The Salesman.com Podcast

Brad Klontz is an expert in financial psychology, financial planning and applied behavioural finance. He’s also the author of “Money Mammoth- harness The Power of Financial Psychology to Evolve Your Money Mindset, Avoid Extinction, and Crush Your Financial Goals” In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Brad explains why we all have weird beliefs around money, why this holds us back, and how to break through and improve our relationship with money. 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 - Brad Klontz Resources: Book: Money Mammoth by Dr. Brad Klontz Dr. Klontz on LinkedIn Discover your Money Scripts here Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is Will. And welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we are getting into improving our relationship with money, and how that's going to help you in sales and hopefully in your personal life as well. Today's guest is Dr. Brad Klontz.   Will Barron: Brad is an expert in financial psychology, financial product, applied behavioural finance and more. He's also the author of Money Mammoth, Harness The Power Of Financial Psychology To Evolve Your Money Mindset, Avoid Extinction and Crush Your Financial Goals. Brad, welcome to the show.   Brad Klontz: Will, thanks so much for having me.   Here’s Why You Should Be Teaching Your Kids About Money From the Word Go · [00:47]    Will Barron: I'm glad to have you on, mate. The audience will know this. We just had a false start recording the episode. We'll try and keep it as real as we possibly can. So I'm going to ask you the same question that I asked you three seconds ago, Brad. And we'll go for it, but it seems like our relationships with our financials, our relationships with money, this should be something that we teach kids.   Will Barron: This is something that almost every society on earth has to deal with as teenagers, as adults as going into retirement age. Am I off the track here or should all people have learned at least from what we're going to talk about today at a young age, and we seemingly don't?   Brad Klontz: Obviously, I think you're right. Money in the United States is the biggest source of stress in the lives of Americans. The American Psychological Association does a survey on this every single year. And it's upwards around 70, 80% of Americans say it's the biggest source of stress in their lives, but it's not something we talk about it. So in schools here, we don't even teach kids the basics of personal finance, let alone the psychology underneath it.   Brad Klontz: And in the studies we've done, it's the psychology that matters. Like the biggest problems we have are people aren't saving enough for the future, they're spending more than they make. I've yet to find somebody who doesn't know better, who doesn't know that they shouldn't do those things. And so for me, why aren't we doing it? It's all about our psychology around money.   Defining Financial Psychology and Behavioural Finance · [01:58]    Will Barron: So is there a definition of financial psychology or applied behavioural finance? Is there a way to define that before we dive into it and dive into the common sense of this? And then maybe there's some elements of this that aren't common sense that we should be implementing as well?   Brad Klontz: Yeah. I should come up with a really good definition. You're putting me on the spot here. I've based my entire life around this field, but I've never really come up with a good definition. It's basically the intersection of the science of psychology and what we know about human thoughts, behaviours, motivations, emotions, what we know about that and how it relates to our financial life. And more importantly for me, is our financial outcomes. So what are we getting in our financial lives? And if we're not getting what we want, that's where a deep dive into our psychology around money can be extremely helpful.   Will Barron: That makes total sense. Okay, then. So I feel like you've probably been asked this question a million times. So I don't want to dwell on it. And I want to get practical of how we can use or we can improve our psychology of finance and money in the rest of the show.   Who’s to Blame For Our Lack of Financial Understanding? · [03:05]   Will Barron: But whose fault is our lack of understanding in some of this? Is it our parents having a certain psychology or belief system or way of talking about money that indoctrinates children? Is it schooling that goes one way or another and university? Is it society? Where do our current beliefs and the psychology of money that we have currently, where does all this come from?   Brad Klontz: Well, Will, I'm a psychologist. And so of course, it's your mother's fault. So that's who we like to do in psychology is blame your mother. But I think it's a combination of those factors. And all those things matter. All those things matter. But what matters most to you as an individual is probably your upbringing. The home you grew up in, the messages you received from your parents or whoever your caregivers were.   Brad Klontz: And not only that, but your family history that sometimes goes back for generations around some of these beliefs around money and outcomes. And that's what's been really fascinating in our research is a lot of these beliefs are unconscious. We're not even aware of them.   Brad Klontz: For most of us, we just have this set of beliefs around money that's clanking around in our subconscious, that's leading to all these results in our lives, but we're not even aware of where those beliefs came from. And sometimes we're talking great, great, great grandparents set us up on this course in our relationship with money.   Practical Steps Towards a Better Relationship with Money · [04:31]    Will Barron: From your perspective here as an expert in this space, do we need to go down some weird Freudian path of reliving our childhood memories of where … My dad used to always say, he still says it now, “Money doesn't grow on trees.” Money's literally made of paper. Money literally grows on trees, up until recently in the UK, now it's all gone plastic.   Will Barron: But all these weird things, do we need to go down this pathway of laying back on a sofa and having [inaudible 00:04:58] yourself, Brad, or a psychiatrist drill into us and understand all these issues? Or is there a better framework or mechanism to perhaps bring to light things that are holding those back and then resolve some of these issues and put perhaps better beliefs in their place?   “If you're getting what you want out of life financially, you don't need to do anything. Just keep doing what you're doing.” – Brad Klontz · [05:20]    Brad Klontz: Yeah. So that's a tough question. And the bottom line is this, if you're getting what you want out of life financially, you don't need to do anything. Just keep doing what you're doing. And then the other answer is depending on the level of how you're feeling stuck, how you're feeling like you're hitting some sort of invisible glass ceiling around how much money you're making, how you feel about your outcomes in life, your income, your net worth, how you handle credit.   Brad Klontz: If you're struggling with that, that's where the deeper dive can become extremely beneficial. And I don't think you need to necessarily talk to a psychologist around it unless you got some trauma around money, which is not that uncommon.   Brad Klontz: Sometimes we have to unwind some really intense emotions because those emotions will lock a certain belief pattern in your brain, and that belief pattern is what's getting you the results you're getting. So it really comes down to how much you want to transform your relationship with money.   Will Barron: Okay. Then from that perspective, and I'm trying to add layers to this here and add context for the audience. If a salesperson, and I find this common with our students in our training programme over at salesman.org [inaudible 00:06:20] academy. A lot of people commit into the training being uncomfortable talking about money, when the whole job presides around the idea of, “We are going to give you this value. We're going to solve this problem in exchange for this cash.” Because we have to exchange something here, and cash is obviously a universal way to exchange value.   Will Barron: For a salesperson to have success talking about large sizes of money that in their personal life they might be uncomfortable with in the business world, do they need to solve their own financial demons or is it possible just to work on the outward perception of this, of being comfortable talking about money in the corporate environment?   Limiting Money Beliefs That Might be Holding You Back · [07:04]    Will Barron: I've not phrased that question very well, Brad, but our own personal demons about money, our own thoughts and beliefs about money, whether negative or positive, are they likely to hold us back when we're talking about money in the corporate environment, when it's not ours and it's not the person we're selling to, but we're represented in an organisation as we go into these deals?   Brad Klontz: In my experience in trying to intervene with people or help people in my various capacities and with the people I train and coach and everything, absolutely yes. If you're tripped up around some sort of issue, how can you not leak that into your conversations with people? Or for example, let's say that you have a real negative association with money, like in your family, in my research, we call it money avoidance.   Brad Klontz: So you were taught rich people are greedy, money corrupts, there's virtue in living with less money. You shouldn't talk about money. If this was sort of ingrained in your brain, of course, you're going to have trouble doing this. You might even feel bad when you start making money. And so this can really trip you up. So depends on those messages you were getting and how intense they were, that really tells us where we need to go from there.   Will Barron: As you say that, my mom passed away five years ago now. But when I was a kid, maybe I was a young teenager, 13, 14, 15, I remember really vividly, the house my dad still lives in now, we were driving back and there was a fella in a nice suit and a nice fast BMW. And my mom drove past him.   Will Barron: And I can't remember if he did something or tried to change lanes or something like that. And she went, “That dude's an asshole.” I remember sitting there going, “You've never met that fella.” I was like, “Why is that?” And she goes, “Well, look at the car he is driving.”   The Subconscious Moments From Our Upbringing That Shape Our Perceptions Around Money · [09:02]    Will Barron: And so there was obviously some kind of issue with my mom there, then she was trying to inadvertently pass on to me. But that stuck as a moment in my mind of, “That's not true. That guy is financially successful. That doesn't automatically make them an asshole.” So are these the kind of moments that we're looking for that could shape our thoughts and views on money? Or is that anecdote just totally way off there?   Brad Klontz: No. So we call those financial flashpoint type experiences in our lives. And it's a perfect example. Now, what's fascinating, Will, is that you had, I don't know if it was your age, I'm not sure if it was your wisdom, but there was part of you that said, “I'm not sure that's the full story, mom. I'm not sure that's the full story.” Now, that's what most of us don't do as kids.   Brad Klontz: And it depends on how these messages come at us, and the message that like, if you had an unconscious sort of negative association of people who drive luxury sports cars, it would make sense to me. What's amazing though, is many people aren't even aware of those early experiences. All they know is they have this negative association with it, where they look down on people or they project attitudes towards them. And it can really trip us up because to your point, you don't know anything about that person.   Brad Klontz: And it might be okay to drive a car like that. It just might. You have to be able to entertain that possibility. But many of us in childhood, we get these money scripts, which is what we call them in our studies, these beliefs around money.   Brad Klontz: And for many of us, it's subconscious. We're not aware of it because it's conversation like that with your mother but it's happened 1,000 times in your childhood. And all you know is that you associate certain things with money. You don't even think about where it comes from.   “Our studies have shown that beliefs around money that are subconscious and come from our childhood experiences end up predicting things like our income, our net worth, and a whole host of financial behaviours.” – Brad Klontz · [10:22]    Brad Klontz: And what our studies have shown is those beliefs around money that are subconscious for many of us, that come from those experiences, end up predicting things like our income, our net worth, and a whole host of financial behaviours. So they're incredibly powerful.   Here’s How to Know if You’ve Got Money Issues That Might Be Holding You Back · [10:56]    Will Barron: Is there a way to, because some of this is almost paradoxical because in your subconscious, you don't realise that you've got these issues until perhaps you reach some kind of glass ceiling and then maybe you just doubt in your own skill as opposed to these avoidance of feeling stuck. I think the two words that you used there, Brad. How do we know if we've got an issue that's holding us back before we reach the point where it becomes obvious? And at that point, we've wasted 10 years of our career just holding ourselves back for no good reason.   Brad Klontz: Yeah. So I think on a preventative nature, it's a good idea to know yourself. We can think of the metaphor of relationships. It's probably a good idea to know yourself and know how your attitudes about a relationship, your attitudes about marriage or not getting married. All this stuff it's really helpful to know who you are as a person. Like some of that self-awareness. I think the self-awareness around money is also very beneficial. It can keep you from getting into trouble.   Brad Klontz: I'm a fan of self-awareness in general. Obviously in sales, it really helps to know yourself. And so I think it'd be incredibly beneficial before you get in trouble around it. And the weird thing about money is we don't really talk about it. So in the example of relationships, when you're in school, you're dating. You're talking to your friends about this date, that date, what you're looking for in a wife or a husband or a partner.   Brad Klontz: These conversations happen all the time. You get to see this modelling out with your own parents, with your friends' parents. None of this happens with money. People don't talk about it. We have a lot of shame around money. There's a lot of shame. When you talked about Freud, Freud identified that. You said that there's a tonne of shame around money. We feel ashamed that we don't have enough. We feel ashamed that we have too much.   Brad Klontz: We feel ashamed that people are going to judge us. And so all that shame leads to silence. And when there's that silence, there's not the opportunity for us to sit back and sort of shuffle through beliefs and decide, “Well, I don't want that one. And how does your dad look at money? Oh, I like that. I'll pick that one.” We don't have the same opportunity to challenge, be aware of those beliefs and change the ones that aren't working for us.   A Practical Action Plan to Help You Understand Your Own Negative Perception About Money · [12:40]    Will Barron: So by the book and work with you, Brad, is half the answer to this question, of course. I'll plug on your behalf. But what does this look like practically? Is this, for a fellow like me going down the pub with a bunch of my mates, who maybe I want to bring in an older fellow who earns way more than me, and maybe I want to bring in someone else who's less focused on money and has a different type of career or they're semi-retired or something like that.   Will Barron: How do I go about practically without, as I say that I'm visualising sitting around the campfire and singing kumbaya and kind of getting a bit hippy with some of this, how do I go about understanding my own obsessed negative thought patterns? Is it just a case of getting around people who have different perspectives and just openly talking about it? Is this a super simple answer to a long and convoluted question?   “Your financial outcomes in life are based a lot on your beliefs around money, how you were brought up and what socioeconomic status you were born into.” – Brad Klontz · [13:34]   Brad Klontz: Well, I love the idea, Will, of picking the brains of somebody who is further along than you are. So the bottom line, you have to understand this, your financial outcomes in life are based a lot on your beliefs around money and how you were trained and what you were brought up and what socioeconomic status you were born into and what they taught you about money, what they taught you about strategies.   Brad Klontz: And so it can be really helpful to kind of do like a little deep self analysis dive, where you ask yourself questions like, okay, so what are my memories around money? How did I feel about the socioeconomic class I grew up in? What did my mom teach me? What did my dad teach me? It can be really helpful to reflect on that. What are some of those early experiences I had around money? All that is really, really useful.   Brad Klontz: But in terms of adopting new beliefs that will help you further your career, make more money, grow your net worth, that's where I think you really does help to get in front of somebody who's at a step or two ahead of you, or they're doing what you want to do, they're making what you want to make.   Brad Klontz: And you sit down with a student with an open notebook and you're like, “Tell me how I should start thinking about money.” And you pay very close attention to what they say because you want to adopt that mindset if you want to get those results.   Why Most People Never Attain Financial Success · [14:39]   Will Barron: How much of this? And you're a scientist. You may not be familiar, but regular audience know this. I've got a background in chemistry. I'm a published scientist. How much of this is very literally, if you're around the right people and you've got the right strategies for long enough, you're going to become financially successful? How much of this is luck? And how much of this is just people getting in their own way? People have talent and there's opportunities in front of them, but they are subconsciously choosing not to take them?   Brad Klontz: I think a lot of it comes down to, and in Money Mammoth, as you mentioned, one of the metaphors we use is the concept of a tribe. So you have a socioeconomic tribe. This is the way that humans have evolved for our entire time on earth. Except for recently, the last few hundred year, we're in tribes. We have a tribe, a hunter-gatherer tribe, 100, 150 people. This is how we've developed our entire psychology as a species.   Brad Klontz: And so if you're in a tribe and it's socioeconomic tribe but people who don't have money, they have certain attitudes about people who do have money. They have certain habits, they have certain beliefs. They're going to teach you how to survive. They're going to teach you how to thrive within that context, but they can teach you nothing about how to live and thrive and survive in a middle class context for an upper income class. They can teach you nothing about it.   Brad Klontz: And as a matter of fact, they're going to teach you probably bad things about it because they don't like that other tribe. This is built into our psychology too. We want to kill those people. We want to take their stuff. And so really ultimately, if you want to climb the socioeconomic ladder, there's a bunch of psychological difficulties in doing that. Number one, you're going to have to abandon the tribe that you're from.   Brad Klontz: And if you know people, if you've experienced it yourself, who've climbed the socioeconomic ladder, a lot of times, there's a bunch of hands trying to pull them down. And emotionally, they feel like they're abandoning the people who they love the most. It's one of the reasons why we see people who come in the large sums of money blow it. Lottery winners lose all their money. People inherit money and lose it all.   Brad Klontz: And one of the reasons we do that is because it pulls us further, further away from that tribe, which makes us feel incredibly anxious, because historically, if you were abandoned from your tribe, or if you moved away from your tribe, you died. So it's an existential panic that happens for us.   Brad Klontz: And so it's really tough. I think psychologically is the hardest part. In terms of bettering your financial life, and in order to do it and do it well, you really have to study this new tribe and this new culture and learn how they think and how they navigate the world.   Will Barron: For sure. Now, I want to come back to … And this is slightly off topic, maybe, happiness and stuff at the moment, and where this ends. Do we have to constantly go through the tribes and end up sat on $100 million yachts next to Jeff Bezos to kind of satisfy our needs here. We'll come back to that in a second. But anecdotally, I've got a lot of pushback at the moment.   Will Barron: And I'm sure the audience will do this when they start crushing in sales, they start making a bunch of money. I'm getting a reasonable amount of pushback at the moment from friends, a few members of family, because I'm looking at buying an expensive car. I'm looking at buying this expensive [crosstalk 00:17:46].   Brad Klontz: Will, you're such an asshole. No, I'm just kidding.   Will Barron: Well, it's almost like a passive aggressive kind of all, maybe that money could be better spent elsewhere. But I'm not really, even after the car, I want to be in this specific … I'm not talked about this too much on the podcast yet. I want it to be a big reveal if and when it happens.   Will Barron: But I'm just as interested in being part of this car, their owner club, and they've got a really good network of events and there's loads of small business owners. And I know spending X amount of dollars, pounds on this car will probably come back in deals and contracts and sales training, because I'm working with a bunch of people who are also in this kind of owner's network. And I feel slightly uncomfortable about it, all of these.   Will Barron: And I understand to a super base level, some of what's going on here of different people's thoughts and beliefs. And I can see it becomes obvious in them as I kind of talk about this car and the networking and the events that they have and all kind of stuff. And I can see it in a few of my friends, and again, a few members of family that they are almost projecting how uncomfortable they are with their financial status onto me.   What to Do When Friends and Family Project Their Money Issues Onto Your Financial Decisions · [19:05]    Will Barron: And not proactively trying to pull me back from this, because they want the best for me. I'm sure they do if you ask them honestly, and you explain the situation, but I can feel that a little bit of tension. What do we do, Brad, when other people, the audience who are listening to this feel that as well, maybe they've just had a absolutely killer year.   Will Barron: They've made a crap, some money in commissions and they're looking at a new house, new car, whatever it is that's pushing their own boundaries. How do we deal with people when they're not being, they're on our side, they want us to win. But again, maybe they're projecting some of their issues onto us.   Brad Klontz: It's a real challenge. And because to your point, these people love you. They care about you. It's not like they're interested in your demise. They're unconscious around what they're doing to you. They just know that you're leaving the comfort zone, and this feels uncomfortable.   Brad Klontz: And sometimes they'll even say, “Well, people are going to look at you at this way or that way.” And you're like, “I don't care about people. I care about you. I care about my tribe and I'm getting this from you.” And it's something we accidentally subconsciously do to each other, but really it does come down to that socioeconomics comfort group that we're in. And it's challenging.   Brad Klontz: First of all, it's easier when it's subtle and slow. So when your income grows gradually over time, you learn to adjust to this situation. You learn that you frankly, some of your friends leave you. Some of your family can be upset at you. But when you get a lot of money really fast, that's when it's extremely challenging.   “I say this for dramatic effect, but when you grow your financial capacity, you're either going to have to get rid of your money or get rid of your friends. And if you don't do one of those two things, it's going to be uncomfortable. And it's going to take some time for you to adjust to this.” – Brad Klontz · [20:32]    Brad Klontz: And I will tell people, I say this for dramatic effect, but you're either going to have to get rid of your money or get rid of your friends. And if you don't do one of those two things, it's going to be uncomfortable. And it's going to take some time for you to adjust to this.   Why It Might Be a Healthy Move to Drop Some of Your Friends Once You Improve Your Financial Capacity · [20:44]    Will Barron: And from a psychological perspective, this is me saying this, is it fair to say that that might be healthy for you? It might be healthy for you to grow and leave a few people behind?   Brad Klontz: Healthy, not healthy, for me, it's like, well, what do you want? And I feel like you have a right to better your life if you want to, financially, and try to talk about it with the people love most, and just understand that some of you, if they have that like money avoidance pattern, where they have this deeply held belief that money is bad and there's virtue in having less money, and the only way to get rich is through corrupt means.   “People have this belief pattern that rich people are greedy or bad. Now, ironically, in our studies, the people who really strongly believe that rich people are bad are also the ones who most desperately want to be rich themselves, which is really sort of a fascinating conundrum psychologically.” – Brad Klontz · [21:20]   Brad Klontz: People have this belief pattern, rich people are greedy, bad. If you really strongly believe that, now, ironically, in our studies, the people who really strongly believe that are also the ones who most desperately want to be rich themselves, which is really sort of a fascinating conundrum psychologically.   Brad Klontz: But just understand this, they are going to give you a lot of negative energy towards this because that's how they look at money. It's not personal to you. They love you. They want to be close to you, but it's going to be intense. It's going to be psychologically really intense and emotionally difficult for you.   Will the Chase for More and More Money Ever Come to a Stop? · [22:00]     Will Barron: Sure. Well, I'll go on the record. It's fine to leave people behind. I've left friends behind. They are doing just fine. I'm doing just fine. And this leads me on to my next question, which is, where does all of this end? Because it seems like, so I'm from a lower middle class background. My dad was a middle management and then runs his own small business. And mom always worked in hospital pharmacies.   Will Barron: It is kind of like this weird golden lock zone of no flores, but also no kind of like issues with food and housing, anything like that. I've surpassed respectfully what my parents have ever earned, way beyond that. And I feel like I'm getting close now with some business stuff that we're doing to breaking beyond where I've been for the past two or three years to the next level.   Will Barron: And that to me, and probably told the audience is exciting. The number is that we're earning the revenue, what we're taking home, is almost like a game that I like to play and I like to see increase. Now, I don't think I'd be sad if the business just collapsed. I think I'd just have to find something else to do. I'd have to go back to a sales job.   Will Barron: I don't take it personally. So taking that out of the equation. When does this end? Or does it not end? Do I end up an 80-year old fellow chasing rather than a couple of million revenue a year, 100 million revenue, and this just continues onwards? Or is there a set point where people tend to go, “Okay, well, I'm now earning three times more than what my parents did. This is kind of a natural level where people start to slow down and become comfortable.”   Brad Klontz: Yeah. For me, it's just a matter of preference. I don't like the pathological part of always wanting more. It can be very pathological. There are examples of people who do do terrible things and sacrifice their family and their health for more and more and more. And sometimes they're trying to fill an emotional hole.   Brad Klontz: Sometimes they grew up in poverty and they have this belief there'll never be enough money, and they're really anxious about it and they're scared. And so they run through life very anxious and scared. And that's no way to go through life either. So it depends on the route to the pursuit. But I feel like having goals is fun. You mentioned, Will, that it feels like a game to you. Play the game, have fun. I don't think there's anything wrong with it.   Brad Klontz: But understanding that ultimately, there's no amount of money that is going to answer the big questions in life for you, which is around connection, around passion, around purpose. And money can help with that. But money doesn't magically solve all of humanities existential problems. Now certainly, if you're lower income, which is how I grew up, if you're poor, not having money will make you depressed and miserable and cause all sorts of problems in your life.   Brad Klontz: So there is that sort of middle class, getting up there, making sure that you have a roof over your head, that you can provide for your children, that you're not going to bed hungry. Now obviously, hitting that point I think is really important. I hope everyone gets there. But really when you get into those upper echelons of upper middle class higher, a bunch of money's not going to magically solve all your problems.   The Correlation Between Happiness and More Money For People in the US · [25:05]    Will Barron: I'm remembering this. I think this is somewhat cliche and I don't know if this is totally out of date, but I remember reading in whatever book it was, that around $80,000 in the U.S was a point where every dollar added didn't increase dramatically the amount of happiness that people had.   Will Barron: Is there any data behind that number? And is there a more accurate? What I'm trying to get at is, is there a benchmark where the science tells us that people at this benchmark, money is a nice-to-have as opposed to something that is going to dramatically decrease the levels of happiness?   Brad Klontz: So we can talk about it after the podcast and put on our nerd hats on the science on it. But basically, there's been a lot of research that has shown that the median income level, household income, which is around that 70, 80,000 mark here in the U.S, that there's no statistically significant correlation between more money and happiness. There's been some dispute around that. But I think in general, it makes a lot of sense because if you feel like you're part of the tribe.   “In psychology, we call it relative deprivation. So this is a fascinating concept that says how you rate yourself financially in terms of how you're doing is not based on an objective number. It's subjective and it's based on the people you're around. That's how you decide whether you feel rich or you feel poor. If you're in a village and you have three goats and everyone else has one goat, even though you might not have running water, you will have the subjective experience of feeling wealthy and feeling like your things are going well. And otherwise, if you have a $2 million mansion but everyone else has a $10 million mansion, you're going to feel relatively deprived and poor.” – Brad Klontz · [26:16]    Brad Klontz: So in the broader United States, if you're making around the median income, you don't feel like you're deprived. You don't feel like you're suffering. And what we know in psychology, we call it relative deprivation. So this is a fascinating concept where how you rate yourself financially in terms of how you're doing, is not based on an objective number. It's subjective and it's based on the people you're around. That's how you decide whether you feel rich or you feel poor.   Brad Klontz: If you're in a village and you have three goats and everyone else has one goat, even though you might not have running water, you will have the subjective experience of feeling wealthy and feeling like your things are going well. And otherwise, if you have a $2 million mansion but everyone else has a $10 million mansion, you're going to feel relatively deprived and poor. And so it's really in relation to our comparison group. That's how we decide whether we have enough money to feel like we made it or not.   Will Barron: I love this. This makes total sense. I started off in St. Helen working town. And my first sales job, I felt like I was absolutely crushing gay. Then moved to the south of the UK, just outside Cambridge. And I was like, I have skin compared to all of these suckers down here. And now back up in north leads in the north UK, for people who're listening from Europe and the UK, who are familiar with this, that is a somewhat affluent place.   Will Barron: And again, I'm kind of at the, not the bottom of the tone pole, but in kind of the middle to bottom of, where we live, there is so just insane houses that is even a stretch for me to visualise the fact that I've got the possibility of living in one of those someday. Now, they're just people. A lot of them are self-made entrepreneurs, small business owners, as opposed to clearly, it's unlikely that it's going to turn out that I'm the prince of some foreign, tiny country, and I'm going to get given 100 million on the back of not doing any work.   Will Barron: So it is achievable for me to get into those, but I still feel like we are looking at those houses, and the there's one particular house around the corner as a Rolls Royce sat outside. And I'm like, “God, that's a stretch for me to imagine myself there.” So, Brad, we've covered why people feel these ways back and forth about money.   Will Barron: We've covered that there are some psychological or subconscious issues that can hold people back. What do we do if we want to proactively push into this? What if I, from a place of sort of, “Other people have got mega houses where I live and Rolls Royces, why can't I have it?” From a healthy place as opposed to a narcissistic place of, “I'll take their shit from them.”   in psychology, we call it relative deprivation. So this is a fascinating concept where how you rate yourself financially in terms of how you're doing, is not based on an objective number. It's subjective and it's based on the people you're around. That's how you decide whether you feel rich or you feel poor.   Money Scripts: Understanding Your Relationship With Money · [28:45]    Will Barron: How do we position ourselves, and how do we change our psychology around money and finance to enable us to push towards this? Do we have to just fake it till we make it? Do I need to go to a Rolls Royce dealership, sit in the car and tell myself, “This is just a car. I could have this one day.” How do we go about making those big leaps forward possible psychologically so that we can put the hustle in and make it happen as well?   Brad Klontz: Yeah. So understanding your money scripts, understanding your family history, understand if you do a real conscientious dive into your financial mistakes and really take credit for them [inaudible 00:29:23] All the studies we've done on ultra wealthy individuals, they have more of an internal locus control. They blame themselves for their problems. They are sort of the instrument of change and blame in their own lives.   Brad Klontz: That can be a really, really helpful mindset. It actually separates middle class and lower income people from people who make it up into the upper echelons of wealth is this earnest desire to look at, “It's not that I had a bad customer, it's like, what could I have done differently in that sales process?” That's where the goal is. That's number one. Number two, understand your money scripts.   Brad Klontz: So I have a website, moneysscripts.com. You can take the test that I'm talking about that we've used in many of our studies. It'll put you in a category. You can read about the research on those categories. Understanding your psychology can really help. And then you mentioned it too, Will. I almost feel like it is a game for you. And you keep moving to neighbourhoods that push you.   “When you're around a bunch of people who are having entrepreneurial success, you're way more likely to have entrepreneurial success. This is just how human beings work. By the way, this works either way. Like all of a sudden if you lose all your money, if you want to learn how to survive, hang around people who have lower income. Many of them are very happy and they spend their lives doing incredible joyous things.” – Brad Klontz · [30:15]    Brad Klontz: Like when you're around a bunch of people who are having entrepreneurial success, you're way more likely to have entrepreneurial success. This is just how human beings work. So if you could put yourself in front of people who are having the experience you want to have. By the way, this works on either way. Like all of a sudden you lose all your money, if you want to learn how to survive, hang around people who have lower income. Many of them are very happy and they spend their lives doing incredible joyous things. And you need to learn how to do that.   Brad Klontz: So get yourself in front of people and around people who are having the experience you want to have, and study them as if you are a psychologist yourself. You're an anthropologist. You're trying to figure out, okay, how do they think about things? How do they handle money? How do they approach business? Become extremely curious. And that's how we learn. And that's how we grow.   Logic Versus Emotion When Tackling Your Money Beliefs · [31:03]    Will Barron: Final question, Brad, before we wrap up and you tell us more about the book, where we find it, more about you as well. But how much of this is logical in that, say I end up buying this luxury car, buying into this brand and this lifestyle that is definitely not going to follow because it's just going to be sat in a garage and probably use it once a week, once a month. It's just going to drop in value over time.   Will Barron: But say like I buy into this idea, and I start going to these car meets up. I start engaging with these much more wealthy individuals than what I am but I perhaps aspire to be. How much of this is logic of, I need to speak to these individuals and say, “Oh, well, this person is running this type of business. They're doing this. Or this salesperson is working this way or that way.” How much of it versus logic is then emotion of allowing yourself to get wrapped up into that?   Will Barron: And allowing, I don't know if this is like a shortcut to your subconscious of allowing events or places or conversations to happen that inspire you and that side of the fence. How much of this is logical, we can be proactive about it, versus emotional, we need to be in situations where maybe some of it happens to us?   Brad Klontz: Yeah. I feel like the logical aspects are the easier part, to be honest. I feel like it's pretty simple. It's pretty simple. If you want to have a certain outcome, you find out how people get that outcome. Read some autobiographies and then just go ahead and do what they did. That's kind of how, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's simple in that way. It's like, just do this set of instructions and then you can get where you're getting.   Brad Klontz: Now obviously, we got to take the random billionaires out who struck it rich in one generation. There is no playbook for that. There's elements of luck associated with that. But in terms of bettering your life, there's a playbook. Find the playbook, read it, and then do what they did. Now, a lot of times you might not want to do what they did. It might have taken more than you want to to give in to do that, but find the playbook could do. I think the emotions are much more difficult.   Brad Klontz: When you said you're going to buy a sports car, I said, “Oh, there you are being an asshole, Will.” Your mom mentioning that to you. It's incredible that you have that conscious awareness, but if you had a negative association with it, I almost guarantee people who've had an experience like that, they're just not aware of it. Or they've heard their family talk about people who drive those kind of cars. It's that unconscious sort of association that really can trip us up.   Brad Klontz: And so I think it's really to your benefit to look at your psychology around that and ask yourself, why wouldn't it be okay for you to do that? What sort of associations do you have on that other tribe? Are they accurate? Is this just a way to look at them so you can feel better about yourself?   Brad Klontz: I think approaching it with a lot of curiosity, can be extremely beneficial, because what happens is we have these automatic thoughts and beliefs about those people. Poor people are got poor because they did this. Rich people are like that. And a lot of it is based on partial truths and misinformation.   Will Barron: Yeah. That makes total sense. I do a daily journal and I catch myself, this story anecdote with my mom. I knew it at the time. I remember of thinking it at the time, but it came up in a journal. I knew I was prepping for the show, Brad. So I was like, that might be a good anecdote to bring up on the show.   Will Barron: But then as we talk about it, it seems even more ridiculous now. And I should just completely forget about it. And I think I forgot it, but I think I didn't hold onto it as, I didn't agree with my mom at the time. And I'm pretty sure I don't agree with it now. But then even just getting out there, talking about it on this show, writing about it in my journal, when it came up the other week, I feel like that is almost therapeutic in its own way.   A Practical Approach to Improving Your Money Beliefs, Getting Richer and Improving Your Relationship with Money · [34:31]   Will Barron: Am I over complicating all this? Or do we just need to be practical? Hang out with rich people if we want to get richer and just do what they do? Have I just spent half an hour going way too deep and we could have wrapped up the show and had a nice succinct episode within five minutes?   Brad Klontz: Yeah. The problem is that you won't go hang around those disgusting people unless you look at the beliefs around those people first. That's part of it. But to your point too, I think whichever way you can get there, the fastest is the best. I will say this too, one of the problems is that, and you run into this all the time with sales people too, is they get too big for their riches.   Brad Klontz: They try to project themselves as having more than they actually do, thinking that this is what wealthy people do. And all the studies on wealthy people actually show that they do the opposite. So the ones who are most likely to flash wealth are the ones who actually have less of it, which is really fascinating because everyone starts thinking, “Oh no, I know this ultra rich person who does it.” That is not the majority.   Brad Klontz: And here in the U.S, the majority of millionaires are self-made. It's upwards of 80%. And when we do studies on those individuals, I'm talking people 11 million in net worth. They are vigilant around money. They're savers. If you ask them how much money they made, they would tell you they make less than they do.   “The only way to become wealthy is to hold onto net worth to save it. And if you're spending it on depreciating assets like cars, it needs to be money that is throw-away money for you because buying cars is not an investment. That's money that's going to go down in value.” – Brad Klontz · [35:59]   Brad Klontz: And so it's a fascinating thing because many of us try to emulate this stereotype we have of rich people, and actually that's not how people become rich. They become rich by, it's net worth. And the only way to become wealthy is to hold onto net worth to save it.   Brad Klontz: And if you're spending it on depreciating assets like cars, it needs to be money that is throw away money for you because that's not an investment. That's money that's going to go down in value. And so looking at it as a luxury, people don't do that unless they can actually afford it, or they're not in the ranks of the wealthy for very long.   Will Barron: The people I know that have the type of cars that I'm talking, and I'll tell you off air in a second about it, Brad, they drive like a crappy, old banger as their main car, then have a prestigious sports car or even super cars from this brand locked up in a nice pristine garage.   Will Barron: And they like to polish it and look at it and drink up a coffee sat in the seat every morning. But they're all wearing crappy polo shirts and ripped up jeans and crappy trainers. And they're all typically salespeople who had success five to 10 years ago, who invested appropriately and are now killing it on the back of that. A lot of them got into property and things like that. Obviously they're small business owners who have just like hustled and grinded their way to where they are right now.   Will Barron: So yeah, I think you're right. This seems to be people who are doing less well [inaudible 00:37:09] who don't have the cash to just flash and show off. Then there's a weird gap in the middle, where my partners, my message is a doctor. So I see a lot of [inaudible 00:37:18] it's by flashy cars when I know exactly how much they earn, and I earn way more than what they earn.   Will Barron: And I'm not driving around in a flashy car day to day as my main vehicle. And wearing Gucci t-shirts and all this crap and nonsense trying to play this bling game. And then you see the actual wealthy people on the other side are all dressed like scruffs, haven't had hair cut in three months, but actually have the wealth to back it up. So I think there's an interesting dynamic there. Right?   Brad Klontz: Very much so. Good observation. And social media, it's a toxic place that just lies to you about how wealthy people go through life.   Social Media and How It Has Changed Our Perception of Wealth and Money · [37:28]   Will Barron: Yeah. I will go on record. There's very, very few rich 23-year old driving Lamborghinis in real life who have actual wealth. There's probably a handful in the west world who have made it themselves, but there's a lot of people on Instagram, young fellas, young girls.   Will Barron: I'm 35. I'm saying younger than me who are driving these ridiculous cars, living this lifestyle, whereas it's just a facade. It's not real. They don't have the wealth to buy a 400 grand car. They're hiring it. They're borrowing them. They're taking pictures next to one part in the street. And it's just not real.   Will Barron: Social media, it's another conversation for another time, Brad, I think. I don't know if you've got research data on this, but with it being a relatively new phenomenon, that must have changed people's perceptions of wealth together.   Brad Klontz: Yeah, it does. And back to that, relative deprivation psychology. Before, it would just be, we would be exposed to people in our neighbourhood. And somebody had a nicer bike that was shiny and we'd feel a sense of deprivation like, “I want that bike.” Now a bunch of it's false too.   Brad Klontz: But you see on Instagram every day, all these people who seem to have a happier relationship than you, driving a nicer car in front of a mansion. You have no idea if any of that stuff is theirs. But what it does is it triggers a sense of deprivation inside of you. And if you notice and you click on those profiles, they're all selling something. They're all selling you a course on how to become wealthy. And they know that they trigger your sense of deprivation that it'll help them sell their get-rich-quick course.   Will Barron: Yeah. And look, to be blunt, the audience will know this. Well, that's why I'm not talking about this car. I'm not naming brands. I'm not doing anything on that front because I'm not sure how to approach this with our audience, because our whole brand, Brad, is based on the back that I'm just this knuckle dragging salesperson like the audience. I'm still doing sales calls every day.   Will Barron: The business do great, revenue wise, but I'm not taking anything out of the business. The business is growing and I'm still skinned every month by the time all the expenses are paid, because I want to do it along with the audience.   Parting Thoughts · [39:50]   Will Barron: So with that, mate, and just for anyone who's new to the show, hopefully that gives a bit of context as to why I'm not showing off this car that we may or may not be buying in the next few weeks. But Brad, tell us about the book, Money Mammoth and where we can find out more about you. And you mentioned the website earlier on as well. Tell us about that link as well.   Brad Klontz: Yeah. So Money Mammoth is my sixth book. Wow. I can't believe it's been 6:30, but had my latest research on there. For example, one study, we got people to save 73% more after just spending an hour of have them visualising their goals and doing weird sort of vision board stuff, but 73% increase in savings.   Brad Klontz: So I've got the science and techniques in there in Money Mammoth. I'm @Dr. Brad Klontz on social media. And if you want to learn more about your money scripts, I put it online, moneyscripts.com. That's the test we've used with, I'm going to say almost 100,000 people now and done studies on.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well, to all that and the shown it to this episode over at salesman.org. With that, Brad, I want to thank you for your time. The fact that you're doing actual research on this and not just pulling ideas and thoughts out of thinner is really important to our community and your community as well. So I appreciate that. I'll just plug you on that point specifically. Oh, thank you for your time and your expertise and for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Brad Klontz: Thanks, Will, it was a lot of fun.

