April 21, 2025 • 63 mins
In this episode, we’re joined by Patrick Tinney, a seasoned sales expert and the CEO of Sales Gorilla. With over 30 years of experience and a track record brimming with success stories, Patrick is recognized as a preeminent authority in business negotiation and sales strategies. He has orchestrated multi-million dollar media sales and negotiation solutions for some of Canada’s largest advertisers. Patrick is also the author of four impactful sales books: Unlocking Yes: Sales Negotiation Lessons & Strategy, Perpetual Hunger: Sales Prospecting Lessons & Strategy, The Bonus Round: Corporate Lessons & Strategy, and Nothing Stops Me: Sales Success from Adversity.
In this conversation, Patrick shares his wealth of knowledge, offering listeners a masterclass in overcoming challenges, mastering negotiation techniques, and driving long-term success in sales. Whether you're looking to refine your negotiation skills or build a more effective sales strategy, Patrick’s insights will inspire and equip you to reach new heights in your career.
👤 Connect with Patrick Tinney:
✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-tinney-903556145/
✅ Website: https://sales-gorilla.com/sales-negotiation-training-videos/
✅We are proud partners with Mattress Industry Network: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mattressindustrynetwork
✅The Mattress Industry Network's core values are helping others to Build, Market, Sell and Succeed in the Mattress Industry
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➡️ Our amazing guests are often booked with PodMatch, a top-quality podcast matching service. For booking great podcast guests like this, we love using PodMatch: https://PodMatch.CastAhead.net
🌐Pete Primeau Official: https://www.peteprimeau.com
➡️ Get Pete’s book, “Miles & Miles Of Retail Selling Greatness: https://geni.us/PetePrimeauMiles
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#SalesTips #PetePrimeauShow #MattressSales #SmallBusiness #RetailSales #RetailExperiences
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:19):
Welcome to the Pete Primeau show. It is episode
220, and we are with my friend, Patrick
Tinney, and we are gonna have you meet the sales
gorilla very shortly. Let me just pay the bills really
quickly. If you haven't read my book, Sell a Million, what are you
waiting for? A hundred and one tips for furniture and mattress stores to
(01:40):
sell another million dollars or more this year.
This is a marketing book.
This this is a sales book.
I have been blessed to travel
over 2,000,000 miles by car in
probably twenty ish states
(02:04):
and primarily the six or seven that surround Ohio.
And we were really blessed to
be able to put this book together with 10 other coauthors
that just did a fabulous job and
delivered incredible value. So if you
go, I don't need another sales
(02:27):
book. Don't buy this.
If you want the next three years of your
sales meetings on Saturday morning done for you,
get this book. Miles and miles of retail selling
greatness, three years worth of sales meetings.
Your salespeople, when they read this and
(02:50):
master what's in it, will produce
happier customers, will produce higher tickets,
and and more than that, they will
absolutely elevate your store to
a whole another level. So grab it. If you're
smart like my friend, Fawad, you'll buy them for every
(03:13):
salesperson that sells mattresses in your store. So,
miles and miles of retail selling greatness is available now.
And I have to tell you something. My dear friend, Pat Tinney,
who's about to come on, had a hand in this
book that nobody knows about. I've never spoke about it
before. But he,
(03:37):
was kind enough to go through and help
me proofread and
improve the book greatly. So I only wish I had
started with him at the very, very beginning. Pat, just
so that you guys know, is the author of four great sales books, and
what he is about to reveal to us in the next hour is going to
(04:00):
make your head spin and make you realize that
when you wanna talk about being great, you're gonna wanna talk about
Patrick Tinney. Two other important announcements,
guys. If you are in the mattress industry and you
don't belong to the Mattress Industry Network group on Facebook,
join immediately. If you wanna learn how to build, market, sell, and
(04:23):
succeed in the mattress industry, this is the
place for you. It's a % free. This is where you come to
learn how to build, how to market, how to sell and
succeed in the mattress industry. Everybody's
in here. It's a group that was started by retailers for the benefit
of the entire industry. So join
(04:46):
our group and and say hi. There's a QR code. My
producer's gonna flash there on the screen. Hit that QR
code and, join the group. It's a
% free, and, you'll have a great time, and you'll
enjoy it. And I will look forward to seeing you inside the group.
Also, if you sell mattresses and you are not
(05:07):
signed up for the master class
that is in Cincinnati starting this Sunday,
Call Scott Vaughn immediately. Use the
link. I think you can still get in.
Beg, borrow, steal, do whatever you have to.
(05:28):
That link right there,
WingoCoaching.win/2020five.
That's the link to register, and use this
code, all capitals,
Pete2025.
2 Dollars off. You'll get 200 off.
(05:48):
This is, a meet and greet on Sunday
night and then all day Monday and all day
Tuesday. Scott reveals his playbook
that took him from zero to millions of dollars worth of
sales. Pound for pound, he's the best mattress
retailer in the country right now. And what he has
(06:09):
done is he's put together his playbook. He he's
laying it open for you in a two day seminar,
and it is something that you should not miss. Patrick,
welcome to the show. Thank you very much.
Who is this big hairy fella that we're about to meet? Tell me
(06:29):
about Sales Gorilla. Well, Sales
Gorilla is was, a vision that I
started about, I don't know, a year ago.
And I don't know what I was thinking at the time. I
was, playing around a little bit with
video, and I thought, I should see if we
(06:51):
can do maybe one, two, three a day.
And then I started thinking, jeez, I wonder if we could
maybe get to five. Anyway, you know what
happened. And then I started throwing
goals up on the board, and I thought, jeez, why don't we get to
50? And then it was a hundred. And then I thought, well,
(07:14):
if we can do a hundred, then you know what happened again. So
by the time I had
finished the what I felt was
enough in other words, I I I made peace with
my own work. I completed, well over a
thousand videos. I won't tell you how many, but it was all it was way
(07:36):
over a thousand. And then I started to to delete,
and I started to visualize, like, what the heck can
we do with this? Right? And, anyway,
then we started to think about,
how do we enhance this? And then
(07:56):
after that, we got involved with, some AI
software that allowed me to enhance the videos.
And, we were at the same time building out a website
that I had a vision for. And it's a crazy thing. When you do an
agency briefing, Pete and Chris,
(08:17):
we booked two hours for this agency briefing.
It was over in less than an hour. Everybody
understood. It's one of the
most interesting things ever. And I'll I I will share with
you that when the website was finished, it was, like,
99% of what I visualized, 99 and a half.
(08:45):
And now I think we've got probably the largest sales negotiation
video portal in the world. In other words, I can't find another
one. So, Pat, what
is the average length of a video that's in here?
So that's a great question. They range from about a minute
to just over five minutes.
(09:07):
My belief is that if you're going to offer
somebody a lesson, it shouldn't be longer than, say, five or
six minutes. Now when we get to strategy,
honest guys, I cannot I've tried. There's only one
or two that I'm able to do in in less than five minutes because,
really, what you're doing is you're talking about
(09:30):
buyer strategy where there's, there's risk for the
buyer and the seller. You've got the time,
compression or time decompression, and you got sort of the management of the
situation, and then you've got navigation. So somehow you gotta get all of that
in. And, you know, you wanna be, you know,
you wanna be able to explain this in the simplest language
(09:54):
possible, which is really, really challenging.
So, Pat, is this is SalesGorilla
sales with a strong emphasis
on negotiation, or is it strictly negotiation?
(10:15):
So it's a combination. So what I would say is it it's it's a it's
a sales site with a very, very, very, very strong bet
on negotiation. In other words, when I sat down to
produce the site, I was thinking sales negotiation,
not sales in particular. Because one of the things that
I've I've come to understand over a long period of time is that, and this
(10:37):
is through a lot of research, 50 bookstore appearances.
And I I just asked the right questions about what people
believed that their proficiency was in,
in negotiation. And people overestimated their
skill sets by, you know, I mean, it was
(10:58):
ridiculous. So I would say about 90% of the people in
the market in business right now, overestimate their,
sales negotiation skill sets. So I think that's the hole in the
market. I wanna fill it. What we did with the site,
I thought, oh my god. I've gotta simplify this thing somehow. What do you do?
And I thought, what what do I feel like when I'm under a lot of
(11:20):
stress? Well, when I'm under a lot of stress, I want things
so simple that I really
can't make mistakes. So the way you do that is to
take the 900 plus videos, which are up there,
and you put them all in alphabetical order.
So it doesn't matter how stressed out you are. You'll be able to find the
(11:43):
letter n, and there's probably a hundred to a 50
videos there. And then the next letter you go to is s, and you're gonna
find another hundred to a 50 videos there, maybe more. I haven't know
I haven't counted them. Well, there's so many. Right? So
that's how we simplified it. And then there's another bracket over, there's a sort
of a separate, area for, podcasts, which
(12:05):
I've appeared on and and, of course, beats yours or some of the very best
in there. And so we we
we separated those two because, again, we wanted to keep it simple.
We want the site to be elegant. We wanted to respect
the African mountain gorilla. Actually, it's really funny. On the
briefing with the agency, that was probably, one of the most
(12:28):
important things that I got across the folks. I I like, I didn't want this
to, I didn't want the the site to be
anything more than, approachable, classy,
and respectful.
So what is it about the African
mountain gorilla that
(12:51):
that excites you, that inspires you,
that made them,
a point of inspiration for your project?
You know, I'm not sure I have a straight answer for
you. I I just I I'm I've been following the
species, and then I started to read about them. What I came to understand was
(13:14):
that they share about 80% of our DNA. That's
why when people go and they go, you
know, up to visit the girls, they gotta be very careful that they're not carrying
disease because the the gorillas have
no antibodies the way that we do.
That's that's one of the big problems. And the other big problem, of course, is,
(13:36):
you know, they're just, they're running out of their place to
live. Mhmm. And, you know, part of the
website, by the way, there's a direct link to the
World Wildlife Fund, and you can go in there and make a
donation. But I will be taking a small percentage of the
proceeds from, sales dash gorilla, and I'll just
(13:58):
be sending it off to the World Wildlife Fund. It's just something I wanna do.
Good for you, Patrick. Pat, we've got a
bunch of store owners. They own either furniture stores
or mattress stores, and they're like my
salespeople, a lot of them
do have sales drops price and drops, but
(14:21):
many of them don't. They're, like, one price shops.
And before they tune us out, I
want to ask you,
if I don't allow my salespeople to negotiate
on price, Why should we watch
(14:41):
these videos, on sales and on
sales negotiations? Is there a benefit
to my retail sales pros?
Yeah. Because I think price is the last place you gotta go.
