How to Leverage the Amazing Power of Selling Without Selling

There are two types of sales:

1. The easy ones, and

2. Those you don’t get.

The reason you don’t get a sale is because you’re trying too hard by pushing for the sale instead of pulling in the sale.

When you try too hard, the qualified prospect is turned off by your neediness. They don’t feel as though you have their best interests at heart becuase you’re talking instead of listening, and you end up following the old school ABCs of Selling—Always Be Closing—and you’re trying to pound a hexagonal peg into a triangular hole. 

Stop Selling To Increase Your Sales

Aurgh?

Since Day One of The Sales Whisperer® I’ve taught you what my sales mentor, Steve Clark, taught me about professional selling going back to 2006:

1. Selling is a calling.

2. Serving is its purpose.

3. Questioning is the process.

4. A sale may be the solution.

Like a doctor, I believe that being in sales is a calling.

Like a doctor, great salespeople are great because they seek to serve.

Like a doctor, great salespeople are great because before they ever and write a prescription THEY DIAGNOSE THE SITUATION! 

That’s why doctors don’t have to sell you on even the most extreme recommendations including taking expensive medications with crazy side effects—some unknown and some include DEATH!—to risky surgeries because the great doctors take the time to ask a lot of questions and run a lot of tests before they make a statement!

Lower Their Defenses Through Right Angle Selling, a.k.a. “Stealth” or “Ninja” Selling

At the Air Force Academy we spent more than a few hours discussing the military genius, Sun Tzu and his “Art of War.” (My 19-year old whiz kid know-it-all son thinks there is nothing to learn from an Asian general who has been dead for 2,500 years. I hope he adjusts that attitude before he suffers a big defeat because of it but like they say, “Good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement.” But I digress…)

While you may not be in a battle with your prospective customer it is imperative that you realize they see most every sales encounter as just that because that is how they—and you and I—have been treated more times than we can count by sleazy, pushy, hardcore closer sales types who are only in sales for the money.

As Part 1 opens in Art of War, Sun Tzu explains his basic thesis, which is to try to overcome the enemy by wisdom, not force alone. (Again, we as sales-abused-shoppers see typical salespeople as the enemy, so we must “Know thy enemy,” which is from Chapter 3, “Strategic Attack,” in Art of War.)

When we use our wisdom we recognize that a typical shopper will approach us defensively, expecting to be verbally “attacked” by pushy salespeople who only know the “frontal attack” whereby they rattle off industry jargon and slang in an effort to “prove” their superiority as it pertains to the product at hand, then belittle the customer if they do not make the “no brainer” decision to buy right there on the spot.

For the same reason you run the ball when your opponent expects you to pass and vice versa in football, in sales it’s best to almost pull away from the prospect who expects you to attack.

When you strive to attract the prospect to you it serves several beneficial purposes for you and your prospect:

1. It reduces the pressure on you by elminating the need to put on a “song and dance” in an effort to woo the prospect to your mental and verbal prowess.

2. It shows the prospect that you are indeed a different type of salesperson because from the moment they engage with you, you are acting differently.

3. Related to #2, you are engaging in a form of “surprising Broca,” which piques their curiosity, and we all know that curiosity closes the sale.

To see this right angle selling in its literal sense, consider how a salesperson would approach you at a furniture store or car lot.

The typical hardcore closer would see you from half a mile away, put his coffee down, flick his cigarette into the bushes or potted plant, smile like the Cheshire Cat from “Alice in Wonderland,” and walk right up into your personal space with his hand outstretched and say “Hi, can I sell you something today?” At least that’s what you and I know he is thinking.

In right angle selling—and I did this when selling mobile homes in Mobile, AL in 1988-1999 and made $100,000 in my first year doing so—you’d approach the shoppers from the side—don’t sneak up behind them!—so they can see you out of their peripheral vision but don’t be staring a hole through them.

Make it appear as though you were simply walking across the store for another purpose and you just happen to cross paths.

As you get near one another greet them simply but not psychotically cheerful and just say,

• “Hi, have you been helped?” or 

• “Hi, welcome to Wes’s Furniture World, have you been helped?” or 

• “Hi, welcome to Wes’s Sales Warehouse. What can I help you find?”