Resonance in Sales

Trying to find the right arguments that will resonate with each prospect, is key to the success of any sales and business development process.

If your arguments, your story, your persuasion tactics don’t resonate with the other person, there is no point in trying to persuade them.

You’re wasting both your and their time.

It’s actually purely scientific and if you see it that way, it’s much easier to achieve it.

According to Wikipedia:

“resonance describes the phenomena of amplification that occurs when the frequency of a periodically applied force is in harmonic proportion to a natural frequency of the system on which it acts”

Your prospect is the system.

She is a system of beliefs, perceptions, values, and past experiences. The way she sees the world, and the way she makes decisions depends entirely on this system.

In my experience, only a very narrow share of the global population is able to disconnect (to a certain extent) their decision making process from their default system.

So if you apply force on this system and the force is in disharmony with the prospect, then it fails.

The only way to make sure your sales process (the force) is in harmony with the prospect (the system), is to actually know in advance what the prospect thinks, believes, and values.

And the only way to extract that is by not talking, getting them to talk and listening. A lot.

Obviously at some point you’ll want to tell them why they should pay attention to you and what you have to offer to them, but attempting to do that when you don’t understand the system won’t work.

Get to know the system first.

One prospect once told me at some point in the beginning of our conversation:

“I don’t like sales people”

So I framed the conversation around my role as an adviser and not a person trying to sell her something.

In another conversation, I asked a prospect what was her budget for a specific need they had and she said:

“I know that trick that companies use, where I tell you my budget and you’ll give me a quote exactly for my budget even though the price is lower.”

So I adjusted my pitch, giving her some examples of past quotes for framing a maximum and a minimum so that she would feel comfortable to share with me her budget.

It all comes down to asking the right questions at the right time in a conversation, in order to have the opportunity to understand the prospect’s beliefs, values, and perceptions with regards to the context of the conversation.