The Selling Newsletter
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The Selling Quote for the Month
“Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.”
– Dennis Wholey, writer
Do your competitors consult you before they try to take your business away from you? Do your long-time suppliers ask you if you are ready for a price increase before they implement one? In both cases probably not. Does that sound fair to you? Probably not, but it doesn’t matter. Fair has nothing to do with selling and business. The quicker you realize that sometimes things are not fair is the quicker you can get on with your selling. I once had a customer who wanted to do business with his brother-in-law and not me. He couldn’t say this to management so he claimed my products were contaminated. My company, a major oil company, jumped through hoops to prove we had delivered on spec product. We did and I still lost the business. Fair? Of course not. But, I quickly learned that sometimes things aren’t fair. I don’t waste a whole lot of time with living in the rear view mirror when things aren’t fair. When things aren’t fair, I get moving on to the next prospect or challenge and distance myself from what’s not fair. Fortunately, there’s more in sales that is fair than is not. And remember, you don’t have to do business with people who aren’t fair. That’s when you can fire a customer. That sounds very fair to me.
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I’m now a guest columnist for the Dallas Business Journal. My column is called “Customer Connections.” I’ll be answering readers’ questions about selling. Do you have any selling questions? Send them to info@bestatselling.com
What sales tip has helped you be even more successful in sales?
Send your helpful tip to tip@bestatselling.com
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The Selling Ideas for this Month
The Rewards of Being Liked
Sally Field, the Academy Award winning actress, could have been successful in sales. When she got her Academy Award she told the audience, “You like me, right now, you like me.” When you are likeable in sales, it can be just what you need to increase your business.
What makes you likeable? Scott Halford is the president of Complete Intelligence (www.completeintelligence.com) and the author of Be A Shortcut: The Secret Fast Track to Business Success. Halford works on applying emotional intelligence, of which likeability is a part, to business. The three biggest components of likeability are similarity, collaboration and cooperation, and compliments. With similarity, people are drawn to people who are like them. Salespeople often use similarity by trying to establish a bond with customers by acknowledging that they attended the same college, grew up in the same region of the country, were members of the same fraternity or other similar shared experience. Another part of similarity is the “me too” factor. This occurs when one person experiences something negative and the other person can empathize, having experienced a loss as well. Halford says, “People bond more strongly over negative experiences than positive ones.”
How does collaboration get you liked? It bonds people and you get the credit. When you bring people together to accomplish a task, you are demonstrating collaboration. You could schedule a conference for your clients where they can meet other product users and learn about improving their business. You would get positive attributes simply because you set up the meeting. When you solve a customer’s problem, you are demonstrating cooperation and you build a strong customer bond. Giving a compliment has enormous power when it’s sincere, but can be very dangerous when it’s not.
What goes wrong. What Halford sees are salespeople who understand the components of likeability, but are not authentic in their delivery. They care more about their own success—getting the order—instead of their customer’s success. That hurts their likeability. Halford says, “You forget that other people make you successful.” They don’t ask questions to understand their customer and hear areas where they might be similar or could solve problems. As a result, they miss the opportunity to create a bond with their customer. Halford says, ‘The establishment of a relationship starts away from the product. A social bond or friendship is twice as powerful in idea or product adoption.”
Collaboration becomes ineffective when salespeople inject themselves into the process. The conference that becomes a blatant sales opportunity causes the salesperson to lose likeability.