0:16
Welcome to sales lead dog.
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My guest joining me today is Lee Sauls.
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Lee is a best selling author.
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The first meeting differentiator, sales differentiation.
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You can look over his shoulder.
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If you’re on YouTube, watch this on YouTube.
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You can see his line up of books.
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Lee, welcome to sales lead dog.
0:35
Thank you, Christopher.
0:37
I’m very excited to have you on just because number one, you’ve written a lot of great books and I want to hear all about those in the back story around all that.
0:48
But before we jump right in, if you’re watching on YouTube, you’ll see Lee is sitting in his office.
0:53
He’s got a, a bookshelf behind him, a lot of great books.
0:57
But over your shoulder, Lee, you’ve got a a rack of metals.
1:02
What’s the story of all those metals to a virtual background that’s not real?
1:09
No, I’m just kidding.
1:10
I’m just kidding.
1:11
You got me.
1:13
I’m a I’m a competitive power lifter.
1:15
I’ve been competing in the bench press since 2000 and I have the state tournament coming up next month.
1:23
What is that like?
1:24
What’s the back story of getting into competitive weightlifting?
1:28
Powerlifting.
1:29
I’ve been a gym rat since I was 18 years old.
1:32
In high school I was 110 LB weakling.
1:35
Kind of a a neat little story.
1:37
I got a job working at this health club where I lived in Marlboro, NJ.
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I had never lifted a weight in my life and I was the weight room supervisor.
1:48
Imagine that.
1:49
That’s a talking to get into that job.
1:52
I don’t know what I said, but I got hired and all I would do was bring my homework everyday and I’d sit at a desk and and do my homework.
1:59
And then some members took me under their wing and taught me the fitness world and I fell in love with it.
2:06
So when I went to college, I managed a ******** gym.
2:10
I competed in bodybuilding and my first job at a college kind of neat.
2:16
There was a member at the gym that I was managing when I was in college.
2:20
He said we just loaned a bunch of money to these muscle heads in Syracuse.
2:24
They need your help.
2:25
They’ve got 4 gyms.
2:27
They don’t know what they’re doing.
2:28
So my first job at a college, I was the executive director of a chain of health clubs.
2:32
Ray, for this Christopher making 600 bucks a week now as.
2:39
Yeah.
2:39
Well, you know, first job out of school wasn’t too bad.
2:42
No, that’s great.
2:43
I’m not kidding.
2:45
Like, because, you know, you’re my age.
2:47
I would have killed for a job paying 600 bucks a week.
2:50
Right.
2:51
Yeah.
2:51
Coming out of school, like, those are tough times back then.
2:55
Yes.
2:56
Yeah.
2:57
So this was cool because they said, all right, we’re going to give you the keys.
3:01
You figure it out.
3:03
So I was, what, 2223 years old?
3:06
I was negotiating advertising deals, putting together campaigns, writing TV commercials, radio commercials, creating print ads.
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I was even in some of the commercials.
3:16
Yeah, I was Santa Claus and in the gym working out.
3:19
But that’s a conversation for another day.
3:22
And I built all of their systems.
3:24
And at the end of the year, I went asking for more money.
3:27
And they said, well, we have your marketing plan, your sales plan, your operational plan.
3:32
Why would we pay you more money?
3:34
What they didn’t know was the largest health club chain in the world was recruiting me, Bally, which doesn’t exist anymore.
3:42
And it became the youngest executive in the company.
3:45
Making you ready, Christopher $50,000.
3:48
Yeah.
3:49
That’s awesome, dude.
3:49
OK, that’s.
3:50
Yeah.
3:51
But here’s what I discovered.
3:53
That was the top of the food chain.
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There’s no money in that industry.
3:58
But I said I really like this sales thing.
4:01
Yeah, so we’re going to make fitness a hobby and I’m going to do sales.
4:06
And and I was in technology, I was in some different services spaces, building sales organizations consistently in my career.
4:13
So how?
4:14
I mean, you’re starting from nothing, no background in this and you’re building this all.
4:19
I imagine you fell on your face a little bit.
4:22
Absolutely.
4:23
But it’s nice to do it on someone else’s nickel, right?
4:26
I mean, trial and error.
4:28
That’s how I I learned things.
4:30
But you know, Christopher, there was, it was an incident, I’ll never forget this.
4:35
It sticks with me today.
4:38
It was a horrible, horrible feeling in sales.
4:41
So we had put together this sales promotion.
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But I OK, it was my response.
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And the deal was this.
4:47
Christopher, if you sign up for a membership on your first visit, it’s $100 off.
4:54
And this one particular day, all my salespeople were busy.
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So I had to do the tour sitting down with this gentleman, an older gentleman, which today I look at and go, OK, he was about my age today.
5:06
And I and I said to him, OK, so if you Sign up today, you get $100 off the membership.
5:12
And he looks at me and he says, son, if the deal isn’t good tomorrow, it isn’t good today.
5:18
He got up and walked out.
5:22
I needed a shower after that, Christopher.
5:25
I felt so dirty.
5:27
That was the last person that ever heard about that campaign because it was gone.
5:30
And it set the tone for me and and how I wanted to be perceived in the world of sales.
5:38
It was horrible.
5:39
It was.
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And I remember like it was, yes, I’m 56 and I still remember that guy sitting in that chair just staring at me, getting up and walking out.
5:50
Yeah.
5:50
Yeah.
5:51
You need those.
5:52
You need those lessons.
5:53
You need those.
5:55
You know, they’re painful to go through, like you’re seeing.
5:57
And you’ll never forget it.
