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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I share a humorous dialogue between a little boy and a Brit, Bill suggests a candid camera version of Advanced Selling Podcast, and we interview Mike Schultz, co-president of Reign Group, who shares some surprising stats that you won t want to miss.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales podcast in the history of podcasts.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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I m Brian Neal.
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Welcome back to another episode.
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We are glad you joined us.
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And a couple of things before we get going today.
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Our LinkedIn group remains really active.
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So if you have not joined the group,
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Make sure you do so immediately.
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We ve got, I don t know, almost 9,000 members of that now.
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More than, I think.
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Some really good conversations go on there.
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And also, if you have a question for us that you d like to ask and have us stumble around with the answer, you can send it.
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And we prefer a voice memo.
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So record your question on a voice memo.
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Send it to listener at advancesellingpodcast.com.
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And if we use your question, you will get a little treat.
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A little treat.
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You ve got to send us your physical address.
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Now, I m going to even edit what you said, Bill.
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Not just a voice memo, but a high quality audio voice memo.
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Not just any voice memo will do.
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So if you ve got some flip phone, Android device, or one of those pocket digital recorders you get at Best Buy.
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And I m the guy, you ve got to get it through, too.
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Audio s just not quite right on this one.
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Yeah, let s bag this.
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All right.
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So I was, we have a lot of listeners in the UK.
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Lots and we ve been over there a couple times saw several of them.
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They re wonderful people over there, but I heard this is interesting I heard a young Lad young man, probably seven eight years old say something very demeaning to his dad who happens to be from Britain and they were sitting at the counter at this breakfast place I go to it padded you you ve probably heard of that restaurant here in
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This was here in Indianapolis, and they were sitting a few people down, and I just couldn t help but hear this little kid.
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He was having a great time, breakfast with his dad, that s really neat.
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He said, Dad, you know what?
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He goes, I wish you were born in America.
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And his dad s like, well, why is that?
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Because the guy s from Britain.
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He goes, because if you were born in America, you d know a lot more about sports.
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And I felt so bad for the dad.
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I m like getting thrown under the bus by his kid.
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And then I thought, our British fans surely know lots about sports.
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This kind of assumption that he had.
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That s funny.
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Which isn t that great?
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And the things that they have.
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And I just wonder where that came from.
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Did you say anything?
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No, because I m guessing, you don t know, probably, because here s what the dad said.
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He goes, I know a lot about sports.
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I know about cricket.
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I know about football.
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It s really, really funny.
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It s just funny when kids say stuff like that.
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Kids say great things.
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It s just hilarious, isn t it?
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And you know what we need to do?
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And I was thinking about this talking to you.
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I ll just talk about it on the air.
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We need to do a segment of this show called Observed, Observed in the Field, where things like this,
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Oh, yes.
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I just observed something at Starbucks the other day.
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I was sitting next to a lady who was interviewing a guy for a position.
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I don t know if she was a recruiter or what she was.
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And he was fumbling.
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And some of the things he said were just hilarious.
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I wrote him down, so we ll get to that some other time.
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It d be a good segment, though, wouldn t it?
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It d be a great segment.
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It would scare the hell out of people sitting around coffee shops and stuff.
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Like, are Bill and Brian around me?
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Like, we re incognito, sunglasses.
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Well, we ll start with just things we observe, and then we ll move into recording it.
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That s the next phase, which is, do you mind if I shut this microphone?
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And then we ll move into telling people we re recording it after that.
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We ll record them first, and we ll tell them after the fact.
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That s really good.
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This is a great, great time to be a salesperson.
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We mentioned that in the last podcast.
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And if you are someone who says, hmm, I wonder what my value is like in the world.
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I wonder what my other options are.
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I want you to check out CenturyLink.
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CenturyLink and Level3 have actually joined forces.
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And as they claim, they are digitally transforming the world, which sounds like a really, really cool thing.
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The New Century Link is hiring sales experts nationwide right now.
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If you re a top sales performer and you want more out of 2018 than you got in 2017, you re sitting there going, man, maybe there s more something different.
