Oct 5, 2020
You will love this conversation. We talked about what sales leaders need to do now. Jill gave survival strategies and we talk about how diversity in sales sucks. It is an honour to have Jill Konrath on Scale Your Sales podcast.
She is the International speaker and author of 4 bestselling sales books—Selling to Big Companies, SNAP Selling, Agile Selling and More Sales Less Time. With over 1/3 million followers. LinkedIn named Jill as their #1 B2B Sales Expert in 2019. And Salesforce recently selected her as one of Top 7 Sales Influencers of the 21st Century.
The legacy that Jill has created is outstanding because people are continually naming her as their Shero. She says 20 years ago she looked around and saw that all the sales experts out there were bald white men. As a woman in sales, Jill was tired of seeing this and realised she was the most bothered by it and so stepped up and has continued to champion women in sales.
In these challenging times to come out strong, Jill advises number one, to learn how to control your fear, the minute you go into fear mode, which can happen because nobody's buying anything. You can't get out and see people the way that you used to or have meetings, and everything's different. Fear can overtake, it stops your brain from working, giving you fewer options, in terms of what can be done. She says to grab a hold of our fear and take a look at what is it that we could do to calm ourselves down.
Second, you need to open yourselves up to learning new
skills.
Some people have been doing the same old, for a long time, and it's
worked for a while. But what happens when you run into a
recessionary period being average is no longer enough.
Everybody has to figure out a way to step up their game and turn
yourself into a learner and somebody who is focused on improving
all aspects of your sales process. Take a look at it from the front
end and say, "where am I not doing well? Where am I running into
resistance?" She says get comfortable with the virtual world and
become cognizant of people's reaction to everything that you're
doing.
Only one out of seven salespeople take a serious look at what
happens in their sales calls and evaluate post calls for:
What they do well,
What worked,
What was highly-effective,
Where they ran into problems and
What they could change.
and that those people who
Research shows that those willing to be brutally honest with
themselves are the ones who discovered better ways and succeed
because they are continually evaluating and testing to improve.
Jill recalls when she first moved into a sales leadership role
at Xerox at the time. She remembers as a salesperson's that
thinking, 'how can I make fewer calls and be more effective?' You
significantly enhance your chances of success. You learn who they
are and what their issues and concerns are, you become very focused
on what are they currently doing today - without your solution,
your service or your products or technology.
Well, they are getting their work done, said Jill, but with some
cost and inefficiencies and maybe some opportunities that they're
missing. The more familiar you become with your customers, the
greater your success rate is because you will speak their language,
you will focus on what matters to them.
You will be able to ask questions that are highly relevant and of
interest to them. The goal is to increase your effectiveness, which
means you are always learners.
As a sales leader, you have people; your sales team will be afraid. They're scared they're not going to make their quota. They're afraid that if they don't make their numbers, that they will be terminated, that they won't have enough money to feed their themselves or pay for their rent. It's a scary time.
Top sales leaders right now must focus on their culture, their
people and be more in touch with their people regularly, talking a
human talk. As opposed to saying, how many calls did you make last
week, let's talk about your numbers and where you are at?
Focus on the person 'so tell me about how are you doing right now?
Be interested as a human being because you want them to be
successful and ask, 'how can I help you?' The best sales leaders
are very focused on helping their people improve what they're doing
and very conscious of the culture, concerned and catching up as a
human being and focusing on we're here to help you. The whole team
is here to help you; let's work together. Jill says this is now
part of being successful and that they're in a different job right
now, that require other skills.
When Jill worked with reps, you could see the ones who were
aggressive. And the result of this was the prospect would put up
barriers. If you're leaning forward and intense with your people,
you are scaring them away. So what a sales leader must do is lean
back and focus on the human being in front of them, to see what
could make them better.
The fact that we can't meet us human beings makes all of us out there alone in these challenging times. It's more important now than ever before because everybody spread out around the world, and we are not getting what we need from a human perspective.
Some top leaders who are really doing well in sales leadership always focused on their people. The top leaders have loyalty and connection with their people, who know that they were being supported throughout these tough times as well as in good times.
Talking about diversity in sales, Jill acknowledged that there
are some industries that are doing well with diversity, but for the
most part, "they pretty much suck. Let me be real honest with
that." They say we can't find female candidates. Well, are you
looking? And you think people wanna be like the slimy people that
are trying to shove things down peoples throat and manipulate them.
And have you read your job descriptions,
looking for ah hunter, go-getter. Jill says everything is all
screwed up, and this does not appeal to women. Women are highly
effective in sales.
Gartner research states that women perform at higher levels than
their male counterparts; they stay in a job longer, is a huge
factor. You have two people you can hire about the same in terms of
capacity. But the women tend to perform at higher levels, they stay
longer, so you don't have to recruit as often and train and
on-board and hope that they work out. There is a huge business case
for women in sales. Then the research also shows that from a
business perspective, having a diverse group of people allows for
faster decisions and better decisions.
So why don't people do that? Because people hire people who look and sound like them, Jill says, something has to be done about it.
She recalls that she was a diversity hire and not brought on board
because of her great potential. Jill was a high school teacher when
she decided to go into sales. Xerox had a mandate from the federal
government of the United States that they had to have a workforce
that represented their communities. Each city had its own diversity
numbers that they had to hire.
Xerox, didn't think women could sell technical things like
copiers. They just didn't think that we were capable of doing that,
said Jill. But within a couple of years of hiring women, they
learned how to look for characteristics that were totally different
from man. The guys answered they were motivated by money
But women said, they want to do a good job, or focus on my
customers, or that they wanted to make a difference. Within a few
years at Xerox, eight out of the top 10 reps were minority and
female.
Diversity is a smart business decision. Jill and I agree that it
would be really good if companies would set quotas and committed to
diversity.
We talked about overcoming isolation, and Jill recommended to get on a phone call, not a zoom and stay in touch with human beings. Jill has personally called friends from high school that I haven't talked to in years just to get out of the business world. Having a wonderful conversation makes you feel connected to the world.
Jill also suggests getting out for a walk. Our bodies need the
outdoors; we connect better. Put in your headphones and call your
friends and have a good meaningful conversation. The isolation is
overwhelming to so many people.
If Jill was on a desert island on her own, she said she would take
her cell phone because she could learn things find new ways to be
engaged, read books, learn new ways to build fires, be more
effective and just keep sharp. That little thing gives her
connection to everything she needs including 101 ways to make
coconut for dinner tonight:-)
Thank you, Jill Konrath