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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, we take our turn at a new feature at Advanced Selling Podcast, the best sales advice I ever got.
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Bill and I give you ours and reminisce about some old leaders from our past who influenced us.
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And by the way, Bill needs help finding one of his.
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The Case of the Lost Sales Advice.
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Hope you can help.
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Enjoy.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest-running sales training podcast in podcast history.
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I am one of your hosts, Bill Kasky.
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The other one, Brian Neal, here.
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We are happy you re with us today.
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For those of you who are fairly new to the podcast and who have got a lot of new listeners that come in willy-nilly throughout the year, we release every Monday at 6, between 6 and 7 AM.
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And we like to, no, we do, don t we?
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Yeah, I just wonder if people are sitting there in the morning watching the Countdown Clock.
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Have you gotten your advance on my podcast?
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I got to get a workout in before.
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Exactly.
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So we are glad to have you.
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And last week, we celebrated our 15th anniversary of the podcast Inception, which happened in 2006, in the October time frame.
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And so we are glad you re here.
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We are going to, do you want me to tee this up?
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Yeah, go ahead.
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No, go ahead.
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So we decided here a couple of months ago that we wanted to reach out to some other experts in the field of sales and marketing and achievement and get some of their advice on some of the things that they were taught when they were younger or over the years that they thought would be helpful for our audience.
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So we ve identified a handful of people.
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We ve already interviewed several of them.
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and ask them a simple question.
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What s the best sales advice you ever got?
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And sometimes they will give us a little bit more than that.
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Sometimes they talk about sales advice they ve given.
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But some of these interviews have been really eye-opening.
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And so there s a lot of really good people.
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Do we want to share a couple of those people?
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I don t know.
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I kind of want it to be a surprise.
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I want it to be a surprise.
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So over the next few weeks, you will start getting extra episodes.
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that will be us interviewing.
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Some of these are short, some of these are a little longer, and we may play some clips of it for the general audiences too, but watch your feed for these best sales advice ever.
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And then to kind of kick that off, we re going to do our best sales advice ever.
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Brian has a couple, I ve got a couple.
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and kind of tee this whole thing off.
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But I think you re going to enjoy it over the next couple of months, because it s really good stuff that we ve learned.
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And it really helps us to get to know some of these experts, because we really didn t know some of these people before.
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And most of them are good people.
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And know that, because we get asked that.
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Exactly.
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I think all.
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We get asked, who do we follow?
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Who do we listen to?
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This group that we got, Bill and I handpicked.
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So we started with a big list.
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We narrowed it down to, we ve done six, we ll have done six here after today.
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And so these are people that we ve selected on purpose for a different voice and people that we admire and respect.
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And something s funny with Bill.
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Can we tell the story about the guy who?
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No.
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No, I wouldn t mention by name.
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Oh, sure.
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We can say that.
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We did have one guru person that we both admire, maybe admired, and had a little technical difficulty, which really didn t seem to be a problem for him.
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Anyone else but him, right?
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So we were seven minutes.
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Well, anyway.
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No, it doesn t.
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Yeah.
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Everyone else was there.
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Everybody else made it with the same link.
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But anyway, and that was the end of that.
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And so that s it.
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So didn t want to reschedule.
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So anyway.
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Yeah.
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And you know, this is a thing.
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New voice of the podcast.
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If you have someone that you like, admire, you can shoot us a note over.
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Put it in the LinkedIn group.
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Maybe we ll put a little chat in there for people you would like to hear from.
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We will track them down interview them where we ve got a really nice platform here.
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Most people would enjoy to be on the podcast No guarantees.
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We re gonna again.
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It s kind of a hand-picked selected thing.
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This isn t like a free-for-all Do you want to have people go to the LinkedIn group and share what sales advice they ve gotten to kind of invigorate this?
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That s a nice little thread
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get lots of stuff.
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So go to our, if you haven t already connected with us on LinkedIn and join the group, go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash LinkedIn.
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That ll take you right there.
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Join the group.
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We ve got 12, 13,000 people in that group.
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And so we ll have a couple of posts here when we start this endeavor to have you tell us what s the best sales advice you have.
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So Brian.
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Tee that up.
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Here we go.
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Why don t you go first?
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We ve got a couple.
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I ve got a couple.
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Alternate.
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And then we re trying to give the source, but we ve got a little funny story out there here in a second.
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That s OK.
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So my one, first, this comes from the guy sitting next to me.
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Best sales advice I ever got from Bill Kasky.
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I was in this business.
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Bill invited me in to work with him and for him.
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And I was struggling.
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I wasn t closing anything.
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And my behavior was wrong.
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I was doing the wrong.
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I was like a professional visitor.
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I was having a bunch of meetings.
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They weren t spitting out anything.
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I don t know if you remember this or not.
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You said you need to have a yellow calendar all the time.
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When you look at your calendar, it needs to be yellow.
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So what you do is you open up your calendar.
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This is back in the days of paper calendar before written calendars.
