Practicing Sales Differentiation to Overtake the Competition

people don't know how to buy what you're selling. They don't know how to buy garage doors.
The worst thing we tell salespeople is you're selling to educated buyers. It's not true.
They have access to information, no question. But we know more about the world of potential solutions in our industry than they do.
And that's one of my favorite questions to ask salespeople. Who knows more about the world of potential solutions in your industry? And I've never had one individual say, oh, the people I sell to know much more about the world of potential solutions in my industry.

It's never happened.

And so that gives us, in my opinion, an obligation and an opportunity.

The obligation is to help people make an informed buying decision.

The opportunity is to shape buyer decision criteria because they don't know how to buy what you're selling.

Now, that doesn't mean we get to lecture them. The idea is we ask them questions, lead them down a path so they see what we're seeing.
Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.
Hey guys, welcome back to the home service expert. I've got a little cold today, so apologize.
I've got a very awesome guest. I watched him speak on stage actually a couple years ago when I was there with Cody.
Lee Saltz here and came out with a book. I want to say it's been, I don't know, Sell Different came out, what, six months ago? Came out in September.
September. So yeah, right around six months.
You sent me a copy. Well, let's go over some of your accolades here.
Lee is an expert at sales management, entrepreneurship, social media marketing, strategic planning, sales operations, leadership training, new business development. A lot of things.
He's a sales architect, sales management strategist. Started that in 97.
Revenue accelerator, sales management strategist started that in 97 revenue accelerator chief executive officer started that in 2011 or present business journal featured columnist 2014 or present lots of other things lots of advisory boards he has authored five best-selling books including sales differentiation 19 powerful strategies 19 Powerful Strategies to Win More Deals and Prices. Oh, look at that.
There you go. A columnist with Business Journal serves on an editorial advisory board of Sales and Marketing Management Magazine and is program advisor to Kansas State University's Strategic Selling Institute.
Built the largest LinkedIn sales management group, sales management executives with over 300,000 executive members. We're over 350 now.
350,000. Also been quoted and featured on the Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times, Dallas Morning News, Selling Power, Sales and Marketing Management, ABC News, MSNBC, and many more.

We've done a podcast in the past, but since then you've come up with a new book.

You're a speaker, I think all around the world.

Let's just dive in.

Why don't you tell us, you know, you signed this book for me and you put, Tommy, energize your deals.

And I just, after reading it,

I felt like that might be the next name of your next book.

Well, I am about to sign with Harper Collins for a new one,

but that is not the title.

Okay. Maybe I was wrong.

So energize your deals.

So talk to me a little bit about what you've been doing here.

Tell me a little bit about this book. Tell me why this book is different.
Tell me about some of your latest speaking gigs, everything like that. You got it.
So sell different is entirely based on, has nothing to do with what you're selling and everything about the way that you go about selling. And I find that so many salespeople, so many executives, so many business owners are hypersensitive about differentiating the product, the service, the technology that they're selling and don't spend enough time thinking about the way that they go about selling.
And I'll tell you, Tommy, my experience, how you sell trumps what you sell all day long. The experience that you create in every step of the process, as a matter of fact, I challenge salespeople all the time to look at every touchpoint, every interaction that they have with a prospect and client, and ask themselves this question.
What is it that I can do different than the competition that my buyers will find meaningful? So it's not different for the sake of different, right? I could be wearing a pink shirt and a pink hat, and it would definitely be a different interview. But would any of our listeners find that meaningful to them? And of course, the answer is no.
So the key is meaningfully different. And the other lens to look at this through, and this is where sell different really comes in, is we look at the competitive landscape out there.
And I have this client in the steel industry, and the CEO refuses to use the word competitor. I thought this was fascinating, his rationale.
He said, why am I going to elevate the competition and say that they play on the same level that I do?

We refer to them as other players. So I thought that was a very interesting mindset for the salespeople to have.
And the idea is when you look at those other players out there and the way that they go about selling their product, services, and technology, you look at their process and say

I'll bet you there is something I can do

all along that journey that will allow me to outsmart, outmaneuver, and outsell them all day long. I'm working with a group now, and they sell technology for restaurants and for grocers.
and we looked at a competitor, I'm going to use that word, a competitor proposal.

And what was interesting, we really jumped off the page was the email address.

It was an AOL address, Tommy.

No one has an AOL address anymore other than our grandma and grandpa.

Exactly.

So what that said was, we're dealing with buyers that are not overly sophisticated. So what the competitors were basically saying, here's a price list, here's a menu, pick what you want.
And we said, we've got an opportunity here in how we communicate our solution in writing and put together a proposal in layman's terms. So it's understandable for someone that is not technology-minded.
So you take this price list, I have no idea what any of these things are, why I need them, what they even do, and here's a thoughtful narrative that says, here's where you are today, here's where we're going to migrate you to, here's why we're going to do that, and here are the results that you can expect. And so that's what I mean when I talk about doing something different than the competition to outsmart, outmaneuver, and outsell them.
So I read this, it's been probably four months, and the way that I do it is I circle and put a lot of stuff in here. Right in the beginning, you talk about three sales takeaways.
Price is not the primary decision factor when people are making a buying decision. Number two, know your audience.
Number three, identify your business. Your business is meaningful.
Differentiators. So yesterday, I was scrambling, and I found another book without my notes.
And I couldn't find this book anywhere because it was under my desk because I had it there for this exact interview. And so I'm scrambling, going through it, just looking through it and trying to get notes again.
And I open up this new book and I'm going through right from the beginning. And instead of circling it, I put check marks.
You can see, I just see i just put check yeah yeah and i happened to walk into luke's office yesterday and he had a meeting going with all of our door salesmen and i hear this guy from tucson his name is leonard great guy he might be watching he goes customers will not pay some of our. They're just not used to these price hikes.

