Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Barry, welcome aboard to the show. So happy to have you with us today.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Well, thanks for having me.
[00:00:05] Speaker A: I am a big fan of your book, no lie. What drove you to write it?
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Because I was selling that way for a whole long time and I realized there were a whole lot of other people that weren't and it just became a whole lot more difficult for them.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Oh my God. I couldn't agree more. Bring us into the story. What does this mean? What was the problem that other people were seeing? What were you doing differently?
[00:00:31] Speaker B: You know, I found out what I could believe in my product. I found out nothing gains more credible than. Nothing gains more credibility than being able to tell people what's wrong with my product. It can't do this, it can't do that, it can't do the other thing. But here's what it can do and here's why you should think about it seriously rather than, you know, it's the greatest product that ever came down the road and there's nothing absolutely wrong with it. Anything you heard, don't know, that's all wrong. That's a complete lie. This, this is a perfect product. This is the one perfect product that was ever created.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: This is such a fundamental truth that you're describing. It's probably the fastest way to build trust in a relationship by being honest.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah, nothing like it, huh?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: It's mind boggling to me. And it's been, you know, quite a bit of time since you published in 2006. And yet I see this all over, right? Sales guys are avoiding telling the prospects, you know, customers what is missing in the product. And in fact, I bought countless products. One of them was a. I won't mention who the supplier was, but it was a GRC tool for compliance. And then I started using it. It's like, oh, all these promises they made were basically lies.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: So there goes your business, right?
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Why is this happening? What's driving basically sales account managers to say things in a way that are maybe is not blatant lie, but makes us believe that the product can do something that it can't.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: It comes right down to the fact they don't believe in their own product.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: But why, if I don't believe in.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: It, I can't sell it to you? Or I can, but only by lying.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: So is there an issue here with a misperception like why is what you're saying in no lie? Why is that not a trivial aspect of selling for everyone?
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Because people, number one, they don't know how to handle objections. Number two, they're afraid of objections, and they're afraid of imperfections in their product. Every product has something wrong with it. Every product has something wrong with it. And there's nothing wrong with admitting that.
If that imperfection means that that particular customer can't buy it, so be it. There are plenty of customers out there. But it usually doesn't. It usually doesn't. One of the biggest objections people have is price. And I'm not just talking about customers. I'm talking about salespeople. They're terrified of the issue of price.
People ask me what my price is very high. What do I charge? A whole lot. Why do I charge so much? Because I'm worth it. Because my clients are willing to pay that kind of money for the results I generate. Bingo. No problem. Move on to the next point.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: You know, I work with hundreds of salespeople, and there's an easy way, in my opinion, and maybe this is just biased to my experience, but there was an easy way that I discovered to tell between a great salesperson and maybe an average salesperson. And it's a very simple thing. Do they ask to reduce the price or increase the price?
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: I had a handful of salespeople saying the price is too low, and then I had a whole lot of salespeople telling me the price is too high. And to me, that just said, well, if you think the price is too high, you don't think there's value in the product.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: Bingo. That's it right there. Plus, it's always nice to have a really big number to throw out the start in case you have to negotiate down. You start out small. Where are you going to go?
[00:04:07] Speaker A: I love that. So let me ask you this.
When you think about hiring salespeople, or maybe I should say the basic qualification, skill, talent to be an amazing salesperson, how would you define that?
[00:04:25] Speaker B: You know, almost anybody, almost any type of person can be a good salesperson. But number one, it's got to be a person who's inquisitive because they have to find out about their customer, and that's a key thing. They have to find out about their product. They have to find out about the competition. But the key point that I want to see in somebody is I want to see somebody that's persistent and who can be aggressive without appearing to be aggressive. Because if you appear to be aggressive, it's going to turn off the customer and he's going to throw you out of there. But if you can be aggressive, you can keep coming back and keep coming back through one no through a second. No through a third. No through a fourth. No. If you're very good without appearing to be aggressive to keep the customer on your side while you're doing that, you're going to make a lot of sales.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: So I heard a stat that most salespeople give up after like the fourth or fifth time. That's statistically. But success comes after the seventh time.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: That's ridiculous.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Go ahead.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: That's ridiculous. Like, how can you get over, like, what you're saying here? This elegant persistence. I'm going to coin it.
Like, I don't want to do that.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Right?
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Like I don't want to be that asshole who keeps coming at. How do you even do this?
[00:05:35] Speaker B: You know, you do it with a sense of humor. You do it by empathizing with the customer. You do it by understanding the customer. I've had times where I've gone into the customer and I knew this is product he needed. He shut me down completely. I left the place, I got back to the car, I got out of the car, I went back in there and I said, listen, I screwed that up. You need this product and I should have explained it better to you. And then I proceeded to explain it again and closed the guy. And. And I've done that a number of times.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: How was that received? What was the response from the prospect?
