Negotiate or die hungry, skinny, and sad. Andres Lares on The Sales Podcast.

#12WeeksToPeak #negotiation #SelfImprovement #LifeLessons

In this conversation, I sit down with Andres Lares, a negotiation expert, to discuss the intricacies of negotiation, leadership, and sales training.

Believe it or not, we get into the importance of goodwill in business relationships. (I always leave a little meat on the bone so my prospects and business partners want to come back to work with me.)

As The Sales Whisperer®, of course, we discuss the value of training.

As a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, I discuss being adaptable as a key component of a negotiation training program.

As an Air Force veteran, we get into the role of leadership in employee retention. (Unfortunately, leadership is sparse in the military, the private sector, schools, churches, HOAs, PTAs, Little League, and everywhere in between...But I digress.)

As usual, balance is key in business and in life, so we look at the need for creating a balance between structure and flexibility in sales processes, as well as the significance of self-reflection and feedback for personal growth.

"The worst-case scenario is not a no."

We agree on the philosophy of incremental improvement and the necessity of practice and preparation in negotiation and in life.

We also agree on the intricacies of negotiation and the importance of tailored training for effective communication. You must understand the buyer's perspective and maintain integrity in your business: prospecting, selling, and fulfillment roles.

As we say in the military, the more you bleed in training, the less you bleed in battle, so we dive into the significance of preparation, emotional intelligence, and the role of negotiation training in building confidence and credibility.

Finally, Lares shares insights on the challenges of hiring skilled facilitators and the value of asking the right questions to uncover the truth in negotiations.

"Nothing convinces like conviction."

GUEST INFO:

• Guest Site: https://www.shapironegotiations.com/resources/books/
• Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreslares/
• Guest X: https://x.com/sninegotiations
• Guest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shapiro_negotiations_institute/

00:00 Introduction to Negotiation and Leadership

02:49 The Power of Nice in Negotiation

06:08 Value-Based Negotiation Strategies

09:05 The Importance of Training and Adaptability

11:59 Balancing Structure and Flexibility in Sales

14:55 The Role of Leadership in Employee Retention

18:10 Investing in People for Long-Term Success

20:56 The Incremental Improvement Philosophy

24:04 The Role of Feedback and Self-Reflection

27:11 The Importance of Practice and Preparation

30:48 The Art of Negotiation and Training

39:41 Understanding the Buyer’s Perspective

42:15 The Importance of Integrity in Sales

46:43 Tailored Training for Effective Negotiation

53:19 Books and Resources for Negotiation Skills

Not for the mediocre majority: Learn how I get more done in a quarter than most achieve in a decade in 12 Weeks To Peak™ https://wesschaeffer.com/12w

Connect with me:

• X -- https://X.com/saleswhisperer
• Instagram -- https://instagram.com/saleswhisperer
• LinkedIn -- http://www.linkedin.com/in/thesaleswhisperer/

#12WeeksToPeak #SalesTraining #GoalSetting #PersonalDevelopment

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello my friend and welcome to the 716th episode of the sales
podcast on West Shake sales Whisper your host today we have
Andres Lares. He is out of Baltimore.
He's the CEO of SNI Shapiro Negotiations Institute.
He is semi recent author, I think from 2000, 2020 1 he said.

(00:22):
But persuade the four step process to influence people and
decisions. Ronald Shapiro is the founder of
the company from about 3035 years ago.
He's still an advisor and on board he wrote the Power of
Nice, how to negotiate. So everyone wins, especially you
and then several other books. But you know, we focus on those

(00:42):
two and we focus on, you know, the difference between
negotiation training and sales training, how they overlap when
you need negotiation training versus sales training.
Where does this all fit in? What size company can benefit?
We'll talk about some of his competition, tell you a couple
stories of my own experience andmy own negotiation training

(01:04):
going all the way back to 2002. So good talk.
We went nearly an hour, smart guy, humble guy, you know, down
to earth, straight shooter. And so we had a good
conversation and you're going tobenefit from this and you need
to know how to negotiate. It is a part and parcel of of

(01:25):
sales. You always say sales and
marketing are, you know, two sides of the same coin.
So I don't know if we need a third side to a coin or part
maybe as much as half of the sales side is negotiation.
We did not get into that. I'm just kind of thinking out

(01:46):
loud. It's important and you got to
get this right. OK.
That's why I have one. So check out his books, I'll
link to them in the show notes and on the blog post itself.
I've got all the links, summary of everything we talked about.
I'm starting to embed the transcriptions as well.
So it's all there for you. All right.

(02:08):
And as I mentioned before, you know, check out the inner
circle. Super affordable way to get
regular access to meet live calls each week, private group
ask questions at any time. My 12 weeks to peak program if
you want some guided one-on-one intense accountability for 12
weeks, fix your faith, family, fitness and finances, talk to

(02:29):
me. OK, You can contact me on the
website, text me, e-mail me, youknow, whatever it takes.
Let's talk and help you grow. And that's something we get into
on this in this interview, you know, is the value and even the
necessity of accountability of outside assistance expert, you
know, third party neutral assistance to help you get over

(02:54):
things, to help you get past sticking points.
Yes, you can do it on your own. It will just take longer and be
more painful. The choice is yours.
Choose wisely. Wisely, my friend.
Now let's get on to the interview.
I'm going to do my best Comedy Central and dress lay rez a a a

(03:18):
a Ron because you know I will never roll those hards.
Andres Lares Pretty. Good.
Decent, all right. All the way from Venezuela
through Canada to Baltimore. Welcome to sales podcast, man.
How the heck are you? Great.
How? You doing I'm good.
I love that those guys key and Peele.

(03:38):
I'm so bummed they need to do a reunion tour like every year.
That whole a a Ron. But anyway, So what is happening
man, you are the CEO at SNI, Shapiro Negotiations Institute.
So I wanted to ask right off thebat that did you buy that
company or what happened? Why is it not the Andres

(03:58):
Negotiations Institute? Mainly, you know, just doesn't
have the same ring, that's all. That's the only reason.
No, we so it is a 30 year old company I took over about 8
years ago now. So it's founded by a a name, a
guy by the name of Ron Shapiro. So he was particularly known in
the sports world. He he was a baseball agent, but

(04:18):
he did a bunch of other stuff. He was civil rights attorney and
he had a very kind of a large regional law firm here.
So he did a lot of things. He was an author and so he wrote
the book actually kind of behindme the power of Nice.
And that kind of launched his negotiation institute.
And what's interesting about himand kind of an evolution that I
find particularly unique is that, you know, when I think

(04:39):
what most you'll think of sportsagents, they don't think of the
warm and fuzzies. You know it's not.
That's not the first show. Me the most.
People get exactly, you know, Jerry Maguire and all the others
that we see on TV. But first of all, I've had the
good fortune working for three and they were all incredible
people, good of what they do, cared about their clients, just
good people. So so that is good.
But the second is to Ron, you know, he started this book

(05:01):
called the he wrote this book called The Power of Nice and he
started the institute. And not only did he write the
book The Power of Nice, but his first clients when he wrote it
as an active agent, were the owners of teams that were having
their companies outside of sports.
He was training them. So the relationship was so
strong and there was so much respect built there.
And so I think for me, that's what's so special.

