Throw Out Your Shoes, Monotasking, Sales-Driven Content
Dive into the second issue of Hacking the Sale
Rob Wormley
- June 15, 2018
Throw out your shoes
To be a successful salesperson, you have to really understand the people you’re selling to. You have to know what they care about, what their pain points are, and what motivates them to buy.
The old saying, “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” continues to be an incredibly effective and important way of thinking.
Effective selling today isn’t about having the best tools, scripts, or pitch deck, although those things do still matter. Instead, it’s about being able to connect with people on a personal, human level. It’s about being able to realize what matters most to the people you’re selling to. It’s about understanding experiences, having empathy, and offering solutions to problems.
In other words, the sale isn’t about you—it’s about them. It’s not about what your product does for your customers—it’s about what your product allows or enables your customers to do for themselves.
And so, my tip for you today is this:
Throw out your shoes.
Get into the minds and hearts of your prospects. Be human, be authentic, and be a resource to the people you interact with this week.
Can monotasking actually make you more productive?
That’s a question that Verena von Pfetten wondered in her 2016 New York Times article titled, Read This Story Without Distraction (Can You?).
In the article, she makes the argument that multitasking—a style of work that we’re all well-familiar with—might not actually be as effective as we think it is.
For example, she references research that found that:
“Interruptions as brief as two to three seconds — which is to say, less than the amount of time it would take you to toggle from this article to your email and back again — were enough to double the number of errors participants made in an assigned task.”
As it turns out, multitasking can actually take a toll on the brain and result in less productivity—not more.
As more research like this becomes available to the public each year, professionals are now investing in a different type of work style that can help them ensure that they’re being as productive and efficient as possible throughout the day:
It’s called monotasking (also known as single-tasking or unitasking), and it might just be the new cool way to work.
Interested in learning more about it? Dig into these resources:
Can You Stop Multitasking? from Slate
Forget Multitasking, Try Monotasking from TED
Monotasking May be Better Than Multitasking from Business Insider
SALES GLOSSARY: Kickers
Kickers are financial bonuses, extra commissions, or additional perks offered to sales professionals in an effort to motivate them to exceed their quotas, complete a number of actions in a certain amount of time, showcase or mention a new service or product, or target a particular market segment.
This idea is absolute garbage
How I Built This is a podcast hosted by Guy Raz from NPR. In it, Guy talks with founders, business owners, and seasoned entrepreneurs to uncover the stories behind some of the world’s best-known companies.
In an episode that was shared back in March, Guy sits down with Brian Scudamore from 1-800-GOT-JUNK? to find out how they went from hauling garbage in a $700 truck in college to building a business that now makes close to $300 million in annual revenue.
In the interview, Scudamore shares a lot of insights and personal stories that help listeners better understand how hard he’s had to work to achieve his dreams and make 1-800-GOT-JUNK? a success.
For example, he talks about:
- Why he had to fire 9 of his 11 employees in one sitting
- Why he changed the name of his business from The Rubbish Boys to 1-800-GOT-JUNK
- How he convinced other business owners to buy into his franchise model
It’s a great listen for anyone who’s looking for a little extra inspiration and motivation this week.
LISTEN TIME: 42 MIN
Want to read the interview instead? Click here for the full transcript.
Test Other Types of Sales-Driven Content
As your sales team continues to align and integrate more closely with the marketing team at your company, it’s a good idea to start thinking about the types of sales-driven content you’d like to work together to create.
When sales and marketing teams come together to create content that can be used to nurture and convert leads, they usually start with the case study. It’s a good resource to have in your pocket, but it’s not the only type of content that you can use to move people through different stages of the funnel.
If you’re looking for other types of sales-driven content to create with marketing, start with these ideas:
- Idea #1: The Webinar. Partner with a customer, team member, or influencer and create a webinar that digs into a specific theme or topic that your target audience will care about.
- Idea #2: The Ebook. Write an ebook about a topic or series of topics that relate to your industry, your products, and your customers. Offer the ebook for free to website visitors in exchange for their email address, or send it to them as a follow-up somewhere further down in the funnel.
- Idea #3: The Infographic. Create a graphic or series of graphics that visualize complex data, tips, and other information relating to your industry and the solutions you provide.
- Idea #4: The Email Drip Series. Create a conversion-driven email series that combines long-form content, links to blog posts, customer stories, testimonials, and call-to-action statements.
- Idea #5: The Customer Spotlight. Feature a customer that you know other people in your target audience will be able to easily relate to. Interview them and package the content into video, a blog post, a podcast, or any other type of marketing collateral that you think would resonate with your audience.
Got another tip to add to this list? Reply to this email and tell us what’s been working well for you and your team lately.
News Stories Worth Reading
17 Ways To Use The New Psychology Of Sales
Remember Daniel Pink, the author we mentioned in last week’s issue? He’s the one who wrote the new book about the science of timing. Well Pink has another book he’s fairly well-known for called To Sell is Human that offers a fresh look at the art and science of selling. Sound intriguing? This article from Business Insider does a pretty great job of pulling out the best takeaways from the book.
15 Communication Skills That Are Crucial to Sales Success
“Good communication is critical to sales success.” That’s something that every sales leader and sales rep knows. But here’s the question: do you actually know what skills you should master in order to become a more effective communicator in sales? If not, dig into this article from the HubSpot blog.
How effective are your follow-up sales emails? Are you getting the kind of response rates you want? If not, it might be time to change up your strategy. This article provides readers with 23 meaningful templates that you can use when sending follow-up emails to prospects.
Share your feedback!
We hope you enjoyed the second issue of Hacking the Sale. If the topics in this digest didn’t resonate perfectly with you, have no fear! Next week’s edition will bring you an entirely different batch of themes, tips, and stories aimed at helping you become a better sales rep or sales leader.
If you have any feedback on this edition or want to send article or topics ideas our way, just reply to this email. Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
// Rob Wormley and the team at Rambl
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