Serving others in sales has always been at the top of my mind, as has been serving others in life. I have volunteered over the years in shelters, schools, and churches, serving those in need. My family has also volunteered and given back to others in our communities. It has been a rewarding experience for me and my family to help and serve others.
How Does Serving Others Relate to Sales
What does helping others and giving back have to do with sales?
Everything! Serving, sharing, and helping are mindsets deeply ingrained in a person. If a person values these attributes, what they do in their personal life will spill into their professional life. How does serving improve future sales to customers?
To Give Back, You Have to Care
Giving teaches us to be empathetic, aware, and engaged. You have to care and invest in making a difference in someone’s life.
Empathetic
To help someone, you must understand or at least try to understand how they feel and why.
While you may never have been in the situation, you must listen to help, a key component for success in sales to customers.
It is essential to understand your buyer by listening to their wants, needs, desires, challenges, struggles, and obstacles.
- What are they faced with both externally and internally?
- What personal or professional problem are they faced with?
- How do you help improve their situation and provide a resolution?
As you build a relationship with your buyer, you will interact with them and discuss these topics in depth, learning more about your buyer and positioning yourself to add value.
Aware
It’s essential to be aware when you help someone, especially in sales to customers.
- Why does your buyer have a particular position or perspective?
- What is their background in trying to resolve a past situation?
- What process do they follow to get what they need for their group?
- What are their aspirations? How can you help?
Learn their history, surroundings, experiences, motivations, and goals. This is critical to helping you guide them through their buyer journey, providing the right direction, information, and advice.
Engage
Engaging with someone can be pivotal to helping someone.
Now, if you are giving back or helping people, your level of engagement may not be deep. You may write a check to your favorite organization. If you volunteer, you may perform your tasks and converse with those seeking help, but you don’t need a deep understanding of the root causes of their challenges to help them in your volunteer role, like handing out coffee on a breadline. But if you were tasked with helping them solve their challenges, you would need to engage in impactful discussions about the root causes of their situation to help them resolve them.
If you are helping someone solve a challenge and offering a solution, like a doctor, salesperson, you must listen, question, clarify, diagnose, and share. You must be able to explore and discover the root or cause. If you don’t understand the root or cause of the problem, it may be harder to solve. This diagnosis builds a bond with the patient prospect or customer, showing a deep interest in genuinely helping them, making you better equipped to help them.
Most people want to make a positive difference in someone’s life. The same should be true in a sales situation.
A Case in Point
In my early days in technology sales, I learned that being empathetic, aware, and engaged was paramount. Clients buy when they urgently need to resolve a situation quickly that impacts them profoundly. A client was overwhelmed by the volume of payroll his firm was manually processing for its accounting clients, slowing growth in his tax practice. Mistakes proved costly. They were seeking to automate client payroll to avoid penalties and liabilities and automate manual processes to increase their client base. I understood that growing their business was important , as well as helping their clients. Clearly, my solution was not the only one available. I believe I won the sale because I understood what my new client was facing internally and externally, and articulated how I could help him achieve his aspirations by engaging with him, being aware, and empathizing. A true interest and rewarding experience to help him succeed.
Sales of Services: Giving Can Help You be a Better Salesperson
Yes, sales of services is a profession, but that desire to make a positive difference in a prospect or customer’s life can help you become a better salesperson.
Think of it this way:
- Would you feel good knowing your solution helped your prospect or customer get an award or promotion for implementing efficiencies that reduced company costs?
- What if the increased effectiveness of your solution allows your prospect or customer to spend more quality time with their family, stress-free, since it automates mundane tasks that make processes more efficient?
An interest in making a difference for your buyer or prospect could make you a better salesperson and improve your sales of services.
Here are Two Tips for Sales to Serve Buyers
- Realize buyers will buy within their timeframe, not the sellers’. Salespeople often offer discounts to prompt buyers to make a decision within a seller’s timeframe. Sometimes, this strategy works out, but not always. A seller must realize the buyer will choose when they see the value and have their resources in place to make the deal.
- Sellers need to have a solid, strong pipeline constantly. Buyers will decide when to sign. Sellers need to meet their quota. If sellers fill the pipeline with viable, qualified prospects, they should have many prospects and customers whose timeframe may fall within theirs.
Solve the challenges, problems, or obstacles prospects and customers face. Yes, you are well -versed in your company, product, and customer, but no one knows a prospect and customer situation like themselves and why they are considering your offering.
It is all about clients, not you, so honor their buyer journey and provide what they need when they need it. Sure, you have new products or services coming to market soon, but they will not be interested unless portions of your offering make it better for your prospect or customer. The bottom line is to improve their situations.
I hope these tips for sales provides insights to serve your prospects and customers.
Elisa Ciarametaro, Principal at Exceed Sales, Inc., offers sound sales suggestions that make an impactful difference and better sales outcomes to individual contributors, managers, and executives in sales, sales development, marketing, and customer service. To learn more about Elisa Ciarametaro get more information at www.exceedsales.com, sign up for our newsletter, call Elisa at 917 653 0125, email elisac@exceedsales.com or follow her on LinkedIn.