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Become An Expert Salesperson with Douglas Kruger | Sales Expert Insight Series

My name is John golden from sails pop online sales magazine and pipeliner CRM, and today I am delighted to be joined by Douglas Krueger, who is in lovely Johannesburg, South Africa? How you doing Douglas says it’ll be with you, John thanks, so much for having me yeah absolutely and it’s late evening. Your time, I presume indeed it’s very late evening, my wife and I manage to read a movie she’s gone off to bed and I’m still enduring so.

Okay. Well Douglas. Just let me introduce you, he is an author of six business books, including the highly acclaimed own. Your own industry, how to position yourself as an expert and that’s where we’re going to focus in today he’s worked with multiple large clients, household names like BMW, but tell me Douglas okay own your own, your industry, how to position yourself as an expert? Why is that relevant to everybody, as opposed to just a small number of people? Well, absolutely.

The the starting point in positioning yourself isn’t as an expert is that it is a choice. People will make and in fact not a great many people vie for that premium level of competition, and for that reason, although we’re what I’m encouraging is that you aim higher, there’s, certainly less noise at the top of the market. So that’s one of the the advantages to it. It also helps us to hit a much more visceral note in terms of our marketing, rather than sounding like a low level salesperson, we actually speak at a different level.

It’s it’s a little at which we start creating tribes of followers and actually, in a sense, are depicting a type of lifestyle, a type of persona and a way of being and done at its highest level. It actually helps people to to actualize themselves and to realize who they want. So how would you advise somebody? So if I’m a salesperson right and yeah I’ve been doing okay, I mean now you’ve been bumping along here, but I feel like I really want to go for it I want to.

I want to be more successful in Excel. What are some of the first steps? I can take towards, as you say, actual izing that well one of the things that I think is a little counterintuitive that most people don’t do is to give away your best ideas for free. When we look at it from a sales perspective, we often we have a sense of being guarded or being a little reserved about how much information we actually want to give away.

There’s always that nagging doubt in the back of our minds that if we give too much, we’ve essentially furnished the solution for free, I believe that the exact opposite is the case. I believe that, when we’re very generous with what we know, rather than just selling to people we’re sharing ways forward, and I find that what tends to happen is that people come to us for the implementation and I’ve seen this.

I’ve been very blessed to see this. In my own career and in that of other speakers, experts, coaches people involved in the world of sales, the more they’re giving and the more they’re helping people to become what they want to become. The more clients come to them. For the the implementation of that ideal, and in a best-case scenario we want to be hearing that phrase, someone told me you’re the person to talk to about now.

What I try and focus on is: how do you become synonymous with an idea? So I go a little bit beyond the idea of simply being say a topic matter, expert or being a being technically good at what you do, and I start asking questions like how do how do you become so synonymous with an industry that it’s almost impossible to Talk about it without referencing you and the top names that spring to mind. Over time I mean you, you can’t speak about, say bodybuilding without speaking of arnold schwarzenegger and you can’t say data’ and TV talk shows without referencing, oprah and so on and so forth and Schwarzenegger is an interesting one and it plays into what we’re discussing here, because He is not technically the most highly accomplished.

Bodybuilder of all time, he’s won mr. Olympia seven times. There are two gentlemen who have wanted eight separate times, and yet, whenever I speak for audiences, I put up the phrase bodybuilding on a screen and I say quick: what’s the first name? Is France Mike? It’s always always Arnold yeah, exactly yeah. So, there’s a lot that we can learn from that and obviously his television appearances and so forth play into it.

But that’s part of what we’re talking about when we say expert positioning, it’s this combination of teaching leading being a personality and very much of being in the public eye. So so how would um and and I agree with everything you said there, but so from from a lot of salespeople – they, while they’re great, if you put them in a room one-on-one with a customer or you put them on the phone or you can put them On with the buying committee, you know they’re great in those situations, but if you say to them now, you’re going to really expose yourself to a much broader audience, maybe one that they don’t even see them get kind of uncomfortable.

In that air arena absolutely – and I mean you know the old joke that does the round about the the fear of public speaking being greater than the fear of death, and the conclusion we can draw from that is that at your average funeral most people would rather Be the guy in the box, but there’s immense power in that, and in fact, of course it’s a very human fear. It’s not the fear of speaking itself.

It’s the fear of being judged – and I think one-one constructive way around. That is for us to realize that we’re not actually there to be judged we’re there to give value to a group of people who don’t know as much as we do. If you have something that teachers a group helps, a group of people shows a way forward. It’s not self-serving to stand up in front of a group and do it you’re actually giving something that is very valuable to people and of course you can do it on different gradients.

You know, though, you don’t have to throw yourself into the deep end and stand up in an auditorium and atriums be for 10,000 people on your first try. You could, for example, craft a small youtube article that gives 10 tips two or three ways to and gives genuine value for free and once again, I return to that idea of saying give away your best ideas for free. Let them come to you for the implementation.

Don’t hold anything back yeah and so that then, obviously will build a level of trust right, because I mean, if you’re, giving out information you’re helping somebody, then they’ll tend to trust you more and though, if you like they’ll get past the idea of this confrontational salesperson. Buyer relationship and I think I think that’s one of the key – the key elements there and but to me also again from again from a salesperson point of view.

