There’s No Laughter in Sales
In a past life at Second City, I found that laughter, beyond feeling good, relieving stress, and amplifying thought, is one of the purest human feedback mechanisms in existence. An attempt at humor is made, and laughter results. Usually. Unless, of course, it doesn’t, or it comes in the form of modest, polite ha-ha laughter. Regardless of how the laughter comes, there’s no need to ask how funny you found a joke after the fact. You’ve already revealed it.
In sales, we lack such a reliable feedback mechanism. It simply does not exist. Instead, we rely on far less useful observations: eye contact, head nodding, questions that reveal “buying signals,” getting our calls returned, but nothing remotely as powerful as that simple telltale laugh. Emotionally, when we’re in sales, we reside squarely in ambiguityland. It’s part of the fun. We can try our best to read visual cues over Zoom, but it’s challenging even for experienced, sophisticated business developers to genuinely know where buyers’ heads are at. If you doubt this, next time you’ve finished a sales call where colleagues have joined you, take a moment for an internal debrief afterward and ask, “What’d you think?” You’ll run the gamut of subjective responses and may wonder if you were all on the same line.
This truth gap is where our egos, in typical fashion, rush to judgment and try to take over, out of one part coping mechanism and the other part hubris. The rationale of a strident salesperson being this: if I can’t ever fully trust what’s happening on the other side, then maybe, just maybe, I can make it about myself, what I’m doing, and the sales process I’m driving, and that will carry the day. I get the temptation. I’ve succumbed to it in the past. It’s human nature. We all love us some Me. Plus, if we’re being honest, the pedestrian buy-sell conversation, unless proper steps are taken to elevate it, often feels so lame, so stilted, and so saddled by self-interest that it seems easy to disrupt it without consequence by making the whole awkward affair an individual sport.
Unfortunately, when we try to play the Me game, it creates overly-optimistic biases and illusions of control behavioral scientists have nailed us on. We think it’s going to be great because we’re on the case and we can make them bend to our will. That’s wish-fulfillment, not reality. It costs us credibility and goodwill. No wonder so many selling conversations never seem to evolve and become more productive, even though everyone desperately wants them to. “I won because I was great,” even when that only works a fraction of the time, is a recipe for not scaling anything. In large organizations, especially ones with non-traditional business developers, it also creates nightmares for growth leaders trying to manage countless individualistic selling approaches under one roof (but that’s one for another day).
What to do instead? If it’s not possible to gauge behavior based on observation alone, if there is no perfect feedback tell, then it’s incumbent on us to gather feedback by asking more, and asking better*.
Set the expectation up front when you’re qualifying that you need to ask for feedback throughout their buying journey in order to help them. During the process, ask how they’re viewing your business and the work you do. Ask them how much they buy into your approach. Ask them what else they’ve considered, and what criteria they’ll use to determine their course of action. Even when it feels like you’re prying, you’ll be amazed how useful it becomes for them to share what they think more openly, how much it differentiates you, and how much clients will reciprocate and model this behavior with you. When that dynamic is established, it’s palpable. It feels good, and it enables people to talk with each other instead of past each other.
It also does one thing I know from experience is a game-changer. It allows you at the end, whether you’ve decided to work with one other or part friends, to ask for meaningful feedback on what could have changed the outcome, and what basis there is for mutual value going forward. I revere that feedback. It’s helped me face truths I wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s made me a better listener and a better person. It’s invited me into more opportunities and earned me more money. It’s helped the businesses I worked for become more successful. At a time of so much change and ambiguity, creating an environment of open, honest feedback is a force multiplier for businesses and their business developers.
*This means retiring, “Make sense?” and, “What keeps you up at night?” – both of which should result in actual fines. It also means that what you are told often needs to be carefully parsed and often directly challenged rather than merely taken at face value.
