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In this episode of the Advanced Selling Podcast, we reminisce about the lost art of the shoeshine guy, Bill gets some unsolicited fashion advice from his wife, you ll have to listen to hear who won, and we wrap our three-episode series on getting unstuck by giving you advice on how to unstick deals at the very end of the sales process.
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Welcome, everybody, 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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Bill has deposited his chewing gum, as I was listening to it in my headphones a few minutes ago.
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Glad we did that.
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Hey, welcome.
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Hey, LinkedIn group is where to be, Advanced Selling Podcast listeners.
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If you re not there, go there.
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The great thing is 12,000, almost 13,000 of you are already there.
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So go join your friends.
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We are going to get, that s our kind of place to go these days.
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Bill and I are going to be a lot more active here in the coming months and years in the LinkedIn group.
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So it s just Advanced Selling Podcast, LinkedIn group, just go to LinkedIn.
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You do have to be approved, accepted, which we accept almost everybody, I would say.
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Yeah, and I got a note from Rachel, who does some work for us.
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She said, let me just say it.
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Yeah, it s part of the deal.
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If you re going to join the group, we appreciate it.
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And please refrain from pitching services that don t make sense for that group.
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Yeah.
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Like if you re a LinkedIn consultant and you have something that might help that group, like a freebie or a document, yeah, I d say cool, because it s kind of in the context.
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If you re selling cologne or perfume, probably not the kind of group.
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And so we re just going to be removing those things.
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And we re doing it because we want this group experience to be good for everybody.
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And if you have to filter through cologne and ads for shoe polish or whatever, it s not a good experience for the group.
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So please, just don t post stuff that s not relevant.
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I wonder what COVID has done to the shoe polish industry.
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Do we have any clients?
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I bet it s dead.
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No, really, because when I go to the airport now, you know the shoe guy?
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The guy s sitting there.
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He s a super nice guy.
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I used to get my shoes polished by him when I was wearing, you know, traveling a lot, wearing regular shoes.
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I think it s the same impact that Desert Boot had on him.
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on shoe polishing back in the 90s.
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Like truly, and then I get these all birds are like a thing now.
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So like you re wearing more like wool.
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I feel bad for the shoe polish guys and the shoe shine guy.
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Makes you feel, it s a very abundant feeling.
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Get your shoe shined, I always felt.
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I know.
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I like it.
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It s just a great thing.
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The death of the shoe polish guy at the airport.
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Well, everywhere.
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Seriously.
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Street corner.
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You even go into Nordstrom.
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They used to have a shoe polish.
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He s rarely there.
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I mean, he s there once a week for an hour.
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There was a woman we used to go for football to in San Francisco, and everyone would take their shoes.
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The whole crew would drop their shoes off on Saturday.
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She d polish them all.
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We d pay her a nice little tip and stuff, and we d have our shoes polished.
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But now our shoes are like cloth.
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So they can be polished, but it s kind of clunky.
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Another casualty of the COVID.
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Man, that s too bad.
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Well, that s more of a casual thing.
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But I think COVID hastened it, which we re going to be talking about this next episode, about the sales process and the sales profession generally, and about what COVID did to it.
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And I think we ve got some interesting comments.
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But that s next week on next week s show.
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And I ve got a quick story here.
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Go, please.
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Yeah, go.
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I was leaving the house today, and I had a blue kind of polo shirt.
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And my wife says, come here.
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She said, turn around.
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And there was a little hole in the back.
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And it probably is a hole of being worn.
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It wasn t like a cigar hole or cigarette.
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It was not a burn hole.
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It was just probably, I ve worn that forever.
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And I said, well, but I m going to be facing the camera today.
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shot from the waist up, how much does that really matter?
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Yeah, I m with you.
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So far, so good?
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Totally.
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I m out the door at this point.
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She said, when you re out in public, people are going to see that you have a hole in your shirt.
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And I said, not if I always face them.
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So what do you think about that?
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I m not going to say agree with her or agree with me, but she s right.
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I ll say on my side of the fence.
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She s right.
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If it were me, I would be comfortable walking around with a small hole in the back of my shirt.
