How Stephanie Chung Sells: Selling is For Losers. Solve, Instead.

Stephanie Chung started in sales at 25, saddled with a $25 million quota, with absolutely no idea what sales really was and, least of all, how she would possibly drive that kind of revenue.

Her boss’s approach – sink or swim. If she were to sink, no problem, the boss would just hire someone else.

Well, Stephanie swam. She swam to hitting that quota and every quota thereafter. She swam to becoming the number-one seller for the organizations she worked for. She swam to sales leadership, and then she swam to serving as a keynote speaker for sales teams. She’s still swimming today, helping sellers around the world hit their loftiest goals.

What did she figure out? How did she transition from selling to sales leadership? What drives her?

We interviewed Stephanie for our latest edition of How I Sell to find out:

1. What do you love most about selling?

What I love most about selling is that we get to help people find solutions to their most serious problems. 

What I like on the money side is salespeople tend not to have a cap on our commission. Some of us make more money than the president of the United States — and we don't have half the problems he has to deal with. 

So, I love sales for a lot of reasons. There's great money to be had here. But equally as important, we really get to help important people in important companies solve really important problems.

2. What is your sales philosophy, in three sentences or less?

I believe selling is for losers. We don't sell, we don't pitch, we don't coerce, we don't manipulate. We really are asking questions to truly understand the pain points for the particular customer or company that we're serving.

And then our job is to give them a solution to the problem. 

Selling is for losers. We solve problems. That's what we do.

3. What’s your favorite discovery question?

I have two. The first one is, “Do you know very much about my product or service?” 

The word “very” is super important. The truth of the matter is the prospect knows something about your product, or they wouldn’t be meeting with you. So they know a little bit. 

But, when you ask that, they're going to give you a negative response, likely, “I know something about your product or service, but I don't know very much.” That gives you the opportunity to hit your top points.

So I really like that question. 

I also love asking people about the impact of this problem not being solved from a non-financial perspective.

The truth is whenever we're talking to prospects and potential buyers, they have a problem. That's why they're meeting with us. They usually articulate that problem by focusing on financial situations. They’re losing productivity. They’re losing money. All those things are important. But what I really want to know is what is the non-financial impact that you're having if this problem doesn't get solved?

Once they answer that, we're getting to a much deeper conversation. They're going to start talking about things that don't really have anything to do with money. 

Many years ago, this gentleman brought me in because the airline that his company was working with was having horrible on-time performance issues. 

This particular company did a lot with production and manufacturing and would fly a crew out from Monday through Thursday, then they’d fly back home on Friday. However, people weren't getting there until Tuesday, which meant they now had to work through Friday, which then meant that they left on Saturday and they were only home with their families one day.

It went against the entire philosophy of the company as far as work-life balance was concerned. It was also impacting productivity and causing them to lose money. 

When I asked him the question about how this has impacted him from a nonfinancial perspective, he said, “When my people can't get there, that means they can't spend time at home with their families, they're missing the soccer games, they're missing church with their family, they're missing all the things that are important to them that they schedule over the weekend.”

Another thing he said is, “Quite frankly, this makes me look stupid with my peers. My colleagues are like, ‘Why can't we get them there Monday through Thursday? That's what we've got them contracted for.’ It makes me look like we don't know what we’re doing.” It was really causing him embarrassment.

As a salesperson, that's a very different conversation than one focused on on-time performance or losing productivity or losing finances. 

I love that question because we all know people buy on emotion, and they get their logic to back it up. 

4. How has sales leadership changed?

Leadership has changed because employees are no longer taking the B.S. Leaders are really having to lead. And if they don't know how to lead, they need to figure it out. It's too important of a job not to know how to do it.

Specifically, we've got to get back to the basics as leaders. You've got to understand that you're not leading employees. You're leading somebody's father, somebody's brother, somebody's mother, somebody's best friend, somebody’s sister or brother.

