As we said, the first skill, the one most important skill when you’re starting a business is sales. And to create sales in a stressless manner, not because necessarily no one will ever be stressed around you, but because you don’t want to stress your customers too much. Because, first of all, I think it’s immoral and ethical to overstress them. But also, because when you’re overstressing someone to buy something, he will regret it.
Whether he’ll get a refund or not, or whatever the financial side of it, you have a lot of headaches and pain to deal with. Because you have customers that are not happy with their service or product. It’s much better to make sure that this process is as smooth and as clean as possible. Of course, very low levels of stress, just sips of stress are actually very positive, and we’ll discuss it very soon. But basically speaking, we don’t want to make people or to push people to make decisions they’ll later regret. And this way we can avoid bad deals. And also, we don’t want to try and sell someone something that he doesn’t truly deeply desire. Because again, it will make him regret or make him an over annoying customer if it’s an ongoing deal.
The job of salesperson
So a salesperson job, in my opinion, the way I define it in the way I’m trying to do it in the companies I manage, and also when I’m consulting clients is like this, “Your job is to help the customers feel certain that the product or service will provide its promise.” That’s it. Okay. And this is the reason why I don’t like the way sales are managed in so many big organizations where it’s so stressful and it’s always about competitions. And it’s also about meeting goals, and so on and so forth. It’s not like, it’s a bad thing. And sometimes it can improve your sales. But again, in my opinion, if a business requires me to constantly be stressful, if it requires me to constantly be impolite and not nice to my employees, it’s simply not worth it. So even if you will have just a bit less sales, and it’s fine.
And also, this is the reason I do believe that it’s very important that the sales people will feel confident, they’ll feel certain, they’ll feel comfortable. When you feel comfortable, when you feel certain, when you feel safe and secure, it’s easier for you to project this feeling to other people. So what I want to do as a salesperson is what I want other people to do when they’re working for me as salespeople is to make the client feel certain [and] feel sure that the product or service will provide or will fulfill its promise. What manipulative people do is that they’re trying to convince people that the product is good for them. And that’s not what we’re trying to do.
We’re not trying to show every single person in the world that the product is good for you. We’ll show you that the product can fulfill its promise. This is also a business integrity issue that we as business owners and business strategies should create. We should create a product with a promise that we know that the product or the service can provide this promise.
So when we’re doing it this way, it’s very easy to make sure that the salespeople or ourselves have a very strong belief, and have a very strong idea… They feel comfortable when they’re trying to persuade someone to feel comfortable, when they’re trying to sell to someone. One of the biggest issues specifically for small businesses is that the business owner himself doesn’t feel comfortable to sell the product. Because he himself is afraid that the product is not good enough, that the person won’t be happy with it, that he will get negative feedback for it or stuff like that. If I, myself, am very sure that my product can fulfill the promise and everything I’m doing in the sales conversation is showing the person that my product or making him feel… It’s not just showing, not just a logical thing, it’s also an emotional thing. And we’ll discuss it.
If I’m making him feel [that] this product or this service can provide this promise, then I can feel very good with it. And also salespeople in very small companies sometimes tend to feel insecure, because oftentimes they also get the customer service calls [from] the people who are not happy with the service. And sometimes they’re simply just having a fight with their boss and their boss is the person who has like running the business. So now they don’t like him in this specific instance. So now saying that he’s amazing. It is very hard for them. So it’s a lot about integrity. And the best way to create integrity is to explain and to make sure that we clarify the job description of the salesperson. Be it ourselves or other people, we need to produce the feeling of certainty that our product can fulfill the promise. So let’s go for the tips.
Understand other person’s need
First, peel off rationalization. The first thing that we have to do as salespeople is to understand that the reasons that people are giving us for why they want to buy this product or service usually are not the real reasons. Those are the reasons they’re telling themselves to sound smart or rational. Most people have different emotional reasons. And they want to have one of their emotional needs met. And this is why they buy almost everything. The rationalizations are exactly what they are rationalizations. So the best way to pull them off is simply to respect them, accept them, but then keep on asking questions, keep on the conversation, and not like taking them as full stop answers.
If someone is telling me, “I would want to buy this cup of coffee from you.” And then I tell him, “Why do you want to buy this cup of coffee?” They will tell me, “I am tired.” That’s the first rationalization. Amazing, you’re tired. So is it really important for you to buy this cup of coffee? Because I want a cup of coffee. I’m just wanting it right now. Why can’t you go over to [Inaudible 07:19]? Because I want it right now. Why do you want it right now? Because I want to have this and that result right now. Because I’m going into a meeting. Because… So why do you have to get it? Because I don’t want to be late to the meeting. Because I’m afraid if I’ll be tired in this meeting, I’ll make a joke out of myself or something like that.
