by Nancy Calabrese | Jul 28, 2023 | Podcast
About Curt Tueffert: Curt Tueffert leads Peak Sales Strategy with over 30 years of experience in sales and sales management. His expertise has earned him the title of “America’s Master Sales Motivator.” Curt understands that motivation and knowledge go hand in hand when it comes to achieving success. He communicates this balance with the right tools to help people stay motivated. Curt is a professor of Advanced Professional Selling at the University of Houston, where he is ranked in the top 5% of professors based on student reviews. Curt’s expertise in sales and human behavior stems from his certification as a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) with Target Training International. He’s the author of “201 Sales Motivators” a collection of quotes and short editorials designed to inspire and motivate sales professionals. Curt has just completed “5 Stones For Slaying Giants”, an e-book written to address 5 critical success factors for business and life. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Curt.
In this episode, Nancy and Curt discuss the following:
- The idea of 201 sales motivators.
- The importance of motivation in sales and in life.
- Who motivates the motivator?
- Curt’s experience at the University of Houston.
- Selling a degree: reality or myth?
- The ability of students to learn the art of communication at the university.
- How can we build trust and value in the art of having a curious conversation?
- Curt’s method of building trust through the quality of questions.
- Determination of behavioral styles via DISC.
- Do the right thing next and the next thing right.
Key Takeaways:
- Our meetings on a monthly basis help a lot. It’s like iron sharpening iron. One person sharpens another that helps me stay motivated.
- Selling is not a degree yet as it goes with accreditation and how difficult it is to define sales, as a leg of a table in academia.
- In the curiosity about engaging with a prospect or a suspect or a customer or a client, be curious about who that person is, do some research on that person, and ask them about themself. That will allow you to reduce that wall of mistrust.
- When the Why gets stronger, the How gets easier.
- If you can’t change people, change people.
“I think because we’re talking about sales, whether outside sales or inside sales or sales support or sales management, we’re expected to be up, positive, enthusiastic, maybe even extroverted. But you know, Zig Ziglar once said, “‘Motivation is like bathing: You have to do it every day for it to take effect.” And we’ve got to stay motivated in order to motivate the people to at least listen to our story, engaged with us and that’s the hard part” – CURT
“ Do the right thing next and the next thing right. As it relates to the sales process, follow a process. Just like if you were a baker, follow the recipe, do the right thing next, and then that next thing, do it right. If you’re moving from prospecting to discovery, do that with absolute expertise. If you’re moving from discovery to application where you get to talk about your solution suite, do that with absolute expertise. If you’re moving from the application to the close, do that, do the right thing next and the next thing right.” – CURT
“The one takeaway is to be fascinated and curious about your career in sales and sales management. To be fascinated by other people and to be curious to connect with them. Now, let me just say that with the caveat that it might sound manufactured and artificial at first, and I understand that. But over time, when you truly love people, and you’re truly passionate about the product or service or company that you represent, those two points will intersect more often than not. And the more you’re in the game, the more you’re collecting stories from other people, the stronger and more likable and more interesting you become.” – CURT
Connect with Curt Tueffert:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and it’s time for Conversational selling – the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation! Today we’re speaking with Curt Tueffert, Curt leads Peak Sales Strategy with over 30 years of experience in sales and sales management his expertise has earned him the title of “America’s Master Sales Motivator. Curt is also a professor at the University of Houston, where he teaches Advanced Professional Selling. His study of sales and human behavior provides a strong foundation for his Leadership, Motivation, and Sales presentations. And he is the author of 201 Sales Motivators, a collection of quotes and short editorials designed to inspire and motivate sales professionals. We are thrilled you are on the show, Curt! So, everyone, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation! Welcome Curt! [1:21]
Curt Tueffert: Hey, Nancy, welcome to you and to all your guests and listeners here. I’m looking forward to our time together.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, me too. So, you know, 201 sales motivators. How did you come up with that?
Curt Tueffert: Well, as I collected different quotes from the planet, if you will, all the different places, and I’d put a little editorial underneath the quote, it just kind of rolled around. I couldn’t get 365, so I landed at 201, and I had to bind these in a binder, and it was a great project.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, you know, motivation is so important in anything, you know, in sales and in life. Why is motivation so important?
Curt Tueffert: I think because we’re talking about sales, we in the sales profession, whether outside sales or inside sales or sales support or sales management, we’re expected to be up, positive, enthusiastic, maybe even extroverted. But you know, Zig Ziglar once said, “‘Motivation is like bathing: You have to do it every day for it to take effect.” And we’ve got to stay motivated in order to motivate the people to at least listen to our story. Engaged with us and that’s the hard part. [2:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay. So, I get like you need to be, especially if you’re in a leadership role, you really need to be motivated, right? Be able to motivate your team. But who motivates the motivator?
Curt Tueffert: Well, that’s a great question. And for me, I have a group that I meet with on a monthly basis. And it’s kind of like a band of brothers. It’s other sales professionals, people who are in the industry. And it’s like iron sharpening iron. One person sharpens another that helps me stay motivated because there are times when I can’t close a door much less a sale. And I’m not, I’m not even worthy to be out in public on those days. [3:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, well, I think that’s normal for everyone. You know, another thing that intrigues me is you’re a professor, and I’m so happy to know that schools or colleges are incorporating professional-selling classes. They didn’t happen when I went to school. I think it’s a gift to people, and everybody should take it. Tell us about your experience at the University of Houston.
Curt Tueffert: You bet, Nancy. You know, we started many years ago, I think it was about 20 years ago, with the Program for Excellence in Selling. And there’s a handful of universities across the United States right now that are creating curricula and certificates in sales. And at the University of Houston, we recruit students from all disciplines. They must interview and resume into the program, and once accepted, it’s a two-year program where they take courses on basic selling, advanced selling, and sales management. They do a technology run on CRM packages. And then they do something called key account selling where they go out into the Houston community and try to go to the major corporations and sell to them either a table at a recruitment mixer where we’re doing graduation recruitment or a golf tournament. So, there’s constant hands-on selling for two years, and they graduate with their normal business degree or whatever degree they have and a certificate in selling. [4:57]
Nancy Calabrese: But why don’t they just make selling a degree?
Curt Tueffert: That’s a great question and I think it goes with accreditation and how difficult it is to define sales as a leg of a table, if you will, in academia.
Nancy Calabrese: I think I’ve said this in earlier podcasts, you know, for all the naysayers about selling, everybody’s in sales. They don’t know it. But I think it’s a gift to just be able to learn the art of communication because that’s what selling is about. Wouldn’t you agree?
Curt Tueffert: Absolutely, Nancy, that it’s all about communication, as well as some of the things about curiosity and building trust and adding value. And it’s something that we don’t typically get in an education or in an academic environment, and it’s hard to pick up on your own. [5:52]
Nancy Calabrese: I agree. And so good segue, how can we build trust and value in the art of having a curious conversation?
Curt Tueffert: That’s a great question. I think, you know, I use little cliches like ABC, always be curious. And in that curiosity about engaging with a prospect or a suspect or a customer or a client, be curious about who that person is, do some research on that person, and ask them about themself. That will allow you to reduce that wall of mistrust. And then it increases the opportunity to build a little trust and then to discover and uncover what that other person feels is of value in this sales conversation. And it starts with curiosity. And I believe it’s a muscle that you work out in the gym and it’s a want to. And I’ll steal another quote from Jim Rohn, who was a phenomenal business philosopher “When the Why gets stronger, the How gets easier”. And if you’re in sales and you’re thinking, “Man, I got to get more curious”. Why? Because it allows me to engage with other people. So, when you have a why that’s strong enough, you’ll find ways of asking questions to be curious. [7:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yep. And I don’t know if I read this or heard this, but you build trust through the quality of questions that you ask, right?
Curt Tueffert: Yes.
Nancy Calabrese: You want to get them talking. And the sales conversation is all about them. So, there’s a great need to be curious, especially in a sales conversation. You also, I researched. taking notes, doing research, being interesting and interested. Why is that important in a sales conversation?
Curt Tueffert: Well, I think we have to take notes because the world is so complex that when we ask permission to take notes about a person and we start using curiosity-based questions to uncover who they are as a person and some of the pain points and challenges. When we have a second, third, and fourth conversation, I can refer to my notes so that I can be interested, meaning I can ask permission to take notes because what you say is valuable and I can be interesting because I take the data and I formulate questions that go above this concept of the needs. It digs down into the wants and goes even further into the whys. [8:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, wow. So, in conversation with your prospects, how do you determine who they are as a person? Are there any key questions that you suggest we ask to determine? Are they the analytical type? Are they dynamic? You know, are they sociable? What do you recommend?
Curt Tueffert: That’s a great question and I’m a passionate student of all things DISC for behavioral styles.
Nancy Calabrese: Ah, me too.
Curt Tueffert: So, I’m looking for a person who’s dominant, influential, steady, or compliant. The questions I ask are more about, “Hey, I’d like to get to know you a little bit better and about maybe give me a week in the life of”, or “Hey, what do you do when you don’t do this?”. Or if it’s more of a classroom situation, “Please introduce yourself. What do you do for the company? And what are your passions? What are you passionate about?” And that allows me to unlock a conversation in the future. If the person has a unique last name, like your last name, “Where is it? What’s the origin of it?” And if the origin is Middle Eastern or European, “Wow, have you ever been? Have you done some research on that?” Or if you’re in someone’s office, you try as hard as you can not say, “hey, that big fish on the wall, did you catch that?” You try other things. And of course, for all of the people who are listening, Nancy, we’ve got LinkedIn and social media, you know if you Google that person and you find out through their profile, some unique things about them, that might be another bridge builder to say, “Hey, you know, Nancy, I was on your profile and you graduated from the university of Blank. What? What was one of the funniest things you experienced when you were at Blank?” [10:33]
Nancy Calabrese: You’re making me think of my college days. I’m trying to think what was my, I know what was my most fun.
Curt Tueffert: Well, Nancy, I would say,
Nancy Calabrese: But I’m not going to let everybody know.
Curt Tueffert: I would say, look, if you’re talking to somebody who’s under 30, you have a higher probability of tapping into their college. If you have somebody who is over 60, you might be tapping into “What do you want to do when you don’t do this anymore, or what legacy do you want to leave?” Or for you, Nancy, I would say, “Nancy, with all that experience that you have, what are some of the aha moments you discovered hosting a podcast?” [11:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Oh, I love doing this, by the way, because I mean, I get to speak to so many interesting people. Is there a story the audience would find interesting?
