WHY YOU NEED THIS EVEN WHEN THE EXPERTS TELL YOU IT IS OUTDATED

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Before it's showtime. Here we go. Being liked and likable are important in sales, aren't they?

It's certainly part of it. I mean, being liked is gonna help you get in the door. It's probably gonna help you get meetings. And it's, it's a, it's a part of just life in general and, and sales. But At some point, just being liked isn't gonna make people change or make people spend a ton of money with you or your company. You're gonna have to have a lot of other things in between there. So sometimes the old kind of old school way of sales always beat closing type mentality and being likable, it gets you to a certain point, but then what is that other part of it? And then also, I think myself included, sometimes I want to be liked so much from my customers or people I'm working with or internally at my company that I don't deliver bad news. I don't do other things because I want people to like me. So then that hinders my reputation, that hinders my deals. So there's a lot of psychology, I think, with wanting to be liked and how it affects you as a salesperson.

Yeah, I think, you know, when you think about what is, or what's a salesperson like, it's the gregarious life of the party, someone you want to be around. And there's a lot of benefits to that. And a couple years ago, there was a sale influencer on LinkedIn saying it doesn't matter at all if there's enough value there. They don't care if you're likable. And I'm like, well, there'd have to be a whole lot of value there, you know, because you go into the emergency room, you don't care if the doctor's likable or not, do you? You just want to stop bleeding. Got it. But if you're going to a therapist, you know, once a week or twice a week for 6 months, you want to like the person. So, you know, like most things in sales, it's not binary. It's kind of context sensitive. And I, I've worked for a guy who was 100% a relationship sales guy. He was my manager, very likable, uh, could talk sports all night and day, really enjoyed going to dinner with him, cocktails. But sometimes he would only get meetings because they liked him. They were never going to buy anything.

Hmm.

Wasn't a match. There's no need. And he would take the meeting, take them out to dinner and everything. Well, that— what's the difference between doing that and just hanging out with your friends? This person's not— there's no business there. You know, do you really need to practice being likable? And also, he, he couldn't really push back. But to your point of You know, if someone asked for a discount, he'd just give it to them. And discounting was his only sales lever.

That's not gonna work out in the long run. Yeah.

So he always had these big deals that turned into tiny deals. And I was scared to bring him on sales calls because I, I couldn't control him. He just like, you know, he had this line, take advantage of me at the end of the quarter. And it's like, that might not be the opener I want. And sometimes that is what you want to do. You just want to get a deal through. You give them whatever they want to get it done, but that's not selling. You know, it's— there's no value there. You're just, you know, the car guy. And I think Likability is important because you want people to want to talk with you. Hopefully it's about business-related things. But if, if it isn't or doesn't start there, that's okay, as long as they're talking with you. Nobody wants to talk to ChatGPT, right? They want somebody with a little bit of life, a little bit of interest, a different point of view, somebody who can get them to laugh. See the world a little differently, engage, spend time with, who shows interest in you.

Great.

But we also have a job to do, and we have to see through what is really being told to us, because they're, they're putting a spin on it, something that serves them.

Definitely. And, and, and that example from your former colleague, if you are likable, you, you're probably gonna have more meetings that could be distractions because you, people do want to talk to you. And, and then now that feeds the ego and you, you want to be life of the party and know everybody. So then you're doing all this stuff that isn't revenue generating, which could be a distraction, but because you have that ego or you kind of want to be liked, you, you keep doing those meetings, which can be distracting. The other Thing for me is I, I do want to be liked to some extent. I also try not to fall into the comparison trap and worry about what other people think all the time because that's a whole nother downward spiral. But because I think I do want to be liked, I will avoid sometimes the unpleasant conversations, the tough conversations, because I'm worried about what people are going to think, or et cetera, et cetera. So I would delay those conversations as long as possible. Still try to get better at it to this day, but that creates a chain reaction with the customers, with the deals, with other things in your life if you can't have those tough conversations. And part of, I think, what was holding me back was because I wanted to be liked and I didn't want to deliver that bad news. But there is a way you can do both. You can deliver that news in a Yeah. candorous manner, but you can also be pleasant and productive when you, when you deliver it. And ultimately, when I found when I did deliver the bad news, whether it was an issue with the product, issue with the deal, whatever happened, you became actually closer with those folks because you kind of got through a hurdle, you helped them out with something, and then it kind of built that relationship better in the long term. So delivering bad news has been a tough one for me because I want to be liked. And that goes for sales, but also outside of that. And that's something I've been Working on. And then it just keeps going down the list with these things. I, I think also the likable people will overpromise sometimes because they're just trying to make things happen. They're trying to come off as the best of the best, and I can always make it happen for you, Brian, type mentality. But then you, you tend to overpromise versus actually taking a step back of what you can deliver for, for those customers. So it, it keeps going deeper and deeper the more I, I think about it with that likability.

