Duct Tape Marketing

When asked about how he crafted his successful on-screen character, former professional wrestler turned movie star Dwayne Johnson invariably answers with the same comment, saying that “The Rock is Dwayne Johnson with the volume turned up.”  What the quote essentially means is that Johnson took elements of his own personality and made them larger than life to fit the character he was asked to play. In many ways, sales is playing a character. 

When meeting with a potential client, you are playing a role.  You are selling a personality to these potential clients so that they will choose to purchase the product you are selling.    Given that fact, the question becomes what type of character should you use. The easiest answer would be to say the character you should use is your own.  In a perfect world, every sales person would be a confident, refined and articulate sales person who can naturally and without effort attract the attention and loyalty of potential customers.  In that same perfect world, every potential customer would be an ideal customer who doesn’t need to be sold by force of personality and sales techniques.   But the world is not perfect.  The reality is that an salesperson’s success many times depends on his or her ability to sell the customer on the salesperson first,  long before they get to the possibility of purchasing. 

This is not to say that you literally need to create an entirely new persona, like a split personality.  The character we are discussing here is the attitude you will assume when dealing with potential clients.  As a result, this article will be focusing on possible ways to create a successful sales “character” for yourself to help increase your sales. 

Bring Your Own Personality to the Table.   Using elements of your own personality in creating a sales persona can go a long way towards making the persona work.  Using your own interests, background and personality as parts of your sales persona can help you connect more to the character, making it easier for you to slide into your sales role.  In addition, the more of yourself that you put into the role, the more genuine it will seem to potential clients.

Don't Turn the Volume Up Too Much  Taking his personality over the top might have worked for the Rock, but in sales, too much is simply too much.  Projecting confidence or friendliness or an authoritative and knowledgeable persona is certainly a plus, but letting those elements go too far and become arrogance, ostentatious phoniness or being a know-it-all can seriously damage your chances of getting the job done.

Know your Audience.  In developing a character, it is important to know to whom you are intending to sell.   Different classes of customers are looking for and will respond to different things than others.  High end purchasers are going to be looking for something different in an salesperson than a middle class family or someone who is purchasing as investment.  Tailor your presentation to the type of client you are looking to reach.

Remember That You Actually Have To Play The Part.  No matter how well thought out it is a sales persona will never work if you are simply incapable of sustaining it.    So, for example, if you want to present yourself as a extremely high end salesperson catering only to the most wealthy customers, you’re going to need to be able to afford to dress and act as the character you are creating.  You need to create a character that is both effective and possible for you to execute.

In the final analysis, the goal is to present a persona to your potential clients which will interest them enough to want to enter into sales transaction with you.  The closer you can get to just being yourself the better, but if you need a little more, don’t be afraid to turn the volume up.