Today we are going to be talking about selling in a post covid world. And we’re joined by a special guest today, Steve Clark, of New School Selling. You know, I think selling can be hard enough in normal times. So to really get an understanding of how to sell in challenging times is, I think, really critical for a lot of businesses.
[00:00:29.425] – Ken
And for many businesses, selling, period, is often one of their biggest challenges. So, Steve, we’re really happy to have you here today to help us talk about all of this.
[00:00:38.825] – Steve
Well, I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:00:41.125] – Ken
Yeah, no problem. So I’ll kick things off. What do you see as the biggest challenges for businesses in regard to selling over the last year or so?
[00:00:54.085] – Steve
Well, I think the biggest issue is that we live in probably the most uncertain times of our lifetime, all of us. And couple that with the fact that trust is probably at an all time low. No one believes anything that anyone has to say, particularly if you’re a salesperson or you’re trying to extract money from them. So there’s a great mistrust there. And I think we cannot underestimate the difficulty of making that transition to get people to know, like and trust us. And of course, people aren’t going to give us money until they trust us. So that’s, that’s the biggest hurdle that we have in, in selling today.
[00:01:40.645] – Ken
Yeah. So you mentioned, know, like and trust. What are the best ways to quickly develop a sense of trust as a salesperson and establish that credibility with customers, clients, patients? I mean, whoever you’re going to be selling to?
[00:01:56.155] – Steve
It sort of sounds counterintuitive, but the key is not to try and sell. No one wants to be sold. People want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold. That’s an old axiom that is true. It was true before. It’s true now. It will be true in the future. No one wants anybody trying to, quote-unquote, ‘close them’ on buying anything. So I think salespeople have to get that in mind and they have to understand that really, to change the mindset from what I call old school selling, which is trying to overcome objections and pin people down for trial closes and all the things that have been taught in the past, and really become a counselor or an adviser to the, to the prospect and develop a relationship by educating the, the potential buyer or prospect well before you try to ask them for money.
[00:02:55.495] – Steve
And there are a number of ways that you can do that. You guys, the marketing world, know all about that, about how to provide information of salient content to people that will demonstrate to them that you are an authority expert at what you do and you do have a solution for whatever problem they may have. And you do that through various means of electronic speaking, one on one phone calls, personal visits, all of the above. You do that before you ever try and ask people for money.
[00:03:30.005] – Ken
Yeah, I think the education process has always been really important for me. You know, I like to think of myself as a consultative salesperson where I really, really want to try to understand somebody’s situation and then find a way to kind of guide them through where they need to be and where they want to go. And so obviously, you have to listen. You have to understand what’s important to them and kind of move people through that. Jen, why don’t you take the next question here?
[00:04:02.425] – Jen
Yeah, absolutely. So even though you think you have done a good job about that, about, you know, educating your, your potential customer, what do you do about when you get the comments, oh, I just want to think it over? Like, how do you eliminate those and how do you also eliminate along with the ‘hmm, I’ll just think it over’, what if you got those, those price shoppers? How do you, how do you handle both of those situations which happen to come up a lot?
[00:04:30.205] – Steve
Well, I think that, that if you, if you’re getting that, you’re in trouble, you’re not doing correctly things up front. One of the things that we teach folks is that they have an agenda, literally a written agenda that they follow with the prospect before they ever try to sell. And that, part of that process involves letting people know what I call the rules of engagement. This is how we operate. This is what we’re going to do and letting people know that when everything is said, when all is said and done and you’ve seen everything you need to see and heard everything you need to hear, are you going to be willing to give us a decision, either yes or no? You know, and either one of those is fine. But we just need, before we start, to understand that we don’t need to engage in just some endless dialogue here unless you are going to be willing to make a decision once all the cards are on the table. And we’re perfectly OK if you say no, that’s not going to hurt our feelings. But we do need you to commit to make a decision if we’re going to spend all of our time here presenting you with proposals and ideas and recommendations.