5:59
But that’s the point, right?
6:01
That’s it.
6:02
You know, that was my big fall on my face.
6:04
Yeah.
6:06
That’s awesome.
6:07
So tell me about your journey into being an author.
6:12
That’s a big jump for those of you who’ve never written a book.
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I’ve written one book.
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It took me 3 years to write the book.
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It’s not easy.
6:21
You’ve written way more than one book.
6:24
Yes, I not the one you referenced.
6:26
The first meaning differentiator is number 7 and #8 is already percolating.
6:31
First thing is, I fundamentally love to write.
6:35
That’s not true for everyone.
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Editing I hate, but I so appreciate it.
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It’s painful because when you’re writing, that’s the creative part, all the creative juices coming out.
6:46
But editing is where you’re challenged.
6:48
Is this really the word you mean here?
6:51
And it’s tough.
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And I’m so thankful for the editors at Harper Collins have working on the on the projects with me.
6:58
They’re just magical.
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They make the book come to life.
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They’re the final Polish.
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And it’s just fantastic.
7:05
You know, they say everybody at some point in their life just said they want to write a book.
7:09
And so few have done it.
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And I believe I’ve discovered the reason why people don’t finish their books.
7:16
There’s two sides of your brain.
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There’s the side of the brain that’s the creative side.
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There’s a side of the brain that’s the editing side.
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And So what I find is people, while they’re trying to create the creative side, they try to edit and they conflict and they create so much frustration.
7:37
I don’t care if it’s missing a word, if it’s the wrong tense, if it’s not sequence right, just get it all out.
7:44
Then you come back and edit when you try to do them both the same time and as I’m sure you found, it’s impossible and that’s why so many people just get so frustrated with it and they just never finished the book.
7:56
That’s my story.
7:58
I struggled for the 1st 2 1/2 years of that three-year journey because I would write a section, I would edit it.
8:08
I’m like oh this is no good, blah blah blah.
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And I would get stuck in the mud and the wheels would just spin and I wasn’t making any progress.
8:16
And it wasn’t until I finally just, I literally, I see the three years.
8:20
It really was the last month of those three years.
8:23
I just blocked out time and I just wrote and I cranked it out.
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And then we went into editing mode.
8:30
After that it, it took us two to three months to edit it.
8:35
But it, it wasn’t until I did exactly what you said that I was able to breakthrough.
8:40
And I see the same thing when I work with sellers on the technology side.
8:45
We’re working with them.
8:47
They get wrapped around the axle on this stuff the same for the same reason.
8:51
Do you see that?
8:53
I do, you know, they’re so focused on what they’re selling and what they forget is it’s about the person you’re meeting with and making the conversation entirely about them features, the functions.
9:04
As a matter of fact, there’s a there’s a chapter in the first meeting.
9:06
Differentiator features, benefits and boredom.
9:09
Yeah, we’ve told salespeople that’s how you convey information.
9:12
Well, if you’re going to do that, bring a pillow with you because you’re going to put people to sleep.
9:17
But everyone loves a well told story.
9:21
It dates back to when you were a child and the day nothing was better than ending the day with mom and dad reading you a story at bedtime.
9:29
And that doesn’t go away because you’re an adult.
9:32
Not only that does countless memory studies that have been conducted when they talk about retention and when facts and figures are shared independently, people are going to forget them.
9:43
But when they’re enveloped in stories, they’ve become much more memorable.
9:48
And if you share them in an emotive fashion, they really grasp onto them.
9:54
Now.
9:54
It is, it’s, it’s, you know, I sell technology, but I don’t really sell technology.
10:00
I tell my marketing team all the time, we’re not selling technology.
10:04
Stop.
10:05
I if you put any features and benefits on there, RIP them out.
10:10
People do not care.
10:12
You know, we sell CRM like nobody buys CRM because they love CRM.
10:16
It’s usually the opposite.
10:18
You know, they want the outcome.
10:20
What is outcome?
10:21
What is that outcome?
10:22
I have this goal in mind where I want to get to and this I’m getting this platform because I think it will help me get there, you know, and, and if they don’t give a Rep that, oh, hey, it’s got this cool feature and you know, whatever, nobody cares.
10:37
And Christopher, what did you say you sell CRMI disagree.
10:42
Oh, no, I do.
10:43
I don’t tell people I sell CRM.
10:45
You know, my, my, my point is the answer to that question is based on where you were in the sales cycle.
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When you’re prospecting, the only thing you’re selling is a meeting.
10:57
That’s it.
10:58
Less tunnel vision to that, right?
11:01
Right.
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If you tunnel vision to that and say it’s not about telling them everything that we can offer, it’s peaking a high enough level of interest that they say, you know what, they should sit down with them.
11:13
I should learn about what they’ve got cooking over there.
11:16
And, and when you see it, I’m sure you’re on the receiving end of these emails and phone calls all the time where the salesperson is trying to sell their stuff when the only thing they should be selling is an initial engagement, an initial conversation and they totally missed the boat.
11:32
That is so true.
11:33
So big part of what we do when we’re implementing CRM is we help them work on their sales process And it it’s they want to like the first thing we do is here, then we do this.
11:45
Let’s and I have to tell them like guys, our when we’re here, our only goal is to get to the next step.
11:54
That’s it.
11:55
We’re not trying to get to the end.
11:57
We’re just like, what is the next step in the buyer’s journey?
12:01
It’s all about the journey they’re on.
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Our job is to help them, is to facilitate them on their journey.
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That’s it.
12:09
That’s our only goal.
12:11
Let’s take that a step further.
