Andy Paul's Blog

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Along with “value,” I believe that “empathy” is one of the most overused, and most misunderstood, words in selling.

To have empathy for your buyers, and the situation or challenges they face, it’s not enough to “put yourself in their shoes” and feel what they feel.

Effective empathy is not about knowing HOW someone feels. It’s about understanding WHY they feel the way they do.

You must understand their situation and their perspective. You have to understand the context of their challenges.

Acquiring the necessary understanding doesn’t come from reading a persona generated by marketing.

It requires a dialog with your buyer(s). It requires asking insightful questions. Most importantly, it requires that you listen slowly and carefully to their answers.

Empathy is a listening skill. To acquire a true understanding requires open-minded listening. Listening without judgment.

Without this understanding, it’s impossible to truly grasp the buyer’s challenges from their perspective.

I see too many sellers assume that having read a personal description of their buyers, they are now empathetic to their situation.

They’re not.

Feeling without understanding is sympathy.

It may seem like a small difference, but buyers don’t want your sympathy.

They want your understanding.

And they can tell the difference.

The post Let’s talk about empathy appeared first on Andy Paul.

What are your core sales values?

How are they reflected in how you sell?

As head coach of the Golden State Warriors, Steve Kerr has built a team that has achieved great success, including winning four NBA championships.

Kerr has built his teams on four core values: mindfulness, compassion, competition and joy.

The Warriors are known for playing a brand of basketball that is remarkable for its teamwork, selflessness, ruthless efficiency and flat out exuberance.

Kerr and his players believe that their team’s success, and compulsively watchable style of play, is largely a factor of the degree to which they all have embraced and bought into the culture defined by Kerr’s four core values.

Have you thought about how you could incorporate these values into your sales culture to improve your results?

It would be quite a change from the traditional sales rep focused, “what have you done for me lately” sales cultures favored by many sales managers.

Let’s take a quick look at how Kerr’s four values apply to sales.

Mindfulness. It’s about being present for the customer.

It’s about eliminating distractions and being completely focused on the customer.

It’s about being mindful of your obligations to continuously learn in order to increase the value you can deliver to your buyers.

Competition. Sales is all about competition.

You have to love battling tooth and nail with competitors (and inertia) for the right to serve your customers.

Sales is also a competition against yourself. Every day you have to compete against your fears that cause you to shrink from doing the hard, but necessary, things like picking up the phone and calling a prospect.

Compassion. Compassion starts with empathy for your customers.

This is the ability to put yourself in their shoes and examine their questions, problems and goals from their point of view.

It also requires that you have empathy for your colleagues. What are they struggling with and how could they use your help? How can you help them meet their goals?

Joy. Joy is fun.

Actually it’s one step above fun. Joy is what you experience when you are in total command of yourself, your knowledge, your products and your customers.

Joy is the pleasure that comes from the confidence, competence and purpose you display in how you help your buyers.

It’s up to sales managers to cultivate these values in their team.

It starts with modeling these behaviors with your salespeople.

Are you completely mindful and distraction free when you meet with a sales rep?

Have you invested the time to really learn about the individuals on your team and their goals, motivations and aspirations?

Do you give your people the freedom to express themselves, to let them decide how to utilize their skills to best serve your customers?

As Steve Kerr said, “A lot of teams have talent, and obviously we have great talent. But when that talent is committed to the greater good and to each other and they actually genuinely care about each other and enjoy each other, that takes you over the top.”

  Join the inaugural class of Selling School.  A 6-week intensive learning experience for uninspired account executives who want a proven human-first approach to increasing win rates and commission checks. Learn more here.

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Looking for the motivation to really succeed and live up to your potential?

Then you have to break some damn rules.

Every top sales professional I’ve worked with, shared that common trait. They broke the “rules.”

I’m not talking about ethical violations. I’m referring to the rules defined by rigid sales processes and methods that are forced onto sellers.

Rules typically that are established by managers and executives for their own convenience. Or to operate within their own comfort zone. Or that reflect their own limited sphere of experience and curiosity.

With these rules they are squashing the motivation of their sellers. And limiting their own upside.

Recent research is clear that if you want people to be self motivated to thrive, then they have to be given control over the choices they make, and to let those choices reflect their personal values and goals.

I was not a conventional salesperson in my own career. By personality, aptitude and outlook, I was different than my peers. Not better. Just different.

In order to succeed, I had to develop a way of selling that reflected those differences and that enabled me to put to use my unique set of skills and capabilities in a way that differentiated me from everyone else.

I got lucky in that I worked for several bosses that were rule breakers themselves and who demanded similar curiosity and evolution from me (and everyone else.)

