Selling with Belief

Why do you sell the products that you do? When you meet a prospective client, how do you see them?

Do you look at them and think, “Gee, I think he might need what I am selling. I hope he does.” When they raise and objection, do you think, “Oh well, guess I’ll try someone else.”

Or do you feel, “I’m happy I met this person. He needs me, he just doesn’t know it yet.”. When they raise an objection, do you feel, “Great! Another opportunity to prove how much he needs me!”

Most are of the former type. Very few are of the latter. Who do you think is more successful? Better yet, who do you want to be?

Preach to the Converted

A wholesaler did a sales presentation recently to a group of highly successful advisors.  She believes strongly in what she was presenting, had proved it to herself, and did not hold back her passion and conviction. The result?  Two loyal advisors bought in immediately. Two other advisors did not, and felt she was too biased towards her company’s solutions. The majority are ‘undecided’ at this point.

I consider this a success. Why?

Too often, we try to appeal to either the ‘eternal naysayers’ or the ‘undecided majority’. Too often we sanitize or pull back from our message so we do not get a negative reaction from anyone. We end up ‘reverting to the mean’ in our messages to avoid offense.

No one ever achieved great things by becoming more average.

The two advisors who ‘bought in’ will be wildly successful, and act as an example to the ‘undecided majority’. The ‘eternal naysayers’ will always find a reason not to accept what they are told, no matter what you say.

Happiness

I have noticed a few traits that happy clients and advisors have in common:

1. They are optimists of the highest order. This is not based on blind faith in ‘everything being OK’, or some misguided belief in destiny. These people accept the future will have its challenges, but they can and will be overcome through their well-considered choices and actions. (Jim Collins calls this the Stockdale Paradox; Nick Murray refers to this type of optimism as the only true realism).

2. They accept that the ideal future may not be achievable. Therefore, they do not look at how far they need to go to get there to measure progress (which, seeing as the ideal is unattainable pretty much guarantees frustration), but rather celebrate how far they have come. (Thanks to Dan Sullivan – read ‘The Gap’ years ago, and it has stood up well).

3. They have the ability to step outside of any situation, objectively observe how they feel, and choose how they act. Eventually, they end up having control over how they feel, and can avoid ‘flash’ emotions of anger and frustration (Multiple writers have pointed this one out – Covey comes to mind).

4. They practice only two emotions towards others: compassion (for those who are trying their hardest to be happy based on the above points, or could be with your help), or pity (for those who, for whatever reason, cannot be happy, no matter what you do). No anger. No blame. (I’ll put this one on Buddhism).

Try your hardest to be happy, and help your clients be happy. What higher value can you provide?