Authentic Selling

I had Jason Cutter on the podcast show not long ago, author of "Selling with Authentic Persuasion." - https://www.authenticpersuasion.com/

Jason was prompted to write the book because he saw a lot of people entering sales, not as a dream job or as an intentional career path, but accidentally just ending up in sales. As many of these people didn't intentionally enter sales they seemed, more than most to have an aversion to strong sales tactics or what might be perceived as manipulating or tricking people, often associated with strong sales stereotypes so they go the other way, acting a little more passive, becoming simple order takers.

Jason had a number of interesting observations:

1. Many of these "order takers" do not do well in sales, but have the potential to. He says that you don't have to be the stereotypical charismatic, "life and soul" of the party personality to do well. Anyone can do well in sales for the simple reason...there are so many different types of people out there to sell to - many of whom will have their guard up to approaches from stereotypical sales people.

2. Its important to know your strengths and weaknesses - to be self aware - what really drives you. Even the best sales people probably only close 20% of deals. That leaves a massive 80% of losses to overcome emotionally. So you need to be sure of your "why".

3. Sales is also about leadership. Your prospect needs help, they need a guide, you need to pull them along with you.

4. Also understand your prospects, often their biggest fear is change! Its our survival instinct at play here, change equals risk, equals possible danger - we are programmed to avoid danger. Make your prospect feel safe, make them comfortable with change.

5. Sales is hard, its difficult, don't take it to personal or conversely make it too much about business - take some personal responsibility.

6. Buyers no longer want information. For some sales people it is still about owning the knowledge. However what buyers today are looking for is wisdom, solutions to their problem, or honest insights/ideas - that will go some way to differentiate yourself from others in sales.

7. An interesting idea on handling objections is not took a technique or stock answer but use it as a tool to move the conversation forward. If that is your goal with every communication you will be making progress - sales is really all about moving the conversation forward.

Given the title of his book the last question I asked was, "is persuasion simply manipulation"?

I think his answer was interesting. He said it really comes down to intent. Is the person trying to get you to do something for your reason or their own? Or for reasons that benefit both parties. If your intent is to help someone then that really is positive persuasion.