In selling, we face two types of competition: internal (peer competition) and external (market competition). In both cases, we learn and practice competition as a war where one must lose for the other to win. In other words, a zero-sum game.
I always try to avoid zero-sum games and transform them into positive-sum games, meaning that both competing parties can be better off in the end. But how can this be possible when selling in a competitive environement?
Let me put it straight; I do not believe in motivation. I even take it further and claim that any motivational speaker or motivational book is a product of great marketing. Their impact never lasts. For me, it is straightforward… You either want to do something or don’t. When you want to do it, you will do it; when you do not want to do it, you will not.
When people say they lost motivation, I understand they no longer want to do it. However, many claims to lack motivation for what they want to do. When coaching, I realized one thing about those people. What they are missing is not motivation; it is clarity.
I believe the biggest problem with learning is not about how to learn. It is about making it last. And it goes through three stages:
-learning the knowledge
-learning how to implement
-learning how to become
Any learning experience (training, workshop, course, etc.) reaches its limitations because we often do not go to the third stage, which is the most challenging part…
During my daily discussions with salespeople around the world, we have been talking about the challenges they have been facing due to global supply chain issues, which means that they need to sell under extraordinary conditions regarding the delivery lead times, which are extremely long compared to pre-Covid period.
In the last twelve months, I observed two main reactions. The first one is…
In sports, the secret of winning all the time is straightforward indeed… The sames secret is valid for sales as well…
As salespeople we all have one primary objective of a customer meeting… closing the deal. I am suggesting to replace this primary objective with learning. Learning about what really matters to the customer.
And in order to put it into practice you can look for the answers of three questions…
Almost every day I talk to salespeople (but also friends, colleagues, customers, executives…) telling me that they are very open to learn. Yet, few of them realize that it means being exposed to be proved wrong. And even fewer people know how to deal with it. Thus, it makes them vulnerable…
I don’t believe in “trying to be” authentic in sales and life. Instead, I believe in remaining authentic. We are all born authentic, but somehow we lose it along the way. The real question is how to remain authentic? I don’t have the answer, but I know how we lose our authenticity. Here is my explanation…
Although we like to pretend to do so (through the dashboards we generate from our CRMs), calculating the odds when facing a customer is very difficult. It is mainly because the customer’s buying journey is much more complex than we think.
But how to use it as a real competitive advantage in sales…? By building customer dialogue with genuine curiosity and humility.
Learning for Performance