The Power of Listening in Sales - Part 1 in Mental Selling’s Listen to Sell Series

This is Mental Selling. This is the sales podcast for people that are dedicated to making difference in customers' lives and have a purpose beyond just a paycheck. I'm your host Wilmolano. Let's get right into the show. It's not easy to be in sales these days. The sales ecosystem is growing more and more complex. With long buying cycles, numerous and unpredictable stakeholders, and a customer base that's both well-informed and distracted and pretty confident they don't need us. What's more, the exponential increase in digital interactions has overloaded us all, with enough data and analytics to make the techiest of headspin. For too long, Mozen Sales Profession have been short-changed by wrong-headed notions of what sales success requires and what it looks like. As the selling environment has evolved in recent years, many are beginning to question whether their role still has meaning, some are wondering whether they even want to be in sales anymore. That's a quote from the newly released book Listen to Sell, How Your Mindset, Skill Set, and Human Connections Unlock Sales Performance. Co-authors Mike Estarday and Derek Roberts are here to unpack that and more in the first of what will be several bonus episodes that get under the hood of why selling is about establishing your true purpose, unlocking your inner drivers, and why selling is about more than just listening to the customer. Mike and Derek, this has been a long time coming. Thank you for taking time to be part of mental selling today. Thank you for having us. I'm excited to be here and to talk about some of the challenges that sales people face and really the opportunities that they have ahead of them. Well, I'm excited to be here. So Mike and Derek, let's start here. Many people, both people in buying roles and sellers themselves, they might be questioning the value of sales people today. Is the role even still relevant and where, if at all, does it still fit into the buyer's journey? But you say in the book that there's actually never been a better time to be in sales. Why do you say that? Today there's so much artificial intelligence that it's easy to think that a robot can make the decisions for us in recommendations. The truth is there's so many options today for buyers and they've researched perhaps online that they need a real live person with some insights to help them think through. What's the right decision for me in my situation? It's not in spite of technology that we need humans to really because of it. It makes the sales role even more productive. There's so much more that we can draw upon that you can be smarter when engaging your clients. You can have so much more insight and background to offer relevant solutions. Mike's right, there is a lot of confusing information out there as well. Buyers come and they're informed, but informed on what is so many different sources of information, which one is reliable. How do you decipher that down into what's relevant? And so having a professional, intelligent, competent, human interpreter really is a value part of the sales process. So I think today is a prime time to be in sales, particularly for more complex solutions or high value solutions. We're happy for the robots and the algorithms to take the commodity sales. That's not very efficient human activity, but it is really valuable when somebody can come in and provide interpretive insight. Exactly. There's often said that there's really a struggle by the customers to buy more than it is a struggle to sell. A lot of buyers are looking for someone they can trust that could really give them authenticity and integrity in the kind of recommendations that they give. There's all sorts of research out there of buyers are 58%, 65. I've read recently 72%, however you want to calculate that, of the way through the buying process before they talk to a salesperson. The way I would interpret that is the salesperson is not less important. They're more important because if a buyer is that far along, they then need somebody who's really sharp and on their game to either validate what they've learned on their own or to just frankly to show up really well and help get the idea or that sale across the finish line. They're not less important. They're more. What role then do sales people play today when buyers have so much data available to them and there's so many sales and enablement tools, AI, etc. That's changed in the sales landscape and that probably accelerated with the pandemic a few years ago and what hasn't changed. There's probably more skepticism on buyers' parts today than they're having in the past. They're not sure what they can trust, who they can trust. That's where our book on listening and selling is really important. How can we listen between the lines and figure out what's the customer really need, what's the customer really saying and provide the kind of advice that's valuable for them to make a proper decision? Think too that you have this might mention listening, such a critical skill. If they've already done so much research, if they've already traversed sort of the exploration phase of figuring out what they think they want or what they think they need, it's really critical for sales people to listen to that and figure out, okay, what do you already know and in many cases what do you not know yet? One of the most significant roles of a sales professional is to ask questions, sometimes questions that the prospect has never considered before. We are all tuned to our own bias. You've been out, you wanted to buy something, you think you know what it is that you want, you think you've got this prime solution in mind, you talk to someone and they open up a whole new world of understanding just because they ask some questions that you'd never considered before. And when you do think about those things, you go, wow, I could have made a sub-particision or I could have even made a mistake because I never considered this other thing. If someone's