Educate Them on What?

0:04 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 Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute. What is the goal of the first meaningful conversation with the prospect? I often ask this question and the answer I hear the most is, I need to educate them on my products, my company, and myself. Really? That's the goal? I say there are other topics more important to discuss.

0:29 Stick around, take some notes, and be open-minded as Bill and I investigate. Educate them on what? And other delectable delicacies on episode 646 of the Winning It Selling Podcast. I like to give you tongue twister Scott. You can always audience, you can always hear him pause a little bit. Oh, those who know me know, like, skip over that like a speed bump at 90 miles an hour. Scott is very good at remembering things but not real good at reading them.

1:05 Alright, well let's get going into the book club. This is a great chapter from New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg, chapter 14, called planning and executing the attack. So if you want to take an overall look at it, it is time management. And how do we use our time to prepare ourselves? Because one of the first things he talks about, and I think this is important, no one defaults to prospecting the node. Scott, you and I have talked to our clients about this.

1:34 This is the biggest challenge, isn't it, with having being both a hunter and the farmer in the same body. Because the farming tasks are a little more fun. The easier tasks are a little bit more difficult. That's what we're paid the big bucks for. Yeah, more challenging. Yeah. And if I have, if my schedule can be full of farming things, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to farm. I'm going to farm. And it's always interesting to see those sales skills just start to dull over time.

2:04 When we emphasize on account management, we count on, we count on satisfying their challenges with customer service and some of the internal screw-ups within the organization that we have to spend time correcting. And if other people will do their job right, I wouldn't have to spend so much time on retention. So what do you do, Scott? What do you do to get yourself to prospect, even though you're busy with writing and developing training and we interview our customers?

2:30 And, you know, we have a lot of things that we're doing because we're delivering and we're selling. Right. Right. And we're account managing. I make it easy for me to stay focused and for me not to be distracted. So if I was going to do a prospecting list, I would create the names and within an hour realistically, you can have 25 records, I think. And if you called them within 60 minutes and made those attempts and you had a efficient script and you manage the cost, the conversations you got into, you could do under 25 an hour.

3:05 So make it easy, create the list outside of prime time and calendar, schedule in your calendar, have the script written out and off you go. And there's no chance for you to get distracted and you're really focused on what you need to do. And when it's over, it's over. So you have an hour, do it. Have an hour. You're done at the top of the hour. You started having it. I think one of the big problems for people is they'll spend that whole hour creating their list.

3:30 Well, and that's what makes it list creation time with time to spend on the call because the same thing will happen. Oh, gee, I was investigating and I was looking up their name and I was making a couple notes and then I, oh, I did, oh, hours up. I didn't call. Right. I think don't mix up those two. Get that prospecting list. Do it on the weekend. Do it on Friday afternoon when things are slower. Have it all ready for Monday morning or Monday afternoon whenever you're going to make those calls.

4:01 If you don't do that, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to do office projects instead of calling any barrier. Any barrier will get in your way of prospecting, I think. My suggestion is time blocking. Exactly. And I said, you've got to, on Friday when you're setting up your calendar for Monday or Tuesday or whatever day you're going to do it every day, you put in a few time blocks or one or two and do one in the morning or one in the afternoon, maybe two half hour time blocks.

4:29 Don't put down a three hour time block. You won't do it. Right. Well, too much. Yeah. It's too much. It's an obstacle in and of itself. So just put in a few of them during the week one every day. So you get a rhythm. If you only do five calls, I'm okay with that. If you're doing them every day, day in and day out and then you can expand it when you feel more comfortable with it. But if it's really working for you, you don't need to expand it.

4:53 How many appointments do you need? If you're getting your 15 appointments a week or 10 or whatever number you need, then that's, then you're at the good, at a good level. Mm hmm. Back in a little bit. I think you can do three hours a day. If you're just getting into sales, you're just getting a territory, you're just starting to work at a company. You can spend three hours a day. And when you're calling and you're making those appointments, conversations, how, whatever the next step is, you schedule them for three weeks out because you're crazy busy and you want to maintain a full pipeline and everybody that you talk to is going to say, wow, you're

5:27 three weeks out. You're that busy. Wow. I want to make sure that I meet with you because you seem to be in high demand and you're not desperate when you do that. So you can do three hours. It's just you're building your building your pipeline in the beginning. All right. The second thing he talks about is the math works work the math. And what he's talking about then is how, then just what we were getting into, how many phone calls do you need to make to get this many people that you actually talk to, to get this many people that will engage with you, to get this few number of people that will actually set an appointment.

