Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.
The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.
The following are notes from SALES with ASLAN Ep. 121 – The 2 Barriers to Being Persuasive.
In this episode, ASLAN President Marc Lamson sits down with Tom Stanfill to discuss Tom’s brand new book, UnReceptive: A Better Way to Sell, Lead, and Influence. They discuss what drove Tom to write the book, why it’s important, and the aspect of selling that sellers hate: unreceptive customers. Tune in to hear Tom and Marc’s insights on how to overcome 2 important barriers to having real influence with a customer.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or check out the summary and full transcript below.
Summary:
There’s an aspect of selling that those of us in sales universally dislike: customers that avoid us, dismiss us, or outright reject us. Why is this experience so common for sellers?
Selling has an interesting stigma attached to it. The population at large tends to think of sales professionals as “used car salesmen” with “commission breath.”
“It’s tough as a seller right now. The catch 22 is that we don’t know how to help customers unless they talk to us, but prospects don’t want to talk to us unless we tell them how we can help them.” – Marc Lamson
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We’ve figured out a way to help eliminate resistance and make sales more enjoyable, meaningful, and successful. There’s a whole other dimension that sellers need to learn to navigate.
Because the reality is that sellers help people. They help their customers sort through the information and options at hand to choose the right solution for themselves and/or their business. Our role is to serve. So how can we eliminate that resistance and increase receptivity so that we can fulfill that role?
The Barriers to Influence
The issue that many salespeople run into in today’s climate is that when customers are unreceptive, the traditional approach to selling fails. What do we mean by traditional? It’s like taking someone to court to make your argument and win your case. Sellers ask for a customer’s time in order to list off their solution’s features & benefits, hammer out their value proposition, provide case studies, etc – and the belief is that logic will win out. But here’s the problem: nobody’s in the courtroom.
Here’s our simple but counterintuitive approach: stop selling and start with cultivating receptivity.
This is the key to gaining influence with your customers.
Think about a farmer trying to grow a healthy crop. There are two elements she needs to consider – the seed and the soil. If the soil is not fertile, the quality of the seed doesn’t matter – it will not grow. The same idea applies in sales. If the customer is not receptive, your value proposition doesn’t matter.
Note: You may be thinking, “Well that’s not always true.” And you’d be right. If your customer is open (receptive), the traditional approach to selling works. But if they’re closed (unreceptive), it doesn’t. And the problem is that most customers nowadays are unreceptive to being sold. That’s when we need to shift our focus from selling to increasing receptivity.
In this episode, we unpack what this might look like in your practice by addressing two of the barriers to influence:
- Barrier 1 – Changing Their Perception of You
- Barrier 2 – Opening a Closed Door
Resources:
- Check out the book here: UnReceptive: A Better Way to Sell, Lead, and Influence
- Or read our blog post on this topic
Transcript:
00:14 – Marc Lamson
Welcome back to another episode of SALES with ASLAN, your weekly therapy session for those who sell for a living and those who help those who sell for a living. That’s what they do. And hello everyone. It’s been a while. This is Marc Lamson, not Scott Cassidy, not Phillips Scott Cassidy, but Marc Lamson. And that’s been a little while because well, our new host, Tom Stanfill has been busy, busier than usual, busy writing a book. Tom, I would have to say by the way that this book is your best book ever, can I say that?
00:52 – Tom Stanfill
You know what, Marc, I don’t want to sound egotistical, but I, I agree with you. I do think this is my best hard copy book ever. That’s fair. That’s fair. Also available on Kindle for 17.99 on Amazon.
01:05 – Marc Lamson
Yeah. Tom has just released UnReceptive. It discusses the five challenges that we have today in selling. And we’re going to talk about some of those things and well, maybe you can listen for 24 minutes or maybe you can spend 24.99 or you can do both. Sincerely, we hope that we share some things that are really addressing the real problem in selling today, which is not about prospecting or pipeline management or closing ratios. It’s that customers are more and more unreceptive than ever. It’s growing at a rapid pace, and we’ll get into that. But first, but first we can’t not spell sales without ales and we can’t do a podcast without ales.
Tom Stanfill
No, I just can’t. Well, it’s after five, it’s almost five o’clock. I’m just going to be a poppy. I had wrist surgery, as you remember, but I forgot about your, I am struggling with the top.
02:10 – Marc Lamson
I’m drinking a Whaler’s rise from my favorite wee hours brewery in Rhode Island. So, so Tom, we have a book UnReceptive, and just personally, as your friend and colleague, knowing what you’ve been doing, congratulations, I’m proud of you. That thing is freaking cool. It’s cool. It’s it’s number. It’s the number of 32 new release on Amazon in sales books. Wow. It’s just cool. It’s neat. You’re an author. You’ve got a LinkedIn page.
03:07 – Marc Lamson
Like you’re cool. You’re a celebrity.
03:09 – Tom Stanfill
Yeah, well I’m sure I’m far from being a celebrity, but I am. And I know you’re kidding about that, but I am proud of myself for getting this done because which is funny. Cause my high school, they have a section for books written by alumni in the library. The fact that this book is in the library when I went to high school, I’m sure there are teachers that are going, what it would be like becoming president to them. I mean, they just because I hated English and I hated writing.
