Love Your Sales

Selfless Leadership Inspires and Empowers

On this episode of Love Your Sales, we delve into the power of leadership with retired Lieutenant Colonel Oakland McCulloch. Oak shares insights from his 40+ years of experience in various leadership roles, emphasizing the importance of selfless leadership and the impact it has on team building and trust. We explore how interpersonal connections and understanding people are the foundation of effective leadership, whether in high-stress environments like combat or the corporate boardroom. Oak's anecdotes and advice underline the significance of genuine human interactions over transactions, shedding light on how leaders can inspire and empower those around them. Join us as we uncover the keys to unlocking your leadership potential and fostering an environment of trust and collaboration, thus enhancing your sales and overall success.
 
Contact Oakland –
Website - https://www.ltcoakmcculloch.com/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/oakland-mcculloch-34293256/
 
Special Thank you to our Sponsor Genhead – www.genhead.com
 
Robb Conlon – Intro and outro – Westport Studio - https://www.westportstudiosllc.com/
 
The Brave Ones – Instrumental Version Song by Jan Sanejko - https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/song/the-brave-ones/119489
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of Love Your Sales. Today, I am excited because I am joined by retired Lieutenant Colonel Oak McCullough. He is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and author of the 2021 released Your leadership legacy, becoming the leader you were meant to be both his leadership talk and his book are based on his 40 plus years of leadership experience in combat, peacekeeping operations, [00:02:00] disaster relief operation, and in the boardroom
Oak highlights principles that will benefit today's leaders and inspire the leaders of tomorrow in any profession and at any level of leadership. Okay. I'm so happy that you are joining me today, um, to not only talk about, you know, I want to learn a little bit about your book. I haven't had the chance to read it, but.
I've already downloaded it on my, um, audio, um, to listen to that, but also to, um, you know, learn more about how you're impacting the world now with the experience that you have. So
Oakland McCulloch: welcome. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on the show. I've been looking forward to this.
Leighann Lovely: Yeah. So why don't we, you know, first, 2021 let's, let's talk about that for, for a moment.
Oakland McCulloch: Yeah, I've always wanted I, you know, for years and years and years, I wanted to write that book and I just never did. Um, and, and it really is. I mean, there's no talk of theory in this [00:03:00] book at all. It's all everyday things that everyday leaders can do to not only improve their leadership skills and abilities, but also to.
Help empower the people they have the privilege to lead, and it is a privilege to be better, not only workers, but also better people. And, you know, I said, I've been given my leadership talk for, I don't know, 20 years or so. Um, and I always wanted to write this book and then, you know, I was at a, an event at our church, um, my wife and I and her mom and a couple of people who live in the condo, we went there and it was kind of a slap motivational slash, how do we revitalize the Catholic church kind of talk?
And it was three hours long and, and now the guy that was talking, talked for 45 minutes and he'd take a 15 minute break. And every time he took a break. I'd go up and talk to him because he was doing what I wanted to do, get out and talk to people. And, and he gave me a bunch of good things. And then at the [00:04:00] very end, we got done talking and he turned around to leave.
And then he stopped and he turned around and he said, Oak, have you written a book? And I said, no, but I'm thinking about it. And he said, stop thinking about it and write it. So I went home that night, wrote out the table of contents, and then I started the next day. That was the 16th of February, and I published it on the 12th of February the next year.
Leighann Lovely: Oh, wow. So a simple,
Oakland McCulloch: I just had to have permission,
Leighann Lovely: I guess, right? Well, and sometimes that's what it takes, right? Somebody's finally saying, Hey, you need to finally do this. You need to do this. Um, and maybe it's not necessarily permission, but that that confirmation from somebody saying. Yeah. You, you need to do this.
Oakland McCulloch: Yeah. And that's kind of what he was saying. You know, the, the message just from the short talks we had during that time, he, he, he said, look, you got a message that needs to get out there. You need to write that book. Well,
Leighann Lovely: that's awesome. [00:05:00] That's awesome. So you obviously have had a wealth of experience in leadership positions in combat, which is at a very, Yeah.
I've never been in combat, so I'm going to, I'm going to make some assumptions here. Um, I'm going to assume that these are high stress. Yeah. They're, um, you know, you've got a lot of people looking at you for answers, for guidance, for direct orders. Um, and, and it sounds like, you know, you also lower stress, you know, positions where it's more.
And when I say lower stress, you know, a boardroom compared to combat, obviously for some people,
Oakland McCulloch: there's still stress, but correct. It's just
Leighann Lovely: completely different, right? When you come back, you [00:06:00] know, when you, when you were comparing, you know, we're not comparing apples to apples here. We're comparing obviously, you know, a banana to a, an apple and it's a completely different shape.
So tell me a little bit about what you. Learned one about yourself. And two, about just, I guess, the human condition when it comes to how you process in those different leadership roles.
Oakland McCulloch: Right. So, I guess what I learned about myself, and I've had people tell me that absolutely this is true about me, is I quickly realized that, You have to maintain your call, no matter what's going on around you, you got to maintain your calm, at least outward.
Even if you're panicked on the inside, you can't show that because the people that you lead are going to take their cue from you. And if you're panicked, they're going to panic. If you're calm, they're going to remain at least a little more calm. Um, so [00:07:00] I think that if nothing else, that was one of the things that I really learned, um, about myself and, and, and try.
Always to maintain that calm demeanor, no matter what's going on around me. Um, and I think, you know, the thing I learned about leadership in all those situations that in the last 40 years is two things, number one, leadership is about people. Plain and simple. It's not about flow charts. It's not about organizational charts.
It's about one to one individual connections and people. And the second part of that is that people aren't going to follow you, especially in dangerous situations. situations if they don't trust you. Uh, and so I talk a lot about what I call 360 degree trust that, you know, until people trust you, you may be the leader by name, by title, but you're not really the leader until they trust you.
[00:08:00] Wow.
Leighann Lovely: And, and I want to, I want to take a second to really think about that because we have a great deal of people in leadership roles that many feel And reality is the way we feel, right? Our feelings drive our decisions. Our feelings drive the way that what drive, what we do, how we react. So the way that people make us feel is really, it becomes the reality that we live in.
And so if you have a leader who makes you feel that you have to do something versus want to do something big difference, Correct. And so you're talking, you're, you're, you're very much talking to the, and I'm going to bring this back to, you know, the sales. If you have a leader that you've become, you've come to know, come to like, and come to trust.
[00:09:00] You've just sold your entire team on buying into. 100%,
Oakland McCulloch: 100%, you know, and, and that's 1 of the things that I, that I see that I, that I always try to emphasize to people because as I go around and talk to people, organizations and companies and, uh, whatever 1 of the things that I, I notice is that there's no community there.
There's not really a team, there's people who come to work and they draw their paycheck and they go home, but they, you know, they may not even know anybody, they may know the person's name because they send them an email, but they don't know that person if they passed them in the hallway, they might not even know who they are.
And I always say, you know, You got to build a team, a community, um, in your organization. And it starts with you, the leader. If you don't get out there and make that effort and show people how important it is, then they're not going to make that effort. And one of the things I always tell people, leaders is a [00:10:00] couple of ways to make that happen.
Number one, get out from behind your desk and get out there and walk around and. Actually, talk to people and get to know them. The more they get to know you, the more they're going to trust you. Now, that goes 2 ways. You know, if you get to know them, they're going to get to know they got to, you got to let them get to know you.
So you got to feel comfortable with that. But, but that that's huge and there's a couple of ways to do that. Number 1, get out from behind your desk, walk around number 2, I tell, especially young leaders, but all leaders that I get a chance to talk to, you should make it a goal. Every day to go out and find one person in your organization that you are responsible for, find one person and find out one new thing about that person.
Every day, just one, just one person, one thing, and not about work. You can eventually bring it back to work if you want, but find out something personal about that person. Find out their spouse's name, their kid's name, what [00:11:00] sports do their kids play? What's their hobbies? What do they like? What don't they like?
Those kinds of things. And the more you do that. the more trust and community you're going to build. And then I also tell them, um, you know, if you're lucky, I had a boss who retired a three star general, and he said, Oak, never, ever, ever turned down a chance to go get your own cup of coffee. He said, I don't care how high up you get in your organization, always go get your own cup of coffee.
He said, for two reasons. Number one, first of all, it shows everybody that works for you that you're no better than they are. You got to go get your own cup of coffee, just like they do. And number two, If you're lucky, you got two or three different ways to get to the coffee pot and back to your office and along the way, stop and talk to people.
Leighann Lovely: And that's amazing, brilliant advice. Because so often we, that are below that leader or who are, you know, looking up to that, [00:12:00] Um, it goes back to, um, you know, the idea that these people who are in leadership positions are looking down and making decisions that they, and, and often you hear this from manufacturing floors, you hear this from, and they're like, well, how are they making these decisions?
Do they even know what we're doing? Do they even understand the grind that we have to go through? You know, how are they? And so when you. When you actually see that they're just as human that they put their pants on exactly the same way that we do that. Oh, okay. This this is a human being just like me.
That's where that connection
Oakland McCulloch: begins. It does. And until until you make that connection, it is just people coming to work and drawing a paycheck and going home. Yeah, yeah. One, one. So that's between you and the person, the people you are leading. And then I'd say, look, you also got to build that team where everybody in your organization trusts everybody else.
That's that [00:13:00] part of that 360. It's not just the people you lead trusting you. You got to trust the people that you lead. And then the people in the organization have to trust each other as well. And there's a couple of ways to make that happen. Have some events, you know, social events or lunches, you know, to where people have to come together and talk and, and get to know each other.
And, and that's huge. Um, and then the second, the last part of that 360 degree trust is. If you're in a business, you got to build a relationship with the people outside your organization. Cause nobody's going to do business with you if they don't trust you. And I hope you don't do business with somebody else.
Just for the money, if you don't trust them. So it really is that 360 degree trust. And it, if you're missing any one of those, then your organization is not going to be running as effective and efficiently as it could be.
Leighann Lovely: [00:14:00] Right. And that's, this lends right to sales. I mean, it directly into. Um, the whole idea and the whole idea that everybody, and this goes back to my very first episode when I talked with Sarah Bauer about everybody is selling at any given time.
We start, we start selling from the time that we're infants. We just don't know it. My daughter negotiates with me on a regular basis about how, you know, she's going to get ice cream if she eats this one last bite.
Oakland McCulloch: Sorry. Yeah. Anybody, you know, at my last 12 years, I just retired in one October, but the last 12 years I was recruiting for army ROTC and I had a bunch of buddies who were doing the same thing and, and I had one of them one time tell me, well, I'm not a salesman.
I said, bull, you absolutely are. We all are. We all [00:15:00] sell every day. I don't care what, who you are, what profession you are. You know, it is all about that. And you can't do it if people don't trust you.
Leighann Lovely: Right. And I hear that people, I, what you just said, I'm not a salesman. Well, let's, let's really take a look.
Every, everybody who becomes a parent becomes a salesperson the moment that child is born. is born, but they have been, they have been their whole life, but it becomes even more apparent when they become a parent. Um, so let's, let's talk about that because you and I had talked about, um, you know, the difference between leadership and unselfish leadership.
And let's, let's talk a little bit about the unselfish leader As a sales leader, because I think this is ever more important because in an industry as a salesperson, those people who choose [00:16:00] sales as a career are wildly competitive. Sure.
Oakland McCulloch: And that's a good thing.
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. It is a good thing. We need to be, we need to have, and some people are not driven a hundred percent by the money.
They're driven by a competitive edge for something else. But a lot of salespeople are like, yeah, if I can write my own, my own check, Hey, that's what I want to do. But many of, you know, some of these salespeople are then pushed into leadership and still have that selfish, still have that. So let's talk about the key.
Components of being a. Good sales
Oakland McCulloch: leader. Yeah. So I, I think I, I'm 100%. Look, there's nobody more competitive than I am. I mean, I don't care if I'm playing old maid with my nine year old daughter or 10 year old granddaughter, I want to win. I, you know, that, that just, I, I, I was raised, uh, that you [00:17:00] want to win.
Um, my father literally beat that into me as a kid. Um, so I, I, I think nothing wrong with that. That's that's what that's what created this great country. We live in this competitiveness. Um, and that's okay. I think the key to it is to be the selfish leader selfless leader is to understand that. Okay. It's okay to win, but it's also you got to include everybody else just because you win doesn't mean somebody else can't win as well.
They may not win at the same level, but you're raising people along the way. Um, to make them better as well. And in the end, that's going to make your organization better. Not only are you winning, but if everybody else is winning and they're getting a little bit better at everything they do, that's, in the end, that's going to make your organization better.
And, and one of the things that I'm always, I'm adamant about, look, we all have egos. Anybody who tells you they don't have an ego is lying to you. We all [00:18:00] have an ego and that's okay because that's what drives us to be the best we can be at whatever we're doing. So that there's no, nothing wrong with having an ego.
The good selfless leaders understand when to put that ego aside. That it isn't about them anymore. It's about somebody else. It's about the team. It's about an individual on the team and the good leaders, in my opinion, the ones out there that are good leaders know when to put that ego aside.
Leighann Lovely: And how, you know, again, you know, competitive land here is like, yes, I just won this.
And, and there have been times where you get so hyper focused. So have there been times where you're like, Oh, Perfect example that you gave, you know, you're playing, you said Old Maid with your 13 year old. And there have been times where my daughter isn't, you know, crying and I'm just one and I'm like, yeah, I just won.
And I'm like, [00:19:00] oh crap, she's crying, but she has to learn to lose. We all have to, you can't, you can't, you know, pretend like, oh, I'm going to throw this game in order to win, you know, in order to become as competitive, you know, you have to learn What it's like to, to lose, to fail.
Oakland McCulloch: That's what, that's what drives you to be better.
Cause you don't like that feeling. So, so, so you, you want to get better so that you can. And you know, one of the things that I, that I, I'm, I believe in is that when you beat somebody or you win, then it becomes a, a teaching moment. You know, whether it's my 10 year old granddaughter or it's somebody that.
That I'm leading when they don't do something as well as they could have, then that becomes a teaching moment. And, you know, I, I'm a firm believer. I, I don't believe you learn from experience. You learn from reflection, reflection on that experience. Yes. That's how you learn. [00:20:00] So if you don't win a game, then you stop and you say, okay.
What went wrong? Where did I not do the best? I could become the best I could be or do the best I could do with that. And I teach my grandchildren that I say, okay, you did well, but here's, you could do better if you did this. And I used to use it with my, the people that work for me as well. I'd say, okay, this is what we were supposed to do.
This is what we did now. Let's sit down and figure out how we make up that difference what we were supposed to do versus what we did. And if you do that, then it doesn't become I'm better than you are. It's okay. We did well here. I did well here, but you can do as well. We just got to figure out that difference and you coach them.
And again, you know, the thing that I always tell leaders is you can't be selfish. You can't say, okay, it's about [00:21:00] me. Cause it isn't about you, you know, it, it isn't about how much money you made this year, it's about making everybody else better. And if you made a. amount of money this year, if you make everybody else on your team better, you're going to make even more next year.
And that's okay. Nothing wrong with that. That's I'm not against making money, but we also got to remember that we got to make everybody else on the team better as well. And if you do that, I promise you your organization is going to get better because the better you make the people that you're leading, the better your organization is going to be.
And in the end, you're going to get what you want, but you got it for the right reasons. Not because you were selfish. But because you help somebody else become a better person and a better worker,
Leighann Lovely: right? So I have a story for you about a motivational speech that I had a old, um, colleague of mine and that I overheard him giving, and I want to get your opinion on this of the motivational speech starts [00:22:00] off with, I have a really big house.
I have a really nice car. I have this. I have that. Would you like to have that stuff? Yeah. And then goes on to say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you just do a little bit better, you can work your way to having this stuff.
Oakland McCulloch: My opinion, that's horrible. Um, so, so one of the things I, I've had my hand in commissioning over 580 second lieutenants for the United States army and for this country.
And the thing I always told every single one of them is. Look, leadership, it's, it's about selfless leadership that I believe that and those are the best leaders. Selfless service is what it's all about. I said, think of it this way. It is not about you [00:23:00] and yet it's all about you. It's not about you and the title you get or the privileges you get or that you get better pay and you live in a nicer house and drive a nicer car.
Let's face it, leaders get those things sometimes and that's okay. As long as that's not the only reason you want to be the leader. If it is, go do something else because you're never going to be a good one. It is all about you and how you treat and empower and coach and mentor the people you have the privilege to lead.
And if you remember that piece of it, and again, you know, because I, especially 18, 19, 20 year old kids, they'd say, well, I want that next promotion. I want my next pay raise. And I'd always say, well, look, you can get both. You can, if you take care of people and make them better, they're going to make your organization better, which means you're, you're going to get your promotion.
You're going to get your pay raise, but again, you get it for the right reasons, not because you were selfish, but because you helped other people.
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. And that was an early on [00:24:00] mistake in my own career is that
Oakland McCulloch: we all make that mistake.
Leighann Lovely: Right. Right. And I remember my boss and exactly, as you said, I was, this was in the HR realm where, and my boss said, you need, you need to make a point to get up from your desk.
And walk around the building and learn who the people are that you serve working in HR. And I was like, well, if they need something, they can come to me. And she's like, you're not listening to me. And I'm like, well, what do you mean? Like, I don't want to go bother them while they're working. And she's like, they need to know that human resources.
And this was way before, you know, 2006, seven, eight, when. You know, this was when we actually like took care of our people and we really wanted to know our people. And we really want to, before HR departments is slim, you know, slim down to, you know, the person that was taking care of everything and didn't have time for anything.
And now we have people leaders [00:25:00] and we have, you know, anyways, and, and I was just missing the point. Like, why do you want me to go waste my time talking to people? Why do you, I don't get it. Um, yeah. And she was a great leader trying to instill in me the importance of knowing your people. Yeah,
Oakland McCulloch: again, and just as important than knowing you.
Correct. And especially in today's world where it's all text messages and emails and phone calls and people don't get out of their office and they don't go meet people, you know, and I, I've had Organizations, he said, you know, my guy, my guys and gals just don't communicate. Well, face to face. He said, you know, they send text messages, they email, they phone call.
But if John walked down the hall, they wouldn't even know who John is. They know his name because they send all those things to him, but they, they don't know who he is. And I said, well, there's a way to fix that. I said, every Friday, make in your office. Now, outside your office, I got it. You got to send [00:26:00] emails, phone calls, text messages, but inside your office building on Friday, there are no emails, no phone calls, no text messages.
If you want to talk to John, you get up out of your chair and you go find John and you go talk to him. And he said, and he implemented that. And he said, Within a month, what an amazing difference. People would pass in the hallway and they'd say, Hey John, how are you today? And they'd actually talk to each other and they knew who each other were.
And it's that simple. That's part of building that community. Building that trust. Because if I send you a text, that doesn't mean you're going to trust me. You don't know me. But if I see you in the hallway and you know who I am, and we talk a little bit, then that trust starts to build. And that's You can't build a team without trust.
Vince Lombardi, probably the not probably he was the greatest football coach that ever coached. He said, Look, a team is not a group of people who play together. The team is a group of people who trust each [00:27:00] other. And it's pick a profession. It doesn't matter. It's the same no matter what profession it is.
Leighann Lovely: Back in the day. I mean, we had a we had a 50 plus group of people. And that, you know, that was at the beginning. Um, it was a company that I worked for recruiting. We knew every single person in the building. I mean, we, when we needed something, we stood up and we walked over and we talked to him. This was a very large, you know, it was all the cubicles and everybody sat in a cube farms everywhere.
It was, you know, you, They're, they're right there. Stand up, walk over, talk to them. Why are you going to send an email and then wait two hours to get the answer that you need when they're literally sitting three cube farms away?
Oakland McCulloch: Absolutely. I had that experience. I was in the army. I, I was working with a guy and he was in charge and, and I, I worked for him and literally there was a wall between us and there was a doorway.[00:28:00]
So I, you had to go through my office to get to his office just happened to be there and there were, you know, five or six other people in that in my office as well. It wasn't just me, but literally, I mean, I was at my desk and I could look do like this and I could see him in his office. He was sending me email messages.
And finally I just said, stop. If you want something, just scream out. I can answer you. I mean, you don't have to scream. We can talk like this and I can answer you. Stop sending me email messages. Right. I mean, we've gotten to that point where, where we have forgotten the importance of face to face. Human reaction of relationship and you see it, especially in this younger generation where they think they believe I've read polls and articles where they believe somebody they've met online and never seen in person is just as good a friend to them as the person That's sitting right next to them.
And we got to [00:29:00] get away from that. We got to get back to the, now I'm not saying that's not important. We, we, you know, we wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for this technology, but this does not replace face to face relationship. And especially in a business where that is so huge. And inside your organization and out, if you're a salesperson and you're not going out and actually seeing the people you're trying to sell something to, I guarantee you, I'm going to sell to them before you do, because I'm going to go see them and I'm going to build that relationship.
Well,
Leighann Lovely: absolutely. And I've heard a lot of people say, you know, cold calling is dead. I've heard a lot of people say, Oh, that's a thing in the past. You're, you're not going to be able to. And I'm like, yeah, but have you ever sold a large Have you ever made a large sale, made a full commitment and gotten a full commitment from somebody that you've never physically met or at least had a face to face conversation with?
Yes, I've had sales via zoom. It happens now because [00:30:00] again, I I've sold internationally, but it's through a text message or through just emailing. No, I've never had it like close because it comes down to, well, How do you trust somebody? How do you trust that that person is even who they say they
Oakland McCulloch: are?
Exactly. Well, you know, again, I recruited for the last 12 years at a university here for Army ROTC and, and I was pretty successful. I was recruiter of the year in 2019. I brought in 158 freshmen into our program and that's bigger than some, ROTC, most ROTC programs are. And every year I was bringing in 100 to 150 freshmen.
And somebody asked me one day how I did it. I said, first of all, I, I do send out an email and I explain me and the program and, and, uh, and then, then I follow that up with a phone call. And then I try to get them to [00:31:00] come down for a visit. And I always told people, look, if I can get that young man or that young lady in my office with their parents, that's even better.
But even without the parents, if I can get them into my office, they're coming to my school. Guaranteed, I don't lose people, um, except to academies. That was a hard one to compete with. But other than that, I mean, I brought, they came, came to our program and it's all about that personalized thing. You know, the email set it up.
Then a phone call and then hopefully, uh, either a zoom or a face to face if I could get a face to face, it was, it was a done deal. That's
Leighann Lovely: awesome. And that again is about once you figure out and see now my sales brain is working, but once you figure out that process, once you figure out what works. And it's never going to just be an email.
I mean, I can email somebody 15 [00:32:00] times and usually if I have to email them 15 times, they're going to email me back saying, stop emailing me.
Oakland McCulloch: Yeah. If I wanted, I'll email you. Yeah. Correct. And I was careful. You know, I didn't over. Try to sell on the first thing. I just said this. Look, you're interested.
Obviously, you applied for an Army ROTC scholarship and applied. Put our school down as one of your choices. So here's what we have to offer. If you're interested, let's hop on a phone call. Right. And almost all of them would at least hop on a phone call. That doesn't mean I got all those, but I, at least I had an opportunity that just takes me another step toward building that relationship.
And then we go from there. Um, so I, I think, you know, you got to figure out what works for you. No doubt about it, because there are no cookie cutter solutions. Let's be honest. No, it's all based on your personality and what you're trying to sell and what Well, you know, but you, but [00:33:00] I don't care what it is.
You got to build the relationship because if you don't, somebody that does is going to outsell you. I promise you 100%.
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. It all comes down to the relationship. It all comes down to the relationship and the relationship with your community and the referrals that your community and trust. I mean, if you can get a referral, you've already has, you already have that buffer of built in trust.
That's right. And then, you
Oakland McCulloch: know, Somebody trusted you or they wouldn't have referred you.
Leighann Lovely: Correct, correct. Well, we are coming to time. So I want to give you the opportunity for your 30 seconds shameless pitch. Um, so, you know, go ahead, plug
Oakland McCulloch: yourself. So, um, I, I, I retired from my day job one October. Now I'm concentrating on getting out and talking to as many people as I can as a keynote speaker.
So I talk about leadership. I talk about again, everyday things. I don't talk about. Theory, and I custom build every single keynote to what you want. [00:34:00] Um, I can honestly say I've never given 2 talks that were exactly the same. Um, and if you want to get in touch with me, I've got my website is LTCOMccullough.com and on there, it's got all my social media. It's got my cell phone number. It's got my email address. Get in touch with me and I'd love to have that conversation with you.
Leighann Lovely: Awesome. And your, um, contact information will be in the show notes so that if somebody wants to reach out, um, I know that you have, you have quite a few speaking engagements coming up, actually.
So, um, that is awesome. But if somebody does want to reach out to Oak, please check the show notes and you can, um, find his links there. Oak, it's been such an amazing, excuse me, I'm losing my voice. It's been such an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me today.
Oakland McCulloch: Yeah, well, I appreciate it.
I, you know, and you always know when, when you're having a good time because 30 minutes gets bought by like
Leighann Lovely: that. I know. I know it does. It does.
 

Mastering Communication Styles for Sales Success

In this episode we dive into the intricacies of communication in sales and leadership. Brian Hendricks, a seasoned performance coach and best-selling author, who shares his expertise on team development, communication, and leadership. They delve into understanding communication styles, the DISC and Social Styles assessments, the significance of 360-degree assessment, and its impact on effective leadership. Don't miss this enlightening conversation on improving communication and effectiveness in sales.
 
Contact Brian –
Website - www.dynamicdevelopments.net
E-mail Brian - BrianHendricks@dynamicdevelopments.net
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dynamic.developments/
 
Special Thank you to our Sponsor Genhead – www.genhead.com
 
Robb Conlon – Intro and outro – Westport Studio - https://www.westportstudiosllc.com/
 
