Maximize Your Sales Confidence (Part 2) with David Schwendiman

Coming to you from the center for Social Confidence in Portland, Oregon, welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy, Helping men everywhere go from social anxiety to social domination with your host, Dr. Aziz.

Hey there.

Welcome to another episode of Shrink for the Shy Guy. I'm excited because today we're going to.

Be diving back into maximizing your sales confidence. And again, this is one of the most important areas you can master directly for sales in your life or just the growth that you have to do in order to do sales is going to benefit you in all areas of life because it involves facing your fears. Your fear of rejection, your fear of no. It involves putting yourself out there again, even after someone has said no. It involves learning how to. To connect with people. And as we're learning from our interview with Dave, which we started last week and we're going to continue this week, it ultimately brings us to a place of service. Because to truly sell effectively, we have to be not focused on ourselves, but focused on the other people and how we can serve them. And in a way that's kind of like a spiritual practice or discipline, because the pull is to focus on me. Me.

Am I doing good enough?

Do they like me?

Am I smart enough? Am I effective enough?

Me?

And the more we focus on that, the worse we get at sales, and the worse we feel, too, the harder the rejections are, the harder it is to put ourselves out there. So it's a really powerful practice to get us to focus on other people, and it pushes all kinds of buttons. We're going to be diving into that more in the interview with Dave. But stuff about money, talking about money, earning money, asking for money, stuff about staying in the conversation even after the person has initially said, no, I'm not interested, or no, I can't afford it, or now is not the right time. The most natural impulse is to say, okay, great, I'll leave you alone. And yet, if you did that, you'd never be effective at sales. And the reality is, even though someone says that if you stayed in the conversation and just asked them a few more questions and found out some of their fears, then they might turn around and say, you know what? Actually, yeah, I really want this.

I'm just scared.

And then now you have a powerful opportunity, a moment where you're really serving them, you're really helping them. So we're going to look at that in much more depth in today's interview with selling expert Dave. And this is really going to be about the inner game, how to shift, how to get your head on right so you can get out there and you're going to learn some powerful stuff about letting go of the outcome and not being hooked into a specific result with a specific person. So really valuable stuff. Let's dive into that interview right now.

Expert interview. Yeah.

It's interesting because I, you know, I never really. I didn't study sales. I was trained as. In professional and clinical psychology and being a counselor. And you don't have to sell if you. If you're a counselor even. I had my own private practice. And basically you just put some stuff up online and put yourself into some directories and get a network of other therapists. And people refer people to you.

Right.

When someone comes in for counseling, they're like, I need counseling. You are in my insurance panel. You'll do.

Yeah. That's sort of how people select it. Yeah. And it's.

There's no sales. And then, you know, I moved into coaching and creating programs and trainings. And I had to learn how to offer these things in the world. And it pushed a lot of my own buttons and my own confidence edges. And one thing that I found really fascinating is that the more focused I was on service. Like, I changed the name if I was gonna talk to someone and they were interested in coaching instead of. I used to call them enrollment conversations. Cause that's what a teacher of mine called them.

Yeah.

And I changed the name because when I called it an enrollment conversation, that made me. That meant that I had to enroll them.

Right now it's a sales conversation. And now it's a sales.

Like, ah, shit, I don't want that. And there's all this pressure. And then I failed.

And then.

And so I just started calling them inquiry conversations.

Interesting.

This is just an inquiry to see how I might be able to serve this person if I think. And I love what you're talking about because I did the same thing is like, I'm not even sure if coaching is what's going to be best for them. Maybe they could start with a product of mine. They could be in a group. They could buy my $10 book. My deep belief and what gave me confidence approaching these things was especially if someone wants to work on their confidence, doing something is gonna be better than doing nothing.

That's it. That's it.

That's where I came from. That sense of believing in the product or the service. But the most fascinating thing, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this. I found that when I. So I first started. I talk about the coaching. They're very Excited. Then we talk about the logistics, the fees, and people would say, oh, I don't know about that. And I'd say, okay, well, see you later. And then what I found that is, if I just stayed in the conversation and said, well, tell me more. Let's talk about it. Let's explore that something would shift, not all the time, but sometimes where there would just be this. No, it's not quite right. I don't think so. I'm not sure. And then all of a sudden, like.

