Three Sales and Marketing Myths: Myth Three

If you’re in sales, you have been hired or contracted to sell something that has a brand name. Many times the brand name is from the company that pays your commission, salary, and approved expenses. Chances are, the company with the brand name has spent a lot of time putting together a compensation plan designed to reward specific outcomes. Most of the time the preferred outcome is a transaction that involves a product or service that you are selling.

Myth 3: Your job is to talk about your product; if you’re not talking about your product, you’re not doing your job.

It’s a perfect circle: commission comes from selling the stuff you’re hired to sell. So it’s not surprising that salespeople feel compelled to talk about their product or service, early, often, and with glowing conviction. That’s part of the job, if not the job, right? How are we supposed to sell this stuff and earn a living if we’re not talking about the stuff, and the brand on the stuff, and how good it is, and how it solves all these problems?

The simple answer is this: unless people are buying the same thing again, they don’t know what they’re buying, why it’s good, and why they need it.

Even more importantly, they don’t care. They don’t care about you, your quota, or your brand. They have enough friends, too little time to do what they need to do, and would rather not waste any energy on you.

Consequently, your only hope is to provoke a discussion with someone about something they are interested in: themselves, and their situation. Your job is to talk to customers about their situation, their problems, and the negative consequences of persisting in the current state.

The temptation to talk about your product can be overwhelming. The discipline in professional selling is to selectively forget about the product and focus on the customer until the level of trust and understanding is high enough. You will know that you’re at that point when the customer asks you for information about the product of service you’re selling. They will ask you what they should do about it; what they could do about their situation; how they can solve this big problem you both have been discussing for a while.

The best practice in selling is to ask about the right problems, hurts, and deficits that are appropriately selected to create a gap for your solution.

Once the customer understands that they have a “your-solution” shaped problem, then you can confidently and correctly talk about your product, your company, your brand. Until then, and only then, discussing your product is not doing your job.

Did you miss our first two myths? You can take a look at them here and here.

Image courtesy of johnsam.