[E119] Straight Talk with Danny Creed – Part 3 of 4

Jason: Welcome back to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason Cutter. You are about to listen to part three of my conversation with Danny Creed. This is part three in a four-part mini-series where we’re just on a roll. If you’re starting with this one, make sure to listen to episode one and episode two in this mini-series guest conversation, whatever you want to call it with Danny and I.

Jason: It’s funny because both in this section and the next one I talk about how I wanted to cover some questions that I normally would ask and I just fail because we were having such a great time going through everything and we cover it any way in those topics. So enjoy part three. And uh, yeah, that’s it.

Danny: And when I’m asking you say, can we sit down and talk a little bit, you know, and let’s find out together if it makes sense that we should work together because I’m not right for everyone. So can I ask you three questions to see if it makes sense that we should work together or not? And I’m telling you, I’ve had big tough guys when I say I’m not right for everyone. They turn around and go, what do you mean you’re not right for me. And then I, you know, it’s just like, okay, that’s dialogue, man.

Jason: Well, and I think when being honest if you’re selling something of any value where there’s an ideal person, right? So going back to conversations about knowing who you should be talking to and who you should be selling to, there. And I’m talking, you know, and we’re talking specifically about or to those kinds of sales organizations, not the one where everybody wins. You talk to anybody with a pulse and you’re selling your widget, right? So we’re talking about more specific is that if there’s somebody ideally who you want to sell to, there’s also somebody who’s not a good fit. Like actually, no, and it’s funny because in my upcoming book that I’m writing, it feels like you still one of my chapters, but uh, in mine I actually have a chapter about the power of saying no and leveraging that and how, you know, if you’ve got someone and they’re not a good fit, it’s not going to happen.

Jason: And not like a money excuse or I need to talk to my spouse or my business partner. I mean like, you know, I sell this and it’s not a good fit because you don’t, you know, you’re not going to do well with it or succeed, is tell them no and that saying no will, A.) blow their mind and your manager may freak out at first, but it’s really the best thing. And then it gives you the mental power and the ability that when you say yes, you mean it. Because if it wasn’t a yes, you would say no. And when it’s a yes, then we’re going to make this thing happen. Right. And so it’s so interesting when I tell that to reps and I say, if it’s not a good fit, like I don’t want you to push a square peg into a round hole, it’s going to create crap for customer service and fulfillment and the business and whatever. So just don’t do that. And now they’re like, “are you sure? Is that okay?” I’m like, “yeah,” your goal is not to sell 100% to a 100% to the people you talk to. It’s never like that.

Danny: They’ll appreciate that and they’ll bring it back around though. You’ll get something at some point cause they’ll start looking for ways to work with you. You know, I would rather be, you know, I’ve worked with a long time to say in today’s world there is no reality. There’s only the perception of reality. Which means everything from how do you present yourself in sales? How do you walk in the door? Positive. You walk in the door, look good, good look on your face again. You’ve mentioned something earlier. I don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room. I just have to be a last best question. So smart as questions, you know, cause I’ll learn as we go. But how do people perceive you when you walk in the door? They’ll create a perception if you’re listening, if you don’t care or positive, if you’ll respect their time.

Danny: If you say no, you know, they’ll respect that and they’ll want to work with you. That’s selling to, you’re selling a perception. You know, my idea and perception was when I walked in the room, I might, be brand new at this. When I walk into a room and I want people to go, “I don’t know what he’s selling, but I want some just because of how I look and how I walked and how I handled myself, how I eat, breathe, and you know, and just, and you know how myself in front of people, people want, they’re attracted to people who they feel like they can respect.” You know, again, that comes back to listening and knowing your product and just working hard.

Jason: And one part I don’t talk about as much as I probably should, especially on the podcast and in general. But I think going with all that, like when you walk into the room, how do you carry yourself? Everybody’s different. But the one thing I found that’s very common in successful salespeople in any realm as a professional is authenticity, which goes back into that telling people “no”. When you walk in a room and you authentically care or you’re on the phone call and you authentically care about that person, you’re asking the questions, you’re listening, like we’re talking about, you’re taking that information and responding appropriately and not charismatic over the top storytelling monologuing schmoozing like cheesy salesperson with all the cheesy close lines. Like if you do it in an authentic way, that’s you. Unless that’s you. If that’s you, it probably works as well. But whatever’s authentic for you, selling to that person, it will always work with the right people and just be your authentic self. Trying to help others.

