Sandler Trainers: Jim Stephens and Sean Coyle http://www.peakperformance.sandler.com/
Entrepreneur Radio: JP Green with Cycle Bar https://villagemeridian.cyclebar.com/
~~The Introduction: An Introduction to Introductions, or Sean Coyle and the Pursuit of Consistency Through Dedication~~
Sean Coyle is a courageous cold caller in the Sandler network. He joined the Sandler network in 1999 at 27 years old, leaving a job as a door-to-door suit salesman. He solved the world’s problems one seam at a time until he joined the Sandler network and built a great organization and business with John Rosso.
~~The Conceptual: Using the BATs of Sandler to Find Success, or You Mean It's More About What You Do Than What You Should Do?~~
The success triangle is a tool that helps us keep sales basic. With the three elements, behavior, attitude, and techniques. And these create a triangle. Behaviors are a blueprint for success—the specs for a piece of equipment—without these specs we might not be able to produce workable machines. Developing behaviors is developing a blueprint for success with specific and measurable action items.
Attitude is what’s going on between our ears on any given time. Our attitudes can be supportive when they carry over from something that happens good in our world, but often our belief attitudes can be not supportive. You’re not supposed to talk to strangers. Good children are seen, not heard. This programming builds a negative belief system that counteracts the attitudes we need.
Technique is what we say and how we say it. Sean Coyle believes it is important, but not as important as behavior and attitude. So, altogether, attitude is how do I feel?, behavior is what do I do?, and technique is how do I do it?. Knowing that this triangle creates a system for reinforcing actions and consistency is key when looking at where you can develop and build success.
Sean Coyle starts looking at the connection between the points when he aims to develop success. Sean focuses on the connection between behavior and attitude and sees that bridge as commitment—an individual’s willingness and ability to do what they need to do regardless of how they feel about doing it—one’s loyalty to a cause; if you’re going to stay loyal to a cause you have to have one. That’s the behavior side of the triangle—part of developing your behaviors and cookbook is to have goals and a vision and this is the thing you have to manufacture to stay loyal to. That loyalty has to be expressed in spite of how you feel. The connection between what you have to do and how you feel about it is built on commitment.
A plan eliminates the agony of a decision. We just have to overcome the limitations of our feelings at the moment and that commitment helps us see past the reticence to pick up the phone or have a tough conversation with an employee. Attitude is what we’re always saying to ourselves, technique is how we’re saying and what we should be saying to others. These two come down to conviction. Conviction is something similar to an individual’s ability to pick a spot and stand firm. This commitment has been historically demonstrated in a way for people to stand firm. We have to see our own sales process, the things we say, and how we say them, and make sure that we have true conviction behind them.
We need to stand firm in the knowledge of our system and how success develops. Our conviction allows us to stand our ground and go through our training. People need to find certain points in the sales process where they must stand their ground. In standing their ground, they need to not be insincere in delivering their attitudes, techniques, and tactics.
These attitudes manifest in sabotaging ways such as our beliefs that the buyer’s have something we want and they don’t want to talk to us. In these instances it is important to change our belief and live with conviction that we belong in the conversation. This demanding and acceptance of a level of equal business stature allows us to develop a more healthy fundamental view of what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. Once we can act with conviction and commitment we have a ready pathway to success with a blueprint that is determined by actions and not assumptions.
Commitment is where we make sure that we follow through on our activities. Conviction is simply the question, “Am I willing to hold true to a particular belief or conviction?” Are we willing to stand our ground and be authoritative to maintain that equal business stature? Are we staying loyal? Are we holding our ground?
Beyond these, the follow-through is to act in a way that helps us achieve our goals by knowing how we do it. The bridge between behavior and technique is consistency. Consistency is the repeatability and regularity by which we perform certain tasks. Whether this is being committed to asking for referrals at the end of every sales call. This commitment has to be made firm through consistency of execution. Following a system, a sequence of events, and technically examining it in a scripted way helps improve consistency and by practicing we improve our consistency to continue getting words out of your mouth when you’re not in front of prospects. When you don’t have to think about doing something then the second nature of that consistency will lead to reinforcing both behaviors and attitudes.
How do I identify the areas where my consistency in doing the wrong thing is not serving me well and how do I break that pattern? Identifying it is not that hard. Anyone who reads that question has already identified it. We know what we’re not doing and if we’re honest with ourselves, we know why we’re not doing it. Instead, we need to look at three elements: beliefs, judgments, actions, and results.
