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. 131 – The 5 Drivers to Confidence & Speaking with Authority (Part 2)
In this episode, Tom and Tab continue their discussion about the 5 simple questions that will help you discover what is keeping you from being the ultimate influencer.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or check out the full transcript:
00:13
Tom Stanfill
Welcome to another episode of SALES with ASLAN. This is your host, Tom Stanfill, with my extraordinary co-host, the doctor of sales training and the Chuck Norris of sales training, I’ve been told Dr. Tab Norris, how you doing my friend?
00:31
Tab Norris
Good. My friend.
00:33
Tom Stanfill
I said doctor like three times. I don’t know where I’m coming up with the doctor thing.
00:37
Tab Norris
I loved that. We went from Chuck Norris to doctor. I don’t…
00:42
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. One and blending them. I don’t tell our audience, but I’m not a professional podcaster. It’s more amateur.
00:51
Tab Norris
They did figure that out pretty quickly, but it does. It does feel good. I love it.
01:00
Tom Stanfill
Probably. You didn’t have to tell him that. It’s like, Hey, I, how do I tell him I can’t speak French?
01:05
Tab Norris
I don’t figure it out. You don’t even have to say anything. I love it. I love doing these. I mean, it’s just, it’s so much fun getting together, sharing truth. I mean, it really is funny how we’ve been doing this together for 20, where I guess we’re heading into year 27.
01:27
Tom Stanfill
I cannot believe it. We’re still friends.
01:29
Tab Norris
And we’re still friends. And.
01:31
Tom Stanfill
I can’t believe that I’m still friends with you. I, I struggle to believe that you’re still friends with me, but I don’t know what that.
01:37
Tab Norris
Well, I’m always working on getting 1% better and you’re that one friend that I, I feel like I’m going to keep him because he’s going to make me 1% better. He’s gonna force me to stretch me more. She’s going to keep giving. I’m gonna, you’re going to make me better. And thank you for that. Well, of course, I’m kidding.
01:58
Tom Stanfill
I don’t know how to take that. Take it. We got it. The phones are ringing off the hook after our last podcast episode. I mean the buzz, I dunno, the internet crash. I mean, I think good morning America picked it up. The, all the news outlets are talking about it. We talk about last on our last podcast about building confidence, the five questions that you need to ask to assess, why you’re not as competent as should be. Now if you’re competent, I mean, in every situation you boldly stand in front of people and you have no, no, you have no struggle whatsoever. Communicating what you need to communicate. You’re never nervous and you and everybody listens to you and everybody follows you. Then you just turn, skip this podcast.
02:41
Tab Norris
I listen to the Eagles, just go listen to the Eagles. And I think that’s great. Take a break. You just need to take a break from learning. So you’re just there,
02:50
Tom Stanfill
Just there. So, so we had, we, we, we had a lot of conversation about this last week’s podcast. We wanted to take a double click on a couple items and go deeper. Cause I think it was a little conceptual first. The first part of this podcast was a little conceptual. Want to take a little deeper dive, but just to make sure we have the context for what we’re going to be talking about, in sales or in sales, we’re all leading our customer somewhere. Right? We want them to follow us. Yeah. The question is, do they look at us and go, Ooh, I, I believe that you’re somebody to follow and what makes us believable? What makes us speak with authority? Why do some of us say things everybody’s like, yep. I agree. That’s that? I believe that was people say things really? Yeah. Whether you’re in sales, you’re a leader.
03:39
Tom Stanfill
That’s the topic today. We’re going to double click on a couple of those items tab. Anything you want to add to the introduction, which although.
03:46
Tab Norris
I, I, I love it. And, and I, I think I did, I actually did hear from a few people from this last part, one of this podcast saying that they really did find that very helpful. I think we struck a nerve, Tom. I think something struck.
04:04
Tom Stanfill
A nerve.
04:04
Tab Norris
Struck a nerve. So, and I think it’s a really important topic and it, if I could share this just a little set up, it just hit me that I remember, I think this would be a good kind of launch into this topic is I’m remembering early Azlan days. I was struggling with confidence. I know that shocks you, Tom. I was really struggling. You.
04:27
Tom Stanfill
Struggle with.
