August 13, 2025 • 47 mins
What truly moves buyers today?
Jon Goehring, Coach Jim Johnson, and Dr. Rehnuma Karim welcome Jim Pancero — sales structuralist, author, and world-class sales coach — for a deep dive into the science and art of selling in today’s landscape.
Jim shares why traditional sales approaches are changing rapidly and how focusing on customer needs and concise messaging (one to one and a half minutes!) leads to breakthrough success.
He unpacks:
Resources Mentioned:
Jon Goehring, Coach Jim Johnson, and Dr. Rehnuma Karim welcome Jim Pancero — sales structuralist, author, and world-class sales coach — for a deep dive into the science and art of selling in today’s landscape.
Jim shares why traditional sales approaches are changing rapidly and how focusing on customer needs and concise messaging (one to one and a half minutes!) leads to breakthrough success.
He unpacks:
- The four foundational selling skill layers: attitude, operational skills, tactics, and strategy
- Why most salespeople fail to follow a deliberate, multi-step sales process
- How to engage buyers earlier in their buying journey despite information overload
- The power of assumptive, validated questions that build trust and reveal real needs
- Real-world examples of differentiating value and overcoming price-driven purchasing
- Transitioning from top salesperson to effective sales leader with proactive coaching
- Tools for weekly micro sales training that leaders can deploy instantly
Resources Mentioned:
- Jim Pancero’s free sales training videos & newsletter: pancero.com
- Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jim-Pancero/author/B001HD21Z6?ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=523a8796-ae37-4acf-91b3-0acce29db53a
- Contact: (952) 913-8998 | jim@pancero.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better
podcast network Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and the podcast to
get you there. You can find out more at teefbetter
dot com slash podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
There's a term you could not use in selling anymore.
It just does not work. It's too generic, and that
is the word quality. Everybody breaks they have quality. And
the way to be more customer focused is we have
to focus on what they want in their needs and
show how we can fulfill it, not lead with our
stuff with them to figure out how they can apply it.
(00:33):
Big difference in selling. We need to be more customer focused.
We need to have a stronger message and answer to
a customer's asking why base on all the options do
I want to buy from you? And that message needs
to be a minute to a minute and a half
and that's all.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Do you want to be a leader in a constantly
changing world? Our emerging leaders look different, come from various
backgrounds and from all different age groups.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Leadership is changing.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
And it's hard to keep up. But the good news
you can be a leader too. You can be an
emerging leader. Welcome to the Limitless Leadership Lounge, a try
generational conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
For emerging leaders.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Come spend some time with us to discuss leadership from
three angles. The coach, Jim Johnson, the professor, doctor Renuuma Kareem,
the host, John Gering a monthly guest, and you get
in on the conversation on Facebook and Instagram, and be
sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Speaker.
So come on in and make yourself comfortable.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
This is the Limitless Leadership Lounge and we're back for
another week. It's a try generational conversation for you, the
emerging leader. And if you're getting value from what you're hearing,
what you're seeing, whether it be on one of our
podcast platforms or up on YouTube, we'd love it if
you leave us a review up on Apple Podcasts or
Spotify or wherever you're checking this out. And if this
is your first time checking us out on YouTube, make
(01:55):
sure to hit that subscribe button see that you never
miss any content that we put out there for you.
Because we're talking with amazing leaders like Jim Pancero today
and Jim has an amazing background that coach is going
to get right into. I think he's been in sales
since he was two, and we're going to talk about
sales for the young and emerging leader, because it's one
of the trickiest things about entrepreneurship and business. Coach, why
(02:17):
don't you go ahead and introduce Jim today.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
Yes, I'm excited. Jim has been an Initial Speakers Association
member for a long time. I also and we got
connected through another member and we're really excited. So let
me share a little bit about Jim. Jim is a
sales instructionalist. Jim's proven a uniqueness and success is centered
on his ability to translate complex selling and buying processes
into simple steps and structures that being taught, retained, and
(02:43):
utilized by his team. Jim has been influencing, guiding, and
inspiring sales professionals in more than eighty different interest industries
to increase sales market share and profitability. Since founding a
sales training and consulting companyineteen eighty two. Jim is conducted
over thirty one hundred speeches, Wow in Depth seminars, are
(03:07):
consulting days for more than six hundred companies in over
eighty different industries. Over ninety percent of Jim's clients have
utilized his ideas and services more than once. Jim has
been recognized by the National Speakers Association having earned the
csp cor a Fight Speaking Professional designation, and has been
inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame. Jim without a
(03:30):
further ado, because we could go on and on, and
you've had a wonderful career and you're still making an impact.
Welcome to the Limitless Leadership Launch.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Honored to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
And of course I've got this since by the start
of your bio is a sales instructionalist, let's delve into that.
What do we mean by that?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
There is really two approaches to selling. The problem is
the first approach is what the vast majority of salespeople
have done, which is they're intuitively effective. They were I
love to ask is say, how many of you were
told in a high school boy you either ought to
be a lawyer or in sales. And that's usually because
those are the two most obnoxious professions they could think of,
(04:10):
and they knew you'd master one of them pretty quickly.
So that as part of this idea that they're intuitive.
So the average salesperson goes out gets a job selling
with no experience beforehand, gets a job selling something is
trained on the product is trained on the administrative function
of how to enter in order, and then is thrown
out the door and said, go sell something, with the assumption,
(04:33):
if your persuasive and have a gift for gab, you
ought to do good at this. Just get out of
here and sell something. So they go out with absolutely
no training. In fact, that was the first four years
of my selling experience was I truly had no idea
what I was doing. I started selling in college because
I knew I wanted it for my resume when I graduated,
because I wanted to work for a large corporation, and
(04:54):
so because of that, I knew I needed to have
a strong resume of experiences, and I knew I wanted
to be in sales, but I had no idea what
was doing because I had no training, I had no
guidance or no coaching. And so the reality is then
as when I started graduate school, I met a mentor
and he taught me the structures of selling. And the
idea of the structures of selling is the more tools
(05:15):
you have, the more processes, the more pieces. The idea
is we want to take selling from being an art
where you take a canvas for each customer and paint
them a unique picture, and we want to make it
more of a printing press, with the idea that each
customer perceives that what you're doing is unique for them,
but you're following a very consistent process. Doctors do this.
(05:35):
If you want to have knee replacement surgery, they're not
going to do it unique because I'm six foot seven
and you're not. They're going to give me the same
surgery they give everybody else because they have refined the
consistency to make it both efficient and effective. So a
sales structuralist is saying, what are the steps? Ninety five
percent of all salespeople cannot write down the steps of
(05:57):
a sales call or have them accurate. They write down
on steps that were obsoleted decades ago, but they're intuitive.
They just kick it up as they go along. You
can't increase sales every ten five to ten percent a
year over your entire career by just intuitively getting better
or being more liked. We've got to put some structure
and process to it to make you more efficient as
(06:19):
well as more effective. So that's what a sales structuralist is,
What are the steps, what are the processes? What are
the pieces and.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Are you really six foot seven?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
By the way, yeah, I can stand up and show you.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
I just caught me off guard. I was surprised.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I'm frequently large by way. My favorite happened as I
was at a hotel, thirty story hotel. I remember I
got on the elevator after dinner in the first floor.
I'm on the elevator alone, second floor. The door opens.
A little old lady had to be over one hundred
and twenty years old and under five foot gets on
and stands right next to me. As the door closes,
she looks ups and she just says basketball. So I
(06:58):
look down and I said miniature golf. Nothing always said
the rest of the.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Trip, intimidating people into there you go, it's one world.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
There, she's not a customer. It's okay, hey, But.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
I wanted to dive in further because we'd all talk
about sales scripts and sales processes, is and all of
you know, if you can sell a shoe, you can
sell a hamburger, then you can sell a ten million
dollar course, isn't sales just sales? Or have things changed
where now over the years we now need to sell
differently than we did when you just first started.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Great question, I want to answer it to two parts.
The reality of selling is for you to be effective
selling anything a product, let's you call it a widget,
that generalized term. You really have to understand how to sell.
But you also have to understand the industry you're selling
in and what the challenges of your customers are. And
you need to know technically what you're talking about so
(07:56):
you can bring value and solutions to your customer. I've
told numerous customers over the years, I could never sell
for you. I can train your people, but I can't
sell for you because I don't have the technical skills
of this industry. I didn't grow up in the construction industry,
so selling new lumber for new home construction I wouldn't
be effective because I don't understand the culture, even though
(08:16):
I understand how to sell. So it's this combination of
these three things. If somebody listening to this is brand
new to selling, the first thing you need to do
is learn your products. The second thing you need to
do is understand the industry of your customer. Frankly, by way,
this is not that hard. If you go into chat
GPT and just say what are the top ten challenges
(08:39):
facing Janituary janitorial supply companies. Today, you'll get a list,
and the list is usually pretty accurate to at least
give you a direction of saying, these are the issues
they're dealing with. Now. I find as a sales trainer
it is universal. The ideas of how to sell on
how to work are very consistent with this and within
how this process works. But the reality is everybody feels
(09:03):
their business is unique, so to help them you have
to show them what's going on. The second part is
things are changing. It used to be that if once
you pass ten years in selling, you could pretty much
I don't want to save negative, but you could coast
the rest of your career. You'd build up a strong
customer base. See, you really didn't need to do a
lot of prospecting, and customers liked you. You knew what
(09:26):
you were talking about, you were persuasive. The problem I
watch happen is I have seen more changes in selling
and how the process works in the last five to
eight years. It's been this major dramatic change and all
of the processes compared to what it's been before. I
believe there's been more changes in the last five to
eight years than I've seen over my entire career. I
(09:48):
have a visual I want to show you, and I'll
read it off as we go through it for your
listeners that are listening on audio. But there's several changes
that have occurred in selling that are dramatically impacting us day.
The first is sales calls are shorter. It used to
be you go into a customer and talk for an
hour about their Hawaii vacation to build a relationship. Buyers
(10:09):
don't have time to day. They're overworked just like you are,
so sales calls are shorter. A lot of times, the
sales calls are five to ten minutes. You got five minutes?