I mean you know becoming the expert, you know owning and just you really becoming the expert again. You know a lot of people would say. Well you know I’m I’m pretty good. I mean, I know some stuff expert. I don’t know whether I’m good, I don’t know whether I’m comfortable putting myself forward as yes, ok. This returns me to to what I believe is that the the heart and soul of genuinely becoming a recognized icon in your industry, where I believe it’s a three-part equation and I think most people tend to to get the one idea and miss the other two.

And I believe that experts exist at the intersection of three different qualities. If you don’t have all three working together simultaneously, you can actually disqualify yourself as an expert now the first one is the one we tend to think of intuitively. When we hear that phrase – and that’s that’s knowledge and knowledge is a broad catch-all term, when we say knowledge, we mean technical ability capacity, you know your stuff, it’s the ability to do the thing that you do.

But now it’s interesting is when you start to study the really top names in every industry. They are not necessarily the most technically qualified people, there’s something else going on there. They know their stuff backwards and forwards. Make no mistake about that, but there are often people who are more technically qualified than them yet less well known, and often these are people who are not remunerated on the same scale and that’s fascinating to us.

So the other two elements, in addition to knowledge, are personality and publicity and in any industry that I’ve studied looking at this idea of of experts and icons, I always find that that one comes to the fore and, of course it’s again it gets a fear reaction From us, because if we’re not very loud verbose, over-the-top charismatic personalities, we tend to think well that disqualifies me and I genuinely believe that that’s not the case at all.

If you look at, let’s take a world like say, the world of professional shifts, Jamie Oliver from the United Kingdom has become a global phenomenon, one of his books launched awhile ago. In fact, the the first book called The Naked Chef. You know millions of them sold worldwide. People bought them, flipped them open found. It was nothing but recipes. They were sorely disappointed, but what’s interesting about that is that Jamie Oliver is a fairly quiet, down-to-earth, bloke, next door, kind of character and he’s not allowed over-the-top person.

Like Seiya at Jeremy, Clarkson in the world of cars or any other big personality, we we care to think of, but here’s the key. We know Jamie Oliver, we recognize his face, we know his voice and we are familiar with his personality. So that’s as a result of the third thing, which is publicity, knowledge, personality, publicity put those three together and you have the core makings of an industry expert take one out of the equation and you actually disqualify yourself from the potential of being a recognized icon and The way I always like to phrase it with my audiences, as I say, if you have all the knowledge but no personality, you are a specialist if you have all listen, allottee, but no knowledge.

You are very good. I like it. So, that’s all that’s interesting and, as you said, I mean the personality piece because that’s been misused over years where people say there are personality types, but you can you know a good personality is a very subjective thing anyway right, and so it doesn’t have to be One type or the other and then the publicity I mean, I guess that’s the piece nowadays, where there’s no real excuse.

Is it because you have all the tools. I mean us, as individuals now have tools that we could only have dreamed of years ago. This might come surprising to anybody who’s under the age of 30, but all of these wonderful tools that didn’t exist absolutely so really leverage so really leveraging. Those tools for the publicity piece is key right. Yes, and also, you know why you mentioned levy the newness of the tools I’d like to throw in as a seemingly contradictory idea, which is that the classic skills still win out and what I mean by that is when you study someone like say, Jeremy Clarkson, who Is famously fired from top gear after a year altercation with his producer, he speaks about how the new top gear is struggling and he did it with uncharacteristic restraint, but he pointed out something that I found fascinating.

He said when you look at the credits. There is no written by and it used to be written by Jeremy Clarkson now Clarkson for all he sort of buffoonery is an incredibly strong writer and he says you know people would apply a young men. Young ladies, would apply to the Top Gear show and they would talk about their love of cars and he would say well yeah, that’s all very well, but can you write? Well, that’s the heart and soul of it, and I think those old classic skills can really set you apart in a world.

That’s perhaps not using them as much as it should, and another example that speaks to my mind is from from the United States, his micro. The globally famous host of dirty jobs on our Discovery, Channel, yes, yeah now as a sort of a suit-wearing person who spends most of his life in conferences and drinking coffee, the world’s most unlikely candidate to follow micro. I have zero interest in dirty jobs.

However, the man’s skill with words hid the beauty of his writing, his wit, his humor and his intellect ensure that I am one of his greatest fans and I think there’s something quite profound about that. You know when we, when we step aside from the sort of the the classical sales role, and we admit to ourselves, that we’re talking to human beings, intelligent human beings who respect good writing good humour, good personality.

There is a great deal of value to the mind in those it yeah. I have to say I’m glad you brought that up, because it’s it’s one of the it’s one of my look at soap boxes as well, because I do believe that it’s a terrible thing. But today you as a salesperson or or is anybody a professional? You can differentiate yourself by being polite by not but not being over familiar with people before you know them and, as you say, by writing, well and actually paying attention to what you’re writing.

