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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, I share a feel-good story about my now favorite Delta Airlines captain ever.
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Bill quotes a movie within a movie.
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See if you catch that one.
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And we tackle a massive global problem.
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Sales is broken.
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Bill and I are going to fix it in just two short episodes.
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Welcome back to the fan-selling podcast, the longest running sales training podcast, Podcast History.
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I m Bill Kasky.
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I am Brian Neal.
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We are so grateful that you come to see us and listen to us every Monday morning.
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And we are blessed to have you as a listener.
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And I really mean that.
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Brian and I talk often about
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how long we ve done this podcast and how many episodes and just how great our listeners are.
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We hear from you all on LinkedIn and the group.
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We hear good emails from you at listenerandadvancesellingpodcast.com.
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And we just really appreciate you.
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We do.
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And it s a, this is a labor of love.
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labor of love.
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People ask, have you been doing a long time?
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And we even got asked by someone, do you guys make a living at the podcast?
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We don t make a living.
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We make a living in our other practices.
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We make some cash with the podcast.
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It s great.
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It s a labor of love.
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We just love doing it.
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It s just really enjoyable.
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And we love our listeners.
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And it s just awesome.
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Yeah.
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Hopefully that comes through.
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I think it does.
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I think it does.
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So if you have not joined us on LinkedIn, go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash LinkedIn.
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The group there is over 13,000.
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And also, if you have not checked out the Insider program that we do, we go live once a month for an hour and 15 minutes.
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And we do coaching live for this group of people, Insiders, about 70, 75 people.
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If you re interested, go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash Insider.
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There s a video there that kind of walks you through how it works.
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Love it.
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I had a flying, I had a fantastic flying experience yesterday.
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This is unusual for you to be bringing positive thoughts.
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When I said, hey, I ve got a little flying story, you re like, you re being a smart ass.
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I m like, I m not being a smart ass.
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So the captain, you know that sometimes, and so we sit, so when we fly for football, we sit in the first class section, right?
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And every once in a while, the pilot will come and just address the first class people, kind of personally.
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This guy, his name is Captain Desert, which was interesting, his name.
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came out, and he took about, he was probably a minute, minute 15, and had the most genuine talk about how much he loves his job.
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And the way he came out in his energy, he came out and said, hey, I just want to let you know how much I love flying and how aware I am that Delta is on my pay stub, but you all are the ones that pay for me to get to do what I love so much.
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And I just want to say in sincere thanks for that.
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He goes, it was no fun flying planes around empty during COVID.
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And I can t tell you how lucky I feel that I get to fly people around again.
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And then he said, and you think you ve got the best seat in the house?
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You should come up and sit where I m sitting.
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He said, there s nothing better.
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So just thanks.
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And the whole group was just like, oh my.
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He was so sincere, so real.
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It wasn t gimmicky.
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And it took a minute, minute 15.
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And I thought, we as salespeople, and I m not looking for people to get on some sort of speech or anything like that.
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But the realness of, if you love what you do, people pick up on that if it s sincere.
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And I wonder sometimes, you as a listener, could you say the same thing that Captain Desert said about you and your sales job?
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Could you say the same thing?
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How much you sincerely enjoy it, and why it s great, and why you missed people during COVID, and why you love to be back engaged, and why you love helping.
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I think it s good just to be thinking about that, because if you don t, it s too easy to drop and default into what s wrong, what s not working, how tough people are to get to.
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I mean, sometimes I think we just have to go back to, why do we do what we do?
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And why do we love doing it?
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And why are we grateful for it?
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And yeah, it s not perfect, but OK, maybe some of the imperfections actually make it perfect.
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The idea that we would spend a little time, first off, to ourself, acknowledging how grateful we are, and then to your prospects and your clients.
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I think it s okay to tell your clients, look, I gotta tell you, I love what I do, and you guys help me.
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Because you provide great challenges, and your people are all coachable, and they re fun to deal with.
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I think it s OK to say.
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Yes.
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That s great.
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Great reflection for you to think about what your speech to the first class cabin would be about selling.
