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Welcome, everybody, to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest-running sales training podcast in podcast history.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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We are passing the mic.
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We are at mile marker 173.5, 173.5 on Interstate 65, heading north near Lafayette, Indiana, on our way to Chicago for a podcast gig.
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So we re glad you re with us.
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I m actually driving.
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We re passing a mic back and forth.
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We re praying to God that no cops see us.
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Yeah, I had the mic things all set up exactly the way I wanted it, and I thought, well, if this doesn t work, I ve got a plan B. Well, guess what?
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Plan A and plan B failed miserably, so we are back.
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I think this is how we began this thing 13 years ago, passing a mic back and forth.
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I had something interesting or funny happen yesterday.
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I was sitting in my, getting a haircut.
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I was going to say my stylist chair, but I was getting a haircut and the stylist next to her and her customer were talking and you know, you don t want to, you don t want to eavesdrop, but you re pretty close there.
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Yes, I understand.
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So they were talking about a family that had children, and the customer said, oh yes, they ve got three children.
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The stylist said, what kind are they?
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Uh-oh.
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It s a PC alert, not a good question.
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As in like, are they human children or wolf child?
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Exactly.
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I heard that and I m like, now I m anxious to hear how she s going to answer that.
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I kind of figured she meant male, female.
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But what kind are they?
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Your mind could go a lot of different places.
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This is not good.
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This is not good.
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Are you going to say your answer or can you not say it?
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I ll say it.
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OK.
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I m ready.
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Well, her answer was, what do you mean?
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What do you mean by what kind are they?
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Well, I mean, are they boys or girls?
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And she goes, oh, oh, well, you got two girls and one boy.
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But I thought, what kind are they?
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Well, we got two smart ones and one pretty stupid one.
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Exactly, right?
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I got two lefties.
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I got one that says a lot of bad things.
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I got one who s been in jail, one we think is probably headed there.
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Not sure.
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That s really, really funny.
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Well, Brian, before we get to our topic today, have you ever wished you could afford your own executive admin to fill your calendar for you?
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Well, the number one problem salespeople have is booking prospect meetings.
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And if you don t get the front end working, the back end won t work either.
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It s one of those things that gnaws at you all the time.
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You re always thinking about it.
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The opposite feeling of that is when you look at your calendar and you have seven or eight appointments stretching out for the next two weeks, don t you feel good?
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Don t you feel abundant?
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So the question becomes, well, how do I book more first appointments?
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You should know about Chronologic, the world s first calendar monetization engine.
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Chronologic takes leads from every channel, converts them to meetings.
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your pipelines, and ultimately your compensation.
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You can use their technology for yourself and book a demo at Chronologic.
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That s K-R-O-N-O-L-O-G-I-C dot A-I.
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Chronologic dot A-I.
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Take a look at it.
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They re awesome sponsors of the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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I think you ll like what you see there.
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Let s see, we re going to go topic.
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So we were talking in our pre-show, which was between mile marker 140 and 148 in the pre-show.
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Both of us have had deals recently where we, for lack of a better term, opted out or tapped out of.
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And this is something that I think a lot of salespeople, if they listen to the podcast, they re really good at knowing that this is one of the good outcomes that can occur if you do the sales process right the way that we talk about on the podcast, still hard to do and difficult to do.
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Because we like deals, we like the income, we want people to like us and want us and all that other jazz and that gets in the way.
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So it becomes hard sometimes to, again, for lack of a better term, to opt out.
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Whoa.
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As I almost rear end the construction worker.
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Bill gave me, the listeners can t see this, Bill gave me the very subtle, which I appreciate, left point, like, get to the left, dude.
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There s something here.
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It was great.
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That s good.
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So, I m gonna talk about how to and when to opt out of a deal, and what should be present, how we should think about it, how we should do it, and that sort of thing.
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And this is one of the skills that even my long-term clients really, really struggle with.
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Even though they work the sales process the way that Bill and I teach, it can be very, very difficult sometimes to tap out and say, I think I m gonna leave this one alone.
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Yeah, is the person you opted out of with a listener?
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No, not at all.
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Okay, because I think mine is.
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So I got to be a little careful about how, what kind of graphic detail I do this.
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But I did have a client the other day who should have opted out and I was trying to persuade him to opt out of something and he just couldn t bring himself to it.
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So like you say, easier to talk about, sometimes on paper,
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You say, well, this doesn t fit.
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We ve got to do this and this and this and this, and it s going to cost us $200,000 to do this, and at least just betting on the come, it doesn t make sense.
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But emotionally, it s really hard.
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And so why don t you maybe talk about yours, and in the meantime, I ll try to think about a way to talk about it so in case they re listening, they re not too upset.
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Well, if they re listening, maybe it s good for them to hear that, because it s difficult.
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So the first thing I think about if I m self-analyzing, watching tape on myself to go back, is to say, at what point did I start to have the inkling or the little signal go up in my intuition that maybe this isn t right?
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And it actually happened early on.
