Transparency Wins More Deals with Todd Caponi

Hey, real quick before we get into the conversation. Look, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while now, you know I don't have sponsors. And it's mainly because I know most people, including myself, skip right through them and I just don't want to annoy my audience with 10 minutes of sponsor spots every single week. However, it also means I don't get paid to do this. So the way I help fund my ability to provide free content and really interesting conversations like the one you're about to hear is through my sales training and coaching services. So if you've gotten value out of some of these conversations on this podcast and you're looking to level up your sales game, do me a favor and go to jbarrows.com and check out the training tab on the top nav bar.

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Now let's get on with the show. You as salespeople, your role is to provide a service to your buyers, you know, help them achieve optimal outcomes as quickly as possible and do it by setting accurate expectations that you can consistently meet. That's got to be the way that we sell going forward. Otherwise, I don't think the role is sustainable. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurs, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And this one is my good friend, Todd Capone. He is, I think this is the fourth or fifth time on the podcast.

He gets, I think he gets a jacket next time he comes on, but he is absolutely one of my favorite people and also one of the most respected voices in especially modern sales philosophy, even though he talks a lot about the history of sales. He's also the author of The Transparency Sale, which is one of my favorite books on negotiations. And now he's gone even deeper into it with The Four Levers Negotiation, which are The Four Levers Negotiating is what the actual book title is. And I highly recommend you go get it on Amazon right now. Look, if you've heard our past conversations, you know Todd and I see eye to eye on a lot of stuff, especially around transparency, trust, and really try to just basically keep it real in sales.

But in this one, we went real deep in something a lot of sellers and leaders still screw up, which is negotiations. So we unpacked a lot of things on this one. And first and foremost, why most negotiation tactics are still stuck in the 80s and what actually needs to change and why. And the four key levers every deal hinges on and how to talk about them with confidence. And this is where transparency really shines. He talks about, you know, how, hey, I pay you in the form of discounting. So he's actually paying the client. He changes vocabulary. He also talks about instead of like, hey, if you close by the end of the month, I'll give you a discount. Hey, we pay for forecast and revenue predictability.

So instead of close by the end of the month, we value revenue predictability, which is why I'm willing to pay for that in the form of a discount. So the way he phrases things is fascinating here. And on that note, we talked about how fake deadlines and last minute discounting are literally slowing down your deals and ruining your credibility and why transparency builds pipeline, trust, long-term growth, and how to do it without getting walked over. And as always, we talked about a little bit of sales history because he is a historian in this profession. I keep going back to him for things like, hey, was it always like this or is this new and almost nothing is. So he talked about pricing psychology and some really funny stories about how sweaters and cheeseburgers play into the mix, which trust me, it'll make sense when you hear it.

Look, Todd's one of the most thoughtful, humble, and no bullshit voices in the game. If you're in sales leadership, frontline sales, or just trying to build a more human revenue engine here, you're going to get a ton out of this one. And again, I highly recommend going and checking out his book. It's one of my favorite books on negotiation. So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Todd Capone, welcome back, my friend, to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. We just said it's number four, so I don't know if my listeners are sick of listening here, but I'm not, my friend. So let's get into it. How you doing? Thank you for having me. And yeah, it's always a blast when we catch up.

So this is awesome. Yeah, and I think the reason it's a blast is because I think you and I share a very similar philosophy on sales, on business, and, you know, today's topic, negotiations. You know, a lot of what I train on is kind of that give and get component of like that foundational piece, but I don't really get into the, okay, how to ask for that, like this specific scenario, like those type of things. I give them a framework, but I think then that's why after I go through my training with everybody, I always say, hey, go pick up Transparency Sale. And now, and again, what was the book? The book's actually called? It's called Four Levers Negotiating comes out the end of January here. Perfect.

So, which is a part of Transparency Sale, but like we talked about, this is kind of more of a deeper dive on negotiations specifically. So with that, we don't have to go through your background, my friend, because if people need to know that they can go on LinkedIn and figure it all out. I will tell you though, I know you posted something recently about how you did all this work for like, you know, Sales Mellon and the history of sales and all those things and, you know, zero dollars, right? All this stuff, like whatever that post was. The sales history stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the sales history. And it's because like a passion project for you. I got to, I don't know, I don't know how many comments or likes you get on those posts, but I love them because it's about perspective and everybody panicking.

Oh my God, AI. Oh my God, this. And then you are incredible at tying it back to something, an article in 1906 about how, oh, the printing press or whatever the fuck that is. So keep doing what you're doing on that, man. I love it because I think it's, it's well-needed perspective on the profession of sales right now. Yeah. And I've been, you know, obviously with the book coming out, really digging in to the history of sales negotiating. There's a professor, Dr. Robert Peterson at Indiana University, Kelly School of Business, who had asked me, you know, Todd, you spent so much time talking about the foundation layers for the sales profession. John Patterson at NCR, Arthur Sheldon, Arthur Dunn, Norval Hawkins, those guys, and Lucinda Prince for Women in Sales, who are the early negotiators?