I mean, think of all the things that you sell in,
(15:02):
in a mattress store. I mean, it used to be
just mattresses, but it, you know, I mean, it isn't anymore. You go in
for, pillow fittings. You, you know, you've got the
you have to have the correct,
you know, sheets that really bring out the life of the mattress. And
(15:24):
then you've got the mattress cover, and all the different iterations
around that. I mean, these things to
me are things that you can talk about with the customer.
You can also talk to them about, you know, delivering,
exactly when they want, where they want it, how they want.
And that's a lot different than throwing a couple of mattresses
(15:47):
on the roof of your car and driving away. It's a different industry now.
I mean, I remember as a younger man, I walked in to a mattress
factory and, it was run by a bunch of
Christian Guyanese gentlemen, and I, you know, I just said, jeez, I've never seen how
a mattress is built. I said, you know, can you show
me? And he says, nope. It's the interest
(16:09):
that in how we put these things together. I said, well, I am. He says,
well, come on in the back, and he says, we'll show you. And they did.
And I learned everything about taking to,
just how things went together and, pillow tops,
and it was it was like the grand tour of the mattress
factory. Of course, I know everything's changed now, and now everything is,
(16:31):
you know, I I mean, we're entering a a stage right now where artificial
intelligence is gonna be built right into the the mattresses.
We're gonna get there. The smart beds will get smarter.
Oh, yeah. Pat Patrick, you've been involved in
some really high stakes. And and by the way,
(16:52):
these are this is a great shot. Chris
Chris, you're the absolute best. Chris Stone is probably the best
producer I've ever seen in my life. Those are Patrick's books.
That is the knowledge in here
is baked into this video program, is baked
into the, Sales Gorilla.
(17:15):
So unlocking yes, the bonus round. Nothing stops
me, made me cry a bunch of times. Perpetual hunger, which
made me cry several times.
Patrick's been involved in some real high stakes, you know,
negotiations. And I think
Pat will tell you himself who wins and who loses
(17:38):
in high stakes high stakes negotiations
is gonna be the person who has the most
knowledge and who's uncovered the needs the best,
and also the person who has put the
time in to train ahead of time and
(17:58):
does not have to search, for the answers.
He or she is competent in all of
these, negotiation techniques. I'll give you guys an
example of one, time compression. We don't even talk about
it in our business. The first time I heard about time compression,
it was Patrick Tinney. And when a customer
(18:20):
is in a hurry trying to hurry you along,
sometimes you need to slow the sale down to allow
you a chance to fully uncover their needs. You as
a sales pro, you know if you fully uncover the
customer's needs and what their outcomes,
you know, the the desired outcomes are, you know, where are
(18:44):
there aches and pains, and you have in your store ways
to eliminate those aches and pains, that is a big
part of what these videos will go
into and teach you questions that you're not
asking your customers, that you need to learn how to start to
ask your customers, and how the different
(19:06):
whys in the rows go, when you have to speed a sale up
and when you need to slow it down. And more often than not,
you need to slow it down. But, Pat, I am talking all
over you, and you're my guest, and please No. You're you're you're
abundantly correct. Here's the thing about, you know, a
store, and I I love the ecosystems of stores, by the way.
(19:27):
I'm a retail guy. So when I had a chance
to study, advertising in college,
I was in an agency program to begin with, and I knew I was in
the wrong program. So I switched to a retail program, And that's where
I came to understand a lot more about retail. And then, of
course, I had to learn how to speak retail. And
(19:49):
that takes that doesn't that's not like a two week conversation.
That takes a couple of years to learn. And when you
start dealing with, you know, major,
you know, furniture retailers like we have in Canada, we have, the the
Leon's group, and, they also own the brick.
And their market share is remarkable up here. It's around
(20:11):
21%. Now, I
don't know too many other, furniture groups that have
that kind of penetration in a country.
That's massive. That's massive. And that was, you
know, that was one of my clients. So I would go in
funny story. My boss, Don Fisher, was a former
(20:36):
president of the child's, children's division of Simmons,
mattresses. And he'd say, alright. Let's go do a store
check at at Leon's. But it was always, like, you know, we would end
up at their head office store. Right? And he'd walk in and he'd start
ripping, like, cushions off of everything,
(20:56):
and he wanted to look at all of the ingredients. He
wanted to know, where everything was made,
the construction, you know, any like, anything
that the average person doesn't look for, he was.
And and I was I was aghast. I mean, I'm going, Don, what are you
doing? Like, the like, these guys are looking at you. And he goes, I know.
(21:19):
He says, we told him we're in your first store check. He says, I'm just
checking it the way that people who are in the
industry, they expect to know exactly
how things are built, where they're built, how they come together,
and the reliability of the product. And he said, you better get used to
that, Pat, because that's the retail game. And then, you know,
(21:42):
and and and and about that time, that's when,
you know, furniture was no longer furniture. It was home
fashion. That was the turning
point. That's when the store became the
brand, and then, you know, the fashion industry, of course,
is a totally different experience. But,
(22:04):
you know, if you look at Ralph Lauren, for instance, he's he's blended
them.
Sure has. Sure has.
So, Pat, let's let's dive into a little bit
more about Sales Gorilla. So,
(22:26):
here, we have a lot of people don't know this,
but one of the huge segments
of our audience is sales reps. So I'm a
sales rep. I've got a big negotiation that's gonna
happen with a top 100 retailer.
(22:46):
And, not
feeling a %
comfortable,
what does preparation like that look like, and how
does SalesGorilla help? Oh, that's a great
question. And I don't get asked that question very
(23:07):
often, but here is the answer. You always
scale your preparation against the size
of the opportunity and the importance to your company.
So if if it's a half million dollar negotiation,
it gets the half million dollar treatment. If it's
a 5,000,000, it gets the 5,000,000 treatment. If it's a 10,000,000, it
(23:31):
gets the $10,000,000 treatment. $10,000,000
negotiation can take up to six months.
And if you're not prepared,
you you you just you've ignored the opportunity.
And to me, that's one of the saddest things
that can happen to to anybody. And I can
(23:52):
tell you that near the end of the preparation
for those negotiations, in the days before we had, you know, a lot of the
technology we had right now, I would just use my phone at night to
to leave myself messages up to eight, ten times a night in the days
leading up to that final in front of the customer negotiation.
And, I go they were very they're I I could
(24:15):
barely understand what I was talking about the next day I'd go to the office.
But the detail, you see,
that term that, you know, that the devil is in the
details is what, one of the largest department stores
in North America, which we we we just lost, the Hudson's Bay Company,
(24:35):
their head of procurement for media, he he would say that to me over and
over again. I mean, it it was that's
how much emphasis he put into
evaluating proposals that came in front of him. And and it's kind of interesting
because I'd sit and talk to him and I'd say, like, how do you make
these decisions? He said, a hundred million dollars, and you gotta shell this out.
(24:57):
And he said, you know what, Patty? He says, that's an an interesting,
point of view. He says, I always sit back because a lot of the
proposals look similar. He says, then I close my eyes for them
and I say, who is actually going to deliver exactly the
way I want the delivery to happen?
And then that is when I make the decision
(25:19):
because I could get a a cheaper price,
But if it's a really rough delivery and all of these store managers start to
complain, you know, the the the product is
is is not, presented as
it was bought, and there's a lot more work
when we get the product on the other end. He said,
(25:42):
you know, he he said, I want smooth deliveries. He says, I want
regional vice presidents to call me up and say, what a great job you're doing,
supported by the store managers. You see, that's the difference
in selling to retail versus selling other types of
entities. You've gotta sell the head office, then you've gotta go
and you gotta have your local people sell the store managers
(26:05):
on the idea that you're the right solution. And then they
shift their, decision up to the regional vice
president who then sends it back to head office.
And if you don't understand that, you're not
in the game. So, Pat, this is for our sales reps, friends
that are watching. What would
(26:27):
you say the biggest mistake that
a sales rep makes when approaching,
a retailer, the the biggest
the biggest mistake or most common?
I think that's a great question. I think you've actually got to
(26:48):
go in and live their brand. You see,
a brand is really nothing more than a series
of perfectly repeatable promises.
And so as a sales rep, I wanna go in
and I want to feel their promise in real time without
identifying myself. And then,
(27:11):
you know, if if I, you know, if I can, it would be to talk
to somebody internally and just say, you know, I'm kind of interested in how this
store works. Have you got a couple of minutes to walk me around and show
me how you're different? And, you
know, the stuff you find out is it's just
amazing. Then you go hit their website, then you're looking for their forward
(27:32):
planning, you're looking for any expansion plans
that they might have, you're trying to figure out, how the geography
links and where the distribution centers are and how
that impacts you and their ideal customer profile.
So I call this brand alignment, but put
simply put simply, is their customer
(27:55):
of the same ilk that yours is? If you're perfectly aligned,
then the chances of having to lower your prices become
less
Because you're delivering to the customer
exactly what it is that they expect to get from
a retailer of that particular,
(28:18):
you know, range, you know, so it's, you know, whether you're lower, mid, or
upper. So
what this is what I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong or
put a fine point on it, Pat.
One of the biggest mistakes that sales reps make
before they approach a retail buyer is the
(28:42):
lack of preparation. They they have not done their
homework and doing their homework and making sure
that the two brands are aligned is a huge part of
having potentially successful outcome. Oh my
god. So,
one of the stories that I tell sometimes is is that, when
(29:04):
Walmart bought Woco here in Canada, and they were coming
up, and I thought, oh, man. I like, I know the local guys, but
I don't know how many of them are gonna survive because, you know, you know
what happens. And so I thought, how do I get my
head wrapped around Walmart? I've been in Walmart because, you know, I would drive down
through The States. You know, we went on driving trips up
(29:25):
down the East Coast, but walking into a Walmart
store doesn't tell the entire story. I mean,
you know, you understand the layout of the store, the departments.
You know, Walmart now is the largest food retailer in the world,
but then they didn't start out that way. They started out selling,
you know, lady slips and children's wear in in our
(29:48):
racks. And and, it
was Sam wasn't the wealthy one, by the way. It was his wife.
I picked up, Sam's book, titled Made
in America, and I thought, I have to read everything
about this, Juggernaut
(30:08):
before I set foot inside head office.
If I don't, I'm making a mistake. That's just one example.
What so when I when I walk in, I was speaking fluent Walmart.
(30:28):
That's the difference. Yeah. That's
you shop in the stores physically, reading
everything that you can. And ladies and gentlemen,
there's this new thing. It's called
AI. You can actually put a prompt in your
in your AI that says,
(30:52):
show me all the brands for x y z
furniture store or ABC mattress store,
brands that they carry, and please identify
any competitive threats to them
because you, as a rep, should be looking out for all
of your dealers and all of your potential dealers if you
(31:16):
understand what the threats are. And by the way, I've done this
several times. I do it for my existing dealers as well.
And, sometimes you learn something
that surprises you. Sometimes, I've even
seen where, some leases that were not publicly
disclosed were revealed.
