Sales Doesn’t Have to be a Dirty Word

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Let’s face it, the general concept of “selling” has developed a bad rap over the years. We all hate to be sold to. If I asked you to picture a salesperson right now, what image would come to mind? Most people likely have the same exaggerated caricature of a person pop up.

In recent years, the selling landscape has significantly changed as customer expectations mount in a globally competitive landscape. For salespeople, there is more at stake, less time to make a great impression and less room for error. Unfortunately, this can often mean less time is spent on building relationships in favor of getting right to the point.

 But the truth is, selling is actually a lot easier than its reputation might have you believe. It’s just that very few people are taught how to do it well. In college, for example, there are very few classes that teach you directly about making a sale. And frankly even if there were, nothing beats the experience that comes from actually talking to a prospective customer anyways. Up and coming salespeople are often thrown to the wolves to figure it out on their own. 

 Selling is personal for me. I’ve built my businesses not by simply striving to make a sale by asking hollow questions, but by building relationships - this is what is referred to as solutions based vs consultative selling. 

 When I talk with a potential customer, I strive to learn their challenges - all of them, not just the ones that I can directly fix. I observe them. I offer my ideas and advice. I get to know them as people. This relationship-first and consultative approach is how I sold for my dad and how I have built my businesses from the ground up. Without this approach, Placers would not be what it is.

 I’m grateful to my dad for teaching me much of what I know about sales and business in general. As with all of the other Outside Insights episodes where Alan lent his insight, I am very excited for our community to learn from him again. In this podcast, Alan discusses:

• The history of sales
• How to do consultative sales and sell the right way
• Four things that will help you sell differently
• Great real life stories of enterprise-level wins that you won’t want to miss

This topic is a must for any entrepreneur. Even if you don’t opt to listen to the podcast, please read up on consultative selling and consider how your own approaches can be adjusted. Sales doesn’t have to be a dirty word - we just need to put people back at the center of business. 

Until next time, friends. 

Chris

Episode Transcript

Chris Burkhard (00:12):
Welcome to the next episodes of outside ins
podcast. Outside Insights is acommunity created to help people
close their personal andprofessional gap. I really am
interested in helping folks havethe life that they want. So I'm
Chris Burkhard I blog. We dothis podcast and generally we
create content that will get youthinking about yourself. I'm

(00:37):
back with podcast regular AlanBurkhart. Believe it or not, if
you're a first time listener,you know, check out the series
of episodes that I have withAlan. Yes, he is my dad. He is
the original serialentrepreneur, we did an awesome
session about his life's workand journey. And he's been
really generous to share thatlife story. And the lessons

(01:01):
learned as they fit very, verywell into anyone that's thinking
about closing a personal orprofessional gap. How're you
doing today, Alan Burkhard, mypop?

Alan Burkhard (01:13):
I am doing great.
I think you give me too muchcredit. But I appreciate that
introduction. I love what we'redoing. I like hope it's helpful.
And today's topic is exciting.

Chris Burkhard (01:28):
I do believe that this is our 13th episode.
Now I save that in that we'realways dropping some for
listening on podcasts like youeither Google Apple or Spotify.
But we always have some inproduction. So I think we've got
two or three that'll come out inthe fall. You know, this

(01:49):
obviously crazy other stuff. Soyou want to listen to them,
there are other guests. But overthe last year, Alan has been a
regular invite t as we sort ofdocument his thinking for our
audience. This week, this week,we're tackling a topic that you

(02:10):
know, I think everyone shouldlisten to. And some I'm going to
say it and you're not going tolisten, and I'm going to say
hang in there with you and thatit has something that really
fits, we're going to talk aboutsales. And I was always taught
that sales is really customerperception of how they go about
buying. And it's actually aservice function in my head. And

(02:32):
the funny thing is, everybusiness lives and dies by
sales, that place you go towork. Yet sales is a dirty word,
and we'll rail about this. It'sinsane to me all the money
that's spent in colleges, andyou cannot get a degree in
sales. In fact, I'm not sure youcan get a three credit course

(02:52):
for learning to sell. And Ihaven't proved that out maybe
somebody will send that to usget selling done right is a huge
life skill. And an advantage.
And it's part of getting what wewant is knowing how to do this
and how to sell how to how toconvey ideas. How to get things
done on teams, if you're aleader, or an employee who wants

(03:15):
to drive change. And of course,we're talking about selling
things to prospects andcustomers. So I'm with, there's
a lot of things that Alanteaches. I don't know where you
would rank sales. But it'spretty damn near high up there,
isn't it?

Alan Burkhard (03:39):
Yes. If the listener can get through this
with us, what I think they'regoing to find what I know is
that selling is actually a loteasier than its reputation. And

(04:00):
it has this reputation becauseit's been so abused at every
stage along the way. So if youcan get through this with us, I
think in the end, you're goingto find that at least our think
my thinking of selling issomething you and anyone is very
capable of doing. In one of mycompanies, we actually

(04:24):
eliminated the Salesforcecompletely and said that anybody
that would like to do it can doit. And that's what happened.
I'll tell you more about that aswe get through it, and why we
eliminated it. You're rightChris, the world spends a
fortune on a set of so calledsophisticated selling strategies
throughout all organizationslarge and small. And yet I find

(04:48):
that very few if any, do itright and training on it. I've
never seen training on sellingeven within a corporation
training on the product service?
Yeah. Training on its featuresand benefits? Yeah, but not on
selling. And we'll talk aboutthat. So I agree with you there.

(05:08):
Where do you go, there'smarketing degrees and
communication degrees, but theydon't touch the word selling.

Chris Burkhard (05:17):
And I can't help hang around you and not put some
of that stuff out. I can tellyou working on it as a business
owner, I can see how hard it isto put training that's not
product specific or, you know,traditional sales specific. But

(05:39):
I think what I would just Iwould just start with with this.
I can't believe I'm going to putthis timeline to it. But over
the last 50 years, you've ran alot of companies.

Alan Burkhard (05:51):
Yes.

Chris Burkhard (05:52):
And you've seen an evolution a revolution in
customer preference, the waypeople buy a lot of change than
the workforce workplace, a lotof changes in service, and
expectations. And you want tostart with kind of, I don't

(06:13):
know, maybe it's 1974, with yourview on how sales changed based
on how customers changed.

Alan Burkhard (06:19):
Yeah. This is so exciting to me, I want to say
everything all at one time. Iwant to cover 1000 words at one
time. So you just kind of haveto bear with us here. And it's
exciting, because

Chris Burkhard (06:33):
pop even my opening question, covered
everything in one sentence. Sonow, I understand now you got to
now you've got to unpack it. Sogive us some room.

Alan Burkhard (06:46):
Let me let me cover two things real quick.
First of all, we're talkingabout a more sophisticated
selling relationship with theclient, not your transactional
three week assignment. There isselling, of course, all there.
But we're kind of talking aboutyou, as an individual learning

(07:07):
to lead sell, by the way,leading and selling are
identical today. When I got whenI grew up in the business,
everybody said to the veryopposite each other, they really
weren't, we just didn't knowthat. So you got if you've heard
any of the podcasts before,you're gonna hear a lot of
similar thinking. It all stemsfrom having a good story being a

(07:31):
culture driven company, if youare that. If you're working on
that, then you have a story totell that everyone will listen
to. And they'll be impressed.
And when they're impressed,they'll open their doors for
you. And when they open theirdoors from you, you can gather
the information that no one canget, like in a bid. And you're
off and running and you getinformation that no one can get.

(07:53):
That's where the differentiationis. But let's get back. Really
to the 40s 50s. And 60s, whenselling was what they call and
they call it. There's threeevolutions of sales in my mind.
And within each a lot of growth.
The first one is what they callpush selling. And it's like you

(08:15):
want to buy a duck, you want tobuy a ticket at the back your
rack.

Chris Burkhard (08:21):
The point is, do you want to buy a book? Do you
want to buy a vacuum cleaner? Doyou want to buy, Do you want to
buy this pen?