And I couldn't find any. And so I, if everybody wants to sit back for a second, I'll tell a little history story on why there weren't any that, you know, traditionally in the sales world, there was this concept called fair trade. And what fair trade meant was it was protected by government legislation, starting with the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was meant to destroy monopolies in the 1800s, and then followed up with the Clayton Act. And then there was acts in the 1930s and the 1950s. Fair trade basically meant that manufacturers could establish minimums for their pricing and their terms so that they couldn't be undercut. And the big guys couldn't undercut the small guys. And so basically there was floors on pricing.

So for the first, you know, 90 years of modern sales, salespeople had to sell on value and differentiation and negotiating wasn't a big deal because there was already a floor mandated by the government. And in 1975, there was a consumer protection act that took fair trade and turned it into free trade. And that's when all of a sudden you had your Walmarts and your Kmarts and all of a sudden there was no price floor and you had to negotiate not only on your value, but negotiation became a skill that was necessary literally overnight. Part of the reason I say that there's two pieces. Number one is that at the time, you know, today we talk about AI is changing everything. Like you talked about at the beginning, like technology is changing everything.

I would argue that government legislation has changed sales more dramatically and more quickly over time than technology has. So that's number one. Number two is when all of a sudden we had to frantically figure out how to negotiate in sales, there was nobody that was talking about it. There was a guy named Chester Karras that had written a book in the early 1970s that kind of filled the gap. But you know what popped up right after that was BATNA and getting the yes. And that was 1981. And I would argue that today, here we are 24, 25 years later, that is still the method and the approach that we take to negotiating. It just has different names, you know, even I never split the difference in all of those different elements.

They're based on that early negotiation where it was adversarial. It was one time. We've changed everything about sales. Why haven't we changed negotiating yet? That's kind of my opening rant on this. And it's through this lens of history that everything we use to negotiate today is still based on 1980s, 81 theory. Hey, taking a quick break here to remind you to check out some of my sales training programs at jaybarrows.com and use discount code podcast for 20% off the individual packages. If you're not interested in training or you don't think you need it, then you can still support me by leaving a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform or G2 if you've already gone through my training before.

You can also sign up for my newsletter on jaybarrows.com where every single week I put out a newsletter that breaks down what I'm learning out there, some of the new tips and tools and tech and resources that I'm coming across, and some stories from the streets of train wrecks that I go through and stuff not to do. So if you could do one of those things, either sign up for the membership, give me a five-star review, or follow me on the newsletter, it would mean the world to me. Thanks for your support. Now let's get back to the show. And it keeps coming back to the 80s, man, about how capitalism gone wrong. You know what I mean? Like, so it's funny, you know, Jack Welsh, right? And we've talked before, I worked for him, right?

And he used to be my business idol, like the book Winning. I was like, holy shit, like fucking candor and all this other stuff. Like, this speaks my language, right? But now I reflect back on that, and I'm like, he was actually like the worst when it came to capitalism. And don't get me wrong, made shitloads of money, profit for shareholders. And I think that's that shift of shareholder value versus value value. That's another shift that I think fucked up everything in our world, especially in the public markets. It's like, no, it wasn't about the consumer. It wasn't about the environment. It wasn't about anything. It was about how much money can we make our shareholders? And that, I think, shifted a lot of what our whole current society is about when it comes to capitalism and how bad it is.

Well, I think it's human nature. Like, you think about a company delivering a comp plan. What do salespeople do? They try to figure it out and go, all right, how can I game this to make as much money as possible? That's literally what the rules have been in sales since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s. It basically was people like Rockefeller and, you know, the steel magnates and all of that going, hey, there are no rules. So we can buy out and charge whatever we want. The railroad industry, for example, they, the two big railroad manufacturers, they got together and they were like, hey, let's just carve up the country. You take the East, we'll take the West and we'll charge whatever we want.

We won't compete with each other and we will charge like crazy. And farmers were like, hey, we can't even ship our stuff. Like this has gotten out of control. And that was happening in every industry. So I would argue that it's always been human nature to exploit the rules to our own personal selfish advantage. And that's why legislation, again, in my perspective, has changed the rules of selling more dramatically and more quickly than technology ever has. You know, you just got me to reflect on this too, because I always wondered why I had an adverse reaction to like hardcore negotiations, right? And it always made my skin crawl. It like, and I didn't know. And I think the reason is, is because the way I got introduced to sales, right?

My first job was DeWalt. So I didn't, there was no quotas. I didn't have to negotiate on anything, right? Whatever. But my second job was Xerox and it wasn't just Xerox. It was Xerox selling to state and local governments. My price was my price, period. It was what was negotiated on contract before I even showed up. That copier cost that much money, period. So I never, even multimillion dollar machines and deals and stuff like that, I never had to quote unquote negotiate because they always knew what the price was. And so it was always the value that does this make sense and all those different things. And so then when I kind of married it and got, you know, small business, that's a little bit different.

But then when I got into SaaS, I was like, this hardcore shit, like cut the shit, like fuck off. This is my price. Like, like people would ask me, like, John, how'd you come up with your price? It's none of your fucking business. Like, it's my fucking price, right? Like, like you're sass for crying out loud. You think, yeah, sure. I cost you a lot more money sales for us to give one extra license to me compared to the $1,500 you're going to fucking charge me. Like, shut up. Right. Which actually let's dive into it. Cause I have a question as it relates to that pricing and we're going to get into the four levers, don't we? I really want to dive into this book, but this just popped into my head.

