[SPEAKER_02]: This is the sales gravy podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, I'm Jeb Blunt, guest selling author, fanatical prospecting objection, sales EQ, and ink.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm here to help you open more doors, close bigger deals, and rock your commission check.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, next up on the show is Andrew Osborne from Manhattan, Kansas.
[SPEAKER_02]: Quick story about Manhattan, Kansas.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of my favorite days there was the Weener Dog Races.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right in downtown, Manhattan, Kansas.
[SPEAKER_02]: lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: How much you got going on, Andrew?
[SPEAKER_02]: Jeb, I kind of got a question for you that's kind of left field, if you will.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I don't have a polished sales background.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm kind of new to the sales industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Originally from a manufacturing supervisor background.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking to gain the knowledge to transition into a more sales role, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I see the opportunities in a sales career.
[SPEAKER_00]: With that said, just for new B-sake, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody new to a sales industry, somebody trying to break into the industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much of the sales process do you think is more of a people skills problem versus a sales mechanic problem?
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, it's a great question.
[SPEAKER_02]: So all sales is as poetry and probability.
[SPEAKER_02]: The poetry is in the messaging, right, it's how you say things what you say, how you ask questions, it's the art of it, and probability is a science of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: For art and science, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit of both.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sales is a process, the set of steps that you run through.
[SPEAKER_02]: to the mechanics of running a sales process are crucial because what the sales process does essentially is that it allows you to engineer the relationship that you're building with the human being that's buying from you.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you just look at it as a chess game, there's motivation and power.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you're motivated to sell something, they're motivated to buy something, and the party with the most alternatives has the power, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So, if you've got sits competitors, and you're trying to sell something this person, and all sits competitors are selling something similar to you, people you're selling to a more power than you, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: On the other hand, if you've got a pipeline full of opportunities, and a bunch of cells you're going to make, and, you know, they're jacking you around, you've got a lot of power because
[SPEAKER_02]: But what we're trying to do is we're trying to eliminate or neutralize their perceived alternatives to doing business with you by making them feel good about doing business with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: In other words, we want to motivate them to do business with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that happens to the relationship.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we think about the mechanics of a sales process from the prospecting call to the first time appointment to how many discovery calls you make or if you're in a short cycle sell the structure of your conversation that like brings them through that journey to get to a point, we're running the process so that over that time we're building trust.
[SPEAKER_02]: for getting familiarity, we're making them feel good, we're making them feel motivated, and we're making them say, well, these other choices that I have that I can make, those don't feel nearly as good as working with Andrew.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why the mechanics actually matter, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And those little tricks and tactics those things, trick to for kids, those little tactics, they always end up failing over time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It might work once or twice.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once someone faces a tactic, they figure it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Friend of mine is a purchasing guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: He put a picture of a fish in his wall that was just ugly, because he knew every self-person would come in and ask him about the fish.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a joke, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because he's like, that's how people build a rapport.
[SPEAKER_02]: They ask me about things in my office, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So you do those tricks, you lose over time.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the mechanics of how you run a process, that's basics and fun in the mills.
[SPEAKER_02]: That does not change.
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to start here, you got to go here, and you're engineering the process over time to build a relationship.
[SPEAKER_02]: and the relationship matters greatly because that's why we're there and we're not talking about making friends with people that is not what I mean.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean trust, familiarity, you seem like a person that they want to do business with.
[SPEAKER_02]: They like you.
[SPEAKER_02]: They feel comfortable with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I mean by that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if you're reselling to someone over and over again, like if you're building out in the count and that account's going to be a long-term account for you, you're going to be
[SPEAKER_02]: Then, yeah, becoming friends with them and really getting into their world matters greatly.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's a short cycle cell and you're going to see them once or twice, you're just building relationships inside that particular bubble or that moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: But those two things matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if anybody tells you that one or the other doesn't matter, they're just wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: And till robots are buying from robots, human beings buy from other human beings.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we are biased as human beings to like people and just like people and trust people or just trust people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the more you build the trust and the relationship with them, the more likely bending probability in your favor, they're going to buy from you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, the way I play cells is everything's about probability.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every move I make on the cell's chessboard is about the probability of that particular move at that particular moment in that particular situation, getting me the outcome that I want.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got to hold on to both of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you ask me which one matters the most, I would say process, running your cell's process,
[SPEAKER_02]: but only slightly, because the problem with just building a relationship is that we focus our time and attention on being liked or being friends, and that friendship and that like ability gets in the way of closing the cell.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not in cells to build friends, we're in cells to make cells.
[SPEAKER_02]: The friendship matters, your ability to run a consistent process, whether it's a single conversation or multiple conversations, will serve you way better, long-term,
[SPEAKER_02]: then having the gift of gab and being able to build relationships with people and taking the play golf and lunch and all those things, those things are great, but I'll put my money on the process person way before I'll put my money on the gift of gab person, if that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm actually glad you said that because coming from an operations supervisor, operate production manager like position.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm used to being focused on, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Systematical, you do this to get this to move to that early on in my sales career, the company that I'm doing a side hustle with.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was able to grow my sales up to 80,000 a month, but that was just through brand on the hey, by my product, by my product, by my product, probability, I just increased the number of reachouts in order to get that number of people to say yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But over time, I didn't have a process.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everything started tanking.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now my sales are downland below minimum, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's where I'm starting to come through and figure out that sales process.
