Take Full Responsibility

Welcome back, everybody. It’s Reza Abbaszadeh. Very delighted. Once again, I’m going to talk about the art of selling, so let’s get it. Customers don’t make sales, salespeople make sales. Okay. So you and your organization is either going to make or break the sale.

I said, customers don’t stop sales, salespeople stop sales. Now I’m going to say that customers don’t make sales. It is impossible. Somebody can’t just buy something that salesperson makes that sale happen or not happen. It’s the management’s job in-store organization’s job it’s the salesperson’s job to sell and create trust. So now tell me whether or not the sales happen is entirely up to who? You never them.

Responsibility and Selling

So to make sales, you have to understand the mind of the customer. If you don’t recognize how buyers think, what causes them to respond, what causes them to act, you are unable to take full responsibility. And I’m telling you guys you’ll never truly reach your full potential.

Then you step into this arena, you are now in the business of handling people, not just selling product. People are run by their mind. Okay. So you’re going to study about mind, understand the mind. You understand people.

Do you know what’s so funny? Most salespeople tend to blame their customers when sales are down, but they don’t usually do so to the customer’s face. It’s an interesting phenomenon. They say, Oh that guy is cheap. Okay, that guy is cheap. So why don’t you say to his face if you really feel good about it? Because it’s crazy to do that. Yeah, I know. But it’s also crazy if you’re talking behind their back. You cannot say that “that guy is cheap” Then talk to your colleague about your customer that did not buy… “that guy was cheap”

So you’re passing responsibility. Okay. You’re passing responsibility on them, but the truth is you are responsible. Have you ever heard a salesperson tells his coworker that “He cannot make a decision? He doesn’t know what he wants. He wants more than he can afford. He is just wasting my time and go on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

I never tolerate this kind of talk. I never, you shouldn’t either. I would never tolerate this kind of talk in my organization. We can’t sell it’s our fault. That’s it. I don’t care what he said. I don’t care how ridiculous it is. Oh, I don’t care how low the offer was. Because when you turn responsibility over to another person, it’s kind of indication of very low level of responsibility and very low level of responsibility equals to very low level of production.

I’m not talking about just selling, I’m talking about your whole life. Okay. So this is an important principle in my life. I would rather cause a car wreck than have one happened to me, right? People don’t buy because at some point you didn’t assume enough responsibility for the selling and also you did assume full responsibility for the buying. See, you have to take responsibility for both. Do you understand what I’m saying? I, you don’t take responsibility for selling. I take responsibility for selling and buying.

How to take full responsibility for selling and buying?

Let me give you a personal example. I was working in a retail furniture store, as one of my first jobs out of college and this guy came in and said, “look, I’m not going to buy anything today. I’m just looking. Don’t bother”. I looked at him and applied. “Sure. That’s totally fine. I’m here for you. If you don’t buy today, that would be my fault not yours.” He looked at me and said. “That’s good. That’s good”. I filled his whole house with furniture. In about 2 hours. I’ve done the whole house. Can you believe it?

That person told me I’m not going to buy anything. I took responsibility for selling and buying. Look what happened. Let me tell you what the problem is. You are thinking just about your role in an organization. But that’s a mistake. You should take full responsibility for managing the transaction if you have to.

If you have to, you have to take responsibility for getting his financing even if it’s not your job. You would have to take the responsibility for executive-level decisions if it’s necessary for you to get the deal done, to get the job done to close to sell. You have to do that, whatever it takes to get the deal done.

Let me tell you something about that person. That person told me “I’m not going to buy anything today, but this is an active response, an active response from his mind. He would do it with anybody that walked up to him. He would do it in any retail environment he walked in and it’s probably not him talking. You’ve done it before?

You, yes. You ever walked in someplace and said: I’m not buying anything, leave me alone. But the truth is you needed help and you would buy it if it was the right product. If there was somebody there who could help you. Here’s the bottom line: the only thing that the buyer should do when they come to your company, store, whatever is to give you money. That’s it.

Why people do not buy your product?

So the buyer who States I’m not buying today or whatever the stall is, I don’t care, is indicating a lack of trust. Okay. A lack of trust of either the salesperson, I mean you, or the ability to make a good decision, it’s vital to understand. While the buyer is very of you as a salesperson, as the company or they very of themselves because he or she has a distrust that they can’t make a good decision.

These points must be understood by you. You must be understanding of the customers. That’s communicating distrust. At that point, you can endear trust. You can get credibility. So once you have an understanding, you can actually prevent it.

When somebody meets you and you sense that oh, there’s distrust. First, don’t make it personal. You haven’t even said anything. Perhaps that blue shirt you’re wearing caused them to distrust you. Okay. So things happen, don’t worry and don’t make it personal. Maybe they had a bad experience on the way over here, or maybe they had a bad experience with salespeople before.

But maybe they ripped somebody off before and they can’t trust anyone else now, because they did it themselves and now they are scared that somebody else does something the same to them. So it’s a possibility. and you do not know! The only thing you know is that they don’t trust you and you need to engender the trust.

You cannot sell people that they don’t trust you. Trust means reliance, integrity, strength, ability, surety. Isn’t it? I can rely on your integrity. I can rely on your strength, ability, surety. It means confidence. It’s a confident explanation of something it’s hope. A hope that something going to happen.

It’s a form of trust, confidence in the certainty of a future payment. For example, I lend you money and I trust you. So you’re going to pay me back. I give you a down payment for a property it’s trust. It’s trust. It’s confidence in the certainty of a future payment and future event.

So trust means reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety of a person, or thinking that’s it. So you have to get people confident in you. You cannot get it in I don’t know in disagreeing, you can’t get it in arguing, you can’t get it in insisting. You have to build trust. Look at the ways you can start building trust. Then you see it handle it. It’s your job, not just to sell your product, but to help them buy the product, take the responsibility of both roles and you will see your trust goes up. – Reza Abbaszadeh