Using success stories to illustrate the benefits of your product or solution, in any conversation or presentation, is something that we teach every sales rep and sales manager we work with. Those stories help your audience emotionally experience the payoff and connect to your message. 

We’ve decided to practice what we preach, by sharing stories from our own customers, partners, and friends, about their journey in the world of sales. We hope you find them inspiring and useful, and most of all, that you enjoy reading them. 

We recently interviewed one of our longtime customers, and now colleague, Penny Honea, about her experience with Other-Centered® selling, and sales in general.

At the beginning of her sales career in IT distribution, Penny believed (like many people) that “selling” meant shoving products/ services down customers’ throats. But early on in her selling career, Penny flipped her own script and decided that instead of selling, she would focus on helping people – and if she sold something in the process of serving her customers, even better.

Before she even met ASLAN, Penny was naturally embodying what it means to be an Other-Centered seller and finding great success and fulfillment through her approach to sales.

You can listen to our interview with her on our sALES with ASLAN podcast episode 94:

Key Concepts and Sales Skills

We asked Penny about the most memorable moments/ concepts from our Other-Centered Selling training course:

“I trained alongside my inside sales team and I absolutely loved it. I was picking up everything ASLAN was laying down.”

Here are some of the highlights we discussed:

Drop the Rope®

This is a fan favorite for most sales reps that go through our in-person sales workshops or online sales training courses. The idea is to remove pressure from a conversation by communicating to your customer that you respect and acknowledge their freedom to choose.

Whether it’s a choice to have a conversation with you or purchase your solution, the decision is theirs to make. When you give people the freedom to choose, they will be more receptive to your message, and more likely to trust your opinion and embrace your recommendation. 

As our customers have seen, Drop the Rope is not just a sales tactic or a way to build trust and receptivity in customer relationships, it’s a concept for life. Stop “pulling the rope” so hard and remove the tension. See how it changes all of your relationships, both personal and professional. 

For Penny, like so many of us, it’s a great enduring life lesson. 

The Quadrant Coaching Method

Your time is limited, and valuable. It’s no surprise that many sales managers struggle to find the time to coach their reps. Penny found our approach to be one of the most tangible and helpful parts of the whole sales training program. ASLAN defines coaching as observing behavior, aligning on what needs to be developed, and then practicing. It’s all about skill development, but if a sales rep does not want to improve their skills, coaching them is a waste of everyone’s time. 

The Quadrant Coaching approach helps sales managers determine how to best spend their coaching time to optimize their team’s results. 

Measuring the Other-Centered Approach

It’s important to be able to measure success. Anecdotal success is one way, a feel-good and important way; but our clients typically also use other KPIs to figure out how well the sales training courses and resources have impacted their sales teams. 

Around 2015, Penny Honea took on a new role where she was responsible for major transformation within her company. Training the sales teams within her organization was a large part of that. The goal was to improve the sales skills of the reps, and give sales managers the tools to lead and continue development, even after the sales training workshops were delivered and concluded.  

All sales divisions (and there were several) were involved in the training, but each had its own leadership. For Penny, this structure is what helped her see the importance of having top-down buy-in to the sales training initiative. 

Most of the divisions had a decent level of buy-in, but one division in particular had a very high level of involvement and buy-in – they were aligned on every level, from leadership right down to the individual sales reps. Within that division, sales grew at a rate three times higher than any of the others. 

Penny attributes this success to establishing a sales practice that encourages collaboration and gives sales managers the right tools to effectively coach their sales reps. That division became the standard for the other sales divisions to aspire to. Their sales continued to grow, and according to Penny, their achievements were thanks for their willingness to embrace the entire sales training program end-to-end.

Ultimately, successful sales training initiatives benefit the customer, as well as the sales reps themselves. 

Why is Other-Centered Selling Different?

During my own career in sales, I experienced nearly a dozen different sales training programs. Usually, the only differences were in the language and vocabulary used to teach the same core concepts. But with Other-Centered Selling, it’s not a change in language, it’s a shift in mindset. 

There is a lesson that we teach sales reps right at the beginning of our sales training program, about making a conscious decision to change the way we approach customers. It’s about examining your motive and changing your mindset.

At first, it has to be very intentional. It requires effort to sustain. You have to build that muscle before it becomes second-nature. But when you do, selling will become more about helping your customers, truly serving them, than trying to close a deal. 

Before joining the ASLAN team, I too was a customer. In my previous role within another organization, we brought in ASLAN to train our sales teams and experienced the same changes Penny described. With buy-in at each level, leadership to management to individual sales rep, our results improved greatly. I believe this was thanks to a mindset shift versus simply a vocabulary change. 

Delivering the Other-Centered Selling Training Program

It has become a running joke over at ASLAN that so many of our former customers join the ASLAN family as trainers or full-time employees. Penny Honea is the latest. I asked her about that decision:

Throughout her years speaking at conferences or delivering sales trainings, people approached Penny to ask, “Will you please come train my sales team? I love your message.”

Penny became an ASLAN Certified Trainer before leaving her full-time job as an IT Sales Executive. When delivering sales training internally, reps and managers alike told Penny that their own customers were asking for their sales training. 

It was a great opportunity for her, with built-in demand and a ready-made market of people asking to be trained in the concepts that she knows and loves to share. 

Penny Honea’s niche is putting together groups of people that don’t necessarily work together within the same company, but that have a desire to learn the concepts of Other-Centered Selling. In this way, she can offer sales training to anyone, no matter how small the company or budget. 

“I’ve helped companies grow their business for decades, and so this was just a natural extension of that, and another way for me to be helpful.” – Penny Honea

Penny and I both stepped out of long, successful careers with big companies because we wanted to reach more sales reps and help more people with this important message. She also shared with me that delivering sales training to so many different people, across industries and organizations, allows her to continue to learn and grow in her own capacity. 

I share a lot of similarities with Penny and I am so glad to be able to share her story and her insight with you. She’s in the process of putting together some virtual sales training sessions for individual sales reps and sales leaders, so if you’d like to reach out to her, you can do so at 864-346-3000, by email at phonea@aslantraining.com or on LinkedIn. 

Summing it Up

Sales reps are resilient. We’re used to hearing “no.” But when you can make that mindset shift that Penny did, very early on in her career, selling becomes more about helping people; and helping people feels good. 

The truth is, people are never more fulfilled than when they are serving others, and that is what Other-Centered selling is really about. 

You can’t fake being Other-Centered, because your motive is transparent. When you are truly trying to serve your customers well, these concepts that we teach are not techniques or tactics, they are logical ways to treat people in a way that makes them feel like the priority that they are.