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Podcast — AoS #1: Creating a Sales Process Customers Love with Carson Honeycutt

Carson explains how to create and implement a customer-centric sales process by listening intently and acting with purpose.

This podcast is an excellent listen for anyone who:

• Wants to focus on their customer more.
• Needs to understand customer feedback and how to apply it.
• Is interested in learning how to align sales and other departments.
• Desires to create highly efficient teams.
• Knows that asking the right questions are the key to success.

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ÏIn this episode of The Art of Sales Podcast, we chat with Carson Honeycutt, a business strategist, educator, consultant, and professional speaker about how to create a customer-centric sales process that focuses on solving problems by listening and taking action that is beneficial to the customer, rather than just focusing on closing deals.

Podcast guest: Carson Honeycutt, Sales Management consultant.

(3:22) How do you map out a sales process? Are there specific questions or techniques you use?

• Bring in more than just the sales team. The “sales process” involves everyone.
• Use a technique that allows you to understand the ways that decisions are made both internally and by your customers.
• How to understand what decisions are leading to outcomes.
• Honesty in planning is key. Get a devil’s advocate.
• Understanding your approach to problem solving is key in creating efficiency.
• Don’t fall in love with your product; you need to see its flaws.

(09:13) How do you ensure you are creating a truly customer-centric sales process, as opposed to one that you just think is customer-centric?

• Talk to Your Market and LISTEN intently to what they have to say.
• Current clients are the best place to start. They will be honest, they understand you and they are ideally the ones you are creating this process for.
• You must be purposeful in conversation. Time is valuable.
• You must understand what drives your customers’ decision-making process: Hopes, Dreams, Pains, Fears.
• Get the WHOLE TEAM involved in this process.
• Beware of false positives.

(15: 05) Ok, so, you’ve talked to customers and received feedback… what next?

• Mapping Round #2. It’s an iterative process. Keep collecting feedback and returning to the drawing board.
• Re-visit the important questions: What do they want? Where are the gaps? How can you close them?
• Clarity creates purpose. Your people must understand how to get from A to B. they need clearly defined targets.
• People don’t want to hurt your feelings… so you need to ensure them that you really want HONESTY.
• Be willing to interrogate your reality — Susan Scott: Fierce Conversations
• Your job is NOT over when the sale closes. You need to provide excellent support.

(18:32) What tips do you have for creating buy-in within the team?

• The whole team should be involved in this process from junior to senior. They are your best source of real-time feedback.
• Align sales and marketing together on the common goal.
• Operations and customer service reps are your most valuable employees; get their feedback. They have customer-facing information. They are engaging with customers most often.

(22:56) How do you get the whole team onboard with this new process?

• Sell the process by discussing the results that customers will achieve.
• Nobody cares about what you do, they care about what it does for them, and how you get it done.
• All too often, what you do is largely inconsequential and is typically only interesting to you. You need feedback.

(25:23) What is your strategy for tracking performance on goals once you have defined and set them?

• Measure Performance in real-time.
• Leverage your Push-Pull Metrics. Each action has an outcome and you must understand the second and third-order effects.
• Beware Goalodicy “Destructive Goal Pursuit: The Mt. Everest Disaster”. Example: Revenue vs Revenue and Margin combined.
• Create teams that empower each other. Example: openers and closers.

(33:27) Brilliance in the basics

• Get your people focused on delivering top-quality work on the basics.
• Yes, revenue is the goal but you need to set small, scalable metrics that lead towards big wins.
• Practice your techniques, use coaching, and get focused on delivery.
• Understand what motivates your people!

(35:16) Setting effective forms of incentive to motivate people

• You need individual conversations with your reps and employees.
• Each person is motivated differently. Understand what drives them.
• Get 1-on-1 time with your reps to ensure you are creating effective motivation strategies.
• People want something to chase after, but they also want something that is meaningful to them as reward.
• Incentives can be win-win… and SHOULD be!

(41:17) The value of professional development as a reward

• Professional development (of their choice) is a huge incentive for most employees.
• Take the mindset from “job” to “career”.
• Give employees room for growth.
• Stagnation is a disaster for salespeople. Help them out. Get buy-in.

(44:46) So, what’s the end-state here? Is it once and done, or is it a process, or perhaps something else?

• Build/Measure/Learn/Repeat
• The Scientific Method is the basis. Have a hypothesis, test it in a measurable way, gather data, keep repeating until you have found what works.
• The PDLR Cycle — Applied Leadership & Development, Al Bolea: Plan, Do, Report, Learn, Repeat.
• Do things with purpose and on purpose.

(49:52) Closing: What advice would you give yourself a decade ago?

• “Ask great questions!”
• Learn the power of open-ended questions and the power of silence.

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