Are you selling me?
Are you selling me?
“Find a need and fill it.” A popular sales motto.
Success in Business, both large and small, revolves around relational trust.
Sales training starts for everyone in the home. Parent selling the idea of how to behave as children. Children standing up for what they want — selling the idea to their parents often getting “it” by wearing them down.
Each new effort is honed to be more effective. “Do it because I said so,” may get your way initially. However, relationships are strained under force. We have seen the seeds of rebellion stem from the “because I said so” statements.
So why is there sales resistance?
Though you can find many reasons why this occurs. I will narrow this kind of resistance to lack of trust. “Is the benefit of your product or service good for me or good for you selling it to me?”
I do not know if sales people read anything about successful sales people? My guess is that few do. If the basis of effective selling is relationship and trust, knowing more about building relationships and trust may be beneficial.
Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, and Frank Bettger are three classical authors that expounded on these relational principles around the time of the Great Depression. That may have been a long time ago, but people have not changed that much since then.
This post is aimed at one of the most important factors; Trust.
I recently had the opportunity to listen to presentation, as a practice run; by a sharp young woman. “If I were you, I would be skeptical trusting in one as young as I am.” She went on to enumerate the value of service by highlighting the experience and success of entire team.
By pointing out the obvious, that she was young and could not have the experience needed to serve her audience by herself. She humbled herself by not skirting the issue but dealing with it directly. By doing this, had her audience been real; they probably would have been more receptive to her and took on the role of problem solving with her rather than being resistant.
There are several examples of this “dealing with the element that could cause resistance head on.” Though not all, but in most cases, the audience get on the same side of the court with the presenter. Why? The presenter was honest in her admission. Honesty promotes trust.
As I mentioned earlier, there are many factors that effect sales. However, leaving trust out of the process is surely not favorable.
Humility and Honestly will always trump Bravado. This is especially true for someone trying to be aggressive in their sales presentation when in truth they are docile.
We all sell and are constantly being sold to. Whether it is buying a car, computer, or asking for a hand in marriage; it is all sales. Each of us carry a certain level of resistance. The higher the trust in a relationship, the lower the resistance.
“Most people do not mind change, but they do not like being forced to change.” Trust is one of the factors that make change smoother, thereby, making the entire sales process work.
I must emphasize, building trust is not a technique, not a method, or a scheme. It must be genuine, it may also take time.
Selling is essentially, asking someone to change and letting them feel like the change they are making is good decision.
Humility and Trust.
Attila B. Horvath, author of the book: “The Journey, what I wish I knew before I hit 21”
attilahorvath.net