[E46] Q&A Week: Being more approachable, introverts as salespeople

Welcome to Week 2 of Q&A mode on TSEP.

In this episode, I answer:

• As a salesperson, how do I make myself more approachable for customers?

• Can you be a good salesperson and an introvert?

If you have any sales or mindset related questions, send me a message through the contact page or via LinkedIn.

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Episode 46 – Transcript

On this episode, I kick off another week of answering sales related questions. I’m going to talk about customers, introverts and mistakes. Welcome to Episode 46 of The Sales Experience Podcast. My name again is Jason Cutter and I’m having a ton of fun answering the sales questions. Hopefully, you’re enjoying them as well.

If you haven’t checked it out, listen to last week’s episodes where I go through questions and answers. And if you’re looking for more specifics, and you’re new to the podcast, make sure to check out the various other weeks and themes that I’ve had and topics that I’ve covered from behaviors to mindsets to scripts, it’s all there tons of episodes, make sure to check those out.

Also, as you may have noticed, I got a new microphone, I’m very excited. Thank you to Mario Poreka for the suggestion on the ATR mike trying this out, hopefully, it sounds a little better. It’s a little bit easier, it’s a lighter weight setup for me. I’m excited to use it. Hopefully, it’s better for you as well.

And as you’re going through these, if you’re a leader of a company or work at a company where you think this could be of value, make sure to send me a message either through the Cutter Consulting Group website, or through LinkedIn, however, you can find me. Send me a message, let’s set up a time to chat.

I love bringing value and helping companies either analyze and figure out where the holes may be in the process to help sales people win more and be more successful. Or to bring in specific training, workshops, tools, techniques, strategies, technology, or whatever may really help the sales team win more, and for the prospects to turn into clients and be happy with a sales experience, leading to more referrals.

All of that is what I love to do. So let’s set up a time to talk and get on the phone and figure out how I can help. All right, let’s get into these questions and see how many I can get through today.

The first one is, as a salesperson, how do I make myself more approachable to customers?

Whenever I get this question, it always makes me think of how the salesperson can get the other person, the customer, the prospect to like them better. A lot of times the salesperson is asking this because they want strategies, techniques, they want some kind of special skill, whatever it is.

I think the best thing and the advice I’ve always given is if you want to seem more approachable, just be human, be you be natural, don’t try to be anyone else. Don’t try to fake anything, don’t try to be what you think a salesperson should be like, or put on an act or a show; just be you. Be authentic, be natural, be who you are and it’ll either work or it won’t work.

Now, obviously, if you want to be more approachable, you got to be nice, you got to be kind, you want to be empathetic, you want to be a good person and someone pleasant that the customer is going to like to deal with and want to talk with.

So, obviously you can’t be rude, don’t be a jerk, don’t come off like harsh. If that’s who you are, then maybe sales might not be the thing for you. But otherwise, if you’re just a good person, if you like to talk to people, if you enjoy other people, then just be you.

Don’t worry about techniques, strategies, tips, manipulation, persuasion, anything like that. To be more approachable to customers, just remember that they’re a person, you’re a person, you’re both two people trying to get through this life; you have a potential solution, they have a potential problem or need or goal or pain point, whatever that is, and you want to solve that for them.

And so when you talk to that customer, to that new prospect, and you’re just you trying to solve problems, and help other people in this world get what they want, again, before you really get what you want, and not with your own goals and your own desires as the point of reference, from your perspective.

When you just act like you and remember the other person is going through struggles and challenges in their life, then you will become more approachable. People will want to talk to you. It will be easy for people to talk to you. It’ll be easy for you to talk to other people when you’re not so worried about what you’re going to say, what you’re going to do, how you should act, how you should look, what it should sound like, what you need to be like, and this impression that you’ve got to have.

I think one of the biggest challenges a lot of times, especially in this day and age, there’s this illusion, especially online of people and their life and how perfect and how great that is. And then for salespeople, you feel like you’ve got to be that as well.

But people are people. We’re all humans, we all make mistakes, we all stumble a little bit when we talk. But if your heart is in the right place, that will be picked up immediately by the people you talk to, and they will want to talk to you. You will be more approachable, and then the conversation will start off in a better way. So hopefully, that helps with that one. All right, on to the next question.

Can you be a good salesperson and an introvert?

Whether reps ask me this question or not. I see this so many times with people who enter into a sales career or thinking about it, but they feel like they’re an introvert. So, fundamentally, it comes down to the conversation of can an introvert be a good salesperson?