Alan Burkhard (08:28):
Yes. And the books that were written were how
to make a million dollarsselling go see 70,000 people a
day and be gutsy enough to bedirect and you want to buy a
book. This is a good book. Andthat's really been why? Why?
Because there's really nocompetition back then. We'd have
the global competition today. Wedidn't have the technology

(08:49):
today. We had customer servicewasn't even a word. It certainly
wasn't on a business card orsign. Customer service really
didn't exist during thattimeframe, almost non existent
without competition that didn'tneed to be said when there
didn't need to be. Then it,That's why it was like it was

(09:13):
but very abused. No one likedit. So it started the process of
no one wanting to be a salesmanand no one wanting to be sold no
wonder. But I'm going to movequickly to the next big one.
Which was really the 50s and 60sand 70s. Hit hard in the 60s and

(09:33):
70s. It's what the pull sellingall of a sudden, we learned,
Wait a minute. We don't push theproducts at people let's pull
and pull what?

Chris Burkhard (09:45):
Let's let's pull them to the product.

Alan Burkhard (09:48):
Yes, pull into it, which was a lot about
gathering information, pullinginformation. But it was really
broken down what they callfeatures and benefits. It was a
new dynamic, it hit the worldlike overnight. And all of a
sudden,

Chris Burkhard (10:08):
what does that feel like? If you're a consumer,
What is that pull? What does itsound like and feel like?

Alan Burkhard (10:15):
Well, if you compare the two, pull selling is
better if it's done, right. Butthat too, was abused. And we'll
talk about that. Features andBenefits means identify a
feature, And I show you abenefit to that feature. I align
a benefit value to you tosomething tangible. The vacuum

(10:40):
cleaner company, what's thename, the one that dominated
market share, they used to bringa bag of dirt in your house,
they brought their own dirt. Andthey would put it on your couch
and put it on your floor and putit on your rug. And then their
vacuum cleaner would clean itup. See? Teacher, dirt, benefit,
cleaned it up? So actually, youcould see it.

Chris Burkhard (11:02):
And that's so we better than, Do you want to buy
a vacuum?

Alan Burkhard (11:05):
Yes, yes. So we would we would work hard back
then to list out all thefeatures of it. And each one, is
it a benefit, And how is it abenefit to the customer might be
price, right? It might beguarantee, it might be product

(11:26):
quality, it might be howdifferentiates from others. It
might be the technology withinit might be the, you know, self
cleaning bag or something is wehave a robot now that actually
cleans it changes its own bag.
And we watch it, you know, meand the dogs watch it go in
every corner and every part, Bythe way, its name is Robert in

(11:50):
case you want to know. So itbecame overnight sensation.
Because most Salesforces again,all these companies, salespeople
sales forces, trying to come upwith strategies adopted it
because it made so much sense.

(12:13):
But can you imagine the varietyof ways in which that happened,
all of a sudden, everyone wasusing a strategy now in selling.
And again, they call it pullselling. We used to do a
brainstorming session at mycompany. And we would start with

(12:35):
another company's product. Andwe would say we are the board of
directors of big pen. And Ithrow out a pen to everybody.
And we say business isn't verygood. Nobody's buying a product.
What can we do? We couldbrainstorm. And course in
brainstorming, first hour, soit's very typical things. Most

(12:58):
of the ideas were already beingin place, such as different
sizes, and different colors andall that. But I knew that that's
anybody can do that. And youknow, and everybody can
brainstorm an hour. So we pushto push to push. And in
brainstorming when it goes quietis when you know on the other
side of that are the real goodones. And so I would throw out a

(13:21):
couple, like make it edible. Andthey'd laugh. I said, why not?
And they started thinking, Well,I guess they could. I guess they
could make it taste like peanutbutter make the ink, good,
instead of bad. So in the end,we were so impressed with

(13:41):
ourselves that we wanted to sendthe list to big pen and say, Hey
guys, we've got some ideas foryou that can help.

Chris Burkhard (13:49):
Did they ever respond?

Alan Burkhard (13:51):
No, we'd never done it to know they didn't
know. But But that's an exampleof how we were beginning to
learn to pull sell, and gatherinformation. But then as we're
doing that brainstorming, what Iwould bring up at the end is
wait a minute guys, we haven'tasked the company what they
think about anything. This is uscoming up with this. What if,

(14:17):
what if we could get a day'sworth of information from them?
Why is business bad? What'sgoing on? Who's doing what?
What's their culture? What, Howare they selling? What's their
process? What's their productlike? What's their market share?
And in other words, what werealized were quite impressive

(14:38):
what we came up with, but it wasus creating solutions for them
that may not be aligned to theirproblems. And then we realized
that that's way off.

Chris Burkhard (14:52):
So that's interesting in just my own
summary. You feel pretty goodabout yourself when you take a
product and you come up with allthese applications, and you
think you're really doingsomething different, because you
are the customer, potentially ofthat product, but you realize
you didn't know anything aboutthe company to know, really how

(15:13):
to help them or solve problems,or even execute what you came up
with.

Alan Burkhard (15:19):
No. In fact, I'll tell you a story about how we
would overcome the bid processwith exactly what you're talking
about. But allow me to back thisup just a little bit.

Chris Burkhard (15:29):
Yes.

Alan Burkhard (15:30):
Remember that what I believe in, and what
we've talked about Is ourcompany being culturally driven,
what we mean is that, is thatour way of thinking drives
everything we do, it drives whowe are, our way, our mindset.
And what was that mindset to be,and we decided that it would be

(15:52):
customer driven. This isoverlapping overtop of of
customer service, customerdriven by definition to us was
that everything we do, had to beperceived by the customer, not
us, as the value to them, or wewould do it. Everything had to

(16:14):
be a value. And so that was thepremise in which we began this
whole process. In house,management, leadership, selling,
hiring, interviews, thetreatment was everywhere. And
that was the consultative, themoving the ladder up. And more

(16:38):
sophisticated pull selling,which we called consultative
selling, that's the third one.
I'm jumping way ahead. Andthat's today, it's had several
steps, several processes. It'sso abused, it's unbelievable.
Consultative selling is takingpull selling, supposedly, to a
limit, where we gather theinformation from the customer.

(16:59):
And then based on that, presentsolutions, and they buy. But the
abuse there is we're notgathering information from the
customer, we're pulling productsoff the shelf, we're not
aligning the results of theirideas to their particular
issues. Because we're notgetting in, we don't ask or we

(17:24):
don't get in, to identify thisinformation. To me, consultative
selling, is all the weight oninformation gathering all the
weight. And informationgathering across all boundaries,
the flow of the customercalling. The flow of the

(17:48):
product, inventory, the flow ofthe sales out, interviewing all
the different people at alllevels of the company, finding
out about the culture, findingout about how they do what they
do, and who they are, gatheringinformation. So that when we sit
down to assess it, as a client,as a vendor, we have the ability

(18:11):
to know exactly what's going on,see issues, see concern, see
problems. And based on that,then brainstorm solutions that
are direct, directly aligned towhat we see. Take a bit that
goes out. If I could say to acustomer, which I've said many

(18:36):
times. If you hire from the bid,I assure you you will not hire
the most qualified company toperform the services that you
expect the new one. Becausethere's no way in hell from that
bid, you can determine who isbest to serve you. Because you
won't let them is not theinformant. You're not asking

(18:57):
you're really looking at price.

Chris Burkhard (19:01):
So right right now the world does break this
down. Sales people, this verymodern 2021. I'm a really good
salesperson, I get a hold ofyou. You're in a position of
authority. You have a need for aproduct. It almost inevitably

(19:24):
goes to the bid is a contractand say send me your terms. Send
me your letter, something,right?

Alan Burkhard (19:31):
Yeah.

Chris Burkhard (19:31):
I heard you describe something. And I'm just
slowing you down because I thinkthis is an important gap. That's
the way sales is generally done.
95% of the time 90% of the timeit's I make a phone call we
connect send me your offeringand I evaluate it. I've heard
you talk about, approaching thatcompany very differently. And

(19:53):
you may be getting there but canyou talk about what you meant
about gathering more informationwith a prospect, and if it's out
of sync go where you want. Butto me, there's so such a huge
difference between the way theworld perceives selling and
this.

Alan Burkhard (20:15):
Yes, and I'm going to try, I'm gonna kind of
be all over the board here. Backit up a little bit, because
you're right, I'm moving wayahead because I want to just
outline the three different overdecades, push, pull, and consult
where we're stuck on that rightnow. All had been abused, or a

(20:36):
little better than the other,but the better they're supposed
to be, the more abused they are.
So all the perceptions of thebuyer is terrible than all the
perceptions of not trustingsales is there, of employees not
wanting to be that of changingthe word out. In the 80s, a
sales associate became a serviceassociate, a sales department

(20:59):
became a customer servicedepartment. They eliminated the
word selling to try to changethat abuse. It didn't change the
way they did with their day.

