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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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The year is 2023 and we are the longest running sales training podcast, podcast history.
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I am one of your hosts, Bill Kasky.
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Other hosts over here, Brian Neal.
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Welcome to a new year.
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I know we received some where are you emails because we missed a week there.
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Typically, we will take a week after New Year s off, but we took an extra week because, hey, this voice work is hard.
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I mean, it s hard to sit in a studio and entertain you guys.
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Well, I like to think we lead by example and you know, you can take some time off.
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It s okay.
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Be with your family, your friends and that sort of thing.
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And, uh, glad to be back though.
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And I m glad some of our people miss us, you know, 120,000 subscribers.
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We have three of them sent us a little hate mail.
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It wasn t really hate mail.
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Like, where are you guys?
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But I like to be able to plan their day around that.
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I m a little disappointed in the, in the numbers there.
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I think about it.
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Some people are still stuck in 2016 binge binge listening the podcast.
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Like they won t get you guys.
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I m in 20 years.
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I love it.
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I love it.
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I love it.
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So amazing.
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2023 that crazy.
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What did we start this in Batman?
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16 years.
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16 years.
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16 years.
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So oh, yes.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Oh, six.
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Crazy.
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Come a long way.
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Haven t we all?
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I don t know.
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16 years later.
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Um, so I had a happy new year, by the way, I ve got, um, something that gets mentioned a lot.
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So I m kind of a nerd with stuff like this.
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So I was reading the constitution.
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weird thing to do, but a lot of people like to reference the Constitution.
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My experience is most people that reference the Constitution haven t read the Constitution.
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They know the paragraph and the item, the section number.
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But there s a thing that comes up, you know, about, you mentioned a lot, race, religion, or creed.
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OK?
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All sorts of things.
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We will not embrace religion or creed or anything else.
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Add one.
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What is creed?
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What is creed?
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I didn t look it up.
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I don t know.
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It was a religious band, wasn t it?
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It was a religious band.
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Yes, with Scott.
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What s the guy s name?
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Yes, yeah.
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Real deep voice.
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Scott Stratton, I think is his name.
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Yeah, I had a real raspy.
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But it s one of those things I heard someone say that, which I hear all the time.
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And I m like, I ve never thought I asked my wife, I said, do you know what creed is?
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She s like, you know, I don t know.
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I didn t look it up on purpose.
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I mean, the easy, yeah, the easy podcast.
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I ll tell you what it is.
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Hang on a second.
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But
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Yeah, I don t know.
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We don t know.
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Yeah, yeah.
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I don t know.
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It s just I it made me think of are there things that you say or hear all the time that you ve never really stepped back from and thought about what they are, what they mean.
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That was an example of that.
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I don t have another example of that.
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But I thought that was an interesting thing to
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to think about.
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And along with that, I would encourage everyone to read the constitution for those of you in the United States.
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I think it s great.
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Yeah, it s great.
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By the way, it s free.
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So you can download it.
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People are like, well, it s a, it s a buck 99 on Amazon, but everywhere else it s free.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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No, I think it s it s one of those documents, you know, I m sure there s people out there who will say there s things in there that are old and antiquated and I probably agree with you, but it is a document that has that has stood the test of time and it s written in such a way that it s a it s a document of philosophy and how in perspective and how you how we look at the world and the country and I think I think it s
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Towards reading.
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Yeah, that s a good point.
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I have not read it in a long time.
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It s tough to read, but it s good reading.
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I looked up creed, by the way.
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What is it?
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It says, a system of Christian or other religious beliefs of faith, people of many creeds and cultures.
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But then we don t need to say religion and creed together then.
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No, no.
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Anyways.
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OK, I have a topic today.
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I m ready.
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Can you tell the listeners what s special about this topic?
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Brian was begging me to learn what the topic was, but I said, no, we re just going, I m just going to introduce it and we re going to talk about it.
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And that s the way we re going to begin 2023.
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So there you have it.
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Surprise topic for BNeal.
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I m ready.
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So when you go to Vegas to gamble, let s say you go to gamble.
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I don t go to Vegas to gamble.
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I will say that really clear out loud.
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I do not go to Vegas to gamble.
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Not part of my deal.
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You know, when you go to Vegas and you re going to a casino, that the system is rigged against you.
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100%.
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It s math.
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Just math.
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You can deny it or you can say, well, yeah, but I m going to, you know, I beat the system last time.
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I m going to beat it again.
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Chances are, if you go a hundred times, you re not going to beat the system very often.
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And we know that and we accept that.
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So the system is definitely rigged against us.
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The second rigged system is advertising.
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Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, really any kind of advertising, the system is rigged against the advertiser and for the platform that you re advertising on.
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And you can, if you advertise on Facebook to buy Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads, you ve got to be very careful or you can clean your bank account out because the system is really rigged against you.
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It s rigged for the platform.
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And so we know that.
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And so we ve got to be extra careful.
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So those are my two examples.
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The third pivot into our world here is when you re a sales professional today selling B2B, B2C, B2G, that doesn t matter.
