HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE PSYCHOLOGY SELLING AND SALES TO WIN

The psychology of sales. That's one of the things we're going to be talking to you about today. I've got a very successful sales guy, 25 years of experience, lots of success, and what he calls the psychology of the sale. You know, we're breaking it down. The things, some of the things we've talked about in the past, empathy, the understanding of what the other person is going through, what they care about. It's not the product. And compassion, the desire to help them through this journey. And he positions it more as being both on the same side. Both people are trying to accomplish the same thing. Throw away that adversarial mindset, the objection handling and the pushing that we think of in sales. Because in B2B sales, that doesn't help. It kind of gets in the way. This is one of my favorite interviews, I think, this year, because he both has the experience and the uniqueness of being able to articulate it. A lot of great salespeople, they don't know how to articulate what they do differently. They're unconsciously competent at it. And I experienced that when I wrote my book. It was, okay, now how do I put this into words that other people can understand? How do I really express it so that somebody can take it and then go with it? It's hard. Seems like it would be easy, but try it. What we end up doing is not going deep enough, and we stick at the platitude level. It's all about relationships, or, you know, close strong. Okay, whatever. Okay, go away. Those are platitudes. They're not really strategies. I think you're going to enjoy this interview. This is one that you don't want to listen to while you're jogging Or at least you want to listen to it where you can take notes, stop, rewind. What did he say? Because he's given real tactical examples too. We're not, you know, glazing over that. We're getting into exactly what he says so that you can apply it as well. So before I get into the interview, I also want to make you aware of that brevitypitch.com is looking for 2 outstanding salespeople. One is the dream job. At least it would have been for me at the right time in my career. What they need is somebody with good solid 5+ years of sales experience who really wants to dissect the the sales process, the stages, debug what the sales leader is dealing with, and come up with micro-conversations for their reps. You know, they're calling it a sales performance consultant. And it's good to work with the existing customers to maximize the sales performance of their team by having 5 minutes a day to practice these advanced skills. So the job is to connect with the sales leader, understand the sales process that they have today, learn where the deals are stalling, dying, or shrinking, and then prescribe some drills, examples, micro-conversations to help the team get better at those and prevent the deal from stalling, dying, or shrinking. Great job, I think. So it's not a prospecting sales type job. It's only with the existing accounts because the company is just on fire right now. The other is there's so much inbound, so many people hitting the website and it's— who may not be ready yet. And what we're trying to do is build a network Of those people. So anybody who's been through my Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting and wants to apply it to sales leaders, this job is the ideal job for you. So it's 2 different roles. They're very unique. So it's not for everybody. But if you think this is something that you'd be great at and something that you would really have a passion for, connect up with me on LinkedIn. Send me a little InMail and I'll prioritize the people, the people who are the best match, and then give it to them or their internal recruiter. You could also hit up their website, brevitypitch.com, and check it out and see if it might be right for you. And if you're a sales leader out there, look at your forecast right now. What's going on? It's probably looking still pretty good. But what happens in the next week or so? It starts to melt. It starts to shrink. It starts to slide into next quarter. How to prevent that? How do you prevent that? Your reps need these advanced skills. They think they have them. They think they're pretty good at them. But who knows? They may think they're better at them than they are, or they may think they're doing it, but they're doing something a little different. Sales is a performance profession. The more reps you get with these skills, the more comfortable and organic they become to you. And that's the challenge. They may know them. They may think they're doing them. With Brevity Pitch, you get the chance to really work them into your DNA to become part of you. So they become part of your DNA and you become better and better in sales. And I was talking to the CEO the other day and he goes, do you think people would ever end with these? There'd be— they would just not need them? I go, look, I've been doing this Longer than you've been alive. I still need them. I need to get comfortable with them. And even talking to him, it's like, you know, you hear me go through them. First time it sounds awkward. Second time it makes a little bit more sense. Third time, oh, I got my groove. That's just human nature. It's not about knowledge. It's not about ego. It's just We need these warmups. We need to practice these skills when we're not expecting them. That's the difference. Because sales is like a pop quiz, but we don't know what's going to happen. It just pops up and we go into fight or flight and we usually cave, which is usually the wrong thing to do. Let's get into this interview. I'll sum it up at the end. Here we go. Hey, Scott, thanks for joining us today. As a way of getting started, give us a little background on yourself.

