Skip to content
Episode 640 October 31, 2024 · 35:02

Who Goes First?

In this episode

Every sale or negotiation, someone must make the first move.  Some think you should never go first, if that’s the case, how do you get what you want – if you don’t ask by going first.  There is a way of starting off a sales conversation and negotiation by going first. If you want to get what you want, learn how to go first as Bill and I discuss, Who Goes First?and other tantalizing tidbits on episode 640 of theWinning at Selling Podcast.

Golden Nugget “You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship – if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” [Patricia Fripp](https://fripp.com/)

Mentioned in this episode

Full episode transcript Show ↓

Generated automatically from the audio and lightly formatted. It may contain small errors.

0:03 Thank you for joining us on the Winning It Selling Podcast. I'm Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems, and with me is Professor Scott Plumb of the Minnesota Sales Institute. Every sales or negotiation someone must make the first move. Some think you should never go first. If that's the case, how do you get what you want? If you don't ask by going first. There is a way of starting off a sales conversation and negotiation by going first.

0:28 If you want to get what you want, learn how to go first as Bill and I discussed who goes first and other tantalizing tickets on Episode 640 of the Winning It Selling Podcast. I thought you were going to talk about who's on first. Oh, shit. I was on third. So we might have people tuning in to see an old comedy routine. Well, we are doing the Stir in the World series. That's right. We'll see who brings it home and where?

1:05 That was Abbott and Castello. Yeah. The only two people in the baseball hall of fame that have nothing to do with baseball are Abbott and Castello. So there's a little trivia for our listeners. Now you can go first. All right. Before we go into who's on first? No, who goes first? We're going to be in New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg, Chapter 8. This is called Sharpening Your Sales Story. So he talked about the importance of the sales story.

1:30 Never really defined it. This chapter, he defines it very well. Rich. His first point is that our story must pass the so what test. I think I've looked at over a hundred company pitches. Yeah. And on every slide I write, who cares, which I think is similar to so what? Right. Exactly. And if you can't connect the fact or claim you're making to a client need, don't mention it. I, I, I almost every one of them, they'll say, we're, we have offices in 30 countries, right?

2:07 And who can around the globe? And I, and I say to them, so if you're showing this to Harvey Smedlap's tire shop down the street, how impressed is he by the fact that you have 30 offices in all around the world? Right. Or is Harvey thinking, God, these guys are too big. They're not going to think anything of me at all. I can't tell you the amount of companies and Scott and I are doing that now. We do business with because we're small.

2:35 Because we're a boutique shop, because we go in and do all the work. How many companies Scott, do you think have said, right? No, you're not going to pull shop months off the shelf and just give it to us. Right. Right. We have to be relevant. Yep. So anyway, it reminded me of the joke where the guy's on the date. And he says, well, enough about me talking about myself. You tell me what you think of me. Exactly. What do you like most about me?

2:58 And that's what that's what most company stories are. Chess pounding and we're so great. And so he's going to take us in another direction. So he's got three critical building blocks for compelling story. The client issues addressed the offerings, what we have and the differentiators, which I think is where people mostly fall down. They know what they have. They don't know what is different or why they're different. We'll spend some time talking about that, but not go into too much detail.

3:29 So why do we lead with client issues? And this is really in general. This isn't specific. So when he opens up one of these, he talks about here's what we do. Right. And so what we do in terms of what people need. So we work with companies that need these sorts of things, right? I think the reason we lead with company issues, we want to show that we know and understand the client issues. And if you don't catch their attention with their own issues, you're certainly not going to get it by talking about yourself.

4:03 What do you think about the client issues being important? Yeah, I totally agree. And in the book, he talks about because that's where the power is derived is leading with the client issues. And I always say that a solution has no value unless it sticks to a problem. An issue is kind of a neutral pain or gain. What do you want to get out of it? It's an issue. They need to do something about it. And he does some great job in the book of asking some very fascinating questions that probably get into a little bit later.

4:28 But that's where the power is, is really being relevant. Yeah, absolutely. So here's the five steps, five pieces of the power statement. The first one is the headline. That's where you kind of say, here's what we do and here's who we do it for. It's a catch all. It's a little bit of mud on the wall, but it's a two sentence outline of setting the vision, right? And you're not going to spend a lot of time there. And then he has a thing he calls a transitional phrase, which is to say, but what companies come to us for are, and then he goes through number three, which is the client issues, the pains remove, the problem soles, the results achieved.