[00:05:50.895] – Steve
And if you’re, if that’s not where you are, then we best not get started in this process and go ahead and close the file right now. And we both can go on about our day and do something productive.
[00:06:02.625] – Steve
That’s the conversation that needs to be had. Now, the difficulty with that is not so much understanding the concept or even the language. The difficulty is having the courage to put that on the table and accept the fact that the person you’re talking with may not be at a point where they’re willing to make a decision. And if they’re not moving on, so it I call it having the guts to address the elephant in the room. And let’s do that up front, not on the back end after we wasted a bunch of time.
[00:06:32.715] – Ian
I love that, Steve. I recently have been putting myself through, I would not say I’m a great salesperson. I’m a very conversational person and, and I’m light on the sales side. But one of the things I’ve recently come across is, I think we’re all aware of Mike McAlloyts, great author. He recently released something called Served Selling, and it’s about the idea of, I am there to actually serve this prospect through their process of finding what they need. And if, if I’m the right person, if I’m the very best person to provide that service, then fantastic, we’ll come together in a mutual agreement of service. But otherwise, I might need to say, I’m not the right person for this role. And that’s probably better for both of us if we, if if we, as you said, have the courage to broach it that way.
[00:07:22.815] – Steve
Right. And it starts with the ideal client. If you’re not in front of the ideal client, if they’re not your ideal client, then there is no fit. And really, we need to be honest enough as salespeople to tell folks we’re not for you. That your issue, your concern is not exactly our area of expertise. You’re best, you’re better off to go find someone else and be totally upfront with people, which is very disarming when you do that, because buyers are not accustomed to salespeople being very honest with them and putting it on the table.
[00:07:58.555] – Ken
Yeah, I think that’s a great point, too, because when you do that, it even winds up building a lot of really good will where they’re going to remember you and they may refer you to somebody else because you’ve had the opportunity to kind of educate them about what is good for you and your business and how can you best serve those types of customers. So even if that, even if that conversation leads to, you know, saying we’re not the right fit, it’s still, I think, gained you massive credibility.
[00:08:30.135] – Steve
Sure. And I mean, it’s it’s pretty simple. It’s the right thing to do. I mean, what’s so important about that? Just do the right thing and and don’t try and con people or high pressure them or anything like that. If you do that and, and you, you have enough conversations, enough of that business will come your way.
[00:08:50.645] – Ian
Well, hey, Steve, I love what you’ve been talking about, about building trust. How can we as small business salespeople, because we’re all salespeople, really, we’re trying to, we’re trying to help people get the very best service from us. How can we help buyers view us as trusted advisers or welcome guests instead of unwelcome pests?
[00:09:12.175] – Steve
Well, I think if you look at the word authority, the first six letters in the word authority spell author, and that’s what we need to be doing. I never realized what I got when I got into the selling business, that my income would depend upon how much I would write and how much content I would produce and push out into the marketplace. But that is exactly one of the ways of going about doing it. And as I alluded to a few minutes ago, it can be print. It can be, it can be electronic. It can be seminars. It can be Zoom webinars. It can be an in-person visit. It can be writing a book. In fact, writing a book is probably the first place to start. It is my, it is my opinion that everyone in business or…
[00:10:04.375] – Steve
Everyone should have a book. Every salesperson in every company should have a book of some sort. And it doesn’t have to be War and Peace. I’ve got clients that have books that are only 70, 80, 90 pages long, but it’s a credibility piece and anybody who is considered an authority expert at anything has written a book. So number one rule is, write a book. And if you, people say, well, it’s hard, I don’t know how to do that – get in front of a microphone and start talking and having it transcribed. And there are places where you can go to, and in one day they will interview you and you will have a book written. They will write your book for you. So that’s a key way of going about it. I think many of you, if not all of you on this meeting here, have written a book of some sort. And the only thing better than writing one book is writing two. I’m a, I’m a great believer in doing that. I didn’t realize when I got in sales that I would need to do that.
