How to Sell and Influence without Sales Experience

Topic: Selling and influence and how to sell if you don't have sales experience

A lot of people feel uncomfortable with this idea of sales. Most of my listeners are in internal roles in companies and focused on talent development, learning and development, organizational development, HR, talent acquisition, whatever it is, and probably don't consider yourself to be in sales. Well, I do have some people in sales enablement and sales leadership roles that listen as well and have reached out to me. And I thank you for that.

I am grateful for all of you. I know there's a lot of different people listening and a lot of people who, again, don't really think of themselves as salespeople, don't really think that they have much sales experience. I have been in that boat in the past. And the question that came to me from Marnie Saali who has been a listener and a supporter for a while and she asked for some advice on how to sell a conference that she was helping a friend put together.

A friend had reached out to ask for her help in selling tickets to this conference because she had a big network in this particular space she's in. And the question was, “I don't have any sales experience. How do I go sell this to people in my network?” particularly without ruining any relationships.

So she knows I'm hosting my own conference soon. That's one of the big reasons why she asked for my advice.

And if you haven't heard about that, by the way, the Talent Development Think Tank is coming November 6th and 7th in Sonoma, California. We have some really great keynote speakers lined up and we have a fantastic venue. It's a fabulous location. We've got some other great speakers. It's going to be highly interactive. It's going to be engaging. There's going to be time for people to work together, to network, to learn from each other, to solve real problems. It's going to be one of the best Talent Development in HR conferences you've ever been to. So you definitely want to check that out. You can go to tdtt,us, to get your tickets.

By the way, see what I did there. I guess some people would consider selling because I'm telling you about something and quite frankly, I want you to buy tickets if you're the type of person that I want to be there at Talent Development Leader, that sort of thing.

Here's the thing, I don't always look at that as selling. So let me get back to this story because Marnie asked the question. She knew I'm organizing my own event, which I just told you about. She's never worked in sales before and so she had no selling experience. And I know a lot of people are in this boat, especially in talent development. I've also noticed that a lot of talent development professionals that I come across have sort of two feet in different areas. They're working for a large company doing that talent development work, L&D, work, organizational development work, whatever it is. They are also trying to do a little bit of consulting on the side. Maybe they've written a book or some articles. They're doing a little bit of consulting work with other companies, sometimes with their employer's permission, sometimes not.

My hunch here, I haven't talked to a lot of them about it. My hunch here is that there are a lot of people who wish that they could go and do this on their own but they're afraid of the selling part. And I had a conversation, a call yesterday with a man that I connected with on Linkedin. We got on zoom and we had a great call. He has intermittently run his own company and wrote a book 10 years ago. He liked delivering the work but he just really didn't like the sales aspect of things. So he's taken a job with a bigger company doing a learning development work but also still doing stuff on the side, speaking and doing the consulting work on the side.

I kind of challenged him a little bit because I said, “it sounds like you've your feet and two feet in different worlds, straddling!” He actually gave a great answer, which was that you never know where things are going to go. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket so you want to create other options for yourself. And I like that. I respect that because the world's changing all the time. We're entering the “gig” economy. Even though there are a lot of people that love the places that they work and they're loyal and they think their companies are loyal to them, you really can't rely on that company to always be there for you. I mean they may decide to make changes and you might get laid off one day or you may decide you wanted to do something different.

It is a good idea to develop skills and kind of be prepared for what the future might bring. Also I got the feeling that he wished he could be completely on his own and he just was afraid of the sales aspect, which is totally fine. Sales is not for everyone. It's a difficult thing to do. I love it and it's difficult for me as well. Cause I used to be in that camp, but as I said, sales is not for everyone but I think everyone is selling all the time. To sell is human to code. Daniel Pink wrote a book about it. We are always selling and influencing with everything we do. Even if you work within a big company in a shared service like HR. Whether it's getting a project approved or getting your desk moved or moving to a different office or being able to work from home or getting your boss' approval for something or getting a peer to help you with a project.

Rallying a team to get them together. Getting suggestions. Having a brainstorming session, getting and giving feedback. Building your network within a big company, you're selling all the time, whether you're selling yourself or you're selling a project or you're selling your skills or your influence, you're trying to get a new role. If you're interviewing for a job, you're definitely selling yourself, right? So you are selling even if you don't have sales experience. And so that's why it's so important to think about your approach to this and the fact that, to sell is human. It's natural, it's part of life. Getting better at influencing is important no matter what type of job or role you're in. So getting back to Marnie’s question, “how do I sell something if I don't have any sales experience and don't want to ruin relationships with people in my network?”

First Principle: Consider serving, not selling

Here is my first piece of advice: Consider serving, not selling. So I think about this all the time. I have a friend named, Liston Witherill, a good friend of mine and he's a sales expert. He runs a podcast about sales that I listen to regularly. His podcast is called Modern Sales and he has another one where he does interviews as well. I listen to him to get his advice on sales quite often and one of the things he says a lot is, “to serve, not sell.” And so I try to live this mantra which is I'm always trying to give value to my network, to the people I talked to, figuring out how can I serve them. How can I help solve their problems?