5:07 Now, I'm going to read one of his in a minute here. And you can see he goes, has too many of them. Now, maybe he's giving this long list of five or six issues. And he would normally pick three or four of those, right, rather than go through all of them, right? Depending on the conversation he's had so far. And then number four, he talks about our offerings. What do we do? And then where do we differentiate ourselves? Why are we different?

5:34 And so we'll talk about that in a moment. I think the differentiators is interesting, Scott, because I think when we talk to clients and you and I spend a lot of time talking to salespeople about what their value is, how are they unique in the marketplace? What do they do different? What are the answers we normally get? They've got a lot of experience. They've got a lot of product knowledge. They've been doing it a while.

6:04 And are any of those differentiators? No, those are all very common. Those are all the table stakes. Everybody else, in most cases. Our equipment works. Yeah. Well, so does your competitors' equipment work? And they don't really know what their value is and they certainly don't know what their differentiators are. They know they're offering. Right. They know what they do. Scott and I spend a lot of time when we start a new client talking to their salespeople about how they sell and why they sell and why people buy from them and why people choose them and they just don't know for the most part.

6:45 We go out and we tell them what we do and some of them buy and some of them don't buy. And they really don't know why. So anyway, I think the differentiators are important. I really like this statement that he has in the book when it comes to differentiators. You know, a prospect is saying we already have that and the prospect just shuts down. They're like, you know, we're not listening anymore because, you know, we already have that.

7:09 That problem is already solved, but differentiating it and I will add and continue to stress, different is not better. Different is different. And sometimes you go in the opposite direction when you pick something different, but you have to pick something that's different and better. And that's what I think a lot of salespeople need to be able to look at is what are the customers doing now? What is the prospect doing now?

7:29 What do they want to achieve? You've got to fill the gap in with a better solution. Yeah, let's let me just kind of go through quickly one of his sample stories, sales story. So it starts off a company he made up called All Safe. All Safe is a premier security services provider in Canada. We work with building owners, property managers and individual corporations to deliver true integrated security. So that might be somebody's elevator talk or statement of purpose.

7:59 You might have heard something like that before. And I think that's good. It outlines what they do, gives them a little bit of information. People say, what do you do? They want to know what you do. The transitional phrase is always something that screws people up. I found that when I did when I do coaching of presentations because we just transitional phrases. Building owners look to All Safe when and you and I might say sales managers engage us when.

8:27 Right. Okay. And then he goes through a list. They're seeking competitive advantage by offering the finest security available. Frustrated that their current system is not doing what they promised or what it was sold. They're facing executive excessive liability exposure. So he's got six or seven of these. I wouldn't go through all of those. I might go through two or three of them depending on what this person does that I'm meeting that might be most specific.

8:54 And then he goes into offerings. We provide true integrated security. All safe services include first class manpower, access systems, monitoring mobile response and close circuit television. So he talks about here's our product offering. And then he goes into differentiators. And I'm just going to read that the sentence he opens with. All safe continues to dominate the security market because we are very different from the other available alternatives.

9:21 We are a true one stop shop that provides real integrated solutions. We offer in house financing and leasing options. So then he's got what he considers as differentiators. So that's really what he calls a sales story. I think if you do all those things, it can get rather lengthy. Don't you Scott? Again, I think hopefully there's enough context for the questions and the prospect is, you know, listening for what's most important.

9:46 Sales person is asking questions and the prospect is identifying what their priorities are. And the sales person is doing that active listening and only presenting what's applicable. I think three is a good number. Don't get more than three because you start to confuse a customer after that. You know enough about them to what's most important. And you just, and I like how he takes these power statements and turns them into power questions.

10:06 And I love those questions because then the prospect's thinking about the answer versus the sales person just spewing it and the prospect is listening, but maybe has no understanding of it. Well, I think you want to engage people with questions fairly quickly. So I wouldn't go into my differentiators as part of this early sales story. I might say, here's people engage us because blah, blah, blah. What sort of situations are you dealing with and throw the ball back at them?

10:33 Anytime we get into a situation where we're talking too much, we take the chance the other person has gotten lost somewhere. Maybe we set something that engaged their mind. They're not on a trip to Tahiti in their mind. They're thinking, oh, yeah, I bought a security system. I don't even know really how to turn it on. And so now they're thinking about that. And if I keep going blah, blah, blah, they miss all that differentiator stuff.

