Begging for the Order

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My guest this week was Stewart Samkange in Kenya. Stewart is a sales professional who’s worked at IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. And he’s in the process of relocating from Kenya to Dublin, Ireland to take a job working for LinkedIn.

Stewart is a regular listener of the podcast and reached out to me with a story of his own that he thought other listeners might want to hear. And after I heard it, I had to agree.

The story involves a sales meeting with a client eight years ago that his boss attended with him. At the end of the meeting, the prospect agreed to make a purchase and asked Stewart to come back on Friday to pick up the purchase order.

At that point, Stewart’s boss got down on his knees and begged the client to write the purchase order right then, before they left the building. Literally. On his knees, begging for the order.

It was the most bizarre behavior Stewart had ever seen. But it worked. And despite the fact that Stewart hasn’t ever tried that particular strategy in the eight years since (nor does he plan to), it did teach Stewart a couple of worthy lessons about sales that he’s followed ever since.

Click the play button above to listen to Stewart explain what those lessons are.

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Source: Sell with a Story: How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale, by Paul Smith.
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Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on business storytelling. He’s a keynote speaker, storytelling coach, and bestselling author of the books Lead with a Story, Parenting with a Story, and Sell with a Story.

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