The Art of Selling
The art of selling skips a grade
Anyone who still sees sales as a kind of peddling or wheedling, done by some charming, fast-talking "macher" (Yiddish for a wheeler-dealer), will probably have to eat their hat.
Over the past five years, sales has taken a real leap forward, along with a fundamental shift in thinking.
Like other areas of interpersonal interaction, sales has been researched, studied and tested intensively all over the world. Today it's clear that good selling isn't built on a string of glowing statements about the product or service, peppered with superlatives. All of that achieves the opposite: wariness, reservations and a postponed decision. So says Izhak Peled, CEO of Talnir in Haifa and author of the book "The Art of Selling in Practice".
The assumptions that "salespeople are born, not made" and that a salesperson has to be charming, ingratiating or a pest also come from that same mistaken, distorted thinking. "Would you buy from a pest?" Izhak asks. "You'd go out of your way to avoid him..."
Over the years, consumers have become wary, sensitive and experienced. They aren't easily swayed by sweet talk, and they've built up defenses against any pushy attempt to persuade them.
In recent years, the art of selling has come to rest on a deep, thorough understanding of the customer: the ability to size them up and understand what makes them tick and how they see the world. To that end, advanced approaches such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and others have been developed, and they're relatively easy to learn and use day to day. Today's professional salesperson can build trust and cooperation with another person within minutes by matching their arguments, their emphasis and even their speaking style and body language to the customer's. The most experienced salespeople do this automatically, without any thought or planning, simply out of a natural tendency toward empathy, an understanding of the subject, and long practice.
The personality this calls for is actually built on great sensitivity and the ability to listen and analyze, and less and less on the skills of a silver-tongued orator with a flair for drama.
Of course, Izhak argues, this updated approach demands a higher level of intellect and analytical ability from the salesperson than was once the norm. The rare combination of "empathy" and "ego drive", which only a few people have, is steadily losing its weight.
"As someone who has trained thousands of salespeople at hundreds of the country's leading companies, I couldn't ignore progress," says Izhak Peled. About five years ago, Talnir developed a fresh, innovative approach based on these new developments. It no longer settles for teaching the classic rules of selling and objection handling, but puts a considerable part of the effort into building the understanding and skills that today's market requires.
In this kind of training, the sales team also gains highly relevant, essential knowledge about the anatomy of the human brain, and practices sophisticated techniques for deliberately and controllably engaging the right hemisphere. Mastering techniques of this kind (guided imagery) lets the salesperson communicate with the customer on a level very close to hypnosis.
Some companies, whether for prestige or to save money, tend to have one of their own senior people train the sales team. "These people surely sell pretty well themselves," Izhak argues, "but they usually lack a deep understanding of behavioral science, teaching skills, and the structured, up-to-date method that success requires."
Among professional trainers, too, there's a very wide range: on one end, high-quality trainers with real knowledge and experience, and on the other, young salespeople who've made a career switch... and those can actually do the trainees harm.
The combination of deep theoretical knowledge of behavioral science, teaching ability and many years of hands-on experience is extremely rare, but it's a prerequisite for success. "Only after about 20 years of fieldwork as a salesperson in all kinds of industries," says Izhak, "did I dare to take on this kind of training." He adds: "Keep in mind that some of the trainees actually work in the field, and within minutes they can spot a trainer who got most of his knowledge from books."
Quite a few companies don't train their sales teams at all. They wrongly assume that "experience will do its thing", or they treat the salesperson as a clerk, as someone who just "provides information" or "answers customers' questions politely and professionally".
"It all starts with the mindset of the organization's management," says Izhak Peled. "I've met many managers with the right attitude, who understood how important this is and made sure their people were trained systematically. Every one of them came out ahead. Many companies would happily tell you about dramatic growth in sales. Some even doubled their sales volume, purely as a result of training their team properly."
At a time when technology lets different suppliers offer very similar products at identical prices, the salesperson's role becomes central and especially critical. The resources routinely poured into advertising and marketing create awareness, curiosity and interest, and bring more customers into the branches. But all too often, those customers run into unprofessional salespeople who throw the whole investment down the drain. "It's precisely in times of recession and economic uncertainty that a high-quality sales team can deal with the hesitation, the doubts and the urge to put off the decision," says Izhak.
In customer service, too, there's a common tendency to settle for teaching basic rules of conduct and courtesy. This field, which is closely tied to sales, has also grown more sophisticated over the years and developed a complex set of professional tools.
Like salespeople, service providers can reach a very high level of understanding and performance. A virtuoso ability to handle complaints, demands and customers trying to outsmart the system lets service staff stand their ground and deliver quality service without the customer feeling hurt.
"You simply can't fight progress anymore," Izhak Peled sums up. "People who work in sales, persuasion and service won't be able to keep up a high, competitive standard on intuition alone. And learning the 'master and apprentice' way can, at best, only preserve the status quo and keep repeating the conceptual mistakes of the past.
"These complex subjects will no doubt become an integral, essential part of the curricula and training programs for the relevant employees, and the day isn't far off when they'll get the weight they deserve in academia as well."