The New Selling
Ask a roomful of people to give you all the words they associate with “salesman” and they will immediately say, “pushy, manipulative, slick, self-serving, phony,” and a list of other things no mother wants her child to be.
Ask that same roomful of people to list all the attributes of the perfect employee and they will say, “honest, hardworking, loyal, dependable, straightforward, anxious to learn” and other things we delight to find in our co-workers and our friends.
To excel in sales today, one must escape the first list and become known by the second.
Face it. Most of your customers can recognize every closing technique Zippy-the-sales-trainer ever devised. Like swimmers too long underwater, we're clawing our way upwards from the depths of a “me, me, me,” mentality that marked the Baby Boom generation. We're gasping hungrily to deal with people who care and are real.
Salesperson, what percentage of your current selling opportunities or “store traffic” is:
- self-generated? They didn't come to you, but you knocked on their door?
- advertising driven? They came because they noticed your ads?
- location driven? They came because they noticed your store?
- repeat and referral business? They came because they, or someone else, had a positive experience with your firm?
The easiest way to make a mountain of money in sales is to build one's repeat and referral business, to have lots of customers asking specifically for you when they contact your firm. Become the expert people can trust – that bighearted helper everyone hopes to find – and you'll soon be making more money and having more fun than you ever dreamed possible.
Here's exactly how to do it:
- Get product knowledge. Know more than just the features and benefits of your own inventory, but everything to which your product might be compared. And no matter what your sales manager might tell you, please for the love of god don't memorize 'ready answers' like some kind of parrot.
- Forget traditional 'selling skills.' They'll only make you seem phony.
- Tell the truth. Even when it seems like the truth might not help you make the sale.
- Accept that not everyone needs to buy from you. Your best ambassadors will often be people you encountered who didn't buy, but who were deeply impressed with your attitude and your expertise.
“Few men, even among the wise, understand the great power than can be gained from service.” – Binnesman
Don't learn to sell, learn to serve.
Roy H. Williams
PS – Wizard of Ads partner Michele Miller is in London this week, where she'll be the opening speaker at Rethink Pink, an international conference on marketing to women. The other speakers are some pretty heavy hitters as well. Check it out.