03:45 – Marc Lamson
Did you, did you go and look, be honest. Did you go and look and see checked out yet and see if it, did they start a stamp thing in the back of the book?
03:54 – Tom Stanfill
Oh, I have to look. But yeah. The fact that I pushed through and spent the 10 years, literally 10 years researching and writing this book, I am proud of that. I have to stop and say, okay, I got that done. And, and I’m excited about, and then one of the reasons it took a while, because I was very passionate about this topic, and I wanted to get it right.
04:16 – Marc Lamson
Well, I think he did it, it’s called UnReceptive: A Better Way to Sell, Lead and Influence. Let’s talk about it a little bit. Why did you write the book? Can we just start with that? I mean, we’re going to get to for the sellers, we’re going to get to what’s in it and what are we learning? The little context means, so I’m talking about 1 million books written on sales what’s. So what?
04:38 – Tom Stanfill
I, there’s a part of selling that, that those of us in sales and I’ve been in sales since I really, even before I graduated college, because I had to, I just sell on my, the breaks in college to just kind of, cause I got married in college, as I was selling phone books and going door to door. I was doing all kinds of things just to support my family. Cause I had two kids before I graduated college and so I’ve just been in sales all my life. There’s just this aspect of selling that we let a lot of us hate, this, the customer that rejects us. He doesn’t want to listen to us who avoids us. I remember my first sales job, I’d walk in. I sold to real estate agents that I would walk in the building and they would pick up the phone and act like they rolled the phone.
05:23 – Tom Stanfill
I mean, you could just deal with it. I’m on the phone. You can’t talk to me because if I was the loan officer, so I would want to go around and meet them and talk about my services and hopefully they would refer me and they would just, so that whole aspect of just people avoiding us or feeling like we’re manipulating them, or we have commission breath and all that stuff. As that’s become, actually increased, as you said, your introduction is that the customer is just becoming just rapidly more unreceptive with the wave of information, the tsunami of information that we’re, that that’s out there, the availability of information has made the customer just like I don’t need to talk to sales reps. I’d rather talk to a bot or do a Google search, plus they’re overwhelmed.
06:05 – Tom Stanfill
They’re overwhelmed by the amount of information. They’re just like, I don’t want to talk to sales reps, which interestingly, a survey that came out by McKinsey recently that said the number of the percentage of customers who want to talk to a seller when evaluating a solution has declined 120% of the last couple of years. So, so that, the world that we’re facing as sellers is becoming more and more difficult. I just wanted to, I said, this doesn’t have to be this way. We figured out a way to eliminate resistance and make sales more enjoyable, more meaningful, and more successful. I, and since we figured that out, I wanted to share it.
06:43 – Marc Lamson
Yeah.
06:43 – Tom Stanfill
Not only does it work at work, it works at home, which I’m even more passionate about.
06:51 – Marc Lamson
Well, if you sold Claire college to marry you, then I think you’re qualified as a damn good salesperson.
06:58 – Tom Stanfill
Really good point.
Anybody ever met Claire and met me… They’re like, okay, what’s going on here? They know that, I’m good at selling.
07:14 – Marc Lamson
Yes.
07:15 – Tom Stanfill
Receptive.
07:16 – Marc Lamson
Well, so I mean, I agree. I think, I think you’re right. Sell selling has an interesting stigma to it. I think the population in large, oh, you’re a seller. They think of, use car salespeople. It’s a shame that it’s such a bad rap. My father-in-law I’m going to give a shout out to my front. My father-in-law was a used car salesman, his entire life, 100% commission salesperson, his entire life, a wife, two kids through college. He’s gone unfortunately, but his wife is still around, has money, like all 100% commission sales. That’s tough. I don’t think if everything that he did would be represented in this book, Other-Centered approach.
I understand the hustle. So sellers get a bad rap. And I think people know that. As sellers, sometimes we’re like, we feel bad and we don’t. So, but it’s, I will say as a seller, it people, you help people. I mean, we help people sort through the fray shore through all the information, all the options, we, whatever you do for a living as a seller, you do every day, these people do it once in a blue moon maybe. And so you can help them. It’s just hard to sift through that. So I think it’s good. It’s so I totally get the reason for it at a high level. Just what our taste buds what’s different. I mean, I’m sitting here looking at my shelf. I love my Dale Carnegie book, how to win friends and influence people written in 1937, Neil Rakim came out and talked about spin.
08:53 – Marc Lamson
Selling’s revolutionary with salespeople all around the world. It’s about questions, or Hyman talked about solution. Selling challengers said, it’s about challenge. It’s not just saying what the customer needs and giving to them. It’s challenging them. All those things are all true. What’s different.
09:12 – Tom Stanfill
Yeah. What’s different about the, that’s a great question. I talk constantly talk about the way I position it in the book is the traditional selling does not work when you’re dealing with the emotionally unreceptive customer. Let that sink in when traditional selling doesn’t work. All of those approaches that you just mentioned are ways to kind of adopt and embrace the traditional approach and maybe make it better. What I mean by the traditional approaches, you think you’re going to court, right? I’m going to go to court. I’m going to make my case. As we talk about business case, use case, we’re going to make our case. It’s about getting the meeting of the people and then taking them to court and saying, let me show you how I can benefit you in the impact of my solution. I’m going to make my case. Therefore, when I make my case, you will then make a logical decision to go.