(31:39):
So learn everything you can before you go in to a
negotiation. Being prepared is, more than
half of it. But understanding
you know, negotiations is a is a part of
sales that a lot of people would say, you know what?
I'm just a good, honest person. You know?
(32:02):
Negotiation sounds like manipulation.
And the reality is once you really learn
about negotiations, real negotiations,
from a real expert like you, Patrick, you realize
that it has nothing to do with manipulation. No. It has
(32:22):
to do with being a professional. It has to do
with being, committed
to helping your retail partner grow their business,
and it has everything to do with you
doing your homework and being aware of
the process. And, you know, Pat, that
(32:45):
that's another one. I think us assuming that we
know their sales process, I had
literally a top 100. I knew their sales
process intimately. Mhmm. I had sold
them things before. Yep. And here I was selling something
again. And I said to the buyer, so I guess you
(33:08):
gotta take it back to the committee. And he goes,
no, Pete. I'd actually like to give you a PO for it right now if
that's okay with you. Oh, wow.
I said that is okay with me. I am sorry I
was being presumptive. Because no. You are a % right.
Because that is our normal process. We've gotten to a place with
(33:31):
this thing that that process is being altered
because this is something that we need to get done right now.
Yeah. And, you know, it's it's under understanding the, the
culture, the ethos of how it is that they operate. So
when you go into different retailers across North America,
walk you into a Walmart home office versus walking into
(33:55):
a Lowe's or walking into a Home Depot or walk you you know, pick
your next five. They're all
different. All they they they they're not the
same at all. And, and I think you have
to you have to acclimate when you walk in that,
in that front door and and sit with them. And by the way,
(34:17):
time slots, used to be half an hour
with the with the likes of Walmart. I'll bet you they're only twenty minutes now.
And I think with the tariffs, it's just going to get faster.
So your, first of all,
they've made probably 75 to
80% of the potential decision before you even open
(34:39):
up your proposal. They know more about you than you
know about them. Gotta remember, if you operate
manufacturing across the country, do you think they've not been in to
visit your your manufacturing sites?
Because I can tell you they have. That's the kind of homework they
do. And, you know, it's it's
(35:02):
also understanding, you know, just how a store works
and the, you know, how the customer travels through the store. By the
way, a store is a huge advantage. If
I've got a customer in a store,
as long as they're in the store, we have a negotiation
advantage. The minute that they walk out of the store,
(35:25):
our advantage. False.
Yeah. Because they can they can pick up the phone and say, you know what?
I really liked everything you showed me today, but I've looked at
my budget, and I just like, I'm 97% of the way
there. What do you think we should
(35:48):
do? But they wouldn't do that in store.
Yep.
So the assumption that you're when you get a call from a customer that
was in earlier that you're just gonna write it up automatically,
it might be the customer trying to negotiate
(36:11):
right there on the phone, a negotiation they weren't comfortable
having in the store. Right? Sure. As a
matter of fact, I think, you know, you know, you
have to keep them on the phone as long as you can. And,
you know, and you you have to look at your cost modeling. So I cost
model up and I cost model down. And, you
(36:34):
know, you gotta know your margins. You gotta know about, you
know, if you're gonna add anything to the package, you
gotta know about contribution margin.
And you've gotta make that decision as to whether
it's the right customer to sell to at the right time at the right
price. And then you've gotta you've gotta make
(36:55):
sure, like, don't do deals for deals.
I mean, shelf velocity, I know, is really important. And you gotta keep running money
through the till. Otherwise, the bank gets crazy. But
selling a product for the sake of selling a product actually costs you money because
you gotta run them through your whole system. And selling one of anything to
a customer, to me, is a lost opportunity.
(37:20):
We sell the ecosystem. We don't sell one thing.
That's super strong. Well, I mean,
it it it just it kinda makes sense. I mean, if I look
if I go into any, operation so so let's let's
just, sort of say, you know, retailers
(37:41):
are the same as just about every other business out there. Right?
They just they they have their specialties. You know, I can walk
in and I can say to somebody, see that thing over there? That's commodity. And
they say, no. That's not a commodity because it comes in a package. But I
said, what what if I only wanna buy that one piece? Then it's a commodity.
And I've explained this to large corporations over and over again. And when I put
(38:03):
it to them that way, they kinda go, oh, I did it with,
Microsoft on cloud. I explained to them. I said, I'm
sorry. Cloud is now a commodity. There's probably ten, fifteen,
major corporations across North America right now that have the money
to create the gigantic,
(38:24):
data banks that, you know, like a terabyte right
now is a peanut. You know what? Do you know what it costs to rent
a a a terabyte of space a month? I have not
a clue. About $30.
Really? Yeah. So Gorilla, I
think, is around I'm probably gonna get this wrong,
(38:48):
but I think it's around 50 gigabytes. And
with artificial intelligence, using the platform
so I use, my original recording platform, which you're looking at
right now. It's called ScreenPal. Then I went to Vimeo and
used AI to enhance all my videos.
And, part of the offering of, you
(39:10):
know, buying the terabyte of space was that once the videos
have been enhanced and the enhancement, it really makes them look about
25% better. I'm shocked. Sound quality, everything's better.
And it allows me now through ScreenPal, I could have,
turned all my videos into a 50 languages almost overnight.
(39:30):
The reality is I only need to do it with nine nine major
languages around the world, and I'm covering probably, I don't know,
75% of the world. And I can
do it almost instantly. That's the power of AI. Here's
another thing, by the way. So we put in some really neat things into
into Sales Gorilla, that you might not
(39:53):
have thought about, but my project manager, Chris, did.
We put in a search bar. So we get a little search engine
behind. So there's 900 videos there. Right? So
you might say, jeez, I've gotta know everything about negotiation. Well,
that's gonna get you about, I don't know, how many hundred fits. But
another way to do it is to, take
(40:16):
your problem and write it out and then,
put it into, CHAP, and
then say, take this problem and compress
it, this negotiation problem or opportunity, compress
it, And give me the outcome,
and then also, by the way, give me, maybe eight
(40:39):
keywords that I need to understand in order to get this deal done. And then
you take those eight keywords and you drop them into our search
engine and see what comes up.
It gets bad because the other thing we did, which
was kind of a one of those things you go, that's really
cool. So what do you mean you got 900 videos? And there's gonna be a
(41:01):
lot more, by the way. I'm holding a whole pile back. It's just there's only
so much like, we had to finish. Right? It it was just
I I got a million stories for you on why this thing probably shouldn't
have finished, but it just finished beautifully. Like, when it when I
finally, fell into a state of peace, I I can't
even explain what that means. But,
(41:24):
the the the one thing I know for sure is we had 900 videos.
What if you come to identify, say,
30 or 40 or 50 that really match your
business? It it it's just how your business
thinks about negotiation. Well, with, SalesDash
Gorilla, you can bookmark them. So when you go on to the
(41:47):
site, you're looking at your, curated set
of negotiation videos. And by the way, with the negotiation
videos, I this this is something I I wouldn't do in my books,
but because I have the video and I can accomplish
so much more, I tell you
I I share with you. I don't tell you anything. I share with you all
(42:09):
of the things that you should be considering. And by the way, corner cases that
you've never dreamed of. So the only way that you understand what these corner
cases is, that it it it you have to have
been in business as long as Pete or
Pat. And you and I are older than dirt,
so we've seen just about every crazy thing you can see in
(42:31):
a negotiation. What I've done though is I've
captured it. And as Rick Denley, said,
I don't know if Rick's, you know, joining us today or not, but he said
he called me up one day and he says, you know, Pat, he says, I
don't know if you realize what you're doing or not, but this may be the
largest brain sales download I've ever seen in my
(42:51):
life. Mhmm. It's exactly what it is.
Yeah. It's really I was talking to a gentleman in The UK.
So to launch Gorilla, so far, we've got, I've been invited
onto five podcasts. And I did a a workup
with one of the podcasters, and he said, do you know what you built?
I said, I don't know. What do you think I built? He says, Pat,
(43:15):
you've built an ark. That's what you
built. The other part of it is, is
that, you know, in the books I would never do this, but I actually sat
down and thought, alright, so if you're going to share with people
what they need to do, you should also take the time
to share with them what happens if they leave steps out.
(43:39):
Yeah. You see, because the customer will almost
never enter your sales process where you want them
to. Right? So
there are times when you're gonna have to backfill the
information in order to be able to
make the best decision on a recommendation for
(44:01):
a customer. Like, I I see people these days, I don't sell
anymore. I just help customers make great
buying decisions that are so derisked that when they take
it home with their family, their family just sort of said, well, jeez, I mean,
we don't buy this wheel. Kinda silly. Now on the corporate side, you could take
that same thing that same proposal home and present it to your wife or
(44:23):
your husband and then say, I I just wanna know if you understand what it
is that I'm looking at. And if they do and if they can articulate it
very clearly, then you're ready to go sell that internally because what you
gotta remember about a buying team is you present to
them, some of us call it, sell it,
and then they have to go internally and sell
(44:45):
your idea up to the executive team, and the
idea must be so derisked that
not implementing the idea may end up being costly for
that company. So
here's something you know, when you started talking about derisking the sale,
what automatically went through my head
(45:08):
is us in the mattress industry, we often have comfort trials.
We have a ninety to a hundred and twenty eight, twenty night,
comfort trial. And, you know,
just having that comfort trial as
an owner does not mean that you
have properly trained your salesperson how
(45:31):
to position it, how to use it, when to
even talk about it, if at all,
and how to be successful with it.
And I think that SalesGorilla does
that. It teaches,
you exactly how to position some of these,
(45:55):
these policies that you actually have in your store. They're great
tools. You have these great hammers
and, saws, but you're not sharpening
them and you're not keeping them in the proper condition and you're not
teaching your people exactly how to use them and how to use them
safely. And SalesGorilla helps you to do
(46:17):
that. Yeah. Because as a matter of
fact, I think I've coined a
new phrase. About two years ago, I
noticed that buyers were taking two or three
negotiation strategies and combining them.
I remember the first time I said, I said, damn, that looks like strategy
(46:40):
stacking to me. And so when you
go into Gorilla and you drop in your keywords or whatever is you
put into our search engine, you wanna take about five
of those videos, maybe six, that address your problem
and stack them all and stack the
solutions based on efficacy,
(47:03):
risk, importance, and dollar value to your
company. And that's when you can go back to the customer and
say, all right, so,
we didn't quite close the first time. Here is the new
idea. Here is the new solution. And by the way, it doesn't always have to
be about money. That's that's what's
(47:26):
so important. And as far as fittings go, like, beat up.
You know, I've got a little bit of a bad back. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Their statement of the year.