I don't know the answer to this question. Is it better to equip a sales rep with the information of where the price comes from and what it goes towards in an organization so that they have the business acumen and context to be able to have a logical conversation and rebut some of these like CFOs would be like, what the fuck? Or is it better to have the rep be ignorant to the nuances of the pricing model of where and why and all that other stuff? So they're kind of plausible denied ability. Like, I'm sorry, my floor is my floor. So where are you on that piece of it specifically related to negotiations? There's two pieces and it's a really good segue into four levers negotiating. Piece number one is just, by the way, a little story that happened when I was in New York last week.

And I posted about this, but I went to, there's a restaurant in Manhattan called Aux Chevelle. I don't know if you've ever been to it, but they've got incredible, like the cheeseburgers are just off the chains. And it's a nice place. It is packed. We went on a Wednesday night. There was five of us. Four of us got the cheeseburger. All right. So the reason I say that is the cheeseburger, the price is anywhere between, I think, 34 and $38. Jesus Christ. For this cheeseburger, depending on what you get on it. And so four of us ordered this thing. And the place is packed, mind you. And so we were sitting there and I was like, hey, why didn't it ever cross our minds to talk to the waiter, salesperson, who had given us a menu, which is proposal, that has, here's all your options and here's how much they cost.

Why didn't it ever cross our mind to go, hey, listen, I have a budget issue. I'm going to need a 20% discount. Or why didn't we go, hey, listen, I was just down the street. There's a restaurant called McDonald's. I can get a cheeseburger and it comes with fries and a drink for $8 and 50 cents, match their price. Or, hey, I need to sign, I need a contract language that protects me in case I have diarrhea from eating this and it costs me wages or additional costs in terms of medication. Like that would be stupid. And so the point being that unless you're a startup, unless you're releasing a new product, your price should be your price. And that should be obvious given the environment, right? If Red Robin tried to charge $34 for a cheeseburger, the restaurant would be empty, right?

This place, they've established a reputation and people go to it. The waiter comes and says, hey, that's the price. And if you don't want to pay it, cool, beat it. And so I think that's part one to your answer is that I think you need to establish the confidence that there is a market value for your solutions, your products, your services, whatever it happens to be, and that we begin to become consistent around it. So then how do you combat the everything's been commoditized, right? Because in that scenario, you can walk into a burger joint and be like, holy shit, that burger even looks a lot better. The vibes here different. And then I go to McDonald's, I'm like, this is a fucking fast food, right?

So there's kind of a perceived, like they've created this whole ecosystem around that perception. But when you're talking CRM, when you're talking cybersecurity, I mean, I know there's risk and all that, but a lot of whether the product or service has been commoditized or not in the mind of the consumer, it's been commoditized. So how do you battle that when it comes to the perception? And I know this comes to discovery and all the impact and all the problem, but like just on a surface level, because that's the challenge I get when a lot of companies that I work with and I'm saying, same view, probably it's like our product is commoditized. Like whether we like it or not, we can say our widgets are better and our features and functions are better.

But at the end of the day, it does fucking this, right? So how does that play into this, this conversation? Because that's a race to the bottom, right? That's the Walmart, like I'm now chasing to the bottom. And how do you hold that when it's a perceived commodity? Well, yeah, I mean, I look at Salesforce and there's Dreamforce and there's the app store and there's all those pieces. And then there's Bob's house, a CRM down the street. That's like, where's CRM too? I'm like, shut up. It's all Chevelle versus McDonald's, right? Like I think there still is an element of that. If your solution truly becomes commoditized and is commoditized, well, then I wish you the best of luck. It goes back to the 1921 quote from Arthur Dunn, my favorite sales quote of all time.

And it's from his book, Scientific Selling and Advertising. And the quote is simply, if the truth won't sell it, don't sell it, right? If the truth won't sell it, don't sell it. So I think it starts there. But going back to that question about arming your salespeople to be able to have the why conversation, I think that's the power of what, and again, I'm biased, but four levers negotiating is about being able to walk into a circumstance or an environment and say, hey, listen, based on your environment, your price is probably going to be between X and Y. And here's the variables that drive that. Number one is volume. So how much stuff you're buying, buy more, better, buy less, commit to less, not as good.

Products, services, technology, whatever it is. Number two thing is it's driven by the timing of cash or how fast you pay. Pay faster, better. Pay slower, not as good, reflected in your price. Number three, the length of commitment. Commit longer to our products, technology, services. Better for us. That's reflected in your price. You want to commit less? Cool. Price will have to be adjusted for that. And then number four is the timing of the deal or predictability. We've got investors to satisfy. We have to resource these investments. We have to be able to predict the future so we can make the right investments in our own organization. And if you don't want to help us forecast, cool, it'll probably cost you more than you actually putting skin in the game and helping us forecast.