What do you want? And that used to freak salespeople
out is becoming more of a standard because the customers
don't want to waste time with somebody that doesn't know
what they're talking about or doesn't have anything different than
what they're currently buying. The second major change, and I
(10:32):
believe it's the most profound of all of these, is
that sales reps today are being brought in leader in
the buying process than they ever have before. The example
I use in my talks is that if you and
your family want to buy a hot tub ten or
fifteen years ago, what would you have done. You've gone
to a hot tub store and picked up some grochers,
talked to a sales rep, come home, talk to the family.
(10:54):
If you wanted to buy it today, what would you do?
Go online? And that's only for the older people, because
studies have shown that the younger people and John here
one of the younger people, so it don't mean to
date you with this, but for most people, the younger people,
they first ask their friends, then they go. Senior people
they immediately go online, and the joke is because they
(11:15):
don't have any friends anymore, but they will not talk
to a salesperson. So now look at the challenge. Let's
say you're a distributor and you have a thousand different
products you sell through your distribution company. You're going to
go into a customer who spent the last two weeks
researching online exactly what that product can do and what
(11:35):
they need and making choices on what they think they want.
So by the time a sales rep gets a chance
to talk to a customer, the customer is pretty far
down the road of making a lot of decisions. Now
that's not bad except for one problem. And the problem
is most of the time they've made wrong decisions because
they don't know what they're talking about. I've done a
lot of training to find it. I'm really big in
(11:55):
the HGD market. I ever heard of HGD market? No, No,
it's heavy, greasy or dirty. Those are my markets. A
lot of agricultural equipment. I've trained about four thousand John
Deere dealer people, a lot of prodition and equipment sales
are where most of my business is. And what problem, well,
watch happened is I was doing this with John Deere.
(12:16):
We were training their salespeople that were in the showroom
selling light tractors and the four wheel riding vehicles they
call them gators, as well as writing lawnmowers. And if
we found in the spring over half the people walking
in to buy a writing lawnmower was bringing in a
print out saying do you have this in stock? And
how much is your price? Where they'd already picked out
(12:38):
the exact model they want, even the features. The problem
we had, and we found immediately was over half of
the people bringing a print out in had underconfigured pretty
dramatically what they really needed. So look at the challenge
in selling. If I say, boy, you need a three
thousand dollars model, and you have a price for a
one thousand, you'll start screaming bait and switch. You're being manipulative.
(12:59):
So how we really redefine what the customer's looking for
to gain more control of that process. Because we're being
brought in later and they've already made decisions, We've got
to understand and even see if we can adjust. That's
one of the greatest challenges in selling today. We're being
brought in too late. You're also seeing there's less loyalty.
Customers don't have the loyalty they used to ten or
(13:21):
fifteen years ago. They have relationships, but they usually have
relationships with your competitors because that gives them back up free.
So if I'm not selling to your company right now,
and I'm trying to get to you guys to have
you buy from me, you'll today you'll just hang me
out there and keep me don't go away. I'm working
to try to get you in. We want to give
(13:42):
you a chance, maybe even give you a small couple
orders to keep you interested, to keep me interested. But
the reality is I'm just free backup so that if
the main supplier screws up, you've got somebody immediately you
can call with a relationship saying, hey, you got your chance,
can you get me something tomorrow? So because that we
see less loyalty than they used to be. So this
idea of just reactive selling. Most salespeople follow a three
(14:06):
steps selling process of show up, suck up, and pucker
up are they going into The average sales rep only
asks four questions on a sales call. Anything you need,
anything coming up, anything I can help with, how's the family?
They view that as a successful call. The problem is
is just reactive and the competitive pressures are forcing us
to be more proactive. We need to be initiators, We
(14:28):
need to be predictive on what our customer's needs are,
not just responsive. Those are the kind of challenges that
are happening. So even if you have a I'll be
doing a training program and I'll have people in there
with over twenty years of experience, but they're still struggling
with these things because this isn't the way they learned
how to sell. These weren't problems in the past, and
now these are issues we're dealing with. People, especially younger people,
(14:51):
do not want to talk to you on the telephone.
So I find my outreach. I will meet somebody at
a meeting and they'll say, boy, we'd love to talk
to you. See how you can help us. I will
start following up and leaving messages for him. I don't
leave voicemails anymore. So I found it just did nothing.
So what I'll do is I will call you on
your cell phone. As soon as it went to voicemail,
(15:12):
which is like ninety five percent of the time, I
would immediately hang up, and then I would send you
a text message. So I find that most of my
selling the day is by text because of trying to
keep and connect, just because of how the culture of
buying has changed. So we got all these differences. But
you have salespeople saying I've been selling for twenty years.
There's nothing new in sales. I've heard it all before,
and I'd be teaching the class, not attending it. Average
(15:35):
reaction to senior people, that's a.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
Good good point. Tell us as an initiator, being the proactive,
give us a few suggestions of some different questions that
you found to be more powerful in the selling process.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
The whole idea of questioning has changed. There's a couple
of major changes that have happened that can make you
more persuasive. The first is it used to be you
can ask, frankly what I call dumb questions of a
prospect and they usually answered them ten or twenty years ago.
So I could sit there in our meeting and say, so,
what's the biggest problems you're dealing with? What would you
(16:11):
most like to improve in your business? What's keeping you
awake at night? These general I don't have any proof
of competence by asking those, but asking you to tell me,
spill your guts and tell me all your problems. That
used to work people actually would answer those questions. They
don't anymore. You ask them a tough question, what's the
biggest challenges you're facing right now? There's a good chance
(16:33):
you'll get push back from that buyer saying, what are
your qualifications? Why would I want to share that with you?
So what I'm finding is there's a whole concept of
how to ask questions. I teach a structure of questioning
which says, today questions are more effective if they're assumptive questions.
So if I'm talking to you and John about your
sales team to wanting to do sales training for your company.
(16:56):
I wouldn't just say, boy, what's the biggest things you'd
like to improve on your sales because that doesn't validate
any of my competency. What I would ask is to
say that in distribution companies like yours, I see three
major challenges that sales reps are facing that frankly, they
usually don't have a solution for. The sales calls are shorter,
(17:16):
the customers are harder to reach, and you're being brought
in lead into buying process. How are your people dealing
with that? Now? That still is triggering them to say,
tell me what your problems are, But look what happened
in that second example. I validated that I'd know what
I'm talking about, especially if any one of those three
rings the bell and that's what they're dealing with. We
have there's all sorts of reasons why, but salespeople have
(17:42):
lost the confidence of customers today. Their overall is a
distrust of salespeople that you're going to take advantage of me,
or you're going to manipulate me, or you're going to
sell me much more than I ever really need. So
because of that, people's resistance is up. So we have
to break through that crust to lower their resistance. They'll
(18:02):
never hear our message. To do that, we have to
validate and prove that we have competence, that they can
trust us to be able to tell what's really going
on and what they need. And people that tell themarket
me and they say, so, how's things going for you?
And I'll tell them you haven't earned the right to
ask that question yet. But this challenge of how do
(18:23):
we validate so the customers will increase their trust of
us over the average salesperson that they frankly don't have
a very good impression of.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Right now, it's brilliantly stated, and I think we're done here.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
I want to dive in deeper because we want more
of your brilliance, Jim. I think I'm guessing that in sales,
every call is unique. Everyone may react differently to say
one of those three assumptive statements that you made, And
that's why this concept of sales scripts is such a
troubling concept for me. Yet so many companies hold on
(18:58):
to this detailed sales script. For you, what is the
role of a sales script and would it be better
if we ditched them all together.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Everything you watch on TV, Almost everything you watch on
TV except for a talk show, is scripted. Every play,
every movie, every word is written. If it's done, it
doesn't come across that way. The reality is we need
to have a consistency and how we sell. Look what happens.
(19:29):
A sales rep works three months to get in front
of a new prospect. They finally earn the write in
there and they're sitting with the prospect. I don't want
that sales rep trying to make up something unique for
every customer they go into because the call is probably
not going to go very well. We want them using
what has most consistently worked. Now. And there's another visual,
(19:50):
if you don't mind, I want to show you, and
I'm just going to put this on full screen to
make it easier to see. There are four sets of
selling skills that a salesperson needs to be effective. And
this is going to get to the personal of what
you're talking about. Scripting the first the foundation of all selling.
It's like building four stories on a building. The first
floor the foundation is your attitude, energy. Are you a
(20:12):
hard worker? Are you professionally curious. Are you excited about
what you're selling? These kind of just energize. It's the
zig Ziglar material and the Tony Robbins material. If you
ever hear it either of them to speak, you didn't
take any notes, but you were inspired. But they didn't
really tell how to do things. They told you why
you want to be more effective. That's say attitude and energy.
(20:32):
A critical part of selling. The second part is your
operational or your personal skills. This is how do you
survive a sales call. Your knowledge of the steps of
a sales call, how to close, how to ask questions,
how to qualify, how to negotiate. All of the technical
and product information you ask are all part of that
operational because that validates improves what you can do. The
(20:54):
third level, though, are your tactics. And the tactics deal
with the process, structures or contry trolls of selling, the
multiple steps. What do you do from the time you
identify a new opportunity till the time you sell? What
are the steps you're going to go through? What do
you to different to the second call versus a fifth
call versus the eighth call? And more important, how are
you on that first call, going to position what you
(21:15):
want to do for the next three calls, so you
set the customer up to follow the path you're trying
to set. Those are the tactics the multiple step thinking.
The problem is most sales reps they only think one
move ahead. The joke I use my programs is most
sales reps are like the Hollari bird. Ever here at
the Hilary bird. Yeah, it's a three foot bird lives
in four foot grasp and his whole life saying where
(21:36):
the hell are we? It's such a cute joke. But
this idea that they only think one move ahead. But
look at the challenge. If you and I are competitors
and we're playing chess and I only think one move ahead,
but you think two moves, how many games you're going
to win that many? It's going to be all of them?
Is that if you're thinking multiple moves, I'm only thinking one.