Alright. So I look like a victim. But,
you know, the thing is, you know, I I can try and explain that to
somebody, but, they might not
(47:49):
get, and they might put me on a mattress that is a little softer
than what I need. I need to sleep on a rock,
that with a pillow top on it. That's when I'm that's when I'm gonna sleep
well. And so sending me home with a mattress
that is slightly softer than I need might have been a great
attention, but might cost you the sale.
(48:15):
Yeah. It's like I it's like one in your book, I
nearly passed out. When I read, a pillow is a bed for your head.
I nearly passed out because it's
true. I I thought, oh my god. And and, of course,
that was one of your, co conspirators. Yeah. Chris Taney.
(48:36):
Yeah. I mean, he just drilled it. I mean, I I'm still laughing
about that because it it to me, it's just it it's it's hysterically
true. You know? So, again, when you are a gorilla, you know, here's
here's the thing you gotta remember. There's there's over
900 ideas in there, but they're only relevant to
your negotiation, and every negotiation will be
(48:58):
different. I don't care if you're dealing with the same customer
over and over again. These the everything
everything changes because everything is moving forward. In other
words, we don't make money in the past. We only make money
in the present and in the future. So what you did last
year may not be relevant this year.
(49:21):
You know, we we we have to have that much elasticity
in in our thinking. And, you know, it's like I say to people, you
know, anticipate needs and, you know,
proceed with deeds. That's what you got. That's when
everybody wins, and that's that's so, like, a deal should be
something when when someone walks away from them, they go, ah,
(49:44):
the folks at home are gonna love this. Not Woah. Wow.
That's a great question. Steve Steve Hauck
says, Patrick, can you hit on the importance of lease negotiations?
Now that this is some hardcore out and out negotiations
now. Yeah. And and I you know,
there's a lot of commercial space available right now.
(50:08):
You know? So we're gonna see a lot of turnover.
Retail has been it's been a harsh place to
be unless you're a destination store. Luckily, Steve, you are a
destination store. But when you get talking about
leases, you're really talking about
your commitment to that community
(50:32):
because retail is really about a community. And, you
know, I learned a really interesting lesson when I
did the, store grand openings for a company called Factory Carpinter
in Canada. And out in Vancouver,
the city was building so fast that that what they had to do was they
had to just, you know, get involved with as many leases as they
(50:55):
could as fast as they could. One of the things they didn't realize after I
finished my research and and took it into them was they weren't anywhere
near their customer. So if your customer is evolving
around your store, in other words, they keep adding in new
developments, you you really wanna
lock that lease down. On the other hand, if your market is
(51:16):
moving away from your store, you're gonna have to spend
more money to get the people to the store, and
often they will have to travel past your competitor in
order to get to your store. And then you gotta
figure out things like, you know,
are there any channels that, you know, you know, when you
(51:39):
first lease the store that weren't a part of the deal,
now that you've been in the store for, I don't know, a few
years, could we add those channels to the lease and just
sort of say, I've been here this long. I've committed. Now what are you
willing to commit? Where is the win for me?
And the win for the other side is gonna be the length of the
(52:03):
lease and any conditions that you put on it.
And by the way, Steve, if you can't, you
wanna be the guy that writes the the last addendums in that
contract. Always control the contract.
That's a great little tidbit there. Write the last addendum.
(52:23):
Oh, yeah. For sure. You see, here's the thing with negotiations.
We never really say a % of everything
that it happens to get a deal across the finish line. We
generally talk about, you know, 85% of the
truth. Well, there's 15% of the of of the
detail left out there. So once,
(52:45):
you know, you get close to signing, you've got to make sure that you're getting
all of your special asks in there. And,
you know, it could be something like, alright. So
if if the heating goes out in this place and we have
to modernize, what's the mechanism that allows us to
modernize? I understand that I'm
(53:08):
responsible for everything that enhances the
store, but when it comes to heat and the roof and the
foundation of the store, that's over to
you. So
you you you gotta figure all those things out.
That's that's huge, Pat.
(53:31):
I I can't tell you how many times somebody had a leaky
roof, and they go into the actual lease
agreement, and they see that I'm
responsible for all repairs. I didn't
negotiate that part of it out, and now I'm
screwed. Or it's the middle of the summer. It's
(53:52):
August. It's 80 plus degrees,
and my air conditioning is out. And I'm responsible
for replacing the air conditioner. So, yeah,
sort all of that out, the heat, the air, the
roof, the foundation. Make sure that you're not
on the hook for those repairs that indeed the landlord
(54:14):
is because, boy, I I've seen
it happen, Patrick, numerous
times. Look at look at the exterior of the store. Then you might say,
well, you know, I'm responsible for the exterior of
the store. Fair enough. Signage, stuff like that. But what happens if the parking
lot starts to fall apart? The asphalt is it
(54:37):
it it it just doesn't it's not holding up anymore,
and it starts to crumble. What's in your
lease to cover that? Because I can tell you when customers
go up to a store and the asphalt is all
messy, in their minds, the inside
of that store is not perfect because the outside is
(54:59):
not perfect. %.
Unfortunately, stores are judged
by, the cover. And The store
is the brand. If the if the store doesn't
look the part because
of something the landlord has done or hasn't
(55:22):
done, it's a reflection on you and your business.
And fortunately or unfortunately, you're
gonna benefit from it or you're going
to suffer from from it. So
heat, roof, AC, foundation, make sure it's
covered under the lease. Plumbing. I might add
(55:44):
this. Electrical. Never fall in love with a
store. Yeah. Just don't fall in love with and and if you
do, don't tell anybody, anybody.
And, surely, do not let that landlord
know that you're somewhat infatuated with
the store because they will just absolutely put
(56:07):
it to you. One last thing, Steve. The store doesn't
know you're alive.
It doesn't care about you.
That's so important. I and I think that, you
know, when people build a certain amount of history in
(56:27):
a location And, you know, they they just
start to think, well, jeez, I could never
rebuild from the bottom up and still maintain
the, you know, the importance of the brand.
I think you're missing the notion that your market may have
moved, and you have to move with your market. They're not gonna come to you.
(56:50):
You have to go to them, or you have to make it so convenient for
them to come to you. It has to be so powerful. In other
words, you have to have a force multiplier that says, if I
don't go to Steve's store, I'm wasting my time in another retailer
store.
(57:10):
Colton Nichols, my buddy at Baba's,
currently in Louisville, Kentucky, hoping
hopping on to say hello. Missed both the Zoom and this. We'll
rewatch. Well, Colton, you're live right
now, brother. You got a question for my friend, Patrick
(57:30):
Tinni, on negotiations?
Andrew Burt says, good afternoon, fellas. Hope you are both doing
well. Pat, that went so fast. That is
not fair. How how long are we into this?
Dude, we got two minutes left.
(57:50):
That's funny. You know what? This happens to us every
single time, Pete. Every time, dude. Every time.
Pat, I just I wanna say for the whole world to hear
this. I absolutely treasure you. I
love you. You have made an incredible difference
in my career, and just knowing you makes
(58:13):
me a better person. So, Pat, thank you for everything
you have done and you continue to do. And
I'm super excited about SalesGorilla. Over
900 videos. So, Pray tell, how
does my audience who's curious about
improving their sales, improving their negotiations,
(58:35):
how do they how do they take a peek at SalesGorilla
and get involved with it? Yeah. So, it takes a little while for a
URL to really sync into the search engines, but it but it has
happened. And so the cool thing is that you can go up and look at
the exterior of the site, and there's gonna be about 11 videos up there that
you can look at right away. And that's gonna give you a sense. Honest to
(58:56):
god, friends, this site is different from what
it is that you've seen in the past relative to
the, the level of detail that we've
gone into to make this experience just so peaceful
and powerful for you. And by the way, you're saying, well,
what's your super differentiator on, you know, x,
(59:19):
y, and z? I started to think about, alright. So how
do I wanna impact people, and how do I want to approach people,
and and how do I want to help people? Because at the end of the
day, if you're not helping, a an
industry, you're not doing anything but filling space.
So from a price point perspective, I know
(59:41):
people don't like to talk about price, but I'm gonna hear, I sat down and
I said, what what would freak people out? And I
said, we're gonna bill this at at 99¢ a
day US or the price of a very cheap cup of
coffee. It's a year membership,
but here's the thing. You save one
(01:00:02):
$348 deal plus tax, and
you're free rolling on the site for the rest of the year. And I can
tell you, no two negotiations are the same. So it's not like you can
go up there for, like, a couple of days and just sort of say, oh,
I got it. I'm sorry. And by the way, the wheels always
come off the buggy late on Saturday, late
(01:00:23):
on Friday, on the weekends when you have to make your
nut. And there is nothing
worse than watching a deal
shrivel in the heat. You wanna you you wanna bring
that deal home, and you wanna do it in a way where,
if you're a sales rep, you you take it in your boss and you say,
(01:00:44):
you know what, boss? I use Gorilla. And by the way,
family came in. They wanted to outfit their house. This one will
help us get there. And if I didn't have access to Grillo, we we
might not have been able to do it. So it's
twenty four hour a day access to the videos Yep.
For a year, and how much does that cost?
(01:01:06):
$3.03 $3.48 US. Everything's
denominated in US dollars, plus tax. That's it.
Wow. For bridging. Yeah. No. It's it's, you know, it it's
so silly. So back to derisking. I thought, you know, I
can't charge much higher for the site. Right? I
mean, we're talking almost eighty hour well, eight over eighty
(01:01:28):
hours of content. That's what it's gonna be. And by the time I finish, it'll
be around a hundred. Might be a 20. I don't know. But right now, you
go up there and there's eighty hours of content. I mean, that
is the equivalent to 40 full length movies.
Wow. And then fragment it down into minutes.
(01:01:48):
Yeah. I mean, I talk about everything from, how
to get ready to what you do when a deal
doesn't close the way you want it to. And let's say let's
say, say let me just leave you with this one because it's kinda funny, and
I don't think enough people do it. So let's say a deal doesn't close.
And so the customer's walking in the store and you just at the very last
(01:02:10):
minute, you you walk up and you say, I understand we're not gonna do business
today. And the person goes, yep. Just didn't find what I was looking for. Understand
that. But if we could've done a deal, what would it have
looked like in your mind?
What would that deal have felt like? What it what would
it have smelled like? And and and how happy would you have been
(01:02:32):
at what price point? And they'll explain it to
you. Because they may go to the next door where they actually
plan to buy, they've been using it as a warm up, and they get in
there, and the people are not as kind as you and caring.
You see, it's the after sale. The after sale is the
beginning of the next sale. Sales
(01:02:55):
in any business, especially retail, are generational.
Yep. You got you you you like, you just gotta get that.
You wanna sell to a family, not to a person.
Yeah.
