The Salesman.com Podcast

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

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

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

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Roland T. Rust is a distinguished University Professor, David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, and author of The Feelings Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy. In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Roland explains what the “feelings economy” is and why more artificial intelligence might be a good thing for sales professionals whilst it wrecks other industries. You'll learn: Sponsored by: Free SalesCode assessment Learn your strengths and weaknesses in an instant. Taken by over 10,000+ of your competitors. Don't get left behind. Take the free assessment Featured on this episode: Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - Roland T. Rust Distinguished University Professor Resources: Roland on LinkedIn Book: The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy Transcript Will Barron: Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we'll be looking at selling with emotion in the feeling economy. Our guest, Roland Rust, is a distinguished university professor at the School of Business at the University of Maryland. He's the author of The Feeling Economy, which we're going to cover in this episode of the show. And with that, Roland, welcome to the Salesman Podcast.   Roland Rust: Oh, thanks very much. Happy to be here.   What is the Feeling Economy? · [00:45]    Will Barron: You are welcome, sir. I'm glad to have you on. I try not to cover it too much before on our pre-call, pre-recording chat, but I think we're on the same wave length with a lot of what we're going to talk about today. So it'll be interesting if there are any points that we do diverge, but I think we're all on the same wavelength with a lot of this. To get us started, this is seemingly a lazy question for an interviewer to ask, Roland, but I'm going to ask you it because I want you to set the scene here. What the heck is the feeling economy?   Roland Rust: Yeah. Okay, very good question. The feeling economy is maybe an unexpected consequence of artificial intelligence, because there have really been a couple of main shifts in technology in the last 150 years. The first was the move toward the thinking economy from the physical economy. So in other words, you had people in the physical economy who were doing things like farming and mining coal and doing physical exertion, and men really dominated at that time. And then around 1900, you really started to see an expansion of the thinking economy, and one of the things that you saw was a very much larger percentage of people became educated, because they had to, to compete in the thinking economy as thinkers. During that time, then women became much more equal. You see many more women in high positions than you did in the 1800s or 1700s.   “The shift that's happening now is from the thinking economy to the feeling economy, and the reason for that is that artificial intelligence is getting good at thinking. And the more thinking artificial intelligence can do, the more humans are pushed into doing things that they can do better than AI. For the most part, that's things like feeling, interpersonal relationships, and to some extent, we're also going to have an advantage on things like common sense and intuition, but even that will probably go away in a little bit of time.” – Roland Rust · [02:05]    Roland Rust: So now the shift that's happening now is from the thinking economy to the feeling economy, and the reason for that is that artificial intelligence is getting good at thinking, and the more thinking artificial intelligence can do, the more humans are pushed into doing things that they're better than AI at. For the most part, that's things like feeling. Feeling, interpersonal relationships, to some extent, for a while, we're going to have an advantage on things like common sense and intuition, but even that will probably go away in a little bit of time. So what our research suggests is that no later than 15 years from now, most jobs will be more feeling jobs than thinking jobs, and that shift is already well underway.   Why Humans Struggle Having Emotional Conversations With AI · [03:10]    Will Barron: Immediately, I've lost all the questions I was going to ask, Roland. We'll drag it back for salespeople and business towards the end of the show. But a couple of things here. When you say salespeople are perhaps, people in general, salespeople in the context of this show, are perhaps better at emotional intelligence, feeling, empathy than AI right now, is that because AI literally can't do those things, or is it because when a human engages with an AI, they don't like that happening, they don't like that emotional kind of conversation happening? They prefer to do it with a human, and so it's a limitation of the person that's doing the engaging, or is it very literally that AI can't handle that from a technological standpoint at the moment?   Roland Rust: Both of those things are true. Both of those things are true. One is people right now don't fully trust AI. They've seen the Terminator movies or whatever, and they just are a little bit concerned about AI and they don't really trust AI to really have our best interests in mind. So there is that problem, but the other problem is that AI really just isn't very good at it. AI is struggling. To do this right, what AI has to do is it has to understand people's emotional expressions and it has to then respond appropriately emotionally.   Roland Rust: There is active research in both of these areas. So for example, one of the things that AI is getting a lot better at is trying to figure out people's emotional reactions from how they look, what their face looks like, what kind of expressions do they have on their face? AI is getting better at that, but it still isn't that good. It's not as good as a person doing this, and fortunately that'll be true for a little while.   AI and the Nuance of Emotional Expression · [05:06]    Will Barron: Sorry to interrupt, Roland, just I think this point's really important. How tangible is this, how objective is this? Because I know when my girlfriend comes home from work and she's in a mood about something, I know there's something up, but I can't quantify it like perhaps a computer programme would want to, and it's trying to weigh different things up. I'm just getting a gut feeling that I want to be polite to her as she walks through the door. How much of this is down to, if you were trying to score this and I was trying to compete me against an AI, it would be very difficult to say who is better at this, so what's the barrier to this? Is it people's ability to recognise some of this stuff, or is it the objectivity of AI achieving a certain standard, that it becomes human-like?   Roland Rust: Well, right now people can pick up the nuance of emotional expression a lot better than machines can. I mean, machines are picking up, if I have a big smile, they can pick up that's a smile or a really bad frown, they can pick up that. But there are nuances. For example, I might be pretending to smile.   Will Barron: Sure.   “I believe that salespeople are in absolutely the right job. They could not be in a better job. They are working with interpersonal relationships and that's not going to go away easily in B2B. It may be easier to get rid of that in B2C. A lot of B2C is done online now, but a lot of B2B is too big and too important to be done online, and so people in B2B sales are absolutely in the right place.” – Roland Rust · [06:50]    Roland Rust: I might be actually very upset. “Say, that was really nice of you to park in front of my driveway so I couldn't get in.” That little nuance would be picked up by my wife very, very easily, but machine is going to have a really lot harder time. Now, one thing I would say, I know that you're really talking to salespeople more than anybody else. I want to tell the salespeople that they're in absolutely the right job. They could not be in a better job. That they are working with interpersonal relationships, and especially that's not going to go away easily in B2B. It may be easier to get rid of that in B2C. A lot of B2C is done online now, but a lot of B2B is too big and too important to be done online, and so people in B2B sales are absolutely in the right place.   Roland Rust: If I had to suggest a career path for a salesperson in B2B, I would say there are two possible career paths that would both be very good. One, stay a salesperson in B2B and be really good at it. That's one career path. And then the other career path is become a sales manager, because the sales managers are also going to be in demand, and that's a job that can't easily perform by a machine.   Will We Ever Get Rid of Salespeople in The B2B Selling Environment? · [07:50]   Will Barron: Will this ever change? And this is more like a thought experiment than something that I can practically see in the real world, but I've talked about this before on the show, Roland, it seems like a lot of B2B deals could be done by, and you're the perfect person to ask this to, an AI like API and it plugs into the seller API and it plugs into the buyers API, and the AI looks at the data of the buyer and says, “Oh, well, perhaps we can help with this. We can bridge this, we can provide this,” and then they go, “Well, okay, here's a fair transaction,” the deal's done instantly and the salespeople are wiped off the face of the planet. Is that something that is plausible to happen, or is there so many moving parts in that, that it'd be too difficult?   “If you're wanting to, for example, sell a bunch of jet fighters to the federal government, I guarantee you're not going to do that on an API system. So the bigger and more complicated the deal is, then the more people are going to be involved. I don't see salespeople in those arenas going away anytime soon.” – Roland Rust · [08:45]   Roland Rust: Yeah. I mean, we already have that. I mean, there are many, many companies that are connected that way, but typically it's for more routine things. If you're wanting to, for example, sell a bunch of jet fighters to the federal government, I guarantee you're not going to do that on that API system.   Will Barron: Sure.   Roland Rust: So the bigger and more complicated the deal is, or the more it's not routine, then the more people are going to be involved. I don't see that going away anytime soon. There are a lot of big, important deals being done.   How to Future-Proof Yourself Against the AI Takeover · [09:10]    Will Barron: What can salespeople do to future-proof themselves other than, just get a better at sales is quite generic, right? What can we learn, do, be, have that would be very difficult to replicate by the AI that inevitably is coming for all of us at some point, right?   “AI is coming for all of us, I'm sorry to say. It's really something that is going to get us eventually, but we can hold it off to some degree. So one way to hold it off is to get good at teaming up with AI. Because what's going to be happening is AI is going to be doing the thinking part of the work and the humans are going to be doing the feeling and interpersonal part of the work. Salespeople don't have to be machine learning experts, but the salespeople need to be good enough to be able to team up with AI because that's what the managers are looking for.” – Roland Rust · [09:34]   Roland Rust: They are coming for all us, I'm sorry to say. It's really something that is going to get us eventually, but we can hold it off to some degree. So one way to hold it off is to get good at teaming up with AI, because for a long time, what's going to be happening is AI is going to be doing the thinking part of the work and the humans are going to be doing the feeling and interpersonal part of the work. Salespeople, they don't have to be machine learning experts, but the salespeople need to be good enough to be able to team up with AI, because that's what the managers are looking for.   Roland Rust: They don't care who does the job. They don't care whether AI does the job or the human does the job. They could care less. What they care about is the job getting done. So what's happening now is that AI is getting better at certain parts of the job, and so humans need to not be threatened by that, need to just accept AI as a teammate. That's the way I like to think about it, as a teammate, and try to be a good teammate for AI, just like AI is trying to be a good teammate for the human.   How to Incorporate AI Into Your Daily Sales Activities · [10:50]   Will Barron: And let's go back to basics, just for someone who perhaps isn't familiar when we talk about AI and the thinking side of business, and perhaps even life in a wider context, Roland. What is AI good at? What should we proactively be letting AI replace in our workday so that we can become more effective and leverage the tools that we have that will make the biggest difference?   Roland Rust: Well, the thought for a long time was that really all AI could do was the very routine sorts of monotonous tasks that were done over and over and over again. And so the thinking was, “Well, as long as you have a good STEM job, you're okay.” But of course, that's not true anymore. Actually, the STEM job people are in much more risk than the salespeople, because the salespeople are in a feeling economy job, and a lot of those STEM jobs are going to be taken over by AI.   Will Barron: So the regular audience will know, I forgive you for not knowing this, Roland, but I've got a degree chemistry. My dissertation was in computational chemistry, part published elsewhere in journals and that, but what we were doing was trying to take the lab work out of the lab and give such proactive and effective modelling in the chemical environment, and it was just computing power that was holding us back from going for larger proteins and interactions. We were stuck with hydrogen vibrating, bouncing off over hydrogens and doing analytics and simulations based on that. But at some point, we're going to have the computational power to not have to use a lab. At some point, you're going to be able to put a problem into a computer, my brother's an analytical chemist, and at some point you're going to be able to put these problems into a computer and go, “Hey, we need this outcome, run a billion different calculations and different simulations and work out something that we can then verify in experimental form.”   Will Barron: And so I think it's actually really exciting and really empowering for the audience to hear you say, Roland, that all of these nerds, which is me in a prior life, who are on their high horses doing all this lab research, looking down on us knuckle-dragging salespeople, we're the ones with the potential career and the job security there. That's a weird dynamic that I know the audience haven't heard anywhere else.   The AI Takeover of STEM-Related Fields · [13:30]     Roland Rust: Yeah, that's true. And it's interesting what you were talking about, about modelling things with chemistry. In the broader sense, it's called a digital twin. You create a computer model of what it is you're trying to model, and of course the computer model that models the thing that you're trying to model has to be much bigger than the thing you're trying to model, but that's been done for computer systems for many years. They build these little computers inside these huge mainframes and treat them as a digital twin. But now the digital twin idea is going much further. We're modelling more complex systems using these techniques, and that gives us a lot more insight than we used to have. So some of the things that used to be impossible to work out are now being able to be worked out, which means that people had better concentrate on the feeling side of things and not try to I'll think that.   Will Barron: So you mentioned right at the top of the show this progression through the centuries and there being limited real crux points where the industry as a whole changes dramatically and massively, and as you pointed out there, and I think you purposefully did this, because this be an interested talking point for us, women, females are becoming, via the industry changing and technology changing, are becoming more, via… I feel bad as I say this, right? I'm trying to be politically correct when we're having a scientific discussion here, so I don't know why I'm overthinking the words that I'm saying, Roland. Just to throw it out there for the audience, as they hear me stuttering as I try and say this.   Women, Emotional Intelligence and the Future of AI · [15:05]    Will Barron: I'll just be blunt about it. Are we going to move into a position where women typically, stereotypically, data led shows that they have perhaps a higher percentage chance of having more emotional intelligence, having more empathy, are women that fit these categories going to come into their own in this modern world of sales, where we're going to partner up with AI, where some of the thinking, more male aspect roles stereotypes… You can clear this up in a second as I finished this terrible question, but are we getting to a point where the traits that women typically have or lean into more are going to be beneficial, versus us grunting men who've dominated the sales industry over the decades and decades that have come prior?   Roland Rust: Yeah, I think a lot of the fact that you still have men having an advantage in certain kinds of sales are really more a matter of inertia. That it's kind of a holdover from the 1950s and 60s world, where the men were the breadwinners and the women stayed at home and raised the kids. But the fact that the women traditionally over many, many millennia have been the ones that stayed home and took care of the kids actually give women a tremendous advantage in the feeling economy, because that nurturing and that empathy that's natural to them, even to a greater degree than men on average, will serve them really well. This is going to be a great time for women. Women should-   Why Women Will dominate the Feelings Economy · [16:47]    Will Barron: Is this change happening now, Roland, or is this something that is a iceberg, slow glacial moving? Because there's many pieces to this puzzle, of access to jobs, biases perhaps, maybe, maybe not biases in companies and employment and that kind of thing. Is this something that there's data on now, that the gap has changed, equaled, performance has changed within the marketplace? Or is this something that-   Roland Rust: Yeah, we can really see this happening. We can measure it. We've done a lot of examination of US government data, for example, and based on that, we have current research that's basically showing the degree to which women gained an advantage from the feeling economy and what kinds of jobs they're getting a greater advantage in. But we see this all over society, not just in business, not just in sales. If you can just take a look at the number of countries that have women leaders, that's a much greater number than it used to be. It used to be unless you were a queen, and you were a queen because the king, your father had you, but now people are electing women leaders. I mean, certainly Angela Merkel was an extremely powerful woman, but there are many, many women leaders around the world, much more than before.   Roland Rust: And in fact, if you take a look at the countries that have women leaders, their economic situation is better on average by far than the average country. I think that the reason for that is that the economies that tend to be the most advanced are also the ones that women can be the best at, because they're the ones, they're the economies that are closest to the feeling economy today.   How Women Can Make The Most of Their Innate Traits to Compete in the Current Sales Environment · [18:47]    Will Barron: What can the women now, forget us blokes for a second, what can they do to make the most of any innate traits that they have, whether it be emotional intelligence, empathy, whatever it is? What do they need to lean into, to not necessarily outcompete men, but outcompete the current marketplace?   