Yesterday on twitter I followed a link showing a hilarious clip from Ellen DeGeneres' talk show, she'd rang one of her viewers live and the 88 year old lady cheerfully answered her phone "Hello this is Gladys, and if you're selling something I ain't interested!" which got me to thinking... what exactly is that we hate about being "sold to"?
I go to a fair few seminars to keep myself up to date on how to continue growing my business, and to pass on tips to my clients. One of the things I've heard at seminars about potential customers being resistant to sales is that it's "their" stuff, ie that some people just have a resistance to sales, and that it's not because the person selling is doing something wrong. Now while I can understand that some times this can be true, quite often it's not, actually what's happening is that the person selling just doesn't understand what selling is, and hasn't followed 2 simple rules:
QUALIFY the customer- are they even interested in what you have to offer? Don't bother wasting their time or yours if not! (And no it’s NOT good marketing to continue blathering if they’re not interested, it’ll just bug them and leave a bad taste in their mouths, and they definitely won't recommed you to someone they know)
LISTEN to your customer- if you give them half a chance, they'll tell you why they need what you have, and how valuable it is to them, all you have to do is mirror back what they've said.
This results in selling being a process whereby customers get to understand that the value of what you have to offer is greater than the price they pay, and SOLVES a problem that they have!
We hate sales because most sales people don't LISTEN to us! If only more sales people were taught this, we'd love being sold to- because it would simply be having our problems solved for us!
Sadly that's not the case, and right now I'm thinking of revising my voice mail to reflect Gladys' comment "Hi I'm Claire and if you're selling I ain't interested, if you've got something I want, I'm all ears!"
If you want to add some joy into your life today click through and listen to Ellen talking to Gladys!
You can follow me on twitter -@ClaireBoyles to get my regular tweets
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Eve Bulman (Tuesday, 07 April 2009 05:40)
Hi Claire, interesting comments on selling and marketing. I'm a marketeer originally and I think that it's the interpretation of selling and marketing that often cause fear and anxiety in people!
In my school, selling is about understanding the client more than anything - it's about getting to grips with what THEY are looking for and being able to connect with that through meaningful engagement - that is true 'PULL' sales strategies as opposed to 'PUSH' which would be trying to 'show' or 'prove' that there's a need for a product.
Marketing then for me is an abundance of activities including advertising and promotion but it's also research and client engagement - getting to know them, what makes them tick so that you can serve them in a meaningful way !!!
Thanks for getting me thinking more about this today !