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 Ep. 124 – Lessons from a 9/11 Survivor & Hero
In this episode, Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris interview John Cerqueira. Hear what John has learned from his 9/11 experiences, his meeting with Oprah, and 20 plus years of selling.
Listen to the conversation here:
(Or check out the full transcript below).
Resources:
- Find John Cerqueira’s book here
Transcript:
00:13
Tom Stanfill
Welcome to another episode of SALES with ASLAN and I am your host, Tom Stanfill. I’m here with literally, I think has been proven, the best co-host their best podcast cohost in history, Mr. Tab Norris. Welcome.
00:30
Tab Norris
Thank you, Tom. You’re so kind. You’re always so kind. And you lift me up.
00:34
Tom Stanfill
I do, I do need to get you a t-shirt the best co-host and podcasts. I do like that. It’s, so far Tab, I’ve been saying that now for several weeks and it’s been uncontested, no one has called me or written me or said anything to the contrary. So I’m pretty sure it’s true.
00:51
Tab Norris
Okay. That’s good. That’s good. I liked that. I love, I love that. You’re the wind beneath my wings, Tom.
00:57
Tom Stanfill
Thank you.
00:59
Tab Norris
I appreciate it. Well, it is always, it is my pleasure to be here. Kind of continuing our process of development in the world of sales and today, Tom’s fifth barrier from the book that we’re going to talk about, that we face when trying.
01:16
Tom Stanfill
To convert final…
01:18
Tab Norris
Final. This is.
01:21
Tom Stanfill
They’re going to sell millions of dollars every year and make millions of dollars. They get past this final barrier.
01:28
Tab Norris
Wow. Everybody’s kinda on the edge of their seat right now. Our guest is I can kind of see him right there. The final barrier is “taking action,” kind of the grand finale. How are we going to take some actions? So, Tom set us up here.
01:42
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Taking action. I, this actually probably is the most misunderstood barriers. How do we get people to actually act and most people, which is another way of talking about this and sales is closing, how do we close the deal? How do we close them? A lot of people think about this as kind of, we gotta be, we got to control, we got to manipulate, or we got to have some creative strategy. And, we see people in movies, they do something at the end that just totally turns them around. And that’s a misconception. Actually, this is probably the least, this is where probably selling an influence is least applied. It’s more, this is really more about alignment. It’s about learning about where is the customer in their process or decision making process and how do we align the next best step. So we’ll talk more about that.
02:33
Tom Stanfill
And, but I’m most excited for we’re done with that. I’m most excited to introduce our guests tab. We’ve got a guest on the show who’s actually famous. I want to be famous, which is the only reason I wrote the book was to be famous, which is not happening, but we actually have someone who’s famous on the show. Should you introduce them? Or should I?
02:51
Tab Norris
I think just let me start and then you can add a lot of…
02:53
Tom Stanfill
Color.
02:54
Tab Norris
Because it’s just, I, I, it just, it warms my heart to introduce John Cerqueira. He’s just one of our favorite people here at ASLAN. He’s very talented. He’s successful in sales he’s he has a Cape, he’s a national hero. He’s a lot of things I could gush and gush what I want just because of time, Tom. Yeah, were really excited, John, to have you with us today. So,
03:22
John Cerqueira
Well, thanks. Thanks. I feel like we could’ve gone on a little longer with the compliments, but I think, okay,
03:29
Tom Stanfill
Let me add one. I want to add more. He’s the only person I know that’s been on a national television program and he’s been featured in a documentary on the discovery channel. The only one I know of it.
03:45
Tab Norris
So I was on the bozo show and I was like, I won the crazy dance contest.
03:51
Tom Stanfill
Is that a true story?
03:54
Tab Norris
It was, it was a big Tootsie roll filled with lies a little.
03:58
John Cerqueira
Yeah, it was the one with the balls. You threw the ping pong in the faraway.
04:02
Tab Norris
Yeah, that’s.
04:03
John Cerqueira
Great. That’s great. So we’re peers,
04:08
Tom Stanfill
All of these accolades actually relate to the topic. Because actually we talked about, I talk about John and the book because his story and relationship with Oprah actually offers some insights into how to overcome this last barrier. John, tell us about your relationship with Oprah. Tell us about your experience that led you to become little, seriously a national hero and how it really short topic.
04:40
John Cerqueira
Yeah, absolutely. With full disclosure relationship with Oprah sounds like some verbal clickbait,
04:49
Tom Stanfill
If you’re just tuning in Clara has a relationship with Oprah.
04:55
John Cerqueira
Oh great. Yes. I’ve had interactions with Oprah. I’ve been in her sphere, in her aura based on an experience that, gosh, Tom, you were kind of around four at the time. I don’t know a lot of people, even within Azlan don’t know, as you and I met back in 2001 in September of 2001, I was working in New York and my office was on the 81st floor of tower, one of the world trade center. You and I met on a Thursday.
