How Humour Can Help You Sell MORE!

2 weeks ago I delivered a Keynote at Europe's leading sales event, The Sales Innovation Expo in London. The title of that keynote?

How A Little Humour Can Help You Sell MORE!

I've been selling for over 14 years and worked in a variety of companies both large and small. One thing that always remains a constant in sales is the stress! Big targets, constant "no's", chasing customers, operations not delivering, pressure from managers, the list is endless.

This then breeds and fuels bad sales people who take that stress and negativity and pass it on to their customers. They put pressure on their customers to buy, bring dark negative clouds into the office and tend to get stuck in a stressful spiral.

So how can you use humour to sell?

There are so many ways to bring humour into the world of selling but I've simplified it down to 3 core areas:

1. Using humour to create BETTER relationships with customers
2. Using humour to build a more PRODUCTIVE sales office environment
3. Using humour to create ENGAGING social content

Master those 3 areas and you'll have a happy motivated sales team who build stronger customer relationships maintained by engaging social content. Let's look into each one in a little more detail.....

1) Building Strong Customers Relationships

The first way humour can help you sell is by helping knock down the massive barriers that often sit between sales person and prospective customer. Let's be totally honest, most people are scared of sales people! They're out to sell you something and they'll use different techniques to try and get you to buy. Well at least that's the stereotype, obviously we all know it's so far from the truth! However to help break down those barriers and create more "human" relationships (as people buy from people), humour can be a great tool.

Humour can help break the ice, humour helps show that you’re human and not just a robot reading from a script or following a strict sales process, it encourages customers to lower their guard and it allows you to find things in common.

Top Tips

• Build confidence in you sales team so they feel comfortable bringing humour into the process
• Create “humour hints” in the office
• Find the balance, what is funny to someone may be offensive to another!
• Find out what their tone is, check their social pages and social interactions
• Play “Word Bingo”, saying certain words during sales calls! 

2) Creating a FUN Office Environment

I have unfortunately seen too many "sales" offices that are no more than a blank room with a bunch of blank desks, and yet they expect sales people to thrive?! We're out there day in day out phoning prospects, dealing with objection and rejection, trying our hardest to win time with our prospects, pitch our products and win sales. To achieve that we need motivation, inspiration and energy!

Humour is a great way to bring energy into your sales office. It can be anything from banter, games, office decoration all the way to incentives team building days!

Top Tips

• Lead by example!
• Include humour in your internal communication
• Manage healthy office banter
• Create a positive sales floor (minimal negativity)
• Run competitions and incentives that are FUN
• Share it on social media!
• Fancy dress days/themed days
• Sound effects 

3) Creating ENGAGING Social Content

Social media is new to a lot of people and businesses but I can't stress enough the importance of understanding and learning about it. There are too many people posting content that is either just advertisement or promotion of their business or product which in turn just doesn't generate any interest. Social content needs to be engaging and offer value, and this is where humour can really help.

I founded The Daily Sales around 18 months ago and in that time it's grown from 0 followers to over 100,000 followers. One of the keys to that success is through sharing entertaining and funny content.

Top Tips

• •Share entertaining content relevant to your industry
• •Create/Share meme’s, GIF’s, Videos, Images, Quotes etc
• •Provide VALUE
• •Write entertaining blogs
• •Look for social talent within your company
• •Engage with your audience
• •Promote followers to your page with competitions
• •Direct people to your website or subscription

There it is, 3 nice and simple ways that by using humour, you can create so many opportunities to sell more. Whether it's by breaking down barriers and building stronger customer relationships, increasing sales productivity by having a more dynamic and fun office environment or attracting and engaging customers with valuable social content.

I'm curious to know.......what do you or your office do to bring humour into the sales process? How has it worked? I'd love to hear about yours or your offices stories so please share them in the comments box below!

Check out my interview with Social Selling superstar Tim Hughes on how humour can help you sell! We go into a bit more detail and I also discuss how to create awesome social content!

I hope you found this blog helpful and informative! If you enjoyed this post please do click LIKE and click SHARE to share it with your network, thank you.

If you enjoyed this post please take time to read some of my other recent posts.

The 10 Things That Will NEVER Change In Sales

How To Make Cold Calling Fun!

Successful Salespeople SELL With Why...

The 10 Films You MUST Watch If You Work In Sales!

Did Gary Vaynerchuck Just Prove Cold Calling is DEAD?

About the author: Daniel Disney is the Founder and Owner of The Daily Sales and one of the leading sales speakers/coach/trainers across the globe. Daniel has extensive experience in building large follower bases (100,000+), writing leading blogs and creating viral content (The Daily Sales content makes over 7,000,000 impressions every single month). Daniel writes regular posts and blogs on Sales, Leadership, Millennials, Technology and Social Media. As a millennial seller, Daniel is on a mission to help businesses and sales teams revolutionise the way the sell using modern strategies. Daniel is available for Keynote Speaking, Sales Consulting, Sales Coaching, Social Media Consulting and Event Facilitating. Check out his profile for more information.

If you work in sales make sure you check out The Daily Sales, It's the number 1 place on social media for hilarious sales memes, inspiring sales quotes and informative sales blogs. #sales #salesstrategy #selling #socialselling #leadership #blog #social #LinkedIn