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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcasts.
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I am Bill Kasky.
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And with me is Brian Neal.
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And we have been co-hosting this thing for almost 17 years.
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It ll be 17 years in September 2006, if my memory serves me.
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I can remember like it was yesterday, the first broadcast.
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I tell you, I was at a conference that will lead into a little story I m going to tell you.
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And it s funny, people have podcast.
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A lot of people have podcasts.
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And like, and I say, you know, so tell me about your podcast.
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I ve been doing a long time.
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It s like I started podcasting in 2016.
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I m like, damn, you re right.
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Long time.
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When d you start yours?
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I go 2006.
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They re like 2006.
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Did they even have podcasts then?
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Cause I started.
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And I tell them the story.
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It s funny, isn t it?
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It s almost like too far away.
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Like they don t believe you.
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Yeah, that s right.
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There s no way.
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And they popped up like, here s first episode.
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There were podcasts in 2006.
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It was just no way to access.
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No, totally.
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Well, that s a funny part too.
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I said, when you came to me with the idea originally, we had the radio show and you said, well, it s like a radio show for iPods.
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And we meant iPods because that s all there was.
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It was iPods.
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Very, very fun.
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But speaking of longtime listeners, I was at an event, a little plug for the event.
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It s a group called EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System Companies that run that program.
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About 1500 people here in our hometown.
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Great people.
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Kind of kind of group that like it s like a second grade class where everyone s taking notes on everything.
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Kind of that kind of everyone s raising their hand.
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Cool group to be around.
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Really good business owners.
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at the last day, kind of like a send off day.
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They have this little, you know, social gathering and I m in line getting some food.
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This guy goes, Brian meal, what advanced selling podcast, Brian?
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I m like, and I thought he was messing with me.
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He s like, do you really want to?
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I m like, yeah, dude, there s no way you re Brian.
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I m like, yeah.
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And he s from Canada.
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And I m like, are you messing with me?
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He goes, no, dude, I ve listened to you and Bill for like 15 years.
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I was one of the original listeners.
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His name is David Lewis.
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He s from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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Oh, cool.
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Been in and around.
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Great guy.
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Sold his printing company in Toronto and now is an implementer for this EOS organization.
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But I got to do a shout out to Dave just in case.
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I never always wonder if a guy sells his company or Gallup.
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Do they still listen?
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I don t know.
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Um, can t stop.
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I can t stop.
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Won t stop.
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Right.
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So this is Miley Cyrus.
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So anyway, hi out, a shout out to David.
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It was just funny, but it was a little, it was so over the, I thought he was messing with me, like kind of making fun of us.
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Yeah.
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You know, but he wasn t, he was a fan.
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It was just really funny.
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The funny part was in Steph, my wife who was with me noticed, she said, I knew that look like you.
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So he didn t say, I knew that sounded like you.
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He said, I knew that looked like you.
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Oh, really?
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Somewhere along the line, he s watching the videos.
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Yeah.
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Interesting.
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That s just fun.
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Fun to be found secretly.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It s funny.
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Usually it s a voice thing though, isn t it?
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Usually it is.
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Yeah, but you know, I get calls from time to time from people and they say, you know, I ve been listening for 10 years or 12 years, or I mean, it s cool, it s cool.
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Anyway, let s get to our topic today.
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Stop boring people.
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We re going long form, one topic into two episodes.
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And now Bill, you mentioned, we kind of talked around this ideal client thing last time, we gave some advice or things, trends we should see, like you should reconsider
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retooling your ideal client.
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But we didn t say what to do or how to do that.
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So the idea, let s try that.
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Let s talk about a little more, a little more depth.
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So we re gonna talk about some frameworks for you, some things that you can tactically go do in your territory as you re sort of rethinking your ideal client, your world, who you call on, who s best, who s not, that sort of stuff.
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And that s the thing that I love about our podcast.
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And I m going to go on a little 30-second curmudgeon rant here.
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OK.
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Sometimes when I listen to a podcast, like of the guest, I like the host, and they bring a guest on, and they trumpet it as something that it s not.
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And I heard Philip Stutz talk the other day about he had a guy on who wrote a book about the Trump administration.
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He was in the Trump administration.
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And the title of the podcast is Learn What It Was Like to Work for the Trump Administration, or something like that.
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And I m a political guy.
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I thought, you know, it was a chaos.
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Was it cool?
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Well, kind of interesting.
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And the guy never talked about it.
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He never did.
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He was trying to sell his book.
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And I thought it was a fake.
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It was a fake out.
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It was a tease.
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And we re not going to do it.
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We never have done that to you, hopefully.
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Hopefully, sometimes our shows are more instructive than others.
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Sometimes we talk about issues.
