How to Sell More by Upping Your Persuasion Game

The art of persuasion is a big thing, especially for salespeople. It’s a pivotal part of being successful. Learning to be more persuasive in sales leads to more revenue generation, and allows the salesperson to add value and make a difference in the lives of their buyers. Lee Warren, interviewed by John Golden, discusses persuasion in sales.

This expert sales interview explores:

• Defining persuasion in sales
• Techniques for becoming more persuasive
• How to shift your mindset to achieve sales success
• Adding value through persuasion

What is Persuasion?:

Persuasion is a very ethical thing. Many people think it’s a shady tactic that involves convincing people to do things they don’t want to do, but it’s actually quite contrary to that. Persuasion is all about getting emotional engagement with other people. If someone feels like what you’re saying to them is fun, or worth their time, or going to make them look good in front of someone else, or make them money, then you’re setting yourself up to be persuasive in sales.

How to Become More Persuasive:

It’s likely the goal of most salespeople to become more persuasive in sales. There are some simple, actionable tips that are easy to integrate in order to take the role of the expert persuader. The first is that you must listen more, and understand people’s words more. Have your hand on your heart with every client. Many people, especially in sales, are good at talking about what is interesting to them. Salespeople are often good at the spiel, but no one really wants to be sold to. People push back against the spiel. Learning how to really listen and understand what your buyer’s real needs are shifts the seller into a position to persuade with empathy. “This is something that you can learn to do in a minute, but it takes a lifetime to become good at,” said Warren.

More Techniques to be Persuasive in Sales:

The second technique for becoming more persuasive in sales is to restructure how you think about language. When you meet people who are genuinely good at being persuasive, they often speak with very visual language and use lots of imagery. They might say things like, “imagine if…” Successful persuaders are also very good at looking at what the future could be like for all of us, together. “They really do want everyone to have a solution, and everyone to win from what they’re proposing,” said Warren.

Shifting Your Mindset:

A mindset shift is often required for those who want to increase their persuasive abilities. “You have to go genuinely believe that what other people have to say, and what’s in their mind, is genuinely as valuable as what’s in your own mind,” said Warren. “Often times, we’re not really listening to people, we’re just waiting for our turn to speak. We must genuinely view other peoples world as being as interesting as our own.”

The Importance of Value:

Many salespeople focus on the product or service itself, and not the value that the product or service could bring to their client’s lives. “Be obsessed with value. Focus on the value that it brings, rather than the thing itself,” said Warren. A persuasive sales conversation is really, at its root, about the exchange of value. One top technique is to fill in the second half of these sentences: “At the heart of what I do is a simple idea…” and “At the heart of our service is a simple idea…” What that gets you to do is to focus really precisely on the value that you bring. This organically and naturally gets you to use a better kind of language that matters more to clients and to the people you’re selling to and illustrates the value that you, and your product or service, can bring to the table.

About 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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Why Are We Still Talking About Sales and Marketing Alignment?

Sales and marketing alignment has become an insurmountable issue in the sales world. Attempts to unite these two entities has gone on for years, and yet there still hasn’t been a concrete solution. Why haven’t we found a resolution? Why are we still talking about it? There are a lot of barriers to getting alignment between marketing and sales. Understanding these barriers, and how to solve them, allows organizations to get their sales and marketing teams on the same page. Chris Ryan, interviewed by John Golden, discusses the barriers to sales and marketing alignment.

This expert sales interview explores:

• How having different objectives creates misalignment
• The importance of unifying measurements and metrics
• Changes in the business world

A Difference in Objectives:

The first of many reasons why sales and marketing don’t often end up on the same page has to do with a difference in objectives. Salespeople are looking to close business and make their number for each quarter. But, if you’re a good marketer, you’re looking out into the future two to three quarters, somethings even years. There’s a difference between sales more short-term focus, and marketing’s more long-term focus, that creates misalignment.

Metrics and Measurements:

A second reason why there isn’t an easy alignment between sales and marketing has to do with the way that success is measured. There is often a lack of credible metrics and tracking systems, so you don’t really know who is responsible for certain tasks, or how and when certain people are supposed to do what. At the end of the day, this leads to sales pointing at marketing, and marketing pointing at sales, with neither team making concrete changes. For sales, metrics are a little bit easier, because they have a number to hit at the end of each quarter. For marketing, it can be a bit more nebulous because they don’t have the same kind of focused measure of success. In order to bridge the gap between the two entities, management must create and enforce metrics at every stage of the process for both sales and marketers.

