E166: Always Make It Personal with Roxana Radulescu – Part 3 of 4

January 6, 2024


How can infusing a personal touch into the sales process enhance customer relationships?


This is part three of the conversation I had with Roxana.


In Part 3, Roxana and I talk about:

  • Patience in sales, management, and leadership
  • Life is all about experiences
  • Sales scripts



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Connect with Roxana on LinkedIn


Roxana’s Bio:

Roxana is the Founder of All Personal, a bespoke training and consulting company. She works with corporate, small businesses and non-government organizations, and helps them build skills muscles to create innovative workplaces!


Born and raised in Romania, having worked in international Magic Circle law firms for 16 years and having led the Learning & Development department for 8 years, she moved to Canada in March 2017, together with her husband and two kids, and has been, since then, in a constant journey of ‘self-building’. She started Life 2.0 (as she titled her initial blog), both as an immigrant and a woman entrepreneur. She has so far worked with teams and individuals in Europe and Canada, in various industries: digital marketing, financial consulting, IT, legal, non-profit, real estate, recruiting, social media.


Roxana is a TEDx speaker and a Master Coach. She holds a diploma in Learning & Development and a certificate in Human Resources from the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development in the UK, as well as a Master of Arts in Knowledge, Information and Project Management from the University of Bucharest, Romania.


The Podcast

Her podcast series, All Personal, turns the good old saying ‘nothing personal, just business’ upside down, and proves that, in fact, it’s all personal, nothing is just business. She talks to people who are passionate about what they do and are ready to share their ‘skills muscles’ discovery stories to inspire others. 


The Articles

She is also a contributing author to organizational blogs, newsletters and magazines:

The Law Office Management Association (TLOMA) – Article Series on Leadership

Digital Business Women eMagazine, interview: Roxana Radulescu on why it’s All Personal

Training Journal (UK), article: Nodding doesn’t guarantee listening – so, what does?

Young Women in Business Toronto blog series: (Pod)casting our skills muscles


You can reach out to Roxana directly, and follow her on social media:

Phone: +1 647 568 1596

Email: all@personalskillscoach.com

Website: www.personalskillscoach.com

FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/personalskillscoach/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roxradulescu/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxana-radulescu-profile/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQJPPzkpd-i4R2TceaUrAsA/featured?view_as=public

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/allpersonal 

  • Show Transcript

    Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason Cutter. Welcome to part three of my conversation with Roxanna Radulescu. We’re just continuing this great conversation. I won’t give much of an intro. I just want to dive in if you haven’t already, make sure to check out parts one and two from the previous two days where it sets up this part of the conversation. We’re just going to continue talking about making it personal, not just focusing on business, right? So that mantra of it’s not personal, it’s business and how wrong that isn’t, right. Every aspect and really we get into a lot more of a business concept in this conversation. Part three, make sure joy this part here and I will see you at the end.


    Roxana: What you’re offering. They don’t need it now. They might need it, I don’t know, two weeks later, 2 years later, you never know. Right? You know, keep your message out there and whoever needs to work on something, they will know that they need to talk to you or they will choose to talk to you. Just that for me. But it took a lot of time for me to learn that as well and to start being more patient.


    Jason: Yeah, and I think it’s interesting too because you know, for me and my age and this generation, it’s easy to look at younger people and say, well everyone wants it now. And instant gratification and everyone’s used to it and they’re spoiled now and everything’s on the phone. But I find myself being the same exact way. Like if I’m not getting something instantly, it seems weird. It takes a long time. You know two-day shipping from Amazon used to feel amazing and now it feels really slow. Like I don’t want to wait two days. Right. It’s almost done the opposite where I don’t want to wait that two days. It might be convenient, but I’d rather go to the store and get something now versus how great that used to be. And I think that’s a good reminder for anybody listening to this, whether you’re a business owner and you’re trying to run the business and you’re trying to grow it is to be patient.


    Jason: Put yourself out there, small business, medium-sized business. If you’re a sales manager, working with your sales team, also be patient and not expect instant results from everybody on the team. And then for salespeople, both a patient with yourself and what you’re working on, but then also with your sales business, right? Whether it’s inbound or it’s outbound, you know a lot of sales is a pipeline. You know, the kind of person that I coach and work with is more consultative than transactions. So we’re not talking like an easy transaction. We’re talking about either a longer sales cycle or more involved conversational relationship, more personal like what we keep going back to. And so you’ve got to work really hard in the moment and then you’ve got to be patient in the long term, right? You’ve got to hustle your face off right now and do everything so that at the end of the day you can say, I gave it my all, I left it all on the field and then be patient for the results and know that if you do that a long enough, it’ll string together the results.


