About Mike Bosworth: Mike Bosworth is the author of three books on selling, a keynote speaker on sales, marketing, and leadership, and in his later years, enjoys being known as a ‘sales philosopher.’ Mike’s passion is helping people land the job of their dreams, assisting salespeople in exceeding their goals, and supporting their families. He enjoys leading experiential workshops on sales and leadership. Mike began his career in the information technology industry in 1972 on the Help Desk for Xerox Computer Services. He was their top new business salesperson in 1975, managed the “Branch of the Year” in 1979, and was promoted to Manager of Field Sales in 1980. Mike founded his Solution Selling business in 1983. Mike has a B.S. in Business Management and Marketing from California State Polytechnic University. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Mike.
In this episode, Nancy and Mike discuss the following:
- The science of selling through emotional connection
- Why most people do not like salespeople
- The importance of asking for permission to tell the story
- The science behind storytelling for sales success
- Leveraging the psychology of storytelling in sales conversations
Key Takeaways:
- The authentic secret sauce of connecting with strangers is a 60-second customer hero story.
- When you’re in sales, that’s like original sin.
- No matter how good your story is, you can’t go up to a stranger and start telling even a 60-second story: you must get permission.
“The biggest problem large organizations with lots of salespeople have been trying to solve for the past 40 years that I’ve been a sales trainer is that 20% of the people sell 80% of the business. And that top 20%, the real difference—and it took me years to figure this out—is that they have an intuitive ability to connect and build trust quickly with strangers emotionally. So, my mission as a sales trainer for all these years has been to help the bottom 80%, the people who are not natural intuitive trust-building connectors, help them feed their families, buy a house, and send their kids to college. And when you go into the enterprise sales range, for instance, in the mid-90s, in my Solution Selling organization, we trained 15,000 IBM salespeople. ” – MIKE
“So, if you think about it, most people will not admit a problem to someone they don’t trust, so the story creates an emotional connection and enough trust that they could risk sharing their problem. And once they share a problem, they go from suspect to prospect.” – MIKE
“The best salespeople I’ve known over the last 40 years rarely have to close because their EQ, their emotional intelligence, is so high, and they’re willing to help the buyer buy rather than try and “sell” them something, and people love to buy. Human beings hate to feel sold to, but they love to buy. So, the very best salespeople rarely must close because they’re so good at facilitating the buying. So smart companies, when they hire new salespeople, they don’t teach them about the product; they teach them how their customers use the product.” – MIKE
Connect with Mike Bosworth:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikebosworth/
- Story Seekers: https://www.storyseekers.us/
- We Concile: https://weconcile.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 Mike Bosworth, author of Solution Selling, Customer Centric Selling and What Great Salespeople Do. Mike began studying the power of story as a framework for building emotional connection. He’s the author of multiple books including What Great Salespeople Do, the Science of Selling Through Emotional Connection, and the Power of Story. He is also the founder of Story Seekers with a focus on teaching people how to connect with strangers using a story framework. His passion is helping people land the job of their dreams and assisting salespeople in exceeding their goals and supporting their families. I love stories, Mike. Welcome to the show!
Mike Bosworth: I’m happy to be here, Nancy, and that was a pretty good introduction for when you said you didn’t have one. [1:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Hey, you know what? When you’re in sales, you gotta dance.
Mike Bosworth: That’s right.
Nancy Calabrese: So, okay, emotional connection. What is the science of selling through emotional connection?
Mike Bosworth: Well, um, the biggest problem large organizations with lots of salespeople have been trying to solve for the past 40 years that I’ve been a sales trainer is that 20% of the people sell 80% of the business. And that top 20%, the real difference—and it took me years to figure this out—is that they have an intuitive ability to emotionally connect and build trust quickly with strangers. And then I went on ChatGPT a month ago, and I even asked that. I said, “What percentage of American adults have high EQ, emotional intelligence?” It said, it said 17 to 21%. So that kind of fits that too. So, what my mission as a sales trainer for all these years has been to try to help the bottom 80%, the people who are not natural intuitive trust-building connectors, help them feed their families, buy a house, send their kids to college. And when you go into the enterprise sales range, for instance, in the mid-90s, my Exclusion Selling organization, we trained 15,000 IBM salespeople. [3:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Holy Cow!
Mike Bosworth: When you look at these big IT sales forces, they don’t typically have a lot of high connection people. They’re very geeky, smart people, people who know all about information technology, and they know about programming, or they might be experts in finance or whatever. And those people need help connecting with strangers. And the real secret sauce of connecting with strangers is a 60-second customer hero story. [3:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Give me an example.
