by Marta Malyk | May 11, 2021 | Advice, Cold Calling, Cold Calling Success, Cold Calling Tips, Lead Generation, Sales Prospecting, Sales Prospecting Success
They say that optimists see the glass as half full. I say that optimists see a full sales pipeline!
Let me explain.
Which would you rather spend time with – a person who is grumpy and glum or a positive, happy person? I would take the positive one every time! And when making cold calls, that positive attitude can be the difference between keeping a prospect on the phone until they set an appointment and having them hang up.
Now don’t get me wrong, hang ups happen, and sometimes, if they weren’t a good fit, that works in your favor – saving you time and effort. But if you want to keep people on the phone long enough to see if they ARE a good fit, a positive outlook is key.
Put on those ‘Rose Colored Glasses’.
Optimism is defined as “A tendency to expect the best possible outcome or dwell on the most hopeful aspects of a situation.”
In a business where so much of your day can be determined by the actions of others, it is great to know that this is something you can drive. What you ‘expect’ and what you ‘dwell on’ are both within YOUR control.
Control those and you gain more control over your results.
Data supports the claim.
Studies show that optimists outsell pessimists, in some cases by many times over! Here is an example of the results from a study done by Dr Martin Seligman, an expert in ‘positive psychology’, from just two industries:
Insurance
Optimistic sales agents outsell pessimists by 38 percent, and extremely optimistic sales agents outsell pessimists by 88 percent.
Real Estate
Optimistic sales agents outsell pessimists by 33 percent, and extremely optimistic sales agents outsell pessimists by a whopping 319 percent.
This doesn’t mean that you have to be unrealistically optimistic. You need to be able to acknowledge challenges and obstacles. I am suggesting that you confidently address them and move one. That you focus on the silver lining rather than the clouds. Don’t dwell on the hang-ups or the unanswered calls, rather, focus on the person you are going to speak with next. Be present and enjoy meeting them. Learn about their needs and see how you can help!
And yes, you can take this too far. Being blindly optimistic can be detrimental to your sales goals. Sitting at your desk, or worse yet, on a distant beach, imagining that prospects will start calling YOU probably won’t fill your pipeline.
But a good dose of optimism WILL boost your confidence, your outlook and your bottom line!
For more on this see our post Control What You Can in Sales and follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter for daily sales tips, advice and periodic boosts of optimism!
by Nancy Calabrese | May 10, 2021 | Podcast
On this week’s episode, our guest is “The LinkedIn Whisperer”, Brynne Tillman! Brynne is the CEO of Social Sales Link and for over a decade has been teaching entrepreneurs, sales teams, and business leaders how to leverage the awesome power of LinkedIn for social selling. She has adapted proven traditional sales techniques to the new, digital world in order to find and engage the right target market.
LinkedIn is the most powerful digital database for business. It offers users the ability to search and filter connections and leverage relationships in order to earn referrals and the permission to name-drop, like a virtual sales conference lobby social. Brynne’s insights into LinkedIn marketing helps companies and individuals maximize business opportunities on the site. Her tips include:
- How to convert your profile from a resume into a client resource
- Why it’s important to use a permission-based model
- How to engage with influencer articles to find new business
- The importance of offering free content to your network
- And so much more
Brynne’s company offers e-learning memberships, coaching, and a community of like-minded business people making the most of what LinkedIn has to offer, but you can get all of her most important LinkedIn lessons by listening in now!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it is Nancy Calabrese. And it’s time for Conversational Selling. The podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Joining us today is Brynne Tillman, the LinkedIn Whisperer and CEO of Social Sales Link. For over a decade, she has been teaching entrepreneurs, sales teams and business leaders how to leverage LinkedIn for social selling.
As a former sales trainer, and personal producer, Brynne adopted all of the traditional sales techniques and adapted them to the new digital world. She guides professionals to establish a thought leader and subject matter expert brand, find and engage the right targeted market and leverage clients and networking partners for warm introductions into qualified buyers. In addition, Brynne is the author of the LinkedIn Sales Playbook, A Tactical Guide to Social Selling. So folks, I’m sure we can all agree that LinkedIn is all over the place today, and an excellent resource, especially for the b2b world. Brynne, I know you have an abundance of tips to share with us today. So welcome to the show.
Brynne Tillman: Oh, my gosh, Nancy, thank you so much for having me. I’m so honored.
Nancy: Oh, well, ditto, ditto. And, you know, as I, as I opened up, LinkedIn is all over the place. I believe in LinkedIn marketing as an important channel in the marketing process. I’ve gotten clients from it, as I’m sure many of my listeners have. But why is it so important in sales and marketing? Why is this channel really credit a critical component to a plan?
Brynne: There’s so many directions, I can go with that answer. But the first one and the most simple one is that’s where the business people are. Right? This is, this is the professional platform, that almost everyone in business, particularly in the US, but even globally, is at least at least has a presence. So that’s number one. Number two, not only is it the biggest, I believe the biggest professional database, but it is the the only self updated database, meaning there are things like Dun and Bradstreet lists and Zoom info.
But all of those are updated by either bots that are scanning the web or human beings, where LinkedIn is, hey, I moved my my company, I’m at a new company, I’m updating my profile. So I’ve been really, it’s as up to date as any info you can get anywhere. And the number one from a sales perspective, why I think LinkedIn is the most powerful tool in any tool chest, not just today is because we have the ability to search and filter our connections, connections and identify who they know that we want to meet and leverage our relationships to get right one referrals or permission to name drop. And I could go on with another 50. But I’ll start with those three.
Nancy: Wow. So you know, what really caught my attention in the opener was that you adapted traditional sales techniques to the digital world? What techniques Did you adapt in particular? And how did you know it was time to do it?
Brynne: Well, you know, I, I don’t I started doing this before it was time to do it. But I knew it was a better way a faster way to get to where I wanted to go. So I guess it’s sort of a two part question. So let’s, I’m going to back up for a second and answer. The first part is what what did I do to adapt? And the interesting thing in answering that question is, what I do is bring in what I would traditionally do, just do it on digital. So for example, I’m just going to throw one example out and again, there could be 50 of these but I come across this very engaged upon article by an influencer in the industry who’s attracting lots of my potential buyers. I just stumbled across it or I went and I purposely founded but either way, there’s a gold mine sitting here.
So I want you to think about this. This is a networking event that article, author is the keynote. And all these people that are commenting are, you know, in the audience or even in the lobby having a conversation before they even go into the audience. And they’re talking about the topic that that keynote has just posted, right? So in real life, if that were the case, you would walk into a circle of people talking at a networking event in or you know, prior to the, the, the main stage, and you would listen, first you wouldn’t kill, you wouldn’t butt your head into a circle of people say, hey, guys, I help companies just like yours. Right, right. That’s what this what people are doing on LinkedIn.