11:02 So at the end of the, here's my three or four key items that we do, I might say to you, Scott, is that any of those resonate with you in the building that you're dealing with? Exactly. When you get engaged in a conversation and your sales story can lay itself out, roll itself out as part of the conversation. And he says, oh, yeah, I'm really worried about my security because our closed circuit TVs are so old you couldn't see anything on them.

11:34 Black and white, but we're worried about the price of it. We hear that a lot of, we hear that quite often that people are dealing with old equipment. People come to us because of differentiators. And now you have something else to say, but now they're engaged and you're not doing a soliloquy. So be careful of that when you're thinking of these stories. Because I do think his example is fairly long. We learned that the two minute elevator talk, not even two minutes, I have 30 seconds to do it.

12:05 I kind of engaged the person. But really focus on client issues, pain points, differentiator, what makes you different. And then ask a question. Don't just leave it open ended. So what do you think is not a good question, by the way? Yeah, exactly. And Mike talks about in the book, how much business is done on an elevator? So you got to lengthen it out a little bit more than just 30 seconds. My question is, when is he telling the story?

12:30 Is this how he opens his presentation with a client? Yeah, context, I think is important. I think to be able to know that this is an option and a practice and a technique that a salesperson wants to apply, at least they know that that's available. And then hopefully the timing will be good. And I think we'll learn a little bit more as Mike lays out his whole process. This is kind of the first step in his process and what he feels is one of the most important ones is to have a good sales story.

12:56 And I think this is a good sales story. He calls it the commodity antidote. And I see the differentiators as the commodity antidote. And don't just look to your product as far as what the differentiators are. We've been having a conversations with a particular company. They're having problems finding the differentiator in their equipment. But many of them have told me is, well, our service, even though we're not happy with our level of service, is better than all of our competition.

13:27 Right. Well, that's interesting. So if we didn't go deeper than that, and we just said, well, tell them about your level of service, even their leader said, I'm not happy with our level of service. But everybody I've spoken to since then out in the trenches has said, well, it's better than everybody else's. We're still working on it, but it's better than everybody else's. So that's a big deal that somebody will come and they also said that almost all of their competitors, even though this is a major piece of equipment that's hard to deliver, they have to send it back to the factory.

13:58 Yeah. What other do you guys do? Whereas they have a service person that will come and be on site. So be careful that you're just looking to the thing you sell for the differentiators, how you sell it, the terms you have, there's a lot of things you can find to change yourself from that commodity, separate yourself from the competition. Yeah. But I think if there's a price cut, I think there's an opportunity for a value add instead to justify the price.

14:26 And the customer, the prospect is saying, I just don't see the value in what you're offering me and the price that you're offering it. Can you sweeten the deal a little bit by adding something on to the product and not cut the price? I think that's a much better position to take than cut the price. You're losing profit in doing that. And you're probably gaining more profit by adding more value. And then you're known for offering the best value.

14:50 Well, that value is different than what we paid for it. So one time I bought a car and I wanted floor mats and I insisted that they give me floor mats. Now I had to fight them. It was kind of crazy. But the floor mats might have cost me $300 for that car, which was ridiculous. They might have paid $30 for them. Yeah. So they can give me what is a $300 value to me only cost them $30 and they still sell the car. You want to what do you want to do?

15:22 Not sell floor mats and not sell the car or throw in the floor mats and sell the 15 or 20 or at that time $13,000 car. So right, right that you have to look at next week new sales simplified chapter nine. Scott will take that on. There's always something to learn. So let's listen to a sales tip from Anthony. And joy and learn from the sales tip from Anthony by Anthony Enorino, a highly respected international speaker, best selling author, entrepreneur and sales leader.

15:54 Hey, it's Anthony Enorino. Today's question is how can I get to the C suite? Okay, this is not going to be easy for a lot of people when I give you the answer here. You have to be worthy of sitting across from a C level person. Now in a small company where let's say they're doing under maybe $10 million, the CEO might be available to you. And maybe the COO might be available for you. But as you get into larger and larger clients, then you're going to have to have the expertise.

16:26 You're also going to have to have the knowledge. You're also going to have the experience. You're also going to need to have what we would call an executive presence. So you have to look like somebody that should be in the room when decisions are being made in the C suite. The only way that you can do this is to work very, very hard to be so insight based with great insights and great experience that the C level is looking at you as somebody who knows more about the decision that they're making than they do.

