#229 From Chocolate Selling to Selling with Love

Notes:

Is the sales component of sales engineering still a struggle for you? Does the part of you that wants to contribute value to your customers sometimes conflict with the part of you that needs to make sales for your company? How can you reconcile these two and feel good while selling? My guest this week, Jason Marc Campbell shares powerful insights around selling that you can learn from and apply to your own career and sales engineer life. This is an episode you surely must have bookmarked!

Jason Marc Campbell is the author of the upcoming book Selling with Love. He interviews thought leaders from around the world on topics of leadership, team building, communication, productivity and so much more. He is a public speaker who’s shared the stage with the likes of Gary V, Jason Silva, Vishen Lakhiani, Lisa Nichols, and more. You’ll quickly recognize him through his high energy and passion for making a positive impact in people’s lives.

His mission is all about teaching companies to care more. As businesses have so much power in the capitalist world, if we can educate businesses to take on more responsibility on how they sell, how they market, how they treat their employees, and even how they invest their money, we start shifting the very planet into a better place for all.

Key Takeaways:

How selling can be an act of love
Why we have what’s called a negativity bias
How Jason fell in love with selling
Selling swimming pools, real estate, and chocolates for charity
Why he felt terrified at his first hardcore sales job and how he eventually got better at it
The point Jason realized selling was actually a fulfilling career
How cold calling became fun for Jason
Selling can come from a place of love and integrity
Jason compares the emotions between two salespeople talking about money versus two engineers talking about product
Why the topic of money is charged with emotion
What holds us back from opportunities that could make our lives better
Why we should not be resisting sales and money
We should also learn how to “sell ourselves”
Love-based versus fear-based selling
How to conquer your fears around selling
Caring about the customers’ needs and having their best interests in mind
What is rational sabotage and why do we do it?
A lot of sales engineers struggle is losing their credibility
The five different loves you need in selling
Building a healthy sales culture
How does one maintain their process while still enabling the customer?
A simple script you can share when customers want a demo on the first call

The Five Loves You Need in Selling:

Loving the impact of every sale you make – That’s being so clear on the difference you’re going to make to people’s lives from selling this product or service. And when I say impact, I’m speaking about the problems you solve, the reason this product exists should be around solving a problem.
Loving the client – The way to love the client is actually to understand the client, like taking the time to understand who they are, what their problems are, and caring for the difference you’re going to make in their life.
Loving the product – Make it awesome as much as you can, and communicate it effectively, see how you can improve it, and then go out there and make it available for the people.
Fall in love with the process of selling – That’s where your scripts, your procedures or protocols, all of it makes sense. Because it’s not about manipulation. It’s about having empathy. It’s about speaking the language that’s necessary for people to realize the problems you’re going to solve in their life by them having this product in their hands.
Self love – It’s actually the most important thing. It’s understanding that you can do well, you’re okay with doing sales, you won’t be rejected left alone. You can grow into anything and do it well. And it comes with practice. And if you can understand that, with the first four loves in place, you’re going to grow, you’re going to have emotional ups and downs. And that’s the beauty of sales is your growth path ends up quite accelerated. But you know, always remember that you’re out there doing your best. And if you start with that foot forward, you’re going to be walking in a straight line.

Quotes:

“I labeled money, within my definition of sales, as nothing else than stored energy. I think it’s not the greatest evil, it’s the greatest invention we’ve ever had. It’s basically that we invented batteries for value.” – Jason Marc Campbell

And when we start demonizing money, I think we start actually holding back ourselves from a lot of the opportunities that could come our way, we hold ourselves back from some of the happiness we can have with having more abundance in our life. – Jason Marc Campbell

“And if you resist sales as a byproduct, from your resistance around money, I think it’s an absolute shame, shame, because sale, everything that is within our physical reach, like where you live, things you have, if you’re listening to this on any kind of device, that was all the product of a sales process that designed everything in your life.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“When you’re selling from a place of fear, this is where all the shame or the guilt that comes from the resistance to procrastination, you know, in sales, there’s a huge emotional component.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“When you know what you offer is so much more than what you ask for in return, that’s when the emotion of love balances the equation. So emotion happens in every sales transaction.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“If it’s coming from a place of fear, is that somewhere in this transaction, there’s a thought that what you’re offering is not more than what you’re asking return, you talked about the shitty product, if you know that when you take 100, like $1,000, from a client, and you’re gonna give them a product, that’s probably going to be, you know, the real value they’ll get from that as maybe 500.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“So as much as you try to watch the motivational talks, and you’re having quotas and goals, if your foot and your mindsets on the brake to resist sales, you’re going to be spinning your wheels.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“You want to do a lot of fear conquering before you start going from a place of love and selling from that space.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“Nobody expects a perfect product, they do expect their problem to be solved.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“If you have the best of intentions, you genuinely care for this customer, you have a product that solves their problem, and you care about the difference this is going to make in their life, then please go use the tools necessary, follow the processes and use the techniques so that people can understand that you’re there to serve them, you want to put a product in their hands, and you can take the risk that, okay, maybe there’s a chance that it won’t be perfect.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“Be honest. You don’t need to be going making false promises, especially as a sales engineer, like you are a trusted adviser to these people, you will help them make the decision. That’s what they’re counting on you for. And so you have so much knowledge. So you and most people, they actually feel comfort when you make an admission of something negative about the product.” – Jason Marc Campbell

“You have to care who you’re selling to. We’re all humans here and you’re trying to solve problems. So you have to look at the nuances when these types of situations show up. Are you there with the best interest of the client in mind?” – Jason Marc Campbell

“Listen, we’ve done a lot of demos which actually caused more anxiety to our customers. And we realized that when we do this one step where we get more clear on what we what you’re looking for. We’re going to not waste your time on a demo. We’ll know exactly if it’s you and worth doing. So you don’t need to do an additional meeting? How does that sound?” – Jason Marc Campbell