How To Succeed In Sales: Become A Trusted Advisor

John Lowe is an Executive Faculty, Coach and Business Presentations Expert at Ty Boyd, Inc.

There exists a glaring hole in traditional sales training and sales management. Sales training teaches salespeople to move through a process, from prospecting to qualifying to establishing pain points to identifying the influencers to presenting a solution to handling objectives to closing. All of this is good information, and salespeople need to understand the process. However, there are two things that sales training fails to address and sales management fails to reinforce, and I believe they are critical. One is the psychology of the buyer, and the other is the psychology of the sales rep.

Regarding the buyer, there are two things sales training misses. One is the fact that people do not like to be “sold to.” They want someone to “help them decide to buy.” This is not merely semantics. Salespeople tend to revert to their training, and in doing so, they act and sound like salespeople. They attempt to move the prospect through the funnel with their eye keenly on the prize: the sale! When they sound and act like a salesperson, the buyer’s defenses go up because they feel like they are being sold to. This makes the end result harder.

The second thing about the buyer is the fact that people make decisions based on emotions. They consider facts and data, but their decision is driven by how that information emotionally impacts them. Salespeople are not often taught this, and consequently, they may make their case based almost exclusively on the facts and data. Again, they act and sound like salespeople.

What’s missing about the psychology of the sales rep is how to handle the pressure. Reps have intense pressure from many sources. The company that hired them did so with the expectation that they would win business. Their manager has the same expectation, and the rep’s results also reflect on the manager’s performance. The rep places pressure on themself to make money and achieve success. The rep’s family does the same. Then there is the pressure to follow the process learned in training and not miss a step that may derail the deal. On top of all this is the pressure of the sales call, walking into someone’s office with the goal of avoiding failure. It can be overwhelming.

Sales reps should be taught one incredibly important thing that applies to all of the above. That is simply, “It’s not about you!” The entire sales process is about the prospect. It’s not about the company, its solutions, the rep’s commission or quota attainment. Those things have their place, but the heart of a successful sales process is the rep being perceived by the prospect as a trusted advisor instead of a salesperson.

In my career, I found the way to achieve this is to leave my baggage at the door. What I mean by that is to go into a sales call leaving behind all my pressure-inducing things and focus on one simple objective: How can I help this person today? How can I fully understand their problem and help them identify a solution that satisfies their emotional pain? Leaving my baggage at the door allows me to really listen, to ask the types of questions that help both parties understand the situation and move at a pace and through a process that creates a relationship focused on the prospect’s best interests—not on my quota or commission or making my manager happy. Once I leave the meeting, I can pick up my baggage and apply what I learned to the sales process, my account and territory strategy, and my team and company sales objectives. But I never bring that stuff into a sales call. In that setting, it is not about me. This also plays out when having the opportunity to present a solution. That event becomes more of a conversation and less a presentation. Many times a rep will lose whatever advisor status they have built up by giving a “sales presentation,” where they revert back to acting and sounding like a salesperson.

Executives do not typically have time for salespeople. But they make time for trusted advisors. For you to become a trusted advisor, they must like you and trust you. Those are both emotional reactions. The more someone acts and sounds like a salesperson, the harder it becomes to achieve trusted advisor status. To consistently be known as a trusted advisor, you must understand that people do not like to be sold to, they make decisions based on emotions and, most importantly, it’s not about you.

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