[SPEAKER_00]: This is the Sales Grady podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, I'm Jeb Blunt, guest selling off their fanatical prospecting objection, sales EQ, and ink.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm here to help you open more doors, close bigger deals, and rock your commission check.
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the Sales Grady podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Jeb Blunt Jr. And today we're taking a deep dive into the intersection of behavioral science, sales history, high stakes, world of closing, and how the best minds and sales strategy today are thinking about the negotiation table,
[SPEAKER_02]: Our guest today is Mr. Todd Caponei, I am such a fan.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have been following his work for a very long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: We haven't had a lot of crossover, Todd.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm really glad you're here because your previous work the transparency sale turned the industry on its head by proving that you can leave with your flaws and actually build trust faster than perfection ever could.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's also an author of the transparent sales leader, a framework for revenue leadership.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's back with his new book, The Four Levels of Negotiating Todd makes the argument that the poker face.
[SPEAKER_02]: The hostage negotiation tactics that have been taught for decades are actually destroying our deal values and our reputations.
[SPEAKER_02]: Todd, it's wonderful to have you on the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't wait to get nerdy with you, so let's go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to get into your new book, but before we do, you are a sales historian.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have been following this since I was in college, maybe I was in high school.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just thought it was so cool because I'm a deep history fan and a deep nerd when it comes to these kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sales history is a very particular niche.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't say that I am the most nerdy about this particular space.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you have so much cool stuff if you're watching on YouTube, he's got a phone from like the 1908.
[SPEAKER_02]: 1908, he's got books that I think were written.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Julia Caesar was invading Gaul about sales and professional B2B selling.
[SPEAKER_02]: What draws you to this particular kind of history?
[SPEAKER_02]: More so than other kinds of history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Back when COVID hit and nobody would talk to people like myself and you and a jab.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a book from the 1940s on sales history and it was called The Five Great Rules of Selling from Percy Whiting and I was I picked it up and I start reading it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, wait, this could have been written today, 85% of it, but it kept referencing books further back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I started digging and I kept finding things that A, we continued to believe that sales was
[SPEAKER_01]: invented it in the 1980s, like no, almost everything we do like objection handling sales process, all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: It comes from the 1980s and 1890s and it's so relevant.
[SPEAKER_01]: But number two is there are things that sales history got right that we consistently get wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so part of my effort is I think this is cool and nerdy, but part of it is there's some lessons that could be learned that we could apply to today because I'll tell you this early 1900 sales was trusted it was respected in many cases it was even admired as a profession we lost that kind of know why.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so maybe we can help get the profession back to where it was and stop scraping the bottom of Gallup's annual professions list along with politicians because we don't want to be hanging out down there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's tough on the bottom, you know, but you got to work hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of like this this history.
[SPEAKER_02]: analogy, you know, as someone who's been in the sales world my entire life, you know, Napoleon Hill, right, and you go all the way back there and you have Dr.
[SPEAKER_02]: Covey and in the seven habits and all of these different books that were written and then you get to kind of the modern age of selling, get to like Gilmple and Gary again, Glen Ross, if you, you know, that's like when people think sales started, was when that movie dropped and then says,
[SPEAKER_02]: It might be to be sales professionals or everywhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have everybody from the IBM, you know, zig zigglers to eat the frog, Ryan Tracy, and then you get to like our era where we have, you know, Jeff Blunt and you have Mark Hunter and you have talk to Pony and you have these different people 85% of those books could have been written today.
[SPEAKER_02]: one of the things that you will shock you as a listeners, if you actually go back and read this stuff, you'll be like, oh, yeah, they were right.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like 85% was the same.
[SPEAKER_02]: What in your mind, as a sales historian, or somebody who's kind of gone through that from a historical perspective, what do you think drove maybe the lack of trust with the sales profession?
[SPEAKER_01]: Mike, second favorite quote of all time from sales history is 1911, guy named Arthur Sheldon, book is over my left shoulder, the art of selling.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is a guy that in 1902 was the one that really founded public-facing sales trend.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, while sales trading was taking place before that, he'd started an organization, was doing correspondence courses.
[SPEAKER_01]: But his quote from 1911 is simply, true salesmanship is the science of service.
[SPEAKER_01]: grass with that thought firmly and never let go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Back in the early 1900s, sales was designed to be a service profession.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were there to be a guide and a navigator and a consultant for customers to show them what's possible and to guide them through the 1916 World Sales Congress takes place.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the first sales conference of its kind.