12:13
In CRM, we have to lead that journey, Yes, So the expertise that we have on the sales side is bringing deals to fruition.
12:23
That’s our expertise.
12:24
That’s right.
12:25
So one of the mistakes we make, often times we finish a first meeting, then we say, so Christopher, what do you see as our next best step?
12:34
Right.
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This is our expertise.
12:37
We should be making a recommendation.
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So Christopher, based on what we talked about here today, what I recommend we do next is X.
12:45
What are your thoughts?
12:46
So we’re still going to seek their perspective.
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But if I’m the Sherpa, I’m the guide.
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I should be the one making the recommendations, not blindly saying.
12:54
So what do you think we should do?
12:55
Oh, yeah, yeah.
12:57
They don’t know it.
12:58
It’s, it’s when I engage like we get this happens all the time.
13:02
People just like Chris, we need a new CRM.
13:06
And I’ll ask why, why do you need a new CRM?
13:09
Because I want to get them talking.
13:10
Tell me your story.
13:12
They’re not just calling me out of the blue.
13:14
There’s a, there’s always a back story that I need to hear and what?
13:18
And they’re usually like, well, you know, we have this issue, this issue, this issue.
13:22
We think CRM will help us fix all that.
13:25
And I tell them or you get like, look, there’s not a serum out there that will fix what you’re talking about.
13:31
Do you see that in your world?
13:33
I mean, is that really what’s behind a lot of your books?
13:37
I do see that a lot.
13:38
And one of the areas I really see it a lot is on boarding.
13:42
So to be an initiative, we’re a company.
13:44
So you know what, we’ve got to get people up to speed faster.
13:47
We have to reduce turnover.
13:50
And they’ll come to me and say, can you develop an on boarding methodology for us?
13:54
And then I start asking questions about the sales process.
13:58
They don’t have one.
14:00
So there’s nothing to put in the onboarding because you haven’t defined how to sell.
14:05
And one of the things that that salespeople and sales leaders have done magically is they convince executives that we don’t need a sales process.
14:15
Sales is it’s an art.
14:16
You can’t really define steps.
14:18
You can’t really, you can’t have a framework like that.
14:21
I call that out all the time and that’s why I get along so well with CF OS, CL OS, presidents, business owners because we’ve got sign of thing what we’ve done in operations where we have a defined process, we have metrics.
14:38
You can’t do that in sales, you can.
14:41
And my challenge to that is if you name a company, consider the sales powerhouse that lets their sales people wake up in the morning and go, what’s this, how I’m going to sell today?
14:52
It gets decided on their own.
14:53
Name one company as the sales powerhouse.
14:55
So let’s their salespeople do it.
14:57
You know, with the business right now, it doesn’t happen.
15:01
It doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.
15:03
It that is a huge fallacy because if you have that, you don’t have accountability, you don’t have, you know, how do you fix anything that’s broken when it is purely the Wild West?
15:16
Absolutely.
15:18
Absolutely.
15:19
So how do you get started with companies like that?
15:23
First is with awareness.
15:25
So I’ll ask the executives.
15:27
If you were going to hire 10 people to manufacture your widget, would you let them do it any which way they want?
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And they go, it’s not well, why not?
15:36
Well, it would be inefficient.
15:38
We keep making mistakes, It would be expensive and on and on and on.
15:42
Exactly.
15:42
So why we do that on the sales side?
15:46
Oh, yeah.
15:49
And then I bring them around to a conversation on the first meeting.
15:52
And I’ll say, Christopher, if all your sales people called you right now and said I just had a great first meeting, what would you know for sure for certain took place during that meeting?
16:04
What the most common answers that I get?
16:07
Not a darn thing, because they’ve never prescribed the handling of that first meeting.
16:12
They say, hey, Salespeop, you know, you got to ask some really good questions.
16:14
You got to tell them about our stuff.
16:17
No, that’s not enough.
16:19
I mean, when you look at the first meeting, the first meeting is the deal foundation.
16:24
There’s so much going on there, right?
16:26
We’re acquiring information, we’re sharing information, we’re engaging emotions, we’re providing meaningful value.
16:32
So much is going on.
16:34
If that step of the process is weak, then you get to the end and you and they say, well, your price and you think you have an issue with negotiation, with closing.
16:44
You know, you have an issue with that first meeting.
16:48
It was squishy.
16:49
It was not solid.
16:51
And therefore what you’re seeing at the end is not the issue, but a symptom of the issue, which is you need to prescribe the handling of that first meeting.
17:00
And you know what’s pretty fascinating, Christopher, my publisher and I did a bunch of research before I ever started putting this book together.
17:08
If you go into Amazon and say I’m looking for a book on prospecting, how to get a meeting, there’s motion to them.
17:19
But if you go to Amazon and say, OK, I got the meeting, how do I put together a game plan for an effective first meeting?
17:27
There wasn’t one.
17:28
Sure, there’s a question on storytelling, a book on storytelling.
17:31
There’s books on, on, on questions.
17:34
One book dedicated to this is not how you get the meeting.
17:38
It’s not what to do after.
17:39
It’s not how to put together a demo or a presentation.
17:42
It’s what is the construct of that meeting.
17:45
This critical first step of the process didn’t exist.
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And I can’t tell you how many colleagues have come to me and said, I can’t believe I didn’t think to write this book.
17:56
It’s so true, though.
17:58
It’s and what I think is hilarious.
18:00
There’s been research done on the perception of the salesperson of how that meeting went versus the people in the room that he’s meeting with vastly different perspectives, Salespeople always great first meeting.