6:00 And it's all based on how many appointments you need. How many appointments do you need to close one deal? How many deals you need to close each week? So let's say I need to close two deals each week and I get a 30% close rate, which is awful because you haven't been listening to us enough. You should be getting a 50 or 60%. But let's say you're new. You might get a 30% close rate. So to get two deals a week on a 30%, I have to have at least about 10 appointments, eight, nine, 10 appointments to get those two deals to close each week.

6:31 If I need three deals, I definitely need 10 or more appointments. So now how many phone calls is it going to take me to get those 10 appointments? Maybe I'll get maybe I get two a week from leads. So now I need to call until I can fill out those eight or nine appointments and get those. So if I'm only getting hold of, and today this is common, how many people do you get hold of if you call a hundred Scott? I would say if I were to break it down, if I had 20 on the list, I may talk to two.

7:00 That's right. 10% is probably good. And if you're good at it, you might get appointments with one of those. Right. Right. So that means you need to spend your time. If you're going to make a hundred calls during the week, that might talk to 20 people and you might get 10 appointments from that. So that might be the number and you don't know it right away and you should be getting better at it. I remember I got so good at calling at one point.

7:22 I got into appointment. The guy said, I don't even know why I'm seeing you. I really don't need what you're talking about, but you were so good on the phone that I just wanted to meet you. So, you know, it's like, okay, well, maybe I should qualify a little bit better, but we need to work that out. What is the math for you and your company? Talk to your sales manager. Find out what that math is. And if you're if you're an unexperienced, if you're experienced, you should know what that math is.

7:47 And you should be working on that math. Yeah. Yeah. The most of the rest of the chapter he gives to writing your goals, writing your individual business plan. He talks about goals, strategies, actions, obstacles and personal development. I thought this was really a good chapter for setting some of these up. So first is your goals. What are you going to achieve? I need to achieve $100,000 in income. What's what are my say?

8:15 Okay, I need to do a million dollars in sales to achieve $100,000 in income. Then you start working it backwards. Right? Now, how many appointments do I need a week and how much do I need to do? And if I get a big one, I don't get to sit on my laurels. I changed my goals. I got that big deal. It was a million dollar deal. Are you done for the year? No. Well, your friend was. You always tell that story about when you're at Thompson, February.

8:39 Yeah, he made it. He was a little in February. He was a little in February. And he's made it. Tortoise and the hair deal. That was. That's right. That's right. So second one is strategies. How are you going to do it? So you have what you want to achieve and how am I going to do it? I need to have this many big deals of this many medium deals, this many small deals. How am I going to fill that pipeline to get that done?

8:59 Right. Right. Number three is actions. What are the specific sales activities I will commit to? Just what we're talking about with phone calls. Block your time out and then work that plan that you've created. I'm going to maybe I'm going to network. Maybe networking is a big. I'm going to go to these meetings every month. I'm going to I remember somebody telling me they want to have lunch with one of their clients every week.

9:22 And so they had to put the budget together in order to have lunch with a client once a week. And I'm going to go to these events and I've got to pay for those events. I have to have a budget for those events. Well, that takes a Scott into obstacles. What's in the way? Maybe I don't have any money. Right. And I've got a budget for that. I've got to find some money to invest in my own business. I think sales we've talked about.

9:48 I think we had a whole show on you're an entrepreneur. Oh, definitely. Your territory is your business. Exactly. Totally agree. I mean, a salesperson is the closest opportunity enrolled to be a business owner. You are in charge of revenue and in reality when you control the revenue, I think you have an influence on the expenses. And you're able to like Bill said, set up a budget for the things that are going to support sales.

10:11 When you have the actions like networking, there are a lot of people that look at networking and salespeople are extroverts or they're social animals. And they look at networking is an extrovert activity where I'm going to get together with my friends. But you have to be strategic on what the goal is on being networking. Right. One of my biggest challenges is I network with too many other salespeople. Right. Oh, yeah.

