When working in B2B sales, it can help to do what you can to not sound like a salesperson.
Why Sounding Like a Salesperson Can Be Bad
The reason that we make this suggestion is that when you are in B2B sales, you are going to face prospects that get sold to a lot. Every day, their phone is ringing from salespeople just like you.
Even though you have a great product and something that the prospect may need, there are a lot of bad salespeople who are calling and bugging your prospect. On top of that, your prospects are usually extremely busy.
When you add all of that up, you end up with prospects who always operate with their guard at a medium level. They are protecting themselves from being sold to and having some of their valuable time taken away.
Everything you say when working in B2B sales will either increase or decrease the prospect’s level of guardedness. And if you sound like a salesperson, their guard will likely increase.
If you feel that is a safe assumption, then if you try to avoid sounding like a salesperson, you could be more likely to decrease the level of guardedness. Worst case, you keep it at a constant level, and this small change prevents you from triggering more guardedness.
How to Not Sound Like a Salesperson
Even if you agree with all of that, you might still think that you are a salesperson, so how are you going to operate in B2B sales without sounding like one? The quick answer is that you will not need to be misleading at all and hide any of your intentions and goals.
The key here is to sound more like a business person than a salesperson. A business person will be similar to a salesperson in that they may also represent a company that has something to sell and may end up selling a product to you. But these two will differ in the impression they make and the feeling they give the people they interact with.
For example, a salesperson will try to convince the prospect to buy what they are trying to sell. A businessperson might look more for those who need what they have to offer and not try hard to convince anyone.
That is just one quick example, but think about how differently a prospect will feel when talking with someone who is trying to convince them to do something compared with talking with someone who is trying to determine if they need something.
How to Sound More Like a Business Person
Here are some quick tips for sounding more like a business person:
- Minimize your company and product details in your pitch, especially early in the sales process
- Focus more on talking about the prospect than talking about your products and company
- Focus on the benefits you have to offer, not what your products do
- Focus more on the prospect’s challenges that you can help to resolve
- Get your prospect to share in a major portion of the talking in your meetings
- Ask good probing questions
- Pre-qualify the prospect to make sure they are a fit with what you have to offer
- Position yourself more as a trusted advisor
- Soft-Disqualify the prospect to let them know you are not pushing something on them
- Let the prospect lead in the decision as to the next steps
SalesScripter can help you to have your best sales pitch when working in B2B sales.