How are your relationships with your prospects? Are they pleased to see you coming or do they avoid your phone calls? Do you remember the names of their children or do you not even know if they have any? These questions may seem several steps away from “how many can I ship to you?” but many times that is exactly the point. It is widely known that people seek refuge in relationships and, therefore, are most likely to do business with people they know. You can increase your effectiveness as a sales professional by understanding the following: people are even more likely to do business with people they like.
The importance of creating friendships in sales does not imply that you must be ingratiating, insincere or fawning. Certainly, these traits can be easily identified and would have the opposite effect of making your customers dislike you. If you want to be sure that you always leave your clients with a pleasant feeling about you it is necessary to be polite, gracious and kind. To create a relationship that allows your prospects to think of you as a friend, you must pay close attention to the impression you leave behind you.
Take the following example: Pete sells a high ticket item mostly through cold calling. In his cold calls, Pete reads from a script but likes to improvise in a few places. “Are you familiar with who I am?” he begins in a loud and booming voice, as though he were just featured in Forbes magazine. The answer is usually voiced in a hesitant “no” as the person on the other end of the phone wonders “who is this guy?”
Pete goes on to explain the high priced nature of his product “I spend that on my credit card every month,” he fibs, causing his prospects to think of him as either a liar or a man in serious debt. “If you can’t move in my time frame, I’m just going to have to walk away from this whole deal. I have deadlines you know,” Pete tries a takeaway. He hopes the reverse psychology will cause his prospects to jump at his offer. Little does he know, his prospects usually can’t wait to end the conversation.
“I have a 20,000 sq ft facility here,” he brags, as though he personally owns the building. “We are so busy that it is filled with workers around the clock.” All in all, a conversation with Pete is an unpleasant ride down his fictional world. He is brash, loud and obnoxious and even without knowing him, it doesn’t take much intuition for his prospects to start wondering if this guy is even telling the truth. Pete loses more sales than he gets because his prospects can’t help but wonder how much worse things would be if they actually signed a deal with this guy.
Action step: Assess your sales presentations, are you at all obnoxious? As much as you want to get the sale, you will experience more success by being more amicable. Adjust your pitch if necessary.
With his brash and unpleasant demeanor, Pete was clearly trying to avoid approaching the prospect with his hat in his hand like a humble salesman. There were many ways Pete could have created the image of a successful, productive and competent business equal without becoming obnoxious. He could have pointed to his company’s past success, alluding to how their product has helped other customers instead of focusing on himself, how great he was, how much he had accomplished and how successful he was. He could have been assertive without being obnoxious and, most importantly, he could have been impressive without being deceitful.
In a world filled with competition, you cannot afford to make enemies of your prospects. While it is not necessary for you to become anything other than yourself, you should make the effort to present yourself as a person your prospects can like. Without this basic relationship, you will find your sales endeavors much more difficult.
Alvin Day’s Sales Training and Self Improvement Advice have helped many sales professionals and success-seekers reach and exceed their goals. For more of Alvin Day’s FREE resources, visit http://www.AlvinDay4Free.com
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