[E403] Training Session - 02 - Making Yourself Into A Sales Pro

Jason [00:00:02]: Welcome to the Authentic Persuasion show, a place where business and thought leaders come to weigh in on important sales related topics that you can use in your sales career and life. I'm your host, Jason Cutter. My mission is to get your help in changing sales from something prospects fear to an act of service they actually seek out and appreciate. Whether you're in sales, leading sales teams, or own a business, I hope this helps you improve your selling effectiveness and you can go out into the world as an authentic persuader. Hey, and welcome back to another episode of the Authentic Persuasion show. This episode is going to be week two of my training session around authentic persuasion. So I'm doing these live weekly sessions, my way of going through the selling with authentic persuasion, transform from order taker to quota breaker book in a way to help everybody in the sales community. Just so you know, and I talk about this in the training, but I have a mission of empowering over a million authentic persuaders out in the world and then what that would do for the sales industry and the reputation of sales. Jason [00:01:04]: And so that's my goal. That's why I'm putting this out there. Make sure if you want to sign up to receive updates about this and tune in live and get the links for everywhere it's at. Make sure to go to jasoncutter.com and you'll see a link on there for registering. And you can also email me [email protected] to get information on how to sign up as well as any questions you want me to answer, any topics you want me to cover. And if you're looking for any guides as you go through this, make sure to email me. [email protected] I have lots of resources. I have ebooks, I have checklists, I have worksheets. Jason [00:01:36]: I have all kinds of things that I can send you to help you with your sales career. Here we go. Jason [00:01:41]: Here we go. Week two. Jason [00:01:42]: Make sure you have your notebook ready. There's going to be lots of things I'm going to be dropping here relative to sales success traits and what it takes to become a great salesperson. Finishing off that debate of natural born salesperson versus making yourself into a sales superstar. Jason [00:01:59]: Hey, what's going on, everybody? Happy Friday. Today is the 27 August. This is the authentic persuasion training session. This is number two. I am very excited for this. First off, one of the reasons why is I'm streaming this to Facebook and to LinkedIn. And last week when I started this, in the nature of live TV, the LinkedIn connection instantly stopped working, and so everybody on LinkedIn had to watch the replay stream that I put out there. So this time I'm excited for people who are tuning in watching this live. Jason [00:02:32]: Or maybe you're catching this on a replay on Facebook, YouTube or LinkedIn, or you might be listening to this on the podcast replay on the authentic Persuasion show. So no matter what, thank you for being here. I'm super excited for these. So just to catch up and kind of give some framework for what I'm doing is I am going through what I feel is a great framework to help people in sales using authentic persuasion. And so why am I doing this? Why am I doing these free training? Well, my mentor, David Meltzer, has been very influential in helping me give away and do more content out there possible, which fits in line with my mission, which I always like to start with and share and give people that context of why I do this and why it's important to me. So my mission in life right now is to facilitate transformation in three ways. One is to encourage and enable light bulb moments. When you have that insight and then you realize that there is a different new or better way or something new you can try. Jason [00:03:36]: It is to help the underdog win their game, and then it is also to leave people better than I found them. So that's why I do this. That's my goal. That's why I do everything I do with sales. I won't get into my background, there's a ton of that online, or you can reach out to me, we can chat about it. But definitely was an underdog growing up, an underdog in sales, having never received any training. Like, literally, I've never received a minute of actual sales training while working at companies where they sat me down and said, here's how you sell, here's how you handle objections, here's how you read people, here's how you do this. I've never received that. Jason [00:04:15]: So it's all been self taught. And then, of course, I want to help people avoid the same learning curve and challenges that I had enabled to be successful. So if you're watching this live, please say hi. Put a comment wherever you're watching it, whether again, it's Facebook or it's LinkedIn, say hello. And then I want to do some training in these sessions. So there's a bunch of things that I want to cover each week. And depending on the questions that come up and from people that are watching, I would love to do as much Q and A as possible. Obviously, like I said, based on who's tuning in? What questions are there? So please, throughout, put your questions in there. Jason [00:04:52]: Sales related questions. It could be about the topic that we're covering today, or it could be about sales in general. Challenges you have overcoming objections, moving people forward in the conversations, what to do if you realize that you are an order taker and what's some good strategies? Any sales related questions? Any sales operation, leadership, management, training, hiring, anything like that? Put that in there and then I will answer those the best I can as we finish off each session. So last week, what I covered was how to identify if you're an order taker. And again, when I say the term order taker, it's not a derogatory term. It's not a hey, you're an order taker and that's bad and you're wrong and that's who you're going to be. And it's a label, right? So I don't use it as a label. I'm using it more of a state of condition, of your state of affairs, of how you're selling right now. Jason [00:05:50]: And it's pretty clear if you're an order taker in your sales role. And again, this is speaking as a order taker, reformed order taker from the past. It's where you're good at building rapport, good at maybe empathy, showing people you care. You do it because you care, but you also don't want to be that person who's pushing people to buy. And you feel like all of that is gross and that is what you want to avoid. It's what you don't like as a customer, and you don't want to do that as a salesperson. And so you avoid that. So you're setting people up and you're hoping that people will buy and you're hoping that they will want what you have and that there won't be too many objections or issues or pushback or confrontation or battles you have to do. Jason [00:06:35]: And that's what you're looking for, and that's fine. That's an easy way to be in sales generally. It's not going to lead to a lot of success because that won't be enough deals on a regular basis that you'll be closing. What happens is those easy deals, right, those lay downs, those people who are just ready to buy, they're far and few