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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I miss an opportunity to pay back a three-year-old for kicking my seat on an airplane.
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We go all orchestra and band on you.
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You might be more musical than you think.
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And we continue our LinkedIn group-inspired series on how to get unstuck.
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This, episode two, is how do we get unstuck when we are stuck in the middle.
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Welcome back to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in podcast history.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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I m Bill Cassidy.
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We are here every Monday for your listening enjoyment.
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LinkedIn group, LinkedIn group, LinkedIn group.
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Everybody needs to go to the LinkedIn group.
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I started to like sing a little bit.
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It was like a song, a little poem.
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Yeah.
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So maybe we ll do that, write a LinkedIn group song.
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But hey, if you re not there, we re trying to get to 13,000 by the end of the month.
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We re 12,000.
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I m just putting it out there.
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You put it out there, sometimes the stuff comes true.
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But everybody go there.
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We re going to start doing a lot more engagement there.
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Today s topic, as you know, is number two of a three-part series inspired by a LinkedIn poll that we put up in the LinkedIn group.
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So you need to be there.
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We re going to be also offering a lot of fun stuff and talking to you from the LinkedIn group.
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So go there if you haven t done that already.
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OK, I m flying a lot, Bill.
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Flight story.
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Have you ever been on an airplane and sat in front of a three-year-old before?
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Have you ever been on an airplane, sat in front of a three-year-old?
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Listeners, have you ever sat in front of a three-year-old?
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Do you know what tends to happen?
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Do you know what tends to happen with three-year-olds?
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A lot of kicking.
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There s a lot of kicking.
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There s a lot of kicking.
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A lot of tapping of the seat in front of them.
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A lot of kicking.
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And there s a debate whether you should say something, because the kid s three.
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They don t know any better than on an airplane.
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You feel bad for the parent, because they re on a two-hour flight with their kid.
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And it s really, really annoying to get kicked, I think, on an airplane seat.
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Would you say something to a three-year-old that was kicking you?
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No, I would not.
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I wouldn t either.
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My aunt, she does that.
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She went there, huh?
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Well, she has.
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She told me about that.
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But I had the tables turned this time.
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I sat behind a three-year-old on my last flight.
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Oh.
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So I kicked his seat the whole.
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You kicked like crazy.
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I was do, do, do, do, do the whole time.
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I didn t really do that.
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But I absolutely thought, I thought, oh my god, I could pay this kid back.
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He was trying to read a book.
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All these years.
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Probably bothered him.
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Totally.
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Yes, he was a very cute kid, actually.
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He was very well-behaved.
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But I thought, oh, I should just, I just want to keep shaking the seat, shaking the seat and banging and sitting up on it.
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He was a really sweet little cute kid looking out the window talking to his mom.
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But oh my gosh, what I would have done.
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And those of you who know what I m talking about, yeah, you would have loved to have kicked the three-year-old s back of the seat.
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Speaking of young children getting hit,
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I went to my grandson s Little League baseball team game the other day, four and a half, so it s first year in baseball.
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He s not all that into it, and I think most of the kids, their parents want to get them out of the house and get them in uniform.
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The uniforms are precious, and they got hats and gloves and balls and bats.
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But most kids really aren t into it.
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So his team is up, and they re actually, it s coach pitch, and then you hit off the tee ball.
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Which, interesting.
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So every time you even get wood on the ball, you re going to get to first base.
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So there s a kid who s not all that into baseball.
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He hits the ball just gently.
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It kind of rolls off his pad, and he runs, kind of meanders to first base.
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And my grandson is up next.
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And the kid on first base, I didn t notice it, but he s sitting down with his back to the field, playing in the dirt, creating some kind of dirt sculpture or something there on the field.
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First base, I mean, the game s going on.
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The coach pitches.
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I don t think it was a migrant.
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Somebody hits it to the person who s standing right next to the pitcher.
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This kid, and nobody has a good arm in this case, this kid picks it up and flings it like 30 miles an hour.
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I don t know, it was an awesome throw to first base, and it cracks this kid on the bat right in the back.
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So this kid who s sitting on first, he s not out because he is on the bag, but he starts crying.