    Roxana: Exactly, it’s all about you know, action that’s consistent enough to give you the results, right?


    Jason: And the right action. And uh, and then, you know, and it’s also this weird thing, right? Cause it’s, here’s the balance and the struggle that I’ve had on a different topic is there’s patients and there’s knowing that it’s just going to take a long time. And then there’s the, the weird over-under balance of should I continue to be patient and wait or am I going the wrong direction and this doesn’t actually work. Right? Like should I write this book and then just be patient and then put in the steps or do I actually suck and I shouldn’t write this book or I shouldn’t do this thing or that thing. You know, like even doing a podcast, I started a podcast years ago and I made the fatal mistake of creating a podcast, putting it out there, watching the metrics, watching the likes, the follows the downloads too closely.


    Jason: And then I wasn’t getting the results. So then I stopped part of that. I think I was going in the wrong direction for me. Part of it. I was looking at it wrong when I did this and season one of the podcasts, I looked at the stats every once in a while, but I didn’t care what the numbers were and I just wanted to be patient and just put them all out there and knew the results would come where people would download it and I would just going to make an impact. So yeah. So what do you think about that? Like where’s that over under for you? For patients or just hitting your head against the brick wall that’s never going to fall over?


    Roxana: Well, it’s uh, you know what? It’s patience combined with action, right? So it patients doesn’t mean you’re just gonna put yourself down in a corner and just wait and do nothing. Right. It’s just patience. When I speak about patients, I talk about results, be patient about when results are showing up, not about the kind of action that you might want to take because we go back. Otherwise you go back to, to be or not to be. That’s all right. We go back there. It’s not about that. It’s about, okay, you’ve taken some action you’ve seen, doesn’t give you, maybe it doesn’t give you the results that you expect and you take a look at what, how long you’ve been doing that. It’s all about measuring as well. How long have you been doing that for? What kind of results were you expecting? Are you getting any results and if not, why?


    Roxana: What have you tried? Why wanted to notch? Right? Maybe there is another action that you might want to take or consider taking, but it’s we can, it’s usually, I find it’s about tweaking either your way of acting or your way of talking to people or your way of putting yourself out there or the focus of the podcast. It does not mean to me at least it hasn’t meant so far, not taking any action at all. Just tweaking any, even when you drop something like completely the way I’ve seen this is people dropping something after they’ve tried everything or they’ve tried everything they could think of. Right. And that helps with the mindset as well because otherwise I’m going to be left up with the question, what if? What if I kept going? What if I kept doing that? Modify, kept doing my podcasts by now?


    Roxana: It would have been a tremendous success. I will never know that if I think that I tried, I really did my best. It didn’t work. This is the best I could. I can move on to do any better and it still doesn’t work. Maybe it’s not for now at least I made it a good experience for me because I will feel better thinking about it. Right? Yeah. I tried this, this and this and that and I really did my best. Maybe the competition was high. When I think about it, I always think about actors and how they audition times and times again, and even big actors. I want to some of the superstars that we know, they still audition. Some of them surprisingly, they don’t get the role. They don’t get the part. What do they do? They still do their best. They still audition.


    Roxana: They still go onto the next one. The important thing is what kind of experiences do I want to have? How do I make that a great experience for me regardless of whether I’m going to get the part? Then whether I’m getting the, I’m going to get the client right away because maybe I’m not getting that client right away. One year from now they will still remember me and they will want to work with me. I’m going there to have because if I have a great experience for myself, they will feel it too and they will be just happy to. It’s going to be a valuable time for both. Right. Am I going to make it valuable of a valuable student or not? That’s the way I see it.


