7: Becoming a Thought Leader

hey everybody it's john barrows with make it happen mondays thanks for joining me for those of you who are going to join uh today's episode we're going to be hitting on thought leadership and uh kind of my thoughts on thought leadership and how it's getting a little bit of overplayed these days but also how to become a thought leader but before we go ahead and do that i wanted to actually give a shout out a couple of things i'm playing around with my new earbuds here these things are pretty fantastic so by the way if you can't hear me um just hit me up on uh on the facebook lives chat here because uh just want to make sure i've been just kind of screwing around with a few things from the bluetooth standpoint that's been messing up a lot of stuff so if you can't hear me let me know um but uh but yeah and also before we get started i want to give a shout out and and an example of some really good social selling in my opinion so i've been doing this facebook live thing for a while and well seven seven episodes here for so so seven weeks and just still trying to figure it out and try to add value and those type of things and you know one of the things that i've been talking about is you know again thought leadership here which is ideally you know bringing other people involved in this conversation answering your questions and something that happens uh one of the kids over at blue jeans so blue jeans networks i'm going to give them a shout out and patrick specifically over there has been paying attention right so he's been paying attention to what i've been doing following my blogs those type of things and he hit me up on linkedin the other day and he said hey john would adding um video other people bringing other people's video into facebook live would that add value to you right and i played a little bit of a game because he asked a close-ended question so i all i sent sent back was yes right um you know i always want to make sure you ask an open-ended question try to get me engaged a little bit more but i said yeah it actually would add a lot of value and then he hit me up again with you know would you be available to have a conversation about this because i'm pretty interested in what you're doing and i think what we have here could really add some value to what you're doing so i said all right cool so i scheduled a meeting with him and the idea of having being able to bring somebody in because i work out of my house as you guys can see bringing somebody here to my house you know an industry thought leader expert that type of stuff is just i don't think i want to do that plus it logistically would be a nightmare so but bringing them in on video would be pretty cool and i didn't even know you could do that on facebook live i'm doing this right now on my um on my iphone and i think it's actually kind of a pain in the ass that you can't do facebook live on your your desktop or your laptop but with blue jeans you can actually launch it through facebook live through through your laptop through their session and it goes straight to facebook live and you can bring anybody you want in on this thing so i was like damn that's pretty cool so i sent this out there you know i said hey let's let's book a meeting a couple you know a week out or so i'm super booked this week and so whatever and then last week a client of mine so my schedule got all screwed up the the snow we got i don't know two feet of snow or whatever foot of snow whatever that screwed up my whole schedule and i was supposed to go to wisconsin and i couldn't client was actually pretty upset because you know my flight got canceled there was nothing i could do about it but the client was pretty upset because they were flying all sorts of people in and so i was figuring they were just going to reschedule but they didn't they wanted to actually do it and they want to do it remotely and i was like oh man and i used join me for that for my usually for most of my remote stuff but for those of you who are familiar with join me they got that little circle that shows a video which would really be rough throughout the entire day and wouldn't allow for the engagement so i'm like well blue jeans so i hit the kid patrick up i said hey man let's get on the phone right now uh it was tuesday i had the training on a wednesday i was like tell me what this facebook live thing is and let me know if i can like this up and he was like yep showed me how to do it and i was like cool send me over the contract so i paid for a year in advance didn't even ask for the discount done and it was probably one of the easier sales he's had in a long time because i immediately saw the value there was also some urgency for me to do what i was going to do it anyways but it was i was just going to get to it um but all of a sudden i had a need for it so i signed up so i bring that up as an example of you know your clients are to our clients are talking they're out there they're they're they're in you know wherever they are we need to be there and we need to listen to them because if you hit the right hey this is what i'm looking for this is what i'm doing and you bring value to the table those sales cycles can be hella fast right they can people can close real quick when you nail something that they're trying to accomplish and you do it in the right way so again big ups to patrick um over there and um and blue jeans i'm going to give them a shout out because they uh you know they the stuff works and i'm going to be using them moving forward i i haven't still figured out my strategy for bringing people in yet so you'll hopefully see that in the next couple of weeks here okay so with that um today the topic i decided to to chat about today was thought leadership and the reason being being is because i was i'm supposed to have a i'm supposed to have a podcast right after this so at one o'clock i was going to do a podcast with real sales talk and i was thinking about what to talk about for that and you know wanted to kind of dive in with um with them about thought leadership and what their thoughts were on it uh that got rescheduled to next week but i just want to kind of chat about a little bit here because i think people are just way overplaying