We’ve covered the first half of need, which is determining their personal tastes in your artistic medium, and for many of you, that will suffice.  For some, however, you will be selling higher dollar items that require a greater financial commitment and, therefore, a greater psychological commitment.  For you, the second part of need is imperative to learn.  Everyone is motivated in life by certain factors.  Some take pride in their social status.  Some take pride in their parenthood.  Everyone is different, but these motivators are really what make a person tick.  If you want to really excel at selling your product, you need to learn how to discover these motivators and, when we get to Assistance, illustrate for your customer how your product will fulfill the motivations in their life.

Like before, the key is listening.  Most people love to talk about themselves, whether they are aware of it or not.  If you know how to ask the right questions, you can get people to tell you everything you need to know about how to sell them.  Some sales training manuals refer to these questions as FORM: Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Motivation.  In the sales process, this needs to come early, before you ever try to sell them anything.  Like one of my mentors used to say, “Sequence is the key.”

Ask people questions about their family.  Listen to their answers.  If their eyes light up and they can’t stop talking, you’ve found a hot button.  Ask about their job, if they groan and complain, stay away from that subject, other than to compliment them on their contribution.  Find out what kinds of hobbies they pursue, and make mental notes to yourself about what makes them tick.  When you are assessing their needs, remember this important fact: your tastes, your preferences, your styles do not matter.  Remove yourself from the equation completely.  Many salespeople lose good potential customers because they allow their personality to interfere with the process.  Just because you personally may not like someone else’s taste or lifestyle doesn’t mean that person may not love your art.

Think back to the example of my grandfather during trust.  On the surface, he had all the markings of an ignorant hick.  He had been an avid NASCAR fan from the days when the Daytona race was still on the beach.  He had very little knowledge of art and had virtually no “classical” education.  But he was an avid reader.  He read just about any book he could get his hands on, and he had a thirst for knowledge and a curiosity about the world that was a major influence on my life.  If he had ever attended a book fair or convention, any decent salesperson could have sold him just about any book, if they took the time to listen and learn a little about him.  But the people who turned their noses up to him and passed him off as someone not worth their time couldn’t have given him a book, for he was a proud Scotsman who took snubbing personally.

If you can get yourself out of the process and let someone open up about themselves, you will also strengthen trust.  People will see you as someone who cares about them and is interested in their hopes, dreams, and aspirations.  In addition, you will learn how to sell them on your product.  Listening is the key, but you have to know how to ask the right questions.  In my experience, the biggest flaw salespeople have in this area is stopping at surface level questions.  They’ll ask, “Do you have kids?” and stop there.  The answer they’re going to get is yes or no, but that tells them virtually nothing about the individual.  The next question should be something like, “Are they still in school?” followed by “What’s their favorite subject?”  These questions get the person talking about the children, and you can learn a lot about a person by listening to what they say and how they say it.

For a person’s career, I like to start with, “What kind of work do you do?” and follow with, “How long have you been doing it?”  I love to get people talking about their jobs.  Most of us define ourselves in terms of what we do for a living, and you can learn a lot about a person by listening to how they talk about their profession.  The things they say are rarely as important as how they say them.  Body language is also important.  If you’re not good at reading body language, I strongly encourage you to study up on that subject.

I wish I could go into great detail about what specific answers to listen for when people talk about themselves, but that’s such a complex and detailed list that it would take dozens of posts just to scratch the surface.  I will, however, discuss more about assessing need because it really is one of the most important steps in the entire process.

www.thirdaxe.com

Regardless of whether or not a person is visual, audial, or kinetic, after they’ve had a moment to absorb the initial introduction to the books, I then ask what kind of stuff they like to read.  The answers are going to vary widely, depending on the person, the time of day, and the crowd.  Some people will rattle off a list of names.  Others will give an abstract overview of the style they like.  A few will say anything in print.  Still maintaining eye contact, I listen to the answers and try to pick up a few clues as to what kind of reading interests them.  If I recognize some of the authors they mention or pick up on a theme they like that’s prominent in my books, I file that away and save it for a few moments.

At this stage, all I’m trying to achieve is a general understanding of what makes a book appeal to them.  I let them do most of the talking.  Most professional salespeople understand this basic tenet of human behavior, pioneered by Carl Rogers: people are more likely to be persuaded by you if they feel like you understand them.  It’s why good cop/bad cop is such an effective interrogation tactic.  The best way to understand someone is to let them talk about their likes and dislikes, and the real key here is to file away and remember what they tell you.  These are your bullets, and you’re gonna fire them in a little bit.

When the customer is talking about the kinds of art they like, listen to the ways they describe it.  If they talk about the memories it stirs, they really like things that remind them of the past.  If they talk about how it makes them feel, they enjoy having an emotional connection to the piece.  Your job as the salesperson is to figure out how to relate your product to their particular needs.  We’ll talk a lot more about that when we get to Assistance, but the more you can get them to open up about what you like, the more bullets you’ll have to fire when you’re ready.

