59: Kevin Dorsey and Humanizing Sales

good afternoon everybody it's john barrows with j barrows consulting with make it happen mondays here hopefully y'all had a fantastic weekend especially for those fathers out there i had a great time with my daughter and my family out in california even though we spent the whole time on the flight home uh for father's day but it was still with my family so that's what matters but uh this week hopefully you're all ready to rock i am super amped up to have my guest today uh kevin dorsey over at service titan kevin why don't you introduce yourself to the crowd and talk a little bit about background what you're coming from all that stuff hey guys thanks for hopping on it's kd um i am the current head of sales development and enablement at service titan we're based like the salesforce.com for the home services industry a little background on me and um i'm a i'm a chosen salesperson not a natural born salesperson and i've cut my teeth in multiple industries and i just i found a knack and a niche for growing coaching sales teams from small to big and that's what i'm doing at service titan now i love it man because you know your linkedin profile um it talks about how you were a sales development executive of the year top 10 top 100 sales coach and sales consultant and mentor so how did you like you said you were chosen right you it's a chosen field for you why did you choose it when i was in school i felt sales was the most secure job you could ever have i i convinced myself that if you knew how to sell that you'd always have a job and so i decided to get into it i was not natural i am more of an introvert than i am an extrovert and i started reading the zig ziglers and the brian tracys knocking on doors i sold i didn't even sell cutco knives that's the knockoff of cutco knives in college so like i sucked i was really bad and worked my way up to figure things out and i think that's why i have such a passion for coaching because i didn't have it no one no one really sat me down to teach me i had to really learn it on my own i think that's why i try so hard to give my teams as much as i can so they don't have to go through all the struggles that i did i love it man i mean this is why i'm i'm so excited for this conversation because i think you and i share a very similar outlook on stuff i mean i i fell into sales didn't have a lot of coaching figured out along the way and the reason i trained today is exactly what you just said there is like i made a lot of mistakes along the way and i'm hopefully just hope you're helping a rep skip a few steps right not all the steps they still got to get punched in the face they still got to learn it but hopefully a little bit of guidance will at least put them in the right direction right exactly i believe i've talked about this before i think sales as an industry loses really good potential people because they don't get through the first three years that you make it through the first three years like you've gotten punched in the face a little bit you've bounced back up you've done through it but we lose a lot of really good potential people that didn't get through those first three years it was too hard they weren't taught how to avoid the the hooks or the jabs like all those things add up they go into marketing and they go into customer success and we lose them and i think that's where i found a little bit of a niche with this sales development world like i love the closing side i'd still miss closing from time to time but like to try to get people through these first three years of like make sales a great career is what i'm really passionate about right now yeah and just for all those grads out there listening to this podcast on the back end i i couldn't agree with kevin more as far as sales being the most secure job that you could have because if you think about technology right now it's disrupting every industry so there could be like ai could all of a sudden point its eye at okay sorry industry we just annihilated your skill set for this but if you sell into that industry then all you got to do is kind of go into another industry and sell for that industry you just got to learn how to sell that product you don't have to be certified in said skill set to be able to like there's a lot of people out there that when technology disrupts that market now they got to go back to school effectively right their sales is pretty universal so i love that line with i think what we're talking about today around humanizing it with sales is most of what i read and study now is on humans it's not on skills it's on people biology psychology neurotransmitters hormones like what what about people that's how you sell and if you really learn people you can move industry to industry but when people learn how to sell in an industry and well person that's when they get in trouble because then they can't switch there's oh i i can't sell x because i only learned how to sell y versus once you get people it opens up the whole world i always say that it doesn't so i had actually a little backdrop here i know a little sidebar but when i got fired from staples so i was an it sales guy for my first startup and we ran that got it to 12 million purchased by staples they fired me because i i couldn't get along in the corporate world um but uh i and then i had a little bit of a crisis as far as like what do i what do i do next because i was like well am i an it sales guy i'm like i i don't i don't even like computers like i i can't like i don't know anything but i sold it i sold computers for seven years or it support and my wife was the one who got me to help me realize she's like well let's take a look at every job you've had and why you've been successful at each one of them right so dewalt power tools why was i the top rep at dewalt because i love dewalt power tools like dewalt power tools were badass so it wasn't hard for me to have that conversation with people xerox copiers why was that once i