27 Years of No Bullsh＊t Sales Advice in 16 Mins
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Summary
In this episode, learn how to become a better sales rep by going over 27 years of sales experience and breaking down what people get wrong about sales. Sales is one of the most important skills to learn because everything you do from getting money from investors to hiring people to getting somebody to buy from you, even having somebody help you out, sits on the other side of understanding how to get somebody to want to help you which is sales.
Transcript
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I've been selling software since I was 17 years old. So that's 27 years of sales experience.
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I sold everything from entry-level software to enterprise deals to the largest companies in the
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Fortune 5000. People like Procter & Gamble, Dole Foods, Johnson & Johnson, and many others. I get
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asked every day about my sales experience and helping other entrepreneurs how to become great
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at sales. I'm going to teach you everything I know about identifying, qualifying, setting,
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Sales is one of the most important skills to learn
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even having somebody help you out it sits on the other side of understanding how to get somebody to
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want to help you which is sales so now let's move into what people get wrong about sales there's a
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whole bucket of things that people do wrong when they're selling first off they over promise
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under deliver what'll happen if you have commission structure where it's not tied to retention meaning
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the customer sticks around and or is happy then you'll have a salesperson saying whatever they
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have to say to get the buy so for example when hubspot it's a popular software that a lot of
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companies use to manage their sales process. When their salespeople were overselling the software
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and then customers were upset, they had to introduce a process where they measured the
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customer happiness after the sale. And if the score was low, it impacted the salesperson's
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commission and it changed the way they sold. So they stopped overselling. That's one thing.
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The second problem is most of them don't follow a process. So they're literally not properly
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trained. Don't run through skills and drills. They're just shooting from their hip. Whatever
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works they keep doing it they don't try something new they don't ask people that are doing better
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them how they can be better they get somebody to buy but the person actually wasn't ready to buy
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they just felt pressure to buy so they say yes and then the person cancels as soon as they hang
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up the phone see this all the time it's like oh i had 17 sales it's like no five of them refunded
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five of them canceled did you actually get them to make a decision to buy they don't do the takeaway
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close the takeaway close essentially somebody purchased and you say perfect super excited for
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you. Can't wait to get you set up. It's going to be an amazing experience. Really going to solve
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these three problems that you talked to me about. Hey, can I just ask you a simple question? Minus
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a global financial meltdown in the world. Is there any other reason that you might not move forward
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and get on your onboarding call or use our software or whatever it is? Asking that question
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as a salesperson really locks in the commitment of the buyer. Most people mess up sales because
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they follow a script and they don't realize it's about having a talk track. It's not about just
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memorizing words and spitting them out because then the prospect doesn't feel like you're actually
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listening or understand what they're saying, they don't write anything down. They're horrible at
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documenting the customer information. So at each step of the sales process, if you don't catalog
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and document what was said to the previous rep, then especially after you sell and the person
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starts the process, they join your thing, they buy your thing, the person shows up at their house,
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then they have to repeat everything that was said in the sales process where that's where all the
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gold is. And then the customer experience suffers because they have to repeat themselves versus the
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sales rep just taking five minutes after the call
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about their situation, their team, the names of the people,
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Then when the person who's in charge of onboarding
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and based on your situation, your revenue should be this.
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Most of the fortunes are made in the follow-up.
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If you say just following up, you lost the sale.
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Just so you know, that language in any way, shape,
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email, voicemail, phone call, stupid, bad.
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Just wanted to send it over, see if it could be helpful.
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Let's move into how to get your first customer.
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from your immediate network of people you know.
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And the best way to get them is just to ask people,
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The cool part is that if the person is interested,
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Or if they're not, they'll go, oh, my friend Bob.
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Would they even have influence in somebody else?
