7 Ways You’re Accidentally Sabotaging Your Sales Calls (Without Realizing It)
===
Brooke Greening: And by lose control, I mean, two things either happen, one ~you like,~ they take control of the conversation.
So then I have one of my clients and she says, it feels like they're, she's like a waitress at a waffle house. And they're like, well, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? Can I have whipped cream on it? Dah, dah, dah, dah. And it's like this fireball of all of these questions and they've completely lost it.
But when they work so hard, trying to overexplain the value of what they're doing and all the benefits of it. The investment of it and why they should be investing it. Like they're trying so hard to convince them to say yes. And we call that over-explaining that actually starts to devalue your value in the eyes of the customer.
Scott Greening: Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Sippin' Matcha and Helping You Make More Sales, where in the time that your matcha or coffee break happens, you'll get some great advice from our resident sales coach Brooke Greening, who also is my co-owner of Building Momentum Resources and more importantly, my wife. And we recently had the opportunity to take a trip together to a conference in Galveston, Texas.
Brooke Greening: Yes.
Scott Greening: Which was the GROW conference. Yes. The GROW Conference from the Good Humans Growth Network. And that was a great experience for a lot of reasons. One of which was we left like Blizzard weather in Northeast part of the United States where we live outside of the Philadelphia area, and winter is not always kind. It's not as bad as some places, but it's not great. Yeah. And so we had had sort of like two blizzards. And we left that and we went down to Texas where it was like 70. And you would've thought we were in the Caribbean or something.
Brooke Greening: We were, it was a beautiful resort and they had a heated pool and it literally, like they were, and nobody was in it. So I was like, oh, it's cold. And then I, the lady was like, no, it's like 92 degrees. I was like. It's a 92 degree pool. And so then I tipped my toe in it and I was like, Ooh, this is so nice. And then we ran and got our swimsuit.
It's this massive resort pool and we were the only one at nine o'clock at night. 'cause our kids aren't there 'cause Scott's parents were watching them in Philadelphia. And we're just like literally just splashing around, diving into the wa, like just having a grand old time. And then later people told us, they're like, yeah, we looked out the window and we thought it was you.
I was like, okay.
Scott Greening: I don't know what that says about us, but hey, you know what?
Brooke Greening: I have no idea.
Scott Greening: We were warm and it was just the two of us, and it was great.
Brooke Greening: ~It was beautiful. It was so good. The biggest bathtub ever. It was so fantastic. ~
Scott Greening: ~All right, now it got a little weird, but that's all right.~
~So ~
Brooke Greening: ~only because you made it ~
Scott Greening: ~well. Alright. So whether at the GROW conference or in some of the other coaching sessions that you've had, and I know you just led a session for StoryBrand and the Coach Builders Network and it was kind of on this idea of self-sabotaging. Your sales calls. And so we thought we'd have, ~
Brooke Greening: ~yeah, ~
Scott Greening: ~a little bit of a conversation today on how people might do that or why they might do that.~
Brooke Greening: ~Yeah. I so are you wanting me to go into the seven pieces? Is that what we're doing? Oh, I lost him.~
~Oh, no. Is everything okay? ~
Scott Greening: ~It is. Evidently that was not a good transition, so we'll be doing some editing. ~
Brooke Greening: ~You're supposed to do the whole thing with listening to your sales calls and having a sales coach as a wife, and all of that's, it's right there. ~
Scott Greening: ~I got it. I got it. Alright, so ~
Brooke Greening: ~please edit. Okay, so what do we do?~
~We don't have to start all over, do we? ~
Scott Greening: ~No, no, no, no. ~
Brooke Greening: ~Okay.~
Scott Greening: ~Alright. ~So, besides having wonderful adventures ~of on~ at conferences and that one of the advantages of being married to a sales coach is that she could still listen into my sales conversations and, it, it is an advantage. Maybe in the moment, sometimes it, it feels a little bad, but like you would say, you would make observations and you would say things and this has actually come up.
And the reason why I say that is because at the conference you had some conversations and then afterwards you just hosted a discussion for StoryBrand marketing guides and ~coach building.~ Coach builder coaches on the idea of self-sabotaging your sales conversation. Mm-hmm. And ~one of the ob~ one of the great things of you listening in on my conversations and sales conversations sometimes is that you can say, Hey maybe next time instead of saying this, you could do this.
