What sales quotes and lessons have served me well in my sales training journey?
In this podcast segment Scott discusses:
- Why plans are useless but planning is invaluable
- Go narrow and deep rather than wide and shallow
Full podcast episode with transcript can be found here.
Transcript – Lightly edited
Robert Plank: [00:00:00] it’s time to try to stump you, Mr. Scott. It’s try time for the scary part of the show. Or ask about a fun or helpful quote or lesson that has served you in all of your travel. So what comes to mind as far as a fun quote or lesson?
Scott Channell: I dunno how fun it is, but I think I’d lay two on you.
So one is, I always like that Dwight Eisenhower quote that said plans are useless, but planning is invaluable. Alright. Yeah. And I thought that it said, it’s so perfect on sales because you obviously have to have a well thought out plan. You have common scenarios and you’re gonna think, hey. If I interact with someone, how do I open the pitch?
How, which questions am I gonna ask? How am I gonna respond to certain objections? So there’s certain things that you know, and you have to plan those out. So when they come, it’s Hey, I’ve thought about this. I have the best response. I know the best thing to do, but at the same time, so you gotta have that plan.
What’s great about sales is no matter how good your plan is, you’re never gonna implement it A to Z the way your plan was, but fact that. [00:01:00] Means that you can make the be better decisions in the moment as to how to best serve the buyer and how to increase the odds that you get to a close.
So I always like that quote because I feel that you made a comment earlier about people don’t want to be too salesy. They want to keep it natural, but I gotta tell you, whenever I hear someone say, oh, I wanna build rapport, I go, oh.
It’s having comfortable conversations. It’s not, talking to a buyer, providing them information intelligently like a professional that is helpful to them. That is how you build rapport. Okay? Sure. It’s not by having, comfortable conversations that are easy, easy breezy. So that’s one thing.
Then the second one is, it’s not so much a quote, but it’s concept. Go narrow and deep rather than wide and shallow because I, again, I see where many [00:02:00] teams lose it is really through just a lack of focus on where the opportunities are. And then even when, so they spread themselves too thin and because they’re too thin they’re not used to going to the depth.
So you end up kind of closing the easy ones. But I think the people who are really successful go. Our adept at getting to mutual agreement deeper into the gray areas, as I call it. You got those who are obvious buyers are gonna jump in the boat and you got those who will never buy, and you get different shades of gray in the middle.
And the goal should always be to perfect the system or your skillset so that you’re able to close deeper in those gray areas than most other reps. Go deep rather, and I think that’s.
Robert Plank: Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable and we can consider that and think about that as we check out that [00:03:00] book. Sell The Meeting by Mr. Scott Channel and also more importantly, check out the very amazing website. That’s S-C-O-T-T-C-H-A-N-N-E-L l.com. That’s scott channel.com. Two Ts. Two Ns, two Ls.
We’ll see you there