Curt Tueffert: Story of me or story once upon a time.
Nancy Calabrese: Any, which way do you want to go?
Curt Tueffert: You know, I guess for me, this story I have is really resonating with a couple of different of these crazy cliches. I mean, the Jim Rohn quote, “When the Y gets stronger, the how gets easier”. When I first heard that, I was driving a Honda Civic in San Diego, California, and I was on the I-5, Interstate 5, and boy, it hit me like a ton of bricks because I needed to find out what my Y was. And of course, Many years later, a guy on the TED Talk scene, his name is Simon Sinek, wrote a book called “It Starts with Why”, and he outlined companies and the whole resonation. What is it that really resonates with you on the Why? And so, I wrote a book called “Five Stones for Slaying Giants” about passion, excellence, vision, value, and confidence. As it relates to the why of my career. Why am I a speaker? Why am I a sales trainer? Why do I like selling? And just tapping into that because I love helping other people. I love solving problems. [12:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. So, you and I have been in sales our whole adult life. And what would you tell your younger self about a career in sales?
Curt Tueffert: Hmm, what would I tell my younger self? I would say, “Do the right thing next and the next thing right. As it relates to the sales process, follow a process. Just like if you were a baker, follow the recipe, do the right thing next, and then that next thing, do it right. If you’re moving from prospecting to discovery, do that with absolute expertise. If you’re moving from discovery to application where you get to talk about your solution suite, do that with absolute expertise. If you’re moving from the application to the close, do that, do the right thing next and the next thing right.” [13:41]
Nancy Calabrese: And never take for granted any step. And I’ve done that.
Curt Tueffert: Preach it, sister, preach it.
Nancy Calabrese: I’ve done that in my early career. You just must follow it, right?
Curt Tueffert: Customer calls you on the phone and says, “Hey, how much is that doggie in the window? You got to ask them about do you love animals. Do you really?” I mean, I can quote you the dog in the window. But let me ask you some questions regarding this for you. Do you have a big enough house? You got to qualify that person. Otherwise, you skipped all the steps, and you closed them on a dog and it’s not even for that person.
Nancy Calabrese: Right now, I’m with you all the way. So, tell me something that is true, that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Curt Tueffert: “something true that no one would agree with me” Okay. “If you can’t change people, change people”. And that’s a cutthroat way of sales management. It’s cutthroat saying if I can’t change you, my salesperson, who’s struggling and who can’t make quota, change people. [14:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Meaning…
Curt Tueffert: That person might be a great person, but it’s a wrong fit. [14:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Curt Tueffert: And I talked to so many people and I’m one of the people, I talked to myself in the mirror. Let’s give Bobby another chance. Let’s give Sally another chance. And I’m just saying, “Hey, look, if we’ve done everything we can, there’s always going to be those people who are straggling”. And so, you carry some, but you gotta cut others. And that’s cutthroat, but I don’t think we have time anymore because artificial intelligence, chat, GPT, and all this new technology are automating the sales process. And if you’re on the lower rungs of sales, your job may be eliminated. And so, you got to, you got to be tough about that. [15:40]
Nancy Calabrese: What did they say? Higher, slow, fire, quick.
Curt Tueffert: And I’m not firing because of I’m mean or I’m cruel. I’ve given you the chance. Here are the three podcasts you need to watch. Did you watch them? Here are the two books you need to read. Did you buy them? If you’re not even going to do that, I can’t be your coach. If you’re not going to show up for the track meet with track shoes, then you might need to find another sport. [16:09]
Nancy Calabrese: That’s true. And you know, the job of every employee is to make their supervisor’s life easier. So, if you’re carrying a person that is just not up to par, it creates so much stress from a leadership point of view. And just imagine the stress that an individual is going through, right? So, you’re really doing them justice by releasing them from a role that they’re not suited to. We are almost out of time. What is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Curt Tueffert: I think the one takeaway is to be fascinated and curious about your career in sales and sales management. To be fascinated by other people and to be curious to connect with them. Now, let me just say that with the caveat that it might sound manufactured and artificial at first, and I understand that. But over time, when you truly love people, and you’re truly passionate about the product or service or company that you represent, those two points will intersect more often than not. And the more you’re in the game, the more you’re collecting stories from other people, the stronger and more likable and more interesting you become. [17:30]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, I love it. How can my audience find you, Curt?
Curt Tueffert: You know, I’ve got a website called peaksalesstrategy.com. That’s one place I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook, and I really believe in paying it forward. So, if your listeners have any questions, comments, or concerns, they want to bounce off me, please, I’d love to help.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, wow, you’re the go-to guy and everyone out there. Take advantage of Curt’s offer. He is a sales guru. And Curt, I may be running a call or two by you. You never know in the near future.
Curt Tueffert: My pleasure.
Nancy Calabrese: So thanks for being on the show. Thank you, everyone, for listening. And make it a great sales day.
Curt Tueffert: Thank you, Nancy. [18:22]
by Nancy Calabrese | Jul 19, 2023 | Podcast
About Deb Brown Maher: Deb Brown Maher owns Deb Brown Sales, a company that helps small business owners succeed through improved sales performance. She has over thirty years of experience in sales leadership, training, and coaching. Her clients boast that she successfully moves them from “stuck” to “productive” by empowering them to change how they approach sales. Deb is passionate about helping people sell from a position of integrity. She shares her methods in her book and video training course “Sell Like Jesus: 7 Characteristics of Christ for Ethical Sales”. Deb has an impressive track record of getting results — first as a salesperson, then as a sales leader for various organizations, and now as the owner of Deb Brown Sales. She loves working with small business owners who have to sell but hate to sell. Her long-term goal is to eliminate the negative stereotype of sales by changing how people sell. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Deb.
In this episode, Nancy and Deb discuss the following:
- The reason why many people hate selling.
- Ways of changing the minds of business owners who must sell but aren’t into it.
- Selling is having a persuasive conversation.
- The history of Deb’s book: Sell Like Jesus, Seven Characteristics of Christ for Ethical Sales.
- Value of a balance of caring for others and standing our ground in sales.
- If you’re talking, you’re not selling.
- You can’t sell anything to anyone until you understand what they want to buy.
- Why nobody can convince anyone of anything.
- You don’t have to be an expert in your product to sell it effectively.
Key Takeaways:
- Changing mindset starts first with the willingness to look at sales from a different perspective.
- If you don’t have a ready response that creates a win-win scenario, you will end up in a win-lose or a lose-win, both of which are loose loops.
- If prospects know a lot and you’re telling them all the great features and benefits, you’re insulting them because you’re discounting what they know without knowing it.
- Good news for those who think you must do dog-and-pony shows – you don’t. In fact, it’s usually insulting.
- Passion drives you. But that passion alone isn’t enough to sell effectively.
- A book might be worth that expense just to read to get alternative perspectives because the phrasing, the way of saying things and doing things differently, is not intuitive.
“So, if you’re in sales, you are going to be asked to lower your price. And if you don’t have a ready response that creates the win-win scenario, then you’re going to end up in a win-lose or a lose-win, both of which are loose loops.” – DEB
“ What I did was look at how Jesus communicated. And I elevated the techniques that he used to these seven characteristics. The first one is a character, then connection, clarity, comprehension, certainty, choice, and commitment. Now you can imagine there are a lot of nuances under each one of those characteristics but basically what I did was take the steps of the sales process from preparation to setting expectations to having that sales conversation, closing, delivering, and doing the follow-up and follow-through, and applied that that structure in each of these characteristics, if that makes sense. ” – DEB
“Going back to something you said about the importance of preparation, we need to be prepared for each sales process step. And when you’re making a first contact, the goal is to go ahead and do your selling on that call if you’re in a one-call close. But most people are not. And so, the goal of that first call is to create space to have a deeper discussion, whether it’s face-to-face or a video conference, or a separate phone call where you have enough time set aside to go through the process of qualifying effectively.” – DEB
Connect with Deb Brown Maher:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Deb Brown Maher, President of Deb Brown Sales. Deb helps business owners and entrepreneurs change the way they sell from convincing a prospect that they must buy to instead being of service. She loves working with small business owners who have to sell but hate to sell. Her long-term goal is to eliminate the negative stereotype of sales by changing the way people sell. Welcome to the show, Deb. Let’s dive right in. [1:00]
Deb Brown Maher: It sounds good, Nancy.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, okay, obviously, why do so many people hate selling?
Deb Brown Maher: I think it’s because we’ve all had that horribly negative experience with a salesperson who tried to push us into buying. So, when we put that sales hat on, we don’t want to do what was done to us.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. Huh. You know, you work with business owners who must sell, but they hate selling. So how do you get them to change that mindset?
Deb Brown Maher: It starts first with the willingness to look at sales from a different perspective. So, we have to put aside the negative experiences that we’ve had and realize that there were things that were done that caused us to be offended or to feel pressured. And when we sell, we don’t have to do the same things.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, selling to me is just having a conversation with someone that you don’t know yet.
Deb Brown Maher: Absolutely. And, adding to that a structure that helps you accomplish your purposes. Because ultimately what you want is for the prospect to have a good experience, good enough that they buy, but also that it’s a good fit for you. Have you ever taken on a client that you wish you hadn’t? [2:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh yeah.
Deb Brown Maher: Yeah, the one you wish you could fire, or maybe you have fired some.
Nancy Calabrese: I have fired.
Deb Brown Maher: So, it must be good for both parties. And although win-win can be heard as a trite kind of phrase, ultimately what we really are looking to do is make sure that we experience benefit and… the prospect experiences benefit at the same time by working together. [3:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. I just want to add to my earlier comment. Selling is having a conversation with people you don’t know, but also people you do know, right?
Deb Brown Maher: Yeah, sometimes that’s harder.
Nancy Calabrese: I know it’s the art of persuasion. You know, how do I get my daughter to do something that I know she doesn’t want to do?
Deb Brown Maher: Uh huh, yep.
Nancy Calabrese: It’s all about communication. So, let’s move into your awesome book, Sell Like Jesus, Seven Characteristics of Christ for Ethical Sales. I mean, how did you even come up with that title and compare it to Jesus?
