[590] Your Niche Doesn't Matter

Jason [00:00:00]: You. This is the authentic persuasion show. Hey there. Welcome to episode 590 of the Authentic Persuasion show. I cannot believe we're ten ish episodes away from 600. It's a milestone that is round in number. Doesn't really mean a lot in the world. You know, the, the 250, the 500, the thousand, those are the big ones. Jason [00:00:23]: My friend George Grombacher is narrowing in on 2000 episodes for his podcast. That's a big milestone. He's a beast. I think he's doing twelve or 14 episodes a week. I just appreciate all the content he's putting out there. We're getting close to 600. It's a cool number. Sounds good. Jason [00:00:41]: I'm excited. I'm loving the podcast. I'm loving this season. I think it's amazing conversations. I'm so excited right now on my screen. I'm looking through the list of guests we've recorded so far and coming up in this season, and these conversations truly, truly shaping me. And I'm getting so much out of it because there's so much value. These people have so much experience and they're sharing so much and they're doing a lot for their students. Jason [00:01:09]: This is the professional sales educators out there that it's amazing. I'm learning so much on my side. Now, one of the things, and this is what I want to talk about in today's episode, is that your niche doesn't matter. Your industry doesn't matter. I was speaking with someone the other day. Her name is Jessica Grossman. She has a digital marketing type agency. And we were talking about sales. Jason [00:01:38]: We were talking about marketing. We were talking about all kinds of things. She said the niche doesn't matter. I've always said the industry doesn't matter. Now, what does that mean? Well, one of the biggest things that comes up for her and then for me, which is what sparked this conversation, is when I'm out there as a consultant and I'm speaking to people or I'm talking to someone about their event or their company sales kickoff or their conference, the question comes up, well, what do you know about x? Have you ever sold x? How long have you worked in X? Right. Whether it's insurance or furniture sales or car sales or SaaS for b to b or enterprise sales, it always comes up. Well, tell me, how much experience do you have in selling insurance? None. But I bought a lot of insurance in my life. Jason [00:02:32]: I know what it's like, and this is the biggest thing, and this is where it came up in the conversation and why the niche doesn't matter is that the product doesn't matter. It does matter, but it doesn't matter. And here's what I mean by that. The product doesn't matter because most people in sales know their product. Their company focuses on product training and is all about the product. Here's what our product does. Here's why we're amazing. Here's why we're better than everyone else. Jason [00:03:01]: Here's who our competition is. Here's why our competition sucks and why we're better. And here's why people should buy from us. And here's how to deal with pricing. That's really the most I see with a lot of training. What they don't do is focus on the people part. That's why I say what I focus on is h to h, the human to human, which is you as a salesperson, as a human, and then dealing with another human, which is your potential customer. Now, why would I say the niche doesn't matter or the industry doesn't matter? Well, because once you know your product, that's great. Jason [00:03:31]: But most people struggle with the human side for what Jessica focuses on. Most people struggle with the digital marketing or media side. From my part, it's the selling effectiveness side. And where I come in is not on the product. And I joke about it with a lot of people. I say, if I have to teach you how to explain insurance or what insurance does, you have a bigger problem that I can't solve. Right? Like, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to be the one that teaches you insurance or teaches you how to be an attorney or teaches you what the cars do. Jason [00:04:07]: Although I am a car guy, so I could probably do that one pretty well. But that's not my point. Like, you know your product. If you don't know your product, your company has let you down. On the product side. However, what I'm going to do is I'm going to help you with the human side. I'm going to help you with the selling effectiveness side. And here's what's fascinating and fun. Jason [00:04:24]: And this is why I'm mentioning on the podcast, right? This isn't just promoting me and what I do. Although, please, if you want help in helping your team be more effective or you want to be more effective and you're an individual contributor, you're a salesperson, please reach out to me. I have all kinds of programs for companies and for individuals. My course, my workshops, so on. Just reach out to me. That's not the point of this conversation. The point is you've got to understand the fundamentals, the fundamentals of humans, the fundamentals of yourself, the fundamentals of what the buyer's journey is, what they want, what the decision making process. As Terry Lowe said on the podcast, decision making process doesn't change. Jason [00:05:04]: It's always the same. It's fundamental for humans, right? That's why my authentic persuasion pathway is so universal that it doesn't matter what's being sold, because the decision making process is the same. Right? You've got a scared human who's worried about change, that you've got to help them, make them feel safe, successful at fear elimination. That's your one job, right? To make them feel safe. That's it. You got one job in the decision making process. Now, there's lots of strategies and tactics and layers and all that kind of stuff on top of it. But fundamentally, end of the day, that's it. Jason [00:05:36]: Once you understand that, you