There is a lot of myth in the world of sales.
Every salesperson knows some magic recipe that, within his personal universe, is the big secret to being a good salesperson. Many may even say that they don’t even believe it, but after a few beers and a chat at the end of the night, he ends up revealing what he believes to be the real differentiator.
All of these myths end up being propagated by common stories that are propagated repeatedly throughout the market. Be it a realtor who tries to sell a launch, a store saleswoman who works with clothes or a sales consultant who works with technology solutions, everyone has a similar story.
Someone they know, knew someone who one day, almost at the end of the day, thinking he was going to end the day without closing a single deal, had a surprise when the last customer came into the store, called or got in touch. Thanks to the secret technique, he managed to make a huge sale. In some cases the story says that it hit the goal of the entire month in one night, in others, in consultative sales or in the case of real estate, the commission was enough to change lives.
It is based on these stories that salespeople continue to believe in the secret technique, in that magical moment where a sale will change your life because you knew how to use the right skill on the perfect customer.
It is not uncommon for salespeople to spend their lives waiting for that moment of the magic sale, the point where everything will change with a single sale.
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Only the real world is a lot less magical and a lot more difficult than the incredible stories tend to tell us.
Selling is one of the most difficult activities out there
Of course, we must disregard extreme professions when we talk about difficult jobs here. We are not trying to buy from the rhino tamer or international space station maintenance technician or kidnapper negotiating police officer.
Our reference here is ordinary jobs, which most people can have one day. Then, the salesperson rises to the top of the most difficult jobs.
Selling carries this heavy load for some very specific reasons, some of them for the country’s culture, others for the fame of the profession and others for the common demands of the sector.
It is common for customers to take pride and treat salespeople badly. Acting rudely, disrespecting commitments and agreements. In any sales department you will see, at least once a week, someone very upset about being humiliated by a customer who thought he could shout and offend the seller.
The profession is also frowned upon by society. They treat salespeople like someone who is always trying to get the customer behind, trying to take advantage and making up negotiations. One of the great difficulties of any salesperson is to transmit to the customer this feeling of confidence, that the price is the same and is not trying to take advantage of the customer’s ignorance.
All of this without counting, of course, the aggressive goals and results that grow every month. For those who think selling is easy, just imagine the pressure to start every month from scratch and need to achieve even more results than the previous month, which was already incredibly challenging.
For those who sell, it seems that the beating comes from all sides all the time.
The way out for some is to try to put some glamor in putting up with all this to feel that it is stronger, others simply look for another profession for not being able to manage the intensity of the charges.
There is only one way to become a good salesman
In the last two years I have been accompanying all kinds of salespeople. I studied techniques and wrote about all the different aspects of the market. I’m just an observer here, but I can clearly see a pattern that defines a salesperson who delivers results.
Kayuá Freitas, our new business director, calls this ballast. Do you know when a swimmer has been swimming in the pool for a long time and you can see the trail covered in the water? This is ballast in this context. It is your mileage traveled as a salesperson.
And as much as most salespeople who have just arrived in the profession try to circumvent the lack of ballast by adorning social networks and appearing at networking events, the truth is that in practice the lack of ballast cannot be completely circumvented.
You can study rapport , mental triggers and all the persuasion techniques you want, but without the necessary mileage to understand the best moment, the right time to apply each technique or even, if a technical sale fits, the result can even be shameful.
Because the tendency is to take the techniques and use as a template, always repeat trying to see when it works, but only experience teaches when to use it or not.
The salesperson’s ballast is responsible for developing what is most important in all of them: sensitivity, tact, empathy and timing .
And that is the good news, but at the same time, the bad news too. Much of what it means to be a good salesman is in the time of profession, in head banging, making mistakes, getting it right, listening to scolding, celebrating and accumulating experiences.
The bad news is that it takes a long time, but it’s usually worth it.
If you don’t believe, no one will
You can see that a salesperson does not believe what he is selling within minutes of a conversation. This may sound silly, but hesitations in speech and posture.
A delay of one second to say the price, the deviation in the look, a stammer on the phone already demonstrate that the seller is not in agreement with the price x value ratio. The sale may even be closed despite this, probably because the customer has already arrived inclined to close.
But if someone is researching price and comparing it with the competitor, this lack of belief in the product itself will be expensive.
That is why before offering the product, the ideal is that the seller understands your product well, knows the features in detail and knows the value offered through the cases that he himself will quote.
All the internal work of the seller is to convince himself that that product is really worth the deal.
You are not a sales star
Even giving your lectures, hitting goals and achieving great results, you are as good as the sales process allows you to be.
The moment the salesperson thinks that his decisions go beyond the sales process, problems begin to arise. Incomplete information, missing data, unregistered agreements and, in many cases, resistance to joining the CRM.
Modern selling is a collective game, which needs to respect the manager’s decisions, strictly follow the strategic alignment and comply with the defined tactical organization. Just like in football, when the player, even though he is very good, decides that he will win the game alone, it is time that he starts to sink the team.
