#219 Selling without Selling Out How to Maintain Your Morals

Notes:

As someone who has always loved sales and worked in the tech industry, Andy Paul is someone who can help sales engineers to transition into sales. In this episode, Andy Paul debunks myths and misconceptions most people have about the world of sales, and how in fact, it’s much better than what others make it out to be. He has already proved it through his top-selling books, the trusted consultant of businesses, and having over a thousand episodes on his podcast. And now, he will prove it once more.

Andy Paul is an author, a podcaster, a speaker, and a consultant. He is ranked #8 on LinkedIn’s list of Top 50 Global Sales Experts. He is the owner and the host of the podcast “Sales Enablement with Andy Paul,” the show already has over a thousand episodes and continues to inspire thousands of sales professionals every week. Andy has also written two award-winning sales books, “Zero-Time Selling” and “Amp Up Your Sales”. He recently published the book “Sell Without Selling Out.” Discover why Andy decided to remain in sales and what motivates him.

Key Takeaways:

Persuasion vs Influence
Qualities you need to become a great salesperson
What does it look like when a salesperson interacts with a sales engineer?
The biggest fear of sales engineers transitioning into sales
How to structure a call to get buyers closer to the deal
A mistake you may still be making when sending a message to your prospects and how to fix it
What sales engineers need to work on to become a salesperson
One of the reasons why Ramzi doesn’t enjoy working in sales

Quotes:

“Latham used the term, ‘We’re no longer knowledge workers, we’re interaction workers.’ Which I think is so so spot on. Because we get our work done with and through other people. The ability to collaborate as well as sport and skills we can have.” – Andy Paul

“My new book addresses how we operate in those environments in such a way that we get better at learning how to connect with other people. To earn the trust of other people so that we can work with them we can ask the right questions to understand the things that are most important to them. If we understand that, then we could do a better job of helping them get those things.” – Andy Paul

“The big thing is that when I talk to engineers, they think about sellers as people who are selling out, which is kind of like, I like the title of your book.” –Ramzi Marjaba

“Our job is to go out and listen to the buyer. Understand the things that are most important to them in terms of the challenges they face. and the outcomes they want to try to achieve by addressing those challenges and then helping them get those things. And that’s a completely different way of looking at the challenge. My job is to persuade you to buy something, my product, then I don’t really need to understand what’s important to you, because my job is to sell this product.” – Andy Paul

Our job is not the course our job is to influence. And so “influence” is defined as having the ability to affect the thinking and actions of others without apparent use of force.” – Andy Paul

“The most effective way to deal with buyers and to shorten decision cycles and increase your win rates is to start by acting like a human being connected somebody earns the right to stick your nose into their business, earn some trust, so they’ll open up to detail and reveal to you the things that are really important to them, which they don’t. Customers typically don’t unless that trust exists there.” – Andy Paul

“If I’m sending a piece of content that I’m asking them to consume, how is that piece of content going to help them move closer to making a decision? How does it turn into a valuable use of their time and attention? And it’s not from your perspective as a seller? It’s you have to understand from their perspective, why would that be invaluable to why would that be valuable for them?” – Andy Paul

“Get some successes, start building some confidence, talk to a manager about that. Make sure you really sort of ramp up your learning curve on business in general.” – Andy Paul

“It is all about wanting to learn something new, and do a new challenge. And I think that’s one of the things that is not wholly unique to sales, but I think to some degree is, it’s relatively unique to sales. And the ability to reinvent yourself with the sort of basic skill set and leverage it into new experiences.” – Andy Paul

“I am not just for monetary rewards. Psychological rewards as well, that sort of kept me motivated and kept my head in the game and made me want to do more of it.” – Andy Paul