Archives for July 2017

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. However, in sales it can be very counterproductive. One of the primary goals of consultative selling and prospect centered selling is to connect with a prospect. The reason you need to connect at a deep level as possible is to create a conduit through which information and emotion can be exchanged. If you adopt someone else’s persona or imitate them, you will come across as fake and insincere. This will definitely derail your efforts at bonding with the prospect and make it very difficult to connect in any real way. You will find it very difficult to gather real insight from the prospect. You will be relegated to gathering only facts, meetings will be shorter and harder to come by. Training is a great thing but don’t imitate the trainer whether it be your boss or a consultant. Rather seek to understand the concepts and adapt them to your own style. In short, the best way to connect with a prospect is to be yourself. Let your true personality shine through and you will be viewed as sincere. If you are using an effective selling process and the prospect views you as a real, sincere, and caring professional that will go a long way to taking you to the highest levels of the sales profession.

To truly understand a prospects pain at a deep level you must have sales empathy. One way to obtain it is to have actually held the position of the person you are calling on and dealt with the issues they are dealing with. Not every salesperson has that opportunity. However all good salespeople have the ability to “share” or “experience” the prospects real issues even if they have not held the position. They acquire this empathy by asking questions, focusing on the prospect and getting to deeper levels of pain over and over again. If you focus on your company and your presentation you will forever be constrained to operating with superficial information about what the prospect needs but be excluded from really understanding whether there is a compelling reason to buy or not. Sales empathy will also lead to more bonding, deeper relationships and higher closing rates.

When you fail to do something I am sure that you have a really good reason … or do you? Next time you excuse yourself (note that word!) from an activity ask yourself if you would let a person who worked for you off the hook that easily. Ask if you would take that “reason” from your 7 year old. Ask what would you do if you couldn’t use that “reason” for an excuse. Then do that! This is a great way to break through barriers and end procrastination.