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. 162 – 2 Counterintuitive Strategies for Salespeople
In this episode, Tom and Tab share two simple yet counterintuitive strategies geared at overcoming the two biggest problems that sellers face: engagement and converting unreceptive customers.
They are the same strategies that leaders leverage to engage their team members and drive results. Their conversation is guided by two questions:
How do you connect? How do you influence?
Listen to the conversation here:
Resources:
- Books and courses by Dr. Arthur Brooks
- From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks
- Rich Roll podcast episode with Arthur Brooks
- Win the Day by Mark Batterson
Transcript:
00:14
Tom Stanfill
Welcome to one more episode of SALES with ASLAN! Tab, we are back. We made it. We’re here for another episode.
00:21
Tab Norris
If we made it again, I love it. It’s the little victories. I like to live my life by little victories, like baby steps. We showed up, made it to another week. That’s always tell people, how in the world did you grow a business from your basement to just show up, just keep showing up.
00:39
Tom Stanfill
It’s probably a little more complicated than that. I will tell you. I will say, Tab, that book that you got me to read, winning the Day, is it Win the Day?
00:57
Tab Norris
I didn’t know you were going to ask me that.
01:06
Tab Norris
Anyway, it’s the pastor guy from the national…
01:10
Tom Stanfill
He wrote Circle Maker. Anyway, in the day, you’ll find it. It’s the book about living one day at a time, which is so great. I tell you, man, I think most of the anxiety and fear that I have is in the future. It’s either in the past or the future. It’s like I’m in regret the past or I’m worried about the future. If I just live in today is awesome. My daughter’s at home, my daughter’s at my house. I just had lunch with her and one of my grandchildren saw my beautiful wife. It’s great, but it’s kind of a future trip. Anyway, I don’t know if that’s a dike we digress, but that was an unplanned moment of truth right there. No.
01:49
Tab Norris
I think that’s Mark Batterson, by the way, the author.
01:51
Tom Stanfill
There you go. Thank you.
01:52
Tab Norris
He’s phenomenal. But no, I’m the exact same. It comes back to me all the time. I was just talking to my son, my oldest son, and, he’s out serving our country and he’s on a deployment and he’s been reading and he told me this week and said the same thing is I finally cracked open that Wind the Day book. He goes, amazing. I just love it. It really is inspiring just to kind of be and it’s not complicated, but I’m the same way if I just drive myself daily to just be. Let’s just embrace and enjoy this day.
02:28
Tom Stanfill
It kind of relates to our topic du jour, on a speech that I gave recently
02:34
Tab Norris
That’s what I was going to ask you. I know. I understand you spoke. It was a Selling Power event.
02:42
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, it was a selling power conference. It was at the Kennedy Space Center.
02:47
Tab Norris
Oh, did you get on up? Did you get to go up?
02:53
Tom Stanfill
They let you ride in the rocket? You got a ride? No, I just flew in, spoke and left. I didn’t know I could get a rocket. I’m a little claustrophobic, Tab, so I’m not sure.
03:07
Tab Norris
Yeah, you would not do well in space. Yeah, you’re right.
03:10
Tom Stanfill
No, I need a little rock, wide.
03:12
Tab Norris
Open spaces, little room.
03:14
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, we should have looked up our friend Shane Kimbrough and see if he was around. No, he was at the Kennedy Space Center and it was about launching sales and so Aslin sponsored it and I spoke and I was kind of relating what you said back to speaking because I really loved presenting the truth of our solution and what we talk about really it’s just about connecting and influence. I mean if you think about all the things we talk about, it’s really you can boil it down to two things how do you connect and how do you influence? I got to share some of the principles that we love and the truth that we love to share about connecting and influence. The anxiety going into speaking it’s like the things you worry about rather than just work your process do what you need to do and deliver it but I have this performance anxiety but I’m doing better of working through that, but it’s kind of a little off point comment because that’s obviously we’re going to talk about what I shared, but it really is important.
04:21
Tom Stanfill
Like we push through our fears and just do the work. If you just do the work you get better and I feel like this is something I need to do. I think one of the reasons it was hard because I haven’t done it.
04:37
Tab Norris
In a while well, I think you’re on to something. Do it and be okay. If good, bad or indifferent, learn from it, do it again. I have the same problem you have with that. I think most people do. It’s really difficult. Even just doing a presentation is like I want it to be perfect. I’m so worried I’m going to make a mistake and I think I told you I was doing a presentation last week and I completely screwed up from the very beginning and I’m like, oh.
05:08
Tom Stanfill
I didn’t know that.
05:09
Tab Norris
Well, I did, I had some technology problems and it threw me off my game and you just have to remember that you just had to put it in the past and go, whatever, it’s not going to matter, let’s just press on. We keep doing our thing. You’re right, I think just keep doing it.
05:24
Tom Stanfill
I think the biggest challenge that I have when I’m in those moments where and I guess these moments are different for everybody, but there’s these moments where you feel like your identity is at stake. That’s it, this is all about who are you? If you pull this off then you have significance. If you fail, then you suck. I suck. Going back to high school tab, if I drop the pass in the end zone, I suck. I mean, I cannot believe as a human if I got a C on a history test, it really didn’t bother me.
