Seven Assumptions

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. Our perception of a situation is shaped by past experiences, judgments, beliefs, and biases. These elements mix each way differently to form our unique perspective. No two people see reality the same way. But is our perception of reality true?

0:29 It's real, yes. No one can take away your reality. However, what's real may not always be true. This is a critical question to consider as we encounter new situations. Join Bill and me as we debate seven assumptions which ones to avoid, and other tantalizing tidbits on episode 656 of the Winning It Selling podcast. I'm going to talk about my truth. Your truth is only true. Your truth is offended. My truth is... I'm offended by your truth.

1:01 Oh, now I'm feeling so hurt and I need to go find a safe space. Oh, okay. I know. All right, this should be true. This should be... I think Scott's going to see a different way about our truth than the pasty way our world talks about it. But before we get there... Yeah, I prefer to go the other way and establish a safe word before you get into some sales conversations. Yeah, there you go. We can make sure everybody feels okay when it's over.

1:27 Well, the safe word for chapter 9 and the one thing is big. Mm. It's called big is bad and that should be a question mark. I don't think he has a question mark on that. But this is all about thinking big. So if you've read the magic of thinking big, you just might resonate with you. It starts off talking about who's afraid of the big bad big. And he says that you should go big. There's nothing wrong with going big. Go for the gusto.

1:57 There's nothing wrong with going for it all. What do you think, Scott? Do you like to think big? I think there was... This chapter was like a bit of a simile or what's a lira... You know, a poem where balancing a big and not big and focus on it. And the essence of this chapter was really, for me, is to just understand where you're most comfortable and knowing that all the magic happens outside your comfort zone. And I remember when I sold real estate, my broker came by my cube and said, Hey, Scott, nobody in the office is going to buy anything from you.

2:27 You got to get outside of the office. I was very comfortable in the office. Yeah, I think that's true. And what we don't know is our own limits. Right? Yet we place limits on ourselves or even worse, we let people do it for us. And I think quite often those people are good, well-intentioned, well-meaning friends and relatives, like our mother, who said, don't get your hopes up, Scott. Right. Don't... You're gonna... You know...

2:58 Don't get my hopes up. Is that my philosophy of life? Don't get your hopes up? Yeah. You know, don't... You know, it's gonna be crushed. And I think quite often we can absorb those unintentionally good advices that will ruin our life. And what do you talk about? You talk about self-limiting beliefs. Yeah. Yeah. How we talk to ourselves, it's just amazing. You know, we've heard about the glass ceiling or the glass lid.

3:28 And I think about the limiting beliefs. When I was 11 years old, I had a subscription to Flying Magazine. I wanted to be a pilot. That was my goal to be a pilot. I loved aviation. My grandmother said to me, Scott, you'll never be a pilot. Your eyes are too bad. You know, I canceled my subscription. It just killed my dream. And loving woman cared about me tremendously. How did I overcome that? In 1995, I went through ground school.

3:53 I'm gonna overcome this. And I'm gonna start working on achieving my dream. And I was not gonna let that conceptual limitation live in my heart and mind anymore. Well, isn't that how we respond to some of those things? We go either one direction or the other. We either believe it. Exactly. And we say, okay, well, I'll never do XYZ. I'll never be rich. You know, that's a big one, huh? Get used to being poor. Yeah. Remember the movie Rudy?

4:17 Oh, yeah. You'll be a football player. Right. And his dad said, you'll never come out to anything. He said, go work in the factory like me. But we tend to pull people down to our level. And sometimes those well-meaning friends and relatives are doing it at a kindness. But sometimes they're doing it because if you've achieved, I could have achieved. Right. If you get better, I could have, and I didn't. And so you're gonna point out through your success my own failure.

4:46 Mm-hmm. I think another one that's very powerful is when a parent has a child that's starting to get more coordinated and wanting to challenge some of the boundaries and the parents telling the child, be careful. That can be interpreted in a destructive way of limiting somebody from taking opportunity. Don't talk to strangers, Scott. Don't talk to strangers. You're the one who's out to get you. Were you and I talking about this or was I talking about it before?

