We talk a lot about all kinds of tips for ways to do your job better, smarter, and enjoying it more. But let’s not forget that a big part of our job includes interpersonal skills with your coworkers and interacting with your customers. Especially in Sales!

Sales is about knowing the customer’s personal and professional WANTS & NEEDS. And I mean their actual WANTS & NEEDS, not the ones you think they should want. This takes time and focus. Every single time you meet with them they will give you a little more insight about them. This is where those active listening skills will come in handy. Be a good listener and take notes. Review those notes just before you go see them the next time. You might even repeat back to them their professional WANTS & NEEDS, “Last time we met you said you wanted to reduce X, Y, Z” or “We discussed that you are having trouble with…”

The customer will tell you their Personal Needs: Family, Ethics, Social, Mental, Financial, and Physical. But probably not the first time you meet. They don’t know you well enough yet. They will also tell you their Professional wants and needs: Time, Sales, People, Productivity, and Strategy. Again, probably not the first meeting. But over time they will share it with you. Listen closely, it may be delivered in code. You will have to learn to decipher subtle statements like, “I am having absentee problems,” or “My operations manager and controller argue a lot.”

Your best Sales Tool? Get to know your customer.

Have you ever have heard the expression “She could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo” or “He could sell an Ice Box to an Eskimo”. It leaves you thinking, why would an Eskimo need ice or a freezer? What the phrase really means is that he or she can sell something deemed unnecessary by many to pretty much anyone.

The real skill here is the ability to sell the value of what is perceived as the impossible, when it is very possible. With all the science fiction writers the last 25 years it is very conceivable that you could find someone to believe you have an implantable memory chip for your brain. If someone believes in it, they will buy it. Advances in technology could also convince us that a pair of sunglasses could double as a computer monitor. Google glasses aren’t far from this concept, and I bet people will buy it.

Think of some of our most influential inventors throughout history. There is some debate over when and by whom the radio was invented, but for the sake of argument let’s says it was David Edward Hughes in 1879. About the same time Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and received his first patent in 1876. In 1876 Paul Gottlieb Nipkow patented a rotating disc that could capture and display an image using electricity. Now let’s say in 1890 you gathered Hughes, Bell and Nipkow in a room and tried to sell them on your idea for a little hand held device that could be used as a wireless communications device with text and video. You were trying to persuade them to invest in your new little gadget or today’s “smart phone”. Do you think they would buy it?

Many people have tried, without success, to sell their ideas and get buy in from potential customers. Xerox comes to mind. The inventor of Xerox eventually gave up on buyers and started his own company to develop and produce “photo copying” machines.

The key to selling an idea is to clearly paint a visual, realistic picture in the buyer’s mind and show them the value behind the idea. Even better, create that picture in their mind appear as if it was their own idea to help their product. In other words, find a way to explain the idea without starting at the total concept, but start by asking small questions. If I were selling the “smart phone” to Hughe, Bell and Nipkow, I would ask them “What could happen if we married your three patents?”  Or maybe start even simpler and speak to Bell, “Could your phone be wireless?” This creates an easy lead in to more questions. “Is it possible for your wired phone to have a picture?” The hardest step but not impossible, “Could we marry all three? And if we could, how would it change the business world? What would it be worth if we could communicate blueprints, information and voice in just minutes or seconds to REST OF THE WORLD?”

Selling is first about helping your customer visualize from within. Then we expand the notion to consider the value to their business. This is the crossroads where selling and listening meet. We must listen to their minds and ask the right questions to lead them to self-discovery. Now you can sell something you knew was beneficial to their company and they just realized they definitely needed.