I can’t tell you how many professionals, coaches and consultants hate selling. They fear being thought of as the proverbial used car 
salesman.
Highly competent professionals, they love consulting but can’t seem to embody the fact that without “selling” they’ll never be able to sustain themselves.
Which is of course why many end up working for larger organisations where they can “just deliver”.
But times are changing. We work with many organisations who need their “advisors” to actively bring in business. No longer can they hide behind “I’m a professional – not a salesperson”. Acquiring new clients is now part of their KPIs.
If this is you, or you have a team of advisors who need to start selling, realise it’s all about your mindset.
As a consultant you have a duty to ensure your clients get the best possible outcome and often this means “selling” them a product or service which will enhance their lives. Not doing so is actually doing them a disservice.
And as an expert in your field, who better to give advice? Your prospects already trust you and your ability, so helping them make a decision to buy comes down to your telling them the next steps – which involve buying the next product or program you offer.
10 years ago, we wrote the Story of Carlos.
It’s a great story of how someone who kept telling us he “was a technician, not a salesman” got us to happily buy a vacuum cleaner worth over $800 when we’d originally gone in to buy vacuum bags worth $15. A whopping 5233.333% spend increase!
It’s a story I tell every consultant who thinks they’re not capable of selling as a way of illustrating mastery at work.
You can read the whole story here and I encourage you to do so.
However, here are some bullet point takeaways if you want the short version.
- Carlos’ first words were, “I’m not a salesman – I’m just a technician who fixes these things”. As an engineer, I immediately related to this and felt I could trust his professional opinion regarding quality and reliability.
- You get what you pay for – “See that model? It lasted 2 hours! Sure it comes in pretty colours, but it has no power and the motor burned out.” Here’s someone I could trust who wouldn’t try to palm off junk on me.
- While showing us 3 expensive models including the latest incarnation of a 15 year old Wertheim we told him we owned, he continually asked relevant questions.
- He used his own daughter’s personal allergy story to illustrate the “chosen” machine’s quality and reliability.
- He demonstrated the machine in a way that had us rolling on the floor with laughter, completely disarming any scepticism on our part.
- He didn’t try to SELL us the cleaner. He allowed us to BUY.
- By offering us a discount (masked as a $500 trade in), we immediately thought we were getting a really good deal. We thought we’d won the lottery.
- He used the law of consistency. He knew we’d had a Wertheim for years which we loved. Having stated this, the law of consistency meant we would be likely to buy the same brand again.
- And of course, the law of scarcity. This special was only going to be available till the end of the weekend (which was that day)!
The result? “Okay, we’ll take one”. Then following him to the sales counter we both asked, “By the way, what’s the price????”
Not bad for a “technician” who didn’t consider himself a salesperson. He singlehandedly increased an original sale from $15 to $800, a massive 5233.333 % increase in value to his organisation.
There is a final twist to the story, but you’ll have to read the full article to find out.
Sales Improvement Training & Coaching
What would your organisation be like if every client facing person had Carlos’ ability? How much more revenue would come in? How much growth would you experience?
If your consultants do not embody an attitude of “I am responsible for bringing in business” and have the skills to do so, you are losing out massively.
It’s almost the last quarter of the financial year.
If your results aren’t up to scratch and sales quotas unlikely to be met, let alone exceeded, engage us to work with you and your team to improve your sales results by changing mindsets about not being a salesperson into one where “I am an advisor and my duty to my clients is to improve their results – via our products and services as appropriate.”
And then learning the skills to do so in an ethical way.
Call us on (02) 9499-7958 to book in.
Rashid & Barbara.