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Is the system rigged against you?
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Interesting.
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The system of buying on the part of the prospect, the system of leadership within your own company.
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And so a lot of times I think we go in, and you and I kind of in similar businesses, we ll go in and we ll help a company grow.
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And sometimes I feel like the system is so rigged against the person that they have to really take a stand to get out of that rigged system and have a chance to prosper and be successful.
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And again, two systems.
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It could be the buyer-seller system, or it could be the system inside your own company.
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So I wanted to pose that to you.
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You may not think it is, and maybe we just talk about it and think about it.
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I feel like there are some elements of riggedness to it.
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I like it.
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So since I didn t get the topic until just now, I m thinking.
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But I m going to just tell you what s I m going to think out loud.
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Yeah.
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I m hung up on the word rigged.
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Rigged.
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I m going to go back to the Vegas example.
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So we say the system is rigged.
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The definition of rigged sounds bad.
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Sounds like you re doing something bad to someone else without them knowing it.
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That s how I feel like when I say it s rigged.
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When the odds of games are posted in public,
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It s very clear.
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And all of the rigging is done with math.
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That s all it is.
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So there s a slot machine says 99.3% payout, which means over infinity, if you put $1 into that machine, you re going to get $0.993 over infinity, which means mathematically, you re not going to win.
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No.
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And it s stated that way.
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So the advertising thing is a little different.
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Because now we re getting into some space where I m not sure really what s going on.
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And it doesn t say what s going to return.
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And we ve got some stats and stuff like that.
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But it s not for sure.
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And then I m asking myself, if the system is rigged, who s rigging it?
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So if the sales process is rigged, the sale buyer process, who s doing the rigging?
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Who s the one setting it up so it s unfavorable for one party?
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Well, first off, I agree with the term rigged.
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I think that s just how I described it.
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But yes, I also say when I talk about this with people is there s not a cabal of buyers who meet every Friday night and try to figure out all the sales people.
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It s not a cabal.
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It s not rigged that way.
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It s more systemically.
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It s just been done for this way for so long.
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that it s rigged, but not in a negative intentional way.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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And what s against us is the math, though.
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The math is against us.
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Now, this to me is a very legitimate thing to talk about.
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This might be a good thing where we turn it directly into sales.
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or any statistics you look up, and we can look up 1,000 different sources, in most cases, you ll see from an opening of a new opportunity to a closing, and you look at closing percentage, is going to be usually in the 20s to 30-ish on average in most cases.
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And then you have some 50s or whatever.
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What you tend to not see is a closing percentage of 98%.
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where you say 98% of the deals that I open, I close.
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Deals open, is that a proposal?
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Let s define that as a first interaction.
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So an open opportunity.
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So some people will open opportunity after the first interaction, some open it before.
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for the first interaction.
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But, and you re saying the closing rate is 30%.
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If you if you do old school third, I think so.
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Yeah, yeah, I would I would probably, as you would, where would you where would you put it in scripture?
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Well, the national average of closing to proposals is 13 1215%.
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That s what you think it s lower.
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Yeah, I think it s lower.
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It s lower.
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Oh,
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Yeah, excuse us, Bill and I are playing card sharks.
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So Brian, do you think the number is 25%?
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Bill, what do you say?
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Well, I think there s, I m going to say lower.
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You ever watch card sharks?
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I do not know.
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I did really card sharks.
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I have no idea.
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You ve never seen anything like shark tank.
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Please watch card sharks.
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It is the great, it is the, is the one game show that requires the least amount of any skill or brain or anything.
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It s like lower, higher.
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You just gotta watch it.
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Sorry.
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Anyway.
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Yeah.
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So I think it s less than I, it s less than unless you re in a business where
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Just opportunities are so well filtered when they pop into the CRM that you re closing 30% of them, but it s high.
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It s low either way.
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It s not anywhere near 100.
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So the math in selling, I think, is stacked against this.
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Just the math is.
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And I think this is where people get hung up, is they forget this, that if there are 100 prospects that need sales coaching from us, from the Advanced Selling Podcast, that are out in the world, in the market right now, and we start talking to some companies, and let s say of those 100, or I m sorry, let s just say there are 100 companies, and let s say 15 of them need some sales coaching, are really active right now.
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We re talking, we can talk to all these.
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You and I can talk to all the 100 companies.
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We don t know what order they re in, though.
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We don t know which 15 need it or don t.
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To me, where people miss is with each of the 100, each conversation, the salespeople are looking and trying to get the yes for these versus efficiently finding the 15 in the quickest manner possible.
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Working through the list of 100.
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Yes, more quickly.
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And that s where I think the system works against people because they spend way too much time trying to make a yes versus filtering out efficiently and effectively yeses versus noes.
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I was watching, have you watched The Chosen?
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It s a spiritual, it s about biblical stories and
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It was written by a guy.
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Well, anyway, it s a whole Netflix series.
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And it s really good.
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And I m really interested.
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I don t know much about the Bible and the Bible stories.
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And I know some people talk about it, kind of like your Constitution.