thought leadership and and forcing and i don't think a lot of people have the right mindset when it comes to it you know for me it's kind of same thing with challenger sale right challenger sale like be a challenger it's like i look i like challenger sale i really do i love the mentality of not just saying yes to your customers and really kind of pushing back on them um thought leadership same thing like i love you know the idea of being a thought leader and really guiding your client through the process there but the problem is is you can't be a thought leader unless you're an actual thought leader you know like i you know you guys know me i follow gary vaynerchuk a lot and he talks about you know you can't be a 22 year old life coach right i mean maybe to a 10 year old kid sure fine whatever but you can't be a 22 year old life coach right it's the same thing with thought leader like i'm sorry if you're 22 23 24 years old or you're brand new in an industry or you're brand new at your company you're not a thought leader like just stop even pretending like you are same thing with challenger sale i got myself in a little bit of trouble a little while back because i stood up at a uh i think it was a saster conference or something like that and this one challenge was super hot it was like last year and i was like could y'all do me a favor and stop teaching these 22 year old kids how to be a challenger like you gotta have some business acumen to be a challenger to be a true fundamental challenger right i mean trust me i tried it when i was like 22 23 years old when i was selling it services right i kind of got to the point where i thought i knew what i was talking about and then you know i'd start pushing back and be like oh you know i appreciate where you're looking at that but if you thought about it this way because you know i help people make these decisions every day and you know you go go tell a ceo that you know who's been doing their business for 30 years and you come in with half a year experience because you read a couple of blog posts and you start recommending stuff to me when you don't know what you're talking about see how long that conversation lasts right so but all right i think we can move in the direction so i don't want to pretend like i'm a thought let's put it this way i'm i'm 41 years old okay the i am just getting to the point in my career where i'm being considered somewhat of a thought leader okay you know where i'm being asked to speak at conferences and those type of thing that's really happened over the past i don't know five or six years is where i've really started to move into that realm but i'm it's taken me 20 plus years to get here and it's been a long road like i've been really methodical about building my skill set and really honing my craft in my industry right so if you're like i said if you're brand new into this no chance you're gonna be a thought leader and i think it's insulting to pretend like you are especially to people who know that they're talking about but i do think we can move in that direction and this ties to also something that i've thought about a lot which is in the whole sales development world okay you know and i don't mean just sdrs or bdrs i mean the the development of sales professionals it's finally starting to get some some traction where we're getting educated a little bit more than we were before right it's still the most undereducated profession on the planet but at least they're starting to become some colleges that you can focus on it there's more training that you can go to but we train on skills technique we train on all these different things process when it comes to sales but we don't train on business acumen right we don't we kind of leave it up to sales reps to to develop their own business acumen their like understanding of business and how to have those conversations and so i think we can preempt that i think we can accelerate that okay as as our own sales professionals forget about whoever your manager is and who's training you and those type of things but as a sales professional i think we should focus on that and develop our business acumen while we learn to be a thought leader and the way that we do that is by educating ourselves on what's happening out there and paying attention to our industry our field the roles that we reach out to and learning about them specifically right and that's really where social selling flipped for me you know when when first when social selling really started coming out i was like great you know yet another thing i gotta do to be successful in sales fantastic add it to the list right um but when it when it flipped for me was you know it also was a gen xer like the whole idea of tweeting and posting and all that stuff was pretty ridiculous to me but where flipped was when i started thinking of it as educating myself first and then using and then when i found something interesting taking that information and then sharing it out there with my context around this you've heard me talk about this before again another gary v quote here everybody talks about content is king well context is god right and that's really where you want to add your context to the content that you're sharing out there and that's how you can become or move into that thought leadership world so tools that you should use recommendation here and i just posted this out on twitter for somebody who asked me this question on twitter which was um feedly right f-e-e-d-l-y that all it is is an rsse aggregator that can bring a bunch of data feeds into one so you can kind of don't have to poke around you don't have to go all over the place and so for me like for instance sass is my industry right that's the industry i focus most of my efforts on so i have to stay up to date on what's happening in the sass world like who are the thought leaders in sass that i can pay attention to and try to stay at least up to date on on what's happening right so i go into feedly i set up a folder called sass and i go find the three or four or five thought leaders in sass and i go follow their blogs or whatever they're posting out there and just to stay up to date um you know vps of sales that's my industry of ceos and certain ceos