8 Steps for Handling Problems

0:03 Thank you for joining us on the Winning and Selling Podcast. I'm Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems. A famous quote by Albert Einstein states, We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we use to create them. According to my dad, probably yours too. Hey kid, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Whatever the case as professionals we have to deal effectively with problems to be successful.

0:31 So let's find some solutions. Scott and I examined eight steps for handling problems and other captivating concepts on Episode 637 of the Winning and Selling Podcast. Well that sounds like a great topic handling problems. I don't think guys like talking about problems. I think guys like talking about challenges and solution. We use euphemism, right? Call it a challenge or whatever. But it's something that went kerfuffle and we got to fix it.

1:08 Right, exactly. Or deal with it somehow. And that's what we're called to do is fix it. But before we get into that topic, on the book, New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg. We're going to talk about chapters four and five. And chapter four is titled a simple framework for developing new business. And he starts this chapter up by saying when you use words like always and never, you probably aren't telling the truth. And I think that was a really clear statement.

1:34 And I've thought about that myself. I never use always and never. I always tell the truth. Every time they do something nice for me. You're right. They're not telling the truth. And when we begin with that, we're like, okay, now, how are we measuring or what are we keeping track of? Or what are we doing when we're trying to make a point and trying to solve a trend? And he starts off with the chapter with the born out of failure.

2:01 And he tells a story about working with a channel partner. And his boss said, now, just wait for the channel partners. They're going to call you. And what? You just want me to sit here and wait for them to call me? Yeah, they're going to call you. And when they do, then they're going to ask you to conduct a demo and presentation to the prospect. And Mike says, I just hate doing demos and presentations. And I just hate waiting for something to happen.

2:23 And he said, no one else will manage my sales process. So born out of failure is he felt like he was failing in his current position and he needed to take action to do something different. And he committed to doing that. Yeah, I've dealt a lot with computer software sales and these partners that they get in with that then bring you in as an adjunct add on to their software. And these guys love to do demos and they are so boring at their demos.

2:53 Now, if you look on the screen, they're, you know, God, it's just me now. I can't see it. But I can think when I read this part in here, salespeople are always now. Now, let's work on your company pitch. Let's get your company pitch because we got to, you know, beat our chest and tell them how wonderful we are. That's the first step in sales for many company. Yeah. Yeah. And then the next part of the chapters has documented out of necessity and he had a business partner named Donnie and they started to create so much content that they had to start documenting it.

3:28 And they put together what later became the sales driver as part of their program and they created a coaching program around it to duplicate the system so that they can create consistent outcomes through the documentation. And I feel like that's a real growing pain when it comes to companies that are developing custom solutions, they have to create some consistency in the process of creating those custom solutions. And I kind of feel that growing pain based on some of the projects that we're working on to bill.

3:57 Oh, yeah. But I think the nice thing is as you work through each project, your documentation should be getting a little bit better. You're honing your, your process. And that's what you and I've been doing the last year or so is honing our process. But I like what Mike is talking about in this because I think a lot of companies want to ignore developing new business. And he starts right in on this tough stuff. And if you go back seven, eight years, this podcast was started by a friend of ours, Steve Cloyda.

4:27 And it was called the get in the door podcast. Right. And it was all about this kind of information. How do you get in the door? How do you get that first appointment with somebody you don't know. That's the creative part of selling somebody calls you and you go sit down with an appointment. That's great. But you didn't create that marketing did. Right. Right. Creative means you sat down on the phone and you made calls until somebody said they'd sit down with you. Now you're creating.

4:52 Mm hmm. Makes a lot of sense. The next part of the chapter he talks about the simplest method and the new sales driver is broken down into three areas. One is select targets. Number two is create and deploy weapons. And number three is plan and execute the attack. Sounds very violent to me. It does. I'm thinking, wow, you are fighting a war. And that that later becomes more of the chapter when he starts getting into some of the bold declarations, which the reasons for the failure are not closing the deal.

5:25 And he identifies three areas for target selection or lack of focus on selected targets. I can see that being very, very. I'm going to go back real quick before you get too much into this. Yeah. This is a tip everyone who's reading the next three chapters are going to be about selecting targets, creating and deploying weapons, planning and executing the attacks. He's laying out the book for you here. Pay attention. Right. Right. He mentions this in this chapter that from this chapter forward, we're going to be talking about this.

5:53 So the reason for the failure is the poor target selection and lack of focus on selected targets, lame sales weapons or lack of proficiency, deploying weapons and lame, lame, so lame, lame, and inadequate planning or lack of execution of the plan. And I think that's probably the three areas that most people struggle with when it comes to execution or anything is you have a bad target. You don't deploy the weapons or you don't have a good execution of the plan.

6:26 And then later, he says, I guarantee that the problem, the sales problem lies in one or more of these sales driver categories. And you're assuming that the business has a clear strategy, a defined place in the marketplace, and there is a demand for the offering. You're assuming that. And or maybe the sales compensation plan is not working against the desired sales efforts. So you're not bringing in the best people or you're not compensating them.

6:52 And maybe they're not applying themselves 100%. Maybe because the compensation plan is not very supportive for one reason or another. And the last is that the sales talent would be least qualified as average. The sales talent would qualify themselves as average and not great. Well, I think what he's saying here, Scott, is you've got to hit a minimum level of capability in order to have new business development work. And what people do is they do sloppy work. And I think this all goes back to what he talked about when you've combined the hunter and farmer roles into one role.

7:32 This thing he's asking you to do these three steps of selecting targets, deploying weapons, executing an attack. That takes a different kind of person then visit your customer and be nice. Take your order book to your customer and have another long lunch with them. Oh boy. All right. This is a person who's out trying to create business. And I think the mistake companies make is they put the same value on somebody who can create business and new business as somebody who can sit and have a nice chit chat with their current customers and maybe sell them a new product that's going to be a very different type of animal. And these people are rare that can do these three things.

8:22 Yeah. And we found that out in our consulting. Right. Most people want to just manage the customers they have. Yeah. And we're starting to work with clients a little bit longer and we're starting to see that growth and we're starting to see people kind of evolve and get excited into the training and applying the new techniques and getting the better outcomes. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy when we do that. But we got to decide to start and we need to know where to start. I'm doing that.

8:47 Getting into chapter five, selecting targets first for a reason. So the first question that we need to think of is where is the business going to come from? And the second question is who should I be pursuing? And I think these are questions that we need to wake up every single morning and ask ourselves is who should I be calling on and why should they be by calling on? And why should they be buying from us? Or where is the business and what's going to make them decide to buy from us?

9:13 What problems do we solve and be a problem hunter? Not a problem solver necessarily. Be a problem finder and look for those situations where clients are struggling. And then it makes it a lot easier for you to apply your solutions because it has value. So he talks about selecting targets and he rattles off a list. You know, who are the best customers? What are their common characteristics? What do their businesses look, smell, feel like?

9:40 Where are they located? Is there a particular size, revenue, geographic location? Where have we had a higher rate of success and where can we find potential customers with similar profiles? So he's trying to identify that ideal customer first, right? Who buys from us and who's going to buy from us in the future? What type of customer? And I think that too many people just get a list. Okay, I'm going to talk to sales managers.

10:07 Okay, well good. How big a company is a good company for you? What do they sell? What do they manufacture? Do they sell through channels? Yeah, yeah. This is always an interesting challenge. Just think of a sales manager giving a sales person a list of 50 companies. Here, I think these are good fits. Now, are all prospects created equal? No. Where are we going to start? Are we going to start at the A's or are we going to start at the Z's or are we going to start at the first one or the last one?

10:33 And I think some people just really have a challenge deciding to start and they should just decide to start. And any call is a better call than not making a call. But there are certain ranking and certain prioritization. If you've got 50, which ones are the best ones? What is the criteria that we should apply before we start calling on them and contacting them? But if we have a problem with hesitating the call on any of them and we just get to announce this paralysis, call on the first one you see.

10:58 Just do something. And you know what? You'll get better when you start applying the action to the goal that you want to achieve. Okay, so the next part of this is your target list may be finite focused, written and workable. So what does your ideal prospect look like? What is your ICP, ideal customer profile when we had Christian Jones on the show? She talked a lot about that. So how defined is our perfect fit? And then segmenting our existing accounts.

11:27 I love this part. Is it the largest, the dollar sales? Is it the most growable? Meaning they've got the greatest amount of potential? Are they most at risk? Were we're not going to be able to keep the business or if we keep the business we're losing profitability? Or other? Are there just prospects that are just not qualified and they don't really deserve your time? And we need to be sometimes more discriminating on our time and invest it in people who are going to give us the best results.

11:54 And then preparing to select the target customers. I love these questions. They're who and why. I'll give you just a couple of them. Who are your best customers in the industry size or business model or location, et cetera? So who are the best ones? Why did they initiate action or why did they become our customer? What made them decide to buy from us? Why? Who do we compete against in the marketplace? Why and when do we beat us or why do we beat them and why do prospects choose us over them?

12:26 So think about in your own world listeners who and why and think about asking those questions and preparing those targeted customers and then making the most of referrals and indirect sales. How many times do we ask for a referral? A referral is the best way to introduce somebody that's going to have a shortest sales cycle, highest closing ratio, least resistance. And in fact, you're probably going to have 10 times the results of making co-calling to people that you don't know.

12:53 And then he gets into the resources. Where do you find these targets? You look for associations, join chambers, read publications. LinkedIn is a very powerful program that can give you a lot of research and a lot of facts on people in different industries. And then really pursuing that dream client and knowing what the dream client looks like and going out and pursue them, but don't become a prisoner of hope. You need to work on your entire list of prospects too, but segment them and rank them.

13:21 And here's the other ones that I'm going to go after first, or I'm going to spend 10% of my day doing this, 20% of my day doing this. Yeah, I thought this was an important piece is to have one or two or three really high-level elephants that you're going to be going after in the next year or in the next, even in the next five years. So you've got your list of kind of the calls you're going to make, but also there's this other list of two or three and you've got to keep those uppermost in mind or they'll slide away on you.

13:49 And when you get those, man, you change your business. Right, right. So the magic is in the mix into having diversification within your pipeline. So I've always practiced that and then it closes up with targeting accounts higher on the customer's organization. So call higher up in the organization. Call higher up first because you can't start low, get rejected, and then go around them and start calling up. But start feeling comfortable calling higher up in the organization.

14:16 You're going to have a deeper conversation. Be prepared to ask the right questions. Don't jump to your solution right away because these are not the people who are ready to make a solution. They want to be able to learn more about you and your process and how you work with companies. And when they do that, they're going to be more interested in the solutions that you offer. Yeah, I was taught this a long time ago to start as higher than you feel comfortable in an organization.

14:38 And what normally happens is you get that executive vice president, you get the CEO and they say, well, Bill, I appreciate you calling. And they're always nice. Yeah, higher up you go. The less, the less annoyed they are. They talk to you and they'll say, but you really don't need to talk to me. You need to talk to Mary Johnson. Yeah. We're in HR and tell her I said to call. And then I call Mary Johnson and I say, you know, the CEO told me to call you.

15:05 And they say, okay, I'll take that call. Right. Get moved down and you find the right level. Right. Right. Yeah. So great chapter. I'm looking forward to the rest of them. I think the book is really starting to get into the execution and I really love that. Yeah. And I would tell our listeners, we're not covering half of what Mike's covering in this book. Yeah. You just can't do it in 15 minutes. If you really want to learn this material, pick up a new sale simplified by Mike Wine.

15:34 It's a great book and he really is laying out a process for you to have the success that you want. For another process and another perspective on selling, let's listen to this sales tip from Anthony. Enjoy and learn from the sales tip from Anthony by Anthony Enorino, a highly respected international speaker, best selling author, entrepreneur and sales leader. Hey, it's Anthony Enorino. Our question today is, should I qualify prospects before meeting with them?

16:07 My answer is only if you don't want to meet with them. If you start asking something like Bant, do you have a budget? Are you the authority? Do you have a time bound need? And if you have those things, then only then we'll all meet with you. This is saying, I'm interested in me and what I want, not what you want. Here's what I would tell you that I've written that you can go find. In the law start of closing, the first commitment is the commitment to time.

16:36 So that's our first meeting. The second meeting is a continuation of discovery. So that's great. You want to have these conversations. But at some point, for me, it's the third thing that I would do is I would ask the question that sounds like this. If you have this problem and if you want to make sure that you get it taken care of, will we be able to get the consensus of your team? Are we going to be able to get the resources and the investment to do this?

17:04 And if that's true, then we should go to the next step and have a collaboration about what the solution might look like. Where are you on this? Now, I like to ask this question, but I also asked another question. And the question that I ask is, are we going to be able to get the consensus of your team? And if you're worried about that, what would they need to know to be able to go forward with us? See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello, add LinkedIn.

17:32 See you soon. And that was good. We should have them back on the show to talk a little bit about this because this seems a little counterintuitive or contrarian to the practices that we've been taught before. So we should see if we can get Anthony on the show. Well, I think what he's saying is that, you know, if you focus so much on pre-qualifying during the phone call, you know, do you have the money? Do you have the budget?

17:56 Do you have this? You're just not going to be able to get the appointments that you want. Right. So I think there's a balance there, just like there's a balance in everything. Well, as we get into our topic for today, it's eight steps for handling problems. I got to tell you, Scott, I stole this from the great Norman Vincent Peele. Yes. And this is from his book, I think Enthusiasm Makes the Difference. That might be the title.

18:22 He's also the person who wrote the Power of Positive Thinking, one of the probably the five greatest self-help books, personal development books that you can read with thinking grow rich and how to win friends and influence people. Very true. Just wonderful books. So if you're in sales, you know what, you handle problems. Very seldom do you get to make the sale and dump it over on delivery and say, oh, not my touch. A customer service takes care of them now.

18:51 When there's a problem, the customer is very likely to call you and you will have to handle it. Why is that? Because you probably have the most to lose if that customer goes south. Right. So it's time to start taking care of these problems yourself. But how do we handle them? So eight steps here. We'll go through and welcome your comments on them. Step number one, don't panic. We don't do well when we're in a panic mode.

19:22 You got to stay calm in order to think clearly. And it's immediate action isn't always your best first step. Sometimes we need to control our emotions, sit on and make a plan. I had a boss that I worked for. Her name was Susan. And she was a very good boss. She taught me a lot. But whenever things went wrong, she started to go off like a crazy person. Like something was going to be laid or something. And she had an assistant that worked for her.

19:52 And Ross was very calm. And she taught me we don't take problems to Susan until they're solved. Good. Good motto. And then we would take it and say here, Susan, Susan and Susan and Sarah would say, no, no. We already took care of it. Oh, don't need to do all these things. So Ross taught me how to not panic. And Susan taught me the reason that we don't panic. Right. Advice. Number two, don't be overwhelmed by your problem.

20:21 So we can pause. We can think about it. But you can't take forever to think about it. You can't be overwhelmed by it. The problems don't get better when they're ignored. Right. So let's put ourselves in the place of a customer, Scott. He's identified a problem to a supplier as a customer. Are you getting happier and happier the longer it takes for them to return your phone call? No. Are you thinking, Oh, well, they're working on it without me there and they'll come to a solution.

20:50 Right. But you want to hear you want to hear that something's happening. You want to hear that they're they're thinking about you want to hear that they've heard you. They understand your problem. So don't get overwhelmed by a problem that causes you to take no action at all. You need to take action after you've thought about a little bit and take calm, calm action. We thought on that. Yeah. Yeah. Totally true. And silence doesn't cause people to add a lot of confidence that something is being done.

21:18 It's okay. Are you there? Are you there? Just sending them an email. We're still working on it. Just want to let you know it's going to be at the top of the list tomorrow, but we're still working on it. And they'll love to hear that. They just want to know that they're not forgotten. Well, and I think number three really talks to that too. And that practice the confusion. Because problems cause repercussions. Right. Yeah.

21:41 People start acting emotionally. They get upset. We were just talking with a customer service group. Yesterday, and they were telling us, you know, their frustrations when a customer calls them a bad name or gets mad at them. Or something that they had no control over. And, and so people get emotional about things that are going. And if we get emotional too, it's going to make matters worse. It made me think of this story. So this, this, this hunter calls 911.

22:09 Yeah. On his cell phone, he says, my, my honey partner just fell out of the, the tree stand. I think he's dead. And the, the, the 911 operator said, okay, now let's be calm about this. First, make sure he's dead. He goes, okay. And, and he, and you hear a gunshot. And he comes back on the phone. He goes, okay, he's dead. That's not what I meant. That's not what I meant by making sure. Maybe I should say from now, and let's make sure he's alive. Are you sure?

22:38 Exactly. Good. So, so when we get in these emotional situations, we know the other person's going to be emotional. We can't get emotional too. We know that in a family situation, you know, one person starts yelling, the other person starts yelling. Nothing's going to get solved. Right. Exactly. I leave the group. All right. Number four, skip the post mortem. So when the problems happening is not the time to start to figure out why it happened.

23:09 Right. So I had a client that I was working with Scott and, and at this one location, they kept sending the wrong items. And they kept having wrong items. And, and so then they went and looked at the bins. And, and the wrong items were being put into the bins. Right. So the, the one number, the wrong number was being put in them. And then we found out that the person who was unloading the truck was dyslexic. Oh my. And, and he confused numbers.

23:38 And there was nothing he could do about it. You know, they, they, there's people who can teach that and they have a process for that to help them. But he really didn't know he was dyslexic and, and, or hadn't identified it. And so, so every order was going to be wrong because the wrong parts were being put into the bin and the person was grabbing it out of the bin to fulfill the order. Yeah. So, so that's a, that's a, what's happening problem. Right. But right in the middle, when the customer is saying, I got the wrong parts.

24:07 Can't say, let me go figure out why we're sending you the wrong part. Yeah. Yeah. You want the right parts now, which means you have to take each individual bag and check that number, not just take him out of the bin. So, so don't get caught in the, in the solution to the, to the why the problem is happening, get it dealt with, get the people involved that need to be do that. And then after that cause and effect time will come later. So number five is looking for a solution. So, so far, you've been able to keep from getting confused and you've been able to keep the emotion out of the equation.

24:41 Now we can start to develop how we're going to solve this problem for this customer at this time. Right. So you don't have to do it all yourself. Right. I think the most important part and that's the next point is practice creative listening point six. It's just like the discovery process we use in sales. When the customer calls and says, this is, I've got a problem. You start asking questions so you can define what the problem is, and what they're what they've done about it. And I had a customer service guy when I sold computers a long time ago.

25:18 And his first question was, is it plugged in? Yeah. Right. And, and he said, I said, that's a stupid question. He goes, I can't tell you the number of times. Yeah. So he kicked their computer plug out of the wall and it wouldn't start up. And so we start with the simplest solutions. He said, yeah. And so asking good questions will lead you to start to figure out and preage why the why the problem is happening, where it's happening and what we can do to solve it.

25:47 But you got to listen and you got to ask questions and then listen to what they're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good advice. And we're seven starts to get in a little more philosophical. Ask yourself, what is the right thing to do? So quite often we get pressure. There's the pressure of money. There's the emotion of maybe we really don't like this customer or they've been kind of a pain to us or we think of what we might lose.

26:15 You have to wipe that away. And sometimes we have to just do what is right. I found to be a good question, Scott, is I asked my customers. What do you think would be a good solution? What would make you happy? And they'll tell me and it's usually something I can do and I can afford. And we move forward and they feel they've had control of it. So don't what I want to tell people is don't get stuck on the rules when you knew those rules are wrong or being misapplied.

26:47 You know, oh, you missed your Oh, this was out of warranty one day ago. Oh, geez, you know, too bad. It's in warranty. Do you want to keep the customer after the conflict? Yes, I would. Let's try to fix that. Emilia rate the conflict. Right. Right. So, so do the right thing. I think is the advice there. And then number eight, for those of you who have a faith life, keep praying, keep thinking, keep believing. You know, sometimes we have a problem that burdens us. We can't sleep at night. You know, the things that make us lie awake, how we talk to somebody or how we dealt with the problem or the problem itself can keep us awake.

27:31 And one of the things that keeps me awake is when I've reached out to a customer that hasn't talked to me for some time and said, is there a problem? Is there something going on? And they don't, they don't get back to me. And, you know, I tend to take that burden on. And the only way that I can deal with that is is to go to prayer. And then when I go to prayer at night, I can, I find I can get some peace and I can get some sleep and some things are just out of your hands.

27:56 And then you have to give them up to the greater powers. I saw one of these reels with Morgan Freeman and was talking about if you're praying to God for patients, he's not going to give you patience, but it's going to give you opportunities for you to be more patient. Right. For me, I want more compassion. I want to practice more compassion and be less critical. So is God going to give me more compassion? No, he's going to give me opportunities to be less critical. And then I can exercise compassion.

28:22 Right. That's right. I love that. Excellent. So we have some resources. You can contact Anthony and Arena with the sales blog.com. And it's time for our Golden Nugget. Golden Nugget. We're going to end as we would begin. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them by Albert Einstein. I think this is so true, folks that want to be able to fix it themselves. I always ask them, what are you going to do different tomorrow that you didn't do today that's going to give the results that you want in the future?

28:53 Cue the crickets. It's just sometimes it's tough to do it yourself. Well, and we don't, we don't always know. I was having a conversation yesterday with a client and he was talking about a leadership program. And I said, what we really try to do is increase their leadership toolbox, give them ideas on how to do it. Ideas on how to deal with situations that they didn't have before. There's an old saying in training, if all I have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right. And so if all I have is one solution, the same thinking I had when I started, I can't solve the problem. It's just going to be the same.

29:30 Great quote. We both we both pulled that out of this. Yeah. Yeah, it didn't. It didn't. So everything we talked about is going to be at winning at selling.com. All this information will be in the show notes. This is episode 637. Next week, we're going to be covering chapter six and seven of new sales simplified. And our topic is going to be successful onboarding. Please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on social media.

29:54 Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.