18:19
That was a great meeting.
18:20
I think it went really, really well.
18:22
Interview the people that he was meeting with.
18:24
They’re like, yeah, now this was a waste of my time.
18:27
This was not a good meeting.
18:29
You know, Vast, you can’t rely on that perception.
18:33
So if you have the Wild West, you’re thinking everything is rainbows, you know, Unicorn and sunshine.
18:40
That’s not the reality at all.
18:42
But that’s where process comes in.
18:43
You know, if you have that, if you have that process in place, that framework, that’s what you need to rely on.
18:53
And I’m going to make a statement right now that it’s probably going to raise an eyebrow.
18:58
Love your process.
18:59
Like your people.
19:02
I’m not advocating for being mean to salespeople.
19:04
You take great care of your salespeople.
19:07
What I’m saying is the foundation of a successful sales organization was the process you build, not your people.
19:15
I’ll give you an example.
19:17
A client of mine many years ago, it was the AAA baseball team for the San Francisco Giants.
19:23
They’ve since been sold.
19:26
And I remember the owner would call me, Oh my gosh, so and so quick.
19:32
And the nature of my League Baseball is it’s a high turnover sales role.
19:36
I mean, if you’re good, if you’re really good, you’ll make 40s, maybe 50 grand.
19:41
You work crazy hours, days, nights, weekends to make that much money now when you’re in your early 20s, say it’s cool to be affiliated with a professional sports team.
19:50
Then you say, you know, I want to get married, I want to buy a house.
19:53
And you go, yeah, I can’t do it with this.
19:55
So the owner of the team would say, so Lee, what do we do about this?
19:59
So what if we can’t?
20:01
What if we just accept that is the dynamic of this business, it’s going to be high turnover and we accept that.
20:09
And rather than people being people based, which is what we are today.
20:13
We become process based because when I looked at each of the vertical markets, it looks like an EKG report.
20:19
It was like this.
20:20
I could see exactly when someone left and when a new person came in.
20:25
When we shifted that business to being process based, two things happened.
20:31
The phone calls went away ’cause you didn’t call me in a panic anymore.
20:35
And rather than this, you had continue growth.
20:42
And that that baseball team is ranked by Forbes as the number one most valuable minor League Baseball team.
20:49
And a big reason, according to that owner, is because they shifted the business from being people based to being process based.
20:59
And we have to and, and I challenge owners and CE OS and sales leaders and they said, how do we fix this?
21:05
What if we can’t?
21:06
What if we just say it just is now let’s build around it so that that business dynamic does not kill our business.
21:16
I’m convinced in, in from what I see when I work with, with clients to implement CRM.
21:24
You know, we want to represent what’s happening in these meetings.
21:27
You know, how are we capturing what’s happening in these meetings?
21:30
And so I’ll ask like, walk me through your process today, What’s happening in that first meeting?
21:35
And it’s crickets coming back to me.
21:40
What are people doing wrong in these discovery meetings?
21:45
Well, the first thing is referring to it as a discovery meeting.
21:48
I’m on a mission to eradicate the word discovery from the sales vocabulary.
21:54
So matter of fact, chapter one of the first meeting differentiator discovery meetings must buy.
22:02
Why do I say that?
22:03
Well, how does salespeople prepare for a discovery meeting?
22:06
Well, I’m going to make a list of the questions I’m going to ask, the message points I’m going to share.
22:10
What’s wrong with that?
22:13
What do I get out of the meeting?
22:15
I’m on the other side of the desk so I know what you’re getting.
22:18
What do I get?
22:20
So the salespeople will say they’ll learn about my company and my stuff.
22:25
It’s a big fail.
22:27
Then they’ll be possible.
22:28
Why isn’t that meaningful to them?
22:30
Well, there’s two types of sales, and I’m going to use a bathroom environment to depict those two.
22:35
You ready, Christopher?
22:36
Yeah, go for it.
22:37
OK, You buy toilet paper.
22:40
I sell toilet paper.
22:41
But you’re buying my competitors toilet paper.
22:43
And I’m saying you should be buying my toilet paper because it’s superior.
22:47
That’s a take away sale.
22:48
That’s the environment most sales people are in.
22:51
Now let me give you the other sale type.
22:53
You buy toilet paper, I sell bidets.
22:56
It’s an alternative way of addressing an issue.
22:59
What’s a demand Gen.
23:00
sale?
23:01
As I mentioned, most sales people are in this take away business setting.
23:04
What that means is the person you’re calling already has a supplier.
23:09
They already have a provider in place, and you’re saying, I know you’ve got 400 things to do on your desk.
23:15
Put those aside and meet with me, and what you’ll get out of it is learning about my company and my stuff.
23:22
I just ain’t going to happen.
23:23
No, no, I don’t give a RIP about your company and your stuff.
23:27
I’ve already got that problem solved.
23:29
Exactly.
23:31
But if you think about the times when you’ve gone to the doctor, you go there for two reasons.
23:35
To become wiser about your circumstances and to understand potential remedies.
23:40
It sure wouldn’t go there.
23:42
The entire experience was them gathering data.
23:45
It was all for the doctor’s benefit, nothing for you.
23:49
That’s what discovery is.
23:51
It’s an egocentric sales step.
23:54
Now, the medical profession doesn’t refer to that as discovery.
23:57
They refer to it as a consultation.
24:00
And that’s the expression that I’ve embraced.
24:02
And that’s the one that I, I highly recommend salespeople embrace because it implies the person you’re interacting with also has to get meaningful value from that time together.
24:13
What do they consider meaningful value?
