Make the Sale Happen Before Lunch: 50 Cut-to-the-Chase Strategies for Getting the Business Results You Want (PAPERBACK)

RULE 33 Ask About the Past, the Present, and the Future

A while back, my mother went to an electronics store. She stepped up to the counter, caught the eye of a counter attendant, and said, “I want to buy a CD player.”

The person at the counter said, “You’ve come to the right place. Let me show you what we have.” And with that, the clerk did what just about everyone at these kinds of stores does: He demonstrated a couple of different models at a couple of different price ranges. He recited a memorized list of features so rapidly that the average consumer could not possibly keep up. My mother selected one of the models, paid for it, and went home.

Later that week, I asked her how she was enjoying her purchase. She told me that she wasn’t all that ...