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. 146 – 7Ks of Confidence (Part 2)
In this episode, Tom and Tab continue their discussion from the last episode on 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 the remaining keys to building confidence.
Listen to the conversation here:
Or check out the summary and full transcript:
00:13
Tom Stanfill
Welcome back to one more episode of SALES with ASLAN we’re in part two of, Tab, a very exciting, what do we, what is it a series now?
00:27
Tab Norris
It’s a mini series. That’s what we call it.
00:33
Tom Stanfill
There’s two parts.
00:34
Tab Norris
Two parts.
00:36
Tom Stanfill
The sound of music does that at all. There was two parts. There was an intermission.
00:41
Tab Norris
Intermission, or you can go get some popcorn.
00:44
Tom Stanfill
I don’t really know of any other movies where there was two parts, but I remember the sound of music. There was two parts. Cause as a kid, I remembered that, but I’m off topic, Tab.
We’re in a part two of a series that we started on being competent. And so we know what drives competence. Competence is critical to being successful because we want the customer to follow us to the solution that we’re recommending. In order for them to follow us, we actually need to know where we’re going. We need to know what we’re talking about and they need to be willing to follow it. There’s a, some, there’s a confidence that we need to communicate and demonstrate so that the customer will follow us. The reality is when we’re not confident, they know it.
01:28
Tab Norris
Yeah. It’s and it’s like, it impacts us. We don’t, we’re not as good. I mean, I think it limits our ability to be good at our job. But boy, it really does. It’s no, they’re just like, man, they’re reading right through it going now. Why he see me? He may be going off a cliff. I don’t know that I want to follow him.
01:50
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Well you watch all of the great communicators, the top Ted talks, just anybody that you regularly listened to. I can’t say the guy’s named Gary Vee or whatever his name is. I mean, they all just speak with definitive statements. They don’t stutter in, they don’t use weak language. They just say, this is the three things you gotta do. This is what happened this week. We’re all like, okay, Stephen Colbert said, Americans buy certainty, not backs.
02:22
Tab Norris
That’s very true.
02:23
Tom Stanfill
I love that. That’s so true. So, but we want to be, we want to have both. We want to have the facts and the certainty. In our part, UNO, I don’t know if I just mixed two languages.
02:35
Tab Norris
I like it because we’re a global company, Tom global audience. So we’ll be covering.
02:41
Tom Stanfill
Spanish, Italian and all the other Springs Latin. We talked about, I speak loud.
02:48
Tab Norris
In the.
02:48
Tom Stanfill
Class, the first session. So don’t miss the first session. We’re talking about the seven things you need to know to be competent because confidence comes from knowledge like were, because we believe that we know what to do. Most of the confidence comes from knowledge, but we talked about the seven things you need to know. We call it the seven K to building confidence. And I really love that title. I think it’s going to be big.
03:12
Tab Norris
It’s because you’re training yourself for the seven. K you gotta have the seven K to hit the seven K to finish. The seven K.
03:21
Tom Stanfill
Well said, well said. The first three Ks tab was, we need to know our purpose. It’s not about us. It’s about helping them. That helps. If you don’t know what the, if you needed a lot of wealth, that of course that’s in the first podcast. We need to understand that we didn’t know the customer’s business and we need to know our solutions. So we’re on number four.
03:42
Tab Norris
Yes.
03:42
Tom Stanfill
Number four. Do you have the, you have a drum roll or anything?
03:48
Tab Norris
I actually, I actually have a drum stick look at that. Cause you never know. I don’t know how to do a roll, but I don’t know if you can hear that, but I’m doing a drum roll with.
03:59
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Did you do that? Because I said something about that in the last podcast.
04:02
Tab Norris
I did. I went and bought one.
04:04
Tom Stanfill
Okay. Number four we need, and this is something that most I can confidently say after working in this, in sales training for 25 plus years, that most people miss, because it’s just not it’s everybody understands the need to do this, but it’s just hard to take the time. We need to know our competitors, as well as we know our solution, we need to know the competitive options. We need it if the customers, so the customers trying to solve a problem, right. Or they’re trying to get what they want. They have lots of options. Right? If we just kind of talk about, Hey, this is what we do, but we can’t unpack all the options than what they do. They’ve got to now go figure out all the options. So, but if we can recommend or understand all the options, we can communicate how we are different and what we do uniquely.
04:57
Tom Stanfill
So help them navigate all the confusion.
05:01
Tab Norris
Yeah. Well, Tom, something I noticed about competitors where I see it as a miss from salespeople is they learn the pieces that they want to put in their gun to shoot with. That’s what they learn. They do the cliff notes version and they learn a few things where we crush XYZ company. Right. They pull them out of there a little back pocket. Well, that’s not that it’s better than nothing, but when we’re talking about learning the good, the bad and the ugly, I mean, know what they do because there are competitors that do things really well. I mean, they’re in business. I mean, they’re there, they have a viable something. I think if we really want to be confident, we have to be okay with the good I love when I can say, I love the way this organization does this.
