99: Keenan - Gap Selling

Thank you to our partner, LeadIQ, for giving out 100 leads, including direct dials to our listeners. Head to jbarrows.com slash leadIQ to get yours. Make it happen. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows with Make It Happen Monday. Hopefully, y'all had a fantastic weekend. I did. My Bruins are still hanging in there, so I got a chance, right? That's right. That's right. Boston kids. So there's so many different reasons I'm excited for this podcast specifically. My boy, Kenan. So not only background synergies, all that stuff, but he's also a Boston kid true and through, even though he's living out in Colorado and living that dream. He's a Boston kid true and through. So Kenan, you want to introduce everybody to yourself and give a little background on where you're coming from these days?

Oh, God, I suck at the background and who I am shit. But yeah, living in Colorado, antagonist of a sales guy, a sales consulting firm, author of this dope book, Gap Selling. Yes. Full-on Boston boy. Lived there until I was 21. Went through all the pain of Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, Boone. I wasn't with the names, the Bs, right? Boone Buckner and shoot. I just said that. I'm sorry? Bucky. Bucky. Yeah, Bucky Dent. I mean, it was, yeah. But yes, spent my Saturday or whatever it was, or yesterday watching the Bruins, squeaked that, almost give it away. Love my pats. Don't be a hater. Just embrace it. Yeah, yeah. I'm ready, baby. You know what? I keep telling, and I digress a little bit here, but I keep telling everybody, like, the Bruins are the highest seed in the playoffs right now, right?

So they have a clear path. They seem to have a real outside chance, but there is an outside chance. Yes. Yes. Yes. I know you do. We can have a championship in every, right? Yes. Yes. We'll have the championship slam. I told everybody, Boston fans are going to be insufferable. If that happens, it's like, just don't even talk to us because we're going to be so obnoxious, it's not even going to matter. So anyways, but let's take some of that energy and let's dive into some sales now, man, because you and I share a very similar approach. I mean, you said you're chief antagonist, right? I think a lot of what's out there right now needs to be challenged, right? Not just like the whole sales tactics and techniques and everything else that people have been spewing, but also the customer, right?

Like, calling bullshit on the customer a lot of times. And I want to get into gap selling, because this is one of my favorite new books. It's the one I tell everybody to go get if they're going to try to get some new intel on what's going on out there. Because, look, Challenger sales, that was kind of the book of the month, like, I don't know, whatever, three, four, five years ago. They came out with Challenger customer, which I thought was actually a pretty good read. It was actually even better than Challenger sale, in my opinion. But there's really been, no pun intended here, gap in what I find a lot, which is the biggest challenge a lot of people have is creating urgency and getting people to move and beating up on no decision, right?

Because that's our number one competitor, everybody's number one competitor. So talk to me a little bit about, first of all, what was the impetus for gap selling? Like, why did you all of a sudden decide to write this book? Oh, boy. What were you seeing? If I want to be honest and selfish about it, it was, look, I needed a way to scale the business. And people have been asking me for years, are you going to write a book? Do you do sales training? Because, look, a sales guy has been around since 2011, right? So we're almost 10 years old. But it was all consulting. And, you know, consulting only gets so far. I mean, it's me. I grow up monthly, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And it wasn't scalable.

And you got to, right, you got to come up with training. Well, I was not going to create a training that was like everybody else's, just wasn't going to do it. And I certainly wasn't going to go, you know, go to some of these older sales training companies that let you branch. That was not going to happen, right? I might as well go back and work for somebody else. So I just, I just, I just paid attention to what I was doing. I paid attention to what my customers do. I was, a lot of it came out of the consulting. I paid attention to where I was consulting them on how we were doing it, how we were structuring it. And then I sat down one day and just took a whole look at everything I had put together.

And I said, Oh, there it is. Like I had to step back. You know what I'm saying? And I let people in a little secret. Many of the major elements came from when I was sitting at a client and someone asked a question. And I was like, all right, look, let me explain it this way. And I'd give an anecdote and I'd put it on the board and I'd sit like, Oh, that, that. And I would take a picture and I'd take it home and I'd put it in the drawer, right? Because I couldn't come up with it on my own per se. I couldn't, I couldn't challenge myself, if you will. Right. To come up with it. I knew it was there, but I couldn't get it out. But every time that happened, then eventually I went back and looked at eight years of blogging, all of those pictures I took, all of the conversations I had.

And I was like, ah, there it is. It's the gap. And I kept finding myself talking more and more about the gap. And so then that's where I just, I wrote the book. And then I realized people needed it. That was the non-selfish impetus. It was desperately needed. I watched salesperson after salesperson after salesperson lose deals because they were causing the very problems, John, that you talked about losing on price, losing to no decision, not being able to overcome lack of feature objections. All of those problems were caused by their shitty selling on the front end. Yeah. That discovery, right? That discovery in that debt. I mean, most of the sales lives and dies right with that discovery. So talk to us, but what is the gap?

Like what's, what define the gap for us? So the gap is basically the space between the current state and the future state, right? So what I think is more important people understand is that when I realized how traditional training was going, and I know you're a trainer, so I, you know, I love you. So don't, don't spread it, man. Right. Is traditional selling is either very tactical or they get to some good stuff, but they don't, it doesn't align with how people buy. And so I started thinking about, okay, how do people buy? And then it hit me. People buy when they have to make a decision. Well, what are they making a decision on? They're making a decision to change. That is at the core of every single sale.

