Effective Selling: Be Helpful, Solve Problems For Customers BY MARK NEELY
spective of other people. We are always guessing at what others are thinking and feeling and often, we are poor guessers. We even struggle with the people we know well and care for the most. We seem to be hard-wired to be self-focused. So, it is natural that, when it comes to dealing with people we hardly ever get to really know, the people we meet professionally, we will struggle even more to con- nect. How then is it possible to succeed as a salesperson? There are, of course, many opinions and theories on the subject of effective selling. For this article, I would like to propose my own and try to do so in the simplest way I can. Selling Is Helping The person charged with the responsibility of purchas- ing packaging materials for their company needs help and if you are charged with the responsibility of capturing new accounts for your employer, you are in a position to help that buyer. All you have to figure out is what help they need and how your company and you may be able to pro- vide that help in a more meaningful way than whoever is currently helping that buyer. To start, what help does the buyer need? There are two pathways to follow regarding this question: • How can I help the buyer to lower their packaging cost? • How can I help the buyer to increase the value of the packaging material they buy so that their company can sell more of their product and satisfy their customers CONTINUED ON PAGE 72
If you are a salesperson, a big part of your job is to im- pose yourself on others. You are constantly calling up and meeting with people you don’t know and who don’t know you. You are not really acting like a twelve-year-old making crank calls but sometimes you worry that the person you are calling perceives it that way. Performing these neces- sary acts is, in many people’s minds, behavior that appears at least a little anti-social. Still, one way or the other, you have to do it. It is essential that you make the calls in order to do your job and put yourself in position to capture new business. The kind of person who can perform these tasks on a regular basis is bound to be a little different than most people. Maintaining a positive approach in the face of con- sistent rejection is very difficult. Not many people can do it well. When I have asked buyers how many salespeople they encounter who they would consider to be top-notch pro- fessionals, the consensus hovers around 15 percent, but when I ask sales people if they think of themselves as part of that 15 percent, just about 100 percent say they are. Why the disconnect? Perhaps it has to do with the rela- tively low level of empathic capacity in human beings gen- erally. We just aren’t very good at understanding the per-
Mark Neely Training and Consulting Services Over 20 years experience delivering Sales & Negotiation Training to the Corrugated Industry
Training Topics Include: • Prospecting • Trust Building and Differentiation • Sales Process Accountability • Negotiating Skills
Consulting Services Include: • Outsourced Sales Management • Building Cooperative and
Collaborative Teams • On-boarding of New Sales Reps
markneely5476@gmail.com 310-346-5476 www.markneelyseminars.com
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September 9, 2024
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