Changes in the Business World:

A lot of things have changed recently in the sales and business world; not only in how marketing and selling are done but also in how people buy and make purchases. And yet, despite these changes, sales and marketing are still living and operating in the past. The success that they had years ago can actually become an enemy today if employees don’t learn to adapt and change with how things are done. It can be hard to get marketing and sells, even at a leadership level, into the same room to create and agree upon a shared metric and workflow in place to support a good revenue generation system.
But, educating staff on what really works, and what doesn’t work, is vital for an organizations success. Management must take the lead in initiating the creation and implementation of these procedures.

To learn more about the barriers to sales and marketing alignment, and how to resolve them, watch the entire expert sales interview.

About 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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

MUST WATCH PANEL DISCUSSION [icon name=”binoculars” class=”” unprefixed_class=””]

When making a sales call, or interacting with customers, you are talking to a human. So why not make your interactions as human as possible? Using video throughout the sales process is a great way to make your interactions more personable, create closer connections with your clients, and develop your buyer persona. John Golden hosts this panel discussion on using video in the sales process, featuring the expert opinions of Meridith Powell and Jorge Soto.

Recorded on October 23rd: get actionable insight into how to use video in sales.

Jorge Soto – I have been selling for over 16 years. I’ve sold everything from consumer products door-to-door, to enterprise software. I’ve been a sales trainer, author, and manager. I am on a mission to inspire and education entrepreneurs through my Sotoventures events and online channels.

Meridith Powell – Voted one of the Top 15 Business Growth Experts to watch, Meridith Elliott Powell, CSP, is an award winning author, keynote speaker and business strategist. She helps her clients decrease stress and increase profits through her work in sales, leadership and employee engagement!

How Small Things Can Make a Big Difference

Do small things really make a big difference? Entrepreneur Kenton Lee is proof that a tiny idea can tackle massive things. Through his project The Shoe That Grows , he found a solution to a particular problem that he felt he could do something about. Interviewed by John Golden, Lee discusses how a small thing has now made a really big difference.

This expert sales interview discusses:

• The power of small things
• How large problems can be tackled with small solutions
• Embracing small things in business to achieve sales success

Embracing Unexpected Ideas:

When living at an orphanage in Kenya, Lee was surrounded by children who had no options for shoes. He had the idea for his Shoe That Grows project while walking with a little girl who was wearing shoes so small, she had to cut open the front to let her toes hang out. “It all started with an unexpected idea that popped into my head while traveling,” said Lee. Since that day, this idea made a huge impact. The organization developed and created an adjustable shoe that grows with a child as they grow, lasting them years and taking them through five sizes. Since its start, over 180,000 pairs of shoes have been delivered to children in need in over 100 countries.

The Power of Small Things:

“I really do believe in the power of small things. It may not be the silver bullet solution, but it could help even one person. It’s a start, in a small way, to make things better or alleviate pain,” said Lee. “We may not be Bill Gates, or have the power to make huge systemic changes, but for regular people, we can do small things that make a big difference.”

Big Problems, Small Solutions:

There is a tendency, both on a personal and professional level, to only discuss large problems. However, it’s incredibly difficult to tackle and make changes to macro-level issues like generational and structural poverty, or a negative systemic culture within an organization. The result is that these conversations about big issues don’t actually lead to anything changing. Instead, pull things back. Look at what is in front of you where you actually could make an impact and take action. This is usually in the small things. “I’m a believer that small things make a big difference in so many areas of life and work,” said Lee. By taking action in a manageable way, you actually make a difference and make changes. Even if they are at a micro level, and the larger problem still exists, you have made a positive difference and created positive change.

Small Things in Business:

Say you are working on big sales with five clients. As a salesperson, there is already a lot to juggle and manage when moving an account through the sales cycle. The tendency is to focus on the bigger picture; always be closing, always be checking off the next step in the process, always be moving the client closer to signing the contract. But sometimes it can be helpful to integrate little things, like sending a thank you note, sending an email back right away, or doing smaller things that yield big results. It’s the small things that stand out to clients, and these little differences can truly make or break the end results. “Do small things really well, and make things happen,” said Lee.

About 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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Rising Above the Status Quo in Business by Crushing Mediocrity

Mediocrity, in many ways, has become the new norm in business as we’ve lowered standards, and been overcome by a more casual culture. These tendencies, however, can be detrimental to success. Sticking with the status quo only serves to limit salespeople and their potential. Lisa Copeland, interviewed by John Golden, discusses crushing mediocrity to succeed in business. 

This expert sales interview explores:

• Defining mediocrity in sales
• The importance of having a purpose
• How to exit your comfort zone

What is Mediocrity?

