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Too often I hear people come up to customers in a store and say “How can I help you?” or “What brings you in today?” While these phrases have the right idea, they are too broad for the ultimate goal; to build rapport and to find the customer’s pain point. It is important to create a bond with your customer by establishing a relationship that is slightly personal and direct. A pain point is the problem that the customer needs to be solved. We can do both of these important things within the first couple sentences of our introduction. To explain this in more detail, I will use an example. We will place ourselves at a neighborhood kiosk, and we are selling a textbook with a tutorial DVD bundle.

Every parent should want the best education for their child, and a neighborhood is a great place to catch moms and their children. Building rapport will include finding something in common with them so we can think similarly. Being friendly will allow them to remember us, and open up to us- like a friend! We can help them relax by mentioning a little bit about ourselves and some background information about the product company. In this case, we can talk about the mission of the company, and why and how we help children succeed. Because we are in a neighborhood it is easy to use my “people follow people” tactic by mentioning people’s names in the area that they may know. It is also important to know the other child’s name and any information we have collected when talking to them (ex: “Oh you play basketball? Do you play with the Bulldogs? I met with Mrs. Smith yesterday! Johnny, do you know her son Philip?”). Once we get Mrs. Jones talking about herself, we can gain control by “mirroring” her body language and voice inflection. When we match her, we remain on the same wavelength and that is when we are able to focus on finding her pain point.

Many people in sales fail because their mouths are bigger than their ears. They ask too many questions without listening to Mrs. Jones’s answers. That is how we repeat ourselves or, worse, miss her pain point. In this example, the child is important to sell to because they are the ones who are using the product, and if Johnny can get Mrs. Jones to believe that he will use it, then she will get it. Here, we need to learn Johnny’s background, discover the current problem, define a specific need, and then show how our product fulfills that need. Common needs that we have for textbook/tutoring bundles are that they save time, the parents can’t remember the material to help, or they do remember but they used to use a different method. We may need to find out what kind of grades Johnny is getting, how easy it is for his the achieve the grades he has, his favorite subjects, or how much help he gets from his parents. If the need is that they spend a lot of time on homework, mention the ways that the textbook saves time. This turns the previous example into “Mrs. Smith was just telling me that Philip stays so busy with basketball practice and the marching band, that he dreads studying for several hours after school. That’s what this is for!”

It’s okay to leave some things out when you’re speaking to your prospects. It’s not okay to completely make up things about your product. I mean, if you are committed to your product, mentioning what is great about it shouldn’t be so difficult that you must resort to lying. However, when offering the various types of salads that one can get with their meal, it’s not a total crime to say that the more expensive option is the most popular. People follow people. When you tell them what is most popular, whether it is a $6.50 glass of the house wine, or an $11 glass of Santa Margherita pinot grigio, they want what everyone else is getting.

At the restaurant that I work at we sell a jalapeno margarita. With that beverage, we offer our house tequila for $6.50, along with our top shelf options. Best of all, we offer the Codigo tequila, which is owned by George Strait. Codigo Anejo is $15, and Codigo Rosa is $12.50. Whenever I sell that drink, the dialogue usually sounds something like this, “For our jalapeno margarita we do use George Strait’s Codigo tequila! We have the anejo, which means it is aged so if you love a great tequila flavor, I would strongly suggest that one. It is $15 with a free floater and with great reason! I, personally, tried the Rosa. It is more of a blush, pink color, so it is the lighter of the two and it is less in price and it includes the floater as well. I love them both! Which one would you like to try today?” My pen is out, my head is down towards my writing pad, and I have sold a jalapeno margarita.

Try not to be too honest with your prospects that you downplay your product. I’ve witnessed other people selling the same drink using the Codigo tequila. Often, they put too much emphasis on the price, and they wait for their prospect’s reaction. When they sense a bad vibe from their customer, they quickly follow up with the fact that we have a house one for $6.50. We never know how dedicated our customers are to a product that we forget to mention either. Ms. Jones doesn’t care about whether you think the $40 mushroom filet is too expensive, you should let her decide what she can and can’t afford. However, if you know you can’t afford the steak, expressing how great it tastes and why it’s reasonable for it to cost as much as it does, knowing you haven’t tried it, is acceptable in the world of sales.

After reading an article by Nir and Far, titled, How to Boost Desire Using the Psychology of Scarcity, I decided that this is one of the best topics to write about for my blog. They used an example from a 1975 study in which there are ten jars of the same cookies, all full except one jar, which contained two treats. Most of the customers desired the cookies that came from the empty jar. The emptiness of the jar, or as we will call it, scarcity, affected their perception of value. When people feel like they could possibly miss out on an opportunity to try something, they will be more inclined to take that one time offer.

I work at a restaurant that is constantly frequented by tourists. I am always extremely surprised when I am talking to a table that has come from Washington, or another far state, just to order a hamburger and fries. We offer off-menu, seasonal items such as local craft beers, different types of cheesecakes, specialty steaks, and we have a catch of the day. When I present these items, I remember to include words such as “seasonal”, “today we are offering..”, “right now we have…” that way they feel like if they do not order the temporary item, they will be left out of the loop.

The article that I referred to by Nir and Far included an example of scarcity going wrong. Of course, if you claim that an item is scarce when it actually isn’t, there is a chance that the customer could come back at a later date just to realize that you lied. Nir and Far mentioned the time when Mailbox and Tempo opened their apps to a small group of people earlier this year. If you were not in the front of the line, then the wait to use the app was inefficiently long. Many registered users wrote bad reviews and rated the app negatively, despite the fact that they never actually used the app. As a result, the creators of the apps expressed their regret for underestimating the demand for their product, and admitted that they had lost about 100,000 registered users as a result of it. Because of incidences like this one, we are careful about how we use scarcity. Have your facts right before your use this tactic!

I figured that I should revisit one of my previous blog posts titled, “Stop Caring So Much!”. It is very important to understand that although we should avoid being over the top toward our audience, we should be careful to avoid having a lack of commitment to our product. As a waitress, I find myself to be very loyal to the restaurant that I work at. I am dedicated to my fellow servers, the cooks, the bartenders, the hosts, the maintenance crew, and also, the FOOD! Tourists frequent the city that the eatery is located in, and I find myself in the position where I must know facts about the food for I am their only information source available to them!

In the food industry, being committed to your product could mean a number of things. Such things would include having accurate knowledge about the menu, having a selection of favorites from every section of the menu, understanding how the food is prepared as well as who prepares it, or even knowing information about the restaurant itself, if applicable. Of course, as mentioned in related posts, we want to be careful not to come off too eager, but customers love when our passion bleeds through just a little bit as we share some of the positive outcomes of purchasing our product. If we have a hard time coming up with ways to calm down, we must remember that product knowledge helps us build confidence in ourselves to allow us to relax while speaking to Mrs. Jones.

Knowing what we are selling does more than help us look good. We will also be more inclined to help guide our customers in the right direction as to knowing what product is more suitable for their tastes. Queensland made a list about how we can turn our product features into benefits. We must know features such as how our products work, their purpose, how they were made, its price, its lifespan, etc in order to implement their tip, which is the essentially highlight the benefits such as how the price makes it comfortably affordable, or how your company assures a 3 year warranty if anything is wrong with the product. Salespersons must achieve a level of commitment before successfully coming off as confident.