veganism

Imagine you are a part of an international sales team who have been tasked with the job of selling the most amazing solution the vast majority of the world’s problems?  You hold the solution to the current global challenges to human health, environment, social justice, the economy, conscience, spiritual growth etc.  The customer is every person on the planet.  What training will your team need to convey the solution and match it to the problems the customer is facing?  Surely a team tasked to deliver such promises, would have a clear strategy and sales process or would they ‘wing’ conversations with customers and get annoyed at them when they don’t buy the solution offered?

Well, if you are vegan reading this, you are part of this sales team.  You may feel resistant to selling, believing that the current financial and economic system perpetuates a system of greed and selling products and services on the back of human, animal and environmental suffering.   If so, how do you feel that you’ve been recruited to this global sales team?  Also, if we use this sales analogy, there are other customers who’ll benefit from your endeavours – the animals.  And they are silent, you’re unsure they even know you’re working at a global level to improve their quality of life and you can’t easily canvass their feedback on how good a job we’re all doing.

How do you feel about selling veganism?

Faced with this responsibility, you may feel you’re facing this task with no real training, only skills you’ve acquired along the way.  You may feel alone in the process, wish you had more information to hand to convince people to buy the solution of veganism. You may long for linguistic mastery to deal with buyer resistance or would like help in upselling them from vegetarianism to veganism – the crème de la crème solution which involves their greatest investment and yet the greatest reward.

You won’t have the chance to meet all the sales team, practice selling with them or ensure your sales materials are branded and professional.  However, we’re all relying on each other to do a great job of offering the solution.  It’s hard because no-one likes rejection and when we offer the solution, our customers often deny they have a problem, the solution doesn’t work, they like existing solutions or can’t afford it, etc.

The best thing you can do is adopt key principles from sales psychology and understand that sometimes the sales cycle is short and sometimes long – some people buy on the spot, others buy lesser priced products and when satisfied make higher investments. There’ll be customers who say ‘no’ or ‘not yet’, because they’re insufficiently convinced of the solution.  Sometimes we have to wait because it’s not until sufficient people change that they decide to ‘Keep up with with the Jones’, and change or they see the latest celebrity convinces them to buy.

What do you need as vegan salesperson?

1. Mind-shift change
   You must believe in your ability to communicate and sell veganism.  If you feel anxious and tongue-tied, your whole neurology will work against you.  When you’re discussing animal cruelty, for example, you’ll often feel anxious and in pain.  When this discomfort or anger occurs, blood flows from your frontal cortex to the reptilian brain at the back of your head.  This is the ‘fight or flight’ red zone where it’s difficult to stay calm, confident and convincing. The same thing occurs for the listener resulting in resistance and comments like, ‘Don’t tell/show me any more!’The good news is that there’s a contagion effect and if you can keep calm and and empathise with the person struggling to receive this challenging information, you’ll influence their blood to flow to the frontal cortex with the increased likelihood that they’ll listen to you.You must regularly practice techniques to remain calm like meditation, positive self-talk, increasing confidence through communication mastery and seek out social support from other vegans.
   A useful technique to calm yourself and move the blood to the frontal cortex in readiness for these challenging conversations is, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).  For a short video on this technique, visit http://claremann.com/endstressUnderstanding neuroscience and parts of the brain responsible for decision making and emotional responses, is invaluable because as every sales person know, ‘People buy with emotion and back up decisions with logic’.  The information you share must evoke and sufficiently emotional response requiring them to want a solution, which can be reinforced with logic.  Such logic is influenced by providing them with facts, figures and evidence that veganism works.People buy from people they like so learning to be empathic, non-judgemental and supportive of where they are in their journey, they’ll learn to trust you (and other members of the vegan sales team) and say that magic phrase every vegan wants to hear, ‘That’s interesting; tell me  more’.
2. A Sales Process
   When engaging people to talk about veganism, it’s best not to ‘wing’ your conversations or ‘play them by ear’.  It’s important to develop a sales process, to move them along a continuum from ‘not interested’ to ‘tell me more’ or, even better, ‘I am becoming a vegan!’  Note, you may need several conversations for them to become vegan and they may not all be with you.  They’ll also be influenced by videos, TV adverts, media reports on animal cruelty etc.  Once you start the conversation, they won’t be able to see issues around veganism in the same light.  New information about the subject will activate what you’ve told them so it’s important that you make a good impression and provide information to back up your claims.Here are some key principles:a)    Make a contract. – Tell the person what you’d like to talk to them about and get agreement to discuss it.  When they say yes, you can refer back to this later when they say, ‘I can’t continue discussing this’.  Their comment isn’t then a signal to stop, merely to modify the intensity of the information you share.b)    Use questions to elicit their motivation. – Ask lots of questions to ascertain their understanding, interests and problems around health, social justice, environment and social concerns.  Then you can position the vegan message so it meets their needs. If you insist on talking about animal cruelty when they’re asking about diet or environmental sustainability, they’ll switch off.  Listen, ask questions and provide information relative to the person’s need.  You can add other information later when they say, ‘Tell me more’.

