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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast podcast about podcast history.
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This is Bill Kasky with my co-host.
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Is it what you do in your rescue yourself when you step on the intro?
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You re supposed to say Brian Neal.
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Brian Neal.
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Welcome, everybody.
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Yeah.
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Glad you re here.
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If you are a new listener, you can go to advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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And there on the front page, there is a list of the top, I think, 12 to 15 podcast episodes.
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So if you don t want to start over from 17 years ago, you can download these 12.
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I think these are the top 12 episodes in terms of popularity.
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So you can go there and start with us.
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But we re glad you re here.
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wanting to join in yet another LinkedIn group, you can go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash LinkedIn.
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And there s 12, 13,000 people there that will send you money as soon as you join.
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They all listen to the show.
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We, nah, probably not all of them.
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Most of them.
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We do a pretty good job like weeding out the people that are selling things.
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Pretty good.
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It s hard to keep up.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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If you re, if you re coming on there to sell, pitch something, spare us.
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So yesterday, this, we re recording this the day after Easter.
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That s April the 10th.
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And those of you who celebrate Easter, happy Easter.
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I hope you had a great day yesterday.
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So Bill, you ve got two young grandkids.
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I have several young nieces and nephews and we were doing this and the older I get,
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the more bizarre the Easter bunny gets.
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And I m wondering if you ve thought, or if your kids, even the whole idea, the whole concept, and I just have never looked into the etymology of the Easter bunny and Easter eggs.
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So there s a bunny, that s a bunny that lays eggs, that bunnies don t lay eggs.
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It s this gigantic,
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you know, freakish, bizarre looking, you know, like worse than the music you played for your grandkid on that first cut.
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I m sorry.
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And did you have an Easter egg hunt with your grandkids and how did that go?
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Yeah, I did.
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I hid 25 eggs in the backyard, and some were hidden better than others.
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And Evan, like, takes one step out of the patio door, and he spots, like, 11 of them.
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And Sawyer s, like, just following him around, kind of picking up what he doesn t get.
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But yeah, but there was no Easter bunny involved.
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They really didn t talk much about the Easter bunny.
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Yeah, he s kind of weird.
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And then let s go to the egg hunt now, because is that not the greatest form of capitalism known to mankind?
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When you watch kids between the ages of three and eight the week get eaten.
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So the older kid, Sawyer, right, goes and destroys and gets all the eggs and the other kids like all sad because they didn t get any.
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And then the socialistic parents chime in like, now Sawyer, you give your sister a coat.
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She s like, I found these, man.
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These are mine.
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Like, I don t care.
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Share with your sister.
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He s like, no, I found these.
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It s funny, isn t it?
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It is a microcosm of our economy.
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Well, we ve taken to changing the color, so we ve got 12 pink eggs and 12 blue eggs.
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Oh, bravo.
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Evan doesn t get to pick the pink egg, but he s always very good.
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Sawyer, look, there s a pink egg.
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It was like, let her experience the finding of them.
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Thank you.
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So that s my last point here.
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Observing the family, then.
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See whether it s the grandparents, or the aunts, or the uncles, or the parents.
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So it s Easter egg time.
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So it s time to mark your set and go for the kids to run out there.
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As soon as the kids leave, it s like the parents and the grandparents are ahead of the kids.
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Sawyer, over here.
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Sawyer, come look.
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Look right around where Uncle Brian is.
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Do you see anything over here?
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Do you see anything?
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See anything pink at my feet by chance?
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Look, let him find it.
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That s the exact thing.
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That s exactly right.
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I said, give him the part of the yard.
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Don t give him the part of the, you know, the three by three foot part of the pavement.
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Right.
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Yes, give them the general quadrant.
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Don t give them the actual... It s true, parents.
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Really what that means is the parent wants to do its own Easter egg hunt.
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Which I think would be fun.
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I ve always said, you know, when I was in my early single party days, I said, you know, when I lived by myself for Easter, I would just like get drunk Saturday night, hide all the eggs and I d get up in the morning, wouldn t know where they were.
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Wouldn t know where they were.
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It was challenging.
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Cruise around my apartment, hungover, looking for the eggs.
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I never did that, but that would be funny.
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Okay, topic, we re coming back from our last episode, we talked about trends.
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We re asking you also to chime in the LinkedIn group, by the way, and tell us what trends you re seeing out there.
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We re gonna peel one of those trends out and talk about it today.
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We re gonna peel off the one we talked about shifting your ideal client.
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We re just gonna kick this around.
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kind of in what do you observe and what should we do mode.
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And so I ll start, Bill, and then I d love to get your take on this to set the problem up a little bit.
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What I m seeing a lot, a lot, a lot of is sales resistance in certain markets and the lack of attention or re-engineering of the ideal client.
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The ideal client s been a certain way for a long time, and it s been working, so there s been no reason to change it.
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And now it s not working.
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And so what we re doing when our sales
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results aren t where they are, what we re doing is more behavior in the same place, more outreach to the same person.
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Well, those people aren t buying or they re slowing down.
