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. 145 – 7Ks of Confidence (Part 1)
In this episode, Tom and Tab discuss what drives confidence. It’s a critical ingredient in the recipe for influence and success, especially for those of us in the world of sales. Based on their experience working with thousands of top-performing sellers over the years, Tom and Tab highlight seven keys (things you need to know) to build confidence.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or check out the transcript:
00:13
Tom Stanfill
Welcome to another episode of SALES with ASLAN. I’m your host, Tom Stanfill. Of course Tab you’re my co-host, which I feel like puts you in a second tier position. I don’t like that, but I am the one with the book, Tab. So I have to be…
00:35
Tab Norris
Author. I, which I get, I mean, I…
00:42
Tom Stanfill
Well, they told me, yeah, I had to put my name on it. Cause it helps get the word out.
00:49
Tab Norris
Yeah, you don’t exactly. We don’t need to go into that.
00:53
Tom Stanfill
We don’t need any of that, but Hey, this is a special day Tab. Not only are we recording our 2000th episode of sales with ASLAN or something like that, maybe it’s 150. I don’t know. But, but, and if I had a drum roll. If I had sound, if were in a real studio, we would still, we would have music, drum roll. We’d have some celebration to announce that July 1st is one of the best days of the year. There’s Christmas…
01:27
Tab Norris
Yes.
01:27
Tom Stanfill
There’s Easter. Right? There’s Thanksgiving. 4th of July and there’s Tab’s birthday… Happy birthday, my friend.
01:37
Tab Norris
Thank you. It’s love that. I’m alive another year to spend with you. I mean, I was thinking, sadly, I spend more time with you than probably my family members because that’s all right. Good thing we love each other.
01:51
Tom Stanfill
Oh man. I am so grateful for you. I could, I could melt right now thinking about how much I love you and how much you mean to me. I know you probably won’t even get anything done. Did I dab? Because you’re going to have to field calls and texts and emails and I mean, it’s just, it’s like, you’re gonna have to, you definitely have to take the day off every July 1st off and what somebody is doing something Monday, the whole country is doing something Monday.
02:16
Tab Norris
Did fireworks for me every year. We delay it but that’s okay.
02:20
Tom Stanfill
Well you wait for the weekend.
02:22
Tab Norris
Yeah, that’s right. So anyway, well I appreciate it. I feel the same way and I’m very grateful. You were born too, but we’ve already celebrated that.
02:32
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, we can. It’s all about you buddy. All right, buddy. We gotta move on. Cause the people that don’t know, you need to know, you see him on the street, pull him aside, give him a hug, get to know him the today tab. Actually we have a lot to learn from you about this subject, but today we’re going to talk about what drives confidence. This came up in a couple of meetings that were conducting recently while were assessing sales organizations and this word confident came up and I started thinking about what, that’s really a critical element of what drives a sales person or really anybody in business or anybody in probably any walk of life. Success is that it’s competence. Especially in sales, because if you really think about what we’re doing in sales is we’re basically saying, Hey, you have a problem or you have something you want and I’m going to help you get there.
03:25
Tom Stanfill
I’m going to lead you to the best solution. The question is, will they follow you? You know, are, do they believe you? Which is really the group confidence comes from this root word believe and I’ve done some study and you, of course, I speak Latin tab.
03:42
Tab Norris
No, I just see you sometimes just at the beach and it was crack out your Latin.
03:46
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Like it’s crazy because no one really can communicate with me. Yeah. Yeah. So what drives confidence? Because there’s people that words that their words have weight, when they say things, you’re like you people write them down and then there’s people that talk and you just kind of tune out, ? Or are you just can kind of tell that they really it’s false confidence. You’re like that, that guy has no clue what he’s talking about or, or y’all don’t believe that person or that woman’s making that up. Or, but then there’s other, people’s like, yeah, they just command the room. They walk in the room, they go walk into a party, they’d go to a dinner that you just like, they’re just unfazed. And I’m so attracted to those people. There’s like, there’s something about them. We listened to them, we follow them. And that’s a critical element.
04:36
Tom Stanfill
It’s like the foundation of being successful at influence is having that foundation of competence.
04:43
Tab Norris
Well, and Tom, I’ve always thought, that’s just the way you are, ? There, I do think there are people that are born with more confidence than other, I don’t know, they’re born with some kind of something, just, I don’t know what it is, but I kind of put a lot of weight on, that’s just genetically how you are. I, as the older I get, I realize that’s not true.
