📄 Why values are not a hippy thing and why they're crucial in selling

The other day on a podcast about selling, I heard the host and his guest talk about values - and I chuckled, because they were almost apologetic about it.

As in "Yeah it sounds soft and hippy-ish, but when you're prospecting and doing outreach, it kinda helps to make sure you prioritise people and companies that have values in common with you."

Uhuh, yeah lol. Kinda helps?

Not sure if you've seen me riff about it, but values are not 'kinda helpful' when trying to find new buyers: they are vital and crucial.

Sure, you can ignore people's values.

But if you happen to be a person of integrity, and you end up with a buyer who lies or who is deceitful or who cheats, then all throughout your engagement with them, you're going to feel a really nasty, wrenching feeling of conflict, because here you are, helping someone who does crap that you would never stoop to.

Or maybe you're a minimalist living a frugal lifestyle and you don't like consumerism - sure wouldn't want to work with a client who is a wasteful spendthrift, would you?

And it would really suck if you care about privacy, only to find out that your client has a second business in the ad-tech industry, and sells people's personal data to the highest bidders on a daily basis.

And examples like these - where you're out of alignment on values and you end up compromised - are only one side of the argument.

The other side is that when you and your buyer do have values in common, you'll have far more rapport, and rapport is crucial in sales.

Sure, you can try to create rapport by nattering about the weather or the kids or hobbies - but that's ho-hum and it's artificial.

There's much more rapport, on a much deeper level, if you and your buyer share values.

So yeah, values matter. Nothing woo-woo or hippy-ish about it. Just common-sense precision in the way you source and enroll your buyers.

And as for selecting people who share your values, that usually isn't all that hard, because people always have their values on display.