Roland Rust: I think that women have the ability now to stop trying to be men. That sounds weird, I think, but I mean women have tried in the past to emulate the people that they've seen that have been successful around them, and that's typically been men. And so you find women trying to be more masculine, trying to hide their feminine side. You saw that with Hillary Clinton running for President of the United States. I mean, from all indications, she's a very warm person to the people around her, but at the same time, when she was trying to be a politician, she really covered that up. Same thing with Margaret Thatcher in England. Margaret Thatcher really tried to change her voice. She made her voice deeper, so that she would sound more serious and more masculine. That's something that we're going to see for a while, but it's going to go away, because women really benefit from being more feminine in today's feeling economy.   Feminine Traits in the Feeling Economy · [20:20]    Will Barron: Is it that they benefit from being more feminine? I'm sure there's an element to that. How much of it is that they benefit from just being authentic and congruent as well on top of all this?   Roland Rust: Well, when I'm saying that they're going to be better or they're going to be more feminine, I really mean that they're going to be more nurturing, they're going to be more empathetic. They're going to have more sensitivity toward the others that they're working with. These are feminine traits and they're very, very timely.   Roland Reveals the Things Men Can Do to Stay Relevant in the Feelings Economy · [21:03]   Will Barron: I know, and we're talking in broad strokes here, what can men do? Say like, and this is not me, say like I was super masculine man, I've just got testosterone squirting out my eyeballs, I'm super assertive, and sometimes that can help the sales process when you know you can really help someone and they've got their own baggage or stress or issues, and you just need to nudge them over the finish line of a deal perhaps. Assertiveness can help in certain selling situations. But perhaps I'm overassertive, Roland, I'm verging on the point of being a bit of a pain in the ass with my customers, but I get the deal done. I'm an ex-athlete, yada, yada, all the stereotypes. What can I do as this hyper masculinized ridiculous man that doesn't exist to lean into the future of the feeling economy and to have success there?   Roland Rust: I guess there are a couple of, I'll talk about a couple of extremes of what men can be like, and then talk about each one, because I think depending upon what kind of for person the man is, he would need to do different things. So for example, if somebody's just a hyper masculine sort of person, then I think the thing to recognise is that there's probably going to be some retraining needed, and the retraining would be to try to build up the empathetic ability, build up the people skills, build up the emotional IQ. Sometimes if somebody's not coming to that naturally, then they need retraining. One thing that the universities are going to have to get good at is bringing thinking economy people in, such as for example the hyper masculine people, and try to make them understand and appreciate the emotional intelligence part. So I think that it's a retraining for them.   Roland Rust: Now, there's another set of people, and the other set of people are the men who are perhaps very sensitive to begin with. I feel as though I fit into that category. I've written poetry and done music and things like that, and I feel as though sometimes on the job, I need to kind of hide that, or have felt that in the past. Now, at this point, realising what's happening in the economy, I'm trying to let that part back out again, because I realise that's a very useful part in today's economy. That if I'm more sensitive and more empathetic, that makes me more effective. So I'm trying to stop hiding the feminine part, if you will, of my myself and allow that to come out, because that is going to be very helpful and make me more effective.   Is Emotional Intelligence a Learnable Skill? · [24:00]   Will Barron: Sure. Are things like emotional intelligence, I don't know, it seems like they should be, but I don't know if there's any science data on this, are these learnable skills? Sure, there's maybe some genetic elements to this, maybe there's a nature-nurture argument to some of this as well, and as you're describing there, this idea of masculine traits, feminine traits is a massive sliding scale, and depending on multiple factors, we all end up one place or another. But are these traits that are going to be valuable in this feeling economy, such as emotional intelligence, be able to have an empathetic conversation with someone, are these learnable traits or are these innate and hardwired?   Roland Rust: Well, I believe they are learnable traits. I mean, a lot of this stuff has been taught in management courses for years. So I think it is learnable, but I think we're not used to thinking about feeling skills as being something that's part of formal education, but maybe we need to change the way we think about that.   AI is Much Broader Than Machine Learning · [25:03]    Will Barron: Okay. Final question for you, Roland, before we wrap up, I'm going to ask you to share a little bit about the book in a second as well, and that is, and I always ask, because we talk about AI regularly on the show. Typically, within the context of this podcast, people say AI, what they mean is machine learning, right? They mean, we are going to jump in our CRM system, we're going to type in a potential customer's name, the company's name, and the AI/machine learning is going to say, “Oh, there's a trigger event. Someone just left this organisation, this just happened, that happened, and it says we should call them in three weeks from now, because statistically, that's a good time to get in touch.” So I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet with all these sales technology companies who say AI, when clearly we have different definitions of these things, but with that same point.   Roland Rust: I think that it's important to recognise that AI is broader than just machine learning.   Will Barron: Yep.   Roland Rust: Machine learning is the thing that has made AI extremely popular today, because it's been shown that it can do very well with prediction. So you have that, but I mean, these CRM systems that you're talking about, they're AI. They're AI, they're just not machine learning in that sense.   The Difference Between AI and Machine Learning · [26:14]   Will Barron: What's the difference? Just so I'm clear, so I can have more informed conversations on this. Is there a definition of what AI is in the context of machine learning? Even better in the context of a CRM or something, if you're familiar with Einstein from Salesforce, or Oracle's different AIs.   Roland Rust: Yeah, and I've done CRM systems myself.   Will Barron: Perfect.   “I think of AI as being anything that uses computing machinery to emulate or do better than what people are doing in their thinking. So, the CRM system would definitely be AI in that definition, and I don't see anything wrong with that. Machine learning, in the end, I think is going to be shown to be limited. I think that it's probably limited to predictive ability.” – Roland Rust · [26:41]    Roland Rust: So I know about that, and I think of AI as being anything that uses computing machinery to emulate or do better than what people are doing in their thinking. So, the CRM system would definitely be AI in that definition, and I don't see anything wrong with that. We don't need to limit ourselves to machine learning, and in fact I think that's a mistake. Machine learning, in the end, I think is going to be shown to be limited. I think that it's probably limited to predictive ability.   Will Barron: Sure.   Roland Rust: Aside from that, I think we need to have perhaps different approaches. For example, one approach I use is Bayesian learning models. That is a statistical approach really, it's not using the neural network approach at all, but that is just as much AI as anything else. It's just a different way of doing AI.   How Long Before We Start Living in an AI Dominated World? · [27:43]    Will Barron: Sure, okay. Well, we'll wrap up with this, Roland, my final question, and obviously no one knows the answer to this to the date, to the year, but how far are we away from there being an AI and maybe this gets replicated and scaled, that can do… I don't know, like for example, you can ask it to do admin tasks and it'll just go off and do them and you'll have your spread sheet back with your expenses and your mileage, and all this kind of stuff that everybody hates doing. It's a waste of time, but typically humans do it because, in my experience, some of the tools that are out there, they need double checking by humans anyway, so a lot of people will just go, “Well, I'll just get it done,” but it's a bad use of their time.   Will Barron: How far away are we from that kind of AI, where we can verbally tell it something, perhaps it looks at us and reads a little bit of our emotions as whether we're demanding it's done right now or whether it can be done next week, or whatever it is, and then it goes and does perhaps an admin-esque task?   Roland Rust: The answer to your question I think is it's going to be quicker than you think, because what you're really talking about here is common sense and general intelligence.   Will Barron: Sure.   “According to our analysis, the feeling tasks will be more important than the thinking tasks by about 2035. That's on average. And the reason for that is that AI is going to be better and better at common sense and general intelligence to the point where really what's going to be left is the very human part of how we deal with other people. That's going to be our greatest advantage over AI. Now, I think if you go out, let's say 30 years ahead, I think AI would be better than us at everything.” – Roland Rust · [28:58]    Roland Rust: And it'll take decades I think for that to really come about, but according to our analysis, the feeling tasks will be more important than the thinking tasks by about 2035. That's on average. That is a huge difference, and the reason for that is that AI is going to be better and better at common sense, and better and better at general intelligence, to the point where really what's going to be left is the very human people part, of how do we deal with other people? That's going to be where our greatest advantage is over AI. Now, I think if you go out, let's say 30 years instead of 15, go out 30, 35 years, I think AI would be better than us at everything.   The AI Takeover is Coming. Brace Yourself · [29:45]   Will Barron: Well, that was what I was going to ask you. Roland, when are we just obsolete? Surely this is something that you ponder on after a few pints or a few whiskeys on a Friday evening, and we're going totally off context here, and we'll wrap up with this, but when do we just become just pointless, we're just these meat sacks that are not needed for AI to do its thing?   Roland Rust: I think 30 or 40 years.   Will Barron: Wow.   Roland Rust: And that's what Ray Kurzweil calls the singularity. It's where AI just becomes better than us at everything. My best guess would be 30 or 40 years for that, and those of you who are going to be alive 30, 40 years from now, good luck.   Parting Thoughts · [30:30]    Will Barron: Well, we'll wrap up with that bombshell, Roland. With that, mate, tell us where we can find out more about the book, The Feeling Economy, where we can buy it, and then where we can find out more about yourself as well, sir.   Roland Rust: Yes, okay. The book, The Feeling Economy, which is coauthored by Ming-Hui Huang, who is my longtime collaborator and wife, that can be found on Amazon. Just type in The Feeling Economy on Amazon and you'll be able to find it easily. And if you want to contact me, I'm happy to be contacted. Just Google Roland Rust, and I will come up, I guarantee.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well, I'll link to the book, everything else that we talked about, and a few articles if people want to read close into this topic, because it's top of mind for me with all the sales technology and everything that's going on in our space at the moment. I'll link all that in the show notes to this episode, over at salesman.org. And with that, Roland, I want to thank you for your time, your expertise, putting up with some terrible questions from me, which you gave great answers to, which are valuable for the audience. I want to thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.   Roland Rust: Thanks very much, Will.      

Michael Reddington is a certified forensic interviewer and the president of InQuasive Inc., where he uses his background in forensics and understanding of human behavior to teach businesses how to use the truth to their advantage. On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Michael explains the 6-levels of listening and how they’ll improve your prospecting, discovery and sales calls. You'll learn: Sponsored by: Free SalesCode assessment Learn your strengths and weaknesses in an instant. Taken by over 10,000+ of your competitors. Don't get left behind. Take the free assessment Featured on this episode: Host - Will Barron Founder of Salesman.org Guest - Michael Reddington Certified Forensic Interviewer Resources: Michael’s LinkedIn InQuasive.com Michael’s Email – mreddington@inquasive.com. Transcript Will Barron: Welcome to the Salesman podcast. My name is will, and on today's episode, we're looking at the six levels of listening and how they're going to help you improve the performance of your prospecting discovery and sales calls with buyers. Today's guest is Michael Reddington, his certified forensic interview. He's got a book coming out in the not too distant future, The Disciplined Listening Method. You can find out more about Michael at InQuasive.com. And with that, Michael, welcome back again to the show.   Michael Reddington: It is great to be here again, Will, thank you so much for having me.   Will Barron: You're welcome. I'm glad to have you back on me. Is this the third time you've been on the show?   Michael Reddington: It is, yes. I'm afraid to admit it, because you're going to cap me off, I don't want to stop myself from maybe getting invited back after, but yes, it's the third time.   Are Salespeople Born with the Ability to Really Listen to Prospects and Buyers? · [00:59]   Will Barron: Good man. Well, maybe there's like five or six people have come on three or four times a year. You're in a select group there and it's because of my fan of you and your work, mate. We're going to dive into the six levels of listening. We'll see if we can get through all six. If we don't, that's fine, we'll have you back on in the future to dive into them, but let's start with this, mate. Are we born with the ability, sales people specifically, are born with the ability to really, really listen to our prospects so that we can help them or is this a skill that we need to learn?   Michael Reddington: I'm going to walk the fence a little bit. My official answer is it's a skill we need to learn. My unofficial answer is it is something we're born with, it's something that we typically stray away from. So if I was bold enough, which I guess I have to be, to take us all the way back to being infants, we literally have to be astute observers to everything going on around us, especially with Mommy and Daddy, to understand what they're thinking, what they're feeling. I have a four year old son. So he's right on track to developing his theory of mind, which is essentially understanding what people around us are thinking or feeling at any time, and just over the last couple of months, he started asking, “Daddy, are you mad at me?” which is a funny question to answer to my four year old because I might be, but I don't want to make this situation any worse.   Michael Reddington: So I would contend that, especially as young children, yeah, we have this real curiosity, this real interdependence, we're very much in tune, but then as we grow up and we get distracted and develop our own thought processes and assumptions and such, then it becomes less of a skill that we really focus on.   “Listening is something that we have to intentionally work to develop because so many of our sales conversations involve some level of stress. And as stress mounts, we tend to go to what we know, and generally in the sales profession, what we know best is ourselves, our product, our service. So if I feel like I'm under the gun, the best thing to do is to feel comfortable talking about me and what I'm selling and not listening, which comes back to backfire.” – Michael Reddington · [02:24]    Michael Reddington: So that would lead me to my final answer if you will, that yes, especially in the sales profession, it is something in that we have to intentionally work to develop because so many of the conversations we have involve some level of stress. They should and as stress mounts, we tend to go to what we know, and generally in the sales profession, what do we know best? Ourselves, our product, our service. So if I feel like I'm under the gun, the best thing to do is to feel comfortable talking about me and what I'm selling and not listening, which comes back to backfire.   The Key Identifiers of a Healthy Sales Call · [02:52]   Will Barron: Is the goal then to develop a skillset or a series, which we'll talk in a second, of skills to listen better, or is it to be just so relaxed during a sales call? I don't know what you take, do, have, or be to be relaxed in a sales call, but to reduce all the stress from it? Should a healthy sales call have a healthy level of, maybe not stress, but energy on the call itself?   Michael Reddington: Several questions in there. Try to work my way backwards. Yes, I think a sales call should have some energy. Passion can be a double edged sword, so we've got to be a little bit careful communicating our passion to too strong a degree, maybe with an audience that isn't quite there can be a little bit overbearing, overpowering, can push them away, but people often interpret passion for conviction and for knowledge and expertise. So having some passion and energy there certainly is important.   “Confidence comes from three places: having experience, being prepared, and surviving mistakes. So the more mistakes we live through, the more relaxed we can be in future situations, because the brain will be like, “I've been through this before. I can get myself out of it again.” – Michael Reddington · [03:54]    Michael Reddington: I do think being relaxed on the call helps and I'm a firm believer that often our confidence… Well, really confidence comes from three places. Having experience, which often we only get that the hard way, being prepared and surviving mistakes, which I think is an interesting subset of experience. So the more mistakes we live through, the more relaxed we can be in future situations, because, “I've been through this before. I can get myself out of it again.” But even on that prepared side, yes, it is true that we're under stress, we go to what we know and that can be dangerous, my personal experience and opinion has been the better we know our stuff, the easier it is for us to apply it to somebody else's world.   Michael Reddington: So if I'm just learning it and top of mind, and I'm worried about how do I convey it, I might be really tempted just to inadvertently force it on people. However, if I know it so well inside, out, upside down, backwards, the research behind it, the support, whatever it is, now I can engage in a conversation where I turn the keys over to somebody else. I let them lead the conversation because I'm not worried about what I'm going to tell them. I'm now listening for the perfect opportunity to fit what we're looking for into their world so it resonates at a much greater level. So the energy and stress should probably be there, we care about what we're doing, we're passionate. Really being completely confident to an in depth degree with our material allows us to let the conversation come to us instead of forcing it.   