Do you want to be a good salesperson? Good news it’s not that hard. Bad news, you’re probably doing it wrong. I’ll start with the common techniques folks use and why they work (because they do), then I’ll explain why that is the wrong approach.
Table of Contents
A few tricks to become a good salesperson
Understand the person
Once you know what makes a person tick you can understand how to best phrase your offer and combat their pushback. Someone who is price sensitive may respond well to reframing the dollar amount to a value proposition for example. Furthermore, making someone feel heard and understood, increasing the likelihood of a sale.
Build credibility
Knowledge in a specific area goes a long way. Having education or experience behind your words makes them have more weight. When a lead believes you rather than seeing you just as another salesperson, you will have better odds to close. DISCUSS TRUST AND HONESTY AS CREDIBILITY
Empathy and relatability
If you can understand the lead and relate to them, you will know the problem better and can address the pains they have. If a lead feels like they can relate to you or that you can relate to them, the interaction becomes more personable. That lowers the walls and makes a sale easier to land.
Will these tricks make you a good salesperson?
Possibly! They are great techniques, but that is all they are. They are tools that you can implement. These tools are building to something more. Using them wrong or building to the wrong purpose can render them useless. That was abstract – what do I mean?
The points above basically told you to act a specific way to illicit a desired outcome. This is sales, yes. But acting is draining and can make sales painful and lead customers to feel like numbers. Trying to utilize all of your sales tactics and having “how do I close this sale” in the back of your head limits one’s sales potential. Great sales experts can utilize their tools effectively and naturally arrive at the conclusion of making a sale. That is not many people. Most people are not sales experts and are trying to be one. Yes, you can develop your craft to get there, but it will be a painful and sloppy road until you get it down pat. Many people give up since success generally takes a while to develop.
So what can I actually do?
It’s simple really! Look closer into the few sales skills that I mentioned above. Basically they said:
- Try to understand them and their goals/what they are looking for
- Build trust with the lead
- Be relatable and empathetic with them
When broken down like this, I can say this is something I feel with my closest friends and what I expect from them. I want to be friends with someone who listens to me and tries to understand me rather than pushing me to do what they want all the time. I want to be with people, I can trust and rely on. I want to be with people I understand and show interest in my feelings. I think my friends would say the same.
Being a good salesperson is simply striving to be a good person.
Try to be someone’s friend. Or at least learn about and understand them. Make your number 1 goal to become their friend. It won’t always happen, but that genuine intention leads you to naturally utilize all of the right tools. No more wondering if you’re saying the right thing.
You build credibility and trust by providing the honesty you would to a friend. Share the knowledge you have, and when you don’t know something, say so. Even that admission builds trust.
My friends don’t buy my stuff
That is okay! At minimum your intentions should leave you with a new connection and new opportunities. This mindset also can lead you to be a highly efficient salesperson. If your solution is not a good fit, you will know quickly since you understand the lead. For those people that the product is a good fit for, it is easy to weave in how you can help them achieve their goals with it since you know what they are looking for. As you talk about the product with those people and use pieces of information you know about them now, they will trust you and appreciate your understanding their specific situation. This opens more doors for greater sales opportunities while making your job more enjoyable and building relationships and networking.
Extra: Is this Karma?
As this realization struck me the other night and I decided to document it, a second realization/question hit… Is this Karma?
As I thought about it, I basically said “be a good person and good things will happen to you” – That is just Karma without reasoning. Karma has always be a gross thought to me. Just wishing for good things to happen to you and expecting them to seemed wrong. I like to do things to generate good outcomes. But now I have a fairly concrete example of how doing good and trying to be a good person does lead to greater outcomes. There may be more behind Karma than I had once thought.
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