Or maybe instead of asking this vague question, you could ask this specific question, or instead of asking, how's the weather? You could ask and do that. And so you've really helped me. I'm still way behind you on comfort and ease with sales conversations, but you've helped me a lot and this self-sabotaging of sales conversations.
Like is a common thing and people may not even realize it, but then like they start to realize, oh, like maybe I'm the problem, maybe. Right,
Brooke Greening: right.
Scott Greening: Maybe when, maybe when I'm not making the sales, it's not always that the other person, it just wasn't a good fit, maybe.
Brooke Greening: Right.
Scott Greening: I could get a little better.
Brooke Greening: Exactly. And it's not, it is not a judgmental thing. It's not to make people feel bad, it's to give them perspective so that they can be able to make changes. And we, these changes don't have to take weeks and months to accomplish. Like you can literally make that change in the very next sales conversation you have.
And so that's what we were talking about. We were talking about when I was just with another group and I was leading a conversation of how are we quietly sabotaging our sales calls and we don't even know it. And so, there's seven things that we have found. We've had lots of conversations with people, over 90,000 of them at this point, and then coached hundreds of B2B professionals.
And so we wanna talk about those today to give people an idea of are they actually self-sabotaging their sales conversations and they didn't even know it. Because the reality is, and you're gonna hear me say this over and over and over again, how well you are going to lead your sales conversations is going to directly impact your revenue and your business if you have to talk to people to make a sale, how well you lead those conversations directly impacts your revenue.
And so we wanna get good at how to be able to talk to people, but in a way that feels authentic. And that's where I think everything comes in. I think people self-sabotage 'cause they're trying so hard not to go across to the pushy line or the manipulative line or where everybody else is at.
And so that's, then they swing a completely different way and then it's actually hurting them.
Scott Greening: Yeah. So that's the why people might, with really good motives, self-sabotage.
Brooke Greening: Yeah.
Scott Greening: Let's talk a little bit about some of the ways or the, how they self-sabotage. So you said there's seven? Yeah.
Let's start with one or two. Yeah. And see see where it goes.
Brooke Greening: All right, so the very first one I wanna say is if you lose control of this conversation, ~you,~ that is a great way to actually wreck the sales conversation. And by lose control, I mean, two things either happen, one ~you like,~ they take control of the conversation.
So then I have one of my clients and she says, it feels like they're, she's like a waitress at a waffle house. And they're like, well, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? Can I have whipped cream on it? Dah, dah, dah, dah. And it's like this fireball of all of these questions and they've completely lost it.
They're not leading the conversation their potential client is. And that's a great way that it's gonna start self-sabotaging for multiple reasons. Which we won't go into all of those, but the main one is that. You as the guide and as the expert know how you can be able to help, how your services work, all of those things.
And they don't. So they should not be leading the conversation at this point. So that's the first one. Or the other way that you lose control of the conversation is they just check out. And you've seen it like, and it can literally happen in the first couple of minutes of the sales conversation they mentally check out.
And so those are two ways that you can self-sabotage and you didn't even know it.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And so that it may not be that the other person is talking too much or asking like they've just, their eyes have glazed over and you've mm-hmm. You've lost it, you've lost control to their daydreams about who knows what they're talking about.
All right. So what's the second one?
Brooke Greening: Second one, it's a huge one, is trust. Everybody is always trying so hard to be able to build trust, but if you have to say, you can trust me, or you have to talk about how trustworthy you are, now we have a problem that. Saying that you are trustworthy is not the way to build trust, and that is actually a way to be able to self-sabotage.
There is much easier way to be able to do that, and that's more in regards to our actions, the questions that we ask, the preparations of the sales conversation, and we'll go into that in the next series or so. But the reality is one of the biggest problems is that they don't know how to be able to build lasting trust.
Yeah. Even within the first three to five minutes of the sales conversation. Yeah. And that's so important because ~I~ the stat that we saw on HubSpot is that only like 3% of the population trust salespeople. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so people's guards are always up when they're talking to salespeople. And so it's really important that you not sabotage that trust building.
