The Salesman.com Podcast

It is common for sales managers to say that sales is a numbers game. If this is what you have been told you may be wondering what this statement means. The simple explanation of what this statement means is that more activity leads to more sales. But this still leaves you with questions like: What type of activity? How much activity? Is it possible to improve the outcomes from the action? If you Google the phrase “Sales is a numbers game.” you'll find many articles claiming this statement is false or a myth. But in reality, it is true. It's just that working in B2B sales has changed over the years. Where more activity to close more sales might have been practical in the past, there is more to the story in today's sales environment. But, before we dive deeper into what that means today, let's start with the basics of sales success. The basics of how sales is a numbers game works Of course, if you are going to play the numbers game in sales, you have to know the numbers. Crazy, right? Yet many salespeople don't track any metrics at all. This means that you need to track your activity every day. For example, if you are making prospecting calls to cold leads, keep track of: How many calls you make? How many decision makers you speak to? How many discovery calls you schedule? How many of those meetings result in a demo? How many of those demos result in a proposal? How many of those proposals end in a closed, won sale? What is the average dollar value of the deals you close? Once you have tracked these metrics for a while, you'll have enough data to figure out how many calls you need to make to hit your sales targets. In a perfect world, where you hit your sales target, your data might look like this: Sales target = $10,000 Calls made = 1600 Decision makers spoken to = 320 Discovery calls scheduled = 80 Demos scheduled = 40 Proposals given = 20 Closed deals = 10 Average dollar value of closed deals = $1,000 In this case, you would need to make 1600 calls to close 10 deals worth $1,000 each to hit your sales target of $10,000. Your numbers are probably very different than this. So, how can this numbers game help you? The point of this example is to show how to determine how much activity you need to do to hit your sales target. Start with your monthly, quarterly, or annual sales target. Then, divide it by the average dollar value of a closed deal to determine how many deals you need to close to hit that target. Once you know how many deals you need to close, work backward to figure out how many calls you need to make to close that many sales. You can then take that number and divide it into weekly and daily activities. Okay, that is the basics of how the numbers game of sales works. But today, there is so much more to this game. Expert Note: “As salespeople we are schooled to think about sales is a numbers game. The more you fill the pipeline with, the greater the chances that you sign something. And in transactional sales, I agree. But in mega deals, it's the other way around.” Bora Brannstrom Salesman Podcast Identify areas for improvement The primary example of sales is a numbers game, if your sales target increased or you wanted to exceed your target, you'd need to increase your amount of activity. But why not work smarter instead of harder? Making improvements in your skills and sales technique will result in better selling strategies. A small amount of sales training advice in the right places can lead to massive upticks in appointments booked and results. By tracking your activity data as described above, you can start improving your skills to close more business from the same number of calls, for example. But be methodical in your approach to measure your progress to recognize what is causing changes to your performance. How does this work? Testing, testing, testing There are many aspects of your sales process where you can use A/B testing to optimize what you are doing to boost your results without increasing the amount of activity needed. For example, a/B testing is a proven method often used by marketing professionals to raise email, landing page, and marketing message response rates. You can test aspects of emails, sales calls and scripts to improve your results. These facets include: Email subject lines Voice message scripts Introductory sentences on prospecting calls Scripts for getting past gatekeepers Responses to objections Closing questions Discovery call questions Time of day calls are made In this case, sales is still a numbers game, and you still need to track your activity to see your progress. This will reveal how much activity you need to reach your target as you improve. The testing process Regardless of what you are optimizing or which aspect you focus on, the steps involved are the same. Begin by choosing what you want to refine. Since 94% of calls from unfamiliar phone numbers go to voice mail and 93% of all converted leads are reached by the sixth call attempt, it's likely you're leaving a lot of voice messages. So, having an effective voice message script is essential. At least leaving a well-crafted message enables the prospect to call you back. As you refine your voice mail script, you'll most likely start receiving more return calls. And this will improve your results. So, let's focus on an aspect of your voice message script in this example. Try two different introductory statements at the opening of your voice message, like: Hi Joe, This is Sue with ABC Company… Hi Joe, This is Sue at 123-456-7890… Use the two scripts for at least 100 voice messages or more, leaving the balance of both scripts the same. The greater the sample size you use, the more accurate your test results will be. Assess the effectiveness of the two scripts by analyzing the data. The option that leads to the desired outcome more often is the better one. In this case, whichever voice message script results in more returned calls, is the better script. Adjust your voice message script accordingly and start testing another aspect of the script to continue refining it. Once you have finished adjusting your voice mail script, select another element of your sales process to optimize. Then test measure, and refine. Expert Note: “A lot of sales managers could care less about the mission, about the cause, about the wellbeing of the customer or the salesperson. It's all about the numbers. And when that's your core mission, your mission is all about the numbers, the customer feels that.” Bill Caskey Salesman Podcast Other ways to improve your numbers Beyond leveraging A/B testing to improve your sales techniques, there are skills you can master to close more sales. Recent research revealed that sales reps who are effective at the following actions could influence buyers: Uncover the complete set of buyer needs Show buyers what's possible Listen Make a strong ROI case Educate buyers with new ideas and perspectives Communicate value to buyers Build rapport and develop relationships with buyers Work to gain and keep buyer attention Differentiate yourself from other sellers These actions are possible when you take the time to master a few skills such as: Research Communications Building relationships Giving perspectives and insights These skills will differentiate you from your competitors so buyers will want to speak with you over other salespeople. But, precisely what do you need to do to implement each of these desirable abilities? Research Develop the habit of doing pre-call research on each prospect and the prospect's company. Then start studying the industries and common challenges your potential customer's experience. This helps you understand your prospects' businesses before you speak with them. The more you know before each customer interaction, the better. Prospects are busy and don't want to educate you about these things. This enables you to ask more meaningful questions and get to know your prospects on a deeper level. Your prospects will appreciate you making an effort to prepare thoroughly and will want to speak with you again and again. Communications And Sales Calls All sales reps need to develop excellent communication skills. Being an effective communicator improves your performance at every stage of the sales cycle. If you can track your calling numbers and get in front of more qualified prospects you're going to earn more money in modern B2B sales. One communication skill that you'll benefit from mastering is active listening. This type of listening means grasping what the prospect is saying in response to your open-ended questions. And the ability to understand the feelings attached to the message the prospect is sharing. Active listening requires the use of clarifying questions to uncover deeper insights. This addresses two behaviors buyers find influential: Making an effort to uncover all the buyer's needs Listening So, developing these communication skills will help you influence more prospects and increase the percentage of prospects who buy from you. Building relationships Buyers don't like doing business with sales reps focused solely on closing the sale and then disappearing after the prospect signs on the dotted line. Instead, customers want to develop a trusted long-term relationship with the salesperson they work with. Prospects feel that they deserve just as much support after purchasing as they receive during decision-making. Potential customers want salespeople to strive to gain their attention. Then the customer wants you to be continuously helpful by sharing information to aid in the decision-making process. Strong relationships are also the quickest way to block the competition from booking an appointment to see your buyer and talk their way back into the account. Giving perspectives and insights Only 23 percent of B2B buyers view sellers as a top resource for solving business problems. That's why prospects prefer to engage with salespeople who provide perspectives, insights and guidance. This makes the buying journey easier for your prospective customers. Doing your advanced research to know and understand your prospect is essential here. Otherwise, how will you understand what perspectives and insights to share with the buyer as they advance through the sales cycle? The types of information the prospect is looking for here includes several of the things that buyers have said will influence their buying decisions, such as: Educating buyers with new ideas and perspectives Communicating value Showing buyers what's possible Making a solid ROI case Becoming adept at these skills will lead to a more significant percentage of your prospects buying because your solution will solve their problem. And buyers will see the value of implementing what you are proposing. Conclusion Sales is a numbers game that you can win. Start by tracking your activities and results. After tracking these numbers for a while, you can work on improving your sales outcomes. For example, do things like A/B testing and developing skills that help you influence and attract more buyers. Over time you will see continuous improvements. So, you won't need to increase your activity for the same results. Working smarter, not harder, will allow you to meet or exceed your targets without constantly working yourself to death.

Cold email is one of the best tools in your sales rep toolbox. But there’s just one problem—if your emails aren’t getting opened in the first place, then all of your efforts (the clever copy, the personalization, the research) will all be for nothing. THAT’S the importance of a great subject line So, what’s the absolute BEST cold email subject line you could ever use? That’s what we’re talking about in this video. The Ultimate Subject Line What does the best-performing subject line look like? Let’s not beat around the bush, huh? It looks a little something like this… “[NAME] – [REFERRAL NAME] said I should get in touch” Bam. That’s it. That’s the absolute best subject line you could ever, ever use for your cold email. It works so well because you’re leveraging someone else’s trust rather than putting in all the effort to build your own. Which is basically impossible to do in a subject line alone anyway. It’s simple. It’s effective. And you could go out and use it for yourself right now and watch your response rates skyrocket. BUT… If this was the magic bullet of cold email, wouldn’t everyone be doing it? See, there’s just one little problem here… referrals are notoriously hard to get. Most buyers don’t give them out freely. And asking for one is a tricky situation that most sales reps just don’t know how to navigate. So rather than spend this video talking about the subject line, breaking it down into why it works, and turning a simple thing into something more complex than it needs to be, we’re going to look at the hardest part of this cold email secret weapon… How to Get a Referral How to get a referral in the first place. Now if you’ve watched this channel’s videos before, you know that we at the Selling Made Simple Academy have a framework for everything under the sun. And surprise surprise, how to ask for a referral is no different. Our 4-step More Referrals Framework takes you through what you need to do and say to bring in tons of referrals from your current client base. And it looks a little something like this… 1. Confirming Value Step one, confirming value with the client. This is where you’re setting the groundwork needed to get a solid referral without any false promising or feet dragging. What you’re going to do here is get your client to clearly recognize the benefits your solution has provided. This is tipping the value scale in your favor. If your ROI is great, then they’ll be more likely to reciprocate with a quick favor. The principle is simple. And it’s the foundation for a successful introduction you can use to bring in a quality lead. Now, an email at this step is okay, but you’re going to get the best results from a quick call. That way you can focus their attention, ensure they’re seeing the full scope of your value, and better direct the rest of the conversation. Once you have shared the numbers (and be sure to use real numbers, not just general benefits) it’s time to ask, “Do you feel like this is working as well as you planned?” If your ROI is solid, they’ll have every reason to say yes. And then you can move on to step #2… 2. Asking “Who Else?” Asking “who else?” When they turn around and tell you how happy they are, ask them, “Is there anyone else that you feel we could help within your professional network?” You’re going to ask the question. And then, importantly, you’re going to shut up. Make the ask. And don’t say another word. Let the buyer think about it on their own and don’t help them out. It might be awkward for a moment or two. And that’s okay. But you’ve made a promise with your product. And you’ve delivered. Now it’s time they did a favor for you in return. Don’t give up after a single name either. Follow up with “OK great, is there anyone else?” and keep on going until they’re spent. 3. Making a Specific Ask Making a specific ask. Getting the contact info is one thing. But it’s also the bare minimum you can do. Instead, you’re going to add in one small detail that will really make your open rates fly. Here’s what NOT to say after they tell you a referral… “Great, can you give me their email address?” And here’s what you SHOULD say instead… “Great, if I email them and CC you in, is it OK for me to mention that we’ve worked together?” This right here is a game-changer. Not only are you getting a referral, which is already leagues ahead of any other subject line you could ever use. You’re also attaching your common contact’s address to that email! And when your prospect sees a name they recognize, your email is going to pop off their screen and practically force them to click “Open”. If you can get your client to agree, it’s a sure thing. 4. The “1-1-1” Rule Sometimes you can’t get all the details sorted out with your client in a single meeting. So what kind of follow-up schedule can you follow to make getting that “oh-so-valuable” referral from your current buyer? Simple. 1-1-1 — follow up after 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month later until everything is set up. At that point, if they do back out, stop wasting time and move onto your next referral. It’s better to keep people on your side for FUTURE referral opportunities than it is to pester them and burn that bridge. Don’t get greedy. And don’t be annoying! Summary When done right, cold email can be one of the most valuable sources of leads at your disposal. But guess what, you’ve got to get them opened first.

One of the absolute best ways to scale your sales earnings is by speeding up your sales cycle. You know this. But how often do you still get hit with “maybes” and “I’ll think about its” when you’re trying to close? The problem—they don’t feel the urgency. And sorry to say, that’s on you. Here’s how to fix your problem with urgency (and the lack of it). “Stalled” Prospects “Stalled” prospects. One of the key differences between high-performing sales professionals that crush targets and those that don’t, is the number of “stalled” potential deals in their sales pipelines. A potential customer is classed as stalled if you’ve tried to close them and they haven’t said “yes” or “no” yet. They’re up in the air. Stalled deals will kill your chances of hitting your sales target and the 4 tips I’m about to share with you will help you give them some momentum through increasing the level of urgency. Many low-performing sales professionals waste time trying to sell these stalled individuals. The fact is, once the momentum of the initial discovery calls and solution presentations has waned, every week that goes by is a lower chance of that potential customer ever buying from you. So how does your pipeline look? Do you have a bunch of stalled accounts in there? If so then this video is for you. 4 Strategies for Driving Urgency So with that said, let’s take a look at 4 tips to create urgency in sales so that your prospects don't get stuck in your pipeline and you can get more deals closed, quicker. 1. Understanding Understanding. Tip one is this – Really understand your potential customer's pain point. If your potential customers aren’t in extreme pain, there will never be any urgency to get the deal closed. Now typically there are three types of pain points that you should be looking out for when you’re going through your discovery and questioning process. They are: Productivity Pain Points Process Pain Points Financial Pain Points These are the REAL pain points that you can use to drive urgency and get the deal done faster. Let me use a quick analogy to explain what a REAL pain point is. Your lead doesn’t buy a shovel because they need a shovel. They don’t even buy a shovel because they need a hole, which is the classic, cliché sales analogy. Instead, their problem is deeper. Much deeper. They’re reworking their landscape to impress the hoity-toity neighbors. They’re finally installing that pole to fly their grandfather’s flag. Maybe they’ve even got a dead body in their closet that’s starting to smell and their wife is getting suspicious! This is the real pain and obviously there is massive urgency here. If you tried to sell a shovel, they wouldn’t care about the features and benefits. If you tried to sell them hole digging service, well they might be slightly more interested. But if you explained that you could get rid of a body… they wouldn’t even ask what the price was and they’d jump at the chance to work with you. So you need to work out what the body is that your potential customers are trying to bury, so that you can sell them the tool or solution to help with the REAL issue. Once you start doing this, the level of urgency in your conversations be much higher. 2. Naivety Now the second strategy revolves around naivety. Tip two – Don’t let the potential customer think they can do it on their own. Another issue that sales professionals run into during the sales process is that they make it seem all too easy to remove the pain for the potential customer. A lot of reps are guilty of shelling out too much free consulting advice throughout the sales process. And that can give the potential customer confidence that now they know all the secrets. They’re capable of solving the problem themselves. This leads to stalled deals and a severe lack of urgency as now you don’t even seem necessary to solve the problem! Not good. So by all means, give advice, share insights, build your reputation as an industry expert throughout the sales process. But keep your advice to more general industry trends only. Don’t solve the entire issue for the potential customer right before you get paid. 3. Speed Now tip number three is a simple one. But it’s powerful too. Tip three – Follow-up quicker. One of the reasons deals stall and urgency drops out of the sale process is because salespeople are too slow with their follow-ups. If you have a sales call on a Tuesday, don’t give the potential customer a week to pull together the information you require to help them. Instead, arrange the follow-up call for this coming Thursday instead. Most salespeople are passive in their follow-up schedule because they are happy that the potential customer wants to speak to them at all! High-performing sales professionals on the other hand are always oversubscribed with potential meeting options and so they need to get deals moving quickly to make sure they have enough time to get through them all, and so their follow-up dates are set in quick succession. Even if you aren’t completely oversubscribed right now, this is the impression that you want to leave on your potential customers if you want this to become the reality in the near future. And now we’re at the final and maybe most important strategy for creating urgency… 4. THE Question Popping THE question more often. Tip four – Close more often. As crazy as it sounds, sometimes you just need to make the deal real. And that means attempting to close earlier rather than adding layers of artificial urgency to pressure them into asking about the close themselves. Now we cover the Closing 3.0 Methodology in a lot more detail in the Selling Made Simple Academy. But the basic gist of it is that closing the sale can be done with no pressure, no weird manipulation tactics, and basically zero chance of rejection by asking the following questions. “Does it make sense to X” So, for example, “does it make sense for you to sign up today, to relieve the pain point of your sales team underperforming which I know is stressing you out and to jump on the Salesman.org sales training platform?” The potential customer, in this example a sales manager, will either say yes or no. This question can’t be answered in a maybe. And that’s part of the magic behind it. Because instantly you have a level of urgency that wasn’t there before. Of course, if they say yes, then you’ve closed the deal and so the rest of this conversation on creating urgency is irrelevant. And if they say no, then just ask the following question. “What needs to happen to move this forward?” No matter what the answer, you’ve automatically built urgency into the conversation because once this next step is complete, your buyer themself has told you that they will then be ready to close the sale. Rather than GUESSING at what they need to move forward, they outright tell you! It’s a prescription for selling success and urgency that you just can’t beat.

Believe it or not, there wasn’t a whole lot of data out there on sales techniques in the past. A lot of the industry was based on “feel”, “intuition”, and “charisma”. That is until one revolutionary book came along and turned the business of selling on its head in 1988. And the research-driven techniques this book uncovered are just as effective today as they were 30+ years ago. Today we’re talking about one of the most influential books in sales history, SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham. The History of Sales As the scholars among you may already know, the first sales model that was widely used across markets we developed in the 1920s. It focused on traditional selling tactics like using open and closed questions, presenting features/benefits, objection handling, and closing. This alone was often enough to win over most prospects. But as sales grew in price and complexity over the years and particularly in the late eighties, this model alone wasn’t enough to get the job done. And that’s where Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling came in. This extensively tested new model was built to address the changing sales landscape. It uses a questioning method that follows the acronym SPIN: S for Situation P for Problem I for Implications And N for Need Payoff We’ll get into the specifics of it all in a sec. But first let’s look at… Why SPIN Works Why SPIN Selling works. When it comes to the larger complex sales of B2B businesses today, there are four main differences that sales reps like you need to compensate for. 1. A Longer Sales Cycle While small sales can be handled in a single call, modern sales require many calls, often with different stakeholders over the course of several months. 2. A Larger Commitment Small sales don’t require a lot of commitment due to the lower price tag. But more complex deals typically require a larger financial commitment, meaning the rep needs to demonstrate MORE VALUE to make it worth the investment. 3. Ongoing Relationships Due to the longer sales cycle, more complex deals will naturally create deeper relationships between the buyer and seller. As a result, that relationship (whether good or bad) tends to have more of an effect on the deal itself. 4. Higher Risk There’s a higher risk with larger deals. If the solution isn’t a fit, there’s more money at stake here. But don’t forget, there’s also a loss of time, respect, and even future advancement on the line. How to Use SPIN Selling How can you use SPIN Selling to maximize success with your prospects? Like so much of sales, success depends on asking the right questions. And SPIN is all about what types of questions you should be asking. S – Situation Questions  Situation questions. These are the fact-finding and background questions. Questions like, “What do you see as your company’s biggest opportunities for growth in the coming quarter?” This is where you start the conversation out. They’ll help you build context around the buyer so you can naturally transition into the next stage. Now before we move on, it’s important that you use these types of questions sparingly as they may eat up a lot of the customer’s time and patience. Once you’ve built up some context, time to move on to… P – Problem Questions Problem questions. These are questions that explore problems or issues your product can solve. Questions like “Are you concerned about your aging equipment’s ability to meet your clients’ quality standards?” These questions uncover implied needs. These are the smaller, more generalized customer frustrations. Frustrations like “Our press quality is lacking,” or “our system creates too much waste.” Your job is to then build those needs into larger, more urgent issues—the explicit needs. I – Implication Questions Implication questions. These are the questions that underscore the implications or consequences of an implied need. Doing that opens the door to more urgency and the customer understanding the value of your solution. Some examples of implication questions might be “how will this affect your fourth-quarter results” or “what will this mean for your biggest customer?” The goal here is to get the customer to state their explicit needs. Needs like “We have to cut our procurement costs” or “we need a more efficient system.” N – Need Payoff Questions These questions lead the customer to link the benefits of your product to their problem. For example, you might ask, “How useful would it be if we could increase your output by 10%?” or “How would being able to reduce errors help you?” When you can ask the right questions to lead the buyer to make that connection, you’re going to be in great shape to close the deal. SPIN In Action SPIN in action so we can better understand how all these questions flow together. Here’s what a typical SPIN Selling question cycle might look like. The seller asks Situation Questions to gather context around the buyer. That then leads to… Problem questions that help the buyer uncover implied needs. The seller then develops those implied needs using Implication Questions that highlight the impact of the problem they’re facing. Thanks to the impact becoming clearer, the buyer will shift from implicit needs to explicit needs. The seller then responds to those explicit needs with Need Payoff Questions… Which let the buyer identify the benefits of the solution, contributing to sales success. As you can see, questions flow into each other and open up the door to the next step naturally. This open flow makes the transition through the sales cycle seamless, natural, and very effective. And that is SPIN Selling in a nutshell.

Keenan is the CEO and President of a sales consulting firm, A Sales Guy Inc., and was named one of the top 30 social sellers in the world by Forbes. In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Keenan is explaining what “GAP Selling” is and why relationships, objections, and closing in sales are dead. You'll learn: Sponsored by: Free SalesCode assessment Learn your strengths and weaknesses in an instant. Taken by over 10,000+ of your competitors. Don't get left behind. Take the free assessment Featured on this episode: Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - Keenan Best-selling Author and Gap Selling Specialist Resources: BOOK: Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price ASalesGuy.com Keenan on LinkedIn @Keenan Post: Dealing With The Sales Objection: “I Need To Think About It…” Book: Not Taught: What It Takes to be Successful in the 21st Century that Nobody’s Teaching You Transcript Will Barron: Coming up on today's episode of The Salesman Podcast.   Keenan: So the only place it matters is value, and the thing that helps drive value is credibility. The credibility you establish as someone who can genuinely help them get done what they need to get done, and bring tremendous value in solving problems. They buy from those people. At the core of that is trust because if you don't trust somebody, they can't be credible.   Will Barron: Hello sales nation and Will Barron and host of The Salesman Podcast. The world's most listened to B2B sales show. If you haven't already, make sure to click subscribe. With that, let's meet today's guest.   Keenan: Hey, what's up, peeps, my name's Keenan. I am the author of Gap Selling and CEO and founder of The Sales Guy. You can find me@asalesguy.com and/or on Amazon.   Will Barron: On this episode of the show with the legend that is Keenan. We're diving into gap selling, how we can uncover what the gap is, the insights behind that, how we communicate it? How it makes closing essentially obsolete? How it makes winning new business, once you get all this down at the front of the sales process, a whole lot easier. Let's jump right in.   The Sales Myths That Were True 10 or 20 years Ago That are No Longer True · [01:13]    Will Barron: What myths are currently being banded around the sales training space, the sales industry, as a whole? Whether it's from trainers, whether it's from leadership, whoever it is, what myths have been banded around that perhaps were true 10, 20 years ago, but aren't necessarily true right now?   Keenan: One is that you need to be liked. That's the big one, that you need to be liked to sell. Another one is that good closers are good salespeople. That's a crazy, ridiculous myth. Another one is that price matters and that people buy on price. That is not true.   Keenan: So those are your three big ones that really … I mean, the other one is that your elevator pitch matters. The idea that you need an elevator pitch and that matters. Those are some of the bigger ones that people throw about and still try to teach.   Will Barron: So why is it? Because all these are seemingly counter-intuitive. I know Objective Management Group have data on the fact that salespeople who don't feel … I might kind of screw this up from their terminology, but sales people that don't feel like they need to be liked by their customers, outperform salespeople who want to be liked by the customers, for example.   Trust Versus Likability in B2B Sales · [02:28]    Will Barron: So there's clear data on this, but it's still seemingly counter-intuitive of, we think that people will, and this is perpetrated, of people buy from those that they know, like, and trust. How much of that equation is perhaps then trust? As opposed to actually liking the individual?   “If I have a four-quadrant matrix that spells the whole thing out. Like is on one axis and value is on another axis. The only axis where people buy every time is on value. So if they like you and there's value, then they're going to buy. I mean, I like you and there's value in what I'm buying, so I'm going to buy. But if you go to the, I like you, but there's no value, they don't buy.” – Keenan · [02:46]    Keenan: It's all trust. I mean, at the end of the day, people don't even buy for trust. I have a four quadrant matrix that spells the whole thing out. Like is on one axis and value is on another axis. The only axis where people buy every time is on value. So if they like you and there's value, then they're going to buy.   Keenan: I mean, I like you and there's value in what I'm buying, so I'm going to buy. But if you go to the, I like you, but there's no value, they don't buy. Because I'm not buying you unless you're the product, which is different. Then there's whole bunch of other things. But I'm not buying you, I'm buying a software, I'm buying services, I'm buying a babysitter. I don't freaking know. So I'm not buying.   Keenan: Then the other, excuse me, the other column, which I don't like you, and there's no value. Well, you can only imagine that's just fuck off. I mean, that's just fucking go to hell.   “The only place that matters is value and the thing that helps drive value is credibility. The credibility you establish as someone who can genuinely help them get done what they need to get done and bring tremendous value in solving problems. They buy from those people, and at the core of that is trust. Because if you don't trust somebody, they can't be credible.” – Keenan · [03:41]    Keenan: Then other places they do buy is value, but they don't like you. There's value but they don't like you, they will buy. So the only place that matters is value and the thing that helps drive value is credibility. The credibility that you can garner, or that you can establish is the best word, the credibility you establish as someone who can genuinely help them get done what they need to get done and bring tremendous value in solving problems. They buy from those people.   Keenan: At the core of that is trust. Because if you don't trust somebody, they can't be credible.   Will Barron: How does then the being a closer come into this? Is it as simple as five, 10 years ago, you could push someone down the pathway of the sales process and get them to sign on the dotted line. Whereas now buyers perhaps have more power, and so that somewhat of a ability to either push or manipulate someone, is less useful because people just don't care as much.   Keenan: So great question. So they really don't go hand in hand. The problem with closing, if you remember closing, the assumptive close. Well, okay. This is fantastic. So I'll get you the contract tomorrow. You're assuming the close and that they'll just go along with it.   Keenan: Or if you say, “Hey, if I can get you this and this, then you'll close.” All of that is what I call product centric selling. All of that is based on the premise that you have told them about the product, you told them what they need. You may even listen to them a little bit, but you really have no idea on why they should buy. So you don't know if they're ready to close or not. Or if they should close or not.   “What I argue is that the close is actually at the beginning of the sale. Your ability to actually uncover the intrinsic motivations of why they need to buy, the impact of why they need to buy, their current state or current situation, why they're in trouble, what problems they're struggling with? All of that. When you get all of that, and then you offer a solution, you know if they should buy. You've already addressed all of the things that go into it. So at the end, it's a simple, let's move forward.” – Keenan · [05:16]    Keenan: What I argue is that the close is actually at the beginning of the sale. Your ability to actually uncover the intrinsic motivations of why they need to buy. The impact of why they need to buy. Their current state or current situation, and what's happening? Why they're in trouble? What problems they're struggling with? All of that.   