Well, sure. I'm Scott Sadowski. I've been a sales engineer for— with this, my present company— for about 24 years. Didn't start off in sales though in my career. I went to school in college to be early childhood education teacher.

Wow.

Because I thought that I was good with children and that I had to have my summers off and my parents had a summer home on a lake and I thought, boy, this would be a great career because I could spend all my time at the lake house and this would be awesome. And enjoyed that for a short period of time throughout college until I did student teaching and realized that I liked the kids but I didn't like the parents.

Oh boy.

So I decided, okay, I might have to change my career here, my career path. And some opportunities presented themselves. They said, Scott, you know, you're a personable guy, maybe you should get into sales and sell something. So that kind of piqued my interest because there's a certain money component to that that I liked. There's a certain kind of freedom to be able to do what you need and to create sales that I like that aspect of it. So I was, I was somewhat drawn to it and Kind of found my niche there.

And plus you have the summers off, right?

No, absolutely not. I don't, I don't seem to even take very good vacations. I seem to always be wanting to do something.

3 months off does sound appealing, doesn't it?

It, it does. You know, that'll come soon enough in retirement, right? Yeah.

And what'd you like about it?

Um, I liked being able to control my own destiny. Which I really wasn't sure of, you know, going into it. But boy, to be able to create your own destiny, create the process with the customer, create a database of customers that appreciate and understand what you bring to the table is very rewarding.

Yeah. And how long was it before it became your thing? Was it immediate or did it take a couple of years?

Oh no, I think I took to it immediately. Part of the issues I think in starting out in sales at the beginning is, you know, trying to have a good team or a good set of management to help you develop. I felt like I was being thrown in and drowning most of the time. And all I was really doing was learning how to swim through all this stuff, which was kind of, you know, trial by fire. And that was also exciting to me in some regards too. That I felt like you had this constant barrage of things happening and how do you knock these issues down or these objections down or how do you get to the customer, to the end user? How do you infiltrate their business? And it became a challenge and I liked that challenge.

Yeah. And I gotta believe that your degree had a lot of psychology elements in it.

Well, you know, it didn't and I didn't actually graduate college. I dropped out to go into sales Because I felt like I could learn more and do more that way than having a degree at the time, which paid off for me in the long run with a long rewarding career and made plenty of money. So that was always good for me. And, but, you know, I think, you know, early in your career, Bryan, your management structure and depending on the companies that you work for, there's a lot of people that are trying to teach you things or teach you methodologies and One of the things I wish I would have learned early in my career that didn't come until later was the psychology of the sale. What does it actually take the person that I'm dealing with? You know, a lot of companies want to take an adversarial position with the customers and negotiate hard and we need to do this and they need to do that. And that just, I found, didn't work.

Yeah.

And so that once I tapped into the psychology of the sale and what is this person standing across the table from me, how do I go sit on that side of the table with them? and work through whatever it is that they need. And in my industry, we deal a lot with manufacturing engineers, not so much with purchasing personnel, but the manufacturing engineers or vice presidents of operations or plant managers. And all these people want to do at the end of the day is have their company look at them in a good light that they made the appropriate decision.

Yeah.

So how do I get on the side of the table with them to help them and reassure them that by going with us and our product or our service or our engineering solution, that it's going to make them a success in their company's eyes because their biggest fear in tapping into that is, oh man, what if I make a mistake? What if this doesn't work? What if we spend all this money? So getting into that psychology of the sale, helping them and get a comfort level with them and then demonstrate how that works with them. And it was really an eye-opening situation.

Was the leadership team supportive of that, or did they take more of a push?

Well, I think, I think that throughout my career of 30-some years now, I've had good managers, some bad managers. They come and go. My strategy is sometimes you leave the meeting after a manager's meeting and you say, yeah, I'm not going to do that. So you kind of, you feel like, you know what works. You tell them yes, you know, you don't want to give them all lip service and you want to kind of appreciate it, but There was an instance really early in my career that I was presented with a script to make telephone calls and what they call teleprospecting. I'm like, oh boy. So I'm reading through the script and I'm like, boy, you know, this is, this is not gonna work at all. So I came up with my own approach to the customers and how I would contact them. Very simple stuff. Hi, this is Scott Sadowski and this is my company and then my phone number and nothing more. So I would get a lot of callbacks from these prospects because they don't know what it is. They're interested, like, well, who is this guy? What has he got? What are we doing? Why is he calling me? And my management team's like, this is unbelievable. You're getting all these callbacks and nobody else gets callbacks. What did you do? I go, I threw out the script. You just sometimes you just have to throw out the script and just go do it and be a person.