5:15 About another subject. About a parent telling a child that they're smart. Oh, yeah. That's from, I can't remember if that's from grit or mindset, but he talks about the book Mindset in here. Yeah, he does. Yeah. And if all you are is smart, then smart is the value instead of hard work. I think that's from Mindset. Yeah. She talks about the growth or fixed mindset. Mm-hmm. It's interesting. We did a show early because we needed to interview somebody at Peter Beaumont who's going to be on next week.

5:48 Yeah. And this is a great segue because he talks about the imposter syndrome. Right. Right. And that's a mindset that says I don't deserve success. Mm-hmm. Or I'm not good enough to have the successes I have so it must be luck because it can't be hard work or skill. But instead of telling your kid they're smart, applaud them for their hard work. Yes. If you're smart as something you can't control, you can get more educated.

6:16 But I can see even my kids or my grandkids, they have certain talents in different areas. And some are smarter in what I would call the book learning, the ability to remember. You're much smarter than me, Scott, and your memory. Wow. You remember details. I remember bigger picture things. I remember things in different ways. But you focus on hard work because that's something you can control. You can decide to work harder than other ones.

6:44 And my one son who was very good at baseball, he liked to play the game, but he didn't like to practice. Yeah. And I said, you're not going to get better if you don't like to practice. So interesting, interesting conversation. Now here's where I relate it to sales. Yeah. I found it just almost as easy to sell a big deal as a small deal. Mindset wise, it's easier to sell a big deal because when you're talking with big companies, you're talking with big people about big money, what you might consider big money to them is a drop in the bucket of their annual budget.

7:21 And so, but when I talk to solopreneurs or smaller businesses, small, you know, three, four people, they don't have any money. My charges is a big deal to them. And so they're reluctant. And then it makes me reluctant to ask for a lot of money because my work is just as valuable to a solopreneur as it is to this huge company with hundreds of thousands of salespeople or thousands of salespeople. What have you found on that big deal?

7:54 Is it just as easy? It's harder to do the work because there's more involved. I think that there's somewhat of a Peter principle for sales reps coming out of traditional corporate training where they end up pumping them up a lot on product knowledge. And they tell them that everybody's a prospect or they give them some sort of focused qualifications but also at the same time some limiting qualifications too. And I don't think that sometimes sales managers understand the true motivation within each individual salesperson to be able to appeal to is it an intrinsic motivation or an extrinsic motivation or if they do make more money, what would that do?

8:37 How do you tap into how they will never give up type of attitude and you got to be able to know that about each of your salespeople? And then find out some of the conceptual beliefs of calling higher up in the organization or calling bigger organizations. That is a self-limiting belief that people have. But we also sometimes I think we sense how much work that will be and we avoid doing something big because we see the work involved.

9:05 And yet really in the scheme of things, if I can sell a $100,000 deal to one company or sell $10,000, $10,000 deals to 10 companies. It's really a lot less work to sell one hundred thousand dollar deal. It's less work to deliver it and it's going to give more value and there's more stuff going to happen than a bunch of small deals. So you really have to blow up your thinking, don't you? Right. And I think one of the lines in the book that I really liked is that you don't really know your limitations.

9:39 Nobody really knows their limitations. Nobody knows what at what point are they going to fail until we know our limitations. So we need to be putting ourselves, you know, conceptually in a mindset, be prepared with the tactics and the techniques, commit to the behavior and to be able to get a goal in mind that we want to achieve and be able to improve our process and by doing it. One thing I like about this book is he summits up with big ideas at the end of each chapter.

10:09 Yeah, I do. I'd like that too. The things that he has, think big, don't get yourself limited by what you've done before, by what your salary has been in the past, value yourself much higher and keep pushing yourself to hit those higher goals. And if you have a good coach, then have use that person to help you get there. I like this one. Don't order from the menu. Yeah. And that means don't do things the same way everyone else has always done them.

10:36 And for creative ways to break out of that normalcy, act bold, right? I don't know where I got it, but I'm saying I've had in the past, be bold, be daring, be unafraid, be bold, be daring, be unafraid, go out and break yourself out of that mold. Don't listen to your mother who said, you know, don't get your hopes up. Get your hopes up. Set your hopes high. You're going to be dashed sometimes. My logo is REACH Development Systems.

