I recorded a personal story that had a couple of sales lessons.

First, people make decisions with their emotions, sometimes even in spite of logic.

Secondly, not all business cases have clear financial returns on investment.

In this exciting fifth season, host Jeff Bajorek takes you through the 7 Steps to Sell Like You. Discover the importance of alignment in selling, redefine it in a way that suits you, challenge your assumptions, and learn from those who have successfully redefined selling themselves.

Most of the reps I see approach these conversations wrong.

It’s probably not your fault. You were taught incorrectly, and years of habits have ingrained your bad behavior.

You were probably told you need to qualify your prospects, and that it doesn’t make sense to go any further with someone who isn’t prepared or capable of buying.

In this exciting fifth season, host Jeff Bajorek takes you through the 7 Steps to Sell Like You. Discover the importance of alignment in selling, redefine it in a way that suits you, challenge your assumptions, and learn from those who have successfully redefined selling themselves.

A few things need to happen for you to make the sale.

There needs to be a problem your prospect is willing to solve. They need to feel your way of solving it is the best way for them, and they need to be interested in solving it now (or at least soon).

It hit the proverbial fan this week in professional golf.

If you're paying any attention to sports, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, that's ok, just know that the money won, and we were all given more reason to collectively wring our hands, clutch our pearls, and thumb our noses at "the man."

I was in Austin earlier this week for an exclusive event for sales leaders and top performers put on by Scott Ingram. If you're not in his community of top-performing sellers, you should be. 

The featured presenter at the event was Dr. Lisa Palmer, an experienced sales leader with a newly minted Ph.D. in AI. If there's a better room to be in to discuss the impact AI will have on the sales profession, I'm not aware of one.

What's wrong with being salesy?

I deal with this every day, but particularly over the past couple of weeks, I've had a few clients tell me that they're progressing slowly with their opportunities, taking care not to come across as pushy or overbearing.

Earlier this week, I led a book club discussion for Women In Sales about Seth Godin's The Icarus Deception, which I consider to be a career-altering read for me. It changed the way I look at selling, as well as the trajectory of my life. That is not an overstatement.

I hope this season has been thought-provoking for you. I’ve tried to tie together a lot of the undiscussed elements of what it takes to do your very best selling.

On the heels of last week's piece about problem-centric conversations, a dynamic young sales leader asked me a question about COI (Cost Of Inaction) calculators vs ROI (Return On Investment) discussions.

It led to a nice exchange about how to create tension in your sales discussions, what might be most effective, and what just feels like BS. 

On the heels of my interview last week with Jen Allen-Knuth, I wanted to go further into the fact that there are so many ways to excel in sales. In fact, there are more ways to do it right than to do it wrong.

Nobody cares about how you help them.

Sorry, was that too blunt for a starter? I guess the truth hurts sometimes.

Jen Allen-Knuth heads up community for Lavender.ai, after being Chief Evangelist for Challenger. When I connected with her a year or so ago, we became fast friends, and I knew she’d be an excellent guest for this podcast because of her wisdom, perspective, and witty style.

To be an effective prospector, you need to reach out longer and more often to your prospects than you do. Once every two weeks for a couple of months isn't going to do it- you're just not creating any momentum. Likewise, those three messages you send in a week's time are easily ignored, and most of your prospects know you can be waited out.

You need to be willing to get out of your comfort zone and leave mediocrity behind. You have to be willing to try things that might not work. You have to do all of this with the goal of doing your best work.

Principles have always guided my sales approach. They’ve given me the tools to actively solve problems and think on my feet in any sales situation. They’ve also allowed me to be creative and develop my own selling style.

I started this series a few weeks ago, and I’m continuing here with another rule to help you guide your approach and do your very best selling.

Jordana Zeldin is a sales coach, facilitator, speaker, and co-founder of The Practice Lab- the first-ever sales training program for B2B Account Executives ready to develop their skills like athletes, musicians and performers do theirs.

A key component of learning to #SellLikeYou is redefining selling for yourself so that you can feel good about doing it. The reframe is crucial. It gets you out of someone else’s ideas, and into a position where you can really do your best work.

Of course, a critical component of selling is the sales call. While in the shower the other day, this hit me straight upside the head.