Leave Your Child In the Car - Sandler Rule 49

Have you ever let your emotions get the better of you in a selling situation?

• Let's revisit Transitional Analysis.
• Nurture your prospect's Child.
• Suppress the salesperson's Child.

At the beginning of this book, you were introduced to Transitional Analysis (T-A), the human relations model that David Sandler used as a foundation for developing the Sandler Selling System training methodology. You discovered how each of the three ego states - Parent, Adult, and Child - influenced the prospect's behavior and, ultimately, the buying decision. Now, let's see how each of those ego states can influence the salesperson.

As you'll recall, the Parent ego state is where we store right/wrong, do/don't, should/shouldn't, and similar lessons and messages we received from our parents and other authority figures as we were growing up - lessons and messages that now largely control our judgments and behavior. Sometimes, those messages were delivered in a "critical" way - in a stern and authoritarian manner. At other times, they were delivered in a more "nurturing" manner - as helpful suggestions and words of encouragement.

You'll remember, too, that the Adult ego state is the "computer" part of our makeup: data in, data out. This ego state facilitates objective, logical, and unemotional analysis and decision-making.

The Child ego state, you'll recall, is where we stored our feelings about the rights and wrongs, the shoulds and shouldn't, and the dos and don'ts that Mom and Dad were teaching, preaching, and demanding. At times, the Child could be very accommodating when it came to receiving these messages - sometimes, merely in an attempt to gain approval and acceptance. At other times, the Child could be downright rebellious, resisting the messages or defying them outright. Every parent has experienced, at least once, the spectacle of a young child dropping to the floor, kicking his feet and screaming when he couldn't get his way.

As you learned in the opening pages of this book, David Sandler recognized that salespeople had to engage all three aspects of the prospect's make-up - the Parent, the Adult, and the Child - when developing a selling opportunity. The Child must want what you have to sell. The Adult must conclude that logically, it is appropriate to obtain it. And the Parent must give the child permission to have it.

Sandler also made some conclusions about ego states that were of interest to professional salespeople. While the prospect's Child is the critical element on the prospect's side of the buyer-seller interaction, Sandler taught that the salesperson's Child must play no part in the process. The salesperson should neither be looking for approval nor acceptance for his prospect (See Rule # 20, The Bottom Line of Professional Selling is Going to the Bank) nor should he begin "kicking and screaming" when things aren't going his way. Otherwise, it will be impossible for the salesperson to remain objective and keep emotions in check.

Sandler concluded that most of your interaction with prospects - about 70 percent - should come from your "nurturing" Parent and the remaining 30 percent should come from your Adult. During a sales call, the salesperson's Child must remain in the car! (You can reacquaint yourself with this ego state after the meeting, perhaps by pumping your fist in the air and shouting something like "Fantastic!" after having closed the sale.)