May 28, 2025 • 30 mins
In the latest episode of The Water Trough, I chat with Bob Musial about the power of laughter in strategic business development. Learn how humor enhances credibility and engagement. Tune in for a great discussion! #StrategicGrowth #BusinessTalks #Podcast
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(00:10):
Welcome to the Water Troughwhere we can't make you drink,
but we will make you think.
My name is Ed Drozda, The SmallBusiness Doctor, and I'm really
excited you chose to join mehere as we discuss topics that
are important for small businessfolks just like you.
If you're looking for ideas,inspiration, and possibility,
you've come to the right place.
Join us as we take steps to helpyou create the healthy business
that you've always wanted.
(00:45):
Hello folks, this is Ed Drozda,The Small Business Doctor, and I
wanna welcome you back to theWater Trough where today I am
joined by Bob Musial, who is theprincipal of StreetSmart
Business DevelopmentIncorporated.
Now I'm gonna give you adifferent sort of an intro here,
and I'm gonna ask you aquestion.
You know, when you had run intosomeone who talks but doesn't
(01:06):
listen?
They do a really, really, reallybad self-serving presentation.
They never follow up with you ontime, and basically they're just
annoying.
Well, enter Bob Musial.
Bob is going to help, does helpbusiness leaders enhance their
strategic business developmentand revenue generation by
addressing these issues.
(01:28):
And he tries to have a littlefun in the process too.
And I gotta tell you something,Bob is hilarious.
He sends out these really,really cool cartoons every time
he talks to you.
Well, don't worry, you don'thave to get overwhelmed.
They're really cool cartoons.
Okay?
He just makes it really excitingand fun.
And he's also available toexplain further how it all works
(01:50):
on a project basis.
But today I have the goodfortune of being joined by my
friend Bob Musial, who's gonnajust have a great time with us
and some great discussion.
Bob, welcome.
Mr.
Ed this has been in the worksfor a while and I'm thankful for
finally being able to have theopportunity to do this with you
(02:10):
'cause we are friendly and, i'mlooking forward to it.
Thank you sir.
This is really a greatopportunity for me and I'm not
gonna, in any way, shape or formdismiss the importance of the
humor that you bring to thetable.
In fact, I'd like to start rightthere.
Sure.
You value humor as most of usdo, but tell me what got you
(02:33):
started on this?
You've been at this for 50 someodd years.
What the heck?
Where'd the humor start?
Well, I'd like to think I'mfunny.
My wife would probably disagreewith that, but I think life's
too short.
And my favorite three words, Ed,are you gotta laugh, and I found
that other people react the sameway.
Probably 25 or 30 years ago, Iworked with a company that
(02:55):
started to send out five byseven postcards with a cartoon
in the front that captured theessence of a situation that a
prospect would be able to relateto.
On the flip side, it had theanswer and it would say(I was a
VP of whatever at the time)contact Bob Musial if you wanna
(03:16):
know more.
They were great, and I thinkmaybe you and I have talked
about them in the past a littlebit, but these were sent out to
people.
People once they got them wouldcall me back and say, do you
have other ones that you couldsend me?
I was over in Europe at onepoint, and my host was
(03:36):
introducing me to hiscolleagues.
We walked into a big room withabout five or six people in it,
and they were all at theirworkstations, and my host
started out by saying this isBob Musial.
Immediately this woman got upand silenced him, and she said
Bob, he's the one who sent methese things and she pointed
over to the cartoons that shehad in her bulletin board.
(03:57):
I didn't have to say anything.
She sold me, and I've been usingthem for a long time.
I'm thinking about maybe sendingpostcards out again because
while it's old school, it willbe new school to some people
now, and we're all inundatedwith internet and spam and
texting and everything and toget something tactile is a
(04:20):
little different.
I use the cartoons to act as amemory anchor basically, it will
typically reflect a relevantsituation that the target
audience will be able to relate.
And then like the woman whosaid, Bob's the one who sent me
these, they remember who sentit.
When I use them in emailoutreach efforts, they set the
stage and then people willusually read a short email and
(04:44):
know who I am.
When I use them in articles itstops people, it takes like four
seconds to get it and like, oh,I get it.
They remember, then they'redriven to read the rest of the
article and they remember whowrote it.
It's just a great memory anchorand that's a long answer to your
question, but that's how I gotstarted.
And there's also a qualifier forme.
(05:06):
If somebody laughs, I'm gonnaget along well with them.
If they don't laugh, I don'twanna work with them anyhow, so
it's a great qualifier.
I think that last point isreally, really important.
If they laugh mm-hmm, we'regonna get along.
Yeah.
If they don't laugh, I don'twanna work with them.
(05:26):
Yeah.
That brings us to a reallyimportant point.
We can be, those of us inbusiness can be selective about
with whom we work.
Right?
Right.
And using a criteria criterionin this case, such as are we
able to engage in humor is areally good one, because what
(05:49):
I'm hearing you say that, thatopens you up to engagement.
I'm sensing that you think thatthey're saying they also are
open to engagement as a resultof their response.
Tell me more about this.
Yeah.
They are open to it more and inmy opinion, Ed, it takes away
(06:11):
the impression that people mighthave a, trying to sell them
something.
I'm not trying to do that.
I'm trying to convince them tobuy something, but I'm doing
that based on three corecommunication categories that I
believe impact that.
It's credibility and it's trust,and its value and the humor
(06:37):
gives me the opportunity toprove that I can do those
things, that I have studied,what their issues are.
I understand what problems theyface because I incorporate them
into the cartoons.
Then when I have arecommendation for them, they
trust what I'm telling them,because I invested time already
(06:57):
in them and that whatever I'mrecommending will provide some
type of value, real value, ROIvalue to them, and when we do
that on an ongoing basis, theend result is revenue for both
of us.
It's win, win, win, you know.
I think that's fantastic.
(07:18):
I often say that if my clientswin, I win.
And you're, telling us the samething.
Correct.
But you're putting it upfront inan atmosphere that really
encourages engagement.
