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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I share the sad story of putting our dog down and how it demonstrates great control of the sales process.
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Bill shares a story that s making him feel less than adequate relative to a couple of sales coaching peers.
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And we riff on taking control in the sales process.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast.
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I am one of your hosts, Bill Kasky.
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I m the other host, Brian Neal.
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Hello, Brian Neal.
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Hi, Bill Kasky.
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How s it going?
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Good.
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Do you ever get an inferiority complex about certain things?
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Oh, God.
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Yeah, of course.
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I know you do a lot of things.
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Absolutely.
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You re very successful at what you do.
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Absolutely.
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Same.
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But sometimes little things like crawl up your, you know what, and do, you know what.
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Loads.
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Well, I reached out to a couple of,
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I would call them some big names in the industry.
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Yeah, yeah.
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John Jantz, who we ve had on the program before, and Jill Conrath, who we ve had on the program before.
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And they re both very good people.
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Yeah, really smart people, yeah.
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And so I reached out to John because I wanted to have him on the podcast again, I think same with Jill.
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And they both came back.
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And this was within a couple of weeks, so I started to really question myself.
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Both came back with, love to do it, real busy for the next three or four months.
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And I don t know if they were expecting me to come visit them for a week at their home.
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That happens.
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Or help me shoot a documentary, or I don t know what they expect.
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I was looking for like a 10 minute phone call.
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So that shows where I am in their world.
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Poor little podcast that keeps chugging along.
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We think we can.
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We think we can.
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No, they are.
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I m sure they re very busy.
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But it s funny how I took that to mean, you don t have 10 minutes for me?
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Of course.
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But anyway.
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Well, it s funny, too.
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So I love people that have boundaries around that, that are able to say no or not right now, that sort of thing.
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And if that s a legitimate thing, I go, perfect.
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Let s book it for January.
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And then you see for sure, if that s really a blow off, they re like, well, no, I wouldn t.
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Yeah, and there are a lot of people in this world that look at any publicity as good publicity.
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So they will be on anything at any time.
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I believe that to be true, too.
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And some people don t.
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Some people just want to be.
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Or maybe the advanced selling podcast doesn t quite rise to their level of standard, too.
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No, that s OK.
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That s OK.
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But anyway, I like everything they do.
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So if you know John or John and Jill, if you re listening together and you re doing that documentary without me.
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There was a radio show here in Indianapolis, Smiley in the Morning Show on 99.5 ZPL.
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And I know he was trying to land an interview with Peyton Manning for like 11 years.
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And they kept reaching out to him and never, ever got anywhere.
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And it s one of the bigger radio shows here in Indianapolis when Peyton was still here.
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I m surprised that he wouldn t do that.
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Yeah, you just don t know.
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You just don t know.
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Some people are like, they re not in my bag.
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And plus, Peyton Manning never gets access to that.
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He s got an agent or a business manager or somebody, PR person, so he probably never knew.
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All right, you guys.
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We have a topic, and we re just going to riff on this topic.
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So this isn t going to be one of those topics where we re going to like, OK, here s a six item checklist or to-do list.
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We re just going to riff on it a little bit.
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We re going to talk about the idea of taking control of the sales process.
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And this is something that I have been doing a lot of work on here recently and brought it up to Bill.
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And Bill s like, why don t we just talk about that a little bit?
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So I want to start with us giving our two cents on if we think
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salespeople these days have something to learn when it comes to controlling the sales process itself.
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Do you think there s, okay, good.
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Yeah, I agree.
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Do you?
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I do.
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It s a great conversation.
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One word answers, yes.
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It s a good interview, isn t it?
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What s your next question, sir?
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Cross-examination?
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Who does the best?
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Yeah, I ll give you my commentary.
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I think that
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People believe that they are taking control of the process by merely following up.
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I think salespeople think that if they are good at follow up and follow through, that that is taking control of the sales process.
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And the problem for me stems in it s not the following up part
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that s the issue.
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It s the language in the follow-up that s the issue, and the way that you do it that s the problem, not the fact that you do it.