Keenan: When you get all of that, and then you offer a solution, you know if they should buy. You've already addressed all of the things that go into it. So at the end, it's a simple, I don't even know. I can't really call it a close. It's all right, let's move forward.   Keenan: It's done. There is no close. There is no I got to get them to some point. It's already done. It's all done in the beginning, not the end. So if you're going to be a hard closer, you didn't do the upfront work.   The Difference Between Asking Discovery Questions and the Sales Qualifying Process · [06:00]    Will Barron: Oh. So what's the difference then, Keenan, between that and then traditional kind of textbook, just qualifying?   Keenan: So textbook qualifying, in most cases, people are looking for a need. So they're saying go find a need or go find the pain. Well, there's two problems with those. First, a lot of times people confuse the two, which is a whole different set of stories.   Keenan: But if you're looking for need, it assumes the customer knows what they want. That's a huge mistake, huge mistake. I talk about, tell a story in the book, how I thought I needed to charger one time. Then what I ended up needing was actually a case. I had no idea that I needed a case for my Palm Pilot when I thought I needed a charger. It's a great story in the book.   Keenan: Had that salesperson not asked some questions to try to get to my core problem, I never would have got it solved because I went into buy the wrong thing. Well, that happens with customers all the time. So salesmen run out and try to sell them stuff based on what they think the customer needs, because they're looking for a need.   Keenan: The second one is they go in for the quote/unquote, the pain. First, we don't even do it very well. When they do find the pain, that doesn't necessarily mean again, it's the right problem. It can be simply a symptom. So it makes it very difficult to influence a sale if you're trying to shoot for a need or a pain that isn't actually at the root cause and/or isn't what the customer actually needs. So it doesn't allow you to do a good job.   Keenan: The discovery that Gap Selling talks about is about breaking it down into current state plus future state, and that equals the gap, the difference between the two. Then you have a total understanding of what's going on. Where they are today? Where they want to go tomorrow? What the space in the middle is?   Keenan: Then when it comes time to offer a solution, it can be customised because your discovery actually created a custom environment, a unique environment that is only specific to that buyer.   How to Identify if We’ve Uncovered the Symptom of a Problem or the Problem Itself · [07:56]   Will Barron: So how then do we know? I don't know. It's even a weird question to ask because it seems so simple. But perhaps it's profound of how we uncover it because this sets up the rest of the sale and the conversation. How do we know the difference between we have uncovered a symptom of the problem? Versus we know the actual problem itself? How do we separate the two live in a conversation?   Keenan: Yeah. So it happens as you dig deeper. So in Gap Selling, the way we talk about the discovery is first, you got to go after the current state. That's first and foremost. So the current state consists of the physical and literal today. I don't know, it depends on what you're selling and you got to be aware of what you're selling.   Keenan: But if you're selling, I don't know, lead services or plumbing services. I don't care, plumbing services. Then you got to understand, okay, what type of house do they have? How many bathrooms do they have? How many showers? Is it copper piping or plastic tubing? Whatever.   Keenan: You ask all these questions and it's non-judgemental, it just helps you understand the lay of the land. Then after that, you have to understand what are the problems that they're struggling with? So do they get clogged often? Does the water run slowly? Do you not have hot water? I'm just guessing stuff.   Keenan: So now you've got to understand the problems they're having. Then you go to the impact of those problems. The impact is two people can't take showers at the same time. I'm constantly having to buy fricking Drano. Our hot water bill is through the roof. I don't know, what is the impact?   Keenan: Then the next one is what is the root cause? Now as you start to dig into the root cause of the problems, what you start to build is a very, very custom assessment that is only specific to that customer. When you add all four of those things up, the actual problem starts to come together.   Keenan: As opposed to, you're like, oh, okay. I thought that was the problem. Now I realise that's just a symptom. Because as you dig and you dig and you get all four of those layers, the problem becomes automatic.   Is It Fair to Say That Customers Rarely Know What They Need Until a Seller Uncovers the Root of the Problem? · [10:00]    Will Barron: Is there a process of getting the person that we're speaking to, to visualise this and take it in? Other than walking them through it? If that makes sense. Are we asking people to go well … It sounds cliche as I say it out loud. It sounds ridiculous as I say it out loud.   Will Barron: Imagine this problem 10 years into the future, tell me the pain that you'd be in? Almost like a kind of psychologist or psychiatrist would do for us? Are we trying to get into their brains like that?   Keenan: No, you don't have to. It's amazing. Well, so when you asked about traditional discovery. One of the things traditional discovery people do is they go, can you tell me what you need? They just ask this one question. Can you tell me what you need? Or can you tell me about some of the pain you're experiencing? Or they just ask these stupid, direct, direct, direct questions.   Keenan: In Gap Selling, what we do is we encourage people to ask very broad open-ended questions. Literally like, tell me a little bit about your current? I mean, we're running on the stupid analogy, might as well continue with it. Tell me a little bit about your current plumbing and your current bathroom and kitchen environment? Then they'll just start talking and as they talk, you listen very intently. You should know what questions to ask.   Keenan: So as I they, “Well, we have …” I don't know. “We have one bathroom.” Then the next question may be, oh really? How many people live in the house? You should automatically click one bathroom. Is it one person or 10 people? If it's 10 people, that's an interesting problem. If it's one person, not a problem, continue. Do you see what I'm saying?   Keenan: Then they say, “We have a shower and a tub separate.” Okay. Interesting. You just let them go and you keep teasing little more out of them to start understanding the environment. Then when you understand the environment, then you should naturally be able to understand some of the problems that come with that.   Keenan: So you start asking questions to tease out problems there. So say it's a woman and she's 32, and you said, “Do you have long hair or short hair?” Now why am I asking that question right now, Will? Why would I ask if you have long hair or short hair?   Will Barron: Blocking up the drains?   Keenan: Yes, yes, yes. So this is a very complex way of thinking. You have to be very, very in tune with what they're saying and what the problems could be and what the root causes could be. So that as they're talking, and she says, “Long hair.” You can say, “Oh, so do you find that your hair clogs the drain often? Or how many times you get clogged? You get once a year? Is it usually hair related?” “Yes, it is.”   Keenan: Okay. Now I know that if I have any products that can address that, I'm going to bring them up. That's how you do it. You just pay very close attention to the environment and what they're saying to start to look and tease out problems that they're not processing.   Will Barron: First question is, are you having some plumbing work done at the moment? Why is this top of mind?   Keenan: No, I have no idea where this problem came from. Because it's always hard. There's different businesses out there.   Will Barron: The reason I ask is I'm having a kitchen fitted in a couple of weeks. So I've got all this kind of stuff top of mind. So it's just a weird coincidence.   Keenan: Yes. Like if I was working with you on your kitchen. I would ask all kinds of questions. Like, is it you? Or you and your wife? Is it you and your kids? What do you like to cook? What does she like to cook? How do you cook today? How often do you cook today? What type of meals does she cook today?   Keenan: Because I might be thinking you need, it's something as silly as I might even recommend the boiling pot thing that comes out of behind the stove? You know that thing that comes out?   Will Barron: We've been through that conversation. We're not getting one.   Keenan: Yeah, oh god.   How to Set Yourself Up As An Expert Consultant Instead of a Pesky Salesperson · [13:37]    Will Barron: Don't need bullshit like that in the kitchen. All right. Going off track here, Keenan. Let's pull it back on. So how do we? Because it seems like if I was to call, if Richard Branson was to call me up and say, “I've got a few questions about your business, I might be able to help.” I would answer any questions he could possibly imagine.   Will Barron: He might be able to give me, even just nothing to do with consulting with him or working with him in the future, he might be able to give me one or two pieces of information that could blow up my business, or change the way I sell, or anything like that.   Will Barron: But if Joe Boggs emails me saying, “Hey, Will, we've got this new SAS.” I've just changed accounting firms and accounting software. So perhaps Joe Boggs rings me up, calls me. He says, “I've got this awesome new SAS software. Let me get on the phone with you, and I'll solve all your problems.” I'm going to say, “I've probably not got time to get on the phone with you. I've just switched kind of 10 minutes ago.”   Will Barron: How do we frame this up, Keenan, so that we are setting ourselves up as an expert to be consulted with? As opposed to a pesky salesperson, just trying to steal time?   Keenan: Yeah. So notice how you just, you even yourself, who've been doing this whole sale things for years, just lead with a product-centric email. You said, “Hey, I'm Joe Blow with accounting software, I'd like to talk to you about how I can solve all your problems.”   Keenan: You started with I'm with accounting software. What you needed to do. You can say I'm with so-and-so, but you needed to start with a problem, or number of problems that I think you might have. So why did you switch your accounting software?   Will Barron: Because there was zero accounting and bookkeeping done beforehand, and now the revenue's getting to the point where it needs to be done basically.   Keenan: But you had one before.   Will Barron: Essentially spreadsheets.   Keenan: Okay. So you're using spreadsheets, that was your current state.   Will Barron: Yep.   Keenan: So if I know that many of my prospective clients are using spreadsheets, or starter accounting packages, I should know what types of problems that causes. So name one type of problem that you were having because you were on that spreadsheet?   Will Barron: We registered for VAT and it was a mess to go back and see what VAT, this is a kind of tax in the UK that I can-   Keenan: Yeah, Value Added Tax.   Will Barron: Just for the audience who aren't in the UK. Yeah, I need to claim a tonne of it back now that we're registered, we have to pay it so that you can have it offset your bill. It's literally, it means me going through 12 spreadsheets per year for the past four years to kind of put all that data together.   Keenan: Okay. So I might, if I'm good and I know that my target is people like you, small businesses that could be on old accounting systems, I would've led that email with, “Will, if you're having trouble or getting frustrated with having to spend countless hours trying to attack that, do spreadsheets or this accounting software or that counting software.”   Keenan: “I'd love to talk about how we can address that, and many of the other time intensive accounting issues that small businesses have because they don't have the right accounting software.” Would that have gotten your attention?   Will Barron: That would have got a phone call for sure.   “This is what most people don't understand, when you're selling a product or service, that product or service was designed to solve problems, whether we talk about them or not. So you should know what those problems are and talk about those problems first. That's problem centric selling. Don't talk about your product and what it can do. Start with the problems that have to exist before your product has any value.” – Keenan · [16:48]    Keenan: Yes. So notice I'm leading with the problem. This is what most people don't understand, when you're selling a product or service that product or service was designed to solve problems, whether we talk about them or not.   Keenan: So you should know what those problems are and talk about those problems first. That's problem-centric selling. Don't talk about your product and what it can do. Start with the problems that have to exist before your product has any value.   Will Barron: What is the-   Keenan: That's how you do it.   The Key Elements of Problem-centric Selling · [17:19]   Will Barron: I love it. What is the cadence of that, Keenan? What I mean by that is, is this a email with one problem? Then we follow up on that problem, then we pitch a second problem further down the line? The answer is it depends, I'm sure. But is there a structure to build a system around this?   Keenan: It does. It depends. It depends on how big are the problems that you can solve? So if you only solve one really big problem, I would probably stick to it.   Keenan: If you solve several key problems that just different businesses could have. One business could have this, and it's a big one, another one could have this and it's a big one. Then I might round Robin it. But I'd go at least two to three touches on the same problem before I pivot.   Sharing Content with the Buyer to Educate on the Problems they Might Be Facing and Stay Top of Mind · [17:58]    Will Barron: Would you then perhaps, because we talk about social selling and it seems to have died down a little bit now, the kind of hype around that. But are we then sending people content in the next email? Or are we always trying to just get that initial phone call? Is that always the call to action?   Keenan: 85%. Now, if I'm going to add content, I'm going to add content that's going to support or explain that problem. So let's say, I mean, again, I'm on the fly on this, but if we're using your accounting software and I get you on that, hopefully I've got some information that talks about the average half a million dollar a year company, spends 25 hours on that. They have these many mistakes and these mistakes can cause you these problems.   Keenan: So if I educate you on the problem, if you don't feel that it's a problem because you didn't pay a right VAT and you're paying fines in retro, whatever. So I might do that. I might find content that reinforces, just reinforces the problem or explains the problem. So I'll go that route.   Why Highlighting the Impact of a Customer Problem is Crucial in All Sales Conversations · [19:04]    Will Barron: Then I want to rush through this because I feel we can paint a good picture on the subject. The answer is buy the book if you want to go more depth into it. But say we get on the phone call, nine times out of 10, it's probably not going to go as swimmingly and seamlessly as what we're described here. But we uncover it, whatever the issue is, they have that aha moment that we're all searching for.    Will Barron: Everyone's happy. Everyone's excited. How do we follow up and reinforce the fact that we have discovered this issue? We potentially have a solution. How does this get formalised? Because I guess if we can get someone to agree to what we've said, then we're halfway there to closing the sale, right?   Keenan: Yes. Well, okay. So yes, but the key is this, getting them to accept and own they have a problem is only half of it. Then you need to outline the impact. Remember I talked about those five things, physical and literal, problem, impact, root cause. Then I didn't talk about one, emotion. How do they feel about it?   Keenan: When you have all those on the table, the impact is the motivator. That's where intrinsic motivation lives. So the impact is I'm paying fines. The impact is how much are you paying in fines? X, Y, Z. If you weren't paying those fines, what would you be doing with that money? I'm making this up. What is your marketing budget? Would you have moved that money from those fines to the marketing budget? What does it cost you to pay those fines? Or whatever the impact is.   Keenan: So we're going to lay the whole impact out. Once you get them sitting in the impact, it's a simple transition to the future state now. It's okay, so where are you trying to go? Is your company growing? That's of course, yes, it is growing by 20%. So if this keeps growing at 20% year over year, these fines are going to continue to increase and so is the amount of hours you're spending.   Keenan: So you're going to lose more and more money. So therefore you want to get to a future state where you're not losing this money and you're saving this X amount. Then you start asking questions about what do you want? Where do you want to take the business? What other initiatives do you want to embrace? So now it's, I don't know, maybe I want to start a podcast.   Keenan: It's okay. So now all this 12 hours is going to make it harder to do the podcast. Yes it is. So now I've got them all focused on this whole future state where I can stop paying the fines. I'm not spending 12, 15 hours a month doing this. I can do other things that I'd never thought about. I can forecast my business better. I can get a loan.   Keenan: All this stuff I can do that I can't do now. I spin this whole future state. Then all of a sudden it becomes just a natural transition. I'm here, now I want to be here. The gap is this. That's what we start selling on is the gap. That's where the closing is already starting to be done.   Gap Selling and Why It’s Important · [22:01]   Will Barron: I think it's James Murray who came up with this. Maybe I'm kind of paraphrasing him/15 other people I've talked about on the show. But I always know, without all this structure, in hindsight, I can put some of this in place, that I've done a great sales call. I've added value to a conversation when at the end of it, I can just go, does it make sense to work with us?   Will Barron: The answer is either yes or no, because, and then you can backtrack. Oh, there's an objection or something you haven't covered. Is that the goal that we should have with all of this? That we just get to the end of the conversation and go, does it make sense to move forward?    Keenan: Yes. Yes. It's that simple, it's that simple? Yep. It is that simple. So getting all that information is hard.   Will Barron: Sure.   Keenan: I'll tell a quick little story. I was called, and I talk about it in my book, I was called by this company. They'd already called several sales experts, influencers. Some have been on your show. Some have written books. They're the names we all know.   Keenan: He had seen me speak at a conference and I don't know why he decided to call me. Just something wasn't clicking with the other ones. These are sales experts. These people know how to sell. He got me on the phone and we talked for a while and I went through the whole Gap Selling approach, current state. Obviously don't tell them that, but you're just going through the whole thing.   