The assumptive friendship — The Daily PPILL #286

You know when you are being presented a product or a service, and the next thing you know is that you are giving out your credit card number? It is usually after a transitional question that goes something like: “which credit card would you like to use?”.

If that ever happened to you, you just been handed an “assumptive close”, a technique that good sales people master. Those of us who are not doing sales day-in, and day-out are not nearly as successful, not because we don’t do the selling, but because most of the time we continue to sell after it is no longer necessary, and we bore our customer away.

Most people, when they are exploring something to buy, they have a need, and they just need to find the right option for them. After all their questions have been answered, there is no more need to convince anybody, they just have to move forward with the process.

I had a similar experience a few days ago on social media. In the attention economy, the valuable transaction is to engage.

This particular individual did something quite gutsy. He reached out on social media, sending me a DM about how he was about to visit the city where I live, and then he added on: “this is totally random, but do you happen to know a good steakhouse?”

Completely shifted the conversation, from a cold opening, to something that someone you know may ask you. He may have just created the “assumptive friendship”. He was hoping to connect, strike a cord, to have me engage. Perhaps if I was particularly fond of a place, I would not be able to stop myself from telling him. Unfortunately for him, I am a pescatarian.

As published on The Channelmeister