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Because we all have clients that are good at, quote unquote, follow-up, who will send emails very regularly that say, hey, Bill, just checking in to see if you have any questions.
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Let me know if that sort of thing.
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That s bad positioning.
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Bad positioning.
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But the follow-up s there.
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So they think, hey, look, I m doing my job here.
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I send them a follow-up email every two minutes.
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But the problem is the language is all wrong in it.
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And we haven t done a good job before that.
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Exactly.
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That s the problem, too.
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Yeah, my commentary on that is we get, and I know you get it, and I get it, too, questions from people where they say, OK, I need to send this email out.
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And here s the email string that has preceded it.
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Now I need to craft an email to follow up.
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You get that, and they say, I need some help with it.
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And then I look at the email string, and I think, well, you re screwed, because your positioning has been so needy, so attached, so desperate.
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Now you expect that horse is out of the barn.
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You can t undo.
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You can t unsee that.
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And don t you think, though, that
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It s when we get that email where we re asked to help them craft this Hail Mary in the 11th hour, that we ve got to say, no, no, no, we re not going to do that.
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You ve got to reset the table, change the game now.
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We re not going to buy into this one more.
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If we could just craft that email just a little bit better.
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What should be the subject line?
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What should that be?
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And it s like, no, it s too late.
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Yeah, it was too late.
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And that s the other part, too, that this gets kind of mechanical, too, is we ve relied on email as our number one process tool from a sales perspective.
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And I used to be in that camp.
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I used to be, well, you know, it s email world these days.
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And now the email is so cluttered, and it s so full, and you can t get through it.
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And it is not, to me, the best methodology for this whole managing and controlling the process part of this.
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You ve got to break out of that and use phone calls, live.
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Texting is something that I think people should look into in terms of the mechanics of this whole thing.
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Co-video, who s the sponsor, who we do the co-video mailbag.
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That s a great thing that totally jumps out and breaks what s going on when we get into that deal.
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My feeling, too, I think there s a thinking column, there s a mindset issue, and there is a fear of taking control of the process because we have been programmed to play nice with people.
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And we think that any sort of confrontation, any sort of angst in a process that feels angsty, perhaps, that might feel like I m pushing someone or being overly aggressive or assertive is a bad thing.
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And that, to me, is the biggest inhibition to salespeople
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taking control of the sales process.
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They re fearful that if they do that, they ll scare the person away.
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That s what I think.
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And I think that is rampant in the philosophy and the mindset of most salespeople that I run across these days, even the ones I ve been training for a while.
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They re attached to the deal and the opportunity and the person liking them and being a nice person and all that jazz.
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And so they won t say, here s what we re going to do.
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Here s what we re doing, Bill.
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Here s the deal, man.
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If we want to work together, here are the steps we go through.
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And yet lots of professions do that.
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I mean, the doctor, the surgeon, the lawyer, the accountant.
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You don t get to name.
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If you re in trouble and somebody s sued you for something, you don t get to create the process with your lawyer.
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You want your lawyer to say, OK, here s what we got to do.
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A, B, C, D, E. A is you give me a check for $10,000 as a retainer.
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Exactly.
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But somehow, and I don t know if it s the level of pain that I m in when I go to the attorney to do that, whether it s like, this is my last stop, so whatever you say, boss, I m going to do, or whether it s just the mindset.
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I don t know.
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I think it s the mindset part first, because this is a bad story, but it shares the point.
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So we had to put our dog down, Stephanie s dog, 14 years old, lived a great, happy life.
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She d been with the dog for 12 years.
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Did the dog tell you this, or did you just assume this?
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No, no, it was time.
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Okay.
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Yeah, the dog did not come up and, like the doggone family guy.
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What the hell?
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The doggone family guy.
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Brian, the dog.
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Family guy people will like that.
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And it was time.
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So we go to the vet, and the vet s very, obviously, vet s very warm about it.
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And the vet said, OK, are you sure we re going on the decision?
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We said, yes, for sure.
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And he said, OK, let me tell you the process here.
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So first thing, I m going to come back, give you guys a few minutes to spend some time with her.