So the idea of selling is how do we think
(21:57):
and plan and have plans for new business ID to
close process for existing customers? What are we going to
do from January first to December thirty first? They have
difference in uniqueness in how we're supporting that customer. And
also the third major tactic is how are we going
to get higher, wider, and deeper within an account. It's
amazing that the average sales rep I see experience successful
(22:19):
sales rep over half of their territory. When I have
analyzed this, over half of their accounts, they've only got
one contact. Now that contact could be the owner and
could be giving them all of their business. They're buying
from them and they're loyal. But what happens when that
owner is either fired, it dies, or is promoted to
something else, or leaves the company. What's going to happen
(22:40):
to your relationship? If you have know their contacts, you're
backed like it's a brand new prospect. So how do
we get higher, wider, and deeper. Higher up to the
executives that are making the real decisions, wider to the
other departments, and how what we're doing is influencing what
they're doing so we understand their needs and deeper down
to the front line, is using, applying, or dealing with
what we sell that gives a stability within an account.
(23:04):
The fourth and final area is your strategic what is
your philosophy, approach, your positioning and how do you differentiate
your sale versus a competitor. So, as an example, I
believe the toughest single question in selling that any customer
will ask, and most salespeople are really bad at the
answer is you're sitting there, I'm the buyer and you're
the seller, and I say, okay, look, you're the third
(23:26):
vendor I've talked to about this stuff this week. Why,
based on all the competitive options available to me, do
I want to buy from you versus anybody else? That
causes most sales reps to collapse. They give a generic answer.
The average answer I hear over ninety percent of the
time when I ask that of salespeople when I'm doing
research on a company is the answer they'll give is
(23:47):
because of our high quality product, our strong little support,
our competitive price. We're not the cheapest, but we're competitive,
and you get me. And what's wrong with that answer
is that's what ninety five percent of all salespeople selling anything.
So if you stand there and say our high quality
products are allo support competitive price, and you get me,
the customer sits there and thinks, Okay, that's what I've
(24:09):
heard from everybody else, So there is no difference. So
I buy based on price. Price is the default in selling.
There is no price driven market. I'm working in all
these commodities, grain, I'm working right now with a company
that sells steel and also sells recycling that you bring
the recycling materials and they give you money for it,
of recycling, all kinds of metals, all these commodities what
(24:31):
other people refer to as commodity businesses, aren't because I
work at them, and in every one of them there's differences.
The easiest way to see the difference on the pricing
issue is look at gas prices as you drive around
your community. We have one corner near my house. I
was just shocked because over the weekend, we were coming
(24:51):
home and we stopped at Delight, and I'm looking at
these three gas stations all in the same corner, and
one was at I'm here in Dallas, so our gas
prices are a little cheaper. But one was at two sixty,
the other one was at two seventy, the other one
was at two eighty, and all three of them had
cars getting gas. Now you think if it was a
real price, if gasoline is a price driven market, if
(25:12):
it's a commodity, there'd be nobody at the two dollars
and eighty centy up place because they'd be over saving
twenty cents a gallon just across the street. But it's
not price driven. So the reality of the process is
the more of a difference in value we communicate improve,
the more of a difference or own price customers will pay.
So our messaging is critical. Our process of how we
(25:35):
take the customer through it so we guide them to
make it a more efficient process is critical. And then
the third is that you're good on your feet. Now
when we talk about it. We need to have a message.
We need to have scripting. Scripting is a positive when
you apply your own personality. So if I give a stript,
it's really an outline. We don't give a memorized word
(25:56):
for word script, but we'll say these are the three
points you want to communicate for your message of uniqueness,
so that you can use your own style. So if
you're from the South, you'll use a lot of phrases
and terms nobody in North would ever even understand, but
works in the process. It's we're not trying to make
your robots, but we're trying to make it more consistent.
So like when you play golf, you need to have
(26:16):
a consistent swing. So even though each placement of the
ball is probably going to be different, your swing needs
to be consistent so you can count on it. Same
thing in selling.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
That's a good point. I'm just curious just to delve
a little bit deeper, is there? So what would you encourage?
Can you give us one example of how you can
differentiate yourself with your thought process? Can you give it
just an example of one of the industries you've worked.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, the differences are based on us communicating value. There's
something in selling came around in now nineteen seventies was
a selling term called selling to the FUD factor. Fud
selling to the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of the customer.
Example it was working with it was another John to
your dealer story. Sorry example of forgiving two. But I
(27:07):
was working with the sales team to sell what they
call a preseason inspection program. So right before it's time
to harvest, let us take your combine in a couple
months earlier and check it out, fine, tune it, adjust
everything so when you need to harvest, it's going to
work for you. Because if you break down during harvest,
that's when everybody else breaks down, you might have a
(27:27):
hard time getting servant. So to lower your risk critical term,
to lower your risk, let us do a preseason inspection
that might cost five or ten thousand dollars, but to
dramatically increase the chances that you're not going to go
down during harvest and you'll get the maximum crops returned.
So this idea of talking to the customer about we're
(27:47):
trying to lower your risk. We're trying to make your
life easier. We're trying to either increase your profitability or
lower your total cost. If we can show we can
do that more than the others can by focusing more
on that and showing ways support that, then we tend
to get to business. So the difference is today are
really not in the products. One of the things that
(28:09):
really screwed up selling was around the nineteen eighties when
and everything collapsed because the quality programs kicked in. And
if you remember back, if you read about it in
the nineteen eighties, the first one was ISO nine thousand,
make sure everything is consistently done. Then six sigma came
out of focusing on what quality really needs to be improved.
(28:31):
Then Chaison came out and all these other ones. About
one hundred different quality programs, and everybody adopted them. The
problem is the companies that were most positively impacted by
the quality programs were your worst competitors. That they didn't
have good quality products, The stuff didn't last, they didn't
have good support. Quality programs improved to everybody. So today
(28:53):
and I apologize, but there's a term you could not
use in selling anymore. It just does not work. It's
too generic, and that is the word quality. Everybody brags
they have quality. Ford Motor Company continues to advertise we're
qualities job one. That was okay, if we go back
twenty years ago or thirty years ago. The first car
(29:15):
I got it was in the late nineteen sixties, and
I remember my parents bought it for me. I was
graduating from high school and they were giving me a
car as a gift, this amazing gift. And we're sitting
in the car dealership that the owner was a friend,
personal friend of my dad. So we're sitting in the
owner's office and he's giving me the keys, and he
gives me this little pad of paper that was in
(29:38):
a little plastic binder with a pen. It was a
Chevrolet of the Chevrolet logo and it says we build
quality vehicles. So here's what I want you to do.
I want you to keep this path in the car,
and anything you find wrong, write it down, and in
two weeks we'll bring the car back, fix everything. Everything
will be great. I had fifteen things on the list.
I remember one of the windows wouldn't roll all the
(30:00):
way down. This was major problems in this car, but
that was normal back then. Look today, if you buy
a new car, they say, I believe it is the
average car coming off. There is like a less than
a two percent chance a car coming off and a
semilar line will have any problem at all. And if
there is a problem with someone like the radio, they'll
send that radio back to their supplier and they'll have
(30:22):
a meeting as to why they send them invalid materials.
So the quality programs everybody has improved. So because of that,
I can't advertise quality as job one, because frankly, when
they talk to my competitors, they're going to say they
agree with that as well. It's a generic term. We
can talk about the attributes and the benefits you'll get
because of our quality, but we just can't talk about
(30:44):
how greater products are and how we have such a
high quality product because the customer just hears that as
blah blah blah.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
So it's all messaging. It's all ultimately messaging in sales
and even just using words effectively and branding. There's so
much crossover there, So how is sale people? Do we
recognize the need to not only be in our sales
profit driven bubble, but step outside of there and really
(31:10):
consider some of those additional features and benefits that we
can use.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I think it was JAYE. Levinson in the nineteen sixties
was famous for the line that said, you don't go
into a hardware started by a drill. You go in
the harware store to buy the opportunity to make holes.
The disconnect occurs when the repinue store is pushing their drills.
Some people call it second step selling. First step is
to satisfy the customer's needs and help them with their
pain so that they get the second step to you,
(31:36):
which is they buy from you. This reality of process
is we can't pocus on the products. We have to
focus on what we're going to do for the customer
the results are going to achieve, And this gets down
to the most fundamental aspects of selling. An example show
you I teach my programs is most salespeople grew up
being trained on a feature benefit or a feature advantage.
(31:58):
Way to sell a feature of this pen is the
cap fits on the base. The advantage to you is
it improves the quality of the handwriting is demonstrated here.
That's how most salespeople sell. But look what happens. I'm
not focused on the customer. I'm leading with my stuff.
So what we want to do is when we reverse
that process and do a benefit feature approach to selling.
(32:20):
It's a minor detail, but it has major impact. Where
now I would say a benefit of this pen for
you and your presenters is going to improve the quality
of the handwriting of your people because the cap fits
on the base. Now, look what happens. We've taken a
feature and we've actually used it to validate the benefits
we're selling. We need to be more customer focused, and
(32:42):
the way to be more customer focused is we have
to focus on what they want in their needs and
show how we can fulfill it, not lead with our
stuff with them to figure out how they can apply it.
Big difference in selling. We need to be more customer focused.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
That's a great point. So Jim, I'm going to make
a little transition here and I know we're getting close
to the end and John'll wrap up. So my final
question is you've given us some great insights on selling,
but something I've done, just a little bit of work.
I've spoke to a few sales teams certainly don't have
the background you do. One of the things that I
have seen because I've done some things with a lot
(33:17):
of things with leadership is the traditional sales person that
becomes highly successful in selling and now they get promoted
to be the sales manager. And I kid people that
often they become the sales mangler because I believe there's
a different skill set. I know you'd talk to a
lot of sales leaders tell us some ideas to help
(33:37):
them making that transition so they become a better sales leader.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
There's a couple of problems and distribution. One of the
problems is most distribution organizations are a branch system where
they'll have multiple smaller locations spread around an area, especially
if delivering heavy stuff to shorten their delivery costs. The
problem I watched in several of my distributors. Is over
half of the sales managers I get a chance to
train never sold personally. They became a branch manager and
(34:07):
now have two salespeople reporting to them. But they came
up through the warehouse, or they came up through accounting,
they didn't come up through sales. So now we have
a sales leader trying to teach selling skills and coach
selling skills to a salesperson when they have no idea
what they're doing themselves. The second problem is most sales
managers never receive any training on how to be a manager.
