Joe DiDonato | Chief of Staff | Baker Communications
“Say what?” Believe it or not, this came up at a virtual “water cooler” talk by one of our sellers. We were talking about the upcoming Friday the 13th in November 2020, and one of our top sellers sheepishly volunteered that he would never attempt to close business during a full moon. We thought he was joking, but he held his ground. Someone else chimed in with an anecdotal comment about school children. She mentioned a teacher friend said that her youngsters really misbehave when the moon is full.
While some of these behaviors can seem surprising, when you get down into the details, you find out that some of these beliefs are based on facts, while others are based on superstitions, myths or urban legends. And of course, some of these beliefs might even be so strongly held as to become self-limiting beliefs.
So, with that as a backdrop, we decided that we should talk about superstitions around prospecting and selling as the topic for our November 13th, 2020 webinar. And ‘yes’ it’s a Friday. Although I won’t give away everything that we found out as we were researching the topic, I thought I’d share some of the more interesting facts that we uncovered before we discuss them in more depth in the webinar.
First, the full moon. There were plenty of anecdotal comments about people’s behavior, but we did find one research study on the topic. It was from a Florida law enforcement study. According to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, that Florida study showed that
“aggravated assaults cluster around full moons.1” There’s a link to that study at the end of this post so that you can check it out.
While we’re on the subject, did you know that the most recent full moon occurred on October 31st, 2020 – on Halloween? Maybe it was a good thing that the “trick-or-treat” ritual was called off in most cities across the country. Fortunately, the “full-moon phenomena” just missed the November 3rd elections. Of course, some of you are thinking, “Or did it?”
The next superstition: “Talking about your competitors can jinx a sale.” The root of this superstition probably has to do with the ‘worry’ that if you mention the name of a competitor, your prospect is going to immediately get on the telephone and call them after you’re both done talking.
Well, you’ll be happy to know that according to some research by Gong.io, they found that this isn’t the case. In fact, when salespeople talk about competitors in the early stages of the sales cycle, they achieve a 32% close rate. Conversely, if they don’t bring up the competition at all, their close rate drops to 21%. That one seems to be counter-intuitive, but nonetheless, the data shows that you really shouldn’t be afraid to talk about your competitors during the sales cycle. Probably the only caveat that we’d add, is that whether you talk about your competition or not, you probably should never trash-talk your competitors.
Sidebar: That would be contrary to what you’re seeing in the political arena. As that seems like a ubiquitous ploy these days, it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the team views negative campaigning when it comes to the competition.
One last superstition that I’ll cover before the webinar is: “If I can’t provide “social proof” like testimonials, big client name-dropping, endorsements, and raving online reviews, I’ll never convince a prospect to buy from me.” That seems to be kind of rooted in common-sense thinking, doesn’t it?
Well according to the good folks at Gong.io, this one too shall be moved into the halls of urban legend. According to their research, salespeople who use social proof in their sales calls have a 22% lower close rate than salespeople who don’t. In fact, their research found that if you had the audacity to use this “name-dropping” urge early in your sales calls, your close rate drops to 47%. That just seems to baffle all logic, but that’s what the data shows.
When we get our top sellers on the webinar this week, we’re going to cover 5 more superstitions that are pretty commonly held, along with the data that either proves them right or wrong. So our challenge to you is to bring your own superstitions to us this coming Friday, and if we don’t have the data on them readily available, we’ll have some researchers locked in the basements of their homes so that they can look up these superstitions.
Either way, it’s sure to be some great fun and a lively conversation. If you’re interested in attending this free webinar, please go to https://www.bakercommunications.com/webinars/Superstitions-About-Prospecting.html and register now to reserve your spot. See you there!
1http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=49286
