Ryan Dohrn, a veteran salesperson nearing 50, shares what millennials taught him about selling. Show pricing upfront instead of hiding it, source every statistic you cite, and focus on solving problems rather than closing deals. The sale follows when you actually help.
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn, your Global Sales Coach, and this week we're focusing on millennials. Oh, as soon as you hear that, you're like, oh boy, time to turn this off, right? This is not about millennials. It's about all of you that aren't millennials. One of the things you've heard me talk about before is how much I embrace the millennial mindset and recognize what millennials have done for me as a bit of an old-school sales guy. By the time you see this video, I will have turned 49 years old. I don't think I'm old, but I think I can recognize where I need to be focusing my learning opportunities. What have my millennial buyers, what have my millennial colleagues, what have they taught me that I can use to drive my sales game forward? There's 3 main things. The first thing is transparency. In the past, I wasn't always transparent about my pricing. Kind of hid my pricing, kept it in my back pocket to the end of the sales call, and what I realized is The vast majority of people, including millennials, want us to be highly transparent with our pricing. So, to me, that was something very important I've learned from my millennial colleagues. Second is sourcing, sourcing information. When I give a fact, when I give a stat, when I throw numbers out there, I source myself. Why is that? I source myself because I don't want to be number 3, which I have learned, and that is a salesperson that is a walking sales machine. So, let's go back to number 2 for a second. Sourcing everything is vividly important because there's nothing worse than working with a salesperson that exaggerates and really truly, friends, just makes things up. The other thing is I've realized the less I sell, the more I sell. And that's really about recognizing who you are as a salesperson. If you're a helper, if you're out to engage with somebody to help them in a deep way, then people will buy. Most people don't mind buying, they just hate the whole sales process. If you're a walking, talking sales machine like I really used to be, recognize that your millennial colleagues can teach you to be a lot more transparent, to source things, and then to recognize in the end it's all about being helpful. If you help people solve problems, you'll never have any trouble in the sales business. So hey, be careful now. Also, be nice to millennials because it's not that long that all you old people out there, you'll be working for one. If you're not already. Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. I mean, we're not crazy. We're just maybe a little challenged out there. We're finding careers, friends, that will feed our families for a lifetime. If I can be of help to you, speak at your sales conference, something like that, reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, take care. We'll see you next week.
