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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, podcast history in the world, on the planet, in the universe.
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I m Bill Kask.
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And I m Brian Neal.
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Greetings.
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Welcome.
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We ve got a lot of new listeners.
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We ve got a lot of emails from you guys, ladies.
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And so keep those coming.
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And if you have not,
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already joined our LinkedIn tribe.
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Go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash LinkedIn.
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We re up to 11,000 plus.
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And they all showed up last weekend at the pool.
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It was a nice day and all 11,000 came over.
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It s a little crowd.
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It was hard to social distance with 11,000.
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That s a great idea.
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A LinkedIn group pool party at Bill s pool.
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Let s do it.
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I ll do that.
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I ll come over.
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Now, yeah, I wonder if you spaced out your deck and all that stuff within six, in like a six, a grid, six foot grid.
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Give me a year to build, to rebuild the deck though, because it s, but you had, I think you had a little, I did.
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We had a scare.
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Yeah.
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So, so it s funny, obviously, you know, COVID s the thing right now and it s all around.
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And then most people know someone that s had it and unfortunately some people know it s gotten really sick and some people passed away and that other stuff but it s been fairly removed from me until last week when someone that I work with very closely who was a little sniffly one day
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kind of joking like, that s not a COVID sniffle.
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Oh no, no, no, it s fine.
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The next day called and said, Hey man, uh, someone in my family tested positive and I m going to go get tested.
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And that was on a, like a Wednesday.
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And then that same person called me on Saturday and said, I got some news.
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I m positive.
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And I had been in a car with this dude.
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Oh, really?
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Yeah, I was in a car.
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I m like, oh my gosh.
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So we had to go.
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The rest of our staff went and got tested.
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And we did the same day test, the antigen, I think it s called.
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And we waited.
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There s a delay because it ll give a false negative if you re too soon.
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So we waited a week.
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And, uh, it was funny.
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I literally, you know, I m sitting there waiting to get my tests back.
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And I felt like they re going to tell me whether I ve got brain cancer, like he wants to live.
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I m sitting in my car in Greenfield, Indiana at this like med check place.
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I m like, Oh my God, like this could be the end.
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Like my life, you know, that s like literally how I felt.
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I m like, Oh, please God, please God, please.
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No, please.
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No.
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which is funny.
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I ll do anything.
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Totally.
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I ll serve.
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Totally.
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Totally.
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I m sorry what I did.
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Yeah.
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I started making all these amends to everybody.
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I haven t talked to him in 50 years.
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I m like, Oh, I m sorry there.
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And then she came back, you know, and you re in the, uh, in the, in your car, they do it in your car.
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And then she brings a little sheet at like, uh, Mr. And Mrs. Neal were like, yep, you re both negative.
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See you later.
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I m like, Oh my gosh.
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It s like.
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Did you renege on all the promises you made?
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And then I think, okay, so then we re like, hey babe, you want to go stop at the restaurant and get something to eat?
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And you pull in a cracker barrel and you re around 55 other people.
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At some point we got to just step back.
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I know.
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Well, I got my haircut yesterday and the lady who cuts it, she goes, oh, I said, what s new with you, Louise?
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And she goes, oh, I had COVID.
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And I said, my husband had it too.
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And I said, well, it s only been four weeks since I met you.
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She goes, yeah, it must ve been right after that.
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Well, okay.
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And then I thought, wait a minute, you re buying into all the hype and all the fear.
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And it s like, OK, but I just won t do it.
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It s going to happen.
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It s going to happen, right?
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Just don t be reckless.
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And we ve been reckless, and that s the thing.
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So before we start, Brian and I have developed a program called the ASP Insider.
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And if you re a sales pro and a fan of the podcast and you want to navigate the coming upheaval in the sales profession, I guess it s more than coming, it s here.
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It s here.
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And you have a deep commitment to up your game, then we invite you to become
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Insider, it s a group coaching program, meets monthly.
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We coach on relevant topics.
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In fact, we re going to cover one today that will help you grow your business and your income.
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Tuition, $47 a month, or you can join for the year and save some more bucks.
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Go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash insider for details.
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There s a little video.
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There s also some videos of some of the people who are members too, who have experienced some success already.
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So advancedsellingpodcast.com slash insider, if you re interested.
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And I may offer my own little commentary on the Insider Program.
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If you re listening to this and you re not in the group, I d highly suggest you take a look at this.
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The next two sessions we re going to do are about messaging.
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Bill and I are going to talk about the topic a little bit today.
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But man, I just told Bill, getting ready, I said the tuition, the annual tuition for this thing, these next two sessions, it s beyond worth it, what we re going to take you through, in my opinion.
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you know, then figure you get the next 10 for free.
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Think of it that way.
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But, um, love to have listeners.
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We ve got a great group.
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It s got a great culture.
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This group does, has a really great group dynamic.
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We d love to have you as a part of that.
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And not to overwhelm people with features and benefits, but if you join, you will get the prior three, uh, events too.
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So you won t miss, you won t have missed anything if you joined up.
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No.
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Everything s recorded and the people have even formed their kind of little offshoot groups, little subgroups from the insider program.
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It s got a really good community feel to it and a very, very reasonable investment for you, we think.
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And it s live.
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Have we had any weddings for the first time?
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Not yet.
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No, we have.
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You know, that s, I don t know.
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Yeah, my days of when we did the old dance marathon back in IU, me and some friends started that thing in 1991.
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It s the 30th year.
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We were trying to do a calculation of the number of both weddings and children that have spawned out of the dance marathon, and there s a ton.
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ton of people that met either they met on Dance Marathon Committee or they met someone through there and then got married and had kids and crazy.
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That s awesome.
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Well, okay, so let s talk about messaging.
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Yes.
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When Brian and I were doing the pre-show, we talked because we each have our own clients and coach and train and counsel.
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Yeah.
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And
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We both have run into the same thing when it comes to helping our clients develop their core unique message.
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And so maybe we spend just a couple of minutes here, Brian, talking about what you find when you introduce the topic, what makes it hard for people.
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I ve got a couple of thoughts.
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Then we can get into a couple of tips on how you can start the process.
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Yeah, this is one of my, it s to me, one of my most favorite topics to speak about.
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And it s also, my opinion, one of the most difficult to do.
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And the reason I think it s difficult is because people tend to, in my opinion, people tend to, when it comes to messaging and that kind of initial, here s what I do, or here s why I m different, or here s how we re different, or here s, everyone s looking for the perfect answer.
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And I think our pursuit of perfection in this case gets in the way of a good enough and also an evolving element there.
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So the story and the messaging will always change.
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And you always, always have to be crafting and working on that.
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That s the one thing I think that s difficult is everyone wants the magic.
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They want like, okay, we re done.
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And to me, one of the first things you can learn from this episode is you re never done working on your messaging.
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It s a constant, constant, you re just never done.
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That s my first idea about that.
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For salvo.
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I think salvo.
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I think we ve all been conditioned to and you and I have talked about the elevator pitch.
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I think we ve been misled by people who have said, well, you got to have a 30 second elevator pitch case.
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You re riding up in the elevator of somebody and they say, what do you do?
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And you got.
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You know, that whole thing, I think, really discounts and dilutes the power of a good, clear message.
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Because we race to, well, how can I make it 30 seconds?
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And I ve said on this podcast before is, let s do the five-minute version, and then we can always scale it back from there.
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But if you don t do the five-minute version, and you told a story about your personal story, Brian, before we started, is if you don t start with the big story, you can t really condense it.
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And so we want to talk.
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Plus, I think it s hard for people to put themselves in the shoes of the person that s hearing the message.
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We put ourselves in our shoes, and we say, well, our message basically is very simple.
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We help you reduce costs and improve efficiency.
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Well, that doesn t really help the person listening.
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That s of no help to them, because they don t know what does that mean.
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It can mean a lot of different things.
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And so I think until we put ourselves in the shoes of the customer, the prospect,
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and look at this message through their eyes, we re going to be, it s going to fall flat on people.
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There s no doubt.
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And I think, though, the other thing that makes it hard, interesting thing, too, you know we call it the elevator pitch.
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Have you ever met anybody who s closed a deal from an elevator, right?
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We should.
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If we have a listener who actually was in an elevator, first of all, who the hell talks in an elevator?
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The answer is nobody talks in an elevator.
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It s not like, well, you ve got to be ready, like you said, just in case.
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And I know it s kind of like a,
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It s a metaphoric thing.
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Well, that should have been the first clue that it doesn t work, because nobody talks about it.
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Especially now.
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Like, who s going to talk?
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You talk now in an elevator.
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Oh, yeah.
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People like turkey in.
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They call 911.
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There was a guy.
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He was talking in the elevator, no mask.
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Droplets.
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Droplets were coming out of his mouth.
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Maskless.
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No, I think the other thing that I wrote down here in the prep is I really, and this is getting into some of our coaching, and you hear Bill and I talk about this all the time, is what is the intention?
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behind the messaging you re delivering.
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And I feel like part of what s led us astray over the years when we re trying to do feature, feature benefit, even some of the solution-based stuff, is you have to ask yourself, what is my intention behind my messaging?
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And we ve been taught that a large majority of the intention behind it has been to hook someone or to get them.
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You know what I mean?
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It s like bait.
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And I think you re really need to check that.
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Yeah, exactly.
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To impress to show well, that sort of thing.
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And I think we re evolving away from that.
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I really, really do that we really need to examine this and to say, the messaging to me, needs to position yourself in a ridiculously authentic way.
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And then the people will then get them because to me a good part of good messaging, I m getting ahead of myself here s, you know, people should be able to hear the message.
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and know with a large degree of certainty, you know, 80-85% ish, whether or not they want to continue chatting with you.
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And if it s no, then I m like, good, the message worked, because the message basically kept me from wasting time with somebody.
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So step number one in this is to really identify your core intention with it.
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What s the intent?
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It s to separate the people who can use what I do from those who won t.
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And so like you say, it works if they say no, not interested in that, then maybe it s a perfect message.
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So let s talk a little bit about, I ve got a couple of things here.
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And we re calling this level one messaging.
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So we re going to give you a couple of things today that you can use immediately.
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And then if you are so inclined and want to go further with it, then I would suggest the insiders a place to do it, because we re going to go a whole lot deeper.
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I think level one is just to start identifying
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what the problems are that a prospect or a customer has that you can bring enormous value to solve.
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So number one might, and I ll give you the two I have, and then you can take it from there if you have some others, is what are the problems you solve?
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And sometimes when I ask people that, it comes out, well, we solve the problem of inefficiency.
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Well, inefficiency is not a problem.
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It might be an attribute.
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It might be something that happens because they have the problem.
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But you ve got to think, and be very specific here, what are the problems that your customer has in absence of you or in absence of your product or both?
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So that would be number one.
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Love it.
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And my second one would be the other side of that coin, which is, where are they trying to go?
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Generally, what kind of end result or opportunity or goals do you suspect they have?
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And part of that could be if you re calling on dentists, for example.
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I know we have a lot of dental salespeople in the listening audience.
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If you re calling on dentists, generally, what are they trying to do?
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Are they trying to build their practice?
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Are they trying to hang on until they retire?
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I mean, you should know generally what the goals and objectives and dreams and ideal outcomes of your customer is.
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And so you ve got to figure out how do you help them get there.
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So the problems they re trying to avoid, the possibilities they re trying to achieve, that s a really good place to start, just start to craft out what that means.
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Yes.
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It s all those two things that you just mentioned are all, this is where I think we talked earlier about where people are going astray, that those are all externally focused.
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They re not internally, so it s not what my software does.
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It s the situation across the table that you have this specific issue that my software makes that issue better or go away or something like that, right?
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So I wrote down, I m going to steal a line from the, or a section at least from the challenger sale methodology that I m a fan of.
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I think that the challenger sales are very, very buzzy.
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I like its theory.
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It s a little short on tactics.
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But there s one element of that.
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One of the core tenets of the Challenger methodology is teaching and educating people.
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And we talk about that, Bill, and I usually talk about through the lens of creating your own personal brand, which we also did in The Insider.
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And I think one of the gifts that we bring to people is an outside perspective of things they may not even know.
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exist in terms of a problem or a solution.
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So for me, if you re thinking about what, what element of messaging can you add to or kind of filter yours and look, go, okay, I really don t talk about that.
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Think about what you can teach somebody in a very short period of time that they may not know about.
