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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, we get a sales lesson from PR firms pitching the Advanced Selling Podcast, things not to do, Bill shares an extremely obscure sleep aid, and we continue our case for deal work with mistakes people make when doing it.
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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 Kasky.
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Sound like the voice of God.
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We call that sometimes, the voice of God.
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We re glad you have found us and you re with us.
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You know by now.
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Some people listen out of order.
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They ll listen later.
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But those of you who know, we are talking, kind of having a thematic month this month.
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And we are talking all about our new program, Live and Open for Biz in the Advanced Selling Podcast, the Dealwork Studio.
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The Dealwork Studio.
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Bill and I have been doing coaching and training for longer than some of us care to admit.
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And we are very, very clear that the most valuable thing we do for our clients is helping them strategize and work through deals.
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Our podcast listeners are always asking us, how can I engage with you at a more intimate level?
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How can I get more of your wisdom and your ideas and your perspectives?
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And we figured this is a great way to do that.
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Have you ever heard, Brian, of the 80-20 principle?
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I have heard of that.
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The Pareto rule.
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Yeah, Pareto s principle.
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Well, when I think about, let s say that you ask Brian or I and I to come out for a full day event, and let s just say that s seven hours.
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That s a long time for you to listen to us and for us to listen to you, for us to look at you and for you to listen to us.
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Anyway, if you take the 20% of that, that s about an hour and a half, let s just say.
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If you take 20% of that, that s about, I don t know, 30 to 45 minutes.
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And the point there is that whenever you look at a full day like that, there s probably 30 minutes to an hour that is the most important part of that.
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Because usually at the end you ll say, well, tell me what you learned today.
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And sometimes people learn something you said in the first five minutes.
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Sometimes it s the last five.
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But the point is that
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The idea of condensing eight hours into an hour, although that doesn t seem conceivable, really is if you do deal work.
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Deal work is the thing that separates all the wheat from the chaff.
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Chaff?
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Is it chaff?
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I don t know.
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Chaff sounds painful.
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Is it chaff?
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Chaff, that s chafe.
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That s bad.
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When you re a marathon runner, we all know what that is.
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But the wheat from the chaff is, I don t know which is which, 20 or 80.
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But the point is that if you really focus on deal work, you can make so much more time and money.
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And the value of that hour is so great.
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So that s why we decided to do it this way.
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Yes, and if you listen in order, we did an episode last week about the case for doing deal work.
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And we highly encourage, so that if you re a salesperson, here s what you do with this whole series of episodes.
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If you re a salesperson, you send this to your sales VP or your sales manager and say, boss, I want to do this with Bill and Brian.
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Your sales manager or sales VP might go, well, we already do that.
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They probably do something they think is, but I m telling you, it s not what we do.
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They probably do some funnel review, some quick strategizing.
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You heard last episode.
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If you listened to that, you should go back if you haven t.
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The gifts of the reasons why to do it.
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Would I say, hey, boss, or would I say, hey, boss man?
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Or boss lady.
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Or boss woman.
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Boss lady, for sure.
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You say whatever you normally say.
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Hey, boss lady.
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Yeah.
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So that s good.
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And today, we re going to talk a little bit about mistakes people make in this process.
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What are the mistakes that people make?
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Before we do that, we get contacted by people multiple times a day asking to be guests on the show.
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And usually, it s from a publicist group or a PR group.
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I m guessing most of these are mass emails.
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Do you know which one I m talking about now?
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We do.
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We got one last night.
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We got one at Sunday night.
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10 PM that came through, and I m not going to read the person.
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But it says, hello, generic, I m a publicist at, name of company, and I ve become a bit obsessed with your show, LOL.
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I wanted to reach out to see if you d be interested in having one of my guests blank.
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And if you read the bio of the guest, very nice bio, absolutely doesn t fit our demographic at all.
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I saw that.
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And so this is a note to the publicist.
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Now, what I know is the vast majority of them do not listen to the podcast that they re selling to at all.
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They do no research whatsoever.
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Clearly, they re just mass blasting as many podcasts as they can find.
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If, though, you do happen to come across one, using the lingo... Come across a guest, a potential guest?
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Or no, come across a podcast that you actually like and listen to that will be good for a guest if you actually do what I think you should be doing, then I would suggest you personalize this a little bit more.
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And instead of saying hello, I would say hi, Bill and Brian.
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And instead of saying I ve become a bit obsessed with your show, tell me a little bit of background, because I did start to respond to her because I couldn t sleep last night.
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And so I wrote this email that I didn t send.
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I m trying to be a better human.
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I said to this woman, could you tell me specifically what about our podcast you re obsessed with?
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Just what you re obsessed with.
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I m just curious.
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So I just thought that was funny.
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There s a good sales lesson in that.
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You ve got to do your research.
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You ve got to understand who you re talking to and what they re about.
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And you don t need to go in depth even.
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Just a little bit.
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Know their name.
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Don t say you re obsessed with them if you re not.
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It s just complete baloney.