[SPEAKER_02]: middle of the world war by the way.
[SPEAKER_02]: The first, the greatest war in the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they got a good scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a world war happening around the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: They decide in the US we're not in it yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so sales conference takes place 3,000 people get together.
[SPEAKER_01]: The keynote speaker was then sitting present then Woodrow Wilson.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, World Wars going on and this dude is Keynoting a sales conference like why would that be?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, goes back to that point about
[SPEAKER_01]: very specific marching orders for the sales profession and it was around this idea that hey, the rest of the world is screwing around like they're messing with each other and we've got an opportunity to become a world superpower, but that requires sales people with a service mindset, the entire sales that conference everybody's got like believe it achieve it, they got all these terms for what they're calling it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That one had one word, service, and so he was there to tell the sales community.
[SPEAKER_01]: He listened to right by your customers.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have an opportunity to lift all boats which then in a self-serving way, service ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: But go out there and do right by the country.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are the stewards.
[SPEAKER_01]: When words are living your mouth, that is the difference between success and failure, not only of those companies, but our entire economy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sales people were looked at as that vessel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, here's what happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll give you the cliff notes version because I could probably talk about this all day.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we have a war-one happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: We come out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It looked an awful lot by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what happened when we shut down for COVID, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It kind of shuts down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Comes back.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a boom.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then all of a sudden, we have a drop.
[SPEAKER_01]: Inflation goes up, 1921, 1922, the sales profession experienced 77%.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turn over, 1921, 1922, 85% turner like sales people being purged everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now what does that also mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we had something called the forgotten depression of the early 1920s.
[SPEAKER_01]: What happened though was that, you know, the manufacturers were manufacturing.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was stuff there was inventory.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's expensive.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't machines is expensive.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of a sudden, these organizations are like, screw the economy, we got to get these machines work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we got to get this inventory out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do whatever it takes and high pressure selling became the mantra.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we forgot about what it was like to be service oriented.
[SPEAKER_01]: We start to get back a little bit, making 25, 1926.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we all remember what happened 1929 to 1939, the depression.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you've gone a whole generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got 20 years since service was the mindset.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody remembers services of mindset and sales.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was gone forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: The last fact that I'll share with you there in the 1910s, sales was taught in most universities.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was actually taught in high schools, the 1910s.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it disappeared, started to come back, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We see that kind of momentum happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: and shameless self-plugged here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a podcast called the sales history podcast where it's just 14 to 20-minute monologues where I research a topic and then I share it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's 55 episodes now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So pick a topic, go find it, and you'll hear me nerd now down at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: From a historical perspective, it makes so much sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just to help understand why
[SPEAKER_02]: the profession feels and is shaped the way it is in the 21st century is you have to go look at the 20th century and you look at you know an entire generation 40, 20 years you think of all those people who grew up in that era you have a many depression and you have the great depression and the economy is essentially stalled so the only thing that sales people can do is sell to people who can't buy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in that scenario, you build the culture of sell it at any cost, sell it any price possible and that includes your own character, the ability to speak the truth and be transparent and actually help customers kind of goes out the window when there's nobody to buy from you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So those pressure tactics really came into place and we all kind of like the tie downs and all of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think one last lesson from history, since you've got a whole podcast about this and you should definitely go listen to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The history is informative.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't believe in the histories of charcoal.
[SPEAKER_02]: It repeats itself.
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe it's the spiral.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks very, very similar.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're in the 20s.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're starting to see classes and college campuses.
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of these different groups are starting to see sales as a real profession that they should invest into.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, corporate wants you to see the difference with these two pictures.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're kind of the same thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like to say that there's an echo to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's an echo.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: For the most part, there's a lot of repeatability and a lot of lessons to be learned.
[SPEAKER_02]: As you've spent time in that world in the history of sales and you're looking forward into the four levers of negotiation, what is a persistent maybe lie or maybe something that has been repeated a lot since 1920 that actually makes it harder for modern buyers to trust us that we does still prevalent in our culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for anybody watching, I'm going to, I'm just going to show you something here.
[SPEAKER_01]: This book is from 1910.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's from Thomas Herbert Russell.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called salesmanship theory and practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just, there's four words in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, this is 1910.
[SPEAKER_01]: Four words.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fires no more nowadays.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fires no more nowadays, 1910, right, but we keep hearing this and repeating this idea that back then, May award a catalog.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've got a 1907 or 30908 series robot catalog in the collection here.
