When you get ready to have a sales conversation for the first time, your mood matters.
HOW you approach a conversation with a customer IMPACTS what will happen in the interaction. Your attitude, energy, perspective or mindset, focus and intentions all get communicated to your customer within seconds of interacting.
MOOD
Something happens on an emotional level when you interact in a sales conversation with another person. The customer often begins the conversation in a mood of mistrust, caution, guardedness, and skepticism. Salespeople have to assume that will be the case, even if it is not. This helps us not to take the customer’s mood personally. It likely has nothing to do with us, and more to do with how they may be approaching their current challenge, situation or opportunity. By not taking the customer’s default mood personally, it helps us continue to generate our own mood.
BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR MOOD
Before we start a conversation with a customer, especially before trust is built, or when something has gone wrong in the relationship, it helps to get our mood elevated. Salespeople have many methods of doing this. Some listen to music, some focus on the customer and what can be possible for their future, others walk, move, or get their blood pumping. The main point here is that one person will likely get enrolled into the other’s mood. Our goal is to to enroll the customer in what can be a new possibility for them.
POSSIBILITY GENERATOR
I find it helps to think of myself as a ‘possibility generator’ when speaking to customers. When I am centered in a confident mood myself first that radiates possibility for the customer and for our relationship together, more often than not, the best possible outcome ensues for both of us.
MOODS EVOLVE
Moods and emotions are also created in our conversations as the interaction takes place. The customer may begin with a mood of mistrust and have emotions of doubt, skepticism, cynicism, concern, worry, excitement, curiosity, intrigue, etc. Then, they can begin to feel interested, engaged, open, hopeful, and confident. Notice the dance of mood and emotion that occurs in your next sales conversation. Notice your own emotions and moods and how they continually change. The sales conversation is an emotional experience we have with people.
WHERE IS YOUR FOCUS?
If we begin a sales conversation fearful about our own commissions or disappointed with our goal achievement, worried about our revenue and pipeline, concerned and focused on whether or not we get the sale, doubting the value our company brings, or in some other way in an ‘off’ mood, we are not as likely going to enjoy the interaction and emotional journey.
Let’s practice being aware of our own mood, the emotions and moods that are being created in our sales conversations and be aware of how effective we are allowing a shift in the mood of the person we are talking to. How much possibility are you capable of opening up for your customer in your sales conversations?