listening and asking the right questions and getting me to consider another way to view this, all of a sudden the value of that conversation is tremendous to me as a potential prospect or buyer. We're going to talk later on about what value-based selling actually means. People know that term but what it actually means. But I think you're sort of alluding to it here when it's, are you going beyond just a Q&A in answering the questions that are obviously on the customer's mind? And like you said, are you opening up new possibilities or interpreting their questions and comments in ways that made allude to larger, deeper issues that you can help solve for it? And that's really what creating value is, right? How have then all these massive shifts in selling and buying and with technology and everything we're talking about? How have these massive shifts affected the way that you think salespeople approach their job? And specifically, how has it affected their confidence in the belief in what they're doing? Unfortunately, not many positive images of salespeople that we see. Whether it's movies, TV, or the way they've experienced salespeople, it's easy to have a poor view of selling. So I think for salespeople today, it's really important to realize that this is a noble profession that we define selling as identified needs, fill in needs of creating value for people. And when we realize that what we're doing is creating value, we're problem solvers, it elevates our belief in what we're doing. Virtual selling has also become a challenge. A lot of folks that are used to go and buy and see people face to face have had to adjust of how do we do this through technology? Why do we pick up different styles of people, communication styles virtually instead of in face to face, which is a challenge for people? And that's sort of baggage, if you will, the negative stereotypes about selling. That's something that long time salespeople can carry around subconsciously themselves, too. It's not just from the buying side and it's not maybe just the brand new salesperson, but you can be in sales 15, 20 years. And then the back of your mind have some of those negative stereotypes that might be holding you back. No one is immune to that subtext or what's going on, whether I've had this told to me by society all along, or it may be that I've had really strong success at times and all of the sudden the landscape has changed. I've got to learn a new technology or my product is in a different market of competition than it used to be. It used to be easy to sell because we were the only dominant player. Now we're all kinds of things that change. So even seasoned pros can wrestle with that internal question of am I still valuable? Is this still something I'm good at? There's a lot that happens inside an individual that is dynamic. And any given day we may wake up more or less engaged in how do we navigate through that, the mental side of this equation. And so whether it's the cultural subtext that salespeople are highly valued or just my own internal voice that says, I'm not sure on the top of my game anymore, those things have to be navigated through sales people. And that's actually one of the things we wanted to try and touch on in the book is speak to the individual. What is that internal belief? How do you shape that? How do you empower that to go and continue to be successful in ways that maybe you've never been successful in sales before? We thought that was a big piece of the equation that we wanted to address. There's a skill set and a mindset piece to sales. And too often there's a focus only on the skill set. We need to know how to ask questions, how to again, rapport, how to-- talk about our value, proposition, and so forth. But the mindset of what do I believe I'm really doing? Am I just trying to sell stuff to people? Or am I saying where I'm creating value for them and insights that are making a difference in the world? A lot of difference in my achievement drive of how hard I want to work and how successful I want to work, but have that different mindset. Yeah, and we're going to talk about the skill set and mindset piece a little later on, but as you're alluding to Mike, those two things are not mutually exclusive. They have to be intricately linked and they build upon each other. You can't have a focus on skill set if somebody's mindset isn't in the right place and vice versa. You can have the greatest mindset in the world, but you need the skills to be able to deliver upon what you want to be able to deliver. As the title of the book indicates, listen to Cell, which is definitely that's the comment thread. When you read it, it cuts across the entire book. How is this theme of listening in both of your minds become so essential to succeeding in sales? And I think when people hear about listening, they're probably assuming this is just about listening to the customer, but you guys, you explore it the deeper way. Can you talk about that? It's easy for people to think that selling is about talking use in your mouth, but effective selling is really use in your ears more than your mouth. We believe that there are three key conversations that we need to be aware of and be listening to. And that's how the books broken out of these three parts. And the first one is the conversation we're having with ourselves. There's the conversation with the customer, which is critical. We need to know how to have that effective conversation, but probably during the day, there's more conversation we're having with ourselves in our mind than anything else. And the question is, what are we saying to ourselves? Is it something positive and encouraging? Or is it something that's pulling us down? I can't call on these people. I can always sell X amount. Here's how successful I can be. So there's things we should be listening to and things we should not be listening to in that conversation in our head. The third conversation is one with our managers, the kind of coach you were getting. So if we think about all three of those