Want to be a BEST salesman, come with me...
Forget the scripts. Forget the elevator speeches. Forget the fancy talk, the big words, the clever formulas. I'm going to make selling simple for you.
Selling is education.
Selling is entertainment
Selling is telling a story.
In a nutshell, those are the three main components of good salesmanship. And when I say salesmanship, I also mean marketing, too.
Let's look at these three components individually.
Selling Is Education
When you stop thinking about 'selling' and instead think about educating other people about who you are and how you help them, selling feels much better. It fits better, like a jacket that's been tailored by a skilled seamstress just to fit your figure. It doesn't hurt anymore or pinch or make you squirm.
Most of us respect education to some degree, and hold educators in high regard. You're like a college professor for your business; an expert, holding a PhD in that unique world called "my business." And so you are the best person to educate prospects about who you are as a business and the most important thing in the world - what you do for them.
Education can take many forms. It can take the form of a simple conversation, a listening give and take with someone who may be interested in your services. Or it may take the form of written materials such as this article, a blog post, or a presentation.
Think about your sales and marketing activities as teaching instead of selling. You'll be amazed at the changes.
Selling Is Entertainment
The best teachers in the world are also entertainers, and the same holds true for salesmen. I'm thinking now of my sales mentor who used to engage prospects in the sales process by using props. He's be speaking with someone and casually ask them, "Do you have a dollar bill?" and then he would do all sorts of things to make his point, like take a $5 bill out and hand it back to the person he was speaking with to make his point that for every dollar spent on marketing, the company would make five in return. It was a great way to engage people in the conversation, teach and entertain.
You don't need to sing or tap dance. But you can't bore people to death, either. Selling is entertainment. The best Super Bowl commercials, the ones we remember the most? Those that makes us laugh, or cringe, or feel something inside. They're entertaining. The ones that make us yawn? Those that just yap on and on about what the product does. All I can think of here are those endless commercials for cleaning products that show a smiling 30-something woman in a pristine clean house swishing a mop around the kitchen. That's not entertainment, that's the most boring use of air time imaginable. Dancing bubbles or a cleaning genie are a sight more imaginative than that.
Selling Is Telling a Story
Like entertainment, sales is also about telling a story - and it should be the story of your customers, not your own company's life story. The story is about the customer, and the story reflects their wants, needs and desires. The story demonstrates how your product or service saves the day, solves the problem, or makes their lives better.
Change How You Think, Change How You Sell
In today's world, consumers' attention for paid advertising is dwindling. Each day, another innovation helps them duck the ads and ditch the marketing. Instead, they're seeking companies and brands they can trust. What is more trustworthy than information? And what drives people to return for more information? Entertainment, engagement, and education - the three powerful motivating factors, the three ways of rethinking selling that can help the small business owner or entrepreneur improve their sales skills.
Are you ready for a change? Then transform how you think about salesmanship. When you change your thinking, you automatically change how you express yourself. And that change will be reflected in a better reception of your communications by your customers, who in turn may respond by buying more from you. Change how you think, change how you speak, and change your level of sales.
Inside the Mind of Sales: How to Understand the Mind & Sell Anything
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