When you think about a sales person, what’s the first thought that comes to your mind? Do you think of someone that is well-dressed, well-spoken, quick-witted? How about charismatic, likable, or financially-oriented? Do you have positive associations with sales people or do you think of them in a negative light? Are they more, sleazy, greedy, and greasy? Do you think of them as compulsive liars that will do anything for a buck? Why do you have this notion of them (positive or negative). If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a salesperson, point-blank-period. You might paint a bright, glimmering picture of salespeople, although, you may not. And if you don’t it’s probably because you’ve had experiences with ineffective or unethical salespeople. You need to flip that on its axis- and remember that the entire concept of sales is to help people make a difficult financial decision, easily- that’s it.
Sales Is Not
- Sales is not your perfectly crafted powerpoint presentation.
- Sales is not trying to manipulate your customers into buying something that’s not in their best interest.
- Sales is not about having a one-time transaction.
- Sales is not about someone a one-size-fits-all solution.
- Sales is not about you giving a monologue to the customer.
What Sales Actually Is
- Sales is about serving your customer and putting their needs first.
- Sales is about asking the right questions to better understand what needs you can service.
- Sales is about listening to the responses from those questions.
- Sales is about empathizing with your customers and connecting to the problem that they are facing.
- Sales is about summarizing your customer’s story, their pain points, and their vision.
Start thinking of it in a different way. Temporarily put your needs and wants a little bit behind the needs of the customer. You are offering a service to your customer. This service is noble in itself as you are supposed to offer a solution to the problem your customer is experiencing. Have a sort of gameplan before you even decide to start serving.
What kind of questions are you asking your customers right now? You should be asking questions that primes the customers into thinking about what they want to achieve. A prospect that is meeting with you, has something on their mind. There is a problem, but they are trying to figure out if you’re going to be able to solve it for them. You don’t want to sound like a robot, a script, or fake. You’re asking open ended questions.
Here are the best lines to get the ball-rolling:
“Why are we having this meeting?”
or
“What is the problem that you are facing with [x]?”
You’ll need to stop the urge to immediately trying to give them solutions when they respond. Be like a doctor, listen to them, take their temperature, start asking a few more questions around their problem. But, we are trying to get the underpinning of why they are experiencing these problems. To be fair, you’re not entirely sure if you can solve all of their problems yet. The ability of being able to solve the problem is first putting your needs on hold.
In doing so, you’ll be able to hear more than what you thought initially. You may not even be the right person to solve their problem. And, at this point, you’ll have to decide your level of relationship and ethics. If you don’t plan on being in the industry for a while, you don’t mind being blackballed. You’ll go for a cash-grab. This isn’t good sales. This is what people remember when they have a bad taste about sales people. However, if you plan on being in the industry for a while, or care about your reputation- think about how you can slow down and serve your customer.
In customer service, you’re creating a memory. Repeating this again, you are creating a memory. What do you think of with Nordstroms? What do you think of Zappos? What is the memory that you’re creating? Think about the relationships that you have in the people around you. It’s all a mindset. They are people, not numbers.
Ask yourself these questions:
Who do you want to be?
and
How do you want the business to be remembered?
Will you be of service to others or will you be self-serving? Once you have a service-mindset everything else will start to fall into place, because you will listen better, you’ll be more empathetic, you’ll care about your customer’s outcome more than your temporary reward.
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone that was really paying attention to you. You can tell in their posture and body language. They’re interested in what you have to say, and they listen with intention. Now, think about the reverse of that. When someone isn’t really listening they have that gloss in their eyes, they are kind of looking around every once in a while, or they are listening just so that they can interject. They’re not present. They want to say something that’s going to impress you. Don’t be like the latter; you want to pay attention and be connected to them.
What emotion are they feeling and how and when have you felt this way? It’s not about closing the sale right now, it’s about closing the sale in the future. You are the therapist to their business problem. You’re going to offer them a solution once you understand their emotion. This solution is going to be summarization of your interaction. Then, you are going to give them a hypothetical close.
What does that hypothetical close look like?
If you saw a proposal that did [x, y, z] in [time] for [price], would you be interested in moving forward?
At this point, you would ask
If I were to get you a proposal by the end of the day, is there anything that would pause you from moving forward?
People will sometimes feel buyer’s remorse. You don’t want them to feel this way. Are there payment options they need to consider? Do they need to loop in a business parter? Do they have terms in their current agreement that they haven’t fulfilled yet? They will mention what they need before proceeding. Once you have the answers to these questions then you can better position sending the proposal- “got it, so you need flexible payment terms”.
Activate them to help you solve this problem. If you can’t deliver, it’s good to know whether this is a dealbreaker or not. If it is a dealbreaker, then you should say that’s unfortunate and find a better fit for them. That fit doesn’t necessarily need to be you.