I really think ya can differentiate you, because I think people there’s it’s become so casual that it’s it’s just become lazy and kind of almost you know insulting right yeah. So I think the human mind sits up and pays attention when it perceives something of a little bit of quality and there’s a fabulous book by Steven Pinker and that the title eludes me now. I think it’s called the sense of style and it’s a book about writing in general, but he uses a fabulous phrase and he comes at it from a sort of a neuro psychology point of view and he says style earns trust.

He goes into a lot of the signs behind it, but the very simple version is: when people see that we pay attention to small details, whether it’s in writing, whether it’s in how we go about treating others whatever the case might be, that small sense of style Convinces people that there is a greater intellect behind it and that here is a person who can be trusted can be taken seriously. You almost earn merit points beyond what you’re actually do by simple shows of of care for small things.

So I think I think that phrase is really profound. That style earns I’m a hundred percent believer in that also believe that you can, you can never be. You can never be too polite right. You can certainly be the opposite, but I don’t think you can be too polite and and it’s better to start off being formal, as opposed to start off being familiar with that earning that right and and my my other one is, I was believe you will never Get you will never get docked points for being overdressed? Yes, because I’ve done it myself in the past, like I’ve, shown up in a suit and tie for a meeting with people and they’ve all been in t-shirts and shorts, but hey nobody’s going to say well, look at him they’re going to say you know you still Going to gradually respect you, but if I turn it up to a room of people who were in shirts and ties, and I was in t-shirt and shorts, I’m kind of the same reaction right.

Yes, I can think of only one example that contradicts that. But it’s such a bizarre when I divert I just share it with ya: go we have a speaker from Johannesburg and he’s he’s globally famous by the name of Clem Sunter he’s a futurist in Scenario planner, who was the ex chairperson of anglo-american corporations, a very high-level He said he’s a very intelligent, very charming man, but because of this very high level of success, the dynamic reverses for him.

He stands on a stage in a very baggy Jersey, hands in pocket laughs at his own jokes and he comes across as an absent-minded professor type, and it’s it’s very charming. But absolutely I agree with your point. If I had to do it, it would just simply look disrespect yeah, I mean exactly. I mean we see the Steve Jobs, I mean when you get to that stage. You can basis name your own uniform right, yes versus because it looks so charming to be human.

Exactly exactly it’s perfect, so tell me in the last few minutes we have here. You know tell me another couple of aspects about how you advise people other than you know, reading your book. But what are another couple of ways? People could start to elevate. The idea of themselves of an expert – or, if you get their head around, even attempting to do that. Yes, absolutely I I think one of the mistakes people tend to make early on is they find it difficult to calibrate what level of expert they are and because we all have some degree of humility, hopefully built into the psyche? We find it hard to say I am an expert and in fact you shouldn’t an expert is something that someone else calls you who then, and what what we want to do is start off with a certain level of humility.

That says, I know this much and that’s what I can teach and as your knowledge grows, you can teach a broader and broader base and you can share with more and more people on, say, an increasingly global level and that that simple little equation I find helps People to let go of a great deal of the fear and insecurity around the idea of being an expert. If you do not have the the insight into physics of someone who’s been around, studying it for decades.

Well, teach at the level of say a primary school teacher and you are an expert to a group of people who know less than you and there’s something Noble and something beautiful about that and that’s fine and, as you grow more your your influence expands. So don’t out claim what you actually know and there you know that that way you never get caught out and in fact, one of the things that I like to challenge people.

Whenever we speak about this topic, so I say the first time you speak as a recognized expert in a public forum in the Q & A session, at least once you should say to someone I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question and there’s nothing wrong with that, and I think it’s a very healthy thing to do. Not only does it actually build credibility with the audience, but it keeps you at a certain level that says it’s.

Okay, not to know more than I do. That’s that’s a great that’s a great tip. Actually, I love that one. That’s a great takeaway for people out there is to be able to confidently say I don’t know the answer to that. I’m sorry because otherwise, if we’ve seen too many people pass where you know you stand, then you think. Oh, I just got asked a question. I don’t know so now my brain is going to go into overdrive, coming out with some nonsense to try as experts there’s no upside to it.

Yeah absolutely well. Listen. Douglas has been a great a great conversation that we could talk a lot more and hopefully we will. Hopefully you come back and talk again soon, but before we go I’d like you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself how they can find out more about you, yes, certainly most of what I do is the the writing. I write books that are entrepreneurial in nature and I speak on the same topics.

My articles and articles are all available on my website, which is Douglas, Kruger, CEO and I’m going to say, dot Z, a in South Africa. We would say: Zed a and I’ve got a little weekly motivational newsletter called from amateur to expert and the idea behind that is every week I send out one free tip that says: here’s the way amateurs would do it. Here’s the way experts would do it. Let’s raise the standards, well, listen Douglas Kruger in South Africa in Johannesburg.

Thank you for joining us. My name is John golden says. Pop online says magazine. Pipeliner CRM, see you all for another expert interview really soon. Thank you. So I encourage you to subscribe to sales popped on net. The online sales magazine also subscribe to our YouTube blog and then comment get involved in the conversation, love to hear what you have to say.