Danny: Jason, I’ll go as far as to say that doesn’t work anymore. What you described.

Jason: Oh the other, the uh, the other cheesy lines.

Danny: Hey, you know, the razzmatazz and people don’t, I mean, look, we’ve got a society that’s, that has more information available to it than any other time in his. They don’t need that. Uh, you know, I did, was doing a workshop a while back in, one of the things I talk about is how easily can you be replaced and some people didn’t agree and I said, look, let me show you something. I just held up my phone and there was like 2000 people room and I held a microphone up and I just said to the person in there, I said, look, tell me how many heating and air conditioning describes the heating and air conditioning. How many HVAC people are there within 20 miles of where we’re standing? One, two, three beep. There was like 35. I went up and touched one. Somebody said, hi, “this is Ralph of The House Heating and Air Conditioning. How can I help you?” “Sorry, wrong number off.” I lay down and go, that’s how easy you’re replaced. People have information available so you can’t get by with it. Easy razzmatazz stuff anymore. People don’t need it. They don’t want it.

Jason: No, they don’t fall for it. And information is the power that you know, cancels that out. Especially with the information available about a company, about a salesperson, about an organization that people can do their research from a prospect customer side and see what the reviews are. Right? You can no longer hide. You can no longer be the snake oil salesman that runs from town to town once the jig is up, right? Like the internet. There is no way to run from the internet and that’s it. Right? The only thing you can do is change businesses and start a new company under a different name and try to run that way. But that’s just a terrible life. And obviously that’s not who you and I are speaking to and who this is for. And I think it really goes back to what you said about being able to sell anything.

Jason: Because I get that question even as a consultant where people will say, you know, business owners will say, well have you ever sold X, Y, and Z ? And I’ll be like, no, but I’ll tell him that doesn’t matter. And I’ll, you know, explain it in a little bit of an eloquent way. But in my mind I’m thinking sales is sales. Like I don’t care what you give me, I will learn enough and then I will sell it. Cause I’m gonna ask questions and leverage listening and caring and wanting to help. And I think that’s super important for anyone listening to this if you’re in sales, is to learn how to sell and learn the foundation, the fundamentals like you’re talking about. Then you can take that anywhere. You can move halfway across the world and go sell in a different country. As long as you can speak the language, then sales is sale, right?

Danny: And you don’t even need to speak the language. You can get somebody to help you. But you know, that’s a great point. Again, it comes back to being honest. It comes back to being transparent. People don’t want it. They can smell it, they can see through it, they can look through it. And if you just come in and that’s where we’re back now to asking questions. That’s where we’re back down to getting clarity. You can sell. All I need to do is ask the right questions and people will want to work with me and they’ll buy something from me. Now again, it’s not that easy, but look it so few people do it that way for all your listeners. So few people actually practice listening, actually studied sales, you know, do that and you’re going to be so far ahead of in your industry, practice time management, understand, you know, ask lots of questions, understand listening, understand your product. I, I’m sure you have to, but I’ve sold products that weren’t number one in the market, but my passion for it, you know, my care for it people bought because I believed in it a lot of times. And that’s the key to it. And not enough people do that.

Jason: Yeah. And I think back to the work ethic part, you know, that’s where it’s on the field, off the field and time management and task. There’s a lot of salespeople out there who feel like, okay, I made calls or I sent emails or I did so many reach outs and that was it. You know, it’s really at the end of the day, can you say you left it all on the field, right? As far as like how many hours it takes. You could be amazing and work six hours, leave it all in the field, have great results, not activity. And then that was a win. And some days you might get, you know, bloodied and beaten because you, you gave it all you could, but at least you tried and you come back another day and you know, it’s all about that effort.

Danny: That’s the key coming back. Yeah. You know, I would say one of the, part of the key to sales is don’t take no personally. Yeah,

Jason: Yeah. Unless, but this is the counter I have to that because you know, you got to say it with two parts. Don’t take “no” personally. Everyone’s going through their stuff. It’s not about you. Unless you suck, then it’s about you.

