Developing a Mindset of Losing Less with Belal Batrawy

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Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host, Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head over to patreon.com inside sales excellence. Now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff.

First and foremost, as, as Katie said, people buy from people. So some of these universal principles of psychology you're going to be able to use across your entire career. And one of the most basic ones that again, I was, I was failed. Nobody really taught me this one. It just failed. In all of my sales trainings was really some of the psychology around how to avoid no decision, how to avoid losing deals. Because the majority of what we do is loss, right? Anybody's close rate is anywhere from on average 8 to about 30%. Usually you don't see numbers lower than that or higher than that. That means 70 to 92% of what you do is ending up in failed outcomes. So is it easier to take 8% and improve it to 10%, or is it easier to take 92% and decrease it to 80%? So we should really be in a mindset of losing less instead of trying to win more by being more efficient with our time. So a lot of this psychology is going to go into how to avoid no decision and why that matters. But I wanted to tee up just the thought process behind that. So the first thing I want to go over is just the universal buyer's journey. So whether it's a gum, stick of gum, a house, a piece of software, it doesn't matter. We go through these five stages of buying. So first you're unaware, let me type it out. Then you enter some state of awareness. Then you get into some state of consideration. Then there's going to be state of evaluation, and then you end up at a decision. So like I said, it doesn't matter what you're buying, how complicated, how simple it is, we go through these five stages. Now, here's what's interesting. We typically talk as sellers about leads, prospects, buy buyers and customers. And sometimes you'll see sales leaders use these words like synonyms. You know, they swap them in and out. They're Not. They're totally not. Okay, Be really clear on how you define the stages of the buyer's journey, because that dictates how you sell. So let me give you an example, what I mean by this, all right? People who sit unaware are basically just prospects, right? People in this stage right here we're talking about, these are. These are leads that sit in your CRM that you've decided to try to approach and send them some sort of message. They're unaware, either of you, of your company, of your offering, or all three combined. Right? Different states of unaware. But it's one of those three. Okay? So that's a prospect. And as you're actively prospecting them and they start opening your messages or answering your cold call or whatever, they're going to move to some sort of stage of awareness right here. So these two stages, these are prospects. Let me change the thing here. These are prospects right here. As soon as somebody enters a state of consideration, they're no longer a prospect. They're now a buyer. So people in this set right here, consideration, evaluation, decision, these are actual buyers. These are your buyers. Anything before this spell. Right, Anything before this are just prospects. Cool. So you want to be really clear whether you're dealing with a buyer or a prospect. Here's why. Because the part of the brain you speak to is completely different. In between these two camps, people who are prospects, you need to invoke the limbic brain. People that are buyers, you need to invoke the neocortex. Now, let me just. Because we said we want to be this interactive for a second. Has anybody ever been taught or trained on the difference between the neocortex and limbic brain in decision making, how we actually make decisions? I just. I'd like to ask, just in general group. Anybody knows that. You can put it in the chat, too, if it's easier. No. Is that weird? Is that weird? I mean, we're salespeople. All we do all day is spend time trying to make people make a decision, and we don't get any explanation. I mean, I'm the same way, Katie. I didn't. I didn't, for the first two years of my sales career ever get exposed to any sort of brain science. Zero. You would think it'd be pretty relevant for what we do all day. Nothing. Okay, so let's back this up for a second just to set the stage. All right? In 2008, a group of researchers in Germany at the Max Planck Institute of Neuroscience are doing a study, and they are able to accurately Predict a decision that a person is going to make 7 to 11 seconds before that person becomes consciously aware that they've made a decision. Let me repeat that. These researchers were able to accurately predict the decision a person was going to make 7 to 11 seconds before they even became aware of, of the decision that they made. But just, just for the sake of just drilling this home, I'm just going to count seven seconds in silence. That's seven seconds. That's how ahead of. That's how much those researchers were able to predict accurately that amount of time before the person even became aware of. How. Because the researchers were tracking the neocortex versus the limbic brain and were able to see the brain activity and know what decision the person was coming to. How powerful is it for us as sellers to be able to know how we can manipulate and understand the decisions that people are going to make when we're trying to sell them something? So the neocortex is right here in the front of your front of your brain, right here at the top. That's the part of your brain that's responsible for justifying for logic for things of that nature. And then your limbic brain is your stem brain, or they call it the old brain, the croc brain. There's a few different names for it. And it's the part of your brain that's responding responsible for fight, flight or freeze reactions. This is where decisions start. This is where decisions end. So when I want to affect people in this part of their brain where decisions start, I'm talking about prospects. I mean, let's go back to this for a second. You don't even know I exist. Or maybe you're aware that I exist, but you don't know what I do. In order for me to get you into consideration, to get you over here thinking about what I have to offer, I've got to invoke the limbic brain. I've got to get that fight, flight or freeze reaction out of you first in order to get you over here into buying mode. The problem is most sales copy is neocortex messaging, roi, unique selling propositions, ways to save you time and money, value statements, all of these things, all of that's neocortex. That's not the limbic brain.