Sales

Aaron Sansoni - Why You Shouldn't Aim For Happy Clients Header

Why You Shouldn’t Aim For Happy Clients
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Some time ago, I was a keynote speaker at a conference that focused on creating happy clients. Obviously, given what I do and how I do it, many people believe that I have a lot to say about that particular topic and the reality is that yes, I do. It may not, however, be what most people want to hear.

I firmly believe that you shouldn’t aim to create happy clients when running your business. Imagine the surprise on the conference attendees face when I said that! It’s certainly not a popular opinion, but I strongly believe it’s an accurate one. You shouldn’t aim for happy clients. You should aim higher. You should aim for tribe members.

What are Tribe Members

Tribe members are individuals that have worked with you and are fully committed to what you do and the way that you get it done. They will do anything for you and they aren’t afraid to tell others about how much they love you and your company. In fact, “not afraid” is perhaps too weak of an impression. They love telling other people about your company and look for opportunities to do so!  

These are the kind of customers you want to create. These are the ones that will provide the most value over time.

Where to Find Tribe Members

Tribe members are created based on great relationships. You build tribe members. You don’t find or create them. It’s a long process, but I promise it is totally worth it to have a group of individuals that you love and that love you when it comes to your business.

The reality of running a business means that tribe members are much more difficult to nurture than happy clients — a fact that is compounded when you take your business to scale. Odds are that, when operating on a large scale, you won’t just have happy clients…you’ll have unhappy clients as well. It’s inevitable. ‘

The key is identifying which of your current clients have tribe potential. Do you have clients that seem ecstatic about an interaction? Beyond happy? Over the moon, perhaps? These are great indicators that you’ve identified a tribe member early on. Nurture these people by going above and beyond for them in return.

In fact, there are four (4) things you can do every single day that will help you create the perfect environment to nurture tribe members. I cover these steps and so much more in my Empire Mastery Course. Visit AaronSansoni.com for more information!

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Aaron Sansoni - Recruiting is a Sales Process Header

Recruiting is a Sales Process
560 315 Aaron Sansoni

Recruitment is a sales process. Whether you are the person hiring or the person applying for a particular role, you can be 100% sure that selling should be a part of your preparation and delivery.

The Applicants

Comparing the job application process to sales is not a huge leap. Most candidates are automatically aware that they are selling more than just a product. They are selling themselves.

Applicants create professional looking resumes highlighting their greatest achievements. They submit carefully crafted cover letters outlining some of their most redeeming qualities and put together the perfect interview outfit.

Do people that are merely presenting themselves for consideration go through all of this trouble? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is yes. Societal standards say that’s what they should do, so most of them do it. The truly great candidates, however, will go above and beyond to sell themselves.

Consider trying the following experiment. Pull 10 promising candidates from your applicant list. Call them and tell them you appreciate their application, but feel that they are not a good fit for the company at this time. The person on the other end of the line will likely react in one of the following ways:

  1. They will say thank you for your consideration and hang up.
  2. They will say thank you for the outreach and ask why they weren’t a good fit or what they could do to improve their chances next time.

What’s the difference? Applicants that respond in the first manner may be great candidates…but they don’t care. They don’t care enough to sell themselves if they’ve accepted the first no they’ve encountered from you.

Applicants that respond in the second manner, however, have taken the initiative to identify what it is about their personal sales pitch that isn’t working so they can correct it. This tiny question is enough to show that they understand the sales game they are playing, and truly do care about its outcome.

The Recruiter

Although it may not seem as obvious as an applicant selling themselves for a particular role, recruiters should be selling just as much. Rather than selling their personal accomplishments and skills though, they are selling the company.

A recruiters sales process begins the second they create a job advertisement. If well crafted, it should contain enough information to intrigue the right kind of candidates. That means it should be transparent, and it should differentiate your company from others looking for similar candidates.

Transparency is important in a sales process. You want to make sure that you are only offering what you intend to deliver or you’ll wind up with a less than happy receiving party. The same is true for hiring companies. Do not sell your company by advertising a possible pay rate or benefit or schedule that you don’t intend to deliver to any candidate that walks through the door.

Equally as important in a sales process is differentiation. You need to convince potential applicants that your company stands out on the list of businesses that do what you do. It is your job as a successful recruiter to explain why an applicant should want to work for your company and why your mission and vision matter.

Thinking of recruitment the same way you would think about selling a product or service is both smart and valuable. It helps recruiters determine which candidates are serious about wanting to work for their company, and it helps candidates realize which companies they want to work for.