16:59 And that's what they're really looking for. It's not something where if you ask to talk to somebody in the C suite and you don't have something that's very critical for them to understand, it's probably not going to happen for you. But over time, as you get better in sales, as you start to learn how the conversations go, eventually you'll be able to sit with the C suite. And eventually you'll find out that they're just very, very human like we are.

17:25 They also are worried about not getting things right, especially because they've got a lot lying on that. And I would just tell you my favorite thing to do with a C level person is eventually grabbing them by the arm and saying, when do you think people will figure out that you have no idea what you're doing? And they always say the same thing. There's no CEO school. Nobody tells you how to do this. We're all just winging it.

17:49 And that's all true for all of them. See me at the salesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon. Wow, that is a powerful one. Talking about getting to the C suite is difficult. And you better not, you know, I always tell people, hey, listen, on your first day, don't call general Mills. Right. So call the CEO of general Mills and try to get an appointment, learn a little bit, get better. And if you're going to get to the C suite, you better have something to offer.

18:21 Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Good, good advice. So our topic today is who goes first? And I'm hoping that this topic creates some interest and discussions on our LinkedIn post about this episode. And we let everyone who posts share and learn from each other. But I was thinking about this topic when I heard this quote and I just really want to build everything on today's topic on this quote. And it's by Bob Wolf, who's a sports agent and represented Larry Burden.

18:44 The quote is, I have one thing that's not negotiable. I demand that we meet your interests. The reason we want to meet your interest is that if we don't meet your interest, you won't meet mine. And I'm a really selfish guy. I want my interest met. And the more that I think about that quote, I think about how powerful it is because you're really understanding what's most important to the other side. And if you can achieve that by by giving the other side what they want, you can almost ask for anything you want because their priorities and your priorities may be different, which is good because that's how we end up trading on value is having different priorities.

19:29 Bill, what do you think of that quote? Yeah, I'm reminded of the Zig Ziglar quote. I can't like I was looking for it real quick, but I couldn't find it. But I know he always talks about the best way to get what you want is helping other people get what they want. And, you know, that's what discovery is all about, Scott. It is. I got to find out what you want so I can help you achieve it and show you where our product or service gets that done.

19:54 And if I can't do that, I am just going to be another one of the group. Right. And I bring this up on the opening comments is that there is a saying and ad age, you know, a mantra, whatever, no go for it. Never go first in a negotiation. Wait a minute here. How do you how do you never go first and get what you want? I mean, you're not you need to be able to know what you want. And I teach a real estate negotiation class, class for continuing education in a few states.

20:21 And in real estate, I always tell them, you know, who goes first? And they look at me and they look at each other and they go, who? And I go, well, the seller goes first because they're putting a sign in the front yard. They're going first. I think about, you know, baseball right now, watching the world series. We got offense and defense to be able to get the game going. Who goes first? Defense goes first. The pitcher throws the ball.

20:45 They go first. And then the game continues from that point forward. When we're negotiating, we have to really know what it is that we want. And I want to I want to go through another formula. And this is from the crucial conversations, the book and they asked four questions that are really important. What do I really want for myself? What do I really want for myself? We really need to know what we want. Second, what do I really want for others?

21:11 What do I want for the other person that I'm negotiating with or working with? Number three is what do I really want for the relationship? We see that when we have competitive negotiators versus collaborative negotiators, we know that competitive negotiators don't care about the relationship. They just want the results. The relationship is much more important for me when it comes to negotiation than the results. And then the fourth question is, how would I behave if I really wanted these results?

21:41 And then we have to look at our behavior. So we can look at our beliefs, our philosophy. We can action our beliefs and philosophy and our behavior. And then we can ask ourselves, how would we act if this is what we really, really truly believe? Yeah, I guess I would turn that around. When I start off a negotiation, I don't think about what I want for myself. I guess I kind of know what I'm trying to close the deal. My focus is on the other person.

22:05 If I'm focused on me, I'm just not going to get there because it's going to come across. I really want to focus on them. Think about what they've told me they want, really delve into that. Here's what you told me you wanted is that I got to remind them of what they told me they wanted before I go into that negotiation. I do think you're right that we can't be super selfish in the negotiation. If we get to the attitude where I must win at all costs, the cost is going to be too high.

