“The sooner you can show them that you listen and that you care, the more likely they are in the long term to give you the business.” – Mandy Sullivan in today’s Tip 1103
How do you reframe your success?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Mandy Sullivan. Mandy is a certified graduate of GirlzWhoSell and #GirlsClub with over 20 years as a customer advocate. She’s a supporter of all things Women in Sales and is focused on customer-centric communication and relationship building. Here she is:
Mandy Sullivan: Welcome to today’s sales tip. This one goes out to our new sellers, people that are making moves from customer service to customer success or from customer success to sales. When you first enter the sales world, you’re focused on quota. You know you have to meet it. You know that you have to hit that number so that you can make the money that you want to make. But let’s look at how we define success. Are you defining it by getting a sale? Are you defining it by booking an appointment? Those things will lead to meeting your quota. But when you’re new, there’s a lot of learning that goes on maybe before you book those sales or book sales consistently.
So I think it helps to break that down incrementally to little wins that we can have every day that help us build our confidence and make us more successful in the long term. So first thing I would suggest is talk to your sales manager and find out the amount of required calls you have to make each day. So make sure, good, bad, or ugly, that you’re making that number every day. And ideally, that you’re exceeding it a little every day. That way you get one win under your book.
Next thing, consistency. Every day as you’re meeting that number, add one more. If you get to the point where you’re consistently meeting that number and you can build on it, try to add up to five more. So that’s another win. Building that confidence, making you feel like you’re definitely capable of doing what you need to do.
But the real focus that I want to share is from the customer-centric side of things. A win is anytime you get somebody on the phone and have a conversation. Whether that conversation leads to booking a meeting, scheduling a demo, or getting a sale is important, but it’s not the goal of the conversation. The goal of the conversation should be learning one new thing, at minimum from your customer.
So if you learn a pain point, if you learn something they’re excited about, if you learn something they’re struggling with, any of those things are a leading to a secondary conversation. So if you can’t close on the first conversation, at least you’ve opened the door to further conversations. So that’s where you start your wins. And as you start having more conversations, that gives you an opportunity to do follow-up. So if you learn in the first conversation that they don’t really have time to talk to you because they’re short-staffed and they really just have to get work out the door, then that gives you an opportunity to email them. Thank them for the time that they give you. Check on them and see if the staffing got better.
If they feel more equipped. These are things that help build rapport and then maybe in that you can give them a link to a brochure of yours, to your website. Then you can follow up later, you can place another call and as you do that, you’re asking them those seeds that you had in the first conversation you’re planting as you called the second time and then that leads to where you get to the point that you can book an appointment because you started building rapport and you started listening to their needs. The sooner you can show them that you listen and that you care, the more likely they are in the long term to give you the business.
So hopefully these are little things that you can apply early on in your customer success or your sales career that help you build the confidence to book those appointments and close those deals. Hope this tip helps.
Scott Ingram: For a link to connect with Mandy on LinkedIn, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1103 and we’ll have that and a transcript of today’s tip for you. Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow and everyday after that, for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!