vps of sales in sass industry so i follow ceos who are speaking about stuff in the sass industry i follow vps of sales and their challenges that they're faced with i join linkedin groups for vps of sales and ceos and sass and those type of things so i can not to troll for leads but to to just listen that you know to listen to what they're saying and what kind of questions they're asking what kind of challenges that they're trying to address so i can just have a better talk track right i mean i remember when i was selling it services my first company thrive networks like we were selling outsourced it services right and i didn't know what i was talking about when it came to you know servers workstations any of that stuff so i would always go on a meeting like it was always a dual sales call with with my engineer dylan and so dylan would come with me and the whole idea was i would set the stage and then kind of hand it over to dylan to have the technical conversation you know but i was the relationship guy that was my role in this whole equation and so i remember one time walking in and um to the ceo pretty legit you know decent sized company a really good prospect for a ceo's office and i was mentality all right dylan you and me part up here and this was right around the time when freakonomics came out i don't know if you guys have read that book but freakonomics it you know it was right when it really first came out and i remember walking in this guy's office ceo's office and my my cto dylan looked at his bookshelf and on his bookshelf was freakonomics and my my dylan said oh i see you know have you read that book yet the other guy's like yeah as a matter of fact and they just went off for the next 15 20 minutes on what their thoughts were on it and all these different things and i'm sitting there going whoa you could literally feel the rapport being built between them and i'm sitting there on the sideline like uh uh freakonomics that's a it's a pretty funny name for a book you know and you know i felt like an idiot and so that that's where it dawned on me i'm like i gotta start paying attention to what ceos read i gotta but you know so that's why i started signing up for i don't like reading books i think books are a waste of time but that's why i started reading those kind of three-page summaries of all the business books you know all those tools and resources you can do for that or books on tape you know or or whatever audible that type of thing because i wanted to start to have those type of conversations that were not just ask my band questions you know here's my product and features and benefits and that type of shit so my point is is that if you really care about your profession you should be educating yourselves on your industry um the industries that you're going after and trying to sell to and the roles that you're trying to go after and sell to as well so you know if you're going after cios right now say you're going after cios in the health care industry well do a google search on cios health care priority 2017 and see what comes up i guarantee you there is a blog post out there i guarantee you there are people talking about it or there's there's forums or something like that and put this as part of your routine like i have a morning routine where every morning i drink my coffee and instead of checking my fantasy leagues getting all pissed off about that type of shit i i just read through my data feeds you know i follow my top tier accounts right on stuff like owler and you know and sales navigator and uh google and those type of things so i get the alerts on what's happening with them and their businesses but then i i read articles about stuff that i that i should be reading articles about anyways you know what i mean if you're not if you're not really thinking about your own career and and developing your own business you know around business and not just like how do i sell better but you know like how do i just be a better business person and have better conversations and care more you know i think one of the things i talk about is catching your sales group you know and and you know everybody there's there's a point every sales reps career where they kind of they catch their sales group and i say that what i means you stop pitching your solutions and you start having conversations about your solutions right you start caring more about um what the client needs than you do about your commission checks and that's really where your commission checks start going through the roof and and it's also when you start giving a shit about your profession and what you're doing and stop going through the motions right and i i think you know i've i've had three sales calls this morning and two of the three ended with you know what john this is a great conversation you know i i got a lot out of this conversation forget about the you know the actual sales pitch here like i you know i like what you're talking about but i just got i got a lot of value out of this conversation because i don't take the typical okay tell me about your priorities uh do you have budget is there a need are you the person authority that has the authority for this because you know you go through those motions people go through the prospects go through the motions with you all right um and they tell you the basic level of information that you don't get the engagement and then effectively you're on a spreadsheet with a number and that's why ultimately it comes down to discounts right but if you give a shit and you really start talking to people about what their real needs are and having conversations around it and bringing some stuff to the table that's where you can start to make a difference right so that whole thought leader thing you know i i come back to that as is really putting yourself in a position to be a thought leader by educating yourselves but don't pretend like you are i think the best thing and any of us by the way um what i think we should all work on more is asking better questions right because i don't care how experienced you are in sales that we all need to figure out how to ask better questions and i think we can do that the better questions come with better education right so for instance