Deb Brown Maher: Well, I spend a lot of time in prayer, and I believe prayer is also a conversation. It’s just a conversation with God where I don’t hear his audible voice, but I certainly sense his leading. And one day I was talking with my coach, and he made the statement, “‘ Deb, you really ought to write a book.’ Well, Nancy, I never wanted to write.” It was never on my radar screen. So, my flippant quick response was, I don’t even know what I would write about. And then popped into my head “unless it would be Selling Like Jesus”. And as soon as I heard the words, I thought, oh no, now I’m in trouble because I’m going to have to do this. I’m going to have to write this book. [05:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. And so, what are the seven characteristics?
Deb Brown Maher: So, what I did was look at how Jesus communicated. And I elevated the techniques that he used to these seven characteristics. The first one is a character, then connection, clarity, comprehension, certainty, choice, and commitment. Now you can imagine there are a lot of nuances under each one of those characteristics but basically what I did was take the steps of the sales process from preparation to setting expectations to having that sales conversation, closing, delivering, and doing the follow-up and follow-through, and applied that that structure in each of these characteristics, if that makes sense. [6:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, okay. How long did it take you to write the book?
Deb Brown Maher: Well, there’s the long version and the short version. So, the long version is seven years. Okay.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
Deb Brown Maher: So, what happened? I told you I never aspired to be a writer. And so, I started writing and getting my thoughts down on paper. And I had a couple of life circumstances that got me off track. And each time I came back, my challenge was that I didn’t want to write just another sales book. I wanted to write something that was going to be new, and innovative, that brought a perspective to selling that wasn’t already out there. And so I struggled to come up with my outline, the chapters that I just read. [7:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
Deb Brown Maher: And so finally, after six and a half years, I was with a different coach and I said to her, I have got to get this book written. And what’s stopping me is having the skeleton to hang all the information on. She asked me three or four very insightful questions. And in 20 minutes, I had my structure. And then it only took me 10 weeks to write the book. It had been percolating for all those years, right?
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, yeah. And now your voice is being read and heard. I know that you state that sales success includes a balance of caring for others and knowing how and when to stand your ground to attain win-win results. I love that. When do we stand our ground in sales?
Deb Brown Maher: Well, the main example that I hear from almost everyone that I work with is they feel pressured to lower their price because every customer under the sun has been taught by marketing campaigns that there’s going to be a discount, some kind of percent off and they don’t ask you don’t get, so I’m going to ask, it was kind of the buyer’s mindset. [8:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Deb Brown Maher: So, if you’re in sales, you are going to be asked to lower your price. And if you don’t have a ready response that creates the win-win scenario, then you’re going to end up in a win-lose or a lose-win, both of which are loose loops.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Yeah, you know, I am very big on being prepared. And what you said just a moment ago, you must have sort of like a script for any of these objections, right? To refer to. Another thing that I’ve learned about you, and I totally agree, is if you’re talking, you’re not selling. Explain.
Deb Brown Maher: Yes. Again, the way sales have been done, we would think that we must be the expert, which means we’re doing the talking, explaining, and teaching. The problem with that is if we’re talking, we’re not learning anything about the prospect. Instead, we need to be asking questions to understand how they think. what’s important to them, what they know or don’t know about the product and service that you’re selling. [10:24]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Deb Brown Maher: Because otherwise, so if they know a lot and you’re telling them all the great features and benefits, what you’re doing is insulting them because you’re discounting what they know without knowing it.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, I’ve always said you can’t sell anything to anyone until you understand what they want to buy.
Deb Brown Maher: Right. And just because they asked you for information doesn’t give you carte blanche to go off on your spiel, your presentation. Instead, that presentation should be the very last thing that you do once you know the person is ready to buy because, at that point, you’re only going to present what’s important to them. So, it’s a time saver. It puts the kind of puts the bow on the package to seal the sale. Instead of being, you know, the song and dance and trying to impress you. And everybody sees through that. So, good news for those of you who think you must do dog and pony shows, you don’t. In fact, it’s usually insulting. [11:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Deb Brown Maher: There’s a better way, right, Nancy?
Nancy Calabrese: And as you’ve said, well, you’ve said nobody can convince anyone of anything. Right? They must come to their own conclusion.
Deb Brown Maher: Yes.
Nancy Calabrese: And earlier, you know, that you love working with small business owners who hate to sell because they probably try to convince a prospect they must buy instead of understanding their world.
Deb Brown Maher: Right. They think they must convince. That’s another misconception about sales. Sales are not about convincing. It’s about helping others discover whether they want to do business with you or not. And at the same time, you’re discovering if you want to do business with them. And that… is the win-win circle that we’re looking to complete. [12:51]
Nancy Calabrese: I totally agree. And, you know, in several of my podcasts, the doctor example comes up, you know, you go to a doctor, and they must diagnose you and how did they diagnose you? They ask questions before they can prescribe. And that’s what sales is about.
Deb Brown Maher: Yeah, we, in essence, need to be doctors of sales, doctors of selling our product or service.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, I like that. A doctorate of sales. Yeah, really, I really do like that. So, tell me something true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Deb Brown Maher: You don’t have to be an expert in your product to be able to sell it effectively. [13:45]
Nancy Calabrese: Absolutely, absolutely.
Deb Brown Maher: In fact, the more you know, the more traps you fall into because you want to tell people what you know.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. You know, it’s funny because, in our business, some customers feel that we must be experts in their business. And that is so untrue. So, we set appointments, right, for our clients.
Deb Brown Maher: Right.
Nancy Calabrese: And we don’t want to be the expert. We want to get through enough information through questioning to say ”pivot, well, let me get you on with the expert to move forward”.
Deb Brown Maher: Yes.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, and very often, and I don’t know if this has been your experience, but very often, when you do get a prospect on the phone, people automatically go into cell mode, right? Rather than just setting the appointment to prepare for the call. What are your thoughts on that? [14:43]
Deb Brown Maher: I think going back to something you said about the importance of preparation, we need to be prepared for each step of the sales process. And when you’re making a first contact, the goal of that contact is if you’re in a one-call close, then, go ahead and do your selling on that call. But most people are not. And so, the goal of that first call is to create space to have a deeper discussion, whether it’s face-to-face or a video conference, or a separate phone call where you have enough time set aside to go through the process of qualifying effectively.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, that is so good. So just another question. I mean, have you always been selling?
Deb Brown Maher: Oh, yeah, since I was eight, I made about 40 potholders on that little loom with the cloth loops. And my mom said, “Deb, I can’t use all these”. So, I said, “I’ll see if the neighbor ladies want to buy something”. And lo and behold, they did. And I caught the bug. I loved earning my own money. [16:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, that is awesome. So, you know, we’re almost up with time. What is one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Deb Brown Maher: I would like to encourage business owners to be open to looking at sales differently. You got into business because you have a passion for whatever your product or service brings to the table. And that passion drives you. That passion alone isn’t enough to sell effectively. But if you’re afraid of sales and you constantly reject learning about just some basic strategies to get better at it, then your chances are you’re undermining your ultimate business success. [17:00]
Nancy Calabrese: I totally agree with you.
Deb Brown Maher: So, I would encourage you, yeah, encourage all small business owners to take a deep breath and go, okay, maybe there is a better way to sell. And maybe, I mean, the book on Kindle is only $10 or the paperback is only $14, it might be worth that expense to just read to get alternative perspectives because the phrasing, the way of saying things, and doing things differently is not intuitive.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, how can my people find you?
Deb Brown Maher: I would direct people to my website, debrownsales.com.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, well, everyone out there, first up Deb, I really enjoyed having this conversation. I know we’re kindred spirits just in speaking with you. And I encourage my audience, everyone out there reach out to Deb. She’s got a lot of selling common sense and she also is a doctorate of sales. How do you like that, Deb?
Deb Brown Maher: Thanks for the promotion. [18:18]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, everyone makes it a great sales day. Take advantage of her book. Go look it up on Amazon so we can all sell like Jesus. See you next time. [18:33]
by Nancy Calabrese | Jul 11, 2023 | Podcast
About James Bond: James Bond, One of America’s leading Marketing & Behavioral Management Specialists, helps businesses with 5-50 employees scale their business by simplifying their management and marketing. James has more than 22 years of experience as both consultant and company insider at more than 133 U.S. companies, from smaller regional firms to divisions of several Fortune 500 companies, including Kal Kan, Amgen, Litton, Kraft Foods, Abbott Laboratories, Dannon Yogurt, Timex, Tenet Healthcare and others. James is a specialist at market introductions and managing execution of complex, strategic business initiatives in Marketing, Operations, Business Structure, Technology Development, Sales Force Structure, Sales Management, Distribution Channels Development, inter-departmental alignment, and post-merger integration. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about James.
In this episode, Nancy and James discuss the following:
- The etymology of the term brain glue.
- Mirroring effect and the incredible power of questions in conversation.
- The neuroscience behind brain glue.
- The physiological influence of humor on the human brain.
- Application of brain glue by U.S. presidents, civil rights activists, comedians, and even moms.
- Political phrases and when to use them.
- How a book title change can change a life.
- Laughter is the best medicine.
Key Takeaways:
- The most powerful human engagement tool that exists is questioning.
- You can’t be too serious, and it lightens up the nature of the conversation and the meeting.
- Political phrases do not make sense, but they grab your attention; they stick to the brain.
- Logic can help, but you must be triggering the emotional sides of the brain, or people will not buy from you!
- If you can get the judge to laugh and if you can get the jury to laugh at you, they suddenly want you to win.
“Brain glue focuses on two basic areas. There are many, but there are two basic areas. Redintegration, which is the brain’s need for completion, is one of them. And then asymmetry, which is when you could present something that is not balanced.” – JAMES
“ By the way, humor is very important. The brain sends chemicals throughout the body. And so, we have something called cortisol, which is the fear and flight drug that goes through our body. So, if somebody scares you or anger you, you get cortisol through your bloodstream. Well, cortisol stays in your bloodstream for up to 36 hours, making you highly resistant to buying anything or agreeing to something you wouldn’t agree to. So, if you go in trying to sell somebody, and they’re really angry because, I don’t know, their client did something, or their wife or husband did something or whatever else, it’s very hard to get them to say, “Yes,” and agree to buy your product or service. And the reason is that cortisol is basically a “getaway from me drug” going through your body. But Oxytocin is triggered; Oxytocin is the antidote to cortisol, and it’s triggered when you tell a joke. Or you do something fascinating, but usually jokes really work well.” – JAMES
“Absolutely, our body wants to smile, and we want to laugh. I mean, life is too short. And so, when to smile and we want to laugh. And so, when you’re working with clients, it helps you, and I know depression is a big thing these days, okay? Well, you got to force yourself to laugh. There was an editor of a major New York magazine, and the doctors told him he has like three months to live. And so, he decided he was going to start laughing. He’s going to force himself to laugh every single day. He’s going to come up with jokes and everything. He’s going to watch movies that are funny. He’s just going to laugh every day. And suddenly he lived, I think, for like nine years after that.” – JAMES
Connect with James Bond:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with James Bond, one of America’s leading marketing and behavioral management specialists who helped famed investor Warren Buffett to simplify growth and selling at one of his companies. James helps businesses with 5 to 50 employees scale their business by simplifying their management and marketing. James has over 22 years of experience as a consultant and company insider at more than 133 US companies, including Amgen, Kraft Foods, Dan and Yogurt, and many more. So, welcome to the show, James. Let me start by saying a catchy name. I’m sure you get that a lot. [1:12]
James Bond: Hi, Nancy. Hi, Nancy. Yeah, no, you’re the first person this hour.