Andres Lares is the managing partner at Shapiro Negotiations Institute and the author of Persuade – the 4-step Process to Influence People and Decisions. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Andres explains his 4-step process to influencing your prospect’s buying 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 - Andres Lares Negotiations Expert Resources: Andres on LinkedIn The Shapiro Negotiations Institute Book: Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're going to be looking at the four-step process to influencing buying decisions. Today's guest is Andres Lares. Andres is the managing partner over at SNI. He's the author of Persuade: The 4-Step Process to Influence People and Decisions. He's been featured in Harvard Business Review, CNBC, Entrepreneur, ABC, Fox, and many other places as well. With that, Andres, welcome to the show.   Andres Lares: Thank you for having me.   Will Barron: More than welcome, sir. You are coming on the show to talk about a topic that we've covered a bazillion gillion times on the past, influence persuasion. I love covering it, because everyone has different insights, different aspects to this. Am I wrong? This is one of the most fascinating topics that two humans can talk about, right?   Andres Lares: I was about to say, you can't cover it enough. It's one of those things that if you think in your professional life and your personal life, you really can't avoid. Negotiating and influencing is something you do all day, every day.   The Art and Science of Influence and Persuasion · [01:00]    Will Barron: For sure. Okay. I want to ask you a really lazy, loaded, leading question, because I think it ties into the content from your business, your training, and the book and stuff as well. I think this'll give us a starting point for the conversation, and we'll see where we go with that. With that, Andres, can the, I'm going to say, the art and the science of influence persuasion really be broken down into just four steps?   Andres Lares: As I think about the answer that, two things come to mind. The first is, I did economics in university. I took a very much, in the economics discipline, really, models are meant to balance giving you something that's practical and actionable and meaningful, but also being simple enough that at the end, you are capturing what you need to capture. Otherwise, very quickly, you get lost in the weeds.   Andres Lares: I think that's the mentality around this four-step process. The second is, it's not necessarily the four steps only to influencing and persuading. It's more the four steps in the decision-making process. As a result, you take advantage of those, and by better understanding those, you're better able to influence and persuade. That's the structure behind it, if you will.   The Four Step Process of Influencing Buying Decisions · [02:00]   Will Barron: Sure. Give us the high-level overview of these four steps. Then, we might not cover them all, but we'll break down some of it, and we'll see if we can leave the audience with some practical steps to improve their ability to influence and persuade.   Andres Lares: Perfect. The four-step process is, and I build this up like Maslow's hierarchy, if you will, for those that have taken psychology 101, in Maslow's hierarchy, it's a pyramid, and the base layer is building credibility. Building credibility, without it, if you think about a commercial that might have a dentist, when they're selling toothpaste, they might have an athlete. Why is that? Because you want to build credibility, you want people to listen.   Andres Lares: It's that base layer. Without it, people, they don't care. There's so much noise out there, that that's what allows us to figure out, is this someone or something I should listen to or not? Credibility.   “People make decisions emotionally, and then they justify rationally. And we can't say that enough because all too often, especially salespeople, are trying to persuade others with logic. “Here's the five reasons you should do this. Here's five of our clients that should make you feel more comfortable.” The reality is, people make decisions emotionally then it's the logic that helps them justify it.” – Andres Lares · [02:59]    Andres Lares: The next step is engage emotion. Really, perhaps the key takeaway of this model is really that, people make decisions emotionally, and then they justify rationally. Really, we can't say that enough, because all too often, especially salespeople, really all of us, are trying to persuade others with logic. Here's the five reasons you should do this. Here's five of our clients. That should make you feel more comfortable.   Andres Lares: The reality is, people make decisions emotionally. Then, it's the logic that helps them justify it. They're sleeping at home at night thinking, “I think I did go with the right decision, because,” whatever the logic is. Then of course comes the logic. First, you build credibility, then you engage emotion. The next step is the logic, and you demonstrate logic. The key there is to do it in a very practical and precise way.   Andres Lares: Then finally, those first three steps were actually from Aristotle. In 350 BC, he taught ethos, pathos, logos. That's credibility, emotion and logic. Of course, I say that to practise what we preach, because with a little bit of extra credibility, if you don't believe us, who is this guy telling me this? Aristotle's someone you probably trust, and there's a lot of credibility there.   Andres Lares: We added on top of that, is facilitate action. I think as a salesperson, anyone can relate to, “Will, is this something that you really want to move forward with?” Oh yes, it is. “Are you excited about,” oh yes, I am. Then, all of a sudden, you don't hear back, and all this momentum is gone. Facilitate action is meant to do that. It's talking about, okay, what are some ways we can keep that momentum, to make sure that the wheels don't fall off?   Credibility and Why It’s So Important in the Sales Process · [04:30]    Will Barron: When we talk about this, I've not got my iPad idea, otherwise I'd draw this out, because I think visually, this would make a lot of sense. When we talk about credibility being the base, if someone does not … A salesperson selling some kind of, I don't know, a software product, Sam the salesperson is selling software product. If he's not credible, can he or she lean into the credibility of the company? Then, if they're not credible, does that just then wipe out any chance of influencing a potential customer into making a purchase?   Andres Lares: For the last part, it does wipe it out, because we won't even give the light a day. If Sam the software salesperson knocks on Will's door and says, “Hey,” and basically, it stops after that. You don't listen. You want to move on to the next thing and just discredit it. What happens is, how do you do it? Most salespeople, most people don't really have credibility necessarily. They're reaching out, potentially cold. That's of course why warm leads are so much more valuable, because there is credibility. It's passed on, because Will knows I'm this, or knows Sam, or whoever it is.   “One of the ways to build credibility is to borrow it. What you would do is you'd borrow from your company, you would borrow it from peers, you'd borrow from experience, etc. The easiest one is company.” – Andres Lares · [05:3]   Andres Lares: If you don't have that, then that's exactly what you do. One of the ways to build credibility is to borrow it. What you would do is, you'd borrow from your company, you would borrow it from beers, you'd borrow from experience, whatever you borrow it. The easiest one is company. If you're in software sales for a large firm, then look, you don't have to necessarily think about Will specifically and what I know, but you've got confidence that, if you're a Microsoft salesperson, we've all heard of Microsoft. There's trust there in the almost trillion dollar cap that it is.   Andres Lares: That's absolutely one of the ways to do it.   How to Borrow Credibility From Your Company, Peers, or Sales Managers · [06:15]    Will Barron: I just want to be … Because some of these conversations I have, we end up in all theory, 45 minutes go past, and there's nothing practical. I want to layer as much practicality as we can into this episode as we go through this, Andres. With that said, if somebody's listening to this and they're going, “Crap, I don't have that much experience in this space. Maybe I'm just straight out of college, my first sales role, and the company I'm selling for is a startup. No one knows who we are.”   Will Barron: Is it practical to advise that person to gather as much experience as they can in that role as they possibly can, but then maybe move to a big organisation, and make selling as easy as possible for themselves, by being able to leverage the credibility, borrow the credibility, to use your wording, of the company, of amazing clients and previous deals that've been done?   Andres Lares: There is something to be said for that. I think at the same time, you don't necessarily have to go to the bigger company to gain their credibility, because then you can get your own credibility and borrow it from elsewhere, not just the firm. Just as a unique example, what does this look like too? I think you said something about practical, and I do want to get to that, because I think for listeners, okay, how do I do this? Hypothetically, I'll give an example from us in our world.   Andres Lares: If we're talking to a pharmaceutical company, what's the best way for us to use emotion, but also at the same time, build credibility? Those first two steps. When someone explains, here's the challenge that I have. It's one of the questions that we ask right up front, why are you calling us? Tell us more about your situation. The first thing we'll do is briefly walk through other examples where you've dealt with exactly that kind of situation. Which, if you're a startup, as long as you have at least more one other customer, hopefully there's going to be some overlap there.   Andres Lares: You don't necessarily have to say, “Hey, look, this is Microsoft or Amazon or Cisco. Of course, you've heard of us.” You could say, “Will, you talked about the challenge that you have, where you are having X, Y, and Z. We've dealt exactly with that sort of situation. Here's what we did.” You walk through A, B and C. What happens is, you don't even have to get specifically to the client name, but your ability to understand what their challenge is, and start getting to some ideas around solutions. You haven't laid out a framework, because you probably don't know enough to do that, but you've at least walked them through saying, hey, not only did I listen to you, but I've also been through similar situations before.   Andres Lares: That's an example of very simple way to borrow credibility from the experience you have as a company. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to point to that, hey, trillion dollar company, the big one, it could be a startup that you've never heard of, but now, oh, okay, they understand me, they've done this before.   Will Barron: Sure. I think a layer on that as well, there are billion dollar, trillion dollar companies that no one's ever heard of anyway. Before we hit record, I mentioned my first sales job, job at a company called Johnson Matthey, multi-billion dollar company, mine most of the precious metals on the planet. If you look up the prices of precious metals, it's usually set by Johnson Matthey. No one's ever heard of the company. I think two thirds of all catalytic converters in cars use the precious metals, which make up the main price of a catalytic converter, from Johnson Matthey.   The Benefits of Being Specific During the Sales Process and What it Does to Your Credibility · [09:10]    Will Barron: Again, no one's ever heard of them. When you start to use storytelling, you can finesse, is that a fair way of describing this? You can borrow credibility without having to name clients, and still talk about big numbers. What am I trying to get at? I'm trying to walk a line here between, we don't want the audience to lie about a customer that doesn't exist, but it's also appropriate if we can't name company names and stuff, to still tell stories. Not being able to talk specifics is not necessarily, or should not, not being specific, be a barrier to someone telling a story, or is a story still effective at building credibility, even if there's a reduction in specifics, names, locations, and people within. More general stories still built credibility.   Andres Lares: I think there's a lot there, that starts getting into the nitty gritty, I think it's worth dissecting, because I would say specificity is important, but specificity in who exactly the client is, when exactly you worked with them, isn't as important. Specificity is important, because it makes it more real and more relevant. An example from the book, we talk about how in just a totally other example, if you say that a price is $10, versus you say the price is $9.59, it conveys that $10 seems like a general number that's been rounded up, and then $9.59 gives automatically the brain of the other side starts to think, there must be a reason it's $9.59. It's almost a more credible number, that's less likely to be negotiated down.   Andres Lares: That's an aside, but that same specificity concept translates to the story. People understand at this point that, hey, I can't tell you exactly who this client is, or whatever may be, but the specificity piece is important. You want to be more specific about the challenges they face coming in, and the solutions you provided them to overcome that. That's when the specificity I think is most important. Not necessarily in exactly what industry, exactly what company, who exactly you worked with.   Andres Lares: Those sorts of things, you can get away with. That's what makes the story more compelling. The idea is you want Will to sit there and think at the end of that conversation, that I've been through a situation like this before. I trust that because of that experience, I'm a valuable asset to you, that can help you find an optimal solution. That's really what the story's saying, more than, “Hey, I've done this before with company X specifically.”   Will Barron: Got it. On that then, is this, and credibility might be the easiest one to do this upon, but is this measurable? Can we say, this person has X credibility, this person has Y credibility? Again, I'm thinking of this from the perspective of the audience, where they want to improve, but it's very difficult to improve that something, if you can't put a number on it, or if it's anecdotally, “Oh, I trust that person, but I don't trust that person.”   Can We Really Measure Our Credibility? · [11:59]    Will Barron: Can we measure credibility specifically? Then we can touch on some of these other points as well.   Andres Lares: We've played around with that for a long time. We've struggled to find a foolproof way to do that. I would say, something we've talked a lot about is, there is a hierarchy, if you will, and credibility has a lot to do with the quality of the relationship. Those two are very closely aligned, because essentially, credibility is basically trust. There's a little bit more to it, but essentially, those are very well-correlated.   Andres Lares: If you think of it that way, if you want to figure out, okay, what's the credibility you have, think about a prospective client, our client, and think about all the little things. For example, if you call them and you leave them a voicemail or you send them an email, how long do they take to call you back or email you back? Have they ever asked you for advice? Do they typically take your advice if you potentially provide a few nuggets, even without being requested? Those sorts of things. Your conversations, are they very transactional nature? How much do you talk personally, and get beyond the business relationship?   “If your prospects respond fairly quickly to your emails, they ask you for advice, or they clearly value your opinion, then your credibility is quite high. If none of those are happening and they only come to you when they need pricing, and you're essentially a rate sheet, then your credibility is probably pretty low.” – Andres Lares · [13:19]    Andres Lares: If you answer all those questions, then I would say it's actually very similar to body language, which is someone we cover in our book, which is, one thing doesn't tell you much. It could be just a mood or very specific, it could be a lot of factors are there. It's hard to read much from one response, but over the body of work, over a few months, if all those things are happening, they respond fairly quickly, they ask you for advice, they clearly value your opinion, your credibility is quite high. If none of those are happening and they only come to you when they need pricing, and you're essentially a rate sheet, then your credibility is probably pretty low.   Andres Lares: That's how I would answer it, rather than having a specific process to figure that out.   Will Barron: Makes total sense. That impact of someone that you're prospecting, someone that you're working with, asking you for advice is so important. I don't think this is really talked about in any sales books that I've seen. It's a question that we include in our sales code assessment in our training product, because it really does set the bar between salespeople, and I won't go too much into this, I don't want this to be a pitch for the product kind of thing, but it really just separates salespeople in the data that we've collected, of the cliche salesperson who's a consultant, versus the salesperson who's just spamming cold emails, as many people as possible, trying to just get the right person at the right time, with the right product by fluke and by look, more than anything else.   Will Barron: That question of, hey, do your buyers ask for your advice, ask for your opinions, ring you up, and anything other than what is the price, or how do I get started? That is a massive differentiator in our own internal data, as to a salesperson who's in control of the sale, as much as we want to be, as the buyer goes through the buyer's journey, versus again, someone who's just spamming for the right person at the right place at the right time.   Why Patience is Key When Trying to Build Credibility · [14:48]    Will Barron: Is there anything else you want to add? I want to go through as many of these as we can. Is there anything else you want to add to the credibility? I think that makes sense. I think that is objectively measurable for the audience now as well.   Andres Lares: The only thing I would add is, it takes patience. The only factor we haven't talked about is … In the book, we talk about really, the name of the game is to speed up that process. That's what we all want to do, as salespeople, we want to get to a point where we are credible in the eyes of a potential client, or a client, and do so as quickly as possible. That is the name of the game, but no matter what, even with the best system, even the most experienced and effective people, it takes time.   Andres Lares: That's part of just one other practical tip. If we're talking about building credibility, if I'm talking to Will for the first time, okay, let me get you a proposal and I'll send it to you by end of day Wednesday, and you purposely set a milestone that you can then do.   “You cannot build credibility and trust in the first call. You can begin to, and you want to give yourselves those opportunities and take advantage of those opportunities, but it really does take time. So patience is key when trying to build credibility.”  – Andres Lares · [15:58]    Andres Lares: Then also, I'll follow up with you the following Wednesday, just to make sure, to check in to see if you have any questions. You do that. Then, a week later, you give yourself these milestones and these activities, and things that you say you're going to do, and you do them, and you build reliability. That's another quick way to build it. I bring that up because as much as you're speeding up the process, as you can tell, that takes time. You cannot build credibility and trust in the first call. You can begin to, and you want to give yourselves those opportunities and take advantage of those hacks, if you will. It really does take time.   Andres Lares: Patience is the one other factor I would throw in there.   The Emotional Piece of Rapidly Trying to Build Credibility · [16:12]   Will Barron: [inaudible 00:16:12] emotion, how much of this is actually in the control of the salesperson, and how much of this is in the upbringing, the four patterns, the beliefs, the cultural elements of the buyer themselves of, we're taught as kids, stranger danger and all this kind of stuff. How much of that is the variable, versus our skillset in the marketplace, to be able to attempt to rapidly build credibility?   Andres Lares: The emotion piece, I think, if we segue to that, is something that you have control over. Not complete control, certainly, but you certainly have control over … I'll give you the example again, a lot of studies around this, we did it in our book, but there's a lot of them out there, which say that people are more afraid, and it's more powerful to lose something, than it is to gain something.   Andres Lares: The simple example that is, that Will, as an average person, will feel more pain if he loses $100, let's say, at a casino in roulette, then he will if he gains $100, he makes $100 from playing that same game. Just as an example of that, the crudest example, the reason I bring that up is, then, when you're talking to someone, if you want to engage emotions and you want to really compel someone to be activated in this conversation, and engaged, you might spend more time on, okay, walk me through, explain to me the challenge you face, and why is that so frustrating? You get them talking about it.   Andres Lares: That is a lot more compelling on the flip side, and going straight to the solution on the positive. That's just a perfect example of, you don't have complete control. The person doesn't have to go along with you, which is some of the art, if you will, that you get them going along with you. The science tells us that, if you get them talking about the struggles, the challenges they face, and how it makes them feel, what would happen if they get beyond that, that is something that's going to engage in emotionally, in a much more powerful way, than going straight to the solutions.   Andres Lares: That's where the credibility and the emotions start to bridge together, where the story would say, I've seen conversations like this before. Here's a solution we came up with. I want to go back to what you're facing, and dig in a little more, and you start really asking questions about that. That's where you now start balancing step one, step two, in that process.   Why Building Credibility Should be Enjoyable · [18:30]    Will Barron: Should this process be, fun might be an extreme word to describe it, but should it be an enjoyable process for the buyer and the seller? Because, if you take away the sales element of this, of, I'm going to sit down with Andres, he's going to tell me some stories, he's going to build some emotion, there might be a bit of a logical element to this, to bring things back down and to wrap things up. Hopefully, I'm going to get some kind of benefit out of it, and I'll be able to move forward with this, or stop this pain point, or something like that.   Will Barron: If you talk about this from a, even a therapy perspective or a mentoring perspective, it sounds like it's going to be really productive and everyone's happy. As soon as you mention sales, and you sprinkle that in, everyone's a bit nervous. Barriers come up in the mind of the buyer a lot of the time, and salespeople feel like they're almost battling for attention. If this is done by someone like yourself, who's highly skilled in these steps of influence and storytelling, and all the other stuff that we're talking about, should this be an enjoyable couple of phone calls between buyer and seller?   Andres Lares: First of all, I want to put that in my bio, that Will Barron has said I'm highly skilled in this area. There's a couple things. One is, we've all heard that people don't like being sold too. I think that's part of this too, that if you think about, we always laugh. In some of the sessions, our facilitators will often share a very relatable story about going into a store. If we go into a store to buy a pair of pants, or a clothing store of some kind, and you'll come in.   Andres Lares: What's the first question you're asked? Is, “May I help you,” from the store person, salesperson. What's their immediate response? Is, no, I'm okay, I'm just looking. What's interesting is, we've come in, and we could just be looking. In many cases, we're coming in looking for a specific pair of pants or shirt or a sweater, but we would rather go find it ourselves rather than literally take advantage of this resource that is meant to do exactly that.   Andres Lares: If we were to say, “Hey, I want this sweater in large,” that's their job is to help us do that. Instead, we don't want to be sold to. We say, we're just looking, to get that space, to make our own decision and to get that space. I think that's a perfect example. I think we have to keep that in mind.   “The salespeople that are genuinely curious in a process that’s truly collaborative are very successful because the other side senses that genuine curiosity, and so they're more willing to share. They truly are collaborating. That's how you get to the best solution.” – Andres Lares · [21:01]    Andres Lares: To your question, I would say, what drives all this? In some cases, it could be fun. I think the best salespeople enjoy it. I think the differentiator we saw from the most successful salespeople, is there's genuine curiosity. When they're doing what we talked about, they really are curious as salespeople. That's today's challenge is to learn about, what's Will struggling with, why, what have they done before, and then to come up with a solution together with Will. Those that see it as, there's genuine curiosity in a process that truly is collaborative, are very successful, because the other side senses that genuine curiosity, they're more willing to share. They truly are collaborating.   Andres Lares: That's how you get to the best solution. Now, it's hard to do, and that's the art maybe less than the science, but the genuine curiosity is the biggest driver, I think, of that.   Will Barron: I think a lot of this, I use that example that you're talking about there. You go to Levi's to buy a pair of jeans. Most of the time, there's a spotty teenager there who you're just like, get out the way. Then, you spend twice as long in there, trying on different jeans, when they could just tell you, because all they do is sell jeans all day, and they could've saved half an hour of messing around. Yet, we turn them down.   Will Barron: If you flip down on its head, if you're lucky enough to go and buy a luxury watch, an expensive watch, or a car or something, if you're going into a Rolex store, Omega store, whatever it is, and you're damn well expecting someone knowledgeable is going to come over and hold your hand, because that's part of the service. You might even get a glass of champagne or something, if you make a purchase on the spot there. That's part of the experience.   Statement Against Self Interest: The One Thing You Can Use to Build Credibility Fast · [22:10]   Will Barron: What can we do if, we'll use Sam the salesperson, he's selling HR software, it's super boring, but Sam is curious, and he does really care about his customers, and he cares about the fact that if he serves them well, he's going to get a big fat commission check at the end of the month as well, to be real about it. How does he change the perception of the prospect to shift them from the Levi's store rep, that when they walk into the store, they're not interested, to, hey, I'm actually here to add value, and you're paying for my time, whether you realise it or not, if you make a purchase, because the price of the product is factoring in the fact that we've got staff here, and we've got training, we've got all the facilities.   Will Barron: How would you go about changing the perception of a prospect on, whether it's via before you reach out, if you're trying to warm up a lead before you get on a call with them, or on a call, or wherever it is, how would you change the perception that you're actually there to help them, as opposed to, you are a pesky old-school salesperson just trying to grab cash out their back pocket?   Andres Lares: I think even in the example you brought up, we've talked about that first step, credibility. The person selling the Rolex has the credibility to borrow from Rolex. Rolex is a world-famous brand. That comes with the expectation that that salesperson will be very knowledgeable with the product. The value they bring to the table may not be, they don't need to sell you on buying a watch, and they don't need to understand why you're buying a watch necessarily, but they certainly, at the very least, need to have a lot of product understanding.   Andres Lares: That's what you're tapping into. The value they bring to you is when you ask, okay, what's the difference between this one and that one, those sorts of … Tell me more about how these are made, or whatever it is that you're interested in finding out, they should be a valuable resource there. Them being a valuable resource is how they prove and demonstrate their credibility.   Andres Lares: I would say in the other case, there's a couple of ways that Sam, selling HR software, for example, can do that. One is using statements against self-interest. To quickly do that, again, it has to be genuine. The concept of, I'm not sure this is going to work for you, sometimes is done disingenuously. Your HR software probably doesn't work for everybody. For example, there may be a sweet spot of companies too big or too small, or some industries you're more or less likely for that to work.   Andres Lares: That's a perfect example of, if you're generally having the first few minutes of a conversation around, Will, I've got a few questions for you, and then based on that, we can pretty quickly find out whether or not this could be a good fit. Now, and this would be the million-dollar piece to it, if every single time you go into those few questions, and it's always a “good fit,” then, your process isn't necessarily really genuine.   Andres Lares: If that truly is, and here's what's crazy, I can tell you that, I've had this, we've had salespeople on our team had this, and I've been on podcasts before, very successful people talk about these stories, where you sometimes will get a better referral and long-term client from people that you can even say at the beginning, where it truly isn't a fit. You build credibility by saying, Will, right now based on your size, I'm not sure it makes sense to go to our payroll services, our HR services, but let's keep in touch and figure it out if it changes.   Andres Lares: Then, what happens is, if Will moves to another company, think about how much credibility you build by bringing that up, by being very clear around, look, in this case, it just doesn't make sense. It's not fitting a square peg into a round hole.   Andres Lares: I think statement against self-interest is a big one, where you walk through. Again, if every single time, you're asking those questions early on to qualify, and every single time they're a fit, then it's probably not … You've got to adjust that a little bit. If there are a few times where it isn't a fit, and you can tell that person, or at least not a fit at the moment, then I think that's a pretty effective way to build credibility, and to get that early on.   Andres Lares: I would say that happens even in the prospecting stage. It's not like, Will, I know this will work for you, but instead it's, I only need 10 minutes of your time. Look, in the third email, when I haven't even got 10 minutes of Will's time, I'm going to send him an email, here's three or four questions you should start thinking about. Then, based on a brief conversation, or even you answering by email, I could tell you if it's even worth your time to spend 10 minutes. That kind of concept again is, there's credibility to that.   Andres Lares: There's empathy there, where they understand that I'm busy. They're going to figure out for me, whether or not this is worth my time.   Should You Be Using Manipulative Selling Techniques Even When They Can Potentially Yield Intended Results? · [26:25]    Will Barron: When we're talking about being, because I'm conscious about being flippant and cliche about this. When we talk about being authentic, we talk about being genuine, to make this practical for the audience, obviously most humans, depending on how perhaps your brain's wired, we have a gut instinct, gut feeling, whatever we want to call it, of someone is lying to us. Someone is manipulating, something isn't right.   Will Barron: Maybe there's a level of skill with … It becomes a manipulation then. Maybe there's a level of skill of manipulation, where you can overcome that feeling that people have. I think a lot of salespeople believe that they are incredible at influence and negotiation, when there's no evidence at all that they are, myself included. I used to think I was killer, all of this stuff. I'd read a few books on it. My real first sales job was working in medical device sales. I'd be dealing with surgeons all day, and they all think that they're amazing negotiations, and it's a bit of a boy's club, and we'd all be battling over these things.   Will Barron: Then when you start doing real deals with actual deal makers in large organisations in the corporate world, you soon realise that, I soon realised, I didn't actually know anything. I was not necessarily from a malicious place trying to manipulate people, but I was trying to just smash through barriers, and talk over people, and do weird tricks and things to try and take control of a situation.   Will Barron: Now, when I negotiate, it's very much from an authentic place of, here's the deal, you can either have it or not have it. You're not going to change my life either way. That's where things are. Deals come in so much easier, cleaner and smoother on the back of that.   Will Barron: My question, Andres, is, for the average person, should they focus on just being real, authentic, not bullshitting and trying to learn some of these skills to put people on the right pathway so we can help them, or is the scope to … Is it possible to manipulate people, is what I'm getting at, in a buyer/seller relationship? Not necessarily from a long-term perspective, from a short-term. Could you teach us black arts and black magic and some witchery, and maybe we've got to have a weird shrine, and we've got to sacrifice a sheep or something, before we jump onto the call.   Will Barron: Is it possible to manipulate people and get deals done, or it's just so difficult to do, that we should just focus on the softer skills, the easier stuff that we're talking about here, that actually gets results? That's a terrible question, but I'm going to let you try and answer it anyway.   Andres Lares: I'm all of a sudden going to take this to left field for a second, because the answer to that, actually, I want to make a connection to the Tinder Swindler. It's big on Netflix. Your question, can you manipulate? I think the answer very much is yes. For those that haven't watched the show, I think the title says it all, but there definitely is the ability to manipulate.   “The reality about manipulation is that if it's against their will, it’s really not something you want to be doing.” – Andres Lares · [29:44]    Andres Lares: I think, and it's one of the reasons, when we wrote our book, one of the first chapters is about that, is about the ethics. It's short, because we could write so much about it. There could be a whole book on that. The reality is, what we say is, if it's against their will, is that really what you want to be doing?   Andres Lares: It's also so short-term. Short-term, eventually you'll find out, eventually, it just doesn't feel good. Eventually, it catches up with you, and that's, for us, when we're training people, we're training for a sustained process, that they can continue all the way through their entire career. If anything, if you're in sales, those relationships you build, they begin to really … It's like a snowball. They really begin to pay dividends over the course of your career. I'm sure you've seen this, where friendships you've made, business relationships you've had for five, 10, 15, 20 years pay off no matter what you do in referrals and advice and everything else.   Andres Lares: There definitely is the ability to manipulate. It is hard, what's authentic and what's not. I think it starts with, at the core is, do you believe in the product or service that you're selling?   Andres Lares: I think that that's almost underappreciated. If you're in sales, that's the first piece you need to do, rather than necessarily getting into that big company we talked about earlier, there is an advantage to the credibility, you can borrow from a really big company everyone's heard of, but more important than that is, do you really believe in it? That alone, you'll naturally, even without thinking about it, that's going to ooze out of you, because you genuinely feel like, if they listen to you and it's a good fit, you're going to be providing value.   Andres Lares: That's the first step. If you want to do it naturally, that's the first step. Then, there's some other aspects that are trained. I think the trained piece is around, really, like you said, asking questions to understand what their needs are, in a way that the answer can't always be, this is a perfect fit. If those two are happening, I would say you're probably 90% of the way there. Then, that last 10% really is the art and science that you can fine tune over experience, do the training, experimenting, all those things take you to the last little bit, but those first two are, in my opinion, very significant.   Negotiation and Influence in Sales. It’s Not That Complicated · [31:35]   Will Barron: Is it fair to say then that me in this conversation, and maybe some of the audience as they look into negotiation, influence? Is it easy to over-complicate this?   Andres Lares: It is. I think, and that's why I know in your podcast, it's something that you talk about, the simplicity and the ability to execute. This is exactly why the book is the four-step process, and not the 72 ways to persuade, because the reality is, if you go back to the four we talked about, even if you haven't read it, even if you know aren't an expert in each area, just even the concepts alone. First, you build credibility.   Andres Lares: The first time you're reaching out to a potential client, you want to figure out, okay, how am I going to gain credibility? Why are they even going to care? Where's my perceived credibility going to come from? Engage emotion. I'm not going to go straight the logic. I want to attach this to something that they care about. Then, the logic is, how do I do that? Whether it's a story or something very … A logical consequence or conclusion based on the emotion and the credibility. Then finally, facilitate action. Okay. Let's do things to, whether it's providing options or maintaining momentum, let's do things that make it more likely that we are going to be able to advance the sale.   Andres Lares: If you think about just that process, again, an example of simple, if you and I talk today about 77 ways to do something, none of them will resonate. If we stick to four, the likelihood that those four will resonate is significantly higher, and that they'll be usable is significantly higher.   Will Barron: Okay. We'll wrap up the show with this, Andres. Are each of these segments, and say, we're trying to do this on, just to simplify our example here, we're going to try and do this on one call. The prospect has booked a meeting into our calendar. We have enough credibility that they want to speak to us about our projects or services. We've borrowed credibility from elsewhere. Maybe we are genuinely experts in our space as well.   How to Take Your Prospects Down the Path of Credibility, Emotion, and Eventually Taking Action · [33:34]    Will Barron: They want to speak with us. The emotion, the logic, the facilitate action, they go in that order. Are we doing emotion, and then we transition to logic, and then we transition to facilitating action, or is this more of a washing effect, where they knock into each other, and there's less of a hard transition between each one?   Andres Lares: I would say the latter. I think it's important, especially, most of us are selling remotely, or there's a significant remote piece of it. Just one other practical tip that I think will answer that question is, as an example, you're talking to a potential prospect now, and especially for those folks that may have been selling in person, but now have to continue to sell remotely due to COVID. If you think about, okay, credibility starts from the emails, the setting up a call, all the things you've done to even get the call. You probably have some credibility enough to at least get the call.   Andres Lares: Then, generally, again, for those folks that used to meet in person, they would spend an hour with someone at their office or at their manufacturing facility or whatever, they're used to running the sales process in one way. I would say, now you've gone online, now, you've probably gone from an hour, an hour and a half, to 30 minutes, and it's online. Engage emotion. If you follow that, where they start going back and forth, what would you do in those 30 minutes?   Andres Lares: While most of us feel the need to rush through the sales pitch, “Usually I've got an hour, but now I only have 30 minutes.” Instead, do these exact opposite, which is, those 30 minutes, you can send a proposal, you can send a PowerPoint, you can work through it on email, all the details of the things that you want to do from a logic perspective, all of the value proposition, you can do all that, but you cannot replicate the relationship with the bonding and the emotional aspect of the sale.   Andres Lares: Those 30 minutes should really be totally on emotion, totally on discovery, because everything else, you can do after. You do that because, if you do enough of that in the richest medium possible, which is the video call, then that allows you enough credibility, and you engage enough emotion for them to even care about the logic that you're going to share thereafter. The sales space, the value proposition, the PowerPoint, whatever you're going to send after.   Andres Lares: I bring that up because it is like the waves concept, where there's back and forth, and it isn't perfectly linear. It is a building of the pyramid, but it isn't perfectly linear. I think that goes into something we cover in our selling virtually programme, which is, even these and these podcasts, I would tell you, when I do podcasts, I think it's a richer conversation when there's video. Whether or not it ends up being broadcast or part of the podcast, because you can see the person, and there's the body language, the feedback.   Andres Lares: I think it makes for a richer conversation. It's the first time you and I have met, but I feel like I know you better, and I hope you feel the same. It's just a little bit different than it would if it was completely audio-based. Hopefully, that example has a practical tip, but also answers that question of, there is some grey areas between the stages.   Will Barron: Yep. That makes total sense. I'm conscious of time, because we could do an episode on each one of these four steps individually, and how it's twined, and another episode on … We could even role play some of this. I think there'd be value for the audience. There's one thing I don't think we've covered yet, and I want to wrap up the show with this, and this idea of, we're not doing this to someone. Tell me if I'm wrong here, but we're not throwing this out at someone.   Will Barron: This is a conversation. This is seeing their body language, as you mentioned, their cues, their triggers, if they're interested, if they're not in their head. Is there anything that we need to be looking out to, perhaps in one or two lines for each of these steps, for how we know that we've achieved that, and we can move on to the next one?   Here’s How To Know If You’re Credible Enough · [37:20]    Will Barron: What I mean by that is, how do we know if we've got credibility when we're on a video call? How do we know when we've ticked a few emotional boxes and we're now ready to talk about logic? Because some of the audience will take this conversation, try and turn it into a script, and just say it verbatim, hoping for a positive outcome. Again, tell me if I'm wrong. I feel like this is something that is done conversationally, as opposed to, I'm doing it's to you, Andres.   “When building credibility, you're not doing it to someone, you're doing it with someone. And I think if you've got time with the person, then they deemed you to be credible, because it's easier to say no than yes. We all have competing priorities and are busy. If you've allowed Will to take 15, 30 minutes of your time, there's enough credibility there for he or she to allow you to do that.” – Andres Lares · [37:57]    Andres Lares: Spot on. I think, I would summarise that with the two words, you're not doing it to someone, you're doing it with someone, is the first answer. Absolutely. I think that's critical. Then, for each one, I think the earlier ones are easier. Credibility, if you've got time with the person, then they deemed you to be credible, because it's easier to say no than yes. We all have competing priorities and are busy. If you've allowed Will to take 15, 30 minutes of your time, there's enough credibility there for he or she to allow you to do that.   Andres Lares: Then as far as emotion, I think if the person cares, if the body language is, the eye contact, video-wise, if that makes sense, if you can tell they perk up and are wanting to share more, the emotion's engaged. I would say logic is probably more around buying signals. At that point, you just start to progress. There's the buying signals of asking for pricing, or asking more specific questions. Then, the facilitate action's probably the opposite. It's one that you don't wait to see whether you're getting those signs, you're doing it anyways to make sure it doesn't happen.   Andres Lares: Part of facilitate action is, I think as salespeople, it's harder to resuscitate a sale than it is to continue all the way through. When we lose momentum, it's hard to regain it, just like it's easier to sell to a current client, and grow a current client, than it is a new one. I would say, that one's actually the opposite, where you don't want to be waiting for that cue, “I think I'm losing this person.” You want to act as if you're not even going to let that person get to that stage by continuing to facilitate action and keep the momentum.   How to Move Into the Close After Successfully influencing Buying Decisions · [39:10]    Will Barron: Final question for me, this is the third final question I've asked you. Should this come to a crescendo with a closing statement? Does it make sense to move forward with this? Should this big ball be getting faster and bigger and boulders removed, as it moves forward throughout the conversation? Or, should there be peaks and troughs, and should it be more chill, again, or should it be like, we're building up speed, we're building momentum, we're building that emotion, we're layering in the logic, and towards the end of it, it's like, yes, we're rocking and rolling?   Andres Lares: It does build, and I think I expected a little bit of that when we started doing our research. Our research was, we did a research of 1000 decision makers around the world. We were trying to take away a bias of a specific culture. I expected to see more of that. We covered, for example, soft and hard closes, and whether there is that buildup into that big ask. I think one of the things that we quickly learned is, that doesn't really happen, because each one's so different. If you see a sales process as just learning about the other party, figuring out if there's a fit, and then connecting your solutions to it, it's that simple. I don't want to oversimplify, but really, it is that simple.   