Two very different concentrations: the arts and business. Growing up, I knew I always wanted to be a famous actor, dancer, or entertainer. I never once thought that I would want to pursue business, BUT here I am. I also never thought that my extensive experience with theatre and dance would come in handy while working with sales. As Pink says within his book, Improv is one of the greatest tools within sales.
As a salesperson, you need to be able to think upon your feet. You need to be able to adapt to the prospect and evolve with the quickly changing situation. If you just stuck to a script it would be very hard to sell effectively.
There are three Rules to Improv:
- Hear Offers- a sales person needs to listen to the customer in order to react in a correct and quick manner. In the end, the more you listen the better. As pink mentions, the first person who speaks loses.
- Say “yes, and,,,” – In theatre the number one rule for improv on stage is to never say no, but always yes, and… If you say no then you cut off a conversation and cause it to be a closed in conversation with not a ton of deep pain searching.
- Make your partner look good. You want to set yourself up in a win-win situation rather than a win-lose one.
So all of my time I spent working on theatre and improv did end up paying off in ways I would have never imagined.
BoweryJE22