love copiers but i believed xerox was the best company at the time in that space thrive why was i great there it didn't have to do with the technology it had to do with the people so what the realization was is it didn't matter what i sold it just mattered that i believed in what i sold absolutely and then it opened up the floodgates to pretty much any career right so i mean well any any industry as long as i can believe in it right so love it so let's talk about because i think this because this is the topic right humanizing sales what does that mean to you based on where we are right now because i think we can look at it from a historical standpoint of humanizing sales but what is in today's world with technology and ai and all that other stuff what does it actually mean to humanize sales from your perspective i think it's when it comes to humanizing sales it's what can technology and automation not do to a human being and i think that's what it means to me is if we look at what it means to be human most of if you look at what separates us from call it the animals and what separates us from technology is emotion humans have emotions we happy sad frustrated all of those things and to humanize means like intentional work to elicit the emotions you want from the people you're talking to whether that's joy or pain whether it's curiosity it's bringing the emotional side back to selling because that's something that technology can't do technology at the moment right who knows eventually but cannot get emotion and that's do you still believe because because historically everybody's always said people buy on emotion back it up with fact do you still believe that i do i think where people get lost is people make decisions with emotion they don't necessarily buy off emotion but we make decisions emotionally right that's how you can have like anyone that's sold knows this you can talk to a prospect on a monday and they're like get lost that's it i don't want to talk to you i'm done and they hit you up on a thursday and say you know what we're ready to go right changed logically the logic was still there but the decision to buy is still based off emotion now the ability to buy that's where logic comes in do i have the money can i prove an roi yes i want this thing i love it but does it actually make sense that's where logic comes in but people don't buy through emotion they make the decision to buy through emotion i like that which one do you think because i get that i'm sure you get this question a lot i get it all the time which is like creating urgency right how do you create urgency um when it's seemingly not there right so yeah inbound leads there's a you know i need this problem solved whatever it is but creating urgency i think is one of the hardest things to do in sales do you think it's what mix or or what approach from an emotional versus factual standpoint do you take when it comes to creating urgency i believe i mean urgency in itself is an emotion right like it's a need with a timeline addressed to it and the biggest way you affect urgency is by making someone want what you have you make someone want it the more you make them want it the faster they will want to get it done right i talked about this with my old teams i talked about it here you can't create urgency for someone who doesn't want what you have right deadlines discounts promos whatever if i don't want it none of that matters and so it's the creation of the want that we have to focus on and the better job we do there then want leads to need need leads to roi roi leads to what's missing if you don't move forward by x but if i don't want it like this was a couple weeks ago i had someone attempt a takeaway sale on me um like well if we can't get this done by friday like the pricing i offered you will no longer be valid and i said okay okay like i'm not buying anyway so i don't want what you have so your urgency doesn't matter to me it just make me want it that's how you do it well and this is why the discount sale is always the saddest way to sell right because it ruins your credibility across the board because you usually a rep has done a pretty decent job up until a point maybe showing the value and it's like okay cool and then look we'll probably buy but all of a sudden you get that call down hey if you if you sign by the end of the month first of all it ruins your credibility but second of all everybody knows that damn discount doesn't go away at the end of the month right so i i've told this to a rep before where they try to pull that same shit on me and be like okay fine i'll just wait till the end of next month and then like uh uh because i know it'll be there next month so like that's why selling on value and trying to create that is way better than selling that discount right um what how do you coach people on on discounts like how and when to use them so it depends on the sale but regardless of the sale i always always always always covered do not cover pricing with someone who doesn't want what you have so that that's my first rule if they don't want it there's no reason to talk pricing so there's rule number one and then rule number two if they can't explain why they want it they're not ready to discuss pricing at that point i actually like to bake in discounts up front right or it's like all right so hey before we dive into pricing do you want this like is this something that you actually want for your business yes okay why why for you though because some people want it for this some people want why do you want this for your business now they're selling themselves back to you right law of consistency all right let's dive into pricing because i'm also anchoring roi throughout the presentation right so now at this point it's saying all right so it's going to be a thousand dollars a month if we can get this done by next friday i can knock it down to 1200 or you know 800 a month and that's going to come with x x and x do we think we can get it done by there so what