Yeah. Sometimes the script was written by somebody who hasn't sold, hasn't tried it.

Well, there's some of that that happens too. And we all, we, you know, going back to the teaching reference early, Brian, is that, you You know, those who can't teach, that's kind of like a saying that I, you know, I heard many times early in my studies. But yeah, you know, sales for a lot of people is finding it out, figuring it out. I've met a lot of different sales mentors, been through many sales training, you know, types of seminars, some good, some bad. But, you know, you try to pull what you can out of them and do the best you can. But you also kind of If you just keep going back to the psychology of the sale and understanding that sometimes people, customers will tell you something, but I always look at it and I just say, geez, if that's not overtly positive, that's covertly negative. What is really going on? What's really happening here? Who else is involved? What else is going on there? And asking them, you know, like, okay, well, why would you do that? Or why don't you teach me about how this process works and getting on trying to get on their team leads to more success.

Yeah, because, and that's kind of what I teach, that empathy. If you were them, what would you be thinking?

That's, oh yeah, absolutely. I was in front of a customer once and he was very at taking an adversarial position like, well, why would I want to do business with you? What do you want? And I just kind of gave him the approach like when I see small children, in fact, from my you know, wanting to teach days. Look, I'm here to help. I'm not here to fight you. Yeah, I'm not here to fight you. I'm here to help, you know, what are we doing here? And, you know, I've had a lot of customers take that kind of stance because they're so used to a certain salesperson pounding and hitting them with something. And, you know, I'll ask them, are we dancing? Are we dating? Are we getting married? What are we doing here? You know, what's the purpose of us to be here? I thought it was for me to Understand you, your needs and wants and what can make you successful. And I'm here to make you successful and make a few shekels at it for both of us. What's, you know, this is, this isn't that hard. And that usually disarms them in a lot of, a lot of cases.

And that's it because I think in B2B, you're not tricking anybody, you're not pushing anybody, you know, because you leave and they can just, you know, block you.

It's like, well, a lot of times, you know, Customers, I find, want to test you a little bit on who you really are or what you, what you're here for. And so many guys in our industry that I see want to be the number one guy in product knowledge. And, oh, I know the horsepower specifications and I know the torque and I know the travels of this and the power required. I don't focus on any of that at all with my customers. My customers, it's, it's like, what, what do you need? What are you looking for? How do we do it? Do we— you know, a lot of times I don't even know if I'm at the right place or with the right guy when we start. And that's what I'm there to find out and help and take that approach that I'm there to help. And there was one time I was working with a big construction equipment manufacturer and did quite a bit of business with them. And they said, oh, Scott, you know, you're a good salesman, you're a good salesman, you're different than the other guys. And I says, well, what makes me different? What is— what did you like about it? And they said, you know, you were helpful, you were looking out for our best interests. And, you know, you're almost like an employee of this company, but fortunately you're on that other guy's payroll, not ours. And that's good for us. So that always kind of stuck with me.

And what kept you in the same company for so long? It's kind of like a world record nowadays.

Yeah. The, after bouncing around from several sales organizations and finding out that I can't work for those people, there's no way it's gonna happen or, you know, that company is not really the kind of the right fit for me. I found this company and it was a management team at a previous organization that all left and came here. So they recruited me to come along with them. So it was a familiarity of the group of people that I was working with that I like to work with that all came to this organization. And when I came here, the leader of the organization said to me, he said, Scott, imagine this as your own business. And I'm just the bank funding you. So you see fit how you need to run the business, how you need to be customer-centric with the business, and I'll fund you. And every year you'll submit me a business plan and kind of let me know the outline of what you think you can do with what resources you have. And let's do it like that. And that really just allowed me to take off.

I think a lot of people like that. Yeah.

So, you know, he's looking for people with an entrepreneurial spirit. This is what, you know, he's looking for.

And how can you be in sales without that spirit?

