Selling to a Group

0:04 Thank you for joining us on the Winning and Selling Podcasts. I'm Professor Scott Plum of the Minnesota Sales Institute and with me is Bill Hellkamp of Reach Development Systems. As it ever happened that you go into an appointment expecting to meet with a single person, but when you get to the conference room there are already three other people seated around the table. Although this can cause your stomach to turn over, it isn't really a bad thing.

0:27 However, it can go south quickly if you don't adapt your strategy. Hey kids, gather your team around the radio. The Scott and I investigate selling to a group and other transcendent truths on Episode 671 of the Winning and Selling Podcasts. I imagine these kids sitting with their legs crossed, sitting in a circle on the carpet. Looking at the Philco. And getting ready to listen to the old radio. That's great. I'm looking forward to this and I tell you, if I were to walk into a room with three other people still sitting there and the person that I would meet with me is walking me into the room.

1:05 And the first question I would ask is where do you want me to sit? Well, let's wait on that. Alright, I just want to give people a tease about what we're going to talk about. But we're going to be starting off with the book sales perspective by Jimmy Zugg's work. We're going to be worth, we're going to be doing that. Jimmy Z, we call it. Jimmy Z, yeah, we're going to be doing part two. Even laughs about talking about pronouncing his name in this one of these chapters.

1:28 He brought it up in the book. I mean, a couple of chapters. He said it's just kind of fun. And I, you know, I'm luckily I've got the same same possibilities with the last name of plum as people have, you know, a different joke for related to that. Oh, you think hell camp, there's no jokes for hell camp. Oh, yeah. That's joke. I guess every name we can abuse. Before we get into the book, we make an announcement about some of the work we started to develop.

1:54 We've kind of come across this new niche about working with franchises. And that includes franchise ores on sellie more units. And it also addresses working with the individual unit operators on generating more revenue. And between the two of them and involving Bill and I and our new company called franchise sales pro. We create that sense of accountability and support within that industry. And we're looking forward to expanding that.

2:20 So anything you want to add on to that bill? No, other than if you're a franchisee or franchise or and you're having challenges with getting the traction you need to create revenue, right? They're both trying to create revenue. Yeah. We're we can help you with that. We think we can. We don't, you know, we pull it back a little bit, but but we'd love to have a conversation. Let's call it that. Yeah. We don't want to be a sump to because every situation is unique and we want to be able to deliver that customized personalized approach.

2:49 And it's some day we'll tell the story as to how we got there. But I'm really excited about that area. And I just seems to be a very well structured area that we can come in and enhance the existing relationship and and enhance the existing operations manual that's being already proposed and implemented. So today we're going to be covering chapter six and seven of sales perspective. This topic chapter six is on care. And when we had Jimmy on the show and he really talked about this, he said this was a really important chapter in his book.

3:23 And I remember when we had Anthony on arena on when we were talking about the only sales guide you'll ever need. He talked about how important it is to have an emphasis on caring about your prospects. And the subtitle of the chapter is preparation makes all the difference and he includes a quote at the beginning of each chapter. And this one is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care about Teddy Roosevelt.

3:43 And I think we've heard that one many times. I think our listeners have heard it too. It's a great quote. And when I started reading this chapter, I kept thinking about the obligation of caring for a prospect or caring for somebody that's important in our lives. And I came up with the line that I care, but I'm not responsible for making the change. Somebody else has to decide to make the change, but I want them to know that I sincerely care about what's best for them.

4:09 And sometimes that can be a challenge of being overly invested and overly committed in a personal relationship, thinking that you're going to change them when they don't want to change at all. One of the things I've always talked about is the difference between empathy and sympathy. Yeah. And I can empathize with your issues. But as you say, I'm not responsible. You've got to take some leadership to do something about them.

4:30 If I sympathize with you though, I tend to agree with you and we all sit around and have our pity party together, crossing our legs and wondering when the world is going to be better. So sympathy doesn't do us any good. Empathy understands, but we're going to have to work on something. I'm not going to just sit in wallow in your pity. Right. Right. And there's a time for that, but there's also a time limit for that. It's how long are we going to do it?

