Selling to friends and family... what a nightmare

Published: Wed, 11/02/22

November 2, 2022

TOGETHER WITH

Welcome back. Halloween is over, but if you still want to be scared, just open up your CRM and take a long hard look at what you see. In this week’s issue of The Quota, we’ll talk about how sales reps can stop procrastinating, share a Sales Fail about bad coffee, and give some advice to a new rep who doesn’t want to have to sell to friends and family. Let’s go.

NUMBER OF THE WEEK

47% of emails are opened or discarded based solely on their subject line.

Source: Invesp

SALES ROUNDUP

Here’s what’s happening in the sales world this week:

NPR recently ran a segment of their My Unsung Hero podcast which showed the human side of sales. The story focused on a woman with early onset Alzheimer’s disease who wanted to buy a pair of shoes (much to her husband’s frustration). At the store, the woman had a hard time following the sales rep’s fitting instructions, but the saleswoman showed her the utmost grace and humanity. You can read the touching story here.
Are we in a downturn, or are we in a lull? No one really seems to know, but the Harvard Business Review recently published an article about how to adapt your sales approach in a downturn. They recommend involving executives earlier in the sales process, breaking out of price-driven sales cycles, refocusing sales managers on planning, and incorporating post-call review. You can read the article here.

FEATURE

Lazy_Bear/shutterstock.com

Sales reps lose billions to procrastination -- here's why we do it and how we can stop

Procrastination. You may be engaging in it right now by reading this newsletter (we won’t tell.) But what is it really costing you, and how can you counter it? Read on to find out. (See? This just became a productive procrastination session.)

Let’s start with the definition of the word: According to authors Steven J. Scher and Nicole M. Osterman, procrastination is defined as: “To voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay.”

Pancho Mehrota, CEO of Frontier Performance and a recognised leading expert in the psychology of selling, has studied hundreds of salespeople and business leaders. In his research, he’s discovered that procrastination is less about avoiding your to-do list than it is about fearing failure and the resulting judgment from your peers, should you fail. Anticipating the shame of failure and a blow to your self-esteem, you put off the tasks in question.

But procrastinating sales calls [and other tasks that salespeople do] comes at a cost, not only to you but to your company. Mehrota’s research has shown that putting off tasks at work costs on average nearly two months of the year in lost productivity.

But procrastinating also keeps you stuck. When you put off work, you don’t develop new skills that can move you forward in your career. This can cause a domino effect, not only stagnating your career but affecting your physical and mental health.

Ah, ok! Procrastination is terrible, We get it! But how do we stop it?!

Mehrota lists three key contributors to procrastination:

Behavioral – habits
Cognitive – thoughts
Environmental – community and cultural

There’s no magic bullet when it comes to rooting out the cause of procrastination and combating it. You will probably have to try a few different approaches before you find the one that works best for you.

Behavioral: Do you have rituals that eat into your work time, such as extra long coffee breaks or social media scrolling? Noticing these habits is the first step to undoing them. Keep a diary during one workday and track each moment of your time. Then you'll have a record to reflect on.

Cognitive: Mehrota says that catastrophizing is the biggest challenge for most people, so doing some reflection on what your fears are surrounding certain tasks and naming those fears can be helpful.

Environment: Is your workspace distracting? Do you work in a busy office with lots of conversations going on around you? Do you work at home where you get distracted with household tasks? Making your workspace as quiet and conducive to concentration as possible can really help with procrastination.

Working through procrastination is as much about creating good habits as it is about undoing bad ones. Rome wasn’t sold in a day. Be patient with yourself as you build good habits and undo years of behavior.

And that call you’ve been putting off? You’ll feel so much better once you make it, we promise. You’ve got this!

MAKE VIDEO CONFERENCING YOUR EDGE

Salesroom was developed specifically for AEs, SDRs, and Sales Leaders to help you sell in a genuine and authentic way – easily creating a 1-3 min highlight reel of your entire sales conversation, keeping your agenda on track in real-time (MEDDIC, BANT, or your own), and (of course) helping you win more deals!

Pro tip: Sales conversations are about information exchange. Your buyer should ask the same number of questions you do, so make sure you leave enough space throughout the meeting, not just at the end (Salesroom can keep you on track).

Try Salesroom for free here!

MEME OF THE WEEK

Source: Instagram -- Sales Humor

QUIZ

Which of the following people wrote the famous sales book Spin Selling?

A. Jim Rohn
B. Dale Carnegie
C. Neil Rackham
D. Jeb Blount

SALES FAILS

Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

This happened to me a few years back. My first job out of college was at a bootstrapped startup selling software services. We were a small team of about 15 people, mostly recent college grads, who worked out of the basement of a church. We spruced it up a bit to make it more startup-y: ping pong table, keg, etc.

