Have Confidence

The Personality Trait that makes a Great Salesperson...CONFIDENCE

As I was thinking about what to write about this week, I read a statement from Seth Godin, author of Purple Cow and other awesome books.

He was describing the difference between "What do you need?" as opposed to "Here's what you need!" 

It struck me that great salespeople have this personality trait...a SUPREME level of confidence when they say "This is what you need!" rather than wavering and saying, “What do you need?” In fact, we have found that our clients appreciate the fact that we can guide them with the highest level of confidence. After all, we are the experts!

This is not the same as strong-arming someone. 

We meet with our clients and have many conversations about their home, their spaces and their vision long before we get to the sales room, so we are not just shooting in the dark (so to speak)-as often as we can, we ask our clients if we can do their planning session in their homes so that we can take photos of the wall space and put that information into ProSelect. This allows us to virtually show them the results of their session over their mantle, piano or wherever they planned to hang it and it is in the correct size for that particular space! 

This is one of the greatest tools we have ever found to help provide context of size in relation to the client's space AND because of this tool, we have great confidence in what we are suggesting for them.

An idea we had many years ago of selling with Suggestions is the way we show our confidence. 

We pre-select the images, sizes, etc for our clients in a well-thought out "Suggestion" presentation so that our clients aren't asked the question "What do you need or want?" 

Instead, we show them our Suggestions and say "Here's what you need!" 

This is so helpful in the salesroom as it keeps the pressure off of the client to make a decision that they may not have a clue about and instead, as the experts, we give our opinion through the Suggestion. 

The thing that makes this work is our integrity and reputation-our clients trust us! Also, they ALWAYS have the power to veto any and everything we have presented if they don't feel it is right for them at this time.

You may say, "What about the time you must spend before the sale, sorting through and creating the Suggestion?" First of all, with experience, it gets faster:-) Second, we would rather spend the time before the sale being better prepped by narrowing the images down to a few of the best ones and then creating the Suggestion. Otherwise, you will be plowing through too many images with the client which creates the trifecta of low (or no) sales...FATIGUE, FRUSTRATION AND CONFUSION.

Finally, having a game plan before you go into the sale is a confidence builder, allowing you to say, "Here is what you need!" 

It is a wonderful working relationship in the sales room and we have seen our sales increase significantly since doing the Suggestions. We have received many testimonials as well from other photographers who started using our Suggestion methods and saw their sales increase many-fold.