[SPEAKER_01]: where it was basically Amazon and printed form.
[SPEAKER_01]: So back then, sales professions like, hey, what are we going to need sales people for in the future?
[SPEAKER_01]: They've got access to information that got mail order.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've got advertising, what would we be needed for?
[SPEAKER_01]: What happened to the profession flourished?
[SPEAKER_01]: We fast forward to even 11 years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: So 2015 Forester comes out with a report saying that by 2020, a million B to B sales jobs would go away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that hundreds of thousands of college students wouldn't graduate into the profession.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of the rise of e-commerce, the internet fires new more now it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, what do we keep hearing over and over again?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, AI and we've got access to more information.
[SPEAKER_01]: And oh my gosh, what are we going to need sales people for?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to be, I keep going back to this fact.
[SPEAKER_01]: That throughout history, more information has never made it easier on buyers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is always made it harder.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I go back to that phrase of hey two salesmanship is the science of service.
[SPEAKER_01]: That when we see our world and our responsibility is being that guide and that navigator and presenting the pros and the cons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what we're great at.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what we're not.
[SPEAKER_01]: By my mind, you're serious here with what I would love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what I wouldn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: You build trust.
[SPEAKER_01]: You win fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: You lose fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you see the world through this idea again, more information is never made it easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always made it harder.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these words, buyers no more now it is, you're going to keep seeing it, but that shouldn't be a threat to the good sales professional those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I even had that context before.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm 28 group in sales and the world has accelerated just in my perspective, history has accelerated since 1945.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy how fast we've made progress.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now we're 26 years into the 21st century, and we have artificial intelligence.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, it's artificially intelligent, but it's artificial intelligence.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember watching cartoons in 2006 as a child, you know, thinking that this was not flying cars were never going to happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: I watched like back to the future too, and he had a hoverboard and that happened in 2015.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're way past that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think it's really important that you know that contacts as a salesperson that's saying, and as a leader, you say, okay, more of a mission is never really made it easier.
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, I would argue that the only thing that's made buying harder is trust.
[SPEAKER_02]: And arguably, we've have, we have way less trust in our society than we did a hundred years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of that has to do with the, rise of social media and how disparate all of our social interactions are.
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of things are just essentially like headlines that we then have opinions about rather than like full context.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now all of these things, you could say, well, JBJ, you're just judging me and my family for really having social media, but being aware of those things is really important.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have this principle, you kind of brought out in your first book, the Transparency Sale.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it applies really well here.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's called the Prattfall Effect.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such a big difference from, you know, even my dad's generation, you know, wear a suit and tie to the office, you have a poker face, you're a business person, you're a serious person.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't laugh at yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: you kind of write a different way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I've really resonated with it as a seller, as someone in this society, I like the way you approach it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So could you kind of flesh out the prep fall effect for us?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then why does a salesperson who presents the perfect solution kind of give the flip side of that coin?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like why is it actually detrimental?
[SPEAKER_01]: The pretfall effect, in essence, is basically sharing, you know, small humanizing errors and that sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I advocate is more around that idea of, hey, buyers no more nowadays, and it's our role to expose both the pros and the cons.
[SPEAKER_01]: The transparency sale came from this idea that, in my last role, I was the chief revenue officer of a company based in Chicago called Power Reviews.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you've never heard of them, but you've used the tech and not realized it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You bought a pair of crocs or sweater on vineyard vines or a thousand other retailers.
[SPEAKER_01]: You look at the product, you scroll down, there's reviews under it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were the engine behind the collect and display of those.
[SPEAKER_01]: What had happened was I was running a big team and my marketing team went off and did a research study with Northwestern University here in Chicago, where I'm based.
[SPEAKER_01]: They came back, there was three data points that came out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: two of which changed my life like could only happen to a nerd, meaning like a lunatic, I quit my job and wrote the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here's the three.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one that didn't surprise me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, I mean, it's obvious didn't change my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we all read reviews when we're buying something that matters that we have never bought before.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the two that changed my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So number one was that almost all of us, that the time it was 86% of us,
[SPEAKER_01]: When we're reading reviews, go to the negative reviews first.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we skipped the FIs, we read the fours, threes, twos, and the ones first.
[SPEAKER_01]: And almost all of us require the negative.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We seek it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other data point that last one is that on a five-star scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: when a product has an average review score between a four, two, and a four, five.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's optimal for purchase converters.