Okay, let's do it.

Yeah.

And it boggled my mind because I was like, they seem so certain that they didn't want to do it. And then it just switched. Is that something you've experienced and what's going on there? And how do we learn from that?

What's going on in that client's head?

Yeah, what's going on? To help us understand how to serve people better and have more confidence in selling. Just so we understand that phenomenon, what do you think is happening there?

I honestly believe, especially in the coaching world and even in the insurance world, they don't see what I can do yet. It's a matter of trying to think of a good context to put this in. When I'm doing insurance and I come in more expensive, I never worried about it because I knew what I had met that client's needs. I guess that's how I'll say it. So I'll do an insurance setting and then a coaching setting. So if I'm going in and I'm talking to a client, I'm not ready to make that proposal until I know exactly where the gaps are, what they care about most, and how I'm going to fix that for them. And so therefore, when somebody says to me, gosh, your policy is like $1,000 a year higher, I say, absolutely. But it does this, this, and this. You know, like, I went into. I was. I was quoting out a woman who owned a art store. It was all glass art, and it's all beautifully displayed on these shelves. And I'm looking over her policy, and I notice she doesn't have any earthquake coverage on there. And I already know my policy is going to be way more expensive without the earthquake. And so then I toss earthquake on it, and we sit down. She says, dave, this is. This is outrageous. And I said, yeah, but I noticed your current policy doesn't have any earthquake on there. What happens if there's any kind of ground movement? I mean, do you have everything glued down or what are you going to do? In that case, and she says, I'd lose it all. I said, perfect. My policy covers that. So if you're interested in making sure you're covered, should that happen, then we should keep talking. And that was it. Price. I figured out what was most important to her, which is this business. She was completely exposed in losing everything. So I provided a solution. And in coaching, I tend to coach business owners and salespeople. So in a way, I have it pretty easy, where I sit down with the client and I say, if we coach together, what do you want to create? And that's where the unreasonable goals come in. They usually say, well, based on last year, I think I could do this much. And then we start talking about if we didn't have these limitations or these limiting beliefs, what would you love to create? And that's when they get really big. Well, gosh, man, I just had a client. My most recent client is making about 5,000amonth. He'd love to be making 20,000amonth. So we start talking about that. Okay, so if we work together, we do this, this, and this. We create $20,000 a month for you. He says, I start getting him. We start seeing how that's possible. Well, now my fee is nothing. So if I propose a fee, he goes, I can't afford that. Okay, so you can't afford to invest this much money to make two, three times that amount every month. Explain to me how that. How that works. And then they have to explain to me why it's not worth it to invest in this.

Absolutely. And it's so interesting, because what I'm hearing, what you're saying is that the shift happens in someone when they see the value of whatever the investment is, whether it's in insurance, the value of protecting all our assets in the event of an earthquake, or in the example of this client, the value of, well, the return, the monetary return, and then also all that comes with that. The ability to be making $20,000 and who he has to become in order to be able to do that. So that is fascinating. And one thing I was just realizing as we were talking is a lot of people have a discomfort with selling and maybe limit themselves and put caps on themselves because on some level they believe that it's bad, that there's somehow I'm manipulating that person or.

They don't.

Really need it, and I'm being pushy and making it happen. And how have you worked with that in yourself? How have you helped some of the people you've trained and coached to overcome that fear.

We're gonna pause for just a moment, take a quick break, and then get back into the interview with Dave Schwindemann.

Have you ever noticed how some people just walk into a room like they own the place? They are cool, calm, collected and other people slink in as quietly as possible, almost as if they hope no one sees they exist. Which one of those do you want to be? Unleash your confidence today and start creating the life you want. Go to confidenceunleashednow.com to get started now.