05:09
Tom Stanfill
No.
05:09
Tab Norris
I mean, I think life experiences impact confidence. I think, I mean, I think there are a lot of things that impact confidence, but I think there’s a lot we can do as human beings to drive more confidence.
05:23
Tom Stanfill
It’s within our control.
05:24
Tab Norris
Yeah. That’s what.
05:26
Tom Stanfill
Confident is a decision that we need to make. We’re going to talk about what drives confidence today and it, and I’m glad you brought that up because it’s not about volume. Right? Right. How loud you speak or fast you speak or, I mean, I, I met with an owner the other day. He was, he was, were talking to him about, becoming a client. He was explaining his business as a really successful business. And this guy just almost whispered. He just talked about how he basically, he was the seller. He had a multimode he, I think it was like a $400 million company. He pretty much sold most of the major accounts like apple. He was just this quiet man who spoke truth. This is how I do it. And you’re like, I’m right. Everything he says down. I mean, I’m like, this guy just blew me.
06:16
Tom Stanfill
He wasn’t saying things that were really rocket science. It was only like, oh, I guess I’ve never heard it. It’s just the way he’s like, I want a client. Like he would say things like most important thing is to understand the client’s pain points. They tell me what their pain is, I write it down and then I feed it back to him. I’m like, yeah, that’s exactly what. It’s like. It’s so simple. It’s like, but you knew that he knows what he’s talking about. There was no question that he knew what he was talking about and how to sell this solution. That’s what we want to talk about today. Tab there’s seven things you need to know. I call it the seven K.
06:57
Tab Norris
You’re a.
06:58
Tom Stanfill
Runner.
06:59
Tab Norris
Yeah. I’ve never run a seven K. They have not been running 10 Cameron and nine K seven. K.
07:10
Tom Stanfill
The number seven. It’s the perfect number.
07:12
Tab Norris
It is.
07:13
Tom Stanfill
I’ve never run a one. K.
07:15
Tab Norris
Yeah, yeah. You ought to try it sometime.
07:17
Tom Stanfill
We’ll do a Walker. I think I’ve done a walk-a-thon tab before. I’ve done a walk-a-thon before,
07:22
Tab Norris
As we’re big in the seventies,
07:23
Tom Stanfill
Big and 70. Here’s you, and I’ve obviously prepared for this thought about it. What we’re sharing is what we’ve learned, literally from working with thousands of top performing sellers and leaders. As we thought about calling down this list, if they took really what does drive confidence and why do we follow people? Why do we listen to them first? We’re gonna talk about seven things you need to know. The first one is you need to know your purpose.
07:52
Tab Norris
Yeah. That if that’s not in place,
07:54
Tom Stanfill
This is where you start.
07:56
Tab Norris
And you start here. You really have to get this figured out. Or it’s not that, I mean, other things are critical, but boy, this, if you get this thing squared away, it really does lay the foundation.
08:08
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Well, I’ll give you an a great example because ultimately what we’re going to, where we’re going to unpack in this is you really have two options. Your, the purpose is to really help other people, right. Or the purposes to perform and get a score. It determines your performance, determines your worth. When your performance determines your worth, there’s a lot of stake. It’s just there’s pressure. There’s yeah. It’s like, there’s too much at stake. If I’m going to a party, just a simple party. At the end of the party, I’m going to go do people like me.
08:42
Tab Norris
Right.
08:42
Tom Stanfill
Right. How did I do.
08:45
Tab Norris
Go to this party?
08:47
Tom Stanfill
I’d go to this party to be like, that’s scary. It’s like, do they like me? Do they want to talk to me? Am I, am I going to buy? I mean, that’s a scary thing. If I go to the party and I say, Hey, I wonder who I can get to know or what I’ll learn from somebody or what, and see how so-and-so’s doing. So, and I make it about them. I have no pressure. Yeah. Like I met Jenna, the, the head of our marketing for Asalyn. I met her father yesterday. It was like, it kind of for a minute there, I’m like, oh God, I mean, it’s like, I need to impress him. I need to, I need to, and then I’m like, no, I just need to get to know him. Who is he?
09:23
Tab Norris
He’s.
09:24
Tom Stanfill
The greatest guy. What does he do? Where does he live? What’s he love? I mean, we just had this great conversation because it wasn’t about me. It was about getting to know him. It’s about other people I’m thinking about that movie, dumb and dumber, which is a great movie.
