Most people sell from their mind instead of their heart. As a result, they’re not able to create an emotionally satisfying experience for their leads and prospects, so they have a very difficult time selling their product or service. 

The most common type of sales training focuses on salespeople learning scripts that their company provides. They repeat those scripts as if they’re robots spitting out facts without emotion and are discouraged from adding anything personal.  

Sales trainers and companies like to teach people to learn scripts to ensure that they’re prepared to deal with objections. Scripts anticipate that the conversation will end in rejection of the sales offer. As soon as salespeople hear an objection come out of the prospect’s mouth, they have a ready-made answer for it — the terminology is “strike it down.” Salespeople armed with a script (notice the word armed) listen to the prospect only to be ready to counterattack an objection (notice the word counterattack). 

By not paying attention to the answers, salespeople aren’t truly acknowledging the person who is their prospect. They’re simply waiting for the objections to pop up. And lack of acknowledgment means a missed opportunity to find alignment and make a deeper connection that can more easily lead to a sale. 

Salespeople armed with scripts that state facts don’t know how to truly listen, show empathy, explore where they’re aligned with the prospect, or focus on building trust first before offering something for sale. Without alignment, there’s no engagement. Without engagement there’s no trust building. Without trust, there are no sales. 

Studies have shown that people don’t buy based on facts, but based on how they feel, and then they back up the decision with facts. They want to feel aligned, or that they have an affinity with the salesperson or the message shared. They want to feel that the salesperson understands and genuinely cares about their problems, issues, and concerns. And they want to feel the salesperson can and will solve those problems through the product or service they’re selling. 

Because of their script-focused training, many salespeople haven’t been encouraged to explore if and how their core values align with how and what they’re selling. They haven’t identified how being a salesperson is in alignment with their purpose or calling. 

As a result, they haven’t created an emotionally satisfying experience for themselves in line with what they’re selling.  

Without a connection to the products or services — a personal passion for what they sell — they can’t be in alignment with their prospects. And without that alignment, they’ll have a much harder time making sales. 

Before you can be in alignment with a product or service — and the people who will want to buy that product or service — you must be fully honest with yourself in answering these questions:  

1. What particular problems or challenges have you had in life?  

2. Which of these problems or challenges do you no longer have?  

3. When you were going through these problems or challenges, what advice or help did you wish someone had given you?  

4. What lessons did you learn or what commitments did you make to help you overcome your problems or challenges?  

5. If you met someone today who’s going through the same problem or challenge you overcame, what advice or support would you give them?  

6. If you had access to the product or service you sell now, in what ways would it have helped you (or how does it help you) to overcome them? 

Passion grows from our experiences of living through personal tragedies and triumphs. Our authentic passion adds integrity and credibility to our words and actions. It’s the emotionally compelling aspect that must be present in our interactions with our prospects if we want them to know how much we care and to be able to ensure them that our products and services can help solve their problems.  

If you can’t share your own personal story of how good your products or services make you feel — and what problems they’ve helped you and others solve — you have no authentic credibility from which to create alignment with your prospects.  

 By matching what you sell to your authentic passion based on your personal experience, your connection with your prospective audience will be built on a solid foundation of authenticity and credibility. No credibility means no sales. 

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Stacey Hall has coached thousands of entrepreneurs on how to attract sales, satisfaction, and success. She is a bestselling author, a TEDx presenter, and a leading social media marketing expert. She is founder of Success with Stacey Hall and of the groundbreaking social media marketing training program, Go for YES, which has helped thousands of people attract more sales, customers, and employee satisfaction and success. Her new book is, Selling from Your Comfort Zone: The Power of Alignment Marketing (BK Publishers, July 26, 2022). Learn more at www.staceyannhall.com/home.