Rule Number One: You can’t sell anybody anything.
Yes, you can’t sell anybody anything, but you can, however, help people talk themselves into buying just about anything.
Consider your own experiences when you buy things. You buy because you talk yourself into making that purchase. So the task is not to sell to anyone, but to learn how to influence, guide, and nudge the internal dialogue that people have with themselves, helping people get through their decision points.
People ask themselves, “do I want it in red?” “do I want it now?”, “do I want it later?”, “do I want to pay by credit card, or do I want to pay by cash?”. All these little decision points go through people’s mind whenever they’re buying anything. It’s your job as the sales person to help them convince themselves that they’re making a good purchase. Yes, you must have confidence in the product or service you’re selling. Have confidence in what you’re offering to people so that you feel right about it. Your job is to work with that internal dialogue that people have with themselves while you are presenting your service or product.
If that internal dialogue goes something like this,
“Seems like this company has good people. Yep, I could use that. I can see myself using that. I guess my credit card could handle the charge. That doesn’t seem like too much money. Why would I wait to do this when I can do this now? Okay, I’ll buy it now.”
Then you make a sale, make a new customer, and make a new referral source. If that’s the conversation people are having with themselves, then you have succeeded in helping them get the information they needed and in helping them work out the questions and hesitancies and concerns that they have. You have helped them talk themselves into making that purchase.
Boom, you succeeded.
