The Salesman.com Podcast

Bob Wheeler is a Financial Expert, Motivator, Author of The Money Nerve: Navigating the Emotions of Money. In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Bob offers a simple and effective framework for creating a healthy relationship with money and explains how emotions trigger our financial decisions. 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 - Bob Wheeler Financial Expert and Best-Selling Author Resources: Bob’s LinkedIn Themoneynerve.com Book: The Money Nerve: Navigating the Emotions of Money Book: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Book: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Values, and Spiritual Growth Money You Should Ask Podcast Transcript Will Barron: Hi, I'm Will. Welcome to the Salesman podcast. On today's episode, we're looking at how you can improve your relationships with money. Our guest is Bob Wheeler. Bob is the author of The Money Nerve. He helps people conquer their money shame and avoid making poor financial decisions by teaching them how emotions can dictate our choices. And with that Bob, welcome to the show.   Bob Wheeler: Thanks a lot, Will, great to be here.   What’s Your Relationship with Money? · [01:00]   Will Barron: Great job. This is one of those topics that we've had over experts on to talk about in the past, but it's so important for salespeople to have a healthy relationship with money so that they can have success. Then also, hopefully we can transition to this towards the end of the show, it's important for salespeople to be able to communicate effectively without emotional baggage when they're talking about their prospect's money, whether it's the actual ownership of cash from the prospect itself or the money that they are, I guess, the company they're representing called that they're trying to exchange value or services or products for. People get weird about money pretty quick. Let me ask you this Bob, to get us started, is it likely, in your experience, right, that a majority of the listeners listening to the podcast right now, tens of thousands of salespeople, small business owners and everyone else in between, is it likely that they all have a pretty good relationship with money or is it more likely that we're all a little bit messed up on this subject?   Bob Wheeler: Well, unfortunately, I would have to say we're probably all a little messed up on this subject. It just, but that's not a bad thing as long as we get conscious about it, but most of us are working from some unconscious beliefs and money blocks.   Money, Emotions, and Why Our Relationship with Money is So Messed Up · [01:40]    Will Barron: Why is that? If we could start from, if we can pull it all back and start from the beginning, right, are we born, as humans, just with money being a relatively new concept? I don't know how many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years old cash in an exchange of value via a, like a stones, gold, paper notes, whatever it is now, our brain's just not wired who understand it and we add weird emotions to it? Is it our childhood upbringing? Is it the media? What causes us to be all maybe slightly messed up with our emotions of money?   Bob Wheeler: I mean, it might be all of that, but unfortunately, and I'm not blaming parents here. I'm not blaming the parents, but we are part of our upbringing. A lot of our decisions, a lot of our beliefs, a lot of our rules got formed when we were four or five and six years old. If we were shamed about money, if we watched our parents fight about money, if we were told we were greedy or if we were generous, we started to take all that on at four, five and six, and then we never update the information. We just keep working with it as we go into adulthood. We're still operating with that information we got at four or five and six, which may or may not be helpful or true.   Understanding Our Subconscious Beliefs About Money · [03:00]   Will Barron: Is this because it's all based in our subconscious? Because it seems like if someone has an issue of money, and I'm thinking of a specific friend of mine, right, who is just a, excuse, my French, just a cheap bastard, right? He doesn't want to spend money. He doesn't really want to earn money. If there's money and he is bank account, he wants to get rid of it as quick as possible. Now, I know his mom. I know his family. They're all very like, and this is painting a broad brush strokes here, but they're all hippies, right? They're all from a place of, which might be healthy, of, “Hey, I value experiences and friendships as opposed to nice cars, big houses.” But in the modern world, some of that doesn't quite work because you need a place to live, you need a way to fund your lifestyle kind of thing. So he's a little bit messed up, but he doesn't see it, right?   Bob Wheeler: Right.   Will Barron: I see it from afar. He doesn't see it, understand it. I try to have these conversations with him. I need to hire you Bob to come in and sort some of this out for, but do we have these beliefs and are they stored in our subconscious? Is it difficult for us to see them internally? Or if we're that messed up on it at some point, are we just choosing to live this way?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah, well, we are choosing to live that way until we decide we want to take a look at it. It is certainly not fun. I don't have people running with joy and glee to explore their money past with me or to look at their debt or to look at their spending habits. It's not something we get excited about, but we do carry this. We're going around with our comfort level. So maybe if I'm a hippie-type and I'm comfortable with having no bank over draught, then as soon as I get a $1,000 or 10,000 bucks, I got to spend that money and get back to my comfort level. For some people that might be $50,000 or $100,000 or $2,000. It's different for all of us, but we tend to go back to what comfortable. It's not comfortable looking at the money choices that we've done that haven't served us.   The Healthy Money Mindset and How You Can Adopt It · [05:10]    Will Barron: Is it possible, and I've heard this band around, you better to tell me if, if there's any evidence to support this, but I've heard this banded round that most people will earn plus or minus 20% of what their parents did via the conditioning of their parents or the upbringing or the people that they, I guess, if you are minted, you'd go like to go to a private school. You're spending more time, so those things become normal. And so that's where if you use, I don't know, what would be a metaphor, like a thermostat. Your thermostat would be set at a certain point. If you are beyond that, you want to cool it down. If you're below that you want to heat things back up. Is becoming wealthy as simple as just repositioning that, somehow that thermostat, and then making that your new normal and you're so uncomfortable until you're there that you're going to hustle, you're going to change things, you're going to change your mindsets to make that happen?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. I think what it is it's not just changing the thermostat so that all of a sudden more money comes in. It's changing the thermostat so that your mindset gets slightly adjusted. If you're in a mindset of spend, spend, spend, spend, and you adjust it to, “Oh, maybe I should save 20%. Oh, maybe I should start investing a little bit more money. I should save for retirement.” It's those types of adjustments where we're shifting our mindset, not necessarily, “Oh yes. I want 10 million more dollars to flow into my bank account.” Certainly that would be nice. It's also, “am I willing to let that happen? Do I deserve it? Am I going to actually let my money start to work for me?” Instead of, “How can I spend my money so I can live in the moment.”   Will Barron: I'm going to give you a super practical example now of something that I've bought that I feel I don't deserve. It's absolutely ludicrous, right? The audience will hopefully enjoy this as well. I've been watching a bunch of documentaries and reading books on this principle of minimalism, right? I'm not entirely sold that I need to live in a shack with one toothbrush and one pair of clothes. But I interviewed Greg McKeown, he's the author of Essentialism as well. I interviewed him with a while back. He drilled this idea into my head of, less but better. That's what I'm trying to lean into, right?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah.   Will Barron: As I say, this example is so, so stupid. I've got a cordless here in the office. I've got a cordless vacuum cleaner and I've got a corded one. I never use the corded one, because it's a pain in the ass, because there's cables everywhere and there's camera equipment everywhere. So I just never use it. The cordless one is just a cheap, crappy thing that doesn't pick up anything, so that's pointless as well. Today I spent 500 quid on the best cordless Dyson that there is right or it's coming tomorrow morning. Immediately, I was like, “Is that too much to spend on a vacuum cleaner?” It doesn't matter, right? I making enough money that that is just so insignificant. It's irrelevant. I wouldn't even notice it coming out my bank account, right?   Bob Wheeler: Right.   How to Overcome Your Money Guilt · [08:24]    Will Barron: I still pondered on, “Have I been a sucker buying this cordless vacuum thing from Dyson?” The idea being I'll have that'll do the best of both worlds of the other two and I'll just bin the other two, less stuff in the office, less stuff for me to think about, maintain, all that good stuff. What is the weird feeling that I'm feeling there about this ridiculous purchase? Then perhaps we can scale this up then to actual meaningful purchases that people either are making or holding back in their lives.   Bob Wheeler: Well, there's probably a bit of guilt there, right? Even though you're making a lot of money, it still doesn't feel, if we're cheap or we're tight with our money or there's a scarcity mindset, who am I to go out and do this thing? There's people out in the world that are hungry. There are people that are trying to get it together and I'm not going to go out and spend all this money on a vacuum cleaner just so I don't have to plug it in.   Will Barron: Do you know what, Bob? As you say that at me, the thing that comes to my mind, right, and this might be useful for the audience, is so I call my dad every day, right? Mom passed away four or five years ago, so I call every day we have quick chat about stuff. He he ran a small business, so we have intelligent conversations about marketing and all that kind stuff. I'm going to tell him tomorrow that I spent 500 quid on Hoover. He's going to go, “What? Are you crazy?” And so maybe some of the guilt is being somehow tied to this flippant conversation that doesn't mean anything. My dad's not bothered about it really, but I know he is going to take the piss out on me tomorrow when I mention it because he wouldn't spend that much, so maybe is that unravelling some of this further perhaps?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Because we also either do things to support our parents. Mom and dad, you're always right. Or we do things in defiance of them. So if you have a great relationship with your dad and now you've done something he wouldn't have done, like maybe you're not a good boy, maybe you're not the good son that you thought you were. And so that may come into play, like I'm still a good guy, even though I didn't follow what you would've done.   Will Barron: And so this is weird though, right? Because it's meaningless.   Bob Wheeler: Right.   The Emotions That Dictate Our Relationship with Money · [10:29]    Will Barron: I don't know if that is true for me, what you just said, unless it's so deep in my subconscious that as an adult or maybe I'm just refusing to believe and agree with that. Maybe that is the case. But why do we have this, why do we form a relationship with money, with objects, with spending things, with death? Why is there emotions tied to what is essentially a very logical thing, right, which is numbers on a screen or pieces of paper in our pocket? Why do we tie emotion to all this? Why am I now feeling embarrassed and guilty about sharing this story on the podcast that thousands of thousands of people are going to see, hear and probably email having a laugh about?   “When it comes to money, we're all judging and we're all getting judged. And so the question is, can we tolerate the judgement?” Bob Wheeler · [11:45]   Bob Wheeler: Well, here's the thing. We start off early, “Hey, I want that present. I want a bicycle.” “You're greedy. You're a selfish little kid. You don't think of other people. If you get good grades, I'll give you some money. If you misbehave, I'll disinherit you. If you do this, you can buy my love.” And so we, early on, start attaching values to good, bad, evil, greedy, and so now, “Am I going to be greedy if I ask for this, if I ask for too much? Do I ask for just enough? How do I self advocate?” It becomes this whole mind game of, “Am I good enough? Do I deserve to ask for these things or go for it or do I need to apologise so that other people don't judge me?” We're all judging and we're all getting judged. And so can we tolerate the judgement ?   Will Barron: Do you know what's even funny as I think about this? I'll leave the analogy at this, Bob, cause I'm not sure it's the best analogy that I've ever come up with or analogy, metaphor, wherever this is. I'm going to go back to the house after this from the office. Me Mrs. bought the last Hoover for the house and that's a Dyson, like V8. Well, I've just bought this Dyson V15. I can't wait to show Emily tomorrow that I've bought a way better Hoover for the office than what we've got there. As you said then there's this idea of like comparison, this idea of competition, there's like a different relationship with me Mrs. misses than what I have with me dad. And so this is incredibly com-, this is more, I didn't, I didn't mean to go into the show with this analogy right? But this is, even for someone like myself, who I thought I had some of this nailed, this can go pretty deep, right?   “Here's the funny thing, many people in relationships are in competition. They're actually like, I beat you. I got you. I did better. It's not conscious, but it's amazing how many times I ask couples, are you on the same team or are you trying to beat each other? I just get this blank look.” – Bob Wheeler · [12:41]   Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Here's the funny thing, so many people in relationships are in competition, right? They're actually, I beat you. I got you. I did better. It's not conscious, but it's amazing how many times I ask couples, are you on the same team or are you trying to beat each other? I just get this blank look.   Will Barron: Me and my Mrs., we have, I'd say we have a healthy element of competitiveness to our relationship, right?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah.   Will Barron: The best way I describe it, I think it was the road less travelled, it's Scott Peck. I don't know if you're familiar with that book.   Bob Wheeler: Yeah, that's a great book.   Will Barron: Something's stood out to me in that, and this totally sidetracked, but I'll come back to sales in a second. Something that really struck me from that book was this idea of you should choose to be in a relationship as opposed to be in a relationship because the other person fills a whole that you think you have. The reason I bring this up is that I think this translates well to sales. It translates well to your friends, your family. You want to work with customers who value you, being there, as opposed to you solving a problem that's they're so desperate to solve, that they desperately need you because then things get a little bit weird and you get people asking for refunds or being overburdened on your time, especially if you're in a consulting type role.   How to Overcome Your Money Shame · [14:00]    Will Barron: With that all said, we've used me as an example here. I've looked silly. I'm happy to do that for the audience. Let's imagine that 99% of the audience all have been people who've worked with you directly, Bob, also have these issues, right?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah.   Will Barron: How do we solve them? Let's get practical about this. Do we need to sit there on a bed, lay back and have someone go into our, Freudian style, go into our subconscious and unravel all these issues that we had with our parents inadvertently saying money grows on trees or all these other notions about cash? Do we need to go through 25 years of therapy to get back to baseline or is there another way to go about doing this?   Bob Wheeler: Well, you don't have to spend 25 years exploring this stuff for sure. It does matter that you get a little bit curious about what you've done in the past. For me, when I work with people, whether I work with them directly or I'm just working with somebody and giving them some guidance is to just do some journaling, get out a journal, get out a book and start writing down memories that you remember, what did mom and dad say about money, did I grow up with my grandparents, did I grow up in a culture that honoured money or made it bad and just really start to become aware of what's my money history. You don't need somebody and you have to lay on a couch and spend hours and hate your parents and all that stuff. But it is important to go, “Oh, that's where that comes from.”   Bob Wheeler: Then start to actually listen to the words you use. I'm amazed at how many people to me and say, “Bob, I'm so broke. I can't afford this. I can't pay these taxes.” Really? You've got three properties that are all making great rental income. You just flew to Europe, for those in America. That's an expense, right? And so there's this story that, “Oh my gosh, I'm such a victim. I'm so poor.” The reality is it's not true. And so the more we can listen to what we're saying and start to realise, “Oh, I'm making different choices other than saving my money. I'm choosing to spend instead of invest.” And so it takes us out of this story.   Bob Wheeler: The biggest thing for me is, and I'm an accountant, so cost-benefit. What's it costing me to stay in my story? What's the benefit? I don't have to be big. I don't have to succeed. I get to stay small, but maybe at the cost of my soul, maybe.   Positive Behaviors and Attitudes About Money You Absolutely Must Have · [16:23]    Will Barron: Is there always a benefit? Even if that benefit doesn't serve your long term purpose, is there always a seemingly positive reason behaviour that people have about money?   Bob Wheeler: Absolutely, and I would say the main one is comfort. I don't have to feel uncomfortable. I don't have to step out of my comfort zone. People can't judge me for doing something different. I don't have to worry about failure. I get to just stay right here and nobody's expecting anything different.   Will Barron: When going to journal. We're going to investigate our thoughts and beliefs. We're going to eventually, which things like my dad always says, still says it now, “Money doesn't grow on trees,” which I don't take seriously, but maybe there's some deep, dark Freudian elements to that that's sabotaging my success moving forward, right? Perhaps we become aware of some of this. We change the narrative. When that crops up in our mind, we immediately try and focus on the fact that we look for evidence that it to be true. If it's not true, we can discount some of it. We need to understand what the positive reasons are for us having these behaviours, whether that be comfort or we've been rejected in the past, and we don't want to get rejected in the future, whatever it is. Perhaps that gets us back to baseline or perhaps slightly net positive of our beliefs of money.   The Cornerstone of a Positive Money Mindset · [17:45]   Will Barron: Are there any money, beliefs that we should proactively try and instil in our brains as if we can go through, if we can be our own weird father archetype and programme our own brains or hire a hypnotist or whatever it is, is there anything that we should be programming to ourselves that will enable us to be more successful, invest more and perhaps if people have debts get out of debts and that side of things as well?   Bob Wheeler: Absolutely, so I would say to be able to spend less than you make, right? Make more than you spend. That is so many of us live beyond our means, and so dialling it back just a little bit and also, which that ties to delayed gratification, learning to experience delayed gratification. If I don't go out and take this little trip for the weekend or go out to the pub and drink a bunch of drinks, I might have that money for the down payment on a rental property, I might be able to make different choices. And so I think those are two things that are really important.   “Look at your spending, do a budget. Budgets are amazing, even though people cringe at them. Budgets give us a lot of information. If we can do that, we can start to actually set life long goals. For example, I want to have this much in savings. I want to have a retirement plan. I want to have a house. I want to have a house in the country, whatever those things are, so that as we are currently spending today, we can ask ourselves, “Is this spending in line with what I say I want for my future?” – Bob Wheeler · [18:50]    Bob Wheeler: I would also look at your spending, do a budget. Budgets are amazing, even though people cringe at that. Budgets give us a lot of information. If we can do that, we can start to actually set life long goals. I want to have this much in savings. I want to have a retirement. I want to have a house. I want to have a house in the country, whatever those things are, so that as currently spending today, we can ask ourselves, “Is this spending in line with what I say I want for my future?”   Will Barron: I'm going to be selfish here for a second, because I think this might be useful for myself, right? We got a training academy. To get the training academy, you got to either speak to myself or one of my colleagues. We see if the users, the students are good fit and if they fit our principles and if we can actually help them or not, we won't take cash people that we don't think we can five-six times their take home and the commissions, right? It's somewhat of a formal process.   Will Barron: One of the questions we ask is how much do you earn right now? How much do you want to earn? Maybe 50%-60% of the time, the potential student will say, “Well, I earn say $5,000 a month from a base of my commissions. I want to earn $7,000.” Some of this is experience for myself, right? Having done well in B2B sales roles and we've had about 2000 people go through our training programme and not every had massive success, but there's a large majority of them have at least some success, if not tremendous success.   Will Barron: Every time I go, I'm in my brain going $7,000 a month in a complex B2B sales role that they're in the right vehicle. They are just about to get the training and mentoring that they need to have everything that a, from a process standpoint to implement. It's almost like the final step is for them to accept that in that role, they should be earning $300,000 if they put the work in, if they follow the process, and if they can find the one or two points of differentiation in the market and the vibe proposition and things like that, which takes a little bit work and does take efforts. There's no magic pill that we're offering or anything like that.   Will Barron: But then they still come back and say, “Well.” I'll go, “$7,000, is that your goal? Is that your dream? Is it worth all the stress and the rejection of your sales role to earn that amount?” They'll go, “I understand. $8,000.” I'm like, “No, it needs to be like double that otherwise don't work in sales, go and do an office job, go do something else.” Right?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah.   Will Barron: I then not struggle because this is part of the sales process, right? I understand what, I'll tell you what I do. I get them to think where they are, where they want to be, what's stopping it in from one side to the other. Then I frame it as they're the hero and I'm going to guide them from one place to the other. They're Frodo. They're going to get rid of the ring, but I'm, Gandalf who's leading them along and helping them through their journey.   Money Shame and How it’s Preventing You From Making a lot of Money · [21:40]    Will Barron: Is there anything else I can do to help these individuals just open their mind that if they're in the right role and there's other people, I guess what I'm saying is I try and give them logical evidence. I'm not sure this is the best approach. There's other people in your company earning [inaudible 00:21:54] quid a year. Can you do the same? “I guess so.” There's other people in similar roles, in different companies doing that. There are people working less hours than you earning way more. I can introduce you to this student, this student, this student, there's this testimonial, there's this video. I keep giving them logical reasons to change an emotional feeling about what they believe they can achieve in their career. What else should I doing? The logical side of things seems to work, but is there a better approach to this, Bob?   Bob Wheeler: I would probably, if I was talking to somebody and they said, “Yeah, I want to do $7,000,” and I really wanted to see them say %25,000. I'd probably say to them, “What's the worst thing about earning five times what you're currently making? What's going to happen. What's going to be so negative about having extra time and being able to pay for things without even thinking about it? What's going to happen when you start to have all this excess money to do things that you've always dreamed about and you have the ability to travel? What are the negatives?”   “If you can actually focus on all the negative things that are going to happen, you'd be surprised at how many negative things people can list out about when something good happens to them.” – Bob Wheeler · [23:18]    Bob Wheeler: You'll be surprised. A lot of people will start listing out a negative. My parents are going to judge me. My girlfriend's going to judge me. I'm going to have to say no to people that ask me for money, because now everybody's going to say, “Well, Bob's got more money. Will's got more money. Let me hit him up.” I might have to draw boundaries. And so if you can actually focus on what are all the negative things going to happen, you'd be surprised at how many negative things people can list out about when something good happens to them.   How to Overcome the Stigma and the Fear of Making a lot of Money · [23:31]    Will Barron: Then is it a case of squashing each one of those negatives and then that allows them the bandwidth in their brain to see if it's possible to get to that kind of amount?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't really say like I squash it. What I would do is I would say, “Is that true? In your experience, if you make more money, do your parents hate you? Do people judge you?” Starting to separate. A lot of times I'll have people say to me, “I've got to get to a certain amount of money or my parents will be really disappointed.” I'll say to them, “Would you be willing to ask your parents what's the dollar amount at which point they stop loving you.” They're like, “What?” Well, you're pretty sure that there's a number, so why don't you ask them and see if that in fact is true because my hunch is your parents are going to love you even if you fail in your eyes. But we're working off these premises and these assumptions that aren't necessarily true. And so the more we can get grounded in reality, we can start to let those stories go.   Will Barron: I love it. Asking that question, “Do you know this to be true? Is there any evidence to support that?” Is there any other, I'm just thinking of very practical for the audience, how they can do this, because we're going to moving onto how the audience can speak to and communicate with someone who's struggling with their own beliefs on money in a second. But is there any evidence that's true? What else did you say? There was a couple of others, Bob, in the like kind of phrases that were mentioned.   Bob Wheeler: Is it true? Is it yeah, is it true? Is this assumption, like, have I seen this happen to me before? Have I seen it to other people? Really just honing in on what story and what's actually happening.   Money Story: What it is and How it Affects Your Spending Habits · [25:18]   Will Barron: Got it, got it. Is that the basic premise of all this, that we can whittle it down? What is a story that you're telling yourself and other people have told you versus what is the reality and what evidence do you have to support one or the other?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. Then am I willing to let it go?   Will Barron: Sure. What happens if the …   Bob Wheeler: Or am I going to stay so attached to my story.   Will Barron: What happens if they're not willing to let it go? What happens if they go, “I quite like being skinned. I quite like being poor. I quite like not taking on all this pressure.” I guess that's almost a positive interaction still, because they can walk away and go, “Oh, I'm choosing to do this.” So maybe they can embrace it and stop moaning about it, right?   “I don't want people walking around being victims of their circumstance. I want them to know that they chose it.” – Bob Wheeler · [26:20]    Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. I think for me the biggest thing is at least I'm stop being a victim. If I'm coming from a place of, “Oh, this always happens, this always happens. No, I'm choosing it. Yeah, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do the work. I don't want to do these things to get what I want. I'm actually content.” Great, blessings. Go in peace. I'm not here to force everybody to want to have more money or to have a more fulfilling life if they're comfortable. I don't want people walking around being victims of their circumstance. I want them to know that they chose it.   How to Handle Buyers Who’ve Got a Negative Perception About Spending Money · [26:20]    Will Barron: Amazing stuff. This is really valuable, this episode, Bob. Okay, so let's flip the table slightly. What do, and we've touched on some of this, I'm sure, in the episode so far, but it'd be useful to get more clarity on this specific scenario. What if we are B2B salesperson, we know our product is going to solve a pain point for a potential customer, we know that they've got the budget because it's not their money. Theirs some middle management or a VP level, director level individual within a medium size organisation say.   Will Barron: Let's well, let's make it real. Sam the salesperson is selling accounting software right into a medium size as organisation. We know that we're really going to help the CFO, the accountants that are going to be using this tool day in, day out. But the CFO that we're chatting with just can't be to give up $30 grand a month of revenue for this tool. They feel weird about it. They feel that they're all old school. They feel like their accountant should be using ledgers. I'm sure that disappeared 20 years ago, right? But they should be doing this in paper. There should be a paper trail. They're not ready to move, even though logically, they know that they should do this. What can we do or how do we approach that kind of conversation from a seller's perspective when we know everything is right, it's just the prospect, the pinch buyer has some weird beliefs about money that perhaps we can help them deal with?   “If you really believe in the product, there's nothing to lose by being willing to give it away for 30 days so they can actually get proof personally and actually feel the difference. So, if we really have something that can change somebody's life, I'm of the belief that you should be willing to lose a little in the short run to make a lot in the long run.” – Bob Wheeler · [28:22]    Bob Wheeler: Yeah. Well, the first thing I would do is ask them personal questions as to why this feels so uncomfortable spending this kind of money. The numbers support it. Depending on the company, I'm the type of person that would say, “Look, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. I'll give you 30 days to try this out and you could tell me you hate it or you love it, because I think at the end of 30 days, you're going to discover it's amazing, it's going to be a game changer.” If I really believe in the product, there's nothing to lose by willing to give it away for 30 days, so they can actually get proof personally and be able to go, “Oh my God, I actually feel the difference.” I think a lot of times, if we're just trying to sell snake oil, yeah, maybe we don't want to do that. But if we really have something that can change somebody's life, I'm of the belief, I'm willing to lose a little in the short run to make a lot in the long run.   Free Trial Sales Conversations and How to Make Sure the Buyer Gets the Most Out of Your Product or Service · [28:50]   Will Barron: Got it, so we are going to give them the evidence, right? We're going to, and then how do we, so let's say that happens. Let's say it's accounting software. Let's say the issue is that this CFO thinks software is free. It's instantly replicatable. We shouldn't be paying $30 grand a month for this. We should be paying $3 grand a month for this. They're not understanding the value. Again, it's this, it's a weird belief that they have about money, as opposed to them not understanding the product that's holding them back. We give them the demo for 30 days. The individual loves it. How do we reengage that conversation? Is it again going, “Well, there's the money here, but there's also the evidence that you've told me that you get a lot of value from this.” How do we approach the conversation knowing that now we've got evidence to show that the individual's going to, the business is going to make money from this, there's going to be a return and investment?   Bob Wheeler: Well, I mean the first thing I would do before I even give it away for 30 days free is I want to make sure with them, “Are you going to give it a fair shake? Are you just going to do this for 30 days, so you can see if you can get something free or are you actually open to, if I can show you where I can save you a lot of money, are you open to moving forward?” Because if they're not, if their mindset is still such that it doesn't matter what you tell me, I'm not going to waste my time. At a certain point, I don't have to save the whole world. I only need to target people that are open to it and actually, they don't have to necessarily see it, but they're open to seeing it through experience.   Bob Wheeler: I've had people, I have a client who she hired a salesperson to bring business into her practise. It doubled the money. It doubled the money, but she was really upset because the person didn't want to drive to the office and clock in and then drive to the different seminars and the places they were going. And so I said to the client, “This is crazy to me. You're making subst-, you're doubling income.” We're talking, it's a small business, so they went for making $250 to $500,000, but not bad for a three person for sure office.   Will Barron: Yeah, for sure.   Bob Wheeler: I said, “So you're telling me, you'd rather give up $250,000 to be right about having them clock in.” The client said, “Yeah.” I went, “Okay, well, there's your answer.” So they let them go. The income dropped. But they're incredibly happy because they're following the rules that they set forth instead of being open to the fact that this person was making money for them, but they weren't doing it in a way that was congruent with the owner. There's nothing I can do to change that mindset, even though I'm just looking at all the lost revenue, going, “This is mind blowing,” but I couldn't change their mind. At a certain point, I'm just going to spend my energy where I can actually do some good.   Will Barron: Sure, so I work with a bunch of small, I'm really passionate about small business owners, right? I love sales. Sales can be systematised a lot easier then it can be to create a startup or a small business. But I love encouraging small business owners, and so I do loads of both free and pay consulting with them. Something that I see time and time again, because a lot of people will get in touch with me when they've hired one or two sales people and they want to ramp up the sales people's performance. What I see so often is the sales person will start killing it, right?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah.   This is How Business Owners Intentionally Sabotage High-Performing Salespeople · [32:20]    Will Barron: They'll be getting close to the take home of the owner of the business. Then the owner of the business starts feeling weird about it, and they try and sabotage the salesperson rather than just give them unlimited, uncapped commissions. As long as it's hugely profitable, what are you doing? But they get jealous. They get weird. It gets all icky. Sales people typically can feel that, and they're going, “Why am I sacrificing?” Because obviously the business owners getting equity, the business and the business growth and all that side of things as well. The sales person's going, “I'm not getting any of that stuff and I'm doing all the job of, doing half the job of a founder, doing all the selling. I'm the one looking silly. They just swoop in at perhaps at the end of the deal and put in a phone call or two.” It's just such a common phenomenon that I found with small business owners. I'm not crazy, am I? That is bizarre, isn't it?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah. It happens a lot. I've actually had a few salespeople on my podcast and we've talked about this where all of a sudden they start killing it and the owner will come back and say, “Well, we're going to have to change the commission structure. You're just doing too well.” What do you mean? You worked it out logically. You're going to make X amount of money if they do this and they're doing it. They're doing it exponentially. Why now do you have to say, “Well, you have to make less because even though you followed all the rules, I don't feel good about it.” It's so counterintuitive. It's so counterintuitive.   Will Barron: That leads me on to me …   Bob Wheeler: It happens.   How to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone and Start Making More Money · [34:00]   Will Barron: … me final question, Bob. We might have already answered this, so I'll ask you again for the is value in recovering this if we need to. What does a sales person need to do if they, and I know loads of salespeople have been there, they're successful, they're doing a $100 grand take home, $200 grand take home, half a million take home, but they've been stuck there for four or five years. Colleagues have come and gone, done better or worse. The marketplace, there's data, there's evidence that shows that the marketplace is there for them to make more cash, but and maybe they are comfortable, but they don't want to be comfortable, right?   Bob Wheeler: Right.   Will Barron: Do they need to start asking questions, like what are the negatives, if I earn $600 grand and start to …   Bob Wheeler: Yeah.   Will Barron: … reverse engineer this? Is there any other questions that they should be asking themselves to not make them hustle hard or a change process, but to open their mindset that other people are earning more, and so they've got the same opportunity as anyone else?   Bob Wheeler: Yeah, absolutely. I would start off with the question of what are my limiting beliefs about making more money. I would really start to look at, “Am I comfortable? What would it take to go to the next level? Why do I believe I can't get there? Is it because I don't have the skillset, I don't have the communication skills?” There might be something there I've watched people move away from jobs because the next level required something that they didn't think they had.   Bob Wheeler: And so I would really, again, get curious. I think, whether you're looking at your own beliefs or you're looking at your potential customer's beliefs getting curious and creating a relationship, instead of just looking at it transactionally is the key. Whether we're talking to ourselves and going “Well, that's stupid. Putting 10% away is just makes sense.” Well, if I don't understand relationally why I'm so opposed to that, I'm not going to do it. The same thing when I'm trying to sell something, if the person thinks I'm just trying to make a sale, there's no reason to trust me because I'm just trying to make a sale. But if I actually get to know them, know that they actually like soccer or that they like to go fishing, or I actually get to know them as a person, there might be some room for, “Oh, this is actually a relationship.” And then we can let it grow.   Bob Wheeler: But until we get aware of what's that limiting belief, why am I afraid to take it to the next level, you're not going to go anywhere. I know for me, I had to struggle with, “Well, it's too easy for me.” I felt guilty charging what I charge because I'm like, “I would do it for free.” I literally would. I like doing accounting. I'm a weirdo. I like doing tax stuff. It seemed too easy, so how can I actually pay lots of money for this when other people struggle really hard to be able to do what I do? It's this, yeah, it's, “How can I be paid that kind of money?” I don't feel so guilty now, but it was very hard raising my rates and saying, “No, this is what I want.” And feeling comfortable being able to say, “This is what it is and if it doesn't work for you, I'm totally cool with it, but I'm not going to change my parameters to make you feel better about yourself when I know this is a solid working model.”   Will Barron: I had a mentor help me with this maybe six months ago, from previous to when we were recording the show now, Bob. They just sat me down with our profit and loss and with all the content that we were producing and the expenses that come along with it. They're like, “What content drives profit?” Not what content do you enjoy doing? Not what content does the team enjoy? What content makes money? It's the Salesman podcast. It's selling made simple, the solo version of this podcast, right? It's the audio podcast. That just slowly, gradually goes up in time, and it's the YouTube videos. We're also doing Instagram, blog posts, in the midst of writing a book, all this, just tonnes mess around with TikTok, all this kind of crap, right? He was just like, “Why are you doing it?”   Why The Success Mindset is Not All About Hustle, Hustle, Hustle · [38:00]    Will Barron: It turns out after going back and forth in a few conversations, I had a similar realisation that what you did. I was like, “Well, it'd be too simple if all I had to do was a couple of podcasts and a couple of videos a week and jump out and do some mentoring calls with our students over at Selling Made Simple Academy.” It's like, “It'd be too easy.” I didn't feel like I was putting in enough effort to …   Bob Wheeler: Right.   Will Barron: … for, I guess the business growth, but also my take home pay as well. I was like, “Well, this is like a really nice little business to run,” if that's all I did, I didn't do all the other crap on top of it that I didn't like. I broached it with the team. The team were like, “Yeah, are you stupid? Of course, it's a waste of time and energy. We don't want to do all this extra crap as well. We want to just do the core content that we can produce high quality content that leads to phone calls getting booked and deals getting made on the back of it.” I was just like, “Why did no one tell me this?” They were happy just to do the work. We had some internal conversations. We had to set some vision and a mission and some principles for the company and get more defined. But it all stemmed from my weird belief pattern of I've got to hustle. I've got to work hard. I've got to stay ahead of everyone in this space.   Bob Wheeler: Right.   Will Barron: I feel like we've got, with our content, we've got a bit of a lead versus some of the competitors, whether it's production quality or the openness of these conversations versus other sales podcast that out there. The reality was that we don't need a lead. We're so different to everyone else out there. People buy the training product because they want to buy from me. As long as I'm still at the company, it's going to sell and do well. Again, it all stemmed from this weird belief that I need to work really hard, really long hours and make loads of sacrifices to make progress, which to be fair, may have been true five years ago, six years when I started the business, you don't know what's going on. But right now, this, this one business coach is like, “You're just crazy. You're just burying yourself with work and stress and pressure for no reason.” How common is that kind of experience [inaudible 00:40:09], Bob?   “Success doesn't have to be complicated. We culturally have decided we've got to have some suffering. It's ridiculous because it's all self-imposed. We've bought into the system that believes success has got to be painful. It can't be too easy, otherwise it's just not right.” – Bob Wheeler · [40:33]   Bob Wheeler: Well, that's super common. We all have a belief of, we've got to put in 40 hours a week at least. It's got to be a little painful. It can't just be fun and easy. What are you talking about? Everybody has slaved. There's a history of you've got to really work hard. Yeah, it may be that sometimes you have to work hard. It doesn't mean you can't also relax and have a little fun. It doesn't all have to be complicated. We culturally have decided we've got to have some suffering. It's ridiculous because it's all self-imposed. We've bought into the system that said, “It's got to be painful. It can't be too easy because it's just not right.”   Will Barron: Yeah, and I think we need to do what you've just suggested as well. If you can sit there in front of an Excel spreadsheet or some accounting software for hours on end and the time flies by, you are clearly perfectly wired for that, learning the latest ups and downs and this and thats with accounting and finance. I hate it. I have an external accountant, because I just don't care. All I want to see is the number in the bank account and then I've not got a big tax bill. I want to minimise that tax bill the best I can at the end of the year. I pay handsomely for not to look at taxes and accountants and PNLs or anything else throughout the year, right?   Achieving Success Can Be Easy. Hardships Are All In Your Head · [41:34]    Will Barron: But I'm perfectly suited to doing these podcast interviews, for doing mentoring at the training programme and for building selling frameworks. I think if you can find the place that you're wired to be, and you can adjust some of this, I'm sure, and you can hustle and you get through certain elements of this and you create, if you've got to breakthrough into management, if you've got to go from one type of sales to another type of sales, if you're in the right place, things can be simple, can't they? Things can be easy.   Bob Wheeler: Absolutely. I mean, love what you do, I think is so important and not everybody always has that option. But yeah, if I hated accounting, it'd be painful. It would definitely be painful. But I love it. I'm glad that other people hate it.   Will Barron: Yep.   Bob Wheeler: Because it gives me lots of work.   Parting Thoughts · [42:19]   Will Barron: Yep. Well, that's the albatross, that's the market. That's what I'm all here and hopefully that's valuable for the audience as well. With that, Bob, tell us about The Money Nerve the book and tell us about the podcast as well, where we can find out more about you.   Bob Wheeler: Absolutely, so The Money Nerve, it's a book I wrote, The Money Nerve, because emotions around money are in our body. People have heart attacks, people jump off of buildings, people get really excited when they get a bonus check, they didn't expect, so The Money Nerve, not nerd, I'm a nerd. Then we have a podcast called Money You Should Ask where we talk with people from all walks of life, a lot of highly successful people that talk about their failures and about their own money journeys so that people can actually hear other stories and realise it's possible for me too, instead of staying small and saying, “I'm afraid to take the next step because I'm the only exception of the role where I can't have what I want.” And so check us out. We're happy to work with people. We've got great resources. We just want people to have the fullest life that they want to have if they so choose.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well, to the book, the podcast, your website, everything else over in the show notes of this episode over salesman.org. With that Bob, genuinely mate, really, I'm going to use this question in the next lot of sales calls that we do, so anyone who's listening to this show will be laughing the head off if they try and join our training programme and I quiz them on some of this. But I appreciate your insights, mate. I thank you for joining us again on the Salesman podcast.   Bob Wheeler: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.  

