A big part of what I believe about “selling clean” with honesty and ethics is finding a way to use stories about yourself in the community that you live in. Part of getting to like your future buyers and to have them like you is spending the first part of the sales process finding common ground. That means directing the conversation away from anything that has to do with sales. You start talking about something that happened locally, like the recent Fourth of July fireworks or the high school football team that is on its way to the state finals.
In my town of Loveland, Colo., we have a small airport that displays World War II-era planes several times a year. So you can bet I ask my new customers if they saw the vintage planes. This is a conversation I like to get into first thing, because quite frankly, I want to find out where my customer lives. Selfishly, I want to make sure they live close enough to do the installation. My store is on a major highway that is the gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park, so we have people passing by from almost every state in the country. The last thing I want to do is spend an hour with someone only to find out they live in Ohio.