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

The Happy Secret To Better Work by Shawn Archor

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“If we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average.” (Shawn Achor)

Lately, I’ve been “refueling” my brain at work with TED.com videos. I just watched an intriguing video on positive thinking and simple ways to train your brain to think happy thoughts. 🙂

Our Caskey philosophy is that if you want to change your results, you MUST change your thinking (your Inner Game).  I’m 100% positive this video will inspire you to take a step back and focus on the power of your Inner Game.

Video Summary:

We believe that we should work to be happy, but could that be backwards? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity.

Is It Mindset Or Skillset That’s The ‘Difference Maker’ Today?

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I had a long, tedious discussion with a family member this week end about the difference between COMPETENCIES and SKILLS. As someone who is ‘in the business,’ I suppose I should have been able to rip off a definition of each, but I couldn’t.

What  did occur to me as we were having the conversation is how little either of them really matter in sales success.

For over 12 years, we at Caskey have been preaching that it’s your “inner game” that makes all the difference in your success. And that if you want to significantly change your outcomes, change your thinking.

Afterall, situations change rapidly and scenarios change from one customer to the next. So, how can you possible have a skillset for each and every nuance of customer situation?

You can’t.

It’s why we’ve been trumpeting the message of “it’s about mindset, not skillset” for years.

Mindset Has Four Components

As we see it, if you can master the mindset of selling (and of yourself), you are unstoppable. Here the four that we teach.

1. Abundance.

This is the perspective that suggests there is more than enough to go around. There is an abundance of sales opportunities, prospects and pain to solve. Any shortcoming you feel right now is a function of how you think. Period. Look at your sales funnel to gauge how you were thinking ‘yesterday.’ Because that’s all a sales funnel is – an indication of old thinking. Read more

What Happens When Neediness Permeates Everything You Do?

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Are you desperate for results?  Do you really need a sale to feel good about yourself?

When we ask those questions in our sales programs, we get a resounding “NO!!!”  But the fact is, that when you listen to most people’s sales pitch and sales process, it is threaded with an element of neediness and desperation throughout.

It’s not the sort of neediness that’s exhibited by begging.  It’s much more subtle than that.

It’s that time during a presentation when you say, “So what do you think?”  Or that time at the very beginning of the process when you fail to plant your feet on solid ground and instead, follow the customer’s process and do so gladly because you think the odds will increase of you making the sale.

Here are three things you can do immediately to end the pitiful approach of neediness:

1. Want nothing.

The more “want” you have in the process, the more likely you are to slip and sound needy.  (Actually, you don’t just “sound” needy, you are needy.)  We say in our work, the only selling that should be happening in the sales cycle is the prospect selling you on why they have a problem that they need solved.

The idea of you selling them is antiquated.

2. Stay detached.

In my book, Same Game New Rules, I devote a chapter to it called “Detachment Increases Power”. I mention:

“Unfortunately, detachment and the ability to let go are not natural characteristics in any of us.  From the time we were kids, we were taught to hang on to what we had….”

Amateur salespeople always tend to have their eye on the prize – the order – the close – the commission.  But as long as you’re focused on that end result (your prize), the less apt you are to be detached during the cycle and therefore, the less power you have.

Why are we always the ones squirming?  You would think if we really believed in our solution the way we say we do, it would be the prospect squirming because they may not get access to it.  But that’s not the way it usually is.

3. A REAL Belief in Your Value.

There are two faces to this thing that we talk a lot about called “value”.  One is the product or service representation of value.  That might be the results that a customer can expect to see as a result of using your service or the distinguishing characteristics that make your product truly unique.

But there’s also another phase of value and that is your value.  Yes, as a sales professional or as a technical resource or as a subject matter expert.  This is the one that we take for granted and rarely work on and yet, this is the exact one that will make it easy for you to distinguish yourself from the pack. 

What are you doing to bring value to the relationship, not through your product or service, but through you?

Neediness is deadly.  When exhibited at the wrong time, it can turn a perfect sales process into a loss.

The instant you become needy, the prospect gets uncomfortable because deep down, their lizard brain is asking themselves, “Why should I buy from him if he seems so needy?  There seems to be danger here.” And there might be.

So lose the neediness and desperation.  Really lose it and watch your control of the sales process increase.

3 Tips On Selling A Premium Product in a Commodity Market

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A few years ago, I did a Webinar called “How to Sell A Premium Product in a Commodity Market.” It was one of our best attended webinars we’ve ever done.

Lots of interest in the topic – and I believe I know why.

In this article, I want to update some of the content and give you a couple more ideas.  I picked this topic because it is an ongoing area of concern for sales people – how to sell a premium product into a market that sees price as THE main driver.

Why it’s so tough.

Think about it. We live in a “price leads” society. Advertisers have led us on a race to the bottom by the constant drumbeat of, “Lowest Prices In The Industry!” Or, “We’ll Beat ANY Price!” I know you’ll say, “But I’m not in the retail game.” No, you aren’t. But do you see the attitude that they’ve placed in the minds of buyers?

So the context is that even though your buyer might not jump to “What’s your price?” they certainly have it on their radar.

Here are four notions that I suggest you consider as you extract yourself form the “commodity dungeon” where the only important issue is price:

1. Position Your Self Properly.

Interesting thing about positioning is that it’s not just about what you say – it’s about how you say it. Sales people spend so much time concerned with the “what” and ignore the “how.”

And that’s wrong.

Regardless of your word choice (you’ll have to decide that), the essence of your message should be centered around ‘the types of problems that you solve.’ That’s right – no enthusiastic sales pitches about how great you are – or how smart your team is. None of that.

Frame your ‘premium value’ around the pains and problems that prospects face. Some of those problems they know they have. Some they’re oblivious to. But either way, begin the conversation there.

Be a problem solver not a product seller. There is a trap waiting for you. The prospect sets it and you fall right into it. It happens when the prospect shows interest and you default to “the pitch.”

Instead, when your prospect shows interest in the types of problems you solve, refrain from pitching the product and spend more time diagnosing what that problem means to him. This one thing can do more to change your position (in the prospect’s mind) and help them see that your premium fee is worth it.

Read more