"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

Walt Disney

This quote suggests that your desire to learn and to discover will drive you to try new things and embark on new journeys.

Staying curious helps you progress and evolve in life, always finding new opportunities and experiences.

How can you apply this quote to sales?

It's about...

Continuous growth: The phrase "we keep moving forward" highlights the necessity of progress in your personal and professional lives. Stagnation and or complacency can lead you down the road to missed opportunities for learning and development. Now, think about how this applies to creating or not creating sales sustainability.

Adaptability: Embrace change and be willing to take steps into the unknown. This reflects developing a mindset that values resilience and adaptability in the face of challenges. Now, think about how important this becomes in the competitive landscape within the sales world.

Taking this one step deeper:

It's all about creating opportunities: "Opening new doors" denotes the potential for new opportunities and experiences. Each door represents a chance to learn something new, meet different people, or explore uncharted territories. Now, think about how this applies to business development.

It's all about innovation: bigger picture thinking, this can relate to innovation in various ways, where new ideas can lead to breakthroughs that change the way you live and work. Now, think about how to apply innovation to catapult your sales results and how you work with your clients.

Mediocre, average, ordinary or complacent - these would not be words associated with successful sales professionals.

What keeps you moving down new paths, opening new sales doors, and doing new things?

I love what Noelle Mykolenko, CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates says when it comes to curiosity, "Are we in a curiosity crisis?"

Curiosity becomes the catalyst for questioning, and questioning is what will push you to seek out the unfamiliar and the unknown. Now, think of how this can be applied to the interactions with your clients.

Curiosity is at the core of creative thinking.

Creative thinkers ask questions such as, "What if, or, why not."

Imagine asking your clients questions like the following... And then just sit back and listen to their responses:

• What if your business could achieve double-digit business growth year over year?

• What if at the end of the year you had removed all the issues and challenges within your department?

Noelle believes curiosity is a gift, as she goes on to say, "Today, it feels like curiosity is on the wane - becoming rarer as the years pass. With the emergence of search engines and the evolution of A.I., answers are literally at our fingertips."

Having curious conversations with your clients allows you to uncover things you just can't find out elsewhere.

Curious driven sales professionals are impactful with their communication, achieve success and over-achieve their sales targets more often than sales reps.

Becoming insanely curious is a required character trait if you wish to master business disruptions.

Sales professionals put learning into overdrive, will you?

Wildly curious sales professionals place themselves in their client’s shoes. They dig in deep to uncover business barriers and then guide them down the road to business betterment.

Walt Disney said it the best,

“When you are curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”

What's your daily appetite for curiosity?

I believe curious salespeople possess a thirst for knowledge. They're interested in the lives of their client's. They love bringing new ideas, experiences and insight to their client's. They hold themselves accountable to always wanting to learn more.

Curious salespeople do not need to be encouraged to ask deep meaningful questions; they just do it.

Are you willing to cultivate curiosity with your clients to foster real connection?

Can curiosity become the fuel to your sales success?

Ray Dalio nails it,

“It is far more common for people to allow ego to stand in the way of learning.”

What is standing in your way of learning?

To further emphasize the importance of curiosity, I will refer to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits,

"A strategy for thinking clearly: Rather than trying to be right, assume you are wrong and try to be less wrong. Trying to be right has a tendency to devolve into protecting your beliefs. Trying to be less wrong has a tendency to prompt more questions and intellectual humility."

CURIOSITY FOSTERS CONNECTION

Curious salespeople seek to understand the world around them, which can lead to deeper connections and a more fulfilling life.

Curious salespeople are active listeners.

This requires intentionality and practice. Active listening is all about reflecting on what others say as you seek to understand their viewpoints. This can enhance the quality of interactions.

In today's world, technology provides instantaneous responses, but it's human conversation that gets to the heart of what matters.

Curiosity is essential. Curiosity fuels your ability to make new connections and engage.

The more engaged you become the more inclined you're to ask meaningful questions; the more you learn and uncover, the more you grow relationships.

