Laura’s Winning Ideas

Years ago, I was a Realtor. In my niche, I was one of the top producers every year. I had a reputation for being able to sell unusual properties other agents couldn’t move.

In that industry, we all regularly attended sales seminars. These inspirational “Go Get ‘em” shows always left me feeling guilty that I hadn’t mastered any of their recommendations. Each speaker had a formulaic approach of asking open ended questions that the crafty sales person could use to “guide” the prospect toward the sale.

When I was with a prospect, I never remembered any of these notions. I simply focused on the needs of the prospect, and if my builder’s house was a good fit for them, I helped them see that. When it wasn’t, I tried to recommend other competing builders or Realtors.

It never occurred to me that I was successful because I’d followed my nose to become a “consultative” salesperson.

One of my prospects who became a happy buyer was a VP of Sales for a large firm. He came to me with a book he was having his salespeople read about this “new” idea of consultative selling. “You are who they describe in this book!” he said, “I never guessed you were doing consultative sales on us.”

Humm. Well, I was just trying to translate your needs to our product.

As I developed in my career, I found another niche in which I excelled; Complex proposals. In places where intuition and science merge to translate the sales strategy to a diverse group of stakeholders, I became more than proficient. Some of my clients found it spooky.

In one circumstance, I had an EVP on the phone who had had contact with a key person in the prospective firm to which we were proposing. I walked them through an exercise to collect psychographic details and allow me to create a profile of the stakeholder. When I read my description back, she was amazed. “I never would have guessed you were doing so many complex things to write a proposal.”

Humm. Well, I just try to translate the needs of the stakeholders to your offering.