The Salesman.com Podcast

Few things strike fear into the heart of sales reps quite like cold calling. Do you know where that fear comes from? A lack of control. The more control we have over any situation, the less afraid we’ll be. Same goes for cold calling. So if you want to eliminate cold calling fears FOR GOOD, you just need a simple process or framework to follow so you know what to do at each step of the call. That’s where control comes from. And that’s what we’re talking about today. The first step of the Cold Calling 101 is… 1. Confirm Confirm you’re speaking to the RIGHT person. And that means the decision maker. You want to be speaking directly with whoever decides whether to buy. Because otherwise, you’ll be dealing with a gatekeeper who then has to go convince their boss to make the purchase. And along the way, your product’s value will likely be diluted. So what does that sound like in practice? “Hi, Will Barron from Salesman.org. Who’s in charge of sales training at X? Scenario 1: “That’s me.” — Move on to the next step Scenario 2: “That’s Barry.” — Now we need to get in touch with Barry. “Ok thanks. Could you connect me with him? Can I tell them that you referred me?” 2.  Break This step is all about breaking the prospect out of their status quo, i.e. being comfortable with the solution they’re using right now. So ask them how their current solution is working out. As it turns out, most people will tell you there’s some kind of problem. Things could always be cheaper, faster, more effective. So pop the question, like this: “OK great, how are you training your sales reps right now?” No matter what their response is, it’s important to still move on to the next step. Even if they tell you they’ve already got a solution that’s working great, still push forward to 3. Value This is when you give a short snippet of the value you can offer. Don’t go too crazy on the details here. Just hit the biggest problem and the most important way what you’re selling solves it. One sentence should do the trick. Now remember, you’ve got to push through to this step, regardless of whether they seem pleased or not with their current provider. Buyers will be open to new solutions more often than you might expect. And if they push back, you only have three more sentences to get through (15 seconds max). Now let’s look at what a value statement looks like in practice. “We help salespeople find and close more sales in the next 30 days or your money back.” See? Quick, succinct, and hit’s all the main points. Doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. 4. Tie-In Here’s where you tie in the value of your product to what the prospect is going through. How can you help? What kinds of benefits that matter to THEM can they expect to see from working with you? And more than anything else, why the hell should they care? Here’s what it might look like in our scenarios. Scenario 1: “It seems like you’re not happy with your current sales training solution. Would it make sense to see if we can solve this problem for you?” Scenario 2: “Would it make sense to see if we can turbocharge your current solution so you can train more effective sales reps more quickly?”  Once you bridge this gap, you can move on to the all-important final step… 5. Close This is where the rubber meets the road ladies and gentlemen. Where everything you’ve done until now combines into the sweet success of a “yes” or the bitter pill of the “no”. It’s time to make the ask. Now of course the goal here isn’t to make the SALE. Because no one in their right mind is going to agree to buying after a thirty second conversation. Instead, your aim is just to set up a sales meeting. Schedule a call. That’s it. So what does that look like? “Ok great, it looks like we might be able to help. Does it make sense to jump on a quick 10-minute call tomorrow to discuss?” Bam, simple as that. Now the nature of cold calling here means you’re likely to get a “no”, even if you’ve done everything right. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to give up. Instead, give them your contact info and ask for theirs as well. You can then plug them into your nurture sequences so that if something DOES change on their end, you’ll be the ones at the top of their mind. And if you get a “yes” out of it all, well then mark your calendar because you just scored a sales call with a brand new lead. Congrats!

Do you want to become a legend in your industry? How would that affect your sales performance? What would your day look like if you had inbound leads hitting your inbox rather than having to cold call until your fingers bleed from dialing? On this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Shama Hyder shares a bunch of personal branding examples and a step by step process to getting known in your industry Sharma is known as the “Zen Master of Marketing” by Entrepreneur Magazine and the “Millennial Master of the Universe” by Fast Company. 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 - Shama Hyder Zen Master of Marketing Resources: FREE SalesSchool Workshop – Start HOT Calling To Remove The Fear And Failure From Cold Calling ShamaHyder.com @Shama Shama on Linkedin Book: The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue Transcript Shama Hyder: So I think as any good salesperson will tell you, especially in the B2B world, relationships are everything. So the first thing that you have to keep in mind, especially with something like personal branding, is that you're going to have to look at the ROI in both quantitative and qualitative ways. It's not necessarily about how many people can you get in front of, it's how are you viewed by that audience? Are you another salesperson? Are you a respected resource? Are you someone they feel looks out and has their best interests in mind?   Will Barron: Hello sales nation, I'm Will Barron, host of the Salesman Podcast. The world's biggest B2B sales show where we help you not just take your target, but really thrive in sales. If you enjoy this content, make sure you click subscribe. And with all that said, let's meet today's guest.   Shama Hyder: Hey, this is Shama Hyder founder and CEO of Zen Media.   Will Barron: In this episode, we're diving into personal brand in sales. Why it's important, how to measure it, how to leverage it the best you possibly can, and the first thing you should do after consuming this content to make a real impact on LinkedIn in front of your potential customers. Let's jump in.   How to Analyze the Size and Depth of Your Personal Brand · [01:12]   Will Barron: Before we dive into the how of building a personal brand. How do we, if we even can, how do we measure our progress with it? Is it the number of Twitter followers we have? Or for a B2B sales professional, is there a better way to measure the personal brand that we have in perhaps within our vertical?   Shama Hyder: So I think as any good salesperson will tell you, especially in the B2B world, relationships are everything. So the first thing that you have to keep in mind, especially with something like personal branding, is that you are going to have to look at the ROI in both quantitative and qualitative ways.   Shama Hyder: So the qualitative is that really important, hard to put numbers on at times, but just as important. So, it's your reputation, it's how someone says, “oh, you are everywhere”, or “I've heard of your company before”. Anybody who's been in sales knows the difference when they call someone and they get hung up on versus, “oh, I've heard of you guys”. And that's the game changer. When someone says, “I've heard of you”, and you have that instant credibility, your reputation precedes you. And I think that's what you're really looking for when you build a brand where you've already have that credibility, you have that respect, and you have that time. So if you get their time and you've got their attention, then you're one step closer to actually closing the sale.   The Benefits of Being Super Specific with the Type of Audience You Want Be In Front Of · [02:27]    Will Barron: I think you just touched on something here and I think you consciously did this of being everywhere. And I think this is the salesperson's biggest competitive advantage versus the marketing team or other development teams in that, my background in medical device sales, there was only 16 urologists here in Yorkshire here in the UK that I needed to be in front of. If they all bought something from me every year, I'd smash my target, which was a couple of million quid. It's not that difficult to be everywhere in front of 16 people, versus a CEO of an organisation, your customers, you're trying to be in front of thousands of people. So how can we leverage this fact that we only need to be in front of a handful of people rather than tens of thousands? How can we leverage that as sales people versus perhaps how a marketer would?   “It's depth rather than breadth. And that is also something to be said about your personal brand. It's not a popularity contest. It's not how many people know you. It's what the people that you are trying to get in front of think of you. How are you creating resonance and relevance with that group?” – Shama Hyder · [03:17]   Shama Hyder: Sure. So it's not necessarily about amplification all the time. And what I mean by that is it's not necessarily about how many people can you get in front of. Which of course, if you have a niche audience, that's not really the case. It's how are you viewed by that audience? Are you another salesperson? Are you a respected resource? Are you someone they feel looks out and has their best interests in mind? Are you someone they feel like keeps up with the industry, that cares about their patients, their practise. I think it's conveying all of this information. So it's depth rather than breadth. And that is also something to be said about your personal brand. It's not a popularity contest. It's not how many people know you. It's what the people that you are trying to get in front of think of you. How are you creating resonance and relevance with that group?   Who Decides How You Are Perceived in Your Industry? · [04:03]    Will Barron: Before we've picked up the phone, perhaps they've Googled us before we've outreached to them, or perhaps we have outreached to them and we're in the process of booking call and they've Googled us. Who decides that initial perception of whether you are an industry thought leader, whether you are to be trusted? Is it the content that we put out? We'll touch on content in a second. Or is it how they interpret the content? If that makes sense. Who's in control of that initial, oh, that seems like a reasonable person to chat to.   Shama Hyder: So it's a combination of things, . And here's the crazy thing. We often think it's one person it's not always one person. Especially if you look at B2B tech sales, what a lot of research shows is that it's a group decision making process now more than ever before. And so it's not always one person who says, “aha, I think X, Y, Z.” I think about, like I do keynotes all over the world and more and more, my bookings are by younger millennials, people who are not necessarily in decision making positions, and roles in their company, but they've read my books, they've followed for a while. And they're the ones that bring me to their bosses and they're “we got to get her in.” And so you've got to be able to realise that it's not a one track, you have this one person you need to influence. You also have to influence this sphere of people that influence their decisions.   Shama Hyder: And what you're really looking for is content, but also consistency in that content. And that's the other mistake so many people make, especially salespeople, which is funny because sales is all about multi-touch, multi-point we all know this. And so it's funny because it's not about one tweet, one LinkedIn post. It's what you do consistently over time. And I feel like consistency is such an unsexy word. People don't like it. It's the cousin of prudence, . Nobody wants to hear the word consistency. But it's absolutely crucial when you're building brand and you're trying to build that trust and credibility and shorten your sales cycle.   Shama Hyder: So for B2B folks, they say, that's the best thing you can do as you build these profiles, as you build this presence, you are going to shorten that sales cycle considerably. That doesn't mean you can be shortsighted about it because it does take time, but where something might have taken eight months, a year, can be a lot shorter because they already trust you. They already think that you are the best of the best.   How to Build a Personal Brand in B2B Sales · [06:56]    Will Barron: For sure. I think it immediately separates you from the competition. If you're known, liked, and trusted within an industry, if you just do a couple of talks a year. I used to do it all the time to surgeons. I'd get up on stage and explain kind of the future of endoscopy, the different equipment that we're using. I worked for the two biggest competitors in the industry, so it'd be kind of a vendor agnostic. But I'd get people come and talk to me after the fact, and they'd very often become customers kind of a year or so down the line. So with that said, is there a series of things that B2B salespeople should be doing to build a personal brand? And then we can kind of dive into the nitty gritty of practically what they should be doing day in, day out. For example, context, speaking, are there any real high leverage items that people or activities people should be doing to build their personal brand in a specific vertical?   “The highest leverage thing that you can do to build your personal brand regardless of vertical, is perhaps the most important and the most overlooked, which is ask yourself why and what are you trying to accomplish?” – Shama Hyder · [07:13]   Shama Hyder: The highest leverage thing that you can do to build your personal brand regardless of vertical, is perhaps the most important and the most overlooked, which is ask yourself why and what are you trying to accomplish? And I know this seems like a simple question, but it's amazing how many people dive in because they think that's what they're supposed to be doing without really saying, what's the goal? Am I looking to shorten that sales cycle? Am I looking to build trust? Am I looking to just get visible? Maybe my target market doesn't even know who I am. I don't even exist. What does that look like? And I think then the question becomes, and again, this is so important, how do I add value to my target market?   Shama Hyder: This is the big difference I think between sales from yesteryear and sales now. Perhaps it's always been this way, but that it's highlighted so much more now, how can you add value to your given audience? Absolutely crucial in sales. And most people never ask themselves that. If you asked yourself that, get on stage, you would talk about these vendor agnostic solutions that there might have been, but you're really trying to educate and you're providing value. So whether that's through the stage, whether that's through online, that's the key. What is it that your audience is hungry for?   Shama Hyder: And I'll go a little deeper into this Will, if you don't mind, because I think this might be helpful for your audience listening. So many people don't know this, but I did my thesis on Twitter when it had about 2000 users. Yeah, so it's crazy, long time ago, about 10 years now, today, of course, Twitter has 375 million users.   “Why do people use social media? And I think this is an important question to answer because before you can try to figure out how to use it,  you have to understand what drives people to use it.” – Shama Hyder · [08:55]    Shama Hyder: So very different landscape. One of the things that I looked at in my academic research for grad school was why do people use social media? And I think this is an important question to answer because before you can try to figure out how to use it, think you have to understand what drives people. Like as sales people, we're all about the motivation. What is the motivation? So when I looked at that, my hypothesis was that we use it to connect with each other, to have that sense of community, but I was wrong. The primary reason people use social media is to showcase their own identity. Okay. And I know it might sound narcissistic first glance, or, oh my God the world is a giant selfie.   Shama Hyder: But if you stop and think about it, you realise that's how we've always become who we are. It's the feedback we get, who we are, and we adapt to fit our community and so forth. Identity is a very changing thing. But translate this to sales and marketing, and what this means is it used to be so much about what does your brand say about you? Like we've all been these branding exercises for a company perhaps, or we're looking at, what does our brand stand for? Who do we want to be? What do we… We've all been there, but what this research shows us is the right question to be asking isn't what does our brand say about us? The right question to be asking is what does doing business with us, allow our customers to say about their personal brand?   How Your Personal Brand Affects the People That Choose to do Business with You · [10:10]    Will Barron: What would be an example of that in the B2B space?   “If someone chooses to do work with your company, they're doing it not because of what your company is, but what it allows them to say about themselves.” – Shama Hyder · [10:28]    Shama Hyder: So if someone chooses to do work with your company, they're doing it not because of what your company is, but what it allows them to say about themselves. And so I'll give an example. We've done projects with McKinzie. They're a client, McKinzie Consulting. And so if you look at those guys, when people hire them, for business issues, big challenges, when the fortune 100 go to them for different things, they're going to them because it allows them to say, “we care about strategy and we're going to look for one of the best in the industry to help us”. It allows them to say about their brand. When a CEO hires a business coach, they're hiring someone because it says, “I care about my leadership. I care about my career. I care about this.” When people come to us for marketing and new media, and how do we how do we stay relevant and make sense in the digital age, what they're saying is “I want to be innovative. So I'm working with you”, and that's very important when you're in sales to try to figure out how can you help support your customer's goals?   Shama Hyder: And I'll give you another great example. So Chase Business is one of our clients. We've got this amazing campaign with them right now called a Chase Bizmobile that has been going all across America. It's literally like an amazing trailer, for lack of a better word, but it's really outfitted cool. We help design, put it together, we got some great partners we're working with to roll that out. But the whole point was chase business, it's a bank, Chase is a bank they're in the banking business. But what they had to stop and ask themselves were “what does that mean for our customers?” And their customers are interested in their business. So Chase looked at it and said, “how do we help support our customers businesses?” Being, “yes we're their banking partner, but we want to be their business partner”. And so great kind of example of that, of where this Bizmobile that's going around, has expert advisors. We actually do a lot of these sessions for them on marketing, on technology, helping business owners, who are their customers, reach their goals.   Shama Hyder: And so it's so easy, especially when you're in sales to get siloed. Like I am selling this one thing without saying, what is the goal of my customer, my client? What are you trying to do? And when you step back a little bit, it's amazing, think about the relationships that we have with someone when they say, “you know what, my product's not right for you. This is who you need to talk to”, or “you're just not ready for this yet. But let me tell you exactly what you need.” It's amazing when someone steps back and has true empathy for their customer, their client, and with that empathy helps them solve the greater issue. It may not be what they're looking for from you right now, but I promise you they'll think of you. They will turn to you. You will have their trust for when you need it.   Will Barron: I'm going to give the audience a sneak peek here, and then we'll pull it back to the conversation because I've been following your Instagram, or the business' Instagram profile. So I've seen your Chase bus. And it's very similar to something that I want to do. I'm trying to work with a couple of the audience will… the biggest brands in the sales industry are kind of back and forth in negotiations over this. I really want to get a VW camper van and turn it into an interview, essentially, studio and drive around the UK and Europe interviewing business leaders and sales experts. So that's a sneak peek for the audience that might crop up before the end of the year. And I saw what you were doing on the Instagram profile. I was like, “yes, this is very similar, this is what I want to do moving forward”. So I'm glad we're on the same wavelength with that, but-   Shama Hyder: Yeah, let us know if you need help designing it and getting it out there. So yeah, it's been such a fun campaign and that's a fabulous idea. And see the right brand partner, for example, Will, the person that partners with you on that or says, we want to sponsor this. They'll be really smart because their audience, who they want to get in front of is who's listening to this podcast. They're professionals, they already trust you, they enjoy the content, they trust that you're bringing good resources to them. So it's already a very natural fit and connection. And if they're smart, they're going to leverage that. So much of this becomes about making those connections and sales not being sort of a blunt force instrument, but really being fine tuned, looking for influencers who already have that trust, who have that credibility and then making smart partnerships and leveraging that to grow your brand further.   Will Barron: Well, I'm going to take that clip where you said it was a smart move and show it to these organisations I work with. So thank you for that. That was awesome.   Understanding What Your Customer Really Needs · [15:05]    Will Barron: But going back to the branding element of this, and kind of what we're talking about is high level. This is what an organisation could perhaps do. How do we narrow this down for an individual? And I had one idea that popped in my head as, you were talking Shama, of perhaps if we don't do a deal with someone without mentioning any names, that's a small blog post of, I couldn't work with this person because of X, Y, Z. I encourage them to look at 1, 2, 3. That's a nice little blog post that can be then shared around within your little niche, within your vertical. And I imagine if you did clearly, there's elements of being able to write and other things here, which we can perhaps drill down into a little bit deeper on the content creation front.   Will Barron: But something like that builds trust, it shows that you're at least an expert in your product and the competitors as well. Is that something that we should be aiming for? Bits of content like this, that take a one-on-one conversation that salespeople have all the time, but then perhaps add a bit of scale to it, because 30 people can see it, 40 people can see it.   Shama Hyder: Absolutely. If you are an individual, you also have this distinct advantage because you can step back and say, “what does my client really need?” And not just right now, but overall.   Shama Hyder: So I'll give you a very simple example. Let's say you're in B2B sales for technology, for IT. Very common, you sell IT and you usually sell it to companies, startups that are growing really fast. Okay. I'm just making this up. So let's say your audience is startups that are scaling really fast and you give them IT infrastructure, great. You know, already that those startups are facing much greater challenges than just IT. It's not so much a stretch to put together a guidebook, a resource that says here's what working with so many startups that are scaling fast has taught us that we've been able to curate all this information and here's a directory of resources.   