04:27
Tab Norris
PI was struggling. I was like, I’m young and I’m an idiot. And I’m just learning things. I’m like, how, how am I going to sell these people on using me to help with their sales people? And, and I will never forget. You said to me, you said, Don, let me ask you a question too. They pay you X amount to come in and spend some people with their folks. You do it once a month and whatever, do you think they’ll get value out of the money they just spent? I said, of course they would. He goes, you’re set. You are ready to go. And I was like, you’re right. This is worth it. All of a sudden I became confident. It was like, I know that’s a silly story, but I vividly remember that. You so infused me with that little morsel and it built enough confidence for me not to bail on year one with you in my basement.
05:20
Tom Stanfill
Well, what I had to have, which is kind of what we’re going to talk about today is I had information.
05:25
Tab Norris
Yes.
05:25
Tom Stanfill
I knew the truth. I knew the truth that you are going to provide value. So I was confident for you. You may have been doubting it. Yeah. I was not doubting it because I knew you and I knew what you had to offer. I think that’s kind of a great segue into what really drives competence. The first question who we offered last week to determine what’s keeping you from competence is, is the truth about your solution, your truth, or is it somebody else’s truth? Want to double click on that and unpack that . Everybody that we’re, we’re serving has a problem. If we’re in sales, we don’t sell anything unless somebody has a problem. So they have a problem. Now, the question is what are they going to do? Or what should they do to solve the problem now? Here’s the here’s I think the root cause a lot of times with people why they’re not confident is because the only path that they see is the path that they recommend or the path that they offer.
06:25
Tom Stanfill
Kind of the way that I think when people are the way I visualize it, when I’m confident or I see other people are competent and they’re just kind of standing by shoulder to shoulder with the customer, and they’re looking at all the customers pass that they can take to solve their problem, all of them. There’s path a, B, C, and D. Let’s just say, they’re four. Now you may offer D but there’s three other paths. There’s like, they may stay with their current solution provider. They may decide to delay. They may, they may want a partial part. They may only want part of your solution, or they may want the full solution, or they may want it even the full solution. Plus, I mean, there’s just, there’s several options. If we’re confident we can lay those options out and explain why is it in their best interest to go down each one of those paths?
07:14
Tom Stanfill
I know were talking before the podcast and you were sharing a story about a client that you’re working with now. And I like to this point,
07:22
Tab Norris
Yeah. I mean, it’s, something we all hold near and dear through the pandemic is delivery service for our favorite restaurants. Right? And you think about it. I’ve just been learning a lot about this, working with this client. I’m in this learning mode and I’m listening and it’s, and bottom line is if you have a restaurant, here are your choices,
07:43
Tom Stanfill
Right.
07:44
Tab Norris
You can go, you can decide that we’re going to have our own delivery team,
07:51
Tom Stanfill
Right? That, some restaurants don’t use a grub or a door dash. They basically have their own delivery team that goes out and delivers, okay,
08:00
Tab Norris
I’m own people. We go deliver our stuff. That’s what we do. Right? You can, that’s what you can do. You can use one of many choices, right? You can use one of two or whatever these services that you can choose. You can, I guess you can offer no delivery. That is an option. You, or you can use a premium version of one of these delivery services, maybe to drive more traffic, get more customers, drive people in. So those are three pretty.
08:32
Tom Stanfill
Obvious choice. You can stay with the one you have, yes.
08:34
Tab Norris
Stay with current delivery team or who you’re using right now. You can stay with that. So those are the three options. To your point, if you’re really want to be confident, you should know exactly what those options are and why it could be in their best interest to pick any one of those. Because by the way, there can be a time and a place where it may be more beneficial to do one or the other.
09:00
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Yeah. That makes, that makes perfect sense. That reminds me of working with a software organization, they were trying to, and this team, all they did was basically call existing customers and try to upgrade them, ? And they were selling an option.
09:13
Tab Norris
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you a few questions to see what options they make sense. I hope it’s a, because that’s all I got.
09:21
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah. And I asked him, I said, so is there any reason why they ever should stay with what they’re doing? They’re like, they looked at me like I was crazy.
09:34
Tab Norris
Horns coming out of your head.
09:35
Tom Stanfill
What are you done? It’s what all I know is to sell. It’s like, and they sounded like sales people who are like, I’m a billboard, right. All, and I’ve got my talking points and I’m going to deliver this message. When you’re a builder billboard, you don’t have credibility with the customer. You are perceived as a billboard. They’re like via working with your, your delivery service. There’s a reason why people they have should have their own delivery team. There’s a reason why they don’t have a delivery service. There’s a reason why they need to stay with their existing service. There’s a reason why they need this way. We need to be able to explain it. One of the things I said to the software guys, as I said, so what if the customer was about to sell their business? Should they upgrade?