Chris Burkhard (21:12):
Didint change the job, didn't change... Okay,
right.

Alan Burkhard (21:16):
Privilege once of being asked by Dale Carnegie
company, to re edit and reviewtheir first sales book, after
this in the 70s. And I sawexactly that. I saw new words,
but the old way, they knewnothing about sales. And so I

(21:37):
kind of ripped it up, tore itup, send it back to them, and
they hated me for that neverheard another word, except we're
not going to use your stuff.
They wanted me to like it. Youknow, I was a graduate, you're a
graduate, we knew we love thecompany, for what they were, but
they were way out of theirleague when it came to selling
how about that. They forgot whothey were. Alright, buying.

(21:58):
Selling as it relates tocustomer perception. The key one
of our major goals of ourculture of customer driven, is
to change customer perception.
Well, we that's why it's a majorgoal. We know, we know that the

(22:20):
perception isn't good. But whata way to differentiate ourselves
from everyone else, if we canchange customer perception. That
became one of our most importantcustomer driven goals. The whole
consultative process is back tofinding the right thing to do.

(22:47):
In a trusting and honest way, ofbuilding relationships with a
client in a way that isn't beingdone now. You can't sell service
when it's fully expected. In the70s and 80s, when the customer

(23:10):
service explosion hit due totechnology, the technology
revolution, due to globalcompetition, due to women in the
workforce, all big a melting potof a lot of things happening,
creating a new world ofbusiness. In the selling. They

(23:34):
were selling the product, theywere selling service. And we
learned that you can't sellsomething that's already fully
expected. If you do, you canonly fail, not any better. You
can only do worse. Soeverybody's out there selling
what you can't sell. So what doyou sell? We did a project at

(24:01):
our company. We took all thewords, all the questions we ever
asked a prospective client. Wejust brainstormed it. And you
know, in this temporary, in thisindustry, one of the questions
was well, Wendy, what part ofthe year do you have the most
needs and just stuff like that?
How many temps do you havethere? We took all the things we
ever asked and then we put onthe other side, a checkmark is

(24:29):
it proceed to self serving ornot? And every one got the
checkmark. Of course. It wasperceived as value to us. But
not necessarily the client atthe time. Weren't bad questions.

(24:49):
Bad timing. We checked box everyone of those Chris, as self
serving. And we looked at itlike, Well, no wonder if
everything we ask a prospectiveclient at the time we're talking
to the however we're talking tothem is proceed to self serving,

(25:10):
well, then that's no good. Sowhat do we do? I remember one
employee saying, well, we can'ttalk. Right. Out came, we can't
talk, we can't do this. We can'tdo this like this. We need to
ask questions that aren'tperceived to self serving. So we

(25:33):
brainstorm and we couldn't findany. We came up with what we
call advanced, great questions.
Still proceed to self serving.

Chris Burkhard (25:45):
Strategy questions. The question is that,
you know, the industry or the,or the product?

Alan Burkhard (25:52):
Yeah, advance, but then it hit us this is over
time it hit us that you knowwhat, it's not the fact that
these are bad questions, that wehaven't earned the right to ask
them yet. And I knew that fromall the other work we talked
about in terms of earning theright. We haven't earned the
right, how do we earn the right,we get the customer to say okay,

(26:15):
you can ask, or I'd like you toanswer some things. I'd like you
to, how do we do that. Andthat's when it started. We
literally disbanded theSalesforce, because we just
couldn't go out and continue todo it the way we were doing it,
which was a major savings. Bythe way in the company, we

(26:35):
weren't really selling muchanyway. What we did was, we
began to realize that what weneed to sell is us, of course,
who are we? What are we allabout? How do we do what we do?

(26:58):
We came up with four things. Whoare we? Thats one, thats a
culture driven company.
Impressive. Two, What are we allabout? That's customer driven.
And explain what that's allabout. Right? Value to the
customer. Everything we do hasto be precedes value to the

(27:19):
customer, or we don't do it.
Three, how do we do what we do?
Give a picture. How we do it, wecome in, we have the information
come back to you with solutionsdirectly aligned to your issues.
And by the way, you don't haveto buy them, you can even send
them to your favorite agencywhich started with us. We're
very transparent. We'll do itanyway, we're coming back with

(27:41):
two things. Huge value, twothings. One, we'll give you
everything we learned, which bythe way will be a lot you don't
know even about your owncompany. And you can do what you
want with them and keep it nocharge. And two, we're going to
give solutions to those thingsthat we see. If you decide you'd

(28:01):
like to get them worked on, wecan do it. Or we'll give you
options. We can even train yourcompany to do it if you'd wish.
Okay, so how do we do what wedo? And then the fourth one, you
ready for this? Is how do webuild you as a client? We're

(28:25):
actually talking about thatbefore we try. So that you can
see in advance what we're tryingto do. And if you'd like what
you hear, we'll get togetheragain. And if you don't punch me
in the nose, and we'll go on ourway and knock on your door

(28:45):
another day. And that's how wetalked about it's how we're
thinking.

Chris Burkhard (28:52):
And you don't really mean punched in the nose.
Do you mean I can take it? I'mprofessional? We'll come back at
you.

Alan Burkhard (28:59):
Yeah, I can take it no. And, and there, you could
punch me in the nose. Okay.

Chris Burkhard (29:06):
Do you think that, question with us? Do you
think it's I mean, you you'vehad 1000s of salespeople, you've
consulted with companies thathave had 1000s of salespeople.
You know, the story Alan istelling it was, it was a bit ago

(29:26):
but he's had many otherbusinesses that have sold in the
last few years meaning sold toprospects. I was sitting there
thinking about this is that isit that you disbanded that
Salesforce because people wouldnot learn new behaviors? There
were plenty of people like mewho were the next ones coming in
that latched on to the ideas.
But is it that people don'tactually know advanced

(29:52):
questions? Or is it the peoplethat salespeople can't, can't do
what you said, and convince thecustomer that we should be led
in.

Alan Burkhard (30:05):
Yes. But yes.
Yeah, it's wonderful. The fourthings I just outlined with you,
if explained properly, whichanybody can learn, because
they're nice things. They'rehonest, they're truthful,
they're open, they'retransparent. And each one has to
be perceived as a value to thecustomer. They don't have to buy

(30:28):
it. We're not asking them tobuy. We're saying we'd like to
tell you who we are. Basically,I'm saying to you, Chris, I'd
like to take 20 minutes yourtime, I'd like to tell you one,
who we are, two, what we're allabout, three, how we do what we
do, four, how we do as a client,I explained each one just a
little bit, I highlighted anexample or two. If you'd like

(30:50):
what you hear, I'm sure we'llget together again. And if you
don't, I'll go on my way. I'mnot going to ask any selling
questions. If I do kick me out.
I'm not going to sell. I'msimply going to do those four
things. Why? And I'll explainwhy.

Chris Burkhard (31:12):
And of course, if you've ever been on a sales
call, the idea of telling astory and asking to come back is
about as different as me saying,uh, you know, Alan, what's your
pain points? I'd like to closeyou today on a sale

Alan Burkhard (31:28):
whenever, and Chris, whenever we've gotten
into whenever we've gotten theirapproval to where, whenever
we've earned the right to askthese questions, because all the
questions were good, just at thewrong time we needed their
approval to do it, if I say,okay, then, okay, whenever

(31:52):
that's happened, we have neverfailed to go back again and
again and again. And almostalways closed account, not
always, but always back again,with the chance of that being
becoming a more sophisticatedrelationship. Sometimes it was
eight or 10 meetings withdifferent people, somebody had
to hear it be impressed and saymy boss needs to hear this. And

(32:14):
then we do it again, you werepart of it. Again, and again,
until one day, they liked whatthey heard. And we're basically
saying how honest andtransparent we are, and that we
are using a selling strategythat is simply nothing but a
value to the customer. And thatyou sir, can do anything you

(32:35):
want with what we bring back toyou. And so sometimes the me is
the most crude example, we get abid in the mail, I would call
them up and say, we made thedecision not to bid. Now we are,
as you know, one of the bestcompanies in this business in

(32:59):
this region. That's why you sentus the bid. And I would hope
that you would even expect thatwe would be one of the
finalists, because we're thatgood. But we're not going to bid
on it. And then explain whybecause it doesn't cover those
things. I would explain thatit's not fair to them, that
you'll get somebody you'llyou'll you can pick somebody out

(33:22):
of that bid processor. But, But,but and then I would I would,
I'm not going to bore everybodywith this. But I would talk
about how what life would belike if they simply chose from
the bid, their decisions, andwhat life would be like if they
had an alternative. So I wouldsay what I propose is this, let

(33:45):
me in for two or three days, twoor three of my people, some of
my best people, and allow us thefreedom to watch the flow of
your product and service, to askquestions to interview a few
people at different levels, justan entry level amount of
information, let us in I willpresent you two things. One,

(34:09):
what we saw what we found ofwhich will be a value in itself.
Some things you don't even know.
And two will present somesolutions that we think might
apply. If we carry thisrelationship further where we
can learn more and refine it,that might be a value to you.

