Why Prospects Aren’t Telling You The Truth

It’s the end of your first meeting with a potential client, and something doesn’t feel right. 

You’ve been at this moment at least a hundred times now, and by this point you can tell with uncanny accuracy, that you most likely won’t be hearing back from them again – especially when they say: “I’d like to think about it.” 

It’s something in the tone of their voice, a lack of urgency and excitement. 

More importantly, a sense that there’s something they aren’t telling you. 

It’s difficult to wrap your head around it. 

You’re a qualified advisor. 

They know you have a solid track record. 

What could they possibly gain by hiding something from you? 

Even if they thought you weren’t a good fit, it makes no sense why they wouldn’t at least give you a chance to put their mind at ease about their specific concerns. 

After weeks of follow-up and no response, you realize your gut-instinct was right once again. 

Another prospect who seemed qualified - has ghosted you with no explanation. 

Here’s what most likely happened, from a psychological perspective, that caused your prospect to hold back from telling you the truth. 

You see, as an advisor, you have the gift of understanding your prospects and client’s problems at an expert level. 

Your knowledge is so vast, often times you’ve thought of a solution, before they’ve completely finished explaining their challenges to you -- I call that the “curse of mastery”. 

Excited that you can be of service, you take the baton and run with it – explaining how you can help and why you’re the one for the job. 

The issue is, in your haste to provide value, you left an important need of theirs unfulfilled. 

Their desire to feel heard and understood. 

It’s a false assumption that your prospects arrive at your meeting with a clear understanding of their situation. 

Yes, they know they have a problem and need help.  

What they aren’t sure of, and what’s much more difficult for them to clarify on their own, are the deeply hidden factors that lie below the surface of what they initially tell you. 

To get your prospects to open up and be honest with you, you need to crack the surface and help them sift through their worries, doubts, and concerns from an emotional level - before they can ever accept your logical solution. 

The only way to do that, is by not taking what they say at face value and asking questions that challenge them to go further for deeper understanding and context -- a process I call “going down the iceberg”. 

Here’s the shift -- instead of jumping ahead to your solution, stay present with empathy and patience until they finally open up and tell you the truth about their situation – something they may have been unaware of, or avoiding altogether. 

View this as your opportunity to provide them with a sense of clarity they’ve never had before. 

When you take the time to truly hear and understand your potential clients’ deepest issues (below the surface of the “iceberg”), you’ll have earned the trust needed to give your expert perspective from a place of truth, instead of assumption - positioning you as a trusted authority, instead of just another advisor. 

Once you’ve mastered this, you’ll never be ghosted or feel disconnected from your prospects, because you made getting to the truth the central goal of your sales process. 

Ari Galper is the world's number one authority on trust-based selling and is the author of 6 best-selling books. Watch Ari’s latest interview with Kevin Harrington from “Shark Tank”, it will shift your mindset on how to grow your business based on trust: https://lnkd.in/g49M86ru