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Ethics in Sales with Richard Forrest | Sales Expert Insight Series

My name is John Dolan from sales pop online says magazine and pipeliner CRM, and today I am joined by Richard Forrest, who is in Sydney, Australia welcome Richard. Thank you very much, John yeah nice to see you today and Richard is the managing director of the fmg group and today. What we really wanted to talk about is ethics and sales, and why ethics and honesty matters and let’s face it when most people, particularly outside of sales, shall we say when most people think of sales, they don’t necessarily think of ethics and honesty.

That’s not the first thing that comes to their minds right. They always think oh yeah. It could be wary of salespeople because they’re a bit slippery. So let’s talk Richard. Why do you think ethics and honesty is so important? And how do you better project that, as a salesperson yeah, I think I think is so important to everything we do and you see almost tends to get a bit of a bad reputation for that? I think it’s because some people do have underhanded practices, but for me the reason for honesty other than it being a core value.

Is that it’s a long term approach to whatever you do, if you’re dishonest in a sales presentation, inevitably nothing it no sale, goes under percent smoothly from beginning to end something’s going to come undone and if you haven’t got in the bank, some honesty and credibility to Back you up it’s very hard to overcome load and you end up with a very unhappy customer. So right from the outset, I think demonstrating honesty and integrity and means you can build a great client relationship and it builds your brand and your own personal image yeah.

I I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more because, as you say, there are things that are going to come up during a sales process and building the building that the trust factor is huge. But so how do you go about that? Because, as I said again, I mean people aren’t just going to trust you just because you show up right, you’re going to have to be improve that. So how do you go about that as a salesperson? Well, I think I think initially it’s making sure you don’t over promise, it’s doing the right thing by the person and showing them respect so, whether you’re talking to them or their PA, show them honesty and dignity and when you’re actually selling be honest with what you’re Doing and don’t over promise, don’t oversell somebody’s looking for a product or solution that you can provide.

They are looking for your solution, but if what I’m looking for is inside the remit of what you could provide, the best thing you can do is tell them that, because if they still decide to choose you – and they may well do at least they do – that With their eyes open, and so I think the key thing is make sure when you’re presenting your product, you do so honestly clearly know over-promising. Yes, so that’s a and that’s a difficult thing sometimes because, let’s face it most salespeople, are you know optimist by nature? I mean you have to have a certain kind of crazy optimism to be in sales right because you suffer from so much rejection, so sometimes there’s the temptation to like try and fit the square peg into the round hole, and it’s not necessarily being dishonest.

It’s just that you’re so enthusiastic and trying desperately to make this fit for the customer, even though when it’s patently it’s not going to. So how do you? How do you encourage a salesperson to overcome that? To take that step back and say: okay is what I’m doing now. Really the right thing. I think that’s exactly right. It’s it comes down to doing the right thing and the right thing is not just doing the right thing for my bonus check at the end of the month.

It’s about doing the right thing by the customer and it’s doing the right thing by the company and it’s also doing the right thing by the operations team who are probably going to have to deliver on what you’ve sold. And if you get all of those things wrong, you’re going to get a wealth of pain from all of those different people, so actually in some ways you learn fairly quickly. You can’t overstep too much, but I really think that the approach that I really focus on when I’m selling and when I’m talking to people about selling, is one of asking really good questions of the customer to find out exactly what you need.

You don’t need to overcomplicate, but you do do need to find out exactly what they’re looking for and if you can do that you can say to them. This is what we can provide this. What we can’t sometimes they’ll choose a competitor over you, but many times. If that’s been oversold, they’ll come back to you at the end of it and say you know what we bought the wrong one, we’ll all a total to your game, but that sort of long-term approach makes a big difference.

Ya know I like that. I did the idea of you know qualifying properly asking the proper questions, because I mean: let’s face it. Sometimes again, I said enthusiasm or optimism or something takes over and says people tend to skid past the qualifying phase a little bit too quickly and that obviously leads to problems down the road. So so, when you’re working with with salespeople, how do you get them to kind of you know slow down cooler, jets, a moment and and and really get into the questioning phase and qualify properly? So how do you revise them together? I think they they sorry say again.

No I’m saying how do you advise them to do that yeah? I always advise them to, as you say, take it slowly and understand that the client’s needs, because you’ve got something which can do a whole range of stuff, and only some of that is going to be what your client needs. So there’s no point in talking to them about things: they don’t need and therefore qualifying them and taking the time to understand exactly what they can’t they’re their pain points in this situation are is really vital.

I think one of the best things that a salesperson can do is see their clients problems through their clients eyes, because when you can do that, you can identify what the issues are for them and where your service or product can fit in. So my counseling always is take your time build your questions, understand what are the key questions and then view the problem from the customers solid and because you’ll build a really good rapport with them.

They’ll understand that you understand their issue and they’ll also open up and they’ll, be much more likely to trust you, because it’s not just about finding an issue and selling on that issue. It’s about finding exactly whether desintegration those yeah, it’s always an interesting. It was fascinating to me bit it’s an interesting phenomena that sometimes we forget that we’re consumers ourselves that we’re buyers ourselves and and sometimes and, as you say in a sales situation, says people forget to put themselves in the shoes of the buyer.

