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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, Bill shares an uncomfortable airplane story where the aisle and the bathroom merge, I quote one of my favorite movies on Golden Pond, and we discuss how to help a buyer create a different perspective.
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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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Good morning, Brian.
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Good morning, Bill.
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Awesome to have you here on my show today.
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Talking like a thespian.
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Yes, you are.
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You re quite the actor.
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Who was that, John Lovett, that did that character on Saturday Night Live?
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The Master Thespian.
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Wasn t that a great character?
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Fantastic.
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We re aging ourselves.
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Well, some comedy doesn t hold up.
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No, that holds up.
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Master Thespian, John Lovett on Saturday Night Live.
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You people can Google that one on YouTube.
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You fly a lot, don t you?
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I do fly a lot.
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I just heard a story the other day that airplane manufacturers have decided that there s just not enough seats in the plane, not enough rows of seats.
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So here is exactly what they said.
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We re going to make the bathroom smaller so we can get an extra row of seats in there.
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I mean the bathrooms now what they should do is Yeah, what they should do is just bring around a dixie cup for everybody.
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I mean, that s how small it s getting It s really it s really bad.
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I can t imagine you in a in a airplane bathroom.
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Oh, well, i m hunched over Yeah, i m hunched over i m six feet tall but this story I think somebody should have edited this story and said wait a minute Is this what they said?
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We re gonna make the bathroom smaller so we can get an extra row an extra row is I don t know this much unless yeah But still how do you it s unbelievable?
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Oh, I know why they re doing it.
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I just don t think the bathroom s a place to live
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Where you cut no, it s funny too.
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They just it just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller and It s just painful.
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Did you hear the story about the Polish lady?
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No, who?
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they were fueling they were ready to leave but the plane was still getting taking on fuel and she had to go the bathroom and
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And so she asked the flight attendant, can I use the bathroom real quick?
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Flight attendant says, no, we are fueling.
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It s policy, company policy.
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And she said, no.
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And the lady says, I ve got to go.
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I can t wait an hour.
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She goes, you sit there.
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So she got out and just peed in the aisle.
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Oh my god.
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Video perfect and the audio is actually funny too because the lady said The flight attendant says you just you just went to the bathroom at the aisle She goes I know I know and it wasn t like I know it was yeah, I know like she was a surprise That s not that s not right.
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Oh, I know I mean you should that s disgusting.
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Oh, I know oh, that s funny.
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Oh
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Yeah, it s just a different thing.
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I hopped on a flight coming home from a meeting a few weeks ago, and I got my first middle seat in about 10 years.
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And you just have to just own it.
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There s nothing you can do.
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Coming back from where?
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Dallas?
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From Dallas.
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And what I am curious about, though, how come the people in the aisle and the people on the window think that the middle armrests belong to them?
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There we got one.
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Totally.
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No one on the plane wants the middle seat, so why don t you show just a little bit of compassion here and say, you know what?
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You can have both of them since you re stuck in the middle seat.
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You guys sit behind me the whole time, or sit next to me.
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That s my thought on that.
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No more middle seats for Moa.
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OK, topic today.
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Yeah, go ahead.
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I have a client who sells a service and a solution to customers who haven t really purchased this before.
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They ve purchased something like it, but they re introducing it.
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And this happens a lot in your business, listeners, is that, yes, you re in the banking business, but you do so much more than banking.
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Yeah, you re in the hydraulics business, but you do so much more than just ship the casting.
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So I think you have to look at your business and say, do my customers really understand the whole scope of what I do?
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Or are they just buying this from me because they ve always bought this from me?
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So sometimes I think we have to go in and have a different kind of conversation with our prospects.
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And one of the tools that I ve been teaching my clients to use is this notion of perspective.
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Is there a way for you to share, you the sales professional, to share with your prospect the perspective that you have and the perspective that they should really have for this decision they re about to make?
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So for example, one example of that and then I ll get your opinion on it.
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is if your customer is always looking at price, if you know they re a price buyer and you know that this is the way this thing that you sell has been bought for years, you ve got to go change that conversation.
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Because if you don t and you re not low bid, you re going to always have an arm wrestling match.
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We talk on the podcast a lot about the economic philosophy.
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What are the economics of this purchase?
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Yes, price is one, but return on investment is one.
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What s the problem that you re trying to solve is one.
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Does the problem have an expense to it?
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If you re trying to solve a million dollar problem, you might spend $300,000 to do it.
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So there s the whole notion of the perspective of economics, and that s just one example.
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So I wanted to get your opinion on whether you think this is a, and I know you ve talked a lot about insights.
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How does the seller be a resource for insights for the buyer?
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Yeah.
