Our Best Sales Tactic (to Make a TON of Money)

0:00Big, big friend. In my ears, in my mind. That's where you live. In your mouth. I'm not in your mouth. I could be if you bought me dinner. Hello, Zach Thompson. Hello. Good to see you again. Good to see you again. I wanted to talk this week about the art of clarity and the importance of gaining it. Something you struggle with. i've been thinking about this habit of clarity like i like gaining clarity but i don't like being clarity uh beautiful song as well by john mayer that you might like clarity um yeah you're very good at being quite forensic in the interviews i've noticed you know you'll uh that bit doesn't make sense with that bit etc etc very good um so in a sales setting i'm going to give people a few different examples to think of here because i think there are some that are commonly talked about and perhaps a few that aren't number one um you know the thing where you're a software salesman and someone says like oh does it do x and the software salesman probably because a trainer whatever goes yes it does so i probably everything they get asked yes it does do that yes it does do that but they never ask a set fundamental questions do they joe they never do they never do i think people see those as buying signs and think right i'm just going to run in here straight away and start selling but actually as two people that have worked in sales for at least a year we know that the selling actually happens in the questioning and the discovery and by the clarifying have you got any examples of either where you've been sold to or heard someone or someone you've trained where that's made a big difference i've got top of the dome I've got a recent example.

1:51So we've hired some new starters who have been dialing for We Have a Meeting. A new starter comes into the office and they dial on our behalf first before they go on clients. And somebody was on the phone the other day and they got asked, are you a competitor of Zoom? Okay. Right. And the person just went, yeah, yeah, we are. And they launched into what we do, which is obviously not the way, but you've got to commend the confidence. but are you a competitor of zoom my head goes to so many different places what zoom do you know i mean are you are you saying zoom info are you saying zoom the the meeting software are you just saying zoom that the noise that a formula one car makes that's that's what you're asking are we competitors of formula one noises because we are um so like clarifying oh sorry just before you say zoom i don't want to i might sound like an idiot but what what one are you talking about what zoom are you talking about okay and then unpacking like if you're asking that there's a reason that you're asking that what is a competitor and actually why are you asking that and if you go deeper into it you might find they're looking at it and if they're looking at it why are they looking at it or they already use it why do they already use it there's so much clarifying that goes on that's going to give you information and knowledge and we know that knowledge is power i'm going to throw back to an earlier we have a meeting podcast guest derrick gaunt who works at chris voss's black swan group he was talking about the difference between a why question right because someone might say do you yeah are you a competitor of zoom why feels a little bit combative but he was saying you can use the labeling technique as a question so and and um there's a few people in in my team i'm sure in yours as well who use this really well so they get asked the question they go oh sounds like there's a reason you've asked me or feels like there's a reason that's come up now or sounds like there's a reason that's that's that's important to you and they kind of struggle with it using those labels and the other person tends to clarify the position the risk is you can have a lot of these little checkpoints right and some of them might be fine some of them like do you do this yes fine some of them do you do this and someone's taking a note down jotting something down you don't really know why you're being asked it and things tend to come out upstream and i when we used to do a lot more sales coaching i would spend a lot of my time on calls pausing going you know doing call coaching people pausing going what did they mean by that i don't now keep going pause what do they mean there i don't really know what and you can just play that game constantly can't you one million percent it's it's it's the it's the game of getting it like everything it becomes a habit what do you mean i say i say it when i do sales training it's my favorite sales question and it's so simple it's so it's very jordan peterson isn't it what do you mean a ham sandwich but it's just like mate i've never heard you do enjoy the impression that was actually quite good and you're not done that's annoyed me that's that's annoyed me that you've complimented it yeah because you're quite good at impressions um but yeah what oh great question but how how i feel like most salespeople struggle because they lack the ability to switch into actor mode of oh they go they they just go for the the juggler of yeah we work with them would you like to book a meeting they don't bring the actor oh oh okay right zoom and they they play with it a little bit we've been we've been thinking about this and this is probably another episode that we might do of that that framework of how do you accept questions through tonality do you know i mean so that that's one thing to think about and then go there's there's a feels like there's a reason you're asking me that like really understanding so what i would what i would set we like setting tasks but this is going to be a real task is go back and listen to two to five of your most recently booked meetings and make sure that everything you know in the call is fact or if you look at your notes and say they're using this they're using this they're doing this they're feeling this they're blah blah blah blah blah why i'm just yeah i've just seen what you've changed my name to and the audience can't say that and you've thrown me off my trade of thought it's very good very very funny humor nice one mate um but yeah but but but asking yourself how do i know this is true you're distracted let me jump over something um i got an email this morning from a client of ours saying can we extend to cover the us as well but in order to cover the us i think we'd be better off using a us speaker right now i think me five years ago eight years ago i would have gone panic yeah we need to go and get that done it's going to be better with a us speaker instead you should be going that's a belief where's that come from hmm is what where would that not be true yeah Yeah.