So, first we start with results. What results are inconsistence? What actions are we taking that are leading to these results? What are the judgments that are leading to these actions? And what beliefs do we have that reinforce our judgments?
If we want to change the results we have to go to our actions and reverse engineer and decide what new actions we must take. Then we need to create a goal and track and measure ourselves against that goal. Then we seek accountability because mentors and peers can help us, while we may make excuses to ourselves. Finally, we improve our performance as we see the outcomes of our execution. By changing what we believe what we do we can build a more successful framework for looking at what we’re going to do in the future.
If we need to change anything we should determine what category it is. Is it a behavior? Is it an attitude? Is it a technique? Once we understand where we need help then we can build and develop a strategy with ourselves, our mentors, and our coaches with a more grounded approach on what changes we want to see in the future.
~~The Technical: Strategies to Effectively Help People Buy, or You Mean I Need to Accomplish What They Need?!?~~
One of the common problems that sales people get into is they get into presentations without the expectation of a decision being made. This allows for a hopa-hopa file where we think there will be a decision in the future, but the probability of the close of the sale will be very low.
But, we need to deliver proposals. Buyers have certain requirements for us and there are necessary things for us to do to fulfill their requirements and earn their trust and their business. The sequence can be misaligned and might not benefit both parties, so for us we need to make sure we are extremely clear on our objectives to a call. This requires us knowing what we are there to accomplish, what we believe our prospect is there to accomplish (with a clear understanding of the alignment between the individuals). We may accept think it overs because we aren’t fully aware or thinking about what we are there to accomplish. The accomplishment doesn’t have to be a decision, but we need to understand what a clear and defined future looks like in order to accomplish the tasks necessary to close the prospect on a decision.
Once we are clear on what the best possible outcome is, we can have a clear follow-up on what the next best thing is to accomplish the primary objective. The first way we can eliminate the file of hope is to understand what the best thing is and the next best thing is. These need to be clearly defined, in the calendar, actions in order to execute a successful sales call.
In Sandler we believe the Upfront Contract determines what those next steps are and allows us to be very clear what our objectives are. Sean walks us through this step and suggests that this upfront contract happens regularly. We may first present it at the seven minute mark in the conversation to make it clear what the next steps are.
Sean Coyle demonstrates this for Sandler:
“Jim, thanks for inviting me out for this dialogue. I’m looking forward to getting to know you and your business and I’d love the opportunity to extend to you how we’ve helped organizations like yours with similar issues. By the time we wrap this meeting up in the next 60-90 minutes a couple of things will be clear. One of them may be that you know what there’s nothing here and that’s okay, we can shake hands and part friends. I’ll sob silently in your parking lot, but you won’t notice. The other side of that is you may see some value in a relationship with my organization and at that point in time we’ll take the last five to ten minutes and figure out what’s a good next step and get into the calendar.”
At the beginning we present very clearly what no means, but we softly present what the yes is.
“Jim, let me make this suggestion: why don’t I extend to you some best practices on what people do with us, to process how we engage with an organization like yours. At the end of the next five to ten minutes we’ll provide some clarity and if we’re on the same page what I’d like you to commit to is step one in our process and if you’re not ready to make a commitment to step one today then we’ll probably have to pull out our calendars and commit to a day where we can figure out when we can make this step in the future.”
If there’s a soft no, we have to let nature take its course and we have to have a sincerely curious dialogue on what that means. Is that no a no today? Is that a not until the next six months? If it’s not today, then we’ll make a suggestion which works as a litmus test and ask for an invitation over the next five to ten business days where they can think about what needs to take place and what questions need asked and answered and at the end of that if the decision is not to move forward then so be it, if the decision is yes then we’ll build a contract together.
If the soft no is something further down the line then we can move them into a prospecting queue and they’ll no longer be in active pipeline. But, if we want to make sure they say yes or no we need to be very clear what yes means in our previous meeting so that we establish a comprehension for both sides and what the next steps look like. At some point in time they have to know what exactly yes means and it may be very uncomfortable. If we don’t believe someone will say yes then we enter into a very unclear conversation.
If you’re extremely clear on the closing contract which stages the next meeting, assuming they don’t cancel that meeting, you should be able to close that deal. But, at the next meeting we need to still start from the beginning what the contract. People generally don’t let you show up to tell you no. If they don’t cancel the meeting, which they can indicate a no by not accepting, then we begin the next call by what’s changed, what do we still need to talk about, and then what’s the bad news. If they know why you’re there then all you have to do is reinforcement your original conviction.
We need to stand our ground and be loyal to our cause and build consistency that allows us to follow a process and follow a system.
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