They want you to do a good job at selling to them
Here’s a bold thought for today: Your customer wants you to be a successful salesperson. They want you to do a good job of selling to them. They may not act like it, but they truly want you to do well when you call on them.
As salespeople, we often get the feeling that customers are not on our side because we are trying to sell them something. Even if we use a highly relationship style of selling, we still get that feeling. It’s not that we feel like the enemy, but more like an adversary.
That feeling increases when we get hit with a request for a lower price by our customer. Or, maybe the customer switches to our competition to get a better price or prove a point to you. These adversarial feelings increase even more when calling on farmers during certain busy seasons like planting or harvest. Lately, tough farm economics have every farmer and livestock producer on edge. They are less receptive to salespeople asking them to spend money.
All of this can cause you to have “call reluctance”, which is mostly developed in your imagination. Call reluctance is that anxiety you get when thinking about calling on busy or unhappy customers. That reluctance reduces your sales call volume as well as kills your confidence in what you are selling. It can also drastically reduce your number of cold calls and prospecting efforts.
However, I’m confident that your customers and prospects really do want you to have an effective and confident sales call. They are cheering for you to do well. They need solutions to their financial situation and hope that you can help them.
This realization came to me when listening to a training session at a national speakers association conference. The speaker was a very experienced and accomplished speaker. During his training session, he brought some audience members up on stage to have them practice speaking. Those members were very nervous to go up on stage in front of a hundred peers and deliver an impromptu speech. However, he reminded each of them that the entire audience is cheering them on. Everyone in the room wanted them to do well when up on the stage. And it’s true. There is nothing more difficult to sit through than a speaker who is bombing on stage.
Listening to those words, it hit me. This also applies to our selling audience. When making a sales call, your audience is the prospect or customer.
When walking on a stage to speak, the audience doesn’t always reflect the message that they are cheering you on or in your corner. You may get blank stares, see uninterested looks, or some are on their phone. A lack of questions and engagement can give you the false feeling that the audience is not happy with you or doesn’t care.
Since sales call audiences are usually an audience of one or two, those blank stares or lack of interest might include actual objections, interruptions, or challenges to what you’re trying to present to them. Customers might go silent on us or lie to us to avoid conflict on the sales call.
You have to remind yourself that they really do want you to have a good sales call. They benefit from it if you do. If you have a good sales call, then they feel that you are helping them.
So, as you jump in the truck today and head out for your sales calls, keep this thought in mind.
No matter how reluctant you are feeling to make sales calls on grouchy, disgruntled, and cranky customers, relax. They are pulling for you. They’re in your corner.
They really want you to have the greatest sales call of your life!
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
RSS