Shama Hyder: Of course, you can have your IT, but maybe they need other things with HR. Maybe they need other things with finding good talent. And so maybe this is a resource book that helps them get where they need to go. And you're a part of that puzzle. But the more you can step back from “what's in it for me?”, and look into “how can I help them with the bigger picture?”, that's really where you're going to get the most bang for your buck.   Will Barron: That makes total sense. And for me, medical device sales, I would put together and I carry out my own iPad. The corporate iPad that could never be touched or changed. I carry around my own iPad as well. And I had basically pinched a load of slides from the previous organisation I worked for, I re-rendered them with my own backgrounds and stuff. And the new call stats, corporate backgrounds from the new company I worked at and it had all our products, competitor products, the differences, the changes, the balances between the weight of the different elements of them. These are all like glass optical lenses that would go inside people. And surgeons loved it. And there was always a fine line to balance on because corporately they hated it, they didn't allow it, they told me off many times, but I kept doing it because it closed deals. People enjoyed it. And it was a reason, an opportunity to spend time with someone. And because it had not just our equipment in it, which the corporate one did, it had everything in it, people loved it.   How to Use Video Content as Your Competitive Advantage in Sales · [18:32]    Will Barron: And so again, positioned you as a somewhat of an expert in the field. If you've got all this information about the competitors, and then they're just trying to pitch their own products, whereas you are kind of going across the board with this. But Shama for someone who can't… I'm an okay writer, I'm not a fantastic writer, I'm okay. From years of practise now doing the podcast and the blog content. For someone who sucks at writing, but, and there's a stereotype here perhaps, is somewhat chatty, somewhat charismatic, how does video play into all of this and how can video be a competitive advantage over someone who's just writing blog posts?   “64% of people will finish watching up to a 30 minute commercial video clip versus 24% that'll finish reading an article.” – Shama Hyder · [19:13]    Shama Hyder: Yeah. So video's fantastic. I think sometimes the challenges with the opposite where you couldn't do video, but you're a good writer, you have to find the medium that makes sense for you. But video I'm so thrilled about because I've been gung ho on this for a long time. And if you look at the stats, they're so compelling, 64% of people will finish watching up to a 30 minute commercial video clip versus 24% that'll finish reading an article. That's staggering. And of course, some of some people on here might be like, “oh, but I love to read.” Yeah, but you are not your audience. I read these novels, like 800 page Diana Gabaldon books, I love it. But not everyone is that way. And the truth is, think about everyone on here listening, has at some point watched an infomercial and could not change the channel until someone else walked in the room and they said, “what are you doing?What are you watching?” And then they're like, “I don't know. But these knives though!” or, “Wow, Oxy really does get it clean!”   Shama Hyder: I mean, we've all been there where we've been completely mesmerised or transfixed by something by video and it's human. It's human. So video was such an amazing tool. I'm very excited with what LinkedIn is doing with video right now. So LinkedIn to me is like a B2B salesperson's best friend. What an amazing platform. You can reach people, you can have valuable conversation, for nurturing, attraction, all those things, I love LinkedIn. And now with LinkedIn video, it's such a no brainer. So if you are in B2B sales and you haven't played with that yet, I highly recommend it because like all things, it will reach saturation and we will lose visibility.   Shama Hyder: And I'll give you an example. This is the stuff I love talking about marketing, technology, so forth. I keynote somewhere, I do a quick video after, whatnot. I'm always sharing this information. Sharing these videos on YouTube, for example, just randomly might get like 4,000, 5,000 views. It's nothing crazy to write home about, but sharing that same video on LinkedIn very quick on my iPhone, shoot it, edit it, quick post, that maybe five minutes, maybe less, five minutes is kind of long. Usually mine are about two to three minutes. Will average a quarter million views within 48 hours and 10% engagement. So very high targeted audience, very engaged. And I find that fascinating, so I'm so gung ho about video. I think anyone who feels comfortable on camera should absolutely go for it. And the only way you learn is by doing, your first videos may be utter BS, but as you do [inaudible 00:21:37]   Will Barron: Will be BS, right. It will a hundred percent be terrible. There's zero doubt in my mind, or I'm sure yours that everyone's first video after watching this is going to be absolutely atrocious, right?   Shama Hyder: I cringe at mine. I mean, Will, when I started doing videos and I look back and I'm like, “what was I thinking?” Like I have my dog in my lap like I thought that was cute. I didn't know. It was really funny. So I look back and I'm like “ah, face Palm, these are so bad.” But I wouldn't be as comfortable as I am on camera doing the things that I'm doing if I hadn't gone through that process. Like there's not a shortcut through that. I do think you can have natural inclinations. Like I enjoy public speaking, I enjoy sharing my passions, so I have natural inclinations for that, but I definitely was not as good of a speaker or doing media interviews and stuff as I am now, because it was 10 years ago, that's a lot of practise show after show. So many things, and that's how you get better. But I am such a firm believer in video, highly think it's the highest ROI right now, especially if you're looking at LinkedIn.   Want to Create Your First Video For LinkedIn, Here’s a Topic Idea For You · [22:50]    Will Barron: Perfect. And I want to offer the audience a challenge here, Shama, what should be the video that after listening to this, and most people listen to this, either driving the car or jogging, so please do it when you get to your office and please don't do it on the treadmill. Cause that's asking for a broken hip, what should the first video that they should be uploading be? What should the title be? What should the subject be? And I guess what's the generic kind of video that the audience should put out there, just to get the first one done, just to get it out?   Shama Hyder: And if you do decide to stop what you're doing right now and take a funny video, please send it to Will and I, tag us, we love it. Don't hurt yourself, but I'm always up for a good laugh. So it's very simple, great question Will, very simple challenge. If everyone listening says “I want to do this, I don't really know like how to start”, start with the most simple thing possible, which is, I'll give you two prompts. You can choose one or the other. You can either do what I wish every single one of my clients knew. And you could do that so quickly because I promise if I asked almost anyone on this podcast, what's the one thing you wish your clients knew, you'd have an answer, whatever that was. Like “do this early and do this before you actually need it”. Or whatever it may be, or “don't listen to X, Y, Z”. So what is that?   Shama Hyder: My second prompt would be share what is it that you have learned as a professional? What's the one thing that you really distilled in all your years? And it may be that relationships matter, it may be that having a good mentor at work, whatever it is, share something that's valuable. And again, you'll notice it has nothing to do with your industry particularly. But these are two really good starting points. And you can choose either/or.   Will Barron: Yeah. And that's almost a full podcast, video, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn series there of, every week what's the one thing I wish my clients knew this week? Or what's the one thing I've learned this week, that could help my clients? That's super simple. And if you've connected with the right people on LinkedIn and hopefully you've messaged them, you've not just spammed them a bunch of connection requests, you've gone back and forth with them. The engagement there is going to bring that up in the feed. And if they're on LinkedIn regularly, you are going to be top of mind constantly. Even if they don't watch the video, they're going to see your face, right. And how powerful is that?   Shama Hyder: Yeah. And I it's funny I do these videos and people tell me all the time when I run into them, they're like, “oh my God, I've seen your videos like 15 times, they pop up” and the thing is you have to play to algorithms, and right now LinkedIn is giving preferential treatment to video. So absolutely ride that wave.   Things That Can Negatively Affect Your Personal Brand · [25:20]    Will Barron: Perfect. So a couple more things I want to ask you before we kind of wrap up here, Shama, and the first one, and this is something I'm trying to ask people more often, is there anything that you've done that has negatively affected your personal branding over the past few years? Is there anything that stood out, maybe it's a cautionary tale or maybe it was just something that didn't really massively, significantly impact it, but would be interesting for the audience?   Shama Hyder: Yeah. You know, I would say the biggest thing again, what I said is the opposite of, it's not staying consistent. So what's funny, like even on Instagram, and my team really gets on me about this because I'm so sometimes busy doing, that they're like “you got to share, share, share, share.” So now I've gotten better and I send my team things because we're creating so much content all the time. But documenting that process I think is important. And so times where I've seen that dip is when I have not been consistent in sharing my stories and continuously building that brand.   “We live in such a fast paced world that you have to stay consistent to stay top of mind. And as we know, so much of the game of sales is staying top of mind.” – Shama Hyder · [26:48]    Shama Hyder: And it's so funny you say personal brand and the perception is like a celebrity or building a brand for the sake of building a brand. But really when I say personal brand, I'm much more mean like your reputation, the value you're bringing, the community you're building. Even, when I go a couple of weeks without sharing something and I do then, my community says, “oh my God, where have you been?” So I'm like “oh, okay”. So it's funny, we live in such a fast paced world that you have to stay consistent to stay top of mind. And as we know, so much of the game is staying top of mind.   Being Personal Versus Professional In Your LinkedIn Videos · [27:35]   Will Barron: And people are interested in you as well, right. And tell me if I'm totally wrong here, I think that's still important in B2B sales. So this is clearly a business to business audience that I've built here. You know, probably 20 odd thousand people will listen to this audio anywhere from, well, we've had anywhere from kind of a thousand to a hundred thousand people will watch the YouTube video depending on the YouTube algorithm.   Will Barron: People ask me, as much as questions I get asked about sales or how I should do this, or I want get a promotion. I get asked about this car, this GTR that I'm aspiring to own in the future. People seem to be just as bothered about my buying ridiculous things that are total waste of money, as they are with improving the sales skills, which is why they're watching the show in the first place. So how much of a personal element should we be adding to all this, versus being the stereotype of a dude in a badly fitting suit stood there of his video going buy my products because you know, the great, how much of it should be? How, how much of ourselves should we be injecting into all of this?   Shama Hyder: Yeah. So it's really funny that you say that. And yes, people are extremely curious about my life. In fact, some of the Google auto searches that auto correct with my name are hilarious and I won't even go into them. But it's so funny. And to me, it's not about how much of your personal life are you sharing, it's more about how relevant can you be to your audience? I don't think me sharing what I'm having for dinner is necessarily relevant to my audience. So I don't share it. I will say that being said, of course, all B2B sales is also B2B to C, which is we're human. And so even when you're selling to a business, you are selling to a human being, and I think that's such an important distinction.   Shama Hyder: So many times we say, “oh, it's B2B, it's different than B2C”. Yes and no, because at the end of the day, you're still buying from people you trust, you still want that experience. I do think it's important to be personable. I do think it's important to be transparent. I do think it's important to be honest, that means saying, sorry when you're sorry. That means saying thank you so much when you feel gratitude. That means letting people in a little bit so they know that you're human, that you have a family that you care about certain things that you care about your community. And that makes people want to do business with you more. I love supporting small businesses for example, or I love supporting people that I know have a greater mission or vision.   Shama Hyder: Of course we're human, we're attracted to that. So I think that's important, but people will always be curious about a million things. And I do walk that line finely because I do think about, is that relevant? Is that going to help them succeed in the digital age, because that's what I'm all about, that's my brand. And here's the craziest thing that I actually was just giving a keynote yesterday. Was it yesterday? Two days ago? Oh my God. I go through so many time zones, I have a hard time keeping up.   Shama Hyder: So I was talking to this group, also B2B. And I told them that the biggest shift that I have seen in the last few years in B2B is that the bar is now so much higher. And what I mean by that is in B2B. And I'm sure like being in medical sales, you can attest to this. The bar was so much lower, for example, if you had a website, it was awesome because all your competitors still had old school catalogues. But you had a website, so you were winning. Now, it's funny though, because your buyer, your B2B buyer is no longer comparing you to your competitors and saying, “well, they got catalogues, but at least this guy's got a website.” What they're looking at is “I just had this amazing experience at the Apple Store. Now I'm buying this. And I expect that same experience”.   “The expectations for B2B buyers are no longer different, they're higher. They don't care if you're better than your second rate competitors. What they care about is, “I just had Amazon experience. I just had the Apple experience. I just had a Zappos experience. This is the experience I expect across the board.” And so that means that you really have to take a look at how you sell and how you market and how you stand out because your competition is no longer just other B2B companies.” – Shama Hyder · [31:07]    Shama Hyder: That level of expectation, and that frictionless ness that we, as connected consumers and my team at Zen Media does a lot of research around the connected consumer, and what that really means. I mean, it's technically all of us. How we buy, how we make decisions, B2B or B2C, how do you stay relevant? But what I find fascinating is this, the expectations for B2B buyers are no longer different, they're higher. They don't care if you're better than your second rate competitors. What they care about is, “I just had Amazon experience. I just had the Apple experience. I just had Zappos experience. This is the experience I expect across the board.” And so that means there have to be some very deep cultural shifts. You really have to take a look at how you sell and how you market and how you stand out because your competition is no longer just other B2B companies.   Will Barron: It's funny you should say this, and we'll wrap up with this and I've got two points I don't want to gloss over. You mentioned them, which I think are really valuable for Sales Nation, everyone listening. But funny you should mention catalogues, the last company I worked for, to get a online version of the catalogue, you had to go through this massive rigmarole of who you are, what you're doing, and then they would only send you a PDF of one particular part of the catalogue. They wouldn't send you the whole thing because heaven forbid the competitor might get a hold of it. And this was three years ago or three and a half years ago, this wasn't 20 years ago or whenever the internet was created 1994, 96, when they would to send a catalogue that size would be a logistical problem through the terrible dial up that everyone had.   Will Barron: This was literally three and a half, four years ago. They would not give out a PDF version of the catalogue, because they were concerned that the competitor would have it. Everyone knew in the back of my car, my company car, I had a catalogue from each of the competitor companies and I was just a rep. So you, the corporation must have had them as well. It was ridiculous. But two things you mentioned here. One, if you're doing video content, if you doing any content really, having a set of rules in place I think is important. And I do this to kind of not have a blurred line between the content I put out with the podcast, with the sales school, which is coming soon and everything else.   Will Barron: For example, my girlfriend's a doctor. I never mention her name, where she works, anything like that because she asked me not to. I don't really record any content outside of the studio, the office or any live events that we do with the sales and podcast live. I don't really record content when I'm in the car or around where we live or if I'm out walking or running or anything like that. So I keep all that to myself. So having a set of rules I think is perhaps useful for the audience and paradoxically, it'll help you create more content faster if you've got a set of rules to go against.   Will Barron: And the other thing, and I'm conscious of time so we won't dive into it, but having some kind of mission or goal or something in your personal life that you're aiming towards, where you're trying to create business, create value, earn commissions because you want to do X, Y, and Z. I think is super powerful to include into your, your videos, your content, wherever you're doing your personal brand. And it makes you more human. So one of my passions is educating people about science and get people excited about science. We've got a whole other podcast that does that very thing. And I kind of intertwine the two here because people then will be asking me, “well, what about the other podcast? Oh, I love science as well”. And it kind of makes me more human and builds a deeper relationship with those individuals who listen to the B2B sales stuff.   Shama’s Advice to Her Younger Self on How to Become Better at Selling · [34:10]    Will Barron: And with all that said, woo, I feel like I need a breath after rabbiting through all that. I just don't want to gloss over them. The excellent points you made Shama. I just wanted to kind of double down on them. I've got one final question to ask everyone that comes on the show. Your answer cannot be personal branding because this is probably part of it. So anything other than personal branding, but if you could go back in time and speak to your younger self, what would be the one piece of advice you'd give her to help her become better at selling?   Shama Hyder: You know, as cliched as it is, and I'd heard this when I was younger, I don't think I fully understood it until more recently. And that is the value of relationships. And I think you hear that and you think ah, yes, like meet people, get to know what they need. But what I mean by that is like today, if you look at the clients that we work with, there are people and human beings I have such high respect for. I hold them in such high esteem, and I think that is a relationship, right. There is a depth there. I love these people outside of work, and the way you do this is you invest. You get to learn about their families, you get to learn about what motivates them, what they care about.   Shama Hyder: And I think when I was younger, I heard that and saw it more superficially. I understood what that meant as my family and people closest to me. I didn't know what that translated to in the broader sense of that true word. Or I heard the very bro version of wine and dine. And I was like, “what's that?” It just felt still very, to me, kind of manipulative in a way, like you have an agenda. You're driven in that way. Well, today, what I have an understanding of now is it's not about an agenda. It's genuinely having that empathy and caring about someone and knowing where they're coming from and connecting on that deeper level. And then if you end up doing business, great.   “Throughout history, whoever controlled information had power because access to information was limited. So if you had information, you had an advantage. Well, the internet changed all of that. Now everybody has information. That's no longer the differentiator. So the differentiator becomes who can then best take that information and distill it in a way that turns knowledge into wisdom, that takes data and turns it into insight.” – Shama Hyder · [36:38]    Shama Hyder: And I think coming from that place has really shifted my perception and my view of work. And I will say this Will, to add to your point where you were talking about, I think this is so crucial for B2B folks in general, we no longer live in the information age. And what's fascinating is what you said, so many B2B companies, and I hear this all the time, especially from younger folks who are like, “my boss doesn't want me to share, because they're afraid our competitors will know.” I'm like “news flash, they already know.” So throughout history, I think what was fascinating was whoever controlled information had power. The church, for example, I mean anybody who controlled information had power because access to information was limited. So if you had information, you had an advantage.   Shama Hyder: Well, the internet changed all of that. Now everybody has information. That's no longer the differentiator. So the differentiator becomes who can then best take that information and distil it in a way that turns knowledge into wisdom? That takes data and turns it into insight?   Shama Hyder: And what you're doing with this podcast here is a great example. There is so much stuff on sales and B2B sales. It is mind boggling. But the reason you have millions of people listening and downloading this is because you are able to create that filter. You're able to ask the right questions, bring on guests. I mean, I know you let them so thoroughly. It's taken us a while to even get to this point, which is awesome. But see, so you have power because you are a curator, you are a filter. So as we talk about B2B and you wrap up about personal branding, it's how can you as a salesperson be that filter for your customers. And they're so hungry for that. Everyone has information, the key to winning now and in the future, is how can you create context and be relevant?   Parting Thoughts · [38:01]   Will Barron: [inaudible 00:38:07]   Shama Hyder: We work with clients around the globe. You can check us out at zenmedia.com. And of course my personal site, ShamaHyder.com. I'm on all the social platforms. So feel free to pick your poison and I'm happy to connect.   Will Barron: [inaudible 00:38:25].   Shama Hyder: My pleasure, Will. Thanks so much.  

