1027. Do You Have Sales Balls 🍒

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do you have sales balls? You don't if you're not willing to take a risk. Today I'm reading out of Jeff Gidmer's book, The Little Red Book of Selling. And he's talking about risk. And sales is imminent in risk. You cannot be in sales. You're just an order taker. If there's no risk, you're just an order taker. But if you're going to be sales, uh if you're going to be successful in sales, it's going to be full of risk. Let me read to you what he writes about this. He says any salesperson who is unwilling to risk should simply get out of sales. And it's not just risk and asking for a sale, it's risk in prospecting, risk in cold calling, risk in fighting the competition. It's risk in creative follow-ups, and risk in sticking to your price and calling your prospects bluff. Risk or the risk factor in selling permeates every aspect of the process. And people who are unwilling to take a risk usually lose to the ones who do. Get them or says, I call this sales balls. The thing about sales balls is the only way that you get them is you gotta earn them. And you gotta earn them by taking a risk. Now, risk for you as a salesperson is what? It's the feeling of if I take the risk and ask for the sale or push the customer or follow up or cold call, all these things that he listed out. If I do that, what could be the consequence? That's the risk that we're weighing. The consequence is rejection, the feeling of embarrassment, the feeling that I did all this work and wasted my time because they bought somewhere else. Or maybe it's the feeling of I went too far. I don't want to come across pushy. But see, you got to be persistent in sales. Pushy and persistence are two totally different things. Pushy is one idea, my idea, don't care about what you say, and you're just going head first in. Persistent means I'm going to give you an idea, you say no, and I pivot and show you another way of looking at it. How about this? Based on what you're saying, is this. See, there's a difference. So what you have to do as a salesperson is you have to push yourself to be persistent with the customer. Pushing yourself means that you got to take that risk and feel embarrassed, getting rejected repeatedly, feeling like you're going too far. Maybe things get a little tense there for a second, and then you stay in the pocket and you help clean that up with a clarifying thought. That's a whole nother episode there. So my point is a lot of times as salespeople, so my point is you don't have sales balls because you're unwilling to feel that risk. And notice what I said it's the feeling of risk. See, it's the voice of comfort that says, no, don't do this. This is what's going to happen. It's it's trying to make you feel safe, but you can't cash. But let me tell you, risk is safe. Safe is risk. Playing it safe is gonna leave you broke, is gonna leave you with the scraps in life. Taking the risk is actually safe because you get better, you get bolder, because it creates more opportunities. See, the risk that you feel, don't think that you're the only person in the room that is feeling that risk. Your customer who is thinking about buying is weighing risk. See, there's a whole conversation going on in their head that you don't even know about. And so they're sitting there thinking about the should I or shouldn't I? They're sitting there making a determination that they don't know if they deserve it, they don't know if they can afford it. All these kinds of, see, there's all these things swirling around in their head and they don't know. So you're sitting there talking to them and you're like, ta-da, da-da-da-da-da-da. You're doing all these things, and in their head, they're like, I don't know, I don't know. And so a way for them to feel safe is they simply tell you no. When salespeople are are focused on how they're feeling, the feeling of rejection, embarrassment, wasted time, I don't want to push them. When you're focused on that and a customer tells you no, you fade off. You're like, yeah, okay, I get it. I don't want to push. And that's what happens. And you're actually doing your customer a disservice big time. Because, see, you didn't you didn't do anything about their risk, you didn't help them. So they have to walk off, go somewhere else, and either go talk to a friend who tries to help them out, or they sit there and marinate in their own thoughts, or God forbid, they go to another salesperson who does your job for you. Gittamer says this in the book. I love this. Let me find it. Risk is harder to identify than it is to eliminate. I love that. That's so true. Risk is harder to identify because, like I said, there's a whole conversation going on in their head. It's harder to identify, but it's easier to eliminate. So your job is to help reduce or eliminate the risk they feel. That's what your job to do as a salesperson. So, this is