    Jason: Well, and I think for salespeople in particular, if you’re, if you’re listening to this is it’s really about focusing on what you’re doing and then learning, adapting and growing with lots of feedback. Either recordings of your calls or your meetings or outside feedback from your manager. And really looking at it like a professional athlete who is, you know, watching that game footage, getting the feedback, tweaking, changing, always progressing, always trying to improve in every little way that you can. I mean, and like they say, I might butcher this quote, but you know, you don’t fail. You either succeed or you learn from it because it’s, you know, you’re not, there is no failing. It’s just learning from it. And then what do you do with that information? Do you keep going? Do you adapt? What do you tweak? What do you change? And then you know, who, where are you ultimately going? Where do you want to get to? And, uh, you know, what do you have to change to get there?


    Roxana: Exactly. And, and again, going back to, you know, when you have a good conversation with somebody, you know, right? And you know how you feel when you have a great conversation and that regardless of whether you make the salethen, that is going to help you afterwards. Say, have a brain talk with yourself. And just say, Whoa, that was actually a very good conversation that I had actually did pretty well. They just didn’t meet these now. Right? Instead of treating it, ah, again, it didn’t work then will nobody will ever buy from me and stuff like that. It’s that kind of growth mindset that will help you go on and make the next call five minutes after you’ve just hung up with the previous client who didn’t buy from you, potential client who didn’t buy from you. But then you ha you can call somebody else because now you’re pumped because you know you can have a great conversation. You know you have something valuable to say to that person and then you’re going to call them and feel better and better about it rather than worse and worse. So it’s a whole lot of a difference here in how you treat that experience for yourself. For me, this was another chance, formational moment when I saw it work with me and with people that I work with.


    Jason: And so when we’re talking about sales people, you know, if you were to give some advice or what you see them do wrong or not as effective as they could in terms of, you know, personal versus business, this kind of mantra we were talking about, what is it that you have seen? Where do you see people like needing some help or what they’re missing?


    Roxana: Well, in really shows when you believe in what you’re saying, if you just have the script and just read this script to me, I will eventually know that this is what you’re doing and I’m not, I’m going to say something like, you know what? I’m sorry. I’m super busy right now. I can’t take this call or I need to hang up. I will say something like that because it, I mean, okay, but the times when people would just sell by reading from a script over the phone, I think they’re not the times that we live in anymore. So at least believe in something. Find something that you believe in when you talk to people about your product or service or whatever it is. If you don’t believe in it, how am I supposed to believe in it? I will never believe in whatever it is that you’re trying to sell me. I can feel it. You don’t say it, you don’t read it from the script, but I can hear it in the voice, in the, in the, in your level of energy. I can, Mary, when you believe in what you’re selling or when you don’t, right. Or when you know what you’re selling to me or when you’re don’t, you have no idea. You just have some pubs right there and just look at them. No, it’s a, that’s why it’s personal.


    Jason: Yeah. And I, and, and, and I think what’s interesting about the script, because this is the bait and I think scripts are very valuable and important. And then it’s a function of what you do with them, which is what you’re saying. Right? And going back to your actor example, if you’ve ever watched a movie or a TV show or a play, there is a script. Now, salespeople want to fight until they’re blue in the face and say they don’t like scripts. And scripts are terrible and they make you sound robotic. No, you make a script sound robotic and terrible, right? Like if you’ve watched a movie, there is a script. They did that scene 32 times from different angles over and over again. If you go to a Broadway play, they do times a day or three times a day, seven days a week, it’s the same every single time.


    Jason: Like that’s what they do. There is a script. You forget there’s a script you get lost in, in the emotion and like what you’re saying is they’re making it personal. They feel it, they believe it, they’re playing role. They feel like they are that person and that’s why they’re a professional actor in any sense is because they can sell that to you and make you believe what they believe. And then when you’re in sales, if you have a script, your job is to take that script, use it, learn it, memorize it with who you are, and then help people believe in what you believe, which is what you’re selling. So you can literally like the top salespeople, I know, they’ll start with a script, they’ll internalize it and make it their own. And then literally if you aligned up, let’s say they’re on a phone call, it’s, you know, it’s telephone sales.


    Jason: If you took 10 of their phone calls and you were to get them transcribed and then you were to stack them next to each other, literally it would be the same thing over and over again. And nobody realized it because it’s different customers, but it’s the same thing. And they’re taking you through the same journey. They’re making it personal where they can, and then the rest of it is, you know, them selling what they’re doing and explaining and walking through the process. And I think that’s so important is that balance. Because the natural reaction, like I said, of most sales people is I don’t like scripts. Scripts are terrible. They make me sound robotic. I hate when anyone uses a script, but that’s you. That’s not the script, right? You can even read a script and make the script sound amazing. Even if you were to read it word for word, you can still make it sound conversational, but you’re right.


