How to avoid cheesy salesmanship and sell like a professional

Today Rod Solar answers a question that we get asked all the time by non-sales professionals. If you’ve ever stayed clear of selling for fear of looking or sounding cheesy, then watch this video.

Question: What would you say to people that say sales is cheesy or isn’t suitable for professionals or a professional environment?

Answer:

I’d say, in part they’re right. Many peoples’ view of sales stems from their observations of cheesy salesmanship, and there is a lot of it. The reason we have developed the stereotype, in part, is because the essence of that stereotype exists in reality, and it becomes easier for us to adopt that framework and subscribe to it.

I think,  like anything else like any stereotype there are individual differences. There are people who do things well, there are people who do things less well. The type of sales I aim to train;  the skills I aim to train – they are communication skills. They are the type of skills that anyone in any discipline can benefit from having.

I think the other thing too is that the way we approach selling as a discipline is a completely different method or paradigm than most salespeople look at it from. When you walk into a store. or onto a car lot, or into a home that you’re considering buying, many salespeople look at trying to convince you what they have is the best thing for you. Often that happens even before they know what you want, before you know what you need, and before they ask questions about what is important to you.

And we turn the tables on that considerably by equipping our trainees with the ability to ask questions about those things, and in so doing we create a consultative environment; not a sales environment – not the kind that most people imagine to be sales. Most of the people that respond to professionals in that environment don’t even see it as sales; they see it as conversation –  they see it as illuminating the professional with what is important to them so the professional can help them to get what they want. I can’t imagine any consumer, client, or patient having a problem with that. In fact, we have noticed that many of the people that learn the approaches that we teach, their customers came back to them and said “this was one of the best consultations I’ve ever had. And your level of service exceeds the kind of service I am used to in almost any field.”

So there are a lot of great knock-on effects to what it is that we are providing and one of those is better customer service, which I’m sure almost every professional is interested in.

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Meet our Founders

We’re passionate about helping leaders of high-quality, growth-minded practice owners double their practice revenue

Rod Solar

Founder & Scalable Business Advisor

Rod co-founded LiveseySolar and acts as a Fractional CMO and Scalable Business Advisor for our customers. He’s on a mission to help transform the lives of 10,000 people with vision correction surgery by 2024. To achieve that, he inspires his customers to make confident decisions that will help 50,000 people take the first step towards vision correction.

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LiveseySolar completely transformed the way we were approaching this… We’ve gone from having just the dream of having a practice to having a practice up and running with people making inquiries and booking for procedures… It’s extremely pleasing. We feel lucky we connected with LiveseySolar.

— Dr Matthew Russell, MBChB, FRANZCO, specialist ophthalmic surgeon and founder of VSON and OKKO

Laura Livesey

Founder & CEO

Laura Livesey is the co-founder & CEO of LiveseySolar. She has developed powerful refractive surgery marketing systems that increase patient volumes and profits for doctors, clinics, and hospitals, since 1997.

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Rod and Laura know as much about marketing surgery to patients as I know about performing it. They are an expert in the field of laser eye surgery marketing. They know this industry inside out. I believe that they could help many companies in a variety of areas including marketing materials, sales training and marketing support for doctors.

— Prof. Dan Reinstein, MD MA FRSC DABO, founder of the London Vision Clinic, UK