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, product that is negative reviews sells faster and more often than a product that is nothing but perfect five star reviews.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I looked at this and I'm like, all right, that's one of websites acting as a salesperson.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool, but wait, I do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a human, I sell the humans.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a whole team out here that's presenting our solutions is, hey, we're a five and they suck, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we do it at wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: We make it harder on the buyers and I started digging into the behavioral science and started realizing, not just when a website exacting as salesperson's when a human and when we go in the sales engagements with, you know, not just like,
[SPEAKER_01]: transparency is about walking in and going, hey, my role is to help you predict.
[SPEAKER_01]: My role is to help do the homework for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So hey, before we dig into it, here's a couple of things that make us not all things to all people.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I'm sitting in your shoes, here's what you might not like.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if that's going to be an issue, can we address that first?
[SPEAKER_01]: We started embracing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: sales cycle sped up because we're optimizing for the buying brain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Winner rates went up, partially because we were qualifying in the deals we should be winning, qualifying out the deals we're going to lose anyway just faster, and then to your point about trust, all of a sudden we're the cool kids, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, hey, they're helpful, they're trying to sell me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who do you want to hang out with?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'd argue that trust Trump's features and benefits all day long, and that when we can build that right from the get going, go, hey, listen, I'm here
[SPEAKER_01]: to help you achieve optimal outcomes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe things you never give a thought possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I'm not the right path to get you there, I'm going to point you that way and wish you the best of luck, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the whole concept behind the transparency sale is, you're not all things to all people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Presenting perfection repels people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Embrace what you give up to be graded at your core and all kinds of magic comes from that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It changed my life too.
[SPEAKER_02]: That last point is that not perfect sells better than perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so true.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we just practically speaking, like I'm a big musician.
[SPEAKER_02]: I play guitar and I like to I like to purchase guitars and I only purchase when I have the money and nice nice had to spend my money very wisely because I'm a young person And I don't have a like a lot of extra funds right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got a family of four.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I see a review on a really nice guitar, but it has only five store reviews.
[SPEAKER_02]: I assume they're all bots.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then if I go to the last six months of guitar and it's a pretty good guitar and has 3.8 stars.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually spending like a majority of my time on a 3.8 star page.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I am the five star page with no new views from a sales person's perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned like the whole purpose of what you wrote was you walk into the room and you say, I have an ICP and I'm going to be transparent about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: The people who work best with me typically look like this, this and this and they have these challenges and we come into roadblocks when they have this, this and this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you put it all on the table and you have a conversation, you say, I want to help you, but I want to make sure that before I just sell you on this, that you feel helped, that you actually have the help that you need.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's so interesting when you walk into these rooms, you can start to see it melt off of people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's whole demeanor changes, but we have an authentic conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can also see their armor build when you aren't doing it, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's both.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been in both situations.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've had both situations happen on the same
[SPEAKER_02]: I think this really leads into the negotiating part of this conversation where you have spent the however many last few years writing this book getting all your ideas together there's a code switch that happens what I mean by code switching is we sort of have different faces for different social settings like if you go out with your buddies to a bar right you have a different face and when you're in the office with the corporate team it's just very different so you do this to an a sales call and I do this and I want to get some help because I walk into a negotiation with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything's been dandy, cod.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've had a great conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: You and I, buddies.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we get into negotiation table.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I am like freaking out anxious, anxiety.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to go through these phrases.
[SPEAKER_02]: We teach negotiating here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got the MLP process.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got all of these things in my head.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I sit in front of you and I go, all right, hardball.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to quote you way high and then you're going to come back with another number and then I'm going to come back a little lower and then you're going to come back up a little bit and I'm going to find something in the middle and we're going to come to an agreement that benefits me in my company.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I come to it with more of an adversarial conversation style than what I did in the sales process.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is exactly what your book is talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what is this personality shift that I'm experiencing and what damage am I doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, it's funny, the really the thing that birthed this was, back in 2008, got promoted to my first SVPS sales role and traditional negotiating was exactly like you talked about and I was terrible at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm a terrible liar.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this idea that, yeah, the whole sales process, my focus is I'm helping you achieve optimal outcomes, building relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get to that coal line, you say yes, and I go cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at some conscious level,
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to start lying to you now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to tell you what a good deal is.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to figure that out.
[SPEAKER_01]: My focus instead of your outcomes is now my outcomes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're learning a lot of these techniques from former FBI hostage negotiators.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, that's no, like don't sit across Chris Fosson, me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the book is brilliant.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got it right here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just don't believe that in a world when we talked about fires no more nowadays, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Peers being able to talk to one another and AI exposing pricing models that you can have every one of your customers paying a different amount based on how well or poorly it was negotiating I just don't think that's sustainable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what it happened in 2008 is I get promoted got a wrap who's working a bigger deal in this framework works bigger small doesn't matter they said yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were like, we got to work on the price and the rep immediately was like, I got to go call my manager and they were like, I don't have time for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Get that manager in a room and let's bang this thing out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he calls me, I go in thinking it's me, my rep in this guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they brought their whole procurement team.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're ready to do battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there was a one in the middle of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you hear like the street fighter music, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm about to get boat-raced out of here because I'm terrible at this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had accidentally just kind of shared my cards face up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a long story behind it, but it's this idea that every four-profit company in the world, yours, mine, the company I'm selling to, if they're four-profit, there's four things that drive your business model.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's basically what I laid out for the customer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before we get too deep into this, our pricing model and our organization is driven on four things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one is volumes, so how much stuff you buy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Buy more is better than buying less.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number two is how fast you pay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like who knew that we like money, so do you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So timing of cash.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pay as faster is better than ping slower.
[SPEAKER_01]: Number three is the length of commitment, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Longer commitment is better, more predictable, shorter commitment is not as good.
[SPEAKER_01]: to invest, no when things are coming to resource opportunities, that's valuable to us and something that's reflected in our pricing as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were like poured out of their mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't, like, but that's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever, we need a 35% discount.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, all right, cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what I advocate for is, hey, regards face up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've now set a sound basis for your pricing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's use those four as a way to get you closer to where you need to go, commit to more stuff, test faster, commit longer, help us forecast those are the four things we're willing to pay you for in the form of a discount.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, you've established a sound basis, you're not a jerk, but it's an extension of the sales process because it's trust building and for everything that you're given away,
[SPEAKER_01]: whether it's a concession and payment terms, whether it's a discount, whether it's anything, you're getting something value in return.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only four things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just internalize that, start sharing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the negotiation does not need to end with you teasing a customer and bringing them to jail.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want them to stay by more advocate, take you with them to their next company.
[SPEAKER_01]: and tell their bugs about how great you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think there's any other way that I've seen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this again, it was birth in 2008.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been developing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And finally, it was time to sit down and write it all out for everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: you bring up really interesting point and before we kind of end the conversation really quickly because I absolutely intrigued and reading your book again and getting these cards on the table and really understanding them and internalizing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a couple of questions just based on the four things that you say it is my cards.
[SPEAKER_02]: I worry as a sales rep that if I put all my cards on the table, I will be eaten alive by the sharks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that ring true to you at all in that it feels like a zero-sum game?
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't win if I lose and therefore I'm not going to lose and so putting all of my cards on the table feels like showing them how the sausage is made and how I'm going to like showing them the reasons I'm lying to them essentially.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they so you're getting rid of the lying and what happened in that room was why this whole thing kind of was like, wait, what just happened?
[SPEAKER_01]: that instead of it being customer vendor, it was six of us sitting around a table, collaborate, because they got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their business is run by the same four things.
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be truthful.
[SPEAKER_01]: My favorite sales quote of all time.
[SPEAKER_01]: From 1922, his book, scientific selling and advertising, it's Arthur Dunn.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the quote is simply, if the truth won't sell it, don't sell it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You should be able to walk in with confidence and say, hey, listen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's our price.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is our pricing model.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's what it's based on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you can sit back on that and let them negotiate their own deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no winning and losing anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a restaurant in New York.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also in Chicago called Oshival.
[SPEAKER_01]: The cheeseburgers are priced anywhere from $34 to $38.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the difference is whether you got bacon or an egg on it, but the place is packed, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was hard to get a reservation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, do you think anybody ever walks in there?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're like, hey, I was just down the street.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a restaurant that's selling cheeseburgers, they give you fries and a drink.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called McDonald's.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's $8.50, like you're pricing is ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They would be like, go to McDonald's, then, Jack.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's the safety of that heat.
[SPEAKER_01]: You should have confidence that your price is your price.
[SPEAKER_01]: I again don't believe that it is sustainable to have every customer paying a different amount because you were either weak or strong in an negotiating or they were.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that word gets out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just denoting a kickoff for a company in the cyber space and they told me afterwards that CSOS that they sell to.