10:03 – Tom Stanfill
That’s true. I therefore will give you my money because their return on the investment is X. The problem is when people are emotionally closed, which a high percentage of customers are, the more you try to make your case, the more you try to sell them, the closer they become. If you sell, you lose – if you don’t sell, you lose. What’s happening is a customers have become, there’s the number of people that they can work with. Use the spend selling is becoming smaller and smaller. What they need to do and what they need to learn and what the book’s about is very, counter-intuitive a simple, but very counterintuitive approach to not selling, but creating receptivity.
The analogy that the book is organized around is the soil and the seed. If I’m a farmer and I want to have a vibrant crop, there’s two elements to that.
There’s the soil, which is the fertile soil. There’s the quality of the seed. Where does the farmer start? The farmer starts with the soil, right? Cause if the soil is not fertile, the seed doesn’t matter in sales, we are one dimensional. Seed equals message. I have a message and I want to craft the best message. I want to deliver that. So, I’m positioning the meeting or I’m selling or whatever. It’s all about seed, but really what we need to do. What the book is about is how do we create the fertile? How do we get people to say to us, tell me what I should do? How do I take that? 80%, 90% of the people that don’t want to hear from us who go tell me what I should do. They go from avoiding a sales call to inviting you in and saying, tell me what I should do.
11:35 – Tom Stanfill
Now. There’s also a way to deliver your message that enhances receptivity, because you can lose them when you start talking. Yeah, for sure. When you go and say, okay, great. I want to now plant the seed. A lot of times we get the soil fertile and then we start to plant the seed and we lose them.
11:52 – Marc Lamson
Yeah.
11:52 – Tom Stanfill
So there’s a way to do both. There’s a way to create the fertile soil and there’s a way to plant or deliver the message in a way that enhances receptivity. So.
12:02 – Marc Lamson
I think the concept of the traditional selling and really what is that, and traditional selling is like, I don’t know. I think it of it is, what were told to do or what you think you should do in sales. Everyone’s like, well, you have to ask them questions first. I think of traditional selling is this, hi mark. I get an email. It says, I’d like to have some time on your calendar. I’m sure you’re busy. And here’s my solution. I’d like this. Well, I’d like to spend some time learning more about your goals and objectives and how we can help. If I had, if I took 10% of the emails that I get that said, I’d like to spend 30 minutes to, you want me to take 30 minutes to a stranger to just unload my strategy and how we’re trying to grow. I think it just doesn’t work.
12:52 – Marc Lamson
It’s just, and it just I’m like, I don’t have time for that. Go away. It’s tough as a seller. I mean, right now it sucks to be a sour. Can I say that because you’re not, you can’t, you don’t know how to help me unless I talk to you, but I don’t want to talk to you unless you tell me how you can help me, then you don’t know. And that’s just a really tough thing. Right.
13:10 – Tom Stanfill
So, yeah. Because they’re so jaded and emotionally closed, they want you to go first.
13:15 – Marc Lamson
Yeah. I can totally.
13:16 – Tom Stanfill
Set a meeting. Even if you get a meeting, they’re like, go for it. You fall for that and they go, oh, that’s not what I needed.
It’s just a, it is a very, yeah, there’s a whole other dimension that it’s, if sellers learn how to navigate, this actually becomes really easy.
13:35 – Marc Lamson
Well, so this whole, this whole, I mean, when we talk about what’s different, you’re talking about selling, leading and influencing. I mean, those seem like very different things. To some extent means selling and influencing the same book. Like, what do you mean by that? Like why do you group those together? I mean, what is the, what are we really teaching people to do here?
13:58 – Tom Stanfill
Well, it was also the thing that the subtitle of the book selling, leading getting, what is better way to sell, lead and influence, as we wanted to apply to multiple scenarios, because sometimes you’re selling the customer on why your solution is in their best interests, right? So that’s kind of selling right? Leading is you may just be leading the customer in a different direction, or you may lead others. If I’m a sales manager, I’m a frontline leader and I didn’t want to lead. I want to lead people to a different conclusion. Maybe I’m trying to lead them from selling one way to another way, or I’m trying to lead them into learning more about something. That is kind of a way to broaden the purpose of the book and then influence applies to everybody. We all have the need to influence, whether you’re talking to your teenagers or your spouse or friends, or having a political discussion, or just influence inside the company, you have no authority over these people, but you want to influence.
15:05 – Tom Stanfill
Sometimes you got to manage up, like if you’re a rep and you’re going to manage your leaders, you have to influence them. You’re not quite selling your influence. So, so that was really the, the backstory behind that. It, if I think people apply, what’s taught in the book around the five major sections of the book, they’re going to better at all three of those things.
15:27 – Marc Lamson
Okay. Well, so let’s get into those sections. I mean, let’s, let me back up and, and kind of summarize what I’ve heard. You’ve been, you’ve been selling since, before you sold Claire some magazines in high school or anything for class trip,
15:41 – Tom Stanfill
I definitely have won. I won the award for those funds raised for the key clubs door to door. I mean, I’ve been a hundred percent, I didn’t say this. I’ve been a hundred percent commission sales my entire life.