[00:11:02.185] – Dan
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a really good point, Steve, because I think that, that’s one that I fell into for other people just because they felt like, to your point that, well, I’ll never be able to sit down and say Chapter one, two, three, four, etc. And a lot of times they need a partner, like you said, just to get in front of a microphone. And let’s at least record these things as if they were, almost like we do for blogs, for intake. And so it’s easier than people think as long as they have a partner to organize this stuff for them. Many times just, they have to get their thoughts out and just have another person who’s an objective third party to sort of help them organize it.
[00:11:46.645] – Steve
Sure. And one of the things I didn’t I kind of backed into this, I was promoting this idea to clients and then they were like, well, can you help me write a book? And I heard Joan Rivers speak one time. And she said when somebody asks you if you can do something, never say no. So I said, yeah, I can help you do that. And then I went, oh, my, what do I do now. So I got into the publishing business and I now help clients write books. They, they produce the content, but I help them publish. So I am a publisher, if you will, by helping clients actually produce their book, which is a you know, as a side note, that’s another revenue source, which is a nice thing to have.
[00:12:28.645] – Ken
And that’s actually how this podcast got started. You know, Marketing Guides for Small Businesses started out as a, as a book series. I think there are four or five copies. And I know we’ve got another one in the works here coming out hopefully very soon.
[00:12:43.945] – Ken
So, yeah, writing, writing, content creation period is just super important in the sales process like that.
[00:12:53.905] – Dan
With a process like yours, you probably, you’re kind of smashing the myth that you have to go through a big publisher and spend a lot of money and things like that, where they can just come to you and say, at the completion of the process, now, where do I go from here? And you can kind of take the ball.
[00:13:10.675] – Steve
Yeah, all they have to do is provide us with the content, we do everything else.
[00:13:14.895] – Dan
Sounds great.
[00:13:17.655] – Paul
Well, Steve, you had talked earlier, first, when we first started, about the new way of selling being a counselor and the old way of selling overcoming objections, but you’re still going to get objections. So how do you handle those?
[00:13:33.075] – Steve
Well, I think they’re different, there’s a difference between questions that you get and objections. So questions you answer, objections the salesperson cannot overcome the prospect’s objections. That’s not what we’re about. It’s up to the prospect to overcome their own objection. So when we get into trying to play psychological arm wrestling, overcoming a prospect’s objections, then we get into that, that whole old school thing of going back and forth. And the reality is we should not be in that objection overcoming business at all. That’s not what we’re about. So, again, if we’re getting that on the back end, it’s because there’s something that happened on the front end. Either, either the prospect doesn’t need what we have, either they don’t have an urgency to address an issue that they may have, they don’t trust us, they don’t have any money, they’re talking with someone else and they’re using us as a third party to get other information to justify a buying decision they’ve already made… So there’s a reason that they have objections. And, you know, without getting into definitely how you do that, you basically deflect the objection and not deal directly with the objection.
[00:14:57.135] – Steve
Let me give you an example. Prospect says, you know what, what makes what you do better than X, Y, Z? And the typical response from a salesperson is they go in to defend and justify position. So what, what we would say in that case if a prospect were to say that to me? I would respond by saying that’s a good question. Now that’s stroking, that’s giving him a stroke for being smart by asking a good question, a softening statement. So that’s a good question. Would you mind telling me why you’re asking that question? So we followed up with a question so that it’s the whole idea of selling something is about asking questions. It’s not about dispensing information. So every time someone asked you a question, there is a reason they asked you that question. We don’t want to address the question. We want to get down what I call peeling the onion and get down deep about why. Why are you asking me that question? Is there a reason you’re asking me that question? Are you talking to someone else, have you tried something else before that didn’t work, do you not trust me?
[00:16:11.445] – Steve
Why are you asking that particular question at this point? And see if we can’t get behind the meaning of why they’re asking that question. Done properly, they will rephrase the question and give you more information, which is really what you’re trying to do as a salesperson. You’re trying to uncover information, not give information. It’s very much the same process that a psychiatrist or psychologist would use with a patient. Those folks are not in the business of solving people’s problems. They’re in the business of asking questions so the people can come to their own realization of what their problem is, how it’s impacting them and what they need to do about it if they want to change their life. So same, same concept. The only difference between a great salesperson and a great therapist is a great salesperson makes a hell of a lot more money.
