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How Can You Predict The Future Of Sales Ops? One of the keys to sales success is to be able to predict the future – what that other person is thinking, what they might say, what they will experience, how they will feel about the product/service. But what can you do – from a sales ops leadership perspective – to predict the future in masse of all the potential customers that will flow into and out of the sales process/funnel? That is a really tough one, but it is doable. Meeting Prospective Customers Where They Are The key is to always meet the prospective customers where they are and with the experience they hope to find. It’s a common theme now in these articles because it’s important AND widely disregarded – your potential customers do not care about you, your sales team, your company, your industry. They don’t care about your stats, your testimonials, your logos. They don’t care about your mission statement or your values. They only care about themselves. They also firmly believe that there is currently unlimited choice for any product/service, which means that everything in their mind is a commodity. Easily replaceable and interchangeable. Nothing (other than iPhones…which you can only get from Apple) is special to consumers unless they feel like it should be special. Are You Still Making It All About You? There is a good chance you are still running a marketing, sales funnel that is all about you. I bet if I looked at your company’s website that from the top down it’s all about you (the company). How great you are. What you do for people. What you have done for others. I bet if I tried to speak with your sales team, I will be made to go through your process whether I like it or not. Maybe fill out a form and wait for a response. Or made to call into a toll free number, even though I don’t want to talk to someone yet. Or made to use a chat widget on a site to get started. I bet when I speak with your sales team, 70-80% of the conversation will be about them, your company, and how amazing you all believe you are. This is all fair. No one starts a company to be mediocre. The goal is to provide value and make money. The missing piece, again like I said above, is no one cares about your goals. They only care about themselves. Predicting What Customers Want From The Sales Experience Back to your mission as sales ops leader – predict what massive amounts of prospective customers are going to want from the Sales Experience. It’s why I wrote about it last week and even offered up a book for free to help in any way that I can. To succeed at your mission, you have to stay ahead of the curve of what the public, and specifically – your buying demographic, psychographic, and valuegraphics, want from that experience. Key Questions To Shape The Sales Experience Do they want to call, text, email or chat? Probably all of them…so can you offer each one? (Don’t make someone decide if they want to go through your hoops…remove all the hoops) Do they need to see pricing online – should it be available and transparent? (In most cases, yes) What sales process will be ideal for moving the most people through the sales conversation to a successful outcome? (More discovery, empathy, active listening. More front-loaded about them, not you. Use the Authentic Persuasion Pathway as your model) Who are the decision makers? Is that individual going to decide or do they need to check with others for approval? (Set them up for success, and don’t force them to make a decision in the moment – you will just lose the potential sale) What type of follow up do they want and need until they make the buying decision? What type of post-purchase follow up would go above and beyond a) their expectations and b) what others in your industry do? If there is an ‘onboarding’ stage after the sale – how can you make that actually customer centric and successful? (It is rarely both) Can You Stay Ahead of the Curve? Remember – evolution is natural. The buying public is always evolving their desired sales experience. Can you predict the future of what they want so that when they encounter your company it matches what they were hoping to find – both in the experience and the solution to their need?