15:51 – Marc Lamson
Okay. I think so, so you’re figuring these things out. The world’s changing. I’ll share another, you didn’t say that share this research, but I read recently, Forbes came out with an article with some research that said more sales reps are missing quota than ever, and it’s getting worse. People are missing quota, their traditional sellers. The more we sell traditionally, what those things are, right? Here’s my value proposition. Here’s my case study. Here’s the reasons you should buy from me. The more people don’t want to meet. This different approach, this shifting our focus from selling to selling or our seed to our creating receptivity or our message is the, the key to being successful today and being better in being fulfilled and helping your customers. Right.
16:49 – Tom Stanfill
I just want to add something because I want to, I’m thinking of our listener. Who’s thinking. Yeah, but that’s not always true. I think that’s really important is that yeah. If, if you think about every time you either go get a meeting or you’re trying to influence somebody to embrace your solution, they’re either open or closed. If they’re open, the traditional approach works. So set that aside. We’re not talking about that. If someone says, tell me what I need to do, and I want to buy you sell that ton of software, and I’m looking for that kind of software. And please tell me about it. Or I sell you sell imaging equipment or whatever you sell. They’re like, I want to talk to you. I’m interested in doing this, go sell them, right. The traditional approach work. If that’s 10% of the time, 20% of the time there.
Pick somebody as we talk about this, or pick an account that, won’t embrace a solution that you’ve offered, whether it’s an existing account or it’s a new account, this is what we’re talking about. That percentage of people in your world. That’s what this book. Cause, cause B be clear. If someone says, sell me, I want to know, sell them. It’s either go take them to court and prove it to them.
17:55 – Marc Lamson
Let me see if I get this right. For example, an unreceptive it’s about really whether the person is receptive or not. For example, hypothetically, someone goes to their spouse and they say,
18:07 – Tom Stanfill
Hypothetically,
18:08 – Marc Lamson
Tyra, I think we should get a bigger boat. If she says, I’ve been thinking the same thing. We just go to the boats.com page and we look through, we type it in numbers, quickly, go boat shopping. Right? That’s easy. If I say, not me, my friend says, hypothetically, Tyra, aesthetically. I think I should. I need a bigger boat. Are you kidding me? That’s the dumbest thing in the world. I shouldn’t go to boats.com and show her the safety and why it’s a better boat. All the logic I need to that’s unfertile soil.
So, there’s five barriers. Help me get a bigger boat and or help our sellers.
18:48 – Tom Stanfill
Your friend, who’s named.
18:50 – Marc Lamson
My friend,
18:51 – Tom Stanfill
Your friend, whose wife’s named Tyra.
18:53 – Marc Lamson
It’s the same. It’s crazy. There’s a lot of Tyra’s up here. First barrier. The first barrier we have in the book is that changing their perception of you? What, what do you mean by that?
19:08 – Tom Stanfill
Yeah. And that’s really where we start. The first barrier is used. So, so the best way to think of that, I like to think about this, or I would encourage people to think about it is for you to influence somebody. What precedes that as an invitation until they say, what do you think I should do until Tyra says, why should we, when she says this, sincerely, why should we buy a bigger boat? Until someone says, I’m spending this amount of money on this, sincerely, why should I spend two X on your solution until they ask that question? Whether it’s verbalized or they you’re thinking it, you’re wasting your time. The number one reason that we all accept an invitation is because his approach is based on who it’s from. Like when you get invited somewhere, the first thing you look at is who’s it from?
That’s the number one reason you accept an invitation is who’s it from, so why don’t they accept the invitation for the influences? Because they, because of how they feel about you based on it, most of the time, it’s just based on your title. What you do is your business card say, so they think you’re going to pressure them. They think you’re that, you’re the hero of the story. They’re not the hero of the story. They think you’re going to try to manipulate them. Whether they articulate this in their head or they say it or whatever, it’s like a, it’s like I walked into best buy the other day and I wanted to buy a television. I don’t know anything about televisions. I need education. I don’t know. I don’t, I’ve done zero research. The guy who works there and lives and breathes television walks up to me and he says, can I help you?
I say, no, I am just looking. And everybody knows that. That’s what I was going to say. Why did I say that to guy whose sole purpose in life is to talk about and learn about and sell television is because who I think he is now, by the way, he, he could be the most helpful intelligent person on the planet, but I’ve perception of him is the invitation is coming from somebody who’s going to try to manipulate me, pressure me, whatever. So that, so we’ve got to change. We’ve got to first start working on us because if we want to be, as Kathy said, if we want to be a person of influence, we have to first be influential. No, I’m going to be, I said that wrong. We want to be influential. We have to become a person of influence. We talk about the first two things to first to the chapters that are in the book are related to this, talk about the two main drivers of pressure and priority.
We got to determine how do we release the pressure and how do we demonstrate that they are really the hero of the story and that they’re the priority. And, it’s in the surface, it’s kind of, okay, well, that doesn’t sound too difficult to understand, but actually it’s actually pretty interesting how I think we unpack that in the book and gets people, some really simple tools for quickly getting, I would quote, bought, like where they buy you before they buy your recommendation.