    Jason: It’s the ones who call script or no script and they don’t believe in what they’re doing and they’re going through the motions. Just kind of like life. You can feel it. 


    Jason: Alright. That concludes part three. We’re going to make it a wrap right here for today. Try to keep it under the timeline if you haven’t, make sure checkout parts one and two and then also you can find these episodes everywhere that you would find podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google plus. You can go to cutterconsultinggroup.com and go to the podcast page and find all the links there. Make sure to subscribe so you get all of these episodes every single day if possible. Wherever you get podcasts from. I would love you to leave a rating, leave a review if you could. All of that really makes a big difference and helps other people find the show and then see if it’s what they want and where they want to spend their time. Cause I want to make sure this is valuable for the right people. And if it’s not a good fit, I don’t want people to spend their time on it. It’s the same way that I do sales. It’s all about finding the right person and then seeing if you can help them. And as always, remember that everything in life has sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.




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By Jason Cutter February 26, 2025
How Can You Predict The Future Of Sales Ops? One of the keys to sales success is to be able to predict the future – what that other person is thinking, what they might say, what they will experience, how they will feel about the product/service. But what can you do – from a sales ops leadership perspective – to predict the future in masse of all the potential customers that will flow into and out of the sales process/funnel? That is a really tough one, but it is doable. Meeting Prospective Customers Where They Are The key is to always meet the prospective customers where they are and with the experience they hope to find. It’s a common theme now in these articles because it’s important AND widely disregarded – your potential customers do not care about you, your sales team, your company, your industry. They don’t care about your stats, your testimonials, your logos. They don’t care about your mission statement or your values. They only care about themselves. They also firmly believe that there is currently unlimited choice for any product/service, which means that everything in their mind is a commodity. Easily replaceable and interchangeable. Nothing (other than iPhones…which you can only get from Apple) is special to consumers unless they feel like it should be special. Are You Still Making It All About You? There is a good chance you are still running a marketing, sales funnel that is all about you. I bet if I looked at your company’s website that from the top down it’s all about you (the company). How great you are. What you do for people. What you have done for others. I bet if I tried to speak with your sales team, I will be made to go through your process whether I like it or not. Maybe fill out a form and wait for a response. Or made to call into a toll free number, even though I don’t want to talk to someone yet. Or made to use a chat widget on a site to get started. I bet when I speak with your sales team, 70-80% of the conversation will be about them, your company, and how amazing you all believe you are. This is all fair. No one starts a company to be mediocre. The goal is to provide value and make money. The missing piece, again like I said above, is no one cares about your goals. They only care about themselves. Predicting What Customers Want From The Sales Experience Back to your mission as sales ops leader – predict what massive amounts of prospective customers are going to want from the Sales Experience. It’s why I wrote about it last week and even offered up a book for free to help in any way that I can. To succeed at your mission, you have to stay ahead of the curve of what the public, and specifically – your buying demographic, psychographic, and valuegraphics, want from that experience. Key Questions To Shape The Sales Experience Do they want to call, text, email or chat? Probably all of them…so can you offer each one? (Don’t make someone decide if they want to go through your hoops…remove all the hoops) Do they need to see pricing online – should it be available and transparent? (In most cases, yes) What sales process will be ideal for moving the most people through the sales conversation to a successful outcome? (More discovery, empathy, active listening. More front-loaded about them, not you. Use the Authentic Persuasion Pathway as your model) Who are the decision makers? Is that individual going to decide or do they need to check with others for approval? (Set them up for success, and don’t force them to make a decision in the moment – you will just lose the potential sale) What type of follow up do they want and need until they make the buying decision? What type of post-purchase follow up would go above and beyond a) their expectations and b) what others in your industry do? If there is an ‘onboarding’ stage after the sale – how can you make that actually customer centric and successful? (It is rarely both) Can You Stay Ahead of the Curve? Remember – evolution is natural. The buying public is always evolving their desired sales experience. Can you predict the future of what they want so that when they encounter your company it matches what they were hoping to find – both in the experience and the solution to their need?
By Jason Cutter February 25, 2025
