Image courtesy of Valentine-clipart.com
There has been much research and statistical evidence to support the premise that people have a tendency to fall in love in part because they are being admired by another human being. Everyone adores being adored and admired. If you don’t, then I say you are in denial or have forgotten how good it feels to be admired.
The same premise applies to people when you are selling them a service or product. The first rule of sales is to make a connection with your potential customer. This connection can happen in many ways- physical contact/touch, meaningful eye contact or verbal connection.
This coincides beautifully with my golden rule of behavior when it comes to personal branding- to have a good personality and be interesting.
In order to make that initial connection a strong one, I suggest you:
1) Be genuine, with a good personality and not appear fake and insincere. Nothing sends a person running away faster than sales people whose smiles are fake, talk non-stop and have absolutely no interest in anyone but themselves and their next sale. And,
2) Find something that you GENUINELY like about the other person and deliver a compliment to them as such. Please don’t make the compliment long and detailed- then it becomes fake. Here I get many people that say to me, “I just don’t like that person and can’t find anything that I genuinely like about them.”
To this I say two things:
First, you mean you can’t find ANYTHING you like about this person?!?! How about how nice and long their eyelashes are or how white their teeth are? Second, if you can’t find anything nice about them, then I can tell you with about 90% certainty that you will not have a successful interaction nor a sale with that person.
If you really can’t find anything you like about them, then for goodness sake DON’T give them a fake compliment! We can’t service everyone and we should choose to not service/sell to everyone. But we can be genuine and let your personal brand resonate with everyone.
Happy Thanksgiving!
