One company that I worked for earlier in my career had a certain type of training and philosophy that I've seen a lot of times in other businesses since.
Right after they hired a new crop of sales representatives, they sent us to a two-week training to learn how to sell their way. A full 80-90% of the training was on the products themselves. The word "convince" was in every other sentence. It was this philosophy of "push, push, push," regardless of what the client actually needed or wanted.
It didn't work very well then, and it doesn't work very well now when I talk with business leaders who have that same philosophy in their company.
Why?
One of the reasons is that gatekeepers can spot that tactic coming from a mile away.
You can think about selling like you're trying to get into a prospect's castle. People like to buy things, but they don't like to be sold. So if they can see that you're coming to try to sell them something, their guard goes up. They've withdrawn. They'll pull up the drawbridge. They'll put out the alligators.
Having an aggressive sales strategy is an incredibly obvious tip-off to your prospect and to their gatekeeper that they need to be on guard because someone is going to try to sell them something.
Looking for a different approach? Change your intent. Aim for a conversation, not a sale. You'll be surprised at how much that changes the interaction.
Take a look at the three elements of communication: words, tonality, and body language. Out of the three of those elements, your body language is the most important, and after that your tonality.
Focus on finding out whether or not it's even worth getting into a sales conversation with a prospect. Develop a more conversational tone where you aren't telling your prospects what they want—but asking them. That will probably come as a challenge if you're used to the aggressive, pushy method of selling.
But think about the kinds of defenses you have to get around with that type of selling. Wouldn't it be worth trying a method that doesn't make prospects put those defenses up in the first place?
You might also be interested in:
