Sell and Be Well with Bre Sprague: Customer Café Podcast
Bre Sprague is a Sales Operations Specialist who knows how to pivot and try new things. Her mission is to train, inspire, and teach others on their journey to personal greatness. She is known as the world fittest grandma!
Bre considers herself and others “natural” salespeople. She believes that her entire career journey has been about helping people. In order to be good at sales you need to listen and understand what is important to them and what their priorities are.
How do YOU do sales?
Today you can use video, podcasts, and other platforms to demonstrate “who you are, what you do and how you can help,” in addition to reaching out to individuals or companies personally. “Most buyers buy with emotion and justify with logic.” Social media opens the door for people to get to know you as a person.
“For sales it starts with a lot of questions but in my own business it always starts with being an observer first. You can’t just go up to someone and tell them that you need this if you don’t know if they need it or not!”
Does coffee pair well with sales? Does coffee correlate with collaboration?
You want to find a common bond. Coffee can be an easy one. “Whether its coffee or something else you want to find a commonality.” Most people drink coffee and can easily bond over it.
How do you align good business including sales with happiness?
You need to identify your values in your personal and professional life and make sure that you are meeting them. Your mental health affects your physical health. If you are not happy, the best thing you can do is extract yourself from a place that makes you miserable and take charge of your life.
“Asking for help is not a weakness it is actually a strength.”
Bre has faced challenges throughout her life which she describes in the podcast, but the challenges required her to ask for help. She now sees that as a gift. You can’t learn and grow and work as a team if you do not know how to ask for help. She also firmly believes that you can learn just about anything from strangers on YouTube! (Including fixing her Fiat.)
How do you collaborate in sales?
“Knowing how someone else shows up, so that I can best communicate with them. Sometimes I have to adjust myself to meet them where they are at.” You may need to adjust your bullet points or style to meet the style of individuals or the team.
Setting common goals is also key along with understanding the company’s mission. “Who do we serve? How do we do it? Why do we do it?”
Why check ins should not be terrifying?
You shouldn’t be surprising anyone at check ins. The same way you nurture your pipeline, you should be nurturing your relationships with your team. Ongoing communication, calm communication, is important. Fingerpointing is not effective. (Shocking, we know!) You need to identify roadblocks collaboratively and address them as a team.
Thoughts on gender parity and DEI?
“The playing field isn’t equal when it comes to gender and to people of color.” She shared inappropriate behaviors she encountered earlier in her career.
She now encourages women to have a voice and stand up for themselves. Earlier on in her career the culture told women “Just be happy you are a woman and have a job in sales. You are lucky.”
How can you be proactive to protect yourself as a woman?
- Set boundaries
- Find a woman mentor
- Consider moderating your alcohol intake on the job
“Your company should have your back. People stay with companies because of the culture.” Companies need to support employees and not just talk the talk but “walk the walk. Live the values.”
Want to help out your colleagues in the field?
Be honest. The best piece of advice Bre got was not sugarcoated. She was told that her resume read like “a piece of crap” and that if she fixed it, only then would someone in the company offer to submit it.
Bre didn’t get defensive. Bre admitted that she had not realized how much work her resume needed, but then she was able to see the flaws, repair them, and land the job.
Who does Bre listen to read, etc.?
She only reads from tangible printed paper books. Bre does not own a tv, so she has plenty of time to listen to a lot of podcasts including but not limited to:
She tends to read to learn about processes, health from all angles, wellness, and whatever else she wants to know to get things done in her personal and professional life.
Want more? You’ll have to tune in! Customer Café by Collabria is available wherever you listen to podcasts including Spotify, Apple, or here.
Want to build a strong team and collaborate smoothly and easily with your colleagues? Get started as a beloved beta user!
Looking for more to listen to? Join Menachem Pritzker and Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, hard core Collabrians, as we drink coffee and learn from collaborative leaders in sales, customer success and account management.
Ready to get started? Customer Café by Collabria: Sales Collaboration Tips for Pros is available wherever you listen to podcasts.
