Sell Without Selling Out – Andy Paul

 

 

Transcript:

Tue, Mar 1, 2022

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 
buyer , people , sellers , selling , call , talking , sales , decision , book , questions , salespeople , person , salesy , company , crm , understand , problem , human , pandemic , outcome

SPEAKERS
Andy Paul & Christopher Smith

Intro
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith, talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack. Listen to find out how the best of the best achieve success with their team and CRM technology. And remember, unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes.

Christopher Smith
Welcome to sales lead dog. Today I have joining me a special guest, Andy Paul, author of sell without selling out the Guide to Success on your own terms. Andy, welcome to sales lead dog, Chris, thank you for having me. I, as I was telling you earlier, I love having authors on the show, because I think we just end up having great conversations going a lot of different places. First question I had for you is, what was the genesis of the idea for this book,

Andy Paul
Just as the idea for the book was that we’re not getting better at selling, basically, is that I believe that despite all the advantages, the technology that’s at our disposal today for marketing and sales purposes, that the data suggests that we’re actually performing less well, meaning we’re doing a less good job of helping our buyers make decisions at a time when in many respects, it shouldn’t be easier to do that. And no, sir, for me was the point I’d started this book prior to the pandemic. But then, yeah, things get delayed because a pandemic, but it gave me a chance to rethink some of was thinking about writing and, and, you know, I thought during the pandemic, we really had an opportunity, given how completely disrupted business was, and how we serve, reset, how we conducted sales and in large measure, that we miss an opportunity to really reinvent selling, in terms of how we engage with buyers to help them make decisions. And instead, we’re doing more of more of the same. And I thought, Okay, what’s the reasons for this? What can we do to do something differently? And now the result was this book.

Christopher Smith
That’s awesome. What are sellers getting wrong today? What are they doing that’s wrong?

Andy Paul
Well, this is the crux of the problem, I think is that what we do is we train sellers and this is this is not a new problem. This has been around forever is Rohit we train salespeople that their job is to go out and persuade somebody to buy their product, meaning, be self-interested. It’s all about you. This is a you’ve got this target, you’re like a guided missile go make that happen. And what it does is it leads to the type of behaviors I call selling out or salesy behaviors that we all familiar with that make buyers cringe and that make many sellers cringe when I think about having to do it. And so, the opposite of that is what I call selling in. And it’s based on four pillars of call connection, curiosity, understanding and generosity, which are innate human behaviors, that are not learned behaviors, like the salesy behaviors is innate human behaviors. Because we’re wired to connect with other people, we’re wired to be curious, too. That’s how we navigate unfamiliar surroundings around ourselves, we’re wired to want to understand other people. That’s partly how we develop empathy for people we’re wired to give and be generous. But if you deploy those in the right way, what you can do is you can help your buyers understand, and you really our job as a seller is to go out and listen to our buyer to help our buyer understand what’s most important to them, right? What are the most important things for them in terms of the challenges they face and the outcomes they can achieve? And then help them get that, right and it’s not, I’m gonna persuade you buy my product, it’s like, we’re gonna identify together, we’re gonna listen to you, we’re gonna dive together, what’s most important to you, and then we’re gonna work together to help you get that. And that’s just a completely different approach. And I strongly believe and I write about this in the book is that as we move into an increasingly digital age, and there have been others written about this, like Jeffrey Colvin and his best-selling book, humans are underrated, says that in an increasingly digital age, those people who thrive in their careers are those who become learned to become more intensely human, meaning those who learn to you know, amplify their uniquely human skills that machines can’t replicate. And that is connecting with a human being that is deploying your curiosity that is being able to synthesize information and into a level of understanding and understanding reading the both the emotional and the rational cues as to what is most important to the buyer, and then formulate a plan to help them get it. And the book says, Yeah, that’s the path we want to go. And we could as a profession, And we’re all consumers. We’ve all been on the receiving end of what I call salesy behavior that’s sort of makes us recoil a little bit. We could stop that today, when that’d be great. We could just stop it today. And no seller would be any worse off.

Christopher Smith
We’d all be better off…

Andy Paul
We’d all be better off. So, let’s just stop. And here’s a very simple, rational way to proceed. That’s aligned with who we are as human beings already. Yeah, that enables us to better help our buyers and the process, shorten the decision cycles, because so much of what happens extends decision cycles for buyers is all the crap sellers do. Yeah, but if we’re really focused aligned with the buyers, okay, now I know what the target is, I know and really understand what’s most important to you. Well, now I can put together a plan to help you get that.

Christopher Smith
Yep. I had a call yesterday on my way to the airport. So, I had some downtime, my phone rings. And I’m like, I have no idea who this is calling. So, I did what I normally don’t do, I answered it. Right. And gentleman on the phone, like, hey, Chris, how you doing? And immediately didn’t wait for an answer just immediately went into pitch his pitch. And I’m sitting there thinking, as this guy’s talking, I’m like, you know, take the breath like, geez, okay, here we go. Right. And I’m listening to his pitch. And I’m thinking to myself, okay, number one, this person has no idea who I am. No idea what business I’m in what I what my struggles are, what pain I may be dealing with, that I need help solving. Right? None of that just right into the pitch. Why are people why are people still trying to sell that way?

Andy Paul
Because I saw the trains, right? I mean, so that’s it’s the reputation that salespeople have as sales are being lazy, shiftless, self-centered, whatever, on one hand, is hugely unfair to the vast majority of people who are in sales. But the other hand, it’s not completely undeserved either. And we continue, we, as a profession continue to perpetuate this through the way we train people. And the way we socialize people in terms of what their job is, as I said before, if you think your job is to be the guided missile to go out and persuade the buyer to buy your product, you’re gonna indulge in that type of behavior if you’re a sales manager, because I get comments from everyone on shows like this, beyond even this last week, since I’ve released the book, saying, Well, yeah, would you write sounds really good. But we’ve got numbers to hit we’ve got I’m like, Yeah, so what I’m what I’m talking about, this is what I’ve used, I’ve closed, the better part of three quarters of a billion dollars, myself, and really large orders and so on, selling this way, and helping the buyers make decisions faster. Right. And there’s a way to do that. This is not antithetical to hitting numbers. In fact, this is a way to do it more reliably, and more predictably, than the way that most selling’s done today.

Christopher Smith
I really pictured is like you’re standing on a sidewalk, this person who called me stand on a sidewalk describing people that are walking by randomly say, you want to buy my product. It’s the same, right? Yeah, exactly the same. You’re not gonna have any luck doing that. I mean, you’re just I mean, if you have a million people walk by you, yeah, you’ll probably get some people to buy whatever it is you’re selling. But

Andy Paul
Well, you are. And that’s unfortunate. The way a lot of sales is done today is Yeah, especially in the software world, in certain markets is yeah, the very proficient at top of funnel activities, demand gen lead gen, inbound leads, as well as outbound calling, getting meeting set. And they’re not really focused much on being really good at selling, because we know where to capture a bit of that flow that comes by. And for many companies, that’s enough to grow and scale. But, you know, we’re in the midst of serve, or we’ll still work until perhaps inflation and the pandemic and Russia invading Ukraine is we’re in the midst of serval uninterrupted period of 14 years of economic growth that, that I think people took the wrong lessons from that. And the way they built up their selling because the good times never continued forever. I know someone who’s sold through multiple recessions and periods with you know, I started my career when interest rates were nearly at 20%. I was selling capital equipment. No, you know, we had to, we had to not only help people understand this was a great investment to make, but that they could pay it back with these huge loans.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, it that you know, what was running through my mind as I was listening to a person, the gentleman who called me I’m like, whoever gave you your training did not set you up for success. You know, I didn’t give them any of the tools they needed. To be successful, so when, when, when I give it where’s the blame on that? Who’s getting it wrong?

