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chetankunder · 7 years ago

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Learning From: To Sell is Human

By a Human but not a Salesman

These days with the rise of technology esp. e-Commerce we do not see salesman knocking on our door. Many argue that previously there was a need of salesman because there was information asymmetry i.e. buyers had very limited access to information and hence they wanted someone who could provide them with the information to help them buy the product. While this asymmetry was a salesman’s strength, unfortunately with most of them using it to deceit consumers and only sharing certain pieces of information which they thought would help them get the sale overtime lead to consumers looking at salesman as not someone who helped them buy but instead someone who pushed products at them with repeated calls and someone who always try to up-sell at every juncture possible, its these folks who put the job of a salesman in bad light and removed all genuine salesmen out of business with only clowns continuing to fool the consumers even more. However, these days with all the information being just a few clicks away with the help of Google & Youtube there is an information symmetry with both the parties having access to tons of information about the product that they want to buy. Which might make us assume that like so many other jobs, even the job of salesman has fallen prey to the charms of technology, but this book helps bring multiple perspectives into place to show us that technology, on the contrary, has made the job of salesman all the more important.

In fact while most of us would view job of a salesman as a tough job, but we don’t realise that we are indeed a salesman in different facets of our life when we try to convince our kid to have his or her dinner, or try to convince our wife how there is no need for shopping for a new footwear as there are already 17 pairs lying inside the cupboard or for that matter when we are presenting our report to our boss or asking for a leave of 2 weeks.

Having said that, the books tell us that one of the fundamental ways to sharpen your sales skill is to start thinking from a consumers’ point of view and see if you would have bought that product or service if you were to hear your own pitch. One of the examples given in the book is how Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) started this concept of ‘empty chair - invisible man’ in his meetings; wherein he use to always keep an empty chair representing a consumer in general who is invisible but an important person and asked his employees to think of ideas from a consumer point of view.

Another example of how we can sharpen the sales skill is by thinking as if you are supposed to explain something to a time traveler, example: imagine you have to explain about some of the today's basic day to day item like computers, refrigerator or cars to someone who time travelled to present day from say the year 1500 and is not aware of any technological advances of present day. You will try to be very simple and make sure you don’t use high-fi methods that's how your presentation of your idea should be, stick to being simple and to the point.

Another emotional aspect to keep in mind is that people buy from those whom they like and they like the ones who remind them of themselves and therefore commonality helps in driving sales, now for that while the book asks us to imitate the buyer or the person to whom we are presenting; another way I see it personally is that the more we keep reading and exploring ideas we would have more things to talk about and thereby strike conversation on some of the other common topics and thereby build familiarity.

Further, don’t rely on fake self-motivation statements like repeating 10 times ‘I can do it’ which were the concepts coined by the salesman of past about whom we mentioned at the beginning of this article the ones who tend to get the sale by deceiving consumers. Instead, ask some interrogative questions such as “Can we fix it?”, with such questions, you tend to come up with few answers around how you gonna fix it and if you consciously list these answers it will help you strategise your presentation and also prepare yourself on any questions that might pop up during the presentation.

Further, brainstorm on reasons why you think the person to whom you are presenting will reject you and once you have a list of reasons go through them one by one these points will help you identify loopholes from your presentation and believe it or not its always recommended to have rather less but explainable points in powerpoint, rather than showing it to be very comprehensive and are unable to talk on certain point.

While we all talk about our product features in detail in our presentations, but the deal breaker page for the buyer is to see how your product or service going to solve his or her problem and that's where the importance of identifying the correct problems comes into the picture.

Believe it or not, it is often the discovery of problem rather than the technical skill that differentiates a creative person from the rest. Finding the right problem is a very difficult but a very important job. Given the information symmetry in the present world, the job of a salesman is no more about simply answering to buyers questions, instead they want to understand why should they buy from you instead of from others for which you as a salesman needs to be a curator of information and identify a problem which your buyer might not have thought of and thereby present that to him or her and then use the information you have to show it as a solution to that problem. (For example the Concept Board Testing, wherein the Insight gives the problem statement followed by the introduction of the product then by RTB (Reason-To-Believe) tells how this product is good to solve that problem and then present the end benefit which is like a short answer to the problem in the insight). The creativity of your presentation will, for the most part, depend on how you present the problem in an interesting way.