i always used to be a priority seller right i always you know i always sold other priorities but you know i'm embarrassed to say up until about 35 years old i the way i got to that was by simply saying something like so tell me about your priorities right and i'm looking back at that question looking back at that question um or that statement whatever i realized that i i used to get very vague answers i'd get stuff like a priority or um you know what are priorities of revenue it's like oh let me show you how i could impact your revenue right and then go off on my canned pitch but now instead of just tell me about your priorities if i'm going after a cio in the healthcare industry well i'm going to do some homework like i said earlier of what do cios in the healthcare industry in 2017 care about like do a google search on that or go talk to the clients that i work with who are cios in the healthcare industry and understand what their priorities are and then when i ask that question to that new cio or whoever i say hey you know what thanks for instead of saying tell me about your priorities i can say you know what we're working with other cios in the healthcare industry who are telling us that some of their top priorities moving into 2017 or x y and z are those your prior are those similar to the ones that you're trying to face right now even if they're not the fact that you showed that you at least know my world in a little bit like tends to open up the conversation a little bit more all right so that whole idea of of giving a shit that's why doing homework i mean i know this is basic stuff here but it's still amazes me how many reps don't do homework before they make a phone call to somebody or have a meeting with somebody right don't you dare say tell me about your business or tell me about your priorities or john why don't you give a little background for me like if you haven't done your homework and looked at me up on linkedin don't you dare have that because it's going to be super annoying all right and i'm going to treat you like every other sales rep but if you pay attention you got something to bring to the table you got some new idea that or you got some example of another customer that you've worked with to help address that problem and you can share that with me all right now i might start paying attention that's where that whole lead with insights comes in right that's what that's the part of challenger that i actually do appreciate they and don't get me wrong i like the chat like i said i like the challenger sale mentality whether you know the methodology or not who knows i you know i haven't gone through the training in a while but you know i think again i think it's dangerous for for younger kids because i think that's more of an elevated thought process and mentality once you get that business acumen but where i think a challenger really is appropriate for everybody is the whole lead with insights right like read that article share that article put your context around it right so when you read something that you find interesting based on the industry or whatever it is that's what you take the extra two seconds and say hey um anybody you know focusing on this industry you should really take a look at this article because you know pages three and five talk about how to integrate this into your process or whatever it is and then you share it out there right then you move into that okay now i'm starting to roll a little bit here now i'm learning something i'm sharing stuff people are looking at me and saying okay this cat this kid has some uh some insights here so i might actually pay attention right somebody told me this a while ago that i thought was pretty interesting which was um you know they want to uh they want to have a conversation with somebody and after the conversation like a sales call with somebody and after the sales call whether it's in person or over the phone they want to be able to ask them hey would you got would you have paid for this like would you have paid for this call would you have paid for this meeting right the mentality there like did you get enough value out of this conversation where you actually would have paid for it now how much who knows but i have that mentality every time i talk to somebody is every single time i talk to somebody i i don't want to oversell them you know i i genuinely want to understand what their situation is and i look i try to i try to qualify prospects out as much as i'm trying to qualify them in you know what i mean because i don't want bad business i don't want people that don't fit that sweet spot for me because this industry mine and i'm guaranteeing yours is too small you know you get one bad now with twitter and all this other stuff on social it's like you do one piece of bad business and one bad tweet goes out there about you or one bad review on yelp or amazon or pickle you know if you're selling a consumer based product like you're screwed you know what i mean so i'm hunting for that ideal customer profile that company that i know i can make a difference for and i really try to find as many people to offload stuff as i can so i can help you out right so so i work with all my competitors you know why because i know what their sweet spots are and so when i have that conversation with a client and they're not a good fit for me i'm like you know who you should talk to boom them and a lot of people like really you know i'm like yeah look you're not a good fit for what i have right now i know i know it sounds good but it's it's just not you're not you don't have the structure in place or whatever it is so you should go talk to them first and you know how much business i get back around on that one too like clients come back hey john yes thank you we built that now we're ready for your stuff or you know what it doesn't look like we're a good fit but go talk to so and so who is because i think they can really use your stuff and that's how i built my business over the years social and brand building uh and thought leadership which is you know the topic here is becoming way more important the more we evolve into sales because the ones who are going to survive from the artificial intelligence taking over our jobs