They got competitors selling it, sometimes half the price.

Sometimes we're literally double the price.

And I stayed in there and just listened.

No one knew I was in the room.

And I walked back in there with your book.

And I said, guys, I want you to read this book, number one.

Number two is I read the three things I just read you.

And I said, I will come up with a, I want to call it an investor special. And we are going to sell oranges when everyone sells apples to apples.
I said, we are going to put the best spring. We're going to put a better rollers, a second strut, an operator bracket and say, we will not sell that door.
We have trademarked things that we put out, but we made it affordable for you. We've got an investor special that won't fall apart in two years.
And if you want to do that, we can get competitive on the price. But I will never make this about price.
And it's so hard. It's so hard to try to drill this into salespeople's minds is i have customers that call me every day i have technicians that call me we have 180 technicians not to mention the installers and the salesmen they call me up and they go we were a thousand dollars more than our competitor but they went with us and i'm like well did we show up the same day did we we have better parts? Did we give a better warranty?

And I just wanted to really dissect this for you since you've got way, way, way more experience than I have.

I'm a garage door company.

We service 10,000 customers a month.

That's all I know.

You do differentiation.

You do different sales tactics for so many companies.

What do you say to a guy? And listen, this is preaching to the choir here all these guys out here that have home service companies that say we got to compete on price we've got to be within a certain margin some people say this leave that they go let's go out and get 20 estimates and try to be right in the middle and just try to make sure we're keeping up with the joneses basically and i think that's bullshit and i want to hear your answer to it so the first thing that that i would do with that one salesperson that you referenced yep put my arm around him and say let's take a walk out to the parking lot which car is yours i guarantee you it's not the cheapest one in the lot how come you could certainly buy a cheap car that has four wheels a steering wheel has heat probably even has a radio for a fraction of what that salesperson paid for the car that he's driving and then he's going to go on to explain all the differences all the reasons why he bought that car instead of a Hyundai or a Yugo, whatever the cheaper options are out there. And what he's really saying to you is, I don't see the meaningful value in what I'm selling.
As a matter of fact, I tell people that all the time. When someone pushes back on your price, they're not objecting to you.
They're giving you constructive criticism, right? If you think of two sides of a scale, you have price on one side, value on the other. You've not demonstrated enough meaningful value to support the price you put in front of me.
Value. And so in his mind, he goes, well, they're quoting the same door.
He goes, they're quoting the same door for the difference is what i always tell people and you know you familiar with a guy named howard partridge i know the name yep you know he puts on a little seminar i was at last week i happened to be in houston and he said did you talk about your reputation did you talk about your experience the history of your company the training that you guys provide of 60 days before you're allowed to touch the door? Did you talk about the systems you have in place to ensure quality that you're going to be there on Christmas Eve? If they break down, did you talk about your guarantees? Unlike any other, and that's where I get into the apples. And my question for you is he'd say, listen, we're looking atmw same year one's white one's black right you really can't tell me there's a different value here because of the same vehicles unless you tell me there's a better warranty with one and somebody might say i'll take my chances so realistically there's a lot of guys commenting here what do we do what are we going, the process, the product.
Where's the biggest things that we could do? Like a list that you say, here's what you teach salespeople. Number one, do you have like that broken down? Absolutely.
So I'm going to give you a website address. It's going to be hard for our listeners to remember.
You ready? Yes. Targetclientprofile.com.
And there's a worksheet there. Targetclientprofile.com.
And you may say, oh, you mean an ideal client? And I don't. If you think of what an ideal client profile says to salespeople, it says, if all the stars were to align, this is the kind of business we'd love to have.
It's like buying a lottery ticket.

A target client profile says, this is who will perceive meaningful value in what we're offering. So some bad news for your listeners, not every prospect is right for your business.
And so the idea is gain clarity. And if you download this worksheet, there's nine components to it that will help you have clarity on who will perceive meaningful value in what you're selling and that's where every sales and business development minute should be invested in the pursuit of those opportunities you know i shared this story in the book where i i got this inspiration this passion if you will for differentiation.
The baseball? No, not baseball. No, 1986.
I'm a junior in high school, and I need a summer job. And a family friend has this idea, revolutionary idea, for pick-up and delivery dry cleaning.
Remember that? That's in the- Yeah, that's later on in it. Yeah.
Yes. Pick-up and delivery dry cleaning.
and that that's in the. Yeah, that's later on in it.
Yeah. Yes.
Pickup and delivery dry cleaning.

And I got hired as a driver slash part-time salesperson.

And so I really hope people would be willing to pay more for this service because the guy

that started the business didn't own a dry cleaning store.

He said, I think it's a hardship for people to take their dirty clothes to the dry cleaner

and then return there to pick them up when they're clean.

So this was a cost on top of cleaning your clothes.

Thank you. it's a hardship for people to take their dirty clothes to the dry cleaner and then return there to pick them up when they're clean.
So this was a cost on top of cleaning your clothes. And Tommy, you read the book so you know the answer.
And for our listeners, think about this, would people be willing to pay more for that service? And some of you are saying, absolutely. Some of you are saying, no way.
And the answer was some people.

See, where I lived at the time is Marlboro, New Jersey. And if you're not familiar with New Jersey, it's central New Jersey.

You drew on a map north, south and put a midpoint east, west, put a midpoint. That's where Marlboro is.

About an hour and a half from Philadelphia, about an hour and a half from Manhattan.

