Shaking You Out of Your Sales Slumber

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A friend of mine who is also in the training business spoke to me recently about his frustration with lack of eagerness to change on the part of his clients. I echoed similar thoughts about some of the work we do.

Our conclusion was that, more often than not, adults do not ask for much advice. And if they do, they are rarely eager to implement.

So the question becomes, why is that? Everybody says they want more but do they? Anybody says they want to improve but do they? The world is full of bad news about underemployment, unemployment, the economy, and prospects for future jobs, yet are we really interested in changing ourselves?

The answer to those questions typically is: NO.

My sense is that the answer to those questions runs much deeper. Perhaps deeper that I have the words for in a column such as this. But what the hell – let’s give it a shot.

The Comfort Zone Rears Its Ugly Head, Again

Most of the readers of this blog have very few Third World problems, like can’t find anything to eat, or are being pursued by rabid hyenas. Most of our problems are of a much higher order.

Consequently, we all live life in a comfort zone. Yes, things could be a little bit better but I don’t fear for my life every day like if I lived on the Serengeti. So we have to look to other areas for our inspiration and motivation and grit.

Here’s Where It Gets Deep

I think an obvious place to look is by asking the question, “Why are you here?” What is it you are put on the face of this planet to be – or to do? Why are you in the business you’re in? Why do you have the life you have? What is your story anyway? What is a message or cause you’re willing to fight and die for?Sales Training Quote for Excellence

By answering some of these questions I think we get to the root cause of why so many of us hate change.

I had this very conversation last week with a client. He sells a product that represents an enormous value to customers. But his sales are way off. He says he really believes in the value of what he sells but I see actions that don’t coincide with that claim. He is content to make cold calls and wait until Web leads come in.

God Enters The Picture

Here is what I said, paraphrasing: “God gave you a voice to go use. He put experiences into your life that could benefit others. He gave you the opportunity to represent a product that actually helps people make better decisions in their business life which will coincide with more success in their personal life. You have all this – yet you refuse to do anything other than make cold calls and sit around and wait on leads to come in. Is that the best you can do? If you were given six months to live, is this the way you would spend those six months – waiting on web leads and making cold calls?”

“Of course not. You would get out and hustle. You would show a little grit. You would offer to speak at clubs where your customers might hang out. You would do everything you could to get this high-value solution into your customers hands. But the reason you don’t do that is because you’re in your comfort zone. If people buy, fine. If people don’t buy, fine. If people hear about it, fine. If they don’t, that’s fine too.”My question to him is: “Is that the best you can do?”

It reminds me of a scene in Walk The Line (story of Johnny Cash with River Phoenix). Cash has shown up for an audition with legendary producer Sam Phillips. After 1 minute of play, Phillips stops him cold.

Sam Phillips: Mr. Cash, we’ve already heard that song a hundred times. Just like that. Just… like… how… you… sing it.

Johnny Cash: Well you didn’t let us bring it home.johnny-cash2

Sam Phillips: Bring… bring it home? All right, Mr. Cash, let’s bring it home. If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had time to sing *one* song. One song – that people would remember before you’re dirt. One song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth. One song that would sum you up. You tellin’ me that’s the song you’d sing? That same Jimmy Davis tune we hear on the radio all day, about your peace within, and how it’s real, and how you’re gonna shout it? Or… would you sing somethin’ different. Somethin’ real. Somethin’ *you* felt. Cause I’m telling you right now, that’s the kind of song people want to hear. That’s the kind of song that truly saves people. It ain’t got nothin to do with believin’ in God, Mr. Cash. It has to do with believin’ in yourself.

What about you? Are you doing the best you can do right now in giving voice to the value that you represent either personally or in your business? What’s the kind of song you’ll sing (or message you’ll send) that’ll save people?

Gives you a different perspective, doesn’t it?

 

 

 

 

 

Does a Strong Inner Game Begin With Self-Acceptance?

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If you have listened to our podcast or read this blog, you realize that the Inner Game (our internal mentality) is a big part of what we teach at Caskey. We believe that if your mind is right, then your strategy and words will be right as well.

And when all that is right, you will experience uncommon sales success.

But often, the inner game shift doesn’t come easy for people. If you’ve grown up in a house full of scarcity and restriction it’s a little bit much to expect that a person will, all at once, see the world as a place of abundance. (Especially only as a result of a trainer/coach showing up in their lives).

Moreover, if your whole life has been focused on getting what YOU want, high intent – where you are interested in getting the customer what he or she wants – is a pipe dream.