What we need to do is get into that circle, listen, ask questions like, what would you naturally do in that environment? And we need to do ask questions, provide additional insights, not about your stuff. But about the topic you’re engaging on. Maybe I own everyone’s engaging on Nancy’s content that is so fabulous. And I say, hey, I, you know, I’m now one on one with someone who commented on Nancy’s stuff. And I say, I don’t know if you heard her podcast two weeks ago with Meredith Powell was absolutely phenomenal. If you’re interested, let me know. I’ll send you a link. And I’m still having a conversation around the topic. I haven’t moved to me yet. Because in real life, you wouldn’t move to you until they say, so by the way, what do you do?
Nancy: Right.
Brynne: Right. And some of that is, hey, they visit your profile. And you notice they visit your profile. So now they know what you do. And you can say, Hey, I noticed you checked out my profile, and I was checking out yours. I’m not sure if you’re exploring this kind of content. But you are, I’d be happy to send you that information too. Right. But it’s a permission based. It’s not pitching your face. And so you know, when you ask the question, taking the traditional networking in sales online, the irony of that is I didn’t have to do too much adapting.
Nancy: Right. I love what you just said permission based, not pitching in your face.
Brynne: Yes.
Nancy: All right. Did you come up with that?
Brynne: Yes.
Nancy: That’s a good one. I may steal it from you.
Brynne: I’ve already coined it, but you’re welcome to use it.
Nancy: Okay. I’ll give you a shout out if I use it, okay?
Brynne: Three times and then it’s yours.
Nancy: Okay, thank you. So that answers the one part that when did you know it was the right time to kind of cut the cord and really just go into it.
Brynne: Well, I was actually a co owner of the sales training company. And we were using LinkedIn and watching 10 years ago, as a as a loss leader, or maybe a win leader, because we were charging, but we would then sell them into more traditional sales training. And it wasn’t aligning well with me, I really wanted to just do the LinkedIn stuff. And my partner at the time didn’t. So we gave each other a hug. She laughed at me. And she said, when this trend is over, you’re always welcome back. And that’s seven and a half years later. We’re still here. But I love it. And it really it just resonates with me. You know, I see the LinkedIn logo and I get happy. It’s just my world.
Nancy: Yeah, well, you’re passionate about it. You know, speaking of passion, I just listened to Simon Sinek talk about passion, which I found on LinkedIn. And so it all goes back to LinkedIn. You also, and I read that you suggest converting your LinkedIn profile from a resume to a resource to become a thought leader. Why is this so important?
Brynne: Well, so I mean, if you’re looking for a job, just hold your ears and scream real loud, because when I’m about to say is wrong. But if you’re looking, if you are in a business development role, you have to earn the right for someone to care about what you do. You even have to earn the right for someone to care about how you can help them. I can’t tell you how many clients start with me, I don’t understand why I can’t get a call. I bring so much value. But they don’t know that yet.
So no matter what you think you bring to the table. Yeah, they don’t even they have no interest in checking out your table. Right. So you have to earn the right for them to even want a conversation with you. And it can start with the profile. Right? And so they show up. And if it’s all resume driven, and if you’re like a real like hardcore sales person, and it’s my mission, my passion, my years in business, my great negotiating skills, my President’s Club four years in a row. You’re gonna lose them. That’s not what matters to them.
Nancy: Well, what I wanted to add was in listening to you describe that, you’re not describing what you do to help others correct and, and why people come to you, versus this is my great story and hope you love it come to me.
Brynne: So, the interesting thing is, the next mistake people make is they tell them how they can help them first.
Nancy: Okay.
Brynne: So you have to earn the right for them to care about how you can help them. And I’m not saying you have to tell them how they could buy from you, or they’ll never buy from you. But you’ve got to earn the right for them to care about that. And so that’s where the resource piece comes in. So, and there’s two major places to be a resource. Could be more, but two that we really stress, which is the about section and the featured section. So most people start their about section about me. Move all that into the experience. About you, about the company, about your products and services, move that into the experience, and make the about section about them.
And don’t tell them how you can help them, actually help them. That’s the difference, right? If we will we help companies from go from this size to this size, we’ve helped a company move from a $10 million company to $100 million company in five years. We’ve all right, like, so I don’t even care yet. Because here’s the thing, they’re not actively shop, most of them are not actively shopping your stuff. They’re not at a networking meeting, you went up to someone in a networking meeting, and you’re in your first conversations, you’re talking about how we’ve helped other companies succeed, their eyes are rolling in the back of their head going, I can’t wait to get over to the crab dip and lead this person.
But we’re doing it on LinkedIn, right? On LinkedIn. So what do we have to do, we have to really provide value. And I am going to make a bet that almost everyone on this that’s listening to this today has done this in real life, you’re talking with someone, you ask them about their business, you learn a little bit about their challenges. And we offer value and insights before we talk about our company. We offer some ideas for that we offer right and now all of a sudden, they’re like, oh, this is a smart person, this person is real. We’re not this is totally free consulting. And there are some sales trainers that say don’t ever give free consulting away.
And I say hogwash, give it away as much as you want. I mean, not the same person for hours at a time, but a lot of people for 10 minutes at a time, right? Because they get to test drive you. Right. And you don’t very well maybe it’s different today, but very few people ever bought a car without test driving it, you got to drive the car for 10 minutes for free. And then if you wanted to keep driving the car, you bought it. But if you didn’t test drive it, you may not have known you’d love that car. And so we have to let them test drive us. And that comes out of bringing insights and value to the conversation naturally and organically in a way that says, oh my god, that was the free stuff like in the back of their head. Imagine if I worked with them.
So back to the profile. That’s the job of the profile to do that to let them test drive us. So your about section should cover the challenge, some real insights, some aha moments that get them not only learning something new, but thinking differently about the way they’re doing business today, because that’s what gets them to raise their hand and say, yeah, I’m open to a conversation.
Nancy: Well, so I kind of think maybe we covered this because I had asked you to come up with a unique idea that is different and sets you apart, I guess within your space, right, the world of other LinkedIn marketers, what makes you unique?
Brynne: I think one of the things that I do is I simplify everything. My clients will are blown away at how simple it is to implement what we teach. There are a lot of people that are really smart in our space. But everything seems very complicated and it’s over. Not I don’t wanna say overthought because you know, when I listened to it, I love it. But I’m on that level potentially, right? But for new people, like our trainings are short, but they’re impactful and they know exactly what to do and how to do it. And they have the right mindset for it. So they know why. They know how, and they get like that we’re working toward a goal and this what we’re doing right now is part of that goal. There’s very little fluff in anything you do.
Nancy: Well, that’s right up my alley. Talk to me about something you would like to spotlight. What in particular you want to share with the audience?
Brynne: Or you mean in an insights perspective?
Nancy: Well, um, you know, I know that you have the social sales link, maybe you can talk further about that and a membership program.
Brynne: We do. So everything is simple. Our e learning, it’s $99. And then we have if you’re a member, and you have coaching at $29 a month, so we keep it really, really simple. We have a twice weekly group coaching calls where our members come on, and they ask their questions, and they share their screens. And as a community, we work together to really bring value and insights. And what’s really fun is like much the people in the community are doing business with each other. And the people in the community are referring each other.
