The more someone trusts you, the more willing they are to share their pain points and needs with you. At this point you can make a realistic judgment call to decide if the product or service you’re selling is, in fact, a good fit. When you’re truthful enough to turn down a potential sale, you’re actually building a lifelong customer.

There are times when we spend so much time thinking about our business that we overlook the simple, almost painfully obvious things that can help our business grow. Sales, for example, are the lifeblood of any business. The only method to increasing the growth of your business is to be able to sell your products or services. Sales challenges come along when trying to build a sales team for fast-growing companies. The focus often switches up from what got you started in the business to thinking about scale. When it comes to influencing sales, it’s important to think about a couple of things:

• People buy based on emotions and back-fill with logic.
• People like to buy, but nobody likes to be sold.
• People do business with the people they know, like and trust.

Buying on Emotion In most industries, too much focus is given to “speeds and feeds”, which is shorthand for swiftly telling people how something works and/or the information they need to make a smart business decision. However, that’s usually the first place where most companies get it wrong. Think about the experience of buying a car. Before you even begin to check out the window sticker for the details, a “wow” moment is needed; those few seconds where you actually imagine yourself driving around inside that car. That emotional “desire” is the moment that lures you into the sales process. Simply put, you have to want something before you can buy it.

Buying vs. Being Sold 
The buying process can be fun. The best companies in the world can tell you this and give you the avenue to enjoy the buying experience. However, no one wants to be sold, and there is a difference. Refer back to the car buying analogy. We’ve all been pounced on by an aggressive salesperson looking to make a speedy close. The act of being sold can feel terrible because you’re not sure that you’re making the right buying decision when you can spot every sales tactic that is thrown your way.

Know, Like & Trust
 The greatest salespeople go through a simple, but dominant process of getting to know their prospects. This process increases their “likability” factor and builds trust. Learning about potential buyers may feel a bit overwhelming at first, as it requires putting yourself out there. The easiest way to get to know people is to find ways to add value first before you ever try to sell them something. By using this model, you immediately remove the “sales” barrier and focus on where you can add value while getting to know the person you’d like to do business with instead.

While you’re getting to know your prospective buyer and finding ways to add value, you’re increasing your likability factor. (For more on this topic, see Tim Sanders’ The Likability Factor). The more someone likes you, the more they begin to trust you. This converts the relationship from one of “buyer and seller” to the preferred position of “subject matter expert and interested party”.

The more someone trusts you, the more willing they are to share their pain points and needs with you. At this point you can make a realistic judgment call to decide if the product or service you’re selling is, in fact, a good fit. When you’re truthful enough to turn down a potential sale, you’re actually building a lifelong customer.

Allow me to give an example. My wife is a die-hard LL Bean shopper, but she could never find a pair of shoes from LL Bean that fit quite right, so she asked her customer service rep to help her. Without hesitation, the LL Bean rep recommended Zappos. My wife was both surprised by the recommendation and pleased by the discovery. The savvy rep, realizing that she couldn’t satisfy the shoe needs of my wife, was presented with a rare opportunity to be a subject matter expert. By altruistically helping my wife discover Zappos, the sales rep has received more business to LL Bean through the many referrals my wife has given since then, by recounting this story to her friends whenever there is an opportunity to do so.

There are many more stories like this–many of them from Zappos reps who have been trained to believe that “delivering happiness” is more imperative than closing a single sale. Of course, none of this can happen unless your customer first knows, likes and trusts you. Otherwise, you’ll never be presented with the opportunity to be a trusted subject matter expert in the first place.