Keenan: One of the things I dug out, is he told all the reasons he wanted. He was very capable buyer. He was like, “I want this, I need this, this is the problem I'm having.” Dah, dah, dah, dah. So he said all of the other sales leaders jumped right on those things he told them, explained how they could help, and walk through what they do it and all this stuff.   Keenan: Then I went to a place and asked some questions. I said, “You said you're growing.” I said, “So it's not like you're losing money.” He goes, “No.” I asked him some questions about how it was structured. He explained how he's structured. I was like, “Well, that's kind of a little messed up.” I said, “So why is this growth so important to you?”   Keenan: He said, “Well, it's not that growth is important. I just don't want to fall behind.” I said, “Okay, that's interesting.” Then I said to him, “What is your goal? What is your growth goal?” He said, “Well, we want to get to a 48 in 2020.” This was in 2000, end of 2017. I said, “Oh, okay. Where are you now?” He gave his number and I did some quick math while I'm talking to him.   Keenan: I said, “Wait, you're behind.” He goes, “Yeah, we're behind.” I go, “You're behind seven million dollars. At your current growth rate, you're not going to make it.” He stopped and he goes, “Yeah, you're right.” I said, “So this isn't just about growing. You've got to make up some lost revenue here. So you can't just keep growing, you need to grow faster than you're even faster going now to make up what you lost.”   Keenan: He said, “That's a great point.” Then I said this, I said, “Why? Why 48 in 20?” “Well, it's a big BHAG we have.” I said, “That's it? It's just a big BHAG? I mean, okay, that's fine. So if you don't make it, it's not the end of the world.” He goes, “No, but one of our competitors just got bought. When we get to 48 to 50 million, the valuations change dramatically.”   Keenan: I said, “What's dramatically?” He said, “It could be an extra two to four X from where we are now in valuation, plus we're 50 million. So it's really worth 100 million to us.” I said, “Oh. Who owns the company?” He said, “There's just a handful of us.” I go, “Oh.” So all of a sudden, I now know what the intrinsic motivation is here.   Keenan: I was like, okay, “This is what's going to happen. This is what you need to do. This is the only way you're going to get to this.” I got the gig and I tell you the story in that, I beat out a number of very well-known sales experts who didn't do this. None of them uncovered where he was trying to go.   Keenan: None of them uncovered 48 in 20. None of them uncovered that there was a potential exit. None of them uncovered where he was and what was preventing him to get there, and the fact that he was seven million behind. That changed everything. So that's what it's about right there.   Will Barron: So a good part of this seemingly, as I listened to you, and as I process this myself, Keenan, is that you just got to really give a shit about the person that you're speaking to. They can't just be another number, another dial, another email that you're spamming with some kind of automated software.   How New Salespeople Can Shift From Product-centric Selling to Problem-centric Selling · [26:00]     Will Barron: So with that to on side, because I think everyone can appreciate that, everyone can wrap their heads around that. How do we make the leap from say, we're new to sales and we're a junior sales person, and we want to share these insights. We want to dig into these conversations. We want to go deep with it all. How do we make the leap from what you're describing here of I randomly for accounting software. Clearly you've got your finger on the pulse of VAT and different things that you certainly mentioned.   Will Barron: So you have a good head for business. You're an entrepreneur yourself. How does someone compete with that? If they are either new to sales? Or they're new to a specific industry? How do they learn and get all this background knowledge that allows them to ask these really useful and powerful questions?   Keenan: One of the things you do, and the term that I like to say is how do you go from product centric selling to problem centric selling? The way you do that is you start by doing your homework and research on the problems.   Keenan: So I'm waiting for a company that hires me, that lets me build the problem centric selling, training for them. Because if you get a new job and you go into this accounting firm and they're going to teach you everything about the product, everything has to be product centric. They're going to teach you all the different features and functions and how it works and who their customers are. They're going to teach you how to build an elevator pitch and they'll teach you how to build messages that talk about the product. I want someone to flip that script.   “What I do is I create something called a PIC list. It stands for problem identification chart, and it's made up of three columns. The first column is the problems that your product or service solves. What are the problems that you know that your product or service solves for your ideal customer profile? Then the next column is the impact to an organisation if those problems exist. Then the next column is why do those problems exist? Or what are the root causes of those problems? If you fill that out and you are accurate and in depth, excuse me, you're in depth, you now have your guide. That's your map.” – Keenan · [27:24]    Keenan: What I do is I create something called a PIC list. It stands for problem identification chart, and it's made up of three columns. The first column is the problems that your product or service solves. What are the problems that you know that your product or service solves for your ideal customer profile?   Keenan: Then the next column is the impact to an organisation if those problems exist. Then the next column is why do those problems exist? Or what are the root causes of those problems? If you fill that out and you are accurate and in depth, excuse me, you're in depth, you now have your guide. That's your map.   Keenan: You look at the problem. You look at the impact it can have on an organisation. You look at why those problems exist. Then you can start having those conversations with anybody. You can enter the account any way you want through that. You can go to the impact first. You can go to the problem first. You go to the root cause first, or why they happen. You can do any of that.   Is Social Selling and Having an Online Presence Really Necessary Once a Salesperson Masters the Art of Gap Selling · [28:29]   Will Barron: Do we need to do anything else to set ourselves up when we send that email? What I mean by that is, clearly the example you just give, Keenan, someone saw you on stage speaking. So immediately you're an authority in their eyes and they ring you up. You've pre-framed yourself as an authority by that kind of link.   Will Barron: For the, not the average B2B sales professional, but the high performer, or the aspiring high-performing B2B sales professional, if we send an email that highlights the problem, or our hypothesis of the problem that an individual has, is that good enough to get a phone call? Or do we need to do all of this stuff?   Will Barron: If you're for this, it's stuff. If you're against this, it's bullshit. Around building a social media profile and social selling and creating content and being at the front of your industry on multiple levels. If we are good at diagnosing a problem, sending a customised message to the right people, do we need all the other stuff? Or is that necessary in the kind of marketplace we're in?   Keenan: So it depends on how you want to define success. If you just want to be the salesperson that's, I don't know, that's trying to make president's club and try to hit their quota every once in a while, or I guess every day, and just work within the confines of your industry and work within the confines of your company, don't do it.   Keenan: If people are responding to your emails and marketing's providing you inbound leads and people are calling you and your pipeline is big enough, then don't do it. But if you actually want to put gasoline on the fire, if you actually want to be the top in your space. If you actually just don't want to be some average dolt, then yeah, you need to do it.   “If you highlight the problems and you create content on solving the problems, you create content on how those problems impact an organisation. You create content on how the impact can bring down organisations. You just keep creating content and educating people on the problems you solve, by default you'll create your own personal inbound engine. You'll have that credibility. So I don't know why people don't. I just think they're foolish. But absolutely that's what I would do. Absolutely what I would do.” – Keenan · [30:22]    Keenan: Because the cool part is you get out there and you create videos, or you write blog posts, or you write LinkedIn posts, or you spend time on Instagram and you highlight the problems and you create content on solving the problems. You create content on how those problems impact an organisation. You create contact and how the impact can bring down organisations.   Keenan: You just keep creating content and educating people on the problems you solve, by default you'll create your own personal inbound engine. You'll have that credibility. So I don't know why people don't. I just think they're foolish. But absolutely that's what I would do. Absolutely what I would do.   Will Barron: Good. I knew you would say that. I tried to tee it up that way. Let me give a bit of context from this. I'll ask you if this is somewhat common, I guess when you kind of work with individuals, or you're at least pushing them in this direction of being the top of their industry and their spaces.   Will Barron: I get asked to consult on things, to come into businesses, all that kind of stuff, somewhat regularly now. If I don't refuse, I just put a ridiculous price on it so that everyone kind of says, “No, sod off, you lanky bugger. What are you kind of playing out here?” Because I don't want to do it. I've not got time to do it, got other priorities.   Will Barron: But four years ago, if you would've said to me, “Right, you're going to do this podcast. You're going to ask questions that hopefully sales people want to hear. On the other end of it, people are going to be both speaking gigs, and people are going to be throwing consultant jobs at you.” I would never have believed it.   The Distinct Benefits of Having an Online Presence · [31:40]    Will Barron: So what I'm getting at here, Keenan, is, is it worth doing all this? Doing the extra mile? Because it doesn't just separate you and allows you to have your own inbound engine for your sales role. It potentially sets you up for just bigger things in your career moving forward as well, doesn't it?   “Exposure, awareness, and reach are the most valuable assets you can have as a salesperson.” – Keenan · [32:00]    Keenan: Absolutely. What people don't understand, and I talked about it in my first book, Not Taught, is that exposure and awareness and reach are the most valuable assets you can have. I mean, reach is like gold. It's like oil.   Keenan: Look, it's a brilliant example whether we like it or not, but the Jenner twins. Those girls were on a show where they almost never spoke. Okay. Now I haven't seen the Kardashians in a long, long time. So maybe they moved them into a more prominent role. But in the beginning, back when I watched the show with my daughters and my ex wife, because that's what they wanted to do. And before what's her name? Before Bruce Jenner became, I forget who he became. What's her name?   Will Barron: I know the names, but I've never watched it.   Keenan: Carrie or whatever. Before he became, before he changed over, those twins had played no role, but everybody knew who they were. So they had reach, they had exposure. They had millions and millions and millions of people who knew who they were.   Keenan: So once they got older, all they had to do is flip that switch. Just flip it, and then start engaging with those people, talking to those people, doing stuff, sharing their lives. Now Kylie, I think is almost worth a billion dollars.   Will Barron: I think she is. I think she's one of, if not the youngest female billionaire.   Keenan: Okay. So she got over the hump.   Will Barron: I think so, yeah.   Keenan: How did you do that? Yes. She leveraged that reach and started pushing cosmetics. Now it's not to say that if she pushed cosmetics that were bad, she'd be able to do it. But the point is she had the reach because it started with exposure. She didn't have to do anything. She didn't have to do an act. Just people knew who she was.   Keenan: That's why I'm emphasising this. I'm leaving her sisters out because her sisters showed personality. They were on the show. They had speaking roles. They could build that. All the twins did, they were just in the background for the first four, five, six, seven years as nobodies. But because they were there and millions of people saw them, they were building reach. Once they decided to flip the switch, it was gone.   “Why the average American does not spend time building micro reach, whether it's only 1000 people, 5000 people, 10,000, is beyond me. Then what they do when they need something, they go on to LinkedIn and say, “Hey, I've just been let go. I'm looking for a gig.” Where the fuck have you been the last five years? You wouldn't have to do this if you had actually built reach.” – Keenan · [34:01]    Keenan: So why the average American does not spend time building micro reach, whether it's only 1000 people, 5000 people, 10,000, is beyond me. Beyond me. Then what they do when they need something, they go on to LinkedIn and say, “Hey, I've just been let go. I'm looking for a gig.” Where the fuck have you been the last five years? You wouldn't have to do this if you had actually built reach.   Will Barron: Are you familiar, Keenan, with the concept of 1000 true fans?   Keenan: No.   The Concept of 1000 True Fans · [34:25]   Will Barron: So I'm pretty sure his name is Kevin Kelly, he's the founder. Maybe still, maybe not, the chief editor of Wired Magazine. He's got a really good article. I'll link it in the show notes of this episode.   Will Barron: Basically this works for an entrepreneur. It works for perhaps you're a sales professional in a specific industry and you want to turn that into a consulting gig. Or you want to do speaking, whatever it is. Or one of the examples he uses in this blog post article is a band. All you need is 1000 people, 1000 people who love everything that you do, who will spend a little bit of money with you each year.   Will Barron: Say for the band, they buy the $100 EAP. The record, as opposed to just the digital download. As a consultant, maybe it's not 1000 people, maybe it's 100 people, and they all give you $1000 for a day's work or whatever it is. Whatever people are charging as consultants in their specific niches.   Will Barron: Once you suss out that it's so few people and you can reach them so easily, it changes paradigms on this. It changed my mindset on all of this for the podcast. It's just slightly different now what we're doing, but I knew that if I had 10 companies that would give me 10 grand a year to sponsor the show. So I only had 10 customers to sell to, that was the business. Or the beginnings of the kind of seeds of a business there.   Will Barron: So I read this article, I translated it into that. That's how I went about everything. I find that the bigger, not necessarily the bigger, the better your relationship, because we kind of poo-pooed relationships at the top of the show. The more value that you can give these individuals, whether they like you or not.   Keenan: Yes, yes, yes.   Will Barron: I'm learning. It is going in, Keenan.   Keenan: The more value you give to these people, the more they'll pay you. Yes.   Will Barron: The more value you give them in the meantime, the easier they're going to pay you and work with you in the future. That's what I was getting at with that. We're not talking about Kylie Jenner with how many millions or 10s of millions or 100s of millions of followers she's got an Instagram.   Will Barron: We're talking about you, perhaps me, as a medical device sales person in leads. I just need to give value to 32 urologists and I will smash my target, do multiple six figures every year and it's as simple as that.   Keenan: Yes. Yep. You got it.   Will Barron: Good man.   Keenan: That's it. Yeah.   Keenan’s Advise to His Older Self on How to Become Better at Selling · [36:48]   Will Barron: Good. Well, glad I've got to kind of tie it altogether there. Well, with that, Keenan, I've asked you this question about 47 times now. I'm going to ask you again, just to wrap up the show. That is, if you go back in time and speak to your younger self, what would be the one piece of advice you'd give him to help him become better at selling?   Keenan: Nothing.   Will Barron: You got to give me something to work with here.   Keenan: That's what I say every single time.   Will Barron: Go back. What would you right now tell if you could, if you could put it in a letter, in a time machine and send it forward, what would you tell your kind of 60 year old self?   Keenan: Oh, I like that one. Remember what got you here. That is, excuse me. That is there are no rules, family and friends matter. That life is too short, too short. By the way, this is messed up. That's only 10 years from now. Okay.   Keenan: So my 60 year old self, you got to come up with an older year because it's nine years from now, actually. So that's not a good one. But here, that puts it in perspective, is as you said it, it seemed in my head like a long way down the road, but it's really only nine years from now for me.   Keenan: So I won't forget, but I think that's why I am happy with the life I've lived and where I've gotten, is I just have a very youthful, a very high energy life. That just doesn't make me feel that I'm getting older. It's moving down the road.   Keenan: I literally forget that I'll be 51 in April. Forget it. I'll be reading articles and they're like that 52 year old man died, or the 60 year old man. I'm like, God, I hope I'm healthy when I get there. I'm like, oh, snap. I'm there. Like, oh my God, I'm almost there. So it's an interesting perspective that I have myself in. I do not feel that 60 is a million years from now in my head, but it's really only nine.   Parting Thoughts · [39:01]   Will Barron: Good. Well, I could dive into that for another 15 minutes and get your insights for all us young guns who are following in your footsteps, Keenan, but we'll wrap up with that. Tell us where we can find Gap Selling? Tell us where we can find more about you as well because you put out so much awesome video content. It's well worth kind of following it and seeing what you're up to.   Keenan: Thank you, sir. So look, I do a lot of video on LinkedIn. So talking about giving. I just do LinkedIn content, tell people how to handle different sales scenarios, that provides tonnes of value on making you a better salesperson.   Keenan: You can find me on Amazon where you can find Gap Selling on Amazon. I didn't check the last few days, but it's been the number one hot new seller on Amazon for almost two and a half months now, which has blown me away. You can also find me@asalesguy.com, just asalesguy.com.   Will Barron: Good stuff. Well, I'll link to all that in the show notes of this episode, over@salesman.org.   Will Barron: With that, Keenan, I want to thank you for your time, as always, mate. Next time you're on, we'll dive into phase two of the kitchen fitting at my place and the saga that's going on there. With that, mate, I'll speak to you again soon on The Salesman Podcast.   Keenan: Awesome, baby. Love coming out here. You're dope. Appreciate it.  