10:33 We know a lot of good salespeople. We need to be meeting with sales managers. Right. That's what we need to be network business owners too. Business owners, CEOs. So you have to change where you're networking. I'm not networking for fun. I'm networking to meet the people that can influence my business. Right. And then these last pieces on personal development, if you're listening to this show, you're listening to podcasts, you're following along with our books, you may not state it, but you have a personal development plan.

11:00 Mm hmm. Right. Right. It's, it's looks like I can't remember an author on habits that said, you know, just decide to get up and drive to the gym. You don't have to get out of the car, but just drive to the gym. Do that after three days and you're going to go, geez, I'm here. Why don't I just get out of the car and go? I should bring my gym clothes with me that next time. I'll have a better. I got to bring the gym clothes, but you start to ease into it just slowly, slowly, slowly, and it's like, God, I'm already here.

11:26 Why don't I just go in? But that's a personal development plan when we have the time and we also have to maintain our commitments to us. So sometimes that can be a challenge. Well, and I think getting into a book club, I mean, I think three different book clubs where I'm expected to do a partial report on that book every three, four, five weeks. And so I stay with the book when sometimes I would be tired at night and not read it.

11:52 I've got this book club every week for you guys. So I either have to respond if Scott's taking the lead on it or, or I'm taking the lead on after prepare. So it forces me to do that. So some accountability in this plan is really good. Right. This individual business plan and stick it in a drawer and not look at it until January of next year. That's why this is such a great timing. Right. We're coming up to the new year.

12:17 Write this out and prepare your plan for next year because it's coming up really quick and put it right in front of you. What are those goals? Those should be up right in front of you on your office wall. Yeah. Yeah. The behavioral goals. Yeah, absolutely. Number five, he talks about pre-planning travel. This was a Southwest Airlines advertisement. And it's old because Southwest Airlines changed leadership and now they don't do things the same way they did things anymore.

12:47 So you can discount the Southwest Airlines advertisement. They're blowing their computers blowing up because they didn't invest in them. Thousands of people getting stranded is not the same Southwest Airlines that your daddy knew. But I think the point is have travel put in. If you're running a territory that's a quarter of the United States, you can't do it from your office. I know we like Zoom. I love Zoom. But I need to meet people.

13:16 Right? Remember the old commercial Scott and get to Omaha? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. They're in this business meeting and the guy says, we've all just talked to each other now. Go out and meet your clients. Get to Omaha. Start pre-planning travel weeks where you're out there. And then this final point is a balanced effort produces a balanced pipeline. You have to be putting stuff in the front of your pipeline. You have to have different size customers.

13:44 We get an elephant and we think we're living large and then we just farm the elephant and then what happens Scott? Well, when the elephant is done and gone, we don't have anything there to replace it. The elephant dies and all we got is a big smelly carcass and we got no other business. The elephants always die, don't they? Right. Someone else is looking for them. They go away. Yeah. Crazy. All right. Next week we're going to finish up New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg with chapters 15 and 16.

14:13 And our next book is going to be The One Thing by Gary Keller. So go out and get the one thing if you don't already have it. I've read it a couple of times. I'm excited to read it a third time. We all start doing things differently Scott. Rather than just the big difference between knowing and doing. Right. Exactly. We all suffer from that. To get another professional viewpoint, let's hear a 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.

14:48 Hey, it's Anthony Enorino. How can you stay mentally strong? One of the best things that you can do is study Ryan Holiday's work on stoicism. It's very good work and it's one of the best ways to stay mentally strong. All kinds of things are going to happen to you in your life. You're going to get sick. The people that you love will disappear from life. And all of these things will happen again and again and again as you are a human being.

15:19 So what you have to do is find a way to say I'm going to stay mentally strong. I'm going to be stoic as much as I can and I'm going to do my very best to take care of all the people that I love and the people that love me because that's what I need to do. So if I could give you one thing to do, if you don't feel like you're mentally strong, then do something for somebody else. Once you take yourself out of this conversation and start looking to help somebody else, you will feel a whole lot better and a whole lot stronger.