“What's my motivation?” Expert Note: “By a massive long shot, salespeople's biggest pain point is a lack of motivation” Kim Walsh Salesman Podcast Clichéd as it is, this question still resonates today. And not just with actors. But with retail workers, executives, laborers—with everyone. For sales reps, in particular, keeping up their sales motivation day after day is often a struggle. Boredom, anxiety, hopelessness, and downright depression can all be expected in the face of a too-far-off sales goal. And for some, the harder they seem to work, the less they seem to earn. If this sounds all too familiar, don't worry: You're not alone. But luckily, there's a way out. It just takes a bit of strategic work on your part. This guide shows you how to overcome a lack of sales motivation using a proven 5-point framework. And with it, you can boost your numbers, blow past your goals, and achieve more success as a sales rep. The Secret to Sales Motivation (Forget The Stupid Sales Quotes) Sales motivation is a tricky beast. On the one hand, it can inspire you to take on new challenges. On the other hand, it can give you the energy you need to truly test your limits. And it can be the impetus to winning record-level sales. But there's a dark side to motivation, too. If you rely solely on motivation to get things done, you're only setting yourself up for failure. For example, on high motivation days, you may feel bulletproof. You're packing your pipeline full of prospects, piquing the interest of leads, and closing deals like a boss. But on the bad days, you're erasing all of that progress. As a result, you're missing out on perfect closing opportunities, forgetting to follow up, and letting ideal buyers slip through your fingers again and again. So, how do you keep the sales motivation going? How can you wake up energized, enthusiastic, and eager to achieve every day? You can't. Surprised? Don't be. We are all human. We are all prone to having good days and bad ones. And anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you snake oil. Instead, you need discipline.  “Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing. That's the Law of Consistency. It doesn't matter how talented you are. It doesn't matter how many opportunities you receive. If you want to grow, consistency is key.” – John C. Maxwell You don't need a sales rep motivation magic pill (because it doesn't exist). Instead, you need a system that takes motivation out of the equation entirely. And you need a way to succeed day in and day out—on the good days and the bad. And that's where the Selling By the Numbers 5-Point Framework comes in. The Selling By the Numbers Framework The Selling By the Numbers Framework is a simple yet effective way to take progressive steps towards meeting your goals every single day. It's numbers-focused, yes. But it's not overly technical. And don't be fooled here—this is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, the Selling By the Numbers Framework is a way of reverse-engineering your goals so you can better understand the steps you need to take to achieve them. The best thing about the Selling By the Numbers Framework helps boost your sales motivation when followed correctly. It'll also improve your performance, focus, help you beat fear and win more business. Here's how. A) Single Path to Success A significant factor in feeling unmotivated in a sales position is not knowing whether the steps you're taking actually lead towards a win. Maybe right now, you're “winging it”—you're reaching out to prospects when it feels right, switching up your cadences on a day-by-day basis, and trying out different approaches whenever you read about them. This attitude to setting goals isn't going to help you crush your performance targets. While there's value in experimentation, this haphazard approach doesn't let you determine what's working and what isn't. And as a result, you're left wondering what you did wrong when you haven't met your quota for the month. The Selling By the Numbers Framework gives you clear, weekly (and even daily) goals so you can quickly know when you're winning and when you're failing. And that clarity will keep you pushing forward. B) Easy to Communicate The framework is also simple to understand and break down for others. But how does that keep you motivated? On the one hand, the simplicity makes it a snap to keep sales managers and other members of your sales team onboard. A clear and quantitative end goal, regular waypoints to track progress, a focused roadmap you can refer to daily—it's a dream for the higher-ups. And the more your supervisors get behind a plan, the easier it is for you to stay on track. Beyond that, the framework's simplicity also makes it great for teaching to the rest of your sales team. With more hands-on deck, you can continually refine the process to make it even more effective. C) Forces You to Decide What You Want This one's important. Money isn't everything. It's important, sure. And having a lot of it is certainly a reasonable goal. But feeling satisfied in sales doesn't always have to be about reeling in a massive paycheck and owning ever crazy resources. This framework forces you to decide what's important to you. For example, are you looking for a way to finance a new home purchase? Do you want to demonstrate consistency and reliability to help accelerate your career? Are you trying to find a better work-life balance? Maybe you want to work in sales, win the incentives and release the pressure by semi-retiring at 40 rather than 70. I encourage you to forget the motivational sales quotes as you go through this framework and really focus on what you want to achieve in your career. By setting precise goals and following the plan each day, you can rest assured you're continually working towards those goals. D) Walk Away When You Want Last but not least, the Selling By the Numbers Framework gives you more control over lead management. How many times have you had to deal with a pain-in-the-butt buyer? They're sucking up all your time. They're rude. And to be perfectly honest, they're probably leading you on a wild goose chase. With this framework, you can easily refer to your plan, see if you need that buyer to hit your numbers, and if not, walk away from all the trouble. And that kind of freedom is inspirational in and of itself. The Downside of Not Selling By the Numbers Beyond those benefits, there are also plenty of downsides to not selling by the numbers. Here are just a few of the biggest. A) You Don't Know What Works When you don't follow a clearly defined framework, you're working from instinct rather than hard data. Sure, some salespeople get lucky. Maybe they catch a windfall client out of nowhere. And perhaps they succeed against all odds using a slapdash approach. But without a step-by-step plan, you can't collect the data points to see what's working and what isn't. That means you can't refine your process. You can't replicate great results. And you can't know for sure you're on the path to success. B) Relying on the Unreliable To people outside of your profession, sales is all about charisma. It's about charm, magnetism, and talking your way into a deal. But as a salesperson yourself, you know the gift of gab can only get you so far. A master charmer can certainly seduce some buyers into eating into their budget. But more often than not (and especially in the B2B space), a salesman that relies entirely on their charisma is a salesman that doesn't consistently hit their numbers. With the Selling By the Numbers Framework, you're putting in the work every day. And that means you don't have to bet the farm on charming your buyer into a sale. C) Stuck in the “Work Harder” Trap Finally, the framework lets you break free from the “work harder” trap. Researching and trying new sales approaches every week is hard. Guessing at what went right (and what made you fail) is hard. Working overtime again and again to make your number is hard. Convincing your manager that next month will be different is hard. This framework gives you a simpler, clearer path to consistent success. No guesswork. And no more working harder, just smarter. Breaking Down the Selling By the Numbers Framework So, what is the Selling By the Numbers Framework? Essentially, this framework starts from the end and moves backward to define how to get there. It does so in just five steps: Define Your Wants Set Your Income Goal Determine Your Starting Point Establish Your Waypoints Create Your One-Page Plan Now let's dive a bit deeper into each step. 1) Define Your Wants Part of what makes this framework so effective is the fact that you're beginning with the end—what you want to achieve—and reverse engineers those results. So let's start there. What do you want? The simplicity of the question is deceptive, though. “More money,” for example, is a goal. But it's not an end goal because it doesn't get to the WHY of it all. Do you want more money to fund your child's college? Do you want more money so you can be in a similar income range as your social circle? Is it all about getting that shiny new Corvette? There are two things important here. Dig Deep – Find out what's truly important to you. What do you want to achieve this year? What do you want to buy, to be, to do, or to have? Make It Concrete – The only way this framework is effective is if you can work back from a solid, non-abstract goal. Defining your ultimate goal and keeping it front of your mind is key to staying motivated. Perhaps Jarrod Glandt, President of Grand Cardone Enterprises, put it best in our interview: Expert Note: “That doesn't mean you have to have a million-dollar goal, but you have to figure out what's important to you, and you have to figure out a way to drive towards that every day. Otherwise, you will end up lacking purpose and lacking drive and lacking motivation, and then you're just going to be unhappy.” Jarrod Glandt Sales Leadership Show 2) Set Your Income Goal Next, it's time to set your yearly income goal. Working backward from the want you defined in the previous step, determine how much income you'll need to make to achieve that want. This step is pretty easy if it's a tangible good that you're after (like a car). But, first, find out how much extra income you'll need to afford that good comfortably and tack it onto your current income. For wants that you don't need to be fulfilled right away (like saving for your child's college), determine how much you'd like to save per year by working backward. For example, if you want to send your child to an Ivy League school, you can expect to pay about $225,000 in tuition. Over 15 years, you'd have to save an additional $15,000 per year. If your want is to be offered a promotion, you'll have to do a bit more thinking. Maybe becoming lead sales rep for 3 years running is the ticket to getting noticed at work. In that case, the goal is to bring in more sales than other reps on your team. 3) Determine Your Starting Point The next step is to take stock of where you're starting from. This, again, is simple—where are you now compared to your income goal? No need to overcomplicate things right now. Just take what you've earned already and subtract it from the final goal. After that, you'll also want to take into account the givens this year. Do you have returning customers that are going to be a consistent source of recurring revenue? Are you midway through a sure-thing deal and are just waiting to collect your commission? Are you going to be losing a longtime customer? Think about what is already scheduled for this year that's going to impact your income and build that into the difference you calculated earlier. 4) Establish Your Waypoints This is where things get slightly more complicated. Now it's time to build out the quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily waypoints you need to hit to earn your income goal and achieve your final want. Try to make these waypoints as specific as you can using data from your customer relationship management (CRM) tool—more on that later. Look at historical tables to find out precisely how many touchpoints it took to close a successful sale. For instance, your data might look something like this: Sales target = $15,000 Average dollar value of closed deals = $1,000 Calls made = 2400 Decision makers spoken to = 480 Discovery calls scheduled = 120 Demos scheduled = 60 Proposals given = 30 Closed deals = 15 Then, break down that data into quarterly, monthly, weekly, and perhaps daily goals. Using the data above, your goals might look like this: *Note: As your timeline gets shorter (e.g., daily goals), the math doesn't always translate perfectly. As such, you may want to reserve more time-intensive plans for longer timelines (e.g., closing deals on a monthly rather than weekly basis).  Quarterly Calls made = 600 Decision makers spoken to = 120 Discovery calls scheduled = 30 Demos scheduled = 15 Proposals given = 8 Closed deals = 4 Monthly Calls made = 200 Decision makers spoken to = 40 Discovery calls scheduled = 10 Demos scheduled = 5 Proposals given = 3 Closed deals = 2 Weekly Calls made = 48 Decision makers spoken to = 10 Discovery calls scheduled = 3 Demos scheduled = 2 Daily Calls made = 10 Decision makers spoken to = 2 Discovery calls scheduled = 1 5) Create Your One-Page Plan Last but certainly not least, you need to create a one-page plan outlining the entire framework. Important: this is not meant to be exhaustive. Don't treat this one-pager like the single note-card you could bring to class—crammed from edge to edge with information. Instead, this is the boiled-down version that hits the core of each step. Yours might look something like this. My One-Page Plan Want: To have enough money saved up over 15 years to pay for Molly's tuition in full.  Income Goal: $150,000 per year Starting Point: $130,000 + $5,000 recurring yearly revenue (additional $15,000 per year needed) My Waypoints: Quarterly Calls made = 600 Decision makers spoken to = 120 Discovery calls scheduled = 30 Demos scheduled = 15 Proposals given = 8 Closed deals = 4 Monthly Calls made = 200 Decision makers spoken to = 40 Discovery calls scheduled = 10 Demos scheduled = 5 Proposals given = 3 Closed deals = 2 Weekly Calls made = 48 Decision makers spoken to = 10 Discovery calls scheduled = 3 Demos scheduled = 2 Daily Calls made = 10 Decision makers spoken to = 2 Discovery calls scheduled = 1 Time to Execute: What You Need to Know to Get Started Now that you have a better understanding of the sales motivation framework let's dive a bit deeper into the details. What kind of information will you need to establish your waypoints? What research will you have to do on your accounts before getting started? And what considerations do you need to include in your calculations? The specifics will vary among industries and positions. But below are some of the most common pieces of information you'll need to consider along the way. A) Your List of Prospects How many prospects do you currently have in your pipeline? How many do you need to hit your goals according to your conversion rates? You'll need to consider this information when building out your daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly strategies. According to HubSpot, more than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process. So be sure to factor extra time into your days for it. B) Average Account/Order Size How big is your average account or order size? And how much will you be pocketing as a commission? Obviously, larger average order sizes mean you'll have to close fewer deals to reach your income goal. But you may have to spend more time on nurturing along the way too. C) Average Touchpoints/Time to Close Sale Is your sales cycle long and complicated? Does closing the sale from start to finish take days, weeks, or even months? How many times do you need to talk to a prospect before they're ready to sign on as a client? This is another important consideration when building out your milestones. Most CRMs should make this info readily available too. HubSpot reports that most B2B prospects will need about eight touchpoints before a sale. But every business is different, so be sure to calculate yours rather than just relying on industry averages. D) Average Number of Sales Closed vs. Touchpoints Started Piggybacking off the last point, you'll also need to calculate your close rates compared to the number of touchpoints started. This stat will be helpful in determining where you start hitting diminishing returns with your touchpoints. For example, you may find that most prospects will need six touchpoints before a sale. But do an additional two touchpoints increase the odds of closing? Or is it just wasting your time? Understanding this information will help you plan out your daily goals and what's needed to close a sale most effectively. E) The Gap This is essentially the third step of the framework. How far are you right now from reaching your income goal? How many accounts will you have to close on to achieve that goal? How many new accounts will you have to bring on according to your conversion rate? And how many calls, emails, and messages will you need to make to sign those accounts? F) Is This Even Possible? This is vital—is this even possible? Take a quick look at your team's sales history. How many clients do you bring on per year? How does your goal compare to that average? Ambition can be a great driving force. But goals so lofty that they're unrealistic aren't helping anyone. In fact, they'll likely only end in disappointment. So be sure your goals are ambitious, just not foolhardy. G) Determine Your Waypoints With all the information you've gathered, it's time to build out your waypoints. It's essential to be exacting here. And during your calculations, be sure to factor in vacations, holidays, sick days, and other time off work like seminars. H) Create Your One Sheet & Follow Religiously Finally, you've got all the information you need to create your one-page plan. It should include each step of the framework: Your Ultimate Want Your Income Goal Your Starting Point + Your Gap Your Detailed Waypoints Take this one-page plan, print it out, and place it in your workspace so it's always visible. The power of this plan is that you can refer to it whenever you want. So the more front-and-center, the better. Wrap Up Maintaining sales motivation is one of the biggest hurdles sales reps like you will face. Some days you may wake up energized and ready to take on the world. But on others, you may feel like Sisyphus stuck rolling the metaphorical boulder up a never-ending mountain. That's why it's so important to take motivation out of the picture using the Selling By the Numbers Framework. With this framework, you can rest easy knowing you're making strides towards your goals every single day, even on your worst days. And ultimately, it's what you need to be happier, more successful, and more motivated as a salesperson. As sales coach Beth Benatti Kennedy put it in our interview: Expert Note: “Resilience is actually moving forward. It's dealing with those challenges but being able to say I have the toolkit, so I can move forward. [Resilient salespeople] not only handle the challenges, but they also hit their numbers, and they also have very high career satisfaction.” Beth Benatti Kennedy Salesman Podcast  

A lot of sales reps I work with have been caught in the time/money trap – what they make is DIRECTLY tied to how much they work. But the great thing about sales is you can create a “flywheel” system that SCALES UP your ability to earn without requiring more of your time. And if you put in a bit of effort, your flywheel system will pay off BIG TIME. What Is The Flywheel? Let’s talk about what a flywheel is. Literally speaking, a flywheel is a heavy wheel that, when turned, continues revolving over and over again thanks to its size and momentum. Think of the Price is Right. You know the big, heavy wheel at the end that keeps spinning and spinning? Like that. Now what does this have to do with sales? Well when you first start out in this job, it takes a LOT of effort to get things rolling. Making those first few sales, building up your network from scratch, getting into the groove with your processes—it’s a ton of work. But once you DO start making progress, your flywheel starts spinning on its own momentum. And that means: You can ask for referrals People in the industry already know you before you even reach out Your sales process gets refined and improved You can farm/upsell current customers rather than having to do lots of cold outreach Simply put, everything gets easier. You don’t have to work as hard to see results. And that means less effort for better outcomes. The flywheel does all the work for you. How Do You Get Your Flywheel Moving? How do you get your flywheel moving? And just as importantly, how do you get it moving faster? Well we’ve got three strategies covering just that. And we’ll start with… 1. Impetus As the old saying goes… “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today.”  Procrastination is wasted time. And the sooner you start doing something, anything for your future, the more that investment is going to pay off. On top of that, it takes a LOT longer than you think to build a successful business or brand—7 to 15 years according to some experts. Do you want to be raking in the spoils of your success when you’re 35 or would you rather be on your way to 60? If you’re looking for low-risk, high-reward things you can start doing TODAY to get things spinning, start spending more time with social selling. Interact with industry experts on LinkedIn. Connect with others you’ve met or talked to over email. Start building insightful, valuable content of your own. But no matter WHAT you do, just do SOMETHING. 2. Focus I’ve seen so many reps fall victim to having too many irons in the fire. It seems like a good idea at first, right? Diversify your approach. Casting a wider net yields more fish. Yada yada. But what they don’t tell you is that you have a limit to the amount of energy you can spend. There are only so many hours in a day. You only have so much work you can do before you snap. And life, at least one worth living, isn’t just about the work. So what you need to be doing is focusing your flywheel. Stop spending time and energy on the tasks that don’t drive results. Don’t send in that RFP for a deal you’re never going to get. Cut out the in-person meetings that you’re always ditched on. Find what ISN’T WORKING. And get rid of it. On the other side of that, double down on what IS working. Find the one channel that’s driving the most sales, whether it’s cold outreach, upselling current customers, targeting inbound leads—whatever. And then hit that channel HARD. Get good at it. Like really good. And spend the majority of your efforts on knocking that channel out of the park. Once you start seeing some really killer success here, only then should you think about getting your other flywheels going. 3. Scale Your time is best spent on the activities that scale your earnings, that multiply your value without multiplying your work. These are the activities that you can perform across your clients without having to deal with any guesswork. For example, how are you following up with first-touch leads? Are you just emailing them randomly whenever they pop into your head? Or are you following a strategic cadence that’s proven effective? The second option is of course going to be the best. When you follow a system, a framework, you don’t have to spend time guessing, hemming and hawing. Instead, you just follow the steps, 1…2…3…4… And because it’s so systematized, you can knock out MORE follow up work in LESS time than if you handled things randomly. The hard part is knowing where to start with cadences. But not to worry, I’ve got you there too. This is one of the starter cadences you’ll find in the Selling Made Simple Academy. Feel free to use it as a jumping off point for your leads too. Day 1 – Connect on LinkedIn Day 3 – Email – Case study for a related business using your product Day 10 – Email – Link to a “how-to” blog post that focuses on a common problem in their industry and how your product can help solve it Day 12 – Call > Voicemail to explain that you’ll send an email > Email link to another case study and reference your call in the email Day 14 – Email – Provide some hard data on the buyer’s problem that they might find useful Day 20 – Email – Straight forward ask for a meeting Day 25 – Call > Voicemail > Email asking for a meeting No one ever said sales is easy, especially when you’re first starting out. But when you create a flywheel sales system, you make selling 10X simpler by being able to earn referrals, build trust at a distance, refine your process, and upsell current customers.

​In sales, no two scenarios, and neither two customers are alike. So sales professionals have to cut through the clutter and get to the heart of what a client wants. The best way to do this is by asking the right questions—questions that help salespeople build a strong rapport with sales prospects. Following the SPIN sales methodology can be a good step in the direction where you can use sales questions with the most impact, easily overcome objections, and close more sales. What Is SPIN Selling? The SPIN sales technique makes it easier for sales reps to close deals. It identifies the core stages of questioning that a salesperson must go through to convert a prospect. Neil Rackham introduced the sales training methodology in his 1988 book titled SPIN Selling. Based on data collected from 12 years of research and 35,000 sales calls (!), he outlined a framework for developing and timing structured questions sales reps should ask to close a deal. The SPIN acronym represents four categories: Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-Payoff. Here's a breakdown of each category, along with SPIN selling method you can use to learn more about your target customer, build trust, and eventually close the deal. 1) Situation This stage of the sales process is all about gathering information. You ask situation questions during the opening stage of a sale to better understand the prospect's current situation. The purpose here is to understand the prospect and their exact situation (hence the name) and whether it aligns with your offering. Situation Questions: How do you achieve X? What process does your organization use for X? What is your role at the organization? Do you have a person responsible for X on your team? What do you currently use for X? Why did you choose these tools and how often do you use them? Do you have a solid strategy in place for X? 2) Problem The problem stage of your sales call involves identifying pains and problems that the prospect experiences. Questions here are asked during the investigation stage to probe the prospect's frustration and pain points. You want to bring the prospect into an awareness that they have a problem or highlight the problems they need to solve. Once you know the problems and issues, you'll use them later to drive the sale forward. Problem Questions: What's the biggest challenge you face with X? How much time do you spend on X? How much money are you paying for your tools to do X? What are the common points of failure for this process? Are you happy with your current vendor? Is your current product always reliable? How many people are currently working on X in your organization? 3) Implication Implication involves underscoring why the prospect should focus on solving their problems. In addition, these questions highlight the potential impact of the discovered issues and issues that aren't addressed. Your purpose here is to relate the prospect's frustrations with the previous stage's problems when demonstrating the value of your product or offer. Implication Questions: How much money and time did you lose during your last outage? If it wasn't for (challenge), how much time do you think you would have saved? What happened the last time X failed? How does (problem or issue) affect your KPIs? How do your team members feel about your current tool? Are you happy with the efficiency of this process? 4) Need-Payoff This stage is all about leading B2B sales prospects to your desired conclusions on their own instead of you telling them how your product or service can address their pain points. In the closing phase of the sale, you ask the prospect how important or urgent it is for them to solve the problem or issue and hand and tie the light on the benefit of solving it. You want the prospect to consider how valuable a real solution to their pain points would be. Need-Payoff Questions: Do you think your team members would be more productive if they had more time? How can you simplify X? What do you think will make a good tool for your organization? Would your team like a tool that does X, Y, and Z? If you find out that you can double your productivity by switching products, would you? What do you think your team needs to succeed? How productive do you think your organization would become if you gave your team the right tools? Understanding the 4 Main Stages of SPIN Selling Rackham and his team also details the four main stages of the SPIN selling method in his book. Let's take a look to get a better understanding of the sales process methodology. Stage 1: Opening The opening stage involves introducing yourself to your prospect. This should be a warm, polite, and gradual process instead of you immediately rushing into a sales pitch about why your product is the best on the market. Stop talking about your features and benefits. Stop being the traditional sales pest. You don't want to overwhelm or annoy your prospect; focus on establishing rapport and trust. Stage 2: Investigating Once you successfully engage your prospect in a conversation, you can start investigating. Focus on the common customer needs. Ask the SPIN selling questions you just learnt. Your chances of selling your product or offering to a prospect you don't know are slim to none. It's a hard fact. You don't know what your prospect wants, needs, what they are willing to pay, and other critical questions that can help you tailor your sales pitch according to them. So how can you make them see value in your product? That's why the investigation stage is all about discovery and asking questions that can help you learn more about your prospect. Getting this right will guide you on the remaining steps of the sales funnel. Stage 3: Demonstrating Capability At this stage we're accelerating through the buying process, you've established trust with your prospect and know about their needs, preferences, and likes and dislikes. Next, you start demonstrating the main capabilities of your product, where you highlight your offering's best features, advantages, and benefits. When dealing with end-users, you want to focus on the descriptive elements of your product that make it functional and unique. On the other hand, emphasize your product's advantages and how it's better than what your rivals offer when talking to decision-makers. Decision-makers are more interested in benefits and the overall value provided by a solution. Stage 4: Obtaining Commitment In the obtaining commitment stage of SPIN selling, you want to overcome objections and get your prospects to commit to a purchase. Objections fall into one of two categories: value or capability objections. While value objections stem from the prospect's belief that your product isn't worth their money and won't guarantee a stable ROI, capability objections stem from a premise that your product isn't going to help them solve the biggest problem. Both objections won't bode well for your deal if you don't eliminate them effectively. Under the SPIN methodology, the best way to deal with objections is to prevent them from arising in the first place. Then, by asking the right questions, you can get the prospect to see your product's value on their own. Additional Tips to Succeed at SPIN Selling According to Neil Rackham, “the best selling isn't at all about your products and what you can offer. It's very much about the customers and their needs. ” Keeping this in mind in your sales training, here are a few additional tips to help you master the SPIN sales methodology: A) Get Specific The best SPIN selling questions aren't too generic or vague. You want to be as specific as you can and avoid beating around the bush. For example: Bad Sales Question: What would your team members do if they had more time? Good Sales Question: How do you think your team members would perform if they got six extra hours every week? Get it? B) Customize Questions—But Don't Go Overboard Your SPIN selling questions should be customized for the specific prospect you're having a conversation with. As mentioned, no two prospects are the same. If you ask everyone the same set of questions, it'll only come off as insincere and monotonous. It's why SPIN Selling emphasizes getting to know your customer before pitching your product or service. While you want to ask thoughtful questions, asking more questions isn't necessarily better. The best tactic is to adopt a minimalistic approach, so the entire selling process is efficient and valuable for your prospects. Ask a select few questions at a time—and make sure they count. C) Listen and Adapt When questioning prospects, you want their answers to fuel your approach. In addition, you want to use them to learn more about your prospect and improve yourself. Think about how you can incorporate the information into your next sales call. It's also good to consider whether you're getting any customer feedback that can help you sell more effectively to other people. D) Demonstrate Expertise and Authority What makes you an expert in handling your prospects' pain points? How can you ensure the client sees your expertise without deviating from the process? Figuring out the answer to these questions is critical to establishing your credibility, which, in turn, will help you close deals faster and more effectively. Play to your strengths, but always keep your prospect's requirements a top priority. Become better at selling! Empower yourself with SPIN Selling knowledge, and improve your close rates right away.

