sales voice Archives - The Sales Experiment

I’m going to take a break from the Dan Miller Challenge and respond to Day 4 of Jeff Goins Intentional Blogging Challenge –

The English Major Youth Pastor Turns Salesman

I was an English major in college. After college, I worked for 2 years as an urban missions coordinator for a small intown Atlanta church.

My next five years were spent earning a Master of Divinity (sort of like an MBA in the church world) and went on to work as a youth pastor for a couple years.

Through a series of events, I landed in the insurance world as a producer in 2004. A ‘producer’ is another name for an insurance agent which is another term for insurance salesperson.

Needless to say, I had no background in sales. More accurately, I never sold anything before, nor had I ever wanted to sell anything. I was like Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything:

Little did I know that I actually had a background in skills that would benefit a sales career.

It took me a good few years to settle in as a salesperson.

The first step might sound strange: I had to come to grips with the idea of being a salesperson. Even seasoned salespeople shirk the title for ‘trusted advisor’ or ‘consultant’ or something else that doesn’t include the word ‘sales’ in it.

The second step was understanding and implementing basic sales habits: making calls, networking, learning how to present and handle objections, and asking for the sale. Most small businesses don’t have formal training programs, so it took me a good bit to cobble together a sales process that works for me.

The final step has been to incorporate my natural skills and gifts and interests into my sales process. While it’s tempting to try to fit the mold of stereotypical successful salesperson, it’s important to find ones own voice as a salesperson. My education, experience in ministry, and talents and gifts should all be incorporated into the way I approach creating value for my clients and coworkers.

I’m still working through these three steps:

1. Strengthening a high view of the sales profession

2. Honing and developing sales skills

3. Working on finding my sales voice.

All professions require continual growth, study, and practice. Sales is no different.

Sales Experiment is for Salespeople (including myself) Who Want to Find Their Sales Voice

I set up this site as a place to curate some of the best sales and marketing strategies, tactics, and philosophies that are bouncing around out there. I’m also using it as a way to sharpen and develop my own sales voice.

Hopefully, in the process, I can help you find yours or at least connect you with resources that might help you on your journey.

Sales is honorable. Selling things that people need in a way that creates value for them is one of the best ways to help others and make a living there is.

The fun part is that one size does not fit all. There’s not a certain personality type or a certain approach that makes a salesperson successful. Experiment.Solve Problems. Create value. Find your sales voice.

Blogging is a funny thing. Those of us who do it relate well to each other. It’s hard to talk about it to someone who doesn’t without hedging and making a few self-deprecating snarky remarks.

I’m good at that because I sell insurance for a living, and since insurance has been a second career, I had to spend a little time getting over similar hedging and self-deprecating snarky remarks.

Both blogging and insurance sales are supremely honorable pursuits. But they are made most honorable when they have a purpose.

Blogging without a purpose is public journaling (still a small purpose, but then you have to be super witty or engaging or kind of a train wreck to be worth reading – or a family member).

Selling insurance without a purpose outside of straight-up raking in the cash can become smarmy and sleazy (although if one is going to be in sales, then making money isn’t a bad motivation at all – it just can’t be the only motivation.)

Having a purpose mitigates self-deprecation. It gives some meat and bones to what we do as either salespersons or bloggers (or both).

Having a Purpose

I’m walking through Jeff Goins’ ‘Intentional Blogging Challenge’ at the moment (to join up, check out the Facebook page he set up for the 15 day challenge).

Day 2’s challenge was all about giving your blog some focus. Identify a subject, theme, and objective for your blog.

So I considered those three items for this particular website. It can easily fall into a little business journaling exercise (a worthy thing, indeed, but not entirely useful for anybody else).

Here were my responses:

SUBJECT: Sales success
THEME: Learning how to find your ‘sales voice’ – especially for those who came to sales or a marketing career as a second career after slightly more romantic pursuits like ministry or some other liberal arts career didn’t pan out.
OBJECTIVE: To find and clarify my own sales voice while developing coaching tools and methods to help other individuals and organizations do the same thing.

I put myself through this exercise for my day job:

SUBJECT: Commercial insurance sales
THEME: Helping my clients protect their nonprofit visions
OBJECTIVE: To be a consultative partner with my clients, helping them to identify the operations, people, and assets that are vital to moving their nonprofit’s mission forward, matching appropriate insurance tools to protect those three things.

I spent some time today filtering newer opportunities as I want to work with people who have a vision (mostly nonprofits) and that value having a mission and being committed to caring enough about the people they serve to be wise about protection.

Having a Focus Filters Opportunities and Gives Us an Editorial Perspective

I love the exercise in focus because it helps filter opportunities. We can’t do everything for everybody and maintain effectiveness over the long haul. Even in our writing, the more laser-focused we are, the more easily we can identify topics to write about (as contradictory as that seems).

In sales, the more laser-focused we are, the more expertise we develop and the deeper we can dive into our chosen niche.

What’s Your Focus?

I won’t bore you with listing the reading and listening for today.

I’ll leave you with a question: What is the subject, theme, and objective of your work life right now? Can you define it? Would it help you to sit for a moment and do so? Give it a shot…

Why The Sales Experiment Exists