Nancy Calabrese: Real, oh just this hour?
James Bond: This hour.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, if that’s an icebreaker you’ve got the best one.
James Bond: Yeah, people hang up on me sometimes. I have this guy Jesse James was an investment banker. I don’t know if that’s the best name for a banker, by the way. Jesse James was a bank robber. And I called his office and I said, “Hey, is Jesse in”? And she said, “Who’s calling?”. I said “James Bond” and she said “Yeah, right. And hung up on me”.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh well, you got a catchy name, so anyway, it’s a great icebreaker. And you know, in doing my homework about you, you have coined the term brain glue. Tell us all what that is. [1:55]
James Bond: It’s brain triggers. We don’t realize that we have, there are patterns that are in the brain. And when we can use those patterns, we can get dramatic results. Yeah, just, I mean, I’ll give you an example. There’s something called redintegration, not reintegration, but redintegration, which is the brain’s need for completion. It’s why we watch crappy movies to the end. I went into the living room, and I said to my wife, she was watching a TV show. I said, “Is this any good?” And she says, “No, stupid”. I said, “So why are you watching it?” She said, “I want to see how it turns out”. Well, questions, you know, I could ask, like “What’s the most powerful engagement tool that exists, human engagement tool?” I’m using it now, aren’t I? Can you tell me what I’m doing? I’m using questions. Questions are powerful. And so, one of the things I focus a lot on is power questions. I’ll give you an example of three incredible power questions, okay? Processes: past, present, future. So, we were selling advertising so we would go to somebody, and we would say “Have you ever worked with an advertising agency before” and They would say “Yes” or “No” and then either yes or no, it doesn’t matter, we would say well “What worked for you and what didn’t work for you” and they would tell us and then we would say: Present “so are you using an agency now?” So “Yes” or “No”, “What’s working for you? What’s not working for you”. And the Future: “What would be ideal as far as the situation is concerned?” [3:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Yes.
James Bond: I remember we won Seagram’s, the booze company.
Nancy Calabrese: Right?
James Bond: And I went in there and started asking him that, like if you ever work with, back then I was a photographer, eventually built an advertising agency. But as I was a photographer and doing advertising, I asked him, “Have you ever worked with photographers before?” I said, “Well, yeah, of course”. They said, “Well what’s worked for you and what hasn’t worked for you?”. He started explaining that they spend $100,000, sometimes 50 to $100,000 on bottles, that bottles and how the bottles are made, and the glasses used and all that stuff, and the labeling is so important for them. In the olden days, when I first started, I would have just walked in and shown a portfolio hoping I found something that was fantastic. I would take them through like 50 different examples. [4:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
James Bond: Now or then, what I did was I asked them questions first. And then, as he explained the bottles were important, I went, oh, and I pulled it out. I had a lighting catalog from a lighting manufacturer. And I said, well, we did work with this lighting manufacturer. It has like 600 lamps and lights and chandeliers and stuff. And here we did this, where we showed off. And I started explaining to them how we’re experts in doing glass and plastic and different textures. And they went, “Oh, we got to hire you”.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
James Bond: And so, going from. you know, just showing a portfolio to asking questions first. In fact, what I would do is I would say, I’d like to show you samples of what we do, and I’d lean forward, and they would lean forward getting ready to see it. And I’d say, but if it’s okay, can I ask you a few questions first? And I’d lean back, and they’d lean back, little dance, you know? And then I’d ask the questions.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, I love that. It’s mirroring, right?
James Bond: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, very much so. You know that they’re engaged. So, what’s the neuroscience behind brain glue? [5:18]
James Bond: Well, brain glue focuses on two basic areas. There are many, but there are two basic areas. Redintegration, which is the brain’s need for completion is one of them. And then asymmetry, which is when you could present something that is not balanced. You know, I’ll give you asymmetry in an example with Marilyn Monroe. A lot of people don’t know this about Marilyn Monroe. So, Marilyn Monroe, her name was Norma Jean. And I think it was her manager that said, you should change your name to Marilyn. And then her stepfather, I’m pretty sure it was her stepfather was named Monroe. So, she came up with the name Marilyn Monroe, which uses alliteration, the repetition of sound. When I’m describing my product, I say, or my book, I say, well, it teaches you how to light the fire of desire in your buyer. And people go like, oh, okay. So that’s what you want to do. You want to trigger the emotion part, okay? But so, the first thing she did was she changed her name. Then she loved Jean Harlow, who was early in the motion picture industry. [6:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
James Bond: And Jean Harlow had platinum blonde hair. So, Marilyn got the same hairdresser as Jean Harlow and got her hair dyed the same color, platinum blonde. But she had a beauty mark on her cheek, and she would cover it up with makeup. But one day she was looking at photographs of Jean Harlow and she noticed that in some photographs, Jean Harlow has a birthmark on her cheek and sometimes it’s on her chin. And then she realized, “Wait a second, I bet she doesn’t even have a beauty mark. I bet she just puts a dot on her face to bring attention to herself”. And so, Marilyn did that and believed that, that she became famous in large part because of that beauty mark. In fact, Cindy Crawford, who’s a supermodel, when she has a beauty mark over, I think it’s her left lip.
Nancy Calabrese: Right, above her lip, right.
James Bond: And, Yeah, just above her lip. And she said when she was a little girl, she begged her mommy, you know, “Can you please take me to the doctor and get it removed?” And now she says, “I am so glad my mom didn’t get it removed because I believe I became a supermodel in a large part because of this beauty mark”. So, I’m not telling everybody “Go out there when you go on presentations and put a dot on your face”, but it will certainly bring attention to you. [7:33]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, it sounds like, you know, you just want to be different, right? You want to do something that’s different from what people remember.
James Bond: Well, and jokes work this way also. You know, if you know what people are thinking, and you could say something different, then it grabs their attention. So, I love the joke, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, congratulations. Okay, it’s like what?
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, right.
James Bond: By the way, humor is very important. Humor, so the brain, you know, sends chemicals throughout the body. And so, we have something called cortisol, which is the fear and flight drug that goes through our body. So, if somebody scares you or makes you angry, you get cortisol going through your bloodstream. Well, cortisol stays in your bloodstream for up to 36 hours, and it makes you highly resistant to buying anything or agreeing to something that you wouldn’t agree to. So, if you go in trying to sell somebody, and they’re really angry because, I don’t know, their client did something or their wife or husband did something or whatever else, it’s very hard to get them to say yes, and agree to buy your product or service. And the reason is that cortisol is basically, get away from me, get away from me. It’s a getaway from me drug going through your body. But oxytocin is triggered, oxytocin is the antidote to cortisol, and it’s triggered when you tell a joke. or you do something fascinating, but usually jokes really work well. And so, if you can tell the joke, and I’m terrible at jokes, I don’t know.
Nancy Calabrese: I think, yeah, humor is so powerful, right?
James Bond: Right, absolutely.
Nancy Calabrese: You can’t be too serious, and it lightens up the nature of the conversation and the meeting. But I want to go back to something. Now, I know you talked about Marilyn Monroe, but, and you also state that US presidents, civil rights activists, comedians use rain glue. Okay, we talked a little bit about that, but how do you… the presidents and the civil rights activists. And you said even moms use their brain glue. I love that. [9:43]
James Bond: Yeah. Well, so let me give you the mom first. So, this mom comes to me and says, “You’re an expert in brain glue. Can you help me with my 14-year-old son?” I’m like, “Okay, what am I getting into?” And she says, “So my 14-year-old son says, Mommy, why do we have to follow so many rules in life?” Okay, so I said, “So the first tool we’re going to use is rhyme. So why do we have to follow so many rules in life? What rhymes with rules? How about fools? Only fools don’t follow rules. Okay, so that’s part of it. I could use that, but let me use a metaphor, you know, and add to that. And so, I brainstormed with the mom and we came up with a metaphor and I sat down with her and her son and I said to her son, so you were asking your mom why we have to follow so many rules in life, right? And he said, yeah. I said, well, think about it. When you’re thirsty, you could drink out of the toilet, but why would you want to? Remember, only fools don’t follow rules. And his response, hmm, that makes sense. First getting a 14-year-old to say anything makes sense is a miracle, so I quickly escaped before he asked another question. [10:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh my God.
James Bond: But does it make sense, or did I just simply trigger the emotional sides of the brain? So here are two political statements, okay? Political phrases do not make sense, but they grab your attention, they stick to the brain. You can’t hug a child with nuclear arms, okay? How about this one? It’s sort of a joke. The right to bear arms is almost as crazy as the right to arm bears.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh God.
James Bond: Now, both these phrases are ridiculous from a logical standpoint, but they trigger the emotional sides of the brain. And when they trigger the emotional sides of the brain, they resonate with us. And there are famous studies that show that more than 90% there’s this Harvard professor, Gerald Zaltman and Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman. And both show that more than 90% of buying decisions are triggered on the emotional side of the brain, not the logical side.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep.
James Bond: Logic can help, but you have to be triggering the emotional sides of the brain or people will not buy from you. So, we often hear people say, Know, like, and trust. Okay, you want people to know you, like you, and trust you. Well, yeah, that’s true. But you can’t just depend on that. If you can do an analogy, I mean, John Gray, this is what turned me on to all this. Well, one of the things was John Gray, I was at a conference, and he was telling me, he wrote the book, Men, Women, and Relationships. Fabulous, one of the best relationship books ever. But he only sold a few thousand copies. Then he got this crazy idea. What if I changed the title to Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus? You know, and just tweak the content so it refers to it throughout the book. Guess what happened? [12:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah!