And I fully think they can. I think the techniques and the strategies and the approach that an introvert is going to take with somebody to help them by can be very successful. The introvert can make a good salesperson.

When we look at the conversation I had in the previous couple of weeks regarding behaviors, introvert may be more along the lines of an analyst or a supporter. And when that’s the case, the analyst or the supporter is coming at the conversation in a different way; trying to solve a problem trying to help the other person in a way that generally works better for the prospect.

They’re not trying to manipulate, they’re not into big confrontational things, they’re not going to push somebody into purchasing what they don’t need. So, the approach is going to be really well. In fact, I think that kind of personality, that kind of behavior style actually lends itself to a better buying experience a better sales experience for the prospect because they’re not going to feel as manipulated.

Now, I think introverts can be great at sales when they bring their strengths to the conversation; who they are, and their desire to help people. Now on the flip side of this, I think the biggest challenge is that for people who are pure introverts, they will not enjoy the sales process.

A pure, pure introvert doesn’t necessarily want to have lots of conversations with lots of different people all day, every day. And so the biggest challenge is, is for introverts, it is draining to be in social situations, to be talking to lots of people, to have lots of conversations. It doesn’t mean they don’t like people.

Most introverts, like they’re certain group of friends, they’re small group, certain people they feel safe with they trust they like it’s easy, they don’t feel that a pressure from them. However, when you’re in a sales role, and dealing with different prospects and having to make outbound calls and deal with inbound calls and conversations where you have no idea how it’s going to turn out and which direction it’s going to go; that could be really stressful for pure introvert type people.

And long term sales careers can be really hard on them. They’re going to finish each day feeling very drained, and just want to go home into their safe place and hide and re-energize. And so that’s the tough part is a long term career in sales for an introvert is going to be hard because it’s the opposite of what energizes them.

Whereas an extrovert that is energized by conversations, energized by people, in the same way, they’re energized by going to parties and events where they’re excited afterwards and they just want to keep going and going and going. The introvert is going to really struggle with that energy wise, at the end of the day, at the end of the week, they’re really going to go into shutdown mode.

Now, here’s what I will tell you and this is a conversation for another episode is that a lot of people who think they’re introverts are really not pure introverts. It’s very rare to find an introvert who just is 100% one way.

A term that I’ve heard more and more over the last few years that I’ve done some research into is ambiverts. And I think that is really a good way to describe most people, especially people in sales, customer service, anything with public facing side. So, ambivert is kind of like ambidextrous, which is where you can use your right and your left hand equally as well.

An ambivert is somebody who’s an extrovert in some situations, introvert in other situations. I myself have kind of always thought I was an introvert because I didn’t really think I liked people. When I went to a party I wasn’t really energized and so I didn’t feel like an extrovert, especially when I read the definitions of both sides.

However, on the outside, people always said like, “What do you mean? You’re an extrovert, you’re always out there, you’re social, you talk to people, you seem good at parties or networking and things like that.” But on the inside, that’s not how it felt.

 However, when I really step back and look at it, it was situational, at parties, at networking events, at meetings, whatever I needed to be, I could be that outgoing person. It wasn’t a requirement, but I could do it and I was excited and I had a good time. However, it didn’t purely energize me, but it also didn’t totally wear me down.

So an introvert at a party or a networking event, at the end will feel very drained. And ambivert can do it, do it really well and not be totally drained from it, and then also likes their introvert time by themselves, it’s not necessary. And so I think a lot of people are actually ambiverts, where they’re situationally introverted or extroverted and they can do either.

And when you’re in that situation, you may think that you’re an introvert. So, a lot of people who think they’re pure introverts are not. And so you can be a good salesperson because while you’re in the sales interactions, you’re doing a great job, you’re out there, you’re having conversations, you’re more extroverted than it may feel like and it feels like a big stretch, but it’s not super draining.

So hopefully, that helps answer that question. If you want check it out. I’m going to link in the show notes for more ambivert related content. I’ve written about it in the past, but there’s lots of you can read online. This might be something that describes you really well and might help you in the context of your conversations and in your life.

But that’s it for another episode of the sales experience podcast. Make sure to subscribe wherever you downloaded this from. Check out the latest episodes, check out the show notes and the transcript on the CutterConsultingGroup.com website. And as always, remember that everything in life is sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.