Andres Lares: Then, each one's going to be a little bit different. Some people are going to … You're going to need to apply a little bit more pressure, because maybe they're changing the status quo. They've had an incumbent supplier, or, as you said, HR software partner for many years, and you've got to move them off of that. That might require a little bit more aggressiveness with a, does that make sense? Should we give this a go? Put a little bit more, not pressure, but take it up a notch.   “The most effective way to get someone to believe something is if they say it.” – Andres Lares · [41:05]   Andres Lares: Versus in some other cases, you want to take the opposite approach, which is, you share, share, share, focus on credibility, focus on building that emotion, and give that person that space, because he or she, again, may not want to be sold to. They'll be more … I will say, one piece that ties us all together is, and we cover this in both our influencing and persuasion class, and as well also, our negotiation, which is, the most effective way to get someone to believe something is if they say it.   Andres Lares: We're better off asking a question of, Will, what would your world look like if you were to save 10 hours a week based on your HR software? Again, those are too cliche, maybe not the perfect question, but that concept, and if you were to say, that would allow me to do X, Y, and Z, that's a lot better than, this will save me 10 hours of time, so that will allow you to do X, Y, and Z. Who believes me? I'm just a salesperson.   Andres Lares: You may not believe me, until I gain enough credibility. Until then, asking a couple of those questions that have you come up with that, and it may not be the immediate response. It isn't, you ask Will this perfect question, and expecting to say, wow, that was a good question. I'm sold, and where do sign. That's not going to happen, but now, you've planted that seed. For that next conversation, you can assume that that person's thought a little bit about it. Now, that's the area we're going to spend a little bit more time in the discovery phase.   Andres Lares: Hopefully, that's not too all over the place, but I think we're talking theoretical, we're also talking practical, but one of my goals was to give us few practical tools and tips that people could use immediately after they listen to this. That's another one, try to find a way you can ask that question to get to that answer, rather than tell the other party that.   “Your sales calls shouldn't be weird. It should be someone who wants to speak with you, and you want to chat with them. You want to see if you're a good fit. If you're not, fine, ask for a referral, you can follow up later on down the line.” – Will Barron · [42:20]    Will Barron: I love it. My biggest takeaway from this show is something that I know, but I didn't know five, six years ago when I started the podcast, and when I was still working in a sales role, but I now for experience, having done thousands of sales calls for our training product, that your sales calls shouldn't, this sounds ridiculous, your sales calls shouldn't be weird. It should be someone who wants to speak with you, and you want to chat with them. You see if you're a good fit. If you're not, fine, ask for a referral, you can follow up later on down the line. As you mentioned, they might change jobs. They might go to different companies. Budget appears six months down the line, whatever it is, you just stay in contact, add that little bit value, share some industry insights every quarter, whatever it is.   Will Barron: The conversation, you don't have to be best friends with the person that you're chatting with, but it should be a half decent little conversation. It shouldn't be weird. You shouldn't be reading from a script, the next step number 27 than in the manipulation formula. Because even as you mentioned earlier on-   Andres Lares: I feel like … when you start saying that, I …   Will Barron: That would be an interesting show in its own right, to look at the black arts of influence and negotiation, and see maybe what we shouldn't be doing with some of this. I feel like, what I'm taking away from this is, it should be just a fun … Fun's a strong word. It should be a constructive conversation between two adults, talking about a business problem, and whether the business you can represent solves it. There shouldn't be no pressure. I know we're talking about negotiations, influence and persuasion here.   Will Barron: A lot of those words have a level of pressure tied to them. In the negotiation, most people assume I'm trying to win a negotiation. As opposed to, we're trying to compromise and come to a solution that everyone's onboard with. This is societal, this is culture and films that, there's no boardroom negotiation in any film where everyone's like, “Oh, I enjoyed that conversation.” You have some pastries and a cup of coffee and you just have a chat about things. It's obviously culturally, negotiation has things tied to it.   Why Your Sales Conversations With Prospects Should Never Be Weird · [44:30]    Will Barron: Am I on the right tracks here that, a sales conversation, as we just outlined, when we've got credibility, especially if it's an inbound lead where the prospect wants to speak to us, we should just be having a nice chat with them?   Andres Lares: Yeah. It's hard though, because I think that requires confidence. I love the way you said, and I agree, fun might be almost too strong, but not a far stretch to say enjoyable. That's the thing, and we get to one other piece we didn't cover at all, though, [inaudible 00:44:51] building is, people like doing business with people that they like. That's a part of it. That is a means to an end. If Will's the nice guy that you enjoy talking to, you're more likely to talk to Will, which makes it more likely for him to make the sale.   Andres Lares: There is an immediate advantage to doing that. If you enjoy it and they enjoy it, good things will come from it, no matter what. That really can only come if you're genuine, if you have enough confidence, because early on in your career, you're reading from the script, because you're thinking, I really don't want to screw this up. You said something earlier today where, you've gotten to a point in your career where you say, look, this is it, and if it doesn't work for you, that's okay. If it does, great.   Andres Lares: That confidence that you have. Just to be fair, if you're starting your career, you're not at that point. You don't have the confidence to feel like you have the ability to do that. I can certainly relate to that, and early on for anyone's career, that's a stage where they're in. The enjoying aspect is, I think, highly underappreciated and underrated.   Parting Thoughts · [45:50]    Will Barron: Sure. I agree. I joined this conversation. With that, tell us a little bit more about NSI, and tell us more about the book, and where we can find it as well.   Andres Lares: Yeah, absolutely. The Shapiro Negotiations Institute, the acronym is a global negotiation influence and sales training firm, based in Baltimore. We do work all over, and actually, excited to share that we've been doing, I think, five languages, and now we're up to eight. Certainly, taking that global to the next level. Then, the book is behind me there, right behind my head, Persuade. It's exactly that, The 4-Step Process to Influence People.   Andres Lares: If you've heard today, that's what it's all about. I really appreciate meeting you, Will, and I enjoy your podcast very much.   Will Barron: I'm glad to have you on. I will link to that, everything else we talked about in this show, in the show notes of this episode, are at salesman.org. With that, Andres, again, genuinely, I don't say this in every episode, love to have you back on the future. Love to dive into this in more detail, and thanks again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Andres Lares: Thank you for having me. I'd love to.  

Jeff Bajorek is a sales and prospecting expert who helps B2B sellers rethink the way they sell. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Jeff explains the traits of high performers and how you can become one today. 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 - Jeff Bajorek Sales and Prospecting Expert Resources: Jeff on LinkedIn Jeffbajorek.com Rethink the Way You Sell Podcast Book: The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results Book: Awaken the Giant Within Book: Finite and Infinite Games Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're looking at the characteristics of top sales performers with my guest, Jeff Bajorek. Jeff is a sales and pro expert who helps B2B sales rethink the way they sell. You can find his new podcast, Rethink The Way You Sell, on everywhere, right, Jeff? And with that, mate, welcome to the show.   Jeff Bajorek: Thanks for having me. It's good to be here again.   Characteristics of a High-Achieving Sales Professional · [00:49]   Will Barron: You're more than welcome. I think this is the fourth time we've had you on. We'll touch on the podcast Rethink The Way You Sell towards the end of the show: where we can find it. I know it's a new and exciting project for you, so I'm happy to get it out there and promote it to our audience. But with that, mate, we're going to touch on this idea of characteristic of top sales performers. And you, when we lined this show up, used the word characteristics. So what does that mean? Is this a personality trait? Is this our DNA? Is this things that we've learned? What defines a characteristic of a salesperson? Then we'll dive into the ones that make the difference when we're all trying to hit quota.   “I think there's a 5% difference between mediocrity and super-stardom. It’s the little things that really make the difference between those top performers and everybody else.” – Jeff Bajorek · [01:05]   Jeff Bajorek: Yeah. I've been saying for years: I think there's a 5% difference between mediocrity and super-stardom, and while there are certainly things that are innate to us that may make us better intuitively at some of these things than others, there's nothing on this list that I don't think anybody can do. We can all be just a little bit better if we have some focus in these areas or for these characteristics. So it's the little things. I'm trying to codify the little things that really make the difference between those top performers and, really, everybody else. And I think it's something, if people want to aspire to it, they can get it.   Can a Person Achieve Sales Success Without the Characteristics of a High-Achieving Salesperson? · [01:51]   Will Barron: Can you have sales success without these characteristics? And I'll give you an example here that I've seen; undoubtedly, you've seen as well. You'll be at a company, whether you're selling there, consulting there, whatever you're doing, sales leadership in their company. And some new kid will come along who doesn't know the product, doesn't know what they're doing, and then they have an amazing first six months and they crush everyone who seemingly does know the product, does have all these characteristics and does know what they're doing. So does that disprove these characteristics, or is it likely that this individual just has a bunch of these characteristics naturally and that's why they crush it?   Jeff Bajorek: Well, it's important, and I'll probably get a bill for this, but my old mentor used to say all the time, “Look, we don't sell in a vacuum.” There are things that happen outside of our control that impact our results all the time. So that fresh-faced kid right out of school comes and has just a tremendous first six months, first year, and rockets to the top of the leaderboard? Yeah, that can happen. That can happen by dumb luck. That can happen by doing the right things, maybe for the wrong reasons or not knowing why he or she should be doing those things.   Jeff Bajorek: But as far as sustained success… Okay, year one was great. What are you going to do when your quota gets jacked up? What are you going to do the year after that? What are you going to do to retain those customers? Or what are you going to do to continue to find those things that are really going to move the needle for you?   Jeff Bajorek: And Will, I think this might have been something we talked about in the past. It's worth talking about again, regardless, but there are a lot of people who get moved into leadership positions, get promoted beyond their real skillset, and their problem is not that they weren't successful before. It's that they don't know why. And so when you get into a leadership role, particularly, and you just say, to your reps, “Just do it like I did. This is how I always did it. Put it out there,” it doesn't usually work because there isn't that understanding or clarification behind it.   Will Barron: I don't think I've ever talked about this on the podcast before. Hopefully this will be a good analogy for the audience. My first medical device sales job was a company called Olympus that's super well known; the products are the best for flexible endoscopes and pretty good for rigid endoscopes in the marketplace.   Will Barron: Well, I took over on my territory from the ex-managing-director of the company. So he was managing director for… His name was Doug, right? Managing director for a decade. And then I think basically he had a few kids, maybe he had twins or something, and so he's like, “Right, I'm going to take a few steps back. I'm going to go into this senior sales role,” three or four years, whatever it is, have that work-life balance, whatever he was after, and then he'd go back into the managing director role, which he did. And I think he ended up moving to the States and taking over the business over there later on as well.   The Truth About Luck in Sales · [04:59]    Will Barron: So I didn't really understand this when I first joined the company, but I thought sales was just super easy and simple. I was the example that I've just given at the top of the show, of: I come in, there's a bunch of deals already happening; I ought to just show up and hand over the order form to get some signatures. Absolutely crushed it that first year. So of course, what happens? My target doubles the next year and things get a little bit more tight from that moment onwards as I had to deal with my own mortality in sales. Right? So I love the way you describe that of the environment, the marketplace, things are in flux, and it is fair that people just have luck sometimes when they jump into sales roles, isn't it?   Jeff Bajorek: Yeah. And I don't think we should hold it against those people. I think we should reserve judgement , obviously, because hey, we'll see what happens next year, but look, you fall to a good gig? Great. There's a lot of jealousy, right? You see people on teams: “Well, she's doing great because she took over from the managing director.” Okay, whatever. I mean, there's no room for that. I don't understand how that helps you as a seller. Right? So if we could stay away from that petty stuff, I think we'd be a lot better off.   Jeff Bajorek: But look, luck happens. Good territories happen. I worked in medical device sales too. What happened when a whale of a customer decided to move to your territory? Hey, you know what? It means a lot of responsibility too. Maybe it was a gift that landed in someone's lap, but now they got to figure out how to continue to deal with that. Right? And it's not as easy as everybody thinks, so let's move on. What's going to be productive for you, regardless of what's happening two counties over?   How to Identify a Top Performing Sales Professional · [06:18]   Will Barron: So with that in mind, then, things that we can control, hopefully: what are the characteristics, Jeff, of top sales performers?   “Great salespeople don't apologise for being in sales. When you're in sales and you're proud of the profession, it means that you're constantly trying to solve problems for other people.” – Jeff Bajorek · [06:37]    Jeff Bajorek: I've boiled it down to seven, and I think where I've gotten feedback where I'm missing something, I'm actually not missing it; I just categorise it a little bit different. So I think the first one is they're proud to call themselves sellers. I think first and foremost, great salespeople don't apologise for being in sales. And so that's something that is pretty simple, not always easy to wrap your brain around, but when you're in sales and you're proud of the profession, it means that you're other-oriented. You're trying to solve problems for other people, and I think that comes through in personal branding really well too. I mean, I'm really proud to help people the way that I do, Will, and I know you are too, and I just think there's still too many people apologising for helping people the way they do.   “One of the only ways you can sell more is by spending more time selling.” – Jeff Bajorek · [07:40]    Jeff Bajorek: The second big thing is that they have a really strong why or purpose, and behind that, we got into just a minute ago the pettiness of some salespeople and wondering about what's going on in the territory next to them. But when you have a really strong purpose, you're focused. You're disciplined. You create really, really strong boundaries, and that helps you get organised so you spend the time that you need, the time that you can, doing the things only you can do. And that's really, really powerful in terms of just not being distracted, because look, one of the only ways you can sell more is by spending more time selling, and that means boundaries. I think top performers treat selling as a vocation, not just a job, and we can get into that. I mean, it's continuous improvement really inspired by the work that they do. Top performers take responsibility for their own outcomes. That means doing what needs to be done to get the outcome for the client, not just saying, “That's my job,” or, “That's not my job.”   Jeff Bajorek: And then just the last few: they think about what needs to be done, not how to do something. They're not following any paint-by-numbers sales manual or playbook. They think about what needs to be done and then they execute in the best way that they can. I think this is probably the biggest one.   Jeff Bajorek: The last two: they create an environment to buy rather than just pitching a product. And they also keep their swagger, which is a great mindset. And they lean into adversity. They make sure they always move forward and they are really channelling that inner rock-star when they do their best work. That's my high level running through that, Will. Where do you want to go deeper?   Why You Need to Treat Your Sales Career as a Vocation · [08:45]    Will Barron: What does it mean to be in a sales career as a vocation, and on top of that, when does your sales role allow you to do that? Because if you're selling some crappy product for a crappy company, it's very difficult to turn that into a vocation. And maybe it's your first job out of college, or maybe you were struggling and you got let go during the pandemic so you just had to grab any sales job that was available. What does it mean to treat your sales role as a vocation, and then what jobs and positions enable you to actually do that?   Jeff Bajorek: Well, I think any job enables you to actually do that, and there are some people out there right now who aren't selling for the company they want to be selling for near the end of their career. Maybe there's a short lifespan in this role. That's okay. But think about what you're doing. Think about the way that you interact with and impact other people. And even if this is a short-term stop on your career-long journey, there's still a lot of greater, broader concepts that you can put into play selling what you're selling right now. So I think it's just seeing the bigger picture, and if this is a step along the way, then great, keep your eyes open for opportunities elsewhere. But while you are where you are at, do the best work that you can and figure out how you can be a little bit better.   Jeff Bajorek: Again, it's continuous improvement. It's looking at not just your weak points, but look at the ways that you can double down on your strengths. Test things. Maybe this is a laboratory. You've been to these same shows. Well, I used to love going to trade shows and especially when it wasn't in my territory, because I would run into my friends and my colleagues. I'd run into their physicians, and I'd run into a lot of physicians that weren't really being called on by anybody in a company, and that was a laboratory for me. I could see which openers would work. I could see which questions were going to get some thought and things like that. And nobody lost, right? There was nothing to lose. So are you tinkering? Are you playing around a little bit?   Will Barron: Are you familiar with the book The One Thing?   Jeff Bajorek: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Will Barron: Have you read it, right?   Jeff Bajorek: I have.   The Only Characteristic You Need to Become a High-Achieving Sales Professional · · [11:08]   Will Barron: Out of these seven traits, is there one of them that, if you've got it, makes all the rest of them either obsolete or unnecessary? Is there one thing that you either need to have right before the rest of them will fall into place, or is there one thing that if you have it and you can leverage that in your sales role, the rest of it doesn't really matter?   Jeff Bajorek: It's like asking me to pick my favourite child. I love that book. I love that concept. It's tough to get these down to just one, and I think even if I did, it would be that the other would fall underneath it. And I think it's either taking responsibility for your outcomes, or thinking in terms of what needs to be done, not how to do it. And I think thinking in terms of what needs to be done, not just how to do it, probably it's arguable which one is superlative to that.   Jeff Bajorek: And having a broader scope, seeing the bigger picture, I think… And maybe that's just it. Maybe we just combine them all, because all of this is about seeing the bigger picture, right? It's boundaries, it's your professional reputation, it's your mindset. It's the tactics of things aren't as important as that broader framework of understanding the rules of the game and putting yourself in position to win. And that, I think, when you look at top performers, they're seeing things differently, and it's because they're giving themselves permission to see things differently.   Jeff Bajorek: When I started my career, similar to yours, Will, I took over a territory that my new managing director, if you will, had, and there was a rep between me and him. But I would sell with him and we'd be in the field together, and I would look at him and say, “Wow. Do I need to be like you in order to sell this way, in order to sell this product?” And then I'd go with other senior reps and I'd be like, “No, I don't do it like him either, or like her either. Huh.” But then I step back and I'm like, “Okay, but what are they all doing? What's the common theme?” And I think a top performer understands those common themes and creates an ecosystem for themself to work within it.   Will Barron: I think a lot of this comes down to… And I'm surprised you didn't say this. I'm surprised, but I can understand, because as I say this, I feel like some weird leadership guru who wrote a book that was three pages of content and then the rest of it was just nonsense, like most business books out there, when we talk about the importance of your why and the importance of your purpose and the importance of knowing who you are, stuff like this. There's a lot of woo-woo, nonsense, leadership mumbo-jumbo in some of this content.   Will Barron: But as I said, I feel like that goes above everything else. I don't mean your why as in, “I want to save the world with my sales job,” because you're not going to save the world with your sales job, right? You're going to go and help people, you're going to exchange your expertise and time for money, and then you're going to pay off your mortgage, put your kids through college, whatever it is, buy your nice car, go on holidays and maybe retire early and then move on to something that's probably going to have more impact, if that's what you care about.   Why It’s So Important to Find Your Why in Sales · [14:35]    Will Barron: But that why, that purpose, that then leads you to question the game that you play. It leads you to not seek permission to see things differently. It leads you to become perhaps unapologetic as a salesperson. Is there a thread there of the why that you have and the purpose that you have, even if it's as simple as, “Hey, I grew up poor, I don't like having debt and I've got to pay off this mortgage so that I feel confident and calm and secure in everything else in life; that's going to lead me to be proactive in my sales to do the right things and to close some deals”?   Jeff Bajorek: Well, I mean, along those lines, that's why there are seven and not one, right? I mean, we can argue about which one is more important or a bigger concept or whatever, and I mean, I'm not going to argue with you and your point as the guy who had a podcast called The Why and The Buy for five years. The importance of that purpose is not lost on me, right? And I think it's really interesting. This is fun campfire talk, right? Let's dig into all of this and bring up these different points, right? I mean, that's what I love about what guys like you and I do. So, yes, I won't argue with you, but if we talked about this again tomorrow, we may come up with different answers, too.   The Traits You Should Drop if You Want to Enjoy Long-Term Sales Success · [16:20]     Will Barron: Sure. I want you to argue with me. I want you to battle me over it, because the problem that I've got in the show at the moment, Jeff, is I'm inviting people on that I want to speak to. Right? And we're all on the same wavelength, so the conversations are 80%, “Oh, this is a good point. Yeah, I agree. This is a great point. Oh yes, it's fantastic. Oh yes.” The audience think we're just sat there stroking each other's egos. So with that, feel free to battle me on some of this, right? Are there any personality traits, or to use your language here, are there any characteristics that we need to extinguish or leave behind that will hold us back? So some of it is the inverse of what we've talked about so far, right?   Jeff Bajorek: Right.   Will Barron: But is there any other, even anything counterintuitive that we need to drop to have success in sales?   Jeff Bajorek: Yeah. I think salespeople need to readdress their dysfunctional relationship with failure and they need to address their dysfunctional relationship with rejection. And I don't mean get thicker skin. I don't mean be tougher. I mean, you need to redefine what failure and rejection are, and, I think, learn to thrive, right? Learn to embrace what those things do. Now, I don't think there's much rejection in sales at all, because I don't think rejection actually happens till someone hears you out and then says, “Will, I see what you're doing there. That's not for us.” That's rejection. Right? Most of what people call rejection in sales is really people just never having paid any attention, and I don't think you can be rejected unless someone's paying attention to you. So the getting hung up on during your cold-calling blocks and things like that, not only is it not personal, it's also not valid as rejection. So stop saying you're being rejected all the time.   Jeff Bajorek: The other thing with regard to failure is are you learning something? Every sales call that I learn something that helps make me rather better at my next sales call, that's a win. And again, it's that broader scope, right? If that sales call didn't go the way I thought it would, and so now I see this small picture, this small deal here, not being able to advance, and so I'll probably lose, okay, whatever. But if I step back and say, “I'm going to be doing this for probably another 30 or 40 more years and I just learned something there that will alter the trajectory of the rest of my sales calls for the next 30 or 40 years even in a small way,” that's a win.   “Every failure is an opportunity to learn. If you choose not to learn, that's a real failure.” – Jeff Bajorek · [18:49]    Jeff Bajorek: That's a big win, because those little steps continue to add up, and no step is too small if it's headed in the right direction and you keep taking steps, right? So let's be real about what we're doing here, and that's what I mean about that scope, right? So quit trying to do it right. Think about what needs to be done, not what everybody else is doing. And every failure is an opportunity to learn. If you choose not to learn, that's a real failure.   The Link Between Sales Success and Developing the Characteristics of a High-Performing Sales Person · [18:59]   Will Barron: How much of sales success comes down to these characteristic? Some of the characteristics that we've described are soft skills. Some of them are more logical things that we need to learn and implement, right? How much of it comes down to, for example, these characteristics versus what you're touching on there, which is the scientific method, which is we make a hypothesis, we test it in the marketplace, we get results, we then refine our hypothesis, and we do this forever because the marketplace is constantly changing. We are constantly changing. The product cycle is changing as well. How much does success in sales come down to, for example, the seven characteristics that you've just described, which we could write a book about now and it'll still be relevant 20 years from now, versus a scientific method, which is this logical iterative process.   Jeff Bajorek: Well, I think there are elements of both, right? Because there are certain non-negotiable things that have to happen in a sales process, which is why the science exists. But in terms of being able to impact more deals, I think the art part of selling lies in these seven characteristics here. So I definitely think it's both, and I'm thinking now, “Okay, there you go, just agreeing with Will again.” It's having the emotional intelligence to know how to react differently to different people. It's paying close enough attention to understand where those hot buttons and buying motives are. It's reading between the lines sometimes, and you can't read between the lines if you're just following the manual that they gave you during onboarding. Right?   Jeff Bajorek: So I mean, there's this nuance that has to come about. You can only really learn and develop by stopping and reviewing the tape after your call, listening to your sales calls, being in the moment regularly enough to pay attention where you made a misstep or where you said the wrong thing or whatever it was. All of that stuff comes about in some way, shape or form through these seven characteristics. But the science is: step one, we pick up the phone; step two, we send an email after we left a voicemail message that gives them another way to hear from us or another way to reply to us. The iteration is different from the approach, but you cannot succeed without some of both.   Will Barron: I agree. I agree. This is the-   Jeff Bajorek: No, argue with me, Will. We talked about this.   Will Barron: This is literally what you said, Jeff, of the science versus the art of sales: why some people jump into a sales role and because of their upbringing, because of whatever it is, the high levels of self-esteem, they don't have an issue with rejection, right? They don't take it personally. It could be the job they did as a kid. It could be the subtle subconscious whisperings from their parents or family members.   Will Barron: I know it as an adult now engaging with kids and I go, “What'd you do?” “Oh, well, I run a small business.” “What does that mean?” “Oh, well, I do this and I take people there and the gap is the value and that's what they pay me for.” “Oh.” And if someone talked to me like how I talk to… Because my friends have young kids and that now. If someone talked to me as a kid the way that I talk to other kids, I would have known what an entrepreneur was at five and I would have wanted to be one and probably still would have gone down the sales role.   Will Barron: And young… I say young. I'm 35. I'm talking about the 20- to 25-year-olds that consume the content, and perhaps I go back and forth over emails with. A lot of them want to be entrepreneurs. A lot of them want to be the next Elon Musks. So the first thing is, you're not going to be Elon Musks by… Reserve yourself, check your ego [inaudible 00:22:42] door. No one emailing me for advice is going to be Elon Musk, because you're emailing the wrong person. You need to be in front of Elon Musk, as much of a hit on my ego as that is. But then I would recommend to them that sales is the process to go through.   How to Develop a Better Relationship with Failure and Rejection · [23:20]   Will Barron: So with all that said, some of this is perhaps innate. Some of it is learned. Some of the science side of things is immeasurably based on iteration, and is constantly in flux. But with that said, to get practical, we can wrap up the episode turning a few of these thought processes into a practical application for the audience, Jeff. How do we practically form a better relationship with rejection and failure? How do we go about reprogramming our brains if we do get slightly… We don't tell anyone at work. We don't tell our sales manager. But maybe we do get slightly miffed when someone hangs up the phone, or we do get slightly bothered, and we take it personally when we've emailed someone and we've had a few calls and we've sent an invoice and then they say, “Oh, we're not interested any more.” How do we practically get over some of these things and change the relationship that we have with rejection, failure and even the permission to see things differently, which you said earlier on in the show?   Jeff Bajorek: Yeah. I think it's stepping back and seeing the bigger picture. We can be really crass and say, “Well, you got to crack a couple of eggs if you want to make an omelette.” Okay. That's tired. That doesn't resonate so much any more. Don't just tell me I need to be tougher. But think back to when you started. Think back to what you were trying to accomplish. To your point, think back to your why. Why are you doing this? Why are you choosing to sell the product that you're selling, work for the company you work for, serve the people you serve? What is that gap that is illustrated, and how do you fit in, and what is your role to help these people move forward? If I don't have someone's attention, that's a me problem. That's not a them problem. Right? So sometimes it's taking responsibility for why those supposed rejections or failures continue to happen, but also recognising in the grand scheme of things, you're taking these little steps forward.   Jeff Bajorek: And I think so much of what we see, particularly when we're early on in our careers, we don't understand the long-term ramifications. I go back; my son, who's going to be 11 here in a couple of weeks… It was four or five years ago. I mean, he fell off his bike for the first time, scraped up his knee, and he thought he was going to bleed out and die right there, because he'd never done that before. So he didn't realise that, okay, it's going to feel better soon. Stings right now; it's going to feel better. He thought he was going to bleed out. You know what I mean? And so without that perspective, he doesn't know any better.   Jeff Bajorek: But as you grow, and if you're in your early to mid 20s, I'm going to tell you right now, everything you're doing right now is going to have impacts that you won't recognise until later. And I can tell you the older I get, the smarter my parents get, particularly the things that they told me when I was growing up that I didn't want to hear and then I find myself telling my kids for the same reasons, right? Perspective is that kind of thing that is very difficult to appreciate until you're in that position. So take my word for it. Take Will's word for it. If you can see the bigger picture and the bigger value to these steps you're taking right now, everything else gets so much less significant, and your ego doesn't take such a big hit and you learn to reframe those obstacles as opportunities. And that's what I want to encourage people to do.   Will Barron: What you say reminds me of this idea of second and third and 22nd order consequences. And the best example I've got is you buy a TV and you're like, “Well, I'll just buy a telly. I can afford it this month.” Well, and you've now got a big, nice TV, so you go, “Well, maybe I'll buy an Xbox.” And then you go, “Well, I've got a TV and an Xbox, so I'll just play 20 minutes of games each evening. It doesn't matter. Right?”   Why You Need to Start Taking Accountability for Your Actions · [26:50]    Will Barron: Well, that 20 minutes of games might take up some of your training time or even just your actual relaxation time, which allows you to recharge for the next morning, which doesn't mean that it's going to spiral into some game addiction, but it means over next 15 years… Because games are designed to be addictive, right? The whole element of 90% of computer games is to pull on the dopamine and serotonin cycles to get you to play and buy the next one and to enjoy it as well. There's an element of fulfilment that could come from media like that. But by making one purchase decision, you've then had second, third, fifth, 27th order consequences on the back of that first decision. And the younger you are as you listen to this, the bigger the impact of that over time, right?   Jeff Bajorek: 100 percent, and good luck keeping video games to 20 minutes. It's easier for me to just not play at all. But you're right. What are those little things? I mean, how many times have you heard it? Just read 10 pages in a book a day. Doesn't matter you're not getting through books as fast as your friends are. You're probably still reading more than most people do. Practising something… You get back to 10,000 hours of dedicated practise. You can get those in 10-minute increments if you want. But when you really think back to it…   “How many sales reps out there don't have one customer conversation a day? There are a lot of them. If you had one meeting with a customer or a qualified prospect every single day, your numbers would improve and you'll be in the top 5% or 10% of people who have booked calendars.” – Jeff Bajorek · [28:07]    Jeff Bajorek: You know what? This is another great one. How many sales reps out there don't have one customer conversation a day? There are a lot of them. If you had one meeting with a customer or a qualified prospect every single day, your numbers would improve, or you're in the top 5% or 10% of people who have booked calendars. It's not as often as you think.    “No step is too small so long as it's headed in the right direction and you keep taking those steps.” – Jeff Bajorek · [28:36]    Jeff Bajorek: There's a lot of getting ready to get ready in sales. And so when you think about what real execution looks like, I said it before, no step is too small so long as it's headed in the right direction and you keep taking steps. Take those steps and step back and appreciate what a step really looks like.   Jeff’s Purpose and Why It’s So Important to Him · [28:46]   Will Barron: Jeff, I can share mine if you like as well, but what's your why or your purpose? You've multiple podcasts. A new one should be out now as we say this. Books, content, tonnes of followers on LinkedIn, everywhere else. What's your why? What's the purpose behind all of that?   Jeff Bajorek: I live for that moment when the light-bulb turns on over someone's head and they realise they can do something that they didn't think they could do before, because they thought about it differently. And that's where Rethink The Way You Sell comes from, right? I remind people what needs to be done, I show them how to do it, and then I make them believe that they can. And that had to happen for me, and when it did, oh my goodness. Life-altering, family-altering, generational impacts on the way that I interact with people on the things my family's able to do. And it's not just financial stuff. It's the way that I look at things that makes my whole life more fulfilling. So for me to be able to help people think about things a little differently, think things through differently so they can see possibilities they've never seen before, it's the most rewarding thing. I mean, and it's similar to parenting in that. And that's my why.   Will Barron: Dude. Yeah. You're making me feel uncomfortable. My why is super-selfish, and totally built on good principles, I think. And I think to achieve it long-term, you have to build a business that adds just tremendous value, and you can't cook corners. There's no opportunity to not do anything the right way.   Will Barron: But I read Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins' book, that I think he wrote in the '80s. I've literally got a box of them out there, big cardboard box, and anyone who… No, I will not say this on the podcast. I was just about to say, anyone who wants a copy, I usually send them one. Typically, when I'm chatting with people and they're not a good fit for the training programme or something, I'll send them a copy. So that is not an open invitation, because I'll end up spending the entire revenue of salesman.org sending people books. Right?   Will Barron: But I read the book, and it helps you outline your values as a human. Now, two of my top ones, and perhaps they're interchangeable, were safety and adventure. Now these do not mix very well, right? You cannot go on many real adventures and masculine hiking, mountain-biking, rock-climbing, the kind of stuff that… I mean, the golden retriever [inaudible 00:31:30] kind of thing. A lot of these adventures are inherently unsafe, even just to a certain extent. And that's what makes them an adventure, right? Otherwise you might as well strap on a VR headset and just wander around some computer-game environments and see the same sights, but you're not getting that intrinsic adventure out it.   Will Barron: So I've got this issue of adventure and safety. Adventure and safety. So maybe this is not my why or purpose. Maybe this is my mission, but my mission is to semi-retire at 40, and I'm well on the way of doing that, and that is: mortgage is paid off, investments all sorted. If I still own the business, there's people in there taking my place and it runs itself. All the business has been sold and the content machine has been sold.   Will’s Mission and Purpose in Life · [32:20]   Will Barron: And so that's what I'm driving for 24/7. It's why I'm willing to put in the extra hours. As I said earlier on this bit of a rant, I know that to achieve that long-term, especially if you're [inaudible 00:32:27], you've got to have a sound business that adds drastic value to a scalable number of people. And so you can't cut corners. You can't be ripping people off. You can't be saying you're going to do one thing and not deliver. You've got to deliver and go above and beyond everything you say, right? So maybe I'm rephrasing this slightly wrong, but would you agree? Is that my mission or is that my purpose, especially in the medium term?   Jeff Bajorek: I would say it's your mission. I don't know that that's your purpose. I think it's your mission, particularly because it's time-bound, and you know what? I don't even know if that's the criteria, but you said earlier you're 35 and you want to be out by 40, or at least able to be out by 40. That, to me, creates a sense of urgency. That makes it feel like a mission. Like I said, someone who understands these terms may argue with me and they might be right, but I don't see myself stopping.   Will Barron: Sure.   Jeff Bajorek: That's why I think of this as being more of my purpose. You know what I mean? I was joking with my mom a couple years ago. I'm like, “Yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to retire.” She's like, “Oh my God, are you okay?” I'm like, “Yeah, I love what I do. I don't think there's ever any reason to stop.” If someone's going to be willing to have really fun, meaningful conversations with me and then send me a check afterward, yeah, why would I ever stop? There will be a time, certainly, where I do less of that. But this is what lights me up. So I don't know, Will, but I think regardless, it's that thing that drives you, and you have something that drives you, keeps you focused, keeps you disciplined, makes you put up boundaries, makes you execute at a very high level. And that's the important thing. We can argue the semantics. Most people don't have that. So start there.   Finite and Infinite Games · [34:20]    Will Barron: Yeah. We'll wrap up this and you can tell us about the new show. It's a fabulous idea, and I've not read the book, but I've heard people talking about it. I think it's called Finite and Infinite Games, something like that. And it's this idea of in your life, there are some finite games, which is for most people, and to be fair, I think it's most people listening to the show right now, sales people, sales leadership, and maybe small business owners who listen to the show as well, of there's a finite game there. In sales, you want to go in, you want to ramp up your time to success and make that as short as possible. You want to make as much money as morally and as ethically and as value-adding as possible, right? If you're killing it and you're winning, you're making a tonne of money in a modern B2B sales role. Right?   Will Barron: But then there's infinite games. So for example, I play drums, and I'm okay, not great, but I've just got back into doing rudiments. So if you're familiar with guitar or piano, these are the scales of percussion instruments, right? And I've not been playing songs. I've just been doing rudiments every day for the past 14 days. And that's an infinite game, because I'll never be perfect at them, because you can always speed them up. You can always change tempo. You can always do syncopation between your hands and your feet or whatever it is. And so maybe my mission is my finite game. Maybe I need to have a think of what my infinite game is, the goal longer-term in my life. And maybe it's just adventure. Maybe that's the end goal. Adventure in safety. Rock-climb with a crash helmet on. I don't know what it is. So some juxtaposition of those two. But we'll wrap up with that, mate. Tell us, with that, the new show: where we can find it, what it's all about and anything else you want to drop on us and share with us, Jeff.   Parting thoughts · [36:00]   Jeff Bajorek: Sure. The show's called Rethink The Way You Sell, and it's a departure for me from where I'd been previously in podcasts, just trying to put out a weekly show and have interviews and things. This is really content-focused. It is going to be released in seasons, so in chunks around a subject matter, versus just having subject-matter experts on talking, right? So it's less a social experiment and much more of the spearhead of my content. And so there will be webinars tied to these seasons, and there will be content and courses tied to these seasons, and really just bringing together what I've learned over the last going on 18 years now and putting it in a way where people can focus on this rather topical season at a time. And I'm having a bunch of fun with it. We've recorded some original material. I'm repurposing some older stuff that's still really pertinent. My producer, Doug Branson, and I are having just a ball with the formatting and everything though too. So check it out. You can find it anywhere you find podcasts. And yeah, I would really appreciate giving a shot.   Will Barron: Great stuff. Well, we'll link to it in the show notes to this episode, and all the books and everything else that we talked about in this episode is shown over at the salesman.org. With that, Jeff, I want to thank you for your time, your expertise. I'll just say this, mate: I enjoy just chatting this stuff with you. Some guests come on and it's like, “Well, okay, well we've covered the topic. That's the end of the show.” But I'm conscious of time here, otherwise I feel like we could have done over half an hour just pontificating about sales, life, careers, and how all this cycles back into performance at the end of the day, mate. So I thank you for your time, your expertise, and for joining us again on the show.   Jeff Bajorek: Thank you. No, it's always fun, and now there's another dimension that I didn't realise we could talk about, because I never met a flam-diddle that I didn't like. So we'll leave it at that.   Will Barron: Amazing. Cheers, Jeff.  

