“Why People Hate Selling” Transcript:
Hi, this is Ben Lai from Sales Ethos. Today’s video is for managers. Specifically, managers of customer service staff and underperforming salespeople. I’m going to address the question “Why people hate selling.”
Now, one of my key specialties is helping companies where they want their non-salespeople to learn how to sell. This is mostly because they are the ones who have the most interactions with prospective and existing clients. They’re ideally positioned to convert these conversations into sales conversations. As a result of these changes, some of my clients have experienced huge amounts of growth anywhere between 20 to 30%, just from these small changes. It happens in a very short amount of time as well. So we’re going to talk about the three key things that are holding people back from selling effectively.
#1 Reason Why People Hate Selling: Negative associations
The first one is that most people have a negative association with selling as a profession and as an activity. The reason that this happens is that all of us have had negative experiences with pushy and dodgy sales people. You know, at some point in time, we would have had that annoying sales call interrupting our day. They tried to push their product on us. Or, you’ve had a door knocker and they made you buy something that you didn’t really want. You felt rotten afterwards. As a result of these negative emotional experiences, we build up these things and feelings in the subconscious part of our mind.
When it comes to us selling, that is a bit of a conflict with who we see ourselves as. Because most of us have a fairly healthy self-image, we don’t want to associate ourselves with something that we dislike. So that’s a really important thing that you have to address. The way you do that, by the way, is by helping people to see that selling in and of itself is a service that you do for people. That the fact they are selling is doing good for your clients and your prospects.
#2 Reason Why People Hate Selling: Selling requires a lot of energy
Number two, is that selling requires a huge amount of energy. Customer service staff, if given a choice between administrative work and selling activities, will opt for the administrative activities. And the reason that this happens is that for us, as human beings, we tend to go for the path of least resistance. This is just inbuilt and hardwired into our brains. As a result, if given the choice between the two activities, we will go for the predictable one that requires less energy. Sales requires a huge amount of initiative and a huge amount of effort emotionally, mentally, and even physically in order to engage in it. And so that’s a key reason that many customer service people don’t like selling.
#3 Reason Why People Hate Selling: Few people are natural at selling
The third reason is connected to that. And that is that not many of us are naturally talented at selling. So in my experience, I’ve met a few rare people that just have a knack for it. They get on the phones, and they’re effective pretty much straight away with little to no training.
But for the rest of us, including myself, we are not naturally talented in sales. And so as a result, we need to invest even more effort in order to make up for this weakness. I recently did a test with a company called Caliper. So it’s a Caliper Report, I’ll leave some details in the description below. And it identified that I actually don’t have the typical traits for effective salesmanship. And so as a result during my sales career, I needed to invest huge amounts of energy and effort in order to be effective. So once again, it goes back to specialization of roles.
If you’re going to get your frontline staff to sell effectively, you can’t be giving them other administrative tasks on top of that. Or, try to minimize them as much as possible if you’re going to expect any decent results out of it.
Why People Hate Selling: Conclusion
So there you have it. Those are the three reasons: the negative associations, the amount of energy that selling requires, and the fact that most of us are not talented.
Now, by the way, I have created a dedicated resource to help you further in this if you are experiencing this problem right now. Hop over to the link below to my website to download the PDF guide as well as an accompanying video to help you to address this problem in a little bit more detail. Feel free to leave your details there and I’ll be in touch and we can discuss your needs more. So I hope to see you there, and remember that integrity plus skills equals success!
Relevant Links
If you want your customer service or technical support staff to sell, this guide will help you to understand the challenges that you must overcome. Visit this link for additional resources
Caliper Personality and Strengths Reports: http://caliper.com.au/
Image courtesy of shutterstock.com
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