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Some people talk about the Bible stories like they ve read it.
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And then I think, do you really know that?
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Because you didn t use the right language.
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Some people talk about them like they re there.
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Yeah, right.
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Well, Moses and I were sitting on the shore.
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And this movie is basically, it s about Jesus and a lot of the interactions he had with his disciples and the general public.
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And he said something interesting that made me think of sales.
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They ask him, how are we going to convert all 5,000 of these people, sir?
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And he goes, oh, no.
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We re not trying to convert all of them.
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We re trying to find the ones who are inclined to convert and convert them.
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There you go.
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And I think it s the same thing that you re just talking about.
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Find the 20 people of the 100 who are the most inclined to want to hear more and have a problem and share with you.
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And then from there, the 15 will pop out really easily.
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That s great.
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That s great.
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Yeah.
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And that is just so much of the sales coaching that is in the ether these days.
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is geared around finding ways to get people to become converted versus filtering out and finding the ones that are ready.
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That may be the system that s not in our favor is how we ve been trained and coached.
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That s probably another element.
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I never thought about that before.
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Absolutely it is.
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And together, and I think that s one thing that Vance Selling Podcast hopefully does is offer clarity in these spots where you feel like there s something that s not right.
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We re kind of off.
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And how many times have we heard people say, man, you ve changed how we sell.
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You ve changed my business life.
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I m more confident.
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And I think it s because we re at the intersection there of the system of buyer-seller, the system that you are operating in, and the system of prior training.
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Yep.
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I think that s where we offer that spotlight.
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Yes.
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And I would love to, in January, and some of you will listen to this later, but whatever month you re in, um, I d love to hear a listener who s hearing me say this for accountability reasons, go post this in our LinkedIn chat room is tell me the deal that you opened up, had a conversation or two with, and the buyer wanted to continue and you stopped it.
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I want everyone to post the deal.
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Like I did that, like I had to be thousands of thousands, but there s not.
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Cause if the bot would salespeople, if the buyer wants to continue sales, people are like, okay, yeah, let s keep going then.
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I want to know the one where you, the buyer wanted to keep going.
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Yeah.
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Like, this is great.
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And you re like, you know what the love here, what you re saying, I m going to call a timeout and tap out here.
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And here s why, you know, that s what it is.
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Right.
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And then move on.
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That tells me that you re executing what Bill and I are talking about today.
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Cause you can t tap out on the street.
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Who is that?
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Oh, I took my grandson to a Krav Maga class.
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Krav Maga is self-defense.
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It s a self-defense class up in Fishers.
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And he s six, and he wanted to go.
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And so we went to four sessions.
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They were free.
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And their saying is Krav Maga, because you can t tap out of the street.
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I didn t know that.
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Now I know.
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What is it?
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Krav?
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Krav?
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K-R-A-V.
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Krav.
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M-A-G-A.
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Maga.
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Not Krav Maga.
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It s Krav Maga.
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Krav Maga.
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Unfortunate branding.
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Yeah, it was fine until 40.
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Whoopsie-daisy.
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Yeah, I don t know.
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Anyway, so I like this idea of talking through this and arriving at a better word than rigged system, and then discovering through the discussion that sometimes maybe it s our teaching, our prior teaching that has led us astray, and that has created systemic problems in how we sell and how we see the world.
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But I think those three things
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are really important.
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I know we re at time, but now that s got me thinking, too.
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What about the managerial structure of a company?
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Right?
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That was two.
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Yeah, there was three.
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That was one.
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Yeah, see that, right?
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Oh, you said that.
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Yeah, I forgot.
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I mean, that s the kind of same thing, right?
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Where all of a sudden, we ve got managers who are on our tails to make numbers because we ve got softening the funnels.
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And boom, here we come.
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And I m all for parts of that.
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But are we asking ourselves, OK, what s the best way to fix that?
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Right.
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and I think the best way to fix that that s been taught is wrong.
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I agree the best way the way people fix that is double down on it.
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Yes that just makes it worse and almost every high achieving salesperson that I coach and train in my programs
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Not everyone, but a lot of them have that issue where they have a manager that all they care about is the number.
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And they will say, oh, no, I care about your well-being.
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But they don t show it.
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They may say it occasionally, but they don t show it.
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And so you managers, in this time where there s a lot of chaos in labor markets, you will lose good people if you re not paying attention to anything else but the numbers.
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You have to pay attention to everything. 100%.
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All right.
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Good first show of the year, Bill.
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It s good.
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Bring in the heat early for the surprise topic.
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OK, go to our LinkedIn.
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Everybody put in the deal that you said no to that your customer want to say yes to.
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Put that in the LinkedIn.
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Advanced Selling Podcast deal.
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Yeah.
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See if we get any.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t think anyone s got, you know, the gumption to do it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I do.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think it ll be blank.
1
SPEAKER_00
I d be one of the three people who ask us exactly where were you guys.
1
SPEAKER_00
All right.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s it.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right.
1
SPEAKER_01
OK, bye.