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The world's best conversations about B2B selling happen here. This exciting new podcast from Andy Paul, the creator and host of the Sales Enablement Podcast (with 1200+ episodes and millions of downloads) is focused on the mission of helping increase your win rates by winning a bigger percentage of the deals in your pipeline. In this unique round table format, Andy and his panel of guest experts share the critical sales insights, sales perspectives and selling skills that you can use to elevate your sales effectiveness and create the buying experiences that influence decision-makers to buy from you. Host Andy Paul is the expert on modern B2B selling and author of three best-selling, award-winning sales books, including his latest Sell Without Selling Out. Visit andypaul.com to subscribe to his newsletter for even more strategies and tips to accelerate your win rate!
Hi friends. Welcome to the win rate podcast. I'm your host, Andy Paul. Now that was Andrew Sykes. And Andrew is one of my guests on this episode of the win rate podcast. Andrew Sykes is founder and CEO of Habits at Work and authored the book titled The 11th Habit. Design your company culture to foster the habits of high performance.
My other guest today for this discussion about sales effectiveness, the buyer experience, and increasing win rates is John Westman. John is vice president of project management at Sidious Pharmaceuticals. He is also instructor of sales management and sales at Harvard. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I want to remind you to subscribe to my newsletter.
If you're interested in increasing your win rates, you can join the more than 50, 000 sellers and sales leaders who subscribe to receive win rate Wednesday. That's right. Each week on Wednesday, you'll see one actionable tip to accelerate your win rates and a lot of other great sales advice as well. You can subscribe by visiting my website, AndyPaul.
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Okay, friends, that's it for this episode of the WinRate Podcast. First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time to listen. I am so grateful for your support of this show. And I want to thank my guests, John Westman and Andrew Sykes, for sharing their insights with us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast.
Win rate Wednesday, excuse me. Do you know the name of my own podcast? If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to this podcast, the win rate podcast with Andy Paul on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Again, thank you so much for investing your time with me today. Until next time. I'm your host, Andy Paul.
Good selling everyone.
Welcome everyone to this episode of the win rate podcast. Another all star cast today. Join me as Andrew Sykes and John Westman. And may just take a second. You guys introduce yourselves. We'll start with you, Andrew.
Thanks, Andy. My name is Andrew Sykes, and I'm the CEO and founder of Habits at Work, and I have the privilege of being an adjunct professor at the Kellogg School of Management.
Okay. And John.
Hey, John Westman. I'm a student and teacher of methods that cause top 1 percent sales performance. And I teach at Boston College and Harvard Continuing Education.
leads with student. I like that very humble leadership. I like that. I like that. All right. So today we're gonna talk a couple topics that I want to delve into. Cause it relates to things that both of you guys are working on that, ultimately relate to sales effectiveness and win rates and so on.
So the first one is, Andrew, I'll start with you cause you're an expert on trust and. You say that you're on a mission to make sales the most trustworthy profession on the planet. Are you trying to tell us it's not?
Well, I think anyone who has heard the phrase secondhand car salesperson Or insurance salesperson, or any salesperson has that view that we're not trusted. Or when you've been on the streets of Chicago where I live, or New York, or wherever you live, and you have someone approach you with a clipboard in your hand, and you sense they're a salesperson on a mission, we've all felt that feeling like, who are you, and what do you want?
And of course, every survey that I've seen rates salespeople as the least trustworthy profession. So, I think there's good evidence That, that's the current status, but I know like John, I'm of the view that trust is everything in sales. And so if we care about being successful in sales, we have to figure out how to change from being the least, perhaps to the most trustworthy professional on the planet.
Yeah, it's so funny when we talk about this information about, gosh, we're the least trusted. It's like, why have we stayed in it for so long, right? All of us are, well, I can only speak for myself, I guess, have been in it for a long time. It's like, gosh, why are we still doing this if everybody thinks we're Yeah, low lives or whatever, but clearly that's not the case, right?
It's, but is this general perception that exists of sales? So you say you're on a mission to change it. How are you going to do that? Okay.
Well, I think to your point, the reason we stay in it is because we believe that we're people of integrity, which many salespeople that I know, if not the vast majority. really are, meaning we tell the truth, we have good intentions and we keep our promises. The problem is that makes you someone with integrity, not someone that is assessed by customers as being worthy of trust, which is a whole other game that has to do with the psychology of judgment and first impressions and the suspicion of motive.
And so unless we get humble enough to realize that having integrity is not enough. We may never earn that title of being trustworthy.
So what's the answer? Let's break that down because I'm sure you've seen the Gartner report that came out in April. They had the slide on, the nine most important factors that influence a buyer's decision. Number one, trustworthiness. I look at the way that sellers are trained and.
Ironically, they're trained on everything but trust building, it seems like, right? Product price, product knowledge, customer knowledge, so on, but I don't know. I've never heard of, I'm sure it exists, but I'm saying in my personal experience, I've not come across the company that says, yes, integral part of our training curriculum, enablement curriculum.
We have a course on building trust,
Well, I think that John and I are aligned on this, that one of the reasons for that is because sales leadership and sellers think that trust is obvious. And there are a few myths. One of which is that trust takes time to build. So people I think are just resigned to the fact that it will be a month's long process to build trust.
And all the research says it's something built in milliseconds to minutes. So perhaps what's been missing is this realization that trustworthiness is a teachable skill and the emphasis on building trust should be right at the beginning of a relationship. There's lots to do downstream of a relationship for sure.
But if you blow that first impression, you can spend months clawing your way out of a trust hole that you didn't even know you were put in because a prospect suspects you have an emotive that's self interested rather than in their best interests.
right? I get worried you get it back there, but John what's your take on this?
I totally agree with Andrew. I think trust. I met Andrew in an unusual circumstance in Chicago. And he immediately
You had to get a clipboard on the street.
Andrew is walking down the street. I was at a friend who I known for 30 years from Kellogg business school, and I was having dinner at his house and all. And he said, hi, Andrew, as Andrew's walking down the street. And I go, wait, are you Andrew Sykes? And he turned around and he's like, what? And so we started a conversation.
We met while I was in Chicago and we decided we're just going to trust right away and see what comes of it. And much has already come, much good has come from it. So I do believe in. I've had ahas about, number one, we breathe as humans, and if we don't breathe for two minutes we're not around in terms of a positive relationship.
We trust and if for any time we decide not to trust, which is in the millisecond time frame to we can decide to not trust or trust, then we disengage from the relationship. And the other thing that really struck me lately was and I'm going to ask you, Andy, think of somebody. Think of some of you do not like right now, a human being.
You just do not like for whatever reason.
Yeah.
I might take you a while.
No.
Now, would you trust that person in the way you would normally trust a human, or do you not trust the person?
No, I wouldn't. No.
Yeah, so this is what was an aha too. Now and then people will say, yes, they trust one person they don't like, but not too many.
And then you go to, who do we like? And we, and do you trust them in the lane that we're supposed to trust them? And often that's a yes. So what I learned was, trust has a bunch of characteristics and Andrew is an expert at teaching us how to, how we trust, how we rebuild trust, how we lose trust.
So trust have these characteristics and liking has these characteristics, but they're really kind of attached. And to me, this was, this wasn't really trained to me over the years, we always talk about, people like you to buy from you and trust you to buy from you. I don't know.
For me, it just put it right at the top. We need to be liked we need to be trusted in order to have a positive conversation.
Maybe I'm late to that game. Have you all figured that out years ago.
Well, yeah, I something I've said on this show before, somebody says, what's the root cause of bad selling? And I say it's bad parenting. And, think about this idea of first impressions, right? How many times you have drilled into your head by your parents, you have one opportunity to make a good first impression.
But to your point, Andrew, there's science behind this, right? It's, and I was doing some research on this for my second book where I wrote about this. Is this. The power of, well, I call it first impressions, I call it first perceptions because we have this science about, pre cognitive processing that we all go through, we're forming an opinion of someone before even conscious of doing it, as you said, in the blink of an eye, 250 milliseconds, we're doing that.
And,
someone even opens their mouth, we've made an assessment of their trustworthiness before they've made a promise, before they've shared their motives. Like none of the things that we think trust deserves to be given for truth telling, reliability, competency, all of the things that we discover after we've met someone and talked to them and maybe seen them in action.
None of those factor into that thin slice of our first assessment.
Yeah. And what the science further goes on and says is that. These impressions, these perceptions of foreign people are extremely sticky, right? That even when confronted with evidence to contradict your perception, We still believe the perception and that the example I like to use is, Hey, you wake up someday at four in the morning and there's police cars surrounding your neighbor's home and he's perp walked out in handcuffs.
But six hours later, the reason said, Oh my God, case of mistaken identity. Yeah. This has had nothing to do with him at all. What do you all think about your neighbor?
Yeah.
I love that example. And that same research also indicates that even if you change context, so you invite a prospect out to dinner, and during the dinner they discover, actually, you're a pretty interesting person, and you form a friendship. As soon as you go back into the context in which the first impression was blown, rather than well made, They go back to feeling that way about you.
So it's not just sticky. It's sticky in the domain in which it's created, which I think was fascinating.
Yeah. All right. So let's go back to this idea that night, cause this is one of my hot buttons that I've talked about a lot is how do you create a strong first impression? Right? Cause it's not like there's things you can't do.
Well, John, I'm curious about your views because I know we've chatted about this and they're probably quite similar. I think there are three big things. The one is a big smile goes such a long way because it generally reciprocates with a return smile and that return smile tells us I probably like this person because I'm smiling at them.
At least in Western cultures, eye contact is the second big one, especially over platforms like this where you're inclined to look at someone's video and the discipline is looking into the camera. So you get that feeling of being looked at on the other side. And the third one is, and this is probably the toughest one, I think, is considering how you dress and carry yourself as a gift to other people.
And I'll get a lot of pushback on this one where people say, I'm just the way I am. If you don't like me, my hair, my dress, my this, my that, then, that's your problem. And that may be true, but it's also a lost opportunity to think about how might I position myself and how I look to allow the other person to trust me so that I earn the right for the privilege of helping them make progress in their life, which is what I think selling is after all.
John, what's your view on that?
So I totally agree with what you said, and I would add pre suasion. A book by Robert Cialdini came out. Really, that was the concept of stuff happens before a lot of times before you see someone. Either you've read about them, or I saw Andrew's video many months ago on this very topic. How do you make a great first impression?
So you get this pre information before you may meet people on phone or Even email or face to face and then I think once you do meet in addition to what Andrew said I think it's all about the other orientation and all about am I really curious about you Andy and Andrew? learn about you as humans and then Get toward the concept that if I do represent a company, I'm selling something.
I want to ask questions around areas where I could make your life even better and that's where I think the magic happens for the top 1 percent sellers because they really make you feel seen, heard and understood or felt. And it's a continual process. They put a lot of energy into that. I can do that a little bit, but not all the, it takes a lot.
So, but bottom line, I think it's that. And, each of us has that experience with each other in an early stage of our relationships. So it's you've already judged me and you've said, well, John, is the other oriented enough or not? And I think that's how it continues.
John, you make a good first impression. So, but the other thing Cialdini of the real key takeaways of the book, is that, we all know the old trope about people like to buy from people they know, like and trust. And we could debate that. But I thought the thing that was most interesting about him is he said people prefer to buy from people who they think.
Like them that, that was the one that was real eyeopener for me. Right? Because this is something no one thinks about. And there's been this pushback among certain, you see this on LinkedIn and certain quarters, which I think is just mind blowingly wrongheaded, but people strongly advocating, ah, you don't need to be likable to sell something.
You don't need to be likable to build a relationship with a customer. You need to be like, and it's like, okay. Sure, in absolute sense, you are, you would be able to sell something to somebody by not being likable, but, it was like to say that's possible, but not very probable.
Oh, Andy, sorry.
I was going to say that I think that there are many people who are effective at closing deals who represent companies whose products are luckily either early stage enough or just so valuable that frankly they're in the way of a purchase or at best they're order taking and in that case you don't have to be likable but if you're in a competitive market and if your product is if you're honest not that much better than everyone else's in the market And you may not be the cheapest.
So what you've really got to distinguish yourself is your sales ability versus your product or brand doing the work for you. I'm with you. I think if you're not likable and don't express a genuine interest and Let's call it a commitment to like your prospect because we haven't met them yet But stalking them on LinkedIn and then expecting when they arrive at the meeting that they haven't done the same and notice that you didn't Send them a gracious invitation a small note to let them know how much you're looking forward to meeting them and other Orientation as John said is I think asking for Having them put you in a trust hole and just sit back and wait and see how you do.
when it plays this whole idea, I'm sorry, John, it's just one point is this, we're in sales, we're in the business of probabilities. Right? Is that everything we do in my mind either increases the likelihood of winning the deal or decreases the likelihood of winning the deal. And so there's these, to me, there's these set of things that are cost free to you as an individual that, given the choice, Why wouldn't you be likable?
Why wouldn't you be friendly? Why wouldn't you be warm? Yeah, in absolute sense, it's absolutely not required. There are always exceptions, but we're in the probabilities business. John.
So I love what you guys are talking about. What struck me I had an aha moment during the pandemic when a former customer invited me out to dinner and it got me thinking about all the top sales people I used to travel with and the companies that I worked at or tried to hire and whatnot. And what it came down to was what you just said about Cialdini.
Which is it's a two way street, right? So, even the buyer's perception is more important than the seller's, and there's a friendliness or friendship perception. Well, what I learned by asking all these top sellers, top 1 percent sellers, which many folks have never met, because it's a small percent of sellers that they befriend their clients.
And then friends help friends, and this is not been typically the start of any sales training, and I really think it should now I'm talking now should for in terms of teaching effectiveness. I'm talking about in the enterprise business to business world.
Sure. That's our audience, right?
Okay. Well, that's really where the experience I'm talking about comes from.
And I just to prepare this podcast, I surveyed folks who've been through my courses and had them identify you top 1%, top 25 percent or whatever. So it's a self identification. However, what I learned was that the top 1 percent people have an estimated number of 18 people they consider friends who are in their clients.
And then the top 25 percent say there are 12. And then under that, it's a mixed bag. then they, then I said, so did they tell you helpful information to help them and their company and their, or their organization? And guess what? The answer was overwhelmingly, yes, they tell me how to sell to them. They tell me about competition.
Yeah. And so it really, it, to me, it like, again, I'm slow to the trust liking being inextricably linked and, but it's much more than that. We got to help the other people be even more successful. And so it's a friendship that has a utility. I remember Andy, you had mentioned that
Aristotle. Yeah.
so there's a utility to it.
And also if the utility goes away, you can continue on. And many enrichments of people's lives have come from people who they first met as business contacts. So this is, I'm kind of, I'm stuck on this for now, and I'm happy to learn that it's not true everywhere. I look, it's true.
Well, I'm going to ask you a question of people about this is so, think back to the people you've, cause I went through this exercise, not that long ago, maybe after you and I spoke, it's thinking, okay, big customers I've sold in the past and so on, are there any there that I just didn't like personally? And yeah, and review. I can't really remember any. It's like, I think that was part of my qualification process is I didn't wanna sell to an asshole 'cause I knew it was gonna be a problem. And , I think top performers by and large do that. Somewhere in the chain. 'cause I saw into large enterprises, there were always some people that, that were problematic.
But by and large, on the people that were my primary contacts that were, moving the deal forward and so on. Yeah. If there was a problem, if I had a problematic relationship with them, the deal wasn't going to happen.
Yeah. And I think the real gold in this area, John, that you're pointing to is considered over the long arc of your trip, the long trajectory of your sales career, because I think the real power in having customers that are friends who, by the way, that doesn't mean in my view that they do you any favors that aren't in the interest of their company.
They're just giving you due consideration and maybe a little bit of information to do a better job for them. So I'm not looking for the kinds of friends who would say, we'll hire you like many government contractors are and one day you both land in jail. But I would tell you that my experience has been that the people that I feel friendly towards and vice versa, hire me over and over again, one company after the next as they move.
And as a seller, I think if you're moving from one company to the next. You're either starting from scratch or worse, you're going back to people you sold to at your previous company, who didn't really consider you as a friend and maybe didn't trust you but bought from you anyway. And now you're telling them that this time my product really is the best.
Last time I told you that, but this time it's true.
So let's dissect some of that a little bit. Because, John, you sort of brought this up, this idea about befriending and, friend is such a loaded word in sales, right. It's because, oh my God, my buyers don't need more friends. And it's like, well. Sure, but that's not what you're trying to do, right?
You're just being friendly.
Right. And.
I was going to say is people, again, it's like, I don't know if it's a generational thing or whatever, but just sort of the weight of the literature. It's like, you tell people, well, the way you connect with someone on a human level in B2B sales, and I'll ask them, I said, do you know how to make a friend?
It's like, Oh, it's like, recoiling. It's what's the word I'm making friends. I said, but this is the same motion you go through, right? Is how do you make a friend? Everybody knows how to make a friend. Well, I'd say almost everybody knows how to make a friend. We learned very early in life. It's you show up this way, you take the mask off and, stop playing the role of a salesperson and show up as a human being that's connecting with another human being. It's pretty straightforward and simple.
I do think it's got a lot to do with time as well, because I'm of the view that the seller that gets the most time with the prospect. More than likely wins the deal and I know as salespeople we're always struggling to get a meeting to get more time and as buyers we're trying to minimize our exposure to Sellers because it's annoying So whether it's called friendship or otherwise, I'd
Unless it's good,
Yeah How do you just be the kind of person that a customer wants to be around because you're lovely you're appreciative You're gracious.
You're humble. You're entertaining you Ask them questions that allow them to see new options they hadn't seen before. You listen like your life depends on it. All those things.
right? But that's the last part. I think it's really the key is that yes, you're all those things, but you're also helpful, right? You're helping them make progress toward making this decision they have to make a change in their business and yeah, if you combine being helpful, I'd put that at the top of the list but to your point precisely, I think about.
Early in my career, when I start, well, at the beginning of my career, when I started in sales, I was selling computers into the construction industry. Big, big computer systems in the construction industry. Knew nothing about business. Knew nothing about the construction industry. Knew nothing about computers.
It's a trifecta. And to top it off, I was 21, 22 years old and I look 16, right? So, all the recipe there to build trust with buyers. The prospects gave me all sorts of time because I showed up interested, curious, wanting to learn about them, wanting to learn what was important to them. And I got all the time in the world I wanted practically.
Yeah, so I think that it's a great story and it's because you were other oriented, you were curious, you were asking questions, and when, and you weren't bogged down with a lot of more experienced people who kind of already knew what they needed and would blurt it out, which every human being recoils against because unsolicited advice, in other words, don't use this, you'll be happy, is an insult.
The humans. So when you too quickly, I think it's too, I think it's the buyer is inspiring themself because like who, who decides for you, Andrew, Andy, who decides for you? Yeah, you do. Yeah. Yeah, you're each.
Let's see, where are we going on vacation? What's for dinner? Yeah. It just depends. Yeah. There's two of us that are part of this conversation. Yes. Yeah.
Yeah, all my kids sometimes, but mostly me, yes.
And you're choosing to move your body toward wherever you're being told to go, it's your choice because otherwise you could be. So the point is this, it relieves pressure. We're not, you don't need to persuade influence. And I think some sales people feel like they're in super high stakes conversations.
Because this is their livelihood and I get it. I think the main thing is to say, Look, just ask questions to help the other person fully reveal to themselves their current situation, rationally, emotionally, how it affects them, other people, monetize it, help them think it through really deeply, and they'll decide, Oh, I'm ready to change, or I'm good with us.
And then the vision of the future. You ask them questions so they can articulate their future. Now you got the gap, and then it's the easy steps to get there. If you go in and say, I'm going to be a friend in that way. And I just want to say to you don't have to be friends with every customer and also friends have boundaries.
There are degrees of friendship, so it and it's meant it's what you said, though. What she'll be, he says to is there is this friendship, human to human connection that facilitates high performance sales. And what I'm excited about with a I, for example, is a is going to help in so many ways. What's really cool is that the top performing salespeople you get in people, you always get down to the human to human connection.
And when you're selling high stakes stuff again, and the enterprise sales. So I'm excited that's going to be a competitive advantage for folks who know how to make friends.
Well, let's ask that question though is, so what does trust look like in the age of AI?
Yeah, I think if any of us are brutally honest, at least for me, the only answer I can give you is I don't know. I have some views on how it might change.
Yeah. The degree of certainty I see on LinkedIn especially among, Yeah, I'll say, sir, the people in their thirties and forties, and please, if you're in 30 and 40s, forgive me, but I was the same way at that age. Right. I know. I know. And, a couple of decades later, it's like, yeah, I didn't know at all.
Yeah, and I think that's true for any, sorry,
Yeah, go ahead.
You're
going to say, I think that's true for any new technology. We never know how it might be applied in the end. And so it's a little arrogant, I think, to have this strong view of this is exactly how it's going to go. Will it change things? I'm sure. And, There's a long history of new technologies coming along that promised a fundamental reshaping of the way sales was done from, I guess, the notepad to the telephone to the email and everything in between.
And still here we are talking about in today's day and age, the importance of friendship and trust and interhuman connection. So I'm hopeful that those things will remain. I'm fearful that maybe in the future, AI will be selling to another piece of AI and humans will be taken out of the equation. But I'm of the view if that happens, we've probably got bigger problems than solving how to sell.
And so I like the idea that AI may amplify the best sellers, may hinder those who don't use it. But like all tools, it's the crafts person that make matters more than the tool. And if we've seen anything with the layers and layers of sales technology being brought into the equation, it's created more distance between buyers and sellers rather than a closeness.
When I hear complaints that customers just don't want to give me the time, I say, are you surprised after you've given them the experience of 13 touches in five days in all the media where they open their email and LinkedIn and you are there with a, trite message, what do you expect? So. I don't know, and I'm hopeful.
Well, yeah, I'm with you. I look back over my career and I, tell people, the big innovation, the year I started selling was FedEx. So FedEx was started the year before I started selling, right? And this is amazing. We could send proposals to customers across the country and they'd get there the next day.
Put them in the mail. It's like, holy cow, right? And then let's see what came soon after that is
Facts for Students.
Well, fax machines before that, but they weren't in wide use. So they came into wide use and then, so then you could fax it. You'd have to FedEx it. And then you had voicemail. Remember voicemail was new.
We thought, Oh my God. This is going to change everything, right? Because we don't have to go through receptions anymore. We can leave voicemails for people. And sure, for a while that worked, until people had 600, 000 emails or voicemails into their inbox. But yeah. I've been through so many revolutions that we're going to completely transform sales that did.
But to your point, it's still humans talking to humans at this point, John, you'll get
Yeah, well, no, I so I do. I do think I will be bigger than the fax machine, whatever that means. I have no idea. But I know you're just giving example. But, I do kind of feel that it is everything is human to human. I can think of very extreme examples where people who are able At odds with each other in extreme degree, and still there was an agreement had not in a sales situation, but other parts.
It is that trust you have to trust is the is required in order to have positive things happen. And I do think we have this animal instinct that gives us the trust, like, even through this conversation, people listening have continued to trust what we're saying or never did or changed. It's a continual process.
It's like breathing. And so I think that when you're. I would love to go and be a seller into a large organization that's complicated and they need help. They essentially need a management consultant to figure out the magnitude of the problems and then how to solve the problems. They need creativity, they need excitement, they need somebody who brightens their day every time they interact with them.
That I think is the most probable way to succeed in the future. Kind of indefinitely, no matter what happens because it's never, the drug companies have absolutely decimated their sales force and then they hire them all back and, every industry. Every industry goes through this thing, and they're still it's what you guys have said.
It's human. It is human to human. That's
well, I remember in 2008 working for a company, we're raising venture money and we're, making the rounds in Sand Hill road. And about 50 percent of the VCs we want to talk to is that no. It looks like part of your plan. You're going to build out a sales team. We're not gonna invest in any product, any company that needs to build a sales team, because we think everything should be able to be sold like Amazon.
Now that presage, this incredible investment and expansion, the sales workforce because investing through SAS companies and so on, and then what was in 2015 Forrester comes out and says, Oh, the world's coming to an end for B2B sellers by the year 2020. Like. I've got 25 percent or 50 percent attrition and the ranks of B2B sellers.
Instead, we've seen a vast multiple of that take place on the other direction. Right. More. And so, yeah, I had some guy this week comment on my LinkedIn post. Somebody had this great certainty. It says buyers want to talk to sellers. They're going to turn to AI who they trust. And there is this tone you get, this assumption, implicit assumption that, or in this case very explicit, is that people are going to trust machines more than humans.
Well, I have to say I'm quite surprised and maybe someone's built this already or it's on its way that there isn't like the filters we have for social media, a trust filter that has your persona show up with all of what science can teach us about how first impressions are made. And you just put on the trust filter.
However, I'm also of the view. That people learn to distrust technology when it's being used on them. It's a little like salespeople calling themselves business development executives. The title is a lie or at least it's a euphemism that tries to hide the bad reputation of being a salesperson. And I wonder if AI used too much is going to have that same effect that if people suspect or they can detect there is a piece of AI in this relationship somehow.
That I'm less trustworthy of the salesperson because of that and maybe we'll start to as a reaction Long for just that human touch, I see in the younger generation now They're starting to use cell phones where there isn't all of this technology So they're always on because they maybe grew up with it like we didn't and so they are longing for just that human touch And perhaps that's our future is a reaction, but I think it's a very brave person who calls it with any certainty So let's wait and see
No I still think that I don't know if you've read Jeffrey Colvin's book, Humans Are Underrated. Or, yeah, for me one of the great takeaways is that, the future and the 21st century belongs to those who learn. How to become more intensely human, right? The things that humans do that the machines can't.
And there's a broad spectrum of those things on the human side that still exist. And yeah, I agree totally. I think you see a situation where, hey, you know. My AI bot is no different than yours in terms of the buyer experience with it. And so they're in the same issue they have today, which is of all products and sort of look alike.
Where's the point of differentiation? Well, it's not going to come through the automation. It's going to come from the human. I believe.
So I love that. I want to leave the AI for a second and come back to the trust concept. I do think that the sales and business people, sales people too, in particular. Have an opportunity to change their language for real. And Andrew brought up like the, I'm going to trick you a little bit. And it's, that's happening all the time, but for real, to change the language and align with these top 1 percent performers with how they really, look at their clients, curious about them, wanting to know about them, wanting to help them.
That's number one is the language can change. So for example, I'm going to target you. No, you're a future friend. I'm going to qualify you. No, we're going to find the fit. I'm going to close you. No, we're going to open a partnership. So I do think there's a whole bunch of language that can change because the words we use change our physiology.
These positive words, yeah, so, so, and not only for us, but then we're contagious. So, from Vanessa Van Edwards has a great Ted talk. You are contagious, no matter what, good, bad or whatever. And so then, so I think there's language there. And then the other thing is have the customers. Tell us how what they want.
And what I mean by now, a individual customer tell us exactly how they want us to behave. And then that's how we behave. We, we're going to trust our customers. We're going to ask them what they want. And of course, we're going to try to share things or ask them questions about things they don't know so they can be fully informed.
But that's what I think the two big opportunities are for the sales world. It's much more client specific input. And then, because they will tell you how to help them if they like you. And if your
I I always say that, people say, how'd you learn how to sell? We're your big influences. I always put the customers number one.
well, so you're, you've
they taught me how to settle to them.
You've been very lucky to be trained in these top 1 percent beliefs and behaviors the way you evolved, where you grew up in sales, many of us don't get that beginning and we get told all these things that reduce trust. So, so I think it is the client input, like you say, and, in the courses I do about 10 percent of people who show up who are all out there in the work world, 10 percent of them integrate customers into their sales training.
That's all just 10%. And it's shocking. Actually, no, you can just stop it right here.
It is shocking and John, plus 100 to words matter. I've stopped when I teach selling using the word discovery because I think it just ends up like someone is coming and they're going to interrogate you, ask you a million questions to discover what your need is so we can take advantage of it, challenge you if you don't have one and then close the deal.
And so I choose the word reconnaissance as an example to look with your customer at what their issue is and stand side by side with them. And Andy, I love what you said. I learned to sell by listening to customers. And then secondly, watching what I used to think were natural salespeople and trying to label and decode what they do.
And then I would say my big third teacher, probably the two of you share this as well, is the many mistakes I've made along the way that just didn't work. And you figure out, well, that's clearly a silly thing to do. Don't repeat that.
Yeah, one of my favorite expressions, I put in my last book, Ralph Waldo Emerson, All life is an experiment, more experiments the better. And, yeah, that has to be sort of your watchword, is keep trying new things and not be afraid to try new things, for sure. And I agree, the language matters. This is language we impose upon our buyers, and we wonder why it's an issue.
Because discovery, nominally, the way a lot of sales leaders want to talk about it is, well, we're discovering the buyer's needs. But really, to the point you're making, Andrew, we're discovering whether they're a fit for us. And those are two completely different things, and the buyers understand and sense the difference between them.
And it's problematic. The way that sales and selling is structured, it's just, it's for our convenience as sellers. And it's never been more true than, let's say, like in the predictable revenue, SaaS business, not SaaS business, but SaaS sales model, is Did anybody ask the buyers if that's what they wanted?
Do we want to have really inexperienced people call them 13 times? You said to try to set up a meeting to have some other person talk to them You know, we sort of go through this laborious process and anybody ask the buyers if they wanted that No, we imposed it upon them. And then we wonder why You know success in that industry generally is pretty low, right?
I mean win rates across the board are pretty low. Why because the buyers like Yeah, this experience sucks.
Yeah. We're customer centric. So we put the customer in the middle and then we fire all sorts of things at them. That's certainly in the middle, but not in the best way.
No. And there's some move a foot thankfully. And yeah, this podcast is meant to be part of that movement to change away from that model, something more customer centric where, yeah, we're there to help the buyer make progress. This is my belief. This is what selling is. We're there to help the buyer make progress toward making this change and the decision to make a change in their business.
Fundamentally. That's what we're trying to do is sales.
Yeah, and it changed for the better for them and the side effect is better for you. Totally agree. Yeah, I think what happened the last 30 years is the company's got, it's what Ford did with the assembly line way back when he found a new technology to get the most out of it.
I think all the things and I don't know that. Sass world like you do it all. I just know from interactions with, participants in the programs and such. I come from the health care selling. I can say with confidence, though, the focus on, making it systematic and forcing people to. Do certain things that take them away from the client is absolutely not what the client wants.
They want the smartest, best people to show up and help them. Plus, they want people to make their lives better. It's an emotion game, really, what we're doing. It's how are we impacting the emotion of the buyer through the journey from before they meet us, and Till they have their outcome and much after and it really is all about.
Are they feeling secure, safe, confident? Are they feeling excited? Are they feeling, are you getting good feelings? And this comes from people have written about it for years. Back, I'm going back before all the systematic stuff. So I want to just say so, Mike Bosworth is a brilliant person who did solution selling.
Published it in 1994. I think almost everything after that rift off his stuff. I even reread it and I was like, Oh my God, I've been doing this stuff, but I didn't really know how to cite it. And so, that I just think we talked about business to business selling. And then, and really we've put that aside and we want to change our language to human helping.
A human to human helping part, it, we're proud to tell our clients that's what we're up for. And that's what we're doing. And it's so funny cause he said, we said B to B selling and he goes, how about John, we call it B to BS. I was like, yeah, because we're not doing business to business.
It's always been humans. So let's really help people focus on make that other human's life even better. And that's the frame and spread goodness and joy. A lot of these top sellers, that's what they're doing too. Even if they're having a crappy day, even if things went wrong, they know that they have the opportunity.
To help another human being who might even be in a rougher spot. So I think that's an important element.
all right, Andrew, a final thought, cause we just about wrapping up time.
Yeah. Final thoughts. Trustworthiness is teachable. It's a skill you can develop. And it begins with the humility that having integrity is not the same thing. So I challenge sales leaders and salespeople to get really humble about how other people assess you, not what you think of yourself.
Yeah. And I would even may narrow the frame to say intellectual humility, right, is we don't know everything and we're there to learn what we don't know and to help the buyer understand things they don't know. So yeah, John.
Thank you for this opportunity. Really fun.
Yeah.
a ton. And I would say befriend clients. Friends help friends. Friends do things for friends that they don't do for non friends. And of course, put the boundaries on that language how you'd like to make you feel comfortable. If you feel more comfortable saying business friends, okay, just realize that client may have somebody they can send or consider beyond a business friend.
And so just keep that in mind. So, thank you. I love what you're doing Andy. Keep it up I love what you're promoting and Andrew love what you're doing. Thank you.
All right, guys. Thank you very much. And yeah, let's do this again. Time went very quickly. Good topic.