As a sales professional, you'll often find yourself working on more than one deal at once. You'll hold conversations with different people with different needs and viewpoints. You want to close each of these effectively to ensure you keep smashing your sales quotas. Staying on top of all this can leave you overwhelmed, confused, and sometimes lost. Luckily, effective deal management can help simplify and organize the various aspects of your sales deals and improve your performance, efficiency, and conversions. How Can Deal Management Help You Become a Better Sales Professional? Effective deal management can drastically improve your sales performance. Here are the three most significant benefits of deal management. Greater Preparedness Having a deal process provides you with all the necessary information and tools to help you make informed, versatile decisions. Suppose your manager is unavailable for a client call due to a bad connection. If your organization has a well-defined deal management system, you can: Speak on behalf of your superior Make the best decisions using the information available to you Keep the deal moving forward You'll be better prepared to pivot and respond to situations and can create a more resilient and sustainable organization that recovers faster from setbacks. Better Consistency Your ultimate goal is to close as many deals as you can. But to achieve this, you have to eliminate any human error or personal preference-caused inefficiencies. Having a clearly defined deal management process makes this possible. With refined deal parameters in place, you can engage proactively with prospects as per the set standard. What's more, having a repeated process will also strengthen your selling skills, helping you deliver consistent and improved client experience throughout the sales cycle. Shorter Sales Cycle Time can be a sales rep's best friend or the worst enemy. Whether it's your friend or enemy depends on your management style. We've found that the longer the sales cycle, the less likely is the prospect to convert. Why? Many things can go wrong if the deal gets dragged. For instance, the prospect may lose interest or have another urgent matter to attend to; a pandemic might hit… anything can happen. With a carefully established deal flow management system, you can speed up your sales process while maintaining an excellent prospect-rep relationship and providing a solution-based engagement. What Are the 5 Stages of Deal Management? Deal management is an entire process designed to inform you what to expect when selling and ensure optimal deal management. It can be broken down into five stages to streamline your processes, letting you make the most of available sales opportunities. Stage 1: Process Planning You need to create an effective deal management that can be implemented company-wide. At the same time, your strategy must align with your organization's objectives, needs, and resources. That's why your deal management strategy should be flexible and streamlined to account for all kinds of client agreements effectively. Consider the following factors to develop an effective deal management strategy: What kind of deals is your company working with? Who is responsible for the different stages of the sales process? What issues have taken place in the past that resulted in a failed deal? What resources do you need to implement your strategy effectively? Answering these questions will help you set the ball rolling for the next stage. Stage 2: Process Implementation Once you've outlined your deal management process, it's time to implement it. We highly recommend using a deal management software tool like Monday.com or HubSpot Deal Tracking Software. You can import your data and onboard your suppliers into a centralized platform, allowing you to set up and execute all your deals with ease. Onboarding is a critical aspect of the implementation stage. Every person involved in the deal should know about your goals and how to use ideal management software. Otherwise, you'll find yourself resolving tons of errors and issues introduced into the deal management process. Ensure you and your team are aware of the new process and follow all procedures to the T to make deal management more reliable and efficient. Stage 3: Pre-Deal At this stage, you've established the foundation of your deal management process. Next, you'll implement it when creating new deals with your prospects. If you want the prospect to invest in your product or service, you should focus on the solution and not the product. It's why effective negotiation and overcoming client objections is such a big part of the pre-deal stage. Ensure you have access to all data that helps you understand the prospect's requirements and then tailor your sales pitch accordingly. Stage 4: Handover (Optional) If your organization has a system where the people negotiating the deal are different from people managing it, you have to hand the prospect over to them. On the other hand, if you're responsible for closing the deal yourself, you can skip this and move on to Stage 5. The thing is, handovers can be tricky. Prospects don't like it since they're back to square one, where they have to communicate with a brand-new person they haven't interacted with before and, more importantly, don't trust. Your job is to make the handover as smooth as possible, ensuring everyone involved in the deal management process knows what they need to do to see it to its conclusion. Be sure to walk the next person to the details of the deals and introduce them to the prospect to make the transition seamless. Stage 5: Closing the Deal This is the stage when you take the plunge and ask for the sale. Make the prospect feel comfortable about saying yes to the deal. A good strategy is to create a sense of urgency by setting a deadline for the prospect to respond. Be sure the prospect is aware of the terms of the deal. Once everyone has agreed on the terms and signed the contract, you've got yourself a brand-new customer. Congratulations! 3 Effective Tips for Better Deal Management Below, we've compiled a list of tips that can help you improve your sales processes and add value to each client or customer experience. Collect All Relevant Data Measurable data allows you to initiate quality engagement with prospects, which will ultimately help you close more deals. Think of the whole process as mapping your roadmap before you start your journey: you'll have a better idea of where you're going, where you shouldn't go, and know where others have gone wrong before. Try to find out more about your prospect—what are their long-term goals, threats to those goals, and their specific pain points. You can then use this information to establish trust and pitch your products or services. Expert Note: “Once a deal has been approved to move through the sales process, the sales leader is responsible for every step along the way.” Tom Searcy Salesman Podcast Create Multithreaded Relationships Sales 101: Never put all your eggs in one basket. Buying decisions generally involve more than one person. So if your point of contact doesn't have the power to make buying decisions, there's a chance you may not close the deal. Create a multithreaded relationship, where you connect with more than one person at the company. This will ensure the deal doesn't rely on a single connection, improving your chances of securing a sale. Stay Patient During the Pricing and Procurement Process Despite everything going perfect, you can still lose the deal if you don't handle the pricing and procurement process effectively. You may feel like rushing the last few steps of the deal, but staying patient and strategic is incredibly important here. After presenting your prospect with pricing details, hit pause. Give the prospect time to respond and resist the temptation to throw out a discount to close the deal faster. Be confident in the way you managed the deal to this point and the value you presented. Trust me, the prospect will notice. If you have successfully established a genuine connection with the prospect, you won't face any difficulty addressing their concerns when they get back to you. Deal Management Tools B2B sales teams often need deal management tools to generate intelligent industry insights and visibility of potential commercial growth. Deal management software can often quickly improve the number of deals that can be worked on in real time and reduce operational constraints at the same time. If you're not happy with your current CRM or deal management software of choice, feel free to drop us an message and we can offer our unbiased opinion on some potential solutions for your business. Next Steps Are you thinking to relax after successfully converting the prospect? You don't want to make that mistake. Following up after the close is critical in effective deal management. Make sure your brand-new customer gets the product or service on time and is satisfied with everything. It'll help you build better relationships, resulting in repeated sales.

Do you feel that? You can practically smell it in the air. *Sniff* *sniff*—a recession is coming. Are YOU prepared? If you want to come out of this economic dip intact, you need to start preparing. Like NOW. And one of the best ways to do that is by setting MORE meetings and begin the work of overloading your pipeline. Today we’re covering that dreaded word on everyone’s mind, “recession.” Not whether it’s going to happen or what the fallout will be. But what you can do to protect yourself or heck, even come out ahead, by booking more meetings TODAY. Now, experts agree that there’s a recession looming not too far off on the horizon. How big it will be or how long it will last is anyone’s guess. But what we do know is how it will affect buyers as a whole. What a Recession Means First and foremost… 1. Less Spending Your clients and potential buyers are spending less money. When money becomes tight (and it will), your buyers are going to be way less likely to shell out for a product they aren’t desperate for. And that means you need to get better at driving urgency, selling value, and showing buyers why you’re a solid investment. 2. Scared For Their Job Number two, buyers are scared about the future of their job. Zooming in from a company level, your buyers are going to have their own fears. How secure is their job? Is their department first on the chopping block? And how will making a buying mistake affect their chances of sticking around? 3. Prioritizing the Status Quo Buyers are also shifting their priorities. In a growth market, companies are looking for opportunities. Chances to get bigger, to get better. They want to expand. But in the face of a recession, a lot of businesses are looking for ways to secure the status quo. How will they simply keep afloat so they can wait out the storm? 4. Scared of Change And number four, they’re scared of change. Change carries risk. And as a result, buyers are going to be waaaaay less likely to spend their already tight budget on big-shift products. Change is already scary enough. But in a recession, it’s a nightmare. Alright, so with all that in mind, the question becomes… How to Book More Meetings (3 Steps) What can you do to capitalize on these shifts to book more meetings? There are three things in particular you as a sales professional can do to keep your pipeline packed. 1. Up Your Qualification Game Up your qualification game. When the market is booming, you may have the time and resources to focus on anyone who shows even an ounce of interest. But when times are tight, every second counts. And that means you need to spend your day working with only the best leads. Now you’re going to be running into three types of leads here. People with money to spend now. People who will have money once things lighten up and get better. And people who don’t have money now and aren’t sure how they’ll be later either. Your goal is to prioritize people with the money to spend now. Put 80% to 90% of your efforts into them. Because they’re the only ones who you’ll have even a chance with. The buyers who are waiting for the economy to shift should be priority number two. Don’t leave them out entirely. Because once things do turn around, the relationship you’ve built right now can lead to some seriously massive quarters in the future. And finally, the “can’t do now, not sure about later” leads. Light touches here. Keep them in your loop for now. But don’t spend too much time with them. Instead, just follow up after everything changes. And invest the bulk of your time in the first two lead types instead. The better you are at qualifying, the better you’ll fare right now. 2. Adjusting Your Value Proposition Technique number two is adjusting your value proposition. In regular times, you’re probably used to hitting some core points when talking about your solution’s benefits. “It can increase revenue, help your company expand, grow your market” – that type of stuff. Go-tos, right? Well, things have changed. And in a recession, belts are tightening and growing takes a back seat to maintaining. So what does that mean for you? To maximize your booking rate, you need to shift your value proposition to how you can help get more from less. Instead of focusing on ROI and investing in growth, talk about how you can boost efficiency. How your product lets them cut costs, reduce time spend, and make the budget they have now go further. And as a cherry on the top, show your buyers how your solution doesn’t just streamline the business as a whole. It also means it’ll make their job more secure. 3. Demonstrate the “Costs” Status quo reigns supreme during a recession, that much is clear. But your buyers shouldn’t just be focused on not growing. They should also be looking for ways to prevent problems. Not acting in and of itself is a problem, particularly during a recession. Companies will go under. And the ones that survive SHOULD actively be looking for ways to increase their competitiveness. So when you’re working on a new buyer, be sure to hit the costs of not changing especially hard. The more they see that inaction is costly, the more likely they’ll be to consider your solution. right now and continue making selling simple…”

Anthony Iannarino is an international speaker, author, and experienced sales leader. In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Anthony shares how we can take business from our competitors and essentially “eat their lunch”. You'll learn: Sponsored by: Free SalesCode assessment Learn your strengths and weaknesses in an instant. Taken by over 10,000+ of your competitors. Don't get left behind. Take the free assessment Featured on this episode: Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - Anthony Iannarino International Speaker and Experienced Sales Leader Resources: Book: Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition TheSalesBlog.com @Iannarino Book: The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the Ten Commitments That Drive Sales Book: Consultative Selling: The Hanan Formula for High-Margin Sales at High Levels ZoomInfo.com  Transcript Will Barron: Coming up on today's episode of the salesman podcast.   Anthony Iannarino: This is the thing about human relationships. Fast is slow and slow is fast. So the faster you try to go, the slower you go and the easier you try to make things for yourself, the more difficult it is for you. And when you do the hard things, the easier it is for you to generate the results you want. It just works that way. I didn't design the universe. I had no say… I mean, God didn't consult with me to make this law. It was the law when I showed up here. That that tends to be the way things work.   Will Barron: Hello, sales nation. I'm Will Barron host of the salesman podcast. The world's most istened to B2B sales show. If you haven't already make sure to click subscribe and let's meet today's guest.   Anthony Iannarino: I'm Anthony Iannarino. I'm a speaker, I'm a writer, I'm a teacher. And you can find me thesalesblog.com.   Should Salespeople Be Aiming To Be the Best Professionals They Possibly Can Be, or Do They Just Need To Be 1% Better Than the Next Best Competition? · [01:18]    Will Barron: On this episode, Anthony, will dive in into how you can go into a competitor account, how you can take their lunch, how you can steal the business away from them, the step by step process to do this. And it's incredible that we haven't really covered this on the podcast before. This is probably the, not necessarily quickest, but the most efficient and best way to really crush your target, not just now, but over the years and decades to come. And so with all that said, I'm hyped up, you should be. This is a real important show for us. Let's dive right in. To set the story, to set the scene for the audience should be to be sales professionals, should they be aiming at all times to be the best professional they could possibly be, learn everything they could possibly learn and give as much value as they possibly can. Or do they in reality only really need to give and be that 1% better than the next best competition.   Anthony Iannarino: I love that question because I see this thing go by on Facebook and it's like a regular post that just always comes by in my feet for some reason. It says, I don't want to be better than anyone else. I just want to be better than I was yesterday. And I love that platitude. But what I would want for you is to be better than you were yesterday and better than your toughest competitor today. Because if you live in the red ocean and your a competitor, then you have to be better. And the way that you frame that up is sort of a mutually exclusive sort of choice.   “A lot of people are so focused on their competition that they forget that it's a contest to create value, and that there's absolutely nothing you can do about your competitors. So if you can't do anything about them, then what should you be working on? That leaves you. So you better start working on that because that's all you've got.” – Anthony Iannarino · [02:20]    Anthony Iannarino: Like, do I need to be the best version of me or do I need to be better than them? Both. It's an and. You need to constantly work on this, but you do hint to something where a lot of people are so focused on their competition, that they forget that it's a contest to create value. And that there's absolutely nothing you can do about your competitors. So if you can't do anything about them, then what should you be working on? That leaves you. So you better start working on that because that's all you've got.   How Much of the Marketplace is Already Taken Up By the Competition Versus New Buyers Who’ve Never Used Our Type of Product or Service Before? · [02:47]    Will Barron: Good. I expected hope for that answer and that makes total sense for me. So hopefully it makes sense for the audience. And with that context and the kind of back in mind as we go through this conversation Anthony, how much… I don't know if there's a percentage, I don't know if there's statistics on it. So I don't want to kind of put you on the spot, but how much of a marketplace, if we are a B2B sales professional is taken up with the competition already having an account versus what we spend typically most of our time on which are trying to convince people that they want our product.   Anthony Iannarino: It's an interesting question. And I think from vertical to vertical and industry to industry there's variances. And a new industry where things are interesting when you look at, especially all the tech stuff that goes on our world of sales, there's a lot of people trying to capture leads. And for some reason they think leads are better than targets because somebody raised their hand. And I had a conversation with a group of people I was speaking to and they said, the biggest challenge we have is turning marketing qualified leads into sales qualified leads. And I said, well, what does that mean? And they said, a sales qualified lead is somebody who shows up ready to buy. And I said, then why do they need you? I mean, you're redundant now. They're already ready to buy.   “The thing that I've always struggled with as somebody who's run businesses of my own is people that come in and say, “we should call on people who don't buy our services and teach them the value of the services because they're not already buying.” And I would say, “well, why do you think they're not already buying? Because they don't care about what we sell. They don't believe they'll benefit from it.” So why not spend all of your time or at least a disproportionate amount of the time on the people that already see what you sell as essential, as strategic, as necessary as something that's going to help them move their business forward.” – Anthony Iannarino · [04:04]    Anthony Iannarino: So I know that's what you want, but that's not how it tends to work. People have issues that they're trying to resolve and questions that they need answered and concerns that they need help with and all these other things. For most of us, I don't know what the percentage is, but the thing that I've always struggled with as somebody who's run businesses of my own is people that come in and say, we should call on people who don't buy our services and teach them the value of the services because they're not already buying. And I would say, well, why do you think they're not already buying? Because they don't care about what we sell. They don't believe they'll benefit from it. So why not spend all of your time or at least a disproportionate amount of the time on the people that already see what you buy as essential, as strategic, as necessary as something that's going to help them move their business forward.   “For most of us, if you were to make a list of your dream clients and say, who are the companies and the people that my value proposition is going to resonate with so strongly that they're going to see me as a strategic resource, they already have somebody sitting in your seat. I mean, they weren't waiting for you to come along like, “we'd really like to do this but nobody's reached out to us.” Everybody's reaching out to them. So I think most of our dream clients, probably a hundred percent of them already belong to a competitor. So what should you do about that? I mean, you can look for an easier way and say, well, if I had really good leads, that would be great, or you can decide to target them and then come up with a strategy that allows you to penetrate that account and develop the contacts and the relationship so that you can displace your competitor.” – Anthony Iannarino · [04:38]    Anthony Iannarino: And for most of us, if you were to make a list of your dream clients and say, who are the companies and the people that my value proposition is going to resonate with so strongly that they're going to see me as a strategic resource, they already have somebody sitting in your seat. I mean, they weren't waiting for you to come along like, we'd really like to do this but nobody's reached out to us. Everybody's reaching out to them. So I think most of us that are dream clients, probably a hundred percent of them already belong to a competitor. So what should you do about that? I mean, you can look for an easier way and say, well, if I had really good leads, that would be great, or you can decide to target them and then come up with a strategy that allows you to penetrate that account and develop the contacts and the relationship so that can displace your competitor.   Is Displacing a Competitor all About Having the Right Mindset? · [05:30]    Will Barron: So I want to dive into specifically displacing competitors and the strategy behind that in a second. But just to wrap up, I guess the intro here Anthony, is this a mindset issue? Is this that humans will… Most humans will typically go for the easiest route if there's two routes to an end goal. Do we have it wrong in our heads that we think that educating someone who doesn't know anything about our product service, perhaps even industry or value, we think that is an easier proposal versus educating someone who or reeducating someone who is already somewhat educated, who's already spending money, we see that as harder. And if that is the case that we've got those perceptions, is that necessarily true?   “Convincing somebody that doesn't believe they’d get value from what you sell to value it, that's really difficult. Finding somebody who already values what you do and has a belief that they could have even better results, it takes more time for certain but it's easier for you to generate the outcome that you want. And there's a difference.” – Anthony Iannarino · [06:13]    Anthony Iannarino: The way that you stated it is exactly right. We want to do what's easy. And what's easy is actually the most difficult thing to do. So convincing somebody that doesn't believe they value from what you sell to value it, that's really difficult. Finding somebody who already values what you do and has a belief that they could have even better results, it takes more time for certain but it's easier for you to generate the outcome that you want.    “This is the thing about human relationships, fast is slow and slow is fast. So the faster you try to go, the slower you go. And the easier you try to make things for yourself, the more difficult it is for you. And when you do the hard things, the easier it is for you to generate the results you wanted. It just works that way. I didn't design the universe. I had no say… I mean, God didn't consult with me to make this law. It was the law when I showed up here. That tends to be the way things work.” – Anthony Iannarino · [06:32]    Anthony Iannarino: And there's a difference. This is the thing about human relationships, fast is slow and slow is fast. So the fast you try to go, the slower you go and the easier you try to make things for yourself, the more difficult it is for you. And when you do the hard things, the easier it is for you to generate the results you wanted. It just works that way. I didn't design the universe. I had no say… I mean, God didn't consult with me to make this law. It was the law when I showed up here. That tends to be the way things work.   Will Barron: Sure. I guess if the law was different, it would still reach an equilibrium, right? Of, if spamming called emails with no customization and no care or thought and it worked, which maybe it did at one point, it's not going to work at some point in the future. So this is always constantly ebbing and flowing, right?   Will and Anthony Talk About the Increasing Amounts of Spamming That’s Present on LinkedIn · [07:14]    Anthony Iannarino: You are apparently having the same LinkedIn experience that I'm having.   Will Barron: Probably not to the extent as you are, because everyone knows I have zero budget to spend on absolutely anything, but I still get… Yes spammy emails and LinkedIn messages all the time.   Anthony Iannarino: That's funny. I mean, I get the worst messages. I have sales trainers offer me sales training continually. And I'm like, did you even look at the profile at all? You had… No. The answer is no they didn't.   Will Barron: I had someone reach out to me the other day. And maybe you've had this with your experience in kind of your podcast as well, Anthony. But I had someone who's obviously scraped my podcast for all the guests and then were reaching out to them to offer them a podcast booking service, to get them booked on another podcast. It was a called email. There was no customization other than a name and then my podcast. And someone had literally written in this… Or spam this email to me that said, Hey Will, I've seen that you… Or I loved your episode on the salesman podcast.   Will Barron: Would you like to get a more podcast like the salesman? I was like, I had to email the guy. I was like, look, I don't need the service. I don't mind you spamming my audience because I will look for other podcasts such as yours to find great guests and I'll do my own research on the back of that and reach out to them. But this is not leading… This isn't going to leave a good taste in anyone's mouth. Because clearly it's… Clearly to me it's spam, but to other people they're going to see right through it as well.   Anthony Iannarino: I didn't realise that I was supposed to be interviewing you on this podcast. So at some point we'll have to do it takeover and ask you a bunch of questions.   The First Step of Trying to Take Over a Competitor’s Account · [08:58]   Will Barron: Yeah. Well off the record, we should probably do that as well. I think that'd be a good way to kind of… The audience would probably enjoy that. We've done it once before in the past. And I think you'd be a good interview to do that on. But as a sidetrack we'll come back to that when we kind of stop recording perhaps, but how do we then implement this? How do we… Clearly there is a strategic process here, but is there a strategic process and what's the first step of it? How do we even just get our foot in the door with an account to maybe they're somewhat happy with the brand, the organisation that they're using at the moment.   Anthony Iannarino: I always know how far people read into the book when they reach out to me and send me emails because the first about three chapters are so consuming for people and the results that they get change immediately as it comes to prospecting that I start getting notes that say I have 17 meetings next week and after reading the first three chapters. The first chapter is a very… It's an important chapter. And it's probably the thing that I've been teaching the longest, but it only made it into the third book because I felt like I had to put the other two books before this one. First I had to give people a competency model. So you could be somebody worth buying from in the first place. That made selling way easier than anything else. Just actually being somebody people want to buy from. The second thing that I wrote was a book called the Lost Art of Closing. That's how do you gain the commitments and have the difficult conversations that move clients forward and their process of trying to create better results.   “Most of us say something like, “well, I’d love to come out, introduce myself and my company, tell you about the products and services and the companies like yours that we’re helping and then learn a little bit about you and what you do.” That is just not a great value proposition, but that's what we offer people when we're prospecting.” – Anthony Iannarino · [10:26]    Anthony Iannarino: And then we got to this book and this is the first place where I felt like I could now start talking about the four levels of value creation. And the reason that they took so long to get here is because the concept it's sort of difficult in execution, but it's a very simple idea. Most of us say something like, well, love to come out, introduce myself and my company, tell you about the products and services and the companies like yours that were helping and then learn a little bit you and what you do. Okay. So that is just not a great value proposition, but that's what we offer people when we're prospecting. And it's what we offer them when we show up in their office to have a conversation. So let me start by telling you my company's great story and our great history.   “The first level of value is what's the value of the product that you sell, and it's critical and it's important that you have a great product. But it's not what people are really buying. If you show up and you start from that part of the conversation, you look and sound like a commodity. The second level of value is what kind of experience do you offer? Are you easy to do business with, do you have the service and support? Because you're going to give me your product or your service and it's going to create problems for me. So I need to know that I can get those problems taken care of. The third level of value is really what I would just call tangible results. So let's imagine you're a company that's shipping something. Can you get it from point A to point B? Does it show up? That's an outcome. But it's not a strategic outcome. And level four is the strategic outcome. So why are you doing this in the first place?” – Anthony Iannarino · [11:03]    Anthony Iannarino: So we go back decades and decades to begin a story with somebody who's actually concerned about right now and they're really not worried about 1972 or some time period before that. So the first level of value is what's the value of the product that you sell and it's critical and it's important that you have a great product, but it's not what people are really buying. If you show up and you start from that part of the conversation, you look and sound like a commodity. So the second level of value is what kind of experience do you offer? Are you easy to do business with, do you have the service and support because you're going to give me your product or your service and it's going to create problems for me. So I need to know that I can get those problems taken care of.   Anthony Iannarino: The third level of value is really what I would just call tangible results. So let's imagine you're a company that's shipping something. Can you get it from point A to point B? Does it show up? That's an outcome. But it's not a strategic outcome. And level four is the strategic outcome. So why are you doing this in the first place? And the first book I used a quote from a Harvard marketing professor named Theodore Levit, who once said, people don't buy drills, they buy quarter inch holes. And that was to say, if they could have the hole without the drill, they just take the hole. But we're at a point right now in the evolution of markets and economies and sales to where instead of showing up and saying, I can get you a hole, which everyone can do. I have to start by saying, first of all, you don't know that you need a hole.   Anthony Iannarino: You don't need to know what the hole looks like yet. You don't have that covered. You don't know what wall you need to drill the hole on in the first place. So we have to get to the first principle, which is what is the strategic outcome that somebody's trying to accomplish. And what we call this in the book is entering from the right. So if you imagine a PowerPoint deck with level one on the left and level four on the right, everybody has been taught to enter from one to say, let me demonstrate my credibility to you by talking about my company, when you really need to show up and say, listen, these are the systemic challenges that are facing your business. These are the strategic outcomes that we should be talking about and you enter the conversation at a much higher level.   “What we're trying to do is make the case for there's a reason to change. And if you say, “well, I have a really good product and my competitors all have really good products.” Well, then I don't really need to change. And if you say, “well, I could probably save you a little bit of money.” Enough money to make it worth my while to go through the trouble of changing all the things that I've set up and I already know these people. They're the devil I know. So I've figured out how to do all the workarounds I need to get this result and I'm going to start over with you, why? So you have to move up to a higher level of value if you're going to have that displacement conversation.” – Anthony Iannarino · [13:46]   Anthony Iannarino: Now you're still going to wrap up your product, your services and the tangible results you produce at some point in time. But it's just not a great starting point for the conversation. That's the first chapter, but it's followed very closely by a chapter about capturing mind share. And the view here is that every client that you are calling on has a lens in front of their face that they're looking at the world through and they're looking it through their experience, their challenges, the other people's content that they read and consume that shapes that lens. And what you have to be able to do is walk in and either replace that lens or sharpen that lens so people see something different to say, wait a second. We haven't quite looked at it like that before. And that changes my view because what we're trying to do is make the case for there's a reason to change.   Anthony Iannarino: And if you say, well, I have a really good product and my competitors all have really good products, well, then I don't really need to change. And if you say, well, I could probably save you a little bit of money, enough money to make it worth my while to go through the trouble of changing all the things that I've set up and I already know these people. They're the devil I know. So I've figured out how to do all the workarounds I need to get this result and I'm going to start over with you, why? So you have to move up to a higher level of value if you're going to have that displacement conversation. And basically the start of that book is what gives people a different view of how to prospect and how to open these conversations. That just results in greater opportunity to have a discussion that ends up with you displacing your competitor.   The Differences and Similarities Between the Process of Displacing Your Competitor and Consultative Selling? · [14:47]   Will Barron: Is this… I'm removing because of people call other people have books about consultative selling and things like that. So removing all that from the conversation for a second of other people's brand and IP, and that side of things. Is this essentially what consult… When we're told to consultative sell what we should be doing in that we should be leading with insights that perhaps our competitors don't have so that differentiates us when we reach out. But then insights that all of this sharpens the lens of how people are looking at the landscape, the customers that we're going to work with. Is this what consultative selling should have been all along as opposed to some kind of buzzword, if that makes sense.    Anthony Iannarino: I love that question too. I got a chance to speak to [Mack Hanan 00:15:18] before he died. He wrote the book consultative selling in 1970. And in the book, he recommended that you focus on pips, not a personal improvement plan, but a profit improvement plan for your client. And his whole view was you should figure out how to make them more profitable, which is a really good starting place. But he literally wrote the book on consultative selling. And this must have been last. Before he passed away, I think in 2014 or something like that, I'd had a chance to spend a little time with him on the phone. And I have these calls recorded with Mack who was at 85 years old as sharp as any human being you've ever met. And I asked him, we've known this for 40 plus years and we haven't done it. “Consultative doesn't mean that you're not high pressure and that you don't use a hard sell. And consultative doesn't mean you ask really good questions. That could be a part of it too, but that's not what it means. Consultative means you provide your best advice as to how they run their business better. So, that's the starting point. When people say, “I really want to be consultative.” And then they say, “well, I don't want to tell them because they know their business better than I do.” Then why are you sitting in front of them? I mean, if they know their business better and you don't have a point of view about this, if you don't have some way that you think you can create greater value, then how are you going to consult with them at all?” – Anthony Iannarino · [16:03]    Anthony Iannarino: Why not? And he said, I have no idea why we haven't done this. Consultative doesn't mean that you're not high pressure and that you don't use a hard sell. I mean, you don't do those things anyway. And that might be something that is an attribute of somebody who's consultative and consultative doesn't mean you ask really good questions. That could be a part of it too, but that's not what it means. Consultative means you tell people, you provide your best advice as to how they run their business better. So, that's the starting point. When people say I really want to be consultative. And then they say, well, I don't want to tell them because they know their business better than I do. Well then why are you sitting in front of them? I mean, if they know their business better and you don't have a point of view about this, if you don't have some way that you think you can create greater value, then how are you going to consult with them at all?   