Written by: Dario Cucci, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
“Selling is not something you do to someone. It’s something you do for someone.” When I trained other salespeople and even business owners, I would often say, "It's not about the outcome. It's about the conversation you are holding with your customer.” All too often, we end up focusing so much on what we want to sell to the customer and what we want that we stop listening to what the customer is telling us from the get-go.
I am sure you yourself might have had that experience when a salesperson from a call center calls you up, reading out loud from a script to sell you insurance or something else, it must have felt forced, and all you wanted to do was get off the phone as soon as you could. Why? Because there is a disconnect when a salesperson just reads out loud from a script without talking to the customer, it's like they are talking at you, not with you. This is essentially a one-way conversation.
Then the managers of the call center or the business owners that lead their sales team are surprised when their conversion rate is only 1-3%. Use your common sense. You wouldn't want to be
talked to any given time during the day when you have things to do, so why do you expect your customers to be okay with it?
This is what is wrong with cold calling but also with sales phone calls that are done to follow up with existing customers. There is no conversation happening. Instead, we just talk to them and hope they buy from us. What they end up doing is burn 99% of their existing bridges with their current customers and make it easy for their competition to take them from right underneath them when the customer is annoyed because of tacky sales, marketing, and survey calls.
Believe it or not, I had the best conversations when I just went with the flow and was listening to the customer, having a conversation with them instead of talking at them. Most of my sales came because of the high-quality conversation I ended up having with them, not only because they ended up trusting me but also because we were able to have a good time on the phone, holding a great conversation, have a laugh, or even diving deep into personal matters that the customer felt right to share with me about him or herself because I connected with them on a deeper level, not just a superficial level where I told them about what I am here to sell, regardless if they were interested or not.
An Example of an Outcome-Focused Pitch
Some customer service and even salespeople are like bulldozers. They crash right into the customer without any regard for them. I once had a personal experience where I worked for
Empowerment and they tried to outsource sales to India for Robert Kyosaki’s "Rich Dad Poor Dad" Book and Seminar.
So, I get this phone call and an Indian man on the other end is telling me all about Robert
Kyosaki, about the book and how great it is, halfway through, I tell him, "I work for the company, I can get tickets myself if I want, so stop selling to me." Do you think he listened? No, of course not. He went right on and keep talking. I had to repeat myself three times, and eventually, I had to change my tone to the point where I was almost screaming into the phone to tell him to stop with the speech because it was painfully obvious that he was reading from a script to sell those tickets.
Now, believe me, that was very off-putting and after that phone conversation ended, I hung up the phone, had a short laugh, and then told my supervisor "Saira" about what had just taken place. She had to laugh herself, shook her head, and said to me, "They are trying to outsource the sales to India to save money."
My response to that was: “Well, if they do that, in that fashion, they will end up not only saving money but also losing more money than they would ever save doing that, so I don't think that is a smart move.”
She then asked me, how did you enjoy the phone call with the Indian guy who tried to sell you the tickets to attend the Robert Kiyosaki Event?
I had to laugh and tell her, “look, that was one of the worst experiences I had had to listen to an aggressive, non-responsive salesperson that is talking at me instead of talking with me. I wanted to hang up 10 seconds into it, but I didn't want to come across as rude. However, I had to tell him three times that I work for the company and he still didn't respond to what I was telling him until I raised my voice for him to listen up, so I found that very much annoying.” Besides, if someone would talk to me that way like he did, they lost from the word go because I would not be interested in listening to them even if they were to sell me something that I would have an interest in because of their pushy approach, it is simply off-putting.
That’s why I say to you, "It's not about the outcome. It's about the conversation you hold with your customers.”
Make sure that whenever you have a conversation with someone, you hold it with them, not just talk at them, that is
all I am going to say for now. Believe me, you will have it much easier when attempting to sell anything if you just have a conversation with someone rather than when you just talk to them.
Dario Cucci, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dario Cucci, is an International Speaker, Bestselling Author, and Holistic Business & Sales to the Professionals. He discovered that many Professionals, Experts & Coaches out there struggle to get repeat business due to their Mindset, Communication Skills & Business Strategies in place to support their growth.
His career in Sales started within the Self Development & Events industry over 20 Years ago, back in Australia, when he worked with the Ton Robbins Team as a Sales Executive based on commission-only income. During his first year working with them, he generated over 1 Million additional Sales Revenue for the Company.
7 years ago he started his own Company “Entrepreneur Growth Ltd” that focuses on providing Training & Coaching, with a unique approach to help them shift their Mindset, improve their communication skills, customer care structure & sales strategies, to help small Business Owners, breakthrough their limitations, boost sales & build a stellar public reputation with their customer care service.