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And so I think there needs to be this kind of reckoning to retool the ideal client.
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That s kind of the setup.
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So let s talk about if you re seeing that, if you re not, and a little bit about what we should do about it.
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Are you seeing it in your training and consulting coaching business where
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the sales team is not quite as, we don t need to emphasize the sales team as much as some of the engineers and sales engineers and other people.
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Are you seeing that?
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I m seeing a little bit of that.
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Yes.
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Yeah, for sure.
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And I m also just seeing, I don t want to call it, it s not yet desperation, but it s starting to feel like that.
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And when we re desperate, we tend to do dumb things.
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And one of the dumb things we do is we continue to do the same thing we ve always done.
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And I m not going to say the cliche thing there.
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Don t say it.
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Don t say it.
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Don t say it.
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But that s happening.
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And I think part of the problem, people are afraid.
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I think they re fearful to step back and go, are we with the right customers?
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Is this the right group?
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And it s hard to do the air thing.
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People, it is hard to do.
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Yeah.
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And they feel like they ve, they feel like, I think people feel like they re giving up on something.
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I think you re just switching gear.
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You know, you re, you re on the Titanic and there s a lifeboat.
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You re just, they re both boats.
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One of them is going to sink.
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One s going to like float.
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They re jumping.
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The one that s going to float, you know?
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One of the biggest challenges is the fear that comes along with deciding to pivot even slightly.
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Yep.
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Because you re not going from one business to a brand new business.
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You re going from the business you re in to the business you re in, but you re picking out a different ideal client or department to call on.
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Yes.
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There you go.
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That s, yes.
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And sometimes I think when, if you said to me, Bill, you ve got to start calling on the engineering department and talking to sales engineers, I d be like, OK, yeah, you might be right, Brian.
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But if you said, oh, by the way, I ve got the,
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game plan here.
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I ll tell you exactly how to do it.
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I ll tell you exactly what podcast to be on.
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I ll tell you exactly what to say when you get in front of them, exactly what message to leave.
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Then I d say, oh, you can get me there?
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Great, let s do it.
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Yes.
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So I think a lot of times it s the fear of changing comes along with I don t know how.
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Yes, yes.
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And it takes work.
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So I think this is also with the balance here, too, is that we have to get in a room with whiteboards and draw stuff and paint and explore and scratch stuff off.
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And our coach here at our firm uses keep, kill, combine ideas.
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Keep them, kill them, combine them.
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That takes some work to do.
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But that s the only way to get.
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I love what you said about the confidence thing, because that s very true.
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If we just tell the sales team they need to retool it, they re just going to stare at us, right?
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We ve got to facilitate that being done.
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And that needs to be done with the sales team and marketing and product or whoever your company is structured in a room.
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And it s going to be really, really hard work.
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Yeah.
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So I ve got a couple of things here that might blend into this conversation about
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When you are doing a slight switch in either who you re calling on, the type of conversation you re having with this person, and it might just be a different department that you re calling on, there s several things.
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I think you have to really get back to the knitting of what s the problem we re solving here?
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What s the problem alignment, problem solution alignment?
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What does it look like when they have the problem and how is our solution going to rid them of the problem or get them to the solution?
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Raising my hand.
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Right, Brian.
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Thank you.
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Fantastic.
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About your gum, by the way.
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Yeah.
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I, uh, why, why weren t we allowed to chew gum?
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Oh, just because they couldn t get it off of the desk.
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Right.
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It wasn t my problem.
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Um, low social, uh, what s it called?
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Social, uh, responsibility.
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Um, I love this idea.
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Um, for sure.
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And this is the thing that I think people have missed, like,
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right out of the gate, without question.
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That they just have initially always thought that, well, I solved this problem, and so I m still solving that problem.
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You re not.
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The problems are different.
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And when you do what Bill s talking about, you re going to either decide, oh, actually, our software solution thing, product, whatever it is, can fix the new problem, or it can t.
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And that person who is an ideal client isn t anymore.
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Even an existing client may not be ideal anymore.
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I love that.
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Yeah.
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I mean, even in our world, the shift from go get more to retain more is a shift.
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We might say, boy, I don t do a lot of work with the account management team.
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So Bill may be working with a big sales team of 25, 30, 40 people, 50 people, whatever, and not with the account managers.
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Like, hey, we need it.
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We re losing clients left and right here.
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Bill, can you come help us strategize our language processes, thoughts around
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keeping clients bills like sure it s a pivot for bill but very helpful so i love that but you know you said something there that uh it was a throwaway line for brian neal but i think it s a um it s something worth revisiting and that is
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And the, I don t think it s reluctance or refusal to sit in a room and hammer these things out, but that s what s needed.
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Because until you dig down to the depths of what is the problems, what are the circumstances facing our customers, our new customers in this new niche or whatever, until we dig down and really get to the bottom of it, and part of it is asking them, but part of it is if you ve been in the business, you kind of know what problems you solve.
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If it s all surfacy, then when you get in front of a prospect, there s no depth to it.
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There s no depth.
