Selling is not only about making a sale to a customer or a client. At heart, it’s also about persuading someone to see your side of things and reach an outcome that ideally benefits both of you. Some people misunderstand this concept. They think it’s all about coercion and manipulation, when it really involves getting people first to see your side of things, then take the appropriate action. True, the same techniques can be used to sell you a car or a purse or some other item you may or may not need. But it can also help convince your child to eat more vegetables instead of candy. Like every other ability we may have, it’s not the skill itself that is open to criticism— it’s where, when, and how it’s applied.
The magic about knowing how to sell effectively is that anyone will respond to a good sales pitch. Even Sharks. Each of us on Shark Tank has, at one time or another, used a sales technique on a member of the panel. And it often works when we want to take a deal away from someone else. But not always.
When Mark Cuban came on the show he couldn’t help promoting himself as the owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks. Through his first season on Shark Tank, Mark used professional basketball “shot clock” timing when he tried to pressure us to decide if we were in or out of a deal. This gave us twenty-four seconds to either go along with Mark’s offer or reject it, which gave him an edge. It worked at first, but eventually the rest of us decided this wasn’t a pro basketball game but a cool business decision, and by his second season on the show he dropped the idea.
Lori Greiner has used her own version. She once tried applying pressure to us by taking her checkbook in one hand and her pen in the other before saying to the pitcher—our term for the entrepreneurs who appear on the show seeking an investment—“I’ll sign this check right now and give it to you,” meaning the full amount the pitcher had requested. The effect was to take the deal out of our hands. This was powerful the first time she used it. The next time, we were less impressed.
Demonstrating our selling skills on Shark Tank is fun, but a TV studio is nothing like the real world, where you run up against complex issues such as building a relationship from scratch and identifying the wants and needs of prospective buyers.
I’m sure you understand relationships well, but you may need a clearer understanding of want versus need. If the two words sound as though they mean almost the same thing, they don’t. They are dramatically different in a sales situation, and understanding the difference between them and the role they play in a customer’s buying decision are a key to successful selling. “Want” and “need” identify different mindsets, and each is satisfied in a different way.
Think of them like this:
Someone goes shopping for a new car. If it’s to satisfy a need, he or she will study advertisements, read reviews of different makes and models, talk to friends about the vehicles they drive, set a figure for the maximum amount of money they wish to pay, and visit dealers (or scan the Internet) looking for the best deal on the car that most closely fits their need.
But if the car buyer’s need is dominated by a want . . . and the want includes driving a Porsche or a Ferrari . . . the need becomes secondary. It would be wrong and foolish for the sales-person in a Porsche or Ferrari dealership to suggest that the customer should settle for a Ford or a Honda. They are there to satisfy wants, not needs.
Another example: If you need a new watch to tell the time accurately, you can choose a Timex or a hundred other brands. Less than $100 will put one on your wrist and you may never be late for a meeting again. But if what you want is a $10,000 Rolex, your need no longer matters.
Those examples are easy to understand, but much of selling involves needs and wants that are not nearly as clear-cut, and the product being sold is not nearly as pricey and complicated. You can probably recall situations where you went shopping for an item without knowing just what you needed or wanted. “I’ll know it when I see it,” you may have told yourself. But depending on the size and complexity of the purchase, you were unlikely to “see” it without the assistance of skilled salespeople. Their job is to identify and ensure that buyers understand both their needs and their wants, and assist in making the best choice for that situation. If in your “know it when I see it” shopping trip you returned with something that fit both your needs and your wants perfectly, you likely encountered a first-rate salesperson.
Before a salesperson can address a customer’s wants and needs, a connection between the seller and potential buyer must be established. In fact, it’s much more than a linkage; even when measured in moments, the connection can be defined as a relationship of sorts. It hardly extends into a BFF kind of bond, but it needs to be revealing enough to provide the salesperson with an insight into some corners of the buyer’s life.
If this sounds intrusive or manipulative by the salesperson, it’s not. It is, however, essential to the success of every qualified sale that is made.
Here’s how it works:
At the close of the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, the lead character, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is conducting a sales training course. He hands a pen to one of the young men hanging on his every word and says, “Sell me this pen.” When the man stumbles, unsure how to respond, DiCaprio’s character yanks the pen away and hands it to another man, repeating his order: “Sell me this pen.”
The scene has become something of a party game. A pen or a drinking glass is thrust at a stranger who is ordered to “Sell me this pen/drinking glass/what ever.” Most people respond by talking about the item they’ve been handed. “It’s a very nice pen,” they may say, “with a clip for your pocket and it writes with permanent blue ink and . . .” Or: “This glass is designed to be easily held and sits very sturdily on a flat surface without falling over.”
The correct answer is not to talk about the pen or the drinking glass or the gizmo. It’s to talk about the buyer, and what he or she expects from the product.