05:32
Tom Stanfill
Remember it well.
05:33
John Cerqueira
And had a great time. I instantly fell in love with you. I assume the feeling’s mutual.
05:41
Tom Stanfill
I immediately thought I want to hire that. My first thought after five minutes. By the way, for those that our listening audience that don’t know that I met John through a guy that was working with Angela at the time. I mean like, I want to hire him. How do we hire him?
05:58
John Cerqueira
Well, you had your chance because a handful of days after was Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. That day I was on my, in my office, the 81st floor of tower one, the plane first plane hit our building. On the way out of the building, my then boss and I happened upon a woman who was a wheelchair user on the 68 floor. We helped her out of the building, carried her down the remaining 68 flights of stairs and evacuated our building about five minutes before it collapsed. The other building had already collapsed. And, and so were the last building, standing put her in an ambulance and, and we’re caught in all the debris that you’d seen from. You’ve seen from a lot of that familiar footage of the collapse and the debris clouds and people running. And, and so that was my experience. By a series of just remarkable, weird events, we got in touch with the media because we put, or friend that we had met at the time in an ambulance and that evacuated before the building collapsed.
07:28
John Cerqueira
We never exchanged names, numbers, and no idea where she had no idea. It was bizarre in that, in an hour long interaction, that’s about how long it took to get down the building. We never, I don’t think we even knew her first name. So, so when we parted ways and the building collapsed, weren’t sure if that ambulance and if she had made it out. Okay. We finally reached what was the barricaded area, that was the defining border that was now being called, ground zero. We asked, media people who were putting microphones in our faces to say, Hey, if you want to do something super productive, it’d be great to see if this person who fits this description and this type of ambulance has made it out, check the hospitals. What happened so that you didn’t.
08:24
Tom Stanfill
Know, you didn’t know if she’d made it.
08:26
John Cerqueira
No idea. Yeah. In fact, our story was in USA today, the following morning. Still at that point, we didn’t know if she was alive, who she was, any of that, were just, were asking reporters to see if they could track her down and in, so doing, were telling them the story and basically they were like, yeah, good enough for us. Let’s put it to print. When I can’t, but we asked you to find a person and it ultimately ended up happening the Friday after nine 11, we found out because a w somebody from a people magazine reached out to me and said, Hey, we’d love to do a feature with you and Mike and Tina. So that sounds great. Who’s Tina. And he said my favorite.
09:24
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Who’s Tina. Yeah. People magazine. Sure. How old were you at the time?
09:32
John Cerqueira
The 22?
09:32
Tom Stanfill
You were 22 years old. Okay.
09:34
John Cerqueira
Yeah. I graduated in, I graduated in may of 2001, moved up to the city in June and this was September 11th, so it was short order. So, yeah, that’s how we found out that she was okay. We did a story with people magazine and then subsequently different media outlets reached out. We were featured on a few good morning, America, local news, and kind of the capstone of all that kind of media sphere was the Oprah show. Were on Oprah phone, up to Chicago, treated at the famous Omni that they, they, they tout and it was a, it was a remarkable, weird, surreal experience.
10:24
Tom Stanfill
Wow. Yeah. That’s amazing. There’s so many questions, but I even still, even after knowing you all these years and hearing the story and watching documentaries on you and seeing you interviewed, which by the way, John, for people that want to know more about it, what’s the name of that documentary on the discovery channel? Cause I thought that was a very well done story about what happened and your involvement and just the, the nine 11 experience period.
10:53
John Cerqueira
Yeah. I think, I think that went on the discovery channel. There were a few there’s discovery channel. There was the history channel history.
11:01
Tab Norris
Channels, the.
11:01
Tom Stanfill
One out,
11:04
John Cerqueira
I think it’s escaping the towers. Yeah.
11:06
Tab Norris
That’s the one from history channel. That’s the one I watched and you look fabulous.
11:10
John Cerqueira
Y Y thank you. That was, that was among my favorite because the way they organize the documentary was following two offices, one from each tower. Interviewing multiple people like that was, most of the interviews have been, Hey, John, and Mike, tell your story what happened. You can kind of rehash that few, but hearing the perspective of some of my other coworkers, I’ve never seen on camera, some of whom I’ve not seen since that week, giving their perspective what was going on, and then hearing another office that was in tower to recount their story. It was awesome. The way that, the way the production team edited that there was a bit of a kind of a cliffhanger and kind of a twist. It was, so it was so well done. It was, it was great. Yeah, that was the, that was, that might be when you’re thinking of.
12:08
Tom Stanfill
Okay, awesome. If they want to know more about it, check out that documentary. Bring us to the topic at hand. How does this relate to advancing an opportunity or getting past the first, the final barrier where you’re trying to advance a relationship and get people to take action and move forward?
