by Nancy Calabrese | Feb 29, 2024 | Podcast
About Craig Lowder: Craig Lowder is a Founder and President of the Main Spring Sales Group, a specialized client acquisition consultancy focused on creating significant, predictable, and sustainable sales growth for successful Financial Advisors, Consultants, and Business Leaders, making a 6-7 Figure Income seeking a strategic senior-level sales executive on a part-time, contract basis to develop and execute sales strategy, including sales process development, performance management systems, and ensure sales execution. With a unique blend of foundational sales science & real-world experience, Craig partners with businesses and advisors to transform their sales trajectory, ensuring consistent, measurable growth in every endeavor. Craig has worked with over 50 companies in various industries, from retail to manufacturing, financial services to business services. He has increased first-year annual sales by 22 to 142 percent for every client. Craig is the author of two highly-rated books, Smooth Selling Forever and Trusted Advisor Confidential℠. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Craig.
In this episode, Nancy and Craig discuss the following:
- The secret of growing a company to 142%
- Shift to virtual Selling and digital self-serve
- Challenges in virtual Selling: Adapting to new technology, maximizing efficiency, and reducing the cost of sales
- From cold calls to warm introductions: Increasing touchpoints with prospects
- Overcoming challenges such as wrong people in wrong seats, lack of clearly defined sales metrics, and absence of sales processes
- Keys to building an effective sales team
- Importance of ongoing learning, open communication, mentoring, and recognition and reward systems
Key Takeaways:
- We are in a virtual selling and a digital self-serve world; the old days of in-person meetings have gone.
- The virtual meetings that are being held are shorter and more on point.
- The definition of cold calling nowadays is getting a list of names and numbers and just banging the phone and calling people.
- Too many salespeople give up after two or three times, and studies show it may take six or seven outreaches.
“There are a lot of opportunities for enhancement or growth in the company. A lot of it gets down to having a detailed sales growth plan that everyone is following, making sure that there are defined sales processes that everyone follows, which shorten sales cycles, improve conversion rates, making sure that there are sales success standards present, that are activity as well as results-based, and that there are targets which generally increases the level of activity that’s taking place, making sure that organizations have an ideal client profile, understanding the difference between a crow and a pheasant. So, they invest their time in marketing, lead generation, and lead conversion on those opportunities that are the best fit for them. And then finally, and most importantly, ensuring that they have the right people in their sales organization in the right seats.” – CRAIG
“The reality is, and I believe I said it in the article, there is absolutely no justification for a cold call. With all the technology available today, whether it’s LinkedIn, the focus of prospecting should be on getting introduced to the individual in the organization we’re targeting to warm up the call. So, there’s a likelihood that an individual will either return your call or respond to an email. I would say it continues because of the amount of, and I hate to say it, noise that’s out there digitally. If you remember back when you and I were doing this several decades ago, the studies were showing it took, you know, six to seven interactions for you to begin to develop a level of trust. Today, because of all that noise out there, it’s taking twice that number of touches before somebody’s willing to trust you. So, I think that the trend is that we need to be in more frequent touch with our prospects. The conversations, the emails need to be shorter with a very defined agenda and take a waypoint for the listener, the reader.” – CRAIG
“In my book, Smooth Selling Forever, I outline 12 reasons why significant predictable and sustainable sales growth will not happen unless you overcome 12 challenges. The top four include the wrong people in the wrong seats. We know that in a virtual selling environment, the role definitions, the makeup of the sales team’s skill sets, and experience have changed. Third was not having clearly defined sales metrics, activities, and results. The focus is typically on the results, but we must understand that results are lagging success indicators. We really need to determine the leading indicators of success, which are activities, their calls, their opportunities discovered, proposals or quotes that go out the door, and how healthy our sales funnel is, just at a very basic level. The second of the top four are no defined sales processes. I’m a firm advocate that you need to have clearly defined sales processes, which are technically the documentation of best practices of those responsible for the Selling. And there are at least three, if not more. One, new customer, new project. Two, existing customers, new project. And it could be upsold, cross-sell. The third is renewals or, re-business or reorder business. And they all have different paths that require different steps and may involve different people. But the bottom line in building sales processes is that the sales process needs to be congruent with your target audience’s buying process.” – CRAIG
Connect with Craig Lowder:
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 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 a human conversation. Today we’re speaking with Craig Lowder, author of Smooth Selling Forever, a sales effectiveness expert with a 40-year track record of helping owners of small and mid-sized businesses achieve their sales goals. He’s also the founder and president of MainSpring Sales Group, which assists companies in need of a strategic sales leader on a part-time contract or project basis to develop and execute a sales strategy, develop sales process and performance management teams, and ensure sales execution. Craig has worked with over 60 companies and increased first year annual sales from 21 to 142%. Welcome to the show, Craig.
Craig Lowder: Well, thank you, Nancy. It’s an honor to be online with you here and have the opportunity to speak to your audience. [1:27]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Okay. So how do you grow a company to 142%? I mean, that number is just, you know, unheard of.
Craig Lowder: Well, there are a lot of opportunities for enhancement or growth in the company. And a lot of it gets down to having a detailed sales growth plan that everyone is following, making sure that they are defined sales processes that everyone follows, which shorten sales cycles, improves conversion rates making sure that there are sales success standards present, that are activity as well as results based, and that there are targets which generally increases the level of activity that’s taking place, making sure that organizations have an ideal client profile, understanding the difference between a crow and a pheasant. So, they invest their time in both marketing, lead generation, lead conversion on those opportunities that are the best fit for them. And then finally, and most importantly, ensuring that they have the right people in their sales organization in the right seats. And since COVID, that has changed dramatically. [2:53]
Nancy Calabrese: How so?
Craig Lowder: We are in a virtual selling and a digital self-serve world. The old days of in-person meetings has gone by the wayside, not entirely, but on-site meetings are less frequent than they used to be. Those meetings have been converted to virtual meetings. [3:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep.
Craig Lowder: like we’re doing right now, Zoom, Google Meets, Teams, etc. And many of the past telephone conversations are being converted into virtual meetings. And the interesting dynamic here, Nancy, is the buyers are driving this, not the sellers. I was privileged to be interviewed by Forbes a couple of years ago. And it was right before a McKinsey report came out and what was happening in the world. And the contributing editor of Forbes goes, oh, you’re pretty good. Forbes said the same thing that you are. Excuse me. Yes, Forbes said the same thing that you did. And I said, no, I said the same thing they did. I’m happy that I’m in line with them. And what they were saying, Nancy, is buyers do not want to meet with their sellers in person, they would prefer to meet virtually. You say, well, why is that? The net of it is they’re able to make better informed decisions. How so? Well, they’re now able to engage more individuals, more stakeholders in the qualification process. The meetings that are being held are shorter. and more on point. And in fact, a McKinsey study showed that in today’s world, a good portion of the buyers are willing to make million dollars plus decisions without ever having met in person with their seller. [5:06]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, it’s funny you bring that up because when COVID hit, all I heard, well, not all, but for many people, they complained they couldn’t sell over the phone, or they couldn’t sell virtually. And I, you know, I’ve been doing this virtually for decades. So, I know a sale can be done, you know, the way in which we’re speaking right now. And I think it was a cop out for many sales reps. You know, you have to kind of go with the flow. What do you think about that?
Craig Lowder: I agree with you 100% Nancy. You know, we all get comfortable in the status quo in what we’ve been doing for years. And you combine that with new technology that people haven’t been trained on how to use. They don’t have the right camera. They don’t have the right lighting. They don’t have the right audio. They’re not sure how to use virtual backgrounders. They’re not sure how to share screens etc. So yes, it becomes a cop-out. And the reality is, and I found in my own business, I was able to have more sales meetings in a day, basically back-to-back to back-to-back, with five to ten minutes in between meetings. And my cost of business, my cost of sales, went down dramatically. [6:29]
Nancy Calabrese: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, the bottom line is you can achieve more doing virtual selling than if you had to hit a car and go, you know, to a site. And even, you know, virtual networking becomes more and more efficient that way. So, I’m in your corner for sure. So, years ago, I was on your website, you wrote a blog that caught my attention, the science and art of prospecting, and that’s music to my ears, because it’s all we do. You wrote that in 21. Has anything changed since then?
Craig Lowder: I don’t think dramatically, Nancy. The reality is, and I believe I said it in the article, there is absolutely no justification for a cold call. With all the technology that’s available today, whether it’s LinkedIn, the focus of prospecting should be on getting introduced to the individual in the organization that we’re targeting to warm up the call. So, there’s a likelihood that individual will either return your call or respond to an email. I would say it continues because of the amount of, and I hate to say it, noise that’s out there digitally. If you remember back when you and I were doing this several decades ago, the studies were showing it took, you know, six to seven interactions for you to begin to develop a level of trust. Today, because all that noise out there, it’s taking twice that number of touches before somebody’s willing to trust you. So, I think that what the trend is, we need to be in more frequent touch with our prospects. The conversations, the emails need to be shorter with a very defined agenda and take a waypoint for the listener, the reader. [8:40]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, I mean, I want to be mindful. Cold calling still works. It’s just another marketing channel that should be mixed in with every other channel that you’re doing to reach out. Because if you’re not picking up the phone, somebody else is, and you’re probably leaving money on the table. What are your thoughts on that?
Craig Lowder: I Yeah, when you talk about cold calling, and I think it gets down to definition, cold calling, I get a list of names and numbers and I just start banging the phone and calling people. The reality is it’s no longer a cold call if you’ve done your research on that organization or that individual and can specifically state some observations that you’ve had by reading the publicly available information. I don’t consider that to be a cold call or a blind call. And the old studies are showing cold calling is two to 3% conversion rate. I’m finding in the business that I do, if I do my research, I’m getting probably close to three out of four people that are responding to a call and or an email. And we do have to be more persistent. Too many salespeople give up after two or three times of someone not. [10:01]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. That is true.
Craig Lowder: not responding and studies show it to may take six or seven outreaches to them with different value propositions before that individual will finally return your call respond to your email. [10:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep, I agree with you completely. So why do business owners struggle in creating significant, predictable, and sustainable sales growth in the business?