between. And I've never found a salesperson or a company that can sustain themselves or succeed or hit their numbers or hit their financial goals that they want by just doing those easy deals. So my goal is to help you. If you're in that mode as an order taker or you have that tendency or you default to it, or if you're a sales leader, a manager, a director, a team lead, and you have people on your team that are like that. This is to help you make that shift. Jason [00:07:27]: Like my book, the subtitle of my book is transform from order taker to quota breaker. And that I know is a, very possible and b, what I want for you and for consumers because they need your help. And so last week, what we covered was order takers. What happens? What kind of leads to that, how it develops, when it's good, when it's right, when it's wrong. Obviously, if you're in a sales role and you need to persuade people, then they want your help, right? We've all had experiences where we've gone into a store on a mission to buy something. We need help, right? We know that we will need to buy something. Like, I have a client, they have a chain of retail furniture stores. And I know what it's like to go into a furniture store really wanting help. Jason [00:08:17]: I want to buy a couch. I don't know what kind, I don't know what the options are. And at the same time, when I go in, I literally can't find someone who can help. When I find somebody, they're of no help for me. They're just an order taker hoping that I pick something and reading from the tags on the furniture and it's not useful and it's not what I need and it's missing. And what I want in that moment is someone to guide me along the way. I don't want the pushy, gross salesperson at the other end of the spectrum. What I want is somebody to guide me. Jason [00:08:46]: So that's what we talked about. We also talked a lot about nature versus nurture, how to make yourself into a salesperson if they're born that way, if they're made that way, and what it would take to move forward in that. And that's where this conversation is going to continue today, is from that point of is a salesperson, is a sales professional born that way or are they made that way? And I firmly believe that they're made. I mean, I think there's some basic personality traits, behavior styles and things that could lend themselves better to that naturally. However, what happens is it's still amount of practice. When you meet somebody who seems like a natural born salesperson, they have some attributes that maybe they were born with. Or nurtured from a young age. And then literally, they've just been selling people most of their life, right? So since they were a kid, they've been persuading people, selling people, and they've been going that route by the time you meet them, they've been at a selling game in their mind for decades. Jason [00:09:49]: And it just seems natural. But it's natural because they put in the effort, right? They put in the time and they put in. If you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's outliers, it talks about the 10,000 hours principle, which is to become a master at something, you have to put in 10,000 hours of intentional effort and practice. Not just 10,000 hours of practice, not just 10,000 hours of doing it, but actually being intentional. And so a lot of times you meet somebody who's just a master at sales. It seems like they were born that way. They're amazing, and you compare yourself to them and go, I could never be like that. I wasn't born that way. Jason [00:10:26]: I don't have that personality. Got to keep in mind, they've been putting in the effort. And so that's what we talked about, and that transitions into what I want to cover today, which is the attributes of a sales professional. And there's five of them that I have seen and narrowed it down to these five. And again, they're in the book. So if you have the book or if you want the book, I'm going to talk about that at the end where I'm going to give you a free copy, if you want, for tuning in, I will mail it to you. And all you have to do is cover the shipping, I'll send you it, and then you can follow along with this. But there are five that I have found that there's two important things to these five traits. Jason [00:11:07]: The first one is, this is what I've seen every successful salesperson and sales professional to have. And two, I firmly believe, using myself as an example, I firmly believe that all of them are learnable. All of them are things that you can develop. And if you not strong in any of these five or all of these five, you can work on it, you can get better, you can improve them, and you can move your way to becoming a sales professional. All right, so the first sales success trait is openness, right? So here's the thing with openness. There's two main parts. The first part is open to new things. It's to being open to new ideas, to new situations. Jason [00:11:58]: Here's the fundamental thing that happens is we, as humans, right? This is a human trait, is we have an ego. We have a brain that wants to keep us safe at all times. It wants to keep us alive. It wants to keep us going. And what it also wants to do is it wants to make sure that we're somewhere in the hierarchy of our tribe and that we're never in danger of getting kicked out of the tribe, which is what I'm going to talk about in future weeks. We're going to talk a lot more about the psychology, especially when it comes to your consumers. There's you right now. We're talking about you, the salesperson, and we're talking about you in how to make you successful and get you to be authentic and amazing at what you do. Jason [00:12:43]: And then we have the other person in the equation of sales, which is your prospects. And there's a lot that we need to cover with that to help you understand what you're up against, because you're up against a very tough opponent when it comes to selling. And I don't mean just the person. I mean our human psychology, our behavior, what's in our brain, our primal side of our mind. Everything that's trying to protect us at all times is a formidable opponent, for sure. So in your mind, you have an ego. We all do. And so one of the things that I found for people to be successful in sales is that they have an openness. Jason [00:13:19]: They have a great balance with their ego. An ego is not a bad thing. It's just about if it's productive, if it's useful, if it's helpful in your current situation. And so there's a balance when you're in sales, you want to have an ego that says, I'm good. I am good at sales. I can help people. I am here to help them. I can be successful. Jason [00:13:41]: You got to have that ego part of you that helps push through the challenges, the ups and downs, the slumps, the missed deals, the lost opportunities and things like that. But where I see it be a challenge is when people have an ego that gets in the way of learning new things, of being open to new ideas, prejudging situations and people, and not being open to learning anything new. I see this a lot where it's the ego, right? So it's not nothing personal, but where people will not be open to learning new things. I don't need your script. I already know how to sell. I don't