12:29
John Cerqueira
Yeah. Revisiting the timeline of how old I was, and when I graduated college right after nine 11, about a week later after we had kind of a regroup meeting with our company in New Jersey, I came back to Raleigh, North Carolina, which is where my family is and where I went to college at NC state. Most of my friends were still in school. I just popped back into the fraternity house. Like I would, like, I never left. It was four months ago,
12:59
Speaker 5
A bit more popular,
13:01
John Cerqueira
Slightly more popular. So, there’s a bunch of our friends saying, what is going on? What is this? I saw you on this show in this magazine and I was on the way to Oprah. They said, man, you should be in Oprah’s book club. I said, I don’t know what you mean. I don’t have a book and a half, you can barely read. So that’s a great suggestion. I’ll think about it. I went on the Oprah show and it was wonderful. She’s wonderful. We would talk in between commercial breaks and we left part of ways. That was great. A couple years later, I ended up moving back to New York and through a friend of mine who has some experience in writing and publishing, he suggested that I start writing some of these experiences down and some of the stories and the impact of, how that event colored my life afterwards.
13:59
John Cerqueira
Some of which was, there was attempts at being lighthearted. Ultimately we wrote a book and it was, gosh, this was probably 2006, 2005, 2006. We said, all right, we’ve got to figure out how to promote the book. What should we do? He said, why don’t you call Oprah?
14:21
Speaker 5
The great idea.
14:24
John Cerqueira
Oh, just knuckleheads. I had the number of the Oprah show. It was funny because when I was working with the producer, I had saved the number from the producer and it just showed up as Oprah. I, it looked like I had literally Oprah Winfrey’s phone number in my phone. I went to go find that number of my contacts and hit, dial left, a voicemail, sent an email, sent another email and a voicemail. I’ll let you guess on whether or not she reached back out if.
15:00
Tab Norris
The pigeons work or is that just, that was over.
15:03
John Cerqueira
Email. There were no pigeons, fiber optic cable was fairly new at the time. I think there was probably a glitch there, but ultimately there was no response surprisingly from Oprah. Where I think it fits into the topic of today’s conversation is, had I, when I was on the show and while Oprah was being super gracious and were having off-camera conversations in between commercial breaks, I suggested or brought up the topic, Hey, I think maybe there’s a way to, tell the story in the hope that it helps others. That was the whole selling point on my being on these shows, because candidly, I wasn’t super excited about traveling or being on planes after the events, right? The, the, I guess the selling point that convincing I suppose, was, Hey, people are feeling down and they would love to hear the story in terms of being uplifting and having some silver lining to an otherwise really tragic event.
16:15
John Cerqueira
So, if I had brought that up at the time and said, Hey, I’m thinking maybe I can help some other people thinking about, maybe I could write a book. Would you happen to know anybody, anything you’d suggest maybe at that time where she was focused on me in a 30 plus minutes segment on a nationally televised show, globally televised show, I, I probably would have had a lot more success getting back in the door or getting some traction than waiting. What was that? Four to five years later after she’s had hundreds of guests and trying to reach out and get back on the radar.
16:54
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. If you were to look her in the eye, right, where you’re two feet away from her and said, Hey, I really want to write a book. Let me just here where this is what I think you’re saying. I really want to write a book. I think it will help other people, whether, regardless of what tragedy they’ve been through a trauma or anything, but I think it will help other people. Would you be willing to review the book or at least, look at the proposal or the outline or consider this, or provide any input? What, however you want to, would you be willing to do that? The chances of her saying yes or at least saying talk to so-and-so or be it being a positive response would probably dramatically increase. Had you looked her in the eye and said that at that point,
17:38
John Cerqueira
Right? That’s right. As we’re talking about body parts and such, I was sitting, I see this.
17:45
Tom Stanfill
I don’t think I said anything about . I did say eyes.
17:55
John Cerqueira
I was sitting next to her with my legs crossed. At one point she leaned over and touched my foot and said, that must have been terrible, scary, something along those lines. So, yes, as Oprah, when Oprah, the most famous person I’ve ever been in the room with touch my foot, maybe I could have said, Hey,
18:15
Tom Stanfill
And you do have nice feet. I’ve always said that about you.
18:19
John Cerqueira
It was so bizarre. Oprah’s touching my foot.
18:26
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I think this is the reason I, I wrote about that in the book, eh, because I do love you. You, everybody knows that, but I just loved the story because that relationship that happens, they are when you’re alive. When you leave that meeting, the probability of getting back in that room, regardless of whether you’re talking to Oprah, or you’re talking to a vice president of manufacturing or the director, or once they leave, there are so many competing priorities. Your probability of getting back in there greatly diminishes. That’s such a great example of that.