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Maybe you ve stagnated in your current territory.
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You want a more high level, high paced
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a technology gig, CenturyLink is the key to ascending your career to record levels.
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Take the first step and visit centurylink.com slash advanced selling and join the talent community there.
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A member of their team will be in touch with you to discuss what the future looks like.
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Go to centurylink.com slash advanced selling and go check it out now.
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You won t be disappointed.
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Okay, special guest today on the podcast.
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We have a gentleman by the name of Mike Schultz.
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He s co-founder of Rain Group.
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They re a sales research company.
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He just came out with a study here a few weeks ago on buyer behavior and selling behavior.
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And we thought it would be really interesting for you to hear it.
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So here s the interview with Mike Schultz.
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Well, Brian, we have a special guest on today s podcast.
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And you know, we don t do a lot of outside guests or interviews.
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No, it s hard to get in.
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It s hard to get in.
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Tough ticket.
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We get a lot of people requesting to be on.
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We get a billion.
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We do.
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We probably get one a week, I d say we get on.
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At least.
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And this one came through.
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And Mike Schultz joins us today.
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Mike is with RAINN Group, R-A-I-N, a global sales training and performance improvement company.
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And he has some really interesting thoughts and stats to share on a sales research study that he just came out with that RAINN did here in the last, basically, the last few weeks.
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So Mike, are you there?
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I am here, gentlemen.
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Awesome.
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Well, thanks for coming on today.
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Tell us a little bit about Rain Group and who you are, and then we want to get into some of the stats and some really interesting stuff that you found out, and I think our listeners are going to be really interested in that.
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So, fire away.
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Uh, sure.
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So a little bit about me.
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Let s see.
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It all started when I was five and I read in search of excellence.
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That started me down in Braille.
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Yes.
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In Braille.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Hebrew, Hebrew.
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I like to do things.
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Uh, so let s see.
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Uh, let s start with, with rain group and then we ll do a little bit about me.
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So, uh, rain group is a sales training and performance improvement company.
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We re founded in 2002.
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I m here in our Boston office.
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We also have offices in Geneva, London, Mumbai, Sydney, Janisburg, Toronto, and Bogota.
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And we work companies across industries with a complex sale, tons that you would have heard of, like Apple and Hitachi and Toyota and Deloitte, and then a whole bunch that are great companies that aren t quite so big.
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For myself, I run the company, but the individual contributor work I do, I don t fly around selling and delivering anymore, but I do run the Rain Group Center for Sales Research, which we started about 10 years ago.
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And it was mostly because a lot of selling advice is from guys that have done it, done it well, seen a lot of people do it, and said, here s what works.
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uh... and a lot of it is experience in opinion-based a lot of work but we found when we did the research that we found different things from the conventional with them up all of the you should and so we could keep well let let s take a look at the more carefully so uh... a lot of failed training uh... sales training programs are from someone who wrote a book twenty two years ago and they re trying out the book well what a fail itself and buying it
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has actually changed.
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Unless you are putting the dipstick into the oil here and pulling it out and taking a look, then you might be leading people astray.
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So a different thing about Reign Group is that we have the Reign Group Center for Sales Research.
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Its primary function is to serve to improve our programs, to make sure that when we re giving people advice, we mean that it s current and modern.
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And we also don t really have a position to defend because our position is whatever the research shows is going to affect our program.
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So we love it when we find something that we said eight years ago is no longer true because we can be ourselves up to date for our clients.
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So that s a little bit about us and a little bit about the research.
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So first question is, do you have any Patriot jokes, Brian?
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No, no, no.
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I leave those.
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You re going to skip that.
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No, the one thing that did strike me, though, when I heard all the locations, Mumbai, Johannesburg, I was listening.
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I was waiting for Green Bay, Iowa City, Moline.
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Like, where s the headquarters in the Midwest?
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No, it s good.
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Go ahead, Bill.
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OK.
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Let me ask you a question, you know, you ve done this a lot You ve been at this for a while and you co-founded the company.
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So the question is Generally, what surprised you about your findings here?
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We ll get into the details.
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We just are there some general Comments or notes that you would have about this study and what really shocked or surprised you if anything Yeah, sure a couple of things and again the surprising parts are when I
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Everyone says something and then you take a look and you see something completely different.
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Let me give you a couple of examples.
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One is that we have heard from people like the Corporate Executive Board that 57% of the purchase decision is complete before a customer calls a supplier and serious decisions said that.
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67% of the buying journey is now done digitally.
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So what I think happens is that many sellers assume that buyers don t want or need to talk to them early in the buying process.
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Well, we found the exact opposite.
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The time in the buying process that these buyers wanted to hear from the sellers was the absolute earliest time.
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So 71% said, when I m looking for new ideas and possibilities to drive stronger results for my business, I m looking for ideas.
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And then it went down from there into the 60s and 50s.
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So one exact opposite.
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Buyers actually do want to hear from sellers.
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They want to hear from sellers early.
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I ll give you one more, and then we can keep diving into a bunch of other things.
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So one of the most common article titles is that cold calling is dead.
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You publish cold calling of dead and everyone hops on and argues about it.
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People look at it.
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We re hopeful.
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Well, uh, so missed number, we, we, we called that missed number two.
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Uh, we asked how to buyers prefer to be contacted, uh, and how to buy or say sellers actually connect with them.
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Uh, I would have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 different ways that buyers can be contacted.
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The number one way that they prefer to be contacted is email.
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And number two is phone, with about 50% saying they prefer to be contacted by phone.
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So yeah, sure, I mean, it s great to see an email, but they are literally sitting by the phone, and 82%, 82% of the 488 buyers that we talk to take meetings with sellers that reach out to them at least sometimes.
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So everyone says, oh, you can t get through to people, and it s impossible to set meetings.
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at least not according to the buyers, and also not according to the 489 sellers that we talked to.
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Some were seeing a lot of success.
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Yeah, really, really good stuff.
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Mike, I got a question about that particular element here.
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When you talk about it, so I always look for things, first of all, that validate beliefs.
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And I ll give you and your group kudos.
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So one of the things that you do for people like me is you give me stats to prove what I already believe, because I m one of those guys that s opinion experience.
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trainer teacher.
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And it does work.
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I use the stats of the scoreboards of my clients for that.
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And this is great research.
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So when you talk about the, how can you take these statistics now and take them actionable for our listeners?
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So we ve got a group of, we get 150,000 downloads a month where people are listening.
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They re salespeople, sales managers, leaders.
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If your research says, you know, 82% of buyers accept meetings by sellers who proactively reach out to them, what do you then do in terms of advice for my listener, for our listeners here to say, okay, here s what the listeners should do.
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What does that mean to them?
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How can they put that in action?
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We went through about 2000 pages of data tabs, and have several hundred individual comments across, across a number of different questions to summarize it.
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And our summary for the big picture headline advice that sellers should take is that one, their mindset, regardless of their skill, regardless of their value, their mindset was a huge factor in whether or not they were successful.
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The second one is that they shouldn t just
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Grab a phone book like 20 years ago when I started doing this.
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You grab a phone book or a directory and you grab a ruler and you slide down and you make calls.
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You call everyone once and that s it.
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And you try to set your 20 minute meetings to go through your capabilities.
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Well, that doesn t work anymore.
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Most buyers, I think it was something like 51% of buyers, expected to be contacted more than five times before they actually reach back and make a connection or accept a meeting.
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So number two, after having a winner s mindset, is to run an attraction campaign.
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And I don t mean this like marketing, like you re sending out a seven sequence spam email where, insert name here.
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I mean, you re actually reaching out to a person and trying to draw them into the seduction of a conversation with you.
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The third thing is value.
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When the buyers perceived the messages the sellers to be sending them to be of value,
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the offer for why they should have a discussion with them, that they d have value in the discussion, and that they had actual, they received value from the initial sales meetings themselves.
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If those value questions were answered higher, the sellers were much likely to be more successful, and the buyers were much likely to take meetings and purchase.
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And the last part came down to core skills, and we called it execution.
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So with execution, there were two parts.
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One, it was those core skills.
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If a buyer says, sorry, I m busy right now, do you know what to say?
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Can you write a competent email?
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The second part of execution and being able to just get these meetings and do well with them is to manage your time and day.
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We found a massive amount of distraction at people s desks when it came to prospecting versus 10 or 15 years ago.
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And again, when I got started prospecting,
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It was quiet.
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You could hear the clock ticking.
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I had a computer.
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I don t remember if it had internet right at the start, but if it was, there was nothing on it.
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So it was quiet.
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I didn t have texts.
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I didn t have Slack.
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I didn t have Facebook.
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I didn t have LinkedIn.
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I didn t have text messages.
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I didn t have all these kinds of things.
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So I sat there and I focused.
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Well, now the lack of focus is absolutely crazy.
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So your ability to execute in the zone and actually just get this work done,
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we found to be a big determinant of success.
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So, just to summarize, it s WAVE.
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Winner s Mindset, Attraction Campaign, Value, and Execution.
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Awesome.
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Good acronym.
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We re speaking with Mike Schultz today.
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Mike is co-president of RAINGROOP, R-A-I-N.
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What s the website for RAINGROOP, Mike?
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It s RAINGROOP.com.
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Okay, just as I suspected.
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I want to get to this question about sellers who bring value win more sales.
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And Brian and I preach on this.
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In fact, we just introduced a training program called the Personal Brand Makeover.
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And a lot of that was about, how are you bringing value to your prospects?
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It s easy to say, well, I ll bring them value when they buy something from me.
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But if that s your attitude, which gets back to your mindset, if that s your attitude, you re not going to get too many first calls because if your only purpose in a first call is to sell them something or start to get them into your sales process, that s not of much value to the prospect.
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So give us some examples that you have seen where sellers actually begin the conversation with buyers with a mindset of value distribution or value conveyance.
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Yes, sure.
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So to support your point once again with research, we studied in a different study a couple of years ago, the buyer s satisfaction with the purchasing process.
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And a lot of that had to do with whether they got value out of the purchasing process.
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Those that said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the purchasing process,
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they were more than twice as likely to buy from that seller again.
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Most people think loyalty is about, I m satisfied with what I bought.
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Well, we found that the actual purchase experience was a huge determinant of having them buy again.
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So you might as well provide value early.
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What were the kinds of things that they valued?
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I ll share with you first the content that influences whether or not they accept a meeting.
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out of, let me count them, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 different offers that you can make or messages that you can give, the number one most influential content type, the buyer said, was primary research data relevant to our business.
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Kind of like what we re talking about now.
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Tied for number two was content 100% customized to our specific situation.
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It wasn t dear insert name.
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I got one today.
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It was dear Mike.
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I see that you and I are both business development professionals.
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Well, I d like to invite like, okay, awesome.
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Great.
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So here s another one.
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And it says the email subject line was LinkedIn connection.
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So I didn t remember this person, so I hopped onto LinkedIn.
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I don t think that they exist on LinkedIn.
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I could find the president of a company on LinkedIn, but I couldn t find her.
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The first one was for me, by the way.
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Right.
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So that was the exact opposite.
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And in fact, that buyers didn t like that.
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But 67% of buyers wanted content 100% customized.
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It shows energy, it shows focus, it shows thoughtfulness.
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And then the third one, which was actually tied for number two,
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was surprisingly descriptions of the provider s capabilities.
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So here we are once again.
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it s been beaten on us.
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Don t do capabilities pitches.
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Don t focus too much on what you do.
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Focus on the 37% ROI.
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Focus on the 10% reduction in blank.
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Focus on the benefit one, two, and three.
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You can get to how you do it later.
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Well, you know, in fact, buyers actually want to scan, do you do something that I think is relevant?
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Because if you do, maybe I ll just call it and talk about that.
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So capabilities was in there with value.
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I ll also add one other
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uh... one other piece of uh... research findings from the from the uh... from the uh... value area so uh... we looked at a whole bunch of different factors of whether the seller focused on or whether the buyers believe the sellers focus on the value they could deliver them whether the sellers collaborated with them whether the sellers brought them new ideas uh... whether the sellers deepen their understanding of their needs and if the buyer said this we called them
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uh... valued driven respondents uh... so they were value-driven respondent the value-driven respondents were sixty-two percent likely to rate their prospecting as excellent very good or good and only thirty nine percent of the non value-driven respondents rated their uh... prospecting effectiveness of excellent good a very good there at least good but it was
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a huge difference.
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Those prospectors that focused on value of the kinds of things that the buyers wanted were significantly, almost wildly more likely to be successful prospectors.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s really easy to understand, though, because if I m prospecting and delivering value, it s a whole lot
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a hell of a lot easier to make that call and to engage somebody than if I m looking for a sale.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s no doubt.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that doesn t surprise me.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s a big swing though.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, we actually found that as well, is that when, and this is from a different piece of research, when sellers believed that their companies focused on value for the buyers more than they focused on being their quotas, so literally,
2
SPEAKER_02
The feeling is that at the end of the quarter, when most sales managers and leaders are beating on their sellers to hit their number, some of them are saying, let s not worry about the number.
2
SPEAKER_02
Let s worry about doing the right thing, making the client really happy, selling them everything that we should, but not necessarily just trying to drop the price at the end of the quarter to make the sale.
2
SPEAKER_02
If they were truly value-driven respondents, the sellers were much more highly likely to pursue top performance.
2
SPEAKER_02
and the sellers were much more motivated to succeed and proud of their companies.
2
SPEAKER_02
So it was huge.
2
SPEAKER_01
Good stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
One more question here.
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SPEAKER_01
I want to take this.
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SPEAKER_01
I m a big fan of taking the data down to tactical.
2
SPEAKER_01
So last tactical question here as we wrap up.
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SPEAKER_01
93% of buyers say their purchase decisions may be influenced by sellers who collaborate with buyers.
2
SPEAKER_01
93% is a lot of them, almost all of them.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell me how you coach your clients and what you would tell the advanced selling podcast listeners to do around collaboration.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so let s even take the,
2
SPEAKER_02
the least collaborative kind of feel of a sales meeting.
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SPEAKER_02
Let s do it as a live sales meeting.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re pitching a demo.
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SPEAKER_02
A demo is almost of its nature a pitch.
2
SPEAKER_02
However, instead of just going in and doing your demo and smiling and saying, Hey, you know, which features do you think are interesting?
2
SPEAKER_02
Or, you know, leaving it to the buyer to say what you hope for, like, wow, I can see we can use it for this.
2
SPEAKER_02
Then we can use it for that.
2
SPEAKER_02
Instead say, okay, I guess I m coming in on, on Thursday to do the demo, uh, with you, Mr. Vice president, do you mind if I talk to someone on your operational team just so I can get the lay of the land of what you guys are doing now.
2
SPEAKER_02
And maybe I can highlight some things that are worthwhile.
2
SPEAKER_02
A lot of them say, uh, yeah, sure.
2
SPEAKER_02
So then you actually have back and forth conversations with some of the folks on the teams there, and you can customize your demo to their particular situation.
2
SPEAKER_02
Then instead of just going through your pitch, which they expect to see it and do the demo, you ask the buyer up front, what s going to make the meeting worthwhile to you?
2
SPEAKER_02
What s it going to look like for, or what do you like when people give you demos and what drives you crazy?
2
SPEAKER_02
And even though it s a demo, most buyers laugh at that, say, that s a really good question.
2
SPEAKER_02
And some say, during a demo, I just want you to show me what it is.
2
SPEAKER_02
And others say, during a demo, don t talk for 40 minutes straight.
