PASSIONATE COMPASSIONATE SELLING
By Sam Nugent, Nvision Coaching
We all recognize that passion is key to any successful sales career. People who are passionate about what they do are hard to ignore. Think back to a rewarding purchasing experience you've had and chances are you'll remember the person you dealt with favorably. After all, passionate people are engaging, enthusiastic and confident. In turn, that makes us, as buyers, more confident, enthusiastic and engaged in our buying decisions.
In your own sales efforts, you probably recognize that when you are passionate about your work, the feeling is contagious. You notice that you have to "sell" less and closing a sale comes naturally and easily. Your relationships with clients are closer, friendlier and in many cases lead to lasting friendships.
But passion can be one-sided. Unrestrained passion can drive customers away.
People are wary of doing business with the zealous. Today's buyer is informed, savvy and practiced in the art of blocking. It is regretable that people have been conditioned to see the negotiation process as a confrontational experience. Their past has trained them to view sales as a competition, which makes you the opponent. Your job is to break through this defense in a way that does not feel like a calculated offense. In a word you must become -- inoffensive.
Great leaders instinctively know that it is not their passion alone that makes them great at their job. They recognize the best approach to negotiation comes from a place of compassion, and that compassion rewards both sides equally.
"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." – Dali Lama
Not to be confused with empathy, which is the recognition of pain or suffering, compassion is the act of alleviating it. Typically applied to human pain and suffering on a grand scale such as war or catastrophic illness, nevertheless, compassion plays a crucial part in our everyday lives, even in something as relatively trivial as the purchase of a new home. A meaningful sales relationship alleviates the pain buyers feel in the process of getting from a place of need to a place of fulfillment, developing a meaningful bond of trust between buyer and seller. Simply recognizing pain is not enough to develop this bond; a truly great sales professional works to alleviate the pain as a primary goal in their relationships with clients.
When you come from a position of compassion, you create a bridge, safely guiding your client from a place of pain to a place they want to be, not through manipulation, but through an honest and heartfelt desire to assist them in making a decision that is in their best interest. The result is a profoundly rewarding sales experience.
Like passion, compassion cannot be feigned. It must be genuine and heartfelt.
Unlike passion, which naturally wells within us when we are excited, compassion must be learned. The majority of us have never actively practiced compassion in our day to day activities and so have trouble expressing it.
Here are five steps you can practice to develop compassion in your life. I have adapted them slightly to apply to selling.
1. Listen without action: Take time to hear what is being said, and more importantly, what is not being said. Think "what if it was me ... how would that feel?" Take note of the use of powerful words or imagery. You can often hear things that are not explicitly stated. You'll develop a sense of the client's pain.
2. Listen to your gut: "Gut feelings" or intuition can provide meaningful insights into the true nature of your client's wants, needs and wishes. Trust your instincts and you'll discover ways to provide these things in surprising ways.
3. Ask questions appropriately: Learning to listen without action and using intuition will lead to a natural curiosity on your part. Questions asked from a genuine curiosity are more apt to be answered honestly than "leading" questions will. Let your curiosity guide you to allow the client to open up and express themselves more clearly.
4. Explore: Still holding the idea "what if I was me..." you may safely begin to explore new paths to alleviate their pain. Discover together what direction might be in their best interest. Be very careful not to jump into problem solving until you have fully gone through the three steps of listening, intuition and curiosity.
5. Get out of the way: Remember, you're first objective is to serve the client. Don't let yourself get in your own way. Create a space in which the client is free to arrive at a conclusion that is in their best interest, even if it means losing the sale. In the majority of cases, clients who sense you have their best interest in mind will instinctively protect yours.
By practicing compassion, you can not only provide a better service to your clients but also reward yourself with a more fulfilling and enjoyable career. This is the paradox of compassion; putting other's needs ahead of your own pays bigger dividends to you.
"It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and deepest reach in his or her search for self-fulfillment." --Arthur Jersild, professor emeritus of psychology and education, Columbia Univ.
---------------Sam Nugent is an entrepreneur and sales professional living on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. His company, Nvision, provides a variety of highly qualified coaches to sales professionals and executives throughout North America. For more information about coaching and professional development, contact Nvision at sam.nugent@nvisioncoach.com or call 360-460-4014.
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