Craig Lowder: That’s a great question, Nancy. I’ll give you a little detail around, but the high level is, because we are comfortable in our status quo, in building our future growth, we’re always looking in the rear-view mirror, in trying to leverage what has worked in the past. And when it’s not working, we kind of scratch our heads and say, geez, what’s going on here? This has worked for decades. So, in my book, Smooth Selling Forever, I outline 12 reasons why significant predictable and sustainable sales growth is not going to happen unless you overcome 12 challenges. The top four include wrong people, wrong seats. We know in a virtual selling environment the role definitions the makeup of the sales team skillsets, experience have changed. Third was not having clearly defined sales metrics, activities as well as results. The focus typically is on the results but must understand results are lagging indicators of success. We really need to determine what are the leading indicators of success, which are activities their calls, their opportunities discovered, there’s proposals or quotes that go out the door, and how healthy is our sales funnel, just at a very basic level. The second of the top four are no defined sales processes. I’m a firm advocate that you need to have clearly defined sales processes, which are technically the documentation of best practices of those individuals that are responsible for doing the selling. And there are at least three, if not more. One, new customer, new project. Two, existing customer, new project. And it could be upsold, cross-sell. And third is renewals or re-business or reorder business. And they all have different paths that require different steps and may involve different people. But the bottom line in building sales processes is that the sales process needs to be congruent with your target audience’s buying process. So, you need to start by putting your buyer’s cap on and understand how they go about making an informed buying decision and then build your sales process to how they buy. And first and foremost, most companies, in fact, I haven’t run into one in five years now that have had a detailed, documented sales plan for growth because they’re viewing their business highly transactionally. [13:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, how long does it take to develop a plan like that?
Craig Lowder: Well, by putting all the elements together, because if you’re looking, Nancy, at what we need to do, is number one, we need to develop the plan. We need to surround that plan with the sales enablement systems that support the plan, and we need to make sure that we’ve got the right people in the right seats. And when I talk to small and mid-size business owners, I say, this will typically take 60 to 90 days envision that there’s probably going to be another two to three months break in period before you see the proverbial hockey stick in terms of increased sales. And typically, I get the question back, well can you do it faster than that? And my response is, I can, but you can’t because this is interactive, and you’ve got a business to run and time and time again it takes 60 to 90 days although they say we want to get this done in four weeks. [14:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. So, what are the keys to building an effective sales team? What’s important?
Craig Lowder: Well, I have my top 10. Number one is you have to start by organizing correctly. Right people, right seats. You need to, two, is define the roles for each position in the sales department. What are the responsibilities of that role? What are they going to be held accountable for? What authority are you going to give them? And once you define what an A player looks like, you can then say, okay, what experience, what skills, and what personality traits am I looking for? So, it’s really building a roadmap to vet sales prospects as they come into the door. Third is creating a hiring system. Most companies do not have a sales hiring system. The larger companies who have an HR department may have a hiring system or process in place, but sales are different. And I’m working with two clients right now where that’s the case. The steps are different, the people involved that are different, etc. Fourth is having a documented onboarding plan. No company that I know of has a documented onboarding plan more than, let me pat you on the rump. We’ve hired you because of your experience. Go kill them tiger or they have a one-day, two-day, three-day orientation period. And having a documented onboarding plan, there’s typically a 30, 60, 90-day objectives to ensure that is done effectively. Bottom line, why do we do this? We want to find out right away if we’ve hired the right people, and we want to bring them up to competency as quickly as they can. Five is establish sales processes and sales success standards, which I just mentioned a while ago. [16:34]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Craig Lowder: Most companies don’t have that. I always, six, as I ask the question, does your sales incentive compensation plan drive the desired behavior? And the answer is one of two. Gee, that’s a great question. I’ve never thought about that. I think so, I hope so, but the reality, it’s not, because compensation plans need to be reviewed annually based on the sales growth objectives of the organization Seven, you need to have ongoing open communication up and down the line. We need to function as a team. Regular mentoring and monitoring are very important to ensuring that each member of the sales team meets their stated objectives. 10th, and I’ve alluded, or 9th, I’ve alluded to this, you need to create a team environment focused on winning. Too many companies are totally focused on the individual, and you find that individuals are in competition with other individuals. The best practices that are being developed are coming from ongoing learning in the marketplace, because as we know, the marketplace is dynamic. And 10th is to have a recognition and reward system. As much as we like to think that sales are always the primary driver, in many cases, it’s not. It’s about being recognized. It’s about being promoted. It’s about being given the opportunity to train some of our peers. It’s about giving a presentation outside the company, et cetera, et cetera. [18:15]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Wow. You know, Craig, you clearly love selling, so do I. I’m afraid our time is up. We could go on forever. How come my people find you?
Craig Lowder: Well, thank you for asking, Nancy. The best way to reach me is via my email, which is Craig, C-R-A-I-G, at smooth, S-M-O-O-T-H, selling, S-E-L-L-I-N-G, forever. Smoothsellingforever.com. Or you can call me directly at 630-649-4943.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. I love the phone call. Pick up the phone people. Craig, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And you know, we could have spent a heck of a lot more time. I hope you’ll come back in the future. We can kind of dive into some other sales topics. And for everyone out there, take advantage of Craig’s expertise. Don’t be afraid to pick up that phone folks and make it a great sales day. [19:28]
by Nancy Calabrese | Jan 26, 2024 | Podcast
About Nicolas Toper: Nicolas Toper is the Co-founder at Inboxbooster. His mission is to help email senders achieve better deliverability and avoid spam filters. With over 15 years of experience in web development, email technology, and cloud computing, he is passionate about creating innovative and scalable solutions for online communication. Before launching Inboxbooster, Nicolas founded and led CritSend, the first SMTP relay service that guaranteed email success. He also invented Pilo, a renewable energy battery that recharges when shaken. Nicolas holds multiple patents and certifications in computer science, and he graduated from Y Combinator and the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. Fluent in French, German, and English, he enjoys sharing his insights and learnings in his newsletter. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Nicolas.
In this episode, Nancy and Nicolas discuss the following:
- Nicolas’ story of getting into this business
- Practical tips for email senders to achieve better deliverability and avoid spam filters
- How to avoid getting important emails to spam
- Gmail and Outlook practical insights
- How long does it take to correct spam issues?
- Why do emails from the same sender intermittently shift between my inbox and spam folder?
Key Takeaways:
- Ten years ago, sending emails was straightforward with clear rules, but today, it’s a complex and unclear landscape, creating a significant challenge for email senders.
- Outlook wants your domain to have a good history, whereas Gmail doesn’t care about the IP and the domain, but they care about your users’ behavior.
- If you’re doing cold emailing, you need to test your email on InboxBooster or another way once a week to ensure you don’t have any problems.
“ So, you have a free tool on our system, the InboxBooster, that tells you how to, analyzes your little list, and tells you where you’re emailing. Because if you’re emailing just on Gmail, it’s not the same thing as if you’re emailing on the form of two Fortune 500 companies, which is not the same thing if you’re emailing, so there is kind of because usually a lot of SMBs are using Outlook. Some other kinds of startups, lots of startups, are using Google Workspace. So, you really, the first step is really to investigate that. And until you know that it’s kind of, you will not be able to sound efficiently. ” – NICOLAS
“Email has become a bit of a puzzle lately, and let me break it down for you. A decade ago, sending emails was a breeze—clear rules, automated stuff, and personal messages. Fast forward to today, and the line between human and machine-generated emails is blurred, thanks to outreach tools like AdRage and Apollo. Cold emails, though less annoying than cold calls, face skepticism, especially from Google, which prefers ads. Now, onto a fixer-upper story about Y Combinator: despite its strong brand, it battled spam on Gmail. Why? They imported a MailChimp template, and some pruning oversight led them back to the promotion tab. We sorted it out, and they saw a 35% click boost. The lesson? Fixing email glitches is like solving a puzzle, sometimes iterative but worthwhile.” – NICOLAS
“Sometimes we have customers sending probably more than a couple of thousands of emails per day on cold average, and it’s working very well. So, it depends on what you’re selling. The key elements are as follows: First, you need to know who you sell to if you do cold average. You need to know: “OK, So this is my ICP,” and know those people will sell. And then what I’m saying usually is if you don’t know who your ICP is, you need to experiment until you figure it out, but you shouldn’t sell a lot of emails to be very careful. In deliverability, once you know who you’re selling to, you can sell a lot. And the second thing is sometimes because you care about who you’re selling to, so basically, what’s your revenue? There is another side to it, and I mentioned it: engagement. So, you want one unsubscription link. One clicks the unsubscription link, now it will be a requirement for Google. And the second thing you want is to be between 0.5 and 1.5 of the unsubscription rate. If you do that, you’re fine. This means that you have found a Via Negativa if that makes sense, your ICP. If you want people to unsubscribe a little bit because it’s a little bit trying to sell them some stuff and some are not going to be interested, then that’s fine, but you don’t want too many of them not to be interested because if you’re there, this means they don’t care, and you’re not emailing the right people.” – NICOLAS
Connect with Nicolas Toper:
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 Nicolas Toper, the CEO and co-founder of Inbox Booster, a platform that uses AI to ensure emails don’t end up in spam promotions on Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. The platform serves over 2,000 clients, including Y, Combinator, Zango, and Wisby, and has recently been featured in several articles, including Forbes, FIM, SMEs, and BusinessMall. Nicholas has a Master of Science in Computer Science and has been awarded four patents computer, compiler, optimization, and email, deliverability. Boy, that’s a mouthful, Nicholas. Welcome to the show!
Nicolas Toper: Thank you, thank you. [1:13]
Nancy Calabrese: I guess my first question is, how did you get involved in this business? And what’s the trick?