Mike Bosworth: All right, well, when I was 28 years old, Xerox Computer Services coerced me into going into sales. I had two years of experience with the company where I had a ton of product expertise, but I had no selling expertise. My boss took me out and taught me how to cold call, and back then, cold calling meant going into a lobby in person. So, there I was, 28 years old, selling first-generation manufacturing technology—pretty geeky stuff. I’d walk into the lobby of a manufacturing company and say, “Hi, my name is Mike Bosworth, I’m from Xerox Computer Services, and I’d like to speak with your materials manager.” Yeah, back then, in 1974, all the receptionists were females, and all the materials managers were males. I’m just clarifying so nobody gets offended by my pronouns. Anyway, she would get on the phone and call the materials manager and say, “I’ve got this guy from Xerox in the lobby, and he wants to speak with our materials manager.” Back then, almost no one ever called on the materials manager, and if you were a senior manufacturing executive back then, the only way you could learn about new technology for manufacturing was to see salespeople from IBM, Xerox, Honeywell, Univac, or whatever, because there was no internet, they couldn’t go searching. So, anyway, about 80% of the time, this materials manager would come out, and they were typically 50 years old. I was 28, and as soon as they looked at me, they’d look at their watch, thinking to themselves, “Gosh, now I have to be nice to this guy for 10 minutes until I get rid of him,” right? Because how could anybody that young know anything about manufacturing, right? But when I, and I did this intuitively—it took me many years to be able to teach it—I would confirm the job title. I’d say, “So, you’re the materials manager?” And he’d say, “Yes.” And I’d say, “Can I share a quick story with you about another materials manager less than a mile from here that I’ve been working with for the last 18 months?” Never once did that story get turned down. [6:38]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow!
Mike Bosworth: Because if you think about it, people are curious about their peers, especially if you’re selling B2B. If you’re selling to the enterprise, everybody’s curious about what their peers are doing. And this group of managers, they really struggled back then with shortages. So, he would agree to the story, and I had the story down to 60 seconds. Basically, I gave a setting, which is when I met this other materials manager two years ago and his background and how he got his job. Then I got into his struggle. His struggle was every day he’d go into work and his CFO is furious at him because the inventory was too high, and every day his boss, the VP manufacturing, was furious at him because his past due backlog was 28%. And then I went to the insight of the story, and I said, 18 months ago, when this guy had Blackman, found out that Xerox now had invented a way using computers to replan an entire complex manufacturing plant overnight, he volunteered to be our first customer. We had no existing customers. He raised and he said, “I’ll go first.” Here we are 18 months later. His inventory used to be 8,000,000, now it’s 2.7 million, and his past due backlog 18 months ago used to be 28%, now it’s 3%. But enough about me, what’s going on around here? And 60 seconds after he looked at his watch, right, he’s now saying, “You want to come in and look around? Can I give you a tour?” Because that little story led him to a couple of emotional conclusions. The first emotional conclusion is, even this guy looks wet behind the ears, he understands how hard my job is. And the other emotional conclusion he came to is, this guy helped one of my peers solve my biggest problem. Well, the offer of this story triggered pure curiosity when I said, “Can I tell you a story about another materials manager?” And then the story itself was good enough that, excuse me, it converted his pure curiosity into pure envy. [9:39]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow!
Mike Bosworth: And because now, 60 seconds later, he was envious of this other materials manager I’ve been working with for the last 18 months, all his natural discovery resistance, as I call it—you know, most people don’t like meeting salespeople. [10:00]
Nancy Calabrese: Why is that?
Mike Bosworth: I think the reason is, Nancy, that what percentage of the people you know personally have had a previous unpleasant experience with a salesperson where within minutes or even seconds they felt pushed, pressured into doing something they didn’t really want to do. We’ve all had those, everyone has.
Nancy Calabrese: Everyone has.
Mike Bosworth: Yes, and so as soon as you meet a stranger and they know you’re in sales, they’re—it’s, well, you sound like you might have some Italian in your Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, very much so.
Mike Bosworth: Well then you know what original sin is, don’t you?
Nancy Calabrese: Well, I think so. You tell me.
Mike Bosworth: Well, you were Catholic, right? Original, yeah, right. Yeah, the babies don’t go to heaven until they’re baptized. They’re born with original sin. [11:07]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Mike Bosworth: Well, when you’re in sales, that’s like original sin. Every stranger you meet, as soon as they find out you’re in sales, their discovery resistance comes up.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, the sales wall.