Well, there's a lot of people that are there. I see them all the time. My customers tell me about them, that they are just, that, that they're not helpful, that they don't like it when they show up at their door. They don't, they dread getting the phone call from the guy that's trying to peddle whatever it is that he's trying to peddle to them. And, you know, that's, that's, it's part of our industry. And, uh, you know, I see, you know, I follow you on LinkedIn. And so I see a lot of the stuff that you talk about and it's all, you know, it's comical. It's got a nice touch to it. And it really does point out a lot of the things about management and bad companies and what they do and how, you know, how do you navigate that?

Yeah. And I think today it's getting worse instead of better.

Well, you know, I think with the advent of some of the ERPs, some of the programs, some of the systems that we need to report to with the key performance indicators and checking the boxes and turning things green from red, Yeah, that's a, it's a whole bunch of nonsense.

That hasn't helped you sell anything?

No, hasn't. So hasn't helped me sell anything at all. Although when you do do it because they're requesting it and, you know, as I was told that it's a complete bunch of nonsense, but Scott, it's part of the job is what the answer I get. Okay. So it's part of my job.

Okay.

I'll do it. And you feel like, oh, wow, I got everything done. It's all checked. All the boxes are checked. This is great. But yet at the end, I look at my checking account. I go, this isn't so great at all. I need to go out and do other things. I need to create. I need to do research on my customers. I need to get involved more in their company and what is their ultimate goals. Those are the ones where the profit equation comes into place.

And what got— what changed your mindset about this? Because getting into sales, you probably listened to managers. Numbers game, number of calls, talk about the product, right? Yeah. Compete on features and benefits. But then you took a different approach.

I did, you know, of course, as a young guy in your early 20s, mid-20s, you listen to all of that and you do it because you think that's the job. But I would talk to some guys that I thought were successful or they, you know, looking in the parking lot, I could see the car they drove. I'm like, oh, look at that, right? How did, what's that guy doing? And you kind of clue into them and He's that guy that's a little bit of a lone wolf. He is an entrepreneur. He walks out of that meeting, goes, oh, that was a good meeting, but I'm not gonna do that, right? He was that guy. And I'm like, boy, you know, and he's been here a long time, or he's been at that company a long time. And, you know, you talk to those people and you ask them, and they tell you, good managers come, bad managers come. They come and go. Just stay the course. Do what you have to do. If you can live, eat, and breathe with your customer, And if they're doing great, you'll do great. And if they're doing bad, you'll do bad. But to take that approach is so much more important than all of the other stuff that we are tasked to do, which are basically just tasks, Brian.

Yeah. And I gotta believe your business, a lot of repeat business. Is that true?

You know, with our business, the capital expenditure is high. So if we think of a good customer may buy once every 3 or 5 years, Okay. One, one big system or one big capital project. So my business is not a customer buying multiple machines in a year, although that's happened. A lot of times they're doing a capital improvement and they'll do it this year and they may not do it next year or the year after, but then the third year they would. So to have that relationship, sometimes there's long lead times to these processes and what we call a turnkey type system for automation and for machining. Takes a while.

And I'm sure there's alternatives, competitors.

Oh yeah, plenty of, plenty of competition. And in our market, it's not just the local competition, it's global competition.

Okay.

So we have, we have companies from all over Asia and all over Europe as well as here in the United States that we're always constantly competing against. And in a global market, that's very tough. It's, it's difficult. But to be there for the customer is important.

And who's the champion on the customer side? Is it the manufacturing manager? Is it the CEO? Is it the— who cares the most about this?

Well, you know, I think that initially at the start, it's a manufacturing engineer that has the most to kind of introduce you to the company. And then from there, it is usually a plant manager level or, a vice president of operations level that cares.

Okay.

And then so you work up the ladder as you go through the process.

And what does that manufacturing engineer care about?

He cares about making his product on your equipment and that it works and that it doesn't break down so that maintenance isn't complaining to him that he made the wrong decision. So that's when you go into the psychology of that type of personnel, which is, look, I know you don't want maintenance on your back. I know that you don't want to be trying to hunt down parts or whatever you need for potential downtime. But let me, let me kind of demonstrate to you with our other customers, you know, what is our mean time between failure kind of rates? What are our responsive times? You don't have to take it from me. We'll take you to see our other customers. They'll tell you themselves because, you know, it's kind of like ask the man who owns one. And that's very helpful to make that switch in the sales from being product or features and benefits sales To what really matters to you, sales.