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Aaron Sansoni - Sales Journey Header

3 Things I Learned On My Sales Journey
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One of my favorite things that I get to do is teach people. I am obsessed with education for myself and I truly love being able to educate others in a way that is going to help them succeed. What’s interesting, however, is that I didn’t always know that helping others and teaching people was a passion of mine. It was something that I learned when I first started out on my own sales journey.

In fact, I learned a lot of things when I first got into sales. Some were personal lessons but others were shareable. They were things I could teach. Here are the 5 things I learned on my own sales journey.

If you have a product or service, you have an obligation to learn how to sell that product or service.

When you’re relying on a particular product or service as the livelihood of your business and source of income, you are absolutely required to learn how to sell that product or service. If you don’t know how to sell it you will never be successful. Why? If you don’t know how to sell it then you don’t see the value in it. And if you don’t see the value in it, why should others?

If you can’t sell, you’re not in business.

You can be good at your craft…excellent at your craft even, but it will do you no good unless you know how to articulate the value you can provide to other people. You may understand that your product or service has the potential to save lives or save money or make life easier, but your customers can’t know that unless you tell them. What’s more? You need to be able to tell them in such a way that you solve their problems. If you can’t do that, then they don’t buy. If they don’ buy, then you’re not in business.

Sales can be taught.

Believe it or not, you don’t have to be born to sell. You can learn sales. As long as you understand what it is that you’re in business to do, and you have a strong desire to succeed, then you can learn how to be good at sales. It’s not a weird, mysterious process that takes place in the shadows or behind closed doors. It’s a concept you can learn with a little time and a lot of effort.

There are undoubtedly so many other things I learned on my sales journey and I doubt that I can communicate all of them in the form of a digestible blog post. These are merely three lessons that stood out from the early stages of my career. You can find out more about my journey (and how to start your own sales journey) by picking up my book, attending one of my mastery classes, or following me on social media!

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When to Fire Underperformers - Aaron Sansoni

When To Fire Underperformers
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If you’ve ever managed any type of metric-driven team, then you are aware that there will be performance rockstars and there will be performance duds. The rockstars are easier to handle. They do their job and they do it well. The underperformers, however, tend to be trickier. How do you know when to invest company time, energy, and money in their improvement and when to cut your losses and let them go? Fortunately, there is an easy way to make this decision by asking yourself one simple question:

Is this a skill problem, or is it a will problem?

Skill Problems

Skill problems are markedly straightforward. There is some aspect of the employees performance that can be corrected by addressing a lack of knowledge or know-how. If your underperformer has the potential to do their job given the right amount of time or education, then they are certainly worth keeping. It’s when they don’t want to do their job that a critical issue arises.

Will Problems

Will problems are difficult. They occur when an employee lacks the drive or ambition to perform in their role. They may have all of the right skills and qualities that a rockstar performer does but if they aren’t willing to put in the work, or don’t see the value in doing so, then they will never add value to your team. If you determine that an employee is underperforming because of will problem, then it’s time to let them go.

The Termination Conversation

It’s important to approach a termination conversation in a strategic manner. It’s not enough to sit the employee down and say “You’re fired.” It’s not practical to engage them in a lengthy conversation that establishes you as a friend. Both options position you as a foe in the long run. If you find yourself in a situation that requires the termination of a team member, it’s best to conduct the conversation by acknowledging your failure.

Realistically, if you haven’t provided a team member with the drive, motivation, or inspiration to perform in their role then you have failed them. You’ve hired them incorrectly and you’ve managed them incorrectly. By accepting the blame at the start of the conversation, you’re automatically relieving some of the tension that automatically bubbles up when an employee is about to be fired. Do not dwell on their failures. It only draws out what should be a short, frank conversation. Merely inform the employee that you’ve failed at giving them what they need and, as a result, they have been unable to meet your company needs. Thus it’s time to part ways.

Addressing underperformance in this manner will eliminate some of the decision-making stress that so often comes with tough calls. Determine whether your employee can do the job, and whether they want to do the job…and then proceed accordingly.

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Aaron Sansoni - Telemarketing Header

How NOT To Telemarket
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Sales is a broad field. There are numerous different job opportunities in several different aspects of sales, and none of them are so universally hated as telemarketing. The field of telemarketing tends to elicit a negative reaction from anyone who has ever spent countless minutes on a phone being “sold” by someone with a script and an earpiece. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, that’s the wrong way to do telemarketing.