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you know anybody might be interested the referral or the intro is one of the best way to find your
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first customers now let's move into the three stages of sales the first one is to qualify
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if you think everybody could be a buyer then you're already messing yourself up what i think
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to myself is what's true about my best buyers who are the people who get the most benefit what are
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the questions that would make it a yes or no if i even move forward so first off if i'm selling to
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other entrepreneurs and ceos i'm going to ask them do you have your own business if the answer is no
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i don't have to proceed qualifying is all about trying to figure out what questions filters out
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our conversations to either say this is a person that could buy this or this is a person that
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shouldn't buy it and letting the people that shouldn't move on as fast as possible here's
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what you got to look for in a lead to decide if you qualify them or not you have to figure out
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what are you selling what's the perfect type of buyer and what questions could i ask in what order
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of broad to narrow that gets me a yes or no to decide to move to the second question to the
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third question to the fourth question so it depends what you're selling if you're selling
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fitness then you want to ask somebody is weight something that you struggle with is putting on
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muscle something that you struggle with so you need to figure out what are the questions that
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get you immediately not only to a qualifying scenario but also to a pain identification
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scenario right do you struggle to hit your numbers every month as if you're selling to business
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owners if you're selling furniture it's like are you guys expanding your office suit right so like
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you have to ask a question that qualifies them are they even in the market or even self-aware that
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they have a problem because if they don't try to sell something to somebody that doesn't even know
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they have a problem it's wasted time the best way to get the most qualified people for your product
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is find out where those type of people hang out so if i know that the best type of person to buy
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something from me is part of this organization then i'm going to go figure out how do i get
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involved in that organization i might be able to add some value i might do some training i might
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come in and do a lunch and learn remember for example my brother was selling houses the first
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time home buyers so he found out that a lot of people that worked in call centers were renting
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So he offered to do a lunch and learn at these call centers
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Because the call center got people that have homes
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because they have a mortgage that they're committed to
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they would reach out to him to sell a home to them,
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which brings us to the second step in the sales process which is setting the sale
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the role of a setter is to talk to the market and identify leads so it's either inbound or
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outbound opportunities so they're either creating demand by going outbound and talking to a bunch
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of people cold or they're fielding inbound interest this could be email subscribers
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people fill out an application people to follow on social media those are warmer they talk to
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those potential buyers and they qualify them to see if there's an opportunity if they find
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people that have pain, then they're going to set that conversation up with somebody that can
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actually close them or a sales professional or sometimes called an account manager or a product
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specialist. It's kind of funny because a lot of time in sales, they give the salespeople cool
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names so it doesn't scare away the buyer. They'll call it a strategy session, a discovery call,
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you name it. In the sense that they talk to the potential buyer, they make sure that they're
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in market, that they have a problem that they want solved, that they're interested in having
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a conversation about your company solving it for them. And then they take all that information
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they log all those notes and they hand that off as almost a package to the next step so that that
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person has all the ammunition they need to have a really productive conversation you know oftentimes
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the setter has to meet certain criteria they have to say like what's a five-star prospect look like
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right do they have a problem do they know they have a problem do they want our help to solve it
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have they tried other things have we expressed that do they have a budget to buy are they currently
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feeling the pain is there been certain key areas that are painful that we've identified that we
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so that we make sure we have a productive conversation.
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Most people don't ask themselves what needs to be true
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What you wanna do is you wanna pair those people together
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Don't send over leads that I'm gonna have a hard time closing
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And then I'm not talking to people that are ready.
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which brings us to the third step in the sales process,
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I call it enrolling and not closing because words matter.
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When I'm closing, I'm closing off the conversation.
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One of the most important things that I teach my people
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is they get in this high volume sales conversation
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If you wanna increase your sales, get referrals.
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And if there's one or two other people just like them,
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that they might be able to help with their service.
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That alone will increase your sales volume by 30%.
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Most salespeople are onto the next one, onto the next one.
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They don't literally say, how do I serve my account?
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How do I create more value for them after the sale?
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This means that you have to have the conversation
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go in a way where you are in control of the conversation.
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Amateur salespeople easily get pushed off the kilter.
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Have you ever worked with this kind of customer?
