Magic words to sell

by Alice Alessandri and Alberto Aleo

Thanks to our job we get the opportunity to meet hundreds of salespeople and professionals every year. They certainly represent a good sample which shows what people really expect from sales training courses or business consultants. What’s for sure is that sooner or later, more or less directly, the crucial request will be: “what’s the magic word for selling?”. Whether you’re dealing with sceptical or enthusiastic sellers, whether they have just started or have many years of experience, they will probably ask you – a qualified trainer and expert consultant – to answer this question:

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“What if the client shuts the door in my face? What shall I say to get a second chance?”

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This question will come as a challenge, as a consequence of inexperience or of so many training courses promising ready-made ”magic” solutions.

Our answer is that “open sesame” doesn’t exist in real life, that it is very difficult to recover after someone “shuts the door in our face”, that our approach is based on the concept that “if you ask me for fish, the best thing I can do is to show you how to fish” etc.. etc… in brief we usually answer that “no, we don’t know any magic spells”. However we do know two words which can bring magic to your jobs and your lives: change and awareness.

Those who ask for magic spells and formulas for successful sales are in fact expressing the need for some quick trick to improve their business performances. Therefore we have to get them to think about a very important circumstance, which Einstein expressed with these words:

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“If you want different results, do not do the same things”.

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It’s as simple as that, you only have to make a change – even a small one – in your daily life. However, as is often the case with easy and reasonable things, this simple rule is not always applied: hence the request for “magic words”, which really means “I’ll keep doing the same old things, just give me one more trick…”.

 

This is when the “power” of awareness kicks in: in order to make a change we need to be aware of our current way of acting and of the results it produces.

Someone might object that the results don’t depend entirely on our actions but are also linked to the context. In other words :

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“Why is it my fault if the client shuts the door in my face?”

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It is a standard objection which needs to be revised by inviting our interlocutors to answer two kinds of questions:

• Has anyone managed to sell anything to this precise client? If so, how?
• How am I relating to this client? How can I change my approach in order to obtain a different result?

Two main concepts are at the basis of these considerations:

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If – despite the economic crisis, market recession and hostile clients – some people still manage to sell and succeed, then this means we can still improve the way we act. Giving importance to aspects which don’t depend on ourselves is useless; let’s concentrate instead on what we can control.

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All the colleagues and friends who, like us, work everyday to improve their clients’ performances, know that awareness and change are at the basis of any growing process – be it business-related, strategic, organizational or personal.

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To achieve maximum results these two concepts must pervade our Business and our job at various levels and include processes and skills, management and operational staff, theory and daily practice.
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They are like “muscles” that need to be trained with discipline and method, keeping in mind that not even the most powerful wizards have purchased their magic formulas at the “Merlin & Morgana outlet”. In fact they started as apprentices and have learnt to prepare their effective “potions” with their own hands.

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