Is Relationship Selling Dead

This week, I visit with Ryan Dohrn from Brain Swell Media. Ryan is an Emmy-winning sales trainer, author and motivational speaker. We discuss how to avoid being ghosted, how to sell in a post-pandemic world and Ryan’s tips for selling virtually. We also dive into the question “is relationship selling dead?”

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Welcome to create, Build, Managethe entrepreneurs Toolbox. Here's your host,
Scott Miller, and my guest thishour is Ryan Dorin. He is the
founder and owner of brain Swell Media. It's a sales management training and consulting
But more importantly, he's just comeout with a book called Selling Forward.

(00:32):
It's Pandemic test it sales Strategies forSuccess. And Ryan, I wanted to
have you on the show tonight becauseas we're going into the fourth quarter,
as we're looking at Q one,as we're coming out of what has been
definitely the most trying time in businessin my lifetime. I don't know if
I'm ready to say the most tryingtime ever. I didn't live during the

(00:54):
Great Depression, but we've had alot of things going on, and I
just want to kind of recap whatwe know. You know, the pen
Some are saying it's not over with. We're seeing shutdowns still happening today.
But you have the pandemic, thenyou have the supply chain issues, you
have inflation. And for those peoplewho are watching the show, who's their

(01:14):
job. Maybe they own a business, maybe they manage a department, But
in the day, it's about sales. How do you sell there in the
middle of a pandemic? That's whyyou wrote this book? I did little
did I realize in writing the bookright towards the end of the pandemic that
the advice in the book would carryover to a level of economic uncertainty.

(01:34):
What's interesting is the number of peoplein the sales business and business world that
on a daily basis try to dothat classic redefining of insanity, and that
is, when things aren't going well, we'll just keep doing it. And
I think it's because our mother's father'sgrandmothers, whatever, whoever raised us taught
us that or told us that ifyou work hard at anything, you can
be anything that you want to be. Well, I'm not going to argue

(01:56):
whether that's true or not. Iwanted to be an NFL running back.
It just didn't work out for me, right. But I think that a
lot of people just continue to dailyredefine insanity because in their mind, they're
like, it's got to be me. I've just got to work harder at
this, and a lot of timesthey're doing the wrong things. And so
I really didn't realize that the bookwas going to resonate beyond my core group
of people sort of in the mediaadvertising business until a couple podcasts later,

(02:23):
I had a guest on that justsaid, you know, I know this
book is designed for people that selladvertising technology, digital technology. I'm in
the insurance business. That he said, and it really deeply impacted me.
So I just feel like the strategiesin the book, and as I'm speaking
and talking around the country are resonatingwith people, whether you're a realtor you're

(02:43):
sell automotive or whatever it is.Because Scott, we're living in a different
time and so we've got to sellin a different way. Well, let's
unpack that, because you're right,I mean, the way we see the
world is different today than it wasa few years ago. So traditional So
all right, if I'm coming toyou, Ryan, I want to sell
your product, I'm really going tofocus on highlighting sort of stats and figures.

(03:09):
I'm going to come at you withsome numbers. I'm going to constantly
kind of hits you that doesn't necessarilywork. To know, it doesn't,
especially when people are fatigued or whenpeople are economically uncertain. So what's interesting
is every Friday, the sales repsthat I coach, I ask them to
take a survey, and the surveyis very simple. It's just three blanks
that they fill in. So ifyou were one of my clients, I'd

(03:31):
say, Scott, in your mind, okay, what types of buyers did
you meet with last week? Whatpercentage were ego driven, what percentage were
buying logically with facts and stats anddata, and then what percentage of those
folks were making emotional buying decisions.And so what's interesting is in the midst
of the pandemic, the emotional buyerset was as high as seventy some percent,

(03:54):
seventy four, kind of in themidst of the major lockdown piece.
I wasn't that's surprised by that.So the pandemic, if you say,
kind of gets over whatever that means, right, the big phase one,
let's just say the vaccine comes out, things get a little bit better,
Okay, all of a sudden,the number of emotional buyers drops to like,
say, fifty ish percent, whichisn't that uncommon. Well, now,

(04:15):
just within the last fridays, I'mseeing it rise back up again.
Because with economic uncertainty, people becomeif you will, they have tunnel vision,
and so they can. They justkind of want to see what's in
front of them, and they don'twant to look really far in the future.
So what I try to advise peoplebusiness owners sales reps is most people,
most sellers, sell the way thatthey want to be sold. So

(04:40):
let's just say you're logical, Scott. I don't know if you are not.
You know, I think you are, right, Okay, So you're
going to sell in logical ways.So you're going to use numbers, stats,
facts, data to try to convinceme to buy from you. Unfortunately,
I'm an emotional guy. I buyemotionally. My wife sent me out
to get in different car not thatlong ago. She said, come back
with whatever you want. I cameback with whatever I want because it looked

(05:01):
good, made me feel good.And she said, you've got to be
kidding me. I mean, wecan't put a bag of groceries in the
back seat of that little car.And I'm like, yeah, but it
makes me look so cool. Right. So she's a logical buyer. I'm
an emotional buyer. I'm an emotionalseller. You're a logical buyer. You're
a logical seller. We're a mismatch. The problem is amidst economic uncertainty,

(05:23):
Logical sellers perhaps like you are notgoing to be a match for seven out
of ten people that are buying.And so because you're not a match,
you don't sell as much, youdon't connect as deeply with people. And
you and I both know, andeverybody that watches you know your show knows
if you can't get a connection withsomebody, they're probably not going to buy
from you. So we've got tosell in different ways. And that's just

(05:46):
one piece of it. Is tounderstand who it is that you're dealing with.
And I can figure that out bylooking up people on LinkedIn and things
like that. Yeah, no,it totally makes sense. So when we
talk about emotional, let's take itjust adeper level to explain. We're not
talking about irrational thoughts, right,We're talking about this emotional connection. So

(06:08):
you know, for me, I'malways kind of hybrid working in media,
there's a lot of emotion. Youknow, I sell a lot of program
sales I have in my career alot of times that is emotion, Right,
you get the feeling of being ontelevision, So I understand that when
I buy vacations, I'm always emotionalright, right. What doesn't matter what
time, because for me, Idon't care. It's like what does my

(06:29):
wife want? What do my kidswant? Yeah, and so give me
some other examples of how you mightsell a product emotionally, where otherwise you
would think more than analytical. Sure, So it's it's actually pretty straightforward when
I realize I'm meeting with somebody that'semotional or I'm trying to kind of attract
or connect with an emotional buyer.It's a lot about It's a lot about
stories. So experts will tell usthat eighty some percent of people remember a

(06:53):
great story, but less than fivepercent of people remember a stat or a
fact. So let's talk about yourtravel experience. We're talking about. What
I want to be thinking about isbeing able to connect with you in two
ways. So the first thing I'mgonna do emotionally is show you a lot
of great pictures, and I'm goingto show you a lot of great testimonials
from others that had gone on thatvacation to a resort or whatever the circumstances.

(07:15):
But I need to hedge my betthat you might be a little logical
as well. So what I'm goingto do is make sure that I'm showing
you the discounts that you can receiveby booking today. I'm using things like
the airlines, do only three seatsleft or whatever the circumstances. Even if
you look online and there's fifteen,there's only three seats left for You's got
right, So I think you canhead your bet either direction. But what
I would advise all salespeople business ownersto consider before you go on a sales

(07:41):
call, look up that person onLinkedIn. You can really get a really
good understanding of who they are emotionallyor logically from looking up somebody on LinkedIn.
An example of that would be agentleman named Ben that I was going
to meet with. Looked him uponline, and at face value, I
thought, I'm dealing with a logicalperson. I could see that in their
profile there was lots of lists,okay. That's a key indicator that someone's

(08:03):
logical. In their linked improv there'slots of lists okay. Whereas on my
profile it says I love my job, I love eighties rock and roll music.
You know, I was excited tomeet def Leppard. You know,
things like that, right, Soit kind of spells it out and so
I think you want to wrap yourstats in a good story. But if
you're meeting with somebody and you cansee when you give a stat that they're

(08:26):
doing like you're not resonating, youwant to wrap that stat in a story
and realize you maybe you're dealing withsomebody that's more emotional than you could ever
feel. And you've got to beable to change your style. The old
way of selling is you said thesame thing to everybody and importunately right now,
Unfortunately, you're not going to geta good connection with people if you're

(08:46):
selling logically to seven out of tenpeople that are emotional. You know,
we see you know recently major retailersare shifting their advertising messaging right, and
these these are I'm gonna use Walmartas example. Sure, Walmart fourtune,
five hundred company. They have avery big research budget. So I always

(09:07):
kind of tell people like, lookat the big guys, what are they
doing? So they have pulled theiradvertising that talks about fresh fruit, let's
talking about clothing, and they've broughtback in the commercials that say lower pricing.
We're the low price leader. Right. There's a reason why, and
it gets back to what you're talkingabout the emotion of where their customers are
right now, right right, andwhat they do. And as you said,

(09:28):
they've got the money to do theresearch. So let's just peg and
springboard off of that and realize whatthe big folks are doing out there is
what we should potentially be doing,but we don't do it. And the
reason we don't do it, Scott, is because we've done it this way
forever. And change is really reallytough on most people, smart or the
older. You know that's true enough, right, Yeah, And so you've

