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Last week I was teaching selling fundamentals, the building blocks for selling. I actually haven't taught this for a while, I was asked to really keep it simple and so I unearthed a lot of the thinking that I used to use to teach sales when I worked for David Forman over 7 years ago.
Whilst in sales training we mainly talk about processes, qualifying, questioning, closing, presenting and the biggest reason people come on sales training, Objection Handling.
The biggest epiphanies for the trainees was more about understanding their own internal dialogue in working with these processes. It had nothing to do with the questions you used but had everything to do with how you listened to the customer, how you focussed on them and managed your own thoughts and emotions.
So whilst the principles of selling hasn't changed our knowledge of the power of our mind and emotions has. Some of the key things that I talked about over the 2 days was emotional intelligence, manage stress levels and the impact of the snake brain.
Most of the people on this course knew how to sell, so to keep them engaged I had to teach them something relevant, something new. The question wasn't about how to sell, it was more about their limiting beliefs that stopped them from asking for the business (closing the sale), it was about how their feelings impacted their tone when they handled an objection that they had heard many times.
What thrilled me was the insights that they got when we talked about the stuff behind the skill and with a predominantly male group they really connected with how important their emotions were in building and fostering long term relationships.
It is exciting to see what I teach to my one to one clients come to life in a training room. The depth of the insight and the change. The difference in the action plan was not classifying the objection but it was about managing a potential amygdala hijack.
Demonstrating motivating a buyer through the use of powerful questions and the theatre of the mind, the ability to help a customer explore their goals and their decision making rather than to "sell them something". Standing back and really listening to someone, rather than for something. Every time I train people the depth of my understanding of the human psyche deepens and my skills are enhanced.
"People are fascinating, I wonder who I am going to meet today" is one of my favourite ways to approach a sales opportunity. Whilst we have sales targets and call cycles the reality in this age of developing new business is to be having conversations with people outside of 9 to 5.
I love helping others to achieve things and make things happen, if what I know can help them get there, then that for me is success! Why do you do what you do?