About John Lester: John Lester is the Founder of Attitude Selling, helping struggling organizations and salespeople become sustainable revenue creators. Throughout his career, John has been acknowledged as a transformational leader, specializing in revitalizing underperforming organizations. He possesses a deep understanding of opportunity development, excelling in identifying and seizing market opportunities to accelerate expansion and boost revenue through fostering collaborative partnerships, strategic connections, and new market segmentation. Having managed extremely large and complex accounts, John understands the importance of delivering quality, consistent service. He exhibits a unique talent for root-cause analysis, swiftly pinpointing the core issues clients face and articulating them effectively while establishing optimal courses of action. He recognizes that business is ever-evolving. John’s observations underscore the critical importance of aligning the organization along the “lead to satisfied customer” continuum for achieving large-scale, repeatable success in sales. John is also the author of “Winning the Inner Game of Sales: The Foundation of Success is Mindset.” Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about John.
In this episode, Nancy and John discuss the following:
- John Lester’s background and expertise in sales
- Sales as an art and the importance of human connection
- Challenges in sales and the impact of mental models
- The importance of understanding buyers and their psychology
- Difficulties solopreneurs face in sales
- Explanation of Attitude Selling and its focus on mindset
- The Sales Mastermind program and its purpose
Key Takeaways:
- Good salespeople help others achieve their dreams, goals, and objectives.
- All these mental models are in your head, and until you get them out, they won’t work.
- Wait a minute, if the person asks about price, wouldn’t it be worth figuring out why they’re asking about price right away instead of pushing that conversation away?
- You’re not going to make progress if you don’t get pushed.
“Sales is so amazing for a couple of reasons. One is because it is not a science as much as it’s an art. It is not practical as much as it’s human. And what you’re really dealing with in sales is human behaviors and human emotions. You can’t predict any of that. And that makes it so much fun. But the other thing that’s so amazing about sales is that good salespeople help other people achieve their dreams, their goals, their objectives.” – JOHN
“I would say the biggest misconception about the role of selling is that the seller needs to go, “Excuse me, but beat the living daylights out of the buyer into submission.” All right? Don’t. Stop. All right? It doesn’t work. But there’s so many. Sellers are told and taught, and hopefully not that much anymore, but told and taught that the buyer is uninformed, buys on price, and knows what they want. Stop! They were wrong, okay? The buyer buys because they think it’s a good deal. No, none of its true. None of its true. They all come into play, but none of its true.” – JOHN
“Great question, but it’s natural, and I want all the solopreneurs listening to take a deep breath. The solopreneurs, for the most part, start a business because they have some kind of expertise. Usually, it’s technical expertise, some kind of subject matter that they know about, whether it’s a physician, a psychologist, or a plumber. They go, “Hey, I want to deliver that expertise.” So, they understand their expertise, and again, this goes back to what I said in the very beginning: their expertise is a technical, definable offering. But the decision to buy their expertise is not technical; it’s not definable; it’s human; it’s behavioral. And so, they’re operating at this technical level, which is fine. Still, in order to sell, they have to change who they are to a certain extent and operate at the human level, and operate at the—I will say—political, not in the sense that everybody thinks of political, but political from the perspective of interaction. They’re not used to doing that. I mean, I don’t know how many schools in the country at any level offer such courses on how to come to an agreement, how to read another person. I don’t know anybody who does, but you need those things. We have lots of classes on accounting.” – JOHN
Connect with John Lester:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnlester973/
- Attitude Selling: https://attitudeselling.com/
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:
- Twitter:https://twitter.com/oneofakindsales
- Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/
- Website:https://oneofakindsales.com
- Phone: 908-879-2911
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/
- Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi, 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 John Lester, the owner of Attitude Selling. He helps organizational change makers reinvent their sales processes so they can keep clients longer, get recommended more often, and upsell, cross-sell on a more consistent basis. He’s spent the last 40 years in direct selling, sales management, sales process improvement, and messaging. John’s work has ranged from very large fortune accounts, primarily in the financial services space to small firms trying to create a sustainable and repeatable sales process. Welcome to the show, John. Let’s get started.
John Lester: Thank you, Nancy. So happy to be here. Yes, let’s. There’s a whole lot to talk. [1:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I know. So why is sales so amazing?
