Selling viewed through the looking glass (it isn’t pretty)

Yesterday, I called into two CRM companies, to evaluate CRM for Storyleaders. I called into the main #s. I’ve actually done some work with both companies, but wanted to hear both sides, maybe get some different ideas. And I was kind of excited going into these conversations; thinking I would get good insights; maybe get inspired to do something new.

It was eye-opening to be on the receiving end of those calls, since I spend the majority of my time being on “this” end. I got the exact same feeling of being “qualified” from both experiences. The exact same stuff:

“What does your company do?”

“How many users?”

“What have you used in the past?”

“What’s your timeline?”

“What’s your role in the business?”

Within two minutes of each call, I turned the interrogations around, “Tell me about your…”

And the crazy thing was I got the same messages from both. “We’re the world’s leading…. we have a mobile platform, a social, you can access everything across all your…..”

Lame and uncomfortable

Both of the calls were with really nice, sweet people, but the conversations were just lame, and uncomfortable. I could feel them following the scripts. I call in for help, and then I’m literally on the witness stand. And then I started to feel bad for both people. They probably both went through some variation of the same question-based sales training, and learned to tell the company “pitch.” I never felt like I was talking with a human being, and it made me feel inhumane.

Both were discovery / qualification calls for them. It was for them, they were doing what “they needed.” And both calls ended with, “What’s your email address?” I’ll send you links to a demo and product info.” So now, they made themselves irrelevant because I now have on-line product demos, and links to product information.

I’m imagining if either of those salespeople opened the conversation up to a more real place, allowed me to share my story; why I founded Storyleaders, why it matters so damn much for me to bring my stuff to the world. Probably could have led to some excitement about a bigger, broader, enterprise wide platform… bigger than “SFA.”

Measurable skills

And I’m sitting here this morning thinking about the question I often get from senior executives, “What measurable skills will my people get from Storyleaders?” I guess thats the question we’ve all conditioned ourselves to ask anyone that is close to being related to “training” industry. And sure, there are learnable skills: storytelling, listening, empathy…these are all the learnable things and therefore by extension, teachable. But maybe it’s bigger than that. How do you measure the things that Catherine shares in this story below… “Radiating, feeling connected, getting someone to smile and open up…” What if those other guys would have radiated, connected with me, or got me to smile?

Catherine is a sales rep from Syncsort. She went through our workshop two weeks ago, and posted just this beautiful story on my website: My Experience In The Crows Nest at Storyleaders

I love it when people share these stories on our website.