Right now, this cup of coffee isn’t worth like $1 or$2 or $3, it might be worth $30. I’m not saying I should sell it to him at $30. Maybe I should still sell it to him for $1, $2 or $3. But now it’s very easy to sell him something that’s worth $30 or $2 or $300 for $2.
Motivate others emotionally
So I want to figure out the root emotional need, the root emotional motivation for the person to actually buy. And sometimes it takes time. It requires me to build some rapport to make sure that he trusts me a little bit. This is why I’m respecting his rationalizations. I’m not like kicking them out or not disrespecting him or anything like that. And I’m not also trying to hard pressure him. When I’m trying to hard pressure someone into buying something, he will not open up to me. And this will make him buy only on the rational side. And the rational side is usually not enough to be very satisfied with a deal. We are buying because of the emotional need. And when their emotional need is on the table. It’s easier for a person to buy, it’s easier for a person to feel good about the purchase and be happy with it in the long term.
Learn other person’s language
The third tip is to learn the other person’s personal language. It starts with listening. A good sales conversation, in my opinion should usually be mixed like 30% of the time speaking and 70% of the time, I’ll be listening. When I’m listening, I’m trying to pick up his language. The words he’s using, the phrases he’s using, the way he’s constructing his sentences.
I wanted to speak as authentically as I can, but also as closely as I can do the way he speaks. If I’m going to speak with the same kind of words, the same kinds of phrases to PhD in sociology from the University of whatever, who’s like stereotypical PhD from the University. Of course, it’s always a straight stereotype. And for example, I know someone who’s a farmer. I’m not saying that a PhD is more intelligent or anything. I’m just saying that they use different phrases in different words. And the more my words [that] I’m using will be similar to the words the person is using, the more he will feel certain, the more he will feel he can trust me.
Language is something that’s very cultural. It’s very environmental. Have you ever noticed that when you’re spending a lot of time with someone and you start picking out some of his words and he starts picking out some of your words? He’s saying it. I was always saying it. I’ve never said it before. Because it’s a very, very, very common thing. So who are the people in your life, in our life, or at least in most people’s lives, that speak as closely as there is to you guys, your family members, your closest friends. So if I as a salesperson can speak in the same way, I can generate a very strong and powerful feeling of confidence, which is very important.
Show excitement
The fourth tip is being excited. It doesn’t necessarily mean we have to smile the entire conversation, especially for selling something that is attached to negative emotions. So we have to be respectful of the negative emotions of the person. But still, most of the time, and whenever we were talking about the product, about the offer, about the promise, then we should be excited. Excitement is, in my opinion, may be the number one easiest thing to do. Because it requires almost no skill. The only skill it requires is to constantly be excited. Being excited takes no skill.
But constantly being excited is the skill. But when you are excited, excitement usually catches people on. When someone else is excited, you tend to be excited. When someone says, “I was eating in a restaurant!” First question is gonna be “Which restaurant was it!” Like, “I was eating in a restaurant.” “I was watching a movie”, you don’t care. When someone is very excited about something, you want to hear about it, you have more emotional intensity about it. It’s very important.
Share exciting stories
The last one (fifth one) is telling authentic and powerful stories. For me, when I was growing up, I was very much into math and computer science and stuff like that. And I was working a lot on my logical skills. So when I am arguing with people, I want to be right, I want to make the right arguments to explain why I’m right and the other person is so “wrong”. Why if I was trying to sell something at that age, I would surely try to tell someone why it’s the right thing to do to buy this product or the service. And then what happens to most people who’re trying this approach is that the person says, “Yes, you’re right. I should buy this, but not now. It’s too expensive.” They try to give up with all sorts of things. Why? Because while they’re logically understanding that they should do it [but] they don’t feel like they have to do it. So the best way to make people feel like they have to do it, is simply tell them stories.
Most people, I think, like 85% of people… One of the researchers I used to read once said, I believe, it was 85, maybe, it was like 83 or something. But it was about 80-something percent of the people who learned much better from stories than by facts. If it’s a story, they’ll remember it. If it’s a story, they’ll tend to agree with it. If it’s a story, they’ll tend to align with it. If those are facts, they’ll agree with it because they can disagree with it, but it won’t really change anything for them. So if you’re just starting out, the first thing you should probably do is try your product or your service yourself and have a personal success story, or at least give your product or service to a few people for free or sell it for a few people and then try to collect their stories.