(09:48):
got to recognize that if you're goingto be great in your sales game,
you're gonna have to change your salesgame. Like even when closing techniques,
it wasn't that long ago that aclosing technique book came out. We'll leave
the author's name, you know,off the show, but one of the
closing techniques was, well, youknow what you're thinking about today, Scott,
somebody else thought about yesterday. Andthey want to put somebody in a

(10:11):
vice and get them to make adecision. Well, the problem with that
is that the younger buyer set thatwe're now selling to, when you do
that to them, it puts themin a very uncomfortable situation, which old
school salespeople liked. But now thenew school sales reps are realizing, Hey,
I've got to help this person.I've got to deeper, deeply connect
with this person to move the needle. We just can't keep selling the way

(10:31):
we sold before the pandemic. Well, I think it's smart. And this
is what sets you part Ryan,is you don't have that one thing you
learned in your twenties, and youkeep selling a book after book after book
of your book, you're keeping apulse on it, you're learning, you're
doing those things. Your website.By the way, Ryan Dorn dot com,
we got you for the full hourawesome. So you're in the hot

(10:52):
seat for the full hour stick around. You are watching create, build,
and manage right here in viz TV. We'll be back after this visiting this

(11:20):
hour with Ryan Doran. He's gota new book selling Forward Pandemic Test It
sells and strategies for success. Yousee it right there on your screen.
Ryan, I want to kind ofdive into relationship based selling. You know,
in my career, been doing mediaand sells for twenty five years.
Relationships it was always what it wasabout his relationship based selling dead. It's

(11:43):
not dead, it's just changed dramatically. What's interesting is the younger buyer set.
And I want to clarify that sopeople don't think that I'm hating on
millennials or something like that or genz. There's two groups of people,
young people and old people, andScott, if you don't know which group
you're in, you in the oldgroup. That's how it works. Okay.
So when you think about relationship basedselling, it used to be that

(12:05):
you did everything you could in salesto build a relationship with somebody to make
them feel comfortable from you, andthen they potentially buy from you. What's
interesting is the buyer sets that we'redealing with today know that they don't have
to have a relationship with you tobuy from you, and in a lot
of cases, they don't want tohave a relationship with you. It's not

(12:26):
that you're not a good person.It's not that they don't they hate relationships.
They just have relationships and maybe theydon't need more. Let me give
you an example. Working with aclient in New York City, huge Yankees
fan, I happen to come acrosstwo Yankees tickets, reached out to them,
Hey, I've got two tickets tothe Yankees. There were great seats.
Do you want to go? No? Ryan, thank you, it's

(12:46):
okay. I said, well,would you like the tickets for you and
a friend? Oh? Absolutely?Thanks? Right, And so it's not
that I'm not a nice guy.It's not that that person doesn't want to
have a relationship. They just don'twant to go to a ball game with
me, and it's okay. Sowhat's kind of been the shift is from
relationship selling to recommendation based selling.Knowing that I don't have to have a

(13:11):
relationship with you, Scott in orderto sell you something. I can still
recommend products to you. I canstill use social proof, which is naming
other customers you have that are veryhappy with your product, your service,
or whatever. The problem I runacross is it used to be that it
was like a string. You haveone end of the string and eye and

(13:33):
in sales that meeting, we wouldjust tug that string back and forth.
Well, now what I found isthat's just not enough. Because I'm a
sales guy, right, salesperson,they don't want to meet with me,
but they're okay meeting with me aslong as I can prove to them using
social proof that there's other businesses,other clients I've worked with that have come

(13:54):
before them. Here's the cool partabout it. You don't have to have
a relationship to sell, but thatkind of subtle name dropping what it does
is it takes It removes the illnessof the performance being on me on Ryan,
and it really shifts to that too. Oh so company A has worked
with you. Awesome, Company B, they're happy, Company C. They're

(14:16):
happy. Great. If they're allhappy, why wouldn't I be happy?
Right? So, what I'm usingis social proof to sell, making a
lot of recommendations, not taking ifyou will, the buffet approach, not
the Golden Corral come in and getall the foods you want approach. I'm
taking a more recommendation, like afine dining approach to it. And what
I found is relationships will come.Do a great job for your clients,

(14:39):
take care of your clients. Relationshipswill come, But you don't have to
have a relationship in order to sellthem something. A very important piece.
I wonder if you know, asyou kind of describe how things are change,
I almost wanted because we're so connectednow in social media, you know,
we got all these people coming atus all over the place. He's
like, I don't need another personin my life. I just need this

(15:03):
problem solved. Can you solve itright? Right? And our network is
in some cases become larger because ofLinkedIn social media things like that, But
if you're really being honest with yourself, you're only going to communicate with a
finite group of people on Facebook orwhatever, so that group has kind of
become smaller. Also, with thepandemic, you really had time to get
to know the people in your smallernetwork. But I think it also is

