In today's episode, Dr. Croner shares a sales strategy you can learn from the famous TV show: Mad Men, called ideation. Learn the importance of ideation and how a client of ours using said strategy in real life. Enjoy!
 
 

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For more selling strategies rooted in psychology, check out Episodes 12 and 16.

 

At SalesDrive, LLC, we help companies perfect the salesperson hiring process by offering a variety of tools, like a sales assessment and psychologically-based interview guides, that aid companies in never hiring a bad salesperson again. SalesDrive was founded in 2005 based on the single biggest frustration many companies face, selecting sales candidates who interviewed well, only to flame out when placed on the line. Dr. Croner reviewed more than 90 years of academic research as well as his own work in conducting intensive behavioral interviews and discovered that high-performance salespeople shared three innate personality traits. After identifying a gap in the marketplace, he went on to develop The DriveTest® sales assessment. The only sales assessment to measure the three non-teachable traits necessary for new business acquisition.
 
 If you are hiring salespeople, request a free DriveTest assessment today: https://salesdrive.info/free-trial-request
 

 

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[00:00]  Katherine Abraham: Hello and Welcome to the Sales Psyched podcast, where we discuss strategies for leveraging psychology within the world of sales. Each episode is hosted by Dr. Chris Croner, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and has spent his career helping companies around the world build stellar sales teams.

[00:20]  Let's get started.
 
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[00:30]  Chris Croner: Dr. Chris Croner here. If you ever watch the T.V. series Mad Men, which is about an advertising agency and it's a wonderful array of characters, you probably noticed that when the creative department is developing a new concept, they do it as a group. Big time advertising and marketing firms know that groups of people bouncing ideas off one another are much more likely to generate something exciting. Then, each person just working on the concept alone.

[01:00]  In psychology, this is called ideation. And the process, when done well, can be remarkably creative, but the key is never dismissing an idea before it has time to blossom. Here's an example.

[01:16]  A client of ours tells the story of planning to throw a first class appreciation party for its distributor salespeople. Their CEO wanted to give away a Lexus, as the grand door prize. Trouble was it exceeded their budget and the planners were getting ready to dismiss the idea entirely when one of them said, you know, we can get the same impact if we drive a Lexus in and have a hole in one contest. That way, instead of spending $60,000, we'll spend $1,500 for the insurance policy. Everyone nodded.

[01:53]  But, there was still a problem. The party was in Chicago and it was scheduled for January. End of idea, right?

[02:03]  The party was being thrown in a big ballroom. So, they worked out a 100 ft putt with twists and turns with the insurance company. It was the highlight of the evening with hoots, hollers and gasps as each distributor took a turn. People talked about it for months.

[02:19]  The moral of the story is not to give up too soon on the germ of a great idea. Keep asking, "how can we pull this off in other ways and still have a big psychological impact?" You'll be amazed at what you can come up with as a team.

[02:39]  And yes, someone made the putt, much to the surprise and excitement of everyone, except the insurance company; who declined to participate the following year.

[02:49]  See you next time.

 

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[02:53]  Chris Croner: Thank you for listening to the Sales Psyched Podcast. If you haven't already, please be sure to click the subscribe button and leave us a five-star review. If you found this information helpful, please consider sharing it. We'd love your help in spreading the word.
 
[03:10]  Until next time, take care!