Being productive is a major pain point in sales. I should know—I used to be lazy, procrastinate, and flake out all the time. But today I run a 7-figure sales training company, produce TONS of quality content, and still have time for coaching calls, hobbies, and a family life. How? I’m tyrannical about how I plan and execute my days. Here’s how I do it. 1. “Does it Make the Boat Go Faster” Only do “what makes the boat go faster.” There was a rowing team in Great Britain that had a big audacious goal—they wanted to win the Olympics in two years. And to achieve that goal, they did something a bit unorthodox. They relentlessly asked themselves, “Does this make the boat go faster?” It wasn’t just equipment they scrutinized. Though they tore that apart too. No, it was training, strategy, mentality, sleep schedules, nutrition, motivation. Everything that came into play was examined and evaluated. And if it didn’t make the boat go faster, guess what? They got rid of it. At the end of two years, they had a completely redesigned team… and a gold medal. If you want to be ultra productive and close more deals, you need to focus on what makes the boat go faster. Prospecting leads to sales. Gossipy emails don’t. Building your network makes the boat go faster. Facebook posts don’t. Get relentless with it. Because if it doesn’t make the boat go faster, you shouldn’t be doing it. 2. Time Block Organization is the heart of productivity. And when it comes to how you complete your mission-critical tasks, it should be no different. That’s where time blocking comes in. Rather than getting to the real impactful tasks whenever you can, start scheduling them directly into your calendar. But be deliberate here. Choose times and windows that you KNOW are realistic and that you can stick to. Because to maximize your productivity, you need to stick to those timelines like your life depended on it. No handling other little tasks while you work on a big one. No spending an extra half an hour of unscheduled time on it. No fudging the numbers. Work on the SINGLE task from start time to finish time. No more, no less. Time blocking requires discipline. A hell of a lot of it. But when you get the system down, you’ll find yourself finishing big tasks faster and fitting more of them into your day. 3. Capture Tasks We’ve all found ourselves realizing something important needs to be done only to forget about it completely by the end of the day. And by the time you realize it, it’s way too late to do anything about it. That’s why it’s so important to have a task-capturing system. Now we at the Selling Made Simple Academy actually have a whole system dedicated to this. It’s called the Bucket Productivity Framework. And if you’re interested in learning more about it, head over to the link in the notes. But for now, here’s a quick overview. You essentially want to capture tasks that come up throughout the day on a pad of paper you keep with you at all times. Then once your day is almost through, take a minute or two to go through your list and define the next steps for each task. This will make it 20X easier to do later. After that, you’re going to organize each task into one of four buckets: Urgent & Important, Not Urgent & Important, Urgent & Not Important, and Not Urgent & Not Important. The Urgent & Important tasks you’ll handle yourself first thing tomorrow. The Not Urgent & Important ones can wait. But for the Urgent & Not Important, you should delegate to someone else. And for the final bucket, Not Urgent & Not Important, just don’t do them. They don’t matter! Again, there’s a lot more to be said about this system. So if you want to learn more, be sure to click over to the full explainer in the show notes. 4. Use the Power of “NO” So much of your productivity losses are tied up in performing meaningless tasks you get assigned by others. A pointless meeting you agreed to attend, a 20-minute coffee break with a colleague when you should be on the phones, an hour-long video call when a simple email would do. There’s so much time wasted on unnecessary engagements, especially when the information you need from it can be covered a simpler, faster way. Worst of all, a lot of the time you don’t even enjoy these engagements! So to recap, you’re: Barely getting anything out of it. Wasting time you could be spending on driving sales. Hating being there anyway. Rather than put yourself through that, get more comfortable saying no. “No” might seem like it’s costing you something when you say it. But the opportunity cost of saying “yes” to something that doesn’t move the boat forward is far higher. 5. Sprint AND Marathon And finally there’s understanding the concept of the sprint AND the marathon. On the sprint side of things, you should always be moving relentlessly towards completing something. Sprint to finish this video. Sprint to create the best YouTube channel for B2B sales reps. Sprint to retire early. Whatever it is you’re doing with your life, always have a goal. And always look for ways to achieve it faster. On the other side of things, you need to understand your limits. That’s where the marathon comes in. If you burn the candle at both ends for too long, it’s going to lead to burnout, exhaustion, and other life priorities that don’t get the attention they need. The solution here is what’s called The 20 Mile March. It’s a concept developed in the book Great by Choice by Jim Collins. It describes how enterprises that last the longest tend to self-impose a rigorous performance mark that they hit with amazing consistency. In the book, Collins equates it to hiking across the United States by marching 20 miles a day, every day. No more, no less. You don’t go further on great days. And you don’t go less on terrible ones. And at the end, the 20 mile marcher will ALWAYS beat out the opportunist that does the opposite. The march imposes order amidst disorder, discipline amidst chaos, and consistency amidst uncertainty. So chase down your goals relentlessly. But keep things to a reasonable limit. And remember that consistency always drives the best results.

In this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett talks about how buyer’s emotions and feelings are formed in the brain, regardless if it’s positive such as happiness, or negative, such as remorse. We cover some sales training nonsense on the topic of influence and Lisa debunks a few more sales myths in this episode. You'll learn: Sponsored by: Free SalesCode assessment Learn your strengths and weaknesses in an instant. Taken by over 10,000+ of your competitors. Don't get left behind. Take the free assessment Featured on this episode: Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett Researcher of Psychiatry & Psychology Resources: LisaFeldmanBarrett.com Book: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain Book: How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain Lisa on LinkedIn Transcript Will Barron: Can we go up on today's episode of the Salesman Podcast?   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Your brain makes emotions, emotions don't happen to you. They are made by your brain for particular situations that you're in. Your brain is always regulating your body. And your body is always sending information back to your brain. And you feel that information from the tug of your lungs, expanding, the rush of your blood through your veins, the feeding of your heart.   Will Barron: Hello, my name is Will Barron and I'm the host of the Salesman Podcast. The world's most downloaded B2B sales show. On today's episode, amazing episode, we have Dr. Lisa, she's the author of How Emotions Are Made. And that's exactly what we're diving into in today's show. We're diving into how the buyer emotions are made in their brain, whether it's happiness, whether it's buys malls, whatever it is. We also dive into how to influence over people's emotions and we call that some of the nonsense that sales trainers have been talking about influencing other people and their emotions over the decades. Lisa dives into that and the book's a whole tonne of it. Everything that we talk about, and this episode is available at the show notes at salesman.org. And with that said, let's jump right into it.   Can Humans Control Their Emotions? · [01:52]   Will Barron: And we're going to talk some science, we're going to talk emotions, and we're going to hopefully be able to discuss where, well I'm going to call buying emotions come from. So that might be happiness. If you buy the right product, it could be the fear of missing out, if there's an offer a deal in place, it could be unfortunately regrets or buyer's remorse. I want to dive into where all these come from, then hopefully how we can help buyers have better buying experiences moving forward. So before the obvious question of where the heck do buying emotions come from? I want to tee things up with asking you, are we in control of our emotions? Because sometimes it seems like I can choose to be happy. I can choose to change my state of mind, but sometimes emotions come in crushing it and hits us like a car crash, I guess, a car wreck. So are we in control of the emotions that we feel?   “Your brain makes emotions, emotions don't happen to you. They are made by your brain for particular situations that you're in. Your brain is automatically constructing emotions out of a set of ingredients. And you have control over seeding your brain with those ingredients to make emotions more automatic in an effortless way, but control in the moment as in stopping feeling one thing and in order to cultivate a different feeling is extremely hard I would say.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman ·  [02:17]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Well, that's a really hard question actually. That could be answered in many different ways. I guess the answer would be, yes, you are more in control than maybe you think you are, but that control looks very different than what you think it does. So your brain makes emotions, emotions don't happen to you. They are made by your brain for particular situations that you're in, your brain is automatically constructing emotions out of a set of ingredients. And you have control overseeding your brain with those ingredients to make emotions more automatically in an effortless way, but control in the moment as in stopping feeling one thing and in order to cultivate a different feeling is extremely hard I would say. If you're very physically worked up, you can change the meaning of that worked up feeling and therefore change the emotion, but calming your body down is actually extremely hard to do for anybody.   Do We All Have The Capacity to Feel The Same Emotions? · [04:10]    Will Barron: Sure, you've touched on something here that I wanted to come to the end of the show or later on the show, but we'll address it now. These feelings that we feel, does everyone feel the same feeling? And then from societal, I guess, norms put a label on it, of I feel butterflies. And so I feel nervous, excited versus other people might feel butterflies and have a different association with that feeling so they feel a different emotion. What I'm asking is all emotions ubiquitous, and we all feel the same. They can be categorised, or do we add a layer on top of emotions that changes what they actually feel towards personally?   “So your brain is always regulating your body and your body is always sending information back to your brain. And you feel that information from the tug of your lungs expanding, the rush of your blood through your veins, the beating of your heart.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [04:21]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: So your brain is always regulating your body and your body is always sending information back to your brain. And you feel that information from the tug of your lungs expanding, the rush of your blood through your veins, the beating of your heart. You experience those sensations. As simple feelings of affect, feeling worked up, feeling calm, feeling pleasant, feeling unpleasant, those aren't emotions, they're simple feelings of mood or what scientists call affect. They're always with you every waking moment of your life. Your brain's job in part is to link the sensations from your body and these affective feelings to the words going on around you in the world in order to give them meaning so that your brain knows what to do next. And so it's more than just labelling. What your brain is always doing is categorising sensations to give them meaning a way to think about it as like this, your brain is trapped in a dark silent box called your skull.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: It's receiving sense data from the world like changes in light, changes in sound, pressure, changes in chemicals. It doesn't know what the causes are of these changes. It only receives the outcomes of those causes, so when there's a flash of light or a loud bang, say a loud bang, what is it? Is it someone slamming a door? Is it a car backfiring? Is it thunder? Is it a gunshot? Depending on what caused that bang your brain would do different things to keep you alive and well. But your brain doesn't know what caused the sound. It only know it's receiving the outcome of some change, but it doesn't know what the change is. Similarly, when your brain receives sense data from your body and there's a tug in your chest, is it hum, anxiety? Is it heartburn from having eaten too much? Is it the beginnings of a heart attack?   “This is what philosophers call a reverse inference problem. You get the answers, but you don't know the question. You have to figure out what caused these changes. And so that's what your brain is always doing. It's asking itself. “The last time I was in a situation like this, where I had these internal sensations and this feeling, what caused it? What did I do about it?” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  · [06:50]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: What is it? Your brain doesn't know what it is. It's only receiving the outcome of some cause. This is what philosophers call a reverse inference problem. You get the answers, but you don't know the question. You have to figure out what caused these changes. And so that's what your brain is always doing. It's asking itself. “The last time I was in a situation like this, where I had these internal sensations and this feeling, what caused it? What did I do about it?” It's asking what is similar to the present moment in my past and things which are similar in some way are a category.   “Happiness for you is not the same thing each time you feel it or regret each time you feel it is not the same thing because your brain is constructing each moment on the fly in a particular situation. So, in some situations, when you're happy, you smile, in some situations when you're happy you cry, in some situations when you're happy you might you pound fists with someone. You do different things, your body does different things.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  · [07:43]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: So your brain is basically forming categories to guide your action and create your extended emotional experience out of the sense data. So the question you're asking me, does everyone in the world feel the same thing? The answer is no, but happiness for you is not the same thing each time you feel it or regret each time you feel it is not the same thing because your brain is constructing each moment on the fly in a particular situation. So in some situations, when you're happy, you smile, in some situations when you're happy you cry, in some situations when you're happy you might you pound fists with someone, you do different things, your body does different things. You feel different things. When you're happy, depending on the situation that you're in. So it's not the same, even for you from moment to moment.   The Brain’s Unconscious Reactions to Different Types of Emotions  · [08:38]   Will Barron: This is fascinating because we've never ponded on the idea before. And just you bringing that back to me adds different frames of references of what emotions are, which is amazing. And how much of this then is conscious versus subconscious or unconscious in this?   “Everything that you experience right now, your brain is able to use in the future to help construct another experience. So in a sense, we're always cultivating our past as a way of controlling our future.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  · [09:18]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Mostly unconscious. So your brain is all of this meaning-making is occurring under the hood really automatically. In fact, it takes me much longer to describe it to you than it actually takes for it to occur. So when you asked me before, how controllable are your emotions? Well, the meaning making part is easier to control if you think about control over the long-term, meaning everything that you experience right now, your brain is able to use in the future to help construct another experience. So in a sense, we're always cultivating our past as a way of controlling our future. So the best way to control your emotions is to give your brain a good, flexible set of options that it can use to construct your emotions with. And then your brain will be very flexible in how it does this on the fly with very little effort from you.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: So can you think of it a little bit like exercising, you invest a lot of energy and then you replenish that energy because it's a really good investment in having a healthy brain in the future. And similarly, you can construct new experiences for yourself, cultivate new situations, curate new feelings. And that is effortful. But what it does is it's an investment in having a flexible brain that will control your emotions in a way that's more tailored to the situation.   Chemical and Neural Activities in The Brain and How They Affect How We React to Emotions  · [10:39]   Will Barron: What is or I'll put this a different way. How much of this is brain activity and feedback from the body versus a chemical a cascade in the brain where once it starts literal chemical reactions are happening. And so it's difficult to put a stop to it in that moment.   “There's a whole system in your brain of neurons. Their only job is to control other neurons. That's what we call attention. You experience attention from a subjective perspective. “Am I looking at this thing? Am I concentrating on this thing?” But attention from a neurons perspective is anything which makes it fire more or less.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [11:30]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Well, here's the thing, all chemical, all neural activity in the brain is both chemical and electrical. Neurons communicate by chemicals. I mean, if you didn't have those chemicals, the neurons could not possibly talk to each other. There's a whole system in your brain of neurons. Their only job is to control other neurons. That's what we call attention. You experience attention from a subjective perspective. “Am I looking at this thing? Am I concentrating on this thing?” But attention from a neurons perspective is anything which makes it fire more or less. So you put a stop to the firing of some neurons by other neurons basically. And it's always possible to turn the dial up or turn the dial down on an assembly of neurons, it's just that your body takes longer to adjust to the neural signals.    “You have these moments where you know nothing is wrong, but you're still worked up anyways. And you really would really, really like that worked up feeling to go away. But it won't it's because your body is just slower to listen to those signals from your brain.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  · [12:00]   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: So it can feel like, you have these moments where you know nothing is wrong, but you're still worked up anyways. And you really would really, really like that worked up feeling to go away. But it won't it's because your body is just slower to listen to those signals from your brain.   How Salespeople Can Make Their Customers Happier By Helping Regulate Their Nevours Systems  · [12:40]    Will Barron: Amazing. Okay. So that's the baseline there. How do we, and we can very quickly move into the world of manipulation I'm not interested in that. I'm more interested in creating a better buying experiences. And I'm sure some of this works better in person than it does over a Skype call or over a phone call. But is there anything we can do as salespeople, as business leaders to make our customers happier, where we engage with them over the perhaps obvious stuff like, perhaps I'm assuming this is the case, but smiling seems to be somewhat contagious. And that hopefully affects the emotions of the people that are engaged with. Is there anything like that, that we can do to I guess, get people to mirror our own emotions?   “When people smile for the purpose of trying to get me to smile, really what I want to do is give them the finger. Honestly, I don't like being manipulated that way. And I don't think people like being manipulated actually.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  · [13:20]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Yeah. So I have to tell you that the more I learn about this, the more I think that smiling is… One day I'm going to write a book called the tyranny of happiness, I think. When people smile for the purpose of trying to get me to smile, really what I want to do is give them the finger. Honestly, I don't like being manipulated that way. And I don't think people like being manipulated actually. So here's what I would say.    “The best thing for a human nervous system is another human. The worst thing for a human nervous system is also another human. So if you want to make your customers more comfortable and able to engage in the kind of thoughtful weighing of pros and cons, so that they'll be satisfied with a purchase that they make, your job is to help regulate their nervous systems.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  · [13:45]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: We are social animals. We regulate each other's nervous systems, in a way you could think about the best thing for a human nervous system is another human. The worst thing for a human nervous system is also another human. So if you want to make your customers more comfortable and able to engage in the kind of thoughtful weighing of pros and cons, so that they'll be satisfied with a purchase that they make, your job is to help regulate their nervous systems.    “The way I describe this is body budgeting. Your brain is running a budget for your body. It's not budgeting money, it's budgeting salt and glucose and water and oxygen, and all the things your body needs to run.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  · [14:17]   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: The way I describe this is body budgeting. Your brain is running a budget for your body. It's not budgeting money, it's budgeting salt and glucose and water and oxygen, and all the things your body needs to run. And we make deposits into that body budget by sleeping and eating, and we make withdrawals.    “When you're giving a client a lot of information and they have to process that information and make a decision, that is expensive, metabolically speaking, and you can make that process more expensive or less expensive for them, depending on how responsive you are to them.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  · [14:47]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: The two biggest most expensive things your brain can do is move your body like when you're walking or getting out of bed in the morning or exercising and learning. So when you're giving a client a lot information and they have to process that information and make a decision, that is expensive, metabolically speaking, and you can make that process more expensive or less expensive for them, depending on how responsive you are to them. We can make metaphorical deposits and withdrawals in other people's body budgets. So rather than smiling, I would suggest, first of all, breathing at a good, slow pace because we mirror each other's breathing patterns.   “The one way to calm your body down is to breathe in a very paced way. And actually, Navy SEALs use this in order to calm themselves down.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [16:30]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: So if you and I were actually in a room together and we liked each other and we trusted each other, our physiological signals would would synchronise. If you're really worked up, I would become really worked up, if you're really calm and you're breathing at a really good pace, then I would become calmer and pretty that a good pace. We're not aware of doing these things, but it's very, very possible to influence people that way. So, for example, when I was training to be a therapist, a million years ago in another life one of the things I learned to do was breathe at a pace of about six to eight seconds, because the one way to calm your body down is to breathe in a very paced way.   “If you want to have a successful selling episode, whatever that means to you, you probably want to do it in a way that leaves your client or customer feeling not happy but comfortable, comfortable, which means that you reflect back what they say, you pace your own breathing. So they pace their breathing, and you basically make it a less metabolically taxing event.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman  ·  [16:48]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: And actually Navy SEALs use this in order to calm themselves down. It's really the only way that we know of that you can lower your heart rate, bring your body back down into a more comfortable range. So what I would suggest is if you want to have a successful selling episode, whatever that means to you, you probably want to do it in a way that leaves the person, leaves your client or customer feeling not happy but comfortable, comfortable, which means that you reflect back what they say, you pace your own breathing. So they pace their breathing, and you basically make it a less metabolically taxing event.   Will Barron: So you'll have experiences, I'm sure, but you may not be consciously aware of all the training that's gone in the past with sales training. So perhaps 10 years ago, we would talk not way, I wasn't involved in this. This is one of the reason I started the podcast, how people like yourself on to actually unwrap the science behind some of this. But last sales training was about mirroring the person that you're engaging with and all these weird tricks and hacks and kind of things. Then he went to more of a discussion. I want to get your thoughts on this in a second on things like discussing newer neurons, but it would be a non-scientist talking about mirror neurons, trying to use anecdotes and metaphors to describe some of that. They don't know what they're talking about.   Lisa’s Shares Her Thoughts on the Effectiveness of Mirroring Other People’s Body Language · [18:20]    Will Barron: So this is why this is really interesting to me to talk about the actual science of why perhaps some of this may work, may not work. What are your thoughts on the likes of the African seal, the effectiveness of mirroring body language, things like this, and are mirror neurons relevant to any of this whatsoever?   