Yesterday I wrote an article for salespeople to know when it’s business and when it’s personal. Check out that article first [https://go.sellingeffectiveness.com/9.23.LI.AM].

But how do you get your reps to take things personally? Why would you want to? Why not just focus on business and keep them from getting too personal? Or limit how personal they take their losses, so they don’t get stuck in their head and start to doubt their sales skills?

Because sales IS personal. It’s all personal. It’s literally one person (salesperson) building a relationship with, listening to, and caring enough to help another person (prospective client).

It’s why I say that it’s H2H – human to human.

The Importance of Personal Sales

Truly, not jokingly, until they find a way to get AI to take over sales…which will probably come at the moment that they create an AI that can just buy on behalf of people (which I think is actually a thing they are working on), then it’s all personal.

So how do you get your reps to take it personally? Let me give you my top three ways.

1. Hire the Right People

First, it starts with hiring the right people. For people to take sales personally and care about their prospects at a H2H level, you must hire people that actually care about people.

Not sharks. Not people who react to every sale with a Wolf Of Wall Street gif/meme.

It’s tough, because your hiring instinct is to get killers—people who want to win and are persistent enough to do whatever it takes to close a deal. That seems like the best thing for the top and bottom lines of your business, but it really isn’t ideal for long-term success and scalability in sales with how it’s swinging fully into H2H, relationship-building, and consultative sales.

For that type of killer salesperson to succeed, they must play the numbers game, which is unscalable and dangerous to your business’s reputation.

2. Build a Strong Company Culture

Second, you must have a strong company culture – mission, vision, and core values – that focuses on the balance between business success, profitability, and doing the right thing for customers. If your company’s internal statements are all about growth, success, profits, going big, and winning big, then it will be tough for your salespeople to ALSO care about helping people in a personal, H2H way.

Where do you need to adjust your internal conversations and messaging to support the outward actions that you truly want?

Let’s take a step back for another reminder…because you might be asking, “Don’t I want killers, and don’t we want to win big, make profits, and be dominant in our market?” Yes…AND…if you do not care, your team will do that at any cost, whatever it takes. But that again is at odds with how sales has changed.

You can no longer Boiler Room your way through prospects because they now have equal power to destroy your online reputation. You can no longer rely on people who you can take advantage of or manipulate into buying without them doing any research. Sure, some people might not research the company they are dealing with or the product they are buying, but you can’t rely on that at scale.

This is why you must have a culture and team that is focused on H2H – the old-school sales playbook and tactics won’t work like they used to.

3. Provide Coaching and Training on Empathy

Third, now that you have the right people hired and you have a culture that points them in the direction you want, the key is to provide constant coaching and training to help them take things personally. The main focus should be on the Discovery portion – which I have relabeled as Empathy. Discovery and probing are the standard modes, but as I wrote, no one likes to be probed (LINK).

Empathy means that I am taking what I would do in the Discovery phase but adding in a heavy amount of actually caring about people. Use Active Listening and a strategic approach where the goal is to find out what the prospect wants AND why. Show them you care enough to help them get what they want and need, not just what you have to sell or what you think they should want or need.

Conclusion: The Impact of H2H Sales

When you help your team care about their prospect’s long-term success AND avoid just defaulting into relationship-building Order Takers, then your team will find great sales success in the current era of what buyers truly want from a sales interaction.