It’s this idea of taking control of who you are going to be, and making the deliberate choices that define how you are going to sell, that drives self motivation.

Charles Duhigg in his book Smarter Faster Better writes about a study of seniors living in nursing homes. The goal of the study was to determine why some people thrived inside nursing homes and why others quickly began to decline both physically and mentally.

What the researchers found was that “the seniors who flourished made choices that rebelled against the rigid schedules, set menus, and strict rules that the nursing homes tried to force upon them.” They found their motivation to thrive by making choices that gave them a sense of control over their destiny. They broke the damn rules.

We need more “subversives” in sales. Sellers willing to take a risk. Sellers who are comfortable begging for forgiveness instead of permission.

I once worked for a boss who was exasperated that I considered his directives to be mere suggestions. “Let me think about that” was my usual response. Hey, it was my career at stake. My deals. My reputation. Not his. I was determined to make the choices that would impact my success.

(Finally, one day he asked “Don’t you ever just say “yes” to anything?” My answer was…)

In my work, I see too many sales organizations where their productivity is crippled by blind conformity to a process that is prized above all else. Where sales reps are over-scripted, micro-managed and collapsing under the weight of activity metrics that their inexperienced managers cling to.

Whether you’re a sales rep or a sales manager, take charge of your success. Want to be motivated to get ahead? Want to reach the next level? Well, you’re not going to achieve that being a meek little lamb led to slaughter.

Take a risk. Take control of the choices you make and how you sell. Break the damn rules.

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We have it all backwards in sales.

The hard sales skills are the easiest to learn and become proficient in.

The so-called “basics,” or “soft” skills, take a lifetime to learn and master.

I call these the Essential Skills because they’re essential to how you differentiate yourself in competitive sales situations to close more deals.

So, stop talking about “soft” skills in sales.

Connecting on a human level.

Building credibility and trust.

Demonstrating true empathy.

Using your curiosity to ask insightful questions.

Listening to understand, not respond.

Truly understanding the things that are most important to your buyer.

Being a source of value that drives decisions.

These aren’t soft skills.

They are Essential Skills with tangible value to the buyer. And you.

Sales leaders can’t easily define and track the “soft” skills with metrics so they don’t consider them to have as much value.

As a result, they don’t emphasize their importance to their sellers.

On top of that, every seller believes that they already “know the basics.”

So, they stop paying attention to them. And stop practicing them.

Here’s the problem: “knowing” is not equivalent to proficiency.

In any competitive sales situation, where the margin between winning and losing is razor thin, it’s how well you execute the “basics” that often make the difference.

If you’re not above average with your Essential Skills, your achievement will be average at best.

As we continue to automate sales, the machines start with the hard skills first. They are more easily automated. And measured.

But, where machines fall short is in the Essential human sales skills.

Authenticity, connection, rapport, empathy, curiosity, understanding, context, generosity.

So, what many sellers and sales leaders consider to be basics, are, in fact, the advanced selling skills that will enable you to win more deals.

And keep your job.

Because, if you can’t be more human than a machine, what future do you have in sales?

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Thinking of growth only as a quantity will hurt your ability to achieve your goals.

“If you focus on goals you may hit your goals, but it doesn’t guarantee growth.  If you focus on growth, you will grow and you will meet your goals.” 

I love that quote from John Maxwell (the famous American business author.)

For the metrics-obsessed in sales, take note of how Maxwell uses growth in this context.

It’s qualitative. Not quantitative. 

If you think growth is solely a numeric goal to be attained then you’ve just put a lid on your growth.

This is why quota is such a poor measure of potential. 

Goodhart’s Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it loses all value as a measure.

The reason for this is that people optimize their processes to achieve their target. Which is inherently self-limiting.

So, the most pressing question for you is not how much do you want to sell this year.

Instead, it’s how much do you want to grow this year? 

By how much do you want to expand your capabilities? What do you want to learn in order to become the very best version of you? 

Brian Tracy (via Earl Nightingale) says: 

“…if you read one book per week, 50 books per year, that will make you one of the best educated, smartest, most capable and highest paid people in your field. Regular reading will transform your life completely.”

You notice how he didn’t say if you make one more call per day or send one more email that you’ll become tops in your field.

Growth is not about doing more of what you already do.

It’s all about what you are learning that will transform the quality of your work.

Want to amp up your productivity? 

Then make it your priority to learn more. Read more. Think more.

You’ll feel yourself grow.

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Buyers choose to do business with you. Not your product.

Your product is nice. I’m sure. However, your product doesn’t win orders. You do.

I realize that this doesn’t come as revealed wisdom for most of you. The whole idea of customers “buying you” has been around forever.

