230: Todd Caponi on Radical Transparency to Build Trust in Sales

All right, you are in for a treat on this one, ladies and gentlemen, Todd Capone is a good friend of mine. And we had if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, we had him on pretty early, I forget what episode it was. But you know, he had this book transparency sale, which is one of my favorite negotiations books. It's all about being like, blind transparent with everything that you do and opening up the kimono and actually working with your customers to negotiate as opposed to treating it as us versus them. And he's working on a new book now about the neuroscience because Todd takes a a very scientific approach, right? Looking at neuroscience and how the brain works and not any, you know, sneaky tactic or technique here.

And so he's working on a new book with the neuroscience around managing in this world and how to have a framework around management. So we get into that a little bit, but we do dive into some really specific tactical things that you can do to get to build trust, to reduce your sales cycles and everything in between. So I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do. And I really do recommend you check out his book, The Trust. Transparency sale as a nice little kicker to this one. is unrivaled in the sales community. Visit salesloft.com today to see it in action. Have you ever wondered what happens to your proposals after you send them? Our friends at Proposify track and measure all your attachments in the hands of your prospects and feed that information back to you in real time.

Know what happens. It makes a difference. Visit proposify.com to learn more today. Hey, you know, how well do your salespeople perform? on their calls. Our partners at gong.io, they are the leader in conversation intelligence. The insights that they bring to the table can change the game for everything that you're doing and consistently improve the quality of your conversations. Check out Gong, Gong Labs, and follow along with them as they show you what's working and what's not. Video is quickly becoming the standard in all things personalization. No better way to create videos, track them, and see their impact on your clients and prospects than with Vidyard. With APIs for Sales Loft, LinkedIn, and much more, Vidyard is quite possibly the most easy-to-use video platform out there today.

As a long-time user, I can stand by the value that video has delivered for me and that Vidyard has provided for me throughout my career. Visit vidyard.com to find out more about how you can start leveraging video in your prospecting and sales cycles today. You know, scheduling has always been kind of a nightmare when you have a packed calendar. Killy Piper makes calendar management and scheduling easy for your prospects, clients, and your internal employees. They are but two clicks away from scheduling a meeting at a time that works for everyone. Everything that you need to know about Killy Piper and easy scheduling can be found at KillyPiper.com. Schedule better, y'all. Salesforce Sales Cloud delivers a streamlined experience for your front lines.

More than just a CRM, this powerhouse of a digital Rolodex is customizable and drives action and manages tasks and more. This is like the engine for all things sales at a scaling organization. Make no mistake. Salesforce Sales Cloud is the last CRM that you will ever need to buy. So learn more today at Salesforce.com to dive in. The water is fine. Okay, everyone. Today, we're bringing you a special guest. For the second time on the show, Todd Caponi, author of The Transparency Sale, talks with John about how people shop today. You know, they lean in towards negative and therefore opening with all the negative things about your product, service, and company might help you gain a little trust.

It sounds weird, but this saves a lot of time and it helps you understand the roadmap of your prospects. And it changed everything for Todd. There's more to this story and Todd will get into it, but this is something big that he's onto when it comes to cutting to the chase. So let's get into it with Todd and John. It's all yours, JB. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrels. Make it up on Monday. Hopefully you had a fantastic weekend. Mine was pretty decent. Decent weather. Got some stuff done. I can't really complain these days, but regardless of that, man, I am psyched to have a good friend of mine back on the podcast for number two and it actually coincides quite well because after the first one, I think it was after your first, like relatively soon after your first book, right?

Yeah, I think that's right. And now he's working on a second one. So Todd Caponi, the founder of SalesMellon and the author of best-selling sales book. One of the best I've ever read personally is The Transparency Sale. So Todd, what's going on, brother? How are you doing? It is so good to see you. And I think I want to be like your Don Rickles to Johnny Carson or your Regis Philbin to David Letterman. Like you got to have me on more often because I miss this. I agree. I agree, man. And, you know, thanks for coming back on. I mean, I wanted to catch up in general with you just to see how you've been. I mean, we haven't really talked since COVID hit and we used to see each other on the circuit and all that stuff.

But, you know, for the audience here who doesn't know, I talk about you a lot on the podcast as far as in the book, Transparency Sale and everything else. But for those of you who don't know, give us a little background here, but also in context here about the neuroscience piece, because that's the part I'm super interested about, you know, and your expertise in that area far surpasses mine. So I'm very curious. So talk to the audience about where you're coming from and what that's all about. Well, yeah, I mean, I think in terms of the transparency sale, I think, you know, what really kicked that off was I was the chief revenue officer of Chicago's power reviews and guests from the name, we helped retailers and brands collect and display ratings and reviews on their websites.

Right. So you're buying a pair of Crocs, you scroll down, there's reviews. That was us helping with the collect and display. And the thing I often joke about is like, only a super nerd could have this happen, where we had done a research study with Northwestern University that was looking at, all right, how do consumers interact when a website's acting as a salesperson? And so what they found, first of all, is that there was three data points. One was no surprise to change my life. The first was that we all look at reviews today, right? If you're going to buy something you haven't bought before, you're trying to get peer focused content to help you predict. We are, our brains are prediction machines.

But the two that threw me on this, like, I'm going to quit my job and write a book like an idiot, is number one, 85% of us read the negative reviews first. So left to our own devices, website acting as the salesperson, we skip the fives, we go right to the fours, threes, twos, and ones. And that last data point was that when a product has an average review score between a 4.2 and a 4.5 on a five-star scale, that's optimal for purchase conversion. Meaning that products that have people that bought them and experienced them and didn't like them and came back and wrote it right under those products, help them sell. I was like, that's weird. And does that equate to when a human being is being the salesperson in a B2B environment and all the behavioral science said emphatically, yes, I went out, I started trying it when I could.

I had a big team at the time, but like when I had the opportunity to do it, results were like crazy magic. Now when you say do it, what is it? Just to make sure that we're clear from a sales standpoint. Good point. Yeah. So going into a sales engagement and understanding that human beings were drawn to the negative first. So actually leading with your 4.2 to 4.5. Leading with what maybe you give up to be great at your core. Leading with maybe something that in the customer's environment, they might not love about us or that a competitor actually does better. Now I know that sounds so counterintuitive, but again, our brains are prediction machines and subconsciously we know that perfection isn't a thing.

And like the example that I often share is the first time I tried it was with a big apparel retailer in New York, total New York style, like in the best way possible, like no small talk, like Todd, we're looking at you. We're looking at your competitor. How are you better? And like all the arms in the room went up like, all right, here comes the sales pitch. And I started with, Hey, you're looking at them before we get too deep into this. Can I share, they just released something that not only do we not have, but it's not even on our roadmap. And if that's going to be an important consideration, can we talk through that now before this whole team in the room here invest time finishing their RFP before I take my team and throw them on a plane and fly them up here?

And they're like, what is it? Like, well, here's what it does and here's how it works and all that. And again, it's not something we do. And so they started discussing it. They quickly came back to me and they're like, yeah, actually that's not on our thought process either. I'm like, all right, cool. Well, this is, we give that up to be great at this core. Like this is our meat. We went through that 15 minutes later, the guy kicked everybody out of his office and literally showed me his budget. And I'd never like, dude, I've been doing this a while. I'm aging like guacamole here, but the, but I've never actually seen a buyer's budget. And the first time I tried it, this guy was showing me and he's like, Hey, can you hit this number?

And they threw out the RFP. They didn't have us fly up. And I was like, all right, I'm onto something. And I think there's a way to learn and to teach people to use this type of stuff for good, not evil. And that's what I've, I've hopefully accomplished through just thinking about, we can play our cards face up, not only in our positioning and our messaging, but also our presenting. And then the thing you and I have talked a lot about is you can do it negotiation too, right? Like why in the traditional means do we have to learn our negotiation from former FBI hostage negotiators? Like that stuff's fascinating. I love it. I've learned so much. However, we're negotiating like technology contracts, like not negotiating the release of hostages from a bank heist.

I have to have a relationship with these people. Why can't I play my cards face up and help sit at the same table with you? And let's negotiate this thing where you start negotiating your own deal. So that's probably a longer answer. No, that's exactly what I was looking for. I mean, cause you know, in what you have backed up with kind of neuroscience and stuff has always been a, not always there, there was definitely a point in my career where I made a conscious decision to stop qualifying and start disqualifying. Yeah. So my whole mentality walking into a situation is why shouldn't you work with me? Right. Because you're going to figure that out eventually, whether my competition brings it up or you just come up with it, I might as well pull out all those words right up front.

And we talk about how, you know, especially, and this is what I want to get into today about the neuroscience of, of today's world of where we in, in a virtual world and all this other stuff when it comes to selling and managing and everything else. But you know, how do you build trust quick? How do you, how do you, how do you, you know, build, break down that barrier that we, we used to be able to break down with relationship stuff, like going to the office, grabbing a coffee, going to lunch, right? We, we could figure that out and build trust. And it, you know, and it was accepted that way. Now we got to build trust in 30 seconds. You know what I mean? We got to get them to open up and, and, and the easiest way to do that to your point is almost leading with what you're not great at.

You know what I mean? Hey, look, here's where we're great. And here's where we're not. You know what I mean? I'm looking to see if our great lines up with your need, because if it does, this thing's going to be a brilliant, if it doesn't, let's just call it what it is. And let's save each other a whole shitload of time here before we figure that out in five other meetings, right? Well, exactly. And I, you know, you know, that my hobby nerdery is sales history. Yeah. Now I, for the podcast, what's, what's the sales, what's the sales history podcast. You just said it. It's the sales history podcast. Like I'm not that creative. The, uh, like this book here, 1916, I wish you could smell it. Cause it smells like history.

I'll be art and science of selling. Um, I've got another one from 1924 here called salesmanship and every one of these, they talk about this idea of honesty. There's one 1919, a guy named Arthur Dunn. He's got a quote that like brings me to tears. It's if the truth won't sell it, don't sell it. Right. Like at its core. So for hundreds of years, we've known that honesty sells better and that we should be doing it. But the difference today too, is this idea that because of the proliferation of reviews on everything we do by an experience, you can't get away with hiding your flaws or what you're not good at. Like, I mean, literally when I started, I was a salesperson for SAP back in the late nineties when it was kind of like working at a drive-through window, but our answer to every question, Hey, uh, can you guys do this?

Yes. The answer was always yes. And we just can't do that any anymore too. So to your point, we should do it. We've always known that the good news is the behavioral science tells us that when we lead with it, magic happens sales cycle speed up because you're helping the buying brain predict, which is the trigger to a decision. When rates go up mainly because of what you just said about qualification, that we're working the deals we should work. For example, that apparel menu or retailer in New York, if that would have been a really important consideration, would I rather know now? Or would I rather know in four months after I've just spent tons of time with the RFP? And would I rather position the add-on or would I rather the competitor do it?

I control the message and disarm it. And we qualify out so much faster, right? So that we're become much more efficient in our pipeline, all of those benefits. And then you add that last one, which is due to the proliferation of reviews, the G2s, the trust radiuses, the Camteros, even the glass doors. We, everybody, you've got to embrace this stuff right now. I, maybe I'm a little biased, but gosh, the truth is going to hurt you. So you might as well own it. Well, and it's, I mean, this is, you just look at society in general too, like the people who like fail or the people who get caught doing something and just come right out and be like, yeah, my bad. No matter how horrific it was, by the way, you know what I mean?

Like they cheated on their wife. They, you know, they, they cheated on a test, you know, whatever it, they get forgiven. You know what I mean? Like, let's, let's go back to the steroid era, right? I was just going to mention that. Yes. Yeah. The steroid era. Like the reason that, that, um, what's his name? San Francisco, big fat head. Barry Bonds. Barry Bonds. Right. So, so the reason that everybody kind of hates Barry Bonds is because for the longest time he said, no, I'm not. No, no, no, no. And, and, and it was like, dude, it's pretty fucking obvious. Your head's a fucking watermelon here. And, and you went from like this to this overnight. Come on. Whereas there was a bunch of other ones who were like, yeah, like picture there was, I forget the picture's name, but he was basically like, yeah, I did steroids.

Cause all the fucking batters were doing steroids. And if I didn't, I wouldn't have a chance in hell. So my bad. And everybody was like, oh, well, that's okay. Good for you. But everybody with Barry Bonds is like, fuck Barry Bonds. Cause he's a piece of shit. It's like, yeah, because he didn't admit it when he got caught. Exactly. That's it, man. I mean, when you own it, you build trust and that slope of trust, it, it, every interaction that you have with a potential buyer, with an individual, with a human being, you're either building trust or you're eroding it. It's never staying the same and, you know, building it that minute that you do anything to erode that it's a, like, it's like a greased hill down to the bottom and your climb out is really, really difficult.

So you've got to start at a, positive, right? I, that's part of the reason why when we think about a company that you may have heard of, they've done pretty well. It's a Amazon. Yeah. Amazon. Um, like Amazon, they were the ones that started this idea of, Hey, listen, we're going to sell stuff on our website. People are going to buy it. We're going to invite them back and share their feedback on it, whether it's positive or negative. And the negative was what drew the eyeballs. And the magic around it is when there were negatives, it sold better. And so they kept making a big deal of it. They were creating these little things that said, Hey, here's most helpful, positive, most helpful negative.

So you can get right to it. Um, and it was aiding in a buyer's ability to buy. Why should that be held just to when a website's acting as a salesperson? Again, in a human to human environment, we are drawn to the negative. When we hear somebody positioning, something is being perfect. It's basically going through a filter on its way to the middle of our brain. That's like, this is bullshit. When am I going to actually hear whether or not this is going to fit in my environment? When am I going to actually be able to predict what my experience is going to be like? And until you do that, every word is going through a filter, which is why it's so important to lead with it. I mean, those, like those five-star reviews, I always question how padded those reviews are.

Like how many of their friends did they send an email out to, to say, Hey, go on and give me a review. And it sounds awesome. Right? Like, you know, Angie's list, you know, I did it and, and I ended up getting, you know, first guy on the list, top of the list. I said, all right, cool. You're my landscaper. And after a while, after working with them, I'm like, there is no way you were top on the list legitimately from a review standpoint. Cause you fucking suck at, at mowing lawns. Like you, you don't set right expectations. You never show up on time. Like my, my, you know, my lawn was a dirt patch for a while. It's like, there's, so it was artificially bumped up at that perfect level. You know what I mean?

I mean, it got me to spend some money with them, but it did not get me to stay with them. So I think we definitely have to kind of reverse engineer that. Yeah. And it's, uh, it's like this book and that whole concept has been a touch of a curse for me in that, like when my book came out, I'm looking through my reviews and like, I like, like, Oh, my, my nephew read the book and, and wrote a review. And I'm like, Oh, he gave me a four star. And I'm like, dude. And he's like, Oh dude, I know that five stars are like, no, no, no. It's, it's the weighted average. Exactly. It's a weighted average. Like if you thought it was a five star, give it a five star. If you thought it was a four, give it a four.

The point being that when we see those imperfections, we all of a sudden lend trust and credibility to that content, whether it's positive or negative. And again, you can have these conversations with your buyers. Just, you know, more about the buying environment than you think when you're going into a sales situation position, like picture yourself in their shoes. Like, what are they going to love about you? And what are you even thinking? Like, gosh, are they going to buy if they know about this? If they were sitting in this chair with me in our internal meetings, and we're talking about this, like, how would they feel? Well, invite them to that meeting. Right? Like, that's the kind of thing that we're trying to do is, is again, help the buyer predict, set proper expectations.

It's, and, and like, I could go on a rant about expectation setting, but like it's obviously under promise over deliver, or actually over promise under deliver problem, big problem. Don't ever want to do that. But that's essentially how we've been brought up in sales. Sell as though it's perfect, get them to sign the contract and they'll figure it out later. And it'll be too late. We don't want to do that. The problem is the under promise over deliver, ironically, actually is a problem too, because it, it is a form of lying. It will create a short-term spike in satisfaction. Like imagine you're out to dinner, you got your kids and with the check, they bring chocolate chip cookies and milk. You're like, Oh, that's awesome.

I'm so excited that they did that. My kids are like, yeah, let's come back here next time. And then next time they do it again. Great. The next time they come, the cookies are maybe a little stale. Your kids are complaining, right? They're all of a sudden like, you don't get cookies and milk with any place else. It's about this idea of expectation inflation. So that once you set an expectation, you've got to stay to it or continue to beat it. Otherwise eventually satisfaction will drop. And so like for everybody listening to this, your goal, your role in marketing departments too, is to help the customer with their expectation setting. Cause if you can do that accurately and consistently hit it, you'll have customers that not only buy, they'll stay, they'll buy more and there'll be more likely to advocate.

And that's actually a perfect, you know, like discounting is a perfect example of that, right? I mean, fine discount to get the deal. Short-term win, you got the deal. Guess what? That's now the floor or the ceiling of where that client is now negotiating from when it comes to the renewal. So I don't remember that. I'm wearing a banana Republic shirt that I got for 40% off on a Sunday because every Sunday they have a 40% off sale. And maybe once every couple of months, I got friend and family weekend where it's 50%. But I told my wife, like, if you're ever going to buy me clothes from like banana or gap, please, if you ever buy full price, I'm going to burst into tears. Like you got to do it on a Sunday.

And because they've set a new expectation that I can't pay less than a 40% discount. Like, why would you ever pay anything more? Right. It's like, I always joke around with Macy's like Macy's. If you ever pay full price at Macy's, you should be ashamed of yourself. They have a one day sale, 365 days a year. All you got to do is go in and be like, Hey, I forgot my coupons. What do you got for me? Right. And they'll almost always pull out. So it's, it's, you know, and look, some organizations bake discounting into the whole thing as far as the expectation, but I talk about losing credibility. Nothing loses credibility for me more. First of all, with proactive discounting, right? When a rep proactively at the end of the month says, Hey, you know, I know you said you're probably going to do this in a couple of weeks, but I'll give you an extra 10%.

Like you've just ruined all your credibility. Right. But that also it degrades the value. I don't think, I don't think reps understand this and I'd love to get your thoughts on this is that, okay, discounting. Good for you. You might've got the deal, but it's not what people, most people give a shit about unless you're so wildly off as far as pricing. And look, if you have an apples to apples comparison product for the most part, and you are more than 30% higher than your direct competitor, you're kind of screwed. Okay. But if I give you a price Todd of a hundred thousand dollars, right. For my training and then, Ooh, shit. Uh, Sandler just came in and Ooh, shit. Richard Harris just came in.

And I, I know Richard charges less than me. And I'm like, uh, I want to get the business Todd. I'll do it for 60 grand. Like you went from looking at my training as a hundred thousand dollar value. And you might've been like, Oh, is it really worth it? But okay. Wow. Right. Down to a four 60. Now I devalue your solution, right. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. There's so much to unpack there. I'll start with the first piece, which is, it's not just discounting. It's any giveaway. Like imagine I live along a force preserve here and there's a path and I've got a pile of dogs. Right. And so like, imagine you're, you're walking your dog down the path. Like you're just trying to get them to do their thing, the path, right.

Like I want to get this over with. And so the dog pulls off to the side, you're sitting there, you look over and there's a rock and there's a piece of paper under it. You lift up that rock and there's $20 under there. Like, what do you do? You're like, well, can I keep it? Cool. I can. But the next thing you do is instead of taking the path, you're going to every rock, right? You just slowed down your journey because Hey, all I had to do is kick over a rock for 20 bucks. What else can I ask for? What am I missing? The minute that I see customer reps that are like, Hey, we require net 60 payment terms when your standards net 30. And they're like, we can do net 45. We're cool. Or these sales organizations where reps have up to 10% that they can discount.

So the customer says, Hey, I need 20% off the reps. Like I can give you a 10. Then I got to start asking my manager as a buyer. How does that change your journey? Right? You're just like, all right, the price wasn't the price that was so easy for 10%. Let's talk to the manager. Let's get it up. You know, like, and so that's, that's a core issue that we can't be giving anything away for free. Now, John, if you were starting out, like your startup, and like you said, you're charging a hundred thousand dollars, but you're not sure because you don't know what the market will bear for it. That's different. But for companies that have established customers that are paying for this stuff, the framework for the transparent negotiation is to just lead with, Hey, listen, our, our pricing is based on four things that we care about, right?

We care about how much you buy, which is volume, right? A product services, technology seats, whatever, the more you buy better. It is for us. The more we're able to pay you in the form of a discount for higher volume. Second one. I want to pause there for a second for people listening. You said something that I've made, I've actually used, uh, and give you credit for that phrase that you just said there, pay you in the form of a discount. I'm not giving you a discount. Could you unpack that one a little bit? Cause that's an important phrase and mentality to have. Exactly. And it's not necessarily comfortable for sales reps, but once you, once you get comfortable with it, like your buyers are going to be like, Oh, I get it.

Right. Like just putting all four of the levers on the table, right? Whether it's a whiteboard, whether it's in front of them and just say, Hey, listen, these are the four things that are valuable to us. These are four things that are valuable enough that if you're willing to give us that we're willing to pay you in the form of a discount for those things. It oozes with credibility, but it gives credibility to your pricing structure. I do it for, you know, my speaking and my workshops too. Right. Like I had a, I had a customer, this was pre pandemic that like one of my levers is travel, right? Like if you're going to require me to travel based on how far it is, the price of changes, because my only inventory I have is my time.

And I had a customer that actually I'm in Chicago. I had a customer headquartered in Cincinnati that had a group of people in Chicago that decided to move the training to Chicago because of my levers, right? That was valuable to me to spend a night with my family here instead of in a hotel. So those are things that I'm willing to pay for in the form of a discount. I like that. So let's go back to the four levers. You pay the terms. So volume. Yep. Right. Second one turns out we like money. So second one's timing of cash. The faster you're willing to pay us, the better it is for us, the more that we're willing to pay you in the form of a discount, right? Net 30 annual upfront. You want to change those?

All right. Something else has to change to reflect it. The third one, the longer you commit. So the length of commitment, the longer you commit to my products, technology services, the better it is for us as an organization. And the more we're willing to pay you in the form of a discount. So if your standard is a annual commitment, if they want to, if they need a discount, Hey, we're willing to pay you in the form of a discount for a longer commitment, two years, three years, however long, Oh, you need termination for convenience. All right. Well, the price needs to change the other way because that represents no commitment. And as a result, the pricing has to go to our month to month. In other words, you can have it, but you're not going to like it.

And then the fourth lever is the timing of the deal. There's value to me, our organization, you know, my rep here, who's got a quota, but also from an investor perspective and our ability to predict our business and our ability to resource this opportunity. If, and here's the, there's an important word I'm about to say here, if you're willing to mutually align around the timing of when you think you'll get this done, and we'll work on a close plan together to just make sure that we're not missing steps. But if we can mutually align around when you think you'll get it done, there's value in that to us. And we're willing to pay you in the form of a discount to hold to it. And that, that mutual, it can't be the, like, don't be a banana Republic email.

It's not, Hey, end of month. It expires at midnight. That's bullshit. Stop it. What does work is to say, Hey, you know, right now we're doing this in July. If we go through a close plan and we're like, Hey, um, does, does August seem reasonable for us to get this done based on the plan that gives us a little buffer on the backend and the customer's like, yeah, I think if we follow these things and things happen, August should be great. Right. If you're willing to hold to that and mutually align around that, I'm willing to pay you in the form of a discount to make that happen in August. Cause there's value to us and our organization and our ability to predict. You'd be amazed how that mutual alignment changes the whole conversation versus the, uh, the, the expiring fake discount, um, or the scarcity model of, Oh, um, you better sign early or there's not going to be enough resources to implement.

You're like that. Stop it. She's bullshit. It'd be like discount selling. I honestly, I wish we could, I look, I understand leveraging discounts. Right. But it goes back to kind of my training, which is give, get right. If you're going to give something, get something type of thing. So I get that. What I think is the most pathetic thing for a sales rep to do and how I feel like you could lose all credibility is the proactive discount. Yes. Hey, it's coming to the end of the month. The manager comes in and says, Hey John, you know, could you pull that deal in this month? If we gave him an extra 10% and then I reach out to you and say, Hey Todd, we got to end of this month. Right. Because guess what?

Everybody knows the discount doesn't go away. Right. So, and what almost always guess what happens? I tell reps this all the time. I go, guess what happens at month end, your month end happens. And so does theirs. So they're tied up internally. They have things that they're working on, especially if you're selling to sales. Holy shit. You know what I mean? So like, so what almost always happens is, yeah, you know what, Todd, I'll do that. You know what I mean? Why don't you, and you know, maybe it'll work. Right. And so now, but then Friday comes and goes last day of the month and I don't answer you and you're panicked about it. Cause I haven't, whatever. And then I pop in on Monday and be like, Oh dude, I am so sorry.

Fucking Friday was a shit show for me. I'm we're ready to move forward here. You know, just throw that extra 10% on. We're, we're looking to go. Right. Right. What are you going to do? Say no. Like, yeah, I'm sorry. That discount expired. What did your profitability change over the weekend? Like, uh, no. So, okay, fine. If I'm a buyer in that scenario, fine, I'm just going to wait till the end of next month to do this then, or the end of the quarter and make it even hurt more for you asshole. Like you've lost all credibility, all that rapport you've built up through all that great relationship. You lose it in an instant by proactively discounting. Well, ironically, what you just said is a perfect example of like, I want everybody to hear this.

When you try to create an expiring discount to create urgency, you are actually incentivizing them to wait because the customer knows that, all right, you're two weeks out for the end of the quarter and you're giving me this. I'm going to wait another week, see if it gets better. I'm going to wait till right to the last hour and just be, and like, maybe throw a little, Hey, give me another 5%. I'll sign it right now. Right. You're, you're literally and subconsciously incentivizing the customer to wait by what you think is incentivizing the customer to accelerate. It literally has the opposite impact on an individual. How much trust and faith do you put into the reviews you read online? It's interesting how we've all gamified this online representation of what we are and what we do and how good we are at it.

We've done this because we've learned how people shop in the 21st century. Todd said, you know more about your buyer than you think you do. And that's such a great piece of this conversation. Join us August 12th when Kyle Coleman from Clary, Morgan J. Ingram, and myself dive into cold emails that convert in 2021. We're going to show you some what to do's and some what not to do's on this one. So visit jbarrows.com today and register for this live action webinar in the blog and events section. I love to connect with new people and I've never met a stranger. So feel free to follow me at say what sales on Instagram and DM me your sales stories. We'll share them on next week's episode of make it happen Mondays.

Today, we're going to give a big shout out to Lance Dowdle of Pluto seven. Lance had a $3.35 billion construction company tell him that he gave them one of the best presentations they'd ever seen. He used relevance and only spoke to the 20% using quote, the JB way. Great stuff, Lance. He gave these prospects permission to say no after the presentation. And because he did that, they decided to trust him and move forward to the next stage. Big win, Lance. Well done. The skills and techniques that you need can all be yours at ondemand.jbarrows.com. This membership is an exclusive annual membership that gives you access to all our training, insights, sales tips, tactics, techniques, webinars, and podcasts, as well as weekly ask me anything sessions that will be a game changer for your pipeline results.

Join us and become a member today. We'll see you there. That URL again, ondemand.jbarrows.com. Let's throw it back to JB and Todd to get this conversation rolling again. Talk to me about creating urgency. Okay. Because that's when I do trainings, when I say, all right, what do you all want to get out of this? What, you know, what's your goals here? Those types of things. Inevitably, you know, 20, 30% people say, how do you create urgency? And my direct answer to that is you can not. Right. You can't. Now, we can manufacture it with discounting. That's sad. We just discussed that. You can't, you can't create, you can't create or you can uncover it and you can drive it, but you can't create it.

So how do you, Todd, uncover, create, not create, but how do you uncover and drive urgency in a scenario that is kind of like a, that, and let's take this, this very specific example that it's not a must have by this date. Okay. Like there, there are some, like, if you got that, like the, the Holy grail is no, we have to line it up. We have to have it launched by here because if we don't, the next day we're screwed. Right. So then you have all the leverage in the world to push. Okay. But let's assume that is, this isn't an emergency room doctor scenario. That is a, if I don't do it right now, it's not going to be the end of the world for me. How do you coach people on how to uncover and drive urgency without selling their soul?

I'm going to give you three words that you're going to be like, dude, you're nuts, but reality makeover television. And what I mean by that reality makeover TV shows, like if you watch like a queer eye or a restaurant impossible or biggest loser, I want you to picture yourself as being the host or the expert like restaurant impossible, right? It's Robert Irvine, big, you know, former British military guy goes into a restaurant that's struggling and in 48 hours turns them around with $10,000, right? How does he approach it? He doesn't approach it with, Hey, here's a bunch of slides of all the restaurants I've helped and look at their ROI on these things. And I'm a James Beard award-winning chef, aren't I?

That would be the most boring show in the history of the planet. And it doesn't build credibility. It builds boredom. What does he do? He walks in and he has a conversation around, Hey, what's going on? Like you, you invited me in here, right? And for salespeople, you're not zoom bombing people. You're not bursting into conference rooms going, you suck. They're inviting you in. So you do an alignment around that. That's what he does on the show. And then what does he do? Well, he disarms them. I disarmed through transparency. He disarms them by being a bit of a bully. I don't suggest that, but then he goes into a diagnosis where he starts to investigate. And he's like, Hey, you told me that it's the economy and the new Italian restaurant down the street, but Hey, I'm seeing the dirty panels in the ceiling and my foot stick to the flight this, this place isn't very clean, is it?

And he starts drawing out something about their perception of their status quo that maybe they didn't know. Right. And then he goes in and invites 30 people in to try the food and they're scraping their tongues off like third graders and, you know, smacking gnats on the wall. And so they start to see it. So they get the diagnosis, they get the logic behind it. And then right before commercial break, it's like, Hey, um, what, what happens if we don't fix this? And they're like, Oh, I'm going to, my dog's going to leave me. And like, you know, it's like the emotion. And then he goes to, all right, here's what we're going to do in, in those shows, they follow a choreography that if you follow from a sales perspective, there's a couple of main things to think about.

Number one, they lead to their solution instead of leading with it. Number two is they not only tell a great story, but they're very compelling because they help that audience, that individual, the, the, like the patient essentially see that their status quo is maybe worse than they thought, maybe more urgent than they, they thought every, like go watch a few episodes of, uh, Queer Eye on Netflix. And you'll see that they do it every single time. These people, they've been living this way for a while. They know they've got problems, but by the end of the episode, they're all celebrating together and they love each other. Right. And it's not because of slides and Hey, look how great, here's a map of our locations.

No, it's about them bringing their expertise to bear, helping a customer see issues that maybe they didn't see and leading to your solution. That's where the urgency gets created, right? It doesn't happen at the goal line. It doesn't happen with your negotiation. It happens to your point much earlier. And if you're able to create that it's gold. And if it's not, it's not going to be discounting that's creating it. I promise you that. Guaranteed. And that, you know, I talk a lot about how, you know, your first sale, if you will, after a cold call and sign time, your first sale is to convince them that status quo is not okay. Right. Right. That's what, because, because if they, if in their mind, they think that currently, okay, devil, I know devil, I don't, it's not going to have a huge impact on my business.

Either way, if they have that in the back of their head, it doesn't matter what you do later on. You're going to lose to no decision. So a, you got to, you got to shake them off that foundation that like example. And this is where challenger sales stuff comes in as far as educating on the marketplace and what other people are doing. And that's where the industry expert stuff really plays in well. Um, but the other thing is, you know, asking this very specific question, I'd love to get your feedback on it. Cause I tell reps to do this and I, and I've had success with it, but we all talk about when we do qualifying and discovery, whatever, we all talk about timeline. Okay. When do you want to, because, and most of us are figuring out timeline of when do you want, when, when are you going to make this decision?

So like, what's the decision-making process and timeline? I'm more curious of implementation timeline and why, and what happens if we miss that? And that question right there dictates our forecast. So I'm going to ask you, Todd, so when do you want to do training, right? Oh, we want to do it in August. Okay, great. Um, why I'm going to dig into those types of things. And then it's like, all right, Todd, so just back into this, you know, heard a lot of stuff from you here. What happens if we don't do training in August? What does that mean? What kind of, and I use the word impact, like what kind of impact will that have on your business? If we don't do what you want, when you want to do it. And the reason I ask that is there are two answers to that question.

One is a very real answer that shows impact and shows urgency. The other is anything other than that. Like if you get the, well, you know, I will, I guess we'll probably just go keep going back doing what we're doing. You know what I mean? Like, we'll just kind of keep leaning in a little bit harder. If you get that answer, you either a, not talking to the right person or B, I would not forecast that opportunity. So do you see that as a good question to prompt forecast accuracy and uncover urgency? Well, yeah. And I'll, I'll give it, I'll, the answer a little different way. Cause I, a lot of it is almost systemic from the way that organizations run their forecasting, right? To your point. And that's why I like the structure of my first book, the transparency sale, I didn't make this up.

It's that a buyer goes through three stages, right? And you can argue about the order, but when we think about dislodging the status quo, the first stage is why change? The second stage is why with you? And the third stage, in my opinion, is why now? Right. And so, first of all, what you said, A plus, like I totally 100% agree with that. But the second point is when you think about your forecasting stages, like just look at your CRM, are your stages based on selling activities? Like discovery, qualification, demo, proposal sent. Like when we do that, we're actually driving sellers to think like an assembly line of what do I need to be doing? And once I've sent the proposal, oh, good, I get to move it to 50%.

What I'm advocating for really emphatically, especially in the new book I'm writing now, The Transparent Sales Leader, is for selling organizations to start to look at their forecasting and base it on recognizing buyer behavior, right? That your forecast needs to be based on those three things, right? Understanding where a customer is and their indication of whether change needs to happen, whether their status quo to them is sustainable or not. Number two is when you recognize that they have made a decision that you are going to be the lever to make that change. And then it's, are we going to do this now or can it wait, right? And if we start to take that lens in the way that we forecast, almost inevitably sales reps will subconsciously start to ask the questions that you just did so that they can get better at not only their forecasting, but just the way that they think about sales, which is taking a buyer through their journey.

It's not about this step, this step, this step, right? And like, I think that's, that's a big change that I think is still so pervasive. And like every CRM I look at still has the discovery stage and the proposal sent stage. And I'm like, oh God, if you're basing your forecast on that, that's a problem all by itself. But again, you're driving behavior in the sales reps to complete steps instead of recognized buyer behavior. Yeah. And instead of giving a shit, right? They're going through the process. Exactly. They're literally just going through the motions. Okay. You're at stage three. So therefore, you know, whatever. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it is painful to watch, you know, I don't know how leaders can forecast accurately based on, hey, it's at 50% because we sent a proposal.

Well, and also you, I have, I've always never understood this one. You, you might have better insights on this. This is how they do it. They fudge the numbers. They, they take the percentage multiplied by the deal. So here's, what's always blown me away. If your deal is a hundred thousand dollars. Okay. And you're at put at stage four and that's 50%. The calculation is now that's a $50,000 deal. As far as when they aggregate all the roll-ups there. Right. No, it's a hundred thousand dollar deal. It's what percentage likelihood is it to close, but it's still a hundred thousand dollar deal, but they report the aggregate shaved off percentage number upstream. And that's basically them saying, I don't trust my forecast.

I don't trust my sales reps to push it on the forecast. So as a manager, I'm going to take all your shit. I'm going to shave off 20% before I throw it upstairs. That VP is then going to say, I don't trust my managers for forecasting this shit. So I'm going to shave off another 20% before it goes to the executive board or the executive team. And then the executive says, I don't trust my fucking VPs of sales here. So I'm going to shave another 20% off before I send it to the fucking board here. And then we're going to come up with some hopefully somewhat accurate forecast, which is not accurate anyway in shape or form. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, first of all, 50%, right? If I flip a coin and it comes up heads 50% of the time.

Now, if the last five times I did it, it came up tails. What are the odds on the fifth time that'll come up heads? It's still 50%, right? And so we need to create like a real firm understanding that 50% means it's got a one in two chance of closing. And if that turns out to be the case, aggregated across all of your deals, the 50% calculation actually should work. However, another systemic problem that we have in sales organizations is this. I actually, one of the things I did as CRO of my last role was like, we celebrated losses, you know, instead of this, Oh, John, you closed, you lost that deal, but better luck next time. And that's the end of it. Instead on a Friday, we'd have everybody in a conference room and be like, John, dude, Hey man, we're going to celebrate.

Cause you're already getting hit in the face with the loss. You're getting hit in the pocket with the loss. Like you don't need any more punishment. What I want to do is celebrate the loss for the effort and the lessons learned. Like what can we learn from that opportunity? And Hey, listen, this is not, we didn't lose because of you, John, we lost because of some issue. And let's, let's vet that out. Like I want my reps to feel comfortable marking a deal lost and sharing why they lost. If you can create environments like that, your forecast becomes more accurate and your 50% deals actually are 50% deals. Your 25s actually have a one in four shot of chain closing. Right. And even your committed deals.

I hate that word commitment. Like a rep makes a commitment that actually drives reps to do a couple of things. Number one, I remember when I, when I got to power reviews, I'm looking at the pipeline where there was a deal, like an active deal working. I thought we were pretty close on winning it. And then all of a sudden it disappeared. I look close dates, like nine months out. And I went up to the woman that was working on it and I was like, Hey, I thought we lost that deal. I see the close date is now nine months out. She's like, Oh, you know, it's kind of on hold. And I'm like, all right. And then as I dug into it, there was a systemic fear of losing. And as a result, no lessons learned from that, the investment in time and energy and resource that was put into that opportunity have gone for nothing.

And, and our forecast becomes wholly inaccurate because nine months from now, there's a hundred thousand dollar deal in there that we actually already lost three days ago. And, and, and, and even the word commitment, right. To your point drives the word commitment. They are not committed. Like, you know, and, and you can, by the way, you can't control that. Exactly. And, and, and, you know, verbal agreements is funny early in my career. I used to think verbal agreements were awesome. I'm like, Oh yeah, they're definitely, I've been kicked in the teeth so many fucking times from somebody. And I've had people look me dead in the eye, Todd, and be like, John, you get a contract in my, on my, you know, in my inbox here in the next couple of hours, you will have a signed contract tomorrow morning.

Absolutely guaranteed. Shake my hand. Look me dead in the eye, went home, high-fived everybody in the office. Like this thing's I'm crushing it. Yeah, whatever. And then next day comes, sorry, something else came up. Sorry, whatever. Right. So let's, let's, well, before we finish up on that, like what we had in our stages, again, based on recognizing buyer behavior, a buyer that would communicate to us that we have been verbally selected and this deal is going to happen was, uh, uh, 75% because we knew that one out of four of those deals still wouldn't happen. Yep. I mean, it's, and, and so it's like, we have this false narrative. Oh, they've committed. So I don't have to work as hard anymore.

No, exactly. Right. Exactly. Let's finish up with what you're talking about these days with this new book, right? Cause you take a management approach to this, but it also, I think is really, really relevant right now. Um, based on this new world, we're all living in after COVID. Right. Um, I just got off of a really, really interesting executive round table where we had six CEOs and we were just shooting the shit about, you know, challenges that they were faced with and all that other stuff. And it is so blatantly apparent coming out of that. The challenges are, uh, culture hiring and retaining your top talent, right? Because it went from a seller's market to a buyer's market. I'm sorry, a buyer's market to a seller's market.

Like when COVID hit, you know, and everybody got laid off. There was a ton of, there was a ton of people out there. And so if I'm an organization, I could cherry pick the best ones. Right. Um, but very quickly the, the a players realized, wait a minute, I can now go name my price and my allegiance to these organizations that I'm working for is way less because what used to be maybe a mediocre company, mediocre job, but a super awesome team that I was always going out and drinking with and those types of things and having fun with and hitting the gong that's been ripped away from us. Now we're all sitting at our house and we're all basically, you know, if I'm an SDR, I'm making fucking cold calls either way.

Right. So if you're a company and you're going to spend, you know, $70,000 base salary on an SDR and give me a little bump on commission, but that company over there is going to drop 90 on me plus commission. Fuck it. I'll go to do that. So, so talk to me about the, the, you know, some of the neuroscience and stuff that you've been studying right now, because I know coaching is a huge component of keeping people on board. Uh, culture is massively important now more than ever, ever, ever. So what are some of the things that you're, you're, you saw recently that were like, holy shit, I got to write a book about this. Well, yeah, the book at its core is about having a foundation or structure shrouded in transparency around the way that you lead as a sales leader.

And it's like, I went from being a sales rep to being a sales leader and I had no structure, no framework. And so that's where it starts, but there is a really big chunk of the book that is about this concept that I like to refer to as intrinsic inspiration. Now to your point about how easy it is for people to leave, I often compare it to, you know, changing streaming cable TV providers or like I used to have Comcast, but boxes on every TV and we had DVR shows that were recorded that if suddenly we lost Comcast, my kids wouldn't have access to their favorite shows every year. Comcast would raise the price, but we would be like, gosh, it's wired in. We got these boxes. I got the physical cost.

I got the emotional cost to change of like, I'm going to lose all these shows. And my alternative is direct TV, which is a satellite dish and more wires and more boxes. Like, screw it. I'll just eat the cost. Well, fast forward to now where all I've got are, you know, these stream, like these smart TVs and Roku devices. And literally this happened. This was one of the things that triggered me a few months ago. It was the beginning of March. I had AT&T now as my streaming provider coming through a Roku, right? They had, I'd had them for two years. Like finally got rid of the boxes because the emotional cost was, Hey, all the shows are on Netflix that we had on the DVR. So that's gone. And the physical costs became really, really easy.

Here's what happened beginning of March for the first time, AT&T raised their prices, 999 a month. So I get this email that's like, Hey, due to the costs of programming, the price is going to go up. I'm telling you within an hour, I'd unplugged from AT&T now and plugged into Fubo TV, same shows, lower price, like same, everything with a slightly lower price. And it literally was just, Hey, cancel subscribe. Now, when we think about the working world that we're in right now, what's the physical cost of changing jobs? I still have the same commute. Maybe I get a new laptop and the emotional cost. We can argue all day long, whether they're not the happy, the virtual happy hours and all this time.

Sorry, to your point, it does not create the same emotional connection that we have when we've actually hung out with people. And as a result, no physical cost to change jobs, no emotional cost to change jobs, none. Cause I've never met you. Right. And as a result, the slightest triggers cause people to leave like, Oh, higher quota this year. Smaller territory. Oh, um, you lost the big deal. And now your pipeline doesn't feel so good. Well, I'm going to run before I got a chance. Unplug, plug in my buddies making a ton of money down the street and he's loving it. I'm just going to, they're hiring. I'm just going to go there. So like, that's where it starts now to the intrinsic inspiration part that I hinted at.

Well, we're as human beings intrinsically inspired by a number of categories of things like things like, you know, recognition, validation, uh, predictability, autonomy. We don't want to be micromanaged all that kind of stuff. It was really fascinating to me to watch the progression from last March to now of how we went through those six. The first couple of months was the yin and the yang of, of, um, a manager losing their control and predictability. Cause I can't see you anymore. And a rep, uh, all of a sudden getting all of this autonomy, but maybe missing out on some of the other things. So we went through a period where it was like, Hey, we're going to do daily check-ins, right? Like that, that had to stop.

We then recognize that, Hey, people don't feel like they're a part of anything. So zoom happy hours every Thursday night. And like, all of a sudden it became this, we're going to over, uh, compensate on this family, this connection, this, this relationship thing. Well, here we are, what, 16 months later, we're still focused on the family connection, the security, the people have got my back issue. Unfortunately, we need to switch to another one because like I said, no physical cost to change, no emotional cost to change that family. You're, you're never going to be able to replicate what's in an office of me being in the trenches with you every day. There's another piece of intrinsic inspiration.

And it's this, this concept I call function, which is mission purpose impact. If you're a sales leader, you got to start prioritizing this right now. And it's, do your reps know what their work means to you as a leader? Do your reps know what their work means to your company beyond their forecast? And do you know what, like, do your reps know what their work means to your customers? And even more importantly, your customers, customers, because if you can create that connection to a, the work that I do every day, these SDR calls that I'm making, they matter because my work is helping keep people safe, or my work is helping people make good decisions or save money or putting families together, or, you know, whatever you're selling to medical device companies.

And now the medical device companies are able to be more effective in getting products to market. So I'm saving lives. Like, I know that sounds cheesy, but the impact, the purpose, the mission of your work is not unplug, plug in. You're going to miss that. And if your reps don't feel that and don't see that, I'm telling you even three months from now, the reps that you're sitting back right now, looking at going, they ain't leaving. They love it here. I bet you one of them's gone by November. guaranteed. And, and the, you know, I've always thought this and believe this, that as a leader, you'll never get anybody to do more than their job, unless they believe in a bigger picture vision of what you're trying to accomplish.

So let's go to transparency. I tell like there's founders, you know, me, you like founders of our organization. And sometimes they know the exit strategy. They know they're trying to in two years, get this thing sold off so that they can whatever, but they pretend like it's not right. So they bring people in and whatever. Um, I'm all about like, if I'm a leader, I'm bringing you on. I'm saying, Hey, Todd, just want to let you know, this is where we are right now. My goal is to sell out in three years. Okay. Um, and so I need you to come on board here, understanding that in three years, my goal is to get the hell out of here and sell this thing for multi millions of dollars. Um, and so therefore this is what I'm going to do for you to help, you know, you be a part of that and get some of that benefit here, but I don't want to pretend like, this isn't going to happen.

We are all hard charged here. You get every, and then you'll find people that like, no, I don't want a job for just three years. I don't want that pop. I'm going to go find another job. Or you get people to say, yeah, fuck yeah. I'm in. And then they'll do way more than you will ever ask them to do. And they'll trust you. If you also caveat it with, Hey, there's probably 10 people like me that are saying the exact same thing right now. And you know how many out of those 10 are actually going to successfully cash a big check in three years, probably three of us. So there's a, there's a chance that this isn't going to happen in three years. This is my goal. And with your help and our mission together, I'm, we're going to be one of the three that that's my, like, until you're setting proper expectations.

So when it doesn't happen again, it's like, you know, going to Ikea, you know, at Ikea that you're going to get a map when you walk in, it's going to be hell on earth. You're going to have to pick the boxes off of a shelf onto a cart that doesn't have brakes, jam it into the back of your car, Tetris style, get home and F-bomb your way through an assembly. And yet you keep going back. Right. And that's exactly the way that we need to think about transparency through leadership, create mission and impact, make sure that your reps know what their work means to you and to your customers and your customers, customers, but then also embrace, Hey, what could go wrong? What are the risks? What are the challenges you put those pieces together?

You're going to create trust in relationships. You're going to create that bigger emotional bond and you're going to create that mission purpose and impact that is not easily replicatable by anybody else. That's exactly it, man. I think it goes back to, I think we do a whole nother podcast on expectation setting because I, I, I fully believe that, that if you pick, I think life is about expectation setting. You know, I honestly, if you pick any, and I challenge reps when I do training, I go, look, think of any, think of the last time you were pissed off about anything, anything. I almost guarantee it's because your expectations were mis-set. So the easiest one, the easiest example of real world that I use is, is like you go to a restaurant, you know, it's a Friday night, the restaurant's banging, fuck, like just super busy.

They're in the weeds. Right. And, and a waiter has two options. Okay. Waiter or waitress. What they can do is they can, they can jump, they can greet you in the first five minutes of you sitting down at that table and saying, Hey Todd, look, I will be right over to you. We're in the weeds right now. We're short staffed. It's probably going to be about 15 minutes before I can get to you and order your stuff, but I'll, I'll make sure the guy brings them over some water and whatever it is. Okay. You're not thrilled. Like, okay, it's going to take 15 minutes before how shit. Now you're thinking about how long it's going to take for the food to come out, whatever, but expectations set. So you go about your conversation.

The other option is the other waiter or waitress waits 15 minutes to come and take your order. They don't engage with you at all. Right. So you get the exact same result in 15 minutes. Your order was taken. Which one are you happier with? Exactly. What are you going to remember? Which one are you going to remember? I mean, I, I tell a very similar analogy about, you know, two groups of people that are going to go on a trail ride, same trail, different guides. Guide number one tells the group number one, you are going to love this trail. It is beautiful. Just here's the map. Go. Can't wait to hear about it on the backend. Group number two comes up to guide number two and guide number two is like, Hey, listen, before you decide to go, there's a steep part, uh, with some like rough gravel and then an embankment.

When you see the tree overhang, slow down. And if you're not cool with the, the, that scary part, don't go. But right after that, the gravel part and the embankment look up, cause it is beautiful. It's majestic. I can't wait to hear what you think on the backend. They both get done. Group number one. What are they going to remember? How bad? We almost died. Like, Oh, that loose. We were going so fast. And then there was that embankment. I thought you were going over group. Number two is going to remember the majestic landscape. And it's, it's, it's simple as same path, same day, different expectations and the different satisfaction. And group two will come back and group one will tell stories about how horrifying the embankment was.

Yep. Absolutely. Awesome. Like I said, we could have conversations for days here and we're definitely going over here. So, uh, love it as always. Um, Todd, tell people, first of all, when's the book, when, when you plan on publishing the book? Well, I'm ear deep in writing it right now. Uh, manuscripts do in September. The book is expected to launch February 22nd of 2022. It's actually available for presale already on Amazon, which is weird since I haven't even finished writing it, but, uh, you can find it on there. Uh, so yeah, that's, that's the main thing that I'm really busy with right now. Awesome. And then, and as just a preface for everybody and I recommend it all in my trainings and everything else, you know, if you haven't read transparency, so I'll read it.

It's one of the better, I mean, and look, and I promote, um, uh, Chris Voss too, you know, never split the difference. They'll have the negotiator one, but I think the balance of the two, right. Um, and, and, and gives you a lot of stuff to work on. And I think the, the, the funny thing is, is that the, you know, it really does come down to just not being full of shit. You know what I mean? Like literally just being dead nuts, honest with absolutely everything you do and not worrying about the negative, because the positive you get out of being honest across the board about what you can and can't do strengths, weaknesses, expectations far outweigh the couple of deals you might lose because your competitor lied a little to get the deal.

Right. And I'd rather lose a deal with integrity all day long than win a deal by lying or, or misrepresenting the truth. I don't care who you are. Well, the fun part is there's no question that it's speed sales cycles, right? Like, I mean, Gartner in 2017 looked at consensus buying and where consensus buyers spend their time. And only 39% of their time is spent talking to you, your competitor or their internal buying groups. 61% of their time is spent doing other stuff. And that other stuff is back-channeling you and trying to figure out why you're not a five. When you lead with it, that 61% is not a foregone conclusion. That's where your cycle length shrink and your win rates go up because you'll qualify in better.

You'll qualify out better. And just like the final rap battle in Eminem's eight mile, when you lead with transparency, you make it really, really hard on your competitors to position against you too. Yeah. I talk about all my warts. And so therefore, if you talk, then the client already knows it. So when they come up and the competitor's like trying to make those super negative, the client's like, uh, yeah, we actually already talked about that. It's not that negative. Like I understand why they don't do that. Right. Exactly. So love it, Todd. All right. Well, where can find, where, where do you want, where do you want to send people here? Yeah. Uh, you can, I'm pretty hard not to find, but, uh, toddcaponi.com transparency, uh, sale.com, uh, you know, keynotes around this stuff, but then workshops around messaging, positioning, presenting, negotiating, and negotiating.

And then, you know, I've been doing some sales or the transparent leadership programs for sales leadership organizations, and that'll be coming in more earnest after the beginning of the year. Love it. And for those of you who are listening and not watching, Caponi is C-A-P-O-N-I. Look him up on LinkedIn, read the transparency sale. Todd, it's always been a pleasure, my friend. Uh, I, I hope let's not make it as long as it was between, uh, conversations here. I mean, at COVID, you know, uh, I think we relied a little bit too, I, I relied a little bit too much on those conferences and just kind of taking those for granted as far as seeing people that I enjoy hanging out with. So let's, let's be a little, I'll be a little bit more proactive with us, uh, reconnecting here.

Yeah. I was thinking there's about five other topics that we could have gone 20 minutes each on. So there's plenty to talk about easily. Awesome. And look, everybody, I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Got you to think a little bit, a little bit differently. Maybe try some things out, maybe try the, the, you know, the dead nuts, honest approach with your prospects, um, and see what happens, you know, practice it a little bit on some, some lesser perfect, you know, tier one deals, right. Just to get used to, you know, elevating this profession by doing it the right way. So anyways, uh, as I always say it at the end of my podcast here, look, uh, even if you had a shitty day, go out there and make somebody smile today.

Cause even if you had the worst day out there, if you make somebody smile, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all for listening. I will see you on the other side. Cheers. The reality show piece of this conversation was very interesting to me. I watch a lot of that stuff and I think there's something to that flow that makes a lot of sense. Your clients can tell a great story. We need to get into this rhythm where our prospects can start telling us what's wrong and what's needed. Losing to no decision is the worst way to lose a deal. In my experience, we're ready to deliver what you need. If you're in sales, you need the structure, the skill sets, the foundation, the processes, and the routines that drive results for you every single day, more meetings, more conversations, and more opportunities.

As John often says, a big fat pipeline solves most of your problems. So join us today and get the skill sets that you need to be a successful sales professional at on demand.jbarrows.com. Follow us on Instagram at JB sales training, all one word and get daily tips and techniques that you can use to get better results right away. See you next week, everybody. When we bring you another stellar guest to help you sell better, make it happen out there.