Tripp Kramer is an author, podcast host, and the owner of Tripp Advice, where he helps shy men from around the world excel in their love lives by showing them how to develop solid-steel confidence. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Trip shares how salespeople can beat rejection and implement a state of unshakable sales confidence. 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 - Tripp Kramer Dating Coach Resources: Book: Magnetic: Cultivate Confidence, Become Rejection-Proof, and Naturally Attract The Women You Desire Book: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance How to Talk to Girls Podcast Tripp on LinkedIn Tripp Advice on YouTube Transcript Will Barron: Hi, I'm Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's show, we're going to talk about how to build unshakable confidence. Today's guest is Tripp Kramer. Tripp is a dating strategist for shy men. He's the author of Magnetic, and he has over 970,000 subscribers on YouTube. He's killing it over there. And with that, Tripp, welcome to the show.   Tripp Kramer: Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. It's always fun to be in a podcast that's not directly related to meeting women and attraction and those things. So it's fun to be here. Thanks for having me.   Will Barron: Dude, this works the other way around. We have so many guests on the show that have nothing to do with sales because sales after six years, 750 episodes is boring as heck. There's only so many ways you can talk about picking up the phone, sending an email, and sales cadences and tools. So I appreciate you coming on the show, mate. Hopefully it'll be fun for you and it'll be, I'm sure, insightful for the audience.   Tripp Kramer: Yeah, absolutely.   Confidence as Described By Tripp Kramer · [01:01]    Will Barron: Just to jump straight into this, we're going to talk about confidence. I like to define things and then we'll make things practical for the audience later on. Do you have a definition of what confidence to you is and how do you define it? I've noticed in another episode of doing podcast, you mentioned the word calmness. How do you define confidence?   “The formula for confidence is competence plus the ability to step into the unknown.” – Tripp Kramer · [01:20]   Tripp Kramer: So I have a formula for it, which is competence plus the ability to step into the unknown. That would be what confidence is. So competence plus the ability to step into the unknown. And so I can break that down even further. Competence just means that you are skilled in something, that you feel good at doing the skill or the action of whatever it is that you're trying to perform, right? That's competence. So you're going to have a feeling of confidence when you are competent in whatever it is. So even that could be with sales, that could be with meeting women, that could be with playing an instrument, whatever it may be. But I also like to add in there the ability to step into the unknown because people who are able to step out of their comfort zone into an unknown space and they do that action regularly, they are someone who has more confidence.   “The people who are able to step out of their comfort zone into an unknown space and they do that action regularly, that’s someone who has more confidence. So that means that if you're always doing things that scare you, that frighten you, that are out of your comfort zone, if you consistently do that, you're actually going to feel more comfortable when you are doing something for the first time.” – Tripp Kramr · [02:04]    Tripp Kramer: So that means that if you're always doing things that scare you, that frighten you, that are out of your comfort zone, if you consistently do that, you're actually going to feel more comfortable when you are doing something for the first time. So when you continuously do new things, you already feel this kind of confidence inside of yourself of like, “Oh, I'm used to this feeling. I know what this is like to do things that scare me.” And so even though it might still scare you to try something new, if you've done this so many times, it's going to be a little bit easier. So I'll give an example of my own life.   Will Barron: Sure.   Tripp Kramer: Is that I have a lot of experiences with doing public speaking. I wouldn't consider this public speaking by the way. This is, I think it's very different, but public speaking meaning, you're speaking in front of a lot of people. But one thing I've never done before was officiate a wedding. So my friend, one of my best friends, he asked me to officiate his wedding. And this is a whole different type of public speaking, right? It's like you are in charge of one of the most important days of this person's life, two people's lives plus two families. So this isn't just like, “Oh, I'm going on stage and I'm talking about whatever it is that I talk about.” And also depending on what scares you, your friends are there, maybe your family's there. So there's a lot of eyes on you that I can build a lot of fear or tension. And while I was nervous to do it, it wasn't as scary as it would've been if I didn't have some experience with public's speaking. And I don't mean like the skillset in public speaking, more so, I've experienced the fear.   Tripp Kramer: I know what it's like to get up there and speak in front of people. I know what those emotions are like. So I knew what was going to happen. As long as I practised enough, there's no getting rid of the fear that's inside of you, that adrenaline. But I know from previous experiences that once you get up there and you start talking, you're going to be super nervous for about 90 seconds and then it's all going to dissolve. And just knowing that was enough to give me confidence in that arena. So actually that was a little bit of competence because I've done it before, plus the ability to step into the unknown, this unknown space that I'd never done before. So that would be my formula that I teach guys. And I say guys because I'm a dating coach for guys. So that's where we usually talk about it.   How to Become Bolder and Increase Your Levels of Confidence · [04:50]    Will Barron: Without getting too nerdy, but if we consider this an actual mathematical formula, can you increase your skill level to compensate for a lack of… I'm going to use the word boldness, the ability to jump into the unknown? And then inversely, if you don't have the skill set, perhaps you're new to sales or you're new to the industry that you're selling into, can you on a lack of skill increase the boldness that you have to achieve the same amount of confidence overall?   “How bad you want something does translate to confidence.” – Tripp Kramer · [05:32]    Tripp Kramer: I think so. Yeah. I also, I don't put this part of the formula, but I do discuss this concept. Is how bad you want something does translate to confidence, to stepping into the unknown, getting out of your comfort for its own, whatever you want to call it. There's that desire, right? I just believe, if you don't have that big of a desire, your fear or your boldness, your lack of boldness will just keep you at home doing nothing. But if you have a really strong desire, like if you're on a sales call and you're like, “I need to make this sale.” Right? There's times when… and I know this, I've done sales calls. I've done hundreds and hundreds of sales calls, by the way. I know we didn't really discuss that. But if you feel like I need this sale, I need to make rent money, right? There's a strong desire in you.   Tripp Kramer: It's like you got to make this happen. You got to just get in there and play your A-game. Michael Jordan, I got to just get something inside of myself that's going to go. I got to perform, and I got to do as best as I can. And I think that that can outweigh the fear that one might have, that desire. So for example, I work with guys who want to meet women and it's very scary to approach a woman, that's what we talk about. Mainly that's where the confidence formula comes from and all that. And it's very scary to do it, but it gets to a point where not every guy, depends if you're successful or not, but the success comes down to the guy saying I've had enough of this. I'm sick of being scared. Sitting here doing nothing, being scared to go approach that woman, or having so many regret of I had an opportunity but I didn't take it. And then finally, and I know I got to this point too. So I experienced this myself, is your desire outweighs the fear and then that allows you to take action.   Will Barron: Does a-   Tripp Kramer: I don't know if that answered your question, but hopefully it did a little bit.   How to Grow Your Confidence When You’ve Got No Skill or Experience · [07:43]    Will Barron: It does. And I want to touch on fake until you make it in a second. I'll circle back to that, but I can't remember the quote and I'd butcher it anywhere. I'm terrible repeating quotes on this show. I always get emails from people saying I've got it wrong, but there's a Tony Robbins quote, similar to what you're saying on the lines of a decision is made in an instant, but the build up to that decision can take as long as it needs to take. And that's my experience with starting a business, getting into sales in the first place. Meeting women back when I was super shy as a younger fellow. I didn't have the ability to turn on a level of extrovertedness that I have now, which I've learned via selling and being rejected time and time again, right?   Will Barron: So I appreciate you for saying that, but at what point in this scenario… and we can paint a picture of a… let's say to add real context to this, there's a young lad called Sam who's watching this. He's just got out of university, college. It's his first job, and he is suffering from perhaps a lack of confidence in both his skill and his boldness to jump in and make cold calls. Do cold emails, knock on doors, whatever it is because he is fearful of rejection. And we can talk about what rejection is perhaps and whether we should be fearful of someone saying no. Maybe we can talk about that in a second. But is the process that Sam, our example here, needs to just go through the pain, do it over and over, mole in the fact that he's not making any money and his colleagues are crushing it all around him to the point where there is that moment of snap, and he makes a decision to push through some of this and change things. Or is there a way to narrow that timeframe and speed all this up and become confident quicker?   Tripp Kramer: I mean, that's where the competence comes in. So I'd say that's where the competence comes in. So if you're someone who's scared of rejection, I think, when it comes to cold calling, unfortunately, I think that you got to get a couple under your belt, and that's where you really just got to push yourself to do it. I think it's the mindset. Here it is. It's the mindset of knowing that you're not going to make the sale. You're just going in knowing that I'm not trying to make the sale, I'm just trying to get good at this process. And that mindset forces you to become outcome independent so you are not just focused on, “Well, I got to make this sale or I got to perform really well.” And this is identical to what I teach guys with meeting women. It's the same thing.   Tripp Kramer: They get really scared because they don't want to get rejected, and they're trying to get the number. And there's something really valuable there that they want is they want that number or they want that approval from the woman, whatever it may be. And I say, “Go into that and don't focus on what's going to happen in terms of the outcome that you desire. In fact, let's move that outcome a little bit closer.” So instead of going, okay, I need to get the number. I need to get laid. I need to get a girlfriend. How about let's just go into, I need to have some conversations with some women. So with guys who are into sales and trying to get good at sales, why not just, I'm just going to go and see what happens. And you become more of an observer, and you stay a little bit more present and not so outcome dependent.   Tripp Kramer: So then in theory, this should help the fear go down a little bit. And that's what I've done with everything in my life too, is like anything I wanted to do because I learned this is, well, I'm just going to go and I'm just going to try. It's not really about failure. And it's funny how our mind is so powerful. We can just create all these labels that we create for ourselves, and then it causes the emotional distress. The fear, the lack of confidence for someone who's just graduating, who's saying I'm going to do this for the first time. You're not meant to be good at it. In fact, if you do get a sale, beginner's luck, 100%. It's like that's just what you have to do, you have to jump in and you have to try it, and you have to see what happens. So more curiosity than it is, a strong desire to get that outcome that you're looking for, which is probably the sale in this case.   Building Confidence is All About Boldness But Being Desperate Enough to Put in The Work · [11:57]    Will Barron: It seems to be… Tell me if you agree with this as well. There's two weird paradoxes here that everyone will know. The first one I always call it a commission breath. So when you're desperate for the sale, you're perhaps talking to people that you shouldn't be talking with, and they can smell that desperation on you via the phone and things don't go quite as well as when you're just trying weird tactics to close them and drag them back in. So if you've got commission breath and you're desperate, you're less likely to close a deal than if you're calm, you're confident. Your pipeline is full. You know that it's just a numbers game. At a certain point, you know that you're going to have four conversations and you're going to close one of them and everything's going to be great. So there's a paradox there of being desperate leads to less sales. Being calm and cool and collected leads to more sales.   Will Barron: But then there's an additional paradox here, which you mentioned earlier on, which I call gun to head selling. So back in my office, in the room next door, I've got a picture, big blown picture on the wall of a… We don't have guns in the UK, obviously. So I have no idea what gun it is, but as if the gun is the barrel's pointing down at me. And if I've ever been soft, if I'm ever going, “Well, I'll do that tomorrow, or that deal make me feel uncomfortable, or this should probably have another zero on the side of it.” The hero of this story if I was in a film would stick a zero on and see what happens to the conversation. I look at that picture and I call it gun to head selling, and I go, “Sod it, let's give it a go,” and it forces me to be bold. It's a prompt to be bold.   Will Barron: So it seems, and paradoxically, you've got to push things out there and test things. And you've got to put yourself under pressure of failure to have higher levels of success. So there's this weird paradox of you can't be desperate, but you've also got to pretend there's a gun to your head and there's an element of desperation to push you forward. Is that fair to say?   Tripp Kramer: I would say so. And I want to throw in something interesting too. There's also times when you can feel over confident. So you are so confident that you go into maybe a sales call or maybe even with a woman, and you feel that it will just happen for you like that. The confidence is so strong that you're like, “I'll make this sale.” No problem. And then you know what you do, you throw away all the principles and then you don't make the sale, and you get humbled. And you go, “Oh, wait a second.” And this happens to me a lot too, by the way, with sales, when I'm signing people up for my programme. I'll be like, oh, thinking they know that this programme is the best, because I'm so confident in what I teach and what I sell, and the results that guys get.   Tripp Kramer: But I can't throw away the principles because the person on the other end of the phone, they don't know that. And so I can't just go in too calm. You still got to be on the ball or else, again, you're not going to get that sale. Even for women, you go in too confident, but you're too calm about it, or you just like go, “Oh, this woman's just going to like me because…” Just because you feel that way, well, they don't know that. So you can't throw away the principles of building attraction, just like I don't think you can throw away the principles of what it means to make a sale. So I just wanted to throw that in there as well. I feel like that's another thing that I've come across, you got to make sure that you're still sticking to the guiding principles of what makes the sale.   Comparing Confidence, Shyness, and Arrogance Using a Simple Bar Chart · [15:25]    Will Barron: Would you say then perhaps confidence is… if we have a bar chart, this would be better if I could draw it out, but I'll do it with my hands in the air. And this is super unhelpful for the tens of thousands of people who are going to listen to this episode, but play along if we can. We have a line. In the middle, we have confidence. Perhaps one side we have shyness and then the other side, I would call it arrogance. And we're trying to be bouncing somewhere in the middle. Is that a way that we could perhaps visualise this?   Tripp Kramer: I think so. Yeah.   Will Barron: You don't sound convinced on that.   Tripp Kramer: I mean, I have another thought.   Will Barron: Sure.   Tripp Kramer: Okay. So I would say here's shyness and here's confidence, if we're looking at the spectrum. So on this end is full confidence, this end is full shyness. And arrogance, because you said that was on your spectrum, all the way to the other end. Is that correct? Arrogance.   Will Barron: Yep.   Tripp Kramer: Yeah. So I would almost say arrogance is kind of off this chart. It's like something different. It's actually insecurity. I think that people, and that's why I take it off the chart, because it doesn't really mean shyness either. It's just arrogance is someone who is equally, almost could be equally as insecure as the person who's shy, right? The person who's shy is insecure. We know that. But arrogance is also, again, not on the chart because they're not shy, but it's kind of similar to that. So that's why I would take it off of that chart. If someone who's arrogant, that's someone who needs to tell people or show people what they have, whatever that means.   “An arrogant person is someone who needs to tell or show people what they have. This could be a skillset, it could be an item, an object, whatever. And they need to show that or need to say it because they actually don't feel good about themselves. So they want that validation. But if someone knows they're good at something and they're secure with themselves, they don't feel the need to tell everyone.” – Tripp Kramer · [16:51]    Tripp Kramer: Could be a skillset, it could be an item, an object, whatever. And they need to show that or need to say it because they actually don't feel good about themselves. So they want that validation. So I would say the spectrum is full confidences on this end, and you're actually super secure. So the person who's super confident and super secure, they're not trying to show off. They don't need to show off that, because they know they have it. If someone knows they're good at something and they're secure at themselves, they don't feel the need to tell everyone, right? I mean, that's my thought.   How to Measure Your Levels of Confidence · [18:06]    Will Barron: That makes sense. I guess where I was going with it is maybe arrogance. I can change that word, but almost like an irrational confidence. So a confidence when you don't have competence and perhaps you're not jumping into the unknown. You're just arrogant in that you are assuming confidence as opposed to having other people kind of validate the skill set, the boldness, and anything else that ties in. So with that then, Tripp, I think this is useful to define things, right? Because then we know what we're aiming towards. Before we get practical, is there a way to measure confidence knowing from the audience that want to improve this? Obviously, if you can set a number on it, or there's an objective way to measure it, we can see progress, and obviously, that's self-fulfilling from a motivational standpoint and another standpoint as well. Is there a way to measure your confidence so we can see where we're at and hopefully where we want to go?   “Confidence is the point where you're taking action and not caring to fail.” – Tripp Kramer · [18:49]    Tripp Kramer: I think that when you know you're confident or at least the start of confidence, it's like your… I don't want to say inability. It's the point where you're taking action and not caring to fail. I would almost say that is a good measure. It's not really quantifiable. Could be, I guess if you measure how many times this happens in your life, but it's saying I'm going to step into the unknown or do something that's hard, or do something I'm scared of. So any of those three, and you just do it anyways. I think that there's a level of confidence in that, and that's what would be the beginning of confidence. And then I think it becomes excitement. So for me, talking about sales, I don't remember ever being nervous. I probably was. It was so long ago.   “When you start doing something new, at first you're scared, so you don't have the confidence. And I think you're always going to be a little nervous, but once the excitement exceeds the nervousness, that to me is a sign of confidence, because if you start to get good at something, you're probably more excited to go and do it.” – Tripp Kramer · [19:43]    Tripp Kramer: I think I was always more excited because I just learned how to sell and that was fun. But even let's just say with women, right? At first you're scared, so you don't have the confidence. And I think you're always going to be a little nervous, but once the excitement exceeds the nervousness, that to me is a sign of confidence, because if you start to get good at something, you're probably more excited to go and do it, I would imagine, right?   Will Barron: Well, it creates then a feedback loop, right? I think it might be Angela Duckworth's book, Grit. I'm sure she talked about it on the podcast with me, this idea… Oh, no. Whoever it was. I'll link it in the show notes, the previous episode that we touched on this. But it's this idea that talent is just how lucky you are at the beginning and then how many other people register that look, tell you how good you are and then at the age it happens. And then all of a sudden, you're talented because you've had this positive feedback loop that, hey, you threw a lucky three pointer when you were 14. The coach said, “Well, done well.” And that fed back into you practising more because of social pressure and other things as well. It's probably maybe similar with dating and women and that kind of world, but also in sales. I remember the first day in my first proper medical device sales role, my boss was like, “This is a list of surgeons that we currently work with. They love the company, they love the product, give them all a call, book yourself in and just go and have a chat with them.”   Will Barron: So I was like, “Okay, that makes sense. That's not particularly scary.” But then the bastard just sat behind me. So we're in a conference room and he sat at the desk behind me. I could feel him just staring at the back of my head. So obviously, you get there like, “Well, okay, he's now listening to everything that I'm saying.” And my confidence from this task, which is a simple enough task to do, an appropriate task to do for a medical device salesperson, my confidence just shot into the ground because I had someone critiquing me. But now the first call went well, second call went well, my confidence went… His name was Steve, Steve buggered off then and went and do some actual work as opposed to just pestering me.   The Role of Luck and Positive Feedback When Trying to Build Competence and Skill · [22:01]    Will Barron: But if my first call would've sucked, my confidence would've went down and then he probably would've tried to give me some advice and coaching. Depending of how my ego was back then, that I might not have took that on board. And then you can quickly spiral out of control and go into the other pathway. So a lot of this, when you're first starting off, when you're trying to develop competence and skill, a lot of it, tell me if you feel the same, Tripp, especially from the dating, it's just luck.   Tripp Kramer: Well, if you get to that point, yes, sometimes I think. Sure. Yeah. Sometimes it's luck. I mean, if you like have a quick win, I believe that can be luck. And what's interesting is something you're saying is I deal with a lot of guys though that don't have a positive feedback loop. So I think the real question is, how do you get good at something with the lack of positive feedback? Is there a way to get good at something without a loop of positive feedback because I'll have guys go out and get rejected so many times. So they're not getting any positive feedback from those interactions. It's like you have to artificially create a positive feedback. It's like you have to tell yourself to keep going. And then I say that has to do with resilience. And so I feel like resilience is the key.   Tripp Kramer: Now, I guess hopefully, someone's teaching you resilience unless you kind of figure it out on your own. Maybe you're listening to a podcast like this or you have a coach of some sort, but that's really the biggest thing, and that's the hardest thing. And then when it comes down to luck, hopefully you get it. I know I definitely had some luck when I was doing sales for the first time, when I was first signing people up to my men's coaching programme. And I did have some big sales of guys that, I mean, I don't even know now that I think about it. I don't even know if it was luck. I was really putting in the right effort. I was doing the things I needed to do. I guess it was kind of lucky that it was someone who was very wealthy and then they could sign up for my programme.   Will Barron: I think you're underestimating yourself there. So we did a show a couple weeks ago on the science of luck and serendipity, right?   Tripp Kramer: Oh, interesting.   The Science of Luck and Serendipity · [24:04]    Will Barron: The science is super clear that you engineer your own luck. And if you are an optimist, your brain will look for patterns of success, and so you'll prospect people who are more… It's unlikely that it just happened chance, that you got on the phone and in touch with people who happened to be wealthy. Even if you weren't consciously doing it, you knew that they were a better prospect, and so you probably engineered those calls. If a 14-year-old called you up or got on your diary and you had a sales call with them, you're more likely to… I don't know if this would be true for your business, but you're more likely to… I would be more likely to cancel that call, free up the space, and then it's some rich dude who's got a Lamborghini in his profile picture or whatever, it shows some kind of affluence, I'm more likely to take that call. So it's not luck that that person showed up, it's serendipitous in that you've engineered that environment to have success from.   Tripp Kramer: Yeah. So optimism, it sounds like. That's one factor. Also this kind of sounds a little bit like law of attraction, which I don't really believe in that, in the kind of woo-woo sense. But this is what I believe the law of attraction really is, is you are looking towards and thinking about the goal, right? It's like you know that an affluent person is probably better to get on the phone with because they're going to have the resources to purchase your thing versus someone who's 14. So it's really understanding your goal and how to get there, and being so zeroed in and focused on what that is. So then you're generating those opportunities for yourself. And I guess that's the luck formula, isn't it? It's preparation plus… I forgot.   Are Confident People Rejection Proof? · [26:00]    Will Barron: It's just the number of swings that you have at the bat that you are happy to be positive about. And this leads us into this idea of rejection, right? Are confident people, Tripp, rejection proof, or do confident people still feel the pain of that girl ghosting them or that customer slamming down the phone and calling them an asshole because they cold-called them before they got to work or whatever it is? Do confident people still feel that pain or do confident people… it's just water off a dog's back, it's not personal, it's not anything, they're just rock and rolling afterwards?   Tripp Kramer: I think that most people do feel it, it's just the scale in which they feel it. So I think that someone who's just starting a business, who's getting rejected and they're just broke and there's no money coming in, no sales being made. Everyone that rejects you is going to be a harder punch to the gut. But I think that as someone who has had a lot of success is that, yeah, I think there's still going to be a twinge of, “Oh, that's stung.” But I think it gets down to the point where it's so small that you feel it because you're human and you'll feel it, but how long will it really stick with you?   Tripp Kramer: I'd say probably not too long. Once you've had the competence and you've gotten the reps in, and you've gotten all the rejections that you've had in your life because you're going to get rejected always more times than not. So it becomes a little bit more numbing. I think it's all from experience, and I hope that's motivation for that Sam character. Is like, you got to get the reps in. So time to start now. Stop worrying about whether you're going to get that sale or what's going to happen with it. You got a long road, let's go. It's time to start.   Will Barron: How much of this-?   Tripp Kramer: Don't let it beat you down.   Mindset Versus Discipline in a Salesperson’s Journey to True Confidence · [27:50]    Will Barron: How much of this, Tripp, when we talk about resilience, you've used that word a bunch, I totally agree with this, how much of this comes down to mindset versus discipline? And just for another layer of context, the first training in our training programme over salesman.org, it's called selling by the of numbers. We get your ultimate goal for the next 5 to 10 years. We break it down as to how much revenue you need to bring in each year, each quarter, each month. How many calls, emails, what cadence you need to achieve that amount of revenue versus your target. And then we give you a daily target of… And it blows people's minds when we do this. Because typically, it's like you've got to make 10 calls and send 4 emails a day. You just got to do it reliably over years to make it happen.   Will Barron: It's not complicated. You see people's stress levels and the pressure and the emotions kind of drop when we get to that final number when we go through in the coaching and the one-on-ones that we do. So that's the discipline side of things. How much of resilience come down to doing a process like that, and then sticking to it and having discipline versus the mindset of being an optimist? The mindset of being rejected and not taking it personally. Obviously, the answer is both but where's the place to start if we're trying to become more confident? Do we need to focus first on the discipline or work on our mindset?   Tripp Kramer: I'd say mindset. I'd say mindset because you'll get killed faster. If you don't have the mindset and you're going into with the techniques, the tactics, the discipline, and doing what you need to do, it is possible that you will end up crashing and burning. But like you said, it is both, because like my formula says, confidence equals competence. So you kind of have to act to build that confidence, but I do feel that if you don't have some sort of mindset going into it, you have a risk of crashing and burning. But there will be very minimal risk of crashing and burning if you go into it saying, “All right, man. This is a process. I know this is a process. I'm going to get really excited when I finally do get a sale, but I don't want to have the expectations too soon because I'm just starting this process.”   Tripp Kramer: Say that to yourself, that helps with your resilience, and then you can go into your discipline as you call it, and doing and taking the actions. So then when you start to feel that overwhelm of it potentially not working out, because you're going to have low numbers when you start anything, you can come back to that mindset and that gets you back on the bike even faster, right? Fall off the bike. You want to go on and hop on the next day and try, or do you want to do within five seconds and try? So I hope that with the mind you get on faster, so you can get better faster and therefore build more confidence through the competence act. Time is of the essence, especially when you're trying to build confidence.   The Quickest Way to Cultivate the Right Mindset for Building Confidence · [31:20]    Will Barron: Do you have any thoughts from a practical standpoint of how to instil the… Because what we're saying here is not rocket science, right? Other people have covered similar ground on other podcasts. But I find that whether it's a book or speaking to someone like yourself, Tripp, with a wealth of knowledge in this area, or listening to a podcast or a mentor, sometimes something just clicks and then it goes in your brain and then you go, “Okay, that's common sense. I've just not been doing this for the past 25 years for some reason. I've no idea why.” So with that said, do you have any practical ways, even with your clients maybe, to drill some of this mindset stuff home? You mentioned the law of attraction, I think it's bullshit. I think you're alluding to as well. I don't think it's bullshit, I know it's bullshit.   Will Barron: We've had someone from the film on the show to talk about how bullshit it is. But with that said, are we doing affirmations? Are we sticking Post-it notes to remind ourself consciously of what we are setting out to achieve on our laptops, our work laptops? Are we having a coach getting on a call every week and just beret us and bully us into doing it until it becomes from a good place before it becomes natural? What's the best and quickest way to implement the mindset side of things so that seemingly everything else can fall in place?   Tripp Kramer: Well, all those work on some level, right? I mean, I think the best thing you could ever have as a coach, because you have someone else on your corner who's helping you do the work, and they're dedicated to helping you do the work. So obviously, that's going to be the best that you could do. But even with a coach, like I coach guys, I'm still going to tell them something that they need to do to coach themselves. Because when they're in that moment, when they need to go and talk to a girl, I'm not going to necessarily be there. And maybe I could, right? And then I don't know, that I'm with them forever, but there's going to be a moment, no matter what in their life where they're not going to have someone in that exact moment. So what do they do? Well, I think the best is, I guess, we can call it like an affirmation or just a reminder.   Tripp Kramer: And I don't necessarily think that you should be even putting it in your phone or anything. It should be something you memorise, and just to remember. And I literally say this to my clients when they're going over and approaching a girl, is they have to tell themselves that they're doing this to get better, to practise to do the approach to talk to her, or whatever they're trying to get better at. They're not trying to get her number. They're not trying to take her home because there's other things that need to be done to get to that point. So you need to focus on what do I need to do today to get myself to go over and approach her and talk to her, because if that's not going to happen, then nothing's going to happen. So you have to remind yourself in that moment, and maybe that's something with someone to do with sales.   Tripp Kramer: I like to say also it's kind of specific to what it is that you're trying to learn. And this is a way of what's called deliberate practise. So in the very, very, very beginning, if you're a beginner salesperson or you're just starting to approach women, then the object is to just pick up the phone and have a few things that you know you can say. Or for the guy it's just to go up to the girl and have like a couple things to say and that's it. And then see what happens and see where you can take it. And then you can come back to the experience and you can reference the experience to then see what needs to be done better. So the big overall idea is, remember, you're trying to get better at this skill, which hopefully makes you more rejection proof or makes you feel more rejection proof.   Tripp Kramer: And then whatever it is that you're trying to build. So maybe like for example, in sales, okay, now you're like all right, I'm comfortable making the calls, but I'm not really so good at building rapport. It's good to build rapport in a couple minutes in when you're first talking to someone. Again, I'm not a master at sales, but then I know that's one thing that I've learned. And then it's like, all right, let's get really good at rapport. Let's just take this call and let's get so good at rapport, and let's see what happens there. And then maybe you start getting good at that and then you go to the next technique, and the next technique or whatever it may be. But it's about kind of being aware of where's my sticking point and then zoning in on that sticking point and nothing else. So that helps you build confidence in that area because it's pushing you and motivating you to do the action to then build the competence   Will Barron: You have just made this super practical for the audience, I feel. All we've got to do if we are unconfident, if that is a word, inconfident, unconfident, if we-   Tripp Kramer: So I've researched this a lot, unconfident is a word. Unconfident.   Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Ultimate Confidence · [35:37]    Will Barron: Unconfident. If you are unconfident with cold calls, you should break your cold call up into segments. Just getting through that first bit of the barrier, the fence that the prospect is in inadvertently, but obviously going to put up because they're busy and you've interrupted them. Okay, you've done it. Just do that 100 times, 50 times. Then you've got to share the value. Then you've got to break the thought process that they're in so they give you an actual answer rather than an instinctual answer. Then you've got to close the next. And if you just break things up, you could do this on a tally chart, and just don't do this with your best prospects perhaps. Do this with a list of customers on a Friday afternoon that you're just going to burn through that perhaps you're never going to be able to sell to anyway. You don't want to do this with all your best prospects and leave a bad taste in their mouth, but just burn through 100 calls of, “Hey, I got the hook. I got the hook. I failed, I failed, got the hook.”   Will Barron: Use a tally chart, go for 50, break it up into different steps. That over the course of a few Fridays where you are being lazy and you probably weren't going to do much anyway because you just chill out on a Friday at work which you shouldn't do, but people do. And it is what it is. A month of that, four afternoons of that, you're going to come out with different person and go back to the very top of the show. Your competence is going to be way higher and you're not really jumping into the unknown anymore. You don't need the boldness because you've seen every excuse, every objection that's going to come your way. And then you can perhaps transition this to your prospects that are more likely to close, more likely to buy, and have better success and results from it. Is that a practical step-by-step guide to-?   Tripp Kramer: I would think so. Or even for sales people, once they get really good what's the last step? I would say objections, right? Sure. I feel that's the hardest thing to get through, and in all the steps. So objections, why not just practise that with your friends or just in your room by yourself. Just pretend that someone gave you that objection and practise what are you going to say to that objection, whatever the objection is, right? The money objections, the time objections, I got to talk to my wife objections. I know all those common ones, and just be so good and be a sniper and like, “Okay, I know all the objections and I know what to say when they give me the objections.” And then those like sub objections, because there's always like the main objection and then they say something else, it's another objection.   Tripp Kramer: And what do you say to that? Because you're going to be responding to that. And so I feel you can even practise that on your own. Of course, it's a little bit harder because you don't have someone who has their own personality and own experience to kind of throw you off and things like that, but still you can practise that. I even had guys, if we were to correlate this to meeting women, I have guys you can practise conversation in a room all alone. And I teach guys a method to do that, which is you go to Google, you type in random word generator. There's a bunch of websites where if you press a button, it just generates a random word from the dictionary. And so what you do is, every time a word pops up, you practise with that word.   Tripp Kramer: So let's say it's garage, you practise saying a statement based on the word and a question based on the word. So for example, for garage, it might be, “Oh man, I haven't had a garage in a long time. I parked my car in the street. ” Or a question would be, “What's the biggest garage you've I've ever been to?” Again, not that interesting, but you're coming up with a statement and a question. So what is that doing? That's actually helping you with continuing conversation because conversation is a lot of it, not all of it, but most of it is listening to what someone's saying and going on a tangent off of what saying, based on what they're saying. So that means that if you can do that little exercise at home and practise that, you are going to get good at being really quick on your feet to then be able to continue a conversation based off of what someone is saying.   Tripp Kramer: Instead of maybe just asking a lot of questions. Again, this isn't related to sales. The point when I'm saying here, well, actually it could be in the rapport section. So I take that back. Building rapport, and they say something and then you continue a conversation based on what they're saying. So that's something you can do at home. So another thing, what I'm saying here is where are the areas of this skillset that you might be able to practise without even having to go on the call or the approach? And of course, it's going to be like level medium or level easy when you're doing it on your own, and it's always going to be level hard when you're with that person, because you don't know what they're going to say next, but you can train for that and it can become easier. So there's a way to get confident without even doing the actual literal skill.   Will Barron: So two things, I don't want to plug it too much because the audience will know all about it. Our training programme has a software tool called The Sales Coach that will throw objections at you and get you to handle it. And also in the training product, I do role plays. I'll jump on a call with members of students within the programme, we put the videos in where appropriate. We don't want to make anyone look too stupid if they're struggling. We want to help them, right? But we put the videos in the community. The community feed back, I feed back at the end of the session as well. And there's other coaches and there's other sales trainers who could do similar things with you. But yeah, you're right.   Tripp Kramer: Cool. That sounds super valuable.   Will Barron: It is. I don't want to plug it too much as the audience will-   Tripp Kramer: No. See, can I just say something here?   Will Barron: Sure.   Tripp Kramer: Fuck that. Can I swear? Fuck that. Plug it. It helps. You have something that helps. I'm trying to… I think that's a mindset too. And by the way, I'm guilty if it's still because I said the same thing as you. Not to plug, it's like why wouldn't you plug? If I was a person who was listening to this and I needed help and someone said, “Wait, there's a programme where I can go on and they throw objections at me and that's going to help me get better. Thank God they said that. I need to get that. I need to get to the next level.” So anyway, going off on a tangent, so I feel that we need to plug the things that are valuable, and that's what sales is, right?   Tripp Kramer: It's saying like I have something… So I'm on the phone, I have something so valuable. The pen, right? That's fine. That's like in Wolf of Wall Street. I have something so [inaudible 00:42:13] pink, fem little pen here, and I know that the person on the phone, if they're a good lead, they would just crush it if they had the pen. So it's like my job as a salesperson to do anything I can because they don't know, they're on the other end. You know they don't know, it's your job to let them know in any way possible that the pen or the phone, or whatever it is that they need, that they're struggling with, that they need to get this thing. I don't know, that's how I feel sales. And there's a lot of different ways to do that, but they have to know and it's your job to know. And if it's not a fit, it's not a fit, right?   Tripp Kramer: It's like, well, they were never someone who is going to be a good lead. I get on the phone sometimes with guys who are interested in coaching and if I know that like it's not really a good fit, I'll just let them know and we just get off the phone and so be it. Or if it's like, “Oh, my gosh, this person has the problem that I can solve for them.” And I know 100% that if they sign up for this programme, they are going to solve the problem and be so happy that they did it. The problem is they don't know that yet. So I need to do everything in my power to get them to know how powerful it is. Of course, going back to the plug, this is not a sales call, this is just kind of plugging things so people understand that they have opportunities. I don't know, I feel it's the same idea. I try to do it on my podcast, I'm like sign up for coaching. I'm like, “You have to, it's so good. Because I know it works and I know that you need it.”   Will Barron: I'll be totally blunt and honest with you, and the audience will enjoy this as well, Tripp. And we can wrap up with this point, mate. I don't plug it so much on the podcast natively as perhaps I could do because we cannot… and this is a good problem to have. We just can't fit as many bookings in our diary for myself and the other sales reps in the team. So every time I plug it, the diary gets booked up for the next week, and then I get loads of emails complaining. So I want people sign up for a call to see if they're a good fit when it makes sense to them as opposed to me not being confident and strong in the pitches that come on the show. But for other people, that makes total sense, what you just shared. And you should be proud and excited, and what's the point in…   Parting Thoughts · [45:12]   Will Barron: Your job as a salesperson, it's not to add value to the customer. It's not to be their best friend. It is the bottom and the basic of everything, is to drive revenue. And so it's your duty, corporate duty to the shareholders if it's a large organisation that you work for, to the founders if it's a smaller organisation. If you're a small business owner, to your freaking self if you want that nice car and that big house and that swimming pool to make these deals happen, and obviously, that comes from being confident and confidently pitching and sharing. So I appreciate that, mate. We'll do some kind of code in the show to this episode and we'll give you a commission for plugging the show on our behalf. I appreciate that. With that, Tripp, tell us where we can find out more about you. Tell us where we can find the YouTube channel and the podcast and everything else that you put out as well, mate?   Tripp Kramer: Yeah, for sure. Well, if you're listening to this on the podcast, I think your next step would be if you like what I'm saying here or if you're a guy who's shy or you are a person who wants to learn about being better at communicating, and more importantly, in that sense, meeting women and attracting women, you're going to want to go to my podcast called How To Talk To Girls. It's called How To Talk To Girls. That's on all the podcast platforms, so you'll find it. And then if you're on YouTube or listening to this, I don't know, somehow in any other way, all my other social media is Tripp Advice, which is the name of the company. So you can find me on YouTube. I have over 1,000 videos giving free advice on how to meet and attract women.   Tripp Kramer: And some guys, if they're like, “Well, actually, I'd like to just really take the next step,” I suggest you get my book, which I guess I'll plug here. Why not? So the book, people love books. I wrote one, it's called Magnetic. And funny enough, in the title: Cultivate Confidence, Become Rejection-Proof and Naturally Attract the Women You Desire on Amazon. Check it out if you want to take that next step, if you want to really learn the full system that I teach, and it's only like 10 bucks on Amazon. Check it out and you'll learn a lot. Otherwise, come check me out on the podcast or the YouTube channel.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. We'll list the book, the podcast, everything else that you're up to Tripp on the show notes to this episode over at salesman.org. Tripp, I want to thank you. Again, I appreciate… I always say this for guests like yourself. I appreciate you've took a bit of a tangent to come on a sales podcast, but I think everything that we chatted about is totally relevant. So I appreciate you taking that bit of a leap into the unknown to come on the show and I appreciate you and your time and for joining us the Salesman Podcast.   Tripp Kramer: Cool. Thanks for having me. Glad I did it. Glad to be here.  