[SPEAKER_01]: They get together and they talk about what solutions are you using.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much you pay and what did you ask for?
[SPEAKER_01]: What did you get?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, hey, here's the things we're willing to pay you for.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're willing to pay you to commit to more past faster, commit longer, help us forecast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here, there you go.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you want to pay a slower, cool, let's adjust something else.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to, don't want to commit as long, cool, here adjust something else.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's meant to be a collaborative extension of the sales process and not again, like you talked about that, hey, I've gone from helpful to hostage negotiating techniques.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I go, you know, throw you a jail when this thing's over.
[SPEAKER_02]: from a listener perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone who is trying to step outside of our conversation and I'm trying to listen to this, how do I apply this?
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't want to feel that way and you feel that way.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not sustainable for your career.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's not sustainable for five years.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not sustainable for like three years.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's tough going to these negotiating rooms and I trust me I've been in both places.
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, I've started to get to a point.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, after reading your book, it feels differently about how it would go about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's, I would just say, sure, to a discount because it was just easier than having to drag someone through 35%.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I can do 32%.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, can you do 33% and like, I think on the day, I don't feel any better and they don't feel any better.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've just had what about a price that didn't mean anything to the relationship of the business that we're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll add one thing to this.
[SPEAKER_01]: That, remember this.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you discount, let's say it's, hey, I got a month and discount, a quarter in discount or anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's counterintuitive to think, but I need you to rewire all your brains.
[SPEAKER_01]: That discount is actually slowing down your deals and not accelerating it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you come to me and you ask for something, and I tell me, boy, and go, okay, don't keep.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're actually signaling to the buyer that, hey, there's more to be had.
[SPEAKER_01]: I should be asking for more.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that if that quarter end it deal expires.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, first of all, if it's a quarter end deal, if I'm a smart buyer, I'm going to wait until the end of the quarter, because I know that my leverage goes up and your leverage goes down the quarter ends and you go, hey, this count goes away.
[SPEAKER_01]: What am I doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: wait until you offer it again because you know you will that idea that a the discount we're doing it because it's easy and all that that's the power of four levers negotiating is like here's all the cards by it now by it later this is it right and this is what's valuable to us here's what will pay you for in the form of a discount right it actually makes it easier here's what we will pay you is such an easier thing to say then this is what we're willing to accept exactly
[SPEAKER_02]: that's very and even the language there is so powerful.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got this book out.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got all of these methodologies in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a really, really fantastic book.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you are struggling with the closing with negotiation, you have to pick this up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go through it at minimum go like learn about volume timing commitment and certainty.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a levers because you might just get 10% better.
[SPEAKER_02]: You might get 1% better at this negotiating thing and that's what you want.
[SPEAKER_02]: You are going on your little book tour right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got our podcasts, which I am so honored for you to be here.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to be speaking about this in lots and lots of places.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I want people who are listening to the sales gravy podcast, where can they get the book, where can they find more about you and follow you and learn more about what you got going on?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the book is available anywhere you buy your book's maphole books, Ben Bellas, the publisher, Simon Schuster distributed, so that's at the Barnes and Noble's and all those places.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all formats, so ebook.todcopony.com, follow along and link them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm pretty easy to find.
[SPEAKER_02]: And go listen to the sales historian podcast and go follow the sales historian.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's incredible stuff to learn about and know the history of the profession that you're in.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you were listening to the salesgroup podcast, you made it this far.
[SPEAKER_02]: Look, I need you to go to Spotify Apple YouTube wherever I heart media, wherever you listen to your podcast and give us a five star review.
[SPEAKER_02]: It really, really helps.
[SPEAKER_02]: And leave your comments too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to see what you're saying about what our conversations and it helps us help more people sell more.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you haven't checked out sales gravy on YouTube, go to youtube.com for slash sales gravy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go there, leave us a comment.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you leave a comment, I will comment back and I might send you a little gift because I'm looking to grow our YouTube and YouTube is an amazing place to watch all of these conversations with people like Todd Capone on the sales gravy YouTube channel.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you are a sales team or you are looking to get training this year and investing yourselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go to abonconference.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have our Las Vegas location locked in for November.
[SPEAKER_02]: It will be perfect for sales leaders and sales teams who want to attend the most bad ass sales learning conference on earth to go to abonconference.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: Otherwise, thank y'all so much for listening and Todd.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for being on sales.
[SPEAKER_02]: Gary podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll catch you next time.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was blast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.