How to Build a Resilient Sales Team

Have you ever wondered what role resilience plays in developing a modern professional sales career?

Old school sales leaders think that selling is still a numbers game, so the most resilient salesperson must be the one who can suffer through making the most sales calls, surviving the rejections, eventually getting to that elusive sale. But this is old school thinking and is the death of any modern salesperson.

Old school sales leaders call this strategy "spray and pray"

Are you a modern sales leader who is strategic with the resilience of your sales team or are you an old school sales leader, using strategies that lead to burnout and chance? Resilience as a strategy can impact every aspect of your sales teams performance and well-being. From Physical to Mental, to Personal and Financial. Well-being is a byproduct of resilience and modern salespeople need to understand how to implement a resilience strategy if they want a successful career in selling.

When it comes to professional integrity selling, most companies have a sales system that looks something like this: Approach, Interview, Demonstrate, Validate, Negotiate and Close. But where does resilience fit in?

If you've been in sales for any length of time, you will know that selling has changed dramatically over the past 30 + years. The internet has provided buyers with access to information, helping them become informed before they ever engage in the sales process. And the global pandemic put a pause on conferences and face to face meetings, the last hope for old school sales leaders with outdated sales systems. These old school sales leaders don't understand or value the process of Social Selling.

If you are lucky enough to get a face to face meeting with a buyer, it is usually at a conference or in a community meeting room that yields no clues to help you gain rapport with the buyer. People buy from people they know, like and trust and that rapport happens in the approach stage of the selling process. So while you might get a quick sale today because of a low price, that rarely translates into lasting ongoing business.

Another challenge modern salespeople face is an ever revolving door of buyers. Corporate buyers are always on the move and what normally moves with them is all of the goodwill and rapport that you developed over time, so you have to be more strategic in your approach to selling if you don't want to be starting from scratch with every new buyer.

Old school selling is one-to-one,

modern social selling is one-to-many

Have you considered "circling the wagons" as a social selling strategy? It used to be that the strategy of circling the wagons would protect the people in the inner circle from outside existential threats. When it comes to developing resilience in selling, all of those circling wagons are your allies. These are the people who you want to know, like and trust you, so that eventually when they do open their line of defense to the buyer in the middle, you are invited in as a trusted partner. Trust from peers creates demand. And when that buyer eventually moves on, they will be replaced by someone from that front line defensive outer circle, someone who already knows, likes and trusts you.

Resilience as a Sales Strategy

All social selling happens in the approach and interview stage. Old school sales leaders push their products onto a target market and hope that someone bites. Modern sales leaders attract and pull in customers by leading with curiosity and growing opportunities together. They don't tell buyers what they can do, they ask buyers open ended curious questions that lead to interesting answers, legitimate conversations and new opportunities. There is nothing quick about it. Resilience is playing the long game. Developing resilience is a strategic process. In sales, making cold calls is the adversity we all face every day. The struggle is mentally and physically going through the exhausting process of making those cold calls. If you are lucky enough to survive that process and not get burned out, resilience comes in the form of learning from the entire experience, so that you can develop best practices, turning cold calls into warm calls and thriving as you move forward.

Planning for resilience is planning to thrive

How can you turn the adversity and struggle of cold calling into an opportunity to become more resilient? Confidence and competence build resilience. The more confident you feel in each area of the sales process, the more competence you will have and the more resilient you will feel. You develop confidence and competence by:

1. Doing your homework and identifying who the buyer is, and who the buyer is surrounded by before you start reaching out.
2. Finding legitimate points of interest. It might be a sport, a city or even a school they went to. Find a point of interest that legitimately sparks your curiosity and then reach out and lead with sincere questions that tune the world out and makes them feel important.
3. Learning something new about your buyer. Happiness doesn't come from making the sale, that's just momentary pleasure. Happiness comes from the joy you feel while striving for your full potential, moving the sales process forward every day.
4. Adding value by starting conversations in the buyers posts on LinkedIn. Odds are they don't have more than 10k connections or followers so when they do publish a post, they do so because it is meaningful to them, so leave comments in the form of questions to spark a conversation. But only do so if you can add value to what matters to them. This is not an opportunity to "bait and switch" getting their attention only to make a sales pitch. This is an opportunity to find common ground to connect on.
5. Leave them wanting more. Curiosity is a powerful tool in your sales tool kit. Every resilient salesperson uses best practices and strategy to become more professional. Amateur salespeople are a dime a dozen and combined with old school sales leaders, the burnout and churn is endless. But when you think of highly successful professional sales organizations or salespeople, they leverage curiosity and best practices to become trusted partners to their buyers and the organizations they serve.

When you start to think of social selling in a more strategic way, you start to develop confidence, competence and resilience. The end result is that more people will want to engage with you, rather than you trying to constantly engage with them. Resilience in sales is that feeling you get when people start to know, like and trust you.

I look forward to discussing in the comments below.

#resilience #resiliencecoach #resilienceforleaders