What makes a Good Sales Person??

Firstborder

Yes I do. As I said the good ones do it naturally. Let me give you an example, not of sales, but of communication. I experienced this when I moved to South Africa from the UK. We had not been there long and we were at home and one of my daughters was on the phone to a new friend. We could hear speaking in this very thick South African accent. Children want to fit in and therefore she had learnt very quickly to speak with the same accent as her friends. She did not know she was doing it. During the conversation she had to ask us a question and to told her friend to wait a minute and turned around to speak. However, when she spoke to us, she had the perfect English accent – changed to suit her audience and she did not know she was doing it.

As humans we build rapport with one another. We do this automatically. Rapport is sameness, matching, like seeing yourself in a mirror. You probably heard of body matching, well rapport goes a lot deeper and language, tempo, words, accent, volume, etc all comes into it. If you watch the great communicators in the world, the likes of Bill Clinton, they will change their approach as they talk to different people in an audience. They can’t stop it, it’s natural to them.

We run communication workshops and bring to the conscious mind all the areas that a person needs to match, including processing filters in the brain. A person’s language will begin to give away how they filter information. Those attending the workshop thought they could communicate until they realise just how difficult it is! Too much to think about. However, it is the same when you first learnt to drive a car – far too much to think about and then you get used to it. Walking is the same, lots to do to get the balance right, yet you don’t think it about it now – you just get up and walk.

Therefore if this stuff does not come naturally you move from the unconscious incompetent state to the conscious incompetence state. Practice well, and you move to the conscious competence state. Practice really well and you begin to embed the skills and move to the unconscious competence state.

Therefore, to answer the question, yes, you do need to adapt to suit your audience and some of the techniques can be taught to those who want to learn. It makes a real difference. Rapport is influence!