(34:30):
Over half my work is in sales leadership training. And
I will ask programs raise your hand if you've ever
sold anything personally that you understand selling. Less than half
the room races their hand usually. And the second thing
I will ask about this is how much training did
you have when you became a manager And the answer
is none. We can strip job titles away in a company.
(34:51):
There's really only three positions in a company. The first position,
as you're a doer, your job is to do something.
You have no responsibility for anybody else except yourself. So
you're a salesperson is a due to sell or running
a piece of equipment. Your job is to run that
stamping equipment and get as much out of it a
day as you can. You're a doer. The second level
up as a doing manager. A doing manager has a
(35:13):
split responsibility. They are responsible for doing as well as
also supervising others. I was touring a metal stamping plant
recently and there was pods of five pieces of equipment
and kind of a semicircles. Each of the pod has
one supervisor. That supervisor was running a piece of equipment themselves,
but their quota was eighty percent of what their other
(35:34):
peoples were for their daily production because the assumption the
supervisor would not watch and maintain the other five people
running the equipment. That's a doing manager. The third level
is a managing manager. Now, my joke in my project
is a managing manager does nothing. If I described your boss,
the head of GM is not going to build any
cars today, nor are they going to sell any It's
(35:56):
not their job. Their job is to make sure everybody
low of them has all the resources so they can
do their job. The problem is we promote somebody that's
been a great doer a salesperson and promote a management
If they'll take the paycut. That's why they don't promote
a lot of senior reps to management, because the reps
don't want to take the pay cut. But they promoted
(36:17):
the management, but give them no training. So the first
time somebody brings them a problem and walks in and says, boy,
the Johnson accounts really upset. Here's their phone number, that
manager is likely to take it and call the customer
and handle the problem themselves as a doing manager. But
then look what happens. You just released a salesperson from
many responsibilities and you're now the pinch point in your company.
(36:40):
So part of this is we've got to make sure
that the job of sales manager on a sales call
is not to sell. That's the job of the salesperson.
And if the sales manager tries to sell instead of
the sales rep in front of the customer, that manager
just took over that account effectively for the rest of
their career, because every time that customer is the problem,
they're going to call the real decision maker, which is
the manager. The second problem is most managers are transactional managers.
(37:07):
I've got a real quick visual I can show you.
I think that can help with this. If you look
and we lay out the selling process, the visual is
showing just an arrow going to the right. On the
very left hand side of the era we have identify
and on the right hand side we have clothes. So
if we look at one cycle of selling, the arrow
represents the relationship is going to continue. But what's one
cycle to get something sold? The problem we have in
(37:30):
that process, besides sales reps not even understanding what the
process is they're going through all the time, is there's
a major critical change that happens right in the middle.
And that change is the sales rep issues a proposal.
And the reason that is so critical is the proposal
is a turning point in that relationship because before I
issue you my proposal, I have power, but as soon
(37:53):
as the issue my proposal, I lose all my power.
Before I issue a proposal, I would say, would you
let me talk to some of your sales reps to
understand more about what they're doing, to see what we
could do to help train them and do better. You're
likely to say yes because you're assuming it'll help in
my generation of a proposal. But if I've already given
my proposal and I say, by the way, would you
let me talk to a couple of sales reps, You're
likely to say, well, if you win the business, that's
(38:16):
a good idea. The problem is most sales reps give
their proposal too soon. Now, the next question is when
do sales managers tend to get involved in this process?
And what happens is for the average sales manager, they're
a transactional manager, so they only get involved once proposal
is issued. A lot of times it is only because
that's when it shows up on their computer system to
(38:36):
track it, or they see the proposal is generated. So
now they're bugging the sales rep what it's going to
take to close this. The problem is that by that
point that the manager gets involved, the sales rep has
lost all their power. So the only only for that
manager to do is either cut the price or promise
extra services, which lowers their margin. The change in management
today is we need to move that forward to the
(38:57):
first half of this. I call themselves process coaching, where
instead of saying waiting till the proposals, they're trying to
help close it. As soon as we hear of an opportunity.
The manager says to the sales rep get in here
and tell me about this account, and let's develop a plan.
It's a proactive change of management where the transactional is
much more reactive. Once a sales rep has some let's
(39:19):
help them land it. We want it to be more
proactive where the sales coach is actually helping guide direction,
focus structures so that we can have a more efficient
and effective way to close the business. So these are
the kind of changes happening in management. It's a whole
different environment. Just because you can sell doesn't mean you're
going to be effective sales manager.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
It's such a good Yeah, that's such a powerful example
of that, because we asked that question to a lot
of people and we get different answers. But that visual there,
I hope you're watching on YouTube because if you aren't,
I recommend checking that out if you're listening to the
audio right now, because that a really powerful visual. Jim,
I know we're running down on time here. Really appreciate
(40:00):
you coming on. But is there anything else you'd like
to share with us?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah? I think that a couple of things. One is,
wherever you are in selling, congratulations or in sales leadership.
It's the idea that the success in selling is you
work and you get trained and you do all these
things and then you die. So if you don't have
all the skills you need, that's okay, says you're still alive.
It's a process. In fact, I joke and to say
people will ask me what's the goal of your sales training,
(40:25):
and I'll say, to help your team suck less this idea.
It's an ongoing process. You never reach perfection in this.
But there are three keys to a competitive advantage. I
want to show a visual again, just list of three
that I find that if you do these three things
at the same time, the needle moves every time. If
(40:45):
I can get a customer to work on all three
of these areas, we increase sales consistently. The first is
we need to have a stronger message and answer to
a customer's asking why base on all the options do
I want to buy from you? And that message needs
to be a minute to a minute and a half.
And that's all because if it's if it's a fifteen
minute PowerPoint presentation, you'll be lucky to give it once,
(41:07):
but you'll never give it again. If it's a one
minute or minute and a half message to cover this
is why we're unique or while we're different, or what
our approach is going to be to help you better.
We can then state that or pieces of it over
the entire sales call. So we need to have a
stronger and tighter message of uniqueness of why, based on
all the options available me, do I want to buy
it from you. The second thing is we need to
(41:30):
improve our sales team's best practices, the structures the steps
of selling. If you only have five minutes in a
sales call, you better understand what the steps of a
sales call are or you'll blow it. You won't get
anything done. This happens at trade shows. Look what happens.
Somebody walks into my booth and goes, what's that? And
it's like pulling a string at a doll. I do
(41:50):
an information dump on them for five minutes about how
great this equipment is. Do you say thanks and walk
out with a brochure? And I never talk to you
again because I didn't follow the steps. So the idea
of having best practices of selling to make you more consistent,
effective and efficient. And then the third piece is we
need more effective selling process coaching. The manager is getting
(42:11):
involved in a more proactive, predictive way, not just waiting
to help close business. With these three changes, that makes
the difference. I have some tools I'd like to offer
your listeners, and that is I've been posting for boy.
It's about eight years now. I've been posting three videos
a week on sales and sales leadership topics. The videos
(42:33):
are all usually under ninety seconds and they're just talking
about this is what's happening and selling or sales leadership
and what you can do about one idea video. It's
something you might want to consider following. If you're a manager,
this is a great opportunity for you to train your people.
It's free training. What you do is you show a
brief video and then all you have to do is
(42:54):
ask four questions of the group. First question is what
do you think of the video? The second question how
relevant are those ideas to us from what we're doing here.
The third question is what do you plan to do
different based on what we discussed? And then the fourth question,
when you see him in the hallway later in the
week or you talk to him, is to say, Okay,
what success did you have when you tried the new idea.
(43:16):
So by just showing a brief video and asking only
these four questions, you can add ten minutes of sales
training to every sales meeting you have with your team.
We don't have to ignore sales training only once a
year at the annual meeting of the sales team, do
we do something. You can be doing this every week
with your team, taking advantage of not just my videos,
(43:37):
but a whole bunch of other ones that are out
there that have good stuff, that are brief that you
can use to bring new ideas to your sales team. Frankly,
I find it's rather difficult to track people on LinkedIn
to follow somebody. It tends to be a little bit
of a challenge because there's just such a high volume
of stuff out there. So I have a weekly newsletter.
(43:57):
It comes out every Monday morning, and all it does
is it has an article that it's hopefully a help
for a sales manager, and then it summarizes the last
three videos I've posted with links to those so that
as a manager. I have managers subscribed to my newsletter
just to be able to keep tracks so when they
see a topic that's of interest, they then can show
it at their sales meeting. It's free, there's no commercials.
(44:20):
I'm not selling anything on it. It's support to help
you help your team sell more. And the final point
is I know that with your listeners all over the world.
I know with your The following that you have is
that if anybody has any questions about this material or
if you would like my opinion, if you call me,
I'll answer your questions. My phone number is my cell
(44:41):
phone number is nine five to two nine three eight
nine nine eight. My email address and you can either
call me or text me. And my email address is
Jim Jim at pansero dot com PA n C ER.
Because I found we know you're good now. The only
question is are you ready to get even better? That's
(45:02):
the challenge in selling today.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
It sure is because we have an audience that you know,
when you're immersing yourself in this kind of content, you
know that you've gotten somewhere. You've already done half of
it right, You've showed up. And I know, Jim, people
at your events, people who train under you, they've already
done the hard part showing up. But there's so much
more to take advantage of in pincero dot com for that,
(45:26):
and also if you're watching on YouTube, you could scan
that QR code, but if not, the link is also
down in the show notes, so go grab that free
newsletter you could sign up for that. And what I
love about your videos, Jim, I know you mentioned there's
a lot of videos out there, but your videos are
quick and to the point. And how many videos do
we see with all that unnecessary fluff. So as a
(45:46):
content creation guru myself, kudos to you for keeping things
quick and to the point.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I find my videos are very unique because they don't
talk about myself, Yes exactly, I have not. If I
a story on a video, it's only because to improve
the point of what's been said, and usually why it
didn't work for me is what I'm talking about. I
believe that the way we communicate today is not through
our egos of talking out great we are showing pictures
of us with famous people or anything else. It is
(46:14):
based on giving solid content so people want to have
a stronger relationship with you.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
That's selling well, said Jim Pancaro. Check out all those
links in the show notes and thank you, Jim for
what you've shared with us so valuable to our audience.
