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Sales, this time it’s personal

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When your sales proposal is turned down, is it you or your product / service that is being rejected? In this Vlog, Grant explains that when you’re selling, you need to think in terms of the ‘sales experience’.

You’re often told, when selling, that if you get rejected, it isn’t personal.

Well it is.

Most individuals agree with the adage, ‘people buy people’, but if that’s true, then people reject people – also.

If you’re selling products, it is possible that people liked you but just didn’t like the product and, therefore, said no. But when you’re selling intangible services, you are what they buy and, therefore, if they reject you, it is YOU that they are rejecting.

Now, of course, while you should learn from every sales interaction, you can’t afford to take it to heart and beat yourself up too much, otherwise it will be impossible to do the job at all. However, knowing this information is important because it will shed a new light on sales. If we’re honest, we live in a world today where most things are commoditised.

Whether you’re selling a product or a service, it’s unlikely that you’re significantly better, or worse, than your competitors and, therefore, YOU ARE THE DIFFERENCE.

What this means is that when you’re selling, people often don’t buy what you sell because that’s very similar to everybody else. They buy how you sell it. In other words and how you make them feel.

When you’re selling, you need to think in terms of the sales experience. You need to really think about the way you want your clients to feel and create a situation where you can evoke those feelings.

For example, in my younger days as a sales person, I used to try and take prospects out for breakfast. The reason being is that they’d come about 8:00 in the morning and people don’t normally go out for breakfast. They’re in a good mood – they were going to get a nice breakfast. I used to pick hotels in London that were really lovely, with lovely reviews, and when I walked in with my prospect, everybody knew me because they were regular haunts, so they would greet me; Hello, Mr Leboff, and my prospect will be impressed that at this posh hotel, people knew me.

People want to buy into someone with credibility, who’s a player and I appeared to be one. I had my favourite table and, therefore, I could manufacture the whole meeting to ensure that my prospect felt great about themselves and, therefore, doing business with me.

Of course not every situation requires taking someone out for breakfast.

However, you really need to think about all the different ingredients that make up an experience. The language you use, the clothes you wear, the environment that you meet someone in. You need to do everything you can to evoke the feelings that you want them to have in order to make sure you appear as someone that would like to do business with.
So you should think of selling as personal, because the more you can tailor an experience for your customer and make them feel great about working with you, the more chance you’ve got of winning business.

There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order to facilitate the readability of the written English

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Comments

  1. Very honest video and lesson, Grant! It’s all about the relationship building between the client and seller/designer/educator. And yes, if you don’t hit it off or make the sale, it is personal. See that as a learning opportunity to become better.

    Loved the idea of using regular spots to make the client understand you are credible and also human.

    1. Author

      Thanks Ariel for your comments. I am glad that you enjoyed the video. I am also pleased that you found the example useful.

    1. Author

      Thank you Chris. I always appreciate your kind feedback

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