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I feel like I m a guest.
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I feel like I m a guest on the podcast.
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Oh, sorry.
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OK.
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No, that s good.
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It s OK.
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Well, I do.
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I do care.
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I do care deeply what you say.
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This is a wonderful topic, I believe.
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It fits in line with what Bill and I will talk about sometimes and use the phrase expert persona and carrying this with you.
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Experience has told me that salespeople struggle with this one, first and foremost, because in their minds and heart and soul, they don t believe that they re an expert in anything but what they sell.
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They re an expert in their product and a product feature function, but they don t believe they re an expert in their industry, their business, business in general, and that sort of thing.
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And they are.
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They all are.
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Because they, more than anybody else, I think, carry expertise because of their
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perspective with all the different people they talk about all day, every day.
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You see, if you sell to hotels, you talk to hotels all day, every day, you see lots of different things and ways to run hotels.
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It s super valuable.
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And so for me, the first step in this process of being able to share it is you have to first believe it in yourself that you carry this expertise.
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And you do.
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So hopefully, if you re listening to this, a flip goes on in your brain, a switch gets flipped in your brain that says, oh my gosh,
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These guys are right.
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I am an expert in what I do.
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Because you ve got all this knowledge that you just need to learn how to compartmentalize and share with people.
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And package.
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Exactly.
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And share it up.
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Yeah, because that is, when you think about it, if you ve been in business for three to five years or longer, think about how many people you ve spoken with and talked to and problems you ve solved and mistakes you ve witnessed.
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All of them.
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And good things you ve witnessed, too.
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It s not always pain and problems.
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And yet, we don t talk about that so much.
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We go in and just we just want to know.
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And that s good.
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We want to know what s on the prospect s mind.
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But there s so much more to your
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persona and your expertise than just asking a bunch of questions.
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For sure.
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And I think the second thing to that is the other justification I ll get from people is they think that the people they re talking to don t care about all those other things.
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They re just there to talk about your software or whatever it is that you sell.
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And that is also a big myth and a miss.
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Myth and miss.
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It s a myth and miss.
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Myth and miss.
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Yeah.
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You ever seen the movie on Golden Pond?
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A long time ago.
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Catherine Hepburn s character s name is Ethel Thayer.
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Ethel Thayer.
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Ethel Thayer.
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Look it up.
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That s good.
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It s funny.
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But that s a really important thing to recognize, that your clients and customers love the gift of perspective if you package it and put it to them in the right way.
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So let s talk about how to do that, then.
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Okie dokie.
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Since we have convinced our listening audience beyond a shadow of a doubt they need to be thinking about that, now the question is how?
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Yes.
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And that s another place people get stuck.
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So it s a different podcast.
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Sorry.
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We re going to tease them and leave them?
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Should we?
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No.
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Let s go ahead and give them a couple things here.
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Here s one.
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I would say one way to do it is just to categorize.
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That s great.
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Categorize these things.
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So one category might be how you want them to look at the investment in your product or solution.
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What s your perspective?
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on the way that the typical client, the great client, will look at the investment.
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Yes.
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So do they look at it as an expense?
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They look at it with an ROI.
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Do they look at it as what problems does it solve, and how much money are those problems causing?
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However, I mean, we re not looking to make it bigger than it is.
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We re looking to give them some kind of keen eye into how we see people looking at this issue.
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So money, I would say, would be one category.
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Love it.
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Love doing categories of things.
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It helps you frame up your own thoughts and helps other people understand them better.
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That s great.
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I wrote down, this is very tactical.
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We talked about this a long time ago, like years and years ago.
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What episode was it?
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It was episode 287.
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No, it s not.
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Don t look up 287.
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I have no idea what that one is.
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Is that the one where we?
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That was funny, wasn t it?
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That was funny.
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Silly rabbit.
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That s a throwback from a cartoon.
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Remember that cartoon?
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Oh, yeah.
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Yeah.
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this stuff.
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Create a buyer s guide.
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And so by buyer s guide, what I mean is if someone s going to buy a piece of accounting software, teach them how to buy accounting software.
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Not yours, nothing about your own product, but teach them the things that they need to understand beyond just feature function.
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So how does it talk to and interact with the rest of the organization, ERP stuff?
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a dashboard functionality, usability, those sorts of things.
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How to get uptake, how to get people to use it.
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Just teach people how to buy the category that you re selling.
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Not your stuff, but the category itself.
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And then in that, think about things that people do well.
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So the people that we ve seen that really do this right are, they do A, B, and C. And the people that make mistakes, they tend to make these three mistakes more than any other.
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One, two, and three.
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Perfect.
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Buyer s guide.
