Psyched to Sell

How excited is your sales team? How passionate are they about your product or service? There's nothing worse than sitting through a meeting where you can tell that the salesperson across the table or on the other end of the phone is just going through the motions and bored by their product. They're not really enthusiastic about it. Strip away everything about sales and just think of it through this lens: sales is a transference of emotion. The faster your sales team can transfer emotion and get the prospect excited about the benefits that will accrue to them once they implement your product or service, the faster they'll move opportunities through their pipeline. If you think about sales from that emotional transfer perspective, it's important that your team is psyched and excited about your product.

The problem typically arises when salespeople hear from their customers.  When do salespeople hear from customers? Usually it's when something is wrong. Because of this, the feedback they constantly get is rejection and negativity from unhappy customers.  It's easy for sales people to carry around that weight and bring it into the next sales conversation, or even get adopt a perpetually defensive stance. They don't even realize that it's happening most of the time.  This is definitely not the experience you want for your customers, either potential or existing.  It's important that your sales managers are checking in with everyone on their team to make sure they're mentally prepared to handle the day. Salespeople face obstacles, rejection, rude customers, people who lie to them, competitors slandering your product or service, etc., so it's important that your sales team is able to push through and be psyched to sell.

Salespeople need to be able to press reset in between each call and bring their best self to the next call. They should look at every call as an opportunity to ask questions and have a conversation that will create urgency for the prospect to get excited about your product or service. What are your sales managers doing to get your team excited about the product or service you sell and the results that your clients are experiencing?

 Here's the thing, your clients aren't going to call you just to say, "Hey, I just want to let you know the X thousand dollars we invested in your software solution is really paying dividends." Typically, they only call you when there's something wrong. Since, this is the case, make sure that you have feedback loops, net promoter scores, and different testimonials so your salespeople see the good things that are happening, not just hearing the negative. Make sure that as your sales managers do daily or weekly huddles, they regularly share good news. Talk about things that are happening in the market that are really going well. Talk about customer success. Have those stories ready so that when your sales team gets beat up, you're able to draw on those stories and share that success.

If nothing else, mentally prepare before going on a sales call. Taking a few deep breaths, visualizing success, and really going into that call with a mindset of, “I'm here to help somebody and it's my mission to go find people who have the problems we're uniquely qualified to solve” is a great way to get ready for a call. With that mindset, your sales team will be in a better position to effectively transfer emotion and get the prospect excited about your product or service. They can't just go through the motions. People pick up on that too easily. Make sure that there's regular feedback given to your sales team to be positive, hear good news, and share that good news with the market.