The Brave Ones – Instrumental Version Song by Jan Sanejko - https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/song/the-brave-ones/119489
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of Love Your Sales. I am joined today by Brian Hendricks. He is the CEO of Dynamic Developments, a performance coach and bestselling author of The Communicator's Playbook. He is dedicated to transforming leaders into effective communicators. He specializes in team focused, client focused, and organizational focused development and empowers leaders and teams to reach their full [00:02:00] potential. He has a master's degree in leadership and counseling. He is married and has three children, all six and under.
Brian Hendricks: The Hendricks house is not boring.
Leighann Lovely: Yes. So welcome. I am very excited to have you join me today.
Brian Hendricks: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to get up here and talk about kind of communications, but from a sales aspect, which
Leighann Lovely: is really cool. Well, and, and so much, um, there's so many companies that forget, um, and which is why I'm wildly excited to talk to you. So many communication or so many companies forget that the lack of communication sets their individuals.
Uh, for failure right from the get go, if they are not focusing on the importance of how that communication flows, not only verbally, verbally, but also in writing or however they choose to do that. [00:03:00] So why don't we start with where you start when you're working with an organization on that effective communication piece?
Brian Hendricks: Yeah. So, uh, for us, we develop a process that's called the RQ process. And really it's a way to. communicate out exactly what I need from a leadership standpoint, but to make sure that the person is actually hearing what I want them to hear. Because so many times, you know, uh, I've talked to whether it's a CEO or it's the VP of sales or whoever they say, I told this person a million times, you know, a million times I said it and they gave me the head nod.
Everyone knows the universal sign for, I understand is the head nod. And then that team member goes out. And completely bumps or forgets everything and so many times leadership or leaders have said, well, that's on them like, no, no, no, that's on you. That's on you. The sales leader, the VP of sales, the whoever it is, that's on you because you didn't check to make [00:04:00] sure that they understood because you didn't adjust your communication approach.
to what their style is and to what their knowledge level. So for us, this is where this idea of our cubing comes in. And, and the first piece, the first R is to rethink. Okay. And you have to rethink what you're going into. What am I trying to get out of the situation? What am I trying to teach this person?
Um, is this going to be a positive or negative conversation? So there's all these different thoughts that go into, you know, any training. Scenario, anytime I'm dealing with a client, it's okay. I need to stop and put away my preconceived notions. I can take my, uh, I always do four to four breathing. There's box breathing and just take those deep breaths before you go into that conversation and really rethink your thoughts.
Okay. Like regroup, regroup everything together, regroup all of those thoughts together. So that's that first time I said, rethink, I meant regroup because I was jumping to the thought. So, so regroup is that first one. Then you have to go [00:05:00] in and, and start to actually reorganize three specific things and all communication comes down to is your words, your tone, and your body language.
And that's what you have to start reorganizing and you have to start reorganizing it based on what that other person needs. And I'll get to how we figure that out in a second, but it's all based on how, you know, when I'm talking to you, do I need to pick up that pace in my work, in my tone? Do I need to slow it down?
Do I need to get bigger because you're a confident person? Do I need to just be more relaxed because you're more relaxed? Like trying to reorganize my words, my tone by my body language. And the last piece where I really want to get into, you know, today from a communication standpoint is actually re delivering that message and actually communicating it out.
Um, and I think so many times people focus on re delivering that message based on someone's communication style. And you can figure out communication style based on, you know, disc training, social styles is, is my all time favorite Myers Briggs, um, insights discovery. I mean, [00:06:00] all of those can come out with what does that other person, like, what is their style and how do I adjust to that?
Right.
Leighann Lovely: And I was going to ask you, you know, there's a lot of, and I've, I've met people who will write out before I've even had the chance to, you know, sit down and have a discovery or have a, Do my pitch. They'll say, Hey, by the way, I'm a high D or I'm a, I'm a high C. And I'm like, wow, that makes my way
Brian Hendricks: much easier.
Leighann Lovely: Yeah. I'm like, okay, now I know exactly how to deliver the information, but the majority of the population don't go, Hey, Brian, before we talk, I just want you to know. I'm a high, whatever,
Brian Hendricks: I'm an expressive, like, so please treat me this way. Right, right. Absolutely. And I think that's where, when you, that's where you have to, you know, either invest in yourself or have an owner of a company invest into social [00:07:00] styles, into disc, into insights, because most people aren't going to jump in and be like, Hey, I'm an expressive.
So now I know, all right, I'm going to make eye contact with Brian. I'm going to use my hands. I'm going to do all these things to make Brian comfortable. That's not how most people are. Right. Once you're trained in this stuff. You can watch and observe other's behavior and start realizing, all right, they're not making eye contact with me here.
They're being a little bit more monotone and they're really focusing on facts and details. I bet you any money that person's an analytical. So Brian, the expressive, I'm not coming into that sales pitch or, you know, if I'm training someone on, on sales, I'm not coming in and being all rah, rah, excited because that person's shutting down right away.
What Brian, the expressive is going to do is I'm going to tone down that expressiveness. I'm going to slow down my rate of speech. I'm going to make sure that I take you step by step by step and give you more facts and more details than what I would probably like. But that's what [00:08:00] you need because you're that analytical stuff.
Right. And it's all about making those slight adjustments to make that other person feel comfortable.
Leighann Lovely: Right. And that's while the, you know, if you were to come at me with all these facts and, and, and again, I, you know, personally, I'm a high I, high D, I. Which I have to battle on a regular basis, um, because there are a lot of people out there are like, well, well, I can't, she's too much, um, which I, you know, I regularly have to try to taper down, um, you know, for, uh, I, I, Variety of reasons, but if I'm trying to explain something, especially my, my husband, you know, he's like, give me the short and skinny facts.
How is this going to get me to point A to point B to point C? Like, he just wants to know the factual information on how to get. So if. I'm a sales leader trying to [00:09:00] train somebody new and I come in with my rah, rah, okay, I'm going to, all that information I'm going to assume is going to just go over their head and they're going to be like, I'm way overwhelmed.
I heard pretty much nothing from, after the first. 30 seconds of them being in my face trying to rally me up. Am I getting that
Brian Hendricks: right? A hundred percent. And I'd say the exact opposite is true. You know, if you're more on that expressive side or that high eye side and you have a, you know, you as a sales leader has, has this new employee and you come in and you just take them through, you know, your operating procedures, you take them through step by step by step and you go through all just the details, but you're not checking in on them.
Hey, how's it going? You're not, you're not being excited about it. That expressive or that high eye is going to shut down because now all you've given me is details You're not connecting it to a bigger picture a bigger goal, which is what drives those eyes And so it goes either way. I mean in with the [00:10:00] D's D's and S's polar opposites So that's one of the things that I think gets missed a lot is it's great to know who you are But it's better to know what your team is and what your sales people are so that I can get my message across best to you, best to her, best to him.
It's gotta be the same message, but I'm gonna have to communicate it differently because each of you need a different thing.
Leighann Lovely: Very interesting. Wildly interesting because now I, now I'm going to pose a question. So what happens if you're onboarding three people at the same time? Three. I'm holding, I'm holding up four fingers, three, three people.
No. So what happens if you're onboarding three people and they're on complete opposite spectrums, personality, you know, what their needs, what their desires, what their drivers are?
Brian Hendricks: Yeah, absolutely. And this is a process that we created. It's called the dynamic communication process. Um, and this is how you handle that.
Because a lot of times when you're doing sales training, [00:11:00] when you're, when you're doing it, we'll take it even further when you're pitching to people, a lot of times you're pitching to more than one person. Right. So you have to get your message across. What we've seen is traditionally how it's gone is here's what we're doing.
Here's how we're going to do it. Whether it's training, whether it's pitching, it's like, Hey, here's what we can do for you. Here's how we're going to get it done. Well, if you stop at that. And all the data kind of shows you're going to hit about 50 percent of the population because 50 percent of the population, they want the bottom line.
What do you want from me? Or sorry, 25 percent of population wants the bottom line about 25 percent wants those details. So here's what happens. Here's how we get it done. You're not answering any other questions for those other 50 percent for those people that are known as, you know, expressive or amiable or the eyes and the S's they're not, you're not winning them over at all.
They're not learning in that onboarding process because those eyes, those expresses, they need to know how does this. Affect the [00:12:00] big idea, how does this affect longterm goals, what those S's need, what those annual people need, they need to know that this is the right thing for them individually, that this is the right thing for our company, for our clients.
So instead of just saying what traditionally everyone has done. Is here's what's happening. Here's how you do it, especially from a onboarding prospect, you got to take it further. So not only is here's what's happening, here's how to do it. Then you have to answer the when question. So in the short term, you want to break it down to short term and long term.
So in the short term, take all those details. Here's what we're going to accomplish in the first week in your training. Here's what we're going to accomplish in the first three months. In the longterm, here's how it's going to affect you. Here's how it's going to make you better salesperson. Here's how you're going to get more clients because those eyes, if you remember from what we just talked about, eyes, too many details, they're going to shut down, but they still need to know the overall goal.
So break those details down. In the short term and long term, [00:13:00] so then you're bringing in 75%. You can't forget about the annual people or the, or those S's. So now, Hey, we're going to teach this out. Here's how it affects you. Where do we do it this way at our company? Here's how it's the right thing for you.
Here's how it's the right thing for our clients. And here's how it's the right thing for us as an organization. So now instead of just, here's what happens, here's how you do it, here's what happens, here's how you do it, here's the short term and the long term impact. And then here's the who, this is who it actually affects.
Now, all of a sudden you're starting to train people all, all different styles. And when you can communicate a message out that way, every single time, it doesn't matter who you're talking to. Because you've hit every style of communication by rolling out your communication that way.
Leighann Lovely: Very interesting. And you know, and it's interesting, you know, as somebody who, um, and I don't do the training, I don't do training and development in my business specifically because on a [00:14:00] large scale, I don't have what you have, which is the ability to notice, see, again, hi, I, hi, D, I'm, I'm like, off thinking about what the next thing is.
Yes. I'm, but I have the ability to see the problems as they are immediately. I'm one of those people who's like, Oh, I'm here. I'm seeing, I'm seeing where the gaps are. I can immediately pick up on those gaps, pick up on the problems, and then I can go, I see where your problems are. I know where you need to fix your problems.
And I can, I can help deliver on that on a small scale as a seasoned professional, as a seasoned salesperson. But when it comes to that large scale training and development and longterm, that's where somebody like you having that understanding. [00:15:00] Really deep dive understanding of all of those different personality types again.
My personality type does not bode well for that.
Brian Hendricks: Oh, and here's what I would say is, but, and part of what I believe in why I get so passionate about communication and training and everything is that you can train yourself to get good at it. Yes. Like that's the thing is like, yes, like, and I've worked with so many leaders and even in the sales role where they're so focused on numbers, numbers, numbers, got to hit profit, got to hit profit, got to hit this, got to hit our numbers.
And there would be considered that high D or that driver, like it's results, results, results. And they tend, and this is, you know, anecdotally, they tend to have high turnover with their sales reps. And it's because, well, for me, I'm so focused on the bottom line. I'm so focused on my numbers. I'm not communicating that out to my team, you know?
So for [00:16:00] example, Hey, if we hit our numbers this week, that can lead to X, Y, and Z rewards for you. Which then can maybe lead to a promote and all of a sudden those eyes are like, Oh, wait, so if I do this, my, and they start working at it, you know, when you're, Hey, you know, for those, for those S's and those annual people, Hey, yeah, look, we got to hit our numbers.
Like that's, there's no doubt about it, but if you're able to hit your numbers, you're actually gonna get a bonus. So remember how are you talking about how you want to get, you want to get that summer house for your kids? That's a way to start working at it. Right? When you hit your numbers during the week, you don't actually have to work later at night anymore towards the end of the quarter, so you can make all your kids games.
You're now connecting that bottom line to what's important to them. And I would love to say, hey, read a book, take my training, you fix it right away. It's like, no, you have to continually work through it and keep practicing and keep practicing just as anything until you can literally sit with someone.
And within five minutes, I have a pretty good idea of what your style is and [00:17:00] what's going to be important to you. Very interesting.
Leighann Lovely: See, and, and I'm just, well, I just run into a room and start talking,
Brian Hendricks: right? It's so many of those eyes and those DS, those expressive, they do. And if you think about just think about to maybe your last sales meeting and this is for all your listeners out there.
And, you know, sales, salespeople tend to be more expressive drivers, you know, those eyes and those, he doesn't mean you don't have people that are more on the ask assertive what I call them, you know, the analytical is the animals, the S's, the C's, whatever you use. Um, but what I would argue is that your last meeting you were in or think of your last sales meeting, like when you were actually like pitching a client, the people that talk the most are those eyes, those DS, those drivers, the expressives.
If we were to take the time and maybe even, um, you know, say beforehand, we're looking for input from everybody or [00:18:00] direct our questions to those other styles that don't talk as much. You're going to get even a lot more from them because they're the ones coming with the facts with the data, right? They're the ones coming with this people centric perspective that that's what takes sales to the next level.
It's not only you're going to hit your numbers, but you go with us. Your people are going to be happier. Your turnover is going to get whatever it is, but until you loop in all four of those styles, you're not going to get the whole picture of any organization. You're not going to get the whole picture of your own sales team.
If you can't connect to those reps that are, that are a different style.
Leighann Lovely: Yeah, no. And I, I. I completely agree. And there, and I can't remember what the statistics are, but there's a huge number of turnover in salespeople because of the lack of understanding those different styles from a turnover standpoint, from a three month to a six month.
Um, because often sales people, people, let me rephrase often management. Um, looks at [00:19:00] salespeople as being those assumes salespeople are those extrovert salespeople like absolutely people. They assume that they're able to just step into a role and be able to take control and, and do what is necessary to get there.
And so often salespeople are kind of thrown to the wolves and they're like, okay, go out and sell. Right. The. Um, the problem, and, and this is coming from somebody who's been in multiple different roles and been a contractor in multiple different roles in order to help with figuring out why can't we keep salespeople?
And that information up front is not delivered. It's not, you know, and, and so I've, I've had to step into, you know, really the analytical position of, okay, well. Um, where's the information, where's your, you know, your mini database of all of your material, [00:20:00] where's the, you know, who do I go to for X, Y, and Z, how do I, and this is ever more important in a world where we are now remote even more, where our boss may be in another state and we can't physically walk up to him and say, Hey, I need, you know, I need this, I need that.
I need this in order to be successful. I need to have a clear understanding of my pricing structure. I need to have, and they're just like, well, didn't you go through this in the onboarding? And this happens a great deal with large organizations where you have your HR department doing the initial onboarding and you're supposed to have your manager doing another piece.
And he's going, well, didn't this person do this and didn't this person, it also comes down to. Do you prefer your information to be verbal? Do you prefer your information to be written, [00:21:00] video? You need to
Brian Hendricks: take it, you need to have me watch you go through it to do it? Yeah. Well, and I think too, to that point, you know, we talk about, you know, re delivering that message out, that last R is about communication style, but I take it a little bit even further than that.
It's about knowledge level. So whatever, you know, theory of development you use, we use something called the life cycle of growth. Basically it says that humans develop in four phases. So when they learn something brand new, when they get brought into an organization, when kids learn how to throw a baseball.
It's four phases of development. Um, and that very first phase is when people are onboarding. It's this unconsciously unable, I like to say they don't know what they don't know. They don't know how to use the CRM. Now let's say, Oh no, that person, they came from company XYZ. They had the same CRM. You have it set up.
differently than they did. So even those great sales reps who've been great sales reps, when they come to your organization, they have to learn how [00:22:00] you do it. They have to learn how your culture sees things. They have to learn your processes. And I think so many times in sales, especially as you mentioned is, Oh, you know, this person's coming in.
They've been a sales rep for years. They know what they're doing. If you have any questions, let me know. And it's like, well, shouldn't you be walking that person through when they're at that unconsciously unable stage? And what I see a lot is when we have, you know, young professionals, maybe it's their first sales job and they're coming in.
I get this all the time. Well, they don't ask questions. Why aren't they asking me questions? And I immediately look at the sales leader and I said, think back to when you don't know something and you're in a group setting, are you raising your hand? No. Well, why don't I ask? Why don't you raise your hand? I don't want to look dumb.
I want it. I want it to be like one of my boss is there and they think I can't do this anymore. So when you have those people that are brand new to your company, to your organization, to the workforce, it is your job as a leader to outline every [00:23:00] single thing for them. People say micromanaging is bad in three out of the four stages of development.
A hundred percent right. When you have someone who is unconsciously unable in that first stage, you have to micromanage them. Now, once they've learned, Yeah, I was gonna say, just once they've learned, then you take it off right away. Because now they're asking questions. Now they're like, oh, I know this, but I don't know this, so let me ask.
We as leaders, we get so frustrated with new employees with because they don't know and they're not asking questions. And I told them to ask me any questions. No, no, no. It is your job to outline everything for them.
Leighann Lovely: I remember in my first sales, my first real. Like corporate sales job. I had, I had like these little, you know, sales roles and, but my first real corporate sales, I pissed off every other salesperson because again, personality wise, I was never afraid to raise my hand and be like, am I supposed to know what ACH means?[00:24:00]
They're like, oh, well probably not if you've never been in a real corporate and you're dealing with payroll. They also did, you know, sold payroll services and I had never heard Mm-Hmm, , the acronym A CH. And everybody's throwing this around like, oh, this didn't go, this a CH didn't work. And I'm like, is this like, am I supposed to know what this means?
Right, right. And they're like,
Brian Hendricks: oh, let's go. Oh, thank you for asking that. Like, we were so happy you asked that question.
Leighann Lovely: Right. And then there was another acronym and I'm like. Am I supposed to know that one? Right. Absolutely. And they're like, no, probably not. And so then I just got to the point where I'm like, I don't want to sound stupid, but I don't know what you're talking about.
Brian Hendricks: Absolutely.
Leighann Lovely: Right. You know, and, and again, this was, you know, this was in my, my twenties and I'm, so I'm sitting there going, you know, late twenties, this is my second career. I was in HR beforehand and in HR. Again, corporate HR, you, you don't, I wasn't [00:25:00] payroll. I wasn't part of payroll. I was, so there were a lot of things that they assumed that I should know.
And I went, guys, I, I have no idea what some of these act. And again, companies make these assumptions like, Oh, Well, she's, you know, she's in her late twenties. She probably is going to know these things and you don't, a lot of people, and I've, I've looked at now, obviously in my forties when I don't know something, I'll just go, guys, I don't know.
But that is a learned thing. The older that you get, you go, you know what, I don't know what you're talking about. Like I've been around the block long enough that I, but in your twenties you go, I don't want to sound stupid. And it's like, that's something that goes with age when you're like. Yeah, if I sound stupid.
Brian Hendricks: That's right. It doesn't matter because I'd rather sound dumb right away and keep my job and be successful at my job then. Oh, [00:26:00] Brian. Brian's not figuring it out. Four
Leighann Lovely: months from now. Go you guys. I still don't know what ACH means. They're going to go. Wait, you've been here four months and you don't know what that means.
Right? I'd rather.
Brian Hendricks: No. And I think you're 100 percent right. And I think to me, like I hear that so often, And I, I don't put that on, I mean, I shouldn't say I don't, that part of that is that the team member's responsibility, right? To ask the question, but for me, it's more the responsibility of that manager or that leader, because you have to realize they literally don't know what they don't know.
Correct. You have to outline everything for them. I mean, oh, they get so frightened. I hear so many leaders. They get so frustrated, you know, oh, they're always doing X. I'm like, well, did you ever tell them not to do X? Well, they should know. Why should they know if you never explained that, then they would never know not to do that, you know, and that's, that's where it, for me, it's like, no, that's where we have to take responsibilities as leaders, as, [00:27:00] as director of sales, as VP of sales, whatever your title is for your team to train them the right way from the start.
Leighann Lovely: And if, and if you're not drilling it into somebody of. Hey, no question is a dumb question, but in six, six months from now, if you're still behind because you weren't asking the question up front, then, then we're going to be having a different conversation. So ask now, I would rather have you bombard me and ask.
And again, I pissed off all the sales people because they were like, Oh my God, we're going to be in this meeting for the next three hours. But at the end of the day, all of those sales people that in the first three weeks of me working there. Came to respect me because I then knew all of the things that I needed to know.
And I became a, I rose up and became a very good salesperson because I knew the information and [00:28:00] I wasn't afraid to go. I don't know this. I want to learn this. I want, however it is on the sales and they had a, they had a very good sales leader who was like, if you don't know this. Ask, we're going to go and have sales training.
We're going to learn. I mean, and they went down to the basics of how to ask open ended questions. How do you start an open ended question? It was, it was, uh, this was a great company to start as a first time corporate sales person. Um,
Brian Hendricks: well, and tying that into what we talked about before. The reason you were so comfortable with that person was probably because he was versatile or she was versatile in her, in their communication.
They adjusted the communication style to what you needed. So now that it all goes together, it's not one or the other. It's a, it's a both end situation.
Leighann Lovely: And that, and that makes all the difference between whether that person is going to choose to stay and whether or not that person is going to say, Hey, the heck with this [00:29:00] company not willing to work with me.
And again, I did a disc assessment before I started there and they understood how my, you know, how I learned. And this was many, many years ago when, when company, well, I think that was the rise. That was the beginning of the rise of. Those personality assessments. When you, you applied for any job and
Brian Hendricks: you like I do nothing.
Cause I can just show you my profile. I have it down.
Leighann Lovely: so Brian, you do you specialize in desk?
Brian Hendricks: Yeah. Your organization. Discs and social styles. And social styles. So those are the two. Yeah. So two, two again, very similar. Um, the biggest differences if, if people are wondering out there, cause you know, people have heard disc or hear social styles. Disc is, it's great.
It's wonderful. Uh, it's a self assessment only. Social styles is a 360 assessment. So you get your perception of yourself and then others perception of you. [00:30:00] So that's a, there's other things that we can go into on another show, but those are the, the, the, probably the biggest difference right there.
Leighann Lovely: And so explain to me the, um, the, the 360 so that, that I have a better understanding of, of.
How that one works.
Brian Hendricks: Yes. So the, the social styles assessment itself, I think it's about 49 questions. Um, and what you do is you fill out the survey based on yourself. So how do you think you communicate? How do you think you use your word, your tone, your body language? There's also a piece to it called versatility.
So how optimistic are you seeing from a leadership perspective? You know, how, um, how willing are you to fight for other people from a leadership perspective? So I should say that's another. Difference between disc and social styles. There's this a whole nother measurement called versatility with social styles, but the three 60 piece is the piece that I really love because you send it out to, uh, people who work above you.
So maybe who you report to, you can send it out [00:31:00] to people that are on your same level, you can send it to your team that reports directly to you. You can send it out to your clients who you have good relationships with. And what you're getting is you're getting other people's perception of how you communicate.
And what I can say, it's amazing because 50 percent of the time we see ourselves differently than how other people see us. And especially in the working world, perception truly does become reality and how I'm being perceived is so much more important than what I want to be. What are what I want to say?
You know, I've had people who, who come in, they're the nicest human beings they get on their results. I say, well, they're not a good listener. Uh, they're rude, they're forceful. And they're like, that doesn't sound like me at all. I'm like, that's not how you're trying to be perceived. But when you cut somebody off, because you're excited about that idea, that other person is taking offense to that.
That means you're not a good listener. And no, I am a good listener. I heard it. And then I want to do this. And I'm [00:32:00] like, that's not the perception of it. So then we talk, all right, well then let everybody get their thoughts out, let them get there and then say, I love that idea. Here's some additional things.
So it's, it's all about perception. I can't tell you how many times I have dealt with people who come and give me detail after detail, after detail, after detail. And in my head, I'm like, who cares about all this stuff right now? You know, and how about just a, Hey, Brian, how are you today? How's life going?
And then give me all the details. And in my head, I'm like, that person's just a jerk. They just don't care about me. When in reality. They're a really good person. They do care about what's going on in my life. But for them, we need to work right now. And when we're on break at when we go to happy hour, then we'll connect on it.
And so it's changing, it's twofold, I would say it's why I like the 360. One, it changes how I perceive everybody else communicating to me, realizing that most people aren't going to be versatile and they're going to communicate in a way that makes them comfortable. But secondly, [00:33:00] then I can work on my own communication to everybody else, because I'm being perceived in a way either that I like or that I don't like, and then I can adjust my communication based on how other people are seeing me.
And you don't get that with the self reflection. You get that with the 360 piece.
Leighann Lovely: That is amazing. And I would love to do that because, you know, it is, you do think I, I would assume, and I know that we should never assume, but that the majority of the people out in the world believe that they are communicating in a way that is kind and nice and to, to everybody.
Right? I mean, we as human beings don't assume Mean we don't try to go out and be assholes,
Brian Hendricks: right? It's so true It is well and every time every time I go through results with people They're like, I can't believe they think that [00:34:00] or I can't believe they see me that way I'm like, it's not saying that you are this big like you're not a mean rude person But that's the perception based on how you're interacting with them And we can control that.
I think that's what's cool about it too, is we can control that. That is under our control. How we control that is by taking a deep breath, back to that RQ process before I interact with someone. How am I going to use my words, my tone, my body language, and then how am I going to re deliver that message out?
Leighann Lovely: That's and you know what? I think that every, every salesperson. Um, should, that should be something that every salesperson does maybe every couple of years to really have, you know, an idea of the way that they are perceived not only by their clients, but by their community of referral sources, by their community of maybe even lost clients.
And to get an idea as to how am I and why [00:35:00] am I. Exactly. Exactly. Either rubbing people wrong or whatever it might be to, I mean, what a better way to grow as a human, as a person.
Brian Hendricks: And I think that's why I love. If you can tell I love doing this stuff, I love teaching this stuff and working with you because I see it at work, but then I also see it at home like I know my wife's style and and just a quick little story.
She is the exact opposite of me. She is very analytical, very amiable, like very like. Give me the facts, give me the details. If there's a problem, I'm not going to talk about it. I'm just going to keep it right in here. And then maybe, and if there's an issue, I'm gonna, I used to just blur it out. Now I realize, okay, don't just burp things out, like breathe rich and think about it.
Um, but an issue came up and something with her work related and my response, you know, years ago would have been like, sit down and talk about it right now. And then I don't want to talk about it and lead to a [00:36:00] confrontation. This time it was, Hey, that's awful. I can't believe that happened when you're ready to talk, I'm here two days later, we got breakfast and she unloaded everything.
And it was just, I understand what she needs from a communications and she does the exact same with me now. Cause she knows what I need. So yes, it works in sales. Yes. It works in organizations, but very selfishly, it works at home too, with your kids, with your spouse. It's, it's amazing when you learn.
Leighann Lovely: Yes.
And that has, because more and more as I've grown as a person in self discovery, I've changed my style with my daughter. I've also, I mean, my husband and I went through marriage counseling because we were constantly butting heads. And through that we, we picked out a very specific style of marriage counselor who really focused on communication, basically the exact same
Brian Hendricks: thing.
I can't tell you how many people have said, Hey, after the training, we will do training. And I can't, can you do this for spouses too? Like can we do spousal [00:37:00] training?
Leighann Lovely: Right. And I, and I specifically chose him based on what his. What his studies were and, and I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm, we're not going in this to talk about our emotions and our, we're going into this to talk about communication styles and how to break down barriers of X, Y, Z, like, because we don't have, we're not looking at divorce.
We're just looking at like, how can we figure out personality styles and better communicate? You know, it was just a little. I don't know, brush, what would you call it? Like brush up on getting better at whatever. It is. It's
Brian Hendricks: just how can we communicate better?
Leighann Lovely: Correct. And so going through that, all of a sudden I realized, oh my God, how have I been blind?
And you do, especially with somebody you're so close to and you become very close with coworkers. Um, but you, and you forget, like sometimes you, You forget, like, I've known him for so long [00:38:00] that there are times where I'm just like, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, uh, I just can't. And I make assumptions about what I think he's thinking.
And then, so we backed up and went, okay, wait a second. I need to allow him to speak for himself and I need to stop speaking for him in my own head.
Brian Hendricks: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I mean, and that's. One of my favorite quotes, and I always, I always like to joke that I came up with this, even though everyone knows this quote, it's you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
And when we look at relationships, whether at home with a client with, well, we have a good long term relationship with someone, we get comfortable in it. So what that means is maybe at first I was being very versatile with you. So I was giving you what you need, but at this point. You know me, this is who I am, so I'm just going to do this and it's, you almost need that training, that kick in the butt to be like, no, no, no, this is not a being versatile, doesn't just go away when you're [00:39:00] comfortable with someone, right?
You have to go back and get uncomfortable and communicate in that person's zone,
Leighann Lovely: right? There, there came a time in our relationship where I was like, every eggshells. And he looked at me and goes. Uh, no, no, no, no. That's how I feel. And I went, Oh, okay. We have a communication problem.
Brian Hendricks: There is a communication breakdown.
Absolutely.
Leighann Lovely: So, you know, again, okay. Enough about that. Anyways. So, Brian, we, we've, you know, covered a lot of ground. Great conversation. But I want to give you an opportunity to do your 30 second, second shameless pitch before we wrap up. Love
Brian Hendricks: it. I love it. Thank you. Um, so again, as you said, uh, CEO and owner of dynamic developments, training, leadership, uh, we do every type of training leadership and organizational development that you can need.
So we can actually take you through the whole organizational development side, go through surveys, small group discussion, focus groups, and figure out, Hey, here's the training you [00:40:00] need, or you can come down and say, we need leadership class. We need an effective communication class. We have that. And we customize everything.
Cause I'm not one who just take it off the shelf and give it to you. We want to get to know you and make it worth it for you. The last thing I'll say, I did write a book. Uh, everything we talked about is in here. It's called the communicators playbook, uh, is an Amazon bestseller, and you can find it on Amazon in heart or a paperback copy and, uh, ebook.
And I'm currently working on the audible version as well.
Leighann Lovely: That's amazing. So, um, if you want to reach out to Brian or his company, how would you go about doing that? Yeah.
Brian Hendricks: So the easiest way is going to be www. dynamicdevelopments. net. That's our website. Uh, you can also connect with me on Instagram, uh, develop.
W Brian develop with Brian, uh, I'm on there, uh, or just send me an email. And I think you put this in the show notes. Um, my direct email is just BrianHendricks@ dynamicdevelopments.net. So trying to be as, as open to any type [00:41:00] of communication as possible.
Leighann Lovely: And that'll all be in the show notes, Brian, I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me today.
It's been an amazing conversation. Yes.
Brian Hendricks: Thank you for having me, Leanne. I appreciate it.
 

Joy-inducing Work That Supports Your Business?!

Join us in another episode of Love Your Sales Podcast with guest Josh Wilson to unravel the puzzle of missed sales opportunities. Discover how to engage in joy-inducing work that directly supports your business model and enhances revenue. Josh shares insights on how to utilize podcasts as a tool to connect with referral partners and potential clients. Gain wisdom from Josh's vast experience as a seasoned podcast host. Don't miss this illuminating conversation that explores the intersections between media, mission, and margin.
Contact Josh-
LinkedIn Josh - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuabrucewilson/
LinkedIn podcast - https://www.linkedin.com/company/podcasthostarmy/  
Podcast - https://www.podcasthostarmy.com/
 
Special Thank you to our Sponsor Genhead – www.genhead.com
 
Robb Conlon – Intro and outro – Westport Studio - https://www.westportstudiosllc.com/
 
The Brave Ones – Instrumental Version Song by Jan Sanejko - https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/song/the-brave-ones/119489
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of love your sales. I am joined by Josh Wilson today. Josh is an accomplished podcast host renowned for his contribution to develop top tier media brands. He has skillfully produced more than 2000 interviews featuring guests, including interviewers, CEOs, and globally recognized thought leaders.
His extensive experience in media has not only honed his expertise, but also cultivated expansive network and [00:02:00] solidified robust alliance in the business world. Josh serves as a capital market advisor and member of the IPO team at Green Tree Financial Group, Incorporated.
Beyond his professional achievement, Josh is deeply committed to philanthropy efforts. He serves as an advisor and partner to various Christian ministries with a focus on initiatives supporting men, prison ministries, and local fire service chaplains. Josh, I'm extremely excited to have you join me today.
Welcome.
Josh Wilson: It's good to be here. You have the coolest headset ever, and I've been in a lot of podcasts. You get the best headset award by far.
Leighann Lovely: I get a lot of compliments on my pink, my, my pink headset here. I, um, I purposely picked it out cause it's, you know, really on brand with my purple, my pinks, my, so
Josh Wilson: thank you.
You pull it off. Great man. Good job. So [00:03:00] thanks for having me. This
Leighann Lovely: is really cool. Yeah. I'm, I'm really excited to, to have you join me. Um, I was recently on your new podcast, right? It's fairly new. Yeah. The five minute one. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, I'm just excited to have you join me and talk to me about, well, I mean, you've You have started assisted in starting podcasts and you're, um, you're very accomplished in your own rights and well, so let's, let's dive in and talk a little bit about, you know, how you have.
gotten to where you are, um, in, in doing what you do.
Josh Wilson: If you ask my wife, what do I do? She has no clue. Uh, and it took me a long time myself to figure out, you know, who is Josh and what does he do? I have a background ranging from venture capital, private equity, uh, real estate brokerage, sold shoes, wrestled [00:04:00] alligators, uh, fought fires, delivered babies, did all sorts of stuff.
My whole career. Uh, one of my mentors has called it a dumpster fire. So, uh, when you say, how have you gotten here? Man, a lot of failures running through brick walls and trying to figure out who I am and how do I show up for this world? Um, in the world of podcasting, it started, uh, maybe eight years ago. I started a podcast show when I was building a technology company.
There's another add to, uh, It's ridiculous. It is absolutely, I look back and I go, what, what's going on, Josh? Figure yourself out. But, uh, yeah, I started a podcast show and since then we built 20 done 2, 500 interviews now, um, sold the show, help other people now launch, grow, monetize their shows. We focus kind of like on, uh, like a business manager, like Snoop Dogg has a business manager.
Tom Cruise has a business manager. So like we've become the fractional CRO for. [00:05:00] Different talent. And, uh, we're having fun. That's, uh, that's one of the businesses that I really enjoy podcast host army.
Leighann Lovely: That's that is okay. So. When somebody, I mean, that's, oh, that's awesome. It's a business manager for, well, and first, okay.
So you've delivered a baby, you've delivered babies.
Josh Wilson: Lots of them. Yeah.
Leighann Lovely: Well, how does that fit in?
Josh Wilson: Well, I wrestled alligators and then the next career path was, uh, uh, I became a firefighter paramedic. So 911, what's your emergency? There's a baby coming inside. Go catch. And I delivered two of my own children as well.
Leighann Lovely: Wow. Okay. I'm sorry. And you wrestled. And I'm sorry, what career was the wrestling alligators? That
Josh Wilson: was different from delivering babies. I know it's hard to track. It's really hard to track this guy. I got it. I got it. Uh, my job, I was [00:06:00] working with my dad in construction and I was sick of working with dad and it was hot in Florida and I was digging ditches.
So I wanted another job. So I opened up a newspaper back in the day when there was newspapers classified, looked for a job, said entertainers wanted. And I'm like, That sounds fun. I show up and they're like, how do you feel about animals? I'm like, I've got a dog. They're like, well, how do you feel about snakes and reptiles and bats and, you know, alligators?
I'm like, let's do it. So shout out to the guy who trained me. Nine finger, Jesse taught me how to wrestle alligators. So there you go.
Leighann Lovely: I suppose if you can wrestle alligators, you should, you know, the next leap would be, yeah, you can deliver a baby. I mean, come on now.
Josh Wilson: Both very, um, squiggly. They both try to get away.
That's the only time I've ever compared an alligator wrestling to wrangling a baby, but it's hard to keep hold of them sometimes. Right.
Leighann Lovely: [00:07:00] Right. Okay. And now, now you are the. Project manager, the, what did you call yourself? The R chief
Josh Wilson: revenue officer.
Leighann Lovely: So revenue officer.
Josh Wilson: Okay. We work with different groups to help them bring in more money, especially like the media side of the world, like people who have a business and then they built a media brand, but they don't understand how media works.
So their business is over here. Their media is over there here, and they have a hard time connecting the two. They know they need a podcast. They know they need a YouTube. They just don't know how to make those things make money. That's where we'd step in and we kind of help bridge the gap there and we turn it into a machine for them, a funnel for them.
And then we take, uh, you know, we get paid up front and we take portions of the upside and we, we, we look at it as a partnership. So that's how we, that's how
Leighann Lovely: we build it. So. I come to you, I say, where do I begin, Josh? [00:08:00] How do I start? And I'm going to guess that not only is there the marketing aspect, there's the sales hat that has to go on.
Obviously, there's got to be good content to begin with. I mean, if you've got crappy content that nobody wants to listen to, or it's, you're kind of dead in the water to begin with. But where do we, where do we
Josh Wilson: begin? Yeah, that's a, that's such a great question, Liam. It has to start with the business, right?
A lot of times people will have a business and then they do some media that has no direct correlation to the actual business. So what it. What happens over time is it just becomes a distraction. And that's why you'll see a lot of pod fade where they'll start a podcast and then they'll fade out. Or if, if a business owner doesn't see a direct connection between their, their media and money or margin, right?
They're going to stop. They have to stop as a business owner. We have too much crap going on in our life. To add something to [00:09:00] it. So if it's not supporting it, it's got to go. So the first thing that has to happen is inside the business and sometimes we'll do a consultive round before we jump into a partnership.
The business has to have systems and process and have the ability to scale and grow new partnerships, right? So a lot of times we just met with a group. They're, they're making 80 grand a month in a service based business. They're crushing it. They're, you know, high margins They're doing phenomenal, but they don't have systems and processes in place So if we add and they're all kind of like spinning their wheels like making it work And they're just they're so smart that it just works really well for them.
But if we add another layer of complexity Add media, add a great amount of influx of PR firms and people wanting to be on their show and noise, what will happen is it will just create confusion and then something will have to break. So the first thing that must happen is within the business. Have a [00:10:00] predictable sales model.
Have the ability to grow, have the ability to take on more clients, have the ability to nurture a, a sales funnel, help bring on a guest and walk them through your sales funnel, whether it's your guest, which is a great way to do business development and strategic partnerships, or have something where the audience could kind of connect with, engage in and be a part of your sales funnel as well.
So I think it starts with the business. A lot of people would be like, yeah, I could start a podcast for you. 2, 500 a month. And yes, it'd be a great show and I bet it would be a blast. But at some point you're going to have to go, is this really business or is it an expensive hobby? And that's kind of what we look at.
Leighann Lovely: And I'm going to guess that the majority of podcasts out there are just their expensive hobbies.
Josh Wilson: Yeah, well, I've created 20 of these things and I've shut down 17 of them and I've also helped start a lot of other shows for other people. And then I've seen things that have taken off and things that [00:11:00] have failed.
So I've been exposed to a lot of successes and failures in the world of podcasts such like that. So, yeah, what, what you're saying is, is so accurate, like, is it an expensive hobby or does it really support the business? And if we take an honest look at it, we go, I really enjoy doing it, but I'd like to find that better connection point.
We got to do some work and that's, it's okay. It's also okay to. You know, take one of your shows out back and put it down if it's not working and stand up a new show with a new brand, with a new focus, it's okay to restart, re pivot, re change, tell your past guests, we started a new show. Would you like to be on this one?
It's okay.
Leighann Lovely: Well, and it's, and that's really funny. That's how you and I originally met. I, I came on and I was listening to one of your, I don't know what it was. Uh, Kind of like a mini webinar, a little series that you did and I, you know, that ended up doing a one on one or a one, [00:12:00] one to two, whatever it's called.
And it was at that point recommended to me that I end a podcast and I'm like, well, what it was, was an expensive hobby and yes, and, and I did some point now ended that because it was. It wasn't in, it wasn't in line, right? Because to, to your point, if it's not, if it's not in brand or doesn't make sense for a business, for what you're trying, the goal, the, the sale you're trying to make at the end of the day.
What is it for?
Josh Wilson: Yeah. Why are we doing what we're doing?
Leighann Lovely: Correct. Why are you doing what you're doing? If, if it's truly just a hobby, if you just want to be out there, you just want to have fun. Great. Then, then do it. Yeah. But ultimately to your point, what is the [00:13:00] goal? Is it to monetize? Is it to make money on the actual content?
Is it to flip audience members into? Potential clients. Is it to flip the guests into, by the way, I have a sales pitch for you. If you would like to know, I'm just
Josh Wilson: kidding. I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah. It's helped me something. I, you know, I love to buy things. So like
Leighann Lovely: totally by you've got some extra cash.
I don't know. I got a really awesome pen here. It'll cost you 50, 000. Um, okay. Anyways, the point being, um, what is the point? Thanks. Of what you're creating if at the end of the day, there's not a, a pull, a offer, a lead of some kind coming in is that that's what you're saying. So how do you guide your clients to figure out what that is?[00:14:00]
Josh Wilson: You know, uh, love is spelled T I N E. And a lot of times it's just, we, we connect and spend a little bit of time together. And, uh, usually, and this happened even with you and I in, in some of the things in the past is because I've had so many failed starts, I can see, uh, I could see hurdles maybe a little bit sooner than other people.
So, you know, some questions, and a lot of times the questions are this. Do you enjoy it? And, and sometimes I've, I've had people go, man, I actually hate doing this, or there's a portion of the thing. Like one of the guys I'm, I'm coaching. He's like, man, I love podcasting. I love meeting people. I hate the post production.
I hate the, the editing on the front end. And I, and he told me all the things he hated. And I said, I give you permission. To just erase all of those right now, use AI for this piece of it and stop doing those other things. He goes, do you think the people would care? It doesn't matter. It's like, they'll get used to it or [00:15:00] you'll find your true fans.
So he stopped doing all the parts of podcasting that he hated. And now he's able to do two to three more per day because he got rid of all the fluff of it. And now he's enjoying it. So a lot of times it's like, what do you enjoy? What produces results? And it's like, Giving permission to go, I could do something that I like doing in business.
Yeah. Why not have fun? If you're going to spend the majority of your life doing it. Love your sales. You love sales. I knew that from the minute I met you, I was like, why in the world are we doing other stuff? You love sales and you're cranking it. Now you're crushing
Leighann Lovely: it. If I could get rid of the paperwork and just go and sell and have somebody else write all the contracts and do all of the other, that's what it now.
Now, one day I'll wave that magic wand and I'll have somebody just follow me around and be like, okay, write that down for me. Okay, write that down. No, probably not that. But yeah, but that's that. And, and I [00:16:00] believe that we would all excel greatly if we could just simply work in our, in our working genius.
And, and that's, that's some pulling that from who is the author. Yes. Yes. There we go. And our, if we stayed in our working geniuses and we just did, you know, that those exact things that we love to do, we would remain in those, in those points, we would remain in those, you know, those heightened, you know, spots of, of genius.
Um, and, and I love, I love to be. having these conversations. I wouldn't do it if I didn't love to have these conversations. Majority of the people who love to have the conversations are not the people who are going to say, gee, I love to do the editing and the production of it. Now, there's people on the back end I could hire and say, Hey, could you just do all of the post production for me?
Um, you know, as I jumped on, I was reading, you know, your bio [00:17:00] going, Oh, sorry, I didn't get a chance to read. I'm not exactly the best planner when it comes to me either getting the, I'm usually just kind of a, Hey, let's have the conversation.
Josh Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When, so I love the book. Such a great book. It's paralleled in, in a book, uh, good to great where he talks about, so in working genius is find your joy in work and you're probably going to excel at it and partner with people who are good at the other stuff in a good to great, find something that is the groundhog principle, hedgehog principle, hedgehog, yeah.
Things that you love doing you're good at and there's an economic driver and that's kind of like your purpose like your joy So why not if you're good, especially for founders out there or for high driver salespeople? Why not focus on the areas of their job that they're really good at that moves the needle?
And then either outsource or use technology to do the other [00:18:00] portions of it when you can. Sometimes you just got to grunt through because you don't have enough money to pay for fill in the blank. And I've been there a thousand times, right? So, but that, that is the, uh, I think that's a path of happiness is kind of doing what you need to do and love to do.
They could combine and it works out perfect.
Leighann Lovely: Well stated. And it's funny because I read good to great a very, very long time ago. And so I actually am literally. Before I, I was driving on my way, you know, back to my office and I've been, um, listening to good to great and they just went through the hedgehog and the circles, right?
So you're referencing a, like, I literally just like heard that piece being like, cause it's been such a long time since I read that book and I was like, I really should read it again. So I'm actually on audio books since I'm in the car and anyways, so that's a, that's a Brilliant reference because if, if, if you find your [00:19:00] perfect alignment of what you're extremely good at, that meets what the economic need is in your business, and then your working genius matches that and you love to do it.
The only way is up. I mean, obviously you have to have the discipline, you have to have the structure, you have to have all of that stuff in line, but I mean, theoretically, it should all line up, and I'm making a hand motion for those of you who are listening, but
Josh Wilson: they felt what you were saying, they knew, they could feel it.
They could feel the passion. And, and talking about sales, I'll tell you, if you're doing what you love doing and you're passionate about and you have a high conviction for it, your conversion rate's going to be higher. So you can really be terrible at sales. But if you're passionate about something you have a high conviction of it people could see that you're having fun and you're enjoying it [00:20:00] You're more likely to have influence over people because they're gonna feel The intent of what you're trying to do and you might screw up with your typing or your invoice or your whatever I'll tell you like when you're in that joy That's magnetic.
And I think that's what sales
Leighann Lovely: is about. Absolutely. I totally agree. And early on in sales and Josh, if you disagree, but I was taught that if you, if you just recently were coming off a high of selling that you should hit the phones immediately. Like get back out there. Don't, don't waste time, you know, going out and celebrating and stepping away and taking that.
No, right now is the time go and try to get as many people on the phone as you can because they are going to hear the enthusiasm, the happiness, the joy that you just experienced in your voice. If you're in a really good mood, if you're in a low, And you're just like, I have to get a sale. I [00:21:00] absolutely, and you're trying to force it.
That is when everybody's going to go, no, not interested. Because to your point, people can tell. And I learned somebody's like, put a mirror on your desk, stare into that mirror and smile. Then pick up the phone and call and I'm like you're straight like I'm not gonna do that. Why would I do? Why do I want to stare at myself?
Because if you're smiling People can tell the difference in your voice versus a smile and a frown They just you react you talk different you sound different versus the fluctuation in your voice people who are naturally Love people and naturally enjoy what they do have passion for it. They just They come across different.
They're magnetic.
Josh Wilson: So cool. So powerful. So true. Um, [00:22:00] yeah. Guide me. What, what, what other thoughts do you have on in your own world of, of your joy? Where do you find your joy? I know this is your show and I'm a podcast host too, but like I could tell like you absolutely love connecting with people and helping solve problems.
Leighann Lovely: Is that right? Oh yeah. Oh God. That's that. I, I, if I could just sit and do that all day, um, and just talk with people about what's going on in their world, that's all I would do. I, I would, and, and then work, you know, work, systematically work through how to solve those problems. Um, and then get on the phone and, and be like, okay, let's, let's do this together.
Let's sell together. Let's figure out the right word track. Let's figure out what's making people respond positively. You know, in a positive way versus people going, yeah, not interested and hang up. Um, you know, I'm not as much on the, you know, the marketing. [00:23:00] I don't like marketing. Um, you know, I, I'm not a pretty butterfly.
I'm a hardcore. Like, let's talk to people, you know, I, and people say like, Oh, cold calling is dead. And I'm like, no, no, it's not like, it's not the way that you're going to actually grab somebody's attention is to have a conversation. So I love to be out networking. It's Transcribed by https: otter. ai You know, it's, I love to be in conversation with people and stop taking control of the show.
You're not allowed to do that. You're just so
Josh Wilson: good. I like this. Like I could feel it in you. That's so cool, man. I love seeing that happen with, with my friends. So yeah, I'm sorry. Back back to you.
Leighann Lovely: So, so how did you, you know, when you help somebody start growing those shows and they start seeing like. Okay, this is, this is starting to, you know, how do you help them pinpoint those sweet spots on [00:24:00] what they're looking to do?
Do they come to you with, this is what I want to do? Are you really helping them take those steps through, this is how we're, We want to position ourselves. This is you know, what is your sweet spot?
Josh Wilson: Yeah, so I like it when someone has had a good amount of failures Especially in the world of media or you know, they built a show they've tried it they know that they've got to do it again, but they've got some experience and they've gone through the fact of Launching growing and shutting down.
So they're much more apt to go. I don't want to You know, uh, go through the pain of that again, right? So when they've already reached kind of the end or they've spent thousands and thousands of dollars of trying to, you know, have a business success through their, you know, media and it didn't work like they thought or promised, that's when they come and they're open to other ideas.
So kind of my sweet spot is a little bit more of a seasoned, I I've helped launch a bunch [00:25:00] of different shows. And there's an art to it. And there's some really great people at that. Like LZ, uh, with podcast. Now he's like just the master of launch. Like he is so good at that and strategies. He's really sharp.
Uh, and then there's like, for me, my, my sweet spot is we've got things moving. We've stalled out and we don't know why, what's going on. And a lot of times for me. And this is going to be controversial. I feel like people are looking at the wrong numbers. When you measure the wrong thing, you're going to get the wrong results.
Right? So people are looking at their numbers of like, Oh, how many views did I get? Or how many downloads or how fill in the blank or how many new followers did I get? And I go, did any of your followers ever reach out to you and pay your light bill? Well, no, then why are we measuring that as a strong business unit?
You could buy followers, right? Like you can buy those kinds of things. And that doesn't, that's [00:26:00] not going to show that, you know, success or hit your bottom line. A lot of times there's a major disconnect between. who they're trying to like sell to and who they're marketing to. So if you're trying to tickle the ears of people and get them to follow you and such like that, it might be a much different message to get a client.
So which one would you choose? So a lot of times I just have to really do an ego check with myself and go on, am I doing this because I want to be TikTok famous or am I doing this because I want to make money and buy diapers for my kids, right? So. That's an ego thing. I mean, a lot of marketing companies will look at and, you know, those kind of vanity metrics that I don't think pay light bills.
And I'm sorry to step on toes here, but like I had a show that was top of charts, you know, like famous, like people were like, send me pictures of myself next to famous people. And I'm like, Whoa, I can't afford 20 a month to pay for the [00:27:00] hosting of this. And I was like, that's when it changed for me is, is I, you cannot depend on those numbers to pay your bills.
So after that, I just said, I'm doing this backwards
Leighann Lovely: and it's been working. Interesting. And you, and you make an extremely valid point because you know, we, somebody who's new, somebody even like me, I'll, I'll pull up my stats and be like, Oh my God, I got a new follower today. To your point, is that a returning somebody who is actually listening and getting information and then reaching out saying, Hey, I would like to talk to you about your actual services, not just the fluff that you're putting out into the world.
Yeah. But so what matrix, matrix actually matter?
Josh Wilson: Yeah. It's like the, the three legs of [00:28:00] a successful podcast. In my opinion, based on my experience of doing this 2, 500 times one, the podcast has to support the business model. If it doesn't support the business model, separate it from that. And then don't don't care about the measurements.
But if you're going, I'm doing this as a part of my business, and I'm dedicating business time, money and other resources, team resources to this. Does this support the business? You've got to be able to clearly attach those two to can your podcast or media thrive with just you and your guests in your strategic partners.
A lot of times people go, I'm going to build this. I'm going to get it to monetize them on YouTube by having X amount of followers. At that point, I'll start selling sponsorships and ads. And that thing is so hard to chase because you're competing with people with big budget So the second one is can it survive with you your guests and your [00:29:00] strategic network your your internal?
like circle of people And then third, if you could figure that out and you have a systematic approach and you have a good proven sales funnel, then you start focusing on engaging the audience and pulling them in, right? That is the icing on the cake is when the audience, I got a text message one day I was doing a podcast and it was a 31 million text message.
Hey, I just heard your show. I'm looking to do a deal. We're looking for this. 31 million price tag on it, right? So that is very, very, very, very rare for an audience member to reach out and do something. Now I give out my phone number. I'm like, and here's my cell phone number. Text me if you have one of these kinds of deals, but that's very rare, right?
So supports business model. It could grow and thrive with just you and your guests and your internal like community. And then third is if you can figure out the scaled business model, the [00:30:00] sales model to bring in the audience, that's the icing on the cake. But other than that, you could, you could survive with the first two and do extremely well for yourself.
Leighann Lovely: And it's extremely difficult to actually monetize. It's just on YouTube alone. I mean, you have to have millions and millions and millions of views on your short views, your views. I mean, you have to, you really have to take off in order to monetize on YouTube.
Josh Wilson: I have very little experience in that. I've made money on YouTube back in the day.
I had a few things that, like, did okay, but it was like pennies. Right. So, like, I don't even pay attention to it now.
Leighann Lovely: Right. I, right. And I, initially I was like, oh, I wonder if, how you can make money and, and, and you look into it and you're like, yeah, there's no way there's, there's, I would have to spend all of my time.
Just doing that, and that is not worth my time on, well, basically banking [00:31:00] all of my time to try to do, I need to actually make money
Josh Wilson: now.
Leighann Lovely: Me too. Yeah, sure. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to pay attention to that, to actually engage and reach the audience that could potentially become a client right now is, is much more.
The thing that makes sense as long as everything else makes sense that you just listed. Is it in line with your business? Are you getting the right message out there? All of the, you know, is it not absorbing too much time of said person being in their business? All of those things.
Josh Wilson: Okay. Here's an example. I think, I think it would be helpful to have an example. Let's say I am a realtor in my job. It's to sell homes in Florida, in central Florida, [00:32:00] more specifically in Ocala. Let's just say that's the example here. And I'm like, I should start a podcast, right? Why in the world would I spend time interviewing people in all these other places?
Unless I have a feeling that they're going to move to Ocala. So like, spinning a wheel on LinkedIn and hitting, you know, Hey, would you like to be on my podcast show about commercial or about real estate interviewing them? And then the likelihood of them doing a deal. No Cal is so small. If I'm doing such a local show, I'm going to go to every bank.
I'm going to interview all the. I'm going to interview all the home inspection people. I'm going to interview landscapers and all the people around home services. And I'm going to say, Hey, if you're buying a home in here in Ocala, you should check out this lawn service. And I'd create a referral relationship with them.
They're great at what they do. Here's what they do. They work all our high end things. I would interview homeowners associations, real estate attorneys, [00:33:00] all the people in my immediate market. That are going to drive and send business to me and I'm going to send business to them. So that makes it right. So I can control my sales and marketing engine.
So I think that a lot of times people go, Oh, that's how it connects to your business model. Right. I'm out there meeting with my referral partners and you know, title agencies and insurance people and everybody.
Leighann Lovely: And then once you become big, they become your sponsors and there you go. I would do it. Right.
That's awesome. That's, that's a brilliant, I mean, see, and you don't think about that because when you get so caught up in, well, I want to talk to, I'm a real estate agent. I should talk to the people who are like minded or are going to, you know, that makes sense to what the topics that I'm talking about, well, your top, there are so [00:34:00] many topics that are surrounding that are orbiting.
Your topic that could very well bring value to your industry, your buyers, your, I mean, if I'm a home owner looking to buy in that area, I've never lived in that area. That is a extremely valuable thing. And excuse me. And if I'm doing research in that area and I stumble or I'm, I find the podcast. That's beautiful research to be able to easily just listen to, especially if they're 15 minutes long.
Oh, great. Here's a perfect mortgage company. That's maybe I'll become a real estate agent and start that podcast.
Josh Wilson: You'd be great at that too. For sure. You,
Leighann Lovely: you, you're kind of a suck up. I feel like you're just, you know, just. Suck it up to me here. Josh.
Josh Wilson: Well, it's your show. That's what we're supposed to do is boost up the host [00:35:00] Man, you're awesome at everything now but you're good at sales and you're good at people now if you said I want to be an accountant I'd probably say don't be an accountant or a bookkeeper or One of those other like high detail hype plan and kind of thing.
So yeah, you got it.
Leighann Lovely: No, no No, my accountant probably hates me. I just submitted all of my stuff for my books. She's probably gonna email me back Hey, you're missing half the stuff Like yep, probably
Josh Wilson: Yeah.
Leighann Lovely: For sure. Yeah. Sure. Well, we are, we're coming to that point. So you get to do your 32nd shameless pitch on whatever you like.
So go at it, Josh.
Josh Wilson: Yeah. Thank you for this opportunity for that. Uh, Hey guys, uh, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Uh, I spent a lot of time focusing with. Uh, on media mission and margin and how they kind of intersect. So if you're, if you're, you know, growing a business and you have maybe a high ticket item, you have something that is scalable, [00:36:00] you have a good product or service that, that has the potential to get, you know, get more sales through media.
I'd love to chat with you. Just take a look at it. It might be something that I can, you know, make a few small tweaks and it, you know, produces, you know, better income and better results for your business. Uh, podcast host army is where you could find us. com. That's where you could find us. Uh, LinkedIn is a good place too.
So you could check up Joshua Bruce Wilson on LinkedIn and just say, Hey, you heard me on her show and, and I'd love to see how I could help.
Leighann Lovely: And we will post all of your contact information in the show notes. So if anybody wants to reach out, you can also find that information there. But Josh, I really appreciated you taking the time to come on and talk with me today.
It's been an absolute honor. Um, really appreciate, you know, that I was on your show. So if you want to check that out, make sure that you go in and check that out as well. But thank you so much. Yeah. My pleasure.
#sales #businessdevelopment #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship #selling #relashionships #customerexperience #podcast #loveyoursales #lastingrelashionships #salescareers #salesmanager #salesdevelopment
 