i'm doing is i'm taking away the back and forth this is what helps shorten the sales cycle i'm going to give you the discount because it also is proven emotionally how do people feel about receiving discounts they like it feel good this is why corporations run sales i actually believe in discounting but it should be paid into your pricing it should be paid in discount because it actually does make people feel good people like knowing they got a better deal you know but i've always generally speaking i've had like flat rate discounts and like this is what the discount is right right it isn't a negotiation it's just this is the discount and let's go so that's kind of like so i talk about objection handling it's almost like so the the close technique you talk about the walk away close but then the objection handling technique which i love which is the preemptive strike where you know it's going to be an objection so before you allow them to use it you use it right and you take their power away right what's that you know what we call that here eight mile eight mile eight mile eight mile remember eight mile the last scene one of the most classic examples of how to handle objections in the history of the world oh yeah yeah yeah absolutely and it comes out it's like yeah i'm white i'm skinny i'm an idiot you know that and he says like it's just every new onboarding class watches the last scene of eight mile when we do our objection train we call it eight miling because it is like take what you know they're going to say use it against them but then the second part right if you remember that scene he says all the bad shit he's going to say when he flips and he goes yeah i know something about you and he goes there so it's the handle the objection but then take what you know about the person you're talking to and leverage it forward so yeah preemptive strike i like eight mile like that's that's what i thought that's a better way to do i i got baked into my my slide deck but i like the eight mile example there because i remember that real well um cool man well i i think um you know i wanted to talk about this one main example because this really hit home for me like you and i were chatting about this earlier where the sales process almost lost and potentially lost the deal for you and and and i got this question after i posted this little example here which was the sophisticated buyer how do you identify a sophisticated buyer so kind of dovetails into humanizing sales right because look we're all every sales rep is you know they got to learn the slide deck they got to learn the corporate deck they got to learn you know whatever's in the sales manual all that stuff like that's the onboarding part of it right but i always tell people like if you can't always if you can't make that your own and if you can't now take that and put some context around this to the buyer and be human about that presentation that process there's a strong possibility you're going to turn off more people than you're going to turn on and look i understand the unsophisticated buyer like the person that doesn't know you know and is usually below the power line being told what to do hey go go look into something like this okay fine bring you through the whole demo whatever i still disagree with that approach of just going through the 30 slide deck you know soup to nuts but let's talk about the sophisticated buyer like somebody like you and me who we've done our homework we're executives within our companies time is of the essence right so walk me through this scenario again without naming any names of what happened to you and then let's talk about how do we identify the person like you versus the person that's just calling up for pricing so walk us through this what happened first and then let's talk about how to identify that scenario for sure and this is by far in a way not an isolated incidence i actually have another process going on right now where it's the exact same thing i was looking into a software for my team there's a couple competitors like in the landscape and so obviously i've researched before i've even reached out to these companies i've already done back channel references i've already talked to people that are using them i understand the concept i've even looked at both of these companies over the past couple years but i saw one and they actually they started off like well what do you need to see like what do you need to see i was like here's what i need to see and they showed me what i needed to see and sprinkled in some questions throughout it i was like all right cool so i end there i go to another company where i'd actually was kind of leaning towards them from the beginning you know i knew some things i had some good back channel um references all right cool but this time they i even remember i got the calendar invite and it was for 30 minutes and i said hey you know we're going to go through some stuff blah blah blah learn more about your business this and this and that then we can set up a demo and i responded back to that and i said no i don't need 30 minutes of discovery i'm already moving forward with this i just need to see some key examples okay now this was called their first mistake they said okay so my okay into that call was i was gonna get what i wanted wasn't the case i got discovered for 20 minutes it left them only 10 minutes at the end even show me their product and at that point two things were in my head either i was like all right screw this like i this was your shot you didn't get it i'm moving on but i threw a all of branch and said you know what stop rushing because he was flying i'm here let's set up another one set up another one let's go and so we set up another one this was for an hour multiple people are now on this call and same thing they're going through the same process i can tell the same deck showing me everything when the whole point of this is tell me how you're different from the other person i understand your value