(34:29):
And you can do what you wantwith any of it, you can say
thank you very much. And you cantake it to your current provider
and say hey, you guys do this,if you want because we know they
can't, because if they couldthey wouldn't. So I'd like I'd
like to offer that as analternative. And Chris, you'd be
surprised how many took me up onit. Maybe only one in 10 took me

(34:53):
up on it but that's a big one.
because once you're in, you getthe client. See you, you asked
me earlier, you and everybody,but today, Alan, it's different.
It's not different. It's evenmore clear today, it's even more

(35:16):
important today. And I think I'mnot doing it. I'm not doing it
to a company. But it's hasn'tchanged. We could do probably
25% of it with Zoom, caninterview some people. And you
can learn something about theirculture, things like that. But,

(35:37):
but more than half of it's gotto be done face to face. And we
may have to wait through COVIDwe may have to wait until a
company says you can come in forthat reason. But okay, that's an
even playing field. Everybodyelse has the same issue.

Chris Burkhard (35:59):
So I think, I think where you're really right,
as usual, is that no, it there'sa lot of complexity today, maybe
there's always been a equalamount of complexity, that
concept that it's all relative,you know, 10 years ago,
everybody felt there was thesame amount of complexity as

(36:20):
there is today. I certainly knowthat the level of complexity,
confuses everyone confused assalespeople, confuses buyers,
global markets, faster changingpeaks and troughs, with business
with workers with whatever. Butin the end, that there's so

(36:41):
guys, there's this notion thatconsultative selling doesn't
work anymore. Because when youask the questions, the people
don't know the answers. That'swhat Alan's getting at. And
that's, yeah, it is real,because that there's an Amazon
effect, like, and we all knowwhat that means. It's like it's
remote control world, six cent,six second attention span, they

(37:03):
want to buy whatever, you cansell something very complex,
solves big problems. But we allwant to look on Amazon or the
version of it, and press clickand put it in our cart and not
talk to anybody. But I get you.
If you can add value, what Itake is if you can add value on
why you should be led in onceyou're in, we know how to gather

(37:25):
the information.

Alan Burkhard (37:28):
Well, think about it. Of course, they don't know
if they did, if we find issuesand problems and concerns. And
therefore solutions. Of course,they don't know where they would
have done it. Of course theydon't know. Of course, that's
what consultative selling is,the more difficult it is to get
in, the easier it is to solvethe problems for the customer.

(37:53):
So I don't look at today as aproblem, I look at it as a
really bigger opportunity todifferentiate. Because
everybody's walking aroundsaying it is a Brahmi game, talk
to anybody. Well, we're notlooking to talk to anybody,
we're looking at theconversation on the phone and
let me in, in 20 minutes and seeif we can carry it further and
into the time inch by inch.
Telling a story is so much moreimpressive than selling. We're

(38:19):
telling a story, a story about acompany like ours, who's trying
very hard to do the right thing.
Who we are, we're culturallydriven. And when that's the
value of the customer. Whatwe're all about is being
customer driven. Let me let megive you a picture of what we
mean. How about customer drivenpricing. And never heard of

(38:41):
that? Well we have that. I giveexamples, nother words, we can
tell a story of a company whohas the right thinking, who's
doing it. We're on our way.
We're not there yet. You don'thave to be great yet yet to be
on your way. Its actually evenbetter to be on your way

(39:02):
improving. They like what theyhear and they perceive that they
would like to be like that.
Everybody we took that thatcompany should be like that, how
come their company isn't likethat. And they're nodding their
head. And they're, and they'relistening, that we're telling a
story, weaving a story about acompany that's on its way to

(39:26):
really do good things. And wehave good thinking and that we
don't sell service because youfully expect it. We kind of say
we know we know what you'regetting in these sales calls. In
fact, the next salesperson thatcalls the company after that
kind of conversation looks likea dork. Makes them even worse.

Chris Burkhard (39:49):
Theyre saying do you want to buy a duck? Do you
want to buy it?

Alan Burkhard (39:52):
Often Chris will get a call back later, after
they've had a chance toexperience what we've said. It's
the same, let's expand sellingto leadership. I'm saying I
believe they're both the same.
We need to teach, and train andeducate and information to our
managers to our staffs, companywide, open up opportunities.

(40:12):
This is something that can bebottom up and anybody that wants
to explore it can explore it.
It's a wonderful opportunitywithin a company to, it's
something, this story issomething substantive to say.
Right? You said salespeopledon't know what to say that it's

(40:32):
all selling you to them. Ofcourse, they don't like it, they
don't like it, because they knowthey're not going to get a good
perception. It's that 500 poundCanary, I don't talk about that,
that you know, the second call,no. Third call the 100 call it
the phone weighs 100 pounds, youcan pick it up, because you know

(40:54):
you're gonna get the sameresponse. We have to stop saying
stuff like that. That's whathappened to us. We can ask these
questions anymore. They don'twork. They're all perceived as
self serving. And that's nogood. We haven't even earned the
right to goddamnit. We haven'tearned the right yet to ask

(41:15):
those questions. That's true.
Who are we to pick up the phonecold and ask companies something
personal, about their, theirtheir stuff? We haven't earned
the right.

Chris Burkhard (41:28):
Let me lay, Let me lay a question out on that
and get your perspective. A lotof times, sales leaders,
salespeople say that I've got tobe able to ask those probing
questions, because I'mqualifying Mr. Burkhard, I'm
qualifying I'm trying todetermine if this business is a

(41:50):
target for us. Your thoughts onhow you qualify the market,
relative to this approach? Ifyou're not going to ask
questions, you got to tell agreat story you share who you
are, what we do, how we do it,how to build a customer. But how
do you how do you do it? Youjust got to know your market,

(42:11):
you got to know who's worth aconsultative selling approach or
how would you recommend somebodydo that kind of thinking?

Alan Burkhard (42:22):
I'm not sure how, what your question is. But let
me respond this way. Doing itright. Every time we get a new
order from a company, a newcompany, I would not fill it, I
would say to the company that wehave a process that we believe
is a value to the customer. Idon't know enough, I don't know

(42:45):
as much as I need to know toreally do the right job for you.
We're not just talking aboutthis one order we're talking
about in the future too. Sowe're not going to fill it. But
we would like to do that. Andthen that would present again,
what we'd like to do. And whilewe're there, we take the
information on the order, wealways do we get it, because all

(43:05):
they want to do is they want usto fill positions for them. They
want us to do this job theydon't understand they don't
know. So if if you are proud ofwho you are as a company, and
now where you're where you'regoing with this, this way of
thinking this mind set drivencompany. And you know, when you

(43:29):
present what we're about itdifferentiates and it's
something substantive to saythat is transparent, it's
honest, it's nice, it's not thekind of selling that weighs more
than an ounce, then we're morewilling to learn it and do it.
And the reception at the otherend of the line is so much more

(43:49):
positive. We don't sell productsand services, because again,
they already expected we knowmore about we know a lot of that
how they perceive selling beforewe even start. So we don't do
it. We don't do the things weshouldn't do. Therefore back to

(44:10):
this consultative, culturallydriven approach to building a
client. Remember, it's amindset. It's a system of
belief. And it expands througheverything we do, whether it's
customer service, or sales ormarketing, or hiring, or
training, or any aspect of ourbusiness. It's driven from that

(44:33):
same base of who we are and whatwe're all about. And we're
impressive. We're different.
We're haven't said a word abouthow we feel positions or
anything yet. We don't have todo any of that. It's amazing.
You kind of don't have to getinto the the minutiae of the
stuff. That if they're impressedwith who we are, then they

(44:55):
perceive we're capable of doingthe job. Typically what happens
is we're talking about who weare that 20 minute talk. We used
to train their employees, Christo do a one minute talk. Right
two minute talk 10 minute talk a20 minute talk an hour talk. If
they want to ask a lot ofquestions and talk, which they
typically do, you'll be therefor a couple hours. But they

(45:16):
also might ask walking by whoare you, and what your what what
are you doing? And you do yourone minute. So we teach our
employees and we had differentlevels, you could do the two
hour we had a lot of employeesthat could do two minutes. But
couldn't, they didn't knowenough to do more. It's okay. We
didn't need a lot of peopledoing it, we only needed a few.