Anthony Iannarino: And I think that it is how we're supposed to be doing this work. I don't think that the insights necessarily have to be unique because as I lay out in the book there's systemic challenges that affect every business. And you sort of can look and say, these are the factors but you do have to have a point of view about it. And you do have to have a set of values that say, this is a better idea than that idea. And this trade off is the right trade off for you to make, but it's not the right trade off for somebody else to make and here's why, because you're pursuing different strategic outcomes. Somebody might say, I'm trying to increase my profitability. And some other company you work with might look at the same solution and say, I don't care about being more profitable.   “This is probably the primary question I get, “How do I compel people?” Well, find out what's already compelling them and figure out how to help them with what they want already. If you're trying to compel them to buy a product, they don't want a product. They want some strategic outcome. And if you can latch onto that and help them with that initiative, you're going to do a lot better.” – Anthony Iannarino · [17:46]    Anthony Iannarino: I don't want to make any money on this. I want to capture market share faster than anyone else. And I'm going to invest in this for a different reason. You have to be able to understand those things and have that conversation, which is why I've been writing about business acumen for 10 years. Because you have to understand that what they want and people ask me… This is probably the primary question I get. How do I compel people? Well, find out what's already compelling them and figure out how to help them with what they want already. You're trying to compel them to buy a product. They don't want a product. They want some strategic outcome. And if you can latch onto that and help them with that initiative, you're going to do a lot better.   Anthony’s Thoughts on Why Salespeople Should Learn About Sales Consultancy Themselves Without Waiting on Marketing or Leadership Input · [18:07]    Will Barron: So is this our own points of view, our own own values, our own ability to understand a marketplace, or is this what has been dripped fed to us by the organisation that we are representing?   “You only need two things to be a trusted advisor: trust and advice. That's it.” – Anthony Iannarino · [18:18]    Anthony Iannarino: I continue to say this, Will, to every sales audience I have. You only need two things to be a trusted advisor, trust and advice. That's it. Okay. So if nothing and you're like, well, I don't really know anything, but my marketing department gave me this killer slide deck, you should see it. Well, why don't I talk to somebody who knows more than you? I mean, you have to get the business acumen yourself. And that's the hard part. The business acumen comes when you're out doing the work and you're paying attention and you're reading and you're learning. But yeah, you have to have something that makes you the advisor. You cannot be a know nothing. And I call this concept in the book, a 52% me. If you can't go on a meeting because you can't have a discovery conversation without having a subject matter expert with you, then you are not the subject matter expert.   Anthony Iannarino: And you have to have enough of this, that when you're sitting across from your client, there's information disparity. We know something, we have ideas and how could it be otherwise? So you think about a salesperson that sells enterprise resource planning software. How many times does the average buyer buy that in their life? Hopefully in their opinion once. Like, hopefully I never have to do this again, because it's a root canal, a colonoscopy, a brain surgery and quadruple bypass for your business all in the same day. That that's too much. It's hard.   “There should never be information parity. And if there is, you're serving hundreds or thousands of customers, how do you not have greater insight about what decisions to make and in what order to do things than your client who's going to buy it once?” – Anthony Iannarino · [19:53]    Anthony Iannarino: How many times does an enterprise resource planning salesperson sell that. Hundreds of times. So who has a better idea of how you should think about it? What kind of trade offs you should make? The person that has all the experience doing that. So there should never be information parity. And if there is, I think if you were to challenge a salesperson, look inside your four walls, you're serving hundreds or thousands of customers. How do you not have greater insight about what decisions to make and in what order to do things than your client who's going to buy it once.   How to Gather and Administer Sales Insights That Give You the Competitive Advantage in the Marketplace · [20:10]    Will Barron: How do we… Because it's one thing to say this, Anthony, but it's another I guess to live it and to document it. So what insights can we gather that give us a competitive advantage when we're doing these, hopefully doing these deals in sales every day, months, and and years to come. What should we be looking out for? Or what is… What would be a counter intuitive insights? How would we uncover something that makes someone go aha, as opposed to kind of facts and figures that are obvious. How do we go that level deeper with this?    Anthony Iannarino: Yeah. And some of the facts and figures are obvious, but what are you going to do about them? So in the book, I used my experience because I came out of temporary staffing and I would walk in and say, well, right now there's 11,000 baby boomers retiring in the United States every single day. So that's 368,000 people a month and we're creating 220,000 new jobs a month. So we now have a gap opening up. That's for 4.3 million people retiring. How are you going to find what's your strategy right now to acquire the talent you need and how do you skill them up to give them the experience of somebody who's been in an industry for 30 years. And first off, no one knows that 11,000 baby boomers are retiring. Second off, no one's ever asked themselves, what's the implications for our talent strategy when there's going to be a massive gap because the baby boomers in the United States is our largest generation followed by two smaller generations.   “If you're not doing the work as a salesperson to have the advantage in the conversation, to know facts and to know what the implications of the facts are, more importantly, then you can't be the trusted advisor. And what happens is executives are busy running their business. And I know what the internet says. I know LinkedIn and I know the social selling stuff very well like, ‘your customer is researching and they're reading and they're studying.’ They're not. They're trying to run their business. They're not doing those things. And when you walk in and you start sharing these concepts with them, they're like, great, now I don't have to think about it at all because I have a really smart person who's doing this work for me.” – Anthony Iannarino · [21:47]    Anthony Iannarino: Where are you going to find the people? ? And you think, well, that's a well documented fact because it is. But people don't know that fact. They don't know it. They're not reading and studying. And if you're not doing that work as a salesperson to have the advantage in the conversation, to know facts and to know what the implications of the facts are more importantly, then you can't be the trusted advisor. And what happens is executives are busy running their business. So they're not out. I know what the internet says. I know LinkedIn and I know the social selling stuff very well like your customers researching and they're reading and they're studying. They're not. They're trying to run their business. They're not doing those things. And when you walk in and you start sharing these concepts with them, they're like, great.   Anthony Iannarino: I can find somebody. They think about this nonstop. They're concerned with this. They understand the implications. They have strategies. Now I don't have to think it at all because I have a really smart person who's doing this work for me. That's back to the beginning of our conversation today. That's just a decision. Like, do you want to be that person that can come in and help people? Or do you want to lean on the product and hope that it's something external that allows you to beat your competitor and take a deal away from them. But it's not, it's going to be you. The product's not going to be enough. Your company's not going to be enough. They need somebody to help them say there's a better way for us to move forward. So you just have to make a decision to do that. And you will find novelty.   Anthony Iannarino: I mean, when you start looking for what's really going on in the world and you will find implications, but it's just enough. It tends to be enough when you walk in and you show up as a subject matter expert. It's not like I'm going to walk into a chief marketing officer and say, listen, I'm not sure if you know this or not, but people are using their mobile phones for everything now. And those chief marketing officers going to go, what! There's a thing called a mobile phone. Of course they know, but you have to say, well, the implication to this from our view right now is that if you're not putting the ads in front of them where they live right now, you're probably missing a large part of the market if you care about 18 to 24 year olds. And I'm going to have facts that can demonstrate that. And I mean, they hope that you know this. You're demonstrating that you belong in the room with them.   Will Barron: I've lived this. And just a super quick example for the audience of selling from one hospital to another. So I'd have here in beautiful Yorkshire in the UK, I didn't manage Leed's hospital, but I managed Bradford. Bradford's colorectal centre is one of the… Some of the surgeons there, some of the best colorectal surgeons in the world and it was all the whole theatre anthem was kitted out with the last organisation I worked for. I would very often just go on the Leed's hospital website, see what they were up to, which anyone could do, and then report that back to the team at Bradford.   Will Barron: And they'd be loving it. There was almost a news ticker for them. And then that would get me meetings. And that just continue that relationship and kind of not what we were talking about today in this episode of securing account. But I went in there then every Friday and secured that account by just doing that very simple task. And it's very difficult for anyone to get a foot in the door because there wasn't many insights if someone was to do this against me to compete against. Because I was the one who kind of always at first through the door with all of this and-   Anthony Iannarino: That's chapter 12. The continuation of creating new value. So you come in and you create new value. Look, there's something else for you to pay attention to. Well, I don't need to look at anybody else yet because you keep coming back with new value. It's a great retention strategy.   Will Barron: I wish I knew it was a retention strategy. For me, it was just, it's the local hospital… Most local hospitals where I live. So I'd go in every Friday afternoon and just sky there for a few hours, do some emails. But inadvertently I'd be winning over the account. And that probably did 20, 30% of my revenue every year by just doing that and popping in on a Friday. And I was almost a rep, a consultant, a service person trying to go in and solve any problems whilst I was there by just doing that. So for people with medical devices, that probably makes somewhat sense to them if you go in hospital to hospital but other people may not. But with that said, Anthony, I want to wrap up the show here with something real practical for the audience. Because we're only really on like stage one of the outreach.   The Strategic Framework for Reaching Out to Prospects When Trying to Convert an Account · [25:50]    Will Barron: So we'll have to of you back on to get deeper into the topic of converting accounts. But is this a reasonable structure or is there a better structure for whether it's a call, an email, meet someone at a conference. But it seems like if we've got some kind of fact, then we have the implication of the fact and then we ask them an intelligent question about their strategy with regards to this. Is that a framework reaching out to someone and if so, is that the best way to go about it? Or is there perhaps enough way?   Anthony Iannarino: Yeah. When people change their language, it's interesting. So you and I were talking and I've mentioned people sending me notes that they have 17 meetings the following week after changing their approach. But their approach went from, love to stop by telling you about my company, tell you about the customers that we work with, to look like you and how we're helping them and learn a little bit about you, which means what's keeping you up at night and I hope you have enough pain or dissatisfaction I create an opportunity. But if you show up and you say, well listen, I'd love to ask you for a 20 minute meeting where I can give you an executive briefing on what's going on in digital transformation inside sales organisations. And a lot of this you're going to be aware of, but some of it is probably going to have some novel implications for your business based on what I can see right now.   Anthony Iannarino: And listen, even if there's not a next step, I'm going to leave you with a deck. I'm going to leave you with some of the questions that you're probably going to want to talk to your management team about as you think about your next 18 to 24 months. What do you look like Thursday for an executive briefing? And I promise this is going to be worth your time. Okay. Now I'm trying to trade enough value to earn a meeting. So the first value prop is you get to listen to me talk about my company, which should be a very interesting experience for you, right?   Anthony Iannarino: And then I'm going to tell you about me, which should just be a delightful way for you to spend your Thursday afternoon. And then I'm going to tell you about our products and services. Okay. Well, I already know all those things because I have people who do what you do. And then you're going to ask me, what's keeping me up at night. I'm a hard pass on that. I have to wash my hair that day. So I can't meet with you.   Will Barron: That's a hard pass for you if you need to wash your hair Anthony.   “The higher people get up into an executive leadership role, the more concerned they are about the things that they don't know. And the more they start looking outside to find somebody who understands something in a way that gives them a competitive advantage without them having to do all the work. And that's just a decision. You either want to be that in your space or you want to try to find an easier way to that conversation.” – Anthony Iannarino · [28:06]    Anthony Iannarino: Exactly. My eyebrows maybe. The other value prop is, I want to have a conversation about strategic outcomes and what's going on in your world and the trends and things that we're concerned with and we're helping our clients answer because that's what this person's looking for. They're looking for ideas. And the interesting thing about the higher people get up into an executive leadership role the more concerned they are about the things that they don't know. And the more they start looking outside to find somebody who understands something in a way that gives them a competitive advantage without them having to do all the work. And that's, again, it's just a decision.   Anthony Iannarino: You either want to be that in your space or you want to try to find an easier way to the conversation that we had at the beginning. You want to try to make it easier. Well, wouldn't it be easier to have a lead come in? It would be easier to have a lead come in, but would it be easier for you to reach your goals with leads? No. You're going to have to go find the largest accounts in your territory and displace people if you really want to perform at the highest level in sales.   Why Salespeople Need Sales Targets and Not Sales Leads · [28:48]   Will Barron: It seems though on another level of all of this as well. If we do have a lead come in, they've raised their hand, they're interested, they've done a lot of the research, right? And I know we kind of poopooed this at the beginning of the show a little bit. But if a lead comes in, it's likely they've put the hand up because they've researched five companies because they want a quote from you to do the comparison because of the done a lot of work on this themselves. Versus if you are given an executive briefing, you are almost start… You're not quite starting at zero because you've done a lot of the qualification has been pre-done for you of there's a need and all this kind of stuff. But it seems like a better position to start from regardless to anything else, just that meeting versus perhaps even getting a meeting with someone who is somewhat raised their hand.   Anthony Iannarino: I mean, if you have a target and they're spending millions of dollars in the category, they're already qualified. I mean, you don't have to worry about that conversation. That book either lunch starts like, you need targets, not leads. And I don't know how much research people do and my experience, and I have a lot of experiences that tell me they don't do much. And if they do, it's a surface level, like who are they? What do they do? It's not a deep dive into what are their views and values and how would they structure a deal different than somebody else? Or how would they structure a solution different than their competitors? They can't see that on your website. I mean, I know everybody wants to have the website doing all this work for us, but the fact of the matter is, in a displacement that's not going to be the way that it tends to happen for most people.   “I spoke to a group of people this last week and they were very excited that two of their dream clients downloaded something and they saw their email addresses. And I had to say to them, if those are your dream clients, and you're excited about this, why didn't you just call them and ask them if you could share something with them that would create value for them. I mean, why did you wait? You're waiting two years for somebody to find you, why? You know what you want, go start doing something about it.” – Anthony Iannarino · [30:38]    Anthony Iannarino: And the truth of the matter is, if you want mind share, if you want to capture mind share, why would you wait until anybody researches your company and offers you an RFP? That would be the exact opposite of what you would want to have happen in real life. So why let that happen to you? Why don't you just get on your front foot instead of your back foot and go start having these conversations. I spoke to a group of people this last week and they were very excited that two of their dream clients downloaded something and they saw their email addresses. And I had to say to them, if those are your dream clients, and you're excited about this, why didn't you just call them and ask them, if you could share something with them that would create value for them. I mean, why did you wait? You're waiting two years for somebody to find you, why? You know what you want. Go start doing something about it.   