(15:26):
an age sort of thing. Whereasit used to be know as many people
as you can. It's a quantitykind of thing. I feel like the
younger buyer set is more about thequality piece of it than the quantity piece
of it. Unfortunately, sales wehave to have a lot of quantity,
you know, to get to thenumbers we need. But I feel like
a lot of people are hung upon if I don't have a relationship with

(15:46):
someone, I can't sell them.You absolutely can and the relationship will come.
So I feel like it's just flipped. It used to be build relationships
sell Now, it's recommend you socialproof. The relationship will come when you
work as hard to keep the clientas you did to get the client.
And that's where the relationship, inmy mind, is more important. There

(16:07):
you go after the sale, allright, customer needs assessments. What we've
been doing that for years. Iwant to sit down and tell me your
pain points, tell me what youneed. Right, But you're right,
no, throw that out? Boy? Doesn't it sound fun like, Hey,
Scott, let's get together for sixtyminutes and I'm going to ask you
a bunch of questions, put youunder the microscope, and then leave to
create a proposal. Well, theproblem with that is is that do you

(16:30):
actually determine what they need or areyour questions actually discovering what they want?
So there's a distinct difference. Whenyou give somebody what they want, they
are happy for a short period oftime. When you guide them towards what
they need to do with your company, using social proof, using examples,

(16:52):
using stories, then all of asudden you've got a client for a lifetime.
A lot of salespeople sell short,meaning hey, if that's what you
want, buddy, I'm going togive it. To you. Well,
the problem with that is that you'redidn't guide them towards what they needed to
do, because what they want maynot be based on your experience what they
actually need to do. And whenyou can dig in on what someone actually

(17:14):
needs to do and guide them beingan advisor be helpful to them, then
all of a sudden, boy,you're really gonna have a customer for a
lifetime. So I'm really big intooutdoor cooking. Love outdoor cooking. I've
got a Commado Joe, like oneof those Commado cookers, a trigger,
a blackstone griddle. Okay, Ididn't go in originally to buy those things.
I went in to buy something else. But the gentleman at the store

(17:37):
said, what are you going tocook? What are you gonna do?
It sounds to me like maybe you'renot going to smoke things. You're actually
going to do more like grilling,more short term things. I said,
yeah, probably, So he said, you don't want the smoker, you
want this, and you want thisfor this reason. He guided me from
what I wanted to what I needed. Now he's got a customer for a

(17:59):
life time, and I have waytoo many things to cook outdoors, you
know, now. I mean,it makes sense very logically when you think
about it, and I've always believed, you know, one of the things
I'll tell a client is like,look, you know, I could sell
that to you, but that's notgoing to help you, right, you
know, I'll take business off thetable, not as a sales technique but

(18:21):
as a general like because in mytwenties, I didn't you know what I
learned, Ryan, I learned thatit's frustrating for them, it's frustrating for
me, and why go down that? Why be frustrated? Right? What's
interesting is it was intuitive to you. It is a sales technique, but
it was just intuitive to you becauseyou're a good person, because you're good
natured. But there is technique inthat, because when you tell somebody that

(18:44):
they can't have something, they wantit, they want it more, right,
So it really is a technique.But not all people are intuitive the
way that you just made that shift. A lot of folks they're like,
oh, that's what you want,good, here you go buy, and
they're not going to have a customerfor a lifetime, so you want to
watch out for that customer needs aset sent. A lot of times people
will say we don't wants your budget. Well, I don't know what the
budget is. So you've got tobe careful what the questions that you ask,

(19:07):
because sometimes you're leading people down thewrong path. And when you lead
them down the wrong path, youdon't have them, you don't still want
to find out what they actually need. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, So
you just want to be careful aboutthe questions that you ask because in sales,
a lot of times we've been askingthe same question from the eighties,
and the eighties are calling. Theywant a lot of those questions pack right,
And I think that's an important pieceof the puzzle. I love this

(19:29):
question. How can I be ofthe most help to you today possible?
Like I'm walking into buy that grill? How can I be helpful to you
today? But what can I doto be helpful? And when people hear
that from you, like, oh, so you don't hear to sell me
something? No, I just wantto help. If you buy, that's
great. If you don't, it'sokay because for me, I'd rather get
a know from somebody than get ghostedby somebody. And if I'm selling people,

(19:52):
you're likely to be getting ghosted.It's pretty high. If you're helping
people, You're likelihood of getting ghostedor deleted goes down. Ryan Doran dot
Com is where you're going to findRyan doing a lot of public speaking as
well. We got ten seconds we'regoing to talk about that next segment where
you can catch Ryan coming up thisfall and heading in the next year.
Stick around. This is Create,Build and Manage. Welcome back to Create,