can then go and sell anything. Now, I don't mean sell anything like, I could sell sand in the desert or ice to eskimos. That's gross and terrible. Don't be that person. That's just dumb. That's what's wrong with sales, is when people say those kind of things, like, I'm so great, I could blah blah in the blah, blah. It's like you're the problem. Like, literally, you're the problem with sales is because you think that's okay and it's not. Jason [00:06:06]: But here's the thing. Once you understand the Fundamentals, the fundamentals of h to h, then you can go sell anything. And why is that important? Because there's a lot of people that are one trick ponies. They're in an industry. They know how to sell this one product. They have relationships. And if that job ever ends, all they can do is go get another job, hopefully in that same industry, selling that same widget, because they don't have any fundamentals. They're just good at product charisma, storytelling, and maybe just pushing people to buy. Jason [00:06:39]: That's it. They don't have any fundamentals. Once you have the fundamentals, it doesn't matter what you do. Let me give you another example. I avoided people for the longest time as a career choice, right? I did work in retail. I worked in a pet store in the fish room, like in the aquarium department, selling fish. But I was more about the fish than the people. I didn't really care about the people. Jason [00:07:04]: And so people were like this annoying thing that would come in every once in a while, and you'd have to catch a fish out of an aquarium or sell them some feeder fish or whatever. I was there for the fish, so I really avoided people. And then I needed a job in college, and I'm like, oh, let me get a job at a restaurant, maybe get some food out of it. Like, this will be good. It's a good schedule. I don't even know why I made that decision. Literally, the restaurant that I worked at, they wouldn't hire me. They're like, we're not hiring. Jason [00:07:31]: We're not interested. I badgered them for months, and then they finally relented. It's funny because that's probably some indication of my persistence even going back then. So I get a job, and I'm like, okay, last thing I want to do is deal with hungry people. Literally never want to deal with hungry people. I'm questionable on people in general. I also know how I get when I'm hungry. I know how my family gets when we're hungry. Jason [00:07:56]: That's not good. I don't want to deal with hungry people. So I'm like, I'll just be a busser. That way I can clear plates, fill water, just stay behind the scenes. Right then I realize I am pretty good with people. I move into a server role. I'm a waiter, and it's an okay restaurant. I mean, it's steaks and stuff at night and decent lunch menu. Jason [00:08:18]: Not fine dining, but pretty good for the area. And so I did that for years. Was pretty good at it, just unconsciously just good at it. And then moved to Seattle and worked in a restaurant. I was actually a buser's assistant or a server's assistant, which is a fancy buser who also sells dessert and then makes the desserts. So the server moves on after dinner is done and the server's assistant takes over, but also busing plates. One of those fancy places where I had to dress up and had a crummer to take the crumbs off the table. And it's just fancy, right? But the skills translated. Jason [00:08:52]: Once you know how to deal with people, you can go do that. I see some servers in restaurants where all they know is that menu and that mode, and they can't go, or they're afraid to change restaurants because they can't go into another mode because they're not open to learning more things. They've just gotten really good at what they know, and they just want to stay in that bubble versus I know for myself. And this is post restaurant era in my life. That season is that I know if I ever wanted to, even to this day, if I needed to or I wanted to, I could go anywhere and get a job at any restaurant and figure it out. Because I have those fundamental skills. I don't care what the restaurant serves. I can learn the menu. Jason [00:09:32]: I have the skills. Right? Same thing. What I'm trying to get you to understand with sales is you can learn any product. That's what I do for my clients. All my clients are like, well, what do you know about this? I don't know anything about it. You do. I know people. So I'll learn your industry. Jason [00:09:47]: I'll learn your language. I'll learn your acronyms. I'll learn your techno babble. I will learn your customers like, I'll learn your demo. I'll learn whatever. I'll stand in your trade show booth and sell for you. I can figure that part out. That's just learning a new menu in my brain. Jason [00:10:04]: I know people, right? I know sales. And again, not that I'm trying to encourage you to learn sales and the fundamentals so you can just job hop and industry hop. There's a lot of value in staying in one thing and becoming really good at it. But also, I see a lot of people who, to their own detriment, stick in one industry and know one thing. If that industry has trouble or if they don't like that industry anymore, they don't have many other options and they're stuck. So hopefully this helps. You always remember, the niche doesn't matter. The product doesn't matter. Jason [00:10:31]: The industry doesn't matter because that is secondary. You learn that part, but the sales fundamentals, the h to h, all of that is what matters the most. And once you master that, once you've developed that and you understand that and you can do that, you can apply that to anywhere, in any industry, in any sales world. And remember, everything thing in life is sales. Thank you for tuning in for being a part of this on our road to episode 600. And I thank you for helping fill the world with authentic persuaders.