I'm making a decision to change. Well, if I'm making a decision to change, how do people process change? Whether it's, you know, you and I were talking about this idea of, of your trip coming up to Africa. And we were talking about my trip to Galapagos. You talk about, you know, I need to buy a piece of gum. I need new pens. No matter what it is, we go through either a conscious or subconscious decision process that starts with, where am I right now? Like that's, that's what we do. It's, it's uncomfortable. I don't like it. It doesn't feel good. I can't get where I want. I'm not seeing the results. Like we start with this inventory of where we are right now. And then what we do is we kind of put our head up just a little bit.

We look into the horizon and we're like, Ooh, that could be a little better. If I could just, Ooh, if maybe, and we start envisioning or looking out into the future. And so the minute we do that, we're basically establishing where we are today and comparing it to where we could be tomorrow. And the space in between the two is the gap. So that's the way we decide things. Why the fuck are we not selling exactly that way? Okay. I like it. So, so let's talk about, I've recognized that current state, right. Is not acceptable. So I need to make a switch. But then there's the people that don't recognize it. Right. So the inbound leads versus the outbound leads effectively, right. The inbound leads.

And I think that's one where, you know, 53% of the buying process is already done. Whatever corporate executive board, however you want to take that stat. I get it. Let's talk a little bit about the outbound stuff is how can gap selling be applied to getting me to realize somebody who doesn't necessarily know I have a problem, knows that everything's not great and knows that things could be better with whatever my scenario is. How are you, how are you articulating that message to somebody who hasn't identified that gap yet? Or are you? Brilliant. Brilliant. And, and the first thing I would say to you is, and I say to salespeople all the time, and it's amazing. It's the hardest thing to get salespeople to do is change their mindset.

I don't, I do not subscribe to messages for salespeople. I subscribe to questioning. So your ability to build a powerful set of what I call credibility questions that allow you to engage someone who picks up the phone and determine if they have a problem and get them to talk about that problem. And you know, it's funny, you know, there's a really good job of this from a marketing perspective. Then you've heard me talk about this is the, um, the infomercial world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. That's all outbound. Right. And what they do is they, they, they did a lot of research and they came back and said, our little product, our, our Tupperware that stacks into the size of a dime, but can hold 2000 things.

Right. People, the problems people have are these in the shit burns in the microwave when you cook the spaghetti. Right. You know what I'm talking about? Exactly. Right. And it stays in forever. Right. Yeah. Look, you know, right. Or they open up that, that, that Tupperware or that container drawer and it just spills out all over you and you can't find anything or you can't, they know the three or four problems. And what do they do? You're sitting home watching CS fucking eye and you're paying no mind, not thinking about your Tupperware and it comes on and it punches you in the face with a black and white screen, sour music, and a woman opening a cabinet and falling on her head. Yep. Yep. And you're like, Hey, I hate that.

Yep. They gotcha. Or they take it and they show you your, your Tupperware with the burned spaghetti on the side and you, and you hate, you hate that. Yep. Now they made you realize, yes, that is a problem and you're paying attention. Same thing with salespeople. See, I love that because what I, yeah, I don't know if you've been paying attention to the gong blog, but the gong blog is throwing out some data that I can't ignore. Right. And one of the things they talk about is how using stories and that stuff, obviously duh, but the problem is, is that too many people, and this relates to gap too many people focus on the outcome. Too many people focus on the pretty picture about where things like how it could be before they get the person to relate to the scenario.

Right. So with the infomercials, like I have to feel that first, I have to be like, that's me. And I did a, I did a podcast that's actually coming out today with Chris Voss, the guy who never split the difference. Yep. Um, this is fire, man. And one of the things, a little nuance that he gets people to talk about when he goes through negotiations is you want to get the person to say, that's right. Not you're right. Yep. So for instance, right. Because if you say you're right, that's, that's a defense mechanism. That's me telling you what you want to hear to be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Keenan, you know what? You're right. You're right. You know, I'm stupid. I should, I should invest in sales training.

That's actually a bad sign when somebody says you're right. But when somebody is like knocking and you know, when you articulate the scenario to me, put it back at me and I'm like, yeah, you know what, man, that's right. That's where you got them. Right. So you get that through questions and we do the same thing. We do persona driven questions, right? Based on that persona, as nuanced as you can get with that question to make sure that you should like, because that's how you show credibility. Right. And I think you talk about this a lot when you, you give like an example of you're snowboarding, right? Like if you ask somebody like walking through that quick scenario, like that shows your credibility with snowboarding again.

Yeah. Yeah. It was skiing. And if I asked the average person who skis every weekend or goes on three or four ski trips and they can ski down a black, if I asked them if they need ski lessons, like, I don't need ski lessons. I'm a great skier. I can ski blacks. I can ski. And then I know they're full of shit because all I have to do is say, let me ask you a question. The minute you get off piece, no off piece meat is not groomed, usually steeper. It's the, the terrain and conditions are super variable. It could have moguls. It could be hard crossed, et cetera. Do you find yourself slipping into the backseat, right? Or in the moguls, I say the same thing. When you're in the moguls and you find that you're going down, do you find that you get in the backseat and you are unable to keep the skis on the snow?

And by doing so, you find yourself going faster and faster down the hill until you get out of control. Now, by asking those specific questions, this person's now isn't thinking, am I a good skier? Do I have a skiing, a problem skiing? I've got them zeroed in on something that I know 95% of most skiers struggle with, including myself. And I'm a level two certified ski instructor. So it's not, does it happen? It's how often and to what extent. And the minute I get them talking about that, I know I'm winning. Yeah. And I think, and that's beautiful because I think there's, there's the, I think the inexperienced sales rep or actually a lot of sales reps look at it and say, well, let me, let me articulate my, my expertise by telling you how much I know about this industry and how much I know about my product and that type of stuff.