I know. This could go on for days. Patrick,
(01:03:18):
thank you so much, my friend. Anyone that wants to get a
hold of you, how do they do it? Well, first of all, you you
plug my name and sales author into any search engine, and,
you know, it just it was, like, 13 pages long. And my phone number
is the easiest one in the world to find. And,
LinkedIn and, you know, if you really got a tough one,
(01:03:42):
call, you know, fifteen minutes at my
cost. Awesome. Yeah.
Patrick, thank you. Have a great weekend. Oh,
thank you for the opportunity. You know, Pete, I I think a lot
of people think they know you, and I'm
sure there's a lot of great stories, Pete Primo stories.
(01:04:05):
But I'll tell you, when it comes to sales and negotiation, doing
business, and doing the right
thing when nobody's looking, that's Pete Primo.
Thank you, Patrick. You are too kind. Thank you for
being with us today, and thank you for creating Sales
Gorilla. You betcha. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend.
(01:04:27):
Everybody go out there and sell a million. Thanks.
Welcome to the Pete Primeau show. It is episode
220, and we are with my friend, Patrick
Tinney, and we are gonna have you meet the sales
gorilla very shortly. Let me just pay the bills really
quickly. If you haven't read my book, Sell a Million, what are you
waiting for? A hundred and one tips for furniture and mattress stores to
(01:40):
sell another million dollars or more this year.
This is a marketing book.
This this is a sales book.
I have been blessed to travel
over 2,000,000 miles by car in
probably twenty ish states
(02:04):
and primarily the six or seven that surround Ohio.
And we were really blessed to
be able to put this book together with 10 other coauthors
that just did a fabulous job and
delivered incredible value. So if you
go, I don't need another sales
(02:27):
book. Don't buy this.
If you want the next three years of your
sales meetings on Saturday morning done for you,
get this book. Miles and miles of retail selling
greatness, three years worth of sales meetings.
Your salespeople, when they read this and
(02:50):
master what's in it, will produce
happier customers, will produce higher tickets,
and and more than that, they will
absolutely elevate your store to
a whole another level. So grab it. If you're
smart like my friend, Fawad, you'll buy them for every
(03:13):
salesperson that sells mattresses in your store. So,
miles and miles of retail selling greatness is available now.
And I have to tell you something. My dear friend, Pat Tinney,
who's about to come on, had a hand in this
book that nobody knows about. I've never spoke about it
before. But he,
(03:37):
was kind enough to go through and help
me proofread and
improve the book greatly. So I only wish I had
started with him at the very, very beginning. Pat, just
so that you guys know, is the author of four great sales books, and
what he is about to reveal to us in the next hour is going to
(04:00):
make your head spin and make you realize that
when you wanna talk about being great, you're gonna wanna talk about
Patrick Tinney. Two other important announcements,
guys. If you are in the mattress industry and you
don't belong to the Mattress Industry Network group on Facebook,
join immediately. If you wanna learn how to build, market, sell, and
(04:23):
succeed in the mattress industry, this is the
place for you. It's a % free. This is where you come to
learn how to build, how to market, how to sell and
succeed in the mattress industry. Everybody's
in here. It's a group that was started by retailers for the benefit
of the entire industry. So join
(04:46):
our group and and say hi. There's a QR code. My
producer's gonna flash there on the screen. Hit that QR
code and, join the group. It's a
% free, and, you'll have a great time, and you'll
enjoy it. And I will look forward to seeing you inside the group.
Also, if you sell mattresses and you are not
(05:07):
signed up for the master class
that is in Cincinnati starting this Sunday,
Call Scott Vaughn immediately. Use the
link. I think you can still get in.
Beg, borrow, steal, do whatever you have to.
(05:28):
That link right there,
WingoCoaching.win/2020five.
That's the link to register, and use this
code, all capitals,
Pete2025.
2 Dollars off. You'll get 200 off.
(05:48):
This is, a meet and greet on Sunday
night and then all day Monday and all day
Tuesday. Scott reveals his playbook
that took him from zero to millions of dollars worth of
sales. Pound for pound, he's the best mattress
retailer in the country right now. And what he has
(06:09):
done is he's put together his playbook. He he's
laying it open for you in a two day seminar,
and it is something that you should not miss. Patrick,
welcome to the show. Thank you very much.
Who is this big hairy fella that we're about to meet? Tell me
(06:29):
about Sales Gorilla. Well, Sales
Gorilla is was, a vision that I
started about, I don't know, a year ago.
And I don't know what I was thinking at the time. I
was, playing around a little bit with
video, and I thought, I should see if we
(06:51):
can do maybe one, two, three a day.
And then I started thinking, jeez, I wonder if we could
maybe get to five. Anyway, you know what
happened. And then I started throwing
goals up on the board, and I thought, jeez, why don't we get to
50? And then it was a hundred. And then I thought, well,
(07:14):
if we can do a hundred, then you know what happened again. So
by the time I had
finished the what I felt was
enough in other words, I I I made peace with
my own work. I completed, well over a
thousand videos. I won't tell you how many, but it was all it was way
(07:36):
over a thousand. And then I started to to delete,
and I started to visualize, like, what the heck can
we do with this? Right? And, anyway,
then we started to think about,
how do we enhance this? And then
(07:56):
after that, we got involved with, some AI
software that allowed me to enhance the videos.
And, we were at the same time building out a website
that I had a vision for. And it's a crazy thing. When you do an
agency briefing, Pete and Chris,
(08:17):
we booked two hours for this agency briefing.
It was over in less than an hour. Everybody
understood. It's one of the
most interesting things ever. And I'll I I will share with
you that when the website was finished, it was, like,
99% of what I visualized, 99 and a half.
(08:45):
And now I think we've got probably the largest sales negotiation
video portal in the world. In other words, I can't find another
one. So, Pat, what
is the average length of a video that's in here?
So that's a great question. They range from about a minute
to just over five minutes.
(09:07):
My belief is that if you're going to offer
somebody a lesson, it shouldn't be longer than, say, five or
six minutes. Now when we get to strategy,
honest guys, I cannot I've tried. There's only one
or two that I'm able to do in in less than five minutes because,
really, what you're doing is you're talking about
(09:30):
buyer strategy where there's, there's risk for the
buyer and the seller. You've got the time,
compression or time decompression, and you got sort of the management of the
situation, and then you've got navigation. So somehow you gotta get all of that
in. And, you know, you wanna be, you know,
you wanna be able to explain this in the simplest language
(09:54):
possible, which is really, really challenging.
So, Pat, is this is SalesGorilla
sales with a strong emphasis
on negotiation, or is it strictly negotiation?
(10:15):
So it's a combination. So what I would say is it it's it's a it's
a sales site with a very, very, very, very strong bet
on negotiation. In other words, when I sat down to
produce the site, I was thinking sales negotiation,
not sales in particular. Because one of the things that
I've I've come to understand over a long period of time is that, and this
(10:37):
is through a lot of research, 50 bookstore appearances.
And I I just asked the right questions about what people
believed that their proficiency was in,
in negotiation. And people overestimated their
skill sets by, you know, I mean, it was
(10:58):
ridiculous. So I would say about 90% of the people in
the market in business right now, overestimate their,
sales negotiation skill sets. So I think that's the hole in the
market. I wanna fill it. What we did with the site,
I thought, oh my god. I've gotta simplify this thing somehow. What do you do?
And I thought, what what do I feel like when I'm under a lot of
(11:20):
stress? Well, when I'm under a lot of stress, I want things
so simple that I really
can't make mistakes. So the way you do that is to
take the 900 plus videos, which are up there,
and you put them all in alphabetical order.
So it doesn't matter how stressed out you are. You'll be able to find the
(11:43):
letter n, and there's probably a hundred to a 50
videos there. And then the next letter you go to is s, and you're gonna
find another hundred to a 50 videos there, maybe more. I haven't know
I haven't counted them. Well, there's so many. Right? So
that's how we simplified it. And then there's another bracket over, there's a sort
of a separate, area for, podcasts, which
(12:05):
I've appeared on and and, of course, beats yours or some of the very best
in there. And so we we
we separated those two because, again, we wanted to keep it simple.
We want the site to be elegant. We wanted to respect
the African mountain gorilla. Actually, it's really funny. On the
briefing with the agency, that was probably, one of the most
(12:28):
important things that I got across the folks. I I like, I didn't want this
to, I didn't want the the site to be
anything more than, approachable, classy,
and respectful.
So what is it about the African
mountain gorilla that
(12:51):
that excites you, that inspires you,
that made them,
a point of inspiration for your project?
You know, I'm not sure I have a straight answer for
you. I I just I I'm I've been following the
species, and then I started to read about them. What I came to understand was
(13:14):
that they share about 80% of our DNA. That's
why when people go and they go, you
know, up to visit the girls, they gotta be very careful that they're not carrying
disease because the the gorillas have
no antibodies the way that we do.
That's that's one of the big problems. And the other big problem, of course, is,
(13:36):
you know, they're just, they're running out of their place to
live. Mhmm. And, you know, part of the
website, by the way, there's a direct link to the
World Wildlife Fund, and you can go in there and make a
donation. But I will be taking a small percentage of the
proceeds from, sales dash gorilla, and I'll just
(13:58):
be sending it off to the World Wildlife Fund. It's just something I wanna do.
Good for you, Patrick. Pat, we've got a
bunch of store owners. They own either furniture stores
or mattress stores, and they're like my
salespeople, a lot of them
do have sales drops price and drops, but
(14:21):
many of them don't. They're, like, one price shops.
And before they tune us out, I
want to ask you,
if I don't allow my salespeople to negotiate
on price, Why should we watch
(14:41):
these videos, on sales and on
sales negotiations? Is there a benefit
to my retail sales pros?
Yeah. Because I think price is the last place you gotta go.
I mean, think of all the things that you sell in,
(15:02):
in a mattress store. I mean, it used to be
just mattresses, but it, you know, I mean, it isn't anymore. You go in
for, pillow fittings. You, you know, you've got the
you have to have the correct,
you know, sheets that really bring out the life of the mattress. And
(15:24):
then you've got the mattress cover, and all the different iterations
around that. I mean, these things to
me are things that you can talk about with the customer.
You can also talk to them about, you know, delivering,
exactly when they want, where they want it, how they want.
And that's a lot different than throwing a couple of mattresses
(15:47):
on the roof of your car and driving away. It's a different industry now.
I mean, I remember as a younger man, I walked in to a mattress
factory and, it was run by a bunch of
Christian Guyanese gentlemen, and I, you know, I just said, jeez, I've never seen how
a mattress is built. I said, you know, can you show
me? And he says, nope. It's the interest
(16:09):
that in how we put these things together. I said, well, I am. He says,
well, come on in the back, and he says, we'll show you. And they did.
