Helping This Generation To Sell

I wrote an article recently on my concerns over the ability of this generation to sell. Once written, I felt compelled to start to think and write about how to address this problem. This is a complex topic, and I intend to explore it fully, if and when I embark on a PhD. For now, I intend to write some short, daily, reflections from my career in selling which I can hopefully relate to situations that a younger person might find themselves in.

Firstly, we need to teach this generation how to reflect and understand self and the world around them; let us call this emotional intelligence for now.  Secondly, we need to highlight day-to-day experiences that a younger person may have had, that can relate to professional situations they might find themselves in later in their lives. I remember trying to explain the difference between planning strategy and emergent strategy to a group of undergraduates, and it was only when I asked them to reflect on how much of their lives had been planned did they start to conceptualize the concept.

Human beings are not rational machines.

As I walked into a major meeting with a potential customer many years ago, I approached my pitch like all good salespeople should: I was armed with a list of all the features and benefits of buying from me and my company and a few thoughtful methods to overcome potential objections.  I had been taught this rational approach to sell during ALL of the sales courses I had been sent on.  Disturbingly, the owner of the company decided to eat whilst I made my pitch, rude, and dismissive to say the least, but I continued regardless. The pitch was going badly, and I could see from the buyer’s body language that he found me irritating and was about to draw the meeting to a close.  I gave up and resided in losing the business. I decided to end the meeting with a question. I asked him how he had built up this multimillion-pound business from such humble beginnings.  It was like I had thrown magic dust over him. He proceeded to tell me in great detail about how HE had built his business from scratch to where it was today. His body language changed and I could see him visibly becoming more animated and happy as he recounted his stories. With a few thoughtful questions from me, I completely changed the tone of the meeting. This was no insignificant event either; this was the boss of a major company. We became friends and the rest is history. So, what happened and how can we relate this to help the current generation sell?

At any age, we all have moments where we feel insecure and fragile and desperately want to be liked and accepted by existing and new acquaintances. The list on the headline picture was from my seminar on dealing with people; I explained how people can be incredibly irrational, and driven by their egos as much as their rational brains.   In my example, approaching the situation rationally, with my list of features and benefits failed. It failed because I had not thought through how my approach was making the other person feel deep into his soul and not at the superficial level of his rational brain. On reflection, he felt I was talking to him about how good I, and my company was, with little respect for the incredible job he had done with his company. By allowing him to talk about himself, I had opened up his ego and the emotional side of his brain, the consequence of which could be seen as he became more and more animated as he spoke. His ego had taken him over and by talking about himself he started to like me. They say the sweetest word in the dictionary is your name, and how true this was in this case.

So, what can we learn from this? I am sure if we asked anybody of any age, how they feel when they meet or come across somebody that talks only about themselves, and, compare it to how we feel when we meet somebody who asks us questions and shows interest in us, we can start to relate it to this example. Whether at school or later in life, I believe that all we need to do is to ask this generation to reflect on their day-to-day lives. When they felt happy, sad, upset, invigorated, enthusiastic etc and deconstruct the situation that brought about these emotions. Making connections into professional life is rarely done, because I believe that we mistakenly think that surely a situation we find ourselves in at school could not be relevant to a high-powered business meeting: it absolutely can! Our humanity never leaves us.