Sales Tip - Selling is About People

Businesses may buy what we offer, but it’s people who decide what to buy, and who from.

Selling is about people – empathy, influence, leadership, support- all these are people centric dimensions of the sale. The other side of the coin are the business centric dimensions – the business imperative, return on investment and risk mitigation.

There are four principles we can understand, and use, to make this work in our favor.

Understand the Personal Agenda
If we accept it’s the people who make the decisions, its easy to understand we have to sell to their personal agendas. In every sale there are three criteria we have to satisfy

The business agenda
otherwise described as the business imperative. This is the factor which everybody in the business accepts. It typically comes out of the strategy and often will relate to the competition, either creating a new initiative to get an edge, or responding to a competitors advantage.

The business case
measurable return on investment. Accountants hate spending money they’re not going to see coming back to them. It’s worth remembering the only place which guarantees a return on investment is the bank. Necessarily all business plans are projections and will often be manipulated to support the decision somebody wants to make. Never the less, we will still get asked for them.

The personal agenda
What the people want out of the investment. This can be really hard to uncover, but we need to do that if we’re going to control the sale.

A really simple example of these dimensions can be the company buying new premises. The business agenda is easy if the existing lease about to run out. The business case is easy, for example lower property taxes. The personal agenda probably won’t get talked about – the Operations Manager wants the premises on the south side of town, because that will cut thirty minutes off his commute.

This personal agenda isn’t going to be talked about openly. Of course everybody wants the best possible premises, at the lowest possible cost. But is the Operations Manager, who is already going to reduce his budget, thinking of adding an hour to his travel time everyday just to save the business a little bit more? Probably not. If we can come up with some arguments for our south side units, the OPS Manager will coach us into winning the sale, even if the cost is higher than the competitions’ north side units.

Employ Consultative Selling
Generally, people would much rather be “helped to buy” than “be sold to”.

When we get to understand both the business imperative and the personal agendas we can begin to explain how our offer is the most beneficial. However we may be in danger of missing some secondary considerations which have never been discussed. We can uncover these hidden influences by becoming consultants. We’re experts in our field after all. We work in our market/sector/product all of the time whereas our prospect is rarely involved in it. Every time we get told something we can ask if alternatives have been considered, point out the upside and downside of different solutions. We can add value to our sales proposition by helping the prospect to know more of what we know.

This goes back to the life insurance salesman – see Beware the Serial Prospect – “helping to buy” is much more acceptable than “selling”.

People buy from people they trust
As we’ve seen earlier, amateur sales people rely on their personal charisma. If the prospect likes them, maybe they’ll buy because they like them.

When sales guys think this they deny the reason successful sales operations are so good. Sales people from the top performing companies aren’t charismatic and easy going, they’re process oriented and disciplined. So why do people buy from them – because they’re professional, direct and honest. Customers may not like what they hear, but believe it. They know they’re not in control, but are going to get what they want. Of course, they also have to pay for it.

Put yourself in their shoes
Our fourth principle is really easy to understand, sell to your prospect as you would like to be sold to.

If we can put ourselves in the buyers shoes, we have a much better chance of understanding how to make him come in our direction. The competition isn’t doing that, we can stand out because we do.