Overcoming setbacks and adjusting your mindset with Nigel Green, Part 2

part 2

[00:00:00] Brad Seaman: Uh, that said, you know, in my experience, I mean, that’s what you want to hear as a leader, right? You want somebody to come to you and say, Hey, look, we’ve had this situation. I want to make you aware about it. Here’s how we’re going to address it. Here’s, you know, I’ve already put a plan together on how we’re going to solve it.

And then you’re basically, you know, you’re supporting and reacting to the situation versus having, you know, versus as a leader, having to come up with that solution yourself.

[00:00:23] Nigel Green: Yeah. I mean, I say this in my coaching work all the time. Like your boss they’ve already got monkeys on their back. You can’t take the monkeys on your back and go put them on their back.

You, you got to deal with the monkeys on your back, man, and that you signed up

[00:00:37] Brad Seaman: for it. Th there’s this hilarious. Um, I guess it’s a, it’s like a tic-tac so it’s basically two dogs. And in this scenario, it’s it’s one dog is the wife is his wife on the other dog says, huh? And there’s a, like a Robbie, one of those little robots and it hits the wife and the husband’s just the dog is just chilling there.

And all of a sudden the wife barks at the husband, it’s really funny, but that’s the same thing in sales thing, you can’t, the purpose of the meme was like, you can’t make your problem. Somebody else’s problem. You can’t. And the same thing with sales sales leader is it’s easy to put or anything in life.

You got problems. Other people got problems. You got to deal. You can’t be mad. You gotta, you gotta deal with, um, but I, I love, I love this. I love the, I love the farming analogies. I love the fact that you’re focused in this space. I think it’s, it’s so key. Particularly as a, as a growing company and you start to build out management levels or you start looking at, um, you know, adding VP of sales, sales, leadership.

I mean, I, I feel like it’s a little, it’s a little bit of a black box, so I love that you’re starting to like break it down and focus on it. Cause I definitely think it’s an area that doesn’t get has not historically gotten a lot of attention. What’s the biggest surprise that you’ve had being in this space.

Like what’s the one thing that sort of happened that you were like, oh, I.

[00:01:58] Nigel Green: I think the, the sales leader and then the management teams in ability to use the data to make more informed decisions. So if you think about even just, I mean, my goodness, Brad, I can’t think of a time when we, when I didn’t have salesforce.com as a CRM in my selling career.

So take it all the way back to 2006. There was, there were CRMs and there was reporting capabilities now. But even then, like I had to do a lot of exports. Right. So it wouldn’t perfect. Right. I’d have to export the data to Excel and do a pivot table, or do a V look up to compare two disparate systems. So you had to know like how to get the data the way you wanted it to now it is done for you.

Like you like the way they built out these tech stacks. You can, you can manipulate the data any way you want. But what surprises me is how unclear the leaders are on the, what I call like the economics, the fundamentals of what’s driving their business to know how to intervene. They just get so bogged down in the copious amounts of data that they don’t know what’s really important.

And that surprises me because you would think with more data. The answers would be easily. But it seems like they’re more complex and nuanced.

[00:03:33] Brad Seaman: You think we’re tracking

[00:03:34] Nigel Green: too much stuff? Absolutely. In a lot of instances, we are tracking too much stuff. And in other instances, Brad, I think we are confusing causation and correlation just because of.

There’s a correlation in the data. We jumped to a conclusion that, that, that this piece of data, because that piece of data, I

[00:03:55] Brad Seaman: don’t know, get on LinkedIn. I mean, I just, I get on LinkedIn. There’s all these people throwing out all these stats. Right. And you’re just like, When somebody is going to take a stat class here.

Cause that’s not how you calculate that.

[00:04:06] Nigel Green: Okay. Bingo. That’s it. So I sit in a lot of meetings and I hear these sales leaders just throwing out stats and I’m like, yeah, but is that true? Really? And how do you know? And so that’s a lot of talk about the truth, the fundamentals they’re throwing out all these statistics, but there’s, there’s no deeper level dive to show me the trail.

Okay. So good sales leaders can say, all right, Nigel, watch this, this call. We’re going to listen to the record. This customer and they follow it all the way through. So if they’ve got us statistic that they’re going to throw at me, they’re going to bring with it. They’re going to show me the trail and say, it’s actually causation.

It’s not correlation. They’re going to bring examples. And that’s where I think a lot of, a lot of companies are. They just look at the data, they look at it. Dashboard and like, oh, well calls or calls are down. Well, um, we must, we gotta go. We gotta go buy more leads. We gotta go get more. What’s going on. I’m like, no knucklehead has anybody called the number.

