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The best way to boost customer impact is to
cultivate an empathy for the customer and to understand his or her needs,
interests, and desires, and to know how to get them what they want. This simple
idea is based on the wisdom I learned from an insurance salesperson who taught
thousands of salespeople the greatest secret of success in selling over 50 years
ago. And here it is:
The Greatest Secret in Selling: Show people what they want most, and they
will move heaven and earth to get it!
That secret comes from an anonymous source and was first revealed in print
by Frank Bettger, in his classic book, How I Raised Myself From Failure to
Success in Selling published in 1949. I don't know about you, but I'd bet
the Triad has changed a lot in those 50 years! Mr. Bettger used its power to
make well more than a million dollars in selling insurance during the middle
years of this century. And that's when a million dollars was a lot of money!
Let's take a look at an easy-to-follow plan that can put this greatest secret in
selling to work for you.
And here it is: Discover what your
prospect will buy, why they will buy it, and under what conditions they will buy
it. Then show it to him.
Mastering the Master Keys
The master keys to discovering what your prospects
want are asking and listening. They are your most effective
implements for opening up the mind and heart of your prospect. Unfortunately,
many salespeople have serious misconceptions about the meanings of those two key
words.
In old-school selling jargon, to ask meant only one thing to ask for the order.
Often, asking people to sign an order is the first question some salespeople
use. It is so common that many of us cannot remember the last time a salesperson
asked us a question such as, "How will you use it?" or "What do
you like most about it?"
Let's re-examine those two words asking and listening but
this time let's do it with a value-based selling philosophy in mind. You will
see different meanings for those two words when viewed in terms of customer
focus:
Asking means
that if you ask enough of the right questions throughout the interview you will
likely get an order.
Listening means
that the most important task of the salesperson is to pay careful attention to
what the prospect truly says.
Let's ask two vital questions about listening, then examine their answers:
·Why
do most salespeople find it so hard to listen to what their prospects say?
·How
can you improve your listening skills?
Lots of salespeople have been conditioned to
ignore the prospect's needs and desires. What is uppermost in lots of
salespeople's minds as we walk into a prospect's turf? To close a sale! Most
salespeople focus on what they will get out of the sale not what the prospect
will get out of it.
The selfish streak in most of us is reinforced by our traditional view of sales.
Unfortunately, much of today's selling stresses our needs and interests. We go
out looking for prospects to buy what we are "selling," try to
"warm them up" so we can lay our "pitch" on them, then
"hit 'em with the close." If we do it well, we can make big
money...for a short while.
Countless salespeople have been trained to use their listening time to think up
what to say after and sometimes before the prospect finishes. To improve your
listening skills, that traditional focus must change. To survive in any crowded
marketplace, you need to lay aside your own interests so you can discover and
satisfy the needs and desires of your customers. This new focus is different and
your customers will notice the difference. It will make your sales efforts
successful even where others repeatedly fail; even where you may have previously
failed yourself.
Self-Centeredness Is Not In Your Best Interest
Please do not misunderstand. I have never suggested that you adopt a
martyr attitude and lay yourself at the feet of every prospect, caring nothing
about your own needs. What I have discovered is that there is a vast difference
between self-centeredness and serving your best interest. Fortunately, serving
your best interest usually serves your customers' best interest.
I firmly believe that the Triad is a place that exemplifies this whole concept
well. It has been my observation that there are lots of leaders who do listen to
others. I'd like to believe that they don't act only in their own best
self-interest. If I believed that they were only interested in their own
welfare, not mine, my trust of them would significantly be decreased. Isn't
sales the same way. And aren't politicians really salespeople, anyway?
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