So it’s gone way beyond like my little project. And it’s really an animal in and of itself, which is amazing. I’m so obsessed with it. I’m so happy. And then on the other side of it, which is our primary business or has been for most of the years is the corporate training. We teach both LinkedIn and Sales Navigator to sales teams.
Nancy: Okay. And you know, I’m sure, just a guess here that you’re full of interesting stories. Do you have one you would share with the audience?
Brynne: Oh, sure. Okay, um, this is my own story. I have client stories, too. But I would say probably nine, eight or nine years ago, I was practicing what I teach. So I had a client named Rob Petcove, who owned a benefits company now they’ve been bought out by Gallagher since but it was his own little benefits company the time. And we did some great stuff for them. And so of course, I’m gonna ask for referrals, because that’s what we do is really good sales people.
But what I teach is to mine connections, and instead of saying, Rob, who do you know, I would say, Rob, I see, you know, these people, when we talk through them. One of them happened to be Rob Curley, who was a heavy hitter at TD Bank that I had been trying to get into for years and just had no luck. And I said, so how do you know Rob Curley? He goes, both our boys had juvenile diabetes. We’ve been in the same group since they were little. And he’s a great guy. I really love him. So can you make an introduction? Sure. Within 20 minutes, it was still in his office. I had a reply with Monday morning. 10am. Here’s the address.
Nancy: Love it.
Brynne: I showed up. And he looked at me and he’s like, alright, go. And I said, Well, why am I here he goes, because if Rob Petcove asked me to do something I’m doing and he’s one of my favorite people. So I said, if I can show you commercial lenders, how you can do the same thing he looked at his calendar, he said two weeks from Thursday. 11am. By the way, how much and it was the fastest sale I ever made. And they are still my client today.
Nancy: Love it. Wow. I think I don’t know if you document that story. Pass it out. Because it’s a good one, for sure. It’s leveraging the connections on LinkedIn.
Brynne: Yeah, that story is actually in my first book, that I published.
Nancy: Okay.
Brynne: But I mean, I’ve told it for years and years, and I’ve actually even told it to Rob’s team. So.
Nancy: I love it. Yeah. So tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Brynne: So I don’t know if nobody agrees with me on this. But we just finished a study. So I proved something out. So I don’t know, completely like no one agrees with me, because I do think there are people even colleagues that agree. And one particular colleague that inspired the study. But it’s whether or not to send someone a link to content. So we typically, throughout you would say, you know, hey, I noticed you’re interested in this. And this, I found a blog post on this topic. Here are some of the great insights, thought you get some value from it. Here’s the link. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
So we did that for a long time just sharing valuable content, nurturing our connections. And one of the my colleagues said, that feels really spammy today. I really, this is an existing connection that I’ve had engagement with, but okay, so let’s, if that’s feeling spammy, let’s ask permission. So now, you know, I might say, hey, Nancy, I came across this article in Selling Magazine that I thought, you know, as someone who is deeply connected into sales, training, coaching, you find it of interest. Some of my takeaways were this, this and this, let me know if you’d like the link, I’d be happy to send it over to you.
Nancy: Okay.
Brynne: So we did the test. And literally last week we finished it. We did 100 messages, giving the link and 100 messages, asking permission to send the link. The 100 messages that we sent, we got 19 click throughs. Not bad. Right? You okay, 19? That’s not bad, right? And remember, these are existing connections. So it’s not cold calling. It’s just nurturing people that we’ve already connected to. So 19 sounds right. But the second hundred, 69 of them said, sure, send me the link and 58 clicked through.
Nancy: Wow.
Brynne: Right?
Nancy: Yeah.
Brynne: They didn’t feel spammy. I think two things happen. And now what I’m about to say is not part of the study. It’s my observation. Number one, they didn’t feel spammed by me. All right, they had the option, and they didn’t feel like I was trying to throw a link in their face. The second thing is FOMO fear of missing out, if I send you the link, you have the link, you can click through anytime, you’re not missing anything. It’s always available to you. If I dont’ send the link, you’re probably like, hmm, I wonder if that’s a good link.
Nancy: I bet you’re right. Cool. So I’m just curious, what would be the next step, the people that went into it.
Brynne: So I mean, it would depend on so in this particular case, the next step was inviting them to if they clicked through inviting them to a webinar that was on that subject, which is in two weeks, so I’ll let you know. But that was the cadence we decided. So it looks like you had some interest in a day in the life of a social seller was around cadence and putting, you know, kind of a process around your social selling, if you’re interested, it’s completely free. And then we’ll sell them into the E learning for $99. At the end, they’re gonna get so much value. Right? You know, you know, but but that’s sort of the cadence. And then and if they want to hop off and not listen to the pitch, I mean, we’ll be really one of my transition slides is because I teach them about, you know, do we earn the right, we earned the right idea.
And I’ll say, did we earn the right to tell you a little bit about how you could work with us? Put a y in chat? And everyone, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. Right. So we just did a permission base, can I sell to you? So my webinar runs the same way as everything else, then I’m asking you permission, can I tell you how you can work with us in the $99 you learning $29 a month coaching, and my and we sent it out to way more than those 200. But those were the 200 we were tracking for the money. And then most of the others were permission based. But we’ll probably have three or 400 people that register and maybe 150 to two hundred people that show up and maybe 75 that buy.
Nancy: All right, yeah. I’ll take that right.
Brynne: Yes, absolutely.
Nancy: Yeah. We are coming to the end of an amazing conversation. And the one takeaway, if anybody walks out of this or stop, you know, gets out of this program, what would that be? What do you want to leave the listeners with?
Brynne: The one takeaway is really treat the person on the other side of the message the same way you would on the other side of the table? These are human beings that we’re doing business with no automation, no bots, you wouldn’t send a robot to network for you. Just show up, be human, be of value. Have real conversations, the sales will come when the time is right.
Nancy: Wow. How can we find you? How can my listeners get in front of you?
Brynne: Well, I’m still the only Brynne Tillman on LinkedIn, which is pretty good. So that works. You can also access our free content and find us there at socialsaleslink.com/library, and there’s a ton of great resources there. But I think that’s those are probably the best ways to connect.
Nancy: Well, if this was awesome for me, and I hope it’s been awesome for all of you listening in. Have a fantastic sales day everyone and remember, reach out to Brynne. Let’s all get the most out of LinkedIn marketing. See you next time.
Voiceover: The Conversational Selling Podcast is sponsored by One of a Kind Sales. If you’re frustrated that you don’t have enough leads or your sales team complains that they just don’t have enough time to prospect, we can help. To work with Nancy and her team one on one to help you manage your sales team, install her proven outbound sales process and create more bottom line results, email her now at Nancy@oneofakindsales.com. To learn more about Nancy and her outbound sales secrets, grab your free copy of her book, The Inside Sales Solution at oneofakindsales.com/book.
by Nancy Calabrese | Mar 1, 2021 | Podcast
On this week’s episode of Conversational Selling, we speak with Fred Diamond, President, Executive Director, and Co-Founder of IES, the Institute for Excellence in Sales. He’s also the host of the award-winning Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Fred started his prolific career in software sales with Apple, Compaq, and Compuware, and had a side-hustle as an in-demand party DJ. He has interviewed 1000s of sales professionals and leaders, always seeking tips to pass on to IES members to help them get better at the art and science of professional sales.