And ultimately, no, that ain't going to get you shit, right? Because me telling you how smart I am, you're automatically have a defense mechanism where you ain't listening. But if you can get people, I always say this right now, I do not believe it is our job in sales anymore to teach people about features, functions, and speeds. And it is just not Google took that away from us. It is our job to get people to think. Yes. But I can get you to think like where, because like the way I put it is, look, if you are comfortable with where you are today, I don't care what your job is. I don't care what your role is. I don't care what your industry is. If you are uncomfortable with, I'm sorry, if you are comfortable with that, I'm worried for you because there's an app that comes out tomorrow.

There's going to be a shift in an industry that you're not going to be able to predict. And if you're not ready for it, you're going to be screwed. So my job is to ask you that question that gets you to pause for a second and say, shit, that's a good question. And not to say just to placate you, right? But it's to legitimately say, that's a good question. And then have me pause for 30 seconds to try to figure out my answer to it, right? My favorite answer to one of my questions is, that's a good question. Like, I know I'm winning. Yeah. Well, there's a nuance to that one, too, for everybody listening, right? There's the, that's a good question. And then an immediate answer to it, which actually isn't that great, right?

Because I've used, there's a little bit of a defense mechanism in there for me to make people feel good, right? So as a trainer, right, stand up and somebody asks a question, you go on, make people feel stupid. So you're like, oh, that's a good question, you know? But then I know the answer and I roll with it. Whereas, that's a good question. Let me think about that for a minute. You know what I mean? Like, that's what I want. Yeah. I love that on the prospecting side. Now let's talk about qualification, okay? And I want you to compare this to what, and look, let's call it what it is, like, you know, the franchise model, right? The sailor model. There's a lot about the sailor that's good, right?

They talk about, there's some bullshit stuff, too. But they talk about their pain funnel, right? And really getting to that quantifiable pain, right? And that's ultimately through reverse questioning and those types of things. And that's good, but I've always kind of been a little bit, like, roll my eyes at shit. So for instance, if you're like, you know what, John, what's your main problem? Well, my main problem is, you know, I missed our quota last quarter. You know, we missed our quota last quarter. Okay, well, what does that mean for the business if you don't hit your quarter target? Well, you know, if we don't hit our quarter target, and this is assuming that this person is wide open and giving you this information.

Yeah, almost never, right? But yeah, you know what, if we don't hit our quarter target, we're going to be in trouble. That means I won't be able to hire the amount of reps that I need. And we're probably, we're going for our series B round funding right now. If we don't hit that, I'm going to be, okay, well, what does that mean for you personally? Well, if I don't hit that, you know, then I'm getting fired. And then you have it, like Sandler's whole thing, right? It's like, by the time you get to that, now I got what I can sell you against, because that's your pain. That's your third level pain, okay? Talk to me about the difference and your philosophy on getting quantifiable metrics during that qualification phase that you can, because I love what you say, and Morgan and I are doing this all day long, which is I'm confused.

But how do you get to the real shit that people like ROI calculators, fuck off, right? I don't believe any ROI calculator that's ever been put in front of me. So how do you get the numbers that are real, that you can legit say, hold still, I'm confused? Yeah. All right. So here's the deal. First off, what was interesting, and you helped me, because people asked me, how do I compare Sandler all the time? Gap sign is the same as Sandler. No, it is not. And here's the first one. The idea of going for the pain is a problem, and I'm going to use this word, stay with me, is a problem, because pain is a symptom of a problem. You cannot have pain unless you have a problem. So I don't even tell people to shoot for the pain.

You're missing the mark. You're just, you're shooting for the yellow or the green outer circle, not the red inner circle. So you're missing it. Okay. The red inner circle is the problem itself, that your product or service solves. So in your scenario, you said, you know, tell me, Mr. and Mrs. customer, what's your problem? First off, if you ever asked that to me, I'm telling you, fuck off. Really? You got me on the phone to ask me to basically do your job for you? No. So I'm not gonna tell you my problem is, right? But in your scenario, the problem was, I can't make my quota. Okay, that's great. But you still haven't. And if you followed your whole chain and people go back and listen to this, you still didn't tell me really what your problem is that I can solve.

Because why you're not making quota could be sales training. It could be, it could be lack of recruiting and not poor salespeople. It could be a poor sales structure. It could be a bad product. It could be a whole bunch of reasons. I may be a recruiter and can only recruit for you. So I can't address those. So why would I even go in up here? It makes no sense. So what I tell people, first and foremost, is you got to know exactly what problems you solve from your product or service, the impact of those problems in the root causes. So then you can win. And like we just did with the skiing, I would say, what's your problem with skiing? I come in at, hey, do you find an off piece steep things you do this?

Because then I'll fix that, right? And then I can go, then I can do what you said there. So let's just say we do that. Let's say we use the same one with sales. What sales problem that training solved? Okay. Do you find that your sales, your average sales cycle is taking longer than it should? You lose deals because of people going dark and never getting back with you and because your sales team get destroyed on price if they do come back. Okay. So, so hold still those. So pause. I love that. You're okay with close ended questions in this scenario, right? Absolutely. That's what I thought. Okay. So, so because, because, and this is where I think people get it, get it lost. And the challenge I think a lot of people have is that they don't want to miss, they don't want to be so specific that they miss out on an opportunity to sell them the suite.

Because like, for instance, I love the approach of, Hey, people come to us for three reasons, one, two, or three, which one are you? Right. And by the way, if you're not one of those three things, cool, it's been good talking to you, but we're probably not going to get along. Right. So let's talk about it. Like, so let's, let's put it in context in the sense that a lot of people have a lot of different components of their solution that can add value to various stages of whatever that problem is. Right. For instance, like I'll, I'll use us first again. Like we got prospecting, meeting execution, negotiation, objection, hand closing, right? So I got five things. I also got an online portal that plugs in that you can do for onboarding, whatever.

So those are the five things. But if I go in straight up and I get a VP of sales on the phone, I say, Hey, do you have a problem of balancing quality and quantity prospecting and ensuring that your reps aren't pressing play on something like a sales loft or a cadence and not actually putting any thought into it? Do you have that problem? Now, what if they're, what if they're just a straight up inbound sales organization? And the guy's like, no, as a matter of fact, like we don't do any of our own prospecting, it all comes inbound to us. If I just put myself in a pigeonhole, because I got negotiations, I got this other shit that I can sell them. So how do you position that question to get somebody to, to not pigeonhole yourself into this one small area and open up the conversation to other, the other things?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, great question. So I think the first thing is you got to, you got to know who you're calling and know what problem you're leading with. So when you just said they're only inbound, my assumption is you probably would have known that, but if you didn't, that's okay. And you should have, and you're a salesperson should have enough industry and problem knowledge, understanding that they owe wisdom that they can pivot right there. So if he says, no, we're all inbound, then you should know what problems inbound people have, right? So let's, let's okay. Inbound people have that you, that you solve that you should be able to pivot to a new question. So let's just say we do use a skiing one.

Cause I don't know why it's easier. Right. And someone says, no, actually, actually, I don't have that problem, which I know is not true because I don't like even the best in the world have it. It's just, it's not that frequent. It's not that impeding, but so let's say they have it, but not enough to this negative impact. So I really don't. And then he says, or they might say, no, I don't, because I spend most of my time in the terrain park. Okay. Okay. Okay. Ah, okay. Well, that's like, to me, that's a win. I know more about your business now. So, oh, you're in the terrain park. Really? Tell me about that. Now, again, you have to know your shit. Are you rails? Do you do boxes? Do you do jumps?

Do you, I mean, tell me a little more about where you are and how you're doing it. Are you on the medium to small jumps or in the large jumps? And by the way, just so you know, a small jump is maybe a four or five foot, what's called landing. A medium can be anywhere between, I don't know, 10 and 15 or 20. A large can be about 25 to 60. And an extra large can be 80 to 100 feet of flat before you get to the, to the, to the down slope. And you don't ever want to land on the flat. No, I've seen it. So just by asking those questions, I start to know where they are. And so let's just say here's, I'm on the medium and I'm saying, really, how come you haven't started to do the large yet? Right. I know what I'm looking for now.

I know that he is probably hasn't nailed his air awareness well enough that as he stays in the air too long, he starts to get off access or can't hold it. And right. So I can, I can address that. So you struggle with air awareness when you're in the air longer than two seconds, dude. Exactly. Like I know where to go. So it's like, so in this scenario of, Hey, we're all inbound, I could be like, Oh, cool. So are you round robin? Or are you, uh, do you assign, uh, inside reps to the field reps when those inbound leads come in? Right. Right. Yes. Or what I might say in this case, I'm making more business oriented because it's inbound. Do you feel that your sales reps are trying to rush the sale because they just assume the person needs it and misses vital information that could have closed the deal.

Cause they just assume that everybody wants to buy from. Gotcha. So, so go, let's go back to that and close in a question. Why are you okay? Cause most sales trainers are, are, are always coach on in the discovery phase. Make sure you ask open-ended questions and you're, you're saying not close-ended questions are legit. If used appropriately, how do you use close-ended questions and what's your, what's your follow-up to a yes, no answer? So I use close-ended questions cause I want to validate and I want, I don't want wishy-washy. Does this problem exist? Yes or no. If it exists, I'm going this way. If it's no, I'm going this way. If you say, well, it kind of does. And sometimes we work this, well, no, I don't know what to do.

I, I, I don't know where to go yet because is it a problem or is it not? You kind of suggest either way. So no, no. When I want a customer to tell me exactly what's going on and I want to validate something, damn straight. I was, I asked, but you said something important there, which is if it, if they say yes, then you go this way. If you go, no, then you go this way. So the idea there is almost like, if you were to think of tactically what to do, you figure out who your persona is that you're going after, right? You piece of sales industry, what are their challenges? What are their priorities? I want to talk about that for a second too, but then come up with your go-to kind of, uh, got like not gotcha questions, but get you to think questions.

Right. And they could be close-ended, but if they're close-ended, you have to have an answer or a follow-up question, whether it's yes or no. Right. So it's like, I tell people all the time, feel free to ask a close-ended question. Just be prepared that if I say no, that you have an immediate rebuttal to say, okay, cool. Well then, and then ask me a little bit more, maybe of an open-ended question. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Rarely do I have, I shouldn't say this, but rarely do I ever ask two close-ended questions in a row. I mean, close-ended questions are directional in my, they're validating or they're directional. Got it. Let's talk about pain and pleasure. Cause I know you're, you're up, the gap to you is about the pain.

