Sales isn't Selling - It's Problem Solving with Tom Jackobs

I want a decision at the end of our conversation because you will have gotten all the information that you need to make that decision there's no reason that a decision should not be made and oftentimes I will start the conversation with I'm giving them the agenda of what's going to happen and as part of that agenda is and at the end of our conversation we're going to make a decision together whether this is a good fit for you or not either's okay but we do want to make it decision [Music] today Tom thank you so much for joining me on the let's business podcast glad to be here thanks for having me Manny yeah so my listeners are very familiar with this line but I'll say it anyway because we're talking for the first time is one of the things I love about the show is when I have one guest referring another guest I actually you came referred through Wendy Weiss Wendy was actually one of the few that came back a second time on the show because the first time all about cold calling was so popular and then she had a whole part that we didn't get to speak um about so she came back a second time so the stakes are high because if she referred you so we'll have a good conversation for our listeners if you don't mind I know that you've been from you know involved in DJ flying airplanes a strong dislike of selling and now you hear teaching selling and speaking much about this topic you know to people that you coach and teach so tell us a little bit about the story yeah you're you're growing up in in my family I grew up in Iowa of all places but my parents had this I don't know if it was a fear or just a a general dislike of salespeople and that really shaped me going into you know owning my own business and having to sell you know I didn't want to be that sleazy salesperson which is kind of the term that I I think I heard found myself hearing growing up and I was just like oh I don't want to do this but I really love it and I was like how do I get you know that internal conflict to go away and I just started studying sales and excelling quite quickly at it in my own Fitness business and then started coaching other Fitness professionals on the sales techniques and I was working with a coaching company that hired me to do the coaching then ultimately they they asked me to sell their coaching program because I was doing such a great job and you I traveled around the world you know delivering talks and we' generally do like a one-day workshop and I'd sell the program on the back end of that workshop and so I started to combine these loves of my life which was like public speaking which I'm sure you don't hear Too Many people say that they love public speaking but I do and and then selling from the stage which is a really unique skill set to have to be able to not only do a public talk but also to compel people to buy something when you're done and in doing that you know in three years I generated $4 million for the company and you know 300,000 air miles in my air mile bank account so that's cool that's cool so I want to go back to to two things you mentioned very organically so to speak so one was the part that we somehow look at the sleazy salesperson and we have that negative effect to a salesperson which I want to get to the psychology behind it because one way or the other I think every person in this universe at one point does selling they sometimes could sell themselves into something they could sell somebody else they could convince somebody to come to work for them they could convince somebody to give them the job which is also a selling technique this is the way you know transactions work this is the way the give or take of the world is set out to do why why do we have to go to have why do we go from having this negative approach to sales to understanding way it doesn't have to be that way because we could actually solve people's problems when not selling we actually telling you you know we have Solutions and ultimately you know nobody wants to be sold to they want to be a buyer so to speak so what is the psychology behind it now that you are in the other side of the aisle where you're teaching selling and have a lot of programs around it what would you say you know in that negative emotions when you speak about a salesperson yeah I mean the my primary clientele are people that I call heart-c centered salespeople so it's selling personal fitness they're selling you know chiropractic care or medical or health and wellness type of things and for that profession a lot of those personalities are very nurturing and nurturing people love to build relationships with others and sales for whatever reason I don't understand why or how this this came about it's always been looked at as a conflict that one person wins one person loses and you know as you know a zero sum game and I was like that doesn't sit well with me because I don't want to work one-on-one with a client and have them think that I took advantage of them when they bought the program and I think that the shift and this is what I teach my students too is that shift is in our own mindset and if we come across as that needy salesperson the sleazy salesperson that's pushing something on somebody that's going to turn off most of the population these days but if we rather approach it as we are problem solvers and our first initial obligation and Duty for that Prospect is to find out what their problem is and decide can we solve it for them and if we can't then we refer them out I think that's where we need to get to as salespeople as business owners and entrepreneurs just anybody in general like you said we are always selling whether it's an idea or there's a transaction or whatever it's that's what makes the world go around and rightfully so salespeople should be the highest paid people in any or organization would you say that part of the problem was that maybe growing up we were used to those people knocking on your door and trying to sell something that you really never thought you need or really didn't need five minutes after buying it so automatically that g that gave us the blanket you know notion of how sales is and when in reality that's not selling at all right well 100% so I'll tell you a story and this is probably where I got this fear of selling and sales people so you I was a very Sly precocious child growing up I was the youngest of three sons so I got everything I ever wanted basically my parents they were just done raising kids at that point but I saw an ad in the newspaper where you know if you allow this person to come over and demonstrate a vacuum cleaner they would give you a set of steak knives and I was like oh that is awesome we need some new steak knives and I thought I was doing something really good for the family so I called up pretend I was my father and I invited the salesperson over to the house to demonstrate I was like oh family meeting we got we have a special guest today and my parents are like what are you talking about and then doorbell rings it's this guy with a vacuum Hoover vacuum clearer Yuri I know what he was selling and my dad just looks at me he like Thomas what did you do I'm like oh well he's going to give us some steak knives all we we have to do is just sit and listen to him for 30 30 minutes and you know he's like vacuuming half of the couch and putting dirt on the floor and vacuuming it up and you know my parents just scold I think I got grounded but I did get the steak Knife so the family did benefit from that 30 minutes those are the memories that people have and therefore anytime we speak about oh what do you do I'm a salesperson all of a sudden you know we have that Persona about a salesperson but in reality that shouldn't be the case we'll come back to sales I also want to you know take note of something you mentioned before you mentioned about you get you're getting to do stuff that you really love doing and you mentioned the public speaking and the selling and combining that how much would you say you contribute your success in what you're doing based on you ended up finding out what you good at and trying to find a professional around what you good at yeah I think I actually did it backwards I went into the profession this especially Fitness I went through a whole body transformation when I was 30 years old I was overweight high blood pressure high cholesterol and I did a 12-week body transformation program and lost 40 pounds of fat and gained 10 pounds of muscle in just 12 weeks but more importantly got my cholesterol in order and my blood pressure down as well and that is what I found the passion of fitness and that's why I went into fitness and then once I'm owning my Fitness business now I'm like oh crap now I need to sell and I couldn't I almost went broke in the first six months of owning that business because like this was my sales process somebody would come in the front door of the the business and we were in this little shopping mall strip mall next to a Subway restaurant is a great place to be and somebody would come in I'd be working out with a client and they go up to the person I say yeah what do you want and literally kind of like that really good rapport building right yeah what you want and they're like oh I might be interested in some personal training okay well it's $60 a session you buy 10 sessions you get 11th for free do you want it and of course they would be like oh let me think about it I like okay well here's my card when you think about it come on back and then I would go back to my client and no wonder I almost went broke compared to then you know going broke and then hiring a coach to help me with my business and she was actually pretty nice about it was like you really need to work on your sales so let me give you some books to look at and and a kind of a process to go through and so I really did a lot of Deep dive into the sales process sales psychology and really around that consultative approach to selling because that's ultimately in health and wellness it has to be a win-win or else it's not going to work long term and once I once I got this whole process down the first consultation that I did and was completely different than what I described I sat down with my Prospect we had a computer in front with a screen with a little presentation that I was going to show you know showing what they get but I started like 80% of the conversation was asking questions about what her goals are why they're important what she was doing or what she's done in the past to fix a problem and why is now the right time and just kind of drilling down into those into like got to an emotional response went through the presentation and then at the end I was like you know Sharon her name is Sharon you know based on what you told me based on your goals and in my expert opinion you really need to invest in our 100 session package to reach those goals now you could probably get there in 50 sessions but I really recommend the 100 session package which would you prefer and it was all I could do to just shut up and not say anything while she thought because you know most salespeople at that moment would go oh she didn't say yes oh I need to lower the price oh maybe I give her a free week to try it out and see if she likes it whatever but in reality she she was probably thinking okay well like maybe I could do two days maybe three days a week would start and I could do that Monday and you know just you don't know what's going on inside the prospect's head so that's why it's so important to just kind of zip it up and and not say anything and then it was just like this awkward silence for it seemed like forever I'm sure it was like 10 seconds or whatever and she was like okay that sounds good can I put that on my master card and I was like I think actually what I said was are you sure and she gave me your credit card I swiped it and went through and I was like oh my gosh it was $5,000 going from maybe 600 you know selling one person $600 package to going to ultimately after a couple months I was 90% close rate and selling $2,000 to $5,000 packages for personal training it's crazy so one of the things that I've seen and I've met many many salespeople and throughout my career and one of the things I've seen too many times is where salespeople are afraid of the no and therefore they'll continue to come ation feel good about the conversation although they're not making any progress on the actual sale for the good or for the bad so to speak and they just avoid the no they avoid ending the conversation so what's next so to speak and getting that concrete un response from a lead what could you speak about that topic yeah well not getting a know or getting a decision I think that's the the main thing right is is I I want a decision at the end of our conversation because you will have gotten all the information that you need to make that decision there's no reason that a decision should not be made and oftentimes I will start the conversation with and giving in the agenda of what's going to happen and as part of that agenda is and at the end of our conversation we're going to make a decision together whether this is a good fit for you or not either's okay but we do want to make a decision today and getting permission at the end you know I generally don't get the whole let me think about it kind of excuse I remember like I interviewed somebody in my show I forgot you know the moment that the name skipping my mind he shared a story where he was sitting he was a rookie sales person he was sitting in the room on speaker phone with the whole board and somehow he had such a good meeting he was you know giving thumbs up for his team throughout the process how good the meeting is going for some reason the phone stayed on after they finish the meeting today it's pretty common with zoom so people will just leave the zoom meeting open and he heard one of the people telling the other people that you know luckily we got this rookie salesperson so he gave us everything we need in order to understand how we can negotiate with the competitor that we're going with ah and then this was a transformational moment for him because he said how could I go from giving thumbs up to my team how well I'm doing and how well the conversation is going to be totally disconnected how the other people are actually feeling like how come I didn't read the other people and and this is where it made him decide that as a salesperson you got to make sure that you're really on top of your game as far as understanding the Dynamics what's happening who are the decision makers when are they ready for a decision and so on and so forth and I think what you just mentioned is is so important I guess my followup question to you is another thing that I constantly hear from salespeople is maybe I'm not made for sale you know they started sales you know very motivated and they're going to do whatever it takes so to speak and then it Fizzles out three months six months and so on and then at one point you know what maybe sales is not for me I have my version of how I respond to that but I would want to hear you as the guest that like when somebody would tell you that how would you respond that was literally me I couldn't close the door like I I had several different sales jobs kind of growing up I know if you know Cutco Cutlery it's all direct sales yeah so I did that for six months and I mean I I think I paid for my own knife set that was it I didn't make any money doing it I didn't know the process and as an introvert also like I didn't have the natural Gift of Gab pretty shy person when I meet people for the first time and like you know going up knocking on somebody's door that I've never met before even though I had the employment was just really nerve-wracking I just couldn't get over that and you know fast forward to then you know having to sell because either that or close my business and I was so invested in keeping my business alive I was like okay buck up and just like do something about the sales and it was really the mindset shift of I am a problem solver now and I have to find a process to sell and that's the key word is that it's a process and when you treat it like a process then you do it the same way each and every time and you'll get the same result which is the sale at the end of it and I think that's the difference between introverted salespeople and extroverted salespeople because a lot of extroverted salespeople allow themselves to just go with the flow and you know if my energy is high today I'm selling if my energy is low today I'm not selling and for me it was just like I don't care what my energy is I'm going to follow the process and I'm going to make a sale so back to the the question directly is you mentioned obviously this was you which obviously then mean makes you for a good coach because you are at that stage I guess the question is where is it coming from are you so based on what you're answering is it coming from not having a good sales process yeah yeah I think not understanding what the process is and having that misconceived Notions of what a salesperson is because I think everybody sees the outlandish salesperson that said the life of the party is always talking to everybody at every networking event is like flirting around to everybody in the crowd and that's just not the case I mean anybody can sell it is a skill like any other skill and I've taught people that I would never have thought would be able to sell to be able to sell you mentioned a minute a moment ago about you know you being an introvert and I know that this is also a conversation with salespeople in general about you know do you need to be an extrovert in order to be a great salesperson because they're used to those loud people those are the people that make a lot of noise you know in terms of you teaching other salespeople so of course A lot of them might be introverts and extroverts is it different learning this the trade of selling for an introvert versus extrovert the training is not different it's it's most likely the approach that an introvert will take versus an extrovert but what I find is when I'm coaching extroverts they're not so clear on the process they're like ah you know I just swing it and their sales quite frankly kind of show that willy-nilly kind of effect to following the process you know some weeks are great some weeks aren't but if you just stick with the process and this is what like introverts are really good at is following a process because it's just it's you know okay report building I don't like to Rapport build but I'll ask these three questions how's your day today and you just you learn to adapt and I think a lot of times the extroverted salespeople will spend way too much time on like Rapport building and then talking to the prospect instead of allowing the prospect to do all the talking right you know we have two ears in one mouth so we need to use them proportionately in the sales conversation that's one of our core values at PEX is two airs in one month we use them in that order and that proportion yeah nice let me ask you because you mentioned before as far as the sales process for introverts it makes they they follow a better process so what I've seen a lot is sales business owners start a small business and maybe they great at the art or the product product development or whatever service they offer but a lot of times they don't don't come with sales backgrounds and then they don't like doing the selling so to speak and this actually a line that I heard from Wendy W a great line cold calling it says when somebody tells her that I don't like doing cold calling says ice cream you could like love or hate and if you have to do something for your business it's not about liking or not liking it's about you got to do it or you got you don't I guess there's something that you're passionate about because a lot of salese a lot of business owners try to Outsource the selling part of the business because so not comfortable you have your opinions about it let me hear a little about what what you feel about business owners being their own s selling their own Services yeah well at first the business owner should be the primary salesperson because the business owner knows the most about their product and how that product can be used by their prospects and their clients but at a certain point you know if you're doing really great with sales your business is growing you're going to need to add to your team as well and that too can then kind of shift some problems around if they don't have a good management process in place and a good scripting of the sales process and how to do a sales call it's going to be like up to the salesperson and that's never a really good thing when you bring a new salesperson into your organization even if they have tons of experience they don't have any experience with your company and if you don't have a good process and presentation you just have all the pieces of that sales conversation put together you're setting it up for failure at that point one create that process while you're doing the sales as as a business owner create that process and the presentation the questions and all that and then be able to teach that to the new salespeople coming into the organization one of the things you started off with obviously you do public speaking um you do a lot of selling from the stage which means it's selling instead of one to one you're selling to one to many I found a lot of salespeople get lost when you know when they will have a oneone conversation they'll carry it very well now they're in a zoom call with 10 people decision makers or five people decision makers and they don't know where to turn to as far as gauging everybody's interests and in in understanding everybody where they're up to what would you say is some of the Practical advice you could share based on you selling from the stage I know not all our listeners have the Leverage of being on a stage and selling from there but the closest to that would be for a board or in a meeting with multiple decision makers and so on and so forth so what could you share as far as how is that process different one you're you're presenting so you really have to understand what the needs are of the client or of the crowd that you're speaking to so I always do a lot of research to know who the audience is so I can customize the presentation to fit them and also having just really clear understanding of what the problem is and how to solve it and it's a one-way conversation you're presenting to them so then I'm going to think about what are all the different objections that they could come up with and any salesperson should know this just for any of the products whether it's one one or one to many what are the the key objections and then I'm going to address each of those objections throughout the presentation and you know show why that objection isn't necessary the other aspect sometimes you'll do this in in one-on-one but it's really critical in one to many is to share stories and case studies of past clients that you've worked with but also to share your own personal story of why you're passionate about representing this product or if you're the business owner why you got into this business in the first place because the power of the story story is one it can't be denied so it's your story somebody's not going to be like oh you're lying about your story that's really rude and so it's your own personal story they cannot say oh that's true or not true because it's a story but also it creates a nice connection between you and the prospects so that they get to know you as a person because at the end of the day whether it's B2B B Toc sales you're selling to a person not an organization but to a person so you know getting them to understand who you are and you understanding them you're going to create this you know it could be a friendship at some point and it doesn't have to be you know a competition or you know somebody wins somebody loses type of situation yeah I I think the power of Storytelling is underrated people think that when they hear the word you know C with stories they think they okay now I have to make something up if you're a good business owner and You' have solved people's problem problems you've seen you know with your solution a business thriving or a company going places so to speak you know that should motivate you to actually continue doing what you're doing and and ultimately That's The Power of a story because every person you know I think I heard it yeah on the podcast we had a guy with the name Mitch Axel a phenomenal guy he also does a lot of of training on sales and he mentioned that the end of the day whatever you do you need to be in the transportation business there's a company at Point a and they want the need to go get to point B and with your product and services you're probably getting them you need to see how you fit in to getting them from point A to point B I I like that analogy you know we at PX we also have a very similar positioning because we help driven Brands you know get to the next step in the brand Journey which means is you as a business owner you don't want to stay put you want to grow your business you know more or less where you want to go and what you want to achieve you sometimes suck how to get there or how to tell the world about what you are able to offer so back to the storytelling is when somebody's sitting in that seat and listening to you and you're sharing a similar story so they could visualize so I could be that person and I'm actually also at Point a and if you're able to get that person from point A to point B now I could visualize how you could get me there versus speak speaking hypothetical speaking just trying to get into understanding what my business does you now shared the story that I I see exactly that you understand what my problem is because you just yeah Illustrated it so professionally somebody that was a very similar stage and I think with that I always speak to salese about this topic is some salese jump to speak too much instead of listening you mentioned before the two ears in one m and most of the time you're telling oh you're listening because you know you have to give the courtesy of to the the person to listen to the person but good sales people know they're listening because they know which story to share if you're not giving that person a chance to explain their life story so to speak as far as what challenges they're going through the business you don't know which story is the most similar if you want to visualize a solution to a person's problem other than listening to the person the more the more you listen the better you could tailor that story absolutely and not just tailor the story but tailor your presentation how you ultimately sell the product because if you don't understand what the pain points are and what the dream outcome is for your prospect then you know might as well just not do the sales presentation at all because there's no way to connect their dream outcome and the pain that they're in to your product getting them out of the pain and moving them towards the pleasure yeah beautiful beautiful so any other last moments of tips that you would share with say people listening to the show yeah well just kind of pigging back on what I just said there during the questioning phase or Discovery phase of the conversation and that's right at the beginning you do Rapport building go right into questions and it's at the questioning phase or Discovery that's when the sale is made and I can't emphasize this enough the questions that you're asking are really not for you they're actually for the prospect to hear them El say I have a problem I need it fixed and I need it fixed now and then once they've said it now you just kind of mirror back what what you heard them say so that they say wow yeah you're listening you understand me tell a couple quick stories go into your presentation and boom boom you got a sale oh W yeah so it's questioning that's where the money is is on the questions yeah and the one thing I will just add is that a lot of of people get annoyed because if I'm going to follow my sales process maybe the lead the prospect will get frustrated in the process but ultimately if you could turn it around that it's for their benefit therefore I need to ask those questions because if I don't understand the situation properly I don't know how to actually tell you what we could offer you I think that's that's a misconception a lot of salespeople have yeah yeah and I think a lot of salespeople also fear kind of challenging the prospect a little bit as well and maybe having some uncomfortable conversations which ultimately help in the end because you need to get people out of their own kind of you know they're stuck especially when it's a service you know building a business health and fitness they're stuck at where they're at and they're comfortable kind of in that stuckness and you need to kind of snap them out of it get them out of the trance that they're in and propel them towards making a decision to grow yeah um that's beautiful um beginning of the show you mentioned about a giveaway that you have um you want to mention that yeah absolutely so talking about stories so I have a workbook on how to create personal stories to use in presentations for sales presentations it goes through the full step of identifying good personal stories and then taking the heroes journey I kind of have a abbreviated version of the heroes Journey that I use and designing your story and writing it out and making sure that it's just like really dramatic and a good story with a good story process and framework that's at my website so it's Tom Jacobs jobs.com storybook yeah for the links resources mentioned this episode check out the show notes at www.group.com podcast where we link to download the story book and ultimately also other ways to follow Tom and everything that he teaches let's close with a four rapid fire questions are you ready okay number one a book that change your life Think and Grow Rich number two a piece of advice you got that you never forget invest early number three anything you wish you could go back and do differently not at all love it and final question what's still on your bucket list to achieve oh Antarctica okay that's a good bucket list Tom thank you so much for joining us I know your time is valuable that is why in the L of our listeners will forever be grateful for sharing some time with us today it's been a blast oh thank you so much Manny really appreciate [Music] it