Selling vs. Buying

“Sell more products!” “Get more share of the client’s wallet!” “Cross sell!”

We hear it constantly as the battle cry of most financial institutions and insurance agencies. Competition is fierce, targets are high, and teams are going a million miles an hour all day, every day trying to make it all happen. “And you want me to sell too!?” is the response from the front line. The concern is that in all this talk about selling and hitting targets and getting more business from the client we neglect to remember that it’s not all about us. The client is a real person that makes real decisions based on their own benefit. We can’t order them around by sprinkling magic “sales dust” on them that allows us to sell them anything we want, whenever we want.

So the question is: are we selling or are they buying? And is our sales process set up to sell them or help them buy? Selling is perceived as pushy, self serving, manipulative and something that we do to someone. Helping someone buy on the other hand creates an image of service and something that we are doing for someone. Which would you rather be known as: the person that is selling clients or one that is helping them buy?

There are a couple of ways to make sure we are helping our clients buy as opposed to trying to sell to them.

Don’t Think Of Yourself As Selling – Think Of Yourself As Helping.

What does that mean? Think about what pops to your mind if I told you I was going to try to sell you on something. If you are like most people in our courses you’ll respond with things like:
- You are going to try to talk me into something.
- You are going to be pushy.
- You might try to rip me off.
- You are going to bore me with facts about a product that may not interest me.

When you think of yourself as selling you will naturally tend to focus on being persuasive and on having a good presentation. “If I can just brush up on my product knowledge and articulately explain why the product is so good they’ll be begging me to buy it!” Right? Wrong. That approach will get you a one way ticket to the local used car lot. You see that is the problem bad sales people have created for us. Selling has become synonymous with talking, telling and presenting product and it all starts in your mind – with your perception of what you are trying to accomplish with your client.

People love to buy but they hate to be sold. Do you agree? Then stop selling and start helping.

When you think about helping people you will tend to focus on them and their problems. When you do that you will typically ask more questions because we usually feel uncomfortable with the idea of trying to help someone until we fully understand their problem. A focus on questions will also allow you to better lead the sales process because in a sales conversation the person asking the questions has the control. Why? The average person can speak at 125 –150 words per minute but can think at 500 – 600 words per minute. So while you are talking on and on about how great your product is they can listen and think of lots of other things: objections, criticism, doubts, fears, and difficulties.

When a sales professional asks a good open-ended question it has an interesting psychological effect. It is not possible for the client to answer without diverting their whole attention to the question. Not only do we maintain the control and flow of the sales process by asking good questions, we actually learn all about the client’s needs, wants, and motivations. Now we can really start helping them!

Watch Your Language

No, I don’t mean “those” words although you should watch those too :-) .  I mean watch out for language in your branch that reinforces the negative stereo type of sales people. Words like “pitch” (as in, we need to work on your sales pitch) should be eliminated from branch vocabulary. In general, avoid talking about how we were able to sell people like they were some sort of a conquest or prize to be won. I’ve heard people in branches brag about how they cross sold a client 5 products when they opened up an account. When I asked what problem they were solving for the client by getting them those products they responded that it didn’t matter, they just bundled the products together with the new account and told the client that’s what came with it. They had held that example up in the previous sales meeting as a “success story”. Sadly, all this did was to reinforce in that branch that selling is telling and it has no concern for the clients well being.

Isn’t That Weak?

Please do not misread this focus on helping as being soft or complacent. Not in the least! Not aggressively looking for ways to help your client by asking good questions is called bad customer service. Sitting back waiting for them to figure out what they want is called order taking and is not what the proactive sales professional is all about.

Remember, many people don’t even know they have a problem. They don’t know they are spending too much money in service charges, they don’t know that their way is those most inconvenient, they don’t know there is a better way. Even if they do know, the problem may not be significant enough for them to take action on. Many times simply getting someone talking about the situation, and why they are doing it the way they are, is enough to get them to consider an alternative.

It starts by being proactive and asking some questions.

So, be aggressive … be tireless at trying to understand what is going on with your clients financially speaking. Take every opportunity to find out how they are, what is going on in their lives, and what challenges they are facing and you will uncover many, many opportunities to serve them.

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Copyright © 2009 by Fusion Performance Group Inc.
Copyright © 2012 by Fusion Performance Group Inc. If you share this, print it out, or reproduce it in any way, please retain this copyright statement.