24:16
They want to learn something from you that helps them in their role, helps their business, or best of all, helps both.
24:24
And Christopher, I have a little something that’ll that’ll help the, the sales people listening put that together.
24:30
I’ve got a very difficult URL to remember you ready meaningfulvalue.com.
24:37
If you go to meaningfulvalue.com, you know it’s hard to remember.
24:42
You can download a little tip she had put together with 10 ways to provide meaningful value during first meetings.
24:48
Now here’s the cool part.
24:50
Once you define the meaningful value you’re going to provide, you fold that in your prospecting messaging.
24:57
By the way, Christopher, we get together, I’ll share with you a best practice that manufacturing CF OS are using to creatively reduce costs.
25:06
Oh, if I meet with Lee, I’m going to get something out of it.
25:11
We’ll take that meeting it.
25:13
There’s got to be an end game involved.
25:15
Like there’s what’s how is this going to help me move forward?
25:19
Otherwise I’m like, why?
25:20
Why am I going to get my time is precious.
25:22
I barely have enough time in my day to get done what I’ve got on my these 4400 things on my desk.
25:29
That’s what I’m focused on to give up my time, which is very valuable.
25:34
It better move me forward in a meaningful way.
25:37
Absolutely.
25:38
And that meaningful value can’t be by my stuff, right?
25:42
If you want me to meet with you, I need to learn something during that interaction that helps you in my role, helps my business, or best of all, both.
25:50
Yep.
25:51
You know, that’s in my world, like it’s always been webinar, webinar, webinar.
25:55
You got to have webinars.
25:57
And my knock on that is I’m not going to give up half an hour, 45 minutes for my day to have to listen to a sales pitch.
26:06
That’s, that’s not worthy of my time.
26:10
You have to make sure people understand, Hey, if I’m asking you for 30 minutes, I want to make sure I’m, I’m giving you something that’s really valuable for you for that gift of your time.
26:24
That’s how I look.
26:24
It’s like you’re gifting me your time.
26:26
I better make sure I’m giving something really nice in exchange.
26:30
Absolutely.
26:31
And I look at it as we’re asking them to invest time, not spend time to invest time with it.
26:36
And so executives, every minute is so precious to them.
26:40
Yeah.
26:40
And I don’t know if you knows, Christopher, there’s never been an executive hired for the sole purpose, the sole reason, Meeting with salespeople every hour on the hour, Not even procurement.
26:50
Yeah.
26:51
Yeah.
26:52
My brother’s the CFO.
26:54
He’s like, oh God, Chris, my phone does not stop ringing.
26:58
My the e-mail, my inbox.
26:59
I just get bombarded and it’s always the same stuff.
27:04
I used to keep a folder of emails of people hit trying to hit me up of like, God, these are awful.
27:12
Like the worst ones I could find.
27:14
I would keep a folder and I go back and look at them occasionally.
27:17
I share with my team like do not ever do this stuff.
27:20
You know, I got one yesterday.
27:23
Have you thought about writing a book?
27:27
No, that’s a brilliant idea.
27:28
That’s revolutionary.
27:30
Tell me about that.
27:31
You know what’s what’s funny?
27:33
I did.
27:34
I was in a mood.
27:34
So I did reply back.
27:36
I said, Gee, what a novel idea because this was on LinkedIn.
27:41
Hoping he would click the Lee Saul’s link, look at my page and go, OK, it was dumb.
27:46
He keeps going, like, I was hoping you’d look at my profile and realize that your your message doesn’t fit here.
27:55
I’m not a prospect.
27:56
Yeah.
27:56
Yeah.
27:56
They can get that crazy.
27:58
That’s laziness right out of the game.
28:01
You’re telling me I’m super lazy?
28:03
Like, why would, again, why would I give to you with time?
28:07
Now, in the book, you talk about emotion versus logic.
28:09
Tell us about that.
28:10
Let’s do a little deep dive on this.
28:12
Yeah.
28:13
It’s one of my favorite topics.
28:14
It’s chapter 5 of the book.
28:17
There’s an expression in sales been around since the beginning of selling time that people buy based on emotion, justify their decisions with logic.
28:26
Every salesperson on the planet has heard that expression countless times.
28:30
Not once, countless times.
28:32
Now find a salesperson actually puts it into practice.
28:36
Mr.
28:36
I’ll bet you the deeds of my house we recorded 101st meetings, all sale types, all market segments all around the world.
28:45
99 of that 100 if not all 100.
28:48
The entire meeting was logic, no emotion whatsoever and I really struggled with that.
28:56
If every salesperson on the planet has heard that expression, why doesn’t anybody do it?
29:02
Then I finally had this epiphany.
29:03
I had two sons that played college baseball.
29:05
I remember when they were little kids and 1st learning the game and the coaches would say now Stephen and David, name of the game hit home runs.
29:15
A big smile and go hit home runs.
29:17
You know something, Christopher?
29:18
They didn’t hit home runs until they were taught how to do it.
29:23
And that’s the mistake we’ve made with salespeople.
29:25
We proved to them by based on emotion, justify their decisions with logic, but we haven’t taught them how to appropriately engage emotion during first meetings.
29:36
And that’s what that chapter teaches.
29:38
But my all time TV favorite TV shows, law and order, the original, not all the the spin offs.
29:44
And it was so happy when it when it came back as a reboot.
29:48
And a couple of years ago there was this episode and the prosecutor was very frustrated with the case.
29:53
He was trying.
29:55
He said, I, I got all the evidence, but I can tell jury’s not with me.
