One of the strongest tools I’ve had in sales is enthusiasm. Enthusiasm sells more than any other skill that I’ve seen. The point is, as the salesperson, “If you don’t care, who else will?”
This doesn’t require you to be really outgoing and dynamic in expression. If it’s a natural part of your personality to be energetically expressive, then that’s how you authentically show your enthusiasm. But if you have a more restrained personality, don’t try to act expressively enthusiastic. People will recognize it as fake, which will undermine your credibility. Just be yourself. Show your belief and excitement about your products and services as you would normally and naturally. Subdued enthusiasm is still enthusiasm. When you speak with conviction and confidence, you will be believable. [...]
The other day I wrote a blog post, “The Strangest Secret to Business Success” http://tinyurl.com/yc7q3ph in which I’d commented positively on the points that three successful businessmen had all made about looking out for the other person’s concerns first. Yesterday I read an email from a friend who advised me that I should be careful about one of the speakers I’d named. He offered no details, but his comment was enough because in all honesty I had had a bad feeling about this man’s presentation. His hard driving approach came off to Dorothy and me as hard sell, i.e. more concerned about his sales than our needs and wants. I wish I’d listened to my feelings before I included him in the article.
This is a case of allowing the opinion of others to drown out my inner voice. I could have used my wife’s reaction to his hard driving presentation to bolster my own response. Instead I was impressed by 1) his examples and points, which I still feel were correct, and 2) his testimonials by famous people. I wrote off my concerns with his presentation style to feelings of inadequacy, such as “I just must not be ready to play at that level,” instead of to “this isn’t the type of game I want to play.” My friend reminded me to trust my own inner feelings about how someone does business. Rather than an issue of honesty, for me it’s a matter of hard sell versus soft sell. Choose what’s right for [...]
For hundreds of year or longer, there were merchants who traveled from town to town, country to country. You’ve doubtless seen movies and TV shows of the Old West when a peddler came through a remote rural area with his wagon loaded with as much merchandise as he could carry. If you wanted something then, like a skillet, you bought what he had or did without. This gave rise to an expression in retail that I was taught when I first went to work for Radio Shack Computer Centers in 1981: sell what’s on the wagon.
I’m telling you, don’t sell your customers what’s on the wagon just to get the sale regardless of whether it’ right or wrong for them. Soft sell sales and marketing are about aligning with your customers. Get to know and understand their problems and desires, wants and needs. Then advise them with all the honesty and integrity you would want if you were the [...]
This concept crystallizes for me the hard sell position when taken to an extreme. Do what it takes to get the sale because “All’s fair in love and war”; and sales, to the hard sell marketer, is war. There are winners and losers. The good ones make sure they are the winners most of the time. On the other end of the spectrum, soft sell salespeople and soft sell marketers work to achieve a win-win.
It’s time that the business world recognizes loving your customer means developing a long term relationship based on trust and mutual benefit. Business relationships are, frankly, relationships..
If you want enduring relationships in business, or in your personal life, move away from the “All’s fair” viewpoint. And leave behind the images that sales or love are warfare. Sales become spiritual service when you make that connection with your customers. Building and maintaining a relationship of trust is so much more satisfying and fulfilling on many levels, more rewarding than just a quick commission from a sale slammed home. Help customers [...]
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