Selling can lose you friends???

At our "Keys to Success, Wealth & More Friends" seminar on June 15, workshop leader Kelly Lim guided the attendees to focus on two questions - basically, two sides of the same issue.

Q1. Why do people think and say selling can cause you to lose friends?

Q2. How would (or should) you do it such that you won't lose friends and instead make friends?

Going around the room, we got the following responses to Q1:

#1: I do seem to scare away my friends and I don't even know why ... some people tell me I ask too many questions.

#2: Hard selling, or forcing a sale of a product on friends, is what will lose you friends. Worse, if you are selling what you don't even believe in!

#3: You will lose friends if you are persistent in the wrong way - keep asking people to buy products from you even when they have said "no".

In the discussion that followed, a leader who was concerned that Q1 was even discussed at all, said: If you keep losing friends in the course of prospecting, examine your ways of selling. But do not be too hard on yourself. Sometimes, it is not your selling that is at fault. It is that the prospect is not good enough. There is such a thing as a "Prospect from Hell". We have come across one or two over the years ;)

As the discussion went around the room, with contributions from people of various levels of experience, we quickly established the following consensus response to Q2:

1. When going into a conversation with any prospect, it is important that we go in with the objective of wanting to get to know the person better, not going for a sale. In getting to know a person, we're really looking out or listening up for a fit - a good fit between the prospect's needs and what we can offer. Where a fit cannot be found, we must simply let go.

2. Think Relationship Marketing, another name for Network Marketing. Relationships must come before the Marketing. Establish a relationship first - ideally, a relationship built on trust. If people trust you, they're more likely to buy what you recommend.

3. Building relationship does not necessarily take a long time or many conversations and follow-up meetings. We can establish a rapport quickly - even within three minutes - if we would just be sincerely interested in people and their interests or concerns. Focus on people, and what they want; not on ourselves and what we may want out of them. If we do that, and if the prospect is right for us, we will have the opportunity to share the products and/or the opportunity within one conversation.

So, "selling" in itself is not a bad thing. It is how you do it.