Ryan Dohrn argues that sales has lost its human touch, especially as AI hype grows. He pushes back against pushy tactics and the stereotypes from Tommy Boy and Wolf of Wall Street, saying advisors who ask how they can help and send handwritten notes build real relationships and referrals.
What's going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach. This week we're focusing in on what I like to call sales humanity, and it's a topic of conversation that I've been having with my coaching clients and on the road as I'm speaking with people. I just feel like the human side of sales is being overlooked, especially amidst all the conversations about AI sales and those type of things. So let me focus in on this for a couple of seconds and share with you my thoughts. And then I'd love to hear from you as well in the comments, as well as dropping me emails and things like that. I'm actually kind of thinking that maybe sales humanity might be something that I should be talking about in one of my next sales books. All right, so here is what I've observed. First, I've observed that all too often those of us in the sales business get a little bit of a negative rap based upon past things that have occurred. Like the movie Tommy Boy and the movie Boiler Room and Wolf of Wall Street and things like that. For example, when you say to somebody, you know, or they say to you rather, what do you do? And you say, I'm in sales. And they're like, oh, and they kind of wrinkle their nose. It's really based upon years and years and years of, in my opinion, bad salesmanship. People, salespeople willing to do anything to get the deal done. Never take no for an answer. Always be in front of people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Follow them home if you have to. That kind of thing is just— the '90s are calling. They want those type of sales ideas back. I would encourage you to be an advisor. And we've talked about it before a little bit on the podcast and in our videos. Salespeople sell stuff. Advisors recommend things. As a matter of fact, advisors get paid to recommend things. In the sales business, all too often it's kind of like, oh, please, would you buy from me? It's like you're looking up at them and you're down on your knees begging them. And I want to be a peer with my customers. I want to be somebody that they trust. I want to be somebody that they refer. And that's what people do with advisors. Most salespeople are thought about as kind of ugly or negative or slimy or schwarmy or whatever. Oh, they'll do anything to get a deal done. That's not the perception I want to be. I want to put the human side back in the sales business. The second thing is I want to be helpful. One of the cores of being a good human being is, is being helpful. Whether someone's asking for time or directions or whatever it is, stop this checking in. I'm checking in on you. How can I help? One of my favorite questions is, when you granted me this meeting, thank you for that. There's probably something you were thinking I could do to be helpful to you. How can I help? What does a perfect client referral look like to you? How can I help? What's going on with your business? Anything I can help with? The human side of sales is always being there for people, always being a great referral, and always being helpful. And I would just love for you to consider that. The next thing is I'd encourage you to stop doing salesy things like using closing techniques like, hey, you know what you thought about yesterday? Somebody else's thinking about today, you know, those type of closing techniques don't work on people anymore anyway, especially when you think about the youngest amongst us. They're so well-tuned, they're so highly researched, so educated that when you try those old-school sales strategies like, uh, never give somebody a chance to say no, I mean, that just doesn't work out for most people. And they find it actually in a lot of cases to be just a little bit offensive. Bring the humanity back into the sales business and stop doing salesy things like pushing the close or following up every day with people or, or tracking them down and being kind of creepy. And the last thing I'd love to share with you is from being a human in the sales business, I'd love for you to increase your non-sales touches. Like rather than every email be about selling something or buying something, what about 30 to 35% of your outreaches to your customers are really all about what you can do to be helpful to them. Sharing articles with them, sending them a handwritten thank you note. Oh my gosh, getting out a pen and paper and writing somebody a thank you note or thinking about them. All of these things are a part of the human element of the sales business that I just feel in today's world is sometimes missing. Love to get your comments and feedback on this topic. Love to hear if you think we should spend more time talking about it because the humanity or putting humanity back in the sales business Heck, it can't do much but just benefit all of us, right? Never forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy. I used to say that. We're not crazy. We're the chosen few. This is a great career. I promise you, friends, it'll feed your family for a lifetime. Love to encourage your team. Love to speak at your national sales meeting. Reach out to me, ryandohrn.com.
