Chapter 1 A New Philosophy of Commitment Gaining To sell effectively, you need a philosophy. Not the academic kind of philosophy that they teach in universities. You need a practical philosophy, like the Greeks practiced. The Greeks didn''t just argue about philosophy in theory. They practiced philosophy. If you were an Epicurean, you ate and drank because that was what a good life was made up of: pleasure. If you were a Stoic (a very popular idea now, by the way), you endured the hardships of life without complaint. Philosophy was about living in a way that was in line with what you believed.
A philosophy should guide how you sell too. Here''s my philosophy, and it is a major thread that runs throughout this book: Selling isn''t something you do to someone. It is something you do for someone and with someone. If you want to be a consultative salesperson and a trusted advisor, this is the starting point in earning that moniker. Caveat Emptor Caveat emptor is Latin for "let the buyer beware," a general philosophy of sales dating to the time that people first started trading. It emphasizes the buyer''s responsibility to protect himself from the merchant (read: salesperson). If you struck a bad deal, then it was your fault. You should have known better.
How could you have let yourself get duped when you knew that merchants were always trying to put one over on you? Caveat emptor was a necessary philosophy because, for most of human history, selling was something that one person did to another. To this day, we still use the expression "you sold them." You "sold them" on your ideas or your product. Taking advantage of the rubes, you "sold them a bill of goods," parting them from their money without delivering the promised value. The idea of caveat emptor made it clear that the seller was acting for his own gain or for his company''s benefit, or both. There was little indication that any selling was done for the benefit of the buyer. Fortunately, times have changed. Because your clients have so many choices available to them, and because word of mouth has been amplified by the Internet and social media, caveat venditor is a more apt philosophy today.
Caveat venditor means "let the seller beware." This is a good change, as it has suppressed a lot of bad sales behaviors. Now if a seller takes advantage of you, you can share your unhappy experience with your friends, family, and countless strangers on social media and various review sites. For today''s sellers, the potential penalty for being self-oriented, manipulative, unfair, or deceitful is too high. One sale isn''t worth the loss of countless future sales-something good sales organizations and salespeople have always known. In truth, most salespeople don''t want to take advantage of other people. Most people don''t want to perform work that makes them feel bad about themselves or would make them guilty of harming others. And they don''t have to.
Sales can be a very rewarding career because, properly done, it requires that you help people get results they couldn''t have achieved without you. And by doing so, you can develop deep, lasting, valuable relationships. Thus, selling isn''t something you do to someone. Instead, you work with your clients, using your resourcefulness and initiative to create opportunities or possibilities for better outcomes. At your very best, you and your clients become strategic partners. You become your client''s trusted advisor, a title you must earn and re-earn by consistently offering sound advice, by knowing and communicating what needs to happen for your client to produce better results. The Right Mindset How do you learn to embrace caveat venditor? Not to do it simply because that''s what''s currently being done in sales, but to really take it to heart? You start by developing the right mindset. Indeed, your mindset is one of the major determining factors of your success.
The right mindset makes commitment gaining easier because your underlying beliefs are healthy and empowering. The six key components of the right mindset are confidence, caring, persistence, speaking from the client''s mind, embracing concerns, and realizing it''s not about you. Confidence Confidence-in yourself as well as in what you''re selling-allows you to act with your customer''s best interests at heart. Confidence permits you to ask a prospective client for the commitment to take the next step. It comes from the belief that you can and will make a difference for that client, and you will be able to deliver the outcomes they need. If you don''t embrace these beliefs, your lack of confidence will show and will prevent you from gaining commitments. Naturally, you won''t feel confident that you''ll make a positive difference for your client unless you believe in your product, service, or solution. If you aren''t 100 percent sure about what you sell, your prospective client will sense the incongruity between what you say and what she sees.
You may come across as being inauthentic, or seem like you aren''t telling the truth or aren''t sure about what you''re saying. In short, if you don''t really believe that your product is so great that your prospects must commit to the next step in the process, neither will they. Let''s take a quick look at what causes you to lose confidence and how you maintain it. Confidence in your product, service, solution, and company doesn''t come from believing that your clients will never have problems. Instead, it comes from your understanding that no company delivers exceptional results without being able to effectively deal with the day-to-day challenges of executing. Even more important to maintaining your confidence is your belief that you are going to make a difference for your clients, and that you will be there to make sure they are taken care of when they have the inevitable challenges that come with real change initiatives. Caring Caring is the root of trust, and trust is the foundation of all relationships-including commercial relationships. Caring is what makes you other-oriented instead of self-oriented.
This isn''t the soft stuff in business; it''s the hard stuff. All things being equal, relationships win. All things being unequal, relationships still win. Your job in sales is to make all things unequal by creating relationships of value. That means more than liking your client or having a personal relationship, even though both of these are extremely helpful in creating a preference for you, your company, and your solution. "Relationships of value" means that you create value for your clients as someone who provides ideas and advice-and who also ensures that the outcomes they sell are delivered. You make selling more difficult when you are focused on "making the sale." That outcome is about what you want and what you''ll receive for having won the deal.
That inward focus prevents you from being effective in selling. When you care about helping other people generate the results that they can''t generate without you, your outward focus is part of what creates a preference and makes you easier to buy from. When your focus is on helping your dream clients make the changes that they need to make, gaining the commitments necessary to move forward-and eventually the commitment to buy from you-becomes natural and easy. This is a mindset shift for most salespeople. Too often, they focus on booking appointments with potential clients that they can report to the sales manager when asked. You could instead focus on sharing information and ideas that would help prospective clients understand why they need to change now. Too often, salespeople focus on "pushing" their product or service rather than engaging with the prospective client in producing better results through change. Too often, they focus on winning deals.
But what if, instead, you focused on helping the client "win"? Truth be told, their win is your win-in that order. Persistence This is a book about commitment gaining in the complex sale. Sales is now all about helping people change, but change isn''t easy. You are going to have to be persistent. I mean really, really persistent. You are going to ask for commitments that your prospective clients will refuse to make. They are going to fear change-even when they know it is necessary. Your dream clients will refuse the commitments that move them closer to the results they need, even when doing so hurts their company.
They''ll also fail to keep commitments, even though they had every intention of honoring them. Look, if this were easy, you wouldn''t need this book. You are going to have to persist in asking for and gaining the commitments you will need to help your dream clients move from their current state to the better future state available to them. You''re going to hear no, and know that you''ll have to try again. You are also going to have meetings canceled, voice mails and e-mails unreturned, and prospects who drag their feet through the process. Do not be deterred. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Energy and persistence conquer all things." Speaking from the Client''s Mind Great salespeople make great language choices.
They have the right words for each situation, words that can work a kind of magic. That''s why sales is more of an art than a science. Many salespeople eagerly memorize the latest, greatest "selling words" and "selling phrases," convinced that having these on the tip of the tongue is the key to success. This means they''re thinking of language as a tool to be mastered and used to hammer home sales, rather than as a means of developing great relationships with p.