Natural Selling
An Interview with Michael Oliver: “The Sales Coach”
For many of us, the toughest aspect of running a business is attracting more customers and referrals. Deep down, we may believe the old stereotype of “salesman as huckster,” allowing our fears, dislikes, and negative perceptions about selling to prevent us from seeking more business. We sense that traditional sales techniques are manipulative and uncomfortable for the buyer, so these techniques are also the major cause of our own anxiety – and can result in poor sales performance.
Yet, we have also found that despite our negative perceptions, the experience of sales can be a very positive one, especially when our customer has found our product or service to be genuinely “worth its weight in gold.” Along with the revenue, which is the life-blood of any business, sales provide an opportunity to get to know others and to help solve their problems.
According to Michael Oliver, owner of “The Sales College,” there are alternatives to traditional sales techniques that can make selling a consistently enjoyable and satisfying experience for both parties. A professional Sales Training Coach, consultant, and speaker, he has worked with people around the world in a variety of businesses, including telecom equipment and services, software, alternative energy, advertising and sponsorships.
Oliver’s program is designed to help people to become more successful through Natural Selling, a concept which teaches that the only way to get what we want is to give others what they want. His unique, eight-week-interactive program is delivered via teleconferencing, the Internet, and personal workshops. Redefining the role of the seller and the business being represented, Natural Selling eliminates the seller’s anxiety and fear of selling by teaching how to identify prospect’s problems, linking their needs to our service, and helping them recognize the consequences of leaving their problem unsolved. Using Natural Selling, Oliver shows companies and salespeople how changing their paradigms and methods enables them to achieve significantly better results, secure outstanding client relationships, and eliminate personal stress.
PS: What does the term Personal Success mean to you?
Michael: For me, it’s being able to achieve all my own objectives in my business and personal life, and being able to combine the two.
PS: At some point, you learned a method for selling that works, and now you’re teaching it to others. How did you come to be an expert in “natural selling”?
Michael: I don’t think I’m any different from anybody else. I just woke up in 1979 looking for a challenge, and decided that selling would be interesting – so I went out there and sold. I think my initial success had more to do with enthusiasm and hard work than anything else.
PS: So it didn’t matter so much what you were selling, it was your own ` enthusiasm that made the difference.
Michael: Oh, it mattered what I was selling – I explored a number of things which I could sell, until I came across solar energy. I was one of the first people to place solar energy systems in apartment buildings, and my commission checks became quite large. It was a very worthwhile product, and I believed in it. I think you can, in essence, sell anything, but if you believe in the product, it gives you peace of mind.
PS: When you started selling solar energy, would you say you had a leap in your understanding of sales methods?
Michael: No, I had no concept of selling, knew no more than most people. I had energy and enthusiasm, and that helped, but I used to sell “features,” which is absolutely the wrong way to go. Features are “the product.” You don’t sell features – you sell what your product or service is going to do for somebody.
But I set out to learn. I took some formal training…courses, books, and a correspondence course. These things gave me some structure. However, I didn’t like having to “close” people – to constantly handle objections. It was all very forced. Consequently, I was forever searching for ways that would make it more comfortable for me to sell because I enjoyed selling. Even though I didn’t enjoy the process.
PS: So you enjoyed the closing of the sale. It’s a great feeling.
Michael: The closing of the sale was a great feeling at times but it was the wrong feeling – a feeling of winning over an adversary. The objective was to make the sale. Most of us dislike rejection – but it comes as a result of trying to push your product or service, which is what we think we have to do because we’ve been subjected to pushy, manipulative techniques. In fact, the total opposite is true. If you stop pushing your product or service, you get rid of your own discomfort because it’s caused by knowing that your client is uncomfortable. Your anxiety goes up and your fear of selling is increased. The real cause of this is that you’re being manipulative. You don’t like it and they don’t like it.
PS: And yet there’s a pressure to perform – to one’s own standards or to one’s employer’s standards.