Nicolas Toper: So, first there is no trick and the second answer is it kind of happened randomly. I was studying and working at the same time and the people I was working with, the company I was working with, started to have email trouble and actually the teacher at my school was part of the team who built AOL’s fan feature so I kind of got some cheat codes here and that’s how I got super good person in my new company because I knew how these things worked just because I had the right connection and so that’s kind of how I got started and then I got real so it was initially just totally random and opportunistic and then I built a business in that space I sold it I worked in compilers afterwards, and then I also had my children, so I stopped working for a couple of years. And after moving to the US, I went back to it, mostly because the ecosystem has changed a lot, I feel, and not for the better. So, my point being that 10 years ago, it was very, it was straightforward to send emails and the rules were kind of simple. Now it’s basically a mess, as everybody knows, but besides being a mess, it’s very unclear. So, nobody really knows what’s working. [2:44]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Nicolas Toper: And a lot of people are selling like snake, all type of, oh, do this and that and it should work. But on top of that, the kind of playing film is very uneven. So, for instance, we’ve lost a customer recently because they raised a lot of funding and they had someone at Google at their board. So, Google told them that they wouldn’t be in spam. So, they donated us. So basically, if you know the right person or spend the right amount of money, then you will have certain advantages, and I just feel that’s wrong, and that’s also a good business opportunity. [3:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. So, you are on a mission to help email senders achieve better deliverability and avoid spam filters. Give us some practical tips. How do we do that?
Nicolas Toper: So, first, the way to do that is actually… So yeah, as you mentioned, I’m on a mission, but this mission is mostly to explain how this thing works because the real problem you have right now is when you’re in spam, you have no clue why. And that’s kind of the problem because what we find out is if you’re in spam, and we explain that to people, in 90% of the time, they’ll do the right thing, and they fix their problem which is good for everybody because usually it’s because they’re sending better emails. That’s what usually that means. And so, the receipts are happier. The customer is happier because he’s selling more and it’s easily it’s more it’s easier. So, everybody’s kind of its kind of good for everybody. And there is 10 percent of the cases where they expect a magic trick. And so now, after I’ve contextualized this answer a little bit, the way to reach inbox, the first is deep. So, the first question is, who are you selling to? So where are you emailing to? So, you have a free tool on our system, the inbox booster that tells you how to, that will analyze your little list and will tell you where you’re emailing to. Because if you’re emailing just on Gmail, it’s not the same thing as if you’re emailing on the form of two Fortune 500 companies, which is not the same thing if you’re emailing, so there is kind of, because usually a lot of SMBs are using Outlook. Some other kind of, lots of, most startups are using Google Workspace. So, you really, the first step is really to investigate that. And until you know that it’s kind of, you will not be able to sound efficiently. And you’ll see that… [5:10]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, why are they all different? I don’t understand.
Nicolas Toper: They all have their own inducing creases, so they all have their own quirks and way of working. So, for instance, Outlook, they really want your domain to have kind of a good history. Gmail, they don’t really care about the IP and the domain, but they really care about the behavior of your users. And other spam filters like for instance, Proofful, they’ll care about the age of the domain, they’ll care about a lot of factors. But for instance, if you look at what proof point, which is a spam filter used a lot for Fortune 500 and Gmail, they will classify spam. If you remove like the phishing email and all those things, the overlap is probably to be 25%. So that means 75% of your emails will be considered spam by let’s say one or the other spam filter, but there will be no overlap. So, you really need to be careful here. And that’s really the first step is, who are you emailing to? [6:11]
Nancy Calabrese: How long does it take to correct that?
Nicolas Toper: So usually, we can do that depending on what problems you have, but can take a day to a couple of weeks. And now once you know where you’re emailing to assuming, for instance, you’re emailing on Gmail, the first step is, are you in spam? For instance, I can use Proofpoint as an example or Gmail. But figuring it out is not that easy, because for Proofpoint, you need to buy this platform to figure it out, which we’ve done for you. And we share that information for free. Or, and even with Gmail, it’s very hard, because if you’re sending an email to your own Google Workspace account, Google is super smart that you want to receive that email, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world wants to receive it. So, you must use a specific way to even test if you’re in spam. So, the second step is, are you in spam? This you can do for free on Inbox Booster, and we’ll tell you if you’re in spam. Because what we do is we change, we have some test addresses that we change regularly. So, this way we know that they’re not getting trained, and they don’t learn what kind of emails our software would like to receive. So that’s kind of how we do it. And if you do it yourself, you can, but you need to create a test address almost each time you’re going to do test. So that’s roughly what we’ll do. So that’s the second step for you. So, before we can get to the inbox, the first question is which inbox? And the second question is, does it work? Now, assuming it doesn’t work, then same thing, you can use inbox booster and we’ll tell you why you’re interested, because there can be a lot of different reasons. And it starts to be very, very complicated. You really have two types of problems. The first one is it’s tied to your past behavior. So, for instance, you’ve sent emails to people you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have, or it has nothing to do with you, but it’s really like just a word that’s triggering the spam feature. And we’re going to tell you both and then you can fix it. If it’s a word, there is nothing to do, you just change the word and you’re there. So, for instance, we’ve had a customer, they were sending like a sign-up confirmation, and they were in spam. And that’s because they had a word tag in your HTML. So that’s the reason. And the second problem you’ll have, and for Google Develop, there’s going to be a lot of that. Well, it’s going to be a mix. It’s going to be also sometimes you’ve sent to the wrong person; you haven’t targeted well enough your email. And Google, if you’re sending to Google, they take that into account a lot. And they’ll assume that you’re not able to target. So, you’ll honor their users. So, to understand how Google works, the way they do it, they want people to like your email. To like meaning to engage with it, which means really to open the email, answer it, archive it, and search it without unsubscribing or deleting it without reading it. Or just reading it and deleting it or marking it as stuff. So that’s what you want to do, and if you’re able to do that, then there is no problem for sending on Google. On Outlook they care about similar things and proof points, they don’t really care too much about that. They care a lot more about certain keywords and all that. [9:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Why is it sometimes when I see, I’ll get from the same party the email in my inbox and other times it goes to spam? Why is that?
Nicolas Toper: Say that again, sorry.
Nancy Calabrese: So, let’s say you’re emailing me, and I’ve gotten your emails in my inbox, and then all of a sudden, your emails start going to my spam folder. Why is that?
Nicolas Toper: Oh, it’s the same principle either. It’s because I’ve sent you an email with a word or a part they don’t like at Google. Or I’m assuming you’re using Google. You’re using Google, right? [10:02]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. No, I use Outlook.
Nicolas Toper: OK, so Outlook is different. So, for Outlook, it’s because I have done so in most, so it’s almost the same thing. Sometimes because I have used a bad keyword like I’ve used, and those words changes all the time, so it’s very, so it’s kind of almost in real time. This is very uncommon with algorithms, I put a lot more with Gmail. What you will usually have been I would have sent bad emails afterwards, and because of that, I would put all my emails in spam. But Google is a little smarter, so they can just put a certain type of email. So, Google is going to do it like that so that is kind of the reason. So, it’s because of stuff I’ve done and in parallel, like for instance, I’m emailing you and at the same time I’ve sent a cold outreach campaign to people who absolutely don’t like my email and that’s what will happen. [11:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Is there a story the audience would find interesting?
Nicolas Toper: Oh, in email, yeah, of course. My story or in email deliverability story?
Nancy Calabrese: Any kind of story you want to tell.
Nicolas Toper: Ah, okay. So let me tell you the problem of email, before I talk about the story, I just want to explain why it’s starting to be a problem, because it used to be easier. The problem is 10 years ago, you really had automated emails, like newsletter, sign-ups, like a bank statement and all that. And then you had personal emails for business emails, like people that have been written by email that had been written by human. But now if you do called email, you’re probably using an outreach tool. You’re using AdRage, Apollo, whichever one of them. And those are automated emails. So, the kind of the line is blurry now. So, what’s an email being written by human? What’s an email being written by a machine? Nobody really knows. And I don’t usually want to receive an email. So that’s why this problem happened. And the reason also I think it’s important is because cold email is, first, it’s a lot less intrusive than cold calls, and two people need to sell. So, in some markets, this is how people expect to be sold for some products. So that’s kind of how you must do it. And it’s a good thing if you think about it. The main problem is Google is not very happy about that, because they would prefer you to pay some ads instead. That’s kind of the thing. And that’s the story. So, for instance, we fixed, you mentioned, a white combinator. So white combinator is not a company doing average. They don’t really care about that. They’re doing marketing. And they have a very, very high brand, a very good brand. It’s very powerful. So, they don’t really have deliverability problem. But they were still in spam on Gmail. They were in promotion in spam and Gmail for the Renewsator. And the reason? That’s kind of the interesting bit is the first one is because they re-imported their MailChimp template. So, they’ve imported, they used the MailChimp template, and they rebuilt it from that, but they kept some key elements of it. And that for Gmail was a very good predictor of promotion. So, they moved their newsletter into promotion. And the second reason they’ve had is, so we’ve did that, and it worked. But then they went back in promotion. [13:46]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Nicolas Toper: And the reason is because they haven’t, they never pruned their inactive users. In newsletter it’s important, meaning that some people haven’t opened their email in like maybe five years or clicked on anything, and they were still sounding to them. So, we fixed it and then the newsletter worked. And the information here and the story here is when I told them that, they were not very happy about the results the resolution we found were increased, their total number of click by 35%. But on top of that, what’s very interesting is this process is iterative. Like you had to fix it the first time, then you had to investigate it the second time. But after that, they had no problems. So, it kind of worked and they stopped paying us because they don’t have any problems. [14:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, that’s not a good thing, is it?
