Ego Death: A Useful Sales Tool
My first sales job went something like this:
“I’m Madeline. I’m here to speak to your CFO.”
“He’s not available” a receptionist would say from behind her desk, narrowing her eyes.
“What was his name again?” I would say.
“Sorry, who are you?”
I would tell her.
Then, despite my gray suit, sharp at the edges and collar, she would shepherd me away into the warehouse through aisles of cardboard to speak to a nonplussed Warehouse Manager about their shipping services.
This job was also known as an entry level B2B Outside Sales gig. It happened to be in the shipping industry and heavy on the cold-calling. It was challenging to find flats with a professional sheen, also durable enough for trudging through the rained-on gravel of Seattle’s industrial parks.
After a few years of this, I transitioned to selling software, where I was offered an experience I hadn’t yet had in the workplace. I was asked to read a book.
It was the classic, the oldie but goodie, SPIN Selling. The ideas lit me up, and I couldn’t wait to help the customer realize what the true impact of a change could be for their lives, and for their business. No longer would I be relying on sheer boldness and volume.
Since then I’ve studied many more sales methodologies and found that most share the same essential kernel of wisdom at their core. Whether it is SNAP Selling, The Challenger Sale, or The Sandler Method, each school of thought provides specialized techniques in order to accomplish the same essential thing. They shift the locus of energy in the conversation from seller to buyer.
The message under the message is: it’s not about you.
After decades of clinical research, psychologists persist in mostly asking questions during therapy. This is for a reason. People change because of their pain and their ideas on how to heal it. Advice doesn’t stick; revelations do.
As folks who sell, whether as an Account Executive, a Founder, or other people tasked with influencing others (i.e., most people at work at some point), it is our job to guide the person we are seeking to influence into heightened awareness. Articulating the scope and nature of the pain is a collaboration. Then only together can we paint a vision of “the promised land” as Andy Raskin imagines. The partnership can actually be a thing of beauty.
Despite the potential for elevated human interaction, so much of the culture in sales departments is about pushing the prospect through the process, meanwhile dominating yourself into working harder to increase volume. Granted, diligence and assertiveness are indispensable to success, particularly in sales. However when a salesperson is grinding on the phones and closing hard, and still beating their head against a wall for lack of results, they may just need to relax.
Is this annoying advice? Absolutely. If you are at 50% of your quota and your sweat is starting to smell like rancid onions, the last thing you want to be told is “relax.” But I have experienced diving into this frightening freedom and know what a gift it can be, so I have to attempt to share.
It was December 13th, with 2 weeks left in the fiscal year. I needed one last deal to hit my year’s quota, and as I saw it, I had one shot. I had been straining to urge a hospital I was working with to choose my company as the vendor, peppering them with emails explaining why the competition couldn’t possibly work for them. Unsurprisingly, the hospital chose the other firm.
After grieving that, I accepted it, relaxed and started just talking to people, since I didn’t have much to lose. I started hearing them on their own terms. A brand new prospect appeared on December 23rd with an active need. I did the meeting on Christmas Eve from my in-law’s basement, and I hit my annual quota on December 31st.
The phrase ego-death delights me because it captures how frightening it can be to surrender control to the greater flow of unfolding phenomena. Granted, many use this phrase to describe a dissolution of self experienced while on LSD. But the possibilities go far beyond what is experienced through drugs. Accepting the possibility of missing quota was a surrender I had resisted fiercely for years. Opening to missing my goals did feel like a “death.” A version of me had to perish — she who inevitably excels.
I also appreciate spiritual teachers like Miranda Macpherson who prefer the gentler “ego-relaxation” to the term “ego-death.” Either way, we are talking about unseating your most urgent selfishness from behind the wheel.
Your goal is still there, but if you can relax into it (or let it perish) you can co-create a purchase with your partner, the customer, in a state of authentic collaboration.
In addition to increasing my quota attainment in following years, my new mindset also enabled me to shift from emotional flailing on a monthly basis (the whole sweat smelling like onions thing may have happened to me) to a full-hearted evenness that made a career in sales sustainable for the long-term, including the transition into sales leadership.
If this is a path you want to attempt, here are some practices to experiment with:
- Acceptance. Welcome whatever the prospect has to say, even if it isn’t the answer that you had planned. Let your ego-driven need to control take a backseat for a minute, or sixty.
- Self-Compassion. In order to be ready to accept whatever they have to say, you need to be able to hold compassion for a hypothetical future-you after this meeting has gone horribly awry.
- Ask Deeper. For every one thing you hear that sounds interesting, go three questions deeper on the customer’s experience. Nestle their pain in the center of a chain of cause and effect that you articulate together.
- More Summarizing. At least 4 times per meeting, say what you are hearing back to the prospect. (Another technique wildly popular with shrinks). If you are asking the right questions, your summaries will strengthen the chain of cause, effect, and solution you are weaving together.
The implications of this approach go beyond increasing your sales, although that will likely occur. Empathy is a heart-opening practice, the way yoga or meditation is a practice. As you grow in kindness to yourself, that will inevitably flow through to the way you treat the person on the other end of the phone line, and also others in your life.
Last month, a rep on my sales team, shared he was using summarizing techniques from work to help his 7 year old son feel heard during an argument about the evening television. He witnessed his son instantly calm in those moments of mutual attunement. Being a quality salesperson and a whole human can be mutually reinforcing.
If you’re going to spend 40 hours plus per week at persuasion, why not make this labor too a labor of love and a part of a life well lived.