Sales success goes beyond just crunching numbers; it’s all about tapping into emotions. Discover how emotional engagement can sway decisions more effectively than mere logic. Explore a five-step framework that highlights understanding buyer pain points and guiding them toward resolution. Learn the power of storytelling in sales interactions and gain insights into using CRM tools to strengthen client relationships. Get ready to boost your closing rates by addressing the psychological aspects of selling.

In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Dr. Robert Glover explains what a covert contract is and why “nice guy syndrome” is killing your ability to get deals done. Robert, an entrepreneur, writer, coach, public speaker and the author of three bestselling books. He is also recognized as the leading authority on tackling the “Nice Guy Syndrome”. 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 - Dr. Robert Glover Best-Selling Author and Psychology Guru Resources: Dr.Glover.com Dr. Glover on LinkedIn Book: No More Mr. Nice Guy Book: Dating Essentials for Men: The Only Dating Guide You Will Ever Need Book: The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck Book: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to today's episode of the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be talking how covert contracts kill your sales effectiveness and today's guest is Dr. Robert Glover. Robert is a entrepreneur, writer, coach, and public speaker, and is the author of three bestselling books. Robert is recognised as the leading authority on nice guy syndrome, which I'm sure we're going to cover in this episode and with that, Robert, welcome to the show.   Dr. Robert Glover: Well, thank you for the invitation.   The Recovering Nice Guy · [00:36]    Will Barron: You more than welcome, sir. Just before we click record, I've read all your books. I'm a huge fan. Is there a way to describe someone who was a nice guy, who had nice guy syndrome and now no longer, well, hopefully no longer suffers for it. You can diagnose me in this episode mate and give me some feedback. Is there a way to refer to someone who is through some of these pain points?   Dr. Robert Glover: Well, I refer to myself as a recovering nice guy because I started working on this stuff in myself before I knew it was nice guy syndrome, about 25 years ago. And what's interesting to me is that layers keep peeling off of this whole nice guy thing and mine show up mostly in relationship, but I see it in work and everywhere else as well. So what I found about any, I believe nice guy syndrome, a lot of it is due to maybe partly natural temperament and partly due who internalised conditioning in childhood.   Dr. Robert Glover: So that means is pretty deep into our emotional operating system. So I've noticed that the anxiety or shame I tend to associate with nice guy syndrome still arises from time to time, but I notice it quicker, I can soothe myself, I can take action, I can move forward. So as I refer to myself as a recovering nice guy, if you like that term, you can use it, it just means that you notice this stuff a lot quicker, and it doesn't seem to take control of your life, especially in those unconscious hidden ways that you're not aware of what's driving the bus of your life.   What is The Nice Guy Syndrome and Are You Suffering From It? · [02:01]    Will Barron: Sure. Okay. So I want to get into covert contracts. I mean, this is really valuable for the salespeople listening to this. I used to do this and put my prospects on a pedestal. I would have covert contracts with these individuals that they didn't know about. We'll touch on that in a second, but we've mentioned nice guy syndrome here. Can you give us a definition of what it is and I guess how we would know. Is there a test? Is there a way to know whether we are afflicted with it myself and the listeners right now?   Dr. Robert Glover: Yeah. Nice guy syndrome, and I'm going to reference this primarily towards men, because that's what my book was written towards, but it also affects women as well. There's lots of nice girls out there. And my view of the nice guy is that at a very early age, as a person that internalised an inaccurate belief about themselves in the world and that inaccurate belief is that if I want to be loved and liked to get my needs met, I have to become what I think other people want me to be, because I'm not okay just as I am. And I have to hide anything about me that might trigger or get a negative response from other people.   Dr. Robert Glover: So nice guys then are out there trying to be good, trying to please people, trying to avoid conflict, trying to look like a decent human being, they're generous, they're giving, they're caring and all thinking that will get them loved, it'll make them be liked, it'll help them get their needs met. And that's what will tee up into the covert contracts that you mentioned.   Covert Contracts: The Relationship Killer · [03:40]    Will Barron: Sure. And the audience will be going, “Okay.” I get tonnes of negative responses from potential customers all day every day. Now hopefully it shouldn't be as dire as that, if you're selling the right product to the right person, but salespeople are getting rejected and conflict is part of sales. We need to negotiate, we need to balance value, we need to adjust our offerings based on price, we need to go by and forth. So conflict in a positive sense as in there'll be conflict with a positive outcome is part of sales as well. So hopefully there's a couple of 10,000 sales people listening right now who are nodding, along as we go through this Robert. Can you give us a definition then of what a covert contract is? Because I think this is like a part of nice guy syndrome, right? But I think this specific slither of it is incredibly important for the audience.   Dr. Robert Glover: Well, let's tee that up of what the covert contract is, let's see up where, where it came from. And I used to think for many years of my life that, oh, I could never be a salesman, mainly because I hate being rejected. I want everybody to like me. I want everybody to have a positive response to me. I don't know how people get up every day and get rejected time, after time, after time. Now, ironically, these days when people ask me what I do, my doctorate is in marriage and family therapy, but I'm not in private practise anymore. I don't necessarily do marriage and family therapy anymore. I've written some books. I'm an online university, I do consultation, I lead seminars and workshops, but if I have to tell them, if I'm to boil it all down, I'm an online marketer.   “Most of the nice guy syndrome is emotional beliefs we internalised at a very young age, maybe three weeks old, three months old, three years old.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [05:40]   Dr. Robert Glover: And here I am being a salesman and so backing up to the covert contract and I know a lot of people have told me that's one of the most powerful dynamics they got out of the book, No More Mr. Nice Guy is this concept of covert contracts. And I know it resonated for me. It gives me clarity of certain unconscious patterns in my life that don't serve me and don't help me get what I want, but to back it up, a lot of the people I work with as children and again, most of the nice guy syndrome is emotional beliefs we internalised at a very young age, maybe three weeks old, three months old, three years old. Before our rational thinking mind was online, our survival brain was working, our amygdala, the fight flight freeze, part of our really old ancient brain. And this part of the brain controls just life functioning, heart rate, breathing.   Dr. Robert Glover: And it keeps us alive. And that was the most evolved part of our brain online when we were born. And it stores up emotional memory of early experiences. Now, not in words, not in pictures, but just in emotion. So it's really very primal inside of us. So at a very early age, a lot of children for one reason or another, before they were thinking about it rationally internalised the belief I'm bad for having needs or is wrong for me to have needs or my needs put burden on other people or everybody else's needs are more important than mine or other people's needs come before mine. And these are all emotional belief systems that we then later put words to or create stories for and then start manifesting in our life. Now he here is the hitch, the problem. We all have needs and we have to get our needs met.   Dr. Robert Glover: And when we were little children, we were completely and entirely dependent on the big people in our lives, our parents, our caregivers, to recognise our needs and to meet those in a timely judicious and hopefully consistent way. Now there's a great book out there, been around for a long time called The Road Less Travelled by Dr. M. Scott Peck. I've been told it's the best selling self-help book of all time. And he talks in there about when parents are meeting their own needs, are then attentive to their children's needs and respond to those needs in timely and judicious ways. And I add consistent to that, a child emotionally internalises the following beliefs about themselves. I'm valuable and lovable, my needs are important and the world is like my family, meaning, hey, everybody out there's going to value me and want to help me get my needs met just like it happened in my family.   Dr. Robert Glover: Now, if our parents were not attentive and did not respond to our needs in timely judicious and consistent ways, we internalise emotionally opposite beliefs. I'm not that important, I'm not valuable, I'm not lovable, my needs aren't important and the world's going to be just like my family. Nobody else is going to care about my needs either. Now again, we all have needs. We got to eat, we got to sleep, we need love, we need physical contact, we need sex, we need adventure, we need stimulation. Maslow came up with the whole hierarchy of needs that we have. So we have needs. So how do we get the needs met when we believe we're bad for having needs or that other people are going to get angry at us for having needs or that other people's needs are more important than ours? And so we have to do it in a secretive covert kind of way.   Dr. Robert Glover: And that's the covert contracts and there are three of them. And I've really even honed these down further than what I wrote about in the book. But the three basic covert contracts of the nice guy or nice girl syndrome are number one. If I'm good, I will be liked and loved. So if I'm a good person if I'm generous, I'm caring, if I help people, I'll be liked and loved second. And this is really a really powerful one, and probably a lot of the salespeople listening will recognise it, if I meet other people's needs without them having to ask, then they will meet my needs without me having to ask. Now, of course it shows up in relationship, it shows up to strangers, it shows up in the workplace.   Dr. Robert Glover: We mind read for other people, we anticipate their needs, we try to do nice things, we build rapport, we do whatever it is we think we need to do so that they will inclined to read our minds and give us what we need without us ever having to ask, because we feel like that would make us a bad person. Now, again, I assume most salespeople have gotten over that to some degree and learned to make a close because if there is no close, there is no sale. And we can't wait for the other person to close the deal. And then the third covert contract is that if I do everything right, I will have a smooth problem free life. And of course this world is not smooth and problem free. We're living in a time of pandemic. You know. There's always chaos and business and sales is not and problem free.   “In a nutshell, these are the three covert contracts. If I'm good, I'll be liked and loved. Number two, if I meet other people's needs without them having to ask, they will meet my needs without me having to ask. And number three, if I do everything right, nothing will ever go wrong. I'll have a smooth problem free life” – Dr. Robert Glover · [11:17]    Dr. Robert Glover: Like you said, there's negotiation, there's conflict, there's dealing with customers, there's dealing with your sales manager, your company gives you, okay, here's the formula in which we'll compensate you for your sales. And then you go out and kick ass and you do so damn well at it, the company goes, “We're going to revise that compensation schedule.” And all of a sudden, you're not making as much money. You go, “What the fuck? That's not fair. It shouldn't happen that way.” But that is life. We think I was doing it right. Everything should keep going the way I expected it to. So those in a nutshell are the three core over contracts. If I'm good, I'll be liked and loved. If I meet other people's needs without them having to ask, they will meet my needs without me having to ask. And number three, if I do everything right, nothing will ever go wrong. I'll have a smooth problem free life   Will Barron: As someone who's fell into this, Robert, right? And then now interviewed 800 odd people, trained thousands of salespeople, done thousands of consulting calls with salespeople and sales leadership, it's now intently obvious to me that we live in a world of evidence that none of that is true. Almost the opposite of this is true, almost verbatim, right? Of bad people have success, which not all the time, but there was evidence of that out that you could see that in many places, this idea, and I love the way that you say this one of, if I meet the needs of other people without asking, they'll meet my needs without asking, and then you add the layer on top of well, if they can read your mind. So that makes that obvious. There's no logic behind that whatsoever.   Will Barron: Even like my partner, Emily right? She knows me much better than probably anyone other than maybe my dad. Neither then to know what I'm thinking about most of the time, it's more obvious is that Emily doesn't know what I'm thinking about the random strangers that I'm prospecting or trying to do business with. So there seems to be a tonne of evidence there as well. And then if you do everything right, you have a smooth life, as soon as you get a layer deep in into that, and you look at some of the evidence, the logic things, we all understand inherently, it's common sense that the world is in flux. There's many things we can't control. Driving on the road, you use that as an example or a metaphor for this of all you could do is stay in your lane and perhaps maybe react to the people around you.   How to Overcome Your Nice Guy Belief System · [13:25]    Will Barron: Someone could easily just crash into the side of you just because they're having a bad day, they're on their phone or not paying attention. So the evidence of that, it's remarkable to that obviously in hindsight, isn't true, but how can we grow up? And I grew up as a young lad with nice guy syndrome, right? I fell into each of these buckets of covert contracts for decades until I was in my mid twenties when I started to read your book and then uncovered, started doing a bit of work on myself and uncovered some of this, how can we get so far through life? I know thy about 40, 50, 60 year old people listening to this right now are going, “Crap. I wished we would've heard this 20 years ago.”   Dr. Robert Glover: Yes, I hear that a lot.   Will Barron: How can we go so far through life with all the evidence that poses the opposite of this is still having these belief systems?   “Everybody has distorted emotional beliefs about themselves and the world because we internalised them when we were immature, dependent, needy, and undeveloped little children, and that's stored in such a deep part of our brain that it influences everything.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [14:49]    Dr. Robert Glover: That is such a good question. And it makes you wonder. And as I said, these belief systems are recorded in an emotional part of our brain that is wired into our rational brain, our prefrontal cortex, that makes decisions. And you would think that our rational prefrontal cortex would see right through these obviously distorted belief systems, but because they are emotional operating system trumps rational break every time. The unconscious is so powerful and is stored up in our body. I mean, it's deep. And we go through life with these emotional belief systems and everybody has them, not exactly these, but everybody has distorted emotional beliefs about themselves in the world because we internalised them when we were immature, dependent, needy, undeveloped little children, and that's stored in such a deep part of our brain, it influences everything.   Dr. Robert Glover: Now how these stay embedded is that probably as much do anything through confirmation bias, is that you hear people talk about, “Well, those jerks over there, those bad people, don't be like your dad.” Or don't be like that person that did that thing and you keep thinking, well, I see if I'm good, if I'm just good, that's what people want. The value a because your confirmation bias ties into that. And so we find stories and experiences to confirm what we already emotionally hold to be true even when the majority of what we experience doesn't. I had a PhD in marriage and family therapy at 29 years old. I'm 66 now. I'm in my third marriage. And I often say, I bumbled my way through every relationship I've had.   Dr. Robert Glover: And I think many of us do mainly because trying to do intimate parabonded long term, lifelong relationships is not in our DNA and there's not a particularly good instruction book for it, but we're all bringing those deep emotional belief systems about ourself and the world into any relationship, intimate, family, work, it doesn't matter, and trying to make it work. And therefore, we do tend to bumble our way through a lot of things.   Dr. Robert Glover: And probably every salesman out there can look back a few years ago when you were operating from some kind of naive and untested, but deeply held emotional beliefs about yourself in the world. And you look back and you go, “Oh man, how did I ever survive? How did I ever make it in sales?” Because hopefully we all bump into something. We have a wake up call, a come to Jesus meeting, a crisis, a major failure, major loss.   Dr. Robert Glover: It could come from a lot of different things. And it's like, something helps us start reevaluating our emotional belief systems and our view of ourself in the world. For me, it was my second wife said, “I can't take you being a nice guy anymore. Everybody thinks you're such a great guy, but you don't always treat me well. You're passive aggressive, you could be mean, you can say hurtful things, you blow up at me.” And she said, “You've got to get to therapy, because I'm not going to live with this. I'm going to leave.” And I'm thinking, “Wait a minute, you're the one who needs to go to therapy. You're the one who's moody all the time, angry all the time, never available, never wants to have sex anymore, so up and down.” I'm going, “Okay, I'll go to…” I was a nice guy.   Dr. Robert Glover: “I'll go to therapy. I'll go find out why me being such a nice guy doesn't make you appreciate me more, it doesn't make you want to have sex with me more often.” And luckily I landed into some good places, a good men's programme, good men's group, a couple of good therapists along the way. And quickly started learning that my paradigm, my roadmap of the world that was operating at a deeply emotional level was faulty in so many ways.   “I think it's the fortunate person that has some sort of crisis, some major loss, some illness, some financial crisis, something that wakes us up and we go looking and hopefully find a more accurate paradigm for living in this world in ways that allow us to live up to our potential, get our needs met, have the things that we want.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [18:39]    Dr. Robert Glover: All the ways I hid myself, hid my needs, hid my wants, never asked for what I wanted, gained to get, avoided conflict, tried to please tried to external approval and validation. All those things just had a bright spotlight put on them and I started seeing where they came from and why they didn't work so well. And I think it's the fortunate person that has some sort of crisis, some big stick up side the head, some major loss, some illness, some financial crisis, something that wakes us up and we go looking and hopefully find a more accurate roadmap, a more accurate paradigm for living in this world in ways that allow us to live up to our potential, get our needs met, have the things that we want.   Will Barron: Well, hopefully this episode of the show is a big stick whacking people on the head and will do a little bit of that motivation and paradigm changing for them. And with that Robert, I'd like to, if possible, go through each of these three covert contracts and see how it relates specifically to salespeople. I think it's relatively straightforward, but then I've read your book and I've worked on this. So maybe it's not as straightforward. Maybe for someone who's new to this, you can add a layer of common sense to this and speed up the process rather than me just whacking them over the head of a stick. Maybe you can [crosstalk 00:19:46].   Dr. Robert Glover: We'll tag team them, right? You come out of from that side of the stick, I'll come from that side of the stick.   You Are Worthy of Being Liked Regardless of Whether or Not You’re a Good Person · [19:52]    Will Barron: Okay, mate. So this first one, If I'm good, I'll be liked and loved. Now you are not saying here that the inverse of this is true, that if you are bad, people are going to like you and love you more. Tell me if I'm wrong, what you're saying is you can be liked and loved regardless. You are worth you of being liked and loved regardless if you be yourself. Explain that one for me.   Dr. Robert Glover: Yeah. Let's take it. Cause they all the covert contracts have many layers to them. And so for example, my profession is mainly working with people and their relationship. So that's usually where I'm talking about covert contracts and for many of the nice guys I worked with that they were told, “Don't be like somebody.” Dad, the other bad men out there whatever. And so we're trying to be different then. So we create this model of what does it mean for me to be good, right? And we're the scorekeepers of that. We have a big scoreboard here in our home or in our office where we go, “Look, I helped that person out. Look, I did that for them. Look, I sacrificed myself to make that easier for them. Yeah. I was willing to give that up. I was willing to work that extra hours. I was willing to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”   Dr. Robert Glover: And we think that makes us good. Now, all the covert contracts are an if then proposition. And one thing I didn't say is that usually we're unaware of the covert contract is covert and the everybody else out there is completely unaware of the covert contract. So where I see it a lot, for example, like with single men, they go, “I'm a good guy. I'm not like the jerks I hear women complain about. I do this, I do that. And then I go out and they don't even notice me. I don't even exist. They ignore me. Or they just put me in the friend zone and don't want to be my girlfriend, don't want to have sex with me.”   “Nice guys are typically terrible receivers. We don't give to ourselves very well, we give to everybody else first, and we don't accept other people giving to us very well.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [22:26]    Dr. Robert Glover: Or married men will say, “I do this for my wife. I do that for my wife. I treat her better than her ex, I'm raising her kids, I do this.” And go, “But she's still upset all the time and never in a good mood and never wants to have sex.” And so there's this, I've done this, this should come back to me, and it ties into yes, a sense of deserving or worthy, but paradoxically, we don't believe we're worthy or deserving because here is one of the core flaws in the thinking. It's not really thinking. It's more of an emotional of covert contracts, is that nice guys are tip typically terrible receivers. And we don't give to ourself very well, we give to everybody else first, we don't accept other people giving to us very well.   Dr. Robert Glover: All the while, we're trying to get them to give to us because down to that core emotional belief is I'm bad for having needs, my needs aren't important, people will be angry at me if I have needs, their needs are more important. Excuse me. So I think she's right. Every woman I've had in my life has told me, “Robert, you're difficult to give to.” Okay. When you start hearing messages like that, “Robert, you're…” Your name isn't Robert. They say your name. You're difficult to give to, or I can never do anything for you, that's because it goes against our core belief of ourself and the world. People aren't supposed to be giving to me.   Dr. Robert Glover: So here's the thing, all the while we're doing this cover contract, if I'm good, you'll like me and love me and you'll sign the contract and you'll appreciate me, and you'll value me and all that stuff, to actually have the good things happen runs contrary to our belief about ourself and the world. So this is a core piece that we do have to go work on that it is okay, not only okay, it's essential that we get our needs met. And for me, that began with me doing good things for me. And an example was really early in my nice guy recovery, my wife and I were both in therapy. And I came to the realisation I was doing a lot of giving to get. And so I went on a one year, 12 month giving moratorium where I quit giving anything to anybody other than when my kids needed things. But I didn't give my wife gifts, I didn't give her mother's date cards, I didn't give her surprises.   Dr. Robert Glover: And she knew that. So she was in because she didn't like all my covert contracts either. And so for a year, every time I had the impulse, oh my wife would like that or I could get that or that'd be a nice surprise, I had to stop, resist the urge and then I had to do something good for me. Right? That was the hitch. I then had to turn around and do something good for me. Now from that practise of doing that, and I've been doing have for 25 years, I've also learned to start practising asking people for what I want and saying, “Can you do this for me? Can you do this for me?” And then add to that when people offer to do things for me, I've learned to say yes and to let them. And just almost a trivial little example.   Dr. Robert Glover: My wife is Mexican and she grew up Mexican culture where she likes to do nice things for her man. And she likes to do things with me and she likes to just make my life better, which those are all good things. Right? And so I'll be taking a bag of garbage out from the kitchen, just going out the front door and got to open the front gate, put it out on the street. It's not difficult to take a bag of garbage out and put it on the street. But frequently my wife will say, “Do you need help?” And if I answer that rationally and go, “No, I don't need any help. This is a really simple task.” I'm just taking garbage from the kitchen, opening the front gate, put it on the front sidewalk.   “Practise making your needs a priority and doing good things for yourself. Now, you can't meet all of your own needs by yourself, so you have to surround yourself with people who want to help you get your needs met and you have to be clear with what you would like them to do to help them meet your needs. Don't make them guess.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [26:32]   Dr. Robert Glover: And so I used to say, “No, no, no, I got it. Don't worry.” Because I didn't want to burden her. Right? There's no reason why she would have to help me carry garbage out. I can. And then I realised, she wanted to help me and I wasn't letting her. And so those were the little cues I had to start picking up on. Let her help me. Say, “Sure, come help me take the garbage out.” And then we got to go take the garbage out together and have a little together time walking the garbage out to the street. But that's an important process, as small and trivial as that might seem is that it is part of how we recondition that emotional operating system. So practise making your needs a priority and doing good things for yourself. Now you can't meet all of your own needs by yourself. So you have to surround yourself with people who want to help you get your needs met and you have to be clear with them, what you would like them to do to help them meet your needs.   “When people are available to help you meet your needs, say yes, give them the opportunity. People find fulfilment in giving to other people. Don't rob other people of that fulfilment of giving to you. Practise saying yes.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [26:51]    Dr. Robert Glover: Don't make them guess. And number three, when people are available to help you meet your needs, let them say yes. Give them the opportunity. People find fulfilment in giving to other people. Don't rob other people of that fulfilment of giving to you. Practise saying yes. And those three practises have been really powerful in my life to rewire that belief system that I'm bad for having needs or other people don't want to help me meet my needs or other people's needs are more important than me or people have a negative reaction if I have a need or ask for what I want. So that's where I would start with that first covert contract, is us actually working on our own belief system that it is not okay to have needs or to get them met.   Healthy Relationships Are Built When Two People Choose to Be Together · [27:40]    Will Barron: You mentioned The Road Less Travelled earlier on. One thing that I took away from that book when I maybe I read it like 10 years ago now, was that healthy relationships are when two people choose to be together and are happy to make that choice as opposed to unhealthy relationships. So when someone has a whole missing and the other person fills that a bit of the hole and perhaps vice versa. And it seems like what you're saying there Robert, fits practise of you don't need your wife to come and help you take out the trash. She doesn't need you to accept it, but you choose to do it and she wants to help, so you going to have a nice natter and a chat as you take the bins out. Am I in the right tracks with that?   Dr. Robert Glover: Yeah. And yeah, of course, well, when I worked as a marriage therapist and I did for 20 something years, couples would come to me and say, “We have this problem and this problem. We want you to help us save our marriage.” And I'd always tell them, “I have no goal of helping you save your marriage. What I will help you do is both grow up and become more mature adults and deal with whatever's getting in the way of you guys having what you want in the rela…” And I said, “Then if you guys decide you like hanging out with each other, you'll keep hanging out with each other. But as you grow into maturity and deal with some of your childhood defence mechanisms, survival mechanisms that are showing up in your relationship, you may decide you don't really like being with each other.”   Dr. Robert Glover: “That's okay too. Then it'd probably be better that you don't hang out with each other. So trying to save your marriage is not a goal. Let's just help you guys just grow and become more mature. And in the process, if you like hanging out with each other, great, if you don't, great.” And that's a good mantra in anywhere in life and especially in the workplace, because here's the crazy thing. I don't know if it's crazy, but here's, reality is, as I said, I'm mainly trained as a relational therapist and focusing on people's intimate relationships, but just like everybody, co-creates a relationship with a partner that lets them live out their earliest, emotional beliefs, their earliest training and paradigm, we all co-create that, we find a person that lets us use the tools that are in our relationship toolbox that we created when we were three months old, three years old.   Dr. Robert Glover: Because if we get with people that we can't use those tools, we don't know what to do. And so we invite people into our life to help us co-create really old relationship patterns and our partners doing the same. Now, the thing is we do that in the workplace as well. We find bosses, we find managers, we find companies, we find customers that all help us recreate our earliest life experiences. And here we are using these tools we developed as a kid and covert contracts are a really powerful set of tools in that childhood toolbox. So we get with our boss and our boss is triggering us in this way. So we start trying to manage that by avoiding the conflict or never doing anything that we would upset him or saying what we think he wants to hear or not telling him there's no way we can deliver on that product in the time they said they needed done by.   Dr. Robert Glover: And so we, “Oh, no.” And then we just keep doing what we've done since childhood. So I believe that, for example, intimate relationships, because of the way they trigger all this really old emotion beliefs, they're really powerful, personal growth machines. I also believe that every relationship we have and work is often just as in a sense, intimate as the person we might live with because we're also recreating really old stuff with them, which means even how we relate to a coworker, our manager, the CEO, a customer, if we do it consciously and use it as an opportunity to grow and deal with our old paradigms, that's a powerful, personal growth machine. And so, for example, I teach guys about dating. I say, “Hey, when you approach dating don't approach dating, you're trying to get a woman to like you, or trying to get a girlfriend, or trying to get a woman to sleep with you, how about you just go out and you're using that experience to just challenge yourself and grow and work on skills and practise saying yes, and practise things you want to practise?”   “I believe, instead of approaching my customer like I’ve got to get them to buy, I’ve got to get them to sign the contract, how about we approach our customers from the point of view of what can I learn from this experience? How can I grow? How can I challenge myself? And the really ironic thing is when I teach men to approach dating in that way, they often quickly become highly successful at attracting women and having good experiences where in the past they weren't.” – Dr. Robert Glover  · [32:01]    Dr. Robert Glover: Hey, we could approach sales in the exact same way. Instead of approaching my customer like I got to get them to buy, I got to get them to sign the contract, how about we approach our customers from the point of view, what can I learn from this experience? How can I grow? How can I challenge myself? How can I look at my covert contracts and stay aware when they tend to come up? And the really ironic thing is when I teach men to approach dating in that way, they often quickly become highly successful at attracting women and having good experiences where in the past they weren't.   Dr. Robert Glover: I think the same thing could happen in sales and business as well is when we let go of any attachment outcome, just say, “Hey, I'm just going to lean into something here. I'm going to practise something here. I'm going to get out of my comfort zone here. I'm going to watch how my anxiety comes up here, how my fears come up here and I'm just going to soothe myself and do it anyway and see what happens.” And what a beautiful template to take into how we interact with coworkers managers, customers.   Will Barron: I'm glad you mentioned this earlier on, and you brought it back perfectly because I wrote it down a big letter there. I wanted to bring this back up, Robert, this paradox of when you don't soak up to your customers, when you treat them like a peer as opposed to someone who's got the wallets that's going to buy you that new car or whatever it is that you're aiming towards of your commissions and that side of things, when you don't stink of what we call commission breath, where you desperate to get a deal done.   Dr. Robert Glover: Commission breath. I love that.   Will Barron: Is that a new one for you?   “People can smell desperation. And the other thing I've been saying for years is our anxiety is contagious. If you're approaching a sale with a strong attachment to the outcome, like Buddha said, “Attachments are the cause of all suffering.” I add, it’s also the cause of all anxiety. So if you go into a sale like, “I’ve got to get this sale. I got to get them to sign. I’ve got to make it happen.” Not only are you going to suffer, your anxiety level will go up. And when your anxiety level goes up, you actually become less effective and your customer will sense your state of anxiety. They will then feel anxiety, not knowing why, and when people feel anxious, they don't want to sign on the dotted line.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [33:44]   Dr. Robert Glover: Well, there's the same kind of terms in the dating world that you stink of desperation and women customers doesn't matter. Doesn't matter the context, people can smell desperation. And the other thing is, I've been saying for years, our anxiety is contagious. If you're approaching a sale with a strong attachment outcome, the Buddha said, “Attachments are cause of all suffering.” I add is also the cause of all anxiety. So if you go, “I got to get this sale. I got to get them to sign. I got to make it happen.” Not only are you going to suffer, your anxiety level will go up. And when your anxiety level goes up, you actually become less effective and your customer will sense your state of anxiety. They will then feel anxiety, not know why, and when people feel anxious, they don't want to sign on the dotted line.   Will Barron: Yeah. We had a Harvard professor come on the show to talk about, it's not quite as simple as this, as Pop Science puts it out there, but this idea of mirror neurons of people have empathy against the emotions that you're feeling and subconsciously they all mirror that back to you. We debugged or debunked some of it, but some of it makes total sense. And especially when a lot of salespeople now doing this over a Zoom call rather than a telephone. A lot of these emotional triggers, a lot of these, the emotional intelligence to the person that you're engaging with, it comes across more over video than a call so it's even more impactful. And you can use it as a tool to push the buyer one way or the other way and not manipulate, but perhaps nudge their emotions.   Will Barron: If they're having a crappy day, you come up all charming, happy, smiling, and full of good energy. You can nudge their emotions one way or another as well. But I love this idea of this paradox. And it's something that I try really hard for our training, Robert, to drill into the brains of our students, that you're there to provide a service, you're there to help people, if you start your call by going, “Oh, I'm so glad that you managed to speak with me. You found some time in your diary.” Or if you try and book a 30 second call to see if you're a good fit, as opposed to just saying, “Hey, it takes 10, 15 minutes for us to have an adult conversation about this.” You're immediately framing yourself up as bit of a loser in the space, right? If you are truly an expert on your product, your industry, if you truly have insights that are valuable for the customer, then you're going to approach the whole sales process differently.   Will Barron: And this is what we teach. The analogy that I like to use is if… I don't know, one of the listeners calls me up and goes, “Hey, I've got a stock pick for you. You've got to buy this stock.” I'm going to go, “Okay, I hope you enjoy the show. I'm glad you're a fan.” I'm definitely not going to buy this thing. Warren Buffet calls up, he doesn't even need to have to introduce himself, I'd recognise his voice. And he just goes, “Hey, [inaudible 00:36:22] halfway buying a load of Coca-Cola. You should probably buy it as well.” I've got so much trust at distance in the way he framed the conversation as an expert, without begging me to jump in on the deal with him, I'm immediately going to do it. So that's how I try and set things up. And I love this idea of this paradox.   Will Barron: And I'm glad you enjoyed the notion of commission breath, but I've got it with salespeople who ring me that they're so desperate to get people on the phone that it puts you off and it's counterintuitive. You've done the hardest bit. You've got the person on the phone, hopefully you've got the right product for the right person at the right time. And then you just [inaudible 00:36:56] the whole thing. Just the words you use, the framing of the conversation and even the language that's pre or post conversation as well to follow up. So with that said, I think that's relatively easy for the audience to understand. It's something that they know they've got to do. And maybe there's a confidence element to this, maybe there's a mindset shift they need to implement, but this final covert contract of if I do everything right, I'm going to… I'm paraphrasing it slightly what you said earlier.   Be Comfortable with Life Getting Uncomfortable · [37:24]    Will Barron: If I do everything right, I'm going to have a smooth and simple life. This is something that I think I still struggle with a little bit, because I know logically that's not true. I've got a degree in chemistry. I understand entropy. I understand chaos, right? I've read books on chaos theory, game theory, all these kind of things were like, it's demonstratable even just how irrational humans are. You know what I mean?   Will Barron: And you're surrounded by billions of people on the planet, nevermind the environment and everything else that's shifted and constantly influx. But how do we… I feel like I've yet to accept this. I feel like I can just earn a little bit more money, I can buy a house a little bit further away from people and I can do this and I can do that. And I can try and mitigate some of the risks and the potential pains of life. How do I, or am I on the right tracker of how do I get to a point where I can flip a switch and be like, “Okay, I'm comfortable that life is uncomfortable.”   Dr. Robert Glover: That's such a good question. I'm smiling through all of it, because me too. I'm still thinking how come she got mad at me? I did everything right. I didn't do anything wrong. She's mad at me. Or how come this… I bought this house here in Mexico, five and a half years ago. And I love my home. I'm in my home office right now. And I love it, got a swimming pool. It's just great. And Mexico's noisy. There's a bar across the street that three nights a week plays really bad live music till two in the morning. And it's like, “That shouldn't happen. I don't want that happening.” Dogs bark, places I've lived before make go, your rooster's crowing at two in the morning, neighbours playing their music loud.   Dr. Robert Glover: And it's just like, there's this part of me, “That shouldn't be happening.” But I live in Mexico and it does happen. And I've looked at that and I'll get into my… I call it my wishful thinker. The corrupt government here instead of stealing all the money they take should actually come and repair the roads every now and then. And then I go, “Oh, well, that's not going to happen.” Government in Mexico's is corrupt at every level. The government is used to benefit the people in government, not the people being governed, but it's that part of me that says, “It shouldn't be that way. It shouldn't be that way.” And I think for me, it is almost childlike, almost Peter Panish.   Dr. Robert Glover: It's like hey, everything should be good in this world, everything should work well, everything should always work out, people should always treat each other nicely, people shouldn't be unconscious. And it is funny. My wife and I, we've learned to laugh at this. Early on it was actually a little bit of a conflict between us. My wife grew up eight out of 10 kids in poverty in Guadalajara, Mexico, an alcoholic father, being picked on, abused by family members, neighbours, family steals from family, neighbours steal from neighbours. That's just her worldview. And I grew up more of a white bread, suburban, lived on the suburb of Seattle, Washington. And everybody I grew up with, their dads were Boeing engineers and it is like my world experience is people sometimes go unconscious and do things not thinking about the consequences of it, but I don't think they're evil or bad.   Dr. Robert Glover: They're just unconscious. My wife thinks no, they're all evil. They're all [foreign language 00:41:16], as she would say, assholes. And so we'd have these arguments while driving, why did that person just cut us off? And she said, “Because they're [foreign language 00:41:24], they're an asshole. And I go, “Well, I think they were just unconscious. They just weren't paying attention.” And we both have kind of learned to laugh at our different worldviews. And I've adopted a little bit more of her worldview that there are bad people out there. There are people out there that consciously and willingly hurt other people and do bad things. And she's actually coming to understand, yeah, sometimes people just aren't paying attention. They're just unconscious. They're not thinking ahead about something or the consequences of their actions.   Dr. Robert Glover: And so I think growing up is partly accepting, we do live in a world where there's evil, there's chaos, there's hurtful people doing hurtful things to other people. And we live in a world, as you said, just from a physical material point of view, that is ever changing. We have pandemics, we have viruses and the nature of a virus, I mean, viruses are the basis of all life, but yet here we are trying to kill a virus. And because we don't want life to be chaotic. We don't want grandma to die 30 days sooner than she was going to, and I'm not trying to be dismissive. I had a sister-in-law, passed away of COVID a year ago. And so, I mean, this stuff is real and it touches close to home. But the reality is, yeah, we have a worldwide pandemic.   Dr. Robert Glover: There's been many others in the history of this planet. There'll be many more. And as you watch the panic of peoples, people going, “This shouldn't be happening. This should be fixed right now. We shouldn't have to do this. We shouldn't have to wear masks. We shouldn't have to get vaccinated. We shouldn't have…” And I'm not trying to make a political point of anything about it other than it is still wired into our emotional operating system, life shouldn't be difficult, life shouldn't be hard. And even going back to Scott Peck, first paragraph of the book, The Road Less Travelled, goes something like this, life is difficult. And he says this is a truth. This is an important truth. One of the greatest truths, because once we accept that life is difficult, life ceases to be difficult because we're not fighting against it.   “We need to accept that life is going to be difficult, that life is going to be challenging. And I love the serenity prayer of the 12 Step Programme. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” There are things we can influence, there are things we have no power or control over, those are the things we learned to accept, surrender into and quit fighting.” – Dr. Robert Glover  · [43:49]    Dr. Robert Glover: I mean, he ripped off the Buddha for that, life is suffering and once we accept that life is suffering, we transmute it into joy. So it doesn't matter how you say it. Once we accept that life is going to be difficult, life is going to be challenging. And I love of the serenity prayer of the 12 Step Programme. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. There are things we can influence, there are things we have no power or control over. Those are the things we learned to accept, surrender into and quit fighting.   “If we can use life's difficulties and challenges, the losses, the setbacks, the disappointments, and embrace them as just part of our powerful, personal growth machine to grow us up and help us live in reality, that's how we begin to learn to surrender and embrace the things we can't change, that we can't control, that we wish weren't happening.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [44:39]   Dr. Robert Glover: I can now sleep through the loud music from the bar till two in the morning. I mean, earplugs help, but I quit getting worked up about it now. It is what it is, and if I'm not worked up about it, I go to sleep. If I get I'll resentful and worked up about it keeps me awake all night long. And if we can use life's difficulties and challenges, the losses, the setbacks, the disappointments, and embrace them as just part of our powerful, personal growth machine to grow us up and help us live in reality, that's how we begin to learn to surrender and embrace the things we can't change, that we can't control, that we wish weren't happening.   Will Barron: Robert, have you read the book… And I apologise for the audience about the language now, but The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck.   Dr. Robert Glover: Yeah. I was really sick four years ago. I had a tumour blocking my small intestine come to find out, but nobody could find it. And so I was sick for three plus months, lost over 30 pounds, went to doctors in Mexico, America, nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. That was one of the talk about things like this should not be happening to of me, that was one of the most challenging things in my life, to not be able to eat, to not be able to use the restroom, to be fatigued all the time, to lose over 30 pounds, to not know what was wrong, to know is this killing me? Am I just going to live with this forever? Is somebody going to find an answer to it? Man, I did a lot of surrendering, a lot of it accepting.   Dr. Robert Glover: But during that time, not only I take a lot of naps, I did a lot of reading. And people that asked me, “Robert, do you know Mark Manson? He mentions you in his book Models.” Which was the first book that he wrote. And I said, “Yeah, we've actually had an email exchange or two, but I don't know him personally.” But I'd never actually read at the book Models. And then of course Mark wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. So during that time when I was dying, I read both of the books and I love his approach and finally found out in Models where he mentions me is in the epilogue, the very end of the book. He says that No More Mr. Nice Guy is probably the best book for men's emotional development out there. And I go, “Thank you, Mark.”   Dr. Robert Glover: And then when he got famous with The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck, and then people probably went back and read Models, that probably sold a lot of books for me. So I'm very grateful for Mark Manson. So yeah, his approach that yeah, we often give too many fucks about too many things that either aren't that important or that we don't have control over, it's another way of saying the serenity prayer. If I can do something about it, let me do it. If I can't, giving too many fucks about it doesn't serve me.   Will Barron: Yeah. I love it. So I didn't know that, your story there, but it's amazing to see the feedback loop of content and insights that goes back around. Right? Because I was with Mark on the show maybe like two years ago I had him on the Salesman Podcast and I'd read the book, but I don't think it sunk in, right? I had a chat with him, really nice guy. I had a good chat. We ended up talking nothing to do with the book. We were just chatting all kinds of stuff. Right? Well, I revisited the book maybe about a month ago. Really enjoyed it even more so second time round. And just as you were saying then, this idea of, with this third covert contract of, if I do everything right, I'm going to have a smooth and simple life, Mark's idea of, well, you're going to give a fuck about something.   The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck · [47:54]   Will Barron: And there's only so many fucks that you can give. So if you choose to give a fuck about things that are more useful and empowering to you, not having a simple, smooth, pleasant, Disney life is less of an issue because you just not focused on that and you can focus on something that's more valuable and fulfilling is a bit of a woo woo word, right? But there's an element of that we want to cultivate in our lives. And heck, if you've got dogs barking one day, but you get to live in Mexico and you got a pool the next day, give a fuck about that rather than the dogs and net you're going to win. Right?   Dr. Robert Glover: Yeah. We'll talk about woo woo for a minute. I've been practising gratitude for 20 plus years, where I just started just daily, just thinking of things for which I felt grateful. And I wake up every morning and just say thank you and feel grateful for a good night's sleep, for a comfortable bed, for the woman I wake up next to every morning, for air conditioning, for my pit bull Nala, for my health, just that I get to do stuff like this. I mean, I love my life, and having that as they say, and again, 12 Step Programme, the attitude of gratitude, yeah. Life is difficult. Life is suffering. Life is challenging. Life has like Mike Tyson says, everybody has a plan till you get hit in the face.   Dr. Robert Glover: We get hit in the face and it shatters our plan and we panic. But what if we could even be grateful for those punches in the mouth, for the being pummelling upside the side of our head? What if we begin to see loss, getting fired, losing a customer, losing a contract, getting sick? What if we started developing gratitude for those things and seeing the blessing and the gift and the lessons and the growth? And I mean, how many people listening to this, years back, struggled with something really difficult, really painful. And they were thinking the whole time, “I wish this wasn't happening to me. Why is this happening to me?” It might have been the loss of a relationship, breakup, it might have been a loss of a job.   Dr. Robert Glover: It might have been a personal illness, a loss of a loved one, a financial crisis. And they're going, “Why do I have to deal with this right now? This is difficult. I don't want to be here. This wasn't my plan.” When I was divorced in my late forties and went through some real big struggles. And as I approached 50, I thought about writing a book called Not Where I Thought I'd Be At 50. And I am glad for every one of those struggles I went through at that time in my life, because they've all helped give me a direction and a foundation and a mindset that's created the life I live right now, which I absolutely love. I love. And even like that near death experience four years ago, what a blessing it was, it rearranged.   Dr. Robert Glover: I mean, when I came out of surgery and woke up and first thing I woke up, I thought I'm alive, that was a plus. And then, but I also, it just hit me and I'm back. My mind was clear. I mean, I'm still under anaesthesia but I thought, “I'm back.” I don't have this fog, this thing I've been having for several months. I laid in my hospital bed that night and reorganised my business, how it's going to approach it, how I was going to just reorganise how I was going.   Dr. Robert Glover: Most people are retiring at my age. It's like, I'm on fire because I almost died. Right? And it is those experiences, instead of saying, “Why is this happening to me?” We can say, “What can I learn from this? How is this going to take me down?” And your listeners probably have all had an experience that they did not enjoy going through and now they're grateful that they did because of the way it pointed them in a new direction, gave them clarity, gave them skills, gave them empathy from being able to relate to other people better and therefore be more effective sales person.   Will Barron: For sure. So-   “If we can accept life being difficult, life ceases to be so difficult.” – Dr. Robert Glover · [52:10]    Dr. Robert Glover: Yeah. If we can accept life being difficult, life ceases to be so difficult.   Will Barron: I've never had a near death experience, but I've had plenty of crappy experiences right, on a few steps down from that. And what I find interesting is some of those tough times as crappy experiences, I now look back at them and it's hilarious. It's like it's a source of humans look back and go, “How stupid was I to do that?” Or remember this when this happened. And it was a pain in the ass. The boiler broken or I had a leak in the office and we had this and this, you look back and laugh about at all. And if you hadn't have gone through some tough times, you also don't the dynamics of the good times as well. There's no counter balance to them. And so they don't perhaps impact as much.   Parting Thoughts · [53:17]   Will Barron: Well with that Robert, I'm conscious of timing, because you said before we click record, that we're probably going to speak for longer than what we plan to. We've already done it. And I'll rub the things in me because if we start on another train of thought, we're going to be speaking for another 45 minutes, which I'd be more than happy to, but I'm conscious of your time there mate. Tell us with that then where we can find out more about you, the training that you do online and the workshops and that and the online university. And then tell us a little bit about the books as well, in particular, No More Mr. Nice Guy is we've touched on that a bunch in this episode.   Dr. Robert Glover: Sure. Yeah. Just I'm at drglover.com, D-R-G-L-O-V-E-R.com. If they Google Robert Glover, if they Google No More Mr. Nice Guy, I've got the top 10 spaces on both those pages, even beat out Alice Cooper's No More Mr. Nice Guy. So just go to drglover.com and it talks about my workshops, my seminars, my online university. I teach one online class. It's actually coming up. I don't know how if people are going to be listening to this in real time, but coming up soon called Nice Guys Don't Finish Last, They Rot In Middle Management, and this is the first online class I developed almost 20 years ago, and it's been popular ever since. And it applies the nice guy principles too, having the success we want in working career.   Dr. Robert Glover: So yeah, drglover.com and the books on Amazon and No More Mr. Nice Guy is my first book for anybody out there who are single. Second book is Dating Essentials For Men. Most recent book is Dating Essentials For Men, frequently asked questions. And what's interesting is my books on dating are actually really great for people in relationship and people in business because the skills I teach men in terms of dating, how to interact and get what they want, are actually great sales and marketing skills.   Dr. Robert Glover: I teach testing for interest, something that I call testing for interest. And I tell dating guys, this is the basis of all sales. And I teach the assumptive close, the man talking to a woman. Take out your phones. It's like, oh yeah, of course you're going to give me your number. You already start putting it in your phone before, you don't just go, “Can I have your number? Would you want to go out with me sometime?” And so the assumptive close is a powerful for sales tool. So yeah, that's me. So then you go to drglover.com and you'll find a link to everything,   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well, I'll link to all of that in the show note this episode over at salesman.org as well. And with that, Robert, I appreciate your time. I appreciate the insights. I appreciate you going through some trials and tribulations ups and downs and pains in your life so you can help support us young guns, right? With your knowledge and insights. I appreciate that mate. And I want to thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Dr. Robert Glover: Well, thanks for invitation.  

The absolute best way to excel in sales is by following a proven system that delivers consistently great results. And today, I’m breaking down the ONLY sales system you need to know to be a roaring success in this industry. In fact, it’s the same system we’ve used to help well over 2,000 sales professionals maximize their on-the-job effectiveness, blow past their previous income goals, and achieve real, lasting sales success. The System Let’s start with a question… When’s the last time you were sitting at your desk, wondering “What do I do now?” Now don’t misunderstand me here—sales is busy. Busy as all hell in fact. You’ve got product demos, client questions, cold outreach, quotas—and on top of it all, a sales manager breathing down your neck. But all this stress and business, it doesn’t really mean you’re productive. You feel busy, sure. But when people don’t have a proven sales system to follow, they tend to… flail. Less gets done around the office. Opportunities go overlooked. And unmet quotas fly by month after month with little improvement. You’re still stressed, of course. But even still, you aren’t able to make any real, lasting progress. And those feelings of stagnation, of plateauing, are the first signs of burnout. Mental health advocate and Founder of UNCrushed Time Clarke once told me in an interview, “I do research around a survey with B2B sales professionals, and of those, 67% of the respondents strongly agreed that they are currently close to burnout or experiencing burnout.” 67% of sales reps feel this way! And the problem in most cases is not having a cohesive system for driving consistent results and becoming a better, more effective salesperson. It’s this problem in particular that we’ve solved for over 2,000 reps with our Selling Made Simple system. And it’s this proven system I’m covering in this video. Now, let’s get into the ONLY sales system you’ll ever need to know. Like I said, this is the exact system we cover in the Selling Made Simply training. And it’s made up of four equally important steps… 1: Understand Your Market First up is understanding your market. Before you can even hope to close a sale, you have to know who you’re selling to. And that means understanding three things in particular.  A) Honing Your Value Proposition First is getting intimately familiar with your value proposition and tailoring it to your ideal buyer. What are the unique problems your prospects are facing? What solutions have they already tried to solve those problems? The more you understand about your customer, the better position you’ll be in to cater your value proposition to their distinct needs.  B) Understanding Your Buyer’s Journey Next up is understanding your buyer’s journey. Prospects move through very specific steps on their way to buying your product. From awareness and consideration to purchase and re-purchase. Guiding prospects through each of these steps effectively means knowing what information to deliver and when to deliver it.  C) Nailing Down the Numbers Finally, there’s playing the numbers game. How many prospects do you have to reach out to in order to book a single discovery call? How many of those turn into a qualified lead? And how many of those are going to actually become a buyer? Sales is, in fact, a numbers game. And the better you get at tracking and playing to those numbers, the better you’ll become at meeting goals and closing deals consistently. The next step in this sales system is getting in front of your buyers. 2: Get In Front of Buyers Getting in front of buyers. Sales don’t happen in a vacuum. Buyers are busy. And to close deals, you need to do the hard work to connect with prospects regularly and strategically. For most reps, that means reaching out in three different ways: A) Cold Email First is cold email. Email has a potential ROI of 44:1—that’s 4,400%! The trick is understanding how to wield this outreach method effectively. Subject lines, send times, body copy, value-adds—they’re all vital for cold emails that get responses from hot prospects. So do your homework before hitting “Send”! B) Cold Calling Then there’s cold calling. I know—the bane of every sales rep’s existence, right? But you don’t have to be fearful of cold calling. With the right game plan and the right intentions, you can turn awkward calls into value-adding conversations.  C) Social Selling LinkedIn in particular is one of the best social platforms to demonstrate your knowledge, build a following, and connect with potential leads. Effective social selling isn’t just a powerful supplement to cold emailing and cold calling either. Instead, it actually lets you generate leads while you sleep. Now, for each of these outreach methods, you also need to develop strategic sales cadences. D) Sales Cadences Cadences are sequences of touchpoints you make with prospects. When to make them. How to make them. And what to say at each touchpoint. Think of it like an outreach roadmap—all you have to do is follow it. A strategically sound cadence doesn’t just boost your chances of success. It also takes all the time-consuming guesswork out of your processes, saving you time and skyrocketing your earning potential. 3: Communicate the Value The most flawless outreach won’t do squat if you can’t communicate the value of your product. And to do so, you need to: A) Diagnose & Discovery Master diagnosis and discovery. This is the stage of the sales process where you identify the underlying problem your prospect is struggling with and determine if your product can actually help. Proper lead qualification on discovery calls does more than just save you time. It also lets you demonstrate your authority, build rapport, and drives enthusiasm from the buyer.  B) Demo, Upsell, & Takeover Mastering the demo, upsell, and takeover. These are each three essential steps for becoming a more successful sales rep. A demo is your chance to showcase how your product really works. And with the right technique, you can create a demo that not only educates and entices prospects, but also drives them to a purchase decision faster. Mastering the upsell lets you win more business from your current buyers. And with proper upselling, you can earn more commissions for less work. Then there’s the takeover. With the right strategy and technique, you can convert even the most loyal competitor accounts into enthusiastic buyers. Admittedly, it can take some work. But the rewards are well worth it. Finally, there’s closing. C) Closing  Closing. Funny enough, if you’ve implemented all the previous steps correctly up till this point, closing isn’t actually that difficult. Your prospects should be primed and pumped to work with you. They should fully understand your product and its benefits. And the only question left should be, “Where do I sign?” That being said, there are a few techniques you can use to clinch the deal even more. Like the Selling Made Simple 2-question closing framework that takes sales rejection out of the equation entirely. Now, the fourth and final step in the sales system is… 4: Cultivate the Right Mindset Now, this is a HUGE topic by itself. And there have been countless books, lectures, and seminars on sales mindset alone. But suffice to say that mindset is the foundation for each of the three previous steps. Do you have the discipline to study and understand your market? The strategy to get in front of buyers? And the assertiveness to communicate the value and close the deal? A lot goes into cultivating that mindset. Summary Well that about wraps it up for the ONLY sales system you’ll ever need. Remember, crushing it as a sales professional takes: Understanding Your Market Getting in Front of Buyers Communicating the Value Cultivating the Right Mindset If you can do that, you’ll be well on your way to selling more, earning more, and, most importantly, achieving professional success you never thought possible.