(05:23):
That is proof that, you know, you can be aggressive and you
can maximize your objectives, but you got to think about the
other side right there. It's got to be a collaborative
approach to some extent. And not, you know, there's some
scenarios where it's not, but that's anyways, that's the,
that's the long story long and then eight years ago.
So after being here for about 7 years, I took over the partner,
Jeff Cochran. And, and then Fast forward a few

(05:45):
years later, we wrote a book called Persuade in 2021 and, and
here we are today. That's a little bit about how
how we got here. Nice I, I remember hearing this
story and I think it was about aJapanese CEO.
I'd have to Google it or ChatGPTit, but they were structuring
like this mega deal and he like backed off a little bit, you

(06:08):
know, and the others right. Well, why did you do that?
Basically, he left some meat on the bone.
He could have he could have struck a harder deal.
He's like, you know, I want goodwill, right?
I, I want, I want to do businesswith these people again, you
know, and, and so, I mean, that was the gist of it.
And it's like, OK, I'm not crazy.
I, it's so maybe I'm weird beingin sales.

(06:31):
Like I I was always money motivated because I want to be
paid according to my worth, right?
Not just time in service. You know, that's what kind of
bummed me out with the military.It's like you could save the
world as a Lieutenant, doesn't matter.
You're going to be two years as a second Lieutenant and then two
more years the first Lieutenant and then you're like 5 or 6
years as the captain doesn't matter, right?

(06:51):
And so, and I get it, you need some experience, but but it's
like, I don't really give a shithow much money I have.
I mean, once you have enough, you have enough.
And but it is how we keep score,you know, and so.
Now some I'll. Leave meat on the bone.
Not everyone's keep score that way, but there is.

(07:12):
That's one of the things too that I've kind of learned is,
you know, it's there's a right way to do it right is.
And what's incredible is I'd sayover time, and there's a lot of
articles when I started doing this about 15 years ago, there's
still a lot of articles that say, oh, good guys finished
last. And you know, you got like
there's a bunch of companies that teach people really
hardball how to negotiate. And Mark, for example, is known

(07:34):
for this, right? You look at the relationship
they have with their suppliers. We've worked with a bunch of
their suppliers and it's not a good one.
But the moment that the supplierhasn't any opportunity, they
will gouge Walmart at every witheverything they have because
they know that's they're waitingfor that opportunity.
And so, you know, is that a healthy relationship?
Is that the way you want to run your business long term?

(07:55):
And again, Walmart's an incredibly run company.
It's incredibly efficient. But that's worth something, your
reputations worth something, youknow, the good deals worth
something. When times get tough, it sure is
nice to be able to call Wes and know you can count on Wes for a
favor. Be the first one to get that
supplied, you know, whatever it is.
That's that's sure more something I think to me and and

(08:16):
I think. And, and doesn't mean you don't
charge what you're worth, right?But it's like, and I tell people
all the time, you know, if I'm, if I'm dealing with a larger
company, you know, I may charge 20 or $30,000 for something that
I would do for seven grand for asmall business, you know, but
some of it is positioning, you know, the larger company may not

(08:39):
take me if I come in too small. And it's also, it's like if I
like the smaller company and, and they just truly do need the
help and it's, and I'm going to like the project and you know,
I'll, I'll pull some things back.
And so it's not the exact same, but it's pretty close, you know,
but like, I'll do it. You know, I think a lot of

(08:59):
people you're too small for me, like runaway, you know, you're
not worth my time. Like, and, and I get it.
I mean, I've always worked with smaller businesses, so I'm going
to maybe I'm too nice to them. It's.
A. It's a.
It's a value based offering too,right?
I mean, well, for sure, same thing that you do for a big
business, you're multiplying it by 100 and for a small business
you're multiplying by three. So to some extent that also does

(09:22):
make sense too, right? It's, you know, we every now and
then we're pretty competitively priced in our space, but every
now and then we get someone says, wait, like, walk me
through the pricing model because like, that's not what
this should cost. Well, I mean, what do you mean
by should cost? Because I can tell you if you
want to tie it to ROI and I get a bonus or we, we pay, we reduce
the price a little if you don't get it, I'll do that and we'll

(09:43):
get a nice hefty bonus at the end.
We'll track some KPI. Well, no, no, no, I was just
kind of asking. OK, that's what I thought.
I mean, you know, I'm going to give you a four to one ROI.
OK, I'll take, I'll take 3040% of that if you want to put some
skin in the game. And so I think that's, you know,
that's part of it is the value, right?
The bigger the company, a couplegood decisions where you're able
to, you know, every salesperson gets 1% better margin on their

(10:05):
deals, but means a lot of money potentially versus, you know,
for sales people in a 15 person company, it's just less dollars
and cents. Yeah, for sure.
But yeah. And it, you know, The funny
thing is it's when the student is ready, the teacher really
does appear, you know, and I, I try to tell people this and

(10:26):
because especially I'm dealing with like an industry maybe I
haven't worked in before. How good are you?
What's your experience with this?
I'm like, are you a human? Oh, yeah.
Do you sell to humans? Oh, yeah, I can help you.
Yeah, Sometimes you need that, that expert with 30 year
experience in the industry. But it's like a lot of times I
tell them you've gotten where you are by listening to those 30

(10:50):
year experts and now you're at acrossroads.
You know, things aren't quite working.
It's time to bring somebody in from left field, you know, that
has no sacred cows, you know, and get will ask the dumb
questions because then when theythey look at it with fresh eyes,
they're like, Oh yeah, like why are we doing it that way?
Sounds like we approach it similarly because the other

(11:10):
thing I say too is, you know, for if I'm helping your company,
we're training your company. I'm like, you are the subject
matter expert in whatever may beright and producing and selling
semiconductors. OK, great.
But the reality is I'm never going to be the expert you are,
but I don't have to be. I know enough to be dangerous,
but my real job is to help you, whatever it is, right with, you

(11:33):
know, discovery skills of your sales team or preparing or
positioning in the marketplace or, you know, you know,
defending and it's being commoditized, whatever it is.
And so those that is business, that's people, that's strategy.
And that is there's a lot of similar, you said from all over.
And so as long as you've got theexpertise that I can tap into

(11:53):
for your industry and your market and your competitors, and
it can tap into that pretty quickly.
It's like you said, there's it's, it's the combination
that's powerful. And if you're just kind of
thinking about only the way yourindustry's done it, I think
you're, you know, you're shooting yourself in the foot
really, you're leaving a lot of potential opportunities just
left. Yeah, it's, I always see one of
two things, like either just a total utter lack of training and

(12:15):
people are just left to their own devices.
You know, the inmates are running the asylum, or it's too
structured. You know, you got your Miller
Hyman pink and blue sheets and whatever, and, you know, fill
out 87 fields in your CRM beforeyou can advance the deal.
And the MP, you know, your salespeople are beat down or they

(12:38):
get, they have two. Like everything is scripted
down. And it's just, oh, my gosh.
And like, neither one's good. Like, let's find that happy
medium. Yeah.
Well, I guess it's good to familiar happen because they
they've been bought a couple times, right, That was and now
it's Korn fairy, I think. I don't even know.
Thank goodness. Keep getting gobbled up and
that's but you're right that I mean, that's the happy medium

(13:01):
that I think people are looking for more now is also so it's not
just kind of the the flavor thatwe're selling, but it's also
that people are looking for thatit's like, I want some processes
because you want some common language and you want to process
that everyone follows. But even we think about this all
the time. So it's funny bring this up.
So I launched the a Salesforce app few years ago and if I
thought this is going to be brilliant, right not you know,

(13:23):
it's the most common CRM that our clients have.
It is not even close to 50%, butit's the most common.
So I thought I'd start there androll it.
I thought I felt so good about myself, which what because I
thought it was going to integrate what we did in there
exactly where they play. It was never being used and I
just couldn't figure it out. And so then I decided to Guinea
pig with one of the clients thatwe had a really good client
that's kind of willing to test stuff.