And in 1986, you know, when people went to work in those cities, they wore business attire. They wore suits, not like Tommy and I are dressed today.
And those people that were commuting all that way, so at three hours a day, wore business suits and didn't have someone at home that could help take the cleaning to and fro, thought the idea was brilliant. They wish they'd come up with it.
But those who work locally didn't dress for work or had someone that could help out, thought we were nuts. Why would I ever pay more to have my clothes cleaned? And very quickly, we learned the importance of knowing who the right audience is for what you're selling.

And a lot of times the reason the price issue comes up is we're going after the wrong opportunities. They don't have the needs, the interests, the desires where our meaningful value resides to justify it.

And so that's where that target client profile comes in,

is to have the true clarity of where you fit and pursue those opportunities and cast the other ones aside you know lee it's interesting you mentioned this because a lot of people go on these facebook forums especially like drives versus north america and these ones in my industry and they go i can't get clients to by springs at 300 now my costs for my best spring my cost is 145 okay so of course we're you know a gross profit a good one is 65 a decent one is 55 i mean people don't understand gross profit they don't understand financials so i don't want to dig into that right now but they a lot of companies go, I just double my cost. You'll never have a good infrastructure.
You'll never have a business if that's what you're doing. There's no way that you could do that with your fixed overhead, unless your wife's working and you're working out of your house and you're not paying or anything.
So I always tell people, where are you marketing? A lot of times I always tell people, if you're looking for a McDonald's customer, you got it. But if you want that high-end steakhouse customer that's willing to spend $100 per one meal with a glass of wine, you got to know where they're hanging out.
And I think that's what this target client profile is going to help people with. Absolutely.
And then, you know, people say, listen, I don't want to spend a lot of money in marketing. Well, if you you don't want to spend a lot of money you're not going to get a lot of people that want to spend money with you and it's not a lot of money but it's it's like you only want to be on groupon and living social and a little bit of facebook marketplace and you want to get leads for free but you also want these customers to spend a fortune with you.
I think that I found is Google has the best clientele for my industry. People, they're called demand clients.
They call up and they say, you know, I just need it done right now. I don't really care.
You know, my dad always said three things, right? You want it done now on your timeline. You want it done right.
And you want it done for cheap. You can't get all three.
Pick two out of the three. We'll never get all three.
That's right. You know, I liked in the book when you talked about, and I'm going to dig into some other stuff, but you said the baseball story too.
Your son had an opportunity to go to a different school and you had a couple of people trying to recruit him. And this is crazy because I'm working on a book with recruiting.
So right before this, I was talking about your stories. And none of them were bad.
But the one guy actually had a parking spot for you. And they made you feel special.
They let you meet future people. It was a relationship.
It was like you felt like part of the family. Absolutely.
So tell me a little bit about what that meant to you and what the difference was and why that was such a decided factor, because we all talk about sales and forget this. I'm going to tell you right now, I get one top guy.
If I recruit one top guy, he will bury four other guys and he'll do it effortlessly. He's born with it.
He knows how to eye contact. He knows how to profile people like no other.
He doesn't know he's doing it. She doesn't know she's doing it, but they do it.
And I think so often we go, I need more clients, I need more clients. I'm not a big person of firing.
I'm a big person of coaching. But some people are just born with talent.
Why not do the unfair advantage? And this is what I'm talking about. Everybody should think about sell different to your internal customers absolutely yeah the story you're referencing is in chapter one so i have two sons so i have a daughter as well who recently graduated from college and my older son when he was in high school had aspirations of playing college baseball and my wife shannon and i and I kept saying, hey, Stephen, you got to set up college visits.

And he's a little slow in doing so.

And that summer, he was asked to play on our city's American Legion baseball team.

And if you're not familiar with American Legion, this is where all the college scouts come

out looking for a top talent.

And during a one-week tournament, Stephen hit four home runs and three doubles.

No longer were we saying, hey, Stephen, set of college visits, the colleges were coming to us. And if you think about college coaches and recruiting, they can't differentiate what they're selling.
And it is a sale. They're trying to sell you on their institution.
But they can't add a major. They can't move a campus.
They can't build a dorm. Gosh, they can't even change the meal plan.
But they do have an opportunity to differentiate the way that they sell, the way they recruit, if you will. And some coaches are absolutely fantastic at it, and some not so good, we'll say.
And the story, Tommy, that you were alluding to, you know, when you first go and visit a college campus, as soon as you cross the border onto the campus, your blood pressure jumps 30 points. It's not the tuition.
It's that you can't find a place to park. Every single parking lot on a college campus says, park here, and we're going to tell you what's going to be for a fine institution.
Well, this one school we visited, we pulled into the parking lot, and there's a spot with Stephen's name on it. Stopped us dead

in our tracks. We go inside.
There's an agenda for the day printed, Stephen's name right at the top.

And what did it cost this university to do these two things, a penny for the paper and ink? But

think about how they made us feel. They made us feel like Stephen was the only athlete they're

recruiting anywhere on the planet for any sport that they offered. Of course, that wasn't the case,