15:53 See me at thesalesblog.com or come out and say hello at LinkedIn. See you soon. Well I don't know that I'm always mentally strong but I do like the very end there where you said take your eyes off yourself and help others. If you're worried, if you're anxious, if you're scared, quit. If you're thinking about you, you're too me oriented. And so there's a great time of year. The holidays are a great time of year. Christmas is a great time of year to maybe give to other people a little bit more than you're thinking about those gifts for yourself.

16:28 Right. If you're feeling lonely, call somebody and conversation with them because maybe they're feeling the same way and it's amazing how good you feel after you make a few phone calls to good people. Yeah, excellent. All right. Well I'm excited about this topic. I know you're excited about educate them on what. I know you're talking about different ways to emphasize this. Educate them on what? Or educate them on what?

16:49 And I always think about the question, you know, we all get these put offs. We get these stalls. We get these objections. You know, we get this. Oh, I want to think it over after we deliver the best possible presentation that we ever could. So I want to ask our listeners a question before they get into a sales meeting, that first meaningful conversation with a prospect. Here's a question to ask yourself. What do I want the prospect to dwell on after the meeting?

17:17 I think we need to begin with the end in mind going, what do I really want them to dwell on after we have a conversation, a meaningful conversation where we're talking to the right person and we're sharing information and we're exploring options. So I got a few questions to ask and just kind of talk about that first appointment when it comes to information because Bill and I was talking about sales and negotiation is all about getting the right information.

17:45 That first appointment, I can't emphasize enough how important that first appointment is. It sets the tone for whether you're a professional or whether you're just another hack blowing information into the wind. Yeah. Information by the way that they already looked up on your website. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So here's a few questions to ask ourselves, Bill, and I'm kind of curious how you would answer them. Who knows more about the problem?

18:08 The sales person or the prospect? I'd say the prospect knows more about the problem. I think sometimes the prospect knows more about the symptoms. I think they see things but they don't necessarily know what caused them. Yeah, but I don't even know what the problem is if I don't ask good questions. True. I don't tell you anything. I will find out what the problem is. They know what's going on. I don't know. I might be able to identify it or call it something.

18:33 But I don't know. I don't know what their specific issue is. Or if they even have one. Well, here's an example. Let's say that you're working with a company, you're selling HR services. You talk with the business owner and the business owner says, I'm just really having a tough time keeping people past the probationary period. It seems like they kind of hold on and then between three and six months, they just kind of the wheels come off and they end up having bad performance, poor performance.

19:02 Do you a pip plan? We ride them up and then they quit and they leave. So I got a really high turnover. Really? Okay. Well, then you ask some more questions. And what you really find out is you've got a culture problem as to what leadership is going to tolerate and you have a hiring problem. Those are the problems. The symptoms are high turnover. So sometimes when a salesperson has the experience of solving a problem, what they see as symptoms, the prospect doesn't really know what the problem is.

19:29 So then a salesperson can present a solution to address the real problem, not address the solutions. It summarizes everybody. Scott just said I was wrong. Well, the customer knows more about the problem or the salesperson knows more about the customer's problem. I want this to create some inspired friction. Who knows more about the solution? This should be an easy one. I'm not going to answer anymore. You already told me I'm wrong with the first one.

19:49 We do. We do. We're a salesperson. As a salesperson, we know more about the solution. Who knows more about the cost of inaction? We compete with inaction. It's our only competition, really. People doing nothing. Who knows the true cost of inaction? Us or the prospect? The prospect doesn't know the formula. We know the formula. When we use the formula to uncover cost, missed opportunities, and we're asking the right questions, and they're filling in the formula just like Bill talked about, how is your personal and professional development?

20:25 How are you measuring your activities? How many calls are you making? We're getting into getting that number, putting it into a formula. Not enough people even consider the cost of inaction, Scott. You're right. They don't. What we need to do when we present a solution that has a price to it, we need to be able to establish a cost of inaction if they do nothing because that's what they're going to compare the price to.

20:46 The cost has got to be higher than the price. We guide them to uncover the price of inaction or the cost of inaction. We know more about the price. Obviously, we set the price. That's 100%. The budget, who knows more about the budget, us or them? I think they know a number. We know that if we present a solution that they need and they don't have the money, they'll find the money because they need the solution. Sometimes we have an influence on the budget.