And I learned everything about taking to,
just how things went together and, pillow tops,
and it was it was like the grand tour of the mattress
factory. Of course, I know everything's changed now, and now everything is,
(16:31):
you know, I I mean, we're entering a a stage right now where artificial
intelligence is gonna be built right into the the mattresses.
We're gonna get there. The smart beds will get smarter.
Oh, yeah. Pat Patrick, you've been involved in
some really high stakes. And and by the way,
(16:52):
these are this is a great shot. Chris
Chris, you're the absolute best. Chris Stone is probably the best
producer I've ever seen in my life. Those are Patrick's books.
That is the knowledge in here
is baked into this video program, is baked
into the, Sales Gorilla.
(17:15):
So unlocking yes, the bonus round. Nothing stops
me, made me cry a bunch of times. Perpetual hunger, which
made me cry several times.
Patrick's been involved in some real high stakes, you know,
negotiations. And I think
Pat will tell you himself who wins and who loses
(17:38):
in high stakes high stakes negotiations
is gonna be the person who has the most
knowledge and who's uncovered the needs the best,
and also the person who has put the
time in to train ahead of time and
(17:58):
does not have to search, for the answers.
He or she is competent in all of
these, negotiation techniques. I'll give you guys an
example of one, time compression. We don't even talk about
it in our business. The first time I heard about time compression,
it was Patrick Tinney. And when a customer
(18:20):
is in a hurry trying to hurry you along,
sometimes you need to slow the sale down to allow
you a chance to fully uncover their needs. You as
a sales pro, you know if you fully uncover the
customer's needs and what their outcomes,
you know, the the desired outcomes are, you know, where are
(18:44):
there aches and pains, and you have in your store ways
to eliminate those aches and pains, that is a big
part of what these videos will go
into and teach you questions that you're not
asking your customers, that you need to learn how to start to
ask your customers, and how the different
(19:06):
whys in the rows go, when you have to speed a sale up
and when you need to slow it down. And more often than not,
you need to slow it down. But, Pat, I am talking all
over you, and you're my guest, and please No. You're you're you're
abundantly correct. Here's the thing about, you know, a
store, and I I love the ecosystems of stores, by the way.
(19:27):
I'm a retail guy. So when I had a chance
to study, advertising in college,
I was in an agency program to begin with, and I knew I was in
the wrong program. So I switched to a retail program, And that's where
I came to understand a lot more about retail. And then, of
course, I had to learn how to speak retail. And
(19:49):
that takes that doesn't that's not like a two week conversation.
That takes a couple of years to learn. And when you
start dealing with, you know, major,
you know, furniture retailers like we have in Canada, we have, the the
Leon's group, and, they also own the brick.
And their market share is remarkable up here. It's around
(20:11):
21%. Now, I
don't know too many other, furniture groups that have
that kind of penetration in a country.
That's massive. That's massive. And that was, you
know, that was one of my clients. So I would go in
funny story. My boss, Don Fisher, was a former
(20:36):
president of the child's, children's division of Simmons,
mattresses. And he'd say, alright. Let's go do a store
check at at Leon's. But it was always, like, you know, we would end
up at their head office store. Right? And he'd walk in and he'd start
ripping, like, cushions off of everything,
(20:56):
and he wanted to look at all of the ingredients. He
wanted to know, where everything was made,
the construction, you know, any like, anything
that the average person doesn't look for, he was.
And and I was I was aghast. I mean, I'm going, Don, what are you
doing? Like, the like, these guys are looking at you. And he goes, I know.
(21:19):
He says, we told him we're in your first store check. He says, I'm just
checking it the way that people who are in the
industry, they expect to know exactly
how things are built, where they're built, how they come together,
and the reliability of the product. And he said, you better get used to
that, Pat, because that's the retail game. And then, you know,
(21:42):
and and and and about that time, that's when,
you know, furniture was no longer furniture. It was home
fashion. That was the turning
point. That's when the store became the
brand, and then, you know, the fashion industry, of course,
is a totally different experience. But,
(22:04):
you know, if you look at Ralph Lauren, for instance, he's he's blended
them.
Sure has. Sure has.
So, Pat, let's let's dive into a little bit
more about Sales Gorilla. So,
(22:26):
here, we have a lot of people don't know this,
but one of the huge segments
of our audience is sales reps. So I'm a
sales rep. I've got a big negotiation that's gonna
happen with a top 100 retailer.
(22:46):
And, not
feeling a %
comfortable,
what does preparation like that look like, and how
does SalesGorilla help? Oh, that's a great
question. And I don't get asked that question very
(23:07):
often, but here is the answer. You always
scale your preparation against the size
of the opportunity and the importance to your company.
So if if it's a half million dollar negotiation,
it gets the half million dollar treatment. If it's
a 5,000,000, it gets the 5,000,000 treatment. If it's a 10,000,000, it
(23:31):
gets the $10,000,000 treatment. $10,000,000
negotiation can take up to six months.
And if you're not prepared,
you you you just you've ignored the opportunity.
And to me, that's one of the saddest things
that can happen to to anybody. And I can
(23:52):
tell you that near the end of the preparation
for those negotiations, in the days before we had, you know, a lot of the
technology we had right now, I would just use my phone at night to
to leave myself messages up to eight, ten times a night in the days
leading up to that final in front of the customer negotiation.
And, I go they were very they're I I could
(24:15):
barely understand what I was talking about the next day I'd go to the office.
But the detail, you see,
that term that, you know, that the devil is in the
details is what, one of the largest department stores
in North America, which we we we just lost, the Hudson's Bay Company,
(24:35):
their head of procurement for media, he he would say that to me over and
over again. I mean, it it was that's
how much emphasis he put into
evaluating proposals that came in front of him. And and it's kind of interesting
because I'd sit and talk to him and I'd say, like, how do you make
these decisions? He said, a hundred million dollars, and you gotta shell this out.
(24:57):
And he said, you know what, Patty? He says, that's an an interesting,
point of view. He says, I always sit back because a lot of the
proposals look similar. He says, then I close my eyes for them
and I say, who is actually going to deliver exactly the
way I want the delivery to happen?
And then that is when I make the decision
(25:19):
because I could get a a cheaper price,
But if it's a really rough delivery and all of these store managers start to
complain, you know, the the the product is
is is not, presented as
it was bought, and there's a lot more work
when we get the product on the other end. He said,
(25:42):
you know, he he said, I want smooth deliveries. He says, I want
regional vice presidents to call me up and say, what a great job you're doing,
supported by the store managers. You see, that's the difference
in selling to retail versus selling other types of
entities. You've gotta sell the head office, then you've gotta go
and you gotta have your local people sell the store managers
(26:05):
on the idea that you're the right solution. And then they
shift their, decision up to the regional vice
president who then sends it back to head office.
And if you don't understand that, you're not
in the game. So, Pat, this is for our sales reps, friends
that are watching. What would
(26:27):
you say the biggest mistake that
a sales rep makes when approaching,
a retailer, the the biggest
the biggest mistake or most common?
I think that's a great question. I think you've actually got to
(26:48):
go in and live their brand. You see,
a brand is really nothing more than a series
of perfectly repeatable promises.
And so as a sales rep, I wanna go in
and I want to feel their promise in real time without
identifying myself. And then,
(27:11):
you know, if if I, you know, if I can, it would be to talk
to somebody internally and just say, you know, I'm kind of interested in how this
store works. Have you got a couple of minutes to walk me around and show
me how you're different? And, you
know, the stuff you find out is it's just
amazing. Then you go hit their website, then you're looking for their forward
(27:32):
planning, you're looking for any expansion plans
that they might have, you're trying to figure out, how the geography
links and where the distribution centers are and how
that impacts you and their ideal customer profile.
So I call this brand alignment, but put
simply put simply, is their customer
(27:55):
of the same ilk that yours is? If you're perfectly aligned,
then the chances of having to lower your prices become
less
Because you're delivering to the customer
exactly what it is that they expect to get from
a retailer of that particular,
(28:18):
you know, range, you know, so it's, you know, whether you're lower, mid, or
upper. So
what this is what I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong or
put a fine point on it, Pat.
One of the biggest mistakes that sales reps make
before they approach a retail buyer is the
(28:42):
lack of preparation. They they have not done their
homework and doing their homework and making sure
that the two brands are aligned is a huge part of
having potentially successful outcome. Oh my
god. So,
one of the stories that I tell sometimes is is that, when
(29:04):
Walmart bought Woco here in Canada, and they were coming
up, and I thought, oh, man. I like, I know the local guys, but
I don't know how many of them are gonna survive because, you know, you know
what happens. And so I thought, how do I get my
head wrapped around Walmart? I've been in Walmart because, you know, I would drive down
through The States. You know, we went on driving trips up
(29:25):
down the East Coast, but walking into a Walmart
store doesn't tell the entire story. I mean,
you know, you understand the layout of the store, the departments.
You know, Walmart now is the largest food retailer in the world,
but then they didn't start out that way. They started out selling,
you know, lady slips and children's wear in in our
(29:48):
racks. And and, it
was Sam wasn't the wealthy one, by the way. It was his wife.
I picked up, Sam's book, titled Made
in America, and I thought, I have to read everything
about this, Juggernaut
(30:08):
before I set foot inside head office.
If I don't, I'm making a mistake. That's just one example.
What so when I when I walk in, I was speaking fluent Walmart.
(30:28):
That's the difference. Yeah. That's
you shop in the stores physically, reading
everything that you can. And ladies and gentlemen,
there's this new thing. It's called
AI. You can actually put a prompt in your
in your AI that says,
(30:52):
show me all the brands for x y z
furniture store or ABC mattress store,
brands that they carry, and please identify
any competitive threats to them
because you, as a rep, should be looking out for all
of your dealers and all of your potential dealers if you
(31:16):
understand what the threats are. And by the way, I've done this
several times. I do it for my existing dealers as well.
And, sometimes you learn something
that surprises you. Sometimes, I've even
seen where, some leases that were not publicly
disclosed were revealed.
(31:39):
So learn everything you can before you go in to a
negotiation. Being prepared is, more than
half of it. But understanding
you know, negotiations is a is a part of
sales that a lot of people would say, you know what?
I'm just a good, honest person. You know?
(32:02):
Negotiation sounds like manipulation.
And the reality is once you really learn
about negotiations, real negotiations,
from a real expert like you, Patrick, you realize
that it has nothing to do with manipulation. No. It has
(32:22):
to do with being a professional. It has to do
with being, committed
to helping your retail partner grow their business,
and it has everything to do with you
doing your homework and being aware of
the process. And, you know, Pat, that
(32:45):
that's another one. I think us assuming that we
know their sales process, I had
literally a top 100. I knew their sales
process intimately. Mhmm. I had sold
them things before. Yep. And here I was selling something
again. And I said to the buyer, so I guess you
(33:08):
gotta take it back to the committee. And he goes,
no, Pete. I'd actually like to give you a PO for it right now if
that's okay with you. Oh, wow.