All right. Now this is where you and I differ a little bit, but I'm starting, I see the data and I see the statistics, right? I think it's like, and I got this through Chris Voss too. Like people are three or four times more likely to avoid pain than, than achieve pleasure. Okay. So, but this was my question. And I actually didn't really get a great response from Chris on this one. So I'm hoping for one from you. Does that matter as it relates to the power line? And let me explain, right? So my experience is people below the power line are typically focused on today or yesterday, which is usually pain. They're feeling pain right now. But when I talk to an executive, if I talk about like kind of the pain about today and what's happening today, they see, they get disinterested pretty quick.

But if I start talking about where I can take them about what their vision is for the next 12 to 24 months of their business and what your goal is to spend some, like for me, like to spend time with my daughter and get off of an airplane, like you get me talking about that shit, man. And I, I'll light up like a Christmas tree. If you want, I will tell you everything you need to know to sell me. You talk about today. What's I usually delegate that down to somebody else who's dealing with that shit. So what is your, like, is it, is it a blanket you, you just go for the problem or do you, do you kind of segment out and sprinkle a little bit of vision on top of like, do you start with the vision and then back it up or do you start with the pain and paint the vision?

So I always start with not the pain. I always start with the problem. But if you look, if you look at gap selling, what is gap selling? What are the two elements of get with the street, but what are the two elements of gap selling? Current and desire. Current state and desire state. Close. Future state. Future state. Okay. Yeah. I might not know it yet. Yeah. Current state is what? Uh, problem, I guess. The pain. Well, yeah. Okay. Sorry. We're going to confuse people. But in your scenario, in the psychological scenario, it's the pain. Yep. The pain lives in the current state. Mm-hmm. Right? The future state is where the pleasure lives. Yep. So really what I do is I don't go in and you say it yourself again, and I do this to salespeople, and I try to be as respectful of people I love like yourself.

I don't talk to people. And I beg people in gap selling, don't talk to people. Get them talking themselves. So whether it's, whether it's above the power line or below the power line, if I can get them talking about the problem and I can get them to give me their current state in whatever particular order, but the physical and literal, the problem, the impact, the root cause, then I can start moving them into a conversation. Well, if we did this and we did that and we did this and we did that, this could be the outcome. Then they get excited. But by doing that in that order and getting them talking, not me telling, I don't tell until that whole process is done. Until I find the gap, I don't tell a thing.

I ask and get them talking. And if we get that whole thing done correctly, the level of credibility you have that you can actually solve their problem, then you talk about the future. All right. So here's, so check this out. Let's back that up. Let's push on that with some data. Bong says, but the average, the average sales rep through a qualification call, ask 11 to 14 questions, right? Above average, above average, last seven, 11 to 14 questions below, ask more or less, whatever, except for when it comes to executives. So now when you, when you got an executive on the phone, you got four questions that you can ask them before the conversion ratio is dropped to the floor. And I can tell, I know that, right?

You know that as well. Like you and I are both pretty impatient people. We're pretty educated with when we want to buy something, we've done our homework. It's rare that you and I are just going to pop on a call and be like, yeah, what's up? Right. So we've kind of, we know, and we get impatient. So after like three or four questions, it's like, all right, when am I going to get mine? Yeah. So to your point of doing it right, which I agree with, like if in a perfect world, we get that scenario where I get to ask you those right questions, you start flowing, you start talking. And all of a sudden I can understand that and then paint you that picture. But say you got that executive that gives you two, three, four questions before they're like, all right, Keenan, tell me how the fuck you go.

Like what, so what, what the hell is a sales guy all about? Like, what can you, what can you bring to the table for me? And I've answered like, what, first of all, do you have like three or four, like, fuck you questions that can give you that answer? Or do you push back and say, look, I still don't have enough Intel to be able to tell you how I can help. Yep. That's what I do. I push back. Okay. I've lost one or two deals by pushing back, but I was perfectly okay with it because I didn't know how I could help. Right. So what I really try to do is my big go-to question is tell me a little bit about, that's my big go-to question. Tell me a little bit about what? Anything. Tell me a little, tell me a little bit about the process.

Tell me a little bit about how your sales team delivers. Tell me a little bit how you compete. Like, I don't know, whatever was on the table at the time. Right. And I listened intently. Like, that's the one thing I don't know how to teach people. Like I pick up on shit that people just, whoa. And I'm like, it's right there. How'd you miss it? I don't know. So I don't know how to teach that, but I listen and I listen for the connections, like the mortar. And I don't want to hear the brick. The brick's easy for me. It's the mortar. Right. And I pay very close attention. And then that's why with executives above the line, that's where I'll push some of the provoking questions because executives have this attitude that they know everything and you're wasting their time.

So rather than asking is too many probing questions, if I can get them just talking a little bit about what they do and then I can provoke them rather than probe deeper. So he's like, oh, you know, our sales team is great. You know, they do this, this, and this, and they're fantastic. And they might've said in their answer, all I need is this much. I'm like, wait, you did say that. When that happens, do you find this? Right. I'm sort of provoking them, right. To get them to think about that. And if I get them thinking, that's the thing people need to understand with executives. If you can get them thinking, you got them. Like they're, they're, they're just too busy in there. And look, I love Gong's research.

I love it. But here's the only, and it's not a knock. It's just, they can't do it is it's, it's one level too high. In other words, in most cases, because I agree with the general premise, more questions, better discovery. But what we're not seeing is what questions are being asked. Absolutely. Right. And that is the gold right there. And I watch the questions salespeople ask. I watch questions, some super impressive sales thought leaders ask. And I'm like, wow, do you get paid to teach that shit? So I just, I just, I'm like, yes, I love Gong. I agree with 90% of what they come out with. I just wish we could get one layer deep because I think that's where the gold is. Yeah. No, I think the, the idea of, I think I say to people all the time outside of prospecting, because a big funnel fills everything, you know, fixes all problems.

