As a sales person, I have to make a few assumptions about you before I can even begin to make a sale. What I tell someone in confidence before I can even approach them can be the difference between “meh” and “wow.
Let me share with you the most common mistake I see sales people make: Not being able to tell whether or not someone is interested. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of sales for me. I get so many calls asking me when I’m available to talk. And I’m not talking about a conversation. I’m talking about a sales presentation where you have to show me how you can make a great sale.
The problem is when a person is not interested in talking to you, they are not interested. So there are several ways to tell if someone is not interested, such as their body language, tone, attire, and perhaps even their clothes. Some salespeople avoid this whole topic by saying, “I’m not interested,” or something like that. This is the most common mistake that I see sales people make.
Your body language tells you this all day long. If a salesperson does not give you the opportunity to talk, then they are the type who never want to talk. This is because they think they are not good enough. However, I have actually seen salespeople who are not interested in talking who are not good enough. The reason these salespeople do not want to talk is because they know they are not good enough.
As you go on, your body language will tell you if you are interested or not. If you are not interested then you have the tendency to only talk to people you already know. If you are interested, you will be a lot more confident that you will get to the point without the salesperson needing to think about it.
You can tell if someone is interested by watching how they talk to you. The more they talk, the more interested they are in the conversation. The best way to be able to tell is to look at how they talk to you. If you are interested in them, you will be talking to them longer. I have seen people who had no interest in talking at all and only want to talk to you if they think you are interested.
This same idea applies to the salesperson as well. If you have a salesperson who is just looking to talk, they are probably not interested in the conversation. It is only after you have talked to them for at least ten minutes that they start to get interested.
And just because you do not want to talk to someone after they have been talking to you for a while, it does not mean you should not have the discussion. You can just end it at that point.
This is where the concept of pre-buyout salesperson comes in. It is common for salespeople to show off their talents for the sake of other people, and it is okay that they do. This should not be construed as a bad thing since it is an opportunity for them to show off their talents for their own benefit. However, it is not always a good idea to lead someone to believe that they are not interested.
The problem is that a lot of people feel that pre-buying salespeople are interested. Most of us have our own pre-buying salespeople, but they are really more of a “I’m not interested” kind of salesperson than they are an “I want to do this for the sole purpose of getting money” kind of salesperson. That’s not to say that they are not interested because, in most cases, they are.