need any more training. I got this, right? I don't need to go to these meetings because I already know what I'm doing. And for some people, they have the stats to prove that. Jason [00:14:34]: However, what I have found pretty much every time is that for somebody who says that and is resistant and isn't open to growth, isn't open to change, isn't open to learning new things, they usually don't have the amazing stats that show they're professional. And the people who have the amazing stats that go along with a level and status of being a professional and consistently getting those results, those people are actually more open. They want more coaching, they want more feedback. They want to keep winning at a higher game. So there's the people at one end of the spectrum who are open because they're new and they need to learn. Then there's people in the middle who kind of get stuck and their ego will get in their way. And then there's the top performers who are true professionals who just always want to grow, always want to learn and always want to get better. And so it's very important if you're struggling with openness, if you're struggling with your boss or manager or somebody wanting to give you feedback and say, hey, I want to talk about that last call, have you tried doing this? Maybe you should do that. Jason [00:15:39]: If you feel this constriction around it and you feel like you don't want that feedback and you don't want to be open to that, make sure to check your ego and look at where that might be coming from. And I'm not going to get into the deep psychology. That is not my purpose and plan on this training. There's a lot of good resources out there. Obviously, there's professionals out there who can help from this. But if you're struggling with openness and struggling with, I'll just say it like some people struggle with being told what to do. Where is that coming from? Is it coming from your childhood, from your parents, from your experience as a kid? Were you bullied, picked on or told what to do? Do you have an older sibling and you just repel that? Where is that coming from? And then how, if you want to be successful in sales, how do you separate that? How do you separate what happened in the past and your initial reaction to being told what to do? Or when your company says, here's a new script, we need you to start using this. Or here's a new way that you have to close your deals. Jason [00:16:45]: Or say this. Or here's a new CRM, how you check that at the door and make sure that you're open. All right, so that is the first one. Let's go on to the second one. So the second one is curiosity. And so this sales success trait is important in two ways. Also, there's the standard, like being curious of everything. And specifically, the first one that you want to be curious about is your company, what you do, what you sell, what's in the landscape of your product or service, who is it that you serve? Who else is in competition, if you will? I'm not a big fan of looking at competition. Jason [00:17:34]: I generally don't make that a big deal when I'm working with companies or working with their reps. You want to be aware of them, but you don't want to be worried about competition when you're having sales calls with your prospects. If you're focused on undermining the competition or winning against the competition, you're giving that too much energy. In my experience, you should just be better and the rest of the competition doesn't matter as much. So you want to be curious about everything to do with what you're selling, how it works, and the value to your prospects. What I see a lot is people get into a sales role, especially again, if they're at the order taker end of the spectrum or in the middle. If you're getting average results, if you're closing deals somewhat, you have a lot of ups and downs. What I find is that person isn't necessarily really curious and diving in to knowing as much as possible about the company, the product or service, and the value to the customers. Jason [00:18:32]: They got a job, they needed a job. Maybe this is you, and you went through the training and you feel like you learned enough and you can have these conversations. But again, if you want to move to quota breaker status, if you want to move to being a sales professional, the key is you've got to know the game that you're playing. You've got to know what you're offering. And again, this is one part that I see a lot, which we'll talk about later on in these sessions, is understanding the true value that you are providing to your prospects. Not what the company told you, not what's in the brochure, not the features and benefits, not what they covered in training, but like the real life changing value. No matter what you're selling, there is life changing value in anything being sold. You've got to understand that. Jason [00:19:18]: And then you sell from that point, which is totally different than how a lot of people sell. So you want to be curious about that side. Here's the other part. And this is where I see very successful salespeople, natural salespeople, who if they get into a sales role and they take off faster than anyone else, it's usually this trait here, which is curiosity about the prospective client. It's about that prospect, it's about that lead and being curious about everything relating to them, their situation, where they've been, where they're at, where they want to be, where they want to go to, what problems they're facing, what goals they have. Like anything and everything around that person, they are curious. They make it about them. I will say, this is live. Jason [00:20:08]: I'm making this live right now. It's the 27th. I actually had coffee with somebody. Mark Evans earlier today, met him for the first time. He's in sales as well. He's been selling longer than me, doing more sales related stuff. Anyone who knows my background, I wasn't supposed to be in sales. Then I came into sales and then I left and I came back and I left. Jason [00:20:26]: And anyway, he was asking me a ton of questions. I was just so curious. I felt bad because I was doing most of the talking, but he was asking questions. And it was fun. But there was a curiosity. There's that piece. And I know why he is successful at what he does because of that curiosity. And there's one thing, if you can work on it. Jason [00:20:47]: Now, I will tell you, for myself, when I was younger and for me in general, I've always been curious, but it's generally been about non people things, if you will. So in my background growing up, I went through a dinosaur phase, and then I went through a shark phase, and then I went into marine biology, like curious about science, about math, about creatures, about things like that. Just curious in general, but not about people. I didn't have a great relationship with people. I was somewhat curious, but that wasn't really my natural mode. Then what happened is I got into sales in 2002, I was almost 27. Got into my first sales role and realized then that it was about being curious. It was about asking questions. Jason [00:21:39]: It was about trying to figure out more about that person, to then be able to serve them with the best solution. Right? In mortgages, there