In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Andy Whyte explains what salespeople commonly get wrong about sales qualification. Andy is the founder of MEDDICC.com and the author of “MEDDICC’ the book. 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 - Andy Whyte Author of MEDDICC Resources: Andy on LinkedIn The MEDDPICC Masterclass MEDDIC Academy on YouTube Book: MEDDICC: The ultimate guide to staying one step ahead in the complex sale Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to today's episode of the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode we're looking at what salespeople get wrong about sales qualification. Our guest is Andy Whyte. Andy is the founder of medic.com and author of MEDDICC the book. Andy has been on the show before. He's a legend. I'm excited to speak with you. Andy, welcome back to the show.   Andy Whyte: I thank you so so much. Well, it's great to be back on the show once again. I had so much great feedback from people who were your audience from last time. So it was a joy to be invited back on. Thank you very much.   What is Sales Qualification? · [00:36]    Will Barron: You are more than welcome. I'm glad to hear that feedback. So let's not mess around. Give us, if you can, a definition, a one line of what sales qualification is. The audience should know this, but just in case they don't and then we're going to get into what people are getting wrong in this space.   “For me, qualification is about identifying with your prospect, with your prospective customer whether there is enough value that you can provide to them, whether they have enough pain or goals they're striving to achieve that your solution can help them to achieve. If the value in that is large enough for it to be worth your while and their while, that is for me what qualification is all about.” – Andy Whyte · [00:57]    Andy Whyte: It's a big question because I think as you kind of hinted there, people get this wrong a lot and I think there's a few reasons for that, which we can definitely get into. But for me what qualification is, is about identifying with your prospect, with your prospective customer whether there is enough value that you can provide to them, whether they have enough pain or goals they're striving to achieve that your solution can help them to achieve.   Andy Whyte: If the value in that is large enough for it to be worth your while and there while because we're asking them to invest their time, their energy, their expertise, just as much as we're asking ourselves to invest with them, is there enough value in that to make it worth my while and the customer's world? That is for me what qualification is all about.   “Sales, when done correctly, should be in exchange of value between a salesperson and a buyer.” – Will Barron · [01:44]    Will Barron: Do you blow people's minds when you frame it up that, Andy, of sales went done correctly should be in exchange of value between a salesperson and a buyer, right? It should be an adult conversation. And if we're in a position where we've got to suck up to potential customers as salespeople we ever sell in a crappy product, we've approached the conversation the wrong way from the outset or they're just not qualified. Do you find the people go like a light bulb clicks on when you frame it up that we're exchanging value and solving a pain as opposed to just talking to features and benefits?   Andy Whyte: Yeah. I do. But I think it's one of those things that seems very obvious when you say it, but when people are actually in the moment it's less visible to them for them to see it. And if you think about what you just described there as a sort of the negative approach that we have in our industry, where we frequently have where we are almost apologetic for being salespeople, when we approach sales with that mindset of thank you very much for your time, it's a great pleasure to meet you, I'll be very, very brief or get into it, all that kind of mindset, but that reverberates with the customer and then they therefore perceive you that way.   “When you engage with a customer almost apologetically, they straight away subconsciously or consciously sort of lower their perception of the value that you are going to bring to the table. Because the opposite of that is if you go into a conversation and you stand firm, you stand tall because you know your solution has tremendous value to offer, then you are going to make the customer feel like, wow, this person is really here to talk value.” – Andy Whyte · [03:02]    Andy Whyte: So even if they were like, great, I'm really excited to meet Will today. I've heard great things about his company. My friend actually has worked with Will before. You may not know this. And so when you engage with the customer that way almost apologetic, they straight away sort of in subconsciously or consciously sort of lower their perception of the value that you are going to bring to the table because the opposite to that is if you go into a conversation and you stand firm, you stand tall because you know your solution has tremendous value to offer.   Andy Whyte: You shouldn't be working for the company you're working for if you don't genuinely believe that. And so you go into the conversation with a mindset of, I have tremendous value to offer this customer. I think, I mean, I've still got to qualify this, but based on my product market fit in the sector based on the references I have, based on the great feedback I have from my customers, now I have genuine values off this customer. So I'm going to engage based on that confidence.   Andy Whyte: And here's the really good bit is if that customer doesn't see that, then I want to also give the impression of, well, if you are not prepared to end to into, as you said very eloquently, a value exchange with me then I've got 10 other customers queuing up to talk to me because my solution is that good. That is all in a mindset for me. And I think that's very, very important, but it's also very infectious.   Andy Whyte: If you go into conversations that way then you are going to make the customer feel like, wow, this person is really here to talk value. They're really here to talk business. I believe that they must have some value to offer me. And so it's sort of almost like a fork in the road and you can go down to one way of being apologetic being very, very confident.   Will Barron: I think the clichéd way to frame this up is perhaps you go into the conversation as a consultant and it's a consultative sound. We've all heard this, but it doesn't really mean anything. And I've found this that's not necessarily the most practical way to look at it. Something that I teach over at some municipal academy and something that I do literally on calls every single day is I will start the conversation, do a bit of small talk, 10, 20 seconds then I'll use this line.   Will Barron: Hey, this is how this call usually goes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then explain how these calls usually go. And you typically get most people go, great. And then they fall into the conversation and the questions that you want to ask. Sometimes people go, oh, I don't care. I just want to ask about this or just tell me your pricing, or I'm ready to go in which case I'll go, oh, great. Well, the way that these calls usually go is that we go blah, blah, blah and go through it again.   Will Barron: And I find that's a real practical way of implementing this, I guess, strategic consultative approach to sales calls specifically. It's more difficult to do that over an email. It's very easy to do that in person. But I like to frame it up that you want to be the doctor. And we'll go through this with qualification in a second. You sit there, you're not judgmental, you're asking intelligent questions, you're hopefully making the prospect think a layer deeper than what they have done in the past as you do question them, and they're hopefully getting value from the conversation because you're perhaps uncovering what their real needs are.   The Consultative Selling Approach · [05:58]   Will Barron: You're uncovering they think they want this solution, but you know with your insights that there's a better solution in the market for them. It may be with your company. It may be with another company, but when you go into a conversation using that line, hey, this is the way these calls usually go and then you dive into outlining what the call goes like and then you frame it up in your own mind that you're a doctor, you're here to understand the patient and then prescribe them a solution, I find that that really gets that consultative approach really practically nailed on people's heads.   Andy Whyte: Yeah. I love the way you said that and I'll probably be stealing your line there a little bit actually. Well, I like it a lot. Don't you think it's funny or don't you find that I think everybody understands what you said there about the consultative approach? I think we buy into that. I think in our industry we understand the value, for want of a better word, of the consultative approach. But we also I think where we get it wrong in our industry is we disassociate being the consultative approach from selling.   Andy Whyte: And what I mean by that and the best way I can articulate this is if you think of a typical LinkedIn salesperson's title these days, if they're not calling themselves an account executive or whatever their actual job role on their job description is, they tend to sort of come up with titles that try to give the illusion that they're a consultant rather than a salesperson. And they're not doing that from the basis of I'm here to be a consultative approach, or maybe they are a little bit, but they're trying to disassociate themselves from sales.   Andy Whyte: And I always think that's funny because I always laugh because I think, well, what's going to happen? You're going to get into what is in my industry of technology sales an average sort of anything like a three to a six month average sales cycle. You're going to get sort of five, six months in and sort just sneaky slide an order form across the desk and the customer picks up and goes, what? You're a salesperson. I thought you were here to give me some free consulting. Well, you got me, so I better sign sort of thing.   Andy Whyte: It's staffed. Whereas the best salespeople, I'm sure if people reflect for a second the best salesperson they've ever worked with. And then if you stop thinking about yourself because salespeople we always think we are the best salespeople ever. So then maybe the second best salesperson you've ever worked with what you'll find with that person it's a lot of behaviours in my opinion and when I talk to people about this, which are things they're the first person to say they're a salesperson.   Andy Whyte: They're the first person to kind of qualify out if they don't think the opportunity is there for them. And so there's a real correlation in my experience about the very best salespeople who are the ones that orientate closest to being salespeople and approaching their job as a salesperson.   Will Barron: I think it's simple than that, Andy. I think this is just a big gap between used car salespeople that we don't want to be associated with and obviously there's some great used car salespeople what's the stereotype but we're going to lean into the stereotype because it makes us feel good in this scenario and then there's actual salespeople. So me who sells medical devices could not go to a surgeon and use weird used car salesperson close ended closing questions and things like that because they're just say get out the operating room, never come back and that's it.   Will Barron: You've just lost a multimillion pound account. Even with, I don't typically sell the one on one training that we do salesman.org anymore, but I do most of the kind of 10 to 100 seat enterprise and large business deals and training that we do. Even with those individuals, a lot of them listen to the podcast. They tune into our concept. They're a fan of me in the training. They're already halfway there to get the deal done. It's just some of the kind of steps of MEDDICC and MEDDPICC of the logistics and things that we need to get sorted to make the deal happen and to qualify them on the call.   Will Barron: Even those people, I can't use all this weird old school sales on them because they're just going to hang up the phone and be like, that dude was two-faced. He said one thing on the podcast and then tried to do another thing with me.   Will Barron: I think it's as simple as Andy, you've got actual sales, which is what we're talking about here, which is understanding your marketplace, getting in front of the right people, doing a qualifying discovery call, understanding where the buy is, where they want to be, maybe stretching that out a little bit and adding a layer of emotion and really emphasising the pain and helping them understand that the pain they're in, getting them through the blockers, wherever that be the status quo, the risk of change, things like that, and getting them from one side to the other.   Stepping Into The Acceptable Sales Landscape · [10:33]    Will Barron: That's what sales is. But that word sales is on the gulf of the kind of sales landscape is someone selling used cars or someone selling TVs in PC world. And I think the same word as you to describe two totally different industries and hopefully our audience right now are in the kind of the far side, the large deal size enterprise, medium size company, that side of things. So is that fair to say?   Andy Whyte: Yeah. I think that's very fair to say. As a former double glazing salesman I have to defend my peers in that industry and say that some of the best lessons I ever learned in sales that I still use today will learn double glazing selling, honestly. And people are probably wondering what those things are. If I expand on what those things, what they are, it's very similar to how when I look at some of the most successful salespeople I've ever hired have been, they've been former recruiters.   Andy Whyte: And I think there's a lot to be said for the craft of sales, but there's also a lot to be said for the graft of sales. And I think that those types of industries where they really make you learn very early on that there's a lot of art to sales, but there's also a lot of the numbers game involved as well. And so I have a certain fondness for people operating at the sort of the less respected end of sales.   Andy Whyte: And as someone that really struggled to get into B2B sales from that world I would implore anyone that meets somebody who's in that world and you're thinking about hiring them and you're looking at all their characteristics and you're thinking this seems like a really high potential person, but I'm a bit put off because they don't have that experience of B2B. I know we're digressing here, but I'll say take a chance on that person.   Will Barron: Well, I think that's easily solved of, Andy, if you got a call with me in a job interview, you're obviously not an idiot. You're obviously not, again, the stereotype that was leaning into there. And so if you've got the traits of someone who's willing to put in the work, who understands the numbers, who isn't fearful of rejection, you've done the hard bit. That's all the mental game.   “Anyone can read a book, anyone can memorise some stuff, but if you're not the person who can implement it, then it's all for waste.” – Will Barron · [13:13]    Will Barron: That's becoming the person who can implement all of the modern tactics and what we're going to talk about in a second, Medic, all the modern tactics and frameworks and procedures of a successful B2B salesperson. The hardest bit is becoming the person who can do the job. Anyone can read a book, anyone can memorise some stuff, but if you're not the person who can implement it, then it's all for waste.   Andy Whyte: Yes. I agree with that spot on   The Things Salespeople Get Wrong About Qualification · [13:22]    Will Barron: Okay. Let's bring things back to the premise of the show because we've digressed and that's great. We can digress some more in a second, but what do salespeople get wrong about sales qualification? It's the one or two things, Andy, that people you see just getting wrong over and over and time and time again.   Andy Whyte: Yeah. I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I think it comes down to this. If I said the right way of qualifying is to identify if there's value for the customer and for ourselves that is there that it's worth exploring, another way of putting it. I think the way that people get qualification wrong is they approach the opportunity based on the perspective of, is there an opportunity here for me? Is there a deal here for me? And if you think about kind of traditional qualification framework, something like BANT, for example, which I'm not going to criticise BANT, it has a place.   Andy Whyte: I wouldn't say you could have it broadly as your qualification framework, but if you think about how that works, you approach a customer and you say, hey, do you have budget? Do you have authority? Do you need what I'm selling and do you know the timing in which you're going to buy it? And if you think about that and if you think back a decade ago, two decades ago, there wasn't that much on offer to customers, particularly in my space of technology sales.   Andy Whyte: You kind of just had a few different pillars, if you like. You had ERP, which actually covered probably five or six different categories that have broken out of it. You have CRM, you didn't even necessarily have marketing software. So generally what was happening when a customer approached you, they a good understanding of whether they needed what you're selling or not. Nowadays I think there's something 10,000 marketing technology companies. There's something like 1,000 new SaaS companies a week.   Andy Whyte: And so the chances of when you approach the customer them really understanding whether they need your solution and therefore whether they even have budget for it or the authority to buy it is quite unlikely. You are narrowing yourself in with that approach for people that are very, very well informed of which, of course, there are customers out there that do approach you well informed, but that's the RFP track. That's the inbound track. And we know in sales now so much revenue is driven out bound.   Andy Whyte: So much revenue is driven by ingenuity at the top of the funnel, whether it be an SDR, BDR, doing something wonderful to capture somebody's attention who's had 10 other people try to get their attention that day. Whether it's somebody boldly approaching someone an event, or whether it's a marketing team with a brilliant campaign, whatever it is, those things, those little sparks of ingenuity that we need now to get the attention of our prospects in so many cases.   “Giving medicine without diagnosis in healthcare is malpractice. But we so often do that in sales when we approach the customer who doesn't probably know much about what we do and saying, “Do you need what we do?” And their answer is either no or they're going to not fully understand your full value and you're not going to get into a really good conversation based on that.” – Andy Whyte · [16:51]   Andy Whyte: If we then take that spark of ingenuity and then say, hey, we caught your interest with something we do, it might have even been a strap line, it might have been a screenshot of a dashboard, if we then go, do you need that and have you got the budget for that? Then we're not going to get a very positive outcome, I don't think. And if we do we haven't even got to what the problem is. And I think you talked about the medical industry and that kind of classic line that we all know and love in sales, which is giving medicine without diagnosis in healthcare is malpractice.   Andy Whyte: But we so often do that in sales when we approach solution first and that's kind of what we are doing when we qualify on that basis. We're approaching the customer who doesn't probably know much about what we do and saying, do you need what we do? And their answers is either no or they're going to not fully understand your full value and you're not going to get into a really good conversation based on that.   The Primary Role the Salesman of the Future Will Play · [17:17]    Will Barron: Is this a lack of understanding our buyers' journeys in that if we are replying to RFPs, well, we've probably already lost a deal because a salesperson has probably helped the buyer create the RFP and that buyer is going to be informed. They've done their own research. We all know these statistics that the salespeople are getting involved further and further back in the buying journey.   Will Barron: Maybe bounce more appropriate in that kind of environment as you kind of outline, going back to Medic, is this more appropriate when we are proactively trying to spark and help the buyer understand the pain point that they may have so we're not reliant on them having gone through tonnes of content, tonnes of conversations with other salespeople before they get to us? We're not necessarily engineering the pain, but highlighting the pain, which is the role of a consultant, which ties us back to the beginning of the conversation. Is that where we should be going with this so that we can then educate the buyer through their buying journey?   Will Barron: We have our own content, we have our own conversations, we have our own insights. So then obviously the far side of this, the far more likely to sanity of course than our competitor. Is that the future of all of this, of lead generation to a buyer? Hey, well, if you discover this problem yourself, you're going to do all this research, you're going to come out of it maybe with a solution one side, but give me five minutes now. I'll see if you've got the problem, I'll see if we can help and I'll guide you through the process towards the end of the sale and in a consultative role instead. Is that what the future of this looks like?   Andy Whyte: Yeah. I think it comes back to a number of things that we know are really, really important. And we all buy into things like the challenge yourself, for example, of kind of thought leadership and it is said a lot that customers are much, much more informed these days than they were because of analysts, because of reviews sites, because of peer reviews, because of better websites, better mediums like YouTube for finding things out. And I think that's all fair, but I do think it does miss out on the big, big, big opportunity that is there, that elite salespeople I see regularly grab hold of.   Andy Whyte: This is the kind of thing that those elite salespeople will hate me for saying. It's one of those things that's dead obvious though. So I think that people probably should use it more, but it's the idea of influencing the customer towards your strengths of your solution. And in a MEDDPICC context, this full into the decision criteria and typically people when they think of the decision criteria, they think about it in a manner of approaching the customer and understanding what the criteria is in which they're going to base their decision.   Andy Whyte: And so that's fine if it's an RFP and they've put a lot of thought or hired an analyst or a consultant to build the RFP for them in a good situation. Like you said earlier, often it's written by your competitor. It's fine if they've already got this really sort of well set out decision criteria to try and adapt your solution to suit that. Of course, you're still going to want to try and influence it towards your strengths as well.   “What elite salespeople do differently is they approach every single conversation with a very clear set of decision criteria that they want to influence the customer towards. So there'll be things that they know that their solution does differently or better than the alternatives on the market and they'll be trying to influence the customer to understand the value of needing those things.” – Andy Whyte · [20:32]    Andy Whyte: But what that really misses out on is the huge opportunity that exists to be seen as a thought leader, your customer and what elite salespeople do is they will approach every single conversation with a very clear set of decision criteria that they want to influence the customer towards. So there'll be things that they know that their solution does differently or better than the alternatives on the market and they'll be trying to influence the customer to understand the value of needing those things.   Andy Whyte: So it therefore becomes part of the customer's decision criteria and therefore they've differentiated their solution and they're kind of almost put it onto the requirements without even almost the customer realising that it's unique to them. That sets them up beautifully for defending and differentiating themselves further on in the sales cycle where other competitors come in and try and say they do the same thing. The customer can ask, well, do you do it like this? And hopefully if you set it up properly the customers should really understand the value and how you do it differently or better.   Andy Whyte: I'll give you an example of where this happened for me recently. I was looking to hire a particular company a vendor to do something for me. And in the very first conversation the first vendor we spoke to said, oh, from everything you've told us you really should have this thing, three letter acronym thing. And I was like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. I knew about it, but I hadn't considered it for this project. And so all of a sudden from that point on they did a great job of explaining why it was valuable to me.   Andy Whyte: I was like, yes, I absolutely need that thing. Every single vendor I met thereafter, I didn't even mention it to them that I was looking for that thing unless I really liked them and I wanted to give them the chance to show that they could do it because I felt if I go and say, hey, do you do this three letter acronym thing everyone go, oh, we do that. So I was almost holding it back and keeping it to myself. It's almost like a test for the vendor I was going to pick. And it turned out that I didn't pick the first vendor, but I would've picked them.   Andy Whyte: It was just that their model was not right, but if everything else would've been right with them they would've won that deal, hands down, no question about it even if others could do what they said as well as them because they were the ones that planted the seed. They were ones that maybe think they're really, really thinking ahead on this stuff. And I think that's a really big thing. We're trying to buy some community software right now and every company website we go on has the buyer's guide, the RFP primer, the comparison site, the 10 things you need to consider buying community software, all that sort of stuff.   Andy Whyte: And we've had to build a spreadsheet of decision criteria, things that we think we need and there's a few things on there that the companies have done well where they've kind of differentiated themselves and they've kind of put themselves strongly early on, but to your point, this is all happening before I've actually spoke to a salesperson.   Andy Whyte: Now, if I actually got onto the phone to one of these people and they really understood what we were trying to do early on and then were able to sort of influence me then I am so easy. I don't know if it's just me, whether it's a salesperson thing, but I feel like I'm very easy to sell to if you kind of understand my needs and adapt your solution to fit it.   Will Barron: I do this all of the time, Andy, and I'll just be straight about it. We just want to deal over Sandler. And what we do different over at salesmans.org and our training programme is online training programme, it's killing, it's great and it's been updated. I think it's Version 4 or 5 now that we're on and it's effective. But what I found, this is just before Christmas we started experimenting with this, is that if I just jump on at least one call with everyone who signs up, just having done now hundreds and thousands of these calls and all these podcast apps, I'm pretty good.   Will Barron: I'm not a genius or anything, just pattern recognition. I'm pretty good at spotting the 10%, 20% of things that typically make 89% of the difference. So I can say, hey, you're just sending this one crappy email. Why is that email going out? Stop doing that. And immediately everything else improved later on down the sales cycle. Whatever it is, there's multiple things. You'd be able to do this as well duping on these consulting calls. So I really emphasise when we're selling against competitors, whoever that be.   Will Barron: And we are the kind of baby in the room versus the beasts of Sandler and challenges sale by Gartner and all these large organisations, corporate organisations. They're all great companies and I've had people from all of these organisations on the podcast in the past. So it's a pleasure to compete against them, but I always double down on this idea that you're going to get me on an hour call, depending on what type of training package you sign up for your team and I'll sit there and listen to them and give them noble share outside perspective insights on what they're doing.   Will Barron: Now, maybe consultants do this, small businesses individuals who do sales training, but no large corporate that I'm aware of does this. They'll do a group class or they'll do a mixture of one thing or another, but you're just getting some random sales trainer. You're not getting the person that you're speaking to, the person that you're consuming the content of. I said, we just won this deal against Sandler, is 100 odd seats, pretty good deal for us, nice kind of large deal size for our organisation.   Will Barron: It might be like a pile sales. It might be pile number of seats for their organisation. I have no idea, but nice little deal for us this month. On the back of they're like, well, can you do some one-on-ones because that's what salesman.org are going to do and they just refused to include it no matter what the price. So we charged way more than what they did, but I influenced the customer and rightly so in that these one-on-one sessions, quick 45 minute call has tremendous value and they bought into that idea. They're going to see the benefits of it.   Selling Success Often Comes Down to Focusing on Your Strengths and Making That Your Differentiator · [26:32]    Will Barron: And that one was a deal against a larger more established company. So this is out the realm for anyone to do. You just got to source out what your strengths are, how you can implement it. And if there's any value that you as a salesperson can add on top of this as well because there's a lot of salespeople out there have a lot of insights and ability to consult and maybe a few phone calls, maybe an onboarding call or something might be valuable for your customers.   Andy Whyte: Yeah. And I bet the beautiful thing about that was, I guess it's why you were using it as an example is the one-to-one, the one-on-one, sorry, were not necessarily something you led with. It was you had identified, hang on a minute, there's something that I have in my offering that seems to be particularly important to this customer therefore I'm going to double down on those things.   Andy Whyte: And what t I'm sure you did and what really elite salespeople do in those situations when they identify they have differentiation, is they almost, well, the best case I ever see of it is they wrap the deal up where it's almost takes entirely around that thing. It's like, we're going to do some training and, of course, you're going to get that brilliant training we've talked about and all that good stuff, but for me I'm just so glad that came to work together because it sounds to me like this is the most important thing. This should be the priority one that we should really stick into.   “Unfortunately, salespeople often just skip past that bit of discovery straight into trying to talk about their solutions and miss out on all the opportunities to attach and uncover genuine value.” – Andy Whyte · [28:01]    Andy Whyte: And that, of course, it only works if it's genuine. So we're not saying for a second that we kind of try and do anything other than find what's in our offering that is genuinely most impactful, most valuable to the customer. So often we just skip past that bit of discovery straight into trying to talk about our solutions and miss out on all the opportunity to attach and uncover genuine value.   Will Barron: Yeah. And in this particular case, and this is why I love remote selling, I love Zoom. Everyone now is just happy to use Zoom or Skype rather than pushing beyond the phone. When I was chatting with this VP of marketing who got the deal signed, got the paperwork done, I could see his eyes lit up as soon as I mentioned the one-on-one sessions. I just called him out, hey, you seem to have lit up when I mentioned that.   Will Barron: And then he goes into the issues that he is had with training in the past and people not getting on top of it and training companies promising one thing and then never see them again further down the line and they'll sign up to an online call or books or in-person training and it doesn't have an effect. And I was like, great. So I'm kind of just calculating all of that and then that's the follow up email that I send. Hey, you said all of this, we solve all those problems.   Will Barron: We solve X with Y, this is why we're a good fit to get work together. Does it make sense to get the contract signed? It's dead simple, but I guess that's almost the art of some of this. The science is you've got the MEDDICC process. You're going to ask certain questions. You're going to qualify appropriately hard and not feel uncomfortable asking some of these questions that can be not awkward. If you're speaking to someone who's actually a decision maker, most people are happy to answer MEDDICC kind of questions.   Will Barron: If you're speaking to the wrong person, an end user, they're probably thinking, oh, crap, this is probably a conversation with my boss. And so they might put the guard up a little bit, but when you qualify hard, you speak to the right person, you get the right answers, you can then facilitate the whole of the rest of the sales process as well as feel comfortable putting in your own time into this because there's a decent chance of it turning out all right.   Who is the Economic Buyer and Why is it so Hard to Engage with the Economic Buyer? · [29:52]    Will Barron: So with that said, Andy, we've covered the decision criteria side of things. Are there any steps in MEDDICC that people get nervous about diving into whether it's the questions are a bit more personal, we're talking about cash now rather than just want and needs? Is there any part of the process that you find people occasionally may skip over if they're not feeling so confident that day?   Andy Whyte: Yeah. There's a couple that I think stand out here and they're very different for the reasons I think. The one that people tend to I find skip a little bit is the economic buyer. And for those that don't know, the economic buyer is the person of authority in the deal. They're generally the overall authority, they control the budget. So you could be selling to somebody who owns the budget, but above them they're the controller of the budget. So they dictate how much budget the person you're selling to gets. They're the person that could create budget, stop budget.   Andy Whyte: they have veto power. They're generally a senior person. And what I find happens a lot is that because it's hard to engage the economic buyer via nature of the fact they're a senior person, there's all these other sort of social dynamics going on in the deal which means you can't go around people or you go above people, that sort of stuff. People tend to go, it's hard. And actually there's a little bit of risk with it where I might upset the people I'm working with.   Andy Whyte: And so I'm just not going to do it. And the analogy I use here is one from customer service, which is that lovely saying of we go the extra mile, which means we do a bit more. And then there's that sort of that saying that gets built on the top of that, which is there's no traffic on the extra mile. I think engaging with the economic buyer is a bit going the extra mile. You're working a bit harder, which means that hopefully you are working harder than your competition is.   Andy Whyte: And therefore when you are on that extra mile, there's less traffic there. And so because it's hard, because it can be, I don't want to use the word dangerous because I think the only time it's ever dangerous is your deal isn't qualify properly, but because of that it means that you are likely to be the only person engaging with the economic buyer in the opportunity and the deal, which for me means you're cut above everybody else. So that's something I say there and just tips for people listening along because, again, even if you don't use MEDDPICC, it's still very important that you engage with senior people in your opportunities.   Andy Whyte: The biggest tip I can give here is the sooner the better. We've all been those people where we thought we've had a good deal and everyone around us, our supporting team has been working with us felt good about it then suddenly it's gone sideways. Something has happened. The competitors got the march on us. Some priorities have changed inside, something like that. And what tends to happen, in my experience when those deals go sideways is you have an urgent meeting goes into the calendar.   Andy Whyte: Your boss invites you and other people in and it's called a war room or something like that and everyone goes, what are we going to do? And always [inaudible 00:32:56] I will reach out to the senior person who's probably the economic buyer. And then it's too late. You are literally rolling the dice at that point where you've got nothing else left to lose. And if you've done everything else right before then, and you've engaged with them, you've kept them upstages in the project and the process and it has gone sideways then that's fair enough.   Andy Whyte: That should be a good thing to do, but it shouldn't be your first engagement with them is when things have gone wrong. So that will be my advice is to engage early and use your executive team. People worry about, oh, I don't want to upset my champion. I don't want to upset my contact coach, whoever it may be by going around them. Well, you don't have to use your… The economic buyer wants to hear from your boss more than it wants to hear from you just because of multi-level selling.   Andy Whyte: So use them and then it's not necessarily going around. It can be a very positive thing. It can be, hey, there, Mr. and Mrs. economic buyer, my name is Will. I lead the team here for salesman.org in Europe. I heard that Andy and a couple of people in our team are working with Stephanie and Steve and your team and all I keep hearing is great things about it. Sounds very, very exciting.   Andy Whyte: We're particularly excited because of how we've helped X reference company that's going to inspire the person you're talking to to know that you are legitimate and know that you are credible. And all I wanted to do was just to let you know that if this project does turn into something, then I'll be the executive sponsor for it. And I wanted to just open up this line of communication with you should you have any questions for me.   Andy Whyte: They've got a meeting next week. If it goes well, I'll let you know how it went kind of thing. And there's no ask. That's the really important thing. You're not kind of troubling them. You're not trying to get them to come to the meeting or anything like that. Just engage them. And then you've got the line of communication open then which is better than not having it open.   Will Barron: So if I'm trying to identify the economic buyer and I'm not convinced the person I'm speaking to is the decision maker, economic buyer, person with the purse strings, I will jovially be, and I almost verbatim clap as I do this on a Zoom call, I'll be like, who bank rolls this? Who's in charge? Who do we need to get on board? What are we doing? Who's got the money? And I'll just throw a bunch of stuff out like that and I'll see the other person kind of go, and the pondering. And they typically give me a pretty straightforward answer.   Will Barron: Now, I don't recommend other people necessarily do this because it takes a little bit of not that I think I'm incredibly charismatic, but I can pull it off a little bit of charisma to pull this kind of thing off. And again, a lot of people that I deal with are already familiar with me, the podcast, the content. So I've already got that little bit of trust at distance and that bit of rapport before I even get on the phone. So I'll be like, who's financing this? How has this deal been done in the past? Want to Identify the Economic Buyer? Here’s How You Do It · [35:50]    Will Barron: Deals that had been done on the past. Who do we need to get on side for this? I'll just throw that out there. Is there another way to, if someone is a bit nervous and they don't want to because it's kind of full barrel. I just did that or it can be. But people who want a more subtle approach, Andy, how would you recommend people, the audience ask essentially ask if the person they're speaking to is the economic buyer and if not, who is that person? What kind of questions would you be asking?   Andy Whyte: Yeah. I love how you said that. I think this is one of the great things about MEDDPICC as well is that it's a framework at its core. People call it methodology as well which I think is fair enough, but at its core, it's a framework. And why that's an important thing in this context is it doesn't dictate your style, how you should talk to the customer, your personality, your tone of voice, all that quite good stuff that makes you you and makes people trust you and feel that you are genuine.   Andy Whyte: So what we're saying with MEDDPICC in this case, the economic buyers, we're saying you need to engage with the person, you need to talk to this person. So what you've just done there is a wonderful, wonderful example of how you can uncover that using your style. And like you said, not everyone will have the same style as you, which is fine. And I think also you've got this wonderful thing which I didn't know existed before doing what I'm doing now, which you're selling to salespeople.   Andy Whyte: So you can almost just be like, wow, I'm going to close you now just so you know. And people are like, oh, he's doing the close. Cool. I'm going to judge you on this one kind of thing. So people are a little bit more give you an easier time of it than they would say if you're selling to an HR, director, or something.   Will Barron: You say given easier time. So these enterprise deals, these large deal size, it's usually a CRO, CMO, VP of sales. And so they're usually a bit of an asshole for the first 10 minutes until I keep going back to that question, hey, the way these calls usually go and then eventually they relent. And then at the end of the call they'd be like, oh, well, I'm just testing you. Well, see our sales team are a big fan of you, but I wanted to just see. So it goes both ways. Sometimes it's really pleasant.   Will Barron: Sometimes you have to stand up for yourself a little bit and you have to position yourself as an expert who humbly I've got expertise on these calls that some of these VP of sales no matter how long they've been selling for I've spoken to more salespeople than they have very likely. I've interviewed more people than experts in the space than what they have and so sometimes you need to lay down the low. So it can go both ways.   How to Accurately Identify the Economic Buyer · [38:01]   Andy Whyte: Spot on. Totally agree with that. Going back to the question because I appreciate I kind of digressed again, but didn't answer it. So I think if you are a person that's finding it harder or finding you don't quite know how to approach that situation of uncovering of economic buyer, you've got options. First things first is it's very unlikely you are the first person ever to sell to this company from the discipline of product that you are selling from.   Andy Whyte: So if you sell marketing technology, or if you sell different type technology, or if you're in a completely different space, there'll be peers in your industry that you know who have sold to that company and to maybe even the person you are selling to before. And for whatever reason we don't tap into this enough in sales. We just don't. And even though we will know that someone else who's maybe even a former colleague, a friend of ours has walked the path that we are trying to walk, we don't ask.   Andy Whyte: So that's one option is to say, hey, I'd call you up and say, Will, I saw on website that you guys have got a ABC as a reference on there. The customer wasn't you and goes, yes. I'm struggling. I can't quite figure out who's the economic buyer or who's the person of authority. And you would tell me or you might give me some clue. You might say, well, it was this person, but they left. Whatever happens it's definitely not Steve. Steve was where I made a mistake. I thought it was Steve. And so you get free information. That's one example that you can do.   Andy Whyte: Another thing that works very well, but again, this is very much a style thing, is I would often, and it would depend on the personality of my champion or potential champion candidate to be champion, let's say, or coach, I would often just level with them. And I would say, hey, look, a lot of people think that my job as a salesperson, what makes me a good or a bad salesperson is my ability to do great presentations or to make really cool demos and things like that.   Andy Whyte: What really makes a good or a bad person when it comes to my job is to being able to understand who all the stakeholders are and make sure that I understand who is who, who cares about what, and to ensure that I consider everybody's needs because you are my number one person. Of course, we can see that. And I'm very much focused on making sure that as we've uncovered our value supports your goals, your challenges, whatever they are. But what about this person? And I'll start to sort of put in some suggested, my sort of suspected economic buyer.   Andy Whyte: I'll be like, what about this person, the CFO let's say? Normally I find when I work with people in that position, I find that as much as they care about the things you are looking at, they're actually more interested in the total cost of ownership or they're thinking more about how quickly this is going to return on investment or what the opportunity cost will be. What do you think about that person? Is her name Stephanie or CFO? When you typically work with her what sort of things does she ask? And then you're into a conversation then and then you can hopefully take the opportunity.   “I think everyone has bought into the idea of how important it's to have champions, right? But what we tend to do is we build our champions up and we do a great job of that, but then we kind of just sort of sit back and look at them, bow before them and think what a great job we've done of building this person that really loves us and our product. We don't actually put them to work for us. We don't ask them to do the difficult things that we really, really need them to do for us like sit on a procurement call with us and stick up for us where procurements try to disvalue our solution.” – Andy Whyte · [41:07]    Andy Whyte: If they're a true champion or potential to be a true champion to sell to them basically the value in them introducing you directly, which I think we just don't do enough. We just never ask the question. And this is another thing and I'll only say this very quickly, but I think in our industry, except for the odd daft, pretend sales guru on LinkedIn, I think everyone has bought into the idea of how important it's to have champions, right?   Andy Whyte: But what we tend to do is we build our champions up and we do a great job of that, but then we kind of just sort of it back and look at them and sort of bow before them and think what a great job we've done of building this person that really loves us and our product. We don't actually put them to work for us.   Andy Whyte: We don't ask them to do the difficult things that we really, really need them to do for us like pull legal calls forward, sit on a procurement call with us and stick up for us where procurements try to disvalue our solution, or bring other people into the meeting, get security to take a call rather than you fill in their 30 page document, all those types of things.   Andy Whyte: What champions can really help us accelerate our progress with we almost sort of shy away because we don't want to like, oh, we want to waste them. I don't want to upset my champion. I don't want to actually put them to work because then they might not be my champion again. And then, hang on a minute, what if I don't actually win the deal at all? And that's the way they should be thinking.   Will Barron: I think a lot of what you to describe comes down to the paperwork process as well. So physical paperwork or just the buying journey within the account of a lot of salespeople and I've been guilty for this in my medical device days of, hey, I got in, I spoke to the surgeon, I ejected, I went KFC on the way home and had a nice snack. And now I'm sat in front of the sofa job done, but it's just got into this black hole. We no idea what's happening within the account.   Will Barron: That might be the actual champion, but I've not guided that person. What I do is do a demo with them. They love the equipment, but then maybe they don't know what to do next, but we are selling these products and services day in, day out so we probably got a pretty good overview across the market of what needs to happen, the paperwork that needs to be done, who needs to be in front of who?   Will Barron: And I feel like a lot of salespeople just allow it to go into the black hole, tick a box, and then move on to the next inbound lead that they get as opposed to doing account based selling or account based marketing of mapping out the account, working out who the actual champion is, the economic buyer, the other steps of medical or MEDDPICC or wherever acronym that whether qualification methodology that we incorporate, we want to use in corporate or telling us to use something else.   The Consequences of Missing Steps in the MEDDIC Framework · [43:30]    Will Barron: You've got to see this through because what's the point in just doing that initial few steps if you're not going to get a deal at the end of it? It's a waste of your time, it's a waste of company resources. Is there anything else that we need to add to that, Andy, to encourage salespeople to… I'll ask you this in a different way. So we can use medical or MEDDPICC whichever you prefer. Does the framework work if we miss steps out or does it have to be done not necessarily in order, not necessarily one person, but does it need to be done within the account to maximise our chances of getting the deals done?   Will Barron: What I'm saying is if we feel lazy and want to skip a bit or we feel our confidence for whatever reason is down on that day, we don't ask a tough question, are we immediately dropping the effectiveness of medical MEDDPICC just rapidly or is it possible to still get deals done by just doing this kind of willy-nilly?   Andy Whyte: Yeah. Great question. The way I'll answer this question is how I think about MEDDPICC which is that I think about it as being three pillars. And I don't think anyone would ever argue with the importance of these three pillars in selling, which is the first pillar is value. So understanding the value of our solution, how we do it, how we do it differently, all that sort of stuff. Second is stakeholders, which is not just who, who, but it's also each stakeholder has a different value.   “It's long known that the biggest lever you can pull in terms of enhancing your performance as a salesperson, as a sales team, as a company is not the amount of opportunities you have. It's not the average selling price opportunities. It's not your conversion rate. It's the time you take to close those opportunities. If you can improve that one, that's the one that'll have the biggest impact on your overall performance.” – Andy Whyte · [44:51]    Andy Whyte: They're interested in different paying challenge they're trying to solve. So those two are very interlocked. And the third one is process and this one is the one that gets the least attention, but it's also the one that can have the biggest impact on your performance as an individual. It's long known that the biggest lever you can pull in terms of enhancing your performance as a salesperson, as a sales team, as a company is not the amount of opportunities you have.   Andy Whyte: It's not the average selling price opportunities. It's not your conversion rate. It's the time you take to close those opportunities. That is if you can improve that one, that's the one that'll have the biggest impact on your overall performance. They're all important, of course, but if we were just to bring up share screen now and start scrolling LinkedIn we would see 100 posts about pipeline generation, cold calling this, cold calling out videos, blah, blah, blah, which is all good. Not knocking it for a second before we saw one about conversion rate or about selling price selling value.   Andy Whyte: And then we'd probably see 1,000 before we'd see any, if at all, about the length of the sales cycle. So those sort of three pillars that I mentioned are all important. And if you were to think about MEDDPICC sits on top of those and it gives a framework so that you can make sure you are focused enough on each of those pillars. If you were to miss off one of those pillars and you were talking about missing off the process, then it's going to have a really big impact.   Andy Whyte: And I always say this, is people will often say, I have this, well, I don't have a saying, it's an industry saying of no champion, no deal. Big champion, big deal. And people go, oh, hang on a minute, Andy. There was this one time where I didn't have a champion and I still closed the deal. So obviously that doesn't work. And it's like, well, yes but I bet if we looked at that deal you weren't actually selling, you were order taking.   Andy Whyte: I bet your product and the marketing that your company did surrounding your product and the pain and the need that the customer had you could have swapped you in and put anybody of any role who can just answer questions would've still sold that. So you are taking an order. So to your question, I think every time you put a little bit less attention onto, let's say, the letters of MEDDPICC as you put it, you are qualifying worse. And people don't lose deals because there's no close lost reason of poorly qualified.   Andy Whyte: What poorly qualified lost deal reasons look like is no champion, price was too expensive, couldn't get access, competition got ahead of us. Those are the reason. That's poor qualification because if you have MEDDPICC in lockdown you're even going to have one or two things. You're even going to have complete visibility of where you are in the deal. And you can see if you're winning or losing. It's like looking out a very clear day. Your deal is you can see everything, you see everyone, all the stakeholders, everything you need to see.   Andy Whyte: And because of that you're going to know where you stand. And if you are looking out of that window into your deal and you see that you are losing, then you should qualify out unless you can fix it. The only way you're going to be able to fix it is if you have a champion. All of the things, all of the common objections about price, competition, not seeing the value priorities, urgency, all those things. We all have tried and tested tactics, if you like, of overcoming those objections and they're always very good.   Andy Whyte: We are good at them. That's what makes us good salespeople, but we can only deploy those tactics if we have a champion to deploy them for us because otherwise we're just sort of talking into an empty room because who's going to take the good news we use and pass it onto other stakeholders for us?   Will Barron: I think to double down on your analogy there, if you don't think there's a champion, you probably just haven't uncovered the champion and they've gone in and done all of a sudden hard work on your behalf and you're not even thanking them at the other end of it. Especially in a large corporate deal, nothing happens. There's so much status quo. There's so much emphasis on just not moving. There's the risk, there's the burden of taking on the…   Will Barron: You might reduce your pain by 20% by using the product, but you're going to have to increase pain just for that short instance to get it implemented, to get everyone else on board. So there's probably always a champion there, you just weren't aware with them. I feel like I want to wrap up the show with this, Andy, in this thought that, and I'm going to use it, I love your LinkedIn analogy of scrolling through and it's all cold calls, cold emails, stupid polls about stupid nonsensical things.   Will Barron: There's very few people talking about process, methodology further down the sales funnel and the buying journey. And the water is somewhat muddied and murky in the fact that now a lot of companies will have SDRs, BDRs, account management, customer success. Everything is getting split up, but the goal here isn't to generate leads. I don't care about number of leads. I care about number of customers out the over end of the process. Of course, the more leads we can generate, the more effectively that turn into customers, the better.   Will Barron: But we get paid on people signing up to the product and then retaining them a lot of time. We don't get paid on the number of calls that we make, the number of emails that we send, and the number of people that we annoy with poorly qualified sales processes that just turn into junk in the CRM.   Parting Thoughts · [49:56]   Will Barron: So with that, Andy, I appreciate you, mate. I appreciate everything that you're about. I appreciate these frameworks. I appreciate your knowledge. There's not been a question that I've thrown at you in this episode that you've not been able to answer. With that, tell us about the book, the training and where we can find out more about you, sir.   Andy Whyte: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. That's very kind of you to say. So people looking to find out more, our proposition is very much around helping organisations to enable MEDDPICC in their teams. So for me you can Google MEDDICC, MEDDPICC and find blog posts that will tell you what the letters mean and what they stand for. That's LIKE scratching the surface of what actually it becomes to be a full organisation using MEDDPICC.   Andy Whyte: And so what our proposition very much is about is giving everybody enough expertise about MEDDPICC, not just on the knowledge and the wisdom of how and what it is, but how to actually execute it. We talked a little bit about economic bio, how actionable tactics strategies you can use to bring MEDDPICC into your deals, into your teams so that it can become the common language.   Andy Whyte: So like you just said there across SDRs, BDRs, AEs, CSMs, leadership, even go-to-market teams of product marketing, of marketing of all the teams surrounding the customer, they can use it as common language. So everyone is more cohesive, everyone knows exactly what they're looking at with customers and they're much more efficient as an organisation. In the best bit the customers prefer it as well because you orientate around the things that matter to them around value.   Andy Whyte: So that's our proposition. There's a book which you can find on Amazon. We also have an online course called the MEDDPICC Master Class. But before, if you are just sort of thinking, well, this sounds interesting you just want to dip your toe to the water, we also have a YouTube channel as well which you can find lots more of me talking about this kind of stuff if that's what you're interested in.   Will Barron: Amazing. So I'll link to all of that in the show to this episode over at salesman.org. With that, Andy, thank you for your time, your insights on this doubling down on the fact that I just fired a load of random questions at you that were basically nothing to do with qualification of MEDDICC and you went through them all absolutely seamlessly. So that shows your expertise in the space and with that I want to thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Andy Whyte: Thank you, Will, and thank you for all you do for our industry.