Michael Reddington: And then I think that first piece was, do I think people should focus on developing a listening skillset? Yes, without a doubt. For me, a mechanism that I try to use, being biassed self or talking about myself, of course, is going into these conversations I try to ask myself, “What can this person teach me?” Because if I go into a conversation feeling like I'm the one with all the information to give, that can put me into a validate mentality as opposed to a learning mentality and really limit my opportunity to create these connections that we're looking for. So I literally at the top of my notes will write down, “What can I learn? or “What can he teach me?” to try to put me into that mindset before the call starts.   The Validation Mindset: What It Is and Why You Should Avoid It · [06:00]    Will Barron: What do you mean by a validation mindset?   Michael Reddington: When your a hammer everything looks like a nail. So we can call it confirmation bias if we want, but if I'm going to check the box mentality, if I can get someone to tell me that they're experiencing this pain or they have this opportunity or this financial need or this staff need or software need, then great, I got them where I want them. Now I'm not really listening, I'm trying to fit them into a box that I already have as fast as possible and I could be missing all kinds of other opportunities.   Michael Reddington: We like to talk about listening for intelligence, as opposed to information. Listening to information can put us in that confirmation bias or that validation mentality where I'm looking for those three or four things that I'm predetermined to set somebody up for what I would like to sell them, but if I'm listening for intelligence, now I can pay attention to their tone of voice pauses, specific word choice. They might say some things that sound like throwaway statements about their day, their week, their weekend, their team, a call they just got off of, that could give me insight into another role to take, but if I'm just trying to fit them in that box, I'll never pick it up.   How to Listen for Intelligence During the Sales Qualification Process · [07:10]    Will Barron: For sure. And to be clear, qualifying our customers is important, right, whether we're all using banned med pick medic, one of like the bazillion different qualification frameworks, but I hear what you're saying, I think I do, tell me if I'm wrong here because I'm trying my best to actively listen as we do this year, right? Just ticking the boxes is something that we need to do, because we're a professional and we just make sure that someone is a fit for what's going on, but that's that's layer one. Layer two is, “Hey, are they responding to these questions? Do they give us information freely? Are they enjoying this? Are they in emotional turmoil? They've given me all these qualification questions, but they're never going to close a deal with me today because they're obviously stressed and we should be perhaps rearranging the call for another time.” Can we describe this as perhaps level one listening and level two listening, which is the word people can really separate themselves as salespeople.   Michael Reddington: Yeah, I think that is fair. The one thing I would say about qualification without disputing the necessity of the steps, is be careful not to do it with an exclusionary mindset. I've worked with a lot of sales professionals. I'm sure you have as well that when they talk about qualifying, “Are they a good fit for me? I don't want to waste my time.” So they literally, if they go in with that time focused mentality, “I don't want to waste my time.” If the goal is literally qualify them as quick as I can, one way or the other, and we could end up disqualifying candidates or prospects that might be an okay fit for what we're trying to sell or it might be a good fit for something else we have or maybe even somebody else in our network that allows us again to build a relationship and demonstrate value over time. So yes, qualify for sure. Just I would coach to not have such an exclusionary mindset or approach when we do.   Will Barron: Sure. I think I'll challenge you slightly on that, but agree in principle. Where I was going to go with it was, in a wonderful world, we've all got big fat pipelines, unlimited people, we can spend time on the phone, we can get to know them, we can close them six months a year from now when things change, when budget align, when timing aligns. Unfortunately, most sales people live in world of, “I've got to get my number by the end of the month,” which is both bad sales targets for management being handed down, multiple other factors as well.   The Rigid Qualification Framework You Should Probably Stop Using · [09:25]    Will Barron: So what you're saying is correct when we're doing [inaudible 00:09:28] rates, but I can just feel the audience going, “But, Mike, I've got to hit target and I've only got eight calls and I've only got so much time during the day and I've got to qualify them out.” Is there… how to describe this? Is that a mechanical process that salespeople need to rethink perhaps or is that just a mindset shift of, hey, you could qualify people hard, but don't miss important things that if you were listening more effectively, are there, which might counteract the very rigid qualification framework that we're probably using?   “Time is the enemy of empathy and time is the enemy of quality. If I'm thinking to myself, “This conversation has to be done in five minutes, I have to make eight calls. If this isn't going to work, I’ve got to hurry up and get to the next one,” I'm literally prioritising time over empathy, understanding, resonating with my audience and I'm prioritising time over the quality of the call.” – Michael Reddington · [10:15]    Michael Reddington: Yeah. I think you just hit another nail right on the head. I probably need a new analogy now, this is the second time we've used that one, but yes. So it's about finding a bit of a balance and it's about making the best of the time that we have. So time is the enemy of empathy and time is the enemy of quality. If I'm thinking to myself, “This conversation has to be done in five minutes, I have to make eight calls. If this isn't going to work, I got to hurry up and get to the next one,” I'm literally prioritising time over empathy, understanding, resonating with my audience and I'm prioritising time over the quality of the call and it can be tough, especially in what we do because in some ways our calls are predicated on failure. There's a reasonable likelihood this isn't going to work, I'm going to try to figure that out as fast as possible. If it's going to, I'm in, if it's not, I'm onto the next.   Michael Reddington: So it's finding that balance of how am I going to maximise the time that I have, really give every opportunity to suss out value in this conversation and if it's not there, cut bait and move on, but do that more from a value standpoint, as opposed to a time standpoint. I guess my personal belief is oftentimes time takes care of itself. Not always. We can run on forever, we can run on to people that, “Ooh, someone I can talk to today,” and they'll just talk our ear off, but generally speaking, if we have a good process in place, the time piece takes care of itself.   The Six Levels of Listening and Understanding · [11:38]    Will Barron: Sure. That makes total sense. Okay. So we pitched the six levels of listening. We should probably get into, at some point of the show, since I've talked about it at the top, before we go down too of the many rabbit holes, Michael, do you want to run through perhaps the first one or two, and then I'll throw some questions at you and we'll see how many we can get through. We don't need to get through them all if we've don't have time.   Michael Reddington: That's no problem. So with the six levels of listening, I'm assuming we're talking about Judy [Burnwell's 00:11:51] the HURIER model of the six levels of listening?   Will Barron: Yeah.   Michael Reddington: So the first two we have are hearing and understanding, and I think we could probably pause there just for a minute and talk about those two and section them off. I was, if you can believe this, sitting at a bar in Gainesville, Florida, if I remember correctly, when I was travelling and teaching years ago, and I sat next to a guy, who, we were talking, he was a nice guy and he said, “Hear me now, listen to me later.” And I thought that was an interesting way to put it, but it's a phrase that he used a lot to basically say, “Yeah, get what I'm saying now, but put some time into it, think about this later and think about what it really means.”   Michael Reddington: So I would argue that hearing and either listening or observing are two different things because we can hear the sounds that people are making, but are we really paying attention to the nonverbal cues, the tone of voice, the speed of delivery, the word choice? And one of my absolute favourite things to listen to is does somebody start to say a word, cut themselves off and then change it to another word because if they do that, there's a strong likelihood they're engaging in some impression management activity. The word they we're going to use is more than likely representative of how they're really feeling in the moment, the word they switch to is the word that reflects the feeling or the impression they want us to have. So if somebody starts to say, “Well…” Now, I'm trying to do one off the top of my head. I should have planned this out in the advance. But if someone was trying to say something along the lines of, “We're all on boar-…. We're going to take some time and talk through this.” Well, they're not all on board. So understanding what somebody is really thinking versus what they're telling us can be really important.   Michael Reddington: So yes, hearing it is important and being focused in limiting distractions and all those basic attentive or active listening skills that we've been taught forever are important, but just hearing the message isn't enough. Understanding is really where, we talked a little bit before, emotional intelligence comes into play, contextual or situational awareness. What is this message likely indicative of? What's the totality of their delivery? What can I assume from their intentions or motivations or fears? Who else is in the room? What might be going on? Really understanding the totality of the message would be that next level up from hearing and I'll certainly pause for you to jump in.   Situational Awareness in Sales · [14:22]    Will Barron: How do we develop this? Clearly your book when it comes out in the not too distant future, is your part of the experience here, right? Clearly. I'll give an opportunity to talk about the book at the end of the show, but is this experience, is this Will and Michael are going to be 80 and we're going to look back at all the mistakes we made in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and go, “Oh, that was because it was there, but I didn't see it,” or is this a skill that we develop of there's a checklist of things that we need to look out for, and then those things directly correspond to a certain result or thinking pattern in the person that we're engaging with?   Michael Reddington: Another great question. By the way, I look forward to having a beer with you when we're 80 and looking back and having that conversation.   Will Barron: You'll to show. There will be some kind of weird virtual show that's just like beamed into people foreheads in like 40 years, 50 years from now.   Michael Reddington: Who knows what it'll look like by then. An interesting piece of research that I discovered writing the book, I focused a lot on situational awareness because I think that really touches on what you're saying, understanding everything that's in play around us, just besides what I want to say and what I want them to say, and I really honed in on research done by a woman named Mica, if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, Mikey or Mica Endsley here in the United States, who was with the Air Force for many years. And she did a lot of situational awareness research, specifically with fighter pilots. And one of the things that she found was the majority of errors that fighter pilots make were involved with recognising all the relevant information when it was available. So everything that they needed to make the right decision was there, they just didn't see it, so they made a decision that they shouldn't have.   Michael Reddington: So when we think about correlating that to us, oftentimes in the sales conversation, it's the same. So yes, experience of course is helpful because the more we're involved in a situation, the more it becomes familiar. Our subconscious mental Rolodex does a better job at identifying when something is familiar, out of place, we've been here before, but really it's a decision. It's a decision to be aware that starts with understanding the goals we want to achieve.   Michael Reddington: So one of the things that we go through with the folks that we work with, which typically annoys them to death, is we'll break down their sales process step by step and it can be familiar, prospecting to setting the introductory meeting, qualifying, to discovery, to a demo, to post demo conversation, to sign the deal and now we're all friends forever doing business together, and through each one of those levels, okay, what's your strategic goal? What's your strategic goal? What's your strategic goal? And 99 times out of 100 their strategic goal is to get to the next level, when in in reality from hello, their strategic goal should be, how do I interact with this individual to eventually turn them into my best sales professional, my best sales advocate?   Michael Reddington: So if we reframe what our goal is, now we look for different cues, we listen for different opportunities, our situational awareness expands, whereas if I'm just trying to qualify somebody, do they fit, while that's a necessary step, I could be missing some additional intelligence. If I'm just trying to get the demo scheduled and they could say, “Yeah, shoot me an email and we'll see if we can get it on the books.” I can hang up the phone thinking, “Awesome, I just got the demo.” Probably not. Whereas if they say, “Absolutely, I'm very interested in learning more about this, please let me know what times work best for you next Wednesday or Thursday.” Now I'm far more likely to have the demo.   Michael Reddington: So in setting the proper goals to really frame our perspective, making the decision to stay aware and consistently questioning and checking what we're experiencing versus we want to achieve can really help elevate that.   The Observable Cues will Always Be There. You Just Have to Spot Them · [18:49]    Will Barron: All the signs, whether this be verbal, nonverbal, literally what people are saying, the buildup to the meeting, were they on time? Are they dressed professionally? Things like that I tend to find, when we do our sales calls or or sales org for our training programme, if someone shows up 10 minutes late to the call, and I'm just about to leave the call and it's your corporate client we're selling our training product, they're just not interested, right? The, the deal can basically just be ended there. We'd follow up with them in six months, send them some literature, see if things change. So I find that even leading up to the conversation there's clues as to the outcome of things.   Will Barron: This is a bit of a weird question, but are those things there and our brains are just so narrowly focused that we don't see them as in we need to expand what we're physically looking for or are our brains just not capable of seeing everything that's there at the time, and so we need to go, “Okay, I'm going to now check in on Michael's body language. I'm going to now check in on this. I'm going to now make a mental note of that and this,” and we need to constantly task switch to keep on top of this? Is this something that just happens and maybe it's a gut feeling that we get at the end of all of this, as opposed to something that is more tangible or is this something that we need to go, “Okay, check in here, check this one, two, three,” and go through a checklist in our brains as we're trying to communicate with someone,   “Gut feelings are good, listen to them. Gut feelings are typically our subconscious brain saying, “Hang on, we've seen this movie before,” and maybe consciously we can't pinpoint exactly where that came from, but we should be listening to our gut feelings for sure.” – Michael Reddington · [19:37]    Michael Reddington: First, gut feelings are good, listen to them. Gut feelings are typically our subconscious brain saying, “Hang on, we've seen this movie before,” and maybe consciously we can't pinpoint exactly where that came from, but we should be listening to our gut feelings for sure. My biassed opinion is I think it would be too bold to say that all of the information we need is there. All of these observable cues and hints are always there. Some people are harder to read than others. Their emotions can conflict and shift throughout. So to say that they're all there would be too bold a statement. I would contend that quite often, many to most of them are there, and usually we miss them because we're either distracted, we're looking for the wrong things, or we don't know what to look for. And when it comes back to distraction, the single biggest distraction we typically run into is our own internal monologue.   “The single biggest distraction we typically run into is our own internal monologue. You can't possibly have anything more important to say to me than I have to say to myself, and the same is true if we reversed it. Our brains can't multitask, so if either one of us is talking to ourselves while the other is talking to us, we're fully focused on what we're saying and only hearing a portion of what the other is saying. So we hear just enough that we trick ourselves into thinking we’ve got the whole message when we really didn't.” – Michael Reddington · [20:27]   Michael Reddington: I thoroughly enjoy our conversation. Anytime you're crazy enough to have me back, I'm in. You can't possibly have anything more important to say to me than I have to say to myself and the same is true if we reversed it. I have nothing more important to say to you than you have to say to yourself. Our brains can't multitask, so if either one of us is talking to ourselves while the other is talking to us, we're fully focused on what we're saying and only hearing a portion of what the other is saying, but we hear just enough that we trick ourselves into thinking we got the whole message when we really didn't.   Michael Reddington: So part of going back to that preparation is I'm not saying we need to go as far as having scripts, because those can be limiting, but understanding the goals we want to achieve, the framework we're going to take to get there, where the common pivot points might be, at least what our important illustrations or questions we want to make are, now we spend a lot less time thinking, “Well, what am I going to say next? Where do I go? What do I do? What's the next slide? What's going to happen?” And we can spend far more time being in tuned to all the cues that they're displaying in order for us to internalise those and adapt as necessary during the conversation.   How to Stay Present During a Sales Conversation with a Prospect · [21:49]    Will Barron: Again, super basic question here and I've tried to make steps towards this and I'll explain why with the [inaudible 00:21:44] in a second, but how the heck do we remember everything that's being thrown at us where we're not just focusing on what people are saying, but we're trying to take the whole picture in, Michael, on maybe a 20 to 45 minute sales call where we're trying to… We'll stick to the beginning of the sales process where we're trying to qualify the buyer, we're trying to see if we're they're a good fit to work with us?   Will Barron: How do we avoid getting to the end of the conversation and then we go, “Well, I really enjoyed speaking to Michael. What just happened?” Like we've chatted, we've gone back and forth, I'm not really any idea because I've been so in the moment, I've been so focused and actively listening, trying to ask questions that bring the best out of yourself during the sales conversation, the sales process, how we from a salesperson perspective then, remember it if we're not taking notes and we're not trying to plan the next question that we're going to ask and we're not following a script, which keeps everything down a straight line? How do we keep track of the conversation that we just had?   