(13:44):
And so I said, listen, let's just let's remove this app that
we put in and instead we're going to do something different
because your main pain points, some of them were discovering
how the managing calls, the others like there's not enough
good information in the CRM. We did the exact opposite.
We actually took away like 30 or40% of the fields.
So they have to enter in their CRM system.
And you will not be surprised tofind out that their salespeople

(14:05):
started using a heck of a lot more, right?
And so all of a sudden now you went from not having good data
because, you know, it's what you, what you get out is what
you put in. And all of a sudden they're more
willing to, right. If I only have to fill up five
or six forms. And then the next step after
that was going to be some automation where we can help
fill them out for like the transcription of the call and go
right in. You don't put the notes in all
that kind of stuff using technology.
And all of a sudden, you know, you cut the time they're

(14:28):
spending in, in CRM system from like an hour a day to 10 minutes
a day, right? Happy salespeople that, you
know, are motivated to get a lotmore deals done.
And so, yeah, that's, and it's, it's simple, but I got to be the
first to admit it, right? I was excited about, you know,
an interesting application that would build based on what they
did and all the stuff we would accomplish.
But it just at the same time yougot to kind of take the easiest

(14:51):
route in the masses is going to be the one that typically it'll
take. Yeah.
Well, it's like in marketing, you know, do you want 100
people, 10% sold or do you want 10 people 100% sold?
You know, so do you, do you want, you know, 100 fields, 10%
filled out, you know, or 10 fields 100%?

(15:12):
All right, let's let's boil thisdown to the core things.
And but it's like, I get it, youknow, the bigger the company,
the more you need clearly defined steps.
I mean, because you're, you're doing your, your forecasting
and, you know, your purchasing and inventory control.
And I mean, that's, it's big business and it's big expenses,
you know, and can you hit deadlines when big orders come

(15:34):
in and whatever. So there's got to be definitive
stages. I was, I was fortunate enough
Dell rolled out Salesforce.com in 2007.
And I knew a guy there and I brought a team A-Team of five
for 10 months. And we helped train them three
or four months during the summeron the rollout.

(15:56):
And then two of us stuck around for like 7 more months for all
new hires. And, and that was the first time
I really understood like the need like for these stages and
like what is the definable documentable thing?
Why is this deal going from 10 to 20%?
Why is it going from 50 to 80%? You know, 'cause you're trying

(16:18):
to take the, the objective, the subjective stuff out of the
equation, right, 'cause like, I know you're a sandbagger.
You say, oh, 30%, that's probably 90.
But you know, Mary over there, she's always optimistic.
She says 99%. I know it's probably 75 SA
managers in there massage. And so I get it.
But like the more like you got to balance it, right?

(16:41):
How can you be objective with a little subjectivity but not
overly object? You know, not too onerous?
Like is that possible for a big company?
Well, it's interesting. One thing that we did that we
tested internally and ended up actually kind of advising a
couple companies that did it. And this is almost like outside
of our normal work, but we tested for us and it was that we
would track the probability of clothes for, you know, a year or

(17:04):
two for every salesperson. And and then the data would tell
you, right? You'd look and it's like, you
know, the 30 percenters, they came in at 30% and they closed
at 15% for somebody, but the 30 percenters closed at 60% for
someone else. And exactly, it's like that
example, you said, you know, Samwas sandbagging them because he

(17:25):
wanted to exceed expectation. And, you know, Michelle was
doing the opposite of vice versa.
And so when you get to that, andso then it's your job to kind of
educate on that is, hey, let me let's define these a little bit
more, right? Like what's considered an opera,
you know, what's in the negotiation phase?
What's proposal set mean? I mean, OK, but you said the
proposal. Does that mean they have to
receive it? Like what's negotiation mean?

(17:46):
Are you really talking about dollars or they just responded
and said, got it. Like what's that mean?
I think that's so, you know, thesmaller the company, the less
important, especially when you're public, though we've got
some, you know, lots of our clients are kind of Fortune
505,000. So they're, you know, the
forecasting is huge, right? It's forecasting then goes into
public statements and then goes into share pricing.
I mean, it's, it has a huge impact.

(18:08):
So I think there it's got to be really a science.
But I think in the smaller companies, I almost feel like
that's more about driving that, OK, what do I do with these
people to increase the probability?
It's like, OK, even if Wes is a little bit off, it's almost more
around, OK, but how do I get Westo close 10% more of his deals
rather than to be 10% more accurate because the value of
former is more than the latter, I think, you know, in a private

(18:30):
company. For sure, yeah.
It's crazy though. It's, I see this, you know, I've
told the story. I bought the domain name The
Sales Whisperer and trademarked it.
I bought, but I bought the URL in 2006.
I was watching the Dog Whispererand he said, I, I rehabilitate

(18:50):
dogs and I train their owners. And I thought I rehabilitate
salespeople and train their managers.
You know, because it's like I, from my experience at corporate
America, I never really had sales training.
I had product training, you know, I had marketing come in
and give us some hype, but like pure sales training, like so

(19:14):
little. And my manage, I don't think I
ever had a sales manager that had sales management training.
You know, they were either promoted from within or brought
over a, you know, somebody knew somebody brought him over, made
him the VP of a region or something.
No real experience in doing that.
Just suddenly they're the boss and PNL and approving expenses

(19:36):
and grilling us on our Excel spreadsheets.
You know, I'm like, what value does this guy bring to my life?
And they were like, rarely was there any value that a sales
manager, you know, added, added value to my life.
So it's why I ended up being on my own.
If I had better managers, if I had better leadership, I'd
probably have spent 30 years in the Air Force.

(19:57):
But even there, I didn't have good, good leadership.
So is it is leadership? Are you seeing dire
circumstances out there? Is it?
Is it a desert for leadership? Well, it's interesting the your
story. I think I remember we did a
study for this. So we we are really AB to B
company where we stick specifically to that, but we'll

(20:19):
do studies that kind of go a little bit up past that.
And so we've got a lot of interviews about negotiating
salaries. You know, that's big to see if
we don't like formally work in that, but it's in negotiating
space, we deal with it. So we did a short study on that
a while back, and it was incredible that we found
convincingly was that essentially the biggest reason

(20:41):
why people leave isn't the salary is, you know, general
compensation is it is their boss.
And typically the close second or the second with a whole bunch
of others nearby is your colleagues, right?
And so it's funny that, you know, so part of it is, yeah,
negotiating compensation is important.
It's critical because especiallyearly on in your career starts

(21:02):
to add up over time. It is the.
I mean, you know, and so your story, I think, is the one of
many where good leadership meansyou stay longer, right?
If you'd had an incredible year,you would have stayed at the
company. You would.
Have. Felt valued, you would have been
promoted, you would have had a bigger impact, you know, and so,
but I would say this, it is not surprising to say that you
didn't have great leaders and also to say that your leaders

(21:25):
weren't trained and that you didn't get much training.
There is a heck of a correlation.
We've seen like we work with a lot of the best performing
companies, which is ironic to mewhen I got here, I thought we're
helping the companies that are already performing the best.
You know why? It's because they're the ones
looking for every edge and they're thinking about seeing
their people. They see their people as real
assets that they invest in long term.

(21:47):
And so what's interesting is we work with the ones that are
already performing. As much as I want to give myself
a pat in the back and say, man, we work with like it's almost
the star of every industry, but that is not a coincidence.
They're the ones that invest long term and invest in
leadership training and not justnegotiation training, which is
what we do in influence training, but all the tangential
soft skills. So it's no surprise.
And they also have by far the longest tenure.