Yet you know they’re in the shoes of the buyer, all the time themselves personally, whether it’s buying consumer goods or whatever themselves. So that’s a really that’s a really critical piece is that empathy, peas are putting them in their shoes, but it just doesn’t seem to come. Naturally, to everybody, why do you think that is? I think I think too many people are focused on making the sale on the outcome and not the process.

One of the first things I learnt in sales is that you don’t make a sale by doing a lousy presentation and posing really hard if you can leave sales that way, but it’s rare the way the way to make sales is in the presentation phase and the Presentation phase is not a verbal monologue of the sales person present or talking at the prospect. It’s about a two-way conversation where the two people are aligned – and you will know this when, when you meet somebody and you gel with them you’re having a conversation back and forwards, and you find things in common, the same is true in sales.

The sales person needs to find what they have in common solution, wise with that prospect, as well as building rapport and when they do that they go on a journey together, it’s not a one-way giving of information. It’s absolutely two people together. Taking that journey understanding what needs to be done, and so by taking the focus off the result at the end and the cloves put it into the presentation and having that presentation being a two-way process, not a one-way process, and because, when you get to the close Likelihood is the survey the client is going to say, okay.

So what are the next steps you don’t actually have to if you put your your energy in the right area? So so it’s an interesting point that you raise right. I mean it’s about having obviously engaging in that conversation. Getting that kind of rapport going and – and I think part of that is you know that you have to recognize that especially a b2b sales right. You know, there’s a lot riding on behalf, the buyer right.

It can be, it can be a career enhancing or a career, limiting decision that they make. Depending on how that works out, and I think going that empathy and really drilling down in that early conversation, you know, can really make a big difference. So how do you also advise your salespeople to go beyond like surface level questioning in order to really get down to what’s going on with with the buyer, with the buying committee with the company? All those other factors are may come into play.

Yeah then you’re absolutely right, you’re generally selling to one of several people who go fine from you and so again that’s the reason for building a great relationship, rapport and um ability a good conversation with that decision maker because they have to take their conversation with you. The salesperson back to the other members of a team and sell it to them, and so they need to be able to do that effectively.

It’s very hard to third-person sell. But if you believe that the person who sold to you is being honest and it’s given you a really good solution, it’s much much easier. So I always suggest try and get as many of the buyers people in the room if you can. But if you can’t make sure that you’re talking about the the problems that exist not just in the the people who are present in that meeting, not just in their areas of the business but also in the affiliated areas of the business, because that’s what they’re going To translate back to their colleagues, so if you’re talking to the head of Finance but there’s an IT component about what you’re talking about, if you can talk to that head of finance about what the IT person is likely to be suffering from the head of finance, Is going to go back to IT and talk about that? It’s going to resonate so you’re, bringing the other buyers in without a and and that again is building more trust and credibility.

Right because you do that, you have initiated that connection. Yes, that’s exactly right and I see salespeople get things wrong right from the word. Go not even in the sales presentation when they’re trying to get through to a decision maker to talk to them. They bully their way past the EA or PA or receptionist them, and they expect that that’s going to be acceptable and nobody going to find out about it.

Inevitably, the decision-maker finds out about it and you’ve lost it before you even get, and even to your point I mean some go goes far as like. I really don’t want to get the IT people involved because they could like sabotage my deal. So, let’s see how I can keep them out of this, so just moving on to another thing about honesty and ethics in that in selling. So there’s so much automation has come in now and there’s box and there’s a I there’s a I selling assistance right on linkedin, which is just nuts.

You know I saw that from somebody who a fake linking in profiles, but so as buyers we’re now you know, got so much automation, we’ve got AI come in and we’ve got all of those things. Do you think that that really is an opportunity for salespeople to kind of raise themselves? Above all of that, because we we’re we’re kind of confused? Now we don’t know what’s real anymore, so you’ve got a great opportunity to engage with me at on a human to human level right, yes, I absolutely agree with that.

I think, as salespeople we’ve become, it’s become easier to get lazy because there is so much automation there. We can rely on that and a new lead pops up. It’s a sales qualified lead coming through from the crm or something like that. But the reality is a whole heap of people in there who probably have a need for products and services who aren’t popping up and they’re just getting getting emails.

And we get to say everybody gets the same thing. Lots of what these. What people call spam and they don’t respond to it – the conversation can absolutely cut through. It makes it very apparent, a genuine conversation. It’s a person, it’s not AI somebody. You can believe in and trust, and also it builds a conversation that is personal to that. That specific prospect, and not an email message that was written to be relevant for a couple of thousand people or a hundred thousand, so in reality, as a salesperson, you can use that relationship.

You can use that honesty. You can use that. You know genuine outreach as almost as like as a competitive differentiator today right, yes, I agree. I really do agree. I think that smart sales teams are going to get back in more human to human contact. I’m not saying they should give up all the electronic media at all. Absolutely that’s got a really great place, but it should be a supplement to the human to human solid, because that’s the way that you build trust, really, you can look at websites and people’s LinkedIn profiles, but today there’s always that nagging doubt that I wonder if this Is genuine or not, if you don’t have with a phone call or a face-to-face meeting, now the excellent lamb? Listen Richard we’re bumping up against the end of the time.