And I love the idea that you arealso selective by that token,
(07:39):
'cause you know that if peoplecan't engage in that humor, that
it will be a barrier to you,perhaps, doing your best job.
Now, I'm not saying you would doa bad job.
Maybe I should step back a bit.
No, you're good.
You that I'm gonna interruptyou.
No, that's exactly right.
Okay.
I don't wanna work with them.
I said before, life's too short.
(08:01):
No, it's not worth it.
And I'm not probably going toconvince them of anything to buy
from me anyhow, so.
Mm-hmm.
No, I just stopped.
I mean, I'm not ignorant aboutit.
You know, I just okay.
Thanks a lot, have a nice day.
Well, sure, of course you are.
If you're gonna take thatapproach in the first place, you
are going to be mindful of theirresponse, of their feelings and
(08:23):
sentiment.
Absolutely.
Yes.
You know, the idea of buyingfrom and selling to, what a
powerful distinction that is.
I learned that a long time ago.
I was fortunate enough to workfor a very exclusive sales
program, a consultative salesprogram that focused on soft
skills and hard skills, that wasdeveloped by a division of Xerox
(08:46):
called Xerox Computer Services.
Mm-hmm.
I was fortunate enough to gothrough this program.
Some of my colleagues who workedthere went on to create solution
selling and I mean this isreally a good program.
I certainly appreciated it, andI learned a lot, a thousand
years ago.
The things that I learned thenI've been using ever since.
(09:08):
How to qualify somebody, how tointeract with them, how to get
them to nod their head andimportantly how to shut up and
listen.
Mm-hmm.
Because if you're not listeningyou're not getting anything out
of it and neither are they.
I learned it a long time ago.
Right.
And I was appreciative.
I still am.
I still stay in touch with someof the people from 30 years ago
(09:31):
that I work with.
I had to turn my eyes up in myhead to see how long ago it was.
It was a long time ago, and itwas great.
It was software as a servicebefore it was known as that.
I sold software in the mid toearly seventies.
Nobody knew what software was,let alone hardware so it was a
great experience.
It sounds like your upbringing,your education in the sales
(09:55):
process was soft skills driven.
Yeah, absolutely.
And to be humorous is a softskill too, I suppose.
Yes, I think so.
Yeah, it's a good form ofcommunication.
I think generally speaking,people are endowed with a sense
of humor.
Some of them might bury it alittle bit, but for the most
part, like I said, if somebody'sscanning, they're inundated with
(10:16):
all the trivial stuff, the zoommeetings and blah, blah, blah,
during the course of the day,this stops them and it arrests
them and grabs their attentionright away and that they smile.
I'm working with a client rightnow, or I have been for the,
well for years actually and Iconvinced him to finally include
(10:37):
a quote in one of his openingsto his colleagues and to
prospects as well.
And the quote went like this, itsaid, airline pilot to
passengers.
I have bad news and I have goodnews.
The bad news is we're hopelesslylost.
(10:58):
The good news is we're makinggreat time.
So he just, they did what youjust did.
They broke out laughing'causethat defined their situation
that they're running everywhere.
They don't know what the heck isgoing on, but they're making
great time.
So he used it and he said it wasgreat.
He had their attention rightaway.
It took seconds.
(11:19):
I've been in those businesseswith a former boss who got up,
we had a good opportunity to getin front of a pharmaceutical
company.
The decision makers, I thinkthere were 15 people in the
room, he got up with hisPowerPoint immediately launched
into talking about how great hewas, and I did this, and I said
that, and I'm like sitting thereshaking my head and the decision
makers said, pardon me.
(11:40):
My staff and I have to go toanother meeting.
Could you just answer thesethree questions for me?
He said, you know what?
I'm going to get them, but Iwant to go through the rest of
the slides first.
There were 98 of them, 98.
Now, what do you think happenedwith the decision maker after
she heard that?
(12:02):
She got up with her, colleaguesand left.
As opposed to the guy telling usa quickie about good news, bad
news, we're hopelessly lost.
Right?
By doing that, he set the stagefor people to be receptive, to
what he was saying.
The laughter just brings downbarriers.
In a good way.
It's very disarming and, yes,it's in a very positive way
(12:24):
because I think when faced withsomething funny, it's very
difficult to, you know how weshoot the messenger because he
or she said whatever, right?
Yes.
Yes.
How can you say something nastyto the messenger who has a funny
thing to say.
And is relevant.
(12:45):
And it gets to what thesituation is.
All those people in that room,when they hear the punchline
about, but we're making goodtime, they got it.
They were nodding their headsand said, okay, tell me how
we're gonna fix this now.
You know?
And that's what it's all about.
Convincing somebody to buy,because you understand what
their situation is.
(13:07):
It's not that complicated.
But very rarely people do it,and it doesn't have to be humor.
I mean, Will Rogers quotes, Iused to do billboards on
LinkedIn occasionally, a lot ofdifferent people.
Bruce Springsteen, I mean, tonsof people.
And you can use those things inpresentations And smart people I
think do that and I'm surethey're successful doing it.
(13:31):
We can relate to things, we'veheard them before in some.
Shape or form, correct?
Not to be self-serving, but Ithink of The Water Trough.
We can't make you drink, thehorse to water.
Yes.
Can make you think we can't makeyou drink.
Exactly.
It's designed to capture thesomewhere, somehow I heard that.
What was that all about?
(13:51):
Oh, yeah.
And right then and there, yourfocus is retargeted.
Correct.
It's brought back to the placethat you know, the person who's
presenting, speaking, who'sshowing you something or what
have you.
I think that really is vital.
And you're right, you point outit doesn't have to be humorous
per se.
No.
But the humor adds that nextlayer to it that really, really
(14:14):
attracts, and you, your humor isalways targeted to that
particular episode.
However many conversations we'vehad, every last one is followed
up with a nice to to chat withyou, Ed, and then a cartoon, a
personalized cartoon.
And it relates to me and you andwhat we talked about.