[00:06:10] Speaker B: In most cases, if you present it rightly, if you present it right, they're perfectly willing to listen. Now, I've had times when I failed doing that, but I think more often than not I've succeeded because the reason I went back is I honestly knew he needed that product and I honestly knew I hadn't done a good enough job selling it to him.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: That's so delightful. First of all, let me just give you a very honest compliment. I love your humility. I think that's another kind of secret hack or secret sauce for being a good salesperson. It's being truthful and humble because, you know, who wants to buy from an arrogant bastard? Like, that's not, you know, that's not a thing.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: Absolutely. I got a review in a presentation I was doing. Woman complained because I was self deprecating.
That's made me a lot of money over the years.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: It's funny, I had a sales manager basically tell me, oh, you need to toot your own horn. You need to say why you're amazing. I was like, but I don't need to. Other people will do that through me. I have the track record of success. And we had this huge Argument around why humility is important in sales. So it's really refreshing to hear your perspective. I appreciate that you said something.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Go ahead. The customer doesn't want to feel they've been sold by the ace salesperson. I remember I had a big argument with a manager I had one time because they wanted to put my picture in the lobby. The last thing I wanted, number one salesperson, last thing I wanted to have happen was a customer to walk in there, see that picture, and figure he's about to deal with the number one salesperson.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: You know, I mean, I love that.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: You know, my motto over the years has been, I want to. If you want to do anything with marketing, I want to make sure you're promoting my customer, not me. Because in that way, you're giving even more value to the customer. So I just love your perspective. You said something incredibly important. You said inquisitive.
I don't know a lot of salespeople that kind of focus and spend time on really understanding the customer pains on doing competitive analysis. You said, that's amazing. Explain your philosophy.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Well, the more you know about him, the more you're going to or her, the more you're going to be able to find the hot button you're looking for and the more you're going to be able to help them. I mean, the idea is if you've got a product you believe in, you're going to be helping these people by selling it to them.
But how do you know if you don't know what their needs are?
I would spend quite a bit of time before going into any call, just reviewing the call, reviewing the customer and finding out. And there was one job I had where you basically had to go through a checklist before you went in there if you wanted to do it right. And it would take 15 or 20 minutes to go through that checklist. But then I'd go in there and I'd have the sales program and I'd have these things all written down and I'd go through them and he'd see me going through them and he'd realize I was asking him questions no one had ever asked him before. And he'd realized that giving those answers was going to help him. And so you're halfway to the sale when that happens.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: That's delightful.
This chase after the no. Right. This inquisitive nature of, you know, let me understand what your problem is, where you're having challenges. I want to see, you know, why this wouldn't work for you. That's not an approach you often see in the sales environment. Often you try to get the, you know, everybody's trying to get the nice. Yes. Right.
What is your philosophy? How do you kind of balance those two things?
I have a strong opinion. Not going to state it. Where do you stand?
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Basically, the salesperson who hears the most nose is going to be the salesperson that succeeds the most. The better you are, the more no's you can hear. Without offending the customer, without pushing him, making him feel that he's being pushed, the more successful you're going to be. I mean, it's just pure and simple. Whoever hears the most no's is going to win.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: What's the value of phrasing your checklist and approach, as in seeking out why? Why not to be in this relationship? Right. So basically trying to figure out, you know, why wouldn't this work for you as opposed to trying selling to the customer, why this would be a good idea? What's your approach?
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Well, that approach is fine, but you better have an answer to every objection because you're raising those objections. That, that's fine because you, you want him to know a lot of times the customer's there and he's not going to tell you what his real objection is. Right. So you bring out those issues yourself, Bingo, they're on the table. You can deal with them. If you just say, you know, I'm Mr. Customer, I've got this product here, would you like to buy it? He says, no, I'm real busy today, blah, blah, blah. You don't ever know what his real objection is.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: I love that.
That's so true. I mean, what I've experienced is that if you're kind of seeking the yes and then it just fuzzes out, you get a polite yes. They're just trying to make you go away. But if you seek that no, then you're actually bringing up real issues. And then the discussion becomes so real that it creates an amazing engagement. So that's a del delightful point. Barry, what have you heard from, you know, salespeople who have kind of made this shift in their perception about moving from, you know, oh, yeah, we're great to no, let's talk about the hard stuff. Let's talk about what this, what the truth is.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Well, it works. I mean, it's pure and simple. It works.
