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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill shares a story about the lack of athleticism in the pool supply business, we banter about old radio station terms, and we take a thoughtful question from a listener who puts us on the spot by asking what have we changed in our philosophy and approach to selling over the years.
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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 is Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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And we are here every week for your listening enjoyment.
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Welcome new members.
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If you ve just joined us, we re glad you found us.
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And we have a LinkedIn group.
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We ve got like 11,000 people in the LinkedIn group.
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We re actually going to dip in, I think, to the LinkedIn mailbag today, right?
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Yeah.
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from a listener, so we re glad you re here.
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We re also on the road.
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I m heading out here to Vegas tonight, and I think I m going to see some podcast listeners.
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Oh, cool.
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Not a podcast gig, but I think some of the people that work at this company listen to the podcast.
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I think I ll validate that when I get out.
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Good.
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Good, good, good.
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And where else are we going?
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Tell them we said hi.
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To Cleveland?
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You went to Cleveland, I went to Southern Indiana.
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You did?
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You went to Huntingberg.
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I went to Huntingberg a couple weeks ago.
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I grew up going to this thing called the Huntingberg Airshow.
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I think I put that up on LinkedIn when I was a little kid.
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All my uncles flew those radio-controlled planes.
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Still do, actually.
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It s really, really interesting.
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Is that how you got into being a pilot?
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Yeah, totally, from all my uncles.
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Yeah, cool.
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Yeah, it was a great, great gig, good people down there at Best Home Furnishings.
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I had something happen here the other day, and I m kind of a jerk when it comes to certain things in life, and everybody in the room can attest to that.
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But I went to, I ve talked about the pool water situation, where you take the sample in, and there s two things that happened there.
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I had the sample, and I walked in, and there was a young man there, probably 30 years old, and he said,
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Hey, how s it going?
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I said, OK, good.
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He worked there.
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And I reared back to throw it to him, because I thought that d be kind of fun.
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I haven t thrown anything in a while, and he looks like the kind of guy that could catch it.
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So I reared back, and he kind of went like that.
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But when he went like that, he kind of put his hands out like that.
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Well, that s not really how you catch a little bottle.
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And as I was throwing, I thought, uh-oh.
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And then as I threw it into the air, I saw him start to collapse his arms around it, and he caught it on his chest.
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Well, I would expect him just to grab it out of the air.
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And so I won t do that again with him, because it was obvious he was not an athlete.
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Because is he a listener?
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Huh?
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No, he s not.
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He s not a listener.
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But then you go through the whole process, and I ve talked about it before, where they test the water, and then they come back, and they have the three pages.
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You ve got some problems.
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You ve got some issues here, sir.
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We re going to have to buy 40 pounds of bone dust.
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You still put that stuff in there?
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Bone dust?
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Well, it s salt.
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I don t know what it is.
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And he goes through the whole thing.
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And there s three or four people also in line hearing the same thing.
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And we re all just like, yeah, OK, what do we need?
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What do we need to buy?
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About $130, sir.
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And it s a surprise that no one that swims at your house doesn t come out with big blisters.
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Big chemical burns.
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All red.
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Hey, before we dig into our listener-inspired topic today, I ve got a question for you.
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Do you ever wish?
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You could have done more this month, but just didn t have the times or tools or processes.
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My clients ask themselves and ask me that just about every month.
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Well, now you may not have to ask that as much anymore.
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You can check them out at outreach.io slash ASP.
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That s outreach.io slash ASP to chat with them and receive a free copy of their book on sales engagement.
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How about that?
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Check them out.
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Outreach.io slash ASP.
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Our topic today, we are going to dip into our LinkedIn mailbag this week.
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And a listener asked us a really great question, we thought.
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And the question is, what have we changed in our philosophy over the years of doing this?
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We ve both been in sales and sales coaching for a really long time.
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And like most people, things evolve and they change.
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And so he asked us a really great question, which is, what have we changed?
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And it got me thinking, like, ah,
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really changed a lot.
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And sometimes I know I catch myself in front of the room sometimes with my clients.