Michael Reddington: It starts with our goals, keeping our goal in mind. So for me, the average sales call, let's just say, is 45 to 60 minutes give or take. If somebody schedules a block of time with you, that's about how much time they have. So for me either right now while we're talking, I have my watch in front of me where I can see it so I don't give long winded answers. So if I have my watch in front of me where I can see it, I can at least keep a basic idea on where that time wise, so that way I know if I have to start shifting the purpose of the call towards the end, I'm leaving myself time to do it.   Michael Reddington: You mentioned notes. Especially if somebody's on a virtual call, which is happening so much more now and probably will stay that way moving forward to some degree. Right now, if I was writing notes over here with my right hand, you wouldn't be able to see it. So I could be not writing notes like I'm witnessing a lecture in college, but just a couple key words that I can look down at and because my handwriting is chicken scratch at best, when I do this, I'll write in all capital letters because it'll make it easy for me to just glance and see that one word that is the trigger I need to remember what I was doing.   “Listen to remember instead of listen to forget. So there are plenty of times where people will be talking to us and we'll start to think, “Oh, I'm never going to remember all of this.” Well, unfortunately we are now far more likely not to member because that's what our brain is focusing on, “I'm never going to remember this.” – Michael Reddington · [23:52]    Michael Reddington: The other thing that I do is listen to remember instead of listen to forget. So there are plenty of times where people will be talking to us and we'll start to think, “Oh, I'm never going to remember all of this.” Well, unfortunately we are now far more likely not to member because that's what our brain is focusing on, “I'm never going to remember this.” So instead, keeping a chain going in my head. I know this borderline's talking to myself, I'm still focusing on you, and now I'm trying to chain some of the things together.   Michael Reddington: I guess the last thought that I'll give here before turning it back over is instead of listening to the whole conversation, really observe for reactions to triggers. So at any point in the conversation where I'm saying something that my counterpart might have an emotional reaction to, that's really the time I want to make sure I'm paying attention. If they're talking to me about their concerns, their future goals, what they think of myself or what we're talking about, the times I really want to make sure I'm dialled in is when they are talking about how they think, feel or wants in a way that helps me achieve my goal. So instead of me trying to be full on a hundred percent for the entire duration of the call, I really want to hone in on those trigger moments that will give me the most intelligence. So it's like conserving resources, so to speak,   Will Barron: I get it. So we need to prioritise, listen to everything and then prioritise the one, two, three things that are going to have the most impact when we repeat them back to the buyer, if it's one specific objection that people are getting stuck on, we can double down and focus on that. I'm similar to you. So I've gone from a… I don't even have it anymore an eight four pad of paper and I'm just constantly scribbling down during these interviews. I've now resided myself to one post-it note per interview so I can just type single words and I've got… I can't read my own writing, start from surname. I don't even know what I've got surname on here anymore. So who knows how effective this is, but I find it keeps the point in my brain if I just do one word note long enough that I can continue listening, then look back, then ask the question, as opposed to being like, “Must ask this, must ask this must ask this.” So that's how I go about doing that and this is my post-it note system, January onwards we're going to give it a go, but we'll see how it goes.   Will Barron: But what I do get is better feedback from guests and I can see sometimes I'll be… Previously, I'd be jotting down making notes, Michael, I'd look up and then the guest would be just staring at me waiting for the next thing to come out my mouth and there's a bit of a delay. So I guess in person this might work better, doing long form notes, but short form notes, especially over Zoom, I think is really useful for the audience.   Michael Reddington: And I guess maybe one last, I think hack is the word the kids use these days, especially over Zoom, if I type out the questions that I want to ask and not necessarily in the script, but I do it in like 16 font, all capitals, can't miss it and I leave a bunch of space in between them. Now instead of me thinking, “What do I say?” There you go.   Will Barron: Yeah.   Michael Reddington: Now instead of me thinking, “What do I say next?” I can just glance down.   Will Barron: Yeah.   “A lot of observing for value and identifying hidden value comes down to managing the number of variables we have to deal with during the conversation. The more we can limit the number of variables we have to deal with and focus on the correct ones, the more successful we'll be.” – Michael Reddington · [27:18]    Michael Reddington: Love it. Or if you answer a question before I even get to ask it, now I just go ahead and I scribble that note next to the question that I was going to ask and I move on. So the little things we can do to prepare, make it easier. In my opinion, a lot of observing for value and identifying hidden value comes down to managing the number of variables we have to deal with during the conversation. The more we can limit the number of variables we have to deal with and focus on the correct ones, the more successful we'll be.   The Primary Goal of All Your Qualification Conversations · [27:40]    Will Barron: So would it be fair to say then if we are going into a qualifying conversation, the goal of the conversation is to see if this person is a good fit to work with us, as opposed to here is a 27 step qualification framework, med, pick, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and we're trying to tick these boxes off as we go through by monotonously asking the prospect these questions that they don't want to answer because there's no value in them answering it. Is that fair to say?   Michael Reddington: I think it's a hundred percent fair to say and I would guess that many situations that demotivates the prospect to answer, because there's nothing personal, there's no resonating going on, there's nothing between me and you. It's like when we go to the doctor and the doctor asks us the same 10 questions, not even looking at us, typing it into the computer and we're like, “Do you even care about me? Are you going to help me with what I feel like is bothering me today?” So I'm a huge fan personally, especially in qualifying calls, going with an illustrative opening, and I'm going to keep it abridged for time, something along the lines of, “Will, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today, appreciate that we're both interested in potentially understanding if we are the right fit to work together. In fact, we found that a lot of times at this point in the relationship, many of the people who are considering partnering with us have the same two or three questions,” one, two three. “So with that in mind, generally…” bam. So now it's like I'm educating them before I start asking questions. And there's some other psychological influence mechanisms that out we're using there, but we like to say illustrate before you investigate.   Michael Reddington: So now I'm making it more of a conversation. Some things I'll just throw out, do they nod their head? Do they smile? Do they react? Do they smile? Do they laugh and say, “Yeah, me too,” or do they shake their head like that's totally foreign? I'm gathering intelligence. Some, I'll asking a question. So by balancing that out through the conversation, now it doesn't feel like I'm sitting in front of them with a clipboard and a checklist and they're going to get the results of my evaluation when we're done.   Will Barron: Let me ask you this and this is going to ruin this call that I do when people… We do essentially a qualification call when people want to sign up to our training programme because there's so much of my time now invested into each of the students and the price has gone up versus just the online version of the course that we need to make sure that it's the right people coming in there.   Michael Reddington: Of course.   Will Barron: So we go through the call and I'll do a bit basic consulting, see where they are. Typically it's where are they, where do they want to get, can we bridge the gap across? And then towards the end of the course something I've started doing and this was just a mistake at first, the Zoom was just playing up and so what I did was there's two packages, two offers that we have, I just typed it into Zoom chat and clicked enter and said, “Hey, talk of the pricing, look at the offer, what you get for it and you tell me which one you want to go with.” So it's some of a close ended question, maybe it'd be more appropriate to have a “What you fancy would be a… I don't want to force people down. I don't want to do like in an assumptive close, I'm not weird like that.   Will Barron: But what I find is then people go, because they're looking, they have to move their laptop closer, so they're looking at the two offers that we give them typically, whether it's like a one month mentorship or 12 week mentorship and you can see the face and I then have this weird moment where they forget that they're on camera.   How to Look Out for Genuine Responses Over a Zoom Call · [31:20]    Will Barron: I can see their genuine reaction, their guards drop and obviously most of the time people are like, “Oh great. This kind of fits my budget. This fits my goals. I'm excited,” and people like, “Yeah, yeah, let's move forward with it.” And you can see some people, their face drops and it's not quite the right fit for them and that is that. And before they even say anything, I can then react to that on the call itself. What do you think of that? Because it's all a fluke and I've done it a few times now on a few calls and people seem to give a… that's the… because it's a sales call as well, but people seem to drop the guard and give me a genuine response just via the kind of the nonverbal cues on camera.   Michael Reddington: I love it. I was doing a sales programme a couple years ago and I spent way too much time going into all these nuances of non-verbal communication and different areas of the body and what to look for and all this stuff and I say this jokingly, all proud of myself for all the stuff that I'm teaching them. And then at the end, one of the reps in the back of the class raises their hand and says, “So I think I got it. Really what I just need to do is do they look happy or do they not?”   Will Barron: Yeah.   Michael Reddington: And I started laughing. I was like, “Yes, you're way smarter than I am.” Like all of this stuff is nice, but it doesn't really matter. Do they look happy or do they not? So one of the tools that I'll use, we like to call a suggestive series. So I'll give somebody a suggestive series of choices. Oftentimes at this point in the conversation, the person I'm talking to, their top three or four concerns might be one, two, three four or their top goals might be one two three or there are two or three things that they really have on their mind or the problems they really want to get resolved right now are one, two, three. And when I throw them out there, I do exactly what you just said. I'm just looking at their reaction to each of them and now does one seem to turn them off? Does one seem to make them angry? Does one seem to make them happy? Do they smile? Do they shrug? Do they stop and move their eyes like they're really hesitating to think about it? Do they kind of give me a disgusted face?   Michael Reddington: But now all of these things give me immediate intelligence. That's an immediate emotional response to something that I said, they almost certainly didn't even realise that they did it and now I have intelligence that I can begin to adapt and specify where I go next to take advantage, either avoid or go for something. So I think what you're talking about is another great application for that.   Will Barron: I think I'll experiment with it. With your blessing, Michael, I think I'll experiment with it a little bit more then because I don't want it to be a manipulative tool that I'm using, but just dumping it in the chat, allowing them just have two, three seconds to look it over and see what's a good fit for them and respond. As I said, I just had this moment of clarity when it happened the other day, as I said, when I had to do it and I've done it since because it seemed to work, of people's faces like either light up or occasionally just go, “Oh crap. I've not got the funds for this,” or “This is not a good fit,” or “This isn't what I was expecting,” and then that immediately, no more bullshitting, no more fuffing around. I know exactly where people are on the call. So yeah, I'll do more experimenting and I'll I'll report back to the audience.   Remembering and Interpreting: The Keys to an Effective Sales Call · [34:14]    Will Barron: Now I've just ruined it for everyone who listens to this episode of the show who jumps on a call with me to see if they're a good fit for the training programme, but I'm happy to sacrifice our sales process for the audience. Michael, we've covered two levels of the six levels of listing now. Is there anything you want to throw in on top? I'm just conscious of time. Is there anything out of the other four levels that we really desperately need to cover?   Michael Reddington: Well, the next two are going to be remembering and interpreting and we can't remember what we don't hear and we talked a little bit about helping with remembering. With interpreting that one thing that I would say is we talk a lot about emotional intelligence, putting ourselves in someone else's shoes. Context is king. So trying to understand where they're coming from, all the factors that could be impacting what they say.   Michael Reddington: A funny example, I think from my interrogation career is people used to ask me, “Don't you get mad when people lie to you?” No, I'm actually thankful for it. And then they would look at me kind of crazy. I'm like, “First of all, they're not lying to hurt me. It's the last good decision they have. Like they're just trying to stay out of trouble, so I can't fault them for that and it probably has some intelligence buried within the lie. So if I listen carefully enough, I can figure out where it's coming from, what they're afraid of.”   “Always remember that as sales professionals, often people have more reason to at least initially resist us than they do to welcome us. So never take that personally.” – Michael Reddington · [35:16]   Michael Reddington: So let's remember as sales professionals that often people have more reason to at least initially resist us than they do to welcome us. So instead of taking that personally, really working to understand, as we go through that interpretation. Interpretation, of course, then leads into evaluation. Evaluation, again, takes in all the contextual clues and works that in with our goals. How does everything I'm hearing and seeing relate to the goals that I want to achieve? If I'm qualifying, is this a conversation I should continue having, is this one I should break off? If it's one I should break off, how should I do it in order to leave some door open for potential? Or if I'm going to keep going, how do I go in a direction that gets me closer to my goal?   “It's important to remember that people react the strongest to what they hear first and people will interpret how we communicate with them as proof for how much we respect them.” – Michael Reddington · [36:04]    Michael Reddington: And then the last one in her model was responding, and I would like to say that it's important to remember that people react the strongest to what they hear first and people will interpret how we communicate with them is proof for how much we respect them. So really being conscious with our responses, trying to respond in a way that helps protect their self image, doesn't put the swinging spotlight over their head or makes them feel embarrassed and keeps us moving towards the goal would be considerations.   Will Barron: There's a whole conversation there. Maybe we can discuss this in the future of not… kind of respect, but also the dynamic between buyer and sell where typically at the beginning of most sales calls, there's like an alpha beta kind of battle where the buyer wants to be the one in control. Then when they see that we can help them, that we're a consultant, that we're following Michael's advice, we're generally listening to them, perhaps that simmers down around the same kind of level, which is where we want to be. And then it depends on how, forceful is the wrong word, completely the wrong word, but how assertive we need to be to help them get over the hurdle of spending the money, putting the resources in, building a team, building consensus within the account, getting a champion on board, depending on how assertive we have to be to help them help themselves towards the end, there can be another bit of a battle back and forth.   Will Barron: So it'd be interesting conversation to have in the future, Michael, of how that respect and all these different dynamics affect a conversation from the perspective of a salesperson where you always start in second place typically. It's very rare, even when I jump on sales calls, when people have listened to the sales and podcast for the last five years, the begging for a book, the begging for consulting and I get on a call with them and they still are trying to treat me not as a peer for the first 20 seconds until I do certain things to not allow that to happen. So that could be a cool topic for the future.   Michael Reddington: Yeah. I'd be happy to talk about that. I think that'd be fun.   Parting Thoughts · [37:58]    Will Barron: Cool, man. Well, we'll wrap up with that. I know the book isn't out yet. Tell us, if you want to share when it's going to be out or you keep the timeframes rough, if you like, but tell us more about the Disciplined Learning Method and where we can find out more about yourself as well.   Michael Reddington: I appreciate it. Thank you. So the book is The Discipline Listening Method, how a certified forensic interviewer unlocks hidden value in every conversation, a bit of a mouthful. If all goes well, I don't want to jinx anything, it should be available globally in spring. So we're working hard to hit that target date. They can learn more about me at InQuasive.com, I-N-Q-U-A-S-I-V-E.com. I'm on LinkedIn as well. If anybody wants to find me on LinkedIn, Michael Reddington CFI, and really the message that they're going to get from the book, from the website, hopefully from our conversations, is that everything that we do should be about enhancing the value of our relationships and conversations in order to spur goal achievement, not just goals we have in mind, but even greater goals. And oftentimes the path to do that is a bit surprising and if we take a step back, prioritise somebody else's experiences, and really, like we talked about today, open our situational awareness up a little bit wider, we can begin to create opportunities that previously didn't appear to be out there.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff. Well I'll link to the book when it's out, your website right now, and everything else that we've talked about in the show notes this episode over its salesman.org. With that, Michael, it's a pleasure as always, mate. I want to thank you for joining us on the Salesman podcast.   Michael Reddington: My pleasure. Thank you for having me back.

