“And me being an absolute moral, obviously due to do what all of us as good salespeople know, which is I should have been asking follow-up questions and probing and asking more detail and all of that sort of stuff, which for whatever reason, I did it too at that time.” – Stephen Holgate in today’s Tip 106
What lesson you’ve had to learn the hard way?
Join the conversation below and share your thoughts!
Stephen Holgate on LinkedIn
Dale Carnegie Webinar
B2B Sales Mentors book
Stephen Holgate on Sales Success Stories Interview
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today I wanted to share another clip with you from my interview with Stephen Holgate from Dale Carnegie Training on the Sales Success Stories Podcast. It’s one thing to “know” that we should do something in our sales process, but sometimes we have to learn lessons the hard way around “why” we need to do those things and it’s those real-world lessons and experiences that teach us so much. Here’s Stephen:
Stephen Holgate: I know there’s definitely lessons I’ve had a long, along the way that as I’ve looked back, there’s been realizations that then has shaped how I go about sales. Now I’ll give you one example. One of the probably still just like bugs me to this day, but it was a good lesson to learn for myself. So with this main client who I had been working with them for a couple of years. One day, one of my points of contact had asked me about a very specific set of training and I was where the leads are liver, this specific set of training around enterprise solutions selling. And at the time, for whatever reason, I don’t actually even remember the specifics of this, but for whatever mood I was in or whatever belief I had, whatever was happening, they asked whether we did this specific training and I said actually “No, that’s not part of our curriculum. No, we don’t do that”. Cool. Right. Conversation over, at the time I thought she was asking about us delivering like this one day never to be repeated program. And I think I just thought, well that’s it. What were you doing this other work? The reality is that program’s not part of our specialty. That’s all it is. It’s not worth chasing that one day of training for us. While they realized later when I found out about three months, six months time is it wasn’t for a one day training program, it was to launch that program across their entire national accounts program around the world that would have added perhaps a hundred days of training per he, on an ongoing basis. And me being an absolute moral, obviously due to do what all of us as good salespeople know, which is I should have been asking follow-up questions and probing and asking more detail and all of that sort of stuff, which for whatever reason, I did it too at that time. And now I just always think that if ever I hear any opportunity, even if it doesn’t initially sound like it hits the sweet spot to ask more follow-up questions and probe a little bit more deeply and figure out what the true requests is, not what the one I’m assuming it is.
Scott Ingram: I’d love to hear what lesson you’ve had to learn the hard way. Join the conversation at DailySales.Tips/106. In addition to a link to Stephen’s full episode on Sales Success Stories, his LinkedIn profile and all of that you’ll also find a link to register for the webinar that we’re doing together on May 21st where I’m going to dig into the Principles of Top 1% Level Sales Success. It’s a free webinar and everyone who joins in will get a free copy of our new B2B Sales Mentors book, so I hope you’ll check that out and join us.
Then come back tomorrow for a tip Shawn Finder, the CEO of Autoklose