“Mediocrity, to me, is what is ruining America, and the business culture around the world,” said Copeland. “It isn’t even just about not doing well or failing, it’s about living in the middle and not wanting to go the extra step to reach the greatest heights we can reach.” It’s making a decision to go with the safe option, and avoid putting yourself out there. Many people look at the bumps along the road to success and make the choice to stick with the safe option. But that is the status quo. That is mediocrity.

Crushing Mediocrity with Purpose:

Copeland discusses 10 tried and true principals in her book, Crushing Mediocrity: 10 Ways to Rise Above the Status Quo. The most significant of these principals is having a purpose. If you don’t know why you are doing what you’re doing, other people don’t either. “My purpose was to revolutionize the auto industry. I wasn’t just going to do it to do it, it was going to be a lot of work, but at that point in my life and in my career, I knew it needed to be a purpose-driven business,” said Copeland. “It was going to matter. For me, it was empowering women consumers and it was empowering women minorities and millennials to stick their toe into the auto industry. I was willing to do the work and do whatever it took if it could help be a revolutionary in the industry.”

Exit Your Comfort Zone:

Danger is real. Fear is a choice. “Psychology today says that 96% of what we fear never materializes, and yet it rents so much space inside of our head,” said Copeland. “When we talk about getting out of the comfort zone, it can just mean that day one, you make the decision. Day two, you take the next step. You learn to fear less, not to be fearless.” Being fearless might be considered reckless, where you aren’t making important decisions or using intentionality in your choices. But to fear less, on the other hand, is to challenge yourself to take one step that you wouldn’t have taken the day before. “Success isn’t easy. If it was, everyone would do it,” said Copeland. Exiting your comfort zone, and taking small steps towards fearing less, will bring you closer to the success you want to achieve.

About 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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

How Neuromarketing Can Help You Persuade Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime

Patrick Renvoise’s new book, The Persuasion Code: How Neuromarketing Can Help You Persuade Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime, was just released. It’s been 16 years since Patrick Renvoise published his first book on neuromarketing, which took the business world by storm. Interviewed by John Golden, Renvoise shares information about neuromarketing and persuasion in this expert sales interview.

This expert sales interview discusses:

• Defining neuromarketing
• The success of neuromarketing over the last 16 years
• The interpretation model
• Using key stimuli to market better
• Simplifying the science

What is Neuromarketing?:

Traditional marketing is about asking people what they want, and then creating product development, sales strategies, and marketing strategies, around what people reported they wanted. The problem with this is that people don’t really know what they want. Billions of dollars get wasted on failing marketing campaigns because of the incorrect assumption that people can tell us their true desires. Nearly two decades ago when neuromarketing first began, it presented a new conclusion: If people don’t know what they want, we can measure physiological changes on the body to get an accurate indication of preferences. This will save money and make marketing campaigns more effective. The promises made by this new technique seemed too good to be true.

Does Neuromarketing Live Up to the Hype?:

Neuromarketing, unfortunately, has not quite delivered on its promises. One of the reasons for this is that it’s quite simple to gather data. It’s easy to put electrodes heads, ask people questions, and gather their physiological measurements. However, actually infiltrating those measurements, and delivering marketing insights that generate real results, was more complicated than expected. “It took us about 15 years to realize that without an interpretation model, people do not really see the benefits of neuromarketing,” said Renvoise. “That is the subject of our second book. We say, ‘yes, neuromarketing is great, we can measuring these things, but do not expect to get miracle results, especially if you’re not using an interpretation model.’”

The Interpretation Model:

The model is based on the work of Daniel Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002, and the fundamental discoveries that he and his team have made. One of these discoveries is that we have two personalities: a rational personality and a primal personality. Kahneman divided these into two systems. System one is the primal personality, driven by the unconscious brain that is in charge of digestion, breathing, and other lower level body functions. System two is the rational brain, which is much more evolved. Although humans might think we make decisions using the rational brain, the reality is that the primal brain has more of an impact on the rational brain than vice versa. The primal brain can only be triggered by six certain stimuli. 

Marketing with Stimuli:

So, is your company communicating to your customer’s primal brain? Or rational brain? One of the six stimuli that trigger the primal brain is visualization, yet most companies communicate using words. You can go onto their website and see a long text-based explanation about what they do or provide. “I’m not suggesting you need a visual product, but you do need to develop a visual that becomes a symbol for your value proposition,” said Renvoise. For example, if you are trying to persuade a prospect that your value proposition will save them money, you might include a picture of a bank note, or a safe, that will provide a visual representation of saving money. This will be more effective than writing the words “save money,” because the photo will engage the part of the brain most responsible for decision making. 