(14:38):
Even if we talked about much ofnothing.
They usually have captions asyou know.
Yes.
And I will endeavor to includeyour name in the caption.
I have to do every one of thoseindividually.
It's not a program that does it.
Right.
And does it take a lot of timeto do that?
(14:59):
Yes,'cause there's usually morethan one person that responds to
me.
But do I think it's worth it?
Sure.
I never had the opportunity todo what we're doing right now.
I'm sure it's been a door openerfor you throughout time.
Mm.
And I can say as being on thereceiving end, it certainly has
(15:21):
been worth it, and I'm verygrateful for it.
As am I.
That's exactly what we'retalking about.
Yeah.
That's the cool stuff.
Yeah.
And we're talking about one ofthe most fundamental things here
in business, and that is ofcourse, relationships, right?
Yeah.
Yes.
How do we work together if wedon't have a sense of each
(15:42):
other?
I'm gonna share something withyou.
Another person who was thinkingabout working with me at one
point, and what he did was in aconversation, he said I just
want sales and I want them fast.
And I said, okay, well all youhave to do is remember these six
words, and I could see he washolding the phone up to his ear
(16:04):
and I could visualize gettingready to write down these six
words.
you're ready to go?
Yeah.
Okay.
I said, here's the six words.
Do you want fries with that?
And he said, what are youtalking?
I said you're in a B2Benvironment.
That's the only way you aregonna get somebody who's coming
to you without being solicitedfor anything, who has money, who
(16:25):
wants to buy something from you,and all you have to do is give
it to them.
That's not how it works.
And to your point, Ed, it'songoing relationships that get
developed where you dive deeplyinto the relationship and people
will trust and find you crediblethat you have the value for
(16:45):
them.
Obviously, I didn't work withhim again.
Well he's coming from adifferent place.
Yes.
Yeah.
It really isn't fast.
It's time consuming, and theones that don't take as much
time usually don't last a longamount of time either, you know.
Isn't that what we're lookingfor?
Sustainability?
I wanna treat people like I liketo be treated.
(17:06):
It's not that difficult.
No, it's not rocket science.
No, no.
And some, people will say areyou a thought leader?
No, I'm a thought provoker, andI told you in an article I've
been referred to as a businessdevelopment whisperer, and I
take that as a huge compliment.
You see, I'm writing downsomething here.
(17:28):
Okay?
Hmm.
Okay.
Provoker.
Oh, the whisperer, of course.
But the thought provoker versusthought, oh my gosh.
Now you've given me a topic fora future podcast.
A thought provoker rather than athought leader.
Wow.
Because you're the one who hasto do it.
(17:49):
You know, the thought leaderisn't gonna do it for you.
You have to do it.
Whatever it is, you have to doit.
And I help people to do that.
I try to.
How does that play out whenyou're helping people to become
the thought provokers?
What are you doing here?
Well, I get business from it alot of times, and that's not my
(18:10):
intent to do it.
Mm-hmm.
I'm an old Boy Scout.
I try to help people whenever Ican.
Sometimes I spend too much timedoing it.
Without anything in return.
I don't expect anything inreturn, but sometimes I spend
too much time being a nice, niceguy, I guess.
But reciprocity has its way ofcoming around somehow, I think.
(18:35):
That's not why I do it, but itjust seems to happen that way.
That's all.
I just try to help peoplewhenever and however I can, and
a lot of times I've ended upworking for some of those same
people for 20 years.
Because your intention is morein depth.
As you said, it is not aboutselling to, it's about buying
from, and buying from is aninvestment.
(18:56):
Selling to is just simply,you're one of many.
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Correct.
Mm-hmm.
I totally appreciate that.
I feel the very same way.
When I think of selling, atlarge, I think of the used car
salesman or the used car salesconcept.
Long ago, I realized there's noway on God's green earth I will
(19:17):
ever, ever, ever fall into thatposition.
Mm-hmm.
To the extent where I have foundmyself saying, I don't sell, I
can't sell, I don't like tosell.
Maybe I've taken it to theextreme, but I Oh, but I, like
you, am on the opposite sidewhere it's an engagement
process.
Almost like a courtship.
(19:37):
Well, you're right.
Building and earning that trust.
Yep.
And then when that trust isestablished, yeah.
Now we can sign that agreement.
Now we can go forward because wehave that.
I realize too, and I want yourthoughts on this, it may not
work in every situation.
Obviously there's some where ourapproach does not work.
Right, and that's okay with me.
(19:58):
Mm-hmm.
It's sort of like the humorthing.
If my approach of trying tobuild a relationship based on,
providing you with credibility,trust, and value doesn't work,
then I'm not gonna kill myselfto try to make it work.
I can't force that.
As an example of that, my wifeand I just had to replace all
(20:20):
the windows in our house.
It's funny that you brought thattopic up.
The salesperson came over.
This was a salesperson, mm-hmm,complete with a folio of here's
all the windows we have, and hetook measurements from outside
and pictures.
He was here three hours.
Mm-hmm.
And my wife kept kicking me.
We were standing on ourcountertop.
(20:42):
She kept kicking me in the side,get rid of this guy will ya?.
And then he went out and he wasclassic, he said look, I'll let
you and your wife, this is afterthree hours, talk about it.
I'm gonna go out on your porchand you talk about it.
And when you're ready to comeback in and sign something,
flick the porch lights on andoff, and we'll come back in.
She got angry with me.
(21:02):
Why are you doing this?
I said, I wanna watch what otherpeople do because I'm not like
that and it reinforces why I amnot like that, you know?
But it was just amazing.
He was like, yeah, flick theporch lights off and on when
you're ready to decide.
We obviously didn't go with him.
We went with a lower energylevel guy.
(21:23):
We paid a little bit more to gowith him than other competitors,
but he wasn't pushy and justannoying.
You gotta know your audience,and he didn't know me.
He did what he was trained todo.
I thought about contacting thatcompany and said, I wanna clue
you guys in on something here.
Eh, maybe I still will.