(20:37):
Building, Manage. I'm Scott Millerand we're visiting this hour with Ryan
Dorn giving you some practical tips tohelp you sell. We've already covered a
lot of great topics here as faras how to sell when there's a pandemic
and a downturn in the economy,And that last segment was great kind of
shifting your focus on you know,the right questions to ask and when you're

(20:57):
doing an analysis, and how tobuild a relationship. It's not about build
a relationship on the front end anymore. It's about offering something of value and
then following up. Now, Iwant to get into another topic that I
get asked from time to time.It's something that we're all dealing with.
I'm listen. I love our friendsat Zoom. They help us out,

(21:18):
they bring me a lot of guestson this show, but man, I'm
kind of getting zoom fatigued, right, right, and zoom fatigued. Yeah,
And you're not alone. You're noticingthat more and more people when you
go to a Zoom meeting or notsharing their camera, more and more people
are just they're just they're tired.I mean it's not Zoom as much as
just as the atmosphere of it.It also reminds us of the pandemic.
But the other thing that's important torecognize on it is that a lot of

(21:41):
times they don't want to participate becauseof how we present ourselves. A lot
of times we don't set ourselves upfor success as salespeople or business owners because
we're in a hotel room with anunmade bed, or we're in our kitchen
with dishes in the background, orwe've got a dog or cat in our
lap, which at first is cute, funny and acceptable during the pandemic,

(22:02):
and now it's like, hey,we've moved beyond that. So what I
try to advise people on Zoom toavoid the fatigue is get ready for the
call. Get ready for the salescall. Now with a Zoom you're able
or any of the most all ofthem. You're able to choose a background,
make it serious, make it relatableto what you're doing. Don't station
yourself in front of your bay window, you know, or in front of

(22:25):
a bright window. You look likeyou're in the Witness Protection program. Buy
a microphone, you know, Buyone of those blue snowball mics for fifty
bucks from Amazon. You don't needa bable fancy one like you know,
you've got a big fancy one here. You don't need that. But what's
interesting to me is the number ofpeople we see on major news network Scott
that still to this day are puttingtheir little earbuds in. I mean,

(22:45):
we're talking about major politicians with terriblebackgrounds. It sounds terrible. The camera
looks terrible. You want to tryto mimic the face to face because people
realize during the pandemic they didn't needto eat us face to face to buy
from us, Right, So youwant to mimic that face to face experience,
and people a lot of times willsay, right, nobody cares,

(23:07):
but they do care. The wayyou look on a zoom call is your
representation to the world. And sothe last thing you want in the background
is something inappropriate or crazy, orbeing on a call with twenty people at
a Starbucks where you've got noise andclanking in the background and think that people
don't care. They do care.So if you're going to be successful in

(23:27):
virtual selling, you really got toget your act together. You're hitting on
things near dear to me. Youknow content marketing agency than we have.
We tell people you got to lookat that like you're on a TV show.
Correct, frame it, have properlighting, as you mentioned, proper
audio, and then you know,consider what you're wearing as well. Right,
you know, you got to havesolid colors work. You can't have

(23:48):
things that are busy. And whenyou talk about the witness protection, just
I just want to circle back tothat. What you're saying is the light
goes behind the camera, not behindyou. Correct. And you know because
all of us get ten Amazon boxesa week. Okay, take one of
those boxes, flip it over andget your laptop camera level with your eyes.

(24:10):
Nobody wants to see up your nose. Nobody wants to see the ceiling
fan, Nobody wants to see thespot from your bathroom above that dripped long
ago. Get the camera level withyour eyes and then go on Amazon or
whatever and buy a soft light.Just look up soft lighting for thirty dollars,
you can buy that. You canbuy a little device that'll get your
laptop up eye level with you.If you have a cat or a dog

(24:33):
that constantly barks or meals or something, find a place for them. There's
a company that's called Kong Ko nG and they make these toys that dogs
will chew on. What's cool isyou can put a piece of food or
a treat inside the toy. Ittakes them all about sixty minutes to get
that little treat out of the toy. So if you've got a dog that
barks NonStop when you're on a zoomcall, get them one of those toys

(24:55):
that takes them sixty minutes to eat. Right. It's those kind of things
that people don't think about that reallymatter. And when you when you present
yourself in a highly professional way,it elevates the sales process. But the
biggest thing is people do care.I mean, people expect you to be
better and it's not that expensive forus to be better. I'm gonna guess
give me your thoughts on this.Sure, less than two hundred bucks,

(25:18):
say one fifty, you could buya nice soft box light, a decent
microphone, and you can get abox for free, you know, right
to fix all this and get thoselittle earbuds out of your ears. They
look terrible and they sound terrible too, right, And I think that's an
important piece. Yeah, I thinkthat's important. And then consider the staging
behind you, right, you know, if you're working from home, sitting

