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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I make a confession and clear my soul, Bill becomes increasingly jealous of my velour blazer, and we record from a remote speaking gig and share with you secrets to preparing for a killer sales meeting.
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Welcome, everybody, to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in sales training podcast history.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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I am Bill Kasky.
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We are remote.
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We re on location today.
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If you hear background noise, that s for a reason.
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We are in Raleigh, Durham at a gig, as we like to say in the business.
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We re working with one of our listeners down here and recording the podcast live in a lounge setting, sober.
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Right?
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We re in the lounge, but we re not drinking.
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And there s construction on.
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Well, Travis, our producer Travis, informed us that there were little mini bottles of booze in his little fridge.
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They re $10 each.
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I think he had six of them last night.
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So we re actually losing money on the gig, but that s OK.
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Hey, if you want us to come visit you, send us an email, listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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Put in the subject line, come see us, and we will make that happen.
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If you see it, if you hear a jackhammer, you don t see it.
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But if you hear a jackhammer and a concrete saw underneath this, then that s what s happening outside.
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And what s interesting is we re getting ready to start this gig here in a couple hours, and they started this morning.
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And as soon as they started inside, those guys started with the concrete and the sanders and the jackhammer.
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So anyway.
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Yeah, and you feel bad because those guys are working really hard.
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They re doing their job and that sort of stuff.
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I m trying to think of other sounds louder than sawing concrete.
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I m not coming up with anything.
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There s not much.
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So I have a confession and a correction to make.
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I was watching a video by Gary Vaynerchuk, friend of the show.
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We love Gary.
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Officially.
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We ll call him that.
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Does he know that?
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But I was watching an old video.
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Someone asked him a question and asked Gary V from several years ago, do you ever watch any of your own videos or listen to yourself?
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And his answer was, no, I don t.
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I just do my thing.
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And occasionally his video producer will have him look at something for editing, but mostly he just puts his stuff out and just keeps putting it out.
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And I m the same way.
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People say, do you listen to your own podcast?
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And the answer is, I don t.
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I don t listen to our podcast very much.
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But I was at breakfast by myself the other morning and just putzing around on my phone.
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I m like, you know what?
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I think I m going to grab an episode here.
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So I turn the episode on.
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This is the confession part.
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And I push play.
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And during the rant, 45 seconds in, I said something that I thought was funny.
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And when I heard myself say it again, I start uncontrollably laughing at myself.
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Hey, the server, I was by myself.
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She s like, what are you laughing at?
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And I m like, uh, I m laughing at my own joke on my own podcast.
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No vanity here.
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Exactly.
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But it was kind of funny and it just got me giggling a lot.
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But then I realized it was the episode where I talked about the voices, our voices changing.
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We were talking about listening to old podcasts.
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Did our voices change?
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And I mentioned an episode from the Brady Bunch about a voice changing.
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And I kept saying that it was the Bobby Brady voice changing episode.
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That s incorrect.
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It was Peter s voice who changed, I believe, in the episode.
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I m listening.
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I m like, that s not right.
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So if I m a listener, these guys don t know what they re talking about.
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This is fake news, fake podcast, fake Brady Bunch episodes.
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So I believe the episode was Peter Brady s voice was changing.
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And that s why they had to.
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changed their song.
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You can sleep at night now.
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I can feel better.
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You corrected yourself.
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I am clean.
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My soul is clean.
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Think about the value, then, of listening to old podcasts.
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We can catch our mistakes.
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See?
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So I m going back through 06.
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I m back in 06.
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I m binge listening and fact check everything.
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That s terrible.
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So our topic today, we thought that since we are doing a gig here in a couple of hours, and it s about a four hour, I think we ve got four hours on stage, Brian and I do, and we re going to be working with a group of about 50 people.
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We re going to be doing kind of a headline, keynote thing, and then we re going to break up into some groups.
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We thought it might be interesting for you all, especially if you plan things like this, to know how we go about thinking through
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the sequence of events and how we think about events like this.
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And so whether you re putting them on or whether you re sitting through them, we thought it might be interesting for you to hear how we do it.
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Yeah, and as I was preparing for the episode,
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And I m looking at the items as I m writing them down.
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I m going to my saying to myself that more noise that your pants dropping in the background.
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This is great.
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I love this.
