We Are What We Do in Sales and in Life
Prominent Nobel prize recipient, Albert Camus, is quoted as saying “We are what we do. ” What this means is our actions are very much integrated into who are are. What a potentially frightening thought and one that might make “The Thinker” quiver.
Take selling or sales for example. What type of salesperson are you? You can choose from a plethora of sales styles from relationship builder to collaborative to technical or knowledgeable to high pressure or “closing sales” or just the opposite of the back door or loath one.
Now consider matching your selling style to how you really buy.
- Is your buying behavior in alignment with your sales style?
- Does there exist a disconnect between the your selling and buying approaches?
- Could this gap affective how people perceive your authenticity?
For example, maybe your style is being a relationship selling or relationship builder. Your goal is to build and maintain strong relationships with your potential customers, unfilled clients and even centers of influence. Now when you make a buy, you may have a tendency to interact with the employees in the business such as when you take your vehicle in for some maintenance. As a replacement for of just sitting and reading a book, you engage the service person when he or she is not busy in real, authentic conversations.
Now if your sales style is one of being technical or a knowledge salesperson when engaging that automotive service person your actions are asking questions, a lot of questions. Your goal is to learn as much as doable about what is happening and what you can do to avoid a similar problem. As a buyer, you may conduct considerable research before making any buys especially a significant ones.
For those who are high pressure or reflect that “closing” sales style, their buying actions may be rather quick, in and out. Returning to the automotive experience, these individuals would be asking “How quick can you renovate my car?” and probably are counting the minutes especially if the renovate time exceeds what they were quoted. After all, they need to get to that next deal.
Loath sellers may be loath buyers. Maybe these types of individuals are always second guessing themselves by “Did I make the right choice?” or asking questions to the service personnel “Are you sure this needs to be done?”
If “we are what we do,” then we have the opportunity to make changes because as free will individuals we have 100% of the choices we make when it comes to how we sell and what we buy. The problem is that sometimes because we do not know ourselves very well, we listen to others and this further widens this authenticity gap.
What I have observed is that far too many people are unaware of how they make decisions and the specific talents they use in coming to those decisions. This lack of awareness keeps them from having clarity necessary in making the right decisions. In a sales situation this would be an internal question such as “should I question this question of my prospect?”
Another performance is quite a few people who earn their living by selling do not have a written clear core values statement. This is a simple statement of one’s on-negotiable behaviors or what some may call business ethics.
Having worked with numerous individuals and organizations, my belief is that this statement is the most vital one and needs to be addressed before any others. Since society appears to be trending to a lack of personal accountability and personal responsibility, those professional salespersons who are know their values (business ethics) and whose behaviors consistently reflect those values will have far greater success.
When we are in alignment with those values or business ethics, then our actions are also in alignment and we can be comfortable with the phrase “we are what we do.” But when there exists a lack of congruency between our values and our actions, then red flags are raised in the minds of our potential customers or prospects. Having a red flag raised in the buying choice making process is that last business you want to happen especially if your goal is to increase sales.
For it is truly our authenticity that pulls us as professional sales people to our potential customer or clients. Since people buy from people they know and entrust, they are more likely to buy from someone they perceive to be authentic. But woe to that salesperson who fakes being authentic because he or she will eventually suffer long term negative consequences.
Since mind reading is still not a honed skill set in the ahead of schedule 21st century, our actions are what our potential customers see first. The greater alignment and congruency between those actions or behaviors with our internal beliefs and that includes our sales style helps to strengthen the relationship between the buyers (them) and sellers (us).
The statement “we are what we do” is to be sure an fascinating and one that may prompt you to respond with your own thoughts.