Perception is everything in sales. If you’re perceived as just another sales rep, your prospect won’t give you the time of day, let alone their credit card. Sorry, but it’s true.
On the other hand, if you’re perceived as a high-status business partner, your stock will skyrocket and you’ll be given the proverbial keys to your prospect’s company.
After all, your prospects are high-status business leaders. They are C-suite executives that constantly rub elbows with other high-status peers.
So the sales psychology here is that they must see you as a peer, or better yet, an advisor, not a groveling employee. Employees are “yes-men” ; they bend over backwards and are always at the beck-and-call. This can’t be you. You are not a coffee boy. Drop to this status and you’re toast.
Sales Tip: Did you know that the average C-level executive gets bombarded with over 100 sales messages a day? If you don’t elevate your status, you will always get lost in this slush-pile of rejects.
This is an absolute fact. And thankfully, it’s liberating! Once you’re armed with this truth, it’s actually pretty simple to change the way your prospect’s perceive you.
So today I’m sharing exactly how to change your body, mind, and soul to communicate to the world that you are high-status and highly capable.
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Why be perceived as high-status?
- Lowers your prospect’s guard
- Have better sales conversations
- Book more meetings
- Close more deals
- Outperform your competition
- Speed up the sales cycle
- Improve your personal relationships
- You’ll get what you want in life
Chin up, Chest out!
Move, move, move. Move your body. Tony Robbins says “motion creates emotion.” Do a primal war-cry in the morning, howl into the sky at night. Walk around with your chin up and chest out. When you get physical and aggressive, you change your physiology and your mind. You snap out of low-status and are ready for anything life throws at you. There’s a reason why NFL players and powerlifters slap each other around before a big game or a heavy lift. It puts them in a state to perform at the highest level. Do this!
Sales Tip: If you want to exude high-status, then dress the part. Spend some money on a few nice suits. Or at the very least, always wear a pressed button-up or collared shirt. People will treat you differently, which will change your perception of yourself. If you feel high-status, you will think, feel, and speak high-status. Believe it or not, on sales calls your prospects can hear what you wear.
Deepen Your Knowledge of the Market
Spend a few mornings or evenings each week to research your market. Read up on industry reports and trends, read the big influencers in the space, and always stay on top of emerging tech in your field. If you’re trying to sell me AI-powered software, you better know about the Deepseek market disruption and resulting market downturn… and the nuances of that situation. This deep market knowledge is sure to elevate your status.
RELATED: How to Go From Pushy Salesperson to Trusted Advisor
Leverage LinkedIn for Social Selling
Use LinkedIn, Substack and other platforms for social selling. Package up your expertise and unique insights and send them into the digital world. You might not get a thousand likes or shares, but people will read what you’re writing. If you do it right, this can position you as a high-status advisor and a thought-leader in your industry. Honestly, this can be the difference between remaining in obscurity and closing the biggest deals of your life. All it takes is one curious prospect to search your name, find your profile, and read the thoughtful and engaging content you put out.
Sales Tip: Don’t “always be selling.” That was the 1900’s way of doing sales. Instead, always provide value. Engage people, teach them, help them. Start a YouTube channel, a podcast, a blog. Publish educational content every day. But whatever you do, don’t farm this out to the cheapest bidder or AI; it’s better to publish no content than it is to publish generic content that will tarnish your personal brand.
Practice Tonality Daily
The fastest way to elevate your status is to speak with confidence and authority. We call this tonality in sales. When your tone has confidence, you can set the agenda on the call and masterfully lead the conversation. Most C-suite execs will match your tone and confidence, so they’ll feel right at home on the call. I recommend practicing tonality daily to get the right pitch, cadence, rhythm, inflection, volume, and variety in your voice. Just don’t overthink this. Listen to the best public speakers and salespeople, and start to mimic how they speak. Most of the best speakers have tonality dialed-in.
Final Words
One word of caution! I caution you against gaining high status for the sake of manipulating and controlling others. Do not become high status for these reasons! These people exist, and they are a nightmare to be around.
You have to take a more altruistic approach. Become high-status for the positive influence you can have — in your career success, in the success of your partner clients, and the lives of those around you.
Sales Tip: The highest-status sales people aren’t always making sales calls. They aren’t trying to drum up business; they don’t have to. Instead, they attract new customers and clients like a moth to a flame. This doesn’t happen overnight. They’ve put in the work to elevate their status. And now it’s paying off in dividends. So why not do the heavy lifting for a couple of years to establish yourself, and let the business come to you.
And with this roadmap I’ve laid out above, you are now primed to do exactly that. You are primed for peak performance that naturally stems from being perceived as high-status. So there’s nothing left to do but get to work. You’ve got this.
Until next time…
Johnny-Lee Reinoso