Pushy salespeople suck. In this episode of the 60 second sales show you hear how I discovered a better way.

Welcome everyone to another edition of The 60 Second Sale Show. This is Dave Lorenzo, and I’m the guy who helps you close more deals fast. Today, I’m going to start off with kind of a confession actually. It really is a confession. I've been thinking a lot about you and what you're facing from a sales perspective, and I wanted to share with you one of the stories that has really shaped my approach to sales over the years. The confession is that, when I first started using this approach, actually how I first started using this approach to sales, it came about really out of the intimidation I felt related to sales and selling. You heard that right. I was absolutely intimated to walk into the office of some senior level executive and offered to help him or his company build and grow their business.

It seems, I guess, a little, maybe a lot surprising to those of you who know me well, because I go in now and I'm like a steamroller, I'm happy to walk into any executive's office at any time and I just start having a conversation. I guess maybe I should preface it by saying I don't steamroll over people, I steamroll into the office, and then I use the approach we're going to discuss, but at the time when I first started developing this relationship based sales approach, I was a guy who thought that sales was, well, for lack of a better word, show up and throw up type opportunity.

Here's the story that really changed the way I think about things. I had developed a business for Marriott. I was probably, if I think back I can give you the exact math. It was probably 20, no 18 years, 18 years into my career, and I had developed a $50 million a year annual revenue business for Marriott. I did that by selling corporate housing. I was the GM, I was the executive VP of the brand, but I sold every day because that's who I am. I was selling corporate housing to large companies, to a lot of financial services companies: Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Cantor Fitzgerald, all of the large financial services companies who would place executives on a temporary basis, at least 30 days, but most the time I was for 3 to 6 months. I was doing this in New York City, which is a very fast-paced environment.

Well, that sales approach was one where I would walk into an executive who handled relocation, usually it was a human resource executive, and I would do a presentation. I would spout off features and benefits, and the executive would either think they were valuable or he wouldn't. Most the time, because I was successful, he would think they were valuable. To be frank, I was selling a Marriott product which was a very high quality product and had a huge successful brand behind me. They would either agree to work with us or they wouldn't.

The sales process was very straightforward. Like I said, it was a show up and throw up sales process. When I ended up leaving that role when I was recruited to join the Gallup organization to start up their business in Manhattan, I had to change my approach. The reason I had to change my approach came from this specific incident. I worked with a partner when I first started at Gallup, and my partner was a phenomenal relationship oriented guy. His role, I guess, would be considered an inside sales role these days. He would call people on the phone and he would set appointments for me to go in and talk about our consulting services.

My approach when I first began was one where I figured I would just go in and say, "Hey, I'm Dave. I'm here from Gallup. Here is the latest thing we've come up with you need it in your company. What do you think?" Typical show up and throw up sales process. I would go in there, talk about features and benefits, and apply the features and benefits to the client's sales organization.