So before we go, I wanted to give you a chance to tell people a little bit more about yourself about your organization, how they can learn more about you. Thank you very much, John yeah. I run a company called forest marketing group or fmg in Australia. We’re a specialist business to business sales prospecting company and we go out and we source qualified sales leads through conversations on the telephone.

Business-To-Business we’ve got a sister company in the UK called air marketing group, and so if anybody wants to contact either air marketing group, it’s air marketing, Cote, UK or Forest marketing group is FM group Condor au happy to talk to them. Yeah, that’s great! Listen! It’s been great talking with you, Richard’s been a fascinating conversation. I really do think that honesty, ethics and relationships are going to come and not just back into vogue.

I don’t think they’ve ever gone away, but I think they’re going to become more important as buyers get more confused by the amount of information. That’s been slung at them. Yes, I totally agree John. Thank you very much. Alright, my name is John golden says pop online says magazine, pipeliner CRM, see old for another expert interview really soon. Thank you. So I encourage you to subscribe to sales pop dotnet.

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Sales Negotiating with Brandon Voss | Sale Expert Insights

My name is John Gollum from says pop online says magazine and pipeliner CRM, and today I’m joined by Brandon vos, who is the director of training and operations at Black Swan group? How you doing Brandon I’m doing very well, I’m happy to be be here with you today great and where are you today Brandon, so I’m just outside the DC area and in College Park, I’m actually in my home office.

I got my dogs here and the office sleeping here next to me, excellent, excellent, that’s a good way to that’s a good way to start your day. Okay, so Brandon tell me a little bit about how you got into negotiations, and especially, I want you to talk about how you have taken a unique approach of adop: adapting the FBI, hostage, negotiation techniques to the corporate space, all right, yeah, very good.

So obviously you know through my father Chris boss and author, I never split the difference that being exposed to how he communicated with people and learned to communicate with people at a young, age and III have a sales background myself before I was working with Black Swan. I did I did retail sales for Macy’s and business business sales with Verizon and so in to apply it in that environment and then being able to grow within the black swan group.

And you know, and this speech can’t ask for a better mentor for sure and obviously for those of you who may not know you know and Brenda’s dad. You know Chris is a hostage negotiator, a long time working with the the FBI and, and so you decided to take that hostage. Negotiation and adapted so tell me about how you would adapt something like that, because, obviously there’s a little bit, the stakes are a little bit higher in hostage negotiation than in an average sales negotiation.

Right I mean you, you would think right. We think about how how the stakes are higher, because there’s lives on the line and something that Chris always likes to mention and the guys I’ve been introduced to through him. They talk about how they know for a fact that business people have dealt with more irate individuals, yelling and and storming out and and and causing a scene, and they ever had to deal with in hostage negotiation.

And I think really it starts with just the approach right. So tell me about that. So how do you? How do you go into negotiate because number, one there’s different types of negotiations and, obviously more than that there’s different people have different approaches to negotiation. So when you go into a negotiation, how do you? How do you start so you can set it up as effectively as possible? Well, the biggest thing is you know if there’s any negatives that might be present, you want to get those out of the way early and and in human nature we want to deny negatives.

You know we want to say things like. I don’t want you to think we’re. Our price is too high and you know I don’t want you to think that we’re jerks and I want you to feel like we let you down and those those are actually denials of negatives and that’s that’s. What inflame the situation and our approach is really to address those first and then once you’ve gotten past that point you build trust and rapport you get to the place where we call trust based influence.

You get there quickly by sounding the other side out. You know Stephen Covey, put it great and seek first to understand, and that gets you a really long way really fast right, and so so, when you were, when you were going to negotiation, how do you I mean? Often you know your negotiation, sometimes with more than one person. So how do you uncover what what roles they’re they’re playing and also what their style is, because, obviously you have to adapt it to the different people right right? Exactly we talked about the different negotiator types.

The assertive, the accommodator and the analyst and plainly put it’s it’s a fight, flight or or make friends, and when people are backed into a corner and they got real skin in the game, their default response is going to be one of those three things and, and That said, you got a handle each one, a little bit differently and and then in a team negotiation, you’re. Obviously there’s a high chance you’re going to have multiples of each type at the table.

You know two or three assertive x’ and an accommodator. It could be, it could be a mix, oh yeah, that’s a big part of it and, and one of the first ways to really start identifying. It is just simply how they approach the negotiation or do they do. They sit down and they’re somewhat standoffish and they look like they’re waiting to hear what you have to say do they come in and they guys they want to lay down the groundwork.

You know they got objectives, they want you to know. They come right at that, or do they seem much more like? I don’t want to say beating around the bush, but the type that’s you know. I really want to focus on how the last three months been for you right. I mean you know. We’ve been we’ve become aware of you, you know, why do our things work and you know so there are different types of conversations and you got ta with that.

Accordingly, your circumstance drives your strategy right. So let’s take the assertive right, because that’s the one that probably throws people the most right. You know the the other two were probably a little bit more at ease with, even though we have us need to have strategies for dealing with them. So how do you deal with the assertive baby, the PERT? You go into negotiations and immediately they’re.