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Nobody heard that is that this this is great.
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Just preparation in general, because the things I wrote down, I m like, you could this could be for a sales call.
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So this this one really can run the gamut.
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You can use what we re going to talk about here.
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I think for I m preparing for a sales call, you can also use it for preparing.
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for a sales meeting, so you re a sales manager, VP of sales, you could use it for that or lots of other situations, I suppose.
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So you want to start, and then I ll chime in?
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I ll start.
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Sure.
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The first thing I did was I went and bought a new sport coat.
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It s a beautiful sports coat.
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We re speaking to a group.
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that is kind of a, let s just say they re kind of like, they re not fancy, but it s a design-oriented group.
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And so I bought this kind of velour, kind of smoking, Hugh Hefner smoking jacket.
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No, my fiance bought this for me.
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And with clothes, I m one of those guys, I buy clothes, I never like them, never.
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And they have to kind of sit in my pocket.
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I hate, oh my gosh, I hate them.
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And so then I have to let it sit, and it sits, and then I get okay with it.
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Well, and then what happens, I put this on, like four people the night I had it on, like, that s a great jacket.
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That s a great jacket.
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Steph s sitting there going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
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Yeah, so you win.
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Anyway, I did buy this jacket, not for this gig, but I think it ll go well.
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So first thing I wrote down, I m stealing from Bill.
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You might already have this, because it was your idea.
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This was Bill s idea earlier, was deciding what the message is going to be from us.
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And our message in this deal is transformation.
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And I think the lesson there is you have to understand very succinctly what it is you want from an outcome standpoint.
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And as we talked through our prep today, we came up with this idea that the theme is transformation.
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So you need to have a one-word theme or a one-word intention, a big one that says, OK, everything can point back to this thing.
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I think sometimes when people are prepping for gigs like this, they try to jam 400 little bite-sized pieces of information
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into the time.
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Guilty of that sometimes.
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Yeah.
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And to me, if all we re going to talk about thematically is transformation, everyone can hang their hat on that.
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Yeah.
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It s good.
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We can always go back to it.
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It s really good.
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I like that.
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I had something similar written down, which is what s the big idea of either the meeting or the presentation or the sales call?
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What s the big idea?
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Because then everything, like you say, can surround that big idea.
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You can t have nine big ideas, though.
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No.
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It s just too many.
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No.
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Agree.
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My next one was, it s the mindset of, am I adding value?
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I was listening to John, who s the leadership guy, John Maxwell.
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John Maxwell, yeah.
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He s written 57, no, 74 books, and he s sold 57 million copies of them.
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I mean, this guy s prolific over the last 40 years.
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We ll call him a friend of the show also.
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He s a friend of the show, yeah.
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And he brought up something, and I think we ve talked about it on the podcast.
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He said, everything that I do, I want to be thinking, am I adding value?
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Am I bringing value to whether it s prospects, client, a group like this?
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And I think sometimes when we make presentations and do gigs, we forget about that a little bit, and we start thinking about, okay, what s the agenda?
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How s the PowerPoint gonna work?
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Instead, we just have to say, look, we could talk about one topic for four hours, and it could be awesome, and if we re bringing value, we don t need PowerPoint.
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No, you don t.
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So how are you bringing value, how are you adding value to that person s life regardless, or as my dad used to say, irregardless.
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Irregardless.
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He used to hate that.
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When somebody would say, he would like call them out.
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You just said that s not a word.
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Okay, all right dad.
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So are you adding value regardless of what comes at the end?
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Yes, that s really, really good.
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And so many people, when they plan meetings like this, do not think about that.
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They just kind of go do their own thing.
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My next element here I had in preparation for a sales meeting or a gig or a sales call is this idea of listening and hearing, listening and hearing.
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And one of the things that we did, if we ever came and did a gig for you, or when Bill and I start new engagements, we do lots of listening and we work really hard to hear what we re saying.
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So we did a survey.
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So we got, gosh, about a 90% return rate on our survey for this gig.
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And it s just the salespeople saying, hey, here s what I would love some insight or some input on or some help on.
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And then we did the survey.
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Now, here s what a lot of people do.
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A lot of people will do a survey, and you ll never hear about it again.
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Well, Bill and I, the first thing we re going to do in this gig is we re going to go to the survey results.