22:09 – Marc Lamson
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s, I think it’s so true that we’re making the decision about you based on the last person I talked to with a similar title. That’s just, it’s just a, but here’s, I’ll add this. I’m, I’m a glass half full kind of guy. I know we’re talking about unreceptive customers and selling is hard and people are missing quota and we’re all wearing masks, but this is a incredible opportunity because, I mean, I’m just going to take a page out of some of the clients that we work with. Because if you get this, if you deal with this pressure and prior, and again, we’re not trying to unpack the entire book. We talk about things like drop the rope and, reset your compass. And how do you do that? What does that really mean? It’s different than just saying focus on the customer. Everyone agrees focused on the customer, but this is different.
When people do that, customers notice instantly.
23:06 – Tom Stanfill
When it’s done sincerely.
23:07 – Marc Lamson
Something is different, something is different and they’re leaning in and we’re getting it’s, it’s incredible. You’re right. Motive is transparent. I know that’s in the book somewhere and it’s that we need to just say what’s our real focus.
23:24 – Tom Stanfill
Well, the thing you’ve talked about, and I think it’s good to give the listeners just a quick, like tactical. And that’s what I think is important. It goes from theory to tactics really quickly is that we talk about it. We’ve been teaching this for years, as is that there’s a tug of war, whether it’s actually happening or whether you’re actually trying to pull them to your position. There’s this perceived tug of war that you’re trying to pull them to your position, which is why I probably didn’t want to talk to the best buy guy. I’m like, I don’t want to get into this tug of war with this guy. I don’t want it. I’m interested. I’d really just avoid the tension. And, but when you learn to drop the rope and don’t play did not quote unquote, play that tug of war by saying things like, I’m not really sure it makes sense for you to spend more on a solution, or I’m not sure my solution is a fit, or I’m not sure that blah, blah, whatever.
However, you communicate that you’re not going to create that pressure. That this is a collaborative approach and giving people really specific language and tactics to use that can immediately eliminate the tension like that. The idea, the best buy. Here’s what he said to me. He goes, listen, I’m not on permission. If you need me, I’m right over there. And I’m like, well, come here.
24:43 – Tom Stanfill
I literally said this, I didn’t make this up because I want to put in the book like this happened. I come here. You help me. I said, so talk to me about these TV. Now. Obviously, if you are in commission, we all get compensated. That’s not the point. The point is he dropped the rope. I could tell he wasn’t going to pressure me. We can do that. Whether we’re in commission or not. And I do it all the time. The thing is, this is back to what you said. Say it sincerely. Like I remember talking to my daughter about the guy she was dating that I wasn’t too crazy about. This is like our first real boyfriend. I said, you can date whoever you want, by the way, that’s a true statement. I can’t force her to date. Anybody control is just an illusion. I said that, though, that phrase, you can date whoever you want.
25:25 – Tom Stanfill
My goal is, I just want you to be happy. That little, those two sentences, right there, you can date whoever you want. My goal is, I want you to be happy. We went from, I don’t want to talk to you about Phillip to sitting on the end of our bed and having a 30 minute conversation. It’s this, this that’s, what’s so great about it. This is so simple, but it’s, it’s very counterintuitive,
25:48 – Marc Lamson
But let’s just be honest. You, but you don’t want her to date? No. I mean, you don’t want her to date the guy she was dating no. Why would you say that? Like what, why? But you’re her dad, Tom, because…
26:01 – Tom Stanfill
What I do is I traded in, I traded control, which does not work ever when you’re trying to influence. And I traded control for influence. What I want her to do is to think about and embrace the truth and think about what I have to say, because that’s an option and something I can guarantee will happen versus control will never happen. I trade something that will never happen for an opportunity to influence her. So that was so clear to me. Cause what I want her to do is I want to put her, I want her on her little. If I think about it in our bathroom, I want that little sticky on her mirror in her bathroom to dad said, Phillip might hurt me. I want her to think about that every time she’s talking to Phillip versus I’m going to stop you from seeing Phillip, and what will she do?
26:55 – Tom Stanfill
She’ll marry Philip, which is exactly what my mom did. By the way my grandmother told my mother, you can no longer date him. His name is Tom Stanfill.
27:06 – Marc Lamson
That’s a common, that’s a common phrase in downtown Atlanta do not date Tom Stanfill. I’ve heard that several times.
I’ve seen it on billboards.
27:20 – Tom Stanfill
Years ago. That was years ago, mark. That’s not current of yeah. So what did my mom do now? It turned out. This is under my point. It turned out great because my dad’s an amazing guy, but blah, blah. I’m like, well, I’m going to marry him. The exact opposite of what should have happened is my grandmother lost influence with my mother. There was consequences of them getting married. My mom was 17 and my dad was 19. Trade control, which meat will never work for influence. My favorite story about this is the guy in the book, Darryl, and I’m blanking on his last name, mark. He converted he’s an African-American guy and converted over 200 KKK leaders by dropping the rope and doing other things in the book that we talk about. I talk about in the book he’s these guys may, because he traded, he didn’t trade control because he had no control, but he can traded revenge for influence.
