Sales sense comes from mastering a series of internal senses. These senses are both subtle and blatant. They are both simple to understand and complex to master, and they hold the key to your sales success.

Last week I described the first four:

1. Sense of self.

2. Sense of others.

3. Sense of surroundings.

4. Sense of situation.

For your “think” pleasure, here are the rest of the senses. As you read them, try to relate them to your feelings when you are in a sales situation. And think about how these senses can affect your success once you understand them.

5. Sense of reason. As you present your ideas and ask questions that engage the customer or the prospect, each of you must establish a balance of agreement, value and desire to own. This comes about when you have an equal conversation, not a one-sided sales pitch. Reason is when each party is asking reasonable questions and making reasonable statements, the preponderance of which are positive. The key here is the word “fair.” Do your value statements seem fair enough, or reasonable enough, for the customer to want to buy? If you get “price” rejections, this is a symptom of lack of acceptable reason on the part of the buyer.

6. Sense of opportunity. When the customer is ready to buy, he or she will tell you in every way other than the phrase, “I am ready to buy now.” In other words, you must interpret the customer’s words, questions, tone and mood, and uncover the customer’s motives in order to determine both where your opportunity is and when that opportunity has surfaced. In the selling/buying process, this is a very subtle, strategic and delicate moment. It is the moment when you need to stop talking, solidify the sale, confirm the next step of delivery and leave. Many salespeople — not you, of course — talk right past the moment of opportunity. The secret of this sense is to pay attention to any question a buyer asks. Questions don’t just call for answers; they demand that you sense why the question is being asked. Often, people ask a question to reassure their thinking and their desire to own. If you can sense this desire, you can capture the opportunity.

7. Sense of risk. If you can’t seem to make any headway in your selling process or in your ability to engage the customers, it’s because their sense of risk is greater than your sense of reason. If the customers perceive that risk is too high, it is predominantly because they feel that the value you offer is too low, or that something is wrong with the company, the product or the salesperson. Yet customers will never tell you this. What they’ll say is something like, “We’re not interested,” or “Your price is too high,” or some other masked message. The single biggest barrier to a sale is the unspoken risk that a buyer perceives. As a salesperson, you must risk uncovering the truth. When you do, your path to the sale will be evident.

8. Sense of confidence. Throughout the entire selling process, your prospective customer is judging the power and the value of your message. The good news is you create both. Your power and your value manifest themselves in your self-confidence. Self-confidence stems from self-belief. The deeper you believe in what you’re selling and believe in your ability to help others, the more your confidence in presence will be transferred to a confidence to buy.

8.5. Sense of desire to have for yourself and win for others. Too often the salespeople will “need” the sale and push way too hard to make it. If they would push equally as hard to win for their customers, they could earn the sale instead of trying to make the sale. It never ceases to amaze me how many salespeople lose sales because they fail to understand or convey how the customer wins. If you understand my mantra “people don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy,” you will be at the beginning of a new era of your sales success.

Come to your senses. Master your senses. When you do, you’ll convert money-earning possibilities into money-earning probabilities.

If you missed part one, or just want both parts of this article together, go to www.gitomer.com, register if you’re a first-time user, and enter REALITY SENSE in the GitBit box.

Jeffrey Gitomer can be reached by phone at (704) 333-1112 or by e-mail at salesman@gitomer.com.

© 2006 Jeffrey H. Gitomer