11:03 It's the name of my company. And there's a little star above the REACH. And that saying that I built that off of is REACH for the stars. May not hit them, but you won't wind up in the mud. Right. So it's REACH for the stars. That's what the stars for. And then finally, don't fear failure, because if you fear failure, you're not going to achieve. And anybody who's successful will tell you they failed a lot more than they succeeded.

11:32 They were willing to fail. And therefore they succeeded because they knew what the numbers were. They knew what they had to do. And they worked with those numbers and they even exceeded them. If I have to have 10 appointments a month, they'd go for 12 or 15. Yeah. And that's how they exceeded what was going on. So that reminds me, and you bring up a good point you highlight in, and that is to commit to the behavior. I think if we can really, truly commit to the behavior, we've got a supportive belief system that is not limiting our behavior.

12:03 We have a target that is higher, greater up, bigger, higher up in the organization that we're want to shoot for. And to be able to have the guts encouraged to try it. Eventually, you're going to get over that wall. The pull vultors, think about how many times they have to practice and practice and they keep raising the bar higher and higher and higher. And every time they raise it up higher and higher, they do knock the bar off.

12:25 They just don't get over it. But eventually, they practice it and they end up doing it and they end up achieving it. I think an overlooked opportunity in today's marketplace, and I'm 58 right now, is young people getting involved in organizations in a leadership role. Join an association, become in charge of membership, and start calling on some big organizations. It's amazing the conversations that you're going to get into.

12:49 Well, not only that. Not only that, but those organizations, and you and I are part of three or four organizations here in the Twin Cities, they would welcome young people. They want a young 20 to 35 year old, 25 to 35 year old to be part of their organization. And they respect those. Don't go in there thinking, oh, I don't know what to do or I'm not old enough to be in this organization. You are, if you're doing that work, be part of that organization, you will gain a lot of respect in the community that way.

13:21 This is an intrinsic motivation to do good work, to be able to do something good for another person. That includes the organization and everything that the organization delivers to its members. That's to do something good. To be able to do it in a way where the risk is very low. What could possibly happen? It doesn't work out. It's not like you lost a sale or you have to be embarrassed about it because you told your sales manager you're meeting with them and then you came back and didn't get the deal.

13:47 This is a philanthropy mindset, but it's an opportunity to generate that experience and to build that confidence. Yeah. And you're not going to do it sitting in your jammies at home. Any more than you're going to do it sitting in the real estate office. That's exactly right. So get out and do something. All right. Next week, no book club. We're going to have a guest. I previewed it for you. Peter Beaumont is going to talk about the imposter syndrome.

14:08 Yes. And our topic today is seven assumptions, which ones to avoid. No success isn't about tactics or techniques. It's about perspective. The way we interpret situations, conversations and objections is shaped by our past. However, what we perceive to be true is not always reality. Sales, unchecked assumptions can lead to missed opportunities, missed aligned conversations and lost deals. The key to growth is questioning these assumptions, challenging our own thinking and staying open to new possibilities.

14:42 Let's discuss the most common assumptions that may affect our perception of the reality in sales. It's important to question them and determine whether they are actually true. Stay aware of these as we engage with prospects. P.S. On this topic, Bill and I are going to go through seven assumptions. I got two questions after each one. We're not going to cover all the questions. But if you go to mnsales.com and look for the sales seven assumptions, you'll be able to get the blog and the download of all PDF.

15:12 Our first one is, this is an assumption. Prospects will only buy from us if we have the lowest price. Well, low priced leaders or low priced people will only buy from you. What you have to determine is that my customer. Do I want the one who only wants the lowest price? That's my question. Prospect is solely focused on price and not purchasing a commodity. They're likely not engaging with the salesperson. They're buying it online.

15:43 It's like the commodity they buy on price. But the salesperson adds value to the purchasing process, yet this is often forgotten when negotiating price. So these economic buyers, that's what you call them, Bill. Economic buyers are. Well, that's yeah, that can be. An economic buyer will still look at value. Right. Right. Even lower down is just the low price buyer. Yeah. The shopping at Walmart buyer. And it's almost like they want to get the best price with the minimum amount of value.