21:15 Who knows more about the decision-making process? I think they do. I think they mislead us sometimes. They always hold somebody back that needs to be involved. It's not part of that. Those initial meetings. Do you think they mislead us on purpose or do you think they just have good intentions that they think they can run it? I think they want to go into it maintaining control. I think that they want to feel like they're going to protect themselves against the manipulative salesperson and prevent them from having any leverage on them.

21:42 They really withhold information. In some cases, they wait too long. It costs them more money. That's just because there's just not enough trust established in the initial conversations. I think in some cases, as you say, they want to be in charge. They want to put themselves off as if they are in charge. Then we find out we have talked their boss to and now we're way behind. There's no reason why you wouldn't want to bring more people in.

22:10 I think if you're a good salesperson, you'd love to have a meeting to have people in it because then you can poll everybody going, what would this solution do for you? How would this have an impact on your professional life? How would it make you feel when you leave work and you come into work every single morning and when you go home, your personal life? Now you get all these people weighing in on what better life they want with a better solution.

22:33 How are you going to get out voted in a committee when you've got seven people and five want it and two are saying, no, you think you're going to lose it? No, you got it. I think you can get so much more information if you're willing to talk and find other people involved. We've been working with a company that sells machines and in our conversation we found out they weren't really talking to the machine operator. What do you hate about the machine you're currently using?

23:04 Might be a really good question for that operator. What do you love about the machine you're currently using? What do you wish it would do? Maybe our machine will do that and while that operator is not going to sign the check, the business owner is smart enough to know I want my operator to be happy. Right, right. And I can increase productivity. But if we don't talk to that person, we'll never know what that operator is feeling.

23:29 So get everybody involved. Think about all the people that are involved with this purchase. Who's going to use it? Who's going to have to maintain it? Who's going to have to train on it? Those are different people involved that are involved in the solution. You may have their vote when you do it. One of the things that Scott and I do that differentiates us from our competition is when we're going to start a training program we interview all the salespeople and the other people maybe inside salespeople or customer servicepeople at that company that we can talk to.

24:03 It's amazing what we find out, isn't it? That the leader didn't know or didn't tell us? Right, right. Yeah. They didn't just didn't realize it, right? They weren't in the trenches. They were the sales leader. I think we learn a lot of those calls on what is not said versus the answer to the question. It's interesting discovery when you look at it from a different perspective. But sales leaders are within the forest. They can't really see the trees for the forest.

24:31 So it's just a different. Well, we all have our own things that's important to us. Yeah, and we all have our own blind spots too. And I think we need to be conscious about where our blind spots are and what we're focusing on. Some of the other things that, you know, who knows more, who knows more about the timing? I think the prospect does and we can leverage that to our advantage if we do a good job of it. What is the criteria?

24:54 Well, I want to go back sometime to I was thinking about the timing. One of the things we have to do in sales is create a sense of urgency. Right. This goes back to your cost question where they don't realize the cost of inaction. Mm hmm. But if we don't create a sense of urgency, this project can just be put off again and exactly and again. So if there's no feeling that if we don't do this now, things are going to get worse or things are not going to get better, at least, we can't create that sense of urgency.

25:20 They may know what their own timing is. They may be wrong on that too. Right. I'll go back to my first question. What do I want the prospect to dwell on after our meeting? Mm hmm. If you've done a good job of creating urgency, you want them to dwell on it. Totally just obsessed themselves. All is capitalized. Yeah. Do you want to keep this going or you want this fixed? Yeah. Why do you want to wait? Why do you want this pain to continue?

25:47 Yeah. So a few other things. I mean, who knows more about other options? I think sometimes a salesperson knows more about other options because they know where sometimes their prospects go when they don't buy from them, the salesperson. So I think salesperson knows more about other options. Well, that's why you asked a great question. Who else are you talking about this? Yeah. Besides us, who else are you talking with?

26:08 You're working with them, the prospect on the same side of the table with them to be able to solve a problem. And if your solution is not the best fit for them and they may have better success with another solution, sad to say, sometimes you may want to work with them to figure out how you can hand them off or sometimes find out the difference in the gap between the two and let them discover which one the best one is.

26:34 And they might grow into your solution later if yours is a different fit. At the point of past experiences, I think when it comes to purchasing and working with salespeople, the past experiences of prospects are very, very important for salespeople to know. And I'll also turn the tables and say the past experiences that the salesperson has with prospects becoming customers with successful outcomes is also very important.

