Women it’s time to drop the nice little girl crap and grow up.  You’ve been told:

• Nice girls don’t toot their own horn
• Nice girls don’t talk too much
• Nice girls aren’t loud and boisterous
• Nice girls should be seen and not heard
• Nice girls shouldn’t talk to strangers

A fine bunch of rules for proper little ladies, but not necessarily for women in sales.  Let’s put each of these under scrutiny, and get you selling like a pro rather than a nice girl.  In sales nice girls finish last.

Nice girls don’t toot their own horn.  Every time you hold a sales conversation you’re in essence interviewing for a job.  If you went to a job interview and you weren’t prepared to answer the standard interview questions: what was your greatest achievement, what was your biggest failure, and why are you the best choice for this job you wouldn’t get the job.  The same is true in every sales conversation.

Be prepared to share stories that make your point without causing you to feel like you’re boasting.  Stories are one of the most universally powerful forms of communication.  Keep your stories succinct; but make sure you tell them in such a way that you’re removing objections, answering questions they’ll need answered, demonstrating what they need to believe, discounting the other options, and demonstrating the behaviors you want them to demonstrate.

Nice girls don’t talk too much.  This one is actually to your advantage.  Your job isn’t to talk them into a sale.  Your job is to ask revealing questions and to listen to their response.  The better you are at listening the better you’ll be at sales.  And that’s why women are naturally wound to be better in sales than most men.

Nice girls aren’t loud and boisterous, and you shouldn’t be either.  Many people have the misguided notion that the best sales people are extroverts, the back slapping joke popping center of attention.  That is completely false.  The best sales people are introverts.  You may wonder why and the answer is both logical and simple.  Introverts are naturally better listeners, buyers perceive them as more trustworthy, and buyers feel more comfortable sharing the information you need to know to do business together with an introvert.

Nice girls should be seen and not heard.  This is a bunch of excess baggage you’ve carried from childhood that you need to dump because it’s terrible advice for anyone in sales.  You bring tremendous value to every situation don’t discount yourself.  Allow yourself to be confident in the fact that when you speak you have something important to say that others need to hear.

Nice girls don’t talk to strangers.  More terrible advice for anyone in sales that you’ve had drilled in your head from childhood.  Get over this childhood fear by making it your goal to make every stranger a new friend.  And you know you can do that.

At a NAIFA convention one of the speakers gave a great definition for self-confidence.  He said that self-confidence was arrogance under control.  You have just as much, if not more, going for you as any of your male counterparts.  List all the things that make you great and then review them before each sales conversation, so you can enter the conversation with the reserved self-confidence that conveys you’re a Top Producer and they should be honored to work with you.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 3:45 pm and is filed under coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.