Josh Braun helps salespeople book more meetings and reduce the chance of getting ghosted without them having to sell their soul. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Josh Braun explains his simple step-by-step framework for successful cold calling and rejection minimization. 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 - Josh Braun Sales Training Expert Resources: Joshbraun.com Josh’s LinkedIn Joshbraun.com/shop Stop Cold Calling | Get Guaranteed Phone Ready Leads Transcript Will Barron: Hi. My name is Will, and welcome to The Salesman Podcast. On today's episode we're looking at how to cold call effectively. Today's guest is Josh Braun. Josh helps sales people book more meetings and reduce the chances of getting ghosted without you having to sell your soul. Josh has been on the show a bunch of times and there's a total value that's going to come at you in this episode, sales nation, and with that, Josh, welcome to the podcast.   Josh Braun: Will, thanks for having me back. You are an energetic guy. I'm always pumped up at the beginning of that intro. I feel like I want to run a marathon, but I'll sit here and we'll do the podcast.   Will Barron: So here's a question for you to pull the curtain back for the audience. Am I substantially more animated doing that intro than in the 10 minutes we chatted before the show? Is there a dramatic difference between the real Will and podcast Will?   Josh Braun: Podcast Will and the real Will are similar.   Will Barron: Well there you go.   Josh Braun: They are similar. They're energetic, and positive, and you want more of them.   Is Cold Calling Still Effective in 2022? · [01:10]    Will Barron: I don't know about that, especially not in this space. Maybe one Will per industry might be an appropriate number of us too before we just take over the planet. So with that, Josh, we'll jump into cold calling, and I want to dive into process, what we should be doing, in a second, but let's set up the topic here with somewhat of a cliché question that get gets asked every year, and we all know the answer to it because it's going to be a short episode if the answer is no. But is there still opportunity for straight up cold calling in 2022 as we record this, or do we need to use social selling, and cadences, and emails, and meeting people, knocking on doors to set up a cold call? Can we have success just picking up the phone and cold calling people right now in 2022?   “If the person that you're trying to get in front of has a phone number, then cold calling is a channel that can be effective for starting conversations with people. But can also be an ineffective channel depending on how you're making a cold call. All channels can be effective or ineffective. Emails can be really effective or ineffective. A movie can be amazing, but it could also bore you to tears. So it's never the medium really, it's how you're executing the medium, and if in fact that person can be contacted with that medium.” – Josh Braun · [01:40]    Josh Braun: So if the person that you're trying to get in front of has a phone number, then cold calling is a channel that can be effective for starting conversations with people, but can also be an ineffective channel depending on how you're making a cold call. All channels can be effective or ineffective. Emails can be really effective or ineffective. Movie can be amazing, but it could also bore you to tears. So it's never the medium really, it's how you're executing the medium, and if in fact that person can be contacted with that medium. So if that person can be contacted and you are proficient or good, and we're going to talk about that on this podcast, then the phone is a good tool that you have in your toolbox. Is it the only tool that you have in your toolbox? No. It is one of many tools that you have in your toolbox for stacking the odds in your favour for starting a conversation with someone that you want to get in front of.   The Effectiveness of Using Cold Calls as the First Line of Contact During a Cold Outreach · [01:30]    Will Barron: If we are pretty confident in our data and we've got a phone number, obviously ringing someone up can be the quickest way to go from A to B, ask a few questions, book that meeting, get it formally in the diary. So let's say we've got great data. Is the phone the first thing that we should do, or are there other steps to this process for the average salesperson who's consuming this in the average marketplace that they are selling into?   Josh Braun: So if you're good on the phone and you have good data, and you have one more tool, which we're going to talk about in a second, I think the phone is a really good first tool to use. And the third missing piece to that I want to talk about briefly, let's assume that you're good and let's assume the person can be reached and you have good data. The third piece is the problem with traditional cold calling is you make 50 dials even if you have good data, and even if you have direct dials. And maybe if you're lucky, you talk to one or two people. You get phone trees, you get gatekeepers, the numbers are bad even if you have “good data,” some of them doesn't pick up.   Josh Braun: That problem has been solved in a couple of different ways. One of the ways that I use is I use a service and what this service does is they pre-call the leads before you do. And they determine people that are most likely to pick up the phone. What that means for you is instead of you having two to three conversations for every 50 dials, you have 10 to 12 conversations for every 50 dials without adding any new technology to your tech stack or outstanding any annual contracts. The benefit of that is you can get better faster. You can get data faster, you can have more conversations. You can do it without that, it's just you're not as efficient. It just takes you longer. You need more people to do the same job. So that's the third piece of this is to have something in your stack, that's stacks the odds in your favours for actually talking to people that you want to actually talk to, so you're not sitting there dialling and not having conversations.   Will Barron: So I want to get into what is good. How do we know if we're good? There's a lot of sales people listening who think that they're probably killer on the phone, and they probably suck. So we're getting into that in second. But just before you mention it, do you want to plug that software or because you purposely didn't name it then, or do you want to not name it on the show?   Josh Braun: Sure. It's not software. So there's a gentleman that I work with. His name is Ryan Reisert, and the name of his service is called Phone Ready Leads. And it's a pay-per-use service. And again, he has a team of people that will pre-call the leads and increase your connect rates. So if you're struggling with low connect rates and you have good data, he might be someone to look into to be able to get you more at bats.   Are You Good at Striking Conversations with Cold Prospects? · [05:10]   Will Barron: Cool. Right. Well, let me start this episode over at salesman.org as well. Okay, Josh. So how do we know whether this is objective or subjectively? How do we know if we're good on the phone? How do we know if this is something that we should be focusing on? How do we know if this is a skill that we should be leaning into? Because maybe is our competitive advantage in the marketplace?   “You can't get good at anything that you haven't been taught, and you can't get good at anything that you haven't deliberately practised.” – Josh Braun · [05:47]    Josh Braun: So, well, you're good at doing these podcasts, but I would imagine when you first started doing the podcasts, you weren't as good as you are now because everything that you're good at now, you weren't as good as when you first began something. If you're a golfer, when you first started playing golf, you weren't as good as you are if you've been playing golf for three or four years. So you can't get good at anything that you haven't been taught, and you can't get good at anything that you haven't deliberately practised. So this process, and good is something that you can learn and practise. So we're going to talk a little bit about what good is on a cold call, but it's not something that you're born with, just like you're not born being a good golfer, and it's not something that's ever finished. Just like you're never finished being a good golfer.   Josh Braun: It's an ongoing progress of learning and getting better. I would imagine the same thing with you as a podcast host. I've noticed, and I've been following you for a long time, you've gotten better with each episode because you're honing your skills. So for people that are listening, be patient and treat this just like learning any other skill. First, you have to know what good is. You have to be taught what good is, then you have to deliberately practise good and just be a little introspective. Observe how your calls are going, don't judge yourself and just start to think, “Hey, what did I do on that call? What do I want to focus on? How'd that feel?” And you will get better each day if you just work on those things.   How to Know If You’re Good at Cold Calling · [06:50]   Will Barron: How do we know if we are good? And I agree what you're saying in that this is kaizen, this is continuous improvement. What worked in cold calling five years ago is not going to work now. Millennials are coming up in the marketplace. I'm 35, I'm in that age bracket, we are now starting to get a budget and perhaps we like to be approached differently than generations have come before us. So everything's constantly fluxing the marketplace, your skillset, even your mood and attitude and stuff during the day. So with that all said, how do we know whether we should be leaning into this or not? Because I guess that both leaned into our own skills and the marketplace that we're selling into as well.   “I don't believe that everyone has to be good at everything, but if you have an appetite for getting good at the phone, I think it's a million dollar skill. At least it's been in my experience and the people that I've worked with. But if you don't have an appetite for it at all, and you don't think it's a good channel, what I always say to people is, don't do it.” – Josh Braun · [07:48]    Josh Braun: Yeah. I'm a big fan of playing to your strengths. So if you have people on your team that are really great at writing emails and they're getting good response rates, they love that, double down, let them do emails. If you have someone to that's good on the phone or has an appetite for being better on the phone or wants to learn how to improve being on the phone, let those people make the calls. So I don't believe that everyone has to be good at everything, but if you have a appetite for getting good at the phone, I think it's a million dollar skill. At least it's been in my experience and the people that I've worked with. But if you don't have an appetite for it at all, and you don't think it's a good channel, what I always say to people is, don't do it.   “My job isn't to change someone who doesn't have an appetite for wanting to change, my job is to work with people who have an appetite for wanting to get better in a particular area.” – Josh Braun · [08:18]   Josh Braun: I get emails all the time that say, “People don't respond to voicemails and they never pick up the phone. Cold calling and voicemails suck, I would never use them.” And what I say is, don't do those things, because my job isn't to change someone who doesn't have an appetite for wanting to change, my job is to work with people who have an appetite for wanting to get better in this particular area. And we can certainly talk about that on this podcast, what does good mean with regards to a cold call and get you on the path, but you have to have an appetite for it first. You don't want to force people into something.   Josh Braun: This is a big problem that I have when I'm training sales organisations, is oftentimes people are told you have to go to sales training. And a lot of people don't want to be there and guess what? They're not engaged, they're not going to get anything out of it. So I think you have to have this mindset of, “Hey, I want to get better at this. I want to do this,” and then you can lean into it a little bit more.   The Best Cold Callers in Sales Have These Distinct Traits · [09:02]    Will Barron: So how do we know if we are good, Josh. Is this a, we make 50 dials, we get on so many calls and we book so many meetings. Is this a case of, we can use a cold call we know objectively or people in the organisation that we use cold calls to shorten our sales cycle by two months? Because we want to improve, and I want to give the audience a way to say, “Well, okay, I'm making progress.” How do we measure where we are, measure where we're at? And then how do we know that we're winning?   Josh Braun: Yeah. So, we'll talk a little bit about what a good cold call is in a second, but the way you'll know when it's really simple is how does it feel? So when you're connecting with people and you have a conversation, how did that experience feel for you? You don't have to judge yourself. You don't have to score yourself. Those things might bum you out a little bit, but if you just are a little introspective and say, “Hey, that call felt a little wonky, what was it about it that felt wonky? It seems like I was talking a little faster than I normally talk.”   Josh Braun: So that's an observation. I'm going to assess the call. I'm not going to judge my call. I'm going to assess the call, and I'm going to say, “I was talking a little fast, maybe next time what I'm going to work on, I'm going to focus on slowing down my speech a little bit. What did I notice on this call? It looks like I was talking over the prospect. I'm going to slow my speech down and I'm going to pause for two seconds after the prospect's done talking, and I'm going to work on that a little bit.” That's going to get you much further in terms of progress in getting better than beating yourself up, telling yourself all the things you did wrong, and that you suck. You don't suck, you just haven't been patient enough and practised. So shift from judging to assessing and observing.   Josh Braun: And I have found for myself and for the people that I coach, when you have that mentality of just observing and being thoughtful about what you're observing and assessing, you get better because you start to hone in on things. And if you're a coach, you might say, “What do you think about slowing down your speech a little bit?” “What do you think about maybe pausing for a couple seconds when someone's done talking?” And then just focus on one thing at a time, just like you would golfing or playing tennis, or the piano, you will get better just by doing that.   Assessing the Effectiveness of Your Cold Calls and Filling in the Gaps · [11:13]    Will Barron: Sure. So is this a first strategy then? I'm making this up the top of my head, but it seems like it could be appropriate, what you're saying here, Josh. We have a piece of paper next to us as we run through our calls, we don't need to show this to anyone. This is our document. Perhaps we write down one thing that went well, one thing that we want to improve on, and then we can see if we are becoming good, if we can eventually see if we are good then perhaps there's a lot more positives than there are negatives on the page. That might be comparing week one to week 27. Is that a fair way to go in about measuring our success, our journey to success, and also whether we are good or not. Is that a fair way to go about doing this?   Josh Braun: Yeah. And I wouldn't even focus on the negative. So, well, let me ask you a question. I don't know. Do you play golf?   Will Barron: No.   Josh Braun: Okay. What do you think the first question is that someone asks someone when they come off the golf course?   Will Barron: Your score.   Josh Braun: What's your score, right? That's the first thing a lot of times people will ask a sales rep too, “What's your score?” How many meetings did you book? A better question is what did you learn? Because when you talk about what do you learn, you're going to get better. You're going to say, “Well, I learned that stroke didn't feel so good. I got a little stiff here. I'm going to need to work on my hips a little bit.” So I wouldn't even focus on anything you really did “wrong” because it's going to get you into this negative space, perhaps. I would focus on just observing and assessing, what did you observe? How did it make you feel? And what do you want to focus on to make you feel a little bit better. And just pick one thing and you will just get better.   Josh Braun: The meetings are a byproduct of just getting a little bit better. You don't finish a marathon, you train deliberately for four or five months, and the marathon finishing is a byproduct of the training. And if you just don't beat yourself up and focus on the negatives, which takes away from that, and you just focus on assessing and observing, you will get better. And you'll also feel tremendously better as well about yourself.   How to Get Better at Anything · [13:13]    Will Barron: So I've never run marathon, I know you do triathlons in that, Josh. I've done a bunch of half marathons. Surely though, to use this analogy, you still set a goal of, well, I'm going to run so many miles this week, or I'm going to lead up to the event and then pull back for the few runs beforehand. So we still need to know what good is, what success is and still move towards the target, right? I just want to counteract your point here of, you don't run 10 feet and then have slightly sore toes, and then sit and ponder about your toes and not initial run, do you?   Josh Braun: No, I think, in that analogy you might go for a run and maybe you were able to only run 15 or 20 steps and you might say to yourself, “Well, how did that run feel? That really hurt. That really sucked.” And then I might say, “Well, what else might be true? The run did suck,” you only ran 10 feet, and it did hurt, but what else might be true is you just started running. And anytime you start running in the beginning, it's going to hurt a little bit, right? And so hurting when you run is a natural part of getting better. So on a cold call, it might be the same thing. Well, that really went dicey. I spoke to three people, and all of those calls were negative. They didn't really go anywhere.   Josh Braun: Lots of fact they were negative. But another way to look at it is they were negative, but you also just started cold calling, and you've only had 15 connects in your whole life. And anytime you pick up a guitar and start playing, it's going to hurt your fingers. And that little shift, it might seem very insignificant, but it changes the wiring in the brain and motivates you to want to learn more rather than focusing on the suck. And so what I'm suggesting here is that there's always multiple lenses to view these things from. There's the, “Oh my God, my toes hurt lens,” but there's also the lens of, “I just started running,” and my toes are going to hurt a little bit because I haven't run before.   Josh Braun: This movie was terrible about these cheerleaders. It was so thin and uninteresting. However, if I asked someone who was a cheerleader about that same movie, they might say, I found it fascinating because I used to be a cheerleader. You're in a car driving, and you flip off the person that cut you off. That person's such a jerk. The other lens is, “Well, maybe that person's in a rush to the hospital, I hope they're okay.” And I think in sales we have a tendency to only look at it through that one lens and we beat ourselves up instead of building ourselves up.   Will Barron: Sure. I guess there's different ways to look at it. I know myself when I've got to do these kind of things and when I'm learning new skills, I don't respond to what you're describing, Josh. I respond to the stick of, “Hey, just get 50 calls done. It's going to suck, it's fine. After 50, it's going to suck less, and then you just keep going.” And the discipline for me is the thing that gets me through this. And then judging what's good, what's bad, and documenting that result. Then I ended up with a feedback loop of well, the first 25 sucked, then there was one that was great. Then 10 sucked, then there was one that was great. Then it is five sucked, and there's one that's great. So with that said, we've quite a lot the emotional side of this now. Hopefully the audience can pick an angle on this, of how they're going to get through the suck, so whether it's discipline, whether it is being introspective and documenting either mentally or on the page what they have improved upon and they can build that feedback loop for themselves.   The Step by Step Framework for Successful Cold Calling · [16:38]    Will Barron: Is there a step by step framework? Is there a step by step process of what you should be saying on a cold call? Because I feel like if there is, then we can nail that, a lot of this other stuff just disappears because most people can sit down and say, “Right, I can make five of these calls right now.” Then obviously you make five and you can carry on for the rest of the morning, if that's what you choose. I think the hardest bit of a lot of this is that initial momentum and making that first call of the day. And obviously this has helped with structure. So do you have a structure that you teach, Josh? Is there a way to go about this that you can share with the audience?   Josh Braun: Yeah, let's actually start it with step number one and step number one is often missed because people want the script, but there's a really important step one, which is, you have to stand for something. Let me just tell you a quick story. Well, you might know about this product P90X. Does that ring a bell, or am I ageing myself. Do you remember that product?   Will Barron: I've never used it, but yeah, I only do training with barbells, but I understand the product, a training from home high intensity training, right?   Josh Braun: Yeah. I don't know if you know this, but when they first started marketing that product, they did about 15 versions of that commercial, and they bombed, they couldn't sell any P90X DVDs. And then Tony Horton, who's the guy who's in the video, and the creator had this brilliant idea. And this was his idea. And you can see this on YouTube if you Google it. It's a 35, 45, second black and white thing. And he said, “The problem with traditional work outs is that you do the same thing over and over again. You lift the same weight's the same way and your muscles plateau. They don't get any bigger. In fact, they get smaller and you don't make any progress. What you need is muscle confusion.” Now that's a word he made up. “And when you confuse your muscles, when you lift heavy weights one day and light weights the other day, and you do this exercise this way and this exercise that way, you confuse your muscles and then they grow.”   “When cold calling, you have to know something that your prospects don't know that can hurt them.” – Josh Braun · [18:45]    Josh Braun: What he's doing here, is he's having a point of view. He's standing for something. The reason I'm bringing this up is that everybody that you call, no matter what you sell is working out today somehow. They have weights and they're working out a certain way. You have to know something that they don't know that can hurt them. So what is it that you know that they don't know? So if they kept working out today the same exact way, what would happen? I'll tell you another story that illustrates this point, because it's so important.   Josh Braun: Several years ago, I was in the mall with my wife and I did not need anything. I was keeping her company. We were going to grab dinner afterwards. I walked into a Fit2Run store for no reason. So if the store associate said, “We got these new sneakers,” I'm going to be like, “Not interested, got new sneakers.” If she said, “Can I help you?” I'm going to say, “Not interested, bad sneakers.” But she didn't do any of those things. She looked down at my sneakers. She said, “Are you a runner?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “What distance?” I said, “I'm training for my first marathon.”   Josh Braun: And she said, “Have you ever had a running gate test?” And I said, “What's that?” And moments later, I'm on a treadmill in the Fit2Run store. She freezes the frame, zooms in on my ankles and says, “Look, your ankles are over pronating.” I'm like, “Yes, so what?” She said, “If you're running in sneakers that are not made for pronated feet, you can get injured on long distance runs and get sidelined, get shins splints and runners knee. If you would like, I could look at your sneakers to see if they're made for pronated feet.” And about seven minutes later, I'm buying new sneakers and insoles because she had a point of view. She's standing for something. So step number one, and this is where a lot of sales people just say, “Well, I got better sneakers,” is what is it that you know that your prospect doesn't know. That's step one.   How to Overcome the Zone of Resistance When Cold Calling Prospects · [20:10]    Will Barron: So let's stop there for a second. If you got an example of this, Josh, I'm assuming with your social media presence, you don't do a lot of outbound calls. I'm sure all your training is inbound, right? Same with us. A lot of what we do is inbound. If you were to do an outbound cold call though to a VP of sales, a potential training client, what would you stand for? What would be an example of how you'd implement this?   Josh Braun: So, I love how to start this exercise with the problem with. So again, and I'm [inaudible 00:20:43] this to our sales trainer. But Steve Jobs 2007, iconic iPhone speech. If you haven't seen that, you must watch. One of his iconic lines was, “the problem with smartphones is,” and it wasn't just one smartphone. He had them all listed on the screen. At the time the Nokia, the Palm, the Trail, the Motorola, all that stuff. He goes, “The problem with smartphones is they're not that smart. It's these keys that are fixed in plastic. Well, every application wants a different set of keys, so it just doesn't work. Interesting, it worked like five minutes ago.” That's the point of view. That's the perspective. So for me, I would say something like this, “The problem with traditional cold calling is that prospects are in the zone of resistance when they hear sales pressure.” You start to pitch your product and they pull away.   Josh Braun: It's the same reason when you're in the mall and someone says from a kiosk, “Can I ask you a question,” you turn around and walk. You're afraid of the pitch. Prospects feel that way all the time. So what you need is an approach that ditches the pitch. Now what you're hearing when I do this Will, is people nodding their heads. Going, “Yeah, I've been in the mall.” “Yeah, I see that ditch the pitch,” and the brain naturally goes to, “What do you have?” What's the answer to that. We're going to get on that in this podcast, but that's how I position when I do outbound, that's the story that I have in my head. I don't do a cold call like that, but in my head I'm like, “That's the Tony Horton version of what I do.”   Josh Braun: It's this idea that traditional cold calling is all about the pitch, and the value proposition and overcoming objections. And yet when you do that, people go into what I call the zone of resistance. It's a natural reflex reaction to sales pressure. It's why you tell someone in a department store you're just looking and literally buying something five minutes later. You don't want the pressure. And so people will say to me, “Well, what do you do?” And now we're into the next part that we're going to be talking about.   Will Barron: Perfect. Okay. So that is written down, it's on a plaque, it's on our desk in front of us and it's a constant reminder, I guess, for us at salesman.org, we make selling simple. Selling's over complicated, it's complicated with tools, with processes, with people, with ideas, with management, who haven't sold anything in 30 years trying to teach you how to one system or another. So we make selling simple. So I've got it on a post-it note. There we go, Josh. I've got it on a post-it note. It's stuck on my laptop to remind me. That's step one, what's step two?   Why Cold Calling is More Like an Infomercial · [23:00]    Josh Braun: So like what you said there, and I want to be very clear, this is like an infomercial. If you're saying to yourself it's simple, that's too generic. I can't see that infomercial in my head. So this exercise I called infomercial, you should be able to see the black and white version of the infomercial. So right now, today, when people get sales training, they're using seven different mechanisms. And let me show you the problem with these seven different mechanisms. They're from the '80s, and therefore buyers react this way. The problem with traditional knives is they go doll, and when you slice a tomato, look what happens, spurt all over your white shirt. What you need is this Ginsu thing. So I want to stress that this is an exercise that you gloss over. Most people that I talk to can't pass the infomercial test. And the litmus test is, can I actually see it?   Josh Braun: I can't see simple. It's not crispy. I know you have this positioning. Perfect, Will. We can delve into this. But can you actually see it? Can you observe it? Can you see the movie in your head? Don't do product training, do problem training, get a really good understanding of what's sucked in your prospect's life before they switched, and feel that. And it's a feeling, like, “Oh my God, that tomato, it's splatted all over that white shirt. That's awful. What do we have?” Well, we got this thing called a Ginsu knife. “What is that?” It cuts cans and tomatoes perfectly forever without having to be sharpened. “That's awesome.” Sure. So I just wanted to punctuate that before we go to the next step.   Will Barron: Well, look, let's spend 30 seconds on this. You can help us refine it. So maybe it's not visual. But when I share that with people, you use the word feeling, this feeling kit. Most sales people that I speak to, and obviously not everyone's a fit for our product and training, but most sales people I speak to, most sales leadership, they are overwhelmed with the training in the marketplace. They're overwhelmed with the sales stack, they're being bombarded by… At this point now, they weren't a few years ago, but billion dollar companies with big advertising budgets. And yet they're tuning into this like pleb podcast, right? We get 700,000 downloads a month and people are tuning to this way more than any podcast from every sales technology company or any sales training company.   Will Barron: So people have that rapport with me when I speak to them, typically before I pick up the phone. So when I say we make selling simple, we use training frameworks to take all the pain out and add process to your sales team's delivery, that's what I pitch. How would you humbly help me refine that?   Cold Calling 101: Always Start with a Problem · [25:25]     Josh Braun: So I love that, because you started with the problem, right? If you notice, if you're listening to this, and of course you're listening to this, if you're listening to this, that Will started with a black and white version. They're overwhelmed by all these… Imagine the kitchen analogy. They're using 10 or 15 of these tools to grow with. You got a spatula, you got a fork, you got a scrapper, you got all this stuff. It's a lot to handle, you got to go keep running back and forth to get the right tool. You got to clean seven tools and everyone's going to be nodding their head. I call it the head nod. Just like what Will did. Yeah. And then brain is naturally going to go, “Well, what do you have?” “Well, we got this tool. It's an all in one tool. It's seven barbecue tools in one. So you only have one to clean, and it's right there, handy for you whenever you want to grill.”   Josh Braun: That's essentially what Will is saying here, to use a grill analogy is that he has instead of using nine or 10 things and having these things be confusing and having a bunch of stuff that doesn't talk to each other, you've got one thing and it's really easy to use and simple to clean. It's the contrast that Will did, but most people have a time with this because they've been focused on the after version. But just like P90X, if they just showed the person with the six pack abs, that doesn't really hit you unless you see the before version when they're about 40 or 50 pounds heavier. So I thought you did that really well, Will.   Crucial Assumptions You Should Never Make in Sales · [26:52]    Will Barron: Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. So if that's step one. I'm conscious of time, Josh, so we might have to rattle through some of these. Give us step two.   “When you assume that everyone's a fit for what you have, what ends up happening is people go into the zone of resistance because you're going to try to be talking people into things, and pitching everyone, and thinking that you're a fit for everyone. So instead, shift away from that and discover if the person has a problem that you could potentially help with, rather than assuming.” – Josh Braun · [27:12]    Josh Braun: Okay. Step two will be really brief. Of course you think that the person you're calling can benefit from the thing that you have, that they have a problem, that their training and they're plateaued, but you don't know until you talk to them. So step two is letting go of assumptions, and detach them from the outcome. Because when you assume that everyone's a fit for what you have, what ends up happening is people go into the zone of resistance, because you're going to try to be talking people into things, and pitching everyone, and thinking that you're a fit for everyone. So instead shift away from that and discover if the person has a problem that you could potentially help with, rather than assuming.   Josh Braun: The mantra here is, I'm for some people, but I'm not for everyone. That intent is going to change what you say, because your thoughts, what you think going into the call, changes what comes out of your mouth. So step two is detaching from the outcome and letting go of the assumptions and testing to see if the person has a problem, rather than assuming they have a problem. And now we'll get into the actual framework. But those two things are really strong foundational elements.   Will Barron: Sure. So, this is prior to picking up the phone, we are focusing on these two things, right?   Josh Braun: Yes.   Why Role Play is Such a Crucial Aspect of Improving Your Cold Calling Outcomes · [28:13]   Will Barron: Cool. Okay. So we are in the right mindset, are there to diagnose potentially a problem, and then book a meeting. We're conscious of that, Josh. What do we do when we pick up the phone and it starts ringing and our heart starts going, “Oh, crap. I should just do something now. I thought I've done some work, but now I'm actually going to do the work.”   Josh Braun: Let's go through a real cold call. Let's role play it. I'm going to just put myself on the spot here. And I'm going to make a cold call to Will. And were going [crosstalk 00:28:30]-   Will Barron: Sure. I'll be a small business owner, right?   Josh Braun: Yeah. No, you be you. And we're going to go through this, and we haven't rehearsed this, so this will be a good process. And we're going to go in and out of role play, and I'm going to dissect what's going on. So just to set this up, we mentioned at the beginning of the call, that when we start to pitch at the beginning of a call, it feels like those mall kiosk people. So what you're going to hear is no pitch. You're going to hear me being a little interested in how will is getting a particular job done today to see if there might be an opening, and we're going to save the pitch if they're even is one for the end. So we're going to walk you through four steps. And the first step you probably heard of bazillion times before, but I'm a big believer in it is we want to get Will's permission to talk.   Josh Braun: Now, why is that? Really briefly, if I told Will I would pick him up at 5:00 for dinner and I didn't show up until six, I would feel bad because I'm incongruent. My actions are incongruent with my words. So when someone says, “Sure, I have a second,” they're more likely to hear us out for part two. You could think of this as four little levels of a video game, and we're going to be asking for permission to get to level two. So Will picks up the phone, and in a very calm voice, I might say something like this. And there's a lot of ways to do this. “Hey, Will. My name is Josh. We've never spoken before. You have no idea who I am; complete stranger here, but I was hoping you could help me out for a moment. Do you have two minutes?   Will Barron: Sure. What's up my friend. What's up Josh?   Josh Braun: Okay. So what did I do here? So I'm using a time commitment, so Will knows this isn't going to be an hour. I'm asking for help because people are wired to help, and I'm using a tonality that's not, “Hey, Will, this is Josh, can you help me out for a moment?” Kind of calm, because when you're calm, you're more inviting. So, that's going to be level one. And then people are going to say, “Sure,” about 70 or 80% of the time. And then what I'm going to do is this I'm going to see if Will, is even the right person that I need to be speaking with. Because even though you've done a bunch of research, this person might not even work at the company anymore, they might not go there anymore. So in a very humble way, I'm going to say this, “Will, are you still the person that's involved with getting sponsors for your podcasts? Or is that someone else since you've gotten so big?”   Will Barron: That is me, Josh. For the purpose of this role play it's me, but do not email me about sponsorships anyone who's listened to this episode. But yes, Josh that's me. I deal with that.   Josh Braun: Okay. So that's step two is, am I talking to the right person? And notice the phraseology? “It seems like it,” it looks like. That implies that I've done a little research. Now, one of two things is going to happen there. You're either going to get the response that Will gave you, which is, “Yeah, that's me,” or “I'm retired.” And don't you want to know that at the beginning of the call rather than going through your pitch? Or “I don't do that at all. That's not me.” In which case we could talk about another path if we have some time, but we'll go through the happy path first. You can see the big picture here. So Will's just going to say, “Yeah, that's me.”   Josh Braun: I'm going to go to step three now. And step three is what's called… So step one, permission. Step two, person, is it the right person? And then step three is what I call poke and peel. I'm going to be poking around a little bit to see how Will's getting the job today done, and I'm going to peel the onion a little bit. I might say something like this. “So Will, how are you currently going about getting sponsors today? Are you like reaching out via cold email? Are people mostly coming to you, or is it a combination of both?”   Will Barron: It's typically inbound leads, Josh.   Josh Braun: Inbound leads, just inbound, or are you doing any outbound as well, or it's all just inbound?   Will Barron: It is all inbound, but I would love to have the time or the help to do some outbound stuff as well. Josh, I feel like we're not at full capacity, and we need a little bit of some secret source here, mate.   Josh Braun: I'm sorry. Not at full capacity?   Will Barron: Correct.   Josh Braun: It seems like I'm missing something here. When you say not at full capacity.   Will Barron: We have ad available.   Josh Braun: Okay. So look what I'm doing here. So the poking was, I'm asking a little bit about how he's doing the job done today. And the peeling was notice I use a mirror, and I know you and I are big Chris Foss fans. “I'm sorry, not at full capacity?” So I'm poking around a little bit. And now I'm going to shift to asking the question that's going to get Will to think a little bit differently. And that might sound like this. “Well, I know you've been doing this for a while. I'm sure you've batted this around, but have you considered using a company in addition to what you're doing now, to be able to find high value sponsors to fill that ad space without you having to actually spend any overtime doing it? I'm sure you've gone down that road before.”   Will Barron: I have considered it, but not gone down that road before, Josh. We're just so busy, mate.   