Why is selling like dating?

The dating-sales parallel reveals how qualification, trust-building, and relationship maintenance drive sales success just as they create meaningful personal relationships.

• Qualifying prospects properly is like dating compatibility—ensuring you spend time with potential long-term matches
• Long-term relationships yield repeat business and referrals, making them far more valuable than one-off sales
• People buy from those they trust, making relationship-building essential for sales success
• Active listening creates powerful connections—clients know when they're truly being heard
• Most objections aren't rejections but requests for reassurance about specific concerns
• Many salespeople never ask for the order despite clients being ready to buy
• Post-sale relationship nurturing through follow-ups, training and support solidifies partnerships
• Problem resolution can strengthen relationships when handled with ownership and responsiveness

Remember to like, subscribe, and follow to support the podcast, and check out the free one-hour webinar and sales training course on the website for more detailed guidance on these techniques.

Chapters

• 0:24 Introduction to Dating and Sales Parallels
• 1:48 Qualification: Finding the Right Match
• 4:30 Diving Deeper with Meaningful Questions
• 7:56 Building Trust Through Active Listening
• 10:50 Handling Objections and Closing Naturally
• 15:51 Nurturing Long-Term Business Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Hello and welcome to another podcast. Now, in this podcast I want to talk about dating, and before you start worrying that you've got the wrong podcast, you haven't. I will be talking about sales as well, but I want to talk about parallels between dating and sales, and perhaps there are techniques you have in one area that might be useful in another. Now, I'm not going to go too far into that, but before I do go into it, perhaps you could just remember to like, subscribe, follow. All of those things are great, because it just makes it easier for me to carry on doing this. Okay, so how are you approaching your sales? Now? I know a lot of salespeople go straight in there, kind of walk in and go for the jugular, try and close the deal straight away, and I'm going to suggest that if you do that, if you're looking to date somebody, that's probably not going to go too well or possibly not the kind of person you want to end up dating. So I don't know if you might have some views on that. If you do, that's something you can enjoy in the privacy of your own home. So, getting back to sales, what do we do when we're looking to have a long-term relationship with someone, and I want to talk about this because it is very relevant to sales, because for most of us, I would say, in sales, we are interested in long-term relationships, because there's really two reasons. One is that we get repeat business. If your business is that kind of business where repeat sales are an important part of it, and repeat sales are great because once you've got that relationship, people will come back and those sales two, three, four, five, whatever they might be are far easier to get than the first sale. So when you go to get your first sale, that's generally where there's a lot of effort, whereas getting those subsequent sales, those repeat orders, they just pretty much come in. You need to maintain the relationship, but they're definitely the best kind of orders to get. On the other hand, you may not have a product or a service where you're looking for a lot of repeat business. However, if you've got a good relationship with your client and you work on a good long-term relationship, your chances are much higher that you'll get referrals from them, and obviously that applies to repeat business as well. So that's really what you want to be aiming for the kind of relationship where people want to buy from you and they want to keep on buying from you, and they want to tell everybody about you, how good you are, how good your services, how good your products are, how good your after sales services. All of that kind of stuff is really important.

Speaker 1: 2:53

So, coming back to dating, what's the kind of process that you go through Now? I appreciate you might not be dating at the moment, and it might have been quite a long time since you were dating. So just bear with me, though, and think about what your approach would be if you were in the dating kind of situation, and how does that parallel to how you would work with sales? So the first thing we do is to qualify this person in the case of dating. Do we find them attractive? Do we find them interesting? You know what are the criteria that we're looking for in somebody that we want to have a meaningful long-term relationship with.

Speaker 1: 3:34

And if you flip that back to sales, what we're talking about here is your qualifying process, and it's something I've spoken about a lot. It's something that I go into a lot of detail on in my sales training course, so if you haven't had a look at that, please do, because this is really important If you get your qualification process correct important. If you get your qualification process correct, then everything else that follows is going to be much, much easier. You'll make many more sales and you'll be spending time with people who are real contenders. And again, flipping back to dating, it's the same thing. If you are meeting different people, you really want to be spending your time with people that you would be interested in having a long-term relationship with, if that's your goal.

Speaker 1: 4:23

So, from the sales perspective, how are you qualifying people as you meet them potential clients and are you qualifying them out? And I've spoken about this before. It's something that I went into a bit of detail on the last podcast, but it is really important because it's one of the biggest mistakes and one of the most common mistakes that I see salespeople make when they are not hitting their number, and this is part of the reason why they're not hitting their number and it's probably the biggest reason why they're continuing not to hit their numbers. So get very clear on how you're qualifying your potential prospects. So, having decided that this person, this potential client, is somebody that may well be someone you want to spend time with, may well be the right client for you, how do you then take things a little bit further. So the key thing is to start diving a little bit deeper, and this is where we start looking at more specific questions.