(45:39):
And we had a few, as you know,and look at how many you closed
and look what they turned into,monsters. So culturally driven.
What does this, what are wesaying? Everything we do. So
when you when you describe thatwhat's what's customer driven
and culture doing to a customer,they want to be that they wish

(46:02):
their company was they don'tunderstand why they they're
perceived. All of a sudden that,hey, this makes sense. It's a
value to us. Why we come up withthis list of cultural traits.
It's the litmus test that westay on track. And again, it
goes back to all those questionsthat takes us off track. Any

(46:27):
question that we ask, that'sgood, that's great. It's only
great. If you say it's okay toask it at the right time, then
it becomes great. But prior tothat it's not.

Chris Burkhard (46:46):
I think that premise is a universal truth
that if you're a sales leader,or a small business owner,
listening, man, it's so powerfulto equip your organization and
all your roles, talk about yourcompany, who you are and what
you do, and how you do it. Andto gain permission to gather

(47:07):
information from your prospector potential target.

Alan Burkhard (47:12):
Think about decades of featured benefits
selling, none of it wasperceived as a value to the
customer, value to the product..

Chris Burkhard (47:21):
But was a necessary evil maybe to get a
grip, you gritted your teeth toget to the finish line if you
just needed to buy something.

Alan Burkhard (47:29):
Yes. And I tried that, because back in the 70s
that's what we knew in thebeginning. And and it was it was
it was God awful. It was tough.
We could bring a pile of dirt inyou know, but we could certainly
write do our own version ofthat. But think about what
happened in the 80s when allthis global economy and and the

(47:51):
technical revolution hit what'dit do companies had to change
the way they operated, it changeto how careers reviewed, it
changed the way selling isviewed. They used to increase
the price, carry on all costincrease onto the price, then
all sudden they couldn't do thatanymore. So they started

(48:14):
outsourcing everything that wasbeginning of the sales,
outsourcing is selling, getsomebody else to do it. And they
used to outsource everything.
And they used to say, but notbut not our core competency with
not people. And of course thatbecame the number one outsource.

(48:37):
And then downsizing where theywould lop off piles of people
and percentage of employeesindiscriminately not the right
way not based on production andperformance but on tenure and
how to save some money.

Chris Burkhard (48:53):
I saw an interesting stat today that
unemployment is actually comingdown. Less about people getting
more jobs and more of thatactually layoffs are at a 10
year low.

Alan Burkhard (49:09):
Yes.

Chris Burkhard (49:09):
Different way to think about it that that it's,
Yeah, sure more people aregetting jobs and there's a lot
of work to do there. But it'sreally about creating less
unemployed right now.

Alan Burkhard (49:21):
I would agree. If I were downsizing the company I
downsize all middle management,and all sales and all the things
that we do. So you want tobuy...

Chris Burkhard (49:33):
You might, you might want to explain that
thought I don't think you cansay that and not. You can't just
you can't leave that hanging.

Alan Burkhard (49:42):
Okay. The business forward, the business
card that says sales associateis changed service associate and
then associate jobs offense, youknow, sir, customer service, and
that's right. And that's reallywhat we are But then started
saying consultant. Well, back inthose days consultant was

(50:05):
pictured as somebody in betweenjobs, we selected that. But
somehow or another, it becamethe word we use to sell. And all
sudden, they tried to make it apositive word. But again, but
again, they started selling whatwas fully expected, which is the
product and service. And itdoesn't work, they started
asking questions that thecustomer didn't like to hear.

(50:28):
And so the abuse, and the abusegot worse and worse and worse,
until nobody wanted to do itanymore. Nobody could figure it
out. We did, and it worked. Andit worked in every product and
service that I've been involvedwith. Because it's based, the
core base is your company, andwho you are your story. Again,

(50:53):
if it's a good story, it worksin all elements of your
business. And that includesselling. When we eliminate the
sales department, we didn'teliminate people at all. It's
not turning over people, it'schanging their role. It's making

(51:15):
selling wonderful again, it'ssomething substantives, it's
perceived well, not to get inthe door, the very best have to
make the call to get in thedoor. And a certain percentage,
you're going to say no in thefirst call. But if we do it,

(51:38):
right, we get in some and thosethat we get in usually lead to
something extremely positive.
And we have a pretty good storyto tell. I can even say to you,
okay, give me 10 minutes on thephone. You pick the time you

(52:00):
pick the day, and I'll do theshorter version.

Chris Burkhard (52:05):
Right.

Alan Burkhard (52:06):
I'll tell you a little bit about who we are and
what we're all about. And ifyou'd like it, we'll do we'll
take it further. Inch by inch.
I'm not hiding from anything. SoI'm welcome to do it. I just
need enough time to say thethings. It's like this. How can
I say what I need to say in anhour, you know, you got to get
in. So you just get very good atthat. Right? And you're a good

(52:29):
example you got you went from aC to an A plus it took time to
learn how to make that call.

Chris Burkhard (52:39):
You know, you know, what always confused me
was, You're right about nine outof 10 is I always wasn't sure
what to do with the nine whenthe one said yes. And it's funny
A plus student. I mean, you'reright. When the one said yes, if
you let me in, I mean, usuallythose that let me in, had a high
degree of pain. Usually. I mean,that's not dirty, it doesn't

(53:03):
undo your great story in yourhistory. It's that there was
something enough wrong, Theycouldn't solve it on their own
or didn't want to solve it ontheir own that they let me in to
gather information to try andsolve it. They perceived that
was okay. It's the nine thatlike Chris and don't know what
to do with me, and won't let mein.

Alan Burkhard (53:24):
Well think about this. There's another whole
element of our, our approachhere. We understand by being
simply who we are. We understandcustomer service. We really
understand how it developed, itshistorical, how it went
overnight, to customer servicecenters, customer service

(53:47):
departments, hotlines, jobdescriptions that are about
customer service, positions,created mission statements of
companies that talked aboutcustomer service overnight. I
mean, we get it we understandwhere company's mindsets were
during this timeframe. Theychanged all the words. The

(54:07):
customer, I think of this at anairport, Customer Service
Center, well that's the linethat everybody's waiting in the
lost their luggage. Well, itused to be for "all you unhappy
people" sign. Now it's thiscustomer service. I mean, every,
you call, you go into a retailstore, customer service

(54:28):
department are the people,everybody's unhappy. They're
taking the products back. Inother words, they dumped
everything on these beautifulwords. So we understood that and
how companies were frustratedwith that. I mean, they're smart
enough to know that they did asurface thing and it didn't
really create a solution. Sowhen they hear somebody talk

(54:51):
about honest solutions and andand transparent and but here's
the key solutions directlyrelate to what we see. And we
have the ability to see whatothers don't have the ability to
see because of our expertise.
And because of our knowledge, wehave degrees in the workforce,
workplace, we're not justsalespeople that fill positions,

(55:14):
these aren't the people that aregoing to come in and knock on
your door and talk to you. Weunderstand that our job is to
change your customer perception,we understand that we can't sell
sales and a product that youalready have a high expectation.
And we know why. Because of thecustomer service explosion, we

(55:34):
understand about all thatsimportant your company,
including the stock value, weunderstand where selling has
been, we understand theperception. So we're coming at
this with a lot of knowledgethat we use, and we use in that

(55:57):
discussion. Not everybody can dothat first appointment, if they
say fine, I'll give you an hour.
Come on in. Not everybody can dothat. Right? We had very few we
had, what a 200 employee companywith maybe what five people that
could go in and do it. If youhave a ten, one or two, but

(56:22):
that's okay.

