[E191] From Paramedic to Sales Leader with Chris Cebollero – Part 4 of 4

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. Welcome back. This is part four so glad that you’re here. My name again is Jason Cutter and on this last segment of the conversation with Chris Cebollero we’re just wrapping it up, talking about sales experience, talking about more about emotional intelligence and how all of that plays in. It was a great conversation. Make sure at the end of this episode Chris mentions his links. You can also find them on the website where I’ve got the transcripts. Also make sure to follow Chris, check out his content. If you’re in sales leadership, he is a great resource as well. And if you’re in the medical field, emergency medical field, then you probably already know his name and all of the great work that he does and has done. But at the end he talks about the books that he’s written and where you can find him.

Jason: So here it is. The final part. Enjoy. 

Chris: Well 2019 went and 365 days, 12 months, 52 weeks. But what happened was, is you didn’t have an intentional process to develop yourself or to have goals in 2019 and you let 2019 live you and you didn’t live 2019 so now that we get into 2020 and now we’re talking about the first couple months here, what plans do you have for yourself? What goals do you have for yourself that 2020 doesn’t live you, but that’s being intentional into being the very best that you can be. Jason, I don’t think we do that enough. 

Jason: No, and I think the component that’s missing for a lot of people, and I’ll speak for myself because I used to be this way and I’ve worked to shift it, is that the most people are also missing the patience side, right?

Jason: So if we’re talking about any kind of transformation, being intentional, like your cousin’s weight loss story, it’s also about being patient. It’s not about losing, how do I lose 500 pounds by next Thursday? It’s, how do I lose, you know, and I tell people, if you lost a pound a week, 

Chris: So I got the pound a week club. 

Jason: Right? A pound a week, that’s 52 pounds a year. If you did that for two years, that’s a hundred pounds healthy, sustainable, consistent, just lose a pound a week, right? No fad diet where you’re losing 20 pounds. So you can look good in a bathing suit. 

Chris: It’s about a lifestyle change and how we’re doing it live in our life 

Jason: And for salespeople, and we’re talking about the emotional intelligence and the curiosity and the being intentional with all that. It’s also allowing the framework for the patience of, okay, well I want to be here as a sales person or I want to achieve these goals.

Jason: It’s like, but you’ve gotta be patient, right? You got to read and learn and you’re not going to be amazing tomorrow if you’re deficient in something. Just play the long game. I say this to people. Life is both very short and very long. Life is very short, where you need to live in the moment. Live in today. Appreciate today cause you never know and then life is also very, very long or you have the time to get things done or if you’re miserable it’s going to feel very long and life is going to be very un-fun for a very long time. 

Chris: Yeah, I’m with you 100% I think you’re absolutely right. 

Jason: So let me ask you, I have a bunch of questions I try to ask. I’m not usually too good at it because we have a fun conversation we covered anyway. But the one question I want to ask for you is what do you think makes for a great sales experience? 

Chris: Well I gotta tell you I am one of the worst customers I think. I don’t, I don’t want people coming to my office and to sell me.

Chris: I want to, I want to call when I need you. I don’t like the pop in, I don’t want the sales pitch. I know what I want cause I do my research on it. And I think what makes a great sales experience for me is the professionals that know that, that understand who I am as a customer. That understand that I’m going to give you a hard time. You got to win your way into my heart for me to be a good client or customer for you. And uh, particularly I put them through the paces just to see their tenacity, just to see their persistence. But I want it on my terms. And I think that that goes back to the processes of you need to learn who I am. You need to learn what’s important to me. And if you don’t, that’s a quick way to make sure that, you don’t come back into my office.

Chris: As a matter of fact, I had salespeople kicked out of the hospital system that I worked in because of them trying to circumvent me. So because I wasn’t moving quick enough for their decision, again, we talk about an 18 month sales process. They decided to go to my medical director or they decided to go to my vice president and try to move the process along. Well, I had them banned from the hospital so they couldn’t come in at all and sell to anybody. So you need to know your clients and customers and you need to make sure that you meet their expectations. And, uh, I think that’s what’s important for the sales experience.