and all that other stuff are those people that really are those thought leaders are all the filters that people look to because you know i've actually been doing some research and by the way feel free to ask questions if as i go on this rant i'm just kind of rolling here um but uh you know as we move into this world of of stuff i you know i've been looking at these studies about what people trust anymore you know i'm a gen xer so i'm a brand guy right i i i'm pretty loyal to brands like adidas you've seen me with my shell toes and stuff like that i'll wear those until i die you know nike has always been a brand of mine you know acurism i love cars and acura gray goose vodka like those i'm very brand loyal and i mean most of my generation is the millennials are not brand loyal they are actually anti-brand what they are loyal to though is uh personalities right think unfortunately kardashian right it's like or or any one of these people people that they trust and i and if you transfer people to brands well yes those people have their own personal brands but it's like hey this person is telling me that i should be focusing on this stuff so i'll focus on that stuff so that's really why i think are right now it's so critical to build your personal brand to build that trust factor so that when people see when you post something when you suggest something when you have a conversation with them they're looking at you as somebody that they can trust and the more we focus on that the sooner the better right i mean right now you have we have such an opportunity to build that brand it's ridiculous um you know and i'm gonna keep giving morgan shout outs the morgan ingram you can go check him out on snapchat and he's got these sdr chronicles and that type of stuff like this kid has built his brand he's he just he was like a year into sales and um he uh you know and and then he he just got promoted to be an sdr manager and he does this sdr chronicles and he snaps these you know little hidden gems and stuff like that i mean that kid's gotten his brand to the point where it's almost at the level of mine and he's done it in a year taking me 20 plus years to get mine to where it is right now granted i didn't have a lot of these tools and resources up until the past like three or four but i mean right now you have an opportunity to move in that direction by sharing information sharing content and everything else right so anyways i'll open it up for questions i don't know if anybody has anything i know philip uh here says my favorite thought leaders don't care about that title exactly uh they're just in love with what they do and genuinely interesting exactly i mean philip it you know again i'm gonna go back to gary v you know he pushes pretty hard he doesn't give a shit about you know don't call me a thought leader he's like i'm just sharing content i'm sharing information i'm i'm blessed to be in this position that i'm in so you know i like whether you do business with me or not i say that probably five six times a day i say that it's like i don't look i don't care whether you do business with me or not do this like go look at this company go you know make sure that the reps are doing this or whatever um it's kind of like it's the same thing with entrepreneurship right like everybody says like you know the best entrepreneurs don't really call themselves entrepreneurs it's like i'm an entrepreneur it's like just by you saying i'm an entrepreneur uh you're probably not you might be a entrepreneur but you're really not an entrepreneur because entrepreneurs don't label themselves that way same thing with thought leaders it's just these are people that like sharing content and know what the fuck they're talking about all right and they do it in a way that has no that's again i'll go back to one of gary's books right he's like jab jab jab jab i think it's jab jab jab right hook and the whole idea there is add value add value add value then have the ask right early on in my career when i was started to do networking and for those of you are looking i i by the way i would recommend everybody go to networking events and join networking groups i don't care if you're brand new into sales and you just do inside sales it's one of the best ways to get out there and develop your skill to go to events at night and just get comfortable introducing yourself to people and having that talk track and same thing with groups and there's a group that started my networking career it's called bni b n as nancy i it's business networking international and it's in their whole mantra is givers gain right the more you give the more you get back and you know at first i didn't really i was like okay whatever but it's a hundred percent true you know i i spent the first probably five six years of my career literally going to every networking a group and every networking event i could possibly go to and my whole focus was trying to make connections and add value to every single person i had a conversation with and because i added so because i would always make a connection make a referral to somebody and it was a legit referral it wasn't just here's a list here's a name you could talk to it's it's no i talked to this person they're expecting your call or whatever because i focused so much on that early on in my career you know fast forward um when i you know sold that when we sold that company to staples and then i went off on my own um when i had to start my own business i you know i'm gonna start a company like so you gotta you know finances you need legal help you need uh you know all these different things to set up a company every single one of those resources was one phone call away so literally it was like okay cool hey uh i need uh some contract set up buddy could you help me out you know and i was happy to pay for it but all these people like you know what john absolutely you know what i'll give you six months free of this let me get you started here go take a look you talk to this person make sure i had literally i had a fully functioning business up in less than a week with a website uh uh finance you know finance you know bank you know all sorts of stuff in less than a week and they were all one phone call away and i remember