Everybody works in sales
and here is why
In the book “To sell is human” Daniel Pink tells us the most important things we all can apply today and start selling anything to anybody.
Firstly it’s important to understand that selling is something that we all do. As surprising as it may seem, we all work in sales. To sell doesn’t mean just to give a product/service to somebody in return to money. You sell when you convince, influence, and determine someone to do something that you want to. We convince others to give up the resources they have and take/accept those we own.
For example, a doctor sells a cure to the patient, a lawyer sells a verdict to the judge, a teacher sells the idea of paying attention in class to the students, and an entrepreneur sells ideas to investors. Everybody is trying to convince the others about something. This is what to sell means.
The word has changed. Before, customers needed to be careful not to be fooled by sellers. Nowadays, when everybody has aces to information, consumers are informed and can’t be fooled that easily. Now, sellers have to be careful to not try to fool the wrong customer.
You may wonder how could you sell anything now that the world has changed. Here it’s how: follow the ABC Strategy.
ABC strategy is very simple:
A — Attunement
B — Buoyancy
C — Clarity
- A — Attunement: harmonization with individual, groups, and context. It’s important to have a balance between power and taking perspective to be able to convince others. People tend to focus more on their on point of view and neglect the other’s person’s perspective. The ability to convince and sell is strongly connected to the ability to understand the other perspective, to see the world through someone else’s eyes.
An experiment taken in 2008 by Galinskysi William Maddux from Business School in France showed that the ones that empathized didn’t do as well as the ones that took the perspective. 76% of the ones that took the perspective made a deal that benefited both of them ( seller and customer). To sell you have to understand the customer’s point of view.
2. B — Buoyancy: floating to be able to face the “ocean of rejections”.
There are 3 stages:
- Before- interrogative self-talk. Have a talk to yourself about why what you are selling is important, valuable, beneficial, and good for the other. This way, not only you will be more confident, but you will discover strategies.
- During- positivity ratios. The importance of having a positive vibe has been shown through several studies taken over the years. Positive emotions help to find a solution to customer problems. Moreover, positive emotions are contagious and when people are happy they tend to buy more. But is important to be a little negative, because this way you can understand why things didn’t go as planned.
- After- Explanatory Style. Explaining to yourself the negative events with a dose of optimism, because this way you will see the rejection as something temporary and it helps perseveration and confidence.
3. C — Clarity: Studies revealed that it’s easier for us to talk about and relate to the present than the future. It’s difficult to project us in the future and see ourselves as a stranger or a totally different person when we do.
A seller has to be preoccupied with finding the customer’s problems and present it to them. People are confused when they don’t know what is their problem. The ability to convince others depends more on finding the problem than solving them. Identifying problems as a way to convince others is based on 2 skills: selecting relevant and clear information and asking questions designed to reveal unexpected possibilities and problems.
The perfect sales pitch
The purpose of the sales pitch is not to immediately persuade others to adopt the idea, the goal is to offer something fascinating to initiate a conversation and eventually reaching a result that suits both parts. An important thing is for the potential customer to be involved in the speech, thus creating a connection, and the process resembling a collaboration.
6 tips for a great pitch:
- One word sales pitch: perfect in a lack of attention century. For example, when we hear “Search” we thing about Google. Barack Obama had the entire political campaign around one world: “Forward”. It’s more likely to reject a pitch for being too simplistic than to simple.
- Interrogative sales pitch: questions often have a surprising impact, but are rarely used. Scientists found that questions can be more effective than statements because it makes people find their reasons for agreeing (or not) to what the sellers are presenting. When finding their reasons to believe in something, people support their beliefs more intensely, and the chances of acting accordingly will be higher.
- Rhyming sales pitch: the message is more easily remembered and processed.
- Email Subject: every email we send is a sales pitch. The title is the one that describes what the message contains. Researchers found that people make decisions about opening emails based on two factors: usefulness and curiosity.
- Twitter format: this approach is fast, painless and to the point, it captures attention and provides relevant information.
- Pixar sales discourse: is about the persuasive force of stories, in a framework that requires brevity and discipline
Why sales are like improvisations?
In sales and theater is always a possibility to face the rejections and you need courage. The chaos behind improvisation is just an appearance, improvisation has a flexible structure that allows it to function. The essential rules of the improvisational theater are: listen to offers, say “yes” and put your partner in a positive light.
- Hear the offers- when the customer does not want to buy, the seller has to make him change his mind, to convince him that the problems he sees either does not exist or do not matter. The basic element of improvisation is listening, thus establishing the perspectives of both parties.
- Say yes- the “ocean of rejections” that sales agents face is characterized by many “no’s”. At the same time, we often say “no” without realizing it. When we sell we have to say “yes” to understand and accept the other’s perspective. When we say yes, so there is room for possibilities and options. Moreover, we need to replace the conjunction “but” with “and”.
- Put your partner in a positive light- The seller needs to put buyers in a good light because if they put people in an unpleasant position, they can make a bad review.
Sales are like improvisation if you train your hearing to distinguish offers, if you answer others with yes and if you put your partner in a good light.
Serve your customers
Sales are concentrated on serving others. Serve is improving the lives of others and, as a result, improving the world. Convincing others can lead to a noble thing. In sales, we could have better results when we go from solving a problem in serving a person. To do this we have to: 1. Recognize the person you want to serve 2. Put yourself in the customer’s place
Sellers are not manipulators, they serve then sell. What you sell needs to improve your customer’s life. To convince others does not mean that we must neglect these nobler aspects of our nature. Today, we need to embrace them, because selling is human.
Daniel Pink is one of the most appreciated speakers of the moment. Pink changes people’s perception of sales in his book “To sell is human”. He claims that we all work in sales, selling being fundamental to humans. Daniel Pink puts the act of selling in a different light, destroying people’s misconceptions that believe selling is an unnatural adaptation to the relentless world of commerce, showing that selling is essential in the development and in the evolution of our species. Selling is part of us, it defines us, it is fundamentally human.