"Nothing happens until somebody sells something.” One of the most common managerial “rah-rah cliches” of our time. However, that doesn’t make it untrue. Sales is one of, if not the most dynamic area of your business to focus on, because it is active. You don’t have to depend on anyone else. Waiting for customers to buy is passive, but you can can always go out and sell. It’s not dependent on external factors like the marker, and you can always improve it, tweak it, hone it, explore new markets, practice it, create new tools, etc. I would go as far as to say that knowing how to sell well is the most effective insurance you can have against your business failing.
Depending on your product, sales venue, and clientele, your tactics for selling will certainly vary. Calling through leads for life insurance is a much different approach than selling a Ferrari to a wealthy businessman in a dealership. In weeks to come, we’ll explore some specific approaches for selling via the most common sales avenues, such as phone calls, retail, and advertisements. However, the principles that dictate your sales effectiveness will remain the same regardless of your product or means of selling. This is the why stuff, and in order to sell well, it’s very important to have answers to the question “Why do people buy?”
Although there are a myriad of other important factors influencing a prospect’s decision to buy, the most important elements that must be present before someone will buy from you can be spelled out in the acronym “NUT”. Your primary job as a salesperson is to establish these three things:
Need- Does the customer think your product has value to them? Do they see that they need it?
Urgency- Why your customer should buy now, rather than wait to buy next Tuesday.
Trust- You have rapport with the customer. They like and listen to you, and believe that you will do right by them.
Today we’ll only have time and space to cover the N... establishing need. When it comes to selling, people will buy your product if they believe that it is more valuable to them than what they are sacrificing for it. You’re probably familiar with that common picture of justice with the blindfold and the scale. In sales, your customer is holding a scale just like that. In one side is the money that they work 50 hours a week to get, that they tolerate their jerk-face of a boss for, and that they guard carefully against all takers so they can provide for themselves and their families. So it has a lot of value in the customer’s mind already. In the other side, you are placing your product or service, which in the beginning of the presentation is pretty light, and the customer’s money weighs far more.
I think we’ve likely all had the experience of an amateur salesperson trying to pressure us into buying an item that we don’t want. Occasionally, we may give in and buy it, but what then? If you’re like me, you’ll either later return the item out of “buyer’s remorse”, or at the least, you’ll avoid going into that business again like it was infested with biting Ebola monkeys.
Ok, so if that’s the wrong way to do it, what’s the right way? Well, let’s talk about the difference between convincing and persuading. If I convince you that my point of view is correct, I forcefully argue my point of view well enough that you have to concede that I’m right about what I’m talking about. I know my stuff and you just can’t find a reason why I’m wrong. Once I’m not around, generally you’ll swing right back to their old point of view on principle alone. Nobody likes to feel they’re being manipulated or swayed. However, if I persuade you about an issue, I help guide you to YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS about it. Which do you think is more powerful psychologically- My ideas, which I shoved down your throat until you finally said ok, or your own conclusions, which you have drawn after being guided through a careful consideration of the facts? The answer is obvious which is why in effective sales, the “leading question”, a question designed to elicit a conclusion in your favor, is your best tool.
With each “yes”, a little more weight is placed in your side of the scale. Enough of these will literally tip the scales in your favor and make asking for the order a much smoother (and more successful) process. Good examples of leading questions might be “Would that help your business?”, “Pretty nice, huh?”, or “That’d save a lot of time, right?”
I’m out of space for today, but be sure to come back next week, where I’ll go much more into depth on leading questions and how to craft, evaluate, tweak, and implement leading questions in all of your sales procedures. Can you see what a difference that’ll make in your sales results?
Josh Wise