How can I help them achieve their goals with the confidence that if I'm able to do those things, then it will probably turn into an official partnership, into a sale, into a business relationship where I'm actually making money from it as well. If you think about serving and not selling, and if what you are providing is valuable then it's not really sales in the very traditional sense. I think a lot of people think about sales as, “I'm convincing someone to buy something that they may or may not want because I want their money,” right? Is that how you think about sales? That's a very classic view of it. But if you think of sales as giving value for value. I think of it as if I'm going to sell and run training and development solutions to big companies.

I want to make sure that whatever I'm providing whether it's a custom business simulation or a leadership development experience, that it is more valuable than the money that they are giving up to have that experience. You want to provide more value than you're getting. Really sales at the end of the day is an exchange of value.

So going back to Marnie, I asked her with this conference, “is this something that you think is a worthwhile investment for them to attend?” And she said yes. I said, “are you going to be going to this conference?” And she said, “yeah, I would like to. I think it's going to be a great conference.” “It's cool, would you like to see other people in your network at the conference?” “Well, yes!” And then here's the kicker. “If they were going to a conference like this, what would you want them to tell you?”

Everybody wants to be invited to a party and they want to have the option to decline, right? One of the worst feelings in the world is when you find out that your friends were all at a party and you didn't get invited. Now if you got invited, then you decided that you had something more important to do, or you just decided not to go, that's cool. But if you didn't get invited then you know, people get FOMO, right? Fear of missing out. If you think about it that way, you really doing people a favor by inviting them to this conference or this party. That is a big reason why you're going to hear me talking in the future a lot about this conference that I'm organizing the Talent Development Think Tank because I am convinced at least I've convinced myself that it is going to be the best conference out there because I'm getting a lot of great feedback from people in my network.

I'm getting ideas from tons of people and because I've been to other conferences and I see a major opportunity to create something great. That is what I'm trying to do and I feel a lot of pressure to come through on that promise for the people that are buying tickets and coming to this conference. If I'm you, I want to know about this, right? I see it as my duty. I'm doing a favor to people by telling them about it and then it's up to them if they want to come or not. I get invited to conferences and events all the time and sometimes I buy tickets and sometimes I don't but I'm glad that I had the option. I'm glad I knew about them. I want to know a lot more things that are going on.

I'm glad when I find out about more stuff, we like to have options, right? Although too many options, we can freeze up and make no decision. There's a psychological principle behind that. If you think about it, like you're serving like you're doing people a favor, you're helping them out, then it's not really selling. You're just giving them great information.

Second Principle: Be curious

The second principle I'd recommend is: be curious. Build relationships, build rapport, find out what people care about, find out what people want and then make a recommendation. Go back to principle number one, which is serve and don't sell. I connect companies with really great talent development solutions. Leadership Development, business acumen and sales training, things like that and so I get on conversations all the time with heads of learning and development, talent development leaders at big companies sometimes line executives and I will spend most of the time asking questions to learn about their challenges and objectives.

I'm trying to get better at telling my story and helping people understand who I am and what I do because I think it's really important for building that rapport. But I  usually spend most of my time asking questions, trying to understand them and their background and what goals are they trying to achieve. Because if I can understand what they're trying to accomplish then I can make a great recommendation for them or I might find out that I don't have anything that I can help them with right now.

Then I can keep in touch and I'll see if I can help you with something later but I don't know that until I ask questions and I try to do that instead of just blindly recommending things.

If I'm doing my job and I'm really understanding people, then I'm serving them. I'm not selling something to them. I'm not trying to push something on them that they maybe don't want or they don't need. The same can be true in your internal talent development roles. I know you're going to have people coming to you saying, “we need training for this and we need training for that,” or ,”we need a class for this, or we need an online course.”

There is a tendency to want to just provide a quick solution to give people what they need or what they want but are you really serving them? If you do that, you're keeping them happy in the moment. What if it's the wrong solution? What if it doesn't solve their problems? What if it doesn't achieve the ultimate goal? You've made a mistake. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know that I often ask my guests about their biggest failure. I think the most common one, is people reacting without really digging in and asking questions.

Third Principle: Take a consultative approach

The third principle is kind of tied to that second one is: take a consultative approach. Be Curious, ask questions. When you're dealing with people internally or if you're selling someone externally on your consulting services, whatever it is, be curious, be consultative. Ask thoughtful questions.

Show them that you know what you're talking about. Don't be too quick to make recommendations. I've been in that situation. Someone says something and I'm right away and like I know the answer, but you've got to hang in there. You've got to hold yourself back and ask some important questions to really make sure that you are recommending the right thing and not the wrong thing. So it doesn't look like you're too eager to just throw something at someone because then they're going to think that you are selling. I like to ask a lot of questions and rarely will propose any type of solution to someone before the second or third call that we might have because there's just so much that we need to understand.

