Selling vs. Dating – Part 2
By Andrew Shedden
In our last issue we discussed the remarkable similarities between selling and dating. Is a good salesperson destined for a date-filled life? Perhaps a person who is a frequent “dater” has all the tools necessary for a great career in sales. In the final part of this two-part article I’ll point out other similarities. The next issue of Marketing Matters will be much more serious (maybe).
You need to be compatible
If your primary area of interest is relaxing by the fire you probably shouldn’t be looking for someone who loves to run a daily marathon. If you are looking for someone who likes to rock and roll all night and party every day it is somewhat unlikely you’ll have much luck at a fundamentalist revival meeting.
Let’s face it, companies, like people have to see eye to eye to be truly functional. If you compromise your core business principles in order to obtain a client it will only result in heartache for both parties. You must have compatibility with your prospect in order for the working relationship to flourish.
You must be relatively interesting
You can be humorous without being a stand up comedian. You can be interesting without being a walking encyclopedia. The trick is to spend some time becoming informed. Prior to meeting a prospect spend an hour or two on their web site as well as researching their general marketplace.
Many salespeople forget that prospects are real live human beings. Obviously when you’re out making a presentation you can’t put on a Jim Carrey routine. Conversely, it’s just as dangerous to be a book in breeches spouting off arcane statistical data. You can relax and reduce the pressure in your sales calls by proving to your prospect that you aren’t some one-dimensional selling machine.
You must be interested
How many of you have been on a date where your date only talked about himself? Pretty boring if you’re the one stuck doing the listening. I believe there was a country song out recently in which the singer kept repeating that he wanted to talk about me. Ah, country musicians, they know everything.
If I were meeting some fresh faced whippersnapper out of college with his business diploma clutched firmly in hand and was able to only give him one piece of sales advice it would be as follows:
Prospects are concerned with their own problems and how you can help them. If you can determine what they truly need and show them how to get it you’ll both succeed.
You must exercise self-control
Would you walk up to someone you’ve never met and ask that person to marry you? Of course not, dating is a series of steps to establish a relationship based on respect and trust. Trust can’t be built in five minutes in either the dating world or the world of sales.
Many companies devote a great deal of thought on how to shorten their sales cycles as a way of boosting profitability. Unfortunately these companies are forgetting about the fundamental rule of successful dating, that rule being you can’t rush Mother Nature.
One of the best ways to dramatically increase your sales effectiveness is to lengthen your sales cycle. That’s right, lengthen your sales cycle and watch your profits increase. For many companies this statement may seem sacrilegious but bear with me.
Selling is a series of steps that should involve incremental advancements. Simply put, you need to analyze your entire sales process and break it down into discrete steps. From the approach through delivery of the final product every point of contact should be used to build trust and ultimately make you more likeable and saleable.
For many companies the only step in their sales processes worthy of consideration is the step in which the sale is closed. It’s much better to closely analyze at what step the sale is lost. In most cases you’ll discover the sale is lost by not allowing enough time to properly develop the relationship.
By trying to go from hello to close in the shortest possible period of time you destroy any prior trust you have built in the relationship. You’ll experience an upswing in sales by adding a trust building step (or two) into your sales process.
We all know that time is money and shortening the sales cycle can mean sales being closed more quickly. You need to be certain that the trade off between speed and relationship building is ultimately serving anyone’s interest, including your own.