4:55 And let's kind of get past it and get on with building a better future. One of the things that he talked about in the book, it's the welcome word, one of the first sections of this chapter. He says, he's calling out to somebody. He says, I've been thinking about you and I just wanted to reach out and see how you're doing. And I call this proactive appreciation. We talked about it the last episode where somebody is thinking about another person proactively out of the blue and reaching out to them and having that conversation letting them know, I'm really thinking about you.

5:24 And I hope you're well and what's new and what's going on. And is there anything that we can work together on or go from there? And it's really thinking about people that are important in your circle because they don't get enough proactive appreciation from people other than people reacting and responding and things that they're doing that maybe they want to be recognized for something a little bit better. I think you're really good at that, Scott.

5:48 You're good at reaching out to people and reconnecting with them. That is not as a weakness of mine. I tend to get my head down on work and productivity. You're very much better at connections than I am. And I think that's something we could all get better at, that reaching out. What do you do? Maybe two calls a day. You just say, I'm going to look back at my list and then I'm going to put down two people that I want to talk to and I'm just going to call them.

6:15 And if I can hold them, that's great. If I don't get hold of them, I'll just leave a message and say, hey, I was thinking about you. Hope you're doing well. Well, one technique that people could do or use is to look in your calendar from a year ago and look at this week and go, hey, who did I talk to last week? How about I call them and see what's new, what's different, what's changed, and see if there's anything that they'd like to share.

6:36 And that's an easy way of doing it. Yeah, I think that's important to continue to make those connections. And when you say they don't care how much you know, people don't want you just to be in it for the next year. You know, that feeling that this guy, this lady, all they want is to get the deal done so they get some cash in their pocket. And yeah, maybe it'll be a benefit to me, but it certainly makes me, you know, what do they say?

7:05 I want to pinch my nose and vote for the guy. I want to pinch my nose and buy from you, but I don't want to have that feeling. Right. Yeah. He's got a couple of bold points that he's put in this chapter. And one is by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail and totally applicable in a sales conversation. And another one is proper planning and preparation prevents poor performance. I can't believe I got through that on the first time.

7:32 That was not edited at all. But we've never heard those before. So, you know, I do think that in the book, we have a lot of these sayings that we've heard a lot. It doesn't make them untrue, a little bit trite per house, but not untrue. Yeah. A couple of things that I highlighted in this chapter is this is an important step because you're caring about the person before the sale and before the business. And he's talked about this before.

8:02 It's the person, it's the business, and it's the sale. And I really love that approach. And he has consistently put the emphasis on the person and the prospect that you're working within this book. And I really love to see how he's implementing it throughout the chapters. It may be the next chapter. I'm getting a little ahead of myself on, but he does talk a lot about, you know, their family. If you heard a little bit about their family to mention that, to ask questions about things that were going on.

8:29 Remember what they told you last time. And I think that's really important. I have talked to people who work on the coasts. And I would be, I would love to hear from our listeners. In the Midwest here, it's quite appropriate to sit down at someone's office and go, oh, I see your fisherman and talk about fishing for 15 minutes. Yeah. Or I see that you've got the award, you know, you're in the optimist club. Tell me about that.

8:56 But I have, I had a friend of mine who worked out East and he said he'd go into an office. He went to an office once and he started his presentation. The guy just saying, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Just hurry up, hurry. Let's get to it. Let's get to the bottom line. So, so there can be, you know, we work in an environment here in the Midwest that is a little bit maybe more relaxed than it might be on the coast.

9:18 I'd be curious to hear from our friends on the coast. And our friends are overseas because we have a lot of listeners, we have a lot of listeners in the Philippines. So we say hello to them. We have a lot of listeners in the Asian area. So we're glad about that. What is it like in your country? What is it like in your area? Is what Jimmy's talking about here, this need to care and connect, is that important? Or is it just business, business, business?

9:43 Right, right, right. Good, good, good call to action Bill. I love that idea. I'm anxious to hear the response. One more thing that he puts in this chapter, and again, it's really reinforcing the essence of the book, is when you focus on the importance of gaining specific knowledge about your prospect and customers, you will have the opportunity to build a relationship beyond business. Yeah. And I can really see that being part of Jimmy's personality.

