Authentic Persuasion Show

[E41] Q&A Week: Biggest no-no’s, hardest thing about starting in sales, co-workers stealing commissions

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I have received a lot of questions from new salespeople,

veteran reps looking for ways to improve, and people thinking about getting
into sales.

Thought I would do my best to answer some of the common

questions, getting through as many as I can in each 10(ish) minute episode.

In this episode, I actually get through three questions:

  • What’s the biggest no-no to avoid in a sales call?
  • What’s the hardest thing about starting a new job in Sales?
  • How do I stop my co-worker from stealing my sales commission?

If you have any sales or mindset related questions, send me a message through the contact page or via LinkedIn.

Episode 41 – Transcript

On

this episode, I kick off a week of answering some sales related questions that
have been coming up recently. Welcome to Episode 41 of The Sales Experience
Podcast.

This

starts week nine of the show and on this end, it literally feel like it’s been
flying by. I have really enjoyed creating these episodes, and giving out as
much information as I can to help sales people organizations, the goal of
achieving more greater levels of success.

If

you’re joining the program for the first time, welcome, I’m so glad that you’re
here. This is going to be a fun week to start out with some sales questions and
answers.

If

you been listening for all or some of the 40 episodes that were in the show
since the beginning, I appreciate you so much. Thank you for being here on this
journey from the beginning and watching things transition and grow and change
and hopefully, get better and better.

This

week, I wanted to do something a little different. Instead of a topic for the
week and having a theme around that for all the episodes, I wanted to dive into
answering some questions that I’ve either received recently, received over the
years or seen online that people have posted regarding sales.

So,

what I want to do is read off those questions, and then do my best to answer
them trying to keep the whole show under 10 minutes. And we’ll just go through
as many as we can in each episode.

Question

number one, what’s the biggest no, no to avoid in a sales call?

I

think about how to answer this. There’s so many different things to avoid in a
sales call. Obviously, if your goal is to be a sales professional, in the
career, long term, doing the right thing for other people, but I think
everything falls under the umbrella of manipulation.

Now

manipulation is generally defined as a tactic used to get somebody else to do
something, to change their behavior, their perception, whatever it is, but
through negative, abusive, deceptive, lying, underhanded type tactics. And so
manipulating is all about getting the other person to do what you want them to
do for your benefit, for your sake and for your goals, and not theirs.

So,

manipulation is all about getting them to do what you want so that you can win
whatever that may look like versus persuasion, where persuasion can go either
way. Persuasion can be used to get the person to do what you want, or for your
goals.

It

can also be used to help them get what they want, in a way that is persuasive,
and moves them from here to there. And so fundamentally, the biggest thing to
avoid in a sales career, the biggest thing to not do is to use manipulation.

So,

the first step is to make sure that whatever you’re selling how you’re selling,
and what you’re doing is for the benefit of the prospects first. It’s to help
them and get them to a better place in their life, or achieve their goal or fix
their situation or get them something that they’re after.

Whatever

that looks like it’s about them first. And it’s about you and your goals and
your needs second. I think fundamentally, manipulation is the biggest thing
that gives sales people in the sales profession as a whole, a bad reputation, a
bad name.

If

we think about the classic sleazy used car salesperson kind of mental image
that people have, even if that’s not accurate, but that’s what people think
about when they think of sales. It comes from strategies that circle around
manipulation.

So

no matter what you’re doing in sales, remember that the sale itself that
transaction, that closed deal is not worth it no matter what if you have to use
manipulation to get there so that you can win.

Next

question, what’s the hardest thing about starting a new sales job?

So,

I see this a lot, especially with new trainee groups that I’ve talked to where
they’re new to a role; they’re worried they’re wondering how it’s going to go,
they’re wondering what the biggest challenges are.

No

matter what you’re doing, if you’re thinking about getting into sales, usually
people want to know like, what’s the hardest part of a new sales job, a new job
in sales. Whether you’re brand new in sales or maybe you’re switching
companies, you want to learn.

I

think the most difficult part of a new role in sales, is trying to get all of
it within your head, and to make it all as automatic as possible, where you’re
running on autopilot. And you can just focus on the basic things that need to
be done right.

But

here’s the biggest challenge when starting a new sales role, is you probably
have some kind of script, you have training, you have objections, rebuttal
responses, you have a CRM and data entry that you’ve got to do for some kind of
application or the actual transaction. You’ve got some kind of phone system or
you’re doing this in person, which is even more stressful, because you have to
memorize everything and then go into it without a script in hand or a playbook
or a list of all the objections and responses.

So.

you’ve got to do all of that, but at the same time, asking questions to the
prospect, listening for the answers, doing five different things at once, while
you’re moving towards a transaction. If it’s a one call closed type situation,
you’ve got a lot to do in a limited amount of time. You got to get it done
right and you’ve got to move on to the next one and do that over and over
again.

If

you have a multiple interaction sales process, so multiple calls over maybe
several days or several weeks or months, then you’ve got all these things
you’ve got to remember where you left off, and you got to pick that up, you
have to use your CRM. And so there’s so much going on at once. It’s like
picking up any new hobby in the beginning.

So,

if you want to learn how to play golf, for example, so I remember taking golf
lessons. And it’s like you got to hold the club, you got to stand a certain
way, you got to do this with your knees with your legs, with your feet, you got
to twist in a certain way, you got to pull it back, and then swing through and
turn your head and make sure you’re looking at the ball at all times.