You know they’re up and they’re in your face and they’re ready to get going yeah. I think that’s a great question because again it’s human nature. Whenever we imagine going to the table, we imagine that that assertive you know shark, like a tagging person, that’s going to corner us right and how do we defend ourselves right? How do how do we grapple with that? That type of individual and really those those those types of people haven’t, have a real, deep internal desire to make sure that you hear them, I mean really where they’re coming from subconsciously is I want to make sure that this person hears me and I’m going to Do whatever it takes to make it happen, and it’s going to start by me being very directing and coming at them like a freight train, mmhmm yeah, that’s an interesting point.

So so, obviously, then the key is to allow them to be heard and kind of draw out what it is. That’s that’s that they really want to say right. Well, that’s exactly at me and you put it a great way because you know our negotiation approach starts with allowing the other side to be heard and for all intents and purposes, this type of negotiator plays right into that very well, because that’s all they want to Do and so some of it is you got to put your own justifications aside right.

It’s you, you know you want to get to the table and say your own piece. You got to let that go, especially when you’re dealing with this with this type. The other thing is as soon as they feel that they’re understood their trust, for you automatically goes through the roof. I mean it’s you instantly become. I can do business with this person because I can tell they get what I see mm-hmm. So the interesting thing about that is obviously, if you break through that, the negotiations can often then move forward.

Are they at a pretty good pace right now, when you have the analyzer on the other side of the table right, okay, so not so confrontational! You know much lower key, but then the frustration it can be on your side right because you’re going, oh, my goodness, is this person ever going to move or they’re going to analyze this to death? Yes, yeah! That’s that’s it right and analysts will self admit that you know they.

They have a paralysis by too much analyzation right, they’re, just say the analysis, paralysis and so and and one of the big things to understand what this type of person is number one they’re very skeptical in nature right. You know they’re very, very slow to trust and they need silence. They need time. You know the the the thing that they hate the most is to make a snap decision mm-hmm and they look at time.

As you know, the best use of time is is as long as it takes to get it right right. You know we had, we were doing it Kris and I were doing it. Try my dad – and I were doing a training recently with it with a great group and and something that that someone in that group mentioned to us is. I need to make sure that I can live with this decision three to five years from there. You know. That’s that’s a huge part of their thought process going in like it’s and and and the emphasis that they put on that is more just based on the way that they approach the process in general.

So this is the challenge, for you, then, on the other side of the table, obviously is to give them the space to do their analysis, but obviously, at the same time you also want to move them forward right and let’s face it when you’re in says in Negotiations, silence and giving people time in space. It doesn’t always come naturally to you right. We have an aversion to the silence part right I mean we can have talk about something and then maybe you’re and analyzer.

You need a few moments to processes, but we hate silence right, that’s that’s it! It’s a human nature response. We want to feel silence and if there’s sounds we feel like. Maybe we did something wrong. We might have said the wrong thing and with this particular type they naturally need time to process, and so you know that’s it when we talk about different types dealing with each other right, the accommodator only uses silence to show anger right.

An accommodator is so focused on a relationship you’re only going to go silent on you when they’re when they’re mad at you they feel like. I have you pushed me too far. I can’t do this anymore, and so in dealing with an analyst they’re going to go silent anyway and for an accommodator it’s. What did I do wrong? How did why did I, you know? Why did I make them with drunk? Where did I screw this up and then that that can be really hard on the mind in the moment and so number one going in, knowing that the analyst is going to need their time to process you, you can’t push them that’ll, just cause them to dig Their heels, they dig their heels in more and then, of course, their emphasis on on data, and so analyst analysts don’t want to negotiate.

But they love to have dispassionate conversations about facts right, and so you can get to that very easily by using the skill that we refer to as labels, because another thing about them them being very skeptical. Naturally they’re skeptical of questions. They don’t like to answer questions fully and completely because they’re afraid they may give too much up so tell me about the labels piece, then yeah, so the the label simply put it it’s a quick way to execute a bit of tactical empathy as it were, and And it’s a it’s simply a verbal observation or a statement that starts with it seems like it sounds like when looks like, or it feels like tremendous amount of people.

We work with having I’ve gotten a long way with using things like it feels like and so foundationally in the in the hostage negotiation world. This skill was used to hit on emotions. Specifically, we all know we can’t avoid emotions in negotiation right, there’s no way around it. So a simple label is something like it seems like you’re angry. It seems like you’re, very hesitant. You know those can get you very far very quickly right, because what I like about that is you’re, not you’re, not making a definitive statement you’re just saying well, this is what it feels like.

I’m maybe I’m wrong or tell me how you actually feel so you’re, giving it a you’re giving it over to the other person to to express how they feel so. Tell me about the accommodator right because, like most people would say, oh I’ve got an accommodator in the negotiation, I’m SAS. So why is that not? Why is that not true? So there’s there’s a lot of reasons and, interestingly enough and my personal opinions, and when I like to talk about this with clients and and and when we’re coaching of the three types, I think the accommodator actually has the least amount to learn.