10:09 I mean, if you've heard the interview with Jimmy, you know, he's a very likable guy. This may be a little bit of a stretch for some of us. But if we just make a conscious referring to me that it's a stretch that's going to be likable, that are a little bit more, I can say it. Most private sometimes. Interverted people make great salespeople because they really spend their energy wisely. But really focusing on that person and thinking about the person that you're meeting and what kind of relationship you want to have with them because there's different types of relationships with the different people that we meet.

10:41 Well, that's the comments and wrapping up on chapter six for care. Anything you wanted to add, Bill? Nope. Let's go into chapter seven. Chapter seven is on connect. And the subtitle is rapport. I love this. Build a bridge of influence. And this reminds me of my line is to educate to influence, not educate to teach. When we're connecting with somebody, we want to work on influencing them to be able to have a better life, a better outcome because of our time together.

11:09 And when we connect with somebody and we have that trust and a poor established, then we're able to really work with them to get a better life and a better outcome. And I love this quote from Einstein. I think this is similar to what you mentioned earlier in the show is try not to become a person of success, rather become a person of value by Albert Einstein. And I really connected with that because I always want to be able to buy on the best value and sell on the best value.

11:33 I want to be able to give somebody a solution that they feel like matches what they're needing, what they want. I'm in the process of, I've got QuickBooks Desktop and they've cranked that fee up from $200 to $1,000 within the last four years. That's not a big jump at all. Oh, God. And they keep pushing me to go online and I don't want to go online. And then the guy says, you know, you're not using a lot of the features that we have on the desktop.

11:57 And I said, you're right, which is why I don't want to pay $1,000 for it. But yeah, that call did not go well if anybody's been in that experience before. But it's just so frustrating when you really want to buy on the best value in the vendor, the supplier, the provider that's offering the service is not selling you on the best value for the customers. It can be very frustrating. And I'm at that point right now. I'm finally getting to calm down.

12:22 But keep in mind that the first person that you begin a relationship is the first person that you start building trust and rapport with. And that person may have a tremendous influence within the other individuals that they're working with on this decision or whatever change that they're making. Well, I think what struck me the most, and you know, this is one of my favorite books, but I felt like I was reading the sales person's guide to how to win friends and influence people.

12:47 And Jimmy is a walking example of that book, a walking talking example. So if you've read how to win friends and you're reading this, you're saying, wow, I'm seeing a lot of the same characteristics here. Get interested in other people. He talks about sincerity. Del Carnegie says, do these things with sincerity? You're not using these tools to get ahead. You're not using this relationship. This caring isn't a fake caring. So I can get what I want. This isn't a fake connection. So I can get what I want.

13:20 This is you become sincerely interested in other people, and then you build a relationship, and then that relationship is built both on your interest in them and providing them with good value with your product or service. So don't use these as hammers to beat people over the head with. These aren't fake tools. These are sincere and interested ways of living your life. Yeah. Yeah. So true. They are. They're very personal skills that you can develop in any kind of relationship in any conversations that you have.

13:55 And he really stresses this is the rapport step of the sales process. This chapter is on connection. So I think the most important skill that any sales person can practice when it comes to building trust in a poor is active listening. And active listening is listened with the intent to understand not to respond. Yeah. Very, very easy for us to think about what we're going to say and get lost in that. Right. And I've talked with people and I'm presenting a topic and I'm creating different subjects of interest.

14:27 And when they don't have a question or a comment or response to that and they start talking about what they wanted to talk about, I can tell that they were listening to me to the point where I would shut up and then they'd be able to tell me what they wanted to tell me. So they're not listening to understand or or to respond, but to listen to a point where now they want to share what they have. And, you know, so he talks so much about developing curiosity in this chapter and you and I have mentioned that before.

14:54 If you're not curious, you're going to be a lousy sales person. Right. If you're not saying, I wonder how Scott got started in business. I wonder what he finds most important about his business. I wonder what if you're not saying to yourself, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, then you're not going to ask good questions. You're going to go in there and tell, tell, tell, barfall over them with your product knowledge and you're going to get stuck in.