John Lester: Sales is so amazing for a couple of reasons. One, because it is not a science as much as it’s an art. It is not practical as much as it’s human. And what you’re really dealing with in sales is human behaviors and human emotions. You can’t predict any of that. And that makes it so much fun. But the other thing that’s so amazing about sales is that good salespeople help other people achieve their dreams, their goals, their objectives. [1:56]
Nancy Calabrese: Huh, I like that. I’ve never thought of it that way, but yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. Now, I know you have stated that many people are challenged by sales. You point out, they are not alone. So, most of what is holding people back is mental models built over the years. Can you go into that a little bit more? [2:23]
John Lester: Yeah, definitely. We all have, like it or not, so folks don’t get all upset about this. First, we’re human. The definition, one of the definitions of human is imperfect. So, we are all imperfect, of course, except for my mother-in-law, God bless her soul, but we’re not going to go there right now. All right, so we have prejudices, we have beliefs, we have all sorts of things that we grew up with. I mean, there’s enough studies out there to talk about the fact that somewhere along the lines of 60% of your personality is cast in stone by the time you’re five or six or seven years old. Which means that things are affecting you in the womb. All right, forget about when you get out and go to grandma school or kindergarten or whatever. They’re affecting you in the womb. Comments that are made, you know, may be offhanded by your parents, by neighbors, by relatives are interpreted by your immature brain completely differently. And so, you then have these things, and they keep getting reinforced over the years and over the years. So, I’ll give you a couple of examples. Don’t trust that person, he’s a salesperson. Might’ve been said when you were three years old. All right. Oh, oh, yeah, don’t go near them. They live in the black neighborhood. And I see this, I’m not trying to pick on anybody. I’m serious. This is the and its little stuff that happens like this. All right, advertising. Advertising is one of the greatest reasons we believe some of the things that we believe. Some of it negative, most of it positive because they’re trying to get us to buy a product or something. But again, this is all implanted into our brain. So, you’ll get things like, oh, I don’t have any value. Oh, I don’t know enough to go and talk to a CEO of a company that’s got 30 years experience. I’m 26 or 27 or 30 years old. [4:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
John Lester: I’m not an expert in that. How can I go in and speak? All these mental models are in your head. And until you get them out, and we’re not going to go back and say, oh, let’s put you through 30 years of psychoanalysis. Now, let’s just figure out what’s holding you back. Let’s figure out a quick fix to get around it. Let’s move on. That’s what I’m trying to help people do. [4:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Right. But how do you get it out of your head? I mean, how long does it take?
John Lester: I mean, I’ve had certain things that I can get out of people’s heads in minutes just because they didn’t think about it a certain way, because it was never presented to them that way. So, I’m going to give you one of my favorite ones. And again, the timing might be not 100% of this, but let’s say 60 or 70 years ago, okay? In Japan, bluefin tuna was considered a waste fish thrown back. Do you know what top-end bluefin tuna goes for at the wholesale markets in Japan? You’re talking thousands of dollars per pound. But it was, somebody then said, wait a minute, what’s going on? Why are we doing this? All right. There’s a, I just read this, this is so amazing. I believe its Asian carp were imported into this or brought into this country, maybe legally, maybe illegally. And now they’re overrunning our waterways in certain states. I mean, this is becoming a serious ecological concern. So, the restaurant industry is trying to figure out how to promote Asian carp on the menus, because they have no natural predator. So, yeah, so everything, yeah, I mean, right? Tomatoes were considered poisonous up until somebody said, wait a minute, I want some pasta. I mean, these are, yeah, early days, yeah, tomatoes were considered poisonous. It’s true. [6:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
John Lester: So, all of these things affect how we act and affect what we are willing to do and not willing to do. Oh, if I talk to this person about something, I’m going to be rejected. So how often do you think that person is going to talk to them?
Nancy Calabrese: Great. Wow.
John Lester: So, some of these things are easy to get across, some of them are harder. But I’ve had some good successes with folks in the five-week program that I run. And a lot of it is, people need somebody to tell them it’s OK to question something and they need somebody to pull it out of them. Because look, the truth of the matter is, when the thunderstorm comes, we all want to crawl under the bed. We all do. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if the house is burning, you might not want to be crawling under the bed. [7:04]
Nancy Calabrese: True. So what is the biggest misconception about the role of selling?
John Lester: I would say the biggest misconception about the role of selling is that the seller needs to go, excuse me, but beat the living daylights out of the buyer into submission. All right? Don’t. Stop. All right? It doesn’t work. But there’s so many. Sellers are told and taught, and hopefully not that much anymore, but told and taught that the buyer is uninformed, that the buyer buys on price, that the buyer knows what they want. Stop! They were wrong, okay? That the buyer buys because they think it’s a good deal. No, none of its true. None of its true. They all come into play, but none of its true. [8:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Well, why don’t we as salespeople understand buyers?