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I m going to come back, shot number one, put that in the muscle.
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That ll just make her sleepy, let you be with her for 10 minutes, come back.
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Shot number two really puts her down like sedation, da-da-da-da.
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And then shot number three is the tough one.
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That s the anesthesia, or the, um,
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euthanasia shot.
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Some want to see it.
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Some don t.
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It s going to be tough to watch.
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So it s up to you.
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And if not, the dog will never be alone.
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If we take her back and do that, we ll always be with her, taking care of her.
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We re like, OK, we want to see.
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Beautiful.
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Isn t it great?
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Beautiful.
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And it wasn t mean.
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It wasn t anything.
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But boy, it made us feel good.
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And he even talked pricing in the thing and upsold us.
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Because we re getting our ashes and then some little paw print thing to come back and sit on the mantle.
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Yeah, we got that when we put our dog down.
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And we never actually received it.
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But we paid for it.
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Never get it.
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But he did, but he was real.
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So there s pricing in that.
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He upsold us from like $150 to $300.
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He did it in a very nice tactical way.
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But see, what you re talking about there is not the doing of it.
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It s the how of the doing of it.
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Correct.
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And I think if we re going to be honest with ourselves with our clients, maybe we haven t.
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putting this in my, maybe I haven t helped them craft the, not just the attitude and mindset, but also the words around it.
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Because if you don t craft the words properly, it can come across as a little bit arrogant, belligerent, and abrasive.
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Look, here s what we re going to do, Brian.
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And Brian s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
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I didn t agree to that.
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Yes.
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I think that part of this too is you have to define what is your ideal sales process?
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What is the process from the time the person first reaches out to you or you reach out to them all the way to the end?
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Because if you can t define that clearly where you re in control, it becomes hard for you to do the things that help you stay in control.
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For example, maybe one part of your sales process needs to be the customer or the prospect fills out some kind of an online assessment.
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And if they don t do that,
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they don t get a call back from you.
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So that could be something you say, well, that sounds a little errant.
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Well, but if you need to know the information, and you know that 95% of the time when they fill out that assessment, it turns into business, you absolutely are going to say, here s what happens.
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There s an online assessment.
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There s 10 questions.
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If you ll fill it out, it ll take you about a half hour.
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Once you hit Submit, I will set up a call with you, and we ll go over it.
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If they don t want to do it, you re not going to call that back and say, hey, have you filled out the assessment yet?
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Have you filled out the assessment?
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No.
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Listen to Gary Vaynerchuk.
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He says, I know when I go out to see somebody, I know within five minutes whether they re going to spend money with me.
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This is his digital agency.
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And he says, I also know within five minutes whether they are.
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And if they re not going to spend money, I just excuse myself and say, I m so glad you invited me in.
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I don t think it s going to work.
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And he says, I m right 90% of the time.
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He said, I may miss some who feel like they re not right, but they are.
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But that in no way makes up for the time that he saves.
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No.
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Like Warren Buffett talking about Amazon at his annual shareholder meeting.
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And he says, I totally missed on Amazon.
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investing in it, because he had his invited early stage.
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And he said, I completely missed it.
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He goes, Jeff Bezos pulled off a business miracle.
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And then here s the sentence.
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He goes, I haven t done too well investing in business miracles over my career.
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So isn t that great?
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That s such a Warren Buffett thing to say.
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It is.
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I m like, oh my gosh, this guy is so smart.
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OK.
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Here s another $20 million.
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Here s another $80,000 for a half a share.
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Thank you.
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Where s my dilly bar?
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So what else on process?
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Is there any?
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So you re saying it s mindset, which I totally agree.
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I think you ve got to have this surrender or detachment gene working well.
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Because if you don t, you will always be a hanger on.
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You ll be hanging on to the deal.
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All right, before we go any further, I want to tell you, we ve got a brand new advertiser, a brand new partner, Cards Direct.
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You ve got some cards.
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They sent us some samples.
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I love these things.
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I ve used it several times.
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And we talked here about how everyone s doing it one way.
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You ve got to do it another way.
