My Biggest Sales Mistake: Are You Negotiating With Yourself?

I think one of the biggest mistakes that salespeople make has nothing to do with product knowledge or objection handling. We work on product knowledge. We work on overcoming objections. But one thing that we don't work on is the psychological part, which is called wallet share You don't share a wallet with your customer. When it's time to pay your mortgage, you don't borrow your customer's wallet, and when it's time for them to pay theirs, they don't borrow yours. So why do we negotiate with customers like we're sharing wallets? Let me tell you what wallet share is. Wallet share is when you start making buying decisions based on what you would spend instead of what your customer values. Maybe there's no shot in hell that you would ever pay fifteen hundred dollars a month, or there is no way that you would pay six figures for a truck, and that's okay. The problem begins when you start assuming that your customer wouldn't either. Bro, I've been guilty of this. I have presented numbers. I have sold the numbers, let me say it like that, and then bought 'em right back. I would present, the customer would get all quiet, and because I was already negotiating with myself in my head, in that silence, I offered a concession. I threw out a discount. I said, "You know what? Let's go, let's go look at something else." I broke the tension, I was assuming that they wouldn't pay for it because I knew I wouldn't pay for it When you see yourself in situations like that, you realize you're not negotiating with your client, you're negotiating with yourself And you have to remember that silence isn't always rejection. Sometimes silence, they're thinking, they're weighing the value, they're processing the information, they're trying to justify it in their mind. And if you interrupt that process simply because you're uncomfortable, bro, you just talked yourself out of a deal. It's your obligation to give your customer options. It's their right to say yes or no. Do not rob your customers of their rights. You just gotta present the numbers and sit in the tension. Stay quiet. And let the silence do the heavy lifting. Anybody in sales will tell you, he who speaks first loses. Just let the silence do the heavy lifting. Just let the silence linger. Sit in the tension. There's an emotional maturity to this, but I'm telling you, you will close more deals if you sit there. You know what to do when they respond. You know where to go with it. But for now, sit there don't negotiate from your wallet, negotiate from their goals. If you've done a good job through curiosity, asking good questions, are you solving a problem for them? Hell, everything's too high. Present it, sit in the silence, and let them respond. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. Stay tough. Peace.