[585] Pain and Suffering is Avoidable

Jason [00:00:00]: You. This is the authentic persuasion show. Hey there. Welcome to episode 585 of the Authentic Persuasion show. This episode, we're going to talk about pain and suffering. All right, so sales is challenging. Anybody who tells you otherwise is lying to you. It's kind of a version of the quote from one of my favorite movies, the Princess Bride, which says, life is pain, and anyone else who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something. Jason [00:00:35]: And sales is difficult. And the reason why it's difficult is the one fundamental truth, which is that if you are amazing at sales, if you are successful at sales, there is a good chance, unless you're living off of a 100% referral, warm inbound strategy, that you are going to get leads or making calls or having inbounds. And if you're amazing, you're going to close a smaller percentage than you're going to not close. Really good. People in most industries might close somewhere between 510, 20, 30% of their leads, depending on what you call a lead, depending on what stage of the process. Some people will gamify and say, well, this is a sales qualified lead. And so I close like 90% of my sales qualified leads, which is bogus. You don't. Jason [00:01:30]: If so, your parameters are too tight and you need to loosen them up, because one of the things is that in sales, you are taking a human and you are trying to help them get to a better place, whether that's with your product or service or without your product or service, which means that you are dealing with a human. And humans are messy and scared and confused. They have baggage, they have hopes, they have dreams, they have goals. They have people that they have to answer to. They have people that once they make a decision, they know they're going to have to explain and justify things to, whether that's a boss or it's a spouse, or it's a parent or it's an adult child, somebody is going to ask them about that purchase afterwards, and they are going to have to be convincing and explain it because they don't want to look bad on themselves. So there's so much that goes into helping another person make the best decision for them. I'm not talking about manipulating, tricking, getting them to buy your product or service. I'm actually talking about sales being service, which means you're helping them get to a better place. Jason [00:02:35]: And people don't always make the best choices that puts them on a better path. Look at how many people have addiction or have issues and financial problems and all kinds of things, and they literally just keep their head in the sand and they don't make good choices and they stay in denial. When it's clear to other people, like, here's what you could be doing. You literally can't afford this, so stop doing this. You need to go do this instead. And people don't do it. And you, in a sales role, are working to help people like that make good decisions for themselves and get on a better path to a better place. Right? Like, part of my mission statement is to leave people better than I found them, which is basically the Cub Scout Boy Scout motto of leave things better than you found them. Jason [00:03:20]: Like when you would go hiking or camping and if there's extra garbage, pick up other people's garbage and bring it back and leave it better. Not just leave it how you found it, but leave it better. And I think when sales is done right with the best intentions and with empathy, which means you care about the other person enough to not let them stay stuck, then that means that you want to leave people better than you found them. When you do that, you're up against human nature. And humans don't like change. They don't like to do things different. It's unfortunate, but the devil that we know is better than the devil we don't know. We would rather stay stuck and semi unhappy or miserable than make a change if that change could be worse. Jason [00:04:03]: Now, again, that's not true for everybody. However, it is true for a lot of people in a lot of different areas. And I go through a lot of training in this, and I work with a lot of teams about this and in the training, and we work on mindset and selling effectiveness skills. The fundamentals, though, is that sales is hard, right? Four minutes into this podcast, you might already know this. It's so important is that sales is hard mentally on you, the salesperson, because what you're up against is a high failure rate when you're succeeding. If you're closing 30%, which is amazing, depending on your industry, that could be absolutely astronomical, amazing or impossible. But let's say it's 30%. That means you're failing 70% of the time in baseball, if you hit, if you get on base 30% of the time, if you have a batting average of zero, three or 00:33 like a third of the time, hall of Fame set for life, you're a rock star. Jason [00:04:56]: Everyone knows your name because you're amazing, right? That still means that hall of Fame rock star baseball player is not getting on base two thirds of the time. They're failing 60% to 70% of the time, day in, day out, season in, season out, over their whole career. And they're still a God, right? In sales, that's the same thing. But mentally, we don't like to fail. And so what happens is we don't like that struggle and our mind freaks out and we don't like the failure. We accept the challenge. We want the wins. We use those to offset the other ones. Jason [00:05:32]: We