What’s the secret to successful selling?
There are two types of sales personnel: those who think they can sell fire to a dragon, and those who just want to help their prospects. Which one you are will determine your success rate.
In this blog, you will discover how to sell without the sleaze and how to become a trusted advisor to your customers instead of an overbearing stereotype.
Is Knowledge Power?
Ever been told that knowledge is power? What if someone told you this is actually utter nonsense?
If you know there is something you should be doing to better your business, or make improvements to your organisation – why aren’t you doing it?
You might know the areas that you need to improve on, but knowing and doing are two very different things. And this is why knowledge is not always power.
How you approach selling is one area that many businesses need to pay more attention to.
Could it be possible that you are making common selling mistakes?
Could your strategy be wrong, resulting in missing the mark? Are you failing to build potential relationships that could be forged through a transparent and honest selling strategy?
It’s never the knowledge that leads to the power; it’s the implementation of said knowledge.
It is the stuff you choose to actually do to better your situation.
If you want to improve your selling, follow this super easy strategy.
Natural Born Seller
Selling can be a difficult area in any business. Your livelihood depends on it, and yet no one wants to be seen as a salesperson.
Sales is a dirty word, right?
Salespeople are pushy. Salespeople are annoying. Salespeople are obnoxious, slimy, and untrustworthy. Who would ever want to be labelled as a natural-born salesperson?
But what if you thought about a professional salesperson?
Does that change your perception? You could market yourself as a sales advisor instead. A professional salesperson is a consultant. They are trustworthy, caring, good listeners, and able to help solve your problem.
Being a salesperson is not a bad thing, but the perception of being one is. So start with changing people’s perceptions and expectations.
How could you sell differently so that your prospects see your heart first?
Share The Vision
You’ve seen how effective changing just one word can be in changing perception. Now you should project your best self through your sales, and this starts with your Critical Sales Conversations.
These are the important conversations that you have on repeat with your clients. How can you improve them? How can you show your clients that you care?
You should always have a plan. Know exactly what you want to say so that your prospects can fully understand all the wonderful things you can do for them.
You can achieve this by planning what you’re going to say during these crucial moments. The reason you do this is super simple: the worst time to think about what you’re going to say is right in the very moment that you’re saying it.
How many times have you left a meeting and thought that you should have said and done something differently?
Those moments are challenging and even more so when the reason you’re trying to sell is to protect your livelihood.
It’s impossible to change a conversation after it’s happened, no matter how much you debrief. So make sure that the vision you share is the right one, and that it shows your clients who you are and what you can do to help them.
Magic Words
Exactly What to Say is a book filled with advice and tips on how to become a better salesperson. Selling becomes easier when you use the right communication.
The book provides tried-and-tested magic words and phrases that, when used right, help create lasting relationships based on trust, not sleaze.
The magic words are so powerful because they talk straight to the subconscious brain.
Why is that so important?
The subconscious brain is incredibly powerful in the decision-making process because it has a yes output and a no output. There is no maybe in the subconscious.
People think that no is the enemy of yes in the world of sales.
But guess what? It isn’t. ‘Maybe’ is the true enemy.
If you could just talk to the part about indecision, you would accelerate the speed of decision-making, which in turn would accelerate the rate of action. This would mean that you could accelerate the rate of transactions.
Operating Framework
Using the right framework will enable you to engage in more impactful conversations.
How do you have an operating framework or a process that can allow you to peel back the layers so that you can get to the real heart of the issue?
If you want to be more influential, all you need are three easy ingredients. These ingredients will create an operating framework to help you be a better salesperson.
The first of those ingredients is curiosity. The second is empathy. And the third is courage.
Why these three words? And why in this specific order?
Questions create conversations.
Conversations lead to relationships.
Relationships create opportunities.
Opportunities drive action change sales.
To get this right, you have to start from a position of curiosity.
The alternative to curiosity is certainty, and if you show up to a conversation with a position of certainty, you will create friction.
To avoid this, you will want to put content into a conversation.
But here’s the problem: If you introduce content into a conversation before you’ve earned the context, you make a noisy environment even louder.
You can use curiosity to understand the context, so stay curious until you get there.
When will this happen? Usually, when it goes from feeling less like it’s ‘you versus them’ and more like ‘us versus it’ – you are side by side.
At this stage, you are dancing towards stage 2 – the position of empathy.
Jon Acuff describes empathy as caring about what the people you care about care about. This definition perfectly sums it up.
Look at your communications towards your clients. Who is the person you care about the most?
How often do you send messages like this
I was just checking in…
I was circling back…
We were founded in…
We are proud of.…
We deliver…
We offer…
Who is the hero here? It’s almost always yourself.
If it’s ever you versus them, then you are creating a winner and a loser. Make a team instead and always strive for you versus it.
Be empathetic to your client’s needs. Once you demonstrate empathy, you become relatable – a trusted advisor
So, all that’s left now is courage. The courage to ask big, bold questions. The courage to invite people to take action.
If you’ve put the work in before, asking will be easy.
Remember, your success is in direct correlation to the quantity of quality asks that you make in life.
Take every moment of influence and follow these steps:
- Start curious until you understand the context.
- Dance towards a position of empathy so that you see the world through their eyes.
- Have the courage to ask people to take big bold actions.
Put It Into Practice
What have you learned to become a better salesperson?
- Firstly, change the perception of a salesperson to generate more success
- Secondly, if you do not ask, you do not get.
- Thirdly, success is directly correlated to the quantity of quality asks that you make in life.
- And finally, stay curious until you reach empathy and then have the courage to ask for what you want.
If you learn the real context of what’s going on and slow down the process, you’ll speed up the positive outcomes because you’ve amplified trust.
