Persuasion Sales

What state do you sell in?

One thing that I found with lots of sales people is that when they are actually in front of the customer, they themselves aren’t in a good and productive state; they themselves aren’t in a persuasive state.

I’ll give you an example of this. Just recently I went to buy a TV and it was about 6-7 pm at night. It was obvious it had been a long day for the actual guy working there in the shop.

He came to serve me and he was in a really unhelpful state, he was looking at his watch, I’m sure thinking “ok there’s another hour to go before I get to go home”, and all he was focusing on was that. He wasn’t in a cheerful state, he wasn’t in a state that was going to inspire me to buy the TV from him and guess what, did I buy the TV? No, I didn’t.

So I didn’t give up, I went to another store looking for the same thing and there I met a sales person in an fantastic state; it was obvious that he enjoyed talking to people, telling them about the differences between the products, he enjoyed communicating with people and that was putting him in a great state and his physiology was totally different from the guy from the first store. Where the other guy was slouched and lent over, this guy was in an upright and open stance with a smile on his face.

He proceeded to tell me about the differences between the TV’s I was looking at and explained why one was better, why one cost more and was better value than the one I was initially looking at. He was also in a friendly state, this is one of the things I really stress to sales people is that of being in a friendly state.

After speaking to this guy for less than 5 minutes, I felt that he’d asked good questions, and he got me into a state that got me thinking “Yea! You know I want to buy something now”.

He had created this friendship very quickly by establishing ‘rapport’, one of the things that I teach in my courses, and very soon I felt that he understood what I was looking for, he had my interest at heart, and he was showing what was a great deal. Let me ask you, “did I buy that TV?” Yes I did, I bought that TV and without any hesitation I made the decision, took it home. And I think this is a perfect example over where putting yourself in a great state, in a friendly state when you meet customers can improve your sales massively.

Many people leave themselves in a bad state and they don’t check what state they are in when they are about to speak to their customer. Obviously, if you are working in retail it will be hard to maintain a fantastic state all day long so then in that case, what you should be doing is that as soon as you see the customer, put yourself back into that resourceful state.

Build what’s called an ‘anchor’, a lot of you have heard me talk about anchors before. Use the anchor so that you fire it, and suddenly you go into a peak state of selling and remember the peak state is a very friendly and trusting state for selling.

You want to convince the person and show the person that you have their interests at heart and what you are actually doing is looking out for them and showing them ideally, that you want to create a situation where you personally feel that they are one of your best friends and you are trying to show them what’s great about your product or what’s great about your idea.

So as an exercise this week, in what ever you do I want you to check yourself and ask yourself “Hey! What state am I in? Am I in a state where I’m going to make a new friend with this person? Am I in a state where I can be calm, relaxed and I can show them why my product is the best? If you are in that state your sales are going to increase massively.