Jason: And a couple of things. The first part is, it’s interesting because I’m the same way as far as I don’t want people to come in to sell me. If I want something, I’ll go to them. But it’s interesting because when I listened to you speak, and we’re recording this on video as well, so I’m watching you explain this, I truly understand and can totally see you being that hard guy that’s going to put them through the paces. And then I also get this very strong feeling that as soon as you do let somebody in and you do trust them and you do want to work with them, like you’re a relational guy. And then unless they screw something up terribly, like you’re good for life with them. Like once they’re in with you, they’re probably in and, and things are great.

Chris: Yeah, I agree. And I think we have to get to that process. And uh, but you know, I think that you’re absolutely right. I think that it is about relationships and you know, Paul Martinelio will tell us that to be a great salesperson, you’ve gotta be able, people gotta be able to know, like, and trust you. And a trust is a big word and big word in a process of, you know, trying to sell somebody something and I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone into a store and there’s been poor customer service and I’ve walked out of the store where I was going to, I had a, a pocket full of cash and my ready to buy some stuff and I just went to the next store because I can pick and choose where I spend my money. I can pick who I’m going to engage with.

Chris: I can pick and choose. Now is my money that walks out the door gonna close that business. I don’t care if it does or not, but I’m not going back. You know, if they have other people that appreciate that level of service, that’s fine. And I don’t think we use that enough. Right? I don’t think we use the fact that I don’t need you. I don’t need to eat here. I don’t need to go to this store. I can find other stores that sell these brand of jeans and um, I think that that’s what makes, should make us happy.

Jason: And the right, the right companies, the right businesses that get that and provide that service no matter what. No prejudging, no treating different people differently based on how they look or act or what kind of customer they’re going to be. Those are the ones that win longterm. I mean, I used to do that just for fun when I was back in college and I would go to like jewelry stores and I would dress like a college student. I have like, you know, flip flops on pocketful of money ready to buy. And I’d literally go into stores and have people like not even acknowledge my presence and then I would wait for a few minutes and walk out and just keep going until I found one where people just engaged with me and talk to me. And then they had access to it from there. So the other part that’s interesting in what you’re talking about, and maybe you can give some tips because I think this would be valuable from your side to help sales people and managers is I work with a lot of business to business companies.

Jason: So they face challenges like the sales people who are trying to get to you and get you to make a decision. So they’re trying to sell to you. They present to you, you have your own reasons why you’re delayed on the process for taking your time. Maybe it’s not urgent, maybe you have a lot of hoops that you have to go through as an owner or a manager or whatever. And so the salesperson then goes to other people in the org chart to try to get the decision made, right? Because the sales person has their goals and their timelines. Is there an effective way they could do that where it doesn’t get them banned from the hospital, you know, quote-unquote where you know, talking to other people in the org chart would be valuable and would help you with your decision or is that just a no go for you?

Chris: I think that that has to be something that’s a common grant. Was there someone else I can talk to? Is there someone else I can present to? Does it help your case if, and you know, in my case as the chief of EMS and when you start to think about fire chiefs and EMS chiefs and police chiefs, I’m going to say we got a little bit of an ego going, but I think that the common ground there is let’s discuss it together. Is there someone that I need to help? What can I do? But when I’m saying this is going to be a process, you know, I’m not going to be able to get this money this year. You know, going to my boss and saying, you know, we need to spend, you know, one point $5 million in monitors and where are you going to find the money? I know what the budget looks like. You know, I know what that process looks like. You know, when it comes to the final pitch to say, I’m going to go with these monitors. Maybe it’s time for you to do that. But if we’re going to develop a trusting relationship, we’ve gotta be in it together. And that together is, okay, I think I need to get you in front of my boss. I think I need to get you in front of my medical director. And it’s that agreement that I think needs to happen.

Jason: And that’s a great lesson because it’s really about coming to you. Like you said, if I, if I heard you right, it’s coming to you and you’re still in the decision process is trying to work together and partner together. Is there somebody else they need to talk to? Is there something else that can be done? And then at some point it’s just letting you make your decision, right? I mean, there’s a balance of persistence and checking in that then becomes nagging and pushy salesperson, desperate for their end of month, end of quarter, whatever that might be versus, you know, just working with you and looking at it longterm and relationship, which is what we started the whole conversation with.