Nicolas Toper: For us it is because it’s just a way of working with customers. We know that some customers will stay forever or a long time because it’s going to be a recurring problem. Most people don’t call Dimmers, usually. And for some others it’s just going to be like a one-time thing because they will not have any problems afterwards. And we can tell ahead because usually it’s email for you, business critical. Like will you be dead if your mail doesn’t work as a company or as a department? And usually, if the answer is yes, we usually have good customers. If the answer is no, usually it’s just a one-time event, but for us it’s still useful and it’s important to do it. So that’s kind of because it helps explain and all that. But what’s interesting in this story is one, the iterative nature of this kind of fix to do it a couple of times until you get there. And two, the second interesting element is that once it’s fixed, you really don’t have any problems in a lot of cases. And it’s the same thing with cold average, because one question I always have, it’s how many emails can I send? I’m proud to be your question list. And the answer is as many as the spam field lets you, meaning as many as you can with good engagement. [16:04]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Nicolas Toper: Sometimes we have customers, they’re sending probably more than a couple of thousands of emails per day in cold average and it’s working very, very well. So, it really depends on what you’re selling. And the key elements here are, and I’m kind of going a little bit outside of the initial discussion, it’s one, you need to know who you’re selling to if you do cold average. Very, very important. Like you need to know, okay, so this is my ICP and you need to know those people are actually going to sell. And then what I’m saying usually is if you don’t know who your ICP is, you need to experiment until you figure it out, but you shouldn’t sell a lot of emails to be very, very careful. And in deliverability, usually once you know who you’re selling to, you can sell a lot. And the second thing is sometimes because you care about who you’re selling to, so basically what’s your revenue, there is another side to it, and I mentioned it, it’s engagement. So, you want one unsubscription link. One clicks unsubscription link, now it’s going to be a requirement for Google. And the second thing you want is you want to be between 0.5 and 1.5 of unsubscription rate. If you do that, you’re fine. This means that you have found a vial negativa, if that makes sense, your ICP. Because you want people to unsubscribe a little bit, because it’s a little bit trying to sell them some stuff to them and some are not going to be interested, then that’s fine, but you don’t want too many of them to not be interested because if you’re there, this means they don’t care and you’re not emailing the right people. So, you want to, yeah. [17:45]
Nancy Calabrese: Right, okay. How many emails is it safe to send out a day?
Nicolas Toper: Again, as I mentioned, there is no limit if you’re able to reach this pattern. If you’re able to reach those KPI, you can sound as many as you want.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, hey, I can’t believe we’re up with time. What is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Nicolas Toper: that you absolutely need to test your email. If you’re doing cold email, you need to do that on InboxBooster or do it yourself, but you need to do it once per week just to make sure you don’t have any problems. Because there is another problem, because I can talk about this subject for hours, but it’s very, very important to test your email. That’s kind of, that like really, this is kind of the stats I mentioned. And even if you don’t think you have a problem, you need to do that, you need to check where you’re emailing to, like what mail server is behind it, and two, do you have a problem? Because the thing about this kind of thing is it’s not to compound, so if you wait too long, not only you will lose sales, but you might lose your whole mailbox. So, you must be very, very careful here if you start to see a problem. It’s kind of like a leak when you have a water leak in your home. You don’t usually want to wait too long. This is the same type of thing. It’s kind of just a problem that kind of explodes if you don’t take care of it. And so, you absolutely want to check that regularly to make sure you don’t have a problem. And you can do that for free. So that’s kind of… And it’s very, very important. [19:22]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow. Cool. So how can my audience find you?
Nicolas Toper: So, they go on Inbox Booster and they can even book a meeting with me on the website. They can also test it for free if their email is in Inbox.
Nancy Calabrese: Cool, cool. You know, folks, we all live in email land. You’ve got an expert here. And I know for me, without having this discussion that Nicolas, I had no idea, no idea. So, thanks so much for being on the show. And for all of you, I strongly suggest that you reach out and you have that offer, right? You could do some free emails. Isn’t that what you said?
Nicolas Toper: Yes, that’s correct. They can test for free; they can test and again we’re happy to do that for free, there is no problem. And they will even get some diagnosis if they have a problem. And there’s no need to sign up or anything, it’s just on the homepage. [20:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. Love it. So here we go. Another fabulous conversation with an expert in what we all need to be better in. I wish you all a great sales day. And Nicholas, thanks so much for being on the show.
Nicolas Toper: Thank you. [20:32]
by Nancy Calabrese | Sep 26, 2023 | Podcast
About Rachel Cossar: Rachel Cossar is a leader in the field of nonverbal communication and leadership presence facilitation. As a former nationally ranked athlete and professional ballet dancer, Rachel has a knack of translating unique skills into relatable business skills and competencies. Virtual Sapiens comes as an evolution of Rachel’s combined work as founder of Choreography for Business, a nonverbal communication consulting firm as well as a faculty member with Mobius Executive Leadership and as a leadership presence facilitator with Ariel Group. Rachel has worked with leaders from GE, BCG, Pfizer, Accenture, McKinsey, HBS and more. With the increased dependency of video events as a way to connect and drive impact across organizations, Rachel and her team at Virtual Sapiens are excited to open up a world of access when it comes to one of the most human, and most important skills in business – communication. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Rachel.
In this episode, Nancy and Rachel discuss the following:
- Importance of self-reinvention.
- Mistakes that sellers make when they’re on video.
- The significance of video call backgrounds.
- The role of the background in the world of remote jobs.
- Non-verbal cues and behaviors that need to be mastered to be an effective communicator.
- Hand gesture etiquette on remote meetings.
- The hacks with lens and seat cushion and their role in making an impression.
- Rachel’s way to success.
Key Takeaways:
- There are transitions and changes around us all the time, whether we realize it or not.
- In the sales process, it’s more than making the sale, it’s about building the relationship and the rapport.
- The background speaks volumes about choices you’ve made or not made when you’ve decided to show up on video with the other person.
- Using hand gestures is a wonderful tool to create a sense of openness, warmth, of invitation.
- The importance of developing a new sense of muscle memory around the way we express ourselves on a screen.
“You know, I think a lot of us felt that or experienced that at some point during the pandemic and there tends to be, of course, fear around change and transition, but sometimes I find people turn to wherever they’re going next and forget where they came from.And so, in my experience, the process of reinventing myself, which I’ve done so many times, is always on the shoulders of these past identities I’ve had. And I think that concept is really fascinating and powerful.” – RACHEL
“Some of the top cues and behaviors that need to be mastered to be an effective communicator are posture, where you’re looking, how you use your eyes when you’re speaking, and as a listener. The way you use your hands and facial expressions. Those would be some of the top four non-verbal categories to be aware of. And on video, of course, all of them are very present. The one thing I’ll say as a caveat on video is the way you frame yourself is critical because if you are going to have your lens positioned such that we can only see the very top of your head, or we can’t see your face because you’re looking at a different screen and your lens is somewhere else like those are things that are just from the get-go, very detrimental to your presence because you’ve ruined the human connection that we can take advantage of on video.” – RACHEL
“Using hand gestures is a wonderful tool to create a sense of openness, warmth, of invitation. It helps people trust you more because they know that you are present with them, that you’re not fiddling around with some unseen phone or tablet or… animal or whatever, right? People like to see open-palm hand gestures. It’s very soothing. It’s very reassuring. So that’s number one. On the other end of the spectrum though, some people over-rely on hand gestures to communicate. And when the hand gestures are kind of waving around nonsensically and there’s not an intentional connection between the way hand gestures are being used and the words that are being communicated, hand gestures, in that case, can be distracting. So yeah, I mean, it’s all about, and then there’s like different types of when you’re touching your face with your hands, that can signal stress and anxiety and discomfort. And so, the way, what it really comes down to is developing a hand gesture vocabulary that supports the message you’re trying to send.” – RACHEL
Connect with Rachel Cossar:
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 Rachel Cossar, the CEO and co-founder of Virtual Sapiens, a machine learning SaaS platform that helps client-facing professionals develop and amplify their communication skills and presence in a virtual world. As a former professional ballet dancer and gymnast with unparalleled expertise in nonverbal communication and live performance, Rachel has a knack for translating unique skills into relatable business skills and competencies. Her thought leadership has been featured on the TEDx Northeastern stage, Harvard Business Review and the Boston Globe to name a few. And she’s worked with leaders such as G.E.M. Pfizer. Welcome to the show, Rachel. This is gonna be a great discussion. [1:18]
Rachel: Thank you, Nancy, for having me.
Nancy Calabrese: Oh, my goodness. So, you talk a lot about reinvention. Why is that so important for all of us?
Rachel: Reinvention, it’s interesting. I find transitions and changes around us all the time, whether we realize it or not, but I also find that everyone is at some point in their lives, or maybe multiple times in their lives is going to have to face a pretty big transition. You know, I think a lot of us felt that or experienced that at some point during the pandemic and there tends to be, of course, fear around change and transition, but sometimes I find people turn to wherever they’re going next and forget where they came from. And so, in my experience, the process of reinventing myself, which I’ve done so many times, is always on the shoulders of these past identities I’ve had. And I think that concept is really fascinating and powerful. [2:20]
Nancy Calabrese: So, you basically are taking your prior experiences into your new experience when you reinvent yourself. Is that what you’re saying?
Rachel: Right.
Nancy Calabrese: Cool. So, you’re all about virtual selling and presentation, which is my world, by the way. And you talk about mistakes that sellers make when they’re on video, especially when it comes to their… What do you mean by that?
Rachel: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because we’ve video was really activated during the pandemic. And during the pandemic, it was just about showing up, and having your video turned on was a bonus, right? Because few of us had much choice in where we were connecting from because there were so few choices we had at that time. And now that we’re evolving out of the pandemic, and video continues to be a primary channel of connection with our prospects and clients, there’s a big gap I find in the education and awareness around some of the messages we may be sending when we show up on video. Specifically, if you think about these squares of real estate we have on video, they accentuate some of the most expressive parts of ourselves, our faces, our upper bodies, our shoulders, the way we move our heads, our hand gestures if we’re framed properly and you can see those. All those components of visual communication can send a very powerful message of preparedness and respect and perceive trustworthiness and authority, or they can really undermine those things, right? And we both know that in the selling or sales relationship, you know, it’s more than making… the sale, it’s about building the relationship and the rapport. And a lot of that can be made or not over video. [4:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, I’m often surprised at the backgrounds some people use or, you know, or in when they do video. How does that impact, you know, a potential customer?
Rachel: Definitely. The background speaks volumes about choices you’ve made or not made when you’ve decided to show up on video with this other person, right? And I think it’s very easy to become… to almost forget… what, or to get used to the background you have, right? And the background you have becomes very normal and you don’t pick up on little details that someone who’s seeing the background for the first time will be like, oh, like what is that thing there in the corner? And oh, that ceiling fan is just going round and round. And every time I think it’s going to biff them in the head, or these little distractions of an unintentional background can require mental energy from your audience, that would be better on your message. [5:36]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, distractions are exactly, you’re right. Well, you know, in my space, you’re not seeing this, but I have a huge picture of Paul McCartney. He’s, my idol. And it is, he is an icebreaker though, I must say, for a lot of people. And I’m shocked some people don’t even know who it is. So, well, go figure. Okay, you talk about nonverbal cues and behaviors that need to be mastered to be an effective communicator. What are some of the top ones? [6:12]
Rachel: Definitely. Some of the top ones are posture, where you’re looking, how you use your eyes when you’re speaking, and as a listener. The way you use your hands and facial expressions. Those would be some of the top four non-verbal categories to be aware of. And on video, of course, all of them are very present. The one thing I’ll say as a caveat on video is the way you frame yourself is critical because if you are going to have your lens positioned such that we can only see the very top of your head, or we can’t see your face because you’re looking at a different screen and your lens is somewhere else like those are things that are just from the get-go, very detrimental to your presence because you’ve ruined the human connection that we can take advantage of on video. [7:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, talk more about hand gestures though. What do you mean by that? Because I talk with my hands.
