October 12, 2024 | Read online
Helping elevate the people and profession of Sales by sharing authentic conversations, practical tips, expert advice, relevant tech and real-world lessons from my experience selling every day. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
I hope you all get Monday off and have a chance to relax a bit.
This week’s newsletter has a few tactical tips and resources that came from conversations I’ve had recently with JB Sales Members.
I’ve also included a post I did about the future of sales that I'd love your insights on.
Let’s make it happen!
TACTICAL TIPS: Does that make sense?
SALES RESOURCES: Which AI platform should I use?
SALES FROM THE STREETS: Where will the future reps come from?
TACTICAL TIPS:
Does that make sense?
I used to use this question all the time when presenting to a prospect.
However, I realized the majority of the time I was asking this question, I was actually asking it to myself because I knew I had droned on for far too long and probably wasn’t making much sense.
I also realized how insulting and worthless this question is.
99% of the time the answer I would get would be “yup, makes sense” which would make me feel good and continue my monologue.
It never really told me whether or not what I was showing them really made sense.
Next time, Instead of asking, “does that make sense?” during a presentation do this:
- Start your presentation with an agenda and ask everyone in the presentation - “what’s the one thing you want to see from today’s presentation that will help you determine whether or not it’s worth taking the next steps?” Write down each response.
- Tell everyone that as you go through the presentation you’ll be looking for their feedback along the way, specifically in areas that address their priorities
- As you go through the presentation, skip through the parts that aren't as important or that all the other competitors have
-
When you get to a point in the presentation that addresses one of the priorities that someone on the call said they wanted to see, instead of saying, “does that make sense?” address the person with the priority directly and say either one of these instead:
-
Sarah, you said that X was your main priorities. This is the part of our solutions that addresses that.
- How does that compare to what you’re doing now?
- How do you see that fitting into your existing workflow?
The way they explain how it compares to what they’re doing now or how they see it fitting into their existing workflow will tell you everything you need to know on whether or not it made sense.
SALES RESOURCES:
Which AI platform should I use?
I get asked a lot about which of the AI tools I use.
I typically use ChatGPT or Perplexity.
I really haven’t explored much about Gemini, Claude or any of the others but I've heard good things.
That’s why I was pretty psyched to come across an AI tool that lets you use all of them and compare answers.
Check it out and let me know what you think: https://thisorthis.ai/ (not a sponsor)
SALES FROM THE STREETS:
Where will the future sales rep come from?
I’ve been struggling with this question ever since my conference tour a few weeks ago (Dreamforce, INBOUND and Linkedin INsiders).
Many of the new features these platforms are rolling out, specifically these AI agents, are going to be able to do a lot of the admin and grunt work that sales reps do with the promise of freeing up reps to do more client engagement work.
However, I see a big problem for both experienced and inexperienced reps.
As I said in my intro, I think we need to focus on Sales Fundamentals, Business Acumen and Agility.
Experienced reps should have decent sales fundamentals and business acumen but agility is the main challenge.
Once you reach a certain point in your life/career, it’s hard to change your processes and routines, including adopting new tech. In other words, they lack agility.
On the other hand, newer, less experienced reps are usually tech natives and can adapt quickly, but they don’t have the fundamentals or business acumen yet.
The fundamentals tend to come from the grunt work a sales rep has to do at the beginning of their careers. Many reps don’t get a lot of good training but they learn by doing and through osmosis by being around other sales reps.
With the majority of the grunt work being done by AI agents and sales reps coming into the profession in a remote world I wonder where those fundamentals are going to come from.
I wrote a post about this on Linkedin that got some traction and has some interesting perspectives I think you will find interesting. I’d also love to hear your thoughts if you have a chance.
I asked ChatGPT to give me some insights on the question too and it actually had a pretty good response.
Regardless, make sure you keep evolving and getting better.
ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME
- The JB Sales Membership is where you’ll get access to my live training, workshops, AMAs and OnDemand catalog so you can level up your sales skills every day! 3000+ Sales pros have already joined. Are you next?
- The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business. (this is where you’ll hear the Guy Kawasaki episode on May XYZ)
- The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently.
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