Sales people please don't call me!

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as guide to our communication with others.      

Tony Robbins

I got a call from one of my old friends. He was getting a tough time getting through a client, who was CTO of a major multinational. He met this CTO in a conference and later called him to get business. Just to help my friend, from this distress I asked him to meet me at a café nearby. We met and discussed what he is going through. It seemed unreasonable from the perspective of my friend initially. As inquisitive as I can get, I asked my friend how many times he has called the other guy. He said every other day… I smiled and knew what was going wrong with the whole thing.

Let's see where are the gaps.If I call you every other day and ask you if you would like to buy my product, believe me, you will bang my head with whatever thing comes first in your hand. No, seriously! I don’t want to get bothered by your products, I live in my own sweet world where your call disturbs me.See it like a mirror if the mirror is tarnished will you be able to see yourself in the mirror. So, what do you have to do? Go clean the mirror. It’s that simple. So, change yourself and give people out there, a breather.

Sweaty palms, shortness of breath and crippling anxiety make us do things which we should not be doing. Giving people time, respecting their privacy and giving them time to think in an empathetic manner not only gives them time to take valid action but will also show how compassionate we are as humans. Sorry to say, people like to do business with humans which and not with robots.

Life, commerce, sales all fall to the basics. The basic is talk to others as you would want others to talk to you. There is no other way than being considerate and compassionate about human life as such.

We salespeople must plow through 100 names each day to get to a point where we are lucky enough to reach to 2-3 names which come under the category of promising leads. I understand it is one of the hardest things to do but what makes sales more effective and eventually get you the results are simple techniques which govern our day to day life.

I know I might be sounding too cynical and ideally correct. However, if you work in the selling profession, then cold calls and prospecting for new business is an essential part of any sales role.You need to quickly acquire the vital skills and tools you need to start closing more sales sooner rather than later.So here I am discussing with you few things which work every time regardless.

Plan whom you would be calling. What that person does?What are his interests?In the last decade, things have become easier with rising social media platform. Next thing is, you need to know exactly what you would be talking to that person.

Don’t pitch as if you are a robot. I bet if this art would have been so easy bots would have been cold calling …. Jokes apart. I know you would say Yay! Neha don’t make it so difficult. Hey, lets see this little closer, it’s not even a secret that we humans like to socialize, so if there is someone interesting and valuable we would like to connect with him at very instant.

When I tell people that I love cold calling and talking to new people every day they look at me as if I am a monster with one big eye in the middle of my forehead. They ask "Don’t people hang up on you or get mad that you’re trying to sell them something?”

Sure, it happens. Everyone has his good or bad days. Does that mean I should lose that 1% chance to sell my product? No, never cold calling is like a gold mining in which you must know the art of digging gold at the right place with right tools.Unless the horse realizes that it is thirsty you can only take him to the water but can’t make him drink. Right?

In my next blog, I would take you through the details of what things to keep in mind when making that one important sales call and what to do next when you put the phone down. Till then signing off on a positive note that you need persuasion skills in every walk of your life. You must be wondering what happened to that friend of mine with whom I was having coffee. I would share his experience in my next post. See you around my friend.

Does life and sales meet at a junction?

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.
 Thomas Szasz

So here is the thing. Sitting in office post lunch. Looking forward to Rohan chaiwallah's chai. I am drifting in my thoughts. A question popped in my mind how sales and life are interconnected. Life is so much like sales. You must convince your close relatives, your colleagues and even your kids to listen and respond as you want. One common thing which I see in successful people is that they are good in sales. I feel around 80% of your success depends upon who you are and rest 20% on what you know. 

What are typically the ways in which one can put the right messages across while selling?

Here are certain ways which does this exactly without fail.

First, you need to sell your idea to your buyer…. So, with broadcasting your advantage you need to tell your audience what makes you different. You need to provide hidden messages to which directly attack the competitor’s product and showing what your product is not. This gives a positive reinforcement to your buyer psychic.
You need to give an out of box idea and your idea should work in a real-life scenario. I would always want to buy a product which would solve my problem, which I desperately looking to resolve. Needless to say, that product should solve that problem every time spotlessly without effort.You know time is of the great essence here. I cannot expect a busy mom trying to figure out a solution to a problem every time her kid pisses. She needs to have a diaper in place and diaper should be leak free. It's that simple. So, you see problem and solution…

Now the question emerges 'What the hell, I have so many diaper brands in the market.' Why would I buy XYZ? Make benefits of your product easy to spot. The perceived value of your product should be far more than anything. I would say think of it this way. If you have a bottle of glass cleaner and the cap of the bottle is attached, then you don’t have an option as what you will be doing when the bottle gets empty. If I say to the customer that the bottle is reusable and can be used to spray plants after washing. Won’t that be nice? So you are getting more for less. Just a simple tweak here and there.

Another best part of convincing a customer about the product is without attempting to do so is by building a relationship and nurturing the customer to make him buying ready. You need not have sales in the first attempt. It would be foolish. Every customer is at a different stage of buying. Understanding where the customer is coming from will always make things easier for you both.

Lastly, why would anyone buy from you without even trying? The whole idea of a sachet of shampoo in countries like us is making consumer try the product. Sample product, a live demonstration is some of the options which make the customer believe in your product. Let me walk you through one incident.The other day I went to the supermarket and got a sample of rice bran oil. I never even tried it at home. The only idea the brand was proposing that it doesn’t get absorbed too much. Here is the best part, next time I went to supermart I thought let me try out rice bran instead of olive oil. The idea is maybe the customer is not ready to buy now but putting your message across in the customer subconscious will give you an advantage over the next buy.

Convincing people around you is the same strategy but worked out little differently. When you want things to go your way, think people may not be ready right now but give them an idea, hope, and solution to their problem. Once they trust you start putting your ideas in their head with perceived advantages. People would agree with you.

Lastly, before I sign off today by thinking over this idea. Never leave without pushing for more. Because people don’t buy on a bleak hope rather they buy because they have fear. Once you know when and what to push you are on your way to becoming the most sought after sales guy ;) For that matter, why only a sales guy, why not someone who can influence others… Think of this thought until the next time I come back with more such similarities with life and my perspective on them.