Lee Salz

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winning It Selling Podcast. I'm Bill Helpcamp with Reach Development Systems, and with me is Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute. As sales professionals, we are inundated with how-to selling advice. There are hundreds of sales books in print and even more sales blogs and podcasts. For example, the Winning It Selling Podcast has over 200 weekly shows spanning more than four years, but is all this advice useful or even true?

0:32 Decide for yourself by joining Bill and me as we welcome author and selling expert Lee Sauls, the sales contrarian, to discuss commonly accepted sales concepts that are just wrong on Episode 636 of the Winning It Selling Podcast. Well, I've been wrong so many times, Scott. I can't even count them, so you might be able to point out some more that I forgot about. I have to walk some of my advice back that I said many years ago.

1:05 When did we meet? When did you hear that? How did you use it? It's expired. Don't write that down. Don't write that down. It doesn't work anymore. Well, we normally would have a book club, and we are in the book New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg. Next week we'll go on to chapters four and five, but today we want to give all of our time to our guest, Lee Sauls, but we do have a one clip from Anthony Anarina, so let's listen to a sales tip from Anthony.

1:30 Enjoy and learn from the sales tip from Anthony by Anthony Anarina, a highly respected international speaker, best-selling author, entrepreneur and sales leader. Hey, it's Anthony Anarina. If you have trouble getting a first meeting, it's probably because you're not offering something that's interesting enough or important enough for the client to say yes. So I would tell you to follow this rule that we call the trading value rule, which means when you ask someone for a meeting, any meeting, you have to tell them what's in it for them.

2:07 I'm going to do what I do when I make a cold call and I ask somebody for a meeting, and I'll let you use this to figure out how to do this for yourself. I'm Anthony Anarina, and I'm calling you today to ask you for a 25-minute executive briefing. Even if there's not a next step for me, I want to make sure that you get these trends and the implications that we believe are going to be important to you over the next six to 12 months.

2:38 Even if there's not a next step for me, I'm going to make sure that you get this. What do you look like Thursday afternoon at two o'clock? Okay, just a little context on this. If you have trouble getting a meeting, you have to give them something that they can say yes to. If you say I want to tell you about me and my company and our solution, that's not a very good trade of value. So basically it's self-oriented. So instead of doing that, figure out what you can do that would be valuable enough that somebody's going to say yes, I'd love to understand what this person can share with me.

3:15 See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon. I love that executive briefing hook. I think it's a great way to give a preview and to really offer. And if you do it right, create a lot of interest and curiosity during that time together with the prospect. Yeah, Anthony's got some deep thoughts. But we also have deep thoughts from our guest, right? Yeah, so let me introduce Lee Saul's is an internationally renowned sales management strategist, best-selling author and award-winning speaker specializes in building world-class sales forces.

3:47 He has worked with hundreds of companies on various industries and sizes to create marketplace disruption by leveraging his sales differentiation strategies leading to explosive profitable growth. In 2022, Lee was named Speaker of the Year by this Institute of Sales Excellence. Lee is a sales contrarian who combats old world ineffective selling methods and challenges you to think differently about your sales approach.

4:14 He has written six best-selling business books, including sales differentiation, the sell different, which has been called the one-two punch. Every sales person needs to differentiate what and how they sell to win more deals at the prices you want. He has a new book in development on discovery strategy, which will be published by HarperCollins in 2025. Welcome, Lee. Scott, thank you. Well, yeah, thanks for being on the show.

4:41 You are listeners might have heard Scott try to work on the word differentiation. I can't figure it out. Pause it, pausing steadily on that. He's no good at intros. Scott's better off the cuff than he is with reading. Lee, thanks for being on the show today. I loved your book on differentiation. I found it to be fast. You said it well. Wow. I thought it sounds. Yeah, I'm a word merchant. Scott's a thought leader. So, you only knows the words he made up.

5:14 In my own head. That's right. That's right. Well, we've got a couple of questions. Lee, we're really looking forward to hearing about this contrarian approach. And can you share with us kind of what what the sales contrarian concept is, first of all. Yeah, so there's these concepts, expressions that have been shared with sales people over the years. And they've just been accepted more questions. Well, we do. And what I found is they create sales and effectiveness.