Salespeople Need Verified Opportunities and Not an Email Address in the Name of a Marketing Qualified Lead · [31:08]    Will Barron: How much of this then? Because I fell foul to this a little bit. I've not really had other than the podcast advertising, I don't really have a B2B product to sell. And the product is the podcast essentially in this point, and there's the sales school, which is we're building a specific product there that can be sold to B2B so I can continue selling and build a sales team and document it all later on. So that's kind of another conversation, but how much of this comes down to… I don't want to give up responsibility for any of this. How much of it comes down to marketing, focusing on perhaps content marketing rather than actually driving MQLs, which obviously then marketing qualified leads, which then we work on the backend of things.   Will Barron: Because it seems like a lot of organisations are getting excited that someone's downloaded this white paper, that they've never open or someone's watched this video and… I've had people email me, go on the LinkedIn statistics and now four people from this organisation have viewed my profile, but none of them have reached out, connected or done anything. How much of this craziness comes from marketing as opposed to just sales alone?   “I think marketing needs to shift to, what are our insights, what are our views and values? What are the kinds of trade-offs that we think people should be making? What do we believe about these things? What do we believe the future means and so much of it is not geared towards that. It's geared towards getting a name and an email address and a phone number. Okay. I did my job. I gave you a lead. That's not a lead. And it's certainly not an opportunity.” – Anthony Iannarino · [32:43]    Anthony Iannarino: I don't think it's marketing. I think it's technology. I just think that we're so enamoured with technology and have been for the last, let's call it 10 to 12 years. We're just so enamoured with the fact that we can capture this data and that we can see these things and we want it to have meaning. They downloaded the white paper. They downloaded our white paper, this is the greatest thing. Not because they're trying to buy what you sell because you had a white paper that had an interesting topic there. And I'll tell you what I think marketing needs to shift to. Marketing needs to shift to, what are our insights, what are our views and values? What are the kind of trade offs that we think people should be making? What do we believe about these things?   “I think marketing, the shift that they have to make is from lead generation to opportunity creation because that's what we're really trying to do, is create an opportunity to displace a competitor, not just get a name and a phone number. That's easy now.” – Anthony Iannarino · [33:12]    Anthony Iannarino: What do we believe the future means and so much of it is not geared towards that. It's geared towards get a name and an email address and a phone number. Okay. I did my job. I gave you a lead. That's not a lead. And it's certainly not an opportunity. So I think marketing, the shift that they have to make is from lead generation to opportunity creation because that's what we're really trying to do is create an opportunity to displace a competitor, not just get a name and a phone number. That's easy now. There's a whole bunch of people, Zoom info. We can get you the name and the phone number and the email address. That's not hard. The interest and the decision to change, that's a different conversation.   When to Talk About the Competition During an Executive Briefing · [33:40]    Will Barron: Okay. So final thing to wrap up on all of this. Say we get our… You described it as an executive briefing. I love that. Just using that language alone separates you for most of the competition, right? So we get the meeting. It goes, well, we've got 20 minutes. We're giving them all these insights. They are kind of perking up. We can see the body language. They're excited. They're almost drooling into work orders in some capacity, just so to keep access to all this data, information, insights, whatever it is. When do we bring up the fact that they've got an incumbent supplier. Do we go straight in for the jugular of all this and just try and just differentiate ourselves, and then say, look just converge, come over. Or is there an element of nurture to all of this?   Anthony Iannarino: There's a long… I mean, the exploration of change happens first. You're going to have a couple conversations. What happens within a briefing like that is people start asking questions. They start saying, well, what do you guys think about this? And what do you think about that? And at some point you have to go back to the second book, the Lost Art of Closing and be willing to say something that sounds like, Will it sounds like there's a couple areas here that are still worth exploring. What I'd like to recommend is that we get back together and let me share a little bit about some of the choices other people have made and see if any of it might make sense for what might come next for you and your organisation. I mean, I have to start getting into a discovery conversation to say, now we're going to collaborate and figure out what the right answer might look like.   Anthony Iannarino: And now I'm going to build consensus and start bringing in the other stakeholders because you're not walking in having a meeting with an executive and them firing their long time partner of 15 years. Like, this guy came in with a great deck. We're going to fire you today. No, it doesn't work that way. It takes time and you have to go through a process. And again, the reason I put the books in the order that I did is first be somebody worth buying from. Second, know how to control that process and have this conversation. And then you can start worrying about the displacement. So this is the book. The books are really kind of a trilogy in that they kind of belong together. Not like Lord of the Rings kind of a trilogy, but sort of you have to go through the process of becoming somebody that's worth buying from. Truly becoming consultative and having difficult conversations and then the rest of this gets easier.   Anthony’s Advise to His Younger Self on How to Become Better at Selling · [35:55]   Will Barron: Makes total sense. Well, clearly we'll recommend all the books at the top of the show and in the show notes. But with that, Anthony, I've got one final question to ask everyone that comes on the show. I've asked you a couple of times now. I'll ask you again. And that is, if you could go back in time and speak to your younger self, what would be the one piece of advice you'd give him to help him become better at selling?   Anthony Iannarino: I'm going to tell you what I now believe to be my final answer on this question. Okay. So this is my final answer. I wouldn't tell the younger me anything. He was perfectly dumb and made tremendous mistakes and those mistakes are why he's slightly less dumb now. And I would just let him make the mistakes. Like just make them and be thoughtful enough not to repeat them over and over again. So I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to sit by and watch and let him learn.   Will Barron: Fair enough. Astute advice. We talked about this on a previous episode recently of, I was a complete idiot until I was 25. Then when I was 30, it went up to, I thought I was an idiot until I was 28. And now being 32, I was an idiot of everything I was doing with the podcast when we first launched it kind of three and a half years ago. And it'll probably go on further. So, I'm kind of coming around to your way of thinking here of [crosstalk 00:37:00]   Anthony Iannarino: I promise you, it goes on forever.   Parting Thoughts · [37:15]    Will Barron: Good. Well, that's that's food for thought for perhaps some of the younger audience who are trying to instil all this and osmosis it. In other words, use osmosis to get it into their brains. With that, Anthony tell us where we can find the book and kind of give us the trilogy and where we can find out more about you as well.   Anthony Iannarino: The books you're going to find at amazon.com or bookstores. I don't know about the UK. Tougher there. All in the United States, all Barnes and Nobles have the books. Amazon.com is the best place probably to get those, unless you buy them in bulk. And then you go to 800 CEO read, because you're going to get the best deal. And they're real book people. I mean, they actually care about books. Best place to find me, thesalesblog.com and the best thing to do when you get there, sign up for the Sunday newsletter. Goes out to about 80,000 people now. And that's my best work every week. At least is my favourite work every single week.   Will Barron: Perfect. Well with that, again, appreciate the time. We've only gone through a third of the book here. So hopefully we'll have you on to dive through the other two thirds in the future. And with that, I want to thank you for joining us again on the salesman podcast.   Anthony Iannarino: Thanks for having me.

Here’s an eye-opener for ya—92% of sales reps quit after hearing “no” four times. But it turns out 80% of prospects say “no” four times before saying “yes”! The lesson here? Sales objections happen. But success boils down to how you respond to them. That’s why in this video we’re covering how to respond to the 5 most common sales objections you’re bound to hear. Alright but before we jump into that, just a word on sales objections. Sales objections are not bad. Not by any means. Instead, what you’re getting from your buyer here is an open window. An open window into what makes them tick, what they’re concerned about, and most importantly, what’s holding them back from saying yes. So if you can turn that sticking point of an objection into a “Yes”, that question mark into an exclamation point, you’re going to have a more enthusiastic buyer on the other end of things. You just have to know how to address these objections properly. And that’s what we’re covering right now. So let’s dive in. The Two Pathways The two ways you can respond to an objection. No matter what the objection is, there are two pathways you can take when a buyer brings up an objection. A) The Circle Back Method The Circle Back Method. See, most objections come from a lack of understanding. And when the prospect learns more about your offering, like later on the call, then the original objection is no longer an issue. These aren’t “stupid” objections. They’ll just get answered over the natural course of the presentation. So in these situations, just respond with “Okay, we’ll come back to that in a minute.” Simple as that! Then there’s pathway number two… B) Solve the Issue Solve the issue. If it’s a real objection, solve the issue. And then, and this is important, follow up to make sure it’s solved. In some cases, these objections might come out as a knee-jerk response. For instance, if you have a buyer that says, “I don’t think we have the budget for this,” and you haven’t even hit pricing yet, push the issue rather than let it go. Ask them, “Do you know what the price is?” In many cases, you’ll find that a little bit of pushing reveals that they don’t actually understand the product like they think. In cases like this, some simple information can solve the problem in a second. If they don’t actually know what the pricing is, tell them. If they don’t think it’s right for their industry, point to their competitors that are using your product. Another simple solution. Now, where it gets complicated is when they have all the information they need and still have objections. And that’s when it’s time to bring out the big guns. So, let’s look at the 5 most common sales objections and how to respond to them. 5 Most Common Sales Objections 1) “This Is Too Expensive” First up, this is too expensive. According to a survey from Sales Insights Lab, budget is the number one reason a strong sales opportunity falls apart. And it makes sense! Business is money. And if you hear this sales objection, it’s because they don’t see ROI from working with you. But instead of closing up shop right then and there, ask… “If I could show you a strong ROI that you could expect from working with us, would it make sense to continue the conversation?” In 99% of cases, the answer is going to be yes. All you have to do then is point to past success stories with a great ROI. If the ROI makes sense to them, Bam! Sold. If not, they weren’t going to be happy with your product anyway. Best to move on. 2) “Now Isn’t a Good Time” Now isn’t a good time. Here the buyer either doesn’t see the value that you offer OR they’re not qualified to do business with you. Now you could handle this like any other sales rep and just leave your contact info. But if you did that, you’d NEVER hear from them again. Instead, you need to close on the next conversation. And you can do that by following up with… “You seem like a great fit for what we do. When would it make sense to chat?” Now you’ve got a date you can call back on without running into any friction from the buyer. Alright third objection… 3) “I Already Have Another Supplier” I already have another supplier. So selling to a brand new customer in your market is one thing. You’ve got to convince them of your value, push their pain point buttons, and get them to fight for the budget. But for buyers that already have a similar solution, you’ve got to focus on how your value proposition stacks up against who they’re already using. In some situations, these customers can be even easier to win over than brand new ones. You just need to find out how their current solution isn’t making the cut. Simple solution here. Ask… “Are you thrilled with how X are performing for you right now?” This will open up the door to where they’re falling flat and let you see if you’re in a position to help. 4) “Just Email Me Some Information” Just email me some information. The ultimate blow-off. It typically happens at the very beginning of a call. And here, they don’t care about you… YET. Your job now is to make them care about you. And you can do that by sending them the right kind of info. That’s why you should follow up with… “Can I ask you a couple of quick questions to make sure that I’m sending you the correct information?” Two things going on here. First, you’re learning more about the buyer and their problem so the info you send is just what they’re looking for. But beyond that, you’re also qualifying the buyer. Are they even a fit for what you’re selling? If not, you can cut them loose and save yourself a whole lot of time. 5) “I Need to Ask My Boss” I need to ask my boss. This is the one that’s your fault. You’re not speaking to the right person within the account. And that means you need to bring the real decision-maker into the conversation. And you can do that with one simple response… “Does it make sense to book a quick call with both your boss and yourself to run through this?” What’s great about this response is it doesn’t cut out your initial contact. And that means you won’t risk embarrassing them or putting them on the defensive.

Look, “selling” gets a bad rap these days. But after reading this monumental book, I realized that EVERYONE sells, especially in the modern workplace. To sell is to be human. And when you do it with the right approach, it’ll make you proud to be in sales, just like I am. Today we’re talking about the book that made me proud to work in sales, To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink. We’ll be covering two foundational concepts covered by his work. Selling: We All Do It We aaallll are sellers. From the retail professional over at GAP to Fortune 500 secretaries, mom-n-pop accountants, and traveling HR consultants. No matter who you are or what you do, odds are you’ve had to sell someone on an idea before. Pitched an idea in a meeting? That’s selling. Asked for a raise? That’s selling. Convinced your co-worker to speed up signing the checks so you could get them out in today’s mail? S.E.L.L.I.N.G. Pink took this idea and used it to form what he calls Contemporary Selling. This kind of selling is about moving others to exchange resources that include but do not revolve around money. Contemporary selling isn’t about PRODUCT. It’s about SERVICE. Okay, so what does this all mean for you, a sales professional? The New Paradigm: What That Means for Professional Sales It means there’s a new sales paradigm. Rather than “selling” in the traditional sense, your job is to render a service to your prospects and clients. And your job is to do it with the end goal of improving their lives. Now there are two specific steps you can take to sell better in this new paradigm.   1. Making It Personal I’ve seen lots of reps try to keep their relationships all-business and ultra “professional.” To a fault even. While there’s a time and place for that, leaning too heavily into it creates distance rather than forging a connection with the customer. Instead, try coming from a place of passion. You LIKE what you’re selling. You believe in it. And you want others to get the same value from it that you do. When you approach your relationships this way, you come off as credible, not profit-driven. And that builds trust. Example Here’s an example of making it personal for you. Say you sell a certain type of large-scale project management software for Fortune 500 companies. And guess what? You hate what you sell. It’s inefficient. It’s overpriced. And frankly, it just doesn’t do a great job of solving your buyers’ real problems. Since you know making a sale won’t actually help the prospects you’re selling to, you have to find value in other aspects of the deal. You’re making money. You’re boosting your numbers. You’re shooting for a promotion and this will seal the deal. Ultimately the potential buyer becomes a means to an end. And that leads to devaluing them and their needs… not good for sales. But on the other hand, say you love what you’re selling. You know it works. You’ve seen how it makes your other clients’ lives easier. And you think your potential buyer will get a lot out of it too. When you approach a sale with that mindset, your genuineness shines through. You’re there to provide a service. And your buyers can tell. So they trust you, what you have to say, and the value of your product.   2. Make It Purposeful It’s easy to get caught up and bogged down in the specifics of your solution. The nitty-gritty features, the in-the-weeds technical details, the straightforward use cases. And if you spend too much time here, you may not realize that what you’re selling is actually connected to a broader purpose. As it turns out, studies show the desire to serve is innate. It’s built right into us. And you’re most successful when you believe you’re serving not just you, not just the client. But also a larger person than both of you. When you connect your solution to that larger purpose, you’re more passionate. You’re more service-oriented. And more driven than ever. So to be more purposeful, focus on how your service can improve society as a whole and frame it that way to potential buyers. Example Say you sell accounting software specifically for mom-and-pop sized businesses. Your product is powerful enough to keep these businesses’ costs down by keeping things compliant. But it’s also easy enough to use that they won’t have to hire an accountant. Your product also works really well, your clients love it. That alone is a great driving force you can get behind. But take things a step further. You’re helping these businesses stay afloat. But you’re also contributing to a world where small but valuable businesses can compete with the big box stores. You’re making it easier for new ideas to thrive and not be immediately squashed by monopolies. And you’re also helping contribute to the values of the free market—competition, ingenuity, and the freedom for anyone to participate. And you thought you were just selling accounting software! When you make your work purposeful, you make it important. That shines through with your buyers. And when you do that, you too will be proud to work in sales.