“If people around you will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness, for in truth you are to blame.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sales team, people and results on fire one day…cold the next?
The laments I often hear from sales leaders are:
"We look and sound the same as the competition"
"My salespeople aren’t aware of the words they use"
"They struggle to build rapport with customers not like them"
"They need to understand the psychology of influence"
"How you phrase things makes a difference"
"To be more self-aware"
Many salespeople - and some sales leaders - will admit that they don’t know what makes them successful. When things are going well, they don’t know why. When things are going badly, they don’t know why. When something works well, they often struggle to repeat it in the next customer interaction. And they don’t know how to teach their skills to others. They are “unconscious competents.”
Not knowing what made you successful one day and not being able to repeat it consciously and intentionally makes for ‘peak and trough’ sales performance at the individual level. Multiply this over the sales organization and you will get chronic inconsistency in your company’s sales results.
They know the impact of their thinking and the power of language to influence and drive change in themselves and others - so they deliberately choose what to say and do.
They also know WHY they behave as they do and understand why others behave and act as they do. As a result, they make more distinctions and have more options and choices available to them when dealing with other people. This leads to more successful sales outcomes.
“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
― Lao Tzu,
Tao Te Ching
Awareness, both personal and professional, can be the missing piece to grow and sustain sales performance. And, last time I checked, they weren’t teaching this subject in school.
The most successful and happy salespeople are highly aware and intentional with their behaviour.
Awareness creates consistent outcomes for your salespeople because they become hyper-aware of the impact that their thinking and language has on their personal and professional success. Taking control of their thinking and language is key to getting rid of the unhelpful patterns of thought, behaviour and language that sabotage their ability to create competitively distinct and mutually beneficial long term relationships with your customers. Awareness is the “why” and “how to” know thyself and others.
Aware salespeople:
• Increase consistency of their sales results
• Accelerate customer rapport
• Increase customer trust and intimacy
• Improve interpersonal communication and accelerate understanding/reduce misunderstanding
• Reduce dysfunctional and self-sabotaging behaviours and habits
• Create a competitively distinct buying experience that leads to more wins
If you’re like a sales leader I spoke with towards the end of 2019 who shared that he is “embarrassed” by the words that come out of some of his salespeople’s mouths when they talk to customers - and you’ve been struggling with this issues for more than 30 days, it’s time to get outside help. Give me a call.