(25:40):
at your kitchen table and there's stacksand sacks and magazines behind you, I'm
a little OCD. That drives mecrazy, indeed. And I also think
your thoughts on this, you know, practice staring at that camera lens yep,
because you know, like I'm lookingJust to give you example home,
this is me looking at you ifI'm doing versus you know, me looking
like this. It's so much morepersonal, Like if I'm looking at you

(26:03):
right in the eyes, that's whatyou want. It is it is.
And so you know, when youturn your camera on, there's this little
green light or whatever you're staring atthe screen, which actually means the person
on the other side is actually seeingyour forehead. So this is what's interesting
for those at home. This isactually hard for me to talk to you
because I'm used to doing this.I'm used to looking at the camera all
the time, and now it's seeingNow I'm like getting really comfortable, like,

(26:26):
hey, how are you. It'sgreat to see you today. But
because of what we're doing here,I'm doing this, so my brain is
like, go back to the camera. What are you doing? Ryan?
You've got to look right into thesoul of the camera. People care,
and you can elevate your professionalism.It doesn't matter what you're selling, whether
it's insurance or its technology or it'ssoftware. I had a sales professional professional

(26:49):
get on a call the other dayball cap backwards T shirt that was mommy
wasn't inappropriate, but it was alittle colorful, let's say, not in
the color, but was on itsitting in his kitchen. The camera was
pointing up his nose. I couldsee the ceiling. And he wanted me
to spend twenty five thousand dollars onsoftware. And I thought to myself,

(27:11):
I just don't feel comfortable with younow. I don't need you to be
in a coat and tie. Ithink that would be uncomfortable in the other
way, but at least come onthis call. Where you're asking for twenty
five grand and at least act likethe call is worth twenty five thousand dollars.
Right, here's what's interesting. Italked to millennials, I talked to
gen Z's, I talked to boomers, I talked to all these folks a

(27:33):
universally. The understanding is, ifyou're asking somebody for money, at the
very least present yourself at that levelof the product. It's sort of like
going on a car lot and aguy walks out or a lady walks out
whatever, in flip flops and atank top, and you want me to
spend well, now, what sixtythousand dollars on a cheap car? Right?

(27:55):
You would look at that person andgo, wait a minute, what
now? Because it's just not whatyou do. Now. Keep in mind,
though there's a little bit of awrinkle here. You don't want to
overdo it because if you overdo it, then I think the person on the
other side of the camera feels like, well, this is really awkward.
So I've got a really nice setup because they do a lot of zoom
calls a lot of times, I'llget rid of my big microphone use my

(28:15):
small one sometimes I'll change the background, but I just think it's kind of
weird when people are on a zoomcall and they've got like palm trees in
the background that are doing a littleanimated gift move and right, it's not
it's not clever anymore. You justneed to present yourself in the way that
you really wants your product represented.And I think it's an important piece of
the puzzle. I personally like thenatural backgrounds over the virtual ones. Right,

(28:38):
you know, the virtual ones aredistracting to me because unless you have
really good lighting and the good greenscreen, they never seem to look well.
But I'm a television guy, soright right. It also eliminates your
ears sometimes, like it'll cut yourears off, you know, or something
like, Yeah, the weird They'llgo get coffee like nothing's there, and
then the coffee cup shows up rightright, right right, I show my
book and the book disappears, youknow, and stuff like that. Yeah.

(28:59):
I don't like virtual ones, butI get it. But I think
really from a practical standpoint, we'retalking about, you know, let's let's
old school before things virtual. I'mgetting ready tomorrow, I'm going on on
the sales pitch. You know,I'm going to be asking for a million
dollars. I'm not going to showup. I'm going to wear a suit.
Correct, I'm not going to showup. You know. Now I

(29:21):
may not have a tie because it'sTexas and it's you know, it's hot,
but I'm going to show up respect. You do that instinctly in person,
but then you're right. You geton home, it's like, oh,
it's almost like to use examples,almost like the guy's like, oh,
I forgot I got Ryan, andlet me get out of my pool
and jump in the kitchen and jumpon and try to sell twenty five thousand.
Right. There was a short periodof time and it was real where

(29:42):
people really didn't care. So duringthe pandemic, people were awkward. They
weren't used to it. Their catwas in their lap, their kids were
in the background. I mean therewas a time when it was I guess
I would just acceptable, so itwas fine. Yeah, but we're beyond
that now. There was also atime and an age group that were kind
of like at beginning of the millennialphase. Remember now millennials own homes like

(30:03):
the rest of us, have kids, have debt. Right, these are
grown adults and the rest of ushave gotten older. Right, there was
a time when it was very casual, wasn't really that big of a deal,
didn't really matter. And I thinkeven that group has changed their philosophy
on it and they're realizing, Hey, we need to be a lot more
professional and how we present ourselves.But we don't have to go over the

(30:25):
top. We just need to makesure that what we're doing makes sense and
represents our brand or a product correctly. It's kind of funny work in immediate
sales. We've been selling virtually.Before selling virtually was cool, right,
exactly, Well, now a zoomis a noun, a verb. Could
it be like an adjective You've beenzoomed right, you know? Or whatever?
Yeah, yeah, and so.But I would share this with you.