Yeah, and it can be a trap. And I think it goes into the category of service versus sales.

Mm-hmm.

And if you're servicing, are you bringing value? And every time I do a post that we're in sales, not service, I get a lot of salespeople arguing the service side of it, and I just go, you're in the wrong department. And typically they're not really in sales, they're kind of clerks Or non-commissioned representation of the company, account managers. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not sales. If you're not on commission, you're not in sales. Sorry. You might have a sales title, you might have a sales responsibility, but if it was important, they would comp you for it. And if you are in sales and you're on commission, you're not in service. Doesn't mean you don't do what the client wants, needs, and would like, but you do something in exchange for it. Because what we think is, if we do everything that they want, when we want something, they'll do something for us. That's not how the law of reciprocation works. It's kind of contextual from a time standpoint. It's the time that they want something that they're most open to helping you. And if you have the service mindset, you're just jumping, you know, how high, how far, how many more times. And they won't stop until you stop. And they don't see any value because you do it without any resistance. And, you know, I have these conversations all the time. Well, I don't feel right about asking for that. And I go, are you in sales? Are you in service? This is your time you're giving away. And if you put in a lot of time and they don't buy, you should have gone on vacation. You would have been refreshed. You probably would have learned more, and you'd come back ready to go. Now you're burnt out, you're disgruntled, and you don't know what happened. And, and people just give their time away like they've— they can just go get some more off the shelf. I need another quarter. Here it is. There is no way of getting time back once you burnt it. So you better be ready. So when they want something, you know what you want and need. And it's okay to push back a little bit, to test them a little bit, to kind of question them.

If I do this, what do you think will happen next?

Because they're not thinking ahead. You know, even simple questions, what do you see as your alternatives? I used to ask that all the time, and you'd be surprised, you know, 3 months into an evaluation, they go, well, we could build it ourselves.

Really?

After 3 months, you don't get this? Or we could do open source, or we could, you know, buy it used on eBay. All of a sudden, those questions start to tell you where their thought process is. But if you're concerned, what will they think about me? Will they not like me?

You know, did I hurt someone's feelings?

You know, it goes to the purchasing discounting. You don't have to give purchasing a discount if it's in procurement. It's approved. The budget's been allocated. The money essentially has already been spent internally. You giving them a discount just so the procurement person likes you, 10% of your commission just went away and you got nothing back from it. And I had salespeople even argue with me, well, it depends on the industry and what you're selling. Well, if procurement's the sole decision maker, you're right. But what are they the sole decision maker on? Maybe renewals, maybe office supplies, pure commodities. And I saw one guy who was essentially an account manager. He doesn't even talk to the people who create the demand for it. He thinks procurement creates the demand for it. Procurement doesn't do anything. You think they sit around and go, what do they think the company needs today?

No.

They take their list of purchase requests and the order that they get them and what they've told, and they start issuing them. They call for an updated quote, and the only joy they get out of life is saying, ah, we're going to need at least 10 points off of this to get this done. I was there.

I did that.

And all these junior reps would jump Get me a new updated proposal as fast as they can, and I like them.