How do you, as a sales leader, help your team become Oracles that can predict the future? [make sure to read the Selling Effectiveness article this week https://go.sellingeffectiveness.com/LI.2.25.AM ] There are five ways to facilitate their Oracle-ness. Be Present in the Moment First, you have to get your salespeople to be in the moment. The challenge that most salespeople (and…humans, for that matter) experience is they are always thinking ahead. Salespeople default to thinking about what they will say next. The next part of their script or process. The next question they want to ask so they can get through discovery. The next part of the agreement they need to discuss and review. Their mind is too busy thinking about what they are going to say and do next, that they aren’t present. As weird as it sounds, if you want to predict the future you must be present. I have said this for decades: the moment you no longer need to think about what you are going to say/do next and can actually be present with your prospect and truly listen to what they say (and don’t say) – you will become a sales professional. Master Active Listening Second is Active Listening and paying closer attention. It’s actively listening…it’s taking what I mentioned above and putting into place. First step is to be present, second is to actually listen. For what they say. For what they aren’t saying. For changes in their tone. For when they are talking to someone on the side – who are they talking to, and is it about your sales conversation? If you sell in person, reading their body language and facial expressions. You must help them develop an almost sixth sense of listening (and yes, I know hearing is one of our senses…but this goes beyond hearing…it’s truly, deeply listening). Ask Better Questions Third, is to help them ask better questions. So many people in sales ask the discovery questions they are required to ask in order to check the discovery ‘box’. Or, they have done sales long enough they know all the answers, they think they know what everyone wants and why, so no reason to even ask questions. [Note – this type of salesperson thinks two dangerous things: 1 - everyone is the same and wants the same thing, 2 – people like to be sold to.] When your team asks better, deeper discovery questions with a focus on uncovering the what and the WHY, they will get better answers. Remember this – when you ask the right questions and you listen close enough, each prospect will tell you EXACTLY how to help them buy. Build Up Experience Fourth, build up experience. If you want to predict the future it comes from enough experience to know the probability of what will happen. For example, when I am in a season of commuting from home to an office, I am the type of person that can predict exactly what will happen on the freeway. Which lane is always faster around certain exits, which lanes always slow down, how much leaving five minutes later can make the drive suck a lot more. How do I know what will happen on a freeway with hundreds and hundreds of random people? Because of experience (and the fact that most people are just going through the motions in life so they become predictable). The more experience your team has with sales scenarios, they more they can predict the future. I generally see that it takes about six months for most people in a new sales role to have seen enough scenarios where they can start to know what will come next before it happens. Trust Intuition The fifth and final trait to help them with is intuition. One definition of intuition is “a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.” It’s that feeling you get when you know something, even if you cannot explain it. It’s what Malcom Gladwell wrote about in Blink! It’s what we do very well as humans, even if we don’t listen to it. The more you can help your team tune into their intuition and listen and trust it – the better they will do in helping persuade that other human. This goes back to the first suggestion – about being present. When your team trusts they know what to do and say next and they are mentally living in the moment with that prospective client, they can let their intuition guide them. Conclusion When I do trainings, public speaking, facilitating meetings, interviews, and sales – this is my main key to success. I trust and know that I have the experience to handle whatever comes my way in the present moment, while also knowing the destination I am heading towards. I can be present, let that experience and my intuition guide me instead of getting stuck in my head and worrying about what I will say next. Get your team to do some or all of these five steps – and they will become an amazing Oracle.

The Oracle’s Role in The Matrix If you have seen the Matrix movies, starring Keanu Reeves (as Neo), then you are familiar with an Oracle. In the movies, the Oracle knows what will happen. She has seen it, and it is predestined. In the Oracles mind there is no such thing as free will. In the first Matrix movie, Neo goes to visit her and knocks a vase off the shelf, and it hits the ground and breaks. Right before he hits it, she says “Don’t worry about the vase.” Neo says, “How did you know?” Then the Oracle responds with “What’s really going to bake your noodle later on, is would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything.” Becoming an Oracle in Sales Your mission as a sales professional is to be an Oracle for your prospects and clients. To know the future. Then be able to see around corners, as they say. Which means you know what is going to happen before it happens, because you have enough experience that you have become a psychic. You want to be able to predict, with amazing accuracy: What will happen next What will happen after that What issues will pop up What your prospect/client is thinking before they think it What concerns they might have before they have them Eliminating the Fear of the Unknown During your presentation/demo you want to set the expectation of what is going to occur next. Remember, humans fear the unknown. They want to avoid risk as much as possible. Your sales presentation is risky and dangerous and very unknown. They don’t know if you have good intentions or not. Are you going to persuade them? Are you going to try to manipulate them? Are you going to overcharge them? Will you actually care about what they need and want? Dealing with salespeople is so scary. Yet they still need and/or want something, so it’s the dangerous game they must mentally play. Guiding the Buyer Step by Step When you explain what you are going to do in part 1 of your process, and then what that part is done you let them know the plan for part 2, and so on – they will be at ease in the moment. They will feel like they have control over this portion, that there is an exit they can take if they don’t want to proceed. That level of control will help them accept the risk of part 1, and part 2, and part 3. Tell them what you will do. Do it. Tell them what you did. This will validate that you can be trusted. Predicting Thoughts and Feelings The next level is being able to predict what they will think and feel before they do. You can use this information in your presentation (without telling them what you are doing). You can also verbalize it, which could sound like “I am guessing from experience that you are probably wondering about _____, so let’s cover that right now.” Or “most people I speak with ask about _____.” They will think – wow this person knows what I am thinking, he/she is in my mind! And that’s a good thing. A really good thing. Conclusion The more they feel like you know what you are doing, know what they are thinking, know what they are afraid of – the more they trust you as a Guide. Because Guides only know what they know because they have helped other Heros successfully accomplish their journeys. Your mission as a sales professional: Become an Oracle.