That's our price. It's consistent for everybody, but there are opportunities to move it up or down. You want to push a lever, you got to pull one. You want to pull a lever, you got to push one. And then all of a sudden, the next thing you have is you've got consistency across all of your customers with flexibility within that based on, hey, these are the four things we're willing to pay you for in the form of a discount. Buy more stuff, pay faster, commit longer, help us forecast. That's it. And I don't want people to skip over what you just said there. You actually have a very unique way of talking about discounting and it's not discounting. I changed the word discount to creativity or flexibility.

We can get creative with our pricing, we have flexibility with our pricing. But the way you say it is I'm willing to pay you for whatever that is, right? So could you kind of dive into that? Because I got some other questions about pricing range and then when to introduce this structure here, but I want to get that nugget right there because I think that's a really good tactical thing that people can shift their mindset on. Yeah. I mean, I'm an advocate for using the language that our buyers use. So if we can keep the word discount out of the conversation, the buying brain, what does the buying brain want to do? Well, they want to commit to as little as possible, pay as slowly as possible, commit to the shortest period possible and sign whenever the hell they want.

But their organization, their company, every for-profit company on the planet is driven by those four things. They, their organization, want their customers to commit to more stuff, pay it faster, commit longer, and help them forecast. And so there's an alignment there. And I think the words you use don't matter as much as just the grounding foundation that every for-profit company is driven by those four things. And I think it's easy. Again, it's like, yeah, of course. I think you can arm your salespeople to go have those conversations this afternoon. I think it's pretty simple. Your pricing is founded in those. And if you want something, I'm not a charity to your bottom line and you don't have to be a dick about it, but it's like, Hey, listen, if you want something, what am I getting for that?

10% on this deal is me taking money out of my pocket, flushing it. Instead, I'm going to give you 10%. You're going to give me something more volume, faster cash, longer commitments, or help us forecast. Okay. So let's talk about the timing of this and when to introduce it, right? So you actually mentioned back up for a second. You actually mentioned the range of pricing, which again, I think is important for people to understand because there's two philosophies, two general philosophies about introducing pricing. One is you don't talk about it at all and you build value, value, value, and then you show them the price so you can justify that price. The other, but that leads to what the fuck?

Like, Whoa, I thought this was going to be 50 bucks and you're telling me it's going to be a hundred grand. Like I just wasted a shitload of time. The other side of this is telling price right up front so that we don't waste anybody's time, but then you, then you distract from the potential value you could be bringing to that person. So I like your, cause I have the same approach of the range here. So let's talk about that. What parameters do you need to gather from the client? So say I'm talking to you and it's like even a first call, like it's an inbound Todd, love your shit, man. Been following you a long time. I got a SKO coming up here, uh, whatever. Um, you know, just, could you just tell me how much this costs?

Cause I got to tell my CRO, I need a budget number here. Like, well, what's that number? Like, how do you approach that scenario right there? That's perfect. So number one, there is a quote and I think it's from 1927. I put it in the book, but it makes me throw up a little bit in my own mouth. It's, you know, never share the price until the customer thinks it's more like that's crazy. Yeah. And here's why. To your point, I'm always been an advocate for setting that range early because the term sticker shock has never been associated with anything good in the history of humankind. And if you set a range, for example, somebody reaches out to me and says, Hey, like you said, Todd, love your stuff.

This is what we're thinking about doing in their first conversation. I'm like, all right, cool. Before we get too deep based on what you're looking to do, and we're going to get much more granular, but your price is probably going to be between X and Y. And if that's way off of what you're thinking, let's talk about that now versus later. Because if you're talking about a five or a six figure solution to a three or a four figure buyer, one of you is in the wrong conversation. You've got to know that now. And so that happens all the time with me is I had a startup as a guy I used to work with 10 years ago. And he's like, Todd, gosh, it would be awesome to have you speak at our kickoff. We got four reps and they're, you know, like all that kind of thing.

And I'm like, cool. That's awesome. Hey, just upfront, like my pricing is between X and Y. And if that's not going to work for you, let's talk about that. Now, this guy was so appreciative of that. Yeah. Right. Versus me wasting two weeks and I give him a proposal and he sees it. And then he's like, are you crazy? Nuance to that though. Right. Because here's another tactic that sales reps get taught or perception of. Which is when you give the price, whether it's range or not, shut the fuck up. And whoever speaks first loses, right? Like, like that, that I, by the way, I tried that early in my career and it was a train wreck and I did it to like a CFO and I was, I think I was like 25 years old and I had just learned like, Hey, whoever speaks first loses.

So I gave my price and I sat there and he knew exactly what I was doing. He literally, all he did was sit back in his chair like this and just waited. And it felt like an hour, but it was probably like 30 seconds. I was like, all right, fine. I lost. Okay. Like, whatever. I'm sorry. I was just trying something dumb here. So where, so you use the verbiage of is you almost use the negative closed on that. Right. I tend to say, is that my approach to this is, is that in the range of what you'd expect to pay for something like this? Right. That's a great way to say it. And a matter of fact, I just had a situation. So I teach a whole leadership program and I delivered the price. I was like, based on what you want to do and how many of these elements you want to do, it's going to be virtual.