[SPEAKER_00]: Specifically, in your neck of the woods, the prospecting, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because all the sales that I've seen, they look at that final number.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you have to make two sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to make ten sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to make X amount of dollars, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The systematic layout, that is a lag measure.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a result, naturally.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something that I can't really control.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I can control is the prospecting.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many reach out to am I doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: How many phone calls am I doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: And now that I'm going through and implementing that and seeing those results, it's making everything a lot easier to comprehend and execute on.
[SPEAKER_02]: You super important what you just said.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to nail this down.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're exactly right.
[SPEAKER_02]: You cannot control the outcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can only control the activity.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the very top of the funnel is the prospecting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, you can prospect widely and just call everybody, you know, and you can say, hit one of my one of my one of my, or you can get targeted and you can improve the probability that the people that you're interacting with will have a meaningful conversation with you that will mean that they move into your cell's pipeline.
[SPEAKER_02]: The control is targeting, who am I targeting?
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can control your messaging.
[SPEAKER_02]: The targeting is science, the messaging is art.
[SPEAKER_02]: When I go from there is, I'm looking for, you're interested in moving money ball.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm looking for my money ball.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whenever I'm working with clients and I'm working in their sales process, there's always a money ball.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's that one metric that if you focus on that has a tendency to drive everything else, yours is probably different than mine, but mine is first time appointments.
[SPEAKER_02]: Prospecting outreach, the activity, I've count all that we track all that at all matters.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what matters more is how many brand new first time appointments, FTAs, as we call them, do you have every day that are qualified?
[SPEAKER_02]: For most people on my team, and we're in a business services because we sell training to businesses and consulting to businesses,
[SPEAKER_02]: If we have two really good qualified appointments a day, we're going to win.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we have 10, about half of them are going to end up going to the next step, half of them will qualify us out or we'll qualify them out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are they won't show up or what have you?
[SPEAKER_02]: But about half of them will move to the next step as we progress through the cell cycle in 30 to 60 days, we'll have closed two of those.
[SPEAKER_02]: So every 10, we typically close two.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, some of my cells are absolutely closed one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So my sales reps only close a half.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's when we start working on the art, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So if they're getting the first time appointments, but they're not closing them, then it's either the appointments weren't qualified in the first place, which that means we get to go back and look at what's our targeting or they're in the sales process and the client doesn't like them or they're not asking the right questions or the business case they're building is not relevant to the customer's business because we didn't
[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't understand how their business worked or what they were trying to accomplish or the outcomes that they were trying to deliver.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then you're going back to let's work on honing our presentation skills and our messaging skills.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's work on honing our asking questions and listening skills.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are let's work on business case skills.
[SPEAKER_02]: or maybe we're not getting high-wide in deep in the organization, multi-threading, is, we say in the modern world.
[SPEAKER_02]: But once you get the system working and you would get this from manufacturing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You were like in a lean manufacturing environment, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Once you had the process working, then you can begin to apply lean or six sigma in the manufacturing process to begin removing the variables that then start to narrow your output
[SPEAKER_02]: At first, like if you open up a line, you're spraying the line with all these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: These things are good.
[SPEAKER_02]: These things are exceptional.
[SPEAKER_02]: These things are okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's a really bad way to run a business.
[SPEAKER_02]: You start running lean or running six sigma.
[SPEAKER_02]: You start bringing it in so that you're getting a very standard output every single time.
[SPEAKER_02]: From a manufacturing standpoint, this is exactly how you look at sales, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So you get the system and the process down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you look at your results, then you go back and say, where do I have variables in my system that if I can fix those variables?
[SPEAKER_02]: Will change or get me a better set of results so that over time, instead of what you're experiencing right now, which was up and down, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You get a very consistent, persistent output over time by running the system.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why, by the way, I put my money on a system person over a relationship person in most cases, because a system person is a lot easier with them to figure out what's missing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then it is with a relationship person that's just a burst of energy all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have no way of going back and figuring out where in the process things went wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jeff, I appreciate all of your knowledge and all your wisdom there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can sit here and I can just start firing off questions left and right to you, because a lot of what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm connecting with and I'm putting the parallels between manufacturing and sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just wanted to thank you for this time and subjugating.
[SPEAKER_02]: Appreciate that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for picking up my brand new book too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Come back on.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll take some of the other questions you can put some of this in practice.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you've got the 90 day to level up your sales skills, that book is like one exercise every single day literally like having me as a coach in your back pocket.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you'll hear my voice now that you've heard my voice in the pages and you'll go practice through just run it through that book every single day one exercise at a time it'll transform the way you look
[SPEAKER_02]: Once at the end of the time, very good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for jumping on with the day Andrew.
[SPEAKER_01]: Process gives you confidence and people skills get you connected.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ultra-hype performance in sales is the result of mastering both the science and the art.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's crucial that you be a mechanic.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a perfect process isn't the finish line.
[SPEAKER_01]: ultra-hyperformers level up by executing the soft skills that create legendary human connections with their prospects with a new well-willed system.
[SPEAKER_01]: And remember, when it's time to go home and you are ready to give it up, make one more call.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Juppla Jr., we'll catch you next time on the salescrary podcast.