CIRKULAR SOLUTIONS

Back in 2008, while listening to a well-known speaker and expert in the area of sales, I noticed the emphasis in his presentation was consistent with everyone else – focus on selling. After the presentation, I had a moment to talk with the speaker and asked him, “have you ever thought about not selling, and instead, building an environment to buy?” He stopped and looked at me and replied that was a fascinating approach and the first time he’d heard someone present an alternate approach to selling.

Building an environment to buy is more about focusing on fulfilling the expectations and needs of the buyer, rather than selling them what you think they may want or need. Big difference, so let me explain why. Growing up in retail, learning how to approach people and successfully sell was critical; and I developed a fairly extensive training program while running one retail organization, helping the people in the store understand how to approach, present, and close on sales. One key element was teaching everyone to understand if a person enters a store, they have already determined they want to buy; they may not know what they want, but just breaking that barrier indicates somewhere in the back of their mind, there’s a desire to fulfill. I found over the years, this is true in almost every sales opportunity; whether it’s in a store, over the phone, or at your front door – if someone allows you to engage, they have some internal interest, even if they won’t admit it.

Accepting this concept is the key to building an environment to buy. So instead of planning out a sales strategy where you have a script or set agenda, you need to plan out a general path and be prepared to adjust and adapt along the way. I just saw “The Wolf of Wall Street” and totally get the idea of a script, that’s hard selling and certainly works for some people. In fact, when I was fresh out of college I worked for a time share company and my only job was to visit people that agreed to have me come to their home, and then convince them they needed to make an appointment to visit our showroom and the real sales people; these were the scripted hard sales people that wouldn’t take no for an answer, and they were only interested in selling not satisfying. I had a script too, but threw it out and opted to take a more personal approach, which ultimately helped me get into more homes and have the highest closure rate for getting people to set appointments and show up – very important to me that they showed up, because that’s how I got paid. I watched the hard sell by the more experienced people in the showroom and hated it, couldn’t understand why anyone would even sit through it. So I left and moved on to develop my own methods for selling.

Building the environment requires I know my product well, so you can’t skimp on investing time into understanding what you sell – the benefits, the negative elements, the competition, and every possible detail in anticipation of a thousand questions; once you do this you can begin building the environment. I broke down the process in the following steps:

1. Engage
2. Qualify
3. Adapt
4. Encourage
5. Reflect
6. Project & Reinforce
7. Comfort & Close

Engaging with someone is the first step; whether that’s a quick “hello” or introduction, it is the first opportunity you have to make sure the customer recognizes and understands you’re there to help. Qualifying someone is where you begin to map out the direction you need to go, as it is less about where you want to go and more about where the customer will be most satisfied. This is a discover period where you should be asking questions, probing, and carefully listening to responses. During the Qualify stage, you should begin to understand the true needs of your customer and begin to consider how you present your product or service to fit their needs (not the other way around). Adapt and adjust your strategy on the fly based on what you discover. It makes no sense to stay on script if the story line changes; find out where the customer wants to go and try to help navigate. As you better understand what the customer wants and/or needs, encourage them to share more details, building confidence in their direction and selection. Reflect what they say, be echolalic, let the customer what they are saying; which leads to projecting and reinforcing their decision – remember, it’s there decision, not yours. You want to build an environment where the customer is ultimately selling themselves and you’re just creating the environment for them to understand their needs. Comfort and close, the hardest part for some; recognize when your customer has taken ownership of the decision and close the deal; it should be a natural transition once you project and reinforce.

Selling involves more persuasive actions, where building an environment to buy requires active listening and helping people make decisions. The first may drive numbers in the short term, the latter drives greater satisfaction and sustainable sales over time. Just think about the last time you were “sold” something you ended up not liking and think about how you felt about the sales person and product…probably not so good and may have blamed the sales person. Now think about the time you bought something where you made the decision, but then changed your mind; I’m betting you didn’t even think twice about the sales person and probably felt responsible for your actions, blaming no one but yourself.

Build the environment and let people own their decisions and you’ll find greater success over a longer period of time with the same people.