Further, once you have identified the right problem while presenting the solution try to connect your solution to an emotional output alongside a functional solution. Selling an experience is better than a tangible item, frame a sale as an experience which has higher potential to bring a repeat business. For example - Instead of simply saying “if you buy my software this will help you save XYZ man hours”, consider putting “if you buy my software this will help you save some man hours and thereby help you provide work-life balance to your employees and they will be able to spend more time with their families with the same amount of work done by them thereby improve the employee retention rate within the organisation”. One interesting example of how an emotional aspect influences people’s behaviour we can see in Rooser Reeves vs. Blind Man Example - Here Mr Reeves changes the wording in a blind mans placard from “I am Blind” to “It is Springtime and.. I am Blind” which brings an emotional connection to the messaging with people able to understand what the blind man is missing and thereby helped blind man get far more alms than usual. Emotional Messaging is Important.

Now that you have understood what is good to be shown in your sales presentation, do not fall into the trap of giving too many benefits in your presentations or in your product/service. Too many options are bad both for you and your purchaser (as proven in the research conducted by Sheena Iyengar & Mark Lepper). Adding an inexpensive item to a product can lead to decline in consumer willingness to pay for that products original value as consumers would start looking at the original product as of inferior quality (For Example: Having too many ice cream flavours won’t lead to higher sales, instead research says that there will be fewer sticks sold than if there were fewer options available). The number of options also influences consumers satisfaction level, selecting one out of the 20 options will make the consumer less satisfied as there will be a feeling of missing 95% of choice.

Further while summarising the benefits of your presentation, do keep in mind that an “A weak negative information shared along with positive points can be useful sometimes”. This trick can be used when the buyer is in a low effort zone i.e. he is not in an extreme need of your product or service. Try to put a negative point which might not really be negative for buyer hence while he/she would ignore that negative point but at the same time, the sharing of that point might help improve your credibility and make the buyer think that that's the only negative point you possess.

Lastly, while you would confidently put your strengths throughout the presentation; if there are other miscellaneous skills you have, which matches buyers requirements, don’t shy away from putting those points thinking that you don’t know the concept deeply. Consider putting that as “potential to be good at XXX”. Uncertainty can make people think more deeply about the person, hence putting your miscellaneous skills as potential to do will not only help you give that necessary cover if there happen to be too many questions on that topic but can also help you to be seen as someone highly potential of that skill.

Other Learnings from Book:

One Word Pitch

Question Pitch

Rhyming Pitch

Subject Line Pitch

Twitter Pitch

Pixar Pitch

Record your presentation and listen to your own pitch and see if it sounds saleable and would you consider that if you are the decision maker.

Experiment the pecha-kucha presentation style i.e. 20X20, your presentation should be of 20 slides with you spending not more than 20 seconds in each one of the slides.

Listen Well, Listen Fully and make sure you take a pause before responding.

Use “Yes and…” instead of “Yes but…” the former gives a picture of you building on to something rather than complaining.

Consider your pitch as a Win-Win situation, i.e. there should be something beneficial coming out of your presentation for both you and the buyer / your client.

Make your client/buyer feel good. Never Argue, To win an argument means to lose a sale.

Answer this two questions about your service after your presentation:

If someone buys your service, will his or her life will improve?

When you are done delivering the service, will the world be a better place for the person who bought the service?

If the answer to any one of the above question is NO, then you are doing something wrong in your service.

Other Books Mentioned in the Book:

Impro: Improvisation by and the Theatre by Keith Johnson.

Improvisation for the Theatre by Viola Spolin

Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher

Improv Wisdom: Don't prepare, just show up by Patricia Ryan Madson

The Second City Almanac of Improvisation by Anne Libera

#tosellishuman #danielpink #sales #howtosell #learnhowtosell #sellingskill

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