Learn the Art of Positive Persuasion

If you really want to excel in 2013 and unleash that sales giant, which is inside every sales professional I have ever encountered, when they move away from old school hard selling and instead focus on using positive influence and persuasion, to build meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships with the right people, who need what they have to offer.

So I guess that it is logical to assume that if you are in sales, you must have the same sales potential. What I want to do, with this article, is to help you unlock your sales giant and help you to achieve all your sales targets this year. Remember if you want to be successful in sales, you need to always have your clients and prospects best interest at heart. That means you can never succeed in sales in the long term, if you try to manipulate or coerce people, rather than positively influence them.
Understanding the Concept of Positive Influence and Persuasion

As a starting point it is necessary to understand that in order to positively influence anyone, you need to understand that there are three separate parts to persuasion.
Logic

The first one requires the use of logic i.e. this is a process where you completely understand your product or services value proposition, you have identified the perfect customer, who needs exactly what you have to offer. Then using this information to inform them, you allow them to use their own logic to come to a positive conclusion, in which they fully understand your value proposition and they see that it meets or exceeds their needs and expectations.
Emotion

As you know people buy with their emotions, so it is vital that you understand this crucial element in the persuasion process. This is the part of the sales process where you have explained and your client has understood all the logical reasons why your product or service is the best option available to them. At this stage they fully understand your value proposition, from a logical prospective. Your role now as a sales professional, is to appeal to your customer’s positive emotions, so that they can completely understand, “What is in it for me”.

The positive emotions I am referring to here are joy, fulfilment, meaningful contribution, recognition, love, compassion, honour and pride. To make this part of the sales process work for you, you must completely understand your value proposition and all the benefits it offers your customer. Using this as the starting point, uncover how your customer will benefit from using your product or service and describe this to them from an emotive perspective.

Action Idea: Explore the positive emotions described above in bold Italic; now examine your product or services benefits. Link your customers need to one or more of the benefits your product offers and describe this to them, in terms of one of the positive emotions they will experience, as a result of using your product or service.
Ethics

The final cog in the wheel of positive persuasion is integrity, consistency and good character. In essence what this means to any good sales professional, is that they must always be authentic, 100 % honest and believe completely in what they have to sell. The truly great sales professional does not only believe in what they sell and what they do, but they are a living example of it. Their actions, words and deeds exemplify everything they stand for. In other words if you want to be a great sales professional, you must walk your talk. Be the example you want the world to reflect back to you.

You can never attempt to positively persuade anyone, if you are not positively persuaded yourself. Just as you would never ask someone to do something you have never or would never do, you can never build a mutually beneficial long term sales relationship with anyone, if you are attempting to sell something you would not gladly buy yourself. Your customers will see right through you, if you act in-authentically or if you try to sell them something you do not believe in 100 % yourself. People are very receptive to feelings and they will easily perceive your negative feelings towards your product, either in your words or body language.
Persuasion and Influence, is Never Trickery or Deception

The key principal to be effective when positively influencing people is to be 100 % authentic and yourself. People will see right through you if you try to be someone you are not. Being authentic and ethical, when persuading people is the exact opposite of manipulation. When you are a living example of your sales pitch and people can see that you have their best interests at heart, they will quickly warm to you and eagerly form long term mutually beneficial, relationships with you. What are you waiting for? Be authentic and ethical and you will open the floodgates on your sales success this year.
Author: Andrew Horton Sales Training

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/sales-training/