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Mirror neurons don't exist. There's nothing in your brain called a mirror neuron. There are neurons in your brain that do what mirror neurons are supposed to do, but they are in many, many, many parts of your brain. There's nothing special. So what I'm trying to say is the function is there, but there are no special neurons that perform this function. Okay? Your brain has the capacity to change the firing of its own neurons. If I ask you to imagine a McIntosh apple of the sort that you eat, so in your mind's eye, can you imagine a red apple that you would eat? And can you imagine picking that apple up, fighting into the apple, hearing the crunch of the apple, maybe tasting maybe it's some tart with a little sweetness. Can you imagine that in your mind's eye?   Will Barron: I can, and it's probably happening what you're trying to be capping of. I'm slightly salivating as you describe it.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Yeah. Why do you think you're salivating? Because your brain has changed the firing of your neurons. Your brain is changing. If we had your head in a brain scanner, we would see that portions of the visual system in your brain would be very active even though there actually is no apple. Just by merely saying the word apple, this conjures an image in your head, your brain upon hearing me talk about the crunch and the taste, is actually changing the firing of neurons without the apple there to actually make you salivate, to prepare, to digest the apple when you eat it. Your brain is basically what we would call simulating. This is what scientists called simulating. It's a fancy word for a bunch of things we do every day, but this is actually how it's exactly the same process that your brain undergoes when it's making sense of information from body in the world.   “So when you see someone smile or you see the raise of an eyebrow, or you see someone move, what your brain is doing is simulating to prepare to deal with that person's action.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [20:49]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: So when you see someone smile or you see the raise of an eyebrow, or you see someone move, what your brain is doing is simulating to prepare to deal with that person's action. That's what so-called motor neurons do. But every neuron in your brain, you can think of acting in that way. It's not something specific to the neurons that are in that little spot. And I guess the thing to say is this, that it is true that if you stick two people in a room who don't know each other, but through the course of conversation, they trust each other, they like each other.   “That kind of mirroring if you actually deliberately try to do it, people notice and they think it's weird.” – Lisa Feldman · [22:02]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: It's true that they will spontaneously mirror each other's actions. Let's say, well, you put your hand up to your face. I might put my hand up to flick my hair and then let's say, I flicked my hair, I flick my hair and I look to the right. You might also slightly turn your body to the right. I mean, people don't mirror in an exact way, but there is probabilistically speaking some… But that kind of mirroring if you actually deliberately try to do it, people notice and they think it's weird.   Will Barron: Of course, it's super weird, isn't it?   “When you lose someone that you love, when that person leaves you, you break up or they die, you feel like you've lost a part of yourself because you have, you've lost someone who was tending to your body budget, and now you have to do it on your own.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [23:03]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Of course it's really weird. But however, I can assure you that when you're trying to calm someone down and help them, we'll put it this way. I worked out with a coach for 15 years. Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning. Okay. I am much more efficient in my workout when he's there, than when he isn't there. It's not just because he's telling me what to do. I'm actually stronger when he's there and I can do more when he's there. And it's because he's providing body budgeting support for me in a way that I'm not consciously tracking. When you lose someone that you love, when that person leaves you, you break up or they die. You feel like you've lost a part of yourself because you have, you've lost someone who was tending to your body budget, and now you have to do it on your own.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: And it feels painful because it is, it's harder. The kind of mirroring that you want to do with someone you don't know very well would be more like staying calm, modulating your voice, modulate your breathing. And that will make it easier for them to do the same if they get worked up and you follow them, that just leads to a cycle of everybody getting worked up as opposed to taking a step back and taking a deep breath.   “If you keep your nervous system calm, you're basically providing support for the other person's nervous system.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [24:40]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: With little kids like with babies, actually, even with my daughter, sometimes I don't depend on mirroring. I get her to come to me. I give her a hug and I actually breathe slowly. And I get her to pace my breathing, which when she was a baby, all I needed to do was put her on my chest and breathe. And she would calm down just by my breathing. Now that she's 22, I can just say to her, “Do you want to hug?” And then we stand there and we breathe together for a minute. And then she feels she's calmer. And then you can't obviously you can't do that with a customer. But what you can do is if you keep your nervous system calm, you're basically providing support for the other person's nervous system.   How to Leverage The Power of Storytelling to Influence Your Customer’s Emotions · [24:58]   Will Barron: Okay. The weird manipulative used car sales techniques of the past are a no go which is approved, that message is approved on this podcast. Is there novel way to perhaps influence a person's emotional state, which you just did to me. Should we be using perhaps stories and storytelling to do that?   “Stories, convince people. So what you're trying to do is get someone to be immersed in a narrative that you've created, and that immersion must involve simulation.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [25:28]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Yes. Storytelling that allows simulation. That allows the person to… I mean, if you notice in both books, I've written, I use stories. I could throw data up on a screen, but that's not going to convince anybody except maybe another scientist. And even then I would say stories, convince people. So what you're trying to do is get someone to be immersed in a narrative that you've created, and that immersion must involve simulation. A person won't feel part of the story unless they're simulating it in the way that I just showed you with the apple.   Will Barron: Because I guess we've also then got to be careful not to be telling stories where we're getting someone to simulate. For example, a lot of sales training is based around this idea of making the buyer feel loads of pain, and then giving them a solution. Now, my experience, having experimented with all kinds of different sales techniques training and all this is, if you make someone feel really bad, they feel really bad. And then you've got to try and shift their emotions from one place to another. It's far easier to go into a conversation, being upbeat perhaps storytell and use positive case studies, as opposed to, again, this might be considered more manipulative of this is the worst thing that's going to happen. This and this as this and this. And I find that that leads to then buyer's remorse as opposed to a happy customer on the other end of it.   Things Salespeople Should Avoid Doing to Prevent Customers From Getting Into a Negative Emotional States · [26:44]   Will Barron: So is there anything that we've definitely spoken about so far least there's anything that we should avoid doing to stop people getting into a bad emotional state, as opposed to what we've talked about so far is trying to get people into a good one.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Yeah, well, I think there were a couple of things, well that come to mind and I'm going to talk to you as a scientist, but I'm also going to talk to you as a consumer. I'm a kind of person who has relationships with the people that I buy things from. And I'm very loyal actually. So I will always go back to the same shop, even if something's a little more expensive there. Not like exceedingly expensive more, but just even if it's a little more, I'll go back to that place because I know that person is going to help me in the long run. If I trust that person, I'm much more likely to buy from that person, I'm much more likely to take a risk that I normally wouldn't take with a purchase and so on. I think you have to understand what your goal is, what your goal is as a salesperson. Is your goal to make a sale in that moment?   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Is that the goal or is the goal to build a relationship with a customer where you will make sales over time to that person? I'm sure sometimes it's one and sometimes it's the other, but you have to think about what is your goal? Is it a short-term goal or a long-term goal? That's the first thing that will help you. And the second thing is, remember that your brain, the brain of a person, your brain, my brain everybody's brain is guessing what negative feelings mean. Those negative feelings aren't emotions. When your body budget is flush, you feel good, when your body budget is taxed, you're running a deficit because maybe you're thinking really hard or you're physically taxed in some way. What is stress? Stress is just your brain preparing for a big metabolic outlay. That's it? Cortisol is not a stress hormone.   “Your brain doesn't know what the negative feeling is about. It has to guess. That customer can guess it's you. So you have to be really careful when you create a negative feeling in someone because they might attribute the cause to you as opposed to the scenario that you created.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [29:02]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: It's a hormone that gets glucose into your bloodstream because your brain is predicting. You have a big metabolic outlay that can mean dragging your ass out of bed in the morning. That can mean going to the gym, or it can mean just learning something new and having to reason your way through a complicated purchase. Your brain doesn't know what the negative feeling is about. It has to guess. That customer can guess it's you. So you have to be really careful when you create a negative feeling in someone because they might attribute the cause to you as opposed to the scenario that you created. But let's say you want someone to simulate negative consequences in order to avoid them. I would do that by inviting them to do it with you to say, if you really think that this is an important thing to, you say, “Can we do a thought experiment?”   “And one of the reasons why we have so much trouble staying in the present is that our brains are very, very good at mental time travel.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [30:29]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: I want us to imagine this kind of a future let's imagine these things happen. So you're basically inviting them to take a little imaginary journey with you. This is something that human brains do exceedingly well, we can simulate into the future, simulate into the past. That's called memory. So imagination memory are both based in exactly the same computation, which is this simulation, ability to conjure experience independent of our immediate circumstances. And one of the reasons why we have so much trouble staying in the present is that our brains are very, very good at mental time travel.   “You want to create the context for the person to come to that realisation themselves, that yours is the best solution. If you try to just tell them that, they might believe you, but they might not. The thing is if they come to it themselves, they will be more satisfied with the purchase afterwards.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [31:00]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: So you can invite your customer to do mental time travel with you, and you can invite them, if you present, let's just say for myself, if somebody presented their product to me as the only solution to a problematic outcome, I probably wouldn't believe them because there's always more than one. You want to create the context for the person to come to that realisation themselves, that yours is the best solution. If you try to just tell them that, they might believe you, but they might not. The thing is if they come to it themselves, they will be more satisfied with the purchase afterwards.   Why Consuming Glucose Tablets Before a Meeting Cannot Change The Outcomes of a Negotiation · [31:19]   Will Barron: Perfect. Right. I've got two slightly more ridiculous questions that I'm intrigued to know the answers of Lisa. And then we'll wrap up the show with these number one, it seems like this could be actually studied. I doubt it's ever been studied. But with this idea of the metabolic deficit and the brain requiring so much energy to process thoughts and say, we're going into a big negotiations, lots of learning and guessing and putting together numbers perhaps. Again, this is not practical, but I think it's interesting to ponder on, perhaps. Could you give someone a glucose tablet or something like that before in negotiation? And would that change the outcome of a negotiation if we did it like 200, 500 times?   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Well, people have done those experiments and the answer is no. And the reason why is that circulating glucose in your blood, we don't know exactly what that does to the glucose levels in your brain. And that's actually really what's important. What's important is how your brain is metabolising as much as what your body is doing. So I would say if you want to be effective, the best thing that you can do, let's say you want to be effective tomorrow. Like today, you and I, I knew we were having this conversation today, and I don't really know that much about sales from a technical standpoint. I know about sales as a consumer. So I need to be sharp for this conversation. So the best thing that I could do is get a good night's sleep last night, just what I did.   The Power of Proper Sleep, Hydration, Healthy Eating Habits, and Exercise In Preparing For Negotiation Meetings · [33:18]    Will Barron: Just about to ask you, perhaps a better way, a best that would be if someone had a power nap before a meeting, or we did a 9:00 AM meetings versus 10:00 PM meetings after some pizza margaritas, which would be probably more effective. So that's common sense right. Although I guess common sense, isn't always used as commonly as what it should be.   “If you want to be in control, as in control, as your nervous system will possibly allow, you have to make sure your body budget is solvent. And if you're running a deficit and you say, drink coffee, what you're doing is borrowing energy from tomorrow that you will spend today. And at some point, we all need to do that at times.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [33:44]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: True, but I would say, get enough sleep, be well-hydrated. Again, it sounds really crazy, but when people ask me, “What can I do to control my emotions, what's the best thing that I can do.” I'm like, “Get enough sleep, keep yourself hydrated, eat healthily and exercise.” I know I sound like a mother and I'm a mother. But I'm speaking to you as a neuroscientist. If you want to be in control, as in control, as your nervous system will possibly allow, you have to make sure your body budget is solvent. And if you're running a deficit and you say, drink coffee, what are you doing when you drink coffee? And I say this as a committed coffee lover and tea lover. I actually don't drink coffee anymore, but tea, I still drink.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: But I love caffeine as much as the next person, but when you drink caffeine as you might be doing right now, well, as you pick up that cup. What you're doing is borrowing energy from tomorrow that you will spend today. And at some point, we all need to do that at times. But at some point, you, the deficit will catch up with you and you will feel really unpleasant to the point of feeling distressed and maybe even getting sick. So the point is just having a glucose tablet is not really going to help you, but being hydrated, getting enough sleep, eating healthfully, those things actually will in the long run on average, be better for you.   Caffeine Consumption and How It’s Affecting Your Brain and Body Performance · [34:57]    Will Barron: Love it. It's funny you mentioned this. I actually did a podcast about caffeine consumption a few months ago, because it's almost a stereotype that business people, leaders, salespeople drink a lot of caffeine to try and stay on their game and stay focused. And so we did a whole show on the science of it, and how is blocking different things. And does what you describe. And I guess in a layman's term of is Robin tomorrow for today. So I've [inaudible 00:35:21] on caffeine in literary months now, and makes that initial kind of a weak period of headaches after the fact of giving it up, which was alarming to me, that it physically had an effect on my brain.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Yeah, do you know why you have those headaches? You had those headaches when your brain is controlling your body. It's controlling your body by prediction, not by reactions. So when I talked to you about the apple and you start to salivate it's because your brain was preparing you, it was predicting there would be an apple, and it was preparing you to digest it. When you drink water and what your thirst is quenched by water, you take a drink and you drink a glass of water. You have no more thirst. Actually it takes 20 minutes for the osmolarity of your blood to change for water, to get to your brain. So for 20 minutes, you're not thirsty, but yet the information hasn't made it to your brain yet that you're hydrated. How come you stopped feeling thirsty? It's because your brain predicted the consequences of drinking water, because it's had gazillions of opportunities to learn that.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: And similarly your brain is really always, always predicting. So if you have coffee every morning at the same time, your brain knows it's can predict, because you've had this coffee every day at the same time. Coffee has chemicals in it that will constrict the blood vessels in your brain, actually everywhere. So your brain in anticipation, dilates the blood vessels just before you're about to drink the coffee. But if you don't have the coffee to keep the blood vessels stable, they stay dilated and you have a headache.   How Emotions are Made, Both In People and in Animals · [37:40]    Will Barron: Love it. I love it. The show is now powered by colour malty. Not quite as interesting or as nice. I quite like the routine of making a nice cup of coffee in the morning. That ritual is important to me. But I'm conscious of time at least, I've got one final question for you. It's on topic of emotions, but it's completely off topic with sales. It's a selfish question. We've just caught a golden retriever puppy. Now he looks like he's happy when he hangs out with me. What I want to ask you though, is, am I projecting an emotion that perhaps a dog does feel? Does it feel onto it? Because I see his tail wagging as is his face almost jumps up at the sides.   Will Barron: And I know that there is kind of a science that shows that dogs, animals that have eyebrows that move in ways that humans can recognise. I've done better. We've been socialisation for humans as we kind of I was also a domesticated wolves over the years. So my question is Lisa, when my puppy comes over and when he's not biting me at all moments, when he's just chilling, is he happy? Or am I projecting these kind of feelings or thoughts that humans have onto this animal? That's perhaps it doesn't have a consciousness.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Yeah. I talk about this in my book, How Emotions Are Made and it's, I think a widely misunderstood chapter. So here's the thing. You don't recognise anything in anybody. Your brain is guessing. When I raise my eyebrows or I widen my eyes or I frown, or I scowl, your brain is guessing what that means. You're not recognising emotions in me. So 30% of the time when people are angry they scowl, which means 70% of the time when they're angry, they're doing something else with their face. They might be concentrating. You might've just told them about Joe, they might have gasp. There are all kinds of reasons why people scowl. So when you're angry, you scowl 30% of the time. But sometimes when you're angry, you cry, sometimes you frown, sometimes you smile. You might even laugh when you're angry.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: And then you also scowled at other times. So your brain is guessing. It's guessing what a movement means in a particular situation. And then it's checking on its guesses to make sure that you're right. So your brain is predicting, “What I'm going to do next?” And if you predicted well, then you probably means you guessed well. Same thing with your dog. Same thing with your dog. But I will say about the dog though, is that the dog's brain is not the same as a human brain. The dog has these simple feelings of affect. The dog can feel calm. It can feel worked up. The dog can feel pleasant. It can feel unpleasant. I have a puppy too. I got it. I mean, one of the first things we did, like everybody else that we know of actually during COVID was we got a puppy.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: We thought we were being so clever. Everyone else thought they were being clever, too clever and unique. And we were very similar to everybody else. So we got this puppy and this puppy is she's very affectionate. Does she love me? She's attached to me because I regulate her body budget and she regulates mine. So she will come and lay on my feet. She likes to be close to me. I also know she is attached to me because I feed her. I feed her and she feels, and I make her comfortable. I pet her. So I am the source of body budgeting for her. And she is the source of body budgeting for me. That's also true for your puppy. We experience that with each other as love. But the difference is that I have a concept for love and you have concept for love and all the humans in your life have a concept for love so they can feel love because they can take those simple feelings and transform them into something more. Your dog's brain can't do that.   Will Barron: You're sure because that's really disappointing, Lisa. It's depressing me.   “Does happiness exist in a dog is an unanswerable question. The question is, do you experience your dog being happy? And the answer is yes. And if you ask the question, does your dog experience happiness the way you experience happiness, the answer is no.” – Lisa Feldman · [41:52]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: No, no, it's not disappointing. The point is that if you make emotions, then the question of does X have an emotion? Let me say it differently. Does happiness exist in a dog is an unanswerable question. The question is, do you experience your dog is happy? And the answer is yes. And if you ask the question, does your dog experience happiness the way you experience happiness, the answer is no.   Will Barron: Because he's a dog.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Yeah, because he's a dog. But he's attached to you. He can feel pleasant in your company, he can feel unpleasant, he can feel worked up, he can feel calm. And his brain is trying to predict what you're going to do. And mainly his whole job in life is to right, arrange things so that you'll feed him or maybe take him on a walk.   Will Barron: Love it, love it. I thought that was a slightly off topic question, but you're right. Probably 80% of the audience has recently got a puppy. So maybe it's more relevant than what I thought it would be.   “When you are interacting with a customer, you are not reading that person's emotions, you are guessing, your brain is guessing. And it's probably a good idea to be humble about the quality of your guesses. Even someone who feels like they are excellent at reading people, their brain is just guessing and you can be wrong.” – Dr. Lisa Feldman · [42:50]    Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Well, here's the point though, to get back to the sales. When you are interacting with a customer, you are not reading that person's emotions, you are guessing, your brain is guessing. And it's probably a good idea to be humble about the quality of your guesses. Even someone who feels like they are excellent at reading people, their brain is just guessing and you can be wrong.   Parting Thoughts: Lisa’s Books and How to Reach Out to Her · [43:11]   Will Barron: Love it. Okay. We'll wrap up the show with that Lisa. I really appreciate your time and your insights on this. With that tell us about, well, we've covered one of the books, tell us about both of them and where we can find out more about you as well.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Okay. You can find out more about me at my public website, lisafeldmanbarrett.com as much just my name.com. There are two books that you can find out about on that website. The first is How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Which is available worldwide. The second book is just new in the U.S. and we're coming out in the UK in March called Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. So ow Emotions Are Made is a pretty standard popular science book. It's about 300 pages long. It explains a lot about how emotions work, how you can control your emotions, some about how your brain works more generally.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain is a little book of essays. It's really written for people who don't think of themselves as that interested in science. But what it does is in seven and a half little essays, it communicates some really cool ideas and facts about how brains work. So you can talk to your friends and, or maybe your customers and kind of wow them with some cool neuroscience tidbits. But it also invites you to think about what kind of a person you are or want to be given that you have this kind of brain that you have. It's a very quick read may husband calls it the first neuroscience beach read.   Will Barron: Love it. Well, I'll link to both books at your website, everything else that we talked about in this episode of the show over to salesman.org. I will give myself a quick plug, which not done for a while. Regularness will note, I host a novel podcast called Excited Science, where we try and get people excited about science. So maybe we can chat on there in the future Lisa. I've not plugged that on this show for a while, so I'll plug it right there. And with that Lisa, I want to thank you again for your time, your insights on this. Absolutely fascinating. You've cleared up a bunch of old sales training nonsense as well. I think that's really valuable for the audience and I want to thank you again for joining me on the Salesman Podcast.   Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: My pleasure, thank you.

