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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I share with you what it s like to referee a football game with nobody in it, Bill stumps me with an old piece of audio equipment trivia, and we talk about how to be a good practicer.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, Podcast History.
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I m one of your hosts, Bill Kasky.
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I m the other one, Brian Neal.
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Thank you for listening each and every week.
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We appreciate you being with us.
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And I know we ve had some listeners since the outset, 16 years ago.
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Has it been that long?
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2004 wasn t it?
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Or was it for 13?
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Maybe it s 14 years ago.
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Six thousand two thousand six fourteen years ago I think we re coming up on our 14th birthday because it s September.
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It is maybe it s today.
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Who knows?
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Let s look knows.
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I have to figure that out.
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That s a good we should have a celebration I don t have a birthday So we re really glad that you have been with us some those of you who have been with us since the beginning the rest of you
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We are glad you re with us now.
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Yeah, and we ve got a big LinkedIn group.
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So go there and visit.
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We put stuff, things that you need to know about in the LinkedIn group.
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We ve got the Insider program, which we just had last week.
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We worked on story and positioning statement work.
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We did some practice sessions.
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It was really, really great.
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If you were sitting, listening, thinking, man, I d love to get some live coaching from Bill and Brian, just go check that out.
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AdvanceLinkPodcast.com slash Insider, I think is where you can
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Get some info on that.
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We have such a great group.
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And every time we get done with that group, I m like, man, this is really good.
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I bet some more people would really benefit from this.
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So go check that out.
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It s really, really cool.
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And then let s see.
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I had my first football game reffed in front of zero people.
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That s weird.
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It was different.
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I m just going to tell you it was different.
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It was interesting.
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They play an ambient noise in the stadiums where there are no people.
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So there s just sort of like it s, but it s 70 decibels.
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It s like limited.
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OK.
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And you can t really hear it.
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And it s really weird, because you can literally hear everything.
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You hear the players, and the coaches, and the hits.
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It s just interesting.
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But I did see one of my fun things to do is to go to Twitter, and I search for NFL refs on Twitter after games.
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And people are very funny.
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And the guy, someone put up there, he said,
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these referees with these masks or the, what do you call the gators?
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Yeah.
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Which I wear on the field.
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He said, why does it look like all the referees are getting ready to rob a stage, a stage coach, a stage coach from the 1890s?
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It s hilarious, because that s what it was, right?
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You d see the guys on their horses with their little pistols getting ready, and they d pull their hoods up, and they d go, take down the stagecoach that had all the money in the back.
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That s true.
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It s hilarious.
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People are just funny.
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They are.
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Twitter is a, it s going to be a cesspool, or it s going to be very funny.
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Actually, I only go there for humor.
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I don t really do anything else.
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There s some pretty funny things.
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So all right, we re going to talk today a little bit about practicing, because we thought, you know,
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Salespeople, this is my commentary here, by and large, salespeople do not like to practice.
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They re like, oh, I m a gamer.
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I m in the game, right?
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I don t need to rehearse.
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I don t need to practice.
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They just don t like it.
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They think it feels uncomfortable.
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And they think, well, it s not real.
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So you can t practice if it s not real, all this jazz.
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They don t watch any other performance anything.
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And all they do is practice.
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That s all they do.
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All they do is practice.
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What does Bo Eason say?
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It s 40 to 1 hours of practice to play.
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It s not even close.
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So we re hoping, as you re listening to this, that the light will go on for you that maybe, maybe practicing is a good thing.
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So if we re going to be practicing selling, what makes for good selling practice?
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And we talked a little bit about the backdrop of even like practicing the first call.
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So what do people do?
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What do you do as a listener to practice an initial sales call with someone who doesn t know you?
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And so we thought we d rant about that a little bit today and talk about what makes a good practice.
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I think one thing that we learned in the Insider program, we break up into small groups, and then we practice things.
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And last week, we practiced messaging.
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I think when you have a group of people who are listening to you who are totally unbiased, they don t know you, and you have someone who doesn t know you listen and then give feedback, it can be very powerful because many times we re talking to people that don t know us.
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Yeah.
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Rather than having your manager or a peer critique what you re saying or how you re doing it, that feels like they got too much skin in the game.
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Yes.
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But when you have an unknown, unbiased observer,
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There was a lot of lessons.
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There was a lot of learning that came through there.
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And a lot of times, here s what we found, is that we found that what you thought you were saying and meaning was not at all what the audience was taking out of what you said and meant.
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It was totally different.
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Completely.
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And that s why we think practice is so important.
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So here s one thing that I would recommend on practice.
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I think you should always record yourself.
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And just on your phone or just, you don t have to have, you could go out and buy a vintage reel-to-reel tape recorder.
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You could do that.
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Cassette or?
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No, no.
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Video?
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No reel-to-reel.
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Video?
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Oh, audio.
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Audio reel-to-reel.
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Audio reel-to-reel.
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Where I hit that little thing down there?
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Exactly.
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What is that thing?
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The little stopper thing?
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Then you have to have a splicing kit.
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Anyway, I think it s important to record.
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And so if you are getting ready to, let s just say, do a first call, or you ve got a full day of outbound cold calling, go ahead and take the first 30 minutes and just record yourself.
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Listen to how you sound.
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Make modifications.
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But I think there s no better way to know what we sound like than to hear what we sound like.
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That s true.
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There isn t.
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And it s painful, but it pays dividends.
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You don t have to let anybody else hear it.
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But just, I want you to hear what you sound like when you re making these calls.
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Yeah.
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And you know what?
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It s painful till it s not.
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And if you do it all the time, it becomes not painful.
