Hi, it’s Ben Lai from Sales Ethos. This is part two of my book review and summary of Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness. So just to give you a quick rehash, Zappos is a huge ecommerce company in the States that sells shoes. For this part of the video, what I want to do is to draw the applications for sales organizations. This is because the principles are really important and can be carried over to the sales profession.
Delivering Happiness Recap
So in the summary of the book, I talked first about the focus on culture and values. This is incredibly important for any sales organization. You see, one of the major barriers to people selling effectively is a subconscious belief that selling in itself is not ethical. Now if you compound this with a toxic sales culture, this is going to really hamstring their efforts as they go out, trying to sell. Their belief in the product and the belief in themselves, and the company will have a really strong influence on how effectively and how passionately they sell.
Delivering Happiness Sales Takeaway #1: Focus on Culture & Values
So the first takeaway for you as a sales manager is that you need to understand the importance of communicating and living out the values of your company. Make sure that things like telling the truth, authenticity, transparency and integrity are just part and parcel of everything that you do. When you increase the ethical standards of your company, your people will feel much more comfortable doing what you ask them to do. If you say, “Hey guys, we got to increase sales…” Well, they’re not going to do it if they feel it’s a conflict of interest in terms of their own personal ethical standards.
Delivering Happiness Sales Takeaway #2: Focus on Customer Happiness
Point number two in the book summary of “Delivering Happiness” was that they were immensely customer focused. This is a beautiful message for sales people, because sales in essence is a service that you are rendering to people.
Now imagine if your sales people are hugely customer focused, how different would their conversations be? Imagine the type of interactions that they have. The customers are going to get a sense that, “Hey, these guys really care about me.” They’re not just here for their own commissions and for their own benefits. As a byproduct of focusing on the customer, your sales are going to increase.
But in addition to that, if your sales people can find ways to wow their customers and their prospects, imagine how much more easily it is going to be for them to make sales and to get referrals on a regular basis. You know, the companies that create these types of experiences and networks don’t have to do outbound prospecting. This is because they’re getting inbound prospects all the time. So if you want to build that kind of sales organization, you really need to focus on wowing your customers.
Delivering Happiness Sales Takeaway #3: Be Passionate About Sales
The third point in the summary is that the Zappos company are really passionate about what they do. Now, if you want your sales people to be effective, they need to be passionate about everything that they do. They need to be passionate about selling, they need to be passionate about your company and your product. You know, their level of belief will determine their ability to sell. And so you need to have a think about how you can help to increase this passion.
One of my key advice for you is to tie everything that you do into the purpose of the company. So Zappos sees themselves not just as a company selling shoes. Rather, they see themselves as a company that delivers happiness to their customers. They’re making a difference in every person’s life, one person at a time. In fact, this has extended far beyond just what they sell. They no help other companies to improve their customer culture.
Delivering Happiness Conclusion
So those are the three key takeaways. What are your thoughts? How can you increase the culture and the values of your organization? Just leave a comment below. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and remember that integrity plus skills equals success.
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