Archives

Selling is dead - long live relationships. The whole nature of selling has changed. If you are still using techniques such as 'overcoming objections', 'closing the deal' or 'hard pressure tactics' then I suggest you think again. You may be fortunate in that you still have a market that tolerates these approaches but I doubt that market will last for long. The whole nature of business has changed. We live in an information age when customers have more choice than ever before and can demonstrate their choice by the click of a mouse. So if your approach to selling is face to face then you need to be very, very good at building relationships. The key to this is rapport and I don't just mean spending a couple of minutes talking about the weather. I mean long term relationship building through sensitivity and flexibility to your customers spoken and more especially unspoken needs.

'I had been in the car showroom twice before. I was wary expecting to be faced with hard selling tactics. I had been pleasantly surprised. A salesman did approach me but I found his style non-threatening and genuinely interested and friendly. We talked for as long as I wanted to talk and then he left me alone. A few weeks later he emailed me (my preferred form of communication). He explained that he had a car in the showroom that he thought I would like. He detailed its engine size, the colour, the model and the music system. I went to the showroom. Until this point I had had no intention of buying. He showed me the car but more important than this he gave me a vision of the future with these words. "Imagine you have driven down to your house in France. The journey has been smooth and relaxing (this was very different from my experience of driving to France before which usually left me hot and bothered). You open the car door and you feel as cool and as at ease as when you got in. You step out onto the gravel and you know that this has been one of the best journeys that you have had."

I bought the car.

What fascinated me was how skillful he had been first of all in discovering all this key information about me. He also mentioned the fact that I was in France to write - he had discovered that I was an author. But he didn't just get the informaiton - he knew how to use it. He had picked out my key criteria for buying a car and then he presented it to me as an vision. Now we all use our senses in very different ways and my strongest sense is my visual sense. I need to visually imagine the outcome of what I am buying for me to go ahead with any purchase. This salesman not only knew this but he used it to put me there in the future in my thinking by using present tense language - "You open the car door". This are very sophisticated selling skills and more than that they are exquisite rapport building skills. He is meeting me where I am in my preferences in my ways of thinking. It is difficult not to be influenced by someone who does this.

I know that this salesman had been taught some of these skills and I also think that he had developed some of them for himself. He had a natural inclination to learn and a natural curiosity. I subsequently invited him to be a model of excellence of one of our courses so that other aspiring salespeople might learn some of his approach.

And the journeys to France - the car lived up to all the promises that he made. And so relaxed as I am having arrived here recently, with wine glass in hand, I wish you very successful selling or rather rapport building!!