22:38 It is. That's the old transactional salesperson. Anything I need to do, close them early, close them off and close, close a hundred different closes from Tom Hopkins. Here's the closes. Get them close. Don't let them out the door. Blah, blah, blah. I just can't sell that way now. Me and I know we've talked to a couple of other companies. If a homeowner, for example, is doing an upgrade project and they're talking to two or three, if you let them go without trying to get a commitment from them, you may lose it to the next person who's going to get a commitment.

23:14 Mostly those are one off companies. They'll do a good job. I'm not saying that they're trying to cheat anybody. But I think you and I and most business-to-business salespeople, they have a different goal. We want to do business with the long term. We want to develop a partnership. We want to work together. We want to get honest feedback from each other so we can improve each other. I think when it comes to going first, think about what is it that we can offer by going first.

23:44 I think about some commercials that I've seen lately on TV where I've seen a national telecom company talk about the customers that they provide service to. These are critical customers. When you get associated with a telecom company and you're talking about burst responders, that adds a lot of credibility. What can you offer? You can offer the public commitment to their profession of offering telecom services to burst responders.

24:10 Boy, that carries a lot of weight. The reliability of that is different than other ways that they can market themselves. Think about what you can offer that's different than everybody else. We talked about the differentiating values from Mike Weinberg's book. Now we can do the same thing with negotiations. What can we offer that's different from everybody else and why somebody would want to work with us? Tell me what you mean by when is this who goes first opportunity?

24:36 That's what I don't understand from what you're talking about. Let's say I'm working with a client and he tells me what he wants. When I put together a proposal and I might ask him and this happened to you and I. We're on a Zoom call with a potential client and we said to him as we teach, well, do you have a ballpark price for what you want this to stay under? He said, well, if I tell you that, you're going to drop it by $700 and that will be your price.

25:09 We said, no, not really. We kind of have an idea. We just want to know if we're in the same ballpark with you and we were able to come in at his number by adjusting what we were offering. We didn't do as large an offer as we might. But he kind of went first by giving us that and trusting us with that number. But then we went first with a proposal that had a real number in it that wasn't used to ballpark. When you say who goes first, what is this happening?

25:40 This is happening when the salesperson is interviewing and discovering and uncovering a prospect's motive or somebody that you want to work with on putting some kind of deal or arrangement together. You know more about what that prospect needs than the prospect does. When you present a proposal, you're presenting an offering and a solution that is going to fix what the prospect is looking for. You're going first and proposing it to them.

26:09 Some sales can be negotiations and they can be part of a longer conversation. But knowing that you understand the prospect's goal or the person that you're going to be working with better than the prospect almost understands what they need, you're coming across as being very compassionate, very caring, and you're making an offering that that other person is going to find valuable. In that exchange that that other person is going to see the trust and the rapport that you've established and the collaboration of what do you want within that relationship.

26:39 You're going first by making an offering on it. You're setting a precedent in negotiations and anchoring. We're going back and we're getting back to that precedent or we're going back to that anchor. When you go first, you're setting a precedent and that can be a very risky move. It can be used against you in later conversations. You have to be prepared enough to be able to know what it is that you want. This is the same thing with a qualified prospect.

27:07 As a salesperson, what is it that you want? You want a qualified prospect. List a qualified prospect. That's where I think a lot of our clients and I'm sure our listeners are struggling with it. I said, describe to me a perfect prospect. When we had Christy Jones on the show, it was an ideal customer profile. ICP. List your ICP. Tell me what it is that you're hunting. When you go deer hunting, how many fessents do you bring home?

27:32 Hopefully not a lot. Just a deer that you bring home, but so many sales. That'd be a good shot though to get them with that rifle. Yeah, but salespeople go out and they want to sell everything to everyone and they don't qualify and they're not going first by really under covering what is it that you're looking for. Yeah, it makes me think that if you think about it in terms of negotiations, you really have to watch what you're seeing all the time.

27:57 I had a situation, I was playing golf with a person who had been a client of mine. I don't know. I casually said maybe that summer was a kind of a slow time for me. Then he asked me to do a quote for him. I quoted him and he goes, well, now Bill, when we sat down to look, he goes, this is summer, which I know is a slow time for you. Maybe you should cut the price a little bit. I thought, man, that is, I kind of watch what I say.

28:27 I'm around people. But it was a fair question. We worked something out, but I kind of went first accidentally. I gave him some information that he was able to use in the negotiation in a fair manner. I didn't feel I was being cheated. I kicked myself a little bit, but certainly not the client. My good friend, Oliver Friscoe, who passed away in 2014, he said idle conversation is like walking in a minefield. You got to be careful about what you say because you could be stepping on a landmine.

29:03 A few ideas that I want to share with our listeners before we close out the show is really think about for you what's most important and to think about the criteria that you look for when you want to create an arrangement with a prospect or another person that you want to have an engagement with. Some of the things that I want to share with listeners is make a list of items that you can trade. I think it's just so important to be able to have different items that you can trade and be creative on it.

29:32 There's a lot of opportunities when you really think about it where you can do something different than cut the price or change the terms, the payment terms. Think about what items that you want to trade. Rank the importance of each of those items. Here's the most important. Here's the most valuable one that we can offer that is differentiating us from everybody else. This is our unique offering that we have when you work with us.

29:55 In some cases, you might have to bundle some lower value items to create a greater value and to be able to do that in a way that you're exchanging bundles of different items. Some of the ones that you don't find most valuable, you trade them back. You're using them as exchange value items, but be cautious of limiting your options. I think sometimes companies can get too far. Those people can get too far. Prospects can get too far on just limiting themselves to one option.

30:27 When you start framing an issue and you just have it down to one item and it's price, well, you have to decide how did you get there and if you want to cut the price to win the business. Always have at least three options and therefore you don't become desperate as a prospect over pay and as a salesperson, you don't become desperate to close a deal to make your quota. A scenario that I asked salespeople when I'm interviewing them when they work for a company, I said, here's a scenario.

30:53 You're three weeks into the month and you're at 60% of your quota and you have one week left to make your quota. What do you do? They'll tell me some great creative things. They'll work 12 hours a day, they'll call up and follow up on everything like that. Then I say, okay, so what are you going to do different in the future to make sure that nothing happens, that never happens again? I said, well, I don't know. I said, you have to be at 33% of your quota within the first week, 66 between that and the second week.

31:23 Let's say 80% at the end of the third week and you're going to wrap it up and bring it home and get 110% on your quota by the end of the fourth week. Some of my advice when it comes to going first, Bill, anything that you wanted to add on to that? The only thing I was thinking about your bundling situation, I think a mistake that a lot of people make when they develop a proposal or, God forbid, just a quote, I don't believe in quotes, by the way.

31:48 I'm solving a problem. I'm not selling you an item or an advice, but don't list everything separately as in column A, column B. You get this and you get this because then they can pick it apart and say, okay, we don't want this. Oh, hell, that was my price. That was my profit leader. And now they can take that out of the equation and take $1,000 off the deal or whatever. But that was the one I was counting on to make the deal profitable.

32:19 And so now they pick all the things that are the slimmest margin and figure they can go get the other things cheaper someplace else. It's like, that's not a good way to do it. So give your program a package price. Here's what it's going to cost. And as Scott said, maybe you want to have two or three options. But here's the cost of the whole package. And then when they say, Oh gee, I need to lower the price. It's like, okay, what did we take out of the package?

32:47 And you control that a little bit better. So be careful how you set up your proposal so you don't cause yourself to get nickeled and dined out of the profitability. Right. Right. That's the technique called, you know, sharing how the sausage is made. You just don't share how the sausage is made. It's not itemized. It's a unit as one. But you know you can trade certain things on it. Were your advantage causes that conversation to happen rather than them controlling it by picking out the things that we're actually going to make you some money in the deal.

33:23 Well, yeah, you're also going to find what's most important to them and what's least important to them. And it may not be the same thing. You might have different values. That's right. That's right. Excellent. For resources, you can go to Anthony anoreenos at the sales blog.com and we'll close out with our golden nugget. This comes from Patricia Fripp. You don't close a sale. You open a relationship if you want to build a long term successful enterprise.

33:51 So be careful when you are starting things out, how you build that relationship, unless you want to just be transactional and make a sale and have to go find somebody new all the time. If you want to start a relationship, you're not just trying to close the deal. Close it, close it, close it. Patricia Fripp, fabulous lady. I believe that she is sister to Peter Fripp, who's a famous guitar player. So if any of you recognize the last name, Fripp from San Francisco, wonderful lady.

34:18 Everything we talked about is at winning at selling.com. All this information in our show notes will be there. So look for it there. Next week, new sales simplified by Mike Weinberg, chapter nine. Our topic is stop delaying and get going. Please subscribe and share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. This is episode 640. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.

Call Bill · 612-247-4155