19:03
John Cerqueira
I mean, I, it is. I started once the trauma of realizing what a missed opportunity was comfortable for me. I bring this up. When we train, when we train this section of the program, it’s about advanced, it’s moving to the next step. You hear routinely sellers who have what they think are good conversations with customers where everyone’s engaged, everyone’s excited, they’re asking questions and they say some version of, all right, we’re going to socialize this, or we’re going to run it up the flag pole or, Hey, there’s something, there’s some stuff going on this week, but why don’t we touch when you reach out to me next week or next month? The sellers put it in their forecast, we’re putting the notes in Salesforce and say, had a great conversation. I’m going to call them next week. I said, guys, how often do those people ghost you intentionally or unintentionally based on the priority issue that you’re saying, and you’re going to be chasing them down, meanwhile, anything and everything can happen and you’re unlikely, or your way less likely to get back in the door that way.
20:10
John Cerqueira
If, when everyone’s excited and they’re talking about socializing, these things, you, as the seller suggest that, Hey, if you do believe that this is something that makes sense to pursue, here’s what I’d suggest we do. Here’s a general range of what I suggest we do. Why don’t we get this on the calendar so that neither of us let it slip?
20:31
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. There’s a couple of things to unpack there that I love is that people P P we all, I think we miss in sales, the idea that let’s just start, let me say it this way. Let’s just say that something is top priority and that if they say, let’s get back together in this. I really want to talk about this later, but it’s not nailed down. They probably really mean that. As soon as you leave that room and you walk into another room metaphorically, then all of a sudden the priorities and the things that you see in that room, all of a sudden become important. They walk into another room and people aren’t like this. Perfect. They can’t manage your life in such a way that they can look at all their competing priorities and all the things they want to do and perfectly stack them.
21:11
Tom Stanfill
Even if yours is on the top of the list, they’re going to forget that when they walk into the next room and people actually make decisions based on most of the time, what’s right in front of them and what they commit to do. I think the other important thing about getting people to take action is that once they commit to it, they will do it. Like if you can get Oprah to say, yeah, I’ll look at that. She now feels responsible to follow. She wants to be consistent with what she’s verbally committed to. It feels wrong for us as humans to say, yeah, I’ll do it and go, now, I’m not doing it. If I can get people to say, and it’s been proven, we don’t have to bring up the studies now, but it’s been proven that people will say yes to something they’ll follow through most likely.
21:57
Tom Stanfill
Has that been true with what you’ve seen tab?
21:59
Tab Norris
Yeah, totally. It’s, I, I CA and you see people on the other side of this as well, right? Where they’ve been trained on power closes or the Ben Franklin, ,
22:18
Tom Stanfill
Dog, the puppy dog,
22:20
Tab Norris
I’ve used the puppy dog, you know? It’s like, it’s not that either, right? It, I liked Tom. I love in the book on page two 18, we’re kind of hitting a lot of this where you talk about the goal is not to manipulate, but to merely reveal the importance of being intentional about confirming the next step, which John, what you’re talking about procrastination is not your friend receptivity to continue the dialogue diminishes and continues to diminish. As soon as you walk out the door, which is dead on. And that’s exactly right. And I’m the same way. I see so many people that I tell them, you can give yourself a huge competitive advantage. If you will just get a commitment, because guess what? And John, I don’t know. You said something one time that I still talk about you say, I, I think about it like this, when I’m wrapping up a call or I’m wrapping up a meeting, I always tell myself that my competitor is going to be coming behind me and they are gonna get a tight specific, next step.
23:24
Tab Norris
I know I will be at a disadvantage if I don’t do the same thing. And I love that.
23:30
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
23:31
John Cerqueira
Yeah. I’m, I’m glad you do, man. I was smart one time when I said.
23:35
Tab Norris
The one time you said, I don’t know when it was, but it locked into my brain. JC I, I, I still talk about it. So thank you.
23:44
John Cerqueira
Oh, no. It’s just, the big risk is what you just said. Tab, you might lose because someone else is moving the relationship forward. You might stall in almost indefinitely because when more priorities get on that decision makers play, they’re not sure which ones to pick, and you can just get shoved out. Maybe you haven’t lost it. It’s just a overwhelming delay or still probably the best case scenario, but still not great is someone says, yeah, this sounds great. Now you’re just chasing them right now. You’re chasing them. You feel weird and now you’re a nuisance, but you’re trying to figure out, Hey, did they like this enough to where my persistent outreach is helpful or my now a nuisance. It’s now eroding whatever relational equity we had during that call. And now I’m just being a pain. They’re like, man, I don’t even like this guys follow up strategy.
24:41
John Cerqueira
I mean, there’s just a wealth of, there’s more risk to not doing it than there is to just saying, Hey, I think we should set some time, figure out what the next step is. Let’s continue this forward if, tom’s point, if that’s on aligned with where it seems like you are, right. So it’s not the power close. It’s not the closing techniques. It’s not the, do you want this one or that one? Or should we connect tomorrow or next week? It’s it’s Hey, it sounds like you want to do this, or at least continue to evaluate in order to do that. Here’s what I’d suggest we do. Why don’t we find a time to make that happen?