Speaker 1: 5:34

This carries on from your qualification. So it's making sure that they do have the kind of budget that you want, that there is compatibility between what they need and what you offer. Remember, we are problem solvers. That's what salespeople are, and everything you've learned about salespeople or you've experienced with salespeople where you feel they're trying to rip you off or they're only interested in the deal or whatever else it might be. Those people are, in my opinion, not true salespeople. They might be con men, women, scammers, whatever else it is, but that's not what sales is about.

Speaker 1: 6:09

Sales is about helping other people to be successful. You're in service to your clients. You're looking for a win-win solution and if you approach your sales with that mindset, you are going to find things much, much easier, not only getting deals, but you're going to find the whole process a lot more enjoyable the whole process a lot more enjoyable. So, with that in mind, how clear are you on how you can serve these people? So this is all about having gone through the initial qualification, having questions that qualify people in and qualify them out again.

Speaker 1: 6:48

You then need to be able to dive down a little bit deeper and make sure that they're now compatible in more of a short-term perspective. So this would be things like when are they looking to have a solution? What is driving them? Why are they looking for something now, if they've approached you? What is motivating them to spend time, take time out from what they normally do, to try and find a solution to whatever this problem is? Once you've got that set of questions together, you get clear on budget, the details of the requirement, what the most important things are, why they're doing it now, what they're currently using, what's good about what they're using, what's not so good about what they're using all those kind of questions. So there's a whole set of questions in there that start to take that relationship deeper and you get much, much clearer on how compatible you are. So how do you build that?

Speaker 1: 7:44

So, diving a little bit deeper again, we're really now talking about building trust and rapport. So at one level, you've got these more detailed questions. This is about you getting a more detailed understanding about what they are looking for and how well you are able to meet those requirements. But in doing that, in having that conversation, what is also going on is that you're building rapport with them and you're developing trust, because we don't buy from people we don't trust. I mean, you've got to be nuts really to buy from someone you don't trust. You're just asking for trouble. So it's really important that, as salespeople, we build trust, because we want that long-term relationship and no relationship functions without trust.

Speaker 1: 8:28

So this is absolutely fundamental, and the key way to go about doing that is to listen, and I can't emphasize that enough. It's something that I've seen so many salespeople do who are struggling. They don't. Some of them don't even listen at all. They just want to talk through a brochure or a data sheet and pitch their product. They're not even listening to what the client's telling them, and this is the goal. This is where you close your deal. This is where you find the edge over your competitors. So you've got to be listening, and another thing that people will tend to do is, if they are listening initially, once the client starts to speak, they get distracted. The client will say something and they're thinking, ah, I can do that, or it might be a problem, but if I do this, this, this and this, whatever it might be, I can do a solution, but of course, while you're going through that mental process, you're not listening anymore. So, again, there are ways of handling this. There are ways of doing this. I'm not going to go into them in this podcast. There's lots in the course to help you with that.

Speaker 1: 9:31

But this is really important that you just listen and people know when they're being heard. You know this is really important in any relationship. It is really important that people feel heard, and the sad fact is that many, many people it's very rare for them to actually have the experience of feeling that the person they are with is truly listening to them, and many of us go through life without really being heard. People kind of are listening, but they're not really. They think they go off into their own headspace a little bit, they zone out whatever it is and when all of that's going on, they're not being heard. So it's really really important to just focus on your client. I mean, not in a weird way, but just focus on them, pay attention to them, make notes if you have to, but make sure they are aware that you are really listening.

Speaker 1: 10:26

Okay, so what will tend to happen in that conversation is that this is where it's good to look for the early signs of either objections or rejection. Possibly and obviously in the dating kind of situation, there can be rejection. You know that's, that's part of it and that's just part of the game, if you want to think of it that way. So the chances are there will be objections, just as in dating. You're likely to get rejected from time to time and the thing is not to fear that but just to recognize that it may happen. And secondly, the chances are it's not actually about you. I mean, it might be, but often the reason that we get rejected is things aren't right. That person, it's just not the right time for them to get involved with somebody.

Speaker 1: 11:19

So, coming back to objections, typically in a sales situation, if you have qualified correctly, so it's really important that you get your qualification process down. But if you've done that correctly, the reason you're likely to get an objection is not that they are saying no, but they have a concern about what you're doing or what you will offer or what you will deliver and they really need reassurance. So if you think of objections that way, then hopefully you'll agree that they are something less, something that you won't fear so much. It's just feedback, that you've missed something somewhere, you've not explained something or you haven't understood something. But there is something in there where your process has gone wrong.