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Think about that for a minute.
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What would you say to people?
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So if you ever get Captain Desert on a flight, if you fly Delta, tell him Brian Neal from Advanced Selling Podcast said thanks.
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Yeah, and let us know if he changes speech because HR might have changed the script a little bit.
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That s very possible, actually.
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So Brian, several things have happened over the past couple of days that kind of informs this topic that we re going to be talking about today.
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One is I got an email newsletter from somebody that I really respect, Anthony Iannarino.
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He sends out an email every day or every every couple of days and This one is called sales is broken and I m not going to go through all the stats But all the stats back him up when he makes that proclamation Early that sales is broken and he says that not only is sales the sales think sales is broken Buyers think sales is broken.
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That s interesting, which is that part?
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So that s number one.
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Second thing is, and we re gonna talk more about some of those stats, second thing that happened is I was listening to a podcast today, Adam Carolla, who I listen to, I think he s funny.
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They were trying to get a guest on the podcast, an older guest, somebody who starred in, you know, the celebrity in Hollywood back in the 60s or 70s, and still very vibrant in the community, and they thought it would be a great guest.
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I can t remember the name.
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So they called his agent, and his agent says, well, I m not gonna put him on unless you re gonna pay me.
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And turns out this agent is about this actor s age, 70 years old, living in the past where Carson or these big platforms might have actually paid for that.
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Now it kind of goes the other way.
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A person might pay to be on Joe Rogan or Adam Carolla because they get access to four million fans or whatever.
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And so the example there is that someone is living in the past trying to make the present work using the glasses and prism of the past.
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And it won t, it just won t work.
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And the third thing is that I was reading the Wall Street Journal the other day and it said there s 900,000 sales jobs open because people don t want to sell.
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And these are, some of them are entry level and the kind of the article was about how college graduates are not really interested in going into sales because of the, because of the perception, point of view of the profession.
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And I think that s also what makes sales broken.
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Yeah.
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So I thought I would introduce this as a topic today, and we can talk a little bit about it.
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And then if the spirit moves us, maybe we do another episode where we get into a little bit more tactical stuff.
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Channeling the podcast, the spirit of the podcast.
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See if we get moved.
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I like it.
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First of all, I love Anthony.
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If you don t follow Anthony Adorino, go follow him.
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He s awesome.
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I think, are we going to have him on for our
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Little side?
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We should.
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I ve talked to him a couple times.
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I think we are.
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I think we reached out to him.
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He s great.
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Very good, very thoughtful sales coach.
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He s a good writer, too.
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Very good writer.
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That s his gift, or one of his gifts.
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So I love that.
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And I love the fact that you re seeing and hearing the same thing from multiple angles at the same time.
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That, to me, is validation that, yeah, there s kind of a bigger, broader problem here.
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where you hear it from Anthony, and then you hear it from the Wall Street Journal, and you think about this idea with Carollo inviting a guest who wants to get paid to show up on the podcast.
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And that s not how it works anymore.
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It was very telling, because it s kind of like, OK, what s the next reinvention?
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As we go through time, what s the next version of the sales function in all business across the board?
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And I think we re really at a next, another little hinge moment or another little,
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lifting point where we re going to be like, OK, this is what it s like now.
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If you re a professional salesperson, God bless you.
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You know, it s funny we started this.
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Like, can you give the same speech that Captain Desert did about this?
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This kind of bleeds into that topic, I think, a little bit.
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It s like, are you proud of what you do?
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Like when you re at a party, people say, what do you do?
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There was a time when I felt we, as sales trainers, was the older word.
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It was a little dirty.
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You re a sales trainer.
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And people would be like, oh, it means you can t sell?
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You filthy animal.
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You filthy animal.
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Yeah.
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So yeah, I think it s a good time to reflect, think, look in the mirror.
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I wrote down the word dabbling in change, in other words.
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And when we started this podcast 16 years ago, we were dabbling in it.
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We didn t know what to expect.
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We said, yeah, well, you know what?
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Let s do it.
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And we decided to do it weekly, not monthly.