Josh Braun: Okay. So pause here. The question is, “Have you considered,” right? “I'm sure you've thought of this before,” this is for captivated IQ. “I'm sure you've thought of this before. Have you considered automating your commission payouts? I'm sure you've batted this around a little bit.” I'm saying the phrase, “have you thought about this?” “I'm sure you have thought about this” to not hurt Will's ego, and then I'm asking a question that's going to get the prospect to think a little differently about how they're currently getting the job done today. So, “But Josh, have you considered incorporating a Kinstretch into your triathlon training?” “What's Kinstretch?” It's a approach that's used to make sure you don't get injured. It's complimentary.   Why You Should Never Hurt a Prospect's Ego · [34:07]   Josh Braun: I always want to compliment what Will is doing. Notice I'm not asking Will to rip and replace anything. I'm saying we can compliment this. “Have you considered this.” And notice he's leaning into this. At some point in the call, what ends up happening oftentimes is Will says, “Well, I'm sorry, what do you do? What's your deal?” And then he's asking me the question. If he doesn't, I might say, “No, it sounds like this might be a fit. Will, I know I'm calling out of the blue here,” step four, going to pop the question, “Would you be open to investing,” not spending, but investing, “15 minutes later this week so I can share a few ideas with you about how you can generate these sponsors, but without you having to actually lift a finger?” What I'm doing is, I'm proactively to Will [crosstalk 00:34:48].   Will Barron: That sounds incredible, Josh. We're in. I'm all in. Sold. Send me the contract, mate.   Josh Braun: We wish all the calls were that easy. But what I'm doing is I'm proactively addressing your objection. We only work for people that are doing inbound, and without you having to lift the finger, right? We're only talking to people that have accountants already. So someone wouldn't be able to say, “Well, we have an accountant for that.” We're talking to people that have accountants about an approach to obtain employee retention credits that typical accountants miss. I have no idea if that's the case for you, but is that something you've considered working with a specialty accounting that only specialises in ERC credits? Well, how does that work?   Josh Braun: “I know I'm calling out of the blue here,” “would it make sense to invest 15 minutes, maybe Thursday or Friday, so you can see what your options are.” Look at the phraseology. So you can review what your options are. It's not assumptive, so it's going to lower the zone of resistance. The words really matter here. I know we're going through it quick, but each word is very deliberate so as not to create any pressure on will. I am always listening for sales pressure, and I'm going to defuse it at every chance I get, and I'm going to try to prevent it from happening by being very selective with my words.   Rejection is at the Core of Cold Calling. Get Used to It · [36:34]    Will Barron: Josh, I did a full share about this the other day, so we don't need to go too deep into it. But if we communicate the way you just communicated, and clearly with your background in teaching sales, training VP of sale, you are perhaps 20 years ahead of some of the audience here. So we have to burst some of that in mind, right? And I know you've got trading products, which we'll touch on in a second where the audience can learn some of this perhaps, but say we get 80, 90% of Josh Braun's skillset here. Should cold calling be a nice, simple, and almost enjoyable activity for salespeople to do when they're confident in what they're saying, when they are unconsciously competent in the wording, so the brain isn't going a million miles an hour trying to source things out in real time. Should cold calling be something that maybe you don't look forward to it, but that you do when you end up on having a nice few conversations over the course of 20, 30, 40 dials, you end up potentially really sparking a few conversations and helping people?   “The trouble salespeople get into is when they attach their self worth to the outcome. No one's rejecting you as a person, they're just rejecting what you're saying.” – Josh Braun · [37:44]    Josh Braun: Yeah, it's a tremendous amount. It's a great question. And when you say enjoyable, I enjoy going to the beach, I enjoy biking. It is work, and there is going to be a lot of resistance, because of the nature of the dynamic. The prospect knows that a salesperson has a vested interest. That's the whole problem what I'm suggesting with this approach is that we're trying to lower that zone of resistance. And when we do that well, and we have the right intent where we're okay either way, of course we care about the prospect, but we're indifferent to the outcome. The trouble salespeople get into is when they attach their self worth to the outcome. No, one's rejecting you as a person, they're just rejecting what you're saying. And so when you do that, it's almost like I feel like I'm on a golf course, and I'm calm and I'm swinging the club, and I'm going to the next hole. And there's a bunch of holes.   Josh Braun: The way I view cold calling is like you're walking down a street with a bunch of brown stones, and there's a door up there, and there's four steps, and there's prospects standing in front of the steps, and there's unlimited steps, unlimited brown stones. And I'm going to approach people, strike up a conversation with them and see if they want to invite me up the steps. And if they don't, that's okay because back to the mindset, I'm for some people, but I'm not for everyone. And I'll be really calm, and I have ways to diffuse sales pressure. I'm just going to keep going to the next brownstone.   “You don't control how people respond to you, you only control what you say. And when you let go of things you don't control, it changes the game, not just in sales, but in your life as well.” – Josh Braun · [38:40]    Josh Braun: So it's not so much it's enjoyable, but it's peaceful and calming and you're not going to get anxious. And you're not going to have this debilitating feeling of rejection when you adopt this mindset because there's nothing to be rejected about. You don't control how people respond to you, you only control what you say. And when you let go of things you don't control, it changes the game, not just in sales, but in your life as well.   Parting Thoughts · [38:50]   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. I'll wrap up with that, mate. For people who want to know more, because we've only obviously briefly scratched the surface of this in today's episode of Sales Broadcast, tell us where we can find more about you and then any training that you offer as well that is relevant to the audience on the back of this conversation.   Josh Braun: Yeah. So I've got a joshbraun.com/shop. You can find my stuff or joshbraun.com/learn, you can read about a lot of content or on LinkedIn.   Will Barron: Amazing. I was too slow on the button then to go back to the two boxes. I thought there was going to be a longer pitch phrase. Succinct, very like you, Josh. I appreciate that, mate. I appreciate you, appreciate your insights, and I want to thank you again for joining us on The Salesman Podcast,   Josh Braun: Ditch the pitch. Well, ditch the pitch. Always a pleasure. 

Do you know why your prospects buy? In this post I’m going to explain why your prospects buy products by sharing the 5 step value ladder. The Value Ladder There are only 5 levels of value that you can offer a potential customer. When you offer your customers levels 1,2 or 3 of value you are replaceable. They do not care about you. Your customers will screw you over whenever they can. At levels 4 and 5 of the value ladder however, which I’ll show you in a minute, your prospects will be begging you to work with them. At level 5 the customer will give you every single penny they have, to keep doing business with you. They will beg you for your product! So would you like to be in the position of having your customers begging to give you money, rather than you begging them? Then let's start at level 1 on the value ladder. Level 1 – Meet specifications The first level on the value ladder is when you meet the specifications laid out by your prospect. This is where a prospect is looking for X feature and by chance your product happens to have this feature. Unfortunately, there is nothing to differentiate you from your competition at this level and so wining this type of business comes down to dumb luck most of the time. Trying to hit a sales target when you’re only providing level 1 value is like putting the lottery on and then standing outside their offices, with your hand out, hoping that you win the jackpot. So let's move up the value ladder, to level two. Level two is where you provide a good product to the customer. Level 2 – Good product This is the level of value that everyone thinks they’re sat at. Everyone thinks that their products are great but, in most markets, again everyone’s products are pretty good and so there is very little differentiation. And so again… winning business here usually comes down to dumb luck and the ability to follow up with a prospect often until they relent and give you their money. That’s a tough way to sell each day, right? Level three is when things start to change. Level three is when we start to remove luck from our selling environment and replace it with hustle. We’re at a level 3 of value when we provide a customised service. Level 3 – Customised service This is where we start to differentiate ourselves in the mind of the buyer. This is when they start to say “Oh, Salesman.org is more expensive than reading a few sales books but the training is personalised for me and so I don’t mind paying more”. So, how many times have you battled with prospects on price? They’ll bring up your competitors. They’ll say “I ain't signing no contracts” at the last minute to force you to discount… I’ve been there and it sucks. That pain starts to disappear at level three on the value ladder as in the mind of the buyer, you’re now different to all of the other that are companies pitching them. You now, finally have an advantage. But things really start to fall into the sellers favour though when we get to level four which is reliance. Level 4 – Reliance When you get to this level of the value ladder the buyer-seller dynamic changes. This usually happens in one of two ways – A) Built on top of your product A current customer builds part of their business on top of your product. For example lots of companies use Salesforce.com to store customer data and then build their own marketing and sales systems on top of their platform. If you’re Salesforce.com in this situation you know that there would be so much damn pain for their customer to move to someone else that they’ve basically got the contracts locked in until their customer goes bust. At this point it’d be easier to stop Donald Trump saying stupid things than it would be for a competitor to break into your account and displace you. B) They NEED you for growth Alternatively, you can reach the reliance level of the value ladder by selling into a new organisation, when they need your product so desperately to grow, that without you, their business is likely going to fail. An example of this would be selling financial services to a startup who needs the influx of capital otherwise their business is going to die. This again makes them reliant on you. Again, at this point, the buyer wants to work with you, as much as you want the commissions of working with them. The final level, the God tier of value in B2B sales is level 5, multiple reliance. Level 5 – Multiple reliance This is where I’d aim to be with my medical device customers when I sold surgical camera systems. Sure it’d be great to have 10 operating rooms in general surgery using our equipment. But then when gynecology and urology also become reliant on your equipment and support something magical starts happening… You find yourself having meetings with the CFO of the hospital, rather than department managers. You find yourself in the middle of conversations about expanding the hospital and their potential equipment needs, rather than hearing about an influx of cash and having to cold call people to learn more… When you get to level 5 of the value ladder you become a businessperson, not a pesky salesperson, who is always pestering and chasing people down. Opportunities come to you; your prospects WANT to work with you. Selling becomes fun! How would that change your day to day? So Will, that’s all well and good, thanks for the theory random 5 level theory… But how the hell do I get to this magical level 5 on your stupid value ladder? That doesn’t even really look like a ladder? Climbing The Value Ladder Well if you’re not starting at level 2 which is having a good product the answer is simple. Change jobs. Stop making life hard for yourself. Find the best product in your industry and start selling their sales management on hiring you. So assuming you’re starting at level two of having a good product, how do we get to level three and offer a customised service? Lets use the example of me selling medical devices. Clearly I wasn’t able to customise my products to my customers needs. Everything I sold had thousands of hours of research, development and testing before it was even allowed to be marketed and so I didn’t have any leverage to customise at the product level. So, instead, I customised the service I provided to my customers. I’d explain the value that I, personally, would add to the prospects in their surgical education, training, hospital business problem solving and more. And honestly, this was all I really needed to differentiate myself from a lot of my competition. Most of my competition were lazy. They wanted to get in, make a sale and get out. So I took a lot of their business by making the extra effort to play on level 3 of the value ladder. To get into levels 4 and 5 of the value ladder you need to up your game. The simplest way to put this is, is that at levels 4 and 5, you must solve your prospects business issues. This means that YOU personally must be able to – A) Make introductions Make introductions within your industry to get your prospects in front of people that can help them move forward. B) Provide insights Provide valuable industry insights that the prospect can’t get elsewhere. For example with the sales leaders that I work with who have their teams in Salesman.org, I can share an incredible amount of information from our SalesCode Assessment data on what traits they should look for when hiring. C) Tie the wins What I mean by tying your prospects wins with yours is that you should be looking for ways to help them improve their own customers experiences. If you can do this and improve their revenues directly, you’ll become indispensable to them. And finally then to go from level 4 to 5 you need to become dispensable across multiple departments within the organisation. It’s all of course easier said than done but once you retrain your selling brain to focus on the level of value you can give to prospects, rather than focusing on what you can take from them, you’ll find that more and more people want to work with you and the game gets easier. Summary To have success in modern sales, you must start at a value level of 3. Then focus on solving real business problems, personally, to get to level 4, then finally do this across multiple departments in the prospects company to become a level 5 seller and really start to win.

Jason Bay is the Chief Prospecting Officer at Blissful Prospecting. He’s on a mission to help reps and sales teams turn complete strangers into paying customers. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Jason explains what is and what isn’t working in the world of cold email sales outreach in 2022. 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 - Jason Bay Chief Prospecting Officer Resources: Blissfulprospecting.com Jason’s LinkedIn BombBomb – Video messaging platform Transcript Will Barron: Hi, I'm Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're diving into successful cold email trends for 2022. And our guest is Jason Bay. Jason is the chief prospecting officer over at Blissful Prospecting. He's on a mission to help reps and sales teams turn complete strangers into paying customers. And with that, Jason, welcome to the show.   Jason Bay: I'm excited to be back, Will.   Will Barron: I'm excited to have you back on, mate.   Jason Bay: We were just talking. It's been a couple of years since we jammed last on a podcast, so I'm looking forward to being back.   Will Barron: A couple of years. You are perfectly suited for this topic of cold email, cold outreach. Perhaps we'll touch on other areas of cold outreach as well. We'll dive into some trends.   Will Barron: It'd be interesting to see the difference between what worked last time we spoke and then what's perhaps working in the marketplace right now in, what? We're in February 2022 as we record this. So let's start by setting some benchmarks.   The Average Cold Email Response Rate in 2022 · [01:00]    Will Barron: We want to measure our cold outreach. We want to see if we're having success or not. I don't know if you've got finite numbers on this. If not, the gist of things will be more than appropriate. Jason, what is an average cold email response/reply rate in 2022? And then what should we be aiming for? How do we know if we're having success?   Jason Bay: Yeah. It's really hard to find good data on this actually. Clearbit's got some stuff that you could take a look at. I've noticed a downward trajectory in the data in the last two or three years.   Jason Bay: So Clearbit's data says less than a 1% reply rate to a cold email. And you think about that, and I don't know about you, that's a lot of work to get a response. You've got to send a hundred emails out to get a response. That's a lot of work.   Jason Bay: Right now with Outreach, Salesloft, any of the traditional sales engagement vendors, they're all seeing a very similar pattern of that reply rate going down. Now, what is good? Depends. It depends on what you're selling, the transaction size, how many meetings that you need to get, the level of personalization.   Jason Bay: And to give you a range here, if you were selling enterprise, let's say, some of my clients, and they're selling, let's say, a customer experience or employee experience solution into a large company where the deal size might be 500,000-plus at a minimum size, I'm going to expect 10% to 20% reply rates on those emails because I'm working 20 accounts at a time.   Jason Bay: And I'm taking the time to actually look for triggers in the company, I'm researching the individual. Maybe I'm listening to a podcast interview with them. I would expect the reply rates to be much higher on those and meeting volume to be much lower in that case.   Jason Bay: And at the very other end of the spectrum, you have people selling stuff that's very transactional, very SMB type of thing. And if what you're selling has at least a 10,000 to 12,000-plus US dollar… I don't know what that translates into to the rest of the world's currencies.   Will Barron: Don't worry. Everyone talks in dollars on the… I'm a British company. We sell our product in dollars. That's where the world's at, I think.   “If what you're selling has at least $10,000 or $12,000 annual contract value, it's worth doing a little bit of customization on the emails. But you're not going to spend an hour researching someone to sell them something that's a thousand bucks a month. You don't have the time to do that.” – Jason Bay · [03:03]    Jason Bay: Okay. If it's at least $10,000 or $12,000 annual contract value, it's worth doing a little bit of customization on the emails. But you're not going to spend an hour researching someone to sell them something that's a thousand bucks a month. You don't have the time to do that.   Jason Bay: So you might have reply rates more in the 3% to 6% range, and then you have everywhere in-between. So I think you need to do some sales math and think about how many deals do I need to be closing on a quarterly basis? You've talked about this a lot.   Jason Bay: How many deals do I need to be closing on a quarterly basis? And how does that backtrack into my closing rates and how many qualified opportunities that would need, how many intro calls that would be? And then you backtrack into the outbound metrics. How many outbound activities does it take to create a meeting?   Jason Bay: You've got to work your sales math a little bit in order to really figure out what is a good or bad reply rate for you. But I can tell you, regardless of the scenario, 1% is not good. That's a little too much work.   The Difference Between Cold Emailing 100 Prospects and Spamming 100 Individuals · [04:03]    Will Barron: I love it. I was going to bring it back to what you said, and you ended with it then, Jason, it's a lot of freaking work for not a lot if you are sending… Well, are you sending a hundred emails at that point or are you spamming a hundred emails at that point? I guess we need to define what spam is to discourage people from doing it to a certain extent, right?   Jason Bay: Oh, yeah. Definitely. So the difference between spamming someone and cold-emailing them is… I think it's the accountability. A lot of these automation tools, the part that's kind of tough is oftentimes you don't really hit Send to that person. You might hit the Send button and it goes out to a hundred people, but you're so removed from what you're actually doing.   Jason Bay: The way that I would compare it is, not to get political, but any kind of politician that is making a big decision that impacts a lot of people, whether that's going to war or something that impacts taxes or underprivileged people, they're so far removed from most of those decisions, the way that we do it here in America at least, where they don't really feel the accountability of their actions.   Jason Bay: In a very small form, we're doing that with our sales engagement tools where we hit Send in a sequence to a couple of hundred people, we didn't actually hit the Send button to Will Barron, the chief revenue officer at this software company I'm trying to get a hold of. And we wouldn't normally hit the Send button on a lot of the stuff that we're sending.   Jason Bay: So the difference between spam, I guess, and cold email, to answer your question, is how purposeful am I in reaching out to this person? Did I pick out this person, this company? Am I reaching out to them on purpose? And am I making it evident to them that this was intentional?   Jason Bay: I'm not approaching you like a list. I'm approaching you as an individual. And there's ways that you can do a hybrid of both. But that's how I look at the difference between the two.   “I like to think of cold emails as would you send that email to your mom? Would you send that email to a friend? Would you send that email internally to someone in your organisation? And if they would just click Spam, then it's probably a crappy email.” – Will Barron · [06:07]    Will Barron: Yeah. That makes total sense. I like to think of it of, would you send that email to your mom? Would you send that email to a friend? Would you send that email internally to someone in your organisation?   Will Barron: And if they would just click Spam, then it's probably a crappy email. Leave it to marketing to send those emails and to warm up a client list if that's what you need, as opposed to… It's a terrible use of a salesperson's time to go about it that way.   How to Gauge the Success Rate of Your Cold Email Campaigns · [06:35]    Will Barron: Just on these numbers… And I want to get into trends and what's working, what isn't working, what's changed in a second. But is this a rubbish way… Having asked the question and listened to your response, Jason, is this a rubbish way to measure success of the response rate of a single email?   Will Barron: Should we be looking at the response rate of a campaign or a cadence that probably includes social selling, LinkedIn? Whether that's cold calls included, knocking on doors as well. Should we be looking at our success and response rate from starting cold outreach to then giving up on cold outreach with a prospect versus the response rate of a single email?   Jason Bay: Yeah. I'm so glad you asked this question because we do have to step back and take a 10,000-foot view. So I look at outbound, I like to think of it as a game of odds.   Jason Bay: So right now, when you look at this in terms of probability, I already mentioned that email, there's a 1-in-100 chance that you get a response to your cold email. With cold calling, it's not much better. According to Gong and what I see across sales teams, it's 1.48%, sometimes I'll see it around 3% or 4%, but of a chance of a positive outcome from a cold call, not even getting a meeting, just the next step of some sort. So basically, the person didn't ask you to take them off your list.   “The number one thing that we are driving with outbound is we want a qualified meeting. So we want a meeting that has a chance to turn into some sort of opportunity. So outbound is a very simple equation where number of qualified meetings equals volume times quality.” – Jason Bay · [07:55]    Jason Bay: So I don't know by you, I don't really like those odds. Those are really low odds. And the thing that we have to think about is that the number one thing that we are driving with outbound is we want a qualified meeting. So we want a meeting that has a chance to turn into some sort of opportunity.   Jason Bay: So if you look at outbound as a very simple equation of number of qualified meetings equals volume times quality, and there's a few things that go into that quality metric, but you can manipulate that equation any way that you want. You just have to start with the number of qualified meetings that you want to get.   Jason Bay: So if we use some really simple math, you can say, hey, it's five qualified meetings that I need to get because I sell enterprise, let's say, and I'm an account executive, that I need to get per month. A lot of times, the way people try to manipulate and get to that number is they really focus on the volume piece.   Jason Bay: So they might have a 1% conversion rate into a meeting, let's say. So that volume is like 500 prospects. That's one way that you could do that. And I'm pretty sure 1% of 500 is 5. You can correct me if I'm wrong, Will.   Will Barron: I feel that the pressure is on me now to double-check all the math in real-time. I'll have my Post-it note with a load of equations on it.   Jason Bay: Yeah. So that's one way that you could do it. But the other side, the quality side is really what I help most companies with. And that's a combination of your message, whether or not the prospect is a good fit, so the prospect fit, and it's also your soft skills.   “I look at outbound as a three-part framework of identify, engage, and create. So we can get to that qualified meeting mark by making sure that we identify good-fit prospects. And then that middle part, engage, that's our ability to start a conversation through emails, phone calls, all of that kind of stuff. And then the create part of that equation is how do we secure a meeting and turn this into a qualified opportunity? And typically, we're going to have to objection-handle in order to get the number of meetings that we need.” – Jason Bay · [09:27]    Jason Bay: So if we look at this as a framework, and this is where we can kind of go in and out, you mentioned cadence, I look at outbound as a three-part framework of identify, engage, and create. So we can get to that qualified meeting mark by making sure that we identify good-fit prospects.   Jason Bay: So it doesn't matter how clever or great your email is if it's not going to the right person at the right company, and that we know about the language in which these people talk about their priorities and problems, which we should spend some time on.   Jason Bay: And then that middle part, engage, that's our ability to start a conversation. So that's your emails, your phone calls, that's how you sequence, all of that kind of stuff. And then the create part of that equation is how do we secure a meeting and turn this into a qualified opportunity? And typically, we're going to have to objection-handle in order to get the number of meetings that we need.   Jason Bay: So to your point, it's a combination of all of those things. The email is only going to be as good as the person that you're sending it to. It's only going to be as good as your soft skills of being able to write a compelling message. And then the actual message itself. How am I talking to the person about what they're focused on, their priorities, problems that get in the way, et cetera? Yeah.   Jason Bay: So I want to look at all three of those areas. And I'm happy to get as tactical as you'd like to. I have example emails that we can talk about, all kinds of stuff. So we can get as tactical as you'd like, Will.   Will Barron: Cool. Well, we'll use that framework for the rest of this podcast. Now, one thing that's just cropped up in the mind of maybe 70% of the people listening to this, the 30,000 people that are going to listen to this, they're driving to work, they're going, “Jason, this sounds great, but it sounds like a lot of work, mate. That sounds like a lot more work than what I'm doing just clicking Send to spam 10,000 people that marketing have just given me.”   This is Why You Should Customise Your Emails and Not Just Spam the Marketplace · [11:10]    Will Barron: Can you just reiterate, you've already touched on this, but can you reiterate the numbers here of maybe it seems like a lot of work up-front, but you're going to send way less emails to get the same or better results? Just to any naysayers who would like to spam, just to knock that on the head before we get into the tactics.   “When you have to spam 500 people in order to get a meeting, you’ve potentially alienated hundreds of people that will never do business with you just simply because you're an email spammer. I think people don't take into consideration that when someone hits Unsubscribe or wants you to take them off your list, you can't ever communicate with them again.” – Jason Bay · [11:42]    Jason Bay: Yeah. It's like, why should you even care about having quality as a side of your approach? For sure. It's a fair question. I think about a couple of things. One, when you have to email 500 people in order to get a meeting and you look at the conversion rates on that and all of that other stuff, you potentially alienated hundreds of people that will never do business with you just simply because you're an email spammer.   Jason Bay: I think people don't take into consideration that when someone hits Unsubscribe or wants you to take them off your list, you can't ever communicate with them again. If someone asks you to take them off your list, you can't communicate with that person ever again.   Jason Bay: So if your goal is you're selling enterprise and you need to talk to chief technology officers or CIOs or whatever, you're putting yourself on a blacklist where your company can never contact these people ever again.   Jason Bay: I've had clients before I come in and work with them where their entire domain of email addresses is blacklisted. So they're trying to reach out to this company and nothing from the @company.com name will even come through to any of their email inboxes. That's how serious these companies are about it.   Jason Bay: So I like to think about… This is called second-order thinking is the mental model behind this. It's the consequences of the consequences. Right? It's the effect of the effect, in other words. So a way that you can think about this is what will the result be in the next one hour? What will be in the next one day, one week, one month, one year?   “Just because something will get you meetings here in the next hour or next day doesn't mean it's good over the long-term of what's going to happen over the next year. So we have to separate decisions versus outcomes. Also, just because we can get an outcome that we want in the short-term doesn't make it a good decision, and vice versa.” – Jason Bay · [13:06]    Jason Bay: Just because something will get you meetings here in the next hour or next day doesn't mean it's good over the long-term of what's going to happen over the next year. So we have to separate decisions versus outcomes.   Jason Bay: Just because we can get an outcome that we want in the short-term doesn't make it a good decision, and vice versa. Just because we don't get a good outcome short-term doesn't make it a good decision to get long-term results. So we really have to think about that. So you run the risk of burning out your market.   “I’ve also noticed that the people that respond to very spammy types of emails are never really great prospects.” – Jason Bay · [13:34]    Jason Bay: The other thing too that I noticed is that the people that respond to very spammy type of emails, they're never really great prospects.   Will Barron: Yep. I knew you were going to say this. This is exactly my experience and exactly my experience with the students in our training programme that come in from just spamming cold calls, spamming cold emails. They're like, “Why does everyone I speak to hate me? This sucks. I'm just getting rejected.”   Will Barron: And they're coming with this hard, thick, emotional shell. And then they're unable to have empathy for the customers that aren't, by happenstance, the right place with the right product at the right time.   Why You Never Want to Be Identified as the Spammy Salesperson by Any of Your Prospects · [14:15]   Will Barron: It makes me laugh so much the fact that you almost counterintuitively, by spamming people, you're starting the relationship as the spammy salesperson. And you've got to do so much work then to get just to level grounds with them to be able to have an adult business conversation.   Jason Bay: Yeah. Let alone the quality of that prospect. A lot of my clients are selling into chief executives at Fortune 1000s or large companies with 5,000-plus employees. And these C-level folks are really smart. You're not going to get any meetings with smart people that know that you're spamming them, that can tell you did zero research. You're just not going to get meetings with those people. You're going to get meetings with all the garbage in that list.   Jason Bay: So I would think about that. And we can address the time thing too because, basically, what we're doing is we're saying, hey, if we're going to do some up-front work and set up a system, we then can maintain over the long run a lot easier. But this is a lot more work to set up in the short-term up-front than for you to just write a couple of really bad email templates and to hit Send. So it is more work up-front for sure.   Will Barron: But then you get, you might have enough analogy for this, but I like to call it the Flywheel Effect. And this is HubSpot terminology. HubSpot talk about this all the time, the main sponsor of this show.   Will Barron: That you get that flywheel spinning and you start to build that momentum and you get a few deals from it, and then you're going to get referrals because you've sold appropriately and you've added value. Then you've got insights from your original customers that you can then share via cold outreach as an appropriate message. This industry insight that only you have as a salesperson, you can share that. And it goes bigger and bigger, and bigger.   Will Barron: And then you've done so much work six months ago, the leads that you spoke to that were like, “Oh, it's not the right time, I'm not going to respond to this,” they then have the problem, they have some kind of critical issue within the organisation and you're top of mind, you've done all the work, they reach out to you.   Will Barron: And this isn't as glamorous and as sexy as the idea of the Wolf of Wall Street where you're just calling people. Two grand, two grand, and you're just going through these numbers and crushing it. But I don't know that that's ever been a thing. And certainly, I'm 35, I've never seen that in any companies I've ever worked in that you were capable of doing that. I think that's a Hollywood stereotype of salespeople as opposed to what's really possible in the modern world.   Jason Bay: Yeah.   Will Barron: Let's get into tactics because that's what we're all here for. We're 15 minutes into the show and I think we're doing a bit of selling now, hopefully, to convince people because I think we're on the same wavelength with a lot of this stuff.   Applying the The 80/20 Principle to Your Cold Email Activities · [16:47]    Will Barron: How do we go about identifying who are… This is a whole episode in its own right. I appreciate that. For the specifics of cold email outreach in 2022, what do we need to know about a customer? What's the 20% of things that we need to know that's going to get us 80% of the results so that we can then send an effective cold email to them?   Jason Bay: Yeah. This is a great question. You wanted to know about trends in this episode too. This is the trend that I have seen really in the last couple of years is a lot of the tools are allowing you to sift through information a lot quicker.   Jason Bay: So what I want to do, I call this the perfect fit identifier, is with any type of cold outreach, whether that's cold email or I'm running a cadence or sequence or whatever it may be, what I want to think about is how can I retrace past successes? So where has my company had the most success? And I'm just going to reach out to companies and individuals and follow that same exact pattern and then I'm going to build upon it.   Jason Bay: So there's three kind of areas if you were building a Venn diagram that you'd want to look at. There's perfect fit on the account level, on the persona level, and then there's the values level. The values one I'll talk about here in a second, that's the most overlooked part, and it's also a way that you're going to customise the approach.   Jason Bay: So on the account level, let's say that it's one of two scenarios. People are usually either assigned a bunch of accounts or it's a bit of a free-for-all at your company. And maybe you have a territory you're working and you can reach out to anyone that you want to. Either way, you're going to have more opportunities than you can reach out to at a time.   Jason Bay: So on the account level, what I'm looking for is who best represents our case studies, our best success stories, the shortest sales cycles, biggest average deal size. I want to look for the verticals, the industry verticals, and the types of companies that best represent where it's going to be easiest for me to sell to, I have case studies, we have lots of content to show them.   Jason Bay: I want to be able to reach out and to cold email and say, “We've worked with companies exactly like you and they've dealt with these types of problems, and here are some of the things that they're doing. Can I share a case study with you or can I share a piece of content with you?” Whatever it might be.   Jason Bay: So I want the prospect to feel like, “Hey, we've worked with tonnes of people like you before.” On the second part of this, on the persona level-   Will Barron: Just before we move on from that, Jason-   Jason Bay: Oh, go ahead, Will.   Will Barron: … What does that look like practically? Is that we go through our CRM, find the top 10 biggest deals, and then go to those companies' competitors and say, “Hey, we've worked with X. We can do the same for Y?”   Will Barron: Do we look through the top 100 deals that we've ever done within the organisation and go, “Well, they were this company size in this kind of location, and we spoke to these individuals within the company?” What do we need to do very literally to put that into practise?   Jason Bay: Yeah. Good question. So CRM is a good place to do that. That's where I would start. And if you've closed a decent number of deals, I would just look at the deals that you've closed because those are the best stories that you can tell.   Jason Bay: But yeah, CRM, your deals that you've closed, your company's closed, whatever it might be. And I'm going to put those companies into a tool like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and I'm going to look at patterns across some of these companies. So, industry, employee count size, department growth, what's in their tech stack, et cetera.   Jason Bay: And then I'm going to look in my prospect list of a hundred accounts, let's say, and I'm going to look and see, out of these a hundred, which 20 or 30 are going to be the best to prioritise first? Because they best represent what's in our CRM and what we've closed, they best represent the case studies that we have. And again, I'm looking at industry employee count and demographic types of things.   Jason Bay: The other thing that you could look at too is some folks sell a solution where you can go onto someone's website, let's say, and you can see if they need it or not. So let's say you sell something that's a customer support type of solution or customer experience solution, and maybe part of what you do to make sure an account is a good fit is you go on their website and if they use a chatbot instead of an actual person, that makes them a good fit. So you're going to look for those kinds of indicators. So that's on the account level.   “People reverse-engineer closed deals, but usually, they only reverse-engineer from what happened in that first call or what happened in the second call, but they don't reverse-engineer how the meeting was landed for some reason. I don't know. People just never focus on that, yet it’s such a valuable process.” – Jason Bay · [21:14]    Jason Bay: On the persona level, I really want to… People reverse-engineer closed deals, but usually, they only reverse-engineer from what happened in that first call, what happens in the second call, who did we multi-thread into this? They do all of those things, but they don't reverse-engineer how the meeting was landed for some reason. I don't know. People just never focus on that.   Jason Bay: So take those deals that you looked at, those clients that you've personally closed, let's say, and what I want to do is reverse-engineer the outbound motion. So literally, who did I decide to reach out to? Who responded first? Who was the first meeting with?   Jason Bay: So I want to look at champions, influencers, and then decision-makers. And people can be a combination of one or all of those things, depending on the size of companies that you sell to. But I have a company that I work with that sells an automated welding solution. It's hardware as a service and software as a service. So they want to reach out to people in manufacturing and operations.   Jason Bay: One of their big champions they noticed they get the first conversation started with is at these manufacturing companies, it's plant managers, it's people that manage a plant. They're most impacted by the labour shortage around welders, for example.   Jason Bay: So I think another big mistake people make when they're figuring out who to target is they'd be like, “Well, I need the chief operating officer to sign off on this, so I'm only going to reach out to those people. They have all the decision-making power.”   Jason Bay: And you're like, “You know what? The chief operating officer is not even going to be in the plant where this tool would be installed, and they wouldn't be working with the people running the software either.” There's such bigger things that this person would be working on that they're not really going to care about that kind of stuff.   Jason Bay: So you need to have a mix. Theirs, it's manufacturing and operations. And the VPs in both of those areas are typically the biggest champions and influencers and decision-makers in the group, and then we have plant managers and folks like that that we would talk to.   Will Barron: That makes sense. I've had a bit of a revelation on this in the past 12 weeks or so, Jason. And this might be useful for you if you're selling to teams as well, sales teams. The person that is signing off on a lot of our Selling Made Simple Academy, the audience know where to find that, our training product, in the corporate environment for more than five to 10 people upwards are HR.   Will Barron: I would've never thought to sell into HR. And it's only that people come on as individuals and then they go, “Well, our company should be using this and I should be getting it for free. I shouldn't be spending my own money.” So they go and sell it internally on our behalf, we give them a commission for doing so if we get a deal done.   Will Barron: And HR is signing off on loads of our deals for onboarding new reps. So they're buying it for their entire teams and then buying extra seats for new people that are coming on board. I've got no data on this, no track record. It's only that I saw it happened twice in November, two decent size deals for us.   Will Barron: And then I sent an email to everyone who… We have a list of people who are in the product and who are trying to upsell it within their own organisation. And I said, “Hey, maybe you should drop this to HR.” We did a bunch of deals in January via HR. The CSO or CMO still signed off and had the budget, but it all went via HR.   Will Barron: And again, this is a trend that has probably existed for 10 years. I've only just picked up on it. Maybe it's just me being dim and not seeing the trend and not noticing these people in on the meetings on the email threads. But we've driven a couple of hundred grand in revenue just via noticing that alone. So finding out these trends can be incredibly powerful, and I'm talking from my own perspective here.   Jason Bay: Yeah. That's really interesting. I haven't noticed that before. And you gave me a little hack, actually, I need to start using.   Will Barron: Yeah. [inaudible 00:24:43] talk about it off-air. I'm explaining the pathway of it. The audience would find it interesting. You might find it interesting. But yeah, HR, not their budget, but they're the champions because they seemingly, in these enterprise companies, are organising a lot of the onboarding for new sales starters rather than you'd think a sales manager would be sat next to them going through all this.   How to Find and Get the Most Out of Your Internal Champion to Win the Deal · [25:04]   Will Barron: So I made the assumption that we are selling to VPs of sales. In reality, even though VP of sales, CMOs, CROs have the end budget, HR is the one going and doing the work on our behalf and grabbing that budget and getting these deals done.   Jason Bay: And that's really what you're trying to figure out when you think about the person is I'm trying to find the person that is working in a department that's going to have a lot of energy and passion around making this happen. Who cares about this the most? That's what the champion is.   Jason Bay: For me, it's always been sales managers. These are typically the people I interact with the most throughout the sales cycle, and they're able to do the work for me outside of our sales call time together to organise the troops, get their VP sold, all that kind of stuff.   Jason Bay: You bring up a really good point here in that you got to find those people. With the HR folks, for example, so this is kind of a messaging thing… Actually, well, I don't want to… I should probably finish this. So there's a third part of this before we get to messaging. But I think the HR one is a really good example that we can use.   Jason Bay: So we have accounts, personas, and then values is the other big one. This is the one where you can reach out to a company that seems like the perfect fit, you're talking to the perfect person, but they just don't really care about your solution. So I'll give you an example. Customer experience was something that I talked about earlier.   Jason Bay: If I'm reaching out to a Walmart, let's say, nothing against Walmart, but their value prop is being the lowest-cost provider, it's literally on their website. So it's not that they don't care about their customers. It's that, to be the lowest-cost provider, that doesn't typically mean that you're investing a lot in the customer experience.   Jason Bay: There are other things that are more important to them to hit that mission, that value of being the lowest-cost provider. So that would make Walmart not a great account in most cases if you're selling a solution like that.   The Three Personalization Buckets You Should Know About · [27:09]   Jason Bay: So the values, what I'm going to look at, is three buckets, and these are the three personalization buckets that we would use too. It's education; so what are they educating their customer base about? That's going to be a little bit more applicable if you're selling to companies that are also B2B.   Jason Bay: I'm going to look at accomplishments; so what does this company brag about? So that might be company awards. It might be workplace awards that they've won. It might be how they're so awesome with certain things. It might be testimonies. It might be case studies.   Jason Bay: And then the last bucket is investing; so where are they investing their dollars? Are they hiring people right now? Are they acquiring companies? Are they merging with companies? Are there new products coming out, new services, et cetera? And tech stack is a really big part of that too.   Jason Bay: So if we were looking at that customer experience solution again, I would be looking for customers… Or accounts, excuse me, that have clear signs that they care about customer support and they care about customer experience. So are they really proud about displaying their response times and their 100% guaranteed policy? And have they won awards around the level of customer service that they add? Do they have content about the service, et cetera?   Jason Bay: So I'm looking for those three buckets as well, and that's going to drive a lot of the messaging that I'm going to send these folks.   Will Barron: Got it. Got it. The answer to the following few questions for me is sign up to Jason's course training. And this is, obviously, more in-depth there and he'll hold your hand and help you through it.   The Messaging Matric: Understanding The Engagement Elements of a Cold Email Outreach · [28:51]    Will Barron: But let's assume now that we've got what we think… We can use the scientific method to make a hypothesis and test and refine some of this over time, right? But we think, via our hypothesis of what our product does, the value, the account, the personas within there that we're in… We've got the right people. We've got a list of 10 accounts.   Will Barron: What does the engagement element of this look like now? How can we take what we've learned and turn that into an email? We'll stick with email specifically. But an email, or it could be cold outreach [inaudible 00:29:11], but we'll stick with email. An email that gets a response, that elicits some kind of reaction in the buyer.   Jason Bay: Yeah. So we want to create what's called a messaging matrix. And this messaging matrix is going to give us swipe copy for emails, it's going to tell us what to say in a talk track, et cetera.   Jason Bay: So what I want you to imagine is I want you to pick a prospect out and I want you to imagine that the prospect is on a path. I call this the prospect path. So they have a current state. And in this current state, they have priorities.   Jason Bay: So there are initiatives. This year, in 2022, as we're recording this, there are two or three things that are at the top of their priorities list. And what you're going to find is there's actually a pattern across all of the people that you reach out to around what they're typically trying to accomplish.   Jason Bay: And then there's things that they're doing to get that job done right now. So there's the solutions that they're using, strategies, tactics, competitors maybe that they're using to help make way on those priorities.   Jason Bay: And then somewhere along that journey, they run into problems. These are things that get in the way of those priorities, these are things that are impeding their team's progress. And then they have aspirations, so things that they're trying to accomplish six to 12 months down the road.   Jason Bay: I want to give you an example of what some of this sounds like. And then what we can actually do with that is I'll talk to you about how that translates into an email. So I work with a company that sells into VPs of human resources. And it's not a staffing company necessarily. It's more of a company that has a software solution where people can go in and hire some of these factory workers and people working on the floors and that sort of stuff.   Jason Bay: So with these VPs of HR, what we found out about the prospects is they want to accomplish a couple of things. So there are two big categories and priorities of things that they want to accomplish. And I'm looking here at their messaging matrix. So one of those is employee satisfaction and productivity, and the other is HR effectiveness.   Jason Bay: They got this information because we looked at all the sales calls, all the discovery calls that they do, the demo calls, and we just asked prospects, “What are your top two or three priorities this year? What would make this conversation relevant for you?” Et cetera. All you got to do is ask.   Will Barron: I know I'm interrupting you, Jason.   Jason Bay: Oh, go ahead.   Why You’re Likely to Get More Done By Simply Asking Your Prospects What They Want · [31:30]    Will Barron: And I'm sorry to keep butting in here, but I think that needs reiterating. How much of a hack is it just to ask your prospects what they want or previous customers what they wanted and what you delivered on and what got them interested?   Will Barron: Salespeople just never… Companies never do this. This is how we found out about the HR hack, getting our product into these enterprise organisations. How important is it just to ask your prospects and ask your best customers, “What did you want from us? What did we provide? What made you reply to an email?”   Jason Bay: It's the oldest advice I could possibly give someone that creates any type of content, right? You're 35, I'm about to turn 33. It's the advice we read about 10, 15 years ago or whenever we got into sales around the language, right? Just ask your customers.   Jason Bay: And there's a bunch of different things we don't have time to get into with how you can find that information. But the bottom line is I would just ask. Every sales call moving forward, before you dig into it, hey, just to keep the conversation relevant for you today, what are the top two or three priorities that are most relevant so I can make this conversation as useful for you as possible today? And people will just share them with you and you're going to find patterns, and you need to write them down word for word.   Jason Bay: So I'll go through one of these. So for the VP of human resources, it wasn't just employee satisfaction or productivity. It was how do we take care of existing employees to increase our workplace ranking and retention?   Jason Bay: So it was very specific around how do we demonstrate that we're a great workplace to work for so that we can win awards and use as a recruiting tool? How can we retain people so that we have great Glassdoor reviews and we have positive references and things like that?   Jason Bay: So the current way that they're getting that done, so that's the next part of the messaging matrix. We got priority, how they're getting it done right now. They're relying on in-house employees to get the job done. So they have an in-house team of recruiters that are going out and finding these people.   Jason Bay: The problem with that is that their current solution leads to a lot of turnover and burnout, workers don't feel valued, and there's a lot of job abandonment due to poor working conditions, long hours, and shift inflexibility. So this is stuff that's happening on factory floors like let's say an Amazon, for example.   Jason Bay: So once I know that's the problem, then I'll look at the aspirations. So what do these people, when they come into sales calls, what do they tell us they're trying to accomplish in six to 12 months? They want to be able to focus on culture, diversity, and inclusion, to hire and promote from within, and increase employee satisfaction and retention.   Jason’s Guide to an Effective Cold Email Strategy · [34:10]   Jason Bay: So that was a lot of information right there and you might be like, well, how the hell do I turn that into a cold email, dude? That's a lot. So the cold email structure, I'm going to give you an example. I'll read off the email. I'll give you an example of what it sounds like first and then we can deconstruct it a bit.   Jason Bay: So here's the email. And it actually follows a very close kind of template to the messaging matrix. “Hi, Andrew.” Personalization. “Saw that you're offering a $1,000 signing bonus, on-demand pay, and retention bonuses for the positions you're hiring for right now.”   Jason Bay: So you remember the three values that we talked about around education, accomplishments, and investments? Well, one of the signs of investment is hiring people. And when you look in those job ads, you can see how they're incentivizing people to work for their company right now.   Jason Bay: So that was that first line. Saw that you're offering a $1,000 signing bonus, on-demand pay, and retention bonuses for the positions you're hiring right now.   Jason Bay: This next part is I'm going to speak to the priority of these VPs of HR that I talked to. This got me thinking about how you plan on increasing the speed of hiring and reducing the cost of acquisition, a focus I'm hearing from many VPs of HR in a similar position.   Jason Bay: So all I did was circle back to the priority, the thing that people are trying to accomplish. And this actually is in alignment with that second priority, the HR effectiveness. How do we improve our hiring practises to increase the speed of hiring and lower the cost of acquisition? This is exactly what they would tell us, word for word. So I'm using their words in the email.   Jason Bay: And then I'm going to drop a couple of names of companies that we've worked with. Coca-Cola and Good Foods are using our help to avoid running into labour bottlenecks by keeping hiring costs down and hiring timelines short.   Jason Bay: So that was the big part that they talked about was a problem. And again, this is actually from that second priority, not the one I listed off earlier. They said costs are high, candidate quality is poor, timeline of hire is too long, it's very labour-intensive, and candidates are not responding to our job ads. So I addressed that right there.   Jason Bay: Coca-Cola and Good Foods are using our help to avoid running into labour bottlenecks by keeping hiring costs down and hiring timelines short. Can I get an opportunity to share how this could be helpful for you at ABC company? Jason.   Jason Bay: So I've incorporated, in that email, all of those elements. I've talked to the priority, the thing that they're trying to accomplish. And I'm going to read that second one off right now, just so it's less confusing.   Jason Bay: So the priority, again, was HR effectiveness. How do we improve our hiring practises to increase the speed of hiring and lower the cost of acquisition? What am I doing to accomplish that right now? I'm working with an outside firm or I'm using an in-house recruiting team.   Jason Bay: That's a problem because costs are really high. When we work with an outside firm candidate, quality is poor, timeline to hire is too long. Or an in-house recruiting team, the problem is that it's very labour-intensive and candidates are not responding to our job ads. And what do I want? And I want to improve our hiring process so that we never run into a labour bottleneck ever again.   Jason Bay: These companies are literally having to put production on hold and turn away orders and business because they can't hire fast enough. So my email is just addressing all of those things in that order.   Jason Bay: We can go ahead and pause there. I'm sure you have a lot of questions on the email. We can go in-depth and break it down. But an email like this would get a 5% to 10%-plus reply rate. If we send it to the right person, we look for that hiring trigger. And we know that the language is really sharp too because we tested a bunch of iterations of this.   Why Simple, Professionally Written Emails Yield the Best Results · [37:36]    Will Barron: My question, Jason, is when this is done correctly and we've done the work up-front and we know what we're talking about, and we're making a few assumptions here that the salesperson is somewhat knowledgeable about the industry, their product, their space, otherwise, it'd be very difficult to come up with these other than asking.   Will Barron: Obviously, any chimp can ask you your best customers, why they want to work with you and all this kind of stuff, and the problems that they've had, and trends that they might have in the future.   Will Barron: So assuming that it's a relatively educated salesperson, they've been through the process that you've just outlined, and they've put all these steps into place, that was quite a simple, straightforward, logical email. Is that what it should look like?   Will Barron: Because if I got an email like that in the circumstance that you just outlined, if I was that potential buyer, at the very minimum, I'd go, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” And if I don't respond right now, I'm probably not clicking the Spam button. And maybe it might take a few more emails because I'm just busy and you need to catch me at the right moment where I've got my calendar open, where I can say yeah, let's jump on a call.   Will Barron: But should the email just be as succinct and as logical and as… That was quite a professionally written email as well. I'm assuming there was no weird GIFs in there and memes and stuff to try and grab attention, right?   “People think they have to be really creative but I like what I refer to as a boring approach. You don't want to bore the prospect to death, but I want to be so insanely straightforward and obvious about what my email is about that the prospect is not having to invest any willpower into figuring out what my email is about” – Jason Bay · [38:59]    Jason Bay: No. Yeah. So you mentioned something really good. People think they have to be really creative. I like what I refer to as a boring approach. You don't want to bore the prospect to death, but I want to be so insanely straightforward and obvious about what this is that the prospect is not having to invest any willpower into figuring out like, I don't know what this is. Does this even apply to me?   Jason Bay: There's some stuff going on on LinkedIn right now that I think is a little bit concerning, where the content is, basically, if you confuse the prospect, they'll respond to you. And I'm like, “I don't think so.” Especially an executive.   Will Barron: You might get a response, right? But the response is what we talked about at the top of the show of you're now the spammy salesperson who's conned the prospect into getting on a call, and that you're immediately 20 steps behind where you could be if you sent a more appropriate, adult, conversational email where it's, here's where you are. Here's where you want to be. You're blocking your pathway. Perhaps here's how we can get you from one side to the other.   Will Barron: A bit of social proofing that we've done this for other companies similar to yours, similar size, similar industry. Even better if it's a competitor because hey, you don't want them getting away from where you are. You probably want to work with us as well.   The Most Effective Cold Emails are Simpler Than You Might Think · [40:13]   Will Barron: Are we over-complicating all of this, Jason, in the fact that that is just a straightforward professional email that can be templated in the idea of, you might do things differently, but this is how we structure our emails, of current state, future states, what's blocking them, how you get from one side to the other, social proof that they should listen to us.   Will Barron: Is that enough to get attention? I'm asking you the same question again because I really want to double down on it. Is that enough to get attention? Or do we need videos? Do we need to be doing an email, immediately calling, adding them on LinkedIn, and then doing some weird bullshit on LinkedIn to get their attention as well?   Will Barron: Or it's just a well-researched, well-written, professional, but still somewhat conversational… We're not being weird. We're not typing a letter here in 1984. But is just a professional, straightforward, conversational value-adding email like that enough?   Jason Bay: I don't know if it's enough all by itself. I think that definitely couple it with a phone call. So the cool thing about this messaging matrix is those two priorities that I mentioned, employee satisfaction and productivity and HR effectiveness, that's the same thing I've used in my opener for a cold call.   Jason Bay: Hey, Will. Jason with so-and-so company. You got a minute for me to tell you why I'm calling? You can let me know if you want to keep chatting. Will says yes.   Jason Bay: Well, hey, I'm talking to a lot of VPs of HR right now and I'm hearing them prioritise one of two things. I'm really curious what it is for you. One is around employee satisfaction and productivity. So how do we take care of existing employees to increase our workplace retention?   Jason Bay: Or two, HR effectiveness. How do we improve our hiring practises to increase the speed of hiring and lower the cost of acquisition? I'm really curious, which one of those two is a bigger focus for you right now?   Jason Bay: So I think the messaging repurposed, this is how you can reduce some of the work. So if you repurpose that same message into phone, I could record a video too, Will, with that. I could say, hey, I could share my screen on the video and do something really simple and just narrate the research as I'm doing it.   Jason Bay: Hey, Will, I was on your website. I saw that you're offering a $1,000 signing bonus, on-demand pay, and retention bonuses for the positions you're hiring for right now. Typically, what I hear from people like you is a focus around one of two things, bam or bam.   Jason Bay: You're just repurposing the same message across a different medium. So repurpose. Repurposing is the big… I mean, it's a huge content marketing hack, as you know, right? You take these episodes and repurpose a best-of. Or you take five episodes on cold email and you just summarise your best parts of it and you put it into a video on YouTube, right? It's content marketing 101 to repurpose the stuff.   Jason Bay: Statistically, less than half of people are going to open up the emails that you send. So make sure you're repurposing that content and reusing it.   Jason Bay: So to answer your question, in email… And I don't think you were asking it in this way necessarily. I just want to be clear for everyone listening and watching. Sending one email, no matter how great it is, probably not going to get a response if you only send one email.   Jason Bay: I need to send multiple emails to this person. I need to call am. I need to reach out to them on LinkedIn. But I don't need to do that in a way that is inauthentic. I could just repurpose the same messaging across those different mediums.   Jason Bay: One of the things I really like to do is to bump emails and to not do it in a pesky way. So I would bump this email if they didn't get a response. And in two days I wouldn't say, “Hey, did you get my email? I noticed you opened up my email but didn't get a response.” Or, “Hey, I noticed I haven't gotten a response from you.” Just a simple, “Any thoughts?” Any thoughts? Question mark. Jason. That gets a pretty high reply rate.   Jason Bay: So a really simple bump email can work really well. There's another type of bump email that works pretty good too. So we did talk about GIFs. The best GIFs are the ones that you make. So if you could make a short video or a GIF of you holding a piece of paper that says, “Any thoughts on it?” And you're pointing up at the email.   Jason Bay: BombBomb is a video platform, they popularised that approach, to give them credit. I've seen that work pretty well too, but I wouldn't send that to a VP of operations.   Will Barron: No.   Jason Bay: You know what I mean?   Will Barron: I was letting you finish that, Jason.   Jason Bay: I might send it to someone in tech.   Will Barron: I was like, “Maybe don't send that to the CEO.” Maybe that you not send that to a Ballmer over at Microsoft or someone. But I really appreciate what you're saying there.   Will Barron: We've not got time. We'll have you back on in the not too distant future to dive into this deeper because I think you might be into some of the psychology of this as well and understanding it. But when you share a similar effective message over and over, you add a layer of congruence to what you're sharing with the prospect.   Will Barron: And it might be one, two, three. There might be layers and there might be layers of the same problem on you, so to speak, for the prospect. But when you're sharing one, two, maybe three different problems and how you can solve them for the prospect over the course of a week, a month, six months, whatever it is; depending on the size of the deal, what it's worth, and appropriate doing; you're congruent. And that shows the prospect that you're adamant in what you're doing.   Will Barron: What a hack does is go, “Well, we can do this. And we've got a discount on next month. And then this week we've just added this feature which might not be relevant but might be relevant. Hey, can you get back to me on this and this?” And you go all over the place and you have commission breath, and it sounds desperate. You're just trying anything to hook them, to claw them in.   Will Barron: Well, if you've got a great product that solved this problem for people similar to your prospect, it's almost going from all this, from a standpoint of, hey, it's almost inevitable that you're going to work with us. I'm going to keep following up because I'm a professional.   Will Barron: And eventually, we're going to get a time booked in the diary. And whether that includes a GIF or not is obviously going to depend on the person. You can send me a GIF all day. I love GIFs.   Will Barron: But you send in a congruent message with regularity. I don't know if that is a real word, I've just made it up. Over the long-term, it shows that you're a professional salesperson, as opposed to someone who's just going to do, as you alluded to before with this weird stuff that's going on on LinkedIn to trick people into getting on calls and follow up on emails.   How to Avoid Stone Age Selling · [46:26]    Will Barron: You're not having to go back to the stone age of selling, which is manipulation, weird five-word hacks to get into someone's subconscious and drive up their 11 levels of emotion and all this weird stuff that happened in the '80s and '90s.   Jason Bay: Yeah. You don't really got to do a lot of that at all. I think of this… Your sequence is like a personalised ad campaign. The average person needs to see an ad six to eight-plus times in order to even click on it. And that's from something that they might like actually. That might be a retargeting ad that they are seeing from Amazon or Nike.   Jason Bay: So my advice is always, don't go into this situation where you're prospecting to someone and you expect to have better brand awareness than Nike or Google because they have to put multiple impressions in front of people to get them to click on stuff too. You're no different.   Jason Bay: You're probably not working at a company that has that level of brand recognition. Most of us aren't. And if you are, that's awesome, but most of us aren't. So treat it like a personalised ad impression where you're putting a custom message or ad in front of someone.   Jason Bay: They're not going to always click or respond in everything that you say, but that doesn't mean that that first email they didn't respond to wasn't a big reason why they responded to the third or fourth email or why they decided to pick up your call.   Will Barron: Yep. It's almost like we're telling a story, right? It's progressing. There's going to be peaks. There's going to be troughs. We're going to try and raise emotion. We're going to try to add logic to it. We're going to make things simple. Maybe there's an element of making things more complex. And then you go back and forth, and it's going to be an experiment.   Will Barron: And we'll wrap up with this. We're using the scientific method, right? We're making these hypotheses, we're testing them. What I find is that when salespeople get that message, they just can dominate a marketplace. Maybe it lasts six months, maybe it lasts 18 months, depending on what's going on in the market, your competitors, and what your customers are doing as well.   Parting thoughts · [48:35]    Will Barron: But that's when salespeople hit target, hit target, do pretty well, make some money, and then just make stupid money for six months, 12 months, and when sales becomes an incredibly lucrative and fun place to be. So with that, Jason, tell us more about Blissful Prospecting. Tell us more about the work that you're doing over there and how we can get in touch and follow you, mate.   Jason Bay: Yeah. This is super fun. This is what I eat, live, breathe. I prospect every week. Outbound is my thing. There's a couple of ways that you can get more of what we talked about today.   Jason Bay: So blissfulprospecting.com, tonnes of free content on there. So we got a podcast. There's guides, webinars, all kinds of stuff that we're doing there on outbound. And then if you're a rep, we have a programme called Outbound Squad, and it's pretty cool. So you get coaching from me, you get a community that you get to interact with, and just all of my best course content that companies like Zoom and Medallia and some of my other clients see, same exact content there.   Jason Bay: And then I also work with sales teams too. So if you're wanting to implement something like this, we have an accelerator programme where we take you through this. You get to work one-on-one with me over six weeks, and that's a lot of fun. And we deliver some good results there too. So blissfulprospecting.com is the best place to check out everything.   Will Barron: Great stuff. We'll link to blissfulprospecting.com, your podcast, everything else that we talked about, and I'll probably link some blog posts of the specific things that you've mentioned in this episode as well where appropriate in the show notes of this episode over at salesman.org.   Will Barron: And with that, Jason, I appreciate you, mate, for your time, your energy, your insights on this. The fact that I think you're a man after my own heart of putting this into frameworks and systematising a lot of it as opposed to just dumping it out there and hoping people can follow along.   Will Barron: I appreciate that from you and your work, mate. And with that one, thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Jason Bay: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

In sales, facing rejection is part of the game. But just because  rejection is a given for salespeople, it doesn’t mean you have to let it drag you down. In this post, I’m sharing 5 ways to overcome rejection that’ll put you in the right mindset to pick  yourself up, and put yourself on the path towards blowing past your sales goals. Sales rejection hurts Now, if you’re in any kind of sales role, you know how it feels to be rejected by a prospect It’s happened to me. It’s happened to you. It’s happened to the greats like Ogilvy, Ziglar, Carnegie, even that guy from the ShamWow commercials. Is that surprising? It shouldn’t be. The point is this—even if you’re selling the most amazing, mind-blowing, revolutionary product on the market today, some of your prospects will say “no” when you call or email them.  sno. And when that happens, it can be demoralizing. It can sap your motivation to keep making calls. It can throw you off your trajectory towards hitting your goals. And it can ravage the sense of fulfillment you get from connecting people with a product you truly believe in. But the motivation, the drive, the purpose—it can all be restored when you reframe rejection with the five concepts I’m going to share with you in this video. And these aren’t “hacks” or “quick wins” or any other (frankly bullshit) jargon terms. There is no quick fix for this kind of stuff. BUT if you want to take this given of sales and turn it on its head, you can start by internalizing these 5 concepts about rejection. 1: The Prospect Isn’t Rejecting YOU The concept that the prospect isn’t rejecting you personally. They’re rejecting your pitch, product or timing. There’s a reason we started with this one. Because honestly, this is the concept you’re going to easily improve  the most from. Concept #4 is similar but more on that in a sec. Now, when you hear that dreaded no, the dial tone, or the deafening silence on the other end of the line, it isn’t necessarily you that the prospect isn’t responding to. It’s what you’re saying that they’ve ignored. There are two main reasons you’re getting a negative response with your cold outreach Reason #1: It’s Your Pitch If your pitch isn’t hitting all the right pain points, then your prospect isn’t going to see the value of your product. The lesson here? Refine the pitch. Dive deeper into who your audience is, what makes them tick, and what problems they’re grappling with. Reason #2: It’s Your Product If after tweaking your pitch you’re still getting too many negative responses, your product just might not be a fit for the market. If that’s the case, it’s time to do some real research and re-evaluate your target audience. 2: Your Prospect’s on Autopilot Next up, it could just be that your prospect is on autopiliot when you try to engage with them. This concept is mostly for cold-call situations, but it can apply to cold emails, social messages, and a slew of other outreach methods too. When you’re reaching out to your prospect, you’re jarring them out of being on autopilot. They’re knee-deep in the numbers, organizing their desktop, or doing one of a million other things that, guess what, have nothing to do with you. When you give them a ring, they’re still in that other mode. And that means they’re going to respond reflexively with a “no” rather than do the work of understanding what you’re trying to tell them. Think of it like this—when you walk into a shop and some spotty teenager stands at the door and asks if you need help, you automatically and instinctively say “no”, right? Same goes with your prospect on a cold call. Again, the buyers state of mind is not your fault. So appreciate this, humbly when you do interrupt your prospects and ask if there’s a better time for a follow up call. 3: You’re Playing a Numbers Game Point number 3, remember that to a certain extent, you’re playing a numbers game. When you get down to it, sales is a numbers game. If you’re doing good work and documenting your wins and losses, you already know that it takes working with on average, say, four prospects before you close on one of them. And if you’re not keeping track of these metrics, I highly recommend starting today. This information on your win/loss ratio tells you that for every perceived failure (a hang-up, a negative response, a no response), you’re actually getting one step closer to closing a deal. So rather than dwelling on the “no”, think of them like the necessary steps to securing a “yes” from a prospect and converting them into a buyer. Now, similar to concept #1 (the prospect isn’t rejecting you personally) is the next concept #4. Both are valuable lessons you can use to learn about your prospect and actually sell them better, later. 4: A “No” Often Means “Not Right Now” A “no” from a prospect when selling to them, often means “not right now.” And in fact, it rarely rarely means “never, forever.” You might have the perfect product, a primo pitch, and a very qualified  prospect. But if the timing isn’t right, they’re still not going to be able to give you their business. This, however, is not a loss. Instead, it’s up to you to determine the why behind the prospect’s “no” before cutting the conversation with them short. If the prospect gets back to you with “Oh, it’s just a really busy quarter for us” or “we’re right in the middle of a transition period,” this is a sign that you should reach out later on. So, ask them when is a good time to follow up before hopping off the phone. With a few simple questions, you’ve turned what other salespeople would perceive as a negative experience into potential business further down the line. Alright, last but certainly not least is an idea you should remember for the rest of your sales career… 5: This Is Just Business This is just business. When you get rejected, you aren’t being attacked. You aren’t under assault. And the prospect isn’t going to jump through the screen via Zoom and strangle you for pitching a product they don’t like. The stakes—the real stakes—are actually pretty damn low. You’re just doing business. And you’re just doing it for a company that you represent. The sooner you adopt the “it’s just business” attitude, the sooner you can accept that: No one is going to actually hurt you here. You’re just doing your job. That’s all. And the sooner you learn to cope with rejection, the better you’re going to be at that job. Simple as that. Summary So there you have it—5 concepts to keep in mind any time you get that dreaded “no” during your cold selling outreach. And if you want to be truly successful as a sales rep, you should: Reframe your rejections using these five concepts Learn from your mistakes Adjust your strategy accordingly Because when you can do that, nothing will be able to hold you back from crushing your goals.

