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 Want
to sell something? Look at it from a buyer point of view! This week, I got
an example of a door to door salesman who lacked this skill completely.
Suppose you have to someone the sell aerial photographs you took from his
house, how would you do it? What the guy tried was giving me a compliment
for my nice garden and the good work done by the garden architect. My
first reaction was: "Hey, I want compliments for MY work and besides, the
grass field looks awful on that picture."
First lesson of selling with empathy make sure you get a grasp of the
thinking process of the customer, in stead of imposing your own thinking.
So what I would do is ask questions, such as: "What do you think of this
picture of your house, your garden, etc. If we would enlarge it, how would
you want us to correct it, etc?"
The guy's presupposition was "I have a unique product, this customer can
only buy from me. So I have the power. I can punish the customer by NOT
selling." My reaction is: "Yes, but do I need this picture?"
The second lesson of empathy is to understand how the customer can use the
product - and eventually help to create a need.
 For
creating a need you could tell stories of other customers, what they got
out of it. You could also ask questions such as "Imagine showing your
house to others? Image using this picture to see how you could even
improve your garden, …" The questions you ask here would be preferentially
driven by the information the customer gave you in the first part of the
conversation.
Only once you know the need of the customer, you may clarify how your
product responds to that. Don't do that exhaustively, that would be
overselling. Just make sure you deal with the important concerns this
person has and the criteria he put forward during his explanation.
In this case, this sales person was getting nowhere, so I tried to help
him a bit and I said: "My wife is not at home, but if you borrow me the
picture, I'll show it to her and ask her what she thinks during breakfast
- you could com back tomorrow." Unfortunately, the salesperson started
from the following belief set: "the customer cannot be trusted" + "I don't
let the picture go out of my hand" - so he refused.
Third lesson: let the customer get a "taste" of the product, let him feel
it, experience how it would be like to own it. So I would have accepted
the offer, asking for an appointment to come back to the customer and
hving an occasion to know how his wife thought about it.
So how did the aerial sales end? The guy walked away without selling and
without understanding why I didn't cooperate. I was happy, since I had a
case to write about! Of course, If YOU are at the purchasing side, and you
really would need the product of this person, I would recommend you
another strategy, but that's another story…
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