So there's two things that I focus on. Number one is why aren't you worth it? And that's the first thing we got to figure out because I definitely had to go through that. I am today making more money than I've ever made before. And in a way that's really, if I am not careful, I start to get really uncomfortable with that. Especially if we're looking at our parents and making more than our parents made, which is the case for me. It's very strange to have this level of income and it's not for me. It's not a sweet let's go brag about it. I'm going to go buy a new car and go do all this stuff. In fact, when I really stop and think about it, that's a bit. It's a worthiness issue where money is tied to my self worth in a lot of ways. And this is something I'm still working through with my coach as the income goes up. Otherwise if I'm not careful, I'm going to find ways to sabotage and stop that from happening. So that's number one is we got to figure out the internal belief as to why aren't you worth that money. And the way I've made that shift is by looking at and I literally keep a sheet of success stories of my clients, of ways that I've made my clients lives better or things where they've come back to me and said after a talk I gave one time, it was a couple day seminar, I had someone come up to me and say it must feel really good to know that you just changed someone's life. Okay, so that's okay. If I'm doing that level of service, then the money now is not about me. The money is just the barometer of how well I'm serving people. And it's a little, it's just a thermometer there when it goes up. Well, my service is really high. It must be really high this month because I'm getting a lot of money in here or I'm not serving this month because my income is low. So I changed how I looked at it. So it's no longer about am I worth it or not. It's just about my level of service I'm giving. And the second trick, and it's funny that you bring this up. This is an assignment I just gave a client yesterday afternoon. Just stop looking at it. Don't look at the money. His rule is, for the next month, he's not allowed to look at his bank account or his sales. Instead, his success relies entirely on, in this case, the number of no's that he gets. The number of people that tell him no and will never work with you. And he has to get five of those every day. And already today, this is his first day of it. And he texts me this afternoon, and he has to give me an update every day. And he said, I got one no for today, but my sales are. They're off the charts. And I said, f that I don't care. You don't leave the office until you get four more no's. I don't care what your numbers are. I don't want to hear about that for the next month. You're not supposed to be looking at that. You're supposed to be showing up, serving people, and getting them to tell you no. That's all we care about. So otherwise, this guy is going up and down every day based on. Based on how his sales are working out.

Yeah. Let's talk a little more about that last part. I love that. I mean, that reminds me of the whole concept of go for no.

Right.

And so setting no goals, Is that something that you often suggest for sales?

It depends on how quickly and how aggressive this person wants to be. It wasn't something I did when I was an agent. I do it. I've done it now just for fun, to try and push myself and push my own ego and see how much I can take. Because if you can take five no's a day, the person you become is pretty incredible. When I was in sales, my own rule was I had to talk to 20 people a day who were decision makers. And so I would literally, I'm sitting in my office, it might be 6, 7 at night. I'd have 20 M&Ms. Lined up on my desk from when I got there that morning. And I wasn't allowed to go home and until all 20 of those were gone. And I got to eat one every time that I talked to a person, because I figured out by Tracking all my numbers, I figured out that If I had 20 conversations, I set two appointments, and I closed roughly 85% of the appointments I had when someone actually sat face to face with me. And so then I could just determine exactly how much money I wanted to make based on how many conversations I had when I worked the math backwards. So sometimes we do that. I have clients that will say, you have to have this many conversations. Another favorite one that I have is we just draw a big T chart on a piece of paper, and I write no on one side and yes on the other. I do this one for people who aren't in traditional sales. Maybe I've got a customer service rep who needs to start selling to keep their job or to make some extra money. And I say, your job isn't to sell anybody. Your job is to get them on one side of this line or the other. Either a firm, no, they don't want it, or a firm, yes, they're coming in to buy tomorrow. You got to get them out of this, maybe land that lives in between, because that's a really. That's not a good place. And so in that way, they don't have to sell. They just have to say, aziz, do you want this or don't you? I'm not allowed to actually let you off the phone until I get an answer one way or the other. So if you just want to tell me no, fantastic, we can be done. Or if it's a yes, then I need to figure out a time when you can come in here and we can get this done. So they're not selling. And I had a girl who told me, I don't want to sell. Don't try and make me sell. I'll quit. And I said, you don't have to sell. You just have to get someone on one side of this line or the other. And that next week, she sold 10 life insurance policies. And she goes, everyone's saying yes all of a sudden. I can't figure out why this is happening now. And it was really because she was making somebody give her a clear answer, but she wasn't focused on the sale. I took in each of these scenarios. I'm taking the focus off of an outcome I have no control over and putting it on something that I do have control over. And that's really empowering for us, I think.

