The Difference Between Good and Great Sales People

There are basically two things every customer is looking for from a sales rep. I know it’s really confusnig to be a sales rep, the problem is as a sales rep you wonder, okay what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to go in a ta;k about how great out company is? How great our product is?

There are two things every customer is looking for a they happen to be empahty and authority. If you understand the Storybrand framework, that means, be the guide in the story and not the hero. The guide is the character in the stroy that helps the hero win and the two things the guide does are express empathy and authority. So ,whenever you’re talking to a customer, let’s say you’re having lunch or you’re sending them an email, the two things you want to make sure to cover are:

1. Empathy – Empathy is ‘I understand your pain’, ‘I hear you’, ‘I understand what you’re struggling with’ and you can repeat back to them if you like just to make sure they know that you understand their pain.

2. Authority – By authority, I really mean, you need to demonstrate competency you actually know MORE about your customers problems than they do. Your customer is alone in their problem but you meet customer after customer who has the exact same problem, that means you are meeting more people with their problem then they are, that makes you an authority about solving their problem. 

If you can express empathy and also demonstrate competency to solve their problem you’re going to check the one two box in their head making you the sales rep that they prefer. 

All right, here’s a simple tip for you before meeting with a customer fill out a worksheet, by worksheet, I really just mea a post-it note. Get out a piece of paper and write empathetic statement and then write it down. “Hey, I understand you’ve been struggling with this, I’ve got a lot of customers who struggle with that, it’s not that big of a problem, we can solve it” and then authority “We’ve solved this problem for other customers by this by doing this we’ve solved it for thousands of customers in this way”. Demonstrate empathy and authority on that sales call, over that lunch or in that email. Just sprinkle it in like seasoning and you will check the one two box in your customers brain that says you know what I want to work with this sales rep.

The two things a customer is looking for are Empathy and Authority.

Video created by Storybrand. We highly reccomend you check them out and read their book!