Data-based Decisions Drive Business Growth

Join the amazing conversation with guest Lynn Corazzi, we dive into the perplexities of sales and understanding business financials. Witness the enthusing conversation about the significance of understanding data analytics to grow your business, with perspectives from sales to financial analysis. Lynn shares his experience on how to better analyze your business through sales and marketing strategies that rely on numbers. Don't miss this exciting talk about using data-based decisions to drive your business growth!
Contact Lynn
Website - https://www.data2profit.net/
LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynn-corazzi/
Phone - (920) 948-3355
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of Love Your Sales. I'm so excited because today I am joined by Lynn Corazzi. Lynn, owns his own business. He helps leaders fix, know, and grow their businesses by making their data work as hard as they do. With over 20 years of experience as a director and CFO in various industries, Lynn has a proven track record in increasing sales.
Margins and [00:02:00] efficiencies through data driven strategies and solutions. His mission is to have a lot of fun with you as you turn data into the most valuable asset. Outside of work, he also has fun with a brand new grandson, Lynn. Thank you so much for joining me
Lynn Corazzi: today.
I'm so excited to be here. And you know, part of it is you said the words that mean the most to me twice there and the word fun. Because we should have a lot more fun oftentimes than what we're having, particularly when it comes to understanding our numbers, it causes anxiety, and it causes stress and uncertainty and leads to, in the worst case, that whole nasty imposter syndrome that everybody goes through at some point in time.
So my job is to help you get more out of that, and working together we're going to have, because I can't do this in a serious way.
Leighann Lovely: And, and I, yes, money apps as a small business owner. That is absolutely [00:03:00] the number one thing. You know, I talk to clients every day about, Hey, let me take the stress out of the sales aspect of it.
Right. But when it comes to even in my own business, when I'm dealing with the numbers, when I'm dealing with trying to understand what those numbers mean. I, I, it's so far over my head and I, and I go to conferences about let's understand your numbers. And I'm writing all of this information down and I'm going, wait a second, I don't even know where to begin.
And, and they, and they talk constantly about, well, understand what's coming in, understand what's going out. And, and, and the more power or the more information or the more you understand this, the more powerful it is as a business owner. And I'm going, I don't know what I'm doing, man, because you know, if, if understanding it has power, then I have.
I'm, I have no power. I, I'm very
Lynn Corazzi: weak. Okay, the, the, the superpower [00:04:00] that you need to develop is, okay, you look at your numbers, that tells you what? Right. This is what happened. It, it, something causes numbers to be what they are. Right. But the second, what is what caused them? Okay. I see what they are. I need to understand what caused them because then you can get to the really fun start of what do I do about it?
Right. And that's the piece where people make that transition between accounting, which is accounting a ago, actuals finances helped me figure out why it happened. But F is the, for the future. It, which is where your fears, your fortune or your failures are, and we need to look ahead.
Leighann Lovely: And it makes so much sense because, and it's funny, cause I was just having a conversation with somebody yesterday about, you know, market trends and things like that.
And, and coming from the industry that I did in staffing, I was saying to them, I'm like, you know, it, my dad was in real estate and he used to call me and say, what's happening [00:05:00] right now in hiring trends in our, our. Our company slowing down our company speeding up because that was an indicator to him.
What was going to start happening in the real estate industry and really quickly after those two things happened, we would then see what was happening with, you know, the trends in the market, because there are indicators historically throughout, you know, And this is all studies throughout the world.
There's always indicators before we go into a recession, before we come out of a recession. And often I always saw that coming from, you know, a 10 year person who is HR sales in staffing. I always started to see a slowdown at certain indicators of what was going to happen in the market. And that is the same thing.
That, you know, I wanted to talk to you about today because there are indicators, I'm going to assume with numbers, [00:06:00] understanding your numbers, how you can turn that into
information then you can use to know what's happening. In your, in your business and specifically today in sales, right?
Lynn Corazzi: And you know, and, and if there was one line on there over, you know, you've got the out balance sheet, your income statement, this is the two of the big three financial statements. If I could only look at one thing every single day.
And just spend all my time on it, it would be sales because at the end of the day, sales is a, it's, it's relationships, right? It's relationships between these people that are selling for you. They're out there doing four different things, everything, every single day, they're talking to customers and prospects.
And those people are just going to make four different decisions every single day. It doesn't matter whether you're selling airplanes or [00:07:00] paperclips, four things you can do for four different decisions customers are going to make. And, uh, and, and, and every time you create an invoice and all those different line items on the invoice, and you've got your product tables, you have all this data around here, you can tease that out.
It's not easy. There's not a system in the world that I know of that can, that does it, but you can break sales down into how are you really growing? Because now we can take all that customer information and say, okay, what, how do I want to grow? Mm hmm. You say, I once talked to this guy. And Bob told me they were having a great year.
They were up 6%, but next year they needed to be up eight to 10%. Why is that? He says, well, we're going to, we're going to take on some debt to expand the warehouse. So great. What are you going to do differently? Cause we're going to sell more. Well, of course you're going to sell more if you're, if your sales are going to go up, but are you, are you going to hire a new sales rep?
Yeah, probably. I'll, I'll need to do that. [00:08:00] Okay. Are you going to hire the hunter? Or are you going to hire two to go out and get new business? You're going to hire a farmer because your retention isn't as good as it should be with your existing customers. Or do you have a chance to grow ancillary sales with a couple of inside sales reps?
I never thought about it like that before. Well, again, what are your objectives? And what are you trying to do? What, what four things do you want people to go out and do every day? Try to get customers. So it comes to wraps. Wraps is retain the customers. You have acquire new customers. The product penetration is the P that's selling different categories of products to, you know, to the same customers.
And then their same sales. If you can get someone who's buying 15 this year to buy 20 next year, you know, just in that relationship, like growing that business, those are the only four things you can do retain, acquire, produce, you know, product penetration and same sales. What are the customers deciding to do?
They're going to keep [00:09:00] buying with you as opposed to quitting. They're going to, you know, buy more and they're going to buy a greater variety or they're going to stop.
Leighann Lovely: So when you're working with somebody, you know, talking with somebody, you know, about this, is there, is there something specific that you're looking at in, in financials or it's, it's, if I'm using the wrong.
No, no, financials is the right term. Yes. What are you looking at and what indicators in that would, would help that person make the proper decision on what direction to go? Yeah, there's,
Lynn Corazzi: um, you hate to say it depends. But it really depends because every business is going to be different. But you think about your financial statements, they are the meal that's done.
You know, that's the plate that just came out to you and how you interpret that meal. And what goes into it reflects all the different ingredients that you put in. [00:10:00] So, and all those different ingredients is the data that you have available. So the first thing that I'm going to do working with you is just, first of all, you said it before, how are things trending?
Mm hmm. You know, are things trending up or down? And then when you can peel that back a layer, you know, like, okay, that's the first thing. A lot of people, unfortunately, they look at their income statements as, as a month, you know, as a month thing, or they're going to compare it to last year. Okay. So you're way up this year.
Is that because you're having a really great year this year or because last year just sucked? You know, it's one of the two. You have to go back and look and understand what was going on in both of those time periods. So what's going on with customers today? So you're I had a client who was up and he said like i'm up 15 this year great But we peeled it back a little bit and said, okay Let's look at all your customers because he knew the top 10 and everybody knows their top 10 customers, right?
Yeah, and the biggest one was up the most of all Okay, Paul, you realize that they now represent 70 percent of your [00:11:00] business, up from like 62. So 62 is bad, but now they're becoming a critical mass. So you've got, you've got the, you know, if they were to go away, you've got a huge business risk there. Right.
And oh, by the way, they're the ones who take margin from you because they take sale, you know, they take advertising dollars and they insist on this higher level of discount than you give to anybody else. So yes, you're growing with them, but you're growing less profitably. So we talked about the next, the next bunch, I said, well, what about the other 90 customers you have?
I said, did you notice that these two way down and like 60 and 80 were really, really growing? I didn't even know where, know where are them. So the first thing we're going to do is look at all the customers and then kind of slice the data that, you know, if it's available by, by different product categories.
How many different product categories do you have? You know, how many of those are up? So it's really beginning to dissect. What has actually happened to go back to you? We have the what sales are up. Why? [00:12:00] But then what do we want to do? And, you know, and when you think about cuts, you know, good companies are launching products all the time and we're going to launch this new product.
Well, who's going to sell the product? Cause the sales reps have to be trained on it. Right. Did you change anything in their incentive program to. Reward them for selling the new business, which is going to be harder than the existing business. Do you have trade partners that also need to be incented to grow this?
And, um, you know, so it's really is an analysis of what goes in it and knows we go beyond just dollars and cents. It's how many customers you have, how are they ranking, where are they, you know, do you realize that most of your sales were in the northeastern part of the state, but you know, in Madison, the second largest city, you know, sales are flat there.
So it's just doing that extra looking to help explain the, you know, you know, we had to what, you [00:13:00] know, the so what is how did this happen? So we can, then we can decide what's next. Does that make sense?
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. And you know, when you said here's a client that holds 75 percent of you know, your business, that's even I know that that's wildly scary.
You know, that's one of the first things that as, you know, as a salesperson coming in, you never, you never,
I was always taught it is way better to have 10 small clients that build up than one massive client because that one massive client goes away.
Lynn Corazzi: Oh, I've, I've made that deci that mistake in my own business. You know, like, hey, because you know, hey, I got this really big client and now they, you know, okay.
When the gig came to an end, I had ignored a lot of the other ones. And, you know, that early business owners', owner's mistakes. [00:14:00] But I talked to another prospect at the time and he never came on, but, um, I think he got a little miff when, you know, he said, yes, I got this really big client that he won this bid for.
I said, that's great. You've now grown your business by 50 percent with one customer. What did you give away? How big of a discount did you have to have? Are you going to be able to serve the existing customers and what's going to happen when the contract's up in two years?
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. And that's, and this goes back to something that has been drilled into me by, you know, a great mentor of mine early on in my career.
If they buy on price, they'll leave on price, meaning if you're giving them discount after discount after discount to bring them on board. and they are a very large client, they will leave you on price. So even if they are a number one, you know, client of yours, but you're continuing to offer them heavy discounts, you're right.
Your margins are going down. Your margins are going down. [00:15:00] They're a very large client that's putting an undue amount of risk on your business because now what say they even even if they're just 50 percent of your business, but they're at a much smaller margin, you're making less on them. Um, and they're, they're owning 50 percent of your business, well, not owning, but you know what I mean?
Yeah. Sure. They're, you know, paying for 50. That, that's a, that's a really large risk, huge risk and a lot, there are salespeople out there who just are farmers. Oh, okay. Now I've, I've met a certain threshold. They, they slow down.
Lynn Corazzi: Yeah. Oh, cause I'm comfortable living at, you know, with this much income and why am I going to bust my butt to make, you know, another 20 percent more, right?
It is amazing, but it happens.
Leighann Lovely: And um, And to your point, another thing that you brought up bringing on new product line. incentivizing those salespeople. How do you incentivize [00:16:00] those salespeople? Understanding your numbers so that you are offering an additional incentive to, here's a new product. Hey, this'll, you know, for the first Year, you'll get X amount for bringing this to market or, and that's not even something that I thought of and I'm living and breathing sales, but that is definitely an attractive thing for a sales.
Hey, I can get an additional two points above and beyond what I'm currently making. If I sell this or, you know, bring this to market quicker or whatever that might be, that's attractive. Yeah. Salespeople are money driven. Yeah, and
Lynn Corazzi: it's, and it's interesting because, you know, we can talk all day about what sales people do, but then the customers, I worked with another firm, they were a manufacturer's rep.
And that they would, they would quote all these different, all these different jobs, right. And, you know, for the building services industry. And, you know, we, we started, they had a new [00:17:00] ERP system, tracked all their quotes. So the switch sales reps did it. How did they move through the company? Where did they go to?
And then we took all that same information from the customer side. And then you can kind of like imagine this conversation with used to be, Hey, We appreciate your business. We do a million dollars with you. Thank you so much. Yeah, we'll be back again next year too. We love your business, but you realize we provided 400 quotes to you and we want about a hundred of them, but you have 17 people, you know, about three of those people accounted for almost 80 percent of them.
We love the fact that we're doing, getting a lot of business from those three, but what can we do different to bring those other 14 people on board? Right. And now you're, now you're, you're telling your customer about the behavior of their decision makers and you understand their business with you better [00:18:00] than, than, than probably they do.
Right. Cause it, again, it just allows a very different type of conversation for the president of one organization to have to go talk to the president of another organization. Interesting. So
Leighann Lovely: that was very cool. Okay. Okay. So the ERP system tracked. Uh, and let me make sure I follow this, the ERP, obviously, you know, ERP systems are meant to do that.
Every quote that went out. So the manufacturer's rep company was quoting their product. They had 14 reps, but only really three of them were mainly doing those quotes. They accounted for.
Lynn Corazzi: Sorry. I, I, I probably moved too quickly from one to the other. The, the, my, my client, the company, they were selling to, to these companies that were, that were building buildings.
Okay. Okay. And they had 17 decision makers of which [00:19:00] we were only getting the business from three of them. Oh, so, you know, so, so now the building services company who was building these buildings, you know, can go to and say, Hey, why did three of your people love our products? Right. But the other ones don't.
What can we do? Can we provide more training to them? Can we bring them in for a tour and, you know, so they, you know, or were they selling systems versus individual parts, but you can have a whole rich conversation built around data that's there. Right. And this is where making your data work as hard as you do, because every sales rep knows what they believe, but are they going to go in and very few of them I found actually go in and analyze their own business.
Leighann Lovely: Very few salespeople spend any time analyzing anything. Oh, cause, cause anything
Lynn Corazzi: they don't want to do, they want to get out and sell. They don't want to talk. They don't want to look at a computer all the time, but that's why geeks like me kind of. [00:20:00] Don't mind doing this kind of stuff.
Leighann Lovely: We know, I love geeks like you who could actually sit down and go, here's what the, here's what this means.
Like you, and I have a very robust, you know, CR CRM system that can literally say, here's how many quotes you wrote. Cause I do everything through it. I am for being a very high eye for being a very, you know. ADD person, I am also, I do have an analytical side, but I have to be in the mood for it. You know, and half of it ends up on my little sticky notes that I have literally all over my desk.
I mean, I, I have. Like 30 of them. And then when I'm finally like in that headspace, I can go, okay, now I'm ready to enter all of this information in I, I can now like do a real quick analysis. How many proposals did I write? How many of them were, you know, are in a pending state? How many blah, blah, blah. So I, [00:21:00] I am capable of getting, do I always know what it means?
Yes. That's,
Lynn Corazzi: that's the thing. Well, and then, and this is where, you know, anybody can hire a big data scientist to go do and do all this stuff. And the question is, you know, what is the real information relevant to that business versus a lot of very, very interesting trivia. And that's where the experience that I've had in working with this, uh, you know, really comes into.
Okay, yes, I learned financial analysis from Procter and Gamble, and I worked for 10 years with the Grande Cheese Company, both as a finance person, as a sales, you know, as a sales operations analyst for all practical purposes, and what we did there was we built a system over, it took a while, it was an integrated CRM system and data system built around some proprietary work processes, but we boiled sales and marketing strategies down to six to eight different numbers.
The same [00:22:00] six to eight numbers went into our own sales reps compensation system. It also were built into our distributor trade programs. So now you have the entire supply chain from the, from the company making the product to the people selling it down to the very last mile, all making money on the six, same six numbers.
And in, in a period of highest prices, we took our average growth rate from a point and a half to maybe 3 percent to over 7%. For three years straight. It's just the alignment around data and information that was easily accessible, perfectly clear. It was always current. And by gosh, we jumped through hoops to make sure that it was correct.
It was that four C's diamond quality data. Right. And everybody believed it.
Leighann Lovely: And that's, so, see, I, and, and I, I started, and here's just a background on me, I, I originally started going to school for, for, for accounting. And I realized I have a [00:23:00] disorder called mixed dominance disorder. It's a form of dyslexia.
So really quickly when I, my first accounting class ever, I realized, wow, I can't do this. I flip numbers around and I don't even know I do it. I do it. Every time they ask me for my husband's phone number somewhere, I actually have to show it to him and go, is this the number I gave you? Because there, even when I'm reading it sometimes, I will, I will flip numbers around.
I've given, I've given my address out to people incorrectly because I, when I'm, if I'm reading, it was when I first moved in, now I've memorized it, obviously. Um, but I flip numbers around. I write numbers in reverse sometimes. Um, it's like I said, it's a form of dyslexia that I, I know I have, I have to relearn my right and left every day.
Anyways, the point being, so I, I do have an analytical side and I remember, um, my, my cousin got this puzzle. It's, it was a puzzle, um, that can be put together [00:24:00] in, there were squares and it had heads and tails on it. And I remember I said, I bet you. I said to my family, I'm like, I bet you that I can sit down and solve that puzzle.
It had nine pieces. In less than 10 minutes and they're like, no, it says on here that it, you know, can take some people, you know, years to do that, you know, blah, blah. Some people can't even solve the puzzle. And I said, I bet you in a mathematical equation, I can sit down and solve that in 10 minutes. And what I did was I counted the number of heads and tails that were on this and it had colors and everything else and figured out which piece had to be the centerpiece.
Okay. Because each, there was only one that could be a centerpiece. And once you identify which one had to be the centerpiece, it made it really simple to put it together. And that was it. All I did was through a mathematical equation [00:25:00] of counting the number of heads and tails on each one of them, eliminating which one could not be the centerpiece.
I figured it out through, like I said, a mathematical equation and that right there, the point of this is that numbers and math. And when you, when I was in high school, they, Oh, you're going to use math one day. Now, I'm not saying that that was used for business, but it's one of the most powerful tools that people underutilize on a regular basis.
I do in my business all the time. But I remind my clients all the time, if you're taking a new product out to market, if you're a lot, especially as a small business, especially as launching a new business, it takes a minimum, a minimum, just as a new salesperson at a new company to get your name out there and for people to start recognizing your name, 12 to 16 [00:26:00] touches.
Email, social, phone call, you know, leaving a message, text message, if that's the type of communication that you use. For them to start recognizing your name enough for them to actually pick up the phone or respond to you in an email or feel comfortable enough to do that. So if you figure 12 to 16 touch points, that is a ridiculous amount of communication, but that's, it's a numbers game.
Lynn Corazzi: Yeah, people say that all the time. And, and the question is, which numbers are you going by? Which numbers are really driving your business? You know, you can get caught up on all these 30 different lines on your P& L, but if it really comes down to wages are the biggest item on your there, that's the one we've got to control.
Because it's, you know, how many, how many people do you have? Why do you have that many? What can you do to eliminate that? Or how do you have each one of them may be more productive. [00:27:00] And, you know, there's people that, uh, you know, you asked me, what would we do after looking at this, having the conversation around what really drives your business, how do we monitor and keep the pulse on, on what those key drivers are, and then once you start projecting out a forecast based on assumptions.
Data based assumptions, then you can say, okay, are we right in this? Or, if there is something fundamentally that says this is the absolute minimum amount of wages that we, that we need, okay, okay, and we can't, we can't reduce that anymore, then we have to either say, okay, how do we grow sales even faster, or what other stuff needs to go?
But at the end of the day, you cannot save your, you cannot save yourself into sustain profitability. You need to, you need to have the sales growth.
Leighann Lovely: Yeah. Well, and that's what I preach. Sales is the, you know, the, the lifeblood of any [00:28:00] organization. If you want to continue to either sustain your business or grow your business, because it's, it's what it is the driver.
Lynn Corazzi: Yes. But what would you say, Leanne? Congratulations, you made a million dollars this year. How do you feel about that?
Leighann Lovely: Well, what is my tax ramification
Lynn Corazzi: on that? Okay, simple question. How do you feel about making a million
Leighann Lovely: dollars? I would be thrilled if I made a million dollars in my business. But
Lynn Corazzi: what if you expected that year to make two?
Well, then I would be
Leighann Lovely: devastated.
Lynn Corazzi: Yeah. So the difference between those two emotions is what were your expectations? My God, if you thought, you know, if you thought 500, 000 was beyond the realm. Right. And you make a million. Oh my God, I am so freaking happy. Then it's like, okay, what did I get wrong? That I only made half.
I'd still be happy with a million and I'd love to pay the IRS. My minimum required tax is on million dollars. [00:29:00]
Leighann Lovely: Right. The minimum
Lynn Corazzi: required. Yes. That's a whole separate discussion about numbers and people who know how to use those numbers to save you numbers so that you could put more of them in your
Leighann Lovely: bank.
And I'm pretty sure, Lynn, you have discussions like this, um, all the time in, in, in different forums, correct? You do like, you do training and things on, you know, your numbers and that kind of stuff, correct? Yes. Yeah.
Lynn Corazzi: And like I just started a couple of weeks ago, brand new client and this, this woman's, they have two businesses, you know, two different locations and she wants to know when can she actually get quit her day job?
Can she ever quit her day job given all the, so we're looking at two different businesses. Projecting you know what what could be what could be the value of them over the next five years. We're looking at a couple other business that she's thinking about. And again, we're going to model those [00:30:00] things out again.
Okay, let's start with some some driven assumptions. And then if we take this and roll it all together into this is what income will be coming in from the businesses. Does it cover all the debt? All the personal household expenses plus generate enough savings for for the kids as they get older for them to start putting together the retirement fund.
So really, and she's asking all the same questions. What are these financial statements? Tell me. So we're going to go through what they tell you also tell you what they don't tell you because Yeah. I don't know anybody who can say my accountant told me I made 50, 000 this quarter, but I know it's not in my bank.
So where did it go?
Leighann Lovely: I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to have some money, but I'm, I'm not sure where, what, you know, I, I keep getting these letters from the IRS telling me that I owe them money. So I, you know, they, it just keeps going out [00:31:00] and. Um, just as a premise, was I supposed to do some type of analysis before I quit my day job to see if I was going to be successful?
I missed that part. I just kind of jumped into ownership.
Lynn Corazzi: So some of us just become accidental entrepreneurs, you know, and, uh, and it's, but, but at some point in time, yes, you have to say I'm working this hard. You know, what, which numbers are not working to come back to your point. If I'm only sending out two emails a day and I need 16 per person before they're going to, you know, 16 touches, I, I, do I really want to do this?
And let's face it, the vast majority of people that are working in their careers, they are working for somebody else. So it is the entrepreneurs who are putting everything on the line. But unfortunately, you know, okay, now get back into, you know, not just out of sales, but they do this without a bit financial business [00:32:00] partner who's biased by their side.
And they make the mistake of not, of not really acknowledging they have somebody doing their bookkeeping for them. They don't know what it means. They don't even know if it's right. They don't know if it's good, bad, or indifferent if they get their income statement five days after the end of the month or five weeks after the end of the month, because they don't even know what questions and what expectations to put on somebody.
So, so that when they get those financial statements, let's walk through them and talk about why did this all happen? Not just for the month, but what's happened over the past several months. Are we trending in the right direction with spending, with sales, in variable costs, in fixed costs? And don't give me just 40 lines on a P& L.
The thing I really, really, really, really dislike about QuickBooks, it puts all of your accounts in alphabetical order. But what if you have marketing, and then you have some printing costs, and then you have some other [00:33:00] sales types expenses, and you have a website? You know, you got to add up those fourth rings.
There's a ways to rearrange it, just put all those marketing and sales type expenses together on one line. Then if you want to understand that you have the detail that you can go digging back to, if you have a question about what happened in a particular month, then you can go back and see all the gory detail that rolled into that one number.
And, and again, it's just building that repetition of what do I need to be looking at? How often do I need to be looking at it? At what level do I need to be looking at it? Cause you can spend days looking at something or you can spend an hour looking at something. Let's start with the hour and see what we learn from there.
Then we learn to manage by exception.
Leighann Lovely: This is my rabbit hole. I open up my QuickBooks and I go, Oh no, Oh no. And then all of a sudden it's five hours later and I'm still going, Oh no, no, no, this makes no sense. That is truly [00:34:00] my rabbit hole. When I. When it comes to Haley and I need a quick analysis on what, how our position in the market as you know, a potential from a sales point of view.
what I do, you know, my, my role is as either doing an analysis on, you know, as a potential buyer so that I can give you, you know, you know, analysis on that. Um, all that kind of fun stuff. It, it, I can do that and have that done within an hour. Mm-Hmm, . But if you get me on the financial side, I'm, I'm, I'm in it for 10 hours and I'm still.
Trying to swim to the surface going what?
Lynn Corazzi: Yeah, well, before we were talking earlier about words from Andy Wines, and I remember him saying the presentation I heard him make recently was, okay, you spent all that time doing something. [00:35:00] Were you busy? Were you productive? And if you find yourself, a lot of times being busy with something like this, you're trying to figure it out.
So the question is, who can you talk to, to help you be a little more productive? And that's what, that's part of what I try to do. You know, because I'm not going to do the work for people entirely. Because I want them to understand and have familiarity. They need to recognize what those numbers represent.
What they, you know, again, what they tell them and what they don't tell them. And then what they can do with them. And that comes with practice over time. Only then should you really just begin farming it all out. Yeah. Because you have to have some knowledge about what they are, because think about someone else is doing your business, and, uh, well, yeah, if I put it here one month and there in another month, yeah, the tax guy will figure it out.
Well, you're not the tax person. There's a whole different approach in something from a tax perspective versus an accounting perspective versus a financial analysis perspective.
Leighann Lovely: Yeah. And so just to [00:36:00] kind of sum things up, it, it is wildly important for not only, not only for an independent or for a salesperson working at a company to understand what they're doing on a regular basis and understand their numbers of where they're putting their time.
Um, you know, and, and I preach this to, you know, people of where. Um, you know, what buckets are they putting their time in when it comes to an understanding the numbers, but for a business owner, um, wildly important for them to understand their numbers. So they know where to invest in their organization when it comes to whether or not they are investing in a full time salesperson, whether or not.
So Lynn, I. Um, so much appreciate you coming on today and talking with me about the importance of understanding, um, you know, the data so that you can accelerate your business, um, on the sales side, on the profit and growth side. [00:37:00] Um, if you want to reach out to Lynn, I'm going to give him a moment to let you know how to do that.
But before Lynn, you have your 30 seconds, um, shameless pitch to talk about your business. Um, and then, yeah, give us, um, how we could reach out to you if we're interested in your services. Yeah,
Lynn Corazzi: great. Thank you so much. Uh, this has been a lot of fun, but really helping you understand what happens in your business.
So for those of you who aren't sure that you have a good financial background, a good financial confidence, and that's really what I'm working on is financial confidence, helping you fix, know, and grow fix means let's look at your accounting, make sure that it's correct. know what it means, what it doesn't mean, know what other numbers you ought to bring into your business.
And that's K N O W, not N O, not just N O. Fix, know, and finally grow. And that's where we're actually teaching you how to make decisions, better fact based decisions, driven assumptions, you know, assumptions about how to actually grow your business. And then [00:38:00] finally, you know, after working with me for a little while, I'm very much interested in being a little shark tank, my, my own little shark tank.
I am willing to take positions. I'm helping you put my, I'm putting my money where your mouth is because I'm going to believe in you. So fix, no and grow businesses. It was what I want to do long term. I want to, I want to be helping you. It'd be a long term involved financial partner.
Leighann Lovely: That's amazing. And how, how does somebody reach out to you, Lynn?
Lynn Corazzi: Oh, I've got a website, www data, do data to profit.net. It's not.com.net and it's data the number two profit.net. Or you can reach me by phone (920) 948-3355 or L razzi@datatoprofit.net is my email address.
Leighann Lovely: Awesome. And we're going to have that in the show notes. So if you are interested in reaching out to Lynn, you can find that in the show notes.
Lynn, again, I really appreciate you, um, coming on and educating us on how important your numbers are.
Lynn Corazzi: Well, I hope along the way that you also thought that this wasn't [00:39:00] painless, you know, painful and that we actually did have a little bit of fun because that's my new year's resolution this year is to have more fun.
And, and if I can make this fun for people, then that's going to be part of my, you know, part of my value prop. I mean, we're, we're not going to be stressed out or all this, you know, we will, we will have conversations about them, but along the way, yes, there's going to be fun. We have to laugh about this because it is what we do.
Leighann Lovely: I, I always have fun when I have a conversation with you.
Lynn Corazzi: Thank you.
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Being Genuinely Interested can't be Faked

Join Ben Zang and Myself as we discussed the importance of building relationships and listening in sales. We talked about the concept of a one-on-one meeting and how to make it successful by being genuinely interested in the other person and allowing them to talk about themselves. We also touched on the importance of being useful and creating value for others. Overall, our discussion emphasized the power of trust, empathy, and genuine connection in the sales process.
Contact Ben -
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/benzang6/
E-mail – ben@THBWI.com
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of Love Your Sales. I am joined by Ben Zhang. Ben is a unique problem solver with a two decade career in sales, he has spoken for organizations like Financial Planners Association of Wisconsin and Wisconsin CPA Association. He has given talks on small business networking and sales training.
Ben, I am so excited to have you join me today.
Ben Zang: I'm [00:02:00] super glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Leighann Lovely: Yeah. So why don't we dive in you and I prior to, um, hitting the record button, talked a little bit about, you know, what we wanted to dive into. And one of those was, , proper way to do a one on one.
And I would love to, you know, talk a little bit about that.
Ben Zang: So I think all salespeople need to do networking because it's always going to come down to relationships. Right. So how do you do that? I spent a lot of time thinking about and intentionally thinking about how to do a one on one. And I don't know if you're familiar with, like, chess clock.
If you push down your side, the other side comes up. Okay. And so when they talk, So I, I look at one on ones like a chess clock, and hopefully, if I've done it right, and there are some exceptions and I'll [00:03:00] talk about it, but hopefully if I've done it right, their chess clock will have moved a lot more than mine, because people are interested in people who are interested in them, so I think it makes a big difference how you're, um, how you present yourself and how you're listening and things like that, and I find if you can get people talking about themselves, And show them that you're actually enthusiastically, uh, invested in their success.
I think they become more invested in yours. And so I have found the best relationships kind of stem from those one on ones where I've done a good job of communicating my investment. And so the chess clock back and forth is something I keep in my brain to, to know if I'm doing the, the yeoman's way of.
Yoman's talking, [00:04:00] like, I'm talking more than they're talking, it's, it's a problem. Unless, of course, they're an introvert, and then they, introverts tend to use others enthusiasm, Um, to kind of ride along, like, they don't want to drive the boat. They just want to be a passenger, and they like the sunshine. So, sometimes that's, that's how it goes, too.
But, you can kind of feel that out within the first five minutes.
Leighann Lovely: That's, that's wildly interesting. And when, when you had mentioned the, the chess clock theory, I was, I was kind of going, I don't get it, but that completely makes sense because it also goes back to, to Dale Carnegie, what, how to make friends and influence people, right?
Um, it's the whole idea that, you know, people inevitably, they want to, they need, want, Uh, to talk [00:05:00] about themselves, they, there are certain things that as a young salesperson coming up, I was taught of use their name because the, the most beautiful word in the world to most people is their own name, right?
And then if you allow, or if you give somebody the opportunity to talk about themselves, they're at the end of the day, typically. And, and again, going back to what you just said, an introvert, this may not hold true, but if you have, if you give them the opportunity to, to talk about themselves, to even vent, often, often I find that when I'm sitting across from somebody, they just want the opportunity to be heard.
Sometimes vent about whatever's going on in their lives, um, or in their, in their business. And if, if they're talking more than you are and you're hearing and listening and then [00:06:00] prompting off of, you know, follow up question, follow up comment to what they are actually saying to you, that person typically walks away going, wow, that was such a great conversation.
And you're like, yeah, it was such a great conversation. And in reality, you know, a true. A salesperson will feel that way as well because they're like, wow, I just, I got some really great information. I either can use this to leverage this relationship in a positive manner and, you know, push, pull it forward or push it forward to something else.
Um, it's, it very similar to, you know, what Dale Carnegie, you know, has very intertwined in his entire book about, you know, about the same thing.
Ben Zang: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that the thing my wife always says, she's like, you're genuinely interested in [00:07:00] people. And I think one of the biggest gifts you can give somebody is to bear witness to their life.
And sometimes it's, you know, sometimes it's crapshoot what's going on and, and sometimes it's all put together. You know, but I think to bear witness to somebody is, is to, in the greatest sense of the word, I think love. Right. So that kind of outward demonstration of knowing somebody, to feel known is quite the gift.
And so I think in those moments where people walk away and they're like, man, he's such a good guy, or man, he, that was such a great time. You know, um, I think it's because they feel like they were a part of something and they were seen. And I think that's, it's very strong. I think salespeople. Especially because we're big talkers, right?
So we forget that part, you know, we've got our own agendas in our heads. And I [00:08:00] think. If we don't realize the power that that is, I think we, we missed the boat.
Leighann Lovely: Salespeople never talk. What are you talking about? My, my husband and I had a conversation this weekend. He said, um, he goes, well, you know, salespeople are just, they just be ass all the time and I got very offended.
I said, no, no. I said, there may be times where I'm introduced to somebody and, and they're like, Oh, how you doing? It's so great to see you. And I have, I'm a blank, I'm blank. I have no idea. I'm, I'm, I'm in my brain going through my Rolodex of who is this person? Who is this person? Like apparently we know each other and, and I will fake it for a moment.
Until they say something that triggers the memory and I go, Oh, and he goes, well, that's BSing. And I said, no, that for a moment is me, you know, kind of [00:09:00] doing the fluff until it's triggered, you know, to, to that moment in time. And, and he says, well, you know, all salespeople BS. And I said, not the ones who truly.
I said, yes, there's a certain amount of fluff that we, that we throw in because I can't remember every single person until there's that trigger, right? I said, but the true, true salespeople, the servant hearts, and, and I just had this convert conversation with, with, you know, Pat Riley, um, on, on a previous episode, the true salespeople who lead, um, with, with, Um, you know, love, if, if that's the word, who lead with compassion, who, who truly want to help their, either their network or their clients, they do actually care.
And so [00:10:00] sometimes for a moment you're going, Oh God, where, who is this person? And so, yes, maybe it is perceived as, Oh, BSing for a second. But in reality, it's. I need to trigger myself to remember and when I do, I go, Oh, yes, but there are other times where I go, Oh, I'm so sorry. Where did we meet again? But I meet.
Um, Ben, how many people do you meet in a day? I don't
Ben Zang: know, anywhere from 10 to 100, give or take, depending on the day. Right. Right? Right. I also think that moment that you're talking about is trusting. There's a relationship here, I can feel it, I just, my brain can't pick up where it was from. And that, I think it takes a minute sometimes, especially in our worlds.
And I think that if, I mean. The BS, so to speak, that, that other people perceive it. I think it's just because they don't understand [00:11:00] what sales truly is. And I think it's a natural thing. I think even your husband would say there are times he can't remember people he's come across. It's just natural. You know, I think people that don't understand sales as being servants, salespeople are servants, you know, you're serving both your client and your customer and your community.
And I think the best ones. Create a community where everybody wants. I know it's cliche, but I truly,
Leighann Lovely: truly believe it. No, and I love that statement. I absolutely love that statement because I know a community that does just that. I know multiple communities that are all You know, circles that all intertwine of different people who are, you know, doing that, you know, simultaneously within all of [00:12:00] those different communities that, that continuously are giving back and obviously, yes, there is a benefit because from that they are continuously getting referrals doing those one on ones.
And so now I'm going to loop back. You mentioned a little bit about an introvert. I think they're
Ben Zang: differently equipped, like the best, um, best example or the best definition I've heard about an introvert to extrovert, an extrovert needs the interaction to energize and an introvert, it takes energy away.
And so it. If you think about it, taking energy away, and then how can you create energy within those conversations? Um, and sometimes that's about getting them to open up, and sometimes that's just about entertaining them enough that they can just relax. [00:13:00] Because I've seen many an introvert just sit, read a book, unwind, watch a TV program.
And sometimes it's just about sharing, uh, an entertaining antidote that they can turn off and there's no pressure to interact with it, right? This is just a story. When we were kids, we used to listen to a teacher read a book. And so it's giving those kinds of pauses within the conversation to give them a minute to kind of recharge and to let them know.
I got this. You sit back. I'll drive the boat for a while. You just get some sun on your face. Right? So I think that's important, you know, and then there's the over extroverts and they're going to talk. They're going to give you their pitch. It's a 30 minute one on one and you're going to get 30 seconds of it at the end.
Right? And how do you handle that? And I've had people who did that. And then I'm like, well, they're going to remember. They won't even know what I did. I think they may remember my name, [00:14:00] but I got a 30 minute interview. And I think for those people, you have to find out what's their objective and then how do you fit in, you know, if they're all about growing and sales and getting connected to people, then I think you interject them enough to say, Hey, I can connect you to here, here and here, just so that they, they see some value.
The biggest thing on the one on one is how are you creating value? And when I was a young salesperson, I thought I had to be the only value in the conversation. And now as I've wisened up or gotten better at my craft, I realized that the Rolodex of people I bring with me is a great value. And I, and I don't underestimate.
Leighann Lovely: So what would you say to, and. You know, I, I try to remind people when you go [00:15:00] on a one on one, it is not about pitching. It's not about pitching and, and I, I have gone on one on ones before where before I've even sat down in a lunch one on one where before I've even sat down, we're standing in line and the person is already practically pulling out their pitch deck and like, and I'm going, Oh shit, should I take an emergency phone call and like, excuse myself, like this is going to be an hour of It's a bad date.
It is a really bad date. Yeah. I didn't know that I had to have somebody pretend to call me to exit this, this date, like really quickly. What advice would you give to, to individuals who are a little, and I'm, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I don't want to pick on those individuals because there was a time when we [00:16:00] were all there when we didn't realize like, Oh.
We didn't set this meeting so that I could pitch you for the next hour on why you should buy my stuff.
Ben Zang: I think, I think you have to understand the difference between a one on one and a sales call, right? So, I think they're not, they're not the same at all. And I think if you're trying to sell during a one on one, I think you've missed the boat.
I think one on ones are, are about two things. I think they're firstly about the relationship and secondly, how are you useful? So when you and I talked back in your previous career, I'd say, look, these are the things I can do for the people you're talking to, just so you know, right? And that was a small part, but I think if you don't give at least that much of your pitch, then, then it's just a social call,
Leighann Lovely: right?
Right. Hey, you want a
Ben Zang: beer? We're just [00:17:00] hanging out and as fun as you are. My boss probably won't like that, right? Whoever I'm selling for, things like that. Or if it's after hours, you know, I have a wife and kids that probably would like my time too. And, and so I think it's that comes back to that intention of what you're doing, right?
So, um, how can I be useful to the people you're serving? And I think because in a sense, and I've gotten kind of slapped on the wrist when I've said, You know, I look at people sometimes like tools in a bag, who's useful for what, how, what problem can they help my people with? And because I'm act, I'm trying to actively listen to everybody I come in contact, then if I hear, Oh, problem A, well, I have this person who's amazing at problem and now I can be of service because I can make that introduction.
So I think, I think that's really, and then the relationship too, right? People do business with [00:18:00] people they like and trust. Right. And how do you build up that trust? You don't build it up by, you know, pitch slapping somebody, right?
Leighann Lovely: I like that pitch slapping. Yeah, that's great. So So, And, and, and to your point, yes, we, the, it sounds harsh.
It does sound harsh. Um, I'm, I'm not going to lie, Ben, um, but you're, you're correct. In your tool bag, who, who can you pull out that is useful in what situation, but it's true, does not minimize the relationship that you've built with them at all.
Ben Zang: Correct.
Leighann Lovely: Exactly. Um, and that, and that is the value of getting to know people.
And the reason that we do one on ones is so that we understand their [00:19:00] business. You and I have understood each other's business. What you do and the service that you provide, the, the size businesses that you serve, the, the individuals that you serve, I understand that so that when somebody comes to me and says, Leanne, I need help with X, Y, Z, I can go, Oh, well, I have a guy.
Yeah. I know a guy. Uh, and that is, that is wildly beneficial for me to be able to, especially when I'm working with somebody, to go, uh, well, I can help solve your problem. Let me make an introduction. That builds trust immediately with my client in even You know, even further because now they're saying, Oh, wait, Leanne can help me with not only the problem that her and I are working through, but she can go a step further and make introductions to three other people that could [00:20:00] potentially assist me with all of these other things.
And I
Ben Zang: tried to make a business on being the guy that at least knows the guy because, and I have told when I've coached young salespeople before, I said, look, If you're the guy that knows a guy or a gal that knows a gal, right, you will always be in the conversation. Right. And I think salespeople, that's our big win, is being a part of the conversation.
Correct. Right? So,
Leighann Lovely: advice that you would give Um, you know, this, this really leads right into the advice that you would give to a young salesperson coming into the crazy world of sales.
Ben Zang: So I think the biggest struggle young people have, especially young people when they come in is they, they sit across the desk and the person they've sat across the desk for has more experience in their industry than they have yours on the plant.
Right. Right. [00:21:00] What am I going to teach this guy? First off, the fact that you have been hired by a company, trained by a company, and given something from a company to sell means you're already more of an expert than 90 percent of the people you're dealing with. And so, I would say, just understand that that's the case, and you're gonna need at bats.
So, go out and fail a lot of times. Like, all, like, fail forward, Denzel Washington's big thing, right? Right. It's so cliche. But the, the non cliche things I would say is Be interested in your clients. If you're genuinely interested in somebody, people will understand that and trust them. I'd say, um, learn the success stories of your business quickly and, and have them at the, the top of your, at the tip of your thumb.
So if I'm talking to somebody and I can say, Oh, well, I just did something like this for another [00:22:00] company and it saved them X amount of dollars or it created this. Because people don't remember facts and figures, they remember stories. And so if you learn how to talk in stories, I think that's a big thing.
And I think the other thing is, is people underestimate enthusiasm. Nobody likes to have a conversation where the guy just talks so slow, right? Nobody wants that. Have a point. You can literally feel your life sucking down the toilet. I will never get those minutes back. Yeah. You, you've
Leighann Lovely: seen the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, right?
Right. You remember, you remember there's, there's the scene there in the hotel and he's like pulling the, the, the, and he goes, I have an idea. When you tell a story, have a point. Yeah. Exactly. This is what just popped into my head. Like have, have a point. Make sure that when you are telling those stories and [00:23:00] you're, they, they need to have an, a, like a punchline, like a point, like, and I'm not talking about jokes, but you know, they need to, they need to lead somewhere.
I don't want to hear, Hey, you know, today was a snow day. Okay, what's the point?
Ben Zang: Right.
Leighann Lovely: Where, where's the point? What is, why is it relevant to me? And that's where, you know, that's where so many salespeople, I feel like in the beginning, they just throw out random facts, not relevant to the client sitting in front of them.
Right. Yeah, I agree. Just telling random things about your product.
We
Ben Zang: can save you X percentage, right? As soon as you get to, we can save you X percentage. You're done on what you're, [00:24:00] you're just done , right? This guy's like, oh my God. I mean, you might as well go Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Live at the, like, it's, you're just done, right?
So learn how to talk to somebody. Like, they're like, they're in the the room. I had a sales coach who would say. Be bold, be brief, and then be gone. Right? They gotta, they have to get on their day. And I think, um, one of the things that I think young salespeople forget is they think closing is manipulation.
And so what I would say is, is closing is asking the girl for the date. And all of us have been in that conversation where we've tripped over our tongue and we've not asked the girl for the date. Or we've not asked the guy for the day or, you know, and while you're sitting there, both parties and understand what's going on and neither of them are getting to the point, it's painful [00:25:00] to learn how to close, right?
And if you're not sure, there's a ton of books out there. And they're all going to sound like cheesy pickup lines, but understand the purpose of
Leighann Lovely: them. I once worked with a saleswoman, um, early on in my career. And I remember the first time I went out on a sales call with her and she literally, she presented all of the information.
She gave all of the value proposition beautifully. I mean, I had, she was like a ballerina dancer present, you know, doing the show of her life. And at the end, she goes. So you're ready to buy from me? And they went, Yep. She goes, Perfect. I'll get the paperwork over and I just, we walked out and I went, Oh my God.
Like, she goes, Why sugarcoat it? Why, you know, I presented everything. I presented the pricing. And when she presented the pricing, it was, it was just, Here's how [00:26:00] much it's gonna cost. Do you have any questions about that? And just, she just sat there and waited. The room was silent, and I was so wildly uncomfortable.
And I'm like, Oh God, like, is a fight gonna break out? And they're like, Uh, no. And then she goes, okay, you're ready to, you're ready to buy. You ready to move forward? And they're like, uh, yeah, I mean, we walked out and I was like, Oh my God.
Ben Zang: I'm in awe of this woman. Yeah. When you watch it done well, as you're, as a young salesman, you're like.
Leighann Lovely: I'm like, how did you do that? Like, can you teach me? Yeah. I mean, she just, every time I watched her, I was in awe. She closed so many sales and she was probably the harshest woman, like the way she talked, not, not on sales calls, but [00:27:00] like she was so matter of fact. So blunt. So, like, if she was a nurse, she would have zero bedside manner.
But when it came to going in and doing a pitch, there was, it was cut and dry. Like, here's what we have to offer. Here's the value proposition. Here's how we're going to help you. This is why you should do this. This is, do you have questions? Okay. Here, here's how we're going to overcome this. I mean, she was brilliant.
And I I've, I don't know that I've ever seen anybody close, close, close, close, close, close, close like she did. It was unbelievable.
Ben Zang: I think as you get better on your craft, I had a good friend of mine who was very, a very good salesman. He's like, I am trying to pick myself out of the deal as fast as humanly possible.
And I, that never made sense to me in the beginning. And then he's like, because I want to know, is the customer right for me or are they not right for me? It's better for both [00:28:00] sides to know up front. And so it kind of goes back to that kind of unrequited love is a, is a B. I don't know if we can use the word on the podcast or not, but it is like, and you don't want to be the one on the other side of the unrequited love and the person who doesn't requite your love or whatever, however you say that.
They don't want to be in that position either. I've been in sales calls where what I, what I do doesn't fit them. And it's very clear it doesn't fit them. And so I've been like, you know, it sounds like We're not a good fit and here's why I would say that and so what I would say is maybe this is something that's part of your growth trajectory and we can revisit this or maybe this is a better fit for what you guys are doing.
I don't have to be the end all be all for [00:29:00] everybody. I mean, that would be amazing. Right. My pocketbook would love that. It's not true. You know, and I'd much rather be honest, then. Then be put in an awkward position later on
Leighann Lovely: down the line. Right. And there have been times where people have reached out to me and I've met with them.
They've gone over what their needs are. And I flat out said, I am not the right sales person for what you're looking for. I just, I, I wouldn't be your, you want XYZ. This is how I work. We would not be a match. I can try to help refer you to somebody who would be a match for you, but this, this is not, it's not how I do business.
It's not how I work. I, I mean, I wouldn't, there have been times where I wouldn't even have an alternative solution for what they're looking for. Then there have been other times where I'm like, I can come [00:30:00] up with a, you know, and my product is customizable for people. But when you know that it's just flat out, Sorry, this just is not a match.
It's better to, and on the flip side of that, I wish customers when they know, like, I'm not going to move forward with you. I would so much more like I would. And this goes back to the very first episode with Sarah Bauer, when her and I talked the, the greatest thing in the world is yes. The second best thing in the world is a no.
The worst is a, I don't know. Or, uh, I'm never going to let you know,
Ben Zang: I literally tell people, look, my job is to bring you ideas. Your job is to say, no, I make, I, I, I put it up front. Very clear. Look, your job is to say no. And, and people are always like, you say that. And I'm like, yeah, because one, it builds trust.
Because I'm not, they understand [00:31:00] now this is my job. I'm doing my job. Your job is to say no. Now the roles are clear in our relationship, right? Right. It's not, you're not stuck at, like, if you're in the friend zone, then be in the friend zone. If you're on the dating track, be in the dating track. Don't be somewhere in, in between.
And I think as long as those things are defined and you as a salesperson are in charge of that. They've taken your call. So now they've taken whatever, they've said yes to whatever, whether that's the 60 second pitch on the phone, whether that's the face to face time, they've said yes. So now your job is to define what's going to happen in that moment.
And the customer has every right to say, yeah. And your job then is to then continue the relationship, even if it's in a no situation. Because I've had people who didn't buy from me in the past. We've come back and said, now I'm ready for you. [00:32:00] Right. And I think that's, that's the biggest thing.
Leighann Lovely: Right. So we've come to a point in, um, the show where you now have your, um, shameless 30 second pitch.
Shameless 30
Ben Zang: seconds. Yes. Ben. So shameless 30 second plug. So here's what I do. I problem solve benefits for companies. I do a lot of, um, interesting and creative ways to solve that problem. And so I was a business owner myself, your people are kind of your bread and butter. And so what I do is I help businesses take care of their people, either through health insurance, dental, vision, short term, long term, all that kind of insurance stuff that nobody thinks is sexy.
I make it sexy and I kind of help you figure it all out. Um, it's long, it's boring, but I don't make it so. So, it's, I think education is [00:33:00] one of those things on those big scary topics that really makes a difference both to an owner of a business and to the individual within the business. And so. I've built my practice on creating that education and making it so people aren't intimidated.
So that'd be my 30 second pitch. I think that was like 90 seconds, but,
Leighann Lovely: Oh, I'm, you know, and so you are with transition benefits and, um, if you are looking to reach out to Ben, how would you go about doing that? So
Ben Zang: I actually, it's, people think it's stupid, but I actually give out my cell phone. Um, so you can call me 4.
Or you can email me at ben at transition or THBWI. So it's ben at THBWI. com. And then you can find me on LinkedIn. Um, you can find me all over. So I network like a madman sometimes. [00:34:00] So.
Leighann Lovely: Excellent. Well, Ben, Hey, I really appreciate this conversation. I think it brings a great deal of value for, you know, the, some of the younger generation entering into the sales force.
And again, I really appreciate your time today.
Ben Zang: Thanks for having me, Leanne. You're always a blast. So I would do this again in a heartbeat.
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Understanding Multigenerational Human Behavior and Communication for Sales Success