15:18 Thank you very much. Goodbye, which is what Jimmy heard the first time he went out and started started with the product knowledge or with the pitch. So curiosity is key. Caring about the people is key. Asking good questions. You know, Scott, you don't have to listen if you never asked a question. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But, but, and while you're active listening is think about what is the intent behind the content.

15:47 So they think about an idea. They pick the words to use to describe their idea in their head. They communicate those words via their mouth. You as the salesperson listen with your ears to the words that they're using trying to understand the definition that they've picked to describe the idea that it's in their head. It's amazing. We're able to communicate when there's so much ambiguity and possibilities to misunderstand what a person's intent is.

16:10 But when somebody is asking a question or a statement, think about it in the back of your mind. I'm kind of curious. Why are they bringing that up? Why are they bringing that up now? And why is that important or not important to them? Or what should they be asking that should be more important to them that would justify a qualified prospect? So listen with, you know, intent to try to understand the content. I'll close with one more thing on this chapter.

16:31 He asked when you're working with the prospect, are you trying to help or are you trying to help their business or are you trying to, to hitch your sale to your sales goal? So what is the goal? Are you trying to help them as a person? Are you trying to help their business or are you trying to achieve your quota? And when you go in with the attitude of, I need to make a sale here, you come across as being desperate. There's no connection there.

16:53 You're really missing that opportunity. Yeah. So in a couple of weeks, we're going to be covering chapters eight and nine out of the sales perspective book. So are we waiting a couple of weeks? We got a guest. Oh, a guest. We like to do a guest. Every third show we try to have a guest. So we're next guest. But let's get into our topic today. It's selling to a group. And as I teed up in the introduction, we usually get surprised by this.

17:20 We don't know we're selling to a group. We could be surprised by walking into the room, as I said, and find out there's three or four people that they want to talk to. I see that as a joyous thing. It's like, wow, I get to meet three or four people influencers in here and get those questions answered because the worst thing is you're selling to a team and you don't know it. Right. Right. Your guy is your contact is taking all the information back and meeting with the team.

17:47 And now you don't get to deal with the questions and the issues. They have to do it. Well, I think the first sign is this is a very important decision for them to make. And if they're doing this with everybody that they invite into their office, they're probably ready to make a change. And you may be one of a few options. And I think one of this this topic of how to work with a group is very advantageous because I don't think a lot of sales people go through this.

18:12 Yeah. And let's start off with what you talked about. And that is you walk into that that room and you've got a group of people. And as you said earlier, you like to say, well, where do you want me to sit? How do you want me to lay this out? Rather than assuming I'm going to I never grab the head of the table, by the way. No, no. I look on the side. I try to get where I can get make eye contact with the most people. If you and I are selling together, I like to spread out a little bit, not both be in the same right next to each other so that they have to turn their heads and look at different people.

18:40 As we move around the table. So I think that's important how it's all laid out. And that kind of ties into point number one, which is identify and map the stakeholders. So who are these people and what is it that's important to them? And I don't think that's a bad question to ask early as you introduce yourself to them and they introduce themselves to you. Finding out what their roles are, what's important to them, why they're in the room, why they're discussing this, why they're looking into this.

19:13 So that's a big part of that first conversation and that may go away from the questions you had prepared, but now you need to find out who these people are and what's important to them. And then also, you know, who's going to be your champion and who's going to be an impediment. Right, right. The advocate or the adversary adversary adversary. That's the adversary. Yeah. And I business cards are great. It seems like people are not printing business cards as often as they used to.

19:43 You're going to have to write down their names and titles and show appreciation that they're all there. I'm so glad that you're all here. We're going to be having a great conversation and think about the different motivations of the people that are in the room as you're hearing more about the areas that they focus on. And the best thing that can happen is they start talking to each other. Right. And they're throwing ideas around. You present something or you bring something up.

20:07 Let them talk. You know, one of the challenges that most salespeople have is they want to interrupt the flow of the conversation with the great idea. And their idea is much better than your idea because it's theirs. So, remember that. So, listen closely and try to see what they're saying. Get that contact, that idea from them. And then also get their contact information. If Scott said they don't have a card, make sure you know their emails so you can include them on any future notes.

