You say you’re not a sales person?
I disagree. Every person on Earth – 6.7 billion of us – sells something every day. Selling is about influencing an outcome. Selling is not just business, it’s an essential life skill.
You may conciously sell a product, service, or point-of-view. Or you may unconsciously sell you: who you are and what you can do. Try to avoid it, but you can’t … you WILL sell something in the next 24 hours.
Rudyard Kipling once wrote: “I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); their names are What and Why and When … and How and Where and Who.”
Let’s consider these five helpers the next time you sell:
No two buyers are the same. Are you a political candidate seeking office? Maybe you’re trying to convince your boss to promote you into a new position. Are you a doctoral student, facing a committee of skeptics during your oral exam? Or maybe you’re just someone on a park bench trying to get a friend to agree to your point-of-view.
Once you realize you ARE selling, you need to start thinking like your buyer – and stop thinking like a seller. Who are you? What do you like and dislike? What are your values? What are your needs? The list of questions to ask yourself is almost limitless. However, until you realize who you are selling to and start thinking like them, you’re facing an uphill battle.
Everything sold can be thought of as either a product (something you can touch), a service (an action performed), or a point-of-view (an opinionated perspective). Ask yourself which one of these best represents what you are selling. Each one needs a different approach. A product needs to be useful, a service needs to be helpful, and a point-of-view needs to be rewarding.
Now that YOU understand what you’re selling, ask yourself “Do THEY think they are buying the same thing?” Too many times a seller and a buyer assume they agree on what is being sold (for example – total price, extras, or warranties), only to be unpleasantly surprised when signing the contract. Want a great sale? Make sure you both are on the same page from the start.
Do they need it right now? What does that mean? In the next minute, the next hour, or the next week? When a buyer tells you they need it right now it gives you the advantage. A sense of urgency is always a great motivator in any sale, but as a good seller, you need to understand does now really mean NOW … or when?
Your buyer may not know when they need it. If there is no sense of urgency, they may have a longer time frame in mind for buying. Great, that gives you a longer timeframe to do better planning. A sense of urgency is a great way to move a sale along, but don’t think if they don’t have one that you need to create one. Slow down, they’ll buy when they’re ready.
You’ve heard it said that a key to successful retail selling is location, location, location. The same is true for all selling; be conscious of your surroundings. Imagine you were selling a car. Where are you: inside the car, inside the showroom, or in front of an audience at a new car expo? Is it noisy or quiet? Full of energy or as dead as a doornail?
Location impacts how you sell. Working with one buyer? Get them in to the car and out for a test drive. Selling to a small group? Gather them in close, pop open the hood, and explain how it can go 50 miles on a gallon of gas. In front of a large audience? Use a short video to get them mentally out of their seats and virtually behind your wheel.
Congratulations, you’ve begun to think like a buyer and not a seller. You’ve pretended you’re the buyer and asked yourself the most important question “Why should I buy what you’re selling?” Another way of putting it that I’ve heard over the years is to ask “What radio station in town does everyone listen to? WII-FM: What’s In It For Me.”
Some sales professionals advise the first thing you need to do when selling is to come up with a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). A USP is often a brief sentence that tells the buyer why they should buy. A USP is good, but only when it’s an answer to the VERY FIRST question you (as a seller) should always ask (thinking like a buyer): “Why should I buy what you’re selling?”
. . . . .
There you go. There are five great helpers for the next time you sell. But wait, didn’t Kipling say there were six helpers? We didn’t discuss the most important one, How. That’s the topic for our next post: Convince Me!
Getting Started article (3) of (10). Previous/Next
Comments on this entry are closed.