Here you are—another year gone by. And you almost, aaaaaalmost hit your sales goal this time! Just like last year. And the year before that. And the year before that… But this year is going to be different. Maybe it’s the world rapidly changing around you. Or maybe it’s you getting another year older. But this year, it’s time to get serious about setting sales goals and adapting your sales process. And I’ve got just the framework to help. In just eight steps, you can map out where you want to be next year, strategize the steps you need to take to get there, narrow down which goals are a good fit, and more. Ready to go? Let’s hit it. Setting Sales Goals: Why It Works Why should you be setting your own sales goals? And just as importantly, why should you start setting your goals strategically so that you don’t give up on them four months into the year? As it turns out, setting sales goals is one of the easiest low-investment, high-return wins sales reps can make. Here’s why setting your own sales targets is such a game-changer. A) A Clear Path to Success First and foremost, setting sales goals gives you a clear, indisputable path towards achieving massive professional success. We can all agree that if you don’t know where you’re heading, it’s going to be a real pain to get there. And setting well-defined goals lets you plan out your path to success milestone by milestone. What’s more, when you continually improve upon those goals (e.g., “I’m going to close 5% more deals than last year”), you’re creating the impetus you need to keep moving forward. And that means less career stagnation and consistent forward progression. Having a clear path to success is also valuable for sales managers and sales teams too. When you can effectively communicate your sales cycle and where the sales revenue is going to come from, management will get off your back and allow you to get on with your job. B) It Lets You Plan Ahead Setting sales metrics (that are reasonable, mind you) also gives you a better indication of what lies ahead. If, say, you need to close on 12 accounts this quarter, that means you need to aim for four accounts per month. If you’ve only closed two in the first month, that means you’ll have to work extra hard to close five in the other two months. Setting annual sales goals based on numbers rather than more a subjective sales goal like “improving customer lifetime value” enables you to directly track progress too. Added to that, your goals also help identify your busy seasons, your lulls, and when you should focus on other goals like filling your pipeline, streamlining your processes, or even taking a vacation. C) Feel More Fulfilled at Work Last (but certainly not least), setting and achieving your sales objectives boosts your confidence, teaches you self-management, and increases your proficiency on the job. All these perks allow for faster upward mobility which often leads to greater satisfaction. Don’t forget—achieving sales goals is often directly connected to bonuses and raises. And as we all know, compensation has a huge effect on overall job satisfaction. The Setting Sales Goals Framework Now that we’re agreed on why setting sales goals is so important, let’s jump into the how of it all. How do you set sales objectives? Is there a sales goals template you can use? What do I need to do to set me up for success this year? I developed The Setting Sales Goals Framework to answer these questions (and more). With this framework, you can evaluate your priorities, identify areas of improvement, establish impactful goals, and set yourself up for your best year yet. Plus, it’s made up of just eight simple steps. What Did I Achieve Last Year? What Were My Biggest Disappointments Last Year? What Did I Learn Last Year? How Do I Limit Myself & How Can I Stop? What Roles Do I Play in My Life? Which One of These Roles Is My Major Focus for Next Year? What Are My Goals for Each Role? What Are My Top 3 Goals for Next Year? 1. What Did I Achieve Last Year? The process starts with an act hated with a passion by some and absolutely adored by others—bragging. If you achieved something this year, you can do the same this year too. What were your finest moments over the past 12 months? When did you feel unabashedly proud? Or when did you receive praise from a supervisor, coworker, friend, or partner? Start with your professional accomplishments like if you hit your revenue targets and sales activities. But don’t stop there. Reach into your family and social life too. Here are a few questions to get your accomplishment juices flowing. Did you hit your sales target? Did you get closer than you have done in the past? Did you move house? Did you decorate or repair your current home? Did you start a new sales job or get a promotion? How much money did you earn in the last year? Did you pay off a debt? Did you get married? Have a child? Did you get through a rough family patch? Did you finally start to get fit? Are you exercising more than the previous year? Did you start to treat yourself to more enjoyable things? Did you read more books? See more friends? Celebrate Your Accomplishments You should force yourself to celebrate the wins no matter how small they seem. There are two reasons for this. First, you’re essentially rewiring your brain to associate completing goals with good feelings. When we skip the celebration phase of the productivity cycle, our brains get wired to associate completing a task with simply starting the next one. There’s no reward here. And that’s going to make it harder to stay motivated and care about actually achieving your goal. Added to that, this stage of the framework helps you balance your perception of yourself. You’re pulling up the celebrations that have been forgotten and weighing them against the losses in the next step. The cool thing is that often when people go through this part of the worksheet, they find that they are doing far better than they thought they were. Setting Sales Goals Pro Tip: Start a wins journal. Any time you get a compliment, a slap on the back, a “Great work!” or any other indication that you accomplished something important, write it down. Doing so helps you identify wins more easily and makes this first step much easier. “One of my favorite things that I recommend to my clients is to create a journal. Call it your wins journal. So every time you have a win, small, medium, or large, write it down. Like, “Woohoo, celebrate! Today I talked with John DOE at Google, and he's always super excited about bringing our stuff into his company.” Write that down. So when you do get caught in these anxious moments, go back to your wins journal, like, “Oh yeah, that happened. That was real.” Remind yourself that you are good at what you do. You are enough, you've got this. – Interview with Michele Molitor, Coach, Hypnotist, & Imposter Syndrome Expert 2. What Were My Biggest Disappointments Last Year?  Next up is the opposite of the last step. When did you feel like your abilities fell short of your expectations? When did you not stack up? And when did you miss the mark? Writing out your disappointments shouldn’t be all doom and gloom. There is actually a lot of value in documenting your disappointments. For instance, it can be quite cathartic. I personally have always felt a great weight lifted from my shoulders every time I write down what went wrong rather than trying to pretend it didn’t happen. Did you fail to hit your stretch goal? Did you make less sales calls than you planned? Did your last monthly sales goal right down the crapper? Most people are more comfortable with their failures than their successes, and so they tend to keep them around, like cozy old friends. But when we hold onto our disappointments and don’t celebrate our wins, our self-perception becomes unbalanced. Instead, you need to accept that your failures are a reflection of who you were a year ago. They are not reflective of what you’re capable of right now or what you’re going to be capable of six months from now. Think of it as a garden. Pointing out our disappointments is like weeding the soil we’ve planted our seeds of achievement in, giving them the environment they need to grow. Document Your Disappointments Too Just as you started a wins journal in the last step, it’s important you document your disappointments as well. Here are some questions ask yourself to get you thinking about any downsides of the past 12 months. You didn’t hit your sales target, or you didn’t get the bonus you wanted Your debt got bigger rather than smaller You didn’t find that man or woman you wanted to bring into your life Your dreams didn’t come through Expectations were not fulfilled You lost someone close to you Your clothes are fitting a little tighter, but you’ve not gained any muscle You were hoping to go on an awesome holiday away, but things didn’t work out You wanted more time to yourself, but it didn’t happen Write them down throughout the year and come back to them once it’s time to set new goals. Setting Sales Goals Pro Tip: Be honest with yourself. Nothing good comes from sugarcoating the past. If you lie to yourself about your disappointments, you’re preventing yourself from avoiding those disappointments in the future and becoming a better, more successful sales rep. “What I teach people is, just change one word around, from the prospect to I. How could I have made them believe that they were ready to buy? How could I have made them understand the price was right? How could I have made sure that they had everybody there? If you can change that one word and put the onus on yourself, you're going to learn from your failures, and those failures are going to start to diminish.” – Interview with Harvey J. Eisenstadt, Trainer, Speaker, Mentor, & Author 3. What Did I Learn Last Year?  Now is the time when you put the two previous steps together. You achieved some spectacular wins. You ran into some unexpected disappointments. So, what did you learn from each? What was the secret to your successes? What worked and what didn’t? And why were you able to achieve what you did and what caused you to fail when you did? Take the time to move through both your wins and disappointments journals and find the lessons in each. And then, ask yourself these questions about those lessons: What would’ve worked better? What was the lesson I should have learned? Have I actually learned this lesson yet? Is there any evidence to prove that I learned it? What is the evidence? Answering these questions gives you an opportunity to take on bigger challenges. If something failed last year, your answers to these questions give you an opportunity to learn what you can do differently next time to increase your chance of success. Asking the REAL Questions Struggling to find the lessons? Ask yourself these questions to tickle your brain a bit. What do I need to change in the way I operate to have success faster? Do I need more discipline? Have I been honest with myself and others? Am I taking care of myself as well as I need to be? Do I face problems head-on, or do I put my head in the sand? Do I let other people support me, or do I avoid getting feedback and help? Do I support other people as much as I should? Do I need to be more proactive in chasing my goals? Do I need to say no more often and focus on what really matters? As you learn from previous mistakes, you reduce the chances that failure happens again. And you also increase the chances of good events happening. When you do that, you are changing the climate that you’re growing your seeds of success in. You’re increasing the amount of sunshine and rain. And you’re reducing the frost and pests killing your plants. You’re cultivating success in your life. Setting Sales Goals Pro Tip: It’s vital that you learn to find a lesson in EVERY failure. That’s why it’s so important to jot down your disappointments over the past year. And that’s why this step is so important for setting sales goals that lead you to professional success.  “I don't care if you're buying something or selling something. The easiest thing to do is give up and walk away. But if you can keep learning a lesson, asking why, wondering why, go back to your team, regroup with them and decide how to be bigger and better and stronger together; it's a formality that the byproduct is success.” – Interview with Derek Daly, Author & Motor Racing Legend 4. How Do I Limit Myself & How Can I Stop? We are often our own worst enemy. And in many cases, the things that are holding us back the most are things we do to ourselves. This crucial step of The Setting Sales Goals Framework is meant to help you identify where these self-imposed roadblocks are. Because once you do, only then can you overcome them. Ask yourself these four questions to uncover your own limiting beliefs and behaviors. How Do I Limit Myself? You may come up with tons of different reasons here. And I want you to make note of every single one of them. For instance, you may think: I don’t plan and think ahead I’m lazy I believe what other people say about me I don’t stand up for myself when my customers push me around I don’t follow through on what I say I’m going to do I spend more than I make I don’t ask for what I want Write them all down here. What Has It Cost Me to Do So? Next, analyze what each of those limits is costing you. This step of the process immediately throws everything into perspective. And as a result, you’ll soon be able to identify that 20% of the issues once removed will give you 80% of all the benefits. In What Ways Have I Benefited from Limiting Myself? What are the upsides of limiting yourself? Don’t be fooled here. There are always perks to limiting ourselves. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t be doing it in the first place. Some of the benefits you come up with may be: Living an easier life Avoiding having too much expected of you Living in ignorance and not having to face up to your issues Increasing the chance that people approve of you Having something to blame everything that goes wrong on Having the excuse that you could “do better if you really tried” when things do go wrong If I Knew How, Would I Be Willing to Stop Limiting Myself? The final step is to ask yourself, “Am I willing to stop limiting myself in these ways?” I don’t want you to worry about whether you think you’re going to be able to stop limiting yourself. Instead, ask yourself – “If I knew how, would I be willing to stop limiting myself in this area?” If the answer is yes, then this should be a goal of yours moving forward. Setting Sales Goals Pro Tip: Adopt an abundance mindset. An abundance mindset lets you see the vast potential in the world rather than being held down by scarcity and fear. And that means you can set better, more ambitious sales goals for yourself.  “We have abundance on this planet. The only limitations that are set, are set ourselves in what we believe we're able to achieve in a world full of abundance. Literally when you open your mind to that understanding, then why wouldn't you want to go out there and get every single thing you can. Because you know everything you could ever want and more is right here in one place. And it's nothing new. It's just a matter of you getting your hands on as much of it as possible.” – Interview with Ryan Stewman, Sales Coach & Business Consultant 5. What Roles Do I Play In My Life? Next up, it’s time to define your roles. And not just your roles at work. But all of your roles in life. Answering the question of “what roles do I play in my life?” allows you to get an overall view of all the aspects and responsibilities in your life. And doing so sets you up to identify which roles you want to focus on in the year ahead. There are three benefits to identifying your roles. 1: It Provides Direction Identifying your various roles lets you see how you’re being pulled in different directions. For instance, I think of my roles as a salesperson, entrepreneur, Brazilian jujitsu competitor, partner to my girlfriend, and a member of the Baron family. Spending a lot of time at the gym, training, and competing in Brazilian jujitsu can be fulfilling. But the reality is that it’s pulling me away from my financial goals as a salesperson. As you can see here, some goals in certain roles may work in tandem while others will pull away from each other. 2. It Generates Balance On the flip-side of that, if I spent all of my time in the role of salesperson and entrepreneur, what would be the point? Sure, I love selling, sure I love building the business. But they are just a vehicle to affording to do everything else I want to do in my life, which includes being a great partner and family member. It is very easy to spend too much time and attention on one area of your life and not enough time where it really matters. 3. It Gives Role Dichotomy You can hold multiple roles in your life. And you can act differently within those roles. This is called role dichotomy. For instance, I can’t take the aggressive version of me from a Brazilian jujitsu competition onto a sales call. If I do, I won’t close any deals. But I can dial back that part of me and tap into my emotional intelligence and calmness when I’m in my sales role. Setting Sales Goals Pro Tip: You can’t just have one role. No one is just a salesperson, a parent, or a partner. We all play different roles in our lives. So be sure you’re really digging deep to find which ones you play.  “We can't be workaholics, no extreme is good. So we want to be able to relax, recharge, have fun. Therefore, finding time to be inspired and do things you love has again, positive domino knock-on effects to the rest of your life as does having lots of energy because your health is good, having healthy relationships at home and in your family.” – Interview with Matt Anderson, Author, Coach, & Speaker 6. Which One of These Roles Is My Major Focus For Next Year?  Now it’s time to pick out which of your roles you’d like to focus on. Of course, I would like you to prioritize your sales career as your main focus over the next 12 months. But the reality is you may have other things that are more pressing right now. And that’s fine. As long as your sales role is at least second on your list of priorities, you’re still going to be able to crush your sales target. In fact, if you are for example, massively obese, fixing the role of being healthy and being there for your family will also have a massive effect on your sales performance too as you lose weight and get in shape. If you’re having a hard time figuring out which role to choose, ask yourself these questions: If you could put one problem behind you, once and for all, what would it be? Which role does that relate to? In which role do I want to not just make progress, but get to the end game of? Which role has the biggest impact on my overall happiness right now? Which aspect of my life is the biggest drain on my energy and willingness to take risks? Which role does this fall under? Understand the Zigzag Trap So, why do you need to focus things down at all? Can’t you just work on achieving all your goals at once? The answer here is no. Remember the old saying, “If you don’t make sacrifices to achieve your goals, then your goals themselves become the sacrifice.” Imagine that you have two major roles in your life, and each one of these roles is an island with lots of treasure on it. You start off the year, right in between the two islands treading water. Now, you can only swim in one direction or the other, towards one island or the other one. What most people do is zigzag between the two islands for decades on end and never make any real progress toward achievement in either role. But the most focused and successful individuals understand this trap. So they swim over to one island, collect the treasure, and then swim back to the other island and collect the treasure there as well. When you’re focused on one main role at a time, you become far more efficient in your goal achievement. Setting Sales Goals Pro Tip: The multitasking myth applies to larger goals, not just daily work. There’s been plenty of research that the most successful people don’t multitask. Instead, they focus on a single objective. Apply that same logic to your goals.  “It's basically been proven that multitasking is a myth. So stop it. Do one thing at a time. And I think that it's very useful to have a practice where you figure out, okay, what do I need to get done today, what are the most important priorities, and then just do them one at a time.” – Interview with Scott Ingram, Founder of Sales Success Media 7. What Are My Goals for Each Role?  This is where things start to get serious. Now we’re going to put together goals for each role. What do you want to accomplish as a sales rep that you couldn’t last year? How would you like to improve your family life? What do you need to do to feel more in control of what you’re accomplishing socially? Try to come up with five to ten goals for each role. And ask yourself the following questions about each goal along the way to make sure it’s the right goal for you. If I accept this challenge, will I make sure it happens? Am I hoping I will achieve this, or is it actually possible to achieve it? Is the goal specific and measurable? Does this goal match my values? Are you willing to be responsible for achieving this goal no matter what? That last question is incredibly important. Because if you’re not willing to do whatever you need to achieve the goal, you’re not going to be responsible for achieving it. And as a result, it will never happen. For all of your goals, no matter what the role, you must feel motivated to give it your best shot. Otherwise, just scribble it out and replace it with a few more potential ones. SMART Sales Goals Defined It’s essential that your goals are as specific as possible. And setting SMART sales goals is the best way to ensure your goals meet those requirements. So be sure your goals are SMART: Specific – What exactly does achieving your goal look like? Measurable – What are the quantifiable metrics you need to meet or fulfill? Achievable – Is this even possible (be honest)? Relevant – Is it even important compared to my role and my other goals? Time-Bound – When exactly does it need to be achieved by? Setting Sales Goals Pro Tip: When choosing goals, listen to your heart. Cheesy as all hell, I know. But when you choose goals that are connected to your emotions, you’re 10X more likely to have the motivation you need to follow through.  “This is why goal setting isn't very effective for most people, it doesn't get us to change action, it's our emotion that gets to change action.” – Interview with Matt Anderson, Author, Coach, & Speaker 8. What Are My Top Goals for Next Year?  Finally, it’s time to narrow down your goals. At this point in the framework, I typically have about 20 or 30 goals total, spread out across my different roles. But then I have to pick out the top five I think are going to be the most impactful. One reason we narrow things down here is that you just can’t focus on achieving 20 to 30 goals at a time. Remember the zigzag trap? When you split your attention among so many goals, you’re setting yourself up to not achieve any of them. But another reason we’re narrowing things down is there are often going to be larger goals that cancel out the small ones. For instance, if I want to build up an emergency fund, buy a new car, start investing, and earn a million dollars next year, the million dollars goal will make the other three irrelevant. See how that works? The 3-Part Test So, how do you narrow your goals down? Well, there’s a handy little three-part test I like to use that does wonders. When evaluating your goals, think: Do your goals fit your major role focus? Do they all (in one way or another) support that role? Do they fit with each other? Or are they pulling you in opposite directions? If so, you’re never going to be able to achieve both. Does each of your roles have a goal? Frontloading one or two roles with all your goals is a surefire path to burnout. But spreading your goals across roles will keep you focused. After you’ve narrowed down your goals into four or five, you’ve done all the hard work! Now, it’s up to you to stick with them. Setting Sales Goals Pro Tip: Focus on getting maximum benefit. What you’re looking for are goals that have an unequal upside. That means you can put a 60% effort into it and get out a 95% benefit. They’re the “easier” wins.  “For people who want to achieve extraordinary results right now, it's actually not about working longer hours. It's actually about being clear on what are the 20% priorities or activities that if I focus on those things, that drives 80% of my results. How do I start investing my time throughout the day instead of spending it.” – Interview with Geoff Woods, Co-Founder & President of ProduKtive Wrapping Up Setting sales goals is one of the most important sales success skills. In relatively little time and for not much effort, you can implement the eight steps in The Setting Sales Goals Framework to plan out strategic, effective goals for the whole year. All you need to do is: What Did I Achieve Last Year? What Were My Biggest Disappointments Last Year? What Did I Learn Last Year? How Do I Limit Myself & How Can I Stop? What Roles Do I Play in My Life? Which One of These Roles Is My Major Focus for Next Year? What Are My Goals for Each Role? What Are My Top 3 Goals for Next Year? Running through this process alone will make an incredible difference in your life. You’re going to feel more motivated, focused, and driven to succeed. And best of all, you’ll have a clear, achievable path to success, both personally and professionally. So now that you know how to set them, your first goal is simple… just get started.

