You are listening to the art of sales.
Everyone sells every day.
And this is your source for conversational.
Real-world sales and prospecting methods
that you are comfortable using and that get results.
You'll help people buy instead of pushing them into being sold.
Here's your host, Art Subject.
Okay, picture this.
You're going in for a basic eye surgery.
Many of us already have.
You're waiting in the chair for the doctor.
The nurse has prepped you for the procedure.
And a guy walks in, not the regular doctor you've consulted with,
but someone you've never seen before.
In a nervous voice, he says,
uh, hi, Dr. Baker couldn't make it in today.
I'm the doctor who normally does the eye exams for glasses.
But I've seen him do a bunch of these before.
He told me to just be myself, you know,
just do what comes naturally.
It'll be okay, authentic, you know?
So let's get started.
You might be just a bit worried at this point to say the least.
Now I know that's an extreme story,
but it's very similar to the horrible advice that some people still advocate
as it relates to sales and preparation for what you're going to say.
And yes, you can use the S word here, script.
My philosophy for my entire sales and training career has been
that the top performers prepare for and script their messaging.
Now, before I lose some of you,
not a script in the way that a telemarketer robotically reads a poorly written script
when they call you on your cell phone,
I'm going to talk about what we should do,
which is a combination of creating great messaging for situations, practicing it,
so that it sounds as natural as an actor working from a script.
And then through practice and experience internalizing your messaging
so that it's almost like you're speaking from your subconscious
without even having to think about it.
So first, this needs to begin with the things that we say in the most common
and repeated sales situations.
Our opening statements, our voice mails, our initial questions,
our go-to-commitment questions,
responses to initial resistance objections and more.
You should develop your messaging.
Those are the words you will commonly use in all of these situations.
To not prepare what you will say in situations that you are certain to encounter is ridiculous.
If you were asked to write a very important article or post that could determine
whether or not you're going to make a lot of money
and would be very high profile in your industry,
would you turn in a rough draft?
Of course not.
But every time someone wings it, they're turning in a rough draft.
Okay, so how do we do this?
Well, this is the work part.
Where do we find this messaging?
Well, up to this point in this podcast, we have over 260 episodes
covering just about every aspect of the professional sales process.
With messaging, word for word.
So go to theartofsales.com, click on the episodes tab at the top
and then it's going to take you to a page where you're going to find all the episodes.
You'll have a search bar where you can find what you're looking for.
And of course, I have tons of other resources that you can invest in
to really take yourself to the next level.
So every successful sales pro, every really successful sales pro has go to messaging,
whether it be templates for the different openings and voice mails they use,
and then they customize those for each prospect and customer.
And also, questions of all types, responses to questions, resistance, real objections,
commitment and closing questions, what to say when setting up the follow-up and more.
One key point here.
When you develop any messaging or script, recite it as you write it and then after you write it.
Be sure it sounds like the way people actually talk.
There's so much sales garbage out there that when you look at it or you read it,
you think, did nobody says that?
People don't talk like that, but yet because it's on the internet,
some people think it's true and then they actually try it and then you know what happens.
Maybe you've been there, they go down and flames.
Next, here's the part where you ensure that you never sound like that cheesy salesperson.
Your messaging and scripting should be drilled, practice and roleplayed,
so they sound conversational, they sound natural and can be delivered instinctively.
Now, with that said, sales is an interactive performance sport
where we don't know exactly how the other person will react during the course of the conversation.
I mean, wouldn't it be cool if we could send them their script?
That's not work that way.
Now, people who are new to sales can and should prepare or be trained how to reply
and what messaging to use in the interactive and the largest part of the sales process.
Which is questioning, responding, recommending and presenting,
asking for commitment the next step in the sale, objections, setting up the next actions and so on.
Of course, there's no way to prepare an advance for everything we're going to encounter,
nor should someone try.
I mean, a kid could read about how to swim and memorize all of the fundamental movements
but to really be able to perform, we have to do, right?
And then put it into action.
I hate when I see the extremes suggested or practiced by sales managers and reps.
On one side, they say, oh, you don't need a script, just be natural, have a conversation.
Yeah, and normally that results in sounding like a babbling fool.
On the other side, you've got the over preparation, preparation paralysis,
which actually is call reluctance and call avoidance.
Success lies in the middle.
There's a difference between understanding something and really knowing it.
The knowing comes from the doing, from the ultimate mastery.
I'll repeat that.
Really knowing something comes from the doing.
Let me illustrate here.
You can and do understand the concept of a lot of things.
For example, electricity powers electrical things when we plug them in, right?
