Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Sales Team

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Hi guys.

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It's Dennis again.

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How would you like to learn a sales hack?

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Yes.

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A sales hack.

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That's easy to use.

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Easy to learn.

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And can double

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sales almost instantly.

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Too good to be true, right?

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Well, maybe

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not.

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Let me introduce someone to you.

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Maybe you know him, maybe you don't.

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I have gotten to know him.

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Through his writings, his speeches, his teachings, his name is Dr.

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Adam Grant, and Adam hangs out at the Wharton School at the University

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of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia,

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and

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he is a renowned

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TED Talk speaker.

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He is a prolific author of too many

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books to mention.

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And a renowned social and organizational

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psychologist, and a lot of his

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research is done on changing

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behavior.

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How does one approach changing a behavior?

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Well,

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Grant and colleague in this particular case, a guy named David

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Hoffman, they've done some major

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research about behavioral change.

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One

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example, a major

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hospital called them in to address what's a major problem.

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One out of every 20 hospital patients actually contracts

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an infection while they're in the hospital, separate from the whole

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reason they were in the hospital.

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It causes 100, 000 deaths a year in this country.

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Can you believe it?

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And the cost 40 billion.

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I would say, on many levels, a problem worth solving.

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Well, Adam knows this.

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Everybody knows this.

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Okay.

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If you live through the pandemic, you know this.

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The best and most effective way to stop infections is to wash your

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hands frequently.

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Now you would think that doctors and nurses and hospitals would get that.

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I mean, I know they preach it, but guess what?

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When I did an initial study, the frequency Of handwashing in a

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hospital situation was surprisingly lower than expected and efforts to

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improve it hadn't worked very well.

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So in comes Adam Grant and David

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Hoffman.

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So their, scheme was to post signs next, to actually in one hospital 66.

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washing stations,

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and they had that gel that you use to wash your hands

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next to it in the dispensers.

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So they

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put, put the,

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put the signs up for two weeks.

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They had three different types of signs.

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Number

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one sign said, hand hygiene prevents you from catching disease.

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Okay.

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Sign number one, one third of the

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66 got that.

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Number two, hand

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hygiene helps prevent

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patients from catching disease.

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Hand hygiene prevents patients.

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from catching disease.

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That was on another third.

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And the final third was just a simple sign, gel in,

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wash out.

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Gel in, wash out.

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Okay.

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So at the end of the two

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weeks, they went back and weighed the bags of gel soap.

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And that would be their way

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to determine usage.

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So what are the findings?

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The amount of gel

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used was

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the first, the number one, Three signs was pretty much the same as

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it had been before this experiment, but the amount of gel used when the

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second sign was used was significantly greater than the other two signs, the

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sign that said hand hygiene prevents

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patients from catching diseases.

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Wow.

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Shocking.

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They were shocked.

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They repeated the experiment

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next time, and they only had two signs this time.

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Hand hygiene prevents you from catching

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the hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases just to double check

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their findings to see what happened.

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Well, guess what?

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The purpose based sign, i.

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e.

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benefits the patients and washing by 10%.

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They paid some spies to look into this and sure that it was getting done.

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And they found 10 percent increase, but way more than that for the

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doctors, for the physicians.

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So what's the conclusion?

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Raising

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the salience of purpose.

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Purpose is

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one of the most potent and most overlooked methods of moving others, of changing.

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We often believe that we're all

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motivated by our own self interest.

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Well, we are.

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That's not untrue.

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But there's now a whole stack of research that proves that

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we all do things for pro

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social, self transcendent reasons that have a purpose.

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Okay, so what does all this have to do with

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sales?

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Wonderful.

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Adam Grant made a

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fortune on the experiment, probably.

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He writes about it.

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But what does that have to do with sales?

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Well, guess what?

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Grant said, let's take this one step further.

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Let's see if this

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research applies in other areas other than in the hospital.

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So in 2008, he conducted research at a call center.

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You know, one of those call

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in centers at a major United States university.

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Each night, the employees made a ton of outbound calls, and they

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were calling the university alumni to raise money for the school.

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Very common, happens, you know, you have an alma mater,

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I'll bet you get those calls.

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So, the fundraisers for this experiment were divided into

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three, they always have three.

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Group one actually read stories from previous employees

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explaining what the job of

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being a hall center person taught them.

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So it was informed educational

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group to read stories from university

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students

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who had actually received

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scholarships from this fund of money that they were raising and how that

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scholarship helped them that they probably wouldn't have been able to

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go to school without that scholarship.

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Group three just read articles.

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They weren't related to the university.

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They weren't related to fundraising.

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Just random

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articles.

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Okay.

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So they began

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their shifts for about

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a two week

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period and read these stories for about five

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minutes before their shift.

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They weren't allowed to tell

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anybody that they had read these articles.

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Okay, so a couple weeks later, Dr.

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Grant, he checked sales results.

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Well, group one and group three, they raised the same amount

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they had been raising as before.

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Group two, The purpose group, the group that read stories about

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alumni who had received scholarships and how it benefited them.

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They went crazy

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double in that two week period.

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They

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doubled

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the number of pledges and they doubled the

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amount of money raised based on the baseline they had established before that.

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So what's

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the how does that happen?

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What's the lessons learned?

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What can we sales managers and sales people learn from them?

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A five minute reading exercise, double sales production.

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The stories,

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the work personal, it's meaningful and purposeful when they had a, why, a purpose

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behind their fundraising, all of a sudden.

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They did a better job.

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They had more conviction, more belief.

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So how do we make our sales more purposeful?

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Okay.

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How does the use of

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our product and service improve somebody's life or improve a business?

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You know, that's that's a key question, isn't it?

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How often do we think about that?

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How often

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do we start our day like reviewing

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testimonials or success stories or how much money we save a business or how many

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obstacles we help overcome our purpose?

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So here's my proposal.

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I proposed all of this, a daily sales accelerator.

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I just made that up.

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I don't know where it came from, but here's what it is.

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Let's start every day with purpose refresher.

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What's a purpose refresher.

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Why is our business here?

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Why am I here as a salesperson, a sales manager or a business owner?

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Who have we helped pick out

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maybe a half dozen people

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we've helped in the last couple of weeks.

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And specifically, how did we help them?

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What metrics, what

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measurable

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results that they have because able to help them solve a problem and what

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difference have we made for them?

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How did it make them feel?

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Let's put the emotional part in too, because that's important.

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The daily sales accelerator start every day.

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If Adam Grant's research holds out.

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Your sales should soar.

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Tell me about it next time in our next episode.

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Coming soon.

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It's Dennis.

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Connect & Convert.