So true. You have to be able to negotiate. You have to be able to say no sometimes, which is tough if you have this this likable personality. But that's gonna make the customer, that buyer respect you more if you're able to negotiate and tactfully push back on them. I think they want to work with. Folks that know the industry well, they're more of a peer. They have done this with other places before. They want to know the trends going on with some of their competition and different things in the industry. So if you can come off with that mentality, that gives you more leverage to negotiate and push back a little bit tactfully. But it's so easy to just jump when they say how high. I did that for sure when I dealt with Home Depot and some other bigger places of that effect where it was just nonstop jumping through hoops, fire drill after fire drill, and you couldn't get out of that cycle. So it's, but I think the more you can plan ahead and prepare for that negotiation versus reacting to it, because if you don't prepare, you're just gonna give the discount right there and not even think twice about it. So you have to prepare in advance. And that's not easy. Also, I see a lot of salespeople that are the likable ones, they're, they're probably maybe not as good on the business side as much. So they might— they're, they're great on the other stuff, but then on the business side, they just fall into this over and over again because that's not necessarily who they, they focus on. So you have to understand who, who are you better in front of as well as at the technical side or the business side, and then who are you negotiating with? Or if you're not good at this and you don't think you're gonna get better, who can you bring in on your team or your manager to whatever, negotiate the right way if, if, if you can leverage people on your team, if it's, it's something that you're not good at or you wanna outsource. So there's, there's a few different views on it, but everything you were saying is, is definitely spot on.

Oh, and, you know, back certainly on technology sales, you know, we divided up the technical sale and the business sale. So we had sales engineers, and I was one of them. And it's good because you have this kind of person who knows the industry and the use of the product really well. They can talk to the end users on the same page. Hard to find a sales rep who can do that. But then if the sales rep kind of relies too much on the SE, Then what value are they doing other than scheduling the meeting? You know, I remember one where it was like all they handled was the pricing question. They would come in and, you know, there was one lady that I worked with at first. She was insanely likable, gregarious, outgoing. She could get a— there wasn't a flight we went on that we didn't get upgraded on. I don't know how she did it. She never gave up a point or a dollar. She would charm women, men. We'd always get upgraded, get upgraded at the hotels. We'd have clients in the pool with us at night. We'd have margaritas going all the time. She convinced me to go get her nail polish one night. She called me up. She goes, hey, she used to call me Toby. That was my nickname. Toby.

Oh, okay. I have to start using that.

I made it up because of how she treated me. Because, you know, go get me some nail polish. And I'm like, who the hell am I? Am I your gopher? I do it. I don't know why, but she knew nothing about the product. So she would be good at certain parts of the deal, but that's That's important, but that's not enough. And she cared too much about the likability and she didn't really qualify. So she'd spend way too much time on these deals that— and I tell her, I go, this deal's gonna go nowhere. You know, the problem isn't big enough. It's too expensive. They can get away with something much cheaper. There's just no way it's gonna flop. She goes, watch, watch me get it. And she'd never get it, but she had enough stuff going on. And no matter where she went, she'd always have somebody for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And she did okay, but she could have done a lot better and not work as hard.

Definitely. And, and it's, it's, it goes back to, I know you've mentioned in the past, if If the customer won't answer the phone or talk to you when they don't need something, then you can kind of figure out where, where your likability is or how much they trust you. It's not just the like, it's do they trust you to get something done or make something happen for their organization? And also, if you don't get over that likability, you're not going to talk about the risks when you implement a product on the front end. If you're not proactive, letting them know, hey, here's the challenges that could come up with the change management, with the pushback from these naysayers. All the barriers and be upfront on that and on the same page. That can also backfire too with kind of that, that overpromising thing I mentioned a little bit ago. So there, ultimately you want to be known, liked, and trusted. And there's a lot that goes into making that happen. And I've been trying to really focus on that over the years because there's, there's a lot of different pieces to, to get stuff done. So the more all-inclusive you can be as a salesperson and be a little bit of all these things we're talking about, the better it's going to go. And that's why I started doing personal branding and all these different things. It kind of keeps building up that likability and trust over a long period of time. And even early in my career, one of the things I was known for, following up in a good way. So I would send a recap email, any somewhat substantial meeting, I would send a recap email just detailing the next steps and all the different stuff. And People just started knowing me for always following up, doing that. So I became kind of trusted as far as being dialed in, knowing what was going on. They knew that I was going to keep things moving in the right direction from that project standpoint. So there's little things like that that can build up on top of the likability. So it's, but ultimately you want to get that trust, which is when people are, are, are going to spend a lot of money with your company and make, make some things happen.