[00:17:00.545] – Ken
And they know how to ask for the sales probably.
[00:17:03.315] – Steve
So, you know, sort of as a side benefit, you guys may or may not know this, before I got into the sales business, I was a therapist.
[00:17:10.485] – Ken
Really. Wow.
[00:17:11.115] – Steve
I’ve been trained as a therapist. It’s the same process, exact same process. I just didn’t realize it at the time. But it is, it’s all about asking questions to get people to come to the understanding of what their issues are. And the reality is, when you ask questions and people share information with you, it increases the bond that you have with people and it increases the trust level that they have. The more information they give you and more questions you ask, the more they share with you, the more they come to know ‘I can trust you’.
[00:17:40.935] – Steve
And of course, that’s who they are going to do business with. You gotta be careful not to want to run on hand to mouth and give a whole bunch of information, which is what most people want to do. They they want to talk about their thing, what they do, how they do it. Prospects could care less about what you do and how you do it. They just want to know, can you fix my problem?
[00:18:00.775] – Ken
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So when is the appropriate time to talk about money and how do you even bring that discussion up as a salesperson?
[00:18:11.055] – Steve
- First thing prospects want to know in the first 30 seconds of the conversation is how much is it? So what we have to do, that’s why we do the agenda, there are several steps on the agenda. The discussion of money comes, comes not first, it comes down later on in the agenda. The first thing we need to do is we need to uncover what the problem is. What is your problem, issue or concern? And a question I like to ask folks when I’m talking with them is, if I’m face to face, I would say, how about share with me why we’re here together and in what you are hoping I could help you with? If we’re on the phone, same question. For on a meeting like this, same type thing. So we need to uncover what the problem is.
[00:18:58.055] – Steve
Now, most people that give you a first response, that is going to be an intellectual description of an existing situation or condition. That’s not enough. We need to, again, peel that onion and get behind. What is the problem, asking questions about how long has that been a problem? What, what is the impact to you personally because you have this problem, what have you tried to do to fix this problem before? And most importantly, what happens if you do not fix this problem?
[00:19:35.765] – Steve
And then part of that discussion is, how much is it costing you to have this problem? Time, money, energy? What is the cost for you for having a problem? The reason we want to do that is we want, we want them to give us the monetary cost or the, or the psychological frustration of how the problem affects them and how much it’s costing. So if one, if someone says to me, my salespeople aren’t closing enough deals and where, you know, if they were doing everything they needed to do, we’d probably do another million dollars a year in revenue if everybody was doing what they needed to do.
[00:20:15.305] – Steve
So how much money, then, is someone willing to pay to solve a million dollar problem? The answer is, up to a million dollars.
[00:20:25.805] – Steve
So we want to ask a question to quantify the problem monetarily, and then we will know in our mind what our price tag is to fix that problem. And if it’s not costing and if the cost of the problem is less than the cost of the solution, if it’s open to the 10 percent cost of the problem, then we should be able to work with that person and close that deal. But we need to find out what, what is going on.
[00:20:57.605] – Steve
And most salespeople, again, don’t ask enough questions, just they want to address the issue and then they end up defending and justifying why they charge what they charge.
[00:21:10.295] – Dan
You know, that’s a, that’s a good segue into this question, Steve, which is, as you talk about peeling the onion, one of the things that I’m curious about is how many pains do we really ideally need when we, when you’re asking those questions? Kind of, I’ve heard it said like a lot of questions that are asked are kind of surface level, but not under the iceberg. You know, how many ideally do you feel like you got to ask as far as pain questions so that you say, OK, you know, is it one pain or three or whatever in order to really help close the deal? How how far do you tend to go when it comes to getting those pains out?