So what is it that can bridge the gap and allow you to fully adapt the fundamental shift in thinking required to change and improve the inner game – especially for sales people? It might be self-acceptance.

Sales Training Quote for Excellence

Self acceptance is your psychological ability to accept yourself, warts and all.

It Begins On The Inside

It is not conditional, based on whether you won last month’s sales contest or secured that million dollar order. It is not based on whether your manager likes you or whether you’re in line for a raise next year. It has nothing  to do with what happens on the outside. Only on the inside.

And it also does not preclude you from wanting to improve yourself. There is room for both self-acceptance as you are AND the desire to be better at what you do.

Assumptions & Information Not Always Right 

So often we tend to look back at the decisions we make and the results that came from those decisions and beat ourselves up. The fact is that most of the decisions we made were done so with a certain set of assumptions and information that we had at the time we made them.

Sometimes the assumptions and information we had were wrong. But we had to make some decision. Or, how we were thinking about life and ourselves at the time we had to make that decision was off track.

But that doesn’t mean that we were bad for those decisions. In fact, I suggest, that your bad decisions and lessons learned from those are every bit as helpful to moving forward as had you chosen every right move.

In a sick sort of way the acceptance of your mistakes makes you who you are today. There is a certain amount of grit (and guts) in accepting your past foibles. It’s when you delude yourself into blaming other people that you don’t learn those lessons and you don’t accept yourself.

Own More of Your Self

Finally, when you accept yourself sincerely, you will naturally become better at what you do because you accepted more of yourself in the process. If you lose a sale and blame everybody else around you for the loss you own less responsibility to create a different outcome next time. And when you do that, all possible lessons go away.

The Pivotal Concept That Governs All Sales Actions

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Of all the concepts that we teach in our sales development firm, this has had the highest impact on people’s results and confidence.

We start sales training classes with a very simple question: “What is the intent of a salesperson?” Almost everyone misses it. They say:

  • “It’s to sell.”
  • “It’s to get the deal.”
  • “It’s to be credible.”
  • “It’s to make money.”
  • “It’s to make quota.”

Our next response leaves them gasping for air…

Your intent is no longer to go out and get deals. Your intent should be to help the prospect identify, reveal and fix his/her problem, even if he/she decides not to use you to get it fixed. Read more

Problems and Solutions In Talking Money With Prospects

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To say that the discussion of money is the most important part of the sales process might be an over-reach. BUT, the fact is that if you aren’t willing to embrace the conversation about money, then you will be at a disadvantage further into the sales cycle.

Why do so many people have so many qualms with talking money? Well, in this Whiteboard Wednesday, Bill Caskey deals with it head-on, discussing the problems, the causes and the solutions that await you. As with any roadblock in the sales cycle, it all begins with “the inner game.”

5 New Ways To Think About the Selling Profession

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I wake up nights thinking about why I so detest the idea of ‘convince and persuade’ in the sales process. In fact, Bryan Neale said in a recent podcast, “No place in selling for persuasion or convincing.”  A bold statement, yes. But one I agree with.

So why is it so detesting to me?

I think I’ve always felt like persuasion and influence are something you do TO someone, not WITH someone. When a salesperson comes back from a sales call, the sales manager typically says (or thinks), “Did you convince them to use us?”

Or, if he doesn’t actually say that, it is an understood question.

And so begins the spiral of “doing it TO someone.”  Even the very word “SELL” is an active verb that implies you are doing it TO another person.

So let’s try this another way…

Instead of thinking, “How do I persuade, convince or influence someone?” let’s ask the question in another, more passive voice:

“What do I need to do so that the person becomes persuaded, becomes convinced, becomes influenced by me so they make the decision that they want to make?”(Not the decision I want them to make.)

I think if we use the passive verb of ‘become persuaded,’ it’s much more positive and powerful than it is to do something TO someone – as in the active voice of persuade.

Here is a list that I’ve assembled of the things I think you can do to help the prospect become persuaded. 

1.) Be sincerely curious and interested in their issues.

How many times have you been called on by a salesperson that is only interested in your issues in as much as it will lead to a sale for them?

  • Old Persuasion: Seller is interested in prospect because prospect gives them money.
  • New Persuasion: Seller is interested in prospect, whether they give you money or not.

2.) Fully understand the kind of pain they’re feeling.

The fact is that your solution probably solves a problem of some kind for most clients.  Even though we can suggest that “every client is different” (naturally, we don’t want to assume anything), we also have the luxury of experience in our businesses.

