How To Sell Coach

Is there a place for Humour in a sales call? Well I think there is but it's a difficult thing to get right. As with any form of humour, you have to know your audience and it generally helps if it is actually funny but I think caution is the word here.

Many years ago, in my first position as a Sales Manager, I was given what was considered to be a difficult team to manage - likely because I was young, didn't know better and so keen to have my first management role.

I was actually younger than everyone else in the team and to say my appointment was not welcomed with open arms would be a gross understatement. So what to do? Well in my wisdom I decided to spend two days dual calling with them on their areas. My thought process being clearly to see how they were at selling, meet some customers and get a feel for what was going on but also you get to know a lot about someone if you spend two days on the road with them.

One of the older reps. Walter had been with the company literally man and boy. If you bit off his head, you would see the company running all the way through - he was also a genuinely funny man.

He could mimic all his collegues and had a joke or comment for every occasion. His customers loved him, he could basically go in whenever he liked and they wouldn't dream of giving the business to anyone else in case it upset Walter.

He also played every trick in the book to put me off thrack of actually doing a structures dual call with him (a great lession to get so early in my career.) At one stage I while we were driving between calls, I had to get out of the car and take a walk, I was laughing so hard and needed to get myself together for the next sales call.

So it worked for him - but he had 30 years to know his audience!

The How to Sell Coach Top Tips for Humour in a Sales Call

1. Caution, caution, caution!
2. Take your lead from your customer.
3. If you not naturally funny, don't try to be. Just being a professional sales person will serve you well enough.
4. Keep any humour in the context of the call.
5. Know your audience.
6. Never, never say or do anything that could be inappropriate - ever.
7. And if you hear yourself saying the words, "Did you hear the one about...." STOP. He will have done and will likely be too polite to tell you so.

You don't want to be in the position of a potential customer saying, "That's a good one but you'll have to excuse me. I have an appointment with this guy who keeps selling me stuff - you know the type!