(30:45):
People feel like, hey, let'snot do a zoom call anymore.
Let's not do a team's call,a virtual call, a go to meeting,
because people are tired of it.In all sincerity, I have found
even here in the in the metroplexarea Dallas Fort Worth, it's going to
be easier to sell virtually because bythe time you drive from Dallas to Fort
Worth back and forth, you couldget caught in three and a half to
four hours of traffic, depending onthe dot of the day. Virtual selling

(31:08):
has become very commons, not goingaway. He has become the norm,
not going away, Ryan Doran dotCom the website. We're gonna wrap it
up and I got a few morequestions, so you're still in the hot
seat. You're not done yet,so stick around. This is create Bill
and mannets right here on this TVand vis talk radio. Have you ever

(31:48):
gotten ghosted on a sales call?This is a terminology our kids came up
with. It's something that's been goingon in sales for a long time.
We're visiting this hour with Ryan Doranagain. He is a founder and owner
of brain Swell Media to sales managementtraining consulting. You're in the know when
it comes to sales and the currenttrends. But let's talk about this because

(32:08):
we kind of joked in the commercialbreak, you and I were talking about
this that you know, clients notreturning phone calls has been happening since there
was a telephone, yep. Butnow we have a terminology with it called
ghosting? How do you how doyou stay clear of it? It's almost
like, if you're giving advice toa kid, how do you stay away
from the friend zone when you're tryingwhen you're interested in a girl? So

(32:30):
how do I stay away from theghosted zone? Well, a lot of
it is at the sales call itself, that level when you're meeting with somebody,
and a lot of times we don'tdo enough questioning at the end of
the sales call to determine if somebodyactually has a need, if it's a
yes, or if it's a no, or if it's a maybe. So
what I like to do is startevery sales call with the end of the

(32:51):
sales call in mind. So whenI'm meeting with you, I'm going to
have a shorter meeting now than everbefore. You can't be asking for sixty
minute meetings. No one has sixtyminutes to give you. Nobody's curious anymore.
Right back in the day. Inthe day, you used to have
to meet with a salesperson to learnabout things. Now you learn about it
online and then you reluctantly meet witha salesperson to complete the close of the

(33:12):
sale. In a lot of cases, so on that sales call, it's
going to be Hey, Scott,Thanks for the twenty minutes. Do you
still have twenty minutes? You're like, sure, Ryan, I've got sixty
stay all day, okay. IfI'm on the phone or zoom or face
to face doesn't matter. And thenI'm going to say, you know,
Scott, at the end of thisconversation, I'm looking for just one of
three things. If it's a yes, awesome. If it's a no,
it's okay. If it's a maybe, I need to think about it,

(33:35):
not a problem. We'll set aplan in place together. Now I'm criticized
on the stage nationally, blogs,you name it, by all the big
names. Why would you ever givesomebody an opportunity to say no? And
the reason I do that is becauseI don't have time to be ghosted.
There's two reasons why people would ghostyou, Scott. One, you're a
very nice guy, and they don'twant to say no to a super nice

(33:59):
guy. That's one. The otheris they actually weren't really that excited about
your product, but they just don'thave the guts to say no to you.
And I know the reason why,because they think you've been trained and
your sales fangs will come out likethe moment a client says no, oh,
you know you're gonna go after them. It's like canceling your whatever internet.
Oh yeah, then the thangs comeout right and they try to sell

(34:21):
you further. So I want peopleto get to the end of the conversation
and feel comfortable. If the answeris no, the answer is no,
it's not that big of a dealbecause now in today's environment, you can
be an aggressive salesperson, but you'renot going to resonate with a vast majority
of people. Do that the firstcall your meeting with them. I do.
I do, And the reason thatI do that is because I want

(34:42):
to feel well then to feel comfortableenough with me, Because for me,
there's a book like the first yesis a no okay, Noah's no,
okay, don't get don't get introuble here, okay, Noah's no.
But the other for me is it'sjust it's not right now. No to
me just means not right this second. It doesn't mean no forever. But
if you're thanks come out as asalesperson and you're selling, they're never going
to meet with you again because peopledon't want to be treated that way.