26:59 So what past experiences you as a salesperson do you want to make sure that you share with your prospect? What do you want them to dwell on after the meeting? And hopefully the success that you had with somebody else is going to be applicable to them. And then the last and most importantly, what do you want them to dwell on after the meeting is what expectations do they have of you and what expectations do you have of them?

27:23 What are the desired outcomes? What is the desired outcome being the most important expectation that they have? And if you don't know what that desired outcome is as a salesperson, when you're talking to a prospect and they're making a commitment to becoming a customer or client, I think you're going to have a rough conversation, a rough relationship if you don't know what those expectations are. So know what those expectations are.

27:42 I think there's not enough salespeople. We've talked about motivational questions before, but we don't know what motivates people beyond just let's get this job done. We need to know, you know, and I know we have the question it's not a good one, but we need to find a better way to ask the question what keeps you up at night. Yes, because what is causing you stress? What is causing you to not enjoy your job? If we can help them overcome that with our solution, then we're selling them on more than just one level.

28:13 We're selling them on the opportunity to solve the problem. Maybe have their people work together more effectively. Maybe have the machine be more productive within the operator, be happier. But then also there's that level of, you know, I'm satisfied with my job. I'm not upset every day when I go home. I'm not frustrated when I have to come into the office. So we need to sell on all those different levels. Yeah, yeah.

28:37 I agree. And I'm going to close with five questions that people can use to just start conversations and really keep the prospect on track with the information that you want. But before I get there, I want to share three other questions. So as you're finishing up that meeting and you want your prospect to dwell on certain things, ask yourselves, you know, what do you want to know after the meeting? So you have to begin with this in mind.

28:58 What do I want to know after the meeting? The second question is, what do you want the prospect to know after the meeting? What do you want your prospect to learn about the conversation that you're going about to have with the prospect? So what do you want them to know? And then lastly, what are the consequences that the prospect doesn't buy from you today? If you don't uncover those and let the prospect see them in that first meeting, I don't know that we're going to be able to create that urgency and motivation bill, like you said earlier.

29:27 But think about those three questions when we start a conversation. And I think too often, again, and this goes back to your educate, I need to tell them about my company. If we go into it with this idea and we explored that with Mike Weinberg's book too, we go with this idea that I need to do a presentation as part of my first meeting with them rather than try to find out all these things you're talking about, then I'm going to spend all my time talking and I'll learn nothing.

29:57 I think who's Lou Holtz has said I never learned anything talking. And so if we don't sit down and ask good questions, design good questions that are going to elicit the kind of information we need to know about what the issue is and if we can solve it for them well, we're going to come out of that. They're going to know more about our company, but we're not going to know anything about the issues that they're dealing with.

30:19 Exactly. Exactly why I bring this topic. We're waiting for them to go. That's it. What you just showed me about please, please, I don't care what it costs. Give me that. Give me that you guys are so wonderful and I've never had that happen in 35 years of selling. I've never had anybody jump up and go, my God, you're wonderful. I must have it. So. And have a deal stick. They might have acted like that, but the deal didn't stick as it ushered me out of their office.

30:46 So as I start to wrap up the topic, I really want to keep the mantra in our listeners mind and that is to educate to influence, not to teach. Educate to influence your prospect, not to teach them. And I want to give three examples of how that happens. How can a salesperson apply this concept is number one, there's the law of comparison or the law of contrast. We all have taken a car that we're thinking about trading in and we go to the dealership and we test drive a brand new car or a different car.

31:19 And for some reason, a used car that's a different car still has that new car smell. And we drive it around and we check out the features and we love everything that it does and then we get into our old car. And it's like, oh, geez, you know, the thing still has that hum, that rattle. And then we have to compare our old car to a new car. And it's like, God, I could have that. What do I have to do to have that? So we're comparing one against another.

31:43 Another thing that I think really supports the educate to influence, not to teach is once you introduce something, the awareness of a current problem and potential threats or future cost or future impact now becomes tangible, becomes discovered. This has been discovered. So worry starts to influence the fear of loss of the prospect of losing something that they currently have and causing them to change their comfort zone.