05:51
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. There are completely different than the solutions that you compete with.
05:55
Tab Norris
Exactly. He’s like, man, I’ll tell you what their negotiation stuff is phenomenal or I mean, whatever, but it means you just, you’re so confident in your solution that you would gladly talk about good things and other people.
06:07
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Where, your lane and what you offer. I remember experiencing this as a potential customer. I was walking into a large trade show and I was walking around and was completely confused. I noticed an, a category of solutions. I kept seeing these firms and I was confused as to who did what was, I couldn’t make sense out of it. I mean, just because at a trade show, everything like cloud-based blah, blah. I’m like, I don’t know what that means. I’m going, I kind of get it, I don’t know. I I’ll walk up to this booth. I said, well, what is it that you guys do? Like, what is this category of solutions that you offer? I’ll never get the woman looked at me and she said, there’s three kinds of companies here. They do three things. She said, category one does this and this category two does this and category three does this and this.
07:02
Tom Stanfill
If you need this category, one’s good for you. If you need this kind of, I don’t even know what she does if you need this category, three is probably what you need to. I said, I’m we’re category one. Until I was like, oh, and she just took the whole confusion out of the market. Basically now I have a guide, right? To walk me through this, this, confusing landscape to walk me through, how do I determine what to do? Now I’m more aligned with her to help me figure this out. Versus she, if she would’ve just said, we do this, and this is what you need, I’d be going. Yeah. There’s a lot of other, there’s a lot of other booths here and you’re acting like they don’t exist. Just look over here. This is what you need. So, and so if she’s going to only represent her solution, then I got to talk to everybody.
07:58
Tab Norris
Yeah. Yeah. She’s leading you, she’s confidently leading you through the process. So that’s good.
08:03
Tom Stanfill
’cause she knows, like I remember working with a home builder. I was a company was real estate, heavy, huge, real estate development company. They had lots of reps selling their properties and houses, et cetera. Everybody was talking about the low cost builder that had popped in to the neighborhood related to these sales reps that I was training. I wanted to meet with the number one sales rep, just kind of prepping for training the reps and understanding their business. I wanted to meet with the number one guy or woman who happened to be a guy. I said, so tell me about this competitor. I know I’m not worried about it. I said, why aren’t you worried about it? Because everybody’s struggling to sell against this competitor. Seemingly has, the same product, but it’s quite a bit less expensive. I said, so how do you sell against it?
08:57
Tom Stanfill
He goes, I went and toured all their houses.
09:01
Tab Norris
I know exactly how to sell. I.
09:02
Tom Stanfill
Mean, he told me, he says, I can tell you where they get the wallpaper for the bathroom. I mean, he knew everything about those homes compared to his homes. I’m like, brilliant.
09:13
Tab Norris
Yeah. It’s just like his, he was beaming with confidence.
09:17
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. If he said, Hey, if you don’t care about blah, blah. He said, but if you want this, like, Hey, if you’re going to move into the house for two years and sell it, right. If you’re looking for a mobile home with put some lipstick on a mobile home, that’s perfect for you. By the way, you’ve got to say that with integrity, because there are some people that really that’s a good fit for it. A lot of people like to act like the other, the whole other world doesn’t exist. It’s like, I just do this. You switched your name. And so customers need an advocate. Tab what any other thoughts that you have related to knowing competitive? You’ve the.
09:54
Tab Norris
No, I mean, I think you’ve pretty much summed it up. I mean, I think that your example, I can’t, there’s nothing better than that. I mean, that’s exactly what I’ve seen. It’s the same idea. They’re just, they just kinda know at a whole nother level. I think that what I had said about the, people kind of don’t, I mean, the challenges don’t stay on the surface. They’ll just get the bullet points, tour the homes, go, really, go download their software, go play around with it, whatever it is that you need to do. It just, and it’s almost like sometimes you’re kind of scared to do that. You’re like, oh, I don’t really want to know.
10:31
Tom Stanfill
That’s a good, yeah. That’s a, that’s a really good point. It’s like when the challenger sale book came out, we can all try to come up and it did a sales training business. Right. Everybody was that was taking the market by storm. I read the book. Right. I got to read the book and go, is that a good idea? Is that true? That, and there were a lot of things in that book. I’m like, oh yeah, that’s a great idea. And I would highlight it. Cause that’s, that’s true. If you’re a friend of truth, you’re like, let’s just focus on what’s true. And, and, there were areas where I disagreed with it. There was areas where I feel like it was missing certain things, but there was a lot of it that I thought was great. So we got to read the book.
