I sell a lot these days. I’m selling my services, and I’m selling myself. Most of my selling takes place over the phone or Skype calls. Selling in person is costly and time consuming (and I don’t like traffic), so I tend to do most of my sales calls virtually, over the phone.
Talking with someone on the phone is an intimate situation. You’re inside each other’s heads, and your voice goes right in the other person’s ear. Talking on the phone is very intimate, and it’s a learned art form.
After lots of hours selling on the phone, I’ve come to find out that two things come across very well when selling your services over the phone – tell the truth and be confident. Telling the truth and being confident has led to many successful sales calls where I’ve earned my coffee (you know, the thing that’s for closers).
There is almost a primal instinct I see come out of people when I tell them the truth while being confident. They can sense deep down inside that I’m trustworthy, they let their guards down, and them bam! I hit them with the confidence and they become intensely attracted to me (whether they know it at the conscience level or not).
In your sales calls, and in life, tell the truth and be confident.
Tell the truth.
Telling the truth isn’t easy. Everyone lies to everyone hundreds of times a day. I could be lying to you right now. You could be lying to your boss. Your boss could be lying to his customers. His customers could be lying to their spouses. And on and on it goes. We are all surrounded by liars. And sometimes we’re liars ourselves.
Being exposed to all this constant lying has led to most businesspeople having their guards up. Everyone in business expects to be lied to. And they’re on guard. So when you’re honest with people (and always honest), it’s like a cold splash of water to the face on a 100 degree summer day – its intensely refreshing.
Lies, lies, lies. That’s all people hear every day. And then you come along and tell them the truth? It’s soooooooooo refreshing, and people will love you for it.
And we’re not talking being radically honest (e.g. telling someone you think they’re fat and ugly). Radical honesty is for the birds. Radical honesty is a good thing if you want to get people to hate you. But we don’t want that. We want people to love us and hire us and give us their money. So don’t be stupid, don’t be radically honest.
Instead, just tell the truth. You can tell the truth by not doing things you’re ashamed of and by not keeping lies. When you conduct yourself in an honest way and do only things in business that you’d be happy to have printed on the front page of your hometown newspaper, then you won’t be ashamed of your behavior and you’ll have nothing to lie about. And when you don’t lie, you don’t have to keep lies going and worry about what you say. Instead, you can speak freely and honestly since all your behavior is above board. And people will be attracted to your honest style of speaking and doing business. They’ll love it.
Be confident.
Don’t be cocky. People don’t like that.
Don’t fake being confident. Most people can see through this.
Be confident. People are attracted to people who are confident. Look at Donald Trump. He’s the GOP front runner right now because he’s confident. The world is scary place. And none of us really know how we got here, what we’re doing here, or where we’ll go next. And that’s scary. Really scary. And that’s why confident people are so attractive. They make us feel more sure about ourselves and the world. They give us feelings of security and direction. They tell us where to go and what to do. And most importantly, they show us that everything is going to be okay.
And this is how you need to be when you sell. You need to be confident.
Your lead has a problem. Show them you’re going to fix their problem.
It’s that simple. Show people that you’ll fix their problems, and they’ll hire you.
How do you become truly confident? Three things to keep in mind:
1. Be great at what you do. Confidence comes directly from being great at something.
2. Be a life long learner. Continually learning and improving will help you stay great at something. And your staying power will give you the self-assuredness you need to stay confident.
3. Stick to what you know. Stay in your circle of competence and stick to what you’re great at.
How do you become great at selling? How do close leads? How do you get that coffee?
Tell the truth and be confident.