Before buyers need to know anything about the pen, the salesperson needs to know something about the buyer. So the response to “Sell me this pen” must be questions such as:
How often do you use a pen?
Do you use it to sign legal documents and on other formal occasions, or just to jot down notes to yourself?
How long have you been shopping for a pen?
All of these, you’ll notice, relate directly to the buyer, not the seller of the pen. That’s why none of the questions refers to the price that the buyer plans to spend, because that’s a question more closely linked to the seller (How much commission can I make on this sale? How hard should I work at it based on how much the sale is worth to me?).
The buyer’s answers may trigger new questions until the seller is prepared to say, Based on what you’ve told me, I have a pen here that fits all of your needs, with a few special features you’ll appreciate.
The salesperson has done two things in this exchange. First, instead of jumping into a sales pitch, she has launched a qualifying session to match the buyer with the product. And second, as limited as it may appear at first glimpse, she has created a relationship with the customer, who recognizes that the salesperson knows enough to make a realistic suggestion about the product.
If this all sounds a little silly, that’s because we’re dealing with pens and drinking glasses, small and incidental things. But the basis still holds all across the spectrum of things being bought and sold. Change the pen to a house, for example, and the qualifying questions are similar—only the dollar value has changed. If I were to order you to sell me a house, questions would pop up in your mind immediately, including:
Where do you want to live— downtown, country, suburbs?
Do you have a family? How many children? Pets, in-laws, parents?
How many bedrooms would you need? How many bathrooms?
Saying to prospective homebuyers, “Th is is a very nice house . . .” before having even the most basic understanding of their needs and expectations—and we haven’t even mentioned budget yet—would be foolish.
Grasping the importance of creating a buyer-seller relationship as the first stage in successful selling is perhaps the most important key to understanding how the entire process works. It’s essential to appreciate this stage of selling, because it dictates everything else that follows. It also illustrates how skilled salespeople can make a positive impact on their lives that has nothing to do with generating a healthy income.
Much of the secret to happiness in our lives is based not on our wealth or our status but on how well we read and deal with those around us— family, friends, colleagues, clients, bosses, and so on. When you’re talking about making a success of a career, many people will say it depends entirely on that skill, and I happen to agree. I can think of many brilliant people, from engineers and medical personnel to musicians and mechanics, whose abilities were never fully realized because they had no idea of how to deal with others.
Most people understand the importance of this knack and try to acquire it. One of the best selling books of all time was Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Carnegie published it in 1936, and it was still in print eighty years later after selling more than twenty million copies.
What made it such a success? It was the first book to teach readers how to get along with other people. Some of its chapters were titled:
“Fundamental Techniques for Handling People”
“Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking”
“How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment”
“Six Ways to Make People Like You”
Soon after its publication, someone described Carnegie’s book by saying that the core idea “is that it is possible to change other people’s behavior by changing one’s behavior toward them.”
And I thought: Wait a minute—that’s the basis of successful selling. Which, in turn, is the secret of getting through life with more successes than failures, more joy than gloom, more friends than enemies.
Does this mean good salespeople enjoy a happier, stress-free life than people in other professions? I happen to believe it’s true. At least they know how to do it more than other people. Whether they apply it to their personal lives effectively is up to them. But here is what all effective salespeople know in their job that they can use in their lives without knowing Dale Carnegie from Carnegie Hall:
They know how to negotiate. It’s a skill needed and acquired when dealing with customers, suppliers, and employees. Negotiating involves listening carefully, evaluating variables, overcoming obstacles, and reaching agreement, and doing it if possible without strife, personal attacks, and burned bridges. You may think it’s all related to settling contracts and making sales. But it’s also part of getting your youngsters to eat their vegetables and working out with your spouse whose job it is to clean the cat’s litter box.
They learn determination. The best salespeople still hear the word no frequently. Instead of seeing it as a rejection, they consider it a challenge. So much of life depends on us not giving up on our goals, and many of us never learn how to do it.
They gain confidence. Nothing delivers self-confidence better than overcoming obstructions to score a victory. It’s not just key to making sales; it’s also an asset in handling crisis situations, small or large.
They get other people to agree with them. In sales, it’s part art, part science. It’s also vital in so many aspects of business and personal life, from getting a raise from your employer to changing your teenager’s conduct.
They practice self- discipline. Most employees in large corporations can sleepwalk their way through much of their work day from time to time and still take home their salary. Depending on commissions earned from your sales almost exclusively means that coasting through a workday costs you money, so you are always aware of the connection between performance and payment.
Not all of these qualities were part of Dale Carnegie’s philosophy, but they’re all part of being able to deal with life and avoiding various disappointments.
So, one more time: Does this mean that, on average, successful salespeople are happier and more satisfied with their job than other people?
It sure seems that way to me.
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You Don’t Have to Be a Shark is available everywhere books are sold May 17, 2016. Learn more.
