Now for the sixth characteristic of our Authentic Selling model: In the AUTHENTIC acronym, N is for Natural.
This one should be easy. If you are a real Advisor to your client, your Trustworthiness, Helpfulness and Empathy will come Naturally. That’s because it’s Authentic.
Let’s take a close look at the importance of being Natural.
When you think of a sales rainmaker, what kind of person comes to mind? Let’s get specific and consider rainmakers in the business of commercial real estate and development. Most likely, Donald Trump would be top (or near top) of mind.
We tend to think of a rainmaker as a larger-than-life kind of figure; someone with a big, maybe even outsized, personality. They are aggressive, highly confident, forceful people who have a “take no prisoners” attitude. For years, it has been understood that if you want to be a rainmaker, you gotta act like a rainmaker—and rainmakers are “alpha dogs.”
People were encouraged to “modify their behavior” and “adapt their selling styles” to emulate that of the hard-charging rainmaker. The problem was, many people didn’t know quite how to pull this off and so ended up simply mimicking The Donald.
Our new Authentic Selling model is nothing like that!
First of all, to be authentic means to be yourself. Therefore, I’m encouraging you to be natural in your approach to sales. Just be yourself. You don’t have to transform who you are into someone you are not in order to be successful in sales.
As we talked about already, buyers are sophisticated. They see right through people who are disingenuous. They know insincerity when they see it! Try to be someone you are not and the buyer will ignore you or dismiss you. Believe me, they will not want to buy from you because you will not come across as trustworthy.
Now, let me be clear here: If your job requires you to interact with strangers or new potential customers and you have daily first-time conversations, you need to either naturally possess extraverted behavior or you can model that behavior to a certain extent. That’s simply rising to the occasion; I call it “show time.” This is that extra spark we all employ when we have to interact with strangers and need to make a positive, lasting impression. This is how you might approach a business dinner, a networking seminar, a trade show, Webinar, Skype session, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with “being on” as long as you are still being you.
If you are naturally very shy and feel seriously uneasy meeting new people, channeling The Donald will not make you successful. Your natural self, your introverted self, will not thrive in an environment of constant newness where you must be “on” most of the time. That doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in sales! Just look for a type of sales position where you deal mostly with current customers and have safe conversations. That way, you’ll remain natural, and your true self can still shine.