“If you want to be a top performer in sales, like top 1%, top performer. You need to be prepared to have difficult conversations” – Jeff Bajorek in today’s Tip 504
Do you have uncomfortable conversations?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jeff Bajorek is back with maybe one of his most important tips. Thanks for this Jeff, give a listen:
Jeff Bajorek: If you want to be a top performer in sales, like top 1%, top performer. You need to be prepared to have difficult conversations. You’ve gotta be willing to be authentic. You’ve got to be willing to be curious. You’ve got to be willing to be creative. You have to have firm boundaries. You have to know your messaging, you know your value proposition, understand the objections you’re going to get and overcome them. All of these things are important and then some that I just can’t even mention right now. Cause there’s just, that’s not what this piece is about. Where all of those things converge and you should study each of them and you should prepare for each of them where they all converge is the difficult conversation. The conversation where you’re not quite sure if you have the right answer the conversation where you’re not sure when your boundaries are pushed, if you should relent a little bit, hold firm, or even push back those conversations culminate when you don’t quite know how the person on the other end of this is going to respond, but you know you need to move forward anyway. Otherwise, you’re going to abandon a really important deal.
Look, you’ve been training for these conversations. These are the big ones. These uncomfortable conversations are where progress comes from. This is how your business grows. This is how you personally grow along with your business. These are where the biggest deals are won. And sometimes they take longer than you’d like them to. And sometimes you can only move a step forward at a time and it feels like a snail’s pace, but you continue to move forward because you know the end is worthwhile.
You’re prepared to have those conversations because you’re willing to do more discovery then most reps are. And that means you’re willing to ask questions that you don’t quite know the answer to because your curiosity is helping you to unravel more of the picture or unravel more of that ball of yarn, or to be able to paint the picture of what that deal entails and how you can help.
And that curiosity means that you’re willing to be wrong. You’re willing to have your assumptions challenged and willing to have them go the opposite way that you came in because you learned something new. And when you’re authentic enough to accept that when you’re authentic enough to put your ego aside so that you can learn something different. So you can help in a different way. That’s when you thrive in those uncomfortable conversations, because you can disarm other people by that authenticity, by that curiosity. That’s how you develop empathy. That’s how you can really connect with the person on the other side of that conversation. That’s how you can make progress. That’s how you can win. That’s how we all win together. Salespeople, prospects into customers, into customers into, in some cases, lifelong friends. You are equipped to have uncomfortable conversations. You are equipped and training to have these kinds of conversations. And in order for you to take your career where you want it to go, you have to thrive in those uncomfortable conversations.
Today, when this releases it’s going to be June 6th, 2020, the United States is on fire in various places. Most of that is fueled by the fact that so many of us are afraid to have tough conversations outside of our business. We have to be better. We have to be willing to ask questions that we don’t know the answers too. We have to be willing to learn things that we don’t want to hear. We have to be willing to have our boundaries pushed. We have to be willing to accept that this is not something that’s going to be over and done within a month or even an election cycle, but that we have to be willing to stand up and put one foot in front of the other for the long haul in order to make things better.
So in case, you didn’t understand the inference for the first half of my video, allow me to make it more clear. You are uniquely equipped as a professional to excel as a person in these situations. The society, not only in this country, but in so many countries outside of the one I live in right now requires you to stand up and use those skills as well.
Scott Ingram: To watch Jeff say these words, which might be even more impactful, you’ll find the video version at DailySales.Tips/504 and there you’ll find links to connect with Jeff as well, and do yourself a favor and subscribe to his newsletter. It’s one of the best that I get and one I actually look forward to receiving each Sunday.
Then be sure to come back tomorrow for a great tip from Eddie Baez around how to be an ally along with a ton of additional resources. Thanks for listening!