Sales Monkeys

July 26th, 2010

During a recent private training session with a group one of the guys used the phrase “Sales Monkeys” in a comment he made to me.  Since I didn’t know what he meant I asked him to clarify and he responded by saying “How do we break the pattern of our prospects who are used to Sales Monkeys just giving away all of their info and pricing.”

He explained how his prospects have been trained by other salespeople to expect a certain way of selling (not asking a lot of good questions, not finding out true budget or why people would actually buy etc etc).  He feels like people will naturally resist if he does not do what other “sales” professionals do.  I helped him discover why this may not be the case and used a recent experience to do just that.

A few weeks back our family went to my dad’s cabin for a little camping trip.  Laughery creek runs right through the property and our young son loves to throw rocks and play in the water.  After a short time he started to stack rocks a few feet from the bank which was causing the water to go in a different direction and pool up in a new place on the bank.  The water still managed to go downstream to where it was headed it just took a different path to get there.

He is right, prospects have learned to expect certain behavior out of sales people.  What you have to do is gently place rocks in the right spot so you can help divert the process (stream) in a way that works for both people.  In this example he was able to splash around and the water was still able to flow downstream.  What rocks do you need to put in place to avoid becoming like all of the other “Sales Monkeys?”

Aaron Prickel

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Aaron’s information and techniques on sales for professional services will improve the success rate of our participants. He captured their attention and delivered in a way that they could easily understand and immediately use. I would recommend his training to anyone who needs to gain new clients and keep the ones they have.

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