Salespeople: Stop Trying to Sell the Product. Sell This Instead:
When a person is good at sales, we often credit their personality or ‘natural’ selling abilities:
“She can sell honey to a bee.”
“He can hold a conversation with just about anyone.”
“They were born to sell.”
And we usually leave it at that.
We shouldn’t.
Sure—there are those who are naturally good at conversation, and those who do seem to have an innate ‘gift’ in regards to influencing others, but those people are few and far-between.
The truth is, a lot of really successful salespeople aren’t naturally gifted when it comes to selling things. They don’t have a ‘secret formula’ or even a personality one would think to be sales-typical.
What they do have, is confidence in their expertise.
So, that’s what they sell.
If you want to be a successful salesperson, stop selling the product. Sell your expertise instead.
Selling people on your expertise is the key to sales success.
Bad salespeople focus all too much on the ‘thing’ they’re selling. If you hop on the phone and start yapping away about how ‘disruptive’, ‘cutting-edge’, or ‘life-changing’ whatever you’re selling is, the person on the end of the line is going to say, “No thanks” nine times out of 10. Most won’t even be that nice.
That’s because, at the end of the day, they don’t need what you’re selling. It’s not important to them. And unless it’s some never-before-seen technology that has the power to make all of their bills disappear, they’re going to tune you out as soon as they feel they’re being sold to.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling cherry tomatoes or a cherry-red McLaren P1 LM—there is no such thing as a product.
What matters, is how well you sell expertise.
Selling your expertise is the only way people are going to trust you.
People don’t want to know how magnificent your product is.
People don’t want to hear that your product is the cheapest and most effective on the market.
People don’t want to listen to you drone on and on about big numbers and shiny reviews.
They’ve heard all of those things before. They know all the buzzwords salespeople use to try and generate excitement. Heck—they probably worked in sales at some point in their life.
What they do want to hear, is much more important for building trust:
They want to know how your product is going to solve a problem they’re having.
They want to know how what you’re selling is going to bring unprecedented value to their business or personal life.
Most important, they want to know they can trust who they are buying from.
At the end of the day, you know more about what your selling than whoever you’re selling to—you’re the expert.
So, prove it.
Identify pain point they’re having.
Find legitimate ways your product solves those pain points. Only talk about the product itself if the information you’re about to give is actually relevant to the conversation. Understand your company’s purpose and mission and be able to speak to those things if necessary. Have an honest belief that whatever you’re selling is will actually add value to the life of the buyer. Focus less on what you say, and more on how you say it.
Selling people on your expertise doesn’t have to be difficult.
Remember: there is no such thing as a product.
Have confidence in your expertise and sell people on that.
