Empathy, Curiosity & Copy(writing)
Howdy,
As we enter into the first month of Q2 - the forecast is less certain than usual, for many sellers. But, I believe right now is a rare opportunity to double-down on skills, and truly get better at your job.
Here are the Top 5 Lessons I Learned (or was reminded of) this past week…
Be Empathetic!
The Coronavirus is revealing that many need to double-down on empathy. More than ever, sellers cannot be tone deaf. And yes, you should always have been empathetic, but let’s use this as a time to accelerate faster into the “Era of Empathetic Selling”.
Trish Bertuzzi, Kyle Porter and Josh O’Brien expand on this concept, in their posts this week (posts hyperlinked to their names, respectively).
Be (Genuinely) Interested In Other People
Sales is about many things. But the best sellers (in my experience), are the ones who are curious about their “prospects”. And help “discover”, or uncover, “needs”. And then solve those needs (“pain”) with their company’s solution (if/when relevant).
I’ve been re-reading the classic: How to Win Friends & Influence People (published in 1936), and this simple quote stuck out to me:
The only way on Earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.
-Dale Carnegie
Copy is King!
This goes for marketers, but also for salespeople.
Whether you’re drafting a recap/follow-up email, an email to loop in other stakeholders, a pre closing-call email, or a prospecting email - what you say, matters. And more so, *how you arrange* your words, matters.
Don’t Bash Your Competitors
Jeremey Donovan (SVP Sales Strategy and Sales Operations at SalesLoft) reminds us:
No matter who the competitor, how bad they are, whether they do things that are illegal or immoral, and no matter if you find their business practices to be irrational, you cannot speak negatively about them directly...
In fact, you should do the opposite...Help others!
Lastly, remember to give back to the community.
If you know of a company hiring or someone looking, help connect them. It’s been amazing to see such great companies, like TripActions (who I have worked closely with for years, in different capacities) take care of their people, even when they had to do the hard thing of letting many folks go.
Outreach put together a great resource of companies hiring. Candor.co has another great resource that shows companies either: Hiring, doing Layoffs, or Hiring Freeze.
If you still have your job - take a minute today, to be really grateful for it. And also, consider how you can help others who may not have a job. You can help by connecting them to companies hiring. Or, by simply being a sounding board for them.
See y’all next week!
Empathetically,
Brendan J Short