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And so his mom comes out of the stands, oh my gosh, what happened?
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And well, he just got, he was foolish.
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He was sitting down and it just cracked him in the back.
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And the crowd was like, oh, God, it s classic.
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It s classic paying no attention and paying the price for it.
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Completely.
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That age is so funny.
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Little league, isn t it?
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Oh my gosh, they re so funny.
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And you re right.
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There s a big group of them that really don t care.
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They don t want to be out there.
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Like, no building castles.
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Stop.
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Stop building pyramids.
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They re like building pyramids in the dirt at shortstop.
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Shortstop, stand up.
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Get your mitt.
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Put the dirt out of your mitt.
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Throw it out.
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Dump it.
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Tyler, dump it.
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Dump the.
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Everybody s Coach Little he knows what I m talking about.
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It s hilarious, isn t it?
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And then you have this beautiful.
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There s somebody on our team hit like a liner that bounced up, and this kid just kind of went like that, and it caught him.
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And he s like, wow, look what I got in my glove here.
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That s so funny.
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It s like, no way you should have caught that.
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It s the best.
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Yeah.
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There s a kid who s a really good athlete now in high school, but I ve known him since he was that age.
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And he s a really good little baseball player, same deal.
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T-ball, he came out, he had four gloves on, he had sliding gloves, he had eye black on, and he d tell the ump to hold up, like in T-ball, you know?
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And then he d just smack the thing into the street.
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Held, was he?
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It was so funny.
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At the time, he was five.
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Oh, wow.
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He was at Meridian Street Methodist.
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Oh, yeah.
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Little T-ball back there.
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Nobody liked that on this field.
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Now he s a really great high school football player.
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OK, so we can talk about that all day.
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Let s topic.
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We re going to talk, again, if you re not in LinkedIn group, go there.
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This is where we got this topic.
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We put a poll up and said, what would you like us to talk about?
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And y all voted on four topics.
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One of them was, how do I get unstuck?
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My deal s stuck.
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Getting deals stuck was a, getting them unstuck when they are stuck is a topic.
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So we re breaking this down into three part series.
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We talked last episode about what to do when they get stuck at the beginning.
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Today, we ve been waiting to say this.
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What do we do when they get stuck in the middle?
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Oh, that is a beautiful song.
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What a beautiful song by?
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Steelers Wheel.
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Who the lead singer is?
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Really accomplished solo artist from the 70s also.
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Does anybody know the lead singer of Steelers Wheel?
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Jerry Rafferty.
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Did you know that?
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Oh, yeah.
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Then when you hear it, you re like, oh, you do.
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Even a songwriting style.
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It s a great little music trivia question for you, 70s music buffs.
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Stuck in the Middle.
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Made famous in what movie?
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Well, it was famous before this.
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I don t know.
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Reservoir Dogs, correct?
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Am I right on that?
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I believe Stuck in the Middle was in Reservoir Dogs.
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So it was 20 years post the song s popularity.
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Post the song, yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, Quentin Tarantino classic.
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But great scene.
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When they re singing that song, it s actually a very uncomfortable scene in Reservoir Dogs.
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Quentin Tarantino is a unique guy.
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We ll talk about him next time.
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I know we want to get to our topic.
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But I love his attitude.
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Somebody says, you ought to do this.
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And he s like, no, we re not going to do that.
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China says, well, you got to take this part out.
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No, we re not going to do that.
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And when his first, it could have been Reservoir Dogs.
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People the studio asked him to do something and he just said no and then he changed studios because no I m not gonna do it.
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I love that attitude of and obviously he s Brilliant genius knows what works and what doesn t okay.
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So in the middle of the sales process.
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Yep.
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Sometimes we get stuck
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And we re going to talk about that today.
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And last time, what we did was we were talking about why.
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What s this whole stuck thing, and why does it happen to us?
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And I think that might be a good foundation today as well, to say, why do we get stuck in the middle with you?
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And then talk about some remedies for it.
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Yes.
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My thinking here, there are always multiple reasons why we get stuck, or potential reasons.
