by Timothy Ramsier

As I was trying to decide on what I would write about in my second article posting, I was flooded with many different ideas for sales related topics. In my years as a sales manager I found myself presenting many different concepts to my sales team, some with better results than others. As I thought about all of the topics, I realized that even when I was presenting the different sales concepts, I had to sellmy team on whatever I was saying. This brought me to the topic of this week’s article. Sales and selling occurs outside of explicit sales situations.

Sales professionals in the real world

When you discuss sales with many people who have never been in sales, they imagine a questionable used car salesman who only has one thing on their mind. How are they going to convince you to spend your hard earned money on the most expensive item they have. Essentially, many non-sales people think that a sales person is someone who only has their own pocket book on their mind.

From my experience, this is far from the truth. I have had the pleasure of working with many top tier sales professionals who have demonstrated the highest of character and ethical standards in their profession. They have nothing by mutual benefiton their mind and work to find a solution that is good for all parties. Mutual benefit is an outcome in a sales situation that involves all parties benefiting because of the deal. All parties in a sales process could include the sales professional, the client, and the firms that are employing both the client and the sales professional. This is not to imply that a sales professional is not seeking profit, because they are. Only that most sales professionals are considerate of the circumstances their client is in and are truly seeking the best solution for them. A sales professional is someone who systematically researches a client’s needs and uses the data gathered to collaborate with the client to find a maximized solution to their problem.

With this more enlightened view of what a sales professional is, what can all of us learn from them? Whether or not you are in sales explicitly, you are implicitly required to sell something almost every day. That is because in this modern hyper connected world that we all live in, sales is all around us!

what you sell everyday

Nearly every job today requires communication with peers and this communication is often done to make business decisions. This is especially true if you are lucky enough to be a manager or leader of some sort. Managers and leaders are tasked with selling their ideas to their subordinates, hoping that they can accomplish that all important buy in from them. Even non-managers often have to sell others on an idea or opinion to persuade them towards their cause. For example, a marketing analyst who has discovered a trend in one of their regression models will have to sell the marketing manager and possibly the Vice President of Marketing on their findings. Data alone may not be enough to convince their superiors of their findings. This is where implicit selling needs to happen. Implicit selling is the process of selling that occurs in our daily professional and non-professional actions that do not involve the exchange of currency.

Another area of implicit selling is in our personal lives. It may be a parent who has to sell their teenager on why they should be doing their homework rather than playing a video game or hanging out with their friends. The explicit opportunity costs involved in a situation like this will probably not be enough to convince the teenager of the importance of their homework.

Whether it is in our professional or personal lives, it is important to understand that almost every interaction that we have with people, there is some level of sales occurring. It may be an idea, principle, or some other abstract thought that we are trying to persuade them to see our way. It might be a job interview where we are trying to convince the hiring manager of all of our merits so that they hire us. So what are some basic sales guidelines that we can use in our daily lives that will help us? The answer lies in the definition I gave earlier of what a sales professional is. They are someone who systematically researches a client’s needs and uses the data gathered to collaborate with the client to find a maximized solution to their problem.

Systematic research

The first concept that we are going to look at is using systematic research in a way that will give insight into a person’s values. In sales this is called needs qualification. Typically, a sales professional will asking questions to gain insight into a client’s problem. They will use the information gained to help determine what the best product or service they should offer the client and often how they should present the product to the client.

In implicit sales activities, there may not be an obvious problem to solve, which can make persuading someone much more difficult. Learning as much about the person you are speaking with through questions and research will help give insight into how you may be able to solve a problem for them. For example, in the marketing analyst example given earlier, there are many ways they can research the situation before they present their findings. First, they might have a conversation with their manager about areas that she might feel their firm could improve. This could bring about other insights into what the marketing manager values for performance or possibly even expand the usage of the model in a way that was not initially considered. The analyst could research other firms that are exhibiting similar trends and use that data to support their recommendation on how to use the findings.

In the end, there are many ways to dig deeper into a situation. The point is to use as many of them as we can to make sure that we have as much as possible insight into a situation before we attempt to sell someone our idea. Questioning the target of our persuasion, researching past trends, and using past experience to understand the situation are just some of the many systematic ways that we can research a situation before we begin to present our idea.

Collaborate

Once we have a solid understanding on what the situation we are addressing is, including external factors and the values of those involved, we can move to solving the problem or addressing the issue. The key to increasing buy in of our idea is collaboration. When people are involved in the decision making process of something, they are far more likely to believe in the solution. This is a great way to motivate others to your cause.

For many of us, collaboration might be hard to accomplish as we feel that we have the best ideas or that other’s just don’t see it the way we do. Regardless, throw that narrow belief out the window, because collaboration will only increase belief in the solution and will add other peoples experiences and aptitudes into the decision making process. That is a good thing!

Let’s use the example of the parent trying to get their teenager to do homework instead of playing video games or hanging out with their friends. Through research of the situation, the parent determined that their child would prefer to play video games because they want to be a video game designer when they complete high school and college. Using this information, the parent researched what it would take to succeed in gaining entrance into a local universities design program and what skills would be necessary to be successful in the industry. The parent intends to leverage the information gathered in a way that will increase the teenager’s desire to do their homework.

If the parent were to simply dictate their findings with their child, they would likely be met with opposition to the idea of doing their homework versus playing video games because the opportunity cost of the situation would be slanted towards the video games. They are more fun than homework after all! Instead, the parent decided to collaborate with their child through conversation and exploration of the child’s values. Using the fact that the teenager intends to have a future in the video game industry and armed with the information on how difficult of an industry the game design industry is, the parent and the child agree on a solution that allows for homework to be completed while also allowing for the child to follow their passion of video games.

Collaboration, just like systematic research can yield insights that may not have been learned otherwise. In the example above, had the parent not done the research and collaborated with their child, they may have never learned of the child’s desire to pursue a career in the game design industry. Without this information and collaboration, the parent would have most likely had a much more difficult time convincing their child to do their homework.

Maximizing solutions

The final concept to consider is all about the result. When attempting to persuade someone to our ideas, we need to be conscientious of one concept. What is in it for all other parties? If we are only considering our own interests when attempting to persuade, we are not likely to meet success. Think of the quintessential used car salesman that everyone thinks of when they think of sales. Nearly everyone is hypersensitive to actions that are self-serving to only others and are likely to disregard anything that appears that way.

This is where maximizing the solution comes into play. Through collaboration, we need to make sure that we are working to a mutually beneficial solution. All parties have to put effort in, even if it is just a conversation, thus all parties deserve to benefit. If we strive to find benefit for everyone, we will only increase the likelihood of our future ideas being accepted. Gaining a reputation as a collaborator who seeks to increase everyone’s benefit in all situations will only lower the cost of future persuasion. Our colleagues, friends, and family will trust what we have to offer far easier if they trust that we truly have their best interest in mind.

There is one caveat to this. You actually have to have their best interest in mind! Even if we are able to initially persuade someone to our idea through deception, it is inevitable that they will see the inequity of the benefits and will ultimately be resentful. This only increases the cost of persuasion in the future and can seriously degrade our relationship with the person.

Conclusion

In the end, being mindful of these three concepts will not only increase our ability to persuade others to our thoughts and ideas but will also make our thoughts and ideas better. In the modern personal and professional world of too many things to do and not enough resources, having the ability to not only convince people of our ideas but actually move them into execution will only increase our effectiveness. In the end, it is up to us to implement these sales concepts into our lives and use them even when we are not selling.