George Donovan is the Chief Revenue Officer of Allego, where he’s responsible for achieving the company’s customer acquisition and sales goals. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, George explains what “digital sales rooms” are and how B2B salespeople can use them to influence their buyers' journeys. 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 - George Donovan Chief Revenue Officer of Allego Resources: Allego: Sales Enablement Platform George on LinkedIn Book: Mastering Virtual Selling: Orchestrating Sales Success Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're answering the question, what is a digital sales room and how can we use them to win more sales? Today's guest is George Donovan. He is a Chief Revenue Officer over Allego.com. He has 20 years of experience in sales, marketing, and operations. And with that, George, welcome to the show.   George Donovan: Thank you, Will. Thrilled to be here.   What is a Digital Sales Room? · [00:30]    Will Barron: I'm excited to have you on mate. So, I'm somewhat familiar with this, but I want to pitch this conversation, especially at the beginning of things, to a place and perhaps position ourselves as the audience who are unfamiliar with this idea of a digital sales room, perhaps it's a knuckle dragging caveman-esque sales person who's only just been pulled away from spamming people on cold calls and is just coming into this idea of content can be really helpful for sales people. So with that, can you give us a brief overview of what a digital sales room is? Then we can dive into the ins and outs of it and perhaps sell the audience on the fact that maybe this is the future of sales.   George Donovan: Right, sure. I think of it as a great way, a technology and a process, that helps close the gap between, and we've heard a lot about this, the buyer's journey versus the seller's process. And how do you map these together and have the prospect feel good about the buying experience and not feel like they're being dragged along by that caveman salesperson, as you say. And I think digital sales rooms are a great way to do that. And what they are is they're a virtual space, it's technology, it's a virtual space that allows customers and salespeople to interact. So, customers can access all the content that they need to provide comfort for them through their buying journey.   George Donovan: It's one place that they can go to for all the exchanges that have happened between the salesperson and the prospect. It could be history of emails, it could be video recordings if you had a recording with the prospect, it could be proposals, spreadsheets, you name it. Anything could be in this digital sales room that customers need along their buying journey. And the nice thing for the customer is they can share it with other people. They can bring other folks on their buying committee into the room, into the digital sales room, to access this content. And then the benefit for the salesperson is they can see the engagement. So they know who's in the sales room, what they're doing, what content is hot and what content is not.   Understanding Digital Sales Rooms From Both the Buyer’s and Seller’s Perspective · [02:30]    Will Barron: What does it look like for someone who's unfamiliar? And perhaps we can throw in some screenshots and a link to product demos and stuff in the [inaudible 00:02:43] to this episode over at salesman.org as well. But what does it look like on a screen? Is this a live Zoom kind of chat room? Or is this a series of content that outlines the buyer's journey? What does this look like, I guess, from the seller's perspective and what does it look from the buyer's perspective as well?   George Donovan: Yeah, good question. It looks the same, Will. It looks the same from the buyer and the seller's perspective. And it's probably not that much different from a B2C buying journey that you've had, where certain B2C companies start to know your preferences. They know what you like, what you might be interested in. So, it's literally a room, a virtual digital room that you go into and there is nice, structured, organised content, and it can be completely customised by the salesperson based on the customer's needs, wants, past behaviour, predicted future behaviour. So it's very, very customizable by the sales person to give the customer what they want.   Can the Digital Sales Rooms Lead to Laziness From the Part of the Salesperson? · [03:46]    Will Barron: And I'm playing devils advocate here slightly, because we're both on the same wave length of all this, and it's going to be a boring conversation otherwise, but is this an opportunity for sales people to be super lazy and just go, “Here you go, customer,” or potential customer, “here's a bunch of stuff that you probably need, go through it yourself. I'll spy on you from my side. If you get stuck, I'll cold call you and jump into this.” Or is this something that has real value for the buyer and perhaps even gives them more control over their own buying journey?   “Gartner did a study about a year ago and I think it said that 45, 50% of B2B buyers, not B2C buyers, but B2B buyers preferred a rep-less buying experience. Rep-less. That's stunning. Bain & Company just did one as well. Their numbers were even higher. I think they were at 90%. So people know that reps aren't going away, but our time is shrinking. So when we have that time, we have to maximise it and we have to drive value.” – George Donovan · [04:27]    George Donovan: Yeah, both. I would say it's a little bit of both. We hope that salespeople don't get lazy, they just have to change their selling process a little bit. You've read recent studies, Gartner, the tech analyst company. They did a study earlier last year, about a year ago now, I think it said that 50%, 45, 50% of B2B buyers, not B2C buyers, but B2B buyers preferred a rep-less buying experience. Rep-less. That's stunning. Bain & Company, a consulting firm, they just did one as well. Their numbers were even higher. Now, I think they were at 90%. So people know that reps aren't going away, but our time is shrinking. Our time is shrinking face-to-face or belly-to-belly or ear-to-ear with customers. So when we have that time, we have to maximise it and we have to drive value.   George Donovan: And how we can do that if we're not face-to-face is through these technologies like digital sales rooms, by making sure that we're getting the customer the right content at the right time based on their needs.   The Value You Should Expect From Using Digital Sales Rooms · [05:25]    Will Barron: So, just so I can clarify this for myself and the audience as well. We're not trying to do this purely on the basis of rather than doing three calls throughout the buyer's journey where I explain this in person, we're not just trying to use content so that I can scale my calls to a thousand people in a thousand rooms. And I drop in occasionally and touch on them. We're still doing the, I hate the cliche, this human-to-human kind of sales process. But we're just, and again, I hate this term also, because we use it all… You use this as well, I'm sure, we're enabling the buyer to do some of the work. Not some of the work, we're enabling them to do what they want to do and have a buying process that they feel is appropriate rather than the stereotype of the used car salesperson of dragging the person in and not letting them go until they made a decision.   George Donovan: You've got it. You've got it. And this is more about when they're at the point where they want to engage. That's the real value of digital sales rooms. So, this isn't replacing sales engagement platforms that help automate messaging and cold calling and email outreach to customers. It's not that. This is, you've gone through that, and a prospect says, “Okay, I want to engage. I to have a conversation.”   George Donovan: Now, what we've all learned, especially folks who did a lot of face-to-face selling in the past, is that you have to change your process. As this trend of less seller engagement continues to happen and with the fact that many of us are virtual and will stay virtual, salespeople have really had to take a step back and think about how do I change my selling manner? How do I change my motion to include more of this virtual selling methodology, if you will? And also appreciate that customers don't want to engage with me as much because, like us, Will, most of our customers are back-to-back on calls like this and they don't have a lot of time to engage with sales people.   Why Buyers Don’t Want to Engage with Salespeople · [07:25]    Will Barron: Is that because we just suck as sales people? If we were doing a better job, would buyers want to spend more time? I know this is kind of paradoxical, for example, if I was buying your product, the organisation you work for at Allego, and I got the opportunity to speak with yourself as a CRO, I'd be going, right, I'm going to take that call. I don't want some sales room because George is going to have way more impactful insights and knowledge and he's going to save… Getting on a call with you for half an hour is going to save me 10 hours of researching and the buyer process.   Will Barron: Now this is an extreme example, because you are an executive in a high flying tech company, but if sales people were thought leaders and were experts, true experts in their space, would this be turned on its head slightly in that buyers may proactively want to speak with them? Or do you think buyers still don't want to speak to anyone? They're just so focused on solving the problem, they want to get their head down and just get it done.   George Donovan: I think a little bit of both, I really do. Again, the intent is not to replace sales people. And as a buyer, I'm a buyer too, I do like to talk to sales people. Especially when I feel like they understand my world. But we all know, again, more studies, lots of these have validated that most B2B buyers are 60, 70, 80% of the way through their buying journey before they ever engage with a salesperson. So, with a lot of other technologies, not Allego, but other technologies, you can track how many times have they hit your website? What are they looking at? Obviously we can look at them on social media. So, we're collecting all these bits and bites of information to help us understand this persona. What does George Donovan want? What is he looking at? What does he care about? What are his pain points?   George Donovan: And now, when I have a chance to engage with George, I'm engaging live, and I'm also engaging in this digital sales room to make it really easy for George to continue his journey and pull other people into the buying process. I'll give you a real quick example if I may, Will, just to bring it to life. You're selling to me, you learn a little bit about me through my activity online, and then you come at me with a real customised message. And I say, “Will, let's talk.” Great. Now, you and I are going to have our first meeting coming up. Part of virtual selling, you may send me a video ahead of time that says, “Hey, George. It's, Will, just wanted to propose an agenda for our first call, based on what I know about you. Feel free to tell me if you want to do something differently, but here's what we're doing.”   George Donovan: Now, the reason for this is twofold. One is, it's nice to come to a meeting with an agenda and a plan, and two, it's personalising who you are. You're introducing yourself to me, because one of the things that we've found is with the condensed timeframe, a lot of sales calls are half an hour now when you're on a Zoom call, and you don't have that time to do bonding and rapport, you don't have time to learn as much about the salesperson or the customer. People want to get right down to business, especially in the tech world. And so using an introductory video is a nice way to bridge that gap. Now that video can go sit in the digital sales room, that's the first piece of content.   George Donovan: So you and I have our initial call, I get your video, we have our initial call, now you're going to tell me, you're going to say, “George, I'm going to start something called a digital sales room for you and this is a place for all of our exchanges to be in one spot.” And you can explain the benefits to me. And now we're off. Everything you share with me, proposal, goes in the digital sales room, a PowerPoint deck goes in the digital sales room, the recording of our first call goes in the digital sales room. So you have memorialised this entire sales process to help the buyer go back to it and access content when they need it.   The Future of Sales in this Fast Moving Digital Environment · [11:20]    Will Barron: I want to come back to making this practical and real for the audience in the session, but I'd be totally amiss here of all this hype around Facebook's metaverse and NVidia have just come out with their version of the future of virtual reality and augmented reality. Could we get to a position or how far away from a position are we where we jump into a 3D Zoom call? Maybe we don't even do that, I don't even know where I'm going with this question. I'm kind of pulling this together as I go along with, but it seems like sales, virtual selling, being able to meet people in person via virtual means in this metaverse seems like the next step of an actual room with actual virtual paperwork or screens on the walls.   Will Barron: Is that the future that sales is heading to? Where there will be, whether it's even an avatar, it's just an AI who's guiding the buyer through the buying process until they need to speak to an actual human. Is that where we're moving to with all of this in the next five to 10, 50 years?   George Donovan: Yes, absolutely. I think we are. And we're halfway there. I think we're halfway there already. You do need the intelligence of a salesperson to problem solve and put the right content in the digital sales room and facilitate the whole process, but you still need the person, but eventually AI is going to get smart enough, machine learning is getting smart enough to understand and to start to populate. Even today in digital sales rooms, while it's not alive, we're not face-to-face in a digital sales room, there is chat capabilities where you're reviewing some content, you have a question, I'm going to get a notification that you have a question on that and we can go back and forth. So we're heading in that direction and imagine replacing me to answering that question with some sort of an AI bot, very, very doable today.   How Long Before Salespeople Become Obsolete? ·  [13:17]    Will Barron: So we'll come back to 2022 in a second. I love this topic because clearly this is where a lot of the less complex B2B, if you're signing up for an app, a SaaS software service, something like that, I think avatars and AI is going to solve a lot of sales pain and buyer journey problems for buyers in the future. How far away are we? Let's talk about a product. I don't know, we'll talk about a… Maybe not a CRM, because that'd be complicated. Some kind of software product, how far away do you think we are of combining of multiple AIs or APIs to integrate with different organisations and different softwares and tools, where the buyer doesn't need a salesperson? Just doesn't need one. All the question's been answered.   Will Barron: Perhaps we've got now five years of data of sales people having, well, maybe in five years time, we'll have the real time data of sales people, creating content, sharing it within digital sales rooms, knowing what makes a buyer put their hand up, knowing the response that the salesperson has to give to them.   Will Barron: So we're not just imagining a scenario where an all-knowing AI comes along and just solves all issues, because we're all knackered at that point. That's a conversation for another time. We're verging into Terminator territory there, but let's assume that we've got data on real life activities from real interactions and we can use machine learning and other techniques to leverage some of that. How far are we from taking all that data and creating an avatar for an organisation that can just nudge the buyer along the buying process, help them along, give them the insights, give them the content without a salesperson being involved for a, I don't know, like a mid-size B2B deal?   George Donovan: Yeah. That last point that you added, the mid-size B2B deal. I think that's the key. I can certainly envision a reckless B2B buying process for smaller deals, SMB, smaller deals, 5,000, 10,000, maybe even 15,000. I think people are comfortable going forward and buying that, if it's not new technology. New technology, they need to do a lot more exploration, understanding, a lot more questions. But if this is a, I'm replacing what I have with something new that's just a little bit better based on peer reviews, and the price is about the same and I don't need to get anybody else involved. They're going to do it.   George Donovan: That capability is going to be there in the not too distant future. It may even be happening today, Will. I think where it starts to get interesting is if it's a, two things, a new technology, again, a lot more questions that have to be answered from a live person. And then if it gets above a certain dollar threshold, I don't know what that dollar threshold is, but there's certainly a dollar threshold where human behaviour, people will get uncomfortable without engaging with a human to make a purchase.   Will Barron: Sure. I know for us, it's an N equals one experiment, since data doesn't mean to anything in the grand scheme of things, but we, this year moving forward of our training programme, which the audience can find over at salesman.org, for years, and we were ahead of the curve, I want to say I was some visionary in the world of sales training, George, not really. I just didn't want to have a team of sales trainers. So we did all our training online and we pushed people to go for our online training rather than in-person workshops. I didn't want to travel around the world doing in-person training. And so we lead into that, we built data on it, and I don't want to bore the audience because they know all about it at this point. What we did in December moving forward though, was we… We've had a couple of new team members, and I do some of it as well, we've now added a mentoring element to the product.   Will Barron: So the price has gone up substantially because of that and we've found we're doing way more revenue, people are way more excited and it's because the differentiator now, everyone having gone virtual and all sales training companies got on this bandwagon that I've been banging the drum of, of online training when they were pushing for in-person training before COVID in the pandemic. Now that we are doing more one-on-one interactions, more mentoring, more group training, people are loving and happy to pay extra for that human touch.   Will Barron: So, it's interesting to me of your cut off there of, if you've got a product, and you mentioned peer reviews, which are going to become clearly massive over time, if not, they're already massive at the moment. But having peer reviews from colleagues, from people in the same or similar industries, going from one price point to a similar price point, changing on features or benefits or new innovations, I totally agree that all that is just… That market for sales people's just going to be wiped out. That's just going to be customer service people managing those calls, answering questions, or even being pushed into customer success of just get people on, this is likely going to be a subscription service and we can deal with issues as we go along.   How to Build an Effective Digital Sales Room · [18:12]    Will Barron: So, with all that said, let's imagine a scenario now where we're doing mid to high deal sizes. So, 50 to a million, a quarter a year, it's a complex product. We need an engineer in there, we need an on-site visit. We need something else going on. There's going to be a barrier to people just signing up and using AI chat bots, stuff like that. What do we need to do to make an effective digital sales room? Is the starting point to map out the customer's buying cycle? Or is it to look at our typical sales cycle that we take people through and map the experience in the digital sales room there? Do we start with what the buyer wants, which may be right or wrong, or do we start with what we know gets people to make purchases?   George Donovan: A little bit of both. In Allego's digital sales rooms for example, we have templates, we work with our customers to build up templates. So if you know that you're selling to this persona, with these interests, in this industry, the digital sales room can be pre-populated in seconds by a salesperson with some content that we believe might be of interest to this persona. Or you can completely allow the salesperson to customise the digital sales room with hand-picked content because they do know more about the buyers interests and where they are in their buying journey.   George Donovan: So you've got flexibility to do both. And I think most of them do start with some pieces of content that you know are in the general area of interest based on the engagement of that prospect, to date. But where it changes is once you start to engage and you talk to that person and you are asking the right questions and you're hearing more about what's of interest to them and where they are in that journey, as you say, and where they need to go next, and you're helping to facilitate. It might be white papers. It might be ROI analysis, whatever it is that's important to that prospect. That's the stuff that's going in the digital sales room because they access that repetitively.   George Donovan: That's what we have seen. Customers just don't look at these things once, they go in and they look at it three, four times and that's a hot piece of content. And then all of a sudden you see they invited someone else. I'm going to invite, Will in here now. And Will comes in, Will starts heat seeking to that same content. What does that tell you? Well, as a salesperson you start saying, “Okay, they're really interested in,” if they're looking at that ROI, Return on Investment content, that would probably tell me that they're interested and they're trying to think of a way to cost justify it or trying to think of a way to go get the budget. So, as a salesperson, you might put two and two together and say, “Hmm, maybe I might want to add a white paper in here on return on investment from some of our other customers that might be helpful.”   George Donovan: So now as a seller, you make an educated guess, you put a little piece of content in there that's a case study from another customer on ROI. And you see if that content lights up, meaning, all the people in digital sales rooms start accessing it. Now you're onto something. If it goes cold and nobody touches it, maybe you're off direction, and you've got to go back to them and ask more questions. So that's why I say it's a little bit of a new selling process. Sellers have to think about things differently than the way they did when they were always communicating face-to-face or over the phone.   How to Gauge the Effectiveness of a Digital Sales Room · [21:46]    Will Barron: Sure. How do we know? And I'm coming from this from the perspective of, I am just a knuckle dragging salesperson, I think I probably know better than what I actually do. So, knowing the people and have data that people have clicked on this, they haven't clicked on this, clearly that's going to be very valuable. Especially if you've got a team of a hundred sales reps, a marked some kind of data scientist will be able to pick up on some of this. The platform itself can hopefully give us some insights as well.   Will Barron: But is there all… Where I'm going with this is, is this just an experiment for six months on hunches and best guesses? Because if I put this together now for my customers, I think I would know what I was doing, but being honest, I'd be blagging a lot of it and I'd be hoping for some kind of insights on the back end. Is this something that we've got to use the scientific method of making a hypothesis, testing it, then refining our hypothesis until we get as close to the results as we possibly can? Is this something that we need to just accept that's part of the process and can refine it over time?   George Donovan: Yeah. I think it's easy. I think it's easier than that. I think it's common sense. A lot of it is just common sense. We've been studying this now. So, you have some customers, don't ever go in there. They don't go into the digital sales room, they'd rather email back and forth when they need something. Even if they need something three or four times, they'll keep asking for it rather than going back to one place. So, take them aside.   George Donovan: And then you have other people who just spend so much time in there and you can clearly see patterns. And another thing we can layer in is Allego also has a module for conversational intelligence where we're recording calls and AI analysis on the transcripts of those calls. So now you're starting to combine what the customer is saying with what they're doing in the digital sales room to give sales people a real good picture of where they are in that buying journey and how you can help facilitate with the proper content or commentary to help them get to close.   Are You Procrastinating By Hiding Behind Digital Sales Rooms? · [23:48]    Will Barron: What I want to get out of you, George, is how much of this… A lot of salespeople in my experience will use a tool like, not necessarily Allego, and there's other tools in the marketplace, we'll talk about the product you represent towards the end of the show. They hide behind some of this and people are hiding behind social selling right now. This is the key one of people will ping someone on LinkedIn and comment on their post for four years before they'll pick up the phone and ask them if they're actually interested in engaging with them, because it seems nice and it seems you can automate some of it, and it seems like you could drop a few emails in a cadence, you're going to be rocking and rolling.   Will Barron: But then the reality is, for a lot of people, that it takes years of learning how to copyright for these emails, it takes years of data collection within the organisation you work for to pinpoint as we're discussing here, some of the right content at the right time. Some of it is common sense, a lot of it's common sense, some of it is gut feeling, which is obviously not very scalable if we're talking from a leadership perspective. How do we know whether we are procrastinating by going here's another piece of content, here's another piece of content? When some of this could be solved by just picking up the phone, if the buyer is willing, and having an actual one-on-one conversation with them. How do we bridge the gap between in this is tonnes of valuable content, this allows the buyer to go at their own pace, but also I've got a quota to hit and really, if a couple conversations can solve these issues in real time, maybe I should be doing that as well? How do we balance out between the two, if there is a way?   George Donovan: Absolutely there is a way. And that's what we, at Allego, that's what we teach people to do. Our co-founders wrote a book last year called Mastering Virtual Selling. We obviously have the technology around virtual selling and there really isn't a canned methodology for virtual selling. So we wanted to try to create one, and to your point, Will, we've got this concept of the salesperson is a maestro, okay. And there is front stage work, which is live with the customer that's very important. And what are all the things that you do when you're on stage, you're in performance? How do you master that? And then when you're backstage, as all of us who have ever been to a concert or participating in a concert, you know there's a lot of work that goes on backstage to make that concert, that front stage performance, successful.   How to Create Presence in Your Absence Using Digital Sales Rooms · [24:40]   George Donovan: So, what are all the things that sellers should be doing on the back end, which is including things like managing a digital sales room, but it doesn't take away the importance of that front stage activity. It's a way to balance the two; front stage and backstage. And we have a term in the book called creating presence in your absence. Creating presence in your absence. So we all have live calls, and then what happens? Couple of weeks until you can get the customer back on the phone, maybe a month between calls, how do you create presence in your absence with smart content that's adding value to the customer's buying journey? And that's what digital sales rooms are all about.   Will Barron: Love it. We talk about a similar concept all the time and I pinched this from, who did I pinch it from? I can't who it is, but this idea of building trust at distance. Similar kind of thing. If you can keep adding insights, adding value over time, you inadvertently build trust. You have kind of a following going on LinkedIn and stuff. So do I. I find this all the time. I speak to people, I've never spoken to them before. They've listened to 400 episodes of the podcast. They know everything about me, my dog, my life, and I've built that trust at a distance. So I feel like that's what we're kind of doing on a smaller scale on a one-to-one level here with digital sales rooms and sharing content.   Should Salespeople Be Creating Content or They Simply Need to Curate Relevant Content for Their Buyers? · [27:42]    Will Barron: Let me ask you this, because this was a contentious issue maybe like two or three years ago, but I feel it's less contentious now, should sales people be purely curating content or should there be an element of them creating content for the buyers? And the line is a little bit blurred as we talk about digital sales rooms because I guess what I'm asking is, I'm not saying a sales person should probably write an ebook on the problems that their buyers have. That's going to be a waste of time unless they want to build that thought leadership and perhaps take their career on a slightly different level, on a different angle. But should sales people be in a digital sales room going through the content? Whether this is possible or not, but highlighting things or say, “Go to this page in this PDF.” And really drilling things down and making things simple for the buyer. Or is that the job on marketers to create amazing content that salespeople are really proud to give to their potential customers?   “You have to be relevant. And that is the key today because nobody has time to just go through a boring generic sales process.” – George Donovan · [29:00]    George Donovan: I think it's a bit of both. I do believe it's marketing's job to come up with real relevant and good content based again, the more finite we can get based on industry, persona, size of business, interests, past buying behaviour, purchasing behaviour, the better off we can be. We want to be relevant. And that is the key today because nobody has time to just go through a boring generic sales process. You just don't, no matter what business you're in. So yes, a lot of it is on marketing, but a lot of it is on the salesperson too, again, to think differently and really maximise those, how do I maximise my digital sales room? And then how do I maximise proving value and helping the customer solve problems while I'm having that short window of opportunity to speak to them live? So I think it's a bit of both, Will.   The Primary Role of a Digital Sales Room and How to Get the Most Out of It · [29:40]    Will Barron: That makes sense. So George, we can wrap up, a few more questions now. Let's say Sam the salesperson wants to sell to you, George. I'm sure you've got some decent size budgets in your organisation. They want to suck some of that cash from your back pocket. They want to convince you, they know the value of a digital sales room, you know the value of a digital sales room, but you're freaking busy. Maybe you don't want to commit to jumping in here. You know that once you get in, you're going to get sucked into it. There's going to be loads of content. You're probably going to have a great time. You're going to learn a load, but you've got your own quotas and targets to hit in the meantime. What would be the process of Sam the salesperson from cold outreach, whether they call, email, LinkedIn, whatever it is, what steps would they have to go through to get you into a digital sales room?   George Donovan: Ooh, that's a tough question. Did you say a Sandler salesperson? Is that the word you used?   Will Barron: Sam the salesperson. Sam's just a generic gender-neutral name value. [crosstalk 00:30:31]. Sam the salesperson.   George Donovan: Oh, that is a tough question. Let me think about this one. Again, the primary intent of digital sales rooms are to be used once I'm engaged. Once we've had some form of hello. It's not to pursue me through a sales engagement platform. That's not what it is. So, let's assume you've got my attention. The salesperson got my attention, and now we're having a conversation, I have some sort of a need. The reason I personally love digital sales rooms, and I've heard other VPs of Sales, CROs say the same thing, is because if I'm buying something, Will, and I have a need, I have an interest, it's not about sparking that interest. It's about, I know I have something I want to look at buying or I know I'm going to buy it.   George Donovan: Now, I might talk to two or three vendors. And I've got two or three vendors sending me follow up emails. I've got two or three vendors sending me PowerPoint decks, proposals, white papers, pricing spreadsheets, changes to their pricing spreadsheets. I don't know about you, but for years I've faced the challenge of not being able to find that content. I'm searching through my email, who sent that? Who sent this? How is this different?   George Donovan: But with a digital sales room as a buyer, how my life gets easier, I just go to one click, one link, for Allego in this case let's say, and there it is, it's all right there. And I can see all the exchanges and all of the content in one place. So, it's a lot about convenience for the buyers as well as that ability, as I said, to bring in others. So if I want to bring in my VPs of Sales into the digital sales room to be part of that buying committee, it's easy to do. I would sell it as convenience, and one-stop shopping for the buyer. That alone is a benefit.   How to Subtly Nudge Executives Into Your Digital Sales Room Without Being a Little Too Salesy · [32:33]    Will Barron: So, what I'm hearing is that what we want to do is rather than just pitch George on getting into our digital sales room at all costs, we could not possibly do a deal unless you're in our digital sales room, everything's in there, George, you're a sucker if you don't join us. Perhaps what we should be doing is saying, “Hey, the meeting notes of what we just discussed and the content follow up, rather than emailing you, I've put it in the digital sales room. Here's the link. View the digital sales room, everything's in there and it's all tracked. And we can add stuff to it over time so you can keep track of everything.”   Will Barron: Then the next meeting, “Hey, well, you asked for this, this and this. Here's the features and benefits, the specifications list, the PDF of this, PDF that. It's in the digital sales room. Check it out when you need access to this.” Is that the approach to get an executive like yourself to buy into it? As opposed to saying, “We could not possibly do any business with you, unless you suck it up and join our sales process.”   George Donovan: You got it. That's the approach, soft-handed. They quickly see the benefits even if it's just to place to put the call recording so other people who might have missed the meeting, we hear that a lot. “My right hand person missed the meeting. Can I get that call recording?” “Sure, it'll be in the digital sales room.” And then they love the ability to invite others in as they go. It could be IT people, lawyers, you name it, but having that one place for everything is really a benefit to them and they get it pretty quickly, but you don't want to be heavy-handed with it.   Will Barron: Sure. It makes total sense. It's almost like Dropbox for a deal. Is that a fair way to describe it?   George Donovan: That's right. Dropbox for a deal. You've got it. With a little more intelligence and tracking and communication capability, but you've got it.   Parting Thoughts · [34:23]    Will Barron: Sure. Amazing stuff. We'll wrap up with that. George, tell us more about Allego and how this relates to the discussion today and where we can find out more about you as well.   George Donovan: Yeah, sure. Allego is a sales learning and enablement platform. We work with customers all around the world, large and small, to help move the needle sales. That's really what we're all about. Whether it's training, coaching, collaboration, conversational intelligence, anything that's going to help a seller, in the flow of work, get information that they need to be able to advance their knowledge and add more value to customer engagement, that's what we're all about. You can reach me, George Donovan on LinkedIn with Allego. Please say hello anytime you'd like.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. We'll link to that and anything else that we talked about on this show in the [inaudible 00:35:09] episode over at salesman.org. And with that, George, I appreciate your time, your insights on this and for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   George Donovan: Thank you, Will, likewise.  

