Brooke Dukes | The Secrets to Selling at the C-Level

• https://www.nasp.com
• brooke.dukes@nasp.com

Transcript

Voiceover: You’re listening to the Conversational Selling podcast with Nancy Calabrese.

Nancy Calabrese: Hi, it’s Nancy Calabrese, and yeah, 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 Brooks Dukes, Chief Sales Officer at Trusum Visions. For more than 30 years the Trusum family of brands has revolutionized on how the world thinks and behaves with the human success operating system. Particular interest for our audience today, Brooke is also the Chief Sales Officer at National Association of Sales Professionals. So overall, and we’ll dive into that in more detail, but overall Trusum has coached Forbes 400 executives, elite professional athletes, and industry leading organizations such as Disney, ABC, Quicken Loans and Honeywell to achieve their results during times of growth and in the face of crises. 

Before Trusum Visions, Brooke was a multi million dollar producer and excelled at various executive level sales and business development positions, including two Fortune 100 companies. She’s worked with some of the largest and most successful companies including Lear, General Motors, United Airlines, and across multiple industries such as insurance, skincare and cosmetics, technology and banking. So sales is all about mindset, thinking and behaviors. And we’re in for a great treat today as Brooke will share more about what’s so great about national sales, associate National Association of Sales Pros or NASP. So welcome to the show, Brooke can’t wait to get started. 

Brooke Dukes: Hi, Nancy, thank you so much for having me. 

Nancy: Yeah. So talk to us about NASP. Why it’s a great organization and why all sales people should be you know, at least made aware of it, if not join it.

Brooke: Well, NASP is the largest online sales association in the world. So the beauty of NASP is really the people. We offer a wide variety of offerings, programs, blogs, webinars, really a one stop shop for a sales professional or sales leader. And the really the differentiator with us is we specialize in supporting sales people in really understanding the way that their mind works. Right? So a lot of organizations and associations are all about strategy. And and nothing against that. But you can google strategy, right? 

With us, it’s about how to take any strategy, right, any strategy that an organization has and support their salespeople to be able to one understand it, and then two integrate it into their daily life. So we’re really all of our programs and everything we teach is about that conditioning process. Right? So really rebooting and reprogramming and upgrading our brain. That human success operating system, just like we would upgrade our phone, right? We all have to do that for our computers. 

Nancy: So talk more about the human success operating system, what is that about? 

Brooke: So we are so fortunate at NASP to have PhDs on staff, right, so they are constantly looking and researching and understanding and supporting us and creating our programs are all of our programs and all of our content. So as a human, our operating system is made up of our conscious and unconscious mind. Are identity, our beliefs, our habits, our decisions, environment, experiences, and most important, the meanings that we assign to all of these pieces. So with our HSOS, or human success operating system, it’s really helping people to understand, okay, here’s the goal that you want. It’s not just enough to know what you want. You also have to understand how the brain works to become a person that can achieve that, right? 

So on the moment that a salesperson or any person for that matter puts a vision out there, right, so a measurable target. Let’s just say, for instance, I want to be, you know, I want to make $150,000 in the year 2022. That’s a measurable target. Well, then what happens is, things come into our path, to help us to become to teach us the lessons needed to become a person that can achieve that. Everything we do supports people in creating that internal motivation, understanding what it takes to create the habits, that you need to then get the result that you desire. And also to recognize things that you may be doing habits that you may have today that are hurting your success that are stopping you from achieving what you want to achieve. 

Nancy: Well, how do you increase internal motivation? I’ve heard from people all the time, either they have a burning desire or they don’t. Right. And in sales, you have to have a passion, right, for wanting it. So how do you increase that?

Brooke: Well, if there’s only you have people, if people are either internally motivated, or they’re extremely motivated, right, so internal motivation is that you get that your certainty you derive your certainty, your self confidence from within, right, the external motivation, which, unfortunately, is a lot of where people live in America. So that is where you derive your certainty in your motivation from an external source. And you can tell about yourself or someone else, if you meet someone, and they say to you, oh, my gosh, you know, I really wouldn’t have worn that outfit, it doesn’t do anything for your color, I really don’t like it, or whatever the case may be. 