John Lester: There’s, what I believe has happened is, we’ll take you back a little bit. The economy that we live in for the most part, now it has been changing over the last, I would say, 20 years, but for the most part was shaped by efforts that were made in the Second World War. Because the Second World War was all about taking the country and creating efficiency out of that country. And it was really from the perspective of producing arms and armaments for the war effort. And to some extent, we won that war because we were able to produce, and we were able to create supply lines. And Patton was very famous for this, was getting things to the troops that they needed to get to the front and to win. And you see this right now, you see in Ukraine, what’s costing Ukraine to lose right now is because they can’t get the armaments. What caused Russia to lose the war against Germany? The freeze, they couldn’t figure out how to work around that. Right. But we figured out how to overcome these obstacles, but what that required was it was a high degree of specialization and a high degree of intense management. Now, who is going to then become your political leaders after a war in the successful war, it’s the people that were fighting the war for you. So, who was the biggest example of that? Eisenhower. Eisenhower came out of the war. What did he become? He became president of the United States. Alright, wow, something must be here. Ooh let’s take this into management psychology and now let’s figure out how we can push people and push people and push people and push people and produce and produce. How do you do that? You push people. Oh, let me learn the six ways to get somebody to say yes so that when they say yes on the seventh time, they’re buying a million-dollar product from me. You know what? To a large extent, it worked. It really did. [10:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
John Lester: And it’s in the literature, it’s still in the literature, it’s still being taught. I was, and I don’t want to go crazy with this, but I can’t, I was sitting listening to a quote unquote, sales trainer yesterday in a webinar and he was talking about, well, if the person asks about what the price is in the very beginning, you got to figure out a way to push that conversation away. Wait a minute, if the person asks about price, wouldn’t it be more worth it to figure out why they’re asking about price right away? [10:36]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, yep. Nope.
John Lester: You’re going to hide from it? I mean, can you imagine walking to the supermarket tonight? Oh, I think I’m going to make a roast chicken tonight. Let me go, hey, Mr. Butcher, how are you, man? How much is chicken today? I’m well. You know, it’s an interesting question that you ask how much chicken is today. Why would you ask that question? What are you kidding me? You serious? But we still have these, and we still teach this kind of, there are very few people that I am aware of that are teaching selling from the perspective of respect for the buyer and teaching selling from the respect of yourself as an individual. So, we have these again models, they’re ingrained into society. We have all this text that’s out there. You have people like, what’s his name, Jordan Belford, you have Wolf of Wall Street, you’ve got all these kinds of people, who really have made money and they’ve done very well with this high-pressure approach. But they’re also highly marketed. So, people believe, oh, highly marketed, hmm, there must be something there. In certain cases, yes, there are certain cases where you can do that kind of stuff. But for the average person, it doesn’t work. [11:50]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So why do so many solopreneurs have difficulty with sales?
John Lester: Great question but it’s natural and I want all the solopreneurs listening to take a deep breath. The solopreneurs for the most part start a business because they have some kind of expertise, usually it’s a technical expertise, it’s some kind of subject matter that they know about whether it’s a physician or a psychologist or a plumber and they go hey I want to deliver that expertise. So, they understand their expertise and again this goes back to what I said in the very beginning, their expertise is a technical definable offering but the decision to buy their expertise is not technical, it’s not definable, it’s human, it’s behavioral. And so, they’re operating at this technical level, which is fine, but in order to sell, they have to change who they are to a certain extent and operate at the human level and operate at the, and I will say political, not in the sense that everybody thinks of political, but political from an interactions perspective, they’re not used to doing that. I mean, I don’t know how many schools in the country at any level, you know, offer such courses on how to come to agreement, how to read another person. I don’t know anybody who does, but those are the things that you need. We have lots of classes on accounting. [13:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, sales is all about psychology, really, right?
John Lester: It’s all about psych. It is all about psychology. And the other piece that I’m taking it to, Nancy, so this is where it’s important, so much of psychology and so much of what we teach in general is about doing it to the other person. So, psychology is the other person. And what I’m saying is what we need to be spending time on is what’s going on in my head before I start to worry about what I’m doing to the other person. So, I’m just taking it one step deeper. [13:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So, I love your company name Attitude Selling. Why is mindset so important in sales?
John Lester: Because how you approach something, as I said before, we all have these preconceived notions, those are all our mindset. And what I’m saying is you’ve got to change that mindset and have a different mindset. My mindset every morning when I wake up is, who am I going to help today? It’s not what am I going to sell today? It’s whose life can I make better today? [14:17]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. I love that.
John Lester: The sales come, but the sales come. Because people want help, especially, oh my God, especially now. People are crazy, they want help. But you don’t have to say to them, oh, you know, I’ll help you fix my, you go, hey, look, I’m here to help you. And they go, hey, cool, what can I give you back? Give me back money, because that’s what we use, fine. [14:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. You know, I said before, mindset is so important in sales, but I think it’s important in life, period. Right.
John Lester: It’s the same. It’s really the same. All everything that I talk about and everything I teach is applicable to life. I’ve just decided to help my tribe and my tribe is people who need to sell. Doesn’t mean, you know, that it’s not going to work for you somewhere else. I give you an example, another example quickly. I spent 18 years as a certified motorcycle instructor. So, I took people who had never been on a motorcycle before and taught them how to ride successfully and how to navigate traffic. All right. [15:16]
Nancy Calabrese: And you had no experience?