Andy Paul
It starts at the top. Yeah, the culture set from the top, and the culture about, hey, let’s just focus on the metrics, let’s just focus on the process, go make your calls will lightly enable you. That’s where it starts, the bad is acceptable. And it served, not really a fault of like frontline managers and so on, because they’re not given the tools to do anything differently, either. They’re not taught how to do things differently. So, everything sort of starts at the top and flows downhill in terms of the culture they create. And yeah, you’ll get situations like you just experienced with that, that Salesforce and I was, I excuse my favorite story of telling this regardless. Yeah, I’ve got a podcast, we’ve almost 1000 35,036 episodes we’ve been doing. And about a year ago, I got a LinkedIn message, direct message from somebody saying, look, I was just looking at your LinkedIn profile. I think you’d be a good candidate to start a podcast.

Christopher Smith
Tell me more.

Andy Paul
I was just like, I said, okay, I got to respond to this one, right. And so, I write back, I said, I don’t get it. You said you looked at my profile? You clearly didn’t. It would take you 15 seconds to do so. I mean, just as a Yeah, I have no stake in your success. But other than the fact that I want to help you get better is take 30 seconds, you could have found tweak the message just a little bit or decided not to waste your time sending me a message. And he said, Yeah, I don’t have time for that. So here, he was clearly being pressured to make a certain number of outreaches, a certain number of contacts, I don’t have time for that.

Christopher Smith
I just have to have my number, I made my 150 calls for the day or my 200, outreaches, whatever it is…

Andy Paul
Whatever it is, it’s like, well, why don’t you care that that leads to anything? Yeah, I mean, it’s it seems like that part of the equation offline is missing is like, connecting, you know, what you’re doing to an outcome. And I think this is, you know, a management problem. It’s a compensation issue. It’s like, I would advocate that for, you know, SDRs doing outreach, let’s say as they get paid only on the deals that end up being successful.

Christopher Smith
Yeah. So let’s set them up to be success successful.

Andy Paul
Yes. Because it’s a hard job. Right? It’s really hard job. Yeah. And I mean, it’s equivalent, I started my career out making cold calls in the field, right? I’d make 3040 calls in person a day. Yeah, just beats you up, right. I mean, my whole goal was we had to do that for a certain period of time until we got to the next level, and then we’re selling more expensive products. So we still made cold calls. So not quite as many per day, but for the first six months is like, what can I do to make this go by faster? To make the pain stop. Yeah. And yeah, so why don’t we do them a favor, do ourselves a favor by helping people learn how to connect with another human being on a level how to prepare for those types of calls? How to ask questions, that that elicit the type of information that you need or open the door to a further conversation in a way that’s just not so salesy. Right.

Christopher Smith
Now, do you think that person that said, I don’t have time for that part of it is, you know, he could be pressured that he’s just got to hit a number, but I think part of it also for a lot of people is they think, well, that’s gonna be really hard or complicated for me to come up with that human approach. Is that accurate?

Andy Paul
Well, aren’t we all human? I mean, it seems like it’s, for me, it’s like, much easier to be human, and to be the sales robot, right? Because I’m so wired. I don’t have to put on an act to be a human, I have to put on an act to be the robot.

Christopher Smith
Right. So why are people scared to be human?

Andy Paul
Because their managers are scared, right, because we’ve reached this point in certain segments. And again, not that we’re focused solely on technical use technical example, where, you know, service is showing us that that the average tenure for a CRO in a venture funded startups like 12 months, right, so if you’re coming into that situation of leadership, you think, gosh, I haven’t got the opportunity to make some changes or really make this better than this. They said, oh, yeah, I got 12 months. I can’t even afford a down quarter because they’re gonna transform what you’re doing. You’re gonna have a down quarter, right? Or it’s not gonna be perhaps you want up ducks fixations, but that’s investment you make known feels like they can make that investment. And so, what people have said to me as well, this is fabulous. My problem is it’s akin to trying to fix an airplane while it’s in flight. Right because I don’t have the leeway to do that. And so, we serve perpetuate this because then the next person comes in and they look at it says, oh, yeah, I don’t have a full a full accounting cycle of 12 months to make a change. So, I’m just gonna do more of what we’re doing. But we’re just trying to do this crap better than we’re doing it now. And the fact is, it’s, it’s still not good. And just doing more of it and trying to tweak it doesn’t solve the problem.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I don’t know the exact quote. But I just saw this the other day where I think it’s attributed to Abraham Lincoln, where if you have six hours to cut down a tree, he’s going to spend four of those six hours sharpening the saw, right. Yeah. And nobody wants to sharpen their axe anymore.