10:24
Tab Norris
I don’t know. I don’t care. It don’t make any money if that app.
10:27
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. It’s like, we’ll see you just lost credibility and see the thing is if we know there’s other options, we don’t want to go there. We’re kind of uncomfortable because we’re like, don’t open those doors. Don’t talk. Don’t ask me about that. I don’t know what I, don’t get me off script.
10:42
Tab Norris
Yeah. That’s I, I just had this happen with another one of my accounts, same exact thing. They were, they were, they’re selling training for a technology and they’re going, well, they don’t have a choice, they just have to do this. I said, so you’re telling me they don’t have a choice. They’re like, no, they don’t have a choice. They, they, this is the only thing we have to offer. I said, okay, that’s the choice. No. I said, wait, okay, let me back up. It sounds like that’s the way, but they have choices, right? They can say, no, I don’t want that. They go, well, yeah, but that probably wouldn’t be in their best interest. I said, okay, I understand. It’s exactly what you’re talking about.
11:26
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. You’ve got a great example of this. What we’re talking about really is being a trusted partner, is like when people invite us in early in the process and we are, we earn a seat at the table, but we have to have the knowledge to earn that seat. I was in a situation where I’m still in this situation where my house is kind of falling apart. I’ve owned it for like 18 years. We’re thinking about selling it. Were talking to a very expensive renovation company cause they handle everything about, we’ve got fake stucco, windows are rotting. We need painting. Doors need to be replaced. Garage doors need to replay. And so.
12:07
Tab Norris
It looks fabulous. I did this. You’re making it sound like, oh my God.
12:12
Tom Stanfill
Well, when you see, I mean, there’s holes in the birds have burrowed in, ? There’s like, there’s a pro there’s some problems. If you don’t look at it, if you look at it closely, there’s some problems I especially. They, one option is we’re just going to paint it. Like the market’s hot. Let’s just paint it. That costs me whatever, $10,000. And, and by the way, they don’t provide that service. They don’t pay the, just painted service, the full-blown windows.
12:41
Tab Norris
Or rip it out,
12:42
Tom Stanfill
Retake the, taken.
12:43
Tab Norris
Out.
12:46
Tom Stanfill
Sound like. You want to take all the rats, the bird, they want to redo the chimney they want to take. Cause then their whole thing is about warranty and they can guarantee it. Like our place, all the windows, they can’t fix some of the rot woods. They’ve got to replace the windows and all this stuff. And I guess that’s their option. What I needed them is to say, look, these are the options you have. You can do kind of a mix of repairs. You can just paint it. You can do the full-blown thing, which is what we offer or we can. They had all like, here’s what, it was interesting. That person walked me through all those options. So.
13:19
Tab Norris
Because.
13:19
Tom Stanfill
They’re in the business, like that’s what she should have done. She was amazing. She’s like, I’m in the business. This is all I do. I can tell you what we can do. I can tell you what other people can do. There are reasons why, like she said, well, if you’re going to sell it, blah, blah, then you should do this. If you’re going to, if you’re going to stay, then you should do this. I, I’m out with a pencil and paper and I’m writing all this stuff down. By the way we just said, what? I think we’re just going to paint it and sell it. And she said, fine. If you change your mind and you decide to do, and she started listing out the reason, then you call me and I would love to help you. And I’m like, oh, okay. I mean, it guess what?
13:59
Tom Stanfill
We decided we are planned change guests, who we call.
14:03
Tab Norris
Her,
14:04
Tom Stanfill
We called her and you know what? She was never shaken by the conversation. She’s like, okay. Yeah. And she’d invested time and she’d put drawings together. My wife had met with her at her office and all this stuff, but she earned the respect because she was confident in what she knew. She was helping me, which kind of goes to what we talked about last week, which is our goal needs to be to serve.