Yeah. And so what is it? We have control over how many phone calls we make, how many conversations we have, whether we encourage them to make the decision before we get off the phone.

Yep. Yeah.

Let's talk about the maybe land because that one's really interesting. That's a place that a lot of people seem to go, which is, you know, this sounds great. And I want to think about it more.

Yeah.

In your perspective is that I want to think about it. Basically never going to turn out. Does it turn out?

Is it? I don't know. It's a place we love to hide. It's a place that salespeople love to. When you talk to almost any salespeople. How's the month going? Well, not good, but I got a lot of stuff in the hopper. I think this stuff's going to come through. They'll be back.

They're coming back.

Yeah. So we hide out there because it's a very. It could happen. You know, I haven't been rejected yet, but it could. There's a chance. And so we live in this fantasy land because we're too scared to get that person on one side or the other. We'd rather chase a bad lead for two months and then be really heartbroken when it doesn't work rather than find out on day one that they're not going to work with us because then we have to go back out and start prospecting again. And I'll watch salespeople just spend hours and hours and fill their day with follow up calls to clients who have no intention of ever buying from them just so that they can feel like they're doing something while at the same time complaining to me that their numbers just aren't where they want them to be. And so it takes some guts. But that's the trick is you have control over that. You can decide. I can decide how many conversations I have and I can decide if somebody's gonna say, give me a yes or a no. So if I get that, maybe I don't. I literally just. My clients aren't allowed to accept that answer. So if you said, I gotta think about it, I'd say, fantastic. How many days do you want to think for? Should we get back together two days from now? Three days? When are we. When are we going to have this decision? So that way, if the client won't commit to that, then I'd say, perfect. What I'm going to do is, it sounds like this isn't a good fit for you right now. I'm going to put you in my no column. Is that all right if I do that? And that way I don't have to keep following up with you and I'm not bothering you. And wasting your time or mine. And if they agree to it, then great, they're a no, and I move on to my next person. But I won't let them stay in, maybe land even my clients when I prospect, when I decide to prospect for clients now, they're not allowed to leave me in that place.

Yeah. And in terms of the kind of squeamish, discomforty feelings that might arise from being.

That will arise.

That will arise from being. In fact, as you're talking, I'm imagining doing that. I'm just like, squeamishly uncomfortable. Like, oh, that's so forceful. And yet everything you're saying makes sense. So how do you help people deal with that feeling of kind of hesitancy? I want to please people. I don't want to be hard and direct. How do you help people with that?

Let's pause for just one more moment and then get back into the rest of the interview with Dave.

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First of all, we've got to find a way to do it that fits your personality. If you're trying to be someone you're not, it won't ever work for you. And so it comes back to kind of a sports analogy is we're going to try a couple different versions of this until you find one that works for you. So what I just said right there, that might be way too direct for somebody else. In which case I would say what feels off about that. And we talk about it until we got it to a place that felt good for them. So it has to feel good for you. Otherwise you won't do it and you'll feel squeamish and you'll back out immediately. On the other hand. So I'm afraid I'm going to lose my train of thought here. We were talking about if it feels off to be that pushy with somebody, is that we're looking at with getting them into one camp or the other.

Yeah, just being that direct.

So here's what got me over it is what I'm not doing is I'm not. I'm actually. And your clients will love you for this if you actually take it on. What we're doing is we are helping. We're helping that client. Their fear is a lot of the time, the client's fear is that they're going to hurt our feelings as salespeople. They don't want to be the one to tell us no because they're worried they're going to let us down in some way. And so what I do is I make it very, very clear that no is a perfectly acceptable answer. In fact, it would be great just to get it out on the table right now so that we understand that either the timing's wrong or you're just not that interested. And once I help my client understand that I'm okay with that, and. And that no is perfectly fine, then we can have an honest conversation. So I'm actually not, in a way, I'm not trying to pigeonhole them. I never want to do that in sales. I want to make them feel completely free to be honest with me. Because once we're being honest with each other, then we can have a real conversation.