In this episode of Love Your Sales I am joined by Brad Herda where we dive into understanding human behavior in this selling environment. Brand offers insights on self-awareness, the art of conversation, communication preference of different generations, and how all these factors can influence sales success. The enlightening discussion also traverse concepts like the DISC assessment, and multigenerational communication. They wrap up the episode with a highly useful discussion on recruiting young talent and adapting selling styles to the client’s unique needs. A must-listen for anyone in sales, looking to broaden their understanding of effective communication and sales techniques.  
Contact Brad –
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-herda/
Website - https://www.vfbsolutions.com/
Podcast - https://blue-collar-bs.captivate.fm/
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of Love Your Sales. I am joined today by Brad Hurta, the founder of Vision Forward Solutions, supporting blue collar businesses to thrive in multigenerational workforces. Brad uses advanced skills of communication, accountability, and leadership to enable his clients to create a future that will allow them more time with family, develop their next generation of leaders, and have a high valued business.
By defining how you want to [00:02:00] work in the future, looking at what What is already working and identifying new ways to improve your life and business. Brad uses context to put the pieces of the puzzle together to see how you can take a chance at creating your new future. Brad, I am so excited to have you join me today.
Brad Herda: I am just happy to be here to be part of this, uh, this adventure that you are on now, and, uh, very happy for you taking on this. Uh, the role that you're taking, because it's a spot that you excelled and shine in. So thank you for even allowing me to be here. Well,
Leighann Lovely: thank you so much for those kind words. I, um, honestly, I'm really excited to talk to you because you do a lot of work with, you know.
I guess the DISC assessments that you look at with behavioral characteristics and then really talking a great deal, because you have a podcast as well, but talking a great deal about the multi generational communication. And that is something that, um, [00:03:00] I think plays a huge role in some of the new, um, younger, I should say, generations coming up in the sales roles.
Right. And selling into certain industries, that can become a huge hurdle for some of the, the younger generation. So this is definitely, yeah, this, it, it can be. Um, and so this is a topic that I, I'm really excited to, To kind of tackle with you,
Brad Herda: I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, because the audience has the opportunity, I think, to learn something different.
Sometimes we do a lot of these things naturally, and we don't know what happens or why those things work the way they work. And if we can get into some of those details here to help them understand the why behind why it works with one person and not another, so they can change or adapt their style.
They may get a better close rate. They might get more effective. They could end up with more dollars in their pocket from their commissions, et cetera. So I'm excited to support them. So, let's,
Leighann Lovely: let's [00:04:00] start off with, I guess, um, first, what is a DISC assessment for some of those individuals that may not know?
Brad Herda: So a DISC assessment is just a behavioral assessment. Sometimes people call it personality tests. Some people call them just, uh, there's DISC, there's Myers Briggs, there's, there's literally hundreds of different ways that go out and do it, but essentially we, as humans have Communicate in very specific manners.
Um, this just happens to be one of the easier ones to understand. Cause there's only four, four quadrants, your, your D, which is your high dominance. You know, the guy that only cares about the facts and data, you know, the cold hearted MRF, or that just. Just give me the details. I don't care about anything else.
Then we have the eye, which is the influencer, which is everybody wants to be their friend. I want to be the life of the party. I'm going to, I'm going to be the use car sales, no matter what I say, that person on the other end is going to think it's all positive and rosy. And it's, and it's great. And I find those many of the high eyes to be somewhat annoying at times when I'm trying to sell or, or be sold to, [00:05:00] um, then you have your asses, which are the steady people, right?
They, they care about the people, but they also care about making sure it's the right decision. Very, very high anxiety. The fear of being wrong motivates them tremendously. They'd rather make sure they're right. Then to make a decision and be wrong and then we have the high seas, which are the compliance people, which are, let's follow the process.
Let's go step by step. If you gave them the alphabet and put it into a circuit, you know, going from a to Z, they go a, b, c, d, if they want a, l, q, p, w. You know, are that would drive them crazy. Hi, I could give two shits about that. Um, because they're going to go everywhere and it won't matter. So all of those things play a key role into understanding people's behaviors.
And if you can understand them and pick them out. Um, it works out tremendously and we've been seeing them for decades, every Disney movie, every sitcom, every drama has all these things baked into it. And that's why it engages us as we watch and participate and watch the movies. [00:06:00] I've never
Leighann Lovely: thought about it that way, you know, and Seinfeld just jumped into my head.
Absolutely.
Brad Herda: 100 percent Seinfeld is 100%. Four disc characters, all right there, all different things, right? Kramer's the high eye, just woo hoo, Cherry, it's crazy,
Leighann Lovely: right? Right, right, absolutely. Like the, oh my gosh, how, I've never really actually thought or, yeah. And that's why it's so entertaining because you see those different things represented and, and they come together and you're like, whoa, my God.
And the different personalities mixed together is really what is the entertainment.
Brad Herda: Correct. And you, you relate to one of those characters more so than the other. And one of them might be very grating. One of them might be just very annoying, right? Um, some of them's like, wow, I like this person a lot.
Leighann Lovely: And which is really funny is that I, you know, I'm, I know that I'm a [00:07:00] high I.
Um. Yes, you
Brad Herda: are. So
Leighann Lovely: now I'm thinking, wow, is that what represents me? I do not slide into rooms with my hair sticking straight up. But, but. Not
Brad Herda: always, some days, maybe. Depends on what's going on with the kids.
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. I am, I am a person that, you know, when I start speaking, I'm pretty much just spewing out random, random stuff on a regular basis.
You're talking about the craziness that's happening and happening in my life. And, but there are times that I also can slide into other. roles where I kind of lean back on some of those other characteristics that, that can take control. So do you think that understanding where you fit can help a sales person or just in general help somebody in In their job.
Brad Herda: Uh, yeah, it would, when I went through the [00:08:00] training to go through that, uh, I was very blessed to go through some very intense training with Bsar's back in the day. And, um, that allowed me to understand my kids better, allowed me to understand my family better. It allowed me to understand some other things as well as professionally be able to get through the manager that I didn't get along with, but I had to, you know, grit my teeth every time I'd go in the office.
But as I learned to change the behaviors or change my. Communication style to that individual, our relationship became better, but I needed to take that course because he wasn't going to take the first step to figure it out because he was going to behave how they behave. And too often, that's what society does.
We are who we are. And as we've gotten more individualistic, it's, we are this way and we will be this way, and that's what we're going to do come hell or high water. And it's not going to matter. Okay, well, then if you're not going to adapt, you're going to miss out on almost 75 percent of the conversations for opportunity to, to create a better impact or a better, more meaningful
Leighann Lovely: [00:09:00] relationship.
Very interesting. So understanding the different, you know, the four core personalities. And obviously there's, I'm going to guess that, you know, these don't identify the, a person a hundred percent there you're ranked at different
Brad Herda: levels, correct? Yeah. We can take all of them and at different points in time, different things will come forward.
Um, you know, you're going to some life decisions in your high eye, right? But some life decisions you're going to take and, and. Making the career path change that you made, you spent a lot of time, energy and resources making sure it was the right change, bringing out all of your S in you, all your S goodness, um, to say, okay, great.
Cause it's a, it was a high risk. There were a lot of, a lot of risks and you wanted to make sure it was right before you just jumped in. Whereas what am I going to get Starbucks today? You could pick something who cares, right? Whatever it's liquid. You're not going to spend the time and energy [00:10:00] as much in that arena.
So just a lot of, a lot of it just factors on what's going on. And often when we get to larger deals or we get into that, I got to get the sale, I got to do this thing. And we come out of that place of scarcity and fear that we got to make it happen. We come back to our core value of whatever characteristic it might be.
And we missed the opportunity from the person on the other side of the table. We miss listening to the cues. We miss listening to. What they're truly asking you for because you're there to respond instead of there to listen and learn because that stress and anxiety is just so high in your own head and often it's our own head trash.
It's not even it's not even the real thing that's going on. We've told ourselves a story because we've never even asked the question the first time. Right.
Leighann Lovely: So now let's flip this around because understanding yourself obviously is wildly important to your own success. But as a young salesperson or any sales, let's, let's not say any, let's [00:11:00] first start off with any salesperson.
You're walking into a room, you're not going to give them an assessment before you walk here. Have this assessment before we have the sales meeting. That's not, that's not a real thing. You can't do that. Having won an understanding of yourself. And then two, understanding that there are different, like, very different personalities that exist, that exist out there.
How can that aid?
Brad Herda: So walking, yeah, so walking to the room, um, you know, we get that whole first First impression scenario, right? We get that 1015 seconds. Um, you walk in the room as the guest. Who's the person that got up to go greet you? Who's the person that made the first set the first eye contact? Who's the person that was the loudest in the room might be the eye in the room and jocular?
Who's the one that buried their head in their phone could give two craps that you're actually in the room? Might be [00:12:00] the S or the D because they're wasting their time Um, who's going to ask you all the process questions. Hey, we're here today. What's the agenda look like? Who's the one that has, you know, their hair all disheveled versus, you know, to dress to the nines in the room.
Um, some of those are key characteristics or things that could be behaviors to. X word outwardly identify what's going on as well. So, so you can walk into a room and kind of judge and figure it out by asking some very specific things or paying attention to very specific things. Who's the person that's just on the other side of the table?
Hey, how's it going? Probably introverted. Probably going to probably be on the C or S category C or S side of the disc behavior style. The person that gets up in the room, they walk all the way across the room, jumps over everybody. They come and say hello to you. Oh my God, I'm so grateful you're here.
Probably a high I.
Leighann Lovely: Interesting. And how does that play into the [00:13:00] success of, you know, Hey, Brad, I'm Leighann Lovely. I'm coming here to talk to you about X, Y, here. I'm going to. Tell you, I'm going to sell you this pen. Right.
Brad Herda: And so, so if you're going to sell me that pen and I'm a high C, you need to make sure that I'm aware of all the things that pens can, the warranty, how long it cartridge is going to last.
How many signed contracts can I get out of that pen? How many times can I click that thing when I'm nervous? What are all those things that are going to be really important to me is the high C potentially. And then can I get the value out of that from the cost basis? That pen might cost me 50, 000, but if I can get 5 million in return, why couldn't I do that?
So that's some logic based activity. Right. The high S is going to want even more reassurance. That's the right pen. Not, well, what about the other pen? The other guy sells, how's that work compared to there? And they [00:14:00] got to trust you that you're there to ensure that they're making the right decision versus you're just there to sell them a 50, 000 pen.
And that feel and that vibe, we all have had it, we've all gotten, we've all walked into a, you know, whether it's the appliance store, the Best Buy, Hey, can I help you? Who's all those commission type scenarios where people are there, you can feel when somebody is just there to sell you something to get a check versus really care about what, who you are and what you're trying to solve for your own problem.
And that's the connection that we buy from people. At the end of the day, we, we, we buy on the emotion and we use rationalization to justify our decision. If I like you, Leighann, I'm going to buy a 50, 000 pen, I'm, and I think it's going to be the best pen ever. I'm going to rationalize that 50, 000 pen in my head in some way, shape or form through the budgets, through other things.
But if we have that connection, you've sold me the pen. I'm not, I mean, why would anybody buy a 50, 000 pen? But it happens all the time. [00:15:00]
Leighann Lovely: I'd really like to see a $50,000 pen .
Brad Herda: Oh, back in they're, they're out there .
Leighann Lovely: Oh, I, I'm sure they are. I mean, there's, there's something for, for every rich person. The Right. I mean, and that's, that's wildly interesting.
I mean, taking the, the, being able to shift to meet the person at their level. Right. Meet the person where they are. But that takes. A great deal of one self awareness because you need to be able to shift and move and be very fluid in the way that you're approaching people.
Brad Herda: And be comfortable with it and not, and not have that uncomfortable, uncomfortableness become such a.
Um, hurdle for you to overcome that when you're out at the table, you know, you got sweat pouring down your face and palms are [00:16:00] sweaty and you know, you got the nervous need to kick going on or whatever it is, you have to get very comfortable. Being uncomfortable, adapting to others across the table and, and silence is one of the most important things in a sales world, having an eye, high I or high D be silent for 20 to 30 seconds, waiting for a response.
Oh my gosh, you're going to shit your pants.
Leighann Lovely: I know. Oh, trust me. That was the hardest thing for me as a young salesperson coming in. Whenever there was silence in a room, I felt like I was responsible for filling that gap. It, you know, you're like, Oh, nobody's talking. So I'm supposed to, to figure out what I'm supposed to say next.
But sometimes that is the most important aspect of closing, especially in closing. That is the most, whoever talks first loses.
Brad Herda: [00:17:00] Typically. Right. And, and one of the great questions to get out of the way is. Okay. The objection over price, and there's different schools of thought over that is the, do you lead with your price?
Do you lead? And I mean, Mercedes is not apologetic in any way, shape or form when they put up there, Hey, here's your lease for seven 29 a month for 36 months on all their car ads. They're not apologizing for any of that. And most people are going, Oh my God, that's ridiculous. That's what it is. And they don't care
Leighann Lovely: for some people.
That's a rent. Yeah. Do I pay my rent or, or half my mortgage payment?
Brad Herda: Right. So they don't apologize at what their price is versus trying to bury it underneath and bury it underneath the lead and go, okay, great. You know, Honda, I did that very much early on that they, they led with the, the warranty side of it and not the price.
And they were able to get the warranty and the price to coincide. And you knew you were going to go get warranty problems for until they built up their brand and their own quality. And we were the guinea pigs to build up that [00:18:00] organization. Because we took the price and the warranty and said, okay, great.
Then they fixed it and they had great customer service. And now they've, they're dominant. I want to say dominating, but they've changed what their vehicles were from 25 years ago. So
Leighann Lovely: let me ask you this. Now, obviously communication has drastically changed. I mean, well, it always is. It's always evolving. I shouldn't say it's changed.
It's evolving constantly. I never imagined there would be a time where I'm sitting in my office, which by the way, is in my home and my husband is on the upper level and I'm texting him in the same house. But this is a real thing. I mean, this happened. Communication is constantly evolving where sometimes I'm, I mean, I never imagined I would text my clients.
I thought, Oh, that's left for personal use. Right. But as time has gone on, From the first time I had my own cell phone when I was [00:19:00] 18 years old, we've gone from our, you know, cell phones becoming our everything, texting and emailing. So communication is, is. Evolving on a regular, constant basis and the younger generation coming in, communication has become drastically different.
I mean, correct. I mean, I'm, I'm in my forties and I look back and I go, do these kids like know how to communicate? And I'm sure that my parents looked at me and goes, did my daughter know how to communicate? What are these words she's using?
So for those of you who are just listening, Brad right now is laughing at me. But. Um, , I, I, I get text messages from my, you know, from some of these, my nanny or, and I get these acronyms or these, I mean, I, I, obviously, I know what LOL means, but careful, careful what you look up. It's dangerous. I know, I know.
My god, I know. Careful [00:20:00] what, and I get these and I'm like, what does this mean? ? Right. I don't know. So obviously with the younger generation coming in and moving into sales roles, um. It's, it's difficult to always communicate at the same level as Um, some of the owners of smaller businesses, some of the managers who are making the buying decisions.
Brad Herda: So, so let's just get some clarity here first. So when we say younger generation, so Gen Z, which is the current, which will be the youngest generation in the workforce right now, they're 26 years old. Okay. So, so they're 26. So if they've left high school and got went to the workforce, they've been in the workforce now for eight years.
Okay. Okay. Almost a full decade. So some of that we got to get over on our own self is that that self realization of, well, [00:21:00] all those young kids, they just don't know what they're at. So I'm 57 years old, right? So I'm at the tail end of beginning of gen X tail end of boomer. Um, Kind of stuck in the middle.
Then we got the millennials and the Gen Z's and then we got Gen Alpha behind that and understanding that, you know, Gen Z prefers communication digitally prefers because they are digital natives. They're not analog first, they're digital first and they prefer that methodology.
It's important to understand that if I'm going to go talk to some, a younger person that's in my B and I group or a networking event or whatever, I'm better off to connect with them to send them a text than to send them an email or make a phone call .
Mm hmm. Whereas I, on the other hand, when I want to say, Hey, just call me. Cause usually I'll have 10 or 15 other questions behind it. And texting conversations drives me batshit crazy. That's just me. , and that's them and that's okay. And, but understanding those differences are also very important. I do a talk for [00:22:00] multigenerational leadership and one of the questions I ask people about when we get to that point and said, okay, you get a thumbs up emoji from your boss, what does that mean?
Most people are like, Oh, it means okay. Yeah, go ahead. No problem. I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure that he's not tired of you being a pain in the ass? And it's not an F you just to get you out of the way, right? And the mind just go, I never thought about it that way. And the communication styles allow for barriers to understanding context and understanding true meaning because we take those things away.
And when you have Supreme courts and States indicating that a thumbs up emoji is a okay piece of a signed contract of a true deal. We have Supreme Court stay in the States in the United States that have upheld a thumbs up emoji to be an agreement to a contract that was never signed. Seriously?
Leighann Lovely: [00:23:00] Seriously. That puts a whole new perspective on when I give thumbs up, because sometimes I'm just like, yeah, okay, great.
Brad Herda: Like, whatever. Hey, do you agree to this deal? Yep. Okay. Thumbs up. Not a, yeah, send it to me later. No, there's, there's been, there's been lots of legal battle stuff going over those communication preferences and how things get communicated and what is a contract and what is not a contract.
So understanding those preferences might have some great unintended consequences for you, depending on how you're communicating across generations as well.
Leighann's face, just, what are you trying to imagine your dog right now? Just looking at you going, huh?
Leighann Lovely: I, okay. So there was actually, there was actually a battle, a contractual battle and a thumbs up was. Basically considered a [00:24:00] signature for a contract.
Brad Herda: Uh, let's see here. There, I'm trying to see if I can find it here.
Uh, that, there, it happened earlier in this year. It happened, uh, can the text message be a legally binding contract? So, tail end of 20, beginning of 22. Texting a thumbs up emoji in response to a question costs a Saskatchewan judge. Here we go. And I can send you, I'll put the link here in the chat so you can put it into your, um, show notes if you so desire.
Um, but yes, a Saskatchewan man, um, uses a thumb up emoji, cost of 82, 000. Wow. Please confirm, Kim, please confirm Flax Contract, thumbs up, question mark. Didn't confirm it, did not confirm it, but just please confirm it. It was a So, yes, right.
Link to reference article - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/thumbs-up-emoji-costs-sask-farmer-82-thousand-1.6898686  
Leighann Lovely: So that they took as a conf like a confirmation of, yes, I'm, I'm okay with it.
And [00:25:00] yeah, I'll get
Brad Herda: back to
Leighann Lovely: you versus a, yeah, I'll get back to you. So obvious what, right, which, and again, you know, I, I'm okay with if the communication needs to be in text message, if that is the preference of the person that I'm communicating with now. You know, in retrospect, I'm like, okay, I got to really be careful with, with what I text in a new next time.
I'm going to text an emoji of a poop sign. No, hold on thumbs up. Like, I'll get back to you or I don't, but that really puts into perspective. The You know, the, it puts into perspective, I don't even know how to follow that. It's
Brad Herda: what it means to somebody else, right? That thumbs up to a younger person might be great.
I can just get to proceed. No big deal to an older person that might be, yeah, I'll get [00:26:00] back to you. Fine. Uh, yeah, sure. I got your text instead of just saying received, you know, an auto response or whatever. Okay. Make them go away. So I don't get another text. Whatever time of day it was. I just want you to go.
I just want you to know that I got it. Right. How we communicate that to each. Each other is different. Uh, I've got people that just get so angry at me when I don't respond to a text. Did you get my text? Well, yeah, I got it. What do you want me to do with it? You didn't ask me a question. You just gave me information.
What do you want me to do with the information? You didn't ask me anything for it. And I'm a high C person. So process rules. Okay, cool. You told me we're, we're meeting at five o'clock today. Okay. And then there's, then I guess I'll meet you at five o'clock. Do I need to send you a thumbs up and okay, uh, Hey, good job.
What do I need to do? You told me we're meeting at five o'clock
Leighann Lovely: recon for, you know, account [00:27:00] well, and then there's me too, where I have sent an email to my boss and then I'll, I'll hit send and literally run into his office and go, did you see the email? And he'll go, I'm not sitting here waiting for you to email me.
So when did you,
the excitability, the, you know, I'm not the only person in the room kind of thing where sometimes I forget that because I'm the high eye. That's very excitable. Yes. And I have to check myself sometime. I have to literally go, I need to go and take a breath. And because yes, I, sometimes that's gets away from me where, and I'm very, When I meet with a client, I let them speak first.
I ask them a bunch of questions and get to know them before I allow my personality to get too overbearing, because I know My personality can be very [00:28:00] overwhelming, especially to people who are introverts, who are that process person. They can literally go, Whoa, I need, I need to take a break from her. Like I'm aware of that.
My husband is a true, I would say he's a, an S, S or C. I mean, very extremely processed, extremely, you know, like. If you give him the alphabet and you don't give him a, b, c, d, I mean, he gets like, I got to stop come back to me in an hour,
Brad Herda: but, but it's important to understand that. And that's how, you know, to create those relationships to create that 1st impression to be able to qualify. So, you know, if I'm trying to sell to you as a high C and your high I, right. If I come into you and just come in hardcore, here's the facts, data, information on the product, whatever.
I cannot make a tangible personal benefit [00:29:00] of the product or the service or the relationship with that. I have blown the opportunity to improve my relationship with you and to potentially impact your business in a positive way, because I have missed the opportunity and missed the full boat of, of creating that relationship with you, the decision maker.
Leighann Lovely: And here's I had a salesperson call me and he called me and he just started talking randomly about this and that and what was happening in his life is talking about his dog. And I'm like, I love you. And he's like, okay, just not even talking about his product. And I was like, I'm going to buy from you,
Brad Herda: right?
Because you've developed the opportunity to know what's going on. And it wasn't about, it's about creating a relationship. And sometimes that that's like we said earlier, if we buy from the people we know, like, and trust, and you've got to be able to prospect those individuals. And just because you don't like me doesn't mean I'm not a prospect.
[00:30:00] Um, if, if I fit that persona. of your, your ideal avatar for your product or service, and now you want to filter out based on whether I like somebody or not, your pool is going to get really small very quickly. So how
Leighann Lovely: does, say this 26 year old coming in, their preference Is, you know, one way, so
Brad Herda: their communication modalities are a certain way, their individual characteristics could be something different.
They could be a high D, high, high, high S, whatever that might look like, because we're at the end of the day, we're still all individuals and generationally, we still have those characteristics, but I want to share some interesting, some interesting data for, um, I belong to a home building trades foundation, and we did some work with the launch program here in town doing some research for us.
How do we can connect with people with students and that don't [00:31:00] have any interest in the trades? And they did some research in 1979. 64 percent of those eligible to work in high school had high school jobs in 2022. That number is 15 percent 15 percent of those eligible to work in high school now work in highs, have a job during high school.
So the other 85 percent that when they get out of high school or they decide to go on to college and if they do decide to go on to college to have a meaningful job outside of college is almost like non existent. So the first job coming out is the first job and we've changed from an employer perspective.
We have put the onus on that first employer to help that individual be successful in and support them to be successful in whatever industry they're chosen, and we don't take the time to do that because we've not realized that because that's not where us as myself from that age group haven't come from that.[00:32:00]
Leighann Lovely: So that number went from, wait, from, from what to what?
Brad Herda: From 64 percent in 1979 to 15 percent in 19 and 2022.
Leighann Lovely: Oh my gosh.
Brad Herda: So when we get those conversations of, we don't understand why these kids can't work well because they haven't worked and they're not doing that. So when you say the 26 year old who might be four years removed from college, who might have only been working.
You know, service industry, fast food, you know, dominoes, Amazon, whatever to, to live the lifestyle and says, oh, okay, and we go to work for the insurance company to go sell things or to be the. Um, you know, cut, go knives or pick whatever, whatever that is, where they take younger people in to go find what's going on, having this, the process, the training, the communication, the support, the structure to define success for them along the way is really, really critical.
And you'll find organizations that do a really great job with younger. [00:33:00] Younger talent because they've defined expectations, put things in place, set things in place and move them through the system versus just a pass fail. If you're going to set up a pass fail for your salespeople coming out of school, you're going to be very disappointed.
Leighann Lovely: What? Okay. So I find that I was not aware of that statistic. So and I should have, I should be aware of that statistic, but we took over the
Brad Herda: show. We're going a different route. No,
Leighann Lovely: no, no, no, no. So this is wildly interesting because obviously I worked, I mean, as soon as I was eligible, to work. What is that?
Back in my day, it was 14. It was 14. You had to apply for your work permit. Then you could work and you had to be minimal, could only work a certain amount of hours a week. I'm going to assume that they still have some type of parameters on
Brad Herda: that. Like seven o'clock. They have to, they can only work till seven o'clock if you're under 16 right now.
Leighann Lovely: Right. And then, um, and you have to have a work permit, all that other stuff. And you can only work a certain amount of hours a week because they still want you to focus [00:34:00] on school. Um, I worked the max hours that I could, could work. I worked in the weekends, but I would go to, you know, work, blah, blah, blah, blah.
That was wildly important. For me when I was in high school because one that was how I party if you had no cash Exactly because my parents didn't just hand out cash and and the money that I made when I worked 50 percent of it had to go to my savings and the other one the other amount I could keep and and I was I Was a saver my friends used to always come to me and be like, do you have any money?
And I'm like, yeah, and they're like, how do you always have money and I'm like because I always save Like the, the money I make and I'm not buying
Brad Herda: cigarettes and beer.
Leighann Lovely: That's well, and I, I was back, you know, as soon as I hit like 16, I was okay. We, we all add our, you know, our person to go to and be like, can you go buy me some cigarettes and beer?
Uh, I mean, I even attempted to, you know, bring the note to the gas [00:35:00] station and be like, my mom told me anyways, I was a, I was a little rebel. Um, that was, that was what you did. And when I was in high school, you got a job. And as soon as I was 18, I, well, I went to the military when I was 17. I graduated early, went and worked, and then I never stopped working full time.
Like that, that, that was just what you did. And then I went, I, I finished college full time while I was working full time. And I've never stopped for, I should be a millionaire. Why am I not? Just as much money went out the door as it came in the door, you know, anyways. So the idea that these kids, but here, but it's also the generation of the parents that, you know, well, I had to work so [00:36:00] hard.
I don't want my kid to have to work. We have our own
Brad Herda: problem. We've created our own problem. And it's always, and we're not recognizing that. So being able to take that 24, 25, 26 year old person into a sales role to teach them those things, because at the end of the day, they went to school. They live through COVID.
They didn't, maybe they were in school during COVID and they didn't have right with no interaction. No, this, no that. And there's a lot of stress and anxiety there. Plus think of all the. Um, cultural and social things that have happened over the last 10 years and how that's impacted them differently than maybe you or I compared to desert storm or nine 11 or other things that have happened or space shuttles, all those other things that impacted our lives, their lives have been impacted differently to create different social cues and different social norms and different social expectations that doesn't change who they are from a human being, from a disc profile perspective, it just changes how they like to receive communication and how they like to be, um, [00:37:00] Educated and, and nurtured and mentored and coached and going through that sales process by coming and say, Hey kid, just tell me what the fricking number is.
They're likely going to be what, what do you mean? Just know my process because they've been, everything's been scheduled for them since they were age five, how do I deal with these curve balls that come out of place? And some, some individuals are much better at that others are not. So finding the right behavioral characteristics, I think is important to put them in the right roles or success.
And too often, we just. I think people are interchangeable. Right. Well,
Leighann Lovely: and, and the reason, so, and here's another, my, I, I wanted to go into sales when I was younger, but my, my dad was a sales manager, managed up to 60 agents at, at, at, at one time, you know, down to, you know, 45, it fluctuated. He was a real estate agent, ran an office, various different offices, you know, promoted throughout the years, blah, blah, blah.
Um, and my dad, I, I talked to him [00:38:00] about, you know, I'd love to go into sales. And he looked at me and he goes, you know, I, I love you. I don't believe. That you have enough life experience to be able to be good at it, to be great at it. Go get some work experience, some life experience to be able to, and, and he was not wrong at this time.
Again, you know, my, my history suffered with bipolar disorder. I was, I think I'm a high I, go back to when I was in my twenties. I was high I with a side of crazy.
I didn't have the life experience nor the self discipline to be able to go into a room and listen to somebody, hear them, and then to be able to determine a solution for them in a proper, strategic way, let alone be able to, anyways. Right.
Brad Herda: I guess, so, so, so, Hank, can I interrupt? Yes. So given that [00:39:00] scenario, right?
Dad saying, Hey, there's not a life life experience. Here's what's also happened. I think culturally that becomes a difference. If I take that same 20, that same 23, 24, 25 year old land, Leighann put her in a room with those same individuals today. And you're capturing all that information and listening and going through it and setting expectations of what I can get you the response versus feeling the need to have to have the answer for everything right now on the spot and those type of things.
That level of expectation has changed. In the business environment over the years as well, because we're not expecting everybody to know it because at the end of the day, I can always grab my phone potentially and look something up and it's not that big of a deal that I have to know everything. But what you do need to do is set your communication expectations for thank you, Mr.
Smith. I do not know the answer to that. I will contact George who's in San Francisco later today when I leave. And is it okay if I get back to you tomorrow? It's 8 a. m. Will that be satisfactory for you taking that [00:40:00] approach? In without the work experience, without the life experience of opportunity.
Changes the sales functionality tremendously if you're willing to adapt to those things and not feel you have to do it all at one, one stop shop. Right.
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. I mean, the, the, the environment of how we sell of even in those appointments has drastically changed. Um, and, and I agree with that, but just being able to communicate clearly and being able to listen and being able to sit in those meetings, you still have to be able to have.
Um, you know, that it's an art form and again, I'm not trying to, to somebody who's interested in doing this. I'm not trying to make them go, Oh, I can't do that. It, but there is, you do have to have a certain amount of self awareness and awareness of the room because there have been times when I've been in the room sitting next to [00:41:00] a colleague who is doing their thing and watched eyes start rolling back because they're just not aware.
Of their surroundings
Brad Herda: and you're going on page 17, section 13. 2. 5. 4, there happens to be a period out of location here and we can fix that for you in that template. That's okay. Mr. Smith, right?
Leighann Lovely: Well, and I've, I've seen demo. Yeah. I used to sell sad solutions where we would do demos and you know, and it's like, Okay.
Um, set it up to what they want, not train them on the product, you know, so anyways, we could continue to go on forever. Unfortunately, we are running out of time and I want to give you, Brad, your, um, opportunity to do your 32nd selfless or, um, shameless pitch. You take the floor, um, go ahead and do that and we'll wrap up.
No
Brad Herda: worries. Uh, so Brad, her division for business solutions, and we support blue collar businesses to hire [00:42:00] anybody of any age to thrive in their business. So they have value at the end and something to sell. So many blue collar guys have given so much to so many, they forget about themselves at the end.
And people are usually their biggest deterrent to getting what they need for their business. And supporting them to understand that they can hire a 22 year old and they can do it differently and getting them out of their own way to build up that pipeline and build that pipeline for success is one of the biggest barriers they have to overcome to, um, sell and buy multiples at the end of the day.
Leighann Lovely: Awesome. Brad, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been. Um, honestly, an eye opening conversation for me. I love, but I love it. I love learning new things. I love, um, it's why I do what I do. It's why I have these conversations with people to learn myself and hope, um, you know, and hopefully educate, um, you know, those who are listening.
So remember if you like the show, um, you know, share it, like it, follow us, um, and thank you everybody for joining us today. [00:43:00]
Brad Herda: Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.
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Converting Prospects to Loyal Customers