16:15 But they want to get the lowest price and just enough to meet. And I always say, how much is too much? And are you looking for the cheapest price for the best value? And that kind of frames it up in a way. But this is an assumption that salespeople have. And it's our own conceptual belief because sometimes that's how we sell is how we buy. Right. And this is a difficult challenge. This is a conceptual belief that salespeople have.

16:40 When I ask an interview, then I'm going, I go, help me out. What is a lot of money? And they go, what do you mean? I go, just answer the question, what is a lot of money? And they might say $100 is a lot of money. Whoa, that's a problem. You're selling $100,000 high tech, AI equipment, computers, chips, whatever. And you think $100 is a lot of money? We have this cognitive dissattances to what is a lot of money. Are you able to sell a $100,000 system if you think $100 is a lot of money?

17:08 You're going to have this belief in your mind that people are really buying from me because of the lowest price. And that's how I buy is the lowest price. It's assumption. It's just simply not true. Yeah. I think that's the worst thing is that assumption that people buy like I buy. They make decisions. And that's why you have to have the conversations so you find out what's important to them. Exactly. And what their priorities are.

17:28 I mean, you and I have sold deals. We get to the point of we're ready to ink it. And then all of a sudden there's another priority that comes up. They didn't say no to us. They just said no, not now. Right. And later on, we end up reengaging in that conversation and then, you know, figuring out what the next step is. So really think about your role is to work with them to define value. Their value, not yours. Because people buy for their reasons, not ours.

17:55 And just get over this assumption that they're only going to buy on the lowest price. So number two is I must be liked by my prospect before they buy from me. This is this is probably I want to be liked by everybody. Well, yeah, I want to be like or they require it to be liked. And some people just short circuit if you don't like them and they start acting out in a way that they need your approval and then it starts to get, Oh, God, I don't know if I can rely on this person.

18:21 And they're very, very, very good people that are very, very likable and they're very generous and they're compassionate and they would never say anything bad about anybody. But sometimes we need to challenge the prospect in order to change them. And prospects like many sales people and they may take different advice from them without making a purchasing decision. So this is a showroom prospects end up getting information from salespeople.

18:46 But when it comes to making a change and taking a risk, they choose a sales person that they respect the most. And respect is earned by keeping the focus on them, asking insightful questions and proactively active listening and guiding the conversation. And this is moving past being liked and earning their respect because if they're going to change, they want to count on somebody that's going to take them to where they want to be and where they want to go.

19:10 And if they don't, that means in the conversation, you have to have some insights. Yes. Yes. And ask me, Oh, you just do discovery and then you walk away and say, okay, I'll get back to you. No, we have a conversation as they're telling me their needs and they're we're having this discussion and I'm asking questions. I show that I have some insight into their their issues so that we're building a mutual respect that says, you know what you want.

19:36 And I know how to get you there. Wow. That's number three. They made. Oh, I'm what I read ahead. They don't know what they want. They think they know what they want. I've done this. I've done it to a store and I think that I know what I want. I talked to a knowledgeable salesperson. They direct me into the solution that is exactly what I want. And it might be a little bit more money, but I'm willing to pay the difference for the extra value and to get what I want.

20:03 Sometimes prospects don't know what they want. Have you ever encountered that bill? I think that's true. And you know, Steve Jobs, when they were developing the iPhone, he basically said, you know, people didn't know they wanted to like gave it to them. There's a lot of truth in that. But don't yourself so involved that you think customers don't know anything. I think that's where people take it. Oh, let me let me hold you by the nose and show you what you need.

20:26 No, you still have to have the conversation. They know what their needs are. They might not know what's available to fill those needs. Wow. Right. Right. And that's a great approach to a conversation to be able to get a potential sale started is you may not know what you don't know. I've been working in this marketplace for so many years. How about we spend 20 minutes together? I'll share some of the things that are going on in our company.

20:50 You can tell me some of the things going on in your company and maybe we can find a way to work together. But you may not know everything that's available. And I would like to share that with you. Scott, they're going to be meeting with the CEO of a company fairly soon. And we're going to spend some time together. Figuring out what we want to talk about. We're not going to certainly walk into that CEO's office and say, so tell me what you need.

