I was listening to a song by ‘Fountains of Wayne’ entitled ‘A Bright Future in Sales’ I was left wondering: do we as sales people have a bright future in sales or are we just hangers on, surviving with a job!

The inner Game of Selling

Dealing with your own mind and the negativities that arise hour by hour & the need to ‘knock them on the head and not be SNIOP’ed (Susceptible to the Influences of Other People) is crucial to your hour by hour success in selling.

99% of sales people I train ask the question – ‘What further reading or study have you done to further equip or improve yourself in the profession of selling.’ Most people say nothing! Sales is one of the few business professions where we do not take the responsibility to improve ourselves, even then we are reluctant to put newly learnt skills into practise.

Read a book on selling, watch a sales video and put it into practise to get a little bit better in the key areas, remember; ‘ Small differences in ability can lead to big differences in results’.

The winning edge

It’s not ‘what you sell ‘but how you sell’ and it can also be ‘why you sell’ that’s important to your customer. Initially it’s not about selling stuff, it’s rather about the customer and understanding their inner drivers.

Remember when you ‘fell in love’ – how curious you were, how interested you were, how many in-depth questions you asked, it was your resolve (drive) to better understand your newly found love, and to be in a better position to make them happy.

Why are we not that curious about our customers? We need to be interested in them and their success. Their success then becomes our success.

Buyers need sales people to personalise the message, to raise priorities and to align themselves into the customer’s ‘pain’ issues. Many times we sales people don’t realise that often the ‘deal is done before the deal is done’. Buyers are often halfway down the sales purchase decision by the time a sales person comes into contact with them. So what is it, at that stage, going to make an impact on them?

Tell a Story!

It’s your story, stories sell, facts tell. Buyers very rarely need sales people to tell them the technical sides of the product – that’s what the internet is there for, they need to be told why it is a great product for them and how your solution will answer issues either not yet realised or the current problems the customer is dealing with.

Why People Buy – Degrees of Satisfaction

Every action a person takes is motivated by improvement, to enhance their lives, spiritually, emotionally & physically. Customers are no different. The more your product can satisfy a customer in one of these areas the more likely they are to buy.

People buy with emotion (almost regardless of cost) and justify with logic. Think of most of the items you have purchased for yourself in the last six months, especially those expensive purchases – most were decisions made on emotion and justified with logic afterwards. Research tells us that price is only 10% of a buying decision. When you, as a sales person have put nothing else on the table in terms of customer value then ‘price’ becomes the talking point.

Your future is short, take hold of it and do something, bold! Start finding ways to tell stories about your products and offerings.

I credit Brian Tracy for some of the thoughts contained herein from his excellent book “The Psychology of Selling”