In this episode of Love Your Sales, we discuss overcoming common challenges in sales, how to communicate effectively with potential clients, and tactics to close deals more effectively. Susan Trumpler, the Founder of Unstoppable Women in Business and She Boss Care shares her 6-step decision-making process inviting us into the buyer's brain and how to convert a prospect into a loyal customer.
Contact Susan –
Website - shebosscafe.com
Website - https://unstoppablewomeninbusiness.com/
LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/susantrumpler/
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of Love Your Sales. I am joined today by Susan Trumpler, the founder of Unstoppable Women in Business and She Boss Cafe. Susan is a master at helping women entrepreneurs find their real voice so that they can find their best clients. Her mission is to never hear another woman say they feel salesy or pushy when they are talking about their business.
Getting to yes, faster is her free masterclass that teaches small [00:02:00] business owners, how to do just that. She has 20 plus years in sales. Susan has an uncanny way to share her best practices and skills to elevate everyone to their highest level in bringing in revenue for their company. Welcome Susan. I am so excited to have you join me today
Susan Trumpler:
Thank you, Leighann. It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Yes.
Leighann Lovely: Well, why don't we jump right in? I'm excited to pick your brain and hopefully learn some tips, tricks, and Um, offer the audience some of that as well. So, you know, I, I, um, you and I kind of talked a little bit about what we were going to, you know, discuss today and you not only with, you know, getting to yes, faster, your free masterclass, but you're one of the topics that we, um, discussed prior to, to having you.
Join me was, you know, the decision dynamics..
And [00:03:00] the six steps a buyer's brain goes through to make decisions, uh, to, you know, to their business. And, and so I'd, I'd love to, to jump into that.
Susan Trumpler: Absolutely. Thank you. It is. I am so passionate about understanding what is going on in people's minds because Leighann, I really believe that the more you're in touch with what your buyer is thinking, the easier it is for you to connect to them, feel authentic and be able to kind of be in alignment with them during the conversation.
So saying yes, just becomes a very natural outcome of any sales conversation. And
Leighann Lovely: I find that it, that's awesome because you know, in any conversation, a salesperson is always finding a way to get the person to say yes or agree to what they're saying. Right. Because as you progress, you want them to continue to agree with you so that at the end [00:04:00] when you say, so does this product solve your problem?
Right. Do you want to buy from me? Be that natural. You know, that natural reaction is,
Susan Trumpler: of course, yes, exactly, exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, yes. A great way to think about it is it's a journey. It's one step at a time. And just like dating, you know, you don't meet someone and ask them to marry you out of the gate.
Right. Most people don't. So, you know, like, should we want to date together? You know, should we have joy dinner? What's the next step in our, our relationship? If you start to, people start to think about sales that way, it becomes much less daunting and um, they act more like themselves, which then the buyer feels more at home with them as well.
So it's, it's just a great way to create
Leighann Lovely: relationship. Yeah. So let's start, you know, what is, [00:05:00] what is the first,
Susan Trumpler: what is the first step here? Okay. So out of the six steps, they, they're kind of clustered together. So I'm going to go through step one and two pretty tightly connected. Um, the very first thing that a buyer will be thinking about as you talk to them about anything is, do I want this?
Like, do I want what you offer? And you think that's easy, Leighann. We live in our world. We are passionate about what we do and what we sell. But if you look at it from the buyer's perspective, it is one tiny little thing that might be on their mind or might not. And until they know that they want what you have to offer, it's really hard for them to get.
Um, let me, let me share this with you because I, I think it really helps for your listeners to think about how they make buying decisions as I go through these six steps. So if you think [00:06:00] about anything that you love to buy, right? Um, more than just going to the grocery store and buying food, but if you're somebody who's a car person or if you, you like expensive purses or designer clothes, whatever it is, that's your kind of thing.
If you think about, and for me, it's cars, I just. I see cars on the road. I pull up next to a car at a signal and I look at this like gorgeous sleek car and I call it the drool factor. It's like, oh, that would be nice. I want that. Right? So I have made a quick judgment in my mind. There's something about that car that's appealing to me and it's really got to do with my identity more than anything.
It's like I can see myself in that. I'm transforming into a person who drives that car and I like myself that way. Put yourself into your buyer's seat. And think about what it [00:07:00] is that they would really want. What's the personal transformation that would happen if they were to buy from you? And how close can you get to being able to have a conversation around what it is that they want in their lives that you can help them get that they don't have right now.
And that's the want factor. So in any conversation, you've really need to ask, obviously you have to ask discovery questions to understand. What is holding them back from getting what they want? What is it that they want? Why do they want it? And once you really kind of get that under your skin, then it's easy to have a conversation around what it would look like if they had it.
So the want factor is number one.
Leighann Lovely: So I'm, I'm going to play devil's advocate because listeners right now are thinking, well, yeah, I mean, I know what I want. Like I love diamonds. I love, and those, those things are, those things are glamorous and those are, those are easy to put yourself in the other, [00:08:00] on the other side of like, oh, okay, yeah, I, I could, I could sell a diamond because it's, you know, anybody who's walking in or a car, anybody who's walking in the lot, you would think, oh, I just have to appeal to what they're drawn to.
But let's talk about health insurance. Yes. Not glamorous. Let's talk about
Susan Trumpler: that. Not glamorous. You know not glamorous? Not pretty. You know what else is not glamorous? Life insurance? No. No. Let's stick with health insurance. You know what's not glamorous is going into the hospital and feeling sick to your stomach that you don't know what this is going to cost you.
Right. Everyone knows that tomorrow is never a given and that at any moment, I, there could be a life situation that would put me into a terrible, terrible bind. Right. So it doesn't have to be something, Leighann, that you can see and touch. Those are external problems, but. [00:09:00] Um, actually the best problems to probe around and play around with are the internal problems, the feelings people have, hopelessness, dread, fear, like what is it that they are afraid of that your solution could resolve for them?
And what would that
Leighann Lovely: feel like? Wow. You did that beautifully. I mean, you, you didn't even skip a beat. You completely, I tried to throw a hard, you know, this is a glamor. You turned that around. It was like, wow. Here's how you get to that. Susan, that was amazing. Okay. All
Susan Trumpler: right. All right. But let's go to number two.
Okay. Because this is tied tightly together and we can go back to the glamorous, like the diamond or, you know, something like a car and you see it and you want it. You've got that drool factor going on. The very next thing that your brain is going to go through is step number two. Do I need it?
Unfortunately, I wish [00:10:00] my brain wouldn't go there when I'm looking at that gorgeous Tesla sitting next to me and it's, gosh, it takes off. It doubles. It's, you know, down the road faster than me. Um, because I want it. I'm like drooling. But then I think. Where would Wally sit? Like Wally, he's my big guy. He, he, you know, I don't, I would have to have another car to take Wally around.
And so now I'm going through all of this stuff in my mind. Do I really need that? And that's, you know, I call that the wah, wah, wah factor. You know, if the want is a drool factor, the need is something that can squash that want. So you really need to understand. Like, what is it that they want and do they need it?
And are you a fit for them? Are there natural things like, like that Tesla? It wouldn't knock me out of the game because I've got a big golden doodle. So under the more, [00:11:00] Leighann, the more you understand the person you're talking to. And you're listening to them and you're asking them questions. If a car salesman was trying to sell me that Tesla, he'd say, tell me about your family.
Tell me about where, where do you travel? Do you travel, you know, long distances? Do you travel with a lot of luggage or whatever? So a lot of these things, Leighann, it's almost like the elephant in the room if you don't ask the question because we, as. Um, if we get excited about when someone wants something and we just forge ahead on our path without finding out whether or not the need is there, um, or there's something blocking the need, then we are really out of alignment with our person who's making the decision and it's not going to help us by skipping past that step.
You've got to do due diligence, so do they want it? Do they need it? Step one and two. Step 11. Mm hmm. All right.
Leighann Lovely: [00:12:00] Excellent. And there's going to be certain things that want and need are, are interchangeable and other things that want and need are on the other end of the spectrum, coming back to the glamorous items where want and need.
Do not typically meet not aligned, whereas health insurance, you may not necessarily want, but it is an absolute
Susan Trumpler: need. Yes. And actually the need could be driving the want on that, you know, because I do want to feel protected and I want to know that I'm not going to go bankrupt if something happens to me.
Right. I do want those things and I need. Insurance so that I can get what I want. So that goes together perfectly. Right? You know, 1 of the problems in this area, Leighann that I see more often than not is that, um, we assume [00:13:00] a level of want to need. That may be higher than what our buyer really has. So I call it like a level five.
It's like, yeah, I do want that. And I, I do need it. And so now again, we are zipping off down the road. We're ready to share our solutions and, you know. Keep our song and dance going, but if someone isn't at like a level eight of a wanton need, they're really, it's, you're going to have a really hard time getting them over the finish line of making a commitment to you.
So there, I would have to say the problem with problems, okay, cause everybody knows you should be asking questions and finding out what people's problems are and what you can solve. Right. But the problem is that we jump too fast from problem to solution. The solution to that is when you hear a problem, ask three more questions and really dig down [00:14:00] underneath that problem so that you can get to the emotional experience within that.
Right? So if somebody says to me, um, I need health insurance. I want it because I, I don't want to feel exposed and, you know, worry about unknown bills. And so I do need it. They may be thinking at a very logical level at that moment. And people do not buy on logic, they buy on emotion, right? So my natural, like if I was just a normal salesperson, I'd be like, super, well, let me tell you about the different options that I have for you.
But because I know. How people make decisions. I will say, tell me a little bit more about that. Have you had any situations in the past where you've been hit with, you know, a bill out of the blue? That was more than you thought. Tell me about that and what was the situation and how did you experience? How did you resolve it?
You ask questions about what their experiences have been and what they imagine the experience to be. What you're doing is you're really [00:15:00] getting them to live with. Uh, within that problem in that moment. So that as you share how to solve it, it's such a contrast to how they are currently feeling because you've stirred this up in them.
This is how the buyer's brain works. Now they're living in that and they're like, Oh, I don't want to be here anymore. What do you got? What do you got? They're
Leighann Lovely: begging. Give it to me, please.
Susan Trumpler: It's just a much easier conversation once you get it.
Leighann Lovely: So now we've gotten through the want, the need. Now we're moving into step three.
Susan Trumpler: Yeah. Step three, four and five go tightly together, but we'll start with three. And this is sad too. This is another one because you've done a wonderful job this far. And. You think you've got them on the quote unquote hook. They're like, Oh, they're eating out of my hands. This is going to be awesome. Guess what?
Leighann Lovely: [00:16:00] Isn't it? Every salesperson has had that like, okay. Oh, yes. This is going to be easy. And then they go, well, I don't get it. What just happens? Was I a different in a different conversation than
Susan Trumpler: this? When I was leading a sales team, I used to call that happy ears when Salesperson would come back. Oh, this is a done deal.
It's a no brainer. I'm like, do you have signed paperwork? Well, not yet. I'm like, ah, happy years. Stop. It ain't done till the fat lady sings.
Leighann Lovely: Right. I never, I never celebrate a sale until I get paid. That's
Susan Trumpler: oh, that's exactly. That's right. Cause they can always back out. Right. Even if they signed something.
Right. All right. So step three is the dreaded part of the brain process. Because once I decide that I want something and I need it, the next thing my brain is going to say is, whoa, whoa, whoa, before you make a decision, what are your choices? [00:17:00] Is there, you don't, don't hop on now, now, now, sometimes people will zip right through this.
I trust this person. I'm, I'm, I believe in them, right? But other people when they're making buyer decisions, pause in this phase and they're like, Hmm, so I like, I do, I do know now that I need something. So now I need to know what choices I have because I'm not going to just jump on the first thing I'm going to shop.
And the higher the ticket, the more people want to shop around, the bigger the commitment, the more they're going to want to shop around. So you really need to understand what's on their mind in regards to what are my choices. And that comes to step. That's why three, four and five are really close together is step four are what are the differences?
Okay. So once the brain is like, what are my choices? It's going to start a laundry list of this is. This one I get from this and this one I need this. And so they're [00:18:00] starting to make that, you know, kind of comparison of this and this. And so when, when I was in corporate sales and we had a lot of competitors that did very nearly the same thing, I sold for ADP, it's payroll human resources, um, outsourcing.
And so. I used to really passionate about how we were different and I would just get on my little soap box and I knew our differences and I would be able to really lodge them out there and like this is this and this and this.
The mistake that I made until I knew better was that not all differences matter. And that's the fifth, the fifth process. So what are my choices? What are the differences? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And do those differences matter? So Leighann, when you are [00:19:00] in a conversation with someone and they are trying to move through that particular area, what you want to do is really uncover.
Based on what they've told you about their problem and how you solve it, you want to be able to make them feel absolutely 100 percent safe and certain that they will be able to relieve the problem they have with the solution that you're offering. The tighter you can connect your solution to the problems that you heard, the more they will see that as the choice that really matters for them.
It's like, no one else has talked to me about this. No one else has talked to me about that. Boy, this Leighann, she's really got me covered left, right, inside and out. She's got the one. She's the choice that I want. So here's, here's the secret on this one really quickly. [00:20:00] When you talk about your solution, never, ever, ever, ever laundry list.
Everything that you can do like, oh, you get 6 months free and you get this and you get 8 weeks of that and 12 weeks of this and this handy dandy this and this other thing of that because that overwhelms someone and then they get confused. What you want to do is pick the top 3 things that will make the biggest difference in solving the problem that you've just.
Diligently uncovered and you tie them together. You say, okay, listen. So you said that this was a really big problem for you. You just, you, you know, we're worried. Let's go back to health insurance. You don't want to ever feel exposed that you may have a bill that will put you into bank medical bankruptcy.
Here's the part of our, our package, our health insurance package that will absolutely eliminate that worry. And you bring that piece, boom, right into the picture. And [00:21:00] then after you've talked about that, then you said, okay, then you said that you wanted to make certain that you had low premiums with a low deductible.
That was really important to you because from a cashflow standpoint, that really fit you. Let me explain to you how that works with our system. And then you bring that into the picture. But the problem is that people, once they start talking about their solutions, Oh gosh, you've hit us. You've hit your comfort zone and you are off to the races and you can't stop them.
And the person's eyeballs are spinning in their head. They're confused. They don't know why they would want it. And so they cannot tell if there's, you're the best choice. If the differences that you have matter to them because they're not tied directly, you're making them do the work. Does that make sense?
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. It's, it's the same thing. You know, I sold SAS solutions and wildly confusing because, you know, quite often they're so customizable and you don't go in and show them. The entire system or they [00:22:00] go, Oh, okay. Uh, I don't, you don't go in and train them on the product. You go in after the discovery and show them, here are the top three things you said you needed like the system to do.
Here's how the system can do that. Now it can do a ton more, but those were the three main concerns that you had. And I just want to show you how it can do that. It can also do the other things. Mm hmm. But those, these are the main things that you really were struggling with. You know, the usability of XYZ, the, you know, clients being able to log into their portal, you know, they're all struggling and they're confused and, and they can't pay easily and you're not getting whatever it might be.
Here's those three things. Exactly. And then you stop and go, What else do you need to know? I can show you more if you're interested. [00:23:00] But is that, is that some of the problems that you've been having with your other system? Is that going to solve the problem? And usually they'll go, wow, yeah, yeah, that is.
Dead on. That's exactly what I want. That is exactly what I need. And wow, is that so much easier than what we're doing right now. And that's, that's what they want to see. They like, that solves my top three problems and it can do the other stuff that, that we talked about. Because if you're presenting it to them in a way that they're seeing, you know, firsthand or if it's not a sales solution, it's something you're presenting the top three problems and you're saying, I can solve those.
Yes, I can solve the other stuff, but these were your top three. Right. We're going to go. Oh, okay. You're, now you've just created trust, a massive trust of. It is. Oh. And then those other pieces, maybe the, the next five things on their list, they're going to go, so you can do the other five things. That's
Susan Trumpler: exactly what happens.
It's like, well, then I, you know, because your system is so powerful, I'm just going to assume that [00:24:00] it can do this. And you're like, yes, it can. Right. And don't go there. Like I, I used to train solution consultants all of the time on demos and how to demo software. And it's like, this isn't a training session, right?
You just don't, if they say, I assume you can do it, you go, yes, you can. And I have moved
Leighann Lovely: on. I have sat in. Um, cause I used to sell, you know, soft time clock software solutions. So you know, implementing new time systems and, and then as I would have somebody come in and show, yes, we can bridge this to your payroll system as well.
So very similar to, and, and I have sat through where the payroll person came in and did their demo and I'm going. Oh, this is horrible. Why, why are you training them? They don't, they don't, why are we walking through how to enter in a new client? You just are like, like kicking them under the table going, do you not notice that the entire room is like got their arms across there, their legs are kicked back and they're like [00:25:00] head is nodding.
We don't train, you know, it's, and a demo should not be any longer at max. 25 to 30 minutes, unless they say, like, I really want to see, like, you know, all of this. Right. Because you start to lose them. And they're like, okay, now I'm bored. Exactly. So, anyways, I, I, I just, you hit, you hit a note with me there. So I'll get off my soapbox.
Well,
Susan Trumpler: that's the, you know, those are the first five steps. If you think about it, it's want and need. And then it's what are my choices, what are the difference and do the differences matter? And so have you noticed, and this is the part where people start going, Oh, we haven't talked about price yet. I thought that they just needed to make a decision on whether or not they could afford what I'm offering them.
And it's like, believe it or not, that's step six in the decision dynamics. And the way that I like to [00:26:00] label it is cost justification. It's not even about price. If you, because really what's on the buyer's mind, and I call this a value to price ratio. So whenever you are proposing a solution to someone, you're, you're telling them about your offer and you're listing the things and how it's going to work.
The buyer in their mind has a. Calculator running and they're at, they're at, Oh, this is probably going to be X much. And then you say something else. They're like, Ooh, this is probably why. And it's just a little bit higher. And then it's a little bit higher. So in their mind, they are coming up with the price that they think you're going to put out on the table, which is why I do not encourage people and to put pricing on, on their website.
That's a whole other subject. But when you go and reveal. When you're ready to reveal the investment, you want your buyer to be thinking, [00:27:00] wow, that's a lot less than I thought it was going to be. Or the price justification piece is that's totally worth it. I will figure out how to pay that because it is going to be so valuable to me that I will figure out how to fit this into my budget.
And they do, they do if you've done a really good job on steps one through five,
Leighann Lovely: right? And what I like about your process is that you're eliminating
75%. of the objections, even more, probably like 85 percent of the opportunity for them to give you objections along the way. Exactly right. Because you're addressing by really digging deep, you're, you're. You're stopping the objections before they can even happen. And so, and even in the pricing section, you're positioning [00:28:00] yourself as, well, I'm the expert.
I'm, I'm offering you everything that you have said to me at this point that you want, need. This is matching all of your pain points. It's going to solve X, Y, and Z problem for you. So at the end of that, what. Um, major objections. If I've done my job properly through all of those steps, what objections are left?
And here's where I learned early on. Somebody said to me, I said, God, you know, they're, they're keep coming back to me about, can we, can we somehow get the price down here? Can we, can we, you know, minimize the price here? And some, my, my boss years ago said. Um, is this worth your time? And I said, what do you mean?
I mean, I, I'm so close to getting this sold. Yeah. Is it worth your time? How many times are you going to go back, rework your price? I said, well, yeah, but it's so close and he goes, [00:29:00] if they buy on price, they'll leave on price. And in a year from now, this client that you sent spent a month renegotiating. And hours upon hours trying to figure out how to get them to buy from you is going to leave you anyways.
So any residuals that you had are going to be gone. And I'm like, Oh, he goes, sometimes you just need to look at them and go, this is my price and do the best I can do. And you are welcome to walk away. But I will tell you that this price is going to offer you everything that you need, everything that you told me and the service that you asked and the reason you're leaving the other place that you, and if you go to another company, you are probably in a year from now going to be looking again for a new service.
And that got drilled into me and for the [00:30:00] first time in my younger career, I realized, Oh, it's okay to tell a client. We're not
Susan Trumpler: right for you. Yeah.
Leighann Lovely: 100%. Or a prospect, not
Susan Trumpler: a client. Not a prospect. Yeah. 100%. Because then
Leighann Lovely: you free yourself up to be able to go after the right clients who understand your value.
And who are going to hurt, you know, buy from you and stay with you because you did the, you know, you sold them at the right price. You're making a decent commission. They're happy with your service and it's just, it's a good relationship. But anybody who, who's nickel and diming, they're buying on price.
They're never going to be happy. And they're probably going to turn into that, you know, where the salesperson's in standing by the water fountain going, Oh God, this client is driving me absolutely crazy. Do it. Do people actually stand by the [00:31:00] water cooler anymore?
Susan Trumpler: The virtual water cooler, I think. Right.
Leighann Lovely: Right. Uh, again, I'll get off my soapbox, but that was probably the greatest advice that I had ever gotten from anybody was, it was really good. Yeah. So, well, so now do you, do you do a training on the, the six steps, um, a buyer's brain goes through to make decisions?
Susan Trumpler: You know, it's kind of interesting because So I offer something called business momentum, um, that has five formulas in it.
One of the formulas and it's in your, it's in essence, your entire sales and marketing blueprint. When you're done with it, the sales formula is one part of that blueprint. And in the trainings I do in the sales formula, that is. Core of everything we talk about, how do you have a sales conversation? What are the, what's the process and the flow look like?
What's your message sound like [00:32:00] that whole, you know, go down and pick up one feature and tie it to a problem. This is most of the time when people say they don't. Like to sell it's because they really have never learned how to do it in a way that is so comfortable and Authentic that they feel pushy and sleazy, you know, so yes That is that's part of what we do and and it's called the she boss pro membership Within the she boss cafe and the name of the products
Leighann Lovely: business momentum That's awesome.
And, um, I, I'm sure that, well, I shouldn't say I'm sure, um, but there was definitely a time in my life where I'm like, how do you not feel salesy, pushy, um, you know, and as I grew into, you know, a more confident woman and more confident salesperson, a more confident me. [00:33:00] That's the key, a more confident me, um, all of the sudden that that kind of went away.
It goes away. Yeah,
Susan Trumpler: it, it absolutely goes.
Leighann Lovely: It does. Because you become your authentic self and all of a sudden those conversations become real.
Susan Trumpler: And you're not afraid to ask questions. I think a lot of times people, when they're new to sales, they're worried about asking questions because they're, this is my experience, they're afraid that they're going to be exposed for not knowing enough.
Right. So when I was in selling for human resources and payroll outsourcing, I was sitting in front of CFOs. I never was a CFO. Right. And I, I would sit in his office and I would think, oh, my gosh, if I ask him that question, he's going to say something that I won't understand or, or be able to really.
Connect back to it, right? So it's really just learning how to get comfortable with the person you're going to be communicating [00:34:00] with in a way that, like you said, just be yourself. You hit me with something. I'm not quite sure. I understand. Can you help me help me understand that a little bit more, right?
People love to talk to you and to help people and to, you know, talk about themselves. So asking the right questions and not being afraid to ask follow up questions is the way to authentic. Settling.
Leighann Lovely: And I, uh, same thing. I had that fear of. Am I supposed to know what that acronym means? Yes.
Susan Trumpler: Exactly. And then you just laugh and you're like, okay, boy, you're talking alphabet soup here.
Tell me, explain what you said to me.
Leighann Lovely: Right. You know, in your, in your younger years, you're like, I don't know, does everybody in the mainstream know what that, and then when you, and here's what really helped me as a young salesperson and, you know, for the younger salespeople out there, just questions are never bad.
Especially in [00:35:00] sales, even if you think, well, am I going to come off sounding stupid? Am I going to come off sounding like I don't know what, if you don't ask the questions, that is where you're, you're, it's, it's, that's where you're going to, you're going to, you're going to be in a world of hurt. Um, the thing that helped me is that I was, I was given the opportunity to go out on sales calls with, um, Um, multiple other people because my company, the company I work for, we did a lot of cross selling.
So cross selling payroll services,
cross selling insurance, cross selling. So I got to sit and watch some of these people who were five years in, 10 years in 15, 20 years in, and I got to see all of their different styles and they were asking questions where I was like, Oh. Yes, I'm not, I don't want to use the word stupid, but I'm not, [00:36:00] you know, crazy.
I knew I, you know, that acronym was weird or, and so it gave me the confidence. So don't be afraid to, if you have the opportunity at your company to say, can I shadow this person or ask another sales? Can I just, can I shadow you sometime on one of your calls? I just want to see how
Susan Trumpler: you do it. Mm. Mm hmm. Or ask
Leighann Lovely: for a mentor.
People love to mentor other people. Some people. Oh, they do. People in, in essence, love the opportunity to help other people. I do. I, I love the opportunity to help other people. Well, Susan, we are coming to time. This has been such an amazing conversation. I, I can't thank you enough for one, your expertise, um, two, your generosity and, and your time and coming on and talking with me today.
Sure. Um. If somebody wanted to reach out to you, um, to learn more [00:37:00] about your she boss cafe, um, program or your, um, your masterclass, um, training, unstoppable women in business, how did they reach out to you?
Susan Trumpler: They can find me all over the place. The best place to find me is I do hang out in the cafe all the time.
So she boss cafe. com tells you all about. The, the cafe, there's lots of free resources, but getting to yes, faster masterclass is inside the cafe. So it's, it's right there as well as lots of great women and, um, events that we have. I'm also hanging out on Instagram at unstoppable women in business, uh, is my handle YouTube LinkedIn.
You can find me anywhere.
Leighann Lovely: That is absolutely amazing. Um, again, thank you. Um, you know, for coming on and, um, thank you to the listeners. Please make sure that you like share, um, you know, another episode of, uh, Love Your Sales is
Susan Trumpler: a wrap. Thank you. Nice to be here.[00:38:00]
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Discover the Power of a Servants Heart

