Are You Boring
You probably answered “no.” Who wouldn’t? I wonder how your customers would answer that question. Do your customers think you, your product and your business are boring? People want to be entertained. Entertainment = Sales. Boring = Broke.
Your customers get their news from FOX News and USA Today, their food from drive throughs, their coffee from Starbucks, their money from ATMs, their exercise from 7 – minute abs DVDs and their information from the Internet.
To be successful, you must provide the perception of ease in doing business, some semblance of speed, and high entertainment value. Your customers have been trained to pick up on “boring” at lightning speed and move towards “wow” in mass.
To provide high entertainment value you don’t have to be a comedian or a circus performer, but you must possess finely tuned people skills. All things being equal, customers will choose the lower price. Your job as a salesperson is to make you stand out so strong that it makes everything else pale in comparison. Your value raises the level of all other considerations. Never forget that you are the difference maker – period, end of story.
Weak salespeople play the price and blame game. Good salespeople concentrate on what they can influence. When you accept total responsibility for your success and failure, you move from blame to fame.
Let’s cover some ways to increase your entertainment value. The easiest way to stand out from the pack is to do the exact opposite of your so-called competitors. First of all, you must change your position of power and leverage by marketing for leads rather than begging for a sale from someone who randomly shows up.
Next, you must think about your first point of impact and how that adds or subtracts from your position. You must either change the location, wording or nature of the first meeting.
Evaluate your conversations with customers. Are you playing the same qualifying game that most salespeople do? When you openly try to qualify people financially and to see if they are ready to do business, you should realize in doing so that you are offending them and putting yourself in a position of beggar. Try giving a reason for people to qualify for you and your product. Stop qualifying them for financial data and make them qualify in a positive way that creates a mental take-a-way.
The take-a-way positioning creates scarcity, urgency, and provides you maximum leverage. Example: When you are profiling your customer in the beginning of the sales process, make sure to mention that you would like to ask a few questions up front to make sure you can assist them the way they desire and to make sure you and your product would be a good fit for them. It’s OK to tell someone up front that you and your product may not be the best fit for everyone and that you purposely don’t try to sell everything to everybody.
It’s a proven fact that customers who have to take certain steps or actions before purchasing create their own sense of emotional and psychological commitment to purchase. In simple language, you allow them to buy rather than trying to sell them. When people commit to something by their own choice, they will go to great lengths to do business, if nothing else but to save face. People don’t want to look bad.
You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with being boring? Boring salespeople do what 99 percent of all salespeople do; they beg and pant like a dog for a sale and put their salesperson dunce cap on for customers to laugh at. STOP IT. You are more important and valuable than that. Salespeople with leverage and a different game-plan for everything – including their sales skills, people skills and marketing skills – never appear boring. Their actions attract and endear customers without having to be a comedian, huckster or circus clown.
Ask yourself again honestly if you are boring and if your sales positioning leaves your customer with a strong mental and emotional feeling about their experience with you. Do you stand out, or are you boring? Boring is usually fatal.
