Love and sales are seldom discussed together. There is an intellectual, “technical” and conventional distance between them that leads to the conclusion (tremendously wrong) that both are “very different matters”.
Love and sales sustain a misunderstood relationship. Victim of the individuals immersed in that "cold and distant world" that commercial relationships have become.
Some will argue that sales are now neither "cold nor distant." That they only evolve to the rhythm of everything else. But as "electronic robots" fill people's mail with offers and enter every area that is franked, it is also true that sales are "dehumanizing" at best.
As an example, look at the media and the profile that a seller has now (be it a person or Organization). Existing resources would pale Jules Verne's imagination.
The “technology” that supports his work makes him look like an astronaut from the 60s: electronic programs for identifying and tracking prospects, applications with a roadmap for approaching and dealing with relationships, automated after-sales services, organization and exploitation of meta-data, geo-location.
It would be necessary to see if sales are a science or not, but it is a fact that at least they have become high engineering.
These are some terms and concepts that a seller should know now (and beware: the list is a minimal expression of what exists):
Lead
ROS
Teaser
UPS
Upgrade
Upselling
Vending
CMR
KPI
ROI
POS
MQR
MRR
Neurosales
This as a sample!
There are countless terms, acronyms, names, acronyms and anglicisms. A dictionary is needed to keep focus.
This is the "contemporary" world of sales. And not to mention Marketing and Administration. Fashionwords are common. They have the healthy purpose of illustrating (theoretically), but they only generate confusion and "intellectual bureaucracy".
If it is about grammatical constructions, it is possibly this “intellectual bureaucracy” that best explains the labyrinth in which management techniques (including sales, of course) have gotten, to try to efficiently fulfill their purposes.
The "bureaucratic dysfunctions" always complicate the processes, and the more if it is mental processes!
How can love and sales be considered in such a context? Treating the subject from this angle can be considered exotic, or interpreted at least as an expression of "flower-power".
But there is no margin of confusion for this matter: love is intimately linked with sales. As it is with all things in life. Simple, and easy to understand.
It is not just that the seller (individual or Organization) loves their work. That aspect of love, valid as it is, is not part of this analysis. The love you are interested in treating is the love that the client (or prospect) has for his own money.
So is. Customer love for their money. The one that will eventually have to "dispense" to acquire what is for sale.
The person interested in buying something must develop more interest, attention, curiosity and affection for the product or service that they want to sell than for the money that it represents to acquire it. In this simple reality is the improvement of sales.
On the other hand, that "affection" for the offer being evaluated is not only disputed by the money that must be dispensed, but also by competing offers. The client (or the prospect, to be technically rigorous), will always be the pretty girl at the dance, and the seller who disputes their favors with other interested parties.
If the prospect's love for the sales offer cannot be greater than his love for his money and the other offers, there will be no transaction.
And this love is not conquered with "intellectual bureaucracy" or the use of a technological arsenal. It is done the same as thousands of years ago: with seduction and grace, attention and delicacy, persistence, encouragement and patience.
This is a game that summons to seduce and fall in love. To build a relationship, not just a contact.
It is a matter of chemistry and skin. Sincerity and honesty. Desire and passion.
The bots know very little about all this.
The logic of the love and sales game is simple, almost elementary, because love is just that in human cosmology: an elementary matter.
But playing, and doing it well, is one of the most difficult things out there.
Ninon De L Énclos said it well: "It takes much more genius to make love than to send armies." And in this logic, the seller would benefit more from studying “the 24 laws of the art of seduction” than a treatise from “Customer Research Management”.
The seller (or Organization) that adopts love as the axis of work to perfect their business relationships, takes into account aspects such as those described below (the biblical statements of Peter in their second letter are of precious reference):
1.- Love is not perfected in words.
It is NOT because it is said to be, or because the personal or "corporate" ego understands it. Love is far from passions or comfort. He is not reflective, he acts. It is not covered in sayings, gestures or impulses.
Love and sales are not rhetoric. There is no space for nice but empty phrases, or the threat that many gestures represent. Love demands action. Concrete facts. Tangible samples.
It is up to the seller to express his desire. Clearly display your interest. There may be a positive or negative response, but that is the only unknown. Otherwise, it is clear that you want to conquer and establish a relationship.
2.- Love suffers, and sales too.
The things that are worth in life and business have a COST. And this is higher in that it represents something of greater value.
People flee from discomfort, difficulty, and pain. This is a world of ease and brevity. Immediate retribution, impatience and susceptibility.
The seller who does not "suffer" in the process of conquest, finally does not charge a piece of great value. The relationship is direct. The cost is higher the more valuable the award. The greater the suffering, the greater the reward.
3.- Love and sales are not envious, they are not boastful and they do not puff up.
Be very careful with this!
Envy always shows weakness. And the prospect does not quote this well. Emulating, recognizing, taking advantage of, and even dismissing the success of others apply in a certain sense, but envying them does not. The "playing field" of sales is wide and foreign. Envy is not only absurd, it is fundamentally a valuable waste of energy.
Love is not boastful, and the seller cannot be, of course. The reason is elementary: before a boastful seller, the client feels an award, a record, and not a distinguished part of a relationship.
The seller who boasts of being a good seller is actually selling himself for very little.
And the vanity? It is a tempting path. But it is also one of the biggest mistakes the seller can make. Vanity is a lousy ingredient i
n business. It is simply very expensive. The vain individual recognizes himself from afar and is easy to manipulate.
4.- Love does nothing wrong, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not hold a grudge.
If sales are not a transparent process, they die before they are even born. The "improper" does not create business relationships, nor does it pay well.
In few aspects of human dynamics, honesty has a better reward than in sales. A client will never love the offer that is made to him more than the money that represents him, if there is something that does not smell good.
On the other hand, if the seller "does not seek his own" and concentrates efforts on a transaction that represents the best interests of the parties, it will generate a sustained profit over time.
This is the difference between a buyer and a customer. Of the first we are all one. But customers only for a particular offer.
The seller who does not seek his own does not generate a sale, builds a relationship.
Love is not irritated and does not hold a grudge. And the seller who eventually does not respect these premises has little to expect at the party, no matter how much he has all the knowledge and resources.
Few trades exude more love than the seller for his trade. It is a prominent note in the history of love and sales. Because only by loving the trade can that impersonal function of selling be assumed without fear of rejection and without rancor in the face of repeated indifference.
That can only be achieved by love.
Only in this way does the character become meat. Thus a professional salesman is born who does not lose his individuality, like the actor who leaves the skin on the character but does not lose himself.
5.- Love and sales do not enjoy injustice, but rather the truth. They suffer it all, believe it, expect it and endure it.
It is not like this?
Nothing sells like the truth. Check it out!
In the commercial history of humanity, unfair transactions have never exceeded the superficial and the vain. While the truth, however hard and complex, has always generated lasting links.
In sales, the best lie is always the truth.
In order to perfect the transaction, the corresponding amount is suffered. Every possibility is believed. The result is patiently awaited and endured. The latter is not a small thing, because you have to have as much wood to support failure as success. The first forces to resume flight, and the second to do so at higher altitudes.
At the end of the road it is not that love and sales are a combination for all success, it is more appropriate to say that sales are, in fact, a love story.
By: https://twitter.com/NavaCondarco
