How as a professional salesperson can you get the prospect to understand that what you sell is different and not a commodity? The answer to this question has more to do with how you do it rather than what you do.

Selling is about style. Style is not an intellectual thing. It is an emotional feeling you get when you are in the presence of someone who has it. All things being equal namely price and product, the salesperson with the most style and ability to connect at an emotional level with the prospect will get the business most of the time.

If this is true then how do you display your style? One of the ways is to behave in a manner that is exactly opposite of your competition. Instead of pitching, convincing or quoting, try becoming a consultant by asking questions, listening and probing to help the prospect discover for themselves what their problems are and ignore the temptation to volunteer information and educate the prospect with your vast array of product knowledge.

In doing this the prospect will come to understand that you are different and do not fit the stereotype of a salesperson. When you do this your prospect will sense that you are different and will open up and begin to share information with you that will help you position yourself as their vendor of choice.

Sometimes it’s difficult to ask for referrals, whether as the sales person you don’t feel comfortable, you don’t like putting the pressure on to get referrals, maybe you haven’t worked with the person long enough to establish the relationship of being “referable”, or the customer/client may blow you off telling you “if I know of anyone, I’ll let them know about you”. Either way, you walk out without any names.

One of the best and easiest prospecting ideas is the opposite of the referral or the reverse referral. When you want to solicit similiar businesses, for example, hardware stores or computer stores in the same vicinity of the customer you already have, this tip will apply.

Rip out the yellow pages for the type of business that you want to solicit in the same vicinity of your customer. If you are in a hardware store, show the hardware store yellow pages to your customer, which most likely would be the owner if this instance, and ask him which hardware store owners that you shouldn’t call on, either because they’re not as nice as you are. they’re difficult to work with, they have no money, they’re not progressive thinkers enough to expand their business, whatever the reason.

Give him a big black magic marker and ask him to cross off the names of the businesses that you shouldn’t call on. As he’s crossing off names, ask him to mark the names of the people you don’t know. Now there should be only a few unmarked names left. Discuss these remaining names with him and ask questions about the people’s personality, etc. At the end of your fact finding, ask your customer if you could use their name as you call on the remainging list. For the most hesitant referral, this normally works. Especially if you use the magic words, “I’d like to ask you for your help”

If you ask most people in the sales business this question they will tell you something like “the purpose of prospecting is to get people to give you an appointment.” They think that their job is to try and convince people to give them an appointment. They think if they can make enough appointments and talk to enough people then everything will work out fine. They also will tell you “sales is a numbers game.” See enough people and make enough presentations and you will close enough deals. That is so old school. That paradigm went out in the 1970’s. Unfortunately, most companies, and sales managers still believe and teach that approach. That is why there is so much turnover and failure in the sales profession.

Think about it. If your goal in sales is to talk to x number of people and to set y number of appointments to close z number of deals, what happens when you fail to achieve that goal. You feel like a lousy, miserable failure. No matter how strong your ego you can only take so much. So what should you do?

Develop a new paradigm that prospecting is the culling out or disqualifying of suspects. If you start trying to disqualify people and you start getting a lot of “NO’S” you are then achieving your goal. You can feel good about yourself. We call this going for the “NO.”

The objective of prospecting is to eliminate those who have no need, no urgency, or no money for your product or service. Most sales people try to qualify when what they should be doing is trying to disqualify as many suspects as they can. Funny thing is when you adopt this attitude you stop wasting time, become more relaxed and start getting more “Yeses”. It really is a paradox.

Perhaps the answer to this question can be found from Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., a research psychologist at the University of Michigan, and a vanguard in the field of Positive Psychology.

According to Fredrickson negative emotions get people to act in particular ways or what she calls “specific action tendencies.” Most of us know this as fight or flight. In essence, we have been biologically programmed by evolution to take action when we perceive danger or feel threatened. “Positive emotions don’t necessarily narrow people toward a specific action like negative emotions do,” says Fredrickson.

What does this have to do with selling? If you want to get a prospect to take action and buy your product or service you are more likely to succeed if you find a prospect that is experiencing a negative emotion. Negative emotions include things like losing money or time, loss of productivity, high employee turnover, etc.

The one thing that all of these have in common is that they all relate to loss of something. Fear of loss (negative emotion) is a more powerful short-term motivator of human behavior than is the desire (positive emotion) for gain.

Think about it. When do people go to a physician? When they feel great and want to learn how to enhance (positive) their health or when they are in “pain” (negative) and want to get rid of their “pain.” Same thing when it comes to filing income tax returns. Over one million taxpayers wait until April 14th to file their taxes. Why? Fear of having to pay a penalty if they don’t?

Learn to become a heat-seeking missile for “pain.” If you do you will increase your income, shorten your sales cycle and have more fun selling.