“To get what you want as a sales professional, you have to connect with the person who has it, and that person is your client.” Lon Graham
My guest is Lon Graham, who’s a speaker coaching advocate. Lon speaks to sales teams, coaches, and sales leaders and is an advocate for sales professionals. He is also an award-winning sales and leadership professional. His message of getting the sales you want comes from over 25 years of experience in healthcare, corporate programs, events, and the airline industry. Lon is an active member of the National Speakers Association.
Sales are complex, and two statistics prove that. The first statistic is that sales have the highest turnover; a third of the sales force leaves yearly, which is 10 points higher than any other profession. The second statistic is that the average tenure of a sales professional is a year and a half.
There is transformational power in being nice to people. If you start by being nice to people, talking to them, and spending a little bit of time getting to know them, they will be more inclined to want to talk to you, and then they will give you a chance to come back.
The four C’s is a framework designed to get people to become better at sales. The first C is Choice which addresses how to choose what you want. The following C is Commit, which addresses the steps to take for you to progress towards that goal. The third C is Connect which is about knowing who to connect with. Finally, the fourth C is celebrating, which is about recognizing the progress that you’ve made and acknowledging wins.
To get what you want as a sales professional, you have to connect with the person who has it; that person is your client. What makes sales so hard is how to connect with your client. The starting point is meeting your client in their story and understanding what they’re doing and what they’re dealing with so that you can provide solutions to their challenges. When you do that, they’re going to connect with you, and they’re going to help you get what you want. The four Cs framework is shaped like a wheel because it’s progressive.
The two things that are so important for sales professionals to learn are first, what your client or potential client does best, and their productivity. The second thing is knowing your ideal client. By knowing these two things, you have an insight into how that potential client thinks, and if you can contribute to them doing more of what they want to do with who their ideal client is, you’ve just made them more productive and more profitable.
