In a perfect world, your sales team would always sell from a place of passion, purpose, and unending motivation.
In the real world? Sales teams lose their focus, forget their purpose, and feel discouraged. The result: a sales dip.
What if there was a way to empower your sales team to communicate from a place of passion and excitement even after a streak of hearing no? What if they could communicate powerfully to clients about your product or service and hear yes more often?
We learned five proven tactics for making that vision a reality in our recent interview with Josh Keck, COO of Ran Services. Josh uses these tactics every day with his sales team, and we're confident they will work for yours as well.
1. Start With the "Why"
Simon Sinek, founder of Start with Why, defines the "Why" as the purpose, cause, or belief that inspires you to do what you do. It's the internal fire keeping your sales team going even when they face rejection.
Understanding the "Why" behind the product or service your team is charged with selling does something no amount of training could: it keeps your team motivated.
Start with the "Why." Why are you selling this product or service? Why do people need it? Why should your sales team care?
In our interview, Josh said that when you communicate and sell from your "Why," it creates a feeling of genuineness and passion to your customers and gives you credibility. It's a powerful way to communicate.
2) Know the Motivators
There are only two main motivators in our lives: pain and pleasure.
We will do quite a bit to experience more pleasure in our lives, but the avoidance of pain is the most powerful motivator. We will do anything to avoid pain.
Understanding these motivators will help you communicate the "Why" to your sales team, so they can communicate the "Why" to their customers.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What pain can you help people avoid if they use your product or service?
Remembering the answers to these questions will help fuel the "Why" behind "hitting the streets" every day to sell your product or service, and it will teach your team a powerful lesson.
Sales is a service to your customers. (Click to tweet)
When your sales team understands how your product or service helps people avoid pain, selling becomes less of a way to just make money and more of a service.
Your customers will feel the difference between the two.
3) Talk About the "Why" Every Day
Selling from the "Why" doesn't happen overnight, nor will communicating the "Why" to your team in a single meeting do the trick.
You need to keep the Why of your product or service in conversation early and often. (Click to tweet)
Think about it. There is a lot on your sales team's plate. Between meeting with customers, explaining features, filing reports, following up with leads, traveling, and all their other duties, it's easy for your team to get caught up in the daily grind.
Every day, they need to be reminded of the "Why" behind the product or service they are selling.
Here are some great ways to communicate the Why regularly:
- Start every meeting with a success story (see the next point below!)
- Ask your team who they helped today (not who they sold to)
- Include the "Why" in your emails, memos, and trainings
- Keep the "Why" in front of your team every day so they not only remember, but begin to live and breathe that "Why" themselves.
4) Use Stories
Telling stories is a powerful way to communicate the "Why" behind your product or service.
Data, statistics, and charts might show trends and communicate the details of your product to engage your logical senses, but it's through stories that you engage the heart.
Get a story every day from your team about how your product or service helped a customer avoid a pain point or brought pleasure into their business.
Imagine how sharing a story every day would motivate your team and remind them of the "Why" behind your product or service. Rather than telling them, you would be "showing" them real-life examples.
5) Tie Sales Into Their Personal "Why"
Once you've instilled the "Why" of selling your product or service into your sales team, it's time to take the process to the next level: tie business success to personal goals.
Your sales team spends a good chunk of their week working for you and their customers. Even if they understand and communicate from the "Why" of your product or service, if it's not tied to their personal "Why," the benefit will only last so long.
When a personal "Why" and a business "Why" aren't tied together, the business "Why" will always lose out.
You can help your sales team tie business success to personal goals in a few ways:
- Encourage your team to develop a personal "Why."
Tactics that Work
These tactics don't just look good on screen--they've been tested and they work!
Josh Keck uses these five tactics every day to empower his sales team to sell from the "Why" and has seen the results.
His team understands the "Why" behind their business--to make your work easier and make you look good--and sells that "Why" to their customers. The result? A business that is continuing to grow due to a motivated, credible sales team.
You can find the interview that this post was based on, and many more, by subscribing to the B2B Growth Show on iTunes.
---
James Carbary is the founder of Sweet Fish Media, a done-for-you business development service that guarantees new relationships between B2B companies and their ideal clients. James is a contributor for Business Insider & Huffington Post, and he also co-hosts the B2B Growth Show: a podcast dedicated to helping B2B executives achieve explosive growth.