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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill talks about his personal assault on fellow IKEA shoppers, I share a sizable, air quotes, pet peeve, and we talk about discovering and overcoming your blind spots.
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Welcome to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in sales training podcast history.
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My name s Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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You know what today is, don t you, Bill?
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It s December 11th.
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It s your birthday.
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It s birthday episode.
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It s your birthday.
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That s right.
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Thank you very much.
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How did I forget about that?
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48 years young today 48 years young while we re young the tradition in my family is we make a yellow cake with no icing because one time when we were Struggling poor we had no money for icing.
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So we had a box hit we re out of it We used to make a yellow cake with chocolate icing and then one time for my birthday.
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We were out of it and
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And my mom felt really bad, because she didn t have any icing, but it couldn t do anything.
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But we did the yellow cake with no icing.
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If you ve never eaten yellow cake with no icing, go do that.
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Just get a box cake, make it as it says on the directions, let it cool a little bit out of the oven, and then just take it, and we eat it on paper towels.
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That s our tradition.
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That s good stuff.
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It is phenomenal.
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I think it s destroyed.
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Yellow cake with no icing.
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So I ll be enjoying a little bit of that.
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Oh, good.
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Well, happy birthday.
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Well, thank you very much.
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Good to be here.
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You ve heard about it.
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And we re really, really proud of that product.
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And I ve got some people already in the program, if you will.
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So glad to do that.
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Oh, you ve got a story that leads us to another topic.
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Well, you have a pet peeve.
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It s not related to the topic, but I ll tell you this.
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I was in an airport coming home from a football game, and I wanted a little sweet treat.
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So there s a Wendy s there, and I had had a Wendy s Frosty in forever.
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And I actually like the vanilla Wendy s Frosties.
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So I go to order it, and I love, you know, it s Sunday, it s after my game.
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I m like, you know, so I order them, and I didn t want to overindulge, right?
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So I ordered a medium.
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So he starts pouring it, and it s in this little bitty, tiny little cup.
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And I m like, I ordered a medium.
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He s like, that is a medium.
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I said, well, I thought that was the medium.
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He goes, that s the large.
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I m like, well, then what s the other one?
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That s the extra large.
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And if you ve not noticed this, certain fast food places don t have small, medium, large anymore.
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They have medium, large, and extra large, or they ll say regular, large, and extra large.
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Why do they do that?
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Does he not know what I wanted?
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And at Wendy s, the small used to be significant.
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It s tiny, yeah.
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Oh, yeah, yeah.
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The small was big years ago.
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Used to be, it s not anymore.
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So I don t know why these restaurants do these sorts of things, where there is no more small anymore.
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I know our consumption habits have gotten out of hand in the United States, because you can go get a 18-gallon Big Gulp of Dr. Pepper now at the convenience mart, where you walk out with a 55-barrel full of Dr. Pepper.
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Well, Starbucks with the tall.
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So tall is the smallest at Starbucks.
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Yes.
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Everybody just kind of leveled up.
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Everybody just leveled up.
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Yeah, like what?
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So just it s small, medium, and large, isn t it?
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What am I missing?
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Anyway, that s a pet peeve.
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It s kind of like the time change.
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We just had the whole fallback time change.
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We did, yes.
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And I know it s been a few weeks, but I always wonder, why do we still do that?
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Totally.
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What is it?
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Because there s all this drama.
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Hey, don t forget this weekend, Brian.
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I know.
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2 AM, man.
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Going to get some good sleep.
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Going to get some good fallbacks.
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Bring it forward.
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Do you feel different Sunday morning?
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Exactly.
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Other than the fact that it s pitch black dark at 4.30 PM now when we drive home from work.
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Yeah.
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Oy vey.
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There s a whole lot of effort there.
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Oy vey.
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Well, speaking of effort, I had a chance to go to our new Ikea store here in Indianapolis.
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Oh, you did.
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Just opened up a few weeks ago.
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Actually, I ve been there twice now.
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I do enjoy it.
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I don t usually enjoy shopping in that kind of form, but they do have some cool stuff.
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And their branding is just really good.
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Yes.
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Really good.
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They ve even got, I may have told you on a prior podcast, when they have a product, they will actually have the picture of the designer down in the corner with his or her name and a little bit about him.
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So now you see the terrycloths or the desks or whatever, and you see the person who actually designed it.
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But I ve got some blind spots in my left eye from all the stuff I had a couple of years ago.
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And when you re in a really crowded space, like Ikea is very crowded still, because it s still something fairly new, is there s a little section over here of people.
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I m all the way to my left here, kind of that peripheral vision.
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You can t see.
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Gotcha.
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You just can t see them.
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And so I m stepping on people.
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And I m 6  5 , and I m 210 pounds.
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And so all of a sudden, I hear people go, ah!
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Oh, sorry, did I get you?
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And I ll be swinging my arms, and I ll hit somebody.
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Creepy man, right?
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See, that happened to you.
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It did.
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You actually stepped on a couple people.
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No, I stepped on people.
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Are they OK?
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And then people would come up on my side, and I d turn, and I d kind of.
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Into them?
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And then what I was doing was I was turning.
