building sales relationships

Successful Selling is Not in Your Head

What you need to know about sales is not in your head.  Effective sales behaviors are based on salesman-cartoonestablishing credibility, building effective relationships, and understanding how to solve problems for your customers.  None of those behaviors requires knowing how to make the right moves, remembering the steps or tricks you learned at sales school, or coming up with the right lines to get the customer to say “yes.”  Successful sales behaviors and the positive aspects of those behaviors are associated with a sincere and real commitment to engaging with and connecting to your clients and prospects.  That type of behavior is instrinsic and real, it is not an act or a game or in a script to memorize and mimic.

Great sales behaviors emanate from the heart, not the head.  If you want to be a successful sales professional in this new economic environment, forget the scripts and the moves and all the sales cliche’s.  Get real, be sincere, build relationships and solve problems.  In short, stop pitching and start solving!  You need to have an honest commitment to building a credible relationship with your clients and have a sincere interest in helping them solve their problems, even if that solution does not exist in your bag of tricks.  Otherwise you are simply acting out a script or following a process or methodology that most everyone in today’s environment has no interest participating in.  Do yourself a favor, internalize your core values and your real commitments to your clients and use that as your sales model.  And quit trying to work the playbook in your head.  It will be much more beneficial for everyone.