25:16
Tom Stanfill
I think the most, what I’ve seen, I think in our experience, so it’d be interesting to hear what you guys say about the search experience matches up with mine. I think most reps don’t want to do the power close. Like they don’t want to be perceived as this manipulative sales rep. That’s doing some technique and, be a self aligned or associated with that rep. What they do is they do nothing, right? Because this is the end of it. They don’t want to be come across to that. But, but I love to make it very clear to the customer. Like, should we do something together? This, is this something we need to pursue? If it’s okay. If what we offer doesn’t fit, but based on what you told me in our previous conversation or on this call, or based on what I understand, it sounds like we need to move forward together at least to do something.
26:09
Tom Stanfill
Let’s, I think of it as create a fork in the road. Like, do we need to continue the dialogue and go down this path of figuring out whether we need to work together or not? It’s okay by the way, either way say, but what I don’t want to do John is I don’t want to be the guy that says, all right, sounds great. We’ll get back to you. All right. Great. Well, call me later. You just keep calling and that, just that feeling of, Hey, the grovelling I’m here,
26:35
John Cerqueira
I’m here.
26:35
Tom Stanfill
Again. I don’t want to, and I get all these emails all the time. Like, Hey, I don’t want to be a nuisance. I don’t want to tell me if I’m doing this too much or, Hey, I’m going to give you the what’s that one that what’s that technique or you say, oh, this is the last one. The.
26:48
John Cerqueira
Break,
26:51
Tom Stanfill
Like all the, it just feels yucky. I just want to repeat back to them what they told me. I want to put something on the calendar. Do we need to put something on the calendar or not? If we put something on the calendar we’re going, if we don’t want to put some on the calendar fine, but what are we doing?
27:07
Tab Norris
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I agree. I think most sellers don’t want to do that. And that is a issue. I, where I’m seeing it show itself more now versus years ago is in email. It’s, it’s, there’s a lot of cheesiness still out there and is exactly what you’re talking about. I must’ve missed you. You must asked. It definitely deleted my last email, but is this.
27:28
Tom Stanfill
Top of your.
27:28
Tab Norris
Inbox, but now you’re losing it. You’re never going to get to hear from you again.
27:36
Tom Stanfill
That’s exactly right. I think, I think if once the, if a rep gets to the idea of first, I think that’s the first step is to be comfortable with creating a fork in the road experience. Are we moving forward or not? And either answer is okay, right? If maybe it sounded like you’re saying, I heard you Oprah based on RX, by what I understand about you love to help people and you love to promote books that you think will help people as I think that, so therefore, should I, based on what I know about you, maybe I’m misunderstanding. Should I send you my manuscript or proposal or whatever, if not fine. That’s not your thing either. Answer’s okay. So that we can get comfortable there. I think most sellers still make another mistake. John, I want to see what your perspective is. I think the NSF didn’t, they don’t know what the next step should be.
28:44
Tom Stanfill
Oh, no. Let’s move forward. Okay.
28:50
Tab Norris
Right.
28:53
Tom Stanfill
What do you want us to do a proposal? Or what do we do? Yeah,
28:59
Tab Norris
Yeah.
28:59
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. All right. Well let’s well, I do like to move. I think we should move forward. I’m going to talk, I’m going to talk to our people and we’ll just, we’ll why don’t you follow up with me in a month or two weeks or whatever when I, and we’ll let you know, we’ll talk about it and get together. And it’s real vague. We don’t have a clue.
29:21
John Cerqueira
Yeah. Well, what’s interesting about this topic is, it, we’re talking about it towards the end of this podcast series, because that’s where it shows up at the end of the book, because that’s where it usually shows up in our program. Because quite logically in the conversation, this is what it happens. You’ve had your conversation, you went through discovery, you’ve made a recommendation. You’re trying to move this forward. It seems reasonable to have this as the last step, but Tom, your point about the lack of clarity a seller might have in terms of what does this process look like? That should be easily well-defined in advance of even beginning the conversation.
29:59
Tom Stanfill
That is a brilliant point.
30:03
John Cerqueira
What are we, what happened?
30:04
Tom Stanfill
This is why we had him on the podcast. This is it. That, that really, I felt that I’ve actually ever made that point before. That’s really brilliant. Let’s talk about let’s. Let’s make sure we rewind that and get that. Even though it happens at the end, even though advance and getting a commitment to take action happens at the end, it really should be defined what the next steps are prior to the call. So that what you’re saying,
30:31
John Cerqueira
It was in the overall you’d call it the customer life cycle, the customer buying cycle. What are the stages usually represented by, chevrons or like arrows that say, Hey, first step is, I’ve got to figure out if this is an account that I should pursue, then I reach out to them. We have some evaluation conversations, then there’s a proposal. Then we, then we transact. If you, as a seller, don’t know how that trajectory auto work. You’re really going to be. You’re going to be a hard pressed to guide the customer, not just in terms of next steps, but we’re glossing over because this is where this advanced sits in this conversation. We’re glossing over whether or not we uncovered where they are in aligned in discovery. Right? I can’t give you a next step if I don’t know where you are. I see too many sellers glossing over discovery and saying, I don’t know, I don’t know if you have the problem that I helped solve.
