Knuckle Dragging Sales w/ John Crowley [Episode 725]

John Crowley, the best-selling author of Knuckle Dragging Sales: A Primitive Process To Make More Money, joins me on this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• John tells what ‘knuckle dragging sales’ means. You persist and win or you quit and fail. John says bring back the simpler tactics that work. It’s not easy. Sales is the marathon of professions.
• Layering processes onto each other leads to train wrecks. Start with the basics of sales. Sales reps are not necessarily being coached on selling skills. The basics must come before the process.
• Some organizations are like big machines. The individual rep has little effect on the overall results and just floats with the current.
• Has the sales process removed the sense of winning the sale?
• Coaching has not been emphasized. Reps should be coached for improvement by their manager, if not by a hired coach. Managers can’t win if their people can’t win. The manager’s job is to make their team better.
• As a manager, come up with ways to coach and motivate your sales team. John would encourage reps to develop themselves with books and podcasts, such as Accelerate.
• There is not just one way to sell. Corporate sales processes are not the full solution. Each rep needs to be the best version of themselves and use their best process to sell.
• The people who succeed are the nonconformists. They don’t work faster or better than others but differently than others.
• Andy appears as ‘unsuitable for sales’ on a personality assessment! He tells of an ‘absolute disaster’ salesperson who fit the profile perfectly. What personality type is best suited for transactional selling vs. for consultative selling?
• Andy and John discuss moving through sales roles. How is mentoring more than coaching? In most cases, companies are not developing their people.
• Andy teaches Managers how to divide their time between Process, Opportunities, People, and Education.
• John talks about sales in the healthcare field. Andy’s The Sales House serves a broad mix of industries and fields to help them put the basics over the processes.