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I ll say, I used to think about this a certain way, and I ve changed my tune on that.
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And I think that whole idea, I think, is interesting.
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I think Gary Vaynerchuk just put a little slide card thing up that said something about changing your mind is actually a form of strength, not a form of weakness.
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And a lot of people see it as waffling or something like that.
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And I don t believe that to be true as long as it s
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Thoughtful and with good reason and adaptive and was that a word adaptive?
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I think in politics we hear about waffling when someone changes their mind.
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Yeah, but I think actually I think they do a lot Yes, depending upon who they re speaking in front of and pandering to votes and what the numbers say.
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Yeah what the numbers say
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But but I don t think that s the case here because so much has changed in selling for example one thing I wrote down as you were talking there I was listening, but I also wrote this down is we used to teach people go into the call with no with no Brochures, no information.
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It s a blank pad of paper and a pencil and that s it and say why am I here and say why am I here?
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And I used to it used to feel a little
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Little strong a little too aggressive, but now if you do that today, you d be thrown out of the office And I don t think you should do it today.
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I don t care what anybody says.
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I just don t think that s right So I think there s little tactics that we ve changed, but also I think some principles have changed So why don t you yeah, why don t you go ahead and take a stab?
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What s your number one?
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so my first one is a principle and I think it s something that I was introduced to a long time ago by you and
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And then over time, it s changed and evolved.
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And what I like to say here is the change has become stronger and stronger.
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And that is my intention.
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My intention.
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And when I was raised at P&G in selling, my intention was crystal clear, to sell as much soap, shampoo, toilet paper as I possibly could.
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Load them up, own the store, all that stuff.
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Everything I did, everything I said, everything I asked had the intention behind it to sell and close as much as I possibly could.
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So then over the years, as that started to evolve to be more helping and serving people, it still had an undercurrent of getting underneath it.
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And I think over the year, it took a long, long time for me at least to get there, that I m to the point now where there is no part of my energy
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And when I m in the conversation with a prospective client or looking at doing a speech or a gig or anything like that, nothing that is about that at all.
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Nothing at all.
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It takes time.
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It takes forever.
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And sometimes you even default back.
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You go into weaker moments, and you drop back to old thinking.
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But yeah, it s good.
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Yeah, that s the biggest one, I think, energy-wise.
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And it s just so hard.
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I find it hard to teach.
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Because it s something you need to experience to learn.
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And everyone s like, well, the switch went off.
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It flipped the switch.
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It wasn t a switch for me.
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It was a dimmer.
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It was a glider.
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It was a slider.
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Yeah, it was a glider.
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Slider, glider.
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Slider, glider.
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It was a pot.
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Turned the pot up.
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Yeah.
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A little radio.
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Potentiometer.
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You like that?
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Potentiometer.
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It s good.
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Is that what that stands for?
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Potentiometer.
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Yeah.
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I didn t know that.
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When they say pot up, that s potentiometer.
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I didn t know that.
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Root word potential, I would imagine.
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Or pot.
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Maybe the root word is pot.
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From the Latin word potens, which means energy.
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I just made that up.
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Oh, very good.
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Latin school.
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Latin club, I mean.
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Yeah, well, at least you were clear about your intention at P&G, too.
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That s true.
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That s true.
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nobleness, nobility to that, is at least I m clear.
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I m not waffling.
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My clarity is around selling as much whatever it is to the customer as I can.
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So I think there s value in that.
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But I also think there s value in being clear about your intention and how it is there to serve your customer, whether they buy or not.
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And that s a tough one.
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People struggle with that.
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It s tough to teach.
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I have one here.
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I used to think that,
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Selling was all about personality and used to do the disc and that and all about you know You got it.
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You got to act like your customer.
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You have to know your customer if they re a high C You ve got to be a high C and you ve got a mirror and match And I always found a lot of that to be a little contrived and phony.
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I
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And I don t know if I ever taught the whole mirror and matching thing.
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But even just the, is he a high D?