James Bond: Instead of his books just sitting on a shelf, almost overnight, half a million books sold, then a million, then two million, then five million. He sold 50 million books, 50 million. He went from a few thousand to 50 million just because he changed the title. Like, wow.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
James Bond: when I first started recognizing how powerful brain glue is, first you do the research in it. I’ve been doing this for like about 35 years, by the way. I’m old. So, I had these three construction guys, guys in a construction business, and after 10 years they had 2 million in sales. In one year, by applying this, I got them to 10 million, and then they reached 32 million two years later. So, we went from 2 million to 32 million just by tweaking how they describe their business. Okay? By the way, when I got up to 10 million, they said, hey, Bond, it was supposed to be 12 million our goal. And my response is, shut up. [13:33] They bought each other the biggest brand-new BMWs. They had three BMWs. But what I did was,
Nancy Calabrese: I hope they bought you one.
James Bond: No, they didn’t. That’s what
Nancy Calabrese: They should have. Ha-ha.
James Bond: That’s what pissed me off. These guys are rich, and they walk away. And I’m like, OK, better look for another client. But they had fun. And it was fun working with them. So, I started with a whiteboard, and I said, let’s make a shopping list of all the different types of clients you go after. I said, everybody, let’s think of everybody you’ve worked with, okay, or that you like to work with. And out of that, I said, okay, now we’re going to play a game. I want you to pick one that you’re going to focus on and say no to everybody else. I said, well, we don’t want to do that. I said we don’t want to say no to people. I said, I got it, but just we’re playing a game, okay? And so, we went through the list, and they finally said. Fire restoration for insurance companies. We’ve done it for two insurance companies, just a couple of clients, where a client had a fire. And when a client has a fire, the first thing you do is go in and check the frame of the building to make sure it’s not damaged. If it’s damaged, you got to tear down the whole building. But if it isn’t, then you must fix it and make sure it’s not going to catch fire again and all that stuff and make sure the smell’s gone. I said, okay, so that’s good. So, let’s pretend you’re focusing on that. And so, what’s the first thing that your client thinks of when he’s ready to hire someone like you, we’ll fire, you know, because my client just had a fire. So why don’t we call you guys the fire extinguisher for insurance companies? And they went, huh? They said that as they’re laughing, as they’re saying this, huh, that’s funny. So yeah, we’ll get the website FireX, but we’ll call you guys the fire extinguisher. And when you go in, that’ll be a big part of your pitches. You’re going to say, hey, whenever your client has a fire, we’re your fire extinguishers. You call us and we’re going to extinguish not the fire, we’re not going to put out the fire, but we’re going to extinguish it. And they had fun. This is one of the things that people don’t understand. You got to have fun when you’re going in to present your product or idea. I mean, I guess if you have a funeral home, it might not be exactly the thing, but for most businesses. [15:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
James Bond: So, they did this, and they said two things happened. The first one was we had a ton of fun because we said, think of us as your fire extinguisher and clients would laugh as, you know, Laughers are buyers, okay? And so, they’re laughing. And they said, this is so much fun, we got to go to other insurance companies. And they finally said no to everybody else because they were so busy with focusing on insurance companies with the deal with a fire that their business grew like big gangbusters. [16:03]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. And it all started with fire extinguishers.
James Bond: That’s right, which made them laugh. It still makes them laugh. I have a friend who’s Robin Thompson, and she’s on the East in Detroit on ABC television as the personal finance coach, okay? And so, she created this program, and it’s very left brain. This is the whole thing in the right brain, which is the emotion size of the brain that you want to trigger the emotion size of the brain. And so, she tells, for women who make over $100,000 a year, but you suddenly realize that most of your money is going to pay off debts and it’s not really, you’re not getting to keep any of it. And so, it’s very left-brain logic, do this first, check your credit card, how much money you make, and everything else. And so, I got her to include this in the pitch. Money isn’t funny, okay? When you laugh, you’re laughing, everybody laughs when they hear it because the word funny just kind of works. And I said, so I’m training her. And she’s having a riot with this now because she says all this logic and she stops and says, remember, money isn’t funny. Okay. [17:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, I love it.
James Bond: She laughs every time she says it, but it triggers the emotional sides of the brain, and it makes it more fun when she’s presenting to people. And they buy more and more people buy. I have these two friends who are in the top 100 attorneys. One is in the top 10 attorneys in the country. And both told me how they use humor all the time. Because if you can get the judge to laugh and if you can get the jury to laugh at you, they suddenly want you to win. It’s just a funky thing, you know? And so, yeah, just jokes work. [18:02]
Nancy Calabrese: I am so about humor, especially in a sales position. You got to have fun. You must be passionate about what you do. You must know how to do it and do it well. But you’ve got to throw in humor too I think that helps to create bonds with your prospects and your customers.
James Bond: Oh, absolutely. And humor is the, you know, laughter is the best medicine. And it’s true. It makes people feel better. I feel bad that people like Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, don’t do comedy at colleges anymore because they’re going to offend somebody. It’s like, shut up.
Nancy Calabrese: I know.
James Bond: I mean, you know, and so, but you must laugh. It makes you feel better. So, if you go in and you’re talking to a prospect and you make them laugh, he wants to buy from you. He’s going to want you to be around him or her. She’s going to want you to be around because. I mean, not just humor, but if they reckon, I work with this company, martial arts equipment company in a turnaround, okay? And when it’s a turnaround, it means they’re in trouble and they’re afraid they’re all going to lose their jobs. The owner’s afraid he’s going to go bankrupt and all this stuff. And so, when people are stressed, it turns off creativity. And so, I had this joke I told, which they tortured me with for over a year, and it was, So the maintenance man is hiding in the maintenance closet. And whenever people would come to show up, he would open the door and scream, supplies, you know, not surprise, supplies. So, I would be walking through the company, and I look inside the window of somebody’s office, and I could see the stress on their face, you know, I don’t know, we didn’t have enough product, or a customer is not happy or what it is or didn’t have supplies. And so, I’d open the door and I’d say, how’s it going? They see me and they’d immediately smile and go, supplies. Every time they saw me, I was tortured with it. But it changed them. [19:30]
Nancy Calabrese: I love it. Yeah.
James Bond: It changed their body language and suddenly they went from being stressed, you could see it in their face, to laughing.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
James Bond: I see how they’re going, oh, we have this crappy, this client is just like terrible and it’s okay.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh my God.
James Bond: But it’s easier for them to deal with it and handle it and sell more when they’re laughing. I mean, life is too short. I saw this guy who had a t-shirt that said, “Life sucks and then you die”. And I’m going, no, no. Although I know some people that can really use that T-shirt by the way, okay. But I mean.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I don’t know how many people know this, but it takes fewer muscles to smile than frown.
James Bond: Absolutely, our body wants to smile, and we want to laugh. I mean, life is too short. And so, when to smile and we want to laugh. And so, when you’re working with clients, it helps you and I know depression is a big thing these days, okay? Well, you got to force yourself to laugh. There’s, I might forget his name, but it was an editor of a major New York magazine, and they told him he has like three months to live. He has this illness. And so, he decided he was going to start laughing. He’s going to force himself to laugh every single day. He’s going to come up with jokes and everything. He’s going to watch movies that are funny. He’s just going to laugh every day. And suddenly he lived, I think, for like nine years after that. [20:47]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
James Bond: And it’s because, yeah, humor, laughter is the best medicine.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I think this is your next gig. You know, if you’re ever looking to get, you want to get rid of brain glue, go into humor. Humor and conversation. I love it. I love it. I can’t believe we were at the end.
James Bond: I’m terrible at it, but I mean Well, well, just can I just tell one quick line?
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
James Bond: Warren Buffett, okay, he loves humor, and he loves metaphors, okay? And so, one of the lines he uses is, only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked, okay? What he means is, you know, only when times get tough do you realize who’s the most innovative and everything else. But if you say that, it goes, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, you know. But if you say, only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked, it’s like you’re laughing while you’re going, yeah. [21:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Holy cow. Unbelievable. James, I loved having this conversation with you. And I really hope we can continue at some point because I know you have a whole lot more information. So, I thank you for coming to the show and sharing your expertise and humor. And everybody out there, grab a copy of his book, Brain Glue, and get in touch with James. How can they reach you, by the way?
James Bond: Well, the easiest way is if you go to Amazon and you do braingluebook.com, it’ll take you right to the book. And then just going through that, it’s easy to get in touch with me from that. But yeah, Nancy, thank you for having me.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, it was a pleasure and you sure made me laugh and I’m sure people listening in are going to have some good chuckles. So, make it a great sales day everyone and we’ll see you next time. [22:30]
by Nancy Calabrese | Jun 29, 2023 | Podcast
About Jennifer Standish: Jennifer Standish is the author of Permission Granted: Live Your Life Full of Joy and Peace, a book in which she shares 91 self-limiting beliefs that, as a result of being raised by a narcissistic mother and an enabling father, she learned growing up and realized as an adult that she needed to change to be happy. She is also the Founder and President of Give Yourself Permission, which helps women create new rules for their lives, so they can overcome limiting attitudes that prevent them from achieving career success and finding happiness. Before becoming a transformational coach, she founded Prospecting Works, a successful business that assists salespeople in overcoming cold-call reluctance. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Jennifer.
In this episode, Nancy and Jennifer discuss the following:
- Cold Calling: why people hate making and receiving cold calls.
- Being a step ahead in the conversation weaponed with a script.
- Jennifer’s authentic warm and fuzzy approach to cold calling.
- How mental discipline helps overcome NO and move forward to Yes.
- Why people drift from the best practices to where they are most comfortable?
- How you say is sometimes more important than What you say.
- Start your conversation with honesty and it’ll reward you with an appointment.
- Tips on contacting C-suite executives and remaining confident.
Key Takeaways:
- If you’re calling the right people and have a great delivery and a reasonable script they’re going to take your call and you’re going to get an appointment.
- You must believe in what you’re calling about to your core, and you must believe that you’re helping people.
- NO is not a forever NO. Moreover, it is never personal.
- Cold calling can actually be fun, and you can enjoy it!