It's going to be between X and Y. And they were like, wait, per session or for all six? And I was like, it's for all six. And they're like, really? Like we just kicked out like one of the big methodologies and they're like, we're not renewing them with them this year. And we've been paying $500,000 a year. And I'm like, well, then I under quote it, but I didn't because my price is my price. Right. Like, again, the truth won't sell it. Don't sell it. Like the fact that I've had people go, oh, Todd, you should have quoted more. You should have waited. And like, stop it. Stop it. My price is my price. Imagine if they end up paying twice as much because I tricked them into it. And I was like, oh, playing a little word art.

And then they find out that other companies are getting the same exact same thing for half. My reputation would be destroyed, especially the proliferation of information, the ability for peers to connect so easily. They're hanging out. I'm going to a dinner on Thursday night with like 15 CROs. You don't think they're talking about how much they're paying at the, and AI is already exposing our pricing model. I believe that we have to, we have to establish a consistent lever or ground for what our pricing is with those levers on top of it. I think five years from now, you can't have every customer paying a different amount based on how well or poorly the negotiation went. I, I, and I did it again.

It kind of goes back to my history. I did that once and it felt fucking gross. Yeah, exactly. You want to go take a shower. It was an inbound lead. We did outsourced IT services and our pricing was like a hundred bucks for a junior engineer, 150 and 200, right? Like those, and the 200 was like our baller engineer, right? Called up, John, I heard about you guys. You know, we need help. We have an emergency. Could you help us? I was like, yeah, absolutely. And she, she then says, I heard you guys are around $300 an hour, right? I'm like, and I remember being like stopped in my tracks and I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly what we are. And, and, uh, uh, uh, and I built this whole proposal and we, we solved the problem.

You know, we, we fixed, but, um, guess who never returned my calls after that? Guess who didn't turn into a recurring revenue customer? Guess who didn't, you know, and I, and I can't guarantee that she found out the pricing was only two, two 50, but it sure shit felt that way. And I felt gross about it. I almost felt like going back to her and apologizing and be like, sorry, here's your money. I lied to you. And I, and those types of sales reps make my fucking skin crawl. So absolutely. I mean, again, the thing that's always driven me crazy is this idea that like you and I talked about at the beginning and you know, the transparency sale, it's this idea that the sales process, it's supposed to be about helping customers achieve optimal outcomes, whether it's with us or with somebody else as quickly as possible and building a relationship and we build trust.

And then the customer says, yes. And then we've all been taught to at least subconsciously go, cool, I'm going to start lying to you now. And I, I'm not going to tell you what a good deal is. My focus has now become on my outcomes, not yours. And I'm going to use techniques taught to me by former FBI hostage negotiators. Like that's, that, that's bananas to me in this era, right? I just can't imagine how that's sustainable that we are eroding trust right at the goal line. And to your point, I'm just a believer again, with the proliferation of information on everything that the long game playing, the long game wins the long game, but it'll eventually win the short game for you too. And what I mean by that is in that case, they came to you and like, Hey, John, your rates are around 300.

You're like, yeah, for you to have been able to go, Hey, no, the good news is our rates are around 200 an hour for our, for our really great people. Here's what makes that sustainable to us. And so we might be able to accomplish more than you ever thought possible. But if you're looking for 300 an hour people, that's not us. I will point you to McKenzie or whoever these people are, and we can end this conversation right now. What did you just do? You just built trust. If they are like, yeah, we want 300s, but I'm going to keep you in mind for all our other stuff. Now, all of a sudden your inbound channel starts ringing too. So we've got to play the long game. And again, I know it sounds so pie in the sky, but truth wins, right?

Transparency sells better than perfection. You've got to embrace that. You got to do it right now. Yeah. It's kind of like the long arc of history, right? You know what I mean? Exactly. And they knew it back then. There's a book. There's books back here. You know, the, the art of selling 1911, Arthur Sheldon in it. He's got a quote that like I rock myself to sleep at night with, cause I love it so much. It's true. Salesmanship is the science of service. Grasp that thought firmly and never let go. Right. You as salespeople, your role is to provide a service to your buyers. Be, you know, help them achieve optimal outcomes as quickly as possible and do it by setting accurate expectations that you can consistently meet that that's got to be the way that we sell going forward.

Otherwise I don't think the role is sustainable. No, it's definitely not, especially now with AI. Yeah. I mean, now I don't, there's a, I mean, what I'm seeing out there, man, there's the traditional sales rep, the value quote unquote that they bring to the equation is very minimal. I mean, very minimal, like the top of the top. Absolutely. The ones who have product knowledge and understanding clients and all that others, but like all this shit and like up until that point, I mean, I use the example of like, I became a doctor for my daughter's, for my daughter's gut health issues. I created a custom GPT. I did all this shit and I like recorded everything and I, and I knew exactly. And I walked into the GI specialist and I asked the very specific questions and I even brought up stuff and he was like, no, no, no, no.

I'm like, no. And literally I, I, I diagnosed her problem three months before the doctor did. And I'm now pissed off at the doctor because he waited three months to do this test that I asked for three times up in the beginning. And I equate that to, and I tell any sales rep who don't think they're in trouble, go into chat GPT right now and just pretend like you're a potential customer of your solution. So for me, I'd be like, Hey, I'm John, you know, I'm a VP of sales of a 50 person sales team. I got 20 SDRs. I got 38 E's. I'm looking at prospecting training. Tell me about the JB sales. How does he compare against the other top three vendors, blah, blah, blah. And when you realize in five minute chat with chat GPT, you get more value out of some dipshit 22 year old fucking kid.