And I know nobody will leave this episode unchanged.
Speaker 6 (46:32):
We appreciate you, honored to be here, Thanks for having me,
Thank you for joining us this week at the Limitless
Leadership Lounge. To listen to this episode again and to
find previous episodes, check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
and spreakare. You can also get in on the conversation
find us on Facebook and Instagram, then tell three of
your friends to join.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
It as well.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Coach Numa and John. We'll be back again next week
for another try generational leadership discussion. We'll talk to you
then on the Limitless Leadership Launch
This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better
podcast network Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and the podcast to
get you there. You can find out more at teefbetter
dot com slash podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
There's a term you could not use in selling anymore.
It just does not work. It's too generic, and that
is the word quality. Everybody breaks they have quality. And
the way to be more customer focused is we have
to focus on what they want in their needs and
show how we can fulfill it, not lead with our
stuff with them to figure out how they can apply it.
(00:33):
Big difference in selling. We need to be more customer focused.
We need to have a stronger message and answer to
a customer's asking why base on all the options do
I want to buy from you? And that message needs
to be a minute to a minute and a half
and that's all.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Do you want to be a leader in a constantly
changing world? Our emerging leaders look different, come from various
backgrounds and from all different age groups.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Leadership is changing.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
And it's hard to keep up. But the good news
you can be a leader too. You can be an
emerging leader. Welcome to the Limitless Leadership Lounge, a try
generational conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
For emerging leaders.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Come spend some time with us to discuss leadership from
three angles. The coach, Jim Johnson, the professor, doctor Renuuma Kareem,
the host, John Gering a monthly guest, and you get
in on the conversation on Facebook and Instagram, and be
sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Speaker.
So come on in and make yourself comfortable.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
This is the Limitless Leadership Lounge and we're back for
another week. It's a try generational conversation for you, the
emerging leader. And if you're getting value from what you're hearing,
what you're seeing, whether it be on one of our
podcast platforms or up on YouTube, we'd love it if
you leave us a review up on Apple Podcasts or
Spotify or wherever you're checking this out. And if this
is your first time checking us out on YouTube, make
(01:55):
sure to hit that subscribe button see that you never
miss any content that we put out there for you.
Because we're talking with amazing leaders like Jim Pancero today
and Jim has an amazing background that coach is going
to get right into. I think he's been in sales
since he was two, and we're going to talk about
sales for the young and emerging leader, because it's one
of the trickiest things about entrepreneurship and business. Coach, why
(02:17):
don't you go ahead and introduce Jim today.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
Yes, I'm excited. Jim has been an Initial Speakers Association
member for a long time. I also and we got
connected through another member and we're really excited. So let
me share a little bit about Jim. Jim is a
sales instructionalist. Jim's proven a uniqueness and success is centered
on his ability to translate complex selling and buying processes
into simple steps and structures that being taught, retained, and
(02:43):
utilized by his team. Jim has been influencing, guiding, and
inspiring sales professionals in more than eighty different interest industries
to increase sales market share and profitability. Since founding a
sales training and consulting companyineteen eighty two. Jim is conducted
over thirty one hundred speeches, Wow in Depth seminars, are
(03:07):
consulting days for more than six hundred companies in over
eighty different industries. Over ninety percent of Jim's clients have
utilized his ideas and services more than once. Jim has
been recognized by the National Speakers Association having earned the
csp cor a Fight Speaking Professional designation, and has been
inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame. Jim without a
(03:30):
further ado, because we could go on and on, and
you've had a wonderful career and you're still making an impact.
Welcome to the Limitless Leadership Launch.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Honored to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
And of course I've got this since by the start
of your bio is a sales instructionalist, let's delve into that.
What do we mean by that?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
There is really two approaches to selling. The problem is
the first approach is what the vast majority of salespeople
have done, which is they're intuitively effective. They were I
love to ask is say, how many of you were
told in a high school boy you either ought to
be a lawyer or in sales. And that's usually because
those are the two most obnoxious professions they could think of,
(04:10):
and they knew you'd master one of them pretty quickly.
So that as part of this idea that they're intuitive.
So the average salesperson goes out gets a job selling
with no experience beforehand, gets a job selling something is
trained on the product is trained on the administrative function
of how to enter in order, and then is thrown
out the door and said, go sell something, with the assumption,
(04:33):
if your persuasive and have a gift for gab, you
ought to do good at this. Just get out of
here and sell something. So they go out with absolutely
no training. In fact, that was the first four years
of my selling experience was I truly had no idea
what I was doing. I started selling in college because
I knew I wanted it for my resume when I graduated,
because I wanted to work for a large corporation, and
(04:54):
so because of that, I knew I needed to have
a strong resume of experiences, and I knew I wanted
to be in sales, but I had no idea what
was doing because I had no training, I had no
guidance or no coaching. And so the reality is then
as when I started graduate school, I met a mentor
and he taught me the structures of selling. And the
idea of the structures of selling is the more tools
(05:15):
you have, the more processes, the more pieces. The idea
is we want to take selling from being an art
where you take a canvas for each customer and paint
them a unique picture, and we want to make it
more of a printing press, with the idea that each
customer perceives that what you're doing is unique for them,
but you're following a very consistent process. Doctors do this.
(05:35):
If you want to have knee replacement surgery, they're not
going to do it unique because I'm six foot seven
and you're not. They're going to give me the same
surgery they give everybody else because they have refined the
consistency to make it both efficient and effective. So a
sales structuralist is saying, what are the steps? Ninety five
percent of all salespeople cannot write down the steps of
(05:57):
a sales call or have them accurate. They write down
on steps that were obsoleted decades ago, but they're intuitive.
They just kick it up as they go along. You
can't increase sales every ten five to ten percent a
year over your entire career by just intuitively getting better
or being more liked. We've got to put some structure
and process to it to make you more efficient as
(06:19):
well as more effective. So that's what a sales structuralist is,
What are the steps, what are the processes? What are
the pieces and.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Are you really six foot seven?
Speaker 2 (06:28):
By the way, yeah, I can stand up and show you.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
I just caught me off guard. I was surprised.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I'm frequently large by way. My favorite happened as I
was at a hotel, thirty story hotel. I remember I
got on the elevator after dinner in the first floor.
I'm on the elevator alone, second floor. The door opens.
A little old lady had to be over one hundred
and twenty years old and under five foot gets on
and stands right next to me. As the door closes,
she looks ups and she just says basketball. So I
(06:58):
look down and I said miniature golf. Nothing always said
the rest of the.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Trip, intimidating people into there you go, it's one world.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
There, she's not a customer. It's okay, hey, But.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
I wanted to dive in further because we'd all talk
about sales scripts and sales processes, is and all of
you know, if you can sell a shoe, you can
sell a hamburger, then you can sell a ten million
dollar course, isn't sales just sales? Or have things changed
where now over the years we now need to sell
differently than we did when you just first started.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Great question, I want to answer it to two parts.
The reality of selling is for you to be effective
selling anything a product, let's you call it a widget,
that generalized term. You really have to understand how to sell.
But you also have to understand the industry you're selling
in and what the challenges of your customers are. And
you need to know technically what you're talking about so
(07:56):
you can bring value and solutions to your customer. I've
told numerous customers over the years, I could never sell
for you. I can train your people, but I can't
sell for you because I don't have the technical skills
of this industry. I didn't grow up in the construction industry,
so selling new lumber for new home construction I wouldn't
be effective because I don't understand the culture, even though
(08:16):
I understand how to sell. So it's this combination of
these three things. If somebody listening to this is brand
new to selling, the first thing you need to do
is learn your products. The second thing you need to
do is understand the industry of your customer. Frankly, by way,
this is not that hard. If you go into chat
GPT and just say what are the top ten challenges
(08:39):
facing Janituary janitorial supply companies. Today, you'll get a list,
and the list is usually pretty accurate to at least
give you a direction of saying, these are the issues
they're dealing with. Now. I find as a sales trainer
it is universal. The ideas of how to sell on
how to work are very consistent with this and within
how this process works. But the reality is everybody feels
(09:03):
their business is unique, so to help them you have
to show them what's going on. The second part is
things are changing. It used to be that if once
you pass ten years in selling, you could pretty much
I don't want to save negative, but you could coast
the rest of your career. You'd build up a strong
customer base. See, you really didn't need to do a
lot of prospecting, and customers liked you. You knew what
(09:26):
you were talking about, you were persuasive. The problem I
watch happen is I have seen more changes in selling
and how the process works in the last five to
eight years. It's been this major dramatic change and all
of the processes compared to what it's been before. I
believe there's been more changes in the last five to
eight years than I've seen over my entire career. I
(09:48):
have a visual I want to show you, and I'll
read it off as we go through it for your
listeners that are listening on audio. But there's several changes
that have occurred in selling that are dramatically impacting us day.
The first is sales calls are shorter. It used to
be you go into a customer and talk for an
hour about their Hawaii vacation to build a relationship. Buyers
(10:09):
don't have time to day. They're overworked just like you are,
so sales calls are shorter. A lot of times, the
sales calls are five to ten minutes. You got five minutes?
What do you want? And that used to freak salespeople
out is becoming more of a standard because the customers
don't want to waste time with somebody that doesn't know
what they're talking about or doesn't have anything different than
what they're currently buying. The second major change, and I
(10:32):
believe it's the most profound of all of these, is
that sales reps today are being brought in leader in
the buying process than they ever have before. The example
I use in my talks is that if you and
your family want to buy a hot tub ten or
fifteen years ago, what would you have done. You've gone
to a hot tub store and picked up some grochers,
talked to a sales rep, come home, talk to the family.
(10:54):
If you wanted to buy it today, what would you do?
