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SALES
EQ
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SALES
EQ
HOW ULTRA-HIGH PERFORMERS LEVERAGE
SALES-SPECIFIC EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
TO CLOSE THE COMPLEX DEAL
JEB BLOUNT
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Cover design: Wiley
Copyright  2017 by Jeb Blount. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or
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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their
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to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Blount, Jeb, author.
Title: Sales EQ : how ultra high performers leverage sales-specific emotional
intelligence to close the complex deal / Jeb Blount.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2017] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017007060 (print) | LCCN 2017016245 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781119312574 (cloth) | 9781119325949 (epdf) | ISBN 9781119325956 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Selling. | Emotional intelligence.
Classification: LCC HF5438.25 (ebook) | LCC HF5438.25 .B5683 2017 (print) |
DDC 658.8501/9—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007060
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For Andy, April, Brooke, Carrie, and Keith.
The future is bright.
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Contents
Foreword Anthony Iannarino
xiii
Chapter 1
The Mysterious Brown Bag
The Lesson of a Lifetime
A Front-Row Seat into the Mind of a UHP
1
2
4
Chapter 2
A Perfect Sales Storm
Meet the Ultra-High-Performance Sales Professional
7
9
Chapter 3
The Irrational Buyer
Nail-Biting Suspense
The Answer
The Reason
To Buy Is Human
The Secret Ingredient
Approach Buyers the Way They Buy
11
12
12
13
14
17
18
Chapter 4
Pattern Painting, Cognitive Biases, and Heuristics
Pattern Monster
Pattern Painting
Mental Shortcuts
People Act on Emotion and Justify with Logic
20
21
22
23
24
vii
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Contents
Chapter 5
The Four Levels of Sales Intelligence
Innate Intelligence
Acquired Intelligence
A Thirst for Knowledge
Technological Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence
IQ + AQ + TQ + EQ—A Powerful Combination
28
29
30
31
32
33
33
Chapter 6
Shaping Win Probability
Poetry
Win Probability Is the First Rule of
Ultra-High Sales Performance
Fanatical Prospecting
The Law of Replacement
Disciplined Qualifying
Mapping Stakeholders
Aligning the Three Processes of Sales
Sales EQ and Human Influence Frameworks
35
36
Chapter 7
Dual Process
Sales EQ Balances the Scales
Four Pillars of Sales-Specific Emotional Intelligence
44
45
46
Chapter 8
Empathy
The Foundation of Sales EQ
Empathy Scale
Intentional Empathy
Regulating Empathy
48
50
50
52
54
Chapter 9
Self-Awareness
Self-Awareness Is the Mother of High Sales EQ
Psychometric Assessments
Get a Coach or Mentor
Ask for Feedback
Write Down Your Goals and Plans
360-Degree Review
Self-Reflection
56
57
58
59
60
60
60
62
36
38
39
40
40
41
42
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Contents
ix
Chapter 10
Sales Drive
Developing Drive
Physical Fitness
Develop Mental Toughness
64
66
68
70
Chapter 11
Self-Control
Managing Disruptive Emotions
Genesis of Disruptive Emotions
Fight or Flight
Cognitive Biases
Developing Self-Control
Rise Above Emotion and Choose Your Behaviors
72
73
74
77
80
84
93
Chapter 12
Shaping Win Probability Begins with Qualification 95
Chasing Ugly Deals
96
Define the Strike Zone
97
Qualifying Methodologies and Shortcuts
97
Nine-Frame Qualification Matrix
101
Measure Every Prospect against Your Ideal
Qualified Prospect Profile
104
Murder Boarding
107
Chapter 13
Engagement and Micro-Commitments
Testing Engagement
Tune In to Emotions
Micro-Commitments
Leveraging the Value Bias and Consistency Principle
Getting Caught Up in Emotion
109
110
111
113
114
115
Chapter 14
Stalled Deals and Next Steps
The Bane of Sales Organizations
The Cardinal Rule of Sales Conversations
Getting Past the Next-Step Brush-Off
Ledge
Disrupt
Ask
118
119
120
122
123
124
126
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Chapter 15
Sales Process
Disruptive Emotions Disrupt the Sales Process
Winging It
Complexity Is the Enemy of Execution
No Sales Process
Aligning the Three Processes of Sales
128
129
130
133
133
137
Chapter 16
Buying Process
Mapping the Buying Process
The Danger of Getting Out of Sync
Average Salespeople Dance
Shaping the Buying Process
Get There First
Leverage
Average Salespeople Become Buying Process Puppets
139
140
140
143
143
145
147
148
Chapter 17
The Five Stakeholders You Meet in a Deal
The Higher the Risk, the More Stakeholders Involved
Know Your Audience
Hearts Before Minds
BASIC
The One Question Ultra-High Performers Never Ask
BASIC Mapping
150
151
152
154
155
157
159
Chapter 18
Decision Process
Influencing the Decision Process
Aligning the Three Processes of Sales
The Five Questions That Matter Most in Sales
Aligning Decision Making with Social Proof
160
162
163
163
164
Chapter 19
Do I Like You?
No Second Chances with First Impressions
Likability: The Gateway to Emotional Connections
Connect
Pitch Slapping
Ten Keys to Being More Likable
Connecting Is the Gateway to Lowering Emotional
Walls and Discovery
166
167
168
168
170
172
173
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Chapter 20
xi
Flexing to Complement the Four Primary
Stakeholder Personas
Four Predominant Stakeholder Personas
Director (DISC Equivalent: Dominant)
Analyzer (DISC Equivalent: Conscientious)
Socializer/Energizer (DISC Equivalent: Influential)
Consensus Builder (DISC Equivalent: Steady)
Style Personas Shift
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
Chapter 21
Sales Call Agenda Framework
Greeting
Call Objective
Check Your Stakeholder’s Agenda
Frame the Conversation
Emotional Contagion: People Respond in Kind
183
184
187
188
192
194
Chapter 22
Do You Listen to Me?
Why People Don’t Listen
Four Principles of Effective Sales Conversations
The Fine Art of Listening
Active Listening
Listen Deeply
Activating the Self-Disclosure Loop
197
198
199
201
202
203
204
Chapter 23
Discovery: Sales Is a Language of Questions
The Tour
Alpha and Omega
Joe the Interrogator
Ask Easy Questions First
The Power of Open-Ended Questions
Avoid the Pump and Pounce
Fluid Dual Process Discovery
Developing Go-To Questions
207
209
211
212
214
216
217
218
221
Chapter 24
Do You Make Me Feel Important?
The Most Insatiable Human Need
How to Make People Feel Important
The Law of Reciprocity
Obligation and Win Probability
225
226
227
229
231
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xii
Chapter 25
Contents
Do You Get Me and My Problems?
You Can’t Differentiate When Everything Looks
the Same
The Age of Transparency
Do You Get Me?
People Buy for Their Reasons, Not Yours
The Power of Language
Message Matters
The “So What?” Smell Test
The Fine Art of Bridging
The Three-Step Bridging Framework
232
234
235
236
237
238
240
241
242
244
Chapter 26
Asking: The Most Important Sales Discipline
Closing
Afraid to Ask
The Assumptive Ask
Shut Up
248
249
250
252
254
Chapter 27
Turning Around Objections
How Salespeople Create Objections
Status Quo Bias and Why Buyers Object
You Cannot Argue Stakeholders Out of an Objection
Five-Step Objection Turnaround Framework
258
259
260
263
263
Chapter 28
Do I Trust and Believe You?
Emotional Baggage
You Are Always on Stage
One Brick at a Time
270
271
272
273
Chapter 29
Amache
275
Notes
281
Training and Workshops
288
About the Author
290
Acknowledgments
292
Index
294
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Foreword
Air Force Colonel John Boyd, the man who popularized the observe,
orient, decide, and act (OODA) loop and perhaps America’s Sun Tzu,
admonished a U.S. Department of Defense enamored with technology
to put certain priorities in the right order. He insisted on “People. Ideas.
Technology. In that order.”
Boyd believed strongly that people come first. Technology,
therefore, serves people and ideas. Technology isn’t and cannot be a
substitute for human beings and their resourcefulness, creativity, and
ability to forge and leverage relationships.
In a day and age when technology is disrupting and disinterme­
diating entire industries and radically changing life as we know it, there
are still a few of us willing to remind you of what’s most important—
especially when it comes to sales and commercial relationships.
At a time when many technology companies and pundits (usually
with an ulterior motive) suggest that “people” are no longer how the
game of sales is won or lost, that technology is what matters most,
Jeb Blount comes forward with Sales EQ. This extraordinary message
about sales-specific emotional intelligence and human relationships
will radically improve your sales results and change the way you look
at sales.
In Sales EQ, you will gain a deeper understanding of human
psychology and influence frameworks. You’ll take a journey inside
your mind to understand the cognitive biases and disruptive emotions
xiii
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Foreword
that hold you back in interpersonal relationships and undo your efforts
to win deals.
More important, Jeb doesn’t leave you hanging with theory. He
gives you a precise prescription for leveraging sales-specific emotional
intelligence (Sales EQ) to reach ultra-high sales performance—the
highest earning echelon of the sales profession.
Jeb believes, correctly so, that ultra-high sales performance begins
with taking control of your emotions and mastering the psychology of
influence within the scope of the sales and buying processes. Selling is
about influencing change, and that starts with changing you and then
helping your clients move past status quo.
As you delve deeply into Sales EQ, you are going to understand
why psychology is far more important than technology. You’ll gain
insight into why your prospective clients take certain actions—or refuse
to take those actions—and how to deftly influence their behaviors to
increase the probability of closing the deal.
This is one of the most important books on sales in the past two
decades, and there isn’t a better person to have written it. Jeb is a
practitioner. What he teaches here is not theory, even though he
provides the latest research in neuroscience and human psychology.
What is contained between the covers of this book can only come
from someone who has sold and succeeded as an ultra-high performer,
and someone who helps salespeople and sales organizations accelerate
sales results by making massive sales productivity improvements.
If you’ve wondered why ultra-high performers produce greater
results than their peers, you are holding all the answers in your hand.
It’s not what they sell, it’s how they sell. If you are seeking a true
competitive advantage that will set you apart in the sales profession,
follow Jeb’s recipe carefully, and you’ll soon take your place among the
ultra-high performers.
—Anthony Iannarino, author of The Only Sales
Guide You’ll Ever Need and publisher of The Sales Blog
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1
The Mysterious
Brown Bag
It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit.
—Antoine Rivarol
At the young age of 23, Art had just landed a huge promotion or, in his
words, “Somebody left the company, and I got lucky.”
As a lease sales representative, he worked with complex, long-cycle
deals, not the typical sales role handed to wet-behind-the-ears 23-year­
olds. Fortunately, Art had two things in his favor: an unequaled drive to
succeed and a great mentor.
His mentor and sales manager was a company legend. Joe had his
name etched on pretty much every award the company bestowed and
on many of the largest customers in the organization’s account base.
Joe appreciated Art’s willingness to learn and took him under his
wing.
“To me, at that young age, Joe looked ancient,” Art jokes. “He’d
been around forever. But he knew the answers to every question and
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where to find any tidbit of information; and, boy, did he know how to
talk to customers.”
It was Joe who taught Art one of the most valuable lessons of his
young career: You must learn to speak your prospect’s language, because people
buy for their reasons, not yours.
The Lesson of a Lifetime
Art had been working on a deal with a local bakery. Everything was
going along without a hitch until Art presented his pricing.
“Mr. Colaizzi, the owner, was adamant that my rates were
too high, and he wouldn’t budge from his position. I’d been going
back and forth trying to convince him that, even though my rates
were a little higher than my competitors’, the added value from
the quality of our service was more than worth it. But I was getting
nowhere.
“He kept throwing the competitors’ low prices in my face, but I
was in a tight spot. If I went any lower, I wouldn’t make a dime
of commission. Worse, I’d have to get approval from my district
manager—not a pleasant experience.
“During a pipeline review with Joe, I explained that the Colaizzi
deal was stalled, and expressed my frustration with our high rates. If we
didn’t get our prices in line with our competitors’, I was never going to
be able to sell anything!”
Art smiles as he explains that he might have been “just a little bit
hotheaded back then,” and tells the story of how Joe taught him an
indelible lesson:
Joe didn’t flinch. He just stood up and said, “Come on.” We walked
out to his car, and he motioned for me to get in.
Then Joe drives us to a local grocery store, parks the car, and says,
“Wait here.” Ten minutes later he comes out carrying a brown paper
bag. He stuffs it in the backseat, puts the car in drive, and off we go.
A half hour later we’re sitting in the lobby of the Colaizzi Baking
Company waiting for Mr. Colaizzi to arrive, the mysterious brown
bag perched on Joe’s lap.
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The Mysterious Brown Bag
After a 20-minute or so wait, an assistant ushers us into Mr. Colaizzi’s
office—the brown bag clutched in Joe’s hand.
I didn’t know what to expect. Joe had barely spoken to me since we’d
gotten into his car, and I was nervous about his intentions.
We sat down across from Mr. Colaizzi’s desk, and Joe started the
conversation in a relaxed, almost nonchalant tone: “Mr. Colaizzi, Art
tells me he’s been working with you on a truck leasing program for
your delivery fleet. He says you feel that our rates are a bit too high,
and I came down here to learn more.”
Then, he shut up.
Mr. Colaizzi leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and said, “I
appreciate that you took the time to come all the way down here,
but the fact is your rates aren’t a ‘bit’ higher; they’re way higher than
your competitors’. You aren’t even close. I know you’re going to say
that your service and quality are better. You can save your breath
because I’ve heard it all before. All of you truck companies are the
same. If you can’t get your prices in line with your competitors’,
we don’t have anything to talk about.”
Joe wasn’t the least bit ruffled. He placed the brown bag on
Mr. Colaizzi’s desk, slowly unfolded the top, and pulled two loaves
of bread out of the bag. Joe set the bag on the floor and placed the
loaves directly in front of Mr. Colaizzi.
Joe allowed the silence to hang in the air for just a moment before
speaking. “Mr. Colaizzi, I’m just curious. What’s the difference
between this loaf of supermarket brand white bread that costs
sixty-three cents and this loaf of Colaizzi Italian bread that costs a
dollar eighty-seven cents? What makes it worth three times as
much?”
Mr. Colaizzi jumped up, pushed his chair back, leaned over his desk,
and spent the next 10 minutes lecturing us on why his bread was
better—his passion for his bread and reputation on full display.
He explained that his bread was fresher, that it was made from higherquality ingredients, the care that went into making it, the unique
baking process, his family’s recipe, the history of Colaizzi bread, and
the taste. The taste was “so much better than mass-produced
bread”—his face twisted in disgust as he said the words—“with all
of those artificial ingredients. That stuff’s more like cardboard than
bread.”
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Sales EQ
When he felt that we’d been sufficiently educated on the superiority
of Colaizzi Italian bread, he sat back down.
Joe leaned across the desk, picked up the loaf of Colaizzi bread, and
said, “Mr. Colaizzi, that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to tell you
about us. We are the Colaizzi bread of truck leasing!”
For an interminable moment, Joe and Mr. Colaizzi just sat there
staring at each other.
I didn’t breathe.
Then a grin spread across Mr. Colaizzi’s face, and he let go of a big
laugh. He reached out and shook Joe’s hand. There were still a few
concessions to make, but we walked out with a signed contract and a
new customer. We no longer looked the same as our competitors.
Today Art Vallely is COO of Penske Truck Leasing. He’s one of
the most gifted and dynamic leaders I know—an executive who gets it.
He puts a high priority on sales and sales training. He’s the only C-level
executive I work with who spends time with every sales training class
from entry-level sales reps in basic sales training to veteran sales
professionals who are attending advanced training.
Art passes on lessons, like the one Joe taught him, to his sales
professionals to help them understand that the key to being an ultra­
high performer (UHP) in sales is mastering emotions, interpersonal
skills, and human relationships.
A Front-Row Seat into the Mind of a UHP
In Mr. Colaizzi’s mind, all truck companies were the same. Why
wouldn’t he believe this? He had endured multiple truck leasing
sales pitches that all sounded the same, marketing brochures and
collateral that looked the same, and proposals that offered the same
promises.
To Mr. Colaizzi, a truck was a truck was a truck. Inside this pattern
of sameness, Mr. Colaizzi shifted into his reflex buyer script—“Your
price is too high.” From a purely cognitive standpoint, his response was
an easy mental shortcut for dealing with the complexity of sorting out
the real differences between the vendors.
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The Mysterious Brown Bag
5
Average salespeople play into and conform to buyer scripts by
responding in kind. They become defensive, they argue, or they fold.
In the process, they lose control and lower deal win probabilities.
But Joe didn’t play by the same rules as average salespeople. He
reached into his mysterious brown paper bag and changed the game—
leveraging simple, but powerful, influence frameworks.
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
In response to Mr. Colaizzi’s buyer script, Joe leveraged a noncomplementary response.
This disrupted Mr. Colaizzi’s expectations for how a salesperson
would behave, pulling Mr. Colaizzi’s attention toward Joe.
Mr. Colaizzi took the stage to defend his position and lecture Art
and Joe on why Colaizzi bread was better than supermarket bread.
As Mr. Colaizzi began talking about his bread, it kicked off a selfdisclosure dopamine loop in his brain that rewarded him for
talking. He felt good, even though his conscious self didn’t
know why.
As Joe and Art listened intently to the lecture and gave their
complete attention, it made Mr. Colaizzi feel important (the most
powerful gift you can give another person). This created a feeling
of obligation in Mr. Colaizzi.
In the process of lecturing Art and Joe, Mr. Colaizzi became more
committed to his position that his bread was better than the
competition.
Joe touched both wires to the emotional trigger by speaking in
Mr. Colaizzi’s language: That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to tell
you about us. We are the Colaizzi bread of truck leasing.
Using Mr. Colaizzi’s language caused him to feel that Joe
understood him, creating a powerful emotional connection and
trust.
Mr. Colaizzi had committed to the position that his bread was
different. To then refute Joe’s claim that his truck leasing service
was also different would be inconsistent. This incongruence
would cause painful mental stress called cognitive dissonance.
All Mr. Colaizzi could do was smile and agree when Joe made his
case.
The feeling of obligation Mr. Collaizzi felt when Joe and Art made
him feel important caused him to want to reciprocate, which
opened the door to negotiation. A deal was then struck that was
fair to both parties.
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Sales EQ
Average salespeople delude themselves into believing that buyers
make rational, logical decisions based on empirical data and informa­
tion. But that’s not how the human mind works. Emotions come first,
then logic.
Rather than fold like a cheap lawn chair and lower the price,
Joe managed his own disruptive emotions and flipped the buyer script,
“Your price is too high.” He then shaped the decision process until it
became virtually impossible for Mr. Colaizzi to make any decision
other than yes.
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2
A Perfect
Sales Storm
Your chances of getting struck by lightning go up if you stand under a tree,
shake your fist at the sky, and say “Storms suck!”
—Johnny Carson
The sales profession is in the midst of a perfect storm. Buyers have more
power—more tools, more information, more at stake, and more
control over the sales process than at any time in history.
Technology is accelerating disruptive change at an ever-increasing
pace, creating fear and insecurity that leaves buyers clinging to the status
quo. Technology also serves the purpose of lowering barriers to entry,
thus releasing a relentless onslaught of “me-too” competitors. Differ­
entiating on the attributes of products, services, or prices is fleeting at
best and more difficult than ever before.
To buyers, it all looks the same.
Legions of salespeople and their leaders are coming face-to-face
with a cold, hard truth: what once gave salespeople a competitive
7
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edge—controlling the sales process, command of product knowledge,
an arsenal of technology, and a great pitch—are no longer guarantees of
success.
Meanwhile, buyers have lost all patience for kitchen-sink data
dumps of features and benefits and canned product pitches. They
expect more from their interactions with salespeople. Buyers want to
emerge from sales conversations with value beyond a dissertation of the
rep’s marketing brochures.
In response to this shift in buyer expectations, salespeople are being
told that they need to offer insight, teach, challenge, and add value.
However, deteriorating attention spans have made it difficult to get
buyers to sit still long enough to be given insight, taught, challenged, or
provided with added value.
These “modern” sales concepts sound intriguing and promising on
the pages of a book or in a seminar, but land like a lead balloon in the
real world with real buyers because the majority of salespeople haven’t
mastered the situational awareness and emotional intelligence to
leverage these techniques effectively while maintaining human
connections.
Many of the salespeople attempting these techniques leave buyers
exasperated because the techniques just come off as self-important
pitching. Salespeople are not learning and mastering interpersonal skills.
They do not understand how to engage buyers on a human-to-human
level.
Adding to the problem is an entire generation entering the
workforce for whom text messaging, e-mail, and social media posts
are the preferred, arm’s-length form of communication.1 This new
generation is a conundrum. They are socially aware but view humanto-human relationships in the abstract.
In this perfect storm, it’s no wonder so many salespeople are
struggling. It’s no wonder that sales leaders are frustrated and more
stressed out than ever. It’s no wonder that buyers are starving for
authentic human interaction. And it’s not surprising that most compa­
nies are experiencing sales pipelines clogged with stalled deals, and
staring down the barrel at 50 percent or more of their salespeople
missing their quotas.
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A Perfect Sales Storm
9
Meet the Ultra-High-Performance Sales Professional
In this new paradigm, though, there is an elite group of sales
professionals who are crushing it. In this age of transparency where
information is ubiquitous and buyer attention spans are fleeting, these
ultra-high performers have learned how to leverage a new psychology of
selling to keep prospects engaged, create true competitive differentia­
tion, and shape and influence buying decisions.
The ultra-high sales performer is acutely aware that the emotional
experience of buying from them is far more important than products,
prices, features, and solutions. They know that to sell value, they must be
valuable, and they must earn the right, through human relationships, to
teach, offer insight, or challenge.
Over the course of this book, I’m going to take you on an un­
precedented journey into the behaviors and mind-sets of the highestearning sales professionals. I’m going to open a window into their
minds and show you their techniques, frameworks, and secrets. You’ll
learn how to:
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Leverage human behavior frameworks, heuristics, and cognitive
biases to influence buying behaviors.
Manage and control the Disruptive Emotions that are holding you
back.
Improve Sales EQ and build on the Four Intelligences required for
ultra-high performance.
Shape and align the Three Processes of Sales to lock out competitors
and shorten the sales cycle.
Influence and manage relationships with The Five Stakeholders You
Meet in a Deal.
Flip the Buyer Script to gain complete control of the sales conversation.
Leverage Noncomplementary Behavior to eliminate resistance, con­
flict, and objections.
Disrupt Expectations to pull buyers toward you, direct their atten­
tion, and keep them engaged.
Gain Micro-Commitments and Next Steps to keep your deals from
stalling.
Tame Irrational Buyers, shake them out of their comfort zone, and
shape the decision-making process.
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■
■
Answer The Five Questions That Matter Most in Sales to make it
virtually impossible for prospects to say no.
Shape Win Probability in your favor to gain an unbeatable com­
petitive advantage.
Sales EQ begins where many of the great books and sales training
programs like The Challenger Sale, Strategic Selling, Insight Selling, and
SPIN Selling leave off. It addresses the human relationship gap in the
modern sales process—the emotional side of selling.
I want to be crystal clear about my intentions. I didn’t invest a year
of my life writing this book merely to make you a better level of
average. Screw average. To hell with mediocrity.
I’m pulling back the veil from ultra-high sales performance. My
mission is to move you into the top tier of salespeople in your company,
industry, and field. To help you become insanely successful—an elite
top earner.
A Note about the Word Stakeholder
Throughout the book, I use stakeholder as a generic term inclusive
of buyers, amplifiers, seekers, influencers, and coaches. These
roles are also, in my work and the work of others, defined as
prospects and decision makers. For expediency and to avoid
confusion, I have chosen to use the term stakeholder.
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The Irrational
Buyer
Life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
—Confucius
Everyone in my industry knew about the opportunity. It was a rare gem
that caused my competitors to throw everything at it. One of my
competitors flew the stakeholders around in a luxurious corporate jet to
visit its manufacturing plants, wining and dining them along the way.
Another competitor feted the stakeholder group at premier sporting
events.
I agonized that we were going to lose the deal because we weren’t
keeping up with the Joneses. My company didn’t have the resources to
entertain a large stakeholder group like our competitors could, nor was
it in our culture to do so.
Adding to my anxiety were our no-frills production facilities that
were dated compared to the competition, with their modern, state-of­
the-art plants.
11
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Honestly, it was like David going up against Goliath. But it was a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I had bet the farm and my
reputation on closing it.
Nail-Biting Suspense
After almost two years of work, we delivered our final presentation and
proposal. On the eve of the decision I couldn’t sleep. Perhaps that I was
close to an all-out anxiety attack and mental breakdown is a better
description.
But the next day no word came. Then another day went by and
another. I called, but no one answered; I left messages that were not
returned, and tried to pry information out of the gatekeepers. Nothing.
Crickets.
I put on a brave, relaxed face, but I was in a state of panic. In my
heart I knew that no news was bad news. After working closely with
these stakeholders for so long, we’d become friends. I knew that none
of them wanted to deliver the word that we were not the vendor of
choice.
Over the next weekend, I talked myself off the ledge and came to
grips with the fact that my dream of landing the account was not going
to come true. I prepared to move on, knowing that there was a
likelihood, after expending so many resources on the deal, that I might
not have a job.
The Answer
On Monday morning, I drove to the office early and prepared to start
rebuilding a pipeline that had been obliterated while I’d focused my
complete attention on a single deal.
Just a little after 8:30 my phone rang. The receptionist told me that
Randy (my coach at the account) was on the line.
“Randy, nice to hear from you! How was your weekend?” I did
my best not to sound as desperate as I felt.
“Good, Jeb. How about yours?”
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“Fantastic,” I lied.
“Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls.” There was no emotion
in his voice. “Our team met last week to go over the proposals, and
honestly it wasn’t an easy decision. All the companies did a great job.
But we made a choice, and I don’t want to keep you in suspense any
longer.”
My heart was racing as I braced for the worst.
“It was unanimous.” His voice was solemn.
I could feel the bad news coming.
“We’ve decided to go with you guys!” He started laughing, clearly
enjoying the pain he’d caused me.
The Reason
“Thank you! That’s incredible. Thank you!” I was gushing and could
barely find words as a wave of relief rushed over me.
We quickly put together a plan for the next steps and getting a
contract over to his legal team. I was anxious to get off the phone and
share the good news with my wife and our team, but, before I let him
go, I asked what compelled them to pick my company.
“You know, we just felt like you guys were a lot like us.” He
pointed to how much fun his team had the day they toured our
production facility.
At lunch, we shut the plant down, brought in barbecue, and ate on
paper plates—his stakeholders, our sales team, and the plant employees
all mingled together. He explained that they enjoyed spending time
with our people without all the formality. His team felt our people
were down-to-earth and cared—just like them.
Closing that deal was a two-year ordeal requiring a significant
investment of resources, a team of people dedicated to the cause, and
hours and hours of work on strategy, stakeholder mapping, endless
financial analysis, and extensive supply chain work to source and
customize an array of products, not to mention all the emotional
anguish.
But it wasn’t the six-inch-thick request for proposal (RFP)
response with every imaginable spec that closed the deal. Nor the
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final presentation we spent three days and nights rehearsing. Nor the
detailed implementation plan that took a week to develop. Nor the
research, demos, samples, and data. Not planes, fancy entertainment, or
sports tickets.
In the end, they felt that we were more like them than our
competitors were. They felt more comfortable with the people on our
team and our company culture. They liked us more. We were a safe
choice. A pivotal decision swayed by the whim of emotion. A similarity
bias. Unquantifiable and irrational.
It was the biggest deal I’d ever closed. Huge. The commission on
the account alone was enough to purchase a 5,000-square-foot home
with cash (which I did) and have enough money left over to make a
significant contribution to my savings. Just like that, at the age of 26, I
went from the depths of depression to the top of the world. Closing that
deal changed my life and set my career on the fast track.
Since then I’ve closed bigger and more complex deals worth
millions more dollars. Yet, no other sale taught me more about
what matters most in sales. It was a humbling lesson on why what
we often believe is important to influencing the outcome of a sale is just
dead wrong.
It also put me on the path I’ve been on as a practitioner, leader,
author, consultant, researcher, and trainer for the past 20 years, on a
mission to answer two simple, yet frustratingly elusive, questions:
1. Why do people buy?
2. How do we influence them to buy?
To Buy Is Human
People act on emotion and justify with logic. From complex to
completely transactional impulse purchases, emotions drive buying
decisions. Science is stacking up one study after another demonstrating
the leverage emotion exerts on the choices we make. The real-life
examples are legion:
■
A banking executive makes a $500,000 enterprise software deci­
sion because she likes the account executive, Geoff, better than the
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■
■
■
■
■
■
■
15
competitor’s sale rep—she tells him she appreciated his thoughtful
birthday card.
Michelle pays more for the same mattress because she feels like
her sales rep Gwen cares more about her than Ray at Gwen’s
competitor.
A vice president of safety and compliance at a major electrical
utility makes a million-dollar decision on safety equipment
because he “just feels like he can trust the rep he’s working with.”
Carrie buys a car that is not exactly what she wants because she
doesn’t want to let down the sales rep who helped her.
At a wine-tasting party, people feel that the wine with the higher
price tag tastes better even though every bottle is filled with the
exact same low-cost wine.1
John buys a stock because the company’s name is easier to
pronounce.2
People choose Pepsi in a blind taste test but think Coke tastes
better when they can see the cans.3
I close my dream account because the stakeholders feel that we are
similar to them.
Daniel Pink says that to sell is human;4 likewise, to buy is human.
Though as humans we are certain that we’re making choices based on
rational logic, our best interests, or organized facts, science says that we
often don’t.
In one research study, a liquor store played German beer hall music
on Tuesdays and French music on Wednesdays. Correspondingly,
German beer sales went up on Tuesdays, with French wine sales
increasing on Wednesdays.
On the sidewalk outside the store, researchers peered into brown
bags and interviewed the patrons to learn why they purchased the beer
or wine. Most of the shoppers gave logical reasons for their purchase—
saw it in a magazine, recommended by a friend, cooking steaks tonight, like the
taste of premium beer—proving that people buy on emotion and justify
with logic.
As humans, it is important that our self-image correlate with our
decisions. So, we fall on logic to justify subconscious buying behavior.
Emotion is why well-educated executives make multimilliondollar decisions with massive implications for their companies because
they feel that one sales team cares about them more than another.
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Despite all of the tools, information, and data at their fingertips, in
our Internet-connected world, buyers continue to make irrational
decisions.
Am I saying that product features, quality, specs, delivery
options and speed, service, technology, locations, price, and other
tangible attributes of your offering don’t matter? Of course not.
These things absolutely matter. All are tickets to the game, and a
deficiency in one of these areas can eliminate you before you ever get
started.
However, the sales profession, inclusive of salespeople, sales train­
ers, sales leaders, and the marketing teams that support sales, are and
have been under the collective delusion that buyers make logical
decisions that are in their own or their company’s best interest—
that they weigh decisions rationally and objectively.
Evidence upon evidence and data stacked on data refute this
assumption. Frankly, you don’t need to look far for proof.
I have no doubt that you’ve been frustrated with a prospect into
which you’ve poured heart and soul. You’ve built the case why they
should do business with you. You’ve analyzed their current situation
and shown them how you can save them money, time, and stress, and
offered them better service.
In such a case, the proof was irrefutable, your references were
impeccable, and there was even a compelling trigger event to drive
urgency. Yet, instead of signing your agreement, they gave your
competitor (who had taken them for granted, provided shoddy service,
pissed them off, and overbilled them for the headache) a second chance.
I know—I’ve been there, and it’s maddening.
If we were to ask your buyer why they chose to remain with a
vendor that was not working in their best interest, they would lead off
with a number of what they felt were logical, rational reasons. But
refuting and arguing the facts would get you nowhere. The buyer
would just dig in and become intractable.
What they would be unable to explain or unwilling to admit is
their fear of making a mistake; or that there was just something about
you that, at the subconscious level, they didn’t trust; or that because
they avoid conflict, firing the current vendor would put them in an
uncomfortable position.
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Layer upon layer of emotions—conscious and subconscious—
drive this irrational choice. Yet they explain the decision in completely
rational terms.
The Secret Ingredient
As a sales professional, understanding how emotions dominate and
drive buying decisions is critical to supercharging your income and
advancing your career.
When all things are equal—and in today’s marketplace there are
rarely huge gaps or differences between competitors (at least from
the buyer’s viewpoint)—your ability to influence the emotions of
stakeholders while regulating your own disruptive emotions, as you
move deals through the sales pipeline, gives you a distinct competitive
edge.
If you’ll just take a moment to consider the deals you’ve lost and
won and how most salespeople approach buyers, you’ll come face-to­
face with the truth:
■
■
■
A truth that is invisible to countless salespeople.
A truth invisible to sales trainers and experts whose house of cards
begins to fall apart when their process-based, data-driven, science
of selling fallacy meets irrational emotions.
A truth ignored by the challengers who pontificate to stakeholders
about how they’re “doing it all wrong,” and the insight sellers who
teach their poor, ignorant buyers how to “do it right.”
Borrowing one of my favorite lines from the movie The Big Short,
“The truth is like poetry. But people fucking hate poetry.”
Emotions are difficult to wrap our arms around and are some­
times hard to face. It’s so much easier to pitch the features of a widget
than to tune into the emotions of the stakeholder sitting across
from you. The brutal, inconvenient truth is you can pitch, challenge,
teach, and offer insight to your heart’s content, but it will not matter
because:
People buy for their reasons, not yours.
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Approach Buyers the Way They Buy
Selling is human. Buying is human. Both pursuits are woven into the
imperfect fabric of human emotions. No matter what you sell, your
sales cycle, or the complexity of the sales and buying process, emotions
play a crucial role in the outcomes of your sales conversations,
interactions, and deals.
Each time you (and the members of your selling team) and each
stakeholder involved in the buying decision meet, those emotions
collide.
Most salespeople begin the sales process from a position of logic
and gradually shift toward emotion. In contrast, buyers tend to begin
the buying process at the emotional level and over time shift toward
logic.
At the beginning of the sales process, the buyer is asking a basic
question about the salesperson: Do I like you? In the same moment, the
seller is delivering a pitch on product features they believe will generate
interest from the buyer.
Few things make sellers more unlikable than pitching. And so it
goes throughout the buying journey. By the end of the sales process
when the buyer is asking rational questions, putting objections on the
table, and negotiating, the seller is reacting emotionally to perceived
rejection, desperate not to lose the deal.
At the emotional level, the parties are perpetually out of sync
(Figure 3.1).
Of course, I’m not blind to the oversimplification of this example.
Human interaction is complex and often nonlinear. However, dealing
with people in the context of sales conversations doesn’t need to be
overly complex or overwhelming.
A handful of principles and influence frameworks guide most
human behavior. When you learn to master these simple frameworks,
you’ll become a master of emotions, influence, and persuasion.
I’ve already shared with you one of the most cogent truths in sales:
People buy for their reasons, not yours. It follows, then, that to be effective,
you must approach people the way they buy rather than the way
you sell.
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Figure 3.1 Seller versus Buyer
This new approach requires sales specific emotional intelligence—
Sales EQ. Sales EQ is the ability to manage your own disruptive
emotions while at the same time accurately interpreting and responding
to the emotions of stakeholders, in the context of the sales and buying
processes. As you’ll learn in the upcoming chapters, it is this emotional
control that sets ultra-high sales performers apart.
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4
Pattern Painting,
Cognitive Biases,
and Heuristics
You can’t argue with the brain: it wants what it wants what it wants.
—Dr. Katherine Ramsland
Stop reading for a moment. I want you to focus on being aware of every
visual, tactile, kinesthetic, and auditory stimulus in your environment.
Try to focus on the obvious to the mundane: the color of the carpet,
walls, the chair you are sitting in. Study each person walking by you or
near you: what they are wearing, their facial expressions, and the
content of their conversations. What sounds do you hear? What
textures do you feel?
Try to take it all in at once. Instantly overwhelming?
Now, imagine what it would be like if you were forced to
experience this massive sensory overload all the time. It would paralyze
you.
Much like a computer, our brains can process only so much
information at one time. As the cognitive load1 grows, it slows
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down and becomes less efficient. The brain is unable to focus, and
attention control diminishes.
From a purely evolutionary sense, this inability to focus can put
you in danger. Should there be a threat nearby—say a saber-toothed
tiger crouched in the weeds, or a bus rolling down the street—and you
are so overwhelmed with incoming sensory information that you fail to
see it, bam! You are lunch or a pancake.
Pattern Monster
Moving slowly had the tendency to remove one’s DNA from the gene
pool, so our brains evolved to think fast. With so much sensory
information hitting us at one time, we needed a way to manage it
and focus only on environmental anomalies that might be dangers or
opportunities.
The human brain is a pattern monster. It is a master at grabbing the
billions of bits of information in the environment around you, inter­
preting the patterns, and behaving appropriately (in most cases) in
response to those patterns.2
If your brain did not leverage patterns for decision making
and adaptive response to the world around you, you’d be unable
to function. Every bit of information would require analyzing
before a decision could be made. Instead, the brain uses mental
shortcuts (heuristics) to cut through the noise and make quick
decisions.
A basic understanding of how these mental shortcuts work is
crucial for controlling your own behaviors and influencing the behav­
iors of others. Let’s begin with two facts about the brain.
1. It is tasked with keeping you alive and, therefore, focuses on things in
the environment that are unexpected and could pose a threat while
ignoring things that are the same (patterns) to ensure that it does
not miss the former.
2. It is lazy, preferring the path of least resistance or cognitive load
when making decisions, which also contributes to keeping you
alive. When the brain sees a pattern, for example, that is similar to
other patterns, instead of taking the time to analyze whether the
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two things are different, it assumes they are the same and uses that
shortcut to make quick decisions.
Pattern Painting
If suddenly there was a loud noise nearby, your attention would be torn
from these words and pulled toward that sound. Then, your brain
would begin scanning your surroundings for anything out of place that
could potentially be a threat while preparing you to deal with that
threat. This is your fight-or-flight response. For the moment, a part of
your brain called the amygdala has taken control of your emotions and
behavior.
Think of the brain as a Russian nesting doll. The big doll on the
outside is the neocortex. This is your gray matter—your rational brain.
The middle doll is the limbic system—your emotional brain. The
smallest doll is your cerebellum or autonomic brain—it manages all the
little (but still important) things, like breathing, so you can concentrate
on thinking.
All three brains are connected to the amygdala, which is housed in
the limbic system.
The amygdala is the hub that processes all sensory input, connect­
ing the rational, emotional, and autonomic parts of your brain and is the
center for emotions, emotional behavior, and motivation. Fear and
pleasure are the language of the amygdala, and it exerts a massive and
compulsory influence over your emotional behavior.
To avoid wasting precious resources on things that don’t matter,
the amygdala focuses on and responds to environmental disruptions—
different, unexpected, new, what it deems important to your survival,
both physically and socially. This simple cognitive shortcut of ignoring
boring patterns and being alert to anything that disrupts patterns is a key
reason for our success as a species.
Salespeople who disrupt expectations pull stakeholders toward
them. They paint boring sales patterns with bright colors. Pattern
painting is how ultra-high performers (UHPs) flip the buyer script and
change the game. Different is sexy. Different sells. The amygdala loves
bright, shiny things.
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23
Throughout this book are examples of how UHPs paint common
patterns to disrupt expectation and differentiate themselves.
When your sales behaviors fall into an expected pattern, you will
not differentiate and you will not garner attention. You do not create
fear or promise pleasure. You are not interesting. Your dull colors are
easy to ignore.
When you look, act, feel, and sound like every other sales rep who
calls, e-mails, provides a demo, presents, pitches, challenges, or walks
through the door, your stakeholder finds you boring and shifts into
their reflexive buyer script. The buyer script is rote. Habit. The same
thing the stakeholder says to every salesperson. It allows the buyer to
remain emotionally detached and to keep you at arm’s length.
Mental Shortcuts
A heuristic is a mental shortcut our brains leverage to make quick
decisions in the thick of complexity—a path to an outcome that incurs
the least amount of effort and cognitive load. Heuristics help you solve
problems faster than you would if you methodically weighed all the
options.3
They’re also thought of as rules of thumb. For example, a simple
heuristic is “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” These cognitive
shortcuts are intuitive and occur at both the conscious and the
subconscious levels. There is nothing you do or decide that is not
impacted by your brain’s desire to use these mental shortcuts to make
things easier.4
Likewise, heuristics are in play as stakeholders decide if they like
you, evaluate your proposal, assess the risk of moving to the next step,
determine if you are trustworthy, and compare you to your
competitors.
While heuristics aid stakeholders in working through complex
problems faster, they also lead to cognitive biases that result in emo­
tional decision making. Rational, objective analysis is pushed aside by
the lazy brain looking for an easy way out. The irrational buyer is born.
The power of the subconscious mind and how it holds sway over
our emotions, behavior, interpersonal interactions, likes, dislikes,
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perceptions, and decisions is something every sales professional must
understand and learn to leverage. We’ll be confronting how heuristics,
cognitive biases, and emotions impact decision making throughout the
book.
People Act on Emotion and Justify with Logic
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio set out to prove that emotions guide
decisions. His somatic marker hypothesis5 changed the way science
viewed human decision making. Damasio studied people whose limbic
system—the emotional center of the brain—was damaged and not
working properly. In these subjects, however, the neocortex or rational
brain was in normal working condition.
He discovered that people in this condition shared a peculiar
commonality. It was almost impossible for them to decide. They could
objectively discuss the logic and rationality of different choices but
when asked to make a choice they found it difficult and sometimes
impossible to choose. Without their emotions to guide them, they
agonized over even the simplest choices like whether to have a ham or
turkey sandwich for lunch.
Damasio’s work demonstrated that emotions are central to human
decision making and that we often apply logic after the fact to avoid the
pain of cognitive dissonance. This is not to say that we don’t make
rational decisions. We certainly attempt to make decisions that are in
our best interest.
What Damasio proved, though, is that for humans, decisions begin
with emotion. We feel, and then we think.
Cognitive Dissonance
When you attempt to hold two or more contradictory beliefs in
your mind at the same time, do or think something that violates
or is incongruent with a core belief or value, take an action that is
inconsistent with a prior commitment, or are confronted with
information that directly contravenes something you believe to
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25
be true, it creates mental stress and emotional discomfort. This is
cognitive dissonance.
Humans have an overriding desire to be consistent in their
thoughts, beliefs, values, and actions. To achieve this comfortable
equilibrium, we constantly seek dissonance reduction, much like
hunger causes us to seek food to comfort a growling stomach.6
Dissonance is so emotionally painful that people will, in many
cases, deny facts, deny evidence, and rationalize anything to
protect a core belief.
When stakeholders are placed in situations where they must
make a decision, they’re being bombarded by conscious rational
choices, emotions, and subconscious cognitive biases. Some of
these biases, emotions, and rational choices are opposing and
contradictory, creating a state of dissonance. It is your ability to
deftly maneuver and navigate this emotional minefield that
opens the door to influence.
Triggering Cognitive Dissonance
Situation: The stakeholder is working with a vendor that is
providing bad service. You challenge the stakeholder with
evidence that his current vendor is screwing him over.
Dissonance: The stakeholder originally chose and committed
to the vendor. The stakeholder believes, like most people,
that he makes good, rational decisions (egocentric bias). You
challenged his judgment by showing him that he made a
poor decision. The stakeholder is forced to either accept that
he made a bad choice, blame external circumstances (attri­
bution bias), lie that he knew the vendor was bad all along
and had no other choice (hindsight bias), or defend his
decision, turning you into an adversary.
Result: He digs in his heels because the need to be consistent
with his self-image and past commitments is powerful.
Instead of agreeing with you, he argues back, making the
case with the few good things the vendor has done for him
while ignoring the damage the vendor has caused (confir­
mation bias).
(continued )
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(continued )
Most of his justifications are irrational. Yet the more you
argue, the more he becomes anchored to his position. (You
cannot argue other people into believing that they are wrong.
This is the reason direct challenges often fail.)
Your challenge creates psychological discomfort. Because you
are the genesis of the pain, you become an unlikable adversary.
When you are branded unlikable, win probability plummets.
A Better Way
Gaining an understanding of and leveraging cognitive dissonance
is one of the keys to influencing stakeholder decisions.
Rather than a direct confrontation—either with empirical
evidence or with badmouthing a vendor that is clearly doing the
wrong thing—create awareness with an artful question:
“John, could you tell me what you like most about ABC vendor?”
Average salespeople feel like this is a suicide question. “Why
would I want them to tell me what they like about the vendor?
Isn’t that defeating the entire purpose?”
To influence the behavior of stakeholders, you must manage
your disruptive emotions (in this case fear), have empathy for the
pain of cognitive dissonance, and have an acute understanding of
how the human mind works.
When you ask most people what they like about something,
you trigger the negativity effect or bias. Most people will respond
with a few positives and quickly shift to negatives. Humans are
more attuned to negatives than to positives. We look for what’s
wrong or out of place, rather than what is right—it’s just what we do.
All you need to do is prime this behavior in your stake­
holders by asking them what they like most. This has the added
effect of disrupting their expectations, thus pulling them toward
you, and causing them to become more engaged.
In this case, there are obvious negatives, making the job of
getting John complaining about the vendor and offering up a
litany of its failures and shortcomings much easier.
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27
When John expresses his dissatisfaction on his terms, he
becomes committed to making a change, and the probability that
he will make the change increases because his actions must be
consistent with his new beliefs about the vendor so as to avoid
dissonance.
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5
The Four Levels
of Sales
Intelligence
We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The
judgment of the intellect is only part of the truth.
—Carl Jung
There is no doubt that ultra-high performers (UHPs) are smart people.
They are keen observers and have insatiable curiosity. They have the
innate ability and talent to connect disparate ideas, data, and patterns
and then leverage these mashups of information to offer insights and
solve problems.
The good news is it is highly likely that you have an above-average
IQ. I know this because people with above-average IQs are statistically
more likely to read books and seek out knowledge.
The bad news is a high IQ is not enough. Ultra-high performance
requires innate intellectual ability combined with acquired, technolog­
ical, and sales-specific emotional intelligence. These are the four types of
intelligence that open the door to ultra-high sales performance:
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The Four Levels of Sales Intelligence
1.
2.
3.
4.
29
Innate intelligence (IQ)
Acquired intelligence (AQ)
Technological intelligence (TQ)
Emotional intelligence (EQ)
Innate Intelligence
Your intelligence quotient (IQ) is an indicator of how smart you are.
Innate intelligence is baked into your DNA. It is a talent no different
than athleticism. You are either born with a certain IQ or you are not.
IQ is immovable. In other words, you are as smart as you will ever be.
The speed and complexity of the modern marketplace is the domain
of intellectual agility. In a low-IQ versus high-IQ battle, I’ll put my
money on the high-IQ person any day. It’s almost impossible to be an
ultra-high performer in sales, or any other career, if you are not smart.
People with an above-average IQ tend to be curious, rapidly
assimilate and learn new information, are strategic and can see the
bigger picture, hold themselves to high standards, and have superior
reasoning skills.
They also perceive relationships among seemingly unrelated
objects, ideas, or facts and develop unique and original solutions to
problems from these relationships—a critical competency in sales for
discovery, challenging the status quo, and developing unique solutions
and recommendations.
These competencies (and more) are why sales professionals with
above-average IQs thrive in sales. But there is a dark side. Because highIQ people tend to think, talk, and connect disparate ideas faster and
more rationally than other people, they have the tendency to damage
relationships through:
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Impulsiveness
Impatience
Talking down to people
Talking over people
Failure to listen and hear people out
Failure to empathize with others
Overwhelming people with elaborate solutions to basic problems
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To effectively navigate relationships and influence the emotions
of others, you must learn to temper and complement innate intel­
lectual ability with emotional intelligence. In sales, where emotions
rather than rational decision making carry the day, IQ is but part of
the equation.
Many extremely intelligent people fail in the sales profession
because they are unable to influence the behaviors of other people.
Likewise, there are people with high EQs and average- or belowaverage IQs who thrive in sales and every aspect of life because they are
virtuosos with people.
What I know to be true is that being smart gives you a competitive
edge, but it is only one part of who you are. Innate intelligence
becomes relevant, useful, and powerful when combined with acquired,
technological, and emotional intelligence.
Acquired Intelligence
A sales manager asked me, as a personal favor, to spend some time with
one of his salespeople while I was at his location on a consulting
assignment. According to the manager, the rep had lots of potential but
was failing.
I met with the rep in the break room. After listening to his long list
of excuses, blaming everything and everyone beside himself for his
shortcomings, I suggested a book and two podcasts that I believed
would help him. He responded, “I don’t like to read, and podcasts
aren’t for me.”
A week later I was delivering a two-day Sales EQ seminar for a
client. On the first day, I noticed that a couple of the participants were
disengaged. The rest of the group of roughly 20 people were partici­
pating and energetic. But these two were almost hostile.
At lunch, I asked the sales leader if there was something going on.
He confided that everyone had been excited about the training except
for these two, who had complained about having to go back to training.
“They think they know it all. But trust me—these guys need this badly
because they are struggling to hit their numbers.”
Average salespeople who think they know it all—I see it every day.
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A Thirst for Knowledge
Innate intellect is useless on its own. It must be honed and developed
through learning, exercise, and experience. Unlike innate intelligence,
acquired intelligence (AQ) is not static.
Regardless of your IQ, you can grow your AQ with schooling,
training, reading, and other learning experiences, along with practice,
adversity, and experience. Acquired intelligence makes IQ relevant and
useful.
What makes one person invest heavily in learning while another
says, “Learning is a waste of time”?
Much of it rests on what neuroscientists refer to as locus of control.
People who develop an internal locus of control believe that they have
control over their life, actions, and situation. People who have an
external locus of control believe they are at the mercy of outside forces,
luck, and chance. They believe that nothing they do will change
anything.
An internal locus of control is a key indicator of high emotional
intelligence. Ultra-high performers have an insatiable thirst for knowl­
edge. They:
■
■
■
■
Seek out every opportunity to learn.
Are coachable.
Welcome feedback.
View adversity as a learning opportunity.
Ultra-high performers believe that they can shape and influence
win probability by investing in and making themselves better through
learning and training. They believe that one of the keys to winning is to
have more knowledge about the sales profession, their industry, and
their products and services than any of their competitors.
UHPs study every move their competitors make. They take pride
in knowing more about their competitors than their competitors know
about themselves. UHPs invest the time to learn their competitors’
products, sales tactics, pricing strategies, marketing, strengths, weak­
nesses, and even the names of their salespeople. UHPs are not
intimidated by competitors; they intimidate competitors.
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I have limited patience for salespeople who don’t invest in selfdevelopment. When you decide not to invest in yourself, you are
making the conscious choice to limit your growth and income.
Technological Intelligence
Technological intelligence (TQ) is the ability to interact with technol­
ogy and weave it seamlessly into one’s daily life. Those who fail to
develop this ability or who resist developing it will be left behind.
According to Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami, and
Maria Valdivieso in their Harvard Business Review article, “Why Sales­
people Need to Develop Machine Intelligence,” it is essential that
salespeople adapt quickly to working with machines. “Beyond their
relationship skills, reps will succeed based on their ability to understand
and interpret data, work effectively with AI, and move quickly on
opportunities.”1
As technology—especially artificial intelligence—becomes a ubiq­
uitous part of daily life, humans with high TQ will thrive in ways that
humans with low TQ will not.
Salespeople can no longer afford to claim that they are “not
computer savvy.” To do so puts you in the below-average group. If
you don’t get tech savvy and quickly, you will be left behind and out of
a job.
Ultra-high performers use the Three As in their approach to
technology:
■
■
■
Adopt: UHPs tend to be early adopters of new, cutting-edge
technology, and leverage it to achieve a game-changing competi­
tive edge. They invest in it themselves out of their own pockets.
Adapt: UHPs adapt new technology to their unique situations.
They leverage technology to automate low-value tasks so as to
gain more time for focusing on high-value human interactions and
strategies.
Adept: UHPs rapidly assimilate technology into their sales day
and become adept at using it, not because they have special abilities
but rather because they are open to it, have the courage to experi­
ment and learn, and seek out on-demand learning resources.
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33
In the future, there will be two types of salespeople. The first group
will tell machines what to do. The second group will be told what to do
by machines. Trust me, you want to be in the first group.
Emotional Intelligence
The ability to perceive, correctly interpret, respond to, and effectively
manage your own emotions and influence the emotions of others is
called emotional intelligence (EQ).
I’ve been obsessed with emotional intelligence and human behav­
ior in the workplace for 20 years. For me it began with Daniel
Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
(Bantam, 1995). This seminal book took emotional intelligence from
the obscurity of academics and introduced it into the mainstream.
Today, the impact of sales-specific emotional intelligence on sales
performance can no longer be ignored. Buyers are starving for authen­
tic human interaction. In our tech-dominated society, interpersonal
skills (responding to and managing the emotions of others) and
intrapersonal skills (managing your own disruptive emotions) are
more essential to success in sales than at any point in history.
Emotional intelligence is the key that unlocks ultra-high perform­
ance. EQ offsets deficiencies in the other types of intelligence. The
awareness and understanding of human influence frameworks, along
with the ability to manage your own disruptive emotions, is the rocket
fuel of sales performance.
Sales professionals who invest in developing and improving EQ
gain a decisive competitive advantage in the hypercompetitive global
marketplace.
IQ + AQ + TQ + EQ—A Powerful Combination
What is certain is that the four types of intelligence are tightly intertwined,
each connecting, affecting, and amplifying the others. Let’s review:
■
■
IQ—how smart you are—is fixed. It is baked into your DNA.
AQ—how much you know—makes IQ relevant.
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■
■
TQ—how fast you assimilate and leverage technology for lowvalue tasks—gives you more time for human relationships.
EQ—your acuity for dealing with emotions—amplifies the
impact of IQ, AQ, and TQ because it allows you to relate,
respond to, influence, and persuade other human beings.
People who combine high IQ, AQ, and TQ with high EQ
dominate any field or discipline they pursue. In business and in life,
these “high Q” people are at the very top of the food chain while “low
Q” people barely scrape by.
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Shaping Win
Probability
The probable is what usually happens.
—Aristotle
There is not a one-size-fits-all solution for every sales situation.
Complex sales are different from one-call closes. Calling on a business
is different from selling a car. Selling software requires a different skill set
than selling office automation equipment.
In sales, context matters. Every prospect, sales conversation, terri­
tory, company, and product is different and requires salespeople to
adapt and adjust to those unique situations.
There is no black and white. There is no easy button that will make
sales work perfectly every time. In some situations, you’ll do something
completely inappropriate and still manage to close the deal. In others,
you’ll run the sales process like a textbook and fall flat on your face.
It’s what I find so beautiful about sales. There are no guarantees, no
magic pills, no holy grail. There is only poetry and probability.
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Poetry
There is poetry in emotion. It is the glue that connects all the disparate
elements of the sales equation. Emotion is sales process agnostic. It
influences sales outcomes across industry verticals, deal complexity,
inside sales or field sales, any product or service, and in both business­
to-business and consumer environments.
It’s the ability to manage and leverage emotion to create the
highest statistical chance of winning that separates ultra-high performers
(UHPs) from everyone else. Your ability to shape and influence win
probabilities is the only reason you have a job.
Consider a potential buyer opening your company’s website to
look for a product; if, when they open the product page, the probability
that they click a buy button, enter a credit card, and make a purchase is
north of 80 percent, you would be unemployed. Your company would
need only to focus its attention on getting more potential buyers to that
page.
Purely transactional purchases don’t require salespeople to shape
the win probability. However, the more complex the sale, the longer
the sales cycle, the higher the dollar amount, the greater the risk to the
stakeholders, and the more emotions are involved in the decision to
purchase, the more companies need salespeople who are intelligent,
creative, insightful, influential, and persuasive to shift win probabilities
in the organization’s favor.
Win Probability Is the First Rule of Ultra-High
Sales Performance
Imagine that you are standing in the doorway to a large room. At the far
end are two identical dollar slot machines. As you walk in, the room
attendant hands you a single dollar coin. You are offered the choice to
play either machine or simply give the dollar coin back and walk away.
If you choose to play, you get to keep the original coin plus any
winnings.
With nothing to lose, you decide to play.
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As you walk toward the machines, you notice something curious.
Above each one there is a sign with a number on it. One sign reads 93
and the other 33. You turn back to the room attendant and ask, while
pointing up at the signs, “What do those numbers mean?”
“Smart of you to ask,” the attendant replies, smiling. “Most people
never do.”
He continues, “Those signs indicate the win probability of each
machine. On the first machine, you have a 93 percent probability that
you will win your dollar back plus more. With the second machine,
you have only a 33 percent chance of winning.”
Which machine will you choose?
Of course, it’s a no-brainer. The smart bet is on the machine that
gives you the highest probability of winning.
Managing probability is how ultra-high performers play sales.
Admittedly, sales would be much easier if there were signs
over prospects indicating win probability. But alas, prospects are
not slot machines and, unlike slot machines, in sales win probability
is fluid, complex, influenced by many different variables, and
impossible to know with certainty until, of course, the deal is lost
or won.
For this reason, ultra-high performers take nothing for granted.
They’re constantly checking, testing, and analyzing where they stand
with the opportunities in their pipeline. UHPs are perfectionists,
managing every element within their control to shape, influence,
and bend the win probability curve in their favor.
There are five levers UHPs pull to shape win probability:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Fanatical prospecting
Disciplined qualifying
Stakeholder mapping
Alignment of the three processes of sales
Sales-specific emotional intelligence and human influence
frameworks
It’s important to clarify that win probability is not the same as a
deal’s progress through the sales process or percent to closed—measures
that are often used to quantify sales pipelines for forecast purposes.
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Indicating that you are 70 percent of the way through the sales
process because you completed the final demo does not mean you have
a 70 percent probability of closing the deal. It just means you have
progressed that far into the sales process.
This is how most sales forecasts are built and why so many of those
forecasts fall short month after month, quarter after quarter, and year
after year. It’s why so many forecasts are stuffed with nonsense just to
get to a number. If you (or your organization) are regularly missing
forecasts, it’s time to take a different approach and forecast on win
probability.
Fanatical Prospecting
Ultra-high performers are fanatical prospectors.1 Developing and
maintaining a fanatical prospecting mind-set is the first and most
important key to ultra-high sales performance.
Because ultra-high performers are fanatical prospectors, they can be
picky. They have far more opportunities to choose from than the
average salesperson. They have the luxury of spending their limited and
precious time on the most qualified deals with the highest win
probabilities.
To avoid putting themselves in a situation where desperation
from an empty pipeline causes them to engage in questionable, lowprobability, or low-value deals, UHPs make prospecting a daily priority.
Average salespeople spend most of their time at the Feast or Famine
Amusement Park riding the Desperation roller coaster. For average
salespeople, prospecting is not a priority and is random and irregular at
best. Typically, they prospect with intensity only when at rock bottom
with an empty pipeline.
It’s for this reason average salespeople often find themselves face­
to-face with the Universal Law of Need. This principle governs
desperation. It states that the more you need something, the less likely
it is you will get it. When all hope for survival rests on one, two, or even
a handful of accounts, win probability plummets.
Desperation is a disruptive emotion and a sign of low Sales EQ. When
you are desperate, you no longer focus your thoughts on what is
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required for success. Instead, you focus on what will happen to you if
you fail. The result is lowered self-esteem, lack of confidence, palpable
fear, irrational behavior, and poor decision making.
In this state, stakeholders sense your desperation. They naturally
repel salespeople who are needy, desperate, and pathetic. Instead, they
gravitate toward sales professionals who exude confidence. When you
reek of the foul stench of desperation, people don’t buy from you.
The Law of Replacement
UHPs avoid the classic sales roller coaster because they adhere to the
Law of Replacement. The failure to heed this law is the reason average
salespeople get on, and stay on, the Desperation.
Consider this math question:
Becky has 30 prospects in her pipeline. Her closing percentage is 10
percent. She closes one deal. How many prospects remain in her
pipeline?
Most people answer 29.
The correct answer is 20.
So why 20? Becky has a 1 in 10 probability of closing a deal. This
means that, on average, she will close only one deal out of 10 prospects
she puts in her pipeline. The net result is that when she closes one deal,
the other nine are no longer viable prospects. Her pipeline will be
reduced by 10 prospects for every one she closes. She must now replace
those 10 prospects to keep her pipeline full.
You may argue that we couldn’t possibly know that the other nine
prospects are no longer viable. To do so, however, is missing the point.
We are talking about statistical win probabilities based on Becky’s
average closing ratio. The stats tell us, over the long run, that she must
replace those prospects to keep her pipeline healthy and full of qualified
opportunities with high win probabilities.
You must be relentless in pushing new opportunities into your
pipeline to replace the prospects that naturally fall out. And you must
do so at a rate that matches or exceeds your closing ratio. This simple
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formula is one of the keys to improving win probabilities. To be picky,
you need choices, and you will never have choices if you are not
consistently prospecting.
I won’t be spending additional time discussing prospecting in this
book, but if you would like to learn more, check out Fanatical
Prospecting. It’s the most comprehensive guide ever compiled on
prospecting and a perfect companion to Sales EQ.
Disciplined Qualifying
Ultra-high performers are stingy. They invest time only with highprobability prospects. This requires them to be masters at qualifying and
segmenting prospects.
Average salespeople have the tendency to treat every prospect the
same. Once they are invested in a deal, they’ll continue to “throw good
money after bad” even when there is a neon sign hanging over the
prospect blinking that it’s a loser. They become emotionally attached to
deals that will never close.
Ultra-high performers have learned how to manage the damaging
disruptive emotion of attachment. UHPs are disciplined enough to
walk away from prospects the moment they feel the probability of
closing the deal moves below an acceptable threshold.
The courage to walk away or detach emotionally from lowprobability prospects requires both a full pipeline and emotional
discipline. This discipline derives from a system of built-in checks
and balances designed to create awareness and perspective when
qualifying deals. We’re going to take a deeper dive into the frameworks
for qualifying opportunities in later chapters.
Mapping Stakeholders
From simple one-call closes to long-cycle complex deals, irrational
human emotions, motivations, perceptions, and subconscious cognitive
biases of stakeholders have the greatest impact on win probability.
A set of stakeholders will determine the outcome of each oppor­
tunity in your pipeline. Each of these stakeholders plays a role—some
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major, some minor, but all with the potential to raise your win
probability or lower it.
In small, simple deals stakeholders may take on multiple roles. In
large, complex deals those roles may be specialized and well-defined. In
some deals, stakeholder roles will be transparent, clearly conveyed, and
easy to ascertain. In others, the stakeholder map is opaque.
There are five BASIC stakeholders you’ll meet in all but the
simplest, one-call-close deals:
■
■
■
■
■
Buyers
Amplifiers
Seekers
Influencers
Coaches
While the average salesperson is myopically asking, “Are you the
decision maker?” the UHP is relentlessly working to identify and map
all potential stakeholders to understand their role in the buying process.
Average salespeople leave fate to chance. UHPs see the bigger
picture and understand the implications of stakeholder blind spots on
win probability. From prospecting to qualifying, from the moment a
deal enters their pipeline and all the way to the close, the UHP seeks to
know, influence, neutralize, and leverage stakeholders in the quest to
increase win probability.
It is here that ultra-high performers begin to pull away from
average salespeople. Once they clearly understand the stakeholder map
and the personal motivations of each stakeholder, UHPs leverage a set
of repeatable frameworks to shape human emotion and influence
buying decisions.
Aligning the Three Processes of Sales
Ultra-high performers are masters of and execute the sales process
playbook like clockwork. But, while average salespeople are mired in
the linear, systematic sales process, pitching logic, data, features, specs,
and facts, UHPs are changing the rules of the game and shifting the
playing field.
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From the initial contact with a prospect all the way through to the
close, they are shaping and aligning the three processes of sales to bend
the win probability curve in their favor.
1. Sales process
2. Buying process
3. Decision process
The sales process (how the salesperson advances the deal) and
buying process (how organizations [B2B] or consumers [B2C] vet the
deal) are linear, rational steps that cannot and should not be ignored.
The decision process, in contrast, is individual, emotional, non­
linear, and often irrational. It is the intuitive process through which
each stakeholder makes commitments of time, emotion, and action.
Ultra-high performers understand that the decision process is where
strategy, logic, and human emotions collide.
Sales EQ and Human Influence Frameworks
UHPs never forget that they are dealing with emotional, fallible,
irrational human beings. They work hard to gain a deep understanding
of the motivations, desires, needs, wants, fears, aspirations, and prob­
lems of each stakeholder.
In sales, perceiving, interpreting, and reacting to your own emo­
tions and the emotions of stakeholders are critical capabilities. Sellers
must learn to manage their own disruptive emotions and respond
appropriately to the emotions of stakeholders, resident within the
logical, linear, systematic sales and buying processes. This is the true
genesis of competitive differentiation.
Mastery of sales-specific emotional intelligence (Sales EQ) explains
why one person becomes an ultra-high sales performer while another is
just average, even though the intellectual ability and knowledge of the
two people are equal.
Ultra-high performers are virtuosos with people. They shift win
probabilities in their favor through perceiving, controlling, managing,
and influencing nonconforming, irrational, human emotions. They
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possess a toolbox full of influence frameworks along with the agility to
apply them in any situation to improve the probability of getting the
outcome they desire.
Average salespeople look in awe at the performance of ultra-high
performers, believing that UHPs have somehow defied the odds. The
truth, though, is UHPs bend the odds in their favor.
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Dual Process
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in
mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
One of the great myths of the sales profession is that the sales process is
about building relationships. If you read enough of my work, you’d
likely be left with the impression that I’ve bought into this myth hook,
line, and sinker.
It is true that I write extensively about how crucial it is to build,
nurture, and leverage relationships in sales and account management.
But I do not believe, like so many experts and trainers in my space, that
the end game of sales is the relationship.
I believe sales is about making sales.
Don’t get me wrong: relationships matter. If you want to close lots
of deals and deliver ultra-high sales performance, you’ll need to build
relationships with stakeholders.
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I just want to be crystal clear that the end game is not the
relationship; it’s the deal. Salespeople who forget this basic fact are
doomed to mediocrity because they’re good at making friends and bad
at moving deals forward through the pipeline.
Reps who fall into this trap are often exceptional at perceiving and
responding to the emotions of others. People like them. They just can’t
advance deals through the pipeline because the relationships keep
getting in the way.
I’m wary of people who tell me that they want to be in sales
because they are a “people-person.” I don’t find that “people­
people” do well in the sales profession over the long haul, because
what they are best at is making friends, not sales. People-people are
unable to regulate their disruptive emotional need to be liked and
accepted.
I know what you may be thinking: “But, dude, isn’t this a book
about emotional intelligence? Are you not writing about interpersonal
relationships and connecting emotionally with prospects? Why would
you say something like this? It seems like the antithesis of everything
you preach and teach!”
I get this and realize the point I’m making is hard to swallow. But
the undeniable fact is that, as a salesperson when you are meeting with
prospects, you are there to do deals, not make friends.
Will you make friends along the way? Of course.
Should you make friends? Absolutely.
Should you focus on building deep relationships with stakeholders?
The deeper the relationship, the higher your win probability.
You just need to remember that the outcome you are seeking is
not the relationship. It’s the deal.
Sales EQ Balances the Scales
This does not mean that you should focus solely on the self-centered
outcome you want. Bulldozing your way through sales conversations
while ignoring the human and emotional component inherent in sales
leads to disaster. If you show up and throw up, pitch, manipulate, and
turn people off, you will fail.
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Sales EQ
Sales EQ—sales-specific emotional intelligence—equalizes the
investment in interpersonal relationships and achieving your primary
objective of advancing opportunities through the pipeline. It’s a dual
process that balances out these two opposing behaviors.
Dual process is the mental and emotional acuity to at once stand in
the stakeholder’s shoes, viewing things from their perspective (empa­
thy) while remaining focused on your sales objective and targeted next
step (outcome).
It’s not the zero-sum game of the “people-people”—you are either
for your prospects or against them. Nor is it the cold, calculated
approach of the narcissistic manipulators—focused on extracting as
much from prospects as possible, in the shortest amount of time, with
the least amount of emotional investment.
Sales professionals who are adroit at leveraging dual process are
masters at managing their own disruptive emotions. They are empa­
thetic, understanding, and invest in relationships. Yet, they detach from
their egocentric need to be liked for the sake of achieving their
objective and moving to the next step.
This dual process is the foundation of sales specific emotional
intelligence.
Four Pillars of Sales-Specific Emotional Intelligence
I believe that emotional intelligence is situational and contextual. It is
applied differently in leadership, in peer-to-peer groups, in the class­
room by teachers, on the beat by cops, in spousal relationships, on the
battlefield, or in parenting.
In sales, emotional intelligence is applied in the context of the sales
process. Sales EQ is leveraged to increase win probabilities by shaping
and influencing stakeholder decisions. Ultra-high performers (UHPs)
have mastered the four pillars of sales-specific emotional intelligence:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Empathy
Self-awareness
Self-control
Sales drive
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For UHPs there is not a binary decision: emotional connection or
outcome. It’s relationship, emotional connection, and outcome. Sales
professionals who leverage sales-specific emotional intelligence are able
to seamlessly manage emotions and outcomes without either becoming
a zero-sum game.
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Empathy
Truth is, I’ll never know all there is to know about you, just as you will
never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too
complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our
fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind,
a dash of optimism and a great deal of candor.
—Tom Hanks
“When young couples come into our store to shop for engagement
rings, it is a joyous occasion—part of their journey together. It also has
the potential to become a stressful and embarrassing experience for the
young bachelor,” explains Shell, an ultra-high-performing sales pro­
fessional in the high-end jewelry market.
“The bride-to-be has a fantasy. In it she sees herself showing off a
massive ring to friends gathered around her in awe. The young man is
desperately trying to give her that dream and avoid having to admit that
he can’t afford the ring.”
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Shell points to the massive diamond on her finger. “The girl almost
always gravitates to the $20,000 diamond. The guy’s face turns white.
You can feel his stress. It’s awful because he’s between a rock and a hard
place—a no-win situation.”
Shell has developed a huge referral clientele because she’s empa­
thetic and does the right thing for her customers.
When working with couples, she tunes in to their emotions. She’s
aware that if the guy is pushed into a corner, there is a high probability
that he’ll “need to go home and think about it” and she’ll never see him
again.
Ultra-high performers (UHPs) believe their primary mission is
serving their prospects and customers. Their default, in sales situations,
is other focused. They actively work to step into the shoes of stakeholders
and view things from their perspective—both rationally and
emotionally.
UHPs tune in to the emotions of stakeholders and respond
appropriately to those emotions, often adjusting their own behavioral
and communication style so other people feel comfortable and at ease.
Shell recognizes and relates to the emotions of the young bride and
groom. “I always start the conversation by getting them to talk about
their plans after they get married. Plans for the honeymoon, buying a
home, new furniture, kids, and the other decisions young couples must
make as they begin their life together. It’s fairly easy to get them talking
because they’re in love and excited about this new chapter.”
Shell continues, “Once I know more about them, I recommend a
ring that fits into their lifestyle and won’t overburden them with debt. I
tell them exactly why I’m making the recommendation, because I want
them to know I’m on their side and want them to get their marriage off
on the right foot.”
Shell explains, “This immediately sets the young man at ease and
lowers his stress level. I take the heat and let him off the hook. At this
point he’s not walking out of my door and going anywhere else.
“Then I help the bride feel comfortable by showing her how she
can trade her ring in for a bigger one once she and the love of her life are
on solid footing financially. This keeps her Cinderella dream alive and
gives her space to think rationally about this decision. Once the bride
buys in, closing the sale is just a formality.”
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Could Shell sell them on a bigger ring? I have no doubt, as she is a
gifted influencer. However, by demonstrating empathy and doing the
right thing she both increases the win probability of the deal she is
working and generates referrals and long-term repeat customers.
She smiles. “Those guys send all of their friends to me.”
The Foundation of Sales EQ
Cognitive intelligence is empty without empathy. In one of my favorite
quotes about empathy, author Dean Koontz explains why IQ alone
isn’t enough for ultra-high performance:
Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve
problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an
advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient
without courage, love, friendship, and empathy.1
Ultra-high sales performance requires intellect and empathy. Both
play vital roles in relationships, communication, and helping people win.
Empathy is the foundational pillar of Sales EQ. It is the beginning
and the end. Empathy is the ability to step into someone else’s shoes and
experience emotion from their perspective—to understand and iden­
tify with another’s feelings and motivations. You demonstrate empathy
for people by identifying with them, emotionally.
Empathy gives insight into the perspectives of others. It helps you
see each person as a unique individual and understand that, regardless of
how common a problem may seem to you, each stakeholder believes
his or her problems, opportunities, and situation are special. It is from
this perspective that ultra-high performers bridge to personalized
solutions that validate that they understand that stakeholders view
themselves as unique.
Empathy Scale
We all possess the capability of relating to the emotions of others.2
For some people this comes easily, whereas for others tuning in
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requires intentional effort. My wife, for example, is highly empathetic.
She doesn’t need to work hard to feel what other people are feeling. I,
on the other hand, am naturally egocentric. Because of this I must
remain consciously aware of my emotional blind spots and be inten­
tional with my efforts to be empathetic.
In his dissertation, Personality Characteristics and Superior Sales Per­
formance, Dr. Marc Hamer makes the case that good salespeople are
naturally self-centric rather than other-focused.3 If you don’t have a
competitive drive to win, if you are not motivated by achievement, if
you don’t have a bigger ego than most people, you’re probably not
going to last long in the sales profession.
For this reason, most salespeople, like me, must intentionally focus
on developing empathy and tuning in to the feelings of others.
Empathy begins with self-awareness. In other words, to become
effective at tuning in to the emotions of others, you must first become
adept at tuning in to your own emotions and acknowledging your
emotional blind spots.
I know that I’m not naturally gifted with empathy. I am aware that
in most situations I’m going to default to focusing on my own
emotional needs before I attend to those of others. I’m also aware
that these traits help me as a salesperson because they allow me to do
difficult things that most people will not—like run headlong into
rejection—and hurt me in relationships.
Each person occupies a unique place on the empathy scale (Figure
8.1). Your natural gift for empathy is mostly innate—it’s baked into
your genes. So it’s necessary to be honest with yourself about how you
view the world.
Are you more other-focused like my wife or more self-focused like
me? Most people fall somewhere in the middle of the scale—3s and 4s
for the self-centric crowd and 6s and 7s for the other-focused.
Figure 8.1 Empathy Scale
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One way of knowing where you sit on the empathy scale is to
consider how you tend to interpret the behaviors, communication styles,
and emotions of other people. Your snap judgments about people tell a
great deal about how tuned in you are to the emotions of other people.
There are two general heuristics people employ to interpret
behavior:
1. Situational attributions: Upon observing a person who is angry,
you interpret this to mean that he or she is having a bad day or
experiencing a difficult circumstance.
2. Dispositional attributions: Upon observing a person who is
angry, you believe that it is a result of his or her underlying
personality and subsequently label that person as an asshole or a
jerk.
People who interpret human behavior based on situational attri­
butions tend to be more empathetic than those who rely on disposi­
tional attributions and labels.
So, we have a conundrum: people lower on the empathy scale tend
to perform better in sales, yet the ability to tune in to the emotions of
stakeholders in the context of the sales process is a fundamental key to
ultra-high performance.
How Empathetic Are You?
Test your empathy with these free empathy assessments:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizzes/take_quiz/14
https://psychology-tools.com/empathy-quotient/
Intentional Empathy
The question: How to bridge this empathy gap? The answer:
Conscious intention.
“We need you to help us teach our folks to spend less time on
e-mail and more time on the phone interacting with people,” Patrick, a
sales director for a 4-billion-dollar company, explained. Across his
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inside sales team of 25 reps there were mostly average salespeople, a
handful of people exceeding their goals, and two ultra-high performers.
The two UHPs weren’t just outperforming the group by a little
bit. They were crushing it: the performance of the ultra-high
performers was 300 percent better than the average group. Let
that sink in for a moment—300 percent! The curious thing was
that no one knew why.
I spent two days observing the team to learn what was going on.
What I discovered wasn’t shocking but it was eye-opening. Patrick’s
intuition that his people were spending too much time on e-mail was
right on the money.
Almost 80 percent of the communication to prospects and cus­
tomers from the average group was via e-mail. They sent e-mail after
e-mail, with a few text messages sprinkled in.
In contrast, almost 90 percent of the outbound communication
from the ultra-high performers was by phone—human to human. Let
me disabuse you of the notion that the UHPs were older—perhaps Gen
Xers who grew up using the phone. It’s what most people think when I
tell this story. However, one was 23 and the other 26.
Patrick’s company does an exceptional job attracting talent and has
a meticulous hiring process with a battery of assessments. The average
performers had the same credentials, same skills, same intelligence, and
same training as the ultra-high performers. Every person on the team
was intelligent and talented.
The only real difference between UHPs and the average group was
that the UHPs intentionally sought out and invested in relationships,
whereas the average performers erected barriers between themselves
and human interaction.
You must make the conscious decision to become other-focused
when interacting with stakeholders. This begins with developing
competence across four core dimensions of empathy:
1. A desire to understand stakeholders and view things from their
perspective
2. Concern about how stakeholders feel
3. A focus on serving stakeholders and solving their problems
4. Deep listening
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Deep listening—listening to stakeholders with all your senses (ears,
eyes, and intuition)—opens a window into what your prospects are
feeling and helps you tune in to their emotions.
Empathy comes easily when you intentionally give others your
complete attention, turn off your self-centric thoughts, and become
genuinely interested in what they are saying.
Regulating Empathy
Empathy is the most important of all Sales EQ traits. Period. The more
empathetic you are, generally the higher your EQ. But too much
empathy can also be a problem.
James came up to me on a break. He was participating in a Fanatical
Prospecting Bootcamp and we’d just finished a short phone block.
“Jeb, you know the hardest part about this for me? If I were in the
prospect’s shoes I’d just hang up the phone. I hate when people call me.
That’s why I can’t do this. It just feels wrong.”
James had been fiddle-farting around, playing with papers and
doing anything other than pick up the phone. Meanwhile the other 25
people in the class had been kicking ass and taking names.
His empathy was getting in the way, causing him to project his
feelings onto other people. This made it difficult for him to interrupt
prospects. He didn’t want them to feel the same way he did when he
received a prospecting call; therefore, it was difficult for him to make calls.
Projecting is a common disruptive emotion for salespeople, espe­
cially those who are higher on the empathy scale.
James and I ate lunch together that day and discussed his feelings.
He acknowledged that if he didn’t start interrupting he was not going to
be able to keep his job and feed his family. Since he wanted to do both,
James came to the self-centric conclusion that picking up the phone was
in his best interest.
Once that decision was made, we discussed the way prospects
would prefer to be interrupted—we stepped into their shoes. We came
to the other-focused conclusion that those interruptions should be fast,
to the point, and relevant so that we would achieve our objective
quickly without wasting their time.
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James then deployed the 5-Step Telephone Prospecting Frame­
work from Fanatical Prospecting because it allowed him to: (1) set the
appointments he needed in order to make his number, keep his job, and
feed his family, and (2) be respectful of his prospects’ time.
He went to work and set four quality appointments that afternoon.
Once he changed his mind-set and gained control of his disruptive
emotions, he changed his game.
In the right measure, empathy helps you avoid intentionally
injuring other people—physically and emotionally. Empathy regulates
greed, hate, jealousy, anger, fear of scarcity, and a host of other
potentially destructive emotions.
Without empathy, we’d have no compunction about steamroller­
ing right over other people. Hence, extremely low-empathy people,
like narcissists and psychopaths, use hyperempathetic people as door­
mats or worse.
Yet, in the sales profession, empathy has the potential to become a
disruptive emotion that costs you money, career advancement, and
potentially your job. In sales, you must be empathetic—tuned in to the
emotions of buyers and stakeholders—while keeping your ultimate
objective in perspective. This is Dual Process.
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Self-Awareness
You know far less about yourself than you feel you do.
—Daniel Kahneman
Ultra-high performers (UHPs) are not perfect. In fact, they are far from
perfect. They have the same issues, foibles, and hang-ups as everyone else.
They have strengths and weaknesses, blind spots, biases, and unique
communication styles that at times impede their ability to effectively deal
with other people.
What sets ultra-high performers apart from average performers is
that they are aware of their shortcomings and blind spots. They:
■
■
■
■
Accurately interpret their own emotions.
Acknowledge their emotional blind spots.
Are realistic about their strengths and weaknesses.
Understand their preferred communication style and how it
impacts other people.
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57
Have awareness of disruptive emotions and the negative impact
these emotions have on their relationships and performance.
Of course, awareness is easier said than done, especially when it
comes to our shortcomings, emotional blind spots, and weaknesses.
Our image of who we are—how we interact with the world, how
others view us, our values, and our judgments about other people—gets
clouded at the subconscious level. Our mind plays tricks on us and hides
reality behind a curtain.
Self-awareness combined with empathy is the key to situational
awareness: knowing when to push and when to pull; when to ask
questions and when to bridge to solutions; when to listen and when to
talk; when to be patient and when to ask for what you want. Situational
awareness is one of the meta-skills of sales, especially in the complex
sales environment.
Self-Awareness Is the Mother of High Sales EQ
Developing self-awareness is a difficult and ongoing process. As
humans, we are not naturally adept at looking in the mirror and seeing
ourselves for who we really are.1 The warm comfort of delusion is
much more appealing than the cold truth of reality. But you cannot be
delusional and successful at the same time.
A long line of scientists, behavioral sociologists, and psycholo­
gists have delivered stunning research findings into how our sub­
conscious mind drives our behavior. We all have blind spots when it
comes to our emotions, our strengths and weaknesses, and how our
style and behaviors impact other people—negatively and positively.
Our self-serving bias, a potentially disruptive emotion, serves to
protect our fragile ego and self-esteem through a cognitive distortion
of reality.
Awareness is the mother of change, growth, development, and
improvement. But it’s difficult to change what you can’t see. Devel­
oping self-awareness is, without a doubt, the most difficult and
challenging hurdle to developing and maintaining a high Sales EQ.
There are six keys to developing self-awareness:
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Psychometric assessments (such as DISC or Myers-Briggs)
Coaching or mentoring
Direct feedback
Writing down your goals
360-degree review
Self-reflection
Psychometric Assessments
We each have a unique way of dealing with the world around us. Some
people are direct whereas others beat around the bush. Some people
talk slowly and with little emotion, while others are more animated.
People may be ambitious and driven, analytical and careful, or social
and outgoing.
Self-awareness of your interpersonal style is critical to becoming a
more effective communicator. People feel more comfortable with you
when you interact with them based on who they are—not who you are.
This allows you to take advantage of the similarity bias, a cognitive heuris­
tic that causes humans to like and trust people who are more like them.
Ultra-high performers are keenly self-aware of their behavioral
style, values, and beliefs, and confident enough to adjust their style to
deal with people who are not like them. The good news is it doesn’t
take much. Small adjustments in your style often make a big impact.
There are no good or bad styles—just styles. You are who you are;
that is not going to change. However, when you are aware of your
preferred style and how you respond to specific situations and to other
styles, this awareness gives you a powerful advantage in influencing the
behavior of others.
The most direct path to understanding your behavioral style is a
personality style assessment. Assessments, used the right way, can be
very effective in helping you become consciously aware of the impact
your preferred communication style has on others. There are multiple
assessment tools, including Myers-Briggs, DISC, Clifton Strength
Finder, Kolbe, and Sales Drive.
We offer a number of assessments to help you better understand your
preferred communication style. Learn more about assessments at https://
www.salesgravy.com/saleseq or https://assessments.salesgravy.com.
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Get a Coach or Mentor
Why do elite professional golfers have swing coaches? Simple. There
are millions of dollars on the line in golf tournaments, and the
difference between winning and losing is often one or two strokes.
Little flaws in the pro’s swing or mind-set can make a huge difference in
their winnings.
The same is true for salespeople. The people who sign up for my
Elite Coaching Program are often at the very top of their game—ultra­
high performers seeking insight that will help them perform at even
higher levels.
You can’t change what you can’t see. This is the reason so many
ultra-high performers across a range of endeavors have coaches.
Coaches hold up a mirror to your behavior and help you come to
grips with the real you.
But let’s face it: not everyone can afford to hire a coach. Although I
have hired some amazing coaches, most of the people who coached and
mentored me were my managers and other leaders who took an interest
in me. The key to attracting a coach is being coachable. You must be
open to self-development. There are five keys to being coachable:
1. Ask. Put away your pride, open up, and ask for help.
2. Listen. Check your ego at the door and be ready to stretch. If you
are resisting, defensive, or not committed, coaches quickly dis­
engage and invest their time and energy elsewhere.
3. Trust. Remember that you have blind spots. Your coach will
often point out things that you cannot see. Give your coach a break
and trust that what they are seeing is real.
4. Take action. Be willing to follow through on agreed-upon action
steps. There is nothing more frustrating for a coach than a coachee
who fails to follow through.
5. Progress. Make progress. If your coach doesn’t see you
putting what you learn into practice, then working with
you loses its joy.
You’ll find additional resources on coaching and my Elite Coaching
Program at https://www.salesgravy.com/saleseq or https://elite.salesgravy
.com.
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Ask for Feedback
Schedule a meeting and ask your manager to give you feedback on your
performance. Be prepared with specific questions about your strengths
and weaknesses, behaviors, interactions with other people, and com­
munication style, because you may have to prompt your manager for
the specific feedback you want.
Most salespeople don’t actively seek out honest feedback, because
the truth hurts. Gaining self-awareness requires courage to face the
truth, walk through the pain, and learn.
Write Down Your Goals and Plans
Investing time to develop a set of goals and writing down your plans can
be eye-opening. Going through the process, you gain insight into your
values, dreams, desires, and what is holding you back.
This awareness helps you draw a more accurate picture of yourself.
It begins with two simple questions:
1. What do I want?
2. How badly do I want it?
You’ll find a free, comprehensive guide to goal planning at
http://www.FreeGoalSheet.com.
360-Degree Review
Marketers frequently gather current and potential customers into
rooms with two-way mirrors to test perceptions of products, services,
and brands. These focus groups help them understand the emotional
and experiential perceptions people have of the brand. The data
gathered is used to refine products, services, messaging, positioning,
and advertising.
Imagine that we’ve assembled a group of your customers, pros­
pects, peers, and managers together in a room. Sitting with the group is
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a moderator who will ask questions to uncover their perceptions of
you.
Behind a two-way mirror are researchers who take notes on every
data point: the words the individuals in the group say, and their
expressions, tones of voice, and body language. You have been invited
to sit and observe.
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
What is their experience interacting with you?
Do they feel you have empathy?
Do they find you likable?
Do they trust you?
Will they say that you care about them?
Do they see you as a good listener?
Do you offer value, or are you focused on taking value?
How do you stack up against your competitors? Are you perceived
as different or the same?
What would they say you should change or refine to become a
more impactful sales professional?
What do they perceive as your strengths?
Overall, what is their perception of you as a person?
For most people, this exercise would be an excruciating emotional
experience. Few people would enjoy the criticism, no matter how
constructive.
Ten years ago, I hired a firm to do a 360-degree assessment of me.
After reviewing the report, I was crushed. Though my focus group had
positive things to say about me, they also had many negative observa­
tions. It was painful to learn how completely blind I was to behaviors
that were holding me back in relationships with the people I counted
on most.
This painful and eye-opening 360-degree process was a turning
point. I emerged from that crucible acknowledging that the value of my
education, skills, talents, and accomplishments paled in comparison to the
quality of my interpersonal skills. I learned that I had to stand in the shoes
of others, respond appropriately, and perceive the world from their point
of view. I learned the real value of self-awareness versus delusion.
A 360-degree review can be expensive. It is also one of the most
powerful ways to kick-start self-awareness. Many employers will
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provide one for you. Ask your manager or your human resources (HR)
organization about starting the process. If you have the resources I
highly recommend paying for it yourself. Learn more about 360-degree
reviews at https://www.salesgravy.com/saleseq.
Self-Reflection
Last spring, my parents prepared their garden for pumpkins. They
turned the soil, fertilized, planted the seeds, and watered. Then they
went on vacation for two weeks.
Upon their return my father went straight out to the garden, eager
to see if his pumpkin vines had sprouted. He was thrilled to find that
things were indeed growing.
Knowing that he had to pull weeds, that had also sprouted, to keep
them from choking out his crop of pumpkins, he got down to work.
But he quickly realized that he could not tell the weeds from the good
plants. I advised him, tongue in cheek, of the old saying that “a good
plant will be easy to pull from the ground while the weed will be
difficult.”
My mom wasn’t thrilled about having him experiment with the
tensile strength of the plants. So, we looked on Google to see if we
could find help identifying the weeds. I typed in “identifying weeds”
and got 600,000 results.
It turns out that this is something lots of people are interested in,
and for good reason. By pulling the weeds early, you ensure that the
good plants don’t have to compete for nutrition, space, or water and
will grow into healthy, mature pumpkins. But waiting until the weeds
can be easily distinguished from the good plants gives the weeds time to
gain a good grip on the soil and choke out the pumpkin vines.
Just as in any garden, weeds are inevitable in life, and frankly just
evidence of our fallibility as humans: weeds of fear, poor attitude,
bitterness, laziness, indecision, ignorance, arrogance, insecurity, selfdoubt, clutter, poor time management, failure to set goals, lack of
exercise, poor eating habits, and neglected relationships. How often do
we allow them to grow unchecked until we lose awareness that they’re
even there?
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Weeds start out small. A simple lapse in self-discipline, poor
judgment, or procrastination provides fertile ground for weeds to
grow. At first we don’t notice a weed has popped up, but, a little
bit every day, it grows and becomes habitual; and by the time the weed
is easily identifiable it is too late—the damage has been done. Our
physical and emotional well-being are choked. Our relationships suffer.
Our careers falter. Failure takes the place of success.
This happens to salespeople, for example, when they put off
prospecting and activity, only to find a month or two down the
road that they are producing no business because their pipeline is
empty. It happens when salespeople begin taking shortcuts in the sales
process because they’ve allowed the weeds of cynicism, arrogance,
entitlement, or self-doubt to take hold.
While no one is perfect enough to keep weeds from sprouting,
we can take measures to identify and pull our weeds before they
take hold. One of the most effective ways is through honest
introspection.
Bill George, a professor of management at Harvard Business
School, suggests that “you should develop a daily practice of setting
aside at least twenty minutes to reflect on your life.”2 For many people
this quiet time involves exercise, meditation, or prayer.
Silence gives you the space and freedom to just think and
contemplate without intrusion from the outside world. This means
scheduling time to:
■
■
■
■
■
Sit in silence and just think.
Listen to your inner voice.
Heed your intuition.
Take stock of where you are and where you are going.
Become aware of what’s holding you back.
Shakespeare’s famous line from Hamlet, “to thine own self be true,”
is important to remember in your quest for self-awareness. We all have
the capacity to see who we truly are and change. It’s a simple equation
of seeking out the truth, the courage to endure the pain of that truth,
and the desire to use the truth for change.
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Sales Drive
Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a
keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
—Napoleon Hill
This is the brutal, undeniable truth: sales is a tough, grueling, and at
times heartbreaking profession. The pressure to deliver and the demand
to perform are unrelenting. You must deliver results and keep deliver­
ing. Your income and ability to provide for yourself and your family
depend on it.
In sales, unlike most other professions, the threat of losing your job
because you have a bad month, quarter, or year is always hanging over
your head. Even when you have a good month, you can’t celebrate for
too long because it’s not about what you have sold; it is about what you
sell today. On this journey, there are incredible emotional highs and
deep lows.
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Despite this highly stressful, high-pressure environment, ultra-high
performers (UHPs) have a relaxed confidence. They fully expect to
succeed. They believe they control their future. UHPs display opti­
mism in the face of adversity.
Dr. Chris Croner spent years researching and has written exten­
sively about UHPs. Through his research, he has discovered that ultra­
high performers “always share one critical psychological trait, and that
characteristic is drive.”1
Sales Drive is a fundamental component of Sales EQ and includes:
Optimism: The positive feeling of optimism helps you face
adversity and keep going. Optimism is the mother of perseverance.
It powers a positive belief system and attracts positive energy. As Helen
Keller so aptly said, “Optimism is faith that leads to achievement.”
Competitiveness: Do you hate to lose or love to win? The drive
to avoid losing is what keeps UHPs working longer and harder, and
doing whatever it takes to win. Competitiveness is the mother of
persistence.
Need for achievement: Psychologist and researcher Henry Mur­
ray defined the need for achievement as “intense, prolonged and repeated
efforts to accomplish something difficult. To work with singleness of
purpose toward a high and distant goal. To have the determination to
win.”2 The need for achievement is the mother of self-motivation.3
Salespeople with a high need for achievement are biased toward action—
a critical competence for getting regular next-step commitments from
stakeholders and moving deals through the pipeline.
We know that a bias toward self-development is an important part
of developing a high Sales EQ and a high AQ. What research4 tells us,
though, is it takes more than self-development to perform at peak
performance day in and day out. All good salespeople train hard and
work hard. That is a given. Ultra-high performers, however, gain their
competitive edge from an unquenchable drive.
Dr. Croner is not alone in his findings. Data from multiple research
studies tell us that Sales Drive is more important than talent, experience,
education, skills, or technique. Sales Drive is why salespeople5 with
high Sales EQ thrive under pressure while others with the same level of
talent fold up like a cheap lawn chair as soon as things get difficult.
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Developing Drive
What does it take to develop and maintain Sales Drive? How do you
incubate optimism, competitiveness, and need for achievement?
The answer to these questions is twofold. First, there is a
component of Sales Drive that is innate. Like most aspects of human
behavior, some of your drive is baked into your DNA. But like all
Sales EQ traits, drive can be developed and honed. You can shift your
mind-set.
This mind-set shift begins with the discipline to develop an internal
locus on control and a clear understanding that there are only three
things you can control:
1. Actions—what you choose to do each day and every moment
2. Reactions—how you respond to people, circumstances, and dis­
ruptive emotions
3. Mind-set—your attitude and beliefs
Essentially you must become aware of the disruptive emotions and
negative self-talk that can consume you and take complete responsi­
bility for your success or failure.
Yes, some people are more competitive, more optimistic, and
more focused on achievement than others. Ultimately, however, Sales
Drive is a choice that begins with two beliefs:
1. An expectation that you are supposed to and will win
2. A belief that everything happens for a reason
The expectation that you are going to win is the genesis of
optimism, enthusiasm, and confidence. When you believe you are
going to win, it turns out that you’ll win far more often than the person
who expects to lose. You’ll brush off the disruptive emotions of doubt
and insecurity and ask confidently for what you want, achieve your sales
call objectives more often, get more micro-commitments, and close
more deals.
When you believe that everything happens for a reason, your
perspective on potentially negative events will be optimistic. Instead of
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complaining, “Why me?” when you face a setback, you ask, “How can
I learn from this?” This belief is the cradle of optimism.
When you choose to believe that you are in control of your own
destiny, you no longer fear failure and rejection, because you believe
that failure is the path to learning, growth, and improved
performance.
So, here we are, full circle: to maintain sales drive you need selfawareness and you must leverage that self-awareness for the self-control
required to manage the disruptive emotions that erode drive. The
following strategies will help you maintain high drive.
Choose Your Friends Carefully
Misery loves company, and it wants you on its team. If you hang out
with people who have poor attitudes, they’ll destroy yours. Instead,
spend time with people who build your attitude up rather than tear it
down.
Change Your Self-Talk
There is a little voice inside of you and it jabbers away 24/7. Selftalk, what you say to yourself internally, manifests itself in your
outward attitude and actions. Stop and listen to what you are
telling yourself. If you are drowning in self-pity, blaming the world
for your problems, and telling yourself what you can’t do, then it is
time to change your language. You cannot afford the luxury of a
negative thought.
Change Your Input
What you put into your brain impacts drive. Reading, watching, or
listening to negative things will impact your attitude. Take a break from
the news. Turn off talk radio. Start feeding positive messages to your
brain, and your attitude will gain altitude.
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Change Your Focus
Yes, you lost. You had a setback. You failed. When confronted with
failure, average salespeople waste their energy and time dwelling on it.
They play the tape over and over again in their head. Change your
view. Embrace the gift of failure. Leverage that hurt to become stronger
and more agile. Harness the energy you are wasting playing the defeat
tape, and use it to drive you toward your next goal.
You are not defined by what happens to you but rather by how
you deal with what happens to you. Each time you face adversity or
when things don’t go your way, you have a choice. You can either
choose to whine and complain, or choose to learn and grow.
Physical Fitness
When you face emotional hurdles, Sales Drive allows you to leap
over them. But drive requires a tremendous amount of mental
energy.
Mental energy will always be limited by your physical resilience. If
you are tired, hungry, or feel physically drained, it becomes very
difficult remain driven and manage disruptive emotions.
Keeping yourself in great physical condition improves creative
thinking, mental clarity, and optimism. It makes you more nimble and
adaptive, and helps you gain the discipline to maintain emotional selfcontrol. It also boosts your confidence and enthusiasm—the two most
important emotions in sales.
Sales professionals spend an inordinate amount of time sitting and
staring at screens. With the increase in inside sales roles and the
advancement of technology like video calls, e-mail, and social media,
salespeople spend less time on their feet than ever before.
There is mounting evidence that sitting all day is extremely
hazardless to your health6 and impacts your mental capacity. It turns
out that when you sit too long staring at a computer screen, “everything
slows, including brain function.”7
Thirty minutes to an hour a day of exercise keeps you healthy,
reduces the chance of disease, and develops physical resilience.8 Go to
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the gym, take a walk at lunch, or ride your bike when you get home at
night. Supplement this with 50 sit-ups and 50 push-ups. On the
weekends, play sports or go for a hike. Carry your bag on the golf
course instead of riding in a cart. Park at the back of the parking lot,
walk the stairs, and walk to the next terminal at the airport rather than
taking the train. Work in your garden.
Stand up while you are on the phone and walk on your breaks or
between meetings rather than sitting in the break room or in a
conference room gossiping. When you work out regularly, you’ll
feel and look more confident and gain control of your emotions.
Get Enough Sleep
Arianna Huffington, the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington
Post, is on a mission to help people get more sleep. According to
Huffington, “We are in the midst of a sleep deprivation crisis. Only
by renewing our relationship with sleep can we take back control of our
lives.”9
Nothing impacts your health and mental well-being more than
sleep. When you get plenty of sleep, your physical and mental energy is
at a peak state. You are more creative, more disciplined, and more agile.
You are more confident, able to think on your feet, apt to push past
adversity, and in control of your emotions; and frankly, you look and
feel better.
Humans need between seven and nine hours of sleep every night
for optimal performance. In today’s society, though, it has become a
badge of honor to live on little sleep.
There are all sorts of ugly things that happen to you when you are
not getting enough sleep.10 Over the long term, you become more
susceptible to immune deficiencies, obesity, heart disease, and mood
disorders, and your life expectancy is reduced.
In the short term, sleep deprivation has a profound impact on your
cognitive ability and degrades your emotional intelligence. You’re
grumpy, mentally unfocused, and stressed out; your memory fails you;
and you become susceptible to breaks in emotional discipline. It is very,
very difficult to regulate disruptive emotions, respond appropriately to
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the emotions of others, and maintain drive when you are not getting
enough sleep.11
Eat Healthily
In sales, it can be difficult to eat well. Field salespeople swing into fastfood joints to fuel up, and inside salespeople reach for the bag of chips or
candy bar hidden in their desk drawer and wash it all down with sugarladen sodas and energy drinks.
Eating poorly is like putting low-grade gasoline in a highperformance race car. To gain the mental toughness and resiliency
to work at your peak throughout the sales day, you need to fill up with
high-test rocket fuel.
Healthy eating is a conscious choice. It is also a commitment that is
easy to break when you are not getting enough sleep or exercise. These
days, even fast-food restaurants have healthy choices. With just a little
discipline and planning, you can find nutritious food on the road, and
you can certainly prepare healthy meals at home.
There is one cardinal rule for salespeople and food. No matter
what, eat breakfast. Breakfast is the most important meal of the sales
day. It kick-starts Sales Drive.
Develop Mental Toughness
To bounce back from setbacks, to get up after you’ve been knocked
down, and to be resilient in the face of rejection, adversity, and failure,
you need to be mentally tough. Mental toughness is the ability to accept
pain and sacrifice today for a win in the future. It’s the ability to block
out negative self-talk, manage disruptive emotions, ignore people who
tell you what you can’t do, and put singular focus on a desired goal.
Groundbreaking studies like Angela Duckworth’s Grit: The Power
of Passion and Perseverance (Scribner, 2016) are helping us understand just
how much mental toughness matters in achievement. James Loehr, the
father of the “psychology of winning,” described seven core dimen­
sions of mental toughness:12
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
71
Self-confidence
Attention control
Minimizing negative energy
Increasing positive energy
Maintaining motivation levels
Attitude control
Visual and imagery control
Each of the dimensions may be learned, practiced, developed, and
honed. The key is making the choice to change your mind-set. Most
average salespeople have everything they need to succeed except
mental toughness.
UHPs sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term gain. They hit
the same walls and face the same emotional suffering as everyone else.
What makes them different is their ability to lean into their challenges,
maintain their focus, and control the disruptive emotions that could
derail them from their mission.
In sales, success is paid for in advance. The fact is, sales is a grind.
But you’ve got to grind to shine. Ultra-high performers are willing to
pay the price for success.
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Self-Control
Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond
to it.
—Dorothy M. Neddermeyer
Sam Scharaga stared into the trashcan next to his prospect’s desk.
Stunned. What had been a routine sales call on a fleet manager, to
discuss damaged windshields on fleet vehicles, had turned ugly in a split
second.
The fleet manager already had a relationship with another glass
company and, even though Sam had made a good case for his company,
the prospect was unmoved. Sam thanked him for his time, left his
business card “just in case things changed,” and prepared to leave. He
also handed the fleet manager a few logoed sticky note pads.
“Most people like getting our note pads,” explains Sam’s son Bob,
now the CEO of All Star Glass, which has grown to 31 locations in
72
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California, Nevada, and Texas. “But this guy grabs the pads from my
dad’s hand and slams them into the trash can.”
Bob recalls, “This was back when we had one store and my dad was
hustling just to keep the lights on. He was working 24/7. The business
was his passion.
“My dad had a hell of a temper, but he just looks at the guy and
says, ‘I admire your loyalty. I wish all my customers were as loyal as you.
Those guys are lucky to have you as a customer.’
“The fleet manager didn’t know what to say. By keeping his
cool my dad caught him completely off guard. The guy ended up
apologizing, and we eventually earned his business. Instead of losing his
temper, my dad kept his cool, and turned the situation around.”
Managing Disruptive Emotions
In big and small ways, disruptive emotions hold salespeople back from
success. The sales profession is so engulfed in emotion that virtually
every mistake, roadblock, or failure that salespeople experience can be
tied directly to disruptive emotions. The list of disruptive emotions is
long and includes, among many others:
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Fear
Anger
Uncertainty
Insecurity
Impatience
Attachment
Detachment
Arrogance
Blaming
Delusion
Disruptive emotions manifest themselves in destructive behaviors
that fog focus, derail relationships, cloud situational awareness, and
cause irrational decision making, misjudgments, and overconfidence;
and they can lead to paralysis or procrastination when you’re faced with
decisions or asking for commitments.
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Managing disruptive emotions is the primary meta-skill of sales.
The combination of situational awareness and ability to consistently
regulate disruptive emotions is what puts ultra-high performers (UHPs)
on a pedestal high above average salespeople.
The brutal reality is no matter what you sell, whether your process
is simple or complex or the sales cycle short or long, excellence in sales
happens when you learn how to manage your disruptive emotions so
that you can influence the emotions of other people.
We know that the buyer’s emotional experience along the
buying journey has as much (or more) impact on their propensity
to buy from you as anything else. When stakeholders become
engaged in the buying process and emotionally connected to the
salesperson (or sales team in complex deals), win probability increases
significantly.
From prospecting all the way through the sales process, the failure
to manage and control disruptive emotions is the biggest single reason
salespeople blow it with stakeholders. Disruptive emotions unchecked
derail your sales conversations, cloud your judgment, and interfere with
all-important situational awareness.
Because the sales process is human. Because buying is human. You
and your stakeholders are each being bombarded with irrational and
disruptive emotions. In emotionally charged sales conversations, every­
one is trying to remain in control and rational to achieve the best
possible outcome.
What makes managing and controlling disruptive emotions so
difficult is that each emotion is, essentially, a double-edged sword.
At once the emotion can be an asset or a detriment, depending on the
situation, context, and people involved. It’s why situational awareness—
the ability to accurately judge where you are in the sales conversation
and the appropriate next move or response—is such a critical element of
Sales EQ.
Genesis of Disruptive Emotions
The paradox of emotions is that at the same time they are your most powerful ally
they’re also your greatest enemy.
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Shannon felt her face get hot. For the fourth time in less than 15
minutes, Amir interrupted her presentation to tell her that she was
wrong.
Shannon had worked for months to get to this point in the sales
process. Discovery and building the business case had been a complex
exercise requiring several trips across the country to visit the company’s
various data centers and dozens of interviews with stakeholders across
the enterprise.
A significant investment of time and money from Shannon’s
engineering team had been required to develop the solution she
was presenting. With a $10 million enterprise software and consulting
agreement on the line, she didn’t need this jerk derailing her. And he
was wrong!
From the beginning, Amir, the target company’s CIO, was against
the idea of making any change. Even though the CFO had sponsored
the project at the behest of the CEO, Amir passively resisted and pushed
back, making it hard for Shannon’s team to build the business case.
Now he was openly working against her, interrupting and pushing her
into a corner.
Suddenly Shannon had had enough. She unloaded on Amir and
put him in his place, refuting every fact and figure he’d thrown at her.
She knew more about their data centers than this old-school Luddite
who was just protecting his job.
In a tense and awkward five minutes she made her point
and lost the deal. As she finished her presentation, her sponsor,
the company CFO, shaken by her outburst, said a polite thankyou for her hard work and told her that the committee would take
everything into consideration before making a recommendation to
the board.
In the rental car on the way back to the airport, she was still fuming.
“Can you believe that guy? How the hell do Peter Principle executives
keep their jobs in companies like this?”
When Edwin, her vice president of sales, pointed out that maybe
she had let Amir get under her skin, she immediately became defensive
and fought to justify her position.
Shannon’s sales engineer chimed in. He didn’t believe Amir’s
argument was gaining traction. “Perhaps you should have just allowed
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him to talk himself in circles.” Shannon continued to argue that she’d
been right to defend her position.
In the meantime, Amir had gone from a naysayer to an outright
enemy. He actively worked to advocate for another vendor and used
his leverage with the other members of the executive team to keep
Shannon’s company out.
Shannon’s inability to control her frustration, anger, and sense of
being diminished in front of other people led her to turn Amir into an
enemy. Subsequently, she, her team, and her company lost the deal.
The human brain is the most incredible biological structure on
earth. It is capable of incredible things, and even now, after more than a
hundred years of nonstop research, scientists are just at the cusp of
unlocking its many secrets. Still, we know a great deal about how the
brain works and its myriad complexities.
We know, for example, that despite its almost infinite complexity
the brain is tasked with one very simple responsibility—to keep you safe
and alive. Harvard professor and psychologist Dr. Walter Cannon first
coined the term fight-or-flight response to describe how our brain
responds to threats.
This response in one circumstance can save you from certain death,
and in another unleashes a wave of disruptive emotions capable of
destroying a relationship.
Essentially, fight or flight is your autonomic, instinctive response to
either stand your ground and fight or run away when your brain
perceives a threat. For humans, these threats come in two forms:
1. Physical—a threat to your safety or the safety of someone close to
you
2. Social—a threat to your social standing: rejection, banishment
from the group, looking bad in front of other people, non­
acceptance, diminishment
Since sales is not a dangerous profession, virtually all perceived
threats are to our social standing and fragile egos. It’s not a stretch to
conclude that 80 percent or more of the disruptive emotions we face as
we walk through our sales day are triggered by the fight-or-flight
response.
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The remainder are caused by cognitive biases. At times these
mental shortcuts that allow our brains to think fast in a complex world
become disruptive emotions that impede objectivity.
One point I want to make about both the fight-or-flight response
and cognitive biases is that these disruptive emotions are universal to
humans. Therefore, understanding your own disruptive emotions has
the additional purpose of helping you gain empathy for stakeholders
and their irrational behavior. This insight combined with emotional
control is a key to mastering influence frameworks.
Fight or Flight
The fight-or-flight response is insidious because it is a neuro­
physiological response that circumvents rational thought and can, at
least in the short term, extinguish your ability to think and focus. It
begins in the amygdala and then radiates as hormones are produced and
pumped throughout your entire body.
The amygdala interprets the threat from sensory input. This
triggers a release of neurochemicals, including adrenaline, testosterone,
and cortisol. Oxygen- and glucose-rich blood floods from nonessential
parts of your body into your muscles. Your heart rate accelerates, your
skin flushes, your pupils dilate, you lose peripheral vision, your stomach
tightens, blood vessels constrict, digestion slows down, and you begin
shaking.
This is the root cause of the uncomfortable and often painful
physical response to fear, anxiety, and stress. Oh, and it gets worse: you
have zero control over this response. The fight-or-flight response
happens without your consent.
If your response is to fight, like Shannon from our previous story,
anger may rage out of control and you verbally attack a stakeholder. In a
milder, and more common, response you may cut the other person off to
argue your point—thus diminishing their significance and potentially
triggering their own fight-or-flight response, resulting in an argument.
Should your response be to flee, you fold in the face of potential or
real rejection. You may become passive and nonassertive when asking
for commitments or insecure and weak when meeting other people.
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To prepare your body to defend itself, blood rushes from non­
essential parts of your body to your muscles. One of those nonessential
areas from which blood is drawn is your neocortex—your rational
brain. When dealing with threats and trying to stay alive, thinking
through your options is not an asset. You need to move quickly.
As blood drains from your neocortex, you gain the cognitive
capacity of a drunk monkey. In the clutches of fight or flight, you can’t
think, you struggle for words, and you feel out of control. Your mind
reels, palms sweat, stomach tightens, and muscles become tense. In this
state, without rational intervention, you are consumed by disruptive
emotions and lose control.
Fear
In sales, the most obvious and insidious disruptive emotion is fear. Fear
is the root of so much failure in sales. It holds you back from asking for
what you want, prospecting, getting through the doors of C-level
prospects, being assertive, getting to the next step, and walking away
from bad deals; it clouds objectivity and breeds insecurity.
Insecurity
Insecurity drowns confidence and enthusiasm (passion). If we were to
strip sales down to its rawest level, we’d learn that sales is simply one
person transferring emotions to another person. This transference goes
back and forth from the salesperson to the stakeholder and the stake­
holder to the salesperson. When you feel and act confident and
enthusiastic, the probability that your stakeholder will be fully engaged
and comply with requests you make goes up exponentially.
Desperation
Desperation is a disruptive emotion that causes you to feel insecure,
make poor decisions, and become needy and weak. It makes you
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unattractive to other people. You become emotional and act illogically,
which causes you to make poor decisions.
When you are desperate, rather than focusing your thoughts on
what is required for success, you focus on what will happen to you if
you fail. Instead of believing you will win, you assume you will lose,
thereby attracting failure.
Stakeholders can sense desperation and are repelled by it. Through
your actions, tone of voice, words, and body language, you send the
message that you are desperate and weak. Stakeholders gravitate toward
confidence.
Need for Significance
The most insatiable human need is the need to feel important or
significant. This egocentric need can become one of your most
disruptive emotions when left unchecked. Your need to feel important
can cause you to be so focused on yourself that you pitch and
pontificate, talk over other people, fail to listen, and arrogantly talk
about yourself. These behaviors destroy emotional connections with
stakeholders.
Attachment
The dark side of competitiveness is attachment. This disruptive emo­
tion causes you to become so attached to winning, getting what you
want, looking good in front of others, wanting everyone to agree with
you, and always being right that you lose perspective and objectivity.
Attachment is the enemy of self-awareness and the mother of delusion.
Worry
Mark Twain once said, “I’ve experienced many terrible things in
my life, a few of which actually happened.” The downside of your
brain’s vigilant crusade to keep you safe and alive is its tendency to
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focus on the negative—what could go wrong, rather than what could
go right.
From a purely evolutionary point of view this made sense because
those who avoided danger in the first place were more likely to
perpetuate their genes. But there is a big difference between avoiding
something that might kill you and a social threat.
The amygdala, though, treats all threats the same. So, we worry
and ruminate and play worst-case scenarios over and over in our heads.
Worry itself can trigger the fight-or-flight response and the stream
of disruptive emotions that come with it. It can lead to the Three Ps1—
procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis—disruptive emotions that
hold you back in prospecting and sales.
Worrying about events that have not yet happened plagues sales­
people. As you roll through the scenario in your head and see yourself
failing, embarrassed, or rejected, you let the air out of confidence,
create insecurity where it didn’t previously exist, or even avoid the
situation altogether.
Cognitive Biases
There is nothing you do, no decision, no conversation, no situation
where cognitive biases are not in play.2 Biases are the dark side of
cognitive heuristics—the mental shortcuts that enable quick and effi­
cient decisions and judgments about people and situations.
But these hasty judgments can cloud objectivity and result in
deviation from objectivity into delusion, causing you to:3
■
■
■
■
■
Ignore opportunities, options, and helpful information.
Over- or underestimate win probabilities.
Lose your empathy and disconnect from emotional awareness.
Become blind to the motivations of stakeholders.
Seek out information that supports your point of view while
discounting data that does not.
Cognitive biases emanate from the subconscious and are often
triggered before you are consciously aware of how your decisions and
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thought patterns have been negatively impacted. It is very difficult to
control them.
The key to control is an intellectual understanding of common
cognitive biases and the self-awareness to catch and redirect them as
they occur.
Fundamental Attribution Error
Fundamental attribution error, sometimes called correspondence bias,
causes you to label the behavior of other people based on perceived
internal characteristics or flaws versus external factors. Instead of
assuming positive intent when attributing4 reasons for another person’s
behavior, you think the worst of other people.5
Self-Serving Bias
The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute positive events to your
own character but attribute negative events to external factors.6
Essentially, the self-serving bias is a disruptive emotion that prevents
you from owning and being accountable for actions that may nega­
tively impact your egocentric belief system and self-esteem.
Self-Enhancement Bias
Humans have a basic desire and motivation to see themselves in a
positive light and preserve self-esteem. Therefore, we tend to seek out
evidence that supports our view of ourselves.
This can be a positive emotion in situations where we’ve been
rejected or hit a roadblock, because it helps us reframe our self-talk, see
ourselves in a positive light, and get back up.
The self-enhancement bias becomes destructive when it inhibits
self-awareness7 and blinds us to our faults and weaknesses, reducing our
drive for self-development and growth; or causes us to avoid coaching
and feedback when it might reveal a truth we are afraid of facing.
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Optimism Bias
We learned earlier that optimism is a core component of Sales Drive.
The dark side of optimism8 is that it can cause you to believe that you
are less likely to experience a negative event—like losing a deal—than
other people (sometimes referred to as comparative optimism9). The
optimism bias can lead to delusion and blind you to potential pitfalls
with buyers, stakeholders, deals, and competitors, leaving you exposed
to surprises.
Overconfidence Effect
The key to ultra-high sales performance is an obsessive focus on win
probabilities. This requires you to accurately estimate and forecast the
potential of opportunities in your pipeline. The problem is that
humans, including you, have the uncanny habit of systematically
overestimating probability.
You’ve been there before. You’ve observed someone complete a
difficult or complex task with ease and you’ve confidently declared, “I
can do that!” It’s only in the middle of doing it that you realize you’ve
overestimated your abilities.
Likewise, overconfidence can cause you to invest time on lowprobability prospects or fail to properly plan for sales meetings.
Overconfidence has three dimensions: overestimation of one’s
actual performance, overplacement of one’s performance relative to
others, and overprecision in expressing unwarranted certainty in the
accuracy of one’s beliefs.10
False Consensus and Confirmation Biases
Take a short spin on Facebook and you’ll get up front and personal with
the false consensus bias. This disruptive emotion leads you to believe
that your values, beliefs, opinions, and habits are normal and therefore
naturally shared by everyone else.11 If people do not believe the same as
you, they’re labeled as abnormal or defective.
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The false consensus bias can be extremely damaging in sales.
■
■
■
It impedes empathy and causes you to project your beliefs on other
people.
When you assume that stakeholders are on the same page with
you, you ask fewer questions and become less curious.
Stakeholders who do not share your views are considered flawed
and you tend to talk at them and pitch in the attempt to argue
them into believing that they are wrong.
Salespeople whose objectivity is clouded by this bias are often
surprised when stakeholders don’t buy. Instead of looking inward for
where they may have failed, they blame the stakeholder or label them
stupid.
Humans also have a nasty tendency to form a belief and then seek
out information that supports and confirms that belief while ignoring
any evidence that refutes it. This is called the confirmation bias.
The confirmation bias obscures the truth. You can observe the
confirmation bias in full force at the end of the quarter as salespeople
miss forecast, blindsided by deals that did not close because they
ignored contradictory evidence that was staring them in the face the
entire time.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
Most of us believe that we make rational decisions about investments
based on our self-interest and a future state we desire. The truth is, in
many cases, these decisions are influenced more by what we have
already invested.
Once we have invested, time, money, and emotion into anything,
humans have a bad habit of throwing good money after bad, believing
falsely that they “can’t give up now.”
This sunk cost fallacy can cause you to become attached to a lowprobability deal once you’ve invested time, effort, and emotion into
it—even though the evidence is clear that it will never close. Average
salespeople usually have a pipeline full of sunk cost deals.
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Developing Self-Control
There is a difference between experiencing emotions and being caught
up in them. For this reason, emotional self-awareness is the mother of
self-control. Awareness allows you, in the midst of your emotional
storm, to take control of the helm and change course.
Regulating and managing disruptive emotions is a difficult and
ongoing process. As soon as you let your guard down, your emotions
begin to run amok at your expense—especially when you are tired,
hungry, or stressed out.
We’ve learned that you have very little control over the process
and mechanisms by which disruptive emotions and cognitive biases
originate. For this reason, to gain control, you’ll need to deploy a set of
techniques and frameworks that help you become aware of disruptive
emotions, gain rational control, and regulate them before your emo­
tions create irrevocable damage.
With awareness, you rise above your emotions to become a
detached, dispassionate observer. From this point of view, you gain
the perspective and objectivity to assess the unintended consequences
of being swept away by disruptive emotions.
Know Your Emotional Triggers
There are situations, words, types of people, and circumstances in your
sales day that trigger disruptive emotions.12
Some emotional triggers, like getting cut off in traffic or being
confronted by a rude person, occur without your consent. Others, like
allowing yourself to walk into potentially stressful or anxiety-inducing
situations when you are tired, hungry, or already experiencing an
overwhelming cognitive load, are self-inflicted.
Many triggers, like facing rejection on prospecting calls, giving
presentations, and dealing with upset customers, are part of the job and
unavoidable. Awareness of these triggers makes it much easier to avoid,
plan for, anticipate, or respond to them appropriately.
Learn to anticipate triggers and become aware of both your
physiological and emotional response leading up to and at the point
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of the trigger. With awareness, you gain the control required to
consciously regulate the disruptive emotion in the moment, and still
accomplish your objective.
Preparation and Practice
Stressful situations, say an important presentation to a C-level stake­
holder while your manager observes, may trigger disruptive emotions
that derail you. Your nervousness can spill over into insecurity, causing
you to look and act as though you lack confidence or stumble over your
presentation.
The most effective way to manage disruptive emotions in these
situations is through advance preparation and practice. Take time up
front to prepare yourself by researching the people involved, antici­
pating the questions they may ask, stepping into their shoes, and
considering their viewpoint.
Then practice. Roll through the demo or presentation several
times in advance or role-play the sales conversation with your manager
or a peer. Play out all the worst-case scenarios so that you are prepared
for any eventuality.
On my team, when we are doing a group presentation, we practice
together and talk openly about where our disruptive emotions might
derail us. For example, one of the big problems with team presentations
is the disruptive need to feel important. This manifests itself when team
members jump in and talk over each other, or feel like they need to
make their point after another team member has made a point—one­
upping one another.
We agree in advance who will say what and who will answer
which questions. We practice shutting up, and we develop signals to
help each other become aware, in the moment, when a disruptive
emotion is causing our behavior to run amok.
Preparation calms the mind and builds confidence. You’ll find that
when you take the time to practice, the actual situation, when you are
in it, seems much easier. Your mind is prepared to anticipate disruptive
emotions and rise above them.
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Pre-Call Planning
Average salespeople wing it. They leave sales call outcomes to chance
and their emotions drifting in the wind. Ultra-high performers plan for
sales calls in advance by asking and answering four questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
What
What
What
What
do I know?
do I want to know?
is my call objective?
is my targeted next step?
Pre-call planning allows them to consider multiple scenarios,
develop an agenda, build questions in advance, and determine the
commitment for which they’ll be asking.
Positive Visualization
We learned earlier that our minds are hardwired to think about the
worst. When faced with an emotionally unpleasant task, we begin
creating negative outcomes in our mind—outcomes that don’t exist.
Without intervention, these internal narratives become self-fulfilling
prophecies.
For instance, Lisa expects to encounter resistance on a prospecting
call. This negative visualization makes her feel insecure. Lacking
confidence, she approaches the call with trepidation. When the
prospect answers, she stumbles over her words, sounding weak and
pathetic. The prospect bulldozes over her. Lisa is shaken and expects
she’ll get even more resistance on her next call.
“Because the brain’s focus on threat and danger far outperforms the
reward capacities of the brain, it is important to keep a deliberate eye on
positive possibilities,”13 advises Scott Halford in his book, Activate Your
Brain. Had Lisa approached the call with confidence, her demeanor
alone would have reduced resistance and generated a more positive
outcome.
It is for this reason that elite athletes14 and elite salespeople employ
visualization to preprogram the subconscious brain. When you visualize
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success, you teach your mind to act in a way that is congruent with
actualizing that success.15
Begin by focusing on your breathing. Slow it down. Then in your
mind’s eye go step-by-step through each part of the call. Focus on how
it feels to be confident. Imagine what you will say, what you will ask.
Visualize yourself succeeding. Repeat this process again and again until
you’ve trained your mind to manage the disruptive emotions that lead
down the dark path of failure.
Manage Self-Talk
There is an endless and ongoing stream of chatter inside your head,
shaping your emotions and outward actions. The conversation you are
having with yourself will either build your attitude, strengthen your
belief system, and generate a winning mind-set or trigger disruptive
emotions that destroy you.
Unlike emotions that are activated without your consent, self-talk
is completely within your control. You make the choice to think
positively or negatively. To pick yourself up or tear yourself down. To
see a glass half-full or half-empty. To be aware or delusional.
Sit quietly and listen to the conversation in your head—the words
you are using, the questions you are asking. Then resolve to change
those words to support the image of who you want to be, how you
want to act, and how you want to feel. Make an intentional decision to
remain tuned in to your inner voice. When it goes negative, stop and
change the conversation.
Change Your Physiology
Studies on human behavior from virtually every corner of the academic
world have proven time and again that we can change how we feel by
changing our physical posture. In other words, internal emotions may
be shaped by your outward physiology. For example, when you slump
your shoulders, lower your chin, and look at the floor—physical signals
of insecurity—you feel less confident.
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A change in physical posture not only elicits a change in emo­
tions,16 but it also triggers a neurophysiological response.17 For exam­
ple, we know that the hormones cortisol and testosterone play a
significant role in creating the feeling of confidence. Research by
Amy Cuddy of Harvard University demonstrates that “power posing,”
physically standing in a posture of confidence, even when you don’t
feel confident, impacts testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain,
influencing confidence.18
Moms know this. They’ve have been giving us this same advice for
years. Sit up straight and you’ll feel better. Keep your head up. Most inside
sales trainers teach salespeople that putting a smile on their face will
transfer that smile to their voice.
Act as though you are enthusiastic, think enthusiastic thoughts, and
use enthusiastic language, and you will begin to feel enthusiastic and
eventually become enthusiastic. Even the simple act of saying “I’m
awesome!” when someone asks you how you are doing can lift your
mood and cause you to feel awesome—even if you don’t.
We know that when you dress your best, you feel your best. When
you put your shoulders up and chin up, you look and feel confident.
Use assertive and assumptive words, phrases, and voice tone, and you
will be more powerful and credible—and more likely to get a yes when
you ask for what you want.
Obstacle Immunity
The noncommissioned officers who had served overseas in combat
nodded and laughed in acknowledgment of the uncomfortable truth.
They’d rather take live fire than make cold calls to 18-year-old
recruits.
These military recruiters were struggling to make their mission, but
not because they lacked talent or passion. Rather, interrupting people
and dealing with potential rejection were such daunting emotional
obstacles—at least in their minds.
When the military brought me in to speak to the recruiters, those
calls felt easy to me. In my mind, the recruiters were doing the high
school kids and their parents a favor: giving the kids a job, college
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tuition, and amazing benefits. The soldiers, though, felt fear. They
could only see rejection.
For the soldiers, cold calling recruits in an environment that they
could not control and did not understand created, what felt like, an
insurmountable emotional obstacle.
In training, the military had run them through endless live fire
drills, conditioning their minds to become immune to that fear before
sending them into war zones. Most people, placed into a situation
where an enemy is shooting at them, might freeze or run, potentially
getting other people killed. These soldiers, however, controlled their
natural fight-or-flight response and raced headlong into dangerous
situations.
It was only when I drew the parallel between how they had been
trained to overcome the obstacle of fear in the face of live fire and how
they could apply the same methodology for overcoming their fear of
calling 18-year-old recruits that the lights clicked on.
You must teach your rational brain to tell your emotional brain
that the obstacle that seems so big in the moment is actually quite small.
This begins by putting yourself in position to experience the perceived
obstacle and the accompanying emotions again and again.
Self-control in the face of obstacles is like a muscle. The more you
exercise it, the stronger you get.
Once you begin intentionally facing fears and emotionally
uncomfortable situations, you’ll learn to anticipate the anxiety that
comes right before the obstacle. You’ll begin shifting your internal selftalk and outward physical reaction to that fear. Soon what once seemed
an insurmountable obstacle becomes routine.
Push Pause
We’ve established that the initial physiological fight-or-flight response
is involuntary. The adrenaline rushing through your bloodstream
occurs without your consent. In this state, with your body and brain
drunk on neurochemicals, it is hard to think and keep your composure.
But adrenaline is short-lived. The fight-or-flight response is only
meant to get you out of trouble long enough to allow you to consider,
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rationally, your options and next move. The secret to gaining control of
disruptive emotions in the moment is simply giving your rational brain
(neocortex) a chance to catch up and take control.
In her book Emotional Alchemy, Tara Bennett-Goleman calls this
the “magic quarter second”19 that allows you to keep the disruptive
emotions you feel from becoming emotional reactions you express.
In fast-moving situations, to effectively deal with disruptive emo­
tions you need only a millisecond for your logical brain to wake up and
tell the amygdala to stand down. This allows you to regain your poise
and your control of the conversation.
The most effective means of giving yourself this moment is
simply to pause before you speak. When you feel emotions taking
over, slow your breathing and count to five. This simple pause allows
time for adrenaline to dissipate and your rational brain to catch up
and hold you back from rushing headlong onto the emotional rollercoaster.
In this brief pause you consider the unintended consequences
of a potential response and instead focus on the outcome you really
want.
Another strategy I use is called a ledge. It works well when facing a
difficult question, an objection, or a direct challenge from a stake­
holder. The ledge has the same effect as a pause—giving your rational
brain the magic quarter second to catch up and take over.
Instead of stumbling through a nonsensical answer—coming off as
defensive, weak, or unknowledgeable—or arguing, simply ledge with
another question:
■
■
■
■
■
“That’s interesting—can you tell me why this is important to
you?”
“How so?”
“Would you tell me more?
“Interesting—could you walk me through that?”
“Just to be sure I understand your question, could you elaborate a
little more?”
The question keeps your stakeholder talking, giving you time to
think and gain control of your emotions.
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Focus on What You Really Want
“This damn unit is a lemon. I want a new one and I want it today!”
Wayne’s customer was screaming at him on the phone. It was July
and the air conditioner his company had installed three months
earlier was broken again. It was the third time, and his customer was
livid.
Wayne, the second-generation owner of the HVAC company,
could feel his blood begin to boil. He didn’t like being talked to this
way. He was trying to get a word in, but this guy wasn’t even giving
him a chance.
“How many units have I bought from you over the last year?” the
customer screamed. Before Wayne could answer, his customer filled in
the blank.
“Six. Six units and almost seventy-five thousand dollars. Plus, we
have seven more on order for the renovations we have under way now.
You’d think our business would mean something to you and you’d take
this situation seriously!”
Wayne had had enough. How dare this asshole treat him this way!
He hated it when customers threw how much they were spending in
his face. He didn’t like being trapped.
“If you aren’t willing to stand by your equipment, I’m going to
pull all of my business and take it to a competitor. Then I’m going to
post it on social media and send a letter to the Better Business
Bureau.” His customer was barely taking a breath between assaults.
Enough! Wayne exploded. His last words ended the conversation:
“If you don’t like the way we work, then take your business some­
where else!” When the dust cleared, he’d lost a customer.
In the moment, it felt good to let this customer, who had crossed
the line, have it. Shortly thereafter, though, there was the headache of
responding to the Better Business Bureau, dealing with the guy’s rant
on social media, responding to the manufacturer to whom the customer
had lodged a complaint, and explaining to his father how he’d managed
to lose a high-value customer who had been doing business with them
for more than seven years.
In retrospect, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut and listened.
Overall, it had been a good and profitable relationship. The customer
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was just upset and having a bad day. But Wayne lost control of his
emotions and caused irreparable damage.
During intense conversations, when you are hurt, angry, and
frustrated or your ego has been bruised, you dig in, stand your ground,
and argue your point—even when your point is irrational. Meanwhile,
the person on the other side of the argument digs in, too.
In this intractable situation, called psychological reactance, both
people argue, neither being willing to back down. You become
attached to winning, to being right. Emotions escalate and words
become personal or biting until something is said that rips the relation­
ship apart beyond repair. It’s human, and it happens every day in
person, on the phone, and via text, e-mail, and social media.
To emerge from these and other emotionally charged situations
unscathed, you must rise above them and avoid responding in kind. Of
course, in the heat of the moment this can be difficult and challeng­
ing—just ask Wayne.
There is a technique, though, that when employed will help you
maintain your objectivity and perspective, and help you detach from
the need to win the argument. The key is focusing on what you really
want. The technique revolves around a simple question you ask
yourself during the argument:
“Do I want _____ or do I want ___?”
For instance, if you are having an argument with a spouse or family
member, you might ask yourself, “Do I want to be right or do I want to
be happy?”
The question that might have helped Wayne avoid losing a
valuable customer is: “Do I want to be right or do I want to keep
this customer?”
When you are meeting with a stakeholder who brags on and on
about how much he knows about your product, you want to show him
how much you know, too. But, before you interrupt and talk over him,
ask yourself, “Do I want to feel significant or do I want to get this
stakeholder on my side and move to the next step?”
Emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman says that this
deliberate, top-down process of putting the rational brain in charge
is the key to self-control in emotionally charged situations.20 It’s
about thinking about the consequences of acting on your disruptive
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emotions and then consciously choosing how you will respond
rather than indulging in the luxury of allowing your emotional brain
to run free.
Rise Above Emotion and Choose Your Behaviors
Salespeople who are unable to regulate disruptive emotions get caught
up in and controlled by emotional waves much like a rudderless boat
tossed at sea in a violent storm—pushed from wave to wave, highs and
lows at whim.
Ultra-high performers master their emotions. They are adept at
being aware that the emotion is happening, and at leveraging the
rational part of their brain to take the helm, make sense of the emotion,
and respond appropriately in the moment. They rise above their
emotions and choose their behaviors.
But let’s not sweep under the rug just how difficult it is to
appropriately manage disruptive emotions in the moment. As humans,
we have all been that rudderless ship. We’ve all said or done things in
the moment that later, in retrospect, we regretted.
Platitudes like “You have one mouth and two ears” and “People
don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”
are all too common in sales training rooms. It is easy to talk about
managing disruptive emotions in dispassionate clichés but an entirely
different thing to bite your tongue in a sales conversation when
everything inside you wants to blurt out an answer or a solution
that seems so logical to you.
Disruptive emotions are the reason sales methodologies like
Challenger, Insight Selling, SPIN Selling, and Strategic Selling are
difficult for average salespeople to actualize outside of the pages of a
book or seminar. Intellect, rational thinking, and process drown in
the sea of disruptive emotions, cognitive biases, and the human
subconscious.
The genesis of much of our behavior—good and bad, destructive
and effective—begins outside of the reaches of our conscious minds.
We act but are unaware of why we act unless we choose to tune in and
be aware. In sales, you cannot be delusional and successful at the same
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time, but delusion is such a gracious thief—a warm, inviting shelter
from the painful truth.
Awareness is the mother of self-control. It is the intentional and
deliberate choice to monitor, evaluate, and modulate your emotions so
that your emotional responses to the people and environment around
you are congruent with your intentions and objectives.
Free Sales EQ Resources
You may already be sensing that there is far more to developing
Sales EQ and deploying it in the sales process than can possibly be
contained in this book.
We cut more than 80,000 words from the final manuscript.
Because of this, I’ve made additional training resources,
articles, videos, and discussion forums available at https://www
.salesgravy.com/saleseq
Because you purchased this book, you get a 12-month
Professional Membership (a $1,200 value) absolutely free—no
strings attached. Just use the following code when you check out:
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Shaping Win
Probability
Begins with
Qualification
You don’t have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing,
it’ll go.
—Yogi Berra
I need to make something very clear. Nothing you learn in this book
matters a hill of beans if you are not dealing with qualified prospects. You
can be the greatest influencer the world has ever known, but if you are
dealing with a prospect that is not in the buying window or stakeholders
who are unwilling to engage and make micro-commitments that
advance your deal through the pipeline, you are going to fail. Period,
end of story.
For ultra-high performers (UHPs), everything begins with a
qualified prospect. UHPs are super-disciplined at qualifying. They
understand that time is money and it is a waste of time to work
with prospects that are not going to buy. They know that qualified
prospects and stakeholders are scarce, and a moment spent with a
95
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low-probability prospect takes them away from their most important
task—investing in prospects that will buy.
Effective qualifying begins with gathering information while
prospecting. It continues during your initial conversations with stake­
holders, through discovery, and maintaining acute awareness through­
out the entire sales process for signs that might disqualify or lower the
win probability of your deal.
Chasing Ugly Deals
If you’ve ever played baseball or softball or watched your kids play,
you’ve no doubt witnessed a batter chasing a wild pitch—too high,
too low, or way outside of the strike zone. It almost never works
out.
Several years back, when my son played Little League baseball,
his team was in the bottom of the sixth inning with two outs and the
bases loaded. The game was tied. With the winning run on third
base, all his team needed was a hit to win the game and advance to
the play-offs.
As the next batter walked from the dugout toward the batter’s box,
the coach pulled him aside and gave him some sage advice.
“Whatever you do,” Coach Sandro admonished, “don’t swing at
nothing ugly.”
Average salespeople, driven by the disruptive emotions of desper­
ation, impatience, sunk cost, or attachment, waste time, energy, and
emotion swinging at ugly deals: low-probability deals that are
unprofitable, are unqualified, are not in the buying window, don’t
have a budget, don’t have engaged stakeholders, or because of contracts
or other constraints don’t have the ability to buy.
From the outside looking in, it’s obvious that these lowprobability, ugly deals will never close and will divert the salesperson’s
time and attention from better opportunities. Yet, despite the obvious
signs, average salespeople forge forward, either delusional or oblivious,
placing ugly deals in their pipelines and forecasts, wasting endless hours
working on prospects that will never close.
Sadly, the results are predictable. These salespeople strike out.
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97
Define the Strike Zone
The first step in qualifying is to clearly define the strike zone. Far too
many companies (especially start-ups and small businesses), sales orga­
nizations, and sales professionals fail to develop a profile of an ideal
qualified prospect (IQP). This profile is a composite that includes
buying window, compelling buying motivations, stakeholder hierar­
chies, engagement, competitor entrenchment, sales cycle, industry
vertical, company size, fit, and more.
Here is a blinding flash of the obvious: if you don’t define the strike
zone, you will waste a lot of time chasing ugly deals.
If you work for a large, established company, it’s likely that an IQP
profile has already been created. This profile will vary based on account
size, market vertical, product, or service. Spend time with the UHPs on
your team as well as your sales leader to ensure you understand the less
tangible nuances of your company’s or product line’s IQPs.
If you work for a small company or start-up, the IQP may be
nonexistent or transforming rapidly as the organization evolves. You
may be left to your own devices to figure it out.
Begin by analyzing your product and service delivery strengths and
weaknesses. Look for patterns and commonalities among your best
customers. Define and map common stakeholder roles. Analyze the
deals you are closing, and gain a deeper understanding of trigger events
that opened those buying windows.
Once you have gathered sufficient information, develop a profile
of the prospect that is most likely to do business with you and, over the
long term, be a profitable, happy customer.
Qualifying Methodologies and Shortcuts
Rather than a single decision point at a single place in time, effective
qualification is an ongoing series of decisions beginning with develop­
ing effective prospecting lists and continuing along the entire sales
process journey.
Over the years, many qualifying methodologies and shortcuts have
been created to help salespeople quickly assess the viability of a deal.
Most have easy-to-remember acronyms.
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My take is that none of them are better or worse than any of the
others. Frankly, it’s situational. Depending on the complexity of the
deal, length of cycle, product, service, and so on, you’ll need to choose
what works best for you, and more than likely you’ll end up with a
mashup of the various methodologies.
BANT
The most commonly used early qualification methodology is called
BANT:
■
■
■
■
Budget: Does the prospect have the budget?
Authority: Are you talking to a person with the authority to
make a decision?
Need: Does the prospect or the prospect’s organization have a
need for your product?
Time line: Is the need urgent? Is there a defined time line for
making a buying decision?
An alternative close cousin to BANT is ANUM, which stands for
authority, need, urgency, and money. While BANT focuses first on
available budget, ANUM prioritizes identifying the decision maker.
Both BANT and ANUM qualification methods work well with:
■
■
■
Short-cycle, low-complexity deals.
Mature products and services for which need can be clearly defined.
High-activity sales roles in which salespeople engage many pros­
pects a day and thus need to make quick decisions about the
viability of those prospects.
BANT and ANUM are deficient when applied to long-cycle,
complex deals that carry high risk for the buyer and have a wide array of
stakeholders.
PACT
With emerging or disruptive products and services, there is rarely a
planned budget and little urgency because the prospect wasn’t even
aware the product or the problem existed.
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99
In her book, The Sales Development Playbook, inside sales expert
Trish Bertuzzi suggests a more effective strategy for early qualifying
when selling disruptive products called PACT:1
■
■
■
■
Pain: Not every prospect will have a need for your product or
service. The bigger question is: Do they have a level of pain
(known or unknown) that, if revealed, would cause them to take
action to remove or ease that pain?
Authority: Are you able to identify the stakeholders and the level
of influence they have on the deal? Are you stuck at too low a level
in the organization? Are you able to level up?
Consequence: Your prospect may feel pain, but if there is not a
big enough consequence or implication to the prospect or the
company for not acting on this pain, it is unlikely they will change.
Target profile: Does this prospect fit your IQP profile? If not,
you’re likely looking at a deal that will never close.
MEDDIC
This methodology was developed by Jack Napoli and Dick Dunkel
primarily for long-cycle technology sales. However, MEDDIC works
well with long-cycle, complex, and enterprise-level deals in any
industry.
When used effectively, it significantly improves pipeline forecast­
ing accuracy because it forces you to know how your prospect buys, the
compelling reason for buying, and who in the account will drive that
decision, before investing additional resources in the deal.
■
■
■
■
Metrics: Is there quantifiable, provable impact to the organization
for selecting you as the vendor?
Economic buyer: Do you have access to the ultimate decision
maker—the person who has the unique authority to say yes?
Decision criteria: Do you understand the criteria that will be
used to select a vendor? Can you influence the criteria? Can you
meet the criteria?
Decision process: Do you understand the decision process and
time line? Can you influence the process? Can you align it with
your sales process?
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■
Sales EQ
Identifying pain: Is there enough pain or a compelling trigger
event associated with not deploying your product or service to
cause the economic buyer to feel an urgent need to change?
Champion: Do you have sponsors or coaches who advocate for
you or amplify your message?
TAS
MEDDIC combined with the Targeted Account Selling (TAS) quali­
fying methodology can be very effective. TAS is a fantastic go/no-go
methodology following initial discovery that forces you to answer four
questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Is there an opportunity?
Can we compete?
Can we win?
Is it worth winning?
All of these are excellent questions to ask at the murder board when
assessing the viability of deals. We’ll discuss murder boarding in detail
later in this chapter.
WOLFE
When working with contractual sales (especially when those con­
tracts create exclusivity) or working with a prospect that is already
using a competitor vendor, I leverage the WOLFE qualifying
methodology.
Contractual sales are unique. Buying windows are open for a short
period of time, are typically predictable, and the buyer is forced to make
one of three decisions: stay with the current vendor, make a change, or
quit using the product or service altogether.
■
Window: Is the buying window open? If not, how soon will it
open? How long has it been open? In noncontractual, incumbent
vendor situations, what triggered it to open?
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■
■
■
■
101
Opportunity: What is the opportunity? Is it big or small? Is it
long-term or short-term? Do they have problems, challenges, or
opportunities that you are in a unique position to solve?
Loyalty: How loyal are they to their current vendor? How
difficult will it be for them to change? How much will it cost
to change? Are all stakeholders loyal? Is the current vendor making
mistakes you can exploit? Is the current vendor taking the prospect
for granted?
Fit: Is this prospect or problem a good fit for your product or
service? Does their buying process align with your sales process? If
not, can you shape their buying process?
Engagement: Do you have a clear map of the stakeholders who
influence and make decisions? Are you able to access and influence
those stakeholders? If not, what other leverage do you have? Are
the most influential stakeholders willing to engage?
Regardless of the methodology or mashups of methodologies
you choose, it’s important to channel your inner UHP and be picky,
picky, picky about what you allow to move into and remain in your
pipeline.
Nine-Frame Qualification Matrix
I’m a fan of simple and visual. My favorite way to qualify and
continue to qualify opportunities is with a simple nine-frame quali­
fication matrix. This tool offers a visual representation of qualification
data points across six independent dimensions. I love it because it
integrates with and amplifies any qualification methodology or
shortcut.
The matrix can be overkill with short-cycle, low-complexity deals
yet extremely eye-opening as complexity grows, making it easy to
assess win probability throughout the cycle.
Earlier this year, for example, while working with a group of sales
professionals at one of the world’s premier tech companies, I had them
split into teams and on whiteboards draw this nine-square matrix. The
columns were labeled Technical Qualifiers, Stakeholder Qualifiers, and
Fit Qualifiers. The rows were labeled High Potential Prospect (HPP),
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Figure 12.1
Medium Potential Prospect (MPP), and Low Potential Prospect (LPP).
It looked like Figure 12.1.
Within each square the participants described the profile of a
prospect that would fall into that square. In the High Potential
Prospect/Technical Qualifiers square, for example, they agreed on:
■
■
■
■
■
Greater than $2 billion in annual revenue
CIO headquartered in the United States
Global footprint
Greater than 10 percent annual growth rate
At least one serious data breach in the previous 24 months
This represented the highest-potential prospect for the software
product this group was selling based on only technical qualifiers (TQs).
Since TQs are just one part of the puzzle, we proceeded to complete
the remainder of the matrix.
Technical qualifiers. TQs are quantifiable facts and figures. This
is the easiest information to gather prior to engaging a prospect. For
example, at Sales Gravy we sell an online remote training and mobile
learning solution. Our target companies are $10 million to $100 million
in revenue, privately owned, with greater than 10 sales resources on the
team. These prospects represent our highest potential for self-directed
and instructor-led remote learning sales. As prospects move away from
this sweet spot, win probability decreases.
Stakeholder qualifiers. This column of the qualification matrix is
stakeholder and engagement focused. Stakeholder qualifiers (SQs) help
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define the roles and the authority of the people you are dealing with
and their level of engagement. For example, if I’m dealing with an
engaged CEO in a complex deal, it’s an HPP SQ. On the other hand, if
I’m on the receiving end of a blind request for proposal (RFP), I’ve got
an LPP SQ.
Much of stakeholder qualification is tied directly to mapping the
stakeholder array within the opportunity. We’ll discuss stakeholder
mapping in detail in an upcoming chapter, The Five Stakeholders You
Meet in a Deal.
Stakeholder mapping goes beyond the typical focus on identifying
the decision maker. It’s a focus on uncovering the various stakeholders
who influence the outcome of a deal. For example, when I’m able to
identify and develop a coach, I move my deal up on the qualification scale.
There is an element of stakeholder qualification, though, that is
purely intuitive. Your ability to sense and test a stakeholder’s emotional
engagement is a critical component of stakeholder qualification. This is
where Sales EQ comes into play. We’ll be taking a deeper dive into this
in the next chapter, Engagement and Micro-Commitments.
Fit qualifiers. Sometimes you don’t fit prospects—their expect­
ations, needs, requirements, demands, buying process, and so on.
Sometimes they don’t fit you—your unique products and services,
capabilities, culture, values, processes, and so on. Your job as a sales
professional is to acquire customers that are the best overall fit for both
parties. This ensures that your customer gets maximum value, while
your organization earns maximum profit.
Many salespeople pursue deals that are not a good fit. The
consequence of these ill-fated partnerships are unhappy customers
who make demands on your business that you cannot fulfill, ultimately
costing you money and, at times, your reputation.
Some fit qualifiers may be discerned before you ever meet with a
customer. In most cases, though, you’ll need to spend time in the discovery
stage of the sales process to gain a better understanding of your prospect’s
current and future requirements, demands, and expectations.
Another way to analyze fit is a simple fit matrix. This matrix focuses
on two dimensions:
1. Ease of working with the customer and stakeholders
2. Profitability of the account
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Hard to work with
High profit
Easy to work with
High profit
Hard to work with
Low profit
Easy to work with
Low profit
In my business, I want customers that are easy to work with and
highly profitable—HPP FQs.
We are willing to work with demanding but highly profitable
customers, and we’ll gladly work with a limited number of customers
that are easy to do business with but generate lower profits—MPP FQs.
Ultimately, we want to stay away from accounts that are hard to work
with and generate low profits—these are LPP FQs.
Average and poor salespeople (especially) tend to engage a large
number of hard-to-work-with, low-profit prospects, primarily because
these prospects are easy to move into the pipeline (because no one else
wants to work with them), and disruptive emotions of fear and
desperation generated by a thin pipeline have clouded the salesperson’s
objectivity.
Measure Every Prospect against Your Ideal Qualified
Prospect Profile
Ultra-high performers are obsessed with win probability. They
measure every prospect against the ideal qualified prospect (IQP)
profile. When the prospect doesn’t fit, UHPs have the discipline to
walk away. They do not allow the disruptive emotions of attachment,
desperation, or sunk costs to cloud their ability to judge win
probability.
I am not saying that every deal must fit your IQP profile perfectly
to enter your sales pipeline. This is not how the real world works.
Recently a company selling high-end, cloud-based service delivery
software deployed me to help them improve the pipeline, which was
dangerously thin (only 1× expected quota). I discovered a raging
conflict between the business development group and the account
executives (AEs).
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The AEs would only engage in opportunities that were perfect
(with a capital P). They were unwilling to work with any prospect that
wasn’t served up on a silver platter. It was killing the pipeline.
HPP unicorns are rare. Most opportunities are imperfect. Qualifi­
cation is as much an art as it is a science and data never tells the whole
story.
You must both consider factual evidence and listen to your
intuition when assessing the viability of a deal. Along the way, based
on empirical information combined with gut instinct, you must make a
series of decisions to discern if the opportunity merits your continued
attention (Figures 12.2 to 12.6).
Figure 12.2
Figure 12.3
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Figure 12.4
Figure 12.5
Figure 12.6
Sales EQ
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In some cases, it makes sense to take a risk and swing outside of the
strike zone. However, there is a difference between taking a calculated
risk and chasing an ugly deal out of desperation or delusion.
When you choose delusion over reality, you are making a con­
scious choice not only to lie to yourself but to lower your standards and
performance. Reality is the realm of the ultra-high performer, and
joining reality is one of the first steps on the road to developing a
pipeline of high-probability deals.
Murder Boarding
Engaging in opportunities that you shouldn’t is easy when you’re
desperate. Letting go of bad deals after you’ve made a significant
investment of time and emotion is difficult. Once you’ve made the
investment, the sunk cost fallacy causes you to ignore probability and
invest even more.
Your naturally competitive nature breeds attachment. Optimism
and overconfidence biases obscure objectivity, and you delude yourself
into believing that you can close a deal that no one else could, even on
their best day (see “Overconfidence Effect”).
In The Lord of the Rings, Gollum is famous for muttering “my
precious” as he clings desperately to the ring he holds so dear. His
emotional attachment to the ring is so strong that he follows it to his
death.
This is an uncanny parallel to how many salespeople hold on to
pipeline deals that are never going to close. Sales managers can
practically beat them off these loser deals, and the salespeople will
go back to their “precious” time and time again, as if pulled there by a
powerful force.
UHPs utilize qualification strategies to rise above disruptive emo­
tions and make objective decisions about how, where, and with whom
to spend their time. They also deploy a system to create awareness when
they are wasting time on deals that in early qualification looked ideal
but deep into the sales process have lost their luster.
One of the best sales managers I ever worked for played a game
with every big deal in our pipeline. We’d get in a room and explore
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each potential scenario that could kill the deal. This wasn’t a broad
30,000-foot conversation. We dove into the minutia and killed the
deal (murder boarding). Nothing was sacred. Every stakeholder,
potential pitfall, competitor, and our own weaknesses were possible
villains.
The sessions, usually conducted with several of my peers, were
painful and, at times, embarrassing. Murder boarding exposed blind
spots, overconfidence, lack of vigilance, confirmation biases, weak­
nesses, and gaps in our knowledge. It was uncomfortable to be
confronted with the fact that you didn’t know important information
because you had been too afraid (disruptive emotion) to ask hard
questions.
The first time I participated in a murder boarding session I hated
it. I didn’t see the point of deflating my confidence (see “SelfEnhancement Bias”). Over time, though, I grew to love the process
because it made me better. I closed many, many deals that would have
been lost if not for the insight I gained from murder boarding.
Objectivity is a big problem for average salespeople. Whereas ultra­
high performers easily jettison prospects that they feel are low proba­
bility, the average salesperson holds on to bad deals and rides them like
the Titanic all the way to the bottom of the abyss.
UHPs have the emotional acuity and discipline to poke holes in
their deals—to ask the hard questions and face the hard truth. They’re
open to feedback and they leverage the perspectives and opinions of
other people.
Ultra-high performers manage disruptive emotions and get real
and strategic about their pipeline opportunities, allowing logic and
objectivity to supersede emotional attachment, cognitive biases, and
delusion.
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Engagement
and MicroCommitments
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small steps brought
together.
—Vincent Van Gogh
Kurt Long, CEO and founder of the data security firm FairWarning,
admits that it was not the optimal situation to be in. “But I didn’t have
much of a choice,” he explains. “We were launching our new cloudbased security product and at that point I was the only person who
really understood it enough to sell it.”
It was a long shot. A new software as a service (SaaS) program no
one had ever heard of. A hungry CEO and founder. A huge targeted
prospect. A distance of 4,400 miles between Tampa and London. Only
one relationship inside that big company.
“What I had going for me, though, was Andy, a stakeholder inside
the company who’d taken an interest in the software. He was totally
engaged.”
109
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For Kurt, like many ultra-high performers (UHPs), the most
important qualifier is engagement:
■
■
■
■
■
Will the person I am working with match my effort?
When I give, does the stakeholder give back?
When I ask for small, reasonable commitments, do they accept or
negotiate an alternative?
When we agree on commitments, do they keep them?
Are they invested in the process?
“Time is my most valuable asset,” Kurt explains. “If my stake­
holder does not value my time as much as they value their own, I’ll
walk away.”
Kurt tested Andy’s engagement by asking for micro-commitments—
small steps forward. Andy agreed to and honored those commitments.
He matched Kurt’s efforts. “He was sincere, and his actions made me
believe that he was invested in getting our cloud security implemented.
He worked with me to keep the ball moving forward—always moving
to the next step.”
Because he was constantly testing engagement and getting microcommitments, with each step win probability increased until eventually
the ultimate commitment was a foregone conclusion. The win gave
Kurt the momentum he needed to launch his new product and build a
sales team to take his software to more companies.
Testing Engagement
We learned in the previous chapter that you should be focused on
prospects that fall inside your strike zone—closely matching your ideal
qualified prospect (IQP). However, just because a prospect is in the
qualification sweet spot technically, that doesn’t mean that the prospect
has a high win probability.
Yes, the prospect may be big, the buying window may be open,
there may be a budget, there may be a good fit, and there may be
urgency. Nonetheless, if key stakeholders and buyers are unwilling to
engage, your deal is going nowhere.
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Ultra-high performers are constantly testing to ensure that stake­
holders are engaged. Testing engagement serves three purposes:
First, it is a compass that helps you gain objective awareness of
reality. This awareness is crucial to managing disruptive emotions,
including attachment, optimism bias, and the sunk cost fallacy as you
assess the win probability of the opportunities in your pipeline.
Second, it helps you gauge the win probability of the deal so you
make better strategic decisions both with your actions and with your
time.
Third, the process of gaining micro-commitments increases win
probability because small commitments lead stakeholders to make
larger commitments.
Engagement is complex. It is emotional, intangible, individual, and
a moving target. Getting stakeholders engaged, keeping them engaged,
and testing and gauging their level of engagement requires empathy,
self-awareness, and self-control—all elements of Sales EQ.
When UHPs sense that engagement is not there, they step back,
reassess strategy, reengage the stakeholder, or walk away from the deal
altogether. There are two ways to test engagement:
1. Tune in to emotions.
2. Ask for micro-commitments.
Tune In to Emotions
During sales conversations, pay close attention to the emotions of the
other person. Observe how they answer your questions. Are their
answers full and elaborate or short and clipped?
Pay attention to their body language, voice inflection, and eye
contact. Listen deeply and intuitively for emotional cues. Are they hiding
emotions and information or being open, honest, and transparent?
UHPs have their empathy antennae up during sales conversations.
They watch and listen, both objectively and intuitively, for emotional
engagement and the progression of that engagement.
At the outset of initial conversations with stakeholders, there is
usually an emotional wall between you. This is natural. However, over
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the course of that first conversation and subsequent conversations the
wall should become progressively lower. If it does not or will not, you
must make an honest assessment:
■
■
■
■
Are you doing something to impede an emotional connection?
Do you need to adjust your communication style?
Is there something you are doing or saying that is causing the
person to distrust you?
Are you talking too much and listening too little?
If your style, behavior, or disruptive emotions are getting in the
way, step back and adjust. In some cases, when you are unable to flex
your communication style enough to get in sync with the stakeholder,
it may make sense to get another person to be the “face” with that
stakeholder. I’ve successfully leveraged this tactic many times in the past
to keep deals moving forward.
If the answer to these questions is no and the stakeholder is still not
engaging, then you have three choices:
Dilute the stakeholder’s influence: If it is a complex, long-cycle
deal and there is a wide stakeholder array, you may have the luxury of
diluting the unengaged stakeholder’s influence by building emotional
connections and alliances with other players on the team.
Leverage the take-away: If the stakeholder has buying authority
or exerts a great deal of influence on the outcome of the deal, leveraging
a take-away may disrupt their position and pull them toward you.
“I’m sensing that what I’m saying is not connecting with you. The
last thing I want to do is waste your time and my time. Is there
something I need to do differently, or should we just shake hands and
go our separate ways?”
(Or a variation of this statement/question appropriate to the
unique situation.)
Most salespeople are afraid to challenge a prospect directly like this.
“What if I offend them?” “What if they say they don’t want to move
forward?” What if, what if, what if—disruptive emotions of fear,
insecurity, and attachment cloud objectivity.
Here is what the UHP knows: if a stakeholder with a high level
of influence or buying authority is not engaging emotionally, win
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probability plummets. You can choose to either waste your time on a
low-probability deal because you don’t value your time enough to
manage your disruptive emotions, or get the truth on the table so you
know where you stand and can make an objective decision about your
next move, based on win probability.
Because people want what they can’t have, the most powerful
tactic in sales is the take-away. By detaching emotionally, ending the
chase, and being willing to walk away, you very often disrupt the
stakeholder’s aloofness and they pull you back in—with the added
benefit of giving you more leverage because the script gets flipped and
they begin chasing you.
Walk away: In some situations, it just makes sense to walk away.
If the deal is small or far outside your IQP, there is no reason to stick
around. If you have a full pipeline, deals that are moving, and little time
for games, it’s a good time to pick up and go home. If the stakeholder is
beyond unengaged and hostile or rude, your best move is to get on the
phone and find better opportunities.
Micro-Commitments
During each conversation with a stakeholder, ultra-high performers ask
for small commitments. Micro-commitments include the next meet­
ing, access to another stakeholder, leveling up to the executive suite,
data and information, invoices, copies of contracts, a competitor’s
collateral, facility tours, breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, or anything
that requires them to agree to and carry through with a commitment.
The Three Commitments
Essentially, there are three commitments we ask stakeholders to make
over the course of the sales and buying process.
Time: The hardest ask in sales is for time. Most people reluctantly
give up their time to meet with you on initial meetings and next steps.
When stakeholders are agreeing to meet with you, it’s a good indicator
that they are reasonably engaged.
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Emotion: We ask stakeholders to answer our questions and reveal
their problems, challenges, and feelings. We ask them to commit
emotionally to the solutions we recommend and to our product
and service. We ask them to emotionally connect. When stakeholders
actively participate and lower their emotional wall, it is a sign of
engagement.
Action: We need buyers to provide us with information, make
introductions, give us data, take us on facility tours, engage in trials and
demos, sign contracts, give us money, and implement solutions. When
stakeholders are willing to take action and match your efforts, it’s a clear
sign of engagement.
Leveraging the Value Bias and Consistency Principle
Ultra-high performers improve win probability by leveraging stake­
holder micro-commitments to activate the cognitive value bias and
human consistency principle.
Humans value that which costs them more. Whether treasure,
effort, time, or emotion, when you pay a high price for something it
means more to you. When humans are given something for free or gain
something with little effort, there is little emotional connection or value
assigned to it—regardless of how valuable that thing might be to
another person. It’s also why higher value is placed on things that
are scarce than those that are abundant (scarcity effect).
It is also true that humans have a strong subconscious drive to act,
behave, and make decisions consistent with their values and beliefs. To
do otherwise triggers painful cognitive dissonance. Each time a stake­
holder makes and follows through on a micro-commitment, they must
shift their value and belief system to be consistent with that commit­
ment so as to reduce dissonance.
Micro-commitments are the small steps on the long buying
journey. Each step forward makes the next step easier. Each commit­
ment makes the price paid grow and turning back more difficult.
With each micro-commitment, time investment, and small effort,
stakeholders are compelled to be consistent with their commitments,
feel an increased emotional connection to you, place ever-increasing
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value on the buying journey, and have a greater sense of responsibility
to move toward an outcome.
Getting Caught Up in Emotion
It’s easy to get caught up in the moment with eager prospects
that seem engaged—especially when they make you feel that a
sale is imminent. You become the prospect’s puppet and skip steps
in the sales process. Eagerness is a disruptive emotion that creates
impatience, causes you to misjudge win probabilities, and clouds
situational awareness.
Recently a heavy equipment company contacted one of my sales
reps about having me deliver a keynote at their annual sales kickoff
meeting. Randy hit all the right notes—he was interested, upbeat, and
eager to meet with me. My sales rep was convinced it was a done deal.
All Randy and his boss, Tim, wanted before committing to a date was a
few minutes one-on-one with me.
As soon as I got on the phone with Randy and Tim, it was evident
that Randy was an influencer (see “The Five Stakeholders You Meet in
a Deal”) and the decision was in his boss Tim’s hands. I asked questions
about outcomes and what they wanted to accomplish. Randy gave long
answers, and his boss short answers. Something was amiss.
So, I asked Tim a direct question: “Tim, I’m sensing that you aren’t
entirely on board with me keynoting your meeting. Am I missing
something?”
The first engagement test: My question was designed to get him
to open up and come clean.
He responded that the previous year they’d brought in an outside
speaker who’d done a poor job. The speaker didn’t get to know them,
gave a generic talk, and basically bored the audience. Because of the
experience, Tim was less than enthusiastic about bringing in another
speaker from the outside.
Result: He told me the truth. I learned he was bringing emotional
baggage from another buying experience into the conversation, and if I
was unable to minimize this baggage there would be no deal. I learned
that hiring me was not Tim’s idea. Randy, the sales leader who first
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called us, was pushing his boss to hire me. If this did not become Tim’s
idea, then there would be no deal.
Tim complained for a few more minutes about the previous year’s
speaker and then asked that I send over some information about me.
The second engagement test: “Tim, based on what I’m hearing,
it feels like you have questions that need to be answered before you can
trust me with your team. Why don’t we do this first? I’m going to send
over a couple of references. You can call these clients and ask them
anything about me. Then let’s get together and decide whether it
makes sense to move forward after you’ve had a chance to speak with
them. How about the same time next Friday?”
Result: To test his engagement, I asked for two micro-commitments:
(1) agree to call the references and (2) commit to a next step. He agreed
to call the references, but it was not an enthusiastic response. He did not
agree to meet with me on Friday and instead pushed that off on Randy,
who readily agreed to the meeting. Win probability at this point had
moved from my rep’s “sure thing” to less than 50 percent.
The final engagement test: I hung up the phone and immedi­
ately e-mailed Tim the contact information for my two references.
The next test was whether he would match my effort.
Clue One: There was no response to my e-mail.
Clue Two: A day later I called my references to find out if they
had been contacted by Tim or Randy. They had not. Two more days
passed and the references still had not been contacted.
My conclusion: Not engaged, not going to get engaged, not
worth my time. I sent Randy and Tim a note and canceled the Friday
meeting.
Epilogue: Randy called back two weeks later to find out if I was
still available. Apparently, Tim had come around. I’d spent no time
chasing them and no time worrying about them. They came back to
me, and when they did it was on my terms. We no longer had the
original date open, and they agreed to change their meeting date to
accommodate my schedule. This happens often—the prospect comes
back when you are willing to walk away.
Asking for and getting micro-commitments, and consistently
getting to the next step, accelerates pipeline velocity. Deals with
forward momentum have a higher win probability and a lower chance
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of stalling. This is why you must never, ever leave a conversation with a
stakeholder without a firm next step.
You should always be testing engagement—on every call and in
every conversation. If engagement is not there, your deal will die.
Sometimes fast. Sometimes slowly. But nonetheless certain death.
It is reasonable to deduce, if stakeholders are making and keeping
commitments, that they are both engaged and committed to the
process. However, engagement is not always quantifiable. At the purely
emotional level it is something you perceive, sense, and intuitively
know is there. It’s human. You can feel it in your gut. You simply need
to turn on awareness.
You’ll often find ultra-high performers carrying around a pock­
etful of yeses. Each time a stakeholder agrees to a commitment, a
change, an idea, a perceived future state, or a recommendation,
the UHP collects the yes and holds on to it.
Should the stakeholder get cold feet when facing change
(and they often do), the UHP puts the yeses on the table, thus
triggering dissonance and helping the stakeholder move past the
fear of change and on to the next commitment.
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Stalled Deals and
Next Steps
Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
—Saul Bellow
This is dialogue from an actual pipeline review:
Me:
Sales rep:
Me:
Sales rep:
Me:
Sales rep:
Me:
“So what’s the next step?” [I’m pointing to the 11th deal
down on the sales rep’s pipeline report. Not one of the
previous opportunities we’d discussed had a solid, scheduled
next step.]
“Um, well, I’m calling her back next week.”
“What day and time is your appointment?”
“She just said to give her a call.”
“You mean ‘Call me maybe’? How is that a next step?”
“Well, she seemed interested in getting a proposal.”
“Okay, let’s keep this real. Out of the 17 deals in your
pipeline, how many do you have a set meeting with on
your calendar and theirs?”
118
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Sales rep:
Me:
Sales rep:
Me:
Sales rep:
Me:
Sales rep:
Me:
Sales rep:
Me:
Sales rep:
Me:
Sales rep:
119
“Maybe three of them.”
[Staring back incredulously.]
“You don’t understand. It’s not like that.”
“Like what?”
“In my industry people won’t set meetings.”
“Really? That’s interesting. You mean on our calls this
afternoon—the ones you scheduled meetings with on the
phone—if we were to ask to schedule a follow-up
meeting to present a proposal, 100 percent of them
would tell us to go pound sand because they don’t
schedule meetings.”
“Well, no. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just hard.”
“Okay, let me ask you a question. Be honest. When you
schedule the next meeting, what is your close rate?”
[Thinking . . . ] “I guess pretty high.”
“And when they don’t schedule the next step?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“I make a lot of follow-up calls but usually don’t hear
from them again.”
This rep’s pipeline velocity was slower than molasses. Most of the
prospects had been stalled for months and he was calling and calling just
checking in.
The Bane of Sales Organizations
Stalled deals plague the sales profession, clogging pipelines, ruining
forecasts, and causing untold frustration. From the CEO to frontline
sales reps, everyone seems to be looking for ways to unstick deals. And,
of course, from top to bottom, everyone wants to shorten sales cycles
and increase pipeline velocity.
When I’m called in to work with sales teams, the two most
common issues holding organizations back are prospecting (not getting
enough into the pipeline) and pipeline congestion (not getting enough
out of the pipeline).
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When pipelines are congested, the root cause is almost always the
same: salespeople are failing to consistently ask for and get commitments
for next steps.
Of course, sometimes deals stall because the salesperson is stuck
with a low-level influencer and either unwilling to level up to a
decision maker or too afraid to move past a blocker and risk the
relationship.
Sometimes deals stall because there never was a deal in the first
place and the salesperson did a poor job with qualifying.
In other cases deals stall even though you’ve done everything right.
In sales, that’s life. You won’t win them all.
The primary reason that deals stall, though—90 percent of the time
or more—is the failure to ask for and get next steps. Getting microcommitments along the way not only tests engagement but keeps your
deal moving steadily forward.
The Cardinal Rule of Sales Conversations
A few months ago, I was riding with Ken, one of my client’s sales
representatives. After our first call of the day I asked two questions:
1. “How do you think that call went?”
2. “Did you achieve your call objective?”
“I think it went well. The prospect was happy to see us and he
seemed interested in doing business with us [delusion]. I think it was a
great outcome considering that it took me almost two months to get
him to meet with me.”
“What’s the next step?” I replied (knowing the truth).
Ken looked down at his meeting notes. “Well, I’m going to go
back and put something together, and then he said to give him a call in a
couple of weeks to schedule another meeting to go over our proposal.”
“Ken, why didn’t you schedule the next appointment while you
were right there, sitting in front of him?”
“I didn’t want to seem too pushy [disruptive emotion].”
“Is he easy to get in touch with?”
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“No. He is never in the office, but he told me to call him so I’m
sure he’ll take my call.”
All I could do was shake my head. I reached out to Ken a month
later to ask about the account. He told me that he’d been unable to
schedule the meeting to go over the proposal with his prospect. “I just
don’t understand it—he seemed so interested. I keep leaving messages
to check in, but he doesn’t return my calls.”
Ultra-high performers (UHPs) follow a simple cardinal rule of sales
meetings:
Never leave a meeting with a stakeholder, whether in person or on the phone,
without setting and committing to a firm next step. Ever!
Let me be clear. Statements like “I’ll call you next week” or “Just
call me when you are ready” are not firm next steps.
A firm, committed next step requires a commitment to action from
both you and your stakeholder—and a date on which you will meet
again by phone or in person to review those actions. Finally, that date
must be written in stone on your calendar and your stakeholder’s
calendar. If you leave next steps up to a hope and a prayer, your deals
will stall.
Prospects are so crazy busy that as soon as you leave or hang up
the phone they have already forgotten about you and moved on to
the next pressing issue on their priority list. If you don’t have a firm
date set on their calendar for the next time you will meet, it will be
difficult if not impossible to get that commitment once you are out of
sight and mind.
Sometimes salespeople get so caught up in the excitement of a
successful sales call that they just forget to ask. Trust me, I’ve been there
and done that. The key to avoiding this is to develop a habitual call
routine that helps you remember to gain commitment for the next step
at the conclusion of every call.
Some salespeople, like Ken, falsely believe that being assertive
when setting the next step will sound rude or pushy. I assure you that it
does not. Instead, you sound professional and organized. Your prospect
will respect your attention to detail and appreciate that you value their
time enough to schedule next steps and keep the process moving along.
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Average salespeople are afraid to ask for the demo, the facility tour,
leveling up to the decision maker, data for building a business case, the
next meeting, or the sale. The fear of asking permeates every client
interaction and leaves them making excuses for why prospects never
call back and nothing ever seems to close.
Trust me, the pain of a stalled pipeline, endless calls back to
disengaged stakeholders, and making excuses to sales management
are far worse than having a prospect say no. It is important to understand
that as a sales professional it is your job to keep the ball rolling, and you
should never expect your prospect to do this for you.
To reach ultra-high performance you must risk rejection. This
requires courage. Courage is like a muscle that must be exercised
regularly to develop and grow strong. Once you begin taking small
risks, you will find that your fear of rejection is often unfounded. Your
prospects will agree to next steps much more often than you think.
Getting Past the Next-Step Brush-Off
You must be firm and assertive about keeping your deals moving
forward one micro-commitment, one meeting, and one step at a time.
This means always, always, always asking for and nailing down the next
step.
But, when you ask for next steps, you’re going to get brush-offs.
Trust me, your prospects have better things to do than hang out with
you. Frankly (this may be hard for you to hear), they would rather
spend the afternoon getting a root canal than spend 15 minutes with
you.
Judo, a Japanese word that translates as “gentle or yielding way,” is
a martial art form that focuses on winning without causing injury.
Similarly, with next-step requests, you want to achieve your
objective—a commitment of time or information—without fighting
or causing injury.
The key is being nimble, adaptive, and quick on your feet. To be
agile, you need to deploy a simple turnaround framework for both
managing your emotions and pulling your stakeholders toward you,
making it easier for them to say yes.
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Figure 14.1 Turnaround Framework Elements
The three elements of this turnaround framework are
(Figure 14.1):
1. Ledge
2. Disrupt
3. Ask
Ledge
As you’ve learned, the fight-or-flight response to rejection is
involuntary. The purpose of the ledge statement is to give your logical
brain the millisecond that it needs to catch up and get control of the
disruptive emotions caused by the stakeholder rejecting your next step
request, allowing you to regain your poise.
Ledge statements include:
■
■
■
■
■
■
That’s exactly why I asked.
That makes sense.
Many of my clients felt the same way before . . .
That’s fantastic.
How so?
Many of my competitors are happy to do that without a complete
understanding of your unique situation.
Because you tend to get the same responses to next-step requests
again and again, ledges need to be memorized, practiced, repeatable,
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and sound like you. When you perfect the ledge, you’ll never have to
worry about what to say, giving you complete control over your
emotions.
A practiced ledge makes your voice intonation, speaking style, and
flow sound relaxed, authentic, and professional. It frees your mind to
focus on your strategy and next move rather than reacting inappropriately
to the disruptive emotions triggered by the fight-or-flight response.
Disrupt
Your prospects are conditioned. They expect you to act just like every
other salesperson. When they tell you no, they expect you to fold up,
go away, and just check in.
The secret to turning around your stakeholder’s reflex response or
brush-off is delivering a statement that disrupts this expectation, takes
away the fight, and pulls them toward you. For example:
When they say they’re busy, instead of arguing how you will only
take a little bit of their time, say:
“I figured you would be. That’s why I want to find a convenient
time on your schedule to meet next week.”
Agreeing with them disrupts and paints their expected pattern.
When they ask you to just e-mail a proposal or pricing, say:
“Most of my competitors are willing to do that without a good
understanding of your unique situation. They have a box and ask their
clients to fit into that box. My company, on the other hand, builds the box
around you. That’s why I need to learn more about your unique situation.”
When they say “Just give me a call next week,” respond:
“Gosh, I’d love to but we have so many new customers coming on
board right now that I don’t think I’ll have time on my schedule. Why don’t
we set a time to meet now, so I can give you the attention you deserve?”
Disrupting with the Take-Away Technique
Keith was on the initial call with a potential consulting client. He’d
shifted into discovery, but his intuition told him that his stakeholder,
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the vice president of human resources, was holding back. From
conversations with other stakeholders and his own research, Keith
had learned that there were severe problems and pain with the process
of managing the company’s benefits plan.
Yet in answering Keith’s questions the stakeholder talked as if
everything was okay—brushing over the issues Keith knew were there.
With the conversation going nowhere, Keith deployed a take-away to
test engagement and pull the stakeholder back in.
“Well, Roy, based on everything you’ve told me, it sounds like
you and your team are doing a bang-up job managing the benefits plan
and enrollment for your employees. It doesn’t sound like there is much
we can help you with.”
Then he shut up and waited for what he knew would happen. (A
calm, relaxed delivery and silence are critical to making a take-away
work.)
After a few seconds of silence, Roy responded,
“Ah, no . . . um, we want to find a way to have you come in and
work with us. We are doing a lot right, but there are some things that
we need another set of eyeballs on.”
Like a magnet, the take-away disrupted Roy’s expectations for
how Keith would behave and pulled him back in.
Question: What’s the one thing we want more than anything else?
Answer: What we can’t have.
When something is taken away from you, your attention is
heightened and suddenly you want it. For this reason, take-aways—
even very subtle take-aways—pull stakeholders toward you, flip their
script, and give you control of the situation.
In essence, the take-away is noncomplementary behavior. Instead
of responding in kind to their brush-off, you pull back, snapping them
out of their pattern.
Leveraging the Perceived Scarcity Effect
If something is perceived to be scarce or exclusive, it is seen as being
more valuable. If something is scarce and another person wants it, you
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want it more. It’s called the perceived scarcity effect and it can be leveraged
in getting stakeholders to agree to next steps.
For example, if you say, “I’m open to whatever works best for
you,” when setting a next-step appointment, you increase the likeli­
hood that your stakeholder will respond, “Why don’t you just give me
a call? I’ll be around.”
But if instead you say, “I’ve got a packed schedule next week. Why
don’t we get a meeting booked before someone else takes your slot?
How about Wednesday at 2:30 PM?” The probability that your
stakeholder will take that time slot or negotiate for another time
slot is very high.
The easiest way to make someone want something is to make it
scarce. People want what they can’t have.
Ask
You may deliver the perfect turnaround, but if you don’t ask again for a
commitment, you won’t get what you want. Don’t wait for your
stakeholder to do your job for you. You must ask confidently and
assumptively for the next step—without any hesitation or awkward
pause—directly following your turnaround. If you don’t ask, you’ll lose
the next step.
The benefit to gaining next-step commitments is enormous.
Asking for the next step exposes buyers that are not engaged. When
they push off commitments or dismiss your attempts to gain a
commitment with vague “call me maybe” statements, you get a clear
picture that the deal is not going to move forward. This frees you up to
invest your time with prospects who will engage.
Consistently getting to the next step gives you momentum, and
each micro-commitment your stakeholder makes causes them to be
more committed to you. As you keep your deals moving forward,
you’ll start closing at a far more rapid pace. By investing your time in
viable deals with engaged prospects, you shorten the sales cycle and
accelerate pipeline velocity.
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The Three Words You Should Never Use in Sales
There are circumstances in which you will be unable to get a
next step. It’s not optimal, but in the real world it happens. You
will be forced to leave a proposal or to send product specs, price
lists, or other information without the benefit of a firm next step.
Then you’ll need to follow up. Sadly, most follow-up calls fail
because they sound like this:
“Hi, Justin, it’s Ken. I’m just checking in to see if you’ve had
a chance to look at that information I sent you.”
Just checking in—the three words you should never use in
sales—have become a ubiquitous phrase used by salespeople
everywhere.
I’ve used “just checking in” and I’ll bet my next book
royalty check that “just checking in” has crossed your lips, too.
But here’s the thing, “Just checking in” is a useless phrase.
It adds no value, fails to engage stakeholders in real dialogue,
elicits mindless reflex responses from stakeholders who shut you
down, and moves you no closer to getting the deal done. It’s a
bad habit and a passive way to follow up.
Your imperative as a sales professional is to keep your deals
progressing steadily through the pipeline. This is the primary
reason why just checking in (much like hope) is not a sales
strategy.
You’ve got to ask specifically for what you want. You’ve got
to be direct. You’ve got to be assumptive rather than passive.
This, by the way, is a core trait of ultra-high performers—who
ask for what they want and assume they will get what they ask
for.
When you just check in, you passively and pathetically
assume that you are going to lose.
Pay attention! Just checking in does not sell your product or
service. It does not move deals forward. It is a useless phrase.
Just checking in is stalling your deals, holding you back, and
it is time to kick the habit.
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Sales Process
You should never allow someone else to dictate your sales process.
—Mike Weinberg
Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Little Red Book of Selling (Bard Press,
2004) and his Sales Bible (John Wiley & Sons, new ed., 2015), is one of
the most prolific authors in the sales space. He has sold more than a
million books and risen to celebrity status in the sales profession. I once
walked through the Charlotte, North Carolina, airport with Jeffrey.
People were coming up to him from every direction to shake his hand
or get an autograph. They were even introducing their children to
“The King of Sales.”
In his home is an impressive library, including what is likely the
most comprehensive collection of sales books in the world. Whenever
I’m there, I find myself staring into the bookshelves, mesmerized, just
trying to take it all in.
128
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In the center of the library surrounded by these books is Gitomer’s
favorite writing chair. And it was there in the library that we engaged in
a deep conversation about the sales process.
“Look at all these books.” Gitomer waved at the shelves—school
was in session. “There’s so much that’s been written about sales, but I
can simplify all of it. Sales is a process—a completely predictable
process. Follow the steps and you close deals. Skip steps and you
lose.”
Sales is a process. I’d heard and said those words more times than I
could remember. Sales is a process is the mantra of sales trainers, the hero
and main character of countless sales books, and a shape-shifting
chameleon that takes on different forms, labels, acronyms, and layers
as the complexity and length of the sales cycle increases.
The burning question is why, after all the investment that compa­
nies have made teaching salespeople the sales process, do salespeople
ignore it and skip steps?
It is a linear, logical process that, when fully leveraged, guarantees a
higher win probability. It just doesn’t make sense to ignore it, which is
why, if you drive around to the back of office buildings, you’ll find
rows of sales managers banging their foreheads against the bricks.
There are four reasons salespeople fail to effectively leverage the
sales process:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Disruptive emotions
Winging it
Complexity
No sales process
Disruptive Emotions Disrupt the Sales Process
You don’t need me or anyone else to lecture you on the steps of the
sales process and what they mean. Most salespeople are familiar with the
sales process, are aware that the sales process is important, and under­
stand the consequences of skipping steps.
Most sales organizations have defined and perfected a simple, easy­
to-execute sales process with steps that are appropriate to their sales
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cycle and product complexity. These organizations also provide sales
process training programs for their salespeople.
Yet many talented, educated, well-trained salespeople consistently
crash and burn in the sales process (go back to that image of sales
managers banging their heads against brick walls).
The problem is not logical, and it’s not a training problem—it’s
emotional.
The most frequent reason salespeople fail in the sales process is the
inability to regulate and manage disruptive emotions. These disruptive
emotions, including impatience, fear, desperation, eagerness, doubt,
hope, insecurity, ego, and more, impede situational awareness, causing
salespeople to ignore, skip, or mangle steps in the sales process.
The lack of self-control is the most fundamental reason why
salespeople fail in the sales process and lower win probabilities.
They push too hard, lose control, overestimate win probability, talk
over prospects, and, far too often, skip steps.
Where ultra-high performers (UHPs) separate themselves from the
masses of average salespeople is their ability to marry intellectual
understanding of the linear sales process with sales-specific emotional
intelligence.
Winging It
Gitomer is right. Sales outcomes are predictable based on how sales­
people leverage, execute, and move deals through the sales process.
Follow a well-designed sales process with qualified prospects that are
in the buying window, and you will close more deals. It’s the truth and
it’s a guarantee.
Sadly, many salespeople discount this basic truth and wing it
because they, in the words of one poor performer, “I don’t like to
be constrained by rules.” These salespeople prefer to chart their own
course, in the delusional belief that their way is better. Trust me. It’s
not. Winging it is stupid.
Ultra-high performers prepare in advance for sales calls. Pre-call
planning can be as simple as doing a little bit of research and scratching
down some notes when working short-cycle, low-complexity deals, or
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as extensive as developing detailed stakeholder profiles and tying preplanning into a comprehensive account sales strategy with complex deals.
Regardless of account complexity, there are four basic pre-call
planning questions you need to answer before each sales call:
1. What do you already know, including information you can find
without asking your prospect?
2. What do you want to know or learn in your meeting?
3. What is your meeting objective?
4. What is your targeted next step?
These questions should be asked and answered prior to every
meeting with a stakeholder.
What You Already Know
Anthony’s company helps employers hire top-tier talent with hiring
assessments. When Anthony and his team were courting a large
furniture seller, they shopped the company first. “We went into the
store and took in the entire experience. By posing as customers we
learned about their sales process, the types of people they hire, and their
culture.”
Anthony continued, “When we showed up for our initial discov­
ery meeting, we explained to the stakeholder group what we had done.
They were beyond impressed that we’d invested time to get to know
them. You could feel the emotional shift in the room. We walked in as
salespeople and out as partners. Today, they are one of our largest
customers.”
Learn everything possible about the organization and the people
you are meeting with in advance. Leverage technology, social media,
and the Internet to gather information about stakeholders and their
organizations. This has four benefits.
1. It helps you avoid asking stupid questions that demonstrate your
lack of preparation.
2. It helps you craft easy questions that get your stakeholder talking.
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3. You begin learning to speak your prospect’s language.
4. It makes your stakeholder feel important because you provide
tangible evidence that you cared enough to invest effort in getting
to know them.
Through preplanning and strategy, UHPs develop theories and
hypotheses that can be tested through questioning.
What You Want to Know
Throughout the sales process you are tasked with building the case for
why the prospect’s stakeholders should choose you and your product.
This case begins and ends with discovery. Each time you meet with a
stakeholder, your objective is to gather information that helps you put
this puzzle together.
Before your call, you must have a clear understanding of what you
want to learn. This is how you define your call objective. Once you
have determined what you want or need to know, in order to move to
the next step, develop and practice the questions you will ask during
your meeting.
Meeting Objectives and Targeted Next Steps
Every sales call should have a simple and easy-to-explain objective so
that both you and your stakeholder know why you are there and what
you hope to accomplish. Your objective should be aligned with where
you are in the sales process.
Likewise, you should have a clearly defined, targeted next step
aligned to the sales process. Before you go into any meeting with a
stakeholder, ask and answer two questions.
1. What’s my objective?
2. What’s my targeted next step?
If you can’t definitively answer these questions, you’ll be winging it
and wasting their time, and the probability that you’ll walk out of your
meeting without a next step will be high.
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Complexity Is the Enemy of Execution
Sometimes sales organizations create complexity in the sales process
where there should be simplicity. This happens for two primary reasons:
1. The leadership team (or worse, a committee of people) breaks the
process into far too many steps—usually in an effort to manage and
measure the pipeline to the nth degree inside the customer relation­
ship management (CRM) system. In their quest for data and
visibility, they unknowingly hinder their sales organization, handcuff
their salespeople, and steal time from high-value sales activities.
2. The organization, in an effort to be truly unique, creates compli­
cated “business-speak” labels for the sales process steps that make
no earthly sense to normal human beings except MBAs from bigmoney B-schools.
Recently I was interviewing a sales rep about his company’s sales
process in preparation for a keynote speech. This company invests heavily
in sales training and is very proud of its unique sales process. Yet the rep
said to me, when I asked him to walk me though the steps, “Hold on, I
think there is a poster in the conference room with the steps on it.”
What do you think the chance is that this rep is executing the process
effectively in the field? Complexity only serves to befuddle salespeople.
Some people feel a need to create complexity out of simplicity
because they believe it makes them look smarter. They cannot accept
that simple works.
It’s a lot easier to make simple things complex than to make
complex things simple. Steve Jobs famously said, “Simple can be harder
than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to
make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there,
you can move mountains.”
Complexity is the enemy of execution. Real genius is making the
complex simple.
No Sales Process
To be fair, there is another group of salespeople who’ve never been
taught to follow a defined sales process or don’t have a sales process.
This problem primarily affects independent sales professionals, sole
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Figure 15.1 Seven-Step Sales Process
proprietors, and salespeople working for small companies and start-ups
that lack a functioning sales training infrastructure.
There is a basic Seven-Step Sales Process (Figure 15.1) that applies
to virtually every sales situation, product, service, and industry. Yes,
there may be different substeps or monikers, but from my work with
some of the largest and most successful sales organizations, I’ve found
that their sales processes are all built on this seven-step foundation.
Prospecting and Qualifying
Every sales process begins with top-of-funnel sales-development activ­
ity. Ultra-high performers are fanatical prospectors that relentlessly and
systematically engage and move the most qualified high-probability
prospects into the pipeline when the buying window opens.
The key to effective prospecting is a balanced approach that
leverages multiple prospecting channels, including the phone,
e-mail, social, in-person, networking, and referrals, to connect with
prospects at the right time and with the right message.
For a deeper dive into prospecting and demand generation, read
Fanatical Prospecting.
Connecting
In most sales training programs and sales process diagrams, this step is
referred to as “building rapport.” This step is focused primarily on
building emotional connections with the various stakeholders involved
in the buying process.
In the context of the sales process, the connecting step is generally
the initial meeting with a stakeholder. Your focus is on lowering
emotional barriers, setting the agenda, defining the sales and buying
process, gaining control, and qualifying.
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The connecting step is where you and your stakeholders decide if it
makes sense to move to the next step and invest time in the sales and
buying process.
Stakeholders will want to move forward if you’ve built enough
interest and credibility to compel them to invest more time with you.
You will want to move forward if you feel your win probability is high
enough to justify a next step and further investment of time and
resources.
Discovery
Discovery is the process of building your case. It’s about asking
questions and listening. Often called fact finding or needs analysis,
discovery is the most important step in the sales process and where 80
percent or more of your time should be spent.
Discovery is the heart of the sales process. Depending on the
complexity of the deal, discovery may last a few minutes or span many
months and meetings with a broad array of stakeholders.
During discovery, ultra-high performers are patient and strategic,
methodically building their case with powerful questions that shake
stakeholders from their comfort zones. They leverage strategic, artful,
provocative, and challenging questions to create self-awareness in
stakeholders for the need to change.
Except for putting the right deals into the pipeline in the first place,
nothing you do in the sales process has a greater impact on win
probability than effective discovery.
Bridging
To build a rock-solid case for doing business with you, you must build a
bridge from your offerings, recommendations, or solutions to your
stakeholder’s unique pain, problems, and opportunities.
In the context of a sales conversation (including demos) informal
bridges give your prospect a compelling reason to move forward to the
next step. When closing, bridging is accomplished through a formal
presentation or proposal. In most sales process diagrams this is called
presenting.
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Sales EQ
Ultra-high performers differentiate by creating personalized rec­
ommendations and bridging from solutions to their stakeholder’s
problems, using the stakeholder’s language rather than their own.
Asking
Asking is a core discipline of sales. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. In
most sales process diagrams this step is called closing. I prefer asking
because asking for what you want is the key.
Over the course of the sales process you’ll be asking for microcommitments. These micro-commitments are the small steps that move
your deal forward through the sales process. Once you’ve made your
final case, you’ll ask for the sale.
There are no tricks or secret techniques. Ultra-high sales perform­
ers find asking is easy because they have earned the right to ask.
Because they’ve systematically followed the sales process, devel­
oped emotional connections with stakeholders, asked questions and
listened, built relevant bridges, and thus increased win probability, their
confidence in getting a yes is high.
The art is situational awareness and emotional control—knowing
when to ask, how to ask, what to ask for, and when you’ve earned the
right to ask.
Objections and Negotiating
Stakeholders are going to hit you with objections. They will negotiate.
It is a fact of life. Even in perfect situations with all the ducks in a row,
you will still be hit with challenging questions and need to work out
win-win compromises.
Average salespeople succumb to disruptive emotions, often at the first
hint of pushback. Rather than negotiate, they give discounts. Rather than
working through objections, they acquiesce and leave the playing field.
Ultra-high performers embrace objections and negotiation. They
recognize that when a stakeholder is throwing out objections or
negotiating, that person is engaged. The more engaged the stakeholder,
the higher the win probability.
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Implementation and Account Management
Depending on the responsibilities of your sales role, you may be
involved in the delivery or implementation of your product or service
and/or managing and growing the account.
Flawless implementation is the key to getting testimonials that
bolster credibility and referrals that are often your best-qualified
prospects.
Effective account management is the key to retaining hard-fought
business and growing highly profitable revenue.
Average salespeople take on the entire burden themselves and get
bogged down in the minutiae of implementation and account man­
agement, leaving them with little time for selling. Ultra-high perform­
ers leverage their support teams to back them up and take care of
customers. They thereby gain more time to focus on high-value
activities that increase their income.
Aligning the Three Processes of Sales
Mastery of the sales process alone, regardless of how you choose to
define and practice it, is not enough for ultra-high performance.
Salespeople who master the sales process intellectually and emotionally
can still fall short. This is because they become too myopic inside the
sales process and lose sight of the bigger picture—aligning the three
processes of sales.
Sales Process
Buying Process
Decision Process
Your defined process
for selling
Linear
Organizational
Measured
Inflexible
Impacted by disruptive
emotions
Your prospect’s defined
process for buying
Formal or informal
Linear
Organizational
Unique
Measured and objective
Shaped with strategy
Stakeholders’ process
for deciding
Emotional
Nonlinear
Individual
Irrational
Influenced through
human interaction
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When these processes are aligned, serendipity happens. Yet they
are almost never aligned, because salespeople—as conditioned by
trainers—focus almost exclusively on their own self-centric process
designed to move (and in the worst cases manipulate) prospects from
one point to the next.
Ultra-high performers see the bigger picture beyond the sales
process and focus on aligning the three processes of sales. This is the real
secret to increasing win probability and making sales outcomes
predictable.
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Buying Process
I’ve come to learn that my initial investment is more about the person versus
the product that I am buying into.
—Daymond John
Most large companies have a formal, defined process for buying.
Smaller organizations at a minimum have an informal buying process.
The buying process is typically a check and balance to ensure that the
company’s stakeholders are making good decisions with the company’s
money.
Typically, the more complex the sale, the more formal and defined
the buying process. In low-complexity, low-risk, and short-cycle
situations, the buying process will often be a single person (perhaps
the business owner) making a simple yes or no decision or an informal
“Before we do anything we have to review it with Mary.”
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Mapping the Buying Process
When working mid- to long-cycle complex deals, it is imperative that
you understand your prospect’s buying process. You’ll need to know
the steps that are involved and the stakeholders’ expectations and
timing for moving through those steps. You’ll also want to map the
stakeholders involved, their role in the organization, and their influence
on each step of the buying process.
Nailing down and mapping the buying process isn’t easy or cut and
dried.
■
■
■
Stakeholders may obscure the process because they feel doing so
gives them a negotiating advantage.
Sometimes stakeholders don’t have access to the bigger picture
and you may only uncover isolated slices of the process, leaving
out vital steps.
In other cases stakeholders have a difficult time walking you through
their buying process because they don’t view it as a process.
It is imperative that you ask about the process and keep asking. This
is a foundational part of qualifying. Once you understand how your
potential clients buy, you’ll begin the hard work of bending their buying
process to align with your sales process.
The Danger of Getting Out of Sync
When I took over as vice president of corporate accounts at early
childhood education company La Petite Academy, aside from an
existing book of managed accounts, the sales team hadn’t sold a
new account in more than five years. If that wasn’t shocking enough,
there was a fully staffed bid desk that responded to several new requests
for proposals (RFPs) each month.
On-site child care is a complex sale. Installing an on-site child care
facility on a company’s campus involves a big risk for the prospect and a
big risk for the vendor. Sales cycles are long and the costs are in the
millions of dollars. The buying process includes surveys and studies,
employee committees, RFPs, tours, vetting of the vendors, risk assess­
ments, and approval at the officer, and sometimes board, level.
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La Petite ran on-site facilities for a wide cross section of employers
and government facilities. It had a great reputation and the capabilities
to design, build, and manage early childhood education programs on
corporate campuses. It had the credibility and the staff to provide any
variety of curriculum. Yet, the sales team was getting beaten by
competitors on every deal.
Our CEO was frustrated, the board was asking hard questions, and
I was on the hot seat to fix the problem quickly.
I spent the better part of a month analyzing the requests for
proposals submitted and lost over the previous two years. Everything
seemed to be in line, but something kept nagging at me—it didn’t make
sense that we’d lost every bid for five years running. Then a new RFP
landed at the bid desk. As I observed the process from start to finish, the
answer to why we were losing every deal became obvious.
On-site childcare facility RFPs are thick, four to six inches thick.
They are complicated and complex, and require a team of people to
complete. The process takes several weeks and sucks up significant
resources. In our case, it was a significant waste of resources.
My first question to the
sales team:
The response:
My next question:
Response:
Next question:
Response:
Next question:
Response:
“Did you know in advance that this RFP
was going to be issued?”
“No, most RFPs are sent to us without
any prior contact. Sometimes we’ll get
a call looking for information on
where to submit an RFP and we give
them our address.”
“Does anyone have a relationship with
this prospect?”
[Crickets]
“Who is speaking to the prospect now
and establishing a relationship?”
[Crickets]
“Why aren’t you speaking to the
prospect?”
“The RFPs almost always give explicit
instructions that we are not to contact
anyone at the company. There is
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Me, incredulously:
Response:
Me:
Response:
To myself:
Sales EQ
usually a person named in the RFP we
can send questions to via e-mail.”
“So you never actually speak to a person?
You just do all this work, submit the
RFP, and wait to see what happens?”
“We don’t speak to the prospect unless
they invite us in after we submit the
RFP.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Once or twice per year.”
OMG! I need to find a brick wall.
Potential clients were defining the buying process via a formal RFP
and we had become their puppets. Through our RFP responses we
were helping the buying committee (almost always made up of
stakeholders who were parents with small children and human
resources professionals) do due diligence and build their case.
Our responses were just filling columns on their spreadsheets so
they could make a recommendation to the executive team for a vendor
that, the majority of time, they had already chosen. We were providing
free consulting and expending precious resources, and our probability
of winning the deal was essentially zero. We’d have been better off
going down to the convenience store on the corner and buying lottery
tickets.
The RFPs came to us randomly and without any influence on the
front side before they were issued. We’d ceded influence to our
competitors, who often helped the prospects build their RFPs, giving
our competitors a decided competitive advantage.
Because our competitors started their sales process well before the
RFP was issued, they’d had the chance to build relationships and align
their sales process to the buying process.
We, on the other hand, were starting our sales process deep into
the prospect’s buying process. This essentially meant that we were
forced to skip the connecting and discovery steps, putting us at a
decided disadvantage.
We had no relationships, no insight, and very little qualifying
information (we didn’t even know if it was worth our while to submit
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the RFP). We had zero influence in a complex, high-risk deal with a
large array of stakeholders. Yet, like robots, we consumed precious
resources responding to RFP after RFP.
Average Salespeople Dance
I realize that most salespeople are not getting RFPs. Many, however,
are being pulled into the prospect’s buying process late in the game and
being told to dance. And the average salespeople dance.
They rush headlong into these deals, producing proposals, pitching
solutions in the absence of information, challenging before under­
standing, blind to the influence of other stakeholders, and asking
without earning the right. Because the buying process and sales process
are out of sync, they skip steps, allow disruptive emotions to drive their
behaviors, and push situational awareness aside. In the process, win
probability plummets.
The outcomes in this paradigm are almost always bad. Deals stall
and resources are wasted on low-probability deals. Salespeople are
frustrated because they spend time on deals that never close, leaders are
frustrated because pipelines are unpredictable, and stakeholders are
exasperated because they waste time in shallow, low-value conversa­
tions with average salespeople.
The only group of people winning are ultra-high performers
(UHPs), who are shaping the buying process to both align with their
sales process and disrupt the sales process of their competitors.
Shaping the Buying Process
At La Petite I made an immediate change. We would no longer submit
RFPs unless and until we were first granted an audience with the
company’s CEO. I made it clear that spending three weeks and a
massive amount of company resources on an RFP with a zero win
probability was going to stop.
Filling out RFPs was not an accomplishment. We needed to close
deals. To do that we had to increase win probability.
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How did this move change the game? First, the only person at a
company who can make the decision to spend upward of $20 million
on an on-site child care facility is the CEO. If the company agreed to
allow us to meet with the CEO, we would:
1. Know they were serious and the RFP was worth our time and
effort (an engagement test).
2. Gain the insight to build a stakeholder map.
3. Slow down the buying process and align it to our sales process, thus
disrupting our competitors.
This was simple enough. Yet my team resisted. It put them in the
emotionally uncomfortable position of using leverage to get what we
wanted. In our case, this meant reshaping the buying process of
potential customers.
“What if they say no?” “That’s too aggressive.” “They’ll never
agree to that.” “We’ll lose all of our opportunities.” Fear, uncertainty,
and doubt—disruptive emotions that leave average salespeople work­
ing on low-probability deals.
Ultra-high performers control these disruptive emotions in
pursuit of higher win probabilities. They never waste time filling
out a blind RFP or delivering a Hail Mary proposal because of a fear
of missing out (FOMO). Hope is not a strategy or a good investment
of time.
UHPs don’t scratch lottery tickets. Instead they put themselves in
position to win by shaping the prospect’s buying process to align with
their sales process. There are two primary ways UHPs shape the buying
process:
■
They get there first. UHPs are fanatical prospectors. They begin
working with prospects far ahead of an open buying window. This
allows them to influence the prospect’s buying process on the
front end.
In this consultative role, they teach buyers how to buy, shape
and even write RFPs and bid specs, lay land mines for competitors,
and add, subtract, or change steps in the buying process. In doing
so they increase their win probability while lowering the win
probabilities of competitors.
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■
145
They use leverage. When UHPs are unable to get in the deal
ahead of competitors, they use leverage to shape the process.
Leverage is derived from something stakeholders want or need:
information, comparative pricing, peace of mind, competing bid.
When they don’t have leverage, UHPs move on. When they have
leverage, they never give it away for free.
Get There First
It was early on a spring morning. Tony was in his small office. Perhaps
“office” is too kind a description. It was, in truth, a former broom
closet. The walls were covered in dark, cheap wood paneling. The
room was no more than four and half feet wide and six feet long. A
small desk had been shoved into it, and that’s where he sat each
morning making prospecting calls and setting appointments.
On the wall in front of his desk he’d taped motivational quotes
and his sales goal for the quarter. On the wall behind him were the
sales ranking report for the region and his quarterly sales projections.
It was cramped and windowless, but Tony loved it because it was
his space.
Nick, his sales manager, sat on the other side of the paper-thin wall,
an arrangement that had its pros and cons. Nick could easily hear and
critique Tony’s prospecting calls without ever getting up from his desk.
Tony could overhear Nick’s conversations, which kept him in the
know about what was going on around the region and the company.
That morning Nick was on the phone having a conversation with
his boss about a new regulation that would begin impacting the
electrical and power-generation industries. They were discussing
strategies for engaging potential customers before their competitors
made a move. Tony’s ears perked up.
One of those electrical utilities was headquartered in an open
territory. Open territories were free-for-alls, and the first person to put
his or her name on a deal got to keep it.
Tony didn’t waste a minute picking up the phone. With no more
information than what he’d overheard from Nick, he called the
prospect’s environmental health and safety (EH&S) department.
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Through some miracle, he managed to bluff his way past the
receptionist. When the department head, a guy named Casey,
answered the phone, Tony’s only goal was to set an appointment.
He prayed that Casey wouldn’t ask any questions.
Tony introduced himself and asked, “Casey, I’m curious—how do
you plan to comply with the new safety regulation that’s going into
effect next month and will be impacting your line crews?”
Casey responded in a relaxed Southern drawl, “Well, that’s a good
question. We’re just starting to talk about that now. We’re not exactly
sure what we are going to do, but we know we’ll need to do something
soon.”
Not wanting to sound overly anxious, Tony did his best to
slow down and relax. “Casey, that’s exactly why I called. We’ve
been watching this thing play out for a while now and have a
number of options available that I thought you and your team might
want to kick around while you figure out your next steps. How
about we get together on Friday and I’ll show you what we’ve been
working on?”
“What time are you thinking?” Casey responded.
“How about 10:00 AM?” Tony smiled.
“Great, see you then.”
Fist pump!
Tony strolled into Nick’s office just as Nick was hanging up the
phone with his boss. He did his best not to smirk as he gave Nick the
good news. “I just booked us an appointment with the head of EH&S
at the biggest electrical utility in the state for Friday at 10 AM. I’m going
to need you to come along on this one because I don’t know a thing
about this new reg.”
Tony recalled, “The look on Nick’s his face was priceless. Like
‘how in the hell did you do that?’ priceless. I lived for that look.” Tony
laughed as he told the story. “Then we both panicked. We had three
days to become experts on the regulation, understand the impact to
electrical utilities, and develop a strategy for our meeting.”
After meeting with Casey and his team, Nick and Tony realized
that they had a monster deal on their hands. Over the next 60 days they
met with Casey seven times and helped him with the information he
would need to formulate his strategy.
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By getting to the table first, Tony and Nick influenced, guided,
and shaped the buying process to give themselves the highest possible
win probability. In the end Tony and Nick won the account because
they took control from the get-go, built deep and trusting relationships
with the stakeholders, and pushed their competitors into a reactive
mode.
Getting there first is the best position to be in when it comes to
shaping the buying process. While other salespeople are being brought
into the deal 50 to 80 percent of the way through the prospect’s buying
process (and made to dance), you are there from the very beginning,
aligning the buying process to your sales process, guiding your prospect,
building connections, and becoming a valuable resource.
Leverage
In La Petite’s case, our leverage was the information being requested in
the RFP. There were a limited number of early childhood education
companies capable of setting up and managing an on-site child care
facility. Few companies would be willing to move forward with such a
complex project without researching all the options.
The company issuing the RFP needed our information and cost
data for leverage in negotiations with its preferred partner (the one the
committee had already chosen). Our demand was straightforward: we
will provide the information once we have an opportunity to meet
with the CEO and the buying committee.
A few companies outright refused to honor our request. Their refusal
told us that they were on a fishing expedition and did not have executive
sponsorship. We ignored those RFPs, saving time and money.
Most companies balked at our request and responded that we would
have to submit the RFP first. When we politely refused, they almost all
relented and set up the meetings. They needed our information.
These meetings allowed us to reshape and reset the buying process.
Once it was aligned with our sales process, the game changed and our
win probabilities soared. Within 120 days of implementing our new
strategy we closed a $16 million deal and closed 12 more new accounts
over the following 18 months.
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Average Salespeople Become Buying Process Puppets
If you’ve been in sales for more than a month, a prospect has said these
words (or something similar) to you in person, on the phone, or via
e-mail:
■
■
■
■
I’m too busy to meet now, but we are interested. Just send me your
proposal. I’ll look it over and call you back to set a meeting.
Send over your prices; we’re always looking for a better deal. Make sure
you sharpen your pencil.
I’m gathering all the information from vendors. Once we get it all in, we’ll
start scheduling meetings.
We’re going to be making a decision this week, so we need to get your
information fast. How soon can you send us your proposal?
Ultra-high performers use leverage to gain control in these situa­
tions. Average salespeople with low Sales EQ become buying process
puppets.
Take the last example. It’s the old “speed you up to slow you
down” play. The prospect indicates that they’re interested and about to
make a buying decision. “If you want in, you need to move fast.”
Average salespeople stop what they are doing, spend an afternoon
(or an entire day) putting together the perfect proposal, push their
leaders to approve lower prices, deliver the proposal, put the deal in the
pipeline, add it to their forecast, and hope.
Why did this happen? The failure to manage disruptive emo­
tions—desperation, lack of confidence, fear of missing out, overconfi­
dence effect, and false hope triggered by the optimism bias.
■
■
■
■
■
Becoming a buying process puppet begins with a depleted or
empty pipeline.
Empty pipelines make you desperate.
Desperation blinds you to the obvious clues that you are being
used.
This opens you up to false hope because hope feels better than
desperation.
In your heart of hearts, you know it is a low-potential deal, but
you fear that using leverage to test engagement will cause the
prospect to walk away.
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■
■
■
149
Overlooking win probability, and with hope as your strategy, you
make a long-shot promise on your forecast.
You give away your leverage and the prospect disappears.
You miss your forecast, feel like a loser, and your confidence dies.
Ultra-high performers with high Sales EQ respond to these
requests with confidence, reserve leverage, and test engagement by
asking for a micro-commitment:
“John, my competitors will be happy to just throw a proposal at you.
It’s easy for them. They’ve got a generic box and expect all their
customers to fit into that box.
“This is where we are different. At my company, we build the box
around you.
“All I’m going to need is a little bit of your time to ask some questions
so I can understand you better. Then, I’ll tailor a proposal around
your unique situation. That way you’ll have the opportunity to make
a true apples-to-apples comparison and choose the solution that you
feel is best for your company.
“How about we get together tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock?”
UHPs know they’ll get one of three possible responses:
1. “That makes sense—when can we meet?” At this point
they’ve gained control, reshaped the buying process, and obtained
the power to align it to their sales process—most likely disrupting a
competitor rep who believed he or she had the deal wrapped up.
2. “How much time will this take?” or “Is there any other way
we can get you that information?” In this case the buyer is
negotiating (read engaged). The UHP learns that there is urgency
and only needs to negotiate how and when discovery will occur.
3. “Look, we really don’t have time to meet. If you want a shot
at this, send us your proposal.” The UHP knows that there is
no deal and no chance, so they walk away, preserving their
precious time for a higher-probability play.
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The Five
Stakeholders You
Meet in a Deal
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
—Jim Rohn
Last summer we decided to run a campaign to generate more buys from
advertising agencies on the Sales Gravy Jobs engine. There were 50 key
contacts we wanted to reach. The campaign would focus on creating
awareness of the advancements we’d made with our mobile job board
and apps.
The idea for this campaign originated with me during a marketing
brainstorming session. Our agency account manager, Brooke, liked the
idea, so I asked her to research options for a promotional item we might
send by mail along with a brochure highlighting the improved mobile
job board experience.
Brooke searched online for options. She found a few items she
liked and contacted the companies for prices and order minimums.
Then she took those ideas to our marketing manager, Dawn, who
150
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151
contacted Christy, an account manager at a promotional company
Dawn had worked with in the past.
Christy went to work on Brooke’s ideas and sent over mock-ups.
Dawn took them to our CFO, Carrie, who made sure the ideas fit into
our budget and that we were getting a fair price. Dawn advocated for
using Christy (even though her price was more expensive than the
other vendors’ prices). Carrie reviewed the proposals and narrowed
them down to three.
Finally, Brooke, Dawn, and Carrie came to me with their rec­
ommendations. Dawn continued to advocate for Christy. Carrie
concurred since Christy seemed more responsive than the other
vendors and Dawn trusted her. I accepted their recommendations
and signed off on the purchase. The entire purchase amount? A
whopping $500.
Let that sink in for a minute. There were four people from my office
involved in the buying process. Four stakeholders for a $500 purchase.
The Higher the Risk, the More Stakeholders Involved
Not every transactional or short-cycle sale involves this many people or
this much thought. When we hired the company that cleans our office,
one person made that decision with zero involvement from anyone
else. The risk to our company for making a poor decision was
negligible. The overall value of the cleaning services was 10 times
the purchase amount of the promotional items, but the impact was low.
The higher the risk, the more stakeholders you’ll have involved in
the sales process. The stakeholder map will grow with:
■
■
■
■
Increased risk to the organization
Heightened risk to the individual stakeholders
Complexity of the product or service
Length of the sales cycle
Two years ago I was working with a company that wanted to
leverage our online learning platform, Sales Gravy University, to train
its salespeople and sales leaders. We’d completed discovery, confirmed
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we were on the right track with the executive sponsor (our coach), and
were set to deliver a final presentation and proposal to the CEO.
The meeting was scheduled for 10:00 AM at my prospect’s corpo­
rate headquarters, a beautiful and sprawling campus. We arrived early
and acclimated ourselves to the meeting room. Looking out at the 22
chairs in the room, I knew this would be a challenge.
Our coach warned us that there would be a crowd. We’d spent the
previous week researching the players and attempting to understand
their motivations. We knew the CEO liked us, along with his executive
vice president. We were aware that the vice president of sales was not in
our corner because he didn’t believe his team needed training.
There were two people from human resources (HR), who wanted
to be sure we would comply with their diversity initiatives; the CIO,
who was worried about an online training platform taking up resources
and security issues; three regional directors of sales, who had been
pushing for sales training; the zone manager, who had originally sought
us out; the senior vice presidents of two potential pilot regions, just in
case the stakeholders chose to move forward; and a team of marketing
managers, who would be acting as brand police.
We knew who we had in our corner. We knew who we needed
to move into our corner. We knew the naysayers we needed to
neutralize—the vice president of sales and the CIO. We needed to
reassure the HR team and the marketing team that we were on their
side. Finally, we needed to make the sales and operations leaders in the
room salivate to get them to reassure the CEO that she was making
the right decision. And we had to do all of this in 45 minutes.
If reading this makes your head spin, then—trust me—I feel your
pain. This is the reality you face in twenty-first-century sales. There are
many stakeholders involved in your deals. Getting on the wrong side of
one of those people or being unaware of a stakeholder who has
influence can sink your chances of closing.
Know Your Audience
We won that deal and it continues to evolve into one of our
most profitable relationships. The key to winning the deal was the
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153
work we did in advance of the meeting to set ourselves up for
success.
We began by developing two coaches: our executive sponsor, a
senior vice president with profit-and-loss (P&L) responsibility, and a
well-connected director of sales who wanted us to win the deal. These
two stakeholders helped us hone our message, taught us the company’s
language, and warned us of pitfalls. They also offered deep insight on
the other stakeholders with whom we’d be interacting.
Leveraging this information, we stepped into each stakeholder’s
shoes and viewed things from their perspective.
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
What are this person’s motivations?
What is the risk to them personally for choosing us?
What’s the risk of not choosing us?
Why would they be an advocate for us?
Why might they be a naysayer?
What are their emotional hot buttons?
What is their language, and how can we speak it so that it makes
them feel that we get them and their problems?
What makes them feel important? How can we tap into this?
What do they fear?
We knew their names, faces (we pulled pictures of each of them
from LinkedIn or the company’s website), background and history,
motivations, where they stood relative to a decision in our favor, level
of influence and informal power, and key personal details that included
their college, spouses and children, recent awards, favorite sports teams
or hobbies, and so on.
With this information in hand, we connected in a way no one
expected. As they walked into the room, we shook their hands and
greeted them by name. During our presentation, we demonstrated that
we understood them and their problems by weaving the issues impor­
tant to them into our message.
When the vice president of sales walked into the room, I could tell
that he was openly hostile. His greeting was terse and he avoided
making eye contact. Sadly, this is common with sales vice presidents,
who see my team as a threat rather than a helping hand. I understand it
because when I was a sales vice president I felt the same way. I was
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supposed to be the sales expert at my company. If we brought in an
outside consultant, what did that say about me?
So I addressed this emotion right up front by talking about my own
experience as an executive and how I hated it when consultants came
into my company and didn’t understand us.
“That’s why I promised I would never be that kind of consultant. If
we cannot add value, if we are unwilling to get in the trenches with
you, if we can’t act as an extra set of hands to help you reach your goals,
then we have the integrity to walk away.”
When the vice president of sales leaned forward and nodded, I
knew I’d connected with him. I was speaking his language.
Hearts Before Minds
When I was a kid, I spent hours sitting in courtrooms watching my
lawyer dad try cases. In the summer, my mom would drop me off at the
federal courthouse, which became my de facto babysitter. I still
remember the unique smells and sounds and how everything seemed
so huge and imposing. I’d find a bench near the front of the courtroom
and watch the master.
My dad earned the reputation of being one of the greatest trial
lawyers and legal minds of his generation. When he was trying a case,
the opposing attorneys would often give up before the trial ever
started.
My dad is a master at shaping the courtroom and flipping the script
in his favor. As he addressed the jury, he made subtle shifts in his pace,
words, voice inflection, accent, and body language so that each
member of the jury perceived that he was speaking directly to them.
They liked him because he made them feel that he understood
them and their importance. He answered the questions that each jury
member would ask about his client based on that jury member’s unique
situation. Because of this they trusted and believed him. Even in the
most improbable situations, he swayed juries to return verdicts in his
client’s favor.
While the opposing counsel argued the case on facts and logic
through self-important pontification, my dad grabbed the jury
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members’ hearts. And he won, and won, and won, because he didn’t
play the same game as everyone else.
It wasn’t until I was in college and interning at his office that I
experienced first-hand how he engineered these wins. One of my jobs
was researching jury members before trial. In his office “war room” we
created a Jury Map.
On the board, we placed a picture of each potential juror,
information about who they were, their career and family history,
why they might find for us, why they might find against us, emotional
hot buttons, cultural background, education, likes, dislikes, fears,
political beliefs, legal history, and many seemingly mundane facts
that sometimes turned out to be very important.
My dad and his team studied the jurors and worked to step into
their shoes. For this reason, my dad defeated most of his competitors
before they ever stepped foot into the courtroom.
BASIC
There are five stakeholders you meet in most deals: Buyers, Amplifiers,
Seekers, Influencers, and Coaches—BASIC. Sometimes stakeholders
play multiple roles, and other times the stakeholder array is large and
each has a single part to play.
Beginning with early-stage prospecting and information gathering,
through qualifying and into discovery, ultra-high performers (UHPs)
are identifying and mapping BASIC. They leave nothing to chance.
UHPs build relationships and get to know their audience.
Buyers are essentially decision makers, people with the ultimate
authority to say yes or no. There are two types of buyers:
1. Buyers who can authorize the deal, sign a contract or purchase
order, and say yes to the commitment
2. Buyers who can fund the deal and write the check
Sometimes these stakeholders are the same person, and other
times they are not. For example, the CIO may be able to say yes to a
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new software purchase but until the CFO agrees to release the funds
nothing will happen. A corporate purchaser can say yes to your terms,
and general managers at field locations can say yes to approving the
budget.
Understanding this difference will save you the pain and anguish of
closing a deal only to see the order fail to materialize.
Amplifiers are typically stakeholders who see a problem or gap
that your product can fill. They are advocates for change and amplify
the message, problem, pain, or need up through the organization.
These folks can be low or high on the totem pole and have varying
degrees of influence on the outcome of the deal. In most cases, their
influence is indirect. They use the product, are impacted by problems
or pain, or perceive an opportunity. Ultra-high performers are masters
at leveraging amplifiers in bottom-up strategies to push distant decision
makers, who may be disconnected from need, problems, and pain, to
take action.
Seekers are stakeholders sent to look for information or who do it
on their own. Seekers are inbound marketing fodder. They download
e-books, attend webinars, peruse websites, and fill out web forms.
Usually seekers have little or no buying authority or influence, yet put
up a façade of authority and block access to other stakeholders. Average
salespeople go for this ruse hook, line, and sinker. Many deals are lost
because salespeople give away their leverage early, get stuck with
seekers, and allow disruptive emotions to keep them from moving
up to a higher-level stakeholder.
Influencers are stakeholders who play an active role in the buying
process. They can be advocates and on your side, naysayers who are
against you, or agnostic. Developing relationships with influencers is
critical in complex sales. Your goal is to develop and nurture advocates,
move agnostics into your corner, and neutralize naysayers.
Coaches or sponsors are insiders who are willing not only to
advocate for you but to help you with insider information. In any
complex deal, developing a coach is a huge competitive advantage.
In long-cycle sales where incumbent vendors have a strong foot­
hold, the absence of a coach or sponsor can put you at such a
disadvantage that it is a disqualifier to continued investment in the
opportunity.
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The One Question Ultra-High Performers Never Ask
In a recent training session, a sales rep called Ryan grabbed me on a
break and asked this question:
“Jeb, over the past month I’ve had several of my potential
accounts hit a wall because the person I was working with turned
out not to be the decision maker. What is frustrating to me is these
people told me in our initial meeting that they were the decision
maker. I don’t understand why people lie to me like that, and I want
to know how I can identify who is telling me the truth and who is
not.”
Ryan is not alone in his frustration. Average salespeople often find
themselves mired in stalled deals because they were dealing with the
wrong person.
This usually happens because the stakeholder either says outright or
insinuates that he or she is the final decision maker. Believing this to be
true, the salesperson goes through the sales process with the stake­
holder: connecting, discovering, presenting solutions, and asking for
the business.
Then bam! Out of nowhere the stakeholder says: “Thank you for
this great information, but I’m going to need to review this with my
boss (the committee, my husband, wife, friend, peers, etc.) before we
can make a decision.”
If you’ve been in this situation, and I bet you have, it makes you
want to scream. You try to get around it by asking for a meeting with
their boss, but most of the time it is too late or they are unwilling to give
you access. You fear if you go around them you’ll poison the
relationship and lose any hope of closing the deal.
It is an awful conundrum, and the net result is that your deal is
stalled. You try to explain it to your sales manager and put it in the best
light. But you’ve still got egg on your face because you’ve been had by
your stakeholder. I know. I’ve been there, done that, and have the Tshirt to prove it.
How does this happen? How do salespeople get themselves into
this situation?
Let’s begin with reality. Sometimes there is no way around it.
Sometimes you are not going to get to the decision maker (buyer) and
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will be stuck working through an influencer. The key is knowing this
up front and adjusting your strategy to align the sales and buying
processes to match reality.
Sometimes you are dealing with a deceitful person who knows
how the game is played. These people have no intention of doing
business with you. They’re just using you for free consulting or pricing
information to use as leverage with your competitor.
These stakeholders are easy to spot because they are unwilling to
engage, resist emotional connections, renege on commitments, and
rush you through the sales process just to get what they want. Sales­
people driven by desperation are the most likely to get used by this type
of prospect.
The most common reason this happens, though, is the salesperson
asks one simple but deadly question:
“Are you the decision maker?”
This is the one question ultra-high performers never ask when
qualifying a prospect. When you ask this question of any stakeholder,
90 percent of the time they are going to say yes.
Why would a stakeholder lie to you so blatantly? Most stakeholders
don’t say they are the decision maker, when they are not, from ill
intent. They are not bad people trying to hurt you.
When you ask a stakeholder, “Are you the decision maker?,” you
put them on the spot. This creates the painful mental stress of cognitive
dissonance. If the stakeholder says no, they are admitting openly that
they are not important, which conflicts with their self-image that they
are important.
So, they say yes because it makes them feel significant. They blurt it
out without even thinking.
Then you, the salesperson, reinforce the lie with attention, com­
pliments, and your focus. It works great for both parties until the
moment of truth when you ask for a commitment and the stakeholder’s
little house of cards crumbles.
This, by the way, is why your supposed decision maker disappears
and your deal stalls. They are embarrassed to admit that they have little
power, have wasted your time, and are not important.
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BASIC Mapping
You must be smart about uncovering stakeholders, intentional with
building and nurturing stakeholder relationships, and strategic in your
approach. In mid- to long-cycle, complex sales, pigeonholing yourself
with a single stakeholder creates risk and lowers win probability. You
must leave nothing to chance.
Begin with research and BASIC mapping. This has become
infinitely easier to do with social media sites like LinkedIn and sales
intelligence tools like DiscoverOrg.
Map who’s who in the account. You won’t always get a complete
map. However, even with incomplete information you can either
level-up higher in the organization or develop questions to get
information from the stakeholder without bruising his or her ego.
The most important step you can take, though, is to change your
question. Instead of asking “Are you the decision maker?” use indirect
questions such as:
■
■
■
■
Tell me about your buying policies?
Could you walk me through the buying process?
How does your organization typically make decisions about
bringing in new vendors like my company?
How did you make the decision on this service the last time you
signed a contract?
Indirect questions work because they trigger your stakeholder to
tell a story and reduce their temptation to take the leading role. Most
important, you avoid putting them and their ego on the spot, and that
gives you a higher probability of getting a straight answer so you know
exactly where you stand before getting too deeply into the sales process.
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Decision Process
It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.
—Tony Robbins
“Look, you guys are all the same. Why don’t you just give me your best
price?”
Jessica had heard the same words leave the lips of stakeholders
hundreds of times over a sales career that spanned 15 years and three
companies. She knew that the statement was part negotiating strategy
and part truth.
To buyers she and her competitors looked the same. And, frankly,
she could see why. In her industry, there were four national competi­
tors, several dozen regional players, and local mom-and-pop enterprises
dispersed here and there—all vying for a piece of the action.
The products and services were essentially the same; yet each
competitor claimed to have some exclusive differentiator. These claims
were mostly marketing smoke and mirrors.
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To say her industry was competitive was an understatement. It was
hypercompetitive. Among just the four national competitors there
were more than 3,000 salespeople calling on prospects. Add in the
regionals and locals, and it was not uncommon for a stakeholder to get
five or more prospecting calls a week.
“I just need five minutes of your time, sir, to show you how we can save
your company money.” The prospecting mantra repeated itself over and
over. Weary buyers were numb to the same stale pitches and sales
conversations quickly degenerated into “What’s your best price?”
The pressure on reps in her industry was intense and turnover high,
exceeding 100 percent in some cases. To succeed, salespeople had to be
relentless. They had to make 50 to 100 prospecting touches a day just to
stay above water—a price that had to be paid to survive in this industry.
Just touch as many prospects as you can, throw out enough proposals,
and you might make it.
As an ultra-high performer (UHP), Jessica refused to play this
game. She’d been to her company’s “President’s Club” every year for
11 years in a row. At her previous employer, she’d achieved similar
success. As new reps came and went, Jessica was one of the elite few
who understood the key to differentiation.
She leaned forward and set the tablet she’d been given for
presentations on the stakeholder’s desk. “Sean, all I want is the
opportunity to get to know you and your company. I want to learn
how you do things here, your challenges, and what makes your
company different. Once I have that information, I’ll deliver a
blueprint for how we can help you and your team achieve your
business goals.”
Jessica continued, “We may find out that it doesn’t make sense to
work together because I can bring no additional value other than price.
If that is the case, I promise to tell you. On the other hand, we may find
ways to help you become more productive, drop some real savings to
the bottom line, and ultimately make life easier for you.”
Jessica’s competitors left Sean’s office with marching orders to
come back with the best price. They’d gone back to their offices, met
with sales managers, put together generic PowerPoint presentations,
given Sean their best offer, and moved on to the next prospect. They all
looked the same.
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Jessica slowed the process down and refused to throw a price on the
table. She’d preserved leverage, managed her emotions, and exercised
patience and poise. In doing so she disrupted and flipped Sean’s buyer
script. He engaged and agreed to move forward to the next step (micro­
commitment).
Over the next four visits, Jessica observed Sean’s processes, inter­
viewed key managers, built trust and relationships. She uncovered several
opportunities to help Sean’s organization become more efficient. She
won the trust of his managers and leveraged their influence on Sean to
amplify the need for change. Through effective discovery she built a case
for change. She earned the right to challenge the status quo and offer
solutions to problems that Sean’s team were unaware they even had.
When she made her presentation to Sean and his team, her recom­
mendations carried weight. She articulated her vision in his language,
bridging only to what was relevant to him. Price was important but not
the deciding factor in Sean’s decision. When he signed the contract, he did
so because Jessica was different.
Influencing the Decision Process
Jessica had access to the same tools, information, products, and rate
structure as her competitors. Each of the salespeople who met with
Sean could have approached him in the same way. Yet only she created
real, tangible differentiation.
The average salespeople working for her competitors were oblivi­
ous to Sean’s motives, goals, and problems. They made no real attempt
to develop an emotional connection or to work at bringing solutions to
the table that might have a positive impact on Sean’s business. Jessica
delivered both value and a better emotional buying experience.
What cannot be discounted or overlooked is the undeniable fact1 that
the stakeholder’s emotional experience2 while interacting with a salesper­
son, as they progress through the sales and buying process, plays the most
significant role in their propensity to purchase and continue to purchase.3
In other words, the tangible attributes of a product or solution are
less important than the emotions derived on the buying journey, from
dealing with you.
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Aligning the Three Processes of Sales
Ultra-high sales performers understand that the decision process is the
pivot point on which the sales process and buying process are leveraged.
The sales process and buying process are linear, rational steps
developed at the organizational level. The decision process, on the
other hand, is individual, emotional, nonlinear, and often irrational—in
essence, each stakeholder’s personal buying journey. The decision
process is how individual stakeholders commit to vendors, products,
services, next steps, and, most important, the salesperson.
Average salespeople forget that in business-to-business sales they
are working with humans who are using someone else’s money to solve
their own problems and alleviate pain. Because of this they fail to reach
below the surface and gain an understanding of the motivations, desires,
needs, wants, fears, aspirations, and problems of each stakeholder
involved in the buying process. They fail to step into the individual’s
emotional shoes.
Ultra-high performers are masters at aligning the sales process,
buying process, and decision process. They never forget that they are
dealing with emotional, fallible, irrational human beings. UHPs know
that through emotional connections they move win probabilities into
the stratosphere and create unassailable competitive differentiation.
The Five Questions That Matter Most in Sales
In every sales conversation and throughout the sales process, stake­
holders are asking five questions of you:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Do
Do
Do
Do
Do
I like you?
you listen to me?
you make me feel important?
you get me and my problems?
I trust and believe you?
These are the five most important questions in sales. Ultra-high
performers get this. From the first moment they engage stakeholders
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and until the deal is closed, they are intensely focused on answering
these five questions with an affirmative yes!
The five questions are being asked and answered at both the
conscious and subconscious levels. The questions are emotional. They
originate from emotion and are answered with emotion.
How you answer these questions for each stakeholder will deter­
mine the outcome of your sales conversations—positive or negative—
and increase or decrease win probability. When you answer the five
questions in the affirmative, stakeholders are more willing to comply
with your requests for micro-commitments.
Aligning Decision Making with Social Proof
As the complexity of the sale, the length of the cycle, and more
importantly the risk to the organization and individual stakeholders
increase, so does size of the stakeholder array. With more stakeholders
in the mix, the risk to the individual stakeholders is diluted while the
risk to you is increased.
With large arrays of stakeholders playing different roles (BASIC),
it’s easier for stakeholders to act on groupthink rather than standing up
for a view that might be the right thing but be perceived as unpopular.
It’s also easier for a single stakeholder to derail a deal when the
stakeholder group is indecisive or misaligned. It’s less risky for the
group to side with caution (status quo) than take a risk and be wrong.
What we know empirically about human behavior is that humans
follow the crowd. We are compelled to do things that other people are
doing. When something is popular, when we see other people doing it,
we feel that it is safe to do the same thing.
This is the social proof heuristic. The more people who are doing
a thing, have a belief in something, or share an opinion, the higher the
probability that we’ll be drawn toward and want to do or believe
the same thing. Effectively we use the judgment of the crowd as a
substitute for our own, which reduces cognitive load, making it easier
to make decisions in complex environments.
In complex deals with wide stakeholder arrays, ultra-high per­
formers leverage social proof to improve win probability and lower the
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risk of a stalled deal and no decision. The key is aligning stakeholder
decision making and neutralizing naysayers.
Stakeholder alignment is difficult and challenging, and entails hard
work. It requires:
■
■
■
■
Disciplined effort to identify and contact all stakeholders.
Gaining micro-commitments and collecting yeses from all
stakeholders.
Intentional effort to build relationships with even the most hostile
stakeholders (it’s harder for them to throw you under the bus
when they like you).
Communicating stakeholder agreement and consensus up, down,
and across the stakeholder array.
You cannot leave anything to chance. You need to have a level of
paranoia that there is a stakeholder you have not identified waiting in
the weeds to sink your deal. You must not assume that stakeholders are
talking to each other.
In complex deals with wide stakeholder arrays, ultra-high per­
formers become a communication hub that connects the stakeholders.
This provides the social proof that helps stakeholders feel comfortable
making a decision in favor of the UHP’s proposal.
Everything UHPs do, from developing sales strategy to managing
the sales process and shaping the buying process, is all directed toward
influencing the decision process. Everything.
This is where you earn your chops. Take shortcuts here, and
you’ll get crushed. However, when the sales and buying processes are
aligned with the account stakeholders’ decision process, win proba­
bilities get close to 100 percent. It becomes almost impossible not to
buy from you.
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Do I Like You?
When it comes right down to it, whatever business you’re in, you’re in the
people business. After all, people prefer to do business with people and
companies they find likeable.
—Karen Salmansohn
At dinner this past weekend, our good friend Michelle told a story
about an experience she had while shopping for a mattress. Now, this
wasn’t just any mattress; this was a high-end mattress that cost a
couple of thousand dollars. Prior to hitting the stores, she’d done
extensive research online and narrowed her focus to a few brands and
styles. She found exactly what she was looking for at the first furniture
store she visited, and the price was right. But she didn’t make the
purchase.
Instead, she drove all the way across town to visit another furniture
store where she met sales representative Gwen. There, she purchased
the same mattress she’d seen at the other store. When I pressed her, she
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admitted (while avoiding eye contact with her husband) that she paid
more at the second store than the first.
“Why would you do that?” I asked.
She responded, “The guy at the first store, I think his name was
Ray, just didn’t impress me. I mean, from the first moment there was
just something about him I didn’t like. So even though he had the
mattress I wanted, I decided to shop around some more. Gwen, the rep
at the other store, was different. Even though we’d just met I could tell
she cared about me. She made me feel good.”
No Second Chances with First Impressions
Like Michelle, we all make snap judgments when we first meet people.
These judgments, which are both imperfect and emotional, have a
lasting impact on how we view and interact with others. In Michelle’s
case, first impressions caused her to end up paying more for the same
product because she liked Gwen more than she liked Ray.
Your prospects make these same imperfect judgments about you.
First impressions are about likability, and likability is the gateway to
building emotional connections with stakeholders. When stakeholders
like you, the probability increases that they will be open to answering
your questions and engaging in a conversation.
Unlike trust, being perceived as likable or unlikable occurs in mere
moments and begins in your stakeholders’ subconscious—long before
they are aware of how they feel about you at the conscious level. Ray,
the rep who turned Michelle off, is the poster child for the saying, “You
never get a second chance to make a great first impression.”
The word likable is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as
having qualities that bring about a favorable regard. We all, to some extent,
have qualities and characteristics that make us naturally likable to certain
types of people and personalities, though at the same time we possess
qualities that make us naturally unlikable to others (see the next chapter,
on flexing your style).
The problem we face in sales is we don’t always get to choose
those with whom we interact. Many of the people we encounter will
not be naturally attracted to us. Complicating things more are the
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preconceived perceptions that all people bring into relationships.
These perceptions, which include but are not limited to cultural,
racial, and socioeconomic biases, are also beyond our control.
There was just “something” about Ray that Michelle didn’t like.
That “something” could be that he reminded her of a bully back in
grade school, a bad date in college, or a sales rep who broke a promise in
the past. Perhaps she didn’t like his facial expressions, attitude, accent,
tone of voice, tie, eye contact, or posture.
The point is, there are myriad reasons a prospect may not like you,
and many of the reasons are completely outside of your control.
Therefore, when you meet new prospects, it’s critical that you control
the aspects of likability that are within your power to control.
Likability: The Gateway to Emotional Connections
Sergeant Lentz leaned through the window of the truck. His eyes
darted away as he admitted the truth. He was under heavy pressure
because he’d missed his recruiting mission two months in a row, and as
he neared the end of the quarter it looked certain that he was going to
roll another zero month.
Desperate for help, he’d flagged me down after training. He
explained that he’d left his last 11 recruiting meetings without getting
a commitment for a next step. “I just don’t understand it,” he said,
almost pleading. “I tell them all about the National Guard and why
they should join, and then nothing. They say, ‘Thanks for the
information,’ and the conversation is over.”
“Sergeant Lentz,” I asked, “when you think back on those meet­
ings, who is doing most of the talking—you, the parents, or their kid?”
He took a step back from the truck and looked down at his boots.
“I guess I am,” he replied softly.
Connect
Sergeant Lentz, like so many salespeople, has a problem—a problem
that is easily fixable but nonetheless a problem. When the parents and
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kids to whom he’s selling the National Guard ask the question “Do I
like you?” about Sergeant Lentz, the answer is “No.”
Now don’t get me wrong. Sergeant Lentz is a very likable man.
He’s polite, nice, and funny, and he cares deeply about his mission to
recruit young men and women into the National Guard. What makes
him unlikable is his approach.
The connecting step in the sales process is designed to win other
people over by making them feel that they are the center of your
attention—to make them feel significant or important. Your objective
is to initiate and then over time nurture a deep emotional connection.
The gateway to emotional connections is likability.
Emotional connections are crucial to influencing the decisions and
behaviors of stakeholders. As these connections grow stronger, they
anchor stakeholders to you and cause your message to feel more
credible to them because as they like you more and become familiar
with you, they naturally move you into their in-group.
The in-group preference, sometimes called the similarity bias,
causes your stakeholders to believe that people who are more familiar
or more like them are more trustworthy, believable, and better than
people who are not. You know this to be true as surely as you know the
sun will come up in the morning, because you face and fight this bias
every day of your life.
Each of us lives and operates in a familiarity bubble. We are more
comfortable with people, places, and things inside our familiarity
bubble and less comfortable with things outside our familiarity bubble.
Your ultimate goal in the sales process is to move into your stake­
holder’s bubble of familiarity and in-group through an emotional
connection.
Of course, we know that likability alone is not a guarantee that a
stakeholder will advocate for you or buy from you. It takes more. People
buy from people they like, trust, and believe will solve their problems. Thus,
execution of the sales process and alignment of the three processes of
sales are critical to positive sales outcomes.
Likability comes first, though. Likability is the gateway to connec­
tions, familiarity, and moving into your stakeholder’s in-group. If you
are not likable, you have no chance. Stakeholders don’t buy from
salespeople they don’t like.
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Sales EQ
Think for a moment about what makes another person likable.
Likable people are nice, polite, respectful, courteous, thoughtful, and
confident; they have a positive disposition, have an appealing outward
appearance, smile (in person), have a positive, upbeat tone of voice
(phone), flex their style, and listen.
They demonstrate that they like us by giving us their sincere
attention and listening. We tend to like people who like us.
Now, think about most salespeople. Most salespeople are nice,
polite, respectful, and relatively confident; they are positive, look good,
smile, and sound great on the phone. In general, most salespeople easily
pull off these likable behaviors except for one.
They talk instead of listen.
Pitch Slapping
Nobody likes a pitch. Not you, not me, not your prospects. Look at it
this way. If you could choose to hang out with people who spent the
entire time you were together talking about themselves or a person
who invested the time listening to you, which would you choose? For
most people that choice is easy and obvious.
The struggle Sergeant Lentz was facing is the exact same problem
thousands of salespeople share. They show up, throw up, and are
flabbergasted that their prospects don’t respond with open arms. Instead
of building emotional connections, they pitch slap stakeholders and
turn them off.
Most stakeholders reluctantly give up their time to meet with you.
Stakeholders are crazy busy and not interested in meeting with mouthy
salespeople, because in their experience these meetings are a painful
waste of time.
During initial meetings, stakeholders keep their emotional wall up
and you at arm’s length. To bend win probability in your favor, you’ll
need to lower the wall.
Yet when your stakeholder is hesitant to engage, the situation is
uncomfortable and awkward. You ask questions and get clipped answers.
It’s like the words in the old James Taylor song “Mexico”—you send a
long letter and get back a postcard. Times are hard.
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In this emotionally uncomfortable situation, average salespeople
succumb to disruptive emotions and impatiently shift from questions to
pitching, effectively killing engagement and discovery. It’s not that
these salespeople are clueless. They know what to do. They’re just so
overwhelmed by emotions that they don’t do it. These emotions
include:
■
■
■
■
■
Fear of the unknown: Since the salespeople don’t know what
the prospect might say, they dominate the conversation to feel
safe.
Attachment to control: Salespeople falsely believe that to be in
control they must be doing the talking.
Uncomfortable with silence: Whenever there is silence, the
salesperson fills in the void with words.
Impatience: The salesperson gets frustrated with the stake­
holder’s short answers or slow pace and takes over the
conversation.
Need for significance: The salesperson doesn’t feel important
when the stakeholder is talking, so they interrupt to prove how
smart they are.
Meanwhile, within this arc of disruptive emotions, the stake­
holder’s negativity bias is kicking in. Their subconscious mind is
homing in on and amplifying the things about you that they don’t
like and magnifying the things about you that are different from them.
They don’t know why, but there is something about you that “they just
don’t like.”
At the conscious level, a salesperson droning on and on about their
company and product features is emotionally excruciating. The stake­
holder begins to consciously seek an escape. People don’t buy from
people they don’t like, and they don’t like salespeople who pitch slap
them.
Ultra-high performers feel these same disruptive emotions. We all
do. The difference is that they are aware of how destructive the
behaviors spawned by these emotions are to stakeholder relationships.
Even when the stakeholder prompts them with an “Okay, tell me what
you’ve got,” they resist the open invitation to pitch and instead ask
questions to get the other person talking.
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Ten Keys to Being More Likable
Answering your stakeholder’s question “Do I like you?” is way deeper,
more complex, and far more important than most salespeople consider.
Being likable requires effort, strategy, and intentional focus.
1. Smile. A pleasant, sincere smile is the best way to make a great
first impression. Humans are naturally attracted to other humans who
are smiling. So be aware of your facial expression, and put a smile on
your face.
2. Voice tone. Like smiling, your voice tone and inflection can
cause a stakeholder to instantly like or dislike you. Your voice
should be as neutral and free of regional dialects as possible, friendly,
and upbeat. Put a smile on your face and it will shine through your
voice.
3. Be polite. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “Mean People
Suck.” People who are rude, impolite, and discourteous are unlikable.
Unless you were raised in a barn by animals, someone taught you basic
manners. Put those manners to work in all interactions with stake­
holders. They will notice.
4. Dress. Despite the admonition “Don’t judge a book by its
cover,” people do and will judge you based on what you wear, what
you drive, and your grooming and appearance. This judgment about
whether to like you based on appearance happens in the sub­
conscious before your stakeholder is consciously aware of how
they feel. If you engage in face-to-face sales conversations (includ­
ing video calls), dress well. Wear the best and most professional
garments you can. Ensure that they are clean and pressed, and put
you in the very best light.
5. Grooming. Look your best. Ensure that you smell good and
that your cologne or perfume is not overpowering. Ensure that your
hair, facial hair, and nails are clean, cut, clipped, and manicured. If you
have tattoos, cover them up. Yes, tats are more acceptable today than
ever before; however, they can potentially turn off stakeholders who
don’t consider them appropriate. No one ever said, “I didn’t buy
because my rep didn’t have a neck tattoo.”
6. Attention focus. In today’s demanding work environment, it
is easy to become distracted. Jim Rohn said, “Wherever you are, be
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173
there.” This is essential advice when it comes to first impressions. You
must develop the self-discipline to shut everything else out and remain
completely focused on your stakeholder.
7. Style. People tend to be attracted to and more trusting of people
who are like themselves (similarity bias). Therefore, when you flex your
preferred or dominant communication style to complement that of the
other person, you are more similar and therefore more likable.
8. Language. When you speak other people’s language, they
readily pull you into their in-group. Shifting your words, jargon, and
approach even slightly to better match the language of stakeholders has
a big impact on likability.
9. Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm (passion) for your product, service,
and company sells. Enthusiasm is transferable and infectious. Your
enthusiasm is driven by your attitude and beliefs, so it is critical to work
consistently to build and retain a winning attitude. One note, though:
there are few things more off-putting than insincere enthusiasm, so be
careful not to get carried away.
10. Confidence. Weak people repel. Arrogant people are turn­
offs. Confident people attract.
Connecting Is the Gateway to Lowering Emotional
Walls and Discovery
When people feel connected to you, they feel more comfortable
revealing their real problems. Emotional connections trump demo­
graphic differences and subconscious biases that are beyond your control.
The objective of the connect step in the sales process is to:
■
■
■
■
■
■
Gain control of the sales conversation.
Shape (or begin the process of shaping) the buying process.
Build credibility and generate enough interest to move to the next
step.
Make the buyer or stakeholder feel important.
Lower emotional walls so the stakeholder feels more comfortable
sharing information.
Open the door to discovery.
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The commercial sales relationship does not begin on a footing of
trust. Stakeholders are naturally wary of salespeople and are focused on
protecting their self-interest. They bring into any new sales relationship
subconscious cognitive biases, emotions, and all the baggage—good
and bad—from previous interactions with salespeople and vendors.
Your stakeholders naturally believe (negativity bias) that your
intent is to extract as much money as possible from them, and anything
they say will be held against them. Therefore, they hold their cards close
to the vest.
Connecting is about minimizing the emotional roadblocks that get
in the way of transparency, honest communication, and understanding.
In all relationships—business and personal—the more connected you
feel to another person, the more you are willing to reveal your true
feelings, challenges, issues, fears, wants, needs, and problems.
With most stakeholders, the layers are deep and almost impossible
to reach without an emotional connection. Unless they feel some sort
of connection with you, they’ll be reticent to reveal their real problems
and motivations. Salespeople who come off as insincere and manipu­
lative in those initial conversations tend to anchor buyers to this state
and never earn entry into the stakeholder’s in-group.
One ultra-high-performance sales professional I interviewed has a
rule of thumb. If she cannot connect with her stakeholder emotionally,
she will disengage and move on to another opportunity.
She says that experience has taught her that if the person she is
dealing with does not relate to her for any reason, win probability
plummets and her chances of closing the sale are virtually zero, no
matter how well her package solves problems or meets the buyer’s
needs.
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Flexing to
Complement the
Four Primary
Stakeholder
Personas
If it wasn’t for the coffee, I’d have no identifiable personality whatsoever.
—David Letterman
You build deeper emotional connections when you interact with
buyers and stakeholders based on who they are—not who you are.
Ultra-high performers (UHPs) are masters at this. They are keenly selfaware of their behavioral style, values, and beliefs, and they are
confident enough to adjust their style to deal with people with differing
communication styles.
Stakeholders tend to like, be attracted to, and be more trusting of
people who are like them. Therefore, when you flex your preferred or
dominant communication style to complement that of the other
person, that person will be more open to connecting and answering
your questions. It’s easier for others to hear and understand you when
you are communicating in a style language that they understand.
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We each have a unique style of dealing with the world around us.
Some people are direct, whereas others beat around the bush. Some
people speak slowly and exhibit little emotion, whereas others are more
animated. People may be direct and driven, analytical and careful,
focused on building consensus, or social and outgoing.
Flexing your style essentially means adjusting your approach and
interpersonal behaviors for each individual so that they are more
comfortable working with you; thus, easing their anxiety and opening
the door for an emotional connection.
Four Predominant Stakeholder Personas
There are four predominant communication styles (Figure 20.1). Labels
for these styles shift from psychometric test to psychometric test and
from training program to training program. Regardless of the labels,
though, the style markers across the multiple theories of human
behavior and innate communication preferences tend to converge
on these four dominant styles.
We use the descriptors director, analyzer, socializer/energizer, and
consensus builder because we find them easier to remember and apply.
Figure 20.1 Four Communication Styles
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Director (DISC Equivalent: Dominant)
Directors make decisions quickly. They have a strong bias toward
action and are most comfortable with salespeople who know how to
and do get things done.
They crave control. If you want them to like you, do not compete
with them. Even when directors have given decision-making authority
to another person, they’ll swoop in at the last minute and subtly exert
their control by “putting their stamp on it.”
Salespeople sometimes sink deals in these situations because they
pick a fight with the director who may challenge them directly—not
because the director doesn’t agree with the decision, but rather he or
she wants to ensure that the sales rep knows who is boss.
The director values confidence. They steamroll insecure sales­
people, without compunction. If you don’t have an answer to a
question, do not try to fake it, do not stumble over your words,
and do not act weak or scared. If you do, the director will first lose
respect for you and then flatten you. Instead, confidently say you don’t
know but you will get the answer, and give a specific time when you
will have that answer.
Directors have no patience for long-winded pitches. When you
communicate to them, do it in bullet points and short, concise
messages. Give them a little bit of information, pause, then a little
bit more, and pause.
This can be challenging for salespeople, who are often socializers,
because directors can be intimidating. Their need for speed causes
you to respond in kind and speed up, resulting in run-on sentences that
bore them.
Directors will at times challenge, push, and negotiate hard, just to
see if you can take it. When you stand your ground and demonstrate
confidence, while showing respect and without challenging their
authority, they will respect you.
If you waste their time, you lose them. If anything you say is not
relevant to their situation, you lose them. They care about their
problems and issues and how you can solve them.
You can build deep relationships with directors, but it is business
first and socialize last. However, when they feel that you know your
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stuff and can be counted on to get things done, they will buy from you
and keep buying from you.
Analyzer (DISC Equivalent: Conscientious)
As buyers, analyzers are often in the stakeholder role of deal funders and
are a check and balance to both socializers and directors, who are often
deal signers. As influencers, they’re usually naysayers who pick your
business case apart.
Analyzers are systematic and methodical. They reject hype and
pitching and value data and facts. They respond best to linear com­
munication and ironclad case studies.
With analyzers, trust is built slowly. It is essential that you overprepare before every meeting with an analyzer. Consider every ques­
tion they may ask and ensure you can answer in a cogent manner and
back your answers up with facts.
Review all written documents, charts, and spreadsheets for orga­
nization and errors. Analyzers are sticklers for accuracy. They will fixate
on inaccurate information, typos, or poorly organized data and become
unable to hear anything else. To the analyzer, your inability to answer
questions, back up propositions with facts, or get it right the first time
says you are untrustworthy and eliminates you as a viable vendor.
Analyzers can often come off as cold and unengaged. Jamal, a sales
rep from Birmingham, Alabama, like many salespeople, finds dealing
with analyzers emotionally difficult.
“It’s when these stakeholders freeze me out,” he says. “I ask a
question and they give me short answers. They don’t show emotion
and won’t open up. It’s frustrating and I usually end up doing all of the
talking.”
The emotional response to getting “frozen out,” to use Jamal’s
words, is disruptive. You don’t feel accepted, liked, or important. You
get no emotional validation. So, to protect your fragile ego, you begin
pontificating—a very bad move with analyzers, as they’re masters at
allowing salespeople to talk themselves out of deals.
Begin conversations by asking the analyzer about what is most
important to them in the decision-making process. Stay away from
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personal questions unless they bring them up. Instead focus on business.
Ask them about the process they use to judge vendors like you. Ask
them about their values.
Analyzers enter sales conversations with their emotional wall up
and keep salespeople at arm’s length. The key to breaking through is
methodical patience, controlling your disruptive emotional need to be
accepted, knowing your stuff, and a series of short meetings designed to
systematically build the relationship.
Socializer/Energizer (DISC Equivalent: Influential)
Socializers are easy to connect with. They’re open to building relation­
ships and value them. In contrast to directors and analyzers, with
socializers it’s relationship first and then business. They tend to com­
municate in long stories, are emotional and animated, have high
energy, and have a high need to feel appreciated. They like to be
the center of attention.
It’s this need to feel appreciated that must not be discounted.
Socializers love compliments and flattery (as long as you are not
blatantly insincere). Socializers feel most appreciated when they’re
talking and you are listening. And socializers talk. A lot.
The good news about socializers is they are easy. When you listen
to them, they’ll buy from you. In fact, they’ll pay you to listen to them
by giving you more and more business. Their insatiable need to feel
important often overrides objective, rational decision making.
The bad news is that the socializer’s need to dominate conversa­
tions can be a challenge for salespeople who, more often than not, share
this style trait. You’ll feel the disruptive desire to jump in and tell your
story, too, because you also want to be the center of attention.
Salespeople damage relationships with socializers when they com­
pete for space in the conversation. When working with a socializer, it’s
critical to keep your eye on the prize; focus on the outcome you want
rather than your need for attention.
Socializers are the opposite of analyzers. Where analyzers are linear
and methodical, the socializer is nonlinear, disorganized, and scattered.
The best way to describe the socializer is fire, ready, aim. They easily get
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off track and can burn a significant amount of time during a sales
meeting on nonrelated issues.
Socializers make great coaches because they enjoy connecting and
sharing information and may be leveraged to influence other stake­
holders to take your side.
When working with socializers, the key is controlling the conver­
sation with questions that keep them talking and that guide the
conversation without making them feel that you are cutting them
off. With socializers, to keep things on track, it is doubly important that
you lead off with an organized agenda and follow up with written
communication on agreed-to next steps.
Consensus Builder (DISC Equivalent: Steady)
Consensus builders value pleasing people, having ducks in a row, and
safety. They tend to be predictable, friendly, and make time to listen.
The consensus builder prefers routine and avoids risk and change.
They abhor conflict and tend to be passive-aggressive rather than direct
when they have an issue with other people. Should you offend a
consensus builder, they will rarely tell you and instead will hold a
grudge and become resentful. You’ll lose the deal and never know
why.
Consensus builders move at a steady and often slow pace. Because
they want to be sure everyone feels included in decisions, they take
great pains to involve and check with other people. They often ask to
see more—another demo, more data, additional case studies, another
presentation—earning them the nickname SeeMores.
Because consensus builders are risk averse and need all their ducks
in a row before taking action, they frustrate salespeople. Just when you
believe you are on the cusp of closing the sale, they ask for even more
time or to see more information. Impatient salespeople who push too
hard shut them down. Because consensus builders are conflict-averse,
once they shut down, it is very difficult to get them to reengage.
When dealing with consensus builders, you must be very careful to
slow down and earn their trust. Ask questions to understand their
sphere of influence and everyone and anyone they want to involve in
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the process. It will serve you well to meet these individuals and get
them aligned.
Take time up front to gain agreement with consensus builders
on exactly what they need to see, know, and feel to make a decision
in your favor. Agree on a time line and the steps you’ll need to take.
Despite any agreement you’ve made, your consensus builder may
still get cold feet when it is time to act. Sometimes gently reminding
them of their earlier agreement and demonstrating that you’ve
jumped through all of their hoops is enough to get them to
move forward.
Consensus builders are great listeners and masters at getting you to
talk. They’ll interrogate you with questions and allow you to pitch your
heart out. They make you feel important and appreciated.
You’ll walk out of meetings with consensus builders feeling
awesome because you spent so much time talking. But you’ll have
little else to show for the time investment and the consensus builder,
who encouraged you to talk, will feel resentful toward you for taking
up all the air in the room.
To avoid this trap, you must be acutely aware of your disruptive
emotional need to tell your story when the consensus builder asks you a
question. Learn to redirect questions with questions:
Consensus Builder:
Salesperson:
“Tell me how you do that.”
“Could you help me understand why this is
important to you?”
You’ll also need to be disciplined to give short answers to their
questions and follow your answers with an open-ended question that
encourages them to talk.
Style Personas Shift
Rarely do people approach the world and the environment around
them with a single dominant style. Instead, we are a composite of
multiple styles with a dominant style emerging in stressful or emotional
situations and when important decisions need to be made.
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Sales EQ
Each of these styles requires a different approach. But here is the
good news. Style doesn’t matter when your mouth is shut and your ears
are open.
Your mission is to reduce resistance by managing your own style.
Self-awareness of your interpersonal style is critical to becoming more
effective at building connections.
Most sales training programs teach you how to approach these
different styles, but few teach you how to interpret your own style. To
me, this is the real key. You must be aware of your own dominant style
if you have any hope of flexing that style to complement others’ styles.
This is where you need to start.
Style Tools
Flexing to and interacting with the four stakeholder personas is
complex, and to provide a complete guide of dos and don’ts is
beyond the scope of this book. We’ve compiled additional
training resources for flexing to different communication styles
along with a complete set of style assessments that will help you
gain a better understanding of who you are at https://www
.salesgravy.com/saleseq.
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Sales Call Agenda
Framework
The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.
—John C. Maxwell
Ultra-high performers (UHPs) are aware of the danger their disruptive
emotions pose to building emotional connections with stakeholders.
In front of stakeholders, it’s easy to:
■
■
■
Start pitching.
Become impatient, talk over them, and shut them down.
Inadvertently say things that trigger the stakeholder’s subconscious
negativity bias and confirm their conscious perception that sales­
people are manipulative, self-centered hustlers.
The Sales Call Agenda Framework reduces the chances of making
these mistakes, especially in the early stages of a relationship. It helps
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you gain control of the conversation, avoid pitching, and manage
disruptive emotions. There are four steps:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Greeting
Objective
Check
Frame the conversation
The Sales Call Agenda Framework, executed correctly, disarms the
stakeholder and lowers the initial emotional wall, because you appear to
be professional, prepared, and nonthreatening.
Greeting
Your greeting is about setting the right tone, demonstrating respect,
and ensuring that you and your stakeholder agree on the time available
for your meeting. Here is an example:
“Thank you for meeting with me. I know how valuable your time is
and appreciate the opportunity you’ve given me to learn more about
you. Just to confirm, I have us down for thirty minutes. Is that still
good for you?”
If you are meeting face-to-face, ask for permission to sit down and
before placing anything on the stakeholder’s desk. If you are on the
phone or a video call, ask permission to get started. When you are
sincerely polite and respectful, people tend to respond in kind and
you’ll get respect in return.
Sometimes your stakeholder will be in a hurry or may respond,
while looking at her watch, “I’m sorry, I only have five minutes for you
today. Quickly, tell me what you’ve got.”
When this happens, be careful! Disruptive emotions will derail the
conversation if you fail to gain control.
The moment stakeholders tell you that they only have a moment
and you need to hurry, your stress and anxiety levels spike. Your fight­
or-flight response kicks in and your head spins. Time was taken away
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from you, and you begin focusing on what you’ve lost. You may
become disappointed, desperate, or angry, especially when:
■
■
■
■
■
You carried high expectations into the meeting.
The prospect is a big opportunity with a potentially huge payoff.
It took a massive amount of persistence to get the meeting in the
first place.
The stakeholder has influence over the outcome of your deal and
you feel that they are blowing you off.
You are behind your number, pipeline is empty, and you really,
really, really need to make a sale.
In these circumstances your response may be rash. You may fight,
become angry, show emotional weakness, or push the stakeholder
away with desperate whining and begging. These behaviors make you
instantly unlikable.
What is far more likely, though, is an impatient jump right into
pitching.
At the very moment your fight-or-flight response kicks in, making
it hard for you to think, the stakeholder gives your insatiable need for
significance permission to take center stage.
“Tell me what you’ve got,” the stakeholder says.
“Whoooo-hoooo,” your brain, toasted on adrenaline, responds.
“I get to be on stage and feel important.” Without even thinking, your
mouth turns on and your neocortex turns off.
Pitching fast in a time crunch almost never ends well. Your pitch
flops because it is:
■
■
■
■
Generic and boring.
Not relevant to your stakeholder’s unique situation.
Fast, scattered, and hard to follow because you are not behaving
rationally.
Self-centered, egocentric, and arrogant.
Understand that the stakeholder’s conscious good intention to give
you five minutes was driven by a subconscious feeling of obligation. It
was they who agreed to the meeting and are now reneging on that
commitment. Now they owe you. They mean well.
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Still the moment you start pitching, the stakeholder’s subconscious
is being pounded.
■
■
■
■
You are boring.
They don’t feel important because you are talking.
Their negativity bias begins magnifying everything about you they
don’t like.
When you are talking fast, you sound manipulative,
untrustworthy, and threatening—triggering the stakeholder’s
fight-or-flight response.
All your stakeholder can think about is how quickly they can get
you out of their face or off the phone. Over the course of this
unintended, five-minute emotional collision you destroy the relation­
ship and almost never set the next step.
You are on an emotional high because you’ve been talking. You
feel important and your confirmation bias blinds you to the evidence
that your stakeholder is running fast in the other direction. The meeting
ends with a “call me maybe” promise, but it’s over. The stakeholder is
not going to respond to your just-checking-in calls and e-mails.
When you get pushed into a time box by a harried stakeholder,
respond with noncomplementary behavior. Take a breath, relax, and
pause. Calmly answer with a concerned tone of voice:
“Five minutes is not nearly enough time for me to learn about you
and your company. Pitching my product without understanding
your issues would be a disservice to you and waste your time.
You deserve better than that. Why don’t we reschedule for
Wednesday afternoon at 2 PM?” (Notice the assumptive ask—always
offer a time.)
The noncomplementary behavior and your willingness to walk
away will often flip the buyer script and pull the stakeholder toward
you because it disrupts their expectations. You’ll find that a large
percentage of stakeholders will shift their position at this point and
make the time for you.
If the stakeholder truly does not have time for you, the confident
and assumptive ask and the offer of a new time makes it easy for them to
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say yes and reschedule. The discipline to avoid getting drawn into a
pitch keeps you alive for another day.
Call Objective
Next you will define the call objective and prime your stakeholder for
taking the next step.
“What I’d like to accomplish today is to learn more about you and
your organization—in particular, how you currently manage com­
pliance reporting. While I don’t know whether it makes sense for our
companies to work together, I thought that might be the best place to
start. Then if we find common ground we can schedule a meeting
with your IT team to take a closer look at your current data
management system.”
The human mind abhors the unknown. Telling your stakeholder
what you want up front sets them at ease and continues to lower the
emotional wall. Additionally, you reduce the stakeholder’s cognitive
load by defining a tight scope for the meeting, which makes it easier for
them to focus and engage in the conversation.
While setting the call objective, you also want to deploy a subtle
take-away: “I don’t know whether it makes sense for our companies to work
together. . . .” This serves to pull the stakeholders attention toward you
and get them engaged in two important ways:
First, it disrupts their expectation. They expect that you are going
to pitch and sell to them, because that is what salespeople do. They are
not expecting a take-away—that you’ll say that it might not be a fit.
This immediately pulls them in.
By indicating that you are unattached to the outcome, that you are
willing to walk away if working together might not be a fit, you activate
a core human behavior in your stakeholder—wanting what they can’t
have. You are saying right up front that you are not going to chase
them, in a subtle, relaxed, and nuanced way.
Everyone wants to be pursued. It makes us feel good. You are
taking that away from your stakeholder, causing them to want it even
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more. At the subconscious level, this flips the script and they begin
trying to win you back.
Finally, giving the targeted next step up front prepares them for
change and primes them to say yes when asked for the next step at the
end of your call.
Priming is a powerful technique used to train a stakeholder’s
subconscious memory.1 Priming increases the probability that a
stakeholder will comply with a future request. There are multiple
ways to prime the human brain, ranging from repetition to images
and experiences. For example, were I to show you a picture of food
and then ask you to fill in the blank in SO__P, you’d most likely fill in
U for SOUP. I primed your answer by injecting an associated idea
into your memory.
Showing a subject the color or word red, for example, increases the
probability that they think of apple rather than banana when you ask
them to think of a fruit. Priming the association with red created an
artificial heuristic that made it easier for the brain to come up with apple.
When you give people a point of reference, they tend to think in that
direction.
In the case of our stakeholders, we prime their propensity to say yes
to a next step by injecting the idea of and expectation for a next step
into their memory early in the sales conversation.
Check Your Stakeholder’s Agenda
It is respectful and good manners to check your stakeholder’s agenda.
It makes them feel important and appreciated and creates a sense of
ownership. People are more invested when they feel included and that
their opinion matters.
“Before we get started, is there anything else you want to be sure we cover?”
Ninety percent of the time when you ask this question, stake­
holders will say, “I’m good.” They agree to go down the path toward
the next step that you have defined. Once they agree, they’ll tend to
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remain consistent with that agreement and move toward the next step
for which they were primed.
In rare circumstances, though, they’ll throw something on the
table. They may respond with a legitimate issue to add to the agenda.
They may throw out a red herring2 or direct challenge.
With their issue, challenge, or redirection on the table, the very
next move you make will determine whether you engage the stake­
holder and get a next step or lose control.
It is at this moment of truth that you must wrest control of your
disruptive emotions and patiently acknowledge the issue or concern, add
it to the agenda, and keep moving. You should not, however, address or
engage in a conversation about the issue or concern at that point.
Salespeople who succumb to their disruptive emotions, pounce on
whatever the stakeholder says and begin pitching, defending their
position, negotiating, or overcoming the concern as if it were an
objection to buying. In doing so they derail the conversation.
Average salesperson:
Stakeholder:
Average salesperson:
Stakeholder:
“Before we get started, is there anything else
you want to be sure we cover?”
“The last time we used your company we
had a terrible experience with your cus­
tomer service. If you can’t do a better job,
there is no way we can buy from you again!”
“I don’t know what went wrong last time,
but our customer satisfaction rating is 96
percent, the highest in our industry. This
is driven by our Five-Star customer service
process that guarantees your satisfaction.”
“Yeah, that’s the same thing your rep said last
time. But it was all a lie. Your drivers didn’t
show up on time. Your product quality was
shoddy. And when we called customer ser­
vice nobody ever got back to us. That’s why I
changed to your competitor. The only reason
I let you back in here is because you told me
you could beat their price.”
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Average salesperson:
Stakeholder:
Sales EQ
“All my customers are very happy with the
service we give them. I assure you that you
will be, too. Our product was just rated
highest quality in our industry, so your expe­
rience wasn’t indicative of other customers.”
“Look, I’m not going to sit here and argue
with you about the truth. Your product
quality was terrible and your service even
worse. Why don’t you just e-mail me your
prices, and if they are as low as you say
maybe we’ll keep talking.”
Meeting over. Win probability zero. You can’t argue stakeholders
into believing that they are wrong.
Psychological Reactance
People have a predictable tendency to rebel when they are told that
something is forbidden, a freedom is taken away, or that they are
wrong. This behavior, called psychological reactance,3 unleashes your
inner brat. When someone forbids you or tells you that you’re wrong,
your response is quick and emotional: “Oh yeah? I’ll show you!”
This is the reason you cannot argue other people into believing
they are wrong. No matter the logic of your argument, data, or
supporting facts, the other person will dig their heels in and rebel.
Psychological reactance can be leveraged with stakeholders by
helping them see that your competitor is “handcuffing them” or
“taking away their options.” Or you may be able to demonstrate
how a specific course of action could “restrict their options” or “take
away their peace of mind.”
Notice my use of words. Message matters. The more vivid a
picture4 you can paint for your stakeholders of a potential restriction or
loss of options, the greater the activation of their rebellion. Use stories
that illustrate the consequences of the restriction, especially stories of
other customers who have “broken out of these handcuffs” and
“regained their freedom and options.”
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What you must not ignore, though, is how the wrong words can
turn a stakeholder against you. This can be a problem for salespeople
who bring sales engineers and subject matter experts to sales calls and
demos. These individuals tend to use words like must and need to. They
use black-and-white language and warnings, rather than giving
impartial and objective information, and allowing stakeholders to
come to their own conclusions.5
People do not like to be told what they can’t do. When your words
come off as controlling or dogmatic, it can trigger reactance, pushing
your stakeholder away from you.
Take time before meetings and in pre-call planning to coach and
prepare your team and yourself to avoid words and phrases that may
trigger reactance. Anticipate and role-play how to answer difficult
questions without putting the stakeholder in a corner. Avoid saying
“no” and instead allude to choices and options with phrases like “the
choice is up to you,” or “we can explore options.”
Gain Control
I can’t begin to tell you how many salespeople I’ve watched jump right
into a price negotiation in the agenda stage of the sales call just because
the person on the other side of the table said: “The one thing that I need
you to understand is we’re going to need your very best prices.” It’s
always a train wreck.
Ultra-high performers absorb whatever their buyer or stakeholder
says. If it is a legitimate question, they write it down and add it to the
agenda. “That’s a great question, and I’ll make sure to answer it during
our conversation.”
UHPs are patient. They know that what seem like early objections
usually go away and never come back once their prospect starts talking
and a connection is made. UHPs recognize that these early challenges
and objections are just part of the buyer script and are often mecha­
nisms stakeholders use to protect themselves from what they perceive
to be manipulative salespeople.
When ultra-high performers get a direct challenge from a prospect
that revs up the old fight-or-flight response, they are disciplined to
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manage their emotions and response. Because stakeholders respond in
kind, instead of becoming defensive, argumentative, or angry, UHPs
leverage noncomplementary behavior to flip the script. They respond
in a relaxed, calm tone, acknowledge the issue, and take control of the
conversation.
UHP:
Stakeholder:
UHP:
Stakeholder:
UHP:
“Before we get started, is there anything else you want
to be sure we cover?”
“The last time we used your company we had a
terrible experience with your customer service. If you
can’t do a better job, there is no way we can buy from
you again!”
“Gosh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I tell you what. If it’s
okay with you, why don’t we start off with a few
questions that will allow me to learn more about you
and your unique demands and requirements? Then I
can show you some of the many positive changes
we’ve made since the last time we worked together.
From there we can decide if it makes sense for both of
us to move to the next step.”
“Okay.”
“I’m curious—I read that you guys picked up a huge
new contract with McKenzie. How is that impacting
the rest of the business?”
My rule of thumb with an early objection is to ignore it and not
talk about it again unless my stakeholder brings it back up. Average
salespeople collect these ghost objections like coins and in moments of
insecurity remind stakeholders of objections that had already been
forgotten.
Frame the Conversation
As you move into the sales conversation, the temptation to pitch is
strong and, even though stakeholders are repelled by sales pitches, they
will allow you—and sometimes encourage you (“Tell me what you’ve
got”)—to unload your entire inventory of features and benefits.
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By framing the conversation structure, you send a direct signal to
your emotional brain to shut up, and position your rational brain
(neocortex) to take control of your disruptive desire to talk.
Framing the conversation is simple and sounds like this:
“If it’s okay with you, why don’t we start off with a few questions
that will help me learn more about you and your unique situation?
Then we can talk a little bit about our service. From there we can
decide together if it makes sense to move to the next step.”
The rubber meets the road at this frame. It is a critical inflection
point. Managed well, you will gain control of the call, get the stake­
holder talking, and move to the next step. Handled poorly, you’ll start
pitching and your call and relationship will go nowhere. The Sales
Conversation Framework has three steps:
1. Stakeholder talks. The more your stakeholders talk about
themselves, the more emotionally connected they feel to you,
opening the door for you to gather the information you need
to qualify win probability and build the case for moving to the
next step.
2. You bridge. After listening to and learning the stakeholder’s
unique situation, problems, pain, needs, or opportunities, you’ll
have your opportunity to talk. However, rather than a generic
pitch, you should shape your story so that it bridges or connects the
dots between the stakeholder’s unique situation and your product
or service—just enough to build credibility and make the case for
moving to the next step.
3. Ask for the next step. Confidently asking for the next step
(micro-commitment) is part of the natural flow of the conversa­
tion. “Based on everything we’ve discussed today, my recommendation is
we meet with your IT team to do a demo of our new dashboard.” Your
prospect is already primed to take that next step, so the probability
that you get a yes is high.
None of this will happen, though, if you lead off with a pitch. As
soon as you start talking, you lose them.
The key to getting the stakeholder talking is opening the conver­
sation with a broad, open-ended question that is easy for them to
answer and that they’ll enjoy answering. In doing so you slowly break
down emotional barriers and build a connection. It’s here that you
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begin the process of triggering the stakeholder’s self-disclosure loop
(we’ll discuss this in more detail in the next chapter).
When you use this framework or a similar set of words in each sales
meeting, you train your rational brain to turn your mouth off. Practiced
enough, it will become an ingrained habit.
Emotional Contagion: People Respond in Kind
One of the truths about human behavior is that people tend to respond
in kind. “People are extremely good at picking up on other people’s
emotions—both negative and positive—without consciously trying,”
writes Shirley Wang in her article “Contagious Behavior.”6
Dr. Elaine Hatfield discovered that emotional contagion, a sub­
conscious response to the emotions of other people, makes it very easy
to both feel what another person is feeling and transfer emotions to
stakeholders.7
Emotional contagion is primarily an automatic subconscious
response that causes humans to mirror or mimic the behaviors and
emotions of those around them. Knowing how to leverage emotional
contagion is a powerful meta-skill for influencing human behavior.
Let’s begin with empathy. One of the surprising findings from
Hatfield’s work is our innate ability to feel what other people are
feeling, and shift our behaviors to align with those new feelings. When
you are relaxed and confident, for instance, you transfer that emotion to
your stakeholders. Should you want stakeholders to be enthusiastic
about meeting you, be enthusiastic about meeting them.
A relaxed, confident, positive demeanor sets the right tone for
meetings. Because people respond in kind, it helps you gain control of
the conversation. It’s important to note, however, that emotional
contagion (responding in kind) goes both ways.
I’ve spent most of my life around horses. Horses have an innate
ability to sense fear. They test new riders and take advantage of those
riders the moment they sense that the person is afraid or lacks confi­
dence. Horses have a 10-to-1 weight and size advantage over the
average person. If the horse doesn’t believe that you are in charge, it can
and will dump you.
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Stakeholders are no different. If they sense fear, weakness,
defensiveness, or lack of confidence, they will shut you down or
bulldoze right over you. For this reason, when horses or people
challenge you, no matter the emotions you are feeling, you must
respond with a noncomplementary behavior—a behavior that
counters and disrupts their aggression. This requires relaxed
confidence.
Confidence and Enthusiasm
Confidence and enthusiasm (passion) are the two most persuasive
nonverbal messages. Disruptive emotions kill confidence and enthu­
siasm. When likability is on the line, a failure to regulate disruptive
emotions can cause you to transfer negative emotions to your stake­
holders. When you lack confidence in yourself, they’ll tend to lack
confidence and thus trust in you. Perhaps you:
■
■
■
■
Are new and feel insecure about your product or industry
knowledge.
Have a depleted pipeline, are under the gun to close something,
and feel desperate.
Are meeting with a C-level executive and feel intimidated.
Had a sales meeting turn into a train wreck and fear this will
happen again.
For this reason, you must develop and practice techniques for
building and demonstrating relaxed confidence and purposeful enthu­
siasm even when you feel the opposite. This begins with managing
your nonverbal communication to control what the stakeholder sees or
hears when dealing with you, including:
■
■
■
■
Voice tone, inflection, pitch, and speed.
Body language and facial expressions.
Sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and the words used in
written communication—e-mail, text messaging, and social
messaging.
The way you dress and your outward appearance.
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Getting past the emotions that disrupt confidence and enthusiasm
is among the most formidable challenges for sales professionals. I’ve
been selling my entire life and have been incredibly successful at it,
yet today I still catch myself feeling intimidated when meeting with top
executives, lacking confidence after experiencing a loss or failure, or
coming up short on enthusiasm when I’m worn out and not feeling
my best.
I must remind myself that my emotions influence my stakeholder’s
emotions. I often repeat Eleanor Roosevelt’s admonition: “No one can
make you feel inferior without your consent.” Then take intentional
steps to ensure that outwardly, even if I must fake it, I appear relaxed,
poised, confident, and enthusiastic.
This brings us back to the emotional intelligence trait of selfawareness. Even in emotionally draining situations, you must maintain
the discipline to be aware of your emotions and how those emotions
may be affecting other people.
As we learned earlier, self-awareness and self-control are like
muscles. The more you exercise them, the stronger they get.
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Do You Listen
to Me?
As soon as you start pitching your ears turn off and so does your buyer.
—Jeb Blount
Think about a time when you were trying to explain something to
another person. Recall the moment, right in the middle of your story,
that the other person held up a hand and said, “Stop! Could you just get
to the point?” Consider how that made you feel—hurt, unappreciated,
angry, enraged? Left with the feeling that the other person did not
understand you?
How about the time you were trying to have a conversation with
friends or family members and they kept looking down at their phones
at incoming text messages or social media alerts. Remember how it
made you want to rip the phones from their hands and smash them on
the floor!
Have you ever been excited to tell your significant other about
your day? You talked, but the person wasn’t paying attention because
197
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he or she was watching TV, playing a video game, or typing away on a
computer laptop?
“You’re not even listening to me!” you complained in disgust. “I
don’t know why I even bother!” As your significant other replied with
a “Huh?” while barely averting attention from the screen, did you feel
more emotionally connected or in love with him or her in that
moment?
You know the truth and so do I. When people don’t listen to you,
it makes you feel small, unappreciated, and unimportant. It damages
emotional connections. Failure to listen is a direct route to a destroyed
relationship.
Why People Don’t Listen
Nothing builds emotional connections faster and more permanently
than listening. You know this because every book on sales, in one form
or another, admonishes that listening is the key to real success. You
know this because a listening module is contained in every sales
training.
You know this because you are human. You know this because
people are not listening to you, and it hurts.
If there is any good news, it’s that you are not alone. It turns out
that feeling this way is the human condition. It seems nobody is
listening to anybody. Everyone is frustrated. We all want to be heard.
We all scream out, “Will somebody just listen to me?!”
The number-one complaint stakeholders have about sellers is that
sellers don’t listen. And the stakeholders are right. Salespeople don’t
listen. It’s epidemic.
Despite all that we have been taught and all that we know, listening
is still the weakest link in human interaction. The reason we don’t listen
is listening requires empathy, cognitive focus, and effort to manage our
self-centered, disruptive emotions. It’s a challenge to:
■
■
■
Tune out the distracting noise from the world around you.
Be patient and wait for your turn to talk.
Avoid looking down at your phone screen.
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■
■
■
199
Turn off your thoughts and pay attention to another person.
Remain interested when you find the other person boring.
Bite your tongue when you feel the urge to interrupt so you can
tell your story or prove how much you know.
The fact is, you spend 95 percent of your time thinking and talking
about yourself—including your product or service. The other 5 percent
of your time you’re dealing with things, including mouthy stake­
holders, who are keeping you from thinking about you.
Whether due to boredom or to the inability to remove distractions,
it’s just so much easier to turn your attention to your own selfish needs
and wants.
Telling your story makes you feel important. Listening to another
person’s story does not. The disruptive emotional need for significance
is the primary reason why salespeople talk and do not listen.
Four Principles of Effective Sales Conversations
Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote that “good communication is as
stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.” Great sales
conversations should be engaging, thought provoking, and memorable.
There are four principles to effective and engaging sales conversa­
tions. This four-part framework allows you to control the conversation
and move toward your outcome, while building deeper emotional
connections with stakeholders.
1.
2.
3.
4.
People respond in kind.
People communicate in stories.
Questions control the conversation flow.
Listening builds deep emotional connections.
People Respond in Kind
Look around you. Do you notice how few people are smiling? Now try
this experiment. When they look up at you, smile at them. I’ve found
that, nine times out of 10, they’ll smile right back. For a moment you
have an instant connection.
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As you’ve learned, when you are relaxed, confident, and patient,
you’ll transfer those emotions to your stakeholders, they’ll respond in
kind, and you’ll gain control of the conversation.
People Communicate in Stories
In conversations, people don’t spit out bullet-pointed facts. Instead,
they use stories. You tell stories, I tell stories, and your stakeholders
tell stories. It’s human. It’s how we communicate. We tell stories
to be understood. We want to be understood. We crave to be
understood. And, when we are onstage telling our story, we feel
important.
When you listen attentively, you encourage stakeholders to
expand on and tell more stories. The clues that lead to their real
problems and emotions are buried inside these stories.
But consider your emotional state when another person is telling
you their story. Your mind drifts. You feel the urge to jump in and add
your two cents. You don’t feel important.
Stakeholders communicate in stories to be understood, but the
truth is that you prefer that they communicate in bullet points. You
want to speed them up and get them to the point, so you can get back to
telling your own story.
Resist this disruptive emotion. The stakeholder wants to talk,
sometimes at you. Don’t get in the way. Inside the stakeholder’s story is
the information you need to build the case for how you, and only you,
can solve their unique problem.
Questions Control the Conversation Flow
Most salespeople believe that to be in control of a conversation they
must be doing all the talking. I assure you it is the other way around. It is
the person asking the questions who has control.
When you are asking questions, you control the shape of the
conversation and move it in any direction you please. This helps you
keep the conversation on track and focused on your call objective,
while making your stakeholder feel listened to and important.
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201
Remember this: stakeholders communicate in stories, but they
don’t care which story they are telling as long as they’re getting to tell
their story.
Listening Builds Deep Emotional Connections
The more you listen, the more connected your stakeholder feels to you.
As this connection deepens, their trust in you grows and emotional
walls crumble. As the walls come down, you’ll get far below the surface
and gain access to your stakeholder’s real problems.
It is here that ultra-high performers (UHPs) derive their competi­
tive edge and begin to build a wide separation from the pack. Stake­
holders never complain about salespeople who listen.
The Fine Art of Listening
The discipline to control your disruptive emotions and listen requires
you to have faith that when you are listening you are in control and by
listening you connect and win others over. The secret to influence is
not what you say; it’s what you hear.
There is absolutely nothing more important in the sales process
than listening. Nothing! Listening is the key to connecting, making
stakeholders feel important, discovery, bridging, getting to next steps,
and closing. Ultra-high performance depends on it, and most sales­
people suck at it.
You’ve developed the habit of being self-absorbed over the course
of a lifetime, and it is the hardest habit you will ever break. To turn
everything in your head off, become genuinely interested in another
person, give them your undivided attention, and hear them—learning
to really listen—requires a fundamental mind-set shift.
Begin with empathy. Consider how you feel when people are
not listening to you, and remember that pain. Step into your stake­
holders’ shoes and consider how they feel when you dominate the
conversation or demonstrate through your actions that you’re not
listening.
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Focus on what you really want. A closed deal, higher income,
respect, deeper relationships, high performance, deeper information, a
next step, an advocate or coach, a friend—focus on and leverage what
you really want as motivation to regulate your disruptive emotions of
boredom, attention control, and the need for significance. Believe and
have faith that when you listen you build stronger emotional connec­
tions that lead to the outcomes you seek.
Practice attention control. Focusing completely on the person
in front of you and being genuinely interested is an intentional
behavior. Make a deliberate choice to remove all other distractions,
including your own self-centered thoughts and impulse to interrupt,
and give the stakeholder your complete attention.
Be intentional. Before each meeting, prepare yourself mentally to
listen. During the meeting, tell yourself to shut up and listen—make it a
conscious, intentional choice. Be aware of your urge to blurt out your
idea when you feel the impulse to make a point, and stop yourself. After
each conversation, evaluate how well you paid attention, acknowledge
your shortcomings, and adjust.
Active Listening
Active listening is essentially a set of behaviors that provide tangible
proof that you are listening. These behaviors include eye contact,
acknowledging with verbal feedback and body language, summarizing
and restating what you have heard, and utilizing pauses and silence
before speaking.
Active listening rewards your stakeholder for talking and keeps
them talking. This is important because the more they talk, the more
they’ll reveal about their situation.
Summarizing, restating, and asking relevant follow-up questions
that build on the conversation validate that you are paying attention.
Nodding your head, smiling in approval, and leaning forward when
you find something they say particularly interesting demonstrate that
you are engaged. Supporting phrases like “Yes, I see,” “That makes
sense,” and “That’s exciting” encourage them to open up and reveal
more.
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One sure way to kill a conversation is to blurt out your next
question or statement or, worse, talk over a stakeholder before they
have finished speaking. It becomes transparent that you are not listening
with the intent to understand, but rather to formulate the next thing
you plan to say.
When you feel that the other person has finished speaking, pause
and count to three. This affords you time to fully digest what you have
heard, before responding. More important, it leaves room for others to
finish speaking and prevents you from cutting them off if they have not.
You’ll often find that this moment of silence triggers stakeholders to
reveal important information they were holding back.
Active listening requires that you be present in the conversation.
Turn the sound off on devices so that beeps, dings, and buzzes don’t
cause you to look away.
The moment you make the mistake of looking away, not only will
you lose concentration, but you’ll also offend the other person. This is
especially acute on video calls because the stakeholder has no insight
into your surrounding environment and will usually assume the
worst—that you are not interested in them.
When meeting face-to-face, maintain eye contact. When on the
phone, keep your eyes off papers and screens so as to avoid the burning
desire to multitask. Controlling your eyes keeps you there physically,
even when you are on the phone. As go your eyes, so goes your attention.
Listen Deeply
People communicate with far more than words. To truly hear another
person, you must listen with all your senses—eyes, ears, and intuition.
Opening your senses to become aware of the entire message affords you
the opportunity to analyze the emotional nuances of the conversation.
As you listen, observe your stakeholder’s body language and facial
expression. You don’t need to be an expert in body language to see
obvious clues. You only need to be observant and tune in to the
emotional nuances.
Pay attention to the tone, timbre, and pace of the stakeholder’s
voice. Focus on the meaning behind the words they are using. Be alert
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for emotional cues, verbal and nonverbal. Since people tend to
communicate in stories, listen deeply to pick up unsaid feelings and
emotions.
When the stakeholder expresses emotion through facial expres­
sions, body language, tone, or words, you gain insight into what is
important to them. As you perceive emotional importance, ask follow-up
questions to test your hunch, like “That sounds pretty important. How
are you dealing with it?”
This opens the door for relevant follow-up questions that encour­
age your stakeholder to expound on the issues that are most important
to them—a key to triggering the self-disclosure loop and getting below
their emotional surface.
Activating the Self-Disclosure Loop
Harvard researchers Jason Mitchell and Diana Tamir discovered that
humans get a neurochemical buzz from self-disclosure.1
In this fascinating study, published in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences,2 subjects were given the opportunity to talk or brag
about themselves while their brain activity was being observed on highpowered 3-D magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.
As the subjects began talking about themselves, even about
mundane information, the area of the brain associated with pleasurable
feeling and reward like good food, sex, and cocaine became activated.
Each time the subject would self-disclose, this area of the brain would
light up like a Christmas tree.
The subjects were getting a shot of dopamine (brain crack) for
revealing something about themselves. And thus a loop was formed.
Each reveal of personal information, each brag, each opinion was
rewarded with another shot of dopamine, thus perpetuating more selfdisclosure. This is how conversations can quickly escalate from small
talk to too much information (TMI).
You’ve witnessed this dopamine triggered self-disclosure loop at
parties or family reunions or even when talking to a stranger at a bar.
The other person tells you a little bit about themselves and you listen.
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Then they tell a little bit more and a little bit more, until suddenly they
cross into the TMI zone and you’re left wondering why in the world
they told you something so personal or revealing.
To them, the self-reveal felt great. Even though they knew, at the
conscious level, that they should not say the things they told you, they
couldn’t help it. It was the brain crack talking.
For sales professionals, understanding and leveraging this reward
loop can prove a boon for discovery. Staying out of the way and
allowing your stakeholders to talk triggers self-disclosure, flips the buyer
script, and causes them to spill the beans.
Chris Keiley recently closed a big deal after a stakeholder hit him
with a hard objection about his high prices.
“I gave no reaction to her pushback and instead asked her about her
current vendor. She went on for a half hour about the problems she was
having with them and their poor service. In the past, I would have tried to
interject or overcome the objection, but after learning about brain crack,
I just let her talk. When she finished revealing every reason why she
should be doing business with me, she asked why she should pay more
with my company. I simply responded that we don’t treat our customers
that way. She signed the contract without any more argument.”
This simple neurochemical reward system allows you to leave
linear interrogative questioning behind. Instead of dozens of questions,
you ask just a few questions and still get a huge amount of information.
Kurt Long, CEO of FairWarning, says his goal is to “see how much
information I can extract with the fewest questions.”
To activate the self-disclosure loop:
1. Begin with an easy opening question that your stakeholder will
enjoy answering.
2. Reward the stakeholder for talking through active listening and
sincere interest.
3. Avoid interrupting, rushing, or talking over the stakeholder.
4. Pause three to five seconds before speaking. Allow the stakeholder
to fill in the silence. (If you start talking you’ll break the loop.)
5. Once the loop is running and the stakeholder begins to selfdisclose, center your follow-up questions on those self-disclosures
(deep listening), and you’ll gain complete control of the
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conversation, move past the buyer script, and uncover the stake­
holder’s real pain, needs, issues, and problems.
Activating the self-disclosure loop relies on the dual process
discovery methodology (we’ll discuss this in the next chapter). Your
questions must be in the moment, conversational, relevant, built upon
the conversation, and centered on emotion.
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Sales Is a Language
of Questions
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of
knowledge.
—Daniel J. Boorstin
Dead on arrival. I’d driven four hours for the sales meeting and been
shut down in the first 15 minutes. “We’re happy with the vendor we’re
working with now, but if you want to sharpen your pencil and give us
your best prices, we’ll take that into consideration.” Chuck, the
decision maker, put a quick end to our conversation.
It was a huge account—so big that signing it would punch my
ticket to the annual President’s Club trip to Maui. In my territory, you
got only two or three shots a year at deals this big because there just
weren’t that many of them. That’s why every one of my competitors
was courting Chuck’s deal, too.
207
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The biggest obstacle to closing this deal, though, was not the
circling sharks; it was the incumbent vendor, a local company that had
been serving the account for more than 20 years. There was no way
they were letting anyone steal this highly profitable diamond from
them, and thus far they had been successful at fending off competitors
and getting a renewal at each contract period.
In my industry, customers signed exclusive contracts, typically for
five years. Losing a deal meant being locked out for years at a time. This
meant that I had one shot at the deal; there would be no second chance.
The clock was ticking.
Chuck was the Vice President of HR at a massive bakery nestled in
the foothills of the Appalachians in western North Carolina. Although
he was required to put his people in uniforms for health and safety
reasons, to him uniforms were little more than a commodity, on the
level of mundane supplies like toilet paper.
He was well versed in how rental uniform contracts worked and
had his buyer script down. He quickly gave me all the facts.
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This is how many people we have in uniform.
Here are our garment specs by department.
This is what we purchase directly.
This is what we rent.
Here are the numbers on mats and towels.
We’re not having any issues; our current vendor does a good job
and is responsive to our needs.
Looking forward to seeing your proposal. I’m happy to consider it.
Make sure you give us your best prices.
Discovery over. DOA. Four-hour drive home to lick my wounds.
Win probability = zero.
I thanked him for the information and his time and promised to
“put something together.” Then I used a tactic that had worked in
other situations like this.
I said, “Chuck, you know I’ve always wanted to see how a bakery
works. Since I drove four hours to get here, I’m wondering—would
you be willing to take me on a tour?”
There was no hesitation. He said, “Sure, come on.”
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The Tour
As soon as we walked out of his office, Chuck’s entire demeanor
changed—an emotional shift that often occurs when the barrier of the
desk and the power center of the office are removed and you begin
walking side by side with a stakeholder.
At the subconscious level your stakeholder’s brain moves you from
adversary (caution) to student (safe). At the same time, stakeholders
begin to feel emotionally significant because they have the opportunity
to tell their story, brag, and show off—triggering the self-disclosure
loop.
Sitting across the desk from a prospect is one-dimensional, whereas
walking through a facility is three-dimensional. You see things, intuit
things, and discuss things that you’d never experience in an across-the­
desk conversation. This tactic is unavailable to inside sales reps, but for
field sales professionals, a facility tour, when it makes sense, is a
powerful tool for building emotional connections and complete
360-degree discovery.
Chuck started our tour on the loading dock. He showed me how
the freshly baked bread was loaded onto the trucks, expressing pride in
their new “green” fleet. Then we walked to the other side of the dock
to where the raw ingredients were unloaded. He explained that the
plant never shut down and they received thousands of pounds of flour
around the clock.
From there we moved to the mixing floor where the dough was
made. I learned about yeast and how bread rises. We then moved on
to the ovens and watched as the bread cooled and went on conveyor
belts to the packaging room. The packaging machines were my
favorite part of the tour—the people who invent those things are
geniuses.
Finally, we walked into the quality control room. There the bread
was inspected by a group of serious-looking men and women who
eyeballed every loaf before the bread passed through a strange-looking
arch on the way to shipping.
“Chuck, what’s that for?” I pointed at the arch and the strip of red
lights embedded in it.
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“That’s the metal detector.” Chuck’s voice took on a somber tone.
“Every loaf passes through a metal detector. You can imagine how bad
it would be for us if someone purchased our bread at their local grocery
store, made a sandwich, and then broke a tooth on a piece of metal that
had inadvertently fallen into the dough. The store would get sued, we’d
get sued, and the PR would be very bad for business.”
I nodded gravely. “That would be bad.”
With the tour over, we headed back toward Chuck’s office. On
our way, I asked if we could go back over to the mixing room because
there was one more thing I wanted to see. Chuck said, “Sure,” and we
walked over.
Earlier he’d introduced me to Betty, a lady who had worked at the
bakery for 40 years. When we arrived back at the mixing room, I
caught her attention. “Hey, Betty, got a minute?” Betty smiled and
walked over to Chuck and me.
“Betty, I know this is a weird question, but I’m just curious. What
kind of buttons are those on your shirt?”
Betty looked down at her shirt and thought about it for a moment.
Then she looked back up and said, “Well, if I’m not mistaken, those are
plastic buttons.”
I didn’t say anything, giving Betty’s answer time to sink in. Finally,
I saw it register on Chuck’s face. Plastic buttons don’t get caught by metal
detectors.
Metal detectors are required by the U.S. Department of Agricul­
ture (USDA) to be in food service plants.1 Along with metal detectors
are regulations that require garments worn in food service plants to have
metal snaps rather than plastic buttons, hidden under a closed placket
just for an extra measure of safety.
The people in Chuck’s plant were wearing the wrong uniforms,
and this was putting him and his company at risk. His current
vendor—the one he thought was doing a good job—had failed
him. But because I asked the right question, I didn’t have to say
it. He became aware of this on his own terms, which is a far more
effective means of challenging status quo than an attempt to argue
him into believing he is wrong.
In sales, a question you ask is far more powerful than anything
you’ll ever say.
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Alpha and Omega
Multiple-choice test. If I were to write and publish an article, which
article do you predict would get the most views—a or b?
a. Discovery and asking questions
b. Closing and overcoming objections
If you chose the article on closing and objections you’d be correct.
We’ve run the experiment enough times to gauge what the sales
audience likes to read. Closing and dealing with objections is sexy.
Salespeople yawn at articles about questioning.
But the sales audience is dead wrong. The magic in sales does not
happen at the close. It happens in discovery.
It’s time for a mind-set shift. Discovery is the heart and soul of
sales. The reason so many salespeople struggle with closing and
objections is they skip or take short-cuts with discovery.
Ultra-high performers (UHPs) close many deals during discovery.
Not because there is a conscious decision to buy in that moment.
Rather, a well-placed question creates doubt about a current vendor,
process, or belief, or, provokes a stakeholder to consider the risk of
failing to act.
Average salespeople tend to believe that challenging the
status quo is about telling stakeholders that they are doing things
wrong, teaching them about what they should be doing, or pushing
insight down their throats. It mostly comes off as arrogant
pontificating.
Ultra-high performers leverage a language of questions to uncover
needs, problems, pain, and opportunities; to provoke self-awareness;
and to challenge the status quo. Because stakeholders act for their
reasons, not yours, anything you might tell them about their business or
problems is 10 times more powerful when delivered in the form of a
question.
In sales, questions are the beginning and the end. Alpha and
omega. If sales were a language, it would be a language of questions—
strategic, artful, and fluid questions asked in the context of a
conversation.
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Joe the Interrogator
If you’ve ever had a chance to see an iceberg up close, you know they
are huge. What is hard to fathom, though, is that what you see of
the iceberg is only a small portion of the total mass, most of which is
hidden below the water’s surface.
It is this hidden mass that poses the greatest danger. On ships that
sail in seas where icebergs float, failure to heed the danger posed by the
hidden mass of icebergs leads to disastrous and fatal consequences.
Stakeholders are much like icebergs, revealing only surface infor­
mation while keeping their real problems and emotions hidden from
view. Until you get beneath the surface, you have no way of knowing if
you are addressing their most important and emotional issues.
Consider Joe, an account executive, who walks into the office of a
new prospect, introduces himself, and begins pitching his company and
products. After his initial pitch (as taught in his company’s sales train­
ing), he transitions into interrogating Linda, the buyer:
Are you happy with your current supplier?
What product specs do you need?
Are you having issues with delivery?
What do you do when a shipment is poor quality?
How often do you order?
How much do you order?
How much are you paying per unit?
Are you the decision maker on this product?
Faced with Joe’s questioning onslaught, Linda raises her emotional
wall and sticks to her buyer script, responding with just the facts.
Yes, they do a good job, but we are always open to other quotes.
Here is a spec sheet of what we are using now.
Not really; like I said, they do a good job.
We don’t have issues, but if we did we would ask them to replace the defective
units.
Monthly.
From 20,000 to 75,000 units, depending on demand.
We don’t share that information. But I’m happy to look at a competitive quote.
Yes. I make the final decision.
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As the conversation hits an awkward pause, Joe swings into a pitch
for his “higher-quality” product. Bored, Linda hurries him up. She
looks at her watch. “Joe, I’ve got another meeting to get to. Why don’t
you e-mail your prices and specs over to me and we’ll talk again in a
couple of weeks?”
Joe dashes back to his office and grabs his sales manager. “I’ve got a
great opportunity over at XTech Industries. I’m talking to the decision
maker and she’s super interested! But I need to get aggressive on our
pricing to get this one.”
Joe talks his sales manager into approving rock-bottom prices and
shoots his quote over to Linda that afternoon. He puts the deal into his
forecast.
Three days later, Joe, anticipating an easy close, calls Linda back.
He gets voice mail. Then he sends an e-mail. Days go by and then
weeks. He calls and calls but gets no response. He promises his anxious
sales manager that the deal will close soon, and the forecast will be okay.
Finally, he gets Linda on the phone. After a quick exchange of
pleasantries, Linda explains that she’s decided to go with one of Joe’s
competitors instead. Joe feels the blood drain from his head. Stunned
and lightheaded, he manages to stammer a weak “Why?”
Linda explains that the other vendor had a better solution to her
most pressing problem—a problem that Joe knew nothing about. Joe
stammers back, “You didn’t say anything about that issue. I wish I had
known. We have the best solution on the market for that problem. Will
you please reconsider? I can be back over there in an hour!”
But it is too late. The decision has been made. Why didn’t Joe
know about this problem?
Imagine the scene from a movie. The villain is strapped to a
chair in the middle of an empty room. A bright light is pointed into
his eyes while the interrogator peppers him with accusatory, leading,
closed-ended questions. The interrogator intends to make the villain
feel as uncomfortable as possible and push him off-balance, breaking
him down so that in a moment of weakness he reveals his deepest
secrets.
Many salespeople, like Joe, unknowingly put stakeholders in a
similar uncomfortable position. They unload an avalanche of closedended, and often leading, questions that may come off as imposing,
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self-serving, and manipulative. In response, stakeholders deflect, obfus­
cate, and erect emotional barriers.
The stakeholders who’ve endured these interrogations before are
prepared with pat answers and a rote buyer script. Held at bay, interro­
gators like Joe only scrape the surface, learning little about the stake­
holder’s real problems, and in the process, shatter emotional connections.
On the contrary, artfully structured, open-ended questions asked
in the context of a fluid conversation keep stakeholders engaged. Sales is
a conversation, not an interrogation. When you treat discovery as a
fluid conversation, you disarm your stakeholders, draw them in, and
lower the emotional wall.
This is where dual process combined with strategic and artful
questions is especially powerful. It is not in the nature of stakeholders to
allow sellers below the surface. You can’t force it. You’ve got to stand
in their shoes from a place of empathy, and build your questions
organically, in the moment, based on the flow of the conversation,
while remembering your call objective and targeted next step.
Ask Easy Questions First
Imagine you see a stranger from a distance walking in your direction, a
man you don’t know. He’s making a beeline right toward you. As he
comes to a halt in front of you, your guard is up. Then, without
hesitation, he begins peppering you with personal questions:
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Where do you live?
What’s your mom’s name?
How many kids do you have?
What are their names?
Where do they go to school?
What color car do you drive?
Where is it parked?
How does this line of questioning feel? What will you say? Will
you give him the answers he’s looking for? Will you lie? How long
would you stand there before screaming at him to get away from you or
before running away?
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This is how a stakeholder feels the first time she meets an interrogator
who begins blasting her with difficult questions. She knows that the
salesperson’s motivation is, first and foremost, to sell her something. She
believes the salesperson is only asking questions to uncover a weakness
that will be exploited. She does not want to be or feel manipulated.
It is human nature to put up an emotional wall when strangers start
asking difficult, intrusive questions. In your role as a salesperson you are
the stranger. When you ask questions that make your stakeholders
uncomfortable, before you have established an emotional connection
and trust, their emotional wall goes up, and they shut down.
The key to breaking through the stakeholder’s emotional wall and
activating the self-disclosure loop is beginning the sales conversation
with questions that are easy for them to answer and that they will enjoy
answering.
Difficult questions require complex answers or cause stakeholders
to feel uncomfortable or vulnerable to manipulation. Easy questions
are not too personal or probing and make it comfortable for stake­
holders to begin telling their story.
Avoid wasting the stakeholder’s time with cheesy questions about
some random object on their desk, or the weather, or other nonsense.
This just makes you look and sound like every other average sales­
person. In this pattern, you trigger the reflexive buyer script, and your
conversation remains on the surface and will stall—especially if you’re
dealing with directors and analyzers.
When I’m meeting with a potential client for the first time, I often
ask, “How long have you been working here?” If they say 20 years, it
gives me the opportunity to compliment the accomplishment (which
makes the person feel important). Then I follow up with “I bet you’ve
seen a lot of changes around here!” and with that the floodgates usually
open.
On the other hand, if they say six months, I ask, “What made you
decide to work here?” In this case I learn about their motivations, career
aspirations, and background. This opens the opportunity for a wide
array of follow-up questions, which again, makes my stakeholder feel
important, keeps them talking, and pulls their emotional wall down.
Common ground is another source of easy questions. If you both
have something in common—you went to the same school, live in the
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same neighborhood, know the same people, have the same hobby, love
the same sports team, and so forth—you’ll have a natural jumping-off
point for easy questions. You’ll also trigger their similarity bias and
move into their in-group.
The pitfall with common ground is when, instead of allowing your
stakeholder to talk, you take over the conversation. You begin
pontificating on the subject with the illusion that your stakeholder
will perceive you as knowledgeable.
When discussing a subject that you have in common with a
stakeholder, ask intelligent questions related to the subject so the other
person does the talking. Trust me on this: people don’t want to listen to
you talk; they want to listen to themselves talk.
The more you become genuinely interested in what your stake­
holders are saying, the more valuable and important they feel. The
better they feel, the more they will want to talk. The more they talk,
the more connected they will feel to you. As you connect, you gain the
right to ask the deeper, more strategic questions that get below the
surface and challenge the status quo.
The Power of Open-Ended Questions
Here is a fact: the more questions you ask, the more sales you will make.
Of course, as we learned from Joe the interrogator, discovery is more
than just asking questions. It’s about asking the right questions and the
right questions are open-ended questions.
Open-ended questions like “How is that impacting you?” or
“What happens when your workers’ compensation costs increase?”
encourage stakeholders to talk and elaborate—to tell stories.
Conversely, closed-ended questions like “How many of those do
you use?” or “Are you happy with that?” elicit short, limited responses.
Closed-ended questions are self-serving and interrogative because they
are focused primarily on you getting only the information you need to
rev up your pitch.
Most salespeople have at least a rudimentary understanding of
open- and closed-ended question types. If you were to interview 100
sales professionals, 99 of them would tell you that open-ended
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questions are most effective in sales conversations. Yet, if you were to
observe these same salespeople interacting with stakeholders, you’d
mostly hear interrogating, closed-ended questions.
Closed-ended questions become habitual because they’re easy,
give you the illusion of control, require little intellectual effort and even
less emotional investment. Salespeople who find it hard to ask openended questions:
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Are unable to manage their disruptive emotional attachment to
always being in control.
Are unwilling to let go and just allow the conversation to happen
with the faith that their stakeholder will reveal key information
inside the context of the story.
Lack the discipline to focus their attention on the other person.
Find it easier to ask closed-ended questions that elicit bullet points
rather than listen to stakeholder stories.
In sales, 99 percent of your questions (and questioning statements
like “Tell me more” or “Walk me through that process”) should be
open-ended. I’m especially fond of the statement and pause approach for
getting prospects to talk. I’ll say something like “Wow, it sounds like
that’s been really challenging.” Then I pause and allow silence to do the
rest of the work.
This technique serves me in two ways. First, it demonstrates that I
am listening (active listening), and second (and most important), the
other person almost always fills in the silence with a story.
The objective of the open-ended question is to elicit stories.
Within these stories you gain access to the information you need to
build your case, and insight into what is most important to your
stakeholder. It is through these stories that stakeholders teach you their
language (more on language in an upcoming chapter).
Avoid the Pump and Pounce
Average salespeople believe that to be in control of the sales conversa­
tion they must be doing the talking. They have the annoying tendency
of pumping their buyers and stakeholders for information with
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interrogating, closed-ended questions and then pouncing on the first
opening to start pitching.
The most destructive sales behavior during discovery is the pump
and pounce. Born from impatience and poor impulse control, this one
habit will cause you to miss important clues, damage relationships, and
lose out on sales.
Here’s how it works. During discovery, in response to a question,
your stakeholder says, “We’ve been having a hard time with (fill in the
blank).”
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If you are an average salesperson, you’ll see the admission as an
opportunity to pounce and start pitching solutions.
If you are an ultra-high performer, you’ll make note of this
potential opportunity and, based on your call objective, you’ll
either follow the path and ask deeper follow-up questions to get
the full story or save/leverage this issue for a future meeting.
As you uncover problems and opportunities, you’ll come face-to­
face with the temptation to pounce and pitch a solution. You must
regulate this disruptive emotion because as soon as you start pitching,
your ears turn off and so does your stakeholder.
Ultra-high performers leverage discovery to build their case. They
patiently ask questions, encourage stakeholders to talk, and get all the
information on the table before formulating any recommendations or
offering solutions. In longer-cycle sales, discovery may span many
meetings with multiple stakeholders before any presentation or rec­
ommended solutions are offered.
Ultra-high performers know that the person asking the questions is
in control.
Fluid Dual Process Discovery
The key to discovery is asking the right questions, at the right time,
with the right intent. In sales conversations, the questions you ask
should support your effort to maintain an emotional connection, build
your case, and move to the next step. It is a dual process—empathy and
outcome.
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Multiple generations of salespeople have learned and been trained
on the SPIN methodology for discovery. SPIN selling,2 developed by
Neil Rackham and codified in his book by the same name, is the most
popular discovery framework of all time. Rackham based SPIN selling
on a well-documented study that indicated that sales calls are most
successful when the salesperson is asking questions and the stakeholder
is talking.
What Rackham theorized from his findings is that the most
successful salespeople were asking specific types of questions, in a
specific sequence. The acronym SPIN stands for four types of questions
and the order in which they are asked:
1. Situation questions are helpful for gathering and qualifying facts
and data, and understanding the prospect’s current state.
2. Problem questions uncover the prospect’s problems and
opportunities.
3. Implication questions help uncover the pain the problem is causing.
4. Need-payoff questions task the stakeholder with defining the
benefit of solving the problem—generating self-awareness for the
need to change.
More recently, author Deb Calvert’s extensive research, much like
Rackham’s revealed that salespeople who talk less, ask questions, and
listen have a higher probability of performing ahead of their peer group.
From her research, Calvert developed her DISCOVER Questions®
framework.3
The DISCOVER acronym stands for:
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Data questions are used to gather facts.
Issue questions are used to probe for problems and pain.
Solutions questions introduce alternatives and awareness of new
ideas.
Consequence questions draw attention to risks, concerns, and
challenges of not acting.
Outcome questions reveal stakeholder expectations.
Value questions organize stakeholder priorities.
Example questions create self-awareness that problems exist by
drawing out contrasts.
Rationale questions reveal how decisions are made.
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A good working knowledge of both SPIN and DISCOVER will
help you ask more effective questions. These books and methodologies
will make you better. The value of both the SPIN and DISCOVER
frameworks is they guide the process of crafting more effective
questions.
The downside, though, is that in the hands of average salespeople,
these questioning frameworks can quickly devolve into linear interro­
gations rather than fluid conversations.
Salespeople can become so focused on the type of question they are
supposed to be asking that they disconnect from the conversation,
causing their questions to feel disjointed and manipulative. Average
salespeople are often caught contemplating their next question rather
than listening.
Ultra-high performers, operate on a much different level. They
leverage a more advanced Dual Process Discovery Framework. This
framework relies heavily on being in the moment with your stake­
holder—empathy, emotion, and attention—while moving the con­
versation toward the targeted next step.
It begins with broad, open-ended questions and continues with
subsequent probing questions, leading to a natural point in the con­
versation at which you bridge to and ask for the next step. The Dual
Process Discovery Framework (Figure 23.1) is conversational rather
than interrogational.
Average salespeople are more comfortable with a linear question­
ing process because it’s easier to plow through a checklist of questions
than to truly listen and make an emotional investment in the conver­
sation. It’s easier to pump just enough information out of their stake­
holder and pounce on the first opportunity to pitch.
Effective questions should activate the stakeholder’s self-disclosure
loop early in the conversation. The key is getting out of the way and
allowing nature to take its course. Rather than the common practice of
asking one interrogating question after another from a predetermined
list, a conversation is organic, building on itself. Fewer questions are
asked but uncover far more information.
Ultra-high performers leverage the Dual Process Discovery Frame­
work because it gives them maximum flexibility to adjust their
questions strategically as the conversation unfolds. This nonlinear
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Figure 23.1 Dual Process Discovery Framework
framework opens multiple avenues of questioning, allowing UHPs to
gain access to the stakeholder’s emotions, flip the buyer script, and gain
a clearer picture of the problems, pitfalls, and issues that lie below the
surface.
Developing Go-To Questions
UHPs seem to know exactly what to ask at exactly the right moment
while remaining engaged with the stakeholder. They never appear to
be working very hard to come up with their next question or to keep
the conversation moving and the stakeholder engaged.
UHPs keep sales conversations fluid and in the moment with go-to
questions. Go-to questions are deeply ingrained and may be accessed in
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the moment within the context of the conversation. The questions may
be repurposed, re-formed, and reframed depending on the situation
and direction of the conversation.
The sales process is situational: different industries, different prod­
ucts and services, different cycles, multiple levels of complexity,
different stakeholders, and different salespeople. Therefore, questions
must flex to the moment.
Great questions are artful. Sometimes they are just simple state­
ments with a pause that elicits responses to fill in the silence. Artful
questions are provocative. They cause the stakeholder to think and
become self-aware of the need to change. Artful questions naturally
build on the conversation rather than being separate from it. They must
match the moment and cannot be scripted.
Strategic questions are well placed within the conversation and
are aligned to the overriding sales strategy and moving to the next step.
Ultra-high performers are strategic and outcome focused, always
thinking three to five moves ahead on the chessboard.
Developing the ability to ask strategic and artful questions that
match the moment requires a high Sales EQ. You must leverage
empathy, situational awareness, attention control, emotional control,
and confidence.
It begins with an intentional effort to internalize your go-to
questions. When I first started out, my sales manager handed me
two pages of questions. The questions were not organized in a useful
way and did not match my speaking style. On sales calls I sounded like a
robot, reading one question after another. But this list was all I had.
It was a starting point. I read and studied SPIN, and over time I
organized the questions into a better format and rewrote them to match
my speaking style. This is essential because, to be conversational, your
questions and questioning statements must sound like you. I also
became a collector of questions:
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■
When you hear a question that resonates with a stakeholder, write
it down and remember the context.
Interview and observe the UHPs in your company, and collect
their best questions. Notice how they ask those questions—voice
inflection, body language, tone, style, and context.
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■
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223
Read books like SPIN Selling and DISCOVER Questions Get You
Connected to spark ideas and practice structuring effective questions.
Experiment with different variations of the same questions to find
more effective combinations that work best with your style and
allow you to flex to complement your stakeholder’s preferred
communication style.
Focus on situational awareness and learn when you should and
should not ask certain questions.
Be strategic. Consider the potential answers to certain questions.
Then develop follow-up questions in response to each potential
answer. This helps you remain in the moment, because you never
need to think about what you will ask next.
If sales were football, questions would be the plays. Following sales
conversations, review the questions asked and their effectiveness—much like reviewing a game film. Keep the ones that
worked and change or adjust the ones that did not.
When you follow this process, over time you’ll develop your own
set of go-to questions: questions that work for you, sound like you, and
allow you to flex to and be in the moment.
Never, ever forget that, in sales, a question you ask is more
important than anything else you’ll ever say.
Author’s Note
I’m asked often why I don’t provide lists of questions in my
books or even my training programs.
The sales process is situational. The questions you ask will be
and should be unique to your product, industry, account, and be
stakeholder specific. That doesn’t mean that you won’t use the
same questions again and again. You will. It would be impossible
for me, though, to develop enough questions to cover even a
small segment of the market. Instead I would leave you with
generic questions that would do you little good.
In my Sales EQ trainings and workshops, I (and our trainers)
work with participants to develop, frame, and structure go-to
questions that are specific to their unique situation. I’ve found
(continued )
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(continued )
that when you actively participate in developing your own
questions they become a part of you and easier to access in
the moment when you need them. That is the point of dual
process questioning.
I’ve provided free resources at https://www.salesgravy
.com/saleseq to help you build your own list of go-to questions
as well as a question forum where Sales EQ members may trade
ideas on great questions.
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24
Do You Make
Me Feel
Important?
Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.
—Phillip Stanhope
Recently while leaving an initial discovery meeting with a potential
client, the company’s director of sales, Sid, who’d been in the meeting,
asked me if I had a few minutes to talk. We walked into his office and he
offered me a chair, but before he even sat down he spit out an emphatic
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?” I responded (not letting on that I knew where he was
going).
“What you just did in that room.” He pointed behind him. “No
one has ever come in here and held the attention of our executive team
like that. Usually, when vendors come in, Jacob [the company’s CEO]
checks out in the first few minutes and spends the rest of the meeting on
his phone. He never took his eyes off you. Where the hell did you
get all of that information?”
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To him, what I’d done appeared to be some sort of Jedi mind trick.
Although I’d never met any of the people on the executive team, I
addressed each person by name when they walked into the conference
room.
Over the course of the meeting I asked questions focused on the
unique issues that each department head was facing while praising
specific accomplishments they’d made. Though this was the first time
I’d ever visited the company, I easily wove the company’s unique
language, jargon, and acronyms into my questions, as if I’d been
working there for years.
Sid was in awe, and part of me didn’t want to reveal my secret. I
wanted him to believe I was a Jedi master.
I reached into my bag and pulled out a file. Inside was a dossier on
each stakeholder that included a printout of their LinkedIn profile,
Facebook page, executive summary of their department challenges and
successes, and questions to ask them.
I explained that a month before the meeting one of my entry-level
sales development reps had done the research for me, pulling from
online sources and calling into the company and asking questions. We’d
reviewed the company’s news, press clippings, blog, and press releases.
We role-played the meeting in advance and I practiced asking
questions. I’d studied hard so that I knew each stakeholder as if they
were a friend. During the meeting, I simply interlaced important facts,
compliments, and questions based on our research.
I’d spoken to each person in the room in their language, listened,
and demonstrated that I understood them and their problems. This
caused them to feel significant and that I cared about them.
The Most Insatiable Human Need
According to research into human social behavior, in conversations
with other people, humans spend as much as 60 percent of the time
talking about themselves.1 Move those conversations to social media
outlets like Facebook and the number reaches 80 percent or higher.2
Why? Well, it seems that talking and bragging about ourselves
makes us feel important.
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The most insatiable human need is the feeling of significance or
importance. It is the singularity of human behavior in the first world.
Almost everything you and I do, virtually every behavior, good or bad,
is rooted in our insatiable need to feel that we matter.
As we learned in an earlier chapter, talking about yourself—
telling your story—triggers a dopamine drip that makes you feel
euphoric. In one study, subjects were even willing to forgo money
just for the chance to talk about themselves.3 This is why we feel so
emotionally connected to people who listen to us and disconnected
from people who talk at us. We don’t feel important when other
people have the stage.
This, by the way, is the primary reason salespeople default to taking
the stage through pitching. The need to feel significant is an exceed­
ingly disruptive emotion for salespeople. On the other hand, when you
gain control of this disruptive emotion and focus on making other
people feel important, it gives you a powerful advantage in influencing
their behaviors.
How to Make People Feel Important
Making people feel important requires only that you get out of your
self-centered world and focus on other people.
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Use their name (the sweetest sound in the world to them).
Remember something about them—an event, their child’s
accomplishment, a special vacation—and bring it up in
conversation.
Build people up by making them look good in front of other
people.
Say “Thank you” and give sincere appreciation.
Ask for advice and demonstrate that the person is valuable and
needed.
Be genuinely interested in and curious about them; by taking time
to research prospects and their companies in advance, you dem­
onstrate that you value them and their time.
Demonstrate empathy by stepping into their shoes and showing
them that you see and value their perspective.
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■
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Sales EQ
Listen. We come back to listening time and again. Listening to
your stakeholder’s story is the easiest, fastest way to make them feel
important. When your mouth is closed, your ears are open, and
you give your compete attention to the other person, it makes a
memorable impression.
Give a sincere compliment.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Everyone likes a compliment.”
I once worked for a man who had a habit of complimenting
everyone he met. He was an executive running a 2-billion-dollar-a­
year business—the big boss. He traveled the country visiting his
company’s offices and production facilities. Wherever he went, people
looked forward to his visits.
Everyone from the part-time worker picking up trash in the
parking lot to the top managers received a sincere compliment
whenever he was around. They would do anything for this man.
The key to influencing through compliments is developing aware­
ness of others. Put your own self-centered thoughts aside, and become
genuinely interested in other people. Notice them.
When you give stakeholders genuine, sincere compliments about a
trait, possession, or accomplishment, you’ve given them valuable gifts.
You make them feel valued, acknowledged, and important.
Compliments are even more meaningful when they are delivered
in front of other people. When you cast stakeholders in a good light in
front of their boss, they’ll remember you. All people have a deep need
for approval of their actions and accomplishments. This need is ongoing
and is never satisfied for long.
When I smile and others respond in kind, I like to compliment
them with “You have a great smile.” Each time I do this their grin gets
even bigger. Compliment clothes, kids, awards, children’s artwork, or
personal traits. If you know people well or have done research in
advance of meeting them, compliment an achievement. Compliment a
decision they’ve made.
Best-selling author and speaker Brian Tracy says, “People who
continually seek opportunities to express approval are welcome wher­
ever they go.” You’ll be astounded at how far a sincere compliment
takes you. When people feel approved of and valued, you boost their
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self-esteem. They like themselves more, and because of this, they find
you likable.
Of course, the easiest, fastest, most powerful way to make
another person feel important is to give them your complete attention
and listen. When your stakeholder is the center of attention and
telling their story, it makes them feel appreciated, important, and
emotionally connected to you.
The Law of Reciprocity
This past summer while riding a bus in Kyoto, Japan, with my son, we
struck up a conversation with a young Japanese businessman. Conver­
sation might be overexaggerating. Since we don’t speak Japanese and he
didn’t speak English, communication was a struggle.
The one thing we found in common was music. We all took turns
naming our favorite bands—thumbs up, thumbs down. We laughed
and sneered, sang snippets of songs, and enjoyed the moment—a brief
connection on a hot, crowded bus.
As the bus approached his stop, the young businessman prepared
to get off. The bus slowed and the doors opened. As we bowed to
say good-bye, he reached into his backpack and pulled out a small,
wrapped, rectangular box, motioning for me to take it. At first I
politely refused, but he was emphatic that I take the gift, so I smiled,
bowed, and took the box from his hand as he slipped through the
open door.
Thirty minutes later my son and I made it back to our hotel room. I
pulled the wrapping paper off the box, curious to see what was inside.
When I opened the lid, it wasn’t what I was expecting. Inside were five
slices of raw fish wrapped in leaves. I stared into the box for a moment
and then reached in and pulled out a leaf-wrapped piece of fish.
My son turned up his nose as I popped it into my mouth. “You
can’t eat that!” he pleaded. “That’s raw fish out of some random guy’s
backpack from a bus. You don’t know what you’re putting in your
mouth.”
“But he gave it to me as a gift,” I shot back. “I can’t waste it. That
wouldn’t be right. It was probably his dinner!” Even though my son’s
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argument was rational, I felt a deep emotional obligation to reciprocate
by eating the fish.
But my compelling feeling of obligation was far from over. The
moment the young man stepped off the bus I felt a twinge of guilt. He
hadn’t given me time to find something in my bag to give him to repay
the favor. Months later it still bothered me. This is the power of the law
of reciprocity.
Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence, says, “One of the most
potent of the weapons of influence around us is the rule for reciproca­
tion. The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another
person has provided us.”
In layman’s terms, the law of reciprocity simply explains that when
someone gives you something, you feel an obligation to give value
back. But as Cialdini explains, the rule or law of reciprocity goes much
deeper than this. This feeling of obligation, the need to reciprocate, is
baked deeply into human psychology.
Imagine what our world would be like if we didn’t feel the
obligation to reciprocate. Society would break down because no
one would do anything for anyone else. Why should they? There
would be nothing given in return, nor would there be any penalty for
taking without giving. The law of reciprocity is the glue that holds
human society together.
Epp Wilson has a firm grasp of the influence the law of reciprocity
has on human behavior. He deftly leverages it with his clients. His
company, Foxboro, builds high-end fences. His crews are well trained
and have a reputation for quality.
But, says Epp, “Sometimes we make a mistake, cut down a favorite
bush or tree, or there is a flaw in the fence that our customer finds
before we do.”
This can be a problem when a customer has just spent $50,000 or
more on a fencing project.
“When my salesperson is working with the prospect in the
initial discovery stages, we try to find a project on their property
that’s important to them for which they don’t have the budget. It
could be tree removal, filling in a hole, clearing a drainage pond, or
fixing a ditch. We make a note of it and once the contract is signed we
do the project at no cost. Of course, our customer is thrilled.”
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Doing more than promised takes advantage of the law of reci­
procity. It generates goodwill and many referrals. It also helps when
issues arise; Epp explains, “Customers repay the gift. They’re more
reasonable and open to solutions. Instead of a fight, they give us respect
and the room to address the issue.”
A closing note on reciprocation. Even though when you give to
others they will feel an obligation to give back, some people may
never return your goodwill. This is why the deliberate pursuit of
reciprocity (in other words, approaching reciprocity as a quid pro
quo—I give value to you; therefore, you give equal or greater value
back) does not work. Doing so will leave you jaded and frustrated
because the expectation of reciprocation is merely premeditated
resentment.
Obligation and Win Probability
The gift of significance and the feeling of obligation it engenders is one
of the keys to improving the win probability of your deals.
You’ll recall that advancing deals through the pipe and creating
velocity is accomplished through a series of micro-commitments. Each
time your stakeholder agrees to a micro-commitment, win probability
increases.
The need to feel important is so insatiable that when you make
people feel important, you give them the greatest gift you can give
another human being. This gift is one of the cornerstones of influence.
By making a person feel important, you create a subconscious feeling of
obligation to reciprocate, and with that you gain the power and
influence to shape their behavior.
Your gift triggers a subconscious feeling of obligation. The stake­
holder’s feeling of obligation increases the probability that when you
ask for the next step or micro-commitment, the stakeholder will repay
your gift with both engagement and a yes.
Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay cosmetics, said that you
should “Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around
their neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’ Not only will you
succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.” Simple.
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Do You Get
Me and My
Problems?
Is there a greater sin in sales than boring your audience?
—Mike Weinberg
My new client was insistent that I was wrong and, having pushed the
issue so hard, I felt I was treading on thin ice with our fledgling
relationship. I’d been trying to make the point that my client’s focus
on competitive differentiation was doomed to failure. The debate
centered on the marketing organization’s desire to develop a con­
sistent sales pitch that would be supported by a bevy of marketing
collateral.
Just prior to our argument, the marketing team had delivered a
dog-and-pony show of brochures, presentation decks, and digital sales
media.
There’d been buzzwords, complex-sounding jargon, and pretty
images all delivered with the smugness and arrogance of highly com­
pensated, well-educated marketing professionals who were completely
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delusional about what it actually took to engage prospects and close deals
in their highly competitive industry.
The marketing team was gravely concerned that the salespeople
didn’t have a consistent message and, in the words of the vice president
of marketing, “had no idea how to articulate the company’s points of
competitive differentiation.”
My pushback was blunt. The company didn’t have a messaging
problem. It had an engagement problem. The account executives were
failing, not because they were unable to articulate a clear message, but
because they articulated it too much. The account executives were
talking stakeholders to death. Worse, the account executives were
boring because their pitch was identical to that of each of the company’s
major competitors.
“Jeb, I hear what you are saying, but our product is superior to our
competitors,” the product manager responded. “Our problem is the
salespeople don’t know how to show potential customers the differ­
ence. We need them to teach potential customers what makes our
software better.”
There was a major disconnect. I’d spent the previous week
shadowing and observing their salespeople. The account executives,
armed with iPads loaded with interactive brochures, pitched and
pontificated. They recited facts and figures, presented case studies,
and challenged their prospects with insights.
But all the challenging and teaching and insight selling wasn’t
working. New sales were flat, and the company was in danger of
losing market share. Leadership was panicking, and the brand and
product managers were under the gun. They were looking for a
lifeline.
That’s where I came in. They’d hired me to help them hone the
message and teach their salespeople how to articulate it. They
believed the solution to the problem was an even better pitch—
one that would wow stakeholders into submission. However, the
marketing team had already made up their minds and were in no
mood to listen.
Sensing that I was in jeopardy of losing my new client if I pushed
harder, I asked if I could come back with some recommendations for
messaging the following week.
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You Can’t Differentiate When Everything
Looks the Same
On a rainy Friday morning a week later, the team gathered in the
executive conference room. On the table, I’d placed sales collateral
along with hard copies of websites and landing pages from their three
biggest competitors. We even had tablets with the explainer videos
from each competitor loaded and ready to play. Alongside them we
placed copies of my client’s marketing material and messaging.
At first the folks on the project team were like kids in a candy store,
fascinated by having so much of their competitors’ marketing materials
right at their fingertips. I was intrigued that they hadn’t taken the time
to do this already.
I left them to it for a few minutes before instructing, “Everyone,
please take a step back from the table and look at all of the messages as a
whole. Tell me what patterns you see.” The large conference room
became instantly silent while they took it all in. No one said a thing.
Then a marketing manager murmured, “They’re all the same.”
This ignited an intense conversation that became a pivot point
to much-needed deep introspection. They’d been so inwardly
focused and such ardent believers of their own press clippings
that they were blind to the truth. Rather than looking at all the
facts, they’d conveniently cherry-picked only the data that proved
their point.
It was a classic example of the human confirmation bias at work.
The marketers sought out data that supported their conclusion that the
salespeople were unable to differentiate while ignoring evidence that
pointed to alternate explanations.
It was a rude awakening to an uncomfortable and inconvenient
truth. To stakeholders, they and every competitor in their industry
were indistinguishable.
How could my client differentiate when their salespeople, messag­
ing, collateral, advertising, website, and even images and videos looked,
sounded, and felt the same as those of their competitors?
It was no wonder that most sales conversations quickly degenerated
into price negotiations. Talking more would not solve their differenti­
ation problem.
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The Age of Transparency
We live in the age of transparency where anyone can get information
about anything with a few clicks and swipes on a screen. Information is
ubiquitous. It’s also confusing.
Consider what a person who is researching potential vendors for
the software my client, from the previous story, sells. What will they
find?
■
■
■
■
■
■
Four
Four
Four
Four
Four
Four
companies offering what appear to be identical products
companies making the same promises
websites that are strikingly similar
blogs with carbon copy articles and themes
free guides on four indistinguishable landing pages
look-alike “me too” explainer videos
Often, research confuses more than it informs. The stakeholder, no
better off than they were before they did their research, requests
meetings with account executives from each company.
The account executives recite messaging and regurgitate stock
presentations developed by the MBAs in their marketing department.
Each AE making a convincing pitch that their software is far
superior.
■
Four meetings with account executives—all essentially the same
How does the stakeholder choose?
Many companies and salespeople delude themselves into believ­
ing their product or service is so unique or different that it sells itself. If
you are in this camp, it is time for a reality check. To stakeholders you
and all your competitors look, sound, and act exactly the same. If your
product is so good it sells itself, I suggest warming up your résumé
because your company is going to quickly figure out that they don’t
need you.
Here’s the brutal truth: To differentiate, YOU must be different.
If you strip all the complexity away from sales, you will find that
sales is, at the core, just one person solving another person’s problem.
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Stakeholders become emotionally attached and extremely loyal to
salespeople who demonstrate that they get the stakeholder and their
unique problems and bring custom-crafted solutions to the table that
solve those problems.
Problem solvers are the champions of the business world.
Do You Get Me?
Close your eyes for just a moment and picture a person in your life who
really gets you—a person who understands who you are and what you
are about. Think about that relationship. What’s it like? How does it
feel? Is it:
■
■
■
■
■
Nonjudgmental?
Comfortable?
Accepting?
Open and transparent?
All of the above?
When you are with someone who gets you, you share a unique
language. You laugh at jokes no one else gets. You exchange ideas and
thoughts with just an expression. You each know what the other
person is thinking—almost like you have ESP. You have the same ideas
at the same time and finish each other’s sentences.
There is something special that happens when other people
understand us. Of all relationships, the ones where the other person
gets you are the most cherished.
Clearly, it is nearly impossible to duplicate the level of get that you
have with a sister, parent, lover, or best friend in a commercial
relationship with a stakeholder. However, the same emotions and
influence dynamics are at play. All human beings, at their core, want to
be understood.
In B2B sales, stakeholders are using someone else’s money to solve
their problems. Those problems are personal and real. Each stakeholder
believes that their situation is unique. Even if you’ve seen the same
problem a dozen times before, if they sense that you are treating
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their belief that they are different with indifference, they’ll disconnect
emotionally.
The generic kitchen-sink data dump pitch that makes you sound
like a walking, talking marketing brochure tells them loud and clear
that you don’t and haven’t taken the time to understand them. That
you are too lazy or self-centered to care enough to see them as unique.
In commercial relationships, the way you demonstrate that you get
your stakeholders is through personalized recommendations to solve
their problems, remove pain, or capture opportunity. These recom­
mendations must be delivered using their language and be relevant to
what is most important to them.
When you speak their language, you look, feel, and sound different
from your competitors and you gain influence over buying behaviors.
People Buy for Their Reasons, Not Yours
During a top-to-top meeting with a prospect’s executive team,
Penske’s COO, Art Vallely, and the enterprise account manager
who was running the deal were offered a tour of the prospect’s facility.
Art and his EAM spent four hours with the prospect’s stakeholders
walking through the massive facility, asking questions, learning about
their operations, and getting acquainted with the company’s history and
values.
“It was fascinating,” said Art. “We left with a much better
understanding of their culture, how they treated their customers, their
goals as an organization, and roadblocks that were holding them back
from reaching their goals.”
Using the information gathered on the tour, the Penske sales team
crafted a plan to help their prospect reach those goals. The Penske team
focused on helping their prospect improve customer service—
improvements that would have a significant impact on both customer
retention and the bottom line.
Six months later Penske won the deal. After the celebration, Art
called the new customer’s executive vice president to thank him.
On the call, Art asked him what swayed him and his team to choose
Penske. The EVP’s explanation revealed again why Sales EQ matters.
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“We also invited your competitor to take a tour of our facility. They
spent less than 30 minutes with us and didn’t ask a single question.
Their executives spent most of the tour looking at their phone screens
checking e-mail. We got the impression that they weren’t that
interested in getting to know us. They were more focused on
pitching us on how big and great they were and how foolish
we’d be to do business with anyone but them.
“You and your team spent half a day walking through our operation.
You asked great questions. Everyone on our team felt that you and
your people were genuinely interested in us. We felt like you cared.
“When you delivered your proposal, it was all about us. With your
competitor, it was all about them. That’s why we’re doing business
with you.”
Millions of dollars changed hands in this deal. When the stake­
holders at this prospect weighed the decision between Penske and its
competition, they chose Penske, because the people on Penske’s sales
team showed interest, invested time to learn and gain understanding,
made the stakeholders feel important, delivered personalized recom­
mendations based on the prospect’s unique situation, and cared more.
Penske’s competitor talked at the stakeholders about trucks. They
pitched their reasons the stakeholders should buy—features, benefits,
truck specs, competitive differences. All rational, logical reasons, but
not the stakeholder’s reasons.
It was not about trucks. The stakeholders at this prospect didn’t
care about trucks. They cared about problems that were impacting their
ability to deliver best-in-class customer service.
People buy for their reasons, not yours. To differentiate in the age of
transparency, you must step into your stakeholders’ shoes. You must
invest time and be curious enough to learn about their business and
problems. You must learn and speak their language.
The Power of Language
Since the dawn of human civilization, language has connected humans,
defined boundaries, and determined who is in and who is out. Today,
more than 7,000 languages are spoken across the globe.
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Communities, companies, families, religions, clubs, sports teams,
schools, and groups of people in every walk of life and every organiza­
tional structure share a common language that binds them together and
creates commonality.
Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel calls language social technol­
ogy.1 He theorizes that one of the main reasons language evolved in
humans was to make it easier to sell things,2 thus accelerating commerce
and eventually creating the modern-day sales profession.
Pagel asserts that language is a powerful, neural “audio technology
for rewiring other people’s minds” because “it allows you to implant a
thought from your mind directly into someone else’s mind.”3
I consider language to be the ultimate sales technology. Language is
powerful. Travel anywhere in the world and even make an attempt to
speak another culture’s language, and people will pull you in and
embrace you—just for trying. You’ll notice how little it takes. Just a
word here or there ingratiates and moves you from stranger to ingroup.
In the context of sales conversations, the stakeholders’ language is
company jargon, acronyms, processes, systems, and industry terms. It
includes their emotional hot buttons, challenges, issues, concerns,
unique problems, situations, and opportunities. It’s the way they
express and emote those things. When you learn to speak their
language, it has the same effect. Stakeholders pull you into their ingroup.
We’ve explored, for example, how the similarity bias causes us to
believe that people who are like us are better and more trustworthy.
Language transcends differences to create similarity.
Much like a TV remote control, you can leverage language to
“alter the settings inside someone else’s brain.”4 Speaking your stake­
holder’s language makes your message and recommendations sound
familiar, safe, comfortable, and memorable. This gives you a distinct
competitive edge in the war for differentiation.
During sales training, the trainers rewire your brain to speak your
company’s language. You learn elevator pitches, how to dish out value
propositions, and how to tell the company’s story. You consume and
become familiar with sales collateral and learn how to talk about
products, services, specs, and features—all from your company’s
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(and your own) perspective. It is total immersion. Over time, you begin
to naturally think and speak in this language.
This is why, it is very difficult to get out of your own head and
speak your stakeholder’s language. In our Message Matters workshops
and Sales EQ training courses, we put participants through a simple
exercise in which they are required to list common stakeholder
problems and pain points—from the stakeholder’s standpoint.
It’s excruciating to watch as participants find it almost impossible to
step into the shoes of stakeholders and intuit problems from that point
of view. Mostly, the lists the participants build are just product and
service feature dumps rather than the real issues that are impacting their
stakeholders.
It is easier to learn and speak your stakeholders’ language when you
are standing in their shoes. This requires an intentional effort to become
empathetic to your stakeholder’s motivations, concerns, interests,
aspirations, and experience.
Artful questions draw out the stakeholder’s story. When you listen
deeply and immerse yourself in your stakeholders’ stories, you gain
perspective, experience their emotions, and learn their language.
Message Matters
Once you’ve learned your stakeholders’ language, the next step is to
weave it through your sales messages to demonstrate that you get them.
Whether in initial presentations, sales conversations, demos, pre­
sentations, or proposals, your message must be relevant, compelling,
and memorable. It must demonstrate that you get the stakeholder’s
unique situation.
Relevance is the critical element. Otherwise it’s just white noise, a
boring pattern the stakeholder’s brain ignores, and will not remember.
Message matters. An important cognitive shortcut is called the
availability heuristic. The brain values information that can be more
readily recalled and considers it to be more important than information
that is more difficult to remember.
The availability heuristic must not be ignored when tailoring
messages and communicating with stakeholders. Memorable equals
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differentiation. When you speak your stakeholder’s language, your
message is easier to recall and therefore carries more weight in decision
making, therefore increasing win probability.
Sadly, average salespeople make egregious messaging mistakes.
Like robots, they mindlessly regurgitate the product feature bullet
points learned in sales training, regardless of relevance.
Their presentations are boring. Average salespeople fail to activate
the stakeholder’s brain and grab attention, because they sound like
walking, talking marketing brochures. It’s no wonder stakeholders
routinely check out during demos and presentations.
Using your stakeholders’ language has the added benefit of reduc­
ing cognitive load, making it easier for them to comprehend, assimilate,
and remember the information you provide. It takes the complexity
out of listening.
With sales messaging, complexity is your enemy. Complex and
unfamiliar language, riddled with jargon and business-speak, is difficult
to remember. When your message is hard to grasp, your stakeholder’s
brain stops paying attention and shifts to heuristics and biases to
interpret what you are saying.
The “So What?” Smell Test
One of my early sales mentors taught me the “so what?” smell test in a
tough but memorable way. Prior to big presentations, I’d role-play my
message with him. On each slide and after each message he’d deadpan,
“So what?”
“Our product will save you up to 30 percent over what you are
spending now.”
So what?
“Our customer satisfaction rate is 96.7 percent.”
So what?
“Our implementation process is seamless and no hassle.”
So what?
He forced me to explain why each point mattered to that specific
stakeholder or stakeholder group based on their unique situation. If I
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was unable to make the case from the prospective company’s or the
individual stakeholder’s perspective, the slide, bullet point, and some­
times entire presentation was scrapped.
It used to infuriate me. I’d push back, argue, and try to make my
case, but if it didn’t pass the “so what?” smell test, my message was
scrapped.
Yet, as angry and frustrated as it made me, it also made me better
and turned me into a messaging machine. I learned to listen with intent
to understand my stakeholders and then craft messages that were
relevant to them, in their language, because I knew I’d have to
eventually get past the stakeholder’s “so what?” gauntlet.
The Fine Art of Bridging
When you are explaining, teaching, demoing, challenging, offering
insight, or presenting, you must remain cognizant of your stakeholder’s
brain’s two most pressing questions:
1. So what?
2. What’s in it for me?
You’ll recall from an earlier chapter that your stakeholder’s
attention is managed and controlled by the amygdala. The amygdala
responds to threats and bright, shiny things. In its quest to keep your
stakeholder alive, the amygdala ignores boring patterns—like scripted
presentations—and responds to environmental disruptions.
Your stakeholder’s amygdala is the gatekeeper. Every sales message
goes through the amygdala first, which, like my sales manager, uses a
harsh “so what?” smell test.
The amygdala is very selfish. When your mouth is moving and
PowerPoint slides are flashing, it only wants to know, “What’s in it for
me?” If your message isn’t new, different, or disruptive, if it doesn’t
solve unique problems, eliminate pain, or combat a future threat, the
amygdala won’t waste precious cognitive resources on it.
Instead the amygdala zones out and goes back to scanning the
environment for disruptions and your message never makes it to the
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stakeholder’s neocortex. In other words, if your message is not relevant,
the stakeholder’s brain is indifferent.
Solving problems, eliminating pain, and helping stakeholders take
advantage of opportunities is how you earn the right to move to the
next step and close deals. You may have the perfect solution, but if your
stakeholders can’t hear you because you are not speaking their language
or the pattern is boring, you lose.
Ultra-high performers (UHPs) are pattern painters. They activate
the amygdala’s attention with messages and stories that are relevant,
tightly focused on demonstrating that they get their stakeholder, and
delivered in a language that is easy to understand.
Bridging is the process and art of building the case for doing
business with you, by connecting your solutions to your stakeholder’s
problems, in the context of what is most important to them. In their
language, not yours.
Pitching
Your reasons: Generic features
and benefits, kitchen-sink data
dump.
Leaves your prospects feeling that
you don’t listen, and makes
them feel unimportant.
Makes you look and sound the
same as your competitors.
Because you have not
differentiated, conversation
moves quickly to cost.
Bridging
Their reasons: Articulates value in
context of what is most
important to your prospects in
their language.
Demonstrates that you are
listening, and makes prospects
feel that you get them.
Differentiates and builds the case
for value versus price.
Deepens your emotional
connection.
Gets you to the next step.
Bridging is where message meets emotion. Use words, phrases, and
stories that provoke and activate your stakeholder’s emotions—typi­
cally by relating to painful emotions like stress, worry, insecurity,
distrust, anxiety, fear, frustration, or anger, and offering them peace
of mind, security, options, hope, lower stress, or less worry.
In an earlier chapter I described a study where subjects purchased
more French wine on days when the store played French music. This
response is called an affect heuristic. Simply put, your mood and resulting
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actions are often affected by another emotional stimulus. For this
reason, bridges framed in emotional language and stories carry more
emotional impact and are therefore more persuasive.
The Three-Step Bridging Framework
Bridging articulates problems, recommendations, and solutions in your
stakeholder’s language, leveraging a three-step process (Figure 25.1)
that connects current state, a personalized recommendation, and a
future, aspirational state or what’s in it for them.
When you tie recommendations and value statements back to the
emotional hot buttons that were disclosed during discovery, your
stakeholders will feel valued, important, and that you get them.
Never forget that each person (and company) views his or her
problems, no matter how common, as unique. For this reason, bridges
must be personalized.
Ultra-high performers make the case that they get their stakeholder
and can solve their stakeholder’s problems with confident, succinct,
personalized bridges. UHPs transform mundane features and benefits
into custom solutions developed for and built around a stakeholder’s
unique situation. They reframe product features that seem generic, in a
way that causes the stakeholder to feel that they were crafted just for
her.
Here’s an example of a bridge. This example is written in informal
language as you might verbally express it during a presentation.
Figure 25.1 Three-Step Bridging Framework
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(Written documents require more formal and concise language. You’ll
find examples of formal bridges on the Sales EQ membership site.)
Problem: “Alba, when we met with your accounts payable team,
they expressed frustration over the manual audit process required to
manage the invoices of multiple vendors. Ruben said that it was
taking up to 40 hours of labor each month just to keep up with it,
and that was causing a delay in getting more important projects
done. Just last week they missed a deadline on a rebate that cost you
$900.”
Personalized recommendation: “For this reason I recommend
installing our Express Invoicing module. This is a cloud-based
payables platform that makes it super easy to manage invoices and
payments. It also gives Ruben an easy-to-use dashboard so he can
focus on anomalies rather than a complete audit each month.”
Planned result: “At a minimum, Express Invoicing will save a little
more than $37,000 in direct payroll costs. More important, though,
it will provide you and all department heads visibility into the
payables that that are impacting your P&Ls. Ruben can get back to
focusing on saving the company money, and you’ll have the peace
of mind that there will be no more embarrassing surprises at the end
of the month because something was missed.”
Notice how this bridge communicates a story. It positions the
current, untenable situation in stark relief, offers hope for a break­
through, and paints a vivid picture of a better future state.
Let’s break this down.
Problem
The problem (challenge, need, pain, opportunity—use any label you
please) defines the current state in your stakeholder’s language. Effec­
tively, you are telling their story back to them and reminding them of
their pain or missed opportunities. The most effective problem state­
ments are specific, emotional, and offer data-driven proof.
The structure of a bridge is designed to activate your stakeholders’
brains and pull their attention toward you, first by engaging the
amygdala, which holds the keys to the cognitive gate. If the amygdala
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refuses to open the gate, it doesn’t matter how well conceived your
message is; you are not getting in.
This is why we begin with a problem or pain. The amygdala is
hardwired to respond to threats, pains, and problems. It also responds to
opportunities, but threats come first. It is not always possible to do so,
but when you can, you’ll generate more interest when you position
opportunities as a way to stave off threats.
Personalized Recommendations and the Authority Principle
Once the amygdala opens the cognitive gate, you gain access to your
stakeholder’s rational brain, the neocortex. Your recommendation
connects with and appeals to the stakeholder’s rational and objective
side while leveraging the authority principle.
Like social proof, where humans look to the actions of others to
decide how to act themselves, we also allow the directions of those in
authority to stand in for our own decision making and judgment.
We respect authority and follow authority. When an expert makes
a recommendation, it’s natural human behavior to accept the recom­
mendation and comply. In his book Influence, author Robert Cialdini
describes this as the authority principle.
Following the guidance of those in authority makes it easier to
navigate uncertainty in a complex world. Uncertainty increases cogni­
tive load and slows us down. To move faster, we look to experts for
advice, directions, and recommendations, to which we very often
comply.
Ultra-high performers take advantage of the authority principle
by making recommendations that deliver the future state the stake­
holder is seeking. UHPs confidently project themselves as subject
matter experts and exert that authority to shape and influence buying
decisions.
UHPs confidently say I recommend to express their authority on the
matter.
Average salespeople diminish and dilute their authority with more
passive phrases like my company offers or we provide or our product will or an
even weaker I’m hoping that.
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When there is uncertainty and risk, stakeholders look to you, the
expert, to make recommendations so that decisions are easier and safer
for them to make.
Planned Result
The planned result connects the emotional and the rational. The
planned result is aspirational. It should be painted with a vivid brush
that describes a better future.
Author’s Note
Crafting sales messages is my favorite part of sales. I love playing
with words and the creativeness that goes into developing the
perfect message for each stakeholder.
This part of sales is where the information that was gleaned
during discovery comes to life. Though it is far more art than
science, there are useful frames like bridging that make it easier.
A deep dive into the process of developing effective sales
messages, sales stories, and powerful value propositions is beyond
the scope of this book. However, you will find resources, guides,
ideas, forums, and exercises at https://www.salesgravy.com/saleseq
to help you develop winning messages that close deals.
We also deliver a popular and fun sales messaging workshop
called Message Matters. You may learn more about this at
https://www.salesgravy.com/training.
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26
Asking
The Most Important
Sales Discipline
A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success.
—Bo Bennett
“Um, uh, so,” Bill was stuttering, barely making eye contact with the
buyer. He looked scared. “What, um, do you, uh, think?”
Sitting next to him, I was thinking, Seriously, after all that work the
best you can come up with is “What do you think?” This company needs us,
you made the case, you earned the right, so ask for what you want!
Marla, the buyer, replied, “Thanks for the presentation, Bill.
You’ve given us a lot to think about. Tell you what. I’m going to run
this by my team and we’ll get back to you in a week or so.”
After nurturing the prospect for more than a year waiting for the
buying window to open, six weeks of work to get on Marla’s calendar,
five discovery meetings, a product trial and pilot, two solid weeks of
work on the presentation and proposal, building a rock-solid business
248
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case, and delivering a flawless presentation, Bill blew it with a passive,
weak, nonassumptive ask.
His disruptive emotions derailing him when it mattered most. All
he had to show for his effort was a “call me maybe.”
In sales, you must ask for what you want, directly, assumptively,
and assertively. Don’t expect stakeholders to do your job for you.
When you fail to ask, you fail.
Closing
I can’t get away from salespeople who quiz me about closing techniques
and sales managers who beg me to teach them how to get their
salespeople to close.
From superstitions (I’ll admit that there was even a time when I
would wear my special closing tie on sales calls) to an endless stream of
cheesy scripts, there seems to be no end to the so-called experts who are
quick to claim that they can lift away the mystery to “closing the deal
every time.”
Here’s the brutal truth: Those so-called experts are wrong. There is no holy
grail of closing.
Closing requires excellence throughout the entire sales process
rather than a point in time where a manipulative line or tactic moves
the prospect to say yes. If you’ve aligned the three processes of sales,
built an emotional connection with your stakeholders, asked great
questions, bridged to relevant solutions, and answered the five most
important questions, then closing is, more often than not, an anti­
climactic formality.
Here’s my advice. Forget about closing and focus on asking.
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Ask
Ask
Ask
Ask
Ask
Ask
Ask
for
for
for
for
for
for
for
the
the
the
the
the
the
the
appointment.
next step.
facility tour.
information you need.
demo.
decision maker.
sale.
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■
■
Sales EQ
Ask for what you want.
Ask!
Can I make it any clearer? If you are having a hard time getting the
next appointment, getting to decision makers, getting information
from stakeholders, leveling up higher in the organization, or closing the
deal, nine out of 10 times it is because you are not asking. Why?
Because nine out of 10 times you are passively beating around the bush,
afraid to hear “no.”
Afraid to Ask
Nothing in sales requires a higher level of emotional control than
asking. The most treacherous disruptive emotion for salespeople is fear.
And the greatest fear in sales is asking, because asking opens the
potential for rejection.
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Salespeople are afraid to ask for time
afraid to ask for the next step
afraid to ask to speak with other stakeholders
afraid to ask for data
afraid to ask the stakeholder to share their competitors’ collateral
and proposals
afraid to ask to go on facility tours
afraid to ask for demos
afraid to level up higher in the organization
afraid to ask for the sale
Rejection is a painful demotivator and the genesis of deep-seated
fear, a fear so strong that it keeps most people from asking for what they
want.
Asking conjures up our deepest fears of vulnerability. Vulnerabil­
ity, according to Dr. Brené Brown, author of the Power of Vulnerability,
is created in the presence of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.
Anxiety, stress, a racing heartbeat, sweaty palms, and a dull brain are all
symptoms of the fight-or-flight response kicking in as you anticipate
what might happen if your stakeholder says no.
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Getting past the fear of “no” isn’t easy. I’ve been selling my entire
life and have been incredibly successful at it, yet today I still need to
remind myself that “no” won’t kill me. That, by the way, is the key.
You must first be aware of your fear, and then teach your rational brain
to manage that disruptive emotion.
Start by learning to anticipate the anxiety that comes right before
asking for what you want. Then practice managing your internal selftalk and physical reaction to that fear.
This awareness helps you manage your outward physiology despite
the volcano of emotions that may be erupting below the surface. Like a
duck on the water, you appear calm and cool and project a relaxed,
confident demeanor on the outside even though you’re paddling
frantically just below the surface.
Demonstrates Lack of
Confidence, Insecurity,
and Fear
Speaking with a high-pitched
voice.
Speaking fast. When you speak too
fast, you sound untrustworthy.
Tense or defensive tone of voice.
Speaking too loudly or too softly.
Frail or nervous tone of voice with
too many filler words, “ums,”
“uhs,” and awkward pauses.
Lack of eye contact—looking
away. Nothing says “I can’t be
trusted” and “I’m not confident”
like poor eye contact.
Hands in your pockets.
Demonstrates a Relaxed,
Confident Demeanor
Speaking with normal inflection
and a deeper pitch.
Speaking at a relaxed pace with
appropriate pauses.
Friendly tone—a smile in your
voice.
Appropriate voice modulation with
appropriate emotional emphasis
on the right words and phrases.
Direct, properly paced tone and
speech that gets right to the
point.
Direct, appropriate eye contact.
Hands by your side or out in front
of you as you speak. Note: This
may feel uncomfortable but
makes you look powerful and
confident.
(continued)
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Sales EQ
(continued )
Wild gesticulations or hand
motions.
Touching your face or putting
your fingers in your mouth—a
clear sign that you are nervous
or insecure.
Hunched over, head down, arms
crossed.
Shifting back and forth on your
feet or rocking your body.
Stiff posture, body tense.
Jaw clenched, tense look on face.
Weak, limp, sweaty palm
handshake.
Using hand gestures in a calm and
controlled manner.
Your hands in a power position—
by your side or out in front of
you in a controlled,
nonthreatening manner.
Straight posture, chin up, shoulders
straight and back. This posture
will also make you feel more
confident.
Standing still in a natural power
pose.
Relaxed, natural posture.
Relaxed smile. The smile is a
universal language that says
“I’m friendly and can be
trusted.”
Firm, confident handshake
delivered while making direct
eye contact.
The Assumptive Ask
Remember emotional contagion? When you are confident with your
ask, and assume you will get what you want, stakeholders respond in
kind and give it to you.
When you sound, look, and give off a weak, passive vibe because
you are too afraid to ask directly and assumptively for what you want,
you transfer that fear to your stakeholders and create resistance where
it didn’t previously exist. In a weird paradox, when you are more
passive, out of concern that being too “pushy” will turn your
stakeholders off, you instead cause them to become resistant to
your request.
Jeffrey Gitomer says that “the assumptive position is the strongest
selling strategy in the world.” Ultra-high performers (UHPs) use the
assumptive ask because it increases win probability.
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Figure 26.1
To reduce resistance and get what you want, you must ask
confidently, concisely, and assertively, with no hesitation. There are
three keys to asking (see Figure 26.1):
1. Ask with confidence and assume you will get what you want.
2. Shut up.
3. Be prepared to deal with objections.
Ultra-high performers with high Sales EQ believe they are going
to win and are supposed to win. This mind-set of positive expectation
manifests itself in their outward body language, voice inflection and
tone, and words. Average salespeople assume they’ll get no. UHPs
assume they’ll get yes. They exude confidence. That confidence
transfers to stakeholders, compelling them to comply.
Whether on the phone or in person, the words you use and how
you structure those words broadcasts loud and clear that you either
assume you will get a yes or assume you’ll get a no.
Nonassumptive, Passive,
and Weak
“I’m just checking in.”
“I was wondering (hoping)
if . . . ?”
“I have the whole day open.”
Assumptive and Confident
“The reason I’m calling is . . .”
“Tell me who—how—when—
where—what . . .”
“I’m super busy bringing on new
clients, but I do have a slot
available at 11:00 AM.”
(continued)
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Sales EQ
(continued )
“How does that sound?”
“What’s the best time for you?”
“I kinda, sorta, was wondering if
maybe you have time to answer
a few questions, if that would
be okay?”
“Would this be a good time for
you?”
“I wanted to find out . . .”
“How do you feel about this so
far?”
“What do you think?”
“How many seats were you
thinking?”
“Why don’t we go ahead and get
the first delivery set for next
Monday?”
“I’ll be visiting a client not far from
your office on Monday. I can
pick you up for lunch.”
“A lot of my customers are telling
me that they’re having problems
with XYZ. What do you feel is
your biggest challenge?”
“How about we meet again next
Thursday at 2:00 PM?”
“Who else do we need to include?”
“Based on everything you’ve told
me about your current situation,
I think it makes sense for us to go
ahead and get a demo set up for
next Wednesday. Who on your
team should we invite?”
“I’m just going to need your
signature on the agreement to
get the implementation process
started.”
“I recommend getting started with
our 20-seat bundle. I’ll just need
the e-mail addresses of each person
on your team to get it set up.”
Stakeholders are subconsciously assessing whether your words,
voice tone, and body language are congruent. When they are not,
stakeholders don’t trust you, and they put up resistance.
Shut Up
The hardest part of asking is learning to ask and then shut up. When
you’ve asked for what you want, you’ve put it all out there and left
yourself vulnerable to rejection. And what happens when you feel
vulnerable? Fight or flight—you get ready to protect yourself.
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In that awkward moment after you ask, your head spins as rejection
flashes before your eyes. The split second of silence is unbearable. It
feels like an eternity.
Despite the alarm bells going off in your adrenaline-soaked mind,
you must shut up and give your stakeholder room to answer.
Don’t attempt to overcome imagined objections, don’t over­
explain, don’t give your stakeholder a way out. Don’t talk past the
ask and thereby convince the stakeholder who was ready to say yes to
say no because of you!
Yes, there will be some no’s and maybes, but you’ll be surprised at
how often your confident silence produces a yes.
No Surprises
My dad is considered by many of his peers to be one of the top
trial lawyers in the United States. During the summers when I
was growing up, he would often take me to court with him.
While watching my dad in court I took away a technique that
today, is an essential step in my sales process.
In court, when presenting or selling their cases to the
jury, attorneys never ask questions for which they don’t
already know the answers. In other words, by the time they
get to court (despite what you see on TV), there are no
surprises.
They make their cases to juries systematically using evidence
and witnesses that have been vetted through pretrial discovery
and depositions.
Learning this lesson as a kid paid off for me later as a sales
professional. As I applied the pretrial discovery process to selling,
I found that I closed more deals, negotiated better terms and
conditions, and developed stronger relationships. And I was
almost never dealt surprises during presentations or closing
(continued )
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(continued )
meetings, because I added one small but powerful step to my sales
process.
The Confirmation Step
The confirmation step comes after discovery and before your
presentation or demo. You schedule a short meeting by phone or
in person with your stakeholders to confirm and verify the
priorities, problems, pain, and opportunities you uncovered in
discovery.
During the confirmation step you allow your stakeholder to
correct any mistaken assumptions you’ve made, fill in any gaps,
and prioritize the issues that are most important to her. These
short conversations, normally no longer than 15 minutes, are set
up like this:
“Hi, Mandy. Thank you for taking so much time to help me
learn about you and your company. I can’t wait to show you my
recommendations at our meeting next week. Before I do that,
though, I want to be sure that I don’t waste your time with
unimportant things. Since I’ve uncovered a number of opportunities
to help you, I was wondering if I might review my assumptions with
you just to be sure I’m on track to help you get what you want.”
Mandy confirms my assumptions, prioritizes what’s impor­
tant to her, and tells me exactly what I need to do to close the
deal. My call demonstrates that I care about her needs and
concerns, demonstrates my commitment to excellence, and
gets me in front of her one more time before the presentation,
which further strengthens my relationship. I also know that none
of my competitors will take this extra step.
Following the confirmation step, I go into presentations and
demos with no surprises. I know exactly which solutions to
present, which problems to solve, and on which hot buttons to
focus my attention. I systematically make my case and wow my
audience with my knowledge and understanding of their unique
business issues.
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By the time I get around to signing the contract, closing the
business seems almost anticlimactic because closing wasn’t some­
thing I did or some cheesy technique I used; it was simply a result
of understanding clearly what was important to my stakeholders,
building an ironclad case for my solution, speaking their lan­
guage, and demonstrating that I understand them.
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Turning Around
Objections
No pressure, no diamonds.
—Thomas Carlyle
You’re at the end of the sales process. After advancing through a series
of micro-commitments, you’ve delivered a masterful presentation and
walked the buyer through the proposal. He agrees that your recom­
mendations to solve his problems will work. It feels like everything is a
go. You ask confidently for his business. Then . . .
“Well, I’m going to need to think about it.”
Ugh! What do you have to do to get this guy to act? You fantasize
about reaching across the table, grabbing him by his collar and
screaming, “Sign the damn contract!”
Instead you present a feeble rebuttal and walk away with a sliver of
hope and vague promise from the stakeholder to “call you sometime
next week.”
Objections suck.
258
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Seriously, think about how much better life would be in sales if,
when closing, buyers just smiled and said, “Your proposal sounds great!
Where do I sign?”
But that doesn’t happen. Instead you get hard questions, pushback,
negotiation, and objections, which trigger a flood of disruptive
emotions.
These emotions hit you like a ton of bricks the moment you get an
objection. You feel like you’ve been punched in the gut. Your brain
turns off and you stumble over your words. You feel embarrassed,
small, and out of control. Sometimes you freeze like a deer in the
headlights, paralyzed, unable to formulate any move at all.
Yet, it’s here, at this very inflection point of rejection and emotion,
that the rubber meets the road in sales. It’s the skill and poise to
effectively turn around objections that gets you to the next step, keeps
your deal advancing, and closes the sale.
How Salespeople Create Objections
There is no magic pill that makes dealing with objections easier. When
you’ve got a deal on the line, especially one that you have invested in
heavily, that moment when your prospect is hovering between yes and
no is excruciating and awful.
Life will be much easier, though, if you avoid creating resistance
and objections in the first place. Salespeople create objections and
resistance to change because they:
■
■
■
Lack confidence when asking and don’t assume they will get what
they want. Since people respond in kind, when you are weak and
passive, the probability that your prospect will respond with an
objection like “Let me think about it” is high.
Fail to build a case for change. Rather than doing deep discovery,
asking questions, and offering unique and personalized recom­
mendations, they regurgitate generic marketing collateral and
hand over a price sheet.
Assume they know what their stakeholder wants and in doing so
miss emotional cues and focus on the wrong issues. People buy for
their reasons, not yours.
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■
■
■
■
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Fail to understand the BASIC map and are engaged with a person
who is unable to make a buying decision.
Fail to qualify properly and are working with a low-probability
prospect that is not in the buying window and due to timing,
budget constraints, or contractual obligations does not have the
ability to buy.
Fail to align the sales process with the buying process and are
closing too soon or too late.
Are guilty of shallow discovery, winging it, and taking shortcuts.
The most effective ways to eliminate resistance and objections is to
follow the sales process and avoid skipping steps and asking directly
and confidently for what you want. An assumptive, confident ask will
break through potential objections where nothing else will.
Status Quo Bias and Why Buyers Object
Stakeholders throw objections at you because they:
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Are afraid of the transition from one vendor to another and the
disruption this might cause for the business and the pain for
themselves.
Feel doing business with you is too risky for themselves or their
organization.
Hate conflict and are uncomfortable firing their current vendor in
order to do business with you.
Don’t trust you.
Did not buy into your recommendation(s).
Have legitimate questions about your proposal.
Are afraid of or uncomfortable with change—they are wedded to
the status quo, no matter how dysfunctional.
Here’s a blinding flash of the obvious: humans don’t like change.
We actively work to avoid change. We stick to our routines and
favorites. We live by the heuristic “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And
God forbid, when someone even suggests that a change might be made,
we become anxious, cynical, and rebellious—even if that change is in
our favor.
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There is always the underlying fear that a choice to change will be
the inferior choice or will make things worse.
This status quo bias is the number-one reason stakeholders throw
out objections and deals stall in the late stages of the sales process, ending
in “no” decisions.
In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the father of
heuristic and cognitive bias research, writes:
Organisms that placed more urgency on avoiding threats than they
did maximizing opportunities were more likely to pass on their genes.
So, over time, the prospect of losses has become a more powerful
motivator on your behavior than the promise of gains.1
This safety bias causes your brain to be more aware of bad things
(what could go wrong) than good things (what could go right). In
evolutionary terms, you might miss the opportunity for a good thing
such as a free lunch. But, if you are not paying attention to danger in
your environment, you could end up being lunch—a very bad thing.
As humans, we tend to be attracted to safe choices and safe
environments. Salespeople, as a rule, are not perceived as safe. You
pose a threat. Now, hitch the safety bias to the status quo bias and you
have a formidable emotional wall between you and the stakeholder you
are attempting to influence to make a change.
These pernicious cognitive biases, working in concert, cause your
stakeholders’ subconscious to magnify every flaw, every risk, and every
concern about you and your proposition. They feel uncertain, unsure,
and afraid. Therefore, they choose staying put, doing nothing (the
status quo) over change. Even in untenable situations in which change
is necessary for survival, people will cling to the status quo: “Better the
devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
It’s maddening for salespeople who lead thirsty horses to water but
come push, shove, and cajoling cannot make them drink. For sales­
people, despite all the concern about the competition, the status quo is
and will always be their most formidable adversary.
In a world driven by relentless, disruptive change, for the riskaverse the status quo is king. Whether you are trying to persuade others
to accept new ideas, influence a prospect to change vendors, coax a
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customer to purchase a new product, appeal to a company to adopt a
new system, challenge a team of stakeholders to accept a new process,
or just get to the next step, the greater emotional pull, no matter how
illogical, will always bend back toward the status quo.
Average salespeople respond by fighting back. They default to
pushing their stakeholders to accept change—attempting to argue them
into believing that their fears are unfounded. In doing so, average
salespeople confirm the stakeholder’s negative stereotype of salespeople
and trigger the safety bias. To avoid the discomfort of this confronta­
tion, the stakeholder disappears.
Ultra-high performers (UHPs) help stakeholders move past their
status quo bias by helping them acclimate to change though priming
and micro-commitments.
An example of the priming process is introducing the stakeholder
to the next-step ask during the sales call agenda rather than surprising
them at the end of the call. Priming change is also accomplished during
discovery through questions that allow the stakeholder to talk about a
desired future state.
A series of micro-commitments prepare stakeholders for change.
Micro-commitments are just that, small, easy-to-consume steps. As
stakeholders get used to small changes, it becomes easier for them to
make big changes.
Trust, however, is the one emotion that breaks the gravitational
force of the status quo. Although few decisions are completely risk free,
trust plays a key role in reducing fear and minimizing risk for stake­
holders. The more they trust you, the higher the probability they will
comply with your requests, accept your ideas, and buy from you.
But if you have failed to build and nurture trust, you’ll run right
into the status quo wall. You may have checked every box. You may
have answered four of your stakeholder’s five most important questions
with a resounding yes!
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Do
Do
Do
Do
Do
I like you? Yes!
you listen to me? Yes!
you make me feel important? Yes!
you get me and my problems? Yes!
I trust you? No! (win probability zero)
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But it won’t matter unless you have trust. Trust, above all things,
trumps the status quo.
You Cannot Argue Stakeholders Out of an Objection
Traditionally, sales trainers have taught salespeople to “overcome
objections.” I often hear trainers use the phrase “combatting objec­
tions.” Overcome means to defeat or prevail over an opponent.2
Average salespeople attempt to argue stakeholders into changing
their minds—to prevail with debate. This is the reason stakeholders
often obfuscate, put up smoke screens, and lie. They expect when they
say no that they’ll face a battle and be disrespected.3
Overcoming doesn’t work. It has never worked. Even when
salespeople do manage to get prospects to say yes this way, it is in
spite of, not because of, debate that they prevailed. You cannot argue
your stakeholders into believing that they are wrong. The more you
push, the more they’ll dig their heels in and resist you.
The act of overcoming (or worse, combatting) creates animosity,
exasperation, and frustration for both the stakeholder, who gets
bulldozed with a pitch about why they are wrong, and the rep,
who creates even more resistance and harsher rejection with this
approach.
There is a better way. Ultra-high performers don’t view stake­
holders as adversaries. Rather than attempting to prevail in an argu­
ment, UHPs leverage the way the brain works to paint patterns, disrupt
the stakeholder’s expectations, turn them around, and pull them in.
Five-Step Objection Turnaround Framework
Everything you’ve learned in this book is designed to lower the
probability that you get objections. When you’ve aligned the three
processes of sales, mapped and managed the stakeholder array, advanced
your deal through the sales process one next step at a time, and
answered the five most important questions in the affirmative for
each stakeholder, closing the sale gets much easier.
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Figure 27.1 Five-Step Objection Turnaround Framework
When you’ve done everything right, most objections are either
legitimate questions that need to be answered or sincere negotiating that
is mistaken for an objection. For example, I love it when a stakeholder
says, “Jeb, we really want to do business with you but. . . .” This means
I’ve closed the deal. The stakeholder has made a commitment to me. All
we need to do is negotiate the “but.”
It’s important to remain alert for objections that are really buying
signals so that you don’t walk on them.
Ultra-high performers leverage the Five-Step Objection Turn­
around Framework (Figure 27.1). When responding to questions,
objections, and attempts to negotiate, this framework serves to help
them manage disruptive emotions, isolate the real issue, and work
through it with their stakeholder without doing harm.
Relate
This step, much like the ledge we use when dealing with reflex
responses and brush-offs to next-step responses, serves the purpose
of giving your rational brain time to catch up and gain control of the
disruptive emotions generated by rejection.
Buyer:
You:
“Your prices are high compared to your competitors.”
“I get how you might feel that way. They sometimes do seem a
little higher than our competitors, and no one wants to pay more
than they should.”
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The key is to simply relate to stakeholders, like a human—to get on
their side and demonstrate that you get them. This disrupts their
expectation that you will argue with them—pulling them toward
you rather than pushing them away. Relating also gives your rational
brain a chance to catch up and gain control of the disruptive emotions
that were triggered by the perceived rejection.
Clarify and Isolate
To effectively deal with an objection, you must ensure that you are
addressing the right objection and that you and your stakeholder are on
the same page. If you aren’t speaking the same language or addressing
the right issue, you’ll end up going in circles or mistaking a buying or
negotiating signal for an objection.
“I’m just curious. When you say our prices are too high, from
your standpoint what does that mean?”
Buyer: “It’s the monthly rate. You are 10 percent higher than what we
are paying now.”
You:
Stakeholders are not always clear or straightforward with objec­
tions. At times, they are confused. In some cases, they want to avoid the
pain of conflict so they throw out an objection they feel will shut you
down and end the conversation quickly (this is a common occurrence
with the consensus builder style type).
Never, ever assume you know what your stakeholder means.
Always clarify. Then isolate the objection.
Average salespeople have the bad habit of pouncing on the first
objection they get. Unaware that there are multiple concerns, they
wear themselves out getting past the first objection on the table, only to
be blindsided by yet another objection.
UHPs always stop and check before moving on to be sure there is
nothing else hiding in the weeds.
You:
“Okay, got it. Other than that, is anything else bothering you
about our proposal?”
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Buyer: “That’s it. I’m going to have a hard time justifying the increase in
monthly rate to my boss.”
Sometimes when you isolate you’ll find that the first objection was
just smoke. Isolating reveals the true and pressing concern.
You:
Buyer:
“Okay, got it. Other than that, is anything else bothering you
about our proposal?”
“I just heard from our current vendor that we are facing a
significant cost to make a change. Your cost is already more than
what we are paying with them, and I’m not sure I can justify to
my boss why making a change is worth it.”
Minimize
You cannot argue other people into believing that they are wrong. But
this is exactly what many salespeople do. They view the buyer as an
adversary who must defeated or beaten down to win. This tactic rarely
works and when it does buyers often renege on their commitment once
they’ve had time to reflect on what happened.
The real key to turning around the objection is to minimize your
stakeholder’s concern or fear of change. Humans hate change, which is
why the status quo has such a powerful gravitational pull.
You have a powerful influence lever on your side, though, called
cognitive dissonance. Throughout the sales process, you’ve asked for
and your stakeholder has committed to a series of micro-commitments.
If you did your job in discovery, you created awareness of the need
to change and helped your stakeholder articulate the reasons for
change. When you bridged your solutions to the problems, the
stakeholder agreed with your recommendations and solutions. Along
the way, you’ve collected a pocket full of yeses.
Each time your stakeholder made a new micro-commitment, each
time you asked, “Do you feel this will work for you?” and he said yes, at
the subconscious level he moved into that future state. Yet at the point
of decision he wavers, torn between his desired future state and the
perceived safety of the status quo.
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To you the decision is rational and obvious, but he is lost in an
emotional haze. If you argue, you push him toward the status quo and
you lose the deal. Instead, you must minimize his fears, accentuate the
benefits of change, and allow the pain of dissonance to shake him from
his comfort zone.
You:
Buyer:
You:
Buyer:
You:
Buyer:
You:
Buyer:
“When we were discussing the service issues you were having
with your current vendor, you said that those issues are costing
you around $1,100 a month in lost wages and around $4,200 a
month in missed sales. Did I get those numbers right?”
“Yep, that sounds about right.”
“You said you felt that the plan I recommended would make it
easier for your service team to take care of customer issues which
would improve customer retention.” [Pause to allow the buyer
to fill in the silence.]
“I like the plan, and I do think it will work for us. I’m just
concerned about the price of putting it into motion.”
“I remember that you said your boss was riding you over the lost
sales and that was her most pressing issue, which is why you
agreed to meet with me in the first place. Streamlining the
clumsy process and the hoops your customers are forced to jump
through just to make a small purchase will fix the issue imme­
diately. That should make Angela happy, right?”
“That’s why we need to make this change. If we fix the sales
problem, she’ll be thrilled.”
“When I do the math, you are losing $63,600 a year by sticking
with your current vendor. Of course, you are right—working
with us does mean you need to build a little bit more into your
monthly budget.
“However, once we implement our program and we elim­
inate the lost sales and payroll costs, you’ll save $34,800 a year.
Essentially, making the move is putting money in your pocket.
“Even with the $10,000 your current vendor says it will cost
you to make the change, and I believe we can negotiate that
down, you get an ROI of almost $25,000 in the first year.
“I’d say with the improved customer retention, increased
sales, and better experience for your employees you’ve got a
good case for making the change.”
“Ah, I hadn’t looked at it that way.”
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As you gently remind your stakeholder of what he has already
committed to, he feels a subconscious tug to remain consistent with
those commitments. To do otherwise creates painful cognitive disso­
nance. This, in turn, makes it easier to break the pattern of status quo.
Ask
Once you’ve minimized your stakeholder’s objection, you must confi­
dently and assumptively ask again.
You:
Buyer:
“Based on these numbers, it doesn’t make sense to wait, so why
don’t we go ahead and get this started?”
“I agree. What are our next steps?”
If you wait for your stakeholder to do the job for you, the status
quo will come crawling back in and you’ll end up with another “I want
to think about it.” Ask directly and assumptively for a commitment
once you’ve minimized your stakeholder’s concern.
Fall Back
Even though you’ve covered everything, you may still get a no. It is
important that you avoid a pitched battle and that you walk away with
an alternate commitment. By maintaining forward momentum, you
avoid a stall.
Buyer:
You:
Buyer:
“It sounds good, and I think we are almost there. But I need to
go over the math one more time before we make this big of a
commitment. Give me a week or so and I’ll get back to you.”
“I’m going to be back over this way next Thursday. Why don’t
we get together at 11 AM and make a thumbs-up or thumbsdown decision then?”
“Sounds good.”
If you end up with a vague “We need to talk this over—how about
you give us a call late next week?” there is a high probability that your
deal will stall and die.
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You must get something. Be prepared with a fallback request. The
request might be for:
■
■
■
■
■
■
Scheduled meeting
Beginning the implementation process
Additional demo
Pilot
Smaller purchase
Alternate product or package
It helps to have your fallback position planned prior to your closing
call. In fact, it’s a good idea to practice and role-play all the potential
objections you may get, in advance.
Practice the worst-case scenarios—a great activity for the murder
board. Put every potential objection and response on the table and
work through the five-step process until you handle them all with ease.
I’ve found that practice helps build obstacle immunity, prepares
you to manage disruptive emotions, and makes it far easier to think on
your feet, in the moment. You will also find that when you plan and
practice in advance, the actual objections you get at closing are far tamer
than what you initially expected.
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28
Do I Trust and
Believe You?
When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.
—Stephen R. Covey
Despite the perception that salespeople will say or do anything to get
the deal, I rarely meet salespeople who harbor ill intentions. Most sales
professionals
■
■
■
■
Do the right thing,
Keep their promises,
Tell the truth, and
Believe in what they are selling.
The trap average salespeople fall into is the false belief that good
intentions are enough. Stakeholders are not judging your trustworthi­
ness based on your intentions. Instead they judge you based on their
own intentions.
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Stakeholders are scrutinizing you. They are looking for congru­
ency in your words, nonverbal communication, and actions. Listening,
demonstrating confidence, keeping promises, showing up to meetings
on time, being prepared, meeting deadlines, following up, following
through, keeping sales material pristine, managing your message, and so
on connect words, intent, and actions.
In our hypercompetitive global market place, dominated by
disruptive change, buying a new product or service or switching
vendors carries real risk for stakeholders. Today, organizations have
very little patience for failure and the penalty for making mistakes is
severe.
When stakeholders rely on you to deliver on promises, they put
themselves in a vulnerable position. Buying from you can mean putting
their reputation or career on the line. Likewise, in high-end business­
to-consumer (B2C) sales, customers may be putting their family
finances and reputation with their spouse or other family members
at risk. Should you fail to perform, the impact on their business,
company, career, or family could be extreme.
In this stress-filled atmosphere you’d think that stakeholders would
rely strictly on empirical evidence and data when choosing vendors;
that they would act in their best interest, putting emotions aside and
doing only what is most logical. But we know this is not how people
make decisions.
Humans almost always act on emotion first and subsequently justify
those actions with logic. This by the way, is why making no change—
sticking with the status quo—is often the emotionally safe choice, even
when staying put is illogical or even dysfunctional.
Emotional Baggage
According to a recent Associated Press/GfK poll that asked, “Can most
people be trusted?” 70 percent of the U.S. population believes that
most people can’t be trusted.1 Imagine the response if the question were
changed to, “Can most salespeople be trusted?”
Stakeholders bring into sales conversations the emotional baggage
accumulated over a lifetime of dealing with salespeople. Those
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experiences are amplified by the negative perceptions about salespeople
that have been drilled into them through movies, TV, stereotypes, and
the media. They are suspicious of your motivations from the get-go.
Most stakeholders, though, given enough consistent evidence that
you’ll listen, care, seek to understand, keep your word, and do the right
thing will trust you. The paradox of vulnerability is that deep inside we
want to trust others. Distrust creates painful dissonance. Suspicion and
skepticism are uncomfortable feelings. Trust is stability—a state of well­
being and equilibrium we seek.
Stephen R. Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,
compares the process of building trust to making deposits in an
“emotional bank account.” Using this metaphor, Covey explains
that you build trust by making regular deposits (consistent evidence
that you are trustworthy) in another person’s emotional bank account.
As you make deposits, like listening, being prepared for meetings,
keeping commitments, and delivering on promises, the balance in the
trust account grows. When you fail to honor commitments, renege on
promises, make the other person feel unimportant or unappreciated,
behave in an unlikable or inconsistent way, you make withdrawals.
As with any bank account, when you make too many withdrawals
and allow your account balance to become overdrawn, there are
penalties. You lose trust, placing the relationship and deal in jeopardy.
You Are Always on Stage
Imagine standing on a stage in an auditorium. In the audience are your
stakeholders, clients, your boss, and your peers. Every behavior is being
watched. You are being observed to see if your actions are congruent
with your words.
Perhaps you are polite to some people, but not others. Perhaps you
become agitated at a minor inconvenience. Maybe you were late to a
meeting and did not call in advance. Could be you didn’t return an
e-mail or voice mail in a timely manner.
You may have missed a key piece of information in discovery
because you weren’t paying attention. Maybe your presentation
material or samples were not in pristine condition. You weren’t
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273
prepared for the demo. Your business card had coffee stains on it. You
told a little white lie and got caught.
Judgments are being made about how much to trust you. In sales
you are always on stage, and it is essential that you control the behaviors
you allow others to observe. You must exert a tremendous amount of
self-control and discipline to manage every behavior, promise, and
action while in front of stakeholders.
Failure to return phone calls, disorganization, spelling and gram­
matical errors on written documents, being unprepared for meetings,
inaccurate facts, inconsiderate behavior, distracted listening, and failure
to follow up, all seem very small. However, the human brain gravitates
toward the negative.
Negative messages, thoughts, and images grab and hold our
attention. We are attuned to what’s wrong about someone rather
than what is right. Over time, these small negative perceptions add up,
building the case that you cannot be trusted.
When it comes to trust, little things make a big difference.
Although there are situations in which one big lapse in judgment
injures trust to such an extent that there is no going back, these events
are rare. Losing trust is more often the culmination of many small
breaches that weaken or destroy the foundation of trust.
One Brick at a Time
You are not entitled to trust, you must earn it with consistent and
ongoing evidence that you are trustworthy. This is where our journey
loops full circle back to the alignment of the three processes of sales.
You can’t show up day one and start challenging stakeholders,
telling them what they are doing or getting wrong. You can’t expect to
walk in the door or jump on a call, throw insight and information at
stakeholders and expect that they will believe you or view you as an
expert. You must earn that right.
You’ll never enter the buying process in the late stages, skipping
the crucial Connecting and Discovery steps and build an adequate
foundation of trust on which to challenge the status quo and close the
sale. It doesn’t work this way.
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Building trust is a step by step process. Every action, decision, and
behavior links to and directly affects trust—positively or negatively. It is
part of the seller and stakeholder emotional journey within the evershifting corridors of the sales, buying, and decision processes. Trust
cannot be rushed. You must patiently lay the foundation, one brick at a
time.
In sales, trust is everything. Without trust relationships collapse and
win probabilities crash. Without trust stakeholders erect emotional
walls, discovery is shallow, next steps are denied, objections become
immovable obstacles, and deals stall. Without trust, you have nothing.
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29
Amache
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost
One of my great mentors taught me that when you are at a crossroads
and have difficult decisions to make about how to spend your time or
which path to take, you should choose the thing you will remember
most. This advice—choosing the path you will remember—has in
many ways shaped my life and become my mantra.
It was this mantra that caused me to stop and consider turning onto
a one-lane dirt road, late on a blazing hot summer afternoon, deep in
the middle of nowhere in eastern Colorado.
The dirt road stretched as far as I could see. Along the left side was a
long line of cottonwood trees. To my right was an old wooden sign,
275
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covered in vines, that just a few minutes before, caught my eye.
Carved into the sign was the word AMACHE.
I took my foot off the brake and the car slowly rolled forward. As it
picked up speed, a dust plume rose behind me, obscuring everything in
my rearview mirror.
It seemed like I’d been driving forever when the road abruptly
came to a dead end. As I stepped out of the car and surveyed my
surroundings, there was no evidence of what had happened on that spot
more than 70 years earlier. Except for a small, tin-roofed pavilion that
housed historical signs and placards, there was nothing—no other cars,
no other people, only silence.
I walked over to the pavilion, started reading the markers, and
immediately became engrossed in the story of Amache—so engrossed
that I didn’t hear the car pull up next to mine, didn’t hear the person
walk up behind me, and was startled by the frail voice that said, “I was
here.”
I turned around to find an old Japanese man leaning on a cane.
“Excuse me,” I muttered.
“I was here,” he said again.
“Here?” I responded, pointing at the ground.
He nodded, “Yes. I was brought here as a child.” He explained
how he and his family had been ripped from their home in Southern
California, put on a train, and shipped to the Japanese internment camp,
Amache, during the early part of World War II.
Standing before me was living, breathing history, and again I was
faced with a decision: whether to focus on my reading or give my
attention to a stranger. I made the choice to get to know the stranger.
This was the first time he’d returned to Amache. His children had
pushed him to take the trip, and he’d driven himself all the way from
Los Angeles.
Even though there was nothing left of the camp, he walked me
along the worn pathways in the scrub brush and drew a vivid picture of
what Amache was like when he was there. He talked, we walked, and I
listened.
I asked him if he and his family were bitter and angry at their own
country for betraying them in such a horrible way. He said, “We were
angry but not bitter. We never talked about it like that. Instead, we used
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the experience as motivation to raise ourselves up and become as
successful in America as we could.”
They’d lost everything. Starting from scratch, they had to build
their lives all over again after the war while being treated as third-class
citizens and enduring prejudice, racism, and hate.
“But,” in his words, “we took advantage of our opportunities and
that’s how we got even.” He’d built a successful business that became
the foundation for his children’s success. Three were doctors, one a
dentist, and the other a successful entrepreneur.
After an hour or so, our conversation came to a natural stopping
point—that awkward place where two strangers, who’d become instant
friends but would likely never see each other again, had to say good­
bye.
I thanked him for spending so much time teaching me about
Amache. I reached out to shake his hand but instead of taking my hand,
he wrapped his arms around me and gave me a hug. Tears were
trickling down his face as he thanked me again and again for listening to
his story.
The experience proved to me, once again, the power of listening.
When you listen to other people, it creates deep emotional connections
because it makes them feel significant and important. You should never
forget, when working with others, that no one ever complains about
people who listen.
The mother of listening and human connections is empathy.
Empathy is the meta-skill of the twenty-first century. When you
master empathy, you master human relationships. You stand out.
You gain a competitive edge. Empathy pulls people toward you,
compels them to help you, and opens the gateway to influence.
I want you to remember Maya Angelou’s words: “I’ve learned that
people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but
people will never forget how you made them feel.”
As I left Amache and turned back onto the paved road, it hit me
how profound the experience had been. I felt so fortunate to have had
such a rare opportunity to walk through history with someone who
participated in it.
The conversation with the old Japanese man inspired me to
learn more. A year later I found myself in Japan at Hiroshima and
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Nagasaki on a personal quest to understand the war in the Pacific and
how it led to the decision to lock up American citizens in camps like
Amache.
But what kept coming back to me again and again on my walk
through history was the old man’s spirit of gratitude. This, I believe, is
the greater lesson from Amache: that we are not defined by what
happens to us but rather by how we respond to what happens to us.
Everyone faces adversity. It is inescapable and often unexpected.
You can choose to believe that the world is conspiring against you or
you can be grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow.
Grateful people feel both blessed to have been given opportunities
and tasked with a deep responsibility to squeeze everything possible
from those opportunities. Bitterness, cynicism, and entitlement cannot
grow where gratitude is present.
What I’ve learned from traveling the world and meeting incredibly
successful people from every walk of life is that gratitude is the secret
sauce of success and happiness.
The key to cultivating gratitude is simple and free. You must
practice and be intentional about being thankful.
I spend a lot of my time with ultra-high performers. It’s one of the
benefits of being a professional speaker. UHPs are a blast to hang out
with. They’re fun and uplifting, make a ton of money, view the world
around them through a lens of infinite possibility, and are unmistakably
grateful.
Gratitude is the cornerstone of a winning mind-set and the spark
that ignites self-motivation. It is an appreciation for what you have,
what you have been given, your opportunities, lessons learned
through failure and adversity, and the help others have given you
along the way.
Gratitude is associated with increased levels of energy, optimism,
motivation, happiness, and empathy, all of which are keys to develop­
ing a high Sales EQ.
In his book A Whole New Mind (Riverhead, 2005), Daniel Pink
makes the case that people who master empathy and interpersonal skills
will have the competitive and economic edge in the coming decades. In
the age of bots and artificial intelligence, emotional intelligence is at a
premium.
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279
Sales professionals who invest in and focus on developing Sales EQ
will dominate the profession. When you raise your Sales EQ, you rise
above the old paradigms that hold average salespeople back.
Go look in the mirror. That person you see staring back at you is
the real key to ultra-high sales performance. You control your destiny.
The only question you must answer is: How badly do you want it?
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Chapter 2: A Perfect Sales Storm
1. www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2015/07/15/why-millennials-are
-texting-more-and-talking-less/#1ac963ef5576.
Chapter 3: The Irrational Buyer
1. Lisa Trei, “Baba Shiv: How a Wine’s Price Tag Affect Its Taste,”
Stanford Graduate School of Business, https://www.gsb.stanford
.edu/insights/baba-shiv-how-wines-price-tag-affect-its-taste.
2. Adam L. Alter and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, “Predicting Short-Term
Stock Fluctuations by Using Processing Fluency,” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 103, no. 24 (2006), www.pnas.org/
content/103/24/9369.short.
3. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/subliminal/201205/why
-people-choose-coke-over-pepsi.
4. Daniel Pink, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others
(New York: Riverhead, 2013).
Chapter 4: Pattern Painting, Cognitive Biases,
and Heuristics
1. www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/cognitive-load.html.
2. Dr. Mark P. Mattson, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC41
41622/.
3. https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/heuristic.
281
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282
Notes
4. “Heuristics in Judgment and Decision-Making,” https://en.wikipedia
.org/wiki/Heuristics_in_judgment_and_decision-making.
5. Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human
Brain (New York: Putnam, 1994; rev. ed., Penguin, 2005).
6. Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1962).
Chapter 5: The Four Levels of Sales Intelligence
1. Thomas Baumgartner, Homayoun Hatami, and Maria Valdivieso,
“Why Salespeople Need to Develop Machine Intelligence,” Harvard
Business Review, June 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/06/why-sales
people-need-to-develop-machine-intelligence.
Chapter 6: Shaping Win Probability
1. Jeb Blount, Fanatical Prospecting (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,
2016).
Chapter 8: Empathy
1. www.quotes.net/quote/14905.
2. There are people who are incapable of empathy due to psychological
disorders, brain injuries, or neurological dysfunction. Since these
individuals rarely if ever work in sales, I feel comfortable making
this generalization about the sales profession.
3. Marc R. Hamer, Personality Characteristics and Superior Sales Performance
(Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest/UMI, 2001), PhD dissertation, Publica­
tion #3015797.
Chapter 9: Self-Awareness
1. “You Are Less Beautiful Than You Think,” https://www.scientific
american.com/article/you-are-less-beautiful-than-you-think.
2. Bill George, “Know Thyself: How to Develop Self-Awareness,”
Psychology Today, September 29, 2015, https://www.psychology
today.com/blog/what-is-your-true-north/201509/know-thyself
-how-develop-self-awareness.
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Chapter 10: Sales Drive
1. Drilling for Drive, August 2007, https://salesdrive.info/drilling-for
-drive.
2. H. A. Murray, Explorations in Personality (New York: Oxford Uni­
versity Press, 1938).
3. Christopher Croner and Richard Abraham, Never Hire a Bad Sales­
person Again: Selecting Candidates Who Are Absolutely Driven to Succeed
(Richard Abraham Company, 2006).
4. “Mental Toughness Profiles and Their Relations with Achievement,
Goals and Sport Motivation in Adolescent Australian Footballers,”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pibmed/20391082.
5. A. L. Duckworth, C. Peterson, M. D. Matthews, and D. R. Kelly,
“Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals,” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 92, no. 6 (2007): 1087–1101.
6. Aviroop Biswas, Paul I. Oh, Guy E. Faulkner, Ravi R. Bajaj, Michael
A. Silver, Marc S. Mitchell, and David A. Alter, “Sedentary Time and
Its Association with Risk for Disease Incidence, Mortality, and
Hospitalization in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,”
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2091327.
7. Bonnie Berkowitz and Patterson Clark, “The Health Hazards of
Sitting,” Washington Post, January 20, 2014, www.washingtonpost
.com/wp-srv/special/health/sitting/Sitting.pdf.
8. “Physical Activity Guidelines,” U.S. Health and Human Services,
www.health.gov/paguidelines.
9. Ariana Huffington, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One
Night at a Time (New York: Harmony, 2016).
10. Harvard Medical School, “Consequences of Insufficient Sleep,”
http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences.
11. “Recipe for a Great Night’s Sleep,” https://www.fastcompany.com
/3060801/your-most-productive-self/heres-arianna-huffingtons
-recipe-for-a-great-night-of-sleep.
12. James E. Loehr, “Mental Toughness Training for Sports: Achieving
Athletic Excellence,” Plume, September 1, 1991.
Chapter 11: Self-Control
1. Jeb Blount, Fanatical Prospecting (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,
2016).
2. Heidi Grant Halvorson and David Rock, “Beyond Bias,” Strategy+
Business, www.strategy-business.com/article/00345.
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3. Sarah Lichtenstein, Baruch Fischoff, and Lawrence D. Phillips, “Cali­
bration of Probabilities: The State of the Art to 1980,” in Daniel
Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, Judgment under Uncer­
tainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge University Press, 1982),
306–334.
4. L. Ross, “The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions
in the Attribution Process,” in L. Berkowitz, Advances in Experimental
Social Psychology 10 (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 173–220.
5. “Why We Don’t Give Each Other a Break,” https://www
.psychologytoday.com/blog/real-men-dont-write-blogs/201406/why
-we-dont-give-each-other-break.
6. “The Self-Serving Bias—Definition, Research, and Antidotes,”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-practice/201301/the
-self-serving-bias-definition-research-and-antidotes.
7. R. F. Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer, and Kathleen
D. Vohs, “Bad Is Stronger Than Good,” Review of General Psychology
5, no. 4 (2001): 323–370, doi:10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323.
8. “The Many Sides of Optimism,” http://positivepsychology.org.uk/
pp-theory/optimism/97-the-many-sides-of-optimism.html.
9. James A. Shepperd, Patrick Carroll, Jodi Grace, and Meredith Terry.
“Exploring the Causes of Comparative Optimism,” Psychologica Belgica
42 (2002): 65–98. CiteSeerX: 10.1.1.507.9932.
10. Don A. Moore and Paul J. Healy, “The Trouble with Overconfi­
dence,” Psychological Review 115, no. 2 (2008): 502–517. doi:10.1037/
0033-295X.115.2.502.
11. Kathleen P. Bauman and Glenn Geher, “We Think You Agree: The
Detrimental Impact of the False Consensus Effect on Behavior,”
Current Psychology 21, no. 4 (2002): 293–318. doi:10.1007/s12144­
002-1020-0.
12. Marie Vandekerckhove, Christian von Scheve, Sven Ismer, Susanne
Jung, and Stefanie Kronast, eds., Regulating Emotions: Culture, Social
Necessity, and Biological Inheritance (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,
2008).
13. Scott G. Halford, Activate Your Brain: How Understanding Your Brain
Can Improve Your Work—And Your Life (Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book
Group Press, 2015).
14. www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/sports/olympics/olympians-use
-imagery-as-mental-training.html?_r=0.
15. www.sportpsychologytoday.com/sport-psychology-for-coaches/the
-power-of-visualization.
16. http://jamesclear.com/body-language-how-to-be-confident.
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17. http://lifehacker.com/the-science-behind-posture-and-how-it
-affects-your-brai-1463291618.
18. https://youtu.be/Ks-_Mh1QhMc.
19. Tara Bennett-Goleman, Emotional Alchemy (New York: Harmony,
2001).
20. Daniel Goleman, Focus (New York: Harper Paperbacks, reprint
edition, 2015), p. 194.
Chapter 12: Shaping Win Probability Begins with
Qualification
1. Trish Bertuzzi, The Sales Development Playbook (Moore-Lake, 2016).
Chapter 18: Decision Process
1. www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/
the-moment-of-truth-in-customer-service.
2. http://returnonbehavior.com/2010/10/50-facts-about-customer
-experience-for-2011.
3. www.oracle.com/us/solutions/customer-experience/cx-sales-executive
-strategy-brief-1836487.pdf.
Chapter 21: Sales Call Agenda Framework
1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/priming.
2. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/
150/Red-Herring.
3. J. W. Brehm and S. S. Brehm, Psychological Reactance: A Theory of
Freedom and Control (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1981).
4. B. L. Quick and M. T. Stephenson, “Examining the Role of Trait
Reactance and Sensation Seeking on Perceived Threat, State Reac­
tance, and Reactance Restoration,” Human Communication Research 34
(2008), 448–476.
5. B. J. Bushman, “Effects of Warning and Information Labels on
Consumption of Full-Fat, Reduced-Fat, and No-Fat Products,”
Journal of Applied Psychology 83 (1998): 97–101.
6. Shirley Wang, “Contagious Behavior,” Association for Psychological
Science, https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/contagious
-behavior.
7. Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo, and Richard L. Rapson, Emotional
Contagion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
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Chapter 22: Do You Listen to Me?
1. Belinda Luscombe, “Why We Talk about Ourselves: The Brain Likes
It,” Time, May 8, 2012, http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/08/
why-we-overshare-the-brain-likes-it.
2. Diana I. Tamir and Jason P. Mitchell, “Disclosing Information about
the Self Is Intrinsically Rewarding,” Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences 109, no. 21 (May 22, 2012): 8038–8043, www.pnas.org/
content/109/21/8038.full.
Chapter 23: Discovery: Sales Is a Language of
Questions
1. www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/FRPubs/02-033N/ForeignMaterial
Detection&Control.pdf.
2. Neil Rackham, Spin Selling (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988).
3. Deb Calvert, DISCOVER Questions Get You Connected (Morgan Hill,
CA: Winston Keen James Publishing, 2012).
Chapter 24: Do You Make Me Feel Important?
1. R. I. M. Dunbar, Anna Marriott, and N. D. C. Duncan, “Human
Conversational Behavior,” Human Nature 8, no. 3 (September 1997),
231–246, www.medisch-fitness.com/documents/75procentdagelijks
egesprekkenbestedenweaanroddelen.pdf.
2. Mor Naaman, Jeffrey Boase, and Chih-Hui Lai, “Is It Really about
Me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams,” http://infolab
.stanford.edu/∼mor/research/naamanCSCW10.pdf.
3. “The Science of Bragging and Boasting,” WSJ.com, May 8, 2012,
www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405270230445110457739039232
9291890.
Chapter 25: Do You Get Me and My Problems?
1. Mark Pagel, “How Humans Evolved Language and Who Said What
First,” New Scientist, February 3, 2016, https://www.newscientist
.com/article/2075666-how-humans-evolved-language-and-who
-said-what-first/.
2. www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/why-humans-speak
-language-origins/396635.
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3. Mark Pagel, “How Language Transformed Humanity,” https://
www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_
humanity.
4. https://www.ted.com/talks/mark_pagel_how_language_transformed_
humanity/transcript.
Chapter 27: Turning Around Objections
1. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2011).
2. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/overcome.
3. Seth Godin, “Why Lie?” March 4, 2012, http://sethgodin.typepad
.com/seths_blog/2012/03/why-lie.html.
Chapter 28: Do I Trust and Believe You?
1. Connie Cass, “In God We Trust, Maybe, but Not Each Other,”
November 30, 2013, http://ap-gfkpoll.com/featured/our-latest-poll
-findings-24.
BLAST
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Training and
Workshops
Sales Gravy, Inc. offers a wide range of training programs and work­
shops for sales professionals, leaders, account executives, SDRs, BDRs,
customer service professionals, and channel partners. Our classroombased training programs, instructor-led remote courses, self-directed
online learning, and short workshops include:
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
■
Sales EQ
Fanatical Prospecting Bootcamp
Situational Coaching
Message Matters
Adaptive Negotiation
Rapid Negotiation Skills
Business Guidance Selling (cloud, SaaS, IoT)
Enterprise Sales Skills
Customer Experience Selling (B2C)
Adaptive Account Management
Customer EQ
Adaptive Partnering (channel management)
Adaptive Mentoring
All training programs are delivered by our professional, certified
trainers or may be licensed and delivered by your training organiza­
tion. We offer self-directed learning via the Sales Gravy University
Platform, instructor-led remote learning via virtual classroom, and
rich in-classroom learning experiences.
288
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Training media, educational design, and delivery methodology
connect with adult learning preferences and is responsive to multi­
generational learning styles. We employ an active learning process that
blends interactive instruction with experiential learning elements and
role-plays to create reference experiences that anchor key concepts and
make training stick.
For more information please contract us at training@salesgravy
.com, reach out to Brooke Coxwell at brooke.coxwell@salesgravy
.com, call 1-844-447-3737, or visit https://www.salesgravy.com.
BABOUT
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About the Author
Jeb Blount is the author of eight books and among the world’s most
respected thought leaders on sales, leadership, and customer experi­
ence. As a sales acceleration specialist he helps sales organizations reach
peak performance fast by optimizing talent, leveraging training to
cultivate a high-performance sales culture, developing leadership and
coaching skills, and applying more effective organizational design.
Jeb spends more than 200 days each year delivering keynote
speeches and training programs to high-performing sales teams and
leaders across the globe.
Through his global training organizations, including Sales Gravy,
Channel EQ, and Innovate Knowledge, Jeb advises many of the
world’s leading organizations and their executives on the impact of
emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills on customer-facing
activities, and delivers training to thousands of participants in both
public and private forums.
As a business leader, Jeb has more than 25 years of experience with
Fortune 500 companies, small and midsize businesses (SMBs), and start­
ups. He has been named one of the top 50 most influential sales and
marketing leaders (Top Sales Magazine), a Top 30 social selling influ­
encer (Forbes), a top 10 sales expert to follow on Twitter (Evan
Carmichael), a top 100 most innovative sales blogger (iSEEit), a top
20 must-read author—People Buy You—for entrepreneurs (YFS Maga­
zine and Huffington Post), one of the 20 highest-rated sales authors—
290
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291
Fanatical Prospecting—of all time (Hubspot), and the most downloaded
sales podcaster in iTunes history, among many other accolades.
His flagship website, https://www.salesgravy.com, is the most
visited sales-specific website on the planet.
He is the author of eight books, including: Fanatical Prospecting: The
Ultimate Guide for Starting Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by
Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, E-Mail, and Cold Calling (John
Wiley & Sons, 2015); People Love You: The Real Secret to Delivering a
Legendary Customer Experience (John Wiley & Sons, 2013); People Follow
You: The Real Secret to What Matters Most in Leadership (John Wiley &
Sons, 2011); People Buy You: The Real Secret to What Matters Most in
Business (John Wiley & Sons, 2010); Sales Guy’s 7 Rules for Outselling the
Recession (Macmillan, 2009); Business Expert Guide to Small Business
Success (Business Expert Publishing, 2009); and Power Principles (Palm
Tree Press, 2007).
Connect with Jeb on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
To schedule Jeb to speak at your next event, call 1-888-360-2249,
e-mail andy@salesgravy.com or carrie@salesgravy.com, or visit www
.jebblount.com. You may e-mail Jeb directly at jeb@salesgravy.com.
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Acknowledgments
In my life, nothing is possible without Carrie. One moment she’s
holding my hand at the doctor’s office because I’m a pathetic wimp, the
next moment she’s organizing book signings and being kind to fans,
then she’s making sure I show up where I’m supposed to with the
information I need to rock my next keynote. She runs everything in
our rapidly growing business and for some strange reason always knows
where my keys are. When we’re not working, I get to be her husband.
Infinite words could never express how grateful I am that God picked
me for you.
Thank you Liz, Pete, Lauren, and Lia for everything you have
done to make Sales EQ a reality. Thank you for your kind guidance and
for being so patient when I, like clockwork, blow through deadlines.
I’m grateful to you and the entire Wiley team for your investment
in me.
Andy Feldman, we are so blessed that God brought you into our
lives. You’ve made me and our business better and we are grateful for
everything you do.
Brooke and April, thank you for holding things together over the
past year while my focus was on this book. I dumped a lot on you both.
You are our rocks and without you there, I have no idea how this
project would have come to life.
Keith Lubner, you are an incredible business partner. Thank you
for your patience, guidance, and enthusiasm as we brought EQ to life.
292
BACK
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Acknowledgments
293
Anthony Iannarino, over the course of a hundred conversations
you helped me shape the core messages in Sales EQ. You are a friend
and mentor, and you inspire me to grow.
Mark Hunter and Mike Weinberg, I feel so fortunate that we’ve
become friends. Like Anthony, you each inspire me to reach higher,
work harder, and be my best. Thank you for all you have done for me. I
hope someday I’ll find a way to repay your kindness.
Chris Dods, I’m in debt to you for sparking my focus on the ultra­
high performer. As always, you emerge as my greatest and most
important mentor. With you, one question provokes awareness
that, more often than not, changes everything.
Bob Blackwell, your coaching, guidance, and techniques are on
every page of this book. Thank you.
A sincere thank you to the dozens of people who agreed to be
interviewed and lent me their stories. You played a crucial role in
building this book. Without you there would be no Sales EQ.
I especially want to thank the entire Penske team including Art,
Don, Rick, Jack, Bob, Matt, Jeff, Luke, Lori, Mandy, Nick, Zac & Greg
for your stories, guidance, patience, and support.
Finally, to the sales professionals, sales leaders, and executives from
across the globe who read my books, listen to my podcasts and audio
programs, watch my videos, and attend our training programs, thank
you for putting your trust in me. I love getting your e-mails and notes
on social media and I’m grateful to you for sharing your success stories
with me.
BMH, I will ride again.
BINDEX
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Index
Account executives (AEs), 104
Account management, 137
Achievement, need for, 65
Acquired intelligence (AQ), 29, 30,
31, 33
Action, micro-commitments and, 114
Adopt/Adapt/Adept technology
approach, 32–33
Adversity, 68, 278
AEs. See Account executives (AEs)
Affect heuristic, 243–244
Alignment, 137–138, 164–165
Amache story, 277
Amplifiers, BASIC and, 156
Amygdala, brain and, 22, 77, 80, 90,
242, 243, 246
Analyzer, stakeholder persona,
178–179
Angelou, Maya, 275–279
ANUM qualification methodology,
98
Appearance, first impressions, 172
Appointment setting, 55, 149
AQ. See Acquired intelligence (AQ)
Artificial intelligence (AI), 32, 278
Ash, Mary Kay, 231
Ask/asking, 60, 113, 120, 248–257,
268
afraid to ask, 122, 250–252
assumptive, 127, 186, 252–254
closing and, 249–250
sales process and, 136
shutting up after, 254–255
turnaround framework and, 123,
126
UHPs and, 157–158
Assessments, 53, 58
Associations, priming and, 188
Assumptive ask, 127, 186, 252–254
Attachment, 40, 79, 171
Attention control, 202
Attribution(s), 52
Attribution bias, 25
Attributions error, 81
Audience, 152–154, 272–273
Authority principle, 246
Availability heuristic, 240
Awareness. See Self-awareness
B2B/B2C processes, 42, 236, 237, 271
Bakery tour, discovery and, 209–210
BANT qualification methodology, 98
Barriers to entry, technology and, 7
BASIC, mapping, 159, 260
BASIC stakeholders, 41, 155–157
Amplifiers, 156
Buyers, 155–156
Coaches, 156
Influencers, 156
Seekers, 156
Baumgartner, Thomas, 32
Beer sales research study, 15
294
BINDEX
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Index
Behavior(s), 9, 21, 30, 52, 194
core human, 187, 227
noncomplementary, 39, 186, 192,
194
self-control and, 93–94
Behavioral style, 58
Belief(s), 24–25, 26, 27, 66–67, 83
Bennett-Goleman, Tara, 90
Bertuzzi, Trish, 99
Bias(es)
attribution, 25
cognitive (see Cognitive biases)
confirmation, 25, 82–83, 186,
234
correspondence, 81
egocentric, 25
false consensus, 82–83
hindsight, 25
negativity, 26, 171, 186
optimism, 82, 107
overconfidence effect, 82, 107
safety, 261
self-development and, 65
self-enhancement, 81
self-serving, 57, 81
similarity, 173, 239
status quo, 260–263
sunk cost fallacy, 83
value, 114–115
Blind spots, emotional, 51, 56, 57
Body language, 61, 79, 111, 154, 195,
203, 204, 253, 254
Books, 10
Brain. See also Neuroscientists;
Subconscious mind
amygdala, 22, 77, 80, 90, 242, 243,
246
emotional center of, 24
facts about, 21–22
input, changing, 67
limbic system, 22, 24
neocortex, 22, 78, 90, 185, 193,
243, 246
as pattern monster, 21–22
physical fitness and, 68
rational/emotional, 89
sensory overload, 20–21
295
threats and, 76–77, 86 (see also
Fight-or-flight response)
unknown and, 187
Bridge, example of, 244–245
Bridging, 135–136, 193
art of, 242–244
framework, 244–247
problem and, 245–246
recommendation, 245, 246–247
result, planned, 245, 247
Brown, Brené, 250
Brown bag illustration, 2–6
Brush-off, getting past, 122–127
Building rapport, 134–135
Buyer(s), 18–19, 33
BASIC and, 155–156
irrational, 6, 11–19, 23
their reasons, not yours, 2, 17, 18,
237–238
Buyer expectations, shift in, 8
Buyer script, 5, 212
example, 208
flipping, 6, 22, 186, 188, 192
reflexive, 4, 23
Buying process, 139–149
average salespeople and, 143,
148–149
emotion and, examples, 14–15
getting there first, 145–147
human nature and, 14–17
leverage and, 147
mapping of, 140
out of sync, 140–143
shaping of, 143–145
stakeholders and, 74
Buying window, 100
“Call me maybe” statements, 118, 126,
186, 249
Calls, 52–53, 84, 88, 161
fanatical prospecting and, 54–55
follow-up, 119, 127, 273
framework for (see Sales call agenda
framework)
“just checking in,” 119, 186
objective of, 187–188
Calvert, Deb, 219
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Cannon, Walter, 76
Career, 2, 14, 29, 55, 63
secret ingredient, 17
stakeholders and, 215, 271
Change
disruptive, 7, 261, 271
fear of, 117, 260, 261, 262,
266–268, 271
flipping buyer script, 6, 22, 186,
188, 192
need for, 162, 219, 222, 266
Choice, intentional, 202
Cialdini, Robert B., 230, 246
Clarification, objections and, 265–266
Closed-ended questions, 216–217
Closing, 37, 39, 49, 129, 211
Coaches, 59, 156
Cognitive biases, 77, 80–83, 261
false consensus bias, 82–83
fundamental attribution error, 81
mental shortcuts and, 23
optimism bias, 82
overconfidence effect, 82
self-enhancement bias, 81
sunk cost fallacy, 83
threats and, 77
Cognitive dissonance, 5, 24–27, 266
Cognitive heuristics, 80
Cognitive intelligence, 50
Cognitive load, 20–21, 187
Cognitive shortcuts, 23–24, 240
Commission, 2, 14
Commitment, 121. See also Microcommitments
Communication, 8, 53. See also Ask/
asking; Calls; Conversation(s);
Language; Listening; Message(s);
Sales conversations
stories, communicating in, 200
style, 58, 173, 175, 176 (see also
Stakeholder personas)
Company culture, 14, 237, 238
Competition, “me-too” competitors,
7
Competitive edge, 7–8, 14, 17, 31, 33,
239, 277
Competitiveness, 65
Index
Complexity/complex sales, 35, 36,
133, 235
Compliments, sincere, 228
Computer savvy salespeople, 32
Confidence, 39, 65, 66, 68, 87, 88,
173, 194–196, 251–252,
253–254, 259
Confirmation bias, 25, 82–83, 186, 234
Confirmation step, 256–257
Conflict avoidance, 16
Connecting, 134–135, 168–170,
173–174. See also “Getting” the
buyer
Conscientious, DISC equivalent,
178–179
Consensus builder, stakeholder
persona, 180–181
Consistency principle, 114–115
Context, 35, 46
Control, 31, 66, 84, 171, 191–192,
193, 202. See also Self-control
Conversation(s), 92, 193. See also Sales
conversations
Corporate culture, 14, 237
Correspondence bias, 81
Courage, 122
Covey, Steven R., 272
CRM. See Customer relationship
management (CRM)
Croner, Chris, 65
Crossroads, decisions and, 275
Cuddy, Amy, 88
Culture, corporate, 14, 237
Customer, 50. See also Prospect(s)
Customer relationship management
(CRM), 133
Customer service, 192, 205, 237, 238
Damasio, Antonio, 24
Deal(s), 5, 13–14, 45, 75, 83
killing (see Murder boarding)
qualified/qualifying, 38, 40
stakeholders in, 150–159
stalled (see Stalled deals)
ugly, 96, 107
viability of (see Qualification)
win probability and, 37, 38
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Decision process, 6, 21, 24, 39, 42,
160–165, 275
sales processes and, 137–138
social proof and, 164–165
Deep listening, 53, 54
Delusion, 16, 79, 80, 82, 130
prospect engagement and, 233
sales conversions and, 120
self-awareness and, 57, 61
success and, 93–94
ugly deals and, 96, 107
Demos, 23
Desperation, 78–80
Diet, 70
Differentiation, 7, 160, 232, 234, 235,
239, 241
DISC equivalent, stakeholder personas
conscientious, 178–179
dominant, 177–178
influential, 179–180
steady, 180–181
DISCOVER Questions framework,
219, 223
Discovery, 135, 162, 207–224,
211
connecting and, 173–174
fluid dual process, 218–221
interrogator and, 212–214
pump and pounce, 217–218
questions and, 211, 214–216
tour and, 209–210
Dispositional attributions, 52
Disrupting, turnaround framework
and, 123, 124–126
perceived scarcity effect, 125–126
take-away technique, 124–125
Disruptive change, technology and, 7
Disruptive emotions, 6, 54, 112, 171,
184, 259
failure and, 74, 87, 148, 195
genesis of, 74–77
management of, 19, 26, 33, 42, 55,
73–74, 84, 85
sales drive and, 66, 67
sales process and, 17, 129–130
types of, 38–39, 40, 55, 73
UHPs and, 171, 183
297
Dissonance. See Cognitive dissonance
Documentation, 60
Dominant, DISC equivalent, 177–178
Dress, first impressions and, 172
Drive. See Sales drive
Dual process, 44–47, 55, 206
emotional intelligence and, 46–47
Sales EQ and, 45–47
Dual process discovery, fluid,
218–221, 220–221
Dual Process Discovery Framework,
220–221
Duckworth, Angela, 70
Dunkel, Dick, 99
Egocentric bias, 25
Egocentricity, 51
EH&S. See Environmental health and
safety
Elite Coaching Program, 59
Elite top earners, 10
e-mail, 8, 23, 52–53, 186, 238
Emotion(s). See also Feeling(s)
buying examples and, 14–15
control of, 4, 69
decision making and, 15–16,
17, 24
disruptive (see Disruptive emotions)
getting caught up in, 115–117
hearts before minds, 154–155
ledge strategy and, 90
logic and, 6, 14, 24–27, 271
message meeting, 243
micro-commitments and, 114
poetry and, 36
psychological reactance and, 92
push pause for, 89–90
sales process and, 36
self-control and, 93–94
trust and, 5
tuning in to, 49, 111–113
“Emotional bank account,” 272
Emotional blind spots, 51, 56, 57
Emotional connections, 168–170, 193,
201, 277
Emotional contagion, 194–196
Emotional detachment, 23
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Emotional intelligence (EQ), 8, 30, 46,
92. See also Sales EQ
defined, 33, 34
sales-specific, 28–29, 33
Emotional triggers, 84–85
Emotional walls, 173–174, 184
Empathy, 48–55
assessments for, 52
behaviors and, 194
cognitive intelligence and, 50
core dimensions of, 53
defined, 50
disruptive emotions and, 55
intentional, 52–54
listening and, 201, 277
regulation of, 54–55
Sales EQ and, 50
self-awareness and, 51, 57
win probability and, 50
Empathy scale, 50–52
Engagement, 101, 233
micro-commitments and, 109–117
testing, 110–111, 115–116,
117
Engagement ring shopping, 48–50
Entertainment, 11, 13
Enthusiasm, 88, 173, 195–196
Environmental health and safety
(EH&S), 145–147
Execution, complexity and, 133
Expectations, 22, 26, 66, 186, 187
Facebook, 82, 226
Failure. See also Rejection
disruptive emotions and, 74, 87,
148, 195
fear and, 67, 78
high-IQ people and, 29
Law of Replacement and, 39
next steps and, 73, 120
success vs., 63, 66
Fairness, 5
Fallback request, 269
False consensus bias, 82–83
Fanatical prospecting, 38–39
Fear, 78, 89, 171
afraid to ask, 122, 250–252
Index
minimization of, 266–268
physical signs of, 251–252
Feedback, 31, 60, 81, 108, 202
Feeling(s), 225–231. See also Emotion(s)
human needs and, 79, 226–227
importance and (see Importance,
feeling of)
obligation and, 5
projecting of, 54
Fight-or-flight response, 22, 76, 77–80
emotional control and, 191–192
time constraints and, 184–185, 186
First impressions, 167–168, 172
Fit matrix, 103
Fitness, physical, 68–70
Fit qualifiers, 103–104
Fluid dual process discovery, 218–221
Focus, 20–21, 68, 91–93, 172–173,
202, 256
Focus groups, 60
Forecasts. See Sales forecasts
Framework(s)
bridging, 244–247
Dual Process Discovery, 220–221
human influence, 33, 42–43
influence, 5, 18, 43
objection turnaround (see Objection
turnaround framework)
repeatable, 41
sales call agenda (see Sales call agenda
framework)
turnaround (see Turnaround
framework)
French wine/French music, 15, 243
Friends/friendship, 12, 45, 50, 67
Fundamental attribution error, 81
Garden/weed self-reflection, 62–63
Generation(s), 8, 53
George, Bill, 63
“Getting” the buyer, 232–247. See also
Connecting
age of transparency and, 235–236
bridging and, 242–247
deal making and, 237–238
differentiation and, 234
language and, 236, 237
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message and, 240–241
problem solving, 235, 236
“so what” smell test, 241–242
their reasons, not yours, 237–238
Ghost objections, 192
Gitomer, Jeffrey, 128–129
Global marketplace, 271
Goals, 60, 62, 154, 161, 237
Goleman, Daniel, 33, 92
Goodwill, 231
Go-to questions, 221–223
Gratitude, spirit of, 278
Greeting, sales calls and, 184
Grooming, personal, 172
Halford, Scott, 86
Hamer, Marc, 51
Hatami, Homayoun, 32
Hatfield, Elaine, 194
Healthy diet, 70
Heuristics, 23–24, 52, 240, 243–244
High Potential Prospect (HPP), 101,
102, 104
Hindsight bias, 25
HPP. See High Potential Prospect
HR. See Human resources
Huffington, Arianna, 69
Human confirmation bias. See
Confirmation bias
Human consistency principle,
114–115
Human influence frameworks, Sales
EQ and, 42–43
Human mind. See Brain
Human relationships, 4, 8, 33, 44, 53.
See also Friends/friendship
complexity of, 18
deal making and, 45
emotional intelligence and, 30
empathy and, 277
high IQs and, 29
listening and, 198
Human resources (HR), 62, 152
Ideal qualified prospect (IQP), 97,
104–107, 110
Impatience, 171
299
Implementation, sales process, 137
Importance, feeling of, 5, 225–231. See
also Significance, need for
insatiable need, 226–227
Law of Reciprocity and, 229–231
making people feel important,
227–229
win probability and, 231
Impressions, first, 167–168, 172
Influence, 228, 230, 277
Influence frameworks, 5, 18, 43
Influencers, 50, 156
Influential, DISC equivalent, 179–180
Information
availability heuristic and, 240
buyer power and, 7
sensory, 21
surface/hidden, 212
too much (TMI), 204–205
transparency and, 235
UHPs and, 28, 149
Innate intelligence (IQ), 29–30, 31
Input, changing your, 67
Insecurity, 78, 85, 87, 251–252
Insight, 8
Intelligence
acquired (AQ), 29, 30, 31, 33
artificial (AI), 32, 278
cognitive, 50
emotional (EQ), 33, 34
innate (IQ), 29–30
machine, 32
technological (TQ), 32–33, 34
sales, 28–34, 159
types of, 28–29, 33–34
UHP and, 28–29
Intelligence quotient (IQ), 28–29, 33,
50. See also Innate intelligence
Intentional choice, 202
Intentional empathy, 52–54
Interpersonal skills, 4, 8, 33, 61
Intrapersonal skills, 33
Invoicing, bridge example, 244–245
IQ. See Innate intelligence;
Intelligence quotient
IQP. See Ideal qualified prospect
Isolation, objections and, 265–266
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Jobs, Steve, 133
“Just checking in,” 119, 127, 186
Kahneman, Daniel, 261
“King of Sales,” The, 128
Knowledge, thirst for, 31–32
Koonz, Dean, 50
Language
amygdala and, 22
body, 61, 79, 111, 154, 195, 202,
203, 204, 253, 254
company’s unique, 226, 238
“getting” the buyer and, 236
“just checking in,” 127
likeability and, 173
power of, 238–240
prospect’s, 2, 5, 257
of questions, 207–224
stakeholders,’ 239
Law of Need, Universal, 38
Law of Reciprocity, 229–231
Law of Replacement, 39–40
Lawyer, sales lesson from, 255–257
Learning, locus of control and, 31
Ledge statements, 123–124
Ledge strategy, 90
Lessons of a lifetime, 2–4
Leverage, 21, 36, 44, 147, 239, 263
cognitive dissonance and, 26–27
consistency principle and, 114–115
influence frameworks and, 5
prospect research and, 131–132
Sales EQ and, 47
sales process and, 129
stakeholder mapping and, 41
subconscious mind and, 24
take-away and, 112–113
value bias and, 114–115
Likeability, 18, 26, 170
connecting and, 168–170, 173–174
emotional connections and, 19,
168
keys to, 172–173
pitch slapping, 170–171
Likeable, defined, 167
Limbic system, brain and, 24
Index
LinkedIn, 153, 159, 226
Liquor store research study, 15
Listening, 59, 197–206, 277
active, 202–203, 217
art of, 201–202
deep, 53, 54, 203–204
not listening, 198–199, 273
sales conversations and, 199–201
self-disclosure loop, 204–206
Locus of control, 31, 66
Loehr, James, 70
Logic, 6, 14, 16, 18, 24–27, 271
Long, Kurt, 109, 205
Low Potential Prospect (LPP),
102–104
Loyalty, 101
LPP. See Low Potential Prospect
Machine intelligence, 32
Manners, 172, 272
Mapping
BASIC, 159
buying process, 140
stakeholders, 40–41
Marketing team, 232–233
Marketplace, global, 271
Market share, 233
Matrix
fit, 103
qualification, 101–104
MEDDIC qualification methodology,
99–100
TAS, 100
Medium Potential Prospect (MPP),
102, 104
Meetings. See Sales meetings
Mental energy, fitness and, 68–69
Mental shortcuts, 23–24, 80
Mental stress, 5, 49, 65, 69, 84, 85,
181, 243, 251. See also Cognitive
dissonance; Fight-or flight
response
Mental toughness, 70–71
Mentor, 1, 59, 275
Message(s), 233, 240–241, 243, 247
Message Matters workshops, 240,
247
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“Me-too” competitors, 7
Micro-commitments, 113. See also
Next step(s)
asking for, 110, 120
consistency principle and, 114–115
engagement and, 109–117
objections and, 262, 266
questions mattering most, 163–164
three commitments and, 113–114
value bias and, 114–115
Military recruiters, 88–89
Minds, hearts before, 154–155
Mind-sets, 9, 38, 55, 66, 71, 253
Mission, 14, 49, 182
Mitchell, Jason, 204
MPP. See Medium Potential Prospect
Murder boarding, 107–108, 269
Murray, Henry, 65
Names, remembering, 226, 227
Napoli, Jack, 99
Negativity effect/bias, 26, 171,
186
Negotiation, 5, 136
Neocortex (rational brain), 22, 78, 90,
185, 193, 243, 246
Neuroscientists, 24, 31
Next step(s), 121, 122–127, 132, 193.
See also Micro-commitments
Noncomplementary behavior, 186,
192, 194
Objections, 136, 192, 263, 265
reasons for, 260–263
salespeople creating, 259–260
turning around, 258–269
Objection turnaround framework,
263–269
ask, 268
clarify and isolate, 265–266
fall back, 268–269
minimized, 266–268
relate, 264–265
Objectives, meeting, 132
Objectivity, 80, 83, 107, 108, 112
Obligation, 5, 185, 230, 231
Obstacle immunity, 88–89
301
Open-ended questions, 193,
216–217
Opportunity, 101, 161, 278
Optimism, 65, 66, 67, 82
Optimism bias, 82, 107, 111
Other-focused nature, 51, 53, 54.
See also Empathy
Overcoming, act of, 263
Overconfidence effect, 82, 107
PACT qualification methodology,
98–99
Pagel, Mark, 239
Passion, 173
Pattern monster, brain as, 21–22
Pattern painting, 22–23, 243
People skills, 30, 42, 45
Perceived scarcity effect, 126
Percent to closed, 37
Performance, feedback and, 60
Personal grooming, 172
Personas. See Stakeholder personas
Phone calls. See Calls
Physical fitness, 68–70
Physical threats, 76
Physiology, changing, 87–88
Pink, Daniel, 15, 278
Pipeline review, 2, 118–119
Pitching. See Sales pitch
Pitch slapping, 170–171
Planning, precall, 86
Plans, documentation of, 60
Podcasts, 30
Poetry, 17, 35, 36
Polite demeanor, 172
Posture, physical, 87–88
Power, 7, 23–24, 238–240, 277
“Power posing,” 88
Precall planning, 88
Presentations, team, 85
Press releases/clippings, 226, 234
Pricing, 2, 3, 4
Priming, call objective and, 188
Probability, 37, 39. See also Win
probability
Problems, buyer and. See “Getting”
the buyer
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Process
buying (see Buying process)
decision (see Decision process)
fluid dual, 218–221
sales (see Sales process(es))
Process puppets, average salespeople as,
148–149
Procrastination/perfectionism/
paralysis, 80
Product pitches, canned, 8
Projecting, 54
Proposals. See Request for proposal
(RFP)
Prospect(s), 2, 39, 54. See also Buyer(s)
commitment and, 121
ideal qualified (see Ideal qualified
prospect)
qualifying of, 40
researching, 131–132
Prospecting, 38–39, 63, 84, 119, 134,
161
Psychological reactance, 92, 190–191
Psychology, obligation and, 230
Psychometric assessments, 58
Pump and pounce, avoidance of,
217–218
Purchases, transactional, 36
Pushback, 205, 233, 259
Push pause, 89–90
Qualification, 95–108
ideal qualified prospect (IQP), 97,
104–107
murder boarding, 107–108
stalled deals and, 120
strike zone and, 97
ugly deals and, 96
Qualification matrix, 101–104
Qualification methodologies/
shortcuts, 97–101
ANUM, 98
BANT, 98
MEDDIC, 99–100
PACT, 98–99
TAS, 100
WOLFE, 100–101
Index
Qualifiers
fit (FQ), 103–104
stakeholder (SQ), 102–103
technical (TQ), 102
Qualifying, 40, 134
Quality, illustration of, 2–4
Question(s), 14, 90, 211, 220
artful, 222, 240
closed-ended, 216–217
collecting, 222–223
DISCOVER framework, 219–220
easy ones first, 214–216
framing conversation, 193
“getting” the buyer and, 238
go-to, 221–223
indirect, 159
interrogator and, 212–214
language of, 207–224
open-ended, 193, 216–217, 220,
221
SPIN question types, 219, 220
suicide question, 26
UHPs never ask, 157–158
which matter most, 163–164
Quotas, stalled deals and, 8
Rackham, Neil, 219
Rapport, building, 134–135
Rational brain. See Neocortex
Reactance, psychological, 190–191
Reality, 74, 111
delusion and, 57, 107, 235
influencers and, 157–158
Reciprocation, 5, 229–231
Recommendations, personalized, 237,
245
Referrals, 50, 231
Reflection. See Self-reflection
Rejection, 84, 122, 251
Relationships. See Human
relationships
Replacement, Law of, 39–40
Request for proposal (RFP), 13, 103,
143, 147, 149
Responding in kind, 5
emotional contagion and, 194–196
sales conversations and, 199–200
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Review
360-degree, 60–62
pipeline, 2, 118–119
Risk level, 36, 151–152
Role-playing, 191, 226, 241, 269
Rules of thumb
connecting and, 174
heuristics as, 23
objections and, 192
SaaS. See Software as a service
Safety bias, 261
Sales, 10, 35
perfect storm and, 7–8
questions and, 163–164, 207–224
words to never use in, 127
Sales call agenda framework, 183–196
call objective, 187–188
conversation, framing of, 192–194
emotional contagion and, 194–196
greeting, 184–187
people responding in kind, 194–196
stakeholder’s agenda and, 188–192
steps in, 184, 193
Sales concepts, “modern,” 8
Sales Conversational Framework, 193
Sales conversations
cardinal rule of, 120–122
emotion and, 111, 201
principles of, 199–201
questions and, 163–164, 200–210
responding in kind, 199–200
role-playing, 85
statement and pause approach, 217
stories, communicating in, 200
Sales drive, 64–71
beliefs and, 66
development of, 66–68
mental toughness and, 70–71
optimism and, 65, 66, 67, 82
physical fitness and, 68–70
Sales EQ, 19, 42, 50, 65, 94, 240. See
also Emotional intelligence
awareness and, 57–58, 74
balancing scales, 45–46
development of high, 278
empathy and, 50, 54
303
“getting” buyer, 237–238
human influence frameworks,
42–43
human relationship gap, 10
pillars of, 46–47
Sales forecasts, 37–38, 83, 96, 99, 119
Sales Gravy, Inc., 288–289
Sales intelligence, 28–34, 159
Sales leaders, perfect storm and, 8
Sales lesson, lawyer’s, 255–257
Sales meetings, 82, 121
Sales messages. See Message(s)
Sales methodologies, 93
Sales organizations, bane of, 119–120
Salespeople
elite, 86
high-performing (see Ultra-high
performers)
Sales pipelines, 8, 37, 39–40, 46, 63,
104, 119–120
Sales pitch, 18, 19, 23, 237
bridging and, 243
framing conversation and, 192–193
time constraints and, 184–185
Sales process(es), 7, 38, 128–138, 133
alignment of, 41–42, 163
alignment of processes, 137–138
connecting step in, 169
disruptive emotions and, 129–130
lack of, 133–134
leveraging and, 129
mantra, 129
seven-step, 134–137
situational, 223–224
winging it and, 130–133
Sales training, 4, 10
Scarcity effect, 114, 125–126
Script. See Buyer script
Seekers, 156
Self-awareness, 51, 60, 61, 63, 67, 81,
196
keys to developing, 57–58
self-control and, 84, 94
Self-centric nature, 51, 54, 138
Self-control, 72–94, 87, 88, 196
behaviors, choice of, 93–94
disruptive emotions and, 73–77
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Self-control (continued)
emotional triggers and, 84–85
emotion and, 93–94
focus and, 91–93
obstacle immunity and, 88–89
physiology, changing, 87–88
positive visualization and, 86–87
preparation, practice and, 85
push pause, 89–90
Self-development, 32, 59, 65
Self-disclosure loop, 5, 194, 220
activation of, 205–206
listening and, 204–206
Self-esteem, 39, 228–229
Self-image, 15
Self-importance, 8
Self-reflection, 62–63
Self-serving bias, 57
Self-talk, 66, 67, 87
Selling. See Sales
Sensory overload, 20–21
Seven-step sales process, 134–137
Shortcuts. See Mental shortcuts;
Qualification methodologies/
shortcuts
Significance, need for, 79, 171, 227.
See also Importance, feeling of
Silence, 63, 171
after asking, 254–255
statement and pause approach, 217
Similarity bias, 173, 239
Situational attributions, 52
Situational awareness, 8, 57, 74
Situational sales process, 223–224
Sleep, getting enough, 69–70
Slot machine probability illustration,
36–37
Smiling, 172, 228
Socializer/energizer, stakeholder
persona, 179–180
Social media, 8. See also Facebook;
LinkedIn
Social proof, decision making and,
164–165
Social threats, 76
Software as a service (SaaS), 109
Somatic marker hypothesis, 24
Index
“So what” smell test, 241–242
SPIN, question types and, 219
SPIN methodology, 219, 220, 222
SPIN selling, 219, 223
Sponsors, 156
SQ. See Stakeholder qualifiers
Stage, being on, 272–273
Stakeholder(s), 10, 39, 49, 53, 74, 121,
153
agenda of, 188–192, 242
audience and, 152–154
BASIC (see BASIC stakeholders)
in deal, parties, 150–159
heuristics and, 23
influence and, 26, 112
language of, 239, 241
mapping of, 40–41
personas (see Stakeholder personas)
risk level and, 151–152
roles of, multiple, 41
Stakeholder groups, entertaining, 11
Stakeholder personas, 175–182
analyzer, 178–179
communication style and, 175–176
consensus builder, 180–181
director, 177–178
predominant, 176
socializer/energizer, 179–180
style personas shift, 181–182
Stakeholder qualifiers (SQ), 102–103
Stakeholder talks, 193
Stalled deals, 118–127
pipeline review and, 2, 118–119
quotas and, 8
sales conversions and, 120–122
sales organizations and, 119–120
Statement and pause approach, 217
Status quo, challenging, 29, 211
Status quo bias, 260–263
Steady, DISC equivalent, 180–181
Stories, communicating in, 200
Stress. See Mental stress
Stressful situations, 85
Strike zone, 97, 107
Style, communication, 173. See also
Stakeholder personas
Style tools, stakeholder personas, 182
BINDEX
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Index
305
Subconscious mind, 15, 57, 186, 188
cognitive biases and, 80–81
heuristics and, 23–24
visualization and, 86–87
Success, 33, 38–39, 63, 66, 73, 93–94
Sunk cost fallacy, 83, 107
disrupting, 123, 124–126
elements of, 123–126
ledge statements, 123–124
perceived scarcity effect and,
125–126
take-away technique and, 124–125
Take-away
leveraging and, 112–113
turnaround framework and,
124–125
Tamir, Diana, 204
Targeted Account Selling (TAS), 100
TAS. See Targeted Account Selling
Team presentations, 85
Technical qualifiers (TQ), 102
Technological intelligence (TQ), 29,
32–33, 34
Technology, 7, 32–33
Tech savvy salespeople, 32
Telephone calls. See Calls
Text messaging, 8
Threats, 76–77
Three As approach, technology and,
32
Three Ps, 80
360-degree review, 60–62
Time, 110, 113, 184–185
Too much information (TMI),
204–205
Toughness, mental, 70–71
Tour, 209–210, 237, 238
TQ. See Technical qualifiers (TQ);
Technological intelligence (TQ)
Tracy, Brian, 228
Transactional purchases, 36
Transparency, age of, 235–236, 238
Truck leasing, 2–4
Trust, 5, 16, 23, 59, 270–274
building, 273–274
emotional baggage and, 271–272
losing, 273
negative perceptions and, 273
stage/audience and, 272–273
Truth, 17, 63, 83
Turnaround framework
asking for next step, 123, 126
Ugly deals, chasing, 96, 107
Ultra-high performers (UHPs)
appointment-setting and, 149
bridging and, 244
coaches and, 59
communication and, 53
connecting and, 175
control and, 191–192
courage and, 122
decision process and, 42
discovery and, 211
drive of, 65, 161
emotional intelligence and, 33, 36,
42, 46–47
emotions and, 19, 74, 93, 171. 183
empathy and, 50, 52, 111
engagement and, 110, 111
fanatical prospecting and, 38
gratitude and, 278
intelligence and, 28, 50
keys to, 4
learning and, 31
mind and, 4–6, 71
mission and, 49, 71
next steps and, 121
objections and, 265
other-focused service by, 49
patience and, 191
pattern painting and, 22–23, 243
as perfectionists, 37
prospects and, 40
qualification and, 95, 107, 110
questions and, 157–158, 163–164,
211, 220, 221–222
relationships and, 53
rules/playing field and, 41
sales meetings and, 121
sales process and, 130
self-awareness and, 58
shortcomings, blind spots of, 56–57
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306
Ultra-high performers (UHPs)
(continued)
stakeholder mapping and, 41
strategies of, 9–10
success of, 278
technology and, 32–33
win probability and, 36–38, 104,
112–113
yeses, pocketful of, 117
Understanding. See “Getting” the
buyer
Universal Law of Need, 38
Unknown, human mind and, 187
Valdivieso, Maria, 32
Value, added, 8, 154, 161
Value bias, 114–115
Vendors, differences between, 4
Visualization, positive, 86–87
Voice tone/inflection, 79, 111, 154,
168, 170, 172, 186, 222, 251,
253
Vulnerability, fears of, 251
Walking away, 115
Wang, Shirley, 194
Wilson, Epp, 230
Index
Window, buying, 100
Wine sales research study, 15
Winging it, sales process and, 130–133
next steps, targeted, 132
objectives, meeting, 132
what you already know, 131
what you want to know, 132
Win probability, 50, 110, 174, 231.
See also Qualification
fanatical prospecting and, 38–39
as first rule, 36–38
human influence frameworks and,
42–43
Law of Replacement and, 39–40
qualification and, 38, 40
questions mattering most, 163–164
Sales EQ and, 42–43, 46
sales process alignment and, 41–42
shaping of, 31, 35–43, 95–108
stakeholder mapping and, 40–41
UHPs and, 112–113
WOLFE qualification methodology,
100–101
Worry, 79–80
Worst-case scenarios, 85
Zero-sum game, 46, 47
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