5:45 They create wrong sales mindsets. They lead to poor decision making. This is one that will certainly get the listeners scratching ahead a little bit. There's no such thing as a great salesperson. And I can prove it. I love sharing that with executives. They take me to task. Don't give me a what do you mean? There's no such thing as a great salesperson. Last time, how many of these so called great sales people showed up with a great resume polished look fantastic track record that you've hired and failed in your company.

6:20 If you believe in great salespeople, you must also sign up for one of two of the following given that they failed. Either that salesperson showed up on your doorstep and completely forgot how to sell. Or your company is the worst company in the history of business to sell for, which is going to be one of those two. Yikes. They won't take number two. See, the issue is the placement of the word great. Every sales role as its own DNA, the factors that lead to success failure and underperformance in it.

6:55 We're different. And when I talk about different, I mean, you may have four sales roles in your company. The factors that lead to success, failure and underperformance are going to be different in every single one of those roles. And so we have an opening on the team, which is a whole separate conversation and we, we go looking for talent. What do we look for? Well, I was looking for a great sales person. Well, what's that?

7:18 You know, a strong prospect or a great closer. Well, if those were the only two attributes that led to success, salespeople would be really easy. So what should happen before we ever talk about looking for sales talent, taking a 360 degree look at a role and identify those factors that lead someone to succeed, fail, and underperforming. Because when you do that, instead of looking for great salespeople, you look for the right salespeople with the potential to be great in this specific role.

7:54 And that's what we should all be looking for when we're talking about hiring salespeople, not looking for great salespeople, those don't exist. Look for the right ones to potential to be great in this specific role. Are those right attributes lee different for each sales organization? Or is there a common set of sales attributes that you're looking for that can then be molded into that great salesperson? There's certainly some overlap.

8:22 But I look at it like DNA. Everyone has that's uniqueness to it. For example, a company may have changed constantly. Whether it be internally or what they're selling or the environment, what have you. So a factor that affects someone's ability to be successful there is their flexibility. Someone who is extremely rigid and, you know, and change just paralyzes them, not a right fit here. And another organization where things are pretty static, person can be very successful.

8:55 I'll give you another one office location. Right. There are corporate offices, there are regional offices, there are home offices. And if you've never worked out of a home office and this is less of an issue since COVID because so many people worked from home but prior to that. Most people worked in some type of an office environment. And if your sales role is virtual and you say, okay, this means you can't walk down the hall and get the answers that you want.

9:28 And you have to schedule time with people and you don't get the energy, which of course sales people love being around energy, not going to have that energy of being in that environment. So you say, okay, the office location is something we need to evaluate with the candidate. If they've never worked in a virtual environment before, plus we've got to ask ourselves is, and they will they be successful in this environment.

9:53 Right. We saw that going into COVID, didn't we, with so many people that weren't able to function and they spent all their time walking their dog. Right. Doing the laundry at 10 30 in the morning. I'll give you another one management style. I'm not a factor to consider. And this is not a lecture on micromanagement versus macro management. Your management style just is, but you need to find sales people that can thrive underneath that church within that management style.

10:23 So again, having that introspective exercise and say that I'm someone that's going to get deeply involved in everything they're doing. Right. So you're going to have a very high, that's your style, fine sales people that'll thrive in management approach. Or if you say, you know, and I'm more like in the background and when they need me, I can bring me in and I'll help them out. But if you have someone that needs to be more closely managed, and you're a more of a lesbian fair sit back and to me when you need me, they're going to have an underperformer.

10:55 I wish sometimes managers in the recruitment process would say what kind of managers they are so that I could make the decision as the as the recruitee, whether I want to work under that style. But most managers will lie and say, Oh, I'm very hands off. Exactly. That's what everybody wants to hear. And then they'll be the worst micromanagers you ever saw. Exactly. So let me give you another one. I'm going to start with a film in the blank for you.

11:24 You guys been around sales long as I have if not long. Are you ready? Yeah. You're only as good as your blank sale. Last sale. First, first expression ever. Right. Right. There is a reason why your windshield is bigger than your rearview mirror. Right. When you say you're only as good as your last sale, all you're thinking about is yesterday. And that's also a flaw with a lot of sales compensation plans. They reward for yesterday's news. And if it's a longer sale cycle means you did something right six months or a year ago, it's not reinforcing any behavior.

12:05 Plus, you'll land a piece of business. That's great news. That's fantastic. But guess what? That's one last deal on your pipeline. Right. But the expression should be is you're only as good as your next sale, always focusing on tomorrow. Right. Because if you buy into your only as good as your last sale, you suffer from what I call the sales, EKG effect. You know what that is? No, Tommy. Okay. You do the right things. You do the right things. You do the right things. You land a piece of business.

12:34 Get a fact commission check. Lazy lazy lazy lazy. Your sales manager comes along and says, hey, Lee, how about doing those right things again? Okay. Do the right things. Do the right things. Land another piece of business. Go to that commission check. Lazy lazy. Yeah. Clickle that that's how things go. Well, you're never going to grow your income that way. And it's impossible to grow sales that way. But if you have this mindset that you're only as good as your next sale, when you land a piece of business, you're a brace what I call the business developers mantra.

13:08 Every deal must yield two more. Every deal must yield two more. Yeah. So if you embrace that, think about what that's telling you, you get one deal that becomes two, which becomes four, which becomes eight. So now you start looking at your income. You look at your sales results and as a company, the entire sales organization. Raestates to that. Look at what the with that doesn't compounding effects overall revenue. No, because when you bring in a piece of businesses, upsellers, cross sells as referrals.

13:38 There's always more juice can be squeezed out of that relationship. One thought as you were talking about that, I run this by you. You're only as good as your last activities, right? What are your activities and Scott. I talk about this a lot. We're always if we all we're talking about as your sale. We're talking about a lagging indicator. indicator that shows what you did. Right. The accomplishment that came from the right activities.

14:02 And in your EKG examples, I get I get fat and happy and I stop doing the activities that then will lead to sales. And so many sales managers sit on their computer and look at what's in the funnel and what is closing. And it's all the work that happened to get them in the funnel. That's going to create the future. And then I really like what you say about how we fall off when we get something big. That's when we need to pour on the gas. Because then we're excited. We're energized by the big sale. Don't get, don't get, oh, I'm going to go take a week off from the big sale.

14:41 As you're saying, get energized and find two more because you're excited. Exactly. As a result of that, we've got some referrals, upsell, cross-sell opportunities. There's always want you to squeeze out of it. For Bill, you know, you, what you just shared reminds me of another sales concierge in concept. When I ask sales managers, what is the most important metric you track for your salespeople? What do they always say? Revenue. Revenue is not a metric.

15:10 Revenue is a result. Right. Not a metric. So, what you're showing, it's a result of your salespeople doing the right things every single day, those right metrics. There is nothing you can do about revenue. You can go and scream from the mountaintops. But there's a lot you can do to affect activity and behavior from a sales team. So, Lee, how long have you been doing this? Give us some number. We talked about experience earlier. Well, hang on, let me put my teeth in. It's been a while. We don't talk about age on this show. Thank you. Let's see. I'm 55 years old. I've been in sales since I'm like 18. Okay. And if we were to take COVID out of the question and look at,

15:54 how has things changed over the last 30 or 40 years, what have been some of the one or two things that you'd go, you know what, that just doesn't work anymore. It might have been written in Tommy Hopkins book back in 1972. But what are the things that are just no longer relevant today's market? And this is regardless of COVID. Well, I'll tell you one big one is around preparation. You used to be able to walk in until you, you know, around my age, you have to walk into immediacy. So tell me what you do here. Yeah. Right. It's usable today. So that's how you end the meeting very quickly.

16:29 Right. Let me say what are you doing? Yeah. Well, let me show you the door. That's what we do around here. Yeah. Yeah. But that's been put on steroids. Now, you know, we've had the internet, we can do research on companies, we have LinkedIn, but boy, chat GPT and AI coming along. Oh my goodness. So one of the things that needs to happen today that was more difficult to do before is understanding the individual that you're engaging with. So for example, if I'm meeting with a CFO, a manufacturing company, I'm going to go into chat GPT and I'm going to create a prompt that says, what are the primary concerns that manufacturing CFOs have today? Right. And I'm going to get a

17:15 report this long. I know this was I did it yesterday. And then I take that information and I look at what I offer. And I develop questions that I'm going to ask information I'm going to share based on the research that I've done. So the bar of what people expect during that initial meeting has raised significantly because of technology. You can't just walk in and say, well, I got my list of questions I'm going to ask. No, no, no, no. They've got to come away with some meaningful value from that interaction. And that only happens if you've done the research coming in.

17:52 Wow. That's that's a huge difference. Yeah, that's that is a big one. And there are expectations are higher. You know, you're not just a sales person anymore. You're an information expert and you're supposed to be bringing some knowledge to that and some information to that meeting that's going to get them ahead. Well, I think they want to work with a business professional more than a sales professional. That's right. Somebody that's more worldly. You know, for example, if you sell cars, knowing what the gas prices are, which again, is not your issue primarily, knowing what the gas prices are and other things that are going around in the world that would affect

18:33 someone's purchase decision, that's an expectation that I have of you that that's working with me. Yeah. Interesting. I think how prospects buy has evolved a lot and salespeople have to be more of that business personally. And I think you really touched on something that I think a lot of them our listeners need to be aware of is it's not it's not just a sales role anymore. It's that trusted advisor. I think everybody wants to be that trusted advisor and offer the resources that their prospects and their customers can use. And I want to be able to make sure that what we talk about today can be applied to our listeners today. What other advice can you give them about this

19:09 contrarian approach and for them to really reflect and contemplate on some of their strategies and skills and their what they consider best practices right now? Or at this, you can prospect too much. Oh, you're gonna have to elaborate on that. All the sales managers are tuning in right now. Yeah, they're on the radio, kids. That's called the show stopper. That's called the show stopper. I've got your attention. Yeah, they're on the radio.

19:35 So there's an expression that salespeople have been told that sales is a numbers game. And that's all it is. Well, you asked before, what's the difference today? Yeah, and I don't know if this is necessarily a difference, but it's highlighted even more today, which is if you can't do the research so that you reach out to me in a way that I feel special, meaning that there's a purpose for this outreach. Don't bother calling because I'm not going to engage with you. So when I talk about prospecting too much, when you think of what needs to happen beforehand to be effective with prospecting, if you can't do that work, don't pick up the phone, don't send the email. It was a

20:17 study done. You may have seen this a couple of years ago by the rain group where they asked executives if they ever took a meeting from a sales person that reached out through prospecting. Did you see this one? No, I didn't. But yeah, keep going. Okay. So they asked executives, if you ever took a meeting from a sales person that reached out through some four prospecting percentage, you think said yes. I hard to guess. Oh, you said five? Yeah.

20:42 Scott, what's your number? I can't even think. I mean, I don't know. I'll go six. 82. Really? I didn't know where to go. 82. 82% said yes. I took a meeting with a sales first at reach out through some form prospecting. But the study didn't stop there. When it's done further, they found the key ingredient, the secret sauce to getting that meeting. Personalization. Okay. If you're sending generic emails, leaving generic voicemail messages or

21:12 oh my goodness, you got someone live on the phone and you're having a generic conversation, you are not going to be in that four out of five group. Right. So to my point about, yes, you can prospect too much. If you are just going to dial for dollars, you're just making call after call. In today's environment, you will not succeed in sales. You've got to do the work up front. Have a reason for that outreach that you convey in your messaging.

21:40 And I think that because we know that most people are hard to get hold of, you know, our phone calls are not getting, you know, a 60 or 70% reception anymore. We might get a 10% reception. So we're leaving messages. And as you say, those messages have to say something in order to strike with that person. I just love that advice. I think that's really good. We talked about the price objection. We have not. Yeah. I don't believe it. Yes. How so?

22:10 I believe it's constructive criticism, not an objection. If someone pushes back on price, what they're saying to you is, the meaningful value that you've demonstrated is not commensurate with the price you put in front of

22:24 them. That's all it is. Exactly. Because here you talk about budget. We've all spent more than what we budget for something because we saw enough meaningful value that made sense to do it. We've used multiple credit cards. We pull that extra cash. We've done it in a business environment. We pulled dollars from other sources. So when you look at the price issue, if you're hearing that enough, take it truly is what it's intended. It's constructive criticism. Go back and retool your selling approach from the very beginning, from when you picked up that phone or sent an email to the first interaction you had, ultimately got to the stage to present a proposal.

23:04 You're hearing that a lot. It means retool the approach. Right. I was like, my response is, I apologize. That's my fault. I didn't do a good enough job of explaining all of the ways for us to work together. So you can find the value to justify that price. If I bought a roller bag many years ago and some of our listeners have heard this story and they're going through a demo and I said, okay, how much is it? And they said, it's $325. I said, I'm not there yet. Keep going. Keep talking. I'm not there yet. And then they kept talking. And then I go, I'm up to $275. They said, well, we are having a sale. I said, oh, I think we might have a deal today. And I never insulted them or they're in assault of value. I just said, you know what,

23:48 I'm not there yet. Keep going. Hello, Vraya. Yeah. So best practice. We've told salespeople, you get that first meeting, you start by sitting in agenda. And it sounds like this. Well, what I want to do today is ask you some questions about your business and I'll share with you what we have to offer. What I want to do today, what we've just told them in the first few moments is the purpose of today's meeting is for me coming. I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What should happen? Yeah. With that agenda is it's a question.

24:21 Or this to be a great use of your time. What do you want to make sure we talk about here today? The answer to that question does two things. One, they just told you what's important to them.

24:33 So now you have focus on the meeting and you've conveyed that you care that they get meaningful value from that interaction. Yeah. Yeah. So, and they feel like they're setting the agenda, not you. Correct. It's a collaboration control. You know, when we talk about setting an agenda with I want, there's only one person in the world who cares what you want. You know who that is? You? Nope. Your mother. Your mother. Yeah. No one else cares what you want. Yeah. Yeah.

25:04 Earlier, you talked about, you know, over prospecting. And Bill and I have worked with some sales reps that can go and make 50 to 75 phone calls a day. And they'll go, I didn't get any conversation. Has nobody ever called me back? I always said, you know, well, you call you back? I mean, how do you get into the salespeople that check the box? I checked the box. I did 75 calls. How do you work with that mindset or what instructions can you give those sales managers?

25:32 When they're leading or trying to lead those salespeople are just checking the box knowing that you have to sound different in order to be different to get better different results. Right. It feels like activity, but it's not it's not good activity. Right. Well, let me ask you this. I should we finish this, this interview and you check your voicemail. And there's a message from a salesperson who says, I've got $10,000 for you. Call me back. Or do you call in that person back? Hard to say. I mean, if somebody called and said my house is on fire, it's the same type of approach. Of course, it creates an interest to curiosity. But that seems to be gimmicky to me.

26:09 But go on. What if the message was, I can save 5% off your insurance rates? Okay. I'd be a little curious, but I find that somewhat is something because they don't know how

26:22 much I'm paying and they don't know why I'm buying it from the person I'm buying it from. Okay. Let me try one more. Yeah. Yeah. I can the messages that can cut your cell phone bills in half. Call me. Okay. I'm interested in that. That's not being a sump dove. Are you calling the salesperson back? Bill, you haven't said anything. Are you going to call any of those three back? I'm not a big caller backer, but I'll take their call the next time probably.

26:50 Okay. So here's another sales patronian concept. Yeah. You ain't getting calls back from your voicemails. Right. I asked that. I asked those three questions when I do my keynotes of the audience that I haven't raised their hand rarely do hands go up for any of those three. And then I said, okay, so wait a minute. I've offered you money. I've offered to reduce costs. And still I can't get everyone's hand to go up and say I'd return that call. What could I possibly say in a voicemail message that would get you to call me back? The answer is nothing.

27:22 Unless you have serendipity taking place. Well, what does that mean? It means I'm looking at my cell phone bill with the same time you leave me a message. I go, yeah, I need to shop this. Right. Okay. Maybe I'll call him back. Right. Yeah. So based on that explanation, you probably think I'm anti voicemail prospecting. And if you're thinking that you'd be wrong. I'm a huge proponent of it. But I think we need to use that medium in a different fashion.

27:48 Let's get away from this notion of return to law. I'm going to use voicemail for interest to create curiosity. So when I connect with them live, they have some context for the conversation. I can tell them everything. This enough to create some interest. And I'm even going to say in that voicemail, I'm not expecting you to call me back, which back to my theme of being different. Right. So what is your approach at that point? If you're if you're not going to call them back, then then I mean, follow up is so important. I mean, sales managers always talking about follow up. If you're not going to follow up on a voicemail, don't leave a voicemail. If

28:27 you're not going to follow up on a proposal that you mailed out to it, don't put it in the mail. Well, you just said another one, Scott. Yeah. I don't believe in sending proposals. Or you present your present proposals. Yeah. Oh, unless you want to be ghosted,

28:41 unless you want to just trigger bill, you just trigger bill. Can't tell you the number of people we call it throw on throw on the proposal over the fence.

28:50 You do all this work. You have a good question. You have a good conversation. You get some ideas, and you go, I'll send you my proposal. And you never walk them through it. You'd. What are you wasting your time for? Correct. And if they're not willing to meet with you to go over the proposal, what's the likelihood you get in that piece of business anyway? If you were to get it, what kind of client are they going to be? Right. The proposal is the payoff to all the work that you've done. I'm not giving it to you for nothing. Right. That's crazy. Hey, let me run one by you that I've been mulling around lately. And your topic made me think of this. I have a mug that says,

29:29 salesmanship begins when the customer says no. And I think there's an old sales book I found out with that same title on that. How does that one strike you as an old idea that maybe is gone? Here's what's old about it. First of all, the word customer. For me, that's nails on a chalkboard. The worst thing that a sales person can be called is a vendor. Right. And if you speak Spanish, you look up the word vendetta, who sell? There's no value there to transaction.

30:01 So we then call them a customer. Look that up in Webster's and you'll see it's someone who buys stuff. So you've got someone who sells stuff, someone who buys stuff. That's how they go together. Vendors have customers. But if you look up the word client in the dictionary, you see a very different meaning. One who's under the protection of another. And if you think about what you're selling, there's always an angle where you say, this is something that we do to protect our clients from something. And so one of the things that I advocate for is to stay, again, as a differentiator, we don't have any customers. And of course, there are many here in the lights on. Wait,

30:42 wait, I've been there before. But we have lots of clients that gives you the opportunity to describe that it's a relationship, not a transaction and the things that you do to provide meaningful value. You can't just say client, can't just say partner, that's vaporware. But if you can explain specifically what you do to provide that meaningful value, you differentiate. Well, here's where I've been thinking about that same, you know, when the customer or client, even client says no, right?

31:14 And that is, it goes back to Scott mentioned Tommy Hopkins and you know, he was a great 500 different ways to close close, close early close off and close close close close close. I think if you close too early, you're going to get the no, because they're not ready. You haven't moved things forward. And and once I've said no, now I've made a decision. And I don't want to get them to a decision until they're ready to make a I have the chances to make an affirmative decision really for both of us. So once they said no, it's now an emotional change they have to make. And that's a tougher change to get over. So that's where I've been moving away from that idea of closing a

31:59 lot and closing early and closing off and all that, because that's something you do as you say to customers, not the clients. I'm not even an advocate for the word closing. I just don't have that mindset to me, you know, no one woke up this morning and said boy, I hope someone closes me today. Right. Right. Oh, I'm so nervous. I'm so close. Yes. And ourselves first on the planet says, I build relationships. You can't say I build relationships. And I'm going to go close some people today. It just doesn't go together. Yeah. Closing is transactional. It is, it is. And if you handle the process properly, it's a natural progression in the relationship. Mm hmm. Yeah. That's so true.

32:46 A proposal is a confirmation of a conversation. And it's like that that's it's a commencement. It's like a college commencement. We've gone from learning to now applying. We've gone about learning about each other to applying, making a commitment to work together, going into the future. Well, we're starting to run out of time and there are a couple things we want to talk to you about before we get there. One, I saw in, I think in the resources you gave us, you have an assessment tool. So I want to talk a little bit about that. And then I want you to tell us a little bit about your next book coming out. Certainly. So this assessment tool is not for sales people.

33:24 Those assessment tools answer the question of Candice person self using hiring processes, usually sometimes with existing sales organizations. This is a tool that's for business owners, executives, sales leaders and answers a totally different question. Have we built the sales organization framework that can produce the results we want? So it

33:46 delves into new client acquisition, account management, performance management, hiring, onboarding and compensation. Let me pause here and say it's free. Not trying to sell you anything. The assessment tool takes about 10 to 15 minutes to get through. And it's at assessmysales.com assessmysales.com. And you'll link to that. We'll link to that Lee in the on the show. Great. Thank you. And you'll

34:15 get a report that says, here's the level of sales organization maturity you have. And here are the things to do to advance in each one of those six categories that I just shared as well as an overall score. Plus, you'll see on the page that I provide a complimentary consultation afterwards to review your results and talk through some action plans. Excellent. Excellent. Well, that's a unique look at it because so many of the assessments are trying to find the right sales person. So I like that.

34:42 Now tell us a little bit about your next book coming out in 2025. It actually comes out almost a year to today. So October 1st, 2025 is when it comes out. Great. I'm on a mission who will eradicate the sales world back to sales contrarian of the mindset of discovery. When you ask sales people about a discovery meeting, their planning is, here's the questions I'm going to ask. Here's the information I'm going to share. One of my favorite questions to ask sales people.

35:16 What meaningful value does the person that you're meeting with get out of that interaction? Most common answer I get is a deafening silence. They've never thought about it. Why is prospecting so hard? Well, we've conditioned the general public to believe and rightfully so based on that response to the question that if you're going to meet with a sales person, the entire meeting is for them. So if you're not ready to buy right now, don't bother meeting with sales person, you won't get in the middle of the middle of the day.

35:46 I'm not going to get anything out of it. So I'm on a mission to eradicate the sales world of that expression. And I share my going to say I coined the expression it exists, but it's not pervasive and it's the word consultation. If you think about times when you've gone to the doctor, it's a medical need. You went for two reasons. You become wiser regarding the circumstances you're experiencing and to understand the potential remedies for those circumstances.

36:14 So I'm going to share my mindset for the first meeting. We have a very, very different sales journey with the folks we interact with. And when you define that meaningful value, what they get out of that first interaction. Now, we talk about what messaging are we going to use for prospecting. So talk about, by the way, when we get together, I'm going to be able to share with you XY and Z. So you're getting something out of it. You're investing time with me for 15 minutes, 30 minutes an hour, whatever that might be.

36:45 And you're going to come away wiser of some aspect that will help you in your business, whether you buy for me or not. Well, looking forward to that. A year from this time next year. Yeah. Every time we have a guest, Lee, I ask a question and our listeners are anticipating this question and your answer. And my question is, of all your experiences that you've had, what book or authors had the greatest impact on your life?

37:14 I'm going to tell you this. This is a recent one. I've become a big fan of predictably irrational. Okay. You come across this one. I've heard of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's written by Dan Ariely. He actually contributed a passage for my new book. There's also a television show called the irrational season two starts next week. Dan Ariely is a professor with a specialty in behavioral science, more specifically in how people make decisions. Fascinating for the sales world.

37:46 Right. That's what that book is all about. It's about his research into that. And he didn't write it as a sales book. But sometimes we think we only have to read sales books to be adept in sales. Either take a step back and read other books that you say point like that would really be better understand the people I'm interacting with. Yeah. Yeah. That's really good advice. I always think a good psychology and philosophy class can make a great sales career.

38:13 The best, you know, I'm often asked to your points, Scott. Yeah. I have sales training I've ever experienced. Yeah. Sandler, you know, all these big names out there. And the answer is no to all of them. And of course, I'm not joking. They'll say, you know, I'm like, well, no, I'm not a sales trainer. Right. The best one ever for carement training. Many years ago, just like, you know, in the sales world, we have sales training, right, procurement officers, there is training. There's even certification for them.

38:41 I had the opportunity to participate in a three day program in procurement training. And I felt like a spy. Yeah. I'm not supposed to be here. I was invited, but it's like, oh my gosh, I was learning all of this. And it was just fascinating. I love it so much. I brought that instructor into two different companies when I was VP of sales to teach my sales people how the other side lives. Right. I encourage you do some research sales leaders. You're saying, boy, what should we do at our next sales meeting? Bring in a procurement expert and understand what they're looking for when they are interacting with your sales people.

39:15 Change your selling approach. Yeah, that's a great idea. All right. Well, let's thank you so much. This has been a great interview. Just so much information and, and we do get old ideas in our heads. And it's a good opportunity to think a little bit about some of the things that we hold dear. And whether we need to hold on to those. So we do have some information. We all have a link to Lee's website at sales architect calm.

39:41 And then also to the free assessment tool at my assess my sales calm. And then we'll also have a link to Anthony and Arino at the sales blog. So, I'm going to go up today. I will just our golden nugget is from Steve Martin the comedian who knew a sales quote that come from Steve Martin. He's so good. Remember, it's not just about being better at selling. It's about being so good. They can't ignore you. That sounds like that relates to what the Lee was just talking about with his sales conversation the sales consultation.

40:18 To learn more go to winning at selling dot com all this information and show notes will be available for you there. Next week we'll be back in the new sales simplified by Mike Weinberg chapters four and five. And our topic is eight steps for handling problems. Please subscribe and share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. This is episode six thirty six. Go out and get better one skill at a time.

40:43 Joyful selling.