But that's how they made us feel. And every one of you that's watching this podcast has this same opportunity, and there's something that we're guilty of.
See, all day long, we're talking to prospects and clients, and it becomes robotic. It becomes rote.
It's just another call. It's just another meeting.
It's just another garage door. We forget to make people feel special.
And what that college coach did, and there were a few that did it very, very well, made us feel special. And that comes back to what we talked about earlier.
In every touchpoint, every interaction you have while you're selling garage doors, what is it you can do different than the competition that your buyers will find meaningful? That's the question that you need to ask yourself. And I can't answer that for you.
And I'm guessing, Tommy, that a 10-minute meeting with the team, they'd come up with a bunch of ideas, things that they could do that would create a completely different impression. I'll give you a recent story.
My wife and I just this week celebrated our 25-year wedding anniversary. Oh, good job.
So thank you. Thank you.
And I wanted to get her a new ring to celebrate her anniversary. And here in town, there's a nice ring designer.
We met with him multiple times. The way he handled the process was so robotic.
He was a ring designer, wasn't just buying off the shelf. And the last straw was, remember, married 25 years.
I was there there for these meetings he sends my wife a text asking if she's made a decision and what her friend thought of it i'm the friend i mean he didn't come across like he cared he didn't come across in a way that my wife found helpful because she came in saying, I don't know what I want. I have no idea what I want.
And the reason we went to a ring designer was here's someone that could create anything. And he had no way to go through the process and narrow it down.
Then we went to this other store in town and they're a blend of doing some custom work as well as call it off the shelf. And I don't believe their jewelry was any better, but we bought from them.
It was the experience that this woman created. A, she came across genuine.
She cared. She took the time to get to know Sharon, her likes or dislikes, showed her different opportunities.
And we bought from her. It had nothing to do with the price.
It had nothing to do with the product itself. It was the process that we went through.
Now, with the baseball story, I mentioned I have two sons. My younger son, who's on a bus right now to Kansas, he's playing college baseball as well.
There was a school that had recruited Steven that made him feel like a number. Now, this was the school that Stephen had said, this is where I'm going before the process began.
And there were seven schools that were recruiting him. This school was the last on the list.
They were number seven. They didn't get rid of a major.
They didn't get rid of a dorm. It was the way that they sold.
And David, my younger son, he saw this whole experience that his brother went through. That school wasn't even on his list to consider because of the recruiting experience.
So when you make someone feel like a number, you don't just blow this one deal. It's like the old shampoo commercial.
They told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on. It negatively impacts your brand.
Yeah, you're right. You know, last night, we had an upset customer I heard Luke dealing with, and they demanded that they only pay a certain price because of all the mishaps.
And I listened to it, and it was like, how could we make that many mistakes? And of course, I want to say, supply chain, there's a virus coming around, there's all kinds of things. But the lack of communication on our end was just dumbfounded.
And I'm the type of guy that says, and Lee, I love your perspective on this. A lot of people say we need to slow down our growth.
We need to get things right first. Whenever I've slowed down, people go, finally, time to relax, Time to chill, finally a break, time to take a vacation.
I've never been a fan of letting off the gas because nothing gets done. Either you're going forward or you're working in reverse.
That's it. And I feel like it's more about, I wrote something yesterday on my whiteboard, literally at 11 o'clock at night.
And I just said wrote it for myself i said if you're going to grow at 80 to 100 a year and be able to step out you need a new design design the life you want with grace happiness enjoy and slow down to do that you're going to need to hire the right people motivate them show them appreciation and watch them meaning step back because they're going to do things better than me and so i'm not the type of person that i'm going to slow down i'm just going to make sure we're ready for some of the obstacles headed our way and i make a lot of mistakes and that customer that was a mistake but it really hit me kind of hard on like 10 000 customers that's one that hit me like and i'm like but i'm only one person i got to change the system i got to change the automations i got to change the the personal relationships but i want to solve it all sometimes what do you say and i know i can't that's impossible right and there's a lot of people here that are doing 5 million, 7 million, 3 million.

What do you say to people that are just,

they're kind of running around here trying to figure things out.

And it's scary.

Our prices went up 140% last year.

Literally it went from a hundred dollars to two 40,

like more than that.

I mean,

it went from 5,000 to 12,000.

It's crazy.

So what do you tell these guys that are guys and gals and businesses that are just scrambling?

Yeah.

The word is driving.

You got to keep driving the business and you have to have a team that you hire that can

help support the growth, that can put the processes in place, the technology in place,

the systems in place.

But like you said, you're either growing or you're dying.

There's no standing still.

There's no floating.

No.

It was funny.

I don't know. in place, the technology in place, the systems in place.
But like you said, you're either growing or you're dying. There's no standing still.
There's no floating. No.
It was funny. I remember as a kid, when I'd look at a business and you could name any business and I just thought, okay, so you get the business going and then you just have it forever.
That's what I thought as a young kid. Come to find out.
And there's a great line from Mark Cuban Work Like someone is working just as hard To take it all away from you If you let off the gas You're just inviting others to clean your cloth And I'm not saying it isn't painful I don't say that at all It is painful, it is hard, it is challenging But you really don't have a choice you know there's a book that i literally picked up just i was going through looking at books i could i couldn't read that what is that it says how's the culture in your kingdom it's about a guy that was at 28 years at uh mcdonald's or disney world geez okay that's a little different than mcdonald's i'm always quoting ray crock you know back in the day mcdonald's was something super special i'm not going to say it's not anymore they own more real estate than anybody in the world except for the catholic church but it says with traditional management training we measure productivity revenue cost, and other key performance indicators or KPIs. The truth is that KPIs are simply results or lagging indicators of running a successful business.
It is people who deliver these results and in order for them to perform at their best level, they need to be in an environment where they feel supported and encouraged along the way. This is called organizational culture.
Culture is an all-encompassing environment within which we all live, work, and play. It's the factor that will most influence on our mood, attitude, and motivation.
You will see your KPIs improve faster as your team members become more engaged in their jobs. And what I'm realizing is, as the CEO, president, owner of this business, I'm really, I'm so tactical still.
And I need to just, I'm looking for the perfect system that I can reach out to 30 people a day. And I don't want to ever criticize, tell anybody anything they need to do.
I just want to say, I want to catch them doing something right. I want to say, aha, happy birthday.
I want to say, say you just set a record i want to spend an hour a day making videos and just saying dude did i ever tell you that you're important that you're phenomenal that you mean a lot to me you know there's 400 people in this organization and i haven't had a chance to tell you and i got to tell you today that you impress me you make me feel so much better about everything i do i fight the war i feel sick today i didn't want to come in but there's never a day that i feel sick unless that you know i don't want to put anybody in exposure but i i've got a cold that's all it is but i feel like i gotta be this now my purpose in life is to be a cheerleader It's crazy but i want to be kissing babies and just giving speeches and motivating and i'm getting the right people on the bus as jim