21:11 Yeah. What's going on? Well, you have to bring something to offer and some new insights for them so that we are showing them that we've done a lot of work not only with their company, but within this field. So we're bringing new ideas to them that they might not be taking advantage of. Or we're bringing old ideas that their company isn't using. Right. Yeah. I love the term market ambassador. I think some salespeople that don't like to be known as salespeople but like to deliver a lot of information, a lot of resources to the marketplace and their prospects.

21:43 They can call themselves a market ambassador, which means that they're taking an assessment also of what's the problem with their clients and their prospects so they can offer the solutions and represent the marketplace by helping everybody that works in it. Right. Number four is I know what they want. Okay. Well, so first of all, they don't know what they want. Then we assume that they know what they want. And then I know what they want.

22:05 I assume that I know what they want. Before I ask them anything. Right. I mean, it's like the sales rep that walks into the manufacturing company and they're selling LED lighting and they walk up to the receptionist and said, who's in charge of the facilities around? You're acting to save you 24% on your electric bill. Really. You didn't even ask a question and you automatically assume that you can save the money. That's just simply not true.

22:27 And we need to ask questions, get information to be able to find out what's most relevant and to what they want to change and why they want to change it. The motivation to do that is what we're constantly reminding them of in the conversation. Well, and that is part of the challenge of being a salesperson is that fine line you're walking between asking questions and giving a little advice and asking some questions. But when you go in there acting like you know everything about them, you should deservedly get thrown out on your tail because you do not know everything about them.

22:59 You're always walking that line that says, let me tell you a little bit. Let me ask a little bit. Let me tell you a little bit. And let's move this ladder together and going back to your other one. Not building a relationship on like but building a relationship on respect. Yeah. Here's the real consequences of getting this one wrong. I know what they want. If you start giving them what they think that they know that they want and you didn't do enough a good enough job on the discovery and the qualifying, you may be prescribing something that doesn't achieve everything that they want but they didn't tell you.

23:32 So now after you get an implement that they come back and they say, why doesn't I do that? And then you go, I didn't know that that's what you wanted it to do. I thought I knew what you wanted and you didn't. Well, they all take the word assumption apart. Yeah. Assume. Take the word assume apart. So number five is I can help them. When we take this stance where we're placing more commitment on you than the buyer. I mean, but in order for them to buy, they must first accept that they need to change.

24:04 Change is difficult. It's driven by emotion, desire, and frustration. And later justified intellectually. We've all heard that people buy emotion. They justified intellectually. And they may see the solution, but they don't see the problem that they don't buy. They don't understand that they don't see the problem. If they don't see the problem, they're not going to change. Yeah. Either they don't see the problem or they don't see you as the answer to the problem.

24:27 Yeah. And even though we may think we can help them unless we can make those two connections, right? Why? What's the issue? Why should I buy from you and why should I do it now? There's these questions that the buyer has in their mind. You have to, they're not overt questions. They're intrinsic questions that you need to answer for them anyway. But if you don't think in terms of what they're going through their head, you're just going to go out there and start blasting as if you know everything.

24:58 Right. Right. And number five goes along with number six. They want my help. Really. I mean, even if you prove to the prospect has a problem and they get, you get them to admit it, it doesn't mean that they want your help. They may want somebody else's. Right. For some reason or another. So maybe they don't feel comfortable being vulnerable with you or uncomfortable and they're uncomfortable working with you. So here, I mean, or maybe they just don't want to get a new person, a new company started because it's too tough.

25:27 They may see that you're a value. You know, there's some lazy people out there. They're not all just, you know, in government offices. Right. And we've heard many times, well, I only want two or three vendors. I don't need four vendors, five vendors, six vendors. So I'm not taking on any new vendors. So you've got to convince them that you're going to do a better job and it's worth doing the work with accounts payable or accounts receivable to get that new vendor started.

25:52 I know that again, we talked about going big. Well, one of the challenges with going to big companies is that there's some rigmarole around getting vendor authorization and all that stuff that you have to do. But once you're in, you're in for the long term. Mm hmm. I think these are two questions that a salesperson needs to ask themselves when they're working with a prospect is the prospect is thinking, do I want to fix this?