31:26
John Cerqueira
I don’t know if you’d like to pursue solving it with me. I’m not sure if we’ve even tested out the potential process of what would make sense in terms of evaluating this. Because if you do discovery well and all those things, by the time you get to advance, it’s basically saying, Hey, remember all that stuff you said you wanted to fix. Yeah. Remember all the steps you wanted to fix them and how you want to fix it and some options. Well, I think of those three options. I think we should do option two. Do you agree if so, let’s do it now, but it starts with, what does that evolution of the relationship look like and starting that at the very beginning from the, from pre-call from pre engagement in general, which would be new.
32:07
Tom Stanfill
That’s good. Yeah. I think that’s, I’d like to park on that because I want to back up and make sure that the listeners understand or at least I think, cause I think I know what you mean, but I want to make sure that this is crystal clear. We talk about, we have our process, right? Which is the stage is kind of our process of working an opportunity or not relationship. However you want to call it. That’s intuitive dust and it should be right. We have like, we know we go through the steps and we have to qualify and who we’re going to pursue. We through and figure out all, then we got to propose and all those things and the steps that we have, but then there’s this process for the customer to make it the best decision. Like what process should they go through that helps them evaluate how to solve this problem that they have and how to pick the right solution.
32:59
Tom Stanfill
All of that needs to be defined by us because we have the best insights on the best process for them to evaluate the solution. Because we’re the ones that have been doing this for so long, right? We need to know what that process is for prior to even having the call, that process of, Hey, if you’re going to buy this software or buy this solution, we’ll pick whatever solution you’re buying insurance, even something real simple. These are the steps that you should go through to figure out what you need and how to evaluate whether you buy from us or buy from anybody. There’s a profit. If you’re going to renovate your house or you’re going to pick, these are the steps that you go through to figure out what you need, who to work with and whether you work for us or don’t work with us, is that part of what you’re, is that kinda what you’re saying?
33:49
John Cerqueira
That’s exactly right. Yeah. I mean a lot of people, depending on what you’re selling, a lot of customers don’t know how to buy what you sell. Right. You can talk about, you got only sellers. I see it. I see it mostly just because people are learning in junior sellers, usually kind of that SDR role lead gen or account acquisition, they get all excited. They’re making a bunch of calls or they’re hitting a bunch of prospects and they get somebody on the line and that person says maybe, and they said, great, next step looks like this. And like, hold on a second. Or, or they say maybe, and then the seller starts extolling all the virtues, all their benefits. And the customer says that’s a lot. Okay. Let me think about it.
34:40
Tab Norris
And then they go backwards. They sell it.
34:43
John Cerqueira
That’s right. The customer is like, I don’t know even what to do with all of this information. And now they go back and regroup. You’ve got sellers who are oftentimes super helpful to the customer in saying, Hey, if you’re wearing, if, if you’re at the stage that I see a lot of customers, at that, kind of this part of the conversation, you might be thinking, this is that what you’re thinking? Good. If, so, then we might want to address this thing, or we might want to do this step. Now you start moving into not just moving the deal along more efficiently, but you’re building that level of receptivity by being the trusted partner that says, I’m not just trying to sell you stuff. I’m trying to figure out the best way to help you evaluate this solution.
35:30
Tab Norris
That’s good. Well, John, any, I know we’ve talked about a lot of great stuff here and I think that was a nice recap. Any other advice kind of, as we move to wrapping up here, I mean, just any other kind of high level advice you would give around taking action. You’ve got what, 15 plus years of experience being an incredible sales guy.
35:50
John Cerqueira
Yeah. I, I would say, before you go on Oprah, if you want to do anything, you should take this training. I wish I’d done that. I wouldn’t be working with you guys.
36:02
Tom Stanfill
I wouldn’t even know you.
36:03
John Cerqueira
Would’ve gotten to the job by now. I.
36:08
Tom Stanfill
Didn’t meet you before.
36:11
John Cerqueira
We’d have been great friends, great pals. I really think the advice is do the work up front to make sure that enough about the, where the customer is in terms of evaluating your solution so that you can give an other centered what reasons suggestion for why, whatever next step makes sense. It makes sense, right? Because otherwise you’re just the person trying to push prematurely for a close where it’s disconnected from what you heard. When you can say, I’ve spent enough time with you to understand that you seem to be solving, trying to solve this problem in this way. This is where you are in your evaluation process, based on where you are. Here’s what I think as the expert in helping people make these decisions. But I think we should do next. Would that be okay? Because once you understand that, now you can get passionate about making the suggestion, which solves that problem, where we were talking about sellers, not wanting to do that because it’s cheesy or feels premature.
