You Learned This in Kindergarten

Stop making sales more complex that it needs to be.

Here’s an example of that.

I frequently get questions from sellers about how best to connect and build rapport with buyers.

I turn the question around. I ask them “Did you ever learn how to make a new friend?”

I’m sure that you know how to make a friend. (You do, don’t you?)

If you do, then you know how to connect with a potential new customer.

I’m not saying that you want your buyers to be your friend. Instead, what I am saying is that building a connection with a buyer starts at the same place.

Imagine that you met someone interesting at a mutual friend’s birthday party. You think to yourself that you’d like to learn more about this person. (I’m going to assume that you didn’t role-play “effective opening lines for making new friends” a few dozen times with your significant other before you went to the party.)

So, you met someone you want to get to know better, what do you do next?

Enroll them in an automated 5-email sequence to get them into your Friend Funnel?

Give them an elevator pitch about why you’d make a good friend?

Actually, I don’t have to tell you what to do.

You already know. You’ve probably made friends dozens of times, or hundreds of times, in your life before you got into sales. Starting in kindergarten. Whatever you did then, try that now.

Your job in sales is simply to help people make a purchase decision.

Now, to do that you have to build some level of personal connection and rapport with one or more stakeholders.

Which means that when you meet a potential prospect, stop and think first about how you want to come across.

Don’t automatically default to being the “salesy” version of you. That’s rarely a good look.

Instead ask yourself what you would say and do if you’d just met the buyer in a social setting. What’s the first thing you’d ask them?

Then do that.

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