20:38 And try to talk with them individually or send them individual notes to thank them for meeting with you and also to ask if there was any questions that they had that didn't get covered. So, make sure you're covering all the bases on that. Okay, the second thing you want to think about is then you're going to have to tell your message to different interests and different needs. Sometimes when we get in a room like that, there's some needs that are constant or consistent across the group.

21:05 And then there's other interests and things that are important to different people. I know that you and I do an exercise where we lay out, we say, what are the names of the different people you might be selling to? What are their titles and what's important to them and why do they buy and how do they buy? And so you need to think about that and sometimes you may need to think about that on your feet is what is the exercise that's going to tell what the different interest and issues and problems that these people have.

21:34 Because what resonates with that CFO is not always going to resonate with the sales manager. And you have to start to sell in different ways. Yeah, or they're going to have to make some changes within the company that are outside your control, but they need to do it in order to grow. And I think about sometimes when people come into a situation of change and they're used to doing it manually and then we add automation to it, it's a challenge for some people to learn something new at an older age.

22:01 And they might have to restructure the company to be able to pull that off too. A lot of times what you'll find is that you've got maybe an end user of some kind and they're more willing to gum up the works of a sale because they're seeing how what you're talking about is going to affect the people around them. Can I do this? I think I said this in a previous show, but when I was teaching people to train for new software, the biggest question that they got was, can you make this software work just as bad as the crappy old stuff?

22:30 Because we're used to it. So we might have a process that might be three steps. Their old process was nine. They wanted to jigger it, so it was still the same nine steps, even though that's exactly what they hated about the software. So that desire to change is very, or not to change is very deep in people. And so be careful of that when you're when you have that end user as part of your conference because you want to make sure they feel empowered to make those changes.

22:59 So very different viewpoints that that those people can bring into the sale. It is because they want to gravitate towards what's familiar, not what's better. Oh, just our it's our human nature. You know, it's how often do we find ourselves the other day I was driving someplace and it was on my way to church and I started going to church. And Kathy said, this is not my our exit. We're going, you know, we're going farther north and this like, oh, yeah, I was on auto drive.

23:25 So we do a lot of things in our life on auto autopilot, right? And if we don't think about it, we're going to drive ourselves crazy. So we know those new things will bring challenges and changes. So we have to be careful about those. All right. Number three, control the flow of the meeting without dominating, but also notice who is dominating. So one of the things you can learn in that meeting when you're when you're selling to a group all at the same time, because there's, you can't be selling to a group all at the same time.

23:54 So there's you can't be selling to a group individually. And then there's times where you're selling to them as a team. So when they're all together, see who everybody looks to see who everybody refers to when the questions are all done. They all look at Mary. She's the VP. She's the one driving the sale. And so you know that that's the influencer that you've got to work with. So make sure that as you're not dominating, you're letting that conversation flow, but you're noticing who's controlling the group.

24:25 And notice the person that is quiet is probably the one who has the most control to. Sometimes. Sometimes. Pretty happy. It's pretty popular over in the in the Eastern Japan, you know, that culture, the person who has the biggest influence as a person who speaks the less. And everybody else is doing all of the work to demonstrate to bring up the information and ask the questions and to get what is needed. And then the person who's quiet is the one that's evaluating everything.

24:51 Yeah, I think you can run into a lot of people that are very dominating. And you can see everybody else kind of shut up. And so that person is dominating and and you're like, okay, I know I've got to sell to this person, but they're quite an ass. And the way that they deal with their people. Anyway, so so figure out who's dominating and you're going to have to deal with them in a different in a different way. Number four, establish your credibility and report quickly.

25:19 Remember, you're establishing rapport with all these people. So kind of what Jimmy was talking about. You've got to connect with a group of people individually. But I think in this case, you really have to establish your credibility by asking good questions. And and add, do you've met those people and figured out what their titles are, what their responsibility and their interests are, then you can start directing questions to them individually and kind of run the meeting that way.