06:06
Tab Norris
It’s all about what you value.
06:08
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, it’s what you value. And I think I value. That’s really, I think the key of getting over some of our anxiety when we’re in those moments is not making it about us and not making it a performance, and it’s not a statement of who we are and what our value. I was there to serve, but I got to do the reps, I got to practice. The more I do that, the more comfortable I get. And it went well.
06:33
Tab Norris
That’s great. Now what was the topic?
06:34
Tom Stanfill
The topic was I shared three very counter intuitive principles, strategies that leaders leverage to engage their team members and drive results.
06:50
Tab Norris
Okay.
06:51
Tom Stanfill
It’s really geared at the two biggest problems that sellers and leaders face engagement and selling engagement and how do they convert unreceptive customers. I kind of shared those three strategies. One of the surprising things about preparing is I prayed before, trying to work through kind of were talking about this performance anxiety and I was trying to remember what one of our guests, Kelly Talomo, shared about it’s not a performance, you’re there to communicate. Yeah, I was kind of praying through that, trying to prepare and just asking, God, just help me share the message that you want to deliver. We believe that the truth about connecting and influence, it comes from our creator. We’re here to share that because it makes our relationships work. It makes life work. I was praying about that. I deliver the talk. I’m walking out and this guy’s on a conference call and he grabs me and he’s like, I got to talk to you, okay?
08:01
Tom Stanfill
I’m thinking, it’s about what we do, sales training, the book, I got to talk to you. I’m like and he’s on a conference call, I can see the person on the screen. He goes, But I can’t talk right now. Call me or here’s my card. I’m thinking he’s going to email me or whatever about something that we do for a living. He calls me five minutes, I’m pulling out the parking lot. He starts talking to me about, well, I should back up and say I shared a picture of Tendul. My daughter, for those of you who don’t know, my daughter went through a real rebellious stage when she started around when she was 15, I call it kind of the blue eyeshadow face. She started wearing really dark, heavy eyeshadow. Her eyes were half open and she looked at me like, if she could kill me with her eyes, I would be dead.
08:50
Tab Norris
Yeah.
08:51
Tom Stanfill
She just kind of started on this path where the two older boys went and went in a completely different direction. They believed what we believed about faith, and they were moving in the right direction. Tendul is like, I’m not doing that, I’m moving in a different direction. I’m looking for my own identity. So she started doing that. I think this high point or low point of that was when we took her to Aruba and she met Jorhan Vanderlu.
09:20
Tab Norris
Now I remember that name. That was remind me.
09:25
Tom Stanfill
That’s the guy that killed Natalie Holloway.
09:27
Tab Norris
Yes, that’s right.
09:30
Tom Stanfill
This guy kills Natalie Holloway in May. I have a picture of Tendul in April, and she’s leaning on his shoulder with her arm around him, and he’s kind of standing very upright, and she’s kind of hanging on him. And I showed that picture.
09:48
Tab Norris
Wow. Did people know what it was? Did people know what this is?
09:55
Tom Stanfill
I pointed it out because I said my position as her father has no impact on my ability to influence her. As leaders, we sometimes think, oh, well, because I’m an authority, I have influence. No, your authority gives you no influence. It gives you responsibility, but no influence. As a seller, my ability to communicate and convince a lot of times has no impact on our ability to influence, because as my daughter was, she was completely closed. She was emotionally unreceptive. Anything I did, that was the traditional strategies of sharing. Here’s why you need to move in a different direction.
10:39
Tab Norris
Let me give you the benefits of why you shouldn’t do this.
10:41
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Here making logical arguments about why her the path she’s on is not going to work out for her. That did not work. That was the point of sharing that slide. We can get into the talk later. Anyway, the guy calls me, I think, because I had a daughter in that same situation, and then he starts to talk to me about he wants to talk to me about his marriage.
11:02
Tab Norris
Wow.
11:03
Tom Stanfill
And so awesome. Yeah. We started he’s apparently having trouble in his marriage, and we got to talk about some of the things that I’ve learned through what we’ve done. So that was the highlight. I thought it was cool that it was more people felt comfortable enough to talk to me. He was not the only one about what’s happening beyond selling and beyond running their organization, but what’s happening in their personal life. And I love that.
11:28
Tab Norris
Well, I think you and I share that. That’s one of the reasons we continue to do what we do, is we love helping people make more money. I love making more money. I think it’s fun.
11:40
Tom Stanfill
I do like my I do that it’s better to have money than not have money.
11:44
Tab Norris
It’s true. I think both of our whys are sharing truth? I mean, just the truth that’s bigger than just business.
11:56
Tom Stanfill
These are times, principles. It’s not our truth. We are just packaging up truth. Yeah, it’s true. So, speaking of truth, so I started off with I said this counter intuitive idea, and I wanted to double click on that. And I started thinking about this tab. Have you ever thought about how most of the things that we teach are counterintuitive?
12:16
Tab Norris
Only because I do find myself saying it all the time. No, this is counterintuitive. I was just teaching a class last week. What we’re trying to do I did this in a presentation. I said, we’re just going to whatever you think sales is, we’re going to train your people to be different.
12:29
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
12:29
Tab Norris
And they’re like, huh? I said, yes, that’s right, we are. We’re going to just do it different. Which is counterintuitive.
12:37
Tom Stanfill
The principles or the things that we teach around connect and influence are just so counter intuitive. It’s like, you think about it. You think, okay, for me to be able to connect with somebody, I need to talk. Well, actually, you need to listen. I need to impress, you need to be impressed. I need to take no, you need to give. I mean, it’s just like all the things that lead to a connection and relationships almost, you have to do like George Costanza. You need to do the opposite. I told a story about JFK Jr. I remember reading about this years ago and thinking about it, but I never really did anything with it. It hit me, like, the day of the talk, he took off from an airport in New Jersey to fly to Martha’s Vineyard. Talking about JFK Jr. I think it was with his fiance.
13:40
Tab Norris
Or they just got married or something like that.
13:42
Tom Stanfill
Maybe they just got well, it was foggy.
13:45
Tab Norris
Yeah.
13:46
Tom Stanfill
And he couldn’t see. And they call it spatial disorientation. What happens is because you lose sight and he didn’t really know how to lean in, read his instruments, or maybe he didn’t trust them. I think he didn’t trust them because he had instruments. You get disoriented, and so up becomes down, and down becomes up. So basically, he was flying upside down. As he gains altitude, he goes into the ocean in his mind. To me, it perfectly captures kind of what happens to us is, like when we get in a foggy situation, we can either trust our instincts or we can trust our instruments.
14:20
Tab Norris
Wow.
14:21
Tom Stanfill
Most of us go with our gut. Like, when my daughter started moving in the wrong direction, I’m going to yank it. My wife would say, I’m going to yank a nod in her. I’m going to grab her. I’m going to control her. I’m going to keep her from going in that direction. That’s our instincts. That backfires.
14:37
Tab Norris
Right.
14:38
Tom Stanfill
We need to know what our instruments are. The top leaders, the top pilots trust their instruments. The top parent, best parents trust their instruments. And the instruments are our principles. If you want to be an effective seller or leader, you need to know what the principles are. Because when it gets a little foggy, we go back to Gut and we base it on how we feel. That is typically not the right response, which is really I don’t understand that. Obviously, our instincts work well to keep us alive. The physical instincts are good, most of them, but most of the other instincts related to what we teach do not work for us.
15:19
Tab Norris
Well, don’t you think, when you think about it, what keeps us alive is we’re selfish. We have to fight for ourselves to keep us alive. And guess what? All these things we’re talking about, the principles are about being selfless.
15:32
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, it’s true. It also works against us being happy. I was listening to this podcast by Arthur Brooks, which I absolutely love. This guy, he wrote a book about happiness, and he was on the Rich Role podcast, and he talks about Mother Nature does not want you to be happy. The things that your instincts tell you to do work against you for being happy. It’s like, for example, our instincts are things will make us happy. He talked about, yeah, you moved to California and the sunshine, it lasts six months. You like that for six months. It makes you happy. No thing makes you happy. Nothing makes you happy. That’s not what our instincts tell you. Like, I used to believe I remember early in our career Tab, that if I remember thinking, if our business got to this side, if I were doing this, whatever this is, if I got here, I don’t care what I would write on paper, what makes me happy.
16:25
Tom Stanfill
I don’t care what people tell me. I would think that will make me happy. And that did not make me happy. Never mind I reached that destination and did not make me happy. It is interesting how I find that fascinating about our instincts. I always think if my instincts were telling me to do something, I’m like, whoa, time out.
16:43
Tab Norris
Wear the Velour suit. Wear the Velour suit. You shouldn’t therefore do remember that the Seinfeld visit with allure he had that Velour sweatsuit. I just put it on everything told me, don’t wear this. I said, well, I love it, therefore I’ve got to wear it. No, I love this. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to tell me the name of the book. Arthur Brooks. What’s the name of that book? Do you know it?
17:05
Tom Stanfill
I’m going to have to find it where’s our producer will look it up. Somebody sent it to me. You know what? I think I actually do have it right at my fingertips.
17:18
Tab Norris
It’s called always looking for a good book.
17:21
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, it’s called from strength to strength.
17:24
Tab Norris
Oh, someone just recommended that for me. I just put it in my goodreads. So. Thank you.
17:28
Tom Stanfill
Arthur’s Brooks. Strength to strength.
17:29
Tab Norris
Strength.
17:31
Tom Stanfill
He’s on the Rich Roll podcast. It’s two and a half hours, tab. Wow. I’ve listened to it now three times wow. He’s just a brilliant guy, but he communicates the principles of happiness so well. It’s not this woo, stuff that this guy comes he’s brilliant. I mean, he was CEO of a think tank. He was a professional musician, so he’s happy. He’s very authentic about that. He goes, I’m a six, but I was a three.
18:05
Tab Norris
That’s a really good way to put it. I’m not a nine, but at least I’m not a three anymore.
18:09
Tom Stanfill
No. He starts off the podcast by telling the story of he says, I’m sitting in this seat in first class, and this guy behind me. I could overhear his conversation about how the guy was saying, I’ve wasted my life. I’m worth nothing. Nothing I’ve done matters. I have nothing to live for. Blah, blah, blah. Just kind of this a guy lamenting over how his life turned out. He could tell it was an older man talking to what he assumed was his wife. He goes up, he stands up. They’re going off the plane. He sees the guy, and it turns out it’s a guy. He goes, that everybody would know. Everybody would think, this guy has lived the perfect life. Anybody is like, what he’d accomplished in his life? And everybody would be a fan. He said you could tell he wasn’t a political figure or somebody that people would think, like it sounded like a Warren Buffett kind of a guy.
19:00
Tab Norris
Yeah.
19:01
Tom Stanfill
Or Bill Gates kind of a guy. This guy could dine out on it for the rest of his life and be happy, and he wasn’t, and that kind of started it on this journey. Well, what makes us happy? Because we accomplished these things in life, and we’re strivers and achievers, but what makes us really happy? He talked about it, but the whole point I brought up was bringing up about this is the fact that most everything he shares is counterintuitive.
19:27
Tab Norris
I love it.
19:28
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. We want to avoid pain. Right. To be happy. He goes, Actually, pain is the path to happiness.
19:34
Tab Norris
Yeah.
19:35
Tom Stanfill
I just find that interesting. So we talked about some counterintuitive principles. Okay.
19:40
Tab Norris
I’m sure you had three points. Two points. I mean I know.
19:43
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I think we talked about three things, but I think we’ve probably given time. It probably makes sense for most of our audience for us to talk about two. The first one I shared was if, I bring up I always want to talk about influence. I bring up that illustration or the I guess it’s an illustration of the globe with the two polarized points of view. You’re at the North Pole and the other person is at the South Pole. I always make the point this captures what our objective is an influence. This is what influence looks like. I have to change my goal influence is changing someone’s point of view. I’m changing their beliefs. It’s not education. It’s not like what we think about is, hey, teach me how to do something. This is somebody going, I don’t believe what you believe. I’m a Republican and you’re a Democrat.
20:34
Tom Stanfill
Or I don’t believe in God and you believe in God? I believe this, or I don’t believe I need to change solutions or move in this direction. And you believe they do. That’s what influence looks like. I bring up this picture, and I say, so what is our instinct when we’re on the North Pole and they’re on the South Pole? What’s my instinct when I want to talk to Tendul about the road that she’s on and how that’s going to lead to disaster? My instinct is to convince my instinct is to talk. My instinct is to make a really strong argument. My instinct is to go to court. I did that with my wife when I first got married. I didn’t actually do that too much with my children. But that’s my instinct. It’s my instinct in sales. What we really need to do, the truth is the counterintuitive strategy is we need to first get an invitation.
21:27
Tom Stanfill
We need to get until we get an invitation, until the other person says, what do you think I should do? What you have to say doesn’t matter.
21:38
Tab Norris
Yeah, I’ve heard you say that before. What was it? I’m going to mess it up. You’re going to make it right? It was something like if you share your opinion without having been given the invitation, it’s taken his judgment or so you said. Something like that.
21:54
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I’d say, well, that’s kind of yeah, well, you think about it when you’re trying to convince somebody, which means you’re sharing your opinion right, about what they do differently. Right. You’re basically starting off by saying you’re wrong. You can think about that. There’s a reason they have a polarized point of view. If you go, here’s why you need to think differently. You basically are starting off this is your position. You’re starting off with the idea that I’m going to tell you’re wrong, and you’re going to like it right here tenda let me tell you why the guy you’re dating isn’t right for you. Let me tell you why the road you’re on isn’t right. Let me tell you why. Blah, blah, blah. Well, what she’s going to do is she’s going to now argue back, and when the argument begins, influence ends.
22:35
Tab Norris
Yeah.
22:36
Tom Stanfill
I got to first get a seat at the table. The best way to get a seat at the table is I got a knock on the door. And I love that idea. I love that helps me think about what I’m doing. I can’t just push my way through the door. I can’t work my way through. I have to knock on the door. She has to open it, and she’s got to let me in. Another way to think about knocking is the way we talk about tab is obviously drop the rope. I don’t need to do the tug of war. I don’t need to try to force her or my customer or my spouse or my employee or my team member or my friend. I don’t need to try to pull them to my position, because when I do, they’re going to resist. I need to drop the room and say, hey, I don’t know if what of my recommendation is best for you.
23:29
Tom Stanfill
I just would like to talk with you. I may be wrong.
23:34
Tab Norris
People have a really hard time saying that. Yeah, someone I said that the other day with somebody. I’m not going to ever say that because you’re saying that I’m saying I’m wrong. I said, no, you may be wrong, but you’re not saying you are wrong. You’re saying you may be wrong. It’s different. You’re not going, Well, I can’t say that because I’m admitting guilt. I’m admitting I said, no, you’re not. It’s just crazy how hard that is for people.
23:57
Tom Stanfill
Well, think about the lack of respect for the other person who has a completely polarized point of view. It’s like you don’t want to begin maybe you’re not saying you’re wrong like you said. Like in the case of my daughter, she’s definitely wrong. Okay, so let’s just look right? Like she would say, hey, she’s 18.
24:27
Tab Norris
Yeah.
24:27
Tom Stanfill
She’s hanging on a guy that’s a murderer. He’s in prison now for murdering a person. I don’t think you ever got caught for an alley all the way. So she’s wrong. Here’s where I have to drop the rope. She has to choose whether she wants to talk to me. Maybe dropping the rope isn’t saying I’m wrong. Dropping the rope could be asking permission. I tell you when I’m selling something and I don’t know the customer, I don’t know their organization, I don’t know what they need. I don’t know anything about them. Like, I remember asking some software guys to say, literally a room of ten software sales guys, and I said, what are the options the customer has when you call them? They started writing, like, what are the options? Like, buy your solution? Yes. So what about bipartial? Okay, that’s good. I said, Is there any other options?
25:18
Tom Stanfill
No.
25:21
Tab Norris
They could not maybe not do nothing?
25:23
Tom Stanfill
I said, well, they could do nothing. It ever in their best interest to do nothing? They go, Well, I mean, they had a hard time thinking, okay, because you’re trying to get them to renew software, right? He said, Well I said, well, what if they’re selling their business in two months? Should they upgrade their software? Well, I guess not. I said, we’ll say that should they ever buy from the competition. There ever a time that they should buy from competition? Unless you’re willing to put all those options on the table. You’re pulling the rope now. Again, if you’re talking about somebody in a personal life and you know that they’re headed down a road that can, then dropping the rope isn’t admitting you’re wrong. You got to ask for at least permission.
26:03
Tab Norris
You got to know.
26:04
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
26:04
Tab Norris
Because you can still say, I just did this with one of my kids. You can do whatever you want to do. I can’t make you do anything. You can choose to go whatever path you and I’m giving her that option that drops the rope. I’m still going to tell her the truth. All I can do is if you want, I can share with you some things I’ve learned by making mistakes over the last 57 stinking years. But she may go. I don’t want to hear your opinion, okay? Yeah, but I have to be okay with that.
26:35
Tom Stanfill
You do. I mean, you got to think about truth. Delivering truth, like delivering food you cannot make people eat it.
26:42
Tab Norris
That the horse in the water?
26:48
Tom Stanfill
I can’t make you embrace the truth. All I can do is serve it up for you, and I can make it as attractive as possible, and I can get you to sit at the table. Right. And I can talk about it. The more I try to take the back of your head and make you eat, the less so we’ve got to create. And I get it. There was a lot of fear talking to our daughter about where she was headed, for obvious reasons. Right. I also need to say there are times when we don’t need to try to influence our children. We need to actually make moves that will protect them. It’s not about influence. I’m talking about a person who’s going to college in four months. Right.
27:31
Tab Norris
They’re grown 18 years old. They make their own decisions.
27:34
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. When she got caught drinking and driving, I took her car away. There was no drop the rope there. There was no.
27:43
Tab Norris
We’Re disciplining. I think that’s a really good thing. I’m glad you said that because I think we do need to differentiate between that.
27:51
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. If you apply this to your team, influencing your team, you apply this to influencing your customers or prospects. It’s always true. You have to get an invitation if you’re going to influence. The first thing we need to do is drop the rope. We need to knock on the door, and they need to answer the door, and we need to stand out and say, can we come in? We’re not going to barge in. They need to say, yes, I’m going to give you a seat at the table. The next thing we got to do, though, is we got to answer the question, well, why should we let you in? It’s the question.
28:29
Tab Norris
Yeah. So that first one is. Connect, right? Because you said two big points, right? Connect and influence.
28:37
Tom Stanfill
That really what you’re well, the first strategy is we got to get an invitation. I’m talking about how do we get an invitation? We get an invitation by first knocking. Or another way to say that is drop the rope.
28:46
Tab Norris
Okay.
28:47
Tom Stanfill
The second way we get an invitation is by answering the question, why should they let us in? Why should they give us a seat at the table?
28:55
Tab Norris
Got it.
28:57
Tom Stanfill
If I’m a leader, I need to communicate that this is about them. No one is motivated by your goals if you’re a sales rep. Customers are not motivated by your goal. They don’t care about you. They care about them. We need to answer the question here’s why you should let us in. Because I’m here to serve you. I want to help you do something versus I’d like to talk with you about my solution. They care about their problems, and if we position the reason that we want to come in is because we want to talk about I was talking to my wife, who was not receptive about changing her approach to trying to heal her chronic disease. My wife’s been chronically over 30 years, and, she’d been the Mayo Clinic. She had all these traditional approaches. She’s looking for a pill or surgery to fix her physical problems, which I get.
29:54
Tom Stanfill
When that didn’t work, she basically said, I’m done. I started getting information from all these other people who’d been in the same situation, who had found solutions to their health issues, but it wasn’t the traditional route. And Claire was shut down. She was unrestricted. She didn’t want to talk about it. And I was doing the preaching thing. I kept telling here’s what I heard, and here’s somebody else who blah, blah, blah. You read this article, and this person said this. I kept meeting these people with the same symptoms who’d solved the problem, and I finally just gave up because she could tell she was a closed. I started thinking, I’m not applying my own principle.
30:39
Tab Norris
Isn’t it great how we do that?
30:41
Tom Stanfill
I know it really wasn’t. Finally, I like to let it go. One day, I basically just said to her I said, are you open to talking about a different approach to help? Are you open to that, or you want to talk about it, or are you just done? I completely dropped the rope, and she said, you could tell. It was almost like she was thinking about the question for the first time. She wasn’t fighting with me because I wasn’t trying to win.
31:11
Tab Norris
You didn’t.
31:13
Tom Stanfill
Are you done? I said, It like you could be done. What do you want to do? I said, it, like, in a real curious way, the no pressure. She goes, you know what? I guess I’m really not. I probably should think about other alternatives.
31:32
Tab Norris
Right.
31:34
Tom Stanfill
That door cracked that day. I can tell you where were sitting since that day. She started moving in a different direction. The second thing I wanted to share about that is why I thought about this is because before then, I wanted her to get healthy because it benefited me.
31:51
Tab Norris
Right. She was natural instinct.
31:55
Tom Stanfill
I want her to get healthy because it’s screwing up my life. Right. My wife being sick screws up my life.
32:00
Tab Norris
Right.
32:00
Tom Stanfill
When I changed and I started worrying more about her and then I said, the reason I want to bring this up is because I just want you to be happy. Here’s the thing about that, is when our motive is pure and it’s about the other person, they know it. They can know when people are sincerely care about you can just tell it. This is part of the problem, is that I think we are selfish people and we’re not other centered, which is fine. I, by the way, do not beat up myself or others for that truth. Because the natural gravitational pull is for me to wake up every morning and try to take care of myself. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve got to decide on a daily basis, I’m going to be more successful, more fulfilled. I’m going to have more influence if I choose to serve other people.
32:53
Tom Stanfill
When I do that on a daily basis, I have impact. And by the way, I’m more fulfilled.
32:58
Tab Norris
You went on both sides.
32:59
Tom Stanfill
It’s like back to my talk. I’m there for those people and they could feel it versus I’m here for performance and I’m here for leads.
33:07
Tab Norris
Right. What happens is when you do that, you have more influence, people are more receptive. You’re probably going to get more leads. You’re not going to get less leads.
33:17
Tom Stanfill
No.
33:18
Tab Norris
And you’re going to feel more fulfilled. You can walk out of there and go, my gosh, I don’t even give a rip about that. I mean, great if I get leads, but it’s all going to work out. I got to help somebody in their marriage. That makes you feel good about life because it’s not just I always like to talk about the dot and the line, our time on earth is small. It’s a dot, but the line goes on forever.
33:41
Tom Stanfill
And what you really want is purpose. What we really want is purpose. We want to know that what we’re doing matters. Yes, we feel the need for commission. Yes. We need to feel the need to hit our number and get our bonuses and all those things. And that’s real, right? I feel that and you feel that. What we really want is we want purpose. We serve our customers and we embrace that, the good thing is we’re more successful and we have more impact on what we do really matters. If you’re a leader building a team and you can focus on that, your team will be engaged. It changes everything.
34:20
Tab Norris
Man, I wish I’d been there. This sounds like it was an amazing time.
34:23
Tom Stanfill
I made millions of dollars down.
34:26
Tab Norris
All I did is cost us money.
34:27
Tom Stanfill
But that’s okay. Yeah, that’s okay. All right, so I’ll share the second thing, which I think follows nicely, and we talk about this all the time, obviously, Tab, as we talked about, take the trip.
34:38
Tab Norris
Oh, yeah.
34:40
Tom Stanfill
Once we get in the door and somebody says, okay, like I did with my wife, you want to talk about this? You want to talk about some other alternative? Which, by the way, the reason she didn’t is because it meant she’d have to really change her life. At least that was part of it. I said, you really want to talk about this? And she said, yes. The next thing is I instinctually want to do is start telling her, great, let me tell you why I think you should consider. Instead of doing that, which I did, something different, counterintuitively, I took the trip, which is what we talk about all the time. We’ve got to leave our position from our point of view, take the trip until we can see their point of view. What I found out about my wife? I’ll tell you what I found out about my wife, and I’ll tell you what I found out about my daughter.
35:35
Tom Stanfill
My wife said, everybody wants to fix me. No one cares about me. As soon as they hear what’s wrong with me, they start telling me what to do, and no one really cares about me. I’m like and this is what happens when you take the trip. You go. Oh, there’s this o moment. What’s really cool about the O moment is when you have an O moment with somebody, then you start to feel something different. You feel empathy, and they can tell that you feel there’s a connection that happens. That’s really cool, because honestly, Tab, this is the tangent right now, but we’re not selling a solution. We’re selling dopamine. Oh, we really are. We’re selling dopamine. We’re selling a feeling. We’re selling like, when people when we listen to people and we get them and we have the O moment, like, we’re understanding them at a deeper level than other people do.
36:30
Tom Stanfill
There’s a dopamine hit there, and they like that. They love that feeling, because people at the deepest level want to be known. I want to be known. When somebody says something about me or says something that demonstrates they really get me, I get teary. We had a branding company. We’re working with a rebranding Aslan, and they read back the statement about Aslan, and they captured the essence of Aslan and what we’re about. I started crying.
36:58
Tab Norris
Oh, my god, I’m a touchy I’ve.
37:02
Tom Stanfill
Seen you do the same thing.
37:03
Tab Norris
I cry like a baby all the time.
37:06
Tom Stanfill
We are a bunch of yeah, we act tough, but we all cry.
37:10
Tab Norris
Mark’s not afraid to cry. We’re all criers. I don’t know if I’ve seen Sean cry a lot, but I’m sure he cries.
37:16
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, but we want to be known. I mean, that’s who we really and when we take the trip and we have this moment and we go, oh, that’s why you do what you do. My daughter told me, she said, Taylor is a quarterback and everybody thinks Taylor’s cool. Christian is a musician and everybody thinks Christian is cool. I’m nobody. Basically, I’m looking for what she said is I’m looking for acceptance. And I can’t compete with them. I can’t do what they do. So it was a shame thing. This is what was driving her in the wrong direction. When I could sit with her and understand that and go, oh, I get it. I went from this disappointed parent or this feared, this parent that lives in fear, or a parent who’s trying to control, or a parent who worried about the impression of what’s it look like that my daughter’s drunk at a football game, too.
38:06
Tom Stanfill
I care about another human being. We bonded through that period. The next thing we want to do as a seller or as a leader is we want to feed it back to them. We want to make sure that because we may feel that and have the omo, but we got to feed it back to them. I don’t know if I should share this, but we’re going to go for it. Come on.
38:33
Tab Norris
We’re doing it.
38:34
Tom Stanfill
I remember this happening with you.
38:37
Tab Norris
Oh, gosh.
38:38
Tom Stanfill
We were in Athens and a homeless guy came up to us. Do you remember this?
38:43
Tab Norris
No, I don’t.
38:44
Tom Stanfill
You seemed annoyed.
38:45
Tab Norris
Oh, I’m sure I did.
38:47
Tom Stanfill
You seemed annoyed. I’m like this at the time, I was volunteering Atlanta oh, yeah. Working with the homeless. You’re like, this homeless guy is bothering me. You just kind of had this disdain look about this guy. I was like I immediately started to judge you. I don’t know if you know this. I started to judge you and I’m like, who the h*** are you to try to that you think you’re better than this homeless guy? And you didn’t say anything. I could just tell by your body language you’re a bug.
39:16
Tab Norris
Yeah.
39:19
Tom Stanfill
So my instinct was to judge you. My instinct was to fix you. My instinct was to sell you on being different. I remembered because I love you and I remembered.
39:31
Tab Norris
I’m glad you remembered that.
39:33
Tom Stanfill
I remembered this ideal I literally did, which I practiced so much better work than I do at home. I’m going to take the trip. I took the trip with you. What you tell do you remember what you told me?
39:43
Tab Norris
I have no earth.
39:45
Tom Stanfill
You don’t have a clue where I’m going.
39:46
Tab Norris
I have no idea where you’re going and I have no idea what I said.
39:49
Tom Stanfill
You told me the story about every time you’re with your dad. Yes. You said, every time I’m with my dad, I’m getting teary thinking about this. Every time I’m with my dad, he would focus on the homeless people and he would take them on trips with us. You would be there for lunch or breakfast with him and he would go pick some homeless guy and he would hang out with them. You said he had a better relationship and knew that homeless guy better than he knew me. That’s what you said to me. I remember Blaine said the same thing, your brother. So then I go.
40:25
Tab Norris
Different perspective.
40:26
Tom Stanfill
It completely changed my mind. It’s like, this has nothing to do with you judging anybody. This is reminding you of a pain that you have with your father.
40:35
Tab Norris
Yeah, that’s really amazing. I can’t even remember that.
40:40
Tom Stanfill
I thought that was a great we had two Polarized, a bunch of you. I’m over here trying to serve the homeless and you’re over here going, I don’t like the homeless. That’s what it felt like to me. That’s not how you feel.
40:49
Tab Norris
No, I don’t, but that’s interesting. That’s such a perfect example of take the trip.
40:56
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I tell you what, this is so counterintuitive, man. I so struggle with this. I think we struggle more with people we know really well than our customers. I think it’s because we know them so well. We know what they’re going to say. We know why we’ve had the conversations before. We’re experiencing the same sort of problems. Hey, listen, my wife, you won’t do anything about your health.
41:22
Tab Norris
They keep doing the same thing over and over again and you’re I kind of know what, you.
41:26
Tom Stanfill
Don’T need to take the trip anymore. The thing is, I have to remind myself I’m trying to build a foundation to be heard. If I’m influencing them. Right. Relationship determines influence. If I don’t have a relationship with you, if there’s not receptive, if you don’t feel heard, if I don’t validate your point of view, you’re never going to listen to me. If I really care about you, why are you going to listen to me? Because I have something for you. I have a truth, I have a solution to your problem. But I got to build this foundation. And it starts with getting an invitation. It starts validating their point of view, having the moment, getting them to say, exactly. If I do that, selling is easy, right?
42:10
Tab Norris
It takes all the pressure. It really is. You are so free. I was talking about this on a presentation this past week. Oh, really? I’m the older I get, I think the more free I get just like going I was like, man, don’t you just want your salespeople to be free, just to serve? Is that really what you want? He’s like, yeah, I really do. I’m like, awesome. That’s what we’re talking about. I would have never talked like that earlier in my career. Let me give you the six tactics of how we’re going to transform your sales team. And we’re going to blah, blah. And I’m just learning that.
42:53
Tom Stanfill
I love.
42:54
Tab Norris
What you said in the very beginning, which is we’re learning how much what we talk about is counterintuitive.
43:00
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, it really is. Well, and I think to your point, I think people maybe resisted some of these counterintuitive ideas because they’re so counterintuitive because we want control. Right. Our instinct is to focus on more, not better. Right. Our instinct. I was working with this client the other day, like 411 leads led to 14 opportunities led to one sale. They had an 8% close rate. Yeah, right. As long as they’re getting enough leads, they can live with it.
43:31
Tab Norris
I can control it.
43:32
Tom Stanfill
I put it in a got to get more sales reps. Right. Because I got to close only 8%. I got to get more leads and more sales reps. I’m like, well, actually and they can control that. They know how to hire and they know how to get 400 hundred and 41 leads. Right. Well, the problem is that’s changing, like, people aren’t getting leads and the conversion rate went from 20 to now eight customers are not buying. The traditional approach to selling does not work. I think people are starting to wake up to that and saying, okay, maybe I’ll look at better.
44:08
Tab Norris
I’m reading a book called Fans First by just I think I told you about this, the guy that started the Savannah bananas. It’s all he talks about. He talks about exactly what you’re saying. He’s like, we just decided to do I’m going to do everything the opposite of normal. Because normal, I did normal. My baseball team was losing money, and they did everything exactly the way everybody did it. I just said, what I’m going to do. It absolutely abnormal. I’m going to go, what? Baseball is too long. Okay, well, we’re going to change it. It really is crazy. To your point, I think it’s getting people are waking up to this.
44:45
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.
44:45
Tab Norris
In a way that I think in our career, tom, this is new. In the last five years, maybe two years, I don’t know, it’s maybe the pandemic shook everybody up to where everybody is going. Maybe we got to think about things differently.
44:59
Tom Stanfill
Well, I think too, because the retentions drop so much, too. The reps don’t want to sell the way we’ve been trying to get them to sell. They don’t want an 8% close rate. They don’t want to go from 441 leads to 14 opportunities. They’re I mean, literally, these guys, they’re an essay guys because I worked there was only guys that I met with when I was conducting this assessment. I couldn’t find a cold call, cold email that turned into an appointment. I don’t think they had zero six. I think they had zero success prospecting. So all they had was inbound leads. They were spending a ton of time trying to prospect to add to the 441. I think part of it is yeah, its retention has dropped. I think that’s why people are open to it. I think maybe also the barrier to why people have keep looking at more versus better or changing is a guy wrote about this in a book, and I love what he called it’s because of business p***.
46:04
Tom Stanfill
Business p***. He’s like, you hear these stories of somebody creating this thing, which it does happen. They create a product, they create a solution, they create a service, and everybody wants it, right? You hire people basically to just catch the money. Like just demand fulfillment.
46:22
Tab Norris
Yeah.
46:22
Tom Stanfill
Everybody’s looking for a demand fulfillment role. The demands here, how do I get? When it comes to demand generation, which is what most of us have to do, the whole make a million calls, tell them about our solution, rinse and repeat, and then try to close the deal and win and overcome objections and all that stuff, which you need to do all that. There’s a better way to do it.
46:46
Tab Norris
Better way.
46:47
Tom Stanfill
There’s a better way to do it. The traditional approach isn’t working and I think people are getting warmed up to that.
46:54
Tab Norris
Yeah, I agree. Well, listen, it sounds like an amazing talk, Tom. It really does. I hope you expect a lot of leads. I’ll be watching that spreadsheet to see how it fills up from that talk.
47:08
Tom Stanfill
I’m sure we’re going to make it because that was really the purpose was to make a lot of money off of it. So I know we talked about that’s. Not the purpose, but ultimately that’s how we measure it. It was good. I appreciate your support and asking me about it, and I hope it was helpful to the people that were there, honestly. And I just love what we’re doing. Tab I love that we continue to talk about how we can help people connect and influence, whether it’s at work, whether you’re a leader, whether you’re a seller, whether you’re a parent, whether you just want to have rich relationships. It’s just how do we connect and influence more effectively? So hopefully this episode was helpful. Guys, please let us know. If you really like the podcast, then like us, whatever you do, what do you do? You give us feedback. Rate us. Because that helps other people find us, that tells other people, hey, this is worth listening to. If you don’t like us, still rate us high so that other people will listen to us.
48:16
Tab Norris
Love it.
48:18
Tom Stanfill
Of course. That was really fun. Anyway, thanks for joining us for another episode of SALES with ASLAN. Tab, love seeing you, my friend. Hopefully we’ll catch you next time on the next episode.