2
SPEAKER_02
Let s make it a conversation.
2
SPEAKER_02
You can find out.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s not that you do it the right way, one way or the other.
2
SPEAKER_02
You should find out and start interacting.
2
SPEAKER_02
Now, in the, let s say you re 10 minutes in and say, let me just stop there.
2
SPEAKER_02
Do you have any thoughts?
2
SPEAKER_02
And they say, oh, I think we could use this.
2
SPEAKER_02
We could use, well, how would you use it?
2
SPEAKER_02
What would you do?
2
SPEAKER_02
And you start talking, and then instead of being in the demo, you grab your whiteboard marker and you start writing things down.
2
SPEAKER_02
And the buyer says, well, no, no, no, I think I d do it like this.
2
SPEAKER_02
And you invite them up to the board, and you re starting to both write together.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re just kind of working on it.
2
SPEAKER_02
Now, you re not.
2
SPEAKER_02
They didn t buy anything yet.
2
SPEAKER_02
You re not that far down the path.
2
SPEAKER_02
But what you re doing, if you can even run, and I tried to pick the demo as the feeling of typically the most one-way kind of thing.
2
SPEAKER_02
If you could even run a demo in such a way that you get them interacting with you like this, you create what is called psychological ownership.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s not your staple anymore.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s their priority.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s their agenda.
2
SPEAKER_02
And you start, the more someone works on something, the more someone works with you on something, the more they want to see it through.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s fascinating and it works.
2
SPEAKER_00
Hey, we re speaking with Mike Schultz today.
2
SPEAKER_00
Mike, we want to thank you for being on our show today.
2
SPEAKER_00
Mike Schultz is co-founder of Rain Group.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can find out more about Mike and Rain Group at raingroup.com, R-A-I-N group.com.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Mike, we really appreciate you carving out some time to be with us.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is really insightful and you ve given our listeners a lot of huge value with this.
2
SPEAKER_00
So thank you.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, thanks so much for having me.
2
SPEAKER_02
I know how hard it is to have someone from the outside join you on your podcast, so I m glad I bribed the Major D and he let me in.
2
SPEAKER_01
Awesome.
2
SPEAKER_01
Thanks, Mike.
2
SPEAKER_01
See you, man.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know what I love more than anything about what Mike does is that he puts some facts and some science behind opinions.
2
SPEAKER_01
And what I love more is he reinforced the primary opinions that you and I have in selling.
2
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
Didn t he, though?
2
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_01
set that up or anything.
2
SPEAKER_01
But when he talked about mindset first, I thought, man, that s just so ironic that he said that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he s got database research that says mindset is a great way to start.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that really made me feel good.
2
SPEAKER_01
And for those of you who ve listened for a long time, you know how big Bill and I are about mindset.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so it s just another reason to stay that way.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had one thing, and I d be interested to hear what your one thing, if there was one stat that kind of shocked you.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve got one here starred.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s the buyer who gets value out of the sales process that is two times more likely to buy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Two times more likely to buy.
2
SPEAKER_00
You double your effort, or you double your results, if you would just bring value during the sales process.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s so easy right there, isn t it?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s so easy.
2
SPEAKER_00
And he told us a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
We talk about that a lot on the podcast.
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe we should devote another podcast to that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I think that was a huge number, I thought.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Mine was all about the element that I brought up.
2
SPEAKER_01
This 5 to 10 touches that he talks about, that more than half the people say it takes 5 to 10 touches to get to him.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so 52% of the people said that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what the other 48 said, but it might have even been more.
2
SPEAKER_01
The point is you have to stay persistent in the selling process these days because of the noise he talked about.
2
SPEAKER_01
All the things, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
All the slack and the Twitter and everything.
2
SPEAKER_01
We have to stay persistent in our behavior.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can never, ever stop too soon.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s good.
2
SPEAKER_00
If you want to ask a question of us and have Brian and I answer it, make sure you send the question voice memo to listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we ll be back next week for another episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast.
2
SPEAKER_00
Bye.