What does it take to build the ideal Sales Experience? Why does it even matter? Maybe you think you already have one. You are a professional sales ops leader. You have put everything you can in place to help your salespeople sell more. You have optimized the processes so that your sales team can focus on one thing – selling. But I promise – even if you think all of that is true, it’s not. The Reality: No Perfect Sales Experience Exists I have never seen any company or team with the ‘ideal’ Sales Experience and operation. And to be honest – I have never built one successfully. Why would I admit that? Because the ideal Sales Experience is aspirational and business, teams, processes, and customer needs/desires are constantly changing. So as soon as you put new processes in place, something else needs to change and evolve. The Scalable Sales Success Iceberg In my Scalable Sales Success Iceberg – there are 24 categories that, when built out, create a scalable sales machine – where you can add in an input and get way more output. I would love to see companies have all 24 categories set up and running optimally. But that’s not even possible – because, as I mentioned, things are always changing. Focusing on the Biggest Levers Here is the key – to build the ideal Sales Experience takes focus on the biggest levers. The ones that, when pulled, create the biggest and best results. There are many processes and systems that you can put in place – but those are going to get you a few percentage points of improvement. Instead of putting it all in here, I want to make you a special offer. Email me at jason@sellingeffectiveness.com with your mailing address, and I will mail you the book that I co-wrote with Nick Glimsdahl called Reasons Not To Focus On The Sales Experience. It will be your starter guide, facilitating the creation of your ideal Sales Experience.

The Numbers Game Mentality is a Losing Strategy Sales is no longer a “numbers game.” You cannot succeed, long term, by focusing on volume of activity. Making a million dials, sending a million emails, knocking on a million doors (the first two are way easier than that last one) is a scorched earth strategy that will sink your business. You can’t out-dial a bad sales process. It will lead to even more bad online reviews. You can’t out-email a terrible sales funnel process that requires people to jump through poorly planned hoops. You can’t out-knock your way past slimy tactics and bad products/services. The Danger of the "Every No Gets Me Closer to a Yes" Mindset The whole “every no gets me one step closer to a yes” mentally is dangerous. That mindset and strategy assumes that it’s a numbers game. That the only thing that matters is finding the right person who will buy from you. Potentially, no matter what you even say – they are just ready to buy. Not only will this destroy any online reputation you have it will also wreak havoc on your team. It is the fastest and best way to burn out your team. It will lead to a revolving door or hiring, training, and quitting as people realize how unfun the game is you have built and how hard it is to be successful. It will also feel like a mismatch – very few people (and hopefully even less over time) are long-term excited about the business model of calling 500 people a day in hopes of making a few sales. If It’s Not a Numbers Game, Then What Is It? It’s quality over quantity. [Now…note – it does take a certain quantity of activity to fill a sales pipeline. So I am not saying that your sales team can just sit and wait for people to fall into their pipeline with money in hand.] It’s about the Sales Experience. It’s about your team ensuring that they are providing the right and best experience for that potential customer – in a way that sets them up to get into the buying mood and mode. All that matters is the Sales Experience. How can you support your team in terms of the quantity of activity to fill a pipeline, and then the quality of interaction that leads to sales? What Does an Ideal Sales Experience Look Like? What does that look like – the ideal Sales Experience? It’s when your team understands that the potential customer they are speaking with only cares about themselves. They don’t care about the salesperson, your company or the product. They are only focused on themselves. It’s when the Discovery/Empathy portion of the conversation is the most important part. Does your team realize that everything after Discovery – when done right – is just a presentation of the solution? It’s the fact that when you combine the parts of the Authentic Persuasion Pathway (Rapport + Empathy + Trust + Hope + Urgency) that the assumptive close is all you need. If your team is having to ask for the sale they are doing sales wrong. And don’t confuse earning the right to close with asking for the sale. The Sales Leader’s Role in Creating a World-Class Sales Experience Your job as a sales leader is to ensure your team understands that the only thing – above all else – is the sales experience they provide to each potential customer. That customer knows that they have the power and the feeling of unlimited choice. Which means they will decide who to give their money to based on the experience they have with buying from a company. How can you shift your team away from the numbers game mentality to actually providing a world class sales experience to each and every person they speak with?

