Asking enough questions

Sometimes what the customer wants, isn't what the customer wants. You have to ask more questions and then make the decision that he would have made if he knew what he was doing.

Back when I was selling plastics, someone called me to see if we had six pieces of 3/8" Teflon sheet in stock. We had it and Teflon was relatively expensive; I could have taken his order right then and it would have been a respectable sale, and I'd have gotten a decent commission from it. What I did instead was ask the Magic Question: "John, what are you doing with this?"

He told me, and his application didn't really need Teflon; he could have been using UHMW, which was much cheaper. So I told him "I know you usually get this from someone else, and the only reason you're calling me right now is because he's out of stock. So I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm only going to sell you one piece of Teflon, not six--and the only reason I'm selling you that one is so you'll be comfortable, you won't ever actually need to use it. And I'm going to send you six pieces of UHMW for the same price as one piece of Teflon.

"Now, let me ask you for a favor. Once you try it, I want you to make a phone call. If it turns out that I've steered you wrong, I want you to call my boss and tell him all about it. And if you try it and it works--which it will--then I want you to call your current supplier and ask him why he's never bothered to find out what you're doing with this, and why he's been selling you something that costs you six times what it should. Is that fair?"

Needless to say, we had a new customer from then on.