Great sales professionals usually have two very powerful weapons: influence and persuasion. And these have more to do with behavioural psychology than with traditional sales techniques.
It’s hard to say who the best salesperson in a given industry is, because many factors would have to be analysed. Obviously, an excellent, well-respected brand at a good price will always be easier to sell than an unknown brand at a very high price. Even so, sales teams have sometimes shown that, thanks to their selling skills and their understanding of human behaviour, they could beat teams that had everything going for them, despite starting at a disadvantage.
But if there was ever a world’s best salesman at selling “something”, it was without a doubt a man from Detroit named Joe Girard.
Joe got rich as a simple salesman at a Chevrolet dealership. He could have had his own car dealership, but he didn’t want one. He made enough money to start any kind of business, but he didn’t want that either.
His skill was selling, and nothing else, and he was so extraordinarily good at it that he didn’t want to be distracted from his main skill and talent.
Why was he the world’s best salesman?
For more than a decade, he averaged more than five cars per day worked. As a result, he was named the best salesman of the year for 12 years in a row, and he even earned a Guinness record as the world’s best car salesman.
Naturally, other salespeople wanted to know his secret. I imagine they were all expecting a set of techniques and steps to follow, but the explanation Joe gave was much simpler.
The formula for sales success, as Joe himself explained it in an interview, was as simple as this
Offer a fair price and get the customer to like you. That’s all. Combine those two things, he said, and you will do well in business.
Joe saw it as that simple, but his straightforward formula for sales success is far more complex than it looks at first sight. After all, with our powers of persuasion, we can even make a product’s price seem fair to the customer without it actually being fair.
The point is that Joe Girard may not have been aware of how much lay behind his simple formula. Getting someone to like you so much that they trust you with a purchase they could make somewhere else depends on several factors that behavioural psychology has been studying for a long time.
(See also: How to get people you’ve just met to like you, using FBI undercover techniques)
What makes a customer like a salesperson?
1. Physical attractiveness
The benefits of physical attractiveness have turned out to be much greater than anyone ever imagined. An attractive person will have an easier time in every area of life than someone less blessed in looks. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a job interview or making a better impression on someone. If you’re attractive, you’re already part of the way there.
Don’t underestimate the “halo effect” we have discussed so often: we unconsciously attribute all kinds of abilities to attractive people. Simply because they are attractive, we credit them with greater intelligence, more confidence and stronger leadership skills.
That’s why many professionals now turn to other professionals for advice on how to get in shape and how to dress.
And there’s no need to panic, because, as we have said many times, being good-looking is one thing and being attractive is something quite different. Anyone can become more attractive by following a few very basic steps. Often, much of the problem is solved with the right clothes.
Other times, it has a lot to do with body language and the way we express ourselves. For that, we shared 16 tips for becoming more attractive in a previous article (highly recommended).
2. Similarity
We win people’s trust when they have a reason to identify with us, that is, when we share a similar background and life, as well as similar concerns.
Having gone to the same school as the customer’s brother, or having taken the same trip to the same place… telling stories the other person can relate to will make them see us as similar to them.
Remember those scenes from American films that comedians sometimes use in their routines: two men are about to get into a fight, and one tells the other that he fought in Vietnam.
The other man takes a deep breath and says: “Me too, colonel of the 77th squadron. It’s an honour.” At that moment the fight is over, mutual respect appears and they exchange phone numbers. All they need to become friends is a shared experience.
This doesn’t only happen in films. It happens every day, everywhere, and it is one of the main reasons we come to trust someone quickly. In fact, it is the con artist’s favourite technique: all they have to do is study a person and find something in common so that the victim trusts them and they can deceive them.
That’s why it is one of the techniques salespeople use most. But since we aren’t mind readers, we will need to…
3. Listen more than you talk
Although people still picture salespeople as the typical “smooth talker with the gift of the gab”, good salespeople have never been like that. If you come across a salesperson who talks and talks without stopping, run! That technique has always been used by salespeople who sell things you don’t need or things that are simply crap.
These salespeople sometimes got customers to sign (and this is no joke) just so the salesperson would shut up and leave. The customer was afraid that raising any objection would set the salesperson off talking nonstop again.
These salespeople died out the day the law made it possible to cancel any contract within 7 to 14 days of signing it. That proved this kind of “sales coercion” was useless: they might get 10 contracts signed, but in the end 9 of those customers would cancel.
As a good salesman, I’m sure Joe asked his customers open-ended questions, and in that way he could draw out all the information he would later use to create those similarities.
I always insist that a good salesperson is a better listener than talker.
(See: 10 findings in psychology that explain why we make wrong decisions every day)
4. Familiarity and a sense of cooperation
If that person found us attractive on first impression, if we have created similarities with them, listened to them and, thanks to listening, come to admire some of the things they do and paid them a compliment, we have almost certainly created familiarity with that person. And so they like us.
Now all that’s left is to put the icing on the cake with the old cooperation technique. Numerous psychological studies have shown that even when two people who don’t like each other start cooperating in a fight for the common good, they end up forming emotional bonds.
In the case of salesperson and customer, the two people cooperating already like each other. And this cooperation can arise as simply as joining forces in the fight to get a reasonable price for the product.
In other words, the salesperson puts on a show of going in to “fight” with the boss to get a better price on the car for the customer.
This technique is very effective, because we are not only creating a sense of cooperation within a newly formed friendship; the “laws of reciprocity” also come into play, as we unconsciously create in the other person a need to repay us for the effort and dedication we have shown in saving them money on the car.
5. Sending 13,000 greeting cards
Joe sent 13,000 greeting cards to his former customers on every occasion, such as Thanksgiving. Joe understood that you don’t make sales, you make customers.
Staying in some kind of contact with your customers builds a long-term bond. What’s more, Joe didn’t deceive anyone, so the customers who had liked him as a person went on liking him afterwards. So if a friend of an old customer was looking to buy a car, that customer would no doubt send them to Joe.
Once we take these five points into account, I’m sure no one will be surprised that Joe Girard was the world’s best car salesman.
Further reading
- The 22 commandments of a good salesperson
- This question will help you hire the best salespeople
- 3 books that aren’t about sales but every salesperson should read
Featured image: Cjp24, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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