The Abundance of Options Today we all have lots of options. While writing this I could speak into my phone and order whatever I want. I can get food delivered before I finish writing this article. I could get a TV delivered to my door before I wake up tomorrow. When someone wants to buy something, they are armed with as much information as they want to access. They can research, read reviews, and watch videos about a product or company. The Shift in Power to the Buyer Because of this, the power balance of sales has shifted away from the salesperson and company to the buyer. Knowledge is power – and they now have all the knowledge they want. With knowing that they have ultimate choice of what to buy (internet and globalization has led to the ability to order anything you want from anywhere…so you are no longer limited to the stores you can drive to and what they have on hand), it means that everything is a commodity in their minds. Nothing is unique or special. Everything is interchangeable. Does the Sales Experience Even Matter? So, this means the sales experience doesn’t matter anymore. There is no reason to put effort into the sales process, the conversations with potential customers. No value in spending time trying to ‘help’ people – since they just view products, salespeople, and companies as interchangeable. You are not special, so there is no benefit in caring. They will walk into your store, and they will decide what they want. They fill out your online for, and they decide if they answer when you call and how the call will go. They walk up to your event/booth, and they decide how the interaction will go and if they want to listen to your elevator pitch. They will let you know if they are interested in moving forward. They will let you know how they want to buy. So, like I said above, there is no real value anymore in the sales experience. Or could it actually be valuable? Is it possible that all that matters IS the sales experience? If people feel they have ultimate information and control of the buying process, how do they decide on what to buy and who to buy from? When I search on Amazon for a product type I have never purchased before, how do I pick? When I want to go shopping for garden supplies for the house, how do I pick where to go? When I need to buy a new fridge, who will I hand my money over to? The cheapest place with terrible service? The place with reasonable prices and great service? The Sales Experience Shapes the Decision I choose based on the sales experience that I will receive. With everything else being equal, I (and I believe most people) will select the place to shop at or the products to buy online based on the experience I receive. To me all that matters is the experience. While I am trying to buy something. Once I receive it – ensure it does what I need it to do. With the feeling of unlimited choices, it can actually be harder now to buy something that in the past. People get into analysis paralysis more often. Which means that for consumers to buy something new they need help. They need a professional salesperson. They need a sales experience that matches their expectations. They want a guide who will help them make the right decision for them, with an experience that goes above and beyond what more people receive any more when they walk into a store, call a company’s toll-free number, or visit a website and have to fill out a form. If you want to succeed in sales – the only thing that matters is the sales experience you provide.