Troy Sandidge is an award-winning marketing strategist, the host of the iDigress podcast, and the author of Strategize Up: The Simplified Blueprint to Scaling Your Business. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Troy explains the power of leveraging strategy to win more business and build a bigger life. 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 - Troy Sandidge Award-Winning Marketing Strategist Resources: Troy on LinkedIn The iDigress Podcast Findtroy.com Book: Strategize Up: The Simplified Blueprint to Scaling Your Business Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we're getting into the importance of using strategy in business in today's episode. Today's guest is Troy Sandidge. He's an award-winning marketing strategist, also known as the Strategy Hacker. He's the host of the iDigress podcast and is the author of Strategize Up. You can find out more about Troy over at findtroy.com. And with that, Troy, welcome to the show.   Troy Sandidge: Thank you for having me. I've been dying to get on this show. So it's here. It's happening. It's real.   Will Barron: Good. I'm glad to have you on, mate. I appreciate the energy, the excitement, and I want to get into strategy. Now, over at sales.org in our training programme, I think me and you are on the same wavelength for a lot of this. We call what you might call strategy, frameworks and systems.   Why All Salespeople Need a Well-Structured Sales Strategy · [00:50]    Will Barron: So I want to get some definitions of this in a second, but just to lay it up for the audience, to add a bit of context here, in a world where, and this is my experience in sales 10 years ago, in a world where most sales people wake up each morning and they just are a blank slate, they pick up the phone, their laptop, they start to do whatever in that moment, it might possibly at some point, lead to a sale getting closed in the future.   Will Barron: Why should they consider implementing a step-by-step strategy to reach sales success, rather than doing what most sales people do each day, which is just winging it?   Troy Sandidge: Let me just make it very clear for you. When you're just winging it, executing, you don't put the finger out and just say, “At what direction should I go, I want to get to my destination?” You take your phone, plug in the coordinates of where you want to go and it automatically always reroutes you to get you to your destination.   Troy Sandidge: So you can either execute and hope for the best, or you can put your coordinates and your strategy is always evolving, helping you, is literally your GPS to get to your destination.   Troy Sandidge: So I don't know what sales person, frankly, what business person wouldn't choose to use a GPS to get them to their customers, to get them to the bag, to get them to their conversion rate, all the different things, the KPIs that they want, instead of just hoping for the best by just jumping and predicating on when and algorithm and faith to get you there.   Salespeople Know They Need a Strategy But They Just Don’t Follow One · [02:18]    Will Barron: That is obvious, right, Troy? We're not preaching something that is ambiguous or is backwards here. In my experience, so sales people know this, but they don't do it. Is that similar of your experience dealing with, in the world of marketing and business consulting as well?   Troy Sandidge: 100%. I think many times people think strategy slows them down. Strategy is part of the execution process. You need a game plan. You need to build the game plan to know how you're going to win the game.   Troy Sandidge: And I think we have to understand that instead of just gunghoing it and jumping into sales calls, getting the lead numbers up and our conversion rate is really awful, honestly, our open rate is even worse. Let's analyse and figure out who our target audience is. That's part of the work.   “The sales people that are most successful, the businesses that are killing it in the industry or that are killing it in the game are the ones that take strategy as part of the execution process, instead of just executing and hope for the best, and then want to apply strategy after the fact. We need to let strategy be the lead in.” – Troy Sandidge · [03:01]    Troy Sandidge: And so the sales people that are most successful, the businesses that are killing it in the industry or that are killing it in the game are the ones that take strategy as part of the execution process, instead of just executing hope for the best, and then want to apply strategy after the fact. We need to let strategy be the lead in.   Why Aren’t Salespeople Implementing and Doubling Down on Strategy? · [03:30]   Will Barron: Troy, for sales people who listen to this now and go, “Okay, right. I know this, this makes sense.” Whose fault is it that this isn't implemented? Is this sales leadership for just going, “Oh, well, I've been given a quota as a sales manager. I've just split it evenly between our sales reps.”   Will Barron: And I've just gone, “Okay, well, you probably need to make 300 calls a month. That's what we're going to pay you against and then a commission when you close a deal on top of that.” Is it their fault or is this something that sales people need to take responsibility for themselves, and perhaps develop a strategy, develop that intellectual property that travels with them from job to job, from a career in sales to a career in leadership and beyond as well?   Troy Sandidge: I think it's both. I do think I will lean more 60/40, 60 being the sales lead, the sales manager, the executive staff or team member over the sales, as 60%. But I do think if you've been in sales for a minute, or this is where your livelihood is, this is where your bread and butter is, it's on you too a little bit as well.   Troy Sandidge: And I'll look at it like this, if you're the lead and you have a sales department, sales team, it's to your best benefit to prepare them. I get it, we've got to get the numbers every month, every quarter, I get it. The pressure is unbearing, even more so now than it's ever been as this pandemic has progressed.   Troy Sandidge: And digital marketing and digital strategy in sales is such a high-octane situation and everyone's desensitised the conversations in outbound. I get it. However, what if just by chance, instead of having them cranked out another 10 more calls, 10 more outbound for the day, you take that one hour and strategize the week, strategize the month.   Troy Sandidge: What are we seeing? What are we hearing? And let's just put that against the line, seeing if our open rates go up, if our conversions go up. I don't know what sales person wouldn't want their numbers to be more of a higher quality. Yes, the volume's always going to be there. It's always going to be there.   Troy Sandidge: But if we can just do a little bit more that can help us increase it by even 1%, that's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on the banking of the year and then the grand scheme of things. And that's where I hope sales leaders think about it, but lastly, for sales people to think about that too.   Troy Sandidge: It's up to you to have a strategy that works for you to make your numbers better and make your experience better, because we don't talk about that enough with the mental psyche and everything else when it comes to sales professionals. You've got to find that mix that works for you to be at your best at all times.   Will Barron: How much of the strategy that you teach, you can sort on, you're writing books on it, comes down to strategy to help people implement a strategy? So whether that's productivity or getting people over things like the fear of rejection, if it's a sales person specifically, helping people have, I don't know, healthy self-esteem, whatever it is so that they can put the strategy into place.   The Link Between Sales Success and Implementing an Effective Sales Strategy · [05:55]    Will Barron: How much of success comes from those strategies versus a step-by-step strategy to increase outbound cadence uptake and email open rates and things like that?   Troy Sandidge: I think it's more so internal. And the reason why I lean more internal, it's very simply, let's say you got 100 more sales calls end of every week, let's say you got way more outbound every month, every quarter, let's just say whatever number you've been chasing and trying to get to, let's say you get it.   Troy Sandidge: Now, let's say you get it and you get the same result, the exact same flat-lining percentage opens, conversions, conversation, sales, the whole shebang. You probably feel pretty bad. I've been chasing this number and I got it, and the result was still the same.   Troy Sandidge: And the reason a lot of that is the case, is that who's going to turn down more sales? But do they have the mental capacity, the fortitude and the tech savvy is all the things they need to maintain that level of capacity? In most cases they don't. They've been chasing a ghost for so long, they didn't realise, “I don't have the capacity that if I acquire this, I can't maintain it.”   Troy Sandidge: And so I focus less on, anybody in the market who's been in the market, they can make the numbers look better. Anybody can. There can be a spike in the data at any point in time, but not too many teach you and educate you on how to build sustainable strategies.   “Salespeople of any profession, no matter the industry, need to have sustainable systems so they can maintain that high performance capacity for a long stretch of time. Otherwise, they're going to get burned out.” – Troy Sandidge · [07:59]   Troy Sandidge: And sales people of any profession, no matter your industry, you need to have sustainable systems, so you can maintain the capacity for a long stretch of time. Otherwise, you're going to get burned out.   Troy Sandidge: You're not going to be ready when you're in the fourth quarter, I'm a big NBA guy, so when you're in the fourth quarter and you've got to take that final shot, and this is for all the [marbles 00:08:08], you flop the ball because you didn't have the capacity to handle it because you were burnt out this whole time.   “Tactics are always going to change. The ‘how’ is always going to change, but where I am now and where I want to be, doesn't.” – Troy Sandidge · [08:25]   Troy Sandidge: And so it's just conserving your energy. And I think it really fortifies on your mental capacity. And then from there, the tactics and everything else come in, because tactics are always going to change. The how is always going to change, just like your GPS. Traffic, slow, everything is going to change, but where I am now and where I want to be, does it.   Troy Sandidge: So as long as you have a strategy that keeps you going, “Oh, this is going down, I'm pivoting, I'm switching, I'm pivoting, I'm switching.” And that's how I wish to work in the grand scheme of things.   The 20-Mile March in Sales · [09:00]   Will Barron: Are you familiar with this idea of The 20 Mile March from Jim Collins' books?   Troy Sandidge: I'm not sure. Please familiarise myself.   Will Barron: I talk about this all the time. Some of the regular audience will know this. “Will, why are you banging on about this dumb book again?” But he talks about this idea of The 20 Mile March of the companies who go from good to great. They go to work every day and they march 20 miles.   Will Barron: If the weather is shitty, they walk 20 miles. If the weather is great and they could do 60 miles, they do 20 miles. And they plod on for years and years upon decades, upon decades, constantly ploughing forward.   Will Barron: Companies who have spits and spats of success, who have peaks and troughs of success will go, “Oh, today's great. The weather's fantastic. The wind's behind us. We'll do 120 miles,” and they crash the next three or four days.   Will Barron: And tell me if you agree with this, but I feel like sales is similar of, you need to know your numbers, know what you need to achieve each day to reach your end goal, your target, hit your numbers, and then maybe do a couple more calls if you've got the energy. But maybe not, maybe just get with The 20 Mile March and be ready to do the same thing tomorrow, because tomorrow you might not feel like it, but tomorrow might be the opportunity.   Will Barron: Tomorrow there might be the opportunity to close the biggest deal that you've ever done. Unless you show up, it can't happen. Can it?   “I think success is boring. Sure, there's moments of sexiness in there, but if you want really clear success, it's boring because you're doing the fundamentals all the time.” – Troy Sandidge · [10:08]   Troy Sandidge: I agree with that, 100%. I think success is boring. Sure, there's moments of sexiness in there, but if you want really clear success, it's boring because you're doing the fundamentals all the time.   Troy Sandidge: That's it. I'd rather be more consistent and know that I can always hit, like you said, that 20 miles than like, I'm always chasing 60 and I stop at five. And the numbers are just all crazy. I'd rather have consistency over everything and have that more sustainable process and formulas to make it work.   Will Barron: So in your book, it seems like there are different categories of strategy and different elements that make up strategies. And you mentioned one there, that needs to be sustainable. You also talk about it being simple and scalable. Now, they both fit with what we teach in our training programme or Selling Made Simple Academy.   Will Barron: And our motto or our slogan is, making selling simple, because I've found, and I'm sure this resonates with you yourself, because we seem to have a similar philosophy of a lot of this Troy, that complexity just kills stuff.   Troy Explains Why Simple Sales Strategies Always Yield the Best Results · [11:07]   Will Barron: Doesn't matter how good your process is, if it's complex and there's 27 steps, most people get to four and then they just go back to winging it every day. Can you tell us maybe some examples of strategies or how this gets implemented of something that was made simpler, something that can be scalable and then the sustainability of the elements of it as well?   Troy Sandidge: Oh, we're a million percent in the line. I mean, I would say, most businesses die by the way of the three Cs; complexity, confusions and complications. No one can replicate the success because they don't even know what's going on.   Troy Sandidge: The process and steps are too complicated, so people who are onboarded, can't fulfil everything and then your audience doesn't know what's going on, so they are too reluctant to trust you. Therefore, they don't want to convert, therefore, they're not exchanging and giving you money for whatever the product or service or solution that you offer.   Troy Sandidge: And then, ooh, things fall down. So I really think that we do got to make things simple. Like I said, the success, simplicity is a straight line and the more efficient you are, sometimes we've got to understand that efficiency doesn't mean you're taking on more than you can chew and you're still winning.   “We've got to understand that efficiency doesn't mean you're taking on more than you can chew and still be winning. Sometimes efficiency is just one task for the day and being the best at that task, and then repeat, repeat, repeat.” – Troy Sandidge · [12:16]    Troy Sandidge: Sometimes efficiency is just one task for the day and being the best at that task, and then repeat and then repeat. Like I said, major success is boring. I don't want to get a high in the process. I want to get a high in that we're getting those numbers, we're winning, we're winning, we're winning.   Troy Sandidge: And it's really understanding that. Now again, strategy for a lot of people, seems boring. Strategy seems like, “I don't want to do that work.” You know how you get an instruction manual for something and you're like, “I'm too macho to read the instructions.”   Will Barron: Of course.   Troy Sandidge: “I'm just going to figure it out and wing it.”   Will Barron: Because we're blokes, we're not going to read it.   Troy Sandidge: And you've spent all this extra time trying to figure something out and then you have too much pride to go back to the instruction manuals, and it tells you right there where it is.   Will Barron: There's always one screw left at the end of whatever you're trying to build anyway. And you're like, “Oh, well, this is probably going to last about 15 minutes before it falls apart.”   Troy Sandidge: So I think in the same way, like I said, strategy is part of your GPS system and you need it. I also want to say it like this, and I know you align with this too, we have to repeat ourselves. We have to get it in our minds, what we're seeing, what we're doing, what's working, what's not working, the fundamentals, all those different things.   Troy Sandidge: So it may seem, listeners, that we're repeating ourselves, but we're trying to really take the time to emphasise what you need to implement within yourself and your process, and your business and your strategy, and your profession in order to get the results that you seek.   Troy Sandidge: It's funny, and I know you understand this too, there's been so many times I'll have a client call or a customer or a brand come to me and they just want the magic peel, “Just give me the sauce.”   Troy Sandidge: And all I'm doing the whole time is asking them a series of questions. “Troy, all you did was ask me all these questions.” Well, unless I know all the details and the information, we can't build you a framework. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what you see. I don't know what your customers see. We need as many vantage points as we can to then create the map, create the GPS, to get us to where we want to be.   Troy Sandidge: And it's amazing how we still in the 21st century in 2022, choose to just run straight through the fire without understanding the full complexity of what's going on first in the situation, evaluating the situation, and then taking action.   Troy Sandidge: That small pause could be the difference between getting zero and five million, 10 million, a 100 million additional dollars in this calendar year or even this quarter, however big or small your company is. Apply the ratio to you.   Troy Sandidge: Do you mean to tell me you're going to risk not taking the additional extra 30 minutes or hour or a day or a week to process things first and then take action, just because you've got the eagerness to just want to go?   Troy Sandidge: You don't always have to rush into things. If they're going to buy, they're going to buy because you've done the work and you know what their pain points are, and you're going to provide the solutions to those pain points to earn their trust, to get the bag. It's that simple. So we ain't in the rushing game. Let's come with our best foot forward so we can win.   Will Barron: Let's see if we can get practical here. I'm not trying to put you on the spot here as a B2B sales expert and tell us the tips and tricks and hacks and steps here. But I think we can lead into your expertise here, Troy.   Is it Possible to Develop Our Own Strategy or Do We Need to Bring In Third Party Expertise? · [15:48]    Will Barron: Where would we start if we were listening to this podcast right now? Me and you, we're sat in the car, we're listening the podcast and we're like, “Oh, that Troy and Will, I think they might be onto something. That Will bloke talks a lot of crap usually, but this one, this is something I want to pay attention to.”   Will Barron: What would be the starting point to… Or let me ask, we'll go to the starting point, developing your own strategy in a second. Is it possible to develop your own strategy or do you need to bring in third-party expertise and people looking from the outside into a business scenario to be able to help build strategy? Is it possible to do it on your own, or do you need someone to help with this?   Troy Sandidge: I personally feel in my time in 10 years of things, I think you can build it on your own first. I think you need to have an alignment of what works for you. And then as things progress, you can apply the technology systems, you can apply all the different subsets of things that align with your sales team, with your marketing team and collaboration, communication, your business organisation, and then outreach, outbound, all that stuff comes after the fact.   Troy Sandidge: But if you don't have the core nucleus of how you want to attack sales, how you want to acquire sales and have that ironed out, bringing in a third-party person is just going to burn more time, take longer to evaluate, which is causing you money, and you're not making a profit from certain things. So I think you can start out by building it yourself.   Troy Sandidge: And you're like, “Well, Troy, what do you mean? Where do I go from?” And I know I talk in a lot of concepts because I feel most people lack the depth of concepts. They always want to do it in tactics, they're galore. Software's galore, technology is galore. Best practises by top voices is galore.   Troy Sandidge: But the fundamentals are lacking. The core concepts are lacking, so that's where my comfortability speaks into for many people who are listening. So I always apply first, let's apply the DART-marking methodology, where you sit on the DART and find the stuff out and then simply you be direct, be authentic, be resourceful and tactical.   Troy Sandidge: What positions you to be your most direct self? Is that email? Is that live video? Is it that, now honestly in-person is stolen right now, but you can still emulate that same connectivity if you know how to expound your language on LinkedIn and outbound reach and different things like that.   Troy Sandidge: How are you your most authentic self? What makes you your most authentic self? Is that email, is that blogs, is that video? And then how are you being resourceful? I think the sales people are the most resourceful people that I know because they're going to find a way to get the bag.   Troy Sandidge: They're going to find a way to get those numbers. But in many cases, that resourcefulness expands on maintaining the ability of getting successful and then being tactical of which things you're going to apply to maintain that success.   Troy Sandidge: And so yes, the core thing of that DART; direct, authentic, resourceful and tactical is a concept, but through that concept, you can build a strategy built on your own personal persona of how well you do outbound, what your digital platforms are, choice, what's your outbound reach of choice?   Troy Sandidge: And now that you've lined that out, now I can get a third-party person to build me a funnel or help me figure out how to hustle my CRM or how to use this, or how to use that in tangent with my strengths, knowing my weaknesses, my opportunities and my threats.   Troy Sandidge: It sounds silly, this is sales one-on-one, this is marketing one-on-one, but I always lean on the fundamentals first and then expound out going at it, because ain't no gimmick going to help you if you don't know the fundamentals.   The First Step to Using Strategy to Win More Sales · [19:10]   Will Barron: Do we, and I don't want to contradict you here, and you might double down on your response there. Do we as sales people, and this is different perhaps if you're a founder of a startup or you're a small business owner who's also doing sales, but let's lean into this idea that there's an enterprise sales person listening to this.   Will Barron: Is step one, “I'm really good at writing copy. I've got lots of influence over email, so I should do email?” Or should we look at the marketplace and go, “Well, my buyers would prefer to be communicated with on this platform in this way, even though I suck at doing in-person meetings,” or whatever it is.   Will Barron: The answer is obviously it depends, but should we, if we need a starting point to build a process here, should it be on what the market wants or should we really just lean into our strengths?   Troy Sandidge: I think it leans into what the market does want, but you have to learn how to convert your strength to match that marketplace. I know it feels like I contradicted myself, so let me clean that up a little bit.   Troy Sandidge: So the marketplace is going to point blank tell you, “This is what we want. For us to give you the bag, you've got to come this way. This is what we are used to seeing in this moment, in this season,” apply whatever dates and ranges and timelines that you want.   Troy Sandidge: So me as a sales person, me as the company looking at this, well, our strength is in writing. We are not live-video people. None of us are. We panic, we freak out. Well, if we know that point A is, we're really good at writing. And to get to the bag, point B is, we've got to do live video, how do we take what we do best which is writing, and convert that into a situation so we can get to point B, a live video, being that medium to get to the bag?   Troy Sandidge: And to me, it's just figuring out how do I connect the two? So if you are someone who wants to go live, there's a thing called social audio, baby. It gives you the same implications, you ain't got to worry about your makeup and you ain't got to worry about none of this other stuff.   Troy Sandidge: And coming in having conversations in bulk, shoot, you can put everybody that you had on your timeline for the week, and in one conversation start asking as many questions you want, your position as thought leader, everyone's like, “Okay, yeah. I would've asked that too.”   Troy Sandidge: And maybe by that, you're getting more conversions and doing less work, so now you're just scheduling bulk of social audio conversations in private settings or public settings and retooling that as marketing of sales funnels to get more conversations through the door.   Troy Sandidge: Well, and the way that you did that, you're reading off things that you wrote. You're asking questions you already had pre-written. Nobody knows, because your delivery is just reading the very concise thing and leaning in the strength that you're always trying to do.   Troy Sandidge: So obviously that's one example. You can retool that for whoever it makes sense, but I definitely think the marketplace tells you the how, that's why I said tactics are always changing. But if you have your concepts down to the fundamentals, our strength is writing, we're trying to get to live video, we just got to build a bridge to get there.   Troy Sandidge: That's easier for me to work at, or bring a third-party person to help me after the fact because I know that information than to go at it blind, leading on my best strength and not getting anywhere.   Will Barron: Dude, that is so smart, and you've doubled down on it towards the end of your answer there of, a lot of sales people will go, “Okay, I'll go on Reddit, I'll go on LinkedIn. I see that videos on LinkedIn messages are hot right this second and so I'm going to spend the next three weeks spamming them to the whole of my audience and pissing everyone off.”   Will Barron: And then they move on to the next thing. And then the next thing they're going from hack to tactic, to tip, to trick. From a lot of the time, people who don't actually sell anything, they sold like 20 years ago, wrote to bucking out, they speak on stage and BS about it, right?   Will Barron: People should hold me accountable as well. So people see my live sales calls, we post it on YouTube, they're all over the place. So you should take advice and tips and tricks and hacks and tactics. You should think about the source that some of these are coming from because a lot of them are not statistically significant to the data that people are throwing out there that you should do X and Y.   Will Barron: But what you said was, when you lean into your strengths, it discourages you from jumping around because you're going to have an expertise in one, two, three, especially that lead generation.   Will Barron: People are either going to be really good at writing copy, they're going to be really charismatic and able to do live video and be able to be quick-witted like you are yourself, Troy. You're very quick-witted and intelligent, so I can throw questions at you and you can bounce back and look great on video.   Will Barron: Some people might just be great at outbound sales calls because they don't give a shit, and they're happy to be rejected all day, every day until they get the right person at the right place, at the right time, and then they can strike up a conversation.   Why Leaning Into Your Strengths is All You Need to Succeed in Sales · [23:43]    Will Barron: When we lean into our strengths, which is what you're saying here, it almost eliminates 50 other different options and simplifies the whole process, right?   Troy Sandidge: I agree. And you hear the thing all the time, quality over quantity. I know that's like, “Oh, I'm triggered, what's going on?” It's the greatest debate ever. And I still think quality matters, but here's how I spin it. And I'm sure it has already been talked about on the show, is that how the content, how your process, how the pitch can be easily converted to fit whatever medium my client, my target audience, my ideal customer is.   Troy Sandidge: And if that same context, that same piece of content, that same strategy can fit like water in whatever mould it's in, if it absorbs and fits the cup, it fits the shape, no matter what it is, it fits to its shape, that's higher quality to me because now I can consistently get more volume out of it, that a higher chance of getting the conversions that I want.   Troy Sandidge: And yeah, I know marketers, we get a bad rep sometimes and sales people do and there's a whole dance of right and left arm, cousins, brothers, sisters, it's a whole mess between us. I don't know why we're still debating here because we need both to get the bag.   Troy Sandidge: We need both to work in harmony, to make it work. One is not better than the other. If you're on one side, you may disagree with me, but I do think there's some harmony there. And part of that is understanding the dynamic of how you approach your process and your content. Quality can be converted to fit different things.   “If you can take one piece of content and distribute it a hundred different ways, that's a very valuable piece of content.” – Troy Sandidge · [25:20]    Troy Sandidge: I think Ross Simmons says it all the time that it matters how much distribution one piece of content can do, one process can do. If you can take one piece of content and distribute a hundred different ways, that's a very valuable piece of content.   Troy Sandidge: And even though it may take an additional hour or additional week to make, that's saving you time to get more numbers to have more conversations. And so that's just how I see it sometimes in that dynamic when it comes to strategy as well, implementation, is finding that balance.   Troy Sandidge: Yes, we want the highest amount of volume, but if we're still hitting the same numbers and missing all the time, we've got to reel it back in. I'd rather have a slight shorter volume in the interim and get my numbers up a little bit more, and then go.   Troy Sandidge: But obviously on the other side, I'm not trying to double down and flip myself out of my conversation. You do got to test, you do got to understand the marketplace, but you still got to go to your assurance and figure that out accordingly. How do I connect the two?   Will Barron: Yeah. I'll go on the record, and this idea from, I had Greg Mckeown offer of Effortless on the podcast. He tried to explain this to me in real time. I just didn't understand it. It was a terrible interview. He was looking at me like I was a right idiot.   Will Barron: I was like, “I read the book. I'm really trying to understand what you're saying here, Greg,” but it wasn't sinking in. But we talked afterwards and he summed it up with just a few words and he said, “Do less, but better.”   Will Barron: And I feel like sales is moving towards that because now 10 years ago, there wasn't a tool to automate, allow a sales person to hit a 1,000 people a week with calls, emails, and just generic spam. Marketers have been able to do it for a while who have marketing technology, but sales people haven't had access to do it.   Will Barron: Five years ago, sales people start getting access to these tools, they just ruin it for themselves, myself included. Just spam the marketplace. And it works at first, and then obviously with the noise, everyone just starts ignoring it. You can see a spammy sales email that hasn't been customised.   Efficiency 101: Do Less But Better · [27:20]   Will Barron: The person's name is in a slightly different font. And then halfway down the email, there's a weird line break where you've tried to insert things. You can see all this stuff from a mile away. But if you try and do less, but better, and tell me if I'm wrong here, Troy, but I think this is what you're saying of rather than scale, get the percentages, get the numbers, get the effectiveness up before you try and scale it.   Will Barron: That in a noisy market has got to be more effective from a time, energy and cost perspective as we move forward from 2022 into the post COVID world where as you said, at the top of the show, we're not really able to knock on doors anymore. And so booking those Zoom calls via intelligent outreach is going to be way more effective than trying to book Zoom calls by just begging and spamming people.   Troy Sandidge: Oh, I agree. And I'll echo this too. I've been saying this recently, sales, marketing, different teams in present by the industry, you need to embrace community more. Community's going to give you access to more referrals, they're going to open, they're going to make those leads more warm because it's not coming directly from you.   Troy Sandidge: It's coming to you in tangent with somebody else. And I think what we're seeing is that even though you may be a sales person, you can have your own community of people. We're not talking about a rolodex of just people who may buy from you. I'm talking about people who can evangelise and be an advocate for you.   Troy Sandidge: I always have to say this in a conversation, relationship status of BAY. You've got buyers, you've got advocates, and you've got elevators. The elevators are those that just promote you, connect with you on social or other means. They're just there. They're cheerleaders, they're fans, all those things.   Troy Sandidge: Those advocates, they may not want to buy from you yet, but they got access and power to open doors and says, “Jess, Hey, this person, I didn't need them right now, but you may need them blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” then obviously the buyers.   Troy Sandidge: And I think we're now in a situation where we're less focused on just buyers. I have your attention for 10 minutes. I'm going to know in probably the first two and a half minutes, maybe a gut check too, that you're probably a buyer, not a buyer for me.   Troy Sandidge: If I know that I'm switching right into an advocate conversation, “Can you become an advocate for me?” And if that's all else fails, everyone could be an elevator. That's just as simple as, “Subscribe to my email newsletter. Join this, join that, be a part of my thing.”   Troy Sandidge: So I think applying the relationship status of BAY; buyers, advocates, and elevators is a simple way to start harvesting and growing your community, which you can do that in tangent with every sales call that you do, and the hope is that you're winning by volume of it, getting more people to be advocates, to get more money down the road for you too.   Will Barron: So tell me if right here, it's almost like we're trying to build a snowball effect of, we start just if we're cold-calling, cold-emailing, whatever it is. But then every three or four of those people go out and email us, we create content, we connect with them on LinkedIn. Then they're going to introduce us to someone and then this rapidly compounds. Is that what we're aiming for?   Troy Sandidge: A 100%.   How to Build and Get the Most Out of Your Community · [30:13]    Will Barron: That's one thing to say and I appreciate it. How does a sales person, and you alluded to it there of, you know on a call whether someone has the budget, authority, time, need, all this kind of stuff. So we can pivot our calls perhaps and invite people to issue content on a call.   Will Barron: That'd be one way of doing it. Are there any other ways, or is there any way we can systematise that process? The reason I ask Troy is, everyone knows it's obvious that we should be doing that, but then doing it day in, day out when we've got another call in another hour, and then the boss is looking over our shoulder, because we've not done as many spammy emails as he wants us to do this month.   Will Barron: How do we make something like a referral process like that happen? How do we systemize it? How would you advise someone to implement it, so it happens organically rather than being something that you've got to remember and you're not sticking post-it notes on your monitor to ask for all this stuff to make sure it happens?   Troy Sandidge: I can't say who the company is, but I was tasked to help a marketing task force to help them simplify this kind of strategy for them. And so the mindset was, we were coming into conversations with these three goals.   Troy Sandidge: If they're going to be a buyer, they're going to check-mark also being an advocate and elevator, almost guaranteed. If they're not a buyer, there's a chance they could be an advocate and an elevator guaranteed. If they're not going to be an advocate, they will always be an elevator.   Troy Sandidge: And so the conversation is less about yes, you've got to see if they're a good fit for the product or service, whether you're SAS, tech, whatever the industry may be, for the product or offering, of course, because you want the buyer. But if they're not a buyer, we'll jump right into this next conversation.   Troy Sandidge: And so we've integrated in our CRM system, how that looks like, where it makes sense for it to happen. And then we just say, “Hey, you just get practising .” A lot of it's just reps.   Troy Sandidge: You're just retooling to, instead of spending those last two minutes of a conversation, really trying to figure out why they said no, instead of just letting it be, because clearly we've spent the first eight minutes and it ain't going nowhere and saying, “Can I now instead shift ever so slightly, and maybe I'll win you later?”   Troy Sandidge: Instead of just, “Hey, I'm going to email you and put you in our funnel,” and it's just very cold and whatever, let's put them in a different category to see if we can really evangelise them and help get them to help us close more deals and more sales.   Troy Sandidge: And so it does seem very simple. There is a lot of logic to it. How do I implement it in my own CRM system? And I can't tell you all the specific of the technology and stuff involved, but it can be done. And then it has been done. And truth be told, maybe your competitors are doing it too.   “At the end of the day, your community is just going to help you get more by doing less, but being more efficient at the same time.” – Troy Sandidge · [32:54]    Troy Sandidge: So it's just something to think about because at the core, at the end of the day, community is just going to help you get more, doing less, but being more efficient at the same.   Will Barron: I'm trying not to plug the training product, but a lot of what you're saying is our methodologies. The audience knows it exists. They don't need an advertisement for it. But to get in the training programme, because this is a mentorship with myself and another two lads involved in it as well.   Will Barron: We don't just let sign up. You have to do a call with myself or one of the team. Now after the call, there's a bunch of different options. And that puts people on a nurturing email series after the fact. So people sign up for the call, straight in the product, everyone's rocking and rolling, and they're happy.   Will Barron: Sometimes people go, “Okay, that's great, but my boss in the organisation, I'm going to see if I can get them to pay for it rather than me pay for it.”   Will Barron: So we click a button in HubSpot CRM, they get a nurturing email list with a one-pager that they can forward to their boss, a PDF of what's in the training programme and the benefits of it for the organisation, as opposed to the individual, and then gets a series of emails just to keep on top of them and keep top of mind after the fact.   Will Barron: If they just don't have the cash and it's not a good fit, whatever it is, there's a different series of emails because six months from now, they might be a good fit. And at the end of all of these sequences, it's, “Hey, is there anyone else that you think would be a good fit for the product?”   Will Barron: And when people sign up for the training product as well, we have a referral scheme within the product so people can refer their colleagues and we get so much attention and traffic from just that one click at the end of a phone call to a series of emails that I didn't even write.   Will Barron: We paid a copywriter to help out with some of it. I just give them a Microsoft word document with a bunch of talking points, and they did the work for us. We get so much revenue and attention and traffic from one click of systematising this.   Will Barron: For us little Salesman org is a tiny play lab company, there's no revenue really, right? And so for large organisations, even small businesses and small business owners who are doing five to 10 million in revenue a year, plus, they should be doing this, shouldn't they? If we could work it out, surely they should be doing it as well.   Troy Explains Why Sometimes Systematizing a Process is All You Need to Get the Most Out of the Marketplace · [34:58]    Troy Sandidge: A 100%. I think we shouldn't just react when changes shift in the marketplace. We should be proactive and just do what we can to maintain our power, our stability, and our anchor in the marketplace and just saying, “No, we're good. I don't have to change. It's working right now.”   Troy Sandidge: Yeah, but what if it doesn't work tomorrow? What if you start losing ground in the next month? What if quarter one is great, but quarter three is like, “Mm, it ain't what it needs to be?”   Troy Sandidge: And so we just always should have at least a good amount of our time being aware of understanding the marketplace and how do we make sure that we're maintaining that level within the marketplace. And I agree with that a 100%.   