Scott Greening: ~Alright. ~
Brooke Greening: ~Yeah, let's, ~
Scott Greening: ~let's ~
Brooke Greening: ~keep ~
Scott Greening: ~going. If you got something that's fine, you can throw it in ~
Brooke Greening: ~there. Well,~ It ~just~ reminded me of another, business owner that I was talking to just recently and they kind of looked at the sales conversation more of like how it was going to benefit them and if they would be like, they're trying to figure out in the first five minutes or so can they afford me, ~is this,~ am I wasting my time?
And that is actually another way to pretty much self-sabotage the conversation. I am not saying by any means that we just talk for hours and hours and we never have any idea of who we're talking to. But if our whole goal in the first three to five minutes is to figure out. Are you gonna be worth my time talking to?
You've really shot yourself in the foot. 'cause that's literally what everybody is worried about on the other side.
Scott Greening: Alright.
Brooke Greening: And so we make it more about us instead of them. And that's self-sabotaging it.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And that defeats the trust and the credibility and the mm-hmm. All those things. Yep. Alright,
Brooke Greening: what's the next one?
All right, so the next one is we solve the wrong problem. That is how you can self-sabotage as well by solving the wrong problem, that means one, either you just kind of are solving the surface problem and then that's gonna put you in with your competitor and then that's when they start comparing you directly.
And then that's like when the race to the bottom happens in regards to pricing and all of that. So that is a way to self-sabotage. The other side is even if you get the sale, but we got the problem wrong, now you're set up for failure through that whole rest of that engagement. So you can't solve the wrong problem, which goes back to we have to take time to figure out what the real, actual driving motivating problem is.
Scott Greening: Yeah. Not the surface one. Yeah. So we sabotage it when we don't figure out that correct problem. What else gives us problems in sales conversations?
Brooke Greening: Yeah, then you overexplain your value. That happens so often when people are trying to overexplain because they're trying to separate theirselves from the competitor.
They're trying to separate and say, okay, this is how I'm different. But when they work so hard, trying to overexplain the value of what they're doing and all the benefits of it. The investment of it and why they should be investing it. Like they're trying so hard to convince them to say yes. And we call that over-explaining that actually starts to devalue your value in the eyes of the customer.
So you can't do that. There's a better way to be able to show your value for it to resonate with the problems that they've just shared with you, and we'll talk about that later. But the biggest piece is. Oversharing will self-sabotage your calls, and so that's easy to lose to the competitor.
And then also it feels like you have to negotiate, so you'll know if you're overexplaining because you're gonna, they're gonna go to their competitor or. You start to feel like they don't see the value of this. So now I have to like, give discounts and whatnot, and that is also completely self-sabotaging your sales calls.
Scott Greening: All right, so we're like halfway through, a little, over halfway through of your seven ways that people often self-sabotage our sales conversations. And maybe people are out there and they're thinking. Oh, shoot. I think I might have a problem. Is there a tool that where people can diagnose if they have a problem or not? Something that,
Brooke Greening: yeah.
Scott Greening: What? What tool is that, Brooke?
Brooke Greening: So we created a conversation sales assessment, because literally every time we're coaching people and we're helping them think through things, there are these seven things that we're talking about and even more that can either, you're accidentally self sabage.
Self-sabotaging it, or there are signs saying, Hey, this is not going to go well in the sales conversation. And so we create an assessment for you to be able to take from the very beginning of the conversation all the way to the end talks about in regards to what's happening with follow-up. And so it takes about three to five minutes to take.
It's not very extensive in regards to your part. And then it'll come back and give you some good insights because the reality is. Is how you think the sales conversation is going is usually very drastically different to how your potential client is taking it. And so we're helping you to see how are they viewing this conversation because that is actually the most important thing in regards to being able to move forward and make sales and continue to be authentic to ourselves.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and like I think I an encouraging way taking an assessment like this is helping see blind spots 'cause mm-hmm. F for all the good reasons and all the best things. Like we don't know what we don't know. And so a tool like this helps us so people can get that tool by going to buildingmomentum.info/assessment.
And you can take Brook's Sales Conversation assessment and it takes about five minutes or so and you can do that. So we've talked about four of the reasons that people might self-sabotage. What are some other ones that people have?
Brooke Greening: So in regards, when it comes to handling objections. So one, you can self-sabotage if you just completely avoid them altogether, because I'm going to encourage you, we need to know them.