How do you, as a sales leader, help your team become Oracles that can predict the future? [make sure to read the Selling Effectiveness article this week https://go.sellingeffectiveness.com/LI.2.25.AM ] There are five ways to facilitate their Oracle-ness. Be Present in the Moment First, you have to get your salespeople to be in the moment. The challenge that most salespeople (and…humans, for that matter) experience is they are always thinking ahead. Salespeople default to thinking about what they will say next. The next part of their script or process. The next question they want to ask so they can get through discovery. The next part of the agreement they need to discuss and review. Their mind is too busy thinking about what they are going to say and do next, that they aren’t present. As weird as it sounds, if you want to predict the future you must be present. I have said this for decades: the moment you no longer need to think about what you are going to say/do next and can actually be present with your prospect and truly listen to what they say (and don’t say) – you will become a sales professional. Master Active Listening Second is Active Listening and paying closer attention. It’s actively listening…it’s taking what I mentioned above and putting into place. First step is to be present, second is to actually listen. For what they say. For what they aren’t saying. For changes in their tone. For when they are talking to someone on the side – who are they talking to, and is it about your sales conversation? If you sell in person, reading their body language and facial expressions. You must help them develop an almost sixth sense of listening (and yes, I know hearing is one of our senses…but this goes beyond hearing…it’s truly, deeply listening). Ask Better Questions Third, is to help them ask better questions. So many people in sales ask the discovery questions they are required to ask in order to check the discovery ‘box’. Or, they have done sales long enough they know all the answers, they think they know what everyone wants and why, so no reason to even ask questions. [Note – this type of salesperson thinks two dangerous things: 1 - everyone is the same and wants the same thing, 2 – people like to be sold to.] When your team asks better, deeper discovery questions with a focus on uncovering the what and the WHY, they will get better answers. Remember this – when you ask the right questions and you listen close enough, each prospect will tell you EXACTLY how to help them buy. Build Up Experience Fourth, build up experience. If you want to predict the future it comes from enough experience to know the probability of what will happen. For example, when I am in a season of commuting from home to an office, I am the type of person that can predict exactly what will happen on the freeway. Which lane is always faster around certain exits, which lanes always slow down, how much leaving five minutes later can make the drive suck a lot more. How do I know what will happen on a freeway with hundreds and hundreds of random people? Because of experience (and the fact that most people are just going through the motions in life so they become predictable). The more experience your team has with sales scenarios, they more they can predict the future. I generally see that it takes about six months for most people in a new sales role to have seen enough scenarios where they can start to know what will come next before it happens. Trust Intuition The fifth and final trait to help them with is intuition. One definition of intuition is “a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.” It’s that feeling you get when you know something, even if you cannot explain it. It’s what Malcom Gladwell wrote about in Blink! It’s what we do very well as humans, even if we don’t listen to it. The more you can help your team tune into their intuition and listen and trust it – the better they will do in helping persuade that other human. This goes back to the first suggestion – about being present. When your team trusts they know what to do and say next and they are mentally living in the moment with that prospective client, they can let their intuition guide them. Conclusion When I do trainings, public speaking, facilitating meetings, interviews, and sales – this is my main key to success. I trust and know that I have the experience to handle whatever comes my way in the present moment, while also knowing the destination I am heading towards. I can be present, let that experience and my intuition guide me instead of getting stuck in my head and worrying about what I will say next. Get your team to do some or all of these five steps – and they will become an amazing Oracle.
By Jason Cutter February 25, 2025
The Oracle’s Role in The Matrix If you have seen the Matrix movies, starring Keanu Reeves (as Neo), then you are familiar with an Oracle. In the movies, the Oracle knows what will happen. She has seen it, and it is predestined. In the Oracles mind there is no such thing as free will. In the first Matrix movie, Neo goes to visit her and knocks a vase off the shelf, and it hits the ground and breaks. Right before he hits it, she says “Don’t worry about the vase.” Neo says, “How did you know?” Then the Oracle responds with “What’s really going to bake your noodle later on, is would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything.” Becoming an Oracle in Sales Your mission as a sales professional is to be an Oracle for your prospects and clients. To know the future. Then be able to see around corners, as they say. Which means you know what is going to happen before it happens, because you have enough experience that you have become a psychic. You