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| This is a weekly column transcribed from my Radio Show. The "Top Story" is the major discussion each week in which I address in great depth and detail, aspects of selling that are pertinent to your job everyday. |
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OK, how do you unlearn to be a better salesperson? I've been giving this a lot of thought lately, and this is a topic that's been coming up at a lot of the keynote speeches I give across the country. Last week and the week before, I've been all over this great country of ours. I've been north all the way to Wilmer, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Paul, Minnesota. I've been in Wisconsin; I've been in Dallas; I've been in Birmingham, Alabama. I've been all over the place. And here's what's been on my mind. This is what happens to you when you're on too many airplanes. You start to think about what you do, and if I was a plumber, I'd probably come up with a new way to fix pipes. But I'm a sales trainer, so I think about sales people and the sales process.
I've said this on the show before. There are three reasons salespeople fail. Either they won't ask for the order or the commitment, or they won't prospect, or they have some type of crisis in their own belief system about the way they feel about themselves, their company, their products, their services, what have you. And these are the three reasons that salespeople fail.
I started thinking about this. OK, why is this? Why are we afraid to ask for the order or the commitment? Why won't we prospect? And why do we sometimes have a crisis in belief?
I was reading a science fiction book about this culture where they created something called a wormhole, and they were able to go back and compress, not only space, but time. And they were able to actually go back into their own lives and watch themselves and watch other people's lives. And maybe that's what it was. I must have been thinking about that on the plane, or dreaming about it or something like that. And I said, you know, if we could go back in the past, we might be able to discover why we have these issues around asking people to do things, not being willing to prospect, and this crisis in belief that happens.
So I got to be thinking, OK, why do people have a problem? Why do we all in the profession of selling have a problem with asking for the order, asking for the commitment, asking for the appointment, all these things that we have to do to be successful in selling?
I realized that what we are afraid of and the reason we don't ask enough of these questions is that we're afraid of that very small word that begins with "N" and ends with "O". We're afraid of that word "no".
Then I said, OK, if we're afraid of "no", and I had that wormhole and I could go back, what would be the reason why people are afraid of the word "no". And what I decided is that this whole fear of "no" is the major enemy of sales people. And where does this come from? It comes from a time when you weren't even conscious that you were being conditioned to feel that "no" is bad.
Let me tell you why I know this. Think about a time. Well, none of us can think about it. We can't remember it, but we can remember it vicariously. Think about a time when you were two or three years old. You were a toddler. So get your toddler personality on; be toddler for awhile; be a toddler with me. Now we're in the kitchen of our house. Toddlers like to explore. We think that most everything is fascinating, from dirt on the floor, to the litter box where the cat goes. We think everything is very cool. Well, today we're in the kitchen. And our parent, mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, whoever, is making dinner. And tonight is spaghetti night at our house. Of course you don't know that because you're two or three years old. You just hear all these sounds and see all these things going on. So in your toddler way, you walk up towards that stove. And if your family had electric power, you see a red glow; if your family had gas power, you see a blue flame, which is fascinating in its own right. But in addition to the fascinating blue or red color, you see this large metal pot that's kind of shaking on the stove as the water boils in the pot. You don't know that it's water boiling in the pot. What you see is steam and bubbles and a hissing sound rising from this shaking metal object on top of this really cool blue flame or red glow. Well, in our toddler way, we want to see what that is. That might be a spaceship taking off that we could go to the moon. So we reach up for that pot with our little hand, and our mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, whoever happens to be in the kitchen. Is this the way it would have been in your house? Did they have an intellectual discussion with you? Did they say, "Excuse me, Steve, I need to have a conversation with you about the properties of water. You see, Steve, when water reaches 212 degrees, when it's in a vessel on top of a very hot stove or cook top, it starts to reach the point where water turns into a vapor. And at 212 degrees, it has the propensity to inflict great damage on epidermis, if epidermis comes in contact with vapor that is that hot. Oh, Steve, you're two or three years old. Let me explain to you what epidermis is. Dermis is the skin that's made up of five layers. There's the epidermis; there's the mid-dermis. And let me explain also what third degree burns are. There's first degree burns, there's second degree burns, there's third." Is this what happened in your house, Steve, or Warren, or Fred, or Anjeli? No. That person who saw you playing with that flame, or about to reach up for that pot would scream at the top of their lungs - I don't want to break the sound barrier in the studio - "No-o-o-o!" they would yell at you. And you, being the smart two-or-three-year-old, associate the word no with something you must be doing bad or wrong.
