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Welcome everybody back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, podcast history.
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Bill Kasky here.
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Brian Neal here.
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Brian, you sound good today, brother.
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Well, you can probably tell.
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I know you can tell.
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Listeners can probably tell also, because there are audio snobs also, that I m not on my normal, big, honking, beautiful microphone that you have, or nor am I through my digital H6 Zoom interface.
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I am coming to you live from my kitchen with my AirPods in because my audio interface
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crapped out on me.
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It s just awful.
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I feel so weird.
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I feel like I failed.
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Thank you.
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I will fix, I promise.
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We will give you a pass today.
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And it s not, I don t know what our audience, I don t know what our audience will say about this.
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I know what they re going to say.
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I know what they re going to say that they expect the advanced line podcast listening groups, very loyal and they expect quality from us.
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They do, especially given how much they pay for each episode.
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They expect high quality for the fees that they pay at each episode.
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Well, and how much we talk about it, too.
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That s the problem.
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We re always talking about how important it is that we show up with a... I didn t think about that, that we do, you know, you kind of put yourself out there that way, like the audio has got to be great.
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Then you got kind of no room to wiggle there.
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So, well, thanks for everyone letting me talk to you with AirPods.
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No problem.
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I will tell you, so I ve been traveling a bunch and I just want to say, yeah, I always be careful with this stuff.
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You know, I don t like to bash experiences or brand names, but I m going to.
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So I frequently fly Delta.
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I love Delta.
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Delta s service, their experience, just everything about them makes me feel special.
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And sometimes I ll flip airlines for efficiency reasons.
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I ll just flip over to another airline.
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So I did that flying to Charlotte.
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Charlotte s a hub for a really, really big airline named after our country, but I won t say the name.
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And, you know, I m like, okay, I m gonna try this out.
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And, you know, you re hesitant.
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And lo and behold, I m flying home Sunday, flight s at 10.30 p.m., gonna get home about midnight.
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Get a note that your flight now leaves at 12.30 a.m.
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Delayed.
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And I get, I travel a bunch.
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I know there s delays and all this stuff.
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And so then it got pushed and pushed.
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I changed my flight the next morning.
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I m like, I m not gonna get home at three in the morning.
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So then I go to the airport.
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Perfect, flight leaves at 8.15.
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Gate change.
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Gate change to Indianapolis from Charlotte.
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Now it s this other gate.
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So we walk all the way across this other concourse, new gate.
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Now it s 815.
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Now it s leaving at 840.
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Then it s leaving at 855.
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No reason, no reason, no reason.
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And then finally we left at about 1130, 11 to 1130.
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And that s fine.
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I understand stuff happens.
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But the process when stuff goes bad, is what makes or breaks a company s experience.
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Right?
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So it s it s not the problem.
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It s how you handle the problem, which is the lesson in my story here.
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So I
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unbeknownst to me had booked another flight with this airline for the two days after this.
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And I m like, I, you know, should I change?
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I m like, I m gonna give him another chance.
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Same deal.
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So I bought a I bought, it wasn t much of a difference, but I was flying.
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So I bought a first class ticket.
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So I show up and I m in row 10.
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And I said to the gate agent, like, Hey, I bought a first class, I got paid for a first class ticket.
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Monroe 10.
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He s like, well, there are no first class seats available.
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I m like, but I bought one.
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He goes, well, you re happy to talk to customer service.
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I m like, where s that?
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Are you serious?
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The woman with the red scarf can help you.
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So go over to the woman with the red scarf.
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I m like, Hey, I bought a first class ticket.
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You know, she s like, I can t move you up into, you know, I can t move you up if there are no seats.
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I m like, you know what, that s fine.
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I just want, there s a, there s a hundred dollar difference between the fair.
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And I just want my, you know, I want to get refunded.
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She has a stack of paper, like a little tear off thing.
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She goes, Okay, here s the number you re going to have to call.
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She hands me a piece of paper, call this number and tell them, and they ll see if they can give you a refund.
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So then I call the number she goes, Hang on, I got to talk to somebody else comes back, like, we can t give you a refund, we can give you a $50 voucher.
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Do you think I m gonna watch?
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So anyway,
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My point to the whole story is there is a bet and nowhere through this whole process that anyone give me any sort of feeling indication that they gave a crap at all about my experience.
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Not one human.
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Everybody seemed like I was bothering them.
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And it s horrible, horrible experience.
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Delta s not that way.
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Delta s great.
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I always feel cared for.
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Yeah.