Michael: That indeed is a challenge. If you use traditional sales techniques, you’re going to have failures. However, if you approach your business in an entirely different way, you’ll discover very quickly whether there is a sale to be made in the first place. If there isn’t a sale to be made, how can you lose it? How can you be dejected or feel rejected? If you change your attitude to what you believe your business is all about, then you change your approach to your perspective purchaser. Whether or not your product is of interest to them, you will have established a relationship there, and not one of rejection. That relationship can lead to other things – referrals, references, and so on. It’s the manner and process in how you go about it that determines whether you’re going to feel this anxiety or this fear or feel rejected.
PS: Was it through the experience of selling a product you believed in that you discovered what you now know about selling?
Michael: No. What I discovered a few years later was a method of communicating which was based on, for want of a better word, counseling – asking people questions. And I started using that more successfully. It suited my personality. I subsequently found out it suited most other people. The problem that I had with it was that the psychological or behavioral process was difficult to understand, and it was difficult to learn. Unless you get some practical element behind it, concepts are hard for people to understand. They need real facts.
This method of communication also advocated a number of techniques for understanding your clients and their personalities, and for building rapport with them. These still seemed to me quite manipulative. If you’re having to build rapport, spending time trying to match your personality to theirs, you aren’t concentrating on the objective at hand. Understanding personalities is important – however, I believe you do that after you learn how to communicate properly. You’ve got to learn how to do your basic work first.
PS: My understanding of traditional sales techniques includes establishing rapport, finding out what they want and a way to match what you have to what they want, and closing the sale. You should do it all in such a way that they like you. Is this wrong?
Michael: Not necessarily. What you’re saying there sounds right, but what do you understand those words to mean?
You don’t have to get people to like you. Respect is more important. We feel that we have to be liked in order to make the sale, and that’s not the important thing. Rapport building, the traditional way, takes up a lot of time and it’s not really necessary. You can build rapport through communication – not through finding some object in the room to be able to relate to, some hobby, or item of interest. There is also this perception that you have to build credibility in the first fifteen
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minutes by talking to your prospect about you, your product or service, and your company. The reality is, it’s a waste of time because your prospect doesn’t care. Background about you and your company has very little meaning to them, because they’re not buying everything that you have to offer. They’re buying what you can do for them. And the only way that you’re going to discover what you can do for them is by asking questions.
Now, we’re not talking about random questions. We’re talking about specific, structured questions, all of which are very meaningful and powerful. Your questions can take the meeting to a meaningful conclusion, and reveal in fact if there is a sale to be made - which saves you both a lot of time. And they will respect you for it.
If you listen carefully to the answers to your questions, you’ll find that objection handling is absolutely unnecessary because all the objections are handled within the conversation you’re had with the person. Closing skills are unnecessary because you’ve come to a natural conclusion that there is a problem to be solved and that you have the ideal product or service.
In effect, then, the commitment is just a natural conclusion. The process is really based on the fact that you are acting as a counselor. The approach is, “I’m not sure if what I have is going to work for you – however, my hunch is that it might, and the way to find out is by spending a few minutes together discovering if what we’ve got is going to make a fit.”
That is a very non-threatening way to approach somebody – instead of insisting that what we have is the ultimate solution. People make purchasing decisions for many reasons, some of which are deeply personal. And it’s the job of the salesperson to discover as many of the desires and needs as possible because two persons will buy exactly the same product or service for entirely different reasons.
The problem most salespeople have is an assumption that what they have is exactly what their prospect wants. Consequently they’re always going toe-to-toe with each other. And what it gets down to is usually a battle over price.
Whether they know it or not, that salesperson is really looking for an understanding of what it is about their prospect’s business that helps them do what it is they’re trying to do. People should be in business to solve other people’s problems.
PS: Obviously, from a spiritual angle, we should all be more involved with helping others, but it’s just not fact. Don’t people go into business to solve their own problems – rent, food, self-esteem, and so on?
