Don’t Just Sell

Being chatty and being good at small talk are not the same thing. You can talk easily, fill every silence, keep it going like a tennis match, and still walk out having built nothing. Most sales training skips small talk entirely. Reps are told to build rapport but are never taught how. In this episode I walk through the visualization that turned small talk from something I dreaded into something I look forward to, the questions that get you past "how are you," the energy cues that tell you where to take the conversation, and how to leave without stranding someone in the middle of the room. If your team thinks good small talk is a personality trait, I'd love to change their mind. It's one of the skills I teach in my sales training. Grab a time on my calendar and let's talk about what it could look like for your team: https://bit.ly/rebeccakilday-calendly  – Most sales podcasts give you more tactics. This one proves you don’t need them.  I’m Rebecca Kilday, and Don’t Just Sell is the podcast where your sales career gets easier when you quit selling like you’ve been trained, and start selling like yourself.  – Produced by SpeakEasy Productions.

You’ve probably brought a gift to a meeting with a prospect hoping it would tip things your way. A coffee, a trinket, or maybe something that actually cost you a lot.  In this episode, we’re talking about gifting and “reciprocity” in sales (the idea that giving someone a gift makes them feel like they owe you). It sounds harmless, but that logic can actually be a bit manipulative. I’m sharing my own experience that changed the way I think about giving gifts to prospects, and what I did instead of trying to out-gift my competitors.  This episode will change how you think about: Why a small gift almost never buys the outcome you’re looking for What actually sets you apart from your competition How to reframe gifts from a game of who-owes-who into something that builds a real partnership I’ve written about gifting and a lot of other hard-won sales lessons in my book, Confessions of a Sales Professional. You can pre-order now and be one of the first to get a copy when it’s out nationwide September 15th: https://bit.ly/dontjustsell-ep22  – Most sales podcasts give you more tactics. This one proves you don’t need them.  I’m Rebecca Kilday, and Don’t Just Sell is the podcast where your sales career gets easier when you quit selling like you’ve been trained, and start selling like yourself.  – Produced by SpeakEasy Productions.

A few years ago I lost the biggest account in my state, and I did not take it well. I wallowed in it for weeks, until my then-manager called me up, laughed, and told me I'm not that special.  That blunt reality check is where I started figuring out what resilience actually takes. Resilience is a muscle, which means the only way to get better at loss is to live through a few. But there's a way to build the mindset faster than just taking the hits.  In this episode I walk through the three P's of resilience, why a loss feels so overwhelming in the moment, and how to cut it back down to the size it actually is. This episode will change how you think about: Why the sting of a loss feels like it's unique and personal (but it almost never is) Where a big failure at work actually belongs in the bigger picture of your life How to keep a loss from feeling like it'll last forever Staying in the sales industry takes more than a good attitude. It takes a real strategy for the hard days, so you've still got something left for the good ones. If your team is taking more hits than wins lately and it's wearing them down, that’s exactly what I built my resilience training for. Reach out to book me for a sales training: https://bit.ly/DontJustSell-Ep21  – Most sales podcasts give you more tactics. This one proves you don’t need them.  I’m Rebecca Kilday, and Don’t Just Sell is the podcast where your sales career gets easier when you quit selling like you’ve been trained, and start selling like yourself.  – Produced by SpeakEasy Productions.

Rachell is a commercial banker, but if you're assuming this episode is about interest rates, stay with me... She closes competitive deals in a field where it would be easy to compete on price and nothing else, and she refuses to.  What sets her apart is the thing I keep coming back to on this show: people can tell whether you actually care about helping them or just want to close them.  We cover: Why a cold call feels completely different the moment you stop treating it like a sale The kind of value women tend to give away too early, and what it can cost you Why a quick no can move a deal further than a drawn-out maybe How preparation, not personality, is what closes a trust gap in the first meeting These are all things I've touched on in past episodes, but Rachell is proof it holds up in one of the most competitive industries out there. If this episode has you rethinking what actually makes you worth working with, that shift is the whole foundation of Sell INSPIRED Academy. Come see what changes when you stop trying to prove your value and start trusting it: https://bit.ly/dontjustsell-ep20  – Most sales podcasts give you more tactics. This one proves you don’t need them.  I’m Rebecca Kilday, and Don’t Just Sell is the podcast where your sales career gets easier when you quit selling like you’ve been trained, and start selling like yourself.  – Produced by SpeakEasy Productions.

Whether it's someone brand new to sales or someone who's been in the industry for 30 years, I see the same 4 mistakes being made over and over again. (Even I’ve been guilty of them before!)   In this episode, I'm sharing what those 4 mistakes are so you can spot them in your own process, and I’m giving recommendations on what you can do instead going forward.   You’ll hear about: The rep who couldn’t take a hint to stop talking A colleague of mine who turned in over a hundred signed agreements in one quarter and still closed nothing My client who did everything right and still walked away without the contract The stranger at a coffee shop who talked himself into a corner    Mistakes don't make you a bad rep. What matters is whether you catch them and do the work to fix them. If you're tired of doing that alone, or of being handed another script instead of an answer, that's what the Sell INSPIRED Academy is for: https://bit.ly/dontjustsell-ep19    Listen to my episode about credibility here: https://bit.ly/dontjustsell-credibility  – Most sales podcasts give you more tactics. This one proves you don’t need them.  I’m Rebecca Kilday, and Don’t Just Sell is the podcast where your sales career gets easier when you quit selling like you’ve been trained, and start selling like yourself.  – Produced by SpeakEasy Productions.