prop i understand the value i could see i understand but i'm making a decision now show me the difference and even that didn't go very well here's the problem i have with discovery so i have a rule on questions don't ask questions you're not going to use to close so if you discover me then you should be using that throughout your whole presentation but most processes you ask all these discovery questions and i don't get they're not used you give me the same presentation you use with someone else so those that was an example of i like almost said no just because of how the sales process was i was forced to sit through something that i didn't need to and so back to i guess the original question is how one of the questions like how do you discover someone's a sophisticated buyer you ask them you ask yeah hey where are you in the buying process right now are you seven percent of the way like ceb says you are by the time you reach out to me or are you at 74 and you ask but then here's how you weed out the people you were talking about is you ask them to explain what they've learned so far okay right so hey kevin where where you at right now in terms of this process you know i've done a lot of research i've even called some of your your customers i guess all right so you understand the overall value that x can bring to your company yes i do what do you think that is for you now again you have me pre-selling you on here's what i believe the return will be now you can say all right so what do you need to see for me to confirm those things you can the the the sales process should is not linear i almost want a whiteboard right now i want to go to whiteboard whiteboard you don't want a straight line right it's a connect the dots that eventually equals like a dollar sign so you can ask your discovery questions that are extra throughout the presentation because the other thing too and i'm sure you've gotten this when you ask all your discovery questions up front you know that leads to on the demo no good questions right because you've already kind of asked them so now i'm just sitting there listening so they just have to ask better questions than actually use actually use it it's it's a you know i wrote a post a long time ago called sell to the 20 which is my firm belief they pick a product or service that you own right i i almost guarantee you only use about 10 to 20 of the functionality whatever that product or service is right i use the iphone as the example right it's like you know this thing has more power than we use to send somebody to the moon but most people check emails text snapchat whatever right so because most people only use 10 to 20 of the functionality whatever it is they're buying that's how i believe people buy they only buy the 10 to 20 percent now we think the whole presentation is important because that's what we were badged for boot camp but really the only thing you give a shit about is show me this right and if i could show you that now all of a sudden i hone in on that i figure out what your priorities are around that with like what happens if you don't do that whatever but that's what i'm selling to do you agree with that kind of philosophy there well one that's that was my presentation at rainmaker this past year sales law like i was on stage quoted big bold letters stop selling your whole product not what everyone is buying i'm trying to remember the book is from it was it's a consumer psychology book and what they found was people buy for one to two reasons any purchase any purchase they buy for one to two reasons and justified with one to two more that is it that is four total reasons why you make any purchase in your life from a cheeseburger to a 130 000 porsche you bought that porsche for two reasons how it makes you feel pulling up to the office and you want to beat the mustang off the line you justified it with two more well it is a german-made vehicle so it's safer and i do like red and how it affects my skin that is it everything else was gone that's why you buy you have to find what those one to two things are and remember they weren't the things i mentioned they were feelings not features the top two reasons why i bought were for feelings and then i justified with the other things what are you looking for if i'm talking to you right what's the feeling i want because i'm working with john america well it's funny because and you know this world right is is i get the roi question a lot by somebody and usually it's not from the vp or svp it's almost always from the person that's below the power line checking out the boxes well what kind of roi does your training provide and i'm like do you really want to have this conversation fine then what's the exact conversion ratios you have you top tier accounts using email to c-level executives what's that number and i'll tell you what they are nobody has that number that's a number they're looking to check a box the question is is are you trying to drive results are you trying to in a lot of cases with training specifically they want to show their team they've invested in them right so they want to have the good feeling that their team comes out of that training jazzed up fired up and ultimately yeah if they have some techniques and tips that'll move the dial that's like almost gravy on like that's almost like the icing on the cake but if you were to really ask most vps when they invest in training i i would say at least 50 percent of them are going to say yeah i just want to i want to have my team feel like we're investing in them right and so that's the team feel what's the feeling that i want right i want my team to feel like i'm investing what's the feeling i'm looking for in that it's security it's confidence right it's like almost like a lack of feel like hey i am investing in my team right it's that feel first and then everything is oh yeah i need to level up my team and i have to do all those things but that that's the we're talking about for that emotion and