Last week I wrote about the age-old stoush between sales and marketing. Both have a role to play in bringing leads into your business. However, this issue opens another creaky old Pandora’s Box – what makes for a good salesman? And in turn, how can a small business improve its approach to selling?
For any business owner, these are always significant questions, but there’s more to it. After you’ve built and implemented an appropriate go-to-market strategy, you must have the sales skills to deliver it.
Often in a financial planning business, the owners and the planners are the salespeople, so this theme is very relevant.
There are a million theories and opinions about what makes for a winning salesperson, which you can Google for yourself. Ultimately there’s no single tried and true method for sales success. Yet, there are coefficients, which set the selling elite apart.
1. Sales is a people game
There’s an adage in sales: “people buy from people they like”. It’s like building personal relationships in some ways. There are some people you’ll gel with, and others you won’t, no matter how often you “like” them on Facebook.
The best salespeople I’ve worked with are engaging, capable of building client rapport quickly and maintaining strong relationships.
These skills are elemental tools in the savvy salesman’s box of tricks, and can be difficult to teach – but not impossible to a willing candidate. Those who struggle with sales usually fail to recognise the value of building relationships and simply try to ram products or services down the throat of an unenthusiastic prospect.
2. Attitude is essential
Legendary American businessman W Clement Stone once said: “Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect”. As a small-to-medium business owner myself, who must sell my own wares on a daily basis, having the right attitude makes a huge difference to sales success. Selling is a stressful occupation. I know this because I do it and have done it as a career – I once sold beepers successfully for a paging company.
Selling fruitfully involves dealing with multiple sources of pressure, from hitting sales targets and dealing with client challenges. It really is a “live and die by the sword” pursuit.
To deal with rejection a salesperson requires a sort of “virtual suit of armour” if they are to succeed. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe a client can reject the attractions of our products and services. It’s confronting to deal with rejection, and it can be challenging not to take it personally.
Those sales knights who can get back on their steeds after an unsuccessful customer joust usually have strong belief in themselves, and in their products and services.
Moreover, the best sales people I’ve seen are able to deal with the pressure of the role, and they bring the right attitude to work every day.
3. Pain points not products
A business colleague of mine, who is a damn good salesperson for what it’s worth, once said to me, “selling is the art of making you want something that I’ve got”. We’ve all experienced situations where a salesperson sells “at” us. They simply gibber on about themselves, their products and services. But, this approach fails to create a situation where the client might buy the widget or service. To steal a contemporary term – “it’s a massive fail.”
Focusing on the client and their pain points is a better approach. The best way to make a client “want” your services is to understand what challenges they’re facing, and what will encourage them to take advice from you. In your profession, for example, it’s too simplistic to say “this client wants financial advice”.
The strategic salesperson will dig deeper to discover if retirement guidance required. Maybe it’s a family breakdown or an errant investment decision that has precipitated the initial sales engagement. The best sales people will uncover a prospect’s challenges, and offer solutions addressing the pain points.
As I said earlier, there are more theories on sales success than “who killed JFK” conspiracies, and my observations might seem elementary. However, I believe they’re the key to understanding why some people fail at sales, and others thrive. I’ll write more on sales skills again, so watch out for future articles on Professional Planner’s website.