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Every page you flip, every week you turn over should be yellow.
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And the reason it s yellow is because you said, I want you to go through anything that s an actual end user sales call, do a yellow highlighter on there.
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And when you flip the page over, the whole thing should just jump out at you yellow.
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I was like, I never thought of it that way.
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I just had all my meetings written down, but I didn t have them categorized or anything.
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And I think that s one of the best pieces of sales advice I ever got.
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And I ve used it since.
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So was the yellow, if I remember, it was the yellow brick road kind of idea that this was a closing call.
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Yes.
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It was a closing call.
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It was the end.
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We can get a thing.
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We get a decision.
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Get a deal.
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Get a deal.
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And to this day, I think about that when I look at my calendar.
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And I m not selling as much as I used to, but still am.
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And I m looking, OK, what do I have?
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What do I have cooking?
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And the visual s a little different these days.
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I like that visual, though.
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The paper calendar, because if I was honest with myself when I turned the thing over before that conversation, there wasn t much yellow in there.
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It s like, no wonder you re not closing deals, because you re having a bunch of rando meetings that aren t moving or coming to fruition with anything.
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Yeah, I think that s good that you said that.
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What that did for me when I used it was it just made me more mindful that there has to be a decision point in the process, whether it was yellow or blue or whether it was highlight or not.
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It kind of brings your attention to, oh, wait a minute.
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I m not really thinking about getting deals here.
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I m thinking about having, like you say, professional visitation calls.
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So yeah, that s good.
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That s good.
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That s really good.
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Here was a piece of advice that I got, Brian referenced it in the intro.
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I cannot recall where I got this, whether it was from a book or a human being.
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So if you actually gave me this advice, you listener, and you re hearing this, and I can t remember, just text me and let me know that I will attribute it to you.
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But, and I ve taught it off and on for the past few years.
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In fact, I had a guy last week in a coaching session from one of my groups, he called me and he has just changed his whole attitude about prospecting because of this little simple thing.
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And that is, typically when we go out to prospect, we think of it as something that we re going to get out of the action.
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Like we re going to get an appointment or get a sale or get an advanced sales process.
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And what we ve talked about in the past is you ve got to enter that process of prospecting with a sense of obligation that you are obligated to share with the prospect your story or your value or ask them questions to find out if there s any way at all you can help them.
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And if there is, great.
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And if there isn t, you really do have to walk away.
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It s not about, well, there is or there isn t, and you re going to try to make it so it s
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you know, they re a prospect.
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No, you re just saying, these are the issues I fix.
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What are some of the issues you have?
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Do they match?
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If they do, let s talk further.
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If they don t, we can move on.
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But it s a sense of obligation that I think goes along with that, that frees you up and allows you to shoot more LinkedIn video, do a podcast.
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I mean, we kind of feel that here.
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If we were to miss a couple of weeks, I think we would miss the sense of obligation that we have for our listeners.
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No doubt.
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And so that obligation, I have no idea where it came from, probably a book.
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It sounds a little spiritual.
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I m not suggesting I m a spiritual dude.
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I kind of am, I m kind of not.
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But it does have that ring to it.
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So that was the best advice I gave, because it just frees you up to do what needs to be done.
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I like that.
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You can t lose if you act out of a pure, good sense of intention and obligation.
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You can t.
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I love that.
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Can I do another one?
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And some people think that word obligation sounds burdensome.
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We don t mean it that way.
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It s just, hey, I kind of owe it to people to share what I know.
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So it s not an obligation where it s a debt to be paid or any kind of hostage situation.
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It s just a new way of thinking.
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OK, fire away.
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So this one came from, and it s less of like a statement or a phrase.
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It was more of a thing, a way to be.
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Vic Livesey, Vic Livesey.
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And Vic was my very first sales manager at Procter & Gamble.
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He was an army, a retired army, I don t know if retired is the right word, but he was an army leader.
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And so you kind of picture an army leader.
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So when we remember the good old days of ride-alongs, we did a ride-along.
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Well, with Vic, you started, you met for
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breakfast at Bob Evans, 6 a.m.
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6 a.m.
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Oh my gosh, Vic.
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Remember those days.
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But he was great.
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But what he taught me was, from a work standpoint, effort standpoint, you do whatever you need to do to make the business happen or be right.
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And he taught me both.
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It s a two-headed thing for me.
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Number one, that starting early thing has never left me.
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Like getting up early to work out, to get your day started so much.
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And some of you are like, I m not a morning person, or I am, or whatever.
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And these days, it seems like this little generational, but it seems like everyone kind of eases into the day, right?
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Kind of roll in at 9, get going about 10, take a break for lunch, head home at 3 to let the dog out.
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Get a good 90 minutes of work in a day.
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Exactly.
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Like, OK, whatever.
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Vic wasn t that way.
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That s a dog out.
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Exactly.
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Well, that s the truth.
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But I called on these grocery stores where the main buyer is this role called a head stock clerk.