14:27
Tab Norris
Right. Which by the way is I think a real big deal for salespeople because they, I think sometimes the hangup is they’re afraid that it’s going to bite them. Like they’re not going to have success. We all know you’re more successful if you serve. She sees the big picture, even though I didn’t maybe win. I didn’t manipulate this person into going with my idea, which wouldn’t have worked anyway, by the way, you feel better about yourself or at least I gave it a good try. I told her the six reasons why, but realize that you keep doing that over time and you become a trusted partner with everybody that you interact with. You’re going to have plenty of business.
15:07
Tom Stanfill
I.
15:07
Tab Norris
Think that’s important.
15:09
Tom Stanfill
You can’t serve the customer if you don’t know what their options are and how to guide them to getting ultimately what they want. So, so I think that, I think the first thing we need to do is kind of replay this back to them. They have a problem, what are all their options to solve the problem? We need to figure out what the truth is related to those options so that we can advise them. One of the best places to do that obviously is with our existing customers. Like we talked about last week, now there is another step. I think that’s really important is because we have a bias towards negative information or against negative information or a bias towards our solution or our path. We need to vet our ideas against somebody, with somebody who probably has the alternative point of view.
15:58
Tab Norris
Right.
15:59
Tom Stanfill
Like let’s like if you, if, if like I had a, here’s an alternative, here’s a bias that I have, right? We, we obviously sell maybe not to our listeners, but obviously to you, we sell a custom, a pretty custom solution. We don’t sell just generic off the shelf programs we have for that. But it’s very rare. We, we recommend that, we want to customize the program to the role in the organization. We play every organization’s unique thing, even a unique program because of its, I say this all the time, if it’s 95% relevant, they’ll focus on the 5%. That’s kind of a strongly held belief that we have. Well, one of the, one of my practices is to call customers are people that we didn’t become. They didn’t become customers that chose the, the competitor, a competitor, which is hard to believe that happens to him.
16:47
Tab Norris
Every once, every 12 to 14 years,
16:50
Tom Stanfill
I think it did happen. Yeah. It happened in 2005. I think 2020, so it’s very rare, but it happened. I call this the decision-maker because we built a relationship. We came in second long story as to why, but we did. And, but it was so close that we had kind of developed relationship. Well, I followed up with this guy a couple of weeks ago and I asked him about, how it’s going? He’s he said, yeah, well we bought this program. It was basically generic. I said, well, I, I, my, my mind I’m like, well, obviously that didn’t work.
17:24
Tab Norris
Right. Well, you made a mistake.
17:27
Tom Stanfill
I can’t wait to hear, I can’t wait to hear why that didn’t work. He said it and you know what? It did work. He said, because he was there, he was hired as an outside consultant to come in and make it work. They invested in him to bridge the gap in the difference between the generic program and the company. And so it ultimately works. So I was like, oh, okay. That’s a situation where even one of our generic programs could be effective for our customers. I learned by talking to people and vetting my biases against somebody who might have a contrary point of view. I, I think it’s important for sellers or even leaders who are leading sellers to say, I have this point of view, but are you talking to people who don’t agree with you?
18:17
Tab Norris
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s really powerful and we don’t do it enough and we all have the opportunity to do it. We all lose deals. We all have the opportunity to find out why we lost. Everybody may not tell you, but you ask enough, you’re going to learn.
18:33
Tom Stanfill
That’s reminds me of a conversation that I had with a guy who was my, at the time, he’s he sold me, my insurance. I had a life insurance and he was, he was my provider. He kept telling me, you need to up your insurance, you need to change your insurance. And it was, it cost more money. And I kept saying why? I said, there are people that offers the people that don’t term there’s people that are they. I started laying out all these other options. I said, I want you to explain to me these other options and why, and he just kept saying, you shouldn’t do that. I’m like, well, it was almost like I was annoying him. And he’s no longer my guy.
19:16
Tab Norris
Yeah. Well like, yeah, to the point where it’d be like, well, here’s where that makes sense. You are going in this direction or you have these goals, or this is what you’re trying versus no, I’m a bit, I’m on this. I’m on this team. We do it this way. What are the blue team? We always go blue, red, maybe my color, it’s like,
19:37
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Just kinda make sure we grounded this. The ideas is no, the paths walk down the paths, be confident of the Plaza. The customer can take and be able to communicate clearly why it’s in their best interest to choose each one of those paths. You’ll be able to communicate confidently a tab. There was, there was another thing, another topic, another question that we talked about last week that I want to double click on, which is your goal to serve the customer. It’s ultimately, now that’s tied to the first question, but I, I want to, I want to dive into how do we apply that to objections? So, we talked about, we talked about the past and we’re saying, yeah, but ultimately is your goal to serve the customer because that’s what, that’s where we’re going to struggle with articulating other points of view or other paths that might be good for them.