Michael: Here’s where there’s a need for a paradigm shift. If you go to somebody with your product or service, and the focus is on your business making a profit, and you’re pushing your product on to them, how does this other person feel? If your focus is on the fact that the purpose of your business is to solve your prospect’s problems, how does that person feel? Special. Your business has to manifest that you’re not in it for you; you’re in it for them. And you have to live and breathe that belief. Once you do that, you go through this massive paradigm shift and you no longer sell you, your product, or your service. You’re not coming across as a pushy salesperson. You’re there to solve other people’s problems.
Using Natural Selling, I don’t try to sell. Yet I’m very successful in selling. You also can be very successful at being manipulative; however, why do it when there’s a far better way? You can be equally or more successful without making people feel uncomfortable – or making yourself feel uncomfortable.
In the Natural Selling process, there are three elements. The first one is the philosophy behind Natural Selling. You could say that it’s to do with principled selling – with ethics. The second is the concept. What is the concept of Natural Selling? And lastly, what are the methods? How do you go about it?
PS: Where and how did you learn these concepts?
Michael: All my material comes from masses of sources including my own experience. It’s worked extremely well for me and for anybody that practices the approach.
I’ve used all of the manipulative techniques and didn’t feel good. It caused me a lot of anxiety. I had to pump myself up, get motivated. I had good days and bad days, but now I never lose – because I can discover very quickly if there is a sale to be made in the first place. If there isn’t, then I move very quickly on. I have still established a good relationship. I get referrals from people that I haven’t done business with because they’ve recognized that, while I wasn’t able to satisfy their particular problem, they knew other people I should call. We hear all this stuff about relationship building and we think we’ve got to do all this manipulative stuff and be friendly with people but that’s not what it’s all about. Relationship building is about being yourself.
I don’t try and convince people that what I’m saying is true, or that it’s for them. I put it in such a way that I allow them to discover it for themselves. And they can do that, as you’re doing it right now, by asking more questions.
In my foundation course, which is a nine-week course, the first hour is completely free. It allows people to discover whether or not learning over the phone is going to work for them and what the natural selling process is all about. People can take these ideas to the bank if they want to, or they can continue with me on the eight-week course, which I start once a week. One course starts every week.
PS: How many people would be on the line at one time?
Michael: At the moment I have anywhere from seven to 22 students in each class. Those that continue all work from the same manual, and it’s very interactive. There’s a lot of sharing that goes on. People from all over North America call in – I’ve even had someone from Europe who has been to one of my classes. It’s a very convenient way for people to learn. I also have a Web Site where there’s a lot of information: (www.naturalselling.com).
PS: Would you say that being successful is a conscious choice?
Michael: I believe so, yes. I think a lot of people wish for success but they’re not prepared to take the steps to get here. And in many cases, people don’t know what those steps are. One of the things that I attempt to do in Natural Selling is to provide an easy understanding of what those steps are in this specific area. Natural Selling is merely a powerful communications tool. It can be used in a lot of different areas, not just for selling.
I think the other reason is that unfortunately in this world, our education and leadership systems are in need of repair, and in many places, replacement. Consequently, there are more and more people who are becoming less innovative. They’re more dependent on others to solve their problems.
PS: What is the motivation that keeps you striving?
Michael: It’s an internal motivation. It’s not winning – at least not in a traditional sense. It’s winning from the point of view of being able to set objectives and reach them. It’s a very satisfying feeling. I don’t need others to motivate me; I don’t need any external stimuli. It’s just a desire to get up at six o’clock in the morning and enjoy my work, and whenever I can, enjoy my leisure, right through to 10:00 at night, and to pack as much as I can into that sixteen hours.
PS: What would you say to someone who has an interest in achieving but is afraid to take the steps?
Michael: Everybody craves success – and yet there are so many people who when given the opportunity to take the first step, don’t take it. It’s easier to rest on what you’re doing right now. And the first step is the hardest because it requires a great deal of understanding. The unfortunate fact is that desiring and wishing and hoping for success goes no further than just that. So if we’re going to change things for ourselves, we’ve got to make positive and practical steps forward. Working on that first step opens up a wonderful world of opportunity.
For further information please check out his website at www.naturalselling.com
Contact information:
www.naturalselling.com
Phone: 775.886.0777
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