How much politics are your sales reps talking with your customers? Hi, I'm Jim Pancero, helping you become a stronger leader. And one of the things that I've noticed today is the intensity of the political discourse. Just seems to be intensifying and becoming more extreme and more polarized. Now I'm not worried where your political views are or what you think should be done or who should be doing it. But the reality is we've got to be careful as managers to ensure that our salespeople try to avoid these topics. Too many times when I've ridden with salespeople, I hear the customers pulling the salesperson into a political discussion, trying to push them to share their opinion and to have an argument. This kind of discourse isn't going to help sales. And frankly, if we show our political views, we'll probably turn off half of our customers because the other half doesn't agree with what we believe.
This is just a good time, especially as things are ramping up for the midterm elections and more on to 2024, to make sure that the sales team, especially your younger salespeople, understand these are conversations we have to avoid. This is also a good time to give them coping skills as to how they can change the subject. Or if a customer does want to talk politics, how to neutralize it. The reality of this process is we've got to make sure that our customers don't hear our opinions on politics because all it could do is potentially hurt our sales. What are you doing to make sure that your team is just aware of this? It sounds like a basic concept, but I watch too many times salespeople out in the field are being pulled into these conversations and then sometimes customers do get upset. They hold a grudge because you don't believe what I do.
Love to hear how you're dealing with this. Love to hear how you've coached your people. Thanks for checking out my podcast. I'm posting two new podcasts each week. All aimed at helping you and your team increase your selling competitive advantage.