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You ve got to stand out in the crowd.
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Nowhere could that difference be more stark than in how you speak to your customers and your tribe.
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We live in a digital age, but prospects and customers are craving something more personal.
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Greeting cards are tangible, friendly,
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and memorable, or as I used to say, memorable.
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As a sales professional, you can do greeting card marketing in conjunction with digital marketing.
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It s a welcoming, personal way of keeping in touch.
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Cards Direct is our new partner, offers greeting cards for a new era, custom, branded with your logo, photos, company colors, and more.
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You can personalize the interior message and upload signatures right into the cards.
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They ll even address and stamp the envelopes for you.
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That s what you need, Brian.
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Cards Direct, full service custom printing.
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You can get 25% off your first order.
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Go to CardsDirect.com slash ASP.
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25% off your first order plus free shipping.
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So go check that out right now.
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What else?
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Yeah.
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I think what you said was brilliant, too, that we ve got to get the mindset right.
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Then we have to get the how, so the action and the language really practiced out.
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And that s probably a part that people are missing.
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They don t know any better, so they default to, please let me know if.
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In all of you listening, I know we re going to give
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That s OK.
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Go audit your email trails between your last set of prospects here in the last 30 days.
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Just read through them and see if you re ending emails in phrasing like, please let me know if, or would like to know if.
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I m anxious to hear back from you.
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I m anxious to hear back from you.
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I ll look forward to hearing back from you.
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Oh, I look forward to it.
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Just go audit your emails, and you ll sit there and go, oh my god.
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Even the best of you.
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I had a client who s an awesome sales guy, and I did this for him.
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He goes, oh my god, I do this all the time.
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And he goes, now that I hear it in a different way, it sounds so passive.
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It sounds like I m relinquishing total control into your arms.
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And you are.
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Yeah.
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Now, if he s that good, he s probably doing something up front to set the stage properly so the emails aren t doing much of the heavy lifting.
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But if you re not doing anything properly up front, then you re putting it all on your email.
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That s difficult.
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And even the best salespeople still have room to grow deals that are stalled and stuck.
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And that s what he s looking at, going, I know in these situations where I m not closing these particular deals, this is one of the reasons why.
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Don t you think that when you re in control of the sales process, the rate, the conversion rate or closing rate just skyrockets?
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Of course.
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Of course, it has to.
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80, 70, 80, 90%.
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And even from a standpoint of just getting the decision skyrockets, back to the Gary Vaynerchuk answer, the thing that bothers most people is this purgatory, I haven t heard anything stuff, that fills up, that clutters up the funnel, it s bad for the VPs of sales for forecasting.
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Correct.
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Drives people crazy, they don t know what to do, that s the problem.
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And can t you make the assumption that when you have people in purgatory, you ve done a lousy job of creating a situation where you re in control?
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I personally think that s one of the things that is 100% on the salesperson if you re in purgatory.
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Because you let it be.
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Because you can end it yourself.
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If it s in purgatory, you can say I m out one way or the other.
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That s good.
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Good discussion about process.
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Let us know.
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Let s post this to the LinkedIn tribe, too.
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And tell us what you think about this whole.
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Idea of process control we ve talked about it off and on on the podcast But I think it s we see it as something that s a big deal Especially when in times when times are good and demand is strong It s even more important because your time is so valuable
1
SPEAKER_00
If you re closing 20% of your deals, that s 80% of the time you re spending on people who aren t buying.
1
SPEAKER_00
And in this world where the leads are coming in, there s lots of good things happening, the market s up, things are good, you can t afford to spend 80% of your time on deals that don t go.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, have to do these things.
1
SPEAKER_00
Good job today.
1
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Nice riffing.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m glad you joined me today.
1
SPEAKER_01
See you next time.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ll be your guest, Bill.
1
SPEAKER_01
Hey, if Jill Conrath and John Jantz won t be a guest, call me.
1
SPEAKER_00
Call in about three months.
1
SPEAKER_01
Text me.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ll be there for you, babe.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
See ya.
1
SPEAKER_01
Bye.
1
SPEAKER_01
Bye.