32:07 So they're seeing something, they're aware of something, now it's a problem that could be a threat in the future. So now that's going to have some influence. So you're educating to influence. And lastly is you will create and define urgency when you ask the right questions, Bill. So when you bring it to the attention, the prospect uncovers and discovers it. They now see the cost consequences and threat of inaction. And they really start to increase the priority station and the urgency and the motivation to fix it.

32:35 This was a big aha in our last presentation, last class that we taught. And that was they said, we said, you know, if they discover their problem through your questions, they believe it. Yes. But if you tell them what their issue is, they're going to fight against it. And they were shocked at that. Right. And I think they're going to be able to use that. If you ask good questions and the client discovers and comes up with the problem on their own, now it's a real problem.

33:04 Yeah. Or a way of solution can have a direct impact on them personally. You're going to be very influential. Get on the same side of the table, ask the right questions against the problem, which you're both fighting against on the other side of the table. But as we start to ask questions, we're going to get objections. So I just want to introduce the possibility of getting those stalls put off some objections. And an objection is just an unasked question.

33:29 And the best way to prevent an objection is before the prospect even brings it up. And if you don't bring it up before they do, it still exists and you're going to have to be dealing with it later. So some of the things that you may discover as you're having a conversation with them is you're going to see something that could cause a problem in the relationship. So you might start a question off with, it's probably not the case here, but what happens if this happens?

33:52 Or you might say, one of my concerns of working together is this. How should we deal with that if that ends up becoming an issue? Or my biggest fear is that you say yes, and then something else is going to be able to take it away and put us right back to where we began. What happens if we do that? So sometimes in our conversations we sense those future objections and it's better for us to deal with them and us to bring them up because we're the experienced ones.

34:16 We want to take the prospect through a path that doesn't have a lot of bumps on it and it's smooth. So sometimes we have to work out those objections. All right, so let me close with the five questions that I alluded to earlier. Number one is a qualifying question. Are you interested or curious about exploring options? And this can just be the beginning of a conversation and they may say exploring options on what? And you might say, do you have the capacity to do more business?

34:43 Yes. Yes, I have the capacity to do more business. Okay, are you interested in exploring options as to how you can get more business? Oh, okay. Well, yeah, okay. Well, what would you like to change? So that's the next question is what would you like to change? Well, you know, I'm really slow at breakfast or dinner slow and I really like to be able to have that lunch rush come back to dinner. Okay, well, that's what you'd like to change.

35:08 The next question, third question is why now? Why is that important? And you look at it going, you know, I've been seeing some of the trends in the area and my revenue's been going down and I need to introduce my service to more customers, more prospects. So I need to advertise. So I need to do that before things get worse and I start losing more people. And then, you know, the fourth question is what would you like to see in a better solution?

35:31 Well, I'd like to be able to see so many covers at dinner or so many covers at breakfast. And so we've got kind of a goal and expectation to look for. And then the last question is what would that do for your business? What would that do for your family? What would that do for your life? So you're looking at that personal impact that somebody would have after they go through the exercise of exploring options, which is where you're really beginning.

35:55 So hopefully those five questions can be used, can be effective and change the sales results that you have. All right. Wow. Great section on that. That's one to really listen to a couple of times. A lot of information in there. Thank you, Scott. That's great. My pleasure. What a joy. Thank you. Yeah. Let's move on to our golden nugget. This is from Norman Cousins, who was a journalist in the 50s and 60s. Death isn't the greatest loss in life.

36:20 The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live. Oh, wow. Ouch. That was powerful. What dreams have you given up on? You decided not to do anymore because it wasn't going to work. And sometimes we do have to reject something and move on. But have you taken a loss? Have you let something die inside of you? Don't let that child die. Right. Right. When I was young, my parents signed me up for violin lessons. I did not like the violin.

36:49 I expressed no interest in the violin. My mother loved the violin. I loved the trumpet. And when I became of age where I could make my own decisions, I went out and put a trumpet. I took music lessons. And I was not going to let that goal of playing the trumpet die inside of me. All right. Very relatable. So everything we talked about will be at winning at selling.com. Next week on our book club, New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg, chapters 15 and 16 will finish that book and go on to The One Thing by Gary Keller.

37:21 Our topic next week is how to leverage the buyer's journey. Please subscribe and share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. This is episode 646. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Happy birthday, JB. Joyful selling.