The majority of salespeople won't try it. No matter, no matter. You can go into a call with them, you can do it. You can show it to them over and over and over and have it working. And the majority of salespeople are still afraid to try it. And that's one of the problems with this.
That may be the only problem with this strategy that I've ever encountered is that insecure salespeople, are they wanting, as you said, they want to walk in and get the yes right away and then they'll move to the next call if they didn't get the yes. They hope they get a yes there. They'll burn territory. You know, we had one customer, one salesperson working for us one time. He was so bad, it was like, yeah, we go to a customer and somebody say, yeah, I ran arrangements with Mickey. You don't have to buy it from anybody. It was basically what it was. That was the kind of answer we get after this guy had been in a call.
You shouldn't be afraid of the no's. You got to know your product. If you don't believe in your product yourself, you're not going to sell it or you're going to sell it, you're going to feel bad about selling it. Oh, I stuck that guy with that product, which is another thing salespeople that talk about, you know, I really killed that guy. I clobbered that call. I really stuck it to him. You know, I don't want to hire those people.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: This is one that I personally have trouble with, working with sales executives, the kind of predictive future. I've seen two extremes. The one is very, very underselling to the executive. What is the status of the deal? The other is completely oversell. Oh, it's done. We're there, we got it. Then nothing happens.
Having this dynamic, I almost prefer the people who undersell me and then surprise me.
But how should a salesperson look at evaluating accurately the status of a deal and then communicating that to the team?
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Again, that's very often experience and experience in that particular customer, in that particular product.
You know, I got. So I would very often I could tell if I'm training somebody in an industry that I was familiar with, I could tell them exactly what was going to happen with the call. And it did. It followed. This guy's going to say no about this. I'm going to say, this is going to happen like this. Then I'm going to bring in this, Then I'm going to show him this, blah, blah, blah, and bingo, we're going to end up here.
And very often you'll be very, very close to it. So you would know. You would know rather.
On the other hand, if you've got a Sales manager, just demanding generalized projections for territory that you haven't worked yet. That's ludicrous. Really?
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Is there a way to kind of bridge the two kind of having that. Look, I haven't done it yet, but this is what I would like to do. This is what I hope to achieve. And then kind of bridge between that and here's what I'm learning and adjusting as I'm going into it. Because. Feels like there's this game where sales managers are trying to get the. Oh, make this commitment. Beat it.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: That feels wrong.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: It is wrong. And it's bad management, you know, and. But what you'll get is what you're asking for, you know, asking for commitments. You'll get commitments, and then they won't be realized. And then, you know, the salesperson feels bad because he failed. And that's. How good is he going to be after that? You know, a few of those fails and pretty. Pretty soon you've got a failed salesperson completely fail.
I much prefer the kind of thing where. And I would protect my salespeople from that. As a manager, you know, if I had to put numbers up, I would come up with them myself. I, you know, I talked to my people first to see what input they would give me, but I wouldn't demand specific numbers from them in advance. I'd come up with the numbers. If somebody's going to yell, they were going to yell at me.
And I was arrogant enough to think that there's no way on earth they're going to give me a problem because they need me, which is the other thing. As a salesman, if you become indispensable, you have an awful lot of power, and you can do a lot of the things the way you want to do them the way they need to be done. So it's a good thing to work, to become indispensable.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: There's nothing like a proven track record of success, 100%. I was kind of surprised when the day came where the number one salesperson was knocking on my door and like, hey, Ari, can you help me get into this account? And I was like, yeah, sure. Let me make the introduction. Let me pull you into meeting. It was my boss that came and said, do you know who just asked for your help? And I was like, no. Do you know what that means? I'm like, just helping, you know, I don't know this guy. It's like, that is the number one salesperson who has tried to get into that account for years. You did what others? It's you know, I didn't even realize that was happening. But, you know, there really is something in this strategy. Right. Which I love. I want to play the devil's advocate for a second here.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: The common knowledge is don't badmouth your competitors. But on the other hand, you're saying, do competitive analysis.
How do those two things reconcile?
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Well, it depends.
Very often if I'm doing competitive analysis, I would go in there and if was necessary to close the account, you know, I'm really thinking of going with them. Oh, fine. They're really good about this. I would do it just the opposite of what I do with a normal call. You know, they're really good when it comes to this, that or the other thing. And I would know that this, that, or the other thing wasn't too important to that particular customer. But here's where they break down. And then I would show them that. But I don't just know that's the worst company in the world. You don't want to go anywhere near them because the guy knows that's crazy. Or he may not know, but he's probably going to think it's crazy.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: Here's the problem that I think a lot of times, specifically in kind of the B2B SaaS world, many of the products are kind of similar, right. The actual software features, they're kind of ripping each other off all the time. Right. That's not always true, but in the situations that that is true, what do.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: We do as salespeople where they basically have the same this, that, or the other thing?