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I just feel I like Delta, but I know who you re talking about.
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You gave us some clues.
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There are a couple hints.
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But I think the way we pivot from that to what we talk about is just what kind of a customer experience do we give people?
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And are we really thinking about the feeling part of it versus just the automatic, automated, everything s automated now.
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We click yes, and they get seven emails.
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Is it really a customer experience worth talking about?
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And even when things don t go bad, is our customer experience good?
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I think that s a great question.
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That s the main thing.
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It s when it goes bad.
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Anyone can do customer experience when everything s going great, when you land early.
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That s easy.
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Like everybody s happy or whatever.
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You make your connection and you know, an hour and a half to spare.
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It s when the stuff goes wrong.
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And I just don t understand why people they like you for a living.
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You work in a customer service center.
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Like this a training thing for me.
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It s a training coaching and or a cultural mentality thing.
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And I ll bet you
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That company spends millions of dollars on customer research, customer loyalty programs.
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How do we get our customers to fly more since they have a lot of choices?
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I bet you they spend millions of dollars on that.
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And you ll probably never get the call for, we want to know what your experience was.
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No, no, no.
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And or if it s bad.
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Yeah.
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Which is weird.
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And I don t, I mean, I fly by, you know, I ve probably spent 30, $40,000 a year on tickets from my football job.
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And I m like, this is not huge.
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I m going to break the bank, but that adds up.
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Sure.
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The other people like me anyway.
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Okay.
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So.
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Here we are 75 days from the end of the year, and I thought and we thought in our pre-game warm-up here, we would talk about, is it too late to make something happen or make things happen for year end?
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And I know you have some philosophies about when the fourth quarter really starts.
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I totally agree with you.
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I always look at this and say, I m good with intensifying the work over the next 75 days as long as I don t come across needy, desperate, trying to make my numbers with really very little regard for what the customer wants.
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So I thought we could talk about that a little bit and give people some insight in what they can do in the next 75 days.
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Yes.
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And I think you all listening, I know several of you listening are thinking, you know, is it too late?
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That s one.
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Some of you are thinking that.
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Others of you are thinking the it s only factor.
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And here s what the it s only factor is.
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And this just came up on a coaching call actually from a chief growth officer, one of my clients.
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I think the fourth quarter starts not October 1st, but in August.
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I think the fourth quarter starts in August.
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I think it completes itself.
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before the Christmas break, like December 15th or 16th.
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Yeah.
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Cause everyone, usually people just disappear regardless of what religion you are.
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It just, the country kind of slows down.
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And I had a client, chief growth officer, very smart person who s been through this system with me personally several times.
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And he said on a call the other day, well, it s only October 11th.
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This was two days ago.
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It s only October 11th.
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And I said, hey, love you, man.
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We can t be saying it s only October 11th, because that mentality just relaxes everyone.
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Oh, yeah.
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And so the first thing is to recognize the sense of urgency around process.
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Now, let s talk about what you said, Bill.
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I want you to talk some more about the energy behind it, because I think people confuse urgency with desperation too often.
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So what s your take on the, how do I maintain good intention, coupled with urgency around process at the same time?
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I d love to riff on that a little bit.
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Yeah, I think that s a good, it s a subject worth riffing on.
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It s riffable.
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It s a riffable subject.
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It s a riffable topic.
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The whole idea of mindset, I think you take with you, whether it s end of year, 75 days, 60 days, whatever, and that is,
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My intention when I m doing this intensive behavior, whatever that is, whenever it is, intense behavior, is to see if I can help, is to see if there s anything that I do that can bring value to this person with whom I m speaking.
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And so that, to me, transgresses whether there s a sense of urgency on your part or not.
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The second thing is, it feels to me like, and this is probably less mindset and more, I ll bet over the course of the last 11 months, 10 months, I bet there are 50 people that I have
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touched in some way, either nothing happened, I dropped the ball, they dropped the ball, we just kind of split up, we just kind of went our own separate ways, there was no intention.
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I bet you if you take some loose ends, I will call them,
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relationship loose ends over the last 10 months, just go through your calendar.
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I mean, just swipe through your phone, you ll think, oh God, I haven t called Brian back.
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Shit, we talked about doing something in October.
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There are so many, and you can t possibly keep track of them.
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I know everybody fancies themselves as super organized, but I gotta tell you.
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things slip to the cracks.
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So that s one method I would use too.
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Maybe there s somebody that you haven t talked to in four months who wants to do something before the end of the year because they have budget to do something.