Consider serving, not selling. Be Curious, take a consultative approach, ask a lot of questions. These are the important tenants for selling.

I want to get into influence as well because I recently got certified to deliver a great program that one of my partners Kelly Dozois from Ocean Beach Consulting offers called, “Influence Inside™”.

This program is all about helping people gain the ability to present an idea and a way that others will support it. Gaining influence within a company. This is not about external sales. This is about influence. Getting people to buy into your ideas and want to come along with you. The objective of that is increasing your ability to communicate your ideas in a way that matters to your stakeholders. Flexing your communication style to influence your stakeholders, communicating your ideas in a way that establishes credibility and common ground with others.

Communicating data and ideas in a way that's compelling, understanding emotions and, applying the influence inside approach to real-world stakeholders.

Connect Emotionally

At the end of the day, what Kelly and her research boils influenced down to is how do you connect emotionally with people, with their desires, with their hopes, with their fears? And for all of these, I'll go back to the example of the conference that we want to sell that I want to sell or tha, my friend Marnie wants to sell to her. People in her network, people desire connection, right? They want to be part of something. They want to come together, they want to learn, they have hopes that they'll be able to grow their career and get a bigger job.I can use the connect emotionally piece to get to connect that.

Credibility

The next piece is credibility. How can I establish trust? How can I establish perceived competence? So this is where I would go to people in my network and continue to build that rapport and find the people that already do trust me and tell them about it. People that don't, I might get to know them better by getting on a call, sharing my story, hearing more about what they care about. And then making recommendations and making a connection, offering things to them without trying to sell them something and that's going to build my credibility and build trust.

Competence

I know a lot of people would probably look at the conference I'm organizing and saying this guy's never organized a conference before. Is he competent enough? Does he know what he's doing? I may need to prove that better.

How can I prove my competence? One of the things may be I've got a lot of connections. I know a lot of people that have organized conferences before I plan on talking to them. I plan on talking to a lot of people in my network about what makes a great conference. I know that because my network is so strong that we will have some great people in the room and that should build credibility.

Common Ground

The next piece is common ground. What's the benefit to them and how can I speak in a way that reflects their needs? So you're trying to influence someone. The mistake that a lot of people make is they talk all about themselves. I want you to come to this conference because I want to fill the room because I want it to make me look good and build my authority and I want everyone to be impressed with me and I want to make money and I want an excuse to talk to all these people.

Do you see what I did? It was all about me. Why would you want to come to a conference if all I'm doing is making it about me? Obviously, that's not establishing much common ground and it's certainly not focused on you.

Now, if I were to flip that around and say, I would love for you to come to this conference because I think it's going to be a great way for you to connect with others, for you to build your network, for you to get ideas, to achieve some of your goals, to solve some of your problems. I think you're going to learn a lot of things. You are going to get to do some experiential learning. You're going to get to do some innovating, some thinking about the future and how you can disrupt and be more innovative. You're gonna learn about trends and you never know, you might be looking for a job down the line or you might want to hire someone and you're going to have some great connections from this conference that are going to help you with all of that.

I really think it's a good idea for you to come. Look at the difference between me talking about myself vs making it about you.

Compelling Position and Evidence

The fourth piece is a compelling position and evidence. So what evidence do I have and how can I present it in a meaningful way? People do respect evidence.This is probably my weakest place because I tend to talk in terms of big picture and vision and, um, I know how to use energy and enthusiasm to make things compelling. I often don't focus as much on data and analytics and what's the pure ROI.

I've been to many conferences myself. I know what makes a good one. I know what makes a bad one. I know how important a network can be because I personally have gotten many jobs and started businesses and benefited from having a strong network and I'm sure that you have seen that in your own life and your own career. I could probably find some data to show people who attend conferences regularly are a 25% more likely to get promoted because they have better connections or they find their new job 30% faster than someone who doesn't attend conferences.

These are made up figures by the way but there are numbers that I could see being true. And you can see how I could use data to now back up why I think you should come to my conference, The Talent Development Think Tank.

Constructive Influence

Those are the important pieces of influence that I've learned from my friend Kelly Dozios, who again, is a partner of mine and I offer that I'm certified to facilitate that program.

If you're looking to improve influence in your company because you have people, not just salespeople but engineers and IT workers and lawyers, who they could benefit from getting better at influencing, let me know.

I think by improving these influence skills people and companies will become more productive and innovative as well. If you're looking to improve this within your companies, reach out to me. I have this program influence inside and if you go to my podcast website, you'll find that we have a free learning journey for you there as well.

Talent Development Hot Seat

Be sure to check out our website for all of our learning journeys and if you are ready to buy tickets to our conference, Talent Development Think Tank you can get them on our conference website.

Let me know what you think.