25:49 This is one thing that we're thinking about doing. How would that affect your team? This is another thing we're talking about. You know, is that an area that you're finding issues in and then let them talk again, be a great listener by listening to understand so much as ties into Jimmy's talk. Or Jimmy's book and listen to understand, let them talk a lot, take a lot of notes and see if you can get the group talking to each other and not to you.

26:15 And a sales tip for those folks that are just getting started or have that less than a year in sales is you're going to determine a lot of credibility by the questions that you ask. The preparation is going to separate you from everybody else. So the separation is in the preparation. The questions that you ask, the relevance that they that it is to the conversation is going to demonstrate a tremendous amount of credibility and confidence that the prospect has in the bearer of a promise, which is you the salesperson.

26:43 Yeah, I just think it's so important to prepare those questions because otherwise you'll ask the same questions over and over again. They won't you won't get into those challenging questions that we learned about in the challenge or sale. You've got to challenge them. You know, what if you don't do something different? What if you don't make a change? And then you might find out they're going to know we are definitely going to make a change.

27:06 We just haven't decided who that changes going to be with. Okay, that tells you something. That tells you the sale isn't going to die for lack of momentum. It may die because you didn't do the right thing. You didn't convince them that your product was best, but it's going to go forward. Right. And in action is not an option at this point. They're going to make a change. Are you going to win the business? That's right. That's right. All right. Number five. Our last one. You want to gain alignment and clarify next steps.

27:31 And I think one of the important tools to use in this because a group sale is a complicated sale. It needs more work. And it means a letter of understanding. That means when you're done with the appointment, you sit down and you write out. Here's what we talked about. Here's what each person said. Here's what you promised to do. Here's what I promised to do. If there's anything wrong with that, please let me know. And that is getting alignment and clarifying next steps in a formal way.

28:00 And I'll tell you, when I do that on these complex sales, I'll get a note back saying, Hey, thanks for doing this. It really summarized it. Well, here's one change I want you to make. That is so crucial. I misheard something and there've been kind enough to help me fix it. Right. And we can move the sale forward more importantly because of that. So I think that letter of understanding can be very crucial in a complex sale.

28:25 And you do this very well. Every time we've been on an appointment bill before we leave, we always have a next step. We always have something that we're preparing for. And sometimes it gets rescheduled. That's fine, but it's still in play. As long as it gets rescheduled, it's still in play. But that confirmation and that alignment is so important because with all of the appointments and all the conversations we have, how do we keep track of them all?

28:45 It's very difficult to do that. Oh, or CRM. It's very difficult to do that. Trigger, trigger word for some people. See, that's right. That's right. Makes care of. All right. So let's go through those five steps. Identify and map your stakeholders. Tailor the message to the different interests that they have. And think about that beforehand. If you get that chance, what are their interests? Control the flow without dominating. But notice who is dominating the conversation. Establish credibility and rapport not only quickly, but with each individual.

29:16 And the best way to do that, I think, is through good questions. And then finally gain alignment and clarify next steps. Do that with a formal letter of understanding. It says, here's what we talked about. And here's the promises that we all agreed to. So good luck and to sell into a group. Great topic. Great topic though. Our golden nugget today is, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

29:39 And that's a African proverb. And I think that goes in line perfectly with the topic and the book today. That's right. I think that's excellent. You know, you and I have had the partner. And I think what we're finding is that working together, it has its own bumps. Because we actually have different skills. And the funny thing about working together with people is that the various skills you don't have are the ones that drive you crazy when the other person does it.

30:06 It's the one that you need. So, repress that need to be the hero all the time so you can go farther together. I think that's a great idea. I'll sign Bill. Totally agree with you. Everything we talked about today is at Winning at Selling.com. You might need to put the three W's in front of that to make it come up. And this is episode 671. Next week, we're going to have a guest, a friend of mine, Dave Herpy, is going to be talking about Leading with Purpose.

30:33 And in two weeks, we're going to be continuing the book sales perspective by Jimmy Z. And we're going to be coming to the chapters 8 and 9 in two weeks. We'll get ready for that. Please subscribe and share this podcast with your colleagues and on your social media networks. And give us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show. Go out and get better. One skill at a time. Joyful selling.