Great Salespeople are Great Fishers - Part II

By: Robert E. Ayrer
Selling Takes Skill
If you do not have the desire, the drive or a positive attitude, professional selling is not for you. All of the skills of selling are learned behavior. Anyone who really wants to be a professional salesperson and is willing to pay the price in time and effort to learn the skills, as in any ohter profession, can be successful in sales. There is no such thing as a "born" salesperson. Selling requires hard work and determination.
Where do you start? Marketing! Marketing will tell you who your prospects are, what they want, where they go for what they want and why they should buy. Keep in mind that prospects don't want your products or services - they want what the product or service does for them personally.
Bad News! The Golden Rule is Dead!
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, means that everyone I encounter wants the same things I want in this world. Not so! Customers' wants are as individulal as fingerprints. No two persons have the same history, education, values, wants or needs. We are all individuals.
What does this mean to a salesperson? You must learn to find out your prospects' passions and desires before you try to "sell" them anything. How do you do that? By asking good questions and listening naively to the answers. Naively, with no assumptions or preconceived ideas about why the buyer should buy.
A popular motivational speaker says the key to good selling is to "Get in front of a prospect and tell your story." If you follow this school of selling, your closing rate will be average at best. When you drag out your stuff before you understand each prospect's unique wants and needs, you wind up "spilling your popcorn in the lobby."
Most of us have prepared resumes and endured interviews for jobs. Are you aware that the function of the interview and resume is to eliminate you from consideration? When an employer has 100 resumes to review for one position, the first thing the employer looks for is a reason to disqualify you, not hire you. When prospects have multiple sources to get what they think they need, they are not looking for a reason to buy from you; they are looking for a reason to eliminate all but one contender. It takes selling skill to be that one.
So, you market to get the highest possible prospects; you get appointments; and you ask good questions. When you find their passion (the "What's in it for ME?) issues, then you're ready to show your stuff. Not all your stuff, mind you, but only your stuff which links to the buyer's passion points.
Find the Link Between Your Offering and Their Passion Points
Link your stuff to their passion points with the three-step presentation - Feature, Advantage and Benefit. Feature is something that "is" about your product; Advantage is what that feature "does;" and Benefit is what that means to the buyers in relation to their passion.
Each time you make a link between your offering and their passion, ask a follow up question such as, "Will that get you what you want?" When you have linked all you have in you feature bag to all of the passion points (there will usually be only one or two), and you agreement from the prospects that they will get what they want from your offering, then ask for the order.
Remember that fishers don't catch fish; they encourage them to swallow the hook. You close the sale, not by just asking for the order, but by getting the buyers to realize that they are going to get everything they want from your proposal - the bait on the hook. The big secret fishers know, too, is that you first wait for the fish to desire and reach for the bait before yanking on the line. With the same strategy, salespeople must first close the sale by convincing buyers that the product will satisfy their passion points, before asking for the order.