20:34
Tom Stanfill
I really want to apply this to objections.
20:37
Tab Norris
Yeah.
20:38
Tom Stanfill
Do when, how can we communicate the truth related to objections? So, so what we teach all the time, as is that what’s the best way to overcome an objection is with the truth.
20:54
Tab Norris
Right?
20:55
Tom Stanfill
I, I remember reading about James Dyson, the guy, the vacuum, I don’t think I’ve told that.
21:03
Tab Norris
Story.
21:04
Tom Stanfill
So Dyson is an $8 billion company.
21:09
Tab Norris
Wow.
21:09
Tom Stanfill
Large.
21:10
Tab Norris
Vacuum cleaner.
21:15
Tom Stanfill
He’s an aids and $8 billion company. I was listening to a podcast on him. I think it was, what is it, how I built this. And I think he was on that. I think that’s where I heard it. He, they asked him the question early in his, in the development of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, it was three times more expensive than the typical vacuum cleaner. Here’s this guy, he built this thing in his basement and he’s walking around these department stores saying, Hey, I want you to buy my vacuum cleaner. And, and so Roz guy Roz asked him, he said, so how did you sell this vacuum cleaner? That was three times more expensive. And he goes, it was brilliant. He goes, I just told them the truth.
22:02
Tab Norris
The music comes on. What did he do? What, how did he manipulate? How did he drive? How did he persuade? I just told them,
22:09
Tom Stanfill
I just told, so this is the one area where we get shaken. This is why we’re talking about this. This is an area where we get shaken is when we get really strong pushback and people, say, Hey, I, why would I pay three? W so we, we talk about the past, but then all of a sudden they start to argue with us. If we know the truth about whatever questions they have, then we can just tell them the truth, ? He explained to them, they let me just, I’ll just tell you that he hate, and here’s the thing. He knew it. I think that’s the difference between people who sell, kind of veterans who really know what they’re doing and newbies who like, kind of learning about this from everybody else. They don’t really know the truth.
22:54
Tab Norris
Yeah. Yeah.
22:58
Tom Stanfill
You were explaining to me to have the, an example that you shared with me the other day about American airlines. I thought that was a good example.
23:09
Tab Norris
Yeah. Like the, yeah, that was a good example of, people, they don’t understand a big objection in the airline industry. Right. Is, why are there all these fees? That’s what I mean, you hear that, it’s like, and, and, a lot of it’s so funny, you talk to, people that are, agents are, in sales or reservations or whatever they’re doing. They’re like, yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m angry. I know I don’t get it. It’s like, why don’t we keep doing this? And, and you get frustrated.
23:44
Tom Stanfill
With the customers. What I have to pay for these fees. Why do I have to do this?
23:49
Tab Norris
I agree with you. I’m just, I think we ought to drop. We, I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s bad, but they don’t know the truth. It was so fun working with them and watching the light bulbs go off. When you start going, Hey, do you even know the truth about this? They’re like, no, I just think, and you get them talking. And it’s like, well, here’s the truth. Here’s the truth. Here’s what we do in order to serve our customers, we start with the lowest fare because some people, they don’t want anything. They just so key. Keep it as low as humanly possible. So you always have that choice. You always, you start with that and you only pay for what you need,
24:28
Tom Stanfill
Like the Liberty mutual commercial…
24:30
Tab Norris
That’s it. See once you know that, and you’re confident, all of a sudden you become confident in communicating, Hey, let me just explain. Here’s why this is the way that it is. I get it. But I’m confident. And,
24:44
Tom Stanfill
That’s, what’s so important about this is why we’re talking about this related to serving is it’s why it’s best for the customer. So it’s like the truth. Why are you charging me a fee to change my flight? Well, because we start off with people. The lowest fare we can possibly offer is for people who don’t change their fight flight and want the cheapest seats. That’s where we start. Now, if you want to change flights, that cost us more money. Cause we have, we’ve got, we have less inventory and so they can explain that. And so then there’s a change fee. That all comes from not, Hey, we want to make more money, which is why they weren’t confident. This is a bad corporation trying to make money too. Okay. This is how this is. Because if we had to say, you can change your flight any time you can do anything you want.
25:30
Tom Stanfill
Then there would be a backlog. There would be an, a diminish of service that they provided. Profits always equals ability to serve the customer better. We need to be able to communicate why, what we’re doing is best for the customer. If we don’t know that, then ultimately we’re not going to be confident and responding to objections. By the way, the top reps that really understood that American airlines outsole the reps that didn’t get it like 10 to one.
25:58
Tab Norris
Oh, it wasn’t even close.
26:00
Tom Stanfill
It was like, people are just like, oh yeah, that’s makes perfect sense. Other people are like, I agree with the customer.
26:04
Tab Norris
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. That’s a great example of what we’re talking about.
26:11
Tom Stanfill
Well, tab any last thoughts before we kinda leave this subject? I, I was thinking we could share maybe our toughest objection.
26:20
Tab Norris
Well, I was going to say, I, I would love to hear that from you. You’ve been, you have been in so many different selling situations, not only with us, but all the salespeople would Asalyn you’ve worked with over the years. What would you say? You got to give it to me.
26:36
Tom Stanfill
Oh, you’re gonna put that on me.
26:40
Tab Norris
I’m Chuck Norris right here. I’m just doing a little.
26:43
Tom Stanfill
Move. I’m going to train me. You could.
26:46
Tab Norris
Drop it down on. You.
26:49
Tom Stanfill
Let’s hear. Well, what comes to mind is I think about the toughest objection or we think about objections and also the ability to communicate it in a way that’s about the customer. Not about me. I was in a situation several ways. God, this was probably 15 years ago is were one of, probably 20 firms brought in to meet with this. What it was a big fortune 500 company. I told you the name, everybody would go. Yeah, of course everybody would know the name of this company. So I was super excited. We had this initial meeting where they all came. Everybody came in and did a 30 minute dog and pony show. Like here’s who we are just capabilities. They’re like, I don’t worry. You’ll be able to meet with this later. We’re just as just an initial. We’re going to narrow it down to the final, handful of people.
27:42
Tom Stanfill
We’ll do more discovery and give you time to get to know us, blah, blah. Well, after my presentation, they call me back and they said, well, here’s correct. Congratulations. Here’s the good news. You came in second out of all the quality companies, you came. In another, your biggest competitor came in first and they didn’t say that, but I knew they were my biggest competitor. And I said, great, thank you. That’s okay. Well, I thought you said were going to be able to, spend more time. This was just a 30 minute thing. I never even, I mean, we really had a blue. Almost was like, what are you talking about? I mean, I, well, it turns out that they had already had hired this company a year, previous, maybe even two years previous. They had to put a halt on the project and for some reason the executives required them to go through the process again.
28:34
Tom Stanfill
So, so they went and told the executives that we chosen the firm and they said, well, actually we’d like to meet with a final two. And they said, oh, okay. Final two. They came to me and said, all right, well, actually we’ve talked to the CEO and the COO. They would like to meet with you as well. And I said, okay, that’s great. I said, but before I do that, I’m not going to make the same mistake. I’m not going to come in cold. I need to meet with them and find out more about your organization. We haven’t even gone through the discovery process. Here’s where the objection shows up tab. And they say, no,
29:07
Tab Norris
Not I’m not going to happen.
29:11
Tom Stanfill
You, we want you to tell them, we want you to come in and make an, I said, we’re objecting to you getting more information because they really weren’t. For me. They were for the other company, they chose me. And I said, no. I said, and here’s why I said, and this is where the confidence comes in. I said, here’s why I said, because I can’t serve you or tell you about our solution. Unless I know the role of the people I’m going to serve, how your resources you have in place, what’s important to your organization. What’s your decision. Drivers are what’s your objectives are all. And I started listing. I said, so, cause I need to make a recommendation out of presentation, unless I know more about your organization, I’m wasting your time and airtime. And so that’s not best for you. So I’m just going to pass.
29:58
Tom Stanfill
They were like, and because I said that they came back to me and actually allowed me to present, to spend time with people. They, they gave me, they opened the door, I got more information. And then ultimately we won. So that was probably my toughest. I would say that was my toughest objection.
30:17
Tab Norris
Well, I’m not, I’m not beating that one. I mean, that is.
30:21
Tom Stanfill
Nothing to be.
