Negative Selling

[canyonwalker]

Yesterday in a blog about the trials and tribulations of buying a mattress I recounted my frustration with a sales person who starting negging us. Folks who've been on the dating scene (or have read about it) anytime in the past 10 years know what negging is. But what about people who work in sales? In sales there is a useful technique called negative selling. It's very different from negging, though.

Negging, defined

Just a quick definition to make sure we're not talking past each other. Negging is a term coined by pickup artists (usually men) for using backhanded compliments as a form of emotional manipulation. A classic negging line would be, "Wow, you're way more interesting than I expected when I first saw you." There's clearly an insult here: they look like a dull person. The negger is combining an insult with a flirtatious remark to undermine the other person's confidence and lure them into seeking his approval.

Negative Selling, or "Unselling"

Most of the time selling techniques are what you'd call positive, or constructive. As a salesperson you're asking questions to understand your prospective customer's needs and you're explaining capabilities in your product and how they help solve those needs. Sometimes, though, the positive-constructive approach just isn't working. Your prospect isn't giving up much in the way of realistic needs and they're shooting down every value you're presenting. They may also be carping (repeatedly) about things like, "I don't get why it's so expensive." At that point you might try negative selling, or unselling.

With the technique of negative selling you agree with the customer's negative remarks. An example I might use in enterprise software sales is, "A lot of organizations buy this product for its security features, to prevent software supply chain intrusions. If security's not that important to your organization, this product might not be the right fit."

Unlike with negging, the purpose here isn't emotional manipulation. The purpose here is to qualify in or qualify out the prospect. I.e., figure out whether or not this prospect is worth continuing with. Many prospects are not! As a sales professional it's critical to understand where (and with whom) to spend your time and effort.

Where the mattress seller messed up

The mattress salesguy messed up in two ways. First, he made his negatives personalized to us, not the situation. That's a key difference between negging, in the slimy pickup artist sense, and negative selling in business. Second, his attempt at negative selling was mis-timed. We weren't dismissing his value-selling or carping about things beyond his control; we were still asking questions. When your sales prospect is still asking legit questions you are totally in positive-constructive selling still. Switching to negative selling prematurely is a power move that shuts down the prospect's questions and runs a big risk of pissing them off.

We were pissed off and left.