logic yep you can does come first and if you never find it if you just sell on logic this is why like spin selling is a great i love spin i love it yeah spin very very heavy logic-based sale right if this situation and problem right solutions over here but they miss out on the stories they miss out on the feelings that got people to where they are now well that's also so let's let's explore that one too because like the pain funnel right so let's talk sandler because i'm a big sandler fan i'm a big spin fan right but i almost call bullshit on the pain funnel here because it's like okay you know what's the primary pain all we're not going to hit our numbers what happens well if we don't hit our numbers we're not going to hit the you know get the next funding round well what happens to you personally if that well i'm going to lose my job and the whole concept there is if i get to that that's what i can sell to but it's sophisticated buyers going to that one like i can tell when a rep's pulling me through that and that's yes that's a data point like if i don't hit my numbers blah blah blah but that ain't the real reason i'm buying this shit and if a rep tried to pull that back on me and be like dude whatever like the time back you know the time back whoa kevin if i could give you three hours a week of time back well then what you know it's like i don't know i'd do something else with those three hours like you know whatever so what's your kind of theory on on where that fits in the overall justification process if you will so pain is important right like and the results of the pain are important but again there's a massive flaw in all of that that assumes human beings are logical we are not logical we are the that's my friend talking of dissonance we are the only creature on this planet that intentionally does things we know are bad for us intentionally yep so all this logic-based thing like we think pain moves people pain doesn't we do things that hurt us all the time anyone who's watching this will say anyone ever maybe been in a relationship they shouldn't have been in and stay for too long even though logically there was a lot of pain that's why like going for pain in the sales process isn't all you can rely on because that's that is pure logic oh it hurts so you should change it right it doesn't work you also have to get me to envision the future you have to get me to envision the better version of myself it's not just the avoidance of pain which does move people but you got to give me that brighter future too and like with my reps we we focus more on gaps than pain now it depends on the the type of sale that you're in especially early on in the sales process which i don't think a lot of people think about how does pain make people react what are the two reactions to pain there's technically a third but you got fight flight or learned help are pretty much the whole how you respond to pain i don't know about you but i'm not trying to invoke fight or flight early on in the sales process no and that's how people try to discover very early on they're trying to find the pain well now who do i associate that pain to you the salesperson i don't feel good interaction interacting with you so i'll leave that session with a purely logical example of yes i have a problem but i don't feel good and now i'm not going to want to take that next step you gotta get both emotions into it yeah we talk a lot about when i do training we talk about pain and pleasure right like and that's also in this kind of we'll get to our kind of a last question here which is the the sophisticated buyer because i look at pain and pleasure like this the reason that i think so many people are fixated on pain is because a lot of times we sell to people below the power line and people below the power line are focused on today or yesterday which is usually pain whereas people above the power line are focused on tomorrow which is usually pleasure so going back to the sophisticated buyer like i don't want to talk about pain if i want to talk about pain i would have submitted an inbound lead and told you i have pain fixes for me but if you're trying to sell me on something and get me to buy something bigger picture you've got to figure out a way to get me up for instance for me to get off an airplane so i can spend more time with my daughter like if you can figure if you can figure anything out that is going to help me spend more time with my daughter i will listen to anything you have to buy and i will spend whatever money it takes to be able to make that happen but if you're just going to say well john i know your travel schedule is busy and i can coordinate it more logistically for you and be more efficient with that it's like yeah okay john i can give you more time with your daughter we're having that conversation so so let's talk about that sophisticated buyer though because i think this is the last piece of this is you said you said it as far as ask them right but there's a lot of sales reps and a lot of buyers again usually below the power line that'll straight up say look kevin i already know what i'm looking for just tell me how much this is going to cost me and you know you and i wouldn't take that approach we we'd articulate you know that type of stuff but i think there are a lot of people that just push sales reps around and sales reps like 22 23 24 year old kid is now stuck in a well i know i don't want to give you that pricing but if i don't give you that pricing i'm probably going to lose the deal so what do i do with that kind of aggressive look kevin i already know what i'm talking about here i've already done the due diligence uh how much does it cost how do you identify the person that's legit about that versus the one it isn't and does it come back to just asking them like you said before yeah it's not it's but it's asking the right questions right so how do you determine if someone is actually the buyer right all right how do you determine if someone's actually