Many of the highly critical parts in your career involve selling. Everything from selling a product or service to a customer to selling yourself to a potential employer. The ability to sell plays an important role in your career. With so much saturated wisdom and blatant misconceptions in the art of sales, it’s hard to tell what’s true and what’s fake. Learning how to sell is a learning process, there is no magical recipe to follow, But, there are fundamental guidelines to follow when going into sales.
Storytelling is a great way to engage a potential customer. When you are able to make a personal connection with the product the customer will be less hesitant to buy. Many common ways a sales person will start this off is by talking about previous customers and what their experience was with the product. Even talking about your own experience will have the customer more convinced. Linking the product to a story is just one way to get your customers on board with what you are selling.
More often than not we are quick to hang up the phone or walk away from a person that starts of their conversation as if they are reading from a paper. The experience you are selling when doing this is not appealing and the customer is already uninterested from the very beginning. These cookie-cutter sales pitches do not work, customers want to be treated as if they are special and they alone caught your attention. Personalize the experience and give positive feedback throughout the whole conversation. When customers feel important and like they are a friend their guard tends to go down and you can talk to them easily without feeling the need to overly convince them.
Mastering sales is about making human connection. You know you are on a right path when you are able to retain customers just as well as you are able to get new one. Both of these are equally as important. According to Forbes, the 80/20 rule applies here. The rule suggests that 80% of business’s revenue comes from 20% of its customers. Therefore, keeping customers coming back should be a major priority when wanting to keep your business up and running.
Cold calls may seem as a burned but in fact can help your business tremendously. This method is still around because it works! When all else seems to fail, picking up the phone and making phone calls to potential customers has proven time and time again to be very effective. You don’t want to sell to just anyone. Targeting an audience specific to your business is a better use of your time. You want to have quality more so than quantity in most cases.
There are many other tips and tricks that you will be able to pick up along the way. Sales is a learning process, be open minded to new things and learn a little something from every experience you encounter. Don’t be too pushy or rely on gimmicks, get your clients to sell themselves or develop a sense of urgency are a few other ways to make a sales experience better for you and your customer. Don’t be afraid to show your personality and make a connection with a person that extends beyond just a sale. Remember, people pay for experience not just a product.