The Selfless Side of Sales

Originally from Warner Robins, GA, Melanie Wood moved to Boston, MA in the fall of 2017 to attend Berklee College of Music. There, she majored in Professional Music, concentrating in Songwriting and Vocal Performance, and minored in Creative Coding. After graduating during a global pandemic, she expanded her job search as her intended industry, music was essentially nonexistent. From there, she found memoryBlue who hired and equipped me with the tools needed to succeed through their continuous training.

Nowadays, she loves tech sales and is so grateful to have entered a fun yet challenging industry.

Selflessness in Sales

I have always been considered an “empath.”  Some might consider it a weakness, but I have always seen it as a strength. Connecting with and helping others is incredibly fulfilling to me, and I’ve always maintained that as a standard for myself both personally and professionally. In the fast-paced, high-pressure, quota-driven world of sales, I was nervous that I might lose that aspect of myself when trying to secure my monthly and quarterly metrics. However, over the course of my tenure as a Sales Development Representative, I have seen major success through my emphatic qualities, so today I am sharing my “secret sauce” to help you tap into this selfless side of sales.

It starts with feeling it versus hearing it. In terms of sales, we should focus our mental narrative from “How can I secure this meeting for myself?” to “How can I make a difference for this prospect?”  As I mentioned before, sales is a quota-driven job, and despite being a music major, I am not naïve to this.  Obviously, it is pertinent to keep our quota and goals in mind, but when we call a prospect with our best interests at the forefront, the prospect hears it. When we call a prospect with their best interests at the forefront, the prospect feels it. Furthermore, building this connection and adding as much value to the call is not only going to resonate with the prospect, but will also increase the likelihood that they will show up for the meeting! Time and time again, I have seen such stark differences between the “quick book” meetings versus the more impactful ones. While quick books can sometimes be beneficial, I’ve personally seen more overall success from the meetings that come from nurtured conversations.

Additionally, there is an artistry to sales. Recently, I was thinking about my role as a Sales Development Representative as it relates to songwriting. The more I pondered, the more I realized that there are quite a few similarities. For starters, the average length of a song is typically from three to three and a half minutes long. If the first 30 seconds of the song are bad, the listener will probably turn off the music before the song ends.  Similarly in cold calling, if the first 30 seconds don’t immediately grab the prospect’s attention, they’ll probably hang up.

Here are some more similarities that I’ve found:

Purpose: Songwriters tell a story, situation, and/or idea to the listener. SDRs tell the prospect about their product or service through stories and situations, such as picture paints and case studies.

Feeling: Songwriters work to evoke a feeling from the listener, whereas SDRs work to evoke a feeling of pain, gain, interest, or fear from the prospect.

Intention: Songwriters hope to positively impact the listener. Similarly, SDRs hope to positively impact the prospect with their product/service.

Response-Based: Songwriters craft their story or idea into a song, pitch it to listeners, and rely on their response. SDRs take their product or service information, craft it into a talk track or “sheet music,” pitch it to the prospects, and rely on their response on how to continue.

Active Listening: Songwriters listen to themselves as well as the feedback of others to tweak and rewrite their lyrics to accurately convey their message into a few minutes. SDRs must use active listening constantly to best direct the conversation and provide as much value as possible.

Impact: Songwriters want the listener to buy their song and listen again. SDRs want the prospect to take the meeting and ideally move into the sales cycle.

As someone with a more artsy and creative way of thinking, seeing these similarities helped me to better understand how to direct the course of my calls.  It also made me think of a template one of my songwriting professors showed me.  The idea of it is fairly simple: Show, don’t just Tell.  In this instance, however, I’ve crafted the template to support the idea of “Show, don’t just Sell.”

The Songwriting Template for Selling

Based on this template, the form is verse one, chorus, verse two, chorus, bridge, and the final chorus. In the verses, the idea is to show. In the choruses, the idea is to sell. For the most part, your verse one will stay consistent while the rest of the boxes can have some overlap. It can obviously change based on the course of the conversation, and I absolutely encourage others to edit this template to their own campaign, but the overall idea is to understand what parts to show and what parts to sell.  In terms of the bridge, it’s the most ideal place to close. By this point in the call, you’ve been able to draw enough to qualify the prospect, provide information for your client and rep(s), and include value for your prospect. The final chorus is the best way to close out the call for one final value add as well as getting in one to two more post-close discovery questions.

Putting the prospect’s best interest at the forefront of the call and tying it into the song template go hand in hand. If you go into a call with your best interests at the forefront, there’s a strong possibility that the prospect will hear it, and despite any value you bring to the call, they could turn down a meeting. If you go into a call without any kind of structure, there’s a chance you’ll fumble. I encourage you to try these methods to selflessly show and sell!