(21:45):
But they spent a lot of timetraining.
He's a huge company.
It's a very big company.
All their staff have beentrained to react like this, to
force a sale.
Right.
Right.
I will never do that.
This window business has theiridea of how things are done and
Mmm-hmm.
And you said they'll appeal tosome people.
(22:05):
Yeah.
Another point I'd like to touchbase on, you have a program
called The Business Evaluator.
I hope I got that right.
You do, and I do.
Yes.
Can you tell us a bit more aboutthat?
Sure.
I'd be happy to.
It condenses my gazillion words,years of business development
experience.
(22:26):
During that time, I found outthat most companies have four
things in common.
They communicate.
So it's communication,reinforcing and making brand
awareness and social media andemail outreach, that comes under
the umbrella of communication.
The second one is presentationsand proposals.
We all do them.
Some of them use templates and Iknow I've received proposals
(22:50):
from people that had the priorcompany's name in the proposal
'cause nobody proofread it.
And the same thing withpresentations like we talked
about earlier.
My boss was horrible.
The third thing is accountmanagement.
Once you get the business, whatdo you do to manage it and keep
it?
Do you follow up withconversations that you've had
(23:10):
with summaries?
Action items and things likethat.
Most people, don't I have found.
And the last thing is theprotection and expansion of your
revenue.
Are you satisfied with yourproposal versus your close rate?
How's your referral rate?
And here's something you wannathink about.
What about scope creep?
Mmm.
You signed something in acontract to do X amount of work
(23:33):
with somebody, for X amount ofdollars, you're gonna spend X
amount of time.
I can guarantee you it's usuallymore than X amount of time.
Well, that's scope creep.
What's the cost to your businessof doing that?
You're losing money.
So this tool, it acts as a GPSfor business development.
There's 20 questions all relatedto those four categories.
(23:54):
Five in each one.
People can rank themselves andtheir companies on how well they
deliver credibility, trust, andvalue in those categories.
Rank themselves, one being verypoor, five being excellent.
If they give themselves allfive, which I've never
experienced that yet with 20questions they'd get a hundred.
(24:18):
No.
So it's best to do it yourself,and I have people do it just
from themselves.
And then for what theirperception is, how they're
delivering credibility and trustand value in those four
categories to their clients, andto their prospects.
When the employees take it,that's an eye-opener.
Now the questions act asguidelines on how to improve
(24:41):
strengths and weaknesses, and ittakes maybe three, maybe five
minutes if you're a slow readerto complete it.
But it acts like I said, as aGPS for business development.
And the way to strengthen yourstrengths and improve on your
weaknesses, it's right there inthe questions.
You just have to do it.
(25:02):
Right.
I'm not gonna do it for you.
I'm not going to, but I can helpyou, if you would like to have
me help you, you can do ityourself.
That's another example of megiving things to people.
I'm like, here, use it.
But you have to do it.
And that's where the hard partcomes in.
You have to do it.
So you illuminate these thingsfor them through the evaluator.
(25:24):
Correct.
But they have the option then towork with you, sure, to address
things.
Yeah.
But your goal is at least tomake them aware of things that
they don't otherwise know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's exactly correct.
When I first developed it yearsago, mm-hmm.
I did a sampling of 30 peoplewho were in key upper
development, businessdevelopment positions, and, I
(25:44):
thought the scores would bepretty good'cause these were
successful people.
The average score was 62.5 on ascale of a hundred.
It was like the equivalent of aa D plus maybe, I don't know.
I don't know about you, but Icame home with the D plus
probably when I was in school,would've been in a lot of
trouble.
Then I waited three years and Ifigured that in those three
(26:05):
years with all the informationthat's out there on the internet
and people had access to it,that would definitely have an
impact on the score.
So I used mostly the samepeople, a couple new ones, maybe
a few more this time, and I wasright.
The internet did impact thescores.
They went from 62.5 to 60because there was so much
(26:27):
information out there to getback to our earlier discussion,
how people were just inundatedwith everything and it takes
away from communicating.
Yep.
So anyhow, I was thinking aboutdoing it again on a much larger
audience, but it takes a fairamount of time.
I still may do it, but maybenot.
It really takes a lot of timeand, I don't know if I wanna get
(26:50):
involved helping people thatmuch,'cause it's like I told
you, I will sometimes spend waytoo much time being a nice guy
and that costs me money to dothat.
Well, you know something though,and this is maybe a conversation
for another time, but it seemsto me that if you did take a
look at a larger audience.
There is a tremendousopportunity here to I hate to
(27:14):
use the word book, but there'stremendous opportunity to write
a book.
I'll leave it at that becausethere's so many different ways
to look at the ideas of thebook, but there's some stories
and lessons to be learned fromthis thing that are striking me,
square between the eye.
Well, me too.
Well, I guess that's, of courseit has to be, right?
Yeah.
No, I mean, I'm just a regularguy kept encountering all these
(27:37):
things and I never came acrossanything like nobody does it,
you know, they're aware of it.
Yeah.
But they're busy.
I hear you and it's, you gottaslow down once in a while and
just like, let me not be busyfor a minute or two?
For a minute or two.
So listen, Bob, our time hascome to an end.
They say that when you're havingfun time flies.
And so it has.
(27:58):
But before we wrap up, I waswondering if you have anything
that you'd like to leave uswith?
Uh, yeah, you gotta laugh.
That's how I started, that's howI'll end it.
If anybody wants to reach out tome, they can certainly do that,
and we can talk.
I'm not fully retired, I stillwork on projects.
I'll be happy to do that, ifanybody wants to reach out to
(28:20):
me.
I will certainly reciprocate.
I will always get back tosomebody, always.
So, I just think take the timeto do what's right for you.
That's all.
Sounds great.
I really appreciate this, Bob.
Me too.
Folks this is Ed Drozda, at TheWater Trough.
(28:41):
I am once again, very, verypleased to have been joined by
my friend Bob Musial ofStreetSmart Business
Development, and usually at theend of my podcast episodes I say
I'm wishing you a healthybusiness, but today I'm gonna
change that for Bob and I'mgoing to wish you a good laugh
(29:03):
in your business.