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Well, if he s a high D, you ve got to go in like a high D. And I always felt like, really, I m going to change my whole personality just to match him or her?
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And I think now it s less about personality and more about process, more about what s the process you re going to take your customer through, regardless of what their personality is.
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And maybe it changes a little bit, but what s the process?
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I think we need to be more focused on what s the customer journey from the time they first meet you, or first hear about you, or first download something, or first attend a webinar, all the way to where they become a satisfied and engaged client and an advocate.
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There is a procedure to that.
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And if we aren t conscious of what that procedure is, what that process is, with all the elements of it, then I don t care what our personality is, it becomes a hard slog.
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Say and Dan Sullivan even talks about this forget about personality for a little bit doesn t mean get rid of it have none Yes, it just means to focus on the process.
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Yes.
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Yeah, and you can take bits of the personality It s it s that you don t give yourself up is what you re saying and that you don t change right because you re good found out eventually
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Yeah.
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If I come in, if I m not a high D, and I come in screaming, hi, you bottom line.
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It s fake.
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It s fake.
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I m going to wear out.
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Wait a second.
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You were different than you were before.
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Yeah.
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That s really good.
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My second thing, this is a very broad statement, but I think very real and very timely.
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I think I ve changed my entire approach to prospecting.
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changed my entire approach.
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My entire thought process around prospecting has changed.
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It s gone from bloody knuckles, 70 dials, call as much as you can, send out as many blast cold emails as you can to
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very, very purposeful, intentional, specific prospecting that is also a process, that s educating people along the way, that s using people that know me well as warm introductions, that s letting people get to know me real softly to go in and
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engage with them, not even past the prospecting stage, even past of me working with them.
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But even if I can be helpful to them and make connections, the whole prospecting thing has changed.
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Leveraging tools that we have now, like LinkedIn, without question have completely changed how I prospect.
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When I started, I didn t have to prospect much at P&G because we knew where all the grocery stores are.
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When I got into this business, though, it was calls.
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And I remember going through the book.
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We didn t have the technology back then.
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So we go through the book.
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So it had to change a little bit.
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Still, though, we have people that are going through lists just like I did in 1997 when I started this.
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They re still banging out calls on a list.
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And I know it s a big debate.
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I don t want to get into the debate about it.
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We ll do that next week.
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For sure.
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We re going to do a whole episode on it next week.
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There s just a better way.
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I ve changed my approach to that.
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Yeah, that s a good one.
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Oh, I have that, too.
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I have personal marketing, which is de-emphasizing the cold outreach call, not getting away from it entirely, but building things around it.
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Because I feel like, and I agree with you, I ve changed my attitude about that, too, is that,
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We rely on a cold call.
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You re relying on everything to be right.
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The customer answering the phone at the right time with the right frame of mind, you waking up on the right side of the bed and having yourself together.
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There s a lot of loose ends to that.
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And I think a lot of times when we say, well, you just got to go make 100 calls, I would say, well, let s spend the first two hours getting ourselves right mentally and psychologically before we make the call.
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But that never happens.
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So I think that personal marketing is a whole lot more than cold call, too.
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I had that down.
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I ll use that.
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And personal marketing is just, we ve got to understand marketing today.
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We ve got to understand the customer journey, how they go from not knowing who in the hell we are, to knowing us, to liking us, to being aware of the problems they have.
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It is a journey.
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And if you re not journey-minded, then you end up trying to vault from, hey, do you like me?
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To, hey, do you want to buy from me?
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That s what it is.
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And that s what a cold call typically is.
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And we ve got to do better than that today.
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There s so many, like you said, Brian, so many tools out there that can help us manage that journey a whole lot more effectively, so that of every 100 people that we talk to on the first call, we might sell 20.
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But now what we re doing is we re going from 100 to three, because only three people want to see us.
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Yes.
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And we re celebrating that.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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We get five out of three.
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Got one.
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Oh, my god.
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You have 500 out of 100.
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That s really good.
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It s unbelievable.
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Can you imagine how long you could put up with that?
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No, I couldn t.
