Just like you have an outlook and a mentality of how you see the world, so does your customer. And many times that mentality they have does not fit in with your plans or your solutions.

Recently, I was asked to come in and do a half day training program for a group of 20 sales people. A manager “just needed someone to fill a slot” and thought I might be the right person to do it. However, in our business I don’t consider myself a slot filler. I consider myself a problem solver and until the customer’s mentality changed from how do I fill a slot in my sales meeting to how do I solve sales problems, he was not a prospect for me.

So the question becomes, can one change another’s mentality? I think you can. But it’s unlikely you will until you realize “the current state of the customer mentality.” 

In many instances the customer’s mentality is save money or get it for cheap, protect and defend my current status or laziness (doing as little work as I can on this). You might consider changing your customer’s mentality by writing down what you would like it to be. What would a client’s mentality have to be for him/her to be open to telling you about his/her problems and your solution? Once you write down the ideal mentality then you are on your way to being able to assess whether or not you see that in a customer.

Another example
I have a client that sells therapy equipment to clinics. When I asked him to do this exercise, he wrote down that the “ideal client mentality” would be to “find a way to leverage my patients and the relationships I have with them to grow the average per patient revenue per visit.”
Even though that wasn’t always the mentality of the prospect, when he was able to articulate that and say this is the kind of person we can help is one who has this “mentality” he immediately started to see change on how the doctors saw his value.

So, do the same thing. Write down that ideal client mentality and see if it enables you to change someone’s perception of what you do.