There’s

so many things at once that you have to do, and try to be fluid with it, that
it starts off terrible. And the same thing is with sales, is it’s going to feel
clunky, and terrible difficult.

And

what you want to do is you want to make sure that you master as quickly as
possible, each one of those parts separated so that you don’t have to think
about that. So the sooner you can get the script down, practice it at night, go
through the script with all your friends and family, enroll your significant
other, enroll your dog, it doesn’t really matter. Just run through it so that’s
natural

Practice

with the CRM as much as possible, data entry, finding the leads, putting all
the information in that’s necessary. Get comfortable with the phone system,
your dialer, meeting people face to face, how you interact with them, whatever
it is, just try to master all those parts.

Because

the fundamental goal, the point where you want to get to and the point where I
see sales, people really start to figure it out and really get into the zone is
when you don’t have to think about what you’re doing in all those parts. When
you can just focus on having a conversation with another human being and asking
questions, looking for where their needs are, their pains, their issues, what
their goals are, and then see if you have the solution for that and then moving
them forward.

Once

you can do that and just literally have a conversation, where you’re also not
thinking about or worried about what you’re going to say next. Because one of
the biggest challenges when you have so much going on, you’re going to ask your
question to the prospect.

And

then what’s going to happen is while they’re answering, you’re going to be
thinking about what you’re going to say next or do next or what you’re going to
respond with, and then you’re not actually listening. And so that means you’re
thinking ahead and not in the present and not reacting to what they’re actually
saying, and picking up on all the little things that they’re saying or not
saying in that conversation.

And

so you want to get to the point where you’re just having a conversation with
another human being and moving them forward in the process, and not worrying
about anything else. If you’ve ever done anything like golf or sports, anything
where there’s a hobby involved where it took a while, the key is to get to the
point with that golf swing, where you don’t have to think about it.

You

don’t have to think about pulling it back, and then swinging through what
you’re going to do with your head, you just do it, it’s just muscle memory. And
the sooner you can get to not thinking about every little step that you’ve got
to do and you can just do what feels natural, then you can make little tweaks
from there.

But

until then it’s going to feel very forced and terrible. And so that’s the
biggest thing with starting a new sales job is putting all that together as
quickly as possible so you can just get fluid with your sales process.

Third

question, how do I stop my co workers from stealing my commissions?

Now,

this is an interesting thing, because in my mind, there’s two separate answers
for this question.

The

first answer, which is the basic one, which is important is that your coworkers
are stealing your commission’s or stealing your sales, whether it’s over the
phone or could be in retail could be on the car lot could be in any different
way, where you’re talking to a prospect, they leave, they come back or they
call back, they get a different rep, then they close the sale with that rep and
they buy from that other person, and then you miss out.

And

it could be malicious or it could be accidental. If it’s malicious, where the
other rep sees your prospect walk back into the store and they go after them
and they don’t let them talk to you, that’s a different part, I’m going to
address that next.

But

for now, the key is, is that if you find your prospects buying from somebody
else at a different time, so again, they call back in or they walk back in at a
later time, and they don’t come to find you or they don’t buy from you
directly, then that’s a sign that you haven’t developed enough of relationship,
rapport and all of the fundamentals I talked about, you haven’t gone deep
enough with that person.

If

they don’t think man, I got to call back and talk to Bob, because Bob was
amazing and he knows my situation, I know that he cares about me. If they don’t
have that reaction and they call back instead and Sue answers the phone and Sue
says, “Hey, have you called and talk to anybody else?” And the prospect says
“Yeah, but I don’t remember who that was was or I don’t really care, I’ll just
deal with you.”

If

that happens, and if that happens more than once and you notice a trend, don’t
think to blame the other person, your coworker, the other reps, whoever it is.
Take responsibility and ownership and look at the kind of relationships and
conversations you’re having and what kind of value you’re setting up. That
prospect should call back and know and feel and want to only deal with you
because you are the professional who is doing it right and taking care of.

Now,

the flip side of that the second part of this answer is that if you work in an
environment, if you work at a company where this happens a lot, not just to you
but to other people where other reps are constantly taking other people’s
deals, where they’re taking their prospects, selling them taking commissions,
then my suggestion in that environment is to run, to quit that company, to
leave that company and go find another one.

Because

that kind of behavior if it happens a bunch and again, the first part is taking
responsibility, making sure it’s not just you failing at doing good job of
setting up relationships. But if this seems to be something that’s within the
company culture, that comes from the top down and that will never change and
that will always be an issue and that kind of toxic sales place is not a place
that you’re going to want to work at.

So,

go somewhere else, somewhere where management supports reps keeping their
prospects. And in the event that a prospect does buy from somebody else, the
managers want to make the best situation for both reps involved and will fix
the situation or coach you on how to do a better job. So, make sure you don’t
stay in any place like that that’s toxic, where it’s encouraged or allowed to
steal deals.

All

right. That’s it for this episode. I tried to keep it under 10 I know I went a
little bit long. I’m gonna keep doing this for the rest of the week. It’s
totally fun on my side and I enjoy. If you have specific questions, send me a
message through the CutterConsultingGroup.com
website or through LinkedIn.

And

if your organization could use some help improving the performance of their
sales team so that everyone can close more deals, make more money, achieve more
goals, go to the CutterConsultingGroup.com
website, send me a message.

I

appreciate and I reward referrals if you set me up with your company and we do
some work together. And until next time, always remember that everything in
life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.

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Authentic Persuasion ShowBy Jason Cutter
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