[00:22:00.425] – Steve
Well, you only need one pain, but it’s got to be a big one. It’s got to be a powerful one and you’ve got to drill down on it, like to say, the pain is like sunburn. Think about this. Everybody can relate to this. Everybody’s had sunburn a little bit. There are three levels of SUNBURN. First degree, you may go to the CVS or the Walgreens and get your aloe vera gel and rub it on it and you’re good. Second degree pain is a little more powerful, a little more painful. Third degree pain you’re going to the doctor, because if you lay down a third degree pain at night and your skin sticks to the sheets when you get up, you’re headed to the doctor.
[00:22:46.205] – Steve
So you only, you only need one pain, but it better be third degree pain. And most salespeople confuse first degree with third degree and they jump on the first degree pain and start trying to solve the problem when the prospect really can live with the problem. So go down. It’s not, not that we need to find more pains. We just need to find one really, really powerful pain. And we ask questions like, how much is that bothering you? You know, what happens if you don’t fix this? What’s the impact to you if your, if your website is not in good shape and you’re not getting conversions to your website? What’s the impact to your business? What’s that costing you? And by the way, let’s flip it around. What would happen if it was doing what it’s supposed to do and should do? How much more would you benefit from that? And they give you a number and you say, so let me ask you. So if your website, if you had a really good website and it allows you to generate another hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue. Let me ask you this, Mr. Prospect. Is that a real number or is that, is that a real number, if you think you could achieve that? Is it, is it realistic if your website was really doing well? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. All right. So let me ask you this. How does it make you feel to know that you’re leaving a hundred grand on the table every year? You don’t have any guns in the house, do you?
[00:24:19.025] – Steve
Let me ask you this. How many more years are you going to be in this business? Ten years? I’m not real good at math, but how much is ten times a hundred thousand? So what you’re telling me is you have a million dollar problem, right?
[00:24:36.135] – Steve
Let me ask on a scale of one to ten – ten, meaning immediately, one meaning I could care less… how much do you want to fix this problem? If you were convinced I could fix this problem for 10 percent of what it’s costing you, what would you do? So that’s how you drill down on the pain and that’s how you peel away the layers, but again, if you’ll notice in this, I’m not, I’m not talking, I’m asking questions.
[00:25:06.775] – Steve
I’m getting the prospect to the realization: hey, before this guy walked in, I thought I was doing OK. Now I’m a psychological basket case. One hundred grand. I’m losing one hundred grand.
[00:25:22.705] – Steve
Now, when you do it right, the hardest thing you’ll have to do is keeping a straight face.
[00:25:28.105] – Dan
Yeah. And inevitably it must be. Sometimes you must, you must get into some things where they almost have tears in their eyes when you ask that
[00:25:37.825] – Steve
Literally.
[00:25:38.605] – Dan
Yeah. Because when you ask that, what do you think is going to happen if you don’t fix this? I mean, you’re talking about firing people and maybe having some personal issues with what they have at home and what not. Does that, I bet that comes up quite a bit.
[00:25:56.125] – Steve
Isn’t that what a therapist does?
[00:25:57.365] – Dan
Yeah. Yeah, I think we are business therapists sometimes.
[00:26:00.915] – Steve
We are absolutely business therapists. We just got to be, we got to be careful that we just don’t get over on that side and start having discussions because we can’t charge them enough to make money at being their therapist, there’s no money there.
[00:26:14.965] – Paul
What about, I was going to ask as a follow up, what kind of prep do you tend to do before a sales call, especially one of the first ones that you’re having a say, a discovery meeting? They’ve reached out to you and now you’re getting in front of them for the first time. What kinds of things do you do to sort of make sure that you’ve got everything buttoned up to really drill down and prepare?
[00:26:39.055] – Steve
I have a two step process on that. The first one is, we do an evaluation. It’s a two step process, I call it a sales and marketing audit, is step one. And the second one is blueprint for success. For the sales and marketing audit they fill out a nine page document for me, just like they would if they were going to a physician and they had to fill out this family history before we had the first appointment. And I ask them to give me all this information. If they’re unwilling to do that then it’s over, and I have them do that, I charge them for that, I charge them a small fee for that as a, as a measure of their commitment. And then they send that to me. I review it, and then we get on the phone and I drill down and ask even more questions in depth to uncover more of the information they sent me. And then the second step after we’ve done that is I put together a blueprint for success, otherwise known as a proposal, and send it to him when we get back on the phone and go over it.