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To me, the number one thing that I think for my own stuff
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where I get stuck in this middle part, and then when our team does, I feel it tends to be a process problem on the other side, where there are multiple people on the other side of my client prospect company.
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And it is a matter of getting everyone involved in the right way.
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And that s when things tend to lose momentum.
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When I ve got maybe a sponsor or champion, everyone calls it something different.
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And they re really into it, but they ve got to get buy-in from three other people.
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And now we re stuck, because we re doing calendars, and then they re coming in halfway.
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And then four weeks go by, and everybody s forgotten why we re even getting together in the first place.
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Completely, yes.
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And then when they do catch wind of it, then like, oh, that s what we re doing?
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We re hiring for that?
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Well, I ve got a guy or a gal who does that, too.
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Then they bring their person in.
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And to me, it s a really, really very common thing for this to happen, where the buyer s process gets in the way in the middle.
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Of all the things, that s one of them.
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There are some others, obviously, but that to me is a real common one.
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I think that s probably the biggest one.
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It s the one I see when I m in the process and what I see from my clients is, and I had a name for it back in the 1920s.
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I used to call it orchestration.
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It is the skill of orchestrating things around the sales process to make sure the ball continues to move and roll.
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And I think we ve lost sight of that.
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I don t think, generally, we as a sales function are that good at orchestration.
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Interesting.
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Present company excluded, I m not saying we re not.
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But I think the orchestration skill is really
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being able to take a 30, kind of pull focus, as we might do in the movies, and take a 20,000 foot view of things and say, OK, we re getting ready to go down this path.
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I wonder why the CEO s not involved, or who s the CEO?
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It s like this.
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You can t have a ground level view of it.
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You have to have an aerial view and say, what s really happening here with all these players and all these people that you talk about?
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And how can we understand orchestration so that we can be a solution to it rather than just a part of the wheel that s going around?
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Yes.
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And that s the biggest mistake.
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And I don t know.
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That s a good thing to talk about.
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I wonder why this is.
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Why is it that we are bad at orchestration?
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Are we scared?
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Are we timid?
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Maybe it s the same word.
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Do we feel like we have?
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Have we given up?
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Like, meaning, well, you know, nothing I can do about that.
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He s got to go talk to the CFO, and she s, you know, whatever.
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Is it too much work to?
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Yeah, is it too hard?
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Yeah, too hard.
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Right.
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Yeah, do I not have the?
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Because it does take some energy and effort.
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That s interesting.
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It does take some.
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What do you think it is?
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What s the number one, do you think?
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I think it s fear.
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I think it s fear.
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I think it s fear to.
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For me, it is.
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Yeah.
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When I know I need to talk to somebody else, I get that little thing in my stomach.
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It s like, OK, well, I know I need to ask.
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I m just going to ask.
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Yes.
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If I do it in the wrong way, it s not going to happen, too.
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Yes.
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And I like the idea.
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So this is, I think, a way to keep us out of it, or to minimize it at least, is if you re going to be a good conductor of an orchestra,
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It s really hard to sight-read a piece of music on performance night.
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You have to look at the music ahead of time and practice and rehearse it.
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And then what a conductor does, I was in the band, so I know this.
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I m kidding.
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I was in the band, but I m getting over my skis a little bit.
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You played under a conductor at one point.
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I did.
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Mr. Lindenschmitt.
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Oh, my gosh.
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Here come the memories.
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Mr. Schoenecke.
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God bless him.
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He couldn t tell.
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Is he still in jail?
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Well, he just had an eye issue where you couldn t tell where he was looking.
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So it was like, oh my gosh, you didn t know.
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Is he looking at me?
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Am I in trouble?
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Very disciplined band that I grew up in.
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Very disciplined band.
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But what they do is they look at the sheet music, and then they make their own little modifications and tweaks to give the best performance that they want in that particular show.
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Our band directors did that.
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I loved band when I was in it.
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What did you play?
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I played the cornet, actually, which is a trumpet.
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Short trumpet.
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But I had a marching band my freshman year.
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We had 103 freshmen.
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We had our own freshman marching band.
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We had so many kids in our band.
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We competed against these little high schools in Indiana.
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Did they make you watch the Music Man before?