the buyer they're actually the buyer when they before and you do this all the time by the time i'm ready to talk to a rep about a product like actually talk to her about the product i'm not just dying to down the buying process i've also already done roi i've already been like okay like what would i need to see to make this worth it so that's a question that you can ask right someone's like well hey i need to know the price it's like all right we have a few different options here what sort of expected roi are you hoping to see from this that will expose right a whole lot either the person that's too low they're like well you know i need to buy and they'll discard it or you're talking to a you or me it's like look i need to see at least a two three x mom it's like okay now you've already been doing your research how do you think a product like this not just us because by the time i'm talking to you i'm talking to other people too there's people forget about a sophisticated buyer if if i opted to you i opted into your three top competitors and you better be ready to have that conversation okay why do you think why do you think sales training will have a positive impact on your company right some people think it's this some people think it's this why do you think it is now we're getting a little bit of exposure to who likes there now there's the last part i'll touch on though sdr to ae there's a big difference there's a big difference here if you are the sdr you need to be brutally honest brutally honest but i can't stand and my team knows this they can't do when sdr says i don't know pricing bullshit you tell me you work at that company in a sales department and you don't know the price of your product yeah you're not allowed to say that right you can start with and depends you know how your product works but most pricing does depend now most prices just depend on how you choose to leverage it so we're up front honestly it's going to depend on how you choose to leverage this product and where you go with it we've got some people that spend x you give them like a low price you got some people spend 30 40 000 a month with us but no one's giving us that money for free it's because they're all seeing a return right let me set you up with my product expert so we can see what sort of return we can give you in pricing no i need to know the price now okay so you're already convinced you're already convinced that as a whole this product's going to be good for you yes are you sure yes well it comes in normally like 350 per month per seat but my account executives have different promos and discounts and things they can offer that i can't because i set you up with one of them so they can go into it right so i still got a range right i still have and a sophisticated buyer we have an idea like i honestly i don't know what you charge for us i don't know what you charge but i have a decent idea of where you're probably gonna fall so as long as you don't fall way outside of that that conversation can continue but you just gotta ask it's just asking the right questions well i think that's the from a pricing conversation similar approach in the sense that you know some people say don't talk price at all build value and then talk price because you've justified it others say talk price up front so you don't waste your time but then you might lose out i'm similar to you as ballpark hey give me a couple of like for me it's how many reps do you have you know do you want to do online or on site that type of stuff how many different sessions those okay cool you're probably in the range of 30 to 50 000 depending on what is that in the range of what you're looking for well yes because i do want to know up front like if you were expecting this to be five thousand dollars okay sorry like let's stop talking here but if you're at least okay to your point sophisticated buyer kind of understands the the parameters here and i throw that number out there and you're like okay then we can work on it moving forward and to you i i don't get discounts out of the vocabulary i don't get i think discount obviously is a part of sales i try to get the word discount out of the vocabulary and change it to creativity and flexibility yeah because that allows it's a different conversation because now instead of maybe cutting off now we add a couple years longer now we add an extra service to it or whatever but we can get creative and we have flexibility as opposed to discounting which is just a dollar figure so i i like it i think the key there though is that you do have other things to add right hey we can get creative here and it's all you of all your creativeness was dropping the price yeah that that wasn't creative that i have an email in my inbox right now right where like i'm negotiating i love negotiating it's the only place i get to like close anymore so like i have a great part of this and if any of the people that are trying to sell to me right now are watching this you know like i'm good at it but it's there it's like oh well what do we do here i'm like ah can we do a little better yeah that was it that that was it well that's that's what cracked me up about what you said to me of this example where you brought the rep in because this is it i mean when you were talking price you were like hold still watch what's about to happen and could you explain that because i think this is this happens to every rep and i'm gonna coach every i want reps to understand the power of silence and also what guys like you and me try to do to sales reps without even really trying so talk like when they did pricing what do they do we get to the end of the the second demo all right and then we get into price right it's like all right so how much is this going to cost and again i'm down the funnel i've talked to your number one competitor i know what they charge you should too and i asked what is this how does pricing work like oh you know it's a per monthly blah blah blah there's no implementation