Have you ever seen the movie Tommy Boy? If not go see it.  If it’s been a while – see it again.  It’s one of the best sales movies of all time.  There’s a scene in Tommy Boy that stands out and highlights what I call “catching your sales groove.” Here’s the scene:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/13574927[/vimeo]

It’s the one where he does his “Jo-Jo, the idiot circus boy” routine and gets the waitress (Helen..because she looks like one) to go back and fire up the grill and make him some wings.  He ultimately “sells” Helen and gets her to do the right thing for the right reasons in the right way. He does it by being himself and not trying so hard.  Before this scene in the movie he was trying to be his dad and failing miserably at it.  During this scene is when he catches his sales groove and realizes people buy from people, they don’t buy from a pitch.

There’s a point in each sales professional’s career when we wake up and things are just a little bit easier than they were the day before.  We usually don’t know exactly what happened to cause this or exactly when it happened but eventually it does.  The day this happens is the day we stop “pitching” our solutions and we start having conversations about our solutions.  It’s when we start caring more about our client’s needs than we do about our commissions, which is ironically when our commissions start to take off.  This is when we “catch our sales groove.” We realize no one ever bought from a perfect “pitch,” they bought from the person who believed in what they were selling so it never had to be a pitch.

The take-away from this one is to just be yourself and make sure you believe in what you’re selling.  If you genuinely believe that what you’re selling makes a difference for the right client then use your personality to get people to pay attention.  If you don’t believe in what you’re selling then please do everyone a favor and find a new profession.