Knowing what sales technique to use is absolutely vital as to whether or not you will be able to efficiently close the sale. One thing you must know about Australians is that using a pushy sales technique will not work. Find out why and what will work in this portion of an interview between Dale Beaumont and Paul Hanna below.
Paul Hanna is regarded as one of Australia’s leading motivational speakers with a client list that reads like a who’s who of the country”s corporate elite: Qantas, Telstra, Lexus, Vodafone and BMW are just some of the organisations that have used his service.
Why do you believe that pushy sales techniques do not work in Australia?
Simply because Australians don’t warm to the pushy sales techniques that stereotypically define the American sales industry.
Yes, we might like American movies and television shows but Australians are not as upfront when it comes to purchasing, nor do they like the hype that some salespeople carry on with. I am not having a go at American sales trainers here, it’s just that Australians are different. We watch the nightly news at 6pm; Americans watch it at 9pm. We drive on the left side of the road; they drive on the right. We sit on the right-hand side of the car; they sit on the left. We all still get to the same destination, but in Australia we like to do things differently.
I think the one thing that really differentiates Australians from people of other cultures is the way we view aggressive salespeople. When I used to work in the travel industry, one of the toughest parts of my job was to escort Australian travel agents overseas on familiarisation trips. These trips were designed to allow agents to grasp a sight, feel, smell and touch for the city first-hand. As part of their itinerary, I would always include a city tour. No matter how many times I did this, I was constantly amazed at how intimidated the travel agents would get when market vendors hustled them for a sale. No matter where we were – Hong Kong, Rome, San Francisco or Bali – Australians really didn’t like being pushed. I found that it was the Japanese who were the most successful in selling to Australians. Despite the language barrier, the Japanese were always willing to spend a little more time with their Aussie prospects.
The lesson I learnt here was that if you really want to bring in the dollars and make more sales, you need to do what the Japanese do – present the product or service at an extremely high standard, be courteous and patient when demonstrating it, and charge a bit more than your competitors because of the perceived higher value.
For more of this interview check out Dale Beaumont’s “Secrets of Top Sales Professionals Exposed!“.