Mike Bosworth: So, that little story we call it a customer hero story, it greets this stranger. And you have to get permission. No matter how good your story is, you just can’t go up to a stranger and start telling even a 60-second story. You must get permission first. “Oh, Nancy, you’re a podcaster, can I share a quick story with you about another podcaster I know?” Yeah, your curiosity, right? Once you get permission to tell that story, now they’ve granted you 60 seconds of story time. And if you’ve architected your story to mainly focus on the struggle of this person’s peer and before you help them, so I talked the story, had their struggle, it had their 18 months ago they decided to take the risk and be our first customer, and here we are now with the results of the inventory going down, etc. So, if that story is architected properly, even if there’s a 20-year age difference, if that story rings true, that story will eliminate the discovery resistance and cause that person to actually—they’d invite me in, say, “Can I give you a tour of the plants?” Yeah, they did. They did me almost immediately admit their shortage problem to me. So, well, if you think about it, most people will not admit a problem to someone they don’t trust and so the story creates emotional connection and enough trust that they could risk sharing their problem. And once they share a problem, they go from suspect to prospect. [13:33]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, right, I love it. I love it. So, would you say your unique idea is storytelling?
Mike Bosworth: Well, it’s not unique because two-legged creatures have been on this earth for 200,000 years and have spoken. For about the last 130,000 years, most of that time, there was no written language, so everything human beings learned about food, spices, tradition, and everything came from oral stories. So, what happens is we’re almost genetically programmed to love stories. And if you think about it, when my kids were small, if I wanted them to cooperate and get ready for bed and brush their teeth and stuff, I said, “If you can be ready in the next 5 minutes, I’ll tell you a story.” And they loved that story. And so when little kids hear “Once Upon a Time,” same thing happens to an adult. If I say, “Can I share a story with you about another podcaster?” When you anticipate a story as a human being, your critical left brain, they’ve even done it in MRI, starts to shut down, and your creative right brain that’s in touch with all the five senses and colors and music and all that, your right opens. And people unconsciously say, “OH, a story. I don’t have to decide. I don’t have to do anything. I can just enjoy it because it’s a story.” Yeah, somewhere in the back of their mind because of, you know, stories where they learned, “Don’t eat those red berries because your grandpa died eating those red berries,” they subconsciously say, “Oh, we know this. I better pay attention because this could be important information that I need to remember.” [15:48]
Nancy Calabrese: It’s interesting.
Mike Bosworth: What a perfect frame of mind for a sales message!
Nancy Calabrese: Wow! Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Mike Bosworth: That the very best salespeople I’ve known over the last 40 years rarely have to close.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, why is that?
Mike Bosworth: Because their EQ, their emotional intelligence, is so high, and they’re willing to help the buyer buy rather than to try and “sell” them something, and people love to buy. Human beings hate to feel sold to, but they love to buy. So, the very best salespeople, they rarely must close because they’re so good at facilitating the buying. [16:53]
Nancy Calabrese: So good at getting to learn how they can help the prospect by asking questions. Yeah, meaningful questions. Yeah, I love.
Mike Bosworth: So smart companies, when they hire new salespeople, they don’t teach them about the product; they teach them how their customers use the product. [17:18]
Nancy Calabrese: Very good, very, very good. So, what is the fun fact about you, Mike?
Mike Bosworth: I love new things, and the newest thing I’m working on is I got contacted about six weeks ago by a startup company offering private AI capability. And so now they’ve helped me build my own private AI. My own private AI’s got all three of my books in it, it’s got all my white papers in it, it’s got my Ted talk in it, so it’s got all this Mike Bosworth material in it. And I can type in questions, and it’s like talking to myself. [18:10]
Nancy Calabrese: I love it!
Mike Bosworth: I will send you a link with some sample questions unless you’d like to play with it.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh my gosh, I would love to get it. You know, AI is fascinating to me, and I’m not taking advantage of it as much as I should, but I mean, it’s the future, it’s now, you know?
Mike Bosworth: Well, if you haven’t published anything, it might be worth considering.
Nancy Calabrese: Yes, I have a book, “The Inside Sales Solution.”
Mike Bosworth: OK, well, then as long as you can get that book in a PDF or Word document, with this AI capability, you can drag your book right into it, and it will ingest your book. [18:53]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh wow!
Mike Bosworth: And then you can start asking the AI questions about your book.
Nancy Calabrese: So great. Listen, you know, I believe we’re almost out of time. So, what is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Mike Bosworth: That anybody can learn to use story to connect with strangers. [19:20]
Nancy Calabrese: I love it! How can my people find you?
Mike Bosworth: The easiest thing is probably on LinkedIn. Just go on LinkedIn and send me a friend request. If you do, I’ll message you a link to my AI so you can try it for free.
Nancy Calabrese: Gang, take advantage of it. I mean, I’m definitely gonna do that, Mike, and I really find you very engaging. I love what you do, and I thank you so much for spending time with us on the show today. People, go and take advantage of Mike’s wealth of knowledge, and Mike, I hope you come back.
Mike Bosworth: Well, let’s make it happen!
Nancy Calabrese: Alright, everyone, have a great sales day, and we’ll see you next time! [20:16]
