Integrity & Authentic Relationship Selling

A different, innovative approach to Sales

“The most important persuasion tool in your entire arsenal is integrity”

Zig Ziglar

 Why do we need a different, innovative approach to Sales?

For many people the experience of being sold to is often a negative one due to the lack of interpersonal skills of the salesperson and the pressures that they are under. Salespeople are given an enormous amount of product training, some sales skills training and often very challenging targets to achieve. This invariably forces the salesperson, through no fault of their own, to use a ‘push’ style of selling i.e. their agenda in every sales interaction is to push a certain product or service and make a sale within a certain timeframe.

Even if the salesperson is skilled in a sales methodology and asks questions first, they often lack skills required to build trust and long-term relationships. This means that despite all their excellent, more traditional sales training & product knowledge, they still don’t make the sales they could, and miss out on their full potential – and of course the organisation misses out on increased revenue.

 Customers are becoming more discerning, and are getting tired of traditional sales approaches – they are demanding more from sales people. Customers do not want to feel like they are “being sold to” – they want to deal with people (and organisations) who understand & relate to them and their ideals & values, in addition to getting the high quality product they expect.

 “First seek to understand before you seek to be understood”

Stephen Covey – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

What is Integrity & Authentic Relationship Selling?

Integrity & Authentic Relationship Selling is allowing people to like and trust you through exceptional integrity and interpersonal skills and increasing sales as a result.

We use the word ‘allowing’ as many salespeople push their own agenda, show impatience, listen poorly and put themselves first which inhibits the natural process of building a relationship.

The focus of most sales training methodologies is to create the need for a product or service through the use of a questioning model (i.e. SPIN selling). The questions are designed to lead the buyer to consider the consequences of their issues and the rewards of solving them, hence creating the desire to take action. These approaches are effective and valid, and researched through years of study on the questions that successful salespeople ask.

However, what is not shared in this research is that these top performers will have also demonstrated excellent interpersonal skills, integrity, motives and values that led to a ‘state of connection’ with their customers.

 In other words, the buyer liked and trusted them.

The often misused saying “people only buy from people they like” is an indication of this.

“It is a basic human need to feel understood and to relate to others.

People are most comfortable when they can relate to you & feel you can relate to & understand them. They are then much more likely to trust you & hence buy from you”

Simon Smith

 Of course, the buying process is not a purely emotional process. Logic is also a significant factor in decision making. The supplier and product must meet the practical needs of the buyer however it is the experience that the customer has when interacting with the salesperson that will ultimately decide the future value of the partnership.

This aim of Integrity & Authentic Relationship Selling is to create trust with prospects and customers. It is as simple as that. The outcomes of this are increased sales, greater customer satisfaction, increased business through word of mouth and greater customer commitment & loyalty, which is much more likely to be long term.

 ”I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Maya Angelou

 Aside from better sales results, greater customer satisfaction, commitment & loyalty, a huge additional benefit is that the skills learnt in this training are equally applicable in the workplace. These skills flow into all aspects of working and personal relationships.

Participants become better mangers, peers, teammates, friends and spouses.