Have you ever met a salesperson who went all through their grade school, high school and college years chomping at the bit to graduate to become a salesperson?
Probably not. Why? Because most of us have a poor image of salespeople, believing them to be pushy, manipulative, greedy and caring more about making the sale than they do about helping us make the right buying decision.
But the most successful salespeople today aren’t pushy or manipulative, and in fact do help their prospects make better buying decisions.
They believe selling is merely teaching their prospects why their product or service offers the best solution. In the academic world, there are basically two teaching models;
One; the deductive or “Transmissionist model”, is much like the pushy salesperson model. It’s all about the teacher or salesperson trying to transmit their knowledge by lecturing their students or customers.
The second teaching model, known as the inductive or Guided Discovery learning model, is proving to be much more successful. The Guided Discovery method guides students or customers to their own conclusions through a number of questions and experiments.
When you guide your prospects, discover the merits of your products or services for themselves, they take ownership of their solution. The buyer’s remorse that comes from old-fashioned show and tell selling is by-passed when you guide your prospects to sell themselves.
No one enjoys being “sold”, but everyone likes to buy.
You’ve probably been to a market where one vendor shouted at you to sell his product while another simply gave you a sample to taste.
The vendor who let you sample his products and let you sell yourself probably was more successful. Your advertising can be one of your most powerful Guided Discovery selling methods. .