Being a Visionary
You can’t sell your goals but you can sell your vision. So don’t just have goals have a vision, which drives these goals.Then you become a visionary. Replace ‘should do’ with ‘will do’ or even better ‘must do’. A goal is something you are somehow obliged to do and push for. They are stepping stones. A vision will pull you. Your vision is your engine.
Imagine your future vision of yourself and your family. Where are you, what are you doing, what do you have? Imagine that you are looking at a picture with you in it. Then step into the picture as if you are looking through your own eyes. Associate with the feeling and let them flood in. I go into a lot of detail on goal setting in my book Done: How to Achieve Your Goals and Make Your Dreams Come True.
Your vision should include the goals of you becoming the sales professional who will generate the income you desire. According to Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street), his sales professional will be:
- Sharp as a tack
- Enthusiastic as hell
- An authority
Here is some more from Mr Belfort, there will be much more later.
For your customer to buy, they need to:
- Love your product or service
- Trust you
- Trust your company
1. Love your product or service.
To make them love your product or service you need to establish a case for them to buy now. You do this by establishing an airtight logical case and an airtight emotional case. You can build the emotional case by future pacing. This is an NLP term to describe a process where the customer imagines how they will feel when they own the product or service.
2. Get them to trust you with Body Language
Apart from your tonality, you can also use your body language to get someone to trust you. You do this by managing your space and time. As a caveat to this though, you need to be a trustworthy person. No amount of body language training will help you if you are not trustworthy.
When selling to women, always stand directly in front of them face to face and about 0.75 metre away (2.5 feet). Standing side on with women will appear shifty.
Conversely when selling to men you don’t want to stand in front face to face as this would be confrontational. Here you want to stand at an angle.
A word on accessories, for the man. One plain wedding ring is a maximum amount of jewellery. Definitely no pinkie ring. Leave this for Prince Charles. Tasteful cufflinks are fine, and a nice tasteful watch, can demonstrate success without being ostentatious.
Facial hair in a no-no. Sorry but the moustache, goatee and beard need to go. They make you come across as untrustworthy. I’m sorry don’t shoot the messenger. Shave them off. Your sales figures will thank you.
Hand Shakes should be neutral ie not too soft not too vice like; think of holding a bottle of wine and that wold be the grip you need. The hands should be waist high.
Dress – Wrapping the package.
Always dress your best not just to impress but for how it will make you feel inside. You don’t need to go overboard on expensive cloths. Understated quality is what to aim for. It goes without saying that clothes should be spotlessly clean and maintained. Let’s face it you could give your best killer presentation ever, but if you have a soup stain on you tie, kiss the sale goodbye.
If you have a meeting to close a sale, there is evidence that a sharp dark blue (or black) suite, a solid coloured (not patterns, checks or stripes) white shirt and a pink/red tie will get you markedly better results. This is all down to the colours of influence. Just look at any major politician and they all wear this uniform.
Eye Contact
;You should aim to be looking at the prospect in the eyes for approximately 70% of the time, preferably more. It’s fine to glance away from time to time, as if you are collecting your thoughts, whilst speaking, but when you are listening to them, keep your eyes on theirs. If you are meeting in a public place like a hotel lobby, get there early so you can find a spot away from windows, TVs or any other things that can distract you or the prospect. Your prospect needs to know they can trust you and so good eye contact is a must.
Matching and mirroring.
These are techniques from NLP. They can subconsciously influence the prospect. The principle here is that people like people who are like themselves, so by matching and mirroring you can make them feel you are like them. Mirroring is when you mirror what they do. If they touch their face with their left hand you touch your own with your right hand. Ie you are like a mirror image of them. Matching creates the same sense of rapport but is more subtle. If they touch their face with their left hand you touch yours with your left hand. Be very subtle with this as you can make them very uncomfortable if you get it wrong. It would be much easier and safer to create an air of genuine rapport t with them and you will both naturally mirror and match.
3. Trust Your Company
This is perhaps the only part you are not fully in control of, however that said you can influence if and how the customer trusts your company. Firstly never over promise what your company can deliver, this is a sure way to lose trust in your company. The saying under-promise and over-deliver is a cliche but it is true. When you are in the throes of a sale, its really tempting to tell the customer that your company can meet some deadline or quality standard which they obviously can’t. It’s much better to say no now.
Other ways in which you can create trust in your company are references. Can you ask your current customers for a testimonial or would they allow a prospect to visit them? There are many other ways to build trust in your company, such as factory visits, or you could take along a trusted Technician with you to the prospect call.