How to use Brain Science to Improve your Sales Results

Damn, I just did it again!

My Advisor client Darren grumbled at himself in frustration. We had just practiced a conversation where he was working to overcome an objection.

When he was talking to me as his prospective client, a physician he was trying to win over, I told him about the various challenges I was facing in my practice, and then I hit him with the objection.

I can see that it makes sense, but I just don’t think now is a good time to invest.

We had reviewed the steps during last week’s session. We had practiced. Darren had committed to handling objections with the more effective approach all week in his prospecting calls. He knew the objection was coming. And yet today, when he was fully engaged in his conversation with ‘Dr. Jameson’, he flipped right back into his old behaviour.

When he heard my objection, he answered back:

Dr. Jameson, I appreciate that you have many challenges, but if you don’t prioritize your own financial planning, you are risking your future.

No acknowledgment, no empathy, no curious questions to learn more about her objection. Instead, a response that felt like a patronizing slap on the wrist. Dr. Jameson ended the conversation with a polite Thank you, I’ll think about it.

I’m writing this article not to lay out a handling objections strategy, but to demonstrate the challenges we all face when trying to shift ingrained behaviours, and how you can leverage Brain Science to make those changes more easily and quickly.

In Darren’s attempt to shift his approach, he was confronting a substantial foe: his own ingrained patterns of communication.

What parts of the sales conversation are you most comfortable with? Where do you shine? Is it building rapport? Educating your clients in a way that they can understand your recommendations? Perhaps you are particularly skilled in asking questions that get people to open up and reveal valuable information.

And which parts of sales interactions trip you up? It could be any of the above, or perhaps there are certain objections that you dread, or even personality types who throw you off balance.

In each of these situations, you unconsciously deploy default patterns of communication.

When you think about your sales results, which skills do you know you need to improve in order to bring in more business?

There is a giant chasm between knowing what to do, and making it happen.

This is where brain science comes in.

When we do something the first time, synapses in the brain fire, and a neural connection is made. When you do that same thing again, synapses fire along the same neural connection, thickening and strengthening it slightly. With each repetition, that connection becomes stronger until it is so strong, the behaviour becomes unconscious.

Think about your communication patterns. Which ones are serving you well?

You have been talking and listening and communicating your whole life. You have a style. Pacing. Word choices. Favourite phrases. Patterns of asking questions, of answering, rebutting, using silence or avoiding silence, reacting, or responding, etc, etc…

Decades of unconscious repetition have turned those neural connections into well-established highways.

Now, you find yourself in a sales conversation, something is at stake, and your anxiety is slightly elevated.

The training program you took at work that recommended certain questions and behaviours, is no match for decades of patterning and established neural connections.

Bummer, right?

It is important to say that there is joy in our established patterns!

Once those neural connections are made, we don’t need one iota of conscious focus to do something. We don’t think about walking or how to do it, we just walk. We don’t think about chatting with a friend, we just let loose and express ourselves, bantering back and forth with abandon.

This joy, this freedom of connection is available to you in your client and prospect conversations, too.

But to get there, you need to create and reinforce the neural connections consistently enough that the more effective skills, assuming you know what they are, move into your unconscious mind as your new default patterns.

Here is how to use Brain Science to your advantage and get results quickly!

First, awareness.

When you understand that your own patterning is what you’re up against, you will be more patient and less likely to judge yourself or give up.

Second, understand the process of creating new synapses.

You must deploy the more effective skill with focus and concentration in situations where you normally don’t need to focus or concentrate. This requires mental energy.

The process feels mentally taxing because your brain will naturally gravitate towards its neural highway of established behaviour, but in that moment during a conversation, you are using focus to pull it off the highway and onto an open field. You are paving from scratch.

This is why change is hard, and why most people give up!

Here is how you can use Brain Science as a shortcut to make a positive shift more quickly!

Step One: Choose just one skill to focus on

For instance, asking more open-ended, instead of closed questions

Step Two:

Write out a few of the open-ended questions you want to make a habit of asking in all your prospecting or sales conversations.

Example

Instead of asking ‘Do you have any financial needs right now? Or ’Is there anything I can help you with?’ (two of the most useless sales questions ever), you want to replace them with this sturdy, effective classic:

What are your biggest financial concerns right now?

Step Three: Repeat the question out loud.

Leverage the power of repetition. You want to ‘lay down tracks’ – begin creating a new neural highway where this question rolls easily off the tip of your tongue, in the right moment during a sales conversation.

A common question: Can’t I just read the question over and over?

The answer is no. If that’s all you do, you won’t get the desired result. Reading it does not fire and wire those synapses together. It does not build muscle memory. You need to take the action of saying it aloud.

Step Four: Do your Reps!

Choose three high-value open questions (or whatever other skill you want to develop) that you want to include in all your sales conversations. Schedule 3 x 5-minute reps each day to repeat them. Imagine you are talking with a client and say the three questions out loud over and over, several times.

THIS repetition is where you quickly get results!

You may feel foolish or think it is a pointless exercise or feel that nothing is happening or changing. Keep at it. Remember, you are laying down tracks, building a new neural highway.

Do this private repetition practice consistently for two weeks, while also using the questions during client calls whenever you can. By the second week you will already notice it getting easier.

To experience that full freedom and joy (and greater sales success), add on another couple of weeks of short practice reps. By this time, the skill will have moved into your subconscious.

You’ll notice that saying the questions aloud while you are alone and relaxed feels quite different from bringing them into sales conversations. This is because the situation, and the slightly elevated anxiety trigger your default patterns. It will require greater concentration to choose the new questions in this context.

If you’re thinking ‘yeah, sounds great but I’m probably not gonna do this’, you aren’t alone. In fact, you’re in the majority!

The chasm between knowing what to do and actually doing it, is why people work with coaches.

You may want the results but you know that you do better with someone who supports and challenges you. Someone who keeps you focused and holds you accountable to your own goals, and gives you a safe place to practice.

I’ve had the great pleasure of working with thousands of Advisors for eighteen year now, helping them build confidence, master their sales conversations and build a practice they love.

If you’d like to learn more about my approach and experience greater freedom and success, here is an article I wrote that captures how I work with Advisors and the passion behind it.

Message me any time here and we can book an exploratory chat to discuss your needs.

#sales #trustedadvisor

Kira Callahan is an expert sales conversation coach serving the financial industry. Her private clients typically experience 30% – 100% increase in appointments and business booked. To discuss your goals, message Kira through LinkedIn https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/kiracallahan/ Or send an email to [email protected]