37:17
John Cerqueira
Do the work upfront so you can be passionate about what you’re suggesting next.
37:23
Tom Stanfill
Got it. I love that. Yeah. If I, if I think about what we’re talking about, if we could just simply say it this way, we should lead the process. We should know what it is. Like, here’s the best way to evaluate this type of solution or how to solve this problem, regardless whether you work from us or not. We should define the process because we do it all the time and the customer may have ever done it or done it. And we should lead that process. It’s not coming from a place of manipulation. It’s coming from a place of I’m the doctor, I’m an orthopedic surgeon. I do this surgery all the time. If you want to go, if you want to heal, this is the process to go through. Whether you use me as a surgeon or not on the experts. So we need to be the expert.
38:11
Tom Stanfill
I think your example of the SDR who doesn’t really know, it’s just like, we just throw stuff out and we’ll get, throw stuff out about our solution. We throw stuff out about how to move forward and hope they pick something positive versus like, Hey look, it’s the goal. After we go through the discovery process is really just, we need to lead. And, and it’s not, again, out of a place of trying to it’s a place out of really comes from a place of serving, but we can’t serve if we don’t know.
38:41
John Cerqueira
Yeah. Tactically speaking on this stage beyond that kind of the motive and doing the work upfront is don’t sleep on the power of an outlook invitation. Don’t sleep the power of, Hey, we’re on the phone right now, or we’re in a meeting right now. You think this is a good next step. You know, Mr. Ms. Customer, why don’t we pull up our laptops for open up our calendars and sync them right now is that step alone is such a pain to reprioritize, hours, days after your meeting. If you can settle it, we’re going to take 30 seconds right now. Let’s sync up that time, that little nuance sometimes kind of annoying feeling step from the seller perspective can make all the difference. Oh yeah. When people need it.
39:30
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I got one other question I want to ask you, John, before we end today is because this all sounds great in our podcast, define the process, create a fork in the road, the other centered, and offer these next steps based on the best way for the customer value. What about when the customer says, no, I don’t want to do it that way. I want to do it differently. They, because of their inexperience are moving down the wrong path, which will ultimately cost them and cost you. So when do you push back? Like when do you say, well, I’m not going to go down that path with you. Another way to, another way you can answer that question is what do you see the most successful sellers do? That’s more, an easier way to answer that question.
40:23
John Cerqueira
Yeah. I mean then the next step that the best constellation prize to getting the calendar invite is to say, okay, well, if we don’t want to set the next step, but we agree that we should continue the conversation. Is that what you’re saying? We do want to, we do want to read it.
40:41
Tom Stanfill
I’m actually saying more like the next step they pick. So let’s say you just met them. You just met the customer and it’s like an RFP situation. They’re like, Hey, we want you to just respond to the RFP. You’re like, well, yeah, but we’d like to learn more. We don’t really know much about your organization. It’s gonna be hard for us to respond to the RFP. So we’d like you to do that. Or we’d like you to come present, but not know anything or we like, we want you to show up. They want you to do something and well, we’re going to make a D like, we’re going to make a decision with very little information. You’re like, that’s not a good idea. Or we’re going to choose a firm that does this and this. You’re like, well, that’s not the kind of firm you need to choose.
41:23
Tom Stanfill
So there’s a flaw in their process. It’s not so much that they won’t commit to something, but they want you to commit to something that is a bad idea. I’ll give you an example, like a accompany once said to me, kind of related to the RFP scenario, they said, well, we want you to answer. They were willing to meet with us. They said, we’d love to, we’ll give you what information you wanted about our company. We’ll let you meet with a lower level person who doesn’t know very much. We’d like you to respond to the RFP. We’re going to make our decision based on your response to the RFP. They’re like, well, you’re never going to meet us. You’re never going to allow us to give you more information or do a demonstration or demo or walk you through what we do or meet our team.
42:04
Tom Stanfill
Nope. We’re just going to do, we’re going to, based on the words that you write on a page, that’s how we’re going to make our decision. So I was faced with the decision. Do I want to spend the two days of writing a response to an RFP because that’s going to be hard or say no. So I’m asking you, how.
42:23
John Cerqueira
Do you.
42:24
Tom Stanfill
Know? When do you say, okay, I, even though I may not agree with it, I’ll say yes.
42:29
John Cerqueira
Yeah. That, that was going to be my answer to that scenario. It’s a, it’s a no, or it’s a guess what, there’s a suggestion of that doesn’t seem like the best way to do this. What I can do there we go into the, I can responses. What I can do is I can give you a range of pricing and I can give you some preset collateral. If that’s what you’d like to figure out, to have a conversation, I can be that. If you want me to give you a recommendation and a scoped up project, I need, we need, we probably need to learn more and spend more time. That’s okay. If you don’t want to do that. But here’s where we are.