Chris Burkhard (56:23):
Yeah, I'm a 40 person business and everybody's
certified in telling the story.
And I might have three to sixthat could do what you're
mentioning.

Alan Burkhard (56:33):
There you go. And then and then and then if they
impress, then we have more thatcan go in and start gathering
information. That increases thenumber and a great opportunity.
We all have employees love PickMe Pick Me. That's something
different in the industry.
Somebody's actually wanting meto do an assessment of their

(56:54):
stuff.

Chris Burkhard (56:57):
And learn how to do that and like to share what I
know, I'd like to be a part ofthat. Yes, right. Right on.

Alan Burkhard (57:03):
Right. And so we had a lot of volunteers within
the company that were theywanted to do that. And, and so
we ended up putting teamstogether based on that some
would cover the flow of the ofthe of the call in and others
would do some interviews, maybeI would interview the president

(57:24):
or CEO and CFO, something likethat. But it's really the the
ground floor employees where welearned about the company, and
what their culture was and whatwas going on, and what the real
truths were, and employees willtell consultants, everything
that they won't tell their boss,and they won't tell the
president of the company. Butthey'll tell us. And we tell

(57:46):
them, we know that we tell theclient that we will learn things
that you can't possibly get,it's not a negative to you.
You're like the mom and the dad,you know, they'll tell a friend,
but they won't tell mom or dad,we'll learn things that will be
a value to you. So yes, youcould do this, you can do it on
your own, we'll teach you. We'llteach you everything we do. If

(58:08):
you want to do it on your own.
We'll work right alongside withyou if you'd like side by side.
But we can also share with youthat we will learn if we do it
independently. As a third party,we will learn a lot that that no
one else has been able to gatherincluding you. And that's value
in itself. It's almost like youwant to scream out to them. This

(58:31):
is the most important callyou've ever gotten. You just
don't know it. And I'm probablythe only honest one you've run
into in a long time, and youjust don't know it. And I
understand that. I understandthat. And I probably haven't
done a good enough job here sofar today in explaining this to
you, sir.

Chris Burkhard (58:54):
I think what you don't have to respond to this.
But I think it's something Iwant to insert. And it's that in
hearing what you've described,no salesperson is trained and
created on a product or theylearned a selling system, quota,
target, market, all thosethings. But what you've shifted
to is a knowledge base workerthat is more considered more of

(59:18):
a consultant than a salesperson,and that they know enough about
business and industry and inthat company and certainly about
like you said this thecertification and workforce and
workplace stuff, staffing,recruiting, whatever, that
enables you to have a differentconversation and be able to

(59:40):
conduct yourself differently.
It's just it's not apples toapples. It's apples to oranges.
And that's a very interestingthought. And I did hear you say
it's a very special person,special employee that can have
this dialogue and get thisstarted. Lots of people can play
on that other side and helpsolve the problem,

Alan Burkhard (01:00:02):
But because it is what it is, meaning it's
something substantive andsomething good and honest,
anyone who wants to really studyand learn and get good at it can
do it. And we'll learn duringthe process that it is not.
Really. It's not, it's not thetypical selling. Let me let me

(01:00:29):
let me describe something inadvance of this timeline that
we're talking about. We werebecoming a strong customer
driven company. And what wemeant by that is, we know the
customer service was abused,right everywhere. Customer
expectations had to be changedand raised. But the follow

(01:00:51):
through wasn't taken seriously.
Because the culture structuresof these organizations didn't
change. Because he didn't reallyknow what was important to the
customer. Bang, they did notknow what's important to the
customer. We then knew in thewhole customer service realm of
business, that we had to learnwhat's important to the

(01:01:11):
customer, in order to create Nthdegree ideas, member customer
insights, what are they? We hadto learn how to ask questions,
why use the examples of retail,as the restaurant manager that
comes to you how they can do itpoorly, and how they can do it
successfully. So we we had thisknowledge, of how to sell

(01:01:37):
customer service in a customerdriven way. So when we got to
selling changes, when pullselling was bastardized, so
much. Then they got to theconsultative selling stage,
because there was abuse, becausethe customers perceived that it

(01:02:01):
was the typical selling, we sawthat as an opportunity. So we
took that knowledge, again,driven from two things driven
from being culturally driven,and driven by being customer
driven, what is that culture tosales became service, service

(01:02:21):
became sales, they blendedtogether, just like leadership
became sales, and leadershipbecame leadership. There was no
difference. The selling strategywas a logical extension of what
we built in the customer servicedriven environment, everything

(01:02:42):
we do, got to be perceived as avalue to the customer. What are
the customer's insights? When Istarted the garbage company, my
partner had 12 years experienceit was the number two man and
the big independent company. Ihad no day experience in the
garbage business. But he knewme, he knew my way of thinking

(01:03:02):
he had learned over the years,which is why he came to me and
asked me to partner, he knew Iwas gonna put him through the
mill before we started. And oneof the things I asked him to do
is call 100 to 200 peoplecompleted calls out of the white
pages. For those of you that areunder 25. That's telephone book,

(01:03:25):
which doesn't exist anymore.

Chris Burkhard (01:03:30):
No.

Alan Burkhard (01:03:31):
But the point is, he called the net 100. Net 100
calls, cold simply trying tolearn the customer insights
about this industry. And what helearned he won't believe and
what they were willing to tellhim because he asked that,

(01:03:53):
right, you won't believe and theway we started the company, and
he'll admit it was differentthan if he hadn't made those
calls. Even though he had 12years experience. He now had a
little bit of insight about thecustomer. And I can think of
many strategies that came out ofthat. I told you, I've always
told the one. He wanted abenefit of revenue driven

(01:04:19):
source, which was to pick upbulk items. You charge anywhere
from 20 to $200, depending onwhat it was. I said, what have
we learned? What are theysaying? And so out of that came
the idea. Well, let's not chargefor that. People love it. But

(01:04:40):
first, how often do they use it?
So he got back on the phone withmore cold calling with the idea
sneaking in their advice, theirthoughts about bulk items and
their experience. And by theway, how often do you use it?
And what he found out was theylove it to death. It's very
tangible seems like a value. Butthey rarely use it.

Chris Burkhard (01:05:06):
Every three years.

Alan Burkhard (01:05:07):
Yeah, let's offer it. And we did. And they're
lucky if they use it once everytwo years, it was amazing the
amount of business we gotbecause of that, all because we
learned a little bit aboutcustomers insights, more than
our competition, we didn't learnenough. So here we are in

(01:05:28):
selling, saying, let's learnabout customer insights. So we
got to get in there. And ofcourse, it's hard to get in, of
course, we haven't earned theright. Look, we're a company and
we like we've done our research.
And what we assume is we loveyour company. We'd love we think
we'd love to, to work with you.

(01:05:51):
We think we can solve a lot ofyour HR issues. We do. But we're
not like anybody else I'd liketo share with you the process
that that we use. I ask for 20minutes your time. That's it. I
won't do any selling won't askany questions, I promise. On
Scott cross my heart. What Iwill do, is this gonna tell you

(01:06:14):
story, a little bit about us. Ifyou like what you hear us to get
together again. If you don't,that's okay, I'll move on. We
are one of the largest in thearea, which means many has liked
what they've heard. So it's anice story, we know that you we

(01:06:36):
think you're a good company. Wethink we'd like to build a
relationship with you. But wegot to start someplace. Well,
I'm not going to start as Idon't want to fill a position.
If you gave me an order today,I'd say no, thank you, thank
you, but no, thank you, becausethey don't know enough. And we
turn it down, the best thing youcan do is turn down the first

(01:06:57):
job order get, best thing youcan do is turn it down. Because
you can only screw it up. Godhas to walk in after that talk.

Chris Burkhard (01:07:09):
can be a female to folks, and you're exactly
right.

Alan Burkhard (01:07:12):
You have to send the best one ever, you got to
send the best one ever and sureas heck something will go wrong.
So no, you can't do that. Yougot to stick with this process
of being open and, and workthrough information. And what
information tells us and I willtell you, what you, every

(01:07:36):
company is different, whatobservations you have to do.
Some are production lines whereyou observe and watch. Some are
more of an office environmentwhere you listen. I guarantee
you a couple days, and two orthree people working it learn a
lot more than we knew before wewent in. Do we learn everything?