Yeah, absolutely.

So my approach to it would be, aziza, it sounds like you're not interested right now, which is totally cool, but I need to know so that I know where to spend my time. If this isn't something that's going to work, just let me know. That way, I'm not calling you and doing these awkward checkups and stuff, and you're not having to play this game of pretending you're still interested. And I might say that to you directly. And so I say, if this isn't the right time or you're never going to do this, just let me know. And then I really enjoy talking to you. I wish you the best of luck, and I'm going to move on to somebody else, and you're free to tell me that. But oftentimes clients, at that point, when they see you're serious, they then they commit.

Right.

That's powerful. And there's so much more we could dive into on this. And just in the interest of time, I'm just going to end with this one question.

Yeah.

Let's say you had a client who came to you and they were willing to do whatever it took. You know, they were saying, yeah, I might feel afraid, I might feel squeamish, but I'm going to. I'm going to do this. I'm ready to face my fear. What would you say is the most powerful or the best pathway that they could have to have more Confidence in their sales, more success in their sales. If they're willing to do anything, what would some of the main key elements of their success?

What would that be?

Number one, I'd say, who are the best people in your industry and have you talked to them yet? So we always have to. I always have my people find out who's just killing it in their business and call that person. Because one thing I've learned is as people grow and become more and more successful, they have the money, what they really want is the recognition a lot of the time and they want to be able to share. And so those people, it's really a gift to that person to call them and say, please teach me. So I always have them reach out to somebody else. One of the biggest shifts for me in sales and something I use to this day, and I use it socially as well, I wish I'd known this in my dating life is sales is not about being smooth or having the right script or the right thing to say. It's about asking a lot of questions and not being the one to show up and educate your clients. Your clients don't want to be educated. So one of the things I do when I'm working on scripts with people or how to make those initial calls if they're willing to do anything, number one, we're going to change your script. Your script is oftentimes too much about you. And we changed the entire script around to where it's just piles of questions and asking really interested questions and answering everything with a question. And I just had this happen the other day. I was talking with a guy who's very high up with Nike and we sat down at my daughter's gymnastics class. And I use this all the time with strangers. And I just say, so what do you do and what do you like about it? We talked for probably an hour. I only asked him questions. He talked the whole time. At the end of that class, he goes, man, I have really enjoyed this conversation. And I thought, yeah, it was completely one sided. I didn't share anything about me. This was entirely you talking at me. And he just loved it. And that's a trick I use in sales constantly. It's not about me, it's about the client. And so I'm just going to keep asking them questions, keep asking them questions. Takes all the pressure off of me to be interesting or funny or anything like that. And they end up loving it. So I use it at parties. Like I said, I wish I would have known this when I was dating it would have made things a lot easier. And we don't need to be the good one. We can just ask questions the whole time. And then the last one is, stop stressing about what you can't control. If my client's willing to do anything, and that's this guy that I just was telling the story about. I said, are you willing to really turn this on? He said, I'm ready. And that's when I said, don't look at your numbers. I don't want you to look at how much money you're making. I want you only to look at. And we figured out the metric. In this case, it was number of nos, the metric that would get him where he wanted to be if we just track that metric. So focus on what you can control. Those are the three things that is powerful.

Man, this is great. I can just hear as you talk that you know this stuff inside and out. And it's not just about sales. I mean, as we're diving to in this conversation, so much of this is about inner game stuff, about confidence, about self worth, about how to let go of the outcome, how to truly serve people. I mean, there's just so much good stuff in here, and I can't think of a better person to learn this from. As a matter of fact, in our last minutes here, I understand that you just launched an online training program specifically targeting new insurance agents. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that program, but then also your coaching in general and how if someone wants to get better at sales, how they can get in touch with you. And we'll make sure we have links down below too, on the site so people can access that.

