Improve Your Sales With a Dose of Creativity

You'll hear many different answers when you ask people what is the one skill that salespeople need to be successful. Answers I've heard include talking, listening, and even golfing.

But I've never heard anyone tell me that successful salespeople need the skill of creativity–and they do. Here's why.

When Do You Need to Be Creative?

Creativity is the process of coming up with new ideas. How many different areas of the sales process require you to generate new ideas? Let's start with solving your customers' problems.

New problems come to light when you sell new products–that's when you need a creative solution. A customer's demand could be incompatible with management's policies–you will need a creative solution here too. You certainly don't want to lose a customer, but you had better have a creative solution when an important customer threatens to change suppliers. And when an important customer threatens to change suppliers, you had better have a creative solution–you certainly don't want to lose a customer.

Problems are only the beginning. You need to be creative to address the challenges selling against the competition. Also attracting new customers and prospecting often calls for having creative solutions.

How to Be Creative

Knowing that you need to be creative and actually being creative are two different things. It's easier to be creative once you understand the creative process, and it starts by understanding how the brain works.

Our senses are overloaded with information from people, places, and things. Only a small amount of the information you process is stored in your conscious memory; the remainder is stored in your unconscious memory.

Our brains then are like our attics. There's a lot of stuff in them, but most of us don't remember what's in there. Your attic material is only useful if you can retrieve it. Creativity allows you to retrieve and use your treasure of stored information.

Generating New Ideas

One way to generate new ideas is to tap into the brain's ability to associate. For example, the word “Thanksgiving” might trigger associations to other words like “food,” “family,” and “holiday.” The creative process starts with using those associations to generate ideas.

Start with a business problem. If your business problem is how to sell to more customers, the question to ask is “How can I associate “food” (the first association for Thanksgiving) with selling to more customers?”

One answer might be sending food gifts to attract new customers. Likewise, an association with “family” may lead to the idea of getting referrals for new business from one's family. “Holiday” may trigger the idea of celebration and how to acknowledge and celebrate new customers.

Creativity can lead to new ideas that would be difficult to develop without associations. There are lists of trigger words for technical and non-technical problems. Once you define your challenge, let the creative process and associations guide you to many possible solutions.

Are You Getting in the Way of Your Own Creativity?

There are many barriers to creativity. Believing there is only one right answer will diminish your ability to be creative. You will prematurely judge and generate fewer ideas. It's been said that nothing is more dangerous than an idea if it's the only one you have.

Challenge yourself to develop many answers, perhaps a second and a third right answer. Do this by rephrasing your problem and ask for many answers. These latter solutions will hopefully be even better than the first one you generated.

Another barrier to creativity is believing that you are not creative. Learning other creative techniques will reinforce your confidence in your abilities. If you believe you are creative, this will improve your ability to be creative.

Creativity Can Lead to Success

Think of how the workplace has changed over the years. There will always be a place for people who can take instructions from others; however, the people who will be the most valuable are the ones who can generate new ideas to get new customers, keep existing ones, and increase profitability. Their ideas will come from creativity. Don't you want to be one of the ones who is more valuable?

Salespeople who possess the skill of creativity, and are generating new ideas for their companies and their customers, will end up being the most successful in the future.

But why wait for the future? You can be creative today.

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