Selling Skills that Get More Results

While sitting under my hat in our 1933 Packard before we knew we won one of the second highest awards at the Annual Concours d’ Elegance of the Eastern United States; Bethlehem PA, I got to thinking about hats and selling.

How you use your sales hat is critical to your results. Here are at least ways to wear your sales hat for greater results:

1. Does your sales hat cover all your bases with your prospects? Are you communicating the way the customer wants to understand your offering, not in the way you want to present things? One thing that I still find too many people who sell do is they talk about themselves or company way to soon in the sales process. To worsen the relationship, they miss clues that clearly communicate HOW someone buys. Is your sales hat covering listening and understanding of what and how your prospect wants what you have, before you start positioning your product or service?

2. Are you selling like you are passing the hat? Unless you are operating like a charity, you are not asking for contributions. You are asking people to do have the trust to do business with you to give them a solution or solve a problem. Maintaining confidence in you and your offering is critical to attracting receptive buyers.

3. Does your follow-up take off your hat to your customer? Or could you be appearing to beg for business? If you want to express regard for, show appreciation for and otherwise respect your customer, you want to have valid business reasons to follow-up – continuing to ask something like, “So are you ready?” is not valid enough.

4. Do you speak through your hat? Selling is a three-legged stool. If you “talk through your hat” about your product or services, or the buying and selling process or lack people knowledge, the stool could collapse. This equals lost sales.

Cover things for your customer they way they want, don’t pass the hat in your work, take your hat off to your customer during follow up and avoid speaking through your hat. Wear your sales hat these ways to both your customer and your benefit.