Any salesperson worth their salt knows we all buy on emotion and justify with logic. From complex to completely transactional, impulse purchases, emotions drive buying decisions. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re the CEO of a fortune 100 to you or me.
People buy from people and all sales hinge on the know you, like you, trust you factor. In that order.
However, salespeople and prospects often start the relationship at cross purposes.
Salespeople start from the wrong end. We’ve been taught to concentrate on features and benefits so that’s what we start the conversation with hoping to get interest. And few things make sellers more unlikable than premature pitching.
However, your prospects don’t think like that in the beginning.
They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
In the start they’re asking a basic question about the salesperson: Do I like you? Do you understand me? Do you care? And can you be trusted?
So by prematurely spruiking your product’s features and benefits without developing a relationship will turn your prospects off.
Then moving forward in the sales process, once the buyer has decided to engage, asking rational questions, putting objections on the table, and negotiating, the salesperson often negatively reacts to perceived rejection, desperate not to lose the deal.
So when it’s time to be rational, the salesperson is getting emotional.
And so, it goes throughout the buying journey. At the emotional level, the parties are perpetually out of sync which leads to lost opportunities. And both parties feel at a loss.
So the big takeaway for you as a salesperson is to be in sync with your prospects.
In the beginning, concentrate on emotional factors which engender likability and trust. Only then move into features and benefits, rationally answering objections, negotiating and closing the deal.
Follow this system and you will close more business and have happy, long term clients.
And if you’d like help improving your sales process, reach out.
Till next time, this is Rashid Kotwal.
