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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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And welcome to the Halloween edition of the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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Oh, my god.
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I hate this.
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You hate what?
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The music?
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I put the music especially for you.
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Okay, we did a little pre-show prep here and Bill and I discovered something about each other.
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We ve known each other for a really long time.
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20, 27, 17, 25 years.
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25 years Bill and I have known each other, been friends, colleagues, coaches, friends, all that stuff, business partners.
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We both have something in common we didn t know.
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We both hate Halloween.
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You know how many people, do people get angry back at you when you say you hate Halloween?
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I know.
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It s like visceral.
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It s like a cult.
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It s like a religion.
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It is.
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And you say, I hate Halloween.
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Like you can t hate Halloween.
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How could you possibly hate Halloween?
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It s like hating dogs, but it s not because it s Halloween.
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It s ridiculous.
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And I get worse and worse as I get older.
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I was out of town for the weekend, just kind of walking around the city I was in.
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And there s a big some, you know, boob ash Halloween party thing.
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And I m just watching all these grownups, he s grown and younger grownups.
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Yeah, walking into this party.
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And I m like, guys, I just thought about, okay, you re thinking of your costume, then you get it, then you re putting it all on.
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And then you walk out.
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Are you are you like trying to win the contest?
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Exactly.
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Well, that s what it is.
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The costumes become a competition very
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quickly.
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Yeah.
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And it just in your own mind it does.
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And then you re out there with a thousand other people that have other costumes.
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You re really, you really don t matter so much.
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No, no.
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I m the one that stands out because I m a Halloween costume.
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I m just walking around in shorts and a golf shirt.
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And people spend an inordinate amount of time and money on cotton.
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I mean, it s like a huge business.
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Now, let s go there.
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Let s go here, shall we?
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And I m a capitalist, so I love I love our economy and I love the wheat get eaten.
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I mean, that s part of the deal.
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But it s such a racket with the candy.
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You know what I mean?
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With the candy.
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Cause it s like, first of all, all parents know, especially these days, the health consciousness stuff is super high.
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So here we are, we re going and buying thousands and billions and millions of dollars of candy.
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We give it all out and then the kids give it away or throw it away.
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It s like, I am so proud.
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It so is, isn t it?
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You know, and it was fun when the kids were little and like, Oh, well, it s a kid s holiday.
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Yeah.
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It s a kid s holiday.
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Or if you have kids, it s great.
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And, and now with, with fentanyl, you know, you have to really be careful.
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I mean, some of these, I mean, it s, it s, I know.
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I usually don t even like if, if a cookie drops on the ground, I don t care.
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I ll pick it up and eat it.
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I really, I don t care.
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But this kind of stuff, it s like you have no control over it.
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So you don t know if it s, if your candy is tainted, doesn t have to be the real bad stuff.
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It could just be, so I don t know.
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I miss the good old days where we used to just get our candy x-rayed for razor blades.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Well, you can bite into it slowly and decide if there was a blade in there or not.
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Well, I heard someone from Posey County found a needle in one of their little fingers.
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Yeah.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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Oh, yeah.
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Got to go get an x-ray.
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Free x-rays down at the hospital to your Halloween candy.
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Where s that now?
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Now we re worried about fentanyl.
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What are we doing here?
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You know, you were talking about getting well, you weren t talking about getting old.
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I was telling you telling me attitude and I was thinking the other day, what are things that really bother me now that never used to bother me?
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah.
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If you start to make a list.
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I mean, sometimes we get wrapped into things that we don t want to do, and then we get there.
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Like, I don t like congested, crowded spaces where you re right on top of each other, and it s loud, and you can t hear, because I m 6  5 , and everybody else is short, and I can t really hear the conversation, because I m way up here, and I have to bend over.
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And then, I don t like that.
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I don t like that.
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I don t like that.
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I don t like that.
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I don t like that.
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I just don t like crowded spaces.
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I don t like fluorescent lights for some reason.
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And then I think, boy, I m turning into, I don t even think my dad was, I mean, I m worse than my dad.
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He didn t care about fluorescent lights.
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Crowds, fluorescent lights, Halloween, the list goes on and on.
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Well, I won t be participating in Halloween.
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And I used to, I used to really enjoy dressing up and fun.
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the costumes and stuff.
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I don t know.
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I don t know what it is.
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And the kids too.
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And I love the kids and my kids are older now.
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I don t know.
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Just not my bag.
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And I love Christmas and it s just sort of in the way of Christmas to me.
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Like, let s just get going on Christmas now.
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You know, it s just more fun.
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It s feeling good.
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OK, so we thought that in honor of those people in our audience who do see Halloween as a cult or religion, we honor you.
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And we re going to honor you through a discussion of the gremlins of sales, these things that are in your way, things that are nuisances and annoyances that maybe you know you have and maybe you don t know you have.
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And so we re going to list a few of these today, all with the intention of
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Just the thematic topic of Halloween, scary stuff, Gremlins.
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And I don t, you know, Gremlins was a movie.
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The Gremlins from 1984, a lot of people love the Gremlins.
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So my question is, were Gremlins like there before the movie?
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Like, was Gremlins like a generic?
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Oh, I think it was.
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Yeah.
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It wasn t like they made it up for the movie.
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No, I don t think so.
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They just named it.
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Trying to think of like a, yeah.
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The mainstream.
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Yeah.
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So we ll define gremlins here as something that it throws you off track.
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It s in the way.
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It s not necessarily scary.
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It s just something that you may know exists in your life or in your consciousness and something you may not know exists.
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So I think that the more hideous form of gremlin is something that you don t know even is a gremlin in you.
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Yes, as a verb now, because I did find it on the old dictionary here.
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An imaginary mischievous threat regarded as responsible for an unexplained problem or fault.
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Hmm.
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Okay.
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Sales gremlins.
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Oh, that s complicated.
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I didn t mean to bring us there.
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Yeah.
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Well, you want me to start?
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I got a couple of things written on the board.
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So the first gremlin that I think sneaks up on salespeople constantly, and I guarantee if you re listening to this, you re like, yep, got one of those, got two of those, got eight of those.
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is the process gremlin of who s involved in a decision making process.
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Part of this is, a huge part of this is our fault as sales professionals, because we have been mistaught by sales coaches over the years, that there s a thing called the decision maker.
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And the decision maker is the one person to talk to and deal with through a decision process.
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And that is false.
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That is not accurate.
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And so we get wrapped up in, oh, yeah, I m talking to, yeah, well, Bill s the CEO, he s the founder.
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So we re in good shape there.
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And lo and behold, you know, the team influences it or the users of your software influence and you get a no or a CFO comes in or an ops person.
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And I think that s a really big gremlin every salesperson deals with is the gremlin of decision people in process.
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So it s a gremlin because it s not stated overtly.
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It s not like the buyer says, well, here are the five people that you need to talk to here.
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We are kind of left to figure it out and calculate it and immerse ourselves in it.
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And that s not always easy, especially since we re not getting much help sometimes from our initial contact.
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So what do we do about that?
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What s the antidote to that?
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What s the gremlin killer?
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Gremlin killer, yeah, gremlin traps.
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Can we trap gremlins?
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You know what?
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I ve never seen the gremlin movies all the way through.
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It s one of those movies I ve seen hodgepodge.
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I need to go back and watch it.
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The first thing is to ask about the process.
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That s the simplest way to do that is if I just say so, and you have to ask about the process to hear the whole story versus the who.
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The who is in the how.
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So you just ask, so take me through what happens as a great.
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Sorry, the dad joke that who was in the house?
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No, the dad joke is going to do this tonight at dinner.
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What?
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I ve got some bad news, kids.
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This is what you d say to your family.
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I ve got some bad news, kids.
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Someone in our family.
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has been possessed by an owl.
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And the kid will go, who?
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Who?
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That s a good one.
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It s good.
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Halloween, yeah.
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Good, good, good.
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Yeah, steal that, Dad, for young kids.
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I want all of you.
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Yes, right.
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I want all of you to be using that tonight.
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And I will with my grandkids.
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Someone in our family has been possessed by an owl.
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You have to be kind of serious with it.
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Little kid, five, six-year-old go, who?
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It s Evan.
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So literally just ask the question.
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That s the simplest thing I can ask the process question.
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Yeah.
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And I also think that you have to ask the question and be mindful that they may not even know who, they may not even know that.
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So they are, all they re going by is function.
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Like, well, you got to talk to the VP of sales, but they re not going to say, well, the VP of sales has a lot more authority than the VP of marketing.
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So when you re talking to him, make sure that you re, you know, speak.
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they re not going to go through that detail.
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And you have to be mindful of it.
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I think this is a great one.
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I think it trips us up almost at every turn.
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And if we only close 15% of our deals, you could probably double that by paying attention to this.
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No doubt.
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No doubt.
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OK, I ve got one here that is a, and we talk about it a lot here in the episodes of our podcast, and that is the idea of high intent.
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I think our intent slips, and the gremlin comes, and it sucks out our high intent, and it inserts low intent.
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High intent is where it s all about the prospect and the customer.
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Low intent s where the customer doesn t matter.
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It s all about you and your income and your W-2 and all that.
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That s good.
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I think a lot of times, our intent starts off really high when we first get into the conversation.
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And as we go, and time goes on, and it s the seventh call now, not the first, our intent becomes, when in the hell is this going to close?
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And we ve got to get this across the finish line.
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And so to me, that s a gremlin.
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It s one of those things that we forget about, and the further on we go, our intent slips.
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Yes.
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And I love the last part you said, because I was thinking when you said it, I m like, that s really good.
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When does that happen?
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That tends to happen later in the sales process.
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Exactly.
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Because we kind of get comfortable, or guard comes down, maybe, or whatever.
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Yeah.
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Give it whatever name you want.
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So your intention does flip, like, OK, let s get this thing done.
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I had a case here about probably two or three months ago where I was talking with a potential client, and we were moving along fine.
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And then all of a sudden, it just stopped.
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It just stopped.
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And it never felt like it was going to stop until it stopped.
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And they weren t responding to emails.
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I don t send a lot of emails when that occurs, one or two.
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But at some point, you have to say, look, you ve probably found somebody else, I would assume, at this point.
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So I sent an email to the person and said that.
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I said, it s been a couple of weeks.
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We haven t talked.
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I know we were looking to do something in x month.
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That ain t going to happen if we don t work through it.
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And if you found somebody else, that s cool.
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I wish you the best.
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And if there s anything I can do to help, I mean, I really was detached from it.
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And of course, what happens?
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They email you back within 24 hours and say, but it wasn t my hope.
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I wasn t hoping for that.
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I just want to be clear.
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I was really looking to move on if this wasn t going to happen.
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One thing led to another, and it was illegal, and blah, blah, blah.
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And it s a deal now.
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That s awesome.
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But the point is that you have to be willing to detach, and you have to be willing to really subscribe or ascribe to the high-intent concept.
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So it s interchangeable?
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Subscribe and unsubscribe?
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I don t think you subscribe to a concept.
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I don t know.
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I don t know.
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I ll have to look that up.
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That s a grim one.
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It is.
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The vocabulary grim one sneaks up on us every once in a while, doesn t it?
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Whoopsie daisy.
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It does.
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OK, I ve got one.
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And I m doing some work around a concept here.
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And I m trying to, there s a lot of different words.
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So I m just going to say it one way and then talk through it a little bit.
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I think one of the gremlins we can get bit by is buyer complacency, buyer complacency.
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I m also moving this toward the idea of buyer laziness.
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And if you think about it, we all are this way.
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If you really step back and think about it, the laziest thing to do, the easiest thing for your own life is to just keep it as it is.
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Just, and it doesn t matter what subject it is, whether it s buying new software, hiring a sales coaching program, switching banks, it s just pretty easy to like go business as usual.
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And it s kind of a lazy choice.
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And I think that s a gremlin that we miss sometimes, that that s a very, very strong, compelling.
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It s our biggest competitor.
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It s our biggest competitor is laziness or status quo or lethargy or whatever you want to call it.
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All of it.
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Gremlin?
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And it s a gremlin, because I think people want to try something new.
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They want to think of themselves as explorative and cutting edge and thoughtful, and they want to move.
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But boy, that inertia towards staying put is really heavy.
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And I think that s a gremlin that we do not give much attention to, is buyer complacency and laziness as an impediment to us getting a deal closed.
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I think this is huge, and especially if,
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It s one thing to be lazy.
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If you wrap fear into that, like, what if this doesn t work?
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Or what if I ve made the wrong decision about who to hire, who to bring in, or what to buy?
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Now you ve got fear and laziness wrapped together.
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And that will cause people to just totally abort.
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I don t want any part of it.
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Let s just fix what we have.
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I know it s broken.
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I know it s a crap house.
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But let s at least try to fix that.
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So it s that fear and laziness together.
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As people in the next year become more conscientious about their decisions, the financial aspect of their decisions, I think fear is going to ramp up a little bit.
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Love that.
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Or a lot.
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I combine those words, I put down they re flazy.
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They re fearful and lazy.
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Flazy.
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Fearful and lazy.
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You re big on the combining of words.
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I like the combining of words.
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I do.
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Because then I can remember the words I make up.
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I can t remember the real words.
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That is my problem.
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Flazy sounds a little like floozy.
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I have to put sclazy down, scared and lazy.
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So there s sclazy and lazy.
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Flazy is better?
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I don t know.
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Like a dog.
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It s a dog s name.
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Flazy.
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That s a good dog name.
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All right, so those are three really good gremlins, if there is such a thing.
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And I think that s a good way to end it here and think through, what are those things for you?
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And maybe you ll look at those three areas and say, I don t have any of that anywhere.
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But I suspect that somewhere in there, there s a lesson or something that you can, again, as we always say, just be mindful of this stuff.
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If you let your body catch up with your mind, if you re mindful of it, then next time you re in front of a prospect, you will say, by the way, tell me about the process around here.
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When you get ready to buy something like this or decide or go down this path, they ll tell you.
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And if it s not perfect, that s okay.
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At least it s something.
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Yeah.
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Test the status quo too.
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Who knows?
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They might say, yeah, maybe we re better staying put.
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Yeah.
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Bill, what s your Halloween costume this year?
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As we were a podcaster, I m a podcaster.
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Oh my gosh.
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That s funny.
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You and I should go with our headphones on and actually do the podcast.
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That would be funny.
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That would be funny.
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Okay.
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We might have to set this up.
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So Bill and I are going to go trick or treating.
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SPEAKER_00
with portable mics.
1
SPEAKER_00
We would need to bring a camera crew with us though, just to document this.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, we have one.
1
SPEAKER_00
Travis, you might have to do this.
1
SPEAKER_00
We got a week to prepare.
1
SPEAKER_00
That would be funny.
1
SPEAKER_00
That d be great.
1
SPEAKER_00
What are you two?
1
SPEAKER_00
Hi, can I help you?
1
SPEAKER_00
What are you two?
1
SPEAKER_00
Welcome everybody to the Advanced Selling Podcast.
1
SPEAKER_01
Aren t you guys a little old for this?
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh no, we re documenting everything that happens here.
1
SPEAKER_00
What are you guys?
1
SPEAKER_01
That d be funny.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ll see you next time.
1
SPEAKER_00
Bye.