Enthusiasm Sells!

Whatever you sell, you probably already know that the more enthusiastic your prospective buyer is about your product or service, the better chance they will pull the trigger immediately. You may also know, the enthusiastic customer may also pay more than their less than excited counterpart. With enthusiasm being such a key component in a buying decision, as a sales person, you probably want more enthusiastic buyers, right? So the question then becomes, how can you as a sales professional inject enthusiasm into a clients emotions during their shopping experience? 

The first thing you must understand about creating enthusiasm in your customer, is that enthusiasm must be transferred from you to them! That’s right, for a customer to become excited about making a purchase, you as their sales associate have to be excited about selling to them. This means in reality, enthusiasm generation is much more about how you approach your sales process, and behave during customer interaction than it is about your customers behavior. Allow me to walk you through a surefire way of creating an excited buyer, who is ready to pull the trigger, molded from a seemingly emotionless client. 

Start at their level, and bring them up with you. 

If you subscribe to mirroring and reflecting while selling, then you understand that you should mimic the customers body language, expressions, tone of voice, tempo of speech and any other attribute you are able to. This is a great way to allow your customer to feel comfortable around you. This phenomenon occurs because we are naturally drawn to people that are similar to ourselves. When first meeting most prospects, their guard is up, and they are on the defensive. Thus, you must come in at their level of enthusiasm. However, if you match that attitude and mentallity throughout the entire sale, you will not generate the enthusiasm needed to create a buyer. Your mission is to slowly raise their level of excitement by slowly raising yours. If their level of excitement when they meet you is a 3, you don’t want to start off at a 10. If they are really excited to meet you, then you will need to start off where they are. Get that enthusiasm up quickly to match theirs. Regardless, after you greet your customer, bring your enthusiasm level theirs, mirror and match, but begin raising the energy as soon as you are able. You aren't able until you find out more about the clients needs. 

Discover their wants and needs to build excitement. 

You can be excited about your product or service, but to express your excitement about the wrong feature or benefit is a waste of enthusiasm, and will have little effect on your customers level of interest. Since you want your enthusiasm to rub off on your would be buyer, it is important you get excited about the correct features. What are the correct features you ask? Quite simply, only the ones that matter to your customer! In order to find this out, it is imperative that you ask many open ended questions. Fact finding, investigation, and discovery will allow you to find out what is important to them. Once you have found out all the important hot buttons and uncover the true buying motive, this is when you may begin slowly turning up the enthusiasm. Here is a practical example of this enthusiasm generation method. You asked, "What is most important to you in a business partner?" Your customer responds with, "The most important thing were looking for is a company's ability to work around our schedule." Later on, during your presentation, you smile, raise your tone of voice and begin using gestures, "Remember when you said you wanted a company to work around YOUR schedule? Get excited, because I'm about to show you how well we do that!" You as the salesperson should be excited, because you are expressing your ability to give your customer exactly what they want! So get pumped up about fulfilling your customers needs and you will get THEM pumped up about buying from you! Enthusiasm sells.  

What is their version of enthusiasm? 

Try to build excitement in the way that is comfortable for them. There is a simple and subtle method for discovering this. During your rapport building, this is when you pay close attention to their reply, actions, and tone. Ask a few rapport building questions that allow someone to open up a bit about their personal or professional lives. While they are doing so, you are observing. Watch for their level of excitement, watch what kind of body movements they make. How much do they smile? How fast are they talking? What happens to the tone of their voice? This is their version of enthusiasm. Later on, when you are presenting and you want to get them excited, you can begin raising their enthusiasm level in the same way they got excited during rapport building conversation. Here is an example of such an activity. You ask, "How did you end up in this line of work?" They reply, "Oh man, let me tell you, it was a long road, I had to try 4 different companies to figure it out!" Lets say they don’t crack a smile but they pace around a bit and make big arm movements, their voice also gets louder. When presenting the features and benefits, you wouldn’t smile to much but pace around a bit and make those similar arm movements and raise the volume of your voice while pointing out the features and benefits that matter to them. Even say "Oh man, let me tell you, your going to love this!" Give them THEIR version of enthusiasm to allow them the ability to get excited and remain comfortable while you crank it up a notch!

Be confident in your presentation, why is it PERFECT for them? 

