Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector
Welcome to this week’s post on sales and selling success.
If you google the word “Simon” the first name to pop up is Simon Sinek, the awesome British/American author, motivational speaker and marketing consultant.
If you then google “Tedx” his name pops up as having the 3rd most popular TED talk of all time! His “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” is a classic – some of you might know it as “The Golden Circles”. Either way, if you haven’t seen it, watch it.
For the moment let’s leave Sinek and address the age-old question is selling:
Is it who or what or why?
I believe that truly great salespeople start with who. Then they move to why. From there they’ll progress naturally to what, how, when and finally how much.
Their bottom line – its far more important getting to the right person first.
If you don’t get to the person with authority (the one with real decision making power) you can’t close the sale no matter how much why and what you discuss.
Once you get to the right “who” (the decision maker) then you can deliver the other stuff.
Back to Sinek
He says: “people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it”
Now you’ve found the decision maker you need to move the conversation towards “why” because “why” is a game changer in modern selling. You’ll also give yourself a competitive advantage as most sales people still focus on the “what” – their great service is, the top ratings, their interesting company history, the competitive pricing.
The customer doesn’t care about this stuff.
They want to know why they should deal with you, your company and why they’ll benefit from the relationship or using your product/service. Will you assist in materially improving their business? They really don’t care how it is going to help yours!
Once you hook them on the “why” and have their attention, then you can backfill on the “what”.
Make the commitment to change. Focus on finding the “who”; then engage them in the “why” and see what effect it has on your results.
Until next week good selling!
About the author
Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.
He can be contacted at [email protected]