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But today, I think we should get into this idea of what can everybody take with them today to improve their ability to find ideal clients.
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Yep.
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And even realizing that it s a different world than it was even six months ago, and I really need to rethink of what that looks like.
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So we ve also, Bill and I, over the years have given, we ve done this topic.
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The cool thing about if you get our app, I m not selling our app, Bill, it s free, right?
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If you download the Advanced Selling Podcast app, it s the most efficient way to listen to the podcast because you can search by topic.
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So even if you put into the app ideal client, you ll see other episodes.
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We ve talked about this.
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And that leads me to the first element is we have given a framework to people before that really helps you flush this out where we take think of like a spreadsheet with three columns across the top that are good, better and best.
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So this is a suggestion people do this.
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And then down the left side, you do some demographic elements.
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So you do things like company size, years in business, ownership structure, geography.
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And you start to define, redefine your bullseye from what it is now.
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So in 2022, your best, let s say geography might have been anywhere in the world might have been global because you re a remote company or something like that.
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Well, you know, these days with all the political turmoil and wars and currencies, maybe your ideal client is not global.
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Maybe your ideal client is stateside.
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Maybe it s just US or just North America.
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So that s what we re looking to do.
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So you go good, better, best, column A, B, and C, good, better, best, and best is the bullseye.
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That s what you re really after.
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But then what good and better allow you to do is operate in the French or in the gray a little bit.
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And the demographic elements are things like location, ownership structure, business that someone s in, very tactical, yes or no sorts of things.
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So do you think
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people, when they hear us talk about ideal client, their mind goes to, Oh, this is, this is going to be good.
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This is going to help me.
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But then when they get off the broadcast and they go to the, to the marketplace, they re like, Hey, I know, I know we talked about ideal client.
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I just need any client right now.
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Yes.
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I don t know that.
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Um, I ll answer the first part.
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And I ve never realized this.
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You know what I think people do?
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I think they define people, not companies.
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I think they define personas.
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Well, my ideal client is a VP of sales or a sales manager who manages a, you know, that s part of it.
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But I think bigger than that, it s like, what type of organization are they?
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And I do now, the second part of the answer would be, that s what good, better, best allows you to do.
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Because it does allow you to wiggle room.
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Now, I ve added something to this here just in the last couple of months when I m teaching my clients.
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This is stupidly simple.
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Best gets three points, better gets two points, and good gets one point.
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And if you just literally look at your spreadsheet and go down, and you can score someone relative to ideal client, and that then drives how much time, energy, effort you put into it.
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So if I am driving, I go, I d take any client, Brian, Bill.
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Well, this one is a 1.2.
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It got all ones and a two in the ideal client framework.
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So we re going to spend a little time on it, but not a crazy amount.
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Yeah, I buy that.
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And I think that s a good to any kind of time you can scale or rate measure your inputs there.
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I think that ll be helpful.
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OK, so we ve talked about this kind of a scorecard approach with the good, better, best along the top, and then all of the elements of that demographics, psychographics.
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Did you talk about psychographics yet?
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No, no.
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Because I d like to get into that.
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I mean, the demographics are kind of easy.
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You can almost buy that data.
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Give me the VPs of sales of 5 to $100 million companies who are in the Midwest who have more than 100.
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I mean, some of that s viable.
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But then the question is, OK, now I m going to pursue that.
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I m going to cold call.
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I m going to reach out.
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I m going to do LinkedIn, what kind of psychographic outline and profile am I looking at from this individual standpoint?
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So at some point, you re going to have a target cohort.
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You re going to have VP of sales, CEO, whatever.
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You re going to have people that you want to get with.
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And then the question is, what do they look like in the best?
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Yeah.
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Because to me, there s a good, better best there, too.
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For sure.
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I mean, I think of things, I ll read from mine.
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And these are, the psychographic things are tough because they re more opinion based.
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Open and learning to grow.
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Yeah.
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Um, easy to conduct a process with.
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Um, we had a deal that we just walked away from and, um, and as we re going through the process, it was just difficult.
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And I thought, man, if it s this difficult to get the deal done, what s it going to be like when they re on the payroll, meaning like as client, which is not a client, we said, no, thanks.
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Um, like that, um, uh, they were very, um,
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Uh, what I m trying to say without saying it, we re very cheap.
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You know, they just low value.
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Like we re trying to get everything for free.
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You know what I mean?
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Like, or yeah, I did get this or sponsored.
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I m like, uh,
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So that s one of your psychographic elements is, do they seem like they want to do business?
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I mean, that could be something as simple as that.
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Because if they don t, now, you know, we re in a business where we have to have people s buy-in.
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If you re just shipping light bulbs to somebody, I don t know if they really need to buy into you personally.
