The response meter nearly tripped a breaker after last month’s column on the importance of mindset in successful selling. That’s encouraging to me because I’ve become quite firmly convinced that mindset – along with language – are the “final frontier” in achieving sales success. Mindset, in particular, has never been given serious attention.
Readers asked me to expand on my discussion of the Traditional Sales Mindset (Let’s give it a “TLA” – that’s a three-letter-acronym. We’ll call it the “TSM”). I’ve summarized the TSM in the following paragraphs.
THE TRADITIONAL SALES MINDSET
“In order for me to succeed in sales, I have to…”
“…master the ability to communicate the value of my solution.”This is the foundation of the TSM. It causes salespeople to operate in “Tell Mode” instead of the vastly more effective “Seek Mode.”
“…build relationships.”Relationships are a good thing in sales – as long as they are peer-to-peer and not “master/servant” relationships. The quickest way to migrate to peer-level relationships is to stop thanking customers for their time.
“…focus on closing the sale.”It’s ironic that salespeople who, instead of focusing on the close, focus on “exploring and describing the ‘fit’– if it exists – between the two companies,” end up closing more sales.
“…understand the customer’s needs.”Customers perceive far more value from salespeople who try to understand their business rather than just trying to learn their needs. Besides, where do customer needs come from? From customer business issues, of course!
“…listen more and ask better questions.”As long as a salesperson has a Traditional “Tell Mode” Mindset he or she will end up practicing what I call, “Tell Mode Listening.” There are five different forms of Tell Mode Listening, and they’re all counterproductive. They are: myopic probing, “brain picking,” interrogating, random listening and structured interviewing. Seek Mode is the only answer here.
“…realize that sales is a numbers game.”Remove the words “Quote” and “Bid” from your vocabulary and see how fast you realize sales is NOT a numbers game.
“…help customers solve problems.”A lot of customer problems – too often, those of prospective customers – end up receiving attention from the selling company without enough consideration for the return on the resources used in solving them.
“…find the decision-maker.”The very notion of “decision-maker” belies the reality of how things actually get done inside companies.
“…be responsive.”Here’s another one with a vice hidden inside a virtue. Many salespeople attempt to commit their own time and company resources in a way that reflects the potential payback on those resources. That’s the virtue. But because they want to appear responsive, they don’t communicate this desire to customers. That’s the vice.
Obviously, each salesperson has his or her own unique mindset. However, there are clearly aspects of the sales mindset that are common across the majority of salespeople and that prevent them from achieving the level of success that they could. Those are what I’ve attempted to summarize here.
I invite you to revisit your own way of thinking about the role of the salesperson and see if you agree with me that a mind might be a profitable thing to change.