I think the number one skill that every rep can get better at. I don't care how good you are. I don't care how experienced you are is asking better questions. Yes. It's being able to layer on those questions in a sequence, because to your point, if I can get you to pause for a second there and say, but you know what, like, I don't, that now all of a sudden we're having, I do, you know, one of the things that Jeff Hoffman, my, you know, my mentor, one of my mentors does like, I love the way he does this is, is after he listens to whatever you say, you know, you're describing me your process or whatever it is, he'll go, he'll actually go, you know what, I really liked what you said there about the lead flow, about how it comes in and what your follow-up process is.

You know, I don't necessarily agree with how you're handling X, but you know, and he, and he almost like throws it out there. Like it's no big deal, but he's like, no, I really like what you said here, but I, you know, I kind of differ in my opinion about that. And the whole idea there is to get that person to go, because as soon as you do that, the executive is going to go, excuse me, like, why don't you agree with that? And then that's, now you got them, right? Because now, now we're talking about something that they are definitely interested as far as your opinion on that scenario. I like that approach because it's a similar scenario. So you asked you, and I don't think I answered the question well, so you brought it back and I want to answer for you.

You asked, how do you get the specifics? That's was the original question. I don't know how I got over in left field. Like, how do you get the measurable? Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, it was going to be, get back to that, but yeah. Like, how do you like, and yeah. So like the, the stuff that matters, you know, like, So you, when you just use that example with Hoffman, right, I would have done it slightly differently. I heard everything they said. And I saw an area where he said, I'm not, I don't agree with this. And I bet Hoffman knows he just has a different style. I I'm, I'm paraphrasing it. So he probably does it a lot better than that, but that's the, I thought it was good. What I would do there is I would use that to get the information you're looking for.

So I would go to that situation and say, Hey Tom, you know, I liked what you said here. This stuff seems pretty solid, but when you sit over here, when you said your team does this, this, this, and this, what's been the outcome, right? Like I know it's not a good outcome. I'm not going to jump in and tell them I disagree, blah, blah, blah. Like this is what I keep trying to pile on. Even when I know the answer, I don't tell them. I'm like a therapist. I'm not going to tell you the answer. I'm going to get you to talk. And he'll, he might say, Oh, you know, now we don't really get the closure rate. We'd like really what closure rate are you getting? Right. So then he tells us, well, what would your closure rate like to be?

Okay. Future state number one, there it is. Right. And I didn't have to tell him anything. This is the art, John. And it's the hardest thing for salespeople because they love telling people shit. I don't tell people anything until I get the gap. And then what I tell them is the how, how we're going to fix it. Right. That's when the product stuff comes in, but I don't tell them about their problem like a doctor, right? As doctors hate clients who come in and tell them what's wrong with them. I'm a doctor. I'm going to get you to explain it. Right. I'm sorry. People hate when the doctor tells them what's wrong before they've had a chance to talk to them. They hate it. I'm the doctor. I'm going to get you to tell me everything that's going on.

And then when I'm completely done and I've diagnosed your problem and the gap, right, then I'll tell you what your options are to fix it. I like it. All right. Now I'm going to end on this one. Cause this is the big read. This is the big question I got. And this is the one that Morgan and I are struggling with actually right now. Right. Cause he read your book. I read the majority of it. I love the whole concept. I want to go on record. World's greatest sales trade is reading gap selling. I'm feeling first of all, that, that ain't like, I'm a sales guy that happens to be able to articulate some value a little bit. Right. But, but that said, um, with the, so the concept here, and I love this, and I think that if you could explain this, cause this is really resonated with Morgan and I, which is, you've got to get to the point where, when they push back on you on price, when they push back on you on timeline, when they push back on you, when all this shit or that goes to you or whatever it is that you can legitimately say, I'm confused.

Like I'm legit confused. Cause you said, boom, boom, boom. So now let me give you a scenario here. All right. Yeah. Um, we, we asked the qualifying questions, right? We asked, we, we, you, you give the kids some structure, but then they, they get it and they ask those questions that gets under and I'll give some basics here. So in our world, right? Your average deal size is 50 G's. You miss your quota by 75% or by 25% last thing. You know, the problem is, is you're not attracting the right talent, uh, that, that gets you to be able to sell at that level. You're not making any investments. Your sales cycle is 60 days. And so, and my training is going to cost you $15,000. Okay. So now I have painted a fuck.

Holy shit picture here. ACV 50,000 60 day sales cycle. Like your problem is you're not attracting the right talent. You're not retaining the right talent to be able to do all that other stuff. Right. And you've missed your quota. So now it's compounded on top of this quarter. And now you're ghosting me. So what I, what we do is we quantify a lot that we use like a summary email. So you and I have that conversation to show active listening. We're like, Hey Keenan, you know, could you do me a favor? Here's a brief, you know, outline of what we talked about today. Anything I'm missing here, right? Whatever. Could you please confirm? Cause that's the key here is that you send the summary email, but you get them to confirm.

Yes, John, that's accurate. Yeah. Now I've got all that stuff, right? Yeah. You're good at that. They still don't move. All right. And what I've had Morgan is my, my theory is this is that either, either you didn't articulate the value good enough or you're missing something. So, so what Morgan do, and this is actually legitimately like for deals that are stuck in the pipeline that he has all that data that I look at, I listened to his gone calls. I'm like, man, you asked the right questions to the right person too. Right. And, and they're still not moving or they're still pushing off till next quarter. So I told him to send this and we're having some luck with this where we put in the subject line of the email.

