Every business needs to sell and the key to selling is correctly understanding what customers need.
When this happens, you're not really selling - you're making people happy.
The idea that great sales people can sell anything to anyone assumes that people will buy products and services they simply don't need. Some people, and indeed some organisations, thrive on this unpleasant mode of operation.
However, it's not for me or my company and it shouldn't be for you either. This way of doing business - the hit and run approach - is best suited to con artists pedaling products or services that are of little value to the customer.
Truly great sales people believe in the product or service they represent. They are evangelists. As a business owner, you will be the best placed person in your organisation to become the best sales person - because no one else will have more belief in the product or service your business is offering.
Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell... They're all great sales people. They are great believers.
You may be thinking that sales isn't for you. It's just something you're not good at. You may see yourself as a planner or a creative or an administrator - but not a sales person. The idea of asking someone to part with their cash may not sit comfortably with you. Incredibly, many people who start or buy a business do not see themselves as 'natural sales people'.
However, this is because of a perception of sales being akin to what I've described above - the smash and grab act perfected by con artists bludgeoning old ladies on the doorstep.
But Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs and thousands of great entrepreneurs that inspire us never bludgeoned anyone into buying something they didn't need. And that is the point. Sales is not about convincing someone into saying yes to something they don't need and therefore will not value. Sales is about knowing what a customer needs, what he truly needs, and then supplying them with the product or service that fulfills that need. In short, sales is about making people happy!
Qualifying the customer is therefore a very important part of selling. This part of the process is often called 'needs analysis'. In order to make someone happy, you need to know what they need.
For example, let's say you've just bought a ski lodge in the Rocky Mountains. It's near some fantastic ski slopes and provides good accommodation too.
Ask yourself this. Is good sales about convincing anyone - anyone who has the money - that this is the place where they should spend their holiday? Some sales people might say yes. But would you honestly try and sell a two week stay in your lodge to someone that didn't ski?
To do this you may end up approaching hundreds of people before you managed to convince someone to say yes - perhaps someone who wanted to learn to ski.
But a better use of your time would be to target people who could ski. Better than that... you could target people who could ski and were thinking about planning a ski trip. By doing so, you're 50% there. You're not selling now. You're making people happy (in exchange for money, of course).
I recently talked to a commercial real estate agent who told me that 80% of his job was spent doing a 'needs analysis'. Before he did anything else, he would try and find out whether someone who came to view a property was a real buyer. This is also known as 'qualifying the buyer'. He would ask himself: Does this person have a real need for this property, or is he just looking? He is an expert in getting an answer to that question. He reads body language, tone of voice and he asks all the right questions. He is an excellent sales person but he considers himself a consultant because he sees himself as being in the business of making people happy.