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that would not bother me.
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And it might bother others.
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You might be in line at Starbucks, and the person behind you is judging you, thinking, this guy is wearing reddy teddy clothes.
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He s got a hole in the back of his shirt.
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OK, like, you know, that s OK.
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But we re always saying to our audience, you have to get over the fear of what other people think.
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Right.
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And so that falls in line with that.
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I wouldn t do it.
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I wouldn t poke a hole there intentionally to see if I could have that attitude.
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Yeah, but again, she s right when it comes to sometimes my dress, my attire gets a little crappy.
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It drops down below.
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And I do feel like a need sometimes to kind of move it up.
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You do a really good job.
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You have a great style though.
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And the other thing you do is you don t, some people try too hard.
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Never try too hard.
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I try not to do that too.
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Sometimes a little too casual.
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So is this the shirt?
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No, no, no.
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So you changed.
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I changed shirts, yeah.
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That s a vicious story.
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That s great.
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You know, speaking of trying too hard, I was at a comedy show.
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I m just going to do.
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I was at a comedy show the other night, saw two comedians.
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And it feels to me, isn t it weird how the great comics never act like they re trying?
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Correct.
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It just flows.
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And then the comics who, you know, and then there s also those that
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Really try so hard that it s even if it s funny.
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It s not funny, and then I think you have a lot of fake laughter Yes, fake laughter and people force the laughter.
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Yeah, I always wonder if that s out of like do they like her to feel bad Yeah, totally It s that s so true though if you watch Jim gaffigan.
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I just love Jim gaffigan
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Seems like he was just like driving by the comedy club that night.
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And someone said, hey, can you come in and grab the mic real quick?
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And he s like, yeah, sure, I ll give it a shot.
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And I mean, it s like you re talking to a friend at dinner.
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It s amazing.
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Amazing how funny he is.
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Yes.
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And it s just observational comedy.
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He s just commenting on things that we all go through.
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Brian Regan s the same way.
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Brian Regan s the same way, I know.
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It s all observational.
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Yes.
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And it just feels like they re sitting out there telling a story about something that they witnessed.
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Yeah.
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And they are.
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Which they are.
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Yeah.
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It s a different art form.
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I love it.
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Topic.
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Topic today, we have, I think we ve kind of been interrupted in this process of how to get deals unstuck.
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We committed to you, our glorious listeners, that we would do three different episodes.
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One is how to unstuck deals when they first start at the very beginning of the sales cycle, then in the middle, and today we re going to talk about the end.
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And we had totally forgot that we committed a three,
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until Travis said, you committed a three.
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We did, number three it is.
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Here is number three.
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Yes.
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So do you want to tee it up?
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Yeah, sure.
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So we did unstuck deals, and we talked a little bit in the first episode of unstucking deal, unsticking deals, about how to keep them unstuck in the beginning of the sales process.
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The second one, which I love, because it quoted one of my favorite songs of all time, Stuck in the Middle by Steelers Wheel.
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We did that second.
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So now what we re gonna do is put a little bow in the whole thing.
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I just said, did you really said that?
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Why do we say that?
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No, no, no.
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I said exactly what you just said about first episode, second episode, third episode.
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So I think you were looking at your phone probably and didn t hear it.
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I m right.
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Well, I always type.
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I don t want to lose the notes because I read the pre-show thing.
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You know what I mean?
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I read the pre-show things, so I write the notes down.
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And I try to write them cleverly, so I do that sometimes.
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That s what I do.
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So where are we at the end?
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We re at the end.
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And so there s no question about where we are.
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Nope, nope.
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And I do, and then I have my notes here stuck at the end.
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I m defending myself now.
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OK, I m sorry.
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Thanks for calling me out.
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Then I thought, well, maybe I didn t say it.
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Maybe I was off.
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I was on mute.
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I think you meant tee up the end part, and I was teeing up the whole episode.
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That s my bad.
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OK, so we re at the end.
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So just a couple of, I don t know, I ve got three or four things written down here if I m stuck at the end.
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This, to me, though, for sales teams, for you listening, salespeople, this is the hardest place to be stuck, in my opinion, because you re right there.
