How to Win the Struggle of Asking for the Sale Every Time. (part 2)

Asking for the Sale is a Result of Understanding Their Story

“The major dilemma is that we tend to listen to reply, while all we should do is: listen to understand and feel.”― Akilnathan Logeswaran.

Understanding people’s stories, or problems, is more about how you make them feel than anything. They want to feel understood and believe that you get them and understand their story.

In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, Dr. Stephen Covey says,?“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Here are a few ways successful salespeople listen:

• As the customer is talking, they’re working on understanding what they want and why they want it, i.e., their story.
• They listen to understand better who the customer is and what’s important to them, and what problem they’re trying to solve.
• They pay close attention to how the customer feels about their answers.
• They repeat the words they use, verbatim if possible, because it lets them know they’re truly listening.

Every customer comes in with a problem they’re trying to solve. They want you to listen carefully enough to understand that problem.

Successful salespeople know that understanding people is about genuinely listening to them, their stories, and what they’re trying to accomplish.

Once you know and understand the customer’s story,?Asking for the Sale?becomes the logical solution to their problem.

Asking for the Sale is a Genuine Love Affair

If salespeople think of what they do as at odds with who they are or what they want to achieve in life, they will fail. If they are comfortable with it, they will thrive. Nothing matters more in sales than how each salesperson perceives their role and how selling protects, inflates, or undermines their sense of self.

Yes, there are underlying traits in every good salesperson — notably optimism and tenacity — which lead to resilience in the face of adversity. But beyond that, a salesperson succeeds because they’ve found a match between who they are and what they must do.

—?Philip Delves Broughton

These are two of the most significant paragraphs I’ve ever read on sales success, and I want to emphasize what he’s saying. Selling must be a passionate match between — Who you are and What the selling profession requires you to do.

Let me explain this way. For far too many salespeople, the most significant thing standing between them and their next Sale is their stinking thinking about?Asking for the Sale.

If you believe that selling and?Asking for the Sale?are manipulative and self-serving, you will let people walk out or walk away.

Let’s take a different view and look at sales as an opportunity to do what suits your customer and their best interests. The beginning of the sales process is just a conversation to discover the problem and help them solve it genuinely.

To truly help and serve people, you’ll need to connect and understand them — their hopes and fears, challenges, and dreams. You must genuinely care about them and believe in them; they must feel and think you care.

This includes being willing to tell them if your company or product isn’t the right fit for them and pointing them in the right direction. However, if YOU are right for them and your product is a good fit for them, then you must do the right thing and?Ask for the Sale.

You can gain sales knowledge and skills and acquire additional years of sales experience. Still, if there is no genuine love of selling, no love of the sales process, no love of genuinely helping people, no love of?Asking for the Sale, and no love of winning and achieving your goals and success, you WILL struggle to be successful at the game of sales.

Successful, highly paid salespeople LOVE their sales careers.

Fall in love with your work, and commit yourself to become excellent.

Stay tuned for part 3, the final piece on How to Win the Struggle of Asking for the Sale Every Time, coming tomorrow!