(22:09):
It's crazy. I mean, we're rooms to be 20
years, 25 years of the same company and in 2025 that does
not happen anymore. Well, that's like the old adage,
you know, you're so lean and fit, why do you keep going to
the gym? What, like you hear what you
just said? Like the top ones double down on

(22:31):
good training. Yeah.
And and, and people just don't get it.
But hey, that's why, you know, like top salespeople.
I heard the statistic a long time ago and I forget it
exactly, but it was like the top4% of salespeople make like 10
times or 40 times the money. And I was like, what?

(22:54):
But yeah, when you think about it, and I use the analogy all
the time, like in golf, you knowit like the I just had the
Masters, right? So if you're like 1/4 of 1
stroke better per day over 4 days, you win the Masters and
you know, $1.6 million and the name on the trophy and blah blah

(23:14):
blah. But second place still gets
about $800,000. So not too bad, you know.
But in sales, you know, if if I got a four week sales cycle and
and you're 1/4 of 1% better thanme each week, then over over 4
weeks now you're 1% better and you win that deal.
I get 0 for coming in second place.

(23:37):
So you know what's what's 100%, you know, times 0.
So it's just, we've got it those1%, you know, because it's easy
to say 1% better every day. Like no, literally you got to be
1% better in everything that youdo or, or you get 0 of the sale.
And I think people, they always think it's something big.

(23:58):
They got to change. Oh, we got to deploy AI
everywhere. Maybe maybe just need a better
e-mail signature. You know, like what I had a guy.
One extra outreach a day or It is interesting that I love that
quote and a bunch of people saidit.
Tony Robbins has said it a few times and we've done some work
with and he'll say, you know, that people overestimate
significantly what they can do in a year, but they

(24:20):
underestimate what they can do in a lifetime.
And I think. That.
Was the focus in the sense that like, you know, that idea of
just like work on one thing a day or a week or a month,
whatever and actually do it all those people are unbelievably
successful. And so that's in sales, that's
in anything. But the problem is, you know,
it's not hard to start, right? It's not hard to get, you know,

(24:41):
but in the notepad, the things you want to do, you know, today
I'm going to work on this weekend when we're preparing
better next week, I'm going to work on sending out more emails
or making more phone calls, you know, whatever it is, right?
Ask you more questions in my conversations, whatever it is.
But you know, a day later, a week later, a month later, are
you still doing it? If you stick to it, I don't
think there's anyone who ends upnot being successful.

(25:03):
I mean, it's just because the, you know, the, the cream rise to
the top eventually, you know, it's it, there is, there's a lot
of that still. I mean, not every single person
in a high position is very, verycapable and competent.
But over time, typically the thecream will rise.
I think I'm only going to start working with jiu jitsu people
because we understand the long road.

(25:26):
You know, I started eight years ago and I was terrible and it
did not come easily to me. And you know, I'll probably get
my black belt the end of this year, which is humbling.
It's like I feel, I still feel like I don't know anything but,
but I have good instincts now. But it's so hard every day with

(25:48):
same warm up, same routine, sameexercises, same drills over and
over and over. And, and it's hard, 'cause like
you're doing it with all your peers, so you're like, well, I
still can't beat that guy or that guy still beats me on this
move, or I still can't get this move on that guy.
But they're getting better, too.Yeah, they're doing it with you.
Yeah, yeah. But the new guy comes in and we

(26:09):
just wipe the floor with him. It's like, oh, OK, I guess this
stuff works, you know, but you've got buddies that you're
grinding it out with and and youstick it out.
Well, that's the discipline, youknow, the discipline there.
We wanted our kids to do it. I did some when I was young,
karate and then a little bit of jiu jitsu.
My parents were big on it and wedidn't last too long, but got a

(26:29):
couple belts because like when Iwas really young.
But I feel like I appreciate thethe discipline and like the
focus, you know, because, and that's The thing is, I think
it's like a lot of things that on the surface can seem, you
know, brutal or like there's a shallowness that's perceived,
but it's exact opposite, you know, and, and, and you can get
to another place, like golf, forexample.
I mean, golf's a great game for people who play golf.

(26:51):
I mean, it's just you. I mean, there's golfer, you can
tell a lot about golfers, right?There's golfers that are
comparing themselves to everybody else.
There's golfers that are comparing against themselves and
they never meet their own expectations.
There's golfers just go out and play and have no pressure And
like, and so, you know, I think those are things to you.
I mean, you realize that's that's mentality, that's focus.
And any of those are fine, right?

(27:11):
You could go and play and say, Iwant to get better every day.
OK, well then what are you doingto get better?
Are you hitting the range? Are you working on your strokes?
Are you, you know, are you getting lessons?
Are you recording your swing? And what are you doing to get
better? Or you can just be a
recreational golfer. But it's, you know, those are
all the same things, right? It's like, is there focus?
Is there an intent? Is there a discipline to
continue to do it? So, you know, training is a part

(27:33):
of it, but it's got to come fromwithin.
That motivation is got to come from within.
Well, you got to have somebody on the outside looking in, you
know, they say you can't read a label from inside the bottle.
And everything I've ever wanted to get better at, I got
recorded. And I, I remember my dad bought
me golf lessons for my 23rd birthday and, and then I, I got

(27:57):
stationed in Korea. So I, I took a train actually
from Texas to Jacksonville, FL, where he was before I got
deployed. And yeah, I don't know.
Is that the word? It's not deployed stationed.
We're the Air Force. We had it easy.
But I, I took, I got recorded and back then 1993.

(28:19):
So it's funny, I, I did a recording session about a year
ago with a local guy and I'm like, where's all the equipment?
It's all iPhones now. Just he's got an app.
But back then it was 3 cameras, one from above, 1 from in front
of you and one from behind and Ionly took like 5 strokes and
then the rest of the time he wasdrawing it like John Madden and

(28:40):
gave me Avhs tape to take home. Yeah, yeah.
But it's like I got better because I could see it now and I
had somebody explain where am I?Where should I be?
How do I get there, what to lookfor?
You know, when I was speaking, Itook a class, commuter spawn, I
think it was called. I went to LA and we'd give it a
little talk, we'd record it, give us the VHS.

(29:03):
This is like, I don't know, early 2000s, go sit in a cubicle
with headset on, watch ourselves.
Oh, no. I hired a sales trainer 2006.
He had to buy back that to buy software that was hundreds of
dollars connected to my physicalphone on my desk and record it.
And he would, he'd listen to it and grill me on that.

(29:24):
Well, that's, you know what, it's certainly not all of our
training because it gets more expensive because not as the
technology, but the time. But one of our advanced
negotiation classes, what we do is we have a, we have one
facilitator. There's a role player.
So you and I would role play, grab the chip or take the iPhone
over whatever it is over to the next room.
We have a second facilitator then that gives you coaching

(29:45):
while the next person rotates through.
And it's funny because most of you are like, oh, you know, the
people don't like the role play or they have lots of
conversation about it. And the second thing is like,
they're like, you know, you're not going to be tough on them.
And it's like, I laugh because it's the exact opposite of
you'll think #1 like, they don'tlike their, I mean, do they want
to get better or not? It's like liking the role play.
I mean, we can make this comfortable for you because you

(30:06):
know, we're not assholes and we approach it.
We're here to help you. Like our job is to help you
negotiate better so you make more commissions.
That's it. There's nothing else here.
We're not going to report this to your supervisors.
We're here to make you better soyou make more money and you make
more money for the company. That's it.
And the second though, is every single student we've ever had do
this. And this is typically for the

(30:27):
executive level. They are way tougher on
themselves than we are. I mean, our coaching style is
not, Wes, you screwed this up. You screwed that up and say
why'd you do this? Is that what you intended to do?
Or tell me more about why you asked this question or why you
went here. And, you know, they're smart
enough. Again, these are executive
senior level folks. They're smart enough to figure
out like, wow, my body language is all really closed.

(30:48):
I don't have to even point it out.
You know, we can talk about it that you may do that on purpose
because you want to signal the other party that you're not
happy with what they're saying. But if you just did that and you
had no idea you were doing that,yeah, not great.
Or, you know, you interrupted the person three times.
Well, probably not the best thing to be doing as a
salesperson, you know, to be in the middle of a negotiation,
interrupting your your potentialclient, especially when he just

(31:11):
said, you know, I don't feel like you're listening to me, you
know, and that kind of stuff. And so, but you don't have to.
But it is so powerful. They see themselves on camera.
We give them a few pointers, aska few questions, and they go
back with this like, conviction of really improving themselves.
And yeah, I absolutely agree. The power of video and it's but
seeing yourself is so, so helpful.
And then of course, someone's got to give you pointers right?

(31:33):
In your golf swing or in these meetings.
Like you can't just like give the video to Wes and help him
figure himself out, right? Golf swing, you know, like
that's why YouTube, watching a YouTube video isn't as good as
watching yourself with someone there who's a pro giving you a
few pointers, right? So that's the difference.
Well, we always make that joke. Somebody'll come into class and
jiu jitsu and do something sillylike you just smash it go.

(31:55):
You've been watching YouTube again, like stop doing that.
That looks like until you go hands on, you don't know, right?
That's why, you know, in the military, you know, said the
more you bleed in training, the less you bleed in war.
You know, are you willing to putin the reps and practice this
and, and understand where you'recoming from and, and all the

(32:17):
potential gotchas, right? Like an attorney preparing a
case, you know, politicians, people don't realize like when
they're preparing for a debate, you know, there's somebody
harsh, you know, we're talking before, you know, the just named
the new Pope, right? Well, the whole the devil's
advocate comes from the CatholicChurch, right?
When they're nominating somebodyto be a St. somebody is assigned

(32:38):
as the advocate of the devil andsay, no, here's why this person
is not a good person. Here's why that wasn't a
miracle. Here's why they should not be
considered. So.
I mean, they're fighting, you know, because they don't want
to, they don't want to promote somebody that isn't good.
So it's like having some conflict, having an opponent,

(33:00):
you know, iron does sharpen iron.
You know, do you, do you care enough about your job and your
performance and your income? You know, to go hard and to be
pushed and and I don't a lot of people aren't you know, how how
do you see it? Like if you know, become big
Fortune 5000 company brings you in, you know, and there's 20
sales people, 30 sales people are great.

(33:21):
Here comes this pointy headed dude.
He doesn't know my business. Whatever.
Yeah, yeah, and they have to be there.
You know, how do you how do you handle?
That there's a lot there. So first thing before I forget I
got us, I'll have to make sure to send this to Ron.
We were talking earlier. It was founded by Ron Shapiro.
He is like the biggest, biggest believer in a devil's advocate.

(33:42):
He's had one forever. It's one of our actually one of
our partners to Michael Moss, this gentleman who's been women
forever and even when I came 15 years ago is he kind of wanted
more support in a particular negotiation.
It's because he wanted that he wanted to be pushed to think
differently and think about every angle when they were
negotiating at the time a a pretty, pretty big player deal.
But you know, I think a couple things.

(34:03):
You know, if we get hired by a company and then we come in.
So first of all, you know, we'rewe've got a team.
So we do we train in seven languages.
We're global and we've got facilitators that are much
better than than me. And so, you know, I'm I capable
of it, yes, do I do it? But I think, well, I know not, I
think that we've got folks that are more skilled than I am.

(34:23):
And so one of that too is we don't send me unless we really
need to, you know, So if you gotme, you're, you're probably in
trouble and you're very, very busy.
But that's like my shirt. If you see me running run,
something bad's happening. Yeah, in fact, like, sorry, I
guess there's a whole bunch of more important clients than you.
No kidding. But but that is some of that,
right? And so, but I think you know,

(34:44):
and that's part of that is, is, is skill and experience.
So I can tell you it's probably my hardest job running this
company. I, I got to think it was
anything else even close is hiring facilitators.
So in eight years, we've hired afew, right?
As we expanded, we needed some more and we expanded a couple
languages too. And I cannot tell you how many
people I met with, I saw presentbecause the, the ability to have

(35:07):
someone who's got negotiation experience, real negotiate
experience. I carried the bag before who's
charismatic, who can teach, right?
Who can educate because that is a skill, right?
I mean, it's one thing to be good at it with the old educate
who's coachable because I got tocoach them on the S and I way.
So they're consistent with our folks.
I mean, we want them to be themselves, whether to tell
their own stories. We want them to tap into their
own experience, but they also got to follow some of our

(35:29):
processes. Have all that together is a
challenge. And so the nice part is honestly
everything after that, it's almost easy like we'll send
someone, they're like, oh, they've had people before and
they don't like them because they haven't done it before.
They don't understand our industry.
And what I love is I feel very fortunate I sent on a lot of the
feedback calls the first time wewould do some work with clients,
especially big ones. And you know, knock on wood,

(35:50):
it's 99.9% of the time. They're like, wow, 10 minutes
in, they had the room meeting onthe palm of their hand.
And I think there's a few thingsthey're, you know, typically
they they use humor or some other thing, you know, to kind
of disarm and I and then they dothe homework.
Well, you just said here caught my attention.
There's, you know, it's the devil's advocate of the
preparation for, you know, politician of this for a speech.

(36:11):
You know, they've thought through before.
They've had all the ifs and thenbuts and every potential
different condition on somethingand what questions could come
up. And so I find this, you know, we
do discovery on our clients. We talked to sales leaders, we
talked to salespeople. We, you know, we will do a
questionnaire in advance of recent negotiations they're
involved in. We do all of that is what
happens is it comes out pretty quick.

(36:32):
You know, if I'm presenting in front of you, Wes knows there's
only one way I can know that much about your business.
That's if I put in the time. And so the credibility comes
from that. And it's that simple.
And that's another part that makes it hard to find these
facilitators because they also got to be willing to put in the
time. We'll compensate him for it, but
he can't just show up and be like, you know, you're not a
Rockstar. Hello, New York.
It turns out you're actually in California.

(36:54):
You know what I mean? It's he really can't help but.
You should have talked to ChadorSanders, man.
He, you know, maybe he hit it onbetter with the Giants.
I don't think he put in the time.
Yeah, I mean that it'll be interesting to see what happens
later on, but perception definitely effects.
I mean, as a as a side note, because we do a lot of work at
sports, it's incredible. If you sit in a draft, you know,

(37:16):
the the combine meetings, interviews, that type of thing,
depending on which sport, they happen at different times.
But like all the top athletes are so trained, they all answer
the same way. It's actually kind of comical.
You know, it's like teams are trying to find really
interesting ways that like kind of get catch them off guard.
So they say something a little bit more, you know, authentic.
You know, it's like, oh, Wes, tell me the first time you put
on skates, you know, they asked,but it's like they've been so

(37:39):
trained. And I'm talking like PR folks
like their agent will hire. And so it's just all these butt
numbers. You know, I love hockey and my
first memories actually a very interesting and it's like this
very eloquent response and you're like, I'm just trying to
find out really who you are and you, you know, but they all are.
And so I don't think, you know, I I'm not sure, but it's

(37:59):
probably not a situation where he got that training or followed
that training, but it's incredible.
I mean, if you sit in like you listen to the first top ten in
in NHLNFL and MLB, they all havevery, you know.
I know it's like, don't even give him an interview.
Hey, you know, I'm just angled to be here, you know, got such a
great team. We really prepped hard and you

(38:20):
know, it's not me, it's it's theguys and and you know, we're
just taking this day by day and you know, exactly.
If there's fourteen of those, choose six in the interview,
right? We're taking it.
I gave it 110%. You know, it's like the guys
really, it's not about me. It's about a team, you know,
like coach saw some things. It's like this.
What you're not, what's the point?