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I was always moving like this, because I didn t want to.
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Anyway, so it s got me thinking about blind spots.
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Oh, yeah.
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Good segue.
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And I ve got a, also have a client who several months ago was dealing with this very issue with one of her salespeople.
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And what s interesting about blind spots is, A, we all have them.
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B, because they re blind to us, it really becomes hard for us to accept that we have them.
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So if I said to you, Brian, one of your blind spots is you talk way too much on a call and you didn t give the prospect a chance to even, you ask him a question and then you just finished and you kept talking.
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You would say, no, no, I really didn t.
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No, as I remember it.
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I ask a question, and he was very responsive, and I wait, and you do not know you re doing it.
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And so Brian and I want to talk a little bit about that.
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We ve got some areas that we think you might be experiencing blind spots in, and then Brian has a thought on how you can become familiar with where they are for you.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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This is one of my favorite topics also, because I believe, and as you listen to this, make sure you pay attention to the setup too, because what Bill just said is part of the most important part of this is we all have them.
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Think of someone who says, I don t have any blind spots.
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Think of what that says.
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We all have them.
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And most of them I found aren t intentional.
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So it s not that we re like, I m just going to talk too much because I just do.
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I think that works for me.
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Most of them, they re blind spots.
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For a reason, we don t realize it, right?
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And so it s really important as you get into this topic that you sort of let your guard down here and go, you know what?
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I can embrace the fact that I have these.
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And I think you always will.
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So this is really good.
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So I m actually in a couple of coaching engagements, too, where I m working with two specific people.
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where this is actually the topic, where their managers come and said, this person is not seeing this, and I m not being effective.
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Can you help?
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And so the first step in that s the assessment as the coach, and to say, I don t know if I can help yet, because sometimes they can t be helped, because they don t remit those things.
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In both of these cases, these people were open.
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to some coaching.
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Good.
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So we talk about the process, maybe, of the things that we do here?
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Yeah.
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So the first thing that I always do in this situation if I m coaching someone where we re working on blind spots, one is to get them OK with the fact that these might exist in these two cases that they both said, yeah, OK, point them out to me.
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Then a coach is a great mechanism person to help you reflect a mirror back to you.
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And so we, Bill and I, as coaches, it s our job to say, OK, my job is to help you here.
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My intent s pure.
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It s not to point anything out that s wrong with you.
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It s to show you where these things might be coming out.
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So one of them, you just said it, talks too much and interrupts people.
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In our second meeting, so this is after we did the, are you open?
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Yes, I m open.
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She did it, and I stopped her every time she did it, and I did a little signal.
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And she goes, oh my God, I do this all the time, don t I?
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I said, yes, you do.
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She goes, I ve never ever been aware that I do this this much.
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So we talked for about an hour and a half in that first meeting, because she s remote and she was here for our conference.
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And by the end of that thing, she was aware all of a sudden.
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All through a conversation, how many times she talked over me and interrupted me.
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What a great gift to give somebody.
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Isn t it?
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Because if you weren t there to do that, and a lot of coaches don t want to take the risk of stopping somebody and saying, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
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You just did it again.
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Most coaches would say, well, you kind of did it, but maybe you didn t.
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And I ll send you an email with all.
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No, you just got to do it right in the moment.
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It s the only way people are going to learn.
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It s the only way.
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I remember I had a coaching gig up in Michigan here a couple years ago, and there was a gentleman up there who was really kind of an up-and-comer.
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He was a star, a superstar in the making.
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And his manager said, he never quite finishes the project.
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He always gets a good start, but he never brings it to fruition.
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with the final, the final, final email, final proposal.
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There s always a lot of loose ends.
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And so I talked to him one day and I said, tell me about that.
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He goes, well, you know, I don t know if I agree with that, but maybe I do, maybe I don t, I don t know.
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And literally every sentence he didn t finish.
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He didn t finish his sentences.
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And this is, I mean, we re laughing about it and it s not funny, but I said, no, I see what s happening here.
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You not only don t finish a project, you don t even finish your sentences.
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And he said, I never thought about it.
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And we recorded him on the phone, not finishing sentences.
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And I said, let s listen to these.
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And it was kind of embarrassing and a little shameful, but it was just he and I in the room.
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And like you said, I was there in the spirit of helping.
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But just by doing that, he realized that this not finishing wasn t just a tactical thing with prospects.
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It was a lifelong thing of finishing, whether it s a sentence, a paragraph, a chain of thought, a stream of conscience, or whatever.
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Yes.
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So we re getting into some to-dos here, I think, that are great.
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That s a wonderful way to have someone call you.
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Now, some of you may not have the chance to work with a coach.
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The good news is there are things you can do around it.
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Bill just mentioned one.
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that I wrote down here, you need to find a place for direct, undeniable feedback.
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Undeniable feedback.
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So I steal this from my work in football.
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So when we referee a football game, we get the video of that game almost immediately after the game.
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And we see it from three different angles, two angles that come from the teams where the coaches film it, the other angle from the TV feed.
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So you have multiple ways to watch your stuff.
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The good thing about that is the feedback is undeniable.
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If someone says to me, you stepped with your right foot, I go, no, I didn t.