what's going to make you a whole lot more successful in sales. When you feel that point of hesitation, let me give you a four simple questions to ask yourself when you're working with the customers. So when you get this internal negotiations, you're like, I don't know if it should, what if I get rejected? You're feeling all that with yourself. Don't make it about you. Instead of thinking about the feeling of some sort of outcome, focus more so on how can I reduce or eliminate the risk that my customers are feeling right now. Remember, both parties are feeling risk. You only have the feeling, they have the consequences because they're the ones paying. You're not, you're the ones simply playing. Your job is to help reduce or eliminate risk so that way you can empower them to make a financial decision. And when you will take this subtle mind shift, it is going to open up opportunities for you, and then you're not going to feel all personally rejected. Because, see, sometimes customers will tell you no. Oftentimes they will tell you no. But the no you hear is actually a no in disguise. It's a K and OW. They don't know if they can afford it. They don't know if your product's going to hold up. They don't know if this is the right way to buy because they've never done this before. I have people that wire deposits and full payments for vehicles that they've never even seen. You think there's not risk in wiring me $100,000 from somebody they've only known for an hour? Yes. So my job is to help reduce that. It's by being able to back up my words. It's being able to provide a service and back that up repeatedly so that way the word gets out, aka Google Reviews. So let me give you four ways to help get the focus off of you, that internal negotiation, and more so with the customer, so that way you can help reduce the risk. The first question that you got to ask yourself is why are you here? Why are they here? What's going on in their life? What's the pinch point? Are they upsizing or are they downsizing? Did they get a promotion? So they want to feel good about themselves? Did they just move into town? Are they having to move out of town? Did they just go through a divorce? Do they need something safer? Like, why are you here? What made you reach out to us? What made you reach out to me? Sometimes I ask customers that. Okay. So now there's already some credibility there established. So I work off of that. But sometimes they reach out to you and be like, I don't know, I just came across you guys. So I have to work harder and establish some trust and credibility before we move further. That's a simple thing. Number two, look at what they have now. What's their current situation? I sell cars, so I'm going to use this and this metaphor. So what do they like about it? What do they dislike about it? If you sell houses, okay, what's the house they're getting out of? What's their current housing situation? And what is the next thing that they're looking at? Is it better or worse? So a lot of times customers will be looking at a newer vehicle with me. It's an upgrade in my mind, but it's a downgrade to them because there's features that they've loved for the last seven years, and it doesn't have it in this. So sometimes it's that kind of situation. I tell my salespeople, look at the crime scene. What do they have now? What are they wanting to get into? And so sometimes you got to work off of that baseline, and then you move from there. And sometimes you got to be a therapist. Sometimes what they're moving into is in their minds, it's kind of a downgrade, but they need to save some money. Like something's happened, they got laid off or whatever, can't just can't afford it anymore. So they're worried about how they look to other people. So sometimes, man, you got to help them through that and say, look, this is just a temporary situation. We're gonna get you going again. Let's this solve this now, okay? And then look, let's keep this 18 months or so, and then let's reevaluate from there. The third thing in helping reduce the risk is what's not being said are often repeated. So what's not being said, so when you're working with customers, especially one-on-one, or if you're doing uh Zoom or whatever the case may be, what's not being said, and what you're looking for is you're looking for them wiping their mouth, or maybe they're maybe they're touching their head, thinking, and then raking down their hands over their face. Those of you who aren't white watching the video, sometimes it's the subtle head shake, sometimes it's the subtle head nod, sometimes it's the wincing, sometimes it's the jaws clenching, your your eyes tightening up, and it's so many salespeople just glaze over this, or sometimes they keep saying a repeated phrase. We miss this as salespeople because we're always like trying to get our point and we're trying to like let me just make the sale, and you're missing key things to call out