Getting Real - Being Clear

Kauai SunsetMy friend Jim is a retired B2B insurance salesman, with tons of sales experience. In one of our conversations about discovering the soul of the sale, he commented, "You describe an ideal situation where both you and the buyer are clear, confident and self-assured; and the prospect is personally empowered by their employer to make a decision. I found selling much easier in this setting. The challenge is to find those conditions in a prospect company."
Jim described his experience in dealing with prospects who are so wrapped up in their own personal situation that it is all but impossible to 'get through to them'. For him, active listening and related techniques didn't always work. Jim asked, how does the soul of the sale approach help with situations where you don’t have ideal conditions?
Well that got my juices flowing! It is especially the challenging situations with dis-empowered or preoccupied prospects where a connection with the soul level transforms the sales process. Jim and I came to the same conclusion that the most important thing a sales person can orchestrate in a new or existing sales relationship can be expressed in one word: CLARITY.
Both sales person and customer must have a clear picture and understanding of what needs to be achieved and what will be offered and delivered. Not every relationship is the right match, and not every sales opportunity will come to fruition. Getting to that level of clarity is crucial in navigating the sales journey, and being focused on the most important relationships.

As I reflected on the idea of CLARITY, it occurred to me that the letters make a great acronym for a set of core principles or attributes that empower what I call “soulful selling”, or better yet, “awakened selling”.

Creativity: transformational sales are created, not made; create the environment you desire
Leadership: lead the change you expect to see in others; live your vision
Attachment: prospects feel the tentacles of your attachment; set them free
Renewal: people sense how you perceive them; suspend judgment, be in the moment
Intent: pure intent opens the door to productive exchange; be of service
Trust: doubts undermine agreement; know your product, build trust through transparency
Yoga: divergent points of view are part of life; don’t argue, find the unity in diversity

These ideas will surely come up in future posts and discussions. I invite you to comment and share your own experience with how you may have discovered some of the same principles in your own sales (or life) journey…