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You don t have to go through, it s not like you re jumping on a whiteboard for 45 minutes.
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But you can, you can even say, theoretically, with as part of your messaging,
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one of the things that we do, we find that when we get into companies or organizations, we are able to bring outside perspective in and shine lights on blind spots that most of our clients didn t even know they had going in.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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So that some of that s uncovered in the sales process, some in the solution or implementation phase.
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But that s a thing on a level one, I think, what are you educating the
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What are you noticing?
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What s great about salespeople is you re out talking to people all day, every day.
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Like you said, you call on dentists, you got ideas.
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And so you say that, you might say part of your messaging is I really try to look for ideas from other dentists that I talk to and share those with others, you know, free of like violating, you know, NDAs and competition problems and stuff.
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But, you know, with good intention to try to share those things around.
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That to me is a level of what can you bring and share?
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What knowledge can you bring and share to others?
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So you just said something that,
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is really important and you just kind of glossed over it, Brian.
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You did that earlier too, and I didn t get a chance to stop you.
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I m going to rewind the tape.
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It was the same.
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Okay, go ahead.
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Because you said something earlier, I m like, that was so good, and we just kept going.
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Yeah, the rewind is that,
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You said you re solving problems that people know they have, but you re also solving problems people don t know they have.
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Correct.
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And so when you show up, I remember the old style of selling was show up with nothing but a pencil and a piece of paper and don t bring any brochures.
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Just go in and start pumping questions.
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Well, tell me.
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Yeah.
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What do you lose sleep over at night, Brian?
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What are your biggest problems around here?
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But if a person experiences problems they don t know they have because there s no awareness of them, you ve got to be the person that exposes that.
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I had a client the other day who was calling on somebody at a large hospital.
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They were talking about my client s services in the hospital.
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And the client, the prospect said to my client, said, well, you know, we ve hired five people over the last two years, and not one of them has worked out.
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So let s wait.
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We ve got a person right now we re going to hire.
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And let s wait until he comes in and gets settled.
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And my client says, because he s well-trained, he goes,
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Well, that guy s not going to be here in three months.
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Why would we wait?
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What s going to be different with this guy?
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And I thought, and his name is Mike, and he was really, it took a lot of courage to say that, but it s the truth.
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And so I don t know where I was going with that other than that s the problem.
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The problem is you re waiting on somebody to come magically solve the problem when the solution sits right in front of you.
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So sometimes you have to bring the light, shine the light, bring awareness on things that people don t,
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They re not privy to because they re too close to it.
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Yes.
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And in the past, I feel like that was kind of taught as confrontational or negative.
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And now I think it s massively valuable to others when someone could come in and say, have you thought about this yet?
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Or I think people love that.
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They love that.
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Done tactfully, obviously.
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Yeah.
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Not in a patronizing way, not in a you re an idiot way.
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But with really good intention behind it, I think people really, really appreciate that.
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Well, and I think he thought, this thing is over.
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If I don t say that, this thing is over, because then he s going to say, no, call me back in six months, and it s going to go nowhere.
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So once it s over, once you re detached from the outcome, you can say those things.
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And it was the right thing to say, and they re now proceeding forward.
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One thing that we ve talked about before is this idea of the iceberg, the iceberg theory,
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There s conscious problems that the customer has, which are on top of the water, but there s a whole lot more underneath that they re unaware of.
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And if you can, and I think that is one place Challenger is really good, if you can educate people so they, after you educate them, they say, well, geez, we got that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I never knew there was a solution for that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right, right, right.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s a good model is just think about there s conscious problems they have, and there s unconscious problems.
1
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The big money is in the unconscious problems that you can expose.
1
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No doubt.
1
SPEAKER_01
I had a second one here.
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And this is another thing if you re just listening to the podcast today, and you re thinking, Okay, what can I get from this to help me with my messaging, we re trying to give you some things to do.
1
SPEAKER_01
If you want to go deeper and really work on it, we re going to do that in our next two insider episodes.
1
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So you need to become a member to do that.
1
SPEAKER_01
This next one is you need to make sure my opinion that your messaging has some boundaries around it.
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Because I think it s real healthy, both for us and for the customer, the consumer that we re talking to, that they understand where our good work starts and stops.