For example, in the sales training and coaching business, there are but a handful of problems that arise that we can help people with.  And we know what those are going in so that we can spot them when they become issues.

  • Old Persuasion: Seller pitches and convinces the buyer.
  • New Persuasion: Seller seeks to understand the prospect.

3.) Understand the economic impact of the problem.

A person can become persuaded pretty quickly if they discover, through your questions, that the problem is costing them $1.5 million per year.  If they come to that conclusion, you don’t have to be very “persuasive” or “convincing.”

  • Old Persuasion: Justify your price.
  • New Persuasion: Give attention to the cost of the problem-let them justify your price. Read more

Too Much Eagerness. Bad for Customers. Bad for You.

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Last week, I had a coaching session with one of my clients who is a pretty talented business development person. I say ‘talented’ because she has all of the raw materials: enthusiasm, energy, work ethic, and decent communication skills.

Then, last week she relayed a deal that her company is working on. As she described the situation, a couple of things caught my attention. She proceeded to tell me how important this deal was to her company and how excited she was and how desperate some of her teammates are about landing this deal. (I suspect the desperation came directly from the sales force, but that’s a different matter).

After she reviewed the situation I asked her if she noticed anything about how she described the deal. She said she didn’t. But I did.

What I noticed was the underlying theme of neediness and awestruck-ness about this deal. It’s that “this-one-would-be-a-huge-feather-in-our-cap-if-we got-it” attitude. But that kind of thinking, to me, assures she won’t get it.

It’s Bad for Your Internal Team

Since one of the strategies with this prospect was a presentation meeting where she was to bring her engineers to discuss the deal with the customer, it becomes even more vital that their (engineer) minds are right when in contact with customer.

Anytime you give those people ample reason to be scared they’ll take it. Feeling pressure and stress is no way to go through a presentation like this. And the more magnitude and burden you put on the situation, the less likely you will be to care/focus on what the customer wants.

This is part of that overall misguided myth that the more excited we are about getting a deal, the more excited the prospect is about giving it to us. I know we were all taught that-and really want to believe it. But in my experience, it’s the cause of more lost deals than won deals.

It’s Bad for Your Customer

More importantly, anything that takes your eye off of the customer’s problems and goals creates a block for you – and they’ll feel it. Feeling that pressure to perform is one of the most common mistakes made in business development /sales. In coping with that pressure, you take the attention off of them and put it right on yourself. Read more

10 Inspiring Inner Game Quotes

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1. “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”  – Marcus Aurelius

2. “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, YOU’RE RIGHT!” – Henry Ford

3. “The less you talk, the more you’re listened to.” – Abigail Van Buren

4. “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale

5. “Never be a hostage to your emotional needs. Never make your prospect a hostage to those needs either.” – Same Game New Rules

6. “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.” – Buddha

7. “Be careful of your own thoughts; they may become words at any minute.” – Iara Gassen

8. “With the right intent, you raise your odds of success.” – Bill Caskey

9. “All action results from thought, so it is thoughts that matter.” – Sai Baba

10. “We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.” – Swami Vivekananda

Who Did You Become?

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My sister sent me a motivating article yesterday called Who Did You Become? by Marc Cenedella.

I’m sharing it with you because I feel it will inspire us all to self-reflect on ourselves and where we are today.

Sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy this blog.

 

3 Reasons You Should Share Your “Why” with Customers

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You’ve probably seen the TED talk with Simon Sinek on the Golden Circle.

He discusses the fact that all of our businesses have an outer circle of “what” (what do we sell or do), the mid circle, which is the “how” (how do we do what we do and is it distinguishable from anybody else who does what we do), and an inner circle is the “why” (what is our purpose for being in business, what attracted us to this business in first place, why are we so passionate about our work).

Simon’s premise is that our customers buy the why we do what we do just as much as they by the how or the what.  And yet, most of the time the why is the last thing we talk about with our customers or prospects.

I believe there are three reasons you should get very clear about the why in your business.

1.  It helps you with your own motivation. 

It’s hard to get up every day and do what we all do without the why behind our actions.  And I think it’s better if the why is about the customer and their business and the work that you do rather than just the income you make.

In other words,”I get up every morning to do what I do so my kids can go to college” is really not relevant to your prospect.

2. The thinking through of “why “do you do what you do will help you communicate your value in a better way.

It will set your inner game right so that you’re not as vulnerable in tough, tight situations.  My sense is that if we operated on a belief of a “solid why” then we’re not as apt to deviate from our process and take some of the crap we take in the market. We will hold firm on our process and our price. Read more