30:01
So he goes into the District Attorney, takes him through the case, and the District Attorney looks at him and says, the problem with your case is it’s all facts, no heart, and the jury isn’t buying it.
30:12
All logic, no emotion, and the jury isn’t buying it.
30:16
I was like, oh, writing a book on this, this is interesting.
30:21
Now Law and order says, RIP from the headlines, right?
30:23
But I couldn’t use that as a source.
30:25
So I interviewed a judge, prosecutor, A litigator and a trainer of litigators about ways attorneys are using a motion to affect jury decisions to see, are there techniques that we could borrow in the sales world?
30:39
And the conversations were just fascinating.
30:42
Prosecutor said to me, when I’m trying a case, I want to take the jury on a journey, say that fast three times, jury on a journey from having the ability to convict to having the desire to convict, bring that around the sales, having the ability to contract with us to having the desire the contract with us.
31:04
And that doesn’t happen with logic.
31:06
It happens by engaging their emotions.
31:09
And then what I’d say, he says if I have a firefighter on the stand, not asking logic questions, I’m asking emotive questions like what did you feel?
31:19
What did you feel when you entered that building?
31:23
Because I want the jury to feel like they were in that fire with the firefighter.
31:27
We could say no emotion drives action.
31:30
And that’s just as true in the sales world.
31:34
So what are the things that we do when we ask questions during first meetings is we ask logic questions like Christopher, what’s the biggest challenge you have in your Business Today?
31:44
And as a result of that question, we get information back.
31:48
I don’t want information.
31:50
I want to know how they feel about the information they’re sharing with me.
31:54
I want color, I want flavor, I want texture.
31:59
So what if we pose the question this way, Christopher?
32:02
What’s that one thing in your business where you’ve got to get this figured out?
32:07
What is that?
32:08
Yeah.
32:09
You felt that question, didn’t you, Christopher?
32:11
Yeah, it’s, you could imagine that in the field, right?
32:13
This is the podcast interview.
32:15
Yeah.
32:16
It’s, you know, I talk about that with my sales guys that again, nobody if if you’re not getting emotional with them, you said it.
32:27
Emotion drives action, especially with what we’re trying to sell with CRM, you know, it’s a huge deal.
32:35
I’m fat, dumb, and happy where I’m at.
32:38
Christopher, sorry, I’m fine.
32:41
Moving on.
32:42
I have to find what are the emotional things absolutely that are causing you angst?
32:48
What’s keeping you up at night?
32:50
What’s making your phone ring in the middle of the night?
32:52
You know what?
32:54
That that’s what I want to hear about because like, I have to get them emotional about stuff to get them to do anything.
33:01
It’s too easy to stay where I’m at.
33:04
It’s super easy to just stay with status quo.
33:08
That’s usually who I’m selling against is status quo.
33:10
I’m not selling against my competition.
33:12
I’m selling against status quo.
33:14
It’s just easier to stay where I’m at than really trying to solve these problems because they’re tough problems to solve.
33:19
I know I’m going to go through a lot of pain getting there, but I tell people, look, we’re going to have a baby together.
33:26
It’s going to be, it’s going to take a while.
33:29
We’re going to go through a lot of pain.
33:31
But the end of it, it’s going to be worth it because you’re going to have this beautiful baby that you’re going to hold, you know, and, and I’m trying to get that emotional attachment and a great visual for that.
33:42
Yeah.
33:42
And it’s like, yeah, it’s going to hurt.
33:44
We’re going to uncover all kinds of stuff that’s gross and icky and yucky and you’re going to feel awful.
33:48
But boy, at the end, it’s going to be so great.
33:53
That’s what I because I’ve just learned there’s got to be some external force to get people to move.
33:58
They are not going to move if there’s not some kind of external pressure.
34:01
So I’m always trying to figure out what is that external pressure that I can leverage to get them to do something.
34:07
And if you want them to do something, they need to feel something.
34:11
Yes.
34:12
Logic’s not getting it done.
34:13
No, no.
34:15
What about fear as a motivator?
34:18
That’s absolutely.
34:19
People are motivated by fear or greed, and there’s one that’s always more dominant than the other.
34:26
I want to get promoted, I don’t want to get fired.
34:29
And in most cases, the fear of getting fired is stronger than the desire to get promoted.
34:36
So when we in the book, I talk about 8 potential emotional transitions that you could have during a first meeting.
34:45
Salespeople usually pretty good with the negative to positive.
34:48
I found pain and I’m going to make them feel better.
34:51
But sometimes you have to go negative to more negative and help them recognize the ramifications of doing nothing.
34:58
Exactly what you described with the status quo, that there, there is a risk there that can’t be ignored.
35:07
And so that’s that’s a potential journey as well.
35:10
Yeah, that’s what I talked of.
35:11
You know, I tried to get help.
35:13
People understand that a lot of times that pain is buried.
35:16
It’s hidden, it’s pushed off the side.
35:19
They’re really not, you know, people are muddling through and they’re figuring out a way to keep things moving.
35:26
So they think like it’s, you know, it’s the, the visual of the iceberg, it’s below water.
35:32
I don’t see it.
35:32
I don’t have to deal with it.
35:34
We’re fine.
35:36
And so I, I, I’ve got to get them to figure that out.
35:41
One of the big pain points I see when I engage with sales teams is because we’re implementing CRM, it’s all about hey, I’ve got my leads, I got to get them qualified and into my pipeline.
35:52
What are we doing wrong around qualification such a critical step.
35:57
You know, time is the most precious resource that salespeople have.
36:02
And so often I’m asked to do post mortems on deals deal that they chase for months and they quote of the lawsuit at the finish line.
