How Our Salespeople Unintentionally Create Friction

[0:04] This is the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast, supporting sales leaders and managers to improve their sales funnels from people to prospects. I'm Hamish Knox. In this show, you'll learn how you can improve your results, lead a great team, and hit more targets with Full Funnel Freedom.

[0:21] Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. Today, I'll be be sharing ideas and insights on words and how the words that our salespeople are using are potentially creating friction with their clients and prospects. The Full Funnel Freedom podcast is brought to you by Sandler in Calgary. Go to www.hamish.sandler.com slash howtosandler for more details. So words, words are important. They're how we're communicating in most cases. Of course, body language is very important as well. However, when we are looking at the results our salespeople are bringing in, in terms of their prospecting, qualify closing, and or expanding activities, and the results are not where we think they should be, it's really tempting for us to go and look for big reasons. You know, it could be their activity levels, could be gaps in their training, could be list quality, et cetera, et cetera. But the culprit actually could be in their words that they're using.

[1:34] Word choices are really critical because it doesn't matter what we or our salesperson says, it matters what the recipient hears. fears. And as I've said to our leaders that we work with, we might say something to our team that we think is sunshine and roses, and they think it's a flaming bag of dog poop. And then we get confused. It's like, well, how are you reacting that way? Because it isn't a sunshine and roses, and it's not because the recipient is filtering our message through their own hopes and dreams, fears, worldview, outlook, et cetera. I've spoken on previous episodes about words that can kill our salespeople's credibility before they've even really got past hello with a new client.

[2:25] I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. In this episode, we're going to be focused on more interactions with prospects where a salesperson is going to say something that they think is absolutely okay, but it's not being received very well by their client. And our clients are really looking for trusted advisors to help them solve challenges in the present and in the future. But...

[2:52] Sometimes when salespeople are using phrases like the examples I'm going to share in this episode, the client goes, oh, you're just a pushy, aggressive, egocentric salesperson. You're not the trusted advisor I thought you were going to be. So when we look at words that our salespeople use, one of the common phrases, and it's been said to me by potential vendors, and I'm sure you've heard it from vendors, both potential and current or maybe past, is the phrase company policy.

[3:24] It's our company policy. Well, what that's telling our client is they're just a dollar sign. And that's it. We don't care about having a relationship because we're going to use this quote unquote company policy as a sword to force the client into course of action that they maybe don't want to go down. A good friend of mine likes to say that policies are shields, not swords. We certainly want to protect ourselves.

[3:55] But when we use the phrase, it's our company policy, it comes across to a prospect like we're using it as a weapon. And it's a quick way to begin the end of a relationship with our client. A client of ours shared recently in a session that they were interacting with a salesperson who said, I need this sale to hit my target. Our clients don't care about our targets. They don't care about the targets of our salespeople. And the cousin to my target is we're having the sales contest and I need the sale to win the sales contest. test. Again, our prospects and our clients don't care at all. That's an internal thing that is egocentric. That is not about supporting our prospect and solving the challenge that they're talking about with one of our salespeople. So what the prospect is hearing in this case, especially with my target is, well, this salesperson's desperate. I bet I can get a great deal.

[4:55] From this salesperson, but I don't trust that they or their company is going to be around for very long. So hopefully you've never heard one of your salespeople utter the phrase, my target or sales contest to a prospect. But if you have, it's a complete credibility killer. The next one is going to sound a little odd because it's legitimate, but it's the phrase, I need. I need.

[5:29] There's a cliche that WIIFM is the world's most listened to radio station. If you haven't heard of WIIFM, it's what's in it for me because we're all wired for self-interest and really that self-preservation. So when a client gets a message from a salesperson, oftentimes it's via email that says, I need whatever the information is that they're looking for, without giving a clear why to the client as to what the payoff is to them for complying with the salesperson's request, they're probably not going to respond. on. And now our salesperson, it gets into chase mode and now they devolve themselves very quickly from trusted advisor to human pest. So when a salesperson needs some information, they've got to give a clear why

[6:24] do they need it and what the payoff is to their client. Because otherwise a client who's got a lot of things on their plate already is probably going to be like, yeah, that sounds great, pushy salesperson, I'll get back to you. Probably never. Another example, and the Simpsons.