Rachel: Yeah, definitely. Hand gestures are a fascinating category of non-verbal because it’s quite rich. And yes, using hand gestures is a wonderful tool to create a sense of openness, warmth, of invitation. It helps people trust you more because they know that you are present with them, that you’re not fiddling around with some unseen phone or tablet or… animal or whatever, right? People like to see open-palm hand gestures. It’s very soothing. It’s very reassuring. So that’s number one. On the other end of the spectrum though, some people over-rely on hand gestures to communicate. And when the hand gestures are kind of waving around nonsensically and there’s not an intentional connection between the way hand gestures are being used and the words that are being communicated, hand gestures, in that case, can be distracting. [8:12]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah.
Rachel: So yeah, I mean, it’s all about, and then there’s like different types of when you’re touching your face with your hands, that can signal stress and anxiety and discomfort. And so, the way, what it really comes down to is developing a hand gesture vocabulary that supports the message you’re trying to send.
Nancy Calabrese: Right, yeah. Now, when we first got into COVID, I met with this woman who used to do broadcasting. One of the tricks that, tips she gave me was to buy a seat cushion to raise myself up. So, I’m looking square in the camera. Is that something that you recommend as well?
Rachel: Yes, whether it’s a seat cushion or propping, sometimes people need to prop their lens up a little bit higher so that they’re not looking down on the camera. The lens is like the other person or it’s like your audience’s eyes, right? It’s their vantage point. If you investigate the lens, you’re looking directly into their faces. And so, the way you orient around the lens is important. And that the level of the lens, making it easy for you to investigate the lens when you’re speaking increases your authority. Little hacks like that really go a long way. [9:32]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, and you know, it’s interesting what she taught me was I wasn’t looking at the camera. I was looking at her on Zoom. And so, I was looking down. So, I’m glad that she pointed that out to me. Okay, AI is big news nowadays. So how does that come into the equation with what you do?
Rachel: AI is central to what we do at Virtual Sapiens. So, all those nonverbal cues that I just mentioned, we’ve trained our AI to recognize. And so, when you’re interacting with any of our solutions, our AI will analyze your video feed and then provide you with personalized feedback on how you were showing up throughout that video recording or video meeting and provide you with suggestions on how you might level up your presence essentially. [10:23]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I’m just curious. So, I know your background is ballerina and gymnast. How did you wind up in this role and this, you know, being the owner of this company?
Rachel: Yes, through a series of reinventions, full circle back to the beginning of the conversation. But it does sound like a drastic leap, but when you follow the thread, it makes sense. I retired from Boston Ballet after dancing with the company for 10 years in 2016 and started working at Harvard in their fundraising department, which is heavy on relationships. And I noticed that there was a general lack of awareness when it came to the way people were showing up physically, their body language, their presence. And so, because of this like dancer spider-sense, right, as a dancer, you’re performing, and you only use your body to communicate. There are no words. And so I had this like nonverbal communication sensibility already and so I started studying the field and the different applications of it in restaurants, with sales teams, leaders, et cetera, started consulting in that space in my own right, but then also as a facilitator with other companies. And then when the pandemic happened, I was just like, if we’re going to be on video, we can use technology to our advantage here. [11:43]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, wow. And so, going back to AI, what do we need to be wary of when we use AI?
Rachel: In this application, right, so AI as a coach, and when the AI is analyzing your behaviors, whether they’re verbal, nonverbal, or vocal, the thing to really pay attention to is, where is the science behind the insights that are being shared? Have these metrics and insights, are they backed up by the most recent science and peer-reviewed research? Um, that’s one thing I would say is important to just confirm because it’s easy like information’s everywhere these days. And so, what you might see, for example, is, oh, this, um, AI coach over here will tell me how many times I’ve smiled. And it’s like, so what? Like, you know, like how is there, is there a study somewhere that says if you smile 15 times in a one-hour meeting that somehow has. You know, it’s like, it can’t be reduced to such a specific arbitrary number. Right? So, at Virtual Sapiens, we look at facial expression variation or expressivity, because we know when people engage with their facial muscles, in whatever way, it could be a surprise, shock, anger, frustration, happiness, or sadness. It depends on the context, which emotions make sense. So, we’re not going to tell you how to… how to feel or what to express, but we will tell you if you’re coming across as completely monotonous with your expressions. [13:20]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, funny, something I learned as well. When I listen to people over, say, a Zoom environment, my mouth droops. And so, I have to make a concerted effort to kind of keep my mouth from drooping. I was not aware of that.
Rachel: Right, right. I mean, that’s a perfect example of our habits on screens are a little, when it comes to the way we engage with a screen, we tend to be more passive, right? When we’re watching a movie, we just sit there and watch it. But now we’re having these human interactions that are alive with other human beings. And so, we must almost develop a new sense of muscle memory around the way we express ourselves on a screen. [14:09]
Nancy Calabrese: This is fascinating stuff. Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Rachel: I mean, let’s see, I think that video, when used well, both in the sense of when the human who’s on video is skilled and aware and can communicate effectively and when the video is the proper channel to use is one of the most powerful ways that as humans we can connect.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. And, you know, in wrapping up the show, what is the one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
Rachel: I would say for all the audience members, the next time you are on a video call, which I would assume is soon, pay attention to not only some of the ways you are showing up, right? But how other people are showing up and whether you’re able to sense that they’ve had some kind of training or practice or put some real effort into the way they’re showing up as communicators. Or if they’re kind of… just turning the camera on to show that there’s a human on the other side. [15:26]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, one final thought before we wrap this up. Matching and mirroring is so important. What do you have to say about that?
Rachel: Yes, fascinating. So, one of our advisors who is a behavioral scientist, did her whole thesis on mirroring and mimicry. She started her thesis before the pandemic and then had to finish it during the pandemic and found that over the video, that same concept of a conversation when there’s synchrony in the conversation, people will mirror one another’s behaviors. That kind of behavioral concept is very present on video, which is fascinating because you would think that maybe the channel’s not strong enough but turns out that it is. [16:16]
Nancy Calabrese: I think it’s crucial in the sales process to use your nonverbal cues, as you’ve mentioned, and really listen in, and by listening in, like very often when I’m deep in listening, I kind of lean forward to make sure I’m getting everything. At the end of the day, I love what you do. I told you; you have such an interesting story. How can my audience find you?
Rachel: I’m most easily found on LinkedIn. So just Rachel Cossar on LinkedIn. Would love to connect with anyone who’s interested in speaking further. And our tools, anyone can try our assessment or Sidekick Coach for free on our website. So that’s virtualsapiens.co, C-O. [17:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Okay, very good. And everyone, I really recommend you go to Rachel’s website and listen to her TEDx speech. It was fabulous. And it kept my attention for the whole time. It was great. So, Rachel, thanks for being here. I enjoyed speaking with you. I hope that we can continue this down the road and everyone has a great sales day.
Rachel: Thank you. [17:39]
by Nancy Calabrese | May 26, 2023 | Podcast
About Merit Kahn: Merit Kahn, CEO of SELLect Sales Development, author of Myth Shift: Challenging the Truths That Sabotage Success, co-host of The Smarter Sales Show podcast. Merit is a certified emotional intelligence coach and certified speaking professional with over 25 years of experience. Throughout her career, Merit has worked with a variety of individuals, including salespeople, entrepreneurs, and professionals, as well as sales teams. She helps them shift their approach from selling to being chosen by their ideal clients. In her spare time, she is a stand-up comedian counting down the days until she trades in her title “single parent” for “empty nester.” Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Merit.
In this episode, Nancy and Merit discuss the following:
- Sandler Training in Merit’s life.
- You need to be selective about the clients that you bring in.
- Have you ever felt like you were pushing against the tide when what you really want is to be open to receiving more business success?
- Nobody believes they’re close-minded, right?
- What prompted Merit to writing Myth Shift?
- Is the strategy of having an open mind to absorb new information and then pivot when necessary correct?
- Why do so many of us sabotage success?
- Interesting story about Emotional Intelligence.
- Fun fact about Merit.
- How can my people reach you?
Key Takeaways:
- Our core philosophy really is that selling is not about being pushy or aggressive, it’s about being selected.
- The truth is we must dramatically open the client’s hand to illustrate the point that we have to open someone’s mind so that they can receive our value.
- My first role is to open their mind to new possibilities because, and one of the best questions for that is, have you already decided it can’t get any better or are you open to a new possibility?
- Really the total intention of my keynotes, my programs, my coaching, my consulting work, the whole essence is around open minds and closed deals.
- As I got more and more experience in the world, I realized that at face value, those lessons didn’t really serve me the way that they were written.
- Instead of just changing my mind willy-nilly or flip-flopping, which also has a negative connotation in the marketplace, I would consider that new information and then I made a new decision.
- I think when people sabotage their own success, they’re certainly not doing it consciously.
- And what I learned was that there was this foundation of emotions, how well we understand our emotions and the impact we have on other people that was very different with these two.
- You and I know that the most important thing you could do with a question that a prospect asks you is fine out why they asked you that.
- The most scientifically validated assessment tool on the market, I use a system through assessment through MHS, which is multi-health systems, and they’re fantastic.
- I can open your mind to new possibilities in ways that I’m not even able to do with you know, expertise and credibility and training and coaching, but I can do it with laughter.