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So in this case,
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The prospective customer, client of mine, was very, very transparent, which I really appreciated, and said, I want to be very upfront with you.
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We are looking at four different options.
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You re one of the four options.
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And here are the other three.
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He told me the other three, who they were.
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And I m very familiar with all of the other three, very.
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And then you also sort of know where you fit in the other three.
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And so I m like, OK, I fit.
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And what I mean by fit is I knew where I was different, if that makes sense.
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So I m like, there wasn t anything at that point like, OK, well, I can t touch that, or I can t touch them.
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So no, there s some positive differences here.
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And there s some great things.
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And the other three are very, very good options.
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It s not like he s going to go wrong here in this deal.
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But that was the first inkling.
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So I think what
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What I noticed then was I went to how I was different and my intention got a little flawed.
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My intention started to be how can I show him not just how I m different, but that how I m different is better.
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And I felt my energy going there.
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And I felt my language starting to go there.
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And I was trying to be real nice about it and PC about it.
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And I know that deep down, my motives were flawed a little bit.
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I was trying to demonstrate to him that not just here s where I m different from those four, but here s why how I m different is better.
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But I think that s part of being a service to someone, too, is trying to call out some of the differences.
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And I know the way you probably did it was in an unbiased way, generally.
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Look, here s what they re going to be good at.
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Here s what I m going to be good at.
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You choose.
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If you want somebody who s good at that, then I m not your guy.
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So I don t think that the calling out of differences and distinguishing is necessarily a bad thing.
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It s like you say, when you get your intent messed up, and now my intent s to call him out so that he loves me more than he loves them.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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And then, so that was the first thing.
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Then the second thing then got into process.
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And what happened here was, this is where I really started to know.
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So then what shifted for me was, because we got to remember in the sales process, it s a balanced thing.
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Bill, you talk about all the time, the customer needs to sell us.
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We did a podcast on this a couple episodes ago.
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They need to sell us, air quotes, as much as we sell them.
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And so two of the four got eliminated.
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then there were two, and one of the two was me and someone else, and this other group offered a free, air quotes, assessment of the sales team, and said, we ll do this assessment, and it s got a fee to it, but if you choose us, you don t have to pay for the assessment.
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And he told me this after the fact.
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And then I said, well, I can do that.
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And he said in an email exchange later, they offered this first and then Brian only offered it when he found out that they did.
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And I m like, eh, that doesn t feel good.
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And it wasn t that.
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It was just like.
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Was this email directed at somebody else in the firm, and you got copied on it?
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Yeah, this was actually when Stephanie kind of took over the sales process.
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Because I told her, I said, I want to opt out on this deal.
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Yeah, and that was the response back.
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Well, they offered this for.
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It was almost like, well, they ve won this round.
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What are you going to do next?
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Exactly.
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Exactly.
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Like, they ve won this round.
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What do you have next?
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And I m like, this just doesn t feel right.
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Yeah.
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And then he said, so then we kind of re-engaged, and he said, well, we re really deep with this other firm on this assessment thing.
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And that was my cue.
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At that point, I m like, and I know this other firm, and I know, again, where we re different.
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And if they are drawn to that other firm, they are not my people.
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The way that they think and behave, if they re drawn to that other firm,
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That s an indicator for me, a really strong one, that they are not my people.
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And that s when I made the decision to make it easy on them.
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I said, hey, I m going to go ahead and tap out.
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And he was very nice about it.
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He said, I appreciate you.
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I appreciate you being up front.
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And then I said, we can reconnect down the road.
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I ll check in maybe to see how it s going.
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But good luck with everything, and talk to you later.
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Are we in the Netherlands?
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If you look out, you can see windmills as far as the eye can take you, although it s a little foggy today, but there s like 4,000 windmills in northern Indiana chugging out electricity for what?
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Farmers?
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I don t know.
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Yeah, for all the Wi-Fi.
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Yeah, I have a windmill that runs my Wi-Fi at home.
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Yeah, that s a good example of, now here s where I want to go with this though, is the, I don t want to go there, nevermind, that opens up another.
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Well, yours was, you were probably not as wimpy as I was on mine, and mine was that I d worked with this firm for a period of time, we ll say,
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And I was a little frustrated with the group s growth or lack of.
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I think they were probably a little frustrated with me for being frustrated with them.
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You know how sometimes you re like, man, we ve been talking about this for a year and you still haven t done anything with it.
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How many more times are we going to talk about posting on LinkedIn as an example?
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And so I think they were frustrated that I was frustrated.
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And so we came back and talked about re-upping for the next year.
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And I got to be honest with you, my heart wasn t in it.
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I would have done it.
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And that feels bad to me.
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It s like, well, if your heart wasn t in it, Bill, why didn t you tell them my heart s not in it?
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I feel like we ve been spinning our wheels here for the last few months.
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But it s part of that attachment, part of that thing where I said, you know, I m not all in on this client, but their money is good.
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And I do like the people.
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It s not that I don t like their good human beings and all that.
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So I went a little bit and didn t opt out.
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And then eventually they said, I don t think we re going to do it anymore.