Andy Paul
I don’t know of no. And I think the response to this book, but I launched this week, has been overwhelming, right. And we start rocketed to the top of the charts. And because I think there is this amazing appetite among sellers to say, Yeah, I’m tired of having to act in a way that’s not congruent with why I think I should act the way my buyers want me to act that’s doesn’t align with what I think my strengths are, just because my managers fearful of me coloring outside lines, because, you know, maybe I’m not gonna make 50 calls, maybe only gonna make 25 calls. And even though those 25 calls may yield the same number of meetings. You know, my boss doesn’t like that, right? It’s gonna be 50. Because that’s the number and reach this point where its really sellers have to begin to push back and say, look, no one cares about me or my career as much as I do. And I’m, I know, excuse me, I know, I have a number I know, I have to be accountable for results. But if I think there’s a better way to do it, then give me the freedom and the agency to go do that make those choices and experiment. So, I can find a way to become the best version of me.

Christopher Smith
Is that what you mean by to sell in?

Andy Paul
Yeah, what’s sort of the end result? Right, as is that as managers, and this book is written primarily for the individual contributors, but as leaders read it, they see that oh, yeah, this is for us as well, is that they have a choice to make. You can be the metrics jockey, you know, tries to manage people just through the numbers. And, yeah, I was at a conference two and a half, three years ago. And it just sort of stuck with me as listening to a panel of CEOs and VPs of sales talking. And one guy said, Yeah, you know, we just don’t do one on ones anymore. I’m like, oh, what? Yeah, they just don’t work. And I’m like, problem is not the one-on-one promise you, buddy. Is this one be directive, and I said, he’s operating from this position of fear. If you don’t do it exactly this way, and it doesn’t work. Who gets blamed? If it’s me, I’m gonna make sure that you comply with this process. And sellers don’t want that. Right. I mean, this is a fun profession. I mean, especially your account exec, you earn your stripes is nasty hurry, become an account Exec. Selling is fun. It’s creative, right? It’s, that’s part the reason I’ve stayed in it so long as Yeah, every situation you get into is different and learn new things, you meet new people and interesting people. But if you say, look, this is our ICP, and we’ve got you sell to these personas, you ask them these questions are going to give you these answers or a spell it out. way, it’s not very productive to do it that way. And secondly, is, is no one likes doing it that way. And your buyers don’t like it. Because, you know, the end of the day, what I’m writing about my book is how are you creating positive buying experiences for your buyers. Because at the end of the day, in most markets, these days, the level of differentiation between the products or service on offer is razor thin. And if it exists at all, it’s hard to sustain, right? So, what becomes the point of differentiation in the mind of the buyer? Well, this has been researched, it’s it is their experience with us sellers. So, if that’s the case, don’t try to become the best version of yourself that you can and doesn’t mean you become a clone of everybody else. It means you take you know the advice you get from managers and you learn from your customers how to sell to him, you listen to podcasts like this, you read books, you experiment with different things, JR ways to say thing and phrase things in your selling and build your own unique selling process within the framework that exists for the company to become the best version yourself. And then you’ll be more fulfilled in your job, you’ll be more productive. You’ll probably stick around longer, all desirable, and you’ll win you’ll increase your win rates, which to me is really the bottom line. All of this is so many industries as the wind rates have fallen so far, because the processes like you know in SAS That’s 20 to 25%. So average win rates in many of the companies, that friend who’s talking to Big Sur industrial concern in Europe as a client, they were 17%. Across the company, it’s like, holy cow. What’s going on? I mean, you can’t claim that you have product market fit, if your win rates are that low.