Now, imagine how many experiences you had when people said no to you before you were even aware what rejection really was all about. We are so afraid of the word no as adults because we've been conditioned from a very young age to associate anything that results in no to be bad.
Now fast forward to your life as a salesperson or a business owner, and we are being asked all the time to go out there and face no. "Would you like to get together this week?" "No." "Have I earned the right to your business?" "No." "Who else besides you gets involved?" "No one, I'm not going to tell you." "Will you buy this product from me?" "No." Even if you're good in sales, you're going to hear "no" about half the time.
So imagine the unlearning we have to do to be able to convince ourselves that "no" is not a bad thing. "No" is just one of those things we hear on the way to "yes".
Here's another thing we had to learn as a child that we need to unlearn as an adult. How many times did your parents say about strangers? What did they say? Smitty, what did your parents tell you about strangers?
[Smitty: Don't talk to strangers.]
Don't talk to strangers. Right? I've asked that question at least fifteen times since I cognized this a little while ago on these airplanes while I was out of town. Don't talk to strangers. OK? Now, in this crazy occupation you find yourself in, whether you're a salesperson or a business owner, anybody who is responsible for bringing business in the door, what do we tell each other, ourselves, our salespeople? We say, "Go talk to strangers." Now think about this. From a very young age, your parents told you, "Don't talk to strangers." Your teachers told you, "Don't talk to strangers." Now as an adult you're asked to go talk to as many strangers as you possibly can.
Is it any wonder that salespeople, when perceived from the outside in, people think we're a bunch of lunatics? It's because we have to unlearn all these behaviors that were taught to us as very young age.
Is it any wonder that we won't prospect? We play those tapes. "My mommy said I shouldn't talk to strangers. My daddy said I shouldn't talk to strangers." Heck, one of the commandments is, "Honor thy mother and father." I'm not going to go talk to any strangers. I'd rather fail. Of course, I'm taking it to the extreme. But that's what we face every day as salespeople. We need to unlearn not talking to strangers.
Here's another example. Weren't we taught about contracts when we were being trained in high school or college? What did they tell us? Smitty, what did they tell you about contracts?
[Smitty: I have no idea. They were good.
Background speaker: Oh yeah, you wish.]
They told you don't sign anything until you talk to your attorney. Don't sign anything until you read it and talk to your attorney. Now here we are. That's what we learn. You learn that from whatever age. Now we are salespeople or business owners; we have paperwork or contracts or agreements that we use in our business. We present it to someone with the blanks filled in, and we ask them to what? What do we ask those people to do, right there when we're in front of them? We ask them to sign the agreement, or OK the paperwork, or authorize the contract. Even though, everything we know about ourselves. You talk about a crisis in belief system. We are thinking to ourselves, "You know, I'm not sure I'd sign this. Why don't I go talk to my attorney first." And here we are, put in the position to ask people to believe in us and enter into a covenant or a contract without reading every little dot and period and comma. I mean, have you ever read the back of any of the contracts you present to people? You'd probably flip out. You'd run ten miles before you'd sign it.
Is it any wonder, that if you go back to the three reason people fail, that we won't ask for the order, we won't prospect, and we won't present contracts for people. We have this crisis in belief. Think about how embedded in our own consciousness all these negative stereotypes and indications are.
That's why my point today is we have to sometimes unlearn to become a better salesperson. Not learn, but unlearn. Think about that. Think about what you can unlearn to become a better salesperson or business owner. Think about how our entire profession can learn by unlearning.
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– Warren
Wechsler |
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