Will Barron: Sure. And I guess a side note, I like the psychology of this. I've never thought about this before with our own process, but it makes sense of when I jump on a call or one of the team jumps on a call to, and it's a sales call, if people want to get signed up, they have to go through us and we qualify them, make sure they're a good fit and make sure that we can help them before we take anyone's cash.   Will Barron: But it's a sales call. We'll influence people to get signed up if they're a good fit and we want to work with them. This is how I've just described, and you went through it previous Troy, if people could implement that, it means that it's very difficult to get rejected in that scenario. It's very difficult to have a bad sales call.   Will Barron: If the worst case scenario, someone isn't qualified, they're not a good fit, but you're still going to send them content or help them out and ask the questions and then build that relationship over time.   Will Barron: I bet if people thought about their sales calls that way, and they can think about it that way with just a tiny bit of automation or just a few notes in your calendar to follow up in a certain way, rather than just ghost the prospect, because they've not got the budget right now in this quarter to get a deal done, it re-frames the whole sales conversation into a place and a position where sales people are going to be more excited to do them.   Why You Need to Get Past the Pass or Fail Mindset in Sales · [36:45]    Will Barron: Because you're not just going to get the phone slammed down on your face and your prospects are going to be more at the end of the call, excited about potentially working with you in the future, because you've not just got your pitch in a traditional sales scenario and just trying to ram it down there and then again, [inaudible 00:37:00] pivot, not a good fit. Do you feel there's something to that, the kind of psychology of some of this?   Troy Sandidge: Oh, I agree. I mean, let's take it like this. You go in any course whatsoever, sure, and this may be a slightly different approach, but I speak in analogies all the time to help people who may not understand that the core concepts of things is pass or fail.   Troy Sandidge: A lot of times we'll come into a sales call, we've got to get the bag, we've got to get the yes, we've got to get the confirmation or we don't, and this was a waste of my time. Versus, every time that I spend with someone, I win something. I either win the contract.   Troy Sandidge: I win to go to the next round in the conversation or I win a new advocate who's going to open the door for places I can't get in, or my team couldn't get in before just off their recommendation because I switched the conversation and identified, this is no longer a buyer, where do I shift on next into the conversation?   Troy Sandidge: And if by the end, maybe they appreciate the way that I approach it, now they're back in the conversation as a buyer. Instead of going pass or fail, I just want to go at grade level. Obviously I want to get the A, but C is passing too.   Troy Sandidge: And if I'm getting a D, at least I'm aware of, here's some things I need to modify. Maybe it's anomaly, maybe it's the specific industry, maybe it's the certain title or certain person I was talking to, but why? Versus just pass or fail, I get the bag or I don't, I get the seller or I don't, that takes the pressure off of psychologically too.   Troy Sandidge: Because like you said, we're coming into the conversation now. We don't lose. And now I don't know, what situation being a sales person where you don't feel like you don't take an out? You feel like you're always taking an out, but if I can come into a situation where okay, that I didn't get the sale, but it's not like I can't get a sale through this conversation, through this connection. That's a different mindset.   Troy Sandidge: And I think that's very beneficial when we're dealing with building community instead of just going at it gun to hole, like a sharp shooter here, trying to win all by yourself. Let me evangelise and get you to join my team.   Troy Sandidge: If I can have 10 calls that they told me no, that they're not a direct buyer, but they, over the span of the year, can each person give me 10 new buyers, I think that's a win too. It's a longer game. It's not an immediate gratification, but in a long grand scheme of things, we go back to the whole calendar year, the numbers look really good.   Will Barron: Yeah. And some of this is a sales leadership issue of quarterly targets and the goals resetting and goal post changing. But some of that will change. And we see that in the marketplace change over time as a lot more products move to subscriptions.   Will Barron: So just getting those numbers done, that's not as important as a good customer success and keeping people on those subscriptions and retaining them for longer periods of time. So we're slowly, slowly dragging sales out of the dark ages and following in your marketing footsteps, Troy.   Parting Thoughts · [39:52]    Will Barron: With that mate, we've covered a lot of ground here. I appreciate you, appreciate you coming on the show. Tell us where we can find out more about you, tell us about the podcast and where we can find that, and then the book as well.   Troy Sandidge: Just like Will, I'm also on the HubSpot Podcast Network. iDigress all in one word, I know I got all weird with the spelling. iDigress.fm. I talk on concepts, I talk about marketing strategy growth, a little bit of sales, but I come from the perspective of, I want bring access to people who are in SMBs or are emerging brands who don't have the time or the team to know all the acronyms, to know the depth of marketing and growth in sales and business.   Troy Sandidge: And so I try to make things as simple as possible in that range. So if this lands in some way, shape or form, when you want to activate your mindset, you want to amplify your marketing and you want to achieve more profitability and very core simple concepts, my podcast would be really good for you.   Troy Sandidge: It's also why I wrote the book, Strategize Up as well, to help people really make it simple, make it practical, and make it sustainable in their business growth.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well, I'll link to all of that in the show of this episode over at salesman.org and with that, Troy, I want to thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Troy Sandidge: I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at – The crypto BILLIONAIRE I inadvertently had on the Salesman Podcast… New LinkedIn Sales Navigator updates The labor shortage You'll learn: SALES NEWS: Alleged crypto launderer Heather Morgan led a second life as the world's worst rapper Earlier today, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who allegedly attempted to launder more than 25,000 Bitcoins that were stolen as part of the 2016 hack of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. What was unclear to us at the time was that an even greater crime had played out across Morgan's social media pages: her rap career. Heather previously ran https://www.salesfolk.com/ where she helped B2B sales professionals write better outreach emails. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/razzlekhan-rap-cryptocurrency-012307238.html LinkedIn Rolls Out Sales Navigator Search & CRM Card Updates LinkedIn Sales Solutions announced a slate of updates to the Sales Navigator platform today, including improvements to the Search experience, CRM integrations, and new homepage optimizations. The first update comes in the form of better visualization in the Search experience. Enhanced CRM cards is another update to the CRM integration. These enhanced CRM cards are added to Account Pages and Contact pages, minimizing the need to toggle between platforms. With the Priority Accounts section, you are able to upload accounts that are most important to your business. For example, with so many people shuffling companies or professions, you’re able to keep tabs on when employee or headcount growth. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/linkedin-sales-navigator-update/437183/#close What Labor Shortage? Technology-Enabled Sales Teams Don’t Miss a Beat A large portion of veteran sales talent is deciding now is a good time to retire. Implementing tech that reduces redundant work and delivers relevant insights is key to achieving growth. For the fourth quarter of 2021, 65% of business economists reported an increase in sales, but 57% reported experiencing labor shortages, according to the National Association for Business Economics January 2022 Business Conditions Survey. In this market, sales leaders are thinking outside of the box for recruitment. They’re hiring more entry-level salespeople, as well as experienced individuals from other unrelated markets and verticals. https://www.mdm.com/blog/tech-operations/technology/what-labor-shortage-tech-enabled-sales-teams-dont-miss-a-beat/ Where Do Salespeople Fit in the Digital World? In-person meetings between customers and salespeople were once at the heart of B2B buying and selling. Now digital communication is embedding itself in every aspect of business. This had led some organizations to look at the future and ask a simple question: Will we still need salespeople? https://hbr.org/2022/01/where-do-salespeople-fit-in-the-digital-world Is It Time To Reassess the WFH and Hybrid Work Movement? A portion of the workforce has unreservedly embraced the WFH movement, while others are looking for office environments to be more functional and enticing. For many WFH employees, commuting hours have now been rolled into working hours; that means many WFH employees are putting in another 10 hours a week. The mental and physical exertion—combined with the relative isolation of home offices—is “taking a toll on people. One answer is an activity-based working (ABW) approach. This means employees having access to a range of technology-enabled work environments to suit the particular activities in which they engage individually and as a team. https://www.cepro.com/business-support/is-it-time-to-reassess-the-wfh-and-hybrid-work-movement/

You'll learn:

Roland T. Rust is a distinguished University Professor, David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, and author of The Feelings Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Roland explains what the “feelings economy” is and why more artificial intelligence might be a good thing for sales professionals whilst it wrecks other industries. 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 - Roland T. Rust Distinguished University Professor Resources: Roland on LinkedIn Book: The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we'll be looking at selling with emotion in the feeling economy. Our guest, Roland Rust, is a distinguished university professor at the School of Business at the University of Maryland. He's the author of The Feeling Economy, which we're going to cover in this episode of the show. And with that, Roland, welcome to the Salesman Podcast.   Roland Rust: Oh, thanks very much. Happy to be here.   What is the Feeling Economy? · [00:45]    Will Barron: You are welcome, sir. I'm glad to have you on. I try not to cover it too much before on our pre-call, pre-recording chat, but I think we're on the same wave length with a lot of what we're going to talk about today. So it'll be interesting if there are any points that we do diverge, but I think we're all on the same wavelength with a lot of this. To get us started, this is seemingly a lazy question for an interviewer to ask, Roland, but I'm going to ask you it because I want you to set the scene here. What the heck is the feeling economy?   Roland Rust: Yeah. Okay, very good question. The feeling economy is maybe an unexpected consequence of artificial intelligence, because there have really been a couple of main shifts in technology in the last 150 years. The first was the move toward the thinking economy from the physical economy. So in other words, you had people in the physical economy who were doing things like farming and mining coal and doing physical exertion, and men really dominated at that time. And then around 1900, you really started to see an expansion of the thinking economy, and one of the things that you saw was a very much larger percentage of people became educated, because they had to, to compete in the thinking economy as thinkers. During that time, then women became much more equal. You see many more women in high positions than you did in the 1800s or 1700s.   “The shift that's happening now is from the thinking economy to the feeling economy, and the reason for that is that artificial intelligence is getting good at thinking. And the more thinking artificial intelligence can do, the more humans are pushed into doing things that they can do better than AI. For the most part, that's things like feeling, interpersonal relationships, and to some extent, we're also going to have an advantage on things like common sense and intuition, but even that will probably go away in a little bit of time.” – Roland Rust · [02:05]    Roland Rust: So now the shift that's happening now is from the thinking economy to the feeling economy, and the reason for that is that artificial intelligence is getting good at thinking, and the more thinking artificial intelligence can do, the more humans are pushed into doing things that they're better than AI at. For the most part, that's things like feeling. Feeling, interpersonal relationships, to some extent, for a while, we're going to have an advantage on things like common sense and intuition, but even that will probably go away in a little bit of time. So what our research suggests is that no later than 15 years from now, most jobs will be more feeling jobs than thinking jobs, and that shift is already well underway.   Why Humans Struggle Having Emotional Conversations With AI · [03:10]    Will Barron: Immediately, I've lost all the questions I was going to ask, Roland. We'll drag it back for salespeople and business towards the end of the show. But a couple of things here. When you say salespeople are perhaps, people in general, salespeople in the context of this show, are perhaps better at emotional intelligence, feeling, empathy than AI right now, is that because AI literally can't do those things, or is it because when a human engages with an AI, they don't like that happening, they don't like that emotional kind of conversation happening? They prefer to do it with a human, and so it's a limitation of the person that's doing the engaging, or is it very literally that AI can't handle that from a technological standpoint at the moment?   Roland Rust: Both of those things are true. Both of those things are true. One is people right now don't fully trust AI. They've seen the Terminator movies or whatever, and they just are a little bit concerned about AI and they don't really trust AI to really have our best interests in mind. So there is that problem, but the other problem is that AI really just isn't very good at it. AI is struggling. To do this right, what AI has to do is it has to understand people's emotional expressions and it has to then respond appropriately emotionally.   Roland Rust: There is active research in both of these areas. So for example, one of the things that AI is getting a lot better at is trying to figure out people's emotional reactions from how they look, what their face looks like, what kind of expressions do they have on their face? AI is getting better at that, but it still isn't that good. It's not as good as a person doing this, and fortunately that'll be true for a little while.   AI and the Nuance of Emotional Expression · [05:06]    Will Barron: Sorry to interrupt, Roland, just I think this point's really important. How tangible is this, how objective is this? Because I know when my girlfriend comes home from work and she's in a mood about something, I know there's something up, but I can't quantify it like perhaps a computer programme would want to, and it's trying to weigh different things up. I'm just getting a gut feeling that I want to be polite to her as she walks through the door. How much of this is down to, if you were trying to score this and I was trying to compete me against an AI, it would be very difficult to say who is better at this, so what's the barrier to this? Is it people's ability to recognise some of this stuff, or is it the objectivity of AI achieving a certain standard, that it becomes human-like?   Roland Rust: Well, right now people can pick up the nuance of emotional expression a lot better than machines can. I mean, machines are picking up, if I have a big smile, they can pick up that's a smile or a really bad frown, they can pick up that. But there are nuances. For example, I might be pretending to smile.   Will Barron: Sure.   “I believe that salespeople are in absolutely the right job. They could not be in a better job. They are working with interpersonal relationships and that's not going to go away easily in B2B. It may be easier to get rid of that in B2C. A lot of B2C is done online now, but a lot of B2B is too big and too important to be done online, and so people in B2B sales are absolutely in the right place.” – Roland Rust · [06:50]    Roland Rust: I might be actually very upset. “Say, that was really nice of you to park in front of my driveway so I couldn't get in.” That little nuance would be picked up by my wife very, very easily, but machine is going to have a really lot harder time. Now, one thing I would say, I know that you're really talking to salespeople more than anybody else. I want to tell the salespeople that they're in absolutely the right job. They could not be in a better job. That they are working with interpersonal relationships, and especially that's not going to go away easily in B2B. It may be easier to get rid of that in B2C. A lot of B2C is done online now, but a lot of B2B is too big and too important to be done online, and so people in B2B sales are absolutely in the right place.   Roland Rust: If I had to suggest a career path for a salesperson in B2B, I would say there are two possible career paths that would both be very good. One, stay a salesperson in B2B and be really good at it. That's one career path. And then the other career path is become a sales manager, because the sales managers are also going to be in demand, and that's a job that can't easily perform by a machine.   Will We Ever Get Rid of Salespeople in The B2B Selling Environment? · [07:50]   Will Barron: Will this ever change? And this is more like a thought experiment than something that I can practically see in the real world, but I've talked about this before on the show, Roland, it seems like a lot of B2B deals could be done by, and you're the perfect person to ask this to, an AI like API and it plugs into the seller API and it plugs into the buyers API, and the AI looks at the data of the buyer and says, “Oh, well, perhaps we can help with this. We can bridge this, we can provide this,” and then they go, “Well, okay, here's a fair transaction,” the deal's done instantly and the salespeople are wiped off the face of the planet. Is that something that is plausible to happen, or is there so many moving parts in that, that it'd be too difficult?   “If you're wanting to, for example, sell a bunch of jet fighters to the federal government, I guarantee you're not going to do that on an API system. So the bigger and more complicated the deal is, then the more people are going to be involved. I don't see salespeople in those arenas going away anytime soon.” – Roland Rust · [08:45]   Roland Rust: Yeah. I mean, we already have that. I mean, there are many, many companies that are connected that way, but typically it's for more routine things. If you're wanting to, for example, sell a bunch of jet fighters to the federal government, I guarantee you're not going to do that on that API system.   Will Barron: Sure.   Roland Rust: So the bigger and more complicated the deal is, or the more it's not routine, then the more people are going to be involved. I don't see that going away anytime soon. There are a lot of big, important deals being done.   How to Future-Proof Yourself Against the AI Takeover · [09:10]    Will Barron: What can salespeople do to future-proof themselves other than, just get a better at sales is quite generic, right? What can we learn, do, be, have that would be very difficult to replicate by the AI that inevitably is coming for all of us at some point, right?   “AI is coming for all of us, I'm sorry to say. It's really something that is going to get us eventually, but we can hold it off to some degree. So one way to hold it off is to get good at teaming up with AI. Because what's going to be happening is AI is going to be doing the thinking part of the work and the humans are going to be doing the feeling and interpersonal part of the work. Salespeople don't have to be machine learning experts, but the salespeople need to be good enough to be able to team up with AI because that's what the managers are looking for.” – Roland Rust · [09:34]   Roland Rust: They are coming for all us, I'm sorry to say. It's really something that is going to get us eventually, but we can hold it off to some degree. So one way to hold it off is to get good at teaming up with AI, because for a long time, what's going to be happening is AI is going to be doing the thinking part of the work and the humans are going to be doing the feeling and interpersonal part of the work. Salespeople, they don't have to be machine learning experts, but the salespeople need to be good enough to be able to team up with AI, because that's what the managers are looking for.   Roland Rust: They don't care who does the job. They don't care whether AI does the job or the human does the job. They could care less. What they care about is the job getting done. So what's happening now is that AI is getting better at certain parts of the job, and so humans need to not be threatened by that, need to just accept AI as a teammate. That's the way I like to think about it, as a teammate, and try to be a good teammate for AI, just like AI is trying to be a good teammate for the human.   How to Incorporate AI Into Your Daily Sales Activities · [10:50]   Will Barron: And let's go back to basics, just for someone who perhaps isn't familiar when we talk about AI and the thinking side of business, and perhaps even life in a wider context, Roland. What is AI good at? What should we proactively be letting AI replace in our workday so that we can become more effective and leverage the tools that we have that will make the biggest difference?   Roland Rust: Well, the thought for a long time was that really all AI could do was the very routine sorts of monotonous tasks that were done over and over and over again. And so the thinking was, “Well, as long as you have a good STEM job, you're okay.” But of course, that's not true anymore. Actually, the STEM job people are in much more risk than the salespeople, because the salespeople are in a feeling economy job, and a lot of those STEM jobs are going to be taken over by AI.   Will Barron: So the regular audience will know, I forgive you for not knowing this, Roland, but I've got a degree chemistry. My dissertation was in computational chemistry, part published elsewhere in journals and that, but what we were doing was trying to take the lab work out of the lab and give such proactive and effective modelling in the chemical environment, and it was just computing power that was holding us back from going for larger proteins and interactions. We were stuck with hydrogen vibrating, bouncing off over hydrogens and doing analytics and simulations based on that. But at some point, we're going to have the computational power to not have to use a lab. At some point, you're going to be able to put a problem into a computer, my brother's an analytical chemist, and at some point you're going to be able to put these problems into a computer and go, “Hey, we need this outcome, run a billion different calculations and different simulations and work out something that we can then verify in experimental form.”   Will Barron: And so I think it's actually really exciting and really empowering for the audience to hear you say, Roland, that all of these nerds, which is me in a prior life, who are on their high horses doing all this lab research, looking down on us knuckle-dragging salespeople, we're the ones with the potential career and the job security there. That's a weird dynamic that I know the audience haven't heard anywhere else.   The AI Takeover of STEM-Related Fields · [13:30]     Roland Rust: Yeah, that's true. And it's interesting what you were talking about, about modelling things with chemistry. In the broader sense, it's called a digital twin. You create a computer model of what it is you're trying to model, and of course the computer model that models the thing that you're trying to model has to be much bigger than the thing you're trying to model, but that's been done for computer systems for many years. They build these little computers inside these huge mainframes and treat them as a digital twin. But now the digital twin idea is going much further. We're modelling more complex systems using these techniques, and that gives us a lot more insight than we used to have. So some of the things that used to be impossible to work out are now being able to be worked out, which means that people had better concentrate on the feeling side of things and not try to I'll think that.   Will Barron: So you mentioned right at the top of the show this progression through the centuries and there being limited real crux points where the industry as a whole changes dramatically and massively, and as you pointed out there, and I think you purposefully did this, because this be an interested talking point for us, women, females are becoming, via the industry changing and technology changing, are becoming more, via… I feel bad as I say this, right? I'm trying to be politically correct when we're having a scientific discussion here, so I don't know why I'm overthinking the words that I'm saying, Roland. Just to throw it out there for the audience, as they hear me stuttering as I try and say this.   Women, Emotional Intelligence and the Future of AI · [15:05]    Will Barron: I'll just be blunt about it. Are we going to move into a position where women typically, stereotypically, data led shows that they have perhaps a higher percentage chance of having more emotional intelligence, having more empathy, are women that fit these categories going to come into their own in this modern world of sales, where we're going to partner up with AI, where some of the thinking, more male aspect roles stereotypes… You can clear this up in a second as I finished this terrible question, but are we getting to a point where the traits that women typically have or lean into more are going to be beneficial, versus us grunting men who've dominated the sales industry over the decades and decades that have come prior?   Roland Rust: Yeah, I think a lot of the fact that you still have men having an advantage in certain kinds of sales are really more a matter of inertia. That it's kind of a holdover from the 1950s and 60s world, where the men were the breadwinners and the women stayed at home and raised the kids. But the fact that the women traditionally over many, many millennia have been the ones that stayed home and took care of the kids actually give women a tremendous advantage in the feeling economy, because that nurturing and that empathy that's natural to them, even to a greater degree than men on average, will serve them really well. This is going to be a great time for women. Women should-   Why Women Will dominate the Feelings Economy · [16:47]    Will Barron: Is this change happening now, Roland, or is this something that is a iceberg, slow glacial moving? Because there's many pieces to this puzzle, of access to jobs, biases perhaps, maybe, maybe not biases in companies and employment and that kind of thing. Is this something that there's data on now, that the gap has changed, equaled, performance has changed within the marketplace? Or is this something that-   Roland Rust: Yeah, we can really see this happening. We can measure it. We've done a lot of examination of US government data, for example, and based on that, we have current research that's basically showing the degree to which women gained an advantage from the feeling economy and what kinds of jobs they're getting a greater advantage in. But we see this all over society, not just in business, not just in sales. If you can just take a look at the number of countries that have women leaders, that's a much greater number than it used to be. It used to be unless you were a queen, and you were a queen because the king, your father had you, but now people are electing women leaders. I mean, certainly Angela Merkel was an extremely powerful woman, but there are many, many women leaders around the world, much more than before.   Roland Rust: And in fact, if you take a look at the countries that have women leaders, their economic situation is better on average by far than the average country. I think that the reason for that is that the economies that tend to be the most advanced are also the ones that women can be the best at, because they're the ones, they're the economies that are closest to the feeling economy today.   How Women Can Make The Most of Their Innate Traits to Compete in the Current Sales Environment · [18:47]    Will Barron: What can the women now, forget us blokes for a second, what can they do to make the most of any innate traits that they have, whether it be emotional intelligence, empathy, whatever it is? What do they need to lean into, to not necessarily outcompete men, but outcompete the current marketplace?   Roland Rust: I think that women have the ability now to stop trying to be men. That sounds weird, I think, but I mean women have tried in the past to emulate the people that they've seen that have been successful around them, and that's typically been men. And so you find women trying to be more masculine, trying to hide their feminine side. You saw that with Hillary Clinton running for President of the United States. I mean, from all indications, she's a very warm person to the people around her, but at the same time, when she was trying to be a politician, she really covered that up. Same thing with Margaret Thatcher in England. Margaret Thatcher really tried to change her voice. She made her voice deeper, so that she would sound more serious and more masculine. That's something that we're going to see for a while, but it's going to go away, because women really benefit from being more feminine in today's feeling economy.   Feminine Traits in the Feeling Economy · [20:20]    Will Barron: Is it that they benefit from being more feminine? I'm sure there's an element to that. How much of it is that they benefit from just being authentic and congruent as well on top of all this?   Roland Rust: Well, when I'm saying that they're going to be better or they're going to be more feminine, I really mean that they're going to be more nurturing, they're going to be more empathetic. They're going to have more sensitivity toward the others that they're working with. These are feminine traits and they're very, very timely.   Roland Reveals the Things Men Can Do to Stay Relevant in the Feelings Economy · [21:03]   Will Barron: I know, and we're talking in broad strokes here, what can men do? Say like, and this is not me, say like I was super masculine man, I've just got testosterone squirting out my eyeballs, I'm super assertive, and sometimes that can help the sales process when you know you can really help someone and they've got their own baggage or stress or issues, and you just need to nudge them over the finish line of a deal perhaps. Assertiveness can help in certain selling situations. But perhaps I'm overassertive, Roland, I'm verging on the point of being a bit of a pain in the ass with my customers, but I get the deal done. I'm an ex-athlete, yada, yada, all the stereotypes. What can I do as this hyper masculinized ridiculous man that doesn't exist to lean into the future of the feeling economy and to have success there?   Roland Rust: I guess there are a couple of, I'll talk about a couple of extremes of what men can be like, and then talk about each one, because I think depending upon what kind of for person the man is, he would need to do different things. So for example, if somebody's just a hyper masculine sort of person, then I think the thing to recognise is that there's probably going to be some retraining needed, and the retraining would be to try to build up the empathetic ability, build up the people skills, build up the emotional IQ. Sometimes if somebody's not coming to that naturally, then they need retraining. One thing that the universities are going to have to get good at is bringing thinking economy people in, such as for example the hyper masculine people, and try to make them understand and appreciate the emotional intelligence part. So I think that it's a retraining for them.   Roland Rust: Now, there's another set of people, and the other set of people are the men who are perhaps very sensitive to begin with. I feel as though I fit into that category. I've written poetry and done music and things like that, and I feel as though sometimes on the job, I need to kind of hide that, or have felt that in the past. Now, at this point, realising what's happening in the economy, I'm trying to let that part back out again, because I realise that's a very useful part in today's economy. That if I'm more sensitive and more empathetic, that makes me more effective. So I'm trying to stop hiding the feminine part, if you will, of my myself and allow that to come out, because that is going to be very helpful and make me more effective.   Is Emotional Intelligence a Learnable Skill? · [24:00]   Will Barron: Sure. Are things like emotional intelligence, I don't know, it seems like they should be, but I don't know if there's any science data on this, are these learnable skills? Sure, there's maybe some genetic elements to this, maybe there's a nature-nurture argument to some of this as well, and as you're describing there, this idea of masculine traits, feminine traits is a massive sliding scale, and depending on multiple factors, we all end up one place or another. But are these traits that are going to be valuable in this feeling economy, such as emotional intelligence, be able to have an empathetic conversation with someone, are these learnable traits or are these innate and hardwired?   Roland Rust: Well, I believe they are learnable traits. I mean, a lot of this stuff has been taught in management courses for years. So I think it is learnable, but I think we're not used to thinking about feeling skills as being something that's part of formal education, but maybe we need to change the way we think about that.   AI is Much Broader Than Machine Learning · [25:03]    Will Barron: Okay. Final question for you, Roland, before we wrap up, I'm going to ask you to share a little bit about the book in a second as well, and that is, and I always ask, because we talk about AI regularly on the show. Typically, within the context of this podcast, people say AI, what they mean is machine learning, right? They mean, we are going to jump in our CRM system, we're going to type in a potential customer's name, the company's name, and the AI/machine learning is going to say, “Oh, there's a trigger event. Someone just left this organisation, this just happened, that happened, and it says we should call them in three weeks from now, because statistically, that's a good time to get in touch.” So I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet with all these sales technology companies who say AI, when clearly we have different definitions of these things, but with that same point.   Roland Rust: I think that it's important to recognise that AI is broader than just machine learning.   Will Barron: Yep.   Roland Rust: Machine learning is the thing that has made AI extremely popular today, because it's been shown that it can do very well with prediction. So you have that, but I mean, these CRM systems that you're talking about, they're AI. They're AI, they're just not machine learning in that sense.   The Difference Between AI and Machine Learning · [26:14]   Will Barron: What's the difference? Just so I'm clear, so I can have more informed conversations on this. Is there a definition of what AI is in the context of machine learning? Even better in the context of a CRM or something, if you're familiar with Einstein from Salesforce, or Oracle's different AIs.   Roland Rust: Yeah, and I've done CRM systems myself.   Will Barron: Perfect.   “I think of AI as being anything that uses computing machinery to emulate or do better than what people are doing in their thinking. So, the CRM system would definitely be AI in that definition, and I don't see anything wrong with that. Machine learning, in the end, I think is going to be shown to be limited. I think that it's probably limited to predictive ability.” – Roland Rust · [26:41]    Roland Rust: So I know about that, and I think of AI as being anything that uses computing machinery to emulate or do better than what people are doing in their thinking. So, the CRM system would definitely be AI in that definition, and I don't see anything wrong with that. We don't need to limit ourselves to machine learning, and in fact I think that's a mistake. Machine learning, in the end, I think is going to be shown to be limited. I think that it's probably limited to predictive ability.   Will Barron: Sure.   Roland Rust: Aside from that, I think we need to have perhaps different approaches. For example, one approach I use is Bayesian learning models. That is a statistical approach really, it's not using the neural network approach at all, but that is just as much AI as anything else. It's just a different way of doing AI.   How Long Before We Start Living in an AI Dominated World? · [27:43]    Will Barron: Sure, okay. Well, we'll wrap up with this, Roland, my final question, and obviously no one knows the answer to this to the date, to the year, but how far are we away from there being an AI and maybe this gets replicated and scaled, that can do… I don't know, like for example, you can ask it to do admin tasks and it'll just go off and do them and you'll have your spread sheet back with your expenses and your mileage, and all this kind of stuff that everybody hates doing. It's a waste of time, but typically humans do it because, in my experience, some of the tools that are out there, they need double checking by humans anyway, so a lot of people will just go, “Well, I'll just get it done,” but it's a bad use of their time.   Will Barron: How far away are we from that kind of AI, where we can verbally tell it something, perhaps it looks at us and reads a little bit of our emotions as whether we're demanding it's done right now or whether it can be done next week, or whatever it is, and then it goes and does perhaps an admin-esque task?   Roland Rust: The answer to your question I think is it's going to be quicker than you think, because what you're really talking about here is common sense and general intelligence.   Will Barron: Sure.   “According to our analysis, the feeling tasks will be more important than the thinking tasks by about 2035. That's on average. And the reason for that is that AI is going to be better and better at common sense and general intelligence to the point where really what's going to be left is the very human part of how we deal with other people. That's going to be our greatest advantage over AI. Now, I think if you go out, let's say 30 years ahead, I think AI would be better than us at everything.” – Roland Rust · [28:58]    Roland Rust: And it'll take decades I think for that to really come about, but according to our analysis, the feeling tasks will be more important than the thinking tasks by about 2035. That's on average. That is a huge difference, and the reason for that is that AI is going to be better and better at common sense, and better and better at general intelligence, to the point where really what's going to be left is the very human people part, of how do we deal with other people? That's going to be where our greatest advantage is over AI. Now, I think if you go out, let's say 30 years instead of 15, go out 30, 35 years, I think AI would be better than us at everything.   The AI Takeover is Coming. Brace Yourself · [29:45]   Will Barron: Well, that was what I was going to ask you. Roland, when are we just obsolete? Surely this is something that you ponder on after a few pints or a few whiskeys on a Friday evening, and we're going totally off context here, and we'll wrap up with this, but when do we just become just pointless, we're just these meat sacks that are not needed for AI to do its thing?   Roland Rust: I think 30 or 40 years.   Will Barron: Wow.   Roland Rust: And that's what Ray Kurzweil calls the singularity. It's where AI just becomes better than us at everything. My best guess would be 30 or 40 years for that, and those of you who are going to be alive 30, 40 years from now, good luck.   Parting Thoughts · [30:30]    Will Barron: Well, we'll wrap up with that bombshell, Roland. With that, mate, tell us where we can find out more about the book, The Feeling Economy, where we can buy it, and then where we can find out more about yourself as well, sir.   Roland Rust: Yes, okay. The book, The Feeling Economy, which is coauthored by Ming-Hui Huang, who is my longtime collaborator and wife, that can be found on Amazon. Just type in The Feeling Economy on Amazon and you'll be able to find it easily. And if you want to contact me, I'm happy to be contacted. Just Google Roland Rust, and I will come up, I guarantee.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well, I'll link to the book, everything else that we talked about, and a few articles if people want to read close into this topic, because it's top of mind for me with all the sales technology and everything that's going on in our space at the moment. I'll link all that in the show notes to this episode, over at salesman.org. And with that, Roland, I want to thank you for your time, your expertise, putting up with some terrible questions from me, which you gave great answers to, which are valuable for the audience. I want to thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Roland Rust: Thanks very much, Will.      