John Lester: Oh no, I was heavily trained. No, I had experience, I had been riding and I went through an extensive training, and I would go through training every single year to upgrade my skillset. But what I found most interesting about it was not just that I enjoyed motorcycling more, but my car driving changed. [15:37]
Nancy Calabrese: How so?
John Lester: Because my mindset changed about driving. My mindset changed about where I was looking, how I was reacting, when I was reacting, how I was braking, how I was turning, how I was, all of those things. So, all of a sudden it translated. So, anything that I convey in the sales arena should convey to personal. Because at the end of the day, as my great friend Wayne Gere said, two people in a room, one walks out sold. [16:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Huh.
John Lester: Well, that other one could be your child. Could be your neighbor.
Nancy Calabrese: What do you mean by that anyway?
John Lester: Everything that we do as humans, whether we think about it or not, results in somebody a little more than the other person agreeing with the other person’s perspective. It just is. So, two people in a room, they’re going to have a conversation, hey, good seeing you, George, hey, good seeing you, Sam. One of them is going to walk away a little more convinced of something the other person said. It’s normal. It’s natural. So take advantage. Take advantage of it. [16:49]
Nancy Calabrese: Never thought of it that way. Yeah, really. So, I know that you have several programs. One program is your sales mastermind. I think you mentioned another program. Why don’t you talk a little bit about them?
John Lester: The one I really want to talk about for this audience is the Sales Mastermind, because this is really my concern for individuals. So, the solopreneur, the entrepreneur, the professional salesperson who’s not making it. I wanted to create an environment where somebody could come in of their own free will, not being told by their management, not being told by, you know, their HR department or anybody else like that, where somebody could come in that said, look, I need to get some stuff resolved. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I need to get this stuff taken care of because I don’t want to be scared anymore. I don’t want to wake up in the morning sweating, getting up. I don’t want to be scared to go talk to quote unquote Mr. Big the buyer. I want to understand what the buyer is thinking. I want them to come to this on their own. And that’s the mastermind. Now, what’s really interesting about us as human beings is we need a couple of things. We need somebody to keep us accountable. We need somebody to push us we need direction. So that’s what the purpose of the Mastermind is. It’s to help people start to realize these issues, start to come to terms with these issues. If they don’t come to terms with these issues on their own, they will never come to terms with them. [18:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Huh. How long is the Mastermind?
John Lester: I can tell mastermind is five weeks. We meet for, after the five weeks.
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. And then what happens after the five weeks?
John Lester: It’s up to the person. Do they want to just go off on their own? Are they so sick and tired of listening to me that they want to leave? That’s fine, I’m only teasing. Or do I keep them in just a group, a larger group of just, hey, you want to come in and talk about something this week or next week. So, you can stay in a group facility, larger group facility for as long as you like. But the mastermind is very focused. There are four or five things we focus on. We get through them in the five-week period. I’m going to tell people that are listening right now, I do push you. I do. Because you’re not going to make progress if you don’t get pushed. [19:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay. So, the moral of the story is unless you’re looking to work, unless you’re looking to work, don’t join the group.
John Lester: Right. Yeah. Don’t join the group.
Nancy Calabrese: I can’t believe we’re up with time, John. You know, I love sales. I I’m guessing as much as you do. How can my people find you?
John Lester: Yeah. So AttitudeSelling.com is my website. And go there, look around, look at the Mastermind, see if it makes sense to you. You can contact me with, there’s a calendar link on there, there’s my phone number on there, there’s my email on there. Reach out. I had somebody come into a session I was doing the other day, they said, I don’t know why I’m here, but it looks interesting. 45-minutes later, they’re going, I can’t believe this was the best session I’ve ever been in, you’ve really helped me. I like to do that for people. I love it when people smile and go, wow, you helped me. I like it when they give me money too, but that’s going to happen if I help them. [20:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, my takeaway from you is sales is all about helping, not about pushing.
John Lester: It is all about helping. No, it’s not. But there is a little pushing Nancy because none of us like change, but it’s pushing in a helpful way. Now, let me throw something out to your audience because I know you’ve got a great audience of motivated people. I’m going to do something I haven’t done before. I’m going to do an offer of a special Mastermind. So, if your audience wants to get four or more of their friends together and do a mat and have me do a mastermind with them for them as a group. I’ll cut out a special mastermind, it can be as few as five people, but nothing less than that, and I will give them a killer price just because I know I will have fun. [20:58]
Nancy Calabrese: Cool, cool. You hear that everyone? Look, I just really want to say a huge thank you, John, for sharing your expertise with me and the audience and people listening in take advantage of this man’s expertise and his generous offer. So, until we speak again, I want everyone to make it an awesome sales day. See you next time. [21:28]