Welcome to the Water Troughwhere we can't make you drink,
but we will make you think.
My name is Ed Drozda, The SmallBusiness Doctor, and I'm really
excited you chose to join mehere as we discuss topics that
are important for small businessfolks just like you.
If you're looking for ideas,inspiration, and possibility,
you've come to the right place.
Join us as we take steps to helpyou create the healthy business
that you've always wanted.
(00:45):
Hello folks, this is Ed Drozda,The Small Business Doctor, and I
wanna welcome you back to theWater Trough where today I am
joined by Bob Musial, who is theprincipal of StreetSmart
Business DevelopmentIncorporated.
Now I'm gonna give you adifferent sort of an intro here,
and I'm gonna ask you aquestion.
You know, when you had run intosomeone who talks but doesn't
(01:06):
listen?
They do a really, really, reallybad self-serving presentation.
They never follow up with you ontime, and basically they're just
annoying.
Well, enter Bob Musial.
Bob is going to help, does helpbusiness leaders enhance their
strategic business developmentand revenue generation by
addressing these issues.
(01:28):
And he tries to have a littlefun in the process too.
And I gotta tell you something,Bob is hilarious.
He sends out these really,really cool cartoons every time
he talks to you.
Well, don't worry, you don'thave to get overwhelmed.
They're really cool cartoons.
Okay?
He just makes it really excitingand fun.
And he's also available toexplain further how it all works
(01:50):
on a project basis.
But today I have the goodfortune of being joined by my
friend Bob Musial, who's gonnajust have a great time with us
and some great discussion.
Bob, welcome.
Mr.
Ed this has been in the worksfor a while and I'm thankful for
finally being able to have theopportunity to do this with you
(02:10):
'cause we are friendly and, i'mlooking forward to it.
Thank you sir.
This is really a greatopportunity for me and I'm not
gonna, in any way, shape or formdismiss the importance of the
humor that you bring to thetable.
In fact, I'd like to start rightthere.
Sure.
You value humor as most of usdo, but tell me what got you
(02:33):
started on this?
You've been at this for 50 someodd years.
What the heck?
Where'd the humor start?
Well, I'd like to think I'mfunny.
My wife would probably disagreewith that, but I think life's
too short.
And my favorite three words, Ed,are you gotta laugh, and I found
that other people react the sameway.
Probably 25 or 30 years ago, Iworked with a company that
(02:55):
started to send out five byseven postcards with a cartoon
in the front that captured theessence of a situation that a
prospect would be able to relateto.
On the flip side, it had theanswer and it would say(I was a
VP of whatever at the time)contact Bob Musial if you wanna
(03:16):
know more.
They were great, and I thinkmaybe you and I have talked
about them in the past a littlebit, but these were sent out to
people.
People once they got them wouldcall me back and say, do you
have other ones that you couldsend me?
I was over in Europe at onepoint, and my host was
(03:36):
introducing me to hiscolleagues.
We walked into a big room withabout five or six people in it,
and they were all at theirworkstations, and my host
started out by saying this isBob Musial.
Immediately this woman got upand silenced him, and she said
Bob, he's the one who sent methese things and she pointed
over to the cartoons that shehad in her bulletin board.
(03:57):
I didn't have to say anything.
She sold me, and I've been usingthem for a long time.
I'm thinking about maybe sendingpostcards out again because
while it's old school, it willbe new school to some people
now, and we're all inundatedwith internet and spam and
texting and everything and toget something tactile is a
(04:20):
little different.
I use the cartoons to act as amemory anchor basically, it will
typically reflect a relevantsituation that the target
audience will be able to relate.
And then like the woman whosaid, Bob's the one who sent me
these, they remember who sentit.
When I use them in emailoutreach efforts, they set the
stage and then people willusually read a short email and
(04:44):
know who I am.
When I use them in articles itstops people, it takes like four
seconds to get it and like, oh,I get it.
They remember, then they'redriven to read the rest of the
article and they remember whowrote it.
It's just a great memory anchorand that's a long answer to your
question, but that's how I gotstarted.
And there's also a qualifier forme.
(05:06):
If somebody laughs, I'm gonnaget along well with them.
If they don't laugh, I don'twanna work with them anyhow, so
it's a great qualifier.
I think that last point isreally, really important.
If they laugh mm-hmm, we'regonna get along.
Yeah.
If they don't laugh, I don'twanna work with them.
(05:26):
Yeah.
That brings us to a reallyimportant point.
We can be, those of us inbusiness can be selective about
with whom we work.
Right?
Right.
And using a criteria criterionin this case, such as are we
able to engage in humor is areally good one, because what
(05:49):
I'm hearing you say that, thatopens you up to engagement.
I'm sensing that you think thatthey're saying they also are
open to engagement as a resultof their response.
Tell me more about this.
Yeah.
They are open to it more and inmy opinion, Ed, it takes away
(06:11):
the impression that people mighthave a, trying to sell them
something.
I'm not trying to do that.
I'm trying to convince them tobuy something, but I'm doing
that based on three corecommunication categories that I
believe impact that.
It's credibility and it's trust,and its value and the humor
(06:37):
gives me the opportunity toprove that I can do those
things, that I have studied,what their issues are.
I understand what problems theyface because I incorporate them
into the cartoons.
Then when I have arecommendation for them, they
trust what I'm telling them,because I invested time already
(06:57):
in them and that whatever I'mrecommending will provide some
type of value, real value, ROIvalue to them, and when we do
that on an ongoing basis, theend result is revenue for both
of us.
It's win, win, win, you know.
I think that's fantastic.
(07:18):
I often say that if my clientswin, I win.
And you're, telling us the samething.
Correct.
But you're putting it upfront inan atmosphere that really
encourages engagement.
And I love the idea that you arealso selective by that token,
(07:39):
'cause you know that if peoplecan't engage in that humor, that
it will be a barrier to you,perhaps, doing your best job.