Personal wins. Yeah. Let's say you get that person, then what does the operations person care about? Cost or reliability?

Yeah, but they're carrying some of that same liability kind of situation where I don't want maintenance to be in, I don't want to be in downtime. I don't want to hurt my customer. Their deliverable needs to be on time. So they're much more in tune with the financial aspect of it and how it relates to their customer. Not the manufacturing engineer is more related to his internal customer, which is his maintenance department and his boss, where the Vice President of Operations is more concerned about his customer and satisfying their requirements. And so a little bit different direction.

And how can you tell how serious they are? Because I'm sure they look years in advance or months in advance.

I think the average sales cycle is a 6-month sales cycle from the time we first make contact to the time to launch. A lot of our customers are product OEM kind of base customers, but many of them also are what we would call a mom-and-pop type of job shop or some smaller company, you know, 10 to 12, 15 employees. So their needs are very different than the OEM-type customer. The OEM-type customer already had a budget set for the project. So if they've engaged you or you've found this project, it's already been budgeted, it's planned. So, you know, it's serious. It's not a waste of time. The other end of it is the smaller machine shops and job shops and manufacturing facilities. They're tasked with, holy cow, I got this request for quote from his customer or a new customer. How— I don't have the right equipment or I don't have the right automation to do this. I need to do something quickly if I want to jump on this. So those transactions happen much quicker and the financial portion of that becomes very important to them. So they're looking at it like, this is more expensive than what I probably paid for my first home. I don't want to make a wrong decision. Again, this fear again and That's a driving factor for a lot of these companies.

And who goes against you in the sale? Is it the financial people? Is it—

I would say on the OEMs, they, if they have a budget set and the budget wasn't properly vetted initially, that's the most difficult thing to get over because then we get into the process and develop the process and develop the sales kind of you know, overview of what this is going to take to launch it and they vastly under-budgeted for this, that becomes a big stressor and pain point because we still want the business. We are maybe willing to take a lower margin to help them with that budget. But if they don't share that with you upfront or you're not able to extract that information from them, it's a, it becomes a big waste of time.

Yeah.

So, you know, trying to understand a customer's budget is pretty important.

And What do you see as your strongest sales characteristic?

I would think that, you know, going to that psychology of the sale that I'm interested in there, I have a vested interest in them. They can see that from my actions and what I'm doing with my team, who I'm engaging, who I'm bringing to the table as far as engineers to understand and help them. That's probably the strongest, that they see that we do really care. And that we are different. We're not just about the product and here it is and here's the specifications. We want to help. We want to help them.

And do you ever run into kind of the stiff arm RFP type of sale?

Oh yeah, all the time. And, you know, we're always challenged with spreadsheets and Excel spreadsheets and, you know, do this. And I think that, you know, early in my career, I realized that filling out someone's spreadsheet is not necessarily the most fun thing to do, and it really puts you at an extreme disadvantage because you never get to the place you need to be. So I've combated that when I've asked customers or buying teams, tell, teach me about how this process works for you guys when you buy something. Do you do it off of a spreadsheet? Do you, who does it go to? Who do you see? Walk me through how this process works. And so, oh, you know, there are, everyone's happy to talk about themselves or with their things. And, oh yeah, yeah, we have a spreadsheet. And I said, Well, you know what? I do spreadsheets all the time. I said, I've run one recently. Why don't I show you my spreadsheet? And it's developed already. I've done it enough times. And so I don't just have to answer a bunch of questions so that you fill out a spreadsheet that maybe doesn't mean something or doesn't. Let me give you ours.

Yeah.

And oh geez, that's a big step saver for me. That'd be helpful. And then I can really kind of outline and go in depth of what really matters on a spreadsheet. Not just the horsepower.

And manufacturing engineers, are they— I don't think I've sold to them, but are they warm and fuzzy? I can't imagine them being warm.

