Most people — including many novice sales people — have a 100% wrong view of selling…
Can’t blame ‘em. It’s what the mass media trumpets as “what sales is.” If there’s a salesperson in fiction, they’re going to have this mindset about selling, 99 times out of 100.
And, if you work in boiler rooms and one-shot selling situations, this mentality will help you close more deals. (Although you’ll consistently see refunds and claw-backs eat into your commission checks.)
While I made the mindset shift a long time ago, I had the idea to write about this this morning, and have been trying to find just the right words to describe it.
Here’s what it comes down to…
Selling as EXPLOITATION versus selling as SERVICE…
Land on either side of that equation, and if you are a decent salesperson, you’ll close sales all day long.
But if you adopt the selling as exploitation mentality, you’ll end up with unhappy customers and a bad rep.
This makes me think back to the days when I sold the local newspaper at kiosks inside grocery stores.
Basically, we had a little stand we’d set up, a bundle of the day’s newspapers, and a stack of order forms.
Here’s how we were taught to pitch. Shopper is walking by with their grocery cart. “Would you like a free copy of today’s Journal Star?” If they say “Yes,” you say, “So you’re not taking the newspaper at home, are you?” Most likely, “No.” “Well, then you should know that we’re currently running a special — either $1 for the Wednesday and Sundays, or $2 for all 7 days delivery. Which would you prefer?” (Or insert whatever current special we were running at the time.)
It was a proven process, in that it kept a bunch of low-wage salespeople out there consistently selling a subscription or two per hour, which kept the papers going out and the ad revenue coming in for the paper.
Wasn’t a great pitch, but I didn’t know any better at the time.
What I did know is that I didn’t like to sell through exploitation. Rather, I saw it as my duty, in that role, to SERVE the customers by helping them get the newspaper, understand their options, and so on. I was maybe a top 20% salesperson in the department in pure order volume, but my orders stuck and my customers were happy.
Then, there were the exploitive sales guys…
One of the guys in particular had a shtick. Like the rest of us, he’d set up in the grocery store, with the kiosk, the stack of papers, and the order forms. Unlike the rest of us, he wouldn’t wait for customers to approach.
Rather, he’d see some nice-looking little old lady browsing the vegetables, and he’d roll up a paper, and walk over to her cart.
He’d drop the paper into the cart, and grab on.
“I just gave you your free copy of today’s paper,” he’d say. Then, he’d firmly-but-slowly start to pull the cart toward the kiosk as he spoke.
“Since you’re not getting the newspaper currently, we need to get you signed up for the 7-day home delivery, it’s just $2 per week.” And unless they told him off, usually by saying that they did INDEED get the paper and he needed to check his records, he was headed straight for the order form.
If they didn’t fight him off hard enough, he closed the sale through sheer willpower.
If that has you feeling sick to the stomach, you’re not the only one.
And here’s where our two approaches diverged dramatically. He often brought more sales than I did back to the office. But if you checked our net sales at the end of the first couple weeks, his cancellations offset any additional sales he brought in through these methods.
If your customers aren’t happy AFTER the purchase, you haven’t made the sale…
In fact, the more interconnected we all become… The faster and easier it is to find ratings on your business online… The more transparency is added to the marketplace through social connections and instant-access Google search…
The more imperative it becomes to explicitly avoid this kind of exploitive selling practice.
Shouldn’t’ve been doin’ it in the first place.
But even if you were, the likelihood of it catching up to you only increases by the day.
The alternative, SERVICE, will only continue to increase and compound in value…
For example, not only has it gotten easier for your market to spread bad news and reviews about your business… It’s gotten easier to spread good news and reviews, too!
Referability and ratings are increasing in ease and importance.
(This is exactly what I was talking about when I wrote “Give me 5 stars or give me death!”)
You have to deliver a dream-come-true experience. You have to deliver a ton of value. You have to be remark-able.
And the way you do that is by putting the customer’s needs and wants above your own.
Paradoxically, the most selfish thing you can do is to be selfish.
Or, to either paraphrase or quote Zig from memory, “The best way to get everything you want in life is to help others get what they want.”
Alternately, Peter Diamandis of X-Prize (and other) fame says, “If you want to become a billionaire, find a way to help a billion people.”
Here we’re talking about this from a strategic level, but it applies at a tactical level, too.
An attitude of SERVICE will transform your selling and marketing efforts…
If you approach selling from the exploitive frame, your basic goal is to manipulate the prospect into giving you their order. The ends will always justify the means. Maximum conversion is maximum success. Again, long-term, this catches up with you. But that’s the frame I still see from salespeople with this mindset today.
Alternately, if you approach selling from a service frame, it’s all about understanding your customer, their dreams, desires, and sense of personal destiny. It’s about knowing their fears, frustrations, and their secret failures. It’s about knowing what they want from all of this — to move toward the good and away from the bad — and explicitly choosing to help them do that.
Because you sell a product or service that is a relevant (and hopefully preeminent) solution, an ideal course of action for them to take would be to buy from you.
However, you recognize that even if you could trick them into taking that action, they’ll be happier and better off long-term if that’s a decision they make on their own.
And so you set yourself up as the thought-leader in your market and the prospect’s advocate as they go through the research and buying process. You help them understand the problem better than they understood it before, and what an ideal solution would look like based on their wants and needs. You establish buying criteria, and present your product as the ideal match for those buying criteria. Then, you make a compelling offer to help them make a prompt decision.
This is all within a frame and comes from a mindset of service. (Also, if they’d be best-served going elsewhere, the service mindset accepts and encourages that, the exploitive mindset fights it tooth-and-nail.)
In the end, this makes happier customers. And if you do it well, and offer a legitimately-superior solution, it causes more of the market to prefer you over other options.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