Go online? And that's only for the older people, because
studies have shown that the younger people and John here
one of the younger people, so it don't mean to
date you with this, but for most people, the younger people,
they first ask their friends, then they go. Senior people
they immediately go online, and the joke is because they
(11:15):
don't have any friends anymore, but they will not talk
to a salesperson. So now look at the challenge. Let's
say you're a distributor and you have a thousand different
products you sell through your distribution company. You're going to
go into a customer who spent the last two weeks
researching online exactly what that product can do and what
(11:35):
they need and making choices on what they think they want.
So by the time a sales rep gets a chance
to talk to a customer, the customer is pretty far
down the road of making a lot of decisions. Now
that's not bad except for one problem. And the problem
is most of the time they've made wrong decisions because
they don't know what they're talking about. I've done a
lot of training to find it. I'm really big in
(11:55):
the HGD market. I ever heard of HGD market? No, No,
it's heavy, greasy or dirty. Those are my markets. A
lot of agricultural equipment. I've trained about four thousand John
Deere dealer people, a lot of prodition and equipment sales
are where most of my business is. And what problem, well,
watch happened is I was doing this with John Deere.
(12:16):
We were training their salespeople that were in the showroom
selling light tractors and the four wheel riding vehicles they
call them gators, as well as writing lawnmowers. And if
we found in the spring over half the people walking
in to buy a writing lawnmower was bringing in a
print out saying do you have this in stock? And
how much is your price? Where they'd already picked out
(12:38):
the exact model they want, even the features. The problem
we had, and we found immediately was over half of
the people bringing a print out in had underconfigured pretty
dramatically what they really needed. So look at the challenge
in selling. If I say, boy, you need a three
thousand dollars model, and you have a price for a
one thousand, you'll start screaming bait and switch. You're being manipulative.
(12:59):
So how we really redefine what the customer's looking for
to gain more control of that process. Because we're being
brought in later and they've already made decisions, We've got
to understand and even see if we can adjust. That's
one of the greatest challenges in selling today. We're being
brought in too late. You're also seeing there's less loyalty.
Customers don't have the loyalty they used to ten or
(13:21):
fifteen years ago. They have relationships, but they usually have
relationships with your competitors because that gives them back up free.
So if I'm not selling to your company right now,
and I'm trying to get to you guys to have
you buy from me, you'll today you'll just hang me
out there and keep me don't go away. I'm working
to try to get you in. We want to give
(13:42):
you a chance, maybe even give you a small couple
orders to keep you interested, to keep me interested. But
the reality is I'm just free backup so that if
the main supplier screws up, you've got somebody immediately you
can call with a relationship saying, hey, you got your chance,
can you get me something tomorrow? So because that we
see less loyalty than they used to be. So this
idea of just reactive selling. Most salespeople follow a three
(14:06):
steps selling process of show up, suck up, and pucker
up are they going into The average sales rep only
asks four questions on a sales call. Anything you need,
anything coming up, anything I can help with, how's the family?
They view that as a successful call. The problem is
is just reactive and the competitive pressures are forcing us
to be more proactive. We need to be initiators, We
(14:28):
need to be predictive on what our customer's needs are,
not just responsive. Those are the kind of challenges that
are happening. So even if you have a I'll be
doing a training program and I'll have people in there
with over twenty years of experience, but they're still struggling
with these things because this isn't the way they learned
how to sell. These weren't problems in the past, and
now these are issues we're dealing with. People, especially younger people,
(14:51):
do not want to talk to you on the telephone.
So I find my outreach. I will meet somebody at
a meeting and they'll say, boy, we'd love to talk
to you. See how you can help us. I will
start following up and leaving messages for him. I don't
leave voicemails anymore. So I found it just did nothing.
So what I'll do is I will call you on
your cell phone. As soon as it went to voicemail,
(15:12):
which is like ninety five percent of the time, I
would immediately hang up, and then I would send you
a text message. So I find that most of my
selling the day is by text because of trying to
keep and connect, just because of how the culture of
buying has changed. So we got all these differences. But
you have salespeople saying I've been selling for twenty years.
There's nothing new in sales. I've heard it all before,
and I'd be teaching the class, not attending it. Average
(15:35):
reaction to senior people, that's a.
Speaker 5 (15:39):
Good good point. Tell us as an initiator, being the proactive,
give us a few suggestions of some different questions that
you found to be more powerful in the selling process.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
The whole idea of questioning has changed. There's a couple
of major changes that have happened that can make you
more persuasive. The first is it used to be you
can ask, frankly what I call dumb questions of a
prospect and they usually answered them ten or twenty years ago.
So I could sit there in our meeting and say, so,
what's the biggest problems you're dealing with? What would you
(16:11):
most like to improve in your business? What's keeping you
awake at night? These general I don't have any proof
of competence by asking those, but asking you to tell me,
spill your guts and tell me all your problems. That
used to work people actually would answer those questions. They
don't anymore. You ask them a tough question, what's the
biggest challenges you're facing right now? There's a good chance
(16:33):
you'll get push back from that buyer saying, what are
your qualifications? Why would I want to share that with you?
So what I'm finding is there's a whole concept of
how to ask questions. I teach a structure of questioning
which says, today questions are more effective if they're assumptive questions.
So if I'm talking to you and John about your
sales team to wanting to do sales training for your company.
(16:56):
I wouldn't just say, boy, what's the biggest things you'd
like to improve on your sales because that doesn't validate
any of my competency. What I would ask is to
say that in distribution companies like yours, I see three
major challenges that sales reps are facing that frankly, they
usually don't have a solution for. The sales calls are shorter,
(17:16):
the customers are harder to reach, and you're being brought
in lead into buying process. How are your people dealing
with that? Now? That still is triggering them to say,
tell me what your problems are, But look what happened
in that second example. I validated that I'd know what
I'm talking about, especially if any one of those three
rings the bell and that's what they're dealing with. We
have there's all sorts of reasons why, but salespeople have
(17:42):
lost the confidence of customers today. Their overall is a
distrust of salespeople that you're going to take advantage of me,
or you're going to manipulate me, or you're going to
sell me much more than I ever really need. So
because of that, people's resistance is up. So we have
to break through that crust to lower their resistance. They'll
(18:02):
never hear our message. To do that, we have to
validate and prove that we have competence, that they can
trust us to be able to tell what's really going
on and what they need. And people that tell themarket
me and they say, so, how's things going for you?
And I'll tell them you haven't earned the right to
ask that question yet. But this challenge of how do
(18:23):
we validate so the customers will increase their trust of
us over the average salesperson that they frankly don't have
a very good impression of.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Right now, it's brilliantly stated, and I think we're done here.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
I want to dive in deeper because we want more
of your brilliance, Jim. I think I'm guessing that in sales,
every call is unique. Everyone may react differently to say
one of those three assumptive statements that you made, And
that's why this concept of sales scripts is such a
troubling concept for me. Yet so many companies hold on
(18:58):
to this detailed sales script. For you, what is the
role of a sales script and would it be better
if we ditched them all together.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Everything you watch on TV, Almost everything you watch on
TV except for a talk show, is scripted. Every play,
every movie, every word is written. If it's done, it
doesn't come across that way. The reality is we need
to have a consistency and how we sell. Look what happens.
(19:29):
A sales rep works three months to get in front
of a new prospect. They finally earn the write in
there and they're sitting with the prospect. I don't want
that sales rep trying to make up something unique for
every customer they go into because the call is probably
not going to go very well. We want them using
what has most consistently worked. Now. And there's another visual,
(19:50):
if you don't mind, I want to show you, and
I'm just going to put this on full screen to
make it easier to see. There are four sets of
selling skills that a salesperson needs to be effective. And
this is going to get to the personal of what
you're talking about. Scripting the first the foundation of all selling.
It's like building four stories on a building. The first
floor the foundation is your attitude, energy. Are you a
(20:12):
hard worker? Are you professionally curious. Are you excited about
what you're selling? These kind of just energize. It's the
zig Ziglar material and the Tony Robbins material. If you
ever hear it either of them to speak, you didn't
take any notes, but you were inspired. But they didn't
really tell how to do things. They told you why
you want to be more effective. That's say attitude and energy.
(20:32):
A critical part of selling. The second part is your
operational or your personal skills. This is how do you
survive a sales call. Your knowledge of the steps of
a sales call, how to close, how to ask questions,
how to qualify, how to negotiate. All of the technical
and product information you ask are all part of that
operational because that validates improves what you can do. The
(20:54):
third level, though, are your tactics. And the tactics deal
with the process, structures or contry trolls of selling, the
multiple steps. What do you do from the time you
identify a new opportunity till the time you sell? What
are the steps you're going to go through? What do
you to different to the second call versus a fifth
call versus the eighth call? And more important, how are
you on that first call, going to position what you
(21:15):
want to do for the next three calls, so you
set the customer up to follow the path you're trying
to set. Those are the tactics the multiple step thinking.
The problem is most sales reps they only think one
move ahead. The joke I use my programs is most
sales reps are like the Hollari bird. Ever here at
the Hilary bird. Yeah, it's a three foot bird lives
in four foot grasp and his whole life saying where
(21:36):
the hell are we? It's such a cute joke. But
this idea that they only think one move ahead. But
look at the challenge. If you and I are competitors
and we're playing chess and I only think one move ahead,
but you think two moves, how many games you're going
to win that many? It's going to be all of them?
Is that if you're thinking multiple moves, I'm only thinking one.
So the idea of selling is how do we think
(21:57):
and plan and have plans for new business ID to
close process for existing customers? What are we going to
do from January first to December thirty first? They have
difference in uniqueness in how we're supporting that customer. And
also the third major tactic is how are we going
to get higher, wider, and deeper within an account. It's
amazing that the average sales rep I see experience successful
(22:19):
sales rep over half of their territory. When I have
analyzed this, over half of their accounts, they've only got
one contact. Now that contact could be the owner and
could be giving them all of their business. They're buying
from them and they're loyal. But what happens when that
owner is either fired, it dies, or is promoted to
something else, or leaves the company. What's going to happen
(22:40):
to your relationship? If you have know their contacts, you're
backed like it's a brand new prospect. So how do
we get higher, wider, and deeper. Higher up to the
executives that are making the real decisions, wider to the
other departments, and how what we're doing is influencing what
they're doing so we understand their needs and deeper down
to the front line, is using, applying, or dealing with
what we sell that gives a stability within an account.