We have complex lives. You constantly hear leaders saying, “Oh, I want you to bring your whole self up to work.” Well, do you? Because that whole person means that you as a leader have to be prepared to lead a whole person, not just Amari from marketing or Stephanie in sales. 

You really have to understand that the people you lead are complex people, and they deserve to be heard. They deserve to be listened to. They deserve to be coached, they deserve to be developed, and they deserve to be able to have a dialogue with you. 

They want to talk about their future and how you can help them get better.

That's what leadership is. Leadership is not about a title. Leadership really is about influence. How you use that influence is what separates good leaders from great leaders from elite leaders.

5. How do you use LinkedIn in your current roles?

I love LinkedIn. 

It keeps me abreast of what's going on in the professional world. It also allows me to stay connected with friends, colleagues, former colleagues, and people that I've had the honor of being able to speak and keynote in front of. 

It's also great as a salesperson. I'm not in the field anymore out there selling products or services. But when I was or when I was overseeing sales teams that did, LinkedIn was an absolute must. It allowed me to research and get to know the person, their background, what people were saying about them, what they care about, and what they follow.

It gives you a lot of great insight. When you're talking to people, you have an advantage because you have so much information about what they care about and what they pay attention to. 

So I'm a big fan of LinkedIn, and I post all the time. It’s how I communicate with my network.

6. How did you make the transition from salesperson to sales leader?

There are so many salespeople who were great sellers, then the company makes them the sales leader and they blow up in flames. That’s because there's so much more to leadership than just being able to produce a number.

The transition for me was simple. When I was asked to lead my very first sales team, the first phone call I made was to my dad. I called my father because my father was a master sergeant in the US Air Force. And when you think of the military, so much of it is leadership.

I had watched my father be a leader as a little girl growing up. I remember saying to him, “Dad, I've been promoted. I want to do a really good job. What would you recommend?”

My father told me two things. He said, “Always protect your team and always know there are two sides to every story.” 

I still lead that way. 

You should also have a team that's diverse: diverse in time at the company, diverse in communication, and diverse in the obvious groups of age, gender, and ethnic groups.

Diverse teams are more powerful and more successful. But when people talk about diversity, what we don't talk about is sometimes that can be a bit challenging. 

But the best way to be a great leader is not to try to take a one size fits all approach. If you're a successful salesperson and you were number one, you had a specific way of selling. That same way may not be the best way for your sales team to sell. 

I always say to any new sales leader – especially if they were a great salesperson — throw away everything you know. Listen to your people. Ask them great questions so you understand their superpower. Then cultivate and nurture that.

7. What’s your biggest failure in sales and how did that experience transform you?

When I first got into sales, I was a disaster. I was 25 years old and selling for one of the airlines. They gave me a quota of $25 million, and I had never sold anything before.

My boss wasn't a great developer of people. What she wanted was that $25 million quota to be hit. If I couldn't get it done, she would simply replace me with somebody who could. I understand that now. But when you're in the middle of it, it’s overwhelming.

I would go home every single night and cry. Every night. Because I couldn't understand sales. It was just like jargon to me: open probe, closed probes, support systems. When do you ask them a direct question? How do you handle rejections? 

My boss would belittle me every single day because I didn't get it. I was like, okay, I'm tired of crying every single night. I'm tired of losing every single day. I'm tired of being at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to sales performance.

I took all the training and lessons I had been given. I remember sitting on my kitchen floor and laying all the training out and putting it in a structure that could make sense to me. Up until that point, it really didn't make sense to me.

I had to rearrange it so that I could understand it. Then, all of a sudden, it clicked. Once I started to lay it out in a way that made complete sense to me, my career took off. 

Not only did I hit my quota, but from that point on, I never missed a quota again. I understood sales in a way that made sense for both the buyer and myself.

I started out rough and it was horrible, but now I am a professional speaker who's brought around the world to keynote for sales kick-offs because I can easily break sales into bite-sized pieces that sellers can learn from. So, I’m grateful for the experience, in a weird way.  

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