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And so I guess we did a little bit more than dabble.
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If we d have said, look, let s do a couple over the next six months and let s see how they work, that would have been dabbling.
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But we said, no, we re going all in.
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We re going all in for a year.
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And we re going to do it every week.
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And here we are 16 years later and it s been really good for us and hopefully good for you too.
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And the point there is I think when change is upon us and there s lots of different things happening in the market, I think we have a tendency to dabble because we re reluctant to let go of what has been successful for us in the past.
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We don t want to let go too quickly of that because what if that comes back?
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And what if plaid leisure suits come back?
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So I need to hang on to my plaid leisure suits.
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Or were there plaid leisure suits?
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No, but I took those pastel leisure suits and had the big open collar.
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Kind of like my collar today.
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My problem was the tweed.
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Tweed jackets and braided belts.
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Horrible.
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But that s what you wore.
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It was terrible.
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Tweed.
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So the idea there is that if we are hanging on to the past, here it is, we re trying to get to second, but we re keeping one foot on first.
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Because we re not sure we want to really leave first base and fly into second and slide in.
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I m watching my grandkids play baseball, no sliding, a lot of falling on the ball, no sliding.
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But are we trying to get to second and still keeping one foot on first?
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And are we trying to live in the past and trying to get to a new future?
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And it becomes really hard because we re afraid to let go.
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I mean, we re just afraid to let go.
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I m right there too.
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I mean, this is not a lecture about something that I don t struggle with.
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Well, there s the other side of this, too.
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That is the 900,000 open jobs.
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And a strong reason for that is that nobody wants to be in sales.
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So those people, they re not even on the diamond, not even on first or second base.
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They re not playing baseball.
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They re in some other place.
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And that s an interesting thing.
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And then I start to think about the, how can we make sales cool?
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Right?
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When I was in college, I always felt that going into sales was a cool thing.
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It sure did feel like it.
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It was a sought-after job.
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It was a sought-after profession.
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It came with lots of money, lots of flexibility, a little visibility, a lot of good things.
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I don t know that that s the case anymore.
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I m not sure it is.
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Not for those 900,000 jobs.
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They haven t positioned it properly.
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Or the people just have a perspective that it s not cool.
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We know, from being in the business that we are in, that all of our listeners have tremendous opportunity in the next five years, because everybody s looking for great salespeople.
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Absolutely.
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I don t have one client or anybody I talk to who wouldn t say, if somebody came across their path tomorrow that was really good, they would hire them.
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Not one.
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Because they would.
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Same.
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Not one.
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Yeah.
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I want everyone to hear that.
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sought after profession.
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And we, I hope, have contributed to some of the change of perception.
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I would argue, especially if you talk to some of our listeners who might be in the Gen X category or baby boomers who ve been selling a while, would say, you know, the Advanced Selling Podcast really changed my whole perspective of selling in general.
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And now we ve got a new crew coming in.
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And they may have an old perception of where they got it.
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Like, well, sales is cheesy, and sales is, I don t like to be that way.
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People say that.
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I like to be that way.
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Yeah.
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I mean, think about it.
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Sorry to interrupt.
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Think about how many podcasts, even today, 2021, you listen to where there is some kind of reference to sales as cheesy, or creepy, or sleazy, or slimy.
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There s always that reference.
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And I feel like, are we still saying that?
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We haven t yet changed the perception that sales is a noble profession and it s not those things.
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And yet I wonder how many of us still in the back of our mind think, yeah, it kind of is a little sleazy.
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It is.
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So if you were a doctor or a lawyer, that came with some sort of accreditation that was a thing.
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Well, I don t know if you have any doctor friends.
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That s not a fun place to be right now.
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Those guys spend a lot of time and money to not make a lot of money and be really overworked.
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And a lot of them are trying to get out.
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But they re a doctor.
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So you re still like, well, they re doctors or whatever.
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And then you have accountants.
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So things have these labels.
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And you get the salesperson.
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Does that mean you couldn t do anything else?
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That s how I think people perceive that sometimes.