was a ton of different options. You might say, okay, well, it's easy. You just want to buy a house, here's a mortgage. Like, no, there's lots of options. There's good options, there's better options, there's worse options depending on that person's situation. And so what would make sense for them? And so that's when I learned to shift and really hone in on curiosity for people and understanding them. And so I know what that's like to go from not very curious, don't really care, to just understanding that. Jason [00:22:15]: People are so complex. Everyone has a story, and I want to get to know that. And then that helps with the sales process. So work on those two things. The openness that I talked about in the first part is very important, but the openness is reactivity. Right. If we think about it, being open is, I'm open to what happens. Okay. Jason [00:22:37]: My boss says, here's a new script. Now I've got to react to that. I'm open to what happens. I got a new process or I should do this. Okay, now I'm reactive. Curiosity to me is about being proactive. And there's a big difference with the people who I see struggle in sales, who are doing okay in sales, maybe think they shouldn't be in sales. And then the people who are on a path to doing amazing things in their sales role or are already there, the difference is that they're open and curious. Jason [00:23:10]: And curiosity is proactive. Curiosity is, I am seeking something. I am looking for some value. I'm looking for a way to be better. I'm looking for a way to help more people. I'm looking at ways to be just more valuable in general. So the openness is reactive, and that's okay. That's what we want. Jason [00:23:31]: That's why I covered that first, because I think that's important. You want to be open to what happens and be okay with it and then react. Curiosity is about being proactive and seeking it. And the more you can shift, the more you can be proactive and curious and seeking information about anything, you will be successful. That's what I've always seen. So, so far, we covered openness. We've covered curiosity. All right, so the third one is being persistent. Jason [00:24:01]: And before I get into this one, just for anyone who's watching live, if you're tuning in, please make sure to put in the chat. Say hello, say where you're coming from or listening from. And then also if you have any questions, sales related questions, challenges, anything that you're dealing with, again, handling objections, your own challenges with call reluctance might be a manager. And you're dealing with your people. You want to know how to motivate them. Just put that in. It doesn't have to be on this topic. I love answering questions about anything sales related. Jason [00:24:32]: Leadership related should be fun. If you're watching the replay on Facebook or LinkedIn, you can always put your questions in there. Same thing with YouTube, and then I will see those. Also, if you're listening to the podcast, I'll put my email, mention my email at the end. You can always email me questions. So let's get to the persistence part. So, being persistent, here's the thing. This is what everyone always thinks that they need to know for or need to do when it comes to selling in sales, right? It seems like, of course, if you're going to be in sales, you're going to be successful. Jason [00:25:03]: You got to be persistent. You got to not give up. You got to be able to go no matter what, and you just can't quit. If you quit, it's over. And that's true, but I think there's more to it than that. And there's parts of it that people don't understand, which is, again, funny enough, there's two sides of persisting and persistence that I think are important to keep in mind. It's not just one, but there's two aspects of using that term and what it could mean for your success in sales that I think that's important to know. So the first one is being tenacious, never giving up in the conversations, right. Jason [00:25:39]: And this is what most people think about, which is, if I'm talking to somebody, I got to be persistent, I got to keep going. I don't want to give up easily. Here's the thing. My general feeling about this, based on my experience, is when you're talking to somebody and you go through your process, and then you realize that they would be a good fit for what you're selling, qualify. They meet the parameters they would make for a good client from what you can tell, right. They check the boxes of what you're qualifying people for. And again, I'm not talking about people who are selling something to everybody, and everybody wins. Right? Like, I'm not talking about when you walk through the mall and there's those kiosks in the middle now that weren't there when I was a kid, and they are literally trying to get anybody's attention and hook anybody physically. Jason [00:26:34]: I think years ago they got in trouble for that and they have to stay in their little zone. But literally, if they could, they would go out and grab people and bring them into their web because everybody wins. If you're a guy, you need this perfume. If it's face stuff, if it's women, if it's this, it doesn't matter who you are. They think everyone should be buying from them. That's not who I'm talking about. That's not the persistence I'm talking about that I will speak for myself. I don't enjoy that. Jason [00:27:02]: The persistence I'm talking about is you're selling something. It's a consultative sale, which means not everyone wins. There's people who qualify. There's people who don't qualify. And then what happens is you get through your qualification process, you determine, yes, they should move forward. Yes, this would be a good fit. Yes, I can help them. I can provide value. Jason [00:27:22]: This could be a benefit to them. And then what happens is from there, it's about persistence. It's about not giving up easily, not stopping, not letting anything get in the way, whether that's objections they raise, answer those objections and keep moving forward, which we're going to talk about in one of the later sessions, which is dealing with objections and dealing with those things that come up and how to address them effectively, and not as an order taker, but as a sales professional. So we'll talk about that in a future week. Also, when they need to talk to somebody else, they need to talk to a spouse or a coworker or a friend or everyone's got, like an Uncle Bob or somebody who always knows something about whatever you're selling. No matter what I've sold, I talk to people and they're like, oh, yeah, my Uncle Bob knows about debt settlement. So let me ask him, because he's a pro at that. Really? Your uncle has done it before? No. Jason [00:28:22]: Okay. Has he ever sold it or been a part of it or actually been a customer? No, but he knows a lot of stuff. Okay. So everyone's got that Uncle Bob that they got to check with. So the persistence part comes in. How are you going to handle that? Are you going to push forward, or are you going to roll over and say, okay, well, talk to Uncle Bob and then just let me know how that goes. Right. Which I will tell you, that will be the end of that sale. Jason [00:28:44]: And do that enough times, it'll be the end of