Oh, no, no, no, no, they're not. They're not at all. They're somewhat, I would say, difficult to communicate with in a lot of ways. A lot of manufacturing engineers just want to be left with their computer or with their machine or with their device. And just leave me alone in the room and I'll figure it out. And that's great. But if, if you're left in a room to figure it out and it doesn't work, wouldn't you want some input? And they're always willing to listen to input. So if you approach it that way, they, they tend to warm up. You know, I, I would like a little input on this because they want to be understanding that it's not just their decision, but that somebody else has buy-in for their decision as well, that someone appreciates what they're doing.

Yeah. And I did sell to kind of on the software side, but they were feature function by definition. They wanted to learn about the product. How did you— are manufacturing engineers like that or are they easier to—

You know, in talking to manufacturing engineers in some levels of these companies, I kind of take the approach with them. It's like, You know, you know, guys, I'm from— I would say I'm from Missouri. It's a show-me state. Like, don't you, don't you want to see it, understand it, feel it, touch it? And most manufacturing engineers are like, yeah, right, we do. We— I want to understand the inner workings of that. I want to understand what that switch does or how that input works. And so to tell them that and kind of disarm them and say, let's, let's go take a road trip. Let's make a field trip out of this. You know, let's, let's go check some things out. Let me show you some things. Oh, okay. Well, let me see if I get approval from my management to leave the plant, whatever. And those field trips are very valuable.

They're gold, aren't they?

They're golden. Yes.

That, that worked for me nearly 100% of the time. If you could get them on a customer site. Yeah.

If you can present yourself as your authentic self, that you really are there to help, you understand what they're up against, what their goals are, how they're judged in their job by their bosses and how they're compensated. Once you present that you get all that, you understand that you're not there just to sell them something that they don't need or straddle them with some project that won't work, they're apt to— they'll open up and they'll say, yeah, let's go, let's go take a look.

And I'm sure your company has younger reps who want to go out there and kill it. What do you tell them?

Yeah, you know, our— I guess our age in our company today is getting up there. But yeah, we have some, you know, younger people that get into it, then in that 27-ish kind of age group. will get, will find us or we find them. And they, they like the idea when I tell them about the concept of the psychology of the sale, not just the features and benefits portion of the sale. How do we communicate with people? And if we focus on how we communicate with people and identifying our customers' attributes or the type of person they are and selling to that personality, they, they get a kick out of that.

Yeah.

It's difficult though because we're seeing a change in the manufacturing engineering level, the vice president of operations level, the ownership level is getting younger now, right? And the younger people respond to text messages, the whole social media, and they don't need to see a salesman to do a field trip. They've already done their online research. They already know they're good. They saw a YouTube video, they're good. And I know that, you know, that's how we learn today. I learn a lot of things on YouTube videos.

Yeah. I mean, that can be dangerous too, right? Because how deep do they go?

How deep do they go is one thing. You know, you, I think today's salesperson has to have a social media presence for us to have to be able to connect to them. Once we have that connection, then getting in the personal connection becomes easier. But there's a lot of salespeople that I know, oh, I'm not gonna post that on LinkedIn. I'm not posting that on social media. I don't wanna, I don't wanna touch that. I don't, yeah. this is my secret. I don't want to share it. And it's just, it boggles me. It absolutely boggles me. You know, we don't want to share our customers. I don't care. I want everybody to see me. I want all my customers to have exposure to what I'm doing or what our successes are. And I like to post about our success stories. And I think sharing that goodwill is good for everybody. Yeah. I don't feel like I'm giving away a potential secret. That's okay. It's all good for all of us as our organization and as our profession.

Yeah. And how do you start off your calls to make sure that you— they don't pull you into the commodity trap? You know, tell me about your product. How's it different? How's it work?

Well, I'll just ask them a very simple question and it just— I'll just say, hey, are you just trying to get 3 quotes here? Because I can make this happen really quick. I'll just— I'll pull up my computer right now and I'll just get you a quote if you're just looking for that. Let's get this over really quickly. You know, You know, I'm here to present you with a solution. If you're just looking for 3 quotes in a commodity situation and you're only going to buy on a bottom line number, I'll just give you the number now. We'll end this real quick and then maybe get a PO today. Would I be lucky enough to do that? Oh no, no, it has to go through much more than that. Okay, well then what is that much more? And then they open up and explain. I'm like, okay, let's go there. So it was kind of disarming them, getting to the real. The real need, the real understanding of the customer and getting, like I said, on that side of the table with them instead of on the opposite side of the table. How do I sit in the chair next to them and have them understand that I'm on their team?

