Jobs in sales and the over familiarity trap

My first sales job was in insurance. Half of my role was to visit people in their homes to collect premiums and the other half to try and sell more policies. Of course the idea was that collecting the premiums gained access which would subsequently allow a pitch to sell product. As with all jobs in sales, there is a strong relationship between your ability to build rapport and your results.

When you first start out selling, it can be a little uncomfortable presenting yourself to a customer, a bit like going into battle, you know you have to try and sell something, and they know this too! It can all feel pretty stiff. To get over this discomfort, some rapport building and less formal conversation on 'non' business topics can break the ice. It might seem a little cheesy but a picture of your client sky diving on the wall can soon get them chatting freely about the occasion with their guard well an truly dropped and you feel a whole lot better from there on.

This approach to jobs in sales may all sound sensible but this kind of approach to remove formality in order to feel more comfortable can lead to a number of problems. Firstly, it can become difficult to take an informal discussion in sky diving and the holiday this occurred on, back to a formal business discussion. Secondly, once your customer comes to expect less formal, non business banter you can begin to find your calls having a mandatory 20 minutes non productive chit chat over a cup of tea before you can even begin to get down to business. Multiply this by all of your calls and half of your day can become unproductive.

The key is be aware of how this can slip into low productivity and fine tune your skills to be able to move your conversation to business at an early time when you decide. You need to strike a balance between a polite entrance that doesn't immediately try to lampoon your customer with a deal but also doesn't allow them to forget your there for business. NLP (neuro linguistic programming) offers a neat skill here. One can quickly change the course of an interaction through 'mismatching'. You can try this on a long phone call to a friend. Throughout a long conversation people tend to 'match' each other with similar tone and tempo of speech. When people are looking to end a conversation, they naturally 'mismatch', that is, suddenly change the tempo and tone, perhaps speeding up speech and increasing the volume. Next time you earwig someone, listen out for the end “looks like the rains coming, I'll have to dash”. Even if this was a foreign language, you would have know the end was coming by the change in tempo and increased volume.

Technically, mismatching introduces a slight feeling of discomfort for the recipient which confirms to them that the conversation is best ending here, even if they haven't picked up this from the words. The analogy is relevant for jobs in sales in that you can also change the mood of your sales call with a little mismatch, particularly if your call has slipped into too much informality. If at the chosen point you begin with “Well the reason I've called is...” I suggest you do this in a different tempo and slightly louder, just like ending a phone call. The impact will be just to 'jostle' your 'friend' a little back out of the comfort zone of a friendly chat, back to a more formal feeling that reminds them your there for business. This will set a better tone for your business meeting and will also create a more appropriate environment to sell in.

In summary, for jobs in sales breaking the ice in call with some informal chat can ease the atmosphere in which your are working. But, be wary of become too familiar with your clients such that you end up chatting away the business hours of the day. Practise the art of 'mismatching' to jolt your call back to business at your chosen time to avoid spending too long in that informal state. You achieve more calls in your day and sell more as a result.

Good luck.