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah, same software.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: They're exactly the same product, exactly the same every kind of detail. They're even the same color. What I sell them is I sell them myself. You know, these products, they're exactly the same. I mean, look at this, look at their stats, look at our stats. You can't tell these things apart. It's become, price is the same, everything's exactly the same. Well, you buy our product, you're going to get me, and you're going to get the kind of service I can give you. And here's what I can do, and here's what I've done for other customers, blah, blah, blah. That'd be one way to approach it.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: That's so counterintuitive because I think what most of us think is like, well, let's search for the differentiation. Let's not admit the basic truth that these things are very similar. Basically, if there's a significant differentiation, sure, of course.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: But I'm talking about a Situation where there isn't. And sometimes there isn't.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I think that's.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: Sometimes they're better. Yeah. Sometimes the competition is actually a better product.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Find out why my product is more important to the customer. This particular customer.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. You know, the thing is that I think we many times discount the value of the relationship and the skills that customer success has. Right. Support the skills that marketing has. And there's a lot of other things that make the relationship as opposed to just the products. I think that's a. That's. That's really a wonderful points.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Especially certain kinds of ongoing. Where you have ongoing clientele and you're building up a territory that's absolutely key. I mean, a lot of times people buy because they like the salesperson. They may not even like the product as much as the competition. If they got a relationship with the salesperson, they know they can trust them. They know there's a problem, they're going to get it fixed. You know, that means an awful lot.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: You know, the person that taught me how to be a sales guy, his name was Dante, and he was managing South America. And he said to me this. He said, ari, if you have two softwares which are the same, and then one of the account managers is a friend and the other is not a friend of the customer who wins. And I obviously said, well, the software is the same. You'd rather buy them from somebody you know and trust. And he said, correct. And then he said, when the software is unequal, meaning the other person, software is better, but you have a personal friendship relationship with the buyer who will win. Well, I said, you know, you'll go with the, you know, the better software. And he was like, nope, nope. Friends always win, friend always wins. And that was such a shock to me. I did not see that coming.
Why is that? What is the thing? It's not really friendship, right. It's really trust.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: It's really trust.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: What is this? Why is this so important to build trust in the sales process?
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Because everybody knows if they buy something, it may not perform like they want it to. There may be problems. They want somebody that's going to be there for them. They want somebody who's going to. If there is a special break on the price, then the next time they come in there, they're going to show it to them. They're not going to try and hide it from them so they make a higher commission. They want somebody they can trust. I mean, we all want to do business with people, with people we can trust and we think we can trust our friends and we hopefully we can trust our friends.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I don't think that I, that I've had a single, you know, software deal that ultimately there was an issue and you know, there are bugs are a thing. Right. And you know, sometimes it's the customer's fault if it's an IT issue or whatever. Right. That that can happen. Sometimes it's the vendor's fault. Right. For different reasons. But knowing that you have somebody who will get you through it, it's, it's the biggest difference. Right. Knowing somebody will be for their there for you is, is massive. Absolutely massive.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Especially with software, you know.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Software can be very frightening. A new piece of software, your whole business can go down because of it. Right?
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Yeah. No, 100%.
Barry. What an absolute delight. This has been so much fun. I have a difficult question, so it's the only scripted question we have in this show.
If you had to go back to 20 something year old Barry, what would you advise him?
[00:22:00] Speaker B: You know what I'd advise him, it has nothing to do with sales or anything else. I'd advise him to take $10,000 and put it into an index fund in the stock market because today that would be worth several million dollars.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: So usually I don't allow those answers because it's the hack answer.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: You can cut that.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: It's the hack answer. It's like, oh, I would invest in Apple. But you said something incredibly interesting because you didn't say a specific stock that went up. You said an index fund, which, this is one of my soapboxes. So I'm going to ask you why did you say an index fund? Because I think that advice is still true today.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: I've been very successful using index funds. I'm a real believer. If you didn't know of John Bogle who started Vanguard, I'm a real believer in that philosophy because on any given year, 50% of the geniuses that run stock funds are going to be above the market. 50% are going to be below. Actually a little bit more than that are going to be below because expenses. An index fund is going to track the market and expenses are going to be very, very low over time unless you get lucky. And you've, you've got that Peter lynch, that genius who just happens to guess right every year.
You're going to do better with an index fund. You're not always going, you're never going to get the very best return. You're never going to get the very worst over time. You'll do. You'll should do very well, assuming the market is doing well.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Yes, very. Thank you so much for joining the show. I appreciate you today. Have a wonderful.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Thank you very much for having me.