collins would say yes what is your take on some of this so a couple things um i'll start at the

end yeah the right seats on the bus and that's evolutionary based on where your business is the

right person today may not be the right person tomorrow and evaluating your needs relative to the team that you have. That's certainly a big part of it.
And I mentioned before about making clients feel special as a part of sell different. Same thing with your employees.
You know, what do they call it the the great resignation or something like that right

now where people are actively looking to be elsewhere you know lee real quick i just got this yesterday let me read this to you it says you're asking a pretty high salary with someone with no experience and the guy says well this job is going to be super hard since i don't know what I'm doing.

That's awesome. You got to send that to me.
I love it. So you need, you need to make your employees feel special.
You know, there's nothing worse. And we've all had that in our personal relationships and business where you don't feel valued.
And when you're not valued, you want to be someplace else. And so when you look at today and people picking their heads up going, oh, should I be doing something else? If you're not treating your people well, and I'm not just talking about how you're paying them, how you treat them, they're going to look to be elsewhere.
I tell executives all the time, they'll say, oh, so-and-so resigned. And they focus on what the other opportunity is that they're moving to.
My question for them is, why were they looking? Or why did they take the call from the recruiter? Something was deficient in the relationship that they have with your organization and maybe with you personally that allowed that to happen, that led them to look on the job boards or to take that call from the recruiter what was it because once they've resigned the game's already over i mean you can throw some money at it and get them to stick around they'll only quit again in a few months when they find something else for a few more bucks and why are they looking to be elsewhere a lot of people hate the word hr human

resources it's because someone says a bad word or sexual harassment we go straight to this negative

stuff but they're involved with payroll culture they're involved with hiring they're involved

with exit interviews and understanding they're involved with net promoter scores internally

and you can do a lot by understanding and surveying a blind survey within a company

and i gotta tell you you're so good at sales and i'm really switching this whole interview

Thank you. scores internally.
And you can do a lot by understanding and surveying a blind survey within a company. And I got to tell you, you're so good at sales.
And I'm really switching this whole interview on just internal customers instead of regular clients. And one of the greatest things in this book is you talk about the first steps to develop a sell-diver strategy is to create a list of 10 clients.
Jamie, you have been a client of ours for a number of years. So you're familiar with what we offer and the quality of what we offer.
May I ask you a few questions? If you were me, what associations would you be active in? What conferences would you attend? What events would you go to? What would you be reading to meet more people like you? A lot of this book, you really go after asking customers for referrals. I mean, one of the things you say in the book too here is think of getting referrals as a campaign, not merely an answer to a question.
Can you elaborate on what you're talking about with some of this? Yeah. So the, if you were me, I actually don't look at as a referral program.
I look at that as getting Intel. You think of how hard it is to bring in a client.
And now that they're with you, they've seen the value that you represent again, coming back to that target client profile, they bought, we know they know some people, they know lots of people. And what we're trying to get, you get you know Tommy you said before you're talking about some operators and where they advertise I'd love to know if this is someone that fits my target client criteria where are they hanging out that I should be to meet more people like them that's the gist of it and it could certainly turn into a referral conversation but the intent is to get some intel from them where would you be so for example i have a client in the garbage space in minnesota every homeowner every business contracts for their own trash removal so if you want to get more of these homeowners buying from you where are they is there an association an association that they're in? Are there events that I should be present at? And I'll tell you a great story from this.
And I share it in the book. I had this one coaching client and the task was to have 10 of these conversations over two weeks and he got seven done.
In one of these conversations, he found out about a technology council in his own backyard that he didn't even know existed. The members of that council were CIOs that he had been cold calling unsuccessfully.
He'd never been able to reach any of them. And his client says, you know, I could bring you as my guest if you'd like.
Yeah, of course. And then a couple of months ago, he had the opportunity to present at this council that he didn't know existed until he asked the if you were me question with a group of CIOs he had been trying to reach through traditional prospecting and had failed, been unable to reach them.
And the beauty of that question is, what are we asking the viewers to spend to put this into practice? Nothing. Nothing.
And so as a business operator, when I look at my target client profile, I'm just thinking this sequentially. I now have clarity who's going to perceive meaningful value in what I offer.
And then I've sold my products, my services, my technology, whatever it is that you might be selling. I've sold it to my target client.
I want to know where more of them are. And if we ask them, you're going to find they're very gracious.
There's been studies that have been done. People love to help, but they have to be asked.
If you aren't posing that question, same thing with referrals. If you're not asking for referrals, you'll get the the active ones which are because you did a nice job and someone had a need and they'd send them your

way the passive ones where you ask for them you're not going to get them very often because people

need to be asked if they're going to provide all you got to do is ask it's my favorite thing

whenever i get any successful guy to the front a newer guy i said what'd you do he said

