Learning more and more about sales, I’ve come to realize that sales and healthy relationships have lots of things in common. When most people think about selling techniques, they would never guess that some of those very same techniques can be used in our relationships with each other. The new approach to selling is in fact very similar to what it takes to have a healthy relationship. Most of what selling involves is asking lots of good questions to stimulate your prospect to reveal their pain. There is a second part to that though, and it’s to ACTUALLY listen to their pain, so that you can keep asking good questions. The same technique can be applied to relationships. When meeting someone for the first time, what do you do? Most sane people ask the new person lots of questions to show their interest in getting to know them. However, one part that lots of people skip out on is that they don’t actually listen, and tend to think of questions while the other person is talking, and don’t truly absorb what the other person is saying. This is something I think everyone struggles with.
Most people think that this interest needs to constantly happen in order to have a good relationship with someone, but most people don’t follow this way of thinking. They get by with shallow conversation, and don’t truly get down in the dirt with friends, leading to lazy relationships. This is wrong. In order to have strong, healthy relationships, questions must be constantly be asked, words must be actually listened to, and things must never be taken for granted.
BoweryJE22
Great post! It is becoming so evident how many parallels connect sales to everyday relationships. It is so true that the healthiest relationships consist of a lot of listening and intentional questions. These questions should be asked to help find a pain that can, therefore, be solved.
You’re right, if a salesperson would treat a sale as meeting someone for the first time that could potentially become your friend instead of having the mentality of “what do I need to do to ensure that this person buys from me” people would have a more favorable view of salespeople and the sales process.