Selling Is Out

Selling is out; the good news is that buying is in big time. There are courses everywhere in every city, all over the internet and in your mailbox on how to sell. They will show you techniques and procedures and rules to follow to hock your wares. You may make a sale or two and feel like you have won in the battle of the sale for a while. That is until the next smooth talking; slick suit walks into your customer's account and steals it for price. The skill one needs is not how to sell but to find out why customers buy. Jeffrey Gitomer says in his classic Little Red Book of Selling: "People don't like to be sold...but they love to buy". That's all you need to know. It changes your mindset to asking better questions of yourself and of your customers. "Why do you buy from me"? That question alone will yield better results to your wallet than three years of sales training workshops with stale cookies and Coke. I bet you have never asked. Neither did I for the first 20 years of my sales career. It is scary I agree. The risk is to our ego, but the reward will be to our wallets. What if the customer says that it was price, or worse yet maybe they say; that's a good question...I have no idea...I think I'll put this contract out for bid. It is worth the risk. You may not hear the answers that you wanted or the answers you expected, but what you will get is the truth. All that matters is the truth. With that you have something to work with, some base to build upon.

Take those answers and mope around for five minutes, and then go to work on addressing the major concerns. I'll bet your evaluation turns out a lot like mine. You'll find that people do business with your company mainly because they have a relationship with you. You'll come to believe that the most important part of the sale is the sales person. You'll come to see that it's all about you and how well you are helping your customer achieve his/her goals. You need to be a valuable resource for their success. Or else you will wind up with a call one day and a "good "client on the other end saying that they were going with another company because they beat your price by twelve cents. People love to buy; you must give them a reason.