Detailed Criteria

By: Kenrick Cleveland

'The devil is in the details.' It's an English idiom I'm sure you've experienced, or at least heard before. This implies that the small things that you weren't expecting or that seemed inconsequential, can sometimes hold up everything. The same goes for the elicitation of criteria. Sometimes we need to explore and delve into the details and definitions of their criteria in order to fully understand them.

I believe that the elicitation of criteria is at the cornerstone of all sales. When we do this, to use a sports metaphor, it's like getting the ball down the alley each time with no gutter balls. Further defining their criteria gives us a strike each and every time.

Here's how definitions work.

I've done a lot of trainings and had many students in my coaching club. Everyone has their own specific reason for coming, yet many of them have very similar sounding criteria. If I have two students who tell me that the reason they're at the training is because what's being taught is very important to them in their sales, well, that's the surface criteria.

If you ask them, "Is this important to you? Do you really want to learn this?" Both of them will say yes.

The first student might say that the training is important because they want to learn new skills and grow in their business. Your follow up is to ask what that means. They might say that they want to see a list of skills and they want to participate in exercises using the skills so they can learn them.

The second person when you ask them what's important about what's being taught in the training, they say, it's to be recognized. That's a completely different criteria. When you ask what that means, they might say, they want to have the class participants recognize their skill and they want to be recognized by the instructor as skilled.

So these two students are willing to pay for and participate in this training, but the similarities in their criteria re: the training being important to them, are backed up by radically different definitions.

For any of you that have taught in front of a group, you'll know what I'm talking about here. In any group there will be a section of people that probably know your material and maybe reasonably well, or at least think they do. There will be a group of people that are star struck, thinking, wow, I'm really in the presence of a master.

Another subsection and also a majority of the students are there for knowledge for its own sake and will gain their value simply from what you're saying.

But it's important that you begin to understand that every time you think you know what someone wants, unless you ask, you don't. You're not on target. You're not on track. And until you both elicit the criteria and elicit the meaning, the definition, you're missing the boat.

Knowing criteria is most definitely a good start. If you want to bowl strike after strike, the key is to learn how to define their criteria.

Article Source: http://www.dxarticle.com

Kenrick Cleveland teaches strategies to earn the business of affluent prospects using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion strategies.

Please Rate this Article

Not yet Rated

Additional Articles From - Home | Business

indexnav

Learn More.

Authors

Author Login

Submit Articles

Submission Guidelines

Publishers

Top Authors