Danny: That’s true. Maybe you can take “no” personally because you don’t know how to deal with it.

Jason: Right. And you did something that caused them to say “no” that a better salesperson would have gotten them to say “yes.” And so that’s the only part. Like if you’re getting no a lot, that might be you and you need to watch the game footage there, listened to the recordings, have someone sit in on your meetings, go to your appointments with you. Cause that might be you like, you know, you and I are both pretty honest, straight shooters. Like that might be you as a salesperson and not the market, uh, or the other person having a bad day. But if you know you’re doing your process, your manager, your company, you’ve developed a sales process that you know, works enough, then don’t take the “NOs” personally.

Danny: Yeah. I have to take a quick story. I think you and I and a lot of other friends could write a book about the crazy thing salespeople were done. I actually had a guy tell me, I was trying to analyze cause he just couldn’t close anything. And I said, so why do you think people will buy from you? He home hard around. I said, well let me ask you something. Let’s go through your process. And he went through this beautiful process of selling and then I say, so we’re down to the end. How do you feel when somebody says no? He goes, “well I tell them how stupid they are.” And I go, “no you don’t.” He goes, “yeah, I write him letters sometimes” I go, “no you don’t.” he goes, yeah, “I’ll send you some.” “Sure enough”, a lady had told him no. And he went home and he said, “thank you Mrs. Johnson for uh, looking at my presentation and I just wanted to write this letter to you to tell, tell you how, how stupid your decision was to not go with my program.”

Danny: And then he did two more pages of why she was that stupid. So don’t blame the market. Don’t blame industry here and don’t blame anybody. But you know, the only way you get great at anything is go out and do it. Learn from it. Do it, learn from it and do it and learn from it. I mentioned earlier, there’s four steps I teach when it comes to dealing with problems and it’s what happened? Why did it happen? How will it never happen again and see you later. You know, you move on because you learned something about why it didn’t work. Why, why a technique didn’t work, why a certain question didn’t work, why saying yes or no. Right time. You know, Warren Buffet always says, I say no to almost everything. And all he means by that is, you know, I’m going to say no and I’m going to analyze it and I’m going to make a better decision. You know? So it’s back where we started. It’s back to the basics. May ask some basics. Sit down and talk to people in your industry and find out what made them successful and then copy it.

Jason: Yeah. But, and for all the salespeople listening, if you’re listening to this is also don’t rely, this goes back to the work ethic. Don’t rely on your managers of the companies to giving you everything. It’s on you to take some responsibility if you want to make this a career. Now if you’re in sales and it’s just a job and you’re, you know you’re just showing up and it’s something you’re doing short term that’s different. But speaking to people who want to be sales professionals, you’re going to have to put in the extra work and this is where business sales profession is different than maybe the public school we were all raised in, which is you go to school, they put some information in front of you. If they give you some homework, you do it, you check the boxes and that’s it. This is different. This is your life and if you want to be successful, take some more.

Danny: I always, I was, when I do seminars that I’ll say, look, if you really want to call yourself a sales professional, you need to get a job and work on straight commission for a while. Cause I did for a long time and there’s nothing quite like your wife meeting you at the door with a baby in her arms thing. Honey, why did you sell today? Cause we need groceries. You know, so you learn how to listen. You learn how to close, you learn how to do those things. Look, I’m not saying don’t take the biggest salary you can, right, of course. But from a management standpoint, if it’s not the smartest thing to pay your sales people salaries and no commissioner, no one says, I live for commission. You want to make more money. I don’t have to go ask anybody. I do. I sell more. You know, in even if you have a great salary and everything else, you still have to have that mentality that if I want to make more, I’m going to go out and create it.

Jason: Alright. Hopefully you enjoyed part three of the four-part mini series with Danny Creed. Again, go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast find the episode. Find Danny’s links if you want to reach out to him or read more about him or any of the things that he’s done, including the book that he’s written and the books that he has upcoming. Also, you can find the transcript of our conversation. Make sure to tune in for the next episode. Tomorrow we’re going to launch part four and the final part of the conversation with Danny. Until then, as always, remember that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.