“Let’s look at it like it’s a Hollywood script. Actors are memorizing scripts and they memorize them to the degree that when they speak to them, it sounds authentic. That’s what you need to do. You maintain control of the conversation because over time it becomes very predictable what people are going to say. Stick to the same script. Don’t reinvent it every single call. Say the same thing over and over again. And you’ll be able to predict what people say in response, and then you’ll be able to then craft your responses accordingly. So, it really makes your life so much easier if you know what you’re going to say ahead of time.” – JENNIFER
“Your delivery I think is 80% of it. If you’re confident and you believe in what you’re saying, even with a mediocre script, you’re still going to schedule appointments. You have somebody with a very weak delivery and an amazing script, that person’s not going to have any success because, in cold calling, our voice communicates so much more than the words that we’re saying. And so, when you don’t have a face and you don’t have facial inspections and body language, all those little nuances in somebody’s voice become incredibly important. And so, people follow confidence.” – JENNIFER
“So be confident in what you’re communicating and realize that you’re really only selling the meeting. You’re not selling a $3 million insurance policy, right? You’re just selling the meeting. You’re just asking for an introduction. And if you approach this with confidence, I mean, young, eager people, whether you’re a financial advisor or you’re a commercial insurance or whatever, where age might be seen as an advantage. You know, people still follow confidence and people will work with a young producer who’s eager in building a book because they know they’re going to get outstanding client service. So, I say, call, ask for the appointment. It’s an introductory call. You’re not asking them to like hand you a ton of money. You’re just asking for time.” – JENNIFER
Connect with Jennifer Standish:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Jennifer Standish, a transformation coach with a strong background in cold calling and helping salespeople overcome call reluctance. In fact, she was the president of Prospecting Works, a cold -calling consultancy that designed outbound calling programs for clients. Her warm and fuzzy approach to cold calling is extremely effective and appeals to women, introverts, and those who don’t want to appear salesy. And in addition, Jennifer helps women in corporate America get the… formal and financial recognition they deserve by overcoming self-limiting beliefs, building confidence, reducing fear and anxiety, changing their image in the eyes of management, advocating for themselves, and finally, transforming their relationship and communication skills. Now this is a topic so close to my heart, everyone. Welcome to the show, Jennifer. Let’s get started. [1:33]
Jennifer Standish: Yes, absolutely, this is going to be great.
Nancy Calabrese: So, you know, obviously the question to start with is, why do so many people hate cold calling? What’s your opinion on that?
Jennifer Standish: Well, it depends. Are you asking about the people who are receiving the cold calls or are you asking about the people who are making them?
Nancy Calabrese: Great question! I would say both.
Jennifer Standish: Because yes. So, the people that don’t like making cold calls, what I have found in working in the cold calling arena for 20-30 years is that call reluctance stems from self-limiting beliefs regarding what we were taught as children, that we are not to interrupt, we are not to be a pest, we need to be “don’t speak until spoken to”. So, it’s a lot of really childhood foundational rules that get in the way. And many times, my clients, when I give them permission to call a business during business hours to discuss business, very often that’s all they need. Because it’s like, this is how business gets done, you know, is by calling and having conversations. So, you’re allowed to do this. Now the people who are receiving the cold calls, the reason why they don’t like the cold calls is because the cold callers most often are not doing their homework. And they’re just calling too many people, they’re not focused. I always tell people, if you’re calling the right people and have a great delivery and, you know, a reasonable script they’re going to take their call and you’re going to get an appointment. But most people aren’t calling with integrity and they’re calling way too many people and what they’re saying is something generic and so they are annoying. [3:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, you know, it’s funny. We very much believe in scripting and or talk tracks. Some people don’t like the word scripts, but by having a script, what you’re doing is you’re honing your skills each and every time you make the call so that you don’t sound scripted, and you sound different and professional. What are your thoughts on that?
Jennifer Standish: I agree. I say, let’s look at it like, you know, it’s a Hollywood script. I mean, actors are memorizing scripts and they memorize them to the degree that when they speak to them, it sounds authentic. That’s what you need to do. And what it helps is, but you maintain the control of the conversation because you know that over time, you know, it’s very predictable what people are going to say. Stick to the same script. Don’t reinvent it every single call. Say the same thing over and over again. And you’ll be able to predict what people say in response, and then you’ll be able to then craft your responses accordingly. So, it really makes your life so much easier if you know what you’re going to say ahead of time. [4:33]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, it’s so funny you say that every time I onboard a new employee, I use that example of an actor or an actress who is your favorite one. And now you’re becoming that person. You’re just handed a script that you’re going to have to study to give the performance. And, and I think it’s a good way for them to understand, you know, the value and the benefit of the script. Okay, so another thing I wanted to talk to you about is you said you have a warm and fuzzy approach to cold calling. What is that?
Jennifer Standish: So, my approach is based on authenticity. You must believe in what you’re calling about to your core, and you must believe that you’re helping people. Then you must have integrity. You’ve got to really do your homework and make sure that you’re calling only your very, very, very best prospects. You’re not calling everyone under the sun. You’re approaching it from a willingness to help. You’re not approaching it to sell anything. And I only set or what I teach is introductory appointments because it lowers the barriers. If you’re calling and you are implying that you’re going to ask them to make a business decision, well then, the walls go up and say, well, the person is like, I’m not prepared to make a business decision. But it’s so much easier if you just say, I just want a simple introduce myself. So that way, sometime down the line, you may need me or… you may be in a bind, and you need a backup resource. So, you know, that to me is, considering what else is out there, all the other approaches to me, it is very warm and fuzzy. [6:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. You know, again, I think that when I think of warm and fuzzy, one thing that we do each and every week is we train and we recognize that this is a NO business, and we never take it personally, right? You just got to keep going and keep going. And ultimately, you’re going to get to that YES.
Jennifer Standish: Yes, absolutely. And even the NOes eventually do come around. There was somebody on LinkedIn who works for a cold calling software company, and they said that they did a study about all the times that it was either a neutral response or a negative response. And when you followed up with those people, there was just like this huge uptick in engagement. And it was like, because when you hear No, it’s really “no, not now”. It’s not NO forever. And so, it is never personal. And this is the thing that happens with cold callers who don’t have control over their own thoughts is when we’re calling people and we’re getting lots of voicemails and we’re not hearing back, it’s so easy to fill in the blanks. You know, oh, they’re not interested. They don’t want to hear from me. But you have to have a lot of mental discipline and not fill in the blanks because you really don’t know why they’re not calling you back. And they may be interested at some point, but now is not the time. So, you just move on. [7:57]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh. You mentioned earlier also, you believe that cold calling training doesn’t stick. Why does that happen? Or some of it doesn’t stick.
Jennifer Standish: Some of it doesn’t, well, I think that there’s drift and people, they will always drift to where they are most comfortable, which is why ongoing training, you can never stop and you always must bring people back to best practices, back to their script. There was somebody that I was working with recently who, I don’t know why he did this, but it was, he, he said, and I work for, and then he named the company. And I don’t know why he needed that little phrase, but it was near impossible to get him to stop saying it. And he would do well for, you know, a couple days and then he would drift back. And so, I think that it’s just human nature that we go to where we’re most comfortable and people will drift away from best practices or the scripts that they’ve been given. [9:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, every time I think about picking up the phone, I think about an opportunity to build a relationship, right? Communication is so critical in sales and using in our world, using our voice and having the right mindset, you know, gives us an advantage, right? We become those actors. Why? would say our voices and our mindset be even more important than the script.
Jennifer Standish: Well, delivery, your delivery I think is 80% of it. If you’re confident and you believe in what you’re saying, even with a mediocre script, you’re still going to set schedule appointments. You have somebody with a very weak delivery and an amazing script, that person’s not going to have any success because in cold calling, our voice communicates so much more than the words that we’re saying. Right? And so, people, when you don’t have a face and you don’t have facial inspections and body language, all those little nuances in somebody’s voice become incredibly important. And so, people follow confidence. If you… I one time was years and years and years ago, I was calling and setting appointments for bank executives. Somebody picked up the phone. I wasn’t expecting them to pick up the phone. And I don’t know why I said, but I was like, we’re a great bank. And it was ridiculous. It was like, I’m like, oh my God, I can’t believe. But he scheduled the appointment and he’s like, I want to meet with a great bank. And he told the banker, I don’t know who you had calling for you, but she was amazing. Now I look at that as like, oh no, that was a mistake. I shouldn’t have said it, but it was said with such honesty. And confident, right? And so delivery is always going to be the biggest thing. You have to have the right place. [11:14]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, several of my people will say right up front, you know, this is a cold call, and if you’d like to hang up on me, I understand. And they almost invariably say, no, no, no, no, go on. They appreciate the humor and the honesty.
Jennifer Standish: Yes. Oh, absolutely. There’s also a technique where people will say, hey, can I just grab a couple seconds to tell you why I’m calling and then you can decide how we proceed. It’s almost like it’s asking for permission. And for a lot of people that have call reluctance, that’s a nice way to go because once you receive permission to talk, then the anxiety lessens and then you’re like, okay, well now I’ve got 20, 30 seconds to say what I want to say and they’re listening.
Nancy Calabrese: We chatted before our podcast about executives and how C-suite executives will take cold calls, right?
Jennifer Standish: Yes. [12:08]
Nancy Calabrese: And a lot of people, I guess, have the call reluctance to speak to them. What advice do you give to those that may be intimidated by contacting a C-suite executive?
Jennifer Standish: So, if they’re intimidated, and this also, this often happens in commercial insurance, where you’ve got a young commercial insurance producer and they’re calling Presidents or CEOs of big companies, and they’re inevitably, the people who they’re calling are their father’s age or their grandfather’s age. And so, they feel like they don’t have the authority. And so, I tell people, I was like, listen, you do this day in and day out. You know more about your business than these Presidents and CEOs do because they don’t do it all day long. They run their business. [12:54]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Jennifer Standish: So be confident in what you’re communicating. Realize that you’re really only selling the meeting. You’re not selling a $3 million insurance policy, right? You’re just selling the meeting. You’re just asking for an introduction. And if you approach this with confidence, I mean, young, eager people, whether you’re a financial advisor or you’re a commercial insurance or whatever, where age might be seen as an advantage. You know, people still follow confidence and people will work with a young producer who’s eager in building a book because they know they’re going to get outstanding client service. So, I say, call, ask for the appointment. It’s an introductory call. You’re not asking them to like hand you a ton of money. You’re just asking for time.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Another thing that we pay attention to, and perhaps some salespeople aren’t aware of this, but the purpose of a cold call is to schedule the appointment, not to go into cell mode. What do you have to say about that? [14:00]
Jennifer Standish: I agree 100%. And that it’s really, you’re trying to get an appointment, you’re not trying to sell. You’re not trying to close any deals. That’s not what this is about. And I think the people who do approach it that way, where they’ll say, you don’t want to explore the opportunity of working together, want to see if you have any needs that we can help. It’s like, oh, you are just, you’re burdening your call with so much. Like, no, back yourself up. And just make it an introduction before the end of the appointment. Then when you have the appointment, then you build rapport, and then you are given the permission to sell. But in a cold call, you don’t have permission to sell.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Why, I think simply, Jennifer, if you go into cell mode in a first-time conversation, you really don’t have an opportunity to do the research and properly prepare for a lengthier discussion. Would you agree with that?