Now, I'm not saying you would doa bad job.
Maybe I should step back a bit.
No, you're good.
You that I'm gonna interruptyou.
No, that's exactly right.
Okay.
I don't wanna work with them.
I said before, life's too short.
(08:01):
No, it's not worth it.
And I'm not probably going toconvince them of anything to buy
from me anyhow, so.
Mm-hmm.
No, I just stopped.
I mean, I'm not ignorant aboutit.
You know, I just okay.
Thanks a lot, have a nice day.
Well, sure, of course you are.
If you're gonna take thatapproach in the first place, you
are going to be mindful of theirresponse, of their feelings and
(08:23):
sentiment.
Absolutely.
Yes.
You know, the idea of buyingfrom and selling to, what a
powerful distinction that is.
I learned that a long time ago.
I was fortunate enough to workfor a very exclusive sales
program, a consultative salesprogram that focused on soft
skills and hard skills, that wasdeveloped by a division of Xerox
(08:46):
called Xerox Computer Services.
Mm-hmm.
I was fortunate enough to gothrough this program.
Some of my colleagues who workedthere went on to create solution
selling and I mean this isreally a good program.
I certainly appreciated it, andI learned a lot, a thousand
years ago.
The things that I learned thenI've been using ever since.
(09:08):
How to qualify somebody, how tointeract with them, how to get
them to nod their head andimportantly how to shut up and
listen.
Mm-hmm.
Because if you're not listeningyou're not getting anything out
of it and neither are they.
I learned it a long time ago.
Right.
And I was appreciative.
I still am.
I still stay in touch with someof the people from 30 years ago
(09:31):
that I work with.
I had to turn my eyes up in myhead to see how long ago it was.
It was a long time ago, and itwas great.
It was software as a servicebefore it was known as that.
I sold software in the mid toearly seventies.
Nobody knew what software was,let alone hardware so it was a
great experience.
It sounds like your upbringing,your education in the sales
(09:55):
process was soft skills driven.
Yeah, absolutely.
And to be humorous is a softskill too, I suppose.
Yes, I think so.
Yeah, it's a good form ofcommunication.
I think generally speaking,people are endowed with a sense
of humor.
Some of them might bury it alittle bit, but for the most
part, like I said, if somebody'sscanning, they're inundated with
(10:16):
all the trivial stuff, the zoommeetings and blah, blah, blah,
during the course of the day,this stops them and it arrests
them and grabs their attentionright away and that they smile.
I'm working with a client rightnow, or I have been for the,
well for years actually and Iconvinced him to finally include
(10:37):
a quote in one of his openingsto his colleagues and to
prospects as well.
And the quote went like this, itsaid, airline pilot to
passengers.
I have bad news and I have goodnews.
The bad news is we're hopelesslylost.
(10:58):
The good news is we're makinggreat time.
So he just, they did what youjust did.
They broke out laughing'causethat defined their situation
that they're running everywhere.
They don't know what the heck isgoing on, but they're making
great time.
So he used it and he said it wasgreat.
He had their attention rightaway.
It took seconds.
(11:19):
I've been in those businesseswith a former boss who got up,
we had a good opportunity to getin front of a pharmaceutical
company.
The decision makers, I thinkthere were 15 people in the
room, he got up with hisPowerPoint immediately launched
into talking about how great hewas, and I did this, and I said
that, and I'm like sitting thereshaking my head and the decision
makers said, pardon me.
(11:40):
My staff and I have to go toanother meeting.
Could you just answer thesethree questions for me?
He said, you know what?
I'm going to get them, but Iwant to go through the rest of
the slides first.
There were 98 of them, 98.
Now, what do you think happenedwith the decision maker after
she heard that?
(12:02):
She got up with her, colleaguesand left.
As opposed to the guy telling usa quickie about good news, bad
news, we're hopelessly lost.
Right?
By doing that, he set the stagefor people to be receptive, to
what he was saying.
The laughter just brings downbarriers.
In a good way.
It's very disarming and, yes,it's in a very positive way
(12:24):
because I think when faced withsomething funny, it's very
difficult to, you know how weshoot the messenger because he
or she said whatever, right?
Yes.
Yes.
How can you say something nastyto the messenger who has a funny
thing to say.
And is relevant.
(12:45):
And it gets to what thesituation is.
All those people in that room,when they hear the punchline
about, but we're making goodtime, they got it.
They were nodding their headsand said, okay, tell me how
we're gonna fix this now.
You know?
And that's what it's all about.
Convincing somebody to buy,because you understand what
their situation is.
(13:07):
It's not that complicated.
But very rarely people do it,and it doesn't have to be humor.
I mean, Will Rogers quotes, Iused to do billboards on
LinkedIn occasionally, a lot ofdifferent people.
Bruce Springsteen, I mean, tonsof people.
And you can use those things inpresentations And smart people I
think do that and I'm surethey're successful doing it.
(13:31):
We can relate to things, we'veheard them before in some.
Shape or form, correct?
Not to be self-serving, but Ithink of The Water Trough.
We can't make you drink, thehorse to water.
Yes.
Can make you think we can't makeyou drink.
Exactly.
It's designed to capture thesomewhere, somehow I heard that.
What was that all about?
(13:51):
Oh, yeah.
And right then and there, yourfocus is retargeted.
Correct.
It's brought back to the placethat you know, the person who's
presenting, speaking, who'sshowing you something or what
have you.
I think that really is vital.
And you're right, you point outit doesn't have to be humorous
per se.
No.
But the humor adds that nextlayer to it that really, really
(14:14):
attracts, and you, your humor isalways targeted to that
particular episode.
However many conversations we'vehad, every last one is followed
up with a nice to to chat withyou, Ed, and then a cartoon, a
personalized cartoon.
And it relates to me and you andwhat we talked about.
(14:38):
Even if we talked about much ofnothing.
They usually have captions asyou know.
Yes.
And I will endeavor to includeyour name in the caption.