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And this is like retail.
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They work nights.
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They work nights.
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So I talked to Vic.
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I said, hey, man, is it OK if I work nights?
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Because he s like, absolutely.
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Do whatever you need to do to get the business done.
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And so I would do that.
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And the great thing was I didn t have to wear a suit.
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I could go in shorts and a t-shirt.
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And I would leave my house about 10 o clock.
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I d go call these guys from like 11 to 2 in the morning.
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and killed it.
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Not because of me, but because Vic gave me the permission, the encouragement, I m like, do it.
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Go ahead.
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And probably you didn t see a lot of other salespeople there.
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None.
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Zero.
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There were zero.
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That s what I loved about it.
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And that little extra effort, and you think, well, that s crazy.
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And then I would sleep in, of course.
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So I m like, hey, I worked 11 to 2 last night.
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So then I did.
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Party from 2 to 5.
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Exactly.
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Get some shut eye.
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Head to a banger.
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Yeah.
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I didn t call them bangers back then, but you know how it goes.
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Yeah, so your advice there was you just do what it takes.
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You would do what it takes.
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And if it s not conforming to the traditional, that s OK.
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It doesn t matter.
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That s the big lesson to me, was that everyone thought, well, I ve got to go at 730, put my suit on, go in my company car, and do that.
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And Vic s like, no, I don t care.
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Go ahead.
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Work at night.
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Just get it done.
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And it worked.
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And he was a- That s kind of a military thing.
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It is, yeah.
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He was a great leader that way.
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He was really, really good.
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Because he was also very in the lines.
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compliant, but also gave me the space and the ability and the encouragement to find new unique ways to get business done.
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So I appreciate him.
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I think he s the director of personnel for HR for the Cincinnati Reds, I think.
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Really?
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Vic is, I think.
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Well, we should tag him on this.
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Great person.
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I should.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Let s see.
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My other piece of advice came from a guy named John Condry Okay, and John actually might be a listener of the podcast and I haven t talked to John in many many years I see him on Twitter occasionally we message back and forth, but John was one of my coaches early in my career and He was one of the most
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he had a knack for articulating difficult subjects.
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And if I had a prospect and it wasn t kind of working, he would say, well look, here s what it should sound like.
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And I can remember he would always just, it would flow.
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And I never recorded any of those, because at that time, that was 30 years ago.
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We didn t have any easier recording equipment.
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But I would love to have captured, because he just always had the right words and the tonality and the right context and the right cadence.
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I would be scribbling frantically trying to write down
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But he was just awesome at just, and one thing he taught me is, look, separate the issues.
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You ve got two issues.
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You ve got the issue of, do they have a problem that they want to solve?
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And the issue of, what do they want to spend to fix it?
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And a lot of times, we get those conflated.
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Well, I want to do it, but I don t have the money.
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And he always said, let s separate the issues.
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Take money out of it, just for the discussion.
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And then we ll reintroduce money based on it.
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And the trick there, the strategy was find out what the problem was, find out what the problem is costing them, and then introduce money to the equation.
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And John was always really good with language.
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Just a really good coach and he was always very eloquent, not just eloquent, but peaceful.
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It was always a very easy conversation.
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Yes.
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I love that.
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Even just, let s just separate the issues.
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Sounds so easy, doesn t it?
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Yeah.
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Let s just take them one at a time.
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Yeah.
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Let s go this one, then that one.
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Yeah.
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There s no pressure.
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There s no angst.
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There s no neediness.
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It s very thoughtful.
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It was all very thoughtful.
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Very good.
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Yeah, very basic.
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What s his name?
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John Condry.
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Where s he now?
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Do we know?
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He s in Provo, I think.
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Oh, really?
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Or Salt Lake City.
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Hi, John.
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I mean, it s great that he s a listener.
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It s good that you get these.
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I think he is.
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Yeah.
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I ll send him a copy of this.
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I love it.
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Yeah.
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So what s interesting is that people from our past that kind of we ve forgotten about, when you start to talk about this, and that s what we might hear from our listeners, too, is on LinkedIn, don t just give us the advice, tell us who gave it to you.
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Acknowledge that.
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I think that s great, yeah.
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And I think we d be amazed at how many people may, all of us, all of you listeners, you ve left at some point some mark on somebody that you have no idea about that might come back to you also in this thing.
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So it s a really, really good karmic thing to do here.
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Best sales advice I ever got.
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So we re going to have several of these, by the way.
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So go to the LinkedIn group.
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We ll have a little chat there.
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Put your own sales advice in.
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Pay attention to your podcast feed.
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These are going to be coming out through the week, not on Mondays.
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Best sales advice ever got from a handpicked group of experts that Bill and I love and admire.
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And then if you ve got some suggestions on people you d like to hear on the best sales advice ever got, go ahead and tag them.
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No guarantee we ll put them on, but we ll certainly take a look at it.
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Awesome.
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Good job.
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Bye.
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Bye.