conversations, those are really critical to have all three of those to be successful. I think Mike's exactly right. We break these things down because who I am and what I believe about myself and the role, we often say, selling happens between the years before it happens between people. What I believe about myself and the role absolutely influences the behaviors where I show up, how frequently I do, who I'm willing to call on, but it also influences the kind of conversation I then have with my customer. And whether I believe I'm there to do something, to say something, to make something happen or whether I'm there to understand. And when I show up that I want to understand what's important to my customer and I really have the attitude that I'm here to listen to you because in listening to you, we began to formulate better, better solutions. So I'm listening to myself, okay, is that clear? In my customers. And Mike's right in the third piece of this and I think often overlooked is am I listening to someone who can speak to me and observe me and give me guidance and counsel in my open to that? They're not just am I willing to hear what my manager says, but am I seeking it out? Do I have the emotional intelligence to go and look for feedback, to receive that in a way that impacts my behavior? That's not a common trait for folks. In many cases, we avoid feedback. It doesn't feel productive. We think that's a missed opportunity. And so we spend a third of our voice here talking about that coaching relationship. And how do we make sure that you get that outside vantage point on what you're doing so that you can be more successful? Are you listening to it? The idea that listening is more than just pausing so that you can let the other person speak but you've already got in your head what the response is going to be, whether it's with the customer or with your manager. But like you said, that third component of listening to yourself and having the self awareness, the mindfulness, the emotional intelligence, all of those things to really be in tune with what are you telling yourself on a day-to-day week-to-week basis? It's a really important component. I think an interesting angle that the book explores. When you look at the finished product, I know this work started on developing the book several years ago and it's now come to fruition. From the standpoint of this finished product, what do you hope that people most take away from reading it? Whether it's an individual salesperson or a sales manager, where did the book end up that you want to make sure it gets across to the reader? We hope that they realize that sales really is a noble profession. That people have a get to job instead of a have to job. If they're practicing this philosophy of customer needs focused interactions with customers, they can feel good about it, they can succeed beyond their wildest dreams and they can be very proud of the profession that they're in. I remember coming into sales and realizing early in my career that I was in sales. This was something I had chosen as a profession and wrestling with some of these very same things. A, do I have the competency to do this? B, am I the right fit for this? Do I bring the right kind of skill set or do I even want to be this? I think navigating through that if I could go back and speak to my younger self or I'm hoping that this book speaks to people in this profession and says, you know what? This is not just a stumble into profession. This is an opportunity you said get to. We get to do some incredible things for people. The sales profession is not just valuable, but it's a privilege to navigate people through to better outcomes. My hope is with this book that we both connect with people who read it and they walk away feeling inspired and empowered to be in this space. Occasionally we may have folks that decide that now that I understand what it is, it's not where I want to be. That's okay too, but they feel connected to the role of selling as one that's significant. But I think the other piece of this is that we've put enough how to in the book that they can actually go and do some things immediately with their prospects and with their customers that have an impact that there are questions embedded in the book that they can go and ask that will reshape the conversations that they're having that they will actively look for that third voice, that coaching voice so that they can grow and change. I think this is an action oriented book that challenges people to both self evaluate and then do something. If it's designed right and we put in little coaching moments along the way and lots of tips and some practical how to sell type of models and guidance that you can immediately impact the kind of engagements that you're having. I want to thank Mike and Derek for joining us for listeners. This is going to be the first of a multiple part many series of episodes around these concepts and around their new book Listen to Sell. For more about the book and to get a free preview and related content, you can visit ListenToSellBook.com, find it on Amazon.com, at Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org or wherever books are sold. You'll also find and be able to follow Mike yesterday and Derek Roberts on LinkedIn. Thanks to everybody for joining us today. We look forward to having you back again soon. Please scroll back and catch up on any previous episodes that you might have missed. And of course, as always, please tell a friend or colleague about the show and be sure to leave us a rating comment. We really appreciate the feedback as we continue to develop the show for you. Thanks everybody for being here. Thank you for listening and I really hope you've enjoyed this episode of Mental Selling. Please make sure that you're subscribed. And as always, leave us a comment or a rating, share with your networks. You'll get more content like this on our website at integritysolutions.com. Until next time, I'm Will Molano with Integrity Solutions. Thanks very much again for being with us.