09:42
Tab Norris
You are so easily distracted. Like a squirrel there. You can’t see out your window or we’d be in trouble,
09:49
Tom Stanfill
Dumb and dumber. When the gods you ever heard the concept of other people he’s on the phone, other people. So, yeah. The one that the other example tab I had is a simple one is I had to give a toast. This is like the soup. Like I’ve talked to several people who are giving toast lately at a wedding. I was very nervous because I’m thinking I got to perform.
10:14
Tab Norris
Right.
10:14
Tom Stanfill
I got to entertain. All of a sudden I shifted to say no, what does Chani want to hear? How can I encourage her? How can I say something about her? What does she need to hear right now? How can I basically make it about her? It’s like, I, when I do that with clients, I moved from a performance to helping.
10:38
Tab Norris
Right. Yeah. And it’s there. I always think about meeting like a famous person. I don’t, like, I, I, I, one time I was, I got dispensed. I don’t know if you remember Amy Grant.
10:54
Tom Stanfill
Grant.
10:55
Tab Norris
She was awesome. This was kind of in her heyday. I had the opportunity to spend some time with her through a mutual friend. He was like, aren’t you so nervous? Are you, are you? And I’m like, why? He’s like, well, she’s like super famous. I’m like, I mean, I can’t get anything for it. Wasn’t like she could help me in my business world or she could help anything else. I just was curious to get to know her, what I mean? I was very confident hanging out with her and her husband because there was no, I had no agenda. I didn’t, I didn’t want her to, I didn’t want to.
11:28
Tom Stanfill
Feel like.
11:29
Tab Norris
What if she doesn’t like me? She’s not gonna like me anyway. I mean, I’m just Amy, whatever. It just takes the pressure off.
11:35
Tom Stanfill
You’re just going to leave her husband.
11:36
Tab Norris
Yeah, exactly. I’m going to change her life. So it was really cool. You can just be very confident in being curious about her, what her background was kind of learning about her and I think it was refreshing for her. I think it was really a fun, enjoyable experience, but you’re right. Confidence within the exact opposite. If I was trying to be impressive, salespeople struggle with that all the time.
12:00
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. A more relevant, not relevant, but a more example related to sales is like, when you make this presentation, oh, the syllabus, the big meeting, and they’re going to make a decision between you and somebody else. There’s a lot of commission on the lines and I’ve felt I’ve been, I, I feel those nerves. I, I do one thing that really puts me in a much more confident position as I even I’ll even begin the presentation by saying these words, I’ll say today, my goal is not to win this opportunity. I’ll say, what I want to do is share with you what I’ve learned by helping other companies solve the same problem. We’re going to walk through the things that I’ve learned. You choose us. Don’t choose us. Yes. I want to work with you. I’d love to, but really the best way I can help you evaluate our solution.
12:49
Tom Stanfill
The best way I can help you today is to share with you what I’ve learned. I, when I do that, I just, it’s like a shift happens from, again, a performance where I’m going to get a score to communicating something, as we learned from one of our guests. I have to do that before every critical thing. That’s some things I don’t get nervous about, or, my confidence is I feel confident, but, and I do that if I’m even going to a social function, if I’m going to some function where I’m going to meet a lot of people and I’m like, this is all about just who’s at the part who can I get to know? How can I understand what versus a performance? And.
13:30
Tab Norris
Yeah, I just wrote that down. If you get nothing else from this podcast, write that down. Because if we as salespeople, all of us, if we took that approach to every big presentation we did, we would be more successful. We’d be more confident. It’s great for the client. It’s great for everybody. So,
13:49
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. I’ve seen other people do that. I probably stole that from somebody, but I did that. I remember landing on that because I did that for me, like that got me in.
13:59
Tab Norris
It was your trigger. It was a way.
14:01
Tom Stanfill
It was my trigger to kinda, I mean, instill, we’re wired. I mean, in certain situations, our body has memorized how to be, how to, for the fear to kick in or for us to be like scared, like it’s just wired. Some of it is just an automatic response to situations. We can tune into what really is our goal, and actually I remember I was on a, B on a that’s just came to me. We, because of my daughter wrote a book, were on this television program because it was about my daughter in her book. It was kind of a big deal. I was meeting with somebody, I was at Andy Stanley’s TV show saw that it’s on after Saturday night live and they got hurt. His church really got behind tendrils book. And, and so they wanted to have the parents on and I’m like, I was freaking out about meeting Andy, not just being on the show.