fee all that like cool you didn't give me the price right and i can hear them kind of like oh okay and one of my reps is like walking by the room that like i'm in a room right now it's got glass glass doors and everything so everyone can can see me i like i wave them in right and i the phone goes on mute and they're like what's up i'm like watch what's about to happen here okay i'm getting into pricing like they're they're still talking right they're still talking on the demo they don't know this is going on and i said i just asked them what the price was i want you to listen to this so they finally give me the price they say it'll be x amount per month and i say oh and mute right oh and mute my phone and i look at my rep and i gave him like the little jordan bell for three two and well but nothing's set in stone and we can get like flexible with our our pricing but we've never lost one you know for you know not being able to find like a way to meet like economically so let me talk to my team here and like we can figure out what we have to do to get your business unmute thank you right so i didn't have to ask for anything it was just i didn't say anything all i said was oh that was it and i just sat in the silence and they were not willing to sit in the silence as long as i was right it was only like if they were would you have been cool with that from a pricing standpoint or like i'd like yeah right because it was already there they didn't ask the right question afterwards right so the reason why they kept talking is they didn't ask a question when you drop your price you need to ask a question right afterwards right like get yourself out of that silence right oh it's going to be a hundred dollars a month based on what you saw today do you think you'll see the roi on that i like it get a question out so you don't say something stupid next what do you think about this one because because you know richard harris right oh so like i'm good friends with richard i like him a lot and he started playing around this he got me thinking about this where what he does is going back to feelings and emotions he'll drop price and immediately ask that question how does that make you feel what do you think about that approach where it's like you know uh kevin's gonna be ten thousand dollars how does that make you feel i love i love that question how does that make you feel because you're gonna get a more honest answer a much more honest answer and man i mean that's genius i'm writing that down because we do we have this like as a rule like we don't ask people how they're doing that's and how they're feeling hey how you feel not how are you doing today how are you feeling today you're gonna get a more genuine answer so if you ask someone on the phone like yeah it's a hundred dollars ten thousand dollars for the training how does that make you feel if i respond back with good yeah i feel pretty good about that yep done there's no there's no more negotiating like there's it oh yeah that that sounds a little bit high yeah okay now that's how it sounds but how does it make you feel like do you feel like that's an unreasonable amount for what we're giving because and this is where you're exposing the feelings because if someone wants it right if someone wants it like hey i do want it and like that's where i was talking actually with my manager the other day right someone i was arguing with someone i argue with people a lot about the gym like budget doesn't matter if value is proven budget doesn't matter if that like if you can prove enough value they'll find the budget and i said that is not true at all that there i've i've worked at a bootstrap startup you bootstrapped from the beginning all right i'm gonna get 10x value on this i don't have a hundred thousand dollar check to write you right i don't just don't have it right so no i think feeling is great there and then it's knowing what you're gonna ask immediately afterwards so what i coach my aes to and my sdrs is what are you gonna ask next not what are you gonna say next and if i can get you in a question mindset it takes away you tripping over yourself and giving shit away or fumbling it's like what are you gonna ask next so i feel good what's your next question going to be all right how do we get this contract so if they say oh that sounds high next question where were you hoping to late right like it's being right at that next question because when sales people talk is when they get into trouble it's that simple well so therefore what's your because a lot of people say ask the closing question then shut the hell up you're saying ask the clue or deliver pricing and then ask a question so instead of the silence and waiting that out whoever sparks first loses blah blah blah you're saying no screw that like forget about silence come up with a question to solicit a response correct i'm gonna put silence on you right so salesperson should never end in dead space right so here's the price because now what you're doing is you're asking the prospect to close themselves right so hey here's the price so if all that sounds good can we get you going today now you got up you put the silence on them right they have to come back to you with whatever they're going to say you do have to ask for the close so you got to ask for it and then shut up you can't just give a price and then it won't work i've always found that awkward it's like how much is it ten thousand dollars right and and by the way most sophisticated buyers know the game you're playing and look i'm i'm more comfortable in silence than a sales rep is because i don't need the commission right so i'll sit here all day if you want me to you're gonna speak first so sophisticated buyers will call bullshit on that silence game all day long i like the way you position it though because i usually i do say you know tell the price and then shut up but it's not like ten thousand dollars shut up it's ten thousand dollars you know here's what's included and then