26:19 So the salesperson in their head has got to be able to first overcome that question of the prospect asking themselves, do I want to fix this? The second question that the prospects ask themselves with a salesperson sitting across the desk from them is, do I want you to fix it for me? I would put the emphasis on you. Do I want you to fix it for me? Do I want you to fix it for me? Because I haven't built respect for you yet.

26:40 Well, yeah. And it's like, you know, I'm not willing to take that risk. Make sure that if I'm taking that risk, I'm reducing my liabilities and doing that. And this is, this is, you know, encouragement for salespeople to ask qualifying questions, to get into dealing with some of their own self-limiting beliefs and some of the assumptions that they have when they're talking to prospects. And that's the point of the podcast in these seven areas that you really think of is to really become conscious of your self-limiting subconscious beliefs in it and really ask yourself.

27:18 Sometimes I mean, this is the interview with Scott Welling. There's the evidence and really thinking about where's the evidence on some of these things and sometimes if we search, we don't, we don't find it. There you go. The last one is most importantly, what's the thing they would deal with most often? Deera. And we're going to end with it. They don't have the money. Okay. Well, this is an assumption and money is tied to price cost.

27:41 However, it's tied to consequences and risk. If the cost of doing nothing is greater than the price of change, they will find the money. And I always talk about a budget and I'm sure the story before, you know, what's your budget? $20,000. Okay. In our conversation, if we talk about anything, it's over $20,000. I'm not going to share it with you because you don't have the money for it. Wait a minute. You mean you're going to hold back?

28:02 Yeah. I'm going to hold back because you don't have the money. Well, if we found something we like, we'd find the money. So in our conversation- We hear that all the time. Yeah. I truly hear that all the time. Really? I can think of a company that we did some work with a couple of years ago. $5,000 our budget. Well, let me show you our process. It'll cost you 12. Yeah. That's a good process. We didn't think about having a strategy to start with.

28:25 So we remember the sales strategy like we've never had a sales strategy before. Like, yeah, that's worth the price of admission for us. I mean, you got to think about are you really focused on a targeted universe with a targeted message that ends up adding value? It's just so important to be able to run profitably when you do that. We need to be able to create a conversation, to be able to uncover the cost consequences and risk of inaction or doing nothing or staying with the existing provider, minus the cost of what your solution is equals the value.

29:00 So if you amplify the cost consequences and risk, you project it out over time, compare it to the price of the solution that you offer now, the difference is value. And we need to structure the vernacular within our conversations to be able to identify the cost of inaction for a prospect to see what would happen and for them to find the money. And they usually find the money. It's a common objection before they even talk about a price or a proposal.

29:25 That's right. So in closing with these seven assumptions, we need to really shift our mindset. We need to feel more confident in appointments, cold calls and networking events and adopt the mindset is I don't want to assume that you have any problems or that you even need my help. Is it okay if we ask of each other a few questions and see if it's worth having a longer conversation? Oh, wonderful. And now we're working on the issues that are real, that are relevant, that are important within the priorities that we have.

29:51 Otherwise, we're going to be selling something. It's not going to be a priority at the time and we're going to wait and then we got to maintain that relationship. So again, if you go to mnsales.com, you can download a printable PDF with these seven assumptions. And then there's some follow up questions after each one of them that you can ask to be able to eliminate the assumption mnsales.com, seven assumptions and which ones to avoid.

30:11 All right. And our golden nugget as we finish up the day comes from the great and say, Zig Ziglar, you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. And that really got me thinking about the big, biggest bad. Yeah, yeah. Right? Or what was bad, big so bad. So if you don't go try to get some of those big deals, you're never going to get one. Very, very wise man. Very, very wise man. And we talked about what we'll be at winning at selling.com for show notes.

30:39 Look from there. Next week, no book club because we're going to have Peter Beaumont talking about the imposter syndrome. Please subscribe and share the podcast with your colleagues and on your social media. This is episode six, 56. Go out and get better one skill at a time. Joyful selling.