The Toa – Using its wisdom to help you successfully sell or manage client relationships.

What is the Toa (or Tao Te Ching) – 500 years before Christ 'Lao Tzu' authored the 81 verses of the Tao which provides advice and guidance that is balanced and spiritual.  These 81 verses can (and many times are) compared to today’s life.  These teachings are embedded in so many things we hear and read today without knowing it.

I will go through the verses I find most relevant to a sales person’s struggles in today’s society.  Lets start with Verse 01:

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders

You are probably ready to stop reading now, and I would not blame you.  However there are jewels in the words of the Tao.  The main thing I walk away from with this is that there is a big difference in trying to sell and selling.  If you are trying to sell you desire a sale.  If you are selling you are without desire, which will manifest itself in sales.

OK so you think I have gone over the deep end, but thing of this.  If you approach selling as helping a prospect solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity they what you are doing is HELPING.  In this helping you will sell more than if you were trying to sell.

Let’s look at an example:  You have a software package that is the best in class product and feature by feature you can go up against any other product in the market.  However, your prospect is looking for a solution to a problem and does not care about features he will not use.  The sales person that focuses on helping him solve the problem will win…..

OK so here is what I will ask you to do.  For the next week focus all of your prospect conversations on helping the prospect with whatever problem they are trying to solve, even if it does not relate to your product or service.  Here are some questions I use to get the conversation started:

•        What from a business perspective keeps you up at night?
•        What have you carved out as your major business and technology objectives for the year?
•       If you have a personal relationship with the prospect, what are your MBOs for the year?

What do you think, how did you do?