I said that is okay with me. I am sorry I
was being presumptive. Because no. You are a % right.
Because that is our normal process. We've gotten to a place with
(33:31):
this thing that that process is being altered
because this is something that we need to get done right now.
Yeah. And, you know, it's it's under understanding the, the
culture, the ethos of how it is that they operate. So
when you go into different retailers across North America,
walk you into a Walmart home office versus walking into
(33:55):
a Lowe's or walking into a Home Depot or walk you you know, pick
your next five. They're all
different. All they they they they're not the
same at all. And, and I think you have
to you have to acclimate when you walk in that,
in that front door and and sit with them. And by the way,
(34:17):
time slots, used to be half an hour
with the with the likes of Walmart. I'll bet you they're only twenty minutes now.
And I think with the tariffs, it's just going to get faster.
So your, first of all,
they've made probably 75 to
80% of the potential decision before you even open
(34:39):
up your proposal. They know more about you than you
know about them. Gotta remember, if you operate
manufacturing across the country, do you think they've not been in to
visit your your manufacturing sites?
Because I can tell you they have. That's the kind of homework they
do. And, you know, it's it's
(35:02):
also understanding, you know, just how a store works
and the, you know, how the customer travels through the store. By the
way, a store is a huge advantage. If
I've got a customer in a store,
as long as they're in the store, we have a negotiation
advantage. The minute that they walk out of the store,
(35:25):
our advantage. False.
Yeah. Because they can they can pick up the phone and say, you know what?
I really liked everything you showed me today, but I've looked at
my budget, and I just like, I'm 97% of the way
there. What do you think we should
(35:48):
do? But they wouldn't do that in store.
Yep.
So the assumption that you're when you get a call from a customer that
was in earlier that you're just gonna write it up automatically,
it might be the customer trying to negotiate
(36:11):
right there on the phone, a negotiation they weren't comfortable
having in the store. Right? Sure. As a
matter of fact, I think, you know, you know, you
have to keep them on the phone as long as you can. And,
you know, and you you have to look at your cost modeling. So I cost
model up and I cost model down. And, you
(36:34):
know, you gotta know your margins. You gotta know about, you
know, if you're gonna add anything to the package, you
gotta know about contribution margin.
And you've gotta make that decision as to whether
it's the right customer to sell to at the right time at the right
price. And then you've gotta you've gotta make
(36:55):
sure, like, don't do deals for deals.
I mean, shelf velocity, I know, is really important. And you gotta keep running money
through the till. Otherwise, the bank gets crazy. But
selling a product for the sake of selling a product actually costs you money because
you gotta run them through your whole system. And selling one of anything to
a customer, to me, is a lost opportunity.
(37:20):
We sell the ecosystem. We don't sell one thing.
That's super strong. Well, I mean,
it it it just it kinda makes sense. I mean, if I look
if I go into any, operation so so let's let's
just, sort of say, you know, retailers
(37:41):
are the same as just about every other business out there. Right?
They just they they have their specialties. You know, I can walk
in and I can say to somebody, see that thing over there? That's commodity. And
they say, no. That's not a commodity because it comes in a package. But I
said, what what if I only wanna buy that one piece? Then it's a commodity.
And I've explained this to large corporations over and over again. And when I put
(38:03):
it to them that way, they kinda go, oh, I did it with,
Microsoft on cloud. I explained to them. I said, I'm
sorry. Cloud is now a commodity. There's probably ten, fifteen,
major corporations across North America right now that have the money
to create the gigantic,
(38:24):
data banks that, you know, like a terabyte right
now is a peanut. You know what? Do you know what it costs to rent
a a a terabyte of space a month? I have not
a clue. About $30.
Really? Yeah. So Gorilla, I
think, is around I'm probably gonna get this wrong,
(38:48):
but I think it's around 50 gigabytes. And
with artificial intelligence, using the platform
so I use, my original recording platform, which you're looking at
right now. It's called ScreenPal. Then I went to Vimeo and
used AI to enhance all my videos.
And, part of the offering of, you
(39:10):
know, buying the terabyte of space was that once the videos
have been enhanced and the enhancement, it really makes them look about
25% better. I'm shocked. Sound quality, everything's better.
And it allows me now through ScreenPal, I could have,
turned all my videos into a 50 languages almost overnight.
(39:30):
The reality is I only need to do it with nine nine major
languages around the world, and I'm covering probably, I don't know,
75% of the world. And I can
do it almost instantly. That's the power of AI. Here's
another thing, by the way. So we put in some really neat things into
into Sales Gorilla, that you might not
(39:53):
have thought about, but my project manager, Chris, did.
We put in a search bar. So we get a little search engine
behind. So there's 900 videos there. Right? So
you might say, jeez, I've gotta know everything about negotiation. Well,
that's gonna get you about, I don't know, how many hundred fits. But
another way to do it is to, take
(40:16):
your problem and write it out and then,
put it into, CHAP, and
then say, take this problem and compress
it, this negotiation problem or opportunity, compress
it, And give me the outcome,
and then also, by the way, give me, maybe eight
(40:39):
keywords that I need to understand in order to get this deal done. And then
you take those eight keywords and you drop them into our search
engine and see what comes up.
It gets bad because the other thing we did, which
was kind of a one of those things you go, that's really
cool. So what do you mean you got 900 videos? And there's gonna be a
(41:01):
lot more, by the way. I'm holding a whole pile back. It's just there's only
so much like, we had to finish. Right? It it was just
I I got a million stories for you on why this thing probably shouldn't
have finished, but it just finished beautifully. Like, when it when I
finally, fell into a state of peace, I I can't
even explain what that means. But,
(41:24):
the the the one thing I know for sure is we had 900 videos.
What if you come to identify, say,
30 or 40 or 50 that really match your
business? It it it's just how your business
thinks about negotiation. Well, with, SalesDash
Gorilla, you can bookmark them. So when you go on to the
(41:47):
site, you're looking at your, curated set
of negotiation videos. And by the way, with the negotiation
videos, I this this is something I I wouldn't do in my books,
but because I have the video and I can accomplish
so much more, I tell you
I I share with you. I don't tell you anything. I share with you all
(42:09):
of the things that you should be considering. And by the way, corner cases that
you've never dreamed of. So the only way that you understand what these corner
cases is, that it it it you have to have
been in business as long as Pete or
Pat. And you and I are older than dirt,
so we've seen just about every crazy thing you can see in
(42:31):
a negotiation. What I've done though is I've
captured it. And as Rick Denley, said,
I don't know if Rick's, you know, joining us today or not, but he said
he called me up one day and he says, you know, Pat, he says, I
don't know if you realize what you're doing or not, but this may be the
largest brain sales download I've ever seen in my
(42:51):
life. Mhmm. It's exactly what it is.
Yeah. It's really I was talking to a gentleman in The UK.
So to launch Gorilla, so far, we've got, I've been invited
onto five podcasts. And I did a a workup
with one of the podcasters, and he said, do you know what you built?
I said, I don't know. What do you think I built? He says, Pat,
(43:15):
you've built an ark. That's what you
built. The other part of it is, is
that, you know, in the books I would never do this, but I actually sat
down and thought, alright, so if you're going to share with people
what they need to do, you should also take the time
to share with them what happens if they leave steps out.
(43:39):
Yeah. You see, because the customer will almost
never enter your sales process where you want them
to. Right? So
there are times when you're gonna have to backfill the
information in order to be able to
make the best decision on a recommendation for
(44:01):
a customer. Like, I I see people these days, I don't sell
anymore. I just help customers make great
buying decisions that are so derisked that when they take
it home with their family, their family just sort of said, well, jeez, I mean,
we don't buy this wheel. Kinda silly. Now on the corporate side, you could take
that same thing that same proposal home and present it to your wife or
(44:23):
your husband and then say, I I just wanna know if you understand what it
is that I'm looking at. And if they do and if they can articulate it
very clearly, then you're ready to go sell that internally because what you
gotta remember about a buying team is you present to
them, some of us call it, sell it,
and then they have to go internally and sell
(44:45):
your idea up to the executive team, and the
idea must be so derisked that
not implementing the idea may end up being costly for
that company. So
here's something you know, when you started talking about derisking the sale,
what automatically went through my head
(45:08):
is us in the mattress industry, we often have comfort trials.
We have a ninety to a hundred and twenty eight, twenty night,
comfort trial. And, you know,
just having that comfort trial as
an owner does not mean that you
have properly trained your salesperson how
(45:31):
to position it, how to use it, when to
even talk about it, if at all,
and how to be successful with it.
And I think that SalesGorilla does
that. It teaches,
you exactly how to position some of these,
(45:55):
these policies that you actually have in your store. They're great
tools. You have these great hammers
and, saws, but you're not sharpening
them and you're not keeping them in the proper condition and you're not
teaching your people exactly how to use them and how to use them
safely. And SalesGorilla helps you to do
(46:17):
that. Yeah. Because as a matter of
fact, I think I've coined a
new phrase. About two years ago, I
noticed that buyers were taking two or three
negotiation strategies and combining them.
I remember the first time I said, I said, damn, that looks like strategy
(46:40):
stacking to me. And so when you
go into Gorilla and you drop in your keywords or whatever is you
put into our search engine, you wanna take about five
of those videos, maybe six, that address your problem
and stack them all and stack the
solutions based on efficacy,
(47:03):
risk, importance, and dollar value to your
company. And that's when you can go back to the customer and
say, all right, so,
we didn't quite close the first time. Here is the new
idea. Here is the new solution. And by the way, it doesn't always have to
be about money. That's that's what's
(47:26):
so important. And as far as fittings go, like, beat up.
You know, I've got a little bit of a bad back. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Their statement of the year.
Alright. So I look like a victim. But,
you know, the thing is, you know, I I can try and explain that to
somebody, but, they might not
(47:49):
get, and they might put me on a mattress that is a little softer
than what I need. I need to sleep on a rock,
that with a pillow top on it. That's when I'm that's when I'm gonna sleep
well. And so sending me home with a mattress
that is slightly softer than I need might have been a great
attention, but might cost you the sale.
(48:15):
Yeah. It's like I it's like one in your book, I
nearly passed out. When I read, a pillow is a bed for your head.
I nearly passed out because it's
true. I I thought, oh my god. And and, of course,
that was one of your, co conspirators. Yeah. Chris Taney.
(48:36):
Yeah. I mean, he just drilled it. I mean, I I'm still laughing
about that because it it to me, it's just it it's it's hysterically
true. You know? So, again, when you are a gorilla, you know, here's
here's the thing you gotta remember. There's there's over
900 ideas in there, but they're only relevant to
your negotiation, and every negotiation will be
(48:58):
different. I don't care if you're dealing with the same customer
over and over again. These the everything
everything changes because everything is moving forward. In other
words, we don't make money in the past. We only make money
in the present and in the future. So what you did last
year may not be relevant this year.