Objections are actually very good, but then two people will self-sabotage because they either try to combat the objections or they try to downplay them and neither one of those work. So it goes all the way back to that trust factor. Like all of these things start tying together. In regards to handling objections, that's a really easy way that people can self-sabotage.
Scott Greening: Yeah. That's the part that if you're, you just get nervous about unless you kind of are ready to handle it. And that, yeah, because it's your baby. It feels like you're being attacked. Any number of things that are probably not true, but but that's the way that it can feel.
Brooke Greening: Yeah.
The other way you self-sabotage and we're gonna be doing a series in a little bit in regards to handling objections is literally any objection that you have. Put my little counselor hat on right now. When you have that objection, that will come across as you're talking to people. And so if you've heard that's too expensive, I don't know if you can help me, imposter syndrome, whatever it is, if you've got 'em rattling up here, they are definitely coming out and it's a way to self-sabotage it all over again.
Scott Greening: Alright? And so. A lot of people that we find that you work with are so, they don't want to be salesy, they don't want to be manipulative. But how can that desire to be like a good person contribute to sometimes sabotaging the the sales conversation?
Brooke Greening: Yes. That goes to our next one in regards to when we're talking about any type of urgency, because like just what you said, they've had that manipulation pushing us, so then they go all the way to the other side, but then that's how you're also self-sabotaging because now we're not even giving our customers a clear ability to say yes.
Like we're not even really asking for the sale or helping them to know, because maybe we don't wanna talk about pricing. Maybe we don't. Feel like we can ask them to move forward with us. And so then we keep like pushing it down the line and that actually sabotages it. Hmm. Yeah, so manipulation, I'm sorry.
Urgency is not the villain, but everybody thinks it is. It's the manipulation behind it. But if you do not have any type of urgency that gives people direction and hope of how you can be able to help in your sales conversation, you have already sabotaged it.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and I think like for me. When I'm talking with people about potential sales or whatever in regards to strategic planning, like I'm so excited about the value and I know the transformation that it can bring to people and that it's easy to just forget and like just assume everyone else will just immediately be pulling out their wallets and figuring out how to give me money.
But I, I end up just being passive and so. There's kinda like a, and they're like, wow, that he's really passionate about those things.
Brooke Greening: Right, right.
Scott Greening: I'm, I'm excited for him.
Brooke Greening: Right. And that goes to the last one you don't make it easy for people to be able to give you money. Not in a manipulative way, but in a way that people could make the decision if they want to, to be able to move forward.
You don't. You don't make that easy for people, and if you don't, then that is gonna self-sabotage your sales calls as well. When I was on the call last week, they were like, Brooke, we hear about these one-time closes, or you know, meaning like you have one conversation and then they close and they're like, we don't really know if that's legitimate.
What does that look like? And so I just encourage them like. If it's usually 5,000 or below, then that can usually happen in one call or definitely two. But for them, some of them we're taking 3, 4, 5, like whatever the amount is, because there were not those clear next steps. And if that is not there and it's not easy for people to be able to say yes and to be able to move forward with you, every time we get off of a call, we lose momentum.
And so we're self-sabotaging if we don't make that as easy as possible.
Scott Greening: All right. I know you kind of wove it in earlier and as far as some of your experience, but you're not just making these observations after a couple of months of good, good talks with people, right? Like
Brooke Greening: no where?
Scott Greening: Where did you find these at?
Brooke Greening: So we did the math, and then we did the math again, and I can confidently say and conservatively say that I've had over 90,000 sales conversations at this point, like high ticket, 90,000 sales conversations. Then I also had my master's in counseling, and so I kept it kept coming in and out. Okay, in counseling we give direction and hope, but over here in sales conversations, it's a completely different process and everybody wants you to do things differently and you have to come across differently, or you have to be manipulative or pushy or whatever it is.
And it just, it didn't jive well. And so we created the service framework or conversation framework. And so that allows. Me to be able to come and help people in their sales conversations. 'cause they would come to me, excuse me, and they would say, okay, I'm stuck in this situation. I would listen. I would tell them what to say.
I would tell them what to do differently. They would go, they would make the sale, which is awesome, but then they would have to come back and I didn't want that. I know from a business perspective that might work really well, but I truly wanna help people apply and be better in their sales conversations and that they don't have to work with me.
