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Win More Sales by Sharing Instead of Selling

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: Sales professionals need to sell their products and services in order to earn a living. However, in today’s global driven marketplace, selling is a challenge because of the Internet to the current economy to all those negative belief about pushy sales folks. So what is a poor sales professional supposed to do?

Win More Sales by Sharing Instead of Selling

Sales professionals need to sell their products and services in order to earn a living. However, in today’s global driven marketplace, selling is a challenge because of the Internet to the current economy to all those negative belief about pushy sales folks. So what is a poor sales professional supposed to do?

Have you considered sharing instead of selling? Yes, I know that this violates one of the basic rules in selling – Do not give anything away – especially if you are delivering services. First, we need to come to an agreement of what is sharing.

Share comes from an Anglo-Saxen word, sceran, meaning to cut. Now consider in the process of sharing you are cutting a small piece from your knowledge and giving it to someone else. You are not sharing your all of your knowledge, but just enough to make that person hungry for more. Also by taking this action, you are demonstrating empathy and authenticity. Both of these traits are critical in relationship selling.

To better help you understand this concept of sharing, imagine for a moment that you are a baker of breads. You have a several types of bread in your bakery along with some day old bread. The day old bread is all of your accumulated knowledge (business acumen). Sharing day old bread does not cost you anything. Now, the freshly baked bread that is something else. Here there is a direct cost. By sharing a slice from this bread will literally cost you some money.

Someone comes into your bakery and you share some day old bread. Through your engaging conversation you believe that the buyer of your bread is qualified, Now this potential qualified customer (a.k.a. potential qualified prospect) asks for some more, but you are not sure if she is willing to pay for the entire loaf of one of your prize, award winning breads. So, you share a piece from that loaf. This sharing demonstrates the quality of what you do and helps to further establish that relationship where you can become the trusted advisor.

After eating this prizing winning sample, the buyer and you come to an agreement not only for this loaf, but for several more loafs to be delivered on a regular basis. As your new customer leaves your bakery, she bumps into a friend and quite excitedly tells her friend all about your “sharing” and how you “never sold her.”

This scenario demonstrates that when we adopt a sales sharing attitude what we are really doing is educating our those around us from suspect to qualified potential customers to centers of influence. We have the opportunity to be viewed as trusted advisors, sources of excellent sales and business knowledge.

Another way to think of this word is to identify 5 critical behaviors when you actually share:

S = Sacrifice in that you are willing to give something up to receive something in return
H = Helpful in that you are willing to help first and foremost and not focused on the making the sale
A = Authentic in that you are who you are at all times with all people
R = Responsive and reliable in that you immediately respond to their needs and do what you say you are going to do
E = Empathic in that you truly listen to their needs and look to make an emotional connection with your potential client

Sales Coaching Tip: To become that trusted advisor, consider stop using those sales skills focused on selling what you do and start developing those sales skills by sharing what you know and how you can help your potential customers without thinking about selling your products and services. You may wish to learn more about education based marketing because sales people who truly know how to share are no longer embracing the traditional and, I believe, outdated sales based marketing approach.

Related Articles
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  A Three Step Solution to the Selling Dilemma
  Even Engineers Sell
  Consultative Selling Won't Fill Your Pipeline

Article Tags: authenticity, baked bread, bakery, breads, business acumen, delivering services, driven marketplace, economy, empathy, knowledge business, money, negative belief, relationship, sales professionals



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Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
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