You could be literally THE best salesperson every to walk the earth with all the tactics and strategies you need to make a sale, but if you don’t make yourself the ideal salesperson for your customer, it is all worthless. Customers are very judgmental and always on guard against whether the person selling to them is legit or not and has their best interests in mind or not.
If we want to be ideal salespeople, we can’t just be good at the tactics. We have to be good at the relationships as well. We have to show our prospects that we can be trusted, that we can be focused on their needs and not our own agendas, and that we are willing to be genuine and authentic with them about ourselves and not be throwing up a completely false face for them — most of the time people can tell.
So to do this we need to be focused on the relationship, NOT the sale. We want to be liked, respected, trusted, and thought to be a person of integrity that won’t steer them wrong. And to do this we have to dive deep into the conversational aspect of the potential client, see what they need, and work to make it happen. Part of this is doing your homework on the company or person beforehand to start to understand what they might be struggling with and what their pain might be. From here once again we have to be genuine and not use scammy techniques to fulfill the ‘Always Be Closing’ ideology. Next you need to show genuine interest in what the buyer has to say and maybe find a connection point through that which can build a relationship between you and the potential client.
Being a perfect salesperson is hard, but simply doing some research, being genuinely interested, and finding a connection point with them can go a long way towards having a natural relaxing conversation that will make it easier for both of you do do business and will put the buyer at ease knowing that they can trust you and that you have their best intentions in mind when talking through the sale.
Ethan David
I like how your post points out the importance of connecting with your customer. Its one thing to listen to them, but its another to be authentic and connect with them. I think that another important thing to utilize is mimicry, especially in the instances where connecting with the customer is more difficult.
I like how your post highlights a key factor in being not only a salesperson but and IDEAL salesperson. A lot of people are hesitant when talking with a salesperson because of the bad reputation salespeople usually get from the general public. Developing the relationship with the customer first rather than just trying to use every selling tactic in the book allows for that customer’s guard/distrust to be let down and a real conversation can be had.
I totally agree with these points, it is really interesting also to see how no one person is gifted with all of these, it takes work to perfect each individual aspect. I love how you tie in the interaction with the customers as well. This is extremely well written and highlights things we learn in class.