(23:04):
The fourth and final area is your strategic what is
your philosophy, approach, your positioning and how do you differentiate
your sale versus a competitor. So, as an example, I
believe the toughest single question in selling that any customer
will ask, and most salespeople are really bad at the
answer is you're sitting there, I'm the buyer and you're
the seller, and I say, okay, look, you're the third
(23:26):
vendor I've talked to about this stuff this week. Why,
based on all the competitive options available to me, do
I want to buy from you versus anybody else? That
causes most sales reps to collapse. They give a generic answer.
The average answer I hear over ninety percent of the
time when I ask that of salespeople when I'm doing
research on a company is the answer they'll give is
(23:47):
because of our high quality product, our strong little support,
our competitive price. We're not the cheapest, but we're competitive,
and you get me. And what's wrong with that answer
is that's what ninety five percent of all salespeople selling anything.
So if you stand there and say our high quality
products are allo support competitive price, and you get me,
the customer sits there and thinks, Okay, that's what I've
(24:09):
heard from everybody else, So there is no difference. So
I buy based on price. Price is the default in selling.
There is no price driven market. I'm working in all
these commodities, grain, I'm working right now with a company
that sells steel and also sells recycling that you bring
the recycling materials and they give you money for it,
of recycling, all kinds of metals, all these commodities what
(24:31):
other people refer to as commodity businesses, aren't because I
work at them, and in every one of them there's differences.
The easiest way to see the difference on the pricing
issue is look at gas prices as you drive around
your community. We have one corner near my house. I
was just shocked because over the weekend, we were coming
(24:51):
home and we stopped at Delight, and I'm looking at
these three gas stations all in the same corner, and
one was at I'm here in Dallas, so our gas
prices are a little cheaper. But one was at two sixty,
the other one was at two seventy, the other one
was at two eighty, and all three of them had
cars getting gas. Now you think if it was a
real price, if gasoline is a price driven market, if
(25:12):
it's a commodity, there'd be nobody at the two dollars
and eighty centy up place because they'd be over saving
twenty cents a gallon just across the street. But it's
not price driven. So the reality of the process is
the more of a difference in value we communicate improve,
the more of a difference or own price customers will pay.
So our messaging is critical. Our process of how we
(25:35):
take the customer through it so we guide them to
make it a more efficient process is critical. And then
the third is that you're good on your feet. Now
when we talk about it. We need to have a message.
We need to have scripting. Scripting is a positive when
you apply your own personality. So if I give a stript,
it's really an outline. We don't give a memorized word
(25:56):
for word script, but we'll say these are the three
points you want to communicate for your message of uniqueness,
so that you can use your own style. So if
you're from the South, you'll use a lot of phrases
and terms nobody in North would ever even understand, but
works in the process. It's we're not trying to make
your robots, but we're trying to make it more consistent.
So like when you play golf, you need to have
(26:16):
a consistent swing. So even though each placement of the
ball is probably going to be different, your swing needs
to be consistent so you can count on it. Same
thing in selling.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
That's a good point. I'm just curious just to delve
a little bit deeper, is there? So what would you encourage?
Can you give us one example of how you can
differentiate yourself with your thought process? Can you give it
just an example of one of the industries you've worked.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, the differences are based on us communicating value. There's
something in selling came around in now nineteen seventies was
a selling term called selling to the FUD factor. Fud
selling to the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of the customer.
Example it was working with it was another John to
your dealer story. Sorry example of forgiving two. But I
(27:07):
was working with the sales team to sell what they
call a preseason inspection program. So right before it's time
to harvest, let us take your combine in a couple
months earlier and check it out, fine, tune it, adjust
everything so when you need to harvest, it's going to
work for you. Because if you break down during harvest,
that's when everybody else breaks down, you might have a
(27:27):
hard time getting servant. So to lower your risk critical term,
to lower your risk, let us do a preseason inspection
that might cost five or ten thousand dollars, but to
dramatically increase the chances that you're not going to go
down during harvest and you'll get the maximum crops returned.
So this idea of talking to the customer about we're
(27:47):
trying to lower your risk. We're trying to make your
life easier. We're trying to either increase your profitability or
lower your total cost. If we can show we can
do that more than the others can by focusing more
on that and showing ways support that, then we tend
to get to business. So the difference is today are
really not in the products. One of the things that
(28:09):
really screwed up selling was around the nineteen eighties when
and everything collapsed because the quality programs kicked in. And
if you remember back, if you read about it in
the nineteen eighties, the first one was ISO nine thousand,
make sure everything is consistently done. Then six sigma came
out of focusing on what quality really needs to be improved.
(28:31):
Then Chaison came out and all these other ones. About
one hundred different quality programs, and everybody adopted them. The
problem is the companies that were most positively impacted by
the quality programs were your worst competitors. That they didn't
have good quality products, The stuff didn't last, they didn't
have good support. Quality programs improved to everybody. So today
(28:53):
and I apologize, but there's a term you could not
use in selling anymore. It just does not work. It's
too generic, and that is the word quality. Everybody brags
they have quality. Ford Motor Company continues to advertise we're
qualities job one. That was okay, if we go back
twenty years ago or thirty years ago. The first car
(29:15):
I got it was in the late nineteen sixties, and
I remember my parents bought it for me. I was
graduating from high school and they were giving me a
car as a gift, this amazing gift. And we're sitting
in the car dealership that the owner was a friend,
personal friend of my dad. So we're sitting in the
owner's office and he's giving me the keys, and he
gives me this little pad of paper that was in
(29:38):
a little plastic binder with a pen. It was a
Chevrolet of the Chevrolet logo and it says we build
quality vehicles. So here's what I want you to do.
I want you to keep this path in the car,
and anything you find wrong, write it down, and in
two weeks we'll bring the car back, fix everything. Everything
will be great. I had fifteen things on the list.
I remember one of the windows wouldn't roll all the
(30:00):
way down. This was major problems in this car, but
that was normal back then. Look today, if you buy
a new car, they say, I believe it is the
average car coming off. There is like a less than
a two percent chance a car coming off and a
semilar line will have any problem at all. And if
there is a problem with someone like the radio, they'll
send that radio back to their supplier and they'll have
(30:22):
a meeting as to why they send them invalid materials.
So the quality programs everybody has improved. So because of that,
I can't advertise quality as job one, because frankly, when
they talk to my competitors, they're going to say they
agree with that as well. It's a generic term. We
can talk about the attributes and the benefits you'll get
because of our quality, but we just can't talk about
(30:44):
how greater products are and how we have such a
high quality product because the customer just hears that as
blah blah blah.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
So it's all messaging. It's all ultimately messaging in sales
and even just using words effectively and branding. There's so
much crossover there, So how is sale people? Do we
recognize the need to not only be in our sales
profit driven bubble, but step outside of there and really
(31:10):
consider some of those additional features and benefits that we
can use.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I think it was JAYE. Levinson in the nineteen sixties
was famous for the line that said, you don't go
into a hardware started by a drill. You go in
the harware store to buy the opportunity to make holes.
The disconnect occurs when the repinue store is pushing their drills.
Some people call it second step selling. First step is
to satisfy the customer's needs and help them with their
pain so that they get the second step to you,
(31:36):
which is they buy from you. This reality of process
is we can't pocus on the products. We have to
focus on what we're going to do for the customer
the results are going to achieve, And this gets down
to the most fundamental aspects of selling. An example show
you I teach my programs is most salespeople grew up
being trained on a feature benefit or a feature advantage.
(31:58):
Way to sell a feature of this pen is the
cap fits on the base. The advantage to you is
it improves the quality of the handwriting is demonstrated here.
That's how most salespeople sell. But look what happens. I'm
not focused on the customer. I'm leading with my stuff.
So what we want to do is when we reverse
that process and do a benefit feature approach to selling.
(32:20):
It's a minor detail, but it has major impact. Where
now I would say a benefit of this pen for
you and your presenters is going to improve the quality
of the handwriting of your people because the cap fits
on the base. Now, look what happens. We've taken a
feature and we've actually used it to validate the benefits
we're selling. We need to be more customer focused, and
(32:42):
the way to be more customer focused is we have
to focus on what they want in their needs and
show how we can fulfill it, not lead with our
stuff with them to figure out how they can apply it.
Big difference in selling. We need to be more customer focused.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
That's a great point. So Jim, I'm going to make
a little transition here and I know we're getting close
to the end and John'll wrap up. So my final
question is you've given us some great insights on selling,
but something I've done, just a little bit of work.
I've spoke to a few sales teams certainly don't have
the background you do. One of the things that I
have seen because I've done some things with a lot
(33:17):
of things with leadership is the traditional sales person that
becomes highly successful in selling and now they get promoted
to be the sales manager. And I kid people that
often they become the sales mangler because I believe there's
a different skill set. I know you'd talk to a
lot of sales leaders tell us some ideas to help
(33:37):
them making that transition so they become a better sales leader.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
There's a couple of problems and distribution. One of the
problems is most distribution organizations are a branch system where
they'll have multiple smaller locations spread around an area, especially
if delivering heavy stuff to shorten their delivery costs. The
problem I watched in several of my distributors. Is over
half of the sales managers I get a chance to
train never sold personally. They became a branch manager and
(34:07):
now have two salespeople reporting to them. But they came
up through the warehouse, or they came up through accounting,
they didn't come up through sales. So now we have
a sales leader trying to teach selling skills and coach
selling skills to a salesperson when they have no idea
what they're doing themselves. The second problem is most sales
managers never receive any training on how to be a manager.
(34:30):
Over half my work is in sales leadership training. And
I will ask programs raise your hand if you've ever
sold anything personally that you understand selling. Less than half
the room races their hand usually. And the second thing
I will ask about this is how much training did
you have when you became a manager And the answer
is none. We can strip job titles away in a company.
(34:51):
There's really only three positions in a company. The first position,
as you're a doer, your job is to do something.
