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Do you know someone that is perfect? They never seem to make mistakes. They look perfect. They act perfect. Many sales trainers dispensing sales tips will tell you never to show a weakness to a customer. I disagree.

No one really likes perfect people because we know it’s impossible to be perfect. I know I’m certainly not. We like hanging around people that are real with all of their good points and their bad ones too.

Our customers feel the same way about the companies where we work. They know there is no such thing as a perfect vendor. They know the company they work for isn’t perfect and they know the company we represent isn’t either. The more we try to convince them of how flawless and perfect our company is, the more they aren’t buying our gospel.

So what are the sales tips then?

We must be willing to give away something to our customers. I can best explain this with an example.

Customer: “Debbie, I need 20 of your assembly line robots and I need you to install them at all my locations.”

Salesperson (Debbie): “I know we can do a good job of taking care of your robotic needs and I’m looking forward to this project. When it comes to product availability and service there is no one better than us and everyone knows that. We could install those robots for you but that is not a strength of ours. I can arrange for another company that is excellent at these installations. I’ll take care of all the details. I want this equipment installed with no problems because I want to keep you as long term customer.”

Debbie was brilliant. She “gave up” one thing by stating that her company wasn’t strong at installations, but she gained the trust and respect of her customer in the process. She kept the part of the business that makes Debbie and her company the most money. She demonstrated to the customer that she was looking after their best interests. She was partnering with them in the truest sense of the word.

Put yourself in this customer’s shoes the next time they need to buy something from Debbie. Would you be inclined to believe Debbie’s recommendations? Absolutely.

Debbie gave away an ounce of business and earned a pound of credibility and a pound of future business.

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Summary: As sales professionals we self-assess the effectiveness of the sales techniques we employ. However, relying solely on self observation may be damaging your sales efforts and you don’t even know it.

A man is fishing alone in the middle of the ocean and his boat starts to leak. His boat quickly sinks and he is forced to tread water. Unfortunately he has no life preserver or lifeboat. He can’t see land so he doesn’t even know which way to swim. He is really in trouble.

Suddenly a dolphin appears and starts pushing him rapidly through the water. After pushing the fisherman through the water for almost two hours a shoreline appears. The next thing the man knows he’s standing on the beach…alive. “The benevolent dolphin saved me!” he exclaims. “He pushed me to the safety of the shore!” The dolphin did save the man, but was the dolphin really doing it because he is a friend of all mankind? Read on.

What about other helpless fishermen this same dolphin may have pushed further out to sea? We can’t know if the dolphin was benevolent or not because those other fishermen, who weren’t so lucky, were never heard from again. The rescued fisherman in this story has no further data about the dolphin and its intentions other than what he has just observed.

Sometimes we do the same thing in sales. We try a new sales technique that gets good results and we believe we have just found a great new sales tool for our arsenal. We think, “Wow, I’m going to use that technique on all of my customers.” If we believe a sales technique is effective - even though it may not be - we will usually continue to use it. We are unable to see that our faith may be misplaced.

I worked with a salesperson who would always take exactly 24 donuts on the first call to a prospect. He told me that it helped him close a big deal once. From my observations I think this practice actually offended most of his prospects because it came across as childishly manipulative. His benevolent dolphin was in fact pushing him into deeper water and he didn’t know it.

Can we make an objective decision about the efficacy of our sales techniques from one or two self observations? Can we know that it was our sales skills that landed us that big order? Or was it because the prospect was completely out of our product and their assembly line was about to shut down? Even if your sales levels are good, could they be even better if you stripped out unproductive sales tactics that you erroneously believe are working to your benefit?

By welcoming and soliciting input from your sales manager and peers you can be more confident about your sales techniques. In addition to getting feedback from other sales professionals you can take advantage of the vast amounts of sales training and materials that are available to you from inside and outside your company. We need to look outside of ourselves to objectively hone our sales skills.

Have you made friends with a benevolent dolphin that may be pushing you out to sea?

If you’re not already a subscriber, click here (salesvitamins.com) to subscribe and automatically receive Sales Vitamins™ as new posts become available. © 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

There are four elements that make up the core of a salesperson. Zig Ziglar and Dale Carnegie were blessed with all four, especially the fourth. All four of these elements are interdependent although one of them is so important that it renders the others almost insignificant by comparison.Intelligence. This is a given and is fixed. When you were hired as a salesperson they assumed you had an adequate IQ to perform the job well. Sales requires that you not only be smart, but you must also be able to think fast and multitask like there is no tomorrow.

Job Skills. If your employer didn’t think you had, or could attain, the necessary sales and product skills to do the job he or she would have never hired you in the first place. You have your sales position because of the skill and potential you bring to the table in this area.

People Skills. Generally speaking, but not always, salespeople are good with people. People skills are essential for the job; you need them to work with customers and you need them to get support from the back office.

Communication Skills. This skill trumps the others and is where sales managers focus when making hiring decisions (or they should if they don’t). The other three skills are almost taken for granted when stacked up against this one. This can separate the men from the boys and the women from the girls in a sales career. The ability to articulate ideas and convincingly communicate them with both your customers and other employees will greatly influence your sales success. Have you ever seen a top salesperson that had poor conversation or presentation abilities? Probably not.

Not surprisingly these four ingredients are also required of top executives and politicians, with communication skills once again being the biggest determinant of success. No one’s communication skills are ever at 100%. There is always room to improve. A safe place to practice these skills and get really honest feedback is at Toastmasters. This non-profit organization has helped salespeople, and others, around the world improve their communication skills. For more information about Toastmasters International go to their website to find a local club.

When it comes to effectiveness in sales it breaks down to a few essentials. After working with hundreds of salespeople I’ve observed that there are three important skills that every successful sales professional must have. If you are comfortable with these three things, you have the building blocks for sales success.

Skill 1: You need a refined ability to ask your customers and prospects open ended questions to develop a relationship and gather information. Remember that an open ended question is any question that requires an explanation to answer. As mentioned in an earlier post, most salespeople probably could use some work in this area.

Skill 2: A closed ended question only requires a one or two word answer and has a place in the sales process. It is important that you are competent in asking closed ended questions at the right time. When is that? They can be used effectively in two situations. The first scenario where they are helpful is in qualifying a prospect. When you first talk with a prospect it is appropriate and desirable to ask them a very limited number of directed closed ended questions to help qualify them. An example would be, “John, how many copiers do you have in your office?” However, be careful not to machine-gun them with a series of closed ended questions at this point. Once the prospect is initially qualified, you’ll want to move on to open ended questions. The second situation where closed ended questions can be used effectively is to move a customer or prospect toward a close. For example, “Mary, if I can meet your budget can we get this on order?”

Skill 3: The ability to prevent and handle objections is a primary skill in sales. Anything that a prospect or customer does that attempts to stop the selling process is an objection. We know that preventing an objection is far better than handling one once it’s been raised. “Before I quote any prices I want to let you know that our service package will cover you 24X7 and has a guaranteed one hour response time so there might be more cost than you are currently paying.” Can we always prevent objections? Of course not, but the ability to both prevent and handle objections is a key element in your sales success.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know our ability levels in these areas. Get with your sales manager or another sales peer you respect and ask them to observe you in action or role play with them. Once you assess your skills then work on your weak areas and practice. NFL players spend 95% of their time evaluating and working on their skills and 5% actually playing the game. We don’t have the luxury of that much practice time, but it’s smart to incorporate some kind of personal assessment and development into your profession for these three skills.

There are many competencies that are necessary to be successful in sales, but these are three that I have consistently observed in every sales leader.