The Perfect Greeting

To greet means to address with expression of kind wishes upon meeting or upon arrival. It’s about trying to make people feel welcome. This is the first purpose of greeting a customer, but it’s also your first chance to make a great impression on them. What you say and how you say it will set the tone for the rest of the deal. You need to nail the greeting. Those first seconds of meeting a customer, those first moments, can never be changed.

Use a firm handshake, not a dead-fish handshake. Wear a name badge because people will forget your name. Make eye contact, be present, listen for their name, and pay attention to their name. Duplicate their name because you will use it over and over again. Don’t be offended by brush-offs. There will be people that will think about you as another salesperson who they didn’t like in the past.

Related: If You Don’t Stand for Something, You’ll Fall for Anything.

After making a customer feel welcome, you want to put the buyer at ease so they start dropping their guard. You want to get on common ground and differentiate yourself from others. You also want to differentiate from any experience they’ve had in the past with your product or service.

Anyone can say, “Hi, my name’s Grant.” After that, if you can’t build trust, you’re not going to put them at ease, and you're going to struggle to get on common ground. If you don’t differentiate yourself, you’ll never control the process. So the greeting is to welcome, make yourself known, put people at ease, differentiate yourself, and grab control of the process. Control is essential to selling. You will either have control, or you won’t have control. Control equals a close.

The greeting is like oxygen to your lungs—it’s vital to get it right.

There are rules to every game. There are two simple steps you must do to properly greet:

A) Go to Them—Go to the buyer, don’t have them come to you. Go greet them and go further toward them then they come toward you. You must initiate.

B) Welcome Them—”Welcome, my name is ____”. Put your hand out for a shake. “And your name?” This is simple but necessary. They may not remember your name but be sure to remember their name.

Keep in mind that they are there for them, not for you. They aren’t interested in you—you need to be interested in them. The person that travels the furthest is the person most interested. They traveled 30 miles, you needed to travel 30 feet. When you go to greet the buyer, don’t rush it. Show them by your actions that you are interested in them.

Related: Success Can Come at Any Age

Know that every prospect you get in front of is real. One day, somehow, somewhere, they will buy—so treat them all like buyers. Regardless of what they tell you, there is opportunity with every client. Every prospect you meet is a sales opportunity. Quit looking for why they are not buyers. Instead, look for reasons why they are.

Here are 12 Tips to use in order to be a great greeter:

1. Prepare yourself for every possible encounter. 2. Never take anything the customer says personally. 3. Dress to the level that suggests you can actually buy the products that you sell.4. See the deal before you ever wait on a customer. 5. Go to them, never have them come to you. 6. Check your attitude before the greeting. 7. Put your problems aside and focus on the customer. 8. Look to build trust and gain common ground. 9. Make service senior to selling. 10. Have the attitude that you can solve a problem. 11. Act professional. 12. Know and act like you can make the sale.

In order to become a great salesperson, you have to perfect every step of the sales process. The greeting is simply the first step. Then you must be able to handle objections. If you aren't a master at handling objections like, "I'm just looking," or, "I don't have the budget." You need to come to my Live Seminar on Saturday.

Be great,

Grant Cardone

Grant Cardone, CEO of Cardone Acquisitions operates almost 4000 units in Florida, Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina. He is an American entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author, speaker, motivator and online sales training expert. Cardone is a respected, highly regarded master salesperson whose passion is to teach people how to sell themselves, their products and services regardless of economic climate. His books, audio packages and seminars provide people of all professional backgrounds with the practical tools necessary to build their own economies towards the path to true freedom.

“Success is your duty, obligation, responsibility."