And then how do you get that introduction to the operations and then to probably the CEO or the finance people to get the paperwork done?

We do it in the very old-fashioned way of cold calling and teleprospecting and customer referrals. Or when you're talking to a customer and you say, wow, you know, I see you're doing this pump housing or this piston or this control arm or whatever gadget is the widget they're making. Geez, you know, what's your competition like? Are they tough? Oh yeah, they're tough. They're on the other side of town. Oh, have you ever talked to them? Oh no, we never talked to them, but they run this equipment or they do that. And that gives me kind of like a little introduction. So I'll go to that next company. Hey, what are you guys working on? I think you're working on a piston project or whatever it is, and we've done plenty of piston projects. Maybe we have something to offer. Maybe there's a fit for us. Maybe there's not. But I don't know unless we start a conversation, and that really helps move things along.

And a lily pad to lily pad.

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And it's, you know, that networking, that understanding, engaging in projects. Always making the contacts. And, you know, I find myself— yesterday was a rainy day, and I've been driving around from shop to shop, getting wet every single stop, trying to keep my glasses clear and knocking on doors. And it, you know, here it is so many years later, it still works, and it still has to be done. There's many other avenues and venues that we do to make contact with the customer, but that one still works, and customers They have all kinds of barriers set up, no soliciting signs on the doors, and nobody allowed in the building without an appointment. And you get in all these kind of crazy situations, and you just kind of break it down to its basic thing. It's like I was at a receptionist's desk, and she says, oh, you can't see anybody here or talk to anybody here or do anything here. We don't give out names. I'm like, great. I just wanted to make an introduction. That's what I'm here for, is to find out how do I start that process? How do you let people in the door? I don't need to get in the door today, but how do I do it in the future? Well, you have to call and make an appointment. I said, well, I don't know, who do I call? She's like, well, you just have to call. So I literally pulled out my phone and I called her front desk standing in front of her and she's like, oh, okay, so now what do I do? And it kind of disarms her because now she laughs. She's like, yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. Here's so-and-so you need to talk to and then you go from there. But you just kind of have to cut through some of that, not be rude or obnoxious about it, but make it a little bit comical. People will say when you walk in the door, oh, we're not buying anything or we're not doing anything. I'm like, well, I couldn't be that lucky, could I? That's impossible that I could be that lucky. I just walk in, you're gonna buy something today. But how do we do this in the future? You know, how is this gonna work? And asking those questions, they'll tell you. They'll let you know.

Excellent. Hey, I really appreciate your time today. Where can people go to connect and follow you?

I'm on LinkedIn, of course, as you know, under Scott Sadowski. Work here at Technical Equipment, uh, at S. Sadowski at techequip.com. And, uh, it was great talking with you today. I enjoy your program.

I, I like how he positioned it, that he makes his clients feel that he has their best interest in mind. That is trust. That is the level of trust that we need to have with our clients. And also how he handled the pricing thing and the commodity trap. He just said, hey, if all you need is a 3rd quote, I can send it to you right now. Because people think they know what they need. Really? I can look back at some of the major purchases that I have made. I don't really— I didn't really know what I needed. And I ended up buying something that wasn't really what I wanted, and then I'm stuck with it. And some people are bold enough to return them, but sometimes they're too big to return, or it's too much of a hassle to return, or it's already installed and it's unreturnable. So you have to live with it, live with it a long time. Your customers are no different. They look at the website and they think they've got it, or they want to just have an aspirin. They want the immediate problem just to go away in the cheapest, fastest way possible. That's natural, but we have to get them focused on the bigger picture. We're running into all kinds of things today, and human nature is always kick the can down the road, delay, ignore until we have to. And that's why when people sell something that people have to buy, they do well because people either have to buy it or they don't. Well, but what are most of us selling? Most of us are selling things that are preventative. Like brevity pitches, preventative. It's not going to help you close a deal that's stuck. It's going to help you prevent the deal from getting stuck. Now, in sales, we say we're proactive, but usually we're reactive, meaning that we don't plan, we don't prepare, we react to things that go wrong. It's kind of the The fireman approach. We wait till the fire alarm goes, and then we know how to put out a fire. The problem in sales is that once it's on fire, it's too late. The deal usually dies. Um, you know, we don't admit it till weeks after to say, like, how did it die? And then, and in yesterday's office hours, I was like, what are these early signs? That a deal really is not a deal yet, that it is a curiosity. It is an interest. It is not an urgency. And how do you turn it into that instead of going down the route, the science experiment route, the big deal trap where we just, you know, go with them because it seems So good. And you know what? Once you're in it, you kind of say, well, this seems too good. And then all of a sudden you realize, I'm in the big deal trap. I'm in the commodity trap. I'm in a science experiment where they want to play with the product. They're not going to buy it, but they want to play with it. But is that What you want? You don't get paid much for that. Sales is being ready for the things that you can't really expect. And knowing it at that moment is critical. And this is what I teach in sales, but most reps just want tips and tricks. You know, how they say this, I say that. Well, okay, first of all, are you going to remember that when you need it? Probably not. It requires a level of confidence to be prepared for that.

Hmm.

Or are you just going to be the know-it-all and just change the topic and answer some question they didn't ask? Sales is all about understanding the full game that you're in. Because we get paid only on the deals that close. Yet we feel so comfortable working on busy deals that we, we're not sure are closable. It might be a year too early. Or the person has an ulterior motive that your product may help them get a job. May help them move to a new company. One of the things I often ran into in selling is that you do the walk to the car thing and the prospect would ask if you're hiring. And I'd be like, oh God, if the person's thinking of leaving, how good of a champion are they going to be? Who knows? These things we need to understand before we invest all our time. We tend to get too comfortable just participating in a sale instead of leading and driving a sale. And most of us are reacting to what the client wants to do. And the client will always want to kick the thing down the road and buy it only when they have to. Not when they need to, not when they should. When they have to. And then they're going to blame you because it doesn't work the next day the way they wished it would. And they're going to forget all the things that you told them 3 months ago about why you should act now. So how do you do that? If you want to become great at sales, you have to study the game. Everyone wants to skate through it. And if you can, Congratulations. You're the one of few that can. What I love to see is all these people who do really well at this big, well-established company, and then they go to a startup without all that infrastructure and brand recognition, and they don't know how to do outbound prospecting. And then they, they don't want to learn it. They just want the tip and trick for it to work like a switch.

That doesn't exist.

If it did, believe me, I'd use it. Go to b2brevenue.com. Check out the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting. It'll help you build up your network, your inbound, your pipeline so that you will be able to start conversations with strangers. Not sales conversations. Conversations that turn into sales conversations. Nobody wants to have a sales conversation with a stranger. Nobody. Do you? When your doorbell rings, do you just wing open the door and say, howdy? Or do you look through the peephole? Who the hell's ringing my doorbell? You hope it's FedEx with the new iPhone or something. But it's usually somebody wanting money and time. Do you open the door? Why not? Why not? This is what we're all trying to do today, sending spam and cold calls. It's not that email can't work or the phone can't work. They can. And the people who are usually good at it, they had a lot of personality to it. So how do you break the art into tiny scientific steps with lots of examples? It's called being a student of the game. You either really want to learn the game or you want to just check a box. The problem is checking a box doesn't learn the game, so you better hope that something's just going to fall on your head. Or you can go get another job, which seems to be the solution for a lot of people. Nothing against it. I had a lot of jobs too, but I didn't switch jobs because I couldn't sell the product. I switched jobs typically because I did well and they cut my territory so low that I couldn't do well. Or it would be just too hard to do well, or you got a manager who thinks they know what they're doing better than you, or mandates how you should do your job. Well, guess what? You're not there. And I like how he mentioned that in the interview. And for the managers that are listening, this is what you want to do. Is separate the performance from the performer. Find out what these skills are. Prepare your reps for them. Don't just yell at them after they fall into it. And you, show them. See how well you do at these things. They're not easy. They seem easy because managers, they don't They don't get involved in the hard deals. They get involved in the end-of-the-quarter deals, the good deals, the— I hate to say it— the easy deals. They're not out prospecting. They're not going on first calls in competitive situations at the beginning. They're at the end trying to get the paper through the process, and they should be. But their vantage point is very different than us in the trenches. We're, we're in the muck. We're trying to survive. It's a very different war every day for us. Let's learn how to win those battles. b2brevenue.com. Thanks for listening.