The Ultimate Sales Skills-set with Greg Scott, How to Negotiate, Sell and Market your Business Effectively

I have some incredible news. My second book, how to have Difficult Conversations About Race, is now the number one new release in its category on Amazon. I'm so excited, so excited for this because we've put a lot of work into it, and this was risky because as a lawyer who's focusing on negotiation and conflict resolution, talking about race seems for many to be outside of the scope of what I usually do. But again, how are we defining negotiation? We define negotiation as anytime you're having a conversation and somebody in the conversation wants something. And as the podcast is titled Negotiate Anything, we can negotiate anything. And in my years of doing all of this work in the professional world, difficult conversations about race is something that comes up over and over and over again in the workplace. And there isn't really a solid resource out there that blends the fundamentals of negotiation and conflict resolution and effective communication with this particular topic. So it's risky. It is risky, risky to venture in this way. But I'm really excited and encouraged by this early result. So this is not just a win for me, this is a win for you too, because you are part of this tribe. And so a quick note about the book. Who did I write this for? I wrote this for the person who is passionate about changing the world and their organizations for the better, the leader who leads a diverse team, and the professional who wants to learn how to overcome the hidden barriers that make it tough to connect with people with a different background. So whether you consider yourself an ally or just want to avoid making a critical mistake when discussing race, this book is for you and for you as a podcast listener, I'm making a direct request. After six years and over 600 episodes of Negotiate Anything, I'm asking for your support in this endeavor to make the world a better place. Our goal of the American Negotiation Institute is to change the world, and this book plays a critical role in making that happen. And we would love to have your support. We have the links in the description of this episode so you can get your copy of how to have Difficult Conversations About Race. Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world.

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Greg, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much, Kwame. I'm excited to be here.

Yes, we are excited to have you, my friend. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do? Perfect.

So my name is Greg Scott. I'm the co director of the Ralph and Lucy Shea Sales center here at Ohio University. We're an undergraduate sales program, the largest in the country in terms of selective sales programs with about 600 undergraduate students, all learning skills and sales. Our goal and mission really is to help undergraduates at Ohio University gain a skill set that is very, very marketable and ultimately find jobs. We have 100% job placement of senior class by the time of graduation.

Okay. So, Greg, how do you get better if you're at 100%? That's incredible.

You know, there's always people that need it. You know, at the end of the day, the beