How to kill a sales process with your body language.

As a coach, I have witnessed hundreds of sales meetings in order to provide feedback to my clients.
They are not able to see or listen themselves. 
The purpose is seeing and listening their selling performance and later, as part of the coaching process, provide feedback. Sometimes I bring a recorder with me and after the sales meeting, we listen to the tape together.
At some of these meetings, I have witnessed how some of my clients have ruined their sales meetings with their 'automatic' body language.  As a coach, I can listen to what they say AND simultaneously, see how they use their non verbal communication in the interview.

They can use it in three levels:

1. Random - This is the category in which almost all of the sales reps fall. Their body is completely disconnected from the sales interview purpose and this is the main reason why people don't accept easily sales reps.
2. Connected - Mind, body and emotions, are connected with the main purpose.
3. Aligned - Sales reps build a strategy around how they are going to use their body and other non verbals as tools to mobilize his client through the sales process towards a positive closing. This is a very rare art but powerful and very effective.

I'm surprise that most of the B2B sales reps are not trained on how to use these 'outside of the sales presentation' mechanisms to align themselves with the client and close the deal.

I will share with you 3 examples on what NOT to do with your non verbal expressions during a sales meeting. Two the sales reps of  these three examples, work for global companies that have said their sales rep are trained in everything: from how to use the fork to how to do networking. From these experiences, it seems that the very essentials, on how to use their non verbal communications, is missing in their curriculum. 


Here they are:
1.    A life insurance sales woman:

• While doing her presentation, she was rubbing her hands. This movement was distracting the prospect, who was trying to listen to her and at the same time was looking her hands. At some point, the prospect finally surrendered in trying to understand what she was saying, he was too distracted. He disengaged from the conversation, relaxing himself in the chair and crossing his arms. Astonishingly, my client, didn't noticed that the prospect wasn't listening anymore, that he was gone and she continued talking. The meeting ended when the prospect said: "Let me study your information and I will call you if I make a decision. I have to show this to my wife."  No follow up was enough to bring him back to her pipeline.

 2.   An IT sales rep.

• He works for a small company that sold more than 5 million CAD the last year in IT solutions. He prepared his presentation thoroughly using the most advanced consultative selling techniques. When we arrived we were leaded to the prospect's office. He showed us were to seat and gave my client the signal to start which made a good opening. The sales rep had a very well designed sequence, good questions, nice answers from the prospect and as we were moving to an agreement to explore further, my client started to feel positive, so positive that he started to move forward to the prospect's desk. The client started to feel OK with the interview, my client felt it and started to move towards the desk. Feeling that he had good rapport, he started to take out some printed materials and moved things on top of his prospect desk . Wrong move. The problem was that he didn't ask the client for permission to do it and that he was careless in the way that moved the things over the prospect's desk. As soon as he started to do this, the prospect was surprised, and with a look of shock in his face, said everything. With these movements my client lost the rapport that he had and the client ended the meeting. My client felt disappointed and frustrated and when I asked to him what he thought what happened he replied: 'I don't know.'

3. A Manufacturing Products Sales Rep

• My client was starting a sales process with this company that she wanted for long time to have in her pipeline and this was the 1st interview. My client was carrying a briefcase. She started this meeting with the final user of her product. Since the very beginning she hold her hand bag in front of her. She never put it aside. Given my position at the table, watching the interview, I noticed how the prospect saw the hand bag several times. My client, left the hand bag open and struggled to make her presentation because she never got rid of it. In fact, she never took her left hand out of it. The prospect perceived that the hand bag was between he and the seller. How did I notice this? Because he looked at it several times. The meeting ended with a very cold: 'I'll call you." The prospect perceived a barrier, he felt that something was between him and the sales rep.

Comments
You can do a great sales presentation but your nonverbal communication might have other plans.  These were just three examples of how good opportunities were lost just because the sales rep wasn't completely in charge of his/her body language. It is not just a matter of having some knowledge about what happens with your non-verbal communication, what matters is if you can use your knowledge about non-verbal communication to help you close the deal.