Be Stellar In Sales; Stop Bad Openers

I am guilty as the next person.  I get offended if I walk into a store and no one asks if they can help me.  Yet, if they do, I completely blow them off.  It is as if I am looking forward to telling them that I am “just looking”.  The reality is that I have been trained to respond to a specific set of “sales” behavior and when I don’t get it… well I am just offended by the poor customer service!

Yes I like bad openers.  We all do really because stores get graded poorly if the salesperson does not ask us the bare minimum, “Can I help you?”  That is right… you, me, the person on the train/plane/car lane next to you… we expect bad openers.

That has translated into most sales professionals having contrived uninteresting boorish presentation starters.  These range from the “How would you feel if I told you that you could ____________?” to “Hi, I am here to _____________ about ____________.”  (If this were a Madlibs you could have a great time filling in those blanks!)  None of them reach out and grab your attention.  I believe it comes from two things:

1.)  Fear of being told that the client is “just looking.”

2.)  Some internal desire to transfer the torture of practicing a sales pitch over and over without regards as to who will actually hear it.  (Imagine if you will a salesperson saying to himself, I don’t care how I get into the sales presentation! As long as I do, I am a success!

You do not want to be like this, you want to be different.

Somebody is boring me.  I think it is me. – Dylan Thomas

One Chance To Get It Right

Successful sales people do not just have a presentation, a canned opener, and stock questions.  No, they train themselves to have detailed intense (some could say almost intimate) conversations with their customers.  They start by having an opener that will spark that conversation, realizing that each conversation is a different event and each customer is unique.  How you get to that level is through belief and practice.

To build special insightful conversations that will make your clients want to buy from you, refer to you, and rely upon you then you must make these fundamentals core to your salesmanship:

Belief….

• You must believe that each customer is unique and different.
• You must believe that each contact with a customer can educate you and them.
• You must believe that the interaction you will have may be life altering.
• You must believe that no one can help them like you.

Practice…

• Asking open-ended questions that keep a conversation alive.
• Practice different ways to open a conversation with a complete stranger.
• Smiling.
• Listening.
• Talking professionally for measured impact.

Leave no interaction to chance.

That last part implies that you have only one chance to get it right.  Just like your first impression, not matter what you do afterwards it leaves a lasting mark.  So too should you approach each sales call as if it is the one opportunity to get it right.  When think of a sales conversation as such, you will remove as much randomness as possible.

Stellar salespeople believe in themselves and their clients.  Stellar salespeople practice earnestly with creativity so that their interspersing of product information is natural and not forced.  Stellar salespeople do all the necessary preparation to make sure that chance is removed from the equation.   All of this translates into stellar salespeople having openers that don’t sound like openers, instead they sound like the beginning of a beautiful conversation.

You can be that way too, if you desire.

Salesmanship is an art; the perfection of its technique requires study and practice. – J. C. Penney

What are some of the worst openers you have experienced?