What The Pros Know: Sales Is About Buying — Not Selling
By: Don Johnson
Tags: Business, Communication Skills, Sales, Business Growth, Strawberry2021

Selling is about buying.

It doesn’t matter if you are selling shoes, cars, or multi-million dollar service contracts; we all like the experience of buying. No one wants to be sold.

If you’re in sales and try to pull your buyer towards you, chances are they’ll pull back. But, on the other hand, if you align yourself with your buyer or even slightly behind where they are in their decision-making process, you allow them to buy.

Imagine a pendulum on a clock, hanging vertically from 12 to 6. That is your buyer. If you position yourself at 8 and try to bring them towards you, you’re selling. If you want them to buy, position yourself at 4.

Here’s an example of each conversation.

The selling conversation: After your initial proposal, the buyer says, “All that sounds great. let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.” The seller says, “Look, this is the best deal out there. We offer everything you told me you need, plus we have the highest ratings of all our competitors.” The seller is now trying to pull the buyer towards him. The buyer says, “I understand that, but I want to think it over and talk to some other suppliers.”

The buying conversation: After your initial proposal, the buyer says, “All that sounds great. let me think about it, and I’ll get back to you.” The seller says, “Hmm. It sounds like you might have some concerns. I’d like to hear what they are if you’re willing to tell me.”

The buyer agrees to discuss the concerns, and the conversation continues. The seller isn’t selling; the seller aligns with the buyer, helping them make the best possible buying decision.

Be a decision coach

If you’re selling something, think of yourself as a decision coach.

There are always two conversations occurring in a sales conversation: the one you hear and the one you don’t. Long after the conversation with your potential customer is over, there’s another conversation still happening — the one inside their head. That’s the one you are trying to influence because buyers make the final decision, whether that’s you or someone else.

You influence the internal conversation of your buyer by how you conduct yourself in the external conversation. For example, sales research says the biggest differentiator in making sales is the effectiveness of the salesperson.

Sales is a unique combination of art and science. You’ve got to know your stuff technically, and you have to have superb people skills. The art of sales is the ability to be articulate but not talk too much. You’ve got to be able to listen, but not just to what is said, but by paying attention to the customer’s body language, voice tone, and what isn’t said. What you notice is critical. What you don’t can be fatal.

Think of the skills a professional business coach uses: empathetic listening, artful probing, paraphrasing, skillful advocacy, clarifying, and confirming. These are all the skills of a decision coach.

A successful sales call is based on mutual agreement.

Some salespeople get hung up on understanding what success means in sales, particularly sales calls. They believe every sales call should have a goal, and if movement through the sales pipeline isn’t achieved, then the call is unsuccessful. However, a decision coach doesn’t worry about this. They know finding the best solutions to customer problems is the key to long-term success, even if that means they can’t be the provider of choice in every situation.

A successful sales call is one in which both parties agree on mutually beneficial next steps.

That’s it. When you believe this, you are free to work with your customer to co-create what makes the most sense for them and you. Your customer is your partner, not your adversary. The more you understand this, the greater your impact will be.

Consultative selling increases impact.

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The more consultative a salesperson is, the more impact they have. However, just having a clever personality, the best prices, or mastering your content isn’t enough. To be an effective decision coach, salespeople need to operate as a need satisfaction seller or more.

Research conducted by AchieveGlobal, a leading international sales training company, found that salesperson impact dramatically increased the more they focused on building business partnerships with customers through an intense customer focus. They distinguished the following salesperson behaviors and subsequent impact.

Professional visitor — wins on personality and shared interests

Price seller — highlights costs, deals, and quotes

Content seller — emphasizes product features and doesn’t recognize or link solutions to critical business issues

Need satisfaction seller — creates mutually beneficial relationships and uncovers critical needs

Resourceful expert — offers in-depth product and industry expertise to build solutions

Loyal champion — has deep insight into the customer's business and industry. Almost viewed as an employee

Trusted business advisor discovers and meets critical needs in distinctive ways by providing products and services and advice and assistance.

Where are you on the sales ladder, and where is your sales team?

Manage internal interferences

Performance = Potential — Interferences. Tim Gallwey, the author of the groundbreaking sports psychology book, The Inner Game of Tennis, says our potential equals our potential minus our interferences. Interferences can be external or internal.

An external interference might be a customer being late for an important meeting, creating pressure on the salesperson to manage the time effectively. An internal inference is a newer salesperson believing they haven’t earned the right to be an equal business partner with a customer older, more experienced, or holding a more significant title.

The external interferences are not in our control. The inner ones are. A skilled decision coach pays attention to and effectively manages their inner world.

When I was new to sales, this was a significant interference for me. I didn’t believe I was an equal when I’d walk into a meeting with a CEO. My mind was full of noise — “He’s a CEO — older and smarter than me. Who am I? Just a sales guy.” The extra noise chipped away at my confidence. When you’re worried about your performance, you can’t be fully present. You’ll miss all the subtle information; you need to have a highly successful conversation with your customer artfully.

The more a salesperson's confidence grows, the more successful they will become. People buy confidence — we’re naturally attracted to confident people.