Forever. And so that's how we created our sales conversation framework because we wanted to help people from the very first step all the way to the end to be able to know how to have an effective sales conversation that addresses these seven problems we've just talked about.
Scott Greening: Yeah. And I think that it's hard for someone like myself or that doesn't have all that experience or that like you'd give great advice and all of that, but it's hard to kind of, it appears to just be coming out of.
Nowhere and like the great Oracle Brooke, like she's got the answers and that, but. But when you have a structure, when you have a framework, then it becomes like a repeatable thing, and then you kind of have hooks on, which you can put the advice that Brooke is giving you in coaching in that. So we've talked about it, we've talked about we seven kind of problems.
There's actually coincidentally enough seven parts to your framework that address each of those things. Yes. And why don't you just say them real quick, run through what is the framework.
Brooke Greening: Set expectations, establish rapport, recognize the problem, verbalize the value, identify objections, create urgency, and explain next steps.
Scott Greening: It's so fast I couldn't even no, but no, that's great. So it's set expectations, establish rapport, recognize the problem, verbalize value. Mm-hmm. Identify objections, create urgency, and explain next steps.
Brooke Greening: Yes.
Scott Greening: Great. That's
Brooke Greening: how we start from the very first minute of the conversation all the way to the end.
Scott Greening: And thankfully, the reason that I'm able to remember that is it's an acronym and that acronym, it's an acronym. Acronym is service. And so this is the service sales framework that Brooke has created. And Brooke, why don't you just share a little bit, like why did you call it service? What's the big deal?
What's your heart behind this?
Brooke Greening: So the biggest thing is in sales conversations, we tend to make it all about us. And so as I was working with our clients, I wanted to make sure that they were reminded constantly that it's not about us. Having effective sales conversations will impact us and will impact our business.
Hands down, there's no doubt about that, but in that sales conversation, in that moment, it needs to be serving the clients, and that is why we did that service acronym. It is not about us. It is not about how great we are. It is not about how amazing we are at solving problems. It's truly understanding who they are, the problems they're facing, and then if we can help them, that's great.
That's when we start talking about the investments and telling about next steps. And if we can't, then we wanna be able to give them other resources. If that is how you lead every sales conversation, you, you won't struggle in sales anymore if you truly make it about them and you get good at understanding where they're coming from.
Then that's how we start separating ourself from our competitor. That's how we can be able to have a shorter sales cycle. All of it comes together in regards to how we lead our sales conversations.
Scott Greening: Yeah, and I think the, you know, one phrase that we often use, or that you often use is you don't have to be a jerk to be great at sales.
Mm-hmm. And that's the reality. It's not an either or, oh, I can be great at sales, but I have to be a sales bro, or I have to be manipulative, or I have to be pushy, or I have to use a script or I have to, whatever. Mm-hmm. Or I can be nice and I can have, you know, I can serve people, but I don't make as much money.
Brooke Greening: Yeah.
Scott Greening: The reality is
Brooke Greening: it doesn't have to be either or.
Scott Greening: It's not either or. Mm. You don't have to be a jerk to be great at sales. You can be great at sales. And the way that the best salespeople are great at sales is they actually serve their customers. And so that's the SERVICE Sales Framework. Mm-hmm. And Brooke has kind of introduced it today, and in the coming weeks and episodes, we're gonna be doing a deep dive on different aspects of the SERVICE Sales Framework.
So obviously we encourage you to subscribe, to turn on the notifications, to share this episode, to do all the things that will help re you remember to keep tuning in to find out more about this and that others can do that. We always appreciate it when you like, review and share. That's awesome. Any parting shots, Brooke, for our listeners and friends out there?
Brooke Greening: No, just go ahead and take the assessment. It'll start giving you a good idea and how you can be able to continue to serve your clients. The people that listen, the people that I talk to, they're great at what they do. It's just hard for them sometimes to be able to make the consistent sales that they want.
And a lot of times it's just in regards to how they're leading their sales conversation. So this can help a lot. Look forward to walking you guys through it.
Scott Greening: Alright, well, we'll talk to you next time and thanks for listening. Until then, enjoy your matcha and keep making those sales. Have a great day.
Brooke Greening: Bye-bye.
