My Personal Sales Conversation with Professor Sweet

Last Wednesday’s class, I was one of the first five students to get to have my sales conversation with Professor Sweet. This sales talk mock-up was a really engaging and fun project. There is so much to learn from not only my sales talk but everyone else’s talk as well. In my conversation with Professor Sweet, I was trying to sell him my made-up football training as he was a sophomore in high school looking to improve his football skills on and off the field. He was looking to play at the next level in college, and I have had prior training experience trying to help him pursue his athletic goals for the future. In my sales talk, I tried so hard to answer questions with a question. In the moment, I learned that we really need to listen in sales conversations because in order to drive for your prospects’ pain, you need to hear them out. I was engaged the whole time throughout mine, trying to almost copy Professor Sweet’s body language in order to really understand what he wanted out of this talk. I was, of course, the salesperson in the conversation, and staying in the lead is not always the easiest thing to do, as Professor Sweet tried to flip the talk multiple times. I learned that in that moment, you need to find a way to answer briefly and then follow up with a question in order to stay in the lead of the talk. I was consistent with staying in the lead and listening to him throughout our talk. I was able to really drive for his pain in order to find out that he wanted training on his footwork and essentially just his speed and agility. Once we got to this point, I could ask my questions about his pain in order to see if this was a fit for both of us. Overall, this conversation helped me learn so many different sales skills that I can carry with me as I go into my future career. I would say my biggest takeaways are being able to listen, ask good, intentional questions, and finally know when to talk in the sales talk in order to not overload the prospect with a lot of information. Finally, this sales talk was a lot of fun and so engaging. I really enjoyed this experience in class, and it helped me so much with actually putting my skills and Sandler rules into play.