[6:40] Use this to great comedic effect, but it's, I got to go talk to my manager. I got to go talk to my boss. That may be legitimately true. One of our salespeople might be interacting with a prospect and the prospect has made a request that is beyond their ability to approve. They've asked for a huge discount or special terms or whatever that might need approval from us. But the prospect doesn't need to know that the salesperson needs to come to us for approval. Because the minute that one of our salespeople says, I got to go talk to my boss, the prospect's thinking, well, then why the heck am I talking to you? Let me talk to the person who can actually make the decisions. What's better for a salesperson to say in that case is I need to go confer with my colleagues internally.

[7:30] Let's set up a time to chat for you and me, get it in our calendars after I've

[7:36] had had a chance to chat with them, and then I'll circle back and we can carry this conversation on. The fact that they have to come to us is irrelevant to the conversation in the fact that by telling the prospect they've got to come talk to their boss, it kills all of their credibility and any potential momentum going forward. The last one I'm going to share on the episode today is a worn out phrase from prospecting training. And you've probably heard it and maybe it's even been said to you. And it's the phrase just like you. We work with vice presidents of sales just like you. Well, all of us are unique, individual, special human beings. So the intention behind just like you is to actually create credibility. In practice, it actually kills credibility because when someone says, just like you, they're thinking, no one's just like me. You don't know me at all.

[8:38] I don't trust you. Get out of my office. Get off the phone. I want to end this conversation if it's a networking event. However, human beings love reference groups, right? We're all social. We're all social creatures and we want to have reference So instead of saying we work with vice presidents of sales just like you, we say we work with vice presidents of sales who are facing problem one, problem two, problem three, which of those is relevant to you and worth a conversation, then the prospect we're speaking to actually can draw the reference point themselves

[9:17] and pull our salesperson forward. And, of course, when we get pulled forward by our prospects, our salespeople can't be pushy because they're being pulled forward. So quick exercise.

[9:32] To challenge you with, as we wrap up today, this is an exercise that a salesperson that we work with took it upon themselves to do. They weren't even directed to do this. They did this on their own after we had given them some insights in a session around word choice.

[9:48] What they did is they went back and analyzed two weeks of email communication with prospects. And what they discovered is they were begging for information, for meetings, for business. They adjusted they adjusted their communication to be much more direct, specific, giving whys for why they needed that information from their client. And right away, their response rate kicked back up and they were booking more meetings, they were getting responses from their prospects. So the exercise is go back and analyze a sampling of your team's emails and or calls from the past month. For the the calls. You might use a service like Gong or Connect and Sell, or if you have another way of recording your team's calls. And then the emails are the emails. Now, what we're looking for is we're trying to figure out, are our salespeople creating friction by their word choice? And the metric for creating friction is either they got no response to an email or you can hear a tonality change in the prospect. So the prospect might be engaged and positive, and all of a sudden, you hear their tone go flat, and they start to verbally back out of the conversation. Because we want to be frictionless with our clients and prospects. Now, that does not mean that.

[11:13] People can't own their process, which actually projects confidence to the prospects. It doesn't mean that they can't ask direct questions. It also doesn't mean they can't decline to do business with a prospect if it's not a good fit. By coaching our salespeople to adjust their word choices, and this is not a PC word police type thing, we want to be interacting in a respectful way no matter who we are interacting with. So when we're coaching our salespeople to adjust their word choices. We want them to be focused on how do we reduce friction, whether that's to getting a meeting, to getting information, to closing a sale. By reducing the friction in our communications with our clients and prospects, we are gonna create rapport quicker and we're gonna create more long-term relationships with our clients and prospects, as well as increasing our sales team's efficacy efficient efficacy as we are

[12:07] looking to create full funnel freedom in our organizations.

[12:10] This has been the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I've been your host, Hamish Knox, today sharing ideas and insights around word choices and how word choices that our salespeople are using, like I need, I've got to talk to my boss, we work with people just like you, can unintentionally create friction because it doesn't matter what we say, it matters what the recipient hears. years. The Full Funnel Freedom podcast is brought to you by Sandler in Calgary. Go to www.hamish.sandler.com for more details. If you would like to be a guest or a sponsor of the Full Funnel Freedom podcast, please email podcast at fullfunnelfreedom.com. Thanks for listening. Give us a rating and a review. And until we connect on the next episode, go create full Full Funnel Freedom. Thank you for listening to Full Funnel Freedom with Hamish Knox. If you want to increase your sales with ease, go to fullfunnelfreedom.com.

[13:10] Music.