If your business uses telemarketing as a sales tactic, then it’s imperative that you understand the behavioral process causing your potential customers to shut down as soon as they realize who is on the other end of the line. Here’s what most telemarketers are doing wrong.

They Ask For Value Up Front

The last thing a consumer wants to hear when they answer the phone is an immediate request for something that they may or may not have. Most telemarketers begin their conversations by asking for time or answers. This immediately sends the consumer into a wary state. It also puts them in a position to decline. They know they’re being sold and they haven’t been given any incentive to offer their valuable time or conversation to your team.

They Sell Themselves

A lot of telemarketers do not understand the difference between selling a product, selling a personality, or offering value. If they’ve received any type of affirmation or consent from the potential client in step one, they immediately jump into their sales pitch. Tactics here will vary from team to team, but the concept is universal. The salesperson feels like he or she is on borrowed time, so they attempt to cram as much information into a brief period as possible. Facts like product details and deadlines take precedence over value. Don’t get me wrong, occasionally one of those facts or figures will solve a problem the potential client has been facing. But the odds of that happening are significantly less if the seller hasn’t taken the time to understand the needs of the consumer. 

They Ask To Give The Value in Exchange For Money

The third and final step in most telemarketing calls is the request for funds. The marketer delivers their scripted lines and proceeds straight to the second commitment request of the conversation— money. The potential client, having already given their time or answers, is now being asked to give yet again before the telemarketer gives them any real value in return. You can understand how this might be a problematic process.

Fortunately for sales teams around the world, telemarketing does not have to follow this precarious path. It stands to reason that if there’s a wrong way to do it, then surely there must be a right way. I can teach you the correct way to leverage telemarketing as a valid way to recruit customers to your sales funnel. For more information visit AaronSansoni.com and click BootCamp.

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sales is cool/aaron sansoni

Sales Can Still Be Cool
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There is a certain perception of sales professionals among the general public that is, unfortunately, widely shared. It’s communicated a hundred different ways in a thousand different words, but what it boils down to is this: selling isn’t cool.

The natural response of many in this particular profession is to find out more. Why is selling uncool? What behaviors can I change to seem less sales-y? Some professionals will even resort to lying about their position. They adopt ambiguous titles and rely on wordy job descriptions to mask their actual role. I try to make it a point to question those professionals about their responsibilities and the reason they are in the position they are in. Why? Because sales CAN be cool…as long as you understand the concept behind what you do.

Every single working human being is helping someone out with something else. It could be money. It could be time. It could be security. It could be anything, really. The important point is that everyone that goes to work on a daily basis is helping someone else in some way, shape, or form. For sales professionals, it is especially crucial that they understand who they are helping and what they are helping them with. A firm comprehension of this information has the potential to change the way you feel about what you do for a living.

Let’s say, for example, that you go to work every day to sell shoes door-to-door. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this job. It is a perfectly respectable position, but the public perception of sales professionals has shamed us into thinking that it isn’t. So, when someone asks what you do for a living, your natural instinct is to say something like “I’m a marketing executive” or “I’m an account manager.”

While not altogether inaccurate, these responses almost always prompt the listener to ask for more information, and you’ll be forced to share the truth anyway. But what happens when you change your response to reflect who you help and how you help them? Then the conversation might look more like this:

Person 1: What do you do for a living?

Shoe Salesman: I provide extremely busy and/or disabled individuals with the opportunity to purchase footwear necessary for them to be successful in their daily lives without ever having to leave their home.

Do you think the individual asking the question is going walk away with a negative impression about what you do? Unlikely. The response above doesn’t seem shady, or greasy, or slick, or dishonest. It sounds cool. The job description didn’t change. The title didn’t change. Your own perception of what it is that you do changed, and that makes all the difference.

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Aaron Sansoni - Live By Design and Not Default

Live By Design. Not Default.
560 315 Aaron Sansoni

I spend a lot of time discussing business tactics and leadership skills, but it all means nothing if my audience hasn’t made the conscious decision to show up, pay attention, and accept the fact that this could be the life-changing catalyst they’ve been waiting for. If there’s one thing that I want people to take away from my seminars and classes it’s that there are two ways to go about life: default and design.

When you live by default, you aren’t actually living at all. You’re merely going through the motions. People that live by default wake up every single day and let life happen to them. They do whatever it is they do because they have to, or because that’s the way they’ve always done it. Most don’t actively recognize what is going on. They just react and, one day, they will wake up from a life on autopilot and it’ll be too late to go back and change things.