because see, those subtleties is the risk speaking to you, and so you got to identify that. Seems like that you're not quite certain. Seems like that you had some questions about what I was saying, what's what's going on, or maybe they're saying something repeatedly, and you say, You've repeated that a few times. Tell me more about that, and put the tension back on them so that way they can unpack it instead of you just assuming or you know what most salespeople do, you know. I didn't see that, I didn't see that. And they have these happy years, and they just and then it blows up later on. You're like, man, all this time I wasted because you did not call out the risk right then and there. The fourth thing in reducing the risk for your customer or eliminating it altogether is how can you make it easy? I remember when Zappos came on the scene. Is Zappos still in business? I guess they are. When Zappos came on the scene, they before they sold out to Amazon, they were an online shoe company, like one of the first ones out there. So Tony Shea, the founder, was like, man, buying shoes online was like totally foreign. And so he said, Well, I'm gonna reduce the risk. You can buy the shoes from me, you can keep them for 365 days, and if you don't like it, on day 365, send them back to me. I'll refund them. He said there were people that returned shoes that obviously were worn. We refunded their money. See, he had to reduce the risk. He had to get the trust and credibility out there. Same thing like the purple mattress. Like you can buy a purple mattress, it was that was their thing. Like you buy a mattress online, we'll ship it to you, sleep on it for whatever 60 nights, and if you don't like it, return it back. I have yet to see anybody at the UPS store pushing a king-size mattress in there to return it. They don't do it, they just simply reduce the risk. Same thing which you got to do in sales. So when customers, you got to reduce the risk. Sometimes what they're saying looks like an objection, but it's actually a stall. So I'm going to test that. So when they sit there and say, Well, yeah, all this looks good. Tell you what, let's just uh let's just button this all up tomorrow. I got a meeting I got to go to. I've never met so many customers in my life who have meetings. I mean, I'm talking about meetings at 8 o'clock at night. Never. I'm like super busy, but these people are beyond busy. I never knew doctors' offices were open at you know six at 5 30. But customers will, yeah, hey, I got to get to a doctor's appointment. I'm like, what? It's 5 30. Yeah, I got, I got, I got to get there. So what I do is I make it easy. I believe them at face value. And I say, okay, no problem. Everything else looks good. Yeah, everything looks good. Tell you what, let me go ahead and work it up with the banks. That way I'll have it ready to go. I'll call you in the next 30 minutes or so. We'll get it all buttoned up. How's that sound? That way when you come back, it'll be ready. See, this is like a ping that I'm sending out there to see how that how that echo comes back. And so a lot of times, what is that objection was actually just a stall. And then the real real comes out. The real reel is where, okay, this is this is the real objection. And then that opens up, and so that way I can address it from there. But we miss these things because we don't make it easy for them. Many times you're going to say that, and because you say this, when you get comfortable saying this, because you said it in such a confident, bold, straightforward, no extra filler words or anything like that. Great. Tell you what, everything else looks good. Great. Let me work it up with the banks. I'll have it ready to go. Let's say we meet back up in an hour, we'll get everything buttoned up. How's that sound? And dude, I'm staring them dead in the face. Many times they'll be like, uh, okay. And boom, you're off to the races. Because by and large, people are terrified of making a decision. They are. They don't want to make a wrong decision, which is why they tend to stay with the the same thing. This is the way, this is what I've always known. So they they're worried about again, it's a no, K and O W. They don't know how their friends are going to perceive it, they don't know what their family's gonna say. So sometimes it's they're weighing a little bit of that. And you as a salesperson have to help them through that. So that way you can reduce the risk and they feel empowered on making a decision, and that decision is with you. See, it's isn't this a totally different mindset shift? Both parties are feeling risk, but the only way that you're going to be successful in sales, you got to get some sales balls. The only way that you're gonna do that is stop worrying about your risk and help reduce or totally eliminate theirs. All right, I'll see you back here next time. Keep it simple, keep it moving, never settle, stay tough. Peace.