Who's going to ask you bank questions and give you no value. And then wait a week to talk to an AE who's going to ask you the same stupid fucking questions and give you a generic demo. And then wait another week for an SC to get on the phone and maybe ask it, probably ask the same questions. And then maybe just maybe give you some value. Like there's literally no fucking comparison between those two experiences. Exactly. Exactly. And that's why this, this douchey sales approach of that's like convincing people in sales. And if you're listening to this, please fucking burn this into your memory. Like convincing somebody is not sales. That's that's douchebag sales shit. Helping people solve problems or achieve goals, period.

That's your job service. Exactly. Yeah. I always say we do not buy as when we are convinced we buy when we can predict. There is a reason why you read reviews over and above what you see on a website around the product. And there's a reason why you go to the negative reviews first and you all do it. You read the fours, threes, twos, and the ones first because you're trying to predict and your brain knows at a subconscious level that perfection doesn't exist. And we have to get the negative to be able to process the positive. That's the whole concept of the transparency sale is leading with setting accurate expectations for the customer, the pros and the cons. And one other history ramp for you here.

This, this book here for anybody who's watching this, this is 1910. It's Thomas Herbert Russell signed, or it's a salesmanship theory and practice. I just want to show everybody something really quick. So 1910, all right, remember that there's four words here. You probably can't see, but the words say buyers, no more nowadays. All right. Buyers, no more nowadays. Now, this is at a time when you had the rise of mail order catalogs. This is a 1908 Sears robot catalog. It's basically Amazon, but in printed form. You can get everything in here, including there's a whole department of human hair. I don't know. But the point being that at the time they were saying the same things we're saying about AI.

They're like, hey, the rise of mail order catalogs, the rise of advertising means that buyers can do their own homework. They can get at all the information that they need before they ever talk to the salesperson. And by the way, there was manufacturing leaders, you know, heads of manufacturing and organizations that would take their new employees and go, hey, can you reach out to that vendor and have them send you a catalog to your home and then just bring it in? Because I don't want the salesperson bothering me, right? Like that's 1910, right? What happened? Well, the opposite happened. The sales profession did not go into the toilet. It flourished. It happened again in 2015 with e-commerce.

It's happening again in AI, which is this kind of bottom line. More information available to buyers has not made it easier on them. It has made it harder. And if you view your role as being a service professional that calls that information and then tells that information and teaches you through the lens of your world, hey, if I'm sitting across the table, here's the things I would love. Here's the things I wouldn't and doing that cards face up. I'm telling you, man, you got a long profession and sales ahead of you. And if you're doing what you just described, you don't. All right. So let's talk about how to introduce this and when to introduce this, right? So the four levers, right? We just talked about somebody coming here immediately and say, what's the price?

But in a normal sales process, right? Like you get a discovery call, like kind of the initial call call. Okay. You look like a duck, smell like a duck. Now let's go a little bit deeper. Maybe we involve a few more people. Second, third, fourth, fifth meeting. Do you introduce this concept of the four levers early or is there a moment when the client, it's a reaction? Like I guess proactive or reactive, I guess. Do you do? And I'm sure the answer is both. But in general, when and where do you introduce this to the customer? Yeah. I think, you know, per your example about somebody calling me and I can see, like I can smell that I'm going to be over their budget. Right. I'm, I'm sharing that right out of the gate.

Like, Hey, here's what the pricing is. Here's the things it's based on. And I think so based on whatever the listener is selling, they probably can sniff that out and you can start to get enough experience where you can see it based on company size, vertical, the buyer. If it's, you know, the person that gets coffee for the janitor versus the CRO or whatever. Right. Well, that was my other follow-up question was like, who do you introduce this to? And so answer number two, then is if your price is your price based on the levers, I'm an advocate for sharing it and sharing at least the first three levers with everybody. Right. And what I mean by that is first conversations. Hey, listen, here's our price.

And it's based on these three things. It's based on the volume component. Our pricing is seat based or location based or hours based or whatever it is. Oh, and it's based on upfront annual payments and a minimum of one year commitment. When you propose, so you send out the proposal, just make sure that's clear. Listen, your price is based on reaching this volume tier. There's other tiers, but this is it. Oh, and by the way, it's upfront annual payments, net 30 and a minimum of one year commitment. Introduce the fourth lever timing of the deal during the negotiation itself, because I, my argument is always the fake expiring discounts have to go away. Like we got to stop. That's what I was going to get into.

Yeah. Like the proactive discounting is the most pathetic thing I've ever seen in sales. Well, it's ironic in that. And I'm going to give you an example here. When you proactively discount, you ironically slow down your deal. You don't speed it up. Right. And I've got, I got a bazillion stories there, but I'm just an advocate that when we are talking about timing, there's so much value in mutual alignment. I'm an advocate for actually paying the customer to help you forecast. And that does not involve, Hey, it's November 10th or whatever. Like, Hey, 10% off. If you did this deal by the end of November, we're actually telling the buyer that, Oh, the end of November is important. That is now the new price level regardless when I sign, but I really want this.