You have no responsibility for anybody else except yourself. So
you're a salesperson is a due to sell or running
a piece of equipment. Your job is to run that
stamping equipment and get as much out of it a
day as you can. You're a doer. The second level
up as a doing manager. A doing manager has a
(35:13):
split responsibility. They are responsible for doing as well as
also supervising others. I was touring a metal stamping plant
recently and there was pods of five pieces of equipment
and kind of a semicircles. Each of the pod has
one supervisor. That supervisor was running a piece of equipment themselves,
but their quota was eighty percent of what their other
(35:34):
peoples were for their daily production because the assumption the
supervisor would not watch and maintain the other five people
running the equipment. That's a doing manager. The third level
is a managing manager. Now, my joke in my project
is a managing manager does nothing. If I described your boss,
the head of GM is not going to build any
cars today, nor are they going to sell any It's
(35:56):
not their job. Their job is to make sure everybody
low of them has all the resources so they can
do their job. The problem is we promote somebody that's
been a great doer a salesperson and promote a management
If they'll take the paycut. That's why they don't promote
a lot of senior reps to management, because the reps
don't want to take the pay cut. But they promoted
(36:17):
the management, but give them no training. So the first
time somebody brings them a problem and walks in and says, boy,
the Johnson accounts really upset. Here's their phone number, that
manager is likely to take it and call the customer
and handle the problem themselves as a doing manager. But
then look what happens. You just released a salesperson from
many responsibilities and you're now the pinch point in your company.
(36:40):
So part of this is we've got to make sure
that the job of sales manager on a sales call
is not to sell. That's the job of the salesperson.
And if the sales manager tries to sell instead of
the sales rep in front of the customer, that manager
just took over that account effectively for the rest of
their career, because every time that customer is the problem,
they're going to call the real decision maker, which is
the manager. The second problem is most managers are transactional managers.
(37:07):
I've got a real quick visual I can show you.
I think that can help with this. If you look
and we lay out the selling process, the visual is
showing just an arrow going to the right. On the
very left hand side of the era we have identify
and on the right hand side we have clothes. So
if we look at one cycle of selling, the arrow
represents the relationship is going to continue. But what's one
cycle to get something sold? The problem we have in
(37:30):
that process, besides sales reps not even understanding what the
process is they're going through all the time, is there's
a major critical change that happens right in the middle.
And that change is the sales rep issues a proposal.
And the reason that is so critical is the proposal
is a turning point in that relationship because before I
issue you my proposal, I have power, but as soon
(37:53):
as the issue my proposal, I lose all my power.
Before I issue a proposal, I would say, would you
let me talk to some of your sales reps to
understand more about what they're doing, to see what we
could do to help train them and do better. You're
likely to say yes because you're assuming it'll help in
my generation of a proposal. But if I've already given
my proposal and I say, by the way, would you
let me talk to a couple of sales reps, You're
likely to say, well, if you win the business, that's
(38:16):
a good idea. The problem is most sales reps give
their proposal too soon. Now, the next question is when
do sales managers tend to get involved in this process?
And what happens is for the average sales manager, they're
a transactional manager, so they only get involved once proposal
is issued. A lot of times it is only because
that's when it shows up on their computer system to
(38:36):
track it, or they see the proposal is generated. So
now they're bugging the sales rep what it's going to
take to close this. The problem is that by that
point that the manager gets involved, the sales rep has
lost all their power. So the only only for that
manager to do is either cut the price or promise
extra services, which lowers their margin. The change in management
today is we need to move that forward to the
(38:57):
first half of this. I call themselves process coaching, where
instead of saying waiting till the proposals, they're trying to
help close it. As soon as we hear of an opportunity.
The manager says to the sales rep get in here
and tell me about this account, and let's develop a plan.
It's a proactive change of management where the transactional is
much more reactive. Once a sales rep has some let's
(39:19):
help them land it. We want it to be more
proactive where the sales coach is actually helping guide direction,
focus structures so that we can have a more efficient
and effective way to close the business. So these are
the kind of changes happening in management. It's a whole
different environment. Just because you can sell doesn't mean you're
going to be effective sales manager.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
It's such a good Yeah, that's such a powerful example
of that, because we asked that question to a lot
of people and we get different answers. But that visual there,
I hope you're watching on YouTube because if you aren't,
I recommend checking that out if you're listening to the
audio right now, because that a really powerful visual. Jim,
I know we're running down on time here. Really appreciate
(40:00):
you coming on. But is there anything else you'd like
to share with us?
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Yeah? I think that a couple of things. One is,
wherever you are in selling, congratulations or in sales leadership.
It's the idea that the success in selling is you
work and you get trained and you do all these
things and then you die. So if you don't have
all the skills you need, that's okay, says you're still alive.
It's a process. In fact, I joke and to say
people will ask me what's the goal of your sales training,
(40:25):
and I'll say, to help your team suck less this idea.
It's an ongoing process. You never reach perfection in this.
But there are three keys to a competitive advantage. I
want to show a visual again, just list of three
that I find that if you do these three things
at the same time, the needle moves every time. If
(40:45):
I can get a customer to work on all three
of these areas, we increase sales consistently. The first is
we need to have a stronger message and answer to
a customer's asking why base on all the options do
I want to buy from you? And that message needs
to be a minute to a minute and a half.
And that's all because if it's if it's a fifteen
minute PowerPoint presentation, you'll be lucky to give it once,
(41:07):
but you'll never give it again. If it's a one
minute or minute and a half message to cover this
is why we're unique or while we're different, or what
our approach is going to be to help you better.
We can then state that or pieces of it over
the entire sales call. So we need to have a
stronger and tighter message of uniqueness of why, based on
all the options available me, do I want to buy
it from you. The second thing is we need to
(41:30):
improve our sales team's best practices, the structures the steps
of selling. If you only have five minutes in a
sales call, you better understand what the steps of a
sales call are or you'll blow it. You won't get
anything done. This happens at trade shows. Look what happens.
Somebody walks into my booth and goes, what's that? And
it's like pulling a string at a doll. I do
(41:50):
an information dump on them for five minutes about how
great this equipment is. Do you say thanks and walk
out with a brochure? And I never talk to you
again because I didn't follow the steps. So the idea
of having best practices of selling to make you more consistent,
effective and efficient. And then the third piece is we
need more effective selling process coaching. The manager is getting
(42:11):
involved in a more proactive, predictive way, not just waiting
to help close business. With these three changes, that makes
the difference. I have some tools I'd like to offer
your listeners, and that is I've been posting for boy.
It's about eight years now. I've been posting three videos
a week on sales and sales leadership topics. The videos
(42:33):
are all usually under ninety seconds and they're just talking
about this is what's happening and selling or sales leadership
and what you can do about one idea video. It's
something you might want to consider following. If you're a manager,
this is a great opportunity for you to train your people.
It's free training. What you do is you show a
brief video and then all you have to do is
(42:54):
ask four questions of the group. First question is what
do you think of the video? The second question how
relevant are those ideas to us from what we're doing here.
The third question is what do you plan to do
different based on what we discussed? And then the fourth question,
when you see him in the hallway later in the
week or you talk to him, is to say, Okay,
what success did you have when you tried the new idea.
(43:16):
So by just showing a brief video and asking only
these four questions, you can add ten minutes of sales
training to every sales meeting you have with your team.
We don't have to ignore sales training only once a
year at the annual meeting of the sales team, do
we do something. You can be doing this every week
with your team, taking advantage of not just my videos,
(43:37):
but a whole bunch of other ones that are out
there that have good stuff, that are brief that you
can use to bring new ideas to your sales team. Frankly,
I find it's rather difficult to track people on LinkedIn
to follow somebody. It tends to be a little bit
of a challenge because there's just such a high volume
of stuff out there. So I have a weekly newsletter.
(43:57):
It comes out every Monday morning, and all it does
is it has an article that it's hopefully a help
for a sales manager, and then it summarizes the last
three videos I've posted with links to those so that
as a manager. I have managers subscribed to my newsletter
just to be able to keep tracks so when they
see a topic that's of interest, they then can show
it at their sales meeting. It's free, there's no commercials.
(44:20):
I'm not selling anything on it. It's support to help
you help your team sell more. And the final point
is I know that with your listeners all over the world.
I know with your The following that you have is
that if anybody has any questions about this material or
if you would like my opinion, if you call me,
I'll answer your questions. My phone number is my cell
(44:41):
phone number is nine five to two nine three eight
nine nine eight. My email address and you can either
call me or text me. And my email address is
Jim Jim at pansero dot com PA n C ER.
Because I found we know you're good now. The only
question is are you ready to get even better? That's
(45:02):
the challenge in selling today.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
It sure is because we have an audience that you know,
when you're immersing yourself in this kind of content, you
know that you've gotten somewhere. You've already done half of
it right, You've showed up. And I know, Jim, people
at your events, people who train under you, they've already
done the hard part showing up. But there's so much
more to take advantage of in pincero dot com for that,
(45:26):
and also if you're watching on YouTube, you could scan
that QR code, but if not, the link is also
down in the show notes, so go grab that free
newsletter you could sign up for that. And what I
love about your videos, Jim, I know you mentioned there's
a lot of videos out there, but your videos are
quick and to the point. And how many videos do
we see with all that unnecessary fluff. So as a
(45:46):
content creation guru myself, kudos to you for keeping things
quick and to the point.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I find my videos are very unique because they don't
talk about myself, Yes exactly, I have not. If I
a story on a video, it's only because to improve
the point of what's been said, and usually why it
didn't work for me is what I'm talking about. I
believe that the way we communicate today is not through
our egos of talking out great we are showing pictures
of us with famous people or anything else. It is
(46:14):
based on giving solid content so people want to have
a stronger relationship with you.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
That's selling well, said Jim Pancaro. Check out all those
links in the show notes and thank you, Jim for
what you've shared with us so valuable to our audience.
And I know nobody will leave this episode unchanged.
Speaker 6 (46:32):
We appreciate you, honored to be here, Thanks for having me,
Thank you for joining us this week at the Limitless
Leadership Lounge. To listen to this episode again and to
find previous episodes, check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
and spreakare. You can also get in on the conversation
find us on Facebook and Instagram, then tell three of
your friends to join.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
It as well.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
Coach Numa and John. We'll be back again next week
for another try generational leadership discussion. We'll talk to you
then on the Limitless Leadership Launch
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!