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And I know damn well that it was because they they caught a vibe from me.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, we can t hide our vibes.
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But I don t know that that s wimping out, because that makes an assumption that my heart s not in it.
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It s binary.
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Like, it s either is or isn t.
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And I think there s a degree element to that that s there, because we all have different engagements at different levels.
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And you have different clients where you re tighter, and they maybe see you more as a
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you know, the guru or trusted advisor than others.
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And it doesn t make one right or wrong.
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So that s another thing to think about is, what does that mean?
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I think if I do it on a degree level now, they pass the point where you re like, no, it s not right.
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But I think you could have taken that deal in good conscious even when maybe you weren t all in on it.
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It s just like they re not your best.
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Everyone s got their best client.
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Then you ve got some going, yeah, they re good.
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They re not my best, but they re good.
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Yeah, and also, as you were talking, I was thinking maybe I might serve them better by being a little frisky.
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Frisky s not the right word.
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A little edgy.
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Yeah, we are.
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We stopped at a coffee shop right down there and had some good Guatemalan brown.
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Yeah, I know what you mean, but in my heart, I feel like I should have said, look, it s just not working.
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And I didn t.
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And then they said, look, it s just not working.
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And so they got the last word.
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So maybe it was my ego that was bruised a little bit.
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But you also, you brought something else up there, the whole distinguishing and how do we distinguish our value from somebody else who s similar in stature and in scope.
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I still think that the experience we give people in the buyer-seller process serves a lot of that up.
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We can talk about how we re different, but if we re actually demonstrating it, and I m not saying you weren t, but I know I struggle a lot in the sales process.
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How do you really show up differently?
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I mean, we can show up emotionally differently.
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But when someone calls me and wants to talk, I send them out a survey, and I send them out a Calendly link, and we get on the phone, and is that a good customer experience?
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It s not bad, but is there a better way to do it?
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And I think about the prospect experience all the time thinking,
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If we executed an awesome prospect experience, and I m talking to you and I, just generally as salespeople, we wouldn t have to explain our differences because the person would say, man, I don t know what they are on, what kind of drugs they re taking.
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I love working with them.
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We ve seen that from the podcast as we go up to this.
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This is our second show with this group who found us on the podcast.
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And we think about that.
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We get lots of feedback.
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It s like, wow, I feel like I already know you guys, or I feel like I already understand.
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I know what I m buying.
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We ve already differentiated.
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And anyone listening to this can do that in lots of different ways.
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It doesn t have to be a podcast.
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It could be LinkedIn, LinkedIn videos.
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I know there s a gentleman, Don Koontz is a friend of mine.
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And I was in another client yesterday.
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And he s like, we know that guy.
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You know?
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So they just see them around.
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So there are ways to differentiate yourself, personal branding, those sorts of things.
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But a little off topic.
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I was listening to a podcast with Tony Hsieh, you know him, CEO, founder of Zappos.
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Oh, yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, I think it s pronounced Hsieh.
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It s kind of a weird spelling.
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And I told him that, he didn t really care to hear that.
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And he was talking about they are obviously known worldwide for customer service and for taking care of their phone ins and their websites and all that.
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I mean, virtually every one of their products has a video about the product on the site.
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I mean, they sell thousands of shoes, different pair and different styles, but everyone has a video.
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I mean, literally, every shoe.
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Like, not a pair, no.
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But every style has a video.
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But he said, we pride ourselves in serving our prospects and customers, and he says, we have a board in our office, and on that board is the longest call of the day to serve or sell a customer.
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And they had one last month that was, one of their salespeople was on the phone for eight and a half hours.
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With a person.
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I don t know whether they bought a thousand shoes or just one pair, but eight and a half hours.
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But that s the experience that he is so proud of.
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And when you call Zappos, you know you re going to get a good experience.
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They don t have to differentiate themselves because they re so well known for their experience.
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That s crazy.
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All right, so let s go, so for the topic today, here s my challenge to the listeners, is I want you to look at your open opportunity sales funnel and get real with it and say to yourself, ask yourself, are any of these deals bad deals?
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Are any of these things deals that shouldn t be there?
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Are any of these deals deals that I should let go of?
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And get in the habit of, and just practice the process of,
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letting things go, and being the one to close it out when you know.
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I think there s strength in that.
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I think it does a service to the other person.
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And I think it s really hard to do.
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And if you learn to do it, you re going to find your sales process gets really, really efficient.
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And you ll end up with the right deals at the right times.
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So as we said earlier, we re on our way to Chicago.
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Sorry for the road noise.
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We should have apologized for that.
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But I think there s a little bit of that.
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So it s not the pristine quality that I m used to and that we re used to.
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But thanks for bearing with us here.
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I hope you enjoyed it.
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If you d like to talk to Brian or I or both of us about bringing us in,
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Send us an email with the subject line, come see us, to listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com, and we will come and we ll either do a broadcast up there with you, or wherever you are, or we ll come out and train your team.
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We d love to do either.
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Come see us, subject line, listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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See ya.