I’ve said it 100s of times, you don’t have to be a pushy asshole to be a sales closer in 2012 and beyond. All you have to do is know your audience. Knowing your audience requires the exact opposite action that most sales people do. Knowing your audience requires you to actually listen to them. Think of your customers as dates or friends. When you were trying to earn a date from a girl (in my case) you put your a-game on and your listening ears. You had to listen to what she said in order to keep the conversation going and ultimately tell her what she wants to hear so you can close the deal. Customers are the same as the girl/guy you are chasing. If you want to close them, you are going to have to hear what they want, give it to them on their terms and let them close themselves.
It’s 2012 and thanks to telemarketers, car salesman, TV attorneys and infomercials, the average consumer is pretty savvy to what a sales pitch sounds like. Too often times when the sales pitch alert goes up, the chance of closing the deal goes down. There are still chances where you can talk yourself into a sale, but what’s the likelihood that they will be back when it’s time to buy your product again? Thanks to social media and the internet, we can’t pull fast ones on people and expect to have long term sustainable relationships with our clients. We can however, build stronger relationships than were possible before. We can also interact with our customers and get to know them on a more personal level. This allows us to know what drives them and what they are most interested in.
On this week’s show I am laying out the foundation that every salesman should be building on from this point forward. People buy from people they know, like and trust buying from. I’m going to tell you how to become the go-to person for all things in your field. There are several things you must have in order for this whole process to work. You must have an AWESOME product that meets the markets needs in a major way. -You must 1000% believe in your product and that it CAN benefit your prospects in a major way. -You must have confidence in yourself. You have to know that YOU are a CLOSER -You must have an extreme amount of patience. This is the biggest lack in all of sales. The last one, patience, is the biggest and most important. Too often times sales people spew verbal vomit all over their prospects and feature dump like a fully loaded tonka truck. It takes patience to listen, sustain the pressure and ask the right questions. Remember this phrase I made up for myself when I’m in the selling process: “Questions lead to confessions” Every episode of CSI or any other murder related acronym has the criminal sitting in the “interrogation room” and they don’t tell the criminal facts ever. Notice they always ask questions that lead the criminal to think they already know the answer. The same works for your prospects. They are just as scared of being “sold” as you are of losing a sale, trust me.
Listen to the replay of this week’s show to get a deeper understanding of how and why you can close the deal every time. Enjoy ;-)
