No, No it doesn't.

I was going to start a poll and say "Does your sales technique need some work?" just to see where everyone thought their skills were. But, I wanted to hop right into the part where I do a lot of typing. Predictable, right?

Anyway, my post title may be a bit of a stretch. But, if you use one sales technique over and over again, it's not going to work every single time. No matter what your individual approach is, "Relating to the customer", "Making friends with the customer", "Being straight forward with the customer", each one of these are good techniques but not 100% of the time. 

There are some...seasoned sales people who really believe that being straight faced and to the point each time is going to get them where they need to go. But it's that one customer that ends up not melding well with them that makes the difference between success and failure.

Failure is a big F word, I know. But if you're being closed minded and one dimensional, you're setting yourself up to not achieve your goal. Each customer is completely different, and you must account for that.

At the same time, there is such a thing as over-analyzing. You may have been taught a method in which you need to listen to the customer and determine what kind of customer they are. So you are left trying to see what their viewpoints are. Trying to see what kind of personality they have. Categorizing them in your head and determining how you should approach the sale.  You're doing so much thinking that you end up stumbling over your words, and focusing more on how to categorize the person rather than just...being you.

It's true that you must adjust yourself to the needs of the customer, but if you make the change internally to approach each situation with an open mind, and no expectations, then you can adjust your tone, inflection, etc. as you go along, instead of back pedaling and apologizing for 'coming off the wrong way.'

You're going to get happy customers, easy customers, depressed customers, angry customers, mean face customers, hilarious customers, and so on and so forth. When a customer walks in, or when I'm meeting with a client, right before I shake their hand I imagine myself as a ball of play-doh (or pizza dough because it smells better), I imagine myself being firm, but movable, and flexible determining whose hands I'm in. While your customers are certainly in your hands, there is a part of you that's in theirs. They control the tone of the conversation. Every single time. 

It's true what they say, the only thing that is certain is change. You have to be ready to adjust accordingly to the customer. 

So maybe there is one technique that always works, and that's "Adjust" or "Change". But that's if you want to get technical. :)