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And I look on the video, I can t deny it anymore.
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I did step with my right foot, and I should have stepped with my left.
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And so ways to get undeniable feedback in sales is the best way is to record your calls.
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And so many people are scared to do that for the things that you said earlier.
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Face-to-face calls or telephone calls?
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These would be telephone calls, of course.
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You have to telephone calls as best you can.
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And some of you are not in that world.
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But to look at that and say it.
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Do you have to record both sides of it, or can I just record my side?
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Both sides.
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Either one.
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Both sides if you can.
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Some people have laws.
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Some places have laws about that.
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I wouldn t worry about that.
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No, laws are just optional.
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They re a nuisance.
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They re optional.
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So you can record your calls is a great way to do it.
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And if you can t do that, then when you take someone with you to a live call, you have to define these roles.
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We ve talked about this with sales manager ride-alongs.
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If they re in feedback mode and coaching mode, they have to stay out of the conversation.
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The manager does.
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So you got to make sure your manager can handle that.
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Then you, again, get direct, undeniable feedback, where the manager watching you coaching you can write down on a piece of paper
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what you did.
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Yeah.
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And so then the third element then would be to record the practice session.
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So now you can video record a live practice session between two people.
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I put that down here too.
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It s practice role play.
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Yeah.
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And then it s undeniable feedback.
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You go back and watch the tape, and you say exactly what you said and what you did and how you handled it.
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I m a big fan of that.
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I love that.
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And if communication, if you re not sure about your communication style, and you think maybe, maybe you have a blind spot in communication, which I think a lot of us do.
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I know I do and did.
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Hopefully, it s not as big now.
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But just record yourself.
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I mean, Brian and I do this every week, 15, 20 minutes.
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And we ve done this for years.
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And we go back and listen occasionally.
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I don t listen to every episode.
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But I go back and listen, and I hear
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where I m not clear.
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I hear where my voice trails off.
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I hear where we go off on a tangent and we never bring it back.
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I mean, all that kind of stuff is really important.
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And I think if you record yourself, whether it s on a phone call with a prospect or even if you have group sales meetings where everybody s remote and you re dialing in, record the whole thing.
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Listen to yourself, how you present your
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You know your numbers or whatever you re presenting online are on the call I think you ll find that you ll make massive improvement if you go with something that s undeniable.
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Absolutely.
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It s great.
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I think one of the areas that we struggle most in and
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Brian, you and I watch it when we re watching role plays, and role plays aren t exactly the way it happens in the field, but it s pretty darn close, is I think we have a blind spot of desperation.
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We talk about detachment a lot on this podcast.
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We talk about the theory of abundance.
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We talk about showing up.
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not in a state of neediness, but in a state of confidence where you re not the one that needs the sale.
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They, in fact, are the ones that need you worse than you need them.
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We talk about all that stuff, but I find that often we default back, and we get a little lazy, and we get a little needy.
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And I always say that you can have a one-hour call and you can spend 55 minutes in a state of confidence and if you spend the last five minutes in a state of neediness where you re now turning back into that that Needy salesperson.
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Yes, you lose all the 55 minutes of power that you just created.
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That s great.
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So I think that
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If there is an area that is almost universal, I think it s the area that we don t see that blind spot of sometimes our language becomes a little needy, a little self-promoting.
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Yes.
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That s so true.
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And what you said, too.
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We talk about that in football.
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Again, you can work a perfect game for 59 minutes and 30 seconds, and it takes one play.
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to muck up the whole game.
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And it s the same thing in this.
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What you re saying is so true.
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And that, to me, I ll endorse that idea.
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If you re looking for a blind spot to pay attention to that most people have, it s that one, for sure.
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They ll flip back into sales mode without even knowing it, without question.
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It s really, really good.
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Takes a lot of attention.
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So you have one more.
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Yeah, one more.
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So this would be also a way to, this is just another mechanism
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to uncover blind spots.
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And you can engage people in all these different groups.
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You can ask and pull your co-workers and or your managers.
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That s 360 stuff.
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You can also ask your customers, both customers that you ve won and customers that you lost.
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to engage in a short survey, or a questionnaire, or something like that.
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I had a client that did this.
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It was really telling.
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And you have to ask for not just generic feedback, but you have to say, if you were going to share one, and put in quotes, blind spot with this person, something that they are, that they may not be aware of, that detracted from your experience with them, what would that be?
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And so you re asking for the blind spot.
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Because without it, people don t like to give this advice.
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They re not coaches and stuff like that, like Bill and I are.
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So it s uncomfortable for them.
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I like that.
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But if you ask them for the blind spot, you d be amazed at what you get.
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So it s a very, very doable thing.
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You can ask your customers at the one, customers that you lost, and also ask co-workers and managers around you.
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Yeah, that s good.
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Good.
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So we d love to hear from you on this.
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We ll be posting this up to our LinkedIn group.
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And make sure you check out the brand course at personalbrandmakeovercourse.com.
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If you forget about what that is, just look in the show notes, and there ll be a link that goes directly to that.
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Page so you can find out a little bit more and Brian.
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We ll see you next week.
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See you then.
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Bye