Ring, ring. I answered the phone.

After a few seconds of talk, the sales guy said, “I was just taking a look at your website, and …” He proceeded to read from a script as sales room background chatter filled my phone.

He said, “I noticed a few things that might help out.” Oh really? I asked, “Like what?” His response was, “Um…”

I could tell he wasn’t expecting me to quiz him on how my search engine optimization could be improved.

Needless to say, he did not get the job and my time was wasted.

Are you wasting your time selling?

My friend Jill Konrath over at Selling to Big Companies, wrote a great post today called, “Beware! Your true intentions are showing.” She addressed this very same issue:

If we were meeting in person, objections would be spewing from my mouth.

Why? Because he was seemed too excited about selling me. Without even realizing it, his approach screamed “self-serving” and I recoiled from it. My reaction isn’t unusual. In fact, it’s the norm. You do the same thing. We all hate being sold!

Yet invariably, I see sellers engaging in self-sabotaging behavior that can only lead to failure.

Jill recommends the following tactics to improve your sales pitch:

Change Your Question
Once you’ve targeted an account to go after, instead of focusing first on “How can I sell this to them?” ask yourself, “How can I improve their business?” When this question is at the forefront of your thinking, you start behaving different. You can’t make calls until you’ve researched their firm, know their company’s objectives and understand the challenges they’re facing. You prepare for appointments with their success in mind, not yours.

Change Your Language
When your intention is to help your customer improve their operation, you don’t talk about your product or service. Period. It’s really quite irrelevant at the onset of your discussion. Even though you’re really excited about it, you don’t talk about it. Your offering is simply a tool that helps them achieve a very specific business objective. That’s what’s important. It’s all about them!

Change Your Role
Stop putting on your sales hat! Stop thinking of yourself as a seller. You are a business improvement specialist. As a result of your work to improve your customer’s operation, they will buy your product or service. Sales is the outcome of what you do, but it is not your purpose.

Have you been sold recently? What strategies are you using to remove the impression of salesmanship?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.