I have to do every one of thoseindividually.
It's not a program that does it.
Right.
And does it take a lot of timeto do that?
(14:59):
Yes,'cause there's usually morethan one person that responds to
me.
But do I think it's worth it?
Sure.
I never had the opportunity todo what we're doing right now.
I'm sure it's been a door openerfor you throughout time.
Mm.
And I can say as being on thereceiving end, it certainly has
(15:21):
been worth it, and I'm verygrateful for it.
As am I.
That's exactly what we'retalking about.
Yeah.
That's the cool stuff.
Yeah.
And we're talking about one ofthe most fundamental things here
in business, and that is ofcourse, relationships, right?
Yeah.
Yes.
How do we work together if wedon't have a sense of each
(15:42):
other?
I'm gonna share something withyou.
Another person who was thinkingabout working with me at one
point, and what he did was in aconversation, he said I just
want sales and I want them fast.
And I said, okay, well all youhave to do is remember these six
words, and I could see he washolding the phone up to his ear
(16:04):
and I could visualize gettingready to write down these six
words.
you're ready to go?
Yeah.
Okay.
I said, here's the six words.
Do you want fries with that?
And he said, what are youtalking?
I said you're in a B2Benvironment.
That's the only way you aregonna get somebody who's coming
to you without being solicitedfor anything, who has money, who
(16:25):
wants to buy something from you,and all you have to do is give
it to them.
That's not how it works.
And to your point, Ed, it'songoing relationships that get
developed where you dive deeplyinto the relationship and people
will trust and find you crediblethat you have the value for
(16:45):
them.
Obviously, I didn't work withhim again.
Well he's coming from adifferent place.
Yes.
Yeah.
It really isn't fast.
It's time consuming, and theones that don't take as much
time usually don't last a longamount of time either, you know.
Isn't that what we're lookingfor?
Sustainability?
I wanna treat people like I liketo be treated.
(17:06):
It's not that difficult.
No, it's not rocket science.
No, no.
And some, people will say areyou a thought leader?
No, I'm a thought provoker, andI told you in an article I've
been referred to as a businessdevelopment whisperer, and I
take that as a huge compliment.
You see, I'm writing downsomething here.
(17:28):
Okay?
Hmm.
Okay.
Provoker.
Oh, the whisperer, of course.
But the thought provoker versusthought, oh my gosh.
Now you've given me a topic fora future podcast.
A thought provoker rather than athought leader.
Wow.
Because you're the one who hasto do it.
(17:49):
You know, the thought leaderisn't gonna do it for you.
You have to do it.
Whatever it is, you have to doit.
And I help people to do that.
I try to.
How does that play out whenyou're helping people to become
the thought provokers?
What are you doing here?
Well, I get business from it alot of times, and that's not my
(18:10):
intent to do it.
Mm-hmm.
I'm an old Boy Scout.
I try to help people whenever Ican.
Sometimes I spend too much timedoing it.
Without anything in return.
I don't expect anything inreturn, but sometimes I spend
too much time being a nice, niceguy, I guess.
But reciprocity has its way ofcoming around somehow, I think.
(18:35):
That's not why I do it, but itjust seems to happen that way.
That's all.
I just try to help peoplewhenever and however I can, and
a lot of times I've ended upworking for some of those same
people for 20 years.
Because your intention is morein depth.
As you said, it is not aboutselling to, it's about buying
from, and buying from is aninvestment.
(18:56):
Selling to is just simply,you're one of many.
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Correct.
Mm-hmm.
I totally appreciate that.
I feel the very same way.
When I think of selling, atlarge, I think of the used car
salesman or the used car salesconcept.
Long ago, I realized there's noway on God's green earth I will
(19:17):
ever, ever, ever fall into thatposition.
Mm-hmm.
To the extent where I have foundmyself saying, I don't sell, I
can't sell, I don't like tosell.
Maybe I've taken it to theextreme, but I Oh, but I, like
you, am on the opposite sidewhere it's an engagement
process.
Almost like a courtship.
(19:37):
Well, you're right.
Building and earning that trust.
Yep.
And then when that trust isestablished, yeah.
Now we can sign that agreement.
Now we can go forward because wehave that.
I realize too, and I want yourthoughts on this, it may not
work in every situation.
Obviously there's some where ourapproach does not work.
Right, and that's okay with me.
(19:58):
Mm-hmm.
It's sort of like the humorthing.
If my approach of trying tobuild a relationship based on,
providing you with credibility,trust, and value doesn't work,
then I'm not gonna kill myselfto try to make it work.
I can't force that.
As an example of that, my wifeand I just had to replace all
(20:20):
the windows in our house.
It's funny that you brought thattopic up.
The salesperson came over.
This was a salesperson, mm-hmm,complete with a folio of here's
all the windows we have, and hetook measurements from outside
and pictures.
He was here three hours.
Mm-hmm.
And my wife kept kicking me.
We were standing on ourcountertop.
(20:42):
She kept kicking me in the side,get rid of this guy will ya?.
And then he went out and he wasclassic, he said look, I'll let
you and your wife, this is afterthree hours, talk about it.
I'm gonna go out on your porchand you talk about it.
And when you're ready to comeback in and sign something,
flick the porch lights on andoff, and we'll come back in.
She got angry with me.
(21:02):
Why are you doing this?
I said, I wanna watch what otherpeople do because I'm not like
that and it reinforces why I amnot like that, you know?
But it was just amazing.
He was like, yeah, flick theporch lights off and on when
you're ready to decide.
We obviously didn't go with him.
We went with a lower energylevel guy.
(21:23):
We paid a little bit more to gowith him than other competitors,
but he wasn't pushy and justannoying.
You gotta know your audience,and he didn't know me.
He did what he was trained todo.
I thought about contacting thatcompany and said, I wanna clue
you guys in on something here.
Eh, maybe I still will.
(21:45):
But they spent a lot of timetraining.
He's a huge company.
It's a very big company.
All their staff have beentrained to react like this, to
force a sale.
Right.
