Money Maker #84: All the sales skill in the world will not save you if you do not understand your fellow man.

Technique is useless without feeling. People will not buy from you because you are a great salesperson. They will buy from you because you are a great person. People will not buy from you because of how much you know, they will buy from you because of how much you care about them and relate to them.

Understanding our own personality type and that of our customers will greatly enhance our ability to sell. In addition to making our selling efforts more profitable, it will make selling less stressful and more enjoyable on a daily basis.

When I first started selling I sold everyone the same way. In fact, I tried to force all my customers to buy from me the way I wanted to sell. This was a disaster. I made a decent living, mainly because I worked hard, but many of my peers doubled and tripled my income. This was tough on my ego, but the numbers were the numbers, and I had to live with them.

When I finally understood that there were different ways to approach people and began to apply these different approaches, my selling career took off and selling became much less stressful and more fun.

Part of what makes selling difficult for some of us is that we have to come to terms with our own personality. We have to look at ourselves and think about how our personalities affect our fellow man. Believe it or not, there are things about our personalities that other people do not like at worst, or at best, make them uncomfortable.

People are not receptive and are not going to buy anything from someone who makes them feel uncomfortable, so learning how to control some of our natural tendencies that irritate some personality types will help us sell more lumber.

Money Maker #83: The way customers think = The way they talk = The way they listen = The way they buy.

The way our customers communicate is similar to the associative property of addition and multiplication.

(2×3 = 6 3×2 = 6 4+5= 9 5+4 = 9)

They way our customers do one thing will be the key to how they do many things. As they speak, so they listen.

If you listen to your customers, they will tell you how they want to be sold.

Want to learn more about this and other Sales Doctor secrets? Click here to buy Selling Lumber: Sales Secrets of a Lumber Broker and tune in each Friday at 4pm PST to the Sales Doctor Radio program. In Portland on 1410 am or around the world online at SalesDoctor.biz.