Remember your school fund raisers? The ones where you would sell cookie dough or frozen baked goods. I was recently writing an article that talked about my ten year old selling experience and realized how poor of a job many sales types do in presenting their product or service to clients. Here is how I see it, at age ten I would walk up and down my block talking to all my neighbors, and their neighbors, and their neighbors neighbors, and their friends.
I would say "Hi, how are you?" If they didn't know me I would give my name and then I would tell them in 3 sentences or less what I was doing. I never did any sales training, didn't have a workshop to help me stumble all over myself and make my job harder. I simply gave accurate information up front and asked if they would like to see what I had to offer. Those who were interested would take a look, some would buy, and a few would tell some of their friends, their friends would buy, the process would keep going, and I would walk away. At the end of the month my "income" if you could call it that was a direct reflection of how many homes I spoke with. There was little thought behind the process and very little advanced skill.
I say that to ask this question. Why is it that many sales types today go through and learn the latest on posturing, closing, opening, opening and closing, opening and closing while posturing when it has very little affect on results? Some would argue that they do, but are any of the above a reason that people buy from us? Why don't we focus on being excellent at communicating with people so that everything is natural and we can simply build trust, answer questions, and help prospects come to a decision? I decided the reason for this isn't because it doesn't work but because it's too simple. But that's just my opinion. What do you think?
Mikhail
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