Repeat this to yourself three times before your next “sales presentation.”

“My goal is to make my client 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether, or not, my solution is a good fit.

My goal is to make my client 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether, or not, my solution is a good fit.

My goal is to make my client 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether, or not, my solution is a good fit.”

The moment in time when you stop “pitching” and you start unbiasedly “solving” will be the moment in time where your sales career will change forever. That moment happened to me in December of 2014. There I was, “pitching” client after client to buy my services, and I was pretty good at it. But it wasn’t going to work for complex b2b deals.

Up to that point in time, I had managed a sales team, built another one from the ground up, and thought I knew everything about sales. I was well read, I was crushing my quota, and was on the brink of getting promoted within the first four months of employment. A hired sales consultant, Steve Gonzales, was on property. That was the first and last time I have ever met Steve. We had one 30 minute “1on1.” We immediately jumped into role play scenarios with me “selling” to Steve. Steve stopped the conversation a few times to feed me a few lines that would fit with my style. I liked Steve’s approach. He knew his shit and I respected the information he disseminated to me.

However,

I didn’t realize until months later when I was back into a coaching role, that there would be one line that Steve fed me that would change the way that I approached sales and coaching sales professionals forever.

“My goal is to make you feel 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether, or not, my solution is going to be a good fit for you.”

It wasn’t the delivery of the line, it was the authenticity of it. When you stop trying to convince clients that a certain solution, idea, or product is “going to be the best thing in the world” and start actually trying to identify and effectively communicate strategies, tactics and tools that can increase their ability to make more money, magic will start to happen for you.

FYI, it would be more effective to not deliver the message at all if you are going to say “My goal is to make you confident, or not, in my solution”. This literally has the opposite effect of what it is intended to do.

When you can create a genuine relationship that is based on respect, integrity and expertise, and it is time to deliver your recommended solution, you will have the floor. Your clients will answer your questions, respect your call agendas, and answer your emails quickly and accurately. You will get to no, or yes, faster and more confidently. It’s the concept of working smarter instead of harder. You will have to do less “convincing” when you spend your time truly solving.  Oh, and your clients will respect you…teeing you up for referrals, promotions and job offers, you know things that make you more money.

Here is an example of feedback I gave to one of my senior reps:
Treat questions (where the answer is no) as an opportunity to build trust. Example:

Prospect: “do you offer trials?” (Think why are they asking this?…maybe they want to be confident this is the right solution and they are not throwing us a hesitation…)

You: “No, we don’t do trials because it doesn’t work with our model. (Pause) Do you feel like you need a trial?”

Prospect: “Well, I want to make sure that this solution actually works.”

You: “I completely understand. Because our model relies on long term partnerships with our clients, we need to ensure that every brand that we partner with is set up for success. (Pause)

Therefore, we have created an onboarding process where our team will work to understand your landscape and what you are trying to accomplish, build your filters to get rid of irrelevant content (like you mentioned earlier), and guide you on how to best leverage this data to implement a best in-class PR strategy. (Pause)

So if this is something you are interested in further evaluating, it is my goal to partner with you to ensure that you are 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether or not my solution will “actually work” for your team.”

At the end of the day, my goal with this post is to make you 100% comfortable and confident in knowing whether or not you want to be a trusted advisor that builds real value for your clients.