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I mean, not for 10 minutes.
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I couldn t do it.
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You got another one?
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I ve got one more.
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Yeah, go ahead.
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You want me to go?
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Yeah.
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This is a tactical.
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I ll tell you this.
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This is a tactical, all right?
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I ll forgive you.
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I have changed my attention to detail and the strength of controlling the sales process.
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And by that, I mean I used to be more lax in ending a sales call in the middle of a process about what our next step is.
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And I have gotten hyper-disciplined about not doing that anymore, where if I m in a sales call, I am going, if we re going to have another step and we re going to talk, we are doing a calendar date while we re sitting there talking.
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And that s the drill.
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And I get real disciplined with myself.
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And if for whatever reason, sometimes the reasons are I m driving.
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So you can t look at your calendar while you re driving.
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Or you have multiple people involved.
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Even in those situations, I m all over the group, whoever I m talking to, to get that next date set, hyper-discipline around controlling the process.
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Because it is so easy for deals to slip away these days.
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with time and attention and all this stuff coming up.
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And so you have to go when it s time to go.
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You have to do that these days.
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That s changed.
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I used to be more soft on that.
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I think that also kind of falls under the follow-up category of, how do you follow up with people?
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And this is one of those.
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Another one is just, have you taken notes on the call?
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Do you let them know what you heard?
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Are there loose ends that you didn t get to that the next time you talk you want to get to?
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Well, document that stuff.
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Write it down.
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And follow-up is one of those things that salespeople in general are not very good at.
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I know that s a universal thing.
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Proclamation, but we re not very good at that and I feel that when I m talking to people on the phone I just had a conversation a couple weeks ago with a person who we were thinking about doing some work with independent contractor never heard from him I m never never heard and it was a Several thousand dollar thing would have been good piece of business for them.
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I presume never heard back.
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No crazy and
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And it wasn t because we didn t have a good conversation.
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There was promise there, at least.
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And I thought, well, if that s how they run their sales part of the business, that probably speaks volumes about how they do things.
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Last one I had here was the emphasis on mindset.
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continue to be encouraged by people who have really worked hard at changing their mindset, changing their perspective of life and what their role in the sales process is, and also discourage when people say, oh, that s just BS, Kasky.
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That s just all soft psychobabble.
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Yeah.
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And really, it s not.
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In fact, I would even suggest I haven t gone nearly far enough.
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Technically, that could be all we did.
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All the training we do is just mindset training.
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And I know some people are doing that now.
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But it s got to be in the context of a salesperson or a sales process.
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But I think that is so much more important than sales process and questioning and handling objections and all that kind of stuff.
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I just think mindset s where it is.
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Thing that I ve changed a little bit.
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There is messaging is getting really clear on message.
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I used to think well, it s not about your message It s about what their pains are.
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It s about what their problems are forget about your message go find out the problems But today if you re not clear on what you do and what your message is They re not even going to answer the truth when you ask them all the questions about pain It has to be easy has to be easy for everybody.
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I
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That s a good question to whoever asked.
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We don t know who asked it, do we?
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This is a mystery man.
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A mystery, yeah.
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So one person out there now knows that we answered their question.
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Maybe it s the same guy I saw on Aruba.
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Still haven t heard from him yet, right?
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He was a one-time listener.
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He listened to one episode on the planet.
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He didn t have your calendar with you?
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Met me in the ocean.
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Once he met me, he s like, I m never listening to that guy again.
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See you later.
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All right.
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I didn t have my calendar on me.
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I didn t.
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Hey, if you want Brian or I or both to come out and visit you here this late this summer or early this fall, fall is when a lot of the retreats happen, a lot of the sales meetings, we d love to do it.
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You can send us an email at listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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Come see us in the subject line and we ll start the process, get the ball rolling, probably get on a call with the three of us or at least a couple of us and talk about your events.
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So we d love to see you.
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We have a lot of fun at these things.
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and we will continue to do them throughout 2019 and beyond.
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Yep.
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That s it.
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That s all I got.
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See ya.
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Bye.