How to Activate Your Sales Muscles and Sell With Your Body Language

Do you know you’re a package of muscles? Do you also know that if you don’t use a muscle, it becomes weak and will atrophy? In the same vein, any muscle you use consistently will become stronger. Just ask health workers who deal with paralyzed patients all day. The human muscle slowly becomes weak with less use. As a sales person, there are certain traits that form the muscles of selling which you must use consistently in order to be successful in sales. I will use the acronym, S.E.L.L.I.N.G to illustrate the importance of these sales muscles.Each letter is a trait you must start to culture or develop in yourself to ensure that you sell effectively and close every single time.

S – State: This refers to your emotional state. Your emotional state is always based on your thoughts. As a sales person, there is an emotional state you have to be in to be productive at all times. In order to be in a productive state, you need to guard your emotions, guard your heart and watch the thoughts that come in so you can perform at a peak level. So to sell effectively, develop the muscle of identifying your productive state and learn how to stay there by moving your body the way you want to think and focusing on the right things so you can feel as productive and as effective as you should. Stay confident, alert and enthusiastic always and clients will gravitate towards you.

E – Energy:​ You can’t meet your sales target if you lack energy to get out of bed in the morning or if you keep falling ill. That is why you have to cultivate a lifestyle that will ensure your energy level keeps increasing not getting depleted. This lifestyle should be centered on routine exercise and healthy diet. You can attain a high level of energy every day by creating a schedule for exercising and sticking to it religiously. You can also improve your energy level and stay healthy through the kind of meals you eat. This is a vital way to keep your body refreshed and your mind alert.

L – Love: You must genuinely care for your clients in order to sell to them effectively. One golden rule I always follow is to never allow myself to be so moved by my sales target such that I sell the wrong thing just to make some short-term gain. It is a policy I implore you to adopt as well. It’s better to lose a sale than to lose a relationship because a relationship will open doors for you to get other clients.

L- Learning Quickly: You need to acquire information quickly, answer questions quickly and adapt quickly to trends in your industry. If you’ve sold your products for a while, you should have an idea of the questions the clients ask, especially the objections they gave when you were selling to them so you can have a list of replies which you’ve memorized to address those objections.

I – Imagination: Imagination is a major and very important part in the sales process. Design your sales process in your mind before meeting your prospect. Touch your product, feel it, smell it and imagine how it will benefit your prospect before the appointment. Imagine the outcome of the meeting. Imagine you already have your cheque. Why is this important? Your mind and your body work together. Once your mind can visualize something, your body will work towards achieving it.

N – Never quitting: Persist. No matter the economic clime you find yourself, you must realize that money doesn’t leave the world, money only exchanges hands. The goal is to make sure you stay in the circle that exchanges money. It is true that you will fail a couple of times during your sales journey but never quit regardless. Find the lessons in each fall and use it to propel yourself for success.

G – Goal oriented: Finally, you need to be goal-oriented. Write down your goals and look at them daily to keep yourself inspired and motivated. For example, I will like to make $100,000 at the end of the month, so how much do I need to make every day? Probably $100,000 divided by 30 which is about $3,333 every day. So how many clients do I need to speak with to make that amount of money every day? That’s the power of setting goals and planning towards achieving them. It gives you a sense of purpose and direction.

As soon as you have activated these sales muscles listed above, it is time to take it a notch higher by harnessing them to sell successfully. To do this, you must understand the power of effective communication. You need to know the right questions to ask and when to ask them because the quality of your questions will be based on the quality of your listening. The quality of your listening in turn will be based on the attitude of your listening. Your attitude to listening will be based on your posture of listening. In summary, the quality of your questions will be based on the posture of your listening. Your posture of listening is your body language and it will go a long way in determining your success or failure as a sales person. When a prospect is discussing his business challenges, what is your body language communicating? Does it say, “I care about your business and will give you products and services to solve your problems” or does it say “I really don’t care about what you have to say. I just want to sell this product and get my money”?

The truth is many salespeople unknowingly communicate the latter based on their body language and lose prospects despite being prepared with adequate data and giving killer sales pitches. Let’s do a simple exercise. Get a note and paper and write your answers as honestly as you can to the following questions.

How did the last meeting you had with a prospect go? Was it woefully unsuccessful? Did the prospect seem aggressive or indifferent and aloof? What was your posture like? Were you glancing at your phone while you are listening to your prospect. Was  your back rested on the chair or you were leaning forward? Where were  your hands? Were  they folded across your chest or they were on your thighs if you were sitting? If you were standing, were your hands on your groin or by your side with your palms opened. What about your voice? Were you mostly quiet or you punctuated his sentences with frequent “hmmm, oh, I see etc”, Was your tone of voice low and timid or loud and aggressive? If you did at least two of the first mentioned postures described in every question, it is likely they account for your inability to close that deal.

While paying attention to your body language, it is imperative that you also pay rapt attention to your prospect’s body language as well. We live in a world where the attention span now is shorter than ever before because things are happening very fast. Often, it takes a lot of effort, skill, mental discipline, and focus to listen to someone, not with the intention to respond but with the intention to understand the person. In order to truly understand someone, you have to pay attention to what is being said and what isn’t. You have to watch the body language and tone of voice of your prospect at all times during your sales process. This will help you pinpoint troubled areas of the prospect, how urgent the problem is and the best way to serve him. You also have to portray the best version of yourself with the right body language.

The best body language to adopt for a winning sales process is a positive, friendly, confident and competent body language. To portray a positive and competent disposition, do the following:

1. Smile: Always smile when meeting your prospects. You can never get it wrong with a smile. A few years ago, I was sitting in the bank, waiting at the customer service area when I saw a highly respected lady from my church. Her face was stern while she tried to squeeze past me in the tiny space. Immediately I smiled at her, she smiled back. A smile is contagious. When you smile, the chemical reactions within you are different from what takes place when you are not smiling or angry. So as much as you can, smile before a prospect.
2. Be agreeable: Sometimes, prospects may be uninformed and may say the wrong thing. But don’t argue with them. Just agree. The whole idea of selling is not to win arguments but to win the money of the prospect. It’s better to lose the argument to win the money. I dare say that if you win the argument, you will lose the money of the prospect.
3. Be Presentable: A sale process is like a building block. Anytime you do something right, you remove the blocks and anytime you do something wrong you add the block and the higher your block, the more difficult it is for you to sell. So try as much as you can to reduce the chances of your client building blocks for you getting to him. This is the reason you must endeavor to always be presentable, well dressed and well spoken. For men, keep facial hairs well trimmed. For ladies, ensure your hair is neat and your hairstyle shouldn’t be a distraction but should be as simple as possible.
4. Build Rapport: People buy from people they like, who are like them or who they would like to be like. The mirroring and matching method can create this kind of rapport. A great example is a couple on a romantic date. They are easy to spot because they are usually seated the same way, leaning forward the same way, putting their hands on their chins the same way. You can tell they are effortlessly having a good time and listening to each other. Create this kind of rapport and flow with your client. Building rapport with your prospect aids the sales process because the moment you can build rapport with someone, they will subconsciously believe that you understand them, then they can trust you. Once they feel they can trust you, a buying desire has been activated and closing the sale becomes easier to achieve.