Cryers are Buyers!

Do you guys know of Jeffrey Gitomer?  He’s one of my mentors in the $ales arena and he taught me all about getting to emotion in the sales process.  He tells a story of a small invisible string that is connected to the heart that runs under the skin, over the shoulder and down and then tied to the wallet in the back pocket!  Can you picture this?  Well – he says – if you pull hard enough on the (heart) string, the wallet pops right out!!  I know this is kind of old school thinking but really when you boil it down – he’s right.

So lets look at this for a moment.  If you are sitting with a prospective buyer (prospect) then your job as a sales person is to make sure you uncover the emotional reasons for the prospect wanting to buy your product or service.  What frustrations do you fix, do you solve problems that they have, and how do these problems or frustration affect them in the lives or businesses.  Say for example you sell solar panels / solutions into the domestic market.  Lets delve into the frustrations of the average home user.  The costs of electricity are rising every year, more and more electrical products are being used in the home, budgets are squeezed, the neighbors have solar – you get the picture.

Knowing this, the sales person needs to develop a set of questions around this to help the prospect understand the problem in quite a lot of detail.  We all know that the price of electricity is high – so rather than glossing over this, delve in and find out how much of a problem it really is, find out what else the family could have done with that money – a holiday, pay down the mortgage faster etc.  You get the idea – we have to play dumb and dig deep here so that the emotional aspect of the frustration is highlighted.  Example – so [name] if we could reduce your electricity bills by 30 – 40% what would you and your family do with the extra money in your account each month?  Is that a dinner out, a weekend away with your husband and facial or makeover?

Once we tap into the emotion we are way more likely to make the sale.  Most sales people are great at following a sales process, what the top performers are good at doing is translating the logical issues into the emotional end point.  So – practice asking questions that uncover emotion and don’t be afraid to go there!!!