Inspired to Write? Lisa Tener
Learning to Trust the W
Have you ever tried to do what the experts tell you only to find it just doesn’t work quite right for you?
isdom W
That was my experience with sales. I’ve worked with at least half a dozen business coaches over the years and I’ve learned different valuable information from every single one. Each helped me move my book writing and publishing business forward in inspiring and successful ways. But I just could not get that sales process. My first exposure to the “sales process” began at a very large company known for its sales training. You see, while in business school, I had a sense I wanted to be in marketing. It seemed one of the more creative and people oriented aspects of business.
At the time, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where I at- tended and received both my bachelors and masters) had an agreement with Harvard, allowing me to take a Marketing course
there that changed the course of my job hunt. “To work in market- ing, you must first work in sales” was the mantra of my instructor. I dutifully took a job in sales, received all the top notch train- ing the Fortune 50 company provided and immediately felt completely at sea. It probably didn’t help that one week into my job, sitting at someone else’s desk after hours, I overheard my boss— the one who’d sold me on the job by promising what a great mentor she would be—telling the two people on the team I would rely on for support that I was in a spe- cial management program (i.e. be- ing paid a higher base salary than they). I knew at that moment her only job in my instance was to see me fail and get me fired.
Even without that rude awak- ening, I wasn’t quite made for corporate sales. Some part of my psyche rebelled so that, by the end of my brief career there, I could not even add numbers properly.
August/September 2012 ithin
Fast forward to starting my own company as a book writing coach. Every time a business coach led me through the sales process, it sounded okay, but I couldn’t do it. Their process when something like this:
• Help the prospective client articulate what they want (the dream).
• Help them get in touch with their pain.
• Help them deeply feel their pain.
• Clarify objections. • Overcome objections. • Get their buy in. • Sell. There were several sophisticated versions of that, of course. But it just wasn’t feeling right to me. My coach would use all kinds of strategic language, but it didn’t come naturally to me and I never remembered it.
One day, I realized I could apply my creative tools to the “sales process.” Without trying to con- vince the person my program was the one for them, I could help
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