1
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For instance, would be when I m talking to somebody, I don t do engagements at companies like Eli Lilly that have 5,000 salespeople.
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SPEAKER_00
That s not where I play.
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SPEAKER_00
Um, that s not where I really choose or want to play at this point in time.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know that I m the best person to serve them and what they need at scale, you know, with certified trainers and a whole bunch of workbooks and stuff and all that jazz.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if I m speaking to someone and they have, you know, 5,000 salespeople, while on one hand that might be kind of appealing, you know, get big dealitis and go, Oh my gosh, that s not what I do.
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This is not what I do.
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SPEAKER_00
And there are some companies that do that really well, and I m not one of them.
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So I think it s really important to have boundaries to talk about.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we talked about the problems you do solve and people you do work with.
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I think it s good to say, here are things we don t do.
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SPEAKER_00
Or like another phrase I ll always use is, and I think, Bill, you re in the camp with this also, is Bill and I usually don t do life rafts, I ll call it.
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We don t do companies that are like, you know, burning, almost ready to go under file bankruptcy, come in, try to save the day.
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Most of the firms that we re drawn to, and they re drawn to us are already really good, high performing people that want to be that much better, and want to modernize and systemize and, you know, make it make it better, but it s not like super, super broken.
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Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
Excellent.
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SPEAKER_01
Another thing that I think you and I look at, and I don t think this is necessary for every salesperson listening, but what s the culture of the company?
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Because if the culture is defeated, if the culture is toxic, that s a great word today.
2
SPEAKER_01
Love it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, it s not a great word, but it s a word that s thrown around a lot.
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You might, if you re selling consulting or coaching or something where that matters to you, then that s a good place to set the boundary.
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Because you re qualifying them just as much as they re qualifying you.
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And they ve got to prove to you that the culture is worthy of you and I, or our listeners.
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So that may be another way that you can define the boundaries.
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Here s who we work with.
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Here s who we don t work with.
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Here s what we do.
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Here s what we don t do.
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Now the customer is extremely clear about where they can put you and insert you in their business if there s a reason to.
2
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I know all of our millennial listeners, when we say the word toxic, they only think of Britney Spears.
2
SPEAKER_00
One of her really one of her key high shirt topping hits.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it s called toxic.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s called toxic.
2
SPEAKER_00
OK, good.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
When I think of that, I think of Ellen DeGeneres now because Ellen s work environment, although what s interesting is a lot of people have come out and said, no, I mean, I m not a big fan of Ellen.
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SPEAKER_01
I think she s funnier than heck.
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But I said, you know, I tweeted the other day, I said, if we were all that concerned with toxic workplaces, we probably wouldn t ever use the iPhone because of Steve Jobs.
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We would never have an iPhone, because that was a, I mean, from what I read, it was a toxic workplace.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you don t like it, get the hell out and we ll find somebody else.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, but that s not a defense of toxicity.
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SPEAKER_01
That s just a, it s an old, old guy.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s such a bad word though, isn t it?
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SPEAKER_00
If you were going to be called anything like work-wise, the worst thing you could be called is toxic.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right?
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, seriously, there s not a worse word, in my opinion, to be, you know, like, and when you think about it, what, you got relationships are toxic, work environments are toxic, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
You have toxic shock syndrome.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s a really, really bad thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
So nobody wants to be labeled.
2
SPEAKER_01
Totally.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you had tested positive for COVID, you would have been toxic to me.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, they ve got a toxic work environment over there, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
They ve got COVID flying around the place.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s scary.
2
SPEAKER_01
OK.
2
SPEAKER_01
So if you liked what we talked about today, as Brian says, go to advancedsellingpodcast.com.
2
SPEAKER_01
Insider, some videos there.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re so inclined, we d love to have you.
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SPEAKER_01
And our next two months, starting August and September, are all going to be about messaging, crafting it, which we re going to talk about first, and then delivering it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So hopefully you can make your way over there.
2
SPEAKER_01
Brian, anything else for today?
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that ll do it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Everybody needs to go be a member of the Insider.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well worth your time and money, I promise.
2
SPEAKER_00
See you.
2
SPEAKER_00
Bye.
2
SPEAKER_00
Bye.