(01:07:59):
No. And we actually say to theprospective client, this is just
the beginning. And there's onlyso much we can learn in that
period of time. But based onthat, here's what we've learned.
Share it with you. And here'ssome ideas based on that. And
most of the time, myrecommendation was, let's come
back in and gather more. Tellingthem until just like a job

(01:08:24):
order. Don't say okay, go untilyou know everything you need to
know. And how many times hasthat not happened? Almost
always. You know, we're gratefulfor thank you for less than
enough information to do a badjob for you. Thank you for
giving me less than enoughinformation to do what I need to
do.

Chris Burkhard (01:08:43):
And we'll put too much research on this and
still fail.

Alan Burkhard (01:08:49):
Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, exactly. So it is
not difficult. It is somethingsubstantive. It is a nice story.
And it's a nice way to go. Wehave made consultative selling a
pleasure. Because it's okay. Ano is okay. It's fine. How many

(01:09:19):
large clients do you get? Youknow, and how do you get them?
So, I don't know about yourcompany, but I would guess one
or two a year would be prettyamazing.

Chris Burkhard (01:09:33):
Your blessed.

Alan Burkhard (01:09:34):
Well you can make 1000 phone calls and get one and
get it poorly. Or you can getfive of them to say come on in
and get it right. And get oneout of that. That saves you a
lot of time and energy. You'reeven thinking I can take it no

(01:09:57):
it's okay. If I if I haven'tsaid enough To impress you to
let me in, up until now, that'son me, sir. And if you don't
mind, I'll just come back at youanother day. And you'll have..

Chris Burkhard (01:10:11):
Are you? Would you want to come out of
retirement and you think youmight like the head, my
workforce, group there, and it'sa compliment. You've still got
it.

Alan Burkhard (01:10:24):
I'll tell you what I would love to do. I would
love to train them a little bit.
I'd love to teach them

Chris Burkhard (01:10:29):
Theres an offer.
There's an offer. All right. Allright. So we're coming up. We're
coming up on an hour. Yeah, knowpeople's attention span. What do
you what do you got left to thatyou want to speak on?

Alan Burkhard (01:10:47):
The end, Was your one question What about today?

Chris Burkhard (01:10:50):
Yes.

Alan Burkhard (01:10:52):
And the world has changed. Yes, consultative
selling has advanced for thosethat are advancing it, but most
do not. And when I listen tothem talk about their
consultative selling, it's nowjust a word that people use
instead of sales. That's all. SoI think today, the world of the

(01:11:18):
customer is listening more.
They're learning to get valueout of a phone call. They're
learning to expect more out of aphone call. They're more
particular about who they let infor, for all kinds of reasons.
But all companies need sales.

(01:11:40):
And today they're struggling tocompete. We know that we know
that. It's a world ofcompetition, all over the world,
companies are producing the sameproduct for less money, or the
same service for less money.
It's why we talk to people thatwe say you, sitting at the
kitchen in India, you know,taking care of our American
espress issue. On and on and ondo they really care as much? I

(01:12:04):
mean, it's all over this. Weknow. I think therefore, because
I think that pandemic hascreated an opportunity here that
gets the ear better than before.
I think there's somethingsubstance about that, that now,

(01:12:24):
if I were making the calls, Iwould get a better ear, and I
would get a better response,then even before the pandemic. I
trust that I think it's given usin selling an opportunity to re
redirect their selling, but wemust know what customers
insights are. So we must, wemust have a good story. If you

(01:12:47):
don't have a good story outthere, then you can't do this.
If your story sucks, you can'tdo it. But if you have a good
story, and maybe maybe what youdo is go build a good story
before you start trying to useyour story.

Chris Burkhard (01:13:03):
I think that there's really good advice there
that if you're a sales leader,or president of a business, and
you're thinking about salesperformance, and the overall
success of the business, thatthe strategy of how you talk
about your organization and whatit does, and how to present it
in a better light. And what I'mfinding today dad is so many

(01:13:26):
organizations put good work intotheir culture, internally, that
they have no one way to talkabout it externally. You can
fuse those two together, whichis what we're really talking
about here is the fusion of yourinternal shit, stuff you're

(01:13:48):
really proud of and working onand starting to tell companies
about that journey.

Alan Burkhard (01:13:53):
Well, Chris, why?
Why do it? If it doesn't have ausage? Why get really good, if
there's nothing to use it? Inother words, we became a culture
driven company because wefigured out the results are
better. We decided it would becustomer driven because we

(01:14:15):
learned that's really where thedemand is. So, So Okay, let's
use it. And we use it whenhiring. Let's take hiring. Why
did I set up the interviewprocess? Well, the first one is
the information gathering. Letme in. You tell me everything
about you. The second one, I'man open book. So the first two

(01:14:38):
interviews are just like ourselling process. Everybody can
gather all the information, thenwe can assess it better. If we
like each other, we get togetheragain. Right? And then we work
on more information. Until i sayto you from now on in you decide
whether you get a job here andthen we move forward. So the

(01:15:00):
interview process is identicalto the sales process, which is
identical to the serviceprocess. And it came, in other
words, let's use, we're goodnow, let's use it everywhere
there's an application. Andthere's an application, take a
line item, think you take a p&lFolks, every line, there's

(01:15:21):
utilization, every line item,how about customer driven
pricing? I use that example tosay what that is, by the way, if
they're in love with yourservice, the price potential is
greater the price risk, when yousee a company, sales price, 50%

(01:15:44):
off today only whatever out,going out of business, they're
all hurt. And that's why theyhave these in other words they
have chosen not to sell right,but to dump the price. So you
can either lower your price toequal your service, or you can
raise your service, and thenequal your price. In other

(01:16:07):
words, the higher your level ofservice proceed, the greater
price you can charge, it becomesless important to the customer,

Chris Burkhard (01:16:15):
you become less commoditized, because you're
offering something.

Alan Burkhard (01:16:20):
So you don't have that price pressure. But you can
be competitive, we proven that.
Because why? Customer service isinexpensive. So you build an
organization, that on its ownmerit, customer driven, is an
inexpensive way to build yourbusiness. Because your ratios

(01:16:44):
are better, your interviews, thehire your all that, all that all
that gets better, with moreknowledge, more information,
more results. Even recruiting onan assignment, I would never
recruit hours and hours for aclient at a high level without

(01:17:04):
going in there and learningabout their culture, dont ever
do that. And I could probablysave. If I come back with I
don't want to work on that Isaved myself about 20 hours of
work, or 40 hours of man hour.
That's a win, win. We as anindustry have to stop thanking

(01:17:27):
the customer for less thanenough information, and then
trying to do the job. That'swhat our industry does. We do it
well. Thank you so much for notenough information to do the
job. And I'm gonna go out thereand pick up

Chris Burkhard (01:17:42):
and we do it well, for a low price.

Alan Burkhard (01:17:45):
Yes. Oh, by the way, we'll cut a price to.

Chris Burkhard (01:17:48):
Yeah.

Alan Burkhard (01:17:49):
And am I am I, So what's your impression of me
now, sir? You know,

Chris Burkhard (01:17:56):
If, if you will allow. If somebody's curious
about this topic, they canlisten to this two or three
times and get somethingdifferent from it. But if
someone's just on the knowledgejourney, I take one thing away,
work on your story, get thatright first, is there anything
else you would suggest as a pathforward? For someone who's

(01:18:17):
interested in this?

Alan Burkhard (01:18:19):
Oh, my.

Chris Burkhard (01:18:21):
I know, I know.

Alan Burkhard (01:18:22):
Number one work to make your story impressive.
You can't lie. You can't nottell the truth. You can't go in
there and give a perception thatdoesn't really exist. It's gonna
come back and bite you. But Iwill tell you this all the
honesty in the world is carriesa lot of weight. We're not there
yet. We're just starting to dothis. I'll be honest with you.

(01:18:45):
But we're on our way. And evenif you're the first major
customer, we're on our way.
That's a start. I would then ifyou feel good enough about that.
Make calls, be okay, with a no,work very hard. We'll build a,
build a way of saying whatyou're saying to the doorknob

(01:19:08):
and say it over and over andover and over and over again.
Practice it 100 times get realgood at it. Get comfortable with
it. Understand that? It's not ano. It's just not now. That's
all. We haven't earned the rightthat's all. And I don't blame
them. I can say I'm a strangerpicking up the phone calling you
I don't blame you for saying noright now. But I had to start

(01:19:30):
somewhere. And I like to saythis. I mean, so honest, you can
get comfortable doing that. Ifyou want Chris we'll do a
session a little bit where we'llget into words. It's not much.
It's just all honesty.

