Buyers or Shoppers?

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Sometimes the biggest thing we can do is to make a minor attitude adjustment or to move our point of view just a degree or two. Taking a slightly different look at a familiar situation sometimes causes a dramatic shift. One slight adjustment in the selling process is to assume the sale. This means that you assume everyone who contacts you is going to rent from you sooner or later. Thinking this way is really powerful. It means that everything you do and say gives your prospect the impression that you believe that he will rent from you. As a prospect, this is an entirely different experience than if you did not assume the sale.

When you do not assume the sale your prospect gets mixed signals from you. Your unsureness creates anxiety and unsureness in the prospect. The prospect will process these conflicting feelings and will come to some decision as to what this experience means. People do not like to feel unsure of a situation, so they make a decision about the experience. When a prospect deals with an unsure sales person or a customer service rep that lacks confidence in his offering or selling skills, the prospect becomes conflicted. Being in conflict means the prospect needs to find a safe emotional place. That is usually found by hanging up the telephone or leaving your store.

The prospect doesn’t think “oh, the store manager is not a confident sales person” or “It’s too bad that the store manager isn’t better at asking closing questions”. The prospect thinks instead that you don’t care about his needs, that you are rude and un-helpful, or that you do not know your business. Do you remember when you were an awkward teenager trying to ask out the girl or boy you liked? Because you lacked confidence and didn’t know how to ask someone out, you probably bumbled the whole thing and made the object of your affection think you were a dork. The same thing happens at your store when you make prospects uncomfortable. This probably all sounds like a bunch of amateurish psychological double talk, but your prospects make decisions about you within the first minute of your interaction. Don’t you want them deciding that they want to rent form you?

Here’s a simple way to avoid the whole problem. Rather than analyzing your confidence and sales ability, just make a minor shift in your thought process and assume that everyone you talk to will rent from you sooner or later. Assume everyone you talk to is a buyer. Do not use the word “shopper.” People call or visit a storage location because they either have an immediate need or anticipate a pending need. These are people who are ready or will soon be ready to rent from someone. Will it be you? Will it be now?

If you think of people as shoppers, you allow the possibility that they will not make a decision or will decide on another provider than you. You need to block those possibilities out of your head, so you can act with the confidence and the assumptive attitude that will win more prospects to your side. If you consider everyone a buyer then you will act in such a way that the prospect buys from you now whenever possible and buys from you later if it is not possible to buy from you now.

If you are a fan of fantasy stories and games, you might consider this your spell of invincibility. Because you believe that you only talk to buyers, you will only talk to buyers. If you are helpful, build confidence and ask good closing questions, these buyers will have no reason to look elsewhere for their storage needs. You can also consider this you power of attraction. When you believe all the people you talk to are buyers, than all the people who come to you are buyers. You can tell I watched one of the “Lord of the Rings” movies recently. Seeing all the wizards, witches and elven types is not only amusing, but instructive as well. Do you think the wizards ever doubt their powers? Why should you doubt yours?

If you have ever read children’s books, you surely have seen The Little Engine That Could. Why did the little engine get up the hill? Because he removed all doubt in his mind that he couldn’t. This allowed him to focus his strength on producing enough power to get up the hill.

So why would you allow doubt to enter your mind about prospects? Are you jaded because you have dealt with many people in unfortunate circumstances or because you have dealt with a lot of people with less than wonderful social skills? First of all you are a life saver to people in unfortunate circumstances, so you should be proud that you are there to help when someone gets in a pinch and needs storage. And as far as the other folks, who cares if a few of your customers have less than admirable social skills as long as their payment clears every month?

Do you lack confidence in your store? Well then you need to find the features and aspects of your store that are appealing and focus on them. Not every store is perfect. Your customers do not expect perfection. They expect to get what you promise them…no less or no more.

Are you judging the people you talk to based on the way they speak or the way they appear and making assumptions about them? Why would you do that? You know that you rent to every sub segment of every demographic group there is. So who cares which one they belong to? The fact that they have sought you out on the phone or in person means they are buyers. So assume they are going to buy from you and act accordingly.

Ask your good qualifying questions. Ask your good closing questions and start filling out the lease. Pass them a pen and show them where to sign. If you believe the prospect is buying from you, it won’t take much before the prospect believes it too.

bye for now, Tron

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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