Improving Your Sales Skills Through Authenticity

Can you improve your sales skills?

I was inspired to write this today from a podcast I recorded with Josh Gillow from Yes Express sales training yesterday. (Here’s his podcast)

Quick check:

You’re walking up to the client’s front door, getting ready to knock and do a sales call or consultation.

Is your heart beating out of its chest?

Anxious?

Yes?

Hmmmm…. why?

Let me guess…

Is “sales” a performance act for you?

You’ve gotta “close the deal.”

You’ve gotta “impress the client.”

The pressure makes you anxious, uptight, and nervous.

You’re not yourself.

And that my friend, is killing your sales.

Authenticity, you being you, is key in sales.

If you view sales as a performance game, you aren’t your true authentic self.

Clients can smell that on you from a mile away.

It lowers your status.

It makes you look desperate.

On the other hand, if you show up to that front door, and in your heart you are intent on serving that customer to the best of your ability…

….it changes your whole entire tune.

Even a novice salesperson can earn the trust of a client if it is obvious that the sales person is intent on serving the client’s needs.

Meaning, it could go down like this:

• The client tells you their vision.
• You immediately know that it is a $50k+ project.
• The client tells you their budget is $10k.

What do you do?

The “performance” salesperson may respond something like:

• pump up the client’s dreams and visions of their $50k project. Get excited with them.
• Think that they can “convince” the client to spend that even if their budget is only $10k
• Submit the proposal for $50k.
• The client feels betrayed. (”Why didn’t you tell me right away it was going to be in this price range!? We wasted all this time and energy on something that was never going to be possible!”)

The “authentic” salesperson may respond something like:

• Educate the client as to the ballpark price ranges of the vision they are describing, and show photos as examples.
• Ask the client, “Which one are you most tied to? Your $50k vision? Or your $10k budget?”
• If the client says $10k budget, then help the client see what they could get for $10k. If that’s a deal breaker, then offer helpful suggestions, ideas, and referrals for what they could do. (Finance, wait and save, phase out the job, etc)
• If the client says “I can be flexible on the budget, I’m more concerned about my end result of the project”, then move forward with educating the client on design and product choices that would be more economical and would help the client find the right balance between their original vision and their budget.

See what’s happening in the “authentic” model?

The salesperson is intent on helping the client get the facts, get educated, and partner with them to help them make the best decisions possible according to their goals.

It could happen that the best way to serve the client is to apologize that you can’t help them, that you’re not a good fit, and not waste any more of their time. (see the subtle shift?)

Anyway, that’s only one tiny example. We could dream up dozens of examples like this.

Reflect for a moment

Which one are you? How do you show up to your sales calls?

Hint: the authentic salesperson doesn’t have their heart beating out of their chest.

They are calm.

They are there to serve.

What experiences have you had that add to this discussion? Hit reply (or comment if on the blog) and let me know!

Cheers!

Weston Zimmerman

SynkedUP CEO and co-founder