A Surprisingly Simple Tip For Selling To Humans

Regardless of formal role and title, every founder, CEO, every manager, every supervisor, every individual contributor – everyone – is involved in sales in some way. That makes sales training incredibly important.

Unfortunately, many sales training programs and sales processes do more harm than good. It's because they're too often focused on the sales plan -- and not enough on the person. They may have worked in a world where customers knew little and the sales person had control -- but don't work quite that well in today's world where customers are connected to information and often control the process.

Here's a personal example.

While we haven’t made many important purchases offline lately, not long ago, my wife and I needed a new mattress. It’s a purchase that’s hard to make online – there’s no way to assess the feel of a mattress from a website description. That's my wife's position. Me, I'll do almost anything to avoid having to go into a store and deal with a sales person. Especially a mattress sale person. In any case, it was an important purchase given that most people spend a fair percentage of their time sleeping. And we were in desperate need.

The good news was that things worked out in the end (hence the photo of a happy couple -- who is happy because they finally checked "purchase new mattress" off of their list).

Here's the story and the lessons learned.

My wife and I went to a sleep center to check out mattresses. The salespeople were huddled together chatting -- as mattress salespeople without customers are wont to do – and they watched as we start to work our way through a row of mattress displays.

A young salesman broke away from the pack and hurried over. Within moments it was obvious he had been trained to follow a specific sales process checklist.

"What brings you in today?" was the first item on his list. Not a strong start: the fact I had already touched three mattresses and sat on one should have been a pretty decent clue. But, that's OK, he was just making friendly conversation.

Next on his mental checklist was likely, “Qualify the customer.” I could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he ran through his training and tried to figure out whether he were “qualified” to make a purchase, and how large. That didn't go particularly well either. We weren't answering questions in the way he was expecting, or perhaps he already had a mental model in his head of what kind of customers we looked like and made assumptions based on that.

After a couple of false starts he abandoned that step and moved on to, "Establish customer requirements," asking what we were looking for in a mattress.

My wife is super polite (she grew up in the south) but was already armed with a fair amount of knowledge, because like every other sane person that buys anything important, she uses this thing called the Internet. She had done some research before walking into the store. She was tactful and courteous, but ignored his questions, because they were a bit basic, and instead asked some of her own. The salesman struggled to answer her questions, possibly because he was new but mostly because he kept trying to reengage his sales process.

That didn't go particularly well either.

Then he surprised me. He stopped, sighed, and said, "I'm sorry but I’m not very good at this. Give me a second to get someone who will be able to actually help you."

My wife instantly warmed up — as people who are genuinely nice are wont to do, when you can be yourself and show some humanness. "Don’t get anyone else. You’re doing great.” (Of course he wasn’t, but why say so?) "Is there one of these that others have really liked? What about something that you like?"

"Absolutely," he said, a spark appearing in his eye. "While some of the more expensive mattresses have more features, this one is really comfortable and I think it’s a great deal. That’s what I would buy."

So we checked it out. We liked it. My wife said, “It is really comfortable. But just to make sure I check out all the options, are there any that are similar to this one?”

There were. We tried them. We talked about them. We tried some that were very different. We talked about what we liked and didn’t like, he recommended other mattresses we should try… and eventually we settled on the one we wanted.

What happened?

Initially the salesman focused solely on checking items off his checklist. He tried to build a relationship. He tried to qualify the lead. He tried to evaluate our needs so he could overwhelm us with specifications and features.

That approach may work with some customers, but in our case it meant giving up his biggest strength: he stopped being a young, enthusiastic, friendly guy who could help us find the right mattress.

He tried to become something he wasn’t instead of being himself.

And he tried to solve for his company instead of solving for the customer.

If you own or run a business, think about how you teach your employees to sell. If you’re an employee, think about how you sell, whether you’re a salesperson or simply someone who – much more often than you probably realize – represent your company and therefore “sell.”

Then think about the customer, not in the aggregate as “customers” but as individuals. What do they need? Then take this approach:

1. Recognize that people – you, me, and everyone else – don’t care solely about what you sell. They also care, to an exceptional degree, about how you sell it. Most customers are at least halfway through the sales process before you engage them: they’ve done some research, checked out reviews, talked to friends.

Customers know much more than you give them credit for.

2. That means your job, in almost every case, is to provide the information the customer needs to finish selling themselves. And that means instantly ditching your script or process when it makes sense. Meet customers where they are – not where you think they should be (or want them to be.)

3. Play to your personal strengths. If you’re naturally introverted (like me) use that to your advantage. Where selling is concerned, listening is often much more effective than talking.

4. Don’t blindly up-sell. Most sales training includes a section that might as well be called, “Never leave money on the table.” That’s fine in theory but often off-putting in practice.

Say my wife and I had walked in and said, “We want to buy this mattress.” Some salespeople will immediately try to up-sell. (I hate that.) Others might take a different approach, one that solves for the customer. The salesperson might say, “That’s a great mattress. Let’s get going on the paperwork. By the way, what made you decide on that one?” Depending on the answer, she might say, “You know, if firmness is a major concern for you, this mattress might be even better … and it’s a little cheaper.”

Would she put money back on the table? Possibly. But it’s always better to create an awesome experience for a customer than to wring every last cent out of the transaction.

Why? Transactions are one-off. Customers who consistently receive an awesome experience are yours forever.

5. Create a sales process that solves for the customer. Ever step, every conversation, every interaction should be optimized for the customer, not your organization.

Because when you do, your organization really benefits – in the short- and long-term.

When you sell, don’t think of it as selling. Think of it as helping another person meet a need, solve a problem, reach a goal… at its best, selling is helping.

So toss out the scripts and processes and just focus on helping people.

That’s the best sales strategy of all.

*****

Dharmesh Shah is founder/CTO of HubSpot. He's currently working on SiteAlerts.com a free tool to get instant insights and ideas from competitors' websites.

Photo: ~ @sharpshutter22 / fotolia