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Because we re on to that.
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In this world of fake news, nothing is real.
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Nothing is real.
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So when you tell me that, I don t believe it.
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In fact, if you say, I ve never listened, but I ve heard it s really good, that s even better.
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Exactly.
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Or, I ve never listened.
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We re trying to get my client on some business podcast.
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We ve never heard yours before.
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Here s what they do.
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Would you be open to talking to them?
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So much better.
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Did you mention the one from two weeks ago?
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I did.
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Did you mention it on a show?
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No, I don t think I did.
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Yeah, there was another one.
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That was even worse.
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No, that other guy.
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Yeah, he sent us this really generic.
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It said, dear, insert name.
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And it just said, insert name.
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It didn t say the name.
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And then it said, we love thee.
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And it said, insert name of podcast.
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Insert podcast name.
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Insert podcast.
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And then I sent him a note, literally a courtesy, like, hey, man, you may want to fix your program.
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And he goes, what about this didn t resonate?
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Did you see that one?
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No.
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I sent him a note.
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I said, hey, just so you know, you probably have a system going on over there.
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This is what came across.
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I m sure this is probably not what you intended.
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He said, what didn t resonate?
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And I didn t respond to that.
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That s awesome.
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It s just unbelievable.
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That s a great response.
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Good for you.
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It s unbelievable.
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So you publicists, if you have somebody for us,
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Listen to it.
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Listen to the podcast and tell us how it may fit.
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We re not opposed to having guests In fact, we get there s some guests that come along but you just come on.
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Come on.
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Come on.
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Yeah earn your money Yeah.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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So let s talk about today s episode now that you got me fired.
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I m sorry We re doing so we re doing deal work and today last time we talked about the case for doing deal work now we re gonna talk about mistakes people make when they do it themselves and
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So before we get into that, once again, if you re interested, just go to advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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And in the upper banner there, there will be a little, what do you call that?
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A little, just a button.
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A button.
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That s what it s called.
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It s a square button that says Deal Work Studio.
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So go there and click on that, and you ll get some more information.
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And by the way, when you do that, you will be contacted by someone for a conversation so you know what s coming.
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That person happens to have my same last name.
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Oh, and she s one of my favorite, probably my favorite person on the planet, probably.
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Her name is Stephanie, so she will.
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Okay, so the first mistake I think VPs of sales, sales managers, salespeople make when they do deal work is they rush to the solution.
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Ding.
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Did you have that as one?
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Number two, number two, going way too fast, all caps.
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I do this in some of my peer groups that I run.
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And I ll say, OK, let s do some dissect the deal, deal strategy work today.
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I want everybody to hush while the person in the barrel gives us a two-minute narrative of the deal.
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And here s the only rule.
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You can t solve it until you have asked five to 10 questions as a group to make sure you re clear about it.
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It never fails that they disregard rule number one.
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They always do.
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And they go, right, well, you know what you should do.
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No, no, no.
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If you rush to the deal or rush to the solution too quickly, you don t get the full complement of the narrative because somewhere in the narrative is the answer.
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Yes.
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And if you re not asking questions of the real background, what will really happen?
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So you said, salesperson, you asked this.
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Tell me how you asked that.
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I mean, it s really detailed stuff.
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So if you rush to the solution, you don t get a good solution.
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You don t, every time.
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And this is fun.
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You ll enjoy it.
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You can steal this, too, by the way.
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OK.
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Thank you.
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My clients, they get a yellow flag if they do that.
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And what happens when you start doing the yellow flag, they will self-govern.
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And someone will say, that s not good.
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Yellow flag.
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They re jumping to the conclusion like they are.
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You got to go slow, and people go way too fast.
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Agree.
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One that I had was, and this is rampant.
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Is rampant, is that the right word?
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Rampant.
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It s everywhere.
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Rampant, it s like everywhere, is flawed intention.
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Flawed intentions.
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You cannot do deal work with the intention to try to get the deal closed.
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You have to do deal work with the intention to try to fix a problem with the deal itself.
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When you go down the path of trying to close the thing, you ll see that you get down this salesy path.
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Make sense?
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Sometimes a better approach when you re objectively analyzing it is to pull back a notch or take a different turn or do something.
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But most people, they go into this, I m going to figure out how to get this one closed.
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That s how they show up to the deal work session, and they ve lost full objectivity.
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All they re trying to do is go and get it, and no one likes to be gotten.
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No one likes to feel that way.
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So the intent then should be, if you hear me talking about, and you hear me kind of leaning into getting the deal, what should I be thinking about?
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Well, I think it s not even the intention of the salesperson.
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It s the intention of the session.
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The intention of the session is critical thinking.
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I don t care about any.
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All I care about is all this facts on the table.
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It s a critical thinking, objective exercise.
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I ve got a set of facts.
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I m going to ask questions and discoveries.
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I m going to make this assessment and this recommendation.
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And it s neutral.
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Because my recommendation might be, you need to close the file.
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We ll find a new one.