Speaker 1: 12:09

And the reason that I talk about your process going wrong is that once we own these things, once we accept that, ok, let's take responsibility. I've asked the wrong question here or I've missed something. But once you do that, if you own it, you can then change it. You can develop your questioning technique, you can develop your conversation skills, whatever it might be. So it's really important that we own what's going on. We own the communication. If you push it onto them, you become victim because you're powerless. So always own whatever is going on.

Speaker 1: 12:43

So, as I've said, often the reason you'll get an objection is that it's not a no, it's simply that person wanting reassurance about something, and then finally, we get down to closing the deal. So how do we get a? Yes, well, there are various ways of doing that, but if you are doing the earlier steps correctly, what you're likely to find is that the order sort of happens. You can just guide very gently into the order process, the closing process. There are various ways you can close, but if you have done.

Speaker 1: 13:23

The more you get these earlier phases correct, the easier it is to close. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that you've built up trust. They feel that you know what you're talking about. Sorry, I can't even say that, but it's really important that we buy from people that we feel we can trust and that we feel they know what they're doing. So if you think about something where you might well have spent a lot of money, the people you get involved, particularly if it's something that you're not particularly knowledgeable about yourself. When you get other people involved, you really need to trust that they know what they're doing, because they're covering that gap in your knowledge and you may not know if they've made a mistake, possibly until it's too late. So, again, switching that around when we are selling, the people we're speaking to need to feel that we've heard them, we understand what their needs are, they can trust us and that we are able to deliver. Needs are, they can trust us and that we are able to deliver. We know what we're talking about. So if you do all of that, closing the deal is much, much easier.

Speaker 1: 14:34

And this again, is where people go wrong. They try and close. Well, if they close at all, because a lot of people don't even try to close a deal and it's sort of crazy. But there's I forget the number now. It was around 80%, I think, of salespeople in the US in a study. This is going back about 10 years now, but my guess is it hasn't changed that much, but it was something like 80% of salespeople wouldn't ask for the order and something like 70% of clients were sitting there waiting for them to ask for the order. So it's sort of crazy when you think about it.

Speaker 1: 15:01

So don't be afraid of asking for the business. There are different ways you can go about it that are not confrontational. I think that's what a lot of people fear that when they ask for the business, two things happen. It might appear confrontational in some way, but the biggest thing is they're frightened of the client saying no, because then they don't know what to do. Well, no often just means maybe, so you just loop back and get clarification on what the issue is.

Speaker 1: 15:27

So once you've got the deal, that's obviously the good news, but then the important thing to do is to look and respect the long-term relationship. So it's not just about getting one deal and going away. You need to nurture the relationship that you have. So that can happen in different ways. It depends on what you're doing and what's appropriate for you. But it might be something like a newsletter that you put out regularly. It might be that you drop in from time to time see how things are going. It may be that you offer training, which might be chargeable, or you might go in and just do sort of quickie training. I used to do that with some of the technical products that sold. I would just drop in if I was in the area and see how things were going and if there was a question I would just sit down and show them how to handle it. But it depends on what you're doing and what's appropriate for the business that you're in.

Speaker 1: 16:22

But do nurture these people, because the more you do that, on the face of it it might feel like you're wasting time, but if you're in an environment where, particularly where it's very competitive and where you may be looking at repeat business, this is really important and it's not just about going in there trying to nail the next deal. It's going in there and genuinely wanting to know what their experience is, how things are going, what's going well? Maybe there are things you can do differently or improve. All of this is really valuable feedback, because if you are finding that with clients you've already sold to, there are areas where they're not happy, these are things that you can fix. Happy, these are things that you can fix. And if they see that you're responsive, that will actually strengthen the relationship. So, as ironic as it can be, when things go wrong can actually be an absolute godsend for building a stronger relationship, because it comes down to how you handle the situation. So if you're there, quickly respond quickly, get things done, take ownership of it again, own it and then drive it, you are going to build a much stronger bond with that client and that increases your chances of repeat business and referrals.

Speaker 1: 17:40

So that really is what I want to talk about with regard to dating. So I hope you found that useful with your approach to sales. You might even have found it useful with your approach to dating, I don't know, but that's really not what I was aiming for. Okay, so that's it for this podcast. Thank you again for liking, following and all the other things. I really appreciate it and do please have a look at the sales training course, because it's on the website, and there is also a free one hour webinar that will take you through some of the things I've spoken about, but in more detail, so that you can get the how to the nuts and bolts part of it and start applying that straight away. Ok, so I'll speak to you next time. Bye for now.