Michael Reddington is a certified forensic interviewer and the president of InQuasive Inc., where he uses his background in forensics and understanding of human behavior to teach businesses how to use the truth to their advantage. On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Michael explains the 6-levels of listening and how they’ll improve your prospecting, discovery and sales calls. 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 - Michael Reddington Certified Forensic Interviewer Resources: Michael’s LinkedIn InQuasive.com Michael’s Email – mreddington@inquasive.com. Transcript Will Barron: Welcome to the Salesman podcast. My name is will, and on today's episode, we're looking at the six levels of listening and how they're going to help you improve the performance of your prospecting discovery and sales calls with buyers. Today's guest is Michael Reddington, his certified forensic interview. He's got a book coming out in the not too distant future, The Disciplined Listening Method. You can find out more about Michael at InQuasive.com. And with that, Michael, welcome back again to the show.   Michael Reddington: It is great to be here again, Will, thank you so much for having me.   Will Barron: You're welcome. I'm glad to have you back on me. Is this the third time you've been on the show?   Michael Reddington: It is, yes. I'm afraid to admit it, because you're going to cap me off, I don't want to stop myself from maybe getting invited back after, but yes, it's the third time.   Are Salespeople Born with the Ability to Really Listen to Prospects and Buyers? · [00:59]   Will Barron: Good man. Well, maybe there's like five or six people have come on three or four times a year. You're in a select group there and it's because of my fan of you and your work, mate. We're going to dive into the six levels of listening. We'll see if we can get through all six. If we don't, that's fine, we'll have you back on in the future to dive into them, but let's start with this, mate. Are we born with the ability, sales people specifically, are born with the ability to really, really listen to our prospects so that we can help them or is this a skill that we need to learn?   Michael Reddington: I'm going to walk the fence a little bit. My official answer is it's a skill we need to learn. My unofficial answer is it is something we're born with, it's something that we typically stray away from. So if I was bold enough, which I guess I have to be, to take us all the way back to being infants, we literally have to be astute observers to everything going on around us, especially with Mommy and Daddy, to understand what they're thinking, what they're feeling. I have a four year old son. So he's right on track to developing his theory of mind, which is essentially understanding what people around us are thinking or feeling at any time, and just over the last couple of months, he started asking, “Daddy, are you mad at me?” which is a funny question to answer to my four year old because I might be, but I don't want to make this situation any worse.   Michael Reddington: So I would contend that, especially as young children, yeah, we have this real curiosity, this real interdependence, we're very much in tune, but then as we grow up and we get distracted and develop our own thought processes and assumptions and such, then it becomes less of a skill that we really focus on.   “Listening is something that we have to intentionally work to develop because so many of our sales conversations involve some level of stress. And as stress mounts, we tend to go to what we know, and generally in the sales profession, what we know best is ourselves, our product, our service. So if I feel like I'm under the gun, the best thing to do is to feel comfortable talking about me and what I'm selling and not listening, which comes back to backfire.” – Michael Reddington · [02:24]    Michael Reddington: So that would lead me to my final answer if you will, that yes, especially in the sales profession, it is something in that we have to intentionally work to develop because so many of the conversations we have involve some level of stress. They should and as stress mounts, we tend to go to what we know, and generally in the sales profession, what do we know best? Ourselves, our product, our service. So if I feel like I'm under the gun, the best thing to do is to feel comfortable talking about me and what I'm selling and not listening, which comes back to backfire.   The Key Identifiers of a Healthy Sales Call · [02:52]   Will Barron: Is the goal then to develop a skillset or a series, which we'll talk in a second, of skills to listen better, or is it to be just so relaxed during a sales call? I don't know what you take, do, have, or be to be relaxed in a sales call, but to reduce all the stress from it? Should a healthy sales call have a healthy level of, maybe not stress, but energy on the call itself?   Michael Reddington: Several questions in there. Try to work my way backwards. Yes, I think a sales call should have some energy. Passion can be a double edged sword, so we've got to be a little bit careful communicating our passion to too strong a degree, maybe with an audience that isn't quite there can be a little bit overbearing, overpowering, can push them away, but people often interpret passion for conviction and for knowledge and expertise. So having some passion and energy there certainly is important.   “Confidence comes from three places: having experience, being prepared, and surviving mistakes. So the more mistakes we live through, the more relaxed we can be in future situations, because the brain will be like, “I've been through this before. I can get myself out of it again.” – Michael Reddington · [03:54]    Michael Reddington: I do think being relaxed on the call helps and I'm a firm believer that often our confidence… Well, really confidence comes from three places. Having experience, which often we only get that the hard way, being prepared and surviving mistakes, which I think is an interesting subset of experience. So the more mistakes we live through, the more relaxed we can be in future situations, because, “I've been through this before. I can get myself out of it again.” But even on that prepared side, yes, it is true that we're under stress, we go to what we know and that can be dangerous, my personal experience and opinion has been the better we know our stuff, the easier it is for us to apply it to somebody else's world.   Michael Reddington: So if I'm just learning it and top of mind, and I'm worried about how do I convey it, I might be really tempted just to inadvertently force it on people. However, if I know it so well inside, out, upside down, backwards, the research behind it, the support, whatever it is, now I can engage in a conversation where I turn the keys over to somebody else. I let them lead the conversation because I'm not worried about what I'm going to tell them. I'm now listening for the perfect opportunity to fit what we're looking for into their world so it resonates at a much greater level. So the energy and stress should probably be there, we care about what we're doing, we're passionate. Really being completely confident to an in depth degree with our material allows us to let the conversation come to us instead of forcing it.   Michael Reddington: And then I think that first piece was, do I think people should focus on developing a listening skillset? Yes, without a doubt. For me, a mechanism that I try to use, being biassed self or talking about myself, of course, is going into these conversations I try to ask myself, “What can this person teach me?” Because if I go into a conversation feeling like I'm the one with all the information to give, that can put me into a validate mentality as opposed to a learning mentality and really limit my opportunity to create these connections that we're looking for. So I literally at the top of my notes will write down, “What can I learn? or “What can he teach me?” to try to put me into that mindset before the call starts.   The Validation Mindset: What It Is and Why You Should Avoid It · [06:00]    Will Barron: What do you mean by a validation mindset?   Michael Reddington: When your a hammer everything looks like a nail. So we can call it confirmation bias if we want, but if I'm going to check the box mentality, if I can get someone to tell me that they're experiencing this pain or they have this opportunity or this financial need or this staff need or software need, then great, I got them where I want them. Now I'm not really listening, I'm trying to fit them into a box that I already have as fast as possible and I could be missing all kinds of other opportunities.   Michael Reddington: We like to talk about listening for intelligence, as opposed to information. Listening to information can put us in that confirmation bias or that validation mentality where I'm looking for those three or four things that I'm predetermined to set somebody up for what I would like to sell them, but if I'm listening for intelligence, now I can pay attention to their tone of voice pauses, specific word choice. They might say some things that sound like throwaway statements about their day, their week, their weekend, their team, a call they just got off of, that could give me insight into another role to take, but if I'm just trying to fit them in that box, I'll never pick it up.   How to Listen for Intelligence During the Sales Qualification Process · [07:10]    Will Barron: For sure. And to be clear, qualifying our customers is important, right, whether we're all using banned med pick medic, one of like the bazillion different qualification frameworks, but I hear what you're saying, I think I do, tell me if I'm wrong here because I'm trying my best to actively listen as we do this year, right? Just ticking the boxes is something that we need to do, because we're a professional and we just make sure that someone is a fit for what's going on, but that's that's layer one. Layer two is, “Hey, are they responding to these questions? Do they give us information freely? Are they enjoying this? Are they in emotional turmoil? They've given me all these qualification questions, but they're never going to close a deal with me today because they're obviously stressed and we should be perhaps rearranging the call for another time.” Can we describe this as perhaps level one listening and level two listening, which is the word people can really separate themselves as salespeople.   Michael Reddington: Yeah, I think that is fair. The one thing I would say about qualification without disputing the necessity of the steps, is be careful not to do it with an exclusionary mindset. I've worked with a lot of sales professionals. I'm sure you have as well that when they talk about qualifying, “Are they a good fit for me? I don't want to waste my time.” So they literally, if they go in with that time focused mentality, “I don't want to waste my time.” If the goal is literally qualify them as quick as I can, one way or the other, and we could end up disqualifying candidates or prospects that might be an okay fit for what we're trying to sell or it might be a good fit for something else we have or maybe even somebody else in our network that allows us again to build a relationship and demonstrate value over time. So yes, qualify for sure. Just I would coach to not have such an exclusionary mindset or approach when we do.   Will Barron: Sure. I think I'll challenge you slightly on that, but agree in principle. Where I was going to go with it was, in a wonderful world, we've all got big fat pipelines, unlimited people, we can spend time on the phone, we can get to know them, we can close them six months a year from now when things change, when budget align, when timing aligns. Unfortunately, most sales people live in world of, “I've got to get my number by the end of the month,” which is both bad sales targets for management being handed down, multiple other factors as well.   The Rigid Qualification Framework You Should Probably Stop Using · [09:25]    Will Barron: So what you're saying is correct when we're doing [inaudible 00:09:28] rates, but I can just feel the audience going, “But, Mike, I've got to hit target and I've only got eight calls and I've only got so much time during the day and I've got to qualify them out.” Is there… how to describe this? Is that a mechanical process that salespeople need to rethink perhaps or is that just a mindset shift of, hey, you could qualify people hard, but don't miss important things that if you were listening more effectively, are there, which might counteract the very rigid qualification framework that we're probably using?   “Time is the enemy of empathy and time is the enemy of quality. If I'm thinking to myself, “This conversation has to be done in five minutes, I have to make eight calls. If this isn't going to work, I’ve got to hurry up and get to the next one,” I'm literally prioritising time over empathy, understanding, resonating with my audience and I'm prioritising time over the quality of the call.” – Michael Reddington · [10:15]    Michael Reddington: Yeah. I think you just hit another nail right on the head. I probably need a new analogy now, this is the second time we've used that one, but yes. So it's about finding a bit of a balance and it's about making the best of the time that we have. So time is the enemy of empathy and time is the enemy of quality. If I'm thinking to myself, “This conversation has to be done in five minutes, I have to make eight calls. If this isn't going to work, I got to hurry up and get to the next one,” I'm literally prioritising time over empathy, understanding, resonating with my audience and I'm prioritising time over the quality of the call and it can be tough, especially in what we do because in some ways our calls are predicated on failure. There's a reasonable likelihood this isn't going to work, I'm going to try to figure that out as fast as possible. If it's going to, I'm in, if it's not, I'm onto the next.   Michael Reddington: So it's finding that balance of how am I going to maximise the time that I have, really give every opportunity to suss out value in this conversation and if it's not there, cut bait and move on, but do that more from a value standpoint, as opposed to a time standpoint. I guess my personal belief is oftentimes time takes care of itself. Not always. We can run on forever, we can run on to people that, “Ooh, someone I can talk to today,” and they'll just talk our ear off, but generally speaking, if we have a good process in place, the time piece takes care of itself.   The Six Levels of Listening and Understanding · [11:38]    Will Barron: Sure. That makes total sense. Okay. So we pitched the six levels of listening. We should probably get into, at some point of the show, since I've talked about it at the top, before we go down too of the many rabbit holes, Michael, do you want to run through perhaps the first one or two, and then I'll throw some questions at you and we'll see how many we can get through. We don't need to get through them all if we've don't have time.   Michael Reddington: That's no problem. So with the six levels of listening, I'm assuming we're talking about Judy [Burnwell's 00:11:51] the HURIER model of the six levels of listening?   Will Barron: Yeah.   Michael Reddington: So the first two we have are hearing and understanding, and I think we could probably pause there just for a minute and talk about those two and section them off. I was, if you can believe this, sitting at a bar in Gainesville, Florida, if I remember correctly, when I was travelling and teaching years ago, and I sat next to a guy, who, we were talking, he was a nice guy and he said, “Hear me now, listen to me later.” And I thought that was an interesting way to put it, but it's a phrase that he used a lot to basically say, “Yeah, get what I'm saying now, but put some time into it, think about this later and think about what it really means.”   Michael Reddington: So I would argue that hearing and either listening or observing are two different things because we can hear the sounds that people are making, but are we really paying attention to the nonverbal cues, the tone of voice, the speed of delivery, the word choice? And one of my absolute favourite things to listen to is does somebody start to say a word, cut themselves off and then change it to another word because if they do that, there's a strong likelihood they're engaging in some impression management activity. The word they we're going to use is more than likely representative of how they're really feeling in the moment, the word they switch to is the word that reflects the feeling or the impression they want us to have. So if somebody starts to say, “Well…” Now, I'm trying to do one off the top of my head. I should have planned this out in the advance. But if someone was trying to say something along the lines of, “We're all on boar-…. We're going to take some time and talk through this.” Well, they're not all on board. So understanding what somebody is really thinking versus what they're telling us can be really important.   Michael Reddington: So yes, hearing it is important and being focused in limiting distractions and all those basic attentive or active listening skills that we've been taught forever are important, but just hearing the message isn't enough. Understanding is really where, we talked a little bit before, emotional intelligence comes into play, contextual or situational awareness. What is this message likely indicative of? What's the totality of their delivery? What can I assume from their intentions or motivations or fears? Who else is in the room? What might be going on? Really understanding the totality of the message would be that next level up from hearing and I'll certainly pause for you to jump in.   Situational Awareness in Sales · [14:22]    Will Barron: How do we develop this? Clearly your book when it comes out in the not too distant future, is your part of the experience here, right? Clearly. I'll give an opportunity to talk about the book at the end of the show, but is this experience, is this Will and Michael are going to be 80 and we're going to look back at all the mistakes we made in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and go, “Oh, that was because it was there, but I didn't see it,” or is this a skill that we develop of there's a checklist of things that we need to look out for, and then those things directly correspond to a certain result or thinking pattern in the person that we're engaging with?   Michael Reddington: Another great question. By the way, I look forward to having a beer with you when we're 80 and looking back and having that conversation.   Will Barron: You'll to show. There will be some kind of weird virtual show that's just like beamed into people foreheads in like 40 years, 50 years from now.   Michael Reddington: Who knows what it'll look like by then. An interesting piece of research that I discovered writing the book, I focused a lot on situational awareness because I think that really touches on what you're saying, understanding everything that's in play around us, just besides what I want to say and what I want them to say, and I really honed in on research done by a woman named Mica, if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, Mikey or Mica Endsley here in the United States, who was with the Air Force for many years. And she did a lot of situational awareness research, specifically with fighter pilots. And one of the things that she found was the majority of errors that fighter pilots make were involved with recognising all the relevant information when it was available. So everything that they needed to make the right decision was there, they just didn't see it, so they made a decision that they shouldn't have.   Michael Reddington: So when we think about correlating that to us, oftentimes in the sales conversation, it's the same. So yes, experience of course is helpful because the more we're involved in a situation, the more it becomes familiar. Our subconscious mental Rolodex does a better job at identifying when something is familiar, out of place, we've been here before, but really it's a decision. It's a decision to be aware that starts with understanding the goals we want to achieve.   Michael Reddington: So one of the things that we go through with the folks that we work with, which typically annoys them to death, is we'll break down their sales process step by step and it can be familiar, prospecting to setting the introductory meeting, qualifying, to discovery, to a demo, to post demo conversation, to sign the deal and now we're all friends forever doing business together, and through each one of those levels, okay, what's your strategic goal? What's your strategic goal? What's your strategic goal? And 99 times out of 100 their strategic goal is to get to the next level, when in in reality from hello, their strategic goal should be, how do I interact with this individual to eventually turn them into my best sales professional, my best sales advocate?   Michael Reddington: So if we reframe what our goal is, now we look for different cues, we listen for different opportunities, our situational awareness expands, whereas if I'm just trying to qualify somebody, do they fit, while that's a necessary step, I could be missing some additional intelligence. If I'm just trying to get the demo scheduled and they could say, “Yeah, shoot me an email and we'll see if we can get it on the books.” I can hang up the phone thinking, “Awesome, I just got the demo.” Probably not. Whereas if they say, “Absolutely, I'm very interested in learning more about this, please let me know what times work best for you next Wednesday or Thursday.” Now I'm far more likely to have the demo.   Michael Reddington: So in setting the proper goals to really frame our perspective, making the decision to stay aware and consistently questioning and checking what we're experiencing versus we want to achieve can really help elevate that.   The Observable Cues will Always Be There. You Just Have to Spot Them · [18:49]    Will Barron: All the signs, whether this be verbal, nonverbal, literally what people are saying, the buildup to the meeting, were they on time? Are they dressed professionally? Things like that I tend to find, when we do our sales calls or or sales org for our training programme, if someone shows up 10 minutes late to the call, and I'm just about to leave the call and it's your corporate client we're selling our training product, they're just not interested, right? The, the deal can basically just be ended there. We'd follow up with them in six months, send them some literature, see if things change. So I find that even leading up to the conversation there's clues as to the outcome of things.   Will Barron: This is a bit of a weird question, but are those things there and our brains are just so narrowly focused that we don't see them as in we need to expand what we're physically looking for or are our brains just not capable of seeing everything that's there at the time, and so we need to go, “Okay, I'm going to now check in on Michael's body language. I'm going to now check in on this. I'm going to now make a mental note of that and this,” and we need to constantly task switch to keep on top of this? Is this something that just happens and maybe it's a gut feeling that we get at the end of all of this, as opposed to something that is more tangible or is this something that we need to go, “Okay, check in here, check this one, two, three,” and go through a checklist in our brains as we're trying to communicate with someone,   “Gut feelings are good, listen to them. Gut feelings are typically our subconscious brain saying, “Hang on, we've seen this movie before,” and maybe consciously we can't pinpoint exactly where that came from, but we should be listening to our gut feelings for sure.” – Michael Reddington · [19:37]    Michael Reddington: First, gut feelings are good, listen to them. Gut feelings are typically our subconscious brain saying, “Hang on, we've seen this movie before,” and maybe consciously we can't pinpoint exactly where that came from, but we should be listening to our gut feelings for sure. My biassed opinion is I think it would be too bold to say that all of the information we need is there. All of these observable cues and hints are always there. Some people are harder to read than others. Their emotions can conflict and shift throughout. So to say that they're all there would be too bold a statement. I would contend that quite often, many to most of them are there, and usually we miss them because we're either distracted, we're looking for the wrong things, or we don't know what to look for. And when it comes back to distraction, the single biggest distraction we typically run into is our own internal monologue.   “The single biggest distraction we typically run into is our own internal monologue. You can't possibly have anything more important to say to me than I have to say to myself, and the same is true if we reversed it. Our brains can't multitask, so if either one of us is talking to ourselves while the other is talking to us, we're fully focused on what we're saying and only hearing a portion of what the other is saying. So we hear just enough that we trick ourselves into thinking we’ve got the whole message when we really didn't.” – Michael Reddington · [20:27]   Michael Reddington: I thoroughly enjoy our conversation. Anytime you're crazy enough to have me back, I'm in. You can't possibly have anything more important to say to me than I have to say to myself and the same is true if we reversed it. I have nothing more important to say to you than you have to say to yourself. Our brains can't multitask, so if either one of us is talking to ourselves while the other is talking to us, we're fully focused on what we're saying and only hearing a portion of what the other is saying, but we hear just enough that we trick ourselves into thinking we got the whole message when we really didn't.   Michael Reddington: So part of going back to that preparation is I'm not saying we need to go as far as having scripts, because those can be limiting, but understanding the goals we want to achieve, the framework we're going to take to get there, where the common pivot points might be, at least what our important illustrations or questions we want to make are, now we spend a lot less time thinking, “Well, what am I going to say next? Where do I go? What do I do? What's the next slide? What's going to happen?” And we can spend far more time being in tuned to all the cues that they're displaying in order for us to internalise those and adapt as necessary during the conversation.   How to Stay Present During a Sales Conversation with a Prospect · [21:49]    Will Barron: Again, super basic question here and I've tried to make steps towards this and I'll explain why with the [inaudible 00:21:44] in a second, but how the heck do we remember everything that's being thrown at us where we're not just focusing on what people are saying, but we're trying to take the whole picture in, Michael, on maybe a 20 to 45 minute sales call where we're trying to… We'll stick to the beginning of the sales process where we're trying to qualify the buyer, we're trying to see if we're they're a good fit to work with us?   Will Barron: How do we avoid getting to the end of the conversation and then we go, “Well, I really enjoyed speaking to Michael. What just happened?” Like we've chatted, we've gone back and forth, I'm not really any idea because I've been so in the moment, I've been so focused and actively listening, trying to ask questions that bring the best out of yourself during the sales conversation, the sales process, how we from a salesperson perspective then, remember it if we're not taking notes and we're not trying to plan the next question that we're going to ask and we're not following a script, which keeps everything down a straight line? How do we keep track of the conversation that we just had?   Michael Reddington: It starts with our goals, keeping our goal in mind. So for me, the average sales call, let's just say, is 45 to 60 minutes give or take. If somebody schedules a block of time with you, that's about how much time they have. So for me either right now while we're talking, I have my watch in front of me where I can see it so I don't give long winded answers. So if I have my watch in front of me where I can see it, I can at least keep a basic idea on where that time wise, so that way I know if I have to start shifting the purpose of the call towards the end, I'm leaving myself time to do it.   Michael Reddington: You mentioned notes. Especially if somebody's on a virtual call, which is happening so much more now and probably will stay that way moving forward to some degree. Right now, if I was writing notes over here with my right hand, you wouldn't be able to see it. So I could be not writing notes like I'm witnessing a lecture in college, but just a couple key words that I can look down at and because my handwriting is chicken scratch at best, when I do this, I'll write in all capital letters because it'll make it easy for me to just glance and see that one word that is the trigger I need to remember what I was doing.   “Listen to remember instead of listen to forget. So there are plenty of times where people will be talking to us and we'll start to think, “Oh, I'm never going to remember all of this.” Well, unfortunately we are now far more likely not to member because that's what our brain is focusing on, “I'm never going to remember this.” – Michael Reddington · [23:52]    Michael Reddington: The other thing that I do is listen to remember instead of listen to forget. So there are plenty of times where people will be talking to us and we'll start to think, “Oh, I'm never going to remember all of this.” Well, unfortunately we are now far more likely not to member because that's what our brain is focusing on, “I'm never going to remember this.” So instead, keeping a chain going in my head. I know this borderline's talking to myself, I'm still focusing on you, and now I'm trying to chain some of the things together.   Michael Reddington: I guess the last thought that I'll give here before turning it back over is instead of listening to the whole conversation, really observe for reactions to triggers. So at any point in the conversation where I'm saying something that my counterpart might have an emotional reaction to, that's really the time I want to make sure I'm paying attention. If they're talking to me about their concerns, their future goals, what they think of myself or what we're talking about, the times I really want to make sure I'm dialled in is when they are talking about how they think, feel or wants in a way that helps me achieve my goal. So instead of me trying to be full on a hundred percent for the entire duration of the call, I really want to hone in on those trigger moments that will give me the most intelligence. So it's like conserving resources, so to speak,   Will Barron: I get it. So we need to prioritise, listen to everything and then prioritise the one, two, three things that are going to have the most impact when we repeat them back to the buyer, if it's one specific objection that people are getting stuck on, we can double down and focus on that. I'm similar to you. So I've gone from a… I don't even have it anymore an eight four pad of paper and I'm just constantly scribbling down during these interviews. I've now resided myself to one post-it note per interview so I can just type single words and I've got… I can't read my own writing, start from surname. I don't even know what I've got surname on here anymore. So who knows how effective this is, but I find it keeps the point in my brain if I just do one word note long enough that I can continue listening, then look back, then ask the question, as opposed to being like, “Must ask this, must ask this must ask this.” So that's how I go about doing that and this is my post-it note system, January onwards we're going to give it a go, but we'll see how it goes.   Will Barron: But what I do get is better feedback from guests and I can see sometimes I'll be… Previously, I'd be jotting down making notes, Michael, I'd look up and then the guest would be just staring at me waiting for the next thing to come out my mouth and there's a bit of a delay. So I guess in person this might work better, doing long form notes, but short form notes, especially over Zoom, I think is really useful for the audience.   Michael Reddington: And I guess maybe one last, I think hack is the word the kids use these days, especially over Zoom, if I type out the questions that I want to ask and not necessarily in the script, but I do it in like 16 font, all capitals, can't miss it and I leave a bunch of space in between them. Now instead of me thinking, “What do I say?” There you go.   Will Barron: Yeah.   Michael Reddington: Now instead of me thinking, “What do I say next?” I can just glance down.   Will Barron: Yeah.   “A lot of observing for value and identifying hidden value comes down to managing the number of variables we have to deal with during the conversation. The more we can limit the number of variables we have to deal with and focus on the correct ones, the more successful we'll be.” – Michael Reddington · [27:18]    Michael Reddington: Love it. Or if you answer a question before I even get to ask it, now I just go ahead and I scribble that note next to the question that I was going to ask and I move on. So the little things we can do to prepare, make it easier. In my opinion, a lot of observing for value and identifying hidden value comes down to managing the number of variables we have to deal with during the conversation. The more we can limit the number of variables we have to deal with and focus on the correct ones, the more successful we'll be.   The Primary Goal of All Your Qualification Conversations · [27:40]    Will Barron: So would it be fair to say then if we are going into a qualifying conversation, the goal of the conversation is to see if this person is a good fit to work with us, as opposed to here is a 27 step qualification framework, med, pick, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and we're trying to tick these boxes off as we go through by monotonously asking the prospect these questions that they don't want to answer because there's no value in them answering it. Is that fair to say?   Michael Reddington: I think it's a hundred percent fair to say and I would guess that many situations that demotivates the prospect to answer, because there's nothing personal, there's no resonating going on, there's nothing between me and you. It's like when we go to the doctor and the doctor asks us the same 10 questions, not even looking at us, typing it into the computer and we're like, “Do you even care about me? Are you going to help me with what I feel like is bothering me today?” So I'm a huge fan personally, especially in qualifying calls, going with an illustrative opening, and I'm going to keep it abridged for time, something along the lines of, “Will, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today, appreciate that we're both interested in potentially understanding if we are the right fit to work together. In fact, we found that a lot of times at this point in the relationship, many of the people who are considering partnering with us have the same two or three questions,” one, two three. “So with that in mind, generally…” bam. So now it's like I'm educating them before I start asking questions. And there's some other psychological influence mechanisms that out we're using there, but we like to say illustrate before you investigate.   Michael Reddington: So now I'm making it more of a conversation. Some things I'll just throw out, do they nod their head? Do they smile? Do they react? Do they smile? Do they laugh and say, “Yeah, me too,” or do they shake their head like that's totally foreign? I'm gathering intelligence. Some, I'll asking a question. So by balancing that out through the conversation, now it doesn't feel like I'm sitting in front of them with a clipboard and a checklist and they're going to get the results of my evaluation when we're done.   Will Barron: Let me ask you this and this is going to ruin this call that I do when people… We do essentially a qualification call when people want to sign up to our training programme because there's so much of my time now invested into each of the students and the price has gone up versus just the online version of the course that we need to make sure that it's the right people coming in there.   Michael Reddington: Of course.   Will Barron: So we go through the call and I'll do a bit basic consulting, see where they are. Typically it's where are they, where do they want to get, can we bridge the gap across? And then towards the end of the course something I've started doing and this was just a mistake at first, the Zoom was just playing up and so what I did was there's two packages, two offers that we have, I just typed it into Zoom chat and clicked enter and said, “Hey, talk of the pricing, look at the offer, what you get for it and you tell me which one you want to go with.” So it's some of a close ended question, maybe it'd be more appropriate to have a “What you fancy would be a… I don't want to force people down. I don't want to do like in an assumptive close, I'm not weird like that.   Will Barron: But what I find is then people go, because they're looking, they have to move their laptop closer, so they're looking at the two offers that we give them typically, whether it's like a one month mentorship or 12 week mentorship and you can see the face and I then have this weird moment where they forget that they're on camera.   How to Look Out for Genuine Responses Over a Zoom Call · [31:20]    Will Barron: I can see their genuine reaction, their guards drop and obviously most of the time people are like, “Oh great. This kind of fits my budget. This fits my goals. I'm excited,” and people like, “Yeah, yeah, let's move forward with it.” And you can see some people, their face drops and it's not quite the right fit for them and that is that. And before they even say anything, I can then react to that on the call itself. What do you think of that? Because it's all a fluke and I've done it a few times now on a few calls and people seem to give a… that's the… because it's a sales call as well, but people seem to drop the guard and give me a genuine response just via the kind of the nonverbal cues on camera.   Michael Reddington: I love it. I was doing a sales programme a couple years ago and I spent way too much time going into all these nuances of non-verbal communication and different areas of the body and what to look for and all this stuff and I say this jokingly, all proud of myself for all the stuff that I'm teaching them. And then at the end, one of the reps in the back of the class raises their hand and says, “So I think I got it. Really what I just need to do is do they look happy or do they not?”   Will Barron: Yeah.   Michael Reddington: And I started laughing. I was like, “Yes, you're way smarter than I am.” Like all of this stuff is nice, but it doesn't really matter. Do they look happy or do they not? So one of the tools that I'll use, we like to call a suggestive series. So I'll give somebody a suggestive series of choices. Oftentimes at this point in the conversation, the person I'm talking to, their top three or four concerns might be one, two, three four or their top goals might be one two three or there are two or three things that they really have on their mind or the problems they really want to get resolved right now are one, two, three. And when I throw them out there, I do exactly what you just said. I'm just looking at their reaction to each of them and now does one seem to turn them off? Does one seem to make them angry? Does one seem to make them happy? Do they smile? Do they shrug? Do they stop and move their eyes like they're really hesitating to think about it? Do they kind of give me a disgusted face?   Michael Reddington: But now all of these things give me immediate intelligence. That's an immediate emotional response to something that I said, they almost certainly didn't even realise that they did it and now I have intelligence that I can begin to adapt and specify where I go next to take advantage, either avoid or go for something. So I think what you're talking about is another great application for that.   Will Barron: I think I'll experiment with it. With your blessing, Michael, I think I'll experiment with it a little bit more then because I don't want it to be a manipulative tool that I'm using, but just dumping it in the chat, allowing them just have two, three seconds to look it over and see what's a good fit for them and respond. As I said, I just had this moment of clarity when it happened the other day, as I said, when I had to do it and I've done it since because it seemed to work, of people's faces like either light up or occasionally just go, “Oh crap. I've not got the funds for this,” or “This is not a good fit,” or “This isn't what I was expecting,” and then that immediately, no more bullshitting, no more fuffing around. I know exactly where people are on the call. So yeah, I'll do more experimenting and I'll I'll report back to the audience.   Remembering and Interpreting: The Keys to an Effective Sales Call · [34:14]    Will Barron: Now I've just ruined it for everyone who listens to this episode of the show who jumps on a call with me to see if they're a good fit for the training programme, but I'm happy to sacrifice our sales process for the audience. Michael, we've covered two levels of the six levels of listing now. Is there anything you want to throw in on top? I'm just conscious of time. Is there anything out of the other four levels that we really desperately need to cover?   Michael Reddington: Well, the next two are going to be remembering and interpreting and we can't remember what we don't hear and we talked a little bit about helping with remembering. With interpreting that one thing that I would say is we talk a lot about emotional intelligence, putting ourselves in someone else's shoes. Context is king. So trying to understand where they're coming from, all the factors that could be impacting what they say.   Michael Reddington: A funny example, I think from my interrogation career is people used to ask me, “Don't you get mad when people lie to you?” No, I'm actually thankful for it. And then they would look at me kind of crazy. I'm like, “First of all, they're not lying to hurt me. It's the last good decision they have. Like they're just trying to stay out of trouble, so I can't fault them for that and it probably has some intelligence buried within the lie. So if I listen carefully enough, I can figure out where it's coming from, what they're afraid of.”   “Always remember that as sales professionals, often people have more reason to at least initially resist us than they do to welcome us. So never take that personally.” – Michael Reddington · [35:16]   Michael Reddington: So let's remember as sales professionals that often people have more reason to at least initially resist us than they do to welcome us. So instead of taking that personally, really working to understand, as we go through that interpretation. Interpretation, of course, then leads into evaluation. Evaluation, again, takes in all the contextual clues and works that in with our goals. How does everything I'm hearing and seeing relate to the goals that I want to achieve? If I'm qualifying, is this a conversation I should continue having, is this one I should break off? If it's one I should break off, how should I do it in order to leave some door open for potential? Or if I'm going to keep going, how do I go in a direction that gets me closer to my goal?   “It's important to remember that people react the strongest to what they hear first and people will interpret how we communicate with them as proof for how much we respect them.” – Michael Reddington · [36:04]    Michael Reddington: And then the last one in her model was responding, and I would like to say that it's important to remember that people react the strongest to what they hear first and people will interpret how we communicate with them is proof for how much we respect them. So really being conscious with our responses, trying to respond in a way that helps protect their self image, doesn't put the swinging spotlight over their head or makes them feel embarrassed and keeps us moving towards the goal would be considerations.   Will Barron: There's a whole conversation there. Maybe we can discuss this in the future of not… kind of respect, but also the dynamic between buyer and sell where typically at the beginning of most sales calls, there's like an alpha beta kind of battle where the buyer wants to be the one in control. Then when they see that we can help them, that we're a consultant, that we're following Michael's advice, we're generally listening to them, perhaps that simmers down around the same kind of level, which is where we want to be. And then it depends on how, forceful is the wrong word, completely the wrong word, but how assertive we need to be to help them get over the hurdle of spending the money, putting the resources in, building a team, building consensus within the account, getting a champion on board, depending on how assertive we have to be to help them help themselves towards the end, there can be another bit of a battle back and forth.   Will Barron: So it'd be interesting conversation to have in the future, Michael, of how that respect and all these different dynamics affect a conversation from the perspective of a salesperson where you always start in second place typically. It's very rare, even when I jump on sales calls, when people have listened to the sales and podcast for the last five years, the begging for a book, the begging for consulting and I get on a call with them and they still are trying to treat me not as a peer for the first 20 seconds until I do certain things to not allow that to happen. So that could be a cool topic for the future.   Michael Reddington: Yeah. I'd be happy to talk about that. I think that'd be fun.   Parting Thoughts · [37:58]    Will Barron: Cool, man. Well, we'll wrap up with that. I know the book isn't out yet. Tell us, if you want to share when it's going to be out or you keep the timeframes rough, if you like, but tell us more about the Disciplined Learning Method and where we can find out more about yourself as well.   Michael Reddington: I appreciate it. Thank you. So the book is The Discipline Listening Method, how a certified forensic interviewer unlocks hidden value in every conversation, a bit of a mouthful. If all goes well, I don't want to jinx anything, it should be available globally in spring. So we're working hard to hit that target date. They can learn more about me at InQuasive.com, I-N-Q-U-A-S-I-V-E.com. I'm on LinkedIn as well. If anybody wants to find me on LinkedIn, Michael Reddington CFI, and really the message that they're going to get from the book, from the website, hopefully from our conversations, is that everything that we do should be about enhancing the value of our relationships and conversations in order to spur goal achievement, not just goals we have in mind, but even greater goals. And oftentimes the path to do that is a bit surprising and if we take a step back, prioritise somebody else's experiences, and really, like we talked about today, open our situational awareness up a little bit wider, we can begin to create opportunities that previously didn't appear to be out there.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well I'll link to the book when it's out, your website right now, and everything else that we've talked about in the show notes this episode over its salesman.org. With that, Michael, it's a pleasure as always, mate. I want to thank you for joining us on the Salesman podcast.   Michael Reddington: My pleasure. Thank you for having me back.