Episode #85: Have a Sales Point of View

People enter sales with no thought. They find it is tough and leave or are fired. How about basing your sales career on having your own point of view, your own philosophy about what you are doing? Today we look at precisely how to do that.

Like a lot of people, I subscribe to various sites that send you useful information, uplifting quotes etc. The following morsel popped into my inbox, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care –Anonymous”.

Wow! What a powerful reminder of the things that really matter in our interactions with others. This piece of sage advice should be metaphorically tattooed on to the brain of every single person involved in sales.

Some salespeople I have encountered remind me of an icy mammoth trapped in a time warp from the past, still trotting out the product brochure and seeing if I will go for one of their goodies? You don’t like that one, well then how about this one, or this one, or this one, ad nauseam? I want “blue” but they keep showing me 50 shades of “pink”. They are playing that pathetic, failed salesperson game named “process of elimination”.

I want to buy, but are they really showing me they are focused on understanding me? Are they demonstrating to me that they foremost care about my benefit? Are they communicating to me that, “in your success Greg, is my success”? Or do they come across not with stars in their eyes, buy $$$$ signs?

The quote at the beginning, “People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care” reminds me of a great Japanese word, which should be embraced by everyone in sales - kokorogamae (心構え).

It can be simply translated as “true intention” but the Japanese nuance goes much deeper than that. Anyone studying a martial art or a traditional Japanese art (道) will immediately be on my wave length, when they hear this kokorogamae term.

What is the spark in our heart driving our behavior? Is it the money or is it the serving? Is it what we want or what the client wants? Is this going to be a long-term relationship or a fleeting transaction?

Single transaction orientated salespeople are like skyrockets that initially blaze through the night and then explode! They are here for a good time not a long time and they give the profession of sales a bad brand.

If you want a successful career in sales, change your heart, focus on True North, purify your intentions, show you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interests before your own. If you do that every single time you meet a client, you will have get success in sales and build a powerful personal brand.

If you want to stay in sales, then create your own philosophy of what that means as a profession. Decide to be the very best that you can be. Decide what your personal kokorogamae of sales will be. So, no more hesitation, let’s commit and get on to it!

Action Steps

1. Decide why you are in sales in the first place?
2. Choose sales as a career and create your own philosophy to guide you through the peaks and troughs, the good times and the scary times
3. If you are working for or with people who have the wrong approach, the incorrect kokorogamae, then get out of there as soon as possible
4. Make the client’s interests your interest and you will do well in sales.