In the minds of many reps, competitor buyers are off-limits for prospecting. After all, why waste time with a buyer that’s already entrenched with someone offering a similar product? But as it turns out, competitor buyers are some of the best prospects you can target. They’re more qualified, they’re budget-ready, and they’ve already got a buying process in place for your product. That being said, these leads can be harder to win over, too. They’re more loyal, resistant to change, and they take a bit more convincing on why your product is superior. So, how do you sell to competitor buyers successfully? This guide dives into how to sell against a competitor to bring on their existing clients. Inside, we take a look at a proven four-step framework. And we also investigate why these leads can be so lucrative in the first place (and how they can skyrocket your commissions in no time). Why Sell Into Competitor Accounts? Before we get into how to sell against a competitor, let’s look at why you should consider selling to their buyers in the first place. At first glance, the prospect of selling to your competition’s buyers can seem like a failed cause. Existing customers are loyal. They’re already familiar with your competitor’s products. And they’re resistant to change (the “don’t fix what ain’t broke” mindset). That all adds up to harder sells, wasted time, and fruitless effort… right? But as it turns out, there are plenty of benefits of selling to your competition’s buyers. And once you’ve developed a system for converting them that actually works, you can start to reap those benefits. Potential Benefits (When You Do It Right) So, why go after your competitor’s buyers at all? Below are a few of the biggest benefits of making the leap. They’ve Already Demonstrated Product Interest – One of the hardest parts of bringing new customers on is demonstrating how your solution addresses their pain points. It’s why retaining repeat customers is 5X more valuable compared to finding new buyers, according to Invesp. Existing customers already see the need. And so do your competitor’s buyers. As a result, you don’t have to spend days and weeks explaining your product’s value—they already understand it because they’re already working with a similar product. The Budget Is Settled – In addition to already demonstrating product interest, a competitor’s buyers have already allocated the space in their budget. When there’s already space in the budget, you don’t have to work as hard to justify spending extra. Instead, you can simply swap out your expenses with those of your competitors (if they’re comparable, of course). Their Buying Process Is in Place – Last but not least, your competitor’s buyers know how this all works. They’ve done it before. The approvals, the training, the onboarding, the ongoing support—they get it. And they’re far less likely to be turned off by how extensive the buying process may be. For you, that means an easier sale and less feet dragging along the way. Why It Can Be So Difficult to Pull Off The perks are clear—your competitor’s buyers are more qualified, more price-friendly, and more efficient than bringing on new clients. What’s not to love about that? But there are also some downsides to going this route too. Namely, converting these buyers can be a tough sell. At least in some cases. Here’s why. Loyalty – If a buyer has stuck with a brand for years, you may have trouble overcoming loyalty. Loyalty is a powerful purchasing motivator. InMoment found 77% of consumers say they’ve held relationships with specific brands for 10 years or more. And 61% go out of their way to buy from them. That can make it especially difficult to bring loyal customers over to your side. Lack of Differentiation – Piggybacking on the last point, a buyer isn’t going to make a shift unless there’s an especially compelling reason to do so. How do you address needs better than the competitor? Are you faster? More feature-rich? Do you provide more value for less investment? If you can’t demonstrate why you’re better or even if you’re better, you’ll have little luck in closing a deal. Change Hesitancy – Finally, individuals are change-averse. But businesses and organizations are even more resistant to rocking the boat. Change is scary. And there’s risk involved in working with a new vendor. It’s up to you to show how partnering with your business addresses those risks and provides more potential benefit than the potential detriment of signing on. The Competitive Takeover Framework Now that we understand both the perks and difficulties of acquiring this type of buyer, let’s look at how to sell against competition. How do you convince a loyal customer to come on board when they’re already loyal to another company? The trick is to address unfulfilled needs, establish some buy-in, overcome objections, and drive urgency. The best way I’ve found to do just that is by following what I call The Competitive Takeover Framework. This framework is composed of four simple steps: Find the Gap Get Agreement Eliminate Self Doubt Answer “Why Now?” And when implemented effectively, it will persuade even the staunchest potential buyers to do business with you. 1. Find the Gap The first and arguably most important step to master if you’re wondering how to sell against lower priced competition is finding and exploiting “the gap.” To explain, the only reason a potential buyer would switch away from their current vendor to you is because they have an unmet need. Maybe that need is a specific feature. Maybe it’s more advanced technical support. The list of potential needs is limitless. But in the end, those unmet needs typically translate into hassle for the buyer. And if you can reduce that hassle, you’ve just found the most powerful change motivator of all. That is the gap. The gap occurs between the end of the competition’s sales cycle and the end of your sales cycle. You can think of these ends as the status quos after implementing each solution. Take a look at the graph below for a better idea of what the gap looks like. See how the gap is defined by where the buyer is now versus where they could be after implementing your solution? The goal is to identify how your product can alleviate the buyer's pain points in a way their current solution cannot. With the gap, you’re building a solid foundation that you can use to demonstrate how the buyer’s life stands to benefit from switching. And it’s the logical reasoning you need to convince them to make the change. A Few Notes on the Gap As you’re identifying and leveraging your buyer’s gap, there are a few things you need to remember. The bigger the gap is, the easier it’s going to be to convert the account. Essentially, a bigger gap means you have more value to offer. And if that gap is small, the risks of changing vendors to your company might outweigh the benefits. The process of navigating the value gap is slower but less painful than implementing the original solution. Once this process of change has happened, the next value gap is between the second sales cycle status quo and then the third. As you go further along (i.e., third to fourth, fourth to fifth), the value gap tends to shrink. Therefore, converting an account that has been converted many times over is tougher than converting an account that has only been sold into once. Gap Building Questions Now that you know what the gap is, let’s talk about how to identify it with your buyer. There are two questions you should ask during this stage: What pain points are you experiencing with your current solution? Are those pain points actually important to you? Let’s get more in-depth with each. With the first question, you are getting your buyer to both acknowledge that there are unaddressed pain points and coaxing them to let you know what those unmet pain points are. In the real world, that might look something like this: Seller – “I’m curious, when you tried to increase the number of sales that your team is making (remove pain) by using in-person sales training (benefits of a product), how did it go?” Buyer – “It worked well at first, but then quickly everybody went back to their old ways, and revenue stagnated again.” After that question, we’re going to further qualify that this is a gap we can sell into by asking a downplay question. The question might look like this: “Perhaps everyone selling as they always have (pain point just uncovered) isn’t that important to you because you’re hitting all your targets already (reason it might not be important)?” This question is invaluable at uncovering information. If the buyer fights back and tells us that this pain point really is an issue for them, then we know we’ve found the gap. If, on the other hand, the buyer agrees with you that the pain point isn’t that big of a deal, they’re probably not worried about it, and so it’s going to be difficult to close a sale with them. Pro Tip: After identifying the buyer’s unmet pain points in the first question, don’t jump right in explaining why your solution is superior. Doing so undermines the decisions the buyer made in the past. And that can lead to reactive discussions where they’re feeling defensive—not a very sales-receptive position.  2. Get Agreement Having highlighted the gap, it’s time for a simple—yet essential—step for getting buy-in from your prospect. And it all hinges on a very peculiar human quality. See, once you get a single “yes” out of an individual, all the “yes” responses that follow are easier to earn. The pill gets a little less jagged and easier to swallow each time. That’s why you must get the buyer to verbally agree that the gap you’ve uncovered is truly worth the risk and the pain of change. If they say no, then they’ve just disqualified themselves as a potential buyer, taking a lot of extra work off your plate. If they say yes, then they’re a good candidate and worth trying to convert them into a buyer. So the question is, how do we get the buyer to verbally agree to make a change? There are four steps in particular here: The “What” Question The “Confirmation” Question The “Reversal” Question Get Agreement Step 1: The “What” Question This question is designed to defy the buyer’s expectations that they’re about to get hit with some manipulative sales pitch. Instead of being pushy and off-putting, we’re going to probe a little bit deeper into their needs. This question may look something like this: In regard to (the pain), what would you like to see happen with it? It’s a simple question. But it's open-ended enough to bring to light some very serious pain points and solutions that you may not have uncovered otherwise. Step 2: The “Confirmation” Question Next up, we’re going to ask a question that confirms you’ve heard the buyer correctly about their pain points and desired solutions. Something like this: What I’m hearing you say that you want is (repeat what they said). Have I got that right? There’s quite a bit of subtlety in this question. On the one hand, you’re confirming that what you’re hearing is what the buyer wants, not what you’ve already pitched. This gives the buyer more agency and connects their wants to your product implicitly. Beyond that, you’re also demonstrating to the buyer that you are invested in their needs and that you’re listening—fantastic for building rapport. Step 3: The “Reversal” Question Here in particular, the buyer will begin dreading what they think is ahead—the pitch. That unbearable time when talking to a rep where they feel they’re being manipulated, cheated, and coerced into a sale. But what you’re going to do here is play off those expectations by asking the opposite of what they’re thinking. You’re going to ask them what they want. That might look like this: So, it seems like there are some issues here. What would you like me to do? With a big enough gap, your potential buyer will be enthusiastic about working with you and ask to engage in the next steps (send us a proposal, schedule a demo, etc.). Step 4: Get Agreement Finally, you need to seal the deal by getting a verbal agreement to work together from the buyer. This commitment helps lock the buyer into partnering up. And it also does wonders for preventing them from bailing out further down the line. This question might look like this in practice: If I can solve (the pain), will you move from (competitor) to us? Simple as that! 3. Eliminate Self-Doubt At this stage of the framework, you’ve already identified the value gap and gotten the buyer to commit to signing on if you can solve their current pains. Sounds like that should be the end of things, right? What else is left? As it turns out, logic alone isn’t enough to get buyers on board. Because buyers are humans. And humans are guided by emotions and social pressures. That means when there’s a risk of looking stupid, a buyer is going to be far less likely to sign on with you. For instance, if a buyer signs on with your competitor only to switch to another vendor, they’re going to feel embarrassed in front of their colleagues. That’s why it’s up to you to give the buyer all the tools they need to look like the hero of the story. There are two main ways to do that—give them customer stories and focus on the upside. The Value of Customer Stories Since humans are so innately social, it’s easy to understand why customer stories can have such a huge impact on how your buyer feels about signing on with you. The opinions of others are highly influential on our own courses of action. And when you feed your potential buyer with customer success stories, it can do wonders in eliminating self-doubt. Focus on customer stories where the case in question involves a buyer similar to your target prospect. The more similar they are, the more likely it’ll resonate with your target. On top of that, these customer stories have the dual effect of showing buyers that other people are in fact making big changes. And those changes have paid off big in the long run. Focus on the Upside To even further eliminate self-doubt, you can ask a series of rhetorical questions that get prospects to understand the value of making the change. What I call “would it be worth it” questions are fantastic for helping buyers focus on the upsides. These questions might look something like this: “If we move forward with the deal, get your team trained, and all it did was increase their performance by 10%, would it be worth it?” “If we replace the competitor’s camera equipment and all it did was eliminate all the breakdowns and lost time you’re currently facing, would it be worth it?” Again, the questions here are mostly rhetorical. But along the way you’ll also be uncovering underlying desires of the buyer that may not have been out in the open before. 4. Answer “Why Now?” Having identified the gap, gotten agreement, and eliminated self-doubt, it’s time to compel action. In a perfect world, buyers would act immediately. After all, the sooner you implement, the sooner you can start seeing the benefits. But we don’t live in a perfect world, unfortunately. And many buyers put off a purchase decision as much as they can. Maybe it’s next week, maybe next month, or maybe next quarter. But with each passing day, the odds of them pulling out of a deal grow higher and higher. That’s why it’s vital you get your buyer to act now. And that’s where trigger events come in. A trigger event is an event that gets people thinking about doing things a bit differently. It could be a superior product launch from a competitor. Or a CTO with institutional knowledge leaving the company. Or it could be a CRM breakdown that obliterates years of customer data. No matter what the trigger event is, it’s bound to spur rapid change. And they’re great leverage for inspiring your competitor’s buyers to switch to your product. You’ll know you’re in the right place at the right time when a trigger event is happening because you’ll hear your buyers say: “It's ironic you have reached out to me right now. I have a concern about one of your competitors.” “I'm delighted you called. We're looking at making a change. Can we speak next week?” There are a few different types of trigger events that you can take advantage of. Trigger Event 1: Bad Experiences A bad user experience is likely to cause dissatisfaction. And when that happens, the buyer’s emotions will be running high. That’s the perfect time to convert an account, and buyers will be much more receptive to your pitch afterward. Trigger Event 2: Internal Changes An internal change within the buyer's organization is another type of trigger event. It could be a change in talent, moving locations, shifting priorities, or anything else that makes the previous status quo now unmanageable. This trigger event usually follows after a change in personnel or location. But it can also happen when there is a change in priorities in the organization from the top down too. For instance, a computer company may decide overnight to stop producing hardware and only focus on software. This would be a great trigger event to exploit. Trigger Event 3: Catastrophe A catastrophic trigger event could be any of the other two trigger events, but this one is held in its own category because it immediately displaces your competition. In fact, it can displace the buyer making purchases of any kind. One of the best recent examples of a catastrophe trigger event is COVID-19 in 2020. Overnight, buyers stopped buying certain products and services altogether. What’s more, these were products and services that were thought to be absolutely indispensable. These events might happen only once every decade within large organizations, and so if you’re trying to convert an account and a catastrophic event hits, it's like winning the lottery. Artificial Trigger Events If your market doesn’t have any trigger events right now, you can (and should) create an artificial trigger event. While you can’t (and shouldn’t) try ousting CTOs, tainting competitor buyer experiences, or causing global catastrophes, you can offer a time-sensitive discount or benefit. Think 5% off, free technical support for a week, or even professional training to sweeten the pot. But again, make sure it’s time-sensitive as otherwise the buyer won’t feel compelled to act. Wrapping Up Some salespeople don’t bother with going after their competitor’s accounts. They think their buyers are too entrenched in their current solution. And trying to bring them over is a waste of time and effort. But buyers from the competition are actually some of the best leads you can get. They’re qualified, budget-ready, and efficient implementors. The only trick is you have to understand how to convince them your solution is the way to go. The Competitive Takeover Framework is the absolute best method for persuading your competition’s buyers that you’re the superior solution to their problems. Just follow the four simple steps: Find the Gap Get Agreement Eliminate Self Doubt Answer “Why Now?” That’s all it takes. When you implement this framework into your processes, you’ll be amazed how quickly you’re converting buyers loyal to your competitor into excited new clients for your business. And most importantly, you’ll be bringing on more qualified, ready-to-buy, and knowledgeable clients—letting you focus on closing more sales than ever.

Tom Pisello is the current Chief Evangelist for sales enablement at Mediafly. On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Tom uses data-backed evidence to explain “Do Nothing Deals” and how salespeople can break the status quo to close more of these deals. 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 - Tom Pisello Chief Evangelist, Mediafly Resources: Evolved Selling by Tom Pisello EvolvedSelling.com The Transparency Sale by Todd Caponi Virtual Selling by The RAIN Group The Evolvers Podcast Transcript Will Barron: This episode of the show is brought to you from the salesmen.org HubSpot studio. Coming up on today's episode of the Salesman Podcast.   Tom Pisello: Yeah, buyers are looking to make a choice or an improvement in their environment, and a do nothing deal happens when they decide to stick with their status quo. Maybe the investment that's required is so high compared to the change and the benefits they can get, the outcomes they can get, that it's not worthwhile. But one of the important things is that people move away from pain emotionally much more than being attracted to gain.   Will Barron: Hello, sales nation. My name Will Barron, I'm the host of the Salesman Podcast, the world's most downloaded B2B sales show. On today's episode, we have an absolute legend, really enjoyed this conversation, we have Tom Pisello. He is the author of the book Evolved Selling, which you can find on Amazon and everywhere else as well. On today's episode, we're getting into what to do with “do-nothing deals.” So what do nothing deals are, how to break through the status quo and get some more of these closed. And Tom comes at this with tonnes of research and data. And so there's tonnes to go out with this episode, so let's jump right into it. Tom, welcome to the Salesman Podcast.   Tom Pisello: Pleasure to be here, Will. Thank you so much for inviting me.   What are “Do Nothing Deals”? · [01:38]   Will Barron: You're more than welcome. I'm glad to have you on. On today's episode, we're going to get into what to do when we have do nothing deals. Now, to set things up, Tom, before I throw my thoughts into the picture here, what is a do nothing deal? Let's clarify this before we suss out how to deal with the situation.   “Buyers are looking to make a choice or an improvement in their environment. And a do nothing deal happens when they decide to stick with their status quo.” – Tom Pisello · [01:41]   Tom Pisello: Yeah, buyers are looking to make a choice or an improvement in their environment. And a do nothing deal happens when they decide to stick with their status quo, or their business as usual, and really the whole buying decision process that they've been through, all those meetings, all the committees, all the getting it together. All that time and effort from the buyer perspective is all thrown away, obviously your sales time with them is thrown away too, and they decide not to go with you, not to go with a competitor, but just stick with business as usual. Maybe relying on that legacy solution or the broke business processes that they're using today. And so, unfortunately we see too many pipeline opportunities ending with do nothing or as Gartner calls it, no decision.   How to Handle ‘No Deal’ Sales Scenarios · [02:42]   Will Barron: We are clearly biassed here on this podcast. Yourself and I, many companies, many roles within the sales space, and myself, all I do is help sales professionals close more deals, earn more commissions, and crush it in their sales jobs. Are there times when a no deal or a no decision is the appropriate decision for the buyer?   “I think there are times as sellers that we need to be ready to sometimes say, “You know what, no decision or do nothing might be the most appropriate.” – Tom Pisello  · [03:38]   Tom Pisello: You know, there could be times where maybe their problem is not that big of a problem. Maybe the legacy solutions and business processes maybe aren't that broke. Maybe the investment that's required is so high compared to the change and the benefits they can get, the outcomes they can get, that it's not worthwhile, or sometimes the organisation just isn't ready for change. And so those are three just quick ones, where it is appropriate. That may be your advice to the customers is, “Look you might not be ready for this.” And I've given that advice to certain customers or, “What you're doing now, you could get some benefit from what I'm providing, but maybe not all of the benefits to overcome all the work and effort and risk of change.” So I think there are times as sellers that we need to be ready to sometimes say, “You know what, no decision or do nothing might be the most appropriate.”   Examining External Market Forces and a Salesperson’s Ability to Influence “No Deal Scenarios · [04:38]   Will Barron: For sure, because where I want to go with this, is it a sales person's responsibility to never have a no deal? Is it in our control or are there other kind of market forces that dictate some of this?   Tom Pisello: Yeah, there definitely are these external market forces. And you know what, identifying a company that is going to end up at no decision or do nothing, as quickly as possible, should be one of the missions we have, right? Which is understand that the outcomes are going to be significant, that the company has the investment that they're ready to make, that they're ready to implement a change and be successful. Many of us now are selling subscription services. So our selling doesn't end with that. Firstly, we have to make sure they're going to be successful and going to achieve those outcomes. So if you're able to identify that a company maybe has one of these three issues, perhaps that's better, you don't waste as much time on them, and maybe you can advise them not to waste their time as well on a decision cycle that might end badly.   Logical and Emotional Responses to Proposed Change · [05:13]    Will Barron: For sure. It's somewhat common sense, we want to qualify some of this out, but why I find it difficult to do this practically when I'm selling our training to the enterprise, as opposed to individuals, I get into a lot of conversations where the buyer is stuck in the status quo. They've always done things one way, and now with COVID, they'd been given a big kick in the arse to do all the cliche stuff of digital transformation, remote selling, all these kinds of things. So now there's a bit less status quo in the marketplace from my perspective. But where I find it difficult to qualify is when logically they should move forward, but emotionally they get stuck. Do you have any thoughts on how to suss out when we are in the qualification process whether we want to invest our time into this buyer, whether we can suss out whether logically we know that they want to work with us, but whether emotionally they are ever going to come round.   Tom Pisello: Yeah, there are a lot of organisations that are stuck, stuck in the mud kind of organisations. And I don't think there's a precise science for understanding whether those companies will move or not. If the company is willing to recognise that they are broken and that it is costing them a lot of money to stick the status quo, I think that that's one way where you can get them to maybe know that they're going to move. I think the other is that you have to think about the outcomes and the value, not just from an organisational or a company standpoint, but from a personal standpoint. So personally, does your stakeholder have the motivation to change? Are they feeling enough pain every day from what's going on, and are they willing to put their job on the line, or perhaps their reputation on the line, by being the champion behind your solution? And what is the business value benefits that they're going to ultimately get is important, but sometimes the personal benefits that they may be able to achieve by doing this is something that you want to amplify to understand whether emotionally they're connected with the solution or not.   Why Change Only Happens When the Pain of Staying the Same is Greater Than the Pain of Change · [06:52]    Will Barron: I know it's difficult because we're talking very in broad terms here, but are there any qualifying questions we could ask? One that comes to mind could be as I'm jotting down notes from our conversation here Tom, could we ask a question along the lines of, “Do you believe that there could be a better solution?”, just to see if there's a willingness to have someone put the solution in front of them and to move forward with it. Is there anything else we can ask question-wise?   “People move away from pain emotionally, much more than being attracted to gain.” – Tom Pisello · [07:58]   Tom Pisello: You can, Will. One of the big things with emotion though, is that you can ask questions about the benefits that they may be able to get out of it on a personal basis, an organisational basis, or a business basis. Personal are the things that impact them every day: recognition, raises, respect from the organisation. Business is the cost savings, the productivity improvements, process improvements, risk avoidance, and then revenue growth. And then on an organisational basis, how does this impact the ultimate end user and the customer and improving the experience of all those that are involved. So those are the three dimensions that we measure on, but one of the important things is that people move away from pain emotionally, much more than being attracted to gain. So the only change I would make, Will, in your question is focus on, “Does the person you're talking to, do they have a good perspective on the personal pain they're experiencing today and is that extreme enough for them to move?”   Tom Pisello: And then on the organisation side and the business side, similarly. Rather than say, “Oh, do you believe you're going to be able to get these benefits out?” Say, “How bad is it? How bad do you think it is today? And what is that costing you perhaps by sticking where you're at?” And so if you're able to get them to clearly understand, and to be able to articulate back to you in a more amplified way, the pains that they're experiencing, that's when I find that you've made that emotional connection and that they're ready and they're primed. And you have to do that, not just for your champion, but all the other dozen or so other flippant stakeholders that we have in every deal now to make sure that everyone understands the pain that's involved. And too quickly as sellers, I think we understand our solution and we understand maybe the benefits that it can deliver. And I think too often, we jump to that rather than really spending time to make sure that the customer and all of the stakeholders really understand how much the affliction is costing them and how painful it is and making sure everyone is aligned on that before we jump to the solution and the ultimate benefits that get delivered.   