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And we re going to say, here s what you told us you wanted to talk about.
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That makes people feel heard.
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When people feel heard, they feel valued.
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And it speaks to your second one there, which was I think we re adding value.
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So that s my next point of preparation is listen and hear what people are saying.
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And I like that because of what you said earlier, that even if it s a prospect call, what do they want to accomplish?
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What are they wanting to hear from you?
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And I don t think we ask that question enough.
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And they will always have something.
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And that s a great way to begin the conversation, is before I get going into my stuff, tell me what you want to hear today.
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And you ll be surprised.
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They may have thought about you and what you re coming in to talk about more than you think they have.
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And it d be nice to get that on the table up front.
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It s your turn.
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My turn?
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That was my, yep.
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My next thing is that I listened the other day to a guy who talks a lot about learning.
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I call him the guy because I can t remember his name.
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But he talks a lot about learning.
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The guy.
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And one of the things.
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Friend of the show, the guy.
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We re going to make it.
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It wasn t John Maxwell.
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Go to theguy.com and get your free autographed picture of the guy.
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Actually, we call him the learning guy because he specializes in learning.
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But he said, knowledge doesn t create behavior change.
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And I think, and I know that on the podcast, we deliver a lot of knowledge.
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We re constantly talking about expertise and frameworks and tips and things like that.
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And those of you who take this and actually go do something with it are the ones that really succeed.
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So we get emails from people who say, hey, I ve been listening.
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It s caused me to be the number one salesperson.
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Well,
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The challenge is that the knowledge didn t do that.
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It s the action on the back of the knowledge that did that so you have to take the knowledge and go do something with and I think when you When you have a meeting or have something where you re delivering a lot of knowledge whether it s through PowerPoints or lecture you need to stop occasionally and ask yourself how am I helping them activate this knowledge by putting it into use and
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And even stopping and saying, OK, we just talked about this for 15 minutes.
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How are you going to use this in the next week?
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I love that.
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Put them on the spot and see, how are you going to use that?
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Or you could even ask the question, who learned something?
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And whoever raised their hand, they re a candidate for, what are you going to do with this?
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I love that.
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I might even today, this crowd better be ready.
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I might even do that in the room.
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Instead of saying, what are you going to do with this?
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I m going to say, go do it.
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Go type that email out right now and go send it while we re sitting here.
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You know?
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Like, oh, jeez, you guys are serious.
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Send the guy in the velour red jacket.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Hard arse.
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My last one, and I think this is as much of our own mental preparation, and there s some tactical elements too, but you have to plan to be engaging.
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And by engaging, I m not saying persuasive or anything like that.
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But you have to go at people.
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When you ve got a room full of people or a sales call, you have to energy up and be engaging.
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And you have to have that first starts with you.
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And you have to feel the vibe.
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And everything s got to go up, I think.
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Your pulse will go up a little bit, your energy, your posture.
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And the next thing, then, is you ve got to have tactical ways to be engaging, too.
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Like we talked about, one of the fun little things that I ll do sometimes in a group like this is people
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Give me a really good answer, and I ll actually give them $20 cash.
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On the spot, take my wallet out, boom, here s $20.
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That creates engagement.
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And if you ever want a group to be engaging, start paying for them to participate, and they will.
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So it s really just a bribe, as all it is, but it works.
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So who cares?
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It s expensive.
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Yeah, be engaging.
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I don t think we have that much margin in this.
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Yeah, we don t.
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Well, Travis drank all the booze in his little fridge.
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So yeah, we owe them.
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It s like the scene in Blues Brothers, right?
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Billy Bob s?
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Yeah.
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He s like, well, you guys drank $480 worth of beer, so you owe me $300.
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Anyway.
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I remember the first time, I think I stayed in a hotel on spring break.
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I don t know when it was on spring break.
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And we had no idea that the booze was charred.
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So we thought, look at this.
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This is awesome.
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They stocked our whole fridge full of booze.
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Our best Western at that time.
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All right, if you want us to consider coming out, visiting with you, we would love to talk to you on the phone.
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Just send us an email to listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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In the subject line, put something like, come see us, and we ll get the ball started rolling, and we ll talk to you a little bit.
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We ve got four or five engagements here in the next month or so, so we re looking forward to it.
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Road warriors.
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See you next time.
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Bye.