I get that.
But most people couldn't wire a new house unless they truly knew how, like the electrician,
who put in many hours studying and then, of course, doing.
Most people understand the concept of brick and block walls being held together by mortar.
Now, personally, I had never built any physical structure in my life until a couple of years ago.
Actually, I've always joked that my favorite tool is the phone where I could call someone to fix something.
Anyway, I always like to take on some major project and scare myself every year,
if something I've never done, and I decided to really challenge myself and do something
where I took on a daunting massive project of building an outdoor combination brick oven,
pig cooker, Santa Maria Grill, and smoker.
And let's say pizza oven as well.
So I found very detailed plans.
And then the first major step was I had to get out of my own head about not being handy.
Then I studied YouTube religiously, became a regular at Home Depot, and I began.
I started from digging the hole to hauling rock, pouring the foundation.
I actually laid block stone and brick for the first time.
I used a variety of saws and drills and tools that I had been horrified of previously.
And it took me a couple of months, probably double the amount of time,
of somebody who knew what they were really doing, but it came out amazing.
Now, I still don't fully know how to build things.
I did it once. I understand the concept.
I made a ton of mistakes.
And thankfully I didn't lose any limbs or pieces of my body.
But I learned a lot, and I could draw on the experience if there is a next time,
because I've done it once.
So I'm on the road to knowing.
Learning and skill development comes both from experiencing something
and to really shorten the learning curve,
evaluating the experience through knowledge accumulation, preparation,
and rehearsing, and role-playing.
You see a sales pros?
We are living, talking, Wikipedia's.
We're constantly adding to our bank of knowledge and skill.
The very best sales pros never stop proactively building their personal wiki sales skills page.
Every sales call can and should be a learning experience.
Helping us work on our scripts that we will draw upon in the next situation where we need it.
Regardless of whether it's written down or not.
That's how we become smooth by becoming rough first.
To put it in a different perspective.
Think about the first time you drove to a new destination.
Maybe you were a little anxious.
You'd never been there before.
And along the way, you're collecting information about what you see,
where you're turning along the way.
Now, the next time you drive there, it's much more familiar.
And then, if you drive there often,
you probably could be thinking about other things
or be having a conversation as you're driving and still arrive there.
You've been driving down the road and you're caught up in some thought or maybe a conversation
and you get to your destination.
You don't even realize how you got there.
That's because it was in your subconscious.
You just did it instinctively.
That's what happens in sales when you experience something many times.
You begin to know what you will say.
It doesn't come overnight to get good at this,
to really accelerate your skill and your acquisition of skill.
You need to be proactive about it.
After every sales or prospecting call, ask yourself,
what did I like about this call?
That reinforces what works.
And then, what will I do differently?
The next time I encounter the same situation.
Every call is a learning experience.
Don't waste it.
So then, think about this.
Isn't everything that we do exceptionally well actually scripted?
Yeah.
Whatever we say or do skillfully is based on something we have prepared for or experienced.
Someone who's never done improvisational comedy would never come close
to being as good as a comic who has studied it and done it thousands of times.
So improv is not really improv, is it?
Preparing and doing are not mutually exclusive.
The best and most successful are excellent at both.
I encourage you to take these ideas and work to truly know what you will say in most situation.
Understanding that it's a continual work in progress.
You're going to fall down along the way.
You're going to make mistakes, but you're going to learn from them.
And then, you get better every single day.
All right.
Hey, you know what time it is?
You're at it to be I am.
Every way you'll never feel what this is.
It's the art of the sales.
It's the quote of the day.
That's right.
It's time for the quote of the day.
Today's quote comes from the legendary basketball coach John Wooden.
And John said, poise and confidence are not possible unless you have prepared correctly.
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
Poise and confidence are a result of proper preparation.
And that really sums up everything that I just said here today in this podcast.
All right.
So, hey, speaking of messaging and where you can get some proven messaging,
actually put into a sales process.
If you don't already have it, I encourage you.
Grab my free book that I will actually mail to you a physical book.
It's called How to Place the Successful Sales and Prospecting Call.
It gives you my proven seven step sales process with actual messaging in each part of that call.
To get that book, go to freesalesbook.com, freesalesbook.com.
All we ask is that you help with the shipping, which is $4.95.
That's not the total shipping.
That's the amount I ask you to help with.
So, you have a little bit of skin in the game.
That's for US addresses.
If you're outside of the US, we have another option for you there so you can click on that link.
Thank you so much for investing your valuable sales time with me today.
Until next time, go out and make it your best sales day ever.
I'm Aaron Subchat.