Why Most Customers Want Their Pains Fixed Rather Than Their Pleasures Enhanced · [09:33]   Will Barron: It's interesting you talk about pain versus pleasure. We're actually going through, and this is marketing. The audience will appreciate this though. We're going through a massive change of our marketing over at salesman.org and our training product and the things that we offer at the moment. Cause we did a poll, and I think it's about three-and-a-half-thousand people replied to the poll, and now, polls are not ideal way to measure intent and different things, but the data is what it is. And we asked people essentially what they wanted from sales training. “What do you want to achieve by doing this?” I thought the answer would be, earn more money, more prestige, easier life. But the response was all negative. People were suffering, they talk about a lack of motivation, even the way that they framed up the answers.   Will Barron: It wasn't, “We want more motivation.” It was, “I don't want to have this lack of motivation anymore. I want that pain to be removed.” What was another one? But that was the top one by a mile. Salespeople in our audience, for whatever reason, are massively unmotivated at the moment. Another one was complexity. People wanted things to be simpler, which is why we're pushing everything towards this selling made simple branding that we're doing now. And I'm really focusing on adding fundamentals and frameworks as opposed to more higher level conversations and topics like that. And it was really interesting to me that it was all, “How can I remove these negatives?”, as opposed to, “How can I earn bigger commissions?”, which was my assumption going into this. Does that surprise you?   “Connecting to a pain is so much easier than trying to convince someone of a gain.” – Tom Pisello · [11:06]   Tom Pisello: It doesn't surprise me. And I'll talk psychologically about where we're at with a couple of those things. But the good news for you, Will, is that you're connecting to a pain, which is much easier than trying to convince someone of a ain. So you should be leveraging that if you're able to solve that pain problem, because they're recognising they do have this pain and they want the motivation. They're suffering from a lack of motivation. You're in a great spot. So anytime we can get our buyers or customers to really connect with them on the pain side, we know that we're solving something that's worth solving and worth it for the client to invest in. And that's a good thing. Let's talk a little bit about simplification and why that is coming up. And I think this goes a lot to the no decision drivers, the do nothing drivers, that Gartner found.   “40% of buying journeys right now are ending in no decision.” – Tom Pisello · [11:51]   Tom Pisello: So first of all, when we look at the problem, 94% of buyers have participated in a cancelled buying cycle over these past two years. And with COVID, although you indicate that things like transformation and some of these projects, you can't stick with status quo, we're actually seeing more of an issue of change rather than less. And you wouldn't think that because the motivation is there to change, but there's a couple of factors, and 40% of buying journeys right now are ending in no decision. So what's changed and what's driving that? Well, there were three issues that Gartner came up with. One was, why are decisions ending with do nothing? Changes in priorities. So 49% indicated that that's the number one issue. So what's happening in organisation is, and what's happening as a seller, you're going in, and underneath the buyer, all of these things are changing, and things are in a lot of flux right now.   Tom Pisello: So you start off selling towards one challenge that the buyer's having. And before, you know it, two weeks in, a month in, their priorities have been shaken up because their management and executives are having to move so quickly. And so we're facing this quicksand of changing priorities, and what you have to do with that, well, you really have to make sure you align with priorities and that you revisit those priorities. Like in subsequent calls, “Here's my understanding of the challenges we're addressing. Have any of these changed?” As new people come on, making sure you're gathering and making sure that everyone involved is aligned, and then making sure you're asking that question to the buyer that says, “Hey, I know these are your priorities.” As we go up the chain to the other decision makers, like, what is the top level strategic priority we're tying to? Because if you're not aligned to that top strategic priority, even if it's a good business case for the solution and there's good justification behind it, it can sometimes be, “Well, that's not a priority for us now. We're only focusing on the top three priorities.”   Tom Pisello: The second priority was perceived business and or technical risks, 45% indicated that. Here's where simplification and things like transparency and facilitation all come into play. Three absolutely critical factors right now. So what has happened to us during this crisis, Will, is that we're under a lot of stress and strain. Personal life, working from home. If you're a seller, one of the pieces of feedback I think you're getting on lack of motivation is, I can't be shaking hands with people. I can't be having dinner with them. We've got a lot of extroverts in this marketplace, and they are being forced to be introverts and selling through a 13-inch monitor, which isn't good for anyone. But there's a lot of change and tumult, whether that be health related, environmental related, personal related, working from home related, job related.   “When you go in and you start presenting a solution, if it isn't really simple, and if you are not incredibly trustworthy from the word go, and you're not making it easy to understand, easy to buy, and completely transparent and trustworthy, you're not going to get that sale.” Tom Pisello · [15:00]   Tom Pisello: They are a tonne of stresses strains on all of our buyers, personal lives, and business lives. Amygdala overload, is what it's called. And so when you go in and you start presenting a solution, if it isn't really simple, and if you are not incredibly trustworthy from the word go, and you're not making it easy to understand, easy to buy, and completely transparent and trustworthy, you're not going to get that sale because the fight, flight, or freeze mechanism within the amygdala complex in the primitive brain is already on overload. It's already overstimulated from everything that's going on around each one of our buyers. And when we present a solution, if it is a stack of all of these different options, and it's really hard, there's a lot of options to assemble these things in a multiple, they're going to go and shut down on you and basically go into possum mode.   Tom Pisello: They might not run. They might not fight, but they'll go into freeze, which is just as common a response as fight or flight, even though everyone calls it, fight or flight. So you have to keep it simple. As they're going through the buying process, if you make it too complex and you don't streamline the steps, and if you don't proactively anticipate what they might run into, they can freeze through that process as well. And so you have to facilitate that and trust. There used to be a time where you would have to emotionally stoke buyers to change from status quo. Well, think about going in with the challenger-like approach today, which is a very popular approach. And I love the challenger guys. I've had a chance to interview many of the original creators and stakeholders, whether it be for my book or my podcast.   “Before, 50% of decision making might've been emotional, 25% was logic was, and 25% was trust. We've now shifted to where most of the buying decisions now, 50% is based on trust.” – Tony Pisello · [17:01]   Tom Pisello: And the amazing thing with all of the challenger is, it works. When you go in and you want to shake up the status quo, you use these techniques of delivering insights and education. But when everyone is on Amygdala overload, you have to temper that. Whereas before 50% of decision making might've been emotional, and 25% of logic was, and 25% was trust, we've now shifted to where most of the buying decisions now, 50%, is based on trust. Why? Because there's not a lot we can hang onto out there. When the world is changing underneath us, we want people we can trust, we want companies we can trust, and the key there is to be transparent. You can't do everything. You can't be everything for everybody. Embrace your flaws. Do what you say you're going to do. Make sure you got plenty of proof points at every step to back up what it is that you're saying, whether those be real-world examples, using their solution or your solution to solve their particular problem. So use case demos, pilot programmes, plenty of success stories, good references, all things like that to build up that trust because that's now 50% of the buying decision. And if you're not able to gain that trust, you could have shaken up the status quo and logically convinced them, but you're not going to get them to make that decision.   Tom Pisello: And then, Will, there's one more, I know I'm going on for a while here.   Will Barron: I'm sat here in silence, just writing notes to come at you with a thousand questions in a second because I don't want to inter- I've done it now, but I didn't want to interrupt your flow.   “The buyer doesn't know how to justify your solution” – Tom Pisello · [19:01]   Tom Pisello: Yeah, no, no, no. So there is one third issue that I think is also important in this overcoming and addressing the no decision, and that's budget issues and constraints, 44%. Shoot, that shouldn't be any surprise to anyone, right? Even companies that are investing a lot in digital transformation and are spending money because their business models may have been disrupted, they're still being spendthrift. Frugal-nomics is what I call it. And it is really in full effect right now. So how are you going to get that project approved by the COVID committee? How are you going to get through the CF no? Well, you've got to have financial justification, and you can't leave that to chance. The buyer doesn't know how to justify your solution in. You have to give them and work with them to co-create that business case to then take up to the executive. So align, simplify, facilitate, transparency, and trust, and justification are five ways to kind of address this no decision.   How the Best Salespeople Tackle “No Decision” Scenarios and Adress the Gap in Buyer Expectation · [19:25]   Will Barron: Tom, have good salespeople been doing everything that you just described regardless for maybe not decades, but for years now? Is this nothing new? Are some listeners now going to listen to this and go, “I'm doing all that and everything's going fine.”?   There's over a 40% gap between what buyers expect you as a seller to deliver.” – Tom Pisello · [20:17]   Tom Pisello: Yeah. Well, if everything's going fine, that's good. Have they been doing it? I think to varying degrees. If you ask the buyers how well they've been doing it, I think you'll see a decided gap. What we call the engagement gap. Sellers are doing some of these elements, but they haven't evolved as quickly or elevated as quickly as buyers want them to. And there's a lot of great research from the Rain Group, Dave Shaby and the team over there, that point to this, and that there's over a 40% gap between what buyers expect you as a seller to deliver. Much of that research was across these exact dimensions. And where the sellers are perceived to be. So if we're doing it, the majority of sellers are not being rewarded for it, one way or another. So what are some of the things that came up in that research?   Why Buyers Believe Salespeople are Not Listening to Them in The Virtual Selling Space · [20:41]   Tom Pisello: Well, one of the big ones was listening, right? Buyers don't think that we're listening to them. Well, why is that? Well in a virtual meeting, what's happening is, Will, as you're talking to me or as I'm talking to you, your head is down, you're taking notes, right? And so all of a sudden the buyer's perceiving, because now we're in a new medium, that you're not listening to them. That's about one of several of these factors that to me again are these fundamental selling principles like, of course you've got to align, of course you've got to simplify your solution, of course you've got to facilitate. Of course you have to listen, but because it's a new medium, with virtual meetings and Zooms, because it is an environment where buyers have been spoiled by consumerization and they expect things to be ultra simple and ultra facilitated. “If we just did the things we did two or three years ago in the exact same way we did them, we're falling down on the declining value side and seller’s expectations are elevating that much more.” – Tom Pisello · [21:40] Tom Pisello: And because they're under more pressure and there's more stakeholders about, so there's all of these factors that are adding up to be where if we just did the things we did two or three years ago in the exact same way we did them, we're falling down on the declining value side and sellers' expectations are elevating that much more. So I think we have to just work on having this growth mindset and across each of these dimensions really look and say, “Am I aligning the way that buyers expect me to align?” “Is my solution really as simple as I think it is?” Or, “Am I over-complicating it?”   Tom Pisello: We implemented jumpstart services to make it be where there's like, “Here, it's all bundled. You get 50 users, it's a quick pilot. You can bail out at any time, so there's a money-back guarantee, and in completeness, you've got 30, 60, 90 days to try it out, and we do all the work for you. So there's no risk.” It's those kinds of things that make it a simple decision so that they don't maybe have to go through that long process, or worry about which pieces they're going to put together and then how much each piece is going to cost and all the risk involved in that.   Tom Pisello: So you have to rethink each one of these really important elements to say, “Am I delivering it in a way where I've elevated it to buyers expectations?” For example, justification. If you're just going to do a back of the napkin calculation with no proof points, no research, is that going to be enough? Or you're going to do a deep dive in a spreadsheet that no one can understand. Is that the way to deliver it in this professional new-century selling model that we're in?   “With this new consumerized buyer, there's a whole set of new capabilities that are going to elevate those sellers that are looking to up their game and looking to grow and evolve.” – Tom Pisello · [26:36]   Tom Pisello: And I think the answer to a lot of these, if you're really introspective, is no. These are all blocking and tackling elements, but you've got to do them in a different, better way now that we're Zooming in our sailing, now that we're all-virtual, all-digital. With this new consumerized buyer, there's a whole set of new capabilities that are going to elevate those sellers that hopefully are the ones that listened to you and I, that are looking to up their game and looking to grow and evolve.   “I think salespeople too often will take what marketing gives to them or take what the sales managers give to them and just regurgitate it and assume it works.” – Will Barron · [24:03]   Will Barron: I'm going to ask you a question in a second of, do you have any books, resources, other than your own, that you'd recommend for salespeople who want to learn to simplify and to create the value propositions and things of this nature, because that's a skill in its own right, and I think salespeople too often will take what marketing give to them, take what the sales managers give to them, and just regurgitate it and assume it works. But before we get to that, I've got one anecdote on this. So we did a new webinar the other day. I'm pretty open with the webinar statistics. Typically about 10% of people on a webinar, when there's hundreds of people on, that will sign up to our training product at the end of it. It's how I can sit there, answer questions, and essentially sell at scale.   Will Barron: Now we changed our offer within the webinar, and it's interesting, and this is why I bring it up, because we added trust to it. And I'll explain what the offer is in a second, dead simple, the value proposition. We added trust to it. I'm just going through some of our notes here from this episode. Made it simpler, covered some budget issues. And we changed essentially the premise of the training that we offer to individuals to use the value proposition of, “Close more deals in the next 28 days, or we'll give you your money back.” Just dead simple. No complexity. If you sign up, if you do the training and you run through it, and you're not closing more deals, then money back, just instant. And the number of people who signed up in that webinar, it was insane. You could see in the chat, and I'm answering questions. We have our assistant in the studio with me, as we're doing these webinars, throwing questions in my direction.   Will Barron: People were genuinely more excited than our previous offer, which is the same product, a very similar offer, but we just word this slightly differently. The guarantee has always been there, we just put it front and centre. And there's enterprise. We closed a couple of larger clients from that as well, multiple seat deals, as opposed to just individuals. And it was just from doing, as you've outlined here, Tom, of understanding that people's priorities are back and forth and all over the place at the moment. So obviously our offer just hit the right priority at the right time. Understanding that there's the business or technology risks, the whole premise of our product. I don't want to talk about it too much. I don't want to plug it on the show. But the whole premise of the product is dead simple. It just works. Everything's a framework. Everything's outlined for you. You can't really go wrong with it. And the trust elements and the budget element of it as well.   Tom Lists Down Books that Simplify The Value Creation Process and Influence Consumer Psychology · [26:13]    Will Barron: So it just seemed to work perfectly. Now, this is a skill, simplifying things I've worked really, really hard on in the past 12 months. I've read tonnes of really crap books on it. I'm reading loads of content on learning design and how to teach at the moment to kind of separate myself from other trainers and content creators. I really want stuff to stick, as opposed to you're just sharing five ways to cold call someone and crappy content like that. But I've not found a solution for myself, so I'm intrigued get it from yourself. Tom, are there any books, resources; is it just experience? How do we learn to simplify in business and create value propositions where we do a lot of what we're describing here upfront so that the buyer can tell us whether we're on the right tracks or not?   Tom Pisello: Yeah. I think there's a couple of books that you can use as a reference. First of all, Evolve Selling, which is my book. I will send you a link that I'm happy for you to share with your listeners, a free ebook, a copy of the full book, but just e-access only. And would love for you to share that with folks. And that goes through the way to use neuroscience and Aristotle and storytelling to really connect with buyers on emotion, logic, and trust. What Aristotle used to call pathos, logos, and ethos, goes through some of the Socratic questioning we mentioned. So it's a really good primer to kind of go the next step if you like the content we talked about on that. But two other really important books from other authors that I'd like to recommend. One deals completely with trust and the importance with trust nowaday, and a great interview as well.   Tom Pisello: Todd Caponi with a book called The Transparency Sale. Absolutely love this book, took many elements away from it, even though I'm schooled at trust, and Aristotle, and the neuroscience behind it. He had some really great practical advice and techniques to apply to negotiating and other elements. “Embrace your flawsomeness,” is something that he talks about, and I definitely borrowed it for this. And then another one where I mentioned the research is a book that you wouldn't think is that good, called Virtual Selling. And why I say you wouldn't think it's good is like, “Man, it's opportunistic that these guys have a book called Virtual Selling, when virtual selling is all we're doing, right?” However, the book is fantastic, and it's by the Rain Group.   Tom Pisello: Dave Shaby, a couple of other folks from the Rain Group came together and created the book called Virtual Selling. And it goes well beyond a simple guide of what you would think. But you really have to rethink some of these key capabilities that you've learned to implement, like listening skills. You have to really reimagine them in this world of virtual selling, and they go through the science behind it, as well as so many practical tips that I think would help, whether it be in the value of communication piece or the listening piece discovery, whatever it may be. I think that is another book that I highly recommend. Virtual Selling from Shaby and the rest of the group over at the Rain Group.   Tom Explains Why Salespeople Should Present Solutions Quickly and Guarantee Value During Virtual Selling · [29:15]   Will Barron: Awesome stuff. We've had Todd on the show, and we've had the Rain Group on the show, so I'll link to those episodes in the show notes of this episode. And I will link to the books in the show notes of this episode over at salesman.org as well. With that, Tom, so we were covering a lot of, it's not common- It's common sense, but it's not commonly done, which is an issue, right? Let's flip this on its head slightly. We'll wrap up the show with this, Tom. What's the one most counter-intuitive thing that salespeople should doing right now that their perhaps not doing? Is there anything that, clearly you're up to date with all the research on this, is there anything that you think, “Oh, I'd have never thought of that,” but in hindsight makes total sense that salespeople should be doing that the perhaps not doing right now?   Tom Pisello: Yeah. Here's the one thing that I think trip up a lot of folks nowadays. When customers get on these virtual calls, they're wanting to see solutions very quickly because they've done a lot of research on their own. And so they're calling up and they're scheduling demos. They're asking for demos. They don't want long presentations. They don't want a lot of questions. And so I think what's tripping up a lot of salespeople is, they hear that and they go into a hundred percent demo mode. Now, if a customer is asking for something, you kind of have to deliver it. But you have to pivot your demos from a big show and tell of everything that you can do. And why does it have to be everything you do because you don't know what they want, right? You haven't done a lot of discovery cause they're wanting a demo right away, and they're not giving you that time.   Tom Pisello: You almost have to change it to be interactive, a very interactive discovery. So you're doing your discovery, and you're doing a lot of your challenge analysis, and probing, and dyscratic questions you need to ask as part of show and tell. So it's a little bit of give and take that you have to do nowadays that I think trip up a lot of sellers.   Tom Pisello: The other thing I find is that buyers are coming in saying, “Here's the drug that I want you to prescribe to me,” as if they went to a doctor and said that same thing. And a good doctor will say, “Okay, I can definitely write that script. And here's what it does.” So if they spend a little bit of time acknowledging that what the buyer said and listening to them, that that's what they want. But then they take a few steps back somewhere in that process, and they say, “Well, I really want to make sure this is right for you. Can we spend a little bit of time talking about your ailments? Do you think maybe we could run this health check on you?” So you have to get out of this mode of just delivering exactly what they want to know that there's probably a misdiagnosis, a mis-framing, a better solution that might be in play, and certainly positioning that you need to do to be different, other than this show up and throw up kind of demo environment that I see a lot of sellers unfortunately fall into.   How Zoom Whiteboards Make Virtual Demos So Much Better · [32:10]   Will Barron: Most demos, they suck, they're terrible. I'm consulting with a SAAS organisation now. I won't say who they are because they might not like me showing what's going on behind the scenes, but the audience will know exactly who it is cause it's one of our big partners. And one thing that I'm getting a couple of the sales teams to do right now and experiment with is on the Zoom demos, Zoom has a whiteboard built into it, at the beginning of the demo, ask the buyer or the potential customer, what they want to be shown. And frame it up as, “Hey, this is customised for you. I don't want to waste your time. I want this to be totally seamless.” Then writing out on the whiteboard, whether they're the using a pen or they're just typing it on there, the two or three main things that the buyer wants to see from the demo itself.   Will Barron: And then asking why a few times, “Why is this important to you? What's this going to change?” Go through the ,usual sales questions and then framing it up and doing almost a micro close at that point of, “Hey, if I can show you these three or four things, do you think this is something that you would like to move forward with? Would it make sense to move forward with this?” And the demos went from, I don't have real data on this, so I don't want to- We've got real data, I don't have the numbers in front of me. But the demo time has shrunk massively from 40-odd minute demos to some just four, five minute demos because buyers are coming in, as you'd said, that buyers are so much further down the buying cycle, they've done all this research.   Will Barron: They probably watch tonnes of videos, especially on this product that I'm consulting on now, they've watched loads of YouTube content on it already, cause they're killing it on YouTube. They know the jist, they've just got a few things. And when you start to point out those few small things to them and get them to assert themselves, “Hey, if you show me these things, does it make sense to move forward with this?”, they're having incredible results just on the back of that, just from using a bit of strategy and a whiteboard, which we might have used 30 years ago in the conference room when we walked in and did these in person.   Tom Pisello: Yeah. We wouldn't think of not using that whiteboard or using a some of the, “Here's what we understand about you,” kind of agreement. But a lot of times I just see that being thrown away or for the demos you do that. And it's just almost like perfunctory, and you go and still do the same old demos that you do before. But I found the better alignment you can have to what they're trying to solve and the better kind of diagnostics that you can do while you're doing that. Show them certainly what they want, but then make sure you're thinking about companies like you, here's the two other things that they like to see that we've got that you might not have been thinking about. So make sure you're still differentiating yourself with that. I think that's where it really wins because not only are you listening, doing exactly what the buyer wants, but then also adding value to it. And then ultimately, how do you tie all of that back to outcomes, so you can do the justification, another really important element, I think maybe to consider adding to that SAAS customer.   Tom Talks About his Book, Podcast, and the Best Way to Reach Him · [35:04]   Will Barron: For sure. Perfect. Well with that, Tom, we'll wrap up there, mate. With that, tell us about the book, where we can find it. And I'll share the link that you're going to share with us in the show notes. Tells us about the podcast and anything else you want to plug on the show mate.   Tom Pisello: Yeah, it's real easy. Evolved Selling, as in Darwin evolved. Evolvedselling.com is where you can find all of the writing and research. You can find tools, interactive tools, so you can assess where you're at in your journey. You can also listen to the podcast and see some great blog and research articles and get a copy of the book Evolved Selling, which is also available on Amazon. And I will definitely share that link so that folks can download a free version for themselves.   Will Barron: Perfect. I'll just redirect it. We'll do salesman.org/evolve, and then that'll go to your link. That'll make it easy. Cool. All right. With that, Tom, I want to thank you for your insights today. I really enjoyed the conversation. It's good to have- and I'll throw this at you because this is important for the audience as well. It's good to have someone on who knows all this numbers, data, is up-to-date with the research without being prompted by me. It's a real pleasure mate. So just to kind of give yourself a pat on the back for that, I really do appreciate it. The audience do, as well. And with that, Tom, I want to thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Tom Pisello: Thank you, Will.