14:55
Tom Stanfill
My nerves started way before and I was not confident. I remember my daughter-in-law had dinner as I was sharing my fear. She said, what are you afraid of?
15:05
Tab Norris
Oh, that’s.
15:06
Tom Stanfill
Good. And it was, It w it was like, I, I got honest. I said, I said, I guess I want people to like me. I want to be respected. I want, and that was, as soon as I said it, I’m like, this is stupid. This isn’t about me. This is about Tyndall. This is about her book. This is about what she’s, I’m just there from a prop. I tell you, man, my whole nerves went away and I walked on that stage. I was the most confident I’ve ever been in the most, in the weirdest situation for me with cameras. I mean, I even did a rap on stage.
15:40
Tab Norris
Yeah. I don’t that obviously that didn’t take off.
15:47
Tom Stanfill
Well, it’s something about how tender will listen to rap music. I would, cause then when they were teenagers, I would make up rap songs. I would blend them together and always say the words wrong. I would, I kind of had this rap thing I did. They always laugh that I was funny. At least I think they thought it was funny. Yeah. I ended up doing that on stage. They did cut that tab.
16:03
Tab Norris
They, I was going to say, I don’t remember seeing that.
16:06
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, they did cut that. Alright. So we probably should move on. Right? Number one is you need to know your purpose is your purpose to help our is your purpose to get a score.
16:17
Tab Norris
That’s.
16:17
Tom Stanfill
It. Right? If your purpose is to help others, that’s gonna, because you can do that, right. That you can pull that off. You can, that you can pull that off. Number two, you need to know your customer’s business. And I think it starts there. You serve certain people. If you think about the decision making roles, the people that you serve, whatever, regardless of what level they are in the organization or their business owner, or you sell the consumer, they are, you have a profile of a person you serve, they all have a whiteboard. And talk about this all the time. They all have a whiteboard, whether it’s metaphorical, it’s actually in their office or in their home. And there’s things written on that whiteboard. What’s on the whiteboard is the things they care about and their initiatives, what they want, what their plans are, their biggest challenges and whatever they’re trying to address.
17:09
Tom Stanfill
The more, your customers and what’s on their whiteboard. The more confident you are.
17:14
Tab Norris
Yeah. Yeah. We’ve talked about that on other podcasts. Just if you didn’t have the right preparation and house, you just instantly just fall apart because you have no confidence. Cause you really don’t, you’re not, you come in, you don’t have a rifle shot. Like you don’t know, like there’s just something that builds up that you just go, oh God, I can’t wait. I just, I know exactly where they’re coming from. I know what the pain is. I know it so.
17:39
Tom Stanfill
I can see it, speakers do it. It’s like, when people know their audience, like when you stand in a room and you say things like when you do this or be, you care about these three things or people that I work with in your role have these situations, or this is what they’re focused on, or this is what they’re doing. Or when they go, somebody says, speaker says, there’s three kinds of people in this room there, this kind of person that has this kind of person, everybody thought, yeah, that’s right, man. They just, they just own that room. They know. Well, that comes from knowledge of knowing their customer and knowing what’s on there. I remember were working with an organization that sold education services and they wanted to move from kind of working with the principals and the spread, the high schools, because they were selling textbooks and they just basically would, the contracts would come up for what textbooks the school district would buy.
18:29
Tom Stanfill
They would just, say this is our textbooks. And, but then they started selling and they would just usher into people that would talk about the textbooks. And it wasn’t a big deal. It was like, they were just more managing the relationship and facilitating conversations. Well then they started selling a complete solution. They had to drive a huge education solution and I need to sell to the superintendent of the schools. I’m like, okay, so, and they were struggling. I said, why we can help you today? Let’s talk about it. So what does the superintendent care about? No, like we’re going to build some role-plays. Let’s talk about their world and what do they care about and what are they struggling with? What are they trying to accomplish in their district? They’re like, no, I don’t really know that was where you have to start because you can’t, and they couldn’t get access to them because they didn’t know who they were or what they cared about.
19:21
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. So that’s super critical. And, and the good news is once you get to know your customers and by the way, their customer, your customers love to talk about what’s on their whiteboard.
19:32
Tab Norris
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And that’s exactly right. Cause we’ve talked, I talked to salespeople about this all the time. There’ll be like, golly, it’s so refreshing when I’m actually talking to the decision maker and the, or, and that’s what happens. Cause they get frustrated cause they’re at a mid-level and they just seem like they’re spinning their wheels. They said, when you get to the real decision maker, they actually care about getting things done. I mean, they don’t, they’re not trying to just fill out a task list and they’re passionate about it. Like they’re trying to go from point a to point B and that’s all they, that’s what keeps them up at night and that’s what they’re all about. They can’t wait to talk about that. If you hit and most people don’t talk to them about what’s on that way.
20:13
Tom Stanfill
The great, I had an opportunity, great example of kind of what you’re saying and meeting a famous person. I was happened to be sitting at a table for a little function and I have to be sitting to the next to the president of Ritz-Carlton. Wow. Yeah. And I was.
20:29
Tab Norris
Just shaking.
20:30
Tom Stanfill
I mean, I was like a 30 year old punk and, but I just had, and I asked him this question because you and I were working together at the time and we had a hundred hourly workers.
20:43
Tab Norris
Oh gosh.
20:45
Tom Stanfill
We knew, I understood the challenges of bringing in a part-time staff and getting them motivated and trained. They stay for three months and then they leave and the turnover and all that, all the challenges related to that. I knew about the risk Carlton. Because I knew about his world, I asked him this question and he was about to speak. I said, how in the world do you get hourly workers to perform at the level you do and learn all the things at the Ritz-Carlton and keep them engaged at how in the world do you do that? He lit up, he lit up and he started telling me what he does and how it made. It was like, were, I mean he loved cause I was like, it’s like, I knew something about his world and he, now, if I would’ve said, so what’s it like to be president of a hotel?
21:34
Tom Stanfill
Hey, what are you going to do you ever get to stay in free rooms? Will you ever go to, did you ever go Jeff Han? Yeah. He was like, he wanted to talk about his hotel and how he did. He said, I personally trained them. He’s talked about how he hired him. I mean, he talked about his philosophy. He’s like, because I was talking about something that was important to him. You can, there’s three things. You can talk about things that they care about, things you both care about or things that you care about. If you pick the last one, they’re going to be interesting.
22:08
Tab Norris
Yeah. That’s exactly right. That’s so good. It does give, it does build so much competence. Like I’m I remember one time I was trying to work with this bank and this keeps the president of this bank. Someone had told me that what was on his white board was his charity. Like he was all about giving away 10% of all of his, their profits. He had developed a couple of a charity and I had done of research on that and I knew about it and it was amazing how confident I was coming into that meeting because I knew from the very beginning I walked in, I was like I said, I, before we get started, I just have to tell you, I bumped into one of your people told me about this initiative that you’re working on, ? I said, you got to tell me how you got into that.
22:58
Tab Norris
Tell me more about, I mean, it would have, I mean, it, we had the greatest meeting. I could done it. The rest of it didn’t even matter because he just lit up and he launched.
23:08
Tom Stanfill
It and.
23:09
Tab Norris
That’s what his passion was. It just nicely led into a confident conversation around serving his sales team. So perfect example of that.
23:17
Tom Stanfill
That’s perfect. Yeah. We think about the whiteboard tab. That’s a great example of a part of a whiteboard. The whiteboard is simply what we mean by that is everybody wants something. It’s just that simple. They have a plan to get there. There’s problems with their plan, their flight. They’re like, I’m not sure about what’s going to happen or I need help there. And that’s their whiteboard. It’s like what they want, what their plan. If anything, you talk about related to what they want their plan to get, there are problems. In executing the plan, they will always want to talk about the opposite though. Like a lot of users, a lot of me, but I was early in and like had a lot of confidence and I didn’t need to have confidence stab. I needed to.
24:03
Tab Norris
Have some false confidence.
24:08
Tom Stanfill
Felt like.
24:09
Tab Norris
You had that when you were like eight.
24:13
Tom Stanfill
I did. My dad happened to know a CEO of, and I’m not going to tell you who it was because I thought I don’t want to, but it was like somebody I shouldn’t be talking to, but it just happened that my dad happened knowing it just because they just happened to connect. And.
24:29
Tab Norris
How old were you at this point?
24:31
Tom Stanfill
I mean, I was probably in my twenties.
24:33
Tab Norris
Okay.
24:36
Tom Stanfill
Let’s just put it this way. When he sold, he had a jet and when he sold his company, he got $500 million. That’s this guy.
24:41
Tab Norris
Okay.
24:42
Tom Stanfill
I didn’t need to be talking to this guy. Because he knows my father, he has the, I guess he takes the call and I had no idea what to say. I started telling him what I wanted to do and why I was calling him. And he’s just like, okay, thanks. Great. Just talk up. No sense. I mean, I just had no idea.
25:09
Tab Norris
Yeah. Thanks. I know you’re friends with my dad. Let me tell you the 17. Yeah.
25:12
Tom Stanfill
I’m thinking about doing this thing in Florida. I was thinking you might, I think I was trying to do some real estate at the time. I’m like, I mean, I just had no idea what to say. I think that’s important because if we stop and say, like I’ve had some things come up recently where I’m trying to meet with somebody, maybe a really big influencer that maybe helps me sell the book and I’m thinking, okay, I want to have him on the podcast. Right. A tab on the podcast. I go to a sit down and write the email and I’m like, why does he want to be on my podcast?
25:44
Tab Norris
That’s.
25:44
Tom Stanfill
A hard question to answer. Why is it, what is it for them? What’s on their, what are they trying to do? Why would they meet with me? Or like, I’m trying to sell it, send the book to somebody. It’s like, why would like, I was going to try to send it to Andy and say, Hey, Andy here’s and I’m gonna start thinking, well, why would he care about my book? I couldn’t answer that question. So I just.
26:02
Tab Norris
Love, you.
26:05
Tom Stanfill
Know, it’s, it’s a question we have to answer. What is, what is it? What’s on their whiteboard. What do they care about? If, whether you’re talking to a teenager, right? You need to do your homework. Why, what is it that they want and what do they care about? How’s doing homework and help them get there. If you can’t answer that question, it’s just going to be, do you need to do your homework? And that’s not very motivating.
26:29
Tab Norris
Right?
26:29
Tom Stanfill
All right. Tablets, move on to number three. All.
26:32
Tab Norris
Right. Let’s keep ourselves organized.
26:34
Tom Stanfill
Number three.
26:35
Tab Norris
Number one.
26:35
Tom Stanfill
Number one, you got to know your purpose. Your purpose to help the serve or is it a performance where you get a score?
26:43
Tab Norris
Get a score. Number two,
26:45
Tom Stanfill
Number two, you got to know the customer’s business. All right. Number three is an obvious one, but it’s, and these are in order on purpose to have, these are purposely ordered. You can say,
26:57
Tab Norris
I believe.
26:57
Tom Stanfill
You, number three, know your solutions. Now that might sound obvious. But most people don’t know their solutions. They know what they’ve been told about their solution, but they don’t really know their. It’s almost like when someone recommends a restaurant, all you got to go to this restaurant, you gotta go to this hotel. The person starts asking them questions and they kind of start backing up. Like, have you ever even been to the restaurant?
27:30
Tab Norris
I just looked it up with TripAdvisor and it came up. Yeah.
27:33
Tom Stanfill
Well, I heard it was really good. They told me to tell you, like, if you ever talked to a concierge, you got their list of like, here’s the restaurant. Can you go to,
27:42
Tab Norris
Oh, it is so true. I, that happened to the other day. I was in DC and that’s what the lady said at the desk. And I, she listed these three things. I said, okay, which one of those have you been to? Which one do you go back to?
27:54
Tom Stanfill
Oh, great question. She.
27:56
Tab Norris
Instantly had answer and she goes, this is not on this list. And I loved it. I was like, well, what’s on your list. She goes, okay, here’s where you’re going to go. It was great. It was exactly what you’re talking about.
28:09
Tom Stanfill
Well, and I, I here’s, here’s what I’ve seen tab of all the sales reps. When we trained a lot of sales reps over the years, here’s what competent sales reps do it state do all, do the same thing. When you start explaining them to you starting explaining something to you, they keep asking questions. They, they get what they want until they can make it there. So, I mean, I’ve just, it’s it happens every time. I’m like, what do you mean by that? Well, how does that work? That’s a little confusing to me. Well, what about this situation? Well, how do you know that? Well, we did a study. Which how many companies did you study? I mean, I just ask, cause you’re basically saying if I’m going to stand on a stage and I’m going to say this, it’s gotta be mine. Until it’s mine, until I know what this does and I can, I feel like I’m not going to tell.
28:55
Tom Stanfill
I’m not gonna say, well, we have really good steak because the guy told me to tell you it’s really good steak, Elliot. He told me to tell you it’s Angus certified. Well, what’s Angus certified. I don’t know.
29:06
Tab Norris
Just sounds cool.
29:07
Tom Stanfill
It’s a, it’s a wag. Ooh.
29:11
Tab Norris
Yeah.
29:11
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. They do that till they’re confident and then they can rep it and by the way, they never get confident they leave.
29:23
Tab Norris
Yeah. Yeah. And, and it, we are fortunate that were most, I mean, pretty much every company we work with. They’re they’re leaders in their industry. We don’t usually work with companies that are just priced providers. Right. They’re not the low price solution. They have value. I’m amazed how often I, these salespeople and I’m putting on my training hat, I’m training a bunch of salespeople and it’s gotta be great to work for XYZ company. I mean, think about who you work for. And, and they’re a lot of them look at me kind of funny. Like, what do you mean? I said, do how passionate you can be about your solution? And they’re like, huh? Yeah. Maybe I need to work on that . Yeah. Cause you’re right. They kind of have all the talking points.
30:07
Tom Stanfill
We got talking points,
30:09
Tab Norris
Talking points, but they’re not real. They don’t really, they haven’t worked through and understood and really kind of embrace what this does for customers.
30:19
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I think that’s, that is dead on tab. They, what they do is again, there, they what’s helpful or what they do because they don’t know is they stay distanced themselves from the engagement. What they do is they say, here are the three things you need to know, and then they got it. They’re like, I don’t really know how to, how I don’t know much about you. I don’t really know if that’s true, but I was told to tell you these things, I call those sales reps, billboards, they’re billboards. They’re like, they told me to tell you this about our stuff. Does any of that mean anything to you? Yeah. They get an objection question, whatever comes back in their late. They gotta, they go back to the script and they say, they told me to tell you this. And it’s like, yeah. The manager was saying now close them.
31:12
Tab Norris
Right.
31:13
Tom Stanfill
And it’s just, it’s not worth.
31:15
Tab Norris
If you want confidence, you really need to know, you need to understand at a much deeper level, how your solutions impact your customer.
31:25
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. How it impacts your customer, which you can obviously, part of that is spending time with the, with the developers of this, the creators of the solution and just people that know. Part of that is being out in the field and talking to people who use it. You go in a lot of times, it’s probably more about that than it is about what you, what you learned about how it’s created or why it’s different, but spending time with customers. They, I absolutely love it. I remember that’s where I’ve made money off stocks is when I talk to customers and I say, you, what do you use? We use the, I remember when salesforce.com came out.
32:05
Tab Norris
And what did they do?
32:07
Tom Stanfill
Salesforce? I mean, this is like, it was early. I mean, it was right. I mean, it was early and I, everybody I talked to, so do you have a CRM? Yeah, were, we was opposite. I say, what do you use? Because you’re Salesforce. He goes, do you love it? We love it. And I go, why? They would tell me why they love it. Everybody told me, I’m like, I’m buying the stock.
32:24
Tab Norris
Gosh.
32:25
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I’m buying.
32:26
Tab Norris
This on other podcasts.
32:29
Tom Stanfill
The point is they sold me. They sold me on Salesforce. Obviously we’re a Salesforce customer now. So, but yeah. So that’s, I think that’s well tab. I’m looking at what we have on our plate next. Cause we’ve gone through what we’ve gone through.
32:45
Tab Norris
Three purpose.
32:47
Tom Stanfill
We’ve gone through purpose customer’s business and solution. We’ve got four more.
32:55
Tab Norris
I think we.
32:56
Tom Stanfill
Cut it off.
32:57
Tab Norris
I think we stopped. I mean, what they say, three fours pushing it, threes. Perfect. Three big takeaways, three, a three point sermon, a three point, whatever.
33:07
Tom Stanfill
Right. The next one we won’t say that. We’ll say.
33:09
Tab Norris
Four is very, it’s very symmetrical.
33:13
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. It’s very symmetrical before. So why don’t we do this? We’ll break now. Why don’t you stay on with me and we’ll record part two yes. Podcast. Or say that the famous guests, that’s what they say. Yeah. What’d you say fly back to London.
33:29
Tab Norris
Birthday and I’ve got parties to get into, but I’m going to hang. I’m going to kind of do.
33:33
Tom Stanfill
We’ll stop here for part one. We’re going to pick it up next time for the second half, we’re going to unpack the other 4k. We’ve done three Ks. We’re going to do 4Ks, four things you need to know to drive confidence.