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And you re like, oh, my gosh.
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And we get called.
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I know I ll speak for myself, but I m sure you do too, Bill.
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You get called all the time.
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Is there anything I can do?
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I just want to tell you where we re at.
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We re at the very end.
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They ve got everything they need.
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We re kind of in waiting.
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Is there anything I can do?
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to push this deal forward to get it closed.
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That s where the salesperson s persona is and their energy, I think, which is a really great place to be, because I love it when it s questioning.
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I don t like it when it s desperate.
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Sometimes I feel like some of my clients will call with some desperation, like, we can t let this one slip away, has that energy, versus I just want to make sure there s nothing valuable to the process that I m missing that I should probably think about.
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Whole lot better.
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Whole lot better approach.
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The second part, yeah.
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Yeah.
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So that might be tip number one in getting stuck at the end is creating a high level of self-awareness of your energy to ask yourself, am I trying to not let this one slip away?
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Or am I trying to make sure that I m doing as much as I can from a value standpoint for the process as possible?
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B is better than A. Yeah.
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So yeah, I like that.
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I like that.
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I think one thing that I wrote down here is test for temperament.
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What s the temperament of the prospect?
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So if the temperament is, hey, Brian, I know you want to get this done by the end of March.
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Look, I got to tell you something.
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It s not going to happen.
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It ll happen the first of April.
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I mean, if there s a lot of conversation and communication on the part of the prospect, that s a whole lot different than if they ve gone silent in crickets.
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Yes.
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And so I think we have to test for temperament before we decide what our next strategy is, because that should govern our next strategy.
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That should govern the next step, I think.
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No doubt.
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No doubt.
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Why is it that crickets are the international symbol for silence?
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And it s always negative.
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It s always negative.
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The poor cricket.
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They re just trying to mate or something, right?
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They re trying to get some food.
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What are they doing when they re not?
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Cricket.
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Cricket.
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Sorry.
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We have a very gullible employee who s very great around here, and we bought a little electronic cricket noisemaker, and we ve had it in the office for about a month and a half, and she s climbed up and down the desks and all this stuff.
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We just told her on Friday.
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She was a great sport about it.
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Yeah.
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We did that.
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That was funny.
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A month.
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She s been in pure terror for a month.
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She has been.
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Search around.
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OK.
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Matt, you got something else?
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No, that was all.
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So test for temperament is just, as we start to give you these things, just make sure that you re using them into the right context based on a customer s communication and style and kind of where they think you are in this.
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Yes.
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Part of what we teach here and try to do also is, the phrase I use is I say it s in God s hands now.
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It s in God s hands now.
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What s going to be is going to be.
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You get to a certain point in the sales process where they re just going to say yes or no.
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And hopefully, they don t ghost you.
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If you ve done a good job of what we taught in the first episode of This Stuck and the second episode of This Stuck, this will happen way less if you get on calendars and get processing.
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But if you re there, it s going to happen or it s not.
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And that s just how it is.
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And so that, to me, is our method for releasing it.
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It s in God s hands now.
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They re either going to say yes or no.
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Like, that s the deal.
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We ve done all we can do, and we are accepting of the outcome that s going to be.
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That helps you move forward with or without this deal.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah, I had similar.
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I had Happy Trails.
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I was going to play the happy trails to you.
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Who sings that?
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Happy Trails?
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Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
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Oh, really?
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That s good.
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I don t know.
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Oh, is it?
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That was their, wasn t that their theme song?
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I don t know.
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It was before my time, too.
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But yeah, I mean, at some point, I think, I think you only, you know, sometimes the best thing to do is do nothing.
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Because if you keep calling,
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And I think we find this in the middle of the process, too.
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Everything s going well, and all of a sudden, you get, there we go again, crickets.
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But sometimes I think you can do more harm by following up and being persistent and kind of annoying people.
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Sometimes it s best just to let it lie, or lay, for a few days or a week.
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And I think it s the same thing at the end, too.
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At some point, it s out of your hands.
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It s in the hands of whomever, the customer.
