Want to Sell More? Serve More!!

Want to Sell More??Serve More!

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Tony Robbins says, “Success leaves clues”. He is so right.??You will learn a lot more about making a good golf swing from studying Tiger Woods than by looking at mine.

As part of my prep for writing Selling With a Servant Heart, I interviewed nearly three dozen of the most incredible salespeople I have ever met.?These were true stars. If you were a sales manager, you’d do anything to have one of these sellers on your team.

-???????One is probably the highest paid radio advertising salesperson in America.

-???????An RV salesperson singularly does more volume than 90% of the RV dealerships do.

-???????Another, a mortgage broker averages 60 mortgages a month.?Most successful brokers do about 6.?He’s 10x the volume that would be called successful.

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These business owners and salespeople became my teachers.?The biggest lesson they taught me??If you want to sell more, serve more.

Sell more by serving more??That sounds pretty simple.?But for Servant Heart sellers this is way more than providing friendly customer service

The Fundamental Question:

How do you define winning in sales????For most sellers winning is defined as closing a sale.?That’s what most of us were taught.?And we celebrated sales with high fives, contest prizes and higher commission checks.

But that’s not how Servant Heart sellers define winning.?For them winning means making a difference.?They see their role as making absolutely sure their product or service provides the desired outcome for their customers. This is way more than customer focused. This is customer obsessed.

Servant Heart Sellers are obsessed by achieving customer outcomes.?Their customers come to know that.?Trust grows.?They stop being “just another sales rep” and become trusted partners. They honor that trust by not selling anything that isn’t in the best interest of their customer.?In fact, they totally believe that if it’s good for the customer it will ultimately be good for them.?Even if it hurts them in the short term.

The obsession with outcomes and the building of trust has a huge business benefit.?These sellers have some of the lowest churn and highest referral business I have ever seen.?Every salesperson has churn.?But if you could cut your churn in half how would that impact your business.?That RV salesperson is Dave Wall. He sells expensive coaches.?The friend who introduced me to Dave went on and on about how good he was.??Sixty percent business is repeat. Thirty percent is referral.?It’s pretty easy to grow your business each year when you have that kind of loyalty.?How does Dave and these other great sellers reduce their churn? Creating positive impact for clients and building trust.?They play the long game. As Oscar Mejia, who sells for Univison, says “I work for them.”??Oscar’s bosses told me that he had some of the lowest churn they have ever seen.?You have to believe that his belief that his customers are his bosses has to be a big part of that.?

The One Thing To Change

During a recent podcast the interviewer asked me a simple but profound question.?What is one thing that someone should start doing if they want to be more of a Servant Heart seller? My answer was pretty simple.?Ask more questions.

Virtually every sales training program talks about the importance of uncovering prospects need.?But the idea of asking more questions may be the most taught and least utilized of all sales techniques.?Most salespeople don’t ask anywhere near enough questions.?Not even close.?Even sellers who think they do diagnosis often quickly slide into asking questions that are more focused on their product then the underlying business issues.?Remember the old line about selling the hole and not the drill bit??It’s only by asking lots and lots of questions that a seller can determine what the real business issues that are behind the customer needs.

The ”wing it” days are only. Servant Heart sellers know its not just about asking questions.?It’s about asking good questions.?“How’s business” is a question.?But that question is not likely to give you answers of any depth.?Great sellers knocombinew that they have to prepare for diagnosis with better questions.?Better prepared questions show the prospect that you are not winging it.?And that’s a solid first step to building trust.

Effective sellers?great questions with a technique Servant Seller Rory Vaden calls “acute listening”.?Most sellers listen thinking more about the next questions they plan to ask.?But Rory suggests listening so intently that “you could hear a pin drop in a crowded room.”

Lots of prepared questions partnered with acute listening, That’s the first thing a sellers might do if they want to become more of a Servant Heart Seller.?

More Sales and More Joy

Selling is hard!???But it doesn’t have to be that hard for you. Servant Heart Sellers have found real joy in their work. They love what they do. Gallery Furniture’s Jim McIngvale, aka Mattress Mack, has the energy of a thirty-year old, and he’s nearly seventy. He told me, “Work is life’s greatest therapy.” Mac is clear about why he works: “Because it’s fun. What else would I do?” I keep wishing you could have been on all the Zoom calls I did for this book. You would have met people with a true love for what they do. They sell different products and serve different industries. There are differences in the specifics of their sales processes. But they have all found a path to true joy. And yes, they have achieved huge financial success. More money and more joy? That sounds like a combination that is worth working toward.

Jim Doyle is a Sales Trainer, business owner and author of the book Selling with a Servant Heart.?He can be reached at [email protected]