Psychologically Engineered™ Sales Process
If your present sales process is non-optimal, recruiting and sales training will be a waste of time. Why hire more reps, or train more, to go the wrong way? A psychologically-engineered™ sales process is crafted to achieve specific explicitly defined effects and reactions. Words have meanings – theoretical (dictionary defined) and practical (street usage). You do not define the meanings, they are perceived by your audience.
The vast majority of sales reps have only vague understanding of precise word meanings. They were forced to use dictionaries in school and quickly discovered that it was a painful experience. Better to guess or fake it. Embarrassing for them (though they often don’t realize it) and for you if they represent your company.
When I engineer a sales process, each word or phrase is selected consciously and carefully to maximize desirable outcomes, and eliminate undesirable outcomes. It is a systematic methodical process, with many iterations to get it to perfection.
This is the opposite of “winging-it,” relying on charisma. I train teams to focus their efforts in a specific direction, like a laser that creates focused coherent light intense enough to burn through steel, instead of like an ordinary bulb that dissipates it’s energy feebly in all directions.
A sales non-process ultimately degrades into relying on magic-bullet closes. Using coercive brute-force manipulative closing tactics only serves to alienate prospects. What could have been a cooperative exercise to find a mutual win-win ends up an adversarial pissing match. Reps meet resistance, get beat-up and rejected, develop call reluctance, don’t make sales, and quit. Not a good outcome for you or for them.
My training mandates a focus on service. The rep’s job is to communicate not just the features, but the true value of the product or service. It’s not up to the rep to make the buying decision. That’s the prospect’s sole responsibility. This realistic process sets the tone – expecting cooperation, facilitating easy decisions. It creates a firm basis for a long-term profitable relationship, referrals, and testimonials.
I developed my methodology on a foundation of seemingly unrelated disciplines – evolutionary biology, philosophy, psychology, quantum physics and the so-called new science, neuroscience, mathematics, Buddhism, and more. What these disciplines all have in common is an attempt to describe aspects of human nature and reality. These various aspects are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in that when combined produce a clearer picture than the parts would lead you to believe. All are models of reality, not actual reality, but useful nonetheless as long as you don’t confuse the two.
Developing my process took many years and extensive field testing to refine and perfect (see Saga of the Top 1%). I can apply this methodology to your company considering your precise market situation. You reps will sell more. You will find it easier to recruit and retain the best reps. You can convert the bottom 80% to the top 20% or replace them.
Lastly I find that humor makes learning more effective. Humor is simply storytelling and we are all DNA wired for that experience. Humor makes life more tolerable. It balances out hardship. Being serious is great when needed but wears thin when constant. You will see humor throughout my writing. Many have no discernable sense of humor and mistake it for being unprofessional. You’re wrong. There are actually college degrees in comedy! I would hire as many of the graduates as I could.