Now that you know exactly what they are looking for, and how they like to get excited, you have the responsibility and the RIGHT to get excited during your presentation. Anyone can do a mundane demo of their product or service, with no pizazz. However, it takes a special kind of sales person to ramp up the excitement and have your customer on the edge of their seat by the end of your sale process. Now is your chance to begin transferring excitement from yourself to your customer and begin turning things up a little bit at a time. When you say things like, "Remember how you said, X feature was important to you? Here is WHY I am showing you this product, these benefits are exactly what your looking for!" You have to be energetic about what your showing them, because they ARE going to buy from you. They are going to buy from you because you are solving their problem, tailoring your presentation to their needs and wants, and expressing these things in a way that makes sense to them. Your confidence in this allows you to be excited, and them to soak it all in. 

Get yourself excited! Body language, behavior, and attitude. 

There are many ways to crank up the enthusiasm. Body language is huge. Standing there with your hands in your pockets while you talk, or just as bad, stiff at your sides, creates no energy. However, when you flail about like a wacky inflatable arm flailing tube man, people can't help but become wrapped up in your presentation. When you look at your customer in the eye, point directly at them and say, "You need this because..." With certainty, that’s the body language that shows pure confidence. From a customers perspective, anyone with that much conviction must know what they are talking about. Asking what many people in sales call "Yes questions" while nodding your head, will also get the customer on your side and generate enthusiasm. A yes question is something like, "You can see the value in that, am I right Mrs. Customer?" While nodding your head with eye contact and extending a hand. You will have them nodding right back with you in agreement. This body language shows confidence, and enthusiasm. When someone feels that all their needs are met when making a purchase, they are often willing to pay more if they are excited about the buy. Big enthusiasm, big profit! 

Use tone of voice and speak in a positive, helpful, contributive way. 

Speech is another way to increase enthusiasm. Speak a little faster, and a little louder, as well as raising the tone of your voice as your presentation goes along. I'm not saying sound like a chipmunk on crack by the end of your presentation. I just want you to understand, using varying tones and volume to have different effects at various points in your presentation can make a massive impact in a clients buying decision. If you want to makes someone feel special, like they are getting "inside information" then move in and speak in more of a whisper. If you want the entire group hear and feel your message, back up, turn up the volume and spread your eye contact amongst the group your presenting. Don’t disparage your competitors products. Doing so actually makes your customers level of enthusiasm drop, because negative speech actually transfers negative thoughts towards you and your product! So instead of telling your client, "That product down the street is a P.O.S. its not half as reliable as what im selling." Try saying it like this, "We want our customers to have worry free ownership, so we have made a product that is two times more reliable than the competition!" Can you actually FEEL the difference in the two messages? One creates excitement, one makes you enthusiastic, the other makes you sound negative, grumpy, and even jealous of your competition! 

Enthusiasm is the least talked about, but one of the most important parts of a sale. 

Overall, enthusiasm generation is reliant on your behavior, attitude, client awareness and mentality. You don’t want to start off with over the top excitement, and pour it on the entire time. Instead you want it to start off like a small snowball at the top of a mountain. Rolling that little snowball down the slope until it creates a big ball of excitement by the close of the sale. Discover the best method for enthusiasm generation that applies to your customer. Next find out the best way you, your product, and service can help them or solve their problems. Get excited about presenting the right things in the right way. Start raising the bar on the excitement by using the right speech, body movements, actions and words. Stay positive and confident throughout the entire sale. When it comes time for the customer to make a decision, the excitement that you have transferred to them will no doubt have a large impact on their decision! You will have had more fun because getting yourself amped up can be quite entertaining! Not to mention, enthusiastic people are generally passionate about what they do. Show me a sales person who is passionate about selling their wares, and I will show you a highly successful sales professional. When its all said and done, using enthusiasm to sell, you will have more buyers, more commission, and more fun while working. Always remember my friends, enthusiasm sells! 

About Sean Kelley

Sean works with car dealers to achieve great results through their people and technology. Sean has extensive diversity in leadership ranging from Special Ops combat veteran, general sales manager, company owner, and a tech company executive. Sean will help your people find purpose, create a growth mindset, improve self-accountability and effectively develop your teams through his unique, customized approach to coaching. If you are interested in exceeding your goals and building an inspirational leadership team, email Sean directly: [email protected] or visit DriveCoaching.us

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