Psychology of the Sale is to be covered in sections  will help to emphasize the applicability of Psychology of the Sale in selling situations. Subsequently, we recommend that you review this subject again after you have had a reasonable number of sales interviews.

Product knowledge is an important facet of development for professional sales representatives in any field. It is certainly a requisite for success in our business since ours is a vital and changing field and one in which the fulfillment of the dreams and obligations of our clients depends on our knowledgeable guidance.

However, desire for product knowledge can also become a trap if it prevents you from acquiring the ability to approach and persuade people. We are not paid for what we know about our product but for how we persuade others to use it.

Traits of sales representatives  TOP

The psychological consultants Mayer and Greenberg researched sales representatives in the retail, automobile, insurance and mutual funds fields, in an attempt to determine if there were any traits which were noticeable in outstanding sales representatives in these fields. The results of their studies indicated that all sales people have two basic traits to some degree.

Empathy

The ability to feel the way your prospect feels in order to sell a product or service. It does not mean being sympathetic. You can know what the prospect feels without agreeing with those feelings. Sales representatives cannot sail effectively if they lack the vital ingredient of powerful feedback from the prospect through empathy. The lack of empathy forces the poor sales representative to follow the track and, if the prospect fails to perform in the anticipated manner, lose the sale. The sales representative with empathy uses an organized track! but, sensing the prospect's reaction, can change pace or emphasis, double back on the track! make modifications to the prospect's feelings and close.             TOP

Ego drive

The need to make the sale as a form of personal conquest. Sales representatives do not enjoy selling for the money alone. They must ultimately dominate, and feel that the prospect exists for their own personal ego fulfillment. The sales representative's self-image is hurt by failure. Since selling by its very nature produces more failures to sell than sales, the ego must be strong enough to survive this destructive response. It must drive you to rebuild your image by closing the next sale. Empathy is the basic tool with which you establish needs in the client's range of feeling and enables you to enhance those needs in the client's mind. But your intense ego drive, your will to dominate and succeed, ultimately predominates and enables you to make the sale.

The successful sales representative in Mayer and Greenberg's studios has developed both of these traits to a high degree.

They observed:

"Thus, there are a number of possible permutations of empathy and drive. A person may have a high degree of both empathy and drive (ED), or little of either (ed), or two kinds of combine actions in between (ed and eD).

For example:            TOP

Ed

A salesman with fine empathy but too little drive may be a splendid person, but will be unable to close his deals effectively. This is the "nice guy." Everybody likes him, and from all appearances he should turn out to be one of the best men on the force. He somehow "doesn't make it." People end up liking him, but buying from the company down the street. He is often hired because he does have such fine personal qualities. Yet his closing ability is weak. He will get along with the customer, understand him, and bring him near the close, but he does not have that inner hunger to move the customer that final one foot to the actual sale. It is this last element of the sale-the close-which empathy alone cannot achieve, and where the assertive quality of ego drive becomes the all-important essential.

ed

A salesman without much empathy or drive should not actually be a salesman, although a great many present salesmen fall into this group. An employer would avoid much grief by finding this out in advance, before so much effort is spent in trying to hire, train, and spoon feed a man who does not have within him the basic dynamics to be successful.            TOP

ED

A salesman who has a great deal of both empathy and strong inner sales drive will be at or near the top of the sales force.

eD

A salesman with much drive but too little empathy will bulldoze his way through to some sales, but he wilt miss a great many and will hurt his employer through his lack of understanding of people.

"Many sales executives feel that the type of selling in their industry (and even in their particular company) is somehow completely special and unique. This is true to an extent. But the basic sales dynamics we have been discussing permit an individual to sell successfully, almost regardless of what he is selling.

"To date, we have gained experience with more than 7,000 salesmen of tangibles as welt as intangibles, in wholesale as well as retail selling, big-ticket and little ticket items. And the dynamics of success remain approximately the same in all cases. Sales ability is fundamental, more so than the product being sold."²

Now if you identify with one of Mayer and Greenberg's "unbalanced" types, don't despair. Everyone has these traits to some degree, and the sales procedures you adopt can go far towards bringing these two items into balance. "Needs" selling procedures in general demand a certain amount of empathy via the Fact - Finding procedure and questioning techniques in fixing the prospect's needs.

Your personal commitment to the product and your services can help you sustain a faltering ego drive. However, you must constantly guard against weaknesses in these areas and adopt techniques which help strengthen these traits.