You’ve probably heard the wise old adage: “You need to stop letting buyer’s waste your time…”
Sounds like the reasonably smart approach to efficient selling.
Right?
You’ve got a plan, a purpose, and more importantly a quota.
And the smart move is that you shouldn’t spend one second with idiot buyers who dare mess with your selling process.
After all, you aren’t paid to give free advice, turn in big entertainment expenses, and spend hours educating uninterested prospects who need to change but don’t have the guts to take the first step.
It’s all wonderfully logical.
It makes a fabulous pipeline. It looks good on a spreadsheet.
But it’s also quite possibly the single biggest thing crippling your selling productivity.
If you can’t invest into others, don’t expect them to give a damn about your crazy sales pitch.
It’s really that simple.
You have to give.
First and furiously.
Outrageously.
Without regret.
It’s all about how much you can give.
Now, before you get the wrong idea, let me set the record straight.
You do need to qualify effectively and measure your return-on-investment for selling.
That’s just smart business.
But there is also something intangibly amazing and rewarding about investing time and effort in a relationship. A relationship that doesn’t even exist yet.
And here’s how you do it:
You give value!
You give:
- Advice
- Compassion
- A kind word
- Consideration
- Time & attention
- The benefit of the doubt
- Ideas
- Understanding
- Honor
You give.
And you do NOT give it after you think that you are getting the sale. It’s too late then. It’s just a transaction then.
It’s you trading concern, effort, and value for money.
And that’s just uncool.
It’s sales prostitution.
To be an amazing seller, you have to do things differently.
You give ahead of getting.
And even if all you care about is the “brass tacks”, here’s something you should know:
Buyers are changing how they do business. They already know (a lot) of what they want. And the only way to change the selling cycle is to provide value.
Up front.
And in a big way.
It might be hard to justify the return-on-investment for an act of kindness, but it’s the most powerful reward (financially and physically) that you will ever realize.
Which brings us back to where we started.
Maybe you need to start letting people walk all over you…
Maybe if you adjusted your sales attitude to see helping others as a positive thing, you wouldn’t be so concerned about how you look to those around you.
And maybe that’s a huge step forward in your outrageous sales performance.