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We didn t watch the Music Man, no.
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One of our songs we played, though, was- 76 Trombones?
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No, we played Late in the Evening.
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Oh, yeah, beautiful song.
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There s a little group of us that did the horns.
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That s a beautiful song.
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That was great.
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Hard to play, too.
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Orchestrator, conductor, looks at the music, knows that making these tweaks and modifications is the best thing, and then tells the players, here s what to play.
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Here s how to make this sound.
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I need it to be a little quieter, right?
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A little quicker.
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And so we, as the salesperson, have to be that way.
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We have to conduct the buyer to say, it needs to be this way.
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This will give you the best outcome.
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Not definitely a deal with me, but the best outcome.
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This process will be the most valuable.
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So that, and I don t think we either don t know how to do that or we re scared to do it.
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So we have to do that.
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Yeah, I think it s a little bit of both.
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But I think fear raises its head there quite a bit.
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Yes.
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I remember I went to an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra event a couple years ago up in Carmel and sat kind of in a balcony overlooking the orchestra.
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And I can t remember the conductor s name.
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But I had a direct shot at him.
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I was kind of just looking directly at him.
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And for an hour and a half, I m not a big music fan when it comes to that kind of music.
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I couldn t take my eyes off of him because of how he just had control of everything.
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And he would know when to point, know when to pull back, and he would know when to look at his...
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It was an art form.
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It s really impressive if you just focus on the conductor.
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And I think that s some of the skills that we need to learn.
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We need to learn how to bring people in when it s time.
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If you re going out making a call with one of your technical people or engineers, you ve got to orchestrate that.
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Because guess what, if you don t, they may say something that they shouldn t say, or they may talk too much, or they may not listen to the prospect s question appropriately.
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So you have to not only orchestrate that before you show up, but during the call itself.
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And I think that takes a certain skill, and it s not something we ve practiced.
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That s really interesting.
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I didn t think about the internal management of the process, too.
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Like you said, you re bringing technical engineers or SME, subject matter experts, as a lot of companies call them.
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And you ve got to be the one that, again, practices with them, coaches them on what to say, what not to say, preparing questions, all this stuff.
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And I think you listeners, if you re listening to this, this is a skill I guarantee you can get better at, what we re talking about here, that will help you dramatically minimize the times you re stuck and get you unstuck if you are.
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So we ve taken a little bit different twist on it.
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Instead of just giving you 17 tips on how to get unstuck, we think that one of the key areas is just
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When you re stuck, it could be because you haven t orchestrated properly.
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Yes.
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You haven t conducted properly.
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Now, do you think you should get a conductor s wand and a tuxedo with tails for your sales calls?
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Oh, absolutely.
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Someone would do that.
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I never thought about that.
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Do you have any clients that are kind of cheesy like that?
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SPEAKER_01
I had one, and he got away with it.
1
SPEAKER_01
But he would dress up in a certain to go to.
1
SPEAKER_01
If he was going to a construction company to sell him something, he would wear a hard hat and a vest.
1
SPEAKER_01
Not my bag, but it works for some.
1
SPEAKER_01
I had a P&G manager of mine who laid down in front of his buyer s desk to give a presentation to demonstrate what it looks like when you re on the bottom shelf, because you can t see it down there.
1
SPEAKER_01
I could never do that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I respect so much people who can do it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I do.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you can pull it off, I know.
1
SPEAKER_00
Pull it off.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it s cheesy.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was not in my vernacular.
1
SPEAKER_00
So anyway.
1
SPEAKER_00
Make sure you go to the LinkedIn group if you haven t already.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re trying to get that thing up to 13,000 by the end of September.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we re at 12,000 and unchanged right now.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we will also be doing some more polls.
1
SPEAKER_00
If you want to weigh in on this one, you can find it there.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we re asking you what you d like to talk about.
1
SPEAKER_00
And unstuck the sales process was number one.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re going to talk next week about at the end of the sales process, how do we navigate that?
1
SPEAKER_00
That s awesome.
1
SPEAKER_00
See you then.
1
SPEAKER_00
Bye.
1
SPEAKER_00
Bye.