“Our core philosophy really is that selling is not about being pushy or aggressive, it’s about being selected. So we really teach people to stop selling and start getting selected. And how you do that is really by Asking good questions, having good conversations, as you well know, it’s not about what you say, it’s about the questions that you ask. And those questions help your prospects understand that you are credible and confident, and you can solve their problems. And that’s when they select you. And the second piece of it really is you want to be selected by them, but you also want to make sure that you’re selecting every single one of your ideal clients because you’re going to put a lot of effort and energy. ” – Merit
“And the way that I distinguish marketing and sales is marketing is everything that happens before you’re in a conversation. Once you’re in a conversation, you’re in the sales part of the process. And what you don’t wanna do is send somebody ” – Merit
“What I took from that when I read that study was, we all want to be perceived as open-minded. So how can we use that to our advantage? Not in a manipulative sale, you know, pushy way, but to recognize that I need to appeal to your bill, your desire to appear open-minded and once I remind you of that desire then you are inclined to agree with that. And now you’re more likely to hear my value. And whether we select to work with each other or not, from there is a different story, but I promise you, you will not sell or close a deal to a closed mind.” – Merit
Connect with Merit Kahn, CSP:
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 Merit Kahn, the CEO of Sellect, sales development, author of Myth Shift, Challenging the Truths that Sabotage Success, and co-host of the Smarter Sales Show podcast. Merritt is a certified emotional intelligence coach and certified speaking professional with over 25 years of experience. And throughout her career, Merit has worked with a variety of individuals, including CEOs, salespeople, entrepreneurs, as well as sales teams. And she helps them shift their approach from selling to being chosen by their ideal clients. So, look, if you’re looking for some practical tips and inspiring insights on leadership and business growth, this is gonna be a great show to listen to. Welcome to the show, Merit. [1:22]
Merit Kahn: Thank you, Nancy. I appreciate the invitation to be here.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, I’m so excited. So, on a side note, everyone, I just found out that Merit is Sandler trained like I am. So, this is really going to be a fun memory lane for you, Merit.
Merit Kahn: Yep. I was a Sandler trainer and coach for about a dozen years. So, it’s a part of how I work.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, we definitely talk the same language. And let’s start with a comment that you say or made. So, helping clients shift their approach from selling to being chosen by their ideal clients. How does that happen? [2:06]
Merit Kahn: Well, a little backstory, that’s actually why we call a company Select Sales. We spell it S-E-L-L-E-C-T, not because we don’t know how to spell the word select, but because our core philosophy really is that selling is not about being pushy or aggressive, it’s about being selected. So we really teach people to stop selling and start getting selected. And how you do that is really by Asking good questions, having good conversations, as you well know, it’s not about what you say, it’s about the questions that you ask. And those questions help your prospects understand that you are credible and confident, and you can solve their problems. And that’s when they select you.
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. It’s funny. This is this just happened yesterday in our Sandler class. It was topic was scarcity and sales. One of the questions the coach asked was how many of you in this class want to write every account that gets in front of you. And most of the people raised their hands. I didn’t because I think you need to be selective about. the clients that you bring in. Do you agree with that? [3:24]
Merit Kahn: 100%. And that’s the second piece of it really is you of course want to be selected by them, but you also want to make sure that you’re selecting every single one of your ideal clients because you’re going to put a lot of effort and energy. My clients are generally in businesses where they sell something complex, creative or custom. So, that’s not a click here, buy now kind of an offer. their effort, their time, their expertise. And if you’re working with somebody who’s really not a good fit in terms of who you’re best suited to work with or the solutions that you provide in the marketplace, it’s ultimately not gonna be your best work. And that doesn’t lead to the referrals and introductions that you want to grow your business more easily in the future.
Nancy Calabrese: Sure. Yeah, in that case, nobody’s happy.
Merit Kahn: Exactly. [4:25]
Nancy Calabrese: The team isn’t happy, the client isn’t happy, and it’s just, and we all make those mistakes from time to time. As much as I try to pick the right clients, we slip on banana peels sometimes.
Merit Kahn: Well, and let’s be honest in the real world, sometimes you’re going to take some clients on because the business requires it, right? Like it’s a sales, it’s about the bottom line. There’s, there’s money involved. You have to be thinking about your revenue goals. And, and sometimes, sometimes we do that. Sometimes it’s required and the way that you would get around that is, okay, this may not be my ideal prospect, but how can I set expectations so that we’re working together in appropriate ways and in ways that best suit each other. So sometimes, you know, there’s other aspects of selecting the ways that you work with people. [5:25]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so you asked the question, I think it’s on your website, have you ever felt like you were pushing against the tide when what you really want is to be open to receiving more business success? I mean, how do we do that?
Merit Kahn: Well, I would say so many of my clients over the years just have complained and they’ve been frustrated by, at some point or another, they feel like they’re talking to a brick wall, right? They’re just, they know they have solutions that solve problems, and they can’t seem to get into the conversation. So, it’s, you know, a lot of times people will say to me, Merit, I’m great once I’m face to face with somebody, it’s just getting those conversations. And they look at that as solely a marketing challenge. And of course, it is partly a marketing challenge. And the way that I distinguish marketing and sales is marketing is everything that happens before you’re in a conversation. Once you’re in a conversation, you’re in the sales part of the process. And what you don’t wanna do is send somebody backwards to marketing like, hey, did you see our website? Like… Don’t do that. You’re in a conversation. [6:38]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Merit Kahn: Have the conversation. Um, what I was finding was people were not, um, well trained in how do you open the minds of somebody to receive your value? So as an example, I’ll paint the picture for you. When I do a, uh, a keynote at a large conference or sales kickoff or company retreat, one of the very first things I do in my, in the opening of the program. is I have a volunteer on stage, and we do this whole song and dance about, you know, whether or not they’ve ever been in a fist fight and I have them make a fist. Well, that fist represents your prospect’s closed mind. And then I say, I say, Hey, Nancy, have you brought, did you bring your wallet? [7:20] And then
Nancy Calabrese: You’re right.
Merit Kahn: We have a little chuckle about money and things, but ultimately somehow we get a, a high denomination bill and I take that bill and I say, Okay, this hundred dollar bill represents all the value you have to give. This is your great customer service, your years of credibility, all the things. Right. But if I try to jam that dollar bill into that closed fist, what happens? Nothing.
Nancy Calabrese: Nothing. [7:49]
Merit Kahn: And we do that all day long. We’re trying to, to cram our good value, all of our features and our benefits, you know, back in the old days, we tried to do that, but like all this stuff, all the good stuff into someone’s closed mind. And the truth is we have to dramatically open their hand to, you know, to illustrate the point that we have to open someone’s mind so that they can receive our value. And, and it’s very simple, honestly, it could be as simple as four words, which are, are you open to? It could, you know, there are other ways that I work with clients, um, to help them get in the head space where they have to remind themselves, I’ve got to open my mind to new possibilities. And then my first role is to open their mind to new possibilities because, and one of the best questions for that is, have you already decided it can’t get any better or are you open to a new possibility? [8:48]
Nancy Calabrese: Wow.
Merit Kahn: And. When you ask somebody that question, they literally have to stop in their tracks and go, Oh yeah, I guess I’m open to something new. Cause nobody wants to say they’re closed minded. So yeah.
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Interesting. Nobody believes they’re close-minded, right?
Merit Kahn: Right. Yeah. Well, actually there was a study done by Pepperdine University a number of years ago, and they asked people, are you open-minded? And, you know, everybody says yes. And then they asked, do you consider yourself more open-minded than the average person? And 95% of people in that survey self-reported, yes, I am more open-minded than the average person. I don’t know where you went to school, Nancy, but that math does not work, not even new math. So… Um, you know, but what I took from that when I read that study was we all want to be perceived as open-minded. So how can we use that to our advantage? Not in a manipulative sale, you know, pushy way, but to recognize that I need to appeal to your bill, your desire to appear open-minded and once I remind you of that desire. then you are inclined to agree with that. And now you’re more likely to hear my value. And whether or not we select to work with each other from there is a different story, but I promise you, you will not sell or close a deal to a closed mind. [10:25] And that’s why
Nancy Calabrese: Huh
Merit Kahn: really the total intention of my keynotes, my programs, my coaching, my consulting work, The whole essence is around open minds, closed deals.
Nancy Calabrese: Wow, let’s talk about your book, Myth Shift. I mean, what prompted you to write it?
Merit Kahn: I wrote that back in 2016 and, you know, I, I just was frustrated myself because there were so many things that I remember being told when I was starting my business and starting my career. And, and as I got more and more experience in the world, I realized that at face value, those lessons didn’t really serve me the way that they were written. And so I looked at the things that I was taught are the truisms in business. And I looked at them from different angles and decided that there was a slight shift that was necessary. So for example, one of the things that, and you know this, cause you work with leaders as well, leaders wanna be strong decision makers, right? It’s powerful and it’s good to make quick decisions. you know, decisions that we stick to. And once we stick to it, we’re just going to stick to it no matter what, right? Because we’re go-getters and we’re going to power through. Well, I don’t know about you, but that was terrible advice for me. You know, sometimes it worked, but it wasn’t foolproof. And what I discovered was, you know, I call it the stick to it myth. And that is where you’re, you stick to it no matter what. But what I realized was that sometimes new information came into my experience. that would have rendered the decision that I made useless. [12:12] And
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Merit Kahn: So, I looked at that from different angles and I thought, you know, instead of just changing my mind willy-nilly or flip-flopping, which also has a negative connotation in the marketplace, I would consider that new information and then I made a new decision. So, I don’t know if I came up with this term or if I heard it and was swirling around in my subconscious. But
Nancy Calabrese: Great.
Merit Kahn: I learned to re-decide. And I love giving leaders that distinction because it gives them the language to change the course of direction without feeling like they’re not a good decisive leader. And so, yeah, and so the mechanics of selling, when I teach somebody what to actually say, I would say in that situation, look, based on the information that we had available to us at the time that I made this decision, this was exactly the right move. Since then, I’ve been made aware of new information and because of that, I’ve made a new decision. I’ve re-decided our game plan, our position, our goal, our objective, whatever, and this is the direction we’re taking. And if you’re somebody on that team, when they deliver that change, of course, and they change of direction, in that way, that still occurs to you as powerful. And so that’s an example of shifting the myth. [13:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Well, talk about being open-minded, right? That ties right back into what we just spoke about, having an open mind to absorb new information and then pivot when necessary, right?