Chris: You know? And I think that one of the things that’s important as well in this from a customer standpoint is not the mislead the salesperson either. So a lot of times we’ll say things just either get him off the phone or to get him off our back or to, we have to be as transparent as we can be as well. Let’s say, you know, the process is going to take some time and not getting misleading information. Because if I’m saying, you know, I just can’t get my boss to agree, they’re going to say, well, I bet you if I get in front of him, I can get them to a great, you know, so if I’m not giving them the truth, I think that that sends the wrong message as well because they’ve got to know, like, and trust me as well. Sure, they want to make the sale, but they want to make the sale if someone that they’re going to respect as well, because regardless if they’re going to make a commission on this or not, they’ve got to feel comfortable and have good, uh, unethical relationship that, you know what, maybe that’s not the best organization that I want to be selling to it.

Chris: People know that they’re in their territory and they’ve got no choice. Sometimes they’re the only ones that are selling that piece of equipment in that area, but you’ve got to be fair to them as well.

Jason: Yeah, and I, and I think that’s important for salespeople to just always ask questions, always dig as deep as possible. If you’re getting the kind of end of phone call, send me information, we need to think about it or I need to meet, you know, ask questions to go deeper and deeper. And then you know, really, you know, because prospects, customers aren’t going to think like you are where they need to be honest and I need to share exactly what’s going on because that’s not how they view it yet. Maybe it’s too early in the relationship with a salesperson. So a salesperson just needs to ask and make sure they understand. I mean one of the things is, you know, I see a lot of people get the, well just send me an email with some information. I’ll look at it and then I’ll get back to you. And then what I found after years of doing is I would ask people, I said, Hey, I can happily send you information, but is it information and research that you want to do? And then we can talk. Or is this just your nice way of getting rid of me because you don’t want to tell me, no one hurt my feelings, but you’re really not interested.

Chris: Remember I don’t hurt your feelings. You allow your feelings to be hurt.

Jason: Right. I couldn’t hurt the prospect’s feelings, but you know, they’re probably not as, uh, as self-aware as you and I, uh, Chris, thank you for being on the show. Where’s the best place for people to find you? Find the information you have out there. I also know that you’ve done a lot of video or a TV appearance is the last stuff like that. So where’s the best place for people to find you?

Chris: Yeah, you go to my website, www.chriscebollero.com check out my books on Amazon. I’ve got three great books that just came out. One or not came out. They’d been out. One is ultimate leadership. 10 rules for success. The rules I had to develop to be a good leader, ultimate success, which is the skills you need to have to be a great leader. And last October, Jason, I put out a great book, advice to my younger self and if we can go back in a time machine to our 25-year-old self, what’s the one piece of advice that we would give ourselves to help our journey to be a lot easier? What’s really great about this book is that I had a lot of my peers in the United States write the chapters, so I just wrote one and then I have 11 great authors that put their expertise Danny Creed who’s been on your show actually wrote one of the chapters, you know? So it really is advice from a lot of great people and whether you’re 25 years old and looking to start your career or you’re 45 years old and you want to change it, get some great advice. But uh, that’s how you can find me best.

Jason: On that note, I wanted to give you the last word. What’s one message you want to put out there? One piece of advice or maybe it’s something that you discovered when you were going through that process of what you would tell your younger self. What do you want to leave the audience with?

Chris: You’re not as important as you think you are. So you’ve gotta be able to earn your leadership every day. If you think that you’re good, then you’re going to let somebody down. You know, you’ve gotta be able to understand that you’re going to make mistakes and then you reflect on those mistakes and that’s where you gain your wisdom.

Jason: Perfect. Thanks, Chris for being here.

Chris: Alrighty. Thanks. Let me come back again and we’ll have another great talk.

Jason: Yeah, we’ll do a recap. Maybe you and Danny, all of us, one big group conversation could do that. And for everyone out there, if you want to get the transcript for this, plus Chris’s links, go to cutterconsultinggroup.com you can find everything there under the podcast page. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.