What am I missing? Literally, that's the subject line. And then, and then it's like, Hey, Keenan, we've been working together for a while now. Could you confirm that below is still accurate? This, this problem, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Cause if it is, I'm having a hard time understanding why you're not jumping on this and doing it tomorrow. Cause either I haven't articulated the value enough or I'm missing something. So what is it? Right. We actually gotten a couple of people feedback. Yes, you're missing something. And this is what it was. Or, you know what? Yeah. I just don't believe that, that you can solve that problem for me. But, but what do you do when you, when you seemingly have done everything right and they're still, and you say, I'm confused.

And they're like, yeah, you're, and they actually even say, yeah, you know what, Keenan, you're right. All that stuff that you just said to me right there, that's a hundred percent accurate. We still got to push this till Q3. Okay. So there's, there's three answers. Make sure I get to them. They all play together. The first answer is, um, and I say this all the time and you get this is sales is like baseball. Okay. If you can bat 350, you're a hall of famer top first, first ballot, right? If you bat 295, you might maybe depending on how long you can bat it, you might be a hall of famer and you'll, but you'll get a good 10, you know, 10 to 15 years, but you're, you're not a big name, right? Well, the difference between 295 and 300 is only like 35 hits in an entire season.

I think it's pretty small. Maybe it's even less than that. Right. So my point in that is, even when you use the I'm confused, you're not going to bat a thousand. It just, it's, I'm teaching you how to go from 290 to 350. Right. So keep that in mind. Number one, number two, I know it was an example. So I don't want to lean too much on it, but I can't help but I heard the example in your example. There was some good stuff, but there wasn't enough. Right. There really wasn't a good solid understanding of the desired future state. Right. Just, just not losing, getting to a hundred percent of quota from 75 is not enough of a future state. We need to understand what the impact of not being at quota is.

Okay. The impact is a huge piece. People miss like, okay, great. You're at 75%. Tell me the impact of that on your organization. And somebody, oh, well, you know what? I'm not making my, my, um, my commission or, you know, the management's getting pissed. Okay, great. But can you please tell me some more? Like, is that it? Right. And how much money is that? Right. So is that, uh, half a million dollars? Is it a million dollars? It's 50 million, a hundred million. Right. Like, so, so it's sort of the open-ended answer piece. I like 25%, but what does that represent? So I think in your example, there was a lot more future state impact information you could have gotten that could have taken you two or three layers down that you could have said, oh, you know what?

Although this seems like a big deal, it's really just about missing quota. There's no series B on the line. There's no jobs on the line. There's no competitive loss. I don't like this. It sucks. Yep. But there's really nothing there. Right. And to know that up front, could he answer some of those questions? And I think just the last piece then is, um, as you described it is, um, um, okay, this situation, what was the other one? Oh, shit. It was one of the third piece and I, ah, it'll come back to me, but yes, but those are the two mains that jumped up. And you just, I guess the last one is in your discovery, you just got to get, you got to go further than you think you've gone. We, we think we get there.

Gap selling demands so much more than people understand. And that's my biggest challenge is selling it. Oh, wait, oh, we already do a discovery. No, you don't. Not a gap selling discovery. You don't. Right. You, you, oh, that's the third one. The third one, you can't start selling until you know the gap and you can quantify the gap. And it's more than just, as you said, the ROI calculator. Right. Right. It's more than that. And I'll give you a really brief example and I'm not going to use any names, but I talk about it in the book. I want an account that turned out being a two year account. So it was worth well over six figures, right? Monthly retainer for two years. And the reason I wanted is all these other sales expert influencers got there before me actually, and they all did a discovery.

But what I was able to do in my discovery was I was able to push the impact further. And as I dug into, well, why does it matter that you're not at quota? Why does it matter that you're, cause they were growing by the way, they were growing at 20% all year over year. Why is, why are you not happy with the 20% as I pushed and pushed and questioned and questioned, finally got to, they had a BHAG of $48 million in three and a half or four years. And that they were, even though they were going at 20%, they were $7 million behind. And, and I was like, well, how are you going to make, you got to make up the 7 million and do that. And he hadn't thought that and none of the other experts got that level of information.

So a discovery is not a word. It is an action. And you can't hit bunts at a discovery and say, you've done a discovery. Your discovery has to be a home run every time. So do you think one of the most important discovery, discovery questions is why? Why is that, why does that matter? Why? Yes, yes, yes. I, I, I hesitated only in that that once you get, it's a, I actually, I wish you would ask me this question two years ago, because it would have made it to the book. I've never processed this before, but it's a great question. Um, the, the, once I understand your first layer of your problem, like I'm not getting, um, so first the what is what's going on. I'm not making quota. I'm not growing fast enough.

We're not hitting our number, whatever the case may be. Right. Okay. Well, then the next one for me is how, well, tell me about how you're doing it today. So first, what, what the problem is, secondly, how are you performing? Like what are your execution strategies? Right. So I want to understand what's going on. That gets me to the root cause. And then after the, how, then it becomes, okay, now that is, why does that matter? Yeah. So I want to go through it like that process. Some people might say, well, put why first. I'm like, I can, but the problem with that is why is a natural conduit to the future state. And if I do that too early, it's hard to come back and have them explain the how in the, how is where I win my credibility.

