How often does it happen - you have the perfect solution for your ideal prospect - and yet, they don't buy? Why? Could it be they needed to feel the heat of their indecision? Find out how to apply subtle pressure in this week's advice from author and sales coach Dan Seidman.

Like a miserable plague, the educated, experienced buyer confronts and confounds us. What happened? How did buyers get better at buying than we are at selling? How can we adjust to this epidemic of enlightenment that is taking money out of our pockets? First, let's look at three ways that buyers are kicking our sales tails.

Buyers know all of our closes
Sales training evolved from techniques developed in the '70s and '80s. We learned to work buyers with the alternate choice, reduce to the ridiculous, the Ben Franklin and many more closes. My favorite old close was one I experienced recently after test-driving a new car. The salesman warned me that the car color and model I'd driven was so popular that if I didn't put a deposit down today, it would be gone tomorrow. "Hey! That's the impending event close," I said. "If I don't buy from you now, circumstances will change and I won't be able to buy from you. That's a very manipulative thing to say now, isn't it?" At that point he asked what I did for a living and accurately guessed that I wasn't going to buy a car from him that day.

Since buyers have endured these sales ploys for decades, is it any wonder that they recognize and are irritated by them? Once a buyer identifies a tactic, it becomes a trick. And nobody wants to be tricked.

Buyers gather information before they talk to us
My whacked-out World Wide Web theory is this - the Internet is merely an outgrowth of Consumer Reports Magazine. Think about it. Before buying, prospects can go online to look at alternatives, gather users' opinions and compare pricing. The popularity of Consumer Reports is rooted in the fact that it educates and prepares buyers. The web and our tendency to send literature first (before qualifying) are educating and preparing our buyers. Think about how many times this past month you bounced around the web or phoned for literature before you went forward with a decision, large or small.

I recently spoke to a national exporting association and noticed a man who lingered until all the attendees had left the room. He introduced himself as a buyer and said he regularly attended meetings like this to find out what to expect from salespeople. Like many others, he's a professional buyer. Companies, like his employer, are paying loads of money to train these buyers how to beat up salespeople to get the best prices. Who's training them and giving away all of our secrets? It made me think of the convicts who get out of prison and help police and consumers to fight crime by giving away their criminal insiders' strategies. We now need to be prepared to deal with buyers who are armed and dangerous.

Buyers have been trained by our bad selling practices
We've done things like push them to hurry up and buy. They respond by pushing us away and stalling. We whip out our laundry list of benefits, and then employ something like the Ben Franklin close, but we don't discover what motivates them to buy. They receive the message that we don't care and mentally mark us off their list.

Another poor selling practice is dumping loads of information on prospects without qualifying them. I worked for an executive search firm in the '80s where, as a rookie, I mailed out almost $1000 a month in classy, expensive literature to anyone who said something like "sounds interesting, mail me your information." The problem with these bad selling practices is they've set a weak standard for the selling environment and created a monster.

Teaching consequences to your prospects
Here's a revelation for you: You already know all about consequences, you just need to figure out how and when to apply them.

Remember when you were a small child and adults had to teach you things like don't touch a hot stove, and look both ways before crossing the street? The adults would conclude their warning with a consequence: you'll burn your hand or, you'll get hit by a car. This was meant to etch into your brain the seriousness of your mistake. Let's move forward a few years. If you steal a banana, later steal a book, then later steal a Buick, you'll awaken one morning surrounded by steel bars and a new set of friends.

Consequences reveal that the initial problem, snatching that banana, is not the real problem. The real problem is the many repercussions of that little banana grab, the eventual conclusion is a life behind bars. While that example seems dramatic, you do want to use similar language that nurtures your buyer while warning them of danger. You're going to play the adult to your child/prospect. Learn to engage in discussions that will prevent your prospects from burning their butts on the job or getting run over by the competition.

In selling, you want to talk about how the repercussions of not buying from you can damage the prospect's business in some way. Consequences might include a slowdown in sales, diminished production, angry shareholders, or serious damage to the future of the business. Your job is to point the prospect to the real aftermath of his or her unsolved problem.

Let's look at an example of a traditional sales call and one that uses the consequences strategy.

Traditional call
As a recruiter, I pitched candidates to employers looking for salespeople. Like hundreds of other recruiters in Chicago, I attacked the marketplace with phone calls like this:

Dan: Hello (decision-maker), I understand that you're looking for a salesperson, and I would like to share a great one with you. She has hit 150 percent of her quota the past three years, is trained by Xerox, which you know is outstanding, and she has made President's Club-that's top 10 percent-for her firm the past two years. What an excellent addition she'd make to your team.

Decision-maker: We don't pay fees to headhunters, we require a college degree, she'd need ten years in selling, she hasn't sold in our industry, I already have plenty of candidates from my ad in the paper, and it's late in the interviewing process. And if she's doing so well, why is she looking? (And so on.)

In this verbal arm-wrestling match it didn't matter if my larynx was stronger; the prospect could always just hang up the phone. Pitching this way was exhausting, discouraging, and demeaning. There had to be a better way.

Consequences strategy
I'll never forget the first time I used consequences. I created a list of questions that pointed to the impact of the missing sales rep problem. Here's how that first consequences conversation sounded:

Dan: Hi, John, I heard you had an open territory, how's it going?

Decision-maker: Well, I'm very busy interviewing people now. (Notice he's setting me up to get off the phone with the "very busy" comment.)

Dan: Good, hope you find someone. So who's covering that open territory?

Decision-maker: I am.

Dan: In addition to managing your other people and all your other work?

Decision-maker: Yes.

Dan: Oh, no. That's probably not taking too much extra time from your day?

Decision-maker: No, it's not really affecting my days; I just work into the evening. (He laughed; he's forming rapport with me.)

Dan: Since you've been doing the work of this missing person, is your family okay with the extra hours you're putting in?

(After a long pause)
Decision-maker: You know what; I haven't been home for dinner in two weeks. And my wife is a great cook!

I continued, asking other consequence questions, like "Do your competitors know that these accounts aren't being visited?" "Is the missing person costing the company much money?" "Is this costing you money?" The situation was being framed by the trauma caused by the missing sales rep.

Five minutes into the call, he asked me if I had anyone for him to see. Imagine that! I hadn't presented a product or service to him. I hadn't presented any benefits I could offer. There wasn't even a hint that I had a solution for his problem. But he knew one thing about me: I knew his situation, his personal experience, almost as intimately as he did. So who was better qualified to help him-me, or the other pushy parrots calling to "present" candidates for the job?

Two great things about this strategy? First, every conversation is customized based on the prospect's perception of outcome (with a little help from you). No more boring pitches that lead to burnout. Next, consequences prevent stalling - the number one problem with which sales reps struggle.

Strategize with your sales and marketing teams about the consequences of your prospects' trouble. Build this new language into your presentation. You'll begin to gather rich information that will help you gather more riches for you and your family.