Salespeople in this twenty-first century do not sell products, services, relationships or solutions. They sell Respect and Admiration.

Some years ago I purchased a car from Bill at Jim Gauthier Chevrolet/Oldsmobile in Winnipeg. Bill greeted me graciously as I stepped through the glass doors of the dealership that morning. He asked me a lot of questions to get a sense of who I was, what I needed in a car and whether I was in the mood to buy. He answered all my questions. He didn’t push, pitch or promote he just patiently stuck with me offering advice as I requested it. We bargained good naturedly and I jokingly said that if he promised to have a bottle of my favourite single malt on the front seat of my new, black Impala when I picked it up, we had a deal.

On pick-up day my car was waiting for me, polished and resplendent in the showroom illumination, and there on the front seat was Bill’s kept promise.

One Saturday afternoon about a week later there was a knock at the front door of my home. It was Bill. He had come to inquire if all was well with my Impala. In his hand he held out a small box I recognized. It contained a Jeannie’s Cake the most famous cake brand in town and, coincidentally, my favourite. He thanked me for my business.

Every step of the way Bill had earned my respect and admiration. Over the year’s Bill would move between dealerships. He stayed in touch and I followed him.

“We’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of stake knives. Third prize is you’re fired.” (quotation from Glengarry Glen Ross … not ‘a movie’ but ‘the movie’ about salesmen and selling.

Blair Singer, motivation speaker and coach had this to say in this quarter’s Motivated magazine. “I remember my first sales position. I was terrified to get out of my car and make a sales call. I was told that if I didn’t sell something soon, I would be fired. The next day I made 68 cold calls and sold nothing. But I won the biggest sale of all – selling me to me. I overcame my fear and re-established confidence through shear immersion and repetition, going on to become number one in sales within months.”  

“There’s nothing like the thrill of the hunt; the cold-call, a righteous pitch, lining up objections in the cross-hairs of my rifle and picking them off one by one; the close, the kill … the taste of blood.” The must-use line in your next interview for a sales job. You have to admit there is a certain romance to SELLING when you see it portrayed in these contexts. Like pirates on the high seas, these quotations stir the appetite for plunder. Don’t have the belly for it … you’ll be walking the plank.

The secret to selling BIG … to outselling your competitors in the twenty-first century is hidden deep in the wisdom of the words above. They are as telling in what they say as in what they don’t say … the treasure map for Evolved Selling.

The absence of stress in selling would be welcomed by buyer and seller. Today’s ‘sell-to-close’ selling model, introduced in North America in the 1960′s and widely used to this day, no longer serves our sophisticated, time-starved buyers and sellers as it once did. ‘Sell-to-close’ selling tends to waste time and money. Most notably neither salespeople nor the prospects they sell to have ever been entirely comfortable with the awkward process. A company using this model will often experience:

Frequent tunover of sales staff … A dislike or fear of propsecting … Sluggish or diminishing sales … Long sell-cycles … Pursuing prospects for proposal decisions … High selling costs … Chronic discomfort with selling in general … the fun having gone out of selling.

Tangent’s relaxed ‘qualification-to-close’ selling model, known as Selfless Selling, eliminates stress, saves time and money, and increases sales, respect and admiration between buyer and seller. 

Tangent’s revolutionary selling concepts are taught at the SKAKUM  SCHOOL  OF  SELLING … through customized corporate classes … One-on-One Coaching. 

A TANGENT YouTube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHosbHEdtGE&feature=youtu.be