Chris Burkhard (01:19:49):
That might be a good, in fact, might be a good
addendum. You know, I thinkthats very good.

Alan Burkhard (01:19:54):
You can kind of build your own around but i'll
give you the words to say. Now,as far as building a good
company, if you can listen,listen to all of our other
podcasts, because you nailed it,Chris, Everything's in there.
And we have a few more to do.
But it's all there. It's allthere. And I'm still here. So

Chris Burkhard (01:20:22):
And that, you know, that gives us some
motivation. We'll package thosethings up. So they're easier for
people to see what's in themand, you know, go where they
want to go. Well, as usual, youbrought it.

Alan Burkhard (01:20:38):
Can I, Can I tell the listeners this?

Chris Burkhard (01:20:40):
Sure.

Alan Burkhard (01:20:40):
It's something I haven't said in any of the
podcast. My dream was to write abook about this. But we couldn't
do it because it's so flexible,a way of thinking that, by the
time the inks dry, it's changed.
It's an evolution of things. IfI wrote a book 30 years ago, it

(01:21:01):
wouldn't be as professional asit would today. So I, I failed
at that. I had to ghostwriters.
One actually finished the book,but I won't produce it because
he didn't understand what we'retalking about in the end. This
is, I don't know whether my sonhad this plan all along, or, and

(01:21:26):
he's a genius and forevergrateful, or he came up with the
idea once we get going. But thislooks like it's going to be that
book in the format of thepodcast. And I've always thought
the story, I wanted to share itbecause it works. I'm not the

(01:21:47):
smartest guy in the room,believe me, I have a lot of
common sense. And I workedreally hard to get a degree in
my own degree in in theworkforce stuff. But, but me and
my employees came up withsomething that really works. And
it's like being honest, direct.
And so just listen to thisagain. And again, if you can,

(01:22:11):
there's more to this. Withoutsounding, I dont even know how
to say it, this may be the bestinformation you've ever gotten.
You just don't know.

Chris Burkhard (01:22:26):
Right, You have to have a minute. And that's it
from a place that this is work.
This is helped you solve bigproblems for customers. When you
do that you get paid well, forthat you grow big companies, you
grow faster than other places,you have good comp, you have
good companies and goodcultures, and you create career
paths for your employees. And

Alan Burkhard (01:22:50):
Could I tell a story?

Chris Burkhard (01:22:51):
coming from a place that this, this is how you
one small brick of how youbecame successful. So yeah, wrap
up, wrap up with a story. Goahead.

Alan Burkhard (01:23:04):
Alright, we had one big major client. And that's
that came by this process. Andit was only one and then it
became a couple more springboardto a couple more, then maybe
eight or 10. But this one wasstill much the largest. And one
day I got a phone call from thelocal president, worldwide

Chris Burkhard (01:23:22):
Oh God.
company bank. And he said to me,I got bad news for you. They've
made a decision in New York todo a single vendor worldwide.
And you're out. They won't evensend you the bid because you're
just a small, small guy. And wetalked about it. I mean, I said
there can't be anybody out therethat can do it other than, you

(01:23:47):
know, manpower and whatever. Andthey're not capable. He said, I
know that, its a price thing,probably. So to cut the story
short, is that they won't evenagree to see you. I said, I
begged them, you got to get mean appointment. I deserve that.
Let me ask you a question iswhat we're doing the best you've

(01:24:08):
ever seen? Yes, he used to rave.
He said what you're doing forus, It's unbelievable that the
customer service processes thatwe've we talked about nth degree
we had them all in there,because they opened up to us. We
had 600 people there. And he gotme an appointment. He said
they're going to give you halfan hour and that's it was nine

(01:24:30):
o'clock in New York by myself. Ihad to get up like two o'clock
in the morning to get there justto check in showed up at nine
o'clock. They made me wait ahalf an hour. And then like
eight of them come prancing inon the other side of the table
with their coffee and theirlaptops and their water and

(01:24:52):
didn't even offer me a cup ofcoffee. And the guy said let's
get started. You had a half an

Alan Burkhard (01:24:59):
And that kind of embarrassed them a little bit.
hour and you want to getstarted? I said yes. Can I have
a cup of coffee?
So what I did was I said, I havea rec, I have a suggestion, do

(01:25:20):
the worldwide bid, you got to doit. Exclude Delaware. It's not
even when you see a map, theyhave Delaware written out in the
ocean, it's so small. We don'teven count. So do a worldwide
bid. And leave Delaware aloneand compare it side by side for

(01:25:42):
a year. Your president is sayingit's the most comprehensive and
best staffing service bunch ofproducts and services he's ever
seen. I wouldn't be I wouldn'tbe here if that weren't the
case. And I wouldn't be makingthis recommendation if it werent
the case. And I simply say this,if at the end of the year, our

(01:26:06):
reports from us aren't sosignificantly higher than what
you're getting from the bidderthen just knock off Delaware.
Put them right in their in theirworldwide services. Because
they'll have offices in Delawarewherever they are. And one guy,
I see one guy looking like,maybe he's got an idea. I said

(01:26:29):
it might be helpful, because youcan learn what I'm doing. And
you can pass it on to theworldwide bidder. I'll give you
everything. If you decide. Whywould you do that? Man, I told
him why your the customer, I'm alittle guy. Delaware, means a

(01:26:50):
lot to me. Doesnt mean as muchto you thats why presenting it
this way. Then they asked me toleave the room. Boom. That's
good. Because talking to me,

Chris Burkhard (01:27:01):
they didn't throw you out, they just asked

Alan Burkhard (01:27:02):
So I come back in 15 minutes later. And he said,
you to leave.
Well, it's crazy. But we likeyour idea. And we could compare
it. And they asked a couplequestions. Can we use
everything? Can we giveeverything to the bidder at the
end of the year that you'redoing? I said you can have it

(01:27:24):
all. I'll teach them. Cause Iknow they cant. I know whoever
it is they can't. I said I willteach them. I will sit down with
them and I will pass everythingon to you. Well, that's why we
will do it. But Delaware is toosmall. So we decided to give you

(01:27:44):
the mid Atlantic. So startingMonday, you've got New Jersey,
Maryland, Delaware. And so Iwalked out of there with four
states. I walked in with nothingabout to lose everything I had.
And I won. And so..

Chris Burkhard (01:28:01):
So many lesson learned, so I guess what? Yeah,
let me just say this. AlanBurkhard can talk. He's a
philosopher. Maybe when youlisten to all these books and
stories that you're like, Wow,this man can theorize. But you
gotta have some big wins likethat, too. And tell me that

(01:28:25):
isn't just sticking with it, andthat it's never over. And that,
you know, tell your authenticstory.

Alan Burkhard (01:28:33):
Well I'm a normal, I'm a regular guy. I was
scared to death. My daughter whowas like, eight years old at the
time, put a little teddy bear onmy car seat. With a little note,
Good luck today dad. And myfamily was rooting for me. It
meant a lot to me to keep thisclient so much so you out there
in this world, if you had oneclients is 30% of your business.

(01:28:55):
And you get a phone call sayingyou're gonna lose them, not
because you did something wrong,but because they made a decision
to lop you off. That would hurtand you'd be scared too. And so
I had nothing to lose when Iwent up there nothing. And so I
you know, I was reminded mymentor used to teach me, you

(01:29:15):
ready for this folks? Picturethem sitting on a hopper seat.
And then you smile just like youdid. Their people just like you
and me. They get up in themorning and brush their teeth
with the same toothbrush eat thesame cereal. And if you think
that way, it brings them down toyour level. They're not God like

(01:29:39):
people. And that's how I candeal with supposedly high level
people by bringing them down tomy level.

Chris Burkhard (01:29:48):
So it's very obvious that our next topic
could be should be maybe aboutjust some of our, some of your
classic solid gold salestactics, well just sales. I
mean, you're not it's not reallysales one liners but I think you

(01:30:10):
have a list of 15 or 20 sellingbest practices or selling ideas
that would probably support whatyou really talked about as a
selling strategy here today anapproach that is very holistic.
But the reason your stuff workedis because you were pretty damn
good in sales as the leader ofthe business so, all right, say

(01:30:34):
goodbye to everybody will comeat you with something soon.

Alan Burkhard (01:30:40):
Thanks for listening folks.