Is Neuromarketing Usable for Everyday Companies?

Neuromarketing, at first blush, sounds like a complicated endeavor. But in reality, it’s a concept that can be used by anyone; you don’t need a neuroscience degree to understand and apply the techniques. At its core, neuromarketing is about understanding how people use their brains to make buying decisions. It’s not just about science. It’s about simplifying that science to make it accessible and usable for sales and marketing organizations. Renvoise’s goal for his book was to simplify the “neuro” part of neuromarketing so that the “marketing” part could be used in the business world.

To learn more about neuromarketing, watch the full expert sales interview, and check out Renvoise’s first interview on neuromarketing.

About 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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

MUST WATCH PANEL DISCUSSION[icon name=”binoculars” class=”” unprefixed_class=””]

Recruiting the best salespeople is no easy task. You’re looking for the person who will seamlessly integrate into your company culture, and bring a set of furnished skills that will lend itself well to overall success, and the success of the sales team. There isn’t always a large pool of available candidates, though. Plus, the recruitment and hiring process of a salesperson is best done by someone who is also a good salesperson. When the wrong kind of person who doesn’t have the right experience tries to hire for the sales team, it often leads to disarray. Recruiting the best salespeople requires careful planning, intentional question asking, calculated decision making, and the skills to decipher who is the best candidate.

John Golden hosts this webinar featuring the expert opinions of Rob Jolles, Monika D’Agostino, and Jason Lalk. Join us on September 25th at 10am PST to get actionable insight into how to recruit the best salespeople.

Rob Jolles has spent over thirty year, and logged over 2.5 million miles as a professional speaker specializing in sales, and influence. He is a best-selling author of five book, translated into over a dozen languages, and President of Jolles Associates, Inc.

Monika D’Agostino is a business growth expert and founder of the Consultative Sales Academy. She provides sales expertise consulting and a blend of e-learning and live consultative sales certification training. Her expertise in establishing a common sales and service language results in increased revenue.

Jason Lalk is the Director of Sales at CloserIQ, the sales recruiting solution for tech companies. Previously, he was the Director of Sales at Bindo, and before that an Accountant for the New York Jets and KPMG before making the transition to sales.

How to Harness the Power of Consistency in Sales

The benefit of consistency in sales is very simple. We know that consistent sales activities produce consistent sales results. Random sales activities produce random sales results. Many salespeople use a sales process to guide their buyers from lead to close, but others opt for strategies that produce more inconsistent results. Weldon Long, interviewed by John Golden, explores the power of consistency in sales.

This expert sales interview explains consistency in sales, including:

• Two main components of consistency
• The importance of following a process
• Common contentions to consistency

Components to Consistency:

There are two main components to creating consistency. The first thing that must be done is that salespeople must hold themselves responsible and accountable for doing the same thing over and over again. They must adhere to the previously set sales process, and stick to it as much as possible, in order to prevent random results. The second component involves holding your customers accountable to consistency as well. Buyers will want to think about things for a while, or talk to the competition, or negotiate on price; each sale usually includes at least a few points of contention before an agreement is made. But, if you can get the buyer to make commitments to certain things, like what they value, or what is most important to them, you can remind them of these commitments if they ever contend them. You provide a gentle reminder about what they said previously, which creates anxiety, or dissonance, in the mind of the buyer, that helps prompt them to stay consistent with their original commitment.

Following a Process:

Say a manufacturer is producing a product, and they are inconsistent with their operations and manufacturing process. They don’t follow a specific course of action, they just walk the factory each day, sometimes doing one thing, sometimes doing another. The quality of their product would be horrible! And they would undoubtedly have a lot of unhappy customers that didn’t get what they were promised. The benefit of having consistency in just as important, yet many people overlook its importance because selling is not as tangible as manufacturing. When it comes to sales, we often don’t apply the same level of consistency. Salespeople think that they can show up to a sales call unprepared and rely on wits and conversation skills to get them through. Sometimes this might work out, but if sales professionals want quality results consistently, they have to follow a sales process.

Contentions to Consistency:

Some salespeople are not fond of sticking to a sales process. But, if a sales process is key to consistency in sales, why is it that sales professionals shy away from using this tactic? One of the common contentions to using a sales process is that it limits creativity. Sales professionals tend to be more on the creative side than the organized side. “Salespeople have great communication and people skills, can be good schmoozers, and we kind of look at a sales process as being put in a straight jacket,” said Long. “But, I think the other thing is that we all face challenges in life, the key to success in sales and in life is learning how to prosper in the face of those challenges.”

About 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 is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.