The how is where I really find the, I can use the triggers to anchor my solution and fixing it. Right. Cause the, how is, is the, is the, the real problem that's happening. Like it's, it's the cause it's the root cause. And so if I, if I, if I don't get to the root cause, it's hard for me to do what you did before. What you were talking about is explain why I can fix it. I can tell you why I can fix this because the problem is the root cause of your problem is that, and I can fix that this way. Does that make any sense? Absolutely. Absolutely. So I like that framework, right? It's, it's, what's the problem? How are you currently dealing with it now? And why is the problem an issue? And then I can tailor my conversation towards the components of my solution that fit, that fix that problem.

And then I can use the, I'm confused because I got the, the, why it's a problem. Right. So, okay. Yes. Right. Like, so using the one where I just give you, he says, well, you're too expensive, Keenan. I'm like, well, wait a minute. You told me that you're not going to hit your B. Oh, I'm sorry. The other part of that BX story I didn't tell is they had an exit plan and they, based on their research and some other things, they found that that number was the difference between a small exit and a massive exit. Like, I don't know what's a magic number in their space. Right. And so not only was it, did we get to that and make more money? Our valuation goes from like four X to 12 X. So that's where you, by me getting there had, which they didn't, but had they pushed back and said, I don't know, Keenan, that's awfully expensive.

I could say, wait, I'm confused. We're talking about a 12 X valuation on $48 million a year. We're talking about the fact that you're 7 million behind now. We're talking about, I'm confused. Why do you think I'm too expensive? Right. I love it. I love it. And is that, I mean, do you give the same advice? Cause the challenge and we'll finish here. Do you give the same advice on, on, you know, products? Cause I always hear this a lot from reps like, oh, we're, we're a like to have not a must have. So that's why it's hard to sell. Do you call bullshit on that one? A hundred percent. That's product centric selling. Look, okay. You ready? Ah, this is the best. Okay. Gum. Oh, I wish I had a piece of gum.

I could hold it up. Is gum. I like to have a nice to have. Oh, thank you very much. Gum. Is that a, is that a need to have or like to have? What would most salespeople tell you that is what that is? That's a like to have all day long. It's not, I don't need that. Okay. If you're a product centric selling salesperson, gum isn't like to have until I, every person who comes up to me and says they want to buy gum. I'm like, well, tell me what's going on. Why do you want to buy the gum? Right. And that person that comes to me and says, I've got a date in 15 minutes with Molly Sims. That is no fucking life to have, bro. That is a must have. Right. So I don't, again, people listen to me loud and clear.

I don't care what I'm selling. I do not focus on what I'm selling. I have trained my mind, trained my mind to only focus on the scenarios where the problems are the biggest to the people I sell to. I'm selling gum. I'm talking about people going on dates. I'm talking about people, um, uh, getting involved in meetings. I'm talking about the embarrassment of bad breath. Like I'm talking about shit that they don't want to deal with. That is not a like to have having shitty breath at a business meeting or on a date is not a like to have. I couldn't agree. And that's why I'm going to come all the way back to the beginning of this. This is why I think companies need to do a much better job at profiling their ideal customer profile.

Cause if you just give a list to a kid of a thousand names that are demographically profile from five to 500 or whatever it is in these industries, you ain't giving them the tools to be able to ask the questions to the right people. They're forced to be generic with their message. And with generic questions and generic messaging, you get generic answers and you get bullshit answers. So that's how I think to that. Please do. So everything you said and the problems that inflict them, educate your young kids on the problems. And if your organization doesn't know anything good for you to admit and go do your research, get with your existing customers, ask them what problems were they were struggling with, why they bought and how it's affected their organization.

Make new reps sit with existing customers or your customer success team and hear about what problems they're trying to eradicate and get them to be experts in the problem. So they can look like a partner that says, oh, wow, you get what I'm dealing with. Yep. Again, that's me. That's me, right? Not, not, that's not, that's right. Not your right. That's right. That's what you got to get to those problems. Yes. Love it, my friend. All right, man. Well, tell everybody how they can find out more about you, follow you, do whatever, where you want people, send people to get more information on a sales guy and gap selling and everything else. Yeah. You can go to look, you go gap selling.com. You go to a sales guy.com.

I mean, if I really want to make it easy, just go Keenan or Jim Keenan and Google. And I think I'm every page Keenan's harder one to harder one to win. There's a lot of big famous Keenan people, but I'm still in the top three. I just don't own the whole page. Um, but Jim can't have the whole page. Like just go there. You find me on LinkedIn under Keenan. Um, I'm easy to find if you want to find me. Awesome, man. Definitely keep following him on LinkedIn. He yells at you every day with something. Uh, it's all good. It's just coming at you hard. So you better. So for my audience, my audience is pretty, pretty, uh, attuned to me being like straight up in your face type of shit. Uh, Keenan takes it up a notch.

So if you want to, if you want to get, you know, if you're, if you're too sensitive, then back off either one of us. But if you're really, if you want to get punched in the face a couple of times, because we all need to get punched in the face a couple of times, follow Keenan because he knows his shit. All right, everybody. Thanks Keenan, man. I really appreciate you coming on board here. Thank you, my man. It was a great time. Absolutely. And we'll take it. We'll probably do this again. We'll do this again. Cause I'm looking forward to some more shit coming out from you. Uh, but for everybody out there, thanks for listening. If you do nothing else today, as usual, go make somebody smile. You made somebody smile today.

You know, you had a good day. All right. Have a great week, everybody. Let's make it happen. Bye. Bye. Thank you.