[00:27:43.195] – Steve
And at that point, it’s either up or down. We move forward or we don’t. And all that is, I set all that up, as I mentioned a minute ago, about setting the rules of engagement, about, this is how it’s all going to unfold. Now, if I’m just, if it’s a first call, if I don’t know anything about anybody, then I’ll go to their website and Google them and go to LinkedIn or whatever and see if I can find out a little bit about them.
[00:28:07.845] – Steve
But all of my sales are inbound. I don’t do any outbound. I’ve done over 10000 cold calls. And that’s probably, I quit counting 20 years ago. So I don’t need any more practice at cold calling. First of all, it doesn’t work. You can’t get people on the phone. You know, psychologists and neurologists and cardiac, cardio vascular surgeons don’t make cold calls and neither should salespeople if you do it right. They should be inbound. Everything should be inbound inquiries. And generally it starts with people going to my website and ordering my book. I give my book away for free. I just charge a small shipping fee, again as a disqualifier. And my best customers are people who order my book.
[00:28:53.475] – Jen
Wow, Steve, there’s a good gamut of salespeople, but it’s, the top ones make so much more money than the great majority. Why do you think that is?
[00:29:08.355] – Steve
It’s the 80-20 principle. Top 20 percent of sales people make 28 times more money than the bottom 80 percent, top four percent of sales people make 56 times more money than the bottom 20 percent.
[00:29:21.365] – Steve
So just like in the U.S., you know, 50 percent of the stocks in the U.S. are owned by one percent of the people. So I tell folks all the time, you’re either going to be in the one percent or the 99 percent, you pick which one you want to be because there’s no lack of opportunity, is just a lack of ambition. It’s there if you want it. So it all goes back to skill and drive. I mean, they’re things, they’re saying things make a great salesperson that makes a great anything.
[00:29:48.825] – Steve
You know, they’re committed, they border on being obsessive about what it is they do. They endlessly practice. They’re, they are, are lifelong learners. They’re continuing all the time to work on their craft and get better. They’re never satisfied. They’re hard to live with. You know, all of those kinds of things.
[00:30:08.445] – Steve
They’re driven.
[00:30:09.465] – Ken
Yeah, fascinating.
[00:30:12.915] – Ian
Some of us are just hard to live with.
[00:30:14.805] – Steve
So my mom told me, she said, you’re hard to live with, but if you, like, make a lot more money, you’ll be a little easier.
[00:30:27.435] – Ian
And Steve, what role do you see knowing that sales and marketing work hand in hand or they should hopefully, they’re part of the same continuum. What role do you see marketing play in the sales process?
[00:30:39.765] – Steve
I think that that obviously you have to have a selling process and a marketing process and they have to work together. But you never really get a chance to sell unless you market. Use a baseball analogy here. Marketing is everything you do to get in the batter’s box to get the opportunity. Selling is what you do when they throw the pitch. You can either swing and miss or swing and hit a home run. So selling is about what happens when you have that conversation, either in person or on the phone. With a prospect. That’s selling. Everything that happens before that is marketing. I don’t even get the conversation unless you’ve done some marketing, and then obviously marketing can, there’s a lot of different things you can do to market, but at some point even making cold calls is a marketing activity.
[00:31:35.995] – Steve
So the better your marketing, is that people don’t understand this about the marketing and sales, the better your marketing, the easier the selling. In fact marketing done right almost eliminates the need to be good at selling. Lousy marketing, you better be really good at selling if you’re, if you’re not good at marketing, because taking someone from zero to, I don’t know you, say on a cold call, to closing them at the end of that phone call, you’ve got to be really, really good and they got to be in a lot of pain.