30:22
Tab Norris
Nothing better than that. I mean, I’ve had similar situations. I can share a lot of times when I did it wrong, Tom, I think that would probably could probably learn a lot from that because I mean, I’ve done the exact opposite of what you said and it doesn’t, it just doesn’t play out, where you’re just like, okay, I promise it’s going to be worth your time, but you can’t do it. I’ll do it.
30:43
Tom Stanfill
Anyway.
30:46
Tab Norris
And I’ve done that in me. You know how it is. You, you learn as much from your failures is your success, right? Yeah.
30:53
Tom Stanfill
I’ve definitely blown it before and you think about it. The key is I think that if you do drop the ball or it doesn’t work out what I think our natural instinct is to blame the negative outcome on something or someone else it’s too expensive, our solutions, this, and I think what’s helped me over the years navigate. This is to really examine what could I have done better? What did I know? Did they make the right decision? You know,
31:27
Tab Norris
You put the thing, you gotta be really, that’s such a good example, Tom, because you have to have not just normal comp. I mean, you have to be really confident in that because that is you’re pushing against the whole process. The way they’re putting this thing together. This is a real big company they’ve gone. There are a lot of smart people that made this decision. That’s what makes this so powerful, such a powerful example because that’s not just a little, oh, here, oh, here’s the box. What you say when they say this, that wouldn’t work in that situation.
32:00
Tom Stanfill
That’s where, that’s where I, that’s the only thing that gives me the comfort or Megace to just the confidence to, to really address it because I’m just focused on what’s true and not what I want, not what I’d like it to be, but what is true? I said, I know that I can’t articulate our solution without information upfront, some information from them. I just know it’s away. So I know that. It’s easy for me to do it. If I’m trying to make things up, then I’m gonna fail. I’m going to struggle. I think that’s the way that we learn is when we do fail. I think that’s a really good point because we all fail a lot.
32:41
Tab Norris
Oh yeah. I don’t ever, when I stood in front of it, I was in Washington DC and I did the exact opposite of what you did. I stood in front of those people was sweat pouring from my brow, going, I am an idiot. I am standing before these people and because I didn’t get to do my process, I don’t know what to say. I will never feel it. Now. You just don’t ever want to feel that again. So, which is great because now you go, now I get it. Now I’m not, I will be extremely confident in pushing for the right process next time. So.
33:16
Tom Stanfill
Beautiful, beautiful. Well, that wraps up our conversation on building confidence. It all comes from knowing the truth about our solution. It knowing the truth about what paths the customer can take and then vetting the truth, right? Against people who may have contrary opinion, kind of take the truth out for a walk and see if it sticks. Chat have people challenge you and see if, if you’re accurate, because we all, I think it’s, we have to fight against the gravitational pull to our company and our solution because we’re always in rooms with people who agree with us, ? We need to get out of the rooms. Is that okay? Let’s look at, as we talked about last week, let’s look at the competitors houses. Well, let’s look at what the other options are so that we can own it because our recommendation needs to be our recommendation.
34:07
Tom Stanfill
Not someone else’s recommendation to have any other closing thoughts.
34:10
Tab Norris
I love it. I love, I, it just stuck with me from last time. As we talk about it this time, and I had several people say this to me, that listened to that last podcast, they just love this whole idea about coming back to the truth. Like it’s a principle, it’s a true, and always, I was working with somebody specifically around this week and they had listened to the podcast and they said, tab, you’re doing what you and Tom talked about on that last podcast. She goes, you’re teaching me to always go back to the truth. I said, do you ever get in that spot where you don’t really know what to do? Go, what’s the truth. What’s the truth. If this is the truth and you don’t have to worry about it, you just always go back to that. I think that’s really powerful and makes you much more confident.
34:54
Tom Stanfill
The best way to overcome an objection is the truth. So, and if you don’t know the truth, somebody does.
35:01
Tab Norris
Yep. Figure it out.
35:02
Tom Stanfill
It’s available. It’s available. So go find it. My buddy loved being with you. If you guys enjoyed the podcast, please give us some comments, give us some love, rate it and keep encouraging us to continue on because it’s a hard world out there. Tab. We need encouragement.
35:19
Tab Norris
We do. We both love encouragement. Enjoyed it.
35:24
Tom Stanfill
All right, buddy. Thanks.
