EP46: Modern Sales is a Collaborative Exercise in Search.

The sales lead discernment process is similar to search results. The ones that come up on the first page are the ones you interact with. It's like a discovery call.  A discovery call's purpose isn't to say, "I'm going to buy." One of the biggest mistakes sales trainers make is relying on role-playing as the method to gain confidence. Role-playing is not designed to get you calm and confident. It's a "gotcha" setup. Rehearsal and practice are a better training method to allow the salespeople to get comfortable enough they don't have to think about how they might fail. You need to have it be a reflex to get to the underlying emotion. The underlying emotion that needs to come through is curiosity.

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As for the introverted sales pros we talked about in an earlier episode, public Rah Rah adulation is of little value. Giving these professionals a private rah rah is more effective in keeping them motivated. Get these and more insights in this episode of Market Dominance Guys: Sales is a Collaborative Exercise in Search.

The complete transcript of this episode is below:

Chris Beall (00:41):

When teaching the golf swing the way I do it anyway, and I've had a lot of success with this in 15 minutes, somebody goes from never having swung a golf club to hitting little 100 yards, right to left seven irons with one hand. And the reason that they can do that is that the impediment is their desire to make the club move fast and get the ball the way,their mind tells them it needs to happen. And by taking the ability to execute on that desire away, they have a chance of feeling what it's really like just swinging golf club, or have a golf club swing now. And I think in sales, the way we do this is pretty simple. One is the script. The script is really important because it gives us a chance to practice our way into the emotional state that we need to begin and to do it without the scary part there, which is the other person.

So a huge mistake that I see sales leaders make is that they think that the sales conversation is a contest between the seller and the buyer. And this is actually fairly commonly taught that buyers are liars and all these kinds of things are out there as concepts that folks have been told as though what you're in is a little war with the buyer. And when you win they buy. And in fact, modern sales is the opposite. It's a collaborative exercise where you start with search, you're searching for somebody who potentially has the ability to get value from what you do or what you provide. So that's all that cold calling and prospecting stuff as a form of search and the search results. When you do a Google search, right? The search results that come up on the first page are the ones you might interact with. The interaction equivalent is the discovery call.

And the discovery calls purpose, just like when you click through a link on a Google query, isn't to say, I'm going to buy. You don't do a query. I did a query yesterday, trying to find a particular hotel up in Birch Bay that happens to be associated with the timeshare that I own, right? I wasn't simply going to click through and buy it. I was going to click through and check to see if the dates they had available, matched up with what I'd like to do in the first week of September. The idea that I need to qualify beyond the fact that they showed up on the first page of the search is kind of ridiculous, right? I need to look into things a little bit further, and it's good that I've practiced, searching and go. That I practiced clicking. I didn't have to spend 15 minutes girding up my loins to be able to click on a link.

I know that it's pretty safe, right? But I've got to practice the safe stuff in a way that gives me a chance of succeeding in the micro, in the moment. And then I need a teacher to say, "Hey, that was good." Even when the result isn't there. And that's the real key. It's the key to the golf swing is the key to anything. If you want to learn something complex, you need a teacher to be there to tell you when it's working before it's producing results. So there's two huge errors that people make in managing sales teams. And if they just stopped them, life would be much better for everybody. One is role play. Role playing is not designed to get you calm and confident. It's a gotcha situation. We're going to role-play. And we're going to show where we can trip you up, where you should have done this, where you should have done that, where don't do this. Don't do that.

All that does is it gets you all knotted up. So when you go into the real conversation, your mind is going, should I have done that? Should I have done that? I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't do that. And then there you go, waters on the left, you've hooked another shot out of balance, right? And then the other thing that needs to happen is in the practice, replace role-play with pr