[00:32:14.315] – Steve
Those things don’t work out. So you’ve got to, you’ve got to be really good at both, and I started, I started, as I said a minute ago, I built my business on cold calls. It can be done. I would not want to do it again. I would find some other line of work to do if I had to do this all over again. And I got to a point where I’m like, if this is what I have to do to make money, I’m going to go do something else. And that’s when I went to work, I didn’t know a whole lot about marketing, so I went to work and I saw all kinds of marketing education to help me become a marketer, and now I’m as good a marketer as I am a sales person.
[00:32:56.075] – Paul
You know, that’s really interesting that it, it starts with marketing, and a lot of, I think a lot of business owners don’t realize how important that part of it is. But when you’re talking to a small business owner, should they be the main salesperson or should someone else do that?
[00:33:16.025] – Steve
Well, it depends on the company. Like, you know, I’m, I’m a, I’m a one man company. So, you know, obviously I have folks doing marketing for me that I outsource things to. But I am the chief salesperson, so I have to be skilled at marketing as well. Now, it’s a, if a business owner is the one closing deals, then they need to be really good at marketing. If they’re not, they need to put marketing in place that will generate leads for their other salespeople to, to work those leads. And the reality is the salesperson should not be charged with the responsibility of generating leads.
[00:33:52.985] – Steve
I do not believe in salespeople creating their own leads.
[00:33:56.375]
I believe that the company should take whatever they’re paying the poorest performing salesperson, fire that salesperson, take that money that they saved from that salary and put it in marketing that will generate leads for people who can close. Now that’s a hard sell sometimes to business owners who grew up thinking salespeople should generate their own leads. But most salespeople, if they work for a company, if they don’t own their own business and they work for a company, and they’re really good closers, they’re not very good marketers, they don’t know anything about it, they know how to close deals, but they don’t know how to generate leads. And in asking that high performance salesperson to do something they’re not good at or are skilled at or even want to do, is really counterproductive so the business needs to have a really great marketing program that continually funnels high quality leads to their salespeople that can close them. Now that, what that means is companies really, if they do it right, can shrink their sales force and put that money in marketing and let their top dogs close the deals.
[00:35:05.815] – Paul
Wow, so marketing generates the leads, that’s a very good point.
[00:35:09.765] – Ken
Yeah, what about, do you think it’s possible that companies can outsource the sales process to somebody else?
[00:35:19.525] – Steve
They can. You know, it’s harder to do because you don’t have control, and you know, if you’re, if you’re subscribing to a sales system and you outsource it, then those people you have no control over those people are doing it however they want to do it. But it could, it can be done. You know, it’s probably not the preferable way, but it certainly could be done.
[00:35:43.895] – Ken
Yeah, Steve, this has been amazing. I mean, I’ve, I’ve learned a lot. You know, I feel like I just went to the new school, for sure. No doubt. So we’ve got your website on this livestream down at the bottom. But tell us, you know, how people can get a hold of you. What are the next steps if people want to learn more about, you know, how can they become better salespeople or how can they hire and work with the right salespeople? So, and thanks so much for all your insights. It’s just been absolutely amazing.
[00:36:17.065] – Steve
Sure. Well, go to the website. It all starts going to our website. On the website there are a number of free resources on the website. You can order my book on the website. The book is free. You pay five dollars and ninety five cents shipping and you get the book and some other pieces of information along with that. And if you would like to email me, I offer a 30 minute free coaching session. That’s not a sales pitch, it’s an honest to God, 30 minutes of me trying to help you as best I can. If you would like that, simply email me at sclark@newschoolselling.com and I will send you a link to schedule a phone call with me.
[00:37:00.115] – Ken
Awesome. Thanks so much, Steve. Massive amounts of information, so we really appreciate your time.
[00:37:06.335] – Steve
Good. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
[00:37:08.425] – Ken
All right, thanks.
[00:37:09.325] – Steve
OK, now y’all go sell something.
[00:37:11.635] – Ken
Absolutely.
[00:37:13.315] – Steve
Alright see ya.