Quick—what part of your job do you enjoy the least? If you’re like most salespeople, you probably said prospecting. All the cold emails, the endless follow-ups, the calling, and the relentless slog of “no” after “no.” While there’s a time and a place for prospecting, if you’ve already got a long list of current clients, you may be wasting your time on finding new ones. Why? Because you can upsell your current clients to a premium product more easily than you can bring on new customers. And when you do so, you can drive more revenue, greater client loyalty, and higher commissions than going the old prospecting route. This guide shows you how to upsell like a pro. Inside, we’ll look at the massive benefits of upselling as well as The Proven Product Upselling Framework that takes all the “huh?” out of this underutilized sales strategy. What Is Upselling? Upsell Definition: To effectively encourage current clients to purchase a more expensive, upgraded, or superior version of the product they have now.  Simple, right? When you convince your current clients to purchase a newer version, you’re offering an upsell, meaning a better version than what they’re using today. This, of course, deviates from the normal routes of prospecting (i.e., attracting new customers) because it focuses on your existing customers. Some examples of upsells include: Higher tier membership offering better support Different models with added features Premium packages with more products included Added product warranties Increased personalization Upselling vs. Cross-Selling Upselling is often confused or conflated with cross-selling. But in fact, the two are slightly different. Let’s take a look at the definition of cross-selling to see how. Cross-Selling Definition: To effectively encourage current clients to purchase an entirely new product, usually on the basis of the product they have now. Rather than getting an upgraded version of a product, they’re getting a new one entirely. Let’s look at an example. Say you’re shopping for organic vitamin C supplements on Amazon. You’ve found a brand with some great reviews, so you decide to purchase from them. But as you’re about to add the supplement to your cart, you notice they offer a higher potency version and decide to upgrade to that version instead. That is an upsell. As you make your way through the checkout process, you’re taken to a “Because You Liked…” page that offers products you may like based on your purchase of the supplement. Products like other supplements, natural teas, and organic skincare products. That is cross-selling. See the difference? Why Upsell At All? Now that we’ve got a better handle on what upselling is (and what it isn’t), the question becomes, “Why do this at all?” I mean, why work on a whole new process to bump your existing clients up to another version? Should you even bother? As you might’ve guessed, the answer is a resounding “Hell yes!” But why? What makes focusing on the upsell sales technique so beneficial for you? There are four main reasons why upselling beats out traditional prospecting. It… Is easier than finding new prospects Drives more revenue Instills greater loyalty Enhances personalization A. Easier Than Finding New Prospects First and foremost, focusing on driving new sales from existing clients is substantially easier than closing deals with new customers. Here are some stats to drive the point home. Prospecting and qualifying leads are the top challenges for at least 1 out of 3 salespeople (HubSpot). You have just a 5 to 20% probability of successfully selling to a new prospect in most industries. If you’re selling to an existing customer, that probability jumps to 60 to 70% (Marketing Metrics). It cost 5X as much to attract a new customer compared to retaining an existing one (Invesp). When you put your efforts into the clients you already have, you’re bound to see more success than blind prospecting. “We all know the stats that show how hard it is to get a new customer compared to keeping your existing ones. So if you show genuine curiosity in how things are going with existing clients, it means you've got to spend less time scrapping about creating content, less time making cold outreach because you're maintaining your existing customer base through being genuine through being passionate about their outcomes, which in result, is going to help you hit your quotas or break your quotas and obviously make more commissions.” – Interview Sam Dunning, Marketing Expert B. Drives More Revenue When you work with existing customers, you’re going to drive more revenue (and earn higher commissions) than seeking out new leads. Let’s look at the numbers. Increasing customer retention by just 5% drives a 25 to 95% increase in profits for businesses (Invesp). Repeat customers spend 67% more on purchases than new customers (BIA). Nearly 2 out of 3 businesses with strong customer loyalty make more money from these customers than it costs to retain them (Aspire Power Solutions). It isn’t just easier to work worth existing customers then. It’s also much more profitable. Convinced yet? C. Instills Greater Loyalty The more you can get current clients to invest, the more likely they are to remain loyal—provided you follow through on your promises, of course. That boosted loyalty increases their customer lifetime value (which is great). But equally importantly, it skyrockets the chances of earning a referral from those clients. And referred customers are worth their weight in gold. Here’s why. Referred customers spend 15 to 25% more on their first order, make more repeat purchases, have double the lifetime value of non-referred customers, and are 3X more likely to refer their friends to your brand (Mention Me). Customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate than clients brought on through other means (Deloitte). Referred customers have an 18% lower churn rate than other customers (Wharton). Boost loyalty, earn referrals, and rake in the profits. What’s not to love here? D. Enhances Personalization Finally, when you upsell your current clients effectively (using the framework below), you’re demonstrating that you understand their needs. You get them. And when you show that, you’re doing wonders for rapport building. Let’s look at just a few more stats. Nearly all (99%) marketers agree that personalization helps advance customer relationships, with 78% claiming it has a “strong” or “extremely strong” impact (HubSpot). Only 13% of customers believe that a salesperson can truly understand their needs (Brevet). More than 2 out of 3 (69%) buyers report that the best way to make the buying experience positive is by listening to their needs (HubSpot). Upselling isn’t just about bringing in more sales. It’s about showing your current clients that you really do understand their needs. And that can go a long way. The Proven Product Upsell Framework Clearly, there are some very real (and very lucrative) benefits to upselling your current clients. But let’s face it, no one likes change. And unless you can really sell an upgrade, you’re likely to hear a lot of “Thanks, but no thanks.” That’s why you need to take a strategic approach. One that zeroes in on paint points, offers quantifiable benefits, touches on risks, and drives real urgency. Enter The Proven Product Upsell Framework. Successful upselling here we go! This framework has seen real-world success in turning lukewarm clients into enthusiastic buyers of upsold products. And when implemented properly, it takes the question mark out of upselling completely. All you have to do is: Document Current Results Explore the Changing Needs Highlight the Risk of Not Switching Give an Instant Discount 1. Document Current Results “Every single move you're going to make, whether it's a renewal or an upsell of any type, starts with identifying and documenting results, anchoring and justifying their faith in you.” – Interview with Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer of Corporate Visions The first step of the framework is to document how you’ve already helped your client. This is the sturdy, logical foundation on which your upselling pitch is built. After all, B2B buyers make decisions on hard numbers, not just sales savviness. When it comes to new vs. current accounts, it’s all about how you treat the status quo. For instance, with new accounts, you want to attack the status quo. Productivity could be better. Efficiency could be better. Bottom-line earnings could be better. But with current accounts, you’re actually attacking and defending the status quo. You’re defending it because you don’t want clients to head to your competitor. And you’re attacking it so you can convince them to upgrade to your premium product. There are a couple of ways you can do both at once. But the best I’ve found is by sending them a value-rich quarterly report. Create a Client Quarterly Report The quarterly report isn’t difficult to create. And sending it to clients before having an upsell conversation is incredibly effective at driving change. In it, you should include six separate elements. Your Earned Results – What results have you and your product earned for the account? How have you improved their business, streamlined their processes, and boosted their revenue? Get into the weeds here with hard, quantifiable numbers. Review of Previous Buying Process – This should be a quick reminder that reconfirms the client did their due diligence during the original selection process. This is especially helpful if decision-makers in the account have changed roles. But secondly, it also reinforces the pain of going through all that again with a competitor. Sharing of New Industry Insights – This is where the real value starts to kick in. What industry issues are coming down the pipeline for the client? What should they anticipate next month, next quarter, and next year? And how can you help them weather that change? Detailed Competitor Improvements – Your product may be very similar to your competitor’s (that’s just the way it is sometimes). But when you’re working with existing clients, that can actually work to your advantage. If you can explain to your client that there are similarities between the two ranges of products, they’ll likely agree that there’s little reason to change things up. Your Own Detailed Improvements – In this section, explain how you and your company have been improving your products. What new features have you been developing? How do they compare to your competitors? And how can they help the client? Highlight the Cost of Change – Lastly, wrap up the document by giving a brief summary of the cost of changing considering everything discussed so far. This is also a fantastic place to start introducing the upsell products you hope to convince clients to buy. Upsell Pro Tip: Your report should aim to offer value, not just prime the client for an upsell. As such, you need to frame it as a source of information they’ll actually want.  If it’s a blatant and shameless attempt to push them towards purchasing a new version of a product they already have, it can have a serious backfire effect that spoils the rest of the framework. “When we provide value for someone, it's giving them the tools to make a better, faster, more effective, more efficient decision than they would have without our input.” – Interview with David J.P Fisher, Sales & Networking Expert 2. Explore the Changing Needs Your quarterly report has already laid a solid foundation for this step with the industry insights, detailed improvements, and cost of changing aspects. With that information in hand, it’s time to extrapolate. How will your client’s business change in the upcoming years? What are their competitors doing that they aren’t? And do the products your client uses now suitable for offering that same competitive advantage? Equally importantly, where does your client want to be in the future? What goals can you help them achieve that might otherwise be out of reach? It’s time to put your research skills to work here. As the more nuanced and specific you can get, the better. Offer the Solution When you’ve identified your client’s changing needs, it’s time to talk about how your product addresses that need gap. How does your premium product help them achieve their goals? How does your premium product get them to where they want their business to be faster than ever? Using “what if” scenarios here is a great sales tactic. Try getting them to vividly imagine what it would be like if they achieved their future goals using your product. Beyond simply priming them for a “yes” answer, this technique also helps the client clearly see that something is needed to achieve those goals. And if you’ve done your job, they’ll know it’s what you’re offering. Upsell Pro Tip: Research is going to play a major role at this stage of the framework. If you can pinpoint some of the biggest pain points and growth opportunities your client is facing, you can leverage them to better sell your premium product.  Plus, it also shows you’re truly invested in the relationship and understand their changing needs. And that builds trust.  “I think the age-old relationship-building, rapport-building, really doing our research and understanding that person and the organization and making that connection, finding a way that we can demonstrate our expertise and show trust. I think that's critical and probably more important now. We just need to do it in a different environment, because some of the other things we used to do, like break bread together or physically shake hands, we can't do those anymore.” – Interview with Ray Makela, Author, Speaker, & Business Executive 3. Highlight the Risk of Not Switching Once the buyer understands that their needs have changed and you can offer them more value than before, you need to pull on the other end of the spectrum of pain. So far, we’ve been focused on how things are going to get better when they work with you. Now though, we need to shift to discuss the pain they will face if they don’t. Now we need to double down on the fact that there is a risk to the buyer if they don’t keep up and enable us to support them. This turns the upsell from a “nice to have” to a “necessity” in the mind of the buyer. You can do so by tapping into the six forms of risk. The 6 Forms of Risk The risk of not changing comes in six different forms. If you can explain one or more of these forms of risk of not changing to your buyer, you’ll immediately get them pushing towards an upsell contract. Physical – This includes dangers to your buildings, equipment, and people. This can hurt your business by resulting in lost time, repair costs, legal action, and reputational harm. Has the buyer changed properties since your original deal? Can your product help reduce the new risk they have in their new buildings? Strategic – This risk type involves roadblocks to achieving organizational goals. Has the client changed their business, marketing, operations, product, or sales strategy? Can your product help them manage this change or reduce the downside if their new strategy doesn’t work? Regulatory – Businesses are governed and guided by a wealth of legislation, regulation, and responsibilities, both mandatory and voluntary. The risks of failure to be compliant can be severe, including legal action, fines, penalties, and even closure. Have their compliance risks changed? How can your product reduce this new risk? Operational – Operational risks are problems that can happen during the day-to-day running of your buyer’s business. They can include things like human error, inappropriate staff behavior, or systems failure. Can your product reduce the new risks that now exist in the buyer’s operations that didn’t exist before? Technological – With the benefit of new technology comes increased risks. Cyber-attacks, leaking important information, or system downtime can be devastating for a business. If your buyer has increased their reliance on technology, can you reduce their new risks with your product? Financial – From economic uncertainties and volatile financial markets, the move towards sustainable finance gets increasingly important as a business grows. If your buyer has increased in size, production, or headcount since you originally sold them, has their financial risk increased? Can your product help reduce this financial risk? Upsell Pro Tip: Don’t overdo it when hammering in the risks. Usually highlighting just one or two will get the ball rolling. But be sure to pinpoint which are most important to the buyer.  “In exchange for giving you the time to have one of these meetings, you're going to be bringing the kind of evidence that is useful to them personally and professionally in that organization and the project or job that they're working on.” – Interview with Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer of Corporate Visions  4. Give an Instant Discount By now, you’ve proven to the client that you’ve brought them real, tangible value with your product. You’ve demonstrated that their needs (and the industry at large) are changing around them. And you’ve given them a few reasons to sweat by outlining the risks of not upgrading. For some clients, these three steps alone will be enough to motivate action. But for others, fear of change may still be causing some hesitancy. That’s when it’s time to break out the urgency-busting big guns—the instant discount. This instant discount should be the motivator that gets the client to sign on. But this isn’t any discount. Instead, it’s a time-based discount. And it’s only valid until the deadline is up. Urgency is the last straw before deciding to buy in. It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were. And if you’ve successfully performed the three previous steps, it should be the final piece of motivation your client needs to purchase your upsell. Trigger Event Best Practices Below are some best practices to follow when creating your trigger event. Avoid Fake Urgency & Scarcity – These ploys, when uncovered, only breed animosity and degrade your client’s loyalty (a death sentence for your rapport). Don’t Get Too Flashy – Too many buzzwords and urgency pushes will rub buyers the wrong way. Instead, be clear, confident, and respectful. Remember, you’re offering value, not trying to meet a quota. Personalize If You Can – If you’re only cutting a deal or giving a unique discount with them, let them know. And tie back the deal (e.g., lower price) to the client’s goals (e.g., coming in on budget). Keep the Pressure On (To an Extent) – There’s nothing wrong with sending a few helpful reminders that your trigger event is ending soon. Just be careful of getting too pushy here. Upsell Pro Tip: A trigger event doesn’t always have to be price-related. You could also offer complimentary onboarding, expert consultations, additional products, or other creative incentives. But remember, they all have to be tied to a deadline to drive real urgency.  “Understanding your audience is always the first step. So, I think so much of sales is doing your homework, doing your preparation, and knowing what those trigger points are. What are the things that are going to move these people to actually respond in the way that I want them to? So, that's where I always start, is let's figure out who our customer is, let's figure out our audience, and let's speak their language.” – Interview with Robbie Crabtree, Senior Lecturer at MIT Wrapping Up The upsell is one of the best ways to generate more revenue, instill more client loyalty, and even bring in more referrals than ever. Best of all, upselling to existing customers is more efficient, effective, and profitable than fishing for new clients. And to do it strategically (and successfully), all you have to do is: Document Current Results Explore the Changing Needs Highlight the Risk of Not Switching Give an Instant Discount So before you go spending 80% of your day on prospecting, try reaching out to your current buyers and upselling them on a premium version of their current products. When you follow this framework, you’ll be surprised how easy earning a “hell yes!” can be.

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at; AI on video calls, revenue operation platforms, answering your questions and much more! You'll learn: SALES NEWS: ZoomInfo Expands Global Operations in London ZoomInfo (NASDAQ: ZI), a global leader in modern go-to-market software, data, and intelligence, today announced it has expanded its global operations in London and named Simon McDougall as its first Chief Compliance Officer. “In Q3 2021, the international business at ZoomInfo grew over 80% year over year while our investment in our data assets outside of North America also nearly doubled throughout the year. We’re now in an even better position to build on our momentum there,” said ZoomInfo Founder and CEO Henry Schuck. https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/ZOOMINFO-TECHNOLOGIES-INC-107772705/news/ZoomInfo-Expands-Global-Operations-in-London-37586238/ Zoom's venture fund invests in conversational AI platform Second Nature, announced a $12.5 million round of investment to build out their conversational artificial intelligence service. Second Nature's platform uses conversational AI to coach a salesperson and improve selling skills as well as product knowledge. A salesperson in training runs through a simulated sales call with Jenny serving as the customer. The video conversation is recorded and each trainee gets a score on his or her performance with advice on how to improve various elements of the pitch. The Second Nature training platform combines sales training and product marketing education in one place. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-was-my-pitch-jenny-zooms-venture-fund-invests-in-conversational-ai-platform/ Sales Embraces the Experience Economy “Physical retail is going to get more experiential,” says Cate Trotter, head of trends at retail consultancy Insider Trends Trotter sees e-commerce becoming more experiential. “Across the board, there are all these ways that retailers can entertain customers, educate them, tell their stories better. The number of consumers using experiential technology is still relatively small. In the United States, only 1 percent of consumers own VR/AR units, For example, Home Depot offers an AR feature on product detail pages for home decor, furniture, and seasonal decorations; consumers can tap it to see the furnishings in their homes with 3-D augmented reality. Home Depot has seen conversion rates two to three times higher for customers who use the app compared to those who don’t. https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/Sales-Embraces-the-Experience-Economy-150987.aspx JPMorgan just raised salaries again JPMorgan has upped the ante again for junior bankers. The investment bank is raising its starting salary for analysts to $110,000, after lifting it to $100,000 last year, reports Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources. The increases are being applied internationally, as well as to second- and third-year analysts, associates and employees in the bank’s markets unit. The move follows a similar one by Citigroup earlier this month and underscores budding costs for banks as they compete harder for entry-level workers.

Is it possible to create luck in life and in business? On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Dr. Christian Busch explains what luck is and how salespeople can generate more of it in their selling endeavors. Dr. Busch is the author of The Serendipity Mindset and one of the world’s leading experts on innovation, purpose-driven leadership, and cultivating serendipity.  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. Christian Busch Author of The Serendipity Mindset Resources: Chris’ LinkedIn Dr. Busch on Twitter Theserendipitymindset.com Book: The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck Book: Man's Search for Meaning Transcript Will Barron: Hello, sales nation. My name is Will Barron, and I'm the founder of salesman.org, and welcome to Salesman Podcast, the world's most downloaded B2B sales show. On today's episode, I am chatting with Christian Busch. He is the author of Connect The Dots: The Art and the Science of Creating Luck. And the paperback of the book has just launched today, so grab a copy from Amazon, wherever you get your books, if you enjoy this podcast episode.   Will Barron: Dr. Christian Busch is an expert in the areas of innovation, purpose-driven leadership, and serendipity. He's the director of CGA Global Economic Programme over at New York University, and he teaches at the London School of Economics. On today's episode, Christian and I are going to be discussing if it's possible, if it's measurable, if it's possible, to create luck in sales and in business, and how you go about doing it. So Dr. Christian, welcome to the Salesman Podcast.   Dr. Christian Busch: Thanks so much for having me.   What is Luck? · [01:03]    Will Barron: I'm glad to have you on, mate. Okay, so let's just get down to the basics of all this before we dive into… Because this topic, obviously there's going to be tonnes of rabbit holes. There's going to be tonnes that we could jump into, right? Does this luck concept, we all know we've all experienced it, does it have an agreed-upon definition? How do we define what luck actually is?   Dr. Christian Busch: Yeah. It's interesting because when looking into that area, what I found fascinating is that usually when we think about luck, we think about that blind luck that just have it's to us, right? Some kind of fortuitous, coincidental, beautiful moment that somehow benefits us. Being born into a good family, things like that. But actually, where it gets really exciting is when we talk about smart luck, when we talk about serendipity that we create based on our own actions.   Dr. Christian Busch: And so, take the quintessential moments, if you have erratic hand movements like I do, you spill a lot of coffee. And so imagine you spill coffee in a coffee, shop over someone, and that person looks at you slightly upset, but you sense, there might be something there. You don't know what it is, you just sense there might be something there. And now you have two options, right? Option number one is you just say, “I'm so sorry, here's a napkin.” You walk outside and you think, “Ah, what could have happened had I spoken with that person?”   “When we look at serendipity, this kind of smart luck, across different contexts, love, business, you name it, there's always the same pattern. It's always the same that there's this aspect of randomness, some kind of unexpected moment, but then it's about us to do something with it, to connect the dots and turn that into positive outcomes.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [02:19]    Dr. Christian Busch: And option number two, you start a conversation, that person becomes your, co-founder, your supplier, the love of your life, you name it. And so it's our reaction to the unexpected. It's making the accident meaningful that turns it into smart luck. And so when we looked at serendipity, this kind of smart luck, across different contexts, love, business, you name it, there's always the same pattern. It's always the same that there's this aspect of randomness, some kind of unexpected moment, but then it's about us to do something with it, to connect the dots and turn that into positive outcomes.   Serendipity: The Process of Spotting and Connecting Random Dots · [02:43]   Will Barron: So I've just kiboshed all the questions I had in front of me straight away. Is a good feeling measurable, that feeling when you know someone's looking at you or you think that there's an opportunity here? We'll dive into whether you grasp that opportunity or not and how we create around look in a second, perhaps. But what is that gut feeling that we label as a gut feeling, but is there a more clinical definition or has it been researched as to what it actually is?   Dr. Christian Busch: That's a really interesting question because a lot of times when we trace serendipity and look at it as a process of spotting and connecting dots, intuition plays a huge role. So that sense of, “Oh, there might be something there.” And that's essentially trying to figure out what is the potentiality in that moment. And so the way we've been studying serendipity, and the way serendipity has been studied more broadly is really in three ways.   Dr. Christian Busch: One is to say, what's the counterfactual? So what could have happened if I put two people into exactly the same position, into exactly the same situation that is unexpected and one does something with it and the other one doesn't, then we see the decision point. The same is with when we think about a lot of my work is qualitative methods. So we go into, for example, a business incubator and we look at what entrepreneurs over time do with a conversation we had, how does that unfold and then what happens with that? Does that turn into a particular product? So we're trying to understand it over time.   Telltale Signs That You Might Be a Lucky Person · [04:05]    Dr. Christian Busch: But I think where it gets really interesting, and to your point, where a lot of times actually it's not necessarily just that gut feeling, which can be important, but a lot of times it's mostly also about what's the way we look at the world? How do we frame the world? And there's an amazing experiment, actually, one of my favourites. And it's been replicated in different types of context where they ask people, “Do you consider yourself to be lucky?” And every listener, if you think about it, do you consider yourself to be lucky?   Dr. Christian Busch: And then they pick one of each, one person who says they consider themselves to be very lucky, “So good things tend to happen to me, yada, yada.” And one person who considered themselves to be very unlucky, so, “I'm always in accidents, bad things happen to me.” And I guess we all know people on both sides of that continuum.   Dr. Christian Busch: And so they tell those two people, “Walk down the street, go into a coffee shop, sit down, have the coffee, and then we'll have our conversation later on.” What they don't tell them is that is five pound notes, there's money in front of the coffee shop door. And inside the coffee shop, there's only one seat left, next to this extremely successful business man who can make big dreams happen.   Dr. Christian Busch: Now the lucky person walks down the street, sees the five pound note, picks it up, goes inside the shop, orders the coffee. Sits down, has a conversation with the businessman, the exchange business cards, potential opportunity coming out of it, we don't know that part. Now the other person, the unlucky person walks down the street, steps over the five pound note so doesn't see it. Goes inside the shop, orders a coffee, sits next to the businessman, ignores the businessman. That's it.   Dr. Christian Busch: Now at the end of the day, they ask both people, how was your day today? And so the lucky person says, “It was amazing. I found money in the street, made a new friend and you potentially an opportunity coming out of it.” The unlucky person just says, “Well, nothing really happened.” And that really tells us about the power of perception and the power of alertness. For example, it's fascinating how much money people drop in the street but most of the time we don't see it because we don't expect it to be there.   Dr. Christian Busch: And I think that's what it mostly bones down to, that in this world that's so uncertain, we still underestimate how likely the unexpected is all the time. And we still think we can plan things out, but actually it happens everywhere and we miss it all the time.   The Difference Between an Optimist and a Lucky Person · [06:15]    Will Barron: What's the difference then, that might be a good scenario to build this conversation on top of, what's the difference between a optimist and someone who is lucky?   Dr. Christian Busch: It's a really interesting question because if you think about it like a couple of Venn diagrams, similar to intuition, it's always good to have a good intuition and a mature gut feeling rather than a naive gut feeling, right? So something that actually helps me with making decisions. So that's one Venn diagram. Another one is optimism, as when you can imagine different scenarios and the potentiality of a scenario, it makes it more likely that you can actually then also act on it.   Dr. Christian Busch: But again, it doesn't have to be the way. I for example, my amazing wife, she is the most amazing person in the world. I know everyone would say that about their wife, but in my case it's actually true. And she's the kind of person, she can be quite not so positive about the world, but still she's always connecting dots and she's always making stuff happen and turning kind of lucky serendipitous moments out of it.   “If you start as a realist, you end up as a depressionist because the world will pull you down. So you have to start slightly optimistic to then become the optimistic realist. Be the kind of person who has a slight optimism, but you’re also extremely realistic about what's possible and what’s not.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [07:43]    Dr. Christian Busch: And so it's in that way where again, optimism can be something that helps us to make more of it happen, but it's not a necessary condition all the time. And I've been a big fan, a lot of my life has been shaped by Victor Frankl. And I've always been fascinated by he wrote this amazing book, A Man's Search for Meaning, and his key point always was, “Look, if you start as realist, you end up as a depressionist because the world will pull you down. So you have to start slightly optimistic to then become the realist, the optimistic realist.”   Dr. Christian Busch: And so I've seen that with a lot of the executives we work with, that they are the kind of people who have a slight optimism, but they're also extremely realistic about what's possible and what is.   The Primary Reason You’re Missing Out on Luck · [08:04]    Will Barron: Is there anything else that goes in this Venn diagram? Because it seems like, and tell me if I'm completely off on this because I could be, but it seems like almost extraversion or confidence could fit into it as well. Because maybe you see the five pound note, maybe you go, “This is an opportunity and I could take it.” And you have the intuition that it's there for the taking, but if you are… And I'm painting in broad strokes here, but if you are introverted, you might be or less confident, you might be more bothered about if anyone sees you pick it up they might come and complain, they might say that you've stolen.   Will Barron: It seems like there's other barriers to you activating on the luck that's been put in front of you, not just the fact that you've recognised it. Is there something along those lines? Is there any other elements to this Venn diagram that we should be adding to it?   Dr. Christian Busch: Absolutely. And if we focus on three that I think are extremely important, one, it's interesting, extraversion. There's a lot of hope for closet introverts like myself in terms of that a lot of serendipity actually comes from quiet and calm sources. So watching a movie and then thinking, “Oh my God, people haven't talked about this. That could be a podcast.”   Dr. Christian Busch: Or taking this one other street to work in the morning and then keeping our eyes open and realising, “In that bookstore, that book, that title, couldn't that be a podcast? Oh my God, serendipitously I came up with a podcast idea.” And so it's a lot of times serendipity can come from these quiet sources or extroverts need introverts to compliment them a little bit to make sense out of all the serendipity and help them filter it.   “When it comes to serendipity and luck, it does help to be an extrovert because you essentially have more conversations with people. So the opportunity space for potential serendipity increases because of the interactions you can have.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [09:38]    Dr. Christian Busch: So I think the first piece is really to your point, it does help to be an extrovert because you essentially have more conversations. So the opportunity space for potential serendipity increases because of the interactions you can have and so on. And we can talk more about this, especially the hook strategy I think, where we can do a lot in that direction, even as introvert.   Dr. Christian Busch: But also I think you made a really interesting point about what are the self-limiting beliefs we have? What are the constraints we have that hold us back from acting on something? And I think to me, the quintessential example is you are at a conference, this amazing speaker speaks. You have an amazing idea of what you could do together, but then you don't go to the speaker because you feel like, “I'm not worthy. I'm not ready. I'm not…” You name it.   Dr. Christian Busch: Same in the coffee shop, right? When you think, “Oh my God, this could be a person I could fall in love with.” But you don't act on it because you have fear of rejection or you name it, right? And I think a lot of us have this inner imposter somewhere in there, lurking around and saying, “Oh, maybe you're not… It's not the right time for that.” And one thing I found really useful in that bracket of overcoming self-limiting beliefs and being able to act on the unexpected is really to think about, what's the worst thing that can happen here?   Dr. Christian Busch: And I always thought the worst thing that can happen is rejection, right? The worst thing that could happen is that speaker says, “No, I don't have time for you.” Or that person at the coffee shop says, “No, I really don't want to talk with you.” But then I realised the worst thing is not that, the worst thing is that actually walking outside and thinking, “Ah, what could have happened?” Because that's the nagging feeling that doesn't stop. And that consumes your energy and that goes on and on and on. And by that reframing, I felt like, to me, that made a big difference.   Dr. Christian Busch: And then the third aspect really, and I think that's what I'm really excited about. So now we talked about the aspect of personality traits. We talked about the aspect of what's the self-limiting beliefs. And then the third aspect is really what are the daily practises that we can use to really have more of this happen? And we can build a muscle for that.   How to Have Better Conversations Using The Hook Strategy · [11:33]   Dr. Christian Busch: And so to give you one example is that hook strategy that I'm a big fan of. And the idea really is to say every time that dreaded what do you do question, for example, do you just answer, “I'm an entrepreneur, I'm this and this.” Or do you cast a couple of hooks where other people could say, “Let me correct the dots. Oh my God, such a coincidence.”   Dr. Christian Busch: Give you example, Oli Barrett, an amazing entrepreneur in London, if you would ask him the, what do you do question, he would not just say “I'm an entrepreneur.” He would say something like “I'm a technology entrepreneur, recently started reading into the philosophy of science. But what I'm really excited about is playing the piano.” And so what he's doing here is he's giving you three potential hooks where you could be like, “Oh my God, such a coincidence. My sister's teaching on the philosophy of science, you should give a guest lecture. Oh my God, such a coincidence we've been hosting piano matinees, you should stop by.”   “The hook strategy is all about how we use every interaction, every conversation to cast a couple of interests and hooks in a side sentence, and then let the person pick up whatever they're most excited about.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [12:36]    Dr. Christian Busch: And I think, especially in sales, that's obviously where a lot of sales come from, right? These unexpected, “Hey, let me just tell you one more thing we just started doing…” Just to put it out there and then see what happens. And then that client might say, “Oh my God, such a coincidence. My sister just started a shop where they need exactly that kind of thing.” And so I think to me, the hook strategy is all about saying, how do we use every interaction, every conversation to cast a couple of interests and hooks in a side sentence, and then let the person pick up whatever they're most excited about.   Here’s How You Can Improve Your Ability to Connect the Dots and Experience More Luck · [13:03]    Will Barron: This is quite a broad question, but is this a skill that we can develop? So you just gave us one direct strategy there that we all literally can use this. I'll have a ponder about this, how I can use this, after this episode wraps up, Christian. But is developing serendipity… I guess connecting the dots seems more logical, as I say, is the ability to connect the dots a skill that we can build proactively? Or is this something that comes with experience of being in sales for 20 years, being in the same industry for five and having gone to networking events for the past three and shook a load of hands? Is it something that we can proactively develop or is it something that comes with time in the game?   Dr. Christian Busch: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, right? Because when you think about something like previous experience for example, it can help us connect the dots because we might see the unexpected anomaly in something that shouldn't be there. And by that, identify what's new here. But also it can give us that functional fixedness, right? The hammer nail problem, that we're so used to using the hammer when we need the nail in the wall, that we are always looking for a hammer rather than any heavy object that would help us to get it into the wall.   “Building that serendipity mindset is like building muscle. You can train a mindset and you can upskill yourself in terms of mindset.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [14:12]    Dr. Christian Busch: And so, experience can be good or bad. But no matter what experience we have, we can always build that muscle. And I think that's why I'm so excited about the idea of building that serendipity mindset. Because it's really about saying, like a muscle, you can train a mindset. You can upskill yourself in terms of mindset. And to give you maybe two examples, one example that I'm a big fan of is to do a serendipity journal where you really write down, “Okay, in the past, whenever I had serendipity happen…”   Dr. Christian Busch: So maybe how I unexpectedly met the love of my life and then actually did something with it but it's not enough to just run into them. You got to go on date and make it happen. Or how I got a client lead unexpectedly at a conference where it was about something completely different and I was there for pleasure, but actually it still came to that.   Dr. Christian Busch: Whenever I had those kind of serendipitous moments in my life, these unexpected positive outcomes, what is the pattern behind this? What did I do that made that happen? And how can I do more of that? Is there a particular thing I do or a particular sentence I use? Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. But then also more importantly, the opposite. Whenever serendipity could have happened but it didn't. When I was in that meeting, I had that brilliant, unexpected idea, but I didn't raise it. Why? When I wasn't the coffee shop, I didn't talk with that person. Why? And really working then on the underlying question, what is holding me back to act on the unexpected? And that's how we can remove these barriers.   Dr. Christian Busch: And then third really, we talked about these concrete practises. And what I found really interesting, a couple of years ago I used to live in London and a colleague of mine, a very decorated, highly decorated professor. I started with this work and I told him about it and he was like, “Look, Christian, I love you, I love your work. But I don't need more serendipity my life. I have everything. I have a great family, I have a great job. What else do I need?”   Dr. Christian Busch: And we made a deal. And we said, “You know what? Just do a couple of small things like ask one different question. Instead of asking people, what do you do? Ask them, what do you enjoy doing?” And small tweaks. “What's interested you about this presentation when you watch it?” Whatever, something that really went deeper into what the motivations of a person are and what makes them tick. And then essentially when you're doing this, what happens is you start getting more and more excited about it.   Dr. Christian Busch: And so after a month, he comes back and he's like, “Christian, I didn't know life can be so joyful.” And so the point here is, we don't know what we don't know, right? And so what I'm excited about in this work is to really say there's particular small practise we can all do. And once we start doing a few of them, for example, in every conversation, thinking about, can I connect, Will, now to one person? Can I connect them to one idea what they told me about?   Dr. Christian Busch: When we train ourselves to constantly think about connecting dots, actually our brain literally self frames itself towards it. And so I think that's the beautiful thing about neuroplasticity, where we can frame both our brain in the kind of neuro sense, but also then psychology-wise, we can actually work on our behaviours and what comes of it. And so that's, I think, at the core of this, to say then we identify those different types of dots.   Dr. Christian Busch: And Will, as last point, then you go to a fisher village in Italy and you meet that fisher woman where you thought you had nothing in common with, but now because you don't ask her, “What do you do?” And she says, “Well, I'm a fisherwoman.” And you're like, “Well, we have nothing in common.” You ask her, “Well, what is it about the fishing that you enjoy doing?” And then she might say, “Well, I enjoy the endlessness of the sea and that it gives me X, Y, Z, and it feels like an endless transition.” And then I would be like, “Oh my God, this is exactly how I feel about when I'm writing an academic paper.” You name it.   Dr. Christian Busch: So we identify those overlaps once we start to go deeper with a person, rather than assuming they're just their position or their job title.   The Reticular Activating System and Pattern Recognition · [17:50]    Will Barron: Are you familiar with this term, because I've not heard this term used in an academic sense so I don't know if this is complete nonsense or not. But I've read it in plenty of books, I think it's called it the reticular activating system?   Dr. Christian Busch: Interesting. Mm-hmm (affirmative). What made you think about it?   Will Barron: Because it seems like a lot of what we're talking about here is pattern recognition.   Dr. Christian Busch: Mm-hmm (affirmative), exactly.   Will Barron: And it'd be perhaps interesting, can you tell us what the reticular activating system is and then how perhaps some of that ties into how pattern recognition ties into some of this?   Dr. Christian Busch: Yeah. Well what's interesting, because I'm obviously not a in a deeper brain or other sciences, but what I am very excited and interested in is exactly the question of we all somehow when we're growing up and we all somehow when we the world get used to particular patterns and ideas of the world and we are navigating those. And then the question becomes, how do we unlearn some of that?   