I'll head to the front a newer guy i said what'd you do he said all i had to do was ask you ask your kids how'd you get a prom date i had to ask what a concept crazy it's crazy there's a good book called no bs about marketing to the affluent and he talks about just like getting into boat magazines and like high-end people read about their private planes and if that's your client there's no better spot and it's such a small group absolutely and you know i have 10 000 clients i could probably have a hundred the dream 100 list is a dream 100 ultimately chet holmes talks about your dream 100 right 100 clients will pay enough that 10 000 customers will do it's something that i'm looking to kind of switch to just big clients you know i thought this was really interesting the myth of closing problems chapter seven yeah my sales people tell me about deals they are pursuing and how confident they feel about winning them then they get to the final stage of the new client acquisition process and the deals unravel. Some decision influencers stop responding to them.
Others develop a litany of concerns, objections, and the stalls of deals go nowhere. For the deals we were able to win, we have to drop the prices to unacceptable levels.
All that becomes summed up as we have a closing problem. And here, I wrote this in the back.
I always write in the back of the books. I wrote this as gold.
After hearing this, I thank the executives for sharing this information with me and proceed to disagree with their assessment of the problem. Based on what you shared with me, you don't have a closing problem, I tell them.
Closing is a symptom of the actual issue you are experiencing. Puzzled by response, they ask, what is the actual issue my salespeople are experiencing? This leads to a lengthy conversation about the foundational issue across the sales profession.
The root cause isn't at the finish line. It's about winning the deal.
Rather, the problem resides at the starting line, at the handling of the discovery phase of the client acquisition process. A discovery different strategy is a solution to the problem and then you go into a lot more and literally i got examples include frustration about the cleanliness of their carpeting you know i've got a lot of stuff underlined in the whole thing but awesome the people listening now i'm sure go i just don't have the right closers i I mean, you hear that every day.
It's a close and close, close. And there are people that talk themselves out of the close.
They ask for the sale, they get it, and they talk themselves out of it. There are things that happen at the end.
Yes. But for the most part, you're seeing the start line, not the finish line.
Explain that. So when you talk about that initial consultation that consultation that you have the discovery meeting you mentioned before a conference that you went to last week and you gave some examples did you tell them about our experience did you tell them about this did you tell them about that and the challenge with that is it's not a conversation it's a lecture so we're in that discovery meeting yeah i told I told them this.
I told them that. They didn't care.
But if we ask thought-provoking questions during discovery, help them to think through it. So for example, how long do you plan to be in the home? I plan to be here for the rest of my life.
And then you can lead them down a path of the way they want that garage door to function. What are your expectations of the provider that you work with for this door installation? What background do you expect them to have to do this type of work? I'm ad-libbing.
Obviously, you can be much more specific in your world, but I want them to be in conversation with me rather than me lecturing them on how wonderful my company is because everybody's going to come in saying, oh, we're the best at putting in garage doors. But if we ask some thoughtful, insightful questions, all of a sudden we start to set ourselves apart.
I'll give you a great example. A few years ago, I replaced all the lighting in my home, all the recessed lighting with LED bulbs.
Have you done that, Tommy? Yeah. Yeah.
that at a couple even the building and why did you do it right to reduce costs right and reduce the light lasts forever and the light lasts forever tax right off yeah there you go and did you know the city of denver did that with their traffic lights and now they're getting sued i didn't know that yeah and the reason is denver gets a lot of snow and the incandescent bulb serves two purposes to communicate a traffic signal and melt the snow. And the LED bulbs don't get hot enough to melt the snow.
So now there's accidents and drivers are suing the city for making a bad decision. Wow.
People don't know how to buy what you're selling. They don't know how to buy garage doors.
The worst thing we tell salespeople is you're selling to educated buyers. It's not true.
They have access to information, no question. But we know more about the world of potential solutions in our industry than they do.
And that's one of my favorite questions to ask salespeople. Who knows more about the world of potential solutions in your industry? And I've never had one individual say, oh, the people I sell to know much more about the world of potential solutions in my industry.
It's never happened. And so that gives us, in my opinion, an obligation and an opportunity.
The obligation is to help people make an informed buying decision. The opportunity is to shape buyer decision criteria because they don't know how to buy what you're selling.
Now, that doesn't mean we get to lecture them. The idea is we ask them questions, lead them down a path so they see what we're seeing.
So, for example, if you've ever been to court, you watch court television. By the way, best news I've received, best part of the Super Bowl, Tommy, is that the original law and order is coming back i didn't like the other brands as much that original one that's the magic for me and if you think about what an attorney does so well they ask questions in a

specialized way because they can't testify to paint a picture for the decision-making group

jury so they see exactly what the attorney wants them to see if you've ever gone to a psychiatrist psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or a psychiatrist or attorney wants them to see. If you've ever gone to a psychiatrist or a psychologist, you know they don't give you the answers.
They ask you questions, lead you down a path until you see exactly what they see. And that's what we have to do so well when we're selling for the company.
Ask thoughtful, insightful questions. I hadn't thought of that.

That's a really good point.

And that was communicated through a question

rather than lecture.

One of the things I try to do,

I was at an event six years ago

and there was a sales coach up top there,

top speaking, and Rodney Webb.

He's a big basketball player.