understand it's a numbers game. We play the long game, we set goals, we gamify things. We have our vision boards, we have why we're doing it. That part is still difficult. Now, the point of this episode and what I want to talk about is pain and suffering. What I see a lot in this realm is that so many people get into sales, they want to make money. They want to make a lot of money, or they needed a job, and sales was the thing that they could get, and they thought they would try it, or they just needed a job and they didn't care, and they end up in sales, or they end up in a role, and they didn't realize how much sales was involved. They thought they were just getting a job. Jason [00:06:13]: Like for myself, when I started in the mortgage business, I didn't realize it was a sales role, and nor was it. It was pretty much order taking, although there was sales and persuasion in there. But I didn't realize. I wasn't even thinking my title was loan officer. It wasn't salesperson. So I didn't think it was sales because in my mind, I thought sales was car sales and furniture sales and that kind of stuff. I didn't think of it as this. I thought, I'm just helping people with mortgages. Jason [00:06:37]: I didn't realize that it was sales. Sometimes what happens is people get into sales because they have a friend who's successful in sales, air quote successful, and they say, wow, this is easy, I'm making a lot of money. You should try it, too. And that's not always the case, right? It just depends. But the pain and suffering that I'm talking about is the fact that people end up in sales and the company they work for may or may not give them much training. They probably teach them about the product and service, but nothing else. Not a lot about the act of persuasion and being authentic and being effective in sales and the soft skills and active listening and overcoming objections. Not in a like responding to everything, talking your way out of it, but actually listening and then being empathetic and using things like empathetic, reversing where understanding what it takes to be successful in sales, what you're up against, all the stuff that I was talking about earlier with sales and with dealing with humans, that's usually not taught, that's not trained on, that's not practiced, that's not gone into exclusively. Jason [00:07:41]: Usually. Most companies aren't doing a lot of scripting. They're not doing a lot of sales process. They're throwing people out there and hoping they're successful. What that leads to is unnecessary and avoidable pain and suffering. Now, it's just the way it is. You might want to dispute that. But if you notice that you're struggling, if you're in pain, if you're suffering in your sales role, the question is, is that based on your closing percentage and the realistic part of sales, which is you're never going to close all of them, and that mindset and mind game that you have to play, which is if I'm closing 30%, I'm not closing 70%, and I'm successful and that's okay and I'm doing great, or are we talking about pain and suffering, which nobody calls you back, nobody does. Jason [00:08:29]: Your follow ups, you are inconsistent in your sales process. You're up and down every day, week, month, or quarter, like, you go up really high and then you go down really low and you hit slumps and you have challenges. A lot of that is avoidable and unnecessary pain and suffering for salespeople, for sales leaders, for businesses, for sales teams, it's unnecessary. And the reason why I say it's unnecessary is because with some simple, not always easy, but some simple processes, simple sales systems, simple training and mindset, strategies and tactics, with some processes in place built around the salesperson to help facilitate the things that should be done automatically, especially in this day and age, especially in 2023, there's a lot of stuff that's being done manually or not being done at all that could be automated to facilitate you, the salesperson, doing what you need to do and do best, which is to have a conversation with another human. Right. And there's all of these things that could be built out. In fact, I have this model. It's called the scalable sales success iceberg. Jason [00:09:42]: And if you imagine, and this is sometimes an overused analogy of the iceberg, where the part that you see above the surface is five to 10% of the whole mass, and then there's a whole bunch below that you don't see below the surface. Right. That's what got the Titanic in trouble. And you see it a lot on motivation, you see it on a lot of entrepreneurs. Like, there's success at the top, and then there's all this, like, hard work and this and that and everything below the surface. For me, in sales, above the surface, what you see, the tip of the iceberg, as you would call it, is the closed sale. It's the ringing of the bell or the gong. It's the high five. Jason [00:10:15]: It's the Commission check. It's the celebration. It's the president's club. It's all these outside things that you see when somebody closes a sale. However, what you don't see is everything that goes below the surface if you want it to be scalable. Scalable meaning repeatable. And it's something that can be relied on and then also grown exponentially. Right. Jason [00:10:37]: Doesn't have to be a grind to do that. There's actually 24 categories underneath the surface that have to be built out from, and this is a dirty word in sales. From scripts to processes to systems, to