We chat with Fred about all he’s learned from hosting a webinar a day, as well as:
- The three big challenges everyone is facing right now
- Being empathetic to customers’ concerns
- The three keys to successful sales
- Differentiating yourself as a professional by staying committed to your development
- And more
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time for Conversational Selling the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation. Joining me today is Fred Diamond, Executive Director and Co-Founder of IES, the Institute for Excellence in Sales. He’s also the host of the Sales Game Changers podcast. Fred is an engaging, energetic sales professional who spent time as an in demand party DJ, that sounds like it was a lot of fun, Fred. He’s interviewed 1000s of sales professionals about their career, always seeking tips to pass on to IES members, and leaders to help them get better at the art and science of professional sales. He’s an exceptional speaker who frequently helps companies improve their sales processes, and stay ahead of the trend. I you know, I’m really excited to get started today, Fred, and I’m hoping to pick up some interview tips along the way. Welcome to the show.
Fred Diamond: Nancy, it’s great to talk to you. Everything you just said is absolutely true. So it’s great to be here.
Nancy: Hey, I don’t know if we want to start with the DJ, or actually a sales trend. So why don’t we start off with the sales trend? You know, we’re in 2021. Everyone’s anxious to move forward and to grow. What are some of the trends that you’re seeing in sales right now?
Fred: Yeah, there’s tons we do a webinar a day at the Institute for Excellence in Sales. And I do want to do one quick comment about the DJing. I’m glad you brought it up. I was a DJ after college. On weekends. I worked for McGraw Hill publishing for a couple years. And on weekends, Friday, Saturday, Sundays, I would I would DJ weddings, proms, bar mitzvahs, you know, the whole thing. And I like to say like to say I learned more about life. And not just sales, but about life in general as a, as a party DJ than I did working for Apple Computer, getting my MBA, running the Institute for Excellence in Sales, just understanding how people interact, understanding how people engage. So I still reflect back on various moments of doing probably, I don’t know, maybe 200 parties.
Nancy: Wow. Why did you stop?
Fred: Well, it was it was a weekend gig. It was after college. Again, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a career. And I’ve always liked loved music, and I did a little interning in high school as a DJ for one of the stations. I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, always into music always in a rock and roll etc. So you know, it was an opportunity. It was a big DJ company in town and I applied to one of their one of their Help Wanted ads member Help Wanted ads.
Nancy: Oh, yeah.
Fred: I really dug it, it helped me to raise some cash. And, you know, it was always fun. But eventually it just became to be honest with just became work became a, like any other job that you’re working for hours for you know, I got paid to do a three or four hour party. And you pretty much got paid the same amount. And eventually, they all pretty much just became the same thing over and over again. And it was time for me to really embrace my life and my career at the time.
Nancy: All right, so let’s get back to the trends. What are some of the trends that you’ve seen out there right now?
Fred: Now we see tons and again every day we’re doing a webinar, which we’re converting to a Sales Game Changers podcasts, I tell you a couple of them. This was a great example that came up from a consultant a guy named David Morelli. And he used to run a very, very popular podcast called Everything is Energy. And I’ve been a follower and now we’re friends. And we had him on our on our web getting a webcast on a Thursday. So every Thursday, we do a webcast called the Optimal Sales Mindset webinar. And all we talk about every single week is mindset related topics, Nancy, and David made a point that has stuck with me. And I’ve been communicating this to everybody I talked to he basically said, and again, this was May of last year and I think this is still applicable.
We all have the same three challenges. Everybody in the business world and social world in the planet has the same three challenges. One is getting past COVID getting past the pandemic side of COVID and, you know now of course there’s vaccines so you know, that whole process. Second thing, everybody is challenge with the financial side of COVID. And how that’s impacted small business, how that’s effect impacted the sales process, how that’s impacted, you know, everybody’s day to day life. You know, a lot of people have lost jobs, a lot of people have lost interest in their jobs. But a lot of people who are motivated, committed still need to be focused.
And the third thing that David talked about whatever third, you know, what’s impacting you, specifically, what’s impacting your company, what’s impacting your family. So everybody is dealing with those three things. And if we realize that and understand that, that can lead to the next thing, which is the need to ensure that you continue to be empathetic in your relations.
Nancy: Well, I, you know, I think empathy is really critical nowadays, right? And it draws us all together, especially with uncertain times, I see it day in and day out. But empathy is also an such an important skill in sales, wouldn’t you say?
Fred: Oh, absolutely. And it’s kind of interesting. So, you know, we’re all kind of dealing our lives pre pandemic, and post pandemic, right. So I’ve been running the Institute for Excellence in Sales since 2012. And prior to the pandemic, I was doing a podcast, it was just audio called the Sales Game Changers podcast. And prior to the pandemic, we had done about 215, interviews with sales VPS. And one of the trends was that you needed to be an empathetic seller. And I thought I understood what that meant, you know, basically empathy being the ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, or ability to view where the other person is coming from, so that you could be of service to them.
And then pandemic kicks in. And we started doing the daily webinars. And empathy became one of the three big words and I’ll share the other two in a second. But they became one of the three big words. And people were were not quite grasping, what it truly meant to be successful in sales, that you had to also be empathetic. And I remember this great interview we did on our webcast, it was the VP of sales for the International Spy Museum, which is this great Museum in downtown DC.
Nancy: Oh, I’ve been there. It’s awesome.
Fred: It’s fantastic. And they’ve put a lot of work into it. And the VP of sales, this guy named Dan Cole. And the question came in via the panel via the webcast. I’m struggling with being empathetic right now, do I have to still be empathetic. And this was two months into the pandemic. And Dan gave a great reply. He said, You have to always be empathetic, to be successful in sales. And if you’re struggling with it, take the weekend off, and go meditate and think through go journal, whatever. And think it through. Because if you forget to be empathetic for a millisecond in sales, then it’s about you, it’s about the customer. And you’ll be toast. And your process will go downhill from there.
Nancy: Yep. What about the other two?
Fred: Preparation. Preparation is huge. So here’s one of the interesting things, as well, that the podcast about the the lessons we’ve learned, you always need to bring value to customers. So whatever it is, you need to bring value, or else the customer really doesn’t have a need for you. And this has become even more dramatic after the pandemic, for a couple of reasons. Some of the reasons we already talked about people are struggling, people are challenged. Certain industries have gotten destroyed, like the entertainment industry, and the in person, sports industry, right? Obviously, the small the small restaurant and the restaurant, and the whole restaurant industry has obviously gone through turmoil. Some charities have had their best year ever, but some charities have had extremely difficult times.
