# Selling, for people who do not want to be salespeople

*Diagnosis rather than persuasion, and the UK law that most small businesses breach without realising.*

## Production summary

- Modules to record: 2
- Total script: 1227 words, about 8 minutes of finished audio
- Voices: Amara (host) and Nadia (practice educator)
- Level: Beginner to intermediate

## Accreditation wording that must appear in the description

- **The CPD Certification Service** (planned): Application scheduled.

> Do not upgrade any of these words in a description or a thumbnail. Aligned is not accredited, and planned is not approved.


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## Discovery: the half of selling that decides the other half

**Runtime** about 4 minutes. **Words** 625. **Starts at** 00:00 in the full course recording.

### Learning outcomes to state on camera

- Run a discovery conversation that surfaces the real problem
- Ask questions that produce information rather than agreement
- Qualify out early, and explain why that increases revenue
- Recognise the four questions that change a quote into a conversation

### Script


`[CUE 1]` *A conversation timeline: pitch at 90 seconds versus discovery for ten minutes, with the price question appearing at the end of the first.*

**AMARA**  [00:00]
I hate selling. I am good at the actual work and I feel like a fraud the moment I have to talk about money.

**NADIA**  [00:09]
Then you will probably be better at it than most people who enjoy it, because the thing that makes selling work is not confidence. It is curiosity.

**AMARA**  [00:20]
Go on.

**NADIA**  [00:21]
The commonest failure in selling is talking too early. Somebody enquires and within ninety seconds they are being told about features and prices that may have nothing to do with why they rang.

**AMARA**  [00:34]
Because silence is uncomfortable.


`[CUE 2]` *The four questions appearing one at a time with the thing each one uncovers.*

**NADIA**  [00:36]
Exactly that. Silence feels like failure and a pitch feels like progress. But a pitch delivered before you understand the problem is a guess, and people can hear that it is a guess.

**AMARA**  [00:49]
And then?

**NADIA**  [00:50]
And then the only thing left to compare is price. Which is why people who skip discovery end up convinced their market is price sensitive. It is not. They just never gave anyone another basis for choosing.

**AMARA**  [01:04]
So what do I ask?

**NADIA**  [01:06]
Four questions. Not a script, but if you leave one out you will feel it later. First: what made you look now?


`[CUE 3]` *A pause on screen after a question, with the useful answer arriving in it.*

**AMARA**  [01:15]
Why now specifically?

**NADIA**  [01:16]
Because something changed, and that change is the reason they will actually buy rather than think about it for eight months. No trigger, no deal, however much they like you.

**AMARA**  [01:28]
Second?

**NADIA**  [01:29]
What have you tried already. That tells you what has failed, so you do not cheerfully propose it again, and it tells you what they think the problem is.

**AMARA**  [01:40]
Third?


`[CUE 4]` *Cost of inaction on one side of a scale, price on the other.*

**NADIA**  [01:41]
What happens if nothing changes. This is the one almost nobody asks, and it is the most valuable question in selling.

**AMARA**  [01:49]
Why?

**NADIA**  [01:50]
Because nobody compares your price to zero. They compare it to living with the problem for another year. If neither of you has said out loud what that costs, your price is floating in mid air with nothing to be measured against.

**AMARA**  [02:06]
And the fourth?

**NADIA**  [02:08]
Who else needs to be happy with this. That finds the people you have not met yet. It is the question that prevents the deal that goes quiet three weeks later because a partner or a finance director said no and nobody told you.


`[CUE 5]` *Disqualified opportunities feeding time back into the pipeline.*

**AMARA**  [02:25]
Let me push back. Is there not something a bit interrogative about firing four questions at somebody?

**NADIA**  [02:32]
There would be if you fired them. Ask one, then stop talking. The useful part almost always comes after the pause, and most people cannot bear the pause so they fill it with another question and lose the answer.

**AMARA**  [02:48]
What about the ones I cannot help?

**NADIA**  [02:50]
Say so, quickly. And I mean this as a commercial point rather than a moral one. Beginners chase everything and are busy and poor. Experienced people disqualify fast and earn more, because an hour spent on somebody who was never going to buy is an hour stolen from somebody who was.

**AMARA**  [03:11]
It feels like giving up.


`[CUE 6]` *A quote sent alone versus a quote walked through, with the next call date attached.*

**NADIA**  [03:13]
Try the sentence and see what happens. From what you have described I do not think we are the right fit, and here is who I would talk to instead. You lose an hour, you gain a reputation, and a surprising number of those people come back a year later with something you can actually help with.

**AMARA**  [03:36]
Last thing. I send quotes and hear nothing.

**NADIA**  [03:39]
Because a quote sent on its own is a document waiting to be compared on price with two others. Send it, then talk it through. Say what you included and, more usefully, what you deliberately left out and why.