   c)     Handle resistance – It is normal and predicable for someone to resist changing their attitudes and behaviour.  When a person resists what you’re telling them, instead of sighing, judging them as blind and selfish, see resistance as positive.  Appreciate that you’ve elicited an emotional response in them, they’re uncomfortable and will want to remove that discomfort.  They can choose to ignore what you’ve told them (which is often more difficult than they think) or seek a solution.

   Resistance in any sales process occurs for 4 main reasons and in the context of veganism, typical responses include:

   i)    Money:  ‘I can’t afford to be a vegan and buy organic fruit and vegetables’.
   ii)   Time: ‘I don’t have time to prepare vegan food’.
   iii)  Need: ‘I’m not sufficiently convinced I could live without meat or dairy’.
   iv)  Urgency: ‘I’ll think about it later as not pressing for me now’.
   v)   Trust:   ‘I don’t believe you’.

   By seeing resistance as positive, indicating that you must answer their concerns, you’ll become empowered rather then believing it’s futile and that some people will never change.

   d)    Sales Materials to support your arguments – Provide as much information and evidence that veganism is the solution e.g. Testimonials and case studies of people who have benefited from adopting veganism. Send links to videos or articles with evidence of the positive changes that result when they adopt veganism.

   e)    Provide the solution – Provide as much information as you can, relevant to their interests, questions and willingness to receive it.  Follow up with information to back your claims and always make a time to talk to them when they have had time to review it.

   Remember, you may not ‘close the sale’ and hear them say ‘Yes, I’m choosing veganism’.  You are part of the global vegan sales team and your contribution is to influence people every day to adopt the veganism.  Likewise, when someone tells you they’re becoming vegan, it is likely that another member of the team influenced their decision.

3. Exquisite communication skills
   You must become a great communicator if you are to influence people to become vegans.  Partner with non-vegans and talk to them as someone who has also been duped by society and industry to live in a non-vegan world.  Learn to listen and position your responses relative to their needs, gain rapport and build a relationship or trust so they don’t ‘shoot the messenger’ when they receive challenging information.For free video communication skills training, visit http://vegan-voices.com

Vegans are part of a global relay team

Communicating veganism is like running a relay race.   You tell somebody something, later they see a TV advert or something on social media and one day, the tipping point comes, their resistance reduces and they choose veganism or as as I prefer to say, ‘They return to their vegan birthright’.  Some may never become vegan in their lifetime but every conversation we all have contributes to a vegan world becoming the norm.

Your job is to be a great salesperson so you don’t let the team down and, most importantly, the animals.

Source:
This article entitled Would a Sales Process Help Activists Convert More People to Veganism? was originally published in the May/June 2016 of Barefoot Vegan. The issue focused on vegan businesses with a feature article on successful US-based vegan businesswoman Victoria Moran of Main Street Vegan.

To access this issue, visit:
http://www.barefootvegan.com/