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Across the Table: The Commercial Field Manual · ← 01 Before you drive · 03 The walk →
All parts: 01 Before you drive · 02 The room · 03 The walk · 04 Paperwork and the climb · 05 The long middle · 06 When it goes sideways · 07 Your own system · Carry cards
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A RocketLevel piece for the people who walk commercial buildings, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 7-minute read.
"How's your week going" is a greeting. Your opening is the first business thing you say, and it has one job: earn the next ten minutes. You earn them by showing you did homework and keeping the conversation on their building rather than your company.
Never lead with capabilities. Every competitor says twenty-four seven, certified technicians, fast response. The decision maker has heard it from every contractor before you and it does not register as information anymore.
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Kills the meeting in the first minute. Leading with your company name and how long you have been in business. Handing over a brochure before you have asked anything. "How are you today." Saying the words "just wanted to introduce myself." Any sentence that starts with "we provide." Dropping donuts and calling it a sales call.
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Say this within the first two minutes. It buys you permission to ask questions for the next twenty without them waiting for a pitch, and it lowers the pressure in the room, which is what gets you real answers.
This one's pretty simple. I want to understand what you've got in place now and how it's actually worked the times you've needed it, compared to what you'd want it to look like. If there's a gap worth closing, we can talk about what a next step looks like. If there isn't, I'll tell you that and get out of your way. Fair?
They almost always say yes. Now every question you ask is one they agreed to.
That is the up-front contract from the Sandler system, and "Fair?" is its signature tag. The structure is theirs. The wording above is ours, written for a decision maker who walked into the room expecting a pitch.
Four kinds of question, in this order. Skipping ahead is what produces "send me some information," because you cannot talk about a solution to a problem they have not said out loud.
This is the shape Neil Rackham named in SPIN Selling in 1988: situation, problem, implication, need-payoff. The structure is his and it is nearly forty years old. The questions inside it are ours, and they are the part that only works in a building.