So if we’re talking to customers, we now need to bring them even more value than ever. Because through dealing with their own challenges, they’re not really that interested in a sales pitch. They’re not interested in more productivity. They’re interested in one of those three things we talked about before. How are you going to help me get past COVID? The challenges related to it? How are you going to help me get my company’s business back in order because of the financial hit, and then once again, whatever the third thing might be specific to the industry or to the company. So you have to spend a tremendous amount of time preparing to ensure that you’re communicating the value you can bring if you figured it out.
Nancy: And what’s the third idea?
Fred: The third idea is that and this goes back to a common sales refrain. We’ve been running the Institute for Excellence in Sales since 2012. People ask me all the time, what’s the main thing you’ve learned or what is the biggest takeaway that you’ve had? Since starting the Institute for Excellence in Sales, and I tell people, it’s the phone. The phone is the number one sales tool, verbal conversations with prospects, customers or partners. And it’s by the phone, it’s not via email. It’s not via text. Not via LinkedIn, those could be helpful. I do a lot of LinkedIn, I send a lot of emails. But it’s not until I physically pick up the phone and engage in a conversation where possibility can happen. One of our great guests, do you know Alex Goldfayn? You ever come across Alex?
Nancy: No, no,
Fred: He’s an author, he wrote the Revenue Growth Habit. But his most recent book that he published, it’s probably in June, it was called Five minute Selling. And basically, it was a whole bunch of processes around picking up the phone, and you know, how to how to manage your, your in person verbal communications. So I tell people all the time, I said, if you’re struggling, if you’re having a challenging day, pick up the phone, call a prospect. It’s not a prospect, call partner, or call a friend, but it’s those verbal conversations. And we forget about them. And there’s been so many other things, Nancy, that we’ve learned over the last year, but but those are, I would say, those are three of the big ones.
Nancy: Yeah. Well, you know, and for everyone out there, I didn’t pay Fred to talk about the importance of the phone, you know, you’re speaking my language, Fred. So, thanks.
Fred: No, absolutely. I mean, that’s, that’s how we first got connected. I mean, I, we discovered each other, but I know that you’re in that space, and you guys have done a tremendous job helping so many companies reach their prospects. And you know, the reality and you know, this, obviously, people don’t love picking up the phone. And people don’t even they don’t even love calling their you know, their best customer.
There’s always, you know, am I bothering you? Is this an okay, time? You know what, there’s a couple things that have happened over the last 10 months that make pick up the phone even more imperative. One is, you know, people are watching webinars or listening to podcasts like ours. They’re reading LinkedIn posts, and engaging in conversation. So people also getting a little fatigued about zoom, as we know. So people are have found themselves in some cases disengaging from verbal communications and conversations. We spend so much time at the Institute, helping people think through the conversations they want to have. And we break past the fear of picking up the phone.
Nancy: Yeah, you know what I’m like, why don’t we talk more about IES. I think everybody is intrigued with it and give us some more insight.
Fred: Well, I’m intrigued. So I would seriously, you know, you mentioned my marketing strategy. So, I worked at companies like Apple and Compaq, and a large software company called Compuware. I then went to work as an outsourced chief marketing officer. And my tagline was, we said in the beginning, marketing that doesn’t lead to revenue reward is a huge waste of time and money. And I’ve even though I’ve been in marketing, and my MBA is in marketing, I’ve always believed that marketing is about sales.
So we created the Institute for Excellence in Sales, mainly to meet more sales VPs, because they were who was hiring us as marketing consultants, or product marketing strategy or outsource chief marketing officer. I needed, yes, I need to be in the room with more sales leaders. So we came up with the idea for the IES, we did a couple of things we would bring speakers. One of the ways you and I got connected was the Sales Hunter, Mark Hunter was on one of our recent shows, we brought Mark to DC a couple times got to know him, placed him at a couple of places or referred him to a couple of customers and companies that had been coming to our programs, and started asking for more things they asked for. Why don’t we do a program for women in sales? Why don’t you do a program for young sales professionals?
You know, why don’t you get a training program instantiated at my company. So we started doing more and more things. We’ve met more and more great people along the way. And now basically, we do four things. We, we have a big award event, typically it was live in the spring. In 2020, it was virtual, and 2021 it’s going to be virtual again. And we recognize companies recognize companies for operational excellence and sales. Second thing we do is we have a designation called the premier sales employer, where we recognize companies that are great places for sales professionals to work. And our 2020 guide is coming out in February. Thurd thing we do is every day we do a webinar open to members and we also let other people come to them. Tuesday we do a webinar just on women in sales buying for women in sales. Wednesday I interview sales VPS. Thursday we do the optimal sales mindset, where we talk about you know how to refine what’s going on between your ears to be as effective as possible in sales. And every Friday we do a show called creativity and sales where we talk about a sales tactic or procedure or technique or process.
We convert them to Sales Game Changers audio podcasts, and then we post them on LinkedIn. And we have about 10,000 impressions. Our members can watch them behind your firewall whenever they want. And finally, we have we have a thriving women in sales program. And it’s called the women in sales leadership forum. It’s a six session cohort over two months, where we work with women in sales in their first, second, or third level of leadership and help them take their careers to the next level.
Nancy: Wow, we could go on and on. Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Fred: You know, it’s interesting, I believe, that might be answering differently than how we talked about this before. But a lot of people were wrong about sales as a profession. And a lot of people believe that it’s about charisma. A lot of people believe it’s about garrulousness, you know, being comfortable speaking to people, and it’s not, we’ve done so much work with great sales professionals and great sales teams, that we understand that sales really is about, there’s an art to it, but there’s also a science, but even more importantly, it’s a skill. And it’s a profession that you need to continually refine.
I’ll tell you one of the other main lessons we had from doing the webinars every day, you know, you may recall, Nancy, the beginning of 2020, everybody thought that 2020 was going to be their best year ever, right? In January, February, a lot of people it did turn out to be that way. But in January and February, everybody thought 2020 is gonna be your best year. But then pandemic kicks in lockdown kicks in. And transactions weren’t happening, like people thought they were going to be for all the reasons that we’re familiar with. So we began, we began to realize that if you’re a sales professional, okay, well, what do professionals do when the transactions aren’t happening?
So you work on certain skills, you understand empathy, like we talked about before you study your customers market, so that you can provide that value, the same way that, you know, golf tournaments were canceled. But you know, the great golfers were out there at the driving range, or the putting green. Professional athletes whose games were canceled. We’re still going to the gym or working in a home gym, I should say.
Nancy: Sharpening their skills.
Fred: Exactly.
Nancy: You can’t stop. You continue. You diverted, if you would, right?
Fred: Exactly. And that’s the whole notion is that, okay? If you’re a sales professional, be a professional. And what does that mean? What do you need to work on? And usually, it’s one of three things, it’s the skill around sales conversations, learning how to be comfortable picking up the phone and making conversations. Secondly, it’s about the mindset, it’s about, you know, being prepared, no preparation, showing up on time, those kinds of things, confidence, you know, accountability. And the third thing, of course, is understanding what you sell and what your customer buys your, your solutions for. And really, really getting deep into understanding your customers market and where the customers market is today in the COVID world.
