The Sales Stoic

January 24th - Understand, Don't Just Sell

7 min

“From Rusticus... I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with just a basic understanding of the whole, and to resist agreeing too quickly with those who seem to know it all.” - Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius reminds us to resist quick conclusions and dig deeper for true understanding.

In sales, the same principle applies. Don’t settle for surface-level knowledge of your prospects or blindly follow every sales "guru."

Take the time to listen actively, ask thoughtful questions, and truly understand your client’s unique challenges. The salespeople who stand out are those who go beyond the obvious and deliver tailored solutions, because they’ve taken the time to really know their customers.

Patience, curiosity, and deep understanding aren’t just virtues, they’re competitive advantages that will enable you to elevate your sales-game and improve the relationships you’re building.

Actionable tips:

  • Dig into your client’s challenges with open-ended questions that encourage them to share more about their situation.
  • Focus on fully understanding your prospect before responding. Practise active listening and resist the urge to jump in too soon with a solution.
  • Before meetings, spend extra time researching your client’s industry, competitors, and specific pain points.

Remember you will die.

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Follow Jack & Zac: Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-frimston-5010177b/ Zac: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-thompson-33a9a39b/

Connect with We Have a Meeting: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/we-have-a-meeting/ Website: https://www.wehaveameeting.com/

Disclaimer:

The Sales Stoic draws inspiration from the profound wisdom of Stoicism as presented in Ryan Holiday's "The Daily Stoic." As avid readers & fans, we deeply respect the work of Ryan Holiday, and acknowledge the significant impact of Stoic philosophy on our own approach to sales and life.

While The Sales Stoic applies the core principles of Stoicism to the unique challenges and opportunities faced by salespeople, it is an original work with its own distinct voice and focus. We aim to build upon the timeless wisdom of Stoicism to empower sales professionals with practical guidance and actionable insights for success in their careers and personal lives.

  • Zac Thompson

    Zac Thompson

    Co-Founder at We Have a Meeting

  • Jack Frimston

    Jack Frimston

    Co-Founder at We Have a Meeting

I want to stand with you on a mountain. want to stand with you in the sea. Truly, madly, push for deeply understanding. Today, and it's the 24th of January. Happy birthday to my youngest boy. Happy birthday. You ready? I'm ready. Moxley Rayleigh is today for you, Jack. I like that guy. And I know you like him, but you can't have him all to yourself. I must share. You must share. From Rusticus.

I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something. Wow. That's from the start of meditation. You know, when he's talking about all the different people that he's learned from in his life. But I think what he's talking about here is you should be pushing to understand at a deeper level, which if you know anything about our sales approach or sales methodology, it's all about that, isn't it? It's all about how do I get to that?

deeper level of understanding. And I remember once when I was still having clients of ours, was looking after clients. I was talking to this guy about software. He had a plumbing business that he was looking to grow this guy for one of our clients were talking away and I couldn't really get anywhere. He kind of seemed interested and just said, look, can I ask you a really direct question? Yeah, of course you can. Why do you want to do this at all? It sounds like things are going really well.

Oh, well, my wife left me not that long ago. I've got a new girlfriend and I only see my kids on the weekend. I don't want to spend Sunday with my head in a load of paperwork. I'd rather have a system in place that can look after it all. And I don't have to do that. Now, one salesperson, certainly me in the past, wouldn't have got that level of understanding. I'd have been trying to sell him the features. Oh, it comes as an app as well. know, I'd be telling that.

But really what I realized from asking those types of questions and getting to that deeper level of understanding, he's not buying a system. He's buying time with his kids on a Sunday. You know what mean? Yeah. You're selling the sizzle and not the sausage, as they say in the industry. Is that what they say? That's what they say. the sizzle and not sausage. sausages after what happened. We won't talk about that. So true. So true. And so many salespeople are probably afraid to go deeper and to ask those...

deep questions. One of the pieces of advice, like make sure that you are asking the difficult questions. The last, when I do sales training, one of the last slides is trust in your gut. And there'll be many situations where you're on a sales call where you feel something or you spot something, but actually you don't say anything. And that might be from a people pleasing tendency. That might be from a, I'm not on the same level as you. I'm putting somebody on a pedestal.

but trust in your gut and asking those deeper questions. Typically when you push it one step further, you'll get a new answer and you'll get a true understanding and you'll find those real root causes and those real kind of reasons why people want to change. And when you find those and you can solve those problems. So sales is a dirty word, isn't it? Like in the industry, we all think- It's when you do it. Sales. Sales is a dirty word, Do that again. Sales.

But thinking about solving that for that guy, he'd be like, oh, thank you so, so much. We've been working with a guy recently who has closed four deals out of the meetings we've put. He's like, off. he's like, my business partner has gone on paternity leave. I don't have enough time to do the prospecting because we're half a team at the moment, blah, He's like, it's helping me. You're helping people solve.

problems. That's all sales is. You're not selling, I was listening to this ideology the other day about vitamins versus painkillers. You know this? it's a case of what am I actually selling here? Is it a vitamin? Oh, it's a nice tab. Oh, that'd be nice to have. Was it a painkiller? It's actually solving a problem. It's actually curing a headache. So vitamin is like a nice to have a painkillers, obviously getting right into the crux of it. What you're giving him there, that's that's a lem sip time a hundred.

Sticking on medicine, if you ever go to the doctor, the way doctors ask questions is just amazing in terms of getting you onto that deeper train. went to probably about this time last year in January last year, I went to the doctor going through the symptoms and it was very, you know, normal conversation. Then he just put his pen down and he looked at me and he went, what do you think it is? Suddenly I'm like, well, I've been under quite a lot of pressure recently and I'm talking about all these different things. And he's like really listening.

made a little note and he went, here, might, might be something there. And they just carried on with these quite, he didn't like try and just like solve it there and then he, but that, what do you think it is putting it back on me was amazing. And I think you can learn a lot from doctors and lawyers and people who it's their job to get to what's, what's really going on here. I'm not just trying to skip to the end. So you go, what a good doctor you are. I'm trying to actually like find out what the thing is so I can fix it. Yeah.

We've got to remember that human beings are wrestling with all this ego as well by asking them their opinion on their life. They're going to know it better. So what do you think? What have you done to solve it? Why, why hasn't that worked? These are the kinds of questions that we're trying to get them to open up. then we just act in as the therapist. We're just guiding them through that process until they come up with a solution of no, need to do something. I need something in place to fix X. Okay. Well, if I showed you that we could fix X by doing

X, Y, Z. Yeah, that'd be brilliant. mean, and that is what sales is. It's helping people solve problem. I think once you change your mindset around what it is, it's not transactional. It was transactional sales. All salespeople will be out of a job. You just have it on a website. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There's a thing that you see a lot of now people trying to hard disqualify as well. Sales, know, well, it sounds like everything is perfect then. What they've not done is asked the deep thought question. Yeah. First, the deep thought question ran.

What do you think the biggest problem is with this? If someone really push out, what do you think the biggest thing is? Oh, it's probably, and they go into a bit of deep thought and then you try and disqualify. Then you say, mean, you've probably found some perfect to fix that, haven't you? No. Yeah. It's not just going straight for the hard disqualify all the time. There's a lot in this one, isn't there? So much. And one more thing, just because I'm so excited. Please. You've got to remember as human beings, we're conditioned to answer questions as well.

So at school you're asked questions, you put your hand up, you're conditioned, classical conditioning, to answer questions. So if you ask better questions, you're gonna get better answers. So go deeper, find that knowledge. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zac Thomson. Remember you would die? Blow your throat whistle.

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