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The recommendation might be, you need to drive over there right now with a contract, or anywhere in between.
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But the intention of the session is not to get the deal closed.
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The intention of the session is to critically think about the situation and the deal objectively.
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Good.
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The end.
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Alright.
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The end.
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The end.
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We call that a call back in the business, baby.
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Here we go.
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The end.
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I say we avoid the hard S-H.
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We avoid the hard stuff.
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And to me, the hard stuff in a deal could be something like, where was your mind when you first made that call, Brian, on the prospect?
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If you re my person in the barrel.
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Say, where was your mind?
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Well, you know, I really didn t have any bias, but sure would be nice to have these guys as a client.
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It d be a good reputation builder.
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I want, and that s the hard truth.
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And if you avoid that, then we never get a chance to fix the real problem, which may have nothing to do with your product versus someone else s product.
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It may be how you showed up on the first call.
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And so now we ve got to unravel.
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We ve got to unravel that and reverse engineer that so that we can go back and reposition ourselves.
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But the hard stuff.
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You have to have a facilitator or a coach or your VP of sales, someone there to call people out on the hard stuff.
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Or again, if you re not dealing with the original trauma, you re not dealing with the real issue.
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Yep, I love it.
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I love it.
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Is that the end?
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That s the end.
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The end.
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My next one, and this just happened in a deal, it s a deal coaching session.
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That s what this deal work studio is all about.
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I was alone with my clients, and I m doing what we re teaching here.
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And this guy raises his hand and goes.
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You get your own dog food, huh?
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It s callback day at the Advanced Life Podcast.
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It is.
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He said, I wish we would have done this two weeks ago because this exact thing happened.
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And that is the mistake people make is they solve for the wrong problem.
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They solve for the wrong problem.
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This particular case, he had an upset customer.
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They were about to leave.
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And real quick, they did all the things wrong, went real fast, intended to close the deal.
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They said, dude, we ll give you a free three months, or they price discounted.
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And the guy s like, I already don t like you.
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I don t need it for free.
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I don t want to do business with you guys.
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It s not about the price.
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You know what I mean?
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They solved for the wrong problem, which made it worse.
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Made it worse.
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See what I mean?
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So you ve got to make sure.
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when you re working on this, that you ve got to make sure you vet through the process.
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That s what Bill and I do in the deal work studios.
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We work through a process that allows you to get better odds, not perfect, but much better odds that you work on the right problem and fix the right problem.
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We ve said this on the podcast for 14 years.
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You ve got to be working with the truth.
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And if you re working on the wrong problem, you will end up with the wrong solution to the wrong problem, or the right solution to the wrong problem, or the wrong solution to the right problem.
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But if you re working on the truth, which is what s really happening, and that s where unbiased eyes, or Betty Davis eyes, as they like to say here at the studio, unbiased eyes will help you.
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OK, here s my final one, and that is,
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This is amazing to me, is we can go in and do deal work, and everybody gets enormous value out of it.
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And the two people who were in the barrel, they say, oh my god, I can t wait to go talk to the prospect.
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And whatever, one closes, two closes.
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And never is there any record of what happened at that session.
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Oh, that s good.
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There s never any record.
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It s like, what did you say four weeks ago, Brian?
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Remember, Brian, you said that?
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Talking about that one deal?
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God, you had the greatest comeback.
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Yeah, what was that?
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So here s my advice.
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Record these.
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Get them transcribed.
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Put them into your playbook, or put them into some three-ring binder that sits on somebody s desk.
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because there are valuable things that ll come from this that you won t remember 30 days down the road that can be valuable to you forever.
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And so figure out a way to get recording and transcription of this and watch what happens because now it s documented.
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We know how to close these deals now because they re documented.
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They re not documented, we re just dealing with ether.
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Love it, ether.
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There s a callback from the 70s.
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Ether.
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Ether?
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Is that a group?
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Ether s kind of lost its luster.
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Ether s a chemical, isn t it?
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Yeah, it s like a sleep aid or something like that.
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Now it s all, I do it every night.
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Is there something wrong with the mask?
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It s either a sleep aid or a murder tool.
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That s one of the two.
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It s like sleep aid.
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I was being nice to it.
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Advanced Learning Podcast.
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New sponsor on board, Johnson & Johnson.
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Who makes ether?
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Elijah Ether.
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That was really good.
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It s just a matter of repositioning your product.
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Look out, Ambien.
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Ether s making a comeback.
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Oh, that s beautiful.
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Can t write that stuff.
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OK, so your task.
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If you re a salesperson, you go give this to your boss.
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You say, boss, I want to talk to Bill and Brian about doing some deal work stuff.
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And if you re a salesperson or a sales leader, sales manager, you go to the website, advancedsellingpodcast.com.
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you go to the deal work studio section, little quick form, real fast, take it 20 seconds or less, and then you ll be contacted by my friend Stephanie.
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Yeah.
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That s it.
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Good job.
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See ya.
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See ya.
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Bye.