7:15Where would it be true? Why would it be better with a UK speaker? Why would it be better with a Spanish speaker? Let's run some tiny experiments. Exactly. If someone rang me with an accent that I don't hear all the time, I might be like, ooh, hello, where are you calling from? Name one. I don't hear all the time. Perhaps, hey there, Zach, it's Cajal from Donegal here. How are you? Well, so Revolut don't have your number, I'm guessing, because I'm at about 30. Very good. Very good. So yeah, so clarity, explore clarity. And then the last one that I want to leave people with is me and Jack bang on about this all the time, but around expectations.

7:55It's just the biggest thing ever. People sell so much at perfect. I've done a few sales calls and a few demos recently where people are just like, I can definitely solve that for you. I can 100 % solve that problem for you. I can definitely. And it becomes very based on that. But expectations are not only subjective, but because of negative bias, we kind of always think it's going to be the worst anyway. So setting your stall, bottle job, at perfect often can lead to disappointment, can't it? Well, you, I mean, I thought I knew where you were going there, but you actually are unpredictably irrational.

8:33But you were telling us this morning in our director's catch-up that you looked at a piece of software. the guy come back and said it might be underwhelming you might not be that impressed with you because because we know the the sales rep and there's a bit of a relationship there but that disarming upfront honesty we've got dr chris phelps on the podcast this week if you've listened to that episode getting there first makes you a bit more bought in and a bit more trust and actually i'll probably be more impressed because my expectations are lower so i don't know if he was being honest i don't know if it was a psychological warfare trick but guess what it worked take our fucking money yeah yeah um and it's something that we're always refining isn't like the onboarding the expectation the expectation for the first week for the first month for the third month for the like the expectation should always be there it should be based very much in reality so takeaways for people should be start to build in a layer of curiosity imagine like kids are really good at this like little kids like my my five-year-old you make a point to him and he's like why the first thing he asks why why does it do that and you get to a point where you get to a point where it's like because i said it is or because i said so you you've hit on something that you don't really understand yeah exactly and then you can start to bring them to the lawyer and you've actually you've got them there themselves like i love it like i know we've digressed but i just love when people say these are our payment terms and you go okay why well yeah it's the way it's always been all right is there a way around that probably okay don't take everything as fat question everything question everything task for this week jack i think it's your turn to set one it's my turn to give a task what i'd like you to do is i would like you to go to linkedin and there is a guy on LinkedIn called Marco Alfonso Rogers.

10:35He works at Centrama. I think his name on LinkedIn is Marco AI. AI, AR. Find him and just message him and say, I've been asked to find out whether you're taller or shorter in real life. That's all we want you to ask. I'm trying to work out his height. What's the price? Really big prize. Let me just check the bank balance at the business at the moment. Wow. Okay. We're doing okay. It's going to be a thousand pound gift card for the first person that does that thousand pounds. Send that message screenshot it. Send it to me because I've, I mean, we'll talk about it offline, but I've heard that you've not been paying out on some of these tasks.

11:14No, I paid out on all of them. The issues I paid out on, on, I paid two people cause I felt bad. You'll get right. We shouldn't be doing that. I didn't pay is that I paid two people. Right. Right, well, don't be doing things like that. Yeah, let us know and we'll get that money in your bank account. I've been Jack Frimson. I've been Zach Thompson. Thanks and respect. Respect yourself. Cheers.