Sometimes not selling is the best way to sell. Instead of forcing your sales targets to focus on what you’re selling, it’s often better to intelligently divert their attention to something they want to talk about. If possible, being a friend is much more effective in sales than being a pushy sales rep for your company. Ultimately, how well you sell yourself is far more important than how you sell your product or service.
what we don’t want
Of course, we all know that the “chemistry” has to be right. How many times early in my career did I have to go on stage in a “hostile” environment? What I’m talking about? I mean having to approach the sales manager of a large car dealership in my town, for example, to ask him to consider buying me a service, in this case an opportunity to advertise in a regional magazine. This would mean asking you to spend money with me for which I would require guaranteed results. He would be brusque, barely polite, sometimes insulting, and generally demeaning in his reception of me. I would feel as if I were being asked to crawl onto my stomach to be granted the privilege of his brief attention to my request. As a woman, as a business person, as a human being, I would feel violated and worn out never to put myself in that situation again. Not worth it, I would tell myself.
Was I naive?
Did I understand that you were under a lot of pressure from your superiors to achieve optimal results and keep profits at a maximum? Of course! Did I understand that he was interrupting you during your busy and stressful day to sheepishly, and probably amateurishly, present my offer? Undoubtedly.
But every sales initiative can feel like this, although luckily not all of them are so demeaning. In fact, some situations can be much more benevolent, even welcoming and appreciative. After all, your role as a sales representative for your company is to offer help. While sellers may suffer the indignities of an undeserved reputation as swindlers and swindlers, undoubtedly the vast majority are honest, hard-working people trying to make a living. Like you and me, right?
The secret of the good art of selling
While I was playing that role, my life as a salesman was not something I enjoyed. Fast forward to the present. Somehow my life has changed drastically, but sales still figure in my reality, but from a completely different perspective. I no longer need to make cold calls in person to try to sell my products. With the advent of the Internet, many things have changed over the years. It’s much more common for me to “sell” via email. But the truth of the matter is that I don’t really try to sell anymore. Rather, I engage with the people I do business with in the most subtle way so they don’t even know I’ve given them a sales pitch. I am neither deceitful nor false. My attitude is one of constructive guidance, to courteously offer you my experience and knowledge to enhance your quest for business success. There is always an intrinsic value in what I tell them that is never dependent on them buying something from me. To be completely frank, I never want anyone to proceed with a sale unless I am convinced that they really want to. If they don’t see that it will help them, then they shouldn’t buy it.
How do I reward my existing customers?
As everyone knows, your best customer is your existing customer. I know this better than anyone, as I am constantly inundated with business from my current clients. But I certainly help the cause by doing nice things for them whenever I get the chance. I’m not talking about giving out candy or sending flowers or taking them out to dinner. Okay, that would be nice, but that’s not my style at all. I’m pretty much a loner and definitely a workaholic, so I hardly ever go out socially, to be completely honest. Instead, I do nice things for them, like not charging them for an emergency service they really needed, one that cost me nothing except my time and effort. Or write a letter on their behalf to bring them more business without even asking me to and again without charging them. Or adjusting your search engine optimization so your websites rank high in Google searches and never tell you I do. I recently spent several days addressing ways to bypass Flash files on some of my clients’ websites in the event that someone’s mobile unit was unable to receive Flash. These are things that I should charge for, but I could never convince some of these clients that they need such services, so I do them for free. I’m not looking for gratitude. I am more concerned that they are happy that their websites work for them and bring them consistent sales. That is something they can understand. Am I defeating my own cause by not bringing all these things to your attention, in case someone of my competition tries to draw them away from me? Maybe. But I trust the core relationships that we have as human beings working together, which is what I referred to earlier in this discussion as “chemistry.” I really like my clients and I want them to know it.
What they need and what I give
Also, I help some of my older clients all the time with their online PayPal accounts, for example, where they’re having trouble logging in, finding what they need, and transferring their funds. If that sounds a bit shady, it’s not. They trust me to help them and I do my best to earn their trust. While on the phone, we both log into their account and show them their account balances and walk them through the processes of transferring funds or increasing their monthly limits. I show them their online sales and discuss where those sales are coming from by sharing statistics I get from Google Analytics.
All these gestures take a lot of my time and I am generous sometimes to the point of excess. But, the rewards I reap far outweigh the time I spend helping them. Since I am usually light years ahead of them in terms of online knowledge, I trust that they appreciate my efforts and will continue to trust me as we move forward.
The toughest sales jobs still haunt me
Still, I am not exempt from having to make phone calls to sell advertising to some clients I represent. This is not an easy job and never has been. Today, in this economically challenging environment, it’s probably one of the hardest things a seller has to do. Nobody likes to be rejected and failure is hard to swallow. Fortunately, as we get older and more experienced, we learn to approach tasks like these in more creative ways.
One of these ad sales jobs happens once a year, so I don’t have to bother with contacts I’ve made in the past. But when I do, they respond favorably to my friendly tone when I remind them of something we’ve shared in the past, whether it’s commiserating about how much worse things were last year, or how nice it was to see customers respond to an ad. that I had placed. I always give them the opportunity to bow out gracefully if they wish. High blood pressure is not my modus operandi. I’d rather have them accept my calls than be afraid to talk to me out of fear. There have been instances where I’d talk to a potential client once a year, laugh about some topic that pleased us only to walk away with no new business at all, but I was satisfied that the relationship had matured a bit more and maybe with the next try, I would see a positive result. In reality, it mattered more that he had struck up a good relationship with someone he had never met in person and spoke to only once a year under the adverse conditions of asking them to spend money in a bad economy. This gave me good mental ammunition for the next phone challenge on my list. Being in a good mood with a lot of confidence is sometimes half the battle. And believe it or not, some people react well to a refreshing break in their day.
The ultimate route to sales success
First of all, whether you’re selling something for the first time to a new person you’ve never talked to before, your biggest goal is to make a great first impression to build a long-lasting and fruitful relationship. If you keep that in mind with each new phone call, you’ll find someone on the other end who recognizes your sincerity, your good intentions, and your ultimate value. And if at the end of the day you have nothing to show, then there is always tomorrow to try, try again.