(38:40):
What's the point? I I just watched the miracle.
Yep. You know, 19. 80 gold medal,
Yeah. Yeah, and dude, I don't think
I've ever seen it. I've seen so many clips, and I
was 10 when it happened. I remember it happening.
But man, that was a good movie. And that coach, he was tough it.

(39:02):
Kurt Russell did a good job and all those dudes ended up being
successful, you know it. But he pushed them hard, and I
love that he wouldn't let them interview.
Hey coach, can we talk to the team?
No, that was old school man. But it did.
Work that was a pretty that was a heck of a run and so good for

(39:23):
the sport because you know and Ithink what's happening now again
so you know we're hockey fans I play hockey and my my kids play
hockey especially one of them and it's you know it's
interesting to see it's like a good playoff run the the Canada
US final for the Four Nations, the Olympics.
You know, same for soccer, right?
It's like it gives exposure. And if you get, you know, if

(39:45):
America does well in either of those, it's just all it's you
know, it's it's just such good marketing.
You can't beat all these crazy 43 overtime winners in the
playoffs, you know, last minute winner in the Four Nations.
And so I hope, I hope it continues to grow the game.
Well, and I loved his speech andI hope it's true.
I mean, I assume it is, but I know they take a lot of a lot of

(40:08):
license in these movies. But, you know, in the locker
room before playing the Russians, you know, he says,
look, if we play these guys 10 times, they're probably going to
win nine. You know, so he doesn't wasn't
sugarcoat it because you see allthese teams like you see some,
you know, Division 2 college, you know, they're going to play
Notre Dame, you know, Alabama, we're going to take them.

(40:28):
I think we got the team to beat them.
It's like, OK, really. You know, so he's like he said,
hey, today is our tonight's our night.
You know, we've trained hard. We're we're give them a look
they haven't seen before. You're in shape, you know, get
out there and just play your game.
And so like, all right, I like that approach, you know, but

(40:49):
what you're saying about these guys that are prepped, Yeah, I
in my training, I've always toldpeople and I've got blog posts
on it and talked about it. But, you know, say our job in
sales, I mean, we're just tryingto get to the truth.
And the truth may be I can't help you, right?
Say I'm not the right guy for you.
And I do that a lot. Like I saw a lot of software and

(41:10):
I'm I'm very basic. I'm not a programmer about what
we go. So when people bring in ER PS
and accounting and e-commerce, all this stuff, I'm like, stop,
I'm not your guy. I I know your guy.
I'm going to introduce you to the guy and that guy's going to
pay me for this introduction. So don't worry about it.
But I'm not your guy, you know, so it's like I'm not getting in

(41:32):
over my head. But you always tell people our
job is to ask questions that theprospect can't answer, you know,
because now I'm going to get thetruth from them.
So if they're expected, if they're expecting it, I'm going
to get this rehearsed answer. And I tell people all the time,
it's just like, hi, how are you?Oh, I'm good.
How are you? I'm good.
Thanks for asking. How was, how's your week been

(41:53):
going? Any plans to come up the
weekend? You got any summer plans coming
up? I mean, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, Oh yeah, I just, I got agood team, good coach you're
looking forward to the next day.So am I on the right track with
that? You know, because it I don't
want to ask an oddball question.Am I going to ask something that
gets them thinking? If I can't even ask a question

(42:13):
that they can't answer, then I mean, I'm not I'm not bringing
anything new to the table. You know, ChatGPT can answer it.
Why do they need me? And that's definitely best
practice that I think you know, you see it in all these
different places, right? So we talked about it in sports
and athletes good coach and theygo up the ranks because they
they will signal kind of a higher level of professionalism.
And so even though that doesn't affect their on the field

(42:34):
performance or on the age performance, you, you know, you
certainly want someone who's more polished, you can trust,
who might be or loyal or, you know, more prepared, all these
things. Well, that also happens in, you
know, a lot of management consulting interviews.
I remember years ago I went to one and and it was like, I don't
know, you sit down like how manygolf balls are in the air right
now? Like what, yeah, how many golf

(42:57):
balls are in there right now? And I thought that was like a
crazy question. So what they wanted, and, you
know, this was like 20 years ago, something like that 15
years ago. And then they became an arm for
a while. They're a little bit less in
style now. But the idea was two things.
Number one is to catch you off guard.
That's got nothing to do with the job.
And so you, you know, it's just and #2 is you're hopefully
being, you're kind of thinking out loud, right?

(43:18):
You're walking through your process.
So some people will say, you know, like they'll take there's
fifty different ways to answer that question, but they want to
hear how you think. And so it's interesting.
So those begin. And so that's, you know, the
same thing you're talking about is that you ask a few questions
that like when I go back to really starting corps with me,
which is a lot of what we teach is like, you can't be in sales

(43:38):
or you can't be a a negotiator with integrity.
If you are, you know, even our influence training, right, which
is kind of persuading. The goal is, is not to convince
you you need something you don'tneed, right.
That's not the job. The job is to cut through the
clutter and the noise, get to people and for anyone you know,

(43:58):
it's it's to get a real understanding of what you need
and then offer a solution that will actually achieve that.
Or if not, point them in the right direction if you can, and
they do that efficiently, right.And so the, you know, the, the
worst case scenario is not a no.The worst case scenario is
someone drags on forever and they weren't actually interested
or they just dragged you along because they don't have, or you

(44:18):
put them in a situation where they didn't feel comfortable
saying no or whatever. Maybe you wasted a lot of time
on it. And so there's absolutely
nothing wrong with them saying no.
They may not have the need now, the budget now they may have
another need. Things changed.
And I think, I think people, yeah, that's intuitive.
You'll know that. But I can't tell you how many
times we see that in teens whereit's like they're just avoiding
the no, you know. And so that's definitely one of

(44:40):
them. And it's the most common.
That's not what you're avoiding.You.
What you want to do is you want to get to an answer yes or no.
Obviously you want to optimize the probability, but yes.
But a no is not the enemy. Allows you to be focused on
something else. Yeah, I tell people, you know,
hearing no early is a win. Don't maybes will kill you, you
know, and you got to cut to the chase.

(45:02):
So you're you know. So the name of the company you
know is negotiation. Is it is it sales training?
Is it negotiation training? Is it one in the same?
Is it both? It is not sales training.
A pure sales training is about asales process and implement and
that's not really us. So it is it's really negotiation
is in the name of that influencetraining.

(45:24):
So those are two kind of separate trainings that are
complementary, but that's what we do and I think there are
certainly some overlap, right. Our negotiating training and any
good negotiating training has a lot of time spent on discovery.
And so you can't be a good negotiator for not asking great
questions that uncover needs andgo really beyond their position
on to their interests. That skill is absolutely

(45:46):
critical for any salesperson as well.
So there's a lot over, you know,but I think it's in some extent
it's actually broader than salesin the sense that like, so we
train a lot of sales people for sure.
It's one of the reasons we're talking today.
But we train a lot of procurement, you know, the other
side of the table, we train leaders, we train program
managers, project managers, R&D,engineers, nurses, right?

