There are two ways in which you can use psychology to increase your sales. The first is to gain knowledge of the psychological aspects of sales and buyer / seller interaction. The second is to leave behind the persona of sales, of being salesy and to learn and adopt the working ethics of psychologists and counsellors. To essentially transform yourself from a sales executive to thinking and being like a sales psychologist.
If you are able to do so, not only would your sales results shoot up, but you would also be respected, revered and sought after. People would love you and love to do business with you. But that is only if you are able to do both. To gain insight of the knowledge of sales psychology and to commit yourself to the responsible use of your new found knowlege by adopting the working ethics and principles of psychologists. Otherwise, you will be seen as nothing more than a manipulator to others and people will detest you.
Coming back to the first step, which is to gain knowledge of sales psychology and how you can apply this to your sales job. The most important aspects to remember and further your knowledge in, are the factors of human needs, weaknesses and triggers. Everyone has a need, something that they do not have and assume that they must have in order to be happy, successful or whatever their goal is in life. Such things that we see as lacking in our lives or in ourselves become our self-created weaknesses. As human beings, there is very little that we basically need to survive as a species. But we always want more, we always want and strive for that which we feel we are lacking in and don’t have. So everyone in this world has a need, something that they feel that they don’t have, and this realisation creates psychological stress and emotional pain which triggers them into action to work towards the acquirements of whatever they feel they don’t have.
Now here is where you come in. What are you selling and what needs can it fulfil ? Don’t think generically. Think psychologically. What psychological needs does your product or service fulfil ? What psychological stress and emotional pain can you and your service or product address ? And most importantly, where are the people who are experiencing this pain ? Those are the people who will willingly buy from you.
Let’s turn this around and look at your prospects first. What are their psychological needs ? What are their stresses and sources of emotional pain ? How can you relieve their pain, their stress and fulfil their needs with your products and services ? If you can’t, move on. There are people out there in pain who need you. Find someone who needs you. Go help make someone’s life better. That is what your job as a sales professional. To make people’s lives better. The sale comes naturally as a consequence of your good intentions.
This is the second step towards your sales success. Your ethics, principles and your intentions. If you merely acquire the knowledge of human needs, triggers and weaknesses and use this to make people buy from you, it is most likely that you would be perceived as dishonest and salesy. On the other hand, if you use your knowledge of human behaviour and motivation to help people, you will be tremendously successful.
It is not possible to elaborate in full in this short article on how to adopt the working principles and ethics of a sales psychologist, but we can start with one important point. Every morning, take a look at your list of prospects, whether it is your diary, card holder, or CRM system and instead of thinking to yourself, ‘who can I target today, who can I sell to today, who is going to sign up’ which is the typical sales mentality, try something different. Ask yourself, ‘Who can I help today ? Who needs me, where are they and how can I reach them and make their life better today ?’
In this manner, try and examine all your thoughts and perceptions on sales, your job, your prospects and see how you can change them like in the above example. This is the first step to transforming yourself from sales executive to thinking like a sales psychologist. I did this in 2003 while working on a selling assignment for something perceived as unsellable. Not only was I surprised by the inherent thought processes that we sales professionals have, but also by the results I was able to achieve by changing my intentions and perception towards my job, my prospects and the sales profession.
I have highlighted some of these important discoveries in my book, The Sales Psychologist – The Greatest Secrets of Ethical Psychological Persuasion applied to Sales – which is still a work in progress I must say as my readers continue to pour in their comments and questions. The kindle version is available through amazon, while other reader formats as well as pdf versions are downloadable from smashwords