[E52] Q&A Week: Sales movies suggestions and managers over your shoulder

In this episode, I answer:

• What are the best sales related movies to learn from?

• How do I get my manager to stop standing behind me when I am on a call?

If you have any sales or mindset related questions, send me a message through the contact page or via LinkedIn.

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Episode 52 – Transcript

Coming Soon

Hello, and welcome to Episode 52 of The Sales Experience Podcast. My name is Jason Cutter and I’m excited to tackle some more questions, answering the best I can, try to give a specific answer to a specific question in the most general way possible so that anybody listening to this that’s either in sales, thinking about getting into sales, or as a leader of a sales team can take this information and apply it to whatever product or service that’s being sold. So, let’s get into the questions right away. All right.

The first question is, what are the best sales related movies to learn from for sales people?

Now, I get this one all the time, people always want to talk about it. Salespeople always like to ask what other people watch and study. And of course, there’s Glengarry Glen Ross, there’s Boiler Room, Wolf of Wall Street, those are like the big ones.

And my advice and what I’ve always found with those is, within those movies within those three movies in particular that almost everyone is familiar with; there is so many golden sales principles and lessons. Always be closing is one of the classic ones that is in both Glengarry Glen Ross, as well as Boiler Room.

Now, the thing is, is that you’ve got to watch those movies and understand all of what’s going on. Because there’s some really good sales tactics that are used and strategies and ways that you can help people move forward and persuade them.

However, all of those movies can show the downside, the negative side, the bad side of when sales is done with the wrong intentions for the wrong reasons. Boiler Room, Wolf of Wall Street has the two biggest examples of that, and you’ve got to be careful.

So, you’ve got to be able to pull out the lessons, pull out the things that work very well without getting drawn into the overall strategy that’s being used in each of those movies, that’s really not effective. Especially in this day and age, especially with the transparency available online with the internet, where that if you’re a bad salesperson, and you’re dealing with customers, at some point, you’re going to be exposed and it’s all going to be crumbling down.

And that’s a terrible way to live, where you’re trying to go from sales position to sales position company to company, you’re trying to stay ahead of this bad thing that you’re doing constantly. It’s much easier to just always do the right thing, always sell in the right way, always focus on helping people in the right way possible.

And there is a lot of lessons from those movies that can help, there’s some good things to use, and to say that will make you more effective. And so again, take the good and leave the bad and just use whatever you can from those. All right.

Next question, how do I get my manager to stop standing behind me when I’m on a call?

So, the scenario that I’m imagining with this question because this is the one I’ve heard myself literally, so many times from reps. Is that on the phone, working on a call, trying to move it forward, trying to close the deal and your manager is standing behind you, maybe with a headset on, maybe they’re just looking over your shoulder, they’re listening into what you say, maybe they’re giving you feedback, maybe they’re on whisper mode on the headset, maybe they’re giving you things you should say, things you should stop saying, they’re giving you advice, and they’re just all over you trying to help you close that deal.

The first question I always have with this is, how well are you doing at sales? Because for most sales, people who are successful and doing well, they won’t necessarily have their manager standing over them in the same capacity.

If you’re doing really well in sales, if you’re performing, if you’re succeeding, then your manager won’t be doing this unless you’ve asked them to because you want them to take you to the next level. Because here’s the fundamental thing is that anybody who’s good in any profession or any trade or any hobby craft, whatever that is, people that are operating at a higher level, actually appreciate more coaching and feedback, not less.

So, when somebody is at the top of their game, they don’t think I have arrived and so I no longer need help. They think I’m at this level, I know how I got here, which is with tons of support, tons of effort, tons of practice, 10,000 hours of just putting in the work and doing things in a way where I’m getting better and better all the time.

And so they get to that point and they go, how do I get to the next level? How do I become even better at what I do? The way to do that is with coaching, and help and support and a mentor no matter what level you’re at.

So, top people actually seek out more help to get them to an even higher level. Tiger Woods, which he had his troubles in life for little while there and now he’s bouncing back. But at his prime years and years and years ago, it was said that he had up to seven different coaches; life coaches, mindset coach, financial coach, you know, he’s got his driving coach, his putting coach. And so everything he is moving forward to in becoming the greatest involved getting so much help to fix and support and help all the areas of his life.

And so if you’re a top rep, you actually are probably seeking out ways to get better. So, if your manager’s standing over your shoulder and your top rep, it’s probably because you invited them there, and you’re hoping they can help you find the little things to get better.