36:13
And when they take me through the deal once we go to the end and they say this is how this ended up, I’ll say, OK, so you didn’t lose the deal.
36:21
And they’ll be puzzled.
36:22
They’ll say, well, we didn’t win it, but you didn’t lose it.
36:28
You were never a viable option.
36:31
And if you would have qualified the opportunity early on during the first meeting, you would have recognized that in the 1st 15 minutes and not invested countless hours chasing a mirage.
36:44
And one of the tools that we’ve given to salespeople is an ideal client profile.
36:50
And if you have one of those, please throw it away.
36:53
You don’t want that.
36:55
Here’s why.
36:56
An ideal client profile says if all the stores were to align, this is the kind of business we’d love to have.
37:02
It’s like a lottery ticket.
37:04
It’s a one in a gazillion chance that you’re ever going to stumble across one of those opportunities.
37:10
But what every salesperson needs is a target client profile.
37:15
And that’s not wordsmithing, It’s a totally different concept.
37:19
The target client profile says this is who will proceed the most meaningful value in what we offer, which gives deals the greatest likelihood of coming to fruition.
37:32
And in the book, there’s a a workshop that I take the reader through and you develop this 12 component tool that becomes the foundation for qualifying.
37:42
So you say, OK, this is what the right opportunities look like, feel like, tastes like, and right opportunity to find as those who perceive the most meaningful value what we offer, which gives deals the greatest likelihood of coming to fruition.
37:54
And now you benchmark every opportunity against that because I’m a big believer.
37:58
If you’re going to lose, lose early.
38:00
And I preach that all the time.
38:02
It’s nothing worse than getting to the finish line.
38:04
And you go, well, that was a waste of 150 hours, right?
38:10
And then you go and we all look back and we go, we could have known this in the 1st 15 minutes.
38:15
Yeah, I felt that pain because I was always optimistic, like, oh, I can turn this, I can make this happen.
38:22
I’m just going to keep working harder.
38:23
I’m going to devote more time to it and you get to the end.
38:27
You’re like, yeah, no, I’m sorry, this is way more expensive than what we thought or wow, that’s like, this is going to be way bigger than what we thought or whatever.
38:37
I and it you know, what crystallized it for me was actually I was reading a book on a totally different subject about hiring is written by two experts in HR, you know, experts in the hiring model and all that.
38:53
And in the book they talk about your job in the first phone call is to actually disqualify candidates within 15 minutes.
39:03
You want to ask your toughest questions.
39:05
Anything that will disqualify them from your hiring poll is to save all those to the end.
39:11
I would interview people for, you know, hours and hours and hours, saving up all my toughest stuff for the end because I was too scared to ask them at the beginning.
39:21
Yeah, soon as I flip that, oh, my God, life got so much better.
39:26
So now I’m like, I need to do that in my, in my sales process.
39:30
You know, I’ve got to ask all those really hard, tough questions right up front, right.
39:36
And in my book, Higher Right, Higher Profits, I advocate for that same thing, which is before you talk about candidates, you need to fully understand the role, the factors that lead to success, failure under performance.
39:49
So when you identify those most critical SuccessFactors, screen them early.
39:54
Yeah, yeah.
39:56
Get them out of the process.
39:57
There’s no point in having to meet everyone on your team, make an assessment.
40:01
We’ll do all these steps and you go, yeah, not the right person.
40:05
Yeah.
40:05
Nobody has time for that concept with the deal.
40:08
I love that in your book about.
40:10
And that really resonated with me too, that I didn’t even know I was doing that.
40:15
You know, change swapping out the word ideal for target, I don’t care about there’s no such thing as ideal.
40:21
You’re right.
40:21
I mean, they’re one in a million, but you better understand who you’re targeting and that like your universe because that’s we talked about that with our clients.
40:31
Like when you’re populating CRM, it better be filled with the companies you’re targeting, the customers that you’re targeting.
40:40
That’s your universe that your people are selling in.
40:45
Chris, will you ever look up the word ideal in the dictionary?
40:49
It says existing only in one’s mind.
40:52
Like sales isn’t hard enough.
40:54
You’re giving me a tool that’s only in my head.
40:56
Yeah, yeah.
40:58
That I’d love that.
40:59
I must start using that with our clients, too.
41:01
That it’s, it’s because everyone understands.
41:03
They’ve heard ICPICPICP.
41:06
People understand that.
41:06
So we’ve been adopting that.
41:08
I’m like, no more.
41:09
We’re switching it to target.
41:11
It’s who are your because that’s what the language we use, but we just weren’t changing the acronym and I think that’s so important.
41:20
So Lee, we’ve had this great meeting, salesperson, great meeting.
41:27
But now we’re we’re the clock’s ticking.
41:29
We’ve got a few minutes left of the meeting.
41:31
What do we do?
41:31
OK, OK, I’m going to give you the easiest one first, and it’s so obvious and so few sales people do it.
41:40
Thank them.
41:43
You’ve asked them to put aside 400 things on their desk and meet with you.
41:47
They’ve invested time to meet with you.
41:51
So the first step is to thank them.
41:54
The second one is to give yourself a meaningful value test.
41:59
Christopher, how’d we do today?
42:02
How’d we do today if I believe the meeting went well?
42:04
What I want to hear back was, you know what?
42:07
This was such a great use of my time.
42:09
I’m so glad we got together because that tells me I’ve succeeded in providing meaningful value during that meeting and any meeting that has gone well.
42:21
This is non negotiable, has to finish with a defined next step and it’s scheduled next interaction unless you enjoy being ghosted.