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But in our business, they do.
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Yeah.
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And so, but, you know, I mean, I think, you know, we re in a business where we have to have people s buy-in.
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I would guess that a lot of the businesses are the people who listen.
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Also, you want to work with people who want to work with you because those are better clients.
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Those are more profitable clients.
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There s more joy in working with them.
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And I think that s OK to have a joy factor here.
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Do I like them?
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I ve got a, I don t know, they may be listening.
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But anyway, whatever.
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A client that I had to say no to after
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Yeah, I got to be careful here, because they may.
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But like you said, everything was hard.
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Everything was hard.
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And at some point, you re just like, well, if this is this way in month one, where we haven t really, it was just more of an assessment month.
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I typically do an assessment month where I get to know them a little bit.
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There s a fee, but it s not as big.
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If this is this hard, the training s not going to work.
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Right, right.
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And I think we all have to.
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Because I m convinced that if we look for that, we ll find more people who we want to work with and who want to work with us.
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If we re not looking for that, we ll run across people, and we ll take them on, and then we ll think, jeez, what the hell did I do?
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It s so true, isn t it?
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And it s so interesting too that, and I think sometimes what happens in our world too, you have to look at this in your ideal client is who has bought in and why.
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So in other words, if in our world, if a VP of sales buys in, but the sales team doesn t, and it feels like go fix these people, it doesn t work.
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versus the culture says, we got my, our sales team loves to find new and better ways to do things.
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We want coaching.
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It s works.
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Um, it s funny, a second plug for this group, this EOS conference, it was just amazing.
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Like at these conferences, these are people that own some really, really big businesses.
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You know what I mean?
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Like nine figure businesses that CEOs and CEOs and,
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So it s not like these people don t know what s going on.
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But man, they listen to a speaker, and they re just feverishly taking notes, feverishly asking questions.
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It s culturally that way.
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And some people aren t.
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And so if we re doing our psychographic best, it would be that type of person.
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And do you know Sherry Levitin?
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Do you follow her?
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No.
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She s one of us.
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She s a sales coach.
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I really, really like Sherry.
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She s funny.
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But she said something that I stole a few months ago off of LinkedIn.
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And it was this.
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She said, are you trying to find a way into this?
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Are you trying to find a way out of this?
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When you get hung up in a process with a buyer and it s like, you know, like the sales team that you probably tapped out of, those salespeople were looking for a way out.
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Bill, this isn t going to work in our business.
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You don t understand this.
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It s not that easy, Bill.
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We can t get, you know, they re looking for a way out.
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Versus other people like, how can I take what Bill s teaching me and make it into what I m doing?
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Yeah.
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And so that will be a psychographic thing for people to look for a way in.
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How can I make this work?
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Not, well, prove it to me, you know?
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Yeah, that s good.
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I also think, and maybe we close it off here and then we come back next week, we can go into a little bit more detail about how to implement this.
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But I think there is a psychographic element on the list here that you ve proclaimed that we should do, which I like.
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And that is, do we really understand
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the dilemmas that our ideal clients are facing, and not just need more sales, but deeper than that.
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How does that dilemma impact that person s ability to live their life, to have a relationship with their partner s significant other, to be a father, a mother?
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Does it affect their
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their psyche in the morning?
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Is it emotionally draining to have these things?
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I think that s OK to learn about, because if you are creating content for that audience, I think it s OK to say, look, this is the kind of work that we hear people need.
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They want to grow their business, but here s what s behind that.
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Yeah, right.
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And then you start.
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putting in some of those things that are really deep issues.
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And then people can either say, Oh man, he s been watching me.
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Does he know me?
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Or I don t have that, which is okay.
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Cause we re either attracting or repelling.
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So I think it s okay to go deeper on what are the dilemmas that our customers have and how does that show up in their life?
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Yes, love it, love it.
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Let s carry that on.
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So we re going to stop here.
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Get your framework, good, better, best demographics.
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Got to redo it.
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Redo it from where it is.
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Add the psychographics below that.
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Easy to do business with.
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Finding a way in versus finding a way out.
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Fun and joyful to be around people you look forward to spending time with.
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And redo it.
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Don t just look at it and go, yeah, I know what it is.
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Look at it.
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Really, is this the way it was?
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And am I behaving toward it?
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Am I aligned with it?
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So then we ll come back next and talk about the
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and talk about the what s behind it all.
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Cool.
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I m going to talk about grooming in the next episode, too.
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OK.
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How do we groom our clients?
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Oh, now I see what you were thinking about.
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Now, how do we groom our prospects?
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Can we get them ready to be ideal clients?
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We ll talk about that next week.
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Love it.
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Nice to meet you.
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All right.
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All right.
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See you.
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Bye.