my partner at the time was like holy shit like like how how did you know all these i'm like oh i just knew all these people and and i it was because of the work that i had done early i got it all back when i needed it too so you know i just um i just can't recommend you just taking your shit seriously stop going through the motions and really try to be that business professional that people are looking for so nicholas here it says uh hey big fan of your blogs and had a training from you one a year ago and doing a lot of the internal selling to my own colleagues cross-selling um let's see what else you got here is a cross-selling uh thoughts on how to improve successful internal selling yeah man i i think internal selling it you know i'm guessing well a little bit more clarity on this one is it like when you get a lead are you an sdr side of the house and you now have to sell that meeting to the aes or are you trying to sell something internally like a program internally um i'll address both um as you go through this but you know with the with the internal selling um i'll talk about hey i'm an sdr i i sold the client on a meeting and now i gotta sell my internal ae on how you know whether they should take that meeting or not you know a lot of that has to come down with your professionalism and how you set up those meetings and the qualification and how structured you are all right um i believe a lot of our products and services and i'm going macro here i think a lot of a lot of our products and services are being commoditized i genuinely believe i know that we can differentiate ourselves purely based on the way that we manage the process okay how how prepared we are when we go into our meetings how much homework how much structure we have not again scripts or templates or any of that stuff but structure so for instance meetings internally i have just like i have meeting agendas with clients i have agendas with people internally too like why are we here what is the goal of this meeting and then afterwards i summarize that conversation and send it over to them for their commitment right so selling things internally say i go and i have a conversation with somebody a prospect right whatever and they say yeah these are my needs or whatever i'm going to summarize that conversation you've heard me say you know go look at this one called uh type in j barrow's favorite nugget right that's a blog post on my summary email and it's it's hey you know really good talking to you here's the things that we talked about today what else you know could you please email me back and let me know if it's all accurate and if i missed anything you get them to say yes now that's a nice way hey sure look this is what the client said here's the actual i documented what we have a conversation the client confirmed it now let's sell it internally um and so you better take this meeting effectively right you have documentation so if that ae comes back to you and says that was a bullshit meeting it's like uh really so that's selling a meeting internally now if you're selling an idea internally it's the same thing with selling a client man you just got to understand what the priorities are how it aligns with those and then be as be as structured as you can with that beginning middle end as far as you know what is the problem you're trying to solve like what's the solution here and what are the results and how are you going to track it all right so hopefully that helps as far as selling things internally um but uh but yeah just the the more structure you can put into this and the more confirmation you can get from the client that shows you've done your homework show you've actually qualified this the right way you're the better off you're going to be okay uh i'll go to two and then uh let's see thoughts on internal selling all right some bobby thanks here man hey john the odds of setting a meeting with a prospect in an event are best when you do it on the spot how do you find the balance between uh persistent but not being too aggressive now i love this this is that so this is one of my favorites right this is um it's the same thing with i'm going to talk about over the phone and i'll transition that into on site so one of the most important things that we can get at any stage of the sales process is a defined next step all right scheduled on the calendar so like say somebody says send me information right usually the way send me information works is sure when you want to you know i'll follow you know when you want to follow up on that oh next week fantastic i'll call you next week and then touch base check in touch base check in whatever right so a way to address that here's a nugget for you is to when somebody says send me information you go what when why right what information would you like to see when would you like to see it and why those are for somebody who's really interested in the information those are easy questions to answer somebody who's not rather difficult right so say they answer them and then you say okay great happy to send you that information when you want to schedule a brief 15 minute call so we can follow up on that information see if it makes sense for us to take the next steps next week when next week and then you do this with a really nice tone of voice by the way you go actually you know what you got your calendar in front of you and then there'll be that little awkward pause where they realize that you got them because if they say no to that they are blatantly lying to your face all right and by the way if you ever do that to a vp of sales you'll literally hear the smirk on the other end of the line being like god damn i wish my rose would do this shit yeah all right let's get it on the calendar right and then you lock it in you send them a meeting invitation so now it doesn't guarantee they're going to be there no but does it give you a much better likelihood absolutely so then let's go to trade shows or on the floor it's the same scenario man you've heard me talk about aida right attention interest desire action that is the fundamental process of sales 1898 a guy by the name of saint elmo's came up with it he said we have five to 15 seconds to get someone's attention two minutes to earn