Merit Kahn: Exactly. Yes.
Nancy Calabrese: So why do so many of us sabotage success?
Merit Kahn: I think when people sabotage their own success, they’re certainly not doing it consciously. I think most of that comes from the foundation that we layer all of our skills on top of. This was one of the things that I had to look outside of my Sandler training to find just something else because what happened to me was as a trainer, I had two guys in my class, Steven and Daniel, and they both were hired by the same company. at the same time, they sold in the same territory, the same products and services at the same price point. Like literally, I even thought these guys looked alike. Okay, like everything was the same. And then they sat in my class and they learned the same material from the same trainer at the same time. Except Steven would come back week after week after week, like, oh my gosh, Merritt, you won’t believe this. I had this other success story. you know, blah, blah, blah. And then Daniel was sitting there and listening to his colleague and getting more and more frustrated every week because he was not having the same success. [15:04]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Merit Kahn: And so that was a real, uh, that was a difficult moment for me as a coach and trainer, because, you know, I, I really believed in my process. I still believe in that methodology. I, I really love what I did. I really wanted to make a difference for people, but I couldn’t take credit for Stephen’s success if I also didn’t take responsibility for the fact that Daniel didn’t do much with it, that forced me to look. What else is there? What’s the difference between these two guys? That’s when I got certified in emotional intelligence. And what I learned was that there was this foundation of emotions, how well we understand our emotions and the impact we have on other people that was very different with these two. Daniel did not have any impulse control. So, I went and I taught him all the wonderful questioning techniques that we teach. And instead of using those in the real world, as soon as a prospect asked Daniel a question, he just blurted out the answer. Well, you and I know that the most important thing you could do with a question that a prospect asks you is fine out why they asked you that. [16:18]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Yep.
Merit Kahn: So, you’ve got to have enough impulse control to wait on your answer to ask another question. And what I learned when I did an emotional intelligence, the most scientifically validated assessment tool on the market, I use a system through, assessment through MHS, which is multi-health systems, and they’re fantastic. And once I learned and saw on paper Daniel’s impulse control, and some of the other things that there’s 15 attributes we assess for, that’s when I could see the very clear difference between Stephen and Daniel. And what that allowed me to do as a coach was tailor my coaching so that I could work with Daniel on, in Sandler’s terms, it would be upfront contracts. [17:11] I talk about that now in my business as setting expectations, but I could teach him things to say in that. early part of a sales conversation so that he was giving himself permission to ask questions. I gave him strategies to interrupt himself when he found himself blurting out an answer too soon. And so that really helped him. And sure enough, then he started to see some of the same success that Stephen had. But that was when I learned that it wasn’t just about the mechanics of selling. It wasn’t just about what I was teaching people to say. It was about their mindset. and how they think and yeah, so.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, sales is fascinating to me and everybody’s different. You really have to understand their communication style, you know, what motivates them. And that’s an interesting story. Are you in touch with these gentlemen at all? [18:10]
Merit Kahn: I kept in touch with Stephen for a number of years after our business relationship was over. I’m sure we’re still LinkedIn friends. But now that you mentioned it, no one’s asked me that for a while, so maybe I’ll reach back out and see how they’re doing today.
Nancy Calabrese: Stephen, look out for your friend here. She’s going to be touching base with you.
Merit Kahn: Yeah, exactly.
Nancy Calabrese: You know what? We’re almost up with time, but you were such a fun lady. Share a fun fact about you. [18:42]
Merit Kahn: Fun fact about me is in my spare time, my spare 17 minutes every week, I love to perform standup comedy and I wrote a one woman inspiring comedy show that I performed a few times in Denver, where I live. I perform it regularly in Denver and I love it and I’m going to be taking that show on tour. So. Uh, you know, my list and let me, and then be alerted for where the comedy shows are coming, but, uh, that’s, that’s really one of my, my, the loves of my life, it’s a, it’s a passion of mine because I also learned that as a person who wants to help people see more possibilities for themselves, um, you know, my two entry points are business. Um, but also, but also laughter. And so if I can laugh, I can open you. I can open your mind to new possibilities in ways that I’m not even able to do with you know, expertise and credibility and training and coaching, but I can do it with laughter. [19:47]
Nancy Calabrese: That’s an excellent combination. You have to have fun. Laughter is so important, especially in sales. So I’m here smiling away. I don’t know about
Merit Kahn: Okay.
Nancy Calabrese: You folks out there, but you bring a smile to my face. So how can my people find you?
Merit Kahn: The hub of all things is my website. So it’s meritcon.com, M-E-R-I-T, just like a certificate. Con is K-A-H-N, so not like Genghis, but the other way.
Nancy Calabrese: Hahaha
Merit Kahn: And yeah, just go there. There’s a let’s talk button on that page. And I would say if I’ve inspired you, if you’re curious about your emotional intelligence or you’re planning a conference and you really need a dynamic speaker who’s gonna match the caliber of your audience, love to talk and so just book some time on my calendar. [20:35]
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. I wanna thank you, Merit. I know this is the first time we’ve spoken. Hopefully it’ll be the beginning of a long-term business relationship and you’ll come back on the show.
Merit Kahn: I would love that. Thank you, Nancy.
Nancy Calabrese: Well, you’re very welcome. And for everyone out there, press that Let’s Talk button. Get her on the phone. She’s fabulous. And she will make you laugh. So, happy sales for everyone out there. And we’ll see you next time. [21:05]
by Nancy Calabrese | May 31, 2021 | Podcast
Our guest on this week’s episode is author, speaker, and CEO John Asher. His company, Asher Strategies, offers sales advisory services to clients all over the world. Working with Vistage, an international network of CEOs, John has presented best practices in sales, sales management, and marketing. And his team has trained over 80,000 executives, salespeople, and managers in almost two dozen countries over the past 19 years. The author of Close Deals Faster and The Neuroscience of Selling is here to talk with us about all things sales.
Solution selling is dead. The idea of building rapport, conducting a needs analysis of the buyer, and then offering a solution that fits no longer works in today’s business world. While the average salesperson is a passive listener and good salespeople are active listeners, elite sellers are the ones who now practice perfect listening. No one stays at the top without training, especially with so much new information emerging in the field of sales. John breaks down the techniques that have replaced solution selling, including:
- How to become a perfect listener
- The five factors for sales success
- Identifying the right time to close a deal
- And much, much more
John is truly a wealth of experience and information. He has helped so many salespeople get to the top of their game in the ever-changing landscape of modern sales. His approaches are backed by science and proven in the field. Become a more successful seller by becoming a perfect listener and listen now!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hello, it’s Nancy Calabrese. And it is 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. Speaking with us today is John Asher CEO and master facilitator of Asher Strategies, which offers sales advisory services. John is an experienced international speaker on sales, sales management and marketing for Vistage a worldwide network of CEOs. He co-founded an engineering firm in 1986. He and his team grew the company at a compounded growth rate of 42% per year for 14 straight years.
During his tenure as CEO, the company acquired seven other engineering and software development companies. His team’s sold the company in 1997. After growing, I believe the I’m looking at this number right growing annual revenue to 165 million. In 1998, he co-founded a sales advisory services practice that has grown into a global leader in sales strategies. And these strategies include sales, sales management and marketing. His team has trained over 80,000 executives, sales people, and other customer facing managers in 22 countries over 19 years. The only word that comes to my mind right now is wow! I’m not even sure where to begin. But to say wow, again, welcome to the show, John.
John Asher: Great to be on Nancy. Thanks so much for inviting me.
Nancy: Oh, my goodness. So I I’ve been looking so looking forward to this conversation. And, you know, one in learning more about you over, you know, over time, I love the name, or I don’t know if it’s a tagline or your company name close deals faster. I mean, that’s every sales person’s dream, right? That’s every CEOs vision. Tell us more? I mean, how do you close deals faster?
John: So it was a little interesting history about that as it was my my second sales book. First of all, I actually wrote I quote, it was co authored by me and my GM in China and in Mandarin. And, and the title of the book was How to do Business with the West. Advice for Chinese Salespeople. And I wrote the second book in the US, it was called the Top 10 skills of the Elite Salespeople. And Ingram, the publisher, went out to his 40 salespeople and had a brainstorming and said he liked the title or is there a better title? And they came back and said, You need to call this book Close Deals Faster. So it wasn’t my idea, actually, it was the publisher’s idea to change it from my preferred title to their’s. So of course, we go over their’s.
Nancy: Well, it is catchy for sure. What’s the trick or any tips? You know, I’m sure we could go on for hours and hours. But anything jumped to mind that you really believe a salesperson should focus on first?
John: Well, if you if you just pick one of the 10 skills, one of the most important almost every salesperson knows this is to be a great listener. Great salespeople are not great talkers. They’re great listeners. And there’s always been two types of salespeople. And if you go back to the harbor data, there’s about 25 million salespeople in the us right now. And there’s two 80/20 rules that are associated with them based on harbor data. The first is 5%, are elite, five land and 20% are not very good. And their turnover rates about a third per year. The second 80/20 rule is those top 20% the elite are again, 80 percent of the new business. Right? Let’s compare the listening skills of the elite salespeople and the average. The average are typically passive listeners meaning, listen, just enough to start interrupting and talking about what you can do. Active listeners have always been keep asking questions. Keep trying to figure out what the buyer needs totally before you respond. Right. Always. And that that’s that’s a key skill.
Now with all these neuroscience studies Nancy, active listening has been picked up to a whole new level. Yeah, perfect listening. Yeah. And if you’re a perfect listener, and you do those three techniques, as the end of a discovery process, the buyer will say something like this, wow, you have a perfect understanding of our needs. You’ve actually helped me understand what we need. This has been such a great collaboration. Thank you so much. So to the end of the story about listening, the elite salespeople now use three techniques to be the perfect listener. Accurate listening is one. Second, ask permission to take notes and take notes. And third, summarize it back to the buyer as many times as it takes the buyer to say you got it. I guess it’s actual statistics that backs it up. 90% of the sales people get it that you really ought to take notes, only 10%. And only 2% summarize the feedback. That’s probably the most important skill.