Geoff Woods is the Co-Founder & President of ProduKtive, the training company behind The ONE Thing and the host of The ONE Thing podcast. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Geoff explains what it means to actually be productive and how we do more of it. 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 - Geoff Woods Host of The ONE Thing Podcast Resources: Geoff’s LinkedIn The1thing.com Book: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results Transcript Will Barron: Hi, I'm Will. And welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're looking at how you can prioritise your time and become effective. Today's guest has been on the show a bunch of times, I've had tremendous value from every time Geoff has been on. Our guest is Geoff Woods. Geoff Woods is the co-founder and president of ProduKtive, the training company behind The ONE Thing and host of The ONE Thing podcast. Geoff, welcome back to the show.   Geoff Woods: Will, great to be here.   Will Barron: I'm glad to have you on, mate. Last time, you gave me, and we don't need to do this again because it was a little bit painful, but you gave me a bit of a pain in the arse. A pain in the arse? You gave me a bit of a kick in the arse, which gave me some pain points that I resolved and the business is doing way better on the back of it. So I thank you for that. And for people who are unfamiliar with that previous episode, I'll link it in the show notes of this one over at salesman.org.   The One Thing Preventing Salespeople From Prioritizing Their Time and Becoming Effective Sales Professionals · [00:49]    Will Barron: And with that Geoff, becoming effective, right? Let me phrase it in The ONE Thing kind of language here, what is the one thing out of everything else, what is the one thing that typically holds sales people back from prioritising their time and becoming effective in the marketplace?   Geoff Woods: Feeling like they have too much to do and not enough time. I remember when my full-time job was as a salesperson in corporate sales. You wake up with big goals, you are naturally an ambitious person who not just sets goals, but you go after them with enthusiasm. And it can be really easy to see all the stuff that's on your plate, knowing the number that you got to hit, telling yourself, all the things you got to do to get there. Along the while, you've got all these administrative things you've got to do, you've got all these customer issues you've got to deal with and you can be really busy and look up at the end of the day and genuinely wonder, “What did I get done?”   Are You an Effective Salesperson? Here’s How to Gauge Yourself · [01:55]    Will Barron: Is there a definition, Geoff, of what effective is? Because I feel like if we were having a leadership conversation or you were coming in and coaching an executive team, “Well effectiveness for executives is this, this, and this.” Is there a broad definition of what being effective in a role is? And how does that then apply to sales people?   Geoff Woods: Well, I think we need to start with, what does it mean to be productive?   Will Barron: Sure.   “There's a difference between being busy and being productive. Being busy is just taking a lot of action. Being productive is taking action on the most important things.” – Geoff Woods · [02:15]    Geoff Woods: There's a difference between being busy and being productive. Being busy is just taking a lot of action. Being productive is taking action on the most important things. I think first and foremost, Will, people have to get clear on what matters most. Then once you're clear on what matters most, are you being efficient and effective at doing those things?   “People have to get clear on what matters most and ask themselves if they’re being efficient and effective at doing those things. A simple question you can ask yourself is, “Am I doing the best that I can do? Or am I doing the best that can be done?” – Geoff Woods · [02:26]    Geoff Woods: A simple question you can ask yourself, is, “Am I doing the best that I can do? Or am I doing the best that can be done?” I think a lot of us will rely on our natural abilities, we call it being entrepreneurial, and we muscle our way to a result based on our natural abilities. But the truth is, if you really want to be effective, we've got to acknowledge that other people have gone before us.   Geoff Woods: And frankly, the best that you can do today is irrelevant. If that's your focus, you are actually imposing a ceiling over your achievement. The opportunity is to ask the question, “What's the best that can be done?” Study the best of the best, model that behaviour and make it your own. That's a whole new ballgame.   Will Barron: I find this fascinating, right? So when we're training people in our training programme over at salesman.org, part of what we do in the very first workshop is go, “Right, put your sales target to one side for a second.” And everyone's like, “Why? That's what I'm here for.” Well, kind of. But then I explain that a sales target, depending whether it's a small company, big company, comes from just weird random places.   Will Barron: If it's a public company, “Well, we've got to do more than what we did last year. So the shareholders get value and the stock price goes up.” Okay, so what does that mean? Well, forget everything that happened in the past. Forget the market as it currently is. Your sales target across the organisation is this. Then it's broken down your sales leadership divisions, right? Then it goes down to a sales manager who may like you, they may not like you, but they want to get their targets as small as possible for the team so that they've got the most chance of hitting their target. Then it goes down to your territory. Then it goes down to your customers. Then it goes down to what's happened on the territory in the past.   Why Targets and Quotas Should Never Be Your Primary Focus in Sales ·  [04:15]    Will Barron: And by the end of it, and tell me if you disagree here, but in my experience sales targets don't really mean all that much. So we're aiming towards a number that's important because we've got to hit it, we've got to smash it to make some money, right? But there's an opportunity here for self-limiting. And also if there's a number that makes us feel uncomfortable, the opposite of this, of not putting in the effort. Because we feel like we're never going to get there on this, am I right here, sometimes, maybe quite often, an arbitrary number that doesn't mean anything when you look at it as to the actual scope of revenues available in the marketplace for you to collect?   Geoff Woods: Well, I think we can spend a lot of time debating if the number's the right number or how important the number is. But at the end of the day, the thing I learned in sales is you don't get a say. The number's the number. So I think the question we can ask is, how does that serve us? And I think this is where we have to acknowledge what is the purpose of a goal or what is the purpose of that quota? A lot of people think it's to achieve a result.   “The purpose of your goal is less about the result and more about informing who you have to become to achieve that goal.” – Geoff Woods · [05:24]    Geoff Woods: The thing that I've learned being in partnership with my two partners who co-authored The ONE Thing is that the purpose of that goal is less about the result and more about informing who you have to become. So I think a lot of us know what it feels like to have a number and we can break that down into monthly targets. And we wake up today and we go, “I got to close a hundred grand.”   “Unfortunately, most people don't know how to turn expected results into an activity.” – Geoff Woods · [05:54]    Geoff Woods: The problem is, based on that, what should be on your calendar today? And that's where people go, “I have no idea.” We don't know how to turn a result into an activity. And I think that's the opportunity. Whatever the number is, it's been handed to you. Who's the person you have to become that exceeds that number? What do your activities have to look like? What are the type of accounts you are going to focus on? Who are the call points? What's your approach going to be? And how do you make sure that as you go through your day, your time is an investment and not an expense?   Will Barron: So we'll get onto this idea of… Because we've got a training on this and it's an hour-long workshop. And maybe you subconsciously put this into my brain in previous conversations, that you're not going to hit the goals unless you become the person who's capable of hitting the goals, right? And this has gone back into philosophy, there's other people who commented this. We'll come back to it in a second.   Will Barron: But I just want to double down on this idea of, because I think I might have not explained it very well and I want the audience to comprehend this. I'm not saying that we should debate numbers. I'm saying the number is almost irrelevant in our performance, in that there's only so much cash in the marketplace. We are a person that is capable of achieving so much of that cash. And so, as long as the number is appropriate that we're going to make money and it's not 27 million when the marketplace is only going to have the opportunity to, no matter who we are, to provide a certain amount under that. As long as it's appropriate, the number is irrelevant.   The Way to Achieving Goals is By Becoming the Person Who’s Capable of Achieving That Goal · [07:40]   Will Barron: So coming onto this idea then of… Because this is quite out there, right? People sometimes take a bit to comprehend this, this idea that you can set a goal that's unachievable until you become the person who can achieve the goal. Do you have a better way of clarifying that because I struggle to get those words out and communicate it? But I know that when this clicks and when it's clicked with me in the past, that I've had to make changes, I have to hire people, we've had to change our coaching to be able to achieve these goals, immediately I feel like a wall has been lifted. I feel like there's been something dragging at my heels, pulling me back in my performance that's suddenly let go.   Will Barron: I can come up with all these metaphors to describe it. But do you have a way of talking about what we touched on there, describing it in a more eloquent way than what I have done?   Geoff Woods: Sure. So for those of you who are listening via audio, I'm now showing my document camera and I'm going to doodle some things. So I'll narrate what I'm doing. So there's three types of goals and I'm drawing an axis where there's an X and a Y axis. On the vertical axis, this represents the size of the question that we ask. The higher up we go vertically, the bigger the question. The bigger the question, the further out to the right, it requires that we search for the answer.   Geoff Woods: Now, most people, when they set their goals, set them based on what they think they can do this year. So they're looking at their current skillset. They're looking at their current comfort zone. It's a relatively small question to ask, which means they don't have to search for that big of an answer. And they set a goal that's doable.   Geoff Woods: Now, if you're listening to this show, that's probably not you because you're investing in your education. So you're probably used to setting stretch goals, going to the outer edge of your comfort zone and skillset and setting a goal that, you know what, I'm not a 100% sure, I'm going to have to stretch to get there. So we've got doable goals, we've got stretch goals.   Geoff Woods: Here's the problem, neither of these are where extraordinary lies. Because we are still shackling ourself to our current skillset and our current comfort zone. But the thing that we also know, that we sometimes forget, is our knowledge, our skillset, our comfort zone, we can change that over time. So the thing that I've learned from my partners is to ask questions that are so big they require that you search for answers that are so far out there. That you set goals that we call impossible possible goals. You're not even sure if it's possible.   Geoff Woods: I think Elon Musk is a great example of this. He said, “You know what? I'm not just out to build an electric car. I'm not even out to build the greatest electric car ever created. I actually want to develop a human colony on Mars.” And he set a goal that's so far out there that people are probably thinking he's crazy. But once he set that goal, it required that he reverse engineer who's the person he has to become today so that when he takes actions, they're on the trajectory that could line up with that future.   Geoff Woods: So I'll give you a real world example of this. When my partners, Gary and Jay, wrote The ONE Thing, Gary looked to Jay and said, “How many books will we need to sell in the first week to hit number one bestseller status?” And Jay did the research and he came back and said, “Gary, I think we need to sell about 40,000 copies in the first week.” Will, do you have any sense how many copies the average business book sells in it's lifetime?   Will Barron: I'll give some context. A guest on the show recently who's had a pretty successful book launch did about 4,000 in the first week.   Geoff Woods: That's amazing.   Will Barron: Yep, exactly. Because the average business book sells 500 in its lifetime because that's all their friends and family will buy. They needed to sell 40,000 in one week. So that's rare air. So Jay comes back with a plan for 40,000 and Gary looks him and says, “You just showed me a plan to fail.” Jay said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Well, no plan ever goes according to plan. So if your plan, if everything goes perfectly on your plan and that gets us to 40,000, I can almost guarantee we're going to miss. You need to show me a plan for a 100,000 copies in one week.” Which after Jay got up from the foetal position, he went and got to work and he came back with a plan for 100,000 copies. Will, guess how many copies they sold in the first week?   Will Barron: I don't know, go on.   “It's not about setting the goal, whether or not you hit it. It's about setting a goal that requires you to change your trajectory. It requires you to change who you are. Ask yourself, what knowledge am I missing? What skills or habits do I need to form so that I can take the current trajectory I'm on and increase the slope so that whether I hit the number or miss it, I'm going to end up further ahead than where I was.” – Geoff Woods · [11:53]    Geoff Woods: 44,000. So here's the point, it's not about setting the goal, whether or not you hit it. It's about setting a goal that requires you to change your trajectory. It requires you to change who you are. What knowledge am I missing? What skills or habits do I need to form so that I can take the current trajectory I'm on and increase the slope? Whether I hit the number or miss it, I'm going to end up further ahead than where I was.   The Question You Should Ask Yourself if You Want to Get to Where You Want to Be · [12:25]    Will Barron: How do we know? Because it's one thing to have yourself, so the answer to some of this is get your company to come in and do some corporate training, right? And help leadership trickle this down to sales people. So with that to one side and we'll cover that towards the end of the show, Geoff. Because clearly, that's part of the answer, have a coach like yourself come in and do some of this. And I'm lucky enough to have had you coach me live on the show a few times.   Will Barron: But for people who aren't lucky enough to be in that position, how do we know if we've asked a big enough question that gets us to where we want to be? Because seemingly, the question can always be bigger, right? And at some point it's just obnoxious and undoable as opposed to something that's going to change us as a person and allow us to make big strides in our career.   “If when you're asking yourself questions and you immediately know the answer, you're thinking too small.” – Geoff Woods · [13:13]    Geoff Woods: If when you're asking yourself questions, you immediately know the answer. You're thinking too small. When I think about how much income do I want, I'm putting myself in your shoes. “How much income do I want to make this year?” If you pick a number that you go, “Yeah, I think I can do that.” You're probably thinking too small. And this is just I can speak to this because I've been put in this position and I've been asked to double that number and then double that number again.   Geoff Woods: The moment I hit the point where I'm going, “There's no fricking way I can hit that.” That's when they're saying, “All right now you're thinking big. Now ask the question, fast forward and imagine you hit that increased target, how did you make it happen? All of a sudden you're leveraging a different type of thinking and you can turn those into action.   Geoff Woods: So I'll give you a real example. Last year in our organisation, one of the parts of my job is driving growth for the business. I set a quota for myself as the leader of the company for revenue. About six months into the year, I realised I was on track to hit the number. It was inevitable that the trajectory, it was going to take us there. So I raised the number by 150%. Now we're talking big numbers so that's material. And once I set that goal, I said, “What will my activities have to look like to get us on that trajectory?”   Geoff Woods: Two months later, I realised we were going to hit that number. We were pacing to hit that number. So I doubled that number. So if we're doing math, it was about 500% of the original number. We finished, we just barely missed the elevated number. Yet had you told me at the beginning of the year, “You are going to do X in revenue.” When originally I was only thinking of Y, I would've thought you were fricking nuts. But the moment I realised our actions were in alignment with a trajectory to hit our goals, I raised the goal, which required me to change my actions.   Geoff Woods: The moment our trajectory was putting me on pace to hit that elevated number, I raised the goal, which required us to change our actions. This number, we've tripled that number as a goal.   Overcoming Limiting Beliefs and Setting Big, Audacious Goals · [16:45]    Will Barron: So I love this. I'm on board with it. I'm just, and I put myself in this box, I'm just trying to visualise this for a, and I use this term endearingly and I include myself in this group of people, Geoff, and you in a prior life probably was included this as well. What about the knuckle-dragging salesperson who's driving in the car right now, who's listening to this, who's going, “Right. I can only send so many emails. I can only make so many calls. I can only get so much better at what I'm doing right now. I was aiming towards my sales target, I thought that was logical. So you're saying I need to double my sales target and have my own target that I'm aiming towards and hopefully I'll end up at 150%, 180% of revenue, whatever it is. But I can only do so much of the activity that I'm already doing.” What do you say? I can guess where you're going to go, but what would you say to that person?   Geoff Woods: Well, I'm going to do for you what a mentor did for me when I was back in my sales career. And this is when I knew I wanted to start a company, just had our first child. I'm already working 50 hours-a-week in my full-time job. I'm not sleeping at night because we've got a brand new baby, plus trying to take care of my wife. And I want to start a company. And my mentor looks at me and says, “Geoff, you're asking the wrong questions.” He said, “What would it take for you to double your income from your day job, working half the hours.”   Geoff Woods: And I looked at him and I said, “That's not possible.” He said, “how do you know?” And he said, “That's your homework. I want you to come back and present me with a plan to double your income working half the hours. So you could free up time to start your side business on the side without sacrificing your family.” And I came back with that plan.   Geoff Woods: And what I learned, Will, this is the 80 20 rule. The idea 80% of our results come from 20% of our efforts. It applies to activities, it also applies to customers. I could focus and had a track record of focusing on the low-hanging fruit, the customers or prospects that were right in front of me that I knew I could get the quick deal. And you know what? A good sales funnel, you've got a percent of them that are quick deals.   Geoff Woods: The thing I wasn't doing that I started doing was asking the question, “Who are the 20% accounts that if I just closed, those would drive 80% of our revenue?” And it didn't even take 20% accounts, it was two to three accounts that by closing those, just those accounts alone, I hit my quota less hours with less stress.   Geoff Woods: Now, most people could think through and identify what those accounts are. The problem is those accounts are not the easy accounts. They're not the ones you just get to walk in and do the quick one call close. It doesn't work that way. You've got to identify the right stakeholders. You've got to build relationships. You've got to build champions. It takes time. But if you are clear that by taking that goal and reverse engineering it to activities, you could get really granular on things that you could do every week that in the short term don't seem to move the needle much, but gradually then suddenly it unleashes a next level of growth.   Will Barron: Some of this is opportunity that's available. And everything has an element of luck to it, right? You've got to be in the right place at the right time. A trigger event happens in the account and just randomly, you can clean up on it. But a lot of this is just playing the right game, isn't it? You've got to be doing the moves that maybe your competitors aren't. And you experiment with some of it and you have to test some of it. But if you don't make the moves, there's no chance of winning.   How to Ask Bigger Questions and Demand Better Answers From Yourself · [20:03]    Will Barron: That's something that I've learned from growing our business and the training that we are doing. And engaging with sales people who some of them are at a point of whupping me at sales, even though they come to us for training and coaching and a bit of polishing up. A lot of them are just playing games that other people in the marketplace aren't. And again, is the first step just to wire your brain you're allowed to play these games?   Geoff Woods: Yeah.   Will Barron: Everyone in the company is doing cold calling, you are allowed to do something else. Because a sales manager doesn't care if you smash quota, right? As long as it's legal and ethical and somewhat moral, they're going to be encouraging you aren't they?   Geoff Woods: Yeah. Well this is a journey of asking bigger questions and searching for different answers, which we need to acknowledge most of us were not taught to think this way. Because we were literally graded in school based on our ability to have the answer, not to say, “I don't know, let me figure it out.” If you did that on a test, you'd fail. And we were told that our future relied on our grades. So therefore, the quality of our future depended on the quality of us having the answer.   “When we are talking about achieving our goals, when we are talking about actualizing our potential, it is not about having the answer. It is about asking questions that are so big that make us stop and go, “Great question. I have no idea, but let me go search.” – Geoff Woods · [21:04]    Geoff Woods: But here's the difference, you get into the real world, that's not how it works, not how it works. Especially in this specific scenario, when we are talking about achieving our goals. When we are talking about actualizing our potential, it is not about having the answer. It is about asking questions that are so big that make us stop and go, “Great question. I have no idea, but let me go search.”   Geoff Woods: Fast forward, I want you to imagine, I want you to think whatever you think you might make this year. And I want you to ask yourself the question, “How might I earn double working half the hours?” And if you find yourself saying, “That's not possible,” I'll ask you a different question. Fast forward to the end of the year and you are celebrating because you doubled your income and you worked half the hours. There's no question mark, you did it, it actually happened. Truth.   Geoff Woods: How'd you make it happen? What did you start doing that you weren't currently doing? What did you stop doing that you're currently doing? And what did you focus on that drove the majority of the results. You pause the episode right now, look at the timestamp for where in the episode we are, you go grab a pen and a paper and you sit down, turn your phone off, shut your email down. Sit down for 30 minutes with a pen and paper. Write those questions on the paper and search for those answers. Game on, baby.   Why Eliminating Bad Behavior is the Key to Consistent Success · [22:28]   Will Barron: Which is more important, changing the things that we do or eliminating things that we're currently doing?   Geoff Woods: If you do the first, you naturally do the second. If you change what you do, that could encompass eliminating things. Now, if we want to get really granular, if you want to look at it through the lens of start doing additional things versus stop doing current things, I think that's going to be a case-by-case basis. I think the way that we, a lot of people here, are wired is to try to add more. And hey, if you've got a cushy sales job and you're working 30 hours-a-week and you've got lots of free time, I've had one of those jobs before, maybe you can start adding more things.   Geoff Woods: I think a lot of us, if you feel like you already have too much to do and not enough time, you may want to pull out your little gardening shears and start pruning the roses. Start cutting back. That's harder though. That's hard.   How to Subtly Nudge Someone Into Becoming the Best Version of Themselves · [23:38]    Will Barron: How do you, Geoff, if you're coaching someone and Sam of the salesperson's listening to this now, he's going, “Okay, I'm going to ask. I'm going to, I pulled over. Literally I'm the best student ever, pulled over on 22 minutes and 10 seconds or whatever it was. And I've asked a big question and I'm going, Of shit, I have no idea how to hit this.” Okay, so box ticked, box ticked.   Will Barron: And then he's going, “But there is some risk to this, right? I'm in a nice cushy sales job right now. I am driving a nice company, BMW. I am slowly paying off my mortgage and I get to go on one holiday a year and I'm somewhat happy. I'm a high performer. I feel like I could do better, but doesn't everyone?” How would you, and let's say you know Sam, and you know that they're capable of more and there's over people in the organisation who are doing twice as much of what Sam's doing and you want the best for Sam, how do you nudge them past that bit of status quo?   Will Barron: How do you, because I just scream at people on the phone when I'm coaching them and eventually. And I just abuse them and bully them and eventually they come around to it, but that's clearly not the best way to go about it. How do you subtly nudge someone so they can be the best that they can be?   Geoff Woods: The short answer is, we don't. We're not for everyone. The subtitle of The ONE Thing is, “The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results.” We are not for people who want to good results. We are not for people who want great results. We are for the small percentage of the population that wants to taste extraordinary. And by definition, it's beyond the ordinary, which means this is not for all of you.   Geoff Woods: I don't know that we are for the people that need the nudging. We're for the people that their current circumstance, the gap between where they are versus where they want to be is so painful for them that it's like their leg just got broken. We're for them because we are not here to motivate anybody. We can motivaid someone, we can aid them on their journey. We can't motivate anybody.   “If somebody needs to be pushed, to be motivated, then their current circumstance is not painful enough to justify them making a change.” – Geoff Woods · [25:56]   Geoff Woods: So if somebody needs that push, then their current circumstance is not painful enough to justify them making a change. Now let me say, Will, you know my story, I've been there. What kept me in medical device sales was I was comfortable. I did not have enough pain. But when a colleague of mine had a stroke at 35-years-old and all of a sudden I've got a stay-at-home mom with our first child and a big fat mortgage in Orange County, California. And I'm watching our bank account go almost to zero because oh yeah, by the way, my company changed my comp structure and I lost 40% of my income.   Geoff Woods: All of a sudden, I didn't need anybody to motivate me to make a change. I had my own internal motivation. I was unwilling to accept the current state. I had to make a change. There was no ifs, no ands, no buts. That's who we're for.   Can a Salesperson Do Extraordinary Things in a Typical Sales Role? · [26:55]    Will Barron: I might be at risk of just losing my entire audience here, Geoff, and you might bankrupt my business. Can you do extraordinary things in a sales role or is this reserved to company founders, startup founders, people who want to partner with organisations?   Geoff Woods: Of course.   Will Barron: Is this open to salespeople?   Geoff Woods: Absolutely. I mean, I think back to my medical sales day. There was one guy, I mean his entire career, we're talking 30 years as a professional salesperson. He's at the top of the stack ranks, president's club everywhere he's been. And the gap between him and everybody else wasn't even close. And I trained with him. He's the greatest salesperson I've ever come across and he didn't do anything extraordinary on a day-to-day basis. He did simple things consistently that unleashed extraordinary results.   Geoff Woods: I'll share a story that's an example of this. We've all lined up dominoes before. And if you stood them up and lined them up correctly, well, how many did you have to knock down with the flick of a finger to actually knock them all down?   Will Barron: Isn't this an illustration in the book? I feel like I can visualise it, right?   Geoff Woods: It is.   Will Barron: Obviously the first one, right?   Geoff Woods: Yeah, the first one. So back in 2009, there was a group out of the Netherlands that broke the world record for domino falls. They lined up almost 4.5 million dominoes. So you and I, most we've probably lined up is 28 because that's how many comes in a box. 4.5 million.   Geoff Woods: Now, what I want you to do is I want you to imagine that you are the leader of that group and you are walking up to 4.5 million dominoes lined up in dazzling display. Imagine what that even looks like. Now on the count of three, I'm going to ask you to just lift your hand because on the count of three, I'm going to ask you just to imagine you're flicking the first domino down on the count of three. Let's do it together, one, two, three. Will. How much effort did that take?   Will Barron: Very little in the moment.   Geoff Woods: Very little.   Will Barron: Probably six months of stress and near heart attack and strokes before I get to that point though.   Geoff Woods: Yeah. I mean it's almost effortless, the flick of the finger. Now what's amazing is you actually just unleashed 94,000 joules of energy. Which to put that into context, I want you to imagine how much energy it would take to do 545 consecutive pushups, that's how much energy you just unleashed with the flick of a finger.   Geoff Woods: So the flick is an ordinary thing. It's a small action. But if it's the right action, if you stood your dominoes up correctly, done consistently, unleashes a massive reaction. So for any salesperson, you have the opportunity to do the small actions that unleash the massive reactions   The Little Sales Activities That Drive the Biggest Results · [30:02]   Will Barron: And the small actions to make the analogy, to make the metaphor… Well, I guess it's not a metaphor, analogy.   Geoff Woods: I can give you a bunch of ideas off the cuff. Step one.   Will Barron: Well, it's your prospecting, right? It's the calls. It's the emails. It's the cadences.   Geoff Woods: Yeah.   Will Barron: It's all the small steps you make over and over that lead to that one or two large deals that… I've experienced this as well. We're doing it right now. We've got one deal on the books that I'm waiting for the invoice to come in, that is going to be as much as what we did in three or four months last year, a training contract. But it all comes from this content. It comes from the calls. It comes from the emails. It comes from being in bullshit that you don't want to be in. And maybe I need to think bigger of how I can engineer myself out of these meetings. Maybe that's a question I need to start asking. But it's all these little things build up to that big dominoes getting knocked over at the end, right?   Geoff Woods: That's right. I mean, simple, time block and protect the time for lead generation. Actually set a goal for lead generation, whether it's an hour a day, three hours a day, four hours a day, depending on the type of sale that you're in. Where you are not just following-up, you are generating leads. Then there's lead follow up, follow up on your leads every week. Really simple.   Geoff Woods: Here's another one, ask more questions than you do telling. It literally took me until I started studying coaching, professional coaching, to understand what my sales leaders had been saying my entire career, “Do not sell features and benefits. Only ask questions until you truly understand the customer's problem. And if, and only if, you think you can solve their problem, do you start talking about what you do.” That's super simple. Most people don't do that.   The Journey to Extraordinary Results Begins With This One Simple Step · [31:45]    Will Barron: Is the goal here, or let me phrase this another way, should we picture this that we're in this journey, we are the hero of our own story and we need to ask these big questions ourselves, maybe via the help of a coach, mentor or people have been there and done what we want to achieve. Should we picture it as we are the hero in our own journey, in our story? Or really, is this formulaic? Can you copy? Can you go through a step-by-step training plan and it promises X and achieve X? Or is all of this, when we start to get to these extraordinary results, a personal thing that's very difficult to systematise for someone to give you a way of doing it?   Geoff Woods: I actually think they can be the same. If you actually study the hero's journey, if you look up, Google, formula to the hero's journey, meet hero, hero has problem. Because hero has problem, hero's life gets worse. When hero is almost at his lowest, introduce mentor, introduce guide, introduce the coach who starts teaching hero certain things. Hero starts implementing what mentor shares, life gets worse for hero. But at true rock,-bottom, hero learns something. Hero changes. Hero starts doing different activities. Hero makes progress. And here's what hero actually learns by reflecting on his journey.   “We can all be the hero of our own story, but you can't actually be the hero without the guide or without the mentor.” – Geoff Woods · [33:16]   Geoff Woods: So we can all be the hero of our own story, but you can't actually be the hero without the guide or without the mentor. And that mentor is oftentimes sharing the model, the system, the approach to a better way of doing things. We cover this in The ONE Thing, it's one of the three commitments to achieve extraordinary success.   Geoff Woods: The first is, you must follow the path of mastery. It means committing yourself to a lifelong journey of mastery. The third is living the accountability cycle. When things go well, celebrate, raise the goal. When things go wrong, look in the mirror, ask what can I do differently? In between mastery and accountability is moving from E to P, from being entrepreneurial to purposeful. From doing what comes naturally based on our current circumstances, our current comfort zones, our current skill sets, which are irrelevant because they impose a ceiling over what's possible.   Geoff Woods: And instead, looking for what's the best that can be done. And modelling that behaviour and following its systematically so you shatter that ceiling of achievement. And all of a sudden, the ceiling just goes to a new level. Which means you're missing the next level of models and systems to get to the next level. And it's a lifelong journey.   Parting Thoughts · [34:36]    Will Barron: Love it. I love it. I've got nothing else to add, Geoff. I want to end on that high. Tell us with that where we can find out more about you, ProduKtive, The ONE Thing, the podcast, what you're up to, mate. Tell us where we can find out more about all this good stuff.   Geoff Woods: Yeah. So if you're listening to a podcast, just on your podcast player search for The ONE Thing, The O-N-E T-H-I-N-G. The podcast is in the top five percent of all podcasts in the world. Every week we share stories of people or give guidance just to help you get a little bit more focused. So you invest more of your time and spend less of it.   Geoff Woods: If you'd like to learn more about what we do as a training and consulting organisation, the website's the1thing.com and that's with the number 1 in the URL. So the, then the number 1, thing.com. As an individual, you can learn about our training programmes, our goal setting retreats. If you're a leader in a company, we have a very simple system that helps leaders take their teams from being busy to being productive. You can request a consultation, we'll hop on Zoom and walk through what it looks like.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well, I'll link to all that and everything else that we talked about, the hero's journey, the book behind that, in the show notes to this episode, over at salesman.org. And with that, Geoff, I want to thank you for your time, your expertise. It's always a pleasure interviewing. No bullshit, mate, it's genuinely a pleasure to interview you on this show when we catch up. And I want to thank you again for joining us on The Salesman Podcast.   Geoff Woods: Thanks, Will. Appreciate you, man.