Unlocking the Psyche of a Sales Super Star

I entered the world of selling in my early twenties and rapidly developed skills and mindset that catapulted me to the top of financial services field. Since I entered the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming twenty years ago, I have had a deep fascination with differences that makes the difference in sales people that are excellent compared with a sales people that are average.

The mind set of averageness and the mindset of excellence are poles apart. In this article I will be exploring the mind set of sales excellence and the psyche of a sales superstar.

Belief in self

The sales superstar exuberates self belief and the self belief is apparent for anyone to see in their walk and talk. From self belief comes a series of very important states for selling, such as self confidence and an ability to listen to others. Self belief provides the sales person with an easy ability to pitch anyone without fear, not be rocked by hostility or objections and to persevere in difficult situations. Self belief enables the sales person to continually raise their game and step out of their comfort zones.

When you believe in yourself you don’t tend to be worried about what other people think of you, when you believe in yourself your goals are set much higher and when you believe in yourself you stay focused on your goal until it becomes your reality. So self belief is an essential ingredient in the psyche of a sales superstar.

Attract people to you as if you are a rapport magnet

The first sale is selling yourself to the client. Rapport is a state of responsiveness meaning when you have rapport you have the lead. First it’s important the client buys your expertise, your authority and credibility. People listen and respect experts. So deep is the rapport gained from being an expert, people tend not to question the authority of an expert.

It’s also important to be trusted and liked, an NLP way of creating a natural rapport is through matching and mirroring the tone and body language so you become an unconscious reflection of them. When you are very good at rapport you will attract so many new clients who will be willing to listen to you uncritically.

Belief in your product

A great way to get a client to buy is to get them to fall in love with your product. When they love your product resistance to your product is significantly lowered. The client will not love your product unless you do, or at the very least you must believe in what you sell. The belief you have in your product will be clearly expressed in systems of communication i.e. the language you use, the tonal qualities of your words and your body language.

The client’s will unconsciously pick up if you don’t believe in your product because you will not be congruent in your presentation. If you love your product, even better. If you don’t believe in or love your product, I highly recommend you find a different product.

The ability to communicate benefits

Through effective questioning, the sales person will gather high quality information on how the client will benefit from the buying of their product.  The sales person will also know the client’s values/criteria for buying. Amateur sales people over emphasise the features and under emphasise the benefits.

Most clients are not interested in the features of what you are selling, they want to know how those features will be of a benefit to them in their personal or professional life. They also will buy when the product or services satisfies a value or cluster of values. So when you are selling always make benefit statements and anchor those benefit statements to the values you elicited in the questioning stage.

The ability to close

Some sales people are great rapport builders and very good at gathering information, the challenge is they don’t know what to do with the information to close the sale.  You earn from closing so make sure you are very good at it.  Throughout the sale, it’s good to have ongoing micro closes so you are training your client to say yes. These are simple questions like, ‘that’s good isn’t it?’ and ‘You like that?’ At important parts of a sale, offer a bigger close which is a test close, bringing you towards the big close.

Some sales people over talk and miss the point at when the client is ready to buy. It is recommended you use your observation and listening skills to detect when the client is ready and at that moment put the close in .

Congruency is a key aspect to any form of communication. When you have belief in yourself and product and can effectively communicate the benefits of your product and close the sale you are congruent with yourself, the product and the sales process. When this happens you will find yourself making many more sales.