(35:07):
The other thing that I do toavoid being ghosted. Is I recognize that
I've got about forty eight hours tofollow up with this person. So I
do a lot of meetings on lateMonday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so
I've got Thursday and Friday to followup with them. One of the worst
things in sales is well, I'llget back to you next week. Well,
a week is an eternity. Imean we can, I mean weeks.

(35:27):
A week is a very long periodof time. So one of my
strategies is meet on Tuesdays with mycritical clients, do my critical selling on
Tuesdays, so I have Wednesday,Thursday, and Friday to follow up and
don't let someone take it to thenext week. So if you said to
me, Ryan, I liked theidea, but why don't you call me
back next week, I'd say,Scott, you know lot's going to happen

(35:49):
here in a week. You're goingto get busy. I'm going to get
busy. We may lose track ofeach other. So if you could just
give me some type of answer,maybe by Friday, that'd be awesome.
Just a quick five minute meeting.And when I set the follow up,
I set up a microscopic little meetingon the calendar, so they don't think
sixty minutes again for this guy,sixty minutes again. And so I'm using

(36:09):
these strategies to just try to workwith the emotional buyer set that we're dealing
with. I'm having great success.My clients are up forty percent in a
lot of cases, not every case, that'd be awesome, forty percent because
they're adapting and adopting new strategies nomatter what they're selling. I've got insurance
agents, I've got SaaS, softwarepeople, tech companies, and we're just

(36:30):
doing things differently and people are reallyliking it. It's really resonating with the
folks that I'm dealing with. Youknow, at the end of the day,
when you're talking about selling in thenineteen sixties, seventies, eighties,
nineties, whatever decade, sure itcomes down to reading the room and the
psychology of the cell it does,and what you've been talking about this hour,

(36:52):
you're saying you need to listen upand understand that the psychology of the
room, the psychology of the cellchanged. It has, and it's vibrantly
changed. I mean, a lotof the books that are written in the
eighties and nineties, early two thousandsare good books. But I feel like
the eighties are calling. They wanta lot of those books back. That
we're just not selling that way anymore. And so when I meet people on

(37:14):
a plane or at a conference,the most common thing I hear is well
I knew to do that, butthat's not really our sales process. Or
people will say interestingly, they'll say, well, we're doing good, why
should we change? Well, mythought is, let's go from good to
great. If you're doing great,let's go from great to superstar status.
But I'm not saying throw everything outthe door. How about this? How

(37:34):
about tweak a few things. Howabout look more at LinkedIn? How about
improving your skill sales set. Howabout just presenting a little bit differently.
How about just not trying to putthe screws to somebody put them in a
vice at the end of a call. How about a yes no if it's
not it's okay. You know,it's not that big of a deal.
You're going to find out that peopleappreciate your sales approach more. You're going

(37:58):
to sell more. And what you'regoing to find does you have clients for
a lifetime because you're a helper,not a salesperson, and that's a very
important piece. How many times youhave clients to come in who are not
having success and they still want tofight you on that. So it happens
a lot. And what has tohappen is they have to have the guts
to try new things. And oncethey have the guts to try new things,
then all of a sudden they seea change. They come back to

(38:21):
me and say, man, youknow what, you know what? Why
did I do this for years?And that really is the selling Forward book
was written for people really in themedia sales business. But what I realized
was as people read it and gaveme feedback that it applies to every business.
Yeah, there's a book by theway, we've got on the screen,
Selling Forward, Pandemic test. Itsellsthis book as we want to leave

(38:44):
it on the screen for just amoment. You can get it at Ryandoran
dot com. You can also searchfor it anywhere you get books. We
got sixty seconds left. Tell themwhere where the net proceeds of this book's
goes, because this is kind ofa cool deality. It is. It
is so all the net proceeds aregoing to go to the Golden Harvest Food
Bank part of the Feeding American Network. I had a couple of times in
my life where we didn't always havequite enough food, and I just never

(39:07):
wanted that to happen again. Igot the idea from people like Bill O'Reilly,
etc. That write books, Briankill Meat that write books, and
they don't get their money to charity. For me, it's just a really
passion project of mine and a lotof people do it. I really mean
it. I really write checks atthe end to it. And so if
people buy this book, they're notonly going to get some good information,
but they're going to be supporting agood cause because the America that I live

(39:29):
in, that you live in,scott nobody should go hungry. And if
we can help towards that cause,I think it's a great effort. And
I think we're seeing the needs orany more they are they are. Ice
goes open for sure. So RyanMan, I enjoyed this hour. Every
time you sit here, I thinkwe could talk another two hours about it.
And there's probably five or six othertopics I wanted to address, But

(39:50):
I do want encourage people to checkout your website, Ryan Dooran dot com.
That's where you get videos and otherinformation to keep in touch. Thanks
so much for tuning in. Thisis Biz TV five