And it changes the way that you feel about yourself. Ot could ruin your day. It changes how you are extremely motivated. I know that’s a pretty elementary way to look at it. But it’s true, right? If you someone says that to you, and you say, whoa, I appreciate your opinion. And I still like it, and neither here nor there and you move on about your day, you’re internally motivated, right. You derive that source of everything we do, is to build that self esteem with in someone. That confidence, to be able to look at the world and to create the what you desire, from your own purpose from your own internal motivation. And we look at that from the human basic needs, right? So there are six human basic needs, four of which really determine whether you’re internally or externally motivated. 

Right, if you are motivated by growth, if you are motivated by you know, your own self confidence in the way you look at the world, if you are internally motivated. If you are motivated by you need people when they’re speaking to you, or when you’re having a communication to build up that self esteem, what they say to you can help you to look at the world differently, or can make you feel good or feel bad. Or if you need connection, if you cannot survive without really making others feel good at the own cost of yourself. Right? Yeah, you really have that external motivation. And we really support people in becoming internally motivated in everything that we do.

Nancy: So what I’m hearing a lot of is your own identity. Right? As you approach your role. Your role is your role, but your identity is who you are. And, you know, in the training that I’ve done, you always want to make your identity a 10 out of 10 as best as you can, right and not let your roll take that down a notch or two. Would you agree with that? 

Brooke: Absolutely. Our identity is everything right? The strongest force in human nature is the identity we hold of ourselves. Right. So if you to your point, if you have an identity of lack, right, I am not successful. I am not capable. Those are I am those are identity statements. And you have to really watch that because it’s very important. Words are powerful. If your I am statements are one of lack or one of scarcity or any of that. You really have to look at your identity, which is a made up of your beliefs, what do you believe about yourself?

Nancy: Oh, I love that example. That’s great. Speaking of love, you wrote an article, the secret to selling to C level executives. What prompted you to write it was your German Shepherd. So let’s talk about that. You know, I think many of us on this podcast can relate to loving animals, loving dogs, I’m a dog lover. So share the examples that you wrote about.

Brooke: Yeah, when, as we, as I’ve been in sales my whole life and we run a team of salespeople, a lot of times, they’ll be very intimidated by speaking to C levels. Right. And so what I tried to do with that article, we actually have a program about it, is to just make it fun. Because honestly, selling to C level, in my opinion, I felt, I felt the middle management, I have sold to purchasing agents I have sold to C levels. It is so much more fun to sell to C level executives, right. If you do it correctly. If you understand what they’re looking for. Kind of picking up from where I talked before. It’s the same concept. When you have a conversation with anyone they are, whether it’s one to one, one to many, whatever that looks like. They’re asking for one of four of the six basic needs. Connection, certainty. I’m sorry. Connection, significance, growth, or self esteem. 

And so I likened to that to dogs, because it would be very easy to understand. So for instance, a golden retriever. That person is motivated by connection. That dog is motivated by connection. They’re externally motivated, externally focused. If you think of it in that way, anytime you’ve ever seen a golden retriever, they’re all about anyone who’s around them. They just want to love. They don’t care, they will sit in the snow for hours and freeze up waiting for you to come. They don’t think about self, it’s all about others. If you look at that, when you’re thinking about that executive, that’s the executive that you meet them. 

And I know in this day and age, it’s a little different, probably meeting them through zoom. But someday when you meet them in person, again, they’re the ones that give you that really soft handshake. They might even touch you, when you walk into their office, there are pictures of family, it’s warm, it’s cozy, and they want to know you personally. That is a golden retriever executive. If you walk in, so if you think about a Doberman, a Doberman was they are a Rottweiler and a greyhound that were mated together. That’s what made it Doberman. If you think about them, they’re they’re kind of skittish, but they could attack, right? 

They you don’t see a lot of them around anymore, because they were so unpredictable, right? Because they had they’re very insecure and nervous. That’s self esteem. They’re an externally motivated, internally focused. If you think about that, that’s a pretty scary place to be because I’m only focused on me, but the outside world tells me what I need to feel about me. Right. And it’s think about that, from an executive perspective. That’s the executive that they’re the ones that they shake your head and they practically break it. Right. And they might even pull you towards them as an act of dominance. They, they lack self esteem, and it may come off at first a bit aggressive. A bit overbearing. They’re testing you every step of the way, like a Doberman. Right? If you think about them, they’re just always watching you. What are they going to do? They want to you to prove to them you can do what you say you’re going to do because what they’re saying, is I don’t feel good about me, by working with you, I want you to show the world how great I am. That is a Doberman executive. 