Nancy: Wow. I, you know, I can’t believe we could go on and on. We’re running out of time, what is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Fred: That’s a great question. You know, it’s interesting, we end every single database that I’m sorry, every single webinar that we do, and we ask the guests, give us one action step, you’ve given us so many great things, give us one action step to be successful. And I’m going to go back to what we talked about before, and looking at a lot of the things that I typically tell people, but I’m going to tell people to pick up the phone.
And, again, it’s not just to make 50 phone calls a day, like, you know, like you guys help people do. It’s, it’s really pick up the phone and continue to develop the relationships that you have. Have the courage and what you know, one of the key things about sales too, is it’s about courage, courage to pick up the phone, courage to ask for the next meeting, courage to ask for a referral, courage to ask for the deal. Courage to you know, to to ask for recommendation, those things. Work on that. But first of all, man, pick up the phone, it’s your best friend, get comfortable. If you do that 10 times today, you’ll have a better 2021 than you would have if you hadn’t.
Nancy: Oh, and you can’t get COVID over the phone.
Fred: You can’t, unless you’re calling from a bar.
Nancy: Right? Don’t do that, folks.
Fred: Wear masks, please. Let’s get this over with.
Nancy: How can my audience get in touch with you, Fred? I think you’re terrific. And I think they’re gonna want to speak with you.
Fred: Thanks, Nancy. It’s very kind and it’s been it’s been an honor. Yeah, I know you’re starting on your, your podcast journey. And I want to let you know that you may not realize this, but I think you’re doing it the right way. You know, you’re you’re trying to figure out how to make your show valuable. How to make it worthwhile and interesting for people who are trying to take their sales careers to the next level. So I applaud you for the efforts.
The best way to find me is LinkedIn. We have a obviously we have the salesgamechangerspodcast.com website and we have the I for the letter I the number four esbd.com website where you can find our daily webinars, but the best way is go to LinkedIn and engage with me. And I’d love to see how many people do that based on this webinar. And we’re we post content every day on webinars on LinkedIn and it’s it’s our friend and it should be your friend as well.
Nancy: First of all, thank you for your kind words. I think another benefit and reaching out to Fred since he’s a rock and roller you guys can all be rollers out there can swap stories and talk about sales. So Fred, I hope you’ll come back we have a lot more to discuss. This has just been absolutely great. And for everyone out there happy selling. Make the phone your friend.
Voiceover: The Conversational Selling podcast is sponsored by One of a Kind Sales. If you’re frustrated that you don’t have enough leads, or your sales team complains that they just don’t have enough time to prospect, we can help. To work with Nancy and her team one on one to help you manage your sales team, install her proven outbound sales process and create more bottom line results, email her now at Nancy@oneofakindsales.com. To learn more about Nancy and her outbound sales secrets, grab your free copy of her book, The Inside Sales Solution at oneofakindsales.com/book.
by Nancy Calabrese | Nov 9, 2020 | Podcast
On this week’s episode of Conversational Selling, we’re joined by Colleen Stanley, President of Sales Leadership, Inc., a sales development firm specializing in the integration of emotional intelligence, sales, and sales leadership skills. Salesforce.com named Colleen as one of the top sales influencers of the 21st century, in addition to her being mentioned among the top 50 sales and marketing influencers and the top 30 sales gurus. She is also the author of three fabulous books: Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success, Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership, and Growing Great Sales Teams.
“If you’ve had the luxury and the good fortune of engaging in formal sales training programs, you would teach your team the skills, they could roleplay it in the classroom, and then you might see that the same salespeople that were modeling the right behaviors in a workshop would buckle when they got on a real sales call with a tough prospect. So, what I found is that EQ, the soft skills, actually helped with the consistent execution of the hard skills,” says Colleen.
We chat about the importance of emotional intelligence in selling and sales leadership, as well as:
- The hard and soft skills of selling
- The importance of ongoing training in sales— why “one-and-done” training is holding you back
- Integrating empathy into your sales process
- Remote selling and emotional expression
- And more
Listen now…
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everybody and welcome to Conversational Selling. It’s the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it all starts with the human conversation. I’m your host, Nancy Calabrese, and joining me today is Colleen Stanley, president of Sales Leadership, Inc, a sales development firm specializing in the integration of emotional intelligence, sales and sales leadership skills.
She’s the author of three fabulous books, Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success, Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership, and Growing Great Sales Teams. Salesforce.com named Colleen one of the top sales influencers of the 21st century, which is pretty awesome. She’s also been named one of the top 50 sales and marketing influencers and top 30 global sales gurus. Now, try to say that one three times fast. I am so honored to be speaking with a sales guru. And welcome to the show, Colleen. So happy to have you here.
Colleen Stanley: Well, thank you, Nancy. And what a buildup, right? My mother would be proud of that bio. They never did understand what I did for a living, but it sounds good. So thank you.
Nancy: You’re very welcome. So, you know, I know your hot topic is to combine several different components in the sales conversation. And emotional intelligence is so important. Why is it so important in selling and sales leadership?
Why Emotional Intelligence is Important in Sales and Sales Leadership
Colleen: Well, you know, what we found and we started bringing these, this topic, this body of work into our programs about 10 years ago. And for me, what really got the light bulb to go off was I really felt like this was the bridge between the knowing and doing gap, right? So for many of us, we have, if you’ve had the luxury and the good fortune of engaging in formal sales training programs, and there’s many good ones out there, you would teach your team the skills, they could roleplay in the classroom.
And then I would see that the same salespeople that were modeling the right behaviors in a workshop would buckle when they got on a real sales call with a tough negotiator, with a tough prospect. And so what I found is that EQ, the soft skills, actually help with the execution, consistent execution of the hard skills. Quick example, Nancy, I think everyone listening today would probably, at some point, say my salespeople present too soon and too often, right? So I’m going to teach them that questioning model one more time, roleplay it.
But when you really take a look, often you’re presenting too soon because you’re lacking impulse control, that desire to serve and help. Maybe emotion management, you’re getting nervous. You don’t have the self-awareness to realize what’s triggering your mouth to start moving too soon and too often. So I feel like if you can teach both sets of skills like diet and exercise, you’re going to equip your team with 100% of the skills needed to win business, particularly in this environment.
Nancy: When you said presenting too soon, I immediately thought of happy gears, and really not allowing that process to explain in more detail the whys behind it. I know you’re, as you’ve mentioned, you’re a big believer in integrating the hard skills of selling, consultative selling skills and soft skills of selling. Can you expand on that?
Colleen: Absolutely. So what we’ve worked very hard to do to make this not an esoteric process theoretical, is we’ll literally look at every selling step and stage and skill. And then what we will do is partner and teach the associated soft skill with it. So Nancy, you obviously run a very successful sales organization and you have probably seen in your years of coaching where every good sales manager or coach will teach get a clear next step, right?
