The Psychology of Selling: 13 Steps to Selling that Work
# The Psychology of Selling: 13 Steps to Success
## Drop the Enthusiasm
Do you ever notice that moment where you’ve won over that prospect? But, on the other hand, have you ever seen the look on their face when you just clearly lost them? There is truly a psychology to selling effectively. Yet most salespeople don’t know exactly what they’re doing correctly that’s making people more attracted to them, versus incorrectly that’s actually repelling prospects away from them. In this video, I’m going to show you the psychology of selling. The 13 steps to selling that actually works, check it out.
## They Don’t Want the Pitch
Some very recent data showed that one of the biggest reasons that prospects and buyers don’t ultimately choose to do business with a salesperson is that they felt that the salesperson didn’t really understand their needs, their concerns. Yet, what most salespeople are doing is when they first meet that prospect they’re coming in with that pitch. They’re coming in with all of the reasons why someone should do business with them in the first place when we don’t actually know if it’s a fit. We haven’t done that proper discovery to understand what’s really going on. So what your prospect really wants at the end of the day is they want to be engaged in a conversation about what’s going on, what’s really important to them. And what those challenges actually look like to them. And then, if based on that conversation they still feel like it’s a fit, now it’s presentation time.
## Pressure is a No-No
Now, growing up we would always use the term no-no, that’s a no-no. And I still think about pressure in sales as the same idea here. It’s that we don’t want to be putting pressure on prospects because it’s a no-no. Because it is such a taboo, it is such a bad thing. And it’s not just not helpful, it’s actually killing the sale. So what we want to do is remove all pressure from the selling situation. Instead of trying to persuade the prospect to tell us, yes, where we’re immediately as a result putting all this pressure onto them. Instead, we want to take a step back. It’s like I said earlier, there’s this concept called reactance in psychology where in any situation when we’re trying to push someone to do something, and they know we’re doing that, they’re immediately going to want to pull back. Think about trying to get your kids to do something, or your spouse, or someone that you know. Trying to push them into something that they’re not really sold on yet. If they feel like you’re putting pressure there’s a good likelihood that they’re actually going to pull back. Well, that’s the exact same thing with selling to a prospect. If we’re putting pressure on they’re actually gonna pull back. What I suggest is you take all that pressure off. And, instead, just ask questions to determine whether there’s actually a fit.
## It’s About Them, Not You
Now, again, this goes back to one of these really old ideas. There was a boss that I had who used to say prospects listen to one radio station. And that one radio station is WIIFM. Do you know what WIIFM stand for? It’s what’s in it for me, that’s what prospects care about. They don’t care about you, they don’t care about your offering. They don’t care about your products, or your services, or how great your service is. What they care about is themselves. Is this conversation going to be worth my time, and is their solution going to actually help me solve a problem that I care about? If they can’t answer affirmatively to either or both of those questions, then you’re in trouble. We’ve got to make the conversation about them. Understanding their concerns, asking questions about their challenges, the things that they care about. And then, when they see that it’s about them, now they’re going to be engaged in a conversation.
## Get in Their Shoes
Some really powerful data has shown that top performers are much more effective at taking the perspectives of their buyers. So when’s the last time you’ve really thought through what’s the experience, what’s the buying experience that my buyer goes through when talking to me, or when talking to my competitors? Again, I’m not talking about what’s the value proposition, or what’s your product experience. I’m talking about the actual experience of buying from you. What’s it feel like, what’s good, what’s not good? Get in their shoes, start to think more like your buyers. What do they care about, what are the challenges that they’re facing? What are the reasons that they do business with you? What are the reasons they do business with your competitors? Understanding that, and suddenly we’re now really getting into the mind of our buyer. So, when we talk about the psychology of selling, it’s literally how can we start to think like our prospect? How can we really understand what they care about? And then, craft our conversations around what they care about.
## Create Value Through Your Questions
When you watch those scenes in The Sopranos, if you’ve ever watched the show The Sopranos. And you watch the conversation…
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