In this Expert Insight Interview, Harry Spaight discusses his recently-released book and the concept of selling with dignity. Harry Spaight is a keynote speaker, coach, and author of Selling with Dignity: Your Formula for Life-Changing Sales Results.
This Expert Insight Interview discusses:
- How the book Selling with Dignity came about
- How switching to a service-minded sales approach changed everything
- How automation can help facilitate the human element in sales
Genesis of the Book
Harry Spaight used to be a missionary before he got into sales. So, when he began his sales career, he was a complete fish out of water or a missionary in a sales bullpen, if you will. If you’re familiar with movies like Boiler Room or Wolf of Wall Street, you might have an idea of a sales bullpen. Harry was a guy who had just come from a foreign country, and he hadn’t sworn in 15–20, and being in a sales bullpen, his world was upside down.
He learned quickly that the best way for him to sell was to go back to his roots, which was to serve people, and that’s not promoted in sales, or at least it wasn’t 25 years ago. Harry wanted to write a book to show others who were service-minded that they could succeed in sales and sales leadership without necessarily being a pushy, egotistical, all-about-me salesperson.
Service-Minded Sales
Harry says he had to switch to a more service-oriented mindset because he failed miserably as a traditional salesperson. He understood that the thing he did best was serving people, and so he decided to be the best customer-service-minded salesperson there was.
Once he started doing that, everything turned around. Suddenly it was all about serving people, and what he could do for them, so everything started to change. Not only did sales start to happen for him, but he got more and more referrals because of how he treated his clients.
Automation and the Human Element
The human element has come into stark focus in sales recently. Automation, AI, and other technological advancements are great if they are helping enable people to be more human and build better relationships, but they don’t work so well in trying to replace that human element.
Harry left one of his jobs as the VP of Sales in Washington D.C. in 2013 because everything was about metrics. There was so little emphasis on people, relationships, trust, and guts that he became disenfranchised with sales and thought he was done with the profession entirely.
Thankfully, he found out this wasn’t the case everywhere and that intelligent people, especially small business owners, are not looking for metrics as much as they are looking for sales.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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