Need For Approval? What is that??

Need for approval? What’s that?!

Need for approval is the undying need to be liked, or in more severe cases…loved. Unfortunately the high need to be liked or loved is often much greater than the need to close business. Salespeople with this weakness are very like-able and great at building rapport, but they hate asking tough questions.

Need for approval is one of the five major weaknesses a salesperson can have, and some might say it’s the deadliest.

Fortunately for me, this was not one of my weaknesses. I found myself having no problem asking the tough questions to my prospects and going for a close, however, my lack of approval hurt me rather than helped. Why? I found myself doing all the wrong stuff, at the wrong time, with the wrong people.

Since I have no need for approval, I often found myself trying to have a deep conversation about the company’s sales organization, right after I had just met them! The bottom line is that no business was getting done since I did not have the most fundamental step of the process done: building rapport.

So how do you go about managing and growing someone who has no need for approval?

1. Teach them to build rapport first: Your salesperson cannot move further down the process if they do not have rapport!

2. Focus on their delivery: 55% of the way we communicate is through our body language, 38% is through our tonality, and 7% is through the words that we use. All of these must be in sync when trying to communicate with the prospect.

3. Work on the timing: There’s a lot of value in asking great questions, but the ones that make for a more productive meeting are the tough questions that make prospects think differently. Work with your salesperson on the TIMING in which they ask these questions.