want to be able to predict, with amazing accuracy: What will happen next What will happen after that What issues will pop up What your prospect/client is thinking before they think it What concerns they might have before they have them Eliminating the Fear of the Unknown During your presentation/demo you want to set the expectation of what is going to occur next. Remember, humans fear the unknown. They want to avoid risk as much as possible. Your sales presentation is risky and dangerous and very unknown. They don’t know if you have good intentions or not. Are you going to persuade them? Are you going to try to manipulate them? Are you going to overcharge them? Will you actually care about what they need and want? Dealing with salespeople is so scary. Yet they still need and/or want something, so it’s the dangerous game they must mentally play. Guiding the Buyer Step by Step When you explain what you are going to do in part 1 of your process, and then what that part is done you let them know the plan for part 2, and so on – they will be at ease in the moment. They will feel like they have control over this portion, that there is an exit they can take if they don’t want to proceed. That level of control will help them accept the risk of part 1, and part 2, and part 3. Tell them what you will do. Do it. Tell them what you did. This will validate that you can be trusted. Predicting Thoughts and Feelings The next level is being able to predict what they will think and feel before they do. You can use this information in your presentation (without telling them what you are doing). You can also verbalize it, which could sound like “I am guessing from experience that you are probably wondering about _____, so let’s cover that right now.” Or “most people I speak with ask about _____.” They will think – wow this person knows what I am thinking, he/she is in my mind! And that’s a good thing. A really good thing. Conclusion The more they feel like you know what you are doing, know what they are thinking, know what they are afraid of – the more they trust you as a Guide. Because Guides only know what they know because they have helped other Heros successfully accomplish their journeys. Your mission as a sales professional: Become an Oracle.
By Jason Cutter February 19, 2025
What does it take to build the ideal Sales Experience? Why does it even matter? Maybe you think you already have one. You are a professional sales ops leader. You have put everything you can in place to help your salespeople sell more. You have optimized the processes so that your sales team can focus on one thing – selling. But I promise – even if you think all of that is true, it’s not. The Reality: No Perfect Sales Experience Exists I have never seen any company or team with the ‘ideal’ Sales Experience and operation. And to be honest – I have never built one successfully. Why would I admit that? Because the ideal Sales Experience is aspirational and business, teams, processes, and customer needs/desires are constantly changing. So as soon as you put new processes in place, something else needs to change and evolve. The Scalable Sales Success Iceberg In my Scalable Sales Success Iceberg – there are 24 categories that, when built out, create a scalable sales machine – where you can add in an input and get way more output. I would love to see companies have all 24 categories set up and running optimally. But that’s not even possible – because, as I mentioned, things are always changing. Focusing on the Biggest Levers Here is the key – to build the ideal Sales Experience takes focus on the biggest levers. The ones that, when pulled, create the biggest and best results. There are many processes and systems that you can put in place – but those are going to get you a few percentage points of improvement. Instead of putting it all in here, I want to make you a special offer. Email me at jason@sellingeffectiveness.com with your mailing address, and I will mail you the book that I co-wrote with Nick Glimsdahl called Reasons Not To Focus On The Sales Experience. It will be your starter guide, facilitating the creation of your ideal Sales Experience.
By Jason Cutter February 18, 2025
The Numbers Game Mentality is a Losing Strategy Sales is no longer a “numbers game.” You cannot succeed, long term, by focusing on volume of activity. Making a million dials, sending a million emails, knocking on a million doors (the first two are way easier than that last one) is a scorched earth strategy that will sink your business. You can’t out-dial a bad sales process. It will lead to even more bad online reviews. You can’t out-email a terrible sales funnel process that requires people to jump through poorly planned hoops. You can’t out-knock your way past slimy tactics and bad products/services. The Danger of the "Every No Gets Me Closer to a Yes" Mindset The whole “every no gets me one step closer to a yes” mentally is dangerous. That mindset and strategy assumes that it’s a numbers game. That the only thing that matters is finding the right person who will buy from you. Potentially, no matter what you even say – they are just ready to buy. Not only will this destroy any online reputation you have it will also wreak havoc on your team. It is the fastest and best way to burn out your team. It will lead to a revolving door or hiring, training, and quitting as people realize how unfun the game is you have built and how hard it is to be successful. It will also feel like a mismatch – very few people (and hopefully even less over time) are long-term excited about the business model of calling 500 people a day in hopes of making a few sales. If It’s Not a Numbers