Pat Riley, president and CEO of Genhead, and I explore the importance of putting the customer first. Discover the power of empathy, active listening, and serving others, and learn how to overcome objections by truly understanding your clients' needs. Don't miss out on valuable insights and inspiration to take your sales game to the next level. And, by the way, Love Your Sales Podcast is presented by Genhead, the AI-driven company helping small and medium-sized businesses find their ideal clients and increase revenue.
Contact Pat
Website – www.genhead.com
Phone Number – 920-205-3589
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of love your sales. I am joined by Patrick Riley, president and CEO of Gen Head.
Gen Head provides their clients with buyer ready leads through a unique combination of their proprietary AI engine and advanced marketing automation. Pat also has 30 plus years in sales, spanning industries from manufacturing, distribution and technology as a producer and in senior [00:02:00] leadership roles.
Pat, I am so thrilled to have you join me today and talk about sales. Well, thank you,
Pat Riley: Leighann. It's great to see you and I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Yeah.
Leighann Lovely: Well, why don't you, um, you know, again, tell us just a little bit more about yourself before we dive in and, you know, hopefully give the audience a little gold nugget of information.
Pat Riley: Uh, well, I love talking about myself. I've been in sales, right? We love talking about ourselves. Uh, it's the first thing they teach you in sales is that people love talking about themselves, but I am a, uh, a senior, uh, sales leader and I have been, uh, around the block as they say. I started out in manufacturing and, uh, I enjoyed that very, very much.
Um, I sold so much that they gave me part of the company and, uh, we grew, uh, that company from a very small company to a good, [00:03:00] good sized medium company and then sold out. Uh, and then I got into industrial distribution on an international scale. And it was promoted into an international role, which I thought sounded great until I realized that when you are an international salesperson, that means you have to actually go to international places.
And I got tired of that very quickly with 4 small children at home. And so I looked again to get into small business and got into a technology company in Wisconsin with locations in Appleton, Madison, and Milwaukee, and we became the largest IT training company in the state. And I recently sold that in 2023, and we started Genhead.
Which is a very exciting adventure, uh, into AI lead generation and, uh, marketing automation, uh, and [00:04:00] it's become very successful very quickly. So very thrilled about that.
Leighann Lovely: Yes. And Genhead is our official sponsor of Love Your Sales. So Pat, I'm extremely thrilled that I get to not only have you as a sponsor of Love Your Sales, but also get to have you on and, and talk to you a little bit about, you know.
Sales and, what has, you know, created your success. So thank you for, you know, being that, that first sponsor of ours.
Pat Riley: Absolutely. And, and we're happy to do so. Uh, you, you're doing good work here and, and that's what's important. And, you know, one of the things that, that I wanted to talk about today, uh, was the, the concept and the importance of putting the customer first.
And, uh, I think that too many of us in, uh, the, what I call the front [00:05:00] facing roles, and that includes sales, obviously, uh, but, but it also encompasses marketing, uh, customer service, uh, technical service, even. Uh, if you're in a manufacturing or an industrial or a technical, uh, kind of a company, but essentially anyone that touches a customer is front is front facing, um, that they really need to.
Always put themselves in that customer's shoes and always think of them first, and when they do that, success will come. And, uh, I, I see so many, uh, people that are front facing that think of only the end. Uh, game, uh, of what they can gain from that client purchasing something from them [00:06:00] instead of thinking of what's best for that customer.
Leighann Lovely: And you make a very valid point in where a lot of salespeople get so hung up trying to force that sale. That through that process, they're not listening. They're not hearing the needs, they're not identifying what that client, that customer, that person. I mean, if you're just meeting somebody for, for a moment, that could eventually turn into a client.
They're sale. You said it earlier. I'm a salesperson. I love to talk. Right. We, we, we become salespeople because we know how to talk. We know how to get in front of somebody. We know how to almost entertain in a way. We're entertaining somebody, but then we forget, how do we shut up and listen?
Pat Riley: Well, and what do we do with the information?
So, so are, are we hearing or are we listening? It [00:07:00] is, is a very important thing. So. If we're hearing someone, what we're doing is we're taking that information and we're twisting it, uh, for our own good. Okay. If we're listening to someone, then we're taking that information and we're applying it as if we are that client.
And we're putting ourselves in their shoes and saying, what would I do if I were the client? And we've got to We, we, the best, the very, very best front facing people do that. And it always works out for them. I never have trouble closing sales because they just happen when, when I'm working with clients, And I'm, I'm, I'm obviously doing that now with, with our, our, [00:08:00] I'll still call it a startup, uh, with, with gen head, I'm on the front lines and working with clients on a day to day basis.
And, and I put myself in their shoes with their budget, uh, with their goals, with their needs, and I asked myself what is best for them. And sometimes it means not spending as much money with us. As I may have been able to get from them because that's what's best for them right now and long term. I know it's going to work out better for us because we're going to have a client longer.
Leighann Lovely: You're going to have a client for life, a client who trusts you, a client who's going to turn around and send you other clients.
Pat Riley: And that's what, that's what, that's the long game. That's what [00:09:00] great salespeople, because that person that I have, I have put myself in their position is now going to say, I've got a really good person who does my marketing and does my, my AI lead generation, and I'm going to tell people about.
And I'm going to share that story. And we have that happening right now. Uh, we've, we've got a person in Florida who is sending us so many people that we're having trouble, uh, keeping up, uh, with Mike, uh, down in Florida and he's doing a great job for us and, and, uh, God love them. And, uh, and so, and it, it, it has to do with.
With empathy and with reality of what you know about your product or service and then what you've learned [00:10:00] about the person who's sitting across from you. And if you don't know enough about the person sitting across from you, you haven't asked the right questions. Right. And that You need to back up. You need to back up.
And you need to even kind of start over again a little bit.
Leighann Lovely: And that goes into, you know, people ask all the time, well, Leighann, how do, how do you overcome objections? I said, well, if you're truly getting to the root of what that person needs, wants, desires, what their end goal is, you should be eliminating those objections all along that process.
Because if you're truly understanding, they're not going to have any, right? Well, they may have questions,
Pat Riley: they'll have some questions, right?
Leighann Lovely: Of course. But you're going to be able to [00:11:00] Identify them as you're having that conversation. And so when you get to that point of are you ready to buy, they're going to go.
Yep, I'm pretty sure you've covered. Absolutely everything, because you're systematically through that conversation, truly understanding and truly getting to the root of what are the three major things that people come, money, what is it? Logistics and fear. Those are the three things, money, fear, and logistics.
Do I have the money? Is this going to work? The fear driven, you know, how, how is it? Do I trust them? Do I not? Well, that one should be. You should be building that from the moment you meet them, the fear of the unknown, that type of thing. And then logistics. How do we implement this? How, how is this going to happen?
How do we make this work? Time elements, all of that. And those are just a matter of, well, let's work through all of that. But if [00:12:00] you are, if you are addressing those three main points throughout the entire conversation, and that person comes to trust and understand you, and you come to understand everything about that client and you become the trusted advisor and not the salesperson.
Pat Riley: Then at the end, you just, I always, the question that I always ask is. Are we ready to move forward? That's, that's, that's my great magical, uh, poof, uh, you know, close is your hard closer. My big, my big hammer, you know, is are we ready to move forward? And if they say yes, terrific. Uh, this is what we have to do next.
Uh, I need a check and I need a signature or I need whatever it might be. Um, and, and they just go, okay, yeah, that's what we have to do. Cause, cause I want this thing [00:13:00] or process or, or whatever it might be. And, and it's just the next natural step, but in order to get there, you must have. Um, what, what I've learned, uh, to call a servant's heart and it's the way that I manage people, it's the way that I work with clients, it's the way that I work with, uh, you know, even our suppliers, everybody that I interact with on a, on a business level, I try to serve first.
And, and Zig Ziglar, God rest his soul, uh, who I think was one of the funniest and best sales motivators. If, if people want to go back to, uh, to watching some of Zig Ziglar's videos, you will both laugh and learn at the same time, um, because he was, he was a funny, uh, funny guy. [00:14:00] Uh, but he said, um, that, that a person will get everything they want in life by giving others what they want in life.
And he is exactly correct. So I try to work on giving others what they want and what they need. And by doing so it comes around and I'm 55 years old. I'm not afraid to say that I've been around the block a little bit. And I'm telling you it works and maybe it doesn't work. In an hour, maybe it doesn't work in a day, but it does work because people come to trust you.
They come to like you and they will refer you. And those, those references powerful, far more powerful. Uh, even then what I can do with AI, which is amazing, but, [00:15:00] but a personal reference of, uh, one person to another, a coworker or someone in another company or someone in another industry, whatever it might be is absolute gold.
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. And you know, I think back, you know, when you say that, I think back to my, when I originally got into sales and you know, somebody goes, Oh, go to this networking and go, you know, the goal is to get two sales and as many business cards as you can. And I remember the pains that I felt when I was in this first networking meeting I ever went to.
And I thought, Oh my God, this is horrific. And I'm sure people have heard the story. It was horrible because I was told to do it wrong. And when I was told to do it wrong, it was the most pain stake, even for an extrovert who loves being around people. But nobody wanted to talk to me because they would approach me and I'm like, here's my product.
And they're like, get away from this girl. When you approach somebody [00:16:00] with the idea that I don't want, I don't want to take anything from you. I want to help you. I want to help you. What can I do for me for you today? That mentality has paid dividends for me year after year after year. There are people that I met 10 years ago that for some reason I've connected with on LinkedIn that that have remembered me, that have come back and said, Oh, I'm so glad that we've connected again because X, Y, Z, or you did this for me.
And I'm like, I, I. I don't, but it meant something to them at that time. And the same goes for me. There are people who did something for me that I go back to and I'll say, you did this for me then. How can I help you now? And it goes back and forth. And that's for the younger, new salespeople coming in. That is the greatest [00:17:00] advice that I was given was give first and ask for nothing in return.
Selflessly give. It will come back to you and, and yes, is there, is there a long game in that for, there is, but you have to wholeheartedly be able to, because you do build a community of people who go, wow,
let's make,
Pat Riley: let's make a couple to the new salespeople. Let's make a couple of things clear. You still have to make the calls. Yes. You still have to, you still have to, whatever your industry is, you have to do the outreach. Okay. Now it, maybe it's email, maybe it's LinkedIn, maybe it's AI, maybe it's the phone, maybe whatever it might be, you have to be the one to instigate the conversation.
So you don't get to get [00:18:00] lazy. it this way. Let's just, let's just be clear here. So this is not a shortcut. This is just the truth of, of, of what you can do. Because what I'm really, uh, trying to share with people here today is, is what I consider to be the difference between good and great, because you can be good, um, without having a servant's heart.
I've worked with people who, uh, will just pound the, the phones or whatever it might be in your industry, and they, they, they make so many calls that they get x number of sales every month or every year, whatever it might be. And, and they do just fine, you know? Mm-Hmm. every year. And they make a living and everybody's happy and the beat [00:19:00] goes on, but they'll never be great.
They'll always be good. And you know what? An organization needs people that are just plain good people. You can rely on people. You can count on people that, you know, are going to hit their quota. They're never going to blow up their quota, but they're never going to fall down on their face either. And every organization knows who those people are, right?
But. Um, to be to be perfectly blunt in my career, I never once had a quota, not once because I blew it. I would blow up numbers so fast. That when I had a boss, they wouldn't even bother with the quota because I would just blow up, I would just explode and I would beat everybody because that's, that's what I looked at was who was number one and then [00:20:00] I'm going to beat him because I didn't care about anybody else, but who was number one and how much could I beat him by.
And, um, and that's, that's internal motivation, but my external execution of that was to be a servant. So, so you can be very competitive. Okay. On the inside. And I am okay. Um, but, uh, but be a servant to people in your execution. And those two things can work together.
Leighann Lovely: And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to say that the majority of the greats have a very high level of competitiveness.
Often it is not, it is a self. a self driven competition. [00:21:00] It's not, I'm going to beat that person. I'm going to beat that person. It is often, I'm going to see what that number is, and I am going to set that bar high for myself. Because like you, I've gone into companies and they're like, okay, this is the number that you should beat this year.
This is the number that you should be at this year. And I'm like, yeah, okay. And I'm at the number I should be in year two and year one. And they're like, oh, Okay. And then they'll come to me. What do you think you can do in production this year? And I'm like, well, I'm going to be here. And they're like. Okay.
And then they come to me and go, so where do you think the other salespeople should be? And I'm like, I don't know, probably closer to me if they're doing everything they're supposed to be doing. But that's my own personal competitiveness that I don't want to be just okay at what I do, but I do that in everything in my life because I've just [00:22:00] I was a sports player in high school.
I was in, and in my family, it wasn't really my family. I just grew up with that. You know, I had two older brothers. I'm going to beat them. I, you know, I used to think I was going to be older than them one day. I'm going to, one day I'm going to be older than you. I'm going to be taller than you. Well,
Pat Riley: that was just how physics work, not when
Leighann Lovely: I was five.
It's that, it's that competitiveness, that competitive nature that Many salespeople have that internal, it's that internal competitiveness that you can't not, not all of them, some of them, you know, kind of like, okay, yeah, I'm, I'm happy. With just meeting this quota, but the ones that you see just take off and just are constantly rocking it.
It's usually an internal compass where they're like, I'm not okay with just meeting my quota. [00:23:00] I want to be, you know, if my quota is a million in sales, I want to be at a million five or I want to be at 2 million because that's where, and even though their boss is happy.
Pat Riley: I shouldn't say those guys, those people, those people, I don't, I wouldn't even give them a quota.
I didn't want, I didn't want to hold them back. I would just say, you don't have one. Your quota is the moon.
Leighann Lovely: And then they go, oh, okay.
Pat Riley: And, and when they would hit certain numbers, I would just show up with a hundred dollar bills and throw them on their laps.
I would, and just randomly, you know, just because they They'd hit a certain number and, and, and I, I, I would just come by. I just stopped at the bank and get, you know, a thousand bucks or 2000 bucks and a hundred dollar bills. And I just go, here you go. Here's a few for you and a few for you and a few for you and just randomly on a Thursday.
But because, you know, great greatness, greatness recognizes [00:24:00] greatness, right? And, and those couple thousand bucks goes a long way, uh, for people who are competitive, right?
Leighann Lovely: Yet, even though I have that wild competitiveness. It's not about beating somebody else. For me, it's about beating my own. And often, you know, it has kicked me in the butt.
Where I'm like, okay, I set the bar too high for myself this year. I'm like, riddled with anxiety and my bosses are going, Hey, you did a really great job this year. And I'm like, yeah, it wasn't good enough. Okay. Yes, that is my internal flaw that, you know, my own, it is, it is, it is a thing. And I'm not sick. I, by all means, I don't want my audience to mistake.
I am not saying that that is what it takes to be great. What it takes to be great is, in my opinion, is a, a balance between [00:25:00] always pushing yourself to be better, always, always looking to serve your clients. First and serve your community first, because that is what people recognize in those, in the, in other people.
Those are the
Pat Riley: characteristics. Yeah. One of the things that I always would say to people is that you push yourself and you pull others.
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. Really well said.
Pat Riley: You push you so you're pushing yourself to to be self motivated, right? You're pushing yourself. To make the calls pushing yourself to make the numbers pushing yourself to do the work, but you're pulling others up.[00:26:00]
You're pulling others with you. You're pulling other others to give you information to help them. And if you, if you can do those two things and they're, I know your listeners can't see me, but I'm doing a, I'm doing a balancing thing here with my hands, right? If you can keep those two things in balance, you will be great.
Absolutely. You will be great. That
Leighann Lovely: is something that, um, something that I've thought about. And if I could just. Pull because I've been a mentor to, you know, many other salespeople I've been, people have come to, how do you do? And I'm like, if I could just wrap my arms around you and pull you up with me, but I can't do the work for you.
There's, there's that certain point where it's like, I, I can, you know, you can lead a horse to water. You can't make them drink, but that is the true servant leader as [00:27:00] well. To be a true leader, you have to want. Others to succeed as much as you are succeeding, you have to truly be able to put in the time and give them your true attention to allow them to level up on themselves and, and also cheer for them and Pat, that is part of why obviously you went from producer to leader because that is, again, a characteristic, a care, a characteristic of
Pat Riley: characteristic even.
Leighann Lovely: But that is, that is a true, that's a characteristic of a, of a true leader, not a manager, a leader of somebody who's saying, yeah, I'm, I'm on the up, I'm trending up, but I want to take you all with me. I don't want to leave you behind. Let's go. Let's all go together.
Pat Riley: And as a leader, [00:28:00] the other side of that coin, Leighann, is that by doing that, you are giving up your time that you could be spending Um, either sharpening your saw, meaning learning something new or getting better at something, uh, or, or producing for the company, uh, which would, which would, uh, uh, help you financially.
So you, by, by helping others. Uh, pull up, you were sacrificing your own production. You're sacrificing essentially, you know, some of your own pocket. And again, that is part of being a servant leader is that you're willing to sacrifice some of your own personal gain so that others may succeed. If you're not willing to do that, then don't be a leader.
Yes. Don't, if they offer you, if they, if you're not willing to do that [00:29:00] and they offer you a promotion to a management or a leadership position, and you're not willing to do that, don't take it. And stay in a production position and just produce.
Leighann Lovely: Right. And to your point, to your point on that, and we're, you know, we're getting to time, but I want to, if I just want to say this, because so often.
Mistakes are made that people think, well, if I don't accept, especially in the sales roles. Well, if I don't accept this position, they're going to think that, you know, I don't think I'm good enough or I'm not good enough, or they're going to, people think they have to accept.
Pat Riley: And here's the thing. There's a natural, there's a natural tendency that if you're offered a promotion and you turn it down, first of all, you'll, you'll never be offered a promotion again.
Right. Right. And secondly, you won't be looked [00:30:00] at as a company person. Right. So what you have to do is explain your way through it. You have to say, I'm, I'm in a position right now where I don't feel that I'm a, I'm a leader. Of others and that my best place for this organization is for me to continue to produce at a high level
Leighann Lovely: and so many salespeople think they can move from producer.
to leader, and then they tank their career or they do, they don't do well. And then they end up having to leave the company because they feel like I don't have a choice. I can't move back or people will think I fail, but so many salespeople don't realize the stress that it takes to move from salesperson producer to leader of others.
And there have been times in my [00:31:00] career where I have said no. I am not taking this role. I just want to produce and they've pushed it and pushed it. Okay. Well, if you won't be, if you won't be the manager, will you just be a mentor? No, it's the same thing, except I don't get the
Pat Riley: pay raise. Except I don't get any money.
Right. No, and, and you have to, if you, if you don't take a promotion, there has to be a good rationale that again, again, this is a servant thing. We're going back to the servant thing. Okay. All you're doing is you're being a servant to the person who offered you the promotion. Right. And, and, and here's how it plays out.
I am not taking this promotion because it is best for the company. Correct. Yes, I am not taking this promotion because I don't think that I would I don't believe in my heart That I would be good at it And I believe in my heart that the best thing for this [00:32:00] company is for me to continue to produce At a high level and that will make the company more money and for someone else to take the role of manager Yeah,
Leighann Lovely: absolutely.
That was really, really well sought and, and Pat, here's, um, opportunity as we're, um, you know, coming to time, um, again, such wonderful information. So that's great insight. Uh, 32nd, shameless pitch. Here you go.
Pat Riley: Oh, oh, I get a shameless pitch. Well, uh, I guess I'll start at the beginning that, that every business needs new customers.
That's where we start. And what we have done is we have created a proprietary AI engine that allows us to work with our clients one on one, uh, defining their ideal customer profile and using AI [00:33:00] to find Find those nuggets, those perfect customer prospects just for them, that are perfect for, uh, whatever business that they're in, whatever service that they're in, whether it's B2B or B2C, it doesn't matter, and, and we, we narrow that bandwidth down to a very narrow group.
That's it. Uh, group of, of potential prospects, and then we market to them in a way that adds value to that prospect group. And we are seeing returns on that where we're seeing click rates, not open rates, click rates in the 48 to 50 percent range on first emails. And we just, we just saw it this week, uh, even this close to Christmas.
And [00:34:00] so, uh, it's tremendous. And so these kinds of returns in terms of marketing automation are helping our clients grow new opportunities at an accelerated rate. Leveraging AI, leveraging our marketing automation. And then finally, we have a customer relationship experience software as a service package that brings this all together.
With CRM tools, sales tools, marketing tools, website tools, uh, AI bots, all sorts of things that's very affordable for a small business to a medium sized business. And it all comes together, uh, in a way that helps our clients improve their sales processes. So from AI. All the way to sales [00:35:00] process. We are bridging that gap and helping our customers succeed.
And it is very exciting. I have to tell you, uh, I'm just thrilled with the results. Uh, and we're seeing a lot of customers just grow like crazy. So, and
Leighann Lovely: how would somebody reach out to you?
Pat Riley: Uh, you can go to www.genhead.com. Uh, or you can just, uh, you know what I'm just gonna tell them to pick up the phone and call me That's how crazy I am 920 205 3589 That is my direct phone number I will put that on a podcast Okay.
That's that is a shameless plug right there, Leighann. Yes, it is. So Genhead. com is where you can start and you can learn about us. Uh, but, uh, you can call the [00:36:00] CEO yourself and I'd be happy to talk to you.
Leighann Lovely: Pat, again, thank you. This has been an awesome conversation. I really appreciate your time and I appreciate your sponsorship.
Pat Riley: Absolutely, Leighann. And we are happy to be a part of what you're doing. You're doing a great job.
Special Thank you to our Sponsor Genhead – www.genhead.com
 
Robb Conlon – Intro and outro – Westport Studio - https://www.westportstudiosllc.com/
 
The Brave Ones – Instrumental Version Song by Jan Sanejko - https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/song/the-brave-ones/119489
 

Know Who Your Decision Makers Are and their Process

Anna Bruno discusses the importance of understanding the decision-making process in sales. She highlights the common hurdle of determining if the potential client is the sole decision maker or if they there are others at play spouse. Anna emphasizes the need to engage with both parties when making large decisions, ensuring that no time is wasted and that both individuals are included in the conversation. By doing so, Anna explains that the couple becomes a conduit, effectively relaying the information and selling the benefits of the product or service to the other decision maker. Tune in to the Love Your Sales to learn more about effective sales strategies and the significance of involving all decision makers.
Contact Anna –
LinkedIN - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-bruno-129532/
Thrive Armenia Foundation - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thrive-armenia-foundation-inc/
Iris Dating - https://www.irisdating.com/
 
Leighann Lovely: Anna, thank you for joining me on an, on another episode of Love Your Sales.
Anna Bruno: You're welcome. Thank you very much for having me here.
Leighann Lovely: So Anna Bruno is a force for change, reshaping financial independence with a unique blend of science and finance. Currently Anna is the VP of business development for Ideal Match Incorporated, an influential US based firm
with an Armenian presence in 2001, Anna founded [00:02:00] Thrive Armenian Foundation, transform Armenian into technology, advanced nation, teaching employable skills and renovating schools. And I'm, I'm so excited to have you, um, with me today and to, you know, chat. So why don't you give us a little bit more in depth about your background and, you know, what you do.
Anna Bruno: Sure. Thank you so much, Lynn. Um, uh, as I said, um, I'm Anna Bruno. Uh, I wear actually a lot of different hats and I feel like only the U. S. that you would have the privilege of, you know, wearing different heights simultaneously. Um, I am the, uh, VP of business development for Ideal Match Inc, uh, under which is, um, the current, um, Subsidiary that I'm a big part of, uh, which is, um, uh, iris dating, which is a dating app.
And, um, in addition to that, as you [00:03:00] mentioned, I have, um, uh, very much involved in different charity, um, projects and, um, you know, and, um, by background and by profession, I'm a financial consultant and I've done that for the last 25 years, but going back to sales, I feel that, um, Anything and everything you do in life.
Sales is a very big, important component of it. Because, um, one thing that I have learned in a 25 years of experience doing sales in different, um, aspects of, uh, with different companies. One thing I've learned that is, um, sales is in every part of our lives. Uh, starting from the skill of learning how to sell yourself, uh, to learning how to sell your company, your product and, um, your services, et cetera.
Yeah. So I think that's for now, you know, [00:04:00] that, and then, you know, if, uh, if you want, I can tell you a little bit more about my background. Obviously I was born in a tiny country called Armenia. I immigrated to the United States when I was young, I started college here. And at the time, I wasn't sure is that what do I want to be?
What's the most challenging thing that I can do? And I thought that, you know, going into, um, science and being a doctor would have been the most challenging thing. So I started my, um, journey as a bio med major, biochemistry major. Um, and along the way, um, I found my passion. I found my purpose in life. Um, and I was able to switch from I graduated, uh, with a degree in biotechnology and biochemistry, and I was slated to go into medicine.
But, , the joke in the family is that my husband is the real doctor and I am, , people's doctor, you know, I'm a money [00:05:00] doctor and sales doctor. And, , so, so I was able to pivot into, , doing other things, , other than, , going into medicine and I'm, I've never looked back.
Leighann Lovely: You know, isn't that funny? So many of us when we're younger or definitely when we're younger, you know, in our twenties and we have this idea of, of here's what we're going to do.
And we set off on this path and often the path we set off on is not. Um, where we find our passion, our purpose, our interests, um, and you're, that's a clear, you know, clear, clearly what happened with you in, in that situation. And
Anna Bruno: I'll give you, uh, I'll give you a very quick example, uh, because I do travel the world a lot and, um, you know, we in, in the United States are very fortunate, uh, and most of [00:06:00] us don't realize how fortunate we are.
To have all these benefits of living in this country, one of which is the flexibility because I'll tell you, I'll give you an example in Europe, in France or even in Germany. Once you choose a path, it's very difficult to change, to veer off from that path. It's very, very difficult. But in the U. S., I mean, look at me, I mean, um, I studied out, you know, I went for medicine, then I graduated and I decided I was going to become a financial planner, and I spent 20 years.
Doing that becoming being a financial planner, and then I was able to pivot again and and start a foundation and start a charity that I was able to pivot again and and and do, um, you know, work with different companies and help them with their sales and their sales training. And, um, again, it's, uh, it's, it's very important that we do realize that, you know.
[00:07:00] Sales. I hope my, one of the things that I really hope from our conversation today would be, is the fact that people would look at sales from a positive perspective instead of negative perspective, because unfortunately there is stigma and there's like a negative dogma with sales and like, Oh my God is a sales person trying to sell me something.
So hopefully we can change that conversation, um, together.
Leighann Lovely: And that's part of why, you know, this podcast Exists is because sales people in general, and you know, and we all have in the back of our head, you know, and I used to, I'd say, Oh, here's another financial advisor run away. Like the last thing that I want to talk about is my finance.
Not anymore because now I'm starting, you know, I'm at a certain age where I'm like, I really need to talk about my finances, my financial health. As I'm starting to get to a certain age. Right. But I remember being in networking meetings where I'm like, Oh, financial [00:08:00] advisor, run away. I don't want to talk about cause it's so personal there.
Even as a salesperson, that's how I, that was like my thought process of like, I don't want to talk about this. I, you know, because again, it's, I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to have that conversation, but now with. Yeah. These, with the realization that every conversation matters, every relationship that you have matters because they're not trying to do anything other than just build a relationship.
And if that relationship blossoms into, yes, I'd like to have a further conversation about what my portfolio looks like. How can I improve this? How can I It doesn't matter what the person is selling as long as they're not shoving it down your throat.
Anna Bruno: You just that was the point that I [00:09:00] was hoping that you would make because you're absolutely correct.
There are different personalities in every field and different people approach sale selling or sales differently. And I think 1 of the most important things to have is finesse. To have the ability to understand when and how, how far you can push the envelope, trying to basically having the empathy to, um, try to build a relationship with people and give them what they need at the time that they need it.
Uh, and there's a fine line that we all walk on, right? There's a fine line between, um. Them knowing what they need and, uh, understanding it and then you knowing what they need. And, uh, again, that's that's really the. The science behind selling, because you have to be persistent. You have to remember that what you do is [00:10:00] very important.
And what you do is very beneficial to most people, even if they don't understand it at that time, but at the same time, there's a time and place of when and how you approach things and when and how you are presented, and that makes a difference between. Uh, a really successful salesperson versus not so successful
Leighann Lovely: salesperson.
So now I want to go back. So you, um, you're the VP of business development for Ideal Match Incorporated, which has other businesses underneath it. And one of that being is Iris Dating. So let's, let's kind of break this down to a better understanding. So Ideal Match, um, this can service. B to C as well as B to B.
Correct. Correct. Okay. So you at times are going to businesses and, and doing [00:11:00] a B to B type sale. But you also, which this is a unique skill because quite often salespeople will find a lane of, I really like B2C sales. I really like B2B, these acronyms. So for those who are not familiar with this, you know, business to business or business to consumer are two very different types of conversations and being able to pivot in between Back and forth and having those conversations is, is can become very difficult because it's a, it's a very, not very, it is a different sale.
I mean, you're still working with an individual, but you're in a B2B situation, a business to business. You're dealing with somebody who. May not necessarily be the person who's signing the [00:12:00] check you're dealing with somebody who's got to go back to other decision makers and make a decision as a group for the health of the company in a beta.
Meet a consumer. They typically are the person who's going to sign the check and use the product. 100
percent.
Anna Bruno: You're absolutely correct. And what I would say is, um, there are a lot of differences and similarities, uh, when you look at B2B versus B2C selling. And, uh, typically, this is what I've seen. Uh, uh, people say it's easier to do B2C.
Business to consumer than B to B for several reasons. Um, it's a lower entry barrier, right? So it's easier to reach individual people than it is to reach decision makers in large corporations. There is a lot of gatekeepers to get a hold of them is. Like a whole another field in itself. We could have a whole conversation about that.
How do you pass that gatekeeper? So, um, [00:13:00] typical, you know, sales cycle or time it takes to get to the right person and get some traction is much longer with B2B than it is with B2C. But the rewards are much higher, right? The B2B is much bigger rewards. So it's like, Um, it's almost like having real, like, uh, commercial real estate versus residential real estate.
I don't know if anybody is a real estate investor out there. I would certainly compare it to buying residential real estate and being a landlord to a residential person versus buying commercial. Two different things, two different approaches, but it's kind of, you know, there's a lot of, like I said, similarities and differences between the two.
Leighann Lovely: Mm hmm. So how do you, um, how do you approach and, and what, I mean, how is this approach different and how do you manage, you know, I guess, let's walk through how the process is different. [00:14:00] Um,
Anna Bruno: okay. So great question. And what I would say is the most important thing is for any salesperson to understand the process.
Like having realistic expectations of what it is that they're trying to accomplish and what time frame would it take for them to accomplish this? And the other big important thing is your pipeline. You can't just take one or two, you know, um, uh, potential clients. Or targets and just go after one. You have to have a long term time horizon, and you have to have a pipeline of which you're doing your work.
And there's a lot of talk about. Being consistent, I think I just read another research report saying the number one differentiator between successful salespeople and non successful is the consistency. Consistency is key. If you [00:15:00] have a plan, if you have an approach, and of course, it's very difficult. To, you know, uh, get shot down to, to hear nose and to, you know, to, uh, see like you're not seeing any immediate results.
But again, the difference between successful and not successful salespeople, and especially when it comes to B2B as opposed to B2C, it's a longer. Time it takes longer to to see the results that it does with the B to C. And I think the 1st step is again having the right expectations, having realistic expectations, having a plan and.
Executing on that plan consistently every day, as long as you like, I know, as long as I do what I'm supposed to be doing, if I've done, you know, I've done my leads, I've reached out to my, uh, leads, and I've done all the things that I'm supposed to be doing all my calls, all my emails, all my LinkedIn reach outs, everything that I'm supposed to be doing, and my [00:16:00] pipeline is what it is, and it's kept, you know, we are in a Yep.
Different, um, processing with different projects that we have, then I can feel good about the fact that I have done everything in my control. Um, everything else is like I said, it's a human nature for us. It's very difficult to work and not see a lot of results. And it helps when you do the C results and this is why quite often it's easier to go to B2C because the results come faster, easier, quicker than B2B.
But like I said, the rewards are much higher with B2B. You get the potential of making a lot more money, a lot bigger deals than you do with B2C.
Leighann Lovely: Right. So the differences between B2B and B2C are clearly, you know, you've got a higher reward in, in the, in the B2B world. But it takes typically a longer life cycle.
So I'm going to assume that it's, you're going to need a much larger [00:17:00] pipeline of people in multiple different stages of that process, consistency in the constant reach out with them. It's, you know, constantly gathering and
Anna Bruno: adding.
Leighann Lovely: Absolutely. And then, yeah. And so in B2C and, and again, I'm, I'm not much of an expert in the B2C world.
I've done limited selling in the B2C except for, you know, makeup and cleaning supply where people were coming to me, I, you know, I'm standing in a Sam's club. This is going way back to, you know, my, my first real sales job where I was like, I want to go into sales, you know, where people are walking in the door saying, Oh yeah, I'll buy that.
So it was more of a. You know, you basically hand them the product and say, here's why you should buy this. Um, but when it comes to outreach, it's a much more faster, quicker. More. Would it be more of an [00:18:00] impulse buy?
Anna Bruno: It is. And it's just like I said, it's, um, you're dealing with, um, individuals that are not as almost like hardened by, um, being pitched so much, right?
When you're dealing with, uh, senior vice presidents of big companies, um. They're being bombarded with sales pitches all day long every day, and they've almost like developed thicker skin for it, and it's much easier for them to say no than to say yes. And like you said, you mentioned something very important.
They're not the only decision maker. It's not really up to them only. And oftentimes it's they take the information and they go up to the higher ups and they have their board meetings and they have additional meetings and then like a team of people will make a decision on what to do right as opposed to dealing with an individual where typically.
They can make a decision much faster and oftentimes it's a [00:19:00] very emotional decision to be made, you know, it's it's they can do it faster. And that's, um, as long as you can tap into. Typically, they said people respond to fear or greed, right? Uh, they said, you know, if you can, um, you know, uh, tap into the fear or greed, you usually can have the sale.
So, you know, And that's why it with dealing with individuals. It's much easier. I'll give you a quick example. I was just recently calling is the talent agency. There's that modeling agency because the product that we have is has applications. The technology itself is patented. It's it's an AI technology that's patented and the technology is capable of predicting and matching people based on attraction.
So it basically puts Things together and finds what would be the most attractive, whether it's the face or facial features or whatever in different, [00:20:00] um, um, markets or in different industries. So I was calling this, um, talent, the talent manager of this company, and I had just met with him a few days prior and I had a conversation with him and he said, Oh, okay.
Call me. He put his phone number on his card and gave it to me. So I, I call a few days later and the gatekeeper is driving me crazy. Who are you? What are you? What do you want? I'm like, I was just talking to him. I was just there in the office a few days ago. He told me to call him. She drove me nuts. Let me talk to him.
Let me blah, blah, blah. Uh, well call him with whatever number he gave you. I'm like, well, this is the number I'm calling you with the number that he gave me. He, I mean, it was a she. It drove me crazy. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm not going to let this woman get to me. I have to get to him. And it was literally back and forth so many times.
And I don't know. I almost felt like saying how incompetent is this [00:21:00] person or is this like, like, is this her job? Like literally she just kept asking me more and more questions. And I kept explaining to her that he was the one who had asked me to call him. And she literally, like, I was like, can you at least just.
Send me to his voicemail. I just want to leave a voicemail. He asked me to get in touch with him. I just want to leave a voicemail of telling what it is that we discussed and then if and when he has an interest, he can call me back. And typically like it's such an like, like non threatening thing to do, go, go to voicemail or send an email.
And this woman, I'm telling you, it was a battle of the patience. Who's going to, am I going to have the patience to deal with her? Or am I going to, I literally wanted to shove the phone down and I said, but you know, it's tough. It's tough. My point is it's tough to deal with. Right. Gay people.
Leighann Lovely: Well, not only are you dealing with the gatekeeper, you, you go into a meeting and you think, wow, I had this great meeting [00:22:00] and you know, he's the CEO or he's the, you know, the president and then come to find out like, oh, well I don't actually make the decision.
I have a board of directors and then you go, so I've made this great relationship with a person who has absolutely no say. And then you, your proposal goes in front of people who have no. idea who you are. They have no emotional buy in to the relationship that you created with somebody, which means that you basically are a piece of paper and they're looking at the numbers.
They're comparing your numbers with the other proposals. They're looking at your, you know, and depending on what your, you know, your offer is, and, and anybody who out there we have a one of a kind offering. Nobody else has it. No, nothing else can do what we do. There's often something [00:23:00] out there that can do something similar.
I'm not, I'm not negating that there are products out there that are superior and that are coming out that are, especially in the AI world, Anna, I mean, having something that's patented in the AI world is, is, is an amazing thing to do. But people don't quite understand that right now. They don't know the capabilities.
So they're basically looking at. You know, all of these, you know, and I used to sell SaaS solutions. So they're looking at all these, you know, three proposals and they're going to go, okay, well, what's, and so the greatest advice that somebody gave me was, look, if they're going to buy on price, they're going to leave on price.
So you go in with your price and if they come back and negotiate and negotiate, negotiate, you get to a point where you're like, I'm walking away because in a year from now, you're going to leave [00:24:00] because you're found something that. is cheaper. And that, and that's what it comes down to. And I don't, I don't want a client like that.
I don't want a client who's going to come to me and say, yeah, let's come down on the price. Okay. Let's come down a little bit more, a little, a little bit. And in this negotiating for penny after penny, after a penny, if they're buying on price, not on relationship, not on the tools that you can offer or whatever that product.
They're going to leave you on
Anna Bruno: price. This is why you want to concentrate, concentrate on the why, not the product and the features of the product. You want to concentrate on what the product can do for you, right? What's the outcome? Should you purchase the product or purchase the service? What is the outcome that you're getting?
Why are you doing this? Not the how, not the features and the [00:25:00] benefits of the product, because like you said, everybody can compete with the different features, and anybody can compete with the price. And the other thing, the point that you made, if I spend time with, um, the CEO or a president, vice president of a company, then I realize, okay, he's not the final decision maker.
Uh, the most important thing that I can do for myself to make sure that this sale, the sale happens. And what I would suggest is to try to get in front of those decision makers, because like you said, you said something very important. You just become a piece of paper and people make a purchasing decisions.
Oftentimes it's a very emotional even in the B2B world, it's still an emotional decision. And if they know you, and they like you, they're much more likely to buy it from you. Even in the B2B. Just like in the B2C, so if you find yourself in a situation where, well, I spent all [00:26:00] this time and I said, you know, did this great rapport, I developed this relationship with this person, but oh, well, he's not, he's just, you know, going to give the paper to proposal to, um, a team of people, try you to do your best to your very best to get in front of those decision
Leighann Lovely: makers.
Right. And I'm going to assume that in the B2C world. That's probably not with a dating app. Um, I'm going to hope not with a dating app, but in the B2C world, you also are going to come up against, especially with larger purchases. I'm going to go talk to my husband before I move forward, you know, expect.
The knocking on the door of, hi, I'm with window company X, Y, Z, or with door and window or, or garage or carpeting company. I'm not going to, I'm not going to go and put my credit card down. You know, if, if that purchase gets over a thousand dollars, I'm not going to make a [00:27:00] decision on, on a purchasing of something for my home that is larger than a thousand dollars without going to my husband and saying.
Should we do this?
Anna Bruno: Well, that's one of the reasons why oftentimes, if you've seen like the sales process, oftentimes, especially with larger decisions, the one of the first questions or the hurdles to pass is you ask your potential, uh, client. Um, Are you the only decision maker or do you have to make this decision with your spouse?
And if the answer is I have to make the decision with my spouse, you don't go sit in front of them alone and then only in front of this person, you make sure you're in front of both of them at the same time. If that is the way they make their decisions for large purposes, for example, or else you're going to waste your time and they get to a point where the person really likes what you have to say, but they're going to say, well, now I'm going to go talk to my spouse.
And now they're going to tell, they're going to become the conduit, right? They're going to try to [00:28:00] sell everything that you told them, you know, from a professional to their spouse. Wouldn't it be better if you were the person who is selling the spouse? So I think it's a very good point you're making, uh, with especially the larger purchases.
You want to make sure you understand what their decision making process is, who is involved in that decision making process. Maybe it's not the spouse. Maybe it's the parent. Maybe it's somebody else who read this, figure it out, make sure that when you're spending your time pitching, make sure the right decision makers are in front of you.
Leighann Lovely: So, um, I purposely, you know, the last time I like buying a car, I will purposely go without my spouse or I'll send my husband without me so that, and then I'll have him call me and be like, okay, where are you in this process? Like how's it going? Do you really like the car? Blah, blah, blah. And then I'll say, okay, call me.
When you're ready to have me come [00:29:00] in and start really like the negotiation. And if we get to a deadlock where he's like, yeah, they're not coming down. This is like, I'll swoop in and be like, you know, honey, we're not doing this. We're not. And the last time we bought a car, I was able to get them to come down like a ridiculous amount, because I just walked in and said, wait, they're not going to match what you.
Like what you said. And they're like, Oh, my husband's like, yeah, no, they said they can't do it. And I'm like, okay, let's go. And they came down and matched. The amount and I'm like, I mean, and, and again, this is, you know, my years of sales experience and I also worked in my younger years at a car dealership understanding how much
Anna Bruno: percentages, because I think people would love to know percentages, what, what they could expect, like how much could a sales car, uh, Of course, the sales card, uh, salesman go down on the price.
Right.
Leighann Lovely: Well, nowadays with all [00:30:00] of the shortage and, and there's inflation on vehicles have been, I would have no idea anymore, but that is, I mean, I, every single car that I have ever bought, they have come down to the price that I'm like, I'm not paying anything over this. Um, I've like, I'm a master negotiator when it comes to buying cars, but it's been now quite a few.
Before the pandemic, before all of the shortages, before I, I remember one car dealership or one sales guy says to me, God, I feel like you just pretty much stole the car from me and, and he goes, and all of the swag, cause I walked out with like all of this, like swag and free a year of free oil changes.
And, but there, there is a way to, you know, to turn around those negotiations on the person. Um, to, to your advantage, you know, when it comes to that stuff and again, not on everything, you know, you can't walk into a, you [00:31:00] know, a, a
Anna Bruno: box, the secret to your success when it comes to dealing with the auto dealers or the salespeople in, uh,
Leighann Lovely: dealerships.
Well first of all, You know, they, they, they play this game of, I'm going to go talk to my finance manager. You know, this is going to be contingent on your credit rating. Well, first of all, I know my credit rating. I'm like, yep, I know my credit rating. I know that I'm approved at the highest rate. So there's no need for you to play a game of you might be approved for this.
You might be approved for that. I will be approved. For the highest credit rating, like, so I know all my financial information. So the games that they play with some of the people that come in, they don't work with me. They don't work with my husband. I know all of that information. So when they sales people, a lot of car dealers are in the back in the day, they, they played that game like, well, that price is for people who have the highest credit rating.
We don't [00:32:00] know. And I'm like, yep. No, that's not a problem. I have. That credit rating. So that's not a problem. So let's eliminate that off the table and let's talk about, you know, X, Y, Z, you know, and that's usually the salesperson's kind of like, well, well, we don't know that we'll have to run your credit. No, I already know it.
You can go run my credit. You can go tell your finance guy to run it. I already know what it is. You know, so you need to take back control from the person who's trying to play. Cause they do, they play these games of. Well, I don't know, it's probably going to be this because and so when they're playing games and for me, you know, the first time I did this, I, I walked in to the dealership and I said, I will buy a car from you today, but this is how much you have to give me for my car.
And they're like, [00:33:00] uh, that's a really specific number. And I said, yep, I'll buy a car from you today. Or I walk, but this is what you're giving me for my vehicle. And they're like, I, we, I don't, I don't know if we can do that. I'm like, okay, great. Either you do or you don't, but I'll move on. And within about 20 minutes, they came back and they said, yeah, we can do that.
And I
Anna Bruno: said, Well, the difference is because most people, uh, again, going back to emotional purchase, most people look at a car. Almost like fall in love with a car, they emotionally get attached to the purchase. And then it's very difficult to negotiate from a point of view having emotional connection to the purchase.
You have to go in very cold, very cold and say, I'm ready to walk out if I don't get my price. And it does. It doesn't. Um, only relate to the cars, but in anything that you purchase in life, whether it's real estate or cars or anything else, you have to leave [00:34:00] the emotions at the door. Otherwise you're in big trouble.
Leighann Lovely: And for me, it's very unemotional because I'm not, I don't care. I'm like, I'm not one of those people's like, I have to drive the fanciest car in the world. I drive a Mazda. I don't need to drive a fancy car. I don't need to be That's not my, like, my showpiece thing. Now, when I bought my house, it was really hard to keep my emotions under control because I wanted the house I bought.
The good thing is, is that the real estate agent that I had kept You know, me blocked from that. They kept, you know, you got to keep the emotions out of it. You got it. And I was like, huh, I don't know how, but you know, again, having a really good real estate agent was like, you know, you set your price, this is how we're going to negotiate this way.
And I'm like, okay, okay, okay. And I, and it, that turned out, but again, you're right. As the [00:35:00] buyer, especially a purchase like a car, because you are walking in, they already know you want to buy. As soon as you engage with the salesperson and say, I'm ready to buy, they've got you on the hook. It's, I mean, it's not like you can go, I don't know, you've already, like, I want to drive this car.
Now you're driving the car and now they're talking you up. Like, how does it feel? Does it feel great? Do you like it? They're engaging you. And they're getting those juices, those, those emotions. You need to be willing to go, yeah, I can walk. And it's even harder now with the shortages and everything else, but it's got to be completely non emotional.
Anna Bruno: This is why they make you go take a test run, right? Take a test drive of the car because again, you're in a car, you're driving it. I even had a jewelry, uh, friend, um, family, uh, A friend of our family who [00:36:00] owns a jewelry store and he not to everybody, of course, but the people that he knew, like, uh, he would give his rings to certain women to wear for free.
For a week or 10 days or two weeks, and then more often than not, they would end up buying the jewelry. Even if they initially said, no, no, no, I don't need another ring. I don't need another piece of jewelry. I have enough. And then you're like, okay, just wear it and then just give it back. And then I would say a high percentage of the people would end up buying the jewelry.
It's because it's an emotional decision.
Leighann Lovely: Right. Because they become emotionally attached to the way it makes them feel. So I, you know, this has been an amazing, um, conversation and I would love to continue it, but we are coming to time. I want to give you the opportunity to, you know, give you your 32nd pitch.
Um, anything it's. You're the floor is open to you. So go ahead and, you know, have your 30 seconds.
Anna Bruno: Well, I would say is, you know, being the [00:37:00] business development, um, uh, you know, being in charge of, uh, vice president of business development for Iris dating. I would definitely say, try out Iris dating. It's a one of a, uh, one of a kind app.
It is powered by AI and it can do many, many different things for you. Save you time. Save you, um, you know, uh, take out the emotions out of the picture because it's going to help, especially for men to, um, take out the fear of rejection because oftentimes we don't approach people because we think we're not good enough.
So it's an amazing app. It's powered by a out a I and it's capable of matching you with your true attraction. The person that you truly attracted to. But it goes a step further because it finds for people with mutual attraction. So give it a try and come back and let me know what you think
Leighann Lovely: about it.
Awesome. Again, [00:38:00] um, that's Anna Bruno. Um, you can find her on LinkedIn. Yes.
Anna Bruno: So you can find me on LinkedIn, Anna Bruno and, uh, Thrive Armenia  Foundation. That's my charity. Uh, of course, you know, all of my social handles are get skills with Anna Bruno because I teach a lot of different skills. So if you want to follow me, it's get skills with Anna Bruno on all different social media accounts.
And thank you again. It was lovely. It was fun. And hopefully we can do this again.
Leighann Lovely: Excellent. Yes. Um, I really appreciate it. Um, again, thank you for listening to another episode of love your sales. Really appreciate the audience support and have a wonderful day.
Anna Bruno: Thank you very much. Bye.
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Creating Personalized Experiences = Customers for Life

