Christopher Columbus, Salesman

by Graham Denton

One of the greatest sales successes in European history occurred in the summer of 1492, when a visionary Genoan navigator named Christopher Columbus, after months of fruitless solicitation, finally convinced the king and queen of Spain to sponsor his hazardous "Enterprise of the Indies." In doing so he provided a classic case of how to overcome objections. The objection that he had been encountering was formidable indeed, and it was being put forth, with irritating eloquence, by "antisponsors" at the Spanish court. What these naysayers were telling the hesitant royal "buyers" was this: "This Italian is a nut. If you give him money to sail West toward the Indies, you may as well be throwing it directly into the ocean. Because there's no way he'll come back from such a voyage as anything but fishbait."

Translated into practical terms - the only terms that really meant anything to the enterprising monarchs - this meant that, if Columbus sailed West, he wasn't the only thing that wouldn't return. Their money wouldn't return, either. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were practical people, and it was that possibility of "no return on investment" - not the crazy sailor's own peril - that truly daunted them. That was the objection, Columbus knew, that he had to overcome.

In tackling this problem, he didn't deny the objection or try to turn it into a plus. This was a sailor with decades of experience in stormy seas. He knew there were risks to sailing West, not the least of which was that he and his crew might be literally "sunk." And he knew that, in asking the monarchs to back him, he was saying, in effect, "I want you to take a chance." "But look at this voyage," he said, "as a gamble for high stakes. Yes, you'll be putting up money that you might lose. But I'm confident in my ability to deliver what I say. And if I'm right, if we're successful in this joint adventure, I beg you to look at what your majesties stand to win.

"I am offering you a key to all the riches of the East. Granted, nobody knows for certain that it will fit the lock. But I ask you to measure what you will lose if this key doesn't fit against what you have a chance of winning if it does open the lock. Are you not willing to incur some risk for the hope of vast gains?"

That argument carried the day. According to legend, Queen Isabella pawned some of her personal jewelry, and the sailor got his funds. Why? Because rather than trying to overcome the objection, he had asked his "buyers" to consider it as part of a cost-benefit equation. That's a model for handling one very specific type of objection: the risk-averse buyer's fear that accepting your proposal will "sink" his investment. If you're faced with this type of objection, consider Columbus's strategy of balancing the immediate costs against the potential benefits.

You've got to be practical - and honest - about this balancing act. For a potential benefit to counter an objection effectively, it's got to display an order of magnitude in excess of the investment. What order? That depends on your industry, your average sale, your customer base. But certainly more than four or five times the investment - unless the initial outlay itself is extremely small.

For example, if you're asking a customer to invest (and therefore risk) twenty dollars, the chance of a fifty dollar gain may be a sufficient objection-handler. If you're asking for an investment of twenty thousand dollars, the possibility of making fifty thousand will probably not be sufficient. The higher the initial cost to the customer, the higher "multiplier" you must be able to bring into play to make putting that money at risk seem a reasonable course of action.

Even though he had never been to a sales training seminar, Columbus understood this. Against the relatively modest investment of some royal jewels, he posed the "incalculable" riches that were waiting on the other side of the ocean. That is why Ferdinand and Isabella took a chance on the "nut."