By now as a Salesperson and Designer, you probably have gotten the point that your client makes buying decisions based on emotions which they then justify later. If you have been reading this blog, you have undoubtedly seen a couple of posts on this very topic.
If you also educate and work to improve yourself (and I hope you do) by reading books about sales and how to become better at it, you have seen sections of books written about how the decision to buy anything over about $109 is an emotional decision.
What this emotional decision really boils down to is what I have coached designers on for years. That is that if your client is happy with your work, enjoys the experience, feels listened to, and likes you, they will buy from you. The price will become far less relevant than the design and service you are providing.
I want to spend a moment talking about the last point, “if they like you.” This may just be the most important variable of all because if your prospect does not like you, then they will definitely be going elsewhere for their project, or just plain not buying anything at all.
The way I see it though, there is however one primary challenge in this idea. What if you have a hard time getting to like your prospect? Naturally, if there is an extremely strong dislike, and you cannot fathom the idea of meeting with them on multiple occasions to work on the project, you may not want them as a client. I am speaking though, about the person who is pleasant enough to work with, but may not share your ideals relative to living environments, how they run their home, their thoughts on parenting, their work ethics, etc.
If your client is not someone with whom you could see yourself being friends with in your own personal life, it can be very difficult to nurture a friendly working relationship where this client feels that they like you. With so many different people in this world and so many different personalities, it would be near impossible to pick and choose the clients only that you like on a personal level. If you did this, you probably would not be very successful.
So, how do you foster a relationship where your client enjoys meeting with you and feels important to you?
If you have ever been to a large party where everyone was having a great time and discussed it the next day with someone who was also there, chances are that there were one or two individuals that you would characterize as the “life of the party”. An interesting observation that someone made years ago (I don’t remember who) is that assuming you did not know that individual before the party, most people there would not be able to answer questions regarding what they knew about that person. Why is that? Much of the time it is because that “life of the party” person spent more time getting others to talk about themselves by asking curious questions, then commenting only on the answers to them than talking about themselves.
The lesson here is two-fold. How do you get perceived as very “likable” and “friendly” to your client?
Ask your client about themselves, their life, their past experiences, etc.
I mean, who doesn’t like talking about themselves when they know they have your attention?
There is one very important element though.
Be Genuinely Curious
If you ask questions about your client and you are doing so just to make simple conversation, your client will see this for what it is and probably shut you down and want you to stop the small talk. They may perceive what you are doing as trying to make a friend, and they probably don’t need more friends. But if you express genuine curiosity about what they are telling you, they will feel that what they are saying is important and that they are important to you.
So how do you show them that what they are saying is important?
- Make eye contact, even when they are speaking.
- Take notes when you discover information relevant to the project.
- Ask more in-depth questions such as, “…that is interesting, tell me more about that.”, or “…what inspired you to do that?”
For more information on this, read my post about listening to your client:
https://sapretraining.com/are-you-listening/
If you ask the right curious questions to find out about your prospect’s everyday challenges and their frustrations and truly listen with the intent of understanding with empathy, they will like you. They will want to have more conversations with you and they will look forward to their next meeting with you.
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As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome!