Is your Customer Spellbound or Dispirited?

Spellbound

or Dispirited

Is your Customer Spellbound or Dispirited?

How challenging and demanding is selling? Habitually the service professional will place extreme difficulty with selling in the construction service trades. The mind perceives and visualizes that the selling is difficult. The reason it is difficult. There is a lack of understanding and defining sales. Sales trainers, sales organizations, and the majority of those that write about sales seem to make selling more difficult than it really is. There is always a debate or argument trying to figure out if sales is a science or art or whether you are born with the ability or it is a learned skill. You have the next debate is whether you are born with the ability or it is a learn skill.

What now enters into sales is the psychology of sales. There is the psychology of selling. Then there is the psychology of buying. Along with psychology there’s a question of who holds the power. Is the power in questions or is it in the answers? Is the power in influencing or persuading? Is the real power in convincing? Is there more power in driving the want or is the need more important.

What is more powerful influencing with words or listening for the real intent of the customer’s words? What the drives the sale? What is making the customer move forward today? Why did the customer choose to call you today? What forced the customer to act today? How can you affect the customer’s choice to use you over the competition?

Why are you there? How can you help the customer? Is it your knowledge or your skill that will drive the customer to a decision? How are you sure what it is the customer wants? What is your purpose? What is the customer’s purpose? Gosh selling is difficult.

Understanding sales is the place to start. Defining your purpose and what you want to accomplish with your customers is essential. Now a decision concerning your purpose is on the horizon. How do you accomplish your purpose?

Many sales professionals believe you must know how to answer objections and then close the sale. Every step is separate from the next. Many believe this is best way and best practice to develop a winning sales team. Take it step by step and when a customer does not understand start at the beginning and repeat each step until the customer gives up and decides to use you.

I’m here to propose a different way. Try something different than what is taught with traditional sales training in the construction trades. My proposal is for you the plumbing professional to start holding conversations with your customer. The difference between having a conversation and telling person stuff is huge. When you hold a conversation, typically it involves more than one person speaking. When you tell people things it is one person speaking and one person listening. It is a do this type mentality. Our economic structure no longer supports that idea.

A conversation allows interaction that is emotional and logically driven. You the professional are pursuing information while the customer is seeking a solution. Together, you’ll find a solution from the information gathered. The key is together, you must start to rely on your customer by asking questions that serve a purpose. That purpose is to solve an issue and when it is possible leave the customer with something better than what they have experienced in the past. Your customer will give you information freely when you make the conscious effort to include them in the conversation. When you include them in your conversation asking questions concerning what is happening and why it is happening will lead to how you can prevent it from happening in in the future. Again, it is a together thing.

Conversations produce definite results. There is your purpose to produce results. I always want a positive result however there are times where I am not the best or perfect fit. Either way, there is a result. When you include your customer, you will increase your positive results with less resistance from your customer.

The reasons why you will increase your positive results are; you are going to discover the customer’s motive. What is the customer’s motive? The motive is why they decided to take care of this today. Frequently in the service trades the idea is the customer is getting something fixed or taken care of because it is broke and or will save them money when it is fixed. Stop trying to guess why the customer chose to get it taken care of and discover the real reason they want it done today. Next discover what it is the customer wants accomplished today. Once you discover why the customer wants to take care of it today you can discover other things that might be more useful to them and enhance their customer experience and use of the product. Finally discover how the customer wants to move forward today.

It really is simple and it is basic. When you find out why the customer wants what they do you can now design and align your solution to the customers why. When you discover what the customer wants you now can provide a better product that will serve the customer in a better way. And when you discover how the customer wants to accomplish this you now have basically taken the decision away from the customer as the only decision that is logical is too move forward with you. There is only one logical and natural conclusion when you align these three things together and that is to choose you.
Sure you should learn how to close and how to answer objections, concerns, and questions. Frequently when these things are taught early in the training they are used as a tool to make customer move forward immediately without having the proper information to move them towards a positive and best choice. This is what builds and creates distrust with many customers. This is where you create resistance and receive stalls that say get out of my home. Techniques are taught and used when there is little to no need to use them in the first place.

Here is what you must do; change your point of view. If you believe buyers are liars it is essential to discover why they are not telling you the truth. There is a reason you are not receiving cooperation from your customers. Frequently the service technician will place all of the blame on the customer. They do not know you well enough not to tell you the truth. The customer wants you to help them remember they sought you out and scheduled you to arrive at their home. I cannot take you serious if you seriously believe they called you out to waste their time and yours to only tell you, no I do not want you to take care of this for me. Change your point of view and watch your results change dramatically.

Stop pitching your business to the customer and start holding a conversation with them that will pass information to them. In your conversation you can show them how you can prevent it from happening again, why it happened and how your solution is a best choice for them. Give the customer a reason to choose you.