(46:09):
And essentially there's almost communication skills.
So in some ways it's broader than sales in the sales space
though it's, it's almost a little bit niche.
It's considered, you know, most people think of it as a, as one
stage in the problem. We talked about Salesforce early
on. Well, Salesforce has a
negotiation stage. So the one thing I would say
it's really been interesting is we work a lot of clients like,

(46:29):
oh, we're that's the negotiationstage of Salesforce type of
thing. It's like if you're waiting till
you get to that stage to negotiate, you're already in
some major trouble, right? The negotiation is about the
impression from the moment you start the sales process about
the impression, right? Of think how differently, let's
say you're buying a house. Think how differently if you're
selling it and you come off as desperate, like you're the only

(46:50):
person that's come in this open house today and we got to sell
this thing. By the time you get to the
negotiation where you go back and forth of the dollars, you
think that person's going to do better or worse.
And someone else says, Hey, you know, I've got a few people.
So I need your I need your offerby the end of the day because I
got four other offers. Well, that is a very different
feel. And so, you know, but that
wasn't, you weren't negotiating yet people would say.

(47:12):
And so I think it it is, there'sa contradiction there.
But to some extent there's, you know, there's a narrowness to it
as part of the sales process, but you got to be thinking of it
all the way through. Yeah, yeah.
I took a Chester Karas class colleague 23 years ago, I think
it was around 2002. And is that guy, is he still

(47:34):
alive? I don't think so, but I don't.
Think so They are. Yeah.
I mean, so they used to be in Southwest everywhere.
One of the things I really like about our industry is in
negotiation sales. There is like millions of sales
training companies, but there's a, there's a handful of global
negotiation training companies. Really there's been a lot of
consolidation. And what I like is there's room

(47:55):
for more than one and comfortably so because each has
its own niche. For example, Cares is really
about, I mean they're AB to C company.
You could take their class todayin California where your base
and I could take it tomorrow in Baltimore.
And so for us, that's not what we do.
We have no Invitational programs, we have no public
seminars. The only way to go training as
we come to you, we tailor to your company, we tailor to your

(48:18):
function. So it's sales at, you know, this
company. And the next thing we could be
training your procure people. And even at your own company it
will be different because one audience is procuring, 1
audience is sales. And so what's nice is I've
actually sent folks to them. I've been to the training.
You know, I'm biased and I thinkours is better, but I would say
I've been through training. I feel comfortable.
So if you wanted to send two people and you needed to do it

(48:40):
locally and you had nowhere elseto go, we're not the group for
you. And so I would say you're
comfortable saying you should goto the training.
You know, you got 25 people or 500 people and you want to be
custom and made for you. I don't think there's anyone
else that's that's fit for us. What I love is there's different
ones and I feel the world's small enough and the right thing
to do that you said earlier withbeing honest, we will say go

(49:00):
ahead. They're a competitor, but they
are a better fit for you here. And I don't even know people,
I'm just referring them to a competitor.
But good things will come aroundwhen you're honest with people,
I think. And, and really, you know, have
their best interests at heart. Yeah.
I've told more people no than yes over the years, you know, on
stuff that I could have sold them like, yeah, that's not the
right fit for you. So, but it was good.

(49:23):
And you know, I'd urge everybodytake some kind of negotiation
training. It is.
It is different than sales training.
And, and I remember distinctly I, it helped me see things from
the perspective of the buyer andI, and I realized how much
pressure the buyer is usually under, you know, because we

(49:46):
think all the pressure is on U.S. sales people like they're
under pressure too a lot of times, right?
They're under the gun, Something's late, something's
broken, whatever, prices are going up, tariffs are coming in.
They got to jump the gun and getthis in before the price goes
up, blah, blah, blah. And how you uncover that is
there's an art to that. And, and I remember the class,

(50:08):
it was $2500 the week after and I was living in Austin.
I drove down to San Antonio for the class and I had a big, it
was like a Bell Labs, like AT&T lab in Austin.
And they bought our stuff and itwas test equipment and, and we
were the leader in the space. They already had one of our, our
units and the guy wanted to buy another one.

(50:30):
It was, it was a $50,000 unit. And you know, 2002.
I mean, so what's a 70 grand a day, 75 grand?
But I was allowed to give a 10% discount without getting
approval. And I would have done that just
to be nice to the guy. But after that class, I was

(50:52):
like, hey, let me check, say I'msorry, you know, this is a rare
unit. But.
And it was, it was, it was a rare unit.
We didn't have a lot of them. There were high lead times.
We did have one in stock, which was a coincidence.
And it would not remain in stock.
And otherwise it'd be 8 weeks, blah, blah, blah.
That's like, no, I'm sorry. We can't.
He says, OK, He bought it, right.
So I called my boss. Oh, I forget what?

(51:14):
Yeah. It was 10.
I could have given 10% was 5 grand.
Yeah, yeah. And I told my boss, I said we.
Just two acts already. That's what I told her.
That's that's how I remember thenumbers.
I said. I said this class should pay for
itself 2 times over. He says what I told him that
whole story. He's like, oh hell, OK.
And he would have given the 10% too.
The thinking about the buying side is like it's so it's one of

(51:37):
the things that we like to do. So there's a lot of
role-playing, good negotiating training should have a lot of
role-playing in simulations. And, and the idea is because you
want to do not, you know, what we talked about earlier, same as
a video you want to be doing, not talking about it.
And So what I love about it is you start to think about the
other side, you know, and unfortunately that's emotional
intelligence, right? It's without the empathy,
thinking about like really caring what the other side wants
and digging in based on genuine curiosity.

(52:00):
And so I love to think about theother, the buying side.
And then the other thing is it gives you confidence, right?
If you have a process to negotiate, which you should get
from negotiation training, then it gives you confidence.
And so it gives you the confidence to say, no, not
because you're being cavalier, but no, because that thing is
worth it because the next one's going to be 8 weeks.
No, because it's rare. No, because you know, they
already have one. And it's so it isn't just this

(52:23):
thing you did, you know, it's thought through.
And so I think those two takeaways are, you know, for
anyone listening, it's in sales.It's like, you know, nothing
convinces like conviction. We, we like to say that phrase
in some of our training. And I mean, that's if you, if
you don't believe it yourself, if you didn't believe that thing
was worth, you know what it was,what you were selling it for,

(52:44):
you were going to get on it. And so you know that training
helps you to realize that they're in that same position
too. They really need this.
They may need this machine more than they need to sell it.
And they likely. They, they did, I mean, this is
a, you know, a multibillion dollar company and this is their
main research laboratory and they, and we had the Cadillac of
equipment and they already had one and they needed another.

(53:05):
But it's like I was talking about earlier, you know, what I
would do for a big company, you know, I would, I would reduce
for a small company and same, same thing in Texas, you know,
we had contractors that would, would splice the fiber and test
the fiber optic cables. And 23 years later, I'm still, I
talked to a guy less than maybe six months ago.
You know, I haven't been in thatbusiness since 2004, but we have

(53:30):
stayed friends. I took care of him and his dad
that, you know, family owned business and I would loan them
gear. I would, I would cut them deals
because they would buy more and they referred me business and
they were just good dudes. And even though I was the, I was
the manufacturer's Rep, they would buy me lunch because I
took care of them, you know, andso I would give them discounts

(53:56):
because that's just how it worked.
The big company didn't need it and it didn't hurt our
relationship. I was friends with that guy.
He was a PhD in the Air Force. He taught the Air Force Academy.
We kind of over, I didn't know him, but he was there when I was
there. So we always had a relationship.
I, I would call him on his birthday, you know, so we were
friends for decades. And so they didn't hurt us by me

(54:20):
selling it at this price, but I knew that because of the
training, you know, and so it helped me see things at a deeper
layer. So, so get you some, get you
some training. I'm I'm going to link out to
you. So, so you've mentioned the book
over your shoulder. Where, where should people
start? You got a new book right?
Persuade. Force that process, you know, So

(54:40):
I guess this is the the time you.
Know both of them there. You go exactly.
There's two, you know. So you got to sit right in the
middle. You got to hold them up like
that's true. Where's the beach?
Exactly the so yeah, there's, you know, we, we have 5 books,
but there's really 2 core ones for us and one's The Power of
Nice. That's what founded us.
That's version 3. It's been updated a bunch of
times and it's a great read. That's kind of an airplane read

(55:02):
in the sense that easy to read. You know, Ron's an incredible
storyteller and sound of the thing persuade the other one,
which is kind of more the teal color that is, you know, still
stories. It's still easy to read, but
it's a lot more dense in the sense that we tried to pack in a
lot more of the science behind, you know, really about building
credibility, building trust, howto engage you emotionally,

(55:24):
storytelling, facilitating action.
So there's there's a lot more kind of psychology and science
behind that one. So we'll have it to some extent,
but it's just a lot more the forefront.
So those are kind of the two core books for what we teach.
One's the basis for negotiation training and one of the basis
for influence training. And is there a a size of company
that's too small for you? Like who?

