By the Ocean
Partly Cloudy 77 Degrees
6:01 a.m.
It’s not hard to stick out when you’re showing up along side the guys and gals whose first communication to you involves asking if you want to “hop on a call.”
I haven’t hopped in a very long time. I guess I could try it. My kids do it sometimes and seem to have fun. But most days, it’s just not something I’m interested in.
Trusted advisors don’t hop on calls, salespeople do.
So you get to choose WHICH you want to be by the actions you take and the words you speak. Both options come with benefits. Both options create obstacles.
The sales approach means you’ll forever be hunting. If you love the thrill of the chase, and you like doing it all the time, maybe it’s the right way for you. Go get ’em Tiger!
The trusted advisor approach means you’ll be on a road to master the art of attraction. This is slow. Often times, it doesn’t even look like you’re doing anything. You do the work FIRST, you get paid LATER.
The important part is not to mix these. It would be kind of like throwing water on a grease fire. Really weird and bad things can happen.
This is what the “hop on a call” folks are doing. And most of us get countless examples of this type of thing showing up in our inbox everyday. So many people playing with two substances that don’t go together.
Chasing and attraction are from two different sides of town. They had very different childhoods and don’t really belong in the same room…ever.
Push or pull, chase or attraction.
YOU MUST CHOOSE.
If you are in a trusted advisor business, I don’t know how you choose the chasing/sales route… unless you are OK being one of those examples where everyone talks about the slime you sling behind your back. And unless you have no issues with crafting the perception in your buyer that you have their best interests at heart even when you don’t.
Just because you choose the attraction route doesn’t mean sales don’t happen. It means the way the sales happen is different, more subtle, invisible even.
When you push someone to buy, something is lost in that transaction. The relationship is forever shifted.
When you attract someone to buy, when you engineer the environment where the buying act is THEIR IDEA, that creates a very different kind of outcome. It strengthens the relationship, it builds the trust, it serves as PROOF that the perception they have of you is correct. It’s not because you tricked them, it’s because you showed them you aren’t living a lie.