And one of the things I learned a long time ago is always try to answer a question with a question. So if you were to ask me something like, how much is something like this? I could say something like, well, Lee, I'm just curious what makes you ask a question like that? Because we do have.
So practice questions on questions. Yes.
And one of the things I've got this gold chain that I'm getting for all my trainees when they hear me. You wear it and each one of them say something.
So one of them says, use my name 15 times. Either Mr.
Salce or Lee. Yeah.
Whatever you allow me to call you. I'll start you i'll start with mr and then one of them is going to say always use yes sir and no sir one of them says make me feel special but ultimately our goal is to have a conversation and absolutely in 2008 i had the top guy of valpac the whole country he I don't know how we met, but he said, we have a competition.
Me and another guy, we go out together a lot. He goes, we see how much we get the customer talking.
We do one-hour sessions. He goes, if we get them talking over 50 minutes, we've never not made a sale.
Absolutely. He goes, 40 to 50 minutes, we're about 70% close rate.
If it if it's 30 30 just because they're not very you know maybe they're a d type person they're like hey guys i'm busy it's tough and it's interesting because you're asking questions the whole time and allowing them but one of the things you do is the non-verbal cues so lee you want your house to be safe can you tell me about the safety that you're considering considering But while making this choice and it's funny because i've already asked you a couple We want to make sure to get this door safe make sure you don't have any problems in the future And you're nodding your head as you're saying that and those things They start to just sure. Yeah, let's go ahead and get that done And you just kind of you follow you can't help yourself it's like yeah but you got to practice these little things and they're so often we're building a new training center 8 300 square feet and i got dogs that look exactly like dogs with the names of the dogs and they're just stuffed animals but i want to learn the names and say max oh my god i love max and the you get to know the dog you go ask about the harley and you got to genuinely be interested in these things i love dogs i love talking about motorcycles but i'm like listen guys every single great pastime is in a man and woman's garage it's very easy to find commonalities in fact i came up with a new line lee how slow can you go okay because a lot of us try to get to the point oh you got a broken spring here let me go through some options yes my secret sauce is let's try to take two to three hours at that call i know i could do it in a half an hour if i really wanted to if you give me eight jobs in a day i gotta i gotta have windshield time so i want to give two to three jobs and say this lee tell me a little bit about the history of this garage when's the last time you had it looked at and here's the secret question what's going on with the garage i garage door? I see you got a broken spring, but I'm not going to go out.
I'm just going to say, what's going on with it? I've seen customers tell me this late. The store is a piece of junk.
We've talked about replacing it for the last three years. I think I just want one of those more modern window-looking doors.
If I would have said it's a broken spring, not a big deal. I got the springs on the truck.
You might have said, well, you know, money is kind of tight. Maybe we can give it another year.
But if you let the customer just, Hey, listen, Timmy sleeps upstairs. The door is noisy.
It wakes him up every day. I don't know what the issues are, but I definitely want to get it quiet.
They'll tell you everything you need to know. And you're right.
It needs to be a conversation. And when you're going through, I want to ask you, this is really, really, really important.
Probably the most important question I've asked on the podcast is, what's some of the things you look for when you're hiring? What are the questions you ask? What do you check in references? What kind of personality profiling do you do? Because I could spend 10 years changing a behavior, or I could find somebody and just teach them what to say and do and they've got yeah so i can't be starbucks and try to change and psychologists and get them through like i'm sorry but at the rate i'm trying to grow i can't save people's lives i want to try to find them up at 90 get them to 100 yeah so there's a couple of criteria one, and we just touched upon it, insatiably inquisitive. That's one big one that I'm looking for.
Related to that, a commitment to continuous self-improvement, always looking for ways to improve. So how do you demonstrate that? I mean, inquisitive is easy, but do you ask questions like what are your hobbies do you go to the gym do you read what's the last course you completed are those the kind of questions you're looking for i would ask them a question like i'm assuming you visited my website and then you may see some deer in the headlights no i didn't okay that's a strike against you what's one thing you would change

on our website and why everything and then what i would look for that person to say tommy i was just curious before i make a statement i'm going to ask a question tommy i noticed on your web page that you have this particular aspect what was the thought behind that i want a question not a statement well that's like sell me a pen a lot of people go well it's a beautiful red pen it could actually turn into a pen so the question is well what are you looking how often are you going to use the pen do you lose the pen a lot you write underwater one of the things i realized when a guy took me down this question 15 years ago is he goes you know ask me the question and i said what kind of pen are you looking for he goes i work for nasa he goes now you go from there i said oh so do you plan on being an outer space student he goes yes i guess you're gonna need an anti-gravitational pen to write upside down or a pencil it was exactly remember the seinfeld episode with that oh he did it in seinfeld it was a seinfeld Seinfeld pen. Remember the Seinfeld episode with that? Oh, he did it in Seinfeld? It was a Seinfeld episode with the pen and one of the neighbors had this pen that you could write upside down.
Oh, well, I didn't see. So they must have took it from that.
I'll bet you they did. So I've got this little thing that my buddy brought me yesterday.
I played this for Seinfeld. You've heard of heard of the office of course so there's a scene where he goes we got to do role play and he goes all right he goes so there's dwight and there's the other guy and then there's michael and he goes all right the ring he goes dwight goes ring hey there sir i'm selling product.
What can I help you with? And he goes, well, my name is Bill Buttlicker. And he goes, I can't hear you.
He goes, Buttlicker, our prices have never been lower. Have you seen that scene? No.
Oh, my gosh. I'm going to send you this scene.
You're going to die. But, okay, I want to go back to this.
So you asked about the website. One of the things I always recommend is how do you identify winners? And for me, they've had to be losers in the past, meaning they've been competitive.
And for me, they've had to have practice. I used to work two a days in football.
I worked out twice a day in practice, twice a day to play one game a week. So I was used to practicing.
Practice makes perfect. We didn't call it role play, but we'd scrimmage.
And so there's one thing. I don't have any kids, but when I do have, I hope I have a boy, and I hope I have a girl too.
But I'm going to tell my son, you lost today. That's not good.
I love you no matter what. But we are winners, and we're going to focus on playing the best we can play and if you're like your dad you hate being a sore loser and blaming other people so we'll play wrestling we'll shoot pool we'll go bowling and we'll we'll play golf because you can't blame anybody else on those sports absolutely mindset is super important And when I was gosh i think the boys were probably seven years old i said i'm gonna put skill aside for the moment because you know you're trying to teach them baseball you know hands here feet there all this stuff this isn't a baseball anymore and they looked at me like i was nuts i said this is a And here's what I want you to do.
I want you to splatter it all over the place. And they went from swinging what looked like a wet noodle with the back, kind of like this, all of a sudden their eyes would light up.
We started with that. And that mindset really works when we talk about salespeople and making sure that they're excited and motivated to be selling.
Yes, skill is important. No question.
But also that they're excited to be representing the brand. And I'll tell you, it works.
It counts. You know, I want to ask a few more questions about this.
So one of the things that an ultimate salesman, Chet Holmes used to challenge his people before he passed away,