Christopher Smith
That’s a shocking number that, you know, 17% that target. Customer, yeah, you’re targeting your ideal customer, you’re supposed to have the solution that’s going to help them transform their business, whatever, you’re only winning 17% of the time.

Andy Paul
So, what to say about how you sell? Right? Well, what it starts from the beginning is what saying is your buyers are voting? And what they’re saying is, you’re not doing a very good job. Right? It’s like say it’s a personal referendum on you. And, yeah, it’s not good, and not personalized, and you’re a bad person, but person is personalized. Yeah, they judge you as wanting in your ability to help them identify what’s most important to them and help them get it. And challenge has done research on this and other people well, as well as saying, when in the b2b space, when a buyer makes a decision that, you know, I think challenge was at 53% of the decision criteria is based on their experience with individual seller. So, as a leader, you think, well, I want to try to optimize that experience. Not make a uniform, because if I try to make a uniform, from our perspective, the fact is, you know, we’re dealing with unique individuals with their own way of looking at the world. Yes, they may fit into a persona by title or position. But everyone’s got their own way of looking at the world own way of processing information, their own way of communicating. And I think one of the things that hamper sellers today is the train to think that everything is so uniform. And it’s not you’re a unique person talking to a unique person, if you’re not alive to what the differences are, between best person in the last person you talk to, then you’re gonna miss an opportunity. And that all contributes to these low-end rates.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, I love it. When people ask me when I’m, you know, talking to them about CRM, and they’re like, well, what’s a typical implementation look like? And I’m like, hey, if I ever find it, I’ll let you know. I get to see a typical, you know, every company I go into is totally different. It’s different, right? Role, different situations, whatever, all the different factors that can impact that uniqueness through there.

Andy Paul
Right, and we do people such a disservice to say that the sellers will just sort of say, Yeah, this is, you know, we’re gonna take a quote, unquote, like, you know, fast food franchise approach to write how we sell because we’re not cooking hamburgers, you’re these are individual individuals. And the other part of a buffet is part of buying committee that’s comprised of people that all these different backgrounds, so every committee is different, the people are different. And it’s like, yeah, your, I think your acumen, as a seller is not based on your ability to recognize how situations are the same. It’s based on your ability to recognize how situations are different and bring yourself accordingly to that situation. And so, but you can’t do that, if you don’t sort of go through. I don’t call them the basics. But there’s these pillars. I talked about this, if you don’t connect with the buyer, right? If you don’t build that level of credibility and trust, which leads them to open the door to say, yeah, why don’t you give you permission to really stick your nose into my business? Right? Because you know, is, you can ask a customer question, they’re under no obligation to answer it. And they’re under no obligation to answer it completely. And there’s a real difference between them, how they answer the same question from somebody that they’ve built some level of trust with, and most they haven’t. Right? So, building that trust becomes bleeds into your ability to be curious and ask great questions of the buyer. But as bad itself is not enough, because, you know, oftentimes sellers, they’ve got their list of questions that ask whether it’s scripted, or, you know, some questions I’ve learned to ask over time. But so many, the way we look at our sales process, we got these linear stages, one of which is discovery. And it’s like, who thinks who has ever sold thinks that discovery happens one time in a sales interaction? Right? It continues, right? You continue to ask questions. But when you put into that little box, what you’re saying is, okay, I know the information I need know right now, what you may know, some information, but what you don’t do is you don’t understand why that information is important to what’s important to and how it relates to their challenges and the outcomes they want to achieve. Right. So, you you’ve got this gap between knowing something and understanding it. So, you need to build across that gap. And when you get that level of understanding, then you can start saying, okay, how can I help the buyer with something of value that helps them move closer to making a decision. And this is this is really the crux of it is, is when we interact with the buyer is a real, we throw the word value out, loosely, like little other cliches, but when talking about the book is, you have to think about values is equal to progress in the eyes of the buyer, that’s what value is, meaning as a result of an interaction with you, Chris, I’m now closer to making a decision after that interaction than it was before. And that’s the acid test for anytime you ask a buyer to invest time in you, whether it’s reading your email, or it’s taking a phone call from you, or doing a zoom call, like we’re doing or meeting in person. That’s the calculation they’re making. I’m investing my time and attention in you. And as a result of investing that time and attention, I haven’t made progress toward making a decision completing this task I have wasn’t a good use of my time. Right? I didn’t get a return on that investment. And so, selling really is this intentional act, trying to be intentional, that every time we interact with the buyer, this is on our mind, what value might be brought into the buyer, to help them move closer to making decision? And if you don’t know the answer that question, as I say, to the horror of sales managers, and others, just don’t do it. Go back, ask more questions. Right, that can be a productive use of the buyer’s time to ask questions, because questions help them think more deeply about the problems they’re trying to solve and the things they can achieve. You got more questions to ask?