I want to make sure I make a couple of things clear; when I talk about getting people to tell me their likes and dislikes and then using this as a bullet later, I’m not talking about tricking them.  That’s what bad salespeople do, and they ruin their own reputation and have to jump from job to job to job to stay ahead of their bad name.  If at any point I realize that my book is not going to fit for that person because they like the polar opposite of what I write, I tell them.  My goal is not to force people into making a purchase they’ll regret.  My goal is to catch as many of my legitimate readers as I can, and that’s how I look at it.  They are my readers if they like fantasy, strong character development, or well crafted narratives, and because they are my reader, it’s my responsibility to get my book in their hands.

That’s the first part of need, and for a small item like a book, which usually costs less than $30, that may be all you need, but if you are an artist trying to sell a higher dollar item that requires much more of a commitment and investment, you will need to learn more about this person.  That’s the second half of need, and it’s a lot more detailed and difficult to master, but if you can get good at this, you can improve your total number of sales and become a much more effective salesperson for your own art.

www.thirdaxe.com

Let’s say for now that trust is not an issue.  You’ve established a pretty good foundation and rapport with your potential customer, and they seem more at ease with you.  The next part of the process is assessing their needs.  There are really two parts to this step.  Understanding what they’re into in terms of your particular art, and also learning what their real motivations are.  This stage of the process is the first place where a professional salesperson begins to separate from everyone else.  The professionals use a secret tactic during this phase that gives them an advantage over most others.  This is the true key to sales, so pay close attention.  They listen.

My former manager, mentor, and friend Tim, the person who taught me most of what I know about sales, is fond of saying, “God gave you one mouth and two ears for a reason.”  I know he didn’t coin that phrase, but because of how much he taught me about this stage, I needed to give him some credit.  If you want to become good at selling people your product, listen closely to what they tell you, and remember what they tell you.  This is how you convince them that your art, your music, your book is going to be the right fit for them.  Let me make an aside for just a moment.  Your work ultimately may not be right for them.  They may end up hating your book, but how will they ever know if they don’t read it to find out, and how will they ever read it if you don’t convince them to try it?  When you are trying to sell a customer, your job is not to please them.  That’s customer service.  Your job in sales is to get them to try the product.  Even if they hate your book personally, there’s a good chance that they’ll give it to a friend or family member who likes it, so in the long run, they haven’t wasted their money.  As long as you are selling a legitimate product for a reasonable price and the customer buys it willingly, you shouldn’t feel guilty if they end up not liking it.

Now, back to need.  The first question I ask people when they walk up to my table at a convention is, “Do you like good action-adventure?”  If they say, “No” or “I don’t like to read” or anything other than yes, I wish them a good day and do not waste any more time on them.  I’m rarely ever rude, but those people are not potential customers because they do not need my book.  It’s simply not for them, and I’m not going to waste my time and energy chasing someone who isn’t a reader or doesn’t enjoy my genre.  It goes back to square peg, round hole.

If they do say, “Yes, doesn’t everyone?” then I will proceed to assess their needs.  I try to gauge their learning style  next.  If they are clearly a visual learner, I let them pick up the book and look at the cover, the back cover, the title page.  These people will also often look at my table quite a bit, my signs, my electric candles, my swag.  They are visually absorbing the stimuli and processing whether or not it’s for them.  For these people, I usually keep my mouth shut and let them absorb first.

Then, there are the active learners, those who learn by doing.  They usually pick up the book, flip it over and read the back.  Some like to flip open the book and skim a few paragraphs.  For these people, I like to hand them a copy of my reviews fairly quickly so that they can read them and add that information to their processing.  At first, I don’t talk a lot with these folks either.  Both visual and active learners wouldn’t really hear me anyway.  That’s not how their brain processes up front.

The audial learners are the ones who will ask, “So what’s the book about?”  They need to hear the explanation to process it.  For them, I have about a thirty second synopsis of my first book memorized to give them an overview of the story.  It’s short, to the point, and gives them just enough to make them want to know what’s next.  If they don’t seem interested once I’m done, I thank them for their time and wait for the next person.  Again, I’m rarely rude, but if the synopsis doesn’t grab them, they probably won’t like the book.

Notice something important here, regardless of which type of learner they are, I let each one show interest and move at their own pace.  That’s a big key to assessing need.  Rushing here comes across as desperate, and desperate people are the worst salespeople in the world.  I always try to lean back away from the customer, let them show me what kind of learner they are, and let them make the first move before I begin selling.

I’ll continue with the first half of assessing need next entry, and later on, I’ll provide some keys to look for when analyzing learning styles.

www.thirdaxe.com