42:30
It’s amazing.
42:31
It’s not new sales people, it’s across the board.
42:34
The meeting’s winding down, everybody’s feeling good and they go, Chris, I’ll reach out next week and and we’ll schedule a time to pick up the conversation.
42:44
Interest is great right now.
42:47
Everyone’s calendar is sitting right here.
42:50
Get it on the books.
42:52
Even if they say, well, I need to talk with so and so.
42:54
Absolutely.
42:55
Let’s get something on the books and you can check with them and see if that date and time works.
42:59
We can always move it, but at least we have this on the calendar.
43:03
Come religious about that.
43:05
People ask me all the time, how do you eliminate ghosting?
43:09
And they’re looking for some word phrase, some magical words.
43:13
It’s not, it’s a technique.
43:14
Have the discipline.
43:16
Every step of your process has a defined next step and a scheduled next interaction.
43:22
If you do that, you’ll find it’s extremely rare that they don’t show up.
43:26
You send an invite for it, they’re going to show up unless there’s some emergency.
43:30
Once in a blue moon, you’ll get ghosted.
43:33
But that’s something I’m so religious about my own business every.
43:38
And.
43:38
And.
43:38
And it’s funny because I did it this morning.
43:40
I said right out of your book, absolutely.
43:42
I practice what I preached.
43:44
Yeah.
43:44
That I learned that a while ago, that it’s like, hey, if someone’s not willing, people are unwilling to hurt your feelings.
43:52
Most people, they just don’t want to hurt your feelings.
43:54
They want to be nice, you know?
43:56
And they’re like, yeah, you know what?
43:57
Yeah, definitely.
43:58
I would love to meet with you again.
44:00
I’ll get back to you on when we can do that.
44:02
They’re just being polite.
44:04
That’s a no.
44:05
You know, if they’re not willing to schedule that next step and give you again, that commitment of time, that gift of time, it’s not going to happen.
44:13
Nope.
44:15
It’s a great deal test.
44:17
It’s a great deal test, isn’t it, Christopher?
44:18
If they’re not willing to schedule that next interaction with you, it speaks volumes.
44:24
Yeah, it speaks huge volumes.
44:26
That’s your true measure of did it go well?
44:29
Did you get the next meeting scheduled?
44:31
What’s that next interaction?
44:33
Is it scheduled and on the calendar?
44:35
And then if they start rescheduling, you know, if you get that and they start rescheduling, that’s really, it’s a, it’s a soft no, you know, meaning I just don’t want to hurt your feelings by saying, yeah, now we’re not interested.
44:48
Right, Right.
44:49
And the invite’s an important part.
44:51
So don’t just get the meeting, send the invite.
44:53
So it’s in their calendar.
44:55
Yeah, exactly.
44:56
You’ve got to block that time on the calendar because that, that’s why I’m like, hey, look, I know you’re probably just as busy as I am.
45:01
If I don’t get this time blocked on my calendar now, it’s going to be incredibly hard to schedule next week or two weeks.
45:08
Like I’ve got to block that time now.
45:10
Can we go ahead and block it?
45:12
And that’s worked pretty well for me because we.
45:14
Oh yeah, that’s.
45:15
Yeah, I have the same issue.
45:16
Let’s do it, you know?
45:17
Absolutely.
45:18
Yeah, absolutely.
45:19
Yep.
45:20
Lee, we’ve come up on our time on this episode of of Sales Lead Dog.
45:24
This has been a great conversation.
45:26
This has been fun.
45:27
So the book, the first meeting differentiator, I’d love that you wrote this book because you’re right.
45:33
I thought about it.
45:34
But as you’re telling that story about going on Amazon, doing the research, I’m like, he’s right.
45:39
There are tons of books out there on storytelling and doing all this stuff.
45:44
There’s not one like yours.
45:46
And that’s I think what’s truly special, why we’re so excited to have you here on the show today.
45:50
So again, the books, the first meeting differentiator.
45:52
It’s available on hardcover, Kindle and audio book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Porch Light and Audible.
45:58
Be sure to check that out.
46:00
Check out Lee’s Amazon profile or excuse me, his LinkedIn profile.
46:04
Don’t be like that one guy.
46:06
There’s lots of good stuff there.
46:08
Reach out, engage.
46:09
Lee, if people want to reach out and connect with you, what’s the best way for them to do that?
46:13
So the book website isfirstmeetingbook.com.
46:17
If you go there, you can download the 1st chapter and wherever you buy the book, all the places that you just mentioned.
46:23
Christopher, go back to that site because there’s a special bonus to sign up for.
46:28
I’m offering three private master classes exclusively for book purchasers to help you implement the strategies that you read about.
46:37
That is awesome.
46:38
That’s an incredible gift.
46:42
You’re the first author that I’ve had on the show that’s done something like that.
46:45
That’s not usual.
46:47
That’s really cool, Lee.
46:48
So are you saying I’m different?
46:49
You’re different.
46:51
OK.
46:51
Good.
46:52
Yeah.
46:52
And I think that’s important.
46:53
You got to find a way to stand out.
46:55
You know, if you didn’t catch that, don’t worry about it.
46:58
You can get it in our show notes at impellercrm.com/sales Lead Dog.
47:04
Be sure to check out the show notes for this.
47:06
Reach out to Lee.
47:07
Buy the book and get those those sessions scheduled.
47:13
Lee, thank you so much for coming on Sales Lead Dog and welcome to the sales Lead Dog pack.
47:19
You, Christopher.
47:20
This was great fun.