Christopher Smith
Yep. And it’s ultimately for me, it’s really understanding what is that outcome? You know, the person I’m talking to what is it because that’s really what they care about, I want an outcome as a customer, right? It might be a problem I need solved, it might be, you know, trying to support growth, whatever it is, whatever that outcome it is, if I don’t, as a salesperson understand what that outcome is that they want. I’m missing the target the whole time, I’m talking to him ask him these questions, right, because

Andy Paul
There is no target yet. Right. Right. Right. And on top of that, and I talked about this in the book, as well, as is that, again, there’s been some research on this is that, that there’s actually two levels to that decision for this, this individual, it’s what’s in it for me, as a human individual, what’s in it for the company, right. And as a seller, you need to understand what both sets of what’s in it for me questions or answers are, because you may think I can rely on this person as a champion. But if you really understand what’s in it for them, and they think, wow, this could be pretty good for the company, but shut this may cost me my job. Yeah, there’s some self-sacrificing people that would say, that’s great. But this person may end up advocating against making that choice. And you really need to know that. So, if you haven’t, for all of your stakeholders involved, that that buying decision, you need to uncover? Yeah. Not only what they think about the investment for the company, what they think about for themselves.

Christopher Smith
Yeah, nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM, that old adage, that it’s that I need to understand that, you know, for them to, like, they’re putting their neck out to say, Yeah, we’re gonna buy from you. Because, like, if I’m the one making that decision, I’m putting my neck out for you. Oftentimes, it can be that way. Yeah, yeah. And for any major purchase, whatever, it’s, you know, I’m, I’m putting my reputation at risk. I’m not gonna do that for a stranger.

Andy Paul
Right. Well, that’s so they talk to salespeople. Yeah. So, some research firms came out, like 2020 20 ones, more multiple research firms saying, oh, we studied the buyer. And what they said is, we don’t want to talk to salespeople anymore. And, yeah, ring. Has hissy fit about that? I’m like, well, okay, I’ve been doing this for a really long time. And pretty successful at it. No one ever woke up in the morning said, geez, I wish they would call me. Right. I mean, it just doesn’t happen. I think in the history of commerce, you know, dating back five or 6000 years, I suspect. No, customers are said she’s like, we should call Salesforce. Don’t call me today. But they do have time for you. If you can do the one thing I talked about, you can help them make progress in making a decision. You can’t do that. They have no time for you. And they’ll try to continue to determine ways to self-service that the acquisition of the can. But one of the reasons I do want to talk to people, though, in addition to helping them make progress is to help mitigate risk, validate that they’re making the right decision. And, yeah, I’ve had this conversation. So, I said, well, eventually it’s all gonna be automated and AI driven, blah, blah, blah, as I will just imagine a conversation. So, you’ve made some big decision for the company, let your let your decision engine do it instead of you doing it. And it goes wrong. And your boss comes and said, so what the sales guy said about this? Well, we didn’t talk to a sales guy. When he didn’t talk to a salesperson. Yeah, we didn’t know. We did this through Yeah, machine learning artificial intelligence, our engine decision engine, whatever that is. We did it completely wrong. Oh, okay. How’s that gonna go for you? Right? Not? Well, no, not Well,

Christopher Smith
I mean, so there’s a lot going to fire the AI engine.