Game, Then What Is It? It’s quality over quantity. [Now…note – it does take a certain quantity of activity to fill a sales pipeline. So I am not saying that your sales team can just sit and wait for people to fall into their pipeline with money in hand.] It’s about the Sales Experience. It’s about your team ensuring that they are providing the right and best experience for that potential customer – in a way that sets them up to get into the buying mood and mode. All that matters is the Sales Experience. How can you support your team in terms of the quantity of activity to fill a pipeline, and then the quality of interaction that leads to sales? What Does an Ideal Sales Experience Look Like? What does that look like – the ideal Sales Experience? It’s when your team understands that the potential customer they are speaking with only cares about themselves. They don’t care about the salesperson, your company or the product. They are only focused on themselves. It’s when the Discovery/Empathy portion of the conversation is the most important part. Does your team realize that everything after Discovery – when done right – is just a presentation of the solution? It’s the fact that when you combine the parts of the Authentic Persuasion Pathway (Rapport + Empathy + Trust + Hope + Urgency) that the assumptive close is all you need. If your team is having to ask for the sale they are doing sales wrong. And don’t confuse earning the right to close with asking for the sale. The Sales Leader’s Role in Creating a World-Class Sales Experience Your job as a sales leader is to ensure your team understands that the only thing – above all else – is the sales experience they provide to each potential customer. That customer knows that they have the power and the feeling of unlimited choice. Which means they will decide who to give their money to based on the experience they have with buying from a company. How can you shift your team away from the numbers game mentality to actually providing a world class sales experience to each and every person they speak with?
By Jason Cutter February 17, 2025
The Abundance of Options Today we all have lots of options. While writing this I could speak into my phone and order whatever I want. I can get food delivered before I finish writing this article. I could get a TV delivered to my door before I wake up tomorrow. When someone wants to buy something, they are armed with as much information as they want to access. They can research, read reviews, and watch videos about a product or company. The Shift in Power to the Buyer Because of this, the power balance of sales has shifted away from the salesperson and company to the buyer. Knowledge is power – and they now have all the knowledge they want. With knowing that they have ultimate choice of what to buy (internet and globalization has led to the ability to order anything you want from anywhere…so you are no longer limited to the stores you can drive to and what they have on hand), it means that everything is a commodity in their minds. Nothing is unique or special. Everything is interchangeable. Does the Sales Experience Even Matter? So, this means the sales experience doesn’t matter anymore. There is no reason to put effort into the sales process, the conversations with potential customers. No value in spending time trying to ‘help’ people – since they just view products, salespeople, and companies as interchangeable. You are not special, so there is no benefit in caring. They will walk into your store, and they will decide what they want. They fill out your online for, and they decide if they answer when you call and how the call will go. They walk up to your event/booth, and they decide how the interaction will go and if they want to listen to your elevator pitch. They will let you know if they are interested in moving forward. They will let you know how they want to buy. So, like I said above, there is no real value anymore in the sales experience. Or could it actually be valuable? Is it possible that all that matters IS the sales experience? If people feel they have ultimate information and control of the buying process, how do they decide on what to buy and who to buy from? When I search on Amazon for a product type I have never purchased before, how do I pick? When I want to go shopping for garden supplies for the house, how do I pick where to go? When I need to buy a new fridge, who will I hand my money over to? The cheapest place with terrible service? The place with reasonable prices and great service? The Sales Experience Shapes the Decision I choose based on the sales experience that I will receive. With everything else being equal, I (and I believe most people) will select the place to shop at or the products to buy online based on the experience I receive. To me all that matters is the experience. While I am trying to buy something. Once I receive it – ensure it does what I need it to do. With the feeling of unlimited choices, it can actually be harder now to buy something that in the past. People get into analysis paralysis more often. Which means that for consumers to buy something new they need help. They need a professional salesperson. They need a sales experience that matches their expectations. They want a guide who will help them make the right decision for them, with an experience that goes above and beyond what more people receive any more when they walk into a store, call a company’s toll-free number, or visit a website and have to fill out a form. If you want to succeed in sales – the only thing that matters is the sales experience you provide.
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