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I mean, really what you re doing here is you re trying to make them a better buyer, a more sophisticated and more efficient and effective buyer.
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And so I love the buyer s guide.
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I once told a guy, when you re doing the buyer s guide and kind of framing it out, be thinking if one of your prospects gave you $10,000 to come in for the day and just help them know the process of buying, what would you teach them?
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And if you say, well, I don t know.
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I d just tell them about my product.
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Well, that s not helping them.
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No.
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You know, so take an unbiased view when you do this buyer s guide and pretend like you re getting paid a massive consulting fee for a day to go in and help the buyer sketch out how are we going to buy this.
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Absolutely.
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Yep.
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That s good.
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Next for me, so this buyer s guide is a very tactical thing.
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This one is more philosophical.
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I don t think, I would disagree.
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I don t think the, I mean, I think the buyer s guide is tactical in terms of creating it, but I think that s a strategy.
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I think the strategy there is to help educate our customers so that they can become more sophisticated buyers.
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To me, that s a big sales strategy that works.
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The guide itself is the tactics, but I don t want you to,
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Dilute yourself.
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I don t think it s diluting.
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Well, what I m going to share is philosophical.
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So we re seeing a difference between philosophical and tactical.
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So philosophical, very simply, is teach them how to think.
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Teach them how to think about this.
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So not what to do, and how to buy, and how to evaluate, and those sorts of things, but how to think about it.
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And not even think about it tactically.
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Think about it like so that, for instance, Bill and I were talking in the elevator ride on the way up to the top of the Advanced Selling Podcast World Headquarters here in Carmel, Indiana.
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as people from everywhere else like to say, is we get asked all the time, Bill and I do, what CRM should I get?
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And what we know is CRMs have a lot of different pluses and minuses.
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All of them do.
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Salesforce.com, HubSpot CRM, OnePage CRM, just pick one.
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They all have their pluses and minuses.
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What Bill and I will both tell you without question is a CRM, every CRM is worthless unless you have a culture of accountability.
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And so before sales manager, VP of sales decides to implement a new CRM, they have to first look in the mirror and look at their culture they ve created and say, does this culture
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pass the test of accountability to processes.
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Because if it doesn t, you might as well set your money on fire.
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Don t bother getting a CRM.
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No one s going to fill it out.
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And so that s a teaching them how to think thing, as opposed to teaching them about your CRM.
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Beautiful.
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That makes sense.
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Beautiful.
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Yeah, I love that.
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Philosophical.
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I think the assignment is really simple, and that is create a buyer s guide.
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And it doesn t have to be a 100-page buyer s guide.
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It could be one page.
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Create a one-page buyer s tip sheet or guide, and just list, how would I go about teaching the buyer to buy my genre, to buy my category?
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And just step one, deep, dark, thorough assessment.
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Step two, understanding the denomination of the problem and what you re trying to accomplish.
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Just go through it.
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And A, that can become your process.
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But B, you can hand it out and say, this is something that we do.
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Whether you do business with us or not, this is something you need to know.
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It s super valuable.
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Yeah.
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And you could take that and repurpose it and make video out of it, right?
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You could.
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Put videos out to it, or you could do an audio program to it.
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You could run a whole 10-year podcast episode, daily episode, just on those towns.
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You could start a TV station if you wanted to.
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This is the Buyer s Guide TV.
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Or, what about this, a reality TV show?
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OK.
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I just wanted to do a quick shout out, Brian, to Bruce Beemeyer.
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And he sent this to me about a month ago or so.
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It was right after we ran the Life is a Rock and the Radio Rolled Me trivia question that you got.
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That was great.
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I missed.
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No, I missed it.
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OK, you got it.
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I missed it.
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Anyway, look up Brian Beemeier on YouTube.
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I told him that I would promote him a little bit.
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He does.
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They re an advertising agency.
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They work with clients a lot and put their customers on YouTube.
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They have a hilarious YouTube channel.
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So go check out Bruce Beemeier, B-E-E-H-M-Y-E-E-R.
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Bruce, thanks for the shout out.
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And yes, life is a rock, and the radio rolled me.
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It s still stuck in his head.
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So he says, gee, thanks.
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Holy crap, you guys rock.
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Oh, that s nice.
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Yeah.
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Very good.
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That s good.
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So if you have a sales meeting coming up or a retreat or some kind of strategy session and you want Brian or I or both to come out and visit, send an email to listener at Advanced Selling Podcast, subject line, come see us.
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And we ll be glad to get back with you and start the process and probably set up a phone call and talk a little bit about what you are trying to accomplish and how we can help you accomplish that.
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So that s the end of the podcast.
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We ll see you next week for another episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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See you.