When I do sales training programs, which I don’t do any more, when I used to do sales training programs. I used to tell all these sales guys, “Seventy percent of selling is repetitive. Thirty percent of selling only is creative.”
Sometimes somebody will raise an objection to you. Sometimes somebody will ask for a feature in your product that does not exist. Sometimes somebody will bring in a competition which you didn’t know existed, and you’ll have to fight that. Sometimes somebody will bring in a political clout into the entire thing and ask you for the deal in certain ways by which you don’t know how to execute it. Suddenly somebody will ask you for a volume of order which you are not producing right now, and you won’t know how to service it. Thirty percent of the time, what happens in a sales process is creative. Seventy percent of the time, what happens in a sales process is repetitive. Unfortunately, ninety-nine percent of salespeople in the world, even that seventy percent that is repetitive, they are not prepared.
They handle it creatively. If you are handling it creatively, see, one day I will be in form, one day I will not be in form. One day I will have the flow. One day I’ll be tired. One day I’ll be energetic. One day I’ll be thinking with clarity. One day I’ll be emotionally chaotic. For example, everybody is going to ask you this question about your organization.
How long you have been in this business? And it’s a repetitive question. In two-three minutes, like by-hearting a Kabir’s doha, you should have a sales manager who has trained the entire team on a very impressive presentation. Like how when you board a flight, the air hostess reads from a script everything to you. And you wonder how every time she is flawless, she’s just reading a script. Of course, one nut of a passenger will ask you there, “When I’m flying from Chennai to Hyderabad where is the possibility of me landing in water. Why did you explain?” That nut has to be creatively handled. The rest of them, it’s repetitive. Don’t you think your product is very expensive? Every fellow will ask this question. Even if you’re giving free. Somehow every prospect has been trained to vomit this question. Whatever price you say. What is discount in this? I’ll drop my pants and show you. But it’s a regular question, everybody will ask you, “What is the discount you offer for this? Are you sure the quality of your product is good?” Will I say no – about my product? But everybody will ask this question. All I’m saying is this. Catch it. Catch it. Catch it.
If I am well trained as a salesman to handle seventy percent of my job, which is repetitive, my entire intelligence is available to be creative in that thirty percent, and that’s where you kill the market. You kill the market.In fact, in any given situation, your sense of timing, your sense of brilliance, your sense of how you handle that. That situational brilliance that comes out of your intelligence in that thirty percent. I’m saying ninety percent of your job can be operated out of memory. Thirty percent of your job only requires intelligence, but because seventy percent of the job, you have not been trained, which is repetitive in nature, you use your intelligence even for that seventy percent, and as a result, you do not show situational brilliance in that thirty percent.