Kat Morrow, a seasoned sales professional with 30 years of experience in the Jewelry industry shares her insights into the art of selling. She emphasizes the importance of building authentic relationships with clients rather than focusing solely on transactions. Kat's passion for her work and her deep knowledge of gemstones shine through as she explains how she strives to create a personalized and joyful experience for each customer. She also discusses the power of referrals and the value of treating every customer, regardless of their budget, with the same level of care and attention. Kat's expertise and genuine love for her product make her an exceptional salesperson who goes above and beyond for her clients.
Contact Kat -
Website - https://katmorrow.com/
Phone – 414-403-8700
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kat-morrow-a6ab196/
 
Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of Love Your Sales. I have Kat Morrow joining me today. Kat has 30 years in sales. She is the former owner and CEO of Robert Hack Diamond, where she spent 20 years there. She is a graduate, with a gemologist degree from GIA, currently she's the owner and CEO of Kat Morrow, private gemologist, specializing in procuring fine diamonds and jewelry, [00:02:00] custom designing and jewelry appraising for private clients.
And she loves. Diamonds Kat. Welcome. I'm so excited to have you join me today.
Kat Morrow: Oh, good morning, Leighann. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm excited for your business and to share my love of, um,
Leighann Lovely: jewelry and my love of sales. Yeah. And I find, um, I find what first diamonds I loved. What woman doesn't love diamonds?
Kat Morrow: right. I'll run into someone, but then maybe they love color gems. So that's
Leighann Lovely: okay too. , right. If, if I had, um, if I had the money, I would turn my, um, it would turn my little, my little fake necklace here that I, I made myself into a, a real diamond around my neck. But, um, I, you can make it happen. Yeah. for free.
No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. One day. Hey, one day. [00:03:00] So I, I'm wildly interested in the how. , selling and working in this industry, , works because as we were just kind of talking, this is a very different type of sale because there is a lot of emotion associated with sometimes large, well, even small, even small purchases.
Let's, let's first talk about, you know, just in general, how do you work with and engage? Your clients.
Kat Morrow: Okay. Well, I think the biggest thing is, is that we have to be authentic in what we do. And so, um, the type of sales that I do, as you mentioned, is very emotional purchase. It's something that people. Um, you know, they want an experience with it's not just, uh, very rarely an impulse buy when they're buying an [00:04:00] engagement ring or an anniversary or, you know, for some special occasion or even buying for themselves personally.
Um, they want to, you know, have. Have an emotional attachment. There's a feeling that goes along with that decision because they're buying something of value of, you know, lasting value that hopefully they're going to enjoy for many, many years and then pass on to someone else and, you know, important in their life.
And so, um, you know, the approaches that, um, you know, I'm. I've always focused on being very relationship focused versus transactional. So this is not a transactional type of sale at all. This is something where you have to, um, you know, build that trust with the customer and, you know, maybe you don't make the sale on the first, um, meeting with the client, but.
You know, if you've taken the time to really learn [00:05:00] about them, their interest, it's, it's kind of like really in, in most type of sales, you have to do a lot of, um, legwork to find out exactly, you know, what's the occasion, what's the purpose, you know, how, you know, you know, I don't even approach budget in the beginning because I really want to find out all about them and the person that they're giving this to.
And, you know, why they are deciding to, um, gift or purchase jewelry for this particular type of occasion. So that's, you know, that's really important is just getting to know your client and, and they have to know that you really have a direct interest in, you know, their life, their purpose, not just, you know, what can I sell you?
So if that makes sense.
Leighann Lovely: It absolutely makes sense. So, you know, there's a common thread when I talk to, you know, to everybody, it's, it's one, you have to show up, right? You have, and, and I don't say [00:06:00] literally walking in the door and showing up, you, you as the salesperson have to show up emotionally, mentally, physically, you, you have to be there.
Mm hmm. And then really engage to get this information. Right. But it seems to me that there is another layer to this, that, you know, we, when you walk into a business, there's very much a gathering of the facts. And that purchase is, while there is emotion involved, they, they want to have a good, happy feeling when you walk away.
There is a fact, factual, you know, does this meet all my boxes? And they're walking away going, okay, let's, let's compare and contrast on a factual, logical [00:07:00] basis. Whereas, I'm not, I'm going to guess cause I, I have never sold diamonds. I've never sold something that somebody is going to stare at, look at, have, feel, get a feeling from, you know, I'm married.
I got my engagement ring. I look at it every day and when I look at it invokes an emotion in me. Yeah, absolutely. Which means that the person who's buying this from you wants to invoke that emotion. Right. So when they're buying it, they're going, those boxes are so different. And the experience that they're going through when they're working with you.
It's not logical the way that most, [00:08:00] yes, there is some logic involved. You made a, you're right,
Kat Morrow: but it's more emotional than just, you know, I mean there is a compare and contrast, especially if they're buying a particular size or quality diamond or whatever. But in general, it's, it's very more of the gut feeling, their intuition, their instinct.
Yes. So how do you play
Leighann Lovely: to that? Yes. And maybe that's the wrong word. I don't know. How do you,
Kat Morrow: I think that's, that's, that's actually, yeah. How do you, you know, kind of hone in on that and capitalize on, you know, getting, getting on that level with them. And, you know, I guess, you know, to back it up a little bit, I have to say that, you know, I'm not an expert in sales, but I know.
What, what works for me and what works for my client. And that's through many years of, of kind of trial and error and perfecting all of that. Um, but I think, you know, the, the best way to describe it is that you have to go [00:09:00] into any interaction with a client, whether it's the type of selling I do or business to business with a hundred percent.
Um, passion and confidence in what you're doing, because if you don't believe in your own product or service, if you don't, um, you know, believe in yourself that you have, you know, the best ability to present and to deliver to that client, um, then, you know, you're, you're not going to operate from any kind of integrity or authenticity.
Because I love diamonds and jewelry so much. I don't think I could do as well selling, you know, computers or things that that don't have, that don't resonate with me as much, but I've always loved jewelry from like little on. , so. You know that it's like I love my product. I love my diamonds. I love my jewelry.
I love looking at them. I [00:10:00] love appraising them. I love trying them on. I love putting them on my clients for them to try on and and I love educating them about it. And that that's because
I have such a deep seated passion and love for my my product and my services. So. I think that authenticity comes across to my clients, and then that puts them more of in a relaxed state because they know that I'm not just trying to sell them anything.
I'm trying to sell them the thing that's going to be Lighting up their eyes, just like when you look at your engagement ring every day and love that. I want them to, you know, love and cherish their jewelry for many years to come. So that comes from my passion imparting that on to clients and then, you know, getting them excited and, you know, bringing in some technical things, but, you know, just [00:11:00] trying to keep it,, fun and asking them, you know, how do you feel?
Try the sun, you know. How does this make you feel? How do, how do you look in this? What, what do you think? And so, you know, it's, it's quite different than, um, you know, like I said, the transactional of doing business to business. You got to keep the conversation going. You have to keep it very, very personal and, you know, but knowing your boundaries, obviously.
Um, but I think the more clients trust you, the more they're going to open up to you. So, um, I think we're all,
Natural born salespeople, believe it or not, some people say, Oh, I don't know how to sell or I don't, I don't love selling. But when you think about it, you're, we're all, um, we're all salespeople.
We sell ourselves every day and in so many different situations. And so when you're when you're focused in on working with a client, and you know, whatever business you're in, you have to realize that You [00:12:00] do this every day, you know, you are a salesperson every day. And so now you're just bringing that culmination of all your knowledge and experiences and care and concern for your customers, you know, to find the best thing for them.
So I think once they know that, , then it's easy for them to kind of let down their guard a little bit and share, you know, what is motivating them to buy. Does that make sense? It
Leighann Lovely: absolutely does. And I got completely wrapped up in what you were saying, because it's just listening to you. And, I can tell and see.
 The passion that you have, I mean, it's, it's, and if you're just listening to this podcast, I mean, if you, if you, if you jump on and you watch, you know, this right now, the clip of, of Kat talking about her passion for, , you know, for diamonds and jewelry, it's, it's, it's amazing. I can see it [00:13:00] in. In your the way that you're talking about it.
It's unbelievable. Um, there's no denying how much you enjoy what you do. And I'm going to guess that that comes out, you know, I'm ready to buy. What do you have? Yeah, well,
Kat Morrow: you know what you mean? You talked earlier about preparing yourself to, you know, coming into the right mindset. Now that just doesn't mean, you know, mentally preparing yourself like, okay, I know my, I know my products, I know my services.
Yeah. You have to, you have to physically, emotionally, and spiritually prepare yourself as the salesperson. You have to, you know, show up in a certain way because let's face it. There's, there's, there are competitors out there and that's okay. We all actually can be, um, you know, motivated by having a little competition too, but if you don't show up.
You know, with, with joy, with energy, with life [00:14:00] in your voice, you know, with, with, um, you know, just looking your best. Okay. And that doesn't mean that we always have to wear the most expensive things or be in the best physical shape or whatever, but if you've put in some effort to make yourself show up in the best possible light to your customer, that sets you apart from your competition right there.
And they feel like if you've taken the time to put that much care into yourself to mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally prepare yourself, then They're going to take care of, they, they feel like I'm going to take care of them in the same way, if that makes sense to you, is that I want to share my, my space with them and pull, pull them into that as
Leighann Lovely: well.
So, absolutely. I mean, there, there, there have been people who have, [00:15:00] who, I've walked away feeling bad that I can't buy from, from somebody because they've put forth so much effort and they've done such an amazing job at the presentation or the pitch or the right. And it's not even the presentation or pitch.
Well, it is. It is. You just don't realize that it's their pitch, which is when you, when you realize that you're sitting across the table from somebody who is the greats. When you've been, when you've been pitched and you go, wait a second, did they just completely and totally pitch me and I want to buy from them and that that's when you know that you're sitting across the table from somebody who has reached a level beyond.
Great. Because you're like, I mean, all, everything in you goes, I want to buy from this person and I'm going to find a way to do it. And then you walk away [00:16:00] and eventually when you either can buy or when you do buy, the only person you think of.
Kat Morrow: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. I can't tell you how many of my clients become my, my, my friends, like my family, because you know, we, we do connect on such a, a deeply personal level because of the emotion and this type of buying.
And it's, it's joyful, you know, because, um, because then I know they're going to refer people to me or that I'm going to get future business out of them or whatever. And I've been in that situation too, where I've maybe not been in a position where I could buy from someone that I connected with, like, like you just described, but then maybe you refer someone to them.
You just give them a good review or you do something to reward them for, you know, being such, such an exceptional person. So.
Leighann Lovely: Right. Well, that's, that's, that's absolutely amazing. Yeah. [00:17:00]
Kat Morrow: You know, I have to tell you, I love the name of your company, which is love your sales. Because if you, if you love your sales, that's another way of saying love yourself.
Because if you don't love yourself and what you're doing and your product, and you don't believe in yourself. You cannot project yourself properly to your customers. So you, you've got to love the industry or in the business that you're in. I mean, you know, even if I always tell people we are all CEOs, like sometimes they'll say, what do you mean?
I don't own a business, but we're the CEOs of ourselves. We are our own brand. And so, you know, what is the brand that you're presenting to your clients? And what I'm presenting to my clients is, you know, that I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that they're happy, the [00:18:00] gift giver is, or the gift receiver is happy, and I'm going to go out and procure something for them, like I was doing it for myself or for my own family, because each person is important to me.
And it doesn't matter if they're spending, and this is key too. You have to treat the person that's spending a thousand dollars the same as you would treat the person who's spending thirty thousand dollars because you don't know that they couldn't refer someone to you that's, um, you know, going to buy something more expensive or whatever.
But to me, it's like, Part of that relationship building that thousand dollar customer. That's as important a sale to them as it is for the person who's buying something more expensive. So to me, it's, it's no difference. I'm, I'm treating everybody with the same level. And I, I have to tell you, I used, I, I don't like the.
Um, the expression under promise and over deliver [00:19:00] that's kind of, you know, like a main stages under promise. And then when you deliver great, they're really going to be grateful. No, you, you promise that the level that, you know, that you can deliver. I never under promise. I mean, if I can over promise and I'm already up here, that's great.
But I never under promise. Like I know what my value is and my worth is, and you know, the product and the service that I can deliver. So I set my expectations super high. And then if I go over and above that, then that's, that's a job well done.
Leighann Lovely: So that's amazing. Yeah. Now, now you made a comment that I, um, so, and here's something, you know, the referral, you treat the customer who buys a thousand dollars the same as you treat a customer that buys 30, 000.
And this is something that I often hear like in networking and people who will be selective in who [00:20:00] they. Um, talk with or meet with or schedule their time with, which I can understand people who, but here's, here's something that you, with what you said, it is vitally important that treating everybody, a customer, a buying customer, a non buying customer, you know, and, and this I'm going to refer back to, um, I was at a networking meeting and somebody goes, well, you know, the, the Mary Kay lady said that she wanted to do a one on one with me.
Why would I meet with the Mary Kay? Lady. And I'm like, because the Mary Kay lady knows absolutely everybody. And she will introduce you to everybody. She's a master networker. In fact, she could be sitting in front of the wife of the CEO of [00:21:00] the largest company in Milwaukee. Right. And, and I, I can't stand it when people discount.
others for what they think they're valued at. Right. And it, it absolutely drives me wild. I understand, you know, scheduling your time. We can't meet with everybody. Right. We still have to do the work. But you, the idea that a salesperson would discount somebody's value without ever taking the time to get to know somebody, that is vitally important to your success.
Right. Mm hmm. Thanks. Right. And could ultimately damage you. Right. If you are discounting people because you are choosing or saying that outright, that well, that person's only [00:22:00] going to spend 50. Why would I want to waste my time? Because that person who spends 50 could have or could know somebody that could spend 100, 000.
Right. Right. Right. Well, it's a
Kat Morrow: person who doesn't value relationship building then they're looking strictly for the here and now and that's short term gain and long term loss.
Leighann Lovely: So right. And so I love that you made the point to say, Oh, I, I treat each customer the same. It doesn't matter. Because that is, that is the key to having your referral base and, and, and trust me, I'm not a 30, 000 buyer.
I am your, I am your 1, 000, your 1, 000 to 3, 000 buyer who's [00:23:00] like, uh, that doesn't mean that I don't have friends who have 50, 000 rings on their finger. Right. And, you know, again, and this goes back to
having a army. An army of people out there that when they say, Oh, you know, I'm, I'm considering buying a gift for somebody. or especially of a certain age. If you have, you know, a whole bunch of people in the late twenties, early thirties, is that the general marriage age now? I'm not a hundred percent sure.
Kat Morrow: Yeah, actually. Yeah. Mid to mid to late twenties for engagements, um, been into early thirties, a little later than it used to be. It is. It
Leighann Lovely: is later than it used to be. You have a whole ton of referrals in that [00:24:00] age range, right? I mean, even if you just have 30 people that you made really happy. They refer one person, that person refers a second person that refers a second person refers a sec.
That could make or break your year. Oh yeah.
Kat Morrow: And you have to always reward those people that refer to you in some way or another. It doesn't always have to be a. You know, a gift card or, you know, it has to be at least a thank you, a call to say, Hey, that's really awesome that you, you know, send someone over to me, you know, you've got to acknowledge that, you know, and, um, and, and then make sure that you follow, follow up with all those referrals and those leads.
I mean, you know, the key is in. You know, just, you know, staying not hovering over people, but you've, you've got to, you've got to reach out and you've got to stay in contact with people and things like that and have proper follow through. But always think those people [00:25:00] that are referring to you, they're golden.
Um, you know, some of my best referrals have been from smaller sales or people that I haven't even charged for anything that I've done. Um, things just gratis because whatever I didn't. feel it was appropriate to charge because it was a quick thing or, um, or something. And it seems like I get great referrals and, and Google reviews from those type of people that are just happy that they thought that their purchase or their referral or their question was small, but it wasn't small to me.
It's all important because, um, Because they didn't know the answer to the question and I did. And so I was happy to be able to provide that service or that information to them.
Leighann Lovely: So, you know, and sometimes that is the, is the most important thing. Somebody comes to you and you're like, Oh, I can help you with that.
And you quickly, it takes you 10 minutes. [00:26:00] It would have taken them two hours. Right. And they are completely grateful. For your help and they go and give you a review because of something that you didn't even think of like you, you were like, Oh, yeah, that's I can get you that information or I can help you with that really quick.
And for you, because you're in your industry. It's, it's, you don't even think like, Oh yeah, I can. And all of a sudden for them, it means the world, right? And they turn around and they're like, Oh my God, that she saved me like three hours or four hours of research and floundering around. And that happens to me all the time where I'll reach out to somebody and I'm like, I'm completely a perfect example.
I was trying to change, legally change my business name. I have been working on it for a month. Okay. And I talked to a tax accountant and he goes, here's [00:27:00] what you do. I went and I followed his instructions. It took me 15 minutes. There you go. I'm like, what's the, I've been working on this and it was like, Oh, well this was really easy.
It's like, because there are people out there who know. Like, they just know that's their area of genius,
Kat Morrow: right? And so they're happy to gift you with that and, um, you know, that's, you'll remember that person, you know, and refer clients to that, that particular accountant. Absolutely.
Leighann Lovely: Correct. He specializes in business.
You know, in that particular area of businesses and he understands how all of that stuff works. And I was like, well, maybe I should have just gone and asked somebody like, and those are the things that may make or break businesses of being able [00:28:00] to gift. Information that become now, Kat, how much of your business is referral?
Kat Morrow: Well, um, I would say a good percentage now when I had the jewelry store, when I own the jewelry store, I did, um, a lot of advertising, you know, traditional, uh, television, radio, newspaper way back when, um, because we were talking about in the nineties and early two thousands. And so. Um, I relied a lot on people walking through the door, but now that I have my, you know, private business, I don't have a physical store location.
I work in person with people online. Um, and so a lot of my business, I would say at least 50 percent of it comes from, you know, referrals or former clients. And, you know, I mean, I still do social media. I still I still do, you know, events where I do vendor tables at country clubs. I hold trunk shows. I try to [00:29:00] do different things to get my name out there.
You know, this is a perfect example doing this podcast, which I'm so appreciative of. Um, but I just, I'm trying to. Show people that there's a different way of doing business, you know, especially since covid. So many things went remote and there were actually a lot of jewelers who closed their stores and went to more of a, you know, private by appointment like I do, but I feel like now I can even focus in a little better on my clients because I'm not so scattered running all these aspects of my business administratively and I can focus just on.
The relationships with my clients and finding the best, you know, products and services for them. And so, um, and I can offer it at a, you know, a smart, smarter spend because I don't have all that overhead and I don't have all that, you know, kind of stress and chaos going on. And so I think because I deliver that real [00:30:00] personalized attention, you know, people are loving giving me those referrals.
So, and I'm so appreciative of
Leighann Lovely: that. Well, that's amazing. And we're coming to time. So here's your, you know, shameless 30 seconds. How do people reach out to you? You know, again, your business name, give all of the, the short and skinny on if somebody does want to schedule an appointment with you, go ahead and give us that information.
Well,
Kat Morrow: you know, I always invite people to visit my website because I think it's a, it's a really great informative, um, website. Uh, it's katmorrow. com, basically my name, K A T M O R R O W, katmorrow. com. On there, you can chat with me, you can schedule an appointment on my calendar with me. You can at least see all the different services and things that I offer in the products.
And I would say, um, you know. I don't care what your question is, what your need is, you know, let me try to help you with all of your jewelry needs, [00:31:00] whether it's, you know, buying a diamond, selling something, because sometimes you get jewelry that you inherited, you don't even know if it's real or not, I can help you go through that.
I can help you sell it. You know, there's a lot of different services as a gemologist that I can do. So, um, Or my phone number. You can call me at, uh, 414 403 8700. But all that information is on my website. So just go there and, um, I'm happy to chat.
Leighann Lovely: Amazing. Kat, again, the, your insight has been so much appreciated.
Um, I really appreciate you coming on today. It's been an awesome conversation.
Kat Morrow: Well, I appreciate you, Leighann. Thank you for doing what you do and giving me this opportunity and, you know, I hope that it, it helps someone, um, you know, maybe just one little thing is triggered in their mind and, you know, if anybody's in the sales industry that wants to connect with me also just to, you know, so we can kind of share because I'm learning from other [00:32:00] people too, you know, you're never too old to learn.
I've always been a, you know, a curious cat, I say, because Oh. And I want to learn more things too. So I'm appreciative of connecting with other people in sales as well. Awesome. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much.
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