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and they're like yes and i'm like cool all right i'll circle back if i have more questions and
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they're like okay and then i hang out i'm like you're an amateur salesperson the best frame is
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the doctor frame the doctor frame is i don't know what is wrong with you it's a diagnosis
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i'm going to ask you questions to help you if i can help you so when the person says like hey
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i need this medication or hey i got this pain you go cool is it okay if i ask you a few questions
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to see where you're at so i can figure out what might be wrong with you to make sure that i
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prescribed the right product see at the end of the day prescribing without diagnosis is malpractice
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and that's why a doctor frame from a sales point of view of trying to diagnose the sale is key a
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lot of people do a bunch of consulting calls that aren't sales calls and then they wonder why the
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person doesn't buy at the end it's because you gave away all the answers to the problem so you've
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released the pressure from the person number two is direct questions this is where you get permission
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you control the frame and then you ask very specific questions around the problem that the
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buyer has the key thing is is the buyer is going to choose if you're an expert based on the quality
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of your questions and unfortunately most amateur salespeople aren't maintaining high quality
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questions they're asking very high level very broad very non-specific questions it doesn't
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demonstrate to the person that you are an expert around the problem that you help people solve
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step number three is challenging beliefs see most people when they come to evaluate purchasing
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something, they fall on the ends of one of two spectrums. They're either overly confident that
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they could figure this out on their own or they're not confident at all and they feel like they got
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to do a bunch of stuff to get ready to actually purchase from you. And it's kind of fascinating
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to watch. So when you challenge beliefs, it's either end. If somebody's so confident, you have
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to ask them a question that gets them back to the middle of the buying zone. If somebody's not
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confident, you have to ask them a question that gets them confident to be ready to make a purchase.
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So ensuring you challenge the question so you can get them in the buying zone is going to be the
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key to get somebody to make a decision. Step number four is pre-handling objection. What you
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want to do is pull up all the objections earlier on in the conversation so they don't show up at
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the end. See, amateur salespeople, person's like, oh, I don't have the money, or oh, I need to check
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in with my business partner, or oh, I need to talk to my wife. All of those are things you could
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have handled way sooner, and that's why we want to pre-handle the objections through the questions.
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So ask them, have you put a budget aside to solve this problem? Have you talked to your wife about
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purchasing this car? Have you already reviewed this with your team in regards to the different
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vendors? Have you bought software like this before in the past? All those questions are going to help
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you pre-handle the objections so they don't show up at the end when you're going to make the offer.
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Step number five is make the offer. This is where a lot of people get a little weird at the point
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where they're like, okay, I know this person has a problem. I know we can help them. They understand
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how it works. All you have to do then is assume the sale, the language, the energy shouldn't change.
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Do you wanna have the medium size or you want the large?
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Do you wanna put the security cameras around the house
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It also allows them to see themselves as a buyer.
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It sounds crazy, but that is the best way to ask.
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And then the key thing is you have to follow up.
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It's dealing with the objections and then following up
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that you can get somebody to make a decision on the call,
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So it saves you the step of having to follow up.
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and it's just like, okay, I'll send you a proposal,
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And the key is, if you have to go to another meeting,
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Try to deal with the objection, make the offer,
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Schedule the call from that meeting to the next meeting.
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say the words. I've got you scheduled for Tuesday, eight o'clock, same time. I sent the calendar to
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your inbox. Can you check it and add it to your calendar? Boom, they do. Could you do me a favor,
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Mr. Buyer? If for whatever reason, something should come up, could you do me the honor of
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texting me beforehand so I can fill that slot with somebody else that's looking to talk about
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our product? And if they say yes, then you don't have a no-show. See, the problem with booking a
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meeting from a meeting is if you don't do this step, then people aren't going to show up and
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you just wasted your time and took that spot in your calendar. Here's the bonus step, and no sales
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people do this after the person has their first aha moment it could be their first call it could
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be after they see the finished product after they see the service done the first milestone
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wherever in the process you have a moment where the buyer goes wow whatever that is in that moment
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that's when you follow up and ask them is there one or two other people just like you that you
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think we could serve with our product or service that question will help increase 30 of sales
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people's quota. It's that simple because they'll be like, yeah, actually my friend Lisa, do you
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mind making an introduction to Lisa right now? Or do you mind if I reach out to Lisa and I use your
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name? Asking for a referral, that's what the best salespeople in the world do. They're not about
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just getting a transaction done. They're about making sure that the person feels comfortable,
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confident going forward. After they receive a massive amount of value, they circle back. They
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say, how's it been going? Do you mind if I ask if there's anybody else just like you, then I might
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be able to help with our product or service. And that's how you get massive amount of new revenue
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on top of the existing sales you've already made.
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click the link and I'll see you on the other side.