28:19 – Marc Lamson
That’s hard, that’s deep and that’s personal and that’s emotional. And this is really hard. You just said, I mean, the guy best buy from and they got best buy says, Hey, look, I’m not on commission. If you need me, I’ll be over here. That’s a, that’s a drop through it. You kind of just kind of sneak one out earlier. You said, Hey, I’m not really sure if we can help or not, but what X, Y, and Z mean, but we’re not taught to do that. That’s counterintuitive work taught to call up, to send an email and say, we can do X, Y, and Z. I remember this beef way before I met you and ASLAN and I had, I ran a call center. I had everybody call me and tell me how they were going to help me with the call center. Somebody call me and say, I guarantee I can save you 30% on your phone bill.
29:01 – Marc Lamson
I’d never talked to the guy is a guarantee I can say. I mean, we had an enormous phone bill. This isn’t like, It was like long distance tolls. I said, if you can guarantee me 30% off of my phone bill, by the way, do what my phone bill was? Was like, no. Okay, perfect. You can guarantee me 30% of my film. It was a real conversation. This is a real sales call guy made to me. I said, then you can come in and meet with my team. If you can’t see me, 30% of my phone bill, I’m going to send you a bill for the time of every one of my team. And we’re expensive. You want to come meet? You want to meet? He said, well, I gotta see your building. Like, well, why the F did you? I just probably didn’t use that because I was like 28 years old. I said, well, why would you tell me that? He’s like, so that’s the point we’re taught to do these things.
It’s just better to say, look, I don’t know if I can save you money or not. I have to see your phone bill, but this is what we’ve done. Hard, easy to say, hard to do. What is it be willing to give up control, to have influence, to trade and trade.
30:13 – Tom Stanfill
Something that you don’t have for something you can get?
30:16 – Marc Lamson
No, it’s transitioned to the number two, which is, which is what we’re talking to the closed door. He, so people have a perception of you, but also the doors are closed.
30:25 – Tom Stanfill
The second barrier, which is probably the most difficult is, is getting a meeting or opening a closed. Yeah. That, and that’s the one, everybody, the surveys constantly come outside. The number one challenge people have is quote, unquote prospecting or getting meetings, whether it’s meetings and, going upstream and existing accounts, or, if you’re cold calling and you’re, rep business development rep that’s where we kind of first set the foundation of who we need to be. We move into, well, how do we get a meeting? The, the approach we teach there in the book or unpack there, I think is super helpful. Something I don’t think is available, or at least I haven’t seen it taught the way that we teach it.
31:14 – Marc Lamson
So, so any more details on that?
31:19 – Tom Stanfill
Any more, any more detail? Yeah. Well, I mean there what we teach or what we talk about, what I talk about in the book is that the reason that reps fail over 98% of the time and to get meetings, is it kind of back to what you were bringing up there is how they position that a position, the meeting, it’s not so much the email itself or the introduction, it’s how they position it. We start the first thing, and the main thing we want to teach them is there’s three elements of how do you position meaning? If those three elements of positioning, and this is the positioning is really the heart of the message. It’s like, once you’re like, what’s the, not the email Excel for the introduction, but the heart of the message, why it’s kind of answer the question, why meet with you?
And so there’s three elements. If you understand through the three elements, you’re going to dramatically increase the number of meetings. I’ll just share one of them, the one of the first one, which by the way, you coined this phrase, that Aslan is lead with their whiteboard. What intuitively do is we all talk about our solution. We, we, we think about our solution all the time. Your organization tells you the, sell the solution, your numbers based on selling solutions. What do you lead with your solution? Actually that’s the least interesting to a lender. Receptive prospect is your solution, because they’re unreceptive again, if they’re looking for what you offer, then saying it well, we’ll build, that’ll get their attention, but the num the least effective way to get somebody’s attention is to show them a picture of you. They don’t care about you the most effective way to get somebody’s attention, to show them a picture of them.
33:01 – Tom Stanfill
In other words, to talk about, think about picture what’s going on their office, picture their whiteboard. There are things written on that. Whiteboard. If you say something that’s on that white board, you will always get their attention. Another way to say that if you show them a picture of them, they’ll get. We unpack that’s the first of the three elements. If we teach them how in the book, we talk about how to do that. And then we get very practical. Once we talk about positioning the book, we talk about how to introduce yourself, which believe it or not is increases engagement rates by 22 times, which it’s almost like I shy away from sharing the statistics, but it really does work and then how to write emails. There’s a whole section that we get real specific about. Do you want to learn how to prospect or improve your ability to prospect?
33:50 – Tom Stanfill
That’s what that second section of the book’s about.
33:53 – Marc Lamson
Oh, this is what we were talking about earlier. There’s a, there’s the, the bad news is selling’s hard. People are unreceptive. The good news is if you embrace that as a seller and respond to that, it’s yeah. It, it, your differential, your difference factor is enormous. People see this. I mean, I love to refer to the book. One of my favorite books is 212 degrees. I think I’ve said this a couple of times.
34:15 – Tom Stanfill
Right.
34:16 – Marc Lamson
Now, I know you went to tech, but I don’t think you’re in the engineering program. Let me explain to you the importance of 212 degrees.
34:25 – Tom Stanfill
Is that pi?
