However, great results can be achieved if you only make people feel special in your presence. Most people love to talk about themselves. So ask questions that cause people to tell you about their passions and problems. If you do, it will enhance the possibility of them becoming attracted to you – and you already know how that’s done. Try to understand others from their point of view. Ask them about their children, careers, hobbies, what they like to read and what they do in their spare time. Whenever you get people to reveal their private world to you, they become more confident in your presence, and in most cases you’ll be considered a terrific conversationalist – and consequently, be thought of as a very attractive person to be near.
2. Compliment People and Their Abilities
Pay people sincere compliments and then acknowledge the compliment. Here's a way you can make it work for you. Say you compliment an associate about some new office furniture they just bought. Most of us would probably say, "Your new furniture looks good and suits the office." On the other hand, the professional that understands the power of complementing the individual would say something like this. "Your new furniture looks great and really suits the office. I think you have a natural talent for decorating. But you’ve never taken decorating lessons have you?” Everyone can give a compliment, but only someone really interested in people knows how to pass on a compliment that will make the hearer feel really special.
3. Focus on the Things You Have in Commo
Another basic way to attract people to you is to find the things you have in common with them. The areas of commonality between you and them could be based on work, family, sports, social and/or business contacts, hobbies, interests and so on. Here’s a hint. Have a pre-prepared card with space allocated on it for work, family, sports, social and/or business contacts, hobbies, interests etc. That way there will be no need to go out of your way to acquire this information. You’ll be able to do this as part of your contact. Alternately, you can simply ask whatever questions come to mind, or are relative to the conversation. But remember, don’t just listen – hear what they say.
4. Talk About Third Party Success Stories
A common mistake too many salespeople make is to tell other people how successful they are. Generally most people you’ve just met don't care about your successes. Other people only care about how they can benefit from the short interlude with you. It is for this reason the top professional salespeople concentrate on third party stories and successes. They tell others what their company, product or service did for their customers, how they helped them get over a hurdle, fixed a problem or made those clients more successful.
• What stories do you have that others would be pleased to hear about? • Can you convey the situation a third party was in before you helped them? • Can you describe their predicament in detail without giving away too many personal details?
Then once you’ve done that, can you provide a good-luck story relating to your third-party reference as a result of doing business with you?
Here’s a hint. Make a list of all those you have helped. Then physically write down those "before" and "after" stories. Refine, rewrite and perfect the story, then keep on refining, rewriting and perfecting the story until you’re happy with it. You’ll be amazed how powerful these personal stories sound – even to you. The danger here is you could make the stories sound “too good to be true,” and when you do that, those stories will sound too overdone. So remember this, if it sounds amazing to you – it will most likely sound even more amazing to them. Be careful.
5. Don’t Just Listen – Hear What They Say
Most of us tend to give our listening skills little more than merely basic lip service. Just hearing another person's words (when they’re talking to you) is not really listening effectively. Most of us think it is, but a seasoned professional salesperson knows it’s not.
So how does a seasoned professional salesperson listen? They do this by listening to someone without thinking of what question they're going to ask next, not thinking about their own agenda and not focusing too heavily on making a sale at that point. They know and understand that when they just listen and focus all their attention on your prospect, the prospect will automatically be drawn to the seller – because the way you listen to the answer appears to the prospect to be both genuine and intense. Do it right, and you’ll find an exchange of dialogue will take place that is both rich and engrossing. Then when that happens, the communication between two people causes an irresistible attraction.
6. The Most Important Person on This Earth
America’s motivational father, Earl Nightingale, used to say, “If you want to be successful, treat every person you come into contact with as the most important person on earth.” Modern-day American motivator, Zig Ziglar says, “No-one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” True sales professionals, and those who understand this one point, focus all their energy, attention and care on the person they're with. They’ve learned to take themselves out of the equation and give others unbelievable attention without any hint of an ulterior motive or manipulation. They know we respond favourably to those that make us feel special in their presence. They also understand that to the people who go out of their way to make us feel extremely important, we will give them our respect, our friendship, our knowledge and our business – and we will do it for life, or as long as they keep making us feel extremely important.
7. Offer To Be An Information Resource
Here’s another valuable hint overlooked by far too many within the selling profession. No. Better still. Let’s call it one of the most valuable selling tools available to you to attract attention to yourself. So why isn’t it used more often? It’s because it usually takes more effort to make this one resource work more than the majority of the other resources available to salespeople. That’s why then true sales professionals approach it in a systematic way. Once the salesperson knows something about their potential prospects, they clearly see ways to provide information of value to them based on that something they have been made aware of. What they hone in on could be articles relating to their prospects hobbies, emails about things they have in common, or websites about ways to help them improve one or more aspects of their business. It could even be information related to their community, their children or their other infatuations. Top salespeople know that their target audience will appreciate hearing from them when they provide information the prospect can use. So here’s a very important hint. Do not try and do any selling whatsoever when you first contact the prospect – just provide them with the information they ask for. When you do this, chances are that they will come to you when the time is right – and that’s the power of this one point.
8. Send Your Good Customers Business
A personally recommended referral that could lead to a potential sale is the one thing that no-one in business will ever say no to. In fact, no-one in their right mind will ever turn it down – especially if it’s a good referral. The salesperson that finds business for their prospects is very likely to build a good relationship, and because of this they will always take your calls. They’ll even be glad to have lunches with you, and they will be more likely to give you more referrals on a regular basis. That’s right. They’ll reciprocate by giving you their business and pass on even more referrals simply because you first sent them referrals that they could work.
9. Develop a Strong Personal Foundation
Amongst top end sales professionals there is a belief that they have either learnt to develop, or are able to naturally acquire a special something that attracts others to them. In fact, to outsiders, it’s considered to be a kind of special energy that either draws attention to them, or, at the very worst, repels others away from them. Many of the sales experts working in the training sector tend to call this a “Strong Personal Foundation.” And that foundation becomes a personal substructure for those sellers to succeed at whatever they put their mind to. The one’s who possess this “Strong Personal Foundation,” are the ones that know how to instinctly “balance” the key areas of their life, including health, money, environment, family, friends, fun, recreation, career and personal and spiritual growth. Moreover, many of the ones that have learned to develop this “Strong Personal Foundation” tend to do so by grading each of the above areas of ‘balance’ between one and ten. A ten grade denotes excellence. Any mark below ten is then worked on until the necessary “balance” (aspiring to be a ten) is achieved in all of the other sectors previously graded to be out of balance.
10. Specialist Knowledge
It is a fact that every top professional in every profession works hard at being a specialist at what he or she does. In fact, the top income earners in every field of endeavour are specialists at what they do. Because of the hard work that they undertake to become a specialist, they become the best, the most in demand, the highest paid, and the most sought after individuals because of their specialised knowledge. Top professionals work hard at knowing more than others in their chosen field. They understand that if they acquire expert knowledge about something that people want to know about, that can make them particularly attractive in the field in life they have chosen to work in. So what are you good at doing presently, or what are you willing to get good at doing in the very near future? Are you prepared to become even better at what you are doing now and specialise in your field of work? The fact is, the better you get, the more others will be attracted to you, and the better you get at what you do, your clients, peers, superiors will be attracted to you – and that includes your opponents as well. At the very least, they will know about you and how well respected you have become in your craft. To have others become aware of you, all you have to ensure is they know that you exist and that you have the skills they need. The rest is up to you, together with the other skills you have acquired to make them want to do business with you.