18: Stop servicing customers

Do not service your customers. So says Mike Weinberg in his book sales truth. Find out

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welcome to the bite size sales podcast where we believe that sales is the most important team and a B2B company that the sales team deserves great sales skills training but usually doesn't get it. And that taking bite-size steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve results. I am your host Andrew Monahan , and I'm using my experiences and B2B sales to bring you simple actionable ideas every day to help you get better.

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So servicing customers. And you know, I've done this before in the past where I've, I've definitely tried to help customers get to a happier spot than the been in . Um , and I've seen other people do a lot as well. In fact, I worked at one company, or I remember this clearly where one of the, you know, pretty successful reps from another team. Um, she seemed to spend most of her time babysitting tech support calls. She wanted to be on them to make sure they happen , to make sure the right things were said. And the resolutions are run path and there was next steps and things like that and she spent an inordinate amount of time babysitting these calls and we're asking her, you know, why do you have to do that? And her belief was, if I don't do it, you know, will a calls ever happen and will they get resolved and things get dropped and our support socks and all these kind of things came up. And the most interesting thing about her though was at the cube next to her, there was also supposed to be another rep sitting there, but he was never there. He was out selling , he was out in the field, he was taking meetings, making meetings, creating opportunities, working his accounts out there in the field. And they were both selling the exact same products. And I am pretty sure the other rep didn't have blissfully happy customers either. Right ? But what he had done is figured out where his time was best spent, where his greatest leverage was. So to read from the book mind Mike Weinberg's sales truth. If you are a serious about upping your game to develop new business thing , consider this strong request . Seriously. Please stop saying stupid things to customers, particularly new customers. Stop telling your accounts that you are their guy or their gal and that no matter what they need, they should contact you. Stop positioning yourself to customers as their personal servant. Order-taker concierge, dedicated account service rep, Aaron boy, preferred estimator and firefighter in chief. I know that many of you reading this are scrunching your faces and confusion and wondering, I ate for breakfast is making me so disagreeable is not what I ate. The upset me is what I witness. It's what I witnessed. Overly relational, overly service minded, underperforming sales reps doing time and time again that causes me to shake my head. So, you know, in this book sales truth, I guess I wouldn't be surprised, he's pretty blunt, but you can tell it he's passionate about this and I think he's maybe witnessed what I witnessed , uh , as well. And he's, he's kinda right. I mean in the day you don't get points, you don't get paid for solving these problems. What you do is you get paid to do is go create opportunities and win opportunities. So the question is, it's ask yourself, have you become too much like a customer service or support person? Are you doing too much babysitting? Uh , do you do a lot of pale , uh , sorry, post sales , handholding in the belief that you're helping your customer get to a great spot or a better spot to then hopefully do more business. Um, but or can you pass that on to someone else who is actually maybe paid to do this , um, and have them do their job and have them take care of some of these post-sales problems or post-sale processes. And therefore, the real question is, how can you spend more time selling

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the episode is sponsored by unstoppable dot. Do . Most sales teams are not trained effectively, the skills and mindset they deserve. And these are the most important people in the company. It's no wonder that only about 50% of reps make quarter every year. Unstoppable is a service that helps sellers and leaders get great at the skills and mindset they need without taking time out of the field. It exists because if the sales team has the right skills and mindset, they thrive, they're confident,

and you perform much better. Find out more. And even get a free sales book@bitesizesales.com and none have to wrap up as Chris Townsend,

VP of sales at UI path may or may not have one said training without implementation is just entertainment and preparer entertainment when Monaghan does it. So make sure you take action on what you learned and keep getting better every day . This world does not more sales BS, so don't create any more . Be great at the fundamentals. Be honest, be real. Be yourself. Just do not be us . And finally, I'm setting off as the great Joe Sexton would by saying, gone to sell

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