However, increasingly I see B2B sellers lured by the false promise of a future in which AI-driven sales tech and data-driven processes will dramatically decrease the need to actually interact with their buyers.

(I find it kind of ironic that many sales people don’t particularly like interacting with people. It calls to mind a Peanuts cartoon strip from my childhood. In it Linus shouts out “I love Mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.”)

I believe sellers should consider instead the very real possibility that the future of complex B2B sales will unfold in just the opposite fashion.

Just like today, future buyers will have an important decision to make. One that will affect their companies and very possibly their careers. They can rely on an algorithm to advise them what to do. Or, they can talk to a human seller to provide their advice.

There’s already research that shows people are loathe to solely rely on machines to make crucial decisions for them. They prefer their final decisions to be influenced by a trusted advisor’s human judgment. 

So, what does this mean for sellers? It means you have to get even better at the human aspects of selling. In particular, building trust-based relationships with buyers.

The key is trust. 

In a recent article in the New York Times, Leigh Tost, an associate professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business was quoted as saying, “To take advice from someone is to agree to be influenced by them.”

So, in earning their trust, what the buyer did is give you, the human seller, the power to influence them with your ideas.

That trust doesn’t materialize out of thin air. You have to establish a sense of connection with the buyer as a person. They have to believe that you are sensitive to their concerns, have viable answers to their questions and can help them achieve their desired outcomes with your product.

Geoffrey Colvin, in his book Humans Are Underrated, writes that in the coming decades those professionals that are more likely to experience success will be those who are more “intensely human.”

For sellers that means developing your human selling skills to ensure that you become less robotic in how you communicate with your buyers. Not more.

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Early in my first marriage it became clear to my wife that something had to change.

And, that something was me.

I had good potential as a husband.

It was the human side of me that needed work.

This same dynamic is at work in every role we play in our lives.

Every role composed of two distinct, yet inseparable, parts:

The human.What’s defined in the job description: Boyfriend. Girlfriend. Partner. Spouse. Seller. Analyst. Engineer. Supervisor. Manager. VP. CEO.

We roll through life on the assumption that we know how to fulfill the human part. There’s nothing in life that we practice more than being human. 24/7/365.

Or, so we believe.

However, when you look at research findings about those things that negatively influence buying decisions they tend to be failures of the human, not the seller.

For instance, one study reported that 77% of decision makers believed sellers were more interested in talking about their products than understanding the buyer’s problems.

That’s not a sales skills issue. It’s a human skills problem. Be more interested in others than yourself. Put the interests of others ahead of your own.

Another study based on interviews of B2B buyers found that one of the key reasons sellers lost enterprise deals is that they failed to create an emotional connection with the decision maker(s).

That’s not a sales skills issue. It’s another human skills problem. Find common ground to connect and establish rapport with another human. Build credibility and demonstrate trustworthiness.

Sales skills will only get you halfway to where you need to be as a seller.

It’s proficiency in the human skills that will firmly differentiate you in the eyes of your buyers.

Read my new book “Sell Without Selling Out” to learn the four core human skills you need to become a complete seller (Connection, Curiosity, Understanding, Generosity.)

Click here to download a free chapter.

Or click the link below to buy it straight from Amazon.

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The best career advice ever?

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.*

Be a generalist and a specialist.

A generalist about what you sell and who you sell to.

A specialist in selling. How you sell. (And how buyers buy.)

In your sales career, you’re going to have a ton of jobs.

Boomers averaged more than 12 jobs in their careers. Millennials averaged 6 jobs just by age 26.

This means you’re going to sell a wide variety of products to a wide range of customers.

By definition, if you’re changing jobs every 1-2 years, you will never become more than a competent generalist when it comes to the products you sell and the customers you serve.

Even achieving that is not easy. Developing a level of expertise in new products and customers every year or two will require a tremendous level of active learning on your part.

However, the common thread throughout your career will be selling.

You have to learn everything about how to sell including how to:

Connect with another person.Establish your credibility.Build trust.Be curious and ask great questions.Listen to understand.Be intentional about helping buyers achieve the things that are most important to them,

These are not matters of personality.

They are skills that need to be learned. And constantly practiced.

Since our knowledge of humans and how we tick is continually expanding, this requires that you must continually learn everything you can about:

Human psychology.Decision-making.Game theory.Behavioral economicsSocial psychology.Relationships.Curiosity.Listening.

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something?

The “something about everything” is what you sell and who you sell to.

The “everything about something” is about how you sell.

Never stop learning.

*It’s a quote from Thomas Huxley. A brilliant 19th century British scientist. 

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