We had a deal in the works with a really well-connected and powerful C-suite consultant from New York. It was the biggest deal we ever pitched by far. We had a few meetings on the phone and finally we were having the meeting in person. The whole team got to the office early and we were running around like crazy cleaning the place up to make it more presentable.

The guy finally arrived with his team (they drove 2 hours from NYC) and we started the meeting in the conference room. We had someone bring him a cup of coffee that we made in our coffee pot (the coffee we all drank everyday). The guy took one sip and his face crinkled up like it was the worst thing he ever tasted.

He immediately stopped the meeting, picked up his phone and called his driver (he had a personal driver who drove him everywhere in a Mercedes that was waiting outside) to go to Starbucks and get him his usual coffee order.

We ended up closing the deal about a month later. Turns out, the guy was looking for a scrappy young team that didn't have a flashy office or expensive coffee. That moment was super embarrassing at the time though, because when we saw his face after he took that first sip, all of our hearts sank.

Anonymous Location withheld

GRAPH OF THE WEEK

Source: LinkedIn Poll -- October 2022

WORTH A PEEK

Struggling to find new accounts? What if you could find similar companies to your best customers? Well, there’s a tool that can help you do just that – it's called Owler Max, and it can save you hours of prospecting and research every week! Owler Max lets you work smarter, not harder – check it out here.

ASK THE QUOTA

Want to submit a question and be featured in our advice column? Click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).

Dear Quota Team,

“I am a recent college grad in my first year in the workforce. When I was in college, I worked all sorts of jobs – I was a barback at a local pub, worked for a moving company for a bit, and worked as a prep cook at a restaurant. I never really thought much about what I was going to do when I graduated, though my major was in business administration.

After I graduated, a guy I used to work with (he was a manager at the restaurant job) recruited me to work in sales for a big financial management/insurance company that you’ve probably heard of (I am not going to name it for anonymity). During the recruiting process, they made it seem pretty amazing, and kind of made me feel like royalty which I was definitely not used to in my other jobs lol.

I accepted the position, but almost immediately, they were on me to reach out to friends, family, and people I went to school with to sell them life insurance and talk to them about financial planning. Not only do most of my friends not have much money yet, but I absolutely hate having to bother people I know to try to sell them something. It feels sleazy and manipulative to me.

Since taking this job, I’ve been researching other sales roles and it looks like you don’t have to try to sell to friends and family in most of them. And it also seems like most other sales jobs offer a decent salary and benefits. Have I really messed up my career by taking this job, or is there still hope for me to move into a more “normal” sales role? What are the best next steps here? Do I stay for a while and tough it out or try to quit as soon as possible? Thanks for your help.

Uncomfortable in Connecticut

Dear Uncomfortable,

We’ve all been there. Well… maybe not all of us, but many of us. When you’re new to the workforce and you’re still trying to figure out what’s what, you might end up in a sales role that’s not what you expected. To be fair, though, there are people who make a great living in those eat-what-you-kill insurance roles, as long as they’re willing to stay in them for many many years while they build up their book of business and accrue renewals etc.

In any case, it doesn’t sound like this is going to be you, which is perfectly fine. There are lots of opportunities out there, from software, to medical device sales, to everything in between. The good thing is that you’re so young and so early that you can chart your own course.

We suggest doing something you didn’t do the first time around: research. Start googling different sales roles, and go deep on articles and message forums that talk about the nuances and pluses and minuses of each one (for SaaS sales, you can check out RepVue). There’s a good chance that one industry will appeal to you above all, and then, it’s just a matter of being persistent enough to get yourself in the door.

In terms of toughing it out or quitting, there are upsides and downsides either way. On the one hand, you’re not getting a salary and it doesn’t sound like you’re making any money, so it makes a lot of sense to leave and dedicate yourself to the job hunt full-time. On the other, hiring managers are (or tend to be) more receptive to applicants who are currently employed. Either way, just make sure you’re ready to hustle to get what you want. In the world of sales, there are no freebies, so be ready to prospect – even if you get to leave your friends and family alone.

Quiz Answer: C

SHARE THE QUOTA

Help us grow, and we'll send you a reward!

{% if subscriber.custom_field['RH_REFLINK'] != '' %}

Share The Quota, get cool stuff!

Know a salesperson who’d love The Quota? Give them your unique referral link (below), and we’ll give you some awesome rewards when they subscribe.

facebook

twitter

PS: You have referred people so far

{% endif %}

How did you like today's story?

Today's email was written by Ken Kupchik, Erica Furgiuele, Steve Rado, and Emily Hill.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Looking for a new gig or to hire for your sales team? Check out our jobs board — powered by RepVue.

Advertise with us

Books

QUOTA MEDIA LLC

651 N. Broad Street., Suite 206
Middletown DELAWARE (DE) 19709
USA

Unsubscribe | Change Subscriber Options