i actually probably do i haven't thought about it but i probably do ask that so how does that make you feel or so what are the next steps from here so it's kind of like let's just keep moving on this but i do want to get a response from you yeah i can't remember it was um session this was like five six years ago at some um conference and he talked about sales reps ending on dead sides right where they answer a question and then they they answer it right oh how does the api work oh and what that does it just gives full control over to the prospect to ask the next question one of my favorite quotes on influence is the person asking the questions controls the conversation i love that quote because it's so the person asking the questions controls the conversation and reps tend to give control away because they want to get their you know the process questions answered right but then they lose control of the conversation right if you continue to answer we we call the double a methodology answer and ask answer and ask answer and ask stay in control of the conversation to make sure you either know what the buyer means hey kevin how far along are you on this process man i've done xxxxx okay what are you hoping to see from this why do you believe you even need something like this right now okay now we can go but always have that question ready oh man i think you and i can have a conversation all day about this shit oh i i actually got one more question that i'm genuinely curious about from your perspective because this has always been one i felt a little weird about with my training when it comes to objection handling right so you want to have there's the techniques that feel felt found whatever you know the preemptive strike those type of things and i think if you use them appropriately they're you know they're all decent in some way shape or form but the other thing is once you handle an object once you address an objection you got to figure out whether that addressed the objection like you don't just move on right so what is your advice for your reps when when i have an objection and say say you'd say john there's gonna be 350 bucks a month per user and i'm like damn kevin that's way more expensive than i was expecting and you say well you had said earlier john that you were trying to really do this and you appealed to my emotions and the roi you said that and so you answer my objection how do you make the transition to did that really like how i now feel about that like do you just straight up ask people so how does that make you feel did that answer your objection but then you get the kind of the fake yeah it did but you know what i mean like so no back to the whole topic around this humanizing sales yes i ask it right oh it's gonna be xed oh wow it's way too high now hey john you know what we went over we were able to show that you're gonna at least see a three x on that is that not enough to justify the purchase for you no it's not okay why not right like why why why not let's break this down because if the roi is not there for you i don't want you buying either so when i talk with my team a lot it's like i'm probably one of the most honest sales people you'll ever meet but i just deliver it in the right tone now right you can't just say why right you can't be like oh well why not how does that make you feel is that too expensive for it it's like hey talk to me here right right right okay the objection oh that's too much okay based off the roi it does not sound valuable enough right is a 3x not enough on that 350 i don't know i need to at least see a 5x okay well there's a few ways we can maybe show you how we can do that could i show you a few other places we could get some leverage let me just have that conversation because at that point though they clearly don't see the roi and they may not even want it which is why again i'm preemptive on making sure you even want it before i bring up the price i don't need to talk pricing to anybody that doesn't want what i'm selling right yeah absolutely right awesome man well like i said i think you and i could probably shoot the ship for for days on end about this stuff because it's fun stuff to talk about too and and all about leveling up right like try how to get that one percent better every day um and hopefully helping reps skip a few steps and elevate the profession away from the glengarry glen ross boiler room wolf of wall street bullshit right so cool man well i i genuinely appreciate you jumping on here man i love the discussion um tell people how to you know get in touch with you or if they got questions or you know service titan what's going on there yeah i mean hit me up on linkedin i don't do twitter i actually had to like refine my facebook login to even make this happen today so no instagram or snapchat or any of that find me on linkedin and if you're on the west coast we are hiring like crazy right now service titans so if you if this type of selling resonates with you hit me up see if there's a position for you here um because this is the type of stuff that we focus on yeah and i'll tell you right now man if uh if i was coming out of school and looking for a job there's one thing about the job and the career in the industry and that's everything and then there's other thing about leadership and where you can learn the most so if anybody's out there listening and looking for a place to start their career or kind of get their career to that next level you gotta you gotta get in touch with kevin at least have the conversation because that the knowledge and and direction of of that is is invaluable in my opinion so kevin it's been a pleasure my friends let's stay in touch here everybody else thank you all so much for listening and i know this was a little bit longer than the usual one but i couldn't shut up because i had too many questions with kevin so thank you all very much everybody have a great week all right make it happen so so you you you you you you you you you you Thank you.