34:26 – Marc Lamson
3.14159. It had 212 degrees Fahrenheit is where water boils and the book is based on in our lives selling and just in our work, in going to the gym, anything we do, a lot of us give less than 212 degrees. A lot of us give 2 10, 211 degrees, a lot of effort, a lot of energy, to get water to 211 degrees. If you just give it a little, tiny bit more energy, and you keep that pot on for another second, it’s 212 degrees. When it, when something gets to two twin water boils, it creates steam, and you create electricity. The world changes from two 11 to two 12. The point is, when we’re sending that degree matters, one-degree matters. Remember sending the next email, we’re making the next introduction. We just like pulling up the thing in Salesforce and saying something to whatever, and just going through the motions, or are we spending a little extra effort to really show them the picture of them?
35:26 – Marc Lamson
The first element: lead with their whiteboard. I mean, this works, I mean, when you first taught me this, I was trying to call Merrill Lynch. I’ll use Merrill Lynch as an example, years ago. I don’t think those still work there had a person’s names and emails call crickets. We should meet all the things I just said that were wrong. I finally called somebody and said, what’s going on? I found that they had something going on. This is probably 15 years ago. It was called the red carpet program. It was an internal program by this leader in the sales organization, but how we treat customers, and everything’s lined up behind it. And it’s a big strategy. How are we going to make a loyal customer? I just sent an email that said insight on their red carpet program. I mean, this is a senior VP at Merrill Lynch.
36:14 – Marc Lamson
I had sent over and over, and I sent it to this guy’s email address. Nine minutes later, Nita, his secretary sent me an email and said, Kyle would like to meet with you. And I mean, I did. I said something else. I said something else I said, I have spent, but it just it’s like, this is what people care about is what’s important to them. So it works. It’s hard to do because we like to talk about us. It’s easy to talk about us, but my, I would say burn the extra one degree of effort and differentiate yourself lead where there a whiteboard. Yeah.
36:56 – Tom Stanfill
I love that example is the, you just reminded me of actually a current client now, but wasn’t when I’m gonna share this example, their big initiative is unconditional. I thought this was the coolest word. You send them anything that says something along the lines of that initiative, then conditional and connect you what you do to that. What we do is if we sell it services, we leave with it services. We say, this is why, and really the simple, some of it is if you sell fire alarms, start with a fire. Yeah. It’s like, just, and again, it’s not complicated. What what’s difficult is knowing what’s on their whiteboard. I’m sure that’s what everybody’s thinking. Well, how do I know what’s on their whiteboard? We talk about how to uncover that in the book, but the reality is the simple answer is if you don’t know guess, right?
Because you’re going to better off.
38:00 – Marc Lamson
Yeah. Educated guess. I mean, soon as you can work in this space, you’ve talked to other people with the same whiteboard.
38:06 – Tom Stanfill
You look, you get to know that you get to know the profile, the person you’re talking about, or you talked to sit an insider, who knows. So, but going to the whiteboard. You guess, or an educated guess based on the profile, if work in the industry and it’s not that qualified, an opportunity or you any signs that you can tell, it’s not something you want to spend a lot of time on, or spend the time and, and dig. But the here’s what doesn’t work. Talk about you.
38:37 – Marc Lamson
Yep. Agreed. Well, good. Well, look, I’m a, I’m watching our time, Tom, and you may know of our demographics. A lot of people tell us they listen to these when they’re working out. I know some of those people that are working out, and I know they don’t want to work out for 38 minutes. I know we’re about eight minutes, so I don’t want to cause any over workouts or whatever. I think this has been a good start and maybe put a bow on this and maybe next week, we’ll talk more about the next three barriers, discovering the unfiltered truth. I mean, really getting people. How do you get people to tell you the truth and what’s going on? How do you really start to shift, change their beliefs and ultimately get them to take some kind of action and you have a really, really interesting last chapter about an Other-Centered life that I’d like to unpack, but I don’t want to just gloss over it right now.
39:25 – Marc Lamson
Plus my beer is empty and everyone’s done working out. So, but I, I do, I do have two questions. Can we just close with two questions? Would that be all.
39:35 – Tom Stanfill
Right? Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
39:37 – Marc Lamson
You got really passionate about soil versus seed and farming. If you were going to be a farmer, what kind of farmer would you like to be? I had some ideas in my mind, but I just, but then I got nervous. It’s not about me. It’s about you. So Tom, would you like to…
39:54 – Tom Stanfill
I share in the book is about this orange farmer I met in California and these from California to meet him in California. I actually met him while playing golf and hope in Kauai. The guy just happened to join me. I’m like, I just loved this guy. So I like third or fourth hole. I’m like, so what do you do? He’s like, I’m a farmer, you’re a farmer. He’s the guy I said, so I said, okay, I’m working on this book. I said, what matters more the soil of the seed. He goes to the soil. Ain’t matter if he’s holding fertile. It don’t matter. The point, the reason I say that is because I thought this idea of being, and he was pretty close to LA. He wasn’t too far from the shore. He had an orange, 150 acres of orange. It seems pretty like a pretty easy, I’m not true.
I shouldn’t say easy because what do I know about art? Anyway, so I thought that would be a pretty cool to have a farm in California and grow oranges. I know that’s kinda, I thought that was pretty cool. I think I was playing golf and quiet. So some was working.