Has anybody tried to see what’s going on? And then it’s like, oh, the bridge is off. Or we’ve got some piece of technology that calls aren’t down. There’s this disconnect, you know, you live

[00:05:17] Brad Seaman: in this world. Yep. No, no, no. For sure. Well, I, you know, I’m still laughing about the stats thing and like the causation piece, because when I get literally when I, I have to stats minor and when I got, when I get on there and I see people coming up with these statistics and not using like good statistical theories and stuff drives me, freaking crazy.

I’m like, that’s not true. That’s not true. That that can’t be true. You know, like you just read these stats and you’re like, that’s not what that means. Like, somebody didn’t do that. Right. Like you’re not doing it. You’re not doing that. Right. And they just make stuff up. And I think the polls have made it worse, actually like polls on a lot of people.

Don’t like the LinkedIn polls, but I feel like that’s created, everybody said their own individual statistics on LinkedIn, you know, and they wheeled out these, they, um, so, so I want to ask you, so why, why we’re talking about these stats. I want to ask you this. Cause I think, I think this is important as we look out as sales leaders into the.

Um, I saw a statistic yesterday where basically the poll was, Hey, the B2B salespeople need to learn more about B to C. How many of you guys would want a demo on the first phone call? And then the stats come in on. And it actually was not what I think the guy thought it was going to be because basically most of the people said that they would appreciate a discovery phone call first before, before it.

Uh, I don’t think that was what he was like. I don’t know. I don’t think that was what he was expecting. So my question is this, how do you think sales is going to be impacted in the future? I mean, do you think we’re going to see, um, like Netflix style buying for huge consulting? And, um, infrastructure projects.

Why do you think that that’s going to get

[00:07:01] Nigel Green: replaced? I think more of like the direct to consumer, like self onboarding option is going to replace the what, what has been the high touch sophisticated? No. No, and here’s why Netflix. Still only cost $15 a

[00:07:21] Brad Seaman: month. Yeah. And you’re not getting fired by your wife’s not firing you.

Nobody’s getting fired over 50 bucks, right? Yeah.

[00:07:26] Nigel Green: You want to work with me? It’s a minimum $10,000 to work with me. Okay. If I were to put a buy now button on my website, and then you got to the car and it was $10,000, what do you think my car to abandoned rate?

[00:07:43] Brad Seaman: Off the chart. Bingo,

[00:07:45] Nigel Green: because there are so many questions about a $10,000 price tag that I need to address.

And I can write the, the greatest long form sales copy with an FAQ. And I can put in some videos and I can have some testimonials I can put Collins’ face on there. $10,000 is a lot of money. It ain’t, it ain’t. And that’s like that. And that’s the tip of the iceberg, right? I mean, when you talk about what I do and the consultation and the bigger, big consulting engagements, where you could be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to a million dollars, depending on the length of the agreement.

No

[00:08:24] Brad Seaman: way, no way. So Jean Allen works for the channel challenger sale, the challenger book, everybody see, and, uh, so gins great had her on loved having her on, we had awesome conversation, but she said the table is getting larger, not smaller. More people are getting involved in the B2B sales process for million dollar sales, not less.

And I think that’s an indicator that that is going to get more complicated to make purchases not less complicated now. Whether it should be that way or not. I just don’t see it on, I don’t see some onslaught of Netflix, B2B buying and purchasing behavior for these big ticket prices. I don’t see it. I think it’s too too complicated.

I don’t think it’s going to happen. I just like, I like being out there talking about, Hey, what’s the future look like? You know, what’s the future of sales, you know, I know there’s a lot of things I think in. Uh, the B2B space that are under attack fairly and unfairly, right. Rightfully and raw and, and, uh, wrongful is not a word, but we’re going to go with it.

[00:09:25] Nigel Green: Well, I’ll say this about the future. I think the future looks a lot more like the past. Okay. And what I mean by that is not the. Not the now. Okay. The future won’t look like the now, cause I think now being in the last three to five years, and in some instances, the B2B seller has earned it. It’s become spammy.

It’s become a volume approach. It’s become spray and pray. The past, when I talk about the past Brad, I go back to like books like this, the new six new, I use the word new successful, large account management. This book was written in 1994. I find myself looking at this book and some other great 1990s book like that, selling a solution, selling strategic, selling some of these books from the late night.

