the yin and yang of selling

The Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner stated that the most creative boys are sensitive (empathetic) and the most creative girls are aggressive (ambitious). What he was saying is that for a boy to reach his full potential he would need to integrate his feminine qualities and a girl would need to integrate her masculine. The path to fulfillment lies in the integrity of the male (yang) and female (yin) energies we all possess.

The problem with this of course is the resistance men have to their feminine side and women to their masculine. There are many severe social judgements that come from being either a sensitive man or an aggressive female.

In business, I see this challenge showing up mostly in the selling process.

The words "selling" and "sales" and "salesmen" conjure up all sorts of negative images and connotations for people who operate professional service practices.

Obviously there is no business without a "sale", because without a "sale" there is no "customer" with a "need" that I can "service" in exchange for a "check".

One of the biggest barriers to a successful business is the resistance of service provider has to being a sales person, operating a sales process and making sales.

Most of the resistance comes from the first generation of professional sales. This was a very masculine era, when salemen had a tendency to push products on prospects using whatever manipulations, "buyer psychology" and trickery they could muster. As generation one selling matured, the profession and discipline of sales emerged. This included sophisticated needs analysis, presentation skills, objection handling and closing. The good thing about first generation selling was that the salespeople were ambitious. The negative was that they were overly aggressive in their willingness to do anything to get the sale.

As the saying goes, people love to buy but hate to be sold.The second generation of selling grew up as a direct reaction to the overly aggressive and manipulative darkside of the first generation. This also marked the entrance of women into the sales force en masse. The concept of "relationship selling" emerged to reflect the introduction of empathetic skills into the process: asking questions, listening, paraphrasing, support. The idea was to build a relationship with a prospect first and the commerce would then flow naturally out of the rapport and trust and goodwill residing in the relationship. The professional sales person would "draw the prospect out" and the prospect would come to the conclusion to purchase all on their own, without any prodding or solicitation on the part of the sales person. During this phase, sales people created clever and often useless and meaningless euphemisms for "sales person", such as "client relationship manager" or "director of business development", as if prospective buyers would not see through the ruse. As the pendulum swung, relationship selling added some much needed sensitivity and compassion, but became overly passive as it left prospects to figure things out on their own, without the direct intervention of the sales person. Prospects don't always know what they need and they are not always the ones with the sophisticated knowledge about what their options are. Relationship builders saw ambition as inappropriate and morally bad and thus would not engage, even if it would have been really helpful.

Third generation selling integrates the best of the female and male approaches to selling. It is both empathetic and ambitious as it aligns the values and needs of both the seller and the buyer into a workable professional relationship. It unites good open-ended questions with technical needs analysis, listening and presenting, objection handling and gentle support in moving forward. A third generation sales person is a coach who helps a prospect come to understand what they need and want, see what's in the way and then develop the mindsets and mechanisms to overcome the obstacles. Third generation selling is a professional intervention in the life of another person. It's neither passive nor aggressive, but assertive and ethical. The professional sales coach has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the customer but is not afraid to take the lead in the relationship.

For more on the possibilities of integrating a coaching mindset and methodology into your sales process go to http://stepup.net/.