company culture, to lead management, to CRM, to technology, to gamification, to compensation plan training, continuing education, all these categories. When you fill those in, the pain and suffering of sales goes away. Sales does not have to be painful and feel like suffering. It's unnecessary, and it's completely avoidable. Now, I'm not saying sales will be easy. I'm not saying every day is going to be great. Jason [00:11:16]: I'm not saying if you do these things, you will close every single person and every deal you talk to. If you do, you either have really easy leads, or you're manipulating and lying and cheating and stealing your way to success. And please don't do that. So you're still going to close 20, 30%, or whatever that looks like for your industry. Some industries I work with, it's 2%, it's 5%. And that's a tough grind, but that it could be success for you, but the rest of it doesn't have to be painful, doesn't have to feel like suffering. And that's really what I want for you. And that's really part of what my goal is. Jason [00:11:50]: And as I've shifted things and as I look at, okay, how would I leave people better than I found them? One is to help alleviate and remove unnecessary and avoidable, painful and suffering for salespeople and leaders. So many sales leaders have painful, suffering filled careers because there's some things they could put in place, some simple things they could do that just aren't being done, and they're just like the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, but in a painful way. Nobody ever says that when it's amazing and somebody's super happy, like my life is great, like I'm the definition of insanity. No, it's because there's pain, there's suffering. Don't know how to fix it. But from the outside, there is. There's always a way. There's training, there's coaching, there's advising, there's programs you could take, there's books you could read, there's podcasts like this. Jason [00:12:42]: If you're listening to this, hopefully this is like lighting some things in your head where you're like, yes, I want some help. I realize, and this is always the tough part, right? The first step is always the hardest, admitting that you have a problem that you can't fix, that you want help with, right? You want to get out of this cycle, you want to get out of the loop, you want to get out of your pain and suffering insanity cycle that you're in. And so the first part is admitting it. Like, hey, this isn't working. I want to do something else. I want to stop being in pain. I want to stop suffering. Like, when somebody has health issues, the only way it's going to ever change is somebody has to say, you know what? The way I'm eating isn't working. Jason [00:13:21]: My lack of exercise isn't working. My lack of rest is not working. My lack of whatever isn't working or my over of x is not working. Right? It's causing harm. And then, now let me figure out some ways to not have it, because life, in some ways, life is difficult. Life is challenging. It's going to be suffering. But there's avoidable and unnecessary suffering and pain that most people could alleviate that they don't. Jason [00:13:46]: Again, health, mental fitness, financial and in sales, there's a lot that can be avoided. So hopefully this helps. I know I didn't say how to avoid it all, other than the systems and processes, but really the first step is look at what you're doing. Does it feel painful? Does it feel like you're suffering through your process? Is it a struggle that shouldn't be a struggle to even get to the benchmark of success in your industry with your closing percentage? If it feels like it's painful and you're suffering, if you're a salesperson, reach out to me. I have books, I have courses, I have programs that I have that you, the individual, can take control of and not wait for your company to help you and alleviate your pain and suffering. But you can take control. Because again, the nice thing is you figure out how you can sell best and you give yourself the tools. If you change industries, change jobs, change whatever, you're taking that with you. Jason [00:14:44]: If you sit around and wait for your company to solve it with you, for you, they may or may not, and then what have you really gotten from it? Right? You want to empower yourself. If you are a leader, listening to this, a sales leader, revenue leader, a business owner, small business owner, it doesn't matter what size or scale. A lot of people think they have to be a big size. No, reach out to me. I have some programs. I have workshops. I have courses. I have all kinds of resources to help. Jason [00:15:08]: It should not feel painful. You should not feel suffering. It's not easy. Sales is a challenge. Generating revenue is a challenge. Having a team full of salespeople is a challenge. But it doesn't have to be painful, doesn't have to feel like suffering. And hopefully you take that from this and do something different. Jason [00:15:25]: You want to find out more information or you want to set up the time to chat. Whether you're in sales or a leader or starting a business or want to grow a sales team, email me. [email protected] be happy to help. Hopefully this helps you make some changes, make some pivots. Realize that there's things you can control, there's things you can't control. Fix, change, adjust the things that you can control and make your life free of pain and suffering so that you're focused on the challenge of sales and being successful.