Are are, are coming back into play and, and here’s why there they are so important. It, a lot of the nineties was about helping your customers make sense. Of a quickly changing world. So in the nineties, it was really, it was like web 2.0, that was when, like this whole notion of the internet and the digital reputation of digital landscape.

Like your customers are having a hard time making sense of that. Well, it was almost like a black Swan event, the size and scale of companies that could now do commerce online

[00:11:00] Brad Seaman: commerce. Yeah. I mean, you had webs, you had websites, you had email, you had CRM,

[00:11:06] Nigel Green: the boom, all this technology. And so they’re like sellers had to help customers make sense of it.

Well now, but coming out of this, like, and I know we’re still very much in it, but I’m going to, we’re talking about the future, this post COVID world. I think you’re going to see it in gyms. Right? I’m seeing the same thing with more and more seats being occupied. Decision-making. Sellers are going to have to help customers make sense of this new world.

And so it’s not technology. That’s the new world. It’s a new values in the marketplace. I mean, employees fundamentally don’t want what they have historically wanted. Otherwise 4.5 million people wouldn’t quit their job in November. Uh, Currency risk. Like there’s all this stuff that is, it’s all like related to COVID.

I mean, there’s the devaluation of the U S dollar. There is the, the fact that there has never been more investment money, ready to deploy into an acquisition or do a deal. There’s more people wanting to buy a company now. Than there ever has been in the history of time. They can’t find a deal because the valuations are crazy.

Add to that. We’re getting ready to see the largest transfer of wealth that we’ve ever seen in our generation. Trillions of dollars of business value in businesses created by baby boomers that don’t have a succession plan. They don’t have an exit strategy. And so there’s. There’s all of this, it’s coming to a head and sellers have to understand that your customer’s world is so much bigger than, Hey, you want to buy this?

[00:12:51] Brad Seaman: You think that’s natural human instinct to, to, to, to have that position. Do you want to buy this?

[00:12:57] Nigel Green: Yeah, it is. I think it’s natural. Yeah,

[00:13:00] Brad Seaman: I do. Oh, sure. Well, you know, I find myself like, and I generally had a lot of those conversations. You know, when I think about what I am naturally very inquisitive. So like on the quiet light where my kids have their friends over and I can, I can tell on their faces that they’re like, oh my gosh, can you guys just stop your dad?

Like he is asking me so many questions. Did not realize that I feel like what is that? Who is whose Fockers dad, where he’s asking all those questions in the, in the Ben Stiller in the movie when, uh, who’s the act. Oh man. You know where he’s the FBI agent and they got the car. Kelsey got to cut all this.

[00:13:40] Nigel Green: It’s not Pachino. I know you’re talking about Justin Hoffman is

[00:13:54] Brad Seaman: Robert in Europe. So a lot. So, yeah, so my kids are like, dad just stopped. Um, you know, like I just ask, you know, ask questions and probe and ask and ask and ask it. Uh, I know I wear out my kids and I wear out their friends and I may wear out the clients. Um, but, um, but I don’t know how you can sell without asking questions, you know, like I just, it doesn’t and you can’t be antagonized.

I think you have a really careful in the questions like I’m, uh, I follow Josh Braun, who I absolutely love. And I had a dad that was a marriage family, counselor. We did active listening and I didn’t realize I was getting sales training growing up, but I know he would, uh, he put me in what I would refer to like the, the, it would be like the equivalent of a pain funnel, but it was like a personal thing.

You know, like he’s like interrogated you and he’s like trying to, he’s like trying to active listen to you. So he’s like, he’s like, so what I hear you saying? And I’m like, yeah, I just said that, you know, so you gotta be

[00:14:45] Nigel Green: careful. So, so what your dad’s doing and it’s fun. I want you to go back and talk to your dad.

I go over this very lightly in the harvest principle of revenue harvest it’s it’s actually a clinical technique called motivational. And I think if you want to master selling in the future, you need to go take a course on motivational interviewing. It started out that this is a clinical technique that clinicians.

Whether it be a therapist like your dad or a primary care provider, it began with diabetes and the disease states that were largely behavior driven. It’s now widely adopted in addiction treatment in the mental health space and the fundamental of motivational interviewing. This is if you hear one thing, it’s this, any motivation that you have to change is stronger than any motivation that I can give you to change.

So if I’m a seller, any motivation that my prospect has to buy, any motivation that might exist is going to be so much stronger than any reason I could give them. So instead of telling them why they need it, I need to say, why would you do it? So I’m hearing you say that this is, and so to give you an example in the clinical world.