40:55 – Marc Lamson
I say so well, that’s good. Good. Well, we know what kind of farmer you want to be a question too, on a serious note, that to close look, there’s a lot of things we covered and there’s a lot of sellers. And as you know, it’s just hard. There’s so many things we’ve covered. Two barriers in three tips and the three models of a position. By the way, we’re only two barriers are the five barriers. We’re on page a page beyond 53 out of 272. Timeout, because I’m with you in high school, I wasn’t, I didn’t like English either. Like that just wasn’t my deal. I didn’t like that. Part of the sat could I ask you to put you on the spot to boil all this down? I’m a seller I sell, I want to take away one thing like I’m. So, so come back next week and hear the other three barriers.
Here’s some pieces, share some feedback. Tell us what you like. In the meantime, what one thing should they really take away from our last 42 minutes together? They were to, if they were to do one thing, what should they focus on?
42:01 – Tom Stanfill
Yeah, my answer to that question though, you’ve phrased it differently and better than I’ve heard it asked before you, sometimes people will say something like, what’s the one thing I need to do. My answer is always the same because it’s the truth is if somebody would embrace, sincerely embrace this idea of being other centered versus self-centered. Here’s what you, when people are Other-Centered, meaning they’re, they really orient themselves around serving who they’re working with, not hitting their number, but not selling, but actually serving their customer. By the way, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hit your number and that shouldn’t be, but they make the prior, they believe that they’re going to be more successful if they put the customer first and they choose who they serve, they don’t serve everybody, but they choose. If people would make the decision to be other centered there, people trust them.
42:49 – Tom Stanfill
They’re more loyal. They have more, they more have they, what they talk about is more relevant. People are, people are drawn to them. It just, everything changes. Their intuition works better. It’s like when somebody says something, it’s not quite sure what they mean, then you pick up on what they actually mean. Cause you’ve studied your customers, what’s on their whiteboard. I mean, your emails are better written, ? I mean, I’ve met sellers that it’s like, they’d been in the business. How have you been in the business for 20 years? Actually, you’ve been in business one year. You’ve just repeated it 20 times. It’s like, they just don’t really learn much, but people that really are other centered you, he was just drawn to those people. I mean, you’re there and people are attractive when they’re other centered. If I had to say one thing, if they adopt that, you’ll say a lot of things that we talk about in the book will come naturally to you.
43:40 – Tom Stanfill
I would say it the other way. If you’re not other centered and you’re using everything in the book as a manipulation tactic, you will have commission breath. Your motive will be transparent and it will fail.
43:50 – Marc Lamson
Well, good advice. I can’t say it any better than the author of unreceptive. If you don’t want to wait for part two, or you just want to know what those three elements are, or you really just want to do a dig in. If you, if you really are looking to find something new and different, by the way, this is a receptivity thing, right? This is, this is if everything’s good and you’re good with where you are and you’re crushing your number, save the money, don’t buy the book and just go to a nice long vacation. If you’re in the boat where we’re struggling and people aren’t answering your emails or not taking your calls, you get off the phone, there’s no real opportunity. They don’t respond to your proposal. You have deals that just and stall. This is in fact something new, something different it’s things that you haven’t heard before.
They may seem counterintuitive and the truth hurts. So it does.
44:49 – Tom Stanfill
Well. I would also add to that list, mark. I love that. I love that kind of where you finished or finalized or brought all that back together. I would also say if you’re hitting your number and you’re crushing your number and it selling is not on your whiteboard, being better at selling is not on your whiteboard. Think about it in relationship to your most important, significant relationships, or how does it apply to the conversations you’re having about politics or real life issues. That may be a place to think about the boat. Now you don’t have to read some of the chapters because some of the chapters very technically as related to selling, but I’d say half the book applies to all aspects of influence.
45:34 – Marc Lamson
That’s the last chapter, which is really, really, really.
45:37 – Tom Stanfill
Well. It’s not just the left checker, but just the part about drop the rope and take the trip. Some of the other barriers that we haven’t talked about that help us influence.
45:49 – Marc Lamson
Well, good. Well, I won’t ask you who you voted for because I don’t want to have that conversation and those types of influential conversations, but they are interesting examples. Thank you for taking the time out of your day. Sorry. You didn’t have time for a beer. Thanks for writing the book and we’ll get back together. Audience. We’re committed to getting back to a weekly schedule here, giving you some good things to read. Get there like us share us, tell others reviews, really help this get shared. Most importantly, just write to us and tell you, tell us what you want to hear. This is for you. I mean, this is an Other-Centered podcast we’re on here. We are kind of talking to each other about ourselves kind of weird, but we’re trying to, it’s weird, Tom. You’re not weird. You’re perfectly normal.
46:40 – Tom Stanfill
So I, I knew what you.
46:41 – Marc Lamson
Meant, but yeah, if there’s some topics that are relevant, then tell us and we’ll be sure to cover them, help you. Yeah.
46:49 – Tom Stanfill
We love the comments. Yeah. The thing, because we know what to talk about based on what you tell us. If you, if you like the podcast, let us know and we’ll keep doing it. If you, if you have ideas for improvement or topics, comment on the podcast.
47:04 – Marc Lamson
Great. Well, thanks everyone. Have a great week selling and thanks for listening to another episode of sales with ASLAN.
47:11 – Tom Stanfill
Thanks Marc.