I can wait till the end of November and I can vet some more out. It, the story I tell might actually be about this sweater, which is hilarious. Um, so I had this sweater. I just liked this sweater, right? It's like one of my, it's just comfortable. Um, it looks good. And I had accidentally washed it a year ago, like washed and dried it. And so it was like November 10th or right around this time. I pulled this thing out of the dryer and I'm like, you're such a dick. Ah, right. And so what did I do? Well, I went to banana republic.com and I saw they still had the sweater. And I'm like, sweet, this is cool. But it was like middle of November. I'd have to be a complete jackass to buy it right then.

Because what happens in two weeks? Black Friday. And it's going to be 40% off. So I'm going to wait. We are teaching our buyers to do that in the B2B world that we're like, Hey, end of month, end of quarter. I can just wait it out. The deal's going to get better. I think we've got to take a step back. This is the price. And then help us forecast. And we'll pay you in the form of a discount to actually help us forecast instead of making up some end of month and a quarter date and trying to motivate them to get it done in that timeframe. I think it's doing the opposite. So let's tactically walk through that, right? So it's like, okay, cool. You know, instead of, hey, if you sign by the end of the month, I'll give you 10% off, 20% off, whatever.

It's, hey, look, one of the things we value here at the organization is forecast predictability. If you can help me predict this more effectively, I can be more flexible with my pricing. So would you be able to get this in here? But, you know, if you could tell me you can do this by the end of the month, then great. We can be flexible with that pricing. Now that talk track, I like it comes the end of the month. This is, this is the discount. So this is the, the, the shitty part of discount selling, right? Oh, the discount spires at the end of the month. Fuck yourself. It doesn't expire. What'd your pricing change over the course of the weekend? Like, shut up, right? Okay, fine. I'll just wait till the end of the quarter now, you know, or the end of the year, right?

And I'll make it even more painful for you. Now there's a caveat to this, that impact is everything, right? So if they need it by a date, you have leverage. If they don't need it by that date, you don't have very much leverage. So what do you now do? And I know there's a lot of different layers of who this is happening with procurement versus the CFO versus whoever else, but what end of the month comes, I try to book a meeting on that calendar for like a yes, no decision. So we can actually talk to each other and sign that and, you know, whatever. So that kind of caveat, that's a little piece of that. But what happens when that date comes and goes, my friend, like what's your, like, literally, what do you say in that scenario?

When they call you up on Monday and be like, Todd, sorry, man. I'm super busy on Friday, man. We're ready to go ahead. Right. So there's a great story. There's a bazillion great stories there. But when I first discovered this approach, we were working on a really big deal. It was the middle of July. It was a $7.5 million deal over three years. And when I took them through the levers, when we were negotiating it, when I got to that fourth lever, I explained to them that there's value in our ability to predict. And if they were willing to mutually align around timing, that's something we're willing to pay them for. Right. So we laid that foundation there. It allowed us to lay out basically a mutual action plan together.

Like, hey, what steps are left? Well, how long is that going to take? What's the range? And the range ended up at like two to six weeks, which would have taken us to the end of August. And I was like, so do you feel comfortable helping us predict the end of August? And they're like, kind of. We're like, hey, listen, there's value in us getting this thing done by the end of September too. So why don't we create that buffer? If you're willing to help us forecast so we can invest, this is going to take resources. So we got to apply resources, knowing when those resources are going to need to be available. We'll pay you in the form of a discount to hold to that. And they were like, sign us up. If we're still talking about this, the end of September, something's gone wrong.

Yes, yes, yes, start, done. We get to September 23rd or so. And sure enough, my rep gets a call and they're like, hey, Chris, we had no idea. But this went all the way around, got to the CFO's desk, who's the signer, and he's on vacation through the end of the month. Will you hold the price? What's your answer going to be? Well, my approach to all of this, so everything that comes up is first be a human being, right? Inquire. Like, oh, he's the only one that can sign it. Oh, he's on a submarine at the bottom of the Atlantic and can't get the docu-sign. All right, cool. That makes sense. All right, great. And then number two is always to remind them of all four levers. Like, hey, remember when we talked, your pricing is based on these four things.

Volume, how much you buy. Timing of cash. Length of commitment. And remember, we had mutually aligned around the timing of the deal. We're paying you to help us forecast. Now comes your answer. Your answer needs to be, I don't know. I don't know. You're creating uncertainty around the ask. You're creating certainty around what you agreed to. And it's a means of reminding them that you are not a charity giving money to their bottom. You want, you're asking me to pay you for, like, we had agreed that I was going to pay you to help me forecast. Now you're asking me to pay you for nothing, right? You've got to go back to that mutual alignment that you had and what you are paying for. That why resonates.