So I worked in the addiction space for a while. And we would, we had a call center folks would call in and w we used to just treat everyone as if they were like, if they come to terms with the fact that they were an alcoholic or an addict, what we quickly learned by listening to the calls that that’s not everyone.

So we would hear, hear call or say a lot. I’m not an alcoholic. If I don’t go to treatment, I’m gonna lose my. Or my wife’s making me do this. And so a seller in that situation would be like, oh yeah, you are not, you need this, you need this, but, but we would take a step back and say,

[00:16:38] Brad Seaman: why do you care? What?

[00:16:42] Nigel Green: Or w if we can help you save your marriage, is that something you’re interested in?

Or if you could keep your job and we could help you, would that be useful to you? And the answer is, yeah. I want to keep my job or I, yeah. I want to keep my house. Yeah. Yeah. And so they’re motivated to keep their marriage they’re motivated. So w we taught our sales team motivational interviewing. Okay. So Brad’s not an alcoholic.

Brad’s got bread does not have an alcohol problem. He has, I’m going to lose my job problem. So we’re going to fix it. Yeah.

[00:17:15] Brad Seaman: Well, I did. So it’s always, when I was getting at is like, I learned these things from my dad and I didn’t realize that like when, when I listen, so Josh Braun talks a lot about, um, just like rocking these names today.

Chris boss losing. I mean, I don’t know if it’s, cause it’s late in the day, I’ve had more coffee, I’ve got some brain fog, but, um, but yeah, so Chris Voss, when I, when I read his book on negotiation, I’m like, oh, this is like growing up in my house. Like I learned all that. I learned all these skills that I didn’t realize that I gave is probably some of the.

Sales lessons that I could learn. I learned like how to talk to people, how to listen, how to, you know, basically how to repeat back to you what you said, and then if I’m wrong, you just correct me, right? You’re like, oh no, no, no, no. That’s not why we’re buying that. Or no, no, no. That’s not why we’re doing that.

So, Hey, I heard you say X, you know, Hey, I heard you say this as a financial decision. No, no, no, no. This isn’t a financial decision. This is a, you know, now I know, right. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Um, so like I learned all these little sales techniques that I didn’t realize I was, I was getting sales, schooled.

I just thought now it did, it does get a little bit like annoying when you felt like you were being like the motivations were, were not pure. So that definitely was not fun. But you felt like you were being worked last night. Yeah. You know, when you get a sale, when you get a suicide, like if you get a sales.

[00:18:36] Nigel Green: Yeah. I definitely have had that situation where it’s like, well, Nigel, I heard you say that you really have, you really want this. And I’m like, yeah, buddy, you heard me say that? Yeah, that’s exactly right.

[00:18:47] Brad Seaman: I’ll be so careful with questions because like, if you’re not careful, you can start antagonizing people.

Like I think it just comes down to like empathy. Like you can’t teach somebody to care. And that’s one of the things that, like, if you take somebody like a young rep, you put them in Sandler sales training and they come out and they’re just asking a ton of questions. It does a lot of damage because, you know, in order to, to ask good questions, you have to really care about the answer and you can’t, and you can use questions, really beat people up and make them feel like crap.

If you’re not, if you’re not.

[00:19:18] Nigel Green: Well, and the other thing too is, and you’re right about is it’s practice in the same way that we’re going to go through the Sandler training questions. Don’t have to start with who, what, where, when, why, or how questions can be. In the intonation or the way in which I just say something.

So you could say like the customer, instead of saying, I heard you say, is that true? And Chris Voss talks about that. You could just repeat the last look at them. Yeah. You could just say you want more customers. And then they’re just going to go right back the way the brain, where they’re going to talk more about why they want more customers.

And so there’s, there’s an element of like practicing craftsmanship

[00:20:04] Brad Seaman: to it. Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Um, well, man, this is so great. I love, I love talking to you. This was a wonderful, wonderful interview. Anything else you want to highlight before we, before we hop off? Oh man.

I’m good.

[00:20:15] Nigel Green: Thank you for having me on. It’s been a pleasure to, to riff with you

[00:20:18] Brad Seaman: for an hour. So thanks so much. All right. Thank

[00:20:23] Nigel Green: you, Brad.

[00:20:29] Brad Seaman: So I hope you guys enjoyed that as always. If you want more information on the podcast, go to monster connect.com forward slash podcast. You can get last season. Uh, last year’s episode, you can get all the new episodes for this year. And as always remember, don’t let what you can’t do interfere with what you can until next time. .