Andy Paul
Yeah, well, but also you think about it from us, you know, a human perspective is, is if you’re evaluating, think what the experience will be at one point, if you’re just doing everything sort of that way, then, you know, quote, unquote, the machines have taken over, you know, you’re gonna have this uniform, Dolly, unsatisfying buying experience, and a person’s going to shop one day a year say, Oh, I’m gonna buy from that person. Right. And that’s, I think what Colvin was also writing about when he said that, you know, our ability to thrive in an increasingly digital future is based on becoming more human, not less.

Christopher Smith
I couldn’t agree more. I mean, nobody wants to be sold, people want to be helped, you know, it’s like, I don’t reach out to a salesperson, because I want them to sell me. I’m looking for a solution, like I said, an outcome that I need, because I know that’s progress, that’s gonna move me forward, it’s going to move my business forward. Right. That’s what I’m looking for.

Andy Paul
And that’s Seth in general, I think that’s, that’s what customers want. And, and, again, part of the resource as well, this is a generational thing. You know, the, the millennial buyers that are now in charge. They won’t do it all on their own. No, as soon as there’s an element of risk involved with it, you’re going to say I need to talk to somebody. And they will. And again, they will, especially if you can help them. Right. And it’s there’s some psychology, sociology behind this as well, which I think is also speaks against what Gardner was, or whoever the research firms are talking about this is that is this whole idea of strong ties, weak ties? Yeah. Is that when you work with a bunch of people, is you develop strong ties, but there’s a report written by this one sociologist talk about this information, you know, becomes redundant, meaning, you know, a certain set of information and you keep reinforcing. And internally, that becomes the status quo. You need the weak ties, people come from outside who have a different perspective, to help you see things differently. And self-aware, individuals and organizations understand that. Right, right. How do we get smarter we bring in people to help us? Why do we hire Hale, Accenture and big consulting firms? Because they have knowledge we don’t have?

Christopher Smith
They have that different perspective or not. Right, the emotional attachments, the history, whatever, they’re able to come in and ask the question objective, ask questions to challenge, right status quo,

Andy Paul
Which is what you want. And that’s so as sellers that is our primary competitor is the status quo. But how do we compete about that? Well, we compete with that by helping the buyer through the process in a way that that is positive for them.

Christopher Smith
Makes a big difference. Mm hmm. Andy, I really appreciate you coming on sales lead, Chris. Look, thank you.

Andy Paul
Yeah

Christopher Smith
The book is sell without selling out. Get it on Amazon. Blowing up. I feel very lucky to have you here on the podcast. Thank you. It’s really a I’m so appreciative that you came on.

Andy Paul
Well, thanks for inviting me. No, it’s a great conversation. And, yeah, hopefully, people want to check out the book there, check it out on Amazon, wherever they do. And if they want to contact me, LinkedIn is a great place to do that. I’m sort of all over there. And they can also come to my website, any paul.com And we’ve got a fun little assessment there that people can take that’s help them sort of see where they sit on the spectrum between selling out and selling it. I love that.

Christopher Smith
And we’ll have all this on the show notes. In case you missed that. Be sure to check out the show notes and get that info. Be sure to connect with Andy and definitely be sure to get the book. Oh, thank you. Well, thanks again for coming on sales lead dog.

Outro
As we end this discussion on Sales Lead Dog, be sure to subscribe to catch all our episodes on social media. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Watch the videos on YouTube and you can also find our episodes on our website at empellercrm.com/salesleaddog. Sales Lead Dog is supported by Empellor CRM, delivering objectively better CRM for business guaranteed.

 

Quotes

Links

Andy Paul LinkedIn
Andy’s Consulting LinkedIn
The Sales House LinkedIn
The Sales House Website

Empellor CRM LinkedIn
Empellor CRM Website
Empellor CRM Twitter