December 01, 2022

1115: Practice the Sales Skills That Matter with Jordana Zeldin and Jonathan Mahan

46 minutes

Jordana Zeldin and Jonathan Mahan are the Co-Founders of The Practice Lab. There is a noticeable gap between what salespeople intellectually understand and what they could actually pull off in the wild. In fact, sellers are overtrained this way, yet are under-practiced in the skills that truly matter.

Salespeople should develop their human and selling skills through practice, much like how athletes and musicians perfect their craft. This space allows sellers to screw up, double back, and ask for feedback. Practicing human skills trains sellers to ask insightful questions and handle objections more effectively, ultimately helping the buyer make a decision.

HIGHLIGHT QUOTES

Salespeople should practice different types of questions like martial artists practice moves - Jonathan: "There's no knowing which move you're gonna call on during any match, but you know that whatever move you need, it's well rehearsed, it is gonna be available to you. So similarly with salespeople, they can practice different types of questions, and... when you get that tickle that says, Ooh, we should ask more about the impacts here, you'll have no difficulty crafting up a question in the moment."

The key difference between roleplay and practice - Jordana: "The goal of the role play is to impress your leadership team to show them how good you are, how smooth you are, how worthy you are. However, that is not how athletes and musicians approach their practice. Practice is a completely different pace, rhythm. There are completely different objectives in practice."

Restructuring the priority of practice within organizations - Jonathan: "More time and money should be spent on practice than training, just because you can take a one-hour training and it could take you 10 hours to implement it, so there should definitely be... let's say 50% of time and emphasis on practice, 25% is on learning, and then the remaining 25% of time and budget should be spent on kind of the coaching."

Find out more about Jordana and Jonathan and join their next cohort in the links below:

LinkedIn (Jordana): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanazeldin/

LinkedIn (Jonathan): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtmahan/

Website: https://www.thepracticelab.co/