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Sales Development Training For When Prospects Don't Remember What You Offer

Guest post by: Mark Satterfield

Article Overview: To say I was frustrated would be an understatement. I had been a member of this peer support networking group for over a year. I had not only explained in a presentation to the group what I did but had made a point to take each member out to lunch to make sure they understood. Look, you can’t get referrals if people don’t know who you are and what you do, so I wasn’t leaving any proverbial stone unturned.

Sales Development Training For When Prospects Don't Remember What You Offer

To say I was frustrated would be an understatement. I had been a member of this peer support networking group for over a year. I had not only explained in a presentation to the group what I did but had made a point to take each member out to lunch to make sure they understood. Look, you can’t get referrals if people don’t know who you are and what you do, so I wasn’t leaving any proverbial stone unturned.

Our meetings were always on the third Tuesday of the month. Occasionally our group leader would invite an outside speaker to come in. That’s what happened on a fine spring day in June, and led me to sitting in my car fuming at the unfairness of it all.

Jim Brinkman is a pretty impressive guy. He’s obviously a polished speaker and his stories about the marketing problems his clients faced are entertaining, well told, and make a lot of good points. Although Jim was technically a direct competitor to me, I found that I was enjoying his presentation a lot. So too were the other members of my peer support networking group.

“Great presentation” intoned Alan Jameson, our group’s leader. “When you were telling us that story about how you helped that chiropractor differentiate his services, that reminded me that I’ve got someone who could really use your help.”

“Your right Alan”, said Tom Treadway, who for the past 11 months had sat to my left at these meetings. “My neighbor only last week said that he needed some help in updating his sales messages-here, let me give you his name.”

I sat there in stunned silence, hardly believing what I was hearing. “These leads would be perfect for me!”, I thought to myself. “Why haven’t you guys talked to me about them?”

The meeting quickly broke up and 10 minutes later there I sat in my car pondering the unfairness of life. “Those ungrateful jerks” I steamed, “I’ll show them. I’ll be damned if I ever refer them any business.” Round and round I went, in an amazingly effective display of mental consternation.

Until I eventually ran out of steam and I began to reflect on what had just occurred with a bit more patience and perspective. “Maybe they don’t like me. Maybe they don’t trust me. Maybe they don’t think I’m competent.” I didn’t know what the answer was as to why I wasn’t getting the referrals I so desperately wanted, but I was bound and determined to find out.

Among all of the group I was the closest to Laura Sinclair. So a couple of days later I invited her out for coffee. I was determined to get an answer to why Jim Brinkman after one 30 minute presentation had received the referrals that had eluded me for 14 months.

“Look Laura, I’d really appreciate your candid advice. I’ve been a member of this group for over a year and have barely received any referrals. This guy Jim Brinkman comes in and picks off two great ones in less than an hour. What gives? Do people not like me? Trust me? Think I’m not competent? You’ve got to help me here, I’m really frustrated.”

Laura’s answer both surprised me and set me on a new path. One that ultimately increased my monthly referrals from zero a month to over a dozen.

“No Mark” Laura said, “It’s got nothing to do with any of that. Everyone that I know really likes and respects you. I guess it’s that we just don’t really understand what you do for clients. To be completely honest, I’m not 100% sure who you work with and what kinds of problems your best at solving. I know you’ve gone to great pains to educate us on that but I’m afraid that it either didn’t sink in or somehow just didn’t register.

When Jim spoke to us I found that I was interested in the stories he told. Even if I couldn’t directly relate to some of them-there was that one about a chiropractor and I never been to one-the problem that the chiropractor faced is similar to issues I’m dealing with. The fact that he told us interesting stories enabled me to understand what he did, who he worked with and the types of successes his clients achieved.”

To say that a light bulb went off in my head would be a little over-dramatic, but that doesn’t minimize the importance of the message. As I reflected on what I had communicated in my presentations to the group and in the one on one meetings, I realized that it had been a laundry list of facts about what I did. Boring, completely forgettable facts.

What made Jim’s presentation interesting? What made it memorable? What motivated the audience to refer people to him? The simple difference was that he told stories. As my friend Laura said, “People don’t remember facts, but they do remember stories.” Once I shifted my communication strategy to creating and communicating unique sales stories, the number of quality referrals I received dramatically increased.

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Article Tags: business sales training, executive sales training, insurance sales training, sales development training, sales presentation training, sales rep training, sales team training, telesales training, training in sales



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