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And then people say, well, I don t want to come across as salesy.
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And then I ve been, I know what that means.
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But now I m thinking, is the problem, our definition of salesy is wrong.
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Mm-hmm.
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Like, the advanced selling podcast version of Salesy is pretty good.
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It s very different.
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Right?
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Yeah.
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I like it.
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I like how it is.
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It s thoughtful.
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It s helpful.
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We critically think.
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We do the right thing.
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We re not pushy.
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Yeah.
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And then I wonder, going forward in the future,
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How are we all going to reinvent ourselves in this context of what is what is sales today?
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It s not what it was 20 years ago or even five years ago.
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So, you know the salesperson of five years ago
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might have been picking up their phone and making 30 dials to get in front of five people, whatever, whatever that behavior is.
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Now, the salesperson of the present and future is writing five LinkedIn articles in that time that goes out to hundreds of thousands of people and captures names and email addresses so that they can call somebody who s raising.
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I mean, it s a terrible example.
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But it s an example of, I can either spend the two hours the old way, or I can spend it the new way.
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And part of that is really understanding, well, what is the new way?
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How should I be spending my time?
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Yeah, I don t think it s terrible at all.
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That s what it is.
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And that s the shift that has to go on.
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And so where s the root of this problem is the thing to think about.
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Where does this problem exist?
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Is it in senior leadership mentality?
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I think so.
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That s a place that we could look.
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Is it in the market itself?
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So the market dynamic has changed.
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We talked in the pre-show about this, again, cliche.
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Google changed everything from a buyer standpoint.
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I can research and find so much information and data as I m going through the sales process before I speak to someone.
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And you ll hear a lot of buyers say things like, well, I really don t want to talk to a salesperson.
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RFPs are made that way.
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So I don t have to talk to anyone.
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And I think that s the biggest mistake a buyer can make.
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Because I always want someone critically thinking about my business with fresh eyes on it.
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The problem is they ve been conditioned, because the people have been so pushy and annoying.
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Right.
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So annoying.
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It s like, that s not worth it.
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So here s Forrester.
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Anthony says this in his email.
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Forrester reports that 60% of buyers would rather do their own research than deal with a salesperson.
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And I think as buyers get younger, that s going to be even higher.
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And the question was, what do salespeople do to create that?
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There s a lot there s a lot of really good stuff here, and I don t want to I don t want to steal his thunder but the point there is that a lot of online research a lot of Desire for content before I move into the sales process with a human being I want to know what do you do?
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How do you do it?
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What s your model?
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What s your framework?
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What are the problems you solve?
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How much is it?
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All those things, I think, are changing.
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And if we keep going out there to the world saying, well, I can t tell you how much it is until I go through my 17-step process with you, then I think we re going to get a lot of resistance.
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And I m not saying lead with price, but you re going to have to realize that price is one of the factors.
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How do you work?
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What kinds of testimonials do you have?
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All those things are part of this reinvention of what sales is.
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So maybe what we do is,
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is we come back next time and go a little deeper into what we see as some of those areas for improvement.
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Love that.
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To reinvent.
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I would love to go on a mission to reverse that so that the buyer s number one reaction is no longer, I do all my research online.
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They say, the first thing I do is I talk to a sales professional to help me think through this.
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Then I go do research online.
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Yeah.
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That d be awesome, wouldn t it?
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Yeah.
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That is good.
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Gosh.
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Yeah.
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And then are you the person they will call or they ll get?
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Absolutely.
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If you re listening to the Advanced Selling Podcast, you will be guaranteed.
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OK.
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So we ll do some kind of tactical tip things next episode.
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Make sure you go to our LinkedIn group, too.
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If you re already there, go and comment on this episode.
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We are making a habit of posting something about each episode.
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And this will be up here.
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if not now, in the next day or so.
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Go and comment, because we d like to hear from you, too, on what you think about this whole shift and what it means to be in sales.
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If you even see it, some of you may not be aware of it or might not see it, and that s okay.
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Love it.
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Okay.
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All right.
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See you next time.