See that ridiculous picture above?
This is what happens as you enter your 50s and go to the gym.
Over the last few weeks, Mike Desormeaux and I have experienced some back tightness that we don't normally get.
And Dan Thiessen at Radix, being the expert trainer that he is, recommended a slight change to some back exercises we were doing that involved creating this setup.
What you see above was a way for us to work our back without putting pressure on our lower back.
Yes, this is the stage of life I'm at.
To Dan's credit, that setup worked perfectly!
Next week, I'm going to stack six boxes on each side and we'll need a ladder and ropes to complete the workout.
Anyway, after a pretty inconsistent summer, I'm back to about 3x a week, which feels great. Nick, of course, hasn't missed any time at all and goes to the gym 8-300 times a week, every week. LOL!
OK, this week I want to share a pretty powerful lesson I was taught from combination of books and high-end sales performers.
This advice changed my life forever.
When I first entered sales, I mistakenly thought the way to make a sale was to explain all the amazing features of the software I was selling to whoever I was speaking with.
And this kinda, sorta worked.
But then I ran into one of the best sales people I had ever met.
This guy almost never spoke about what he was selling.
If he was dealing with a new customer for 60 minutes he would spend about 50 minutes just asking them questions.
At first I thought all the questions were pretty random.
I would be on sales calls with him and the range of questions seemed to be all over the map. They changed all the time.
But his approach was consistent...80% of his time was spent asking questions.
20% of his time was selling.
And he was crushing it.
I mean he was making over $600K a year in software sales back in 2003 and 2004. That was big time back then...heck, it's still big time.
I just couldn't figure him out. I knew way more about the software than he did but it didn't seem to matter. In fact, he didn't seem to know much about the software he was selling at all.
After all, he would ask a sales consultant, like myself, to demonstrate very specific things and that would be it ... he'd close the deal.
Sometimes there was no software demo at all. None. This was unheard of.
It was honestly shocking to watch.
Finally, one day, he sat me down and explained what was going on.
He shared that he couldn't begin his sales process until he understood a person's value hierarchy.
He had learned that everyone had a different one and listed off a bunch of values and also categorized them slightly differently between men and women:
He said that he had noticed men prioritize these values:
Autonomy/independence, achievement/status, competitiveness, financial success/wealth, strength/resilience, power/influence, personal freedom, adventure, exploration, justice, task orientations, duty/honour, control, leadership.
And he had noticed that women would prioritize values like these:
Connection/relationships, empathy/compassion, cooperation/community, intuition, health, well-being of the family unit and others, equality, belonging, safety, justice (restorative), loyalty, support/encouragement.
He also said it wasn't a perfect list and that some people had a mix of both lists of values.
So what he was doing, when he met a new customer, was asking all sorts of questions to determine what their top two or three values.
He would then internally rank those values in a priority order.
Once he understood those he'd then structure his sales presentation to map directly to those values.
That's why he always asked for very specific types of demos from his sales consultants. He mapped the solution directly to the things they valued most in that situation.
And it worked. It worked very, very well. I watched it work with my own eyes.
I must have worked with 100+ sales reps and he was the only one doing this over and over and over.
It always stayed with me.
I began to notice when I was trying to persuade someone to my way of thinking I was using my values to influence my discussion.
Instead, I should have been focusing on theirs.
So if I focused on something as financially important, but the other person prioritized family as a higher value, then my financial breakdown would fall flat.
What I thought was amazing financial wizardry did not resonate at all.
In that situation, I had much more success when I connected my financial analysis to how it would help their family.
I was then speaking with their values in mind.
When I went into sales myself I took this strategy and used it to do 220% of my annual quota in 5 months.
This concept stayed with me and began to help deepen my personal relationships and it helped my understanding of marketing.
I think it changed my life, LOL!!
When we started marketing our own business, Rock Star, we realized we shouldn't talk about the things we thought were important, we should try and help people and focus on what THEY thought was important.
It's a subtle shift but the impact of communicating with someone in their values instead of yours is magical.
I'm not saying to not be true to yourself. Of course you should.
But if you find yourself in a disagreement or in a stalemate of a situation, take a step back and write down the list of values you think the other person has and rank them in order.
If you come back to the situation with their #1 value in mind...my money says you'll have a much more pleasurable experience.
Anyway, there you have it.
A little sales secret from a top performer that ended up impacting my life beyond sales.
Next week, I promise we'll get back to interest rates, monetary debasement, real estate, student rentals, and, of course, Bitcoin! LOL!
But we do have a treat for you, Nick just released a new video talking real estate prices and you can check it out right here...
|
|
And one more thing!!
Next Saturday, October 18 is the Your Life. Your Terms. Event.
We're basically full!!
We have a few spots remaining for Rock Star Members.
You can find all the details here.
We're in the middle of prepping for it all...it's gonna be fun!!
See you there!!
Tom & Nick
