Think about the prospect. Seek one individual you can help every day, and it will change the way you operate.
Today on The Sales Evangelist Hustler’s League, we discuss how to empathize with your prospect and put yourself in his shoes. By doing so, you’ll add value and you’ll become the kind of seller buyers want to buy from.
I learned this paradigm shift in the book, Stop Selling & Start Leading: How to Make Extraordinary Sales Happenfrom our sponsors at Wiley. It’s a fantastic blueprint of all the things buyers say they expect from sellers and want from sellers.
I’m offering a free excerpt of the book to this community of sellers so you can check it out for yourself.
Understand your customer
Understanding your customer is such a basic concept that sometimes we overlook it.
As a man of faith, I’ve been known to pray and ask God to lead me to someone who could benefit from my services.
If I can put myself in the customer’s shoes and understand his difficulties, then I can help him solve problems. I have to listen, understand his struggles, and focus more on solving his problems than on making the sale.
I recommend you remind yourself to think about the prospect every day.
Stephen Covey, in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says we must seek first to understand people, and then to be understood. Far too often we try to push something to our prospects that they don’t need.
Also, though, we have to understand the hurdles they are up against.
If, for example, you’re an interior house painter, and your prospect needs his walls painted, but he doesn’t have the time to wash them first, seek to understand his situation. He has other fires to put out. He has other priorities.
Demonstrate understanding by acknowledging his dilemma. Perhaps you’ll even incorporate washing the walls into the cost of painting them and wash the walls for him.
Adopt your customer’s point of view
My own clients tell me they are trying to grow their organization, or that they don’t feel comfortable talking to prospects. Sometimes they tell me that cold calling isn’t working for them.
These are the problem I’m helping them solve. The solution, of course, is sales training, but my focus in on the problems I’m helping them solve.
View your product or service as a solution instead of a sale. Understand that you’re selling them a way to operate their business so they can continue collecting money from their customers.
Take 30 minutes today to look at your product or service from the customer’s point of view. Ask what issues you can help him solve.
Do you feel a personal obligation to help him? If you don’t, your performance will be haphazard, and you won’t enjoy your work.
Your customers are tired of sales people. They want sales leaders. They want you to think about the prospect.
“Think About The Prospect” resources
If all of this sounds great to you but you still aren’t sure how to start, check out The Sales Evangelist Hustler’s League, an online group coaching program that brings sellers of all levels and all industries together to share insights.
You can also join our Facebook group, The Sales Evangelizersto connect with sales professionals from all walks of life.
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