your career in sales because you got to be persistent. You got to push through those or go along with that person on the journey. So that's one of the important things. So that's the persistence that most people think about when they think about sales, is the persistence in the conversation, not taking no for an answer, which, again, is a fine line. If you've got somebody who doesn't qualify, it feels gross. If you're that person who's like, no matter what they say, if they keep saying no, I don't want to do this. And you won't take no for an answer. We've experienced those kind of people as well, and that's not what I'm talking about. Jason [00:29:21]: I'm talking about when you know that you have somebody you can help and then helping them, making sure you're on that path and that mission to actually help them. Now, the other part of persistence that is important to keep in mind, and this is the one that's maybe more important. Equally important is the fact that sales is tough. I think I talked about it last week. I talk about this a lot. It's something important to understand. Sales is a very challenging mental game. Physically, it could be somewhat tough, but it's really not that tough. Jason [00:29:56]: Mentally, emotionally, sales is tough. That's why a lot of people can't do it. A lot of people don't want to do it. Yes, there's the gross side of sales, and people are like, yeah, I definitely don't want to have to manipulate people to win, which, of course you don't. That's when it's done wrong. But on the other side, people are like, I can't handle that rejection. I can't handle that. I don't want to be a part of that. Jason [00:30:18]: I don't want to get yelled at. I don't want people hanging up on me, slamming doors on me. I've known people who, door to door, like getting guns pulled on them, don't want to put up with that. It's such a mental game. And the key is to remember. Got to put it in perspective. If you're really good in sales, you're probably closing 30, maybe 40% of the opportunities. Depends on how good of a qualified lead it is, where they're coming from. Jason [00:30:45]: I know people who are really good, and they close, like, 10%. That means if you're closing 30%, that means you are missing 70% of the deals, of the people you're talking to, and you're getting 30% of the ones that you're talking to. Right. So you're getting 30, you're losing some. You're losing two to one ratio, which is tough. That's twice as much rejection as success. And the success feels good, but you've got to be able to persist through the rejection, through losing 70%, 80%, 90%. Some days you're losing 100%. Jason [00:31:23]: You talk to ten people, you close zero deals. You got to be able to get back up. You got to be able to persist. Right. Steven Pressfield, he wrote a book it's about being a professional. I forget the exact title, but in it he talks about the traits of being a professional and what that means. And a professional, a true professional, gets up every day, goes in, goes to battle, goes to their court, goes to their field, goes to their job, goes to wherever they go and they go no matter what. Whether they're sick, whether they're tired, whether they have drama at home, whether they've got things on their mind, they go and they do their thing and they act like a professional. Jason [00:32:06]: They shut everything else out and they just do what they were supposed to do and they give it their all and they do the best they can. Now, of course, we're all human. Sometimes we have things in our lives that make it difficult to focus. I know I have many times in my life where I usually can compartmentalize, but I'll get into the office and literally there's no way to shut out what's going on and it affects you. But the more you can be a professional, the more you can show up no matter what and give it your all. And especially when you're facing challenging times in your sales success. Slumps are going to happen all the time. Slumps happen. Jason [00:32:47]: They happen to pros. If you look at professional athletes, professional athletes hit slumps all the time. Now, really good professionals with a lot of coaches around them and a lot of mentors and a lot of openness and ability to get the feedback and want the feedback and the curiosity side of craving that feedback from their various coaches. Their slumps will be shorter, right? So somebody who is a top performing professional, they'll hit a slump, but it'll be short, it'll be a blip and then it'll be fine. Other professional athletes, you see them hit a slump and it could be a long time. In baseball, someone gets into a hitting slump, they get in their head and they just stop doing what they did that was making them successful and they've got to keep going and they've got to pull themselves out in sales. Same thing's going to happen. You're going to have a slump. Jason [00:33:38]: That may be you, it may not be you. Could be the leads. I know everyone blames the leads, but sometimes it is. Sometimes it's just the timing of things. Sometimes it's the customers and sometimes it's you. There's something that you're doing that's not working, that you used to do that was successful and you need some coaching, some mentoring, some training, someone to look at it from the outside. That's where the openness and the curiosity come in, why those two things are more important and why I put those first before persistence. Because you can persist. Jason [00:34:07]: You're persisting in the wrong direction. It's not going to work. Right? And if you're not open to feedback and you're persisting, you're just a loose cannon. Who knows what's going to happen. But if you have this persistent, sudden and a slump happens, it's about getting up every day and doing it again and doing it again. Because I promise, not every day in sales is amazing. Not every day in sales is a success. It's just not how that works. Jason [00:34:33]: You can be on a good street, you can close lots of deals, you can have a really good run, but then things always shift. There's seasons that comes and goes. It's just normal. It's part of the game. It's part of the reason why a lot of people don't want to play this game called sales. And so the key is being able to persist through those slumps and not give up. Not just quit, not just say, oh, woe is me, everything is bad. I must suck, or the lead suck, or my company sucks or my boss sucks, my trainer sucks, whatever, right? Like persisting through, pushing through and looking for a way to succeed and not giving up. Jason [00:35:14]: And in the moment, in the game, during the day, you've had ten people hang up on you. How do you make that 11th call? How do you persist? We're going to talk about that probably next week about some valuable tool that you can use to help move you forward in that instance. But the persistent side of being able to move forward no matter what, push yourself forward, pick yourself up, right? It's nice when you have a team around you. It's nice when you have a manager or a coach or a mentor or somebody there support you who can try to pick you up. At the end of the day, it's going to be you more times than not, no matter what. Even if you're in a cubicle around a whole bunch of