Yeah. And you got to ask yourself, why do they like me? Is it because I know about sports or I know about their kids? That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But are they going to call you back to talk to, to you about their kids and sports? Probably not. But if you're likable because you know the industry better than they do, You know the issues that they're going to run into that they're not thinking about. The approval issues, the finance issues, the legal issues, the implementation issues, the things that they are a little bit scared to think about right now. That's what you really want. Where they want to talk with you because you bring, you know, values over use. You bring information. ideas, opinions that they're not thinking about. That's the likability you want. Sports, weather, jokes, current events, reality TV— that's all okay, but is it going to get a callback? Rarely.

Those are good for icebreakers. You want to be— have some relevant icebreakers in your conversation that are With pop culture or whatever they care about. I mean, that stuff definitely is good to a certain extent, but not to get it to the next level for—

Yeah, you want them calling you back because they're gonna be talking about what they care about that's relevant to the product that you're selling. You know, it's great to talk about their career and everything, but if they're thinking about leaving, how much of a champion are they gonna be? Not a very much. Yeah, right. And reps feel really uncomfortable if they're not talking about themselves, their company, or their product. That's a transaction. That's not a transformation. If you're selling something that's over $50K, it's typically a transformation. It's not a widget. It's not a thing. It's changing the way they're doing business. And they're not— they're thinking about how it affects them personally. They're not thinking about how it affects the company. So our job is to kind of have them see that. It's like, I know you're bought into it, but, you know, are you curious about the resistance we typically see from others in the company that have nothing to do with you and the product?

What do you mean?

Everyone does whatever I say around here. I'm the sole decision maker. Okay, why do they all want you not to talk to anybody else?

Definitely never a good sign when they say that.

Yeah, it's because nobody else should know, because nobody else does know about this. And what's the likelihood of some one person's desire is worth $50K to the company in 3 months?

Even, and that's why I'd argue too, even if that high-up person, CEO, if they're a good CEO or leader, they're still gonna want their team to be bought into whatever it is that you're bringing up. So whether you think that person can approve $50K, $100K, whatever, they're still gonna want other people To be exposed to it and feel part of it in some form or fashion. So yeah, it's not just gonna get done because of that. So the question for you, do you think you can work on likability or is that just something that's fixed based off whatever profile you have? I, I did something called the Culture Index recently with my business partner. He, he was more of the Rainmaker, that traditional sales personality where you're life of the party, everyone likes you, ton of friends, knows everybody. I was more of an Architect, so I, have some of those traits, but I'm more analytical, structured, get stuff done, action. Don't need anybody telling me what to do. I'm just going to make it happen. But, uh, I'm, I'm more of an adapted extrovert. I do it when I have to, but I don't seek out being around a ton of people. But do you think salespeople should work on their likability or should they think about it differently or focus more on those other items about getting deals done and understanding how companies make decisions, that type of stuff?

Well, anyone can service, right? And you can, you know, it's something you can learn because if you ever gone to a trade show and you're talking to a salesperson and they're serious with you and all of a sudden a prospect comes by and they light up like a Christmas tree and they, the personality switches like that, clearly it's learnable.

Yep.

I worked with a rep who was Kind of grumpy most of the time unless he was in front of a customer, and then he was the nicest person on the planet. Look at a lot of talk show hosts and hostesses. 2 of them got canceled last year because in front of the audience they're dancing and nice and friendly, but then when they're talking to their staff, They're notoriously vicious and cruel where one guy was sending back his eggs 3 times, but yet he's the, you know, car karaoke guy, just as friendly and nice as can be. Of course, it's something you can learn. But I think the key part is learning the right type of likability because the—

Mm-hmm.