On the calendar. Meet with all the buying influences. So you’ve taught the knowledge, but if a salesperson isn’t executing that knowledge, often that’s due to lack of assertiveness. They lack the ability to state what they need nicely. And what they need nicely as an actual calendar date on the calendar or meetings with all the buying influences, right? So assertiveness is the soft skill that supports the execution of asking for what you need on a call.
Meetings budgets, before writing proposals. I would also say emotion management is a big one, right? Because, again, you might be meeting with a prospect and to no fault of your own, they just met with another salesperson that over-promised and under-delivered, right? So now, they’re looking at this salesperson thinking you’re that same person.
And they’re a little bit tough on that person during the sales call. Not real friendly. Well, if a salesperson doesn’t have self-awareness and emotion management, they can start defaulting into fight or flight responses, right? Getting defensive, over-selling, or simply doing what we call the Tommy Boy behavior. Okey, dokey, I’m out of here. I don’t get paid enough to put up with this, right? So all those great skills, go right out the door even though the manager or the sales trainer has taught the hard skill.
Nancy: Yeah, so why does this integration work?
Colleen: Well, again, it’s because if you really teach just the hard skills, those are very, very important. So it’s not an either-or. But if you’re seeing them not executed, this is what I found. If I get emotionally charged up, my brain literally can’t think, right? So I can’t execute the skills I’ve been taught. If I lack empathy, really not sitting there being fully present, paying attention to the conversation that’s happening, and more importantly, the one that’s not happening, the unspoken objection, I can leave that meeting because I wasn’t tuned in to my prospects emotional state. And guess what?
I missed the meeting after the meeting. And that’s the one where they talk about, well, you know, they’re kind of a small company. Can they really handle us? No, do we really need to change, switch or move? And so because I haven’t developed my empathy muscle, I wasn’t able to ask the proper questions, the hard skills. So those are a couple of examples of where it’s a constant back and forth. And we’ve got a training coach on both.
Nancy: Yeah, so, you know, just to speak about your training experience and the importance of training in sales, I’m a big proponent that training has to be all the time. Many companies don’t believe in that or don’t look to invest in that ongoing training. You have any comments on that?
Colleen: That should stop. That should stop. And so we, you know, the term is called one and done training. And it always cracks me up, right? Okay, I trained my team once. now they’re trained for the rest of their life. And so, you know, all you need to do is sometimes study other professions that actually get called professions. Lawyers, accountants, all continued to go to courses to get their CEUs, right? And for some reason, in sales, we seem to think you’re born, or once you’ve learned at once, you don’t need repetition on it.
So this is really a culture shift people need to make. And I would say, the EQ skill behind this is really delayed gratification, right? Because, you know, to carve out the time for teaching, training and coaching, you’ve got to take time to calendar block this, pre-call plan your sales meetings for training and development versus roll call meetings and really put in the time for training and development. So sometimes, sales managers given the instant gratification, doing drive-bys, or just hope and pray strategies.
Nancy: Yeah. And you know, for the benefit of everybody listening, could you explain what EQ skills are?
What are EQ Skills?
Colleen: So EQ skills, basically, they’ve been kind of called the soft skills, which is, in many ways gives them a, sometimes a bad rap, so to speak, because, you know, in sales were hard-charging. I need to be aggressive and assertive and competitive. But really, you take a look at it, they’re often the hard skills to master.
So you can have, optimism is actually an EQ skill. And a really important skill in this day and age of these very turbulent business times we’re in. And so optimistic salespeople, they’re not Pollyanna, but they literally have a belief system or a thought process that you know what, this is temporary, whatever adversity I’m facing is temporary, not permanent.
I’m in control. So I’m going to focus on what I can control versus what I can’t control. You’ve got interpersonal skills, assertiveness, empathy, self-awareness, emotion management, reality testing. So there’s a variety of skills that fall into this bucket. And then it’s figuring out which ones you’re pretty good at and then which you might have a blind spot on that are impacting your personal and professional success.
Nancy: Yeah, so you’ve trained so many sales teams. Is there a story that comes to mind where, you know, it just clicked? An example, perhaps in one of your workshops, one of your clients or customers applied, what you taught?
Colleen: You know, one that comes to mind is we were conducting a happy sales kickoff. So this isn’t that, you know, reenforcement training that we’re talking about which the company does do pretty well with that. But this is a sales kickoff at the beginning of the year. And I was teaching the team, the framework behind real-world empathy. So this is a pretty big crowd, right? And so at the break, Nancy, a salesperson got on the phone and called a customer that had been really upset with the installation and delivery.
They’re a managed technology firm. And she immediately applied the model and she said, Hey, listen, I gotta tell you, if I were in your shoes right now, I’d be upset for two or three reasons. Number one, you’re busy, the last thing you need to do is be on the phone talking with me on something that should have happened in the first place. And the second thing is, I think we’ve probably put you in a really difficult position with your clients.
And then she stopped. And what happened was the magic of empathy. You’re right. But the customer diffused because often what happens like in upset customers, which is the sale after the sale, they simply are fighting to be heard. And the fact that she stated everything he was thinking or feeling, he was like, okay, we’re done with that part of the conversation, and they could move on to a solution. So it was just this beautiful example that happened after a four-hour training that somebody was paying attention and actually applied it.
Nancy: Wow, those two questions, I think, are pretty powerful. So everyone in the audience, I hope you jotted that down. It’s a great way to deflect in a professional way, right? You’re addressing the issue, you’re owning the issue and your customer is surprised.
Colleen: Yes, yeah. And I think that’s the big thing is often with the customer service, again, the sale after the sale, just as important. You bring them in the door, please keep them in the door, right? And so they often think they’re going to ask their fight for their position because, frankly, a lot of people haven’t been trained in real-world empathy.
So they start solving the problem right away. And what we always teach our clients is empathy first, advice second. I cannot hear you until you have demonstrated you’ve heard me. But that takes self-awareness because our impulse is I got to fix this. I care about you. Well, you’ve got to tap into empathy first, advice second.
Nancy: Yeah, I totally agree. Talk about the video you posted a month ago, which is really great. I found it on YouTube. So everybody go out there. The name of the video is How Too Much Empathy erodes Sales Results. Can you explain why?
Empathy + Assertiveness
Colleen: So I actually wrote that blog and it was inspired by some feedback I was getting from sales leaders, and they were sending me responses and questions. My team is showing too much empathy to their sales team. They’re getting burned out, stressed out. And so I thought, Oh, my gosh, in this time of the pandemic, we’ve all been trying to be very empathetic, right? But they were going overboard on it to where they were taking on the problems of their salespeople. They weren’t asking them to take action.
So empathy is this fine balance because too much empathy with a customer, you discount. You’re not good at stating what you need, right? So I always say empathy combined with assertiveness is the formula. So yes, I’m going to demonstrate that I understand where you’re coming from but we are also a company where we’ve got to take action and make money, even when it’s difficult to do so. So it’s that combination because if we just go overboard, and one, you tend to get very depressed and you’re taking on the work of others, frankly.