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And you look forward to it.
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I m going to have a good practice session today.
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I love the idea of recording.
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It s really, really good.
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So my first recommendation is, so I agree you should record yourself always.
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Second, you have to, this sounds so tactical and it is, you have to set time aside on your calendar for practice.
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You do, if you look at a salesperson s calendar,
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you re going to see a whole bunch of time for other things.
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Admin time, prospecting time, rarely.
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I guarantee any of you listening, if you can show me a screenshot of your calendar without adding it, I should give someone like $100.
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I ll demo you $100.
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Yeah, now I m going to have like a billion.
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But literally, like whoops.
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What happened to the advanced selling podcast?
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Well, they went bankrupt because Brian promised $100 to anyone who can show him a screenshot.
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That s Brian s promise.
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Practicing time.
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Good point.
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That s a good point.
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That s a thing.
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You ve got to set time aside.
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So I d love it if, after someone listened to this, writes us back and go, you know what?
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After you guys talked about that, I put 30 minutes every other week aside just for practice.
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Then you ve got it slotted.
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Then you ve got some space for it.
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I mean, think about you take part in NFL practices during the fall training.
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And think about how many hours a day those guys spend working on the slightest of moves.
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You watch Dak Prescott when he s out getting ready for the game.
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He does that thing.
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Well, that s a dance.
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You know the dance, the Dak dance.
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But that s actually a move that he makes.
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I mean, he s just practicing.
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And it s constant.
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And yet, when we re in sales, we just go to game day.
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That s it.
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Go to gaming.
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The whole time.
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Yes.
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Here s another thought that I had.
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I love that one.
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Let s say you re practicing your messaging.
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Let s say you re practicing this idea of when someone says to you, well, Brian, tell me what it is you guys do over there at your company.
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You re on now.
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It s show time.
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You ve got to deliver some value in some language If it s something like that, you need to Record it and get it transcribed.
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I ve said this before this is not new a new tip But get it transcribed read over it and then you can make changes and modify it almost like a script for a movie Yes, you know every
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When they re changing the script for a movie, they don t just say to the actor, hey, try something else there.
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They say, no, you know what?
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We said this last time.
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We re going to go this direction this time.
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Here, read this.
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And I think we need to do the same thing.
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We need to be a little bit more intentional about our language and our words and what we say and not just wing it all the time.
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Correct.
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I just saw a little, I ve never seen the movie, the movie that s about Facebook.
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What s it called?
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The movie s about Facebook.
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Social network.
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Social network.
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Yeah, social network.
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I saw a little clip of the shooting of that.
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And they were on this desk, and the director cut it.
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And there was a desk scene.
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He came over, and he moved the computer.
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He goes, OK, I m going to go here, and I want you to turn a little bit this way this time, or whatever.
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It was itty bitty, but I m like, but that s what happens, right?
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You ve got to write your script down like that that we did in our insider session.
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No, this wasn t.
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This was a different client.
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But we talked about the idea of the difference between the words same versus similar.
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Yeah, we did.
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You brought that up.
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OK, yeah.
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We did talk about the insider.
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So see what you re missing on that.
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the insider.
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But that was a big deal.
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And then we had small groups on the insider that were getting together.
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And like you said earlier, people saying their messaging up front, and the group going, I didn t understand it, or just was, you know.
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And it s painful to hear when someone says, I didn t know.
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What were you talking about there?
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Well, I knew exactly what I was talking about, but if the other person doesn t, so.
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And the problem is, your customers and clients are not telling you that.
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They re not going,
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I don t really understand what you do.
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They re going, oh, OK.
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And they don t understand.
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And then they don t call you back.
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And you re like, oh, I wonder what happened.
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But in the coaching session, you re like, you confused me there.
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Yeah.
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And I think that especially for messaging or positioning or explaining your value or your offer, those are all very important places to practice and rehearse and script and repractice.
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Throw away all the stuff that didn t work and man if you I always think about Jerry Seinfeld, you know I just sure that when he would come back from a club and something worked or something didn t he would go through it and he would
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go up to the mirror and say, we re going to try this again.
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And he would just completely practice until he s on stage.
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And it just looks perfect.
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Absolutely.
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Because it s all rehearsed.
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Yes.
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And it doesn t look like it s rehearsed.
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It doesn t.
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No.
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That s the beauty of it.
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My last bit of advice here on practicing is I do think you need to practice in scenario form.
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So the scenario form could be generically even first call, messaging up front, practice that.
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To me, even better is practicing with a conversation that you re going to have.
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And you look up the people.
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You kind of find out about their personality, their background.
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And then practice in reality.
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So again, when you see NFL players practice, they practice scenarios.
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So they literally, at the end of every NFL practice, they do a two-minute drill.
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And they put, OK, it s 1.38 left in the game.
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We got one timeout.
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We need a field goal to tie.
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That s a real scenario.
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And they practice it.
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And then they practice scout team.
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So it s all real stuff.
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So the closer you can get to real, the better when you practice.
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And sales leaders, we ve just given you 10 ideas for great sales meetings.
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So if you re a VP of sales, sales manager, regional director, this is great stuff to practice.
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Don t call it role play.
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No.
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Call it practice.
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Correct.
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Because it is.
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That s exactly what it is.
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Role play, to me, says it s fake.
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It says it s fake.
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Practicing is not fake.
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It s not.
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People think it is.
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It s not.
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Well, thanks for listening today.
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If you have not gone yet to check out our insider program, go to advancedsellingpodcast.com forward slash insider.
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Get some detail there.
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There s a couple of videos I think you might enjoy, and we will talk to you next week.
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See ya.