Tuesday, November 5, 2024

David Sandler had a rule for sales: Learn all you can about your product. Just don't tell anybody. 

His tongue was planted squarely in his check, but it's a reminder that droning on and on about you, your product or service, your company, features and benefits is a path of great resistance in sales. 

People care about themselves, their challenges, and their problems. 

Sandler knew that great salespeople were different—they knew how to use product knowledge appropriately. 

Salespeople can ask great questions when they have excellent knowledge of their product or service. Questions get prospects to think differently, and good questions teach them. 

Question: "When you do your quarterly maintenance, what kinds of things do you typically find?" 

Answer: "Hmm...we don't service our machine quarterly. I thought annually was standard practice." 

Thought: "Maybe that's why we must continually replace these parts. I bet that's it...maybe the parts are wearing out because we aren't maintaining them properly."

Questions teach. 

I saw a great example of this last week. 

Our son invited us to "Parents & Partners Day" at Penn Law, where he is a first-year law student. Of course, I was very excited to go. Should I brush up on the Constitution? 

My exposure to law school starts and stops at the movie The Paper Chase. I wasn't sure what to expect, and my head was spinning after observing the two classes (Civil Procedures and Torts). First, the students were amazing. I know it's the Ivy League, and the students are supposed to be smart, but they seemed to answer every question with depth and insight. The professors were impressive. They worked the room like a talk show host and clearly commanded the material. 

Later that day, it hit me. The professors didn't teach through declarative statements. They didn't say, "Here's something you need to know..."

They asked questions. A lot of questions! Collectively, the students spoke a lot more than the professors. 

It was a great example of teaching through questions. Even though the questions weren't directed at me, I felt the tension of trying to answer correctly. It made me think. It was engaging.  

It was a great reminder that we don't need to prove our competency and command through telling when it comes to being a sales professional or a leader. We do it by asking. 

 The Huddle is a weekly newsletter that is designed for leaders. Leaders must be learners. There is never a moment when leaders arrive. It's a never-ending growth process. I hope this can be a resource that you can use to stay sharp and share with your team.

With that, here are some things I ran across this week. 

Losing Customers—One of the best ways to keep your business strong is to retain your clients. I've read that getting a client is six times more expensive than keeping one. 

Account retention is a verb. It requires action. Businesses can't take clients for granted because our best customers are someone else's best prospects. 

I found this article from HubSpot interesting. Look at the list and see which of the nine reasons your business needs attention. 

Smarter and Fitter - We need rules. Not rules like "Eat your vegetables or you can't go outside," though that does have merit.  We need rules that are more like "advanced decisions."

Rules like:

• I don't take meetings on Fridays
• I don't check my email until 11 a.m. 
• I put my phone in another room when I sleep
• I never take a meeting unless I understand the purpose of the meeting

And so on.

I like this "rule." I've declared it more than once in my life, but I've never been able to carry it out. It's an excellent way for learners to incorporate fitness into their lives. 

If you can do it, let me know. 

Presentations - Most presentations we experience are mediocre. I have sat through hundreds of them and given quite a few myself. 

To be fair, the modern world has made giving presentations more difficult. Thanks to PowerPoint, we can make our slides amazing. Crammed full of bullet points and moving figures—oh, the possibilities! Also, everyone in the audience is being tugged by their phone. As presenters, we have this insatiable desire to share everything we know on the topic in an effort to be extra impressive. 

The problem is that's not what makes a good presentation. 

The best advice I've received is this: don't focus on what you will cover in a presentation. Focus on what you want people to take away. Do this, and you'll have a good presentation. 

I've found that to be true. This article hints at that advice. 

The Cardinal Sin of Leadership - I see this frequently. Take a top performer and, because of their success in that role, make them the leader. Think of the great salesperson who now becomes the sales manager. "Just get the team to do what you do, and we'll be great!"

That's not how it works. 

Leaders are typically the least trained people in an organization. Skill in a role does not make a leader. It's a different set of skills. 

Jocko Willink says it better than I can.

A Quote to Leave You With

 Have a great week!