Professional Sales as Habit - How Well Does It Fit?

Had an interesting conversation with two principals of an accounting firm this morning, about embedding a business development (i.e., sales) mindset with those who never wanted to sell.  Not easy to do - unless you change the frame.

There are many ways to think about selling, and some are much more productive and congruent with a professional self-image than others.

If the frame in which you think about selling is to focus on the numbers you need to post, it creates desperation and leads to behaviors that won't work and don't fit.

If your frame is that you have to hunt prospects, pitch them, overcome their objections and close them to win the deal, it requires an aggressiveness that doesn't come naturally or comfortably to professionals who didn't plan to be salespeople.

But if the frame is professional sales - that you provide a useful expert service that really helps current clients, and as you meet people you want to discover whether they may have a need for this useful service - it's a better fit. Your conversations are about discovery, not manipulation; you're not trying to convince anyone, but just understand whether there may be a need.

Because you're not "selling" anything, unless you make a connection and discover a need.  At each step of the sales process, you only need to get permission to move along to the next step. And if a relationship happens and a need becomes apparent, you're only inviting the prospective client to act in their own best interest by getting your services.

This approach feels very different for professionals who become responsible for business development.

Why?  Because it's honest.  There's no manipulation, no "games," no deception. Metaphors of war and win/lose just don't fit, and are not necessary.

It's a professional approach to sales, with the highest integrity.

Making (fewer) Bad Decisions

Today I'm on the Peter McClellan Radio show (AM1570) at 4 PM, talking about "Making Bad Decisions" - and of course, the subtext is "how can we make better decisions" and "how can we avoid the bad ones"

I based my comments on a couple of books I re-read for this, Robert Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" and Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational."  I've included my mind-map notes on both books on my website, events page.

The one thing I really wanted to say that we didn't cover was about the critical importance of "reflection in action" in improving decisions.  That's deliberately revisiting how you reached the decision, honestly searching for what part was logic, what was "gut" or instinct, what information you had and what you lacked, what signals of external influence were present, and so on.

Many people think we make most of our decisions rationally.  Not so much.  There's a rational component, and some decisions are best made mostly rationally.  But we have a lot more brains than logic, and the unconscious, intuitive "hunches" and emotions are often bringing us important information that we haven't worked up to conscious awareness.

When we revisit our decisions to analyze them, we can better understand how we really made them.

Most people think of analyzing their failures, and of course we should.

But most don't think to analyze their successes.  And which do you want more of?