The buyer now has skin in the game. And so in this case, my rep masterfully was like, hey, I don't know. Let's talk about October and October. And the guy's like, well, we got to know. We got to go get new approvals and new POs. And he's like, dude, we were paying you for something. We're going to have to wait until October and see what happens. He hangs up. My phone rings. It's him. Same thing. Todd, I just talked to Chris. Like, he didn't know. Could you give me some clarification? I'm like, no, we probably, we might not even know until our board meeting. But, so, hey, just do everything you can to get it done in September. We'll talk about October and October, I promise. Right? Somehow they found somebody to sign it on September 26th.

Now, the point being, though, let's say they don't get it done and October comes around and they haven't signed. It's incumbent upon you to go back to the why and to be able to tell them, hey, listen, we have aligned around this, so it turns out, though, there's tremendous value in us still getting this thing off the table. We got a board meeting coming up in 10 days. We missed, right? But we're only a day off, so it's cool. Take the signature. If it's a customer that's screwed with you 100 times, maybe you want to go, hey, remember, we were paying you for something we didn't get. We're going to have to go back to the drawing board. But create uncertainty around the ask. Uncertainty drives us as human beings to go to certain grounds.

Because the minute you say, yeah, as long as it's Monday morning, we're cool, your deal just slipped. The minute you bang the desk and go, no, we had an agreement, now you just sound like a jackass, especially if you're privately held, like that's stupid. Like, what's the difference between October 1st and September 3rd? That doesn't make any sense. You've eroded trust, and now they think you're a jackass. But they now have to get new POs and new approvals. Imagine 5% of $7.5 million. And we decide, well, because it's October 1st instead of September 30th, your price just went up hundreds of thousands of dollars. Your beginning of October deal just moved to end of October, end of November, maybe never.

Take it off the street. Go back to the why. But create uncertainty through those three words, I don't know. And I'm telling you, you will find more customers are going to do everything they can to get that signed off in time for you. And I think that's the kind of final point, right? It is about leverage in a lot of ways, but it's not leverage to take advantage of. It's leverage for the real reasons. Exactly. The real reasons. It has to be the truth. And I believe that I don't know should be the truth, right? You're paying for something you won't know about next month until next month. Is it still valuable to take it now or should we go back to the drawing board because the value is no longer there?

We were paying you for something. It's got to be for real reasons. You said that perfectly. Yeah. And I, and I, and that to me is, you know, for instance, when I, I know I'm the only vendor and they, you know, I've crossed off all my competition. They love what I have. It fits perfectly. I'm a little bit more apt to be like, go fuck yourself. This is like when that procurement person comes in out of nowhere who I haven't engaged with it all and just cross the board says 20%. My answer is go fuck yourself. Like I know the amount of effort you put in, but the problem is, is the nibbling factor is that they take advantage of that for us because they know the amount, the more time we spend on a deal, the more we have to justify that time.

And so getting anything is better than getting nothing. And they know that far better than we do. Well, I will tell you the helicopter buyer is where the four levers become so powerful. I remember we were working on a deal where a helicopter CFO, the signer said, Hey, we're ready to sign, but we only want to commit to half the volume. Now we'll commit to the second half, maybe later in the year. And for us to be able to go, go, all right, cool. Probably not going to like it though, because your pricing is based on this volume. If you have it, then the price per goes up quite a bit. And when you add that a second half, it's going to be at that other price. And you're going to, your pie is going to get much bigger, but I'll have the rep draw it up for you.

Silence, right? Professional buyer. Like you could hear tumbleweed blow through the phone. And I remember DMing the rep. I was like, put your phone on mute. Like, I know you're shitting yourself right now, but just calm down. And sure enough, he was like, send me over what that pricing looks like. And the next morning we got the deal for the full amount because again, volume, timing of cash, length of commitment, timing of the deal, internalize those negotiation becomes less anxiety ridden. It becomes truth-based. You will discount less. You will build trust to the goal line. And if you do that last one, right, that timing of the deal, your forecast will become more accurate too. Kind of last thing I'll say is, you know, it goes right along with my, my philosophy of life is about expectation setting.

Exactly. You set good expectations. You meet those expectations and things tend to work out. You don't set good expectations. You tend to get into squirrely situations. So with that thought, I know we're up on time here. I know you got a lot of other stuff. So do I here. And there's so much more we could talk about, but you got the book coming out, Four Levers of Negotiation. It's coming out in January. Where can they find out more about, about Sales Mellon, about the book, about what you're doing and following and all that fun stuff, my friend. Yeah. So Four Levers Negotiating available for pre-order everywhere that you buy books. So just search it. You'll find it everywhere. You can find me on LinkedIn, Todd Capone or at ToddCapone.com.

And by the way, if you like the history stuff, just for fun, my hobby, the sales history podcast, go check it out. That's available on all platforms, but it's just a nerdy outlet for all this history stuff running around in my head. I love it. Awesome, man. Well, always a pleasure. I always learn something talking to you and I always have fun doing it. So thanks again for coming on, man. Thank you for having me, John. And we'll have to do a fifth one. Yes, we will. Yes, we will. I think like I told you, you're going to get the green jacket, the gold jacket, whatever that is on Saturday Night Live when you get the five different, right? All right, everybody. Look, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.

And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, you make somebody smile and you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much and I will see you on the other side. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and I can't thank you enough. Now, to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day just like you. Go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today. Let's all level up and make this happen together. you