(55:46):
Who should be calling you? So really typically want to have
about a minimum of six people going through the training.
So we definitely work with very small companies, you know,
larger portion of these bigger companies, but that's kind of
that's skewed because a bigger company will train 500
salespeople, 1000 salespeople, 300 procurement people, you
know, So then when we're doing 110 person training for a 30

(56:07):
person company, you know, that'snot only one program only, but
that's one program rather than, you know, 20304050 programs for
another company. So it's kind of that scale
piece. But I think really it's it's
about having a need. I mean, the people we can help
the most is when they have that,you know, there's, there's a,
there's a challenge that they'refacing and we're helping them
overcome. That's how you get real ROI,
right. It's we're being commoditized

(56:29):
and new competitor in the space.We just had an acquisition.
Our people aren't really trainedhaving over time.
And now there's, there's more, you know, pressures tariffs are
coming in and we, you know, we have to negotiate increase in
pricing or the tariffs themselves.
If you're in the supply chain side or sale side, that type of
thing. If there's something specific,
we can then tailor more to you and, and have a bigger impact.

(56:50):
So any size really and any, and the other thing too is any, any
industry really that you see we talked about, you know, if
you're human, you sell the, the more complex the sale, the more
relationship based, the more of an impact we can have.
Yeah, yeah. And I tell people that all the
time. It's like it's a, it's a
feature. It's, it's a benefit, right, Not

(57:11):
a bug for me to not have experience because I'm going to
ask a lot more questions. And in that uncovery discovery,
we're going to pull more stuff out because people like they
really don't get it. I think in the beginning,
because it's like, and my interview of you as we prepare,

(57:31):
that's where the magic happens, you know, then I just feed it
back to you what you gave me. You know, I think we just, we
overlook, you know, the curse ofknowledge is like a real thing.
We, we devalue, we undervalue what we're familiar with.
And it's like, man, that's the magic right there.
You ever see the you ever watch Mad Men?

(57:53):
I tell that story all the time. When we had the the cigarette
guys come in. He's like, it's roasted.
Do you remember that scene? They're all roasted.
Yeah, where everybody does it. But you know, you wrote
everybody else. You know, I got to, I got to
probably just buy that episode, just have it because I talk
about it so much. That will be.
Everybody else is just copying you.
That won't be cheaper to buy that episode.

(58:16):
Yeah, used to use some. Videos in, in our training back
in the day and you know, they, they became so expensive it was
crazy. So you better just get really
good at telling what that scene looks like.
It'll save you a lot of money. Yeah, that's, that's true.
I'll, I'll storyboard it. I'll write it out.
Exactly. I can memorize it, right?

(58:38):
They can't. They can't sue me if I'm just
quoting it. Yeah, exactly.
And give them credit. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah. It's their show.
But it's such a good scene, you know?
But it's so, it's so indicative.It's so accurate.
You know, you just down. But what?
Everybody does it. But to an outsider, it's like
that's unique. Oh, OK.

(59:00):
Like trust me, let's run with that, you know?
So bring in an outsider. So let's roll the Rs.
Andres la Lares. There you go.
Look at that, man. I'm, I'm practically Venezuelan.
Look at that. Very nice.
Well, thanks for carving out some time, man.
It's been great catching up withyou.
Same, thank you for having me. It was.

(59:21):
It was a fun experience and hopefully worthwhile to the
folks that listened in. Oh yeah, for sure.
Hey man, have a great day. I told you, negotiation and
sales. I mean it's two sides of the
three sided coin or something like that.
I mean, you know, it's related, very closely related.
So I'm glad we got to, you know,who's ideal for him and his

(59:43):
approach. And I'm glad I brought up your
Chester Charis and understandingthat difference and where he can
help you, right? And I don't have a pure
negotiation program like that. But like I said, I went through
this 23 years ago, still got allthe books, C, DS, well, MP
threes I've recorded and listened to repeatedly.

(01:00:05):
I've got modules, you know, thatget into negotiation and you
know the inner circle. We're on live every week when
private group. You can ask questions at any
time and I can help you through some negotiation issues.
A lot of it, you know, you've heard me say to make any sale
you have to make every sale. A lot of the negotiations, the

(01:00:28):
prep work comes way ahead of time.
Do you understand how you're being perceived?
Do you understand how you're coming across small hinges,
swing big doors? Yeah.
I was mentioning the emails and I didn't get to tell that story.
I think I told it before, but I was working with a, a marketing
agency and they had sales peopleand one of the guys had a link

(01:00:50):
in his e-mail signature to his Instagram account.
And he had some name, you know, like marketing guru or something
like that. But he had like 1 post and one
follower or something like that.And, and the prospect he was
dealing with, it was a good prospect, you know, reply and
said, yeah, I don't. We need somebody that basically

(01:01:13):
eats their own dog food, somebody with bigger following
that that has their own big following and knows what it
takes to build it and maintain it and grow it.
And I was confused because the company had a good social media
presence. Then I went and looked and this
guy's signature, I mean, something you would overlook,
right? I mean, you would never think of
1 little link of an icon in a signature.

(01:01:38):
That was his downfall in this account.
It was tough to save that that deal.
So as you negotiate, understand you have to see things from the
buyer's perspective. That's why I mentioned in the
interview. Do you know how you are being
perceived? What is what is your digital
footprint look like both for yourself individually and the
company? And if there are bad things out

(01:01:59):
there, how are you addressing it?
Maybe you can get rid of it overtime.
But you know, can you just address it?
Can you explain it? It's like having negative
reviews, you know, had Shane on and talking about Amazon
reviews. And it's OK to have some one and
two and three star reviews. You're not going to make

(01:02:19):
everybody happy. But as long as you address it,
use it as feedback, acknowledge where maybe you fell down, and
instruct the world, you know, how are you fixing it?
What do you do to rectify the situation?
So it's OK to have some negativeif it's out there, Do you know
that it's out there? Because the worst thing is to be

(01:02:40):
ambushed on this. So how well are you setting
yourself up for success? The more proactive you can be,
the more successful you'll be, the calmer you'll be.
You'll sell bigger deals, easier, more predictably.
But it takes work. OK, if you need help with that,
hit me up. Head of Andres, get some help

(01:03:01):
though. Get somebody, a neutral third
party, an expert to come in and help you get this done.
Hopefully that's me, right, or one of my guests and or both of
us. Hey, there's no reason, I mean,
double down, right? But hey, either way, implement
what you learn. OK, If I can help with that, hit
me up. Thanks for watching.

(01:03:22):
I'll go sell something.