“Feel free to share why you’re asking questions and be transparent and brutally honest with your buyer.” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 1105
Are you being real with your clients or customers?
Join the conversation below and learn more about Jack!
Seismic
Jack Wilson on LinkedIn
Jack Wilson on Sales Success Stories interview
Submit a Sales Tip
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from our regular contributor, Jack Wilson. Here he is:
Jack Wilson: What’s going on Daily Sales Tips Community. It’s Jack Wilson and I’m back for another tip. Today, I want to talk about the fact that there’s really no secrets in sales. At least there shouldn’t be. We live in a day and age where there is so much information readily available that as much as we understand our buyers and as much as we try to become an expert in their field, our buyers are really an expert in us, sellers, and how we go to market. The strategy that we use to try to get certain information to negotiate to close deals.
So there’s really no secrets on either side. And it brings me to a phrase that I’m hoping that collectively we can kill. And that phrase is “fake it till you make it.” Because one of the stats we never really see is what percentage of those people actually make it. I would argue that of the fakers, it’s a pretty low percentage. So instead, let’s replace “fake it till you make it” with “be real to win the deal.” And here’s a couple of ways that I think we can do that.
The first is don’t ever leave your buyer to interpret the reason why you ask a question. For example, early on in our sales processes, we ask a lot of the classic qualification questions or the bant questions that we always hear about. And a lot of times, the way that we ask a question, the tone or the inflection about, for example, budget. It leaves our buyer wondering, why do you want to know this? Is it because you’re going to change the pricing based on what you hear from me? And a lot of times that’s really not reality. For us, we want to understand that there’s the capacity to actually do business with us. So share that with your buyer. It might literally sound like explaining, “Hey look, the reason I ask this is not because I’m going to change my pricing based upon what the answer is, but I just really want to understand what is your capacity to engage in a project like this or to an agreement like this?” So feel free to share why you’re asking questions and be transparent and brutally honest with your buyer.
The next part of that and the honest part of it is, be honest about your intentions. I recently had an interaction with a buyer where I saw value in expanding our opportunity to multiple product sets that we sell. But I understood the active initiative that they had was for one specific area, in particular, they had budget, they had a team, and they had a real call to action around that one area. So instead of guessing and trying to play my own strategy and see how it shook out, I just shared that with the buyer, with my champion. And I said, “Hey, obviously I’m in sales. It’s my job to expand the opportunity and to bring you all of the solutions that I see have value. Here’s what I see. Here’s why I think it would be good for you. But you tell me, what do you think that will do for our opportunity and for our project here?” And of course, you’re not going to take the impact of one-person statements as the end all. You want to gather consensus across your buying group, but it’s important to just be honest about your intentions within the process. And the more honest and transparent you are, the more trust and credibility that you build.
And lastly, for that trust and credibility, tell your buyers how you really are personally. You might tell by the sound of my voice today I’ve been pretty sick with Covid for the last couple of weeks. It’s actually hard to talk without going into a coughing fit too often. And when I jump on a call with my clients, I don’t try to hide it. I don’t try to act like I’m a superhero. So the thing is the more you get on calls with buyers and you never act like anything is wrong, the more they start to doubt how human you actually are. So instead, be transparent. Share with someone when you’re going through a difficult time, don’t use it as an excuse, don’t harp on it, but share openly. And what you’ll find is that your buyer starts to meet you on a personal level. You start to build reciprocity when it comes to empathy. You get them on an emotional plane with you and I think this all helps to go toward being more honest and transparent and being more real, ultimately to win the deal.
Scott Ingram: To experience a dose of the realness that is Jack Wilson. Do yourself a favor and go connect with him on LinkedIn. He consistently shares some great stuff that is very Jack. As always we’ve got a link for you at DailySales.Tips/1105.
Once you’ve clicked over there, be sure to click back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!