Sales Fix Quick Fix

All humans make ALL decisions for one of two reasons. Avoiding Pain or Seeking Pleasure. If we understand how this works, and how our brains process these decision making influencers, we can understand how to focus our sales approach to speak our client's brain language

In this video, I want to talk about the concept of serving or asking questions in sales. Just like in tennis, where the server has a huge advantage, being the one who initiates the conversation in sales gives us control. Too often, we leave it open for the customer to start asking questions, which puts us in a reactive position. As sales professionals, we should be the ones serving the ball with well-crafted questions that require thoughtful responses. By taking the lead and managing the conversation, we can effectively qualify or disqualify our clients and avoid high-pressure situations. So, let's dive in and learn how to use the power of the serve in sales!

I discuss the concept of push and pull in the buyer-seller relationship. Often, our enthusiasm for our product or service can overpower the conversation and actually push the buyer away. Psychology tells us that people naturally counter the energy directed at them, so it's important to control and curtail our enthusiasm when talking with prospects. This push and pull dynamic is similar to the chess game in jiu jitsu, where pulling someone forward is more effective to sweep them back than starting off by pushing them back. Tactics for approaching sales conversations with a disqualifying agenda and focusing on "Discovery" and not "Convincing" lead to a healthy, balanced and effective conversation with our prospect

Lets talk about how our brains take shortcuts to understand things in terms of their meaning and what they represent for us, not in terms of just what they actually are. This has implications in the world of sales, where we can incidentally cause the wrong kinds of shortcuts to happen. I recently worked with a sales rep who was getting a negative reaction from prospects when he used the word "struggling" to describe their obstacles. We worked on his scripts and hunted for words that could be causing false reactions and leading clients to take the wrong shortcuts.

The Shawshank Redemption is one of my favorite movies. Everyone knows that amazing moment when the protagonist breaks out of prisons and stands in the rain with his arms reaching up. Success isn't a magic moment in real life, but rather the result of hundreds of small decisions and actions over time. The movie gets this right, as the protagonist chips away at the prison one stone at a time over 20 years. Similarly, in sales, it's the little things we do every day that add up to success. There are no shortcuts or silver bullets. We need to hold ourselves accountable for our daily, weekly, and monthly activity and consistently make small improvements to our pitch, approach, and marketing materials. Small actions over a long period of time have monumental consequences. So, let's focus on the small building blocks of actions that make us 1-2% better each day, and we'll see monumental results.

What happens in those critical moments where we lose trust? We know that trust accounts for 40% of the buying decision. We also know that trust is an all-important aspect to sales. Clearly clients buy from people that they trust first and foremost. In this video, I cover the three areas of trust - authenticity, empathy, and logic - and how they apply to sales. I also discuss the two different modules of communication and how just focusing on the right one can help us save ourselves from trust failures.

I'll be discussing our activity numbers as sales reps and the correlation between our activity and the results we get. I'll also be sharing a simplified activity ladder to help us understand the numbers better. By tracking our conversions and understanding our numbers, we can make adjustments to improve our performance. I'll be sharing some examples of how small changes in conversion percentages can have a big impact on our sales success. It's important to track our numbers month over month and be self-aware enough to make changes when necessary. So, let's dive into the numbers and start leveraging them to improve our sales performance!

In this Sales Quick Fix episode, I talk about communication styles. Did you know that there are two scales by which human communication is typically measured? The first is logical versus intuitive, and the second is slow versus fast. By understanding where we and our prospects land on these scales, we can identify potential communication gaps and work to bridge them. Word choice and tonality are important clues to identifying communication styles. It's not about changing who we are, but rather being aware of our own style and adapting to better connect with others. This is crucial in prospecting and building relationships with clients.

I explain the three main types of prospects that we encounter as salespeople: A, B, and C prospects. A prospects are the ones who are ready to buy and have a sense of urgency to fix their pain points. B prospects are hesitant and need more convincing, while C prospects are not interested in buying at all. I also discuss how to identify each type of prospect and what actions to take when dealing with them. As a salesperson, it's important to understand these distinctions to maximize your prospecting efforts and increase your chances of success.