Perfect. So I have one of our fellow coaches. My website is in development. This is a relatively new venture for me, but it does have all my contact info on it. So davidschwenderman.com is the domain where someone can reach out to me or get in touch. But this. Yeah, I saw there's such a need for good sales training out there and sales training that's not focused on, again, manipulating or only ask questions. The client can say yes to. All this stuff that I was trained on that I really just threw away when I started having some success. So I put this course together and it's a mix of that tracking. Like I said, each week we layer on a new layer. Like week one. Your job and your homework is to talk to ten strangers a day. You don't have to sell them, you just have to talk to them and then mark down that you did it. So kind of getting people slowly out of their shell over the course of six weeks to the time where when I've done this with other agents, usually it takes an agent about six months to get up and running. I've had agents do it in a month or two months by using this. So it's really just taking this stuff and step by step, working on the mindset in tandem with the actions that will get you to be successful. And we're going to have all that information on the website as well that just launched. It is specific for insurance. I'm looking at revamping it to make it so it's a better fit for no matter what industry you're in. Because at the end of the day, these tools work no matter what you're doing. That's what I'm finding out as I coach more and more people is the same stuff works everywhere.

Absolutely. And if someone wanted to find out more about working with you directly for coaching, would they go to the same site? Where would they go?

Yeah, yeah. Just. Yeah. Really? It's like I said, I don't have business cards. It's very informal. Usually people reach out to me. If I get a referral or someone who's interested, I just kind of figure out first. I just want to know what their goals are. And sometimes I'll have them write down their goals or send me a long rambling email telling me about them, whatever helps me get to know them. And if it seems like it's a good fit, then we hop on the phone, we talk. And I've had clients where one phone call is enough to send them off and they are off to the races and they're going to hit those goals with just that and others who really want to achieve something big and scary, then we might end up working together.

That is fantastic.

I'm pretty booked up. That's the fun thing about doing this is as it works, I don't have a ton of room, but I always keep space open because I love having these conversations. So if someone really wanted to talk, then we would find a time to connect. That is great.

And I'll make sure we have a link down below for the site so people can access that as well.

Perfect. That sounds good.

Thank you so much for joining us, Dave.

Yeah, thanks, Aziz. This is fun.

That brings us to the end of the interview and the end of our show. Except we can't leave without what?

That's right.

Action.

Because as interesting as this was, or.

As many insights as you had, Unless you put this into action, nothing will.

Change in your life.

So let's do that now.

Time for action.

Your action step for today is to detach yourself from specific outcome and set a goal of actions, things that you're gonna do. So remember in the interview he was talking about, I had 20m andms. On my table and I didn't leave until I made.

I talked to 20 decision makers and.

Each time I talked to a person, I could eat an M and M. So that was. He set up his goal of something he could control, which was I could talk to 20 people or the client that he was working with. He said, stop focusing on the outcome and your sales and start focusing on getting no's. You gotta get five nos per day. So you're gonna want to set some goal for yourself that is like that. A really simple one is the no goal. I'm gonna get three no's a day. I'm gonna get five no's this week, whatever it is. But you're going for no. It's really powerful. And I talked about that in my interview with Andrea Waltz, the author of a book called Go for no. If you want to go back and search through the episodes, you can find it, but very powerful. But you want to set some sort of goal that that is in your control and then take action to make that happen.

So instead of I gotta talk to.

Five people and get them to buy from me, well, that's outside of your control, what those five people are gonna do. But I'm going to have five conversations with people that's inside your control. I'm gonna get three no's. Well, that's in your control too. Cause you can just keep talking to people and keep asking until you get no's. So get out there, take those actions. And again, if you're not doing sales right now, you still may want to consider practicing this stuff. Apply it to something else. Say if maybe you're looking at dating and relationships. So I'm going to get 3 nos from women this week, whatever it is. You can apply this to any area of your life of just getting out there, taking action, putting the things that are in your control, and then letting the rest go, letting the outcome go. So thanks so much for joining me today. If you'd like to share about your experience, please join us in the community, which is facebook.com social confidence. You can also go to shrinkforthshyguy.com and.

Find out the show notes there.

Get all the links to Dave's program or just find out more about Dave, as well as leave me a message and chat with me through the show. I love to hear from people that are listening hear from you directly. So thanks so much for listening and until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.

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