Ari Galper is one of the people I respect most in the world of sales. I’ve rarely seen anyone address the conversation about integrity in selling more directly and head on and . . . with more integrity. Here’s a great article from him about sales.

7 Ways to Sell and Retain Your Integrity
by Ari Galper, Founder, Unlock The Game™

Making more sales while retaining your integrity — is it possible to do both?

Based on e-mails I continue to receive daily, the answer is a resounding “yes.” People are telling me that they have expanded their view of “selling” and experienced better sales results after adopting the Unlock The Game™ mindset.

Eliminating traditional sales thinking and tactics does take effort, though, because the messages of the sales “gurus” you’ve read over the years can continue to bubble up in your mind, especially when you’re in the sales process.
Despite your good-hearted intentions of helping others with your service or product, do these traditional “sales tips” still pop up in your mind?

• Focus on “closing” the sale and it will happen

• When you feel rejected, brush it off and get ready for more

• If a potential client says “no,” it’s your job to turn it into a “yes”

• When a potential client challenges your product or service, just sell harder

These ideas reinforce the traditional sales message that your only focus should be on pursuing the end goal of making the “sale,” regardless of the personal toll it might take on you and your potential client.

It is possible to sell without compromising your integrity. Here are seven suggestions:

1. Focus on the getting to the “truth” of your potential client’s situation. You may or may not be a fit for each other, so focusing on the end goal of making the sale only derails the trust-building process. Without trust, you compromise integrity.
2. Eliminate rejection once and for all by setting realistic expectations and avoiding traditional sales behaviors such as defensiveness, persuasion, and over-confidence. If you’re not trying to sell, you can’t be rejected.
3. Stop “chasing” potential clients who have no intention of buying. How can you do this? Shift your mindset and boost your truth-seeking skills so that you can quickly, yet graciously, discern whether the two of you are a potential “fit” or not.
4. Avoid calling people “prospects” or even thinking about them that way. People are people, and when you label them in your language or your thoughts, you dehumanize them and the sales process. “Prospect” reinforces the notion that sales is only a “numbers game.” Train yourself to think about “potential clients” instead.
5. Take the “cold” out of your cold calling. Don’t start with “Hi, my name is… I’m with… We do…”. When you begin a conversation by making it about you, instead of about the other person, you immediately cut off the possibility of opening a dialogue. Try the more humble approach of asking “Maybe you can help me out for a second,” and keep in mind that you’re really calling to help them solve their problems.
6. Don’t try to “overcome” objections. Instead, determine whether the objection is the client’s truth or not. Then you can decide whether to continue to open the conversation.
7. Avoid using “I” or “We” in your e-mail communications to potential clients. These words indicate that the focus of your communication is on satisfying your needs rather than solving their problems. This sets the wrong tone for a potential relationship.

This recent e-mail from Pat, who has shifted to the Unlock The Game™ mindset, sums it up quite well:

“My sales have doubled for one simple yet powerful reason: my mindset has been expanded, giving me new skills that I never could have imagined. What’s happening is that potential clients now trust me at a deeper level than they ever have, and this has resulted in more sales and, even better, more referrals.”

 

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The words ‘selling’ and ‘truth’ don’t often go together.

Because selling is almost always about ‘getting the sale’ instead of ‘uncovering the truth’. And that’s what I want to talk about here. Uncovering the truth.

Truth of things either being a good fit or not.

The Finest Music In Of the World

In Celtic mythology, there lives a band of warriors known as the Fianna.  They were the most noble, powerful and fierce defenders of Ireland.  It was an extensive and harrowing process to become a member of this group.  The leader of this band was Fionn Mac Cumhaill [pronounced: Finn MacCool].

Once Fionn, and his hunters were discussing the “finest music in the world.”  The question was put out to the group as a riddle, “what is the finest music in the world?”  The hunters began to give their answers.  One said it was the sound of a stag running across the lake.  Another disagreed , saying it was the sound of raindrops falling onto leaves.  Another suggested it was the laughter of a young girl.  The sound of dogs yelping thing during the chase, wind in the grass or water falling over stone.  Each hunter seemed to have a strong opinion.

Then one hunter turned to Fionn and asked him, “And what do you think is the finest music in the world?”

He replied, “The finest music in all the world is the music of what is happening.”

You might find it useful to let go of trying to persuade people and simply focus on listening for and exploring the truth.

After all, when you finally reach the truth of the situation — that’s all there is.  What else can there be?  The truth is much more real and compelling — and far more powerful — than any manufactured “closing tool”.

Think about it.

If the truth is that they only have so much money — that’s the truth.  They really don’t have more money.  They don’t have less money than that.  They just have the amount they said. Your “Closing Techniques” won’t put one more cent in their wallet. You need to deal with that.  You need to work with that.  It doesn’t mean they won’t buy. It doesn’t mean you can’t help them. It just helps you define the territory so you can navigate it more skillfully.

You may even find a way to still be able to help them given the reality of their budget.

But, it’s very expensive and misery-making to try and argue with reality.

Whenever there’s a problem with the client always go back to the truth.  First, take a deep breath, let go of any attachment you have to them buying your product or service and let go of any agenda you have to move them forward in the process.  Get centered.  Get curious.  Open yourself up to whenever possibility emerges, and then engage in a conversation with them that helps reveal the truth of the situation.

Always go back to the truth.

Sales Tools, Technologies and Skills:

It would be a huge mistake to label all of the existing sales tools and methodologies as bad or “wrong”.  They aren’t.  They are sometimes inherently manipulative, often unnecessary, frequently overwhelming and, almost always, simply overused.

You can use elaborate tools and systems like Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) with tools like matching and mirroring, or making sure that you’re speaking on someone’s leading representational system [whether that be visual, auditory or kinesthetic]. You can elicit people’s metaprograms.  You can learn how to put people in subtle trances to make them more open to your influence.

You can spend a great deal of time learning various personality typing systems.  You can learn how to, within a short period of time put people into a box based on your perception of their lifestyle choices [such as the Values And Lifestyle Survey – (VALS)] or their personality [e.g. the DISC model].

You can learn a lot of elaborate influence skills and “power-persuasion” techniques.

You can do a lot of things.

But, what I’m going to suggest is that all of these skills are entirely secondary [and that some should be dismissed with great force].

Make your first and last priority — getting to the truth.

If you spend too much time learning complicated communication strategies, and trying to memorize the precise sequence and ordering of your sales process — it will prevent you from being present with your clients and prospects.  Your body will be there, but your mind will be “nearby” if you catch my drift. And people feel that.

Prospects and clients are much more intuitive than we give them credit for.  They can feel it when they’re being manipulated and pushed around.

Of course this is precisely what many techniques were invented to counter.  They saw that overt disagreement and confrontation didn’t work, so they became more subtle. In the “old sales,” there’s lots of talk about “never argue” or “never directly challenged the prospects belief”.  They talk of using aikido style communication.  First you align and then you redirect.  You try to be graceful.  But, here is the key question that never gets asked.

Graceful at what?

Graceful at moving your client forward towards a sale.

And what always happens when you try to move someone — no matter how gracefully or subtly — towards a sale? And that is precisely what creates pressure and resistance in the first place.

Let go of the sale and focus on the truth of ‘is this a fit?’

It is or it isn’t.

If you’d like get cool posts like this in your inbox every few days CLICK HERE to subscribe to my blog and you’ll also get a free copy of my fancy new ebook “Marketing for Hippies” when it’s done.