Summary: Brute force selling usually comes about when someone feels like they have to sell their product or service, regardless of the needs, wants, or desires of their prospect. The antidote comes from better understanding, relationship building, and effective qualification.<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, cohost Jay McFarland, and I will be discussing the idea of brute force selling. Welcome, Jay.<br> <br> <br> <br> Jay: Hey, thank you so much, David. I know we've talked about a lot of different issues, you know, generating leads and those types of things. I'm very anxious to talk about this brute force. When I hear it, as a customer, I'm like "brute for selling? What exactly do you mean here?" Because I might want to run away from it.<br> The Case Against Brute Force Selling<br> David: Yeah, well, I'm not really here today to advocate for brute force selling, okay? So, definitely not my first choice, but it seems to me like there are so many people, so many industries that tend to engage in it, that I thought we should probably have the discussion.<br> <br> Jay: Yeah. I mean, nothing could be worse than chasing potential clients away. I think there's a fine line between brute force and still trying to help customers understand the importance of your products and using good sales techniques. It's really a fine line. Isn't it?<br> <br> David: It is. There's definitely a balance. And I think there's a big difference between persistence and brute force selling. But to get to the core of it. I think one of the biggest problems that a lot of small business owners and salespeople have today is that they think in terms of selling.<br> <br> I have to sell this product, or I have to sell this idea. I have to sell this concept. I have to sell this customer. "I have to sell," being the main thing.<br> <br> When you're approaching someone for the first time with the idea of, "I have to sell," it's easy to slip into the wrong gear about trying to push what you have onto them before you've even identified, whether they have a need desire, money, budget, willingness to spend, any of those things.<br> <br> When I think in terms of brute force selling, to me, it's often about people who have gotten into sales. They've been given maybe a lead sheet or in the old days, it was a phone book by their manager who said, "Go make sales. Knock yourself out."<br> <br> And when you don't know how to do that well, then trying to sort of push or bully or cajole people into buying from you becomes the default.<br> <br> So when the focus is just on sales as the first, middle, and end of the process, it's kind of a lose/lose for both the salesperson and the prospect. Also for the company. So it's a lose all the way around.<br> Effective Qualification is the Key<br> If we can train salespeople on the idea of first determining need, identifying whether or not this person is a good candidate for what we're selling. I mean, we're really just talking about qualifying. And a lot of salespeople and even a lot of sales managers fail to make the distinction between qualification and selling.<br> <br> When we're qualifying somebody, we're not trying to convince or persuade them to buy our stuff. We're trying to find out if our stuff even makes sense for them.<br> <br> And what I've seen over the years is that there are a lot of salespeople who waste enormous amounts of time pushing and trying to sell to people who have absolutely no capability even to buy what it is that they're selling.<br> <br> Without taking that step back and saying, okay, let's do a little qualification first. Let's find out what this person is dealing with, and what sort of help they need. And if I can even help them, if you do that first, then you can find out pretty quickly if somebody is a good prospect for you or not.<br> <br> And if they're not,
