Buyers are savvier than ever and able to cherry pick companies, brands, products and services from among the many global competitors vying for their custom. Salespeople have to their super-powers and not their kryptonite.
- One super-power is understanding how you come across to potential buyers and existing customers.
- Another is being able to adapt to your buyers and customers preference and remain authentic!
Self-awareness is an essential trait of a successful, and in fact, all customer-centric operations must develop self-awareness. When you are aware of how your actions can affect the outcome of a sale and the future of the business; you are more likely to pay attention to the triggers that hamper success.
Self-awareness is to align view your salesperson has with the view your buyers has of your salesperson. If these perspectives do not match, there is a disconnect in your buyer’s mind and distrust in the relationship. To understand how the outward display of your sales peoples’ attitude and behaviour can influence the perception of the buyers. One approach is to understand the natural and adapted behavioural style. Through this, the salesperson can understand and most importantly their personality and style to align with their buyers.
Tony Robbins said, “If there is a rare quality in life, it’s self-awareness. Self-awareness of the difference between you and your patterns and the impact of your patterns on those around you.”
If a prospective buyer is uncomfortable with you, you will not have a successful sales outcome. Buyers are comfortable to work with confident, knowledgeable, characterful and likeable salespeople. Salespeople are motivated by working in an environment supportive of their unique personalities, that challenge and at the same time functions efficiently and team-spirited.
I often hear sales leaders talking about their sales team lacking motivation, I have found almost all salespeople have motivations as defined as:
- A reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way.
- Internal and external factors that stimulate their desire and energy to be continually interested and committed to their job.
Rather, what I found was a host of demotivating triggers that demotivate salespeople.
11 Demotivating Triggers include the:
- Right people in the wrong role.
- Lack of personal goal and specific action plans.
- Environmental factor creates barriers.
- Lack of confidence in an uncertain macro and micro environment.
- Customers environmental barriers.
- Social networking obstacles so frustrating salespeople to do whatever it takes.
- Internal culture and systems create barriers.
- Salesperson is not motivated by cash or compensation incentives.
- Limiting belief sabotages their efforts.
- Salesperson does not feel supported or valued.
- Lack of communication and team-work.
Master Self Awareness to Master Relationships
In his Harvard Business Review article, How Leaders Become Self-Aware, Anthony K. Tjan said, “the one quality that trumps all, evident in virtually every great entrepreneur, manager, and leader. That quality is self-awareness. Without self-awareness, you cannot understand your strengths and weakness, your “superpowers” versus your “kryptonite.”
With self-awareness, salespeople can spot aspects of the buyer’s behaviour that requires they adapt their natural approach to behaviours aligned with their buyer’s preferences. Salespeople can only do this if they are self-aware of the effect their personality is having on their buyer’s personality.
Research conducted by Innermetrix shows that self-awareness is essential to your success and a vital trait for all successful leaders. Self-aware people recognise the situations that will make them successful, and this makes it easier for them to find ways of achieving their objectives that fit their natural behavioural style. If you understand your natural behavioural preferences, Innermetrix say, you are “far more likely to pursue the right opportunities, in the right way, at the right time, and get the results you desire.”
If you do not understand why you say or do what you do, it is hard to cultivate personal growth and positive, proactive relationships. It is critical to build awareness of your core strengths, to understand what influences your successful outcomes and to identify the triggers that can hold you back.
I work with sales teams to help them master their self-awareness and use the DISC profile index test as one of many tools.
Let me explain why?
This Disc index will help you understand your behavioural style and show you how to maximise your potential.
Once you understand your natural behavioural patterns, it is easier to recognise the opportunities to achieve the results you want. Self-awareness is making the most of what strengths you already possess to play with your unique strengths and to align with your customer’s personality and style. However, you can only do this if you understand your natural strengths, behaviour and unique style.
The Disc Index is an interpretation of Dr William Marston’s behavioural dimensions. Marston’s research uncovered four quadrants of behaviour which help you to understand a person’s behavioural preferences.
The DISC index Measures 4 Dimensions of Your Behavioural Style:
- Decisive — your preference for problem-solving and getting results.
- Interactive — your preference for interacting with others and showing emotion.
- Stability — your preference for pacing, persistence and steadiness.
- Cautious — your preference for procedures, standards and protocols.
The DISC profile index is designed for both individuals who want to identify and maximise their strengths, and for organisations looking to integrate high-performance in teams.
Your natural style is the style that you adopt when you are authentic and true to yourself. It is also the style that you revert to when you are under stress. Behaving in your natural style reduces your stress because it is you at your most comfortable and so effortless. When you are authentic to your natural style, you will maximise your real potential, and you perform effectively.
We all have an adaptive style. It is a role you take-on and adapt from your natural style. It is how you behave when you feel you are being watched or how you act when you are aware of your behaviour, such as when you use your ‘telephone voice’. It is less natural and undoubtedly less comfortable. When you are forced to adapt for extended periods of time, you may become stressed and less productive. Think of a time when you have had to conform in an environment; it may sap your energy. Therefore, choosing the right working environment will aid your successful outcomes, because if you spend less energy having to adapt, you spend more energy excelling naturally.
Unfortunately, buyers have the power to work with the salespeople they like. Hence sellers must be better than their competitors at reading their buyers preferences and understanding and adapting to their perspective.
I work with the DISC profile index with other tools Scale Your Sales Motivation interactive training, to help salespeople build confidence and self-awareness to interact positively and influence their buyers and customers. Scale Your Sales Motivation helps align the various aspects of your personality and your behaviour to master self-awareness. Scale Your Sales Motivation is made up of 3 modules Youlogy, Customer and Environment, or your, your buyers and your buyer’s environment When your livelihood is dependent on how your salespeople interact with buyers, and your business success is dependent on sales team successfully achieving quota.
To inspire motivation, sales leaders must remove barriers for motivated sales people to prosper and create an environment for the sales persons natural strengths and adaptive behaviours to grow. Helping your salespeople to go the extra mile for their customers to build trusted relationships.
This article is adapted from How Self Awareness Cultivates Positive Relationships
Contact me to discover more about how Scale Your Sales will help to Motivate your Salespeople