Conversely, when you live by design, you are taking an active role in your life. You meet mornings with important questions like “What do I want to accomplish today?” and “How do I want to be as a leader/employee/parent?” They choose to prioritize their actions, placing significance on the ones that better align with who they want to be.

To achieve your goals and reach an entirely new level of happiness, you must live by design and not default.

Now, let’s go one step further and relate the concepts of design and default back to your business. If you’re looking at a graph of company profitability, it should not look like a roller coaster at an amusement park. There should be no major ebbs and flows. There may be fluctuations, but they should appear minor in comparison to the scope of your graph. To put it simply, you should not make $100,000.00 one month and $0.00 the next. That is the result of default— reacting to individual situations as they come without any concept of your goals or processes. Business is happening to you. You’re not happening to the business.

When you approach your business by design, you have the capability to troubleshoot key areas contributing to the major fluctuations in profitability. You can step back and analyze your funnel, determine the area with the biggest bleed, and begin the process of correcting it. Clearly define what you’d like to accomplish in relation to that sales funnel, and then act in a way that is conducive to accomplishing that task. Once you’ve succeeded, you’ll be able to re-evaluate your process and set out to improve the second biggest bleed. With time and concentrated effort, you should be able to decrease those ebbs and flows and you’ll have done it by design, not default.

I’ll leave you with one last thought about design and default. I know it is sometimes difficult to think or behave a certain way when our brains are biologically programmed to resist. They are meant to be a survival mechanism and, when you get down to it, surviving is not the same as thriving. We need to trick or trigger the brain to agree with our goals. The best way to do this is by leading with your body.

If you don’t want to get out of bed, do pushups. If you are having trouble paying attention to a lecture, lean forward in your seat and make eye contact with the speaker. Your body will understand your intent and communicate the message to your brain.  Lead with your body and your mind will follow. The same holds true with design and default. Live by design and you’ll be amazed and what follows.

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Obligation Mindset | Aaron Sansoni, Sales King

You Have To: Why The Obligation Mindset Is Non-Negotiable
560 315 Aaron Sansoni

Obligation is a word riddled with negative connotations. For entrepreneurs and managers, however, it is a word that should be undeniably linked to every aspect of their title. The obligation mindset is a necessity.

There are two types of obligation that should occupy the minds of successful leaders everywhere. The first is the obligation to perform. The second is the obligation to share.

Obligation to perform

This is perhaps the most obvious form of entrepreneurial obligation: the requirement to perform. As an entrepreneur or manager, your team is constantly watching for you to set the bar in terms of expectations.

It is your responsibility to conduct business the way you want to see it conducted across your company. Complete your tasks on time. Communicate efficiently and effectively. Continuously chisel at your task list to illustrate the proper work ethic, drive, and output. There can be no doubt about what you expect of your team if you show them firsthand.

“I feel an overwhelming obligation,” says entrepreneur Rand Fishkin, “to someday, somehow live up to my own standards.”

Obligation to share

The second, perhaps more rare, type of obligation encountered by entrepreneurs and managers is the obligation to share. It is typically categorized by the need to ensure your business ventures survive beyond the term of your capabilities.

How long would your business last if you were not around to help run it? Sharing your expertise is a good way to ensure that your team is well-prepared should you require an extended or permanent absence.

Sometimes the obligation to share can expand into benevolent realms. For example, you might feel obligated to share your secrets for success with others that exhibit similar levels of ambition and passion. This “Life by Design” form of obligation stems from a strong desire to help like-minded individuals meet and exceed their own personal goals, which often results in a rewarding feeling for both you and them.

When the obligation mindset is absent

No one is obligated to adopt the obligation mindset. So what happens if individuals in leadership roles don’t embrace this sometimes unpleasant feeling of responsibility?

Nothing will change at first. In fact, nothing may change at all. Employees may continue to perform the way they always have. Company standards may remain as incomplete as they were when you first began your journey.

Worst of all? No one will be capable of ensuring your company prospers after you are gone. You may be able to achieve short-term success by refusing to share your methods with those around you, but your business goals and level of personal satisfaction will surely suffer in the long-run if you neglect your obligation to teach others what you know.

Aaron Sansoni, the new breed of selling superstar, is an international speaker, best-selling author and recent nominee for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 & Australian of the Year 2017.

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