43:08
Tab Norris
Well, get away. You’ve walked away from deals like that. I mean, you’ve said, Hey, I’m not going to do, I’m not going to play by those rules because it’s not in your best interest.
43:19
John Cerqueira
I’ve, I’ve throttled my level of effort based on that. Tell it with full disclosure of what I’m providing and why. It’s usually based on, Hey, based on what you’re telling me and the level of information we have, here’s what we’re going to give you. Hopefully I would suggest that is followed by a deeper discovery conversation. Some evaluation, some walk through what we do up to you. If you don’t want to do that, here’s what I’m going to send you now. It’s a nice way of saying, Hey, no,
43:53
Tab Norris
Well, for every deal you win, you lose a deal, right? I mean, if you’re spending your time chasing an RFP, that’s a waste of time that, you’re going to lose. That’s just not why it’s not a good use of your time problem.
44:05
John Cerqueira
That’s right. The other piece is the full-on know, comes when people want you to travel to go do it for the patient. That’s like, look, there’s, there’s no other than a quick virtual meeting. There’s no, you’re either there, or you’re not there. You’re going, or you’re not in the PR in the RFP response. It’s, I’m not doing 40 pages of Norris P RFP, or putting this in all your Ariba boxes. I’ll give you what we have, unless I’m happy to fill out a Rebbe boxes, but I need this information probably from these people. Happy to do your thing when this happens,
44:40
Tom Stanfill
Right? Yeah. I, I, my heart, no, is when I know that I’m going to lose the opportunity based on what they’re asking me to do, or I know that the mistake they’re going to make is so detrimental to what they want to do or to the company that I think is just, that’s just not something they should do. And I feel so strongly about it. I want to take a stand and almost throw them off by saying, I’m not willing to participate in this fiasco. Willing to participate.
45:19
Tab Norris
Yeah.
45:20
Tom Stanfill
I remember saying, I said this to somebody one time, and I’ve said this a couple of times that they wanted in our business. I, if they don’t meet the team, it’s a big mistake. You’ve got to at least meet the people that are going to be in front of your sales organization and our world. If you’re gonna hire a sales training organization, you’ve got to meet them. This is what I say is I say 50% of the success of this project was based on the people that you hire, not the content, not the program, but the, what you can see and read. The people that bring the content to lights that work with your senior leaders, that work with your frontline leaders and people that will work with you to customize up. If you don’t meet the people and you make a decision, this project will fail and you may get lucky.
46:02
Tom Stanfill
I don’t think we’re going to participate if you don’t want to meet us. And when I said that they changed. Now I think what’s important about that is I didn’t say that. Like, I think you’re an idiot. I said it like, it’s just, don’t, it won’t be successful. You won’t get what you want. Also, I was working with someone who had never done this before, and I felt like it was so important for me to educate them on this process. Again, what I like to take the stance, whether you hire me or you don’t hire me, if you’re going to go down this path, this is what you need to be aware of. I almost felt like I needed to take care of them. That gives me the confidence to say some of those hard things. This isn’t about me. Yeah. I want to win, but you’re going to your, if you could lose your job over, rolling this out, you’re about to roll out a sales training program.
46:52
Tab Norris
Why don’t we wait just a second. I.
46:55
Tom Stanfill
Don’t want you to.
46:55
Tab Norris
Lose your job. That’s good. All right. Well, I think we ought to wrap this up. Tom, kind of pull us together. Give us the final, just a couple of takeaways.
47:06
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I think I love this. John. I’ve learned some things from me as always do, but I think, the idea that when we leave the room, our per probability to win and guide the process and for the customer to see the decision maker, to see the, the priorities and keep this as a top priority is going to diminish. We’re just, as soon as we leave the room, then all of a sudden, all the other competing parties come into the picture and our probability to get a commitment’s going to diminish, also love what John talked about is defining the process to how a customer needs to buy the buying process. Not just our process of the buying process needs to happen before the call. We line, we align where they are in their decision-making process or where they are with that process with the, the, the right steps, right.
47:59
Tom Stanfill
We just align that. Knowing where they are and knowing what the process is, I think is the key. At least that’s what I took away from it. If you meet Oprah Winfrey, whether you’re writing a book or not, you should ask her if she’s willing to promote the book.
48:23
Tab Norris
That’s awesome. Well, guys, I enjoy this. It was excellent. John, always a pleasure to be with you and thanks for your insights. Thank you.
48:33
Tom Stanfill
Those of you listening, love your feedback. Like the podcast, give us comments so we know that’s helping or what else you’d love us to, what are the topics you’d love us to cover? Thanks guys.
