Choose your friends […insert as applicable…]
What is a friend? To me someone you have simply connected with, but a lot of people mistakenly think it is more than that. I want to discuss friendship and its role in the context of Sales.
Are your friendships purely contractual, i.e. functional? Do you need to examine your friendship skills? Have you become stale or complacent? Is it you “want” rather than “have ” friendship? A subtle, immensely distinct difference, even for young boys and tigers. Read the strip again.
This is my business website, and thus this is a business blog entry, well sort of… I believe life is life no matter what label you put on it. I avoid dividing life into personal, work etc. So what I write continuing onwards applies in many if not all aspects of life.
At what point in a interpersonal situation does it become friendship and what is friendship? I have a unique approach to this in my capacity as advertising salesman.
I’ll digress for a moment. There is no clear definition of friendship and like a lot of life it operates on a spectrum, from close to ephemeral. For example I have dear close friends, and would class my wife Claire as my dearest friend. Then I have business friends, more tenuous, but people I have an association or affinity with - I won’t name names.
But, I view a friendship as starting when I immediately connect with someone. What do I mean? I don’t strive to go through life viewing people as commodities to be consumed, nor used, nor any connection with a human as transient; even a fleeting meeting always leaves a residue. It could be a chat with a stranger on a train or in a coffee shop. Point is I use “friendship” loosely, and if you take this approach you live a fulfilling life, make friends, and establish longer term relationships. There is a common theme(s) between people and if you look to make friends by tapping into this you’ll have a richer life in business and personal lives (as I said I personally don’t like making such simple distinctions.)
Friendship can be a loose thing to a solid thing. Worth reading as a starting point about social connectivity. The thing is we all seek biological and spiritual connectivity, and Sales insone channel in this human interplay - you need to grasp this.
This brings me onto developing friendships from a Sales perspective, and I talk in the Advertising vernacular. I believe all sales can distilled into making a friendship with someone, but it goes beyond a purely contractual as per the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. What friendship do you seek to create? And are you just acting by wrote? Have you stopped to take an interest in the person before you launch into your sales pitch? This is what happens when you don’t learn about a new friend. Do you harness social connectivity in your method?
There are many structures to selling. I was initially trained to AIDA. They are there for a reason and any good salesperson, contrary to popular belief, will work to a structure. Even if not obvious.
Attention You seek to gain the attention of the person you talk to.
Interest You arouse their interest by establish what they need, and then…
Desire You create desire by explaining how your offering meets the need.
Action You close the sale.
What I strive - with my approach - is to put friendship first then the Sales structure, or blend the two together. A Sales approach with friendship. There is a very old Sales phrase that people buy from people and this is true. Any point on this invisible scale of friendship means that two or more people tap into what makes us human and our commonality, or as explained earlier connectivity. There is much psychological material that can be read in this area, with older authors ranging from Dale Carnegie to the contemporary Tim Connor.
It is an old book, but one that holds true today: How to Win Friends and Influence People. And here is an excellent precis of the book and its techniques.
Life is about making connections. One of the best ways to think of life and Sales is akin to a train journey. You get on the train, there are other people on the train that you meet or maybe don’t meet. Some people you meet or don’t meet get off the train, just as new people board the train. The train is in fact your life’s journey. You can choose your life’s destination, or get off and get another train. You can also choose who you talk to and strike up a rapport with. That is life in all its elements. An that is Sales. People are constantly moving in and out of your life and you have control over who you choose to engage with and offer the hand of friendship to; and to an extent you have control over your journey and destination in life. Interestingly enough, and as an aside, have you ever thought who is your train driver?
“When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.” (Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People.)
Don’t be “other people”.