Right.
I will never do that.
This window business has theiridea of how things are done and
Mmm-hmm.
And you said they'll appeal tosome people.
(22:05):
Yeah.
Another point I'd like to touchbase on, you have a program
called The Business Evaluator.
I hope I got that right.
You do, and I do.
Yes.
Can you tell us a bit more aboutthat?
Sure.
I'd be happy to.
It condenses my gazillion words,years of business development
experience.
(22:26):
During that time, I found outthat most companies have four
things in common.
They communicate.
So it's communication,reinforcing and making brand
awareness and social media andemail outreach, that comes under
the umbrella of communication.
The second one is presentationsand proposals.
We all do them.
Some of them use templates and Iknow I've received proposals
(22:50):
from people that had the priorcompany's name in the proposal
'cause nobody proofread it.
And the same thing withpresentations like we talked
about earlier.
My boss was horrible.
The third thing is accountmanagement.
Once you get the business, whatdo you do to manage it and keep
it?
Do you follow up withconversations that you've had
(23:10):
with summaries?
Action items and things likethat.
Most people, don't I have found.
And the last thing is theprotection and expansion of your
revenue.
Are you satisfied with yourproposal versus your close rate?
How's your referral rate?
And here's something you wannathink about.
What about scope creep?
Mmm.
You signed something in acontract to do X amount of work
(23:33):
with somebody, for X amount ofdollars, you're gonna spend X
amount of time.
I can guarantee you it's usuallymore than X amount of time.
Well, that's scope creep.
What's the cost to your businessof doing that?
You're losing money.
So this tool, it acts as a GPSfor business development.
There's 20 questions all relatedto those four categories.
(23:54):
Five in each one.
People can rank themselves andtheir companies on how well they
deliver credibility, trust, andvalue in those categories.
Rank themselves, one being verypoor, five being excellent.
If they give themselves allfive, which I've never
experienced that yet with 20questions they'd get a hundred.
(24:18):
No.
So it's best to do it yourself,and I have people do it just
from themselves.
And then for what theirperception is, how they're
delivering credibility and trustand value in those four
categories to their clients, andto their prospects.
When the employees take it,that's an eye-opener.
Now the questions act asguidelines on how to improve
(24:41):
strengths and weaknesses, and ittakes maybe three, maybe five
minutes if you're a slow readerto complete it.
But it acts like I said, as aGPS for business development.
And the way to strengthen yourstrengths and improve on your
weaknesses, it's right there inthe questions.
You just have to do it.
(25:02):
Right.
I'm not gonna do it for you.
I'm not going to, but I can helpyou, if you would like to have
me help you, you can do ityourself.
That's another example of megiving things to people.
I'm like, here, use it.
But you have to do it.
And that's where the hard partcomes in.
You have to do it.
So you illuminate these thingsfor them through the evaluator.
(25:24):
Correct.
But they have the option then towork with you, sure, to address
things.
Yeah.
But your goal is at least tomake them aware of things that
they don't otherwise know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's exactly correct.
When I first developed it yearsago, mm-hmm.
I did a sampling of 30 peoplewho were in key upper
development, businessdevelopment positions, and, I
(25:44):
thought the scores would bepretty good'cause these were
successful people.
The average score was 62.5 on ascale of a hundred.
It was like the equivalent of aa D plus maybe, I don't know.
I don't know about you, but Icame home with the D plus
probably when I was in school,would've been in a lot of
trouble.
Then I waited three years and Ifigured that in those three
(26:05):
years with all the informationthat's out there on the internet
and people had access to it,that would definitely have an
impact on the score.
So I used mostly the samepeople, a couple new ones, maybe
a few more this time, and I wasright.
The internet did impact thescores.
They went from 62.5 to 60because there was so much
(26:27):
information out there to getback to our earlier discussion,
how people were just inundatedwith everything and it takes
away from communicating.
Yep.
So anyhow, I was thinking aboutdoing it again on a much larger
audience, but it takes a fairamount of time.
I still may do it, but maybenot.
It really takes a lot of timeand, I don't know if I wanna get
(26:50):
involved helping people thatmuch,'cause it's like I told
you, I will sometimes spend waytoo much time being a nice guy
and that costs me money to dothat.
Well, you know something though,and this is maybe a conversation
for another time, but it seemsto me that if you did take a
look at a larger audience.
There is a tremendousopportunity here to I hate to
(27:14):
use the word book, but there'stremendous opportunity to write
a book.
I'll leave it at that becausethere's so many different ways
to look at the ideas of thebook, but there's some stories
and lessons to be learned fromthis thing that are striking me,
square between the eye.
Well, me too.
Well, I guess that's, of courseit has to be, right?
Yeah.
No, I mean, I'm just a regularguy kept encountering all these
(27:37):
things and I never came acrossanything like nobody does it,
you know, they're aware of it.
Yeah.
But they're busy.
I hear you and it's, you gottaslow down once in a while and
just like, let me not be busyfor a minute or two?
For a minute or two.
So listen, Bob, our time hascome to an end.
They say that when you're havingfun time flies.
And so it has.
(27:58):
But before we wrap up, I waswondering if you have anything
that you'd like to leave uswith?
Uh, yeah, you gotta laugh.
That's how I started, that's howI'll end it.
If anybody wants to reach out tome, they can certainly do that,
and we can talk.
I'm not fully retired, I stillwork on projects.
I'll be happy to do that, ifanybody wants to reach out to
(28:20):
me.
I will certainly reciprocate.
I will always get back tosomebody, always.
So, I just think take the timeto do what's right for you.
That's all.
Sounds great.
I really appreciate this, Bob.
Me too.
Folks this is Ed Drozda, at TheWater Trough.
(28:41):
I am once again, very, verypleased to have been joined by
my friend Bob Musial ofStreetSmart Business
Development, and usually at theend of my podcast episodes I say
I'm wishing you a healthybusiness, but today I'm gonna
change that for Bob and I'mgoing to wish you a good laugh
(29:03):
in your business.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.