Dr. Christian Busch: So if I am used to something, that's the hammer nail problem thing for example. When I have a certain idea of how I go about things and how I learn things, it's very hard to unlearn this. But when you look at, I'm extremely excited for example about Sub-Saharan Africa, where a lot of our work is. Because a lot of times when you are in a context where you have extreme resource constraints, you don't have to unlearn.   Dr. Christian Busch: If you don't have an ATM machine in your local village, you don't have to think about how do I innovate that kind of ATM machine? You think about how do I get my money from my friends, to the friend in the other village? And that's how unexpectedly or expectedly something like mobile banking comes about because you don't have to think in that box you're in. But you're actually thinking, “Okay, we're solving a particular problem here.”   Dr. Christian Busch: And I think a lot of companies actually are trying to do that. If you look at a company like Phillips, they used to be organised in departments. So you would have something like a tomography department. But by predefining the solution tomography, you're only innovating within that space now, right? You're thinking about what can I make better as a tomography machine? Versus if you step back and say, well this is all about precision diagnosis. Tomography might be one way, but there might be 20 other ways of how to do precision diagnosis.   Dr. Christian Busch: And so, if you rename the department into precision diagnosis, you give people the licence to also come up with other things. And that's the same, obviously, in our own lives and how we think about how we define problems. Do we over define the problems so to then kind of limit the potentiality for people? Or do we broaden it up and allow people to connect the dots broader as well?   Will Barron: For sure. And we see this in sales, just to drag the conversation back to that for a second, all the time, of the problem is how do we get in front of qualified customers and explain what we do and how we can help them? And sales people have the boxes of, I call them, I email them and then, pre-COVID, maybe I knock on a door or see these people at a conference as well.   Will Barron: And so we're all stuck in these different boxes of there's probably 300 to 500 million salespeople on the planet, all trying to email the same executives in the same five, 600 companies. And they're all trying to do the same job, skin the cats in a slightly different way, to break through. But what I like about this is that perhaps if we remove that box, and obviously it's one thing to say it's another thing to do it, clearly. But if you can make that happen, you…   Will Barron: Or let me rephrase that, there's potentially other angles, there's other dots that are there in front of us that we just haven't seen. And if we can see them, we'll have opportunities that other people won't have. We'll have that competitive advantage. So is there anything else? Because I want to turn this conversation on it's head slightly in a second, Christian.   Learning to Unlearn: The Most Effective Path to Serendipity · [21:21]    Will Barron: But is there anything else for a salesperson who's listening to this conversation, Christian, that banging the head against the wall, they're just go email after email, they're not getting through to anyone, they've tried cold calling. They've tried all these things that we talk about in the show all the time, we talk about it in sales books, podcasts, videos, YouTube videos, and nothing's working. Is there anything that they can do to try and pull back, unlearn some of the things that they've learnt perhaps about how sales should be done, then innovate and find other dots that could be connected?   Dr. Christian Busch: Yeah. Well, that's a great question because I think in general, and I can't speak for the hundreds of millions of salespeople who obviously listen to this show. But in general, a lot of the people I work with and a lot of the people who we study, I think what happens a lot of times is that they very much underestimate their own, quote unquote, warm social capital. So they might focus on cold calling, cold emailing, whatever it is. And we all know how ineffective, that's the numbers game, right? That's kind of all about having a huge pot of numbers and then hoping that one of them goes through.   Dr. Christian Busch: Versus I think we completely underestimate our own social capital in the sense of, let's say I live somewhere in South London and I have 10 people I interact a lot with. One is the shopkeeper downstairs. One is the kind of local priest or rabbi or imam. And one is the my sales partners. We might underestimate how much that local shopkeeper for example, they might confidentially be the brother of the CEO of [inaudible 00:23:02]. Or the priest might have gone to school with X, Y, Z person.   Dr. Christian Busch: The point is we will never know that latent social capital, if we don't cast these hooks where we essentially in every conversation bring in those things that actually we would like to somehow, in a way, sell. So to give you one example, at the moment, one of my key purposes in life is to say, “I've seen this mindset work and I've seen it work across contexts around the world. So I want to take into any curriculum and company and training programme that I can.”   Dr. Christian Busch: And so wherever I go, being it with a shopkeeper, in a local supermarket or whatever it is, I would somehow try to seed that in. And I would be like, “Oh, thank you so much. No, this is really exciting because after writing a book, you can see how this is and da, da, da. And now it's all about how we get this.” I'd bring that into a side sentence. And the amount of times from the most unexpected of people, again, the local shopkeeper type people, would be like, “Oh my God, I watched something on TV yesterday. Have you like seen that this thing could be perfect for you?” Or, “Oh my God, my sister is actually running a local school. You should come by.”   Dr. Christian Busch: And so the point really is I think leveraging our latent social capital, even our uncle, our sister, where we don't assume that they might know someone. But just casting a couple of hooks I think leads us to many more warm introductions as well.   How to Leverage the Social Capital of Other People · [24:24]    Will Barron: Is there any technology that can help us with this? Because it seems like for the average Joe, who's going around, plodding around the shop. Obviously I'm not being derogatory toward shopkeepers here, but they're in a specific place all day, right? They are speaking to customers. Most of the traffic into the shop is going to be foot traffic going by. Maybe in hindsight, this conversation, they can influence the luck of a big spender coming into the store and buying a load of food.   Will Barron: But for sales people, they proactively are calling, emailing. They're proactively doing this outreach. So it seems like they might be slightly more in control of their own destiny than someone like a shopkeeper. Not the greatest example, but I'm sticking with it, Christian. Is there any way that we can use technology to, at minimum, track some of this and at best speed it up, leverage it, and multiply the effects of it?   Dr. Christian Busch: Yeah. Well, I'm a huge fan of trying to leverage the social capital of others. What do I mean with this? And that works both offline and online. It's the idea let's say, I don't know, it's an online event, right? Virtual event where you have this amazing speaker speaking and then there will be a Q and A session at the end. Now that's not your audience, that's their audience. But if you're the person who, in a very proactive way, asks a couple of questions in the Q and A so that nobody can ignore you, in a non [inaudible 00:25:45] way, but really asking a lot of the good questions. And then you are the one who is asked in the end to, “Hey, why don't you ask your question?”   Dr. Christian Busch: And again, same in a physical setting, right? When you're in a room of 500 people, you're the first one asking the question. And then the way you ask the question is making it all about the speaker, “Thank you so very much for this great presentation, blah, blah, blah. As someone who is looking a lot into X, Y, Z thing…” So that's where the hook is being asked. So that can be any kind of hook that wants to be put. “I wanted to ask you the question of X, Y, Z, X, Y, Z.”   Dr. Christian Busch: What's fascinating here is that it's always nice to connect with the speaker, but what's mostly important is, in an audience of 500 people, there's always two or three people who will come afterwards and say, “Oh my God, such a coincidence. We were just looking into like such a solution. Can you help me out?” And the point here is, that's really about saying, “How do I leverage the social capital of other people if I don't have it?”   Dr. Christian Busch: In a really smart, unobtrusive, unannoying way. It's not about pitching something. The moment you would pitch something at people, they would say, “Oh my God, let's get that person out of here.” But if you frame it around, making it all about the other person and then building in that small hook, it's amazing how often people latch on that and do something with. And I think technology in a way makes that scalable. Technology from our living room, we can dive into those different types of conversations in a non-pitchy way.   Dr. Christian Busch: But also second, I'm a big fan of this idea of Zoom and WebEx and so on being our own personal, private plane. When you think about it, when we are speaking now, when I think about my selling is mostly around content, right? I'm selling ideas. And so when I'm selling ideas, usually I have to fly to Tokyo to give a speech, and then I have to fly back. And that costs me one-and-a-half days, right? To go through customs and everything else. Now within 30 minutes, I'm there and that's okay and so on.   “Technology is just a tool. And I think with any given tool, it's the way we interact with people. Do we interact with them in a way that's truly meaningful and cast hooks that they want to pick up? Or do we just push something on them, which rarely works.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [27:47]    Dr. Christian Busch: So to me, it's the scalability of any platform. And so that's to me less about… To me, technology is just a tool, right? But it's about what do we do with any given tool? And I think with any given tool, it's the way we interact with people. Do we interact with them in a way that's truly meaningful and cast hooks that they want to pick up? Or do we just push something on them? Which rarely works.   Will Barron: For sure. You touched on tonnes of points here. I literally preach to the audience, Christian. So, 30,000 plus people will download this episode of the podcast on audio, who knows on the video side of things? We've got some episodes that have 1000 views, some that have got like 700,000 views, certain interviews now. I get the majority of the business that I sell over at salesman.org, which is the enterprise sales training that we do with our training product, which is tying into even more what you're saying of it's an online product with backed-up one-on-one training via Zoom.   Will Barron: And if I was doing this in person, well, I'd need a team of 50 people. I'd need 50 Wills and I don't think the world wants or needs that, right? It'd be carnage. The scale that we operate at for such a small team just couldn't exist if it wasn't for the fact of Zoom and the scale of the podcast. And the fact that this year, we'll be up to, in 2022, we'll have interviewed over 1000 people, 1000 experts like yourself in business and psychology. And I've had F1 drivers on here. We've had astronauts on here.   Structural Advantage and the Science of Good Luck · [29:20]    Will Barron: There's no way I'd get access to any of these people. Well, they'd see me coming a mile away and be running away before the interview even started if we were doing this in-person. But that scale is unprecedented. So let me ask you this, and I've got one final question that we'll wrap up the show with, is there a first move advantage to connecting the dots, to building luck, to becoming what seemingly is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy with some of this? Is there a first move advantage in leveraging this now before all the Zoom calls, all the content of your book, this idea of luck, the science behind connecting the dots becomes more and more mainstream, which it clearly will do over time?   Dr. Christian Busch: It's really interesting because it makes me think of two things. And it's one of those questions, in my mind it went into 20 different directions, but I'll pick two of them. And then the rest we'll discuss over a nice beer, I assume. But so the first is really around when we talk about advantage. To me, it's important to think about that obviously it's a lot about structural advantage, a lot of times you'll certainty be base level, right?   Dr. Christian Busch: So when I look at an entrepreneur somewhere in Kenya, the starting level in terms of potential certainly is very different from someone like me who can set up businesses because I have good networks and things like that. And everything scales much quicker. And so the base level we're starting from is very different. But then in any context, the point is that we can do something. And I've seen that in different context work out.   “There's so much adjacent possibility that at any given point there's something possible, but it’s lost potential by us not having thought of it.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [30:53]    Dr. Christian Busch: And so the mindset has to go hand-in-hand with working on structural constraints, working with governments and others on also making sure that other people, the social inequalities is being reduced. I think that's an important point. But to your point, the way I really look at it is that there's so much adjacent possibility that at any given point, there's something possible because of the potentiality of us not having thought of it.   Dr. Christian Busch: Because if you think about it, let me give you an example. I'm a big fan of the potato washing machine. And the potato washing machine is essentially a couple of years ago, a company, they produce refrigerators and washing machine and they receive calls from farmers. And the farmers told them, “Your crappy washing machine is always breaking down.” “Well, why is the washing machine breaking down?”   Dr. Christian Busch: “Well, we're trying to wash our potatoes in it, and it doesn't seem to work.” And so what would we usually do? We would probably try to educate the customer. We'll probably say, “Well, that's a washing machine. Don't wash your potatoes in it. It's not made for that. Our marketing plan says that we are selling those machines for clothes.” Now they did the opposite, they said, “That is unexpected, but there's probably a lot of farmers in the world who might have a problem in that department too. So why don't we build in a dirt filter and make it a potato washing machine?”   Dr. Christian Busch: Why am I telling you this? Because at the end of the day, there's unlimited potential for how we think about innovation and inventions offline and online. And I think it's great that we can now do that in a scalable way to your point via technology. But I think we can do it in any moment, in any meeting, at any interaction. And that's why I'm so excited about that. I think you can at any point in your particular field, be a first mover in thinking about what is the adjacent possible here that we can do around? And then cast those hooks to make it happen.   How to Spot Bad Luck and Stop it Before it Actually Happens · [32:21]    Will Barron: Love it. Okay. This is the final question for you, Christian. And this might be a whole different podcast episode or a whole conversation, eight pints in, three shots, and a sambuca in a pub in London. Is the inverse of everything that we discussed true in that, every now and again, we're all going to be struck with bad luck, a bad serendipity, dots that have connected that we don't want to be connected? Is it possible to inverse everything that we talked about and perhaps see the dots ahead of time and avoid them, does it work that way around as well?   “Bad luck happens to everyone. I think that's just what it is, and that's unfortunately how life is. And so I think being too afraid of the bad luck that could happen will hold you back.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [32:58]    Dr. Christian Busch: I think it's a great question. It makes me think of two things. So one, bad luck happens to everyone. I think that's just what it is. And that's unfortunately how life is, right? That we all have bad luck happen. We all will be disappointed by some people where we put a lot of hope in it and so on. And so I think that's a given, that will happen. And there's probably not that many ways around it. I'm always a big fan, similar to love, if you don't embrace it and if you're trying to be too scared of it, it will never really happen. And so I think being too afraid of the bad luck that could happen will hold us back. So I think that's just a part of life.   Dr. Christian Busch: But I think the second part is to me the important one, serendipity for one might not necessarily be serendipity for someone else. So if you take someone, if you have a dictator of a country who has a lost serendipity happen, but that doesn't necessarily benefit their people, right? It might be the opposite.   Dr. Christian Busch: One of my favourite examples is this retired person driving in a car and the last pleasure of their life was smoking a little bit of weed. And so they had a bit of weed in their car. A police man had an unexpected hunch of stopping that car, stops the car, unexpectedly finds the mariajuana, which was a bigger stash than expected. Great for the policeman, becoming policeman of the month for like unexpectedly identifying [inaudible 00:34:11] thing. For the retired person, of course that's really the worst thing that could have happened to them. And so I think what happens here a lot of times is that serendipity for some person might be the opposite for the other.   Dr. Christian Busch: And then third to your points, serendipity a lot of times, because it's a process, can turn into good or bad. And vice versa, the inflexion point for serendipity a lot of times start is crises. And I think that's to me the really interesting thing also, that when you think about where a lot of serendipity comes from, it comes out of crises. Think about how you could only meet the love of your life today.   The Mindset We All Need During Crisis · [34:46]   Will Barron: Sorry to interrupt you, Christian. That that's a mindset though, right? You see it that perspective. But if you didn't have what we talked about so far on the show, and you didn't have the mindset to look for the opportunity in the crisis, if you were a pessimist, if you took no action on it, if you've got regrets on not acting upon it, you're not going to have what you've just described. Which is taking something negative and turning it positive, which I guess the whole point of the show, right?   “In every moment, every crisis, we have the question, does this crisis and this situation define me, or do I define that situation? So, wherever you are, whatever situation you are, there's always something in there.” – Dr. Christian Busch · [35:13]    Dr. Christian Busch: That's exactly it. I think every moment, every crisis, we have the question, does this crisis and that situation define me, or do I define that situation? And I think that is the power. Victor Frankl always said it beautifully, “We can't always pick the situation we're in, but we can always pick our response to it.” He didn't never say that, but that is his spirit. I think he was misquoted a couple of times about it. But his key idea behind it was to say, wherever you are, whatever situation you are, there's always something in there.   Dr. Christian Busch: Sometimes there might be no intrinsic meaning. He was in a concentration camp, which is the toughest of situations I can imagine. And he wondered, “How can I still build meaning into that situation?” And so one thing he did, for example, was he said, “This is a situation in that intrinsically doesn't have any meaning so I will create one. So I know that I might die here. I know that there's nothing here that I can objectively do, but I can every day speak with a fellow prisoner and make them feel better about themselves. And now I have a meaning to wake up in the morning.”   Dr. Christian Busch: And by doing this, now he can look back on the time and say, “I made something meaningful with whatever situation I was dealt with.” And I think any situation I've had in my life where something really interesting happened, a lot of times came out of crisis, out of a heavy breakup as an inflexion point. And then yes, if you in the heavy breakup say, “Oh my God, my life is over.” Then life is over because nobody will just hand it to you.   Dr. Christian Busch: But if you go through and say, “Look, maybe there's someone even better out there.” And that's easier set than down, right? There's a lot of emotional components to it. I had COVID last year in a very severe way, those kind of situations you just feel, “Wow, life is over.” But then actually I think it's that reframing that can help us a lot. It's sometimes easier than other times. And I think, again, we never blame anyone for blind luck, and we can never blame anyone for the situation then because we don't know all the aspects around it.   Will Barron: Love it. We'll wrap up with that, Christian. I love the way that this show started numbers, quantifying these techniques. I'm not religious, not spiritual in the slightest about anything. But there's almost a spiritual element to this, beyond a self-help book, Tony Robbins-esque element to this as well of it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy of what you look for, you're more likely to find. And then of course you're more likely to act on as well. I think that's really serendipitous for the audience and I think there's a tonne of value there for them in this episode. So I appreciate that, Christian.   Parting Thoughts · [37:46]    Will Barron: With that, mate, tell us more about the book, tell us what we can find it? And tell us what we can find more about you as well, sir?   Dr. Christian Busch: Yes, absolutely. And likewise, I really enjoyed that, to go on those different levels. Because I grew up in Heidelberg were Goethe and [inaudible 00:37:57] wrote a lot of their poems. And a lot of what they wrote about was about that idea of potentiality. Goethe would write about if you take someone as they could be, you make them capable of becoming who they can be. And that's always been exciting to me to say, is there something more in a situation than there is? And then that's how… It's not only a former drug dealer who's in front of you, but a potential teacher. It's not only a former [inaudible 00:38:19], but…   Dr. Christian Busch: Once you see the potentiality in a moment, it's almost like, in a very non-spiritual spiritual way actually about the betterment of society. And I think we can apply that to a lot of different areas as well. The book itself kind, it's everywhere where books are sold. It's called Connect the Dots, Penguin is publishing it. And yeah, it's on Amazon, local bookstores. And on Twitter, I'm @ChrisSerendip.   Will Barron: Amazing stuff, well I'll link to that book and everything else we've talked about in this episode over at salesman.org. Christian, I want to thank you for your time, mate. We said this before we clicked record, I love doing these episodes. There's a tonne of vibe for the audience. I get more enjoyment myself from having these conversations than I do the usual cold calling, emailing, social selling side of things. So I appreciate you coming on the show. I appreciate you sharing your insights. And thanks again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.  