Nancy: You know, they seem pretty simple. And listening to it. Why? Why are most salespeople challenged with doing that?
John: As my wife says, frequently, you can’t fix stupid.
Nancy: I like to think that not, you know, most of us aren’t stupid, but there seems to be a hesitancy or just lack of interest.
John: Just a lack lack of training, in my view, in my experience, once you start doing it, using the three techniques ask permission to take notes, take notes, summarize and feed it back. And don’t do that until you thoroughly understand what the buyer needs. And then you watch your closing rates go sky high, when you start using the technique, it’s just like a no brainer.
Nancy: I’ve also read that I really loved what I’ve written when I read this, no one stays at the top without training. Isn’t that true? Tell me where that came from and give share your thoughts on why it’s so important to keep polishing your skills.
John: Well, what is that they say sales training. That’s what we’re talking about. There’s so much new information coming out. I give you one example. So there’s a worldwide forum of neuroscientists in 70 country, countries sharing their expertise, sharing their research. Sharing our experiments. And many of the now we’re done with what are called functional MRI machines. So imagine a buyer sitting in a chair with a helmet on and there’s an MRI machine built in. You show the buyer a picture, you ask the buyer a question, you show the buyer or short video, you make a statement to the buyer. And then you can see when the oxytocin circuit lights, up the dopamine circuit, the serotonin circuit. When nothing happens. When more than one light at the same time. So now we have real science behind sales. So sales people haven’t caught up with that and had this new neuroscience based sales training. They’re behind the competition. You got to keep trying new stuff happens all the time.
Nancy: Oh, yeah. Interesting. You also have a segment I found online about the five factors for success in sales, can you share what those are?
John: It’s really simple. So if you if you go back to the elite salespeople, all five of the following factors are in alignment. One, great product knowledge. Gives them power and confidence. They can really add value to prospects and suspects. Two, they have a natural talent for sales. You can’t you can’t change your talent, right? The leopard doesn’t change his spots. So back to good to great get the right people on the right seat on the bus based on natural talent. Though product knowledge must be learned natural talent or sales aptitude is we’re born with what we got. The third is selling skills, which must be learned. The fourth is motivation. Fairly, fairly complex aspect, there are three parts to it.
One is people’s natural motivation. Two is the environment they’re selling in. So during COVID when sales went down by 90% for some companies, what happened the motivation of their salespeople right? In the tank. Yep, to the third part of motivation is who’s the sales manager. And if you go look at these various Gallup studies, one of them was 800,000 managers in three million people. One of the results was people will stay with a great manager in a bad company. They will not stay with a bad manager in a great company. So the third, the third, the fourth aspect, motivation has three components. And then the fifth is the processes and technology and tools that the company provides for the salespeople. So product knowledge, natural talent, selling skills, motivation, process, technology and tools. When you see all five of those in alignment, now we’re talking about the elite sales people.
Nancy: Yeah. So you think elite sales people are natural, naturally born, they have it within them.
John: Elite sales people are naturally born and made. In other words, all five factors are in alignment. When you go back to the five factors and ask what’s your most important? What’s the most important one and blah, blah, blah. So if you integrate, if you have a big meta analysis, a summary of a bunch of studies from sales, and HR Institutes, aptitude accounts for 50% of results, and the other 50% is the other four factors. So aptitude ain’t everything, but it is pretty significant. For the best sales people are born and made. Yeah, born meaning they got the natural talent and made means they’ve got the skills, they got the product knowledge, and they got the tools and know how to use them.
Nancy: Yeah, you know, I want to go to the question I asked you to think about which is sharing your unique idea that is different and sets you apart? What is that?
John: Well, it’s actually not my idea. But there was a article in the Harvard Business Review must be three years ago. And the title of the article was, of course, provocative to get people to read it. And the name of the article was Solution Selling is Dead. Pretty provocative, right? And solution selling has been around probably for 15 years. Sometimes it’s called consultative selling. And the big breakthrough happened when, instead of salespeople just starting with presentations, the whole idea of their idea was to be a solution seller or consultant, meaning that three step process, build rapport, make the buyer comfortable with you, doing these analysis discovery process, find out what the buyer needs, and three offer a solution as the term solution selling opera solution.
I agree, and everybody kind of knows that. Pretty much now. Not all of the not so good salespeople, but the elite salespeople certainly know that. So here’s a little bit of a background behind the article. I mentioned these neuroscience studies, essentially worldwide now. And there’s huge collaboration of them in 70 countries. So the the, the knowledge increases exponential. We now know from these functional MRI studies, that by the way, it the science behind sales now tells us what techniques we’ve been using that are correct. Tells us how to improve some of those techniques, and also tells us some of the techniques that we’ve been using are exactly the wrong thing to do. That’s why I’m an engineer engineers. That’s why I really love the science behind the sales. So that has been the art of the sale the sales process now we have the art, the process and the science. And yeah, here’s, here’s one of the results of the science.
There are six activators that will wake up the buyers decision making brain. So we all have three parts of the brain a rational part, facts, figures, complex thinking, our conscious brain. And we have two parts of the unconscious or old brain one’s instinct to the reptilian brain and the other is emotional brain. And we now know that I’m sure you’ve heard the term we buy on emotion and justify with logic. Yep, so there’s six ways to wake up the buyer’s old brain. So they’ll they will like you and they want to do business with you. And you’ve really alerted them that something important is coming. And one of those six is called me, me, me focus. In other words, we’re all focused on ourselves. So when you go back, millions and millions of year, no, no species survive through evolution without being focused on their own safety. So it’s true for all of us. We’re all focused on our own safety, our own success, our own happiness, her own family.
Just everybody kind of knows that. Well, when you put that in a buyer selling context, when salespeople are all focused on themselves and what they’re selling, it ain’t waking up to buyer’s old decision making brain. But the salesperson can, can make it focused on the buyer, then the whole thing will shift. So a good example would be a presentation. So if when you are going to meet with a new buyer, and instead of the solution, sell it and build rapport, do a needs analysis. So build rapport, of course, but then instead of at least starting with a needs analysis, and you’re kind of 15 questions that you know, you need to ask to get to the bottom of everything. In many cases, now, buyers savvy buyers, know there’s so much information about their company about them about their competition on the internet.
They get impatient with the 15 questions of their discovery analysis. They’re saying to themselves, why does this salesperson know more about us and our competition and where we stand. So now let’s go back to the harbor sales department forty four years, the Harvard neuroscience laboratory 10 years, as you can imagine, they talk to each other now. So if you are the salesperson, and you will use to get ready to start the needs analysis, you say something like this, here is our understanding of your needs, bullet, bullet, bullet. Whatever they are. Do I had this about right? Then, based on the neuroscience studies at Harvard, you don’t have to have it exactly right. If you had a pretty well nailed, in 95% of the cases, it causes a big conversation between the buyer and the seller.
And then after that conversation is over, maybe you have three or four questions left to ask, you have to ask all 15 questions now. Maybe only a few more. And if you had a slide deck of 23 slides to show how many slides you have to show now. Maybe three or four. And it won’t be a random three or four, either. There’ll be just the three or four that relate to how the conversation is going. So that’s what I mean by solution selling is dead. As I said I wouldn’t sell brands and I made it up. It’s actually another Business Review article. And that’s, that’s what they mean.
Nancy: What they mean it’s all about them. Them them them.
John: Correct. Make it all about them, them, them.
Nancy: Yeah. Lose the me, me, me and focus on them. What is something and I think we kind of touched on this, but what is something you would want us wants to spotlight? Besides your good looks?
John: That is debatable. That’s for sure.
Nancy: Well, they can’t see us unfortunately.
John: Yeah. Yay. Like, ah, yeah. Well, the probably the second most important skill after listening would be closing. Now is knowing when is the right time to close knowing how to interpret the vocal from the buyer and knowing how to interpret the buyer’s body language. And knowing that you have to you can’t try to close before the buyer’s ready because it’s a total turnoff. And once the buyer is ready, if you don’t try to close the buyer, wondering what’s going on. It doesn’t take too long before you lose the opportunity. And buyers and buyers don’t want untrained salespeople who since they’re like to to sure when the buyer’s ready, will kind of beat around the bush and hope the buyer will close themselves. As you know, hope is not a good, good strategy.
Nancy: Hopeism. Haven’t you heard that term?
John: I have. And so the buyer wants to definitive closing approach something like this. Would you like to get this project started on the 5th of May? Any ambiguity there? There’s no ambiguity, you just directly ask him for the for the deal. And there’s nine other ways to close and I’m sure you’ve heard the alternative close and the assumptive close. You know and on and on. So the great salespeople have those 10 closing approaches in their back pocket or up their sleeve. And they recognize when the buyer is ready and how to get them and what they need to do to get them ready. That’s probably number two skill and importance after listening. Yeah, and frankly, if you don’t do great listening, you’ll never get anywhere near close.
Nancy: I totally, totally agree. And I can’t believe we’re at the end of our show. I want to be sure to get one or two other comments out here. What is one takeaway you want to leave the audience with?
John: If you want to get to the top of the game as a salesperson, be the perfect listener. That has to be a total active listener, don’t start talking or enter. The worst is interrupting. Don’t start talking about what you can do, until you thoroughly understand what they can do. Ask permission to take notes and take notes. And when you think you got it all summarize and feed it back.
Nancy: Yep. Great, great advice. Great advice, John. How can my audience find you?
John: Well you can find me on LinkedIn, that’s easy. So John Asher. Just go to LinkedIn and everything you need to know and probably more than you want to know. That’s probably the best and easiest way to go. You know, there’s 760 million people on LinkedIn now.
Nancy: I love it.
John: So right, why not? Why give out phone numbers and email addresses anymore with LinkedIn?
Nancy: You don’t need a business card, that’s for sure. Yes to text and do everything electronically. Well, listen, I really want to thank you, John, for being on and to my audience. Thank you so much for listening in. Everyone have a fantastic sales day. And we remember, you want to be elite. John’s your man. Pick up the phone, give him a call. Hook up with him on LinkedIn. Thanks again, John.
John: Thank you, Nancy. Great to be with you and then we’ll get you on our podcast sometime in the near future.
Nancy: Well, I’m gonna have to study up for that one. I can’t wait.
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.