you'd go interview for him and he'd go, you know, Lee,

here's the thing about you.

Let's be honest with each other.

You're not really cut out for this job.

You don't have what it takes.

Obviously.

I mean, look at some of your answers, your composure.

It's just, you seem nervous.

You're just probably not the right guy for this.

It's a sales job. It's performance pay.
And I think you're just probably not the right guy for this. It's a sales job.

It's performance pay.

And I think you're just,

you're probably going to burn out

during the third month.

And if the person backed down

and they said,

well, I guess it's not for me.

But if somebody said,

what do you mean?

Tommy, I'm the top performer

in every company I've ever worked at.

If you even call my references,

I'll tell you, what are you looking for? And a pro, because i believe i hit every single one of the things you're looking for yeah and you want to get that adversity up front you want to see some fight in there absolutely fight yep i agree 100 i think this is so important the reason i'm asking this is because you know why people really love this podcast is because I ask questions that I'm having problems with in my

business all the time.

And they like a guy came in here and he goes,

Tommy,

he goes,

I remember when your business went from 15 million to 50 million,

you listen to the first 40 episodes.

We get exactly what we need to do that.

He's like,

and now we're working on getting from a hundred to 150 million,

but these are the core questions because I'm literally asking you questions, being greedy. Free consulting.
Why not? Yeah, well, it's great. We were together.
Did I give you a copy of my book, Higher Right, Higher Profits? Yeah. Tell me a little bit about that.
You can go on. I got it right here somewhere.
That's my sales hiring and onboarding methodology. Yeah, no, I actually bought a second copy of it.
I've got so many books here, but tell me a little bit about it real quick. Yeah, so it walks you through the steps.
I'm a big believer there's no such thing as a great salesperson. And I can prove it.
How many of these so-called great salespeople have you hired and they failed in your company? So if you believe in great salespeople, you also must subscribe to one or two of the following. Either the person showed up on your doorstep and completely forgot how to sell, or your company is the worst company on the planet to sell for? What else could it be if you believe in great salespeople?

And the concept that I teach is we need to find the right salespeople

who can be great selling for us.

That's the goal.

And so in the book, I go through the steps to first understand

your own selling environment.

What would cause someone to succeed, fail, or underperform in it? And you put together what I call a performance factor portfolio and said, okay, this is what it takes to be successful here. This is what causes people to fail.
Now I'm going to evaluate candidates, not to see if I can find a great salesperson, someone that meets this criteria. The things that we know cause them to fail we're going to stay away from those the key factors that lead to success that's what i'm going after and so the steps of the evaluation process are tied to evaluating not great salesperson but the match or lack thereof between the candidate and each of those factors i if you can't find it tommy let me know and i'll say i have two copies of it and i'll tell you this i have read it and it's all the notes are in the back of it and i'll tell you sometimes i probably read too many books but the difference is we have three full-time recruiters okay and i have a lot of knowledge i've probably seen over a thousand guys work for me over the last 15 years i'll tell you the biggest problem right now in this hiring environment recruiting you go out and get it it's not hiring you go out and get a number one just like if you're in the army or if you're a sports recruiter number one number two is the best recruiters are your employees you know i told i told, I told my CSR manager and I don't want to call it CSR.

I want to call it sales associate because that's a higher paying job.

I said, I want my people to make $70,000 in that role.

She goes $70,000.

She says, you know how much I make?

And I'm like, well, she makes more than that.

But I said, if they recruit two people a month, that's $3,000.

That's $36,000 a year.

That means they only need to make $35,000 at their main job. That's $71,000.
She said, oh, I didn't know you were talking about recruiting. I said, of course.
There are internal recruiters. Absolutely.
It all connects, right? I mean, if you take great care of your people, they're telling everybody, hey, you need to be working here. How do people find you, Lee? We'll end here here so we can get you uh to your next appointment yeah my website is salesarchitects.com if you're intrigued by what we talked about with sell different it's available on amazon and hardcover kindle and audiobook and i narrated the audiobook and if you go to selldifferencebook.com you can download the first chapter either in print or in audio and there's a video series that goes with it.
If you buy a copy of the book, wherever you do, come back to selldifferencebook.com, sign up for that video series and you'll get a link to a video every week for a year to help you implement those strategies. I love it.
I love it. You're such a genius when it comes to these marketing things.

Okay, and lastly, we hit a lot of things, Lee,

and I appreciate you coming on.

I'll let you end it here.

Is there something that the listeners should go do today?

Yeah, I would say the best thing you can do

is invest time improving your handling of discovery.

You do a better job of discovery,

the finish line takes care of itself. Discovery, I love that word.
Well, Lee, I appreciate you very much. Thank you for coming on again.
I'll catch up with you soon. Thank you.
Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast from the bottom of my heart means a lot to me. And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast.
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