Behavioral Selling Skills: Developing The Unfair Advantage

Behavioral Selling Skills: Developing The Unfair Advantage

Following a slower-than-hoped-for sales (and asset retention) year, sales teams and client relationship management departments are struggling to understand what’s gone wrong in the sales and asset retention process and to implement new approaches to relationship development and management.

Today, there are a number of new and creative tools and strategies available that enable sales professionals and relationship managers to look at sales and business development with a fresh perspective.

One new tool to consider is behavioral selling. This technique offers a new framework for approaching relationship development. Why does behavioral selling matter?

The reality is that people buy from people they like. The key to developing and maintaining relationships (and closing sales) over time is the ability to connect-and stay connected-to lots of different kinds of people. Because we each have our own behavioral styles, we cannot naturally connect with people who are very unlike ourselves-unless we understand behavioral styles and behavioral selling.

With a behavioral selling framework in hand, though, we are able to both identify our own behavioral style and to understand the styles of the people with whom we’d like to develop relationships. Most importantly, we are then able to “adapt” our behavioral style to increase the probability of developing new, long-term relationships-even with people very different from ourselves. For sales people, this leads to an increased ability to close more business with new and existing prospects and clients. For relationship managers, this means the ability to manage a long-term relationship even when there’s no “clicking” of personalities.

The “big idea” to behavioral selling is the concept that each of us has a different core behavioral style. These styles fall into recognizable patters of communication behavior and preferences. The patterns then translate to a host of very specific day-to-day behaviors.

Core behavioral styles can be identified and documented, and the information can be shared to enhance team and interpersonal communication.

There are a number of effective tools available today to help identify core behavioral styles, and to leverage the understanding of behavioral styles to the financial services sales and marketing process. If you’d like to know how these tools and programs can work for you, give us a call.