As far as an application of tactical empathy or emotional intelligence, because they’re naturally built that way, they’re naturally built to really actually care about. You know what what you think and how you feel about stuff and the flip side of that is they’re seen in society as pushovers right, because an accommodator can get carried away with caring about you so much that they compromise their own position to take care of.

You, and so you know they can get this reputation of being pushed around and really the the dangerous the dangerous negotiator is, is a natural accommodator that has really learned how to analyze and assert when they need to so those those can be, very especially when they Come from the accommodator side, naturally they haven’t had to learn but um, but yeah they’re, I mean very powerful. I mean I would always want an accommodator at the table with me.

You know if I’m going into a team negotiation, I’m going to want to have an accommodator as a second mover, every time without question yeah. So it seems at the end of the day that if two effective negotiations you either need to learn and be able to adapt these different types at the right time or if that is something maybe you’re, just an assertive person who can’t do it, then you bring In somebody who can complement you, that’s that’s a great point.

I mean that’s a great point. I mean they. They say: there’s lots of studies out there that, in order to have a good team, you got to have people that think differently right. You can’t have a team made up of people to think to say not going to accomplish as much and so yeah. It’s a great point, that’s a great point and as far as executing yes, you have to incorporate all three styles and to what you do.

There’s there’s some directions: you’re going to want to lean a little bit heavier than others right, you’re going to want to be in the accommodator set, or at least tone of voice. More often than not, but really the focus is, how do we see it in other people right going back to understanding and looking at it from their point of view, we’re caught up in how we’re executing sometimes that actually right, the muscle memory doesn’t kick in.

So we got to build that muscle memory and we see the assertive okay. I know I got to go in with mirrors. I’ve got to sound them out for 10 or 15 minutes, because they’re going to have things they need to say right is it’s an accommodator? They may promise me too much. You know I got ta focus on calibrated questions that really dig into implementation right. How is that going to work? How are you going to make sure that happens? How do we incorporate all these different mindsets into this decision-making process, and so you know that you got it with that right, a circumstance going to drive your strategy yeah, and so do you think that enough people put put enough thought into what they want out of A negotiation because other people just go in to negotiate and they think it’s about one thing only and that’s about getting the best price on one side of the table or getting the lowest spear lowering the price or higher in the whatever.

But people tend to micro focus on that one outcome: that’s it yeah! It’s a great term microfocus yeah! We get. We get tunnel vision when we think that it’s only about one thing and the the black swan group, I mean the the name comes from the idea of finding the black swan finding that the piece of information that, if uncovered, would completely change your outcome, and we Say there’s at least three to five of those in every interaction, so you’re going with the idea of sounding them out, but really it’s it’s kind of a selfish purpose of I’m here to be smarter.

There’s things, there’s information that you have that there’s no way! I can get it unless you tell me, so how do I put you in a place where you trust me enough probably be able to expose some of that stuff and then once we aren’t an iron that out it’s going to completely change our destination. So if I’m caught up in the destination ahead of time, I may miss an opportunity to bend up in an even better place.

Yeah and let’s face it like people. Can people can tell when you’re just trying to push them over the finish line and when they’re not ready to go and it and like anybody? If somebody pushes you, what do you do you start to dig your heels in yeah, yeah, again, human, it’s a human nature response like a you. You will be obstinate just to prove a point. Yeah right i-i’ll hurt me because I know it hurts you and that’s good enough, so, which is the opposite of a win-win and at the end of day, at the end of the day at your negotiation, you should really be looking for a win-win here right.

Well, I think it you know it’s it’s. It even goes beyond that, because you know when win can easily be interpreted as both sides felt like they lost, so it was probably a good deal, and actually there are people out there. You’ll find that’ll say things like that, and and really more so it’s you know. I think we like to look we like to look at it is how do we both prosper at it? How do we make? How do we go beyond like we made such a great deal that you want to recommend this to people in your network, because our deal was so seamless? This things went so well right.

How do how do we turn this one deal into all of a sudden? Now we got a community of individuals and those communities are out there. You know in pockets, we’re all doing business together and we’re slowly starting to take over the world right. How do you get to that point? Which then, obviously, if you go to a process like that and have that kind of outcomes and your chance of getting referrals and all of that go up right? Because people have a good, have a good feeling? That’s exactly what they they refer to, that right.

It’s like the Platinum level of business development and that’s referrals, word-of-mouth and and the more you create that it’s a snowball effect, perfect, listen, Branden! This has been fascinating and we’re bumping up against the end of our time. But before we go, can you tell everyone a little bit more about you about the Black Swan group and how they can learn more sure, very good, so our website is www.

Pevs.Com out into this month, but one one big way we keep in touch with people is Through our we clean newsletter that comes out on Tuesday mornings at about 9:00 a.M. Your local time, so you can sign up on the website or you can text FBI empathy. That’s all caps! Fbi, empathy, one word two, two, eight two, two eight and it’ll prompt you to your phone to to sign up quick and easy. That’s a great way to keep in touch with what we’re doing and things we’re exposing community to fantastic, listen Brenda.

This has been great, been a pleasure talking with you. My name is John golden from sirs pop online says magazine, pipeliner CRM SEO for another expert interview really soon.

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