(49:21):
You know, we we we have to have that much elasticity
in in our thinking. And, you know, it's like I say to people, you
know, anticipate needs and, you know,
proceed with deeds. That's what you got. That's when
everybody wins, and that's that's so, like, a deal should be
something when when someone walks away from them, they go, ah,
(49:44):
the folks at home are gonna love this. Not Woah. Wow.
That's a great question. Steve Steve Hauck
says, Patrick, can you hit on the importance of lease negotiations?
Now that this is some hardcore out and out negotiations
now. Yeah. And and I you know,
there's a lot of commercial space available right now.
(50:08):
You know? So we're gonna see a lot of turnover.
Retail has been it's been a harsh place to
be unless you're a destination store. Luckily, Steve, you are a
destination store. But when you get talking about
leases, you're really talking about
your commitment to that community
(50:32):
because retail is really about a community. And, you
know, I learned a really interesting lesson when I
did the, store grand openings for a company called Factory Carpinter
in Canada. And out in Vancouver,
the city was building so fast that that what they had to do was they
had to just, you know, get involved with as many leases as they
(50:55):
could as fast as they could. One of the things they didn't realize after I
finished my research and and took it into them was they weren't anywhere
near their customer. So if your customer is evolving
around your store, in other words, they keep adding in new
developments, you you really wanna
lock that lease down. On the other hand, if your market is
(51:16):
moving away from your store, you're gonna have to spend
more money to get the people to the store, and
often they will have to travel past your competitor in
order to get to your store. And then you gotta
figure out things like, you know,
are there any channels that, you know, you know, when you
(51:39):
first lease the store that weren't a part of the deal,
now that you've been in the store for, I don't know, a few
years, could we add those channels to the lease and just
sort of say, I've been here this long. I've committed. Now what are you
willing to commit? Where is the win for me?
And the win for the other side is gonna be the length of the
(52:03):
lease and any conditions that you put on it.
And by the way, Steve, if you can't, you
wanna be the guy that writes the the last addendums in that
contract. Always control the contract.
That's a great little tidbit there. Write the last addendum.
(52:23):
Oh, yeah. For sure. You see, here's the thing with negotiations.
We never really say a % of everything
that it happens to get a deal across the finish line. We
generally talk about, you know, 85% of the
truth. Well, there's 15% of the of of the
detail left out there. So once,
(52:45):
you know, you get close to signing, you've got to make sure that you're getting
all of your special asks in there. And,
you know, it could be something like, alright. So
if if the heating goes out in this place and we have
to modernize, what's the mechanism that allows us to
modernize? I understand that I'm
(53:08):
responsible for everything that enhances the
store, but when it comes to heat and the roof and the
foundation of the store, that's over to
you. So
you you you gotta figure all those things out.
That's that's huge, Pat.
(53:31):
I I can't tell you how many times somebody had a leaky
roof, and they go into the actual lease
agreement, and they see that I'm
responsible for all repairs. I didn't
negotiate that part of it out, and now I'm
screwed. Or it's the middle of the summer. It's
(53:52):
August. It's 80 plus degrees,
and my air conditioning is out. And I'm responsible
for replacing the air conditioner. So, yeah,
sort all of that out, the heat, the air, the
roof, the foundation. Make sure that you're not
on the hook for those repairs that indeed the landlord
(54:14):
is because, boy, I I've seen
it happen, Patrick, numerous
times. Look at look at the exterior of the store. Then you might say,
well, you know, I'm responsible for the exterior of
the store. Fair enough. Signage, stuff like that. But what happens if the parking
lot starts to fall apart? The asphalt is it
(54:37):
it it it just doesn't it's not holding up anymore,
and it starts to crumble. What's in your
lease to cover that? Because I can tell you when customers
go up to a store and the asphalt is all
messy, in their minds, the inside
of that store is not perfect because the outside is
(54:59):
not perfect. %.
Unfortunately, stores are judged
by, the cover. And The store
is the brand. If the if the store doesn't
look the part because
of something the landlord has done or hasn't
(55:22):
done, it's a reflection on you and your business.
And fortunately or unfortunately, you're
gonna benefit from it or you're going
to suffer from from it. So
heat, roof, AC, foundation, make sure it's
covered under the lease. Plumbing. I might add
(55:44):
this. Electrical. Never fall in love with a
store. Yeah. Just don't fall in love with and and if you
do, don't tell anybody, anybody.
And, surely, do not let that landlord
know that you're somewhat infatuated with
the store because they will just absolutely put
(56:07):
it to you. One last thing, Steve. The store doesn't
know you're alive.
It doesn't care about you.
That's so important. I and I think that, you
know, when people build a certain amount of history in
(56:27):
a location And, you know, they they just
start to think, well, jeez, I could never
rebuild from the bottom up and still maintain
the, you know, the importance of the brand.
I think you're missing the notion that your market may have
moved, and you have to move with your market. They're not gonna come to you.
(56:50):
You have to go to them, or you have to make it so convenient for
them to come to you. It has to be so powerful. In other
words, you have to have a force multiplier that says, if I
don't go to Steve's store, I'm wasting my time in another retailer
store.
(57:10):
Colton Nichols, my buddy at Baba's,
currently in Louisville, Kentucky, hoping
hopping on to say hello. Missed both the Zoom and this. We'll
rewatch. Well, Colton, you're live right
now, brother. You got a question for my friend, Patrick
(57:30):
Tinni, on negotiations?
Andrew Burt says, good afternoon, fellas. Hope you are both doing
well. Pat, that went so fast. That is
not fair. How how long are we into this?
Dude, we got two minutes left.
(57:50):
That's funny. You know what? This happens to us every
single time, Pete. Every time, dude. Every time.
Pat, I just I wanna say for the whole world to hear
this. I absolutely treasure you. I
love you. You have made an incredible difference
in my career, and just knowing you makes
(58:13):
me a better person. So, Pat, thank you for everything
you have done and you continue to do. And
I'm super excited about SalesGorilla. Over
900 videos. So, Pray tell, how
does my audience who's curious about
improving their sales, improving their negotiations,
(58:35):
how do they how do they take a peek at SalesGorilla
and get involved with it? Yeah. So, it takes a little while for a
URL to really sync into the search engines, but it but it has
happened. And so the cool thing is that you can go up and look at
the exterior of the site, and there's gonna be about 11 videos up there that
you can look at right away. And that's gonna give you a sense. Honest to
(58:56):
god, friends, this site is different from what
it is that you've seen in the past relative to
the, the level of detail that we've
gone into to make this experience just so peaceful
and powerful for you. And by the way, you're saying, well,
what's your super differentiator on, you know, x,
(59:19):
y, and z? I started to think about, alright. So how
do I wanna impact people, and how do I want to approach people,
and and how do I want to help people? Because at the end of the
day, if you're not helping, a an
industry, you're not doing anything but filling space.
So from a price point perspective, I know
(59:41):
people don't like to talk about price, but I'm gonna hear, I sat down and
I said, what what would freak people out? And I
said, we're gonna bill this at at 99¢ a
day US or the price of a very cheap cup of
coffee. It's a year membership,
but here's the thing. You save one
(01:00:02):
$348 deal plus tax, and
you're free rolling on the site for the rest of the year. And I can
tell you, no two negotiations are the same. So it's not like you can
go up there for, like, a couple of days and just sort of say, oh,
I got it. I'm sorry. And by the way, the wheels always
come off the buggy late on Saturday, late
(01:00:23):
on Friday, on the weekends when you have to make your
nut. And there is nothing
worse than watching a deal
shrivel in the heat. You wanna you you wanna bring
that deal home, and you wanna do it in a way where,
if you're a sales rep, you you take it in your boss and you say,
(01:00:44):
you know what, boss? I use Gorilla. And by the way,
family came in. They wanted to outfit their house. This one will
help us get there. And if I didn't have access to Grillo, we we
might not have been able to do it. So it's
twenty four hour a day access to the videos Yep.
For a year, and how much does that cost?
(01:01:06):
$3.03 $3.48 US. Everything's
denominated in US dollars, plus tax. That's it.
Wow. For bridging. Yeah. No. It's it's, you know, it it's
so silly. So back to derisking. I thought, you know, I
can't charge much higher for the site. Right? I
mean, we're talking almost eighty hour well, eight over eighty
(01:01:28):
hours of content. That's what it's gonna be. And by the time I finish, it'll
be around a hundred. Might be a 20. I don't know. But right now, you
go up there and there's eighty hours of content. I mean, that
is the equivalent to 40 full length movies.
Wow. And then fragment it down into minutes.
(01:01:48):
Yeah. I mean, I talk about everything from, how
to get ready to what you do when a deal
doesn't close the way you want it to. And let's say let's
say, say let me just leave you with this one because it's kinda funny, and
I don't think enough people do it. So let's say a deal doesn't close.
And so the customer's walking in the store and you just at the very last
(01:02:10):
minute, you you walk up and you say, I understand we're not gonna do business
today. And the person goes, yep. Just didn't find what I was looking for. Understand
that. But if we could've done a deal, what would it have
looked like in your mind?
What would that deal have felt like? What it what would
it have smelled like? And and and how happy would you have been
(01:02:32):
at what price point? And they'll explain it to
you. Because they may go to the next door where they actually
plan to buy, they've been using it as a warm up, and they get in
there, and the people are not as kind as you and caring.
You see, it's the after sale. The after sale is the
beginning of the next sale. Sales
(01:02:55):
in any business, especially retail, are generational.
Yep. You got you you you like, you just gotta get that.
You wanna sell to a family, not to a person.
Yeah.
I know. This could go on for days. Patrick,
(01:03:18):
thank you so much, my friend. Anyone that wants to get a
hold of you, how do they do it? Well, first of all, you you
plug my name and sales author into any search engine, and,
you know, it just it was, like, 13 pages long. And my phone number
is the easiest one in the world to find. And,
LinkedIn and, you know, if you really got a tough one,
(01:03:42):
call, you know, fifteen minutes at my
cost. Awesome. Yeah.
Patrick, thank you. Have a great weekend. Oh,
thank you for the opportunity. You know, Pete, I I think a lot
of people think they know you, and I'm
sure there's a lot of great stories, Pete Primo stories.
(01:04:05):
But I'll tell you, when it comes to sales and negotiation, doing
business, and doing the right
thing when nobody's looking, that's Pete Primo.
Thank you, Patrick. You are too kind. Thank you for
being with us today, and thank you for creating Sales
Gorilla. You betcha. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend.
(01:04:27):
Everybody go out there and sell a million. Thanks.
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