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Like if I asked a
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If I ask a 25-year-old to come in and talk to my sales team or ask Brian Neal or Bill Kasky to come in, you could tell the difference very quickly, even if we were saying the exact same thing because of the depth of knowledge.
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And our listeners have a depth of knowledge.
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And you have to allow space to really understand the depth of your value so that when you re out talking to prospects, it becomes apparent quickly that you know what the hell you re talking about.
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And it s not just a script that you re reading.
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That s so good.
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It s got to be that way.
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It has to be that way in this environment.
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You can get away with the surfacy stuff.
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That s why all the past kind of coaching training buzz was all around the last four or five years or so.
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It s been really tactical.
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Here s a great cold email cadence that works.
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Look at this fire email cadence.
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Here s how to leave a great voicemail.
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All this stuff like that, that s not going to fly anymore.
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People are tired, and it s just a, what do you call it, throwaway white noise, whatever.
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It s really, really good.
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So here s another thing I want to do, because Bill and I talk about this.
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We have this for you, I think, somewhere, the Ideal Client Template.
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So think of it like a framework you can use that Bill and I put together and use in our practices and with Advanced Line Podcasts, where we have you just examine your client in a framework lens of demographics and psychographics together.
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And if you ve never done this before, it s a good little framework for you to use.
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Your demographics are your yeses and noes, where they live, how many you head count, that sort of stuff.
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The psychographics are more of that touchy-feely depth of pain and problem, that sort of stuff.
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And if you can frame this up into, we like to frame it up into a good, better, best scenario under demographic and psychographics.
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So visualize that.
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You ve got demographics, psychographics as your rows, and you have columns, good, better, best.
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There s your framework right there.
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You don t even need to ask for the template.
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Right?
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Type it up.
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Most people don t have the framework for that.
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You know, they just go like, well, they just talk about what their product does.
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They say, well, we help, you know, business to business sales teams increase lead time or, you know, decrease close time or something like that.
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But this good, better, best, and demographic psychographic really helps you drill down.
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We help sales teams in a business-to-business market in the industrial sectors in the Midwestern United States.
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That s really, really specific.
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Yeah, that s right.
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I love that.
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Got to get there.
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I love that.
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Got to get there.
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Last thing I would have here is that when you re entering a new area is get your process up to speed in that new area.
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So if you ve had a sales process that you ve used for 20 years, and now you re moving to another niche, make sure that you are updating that.
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Because it could be that it s growing weary.
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And the sales process today should be different than it was two years ago.
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If it s the same exact process you ve used for 10 years, it s outdated.
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Because of digital, because of technology, because of AI, because a lot of things.
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I mean, a lot of things you can add into it.
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take a long, hard look at your sales process, which is the vehicle, and see it as the vehicle that helps your prospect start to get value from you.
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They don t have to buy to get value from you.
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They should get it partly in the sales process, or at least that should be the commencement of that.
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That s bravo.
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I love that.
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Um, the last thing I m going to say, uh, well, it s two, it s two things, but I can t combine them.
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So it s going to be two.
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Uh, one is, is a thinking thing.
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Have fun with this.
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Like just enjoy this process.
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This is exploratory, right?
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It s like fun.
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You re like playing, trying to find something new that should be fun, not pressure filled.
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And then as you re approaching new markets, if you do modify or shift, whether it s a new department within a company or anything, here s some words.
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We ve used these words in the podcast that become difficult to say no to.
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Opinion, advice, guidance, coaching.
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Ask people for those things when you re going to these new markets.
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If I ask Bill for some guidance or some coaching, he s more apt to say yes.
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It s actually socially awkward for him to say no.
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I said, hey, Bill, I was looking, I m exploring a new market.
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I wanted to get some input or some coaching around this.
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Could I ask you a couple of questions about that?
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It s weird for people to go, no, sorry.
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Yeah, and ask it in public, in a public forum.
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Right, where they can t see additional pressure.
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People love pressure.
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I don t mean to put you on the spot here, but I love when people say that.
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Hey, I know I m catching you off guard here, Bill, but.
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Uh-oh, yeah.
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Yes, you are.
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I m not gonna answer.
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No, this is a good topic, because I think as things change, and the chaos gets even more chaotic, if this chaos get more chaotic, that we have to be
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just really dialed in and focused and mindful of who is our ideal client?
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How have their lives changed over the last few years?
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How will they continue to change?
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What s the organization?
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What kind of pressures is the organization putting on your buyer?
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Do we either save money, cut costs, cut cycle time, whatever?
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You ve got to be mindful of those things, because they re all changing the way your product is being purchased.
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100%.
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The problem they had then is not the problem they have now.
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You ve got to figure out what the new problem is.
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All right.
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Good stuff.
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Yep.
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Check out LinkedIn group and go to join the next insider.
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By the way, if you re not a member of the advanced podcast insider group, please do that.
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That s the first Friday of every month with my good friend Bill Caskey.
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Go be a member of that.
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All right.
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We ll see you.
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All right.
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See you next time.
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Bye.