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And if we re not calling them and we re hoping they call us, ain t gonna happen.
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So go through your list, find 25 loose ends, relationships that you haven t closed up and just go call them.
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That s awesome.
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I wrote down RLEs.
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RLEs, Bill.
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Relationship Loose Ends.
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RLEs.
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RLEs, I m gonna call it RLEs.
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Relationship Loose Ends, these are our RLEs.
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Yep, how many RLEs do we have?
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It s funny you bring this up.
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I just did this.
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So we re behind at our firm on our sales goal.
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So I wanted to print out, I said, I wanna print out all the closed loss deals for the last 18 months.
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And there were hundreds and I m flipping through there.
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And exactly what you said is happening.
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I m like, Oh my God, we, we haven t talked to them for eight months.
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They were awesome.
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They loved what we were talking about.
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We did call them back.
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Cause so much changes in that time.
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Next one.
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What about them?
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Oh my gosh.
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I know that this happened.
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You know what I mean?
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So one after the other, and it gave me this really one, it was bummed me out.
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Cause I m like, we let all these things disappear.
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But on the flip side, opportunistically, I m like, these are great times to call these people.
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like you said, end of the year, fresh start, maybe start a new program at 23, enough grass has grown, go back to those relationship, loosen those reallys.
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And, uh, man, it s, it could just, it s a great, great thing to do.
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Yeah, for sure.
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So, so that s good.
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That s a good, uh,
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model for what you can do.
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Now, if you re in a selling cycle that s a six month selling cycle and you start something at the end of October, obviously that s not going to close.
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But I wouldn t worry about that.
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I think we ve got to be a little bit longer range in our thinking and our awareness that it s OK if you call somebody and they re not going to close by the end of the year.
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Start something now.
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So I think we ve got to get out of that urgency thing a little bit.
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Yeah, well, I also think you should.
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Again, in the spirit of the Q4 starts in August, Q1 starts in October.
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You ve got to seed Q1 with this stuff, for sure.
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Now, for this stuff that s in the funnel, I am
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really bullish on the idea of what I m calling extreme discipline to process in this fourth quarter with good intention like we said earlier.
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And that is just picking a date that s before the end of the year and working to get everything
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Either closed, yes, closed, no, or a date on the calendar for January.
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Yeah.
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By a certain day, like we picked at our firm, we picked December 16th as our date to do that by.
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And man, when you do that, you re driving things towards a date that s before the actual end of the holiday.
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It really cleans things up.
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And if someone can t give you a decision by December 16th, that s not a problem.
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You just flip them over to a scheduled meeting in January.
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And that keeps momentum.
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So many deals die through the holidays.
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Because people say, Oh, you know, yeah, we re getting ready.
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You re really busy holiday wise.
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Let s just once you give me a call back in January.
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Okay.
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Have a great holiday, January.
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Hey Bill, it s Brian.
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Oh, hey man, I just got back from the holiday.
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It s really busy.
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Call me in February.
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Right, exactly.
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Just to get back in the group here.
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So if you can be really disciplined to that, you will end your year as strong as you possibly can.
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And if you re not, and that s, go ahead.
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Yeah, no, I was just gonna say, I think that as we close here, I think that s the key word is can you be disciplined for 75 or 60 days, whatever that end date is, can you be disciplined about going back and resurrecting relationships that may be drifted, understand that there s process and having dates set in the calendar, and three is make sure that you re planting some seeds for next year.
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And if you do that and you work six to eight hours a day on that,
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You re going to uncover things that ll happen in the next 60 days and you re going to be super ready for next year.
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There s no doubt.
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Yes.
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And the last thing I ll end with is what not to do is do not in the quarter,
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running as fast as you can to close as much as you can and have that be your number one strategy.
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Well Bill, I m just going to work as hard as I can, get as much close as I can before the end of the year.
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I think a lot of people carry that strategy.
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It just does not work.
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It just does not work.
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Have some clarity, pick a date, get clear on it, move this stuff into January that needs to, and then seed the first quarter.
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And a great place to see your first quarters with your release.
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If you have not connected with us on LinkedIn, make sure you go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash LinkedIn.
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Got a great group of people, 12,000 plus that are on LinkedIn and our group.
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And so we have a lot of good conversation there.
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Make sure you do that.
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Also, next week, I ve got a special offer for people that Brian, you don t even know about.
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I can t wait to hear this.
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We ll talk about it next week, and y all have a great week.
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We ll see you next time.
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Nice tease, bye.