their interest and then we close them on a meeting where we can create desire and action so that's really when we're prospecting whether it's over the phone or in person that's what we're selling we're not selling our products and services we're selling time we're selling the next step so here's let's do a you know role play here on on meeting somebody at an event when somebody says hey john you know nice to meet you whatever it is what do you guys do first of all i want to try to grab some qualification criteria so i can make it as tailored as possible because i don't want to just throw up on you about my generic elevator pitch right um so great what company do you work for and what interest are you in and oh cool and what's your role within that company okay cool so well for comfort for people like you like in your role in industries like this this is what we do right now what i hit them with is what i call an attention grabber right which is five to 15 seconds what can you say to get somebody to say tell me more it's not the elevator pitch usually based on a result that you can drive for somebody else like hey you know what we showed other companies or other people like you and your roles how to drive down the amount of time they spend on x by this and uh that's actually what we do right that's what you do that's your differentiator so you hit them with an attention grabber and the goal there is to say well how do you do that tell me more and when they say that you say all right well then you give them a little bit more context well you know through our platform and our services we kind of take this approach or whatever it is then the whole thing is interesting tell me more actually and that's what you pause you know what now that i got your attention i know you're interested it seems like this is a pretty decent fit so why don't we stop here we're at a trade show we're an event i'm sure you want to meet a whole bunch of other people here so why don't we schedule something on the calendar for next week you know what you got your iphone on you i know you do right this is my iphone this is my wallet oh my shit my iphone's right there um but you have your iphone on you um and you just do a kind of real matter of factly so you know what it sounds like this actually is it sounds like you're it sounds like this is something we might be able to take a deeper dive into but i'd love to just you know segment that and put that out tomorrow or next week or whatever it is so because again mess here you're probably not going to remember this conversation so i just want to make sure that that we really dig into the details of what your scenario is and so i can show the value that we have to the tip so why don't we schedule something next week you know what um we're missing why don't why don't you why don't we get your iphone on you i know you do right i can see in your pocket and you make it awkward on somebody right i do because if they're genuinely interested in setting someone yeah shit man you know let's take it out let's let's schedule something right now if they're not they'll be like oh you know why don't you send me an email then you know where you stand so there's a there's a fine line between being direct and being rude and i think the direct these is when somebody says yeah sure why don't we schedule something like that great why don't we why don't we just pick a time now so i would carry your iphone around with you at the trade shows at those things as well as the scanners you know the whole scan your badge and whatever that's for marketing fine but carry around your iphone or have your laptop if you're at ed booth have your laptop ready with a calendar on it so you can just pick a time right there and schedule it with the client all right and then take some notes you know i usually take their business card and flip it over and write some down some notes right after the conversation about what we talked about you know any personal things or whatever it is that i can use as a reference to send after that and prep them for the meeting those type of things okay all right uh let's do one more um it says uh nicholas let's see i do education on the software we sell so i try to tell my colleagues to add trainings to their offerings yep okay yeah just make sure that um you know you introduce that in the right way right i mean the whole the best thing to do is introduce all of it up front and then peel back if you have to and that that actually brings up a great point on on negotiations here nicholas don't start don't make sure the reps don't start with the base and then add things you know towards the end oh what do you want this start with the whole package like hey ideal state this is what people you know when they buy the software you know it includes training this this this and this and give them that price because now you have something to back off of right if you start with just the base and then you try to add things later then it just increases the price and then you're good shape for negotiation because you know on the flip side if you just sell everything because then you're taking stuff away so if they want a discount sure no problem i can give you a discount like well we'll we'll we'll get creative with your pricing i'd have to take the training away and that'll cut the price down by x percentage and now when you're taking things away that's where people like well i need that it's like well okay well you have to pay for that all right so so keep that in mind as well all right everybody well it's um i appreciate the questions keep them coming you know every monday i'm going to keep trying to do this so uh you know stay on tune stay on track here and i'm going to start to introduce other people into the equation here talk about stuff that uh hopefully you get value from and again uh if you could help me spread the word i'd really appreciate it uh i'm also going to be on some podcasts coming up here you can hit me up on snapchat as usual it's john emma's michael barrows where you can i'll answer any questions one-on-one with you um and then my blog and all that other stuff too all right all right everybody make it a great week let's make it happen cheers you you you you you you