The Balance of Effort in Sales The blogs this week have been about the other person going most of the way. Whether it’s a prospective customer and your salesperson, where the salesperson truly can’t want the deal or make most of it happen for that customer to truly be successful. On the path for that prospect to becoming a customer, they should go at least 51/49. Whether it’s your team and their manager, the manager can’t want the team to succeed more than the team actually wants it for themselves. It’s not scalable for the coach (manager) to run on the field every play to win the game for the salespeople. What about sales ops processes and systems? What about the tools available to the sales team and the ones that are classified as sales enablement? In a reversal of philosophy, I believe the sales ops processes should go 90, the team should only have to go 10. Why Do We Need Salespeople? Let’s start where it matters – what is the point of having salespeople? I know many owners question the need and desire to have salespeople. They are hard to manage, tough to deal with, always want more money (potentially for doing less work and closing less deals), and are very resistant to change. Of course, that is a generalization. Of course, there are salespeople who don’t check those boxes. However, having worked with a lot of teams in a lot of industries, that generalization isn’t completely wrong or unfair. So if there is even a small part of that which is accurate, why would we even mess with the messiness of having salespeople? Of needing to employ and manage humans? The Human Element in Sales We need them. That’s why. Even in 2025, AI and technology has not successfully replicated the requirements of sales – which is about helping a human (prospect/customer) make the right decision and move outside of their comfort zone to buy something new. It still takes your human (salesperson) to persuade that other human. It’s why I say all the time that its not B2B, B2C, Retail, SaaS, etc. – it’s H2H. Sure, people can buy something online or even in a store without speaking to someone. But if it’s a considered purchase where there are options and decisions to be considered – it still takes a human being involved. That means ultimately your human (salesperson) has one job, and one job only – persuade the right prospective humans to buy. Minimizing Distractions for Salespeople Everything outside of that mission, task, focus is a distraction that takes away from their highest and best use. Imagine if we had a surgeon who had to prep the room, prep the patient, schedule the surgery and meetings, and do all the parts of the surgery themselves. Nope – they show up for the surgery and do what they do best. Then they take off their gown, gloves, and walk away to get cleaned up and move on to the next thing. Your goal as a sales ops leader is to support the team with systems and processes that allow them to focus on the one thing you need them for. The human part. It would be amazing if they could show up, talk to people, and make sales happen. Of course, there is more that they (and any professional) need to do before, during, and after the sales conversation. But your goal is to minimize all that. Every hour that your salespeople aren’t selling or doing sales-related activities, they aren’t moving revenue forward. The Ultimate Goal of Sales Ops What processes can you put in place that go 90 percent of the way, where the salesperson can do the last 10 percent? An example would be building an email campaign that runs automatically, and when the right people reply, the salesperson gets involved in getting that person from email to phone call. Another example would be your CRM serving up people for the salesperson to call – leads or anyone in the sales pipeline flow – with all the backstory, research, data, intel needed for them to review it then take action. What can you put into place that takes away as much distraction and effort from your sales team such that they can focus on the one thing you need to focus on – other humans?

The Danger of Doing Too Much as a Sales Leader Alright – so maybe they don’t need to go 90. In true servant leadership mode, you would go way more than 10% of the way to your team. But you have to be careful, as a sales leader. The inclination might be to do it all for them. To help them close their sales. To make excuses for them to your leadership as to why they aren’t closing more sales. Especially considering the very high likelihood that you are a sales manager because you were a great salesperson in the role that you are now managing. And there is a slight chance that you are a player-coach…so you are leading and selling. This can make it really tough not to want to run out on the field to win the game each time. But that doesn’t scale. That doesn’t lead to increased results. You can only sell so much as one person. Creating a Culture of Ownership So, you need to have people on your team that are coming to you. What does that look like? The pinnacle is a salesperson who doesn’t close a deal, comes to you right away and asks for feedback. They want some critiques as to where they could have done things better, different that would have led to the desired result – a closed sale. That takes a healthy level of ego by a professional who has the ultimate growth mindset. They know there are always ways to improve. They want to improve. And they are willing to risk their ego (and the internal, protective, primal part of our brain that doesn’t want to risk our place in the tribe) by asking for feedback that could be negative. Whenever you can, encourage that type of response. Ensure that the team knows that the team itself, and you as their leader, is a safe space – where the goal is to improve, grow, win and that everything done to support each other is done in that mode. They truly have to feel safe to share their mistakes and to get support in learning how to do more, better. Feedback That Drives Growth Part of this takes team and individual meetings that are actually filled with positive support. That doesn’t mean it’s always positive, motivational fluff. It’s not even about the shallow strategy of the feedback sandwich. Its about being real, honest, and empathetic – meaning “I see you are here, I know you want to be there, I will help you get there – even if its hard and it means saying hard things.” It should never feel mean or abusive or like an attack. But you can give some really direct feedback that will sting that ego I mentioned, but the person will know the intent behind it. The second part is hiring this type of person. Hiring people for the team that wants to win, grow, succeed. And they know that you don’t get better by being coddled, sheltered, or protected. You want people who don’t like the thought of perpetually living safely in their comfort zone. And they are excited about the opportunity to be a part of a team that pushes everyone, empathetically, outside of their comfort zone. Are You Leading or Just Managing? If you find yourself as a leader having to push your team, or going to them most of the time, or most of the way mentally – then they see you as a manager not a leader. They see you as someone who manages them, pushes them, and wants them to do things they don’t want to do. I have written some blogs here that go into what your role should be – as a leader, not a manager. Pulling people along with you, inspiring people, and supporting yourself with a team of people who want to win. Not just those that want to show up, do as little as they can and hopefully go unnoticed (yet – complain about not making enough money and how the comp plan isn’t fair, or the leads are bad, or their schedule means they can’t be successful.) Make sure your team knows that they need to come to you – at least 51/49. They should be asking for help, guidance, training, feedback, and support more than you are having to push it down onto them.

