“Sales Theater”

Or Theatre depending on where you live 😉

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had two experiences in Sales Theater. I’ve struggled in thinking about them, whether they were dark dramas or unintended comedies. Both were choreographed from the same playbook, I’ll describe the second since it was only a couple of days ago.

I was at a conference of about 150 CROs, RevOps, RevEnablement leaders. They keynote speaker mounted the stage, following a dramatic video. He was followed by his own cinematographer, I suspect so his performance could go down in history. There were the dramatic pauses, the positioning, then the dramatic start. He was on his script, pacing across the stage, moving into the audience. At times his voice was booming, at times it sank to a whisper. He went on and on about sales calls, suggesting explicitly that sellers lie and manipulate to achieve their goals, overpowering all customer resistance. Like any theatrical performance he took us through peaks and valleys until he reached the dramatic conclusion, at which point he dramatically walks off the stage and disappears.

The audience sat there numbly. I felt like I had bought tickets to the wrong theater performance, I thought I had tickets to see a performance of Cirque de Soleil. I asked a few people sitting with me, “Did I miss something?”

They replied, “We missed it as well…….” I don’t know what he was trying to achieve, what he was speaking about was irrelevant to the theme of the conference, and he didn’t connect with anyone in the audience. I’m certain he didn’t attract any prospects, he left so no one could speak with him. Perhaps he did get a great video of him striking dramatic poses as he walked through the audience.

But as I reflected on this drama and similar but shorter one that I saw a few weeks earlier I thought, “These people have built, apparently successful sales training businesses, why do people buy this? Why do people buy the concept of bullying customers with great tonality? Why do people continue to buy the recommendation that you have to lie and manipulate the customer, the only focus is to achieve your goals?”

Then I realized these people are exploiting seller fear.

Selling is a different career than most. It’s plagued with uncertainty. We are charged with driving revenue and whatever success we may have achieved in the past are forgotten, we have bigger goals for the next quarter and the next year. We live in worlds of constant turbulence and uncertainty, both with our customers and within our own organizations.

We are chartered to engage people who don’t want to talk to us, unless it’s absolutely necessary.

In my career, I have experienced some fear. I feared losing a huge deal in which I was heavily invested. I struggled meeting goals, worried about my job. I’d have a meeting with a senior exec and was worried about holding up my end of the conversation.

Fear is something natural and impacts each of us. And if it doesn’t, then we are probably unconscious.

And these theater performers and others are exploiting that seller fear. Selling miracle cures to overcoming that fear.

But as I reflected on the issues seller fear is real. And “we” need to start talking about “Seller Confidence.”

We don’t build seller confidence by teaching sellers techniques of bluster, manipulation, bullying, and lying.

We don’t build seller confidence by scripting every word that comes out of their mouths, and not equipping them to engage customers in two way conversations.

We don’t build seller confidence by constantly beating them over the heads with volume and velocity, despite the increasing failures of those strategies.

It’s easy to see how seller fear is mounting, and how these charlatans can extract millions from these fearful clients.

But how do we build seller confidence. While this will be the subject of future posts, I’ll start here:

• We increase seller understanding of the customer. Who is our customer? What is their job? What challenges do they face? How do they feel about those challenges? What are their goals, dreams and aspirations? What’s happening in their companies, in their markets? What are their fears? (For more ask me for the “Brock Questionert.”
• We recognize that sellers, just like our customers are overwhelmed. So we help them focus on the few key things critical to their success right now.
• We recognize that reaching out to people you don’t know and engaging them is an “unnatural act” for many people. We help them reduce this discomfort by seeing how others do this, getting peer mentoring and great coaching.
• We coach our people, helping them better understand, helping them think about the obstacles they face and helping them discover ways to overcome them.
• We help our people understand that a “sales call” is no different than any “business conversation.” Every business conversation is goal focused, in every business conversation we may encounter disagreement, and challenges with aligning within the group.

I think there are several competencies/skills that underly seller abilities. I think they include, genuine caring, curiosity, a drive to solve problems and support change, a drive to constantly learn and improve, and resilience. There are more and I’ll speak to them in future posts.

At first, when I saw this dramatic theatrical performance, I thought I had lost 63 minutes of my life. But on reflection, I’m thankful that I got to see it. It got me to recognize we spend too little time talking about Seller Confidence. I’ll be back with more (Hmm, wondering it that’s called a second act…..)