Having a file or a piece of paper with several stories of several people who used your product [or] used your service and they have had wonderful results from it, is way more powerful than explaining how it works or explaining why it’s important. The answer to so many questions in a sales process is simply telling a story. Yeah, I understand that but it’s too expensive for me. One of the best answers could be, “Yeah, it’s expensive. But you know, a client of mine used to be like this, and this. And then something like this happened to him. And he used this in this service. And what happened to him was this and this and this.” So it’s expensive, but you want it. And many times that’s simply ‘yes’. So use the power of stories when you’re selling.
Don’t take objection as feedback
And the last part when you’re doing the sales as a business owner or at very small businesses, when you work very closely with your salespeople, is make sure you don’t take people’s objections as feedback to your business. The fact that people are telling you that it’s too expensive and this is why they’re not buying, is not a cue to have discounts or to reduce your price. If someone is telling you that they need time to think about it, or they have to – I don’t know – talk to your spouse about it, or something like this, it doesn’t mean you need to create family meetings before you sell your product or service. Most of the time for most people the sales objection they’re going to use during a sales pitch or during a sales situation is not even dependent upon a situation. It is simply the most comfortable objection for themselves.
Some people will answer when it’s too expensive because this is their way to avoid being sold to. So they say, “It’s too expensive.” Because this is the way they learned to make salespeople get off of their skin. Others have learned to say ‘I have to think about it’. Others have learned to say ‘I need to talk to my spouse’. Others have learned to say… So the number one most determining factor of what objections you’re going to get is the type of people you’re going to talk to and not anything about your business or product.
A very good example of this is a friend of mine who was also in business consulting, and he was taking a fee that I believe was a bit high compared to the market prices, but it wasn’t too high. If I’m putting it in US dollars, it would be like $150 for an hour, whereas the average person would take $75 or $70 or $100. And he’s taking $150. And he would get it’s too expensive, It’s too expensive, It’s too expensive, It’s too expensive, It’s too expensive, all of the time. Then he decided on a different approach. And he decided instead of getting his price down to put it up. Because he got advice from a friend. So he bumped it up to I think around $400.
And now all of a sudden, no one told him it’s too expensive, or almost no one. That’s because he was delivering it in a different way. And he was attracting different types of people whose usual objection was something else. So be it the price or the distance or the shipping or whatever, I’m not saying you shouldn’t listen to your customers. [But] If you want to get feedback from customers on why they did not buy, then I would get a different call a few days or weeks later and tell them,
“Hey, it’s me from this and this business. I’m not trying to sell you on anything. I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just asking you, what was the number one reason you believe that you didn’t buy it? I’m just collecting feedback or something.”
And if you can do it anonymously via SMS or something like this or email, it’s even better.
Of course, yeah. Okay. What was the main reason you took the decision to not join us? It doesn’t matter. If you’re selling pizza, then to fill your tummy with our delicious baked pizza. Yeah. So yeah, asking for feedback in a different way.
The second way is to try something new. To reduce the price, to try something different with a different product, something different with the service with the shipping or stuff like that, and see the real feedback. Another common example I have is what we have with classes and courses, is that many times people are asking for different days. Like for example, if we’re starting a course on Wednesdays, people will tell me, “If it would be Monday, then I would be able to come.” And then if you’d open the class on Monday, they wouldn’t. Or people will say, “I wish it was in the morning, or in the evening. I wish it was in a different area in the country or stuff like that.” And usually, it doesn’t work.
So the fact that they’re saying it, it’s just the rationalization to the real reason they’re not buying it. So for me, before I’m doing anything on feedback like this, I need to have at least like 10 times the amount of people that would actually take to open a course. If I’m going to open a morning course, [which] usually only at night, and I want at least 20 people to join, then I will wait for 100 people to say they want to be in the morning, before I actually do it. Because I understand the dynamics. Okay.
So for example, if I’m opening the public speaking course. Every time I’m opening it, I’m always opening it on afternoons and nights. And every once in a while, someone’s telling me, “I wish I could go, but I have to have it in the morning.” So sometimes it’s very tempting to say, “Okay, I’ll open a morning course.” And what happens to many people is that they’re getting so many requests, for example, morning or a different day of the week or different times or whatever or different location, and they feel like they get so many requests, and then when they’re doing it, they can’t have enough people to join. So because I know d anomic, this is the dynamic we’re just talking about, then always wait for way more people to ask for it than I actually need to open the course. Okay.
Hey, it’s Gal Tzhayek. Thank you for watching this video. If you liked it, please press the thumbs up button. And you can also subscribe to the channel. Make sure you get notified each and every time a new video is uploaded. I’d like to hear your questions and review in the comment section below. And I’ll see you in one of those new videos.
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