How to Sell: yourself, your products, your services

Hi, welcome back. Today we are looking at selling techniques and phrases that could be useful if

you're trying to sell something. Now, not all of you will be working in sales and marketing,

but the reality is that on a fundamental human level, we're selling ourselves the whole time.

Um, so it's about a kind of an attitude, like maybe you're trying to get picked in the football

team. Um, we're going to be looking at just the kind of approach and the confidence you need to

have to be able to sell yourself as well as phrases that you can use if you are working in sales.

Um, okay. So my top tips, you want to have a confident voice. I've got other videos where

I'm teaching aspects of voice work, so do check those out, but very basically don't mumble. Yep.

Don't be too overbearing. Yep. But be yourself, speak clearly, communicate what you need to say,

and you should try and feel good. So, so many different things you can do to make yourself

feel good from listening to music to, um, you know, small adjustments, eating the right food,

wearing clothes that you feel comfortable in. Um, you know, this is a whole lifestyle thing, but

before you are the moment before you go to try and sell, like, you know, pick yourselves up,

make you feel, make yourselves feel good. Be yourself. Yeah. Um, there's no point trying to

copy someone else. Um, I had the misfortune to have to work in London where I was one of those,

um, people trying to raise money for charity on the streets. It's not a fun job. Um,

a chugger they're called, um, charity fundraiser. Um, and copying my boss's approach didn't work

because he was totally different to me. And, uh, I was really bad at the job left after a week.

Um, but I'm an amazing salesman, obviously, and I've got so much to teach you.

Um, right. You need to make the script your own. Um, so, you know, have a look at it. What are the

compelling reasons that you can think of for your customer to buy that product? Try and rephrase it.

How would you actually say this? Because it needs to sound natural to you. Um, you need to be

listening to the person you're selling to. So really respond to them. You know, what are their

concerns? Like if you, if you can sort of build a relationship with them, then they're much more

likely to buy a product from you. Um, you know, have an interest in them, make it new each time.

Um, so as an actor, sometimes I would do plays, you know, time and time and time and time again,

but the trick is to do it. So, you know, that audience member hasn't seen this

show before, so it needs to be a new experience for them. And the same thing is if you're selling,

like, you know, um, really think about what it is that you are selling and, um, be interested

and excited in it. Uh, not great. It shows a lack of fluency. It shows a lack of sort of

assurance. I sometimes play a game with my students where they have to speak for 30 seconds

about a given topic and they're not allowed to hesitate by going, um, uh, they're not allowed

to deviate by going off topic and they're not allowed to repeat themselves. Now I've once did

another sales job where I had to go into this office and we'd be sat in front of a computer

and we'd have to cold call various people asking them to give money to a charity. So no, Mr. Jones

is not interested. Okay. On to the next person. You see what I wasn't doing is making it new each

time. And I wasn't, um, I didn't have energy. Have you watched wolf of wall street that highly

entertaining film with Leonardo DiCaprio? You know, those guys are going, you know,

they're ramming it down their throats. I'm not saying you have to be quite that sort of bullish,

but if you stand up and get sort of passionate about what you're doing,

then it's going to be much more interesting for the other person. Anticipate questions.

Why might the person not be interested? Think of a comeback. You've got to pre meditate everything,

right? Let's start looking now at some actual phrases that you could use specifically with

a telephone cold call. I have a friend called Harry who works at a wonderful clothes company

called a Puma. So we're going to imagine that we're him doing a cold call. Hi, it's Harry from

a Puma. Like they might not have a clue who a Puma is, but I'm going to go straight on it.

You're probably in the middle of doing something and then I'm going to leave a pause. It gives

them a chance to respond. They might say, yeah, I'm watching the football. What do you want me?

So this, I said, um, again, didn't I? Maybe you can keep a little tally.

This is an opportunity to respond to what they've just said. Oh, the football. Fantastic. Who's

playing today? Oh yeah. It's the wolves game. You're not a wolves fan. Are you, sir or madam?

They're like, what do you want me? What is this? But at least I'm starting to build that relationship.

I will go on to what you say when you give your pitch on the next board, but I'm just explaining

ways into the conversation at the moment. So we could say, I understand. Well, I won't keep you

for too long. I know you want to get back to that football, but, and then I'm going to go into my

sales pitch. There's no apology here. Yeah. We're trying to eliminate these ums, these ahs. If we

appear too apologetic, then they're just going to sort of dismiss us. We've got to be a little bit

confident and, you know, you've got to get in there.

Another approach would be this. So we, the same beginning. Hi, it's Harry from Opumu.

I haven't caught you at a bad time, have I? Now, this is quite clever psychology because we like

to say no, but if the answer is no, then, oh, great. So we've got some time to talk.

So you're playing a little mind game on them. Right. Let's go now and look at how you actually

talk about your company. Right. Let's get into the main content. You'll notice that the attitude

here is one of confidence in the product that is being promoted. Now, a cultural difference between

North Americans and Brits is that North Americans are very good at selling themselves and saying

what they do and promoting it, whereas the British are more sort of reticent. They hold

back a bit more. But I think there are some lessons to learn from the Americans here.

So we've got the interest on the phone. The person is listening at least. And now it's our moment

to talk about the company. We're going to swap over. We're not going to worry about Opumu just

because it works better to talk about my mum's garden design business. So let's talk about that.

So my company, I'm going to put the name in there, transforms derelict spaces into beautiful gardens.

We work with... Do we work with individuals, groups, FTSE 500 companies? We work with

individuals in the such and such region. And we recently helped, let's say, a cafe to create

an outdoor wonderland that has now doubled the amount of customers they have enjoying

their outdoor space. With this particular cafe, we managed to... We managed to get rid of the problem

of no one sitting outside when it rains by creating an awning. And we also removed the

inconvenience of the buses and the traffic creating noise pollution because the bush

that we put in blocked off much of the sound. And ultimately, the customers enjoyed being in there

to such an extent that our trade volume has massively gone up, or their volume has gone up.

So I was wondering if you'd be interested in a garden redesign or cafe redesign.

Now, I was going quite slowly through this material, and I was thinking about it.

I hadn't worked it out in advance. Obviously, if you are selling something, then you need to have...

You need to know your script so well that you're like, "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da." You need to

know your examples. You need to know what you have done and why it was so amazing. Okay?

Now, it's really important that you find out the needs of the customer. What exactly

are you looking for? Give them a chance to spell it out, and then say how you can supply that need.

Maybe they say, "Actually, you know what? I don't need a new garden at the moment. I'm

happy with what I've got." This answer comes from the world of cold calling. "Not a problem at all."

Okay? Do you see how we're kind of putting all the sounds together?

Elision. "Not a problem at all." "Not a problem at all."

What I would say... Emphasis on "would." What I would say is that about 90% of our clients

said that exact same thing, and I'd love to show you some pictures from the transformations of

gardens that we have done. Now, we're being purposeful. We're being proactive here, and

we're saying, "Come on. Let's do this." Would it work for you if we arranged an initial meeting,

and we could talk about some potential aspects of the garden we could put in?

Shall we book an appointment? Shall we send over? Shall we arrange a follow-up call?

What if we met next Tuesday? Okay? So, the general attitude. Confident.

You know your product. It's great. Yeah? You're going to get in there. You're going to ask

questions. You're going to form a relationship. You're going to listen to the other person.

You're going to take your cues from them. You know your script, but you're going to react

to what the other person says. Okay? Hope that's been useful. Hope there's been

something in here that you can apply to your everyday life.

Until the next time, make sure you do the quiz, and happy selling.