Here are three ways that you can start to become a bit more curious:

1. Have a beginner's mindset - Assuming is the killer of all learning. You must have a burning desire in your heart for personal growth and knowledge.

2. Surround yourself with other curious people - You become who you hang out with. Imagine what you could learn by associating with other curious people?

3. Make WHY your favorite word - Asking WHY helps you get to the core cause, intent and purpose.

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

Albert Einstein

Becoming insanely curious with your clients will build deeper connections, relationships and open the door to new opportunities.

A curious professional finds enthusiasm and interest in their career.

A curious professional is open-minded.

A curious professional is inquisitive and wants to know why.

A curious professional is not shy to ask questions and seek out answers.

A curious professional gives a rip about getting to the next level.

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CURIOSITY HELPS TO SMASH SALES TARGETS

Albert Einstein once said,

"I am neither clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious."

Curiosity, it's becoming massively obsessed with always wondering WHY. What's behind your sales WHY?

Curious salespeople think and act on a different level. They identify and ask questions that solicit deeper results.

Sales reps ask surface level questions, sales professionals dig below the surface to uncover the root cause.

According to the Oxford dictionary, curiosity is a strong desire to know or learn something.

Those salespeople who wrap their arms around curiosity and are not afraid of exploring it, poking at it, or even questioning it, soon start to reap the rewards that it provides.

Curious salespeople have no issues asking their clients...

• What value do my services, products or solutions create for you?

• What does value-add look like to you?

Sustaining value in the minds of your customers requires persistence and extreme focus.

Curious salespeople are obsessed with understanding value.

CURIOUS PROFESSIONALS TAKE OWNERSHIP

Curiosity drives learning.

Curious sales professionals engage deeply with their clients to understand their needs and challenges.

Curious sales professionals take ownership of their careers. They're more self-aware and accountable for their actions.

Self-awareness helps them make informed decisions that align with their personal and professional goals, ultimately leading to greater career satisfaction and success

Plain and simple, average sales reps are excuse makers. They point fingers towards everything bad that happens to them. It’s the economy, the leads are weak, the competition has better products, buyers are idiots, we’re too expensive, our service is horrible; stop the freaking excuses and all the madness!

Curious salespeople see all of this as learning opportunities.

They learn to do something different and practice different ways of progressing towards achieving sales success.

They view roadblocks as learning opportunities and become obsessed with the identifying as many ways as possible to improve.

Are you constantly on the lookout and open-minded for new and novel ways of enhancing your sales career?

BECOME CURIOUS ABOUT YOUR CLIENTS

Highly successful sales professionals know their clients deserve more than just a "check-in or touching base" phone call.

They acknowledge the importance of exploring their clients' beliefs, challenges, what drives them and most importantly, what they want to accomplish.

Innately curious salespeople ask the right questions, provide the right insight and respond with answers.

Instead of relying on scripted pitches, curious salespeople engage clients with thoughtful questions that elicit detailed responses.

Your mirror moment: By the way... The mirror never lies, only the person looking into the mirror lies.

• Are you making your clients feel special before, during and after doing business with you?

• Are you making your clients feel important?

• Do your clients feel that you care about them?

• Do your clients feel like they can trust you?

Curious salespeople focus on developing conversations, not sales campaigns. It is about opening human to human conversation.

With curious intent, spend quality time with your clients and ask them how you have been enhancing their experience with you?

CURIOSITY IS A GIFT

"Stay loyal to your creativity because it's a gift"

Pharrell Williams

The one thing separating successful salespeople and others who are merely surviving, or should I say, being complacent; is their desire to learn and curiosity ignites it.

I encourage you to break out of the complacent, default modes of thinking.

Recycling old ideas with traditional sales approaches doesn't help you smash your targets or satisfy your clients.

As you reflect upon curiosity and what this all means to you, I ask you to think about your professional growth...

• Accept your knowledge is limited and can be developed.

• Ask questions to uncover the real problems with your clients.

• Avoid asking limiting questions with your clients.

• Rephrase your understanding and ask for clarity.

Allow curiosity to fuel your innovation. This could be the best present you give to yourself.

Originally published on Larry Levine's LinkedIn.