Sales secrets
June 29, 2004

Q:  Are there any sales secrets I should know? I am always on the hunt for new tricks to grow my small business. -- Roger in Denver

A:  I would not say I have any secrets, but I can say that sales are one of those areas where even the smallest little trick or new idea, once implemented, can reap surprising rewards.

For example, Brian Tracy, maybe the world’s best salesman, tells the story of how his first sales job was selling soap door to door to earn his way to YMCA Camp. He heard rejection after rejection until he oh-so-slightly rephrased his sales pitch. Instead of asking, “Would you like to buy a box of soap?” he said instead that he was selling soap, but that “it was only for beautiful women.” Thereafter he says, getting to camp was a breeze.

So yes, the smallest sales secret can often make the biggest difference. Here are some of the most important:

It’s Just Like Golf: If you have ever played even a little golf you know that the harder you try, the less successful you are. But when you ease off the throttle a bit and trust your natural abilities, when you stop trying so hard, that is when the great shots appear. Well, to a certain extent the same is true in sales.

It is a paradox: Just as you make the great golf shot by not caring about the great golf shot, so too can you get the sale by not worrying about the sale. A customer can sense when a sale is your priority, and will back off accordingly. But once he is convinced you are more concerned with helping him solve his problem than selling him a product, you will birdie the sale. So stop trying so hard.

Rapport Is All. Rapport, once established, will make your sales almost effortless. Once your create rapport with someone, he begins to trust you, and with trust, walls and reasons melt away.

One of the best ways to build rapport is by focusing on the needs of the customers. They are there, wanting to buy, for a reason. Customers have needs or wants that they think you may be able to fill. If you can focus on those, and if they “get” that what you are really interested in is fulfilling those needs or desires, then the sale becomes exponentially that much easier.

One way to do this is to ask questions, and then actually listen to the answer. Salespeople often make the mistake of falling in love with their own voice, convinced that if they spin just one more angle the sale will be theirs. But in actuality, the opposite is usually true. If you listen at least as often as you talk, sales usually increase.

Master salesman Tom Hopkins puts it this way: “The human body has two ears and one mouth. To be good at persuading or selling, you must learn to use those natural devices in proportion. Listen twice as much as you talk and you’ll succeed in persuading others nearly every time.”

Go the Extra Mile: Because it costs so much more to create a new customer than it does to keep an old one, it behooves you to foster your relationships with your current clientele. Part of that is doing your homework and keeping up to date on where your customers are and what it is they need.

A little extra effort into learning about a customer, for instance, by studying trends in their industry or knowing a bit about a competitor, can go a long way towards impressing that customer and keeping her around.

Similarly, going the extra mile for potential customers can reel them in. Consider the sports agent who flew cross-country just for the chance to have a brief meet-and-greet with a potential client. The sports star was so impressed that he signed up with the agent, concluding that that kind of personal service is what he wanted from an agent.

Remember this too – it can takes up to six interactions to close a sale. Going the extra mile means being willing to see a potential customer again and again, continuing to build rapport, until the sale is made.

Finally, going the extra mile also means following up. Thank you notes, checking in to see if the product is working out, and that sort of thing builds rapport for future sales.

The moral is that all sales are built on relationships.

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Today’s tip: Visualize a pickle or olive jar for a second. Think about that first pickle or olive. Getting the first one out of the jar takes some work, right? But once you do get that first one out, all the other pickles or olives come out quite easily. So too in sales. Getting that first sale with a customer takes extra work, but once you get it, all subsequent sales with that customer come much easier.

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