If you have seen the movie Hitch, then you know the scene. Will Smith’s character (Hitch) is trying to coach Kevin James’ character (Albert) on how to finish out his upcoming first date. He is giving him pointers, one being that if his date fumbles with her keys at the door, it could mean she wants a kiss. So Hitch wants to see if Albert knows what to do – for a good night kiss. Hitch gives him the advice “you go 90 percent, and then wait for her to go 10%” which Albert then asks “wait for how long?” Hitch: “as long as it takes.” Albert leads in, Hitch is holding back to see if Albert will wait, and then Albert goes all the way and gives him a kiss. Hitch gets upset, and says “You go 90, I go 10 – you don’t go the whole 100%.” The Sales Analogy Kissing our prospective customers is not acceptable (just ask HR!). But the concept is the same. You don’t want to ever make 100% of the effort for your prospective customers. You don’t want to be the one who is doing all the work. Fundamentally, it is not good practice to want the deal more than the other person. When you go your 90, you need to wait – as long as it takes – for the prospect to go to their 10. And I would say that you want to go somewhere between 10-49, in reality. How Successful Sales Professionals Balance Effort Successful sales professionals know how far they have to go to meet the prospect where they are, while also knowing how much effort the prospect needs to put in to show they are committed. Where most salespeople get in trouble is they get desperate. They want the sale (kiss) more than the other person and they go the full 100%. Of course, persistence is important. And you won’t get what you don’t ask for (although…if you have followed me for any length of time, you will know I am very against having to ask for the sale). But you also have to ensure that your prospects actually want what you are selling. And they want it for their reasons and their motivations. They are driven to pursue your production option(s). They must go 10, 40, 60% of the way to you. The Pitfall of Chasing Your Prospect Just like courtship and relationships – if you find yourself chasing and one-sided-pursing the other person then it means you want it more than they do. It also means they own you. You are essentially begging them for the relationship – convincing, manipulating, begging, bribing, persuading your way forward. Which means they consciously and/or subconsciously know that they are in control. Because if they say no, you will keep pursuing and offering solutions. In sales – that looks like a salesperson who is calling, emailing, stalking a prospect – making offers, offering discounts and trials, and trying to find any way to make deal work. They are going 90-100% of the way for the prospect, not requiring them to go anywhere towards the agreement. This will end terribly. If they do decide to buy – taking the discount, free trial, taking the sale bait – they will not be happy (since they weren’t bought in for their reasons), they will look for reasons confirming why they didn’t really want to buy anyway, and they will know that they own you. Your company will have to convince them on a regular basis to stay in the relationship. The Right Balance for Customer Ownership You fundamentally need that prospective customer to come to you. Not 100% where you are just an Order Taker. But potentially 51% of the way – so they want it more than you. The more you can get them across that 50/50 threshold, the more they will be a satisfied customer. But remember – at 51/49 – they still need persuading, they still need to understand the value of your product for where they ultimately want to be in their life/business, and they still need your support. They lean in the right amount, you lean in the right amount = sales magic!