7 Ways How NOT to Talk about Yourself

One thing buyers can smell a mile away is a desperate salesperson. Often, that desperation comes from a lack of turning pipeline opportunities into results. But also from a lack of knowledge of how exactly to sell with the buyer’s perspective. If you still find yourself in situations where, within two minutes into a customer meeting, you talk about how your company is the best and the greatest and that your capabilities and solutions are absolutely better than your competitor… then from a buyer’s perspective, you come across as desperate. To turn pipeline opportunities into success, you need to learn how to not talk about yourself.

Here are seven ways how not to talk about yourself and instead come across as a more composed, authentic, and thoughtful person. Someone who wants to help and is getting the buyers’ attention:

1. Be interested in others

To be successful in sales, you cannot be self-orientated. Let go of your agenda and push instead the customer’s agenda. If you could be a fly on the wall at their senior management meeting, what are they talking about? Show your interest in their priorities and their challenges. Do you want to create stakeholders’ interest? Customers find those people interesting who are interested in them.

2. Recognize change from your experience

Customers are always on the lookout for external drivers that could affect their business. Factors like changes in the economy and regulatory changes. Technology innovation, industry trends, competitor moves and disrupting business concepts are also driving their motivation to adapt and change. The question is, have they recognised similar changes as you have seen with other customers? That is the experience they do not have. Stakeholders are hungry for insightful stories about other customers in similar situations. Did they face the same issues? How did they overcome these? What can they learn from you?

3. Go beyond the average preparation

Don’t wing your meetings, and go beyond the understanding of the IN-DO-OUT of a business. Figure out how your prospects make money. What is their business model? What is their strategy to attract consumers or other businesses to buy from them? How successful are they with this? Verify this type of situational knowledge in your meeting. Ask yourself in your preparation: How can I help them with improving their results? What do they not know but should know to be more successful? What would you like them to discover during your meeting?

4. Be resourceful

Trusted Advisors are resourceful. If you want to change the customer’s perspective about their situation and challenges, then you cannot rely just on your own obtained knowledge. You need to come up with ideas that make your customers more competitive. Ideas that help them with identifying growth opportunities. When done well, you kick-start the buying process. Use Google and AI to find third-party sources that back up your idea. Here are some examples (just literally Google or AI your idea and ask for research with links; it is that simple!).

YOUR IDEA / INSIGHT	ARTICLE / INSIGHT / RESEARCH / WHITE PAPER
Focus on Customer Experience as a growth strategy	https://www.superoffice.com/blog/customer-experience-strategy/
Drive revenue by improving Consumer Loyalty	https://www.score.org/resource/blog-post/14-brand-loyalty-strategies-small-businesses
Apply creative SME growth strategies	https://www.ruby.com/blog/creative-growth-strategies-for-todays-small-businesses/
Innovative Profit Improvers	https://www.mindtools.com/as67pbm/doblins-10-types-of-innovation
South-East Asia as your next growth market	https://www.aseanbriefing.com/news/industries-to-watch-out-for-growth-in-southeast-asia-in-2023/

5. Align information with the Buying Clock

Trusted Advisors are sense-makers. The information they share is exactly aligned with what Stakeholders need at that moment in their buying process. In Why Change?, their information is about risks and opportunities they see for their customer. In Change to What?, their information is about different solution criteria and business case examples. They can explain the context and importance of using that information to grow the customer’s business. They do not talk about themselves and let the shared information do the talking.

6. Focus on strategic outcomes

As Theodore Levitt, a marketing professor at Harvard, once said, “People don’t buy drills; they buy holes.” Business people don’t buy your solution; they buy a desired outcome, the new results they want to achieve. Accelerated growth rarely comes from tactical decisions. Cheap drills don’t produce quality holes. For that, you need a quality drill with quality skills and a solid strategic plan. Sell the need for a desired strategic outcome first.

7. Show how you have helped other customers

The FOMO and FOWI phenomenons still work. Your business idea can probably lead to great top-line growth for your customer, but has it been done before? People are always scared to dive into the unknown. They prefer to dip their toes into the water first. Help them see how worthwhile the swim is by showing how you have helped other customers in similar situations. Back this up with business acumen language. Use percentages, real dollars and cents outcomes and growth simulation graphs. If it worked for others, why shouldn’t your idea work for them? To influence your Stakeholders moving forward in their buying process, ask if you can build a business case with one of their team members. Don’t talk about your company, talk about theirs.

Apply the 80-20 rule.

The 80/20 rule of active listening says that in any sales conversation, the sales rep should spend 80% of the time listening and only 20% of the time talking. Use the 7 ways of not talking about yourself to achieve the above 80/20 rule. I guarantee you that this will produce better results for your customers and for you.