Humans are notoriously bad at hiding their intentions. We all know the eager salesman who walks into a meet, where everyone in the room can read him like an open book. For those who do know, however, hiding intentions is often viewed as a shameful thing. Concealment of your goals can be seen as misleading or worse, outright deceit. More often than not this holds true, like the charismatic but devious car salesman who only wanted to help you find your “Dream ride” and stuck you with a lemon. Perhaps there is a third option then. If we cannot wear our selling intent on our sleeves, or conceal it, then perhaps we must change our intent entirely.
The importance behind changing our intent isn’t obvious as first, but it becomes obvious in the light of proper sales practice. It becomes hard to ask your client questions, for example, if all you can think about is closing your sale. Therefore, we should change our intention from selling the product to helping the client. Remember that you client is considering buying your product because it will help them. Very few clients buy because they want to see their money in your hands. Therefore, by aligning our intentions with the clients we not only brush off our bad looks but connect with the client on a deeper level.
So we must remember, if we are to sell to our client then we must recognize why our client wants to buy in the first place. Ask questions, get to know them, and before you know it you will have made the deal.
BoweryJE22
Great points! I like how you focused on the pre-sale information needed to get a sale. Understanding true pain of a client is crucial to closing! I also appreciated how you acknowledged the different motivations for why clients may hide their true opinions.
I really like that way of spinning it out into those 3 options and yes, helping the client be the focus is the clear right choice even if that means they do not purchase your product or service. Our intentions must be pure and create win win scenarios in order to build and keep customers and obtain great referrals.
It’s a fare point that even a good salesman cannot easily hide their intentions. It is interesting that the difference between a successful sale and a failed sail might be the difference between the mindset of the salesman. If the salesman changes his intent, which is a mental decision, it could totally change the outcome.