people at a company with managers and bosses and people who want you to succeed at some point, at most points, it's about you picking yourself up because you're the only one that's playing that game. It's you. Right? So just make sure to be persistent. Jason [00:36:11]: All right, so that was number three. Let's go on. Number four. So number four is being creative. Now, this one here usually throws people off. Of course, most people, whether they do it or not, they understand and believe yes. I have to be open to feedback. I don't like it. Jason [00:36:27]: I don't want to do it, but I have to be open. I know that I have to be curious and I have to ask questions. Blah, blah, blah. I got riches. I know that I should be persistent. I shouldn't give up. Break. Now, here's the other thing, is creative. Jason [00:36:39]: So number four sales success trait is being creative. This one is so important on the list, and this is a huge, I can't emphasize it enough, a huge separator between the unsuccessful salespeople and the successful salespeople based on results, based on closing deals, based on making things happen, unsuccessful versus successful. And keep in mind, I am not, again, I covered this last week. I covered it earlier when I was talking about and recapping last week. I am not the kind of person who says either you're good at sales or you're not. Either you have it or you don't. Right? All of these traits you can learn, all of these traits you can develop. And if you're currently finding you're not successful in sales or you're struggling in sales, you're not getting the results you want, then you can fix that. Jason [00:37:34]: You can work on that. You can develop it. And I want to say, I forgot earlier I was going to mention, when I'm talking about this, when I'm going through this training, when I'm talking about these topics, I'm not just talking to somebody who's in the cubicle, in a call center working on sales. I mean, anybody who has a sales and selling aspect to their role, to their job, into what they do as a career. And I won't go on this tangent, but everything in life is sales. Everybody is persuading somebody about something at some level. Everybody's in relationships or engaging with people, and then there's persuasion that's happening. So all of these things are actually great tools and so important in life, in relationships and everything. Jason [00:38:20]: You want to have a good relationship or someone you meet and you want to be successful at persuading them, or you're in a relationship and you want to persuade and just have a good relationship. Open, curious, persistent, now creative. It all applies. So a lot of times people think, okay, this is only if I work at a company. If you're a solopreneur, if you work for yourself, if you sell your own service, then all of these things apply. So just keep that in mind. So back to creativity. Here's the deal with creativity that's so important, and here is the division between unsuccessful, underperforming salespeople, which might be you. Jason [00:38:59]: If you're watching this at this moment, that's great. You're here, which means you're already open and you're already curious, which I love. And we know where we can get you to. The key with the creativity is it's all about solving problems. Sales professionals, every single one I've seen. And really the big key for me when I realized I was actually in sales, because I didn't realize it for the longest time. Once I realized I was actually in sales, I realized how important the problem solving creativity was. And here's what's interesting for me, kind of going back a little bit to help you understand my take on why I don't think sales professionals have to be born that way, where they're actually more made that way and they have that experience is I have always been good at solving problems and creativity when it comes to puzzles, right? Let's say like putting together a jigsaw puzzle or solving a puzzle or a brain teaser or things like that. Jason [00:40:01]: Putting together models, doing stuff like that is always good at doing it. Computer games, video games, when that started coming out, wasn't there as a kid, and then it started becoming a thing for me. I was good at solving problems, good at being creative, good at exploring and figuring out, how do you solve this problem? So I was good. Then again, not a big fan of people. So it wasn't solving problems about people, wasn't about helping people, was about solving actual problem, brain teaser things. Then when I got into sales, I realized when faced with a challenge, I had the option of giving up. Right. And we talked about that with the persistence or pushing through no matter what. Jason [00:40:46]: And it's not just about being persistent. It's not just about, like, I'm going to push you forward and why don't you do this? No, it's also about being creative and solving the problem around that. There was a period of time where I was helping people who were in foreclosure. And this is early Internet. I mean, yes, there's Internet, but it's not like it is now. The smartphones where everybody's got it wasn't like it is now. And there were many times I needed people to be on the Internet to review something or look at a document and then actually print it, sign it, and send it back. And I would deal with people who literally didn't have Internet, maybe didn't even have a computer. Jason [00:41:27]: I actually dealt with people many times when I was helping people avoid foreclosure. Who their phones were shut off. One time I dealt with somebody who their power was sharing off. They had a phone, but they didn't have power. Another person I talked to, they had power, but they didn't have a phone anymore. Again, there's people in financial Cris. And so then how do you address, how do I move this transaction forward? How do I help this person avoid losing their home? When they don't have a phone, I can't communicate with them. I remember that guy because what we did was he basically called in from a friend's phone, and then from then on, what I would do is I would call the neighbor's house, and then the neighbor would put the phone down, run over, and get him, and then bring him and another client that called me every week from a pay phone. Jason [00:42:15]: That's how we got it done. That's how we were creative. So many times I had people who needed to print out documents and then scan them back to me, literally having them go to a post office and then calling me from their cell phone out in front of the post office once they have the documents ready, printed, and then reading through them with them, explaining them, and then they sign them, go back in the library, scan them, and email them back. It's that creativity, it's that problem solving that separates the people who are struggling in sales aren't getting the results they want and the people who are winning and effective in sales. Because no matter what happens, no matter what obstacle is thrown at them, no matter what. Objection. No matter what physical obstacle, I don't have Internet. I don't have a car. Jason [00:43:01]: I don't have this, whatever that is. The creativity part comes in and says, we will find creative solutions. I don't care. I