Many people struggle with selling. Whether as employed and trained sales personnel, working in a professional services firm with a client fee target, or as a small business owner who needs customers to survive you need to sell. Why is it an issue? For many it starts with their own self-perception and how they, personally, relate to selling – or what they perceive as selling! Certainly, for many people the idea is that sales people have to spend their time finding potential customers (or clients!) and then convincing them to buy the product or service. This may have to mean pushing, manipulating or coercing them in some way. WRONG! Effective, professional selling is radically different

The important thing is to be very clear about what is selling. Having spent much of my working life in sales, sales management and training and developing people in the skills and attitudes to be successful in these areas I can confidently state that many people do not have a full understanding of it. Yes, they know that it is about a transaction or exchange of some sort. However, when I looked up “to sell” in a dictionary some years ago it had a great phrase within the definition – “to convince of value”. Hold this thought for a minute! When moving on to look up “salesmanship”, the interesting part, for me at least, was “to persuade purchaser to buy”.

These two parts of the definitions provide the possibility of a total rethink of what is required to be successful in selling, regardless of your market. To achieve these two effectively and consistently an organisation needs to think about its sales strategy, sales management style, sales culture and sales approach. The old style “push, push” element will not work in achieving consistent results. In the short-term there may be spasmodic success – with a turnover of customers and selling personnel too!

Let us look at the definitions and consider why they might make a difference. “To convince of value” – what does value mean to you? The beauty of the idea of value is that it is highly individual and personal – and can change according to circumstances. It is not a constant. Most people will tell you they want value for money, but what does that mean? The key challenge for anyone having to sell, is that we need to be able to find what our prospective customers consider to be value at the time. Anyone reading this who has issues about “selling” or being thought of as selling can redefine what you do! If you think about this, your role as a sales person is not to sell or impose products or services on people. It is to find what they believe is value and then show them how you can deliver it. While on this subject, remember that it is the prospect or customer who defines value! Beware of claims which claim to offer added value or value added – the supplier does not define this!

The successful sales people will still use a large number of the fundamental selling skills. A well thought through sales process will help to achieve results and help sales managers and sales people work together towards this end. Do it well and there will be much less rejection and far fewer objections. So, where do you need to start?

Begin with yourself and your own mindset! You will be helping them to buy something – if it is appropriate and they believe it is good value. As an aside, you do need to believe in your own products and services and that they are good value! If you have any problems with this, it is very difficult to put across a positive message with any conviction or integrity! While working on your mindset, remember that any meeting or contact with a prospective client is about them, their situation and what they want. They are the focus, not you, your product or your sales target!

If you have to do any form of prospecting, this is important to remember too. Why should they talk to you or agree to see you? You need to approach them with an understanding of the issues they may be facing and get them talking about these. More about this another time!

When you do get face to face with a prospect, there are a few basic steps to follow in order to get to the situation where you can find out what they consider to be value. The first stage is to gain a degree of rapport, which needs to be the right level for the prospect. During the early phase of any meeting the prospect is making a variety of judgements about you – and your organisation! These may be accurate or totally unreasonable as they will almost certainly be subjective, or based on subjective criteria! Regardless of this, we have to be able to gain some degree of trust from the prospect. Without this, it will be extremely difficult to get the real information from them.

Once there is rapport, the conversation can move to the “sales” part. Hold it – do not start telling them all about your company, product or service! The key element to establish is what they are really looking for – and why! There is a great quote from “The One-Minute Sales Person”, “When I want to sell, I remember how I, and others, like to buy.” Stop and think. How do you like to buy? When you last bought something which was a significant purchasing decision, what was important to you? Why did you choose the product and supplier?

Whatever your reasons for this – their combination will have matched what “convinced you of value”. The challenge in a sales situation is to find out these criteria from your prospect. I call this their “shopping list”. Do this before talking about what you can offer, because the things the prospect is interested in will be related to what is on this list and not the other aspects you think are important for them.

So, once you have a sense that you are moving into the “sales” phase of the process, it is really useful to ask a question to get the prospect’s shopping list. Something along the lines of, “When you are choosing a supplier, what is important to you?” or “When you last chose a new provider, what made you choose them?” This can cause the prospect to stop and think!! They do not get asked this very often – too many people are too keen to tell rather than sell! Listen, write down what they tell you, and keep asking, “…and what else? until you have their list!

This is the key starting point, because this list is their set of value criteria right now! (It might change when you visit them again next month, so you need to check it again.) If you show them how your product or service can deliver against this list you will be able to “convince them of value”. As you keep the focus of your conversation and presentation around what is on their list and they can see you are doing so, the will want to buy from you. In doing this, you have a much smoother and simpler conversation and by dealing with the elements the prospect wants you will have fewer objections to deal with and will feel more confident in asking for commitment.

Whatever your business, you need to find clients or customers. They will choose to use you to supply them provided you can offer them “value”. For me, one of the enjoyable aspects of selling is meeting different people and finding out more about each person’s challenges or issues and what is on their “shopping list” at the time. This really makes each sales meeting unique and fun! Once I have this, I am not selling to them. I can help them to achieve what they need to in a way which matches the factors on their list – and if I do this effectively, they will buy from me. Selling does not have to be a battle or a challenge, it is about working together giving the prospect what they want and need to get value.