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And you just have to let it go.
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Yeah.
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Now, I wrote down something that might be obvious or counterintuitive to some people.
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The best thing to do once you ve got, we have one of these.
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We re working on a really, really, really big opportunity.
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And those big ones are pretty rare.
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And their close rates aren t super strong.
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Most companies would give you those stats.
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And we ve worked it really well.
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I feel really good about where it is.
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And we have a clear feature date set with them.
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So we have a calendar date.
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We re at the very end of the process.
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And one of the things we were talking about is like, hey, what can we do right now?
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We re kind of not really stuck.
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But if we got stuck at the end, what can we do?
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I go, let s go find five more of these.
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And that energy is like, hey, we ve gotten this far with this type of account or this type of opportunity.
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Surely there are more out there.
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Let s leverage this story to go out and prospect some other ones.
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Because that will also make you, that will help with your attachment levels and help you relax a little bit.
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And you ve got a fresh story to tell, because you ve been through this process with this particular opportunity.
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Go find five more.
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Yeah, I had the same thing on number three.
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I said, it s a lead generation problem.
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more than it is a stuck at the end problem.
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Because if I don t have enough leads in my pipeline pushing this out, then I m going to be trying to yank it through.
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And I think there s got to be some natural gravity for, I got seven deals like this.
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You know what?
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If you don t want to do business with me now, cool.
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I would just kind of like to know where you are.
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You tell me, I ll tell you.
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And let s either abort if necessary, or let s keep going.
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And you re not as attached.
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as you said, to the deal if you have a lot of leads.
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So go out and find five more.
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Make sure you have a lead generation system that s putting people in the funnel.
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And then you re not going to have this problem.
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It s going to be just very clear about what to do.
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Yeah, for sure.
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Can I ask you one question real quick?
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Yeah.
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This might not be quick, because I get asked this.
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What do you think about doing incentive-y things to help close a deal?
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So that would be, hey, we re trying to make a number, or we really want to get things closed up by the end of the year.
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Would offering a complimentary month or pause billing until 2022 help get this thing through and signed or not?
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Or we ll send you something or add something on.
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We ll throw in an extra whatever it is.
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Like in our business, we might say, hey, if we do this, we ll throw in an extra business planning session for the end of the year if you can get this contract signed.
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What do you think about that?
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I think it s fine.
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I think it s fine.
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I think as long as it doesn t come from a place of desperation, where I just got it OK d by my boss to give you some extra Expo markers.
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If you sign by the end of the week, I can ship 12 of them.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean it s got to be in the context of what you do I like I like the idea though of being honest and saying look I was hoping to get this done by the end of August I don t know if it can happen or not But I was I was I decided to put together a little incentive package if you re okay with it if you re not that s I mean Yeah, just how you position it to yeah, that s true.
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SPEAKER_00
I
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SPEAKER_00
But I think that s fine.
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SPEAKER_00
I would rather that offer come earlier in the sales process, though, rather than at the 11th hour when you re trying to get it across the line.
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SPEAKER_01
But sometimes you can t.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
I think the common theme through all these as we wrap is the energy.
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SPEAKER_01
that you have to take, keep the things that Bill and I talk about with good intention and healthy detachment through all the way through.
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SPEAKER_01
And then you really can t go wrong here, whether you offer an incentive or whether you move on or you re kind of free.
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SPEAKER_01
You re not kind of, you are free to do and say whatever you want.
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SPEAKER_00
Hey, if you have not gone to our LinkedIn group page and joined, we would love for you to.
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SPEAKER_00
We ve got, as Brian said earlier, many, many thousands of people on that page and we show up there occasionally.
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SPEAKER_00
And also we get good show ideas from that group too.
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SPEAKER_00
So make sure you go and join and also let us know if you have any ideas or critique about the podcast.
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SPEAKER_00
You can go to advancedsellingpodcast.com slash LinkedIn.
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SPEAKER_00
That takes you right to the group page.
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SPEAKER_00
Hope you can make it.
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SPEAKER_00
Please do.
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SPEAKER_00
See you next time.
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SPEAKER_00
Bye.