Now, if you’re not a top rep and your manager standing over your shoulder, it’s probably because you’re not even an average rep, you’re at the bottom of the pack and that manager is trying to help you. Now, it could come across as two different ways.

One is that they’re there to coach you, support you, and their goal is to help you move from where you are now to where you could be and the potential they see in you. They’re supportive, they’re helpful and what they’re saying is coming from a good place inside of them, and they want to move you forward.

The other option, and I’ve seen this one as well is where the manager is trying to control you and the process so that you can close deals, and they’re doing it in a micromanaging kind of way with authority and from their own ego. That kind of way doesn’t work too well because even if you do close the sale, it will be because of their pressure and what they were doing for you or with you are to you in that scenario, and it won’t really help you grow.

If you have the more supportive manager, the first one I mentioned, they’re going to help you learn how to do it on your own. They’re going to teach you how to fish so you can get better at fishing, and fish on your own and feed yourself.

They’re there because they want to support you and they want you to be successful. And you have the choice, whether it’s a supportive manager or a micromanaging manager to either have an attitude where you want to resist and repel everything they say or you want to be angry, or maybe you do what they say that you should do.

And then as soon as they walk away, you’re mad, you go back to doing your own way. You bad mouth them to your co workers in the other desks around you. Or you take what they give you whether they’re the supportive one or not and you run with it because you know that what they’re giving you is the advice to help you win either way.

And so you taken what you can you’ll learn from it, you use those techniques, and you get better at sales. Either one of those managers, that’s their goal is to help you get better at sales.

And again, like the first question of this episode, you know, sometimes it’s not the best manager, maybe it’s not the best environment, you can just pull out the good techniques, pull out the good things, you learn the good lessons, leave the bad, and then use that as you move forward in your life. But again, my biggest thing when any rep ever ask me, how do I get my manager to stop being behind me or I don’t like it when my manager or the team lead or somebody you know, the mentor, the trainer is there behind me.

First up, nobody really likes that. It’s always a little stressful no matter what when somebody’s standing behind you. I know, I’ve seen it so many times, I know the way – myself. I’m trying to type someone standing behind me, over my shoulder, all of a sudden I forget how to type and I’m completely ineffective.

And so just know that it’s the same way that everyone hates listening to themselves talk on a recording, nobody likes having someone behind them. But take it for what it is and appreciate that that person is there to support you and they’re trying to help you win.

Again, whether they’re being supportive, or micromanaging, whether they’re being nice about it or not, take in the good, use that to get better. And if it’s really a bad environment, move on. Find a different company to work for, a different product or service, take what you’ve got and move forward with it.

If is a supporting environment, stop resisting it, stop fighting it stop thinking you know better because if you knew better, the manager wouldn’t be behind you. So be open, be willing, I talked about that a lot in mindset week, and just focus on what they’re doing is trying to help you win.

And sometimes in the moment, you’re mad at your coach, you’re mad at your manager, you’re mad at your parent, you’re mad at the other person who’s trying to teach you and show you how to do it. And then once you get it, once the light bulb turns on, once it all clicks together, then you can look back and go, wow, I’m so thankful that that person did what they did for me.

In the moment, I couldn’t stand it and I was mad and I didn’t like them. And now I’m so thankful and I appreciate that experience that I had and what they did for me, and the fact that they didn’t stop, and they didn’t let me be mediocre, right? They pushed me to a different place, to a better place to more of what I could be and I’m thankful.

So hopefully, that helps. If you’re in that situation, try to keep that in mind, try to step back instead of the reaction, which is our ego, which is like I don’t need help. Stop trying to help me. I know what I’m doing. I’m really good at this. That’s the ego trying to protect us, right. I talked a lot about that in mindset week as well, which is our egos trying to keep us safe.

And anyone else, any comments, any suggestions, any coaching, if you’re not careful that will be seen as an attack on us, attack on our personality, on our soul, on who we are. And of course, we’re going to get defensive and block that out. So, just let that part go, take in the feedback, whatever is valuable, use that and work on improving all the time.

All right. That’s it for another episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment, send me a message all the same stuff I say every episode. I mean it, I appreciate it all. I’m so thankful if you’re listening to this and if you subscribe, if you’ve commented, thank you so much. And until next time, always remember that everything in for sales and people will remember the experience you gave them.