Jennifer Standish: I would, oh, absolutely, absolutely. A lot of times my students will ask, well, what if they’re available right then and there? And I was like, okay, well, unless you’re calling truckers or people who are on the road in, you know, can’t hold, I always, always say, you know, now is not a really good time for me. I don’t have enough time to do this. Let’s schedule at a later date so that you do have the appropriate. Do the research. You really, and I also, when I’m in a cold calling mode, I just want to make calls. I don’t want to then switch modes and have an in-depth conversation with somebody. I’m not prepared. So, you’re doing yourself a disservice as well as the prospect of disservice. [15:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. What would be your recommendation to everyone listening? How many calls should they make or how much time should they spend in cold call prospecting every day?
Jennifer Standish: It really depends on where you are in your business. If you’re a new business, 80% of your time should be spent setting a point. But if you are in a mature business where you’ve got a lot of repeat clients, a repeat business, you probably don’t have to be prospecting as much. But I think it depends really on the industry and where you are.
Nancy Calabrese: So tell me something that you know is true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Jennifer Standish: That cold calling can actually be fun, and you can enjoy it. And you can enjoy it. And I’ve had great conversations with people, and I’ve become good friends with people who have cold called me and, or I have cold called. And so, I tell everyone, take every single cold call that comes your way. I wrote an article year ago about like the seven reasons why an executive should take a cold call. A lot of it has to do with, nobody else is qualified to vet that call other than you. A lot of it has to do with karma. If your people are cold calling, well then you want your prospects to take calls, then you should take all the calls that come to you.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Jennifer Standish: I also think you never really know who’s on the other end and it could be somebody that could transform your business. [17:23]
Nancy Calabrese: It’s all relationship building, you know? And I’m looking and we’re almost up with time, but I had a call today with a gentleman who was contacted by one of my people. And I had spoken with him a couple of years ago and long story short, we’re speaking again next week. And he was very complimentary of my caller. Now there’s nothing like hearing that, in this business, right?
Jennifer Standish: Yes, and I will tell you.
Nancy Calabrese: There’s so much churn and burn and you need to just approach it, I think, with the smile on your face, the level of confidence that you speak of, and the rest will come into play.
Jennifer Standish: I time and time again, I tell people, people thank me for calling them. People thank me for reaching out. Thank you for thinking of me. I really appreciate it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that from a prospect. [18:23]
Nancy Calabrese: It’s rewarding.
Jennifer Standish: It is. It is. It’s an amazing reward.
Nancy Calabrese: So, listen, how can my people find you?
Jennifer Standish: LinkedIn is the best place to get me. Um, I have all my contact information. I even give you my phone number and I encourage people to call because I take all the calls. But LinkedIn, Jennifer Standish, I’m right there. You’ll, you know, reach out, schedule a meeting. Um, I work with companies. I design outbound calling programs. I work with individuals. Uh, I am a leadership.
Nancy Calabrese: All right.
Jennifer Standish: Career coach.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, you know, every first of all, Jennifer, I really enjoyed having the opportunity to speak with you. You’re some friendly competition. And I suggest strongly if you like what Jennifer had to say, reach out to her. She’s a fascinating lady. We didn’t even get into some of her interesting stories. And I hope that you’ll come back on the show sometime soon.
Jennifer Standish: I’d be delighted. I’d be delighted.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, everyone make it a great sales day and when you’re done listening to this, pick up the phone. See you next time. [19:34]
by Nancy Calabrese | Jun 24, 2023 | Podcast
About Mike Montague: Mike Montague is the Director of Community Engagement and a Certified Trainer at Sandler, where he hosts the How to Succeed podcast, Sandler Summit, and other live events. He is also the author of LinkedIn The Sandler Way and numerous courses and content on sales and leadership. In addition, Mike is a podcaster at Playful Humans, a community designed to help the burned-out and bored get re-energized and engaged with life. He is a contributing writer on the Sandler blog and many other international publications, including the Thinking Bigger Business, Hubspot, and LinkedIn sales blogs. Also, he has entertained and educated thousands of audiences as a professional speaker, on-air radio personality for Mix 93.3 and 105.1 JACK FM, and MC for other live events. Mike has also been an opening act for Billy Idol and Frankie Valli as a DJ and was named one of Kansas City’s Rising Stars of Business in 2015. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Mike.
In this episode, Nancy and Mike discuss the following:
- Communication is the key in Sandler.
- OK, Not OK principles in sales.
- Social selling and social media marketing.
- Advantages of back-and-forth conversation over blasting messages on social media.
- Social selling definition and purpose.
- Fewer connections lead to more conversations.
- Playful Humans – a space for happy people.
- Why salespeople should be happy to be productive?
Key Takeaways:
- I fell in love with the communication principles and people deserve respect, and it should be an adult-to-adult conversation, and learning how to be an adult in a conversational selling kind of way with Sandler was really a cool experience for me.
- Social selling is just adding people’s information and opportunities to your pipeline by using any type of sales or social media platform.
- From a marketing perspective the more connections you have on LinkedIn, the better, the wider your reach, but from a sales perspective, it’s actually the deep relationships that matter.
- We forget that happy people do more work.
- The harder you try to sell, the less likely you are to get that.
“So as human beings, we can only keep track of about 150 to 250 relationships at any given time, we just don’t have the bandwidth. And it’s an interesting number. It’s through a lot of scientific research. It goes back to even when humans were in tribes, wandering the planes and stuff. It was like at about 150, you see them start to split off because you just can’t know everybody, and you can’t keep close to relationships with that many people. So, what happens with salespeople is… They start getting weaker relationships. They start chasing weaker deals and they start missing things from their ideal clients because they’re not paying attention to them. ” – MIKE
“It is interesting to me that when you take yourself and your work less seriously, you can become more productive. People equate hard work with success. And I don’t think that’s true. It depends on the work you’re doing. If you’re building a deck or a brick wall – sure. The more work you do, the higher the wall is going to get, but in selling, that’s not true. And selling the harder you try to sell, the less likely you are to get that. ” – MIKE
“Do not be afraid to be yourself. So, whether that’s in sales, in social selling with LinkedIn, or the kind of personal branding and play work that I do with Playful Humans, I think we try to fit in often too. And that makes us boring and the same as everybody else. That is when you embrace your weirdness and your silliness and your personality, and then go find people that want that rather than trying to make yourself into something that other people want. I think that’s a really powerful lesson.” – MIKE
Connect with Mike Montague:
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today, and it always starts with the human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Mike Montague, Director of Community Engagement for Sandler Training, an international sales training and consulting organization headquartered in the United States. He is the co-author of LinkedIn The Sandler Way and a contributing writer on the Sandler blog and many other international publications Mike has entertained and educated over 3,000 audiences live and virtually over his career. He hosts The Sandler Summit, and his popular How to Succeed podcast has over three million downloads. And Mike, I was just saying before we jumped on, I attend all the Sandler summits. You do an amazing job. Welcome to the show. [1:17]
Mike Montague: Oh, thank you so much. Great to be here, Nancy. I’m excited to have a conversation with you. And the summits are definitely one of my favorite weeks of the year. It’s like Christmas for me. I get to be on stage in front of a thousand people and do all kinds of crazy shenanigans. If you’ve been to all of them, you’ve seen my time travel and do wigs and costumes. I’ve done magic tricks with Dave, all kinds of stuff on stage there.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, you should have been an actor with all the different things you do. And he’s an amazing, amazing entertainer. So, I want to open up just about Sandler in general. I’m a big fan. We followed Sandler for many, many years. And in my mind, it’s all about communication and how communication is so important in sales. Can you comment on that?
Mike Montague: Yeah, I think that’s what I fell in love with too. My dad became a Sandler trainer when I was a junior in high school. So, like 28 years ago now, and I took, the foundation’s, you know, selling course when I was 16 years old and didn’t have anything to sell. So, I fell in love with the communication principles and then the personal development, the eyesight and the attitude and the beliefs that. You know, people deserve respect, and it should be an adult-to-adult conversation, and learning how to be an adult in a conversational selling kind of way with Sandler was really a cool experience for me. So, I lean on that a lot too. I think the communication skills bonding and rapport and we talk about DISC personality profiles and OK, Not OK is a big one for me. I don’t know if you’ve ever had anybody talk about that on the show, but that was life-changing for me. [3:06]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I think the one thing that comes to my mind, Sandler is all about equal stature, right?
Mike Montague: Yeah.
Nancy Calabrese: What we do is just as important as what the prospect does. And when you have that mindset, it really helps you, you know, navigate through the conversations.
Mike Montague: Well, not only that, but I also think it goes right to the, OK, Not OK principles too. So, if you’re not familiar, there was a book that came out in the 60s called I’m Okay, You’re Okay. And that’s that adult-to-adult conversation that you’re talking about. So, a lot of times, whether it’s a child to parent or it’s a salesperson to the leader, we tend to be subservient. We tend to, you know, want to get the deal and we, we do things that aren’t in our best interests. And we even position ourselves intentionally as a servant in that relationship, rather than being that adult with equal business stature and a highly paid consultant who is helping them solve challenges. And that’s interesting to me.
Nancy Calabrese: Huh. So, let’s talk about your book, LinkedIn The Sandler Way. You’re all about, and you’re very involved in, say, social selling, and social media marketing, but you feel that there are two different things. Can you explain that? [4:28]
Mike Montague: Yeah, I think, especially when I wrote the book, it’s eight years old now, but I intentionally wrote it to be evergreen because I think there is this dichotomy between social media marketing and what most social media sites have become. It was already starting there eight years ago where people were jumping on LinkedIn and they’re saying, we need to build an audience. You need to join 50 groups. You need to get, you know, 500 contacts as fast as possible. You need to get as large. an audience as possible and then blast messages in your posts and hope that someday somebody buys from you.