11:14
Tab Norris
Yeah. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid what you’re going to see. Cause if they’re better at something than you are, you need, you’d better better to know it and work around it than just kind of stick your head in the sand. Because I mean, talking about confidence, like to your point, if you don’t know, it’s harder to be confident.
11:33
Tom Stanfill
There’s always three things that you offer that can give you a competitive advantage. Only one of them relates to the product or the solution. There’s the, how, the what and the who. Right. The, how is how you deliver it, how you support it, your process for figuring out what they need, all the process related to it. What is the thing that, the solution that the product or service that you sell and the, who is you? Even if it’s a superior, what if you can deliver a superior, how and who, then you can win and you may, or you could create a competitive advantage, but you can’t do it. If you’re trying to go, I don’t know about the whole existing. I don’t want to deal in reality. We’re great. That’s all fine. Those people saw.
12:18
Tab Norris
Yeah. It gives you the, I do, I was, this was last year. I was working on a deal. I did remember this and you just reminded me of it. I was talking to this guy and he was trying to choose between us and somebody else. And we actually lost this deal. It was, but it was really fine because I knew the competitor. I started asking him questions of what he was really trying to accomplish. It didn’t really fit in, he thought were apples to apples, what I mean? As I started really kind of uncovering what he was trying to accomplish and trying to do, I realized you really want a consultant to come in and just motivate the team. And, and you want this and you want them to constantly being, building specialized little tools and all these things. He goes, no, I want a training program.
13:12
Tab Norris
I said, no, I, I know what you want because you’ve told me what you really want. This is what you want. He goes, yeah, I guess you’re right. I said, you need to work with this other company. I’ll probably get a call from this guy someday. We’ll probably end up working together because, but I could confidently say it. It was like, I could confidently help him make the right decision, which goes back to purpose. Purpose is not to win. My purpose is to serve.
13:38
Tom Stanfill
So I didn’t know.
13:39
Tab Norris
That competitor. I didn’t know what really, what they did. It would have been hard because confident in pushing them in the right direction,
13:45
Tom Stanfill
You can’t lead them. If you don’t know what are their best options. Yeah. Like in our world, sometimes companies, what’s a really inexpensive solution for them to buy as digital training.
13:57
Tab Norris
Yes.
13:58
Tom Stanfill
Right. Well, in digital training is a great solution for it. If you need to address a knowledge gap, if somebody has a knowledge gap, that’s the least expensive way that you can bridge that gap. Right. There’s more to change than just knowledge. I always think about there’s the head, there’s the heart. And there’s the hands, right? The head is what I need to know hard is my willingness to change. And the hands are the skills. Well, digital learning only addresses the head.
14:28
Tab Norris
That’s a good word picture.
14:30
Tom Stanfill
So, but that’s a way that I need to explain that to the client. If you just need, Hey, we really only care about teaching our pharma reps about the drug that they’re going to be selling. That’s coming out and we want them to know all the science behind it. Digital learning is perfect for you, right. Or maybe it’s learning the lay. Remember we created some digital learning for companies that they only needed to learn how to sell virtually. Only really what they really needed was just to understand the technology and the pro tips for selling. Well, that’s a great application for digital, but if I’m myopic and I’m saying, this is the only option that you have, like if every, it’s like going to a restaurant and everything’s great,
15:15
Tab Norris
Every time you hear that, you’re like, well, then everything sucks. I.
15:18
Tom Stanfill
Don’t believe anything. You say you lose complete credibility. No, the competition well enough to figure to how to, and I would say know it well enough to recommend, to be able to represent them.
15:30
Tab Norris
Yeah.
15:31
Tom Stanfill
Like, could you represent them? Like, did you sell for them? Because you know it well enough.
15:37
Tab Norris
Can I say something about this next component? You’re about to bring up,
15:42
Tom Stanfill
Oh, well it’s pretty bring it up. Yeah. When you want to bring it up,
15:44
Tab Norris
I just got know, I’m gonna let you bring it up, but I’m going to tell you this a little precursor. I’m pulling people in right here. This, this step right here probably helped me in confidence as a salesperson. More than anything that we’re going to talk about on this.
15:58
Tom Stanfill
Podcast. Number five.
16:00
Tab Norris
Yeah.
16:01
Tom Stanfill
Number five. Okay. Number five is know the customer’s process or know the process, which, and what I mean by that is know the process that needs to be adopted or embraced by the customer to evaluate how they solve their problem or by the right solution. Not your process. Not here’s my process. I qualify, do whatever, which is great. That’s fine. We need to have a process that helps the customer figure out the best way for them to determine how to solve the problem. Tab, since this is something you’re passionate about, tell me how did that help you build more confidence?
16:44
Tab Norris
Well, you taught me this time, once access fee, like I say this a lot on these podcasts, because Tommy has Obi wan Kenobi for all my star wars friends. In, I was trained early in my sales days about closing deals. It was always about the clothes. It was always bunch of clothes. So I always felt awkward. I was so well-trained that you always ask for the order, and all was a lot of times it just felt awkward.
17:13
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. What about now?
17:16
Tab Norris
Yeah. I mean, come on, is it Jane? I know that sounds cheesy, but in the backlog, right, you got to do something.
17:23
Tom Stanfill
We’ve done that. A guy typed in a number on a calculator and held up the calculator. He goes, if I could give it for this, would you do it? I’m like, are you, I need to take a bath right now I need to take a shell.
17:36
Tab Norris
But you said something is tab. We sell our process, not our product. While we’re trying to do is get the customer to go from one step to the next step. You don’t want the process to stop. It was so freeing. It gives you such a competitive advantage when you do that. Like, like, what is it? Does it make sense to, oh, based on what I’ve just discovered, this is what we need to do next and just understand what they need to do in order to make a wise decision. Like, they’ll think here’s what we need to do. I mean, this happens all the time. Here’s what we’re going to do. This sounds good. I want you to do, yeah, they’re leading. I want you to do a presentation to the whole team now, like I’m not even remotely ready for that. I need to learn something.
18:29
Tab Norris
What you taught me was selling assessment,
18:33
Tom Stanfill
Right?
18:34
Tab Norris
Hey, great. Sounds like, but here’s what we found. In working with organizations, in order for you to make the right decision, to make the best buying decision, we found that if we can come in and do an assessment and really kind of give you basically a free assessment to let you know where your people are strong and where there’s some weaknesses, and then we compile that and then we get to share that. It helps us make the presentation directly related to your pain points and what you guys care about. It was life-changing because it made me so much more confident in, in this.
19:10
Tom Stanfill
Ask for the outer advance, because everything you’re doing helps the customer be like, look, I, you want me, this is the way I say it. I said, you want us? This was, I think it applies to anybody in sales. Yeah. You do. You want me to make a presentation or a recommendation, Right? You, you get back to your house, you gotta, you want a roofing guy to come over and go. This is what we can do. Well, I don’t know what that, then they’re going to get in there and they’re going to do something completely different. Are they going to charge me something different? Now that I’ve started like the best thing to help a company figure out what to do is to allow you access to the information so that you can say, Hey, now I want to make, now that I understand what’s happening your organization, I want to make a recommendation whether you work with us or not, but that’s the best way for you to evaluate what training that you need is to allow a company to come in and assess your organization, look at your, talk to your leaders, and then come back and make a recommendation.
20:08
Tom Stanfill
In a lot of times they’ll say things like, well, why don’t you just send us a proposal?
20:12
Tab Norris
Yes, that’s the same. And I.
20:14
Tom Stanfill
Say, yeah. How do I say that will confidently? Here’s what I can say confidently. I said, you will not be able to evaluate the training solution in a proposal. I said, whether you did, that’s just true, right? Whether you, and a lot of times that’s true. Whether, whether you buy us, right. What’s true is 50% of the success of choosing a firm like ours is the people that you’re going to work with. Here’s why, and I would tell them why. I say, so you need to see the content you need to, right. If I just show you a menu of a restaurant, you’ll have no idea how good the food tastes. You need to taste the food, need to meet the people in it. You use all these, we use all these different analogies and con and word pictures to communicate that. The bottom line is there’s things they need to do in order to figure out how to best evaluate.
20:57
Tom Stanfill
If I understand that, it’s easier for me to say it. If I’m just like, w well, I’d like to what’s next step. The customer’s like, well, why don’t you send me some information? I’ll share it with my team. Okay. Well, I’d rather you not do that. And I presented the team. No. Okay. All right. Well, I’d like to, because my boss says I need to, and I know if I don’t present the team, I need access to the economic buyer. I need to be able to meet with the team. Well, you’re not going to, okay. I guess I’ll just send you information. Yes. You send information, go, can I follow up with you? Maybe it’s like in the customer’s driving, which, and we want to drive and they want to drive, but why we need to communicate why it’s in their best interest to let us drive.
21:50
Tom Stanfill
The best way to do that is to be able to nail down the steps in the process that we know from doing this over and over again, we’ll give them the best opportunity to evaluate the right solution for them, not my solution, the right solution. And I think we’ve got it. People need to be able to, you can’t lead them. If you, again, don’t know the path. I think you’re right about the idea that it takes pressure off of you, because you’re just saying, look, here’s the best steps to take. Not by,
22:19
Tab Norris
Yeah. Just trying to get you to make the right decision, whatever it is. Let’s, we’ve been doing this for a while. We’ll help. It’s just, I can constantly lead you to make a wise decision.
22:31
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Versus we, I think a lot, the easy thing to do is to, we do a capabilities presentation of whatever we sell. Here’s a little demo of what we have and then we go, what do you think about that? And they go, that’s great.
22:44
Tab Norris
You’re going to buy it or not. Yeah. And then.
22:46
Tom Stanfill
What do we do after that? It’s like, well, yeah, we’ve got to think about it. We’re now going to go away. What they’re really saying is we’re going to go away and try to figure out what to do.
22:59
Tab Norris
Right. Versus us guiding them to figure out what to do.
23:03
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. It starts with setting your process aside and thinking about it. If you were the customer, what is the best way? Knowing what about your solution, what is the best steps they need to take to determine how to best solve their problem and evaluate solution regardless of what you sell. So, and if, once you nail that down and you can communicate why it’s in their best interest to take those steps, now you can stand Copley. When they say, Hey, I think we ought to do this. You can say, well, that’s, a lot of people do that. Let me tell you why. I think, because you know,
23:41
Tab Norris
Right. Said right around, not even if you learned it from your someone who’s done it, take it from us. We’ve been doing this a long time. I can trust that this is the better way to do it,
23:51
Tom Stanfill
You know? Yeah. You know what it is. By the way, you can know, by watching what people do that fail. Right. It’s like I worked with a company about a year ago and back to my analogy for, or about analogy. I was talking about digital learning and they have a skills problem and they wanted to do digital. They wanted to solve it with the knowledge they wanted to start to solve it with a knowledge tool, digital learning. I said, you can do that, but here’s, what’s going to happen. I said, no, one’s gonna watch the videos. No one’s going to apply it because it’s not the way to learn. A year later I get a call now, it’s and, and what I tried to do is communicate here are the steps to, we need to take, and they did the best they could, but the problem is weren’t, we didn’t have the power to implement that, but that’s fine.
24:42
Tom Stanfill
Sometimes that happens, but I’m communicating truth to them, which allows them to see or dim, or I guess maybe a better way to say tablet. It helps them see that I’m here to help them. I, and I know what I’m talking about. Not because I’m smarter, but because I’ve done it over and over again. Yeah.
25:01
Tab Norris
Yeah. That’s.
25:03
Tom Stanfill
Good. That’s number, number five, number six, and this may be the toughest one. Know the truth.
25:15
Tab Norris
About that. You.
25:16
Tom Stanfill
Free and it’ll set you free. So the process is just the steps. The truth is what are the best practices? What are the principles? What are the things that have to be in place for the customer to solve their problem? I kind of think of it this way is when can you say, here are the three things that you have to do to solve that problem, or here are the three things you have to do to ensure that it’s successful. When I look at companies that are really good at selling solutions and especially expensive solutions, they have this nailed down. They really, they have it. They know what’s required to be successful, and they communicate it with very strong definitive statements. There’s no wiggle room because it’s not their opinion. It’s not them selling something. It’s just true.
26:12
Tab Norris
Yeah.
26:13
Tom Stanfill
We really buy from people like that.
26:16
Tab Norris
Yeah. We talked about this on our pod, one of our podcasts in the last few weeks, and were talking about our bridge slide that we use in presentations. I don’t know if you remember one of the reasons I was not successful. I struggle with confidence oftentimes in presentations is if I don’t have that tight. That’s exactly what that is, that’s the truth. The truth is if you’re going to have a successful campaign, you gotta do these four things, these three things. If I don’t have, my confidence is shot.
26:45
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. You’re like, you’re you’re feel exposed. Like I hope they don’t ask that question. When you do know that you’re like, oh, and I always kind of stepped back and say, regardless of whether you hire me, regardless, whether you use me, this is just true. I experienced this back as a customer. I had this guy. And, and, and I’m gonna tell the story because it’s really important that we need to be able to record. We need to know the truth, even if it’s beyond what we offer, right. Because the problem that we usually, the problem we’re involved, the customer has a problem. We’re usually only part of the solution to the problem. Only part of the solution that helps them get what they need, but we need to, we need, the more we know about what’s required for them to be successful more. They’re going to invite us in early, the more we’re going to get a seat at the table.
27:35
Tom Stanfill
The more confident we are going to become, and the more loyal they’re going to be, and the more money we’re going to make, which is good. That’s why I, I love sales because it’s a, win-win, the more you can do this, the more money you make in the world, the moneymaker, the more the customer. Right? So anyway, tablets, this guy. Okay. We moved in and you remember, you probably remember this, we bought our house 18 years ago, we inherited a pool.
27:57
Tab Norris
Yeah.
27:57
Tom Stanfill
And it had an old concrete top. The, the lining of the pool was old and cracked. We knew eventually were going to have to do something. And, but we, so we started down this process of renovating our pool. We had everybody had all these different, our guests better way to say it, all these different contractors kept coming in and they would do a part of it. Like one of them, like we put the gun out in and the other people say, well, we put the new tile on the top, but the problem is were going to try to put, we had all these issues with the pool had to be raised because it was already concrete. We didn’t want to take all the concrete out. We wanted to try to put it on top of the concrete re resurface it. That meant that we have to up raise the pool or lower there’s, all these things going on.
28:43
Tom Stanfill
And we didn’t know what to do. Every, were stuck and were stuck for about a year. Cause everybody would come in with their solution and our pool was leaking. All of that to say, this guy comes in one day, his name was Fabio.
28:58
Tab Norris
No, it was not. You’re making that long hair just popped into my head.
29:03
Tom Stanfill
I mean, I wrote a blog about this guy and he was like, and he was from Spain. So for some reason I was home. The day Fabio is coming by honey. I’ll I think I’ll be.
29:16
Tab Norris
Like,
29:16
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, this guy, Fabio is coming over to get us a quote on the pool. I’m like, okay. I think I’ll be home for Fabio.
29:21
Tab Norris
Yeah.
29:22
Tom Stanfill
He’s going to have a shirt off.
29:24
Tab Norris
It’s going to be couples retreat. Remember that movie? I could been.
29:30
Tom Stanfill
That guy.
29:32
Tab Norris
Water.
29:34
Tom Stanfill
Fabia only solved this to say we have four things that have to have in the pool. Fabio only did one. He, the piping guy, like he was the guy that was going to fix all the pipes and reroute them and fix the leaks and whatever. He and me, he, I saw, I started telling him, okay, well, here’s, what’s, we’re trying to do. He looked at our pool, walked around and he gave him, he said, there’s your first five things you gotta do to fix this pool. You gotta do this. You gotta do this. You gotta do this. You can’t do that because this, you can’t do that because of this. You can do this, you do this and you can do that. And I’m like, got it. He literally, in 30 minutes, he told me everything I need to do with pool. Now, he only did one of the five,
30:12
Tab Norris
But he gave you everything you.
30:13
Tom Stanfill
Needed. When got the product just started, we knew exactly what to do. The problem was solved in the pool still. And that was probably 10 years ago.
30:21
Tab Norris
The thing that’s so powerful about that story is that he, because he knew all that, he was competent.
30:31
Tom Stanfill
Exactly. He didn’t say it like, you better do this, or it was no, he just like, it was like, this is what you need to do.
30:38
Tab Norris
I can’t help. Say it when you know that it just comes out of you. It’s I, it just pains you. I don’t want to see you make a mistake. Do these five things.
30:47
Tom Stanfill
He would say, you can’t do that. You got to do this.
30:49
Tab Norris
Yeah.
30:50
Tom Stanfill
Right. Cause there was all this about, we gotta raise the lower and you gotta, you can’t do that because of this and this. I’m like, he never, he, everything he said was a definitive statement. It was like, it was just facts. He just spoke the truth and he was super confident. And I believed him. We, we hired a Fabio and I got my pool done. Here’s the thing customers intuitively know when people speak with strong statements like that or in definitive statements, they know what they’re talking about. Now. There is probably 5% of the world, 2% of the world. I don’t know what that is. They’re psychotic. We’ll say things like, wait a minute.
31:28
Tab Norris
And a prison somewhere in south America. I don’t know what happened.
31:32
Tom Stanfill
Exactly. Well, because I’m from Mars. Where did you learn this? I was from Mars. I’m like, oh,
31:39
Tab Norris
We’re going to put those in our little category.
31:42
Tom Stanfill
People are just manipulative and Mo I mean, people I’m going to make up 98% of the people don’t speak like that unless they really do know. We, again, we are confident now politicians are probably paid to talk like that. Maybe they, we don’t count them, but so know the truth. And then the last one tab,
32:01
Tab Norris
The grand finale.
32:02
Tom Stanfill
Again, unlike grant. Well, do you have any examples of the truth knowing the truth? Do you have anything? I didn’t want to, I kinda grabbed the knife on that one.
32:10
Tab Norris
I think that’s good.
32:12
Tom Stanfill
To.
32:12
Tab Norris
Bring home the finish,
32:13
Tom Stanfill
Bring home the finish. This one’s, this is probably of a surprise, but very free, confident people know their limitations.
32:23
Tab Norris
Oh yeah. That’s good.
32:25
Tom Stanfill
They know what they’re good at. They know what they know and they know what they don’t know. They’re not like, I’m not, they’re sure of what they can do. They’re also sure of what they can’t do.
32:39
Tab Norris
Yeah. I said we did annex training long time ago, that was probably not, I said it very comparable,
32:45
Tom Stanfill
That was competent because we probably would have figured it out.
32:48
Tab Norris
Well, back then we didn’t have anything. So everything made me competent painting done. Of course.
32:54
Tom Stanfill
We can. Well, you knew enough to fake it.
32:58
Tab Norris
No, that is that’s something. This is one of the things Tom, you and I are not, we’re getting older. We’ve had a lot of years.
33:07
Tom Stanfill
I mean, I just turned 50, so.
33:09
Tab Norris
I’m 47 today, But we’re kidding. We’re definitely much older than that. The, in my younger years, I’ve really struggled. Think about a lot of these folks, listen to this maybe earlier in their sales career. Right. I struggled with this a ton. I wanted to be everything I had to, I have to be everything I have to be, I ha I, it was hard, even you trying to be like trying to sell, like you, I’m S I’m very different than you. I think you and I both have strengths and we have weaknesses, but I, I’m not, I don’t need to be you and you don’t need to be me. We have our different styles. We have things that we bring to the table that are unique. Tell me if I, the, where I really saw this for me, I’ve been processing on this a lot. That kind of figuring what my, I have a limitation on keynote speaking.
34:08
Tab Norris
I always felt like I needed to be a keynote speaker.
34:11
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Like that’s a great example. Like I’m supposed to be,
34:14
Tab Norris
I’m supposed to, I’m a business owner. I work in sales, I’m in training. I’m a communicator. And I love to communicate. I don’t like keynote speaking. I don’t like it. And I’m not very good at it. It’s probably not good at it because I don’t like it. So I don’t want to practice it. I don’t want to do. I just, I like developing people. I like getting.
34:34
Tom Stanfill
Great coats.
34:35
Tab Norris
I like rolling up my sleeves in a classroom. And I like helping people with application. I like coaching them. And, and I am okay with that. I, it makes me much more confident. I believe in, in choosing where I spend my time in what I do. It makes me more calm because before I think it, I would be less confident in training because I wasn’t as good as a keynote. Well, when you separate them, you go, no, that’s not who I am. This is who I am. I think as salespeople, you’ve got to figure out who you are, what you do. Well, there’s some people that sell, no, we can all get to a million dollars. Some people can get there one way. And other people get there another way. I, I’ve seen people that sell a lot of smaller deals and they crush it and other people sell one big fat deal.
35:20
Tom Stanfill
So, so people are more charismatic and some people are more diligent. Some people are more methodical. You got to figure out, well, the thing is when you’re trying to be all things, you’re not anything.
35:32
Tab Norris
Oh, that’s it.
35:34
Tom Stanfill
You’re lost. And you’re, I don’t know. I’m, you’re just wandering around versus people like, this is who I am. This is who I am. This is what I’m good at. It’s just, it’s a, there’s a clarity there. It’s in a groundedness that comes from that. There’s even another benefit you bring in the people. You find the people. That round out your weaknesses. Like mark, who’s one of our partners at, Azland one of our key leaders, he’s an engineer by training and by I guess, education. We have something really complicated or something requires a lot of process or managing a lot of details. I’m like, you’re the guy I’m like, I’m going gonna, I’m gonna, I’m not that guy. I’m meeting with a client, they’re saying we need to get this done. I’m like, okay, I think that’s not something I need to do. We need to have this person to like, again, I own the problem that I’m solving the problem versus, oh yeah.
36:35
Tom Stanfill
I, I don’t know. You could tell, I, you could tell if I don’t really know what I’m doing there, or it’s going to require a lot of details. It’s like, but it also allows me to say, Hey, well, creatively, that’s where my strength is. I’m gonna, I’m going to spend time in the creative bucket and you make the decisions and what you’re doing in the client follows you, But it lasts you. You can bring in other team members. I think that’s really key. I remember I, something that sticks out in my mind, speaking of keynote is I remember being at a big function. It was a young life speaker. This person would like really cool, like likable, you could done. Cause I knew I’d seen him interact with the kids and then getting up in front of like, I don’t know, it was like 700 people.
37:20
Tom Stanfill
I remember thinking, this is why I remember it. I’m like, man, I’d be really nervous. Cause I was like, if I were in this situation, cause just go, kids are tough, ? And you know, you’ve got to feel. Cause I think I was feeling I’d have to entertain. I’d have to do stand up. I’d have to do something crazy. She gets up. She just says, I’m not very good at being entertaining.
37:42
Tab Norris
Which made everybody laugh. No, it really wasn’t.
37:48
Tom Stanfill
Actually. That’s not what she said. She said, I’m not going to entertain.
37:53
Tab Norris
Yeah. That’s.
37:55
Tom Stanfill
So yeah, there was this sense. Like I’m just, I’m not gonna entertain you. That’s not who I am, but I’m going to tell you these, I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned about blah, blah, blah. I’m going to share what I’m. There was just a confidence that she’s like, I’m not that guy. Or I’m not that woman. This is who I am. I’m going to tell you what I can do now. The other thing is, if they’re like, well, we don’t need that. I’m like, well, you don’t need me.
38:19
Tab Norris
Yeah. This isn’t a good fit.
38:21
Tom Stanfill
This is not a good fit. And so seven K tab seven.
38:30
Tab Norris
Ray.
38:30
Tom Stanfill
Know your purpose.
38:32
Tab Norris
Yep.
38:33
Tom Stanfill
Right. You got to know your purpose. That’s where it all starts. Are you here to serve or is this a score where you’re going to be your worth and value is going to be determined. One is super scary and there’s a lot at stake. The other one is you can always achieve the other, which is help the customer figure out what they need to do. I always think about it as like, when I’m going into a tough situation where I’m trying to communicate. I, my make my goal is just, all I simply want to do is make sure the other person sees and hears the truth. Yep. Period. That’s easy then too. We need to understand that. We need to know the customer’s business. Number three, we need to know our solutions, not what somebody tells us about our solution, but we need to know we need to own it.
39:20
Tom Stanfill
We need to know the competitor solutions and how we compare and contrast. We need to know the best process for the customer to evaluate solution. Number six, we need to know the truth, all the truth and best practices related to helping the customer solve their problem. Number seven, tab the last, but not least know our limitations. Seven K any closing comments, tab, anything you want to leave our listeners with since it is your birthday, is there any wisdom that you want to say I’ll leave us with.
39:53
Tab Norris
Go forth before confident. I mean, it’s just a little benediction that go forth and they may the sun shine upon your face and the wind blow at your back. Yeah. Yeah. The stars be bright.
40:08
Tom Stanfill
Beautiful.
40:08
Tab Norris
I’ve always wanted to do that. It’s my first benediction. Maybe we’ll start making that a thing to have you got the benediction today. Yeah, I got it. I’m going to do that.
40:16
Tom Stanfill
I have a, I have a question for you. Where, where, what role have you been in where you are most confident,
40:26
Tab Norris
Most confident.
40:29
Tom Stanfill
Where do you feel like.
40:31
Tab Norris
In a classroom,
40:33
Tom Stanfill
The training facility.
40:34
Tab Norris
And a training facilitating in the classroom? I’m probably the most, that’s probably the most confidence I have.
40:39
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
40:40
Tab Norris
How about you?
40:42
Tom Stanfill
I answered this question not too long ago or maybe a set it not till I got it surprised me. I think I was most, the most confident I’ve ever been was being a parent.
40:54
Tab Norris
Oh yeah.
40:57
Tom Stanfill
Even, even more so than when I’m selling or anything in business, which is kind of a funny answer. A strange answer. Unique answer to that question. That was the, that was a role where I never questioned, which could have been an arrogance thing too, but I never questioned what was the right thing to do.
41:19
Tab Norris
That’s good. Yeah. I can’t, I would not say that I’m a lot more confident now than I used to be, but that’s, I’ve been scared. I mean, there’ve been plenty of times. I’ve not been a hundred percent confident as a parent.
41:30
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I’m not saying I was that either, but I’m just saying if had to compare to other,
41:35
Tab Norris
Other roles you play,
41:37
Tom Stanfill
I surely wouldn’t have perfect parent. I certainly didn’t know everything, but I felt this.
41:43
Tab Norris
A good place to be very confident,
41:46
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, it’s, and it’s interesting because I landed on that and I go where it’s in my life where I’m like, business, I’m always looking for what I don’t know or feeling like I could do it better or feeling like there’s something I’m missing or, and I feel pretty calm. I mean, I, I would say also, when I’m in a selling situation, which I sometimes hate that word, cause it sounds like I’m manipulable or I’m communicating or selling or meeting with somebody about understanding what’s important to them and communicating what we do. I feel, I feel very confident at that as well. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Anyway, happy birthday, my friend, we all love you, especially me, but I hope this episode was helpful if you didn’t listen to part, oof is one, what’s one in French I’m going to do.
42:44
Tab Norris
If you didn’t listen to the what happened, that’s a Southern way of the Southern French way.
42:53
Tom Stanfill
Okay. Y’all, didn’t listen to part one, go back and listen to it. But Hey listen, seriously. We love that. You’re listening to the podcast. We’d love feedback. If you could rate us or give us feedback or tell us how we can prove it always helpful for us so we can make the show better. We can address your needs, but it also helps other people find us. Thanks for joining us for another episode of SALES with ASLAN, Tab. Good to see you, my friend. Until next time be safe out there.