Nancy: Well, congratulations on the release of your latest book, Emotional Intelligence for Sales Leadership. Tell us more about it. And what is some of the key points?
Colleen: So thank you, first of all. Yeah, we’re very excited to get this out to quote the world. I would say there’s a few points for sales leaders listening today is number one, we really talk about the importance of their own emotion management when they’re coaching. So if you’ve run enough coaching calls, you’ve had a situation where you set up a well-intended coaching session with a salesperson, right?
You use the sandwich method. Positive, let me deliver feedback on what needs to be approved. And sometimes, you’ve got a seller that simply starts to lobbing back excuses. Well, if I had better leads, if I had better pricing, if I had better. And if a manager is not able to manage their emotional state, they can default into fight or flight. And what happens with this well-intended coaching conversation, it turns into the need to be right rather than get it right. And so they get caught up in the emotion and none of the great coaching skills or questions are asked.
I would also say we talk a lot in here about empathetic coaching. So again, I’ve seen managers where they actually score pretty well on empathy but they’re also good problem solvers. That’s another EQ skill. So a salesperson brings them a problem, like, you know, I’m just doing a lot of the activity, I’m not getting any results. And you can tell the person’s discouraged. So this isn’t a lazy person, they’re doing the activity. The manager puts on his problem-solving hat and says, well, let’s look at the activity plan again. Let’s take a look at those value propositions.
Let’s see what we need to reengineer. And the poor salesperson sitting there just thinking, Could somebody just show me a little empathy? And so again, you’d say, you know what, that must be discouraging because you’re doing all the right things and nothing’s popping. And I’m guessing you’re a little fearful, you’re not going to get the monthly quota, which could impact your year-end bonus. So again, empathy first, advice, second. So those are a couple of examples. And I can talk about several others. I want to make sure we’ve got time today.
Nancy: Yeah, well, isn’t it also all in the way you say it? And to, here’s another point, we are in the world of remote selling today, most of us are, right? And so saying those words, and then conveying them in a way, either over the phone or on a video webinar, how important is how you say what you say in today’s day of selling?
Emotional Expression
Colleen: I would say very important, and it ties into another EQ skill that’s been called emotional expression. And this is really interesting. Emotional expression is where somebody is listening not only to your tonality, rate inflection, but they’re also watching your facial expression. So here’s the example I use to teach this. I am sure everyone at one point has seen a pundit on TV, right? And they’re talking about the latest war that just broke out, but the person is smiling. Have you ever seen that? Well, we’ve just had a war break out.
And so, and or as they’re waiting to be interviewed, for really, this is a serious topic. They’re sitting there smiling. It’s incongruence. So sometimes what happens with sales managers, they may have a resting expression, we all know what I’m talking about. And it is not conveying empathy. And that’s simply their resting expression. So they really have to take a look in the mirror and say, What are my salespeople seeing what I’m talking? Because if there’s a disconnect, you could be saying the right things, but your face is saying and other.
Nancy: You know, it is so funny you say that, because since COVID, I’ve been very aware of my resting expression. And it’s something that I never paid attention to before. Now that you see yourself on Zoom meetings all the time. You know, I always like to ask this question. Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on
Colleen: Multitasking. So it is so interesting in training, when we had the face to face, now we’re doing it with our virtual instructor-led, but literally in face to face, we would say, okay, you need to take your cell phone, we’ve nicknamed that the adult binky, because it goes everywhere, right? It’s crazy. And, you know, and then we say, Now, you need to put it aside. And it’s kind of funny, they’ll put it off to the side and they put it face down and they think they’ve accomplished something great. And I’m like, No, no, no, it goes into your briefcase. You should see the look of fear on people’s face because they’re so afraid they’re going to miss something.
And then we’ve had sales leaders that actually allow that behavior. So sometimes, you know, we’ve got to make sure we’ve got that agreement up front. But there’s some cases, you know, it is their training. But here’s what happens. When sales leaders are modeling a culture of distraction, that’s what they’re modeling, their team cannot learn because it’s proven. You can only learn very intentional learning, which is when you’re going to become a very good deep consultative seller. You’ve got to be paying attention. You’re engaging the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is a glucose sucking machine, right?
If you are going to teach your team how to be perfectly present on a call, that’s, see, being present on a call is the requirement for empathy. But if you’ve allowed your team to constantly keep checking in, well, they sit down and have that 45-minute call, whether it’s video or phone, they can’t focus for 45 minutes because they’ve never done it before in their life. You can’t recall a habit you’ve not developed. So I am all over the sales leaders. I’m like, you know what? You need to model the behavior focus and paying attention. That’s what’s going to win in the future.
Nancy: Yeah, well, I just think it’s bad manners in a group meeting. You know, it’s simple is that for me, exactly?
Colleen: Well, and Nancy, what always cracks me up with this, this will be in a meeting where it’s when people, you know, prior to COVID, were going into meetings, first thing they did was pop up the laptop then they put their cell phone down. It looked like a command and control center And this is in a room, right.? This is a room that has posters that are called teamwork, respect. There is nothing that you can accomplish teamwork if we’re not paying attention to what anybody’s saying. So, again, it’s this big disconnect for people. You and I are on the same page there.
Nancy: Alright. So and what’s the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Make Sure You’re Coaching 100% of the Person
Colleen: You know, for sales managers, the question, I think you always need to be asking yourself, am I working on the right and the sales performance issue? Does the salesperson need more tactical sales training, strategic thinking? Or do I need to give my attention to building their empathy skills, assertiveness, empathy, or excuse me, emotional intelligence skills? So empathy, assertiveness, impulse control, optimism, reality testing, and it’s generally not an either-or, but make sure you’re coaching to 100% of the person.
Nancy: Yeah, it’s a lifelong skill to develop, wouldn’t you say?
Colleen: Absolutely. And so it’s like anything, and it’s a very overused analogy, but frankly, still relevant. It’s like working out. You can work out for a year and if you take six weeks off, you get flabby. Yeah, the brain is the same way, skills are the same way. It’s not fair. I worked out for a year. Which is just something called life. So continuous improvement is continuous improvement.
Nancy: Well, I can’t speak for my audience right now but I know that they are taking away a lot of excellent nuggets. I’m so excited that you joined us. Now how can my audience find you?
Colleen: You know, I would suggest going to our website. We’ve got a lot of resources there. And that is www.salesleadershipdevelopment.com, salesleadershipdevelopment.com.
Nancy: Got it. For everyone out there today, I definitely would go find Colleen on YouTube. She’s an awesome speaker with some, as you heard. excellent points in the sales world. Happy selling everyone until the next time. And thanks again, Colleen, for joining.
Colleen: And thanks for having me.
by Nancy Calabrese | Apr 14, 2020 | Appointment setting services, Case Studies, Sales Prospecting
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