Few things are more infuriating than having a product you know is perfect for a buyer, but continually getting shut down, time and time again. “We don’t have the budget.” “We’re happy with what we have now.” “I don’t see the value in what you’re offering.” These are sales objections. And they are usually the biggest hurdle to you closing the sale. But when addressed the right way, they can build rapport, provide valuable buyer insights, and (of course) lead to a serious sales win. In this guide, we’re going to cover the most effective method I’ve found for objection handling. Once you’ve engrained this simple framework into your processes, you’ll be turning doomed deals into sign-on successes in no time. Plus, we’re also going to look at some of the most common sales objections you’re likely to face and how to respond to them using the framework. Sound good? Then let’s go. What Is Objection Handling?  We’ve all been hit with the “no” bomb when talking with a prospect. Unfortunately, in our industry, it’s inevitable. There will always be prospect's concerns that need to be overcome. But getting a negative response doesn’t necessarily mean the deal’s dead in the water. Buyers are people. And when people are unsure about making a change (e.g., buying your product), they’ll throw out excuses for not doing it. In the sales world, these are called sales objections. Now, some of the excuses given to sales reps are legitimate, to be sure. Others are just knee-jerk reactions. But no matter what type of excuse you’re dealing with, you can, in fact, handle sales objections in a way that still leads to closing the deal. Objection handling, then, is how you address those sales objections to continue to move the buyer through the sales process. Again, it’s all about understanding their concern (whether legitimate or not), addressing it, and easing their mind. Only then will they be ready to buy. Why Do I Need to Master It? Objection handling is a challenge to be sure. HubSpot found 42% and 35% of salespeople think addressing objections involving urgency and price, respectively, were the top challenges they face. Plus, there are some profound benefits to better sales objection handling. Benefits like: Need It to Close – The most obvious benefit, of course, addressing sales objections gives buyers peace of mind. It helps them better understand why your product is suitable for their organization. And that means you’re one step closer to “yes.” Provides Buyer Insights – Sales objections are a window into the mind of your buyer. What issues are they concerned about? What’s most important to them? These details help clue you into what points to focus on during your pitch to maximize your closing success. Demonstrates Your Knowledge – People want to buy from someone who knows what they’re talking about. If you’re scrambling to come up with an answer to an objection, you’re tanking the deal. But someone who effortlessly and effectively moves through the objection handling process is going to look like an expert. Builds Serious Trust – When you address your buyer’s objections, you’re proving you take them seriously. You aren’t just some smarmy salesperson only looking to close. Instead, you want to truly solve their problems. And that means more loyal, enthusiastic buyers for you. The Objection Handling Process: 3 Steps to “Yes” Now that we have a better idea of what successful objection handling does for us, let’s take a look at how to do it right using the framework. This framework consists of three steps with two different options for the last step (more on that later) for overcoming common objections: (Really) Listen to the Issue Repeat the Issue Back Clearly (Option 1) Solve the Issue Confirm the Issue Is Solved OR (Option 2) Move Past the Issue Now, let’s jump into the details. Note: When it comes to the objection handling process, the best offense is typically defense (i.e., buyers not having negative sales objections or knee-jerk objections like “I don’t have time for this, just email me”).  The best way to prevent negative sales objections from happening in the first place is by asking confident, assertive questions that prove you’re someone to be trusted. That’s the best foundation to build on using this framework.  I cover how to ask these questions in my Selling Made Simple Academy. But in the end, knowing how to do so means fewer negative sales objections and objections you can solve to actually enhance the outcome of the sale.  1) (Really) Listen to the Issue People like to be heard. That is no different when you're overcoming objections. And knowing you’re really truly being listened to is vital when it comes to addressing sales objections. That’s why the first step of The Objection Handling Framework is to listen closely to the buyer when they’re describing their sales objection. Half listening just won’t cut it here. I don’t care if you think you’ve heard this sales objection 50 times already this week. I don’t care if you’re put-my-life-on-it certain you know what they’re saying after the first few words leave their mouth. And I especially don’t care how much experience you have in the business. Instead, you need to stop yourself and really listen. Listen to the nuance of what the buyer is telling you is holding them back from closing the sale. And most importantly, shut the hell up. Don’t interrupt them with your answer. And give a slight pause after they’ve posed their objection so they know it’s actually sinking in. Only then can you move on to step number two. Active Listening Is Key Active Listening [ak-tiv lis–uhning]; noun: Making a conscious effort to not just hear but really concentrate on listening to what the buyer is saying.     I cannot overstate the value of investing all the time and energy it takes into developing your active listening skills. Most salespeople are natural-born talkers. It may be why you got into the business in the first place. But talking too much is detrimental to sales success. To put a number on things, the sales intelligence platform Gong found the average B2B sales rep spends about 53% of calls talking. For reps in the bottom 20% of performers, that number was closer to 68%. However, top closer spent just 42% of the time talking, leaving a whopping 58% of the talking to the buyer. Active listening comes with plenty of benefits. Benefits like: Not missing critical information Avoiding misunderstandings Having a better idea of the core problem (not always stated outright) Showing you care about what the buyer has to say Improving relationships Qualifying leads Next time you run into a sales objection, be sure you consciously engage in active listening. It’s the foundation the rest of this framework is built upon. 2) Repeat the Issue Back Clearly Now that you’ve put effort into really and genuinely listening to what the buyer is saying, it’s time to move on to the next step of these objection handling techniques—repeating the issue back to the buyer. It looks as simple as this: Buyer – “I’m not sure if you can do it in the color I want.” Seller – “So you’re unsure if we can provide you with the correct color?” Buyer – “Yes, can you show me the colors you offer, and we’ll see if you have a green?” It looks pointless, I know. But in reality, there are several reasons why this step is so essential: It avoids any misunderstandings you may have made on your part. It shows the buyer you’re listening. It’s an effective way to deal with knee-jerk sales objections. The first two points are pretty obvious. So let’s take a closer look at the third point. Often the buyer will have dealt with so many salespeople over their careers that they will have a bunch of automatic responses (knee-jerk objections) that they give to salespeople to get them out of their hair. We need to get the buyer’s attention to break these objections. We’ll do this with a pattern interrupt as we repeat back the buyer’s question. The Value of Pattern Interrupts All we’re doing with a pattern interrupt is making the buyer think for a split second and then repeating their objection back to them so they can confirm if it’s a real objection or not. Often, when you use a pattern interrupt as you repeat back the objection, the buyer will think about the objection they brought up and actually dismiss it themselves. Let me give you an example: Objection – “I don’t have the budget.” Pattern Interrupt – “Ah, so you’ve worked with us before, and you know our pricing?” Here the buyer is trying to use budget as an excuse. But unless you’ve just explicitly told them the pricing, how the heck do they know you’re out of budget? Here’s another example: Objection – “I’m not interested.” Pattern Interrupt – “Ah, that’s why we should talk. It sounds like your current supplier must be a pain to work with, and you’re trying to avoid more of that pain by cutting this call short.” We’re doing two things here. First, we’re avoiding those usual phrases salespeople typically use (“reaching out,” “checking in,” “I just wanted to,” etc.). If you use the same language as everyone else, you’re going to be ignored like everyone else. Second, I’m also proactively saying the opposite of what other salespeople do, too. For example, if a buyer gives you the objection “email me the details,” instead of ending the conversation and agreeing to their demand, you’ll use a pattern interrupt of “sure, do you know the details that you want me to send over”? Pattern interrupts snap buyers out of those automatic responses and makes them receptive to the rest of what you have to say. Pattern Interrupt + Repeat the Issue After the pattern interrupt, the last part of this step of the objection handling framework is repeating the objection. This happens in the same breath as the pattern interrupts itself. For example: Objection – “I don’t want to be locked into a contract.” Pattern Interrupt / Repeat It Back – “Ah, 100-year contracts are insane. Are long contracts the real hold up here?” Or another example: Objection – “I’m happy with [competitor].” Pattern Interrupt / Repeat It Back – “If they did everything they promised I’d be thrilled with [competitor] too. They’re probably awesome! Is your love for [competitor] the only thing stopping us from booking a meeting?” See how we’re getting the buyer to confirm that this objection is worth holding up the entire sales process for? At this point, something remarkable happens. We get one of two responses. Either the buyer confirms that this is a true objection that we need to resolve before we can move forward, or they’ll be happy for us to just move swiftly past it. 3) (Option 1) Solve the Issue Listening and repeating the sales objection back to the buyer has hopefully clarified whether this is an actual problem or a knee-jerk objection. People don’t buy when they have genuine concerns. And they sure as hell don’t buy when those concerns go unaddressed. If it turns out the issue is accurate, then it’s up to you to solve it. Now, “issue” might be a strong word here. Because, when a buyer offers up a legitimate sales objection, it means two great things for you: It allows you to demonstrate expertise and earn buyer trust. It indicates an authentic and strong buying signal (after all, a buyer won’t go through all the steps of an objection if they weren’t seriously considering your product). So with that knowledge in tow, it’s time to buckle in and simply solve the issue they’re worried about. If it’s an issue of price, get to talking numbers. If it’s functionality, hit some of the core features. If it’s implementation, talk about your extensive onboarding program. You should be able to hit each objection the buyer has with a clear, effective response that solves those woes. It also helps to prepare for objections beforehand (time to break out the flashcards?). Confirm the Issue Is Solved A short—but entirely necessary—sub-step here. Once you’ve addressed the issue, it’s up to you to confirm that you’ve satisfied the buyer’s concerns. This involves confirming your prospect: Heard your answer Understood your answer Accepted your answer If you don’t complete this step, the buyer will likely bring the same objection up over and over in different forms. Finally, they have to say “yes, that makes sense” out loud. Otherwise, their brain just won’t register that this objection is solved. This doesn’t have to be aggressive or complex either. Just ask, “Did this answer your concern [name]?” If you’ve solved the objection, move forward in the sales process. If you haven’t, ask, “What else is unresolved that I can explain?” Keep going deeper and deeper until the buyer publicly and verbally admits that their objection has now been solved. 3) (Option 2) Move Past the Issue If, after repeating the issue, the buyer admits the sales objection they raised wasn’t important, it’s time to move past the issue. To be honest, not all issues are worth debating. And if you’re confronted with a knee-jerk problem that’s not really important, you can often move straight past these issues during your objection handling process. I know this might feel sneaky the first few times you do it. But if the buyer has thrown out the sales objection unconsciously, they probably barely know the excuse they gave you. If when you repeat the objection back to them, they look at you blankly or don’t give an immediate response, just say this: “That makes sense. Let’s come back to that in a minute. We also do…” And then carry on through the selling conversation. Unless the buyer actively brings you back to the objection, you can likely never discuss it again. Because remember, it wasn’t of any fundamental importance to the buyer. You’re going to find that, once you learn to recognize them, around 50% of the objections that you get day-to-day can be skipped over just like this. Common Sales Objections & Responses As I mentioned earlier, it pays to study common sales objections for your product and come to calls with your responses ready. Now, you may be wondering, “How am I supposed to know exactly what kinds of sales objections the buyer will have? Aren’t all buyers different?” And that’s true; there are plenty of variations out there. But in general, you can boil down nearly all sales objections into one of four categories: Budget Value Urgency Trust I’ve written extensively about the most common sales objections before. But for now, let’s take a look at some of the best sales objection handling examples and objection handling scripts to help you overcome buyer concerns. “The price is too high.” Objection Type: Budget Ah, the pricing objection… This is most likely going to be the most common objection you’ll face. Business is money. And money is essential. This one really really test your objection handling skills. Responses Compare the cost of not solving the issue to the price of your product. “How much is [the problem you solve] costing you each month?” [Follow-Up] You said this problem costs your business about [$X] per month, but our service is just [$Y] per month, leading to savings of [$X – $Y] per month.”  Use price ranges to qualify leads and keep the conversation going. “Our price is within the [$ range] range per month. Where in that range could you see yourself investing in solving [the problem]. “We’re happy with your competitor.” Objection Type: Value This is the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality at play. Change can be tough. And most people are naturally resistant towards it. However, that doesn’t mean putting effort into that change isn’t worth it. Sometimes all the buyer needs is to take a minute or two to learn about your product. Response Give a light nudge for the buyer to compare options by offering a free trial or demo.  “I completely understand where you’re coming from. Many businesses are constantly looking at other potential solutions to their problems; even it is just to compare with what they have now. Who knows, we may be a better match. How would you feel about attending a product demo to see how we compare? “This is not a priority for us right now.” Objection Type: Urgency This is tricky because it’s a sign of a blow-off, it’s truly not on their to-do list right now, or they don’t fully understand the value. As a result, there are a few ways you can handle this one. Response Narrow down the real reason behind the objection. “If money and resources were no object, would you be willing to start with our product today?” [If no, there’s no hope. If yes, then dig deeper to discover the real objections.] Ask them straight up. “When would be a good time to buy?” “What are your company’s other priorities right now?” Take time out of the picture. “If I call you back next quarter, what circumstances will have changed?” “I’ve never heard of your company.” Objection Type: Trust This type of sales objection indicates a lack of trust. But don’t abandon the call just yet, no matter how embarrassing it might be. Instead, take this objection as an opportunity to give them a bit more information about the value you offer. Response Ask if it’s okay to give them a quick elevator pitch highlighting your organization’s authority.  “No problem! Lots of our loyal customers hadn’t heard of us before they signed up. Does it make sense for me to explain the value that we can bring to your business?” “Email me more info and I’ll get back to you.” Objection Type: Urgency This is often a blow-off move. In most cases, the buyer is just looking to get rid of you. But that in no way means the conversation has to be over. Instead, use a pattern interrupt to keep the conversation going. Response Keep the conversation moving forward with a pattern interrupt. “I can do that. What particular details are you interested in learning more about?” [You can then give the buyer more insight into the details they list right over the phone. This keeps the buyer engaged and opens the door for more opportunities to further the sale.] “This won’t work for us.” Objection Type: Budget, Need, Urgency, or Trust A jack of all trades with this one! This sales objection is a smokescreen. And on its own, it isn’t telling you anything about the situation. Your goal here is to eke out exactly why your product won’t work for the buyer. Response Get more information and address the new sales objections one by one.  “Can you elaborate on why you don’t think this will be a fit?” [They’ll likely respond with some variation of the four sales objections discussed above. From there, just use the appropriate response and follow the framework.] Wrapping Up At first blush, a sales objection can seem like a dealbreaker. From price point ultimatums to savvily sly brush-offs, running into these pesky problems can leave you wondering, “where’d I go wrong?” But when you’re a pro at objection handling, you can turn these dire situations around completely. The sales objection process can even make closing the deal more likely. You just have to know what you’re doing. And with this time-tested objection handling framework, you can do precisely that. Just: (Really) Listen to the Issue Repeat the Issue Back Clearly (Option 1) Solve the Issue Confirm the Issue Is Solved OR (Option 2) Move Past the Issue Using these objection handling techniques, you can demonstrate your knowledge, bolster your authority, and build some serious trust with your buyers. And in the end, that means you’ll be closing more deals, earning more loyal clients, and building a more prosperous, lucrative career for yourself.