Tag: persuasion

We Are All Salespeople At Birth

by Jacques Werth

As new born infants, our survival depends on how well we can manipulate adults, usually our parents, in order to get what we need to thrive.  We are instinctively programmed to keep trying all kinds of tactics to get nourishment, comfort, and safety.  Fortunately, our parents and most other adults are programmed to respond well to this.  We then continue to learn manipulation and persuasion techniques as our lives go on.

By the time we are in our teens, we have been inundated with hundreds of different marketing, advertising, and sales tactics.  In response to those tactics, we learn how to resist the techniques that others use on us to try to make us do what they want.  This is the origin of sales resistance.

Sales experts are constantly developing new methods intended to negate our sales resistance.  However, no matter how subtle or persuasive their methods may be, most people have learned to intuitively sense it when they are being pushed or preyed upon.

Nevertheless, we have to buy stuff that we need and want.  Given a choice, we prefer to buy from a person whom we trust.  We also want to be trusted by others.  It’s not easy to become the kind of salesperson that people feel like trusting.  There is so much unlearning to do.  However, when we succeed at that we are far happier with our lives.

Totally Truthful Salespeople

by Jacques Werth

I have been in sales, sales management, and sales training since 1955.  From the beginning, I observed how top sales producers actually sell, intent on becoming one of them.  In 1961, I started to manage a sales force.

The first thing I noticed in my new job was that our salespeople all had an underlying sense of insecurity about selling and being believed.

Lou bragged about how his magic words and wise appearance closed his last sale, even though his sales were infrequent.

Steve kept revising his sales pitch, sure that all he needed was the right words to convince his prospects to buy.

Art was good looking, charming, and had a great sense of humor.  His lynchpin was rapport.

Bill knew far more about the services we sold than anyone, and he was sure that his expertise would close the sales.

They all constantly tried to come up with the best way to convince prospects of the benefits of our services.  However, most of them were barely making a living.

That was my first shot at managing salespeople and I didn’t know how to get through to any of them.  Then, one day, Wilbur joined our sales force.  He was quiet, self-assured, and a very good listener.  He reminded me of some of the top sales producers I had observed before I got into management.  In his first month with our company he became the top sales producer and his sales production kept improving.

When the other salespeople asked Wilbur how he did it, he said, “I just tell my prospects the truth about everything, the good and the bad.”  However, the other salespeople continued to sell the way they always did.

At that point, Wilbur’s sales accounted for almost 40% of our total sales volume and I was determined to find another Wilbur.  So, I began recruiting and interviewing salespeople, but I didn’t hire anyone until Stan showed up.

Stan didn’t seem to be like Wilbur in any obvious way.  He was friendly, energetic, and gregarious.  However, like Wilbur, he was a stickler for telling the whole truth.  After several months, Stan’s production was getting close to Wilbur’s and the less successful salespeople wanted to know how he did it.

Stan may have had a better understanding of why his sales process worked so well.  He told the other salespeople that he always told his prospects about the benefits and the detriments of our services, including everything that could go wrong.  He also explained how we guaranteed our services, but if service was required, it would not be a pleasant experience until everything was fixed.  However, the poor performing salespeople did not believe Stan either.

By the following year our company’s sales volume had almost doubled, most of the original salespeople were gone, and I was still recruiting salespeople like Stan and Wilbur.  That is how our company became one of the largest in the industry.

The lesson in this story is that you can make a lot more sales by telling the whole truth, and not just the parts that you think will help you persuade your prospects to buy.

5 Toxic Behaviors that Kill Sales

by Jacques Werth

1. Assume the Sale.  Treat everyone who might buy from you as if they will.  Persuade and convince them.

People who are that easy to convince are probably unwilling or unable to buy.  Many more people will resent you making assumptions about what is theirs to decide.
2. Get Out There and Sell.  You can’t sell ’em if you don’t meet ’em.
You will waste a lot of time that way, yours and theirs.  That will probably be the last time you get to meet them.
3. Act Like a Consultant.  Present yourself as an expert and trusted advisor about what they need.
Most prospects know better than to believe that a salesperson can be an objective advisor.  Salespeople who pretend to be consultants are trusted even less.
4. Find Problems and Solve Them.  Uncover the prospect’s needs and persuade them that you have the solutions.
Most prospects have more problems than they can ever get handled.  If it’s not a top priority for them when you call, they will not buy.
5. Overcome Objections and Close the Sale.  Convince prospects that their objections are wrong, or are actually benefits.
Objections are usually caused by the salesperson’s lack of authentic disclosure or by the prospect’s lack of a commitment to buy.

 

We Need Your Help with a Marketing Question About a Call to Action

We need your help.  What would a Call to Action from High Probability Selling (HPS) look like and feel like?  We want to hear your thoughts, and even more importantly, we want to know how you feel.

Marketing experts tell us that every “pitch” should contain a clear Call to Action, something that we want the reader or listener to do.  But they live in a persuasive world, where marketing and selling is all about pushing or nudging or influencing people into buying something.  High Probability Selling is not in that world at all.

We don’t pitch.  Instead of trying to get someone to buy, HPS is about finding someone who wants to buy what we are selling, and then communicating with that person in a way that is completely consistent with this purpose.  So, what would a Call to Action look like in order to be compatible with High Probability Selling?

It can’t be pushy.  We’ve tried that.  Our website used to say “Get Started Now!” in big bold type on the home page.  It just didn’t feel right, and one of our readers pointed this out to us recently on Twitter.  So we changed it to something else.  We thought about it, and made a guess about what might work.

Our thinking went like this.  In the world of persuasion, a Call to Action is a push in a direction chosen by the seller.  In the world of HighProb, it’s replaced by a map, so that the potential buyer can make an informed decision.  People want to know what direction to go, but they don’t want to be pushed.  What we have now starts with “What’s next?  We offer the following suggestions”.  This is followed by our best guesses about what a reader might want.

High Probability Prospecting contains a good example of a High Probability version of a Call to Action.  Another Twitter friend pointed out that we are asking someone to make a decision (a type of action) when we are prospecting and we ask, “Is that something you want?”  When we do this, we make no attempt to steer the prospect toward a particular answer.  It’s a Call to Action without a direction.

We need to be creative.  High Probability Selling contradicts conventional wisdom about marketing and selling.  We want creative people to tell us what they think and feel.

 

We thank our readers, especially Linda Sgoluppi and Russ Thoman (@Linda_Sgoluppi and @RussThoman on Twitter), for calling us into action and for helping us clarify our thoughts on this.

Persuasion vs Trust

It’s harder to trust someone whose first thought is to influence my purchase decision, even if their intentions are good.

by Jacques Werth and Carl Ingalls

It’s harder to trust someone whose first thought is to influence my purchase decision.  Even if I can see that they only want to steer me toward something they think will be good for me, I know that they are not focused on listening to what I want, and that it’s going to be a time-consuming transaction at best.  If I wanted their help in making a purchase decision, I would ask for it.

Trust takes more than just good intentions.  Knowing that someone’s intention is to persuade me to go with something that they believe will be better for me is not enough, and especially if they haven’t listened.   Many terrible things have been done by people with good intentions.   I also need to trust in their ability to hear me well, and also in their ability to make good judgments based upon what they hear.  If they start out with anything at all that suggests a desire to influence me, then they have failed on both of those counts.

I would rather do business with someone who listens to what I want and helps me get it, than with someone who wants to change my mind.