**AMARA**  [03:54]
And then chase?

**NADIA**  [03:56]
Put the date in before you hang up. I will call you Thursday morning. That single sentence outperforms every closing technique ever invented, because most deals are not lost. They are just never followed up.

### Sources for the on screen credit

- Consultative selling research literature, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management
- Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, legislation.gov.uk
- Business to business sales practice guidance, Institute of Sales Professionals

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## Objections, and holding your price without being difficult

**Runtime** about 4 minutes. **Words** 602. **Starts at** 04:10 in the full course recording.

### Learning outcomes to state on camera

- Tell the four kinds of objection apart and respond to each correctly
- Handle a price objection without discounting reflexively
- Explain the legal limits on pricing and sales claims in the UK
- Ask for the decision plainly, without a technique

### Script


`[CUE 1]` *Four objection types as four doors, each opening onto a different response.*

**AMARA**  [04:10]
I get one objection over and over. That is more than I expected.

**NADIA**  [04:15]
And what do you do?

**AMARA**  [04:17]
Drop the price, usually. Immediately.

**NADIA**  [04:19]
Which does three bad things at once. It tells them the first number was not honest. It removes the margin that funds doing the job properly. And it trains them to ask again next time, and to tell their friends to ask.

**AMARA**  [04:36]
So what should I say?


`[CUE 2]` *Discount reflex shown costing margin, trust and the next negotiation.*

**NADIA**  [04:38]
Ask what they were comparing it to. That one question turns an adversarial moment into a useful one, and very often you discover they were comparing it to a genuinely different scope of work.

**AMARA**  [04:51]
And if I do want to move on price?

**NADIA**  [04:55]
Move the scope with it. A lower price for the same work is a discount and it costs you twice. A lower price for less work is a negotiation and it costs you nothing.

**AMARA**  [05:08]
You said objections come in kinds.

**NADIA**  [05:11]
Four, and the mistake is treating them all the same. A misunderstanding means they have the facts wrong: correct it gently and move on.


`[CUE 3]` *Scope and price moving together on a slider.*

**AMARA**  [05:20]
Second?

**NADIA**  [05:21]
A genuine limitation. You actually cannot do the thing they are asking for. Say so, plainly. Trying to talk around a real gap destroys everything you built in discovery.

**AMARA**  [05:32]
Third?

**NADIA**  [05:33]
Risk. They believe you and they are frightened of being wrong. That wants evidence: references, a smaller first phase, a guarantee. It does not want more enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is exactly what most people supply.

**AMARA**  [05:47]
And fourth?


`[CUE 4]` *Permanent sale price flagged against the 2008 Regulations.*

**NADIA**  [05:48]
A stall. No real objection and no real intent. Ask the honest question. Is this something you still want to do, or has it slipped down the list? Most people will tell you the truth if you make it easy.

**AMARA**  [06:04]
Can we talk about the law? Because I see competitors doing things that cannot be legal.

**NADIA**  [06:10]
They probably are not. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 prohibit misleading actions, and that includes false price comparisons.

**AMARA**  [06:18]
Meaning the permanent sale.

**NADIA**  [06:20]
Meaning exactly that. A hundred and forty nine pounds, always on sale at ten. That is a misleading price indication, and everybody in that sector doing it is not a defence, it is just a bigger enforcement problem.


`[CUE 5]` *14 day cancellation clock extending to a year when not disclosed.*

**AMARA**  [06:35]
What else catches people out?

**NADIA**  [06:37]
False urgency. Claiming limited availability that is not real is an aggressive practice and it is prohibited. And for consumers, contracts made at a distance or off premises carry a fourteen day cancellation right, and you have to tell them about it.

**AMARA**  [06:54]
And if I do not tell them?

**NADIA**  [06:57]
The cancellation period extends, by up to a year. People find that one out the hard way when a customer cancels eleven months later and is entirely within their rights.

**AMARA**  [07:09]
One more. Anything I say in the meeting?


`[CUE 6]` *The plain closing question on screen with the permission clause highlighted.*

**NADIA**  [07:12]
Becomes a term of the contract under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. So overselling in a room is not enthusiasm, it is a promise you just made in law. Which is a very good reason to be accurate, quite apart from being honest.

**AMARA**  [07:29]
Then how do I actually close?

**NADIA**  [07:32]
You ask. Almost all the theatre around closing exists to help people who are uncomfortable asking, and if discovery was done properly the close is administrative.

**AMARA**  [07:42]
Give me the words.

**NADIA**  [07:44]
Summarise their problem in their words. State what you propose and what it costs. Then: does that work for you, or is there something in it you would want to change?

**AMARA**  [07:56]
Why the second half?

**NADIA**  [07:58]
Because it gives permission to raise the real objection instead of saying they will think about it. And an objection you can hear is worth ten deals that go quiet on you.

### Sources for the on screen credit

- Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, legislation.gov.uk
- Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, legislation.gov.uk
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, legislation.gov.uk
- Pricing practices guidance, Chartered Trading Standards Institute

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