What does Affability have to do with Sales?
The final element of the right sales attitude is Affability the “A” in OPERA. Affability is not just about being pleasant and courteous. In fact, being conventionally polite can even get in the way of the real communication that springs from genuine affability. Most people can be outwardly friendly some of the time, to some people. However, the affable person cultivates an open-minded attitude to new contacts; from the start, there is warmth in the relationship.
Affable people make few assumptions about others, and like to find out what really makes people tick. They place others, not themselves, at the center of the discussion. They’re not just friendly, they’re helpful.
Customers love affable people because they see that they care and are genuine in their intentions. Customers love to talk, and affable salespeople want customers to do most of the talking. They want the customers to be on center stage. An affable person stays attentive towards the customer, maintains great eye contact, and asks pertinent questions at the right time. It’s not about the salesperson’s products or services, but the key issues for the customer. Affable salespeople want more than anything else to please customers.
When it comes to understanding a customer’s needs and preferences, affable salespeople do it faster, more accurately, and in greater depth. Affable salespeople can relate to the customer, seeing the issues through the customer’s eyes and not just their own.
The source of affabilty is a genuine interest in other people, and a real desire to be of help. This is one of the best ways to build long-lasting customer relationships. Affable salespeople are not only with their customers when times are good, but also when times are bad. They value each and every relationship they have built.
As with each OPERA attribute, balance is essential. Not everyone can be affable all the time, and the need to be generally affable should not prevent candor with your customer when it’s needed. You don’t need to hide your true opinions and feelings. Customers respect the opinions of those who truly care and have their best interests in mind.
Affability can be the deciding factor in nudging the customer to a decision in your direction.
Most Recent Articles
- Help Your Clients Recognize Their Need
- 3 Tips for Finding New Clients
- 3 Reasons Clients Procrastinate
- 3 Tips for Selling to Your Prospect’s Brain
- 3 Sales Tips for a Successful 2012
- Relationships Trump Everything in Sales
- 3 Facts About the Psychology of Selling
- When Do Executives Buy?
- Why Customers Hate To Be Sold
- 3 Ways to Peak your Prospect’s Interest
- Overcoming the “Sales Rut”
- 3 Principles for Building a Great Reputation
- Questions That Customers Pay Attention To
- 3 Reasons Prospects Will Meet
- The 3 Laws of Relationship Selling
- The Psychology of Prospecting
- 3 Easy Tips for Successful Prospecting in 2011
- Selling Isn’t Like Buying a Lottery Ticket
- Customer Centric Selling-No Goals Means No Solution
- What Will It Take To Earn Your Business?
- What Do Customers Really Want-Really!
- Characteristics of the “A” Player Sales Professional
- Are You Customer Centric?
- Is Your Value Irresistible
- Is Your Value Proposition Compelling
- 3 Components of Customer Value
- What Drives the Customer to Buy-Pain or Gain?
- 3 Musts for Sales Success
- Social Awareness and Selling
- Self Awareness and Selling
- 5 More Critical Mistakes of Cold Calling
- 5 Critical Mistakes of Cold Calling
- Is Cold Calling Worth it?
- The Three Elements for Sales Success
- 3 recommendations for your negotiating strategy
- Anticipating your negotiator’s style
- Negotiating with inside information
- The four critical elements for negotiating
- Negotiating-It’s all about power
- 3 considerations for exceeding your sales budget
- What’s their decision making style
- The power of influence
- Momentum: The key to a winning sales team
- Positioning customer value
- Three realities of prospecting
- Emotional intelligence & “Four People You Should Know”
- Maximizing your team’s performance
- Identifying personality from a conversation
- Four key questions that aid in identifying the customer’s personality style
- How knowledge of personality style helps with conflict
- The Strategic Seller
- Streamlining Customer Buying Decisions
- Anticipating And Handling Your Customer’s Objections
- How Do You Identify Someone’s Personality
- What Motivates Your Customer To Buy?
- Leveraging Perceived Value For Sales Success
- The value of identifying personality styles
- Maximizing your team’s performance
- Your lifelong personality
- It’s not “what” we do, but “why”
- Left Brain versus Right Brain learning
- The Company’s most important asset
- Customer Benefits
- Do You Know Why Your Customers Buy?
- Responding to Customer Objections
- The Sales Process
- What does Affability have to do with Sales?
- Resilience: The Antidote to Failure
- Enthusiasm Breeds Success
- Persistence: a Key to Success
- Fuel Your Attitude with Optimism
- The Power of Value Propositions
- A Positive Attitude Wins Customers
- Are you motivating your sales team?
- Bringing your Customer Value
- The Truth on Sales Training
- The “Cold” Call
- Today’s Hi Tech Sales Environment
- Selling in the new Millenium
Subscribe to Articles
Competitive Excellence offers readers the ability to subscribe to new website articles — you’ll be instantly notified whenever a new article is available.
Subscribe to Competitive Excellence Article Feed
Questions about subscribing? We’ve got the answers to the ‘What?’, ‘Why?’, and ‘How?’.
Questions about Subscribing?
- What are feeds? I don't know how I might use these links when I find them.
- Feeds are a way for websites to distribute their content beyond just visitors using web browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a news reader.
- What Does This Mean?
- You may recognize the universal feed icon from your favorite websites. This icon (among others) represent content in any format - text, audio or video - to which you can subscribe and read/watch/listen using a feed reader.
- Why would I use this?
- This way, whenever new articles are written at Competitive Excellence, you'll be instantly notified.
- How do I read feeds?
- If you want to browse and subscribe to feeds, you have many choices. Today, there are more than 2,000 different feed reading applications - here are our three favorites.
- Do I really need to bother with this?
- Absolutely not. Visit http://www.competitive-excellence.com/ regularly - you won't miss anything.