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Mike Montague: But what I found is that’s a marketing approach, right? That’s a one-to-many blast of a message for brand awareness. And some of those strategies are not bad. If you’re the brand ambassador, like I am for Sandler, or the CEO, David Madsen, those approaches are pretty good. But we have over 500 trainers. We can’t really all be subject matter experts and brand ambassadors for what we’re doing. A lot of the time, salespeople that I’ve trained like Uber or Thermo Fisher Scientific, have thousands of salespeople around the world. What I wanted to talk about was, what we do in a sales conversation with social media. So how can we add more people, information, and opportunities to our pipeline and turn it into a one-to-one communication and a back-and-forth conversation rather than blasting messages? And I found that to be really a lot more powerful. [6:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, you know, the one thing that I realized, so you know my business is all about appointment setting and cold calling. And one of the advantages of actually speaking with people is we can uncover what their pains are, right, in a call. And I have found, and I do use LinkedIn, you know, Navigator, and you know, we do get appointments, but I don’t often know if their pain is deep enough for them to want to make a move today. Do you find that? Do you have a lot of meet-and-greets versus serious contenders?
Mike Montague: You know, that’s interesting. It can happen certainly when you’re doing cold outreach because that person, you know, is sort of a stranger. You’re not doing a whole lot of qualification, maybe whatever you can find online, and certainly the AI tools and data you can get now are better than ever from their side. Uh, and the same thing back to you. They may just be trying to qualify you and so early, you’re not going to have a whole ton of really great success, but I think social media when you start conversations, there are two ways that I look at it. One is getting referrals out of those conversations. I just want to meet cool people. I want to have a conversation like we are here today. And if there’s something that happens, then great. We keep it moving. If not, maybe they can introduce me to somebody in their network that would be a better fit for that. And not putting a lot of pressure on it. And then the second thing I would say is really going heavy on that qualification, that I should be using all my tools and insights and my Sandler questioning skills to dive deep into that conversation and see if there’s anything there. Sometimes people only have surface-level pains, and you have to help them uncover them, or they haven’t recognized them yet, they have unrecognized pains that are not quite ripe yet, right? They’re below the surface, and we need to go deeper on those. [8:04]
Nancy Calabrese: So social selling, what’s your definition of that?
Mike Montague: For me, it’s what I said earlier, just adding people information and opportunities to your pipeline by using any type of sales or social media platform. So, apps and things these days get wide. That includes a whole lot of other stuff. There are some really great like I mentioned, AI tools like Humantic AI, which will give you their disk profile before you even call them and stuff. That’s adding information to your pipeline and selling in a way that.
Nancy Calabrese: Absolutely. Yeah, by the way, I used Humantic, but I forgot what your DISC profile is tool. I know that Dave Mattson is what a CD.
Mike Montague: Yeah, yeah, he’s definitely on the task-oriented side. I’m on the people-oriented side. So, we make a good team.
Nancy Calabrese: You’re on the people’s side. I’m a DI, so I think I have more I in me than I do D. Okay, so moving along, you shared with me that you believe fewer connections lead to more conversations. Why is that? [9:17]
Mike Montague: This was an interesting insight because I don’t think people realize, they think again on the marketing approach that the more connections you have on LinkedIn, the better, the wider your reaches. And from a marketing perspective or advertising, that’s true. But from a sales perspective, it’s actually the deep relationships that matter. So as human beings, we can only keep track of about 150 to 250 relationships at any given time, we just don’t have the bandwidth. And it’s an interesting number. It’s through a lot of scientific research. It goes back to even when humans were in tribes, wandering the planes and stuff. It was like at about 150, you see them start to split off because you just can’t know everybody, and you can’t keep close to relationships with that many people. So, what happens with salespeople is… They start getting weaker relationships. They start chasing weaker deals and they start missing things from their ideal clients because they’re not paying attention to them. [10:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Mike Montague: So, if you can create a diverse network, you want that 150 to be as wide-ranging as possible because then you’re getting more, you know information and you’re getting more opportunities from a wider range of people. If I only had 150, I don’t know, uh, franchise brokers or whatever in my profile. I’m only going to hear about stories and news posts and things that are happening in the franchise world. But if I have 150 random people that are different ages and interests and religions or countries or work industries and, uh, jobs, you know, some people are frontline, some people are CEO and executives, but I really know. And I follow all 150 of them. I’m going to get a ton of information. I’m going to hear about opportunities. I wouldn’t have if I was just, you know, randomly scrolling through a thousand people’s posts.
Nancy Calabrese: You know, I totally agree with you because very often when we are prospecting for One of a Kind Sales, I speak with decision makers that think they have to have millions of contacts. And there’s just no way to have a system in place to touch them, right, throughout the year on a regular basis. So, I’m in your court, you know, less is more for sure. [11:40] Now, I do want to move into what I…
Mike Montague: Yeah, it really gets expensive and there’s a whole lot of other downsides too, right? Then the algorithm starts choosing for you whom it wants you to pay attention to rather than you choosing whom you’re following.
Nancy Calabrese: So everyone out there, you’ve got to go check playfulhumans.com. It’s a dot com, Mike?
Mike Montague: Yeah, you got it.
Nancy Calabrese: It’s an amazing website. And I’m going to quote something that I read, and I want you to describe it in more detail. You quoted “Harvard Business Review that stated, happy people are 31% more productive and have 37% higher sales. But the flip side to that, is high-stress cultures make employees 10 to 15 IQ points dumber”. So, what made you create this company and why does it work so well? [12:40]
Mike Montague: I love you. Yeah. Uh, thank you for sharing that. It’s so great. Um, this is my side project, and it just makes me, um, makes me happy with something that I, it was a COVID baby for me. And I’ve always been playful. I was an entertainer and DJ in my younger days and, got to do fun things like open for Billy Idol and Frankie Valley. And so, I always had this playful side of things. And what I found in corporate cultures a lot is that, especially with the measurement, culture we have these days that people are stressing each other the heck out. And even with technology and all the great advances, and tools that can help us sell more, sometimes they make it worse because we start overthinking it. And so, when we’re stressed out, we settle on one right answer that will allow us to survive the situation. And what we don’t often settle on is the most creative and innovative solution that’ll get the best outcome long term. And so, our creativity goes down and our communication skills go down. I want to get stressed out, but even having your cell phone in the room makes you 10% dumber because you outsource your brain to the phone. You go “Oh, I don’t have to know this. I can Google it”. Right? [13:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Mike Montague: And so all these technologies, and sometimes it even happens in the Sandler training. I’ll be honest with you. You know, when you first learn about the pain funnel, your kind of do it like a robot. You forget how you were supposed to sell you know, the week before, and now you’re trying to do all these new moves. And it can hurt you a little bit. And we really work hard with people to practice, and role play in the classroom. And then just be themselves, let all this soak in, and just sell the way that you know how to sell and look for some of these opportunities to leverage a really good idea, a really good technique. But if you try and do everything all the time, you get in your head, and it just causes a lot more problems than it does.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, one thing that’s so important in my culture is we’ve got to have fun. You know, my people work so hard and they’re in No business, right? Most salespeople are in a No business, right? And you must flip that. Well, I’m getting closer to my yes. And I think humor, and fun games, just keep everyone fresh and motivated to want to do it one more time and maybe get that next no, but they keep doing it, you know? [15:09]
Mike Montague: Yeah, well, it’s funny, right? It’s so obvious, but we forget that happy people do more work, happy people repeat things. So, whether that’s your employees and the job they’re doing, or your customers, customers that enjoy a happy salesperson and experience refer more people than clients that were stressed out and that you stressed out because you were having a bad day or whatever. So, it’s blatantly obvious to me. But we forget it so much when we’re trying to charge for numbers or we’re getting beat down by those Nos. We forget that like having fun when you smile more, it’s contagious. People join in on that and then you get referrals, and you get better outcomes and people love working.
Nancy Calabrese: Isn’t it true it takes fewer muscles to smile than it is to frown?
Mike Montague: I always like that one. I think it’s true. Yeah, I’ll buy that biologically.
Nancy Calabrese: I think it’s true too, you’re making me smile. Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Mike Montague: Oh, I feel like I have a bunch of these from playful humans. But I think the thing that is interesting to me is when you take yourself and your work less seriously, you can become more productive. People equate hard work with success. And I don’t think that’s true. It depends on the work you’re doing. If you’re You know, building a deck or a brick wall. Sure. The more work you do, the higher the wall is going to get, but in selling, that’s not true. And selling the harder you try to sell, the less likely you are to get that. [16:50]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh yeah. Yeah, just as we’ve been talking, have fun with it. Understand their communication style, which really is what Sandler is all about, right? Becoming an actor, which obviously is common for you or easy for you, Mike, but you become actors, right? Depending on the person that we’re speaking with. You wanna match their style.
Mike Montague: It is largely a Broadway play and we’re just kind of the producers here. And if we have fun and we realized that we got a lot of different players in this role, um, we can have fun with it. We can be a third party to it. We cannot take it personally and, uh, we can experiment, have fun.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, we’re almost up with time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Mike Montague: I think it’s also not being afraid to be yourself. So, whether that’s in sales, it’s in social selling with LinkedIn, or the kind of personal branding and play work that I do with Playful Humans, I think we try to fit in often too. And that makes us boring and the same as everybody else. That is when you embrace your weirdness and your silliness and your personality, and then go find people that want that rather than trying to make yourself into something that other people want. I think that’s a really powerful lesson.
Nancy Calabrese: So basically Mike, what you’re saying is go find other weird people like yourself. You’re so funny. So how come my people find you?
Mike Montague: Go to Sandler.com and subscribe to the How to Succeed podcast anywhere you’re listening to this. It’s a great show. We talked to salespeople and sales leaders about how to succeed and then playful humans, playfulhumans.com. There’s a fun quiz on there where you can do a personality quiz and find out maybe some better ways to incorporate play into your life and then reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’d always love to connect. [18:44]
Nancy Calabrese: I love it. So, a huge thank you for joining me. I know I’m the second of your third podcast today. You sounded fresh and I’m sure you’re going to do a great job on the next one. But I hope you’ll come back sometime and, you know, make us all laugh. Maybe we’ll just focus on the playful humans. How does that sound?
Mike Montague: Uh, that sounds great. I would love to play a game next time or tell you a good joke too. That’d be fun.
Nancy Calabrese: Yes. All right. So, everyone take advantage and reach out to Mike. He’s full of wisdom. He’s a lot of fun and his insights are spot-on when it comes to sales. So, until we speak again, have a great sales day. [19:35]