will make this happen. I will get through this wall and this barrier and that no matter what you throw at me, I know the destination, I know the end goal. I know where I want to go with you. Again, you're a qualified prospect. I know this will help you. Jason [00:43:25]: I'm not going to give up. And so based on that, no matter what, any wall you throw me, we're going to get through any obstacle that pops up. I will find a creative solution. It doesn't matter. That's the biggest thing. And again, I told you as a kid and growing up, I was creative and curious and a problem solver about stuff, but not necessarily people. And I had to work on that. I developed it, which is why I know that you can do that, too, if that's not one of your strong suits. Jason [00:43:54]: You're like, I'm not very creative. I'm not a great problem solver. That's okay. The key is to just work on that, to strengthen it, to build it. When somebody says, I don't have such and such, or I don't have access to money, right. The money thing comes up a lot. Right? This is going to be $5,000. Well, I don't have that kind of money. Jason [00:44:12]: Okay, how do you solve that problem? Instead of saying, okay, well, when you find it, give me a call, let me know when you can pay for it, and we'll move forward versus, okay, let's get. We're in this together. Let's solve this problem. Because you know that you need it. I know that you need it. Now let's just figure it out. This is a problem. Let's solve it together. Jason [00:44:32]: So that is key is to have that creative side of your brain. And no matter what, sometimes it's calling people and they're not answering. It's like, how do I reach out to them? Can I email them? Can I text them? Depending on what you're selling, maybe it's business to business. Can I mail them? Can I go to their office? How can I be creative and persistent and curious and open and stack all of those things together, right? So that one's so important. But again, the layers have to be there. You have to be open. Then you have to be curious, persistent, and then creative. All right. Jason [00:45:07]: And then now the fifth and final one is authentic. It's being authentic. It's authenticity. Now, of course, the book is selling with authentic persuasion. This is the authentic persuasion weekly training program. So I put this in there, and I think this is really important. I mentioned this in the book, and obviously, this first chunk of trainings. What equates to the first third of the book is about authenticity, which is the key. Jason [00:45:33]: A lot of people, they want the persuasion. They want the sales tactics. They want to know, how do I close more deals? What do I say? What do I have to do? What's the best response for objections? What's the best questions I can ask to close deals? Like, to get what I need to know. And all of that is important and all of that is valuable. But if you're not being authentic, you're not being true to who you are, and you're not giving an authentic part of you in your conversations that's transparent and just you being you, then it's not going to be as successful if you're phony. Or fake or feeling like you have to act like a sales professional or you have to be this person. You will close some deals. I absolutely promise it. Jason [00:46:17]: I've seen it. I've seen enough people like that who are just completely fake and phony. Once that phone rings and they turn into a completely different person and they can close some deals. But I will debate for a long time that that will not lead to long term success that is hard to sustain. You're going to have an off day. You're going to say something, you're going to forget your own stories. Like it's not going to resonate. People will pick up that you're fake and phony. Jason [00:46:43]: We've all dealt with those salespeople that just feel they're just oozing with fake and phony and it's just repulsive. I don't know what any other word to you. There's times where we've all done it, where we need to buy that thing or we really want to buy that thing, but we just don't enjoy the experience and we don't want to do that again from that person. And so the more you can be authentic, the more you can be true to who you are and understanding it, the better things will be in two areas. Again, it's all about you knowing who you are and what you want and what you're going after and what's true for you, which we're going to cover a lot, especially next week. And then the other part is being authentic and true for your customers and giving them the authentic side of you, right? Like if you're nerdy or you laugh funny or you say funny jokes, as long as they're not terribly inappropriate, right? Maybe they are. And that's just what you're going to go with. That's what people will pick up on that. Jason [00:47:44]: And I'm telling you, because this is the important part, is the more authentic you are, the more real you are and the more you're not trying to pretend to be someone else. I mean, I think you always want to be working on your professionalism. You want to be a professional. You want to be in the mode and in the zone of what you're selling and what's appropriate for that, but bringing your authentic side, the more you do that, the more your prospects will feel that they'll believe you. They'll trust you, which is such a huge part in sales, to get someone to trust you, but they'll trust the real you and then they will want to buy it from you. It's such a key thing. So make sure to focus on the authenticity piece and being authentic, because that is so important when it comes to these sales success traits, is this fifth and final one, is being authentic for you and for them to wrap up. So being a sales professional, these five traits. Jason [00:48:46]: Now, of course, there's more. There's people who add more. If I say there's five, someone else will say, hey, there's six, there's seven, there's ten, there's 18, there's only two. There's always that, right? There's always a list and a number, and every expert has their list of what it would be. For me, it's these five. It's what I've seen in myself. It's what I've seen in hundreds and hundreds of salespeople, the successful ones and the very unsuccessful, the mediocre, the average ones, the people who want to be successful, and they're just stuck and they don't know how, and they're just missing something and they don't know what it is. These are the five traits. Jason [00:49:24]: So it's openness, curiosity, persistence, creativity, and authenticity. And those, again, are so important to have. And like I said in the beginning, if you're just tuning in here towards the end, is that you can build all of those. You can create those in yourself and make them stronger and work on them. Every time. Every time you get off a call that was unsuccessful, ask yourself, was I curious enough? Did I ask enough questions? Was I persistent enough? Did I know that they would be a good fit and I could help them? And then I gave up too easily, right? Was I creative enough? They said, hey, I don't have the money, and I don't know when I'm going to get it. Did you give up too easy? Right? Ask yourself those questions. Reflect, that's where the openness comes in. Jason [00:50:12]: That's why that's the first on the list, is being open to analyzing what happened in the game. That's what professionals do. Professionals get off the court, right? Professional basketball players. And between then and the next game, they're watching game footage, they're talking with their coach, they're getting feedback, they're seeing what they did right, what they did wrong. Then they're getting ready for the next opponent and practicing in their mind, physically putting all those things together. Salespeople don't do that enough. They just kind of go through the motions and hope that they can find the easy prospects who want to buy from them. But when you get off that phone call and it doesn't go well. Jason [00:50:46]: It could have been a sale, but it wasn't. Spend some time, reflect. Was I open? Was I curious? Was I persistent enough? Was I creative enough? And was I authentic to myself? And did I bring that side of me? And was that what they got to experience and look at it and go, okay, maybe I wasn't persistent. All right, next time when they say no or they say that they got to talk to their uncle Bob, I'm going to say, that's great. Let's call Uncle Bob together because I'm sure he's going to have a lot of questions. And that way you can put it on me because if he asks you questions, you're not going to be able to answer them. I do this all day, and that way I can answer, I'll be the punching bag. He can ask me as many questions as he want. Jason [00:51:27]: That's what I'm here for. That's what I enjoy doing. So let's call Uncle Bob together right now, or do you want to set up a time for us to call him later? And that way he can ask that persistent, that creativity, that wanting to make it successful and also staying in control of the process because you know what can happen. You use that next time, right? You try a different creativity tactic next time. All these different things which we're going to cover throughout these training. If you have any questions on these, you can always reach out to me. If you're watching this in the replay, put questions, comments in there and wrapping this up, you can also email me. So I mentioned earlier that if you want a copy of the book selling with authentic persuasion transformed from order taker to quota breaker as part of these trainings that I'm doing as part of reaching out to my community as far as putting out this value, if you want, all you've got to do is two things. Jason [00:52:20]: One is you can email me. So you can email me at [email protected] and you can also go to authenticpersuasion.com freegift. And if you go there, then put in your information again, you just pay shipping, not even handling, just shipping. And I will sign a book, I will send it to you, and then you can follow along this training and get some value for that, hopefully shifting your sales, your sales approach, your mindset, strategies, whatever that looks like. There's a whole bunch in there. Again, any questions, any comments, any feedback, any ideas, any other topics you want me to cover as I interject in this? Because again, what I'm doing here is following along with the training, with the framework, with everything I've built with authentic persuasion and adding to what's in the book and also taking feedback from other people, making it something that's current for today, what people are facing right now, what you're dealing with. You have any comments or questions, always email me. [email protected] and of course you can find me. Jason [00:53:21]: You're watching this on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. This is also being broadcast on YouTube. I'm on Instagram, on Twitter, everywhere. And then my other two podcasts, you're watching this. I have two podcasts that I am super excited about having fun. If you're listening to this afterwards, you're listening to on the authentic Persuasion show podcast, which is a blast. Jason [00:53:44]: I love that one. I also have a show called the Scalable Call center sales podcast. So if you're in the call center space, a manager, a leader, a business owner, you're running a call center. You're a part of a call center. You're in a role within a call center being any telephone sales related thing, then make sure to tune into that show. Those episodes come out on Mondays, Wednesdays. They're available everywhere. ITunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon podcasts, Google podcasts. Jason [00:54:11]: Basically everywhere that podcasts are sold, you can find those episodes. A lot of great leaders coming on that show. Call center leaders, experts in the field, people who deal with call centers all the time, a lot of technology companies I'm talking to and resources and marketing companies to provide tools for that. So make sure to check that out if you're in that space. And then the other one, that's just an absolute blast, just full of value. Like it's so fun is the call center confidence with cutter and cat, with my co host Oliver Cat. And we do that Wednesdays. That one's live Wednesdays, 01:00 p.m. Jason [00:54:48]: Eastern, 10:00 a.m. Pacific, 06:00 p.m. GMT on Wednesdays. And then you can also find that on all the podcast platforms in replay form. And we do a lot of fun stuff. We're going through everything for call center related there. So if you're in a sales team, in a call center, again in a leadership role, that's another great resource because that's he and I just walking through every phase of building a great call center and having the confidence to run it and succeed in this day and age. And with the call center and everything. Jason [00:55:18]: That's all the challenges that come with call centers. So make sure to check that out. But that's it for this. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Week two episode two of the authentic Persuasion live weekly training. Again, you can catch this replay on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook. It'll be on the podcast in a matter of weeks. If you have any questions you can email me, but that's it. Jason [00:55:43]: And I will catch you next Friday. Have a great day. Jason [00:55:46]: That's it for the replay of the authentic Persuasion weekly live training session. Again, make sure to catch them live Fridays at noon Eastern, 09:00 a.m.. Pacific. You can go to jasoncutter.com to sign up so you can get alerts. Put it on your calendar and have the links for when it goes live. And you can always email me. [email protected] and I can get you the information to sign up as well as let me know any questions that you have, topics you want me to cover, or guides that you may be looking for. Thanks for tuning into the authentic persuasion show. Jason [00:56:18]: If you found value in this episode, please do two things. Subscribe so you can get each new episode and share this episode with anyone else you know in sales. Together we can help shift the way sales is done. And if you want to find out more information about how to transform your sales career or you want help with shifting your sales team from order takers to quota breakers, go to jasoncutter.com. Don't forget that everything in life is sales and I will catch you on the next episode of the Authentic Persuasion Show.