One of the key traits of a successful salesperson is being flexible, which means you’re able to pivot as needed to suit your customer’s needs… not yours.
This means being able to read your prospects and be willing to change under whatever circumstance. Flexible individuals are the ones who excel most at selling.
Here’s a concrete example:
I sat down with one of these organizations that recruit students. So I figured I’d reach out to them and connect with them until I realized during the process that they weren’t necessarily interested in getting sales training for their admissions staff. Instead, they’re more concerned about keeping the one they already have.
A lot of schools out there have a populace of first generation college students, and they tend to have more challenges when getting started.
So first off, the pain point of this particular organization was not getting more people.. but keeping the ones they already have.
Now being a 1st generation college student myself, I had a first-hand experience of seeing how it’s possible to be in this place where I’m at now with The Sales Evangelist brand. So these students can definitely do it as well.
As a result, I came in to help them with retention, give motivational speeches and eventually worked something out to help all of their campuses in helping students stay in school and overcome their many challenges.
Got the gist of the story here?
You have to be nimble. You have to be quick. Nimble and quick enough to identify and understand your customer’s true pain point. Understand your client’s pain first. Listen to them. Then articulate your message appropriately towards their need.
As a result, a second opportunity opened up to me because I was flexible enough to go according to what the customer needed.
Again, listen to your prospect.
Listen to what is going on. Ask to know more and get deeper to uncover the true pain. It’s like Toyota’s “5 Why’s” where you get down to the fifth “why” in order to find the true issue. Listen to be able to get to the core challenge they have.
Episode Resources:
Listen to TSE 282 where I talked about the Dream 100, having 100 ideal customers you can focus on as well as campaigns and strategies.
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