Surely You Can’t Be Serious? Pead

Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector

Over the weekend I revisited the 1980 movie “Airplane” (or “Flying High” as it was known in Australia, New Zealand) it produced the classic line “surely you can’t be serious?” which got me thinking about how many salespeople take selling far too seriously.

Don’t get me wrong – the sales and selling business is important however sometimes its best to lighten up when working with new and current clients. To use an old phrase “we’re not doing brain surgery!” so it’s terrific if you can find ways to make our profession fun and profitable.

It works

Some of the elite media salespeople I have worked with over the years use humour as one of their selling tools. By the way there’s a big difference between jokes and humour. Jokes can cause all kinds of problems in today’s politically sensitive environment but everyone loves a funny, relatable story.

Truth is everyone likes to laugh, everyone wants to laugh and in business the opportunity is all too rare.

By using humour, you can quickly build a bridge between professional and friendly while making the atmosphere of the room positive and open.

How do you do it?

Start by building a library of the funny things that have happened to you, your colleagues or family. It doesn’t matter how old the story is – funny is ageless.

Funny stories also work best when they are at your own expense – you become vulnerable.

Then work out how the stories might relate to given selling situations – if the prospect is into a specific hobby or interest use a hobby type story; if they play or follows sports use a sports story; if they have family use a story about one of your kids (or nieces, nephews). You get the idea.

Rapport and humour

Humour is a great way to build rapport quickly and to demonstrate your difference. While your competitors are talking about themselves and their product you’ll be relating to your clients on a whole new level.

Try it. Build your library, practice your delivery then see what happens. At worst you’ll get a few laughs.

Until next week good selling!

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About the author 

Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.

He can be contacted at [email protected]

 

 

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