Then you think about a poodle. I’m thinking of a standard poodle, right? Not necessarily the miniature one, but a standard poodle. And they have a lot of them. You’ll see there if they have the big hairdos and they’re all they are internally motivated, internally focused. Their need that they’re asking for is significance. If you think about how a poodle a standard poodle, they strut around, they stand very tall, you know, that executive, same. You’ll come in, they’ll give you a firm handshake. They’re the ones that are saying, okay, my time is valuable, they’ll be looking at their watch. They don’t want a big, you know, getting to the nitty gritty of the details. They want a high level overview, tell me how you’re going to support me. 

Right, it’s about significance, not to be confused with the Doberman that needs you to give them significance because they have low self esteem. A poodle is they have confidence. They want to know you recognize and see their greatness before they will even have anything to do with you. So you know, they’ll be impeccably dressed. Right? They are all and they want to know, how are you going to help me meet my goal. Those leaders are I have a vision that follow me, and let’s do this, support me in getting there or get out of my way, right? Then you’ve got, lastly, a German Shepherd. Near and dear to my heart. 

I’ve own three of them, I adore them. They are internally motivated, and externally focused. If you think about a German Shepherd, they are very loyal. Right. And they can also be focused on themselves, but they’re are also focused on their pack. Right? With that type of leader, again, you’ll walk in it will be a firm handshake, not overly touchy, not overly firm to break it trying to make make dominance. And what you’ll notice is, they want the details because they’re focused on others, not just themselves. Right? So they want to make sure that what you’re offering serves everyone themselves and their team. They want to know those details. They want to know when you walk in that you’ve done the research. They’ve done their research. So they could want you to confirm what they have researched is real. So those are in a nutshell the four executives, as it relates to the human basic needs and how to respond to them. 

Nancy: Holy cow. So what we all need to do now is to get pictures of these four animals, or do you I don’t even know, if you sell something like that. Every salesperson should have it up on their wall as a reminder, as they’re engaging in conversation. 

Brooke: Absolutely. And all of our programs at NASP have a bit of that, in it. We call it the four colors. Right? And that is exactly that in supporting a sales person to quickly be able to identify whether it’s on the phone, via zoom, via email, or in person, the basic need that whoever they’re talking to is asking for, to help them quickly build rapport, and want to work with them. Because, you know, we know people buy for emotional reasons, and they justify with logic. So you got to build rapport right out of the gate. And if you know what need they’re asking for you are 10 steps ahead of your competition already.

Nancy: Wow, you know, Brooke, I can’t believe that we’re running out of time. Can’t believe it. What an interesting, amazing story. You know, let’s let’s kind of wrap this up with one takeaway. You’re you’re all about beliefs. And I think that’s really great. Believing in yourself, your abilities, but what’s the one takeaway you want to leave the listeners with?

Brooke: I would say that if you are not reaching your goal in any area of your life, it’s not the strategy. It’s not the how that’s the problem. Everything always starts with belief. Look at what you believe around that area of your life, whether it’s your sales career, whether it’s your relationship, whatever that may be, because you have a belief problem. If it’s your career, you either don’t believe in your own capability. You don’t believe in your company, the product, your leader, there’s somewhere that your belief is lacking. And you’ve got to build that belief before any strategy is going to work.

Nancy: Bravo, well said. How does my audience find you? 

Brooke: Well, you can go to nasp.com. Or you can email me direct at Brooke b r o o k e.dukes, d u k e s @nasp.com. 

Nancy: Great. So thank you, Brooke, for being on the show. And thank you all for listening in. Remember, reach out to Brooke and her team NASP. If you haven’t heard of it, go Google it get online and look at all of the wonderful tools that they have. Especially when you want to get things right. Make it a great sales day everyone. See you next time.

Voiceover: The Conversational Selling Podcast is sponsored by One of a Kind Sales. If you’re frustrated that you don’t have enough leads or your sales team complains that they just don’t have enough time to prospect, we can help. To work with Nancy and her team one on one to help you manage your sales team, install her proven outbound sales process and create more bottom line results, email her now at Nancy@oneofakindsales.com. To learn more about Nancy and her outbound sales secrets, grab your free copy of her book, The Inside Sales Solution at oneofakindsales.com/book.