The friendly, nice stuff, that's good. But you want them to want to talk with you about business stuff that they care about. And if they don't do that, what do you have? A nice friendship?

Friend? Yeah, a friend but no commission.

A friend, yeah, with, you know, who takes your time and gives you nothing in return. And that's the test. Are they calling you back? Because the number one thing is everyone's ghosting. Well, ghosting off of your spammy cadence is one thing, but ghosting after, you know, a 2 or 3 month sales process— why are they ghosting you? They've got bad news. They don't have rapport with you, because that's real rapport. You got a partner in crime, like we're both trying to do this, you're both honest and open and proactive. If you don't have that, That's not a champion. That's kind of, you know, an unpaid servitude. And there's probably not a deal attached to it because if they're not good at communicating with you, they're probably not good communicating internally. They're not pulling people in, kind of, you know, taking your coaching about how to get a deal done. They're overconfident. They think they're the rock star. So you got 2 rock stars and no one listening, right? So who's playing the bass and who's singing and there's no one in the audience.

It's, it's a good point that it also goes to the customer side because they probably wanna be liked too and they don't wanna deliver bad news to us. So we, we don't get the reality and we're chasing stuff that's Never going to happen, and they don't want to tell us. Maybe not on purpose, not telling the truth, but they don't want to deliver that bad news. So most of the time when you're getting ghosted, it's because of something to that effect or timing, what have you. But it's it's an interesting topic. I think the more you can work on that business likability, the better you're going to do, and you're going to close more deals. It's it's good to have both. If you can have the personal likability as well as the business, I mean, that's going to be a positive thing, and getting that trust built up to close.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of the stuff that gets in our way between where we are And the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Hmm, there's really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good, good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

That's what I'm here for.

I'm here for you to learn from my mistakes. And boy, do I got a lot of them. So go to b2brevenue.com. Sign up for the courses. There's 2 major ones. Start the Conversation, Get the Meeting fills up your pipeline. Gets rid of that problem of, oh, I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough meetings. It gets those conversations started with the people you want to talk to. Now, it's not about a pitch. It's about a conversation. Now, everybody thinks of conversations when you're talking or you're online at the same time or you're on the phone or Zoom at the same time. That's not a conversation. A conversation's when the client is talking about what they care about, what they're interested in. And that is what we call qualification, where we can sense where are they and how do we build up that curiosity into interest, into urgency to get a deal. And these are skills that we need. They're lifelong skills that we need in sales. And then how do we get a deal closed? Yes, anyone can take an order, but what if they don't know how to get it done? You got a new account where you're trying to get a big change done internally. What are the issues? If you're not planning that through, odds are it's not going to get done no matter how much your champion wants it. So winning the complex sales solves that problem for you. Why waste all your time on these false positives or these no decisions? Because they don't pay very well. They pay 0.0. What you want to do is pay a lot. So sign up today. Invest in yourself. You're the asset in sales. Quit waiting for somebody else to approve it or train you. See if you can get it expensed. That should be your first sales obstacle. Your first sales challenge is how do you get your company to pay for it? Just go down, tell your manager you want to do this. I put a little example email in the show notes right below here. Just swipe up and take a look at that. And if they won't, you got to ask yourself, why won't you? Why won't you? Oh, it takes time. Well, you work all day. You're working wrong all day. Why not improve that? There's the time right there. Oh, the money, Brian. It's money. Well, you make more money if you become better in sales. And Start the Conversation pays for itself the first week because you're going to get at least 2 meetings just learning from the very basics of it. Closing the Complex Sale will pay for itself 100 times over. Students in it tell me it's the best money they ever spent because they now have control over their deals. And it doesn't end.

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Really?

Yeah, the difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000, decent. Decent income, but you know there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads trying to close those deals. And do you have the game?

Few people do. Everyone thinks they do.

Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth.

Accept it.

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