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. 180 – Solutions to Buyer Resistance – Part 2

In this episode, Tom and Tab continue their conversation on buyer resistance in this age of information overload, and give additional strategies for sellers to navigate this challenge.  

Listen to the conversation here:

Or check out the full transcript:

00:13
Tom Stanfill
Tab, the cool music is just kind of winding down, and that tells you that it’s another episode of Sales with Aslan. We’re back in the studio. I hope everybody missed us.

00:26
Tab Norris
I know they did.

00:28
Tom Stanfill
You think so? Okay. Because I realize this is probably the reason we’re doing the podcast, is probably because I’m just lonely.

00:38
Tab Norris
That’s right.

00:39
Tom Stanfill
And I guarantee that I get to talk to you. I get to talk to you, and I’m assuming that I’m talking to other people. They’re in the room. We’re hanging out.

00:50
Tab Norris
I know. No, I talked to one of my associates, a friend client, this past week, and he was just saying how much he loves the podcast. And he said, I just feel like I’m at a bar hanging out with you two and picking up on some things, which I’m like, that’s exactly what we want this to be.

01:10
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

01:11
Tab Norris
Reconnected.

01:12
Tom Stanfill
We’re in the trenches every day. Pretty much. I mean, I was on a sales call with a potentially new prospect that wanted to hire me to speak at a conference in July, which, by the way, maybe we have to move our meeting. That we do. And I have. Okay, typical. But that’s a side note. Get out your calendar. This is what we would say if you’re in the room. Exactly. But we’re in the trenches, and it’s just good to get together and talk about what everybody’s facing, because I do think it’s easy to misdiagnose the problem, and if you misdiagnose the problem, you won’t come up with the right solution. And I think a lot of people in sales or influence, if you’re a leader and you’re trying to influence, or even if you’re a parent trying to influence a teenager or you’re having conversations with the most important people in your life, a lot of times we misdiagnose the problem, which means we can’t solve it.

02:11
Tom Stanfill
And the conversation I had today with the prospective client is they were talking about they’re losing market share. People see the competitive solution is better because it’s less expensive, and the reps are getting frustrated, losing confidence with the way that they’re talking about the solution, which is good. Definitely what they want to do is they’re thinking about they got to motivate the team, they’ve got to give them better messages, they’ve got to defend all those things. And there’s just a lot of things that we face. But the reality is it’s usually they’re not resisting a solution, they’re resisting a sales call.

02:54
Tab Norris
Right.

02:55
Tom Stanfill
Buyers are so resistant to just having the if we could just have the conversation, I think a lot of our problems would go away if people would just could sit down and say, okay, I’ll invite you in and I’m going to listen to everything you say, and I’m going to consider what you’re saying, and then I’m going to act on what you’re saying. I think 90% of our problems would be solved, but that is a challenge.

03:20
Tab Norris
Why is that so hard? It seems so simple.

03:25
Tom Stanfill
I think it’s just so much noise. I actually think we exacerbate the problem because we’re having, like, how we have political conversations, right. We step into a room and somebody says something opposing to us, and so then we counter that with our perspective, and then the argument begins. And when the argument begins, influence ends. It’s just the way we’re wired. We think of it as we’re going to court. I mean, I remember when I first got married and we started having argument. I’m like, okay, let’s go. Let’s go to court. I’ll make my case, you make your case. We’ll both defend our positions. At the end of it, the one that has the best logic will win.

04:05
Tab Norris
Right. How’d that work out for you?

04:09
Tom Stanfill
I know I realized there was no judge or jury.

04:15
Tab Norris
That’s your problem.

04:16
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. And there’s all these layers. It’s a little different in marriage than hopefully in business, but yeah. Are you seeing some of the same.

04:29
Tab Norris
Challenges all the time? And it’s funny, I was on a call earlier today with a potential customer. Same thing they’re telling me. I just don’t get it. I clearly have a problem. I’m just trying to get somebody to help me figure out a solution. And some of the way some of these salespeople approach it is just hard to believe. They’re asking me dumb questions for me to figure out if there’s a problem. And I told them what my problem was. I don’t know what it is. It’s almost like they’re just customers are out there going, I just want people to help me come up with the right solution. And I just think there’s a lot of salespeople overcomplicate. It’s not that complicated.

05:22
Tom Stanfill
Great example that came to mind, as you were saying that is like, you go to a restaurant, you could see what happens. Before you got to the restaurant, they had a meeting, they laid out all the food, and they said, look, here are the specials. Right? This is what we’re selling. This is it. And by the way, we probably bought a lot of salmon, so we need you to push there’s probably margin involved, who knows? And they’re like, we need you to.

05:45
Tab Norris
We’Re a little heavy on salmon.

05:49
Tom Stanfill
We need to get rid of salmon. I don’t know what drives it. The waiter can go out and they can go, these are my talking points. This is what they told me to say, and I’m going to say it, and good luck to you and yours. Or they can say, you know what? I get it. We have specials. We have certain things we’re good at. I will also say there’s certain things we’re not good at. And I’m going to make sure that the people that are in my restaurant, I’m going to take care of them, and they’re going to have an amazing experience. And that’s my focus. And part of that is just a simple mindset.

06:25
Tab Norris
Yeah. And I know we talked about that last time. We really kind of broke that down, and I thought we had some really good conversation around that we have to have that right mindset, don’t we?

06:36
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Well, last time we talked about the process, which is something that I think we started there, it’s probably because it’s the easiest thing to fix is having a customer oriented process. The number one reason deal stall is because we have a self centered, rep centered process and not a customer oriented process. How does the customer move from their vision to ultimately picking the right solution? And what value can we add along the way? And so we talked about that last time. Today I thought we would address what I think we can debate. This is what I I really think for me, is the most difficult aspect of selling right now related to the buyer resistance, which is getting invited in.

07:22
Tab Norris
Okay. Yeah.

07:24
Tom Stanfill
Literally. Not just, hey, I want your billboard, but I’ll talk to you. I’ll tell you, as the other side of the coin, I get 15 emails a week, easily about a solution that I need. I’ll delete every single one of them.

07:45
Tab Norris
I was just doing that right before we jumped on I was deleting. I was kind of like, golly, I really do have that need. I do have that need. I’ll just delete, delete. It was exactly the same thing.

07:55
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. And you can see that. If they could read my mind or watch me, they’re like, what? You need this. Why are you doing that? And that’s what I want to solve today, is how do we get people to respond and how do we get them to invite us in? Because I think if once we get in, yes, we can blow it. But I think that’s the biggest hurdle.

08:16
Tab Norris
It’s just getting in.

08:19
Tom Stanfill
I think the solution is the way we think about it and then some specific things that we can do. So that was what was on my mind. It’s hard to address. Kind of the number one problem, I think.

08:31
Tab Norris
Let’s do it.

08:32
Tom Stanfill
All right. Beautiful.

08:33
Tab Norris
I love it.

08:34
Tom Stanfill
So you want me to just dive in?

08:39
Tab Norris
I want you to start and I’m going to react. I want to hear what you have to say because I know you’ve been really well.

08:44
Tom Stanfill
It is kind of fresh because I just spoke about this at a webinar with selling Power. So we want an invitation. I think the setup is, and the way I like to think about it is until the person that you seek to influence says to you, whether audibly or verbally, what do you think I should do? I don’t know if that sounds right. Audibly or verbally either. Verbally. It didn’t make sense either.

09:09
Tab Norris
They just say it to you.

09:12
Tom Stanfill
I think I screwed that up. In the webinar too verbally doesn’t really matter, or they’re thinking it. That’s what I’m trying to say. Okay, what do you think I should do? It doesn’t matter what you say. And I think that’s something to just let that sit in until my daughter says to me, dad, do you think I should date Philip? It doesn’t matter what I say.

09:40
Tab Norris
Right. It’s like, that’s got to be your focus at that moment. I’m trying to get to that place. Everything about me, everything that I’m trying to accomplish is about getting that invitation, getting that question asked. And if I can’t get that, don’t start pressing on. Don’t start pressing forward. Hang till you get that. That’s really what you’re saying?

10:04
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. We think that if we deliver the message and another way to say this is their willingness to listen is more important than your ability to communicate. In other words, their willingness to lean in and say, what do you think? If you fumble around but you have truth, they’ll give you the grace to get it out, but you’ll be able to land it. But if they’re like, I don’t care what you say. What we do is we amp up the volume, and we talk louder, and we talk faster, and we talk with more passion, and we try to come up with better bullets. And it’s just all it does is actually shut them down. And so we have to get an invitation, which is a little different. And so what we’ve been taught to get an invitation is we need to have a value prop, which there is some wisdom in that.

10:55
Tom Stanfill
Right. We do need to be able to communicate what’s unique and what’s valued. That’s part of it. But we’re missing some other things that need to be in place for us to get the invitation.

11:05
Tab Norris
So what are the keys? Give me the keys to pulling this thing off.

11:09
Tom Stanfill
The first thing we have to do and this is where my people are blowing the first hurdle, is attention. Okay. Yeah, I’ve seen this, like, working with account managers who walk by somebody’s office, and they want to, like they’ll poke my head, hey, by the way, we got the new thing that’s offered at this thing, and we got this thing going on, and are you aware of this thing? And they’re like, yeah, whatever. You could tell that they’re doing the thing where they’re looking at them and just sort of ignoring them. Okay.

11:38
Tab Norris
So they’re not getting there. They’re just talking, and the person’s not really paying attention.

11:42
Tom Stanfill
They’re still writing the email in their head that they were writing before the person interrupted. Or you’re actually reaching out, sending an email to somebody you don’t know, so you’re moving beyond your existing relationships. But either way, you have to get their attention, and what gets their attention works for regardless of the type of audience that you’re trying to get their attention and what gets their attention is communicating a problem that’s on their whiteboard.

12:09
Tab Norris
Yeah, that’s the biggest issue, isn’t it? I mean, salespeople, we want to talk about our stuff. I was talking to one of a rep about this. I was saying, well, what’s on their whiteboard? What’s their issue? What’s their problem? He goes, I don’t really care. What I care about is I just want to know about stuff that they have pain about that is going to make them buy my stuff. I said, well that’s your problem because it’s all about you. And if their problem has nothing to do with your solution, you’re not going to sell it to them anyway. So figure out what their problem is. What are they trying to accomplish? What are their couple of big initiatives that they have going on because that’s what they care about.

12:58
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. And it makes sense that we would lead with our solution because that’s what we talk about. Just like the waiter talks about the specials, we talk about our specials. These are all the cool things that we do. And we’re constantly in meetings talking about the cool things we do. And we’re talking about how do we say this better and how do we do this better and how do we share this better and how do we prove and validate and all those things that we should be talking about. But the problem is we don’t give equal time to what’s on the decision makers whiteboard. And so I would say the first thing you need to do is picture the person you’re reaching out to. So they’re either a persona, a VP of and so you got to picture somebody or they’re an actual person that you know and you got to picture the whiteboard in their office and you got to think, okay, what’s on that whiteboard?

13:43
Tom Stanfill
And if you do not know, you will not get their attention. Okay.

13:48
Tab Norris
Which begs a great question. It’s great to know. And you talked to Johnny who told you, well, I know exactly what’s on Tom’s whiteboard. He cares about these four things and they’re huge initiatives and he’s got to get them done in eight months to a year. But the question is what if I can’t I want to connect with Tom, but I don’t know, what do I do?

14:11
Tom Stanfill
You get what do you do? You’ve got to do more research. First of all, you got to guess. But then the more educated the guess is, the more research that you have, the more educated the guess is. So if you think about we serve VPs of sales. We’ve served people that lead VPs of learning. We have certain people we serve. We’ve learned over the years of doing this year after year that there are certain things that’s on their whiteboard. I know that the head of learning will say, sometimes I feel take a note I’m ignored. They’re trying to do all this work to roll out a training initiative, and they have difficulty getting the attention of the people they’re trying to serve. They also get held accountable for things they’re not accountable. All these things, I could go on and on. Yeah. What’s on their way?

15:02
Tab Norris
I learned it because I ask. Yeah, and you learn the roles.

15:08
Tom Stanfill
What you’re saying too?

15:09
Tab Norris
You learn the roles and you know that there’s a 90% chance that one of these five things are going to be on their whiteboard because I know their role.

15:19
Tom Stanfill
You have to learn, you have to become a student of the people you serve. And the more granular you get here are all the let’s say you serve five different types of personas, five different kinds of roles, and so you start to study them, and you add questions to your meetings, which is not going to happen overnight. But you ask questions to your meeting that don’t aren’t necessarily related to what you’re talking about at that moment. But what’s your biggest pain point? Or how do you I mean, this would be difficult to ask, but it’s really what you’re looking for is how are you comped? You will lose your job if you will get a bonus, if now, you can’t ask that directly, most likely, unless you have a really good relationship, but that’s ultimately you want to know how they’re measured, how do they look at success, what are their biggest challenges, regardless of what you sell.

16:07
Tom Stanfill
And if you don’t have that information, there’s two ways to get it. You can either talk to or maybe three. You can talk to existing customers, talk to new customers, or you can talk to people in your organization who already know this.

16:20
Tab Norris
Right.

16:20
Tom Stanfill
But you’ve got to lead with a whiteboard problem. And here’s another mistake that people make if they do know the problem. Is it’s too broad.

16:32
Tab Norris
Okay. You mean like, we want to grow revenue?

16:35
Tom Stanfill
Yes. I got to go. Really?

16:38
Tab Norris
I want to sell more stuff. Okay, great. Awesome. I understand you’re trying to sell more stuff.

16:43
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Right. Every business is trying to grow revenue or make more money. Okay. Or cut cost. Reduce cost. Yeah. Okay. You got me. So that’s just noise. Now, I got an email the other day which I actually responded to, and it said, AI for business owners to reduce cost and increase revenue. Now, there’s only one way I’m going to respond to that email is because I already know something. I know who’s sending it, and I happen to know who was sending it.

17:15
Tab Norris
So you knew who it was coming from.

17:16
Tom Stanfill
Therefore, the person that was sending that email, the source of that email was somebody I respect, and they have credibility. And because I’m interested in AI, as we all are, I’m like, I’m looking at the source, but if that came from a stranger, I would just delete marketing. Stranger. Oh, you’re going to make more money, lose money, whatever. It’s got to be really specific to the person. They got to believe that you how did you know that? That’s the response I want.

17:46
Tab Norris
That’s what I always tell people when I’m teaching this or I’m talking to people about this. It’s like the more unique, the more specific, the more powerful.

17:56
Tom Stanfill
Exactly.

17:56
Tab Norris
When you can say, I talked tom and he told me, right now, the initiative, you guys are going to grow 27% in the next three years without any change in headcount.

18:06
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

18:07
Tab Norris
And you’re trying to figure out what’s the best way to do that? Well, there’s some all of a sudden it’s kind of like wow versus hi. We help organizations grow anywhere from 10% to 30% every five years, whatever. And that’s what most salespeople do.

18:25
Tom Stanfill
And it’s just noise. And there is so much AI tools out there. And this is where AI can be leveraged that you can pick up. If you look at we get a lot of lead gen people that want to generate leads for us because we’re, I mean, all companies like ours need more leads, right? Everybody? So we get marketing firms who want to market to us, and they want to offer that service. But it’s always generic. But there’s so much out there about aslan that you can tell what we’re specifically doing. All you have to do is a little research. Say, I know your campaign is blah, blah.

18:59
Tab Norris
You could find out exactly yeah.

19:01
Tom Stanfill
And I can help you do that because what you’re doing is this, and we could help you do this. And so they would just make it more specific. Matter of fact, I got an email that I read today from somebody that basically had gone to our website, never talked to me, and had said, based on what I’m seeing on your website, I see these three campaigns getting you more leads. I read that email.

19:21
Tab Norris
Oh, that’s really good.

19:23
Tom Stanfill
One of the things we talk about is how do you build training for the eleven unique roles in sales? There’s not one role. There’s eleven. That was in the email that was specific, that got my attention. There’s a part of your brain that forces you to notice things that you know you need or things you don’t understand. And so if it’s something familiar, something that’s related to me, I’m going to pay attention to it. I just can’t help it. But that’s a big deal. I would say the easiest way to remember this, what I always like to remind people of is to think about if I hold a picture up and it’s a picture of you will look at it 100% of the time. I took a picture of you and Elizabeth, were on a trip. You blow it up, you look at it. It’s what I do, right?

20:12
Tom Stanfill
You look at I’m going, I don’t like my smile. I don’t like this. It’s a bad picture. I don’t look at you.

20:16
Tab Norris
Right? I don’t care about me. I just want to see what my wife yeah.

20:23
Tom Stanfill
See what Tab looks like. No, I go, I don’t like my hair. Whatever. And so that’s really the goal. You get their attention by showing them a picture of them and not a picture of you.

20:35
Tab Norris
That’s huge.

20:36
Tom Stanfill
There’s some work to be done, but, man, it gets really easy if we start to do that research.

20:41
Tab Norris
So that’s number one first step in getting attention.

20:45
Tom Stanfill
First hurdle is we got to get their attention. If we don’t get their attention, nothing happens. And you get their attention by focusing on a problem that they have because.

20:54
Tab Norris
That’S what they care about.

20:56
Tom Stanfill
That’s what they care about. Something’s very specific.

20:58
Tab Norris
Love it. Love it. Great.

21:01
Tom Stanfill
Second hurdle, and this is the one I think most people fail at. If they get the first one right, the second one they suffer with. This one is why you? Why you?

21:15
Tab Norris
In other words, what’s unique or different?

21:18
Tom Stanfill
What’s unique or different? Okay, so you do offer a solution that I’m interested in, and you understand my problem. They did get my attention, but I just got 15 of these right. So why you? I don’t see any difference in all of these. You got my attention, but I did read yours, and that gives you a competitive advantage. But I don’t act it’s like you got me to read it like I did this morning, but I’m not going to reach out. So what is unique about you? For me, it would be like, prove to me, you focus on my industry, you do something different. What is it that’s different about you than all the 50 different firms that I’ve received messages? Why you? And there’s two ways we can do that. One is we can just say what’s different.

22:01
Tab Norris
Right?

22:02
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. And that can be a who, what, or how. Who’s going to be working with you? Like, a guy reached out to me on LinkedIn that went to my webinar, and he leverages his CEO’s experience to get meetings. And it’s a really cool position that he came up with about, our CEO has this experience, and I want you to meet with our CEO. And I’m like, that’s pretty cool. That was the differentiator it could be a how our process. What’s unique about our process is we do it risk free. So if we don’t get you this, then you don’t pay whatever the process, whatever is unique about the process. Or it could be actually what you offer. That’s one way to do it.

22:47
Tab Norris
Right.

22:48
Tom Stanfill
The other way to do it is to communicate what I call a disruptive truth about a better way to solve.

22:58
Tab Norris
Their problem, which is instead of playing up what you do that’s unique, it’s offering an insight to get their attention.

23:09
Tom Stanfill
Exactly.

23:10
Tab Norris
It’s a counterintuitive thought. All of a sudden, it’s different. I love that. So it’s not some proprietary something in your solution, but it’s just getting them to think about it differently is impactful.

23:29
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. You’re basically saying, I know something you don’t.

23:32
Tab Norris
Yeah. So you’re using that as your attention grabber.

23:36
Tom Stanfill
And it’s not a service. It’s not about the service. It is about the service you offer, but it’s not the service. It’s just your knowledge, it’s your insight, which they could use whether they hire you or not. So, for example, a company that we wanted to talk to wanted to train their reps because there was a turnover problem. Right. So that’s a typical reason for us, like a position that we would take, hey, we want to talk to you about improving rep engagement or reducing rep turnover. That’s a whiteboard problem. And most people think, okay, well, what you should do is you’ll train them, and if they’re better at their job, if they can get more meetings and they’ll create momentum and there’ll be less turnover. Right, that’s true. But actually what most impacts turnover the most is the leader.

24:32
Tab Norris
Yeah. People think they got to fix the rep, but the reality is, our experience has told us the greatest impact is the manager.

24:42
Tom Stanfill
You think you have an execution problem, you actually have a leader problem. And here’s the cool thing. Working with your leaders is a lot less expensive than working the training your reps. And so you’re flip it on them, and all of a sudden you elevate you as a seller, you elevate yourself in the mind of a decision maker because decision makers classically don’t meet with sales reps. They delegate to other people to talk to the sales rep because they’re like, you go talk to the vendors because they’re just going to give you information about what they do. And then we’ll, as a decision making team, talk about it and we’ll make a decision. But this is why the invitation is so important. We’re not going to invite them in because they’re just going to try to sell us stuff.

25:28
Tab Norris
Right.

25:28
Tom Stanfill
They’re going to try to sell us a special.

25:30
Tab Norris
Yeah, there’s that salmon. It’s already going bad, by the way.

25:34
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, there’s salmon, salmon. Right. Versus they’re not going to really represent us if we give them a seat at the table. But when you say things that they’re like I hadn’t thought of that way, all of a sudden you elevate yourself thinking this person might be worth engaging with because you kind of get them to go, yeah, this isn’t the typical and I think, too, it takes time to do these two things, get attention and answer the question, why you? So I think it’s almost like we need to slow down, get better at how we position it, and then we’ll have higher quality will get you more leads, versus doing more with low quality isn’t working.

26:20
Tab Norris
Okay, that’s good. So start with their whiteboard, their perspective, their point of view, like, what’s their problem? What’s their deal? We got to do that. That may take a little research. It’s learning constantly talking to other people that know. Then, secondly, it’s some kind of unique why were you unique? Why us?

26:47
Tom Stanfill
Some kind of why you versus think of it as they got they’re looking at 14. You remember that exercise we used to do in training where we’d have they were looking at ads from helicopter companies.

27:00
Tab Norris
Oh, yeah, I love that.

27:03
Tom Stanfill
We did this exercise where because we saw this, went to Hawaii together, and were wanting to hire a helicopter company to do a tour of Maui. And so I looked at all the helicopter companies, and there they were, five helicopter companies side by side ads that were probably 100 words long. So they all had to say something unique. They all had to say, well, we do this. We go to all the islands, and this would say, well, we do the waterfalls, and this one would say, it’s piloted by a Navy pilot. One would sell the video. They all had their thing because uniqueness. And what we do is we say the same thing, and we don’t think of it as people are going to get this email, and they’re going to look at it in light of all the other emails they got. They got the same thing.

27:50
Tom Stanfill
So you got to stand out.

27:52
Tab Norris
Well, don’t you think? Let me ask you this, because I think this is the biggest problem with that, and I struggle with it, too. You’re scared of picking something because you feel like, oh, gosh, there’s so many great things about us. I don’t want to just pick one. So I’ll say seven. Yeah, because I think maybe one of those seven is going to be it. But I think if it’s the rifle shot, I’m going all in. This is what you have to really pick. You have to say, this is why I’ve said it to potential customers. Let me just be clear. If this is not your big thing, if you don’t care about this, you’re never going to work with us. We’re not going to win. And I’m okay with that.

28:36
Tom Stanfill
That is so difficult to do.

28:38
Tab Norris
It is.

28:39
Tom Stanfill
But I remember Jim Carville telling Clinton this. I wasn’t in the room, but I read about it. Yeah, I was invited. I didn’t have a seat at the table. But he said if you say three things, you say nothing.

28:51
Tab Norris
Yes.

28:51
Tom Stanfill
And that’s when he came up with the economy, stupid. And that was his one thing. It’s the economy. And if you look at all the great politicians, they come up with their thing. You go, Obama’s was changed, right? And then you look at, well, who did he run against? Bush?

29:09
Tab Norris
I don’t know. I don’t start going into asking those kind of questions.

29:13
Tom Stanfill
You don’t remember. It’s like, yeah, you’re like, I don’t know, but Clinton was economy. It’s. Economy.

29:20
Tab Norris
Yeah.

29:22
Tom Stanfill
And so we got to pick. And I remember thinking this when I was I walked down the nutrition bar aisle at Target a couple of months ago, and there was like, I mean, literally 20ft all there was on the right side were nutrition bars, every shape, size. That’s the flood of information that decision maker is getting right now. And so the ones that I bought, it had one thing you’ll be faster.

29:54
Tab Norris
And stronger than anybody else. Is that right?

29:58
Tom Stanfill
It didn’t pick taste. It didn’t pick calories. It hits one thing. Less sugar.

30:05
Tab Norris
That’s all it said, just less sugar.

30:08
Tom Stanfill
And that’s what I was like, less sugar. Now, if it would have said but it’s also less things.

30:14
Tab Norris
Less sugar ball.

30:15
Tom Stanfill
It was just less sugar. Like, I’ll take it in the flood of it. It’s like I just don’t have the ability to read all of these packages, and so I got okay. That fit with what I’m doing. Yeah. It missed people that want I want the best tasting nutrition. It missed that low in sugar. So if we don’t say anything, we lose it. And here’s the good news. We can change it up. Yeah. Unlike the nutrition bar that got packages, and it’s on the shelf, and they got to pick, and it can’t change for years. You can do one email, have a position, one problem, one Disruptive truth. What’s different about you enroll with that for three or four times, and then you could switch it up and do the next one?

31:00
Tab Norris
That begs the question, and based on their whiteboard, it could change your unique thing that you pick. Right.

31:10
Tom Stanfill
Great point. You got to start with that. But if you don’t know, like, if you think, oh, your problem is whatever your problem is, you’re trying to get more healthy, and your number one reason you want to get more healthy is change your diet, and sugar is a big deal, that you pick that problem. Well, if that’s not my problem, then maybe my problem is I’m allergic to chocolate. Exactly.

31:31
Tab Norris
That’s like death, isn’t it?

31:36
Tom Stanfill
But yes, you have to start with a problem, and then the Disruptive Truth has to relate to that, and then what’s unique about you has to relate to that, and then you can change it out.

31:47
Tab Norris
All right, so I got the whiteboard Disruptive Truth, and then you said there was a last hurdle.

31:54
Tom Stanfill
Last hurdle is what will happen if I let you in. Yeah.

32:02
Tab Norris
Now I’m getting a little scared. You can come in here, and it could be ugly. I don’t know.

32:08
Tom Stanfill
And this may be something you can try to address in a video. Like, you can attach a video. You could potentially address it when you part of the copy of your email or your voicemail. Or it could be what happens when you start dialoguing. Like, they reach out to you on email. Like, I just got an email earlier today, now I’m going to respond. What do I say when I respond? So they kind of go, they kind of like, okay, well, I’m willing to talk to you a little bit, but I’m still not sure if I want to go to the next step.

32:43
Tab Norris
Right.

32:44
Tom Stanfill
And so two things I would recommend to answer the question, what will happen? Maybe a better way to say it is what do they really care about when they think about letting you in? What are the concerns that they have? And number one is I don’t know if there’s a one and two, because I haven’t done the research on this, but I think it’s probably equal one is what’s the agenda? Okay, are you going to sell me or are you going to try to understand what I care about?

33:16
Tab Norris
So you’ve got to communicate that agenda, communicate your plan, your process when the timing is appropriate.

33:23
Tom Stanfill
I’m trying to apply these three hurdles to all different types of situations, whether I’m face to face, whether I’m in email, whether it’s my second email. I’m trying to give you the three big things. So I deem you to somehow communicate. If you let me in, my focus is going to be to understand you, not to sell you.

33:41
Tab Norris
Yeah. Okay. Which is saying things such as.

33:49
Tom Stanfill
We.

33:50
Tab Norris
Have these insights, or I’ve got this unique positioning and really the purpose to connect was to learn more about you, where you are with this, see if exactly. So it’s got that kind of language versus and here are the seven reasons why we do this. Great. Because that’s what gets all people scared again. Right. They start pulling back.

34:19
Tom Stanfill
And remember, that’s what people are rejecting. They’re not rejecting a solution. They’re rejecting a sales call. So if you sound like a seller, they’re not going to want to engage. What they want to do is they think because they’re like, oh, this is going to get sticky. Because people don’t want to be rude. You’re going to get the ten emails and when you’re in the conversation, you’re going to start talking or they think you’re going to start talking and then they got to interrupt you and they don’t want to do that.

34:51
Tab Norris
It’s so true. It was a LinkedIn one of these invites from some recruiter. And all I could think about was, if I accept this, I’m opening up myself to the misery and I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want to deal with it. It’s going to take eight in mails for me to get them to go away.

35:12
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. And then everything that’s going to follow, that all the automated emails related to the fact that you did. Now, once you don’t talk to this guy anymore, whoever it is, then there may be all these so what’s going to happen? What’s going to happen if I say okay, it’s kind of like they sort of crack the door open and they say, okay, you got my attention. I’m opening the door a little bit like my daughter. Okay, so what do you want? What do you want? And I really need to answer that question. What do I want? And if I say, I just want to see how’s it going, or how are you doing? Yeah. And then that relates to the second thing that you need to communicate. What’s going to happen is, one, what’s your agenda, which needs to be to understand what’s important to them, not sell them.

35:56
Tom Stanfill
And two, remove any tension from the conversation. You are not going to try to pressure them in any way, shape or form. Another way to say that is all options are acceptable. Use us, don’t use us. Use portion of us. Stay what you’re doing, whatever. It’s like, look, and I like to boldly say, I have no idea at this stage if you should ever work with us.

36:19
Tab Norris
Yeah, I do the same. It’s powerful, isn’t it? Yeah, but it’s as if isn’t that the way you want to be sold? We don’t want to be sold.

36:30
Tom Stanfill
I know.

36:31
Tab Norris
That’s my point. That’s what you want the process to be. If you’re going to work with a salesperson, you would like people to sell it’s. Even saying sales makes you go, I don’t want to be sold, but have that word exactly. But you want somebody to help you come up with a solution. So bag the whole sales thing. That’s all you’re trying to do is have somebody guide you through the process to help you make the right decision. That’s it.

36:58
Tom Stanfill
That’s exactly right. I think the second part of this is what’s going to happen when you get in is, are you going to pressure me? I don’t think it’s a conscious decision that sales reps think about, like, okay, yeah, I’m going to pressure them. It’s going to work. I think it’s an instinct. It’s like, I’ve worked so hard, maybe I’ve studied them right and I figured out what’s on their whiteboard, or maybe I talked to somebody in their organization. I’ve sent four emails, and then they didn’t. And then I called them, and then finally I got them in there, and it’s a big opportunity, and they responded, and now I’m in there, and it’s like and you just want to grab them. Don’t leave. I know, but the thing is, the more I hold on, the more they want to move away, and the more you let them go, the more they want to stay.

37:48
Tom Stanfill
That sounded take a note.

37:49
Tab Norris
It’s poetry. Waldo Emerson pin that I try to.

37:55
Tom Stanfill
Remind myself tab, especially in my personal relationships and corporate professional, but in all, it’s like control. I have no control over anybody. I might feel better if I get my message out, but I have zero control is an illusion. I have zero control. And if I try to exercise control, it robs me of the opportunity to influence and so it’s like hitting somebody in the head and going, now will you listen? Yeah, exactly.

38:28
Tab Norris
No, yeah, that’s really good. Well, awesome. Well, I mean, this is great. Why don’t we put a bow on this?

38:38
Tom Stanfill
You want to put a bow on it?

38:39
Tab Norris
Let’s bow it up. Let’s bow on wrap it up. Let’s land this plane.

38:44
Tom Stanfill
Tom yeah. So all we really say is there’s three hurdles. The first hurdle is we got to get their attention. The best way to get their attention is show them a picture of them, which more tactically, that’s say something that’s on their whiteboard. If you don’t know, learn to come up with your best guess. And there’s a lot of places to learn. You can talk to people in your organization. You can interview existing clients. Definitely start asking people you’re meeting with what are your biggest challenges? And say that, look, my goal is to serve people in your role. And I always want to every time I meet with people, I want to learn from you, because no one knows your role like you do. What conferences do they go to? Who do they listen to? What influencers? Who they follow? What groups are they? And you’ll start to see some common threads, and you’ll start to build.

39:32
Tom Stanfill
Hey, I know there’s usually four or five things on the people that I serve as whiteboard. And here’s the cool thing, tab. If you do that, you’re going to be, like 1% of the sales rep. Yeah.

39:42
Tab Norris
That one step alone will put you in a whole new category.

39:47
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I agree. And you, by the way, you need to do the same thing with your competition. What is your competition doing? You need to be a student of your customer, and you need to be a student of your competition, because you can’t serve your customers if you don’t know what they’re options are. Number two, we’ve got to answer the question why you two ways to do that. One is you can communicate a disruptive truth, something unknown, something that’s unexpected about a better way to solve their problem. It’s an easy way to elevate. Or you can communicate what’s unique about who you are, how you do it, or what you offer. That’s just more facts. It’s like, this is how we do it.

40:28
Tab Norris
Yeah. And that may be all the disruptor or insight that you need to get their attention.

40:35
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, I like it. The only thing that’s required of those is definitely describing a problem that they have. And if you do that really well, they may go well. Obviously, if you know my problem is that then I’m going to hire you. And I think about some of the people I’ve hired, it’s usually because of their ability to describe my problem.

40:58
Tab Norris
I think you must be able to critical. It all hinges upon that. If you can’t do that, the other if you struggle, the second one fine. Continue working on it and working on your craft. But crush number one.

41:11
Tom Stanfill
Crush number one. And then the last one, as we said, Tab, is we need to answer the question, what is going to happen if I let you in?

41:27
Tab Norris
Why did we bring him on this trip? I don’t know.

41:30
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, why did we let him in? Why is he in this meeting? Why is she in this meeting? And by the way, that also means that you have something to say. It doesn’t mean you’re quiet. It doesn’t mean you’re just go there, hey, listen, do whatever you want. I just serve. And I just want to understand your agenda. We need to be able to respond to what we’re hearing. And when people ask us questions, we need to be the doctor who asks questions to be able to come up with a diagnosis, not just go, well, thanks for sharing.

42:01
Tab Norris
All right, how’s this going to go? It’s got to feel like it’s going to be productive and helpful and insightful and not just a waste of time or irrelevant.

42:14
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, beautiful. So we need an invitation. We need an invitation, Tab. And I think it’s just a really important concept to embrace until somebody either we’ll see if I can say it right, ask you verbally, ask you, what do you think I should do? Or they think it doesn’t matter what you say. Think about that in the next time you have a conversation. Are they great? Tell all you can tell. They have that sort of their hands are up. Like their body language is like, you’re talking, but I am not listening. Yeah, and then you got to change what you’re doing. Hi, buddy.

42:52
Tab Norris
Once again, great insights. I love you being out on the circuit, talk, speaking and doing webinars. I think it’s great. Just kind of keep the brain spinning, all these great ideas and share it.

43:06
Tom Stanfill
Well, Tab, it just really comes from as you know, it just comes from what works. I know that’s really complicated. We look at what works. We don’t say, well, this is the easy thing to do or say. We focus on what actually motivates people to listen. Why do they listen? Why do they change their mind and what works? So that’s where we’re constantly looking for those new truths, and then our goal is to share them. So I love doing that.

43:40
Tab Norris
Yeah, it was funny. I was talking to a prospect and doing a presentation, going through everything, and she goes, now, I don’t want this to sound bad, but it’s so simple. And I said, oh. I said, Is that a good or a bad? She goes, It’s really good because it’s like you’re just trying to help us figure out what we need to help our salespeople sell better. And it’s like she goes, I feel like in all my years, I just feel like people want to just complicate it and they want to make it so confusing, and it’s just not that complicated.

44:17
Tom Stanfill
No, I think Randy Reamersman was on our show, one of the leaders of a SaaS company and him or what episode that was, but he talked about it. He said it’s really not complicated. It’s just not easy.

44:33
Tab Norris
It’s not easy.

44:34
Tom Stanfill
You got to do a few things. I thought it was brilliant. It’s really so simple. It’s like sports. It’s like you got to do a few things really well. And I like to use golf because it’s kind of regardless of what country we’re in. And it’s simple because it boils down to, like, four different things. Like, you have to do four. You and I both play golf, and whether you love golf, you hate golf. It’s like it’s not complicated.

45:01
Tab Norris
No.

45:01
Tom Stanfill
You take the club back and you really hard. We can’t overcomplicate it. But you just got to do a few things really well.

45:13
Tab Norris
Very well said.

45:14
Tom Stanfill
There is a need sometimes I have or desire temptation is probably a better word where I want to make it more complicated. I’m like, I want to come up with something new and fresh. No. What’s happened is there’s more barriers to having the conversation because there’s more noise. I think what’s happened is that people are now open to learning some of these truths about influence that they weren’t before, because I have this thing and do you want it worked for certain high enough percentage of people? Because if they’re in the market looking for something and they want to talk to a sales rep, and they have to talk to a sales rep, that was a valid strategy. Well, now they don’t want to talk to a sales rep. They don’t need to talk to sales rep. And so you better do something different.

46:02
Tab Norris
Yeah. Very good.

46:04
Tom Stanfill
Alright, buddy.

46:05
Tab Norris
All right, Tom. Great.

46:07
Tom Stanfill
Thanks for everybody for joining us. You don’t wanna close this out?

46:13
Tab Norris
No, I’m not. I tried last time, and I blew it. That’s what you do. You’re the closer. We’re not going to bring a starter in to close it out.

46:22
Tom Stanfill
After all our conversations about selling closer, I’m the closer. Okay, I’m closing this out. But yeah, we do appreciate you guys joining us and listening to another episode of SALES with ASLAN. And as always, tab, we love feedback. Please let us know how we’re doing, how we can get better. Lead us comments because we read those, and it also helps other people find us. The more you give us feedback, the more people will find us and hear what we have to say. So if you love it, let us know. If you don’t love us, do not let us know.

46:55
Tab Norris
Not true.

46:56
Tom Stanfill
That’s not true. Now we’ll read it, and we’ll get better. All right, my friend. I’ll see you next time.