Have you heard the quote from Theodore Roosevelt, “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”? Guess what, no one is going to do business with you, or at least not the kind of business that you want just to make you successful, until they know, like and trust you.

Slow down, stop selling and turn off your radar. By radar I mean that bad habit of only listening for the buying signals. How can you do this? I remember a sales training course I took almost 30 years ago in which they taught us to work every time we meet someone to ask questions until we can find things we like about them. Talk less about work and more about what they do when they are not working, who is important in their lives and what their goals and dreams are. How do you feel when someone takes the time to get to know you like this?

This plays into two other conversations I have often with coaching clients. First the belief that price is the most important buying decision for their clients. Getting to know people on a deeper level like this is one way to overcome this. If you stop and reflect in all of your own purchases you will probably find several examples in which you yourself will pay more or accept less because of your relationship with the provider. The second area is the whole teaching around “closing the deal”. Oh man, when I was in automotive sales I heard every horrible sneaky twisted way you could imagine of how to close the deal. Many salespeople have earned their bad reputation. I have learned that when you really get to know the person you are talking with the sales process becomes more of a conversation. This can move you into a position of simply being a form of a partner with them and things like price become less important and the need to push them is drastically reduced.

Make it a habit. How can you do that? One way might be to write out your sales process and creates steps like first just connecting with them, second getting to know them, third meet at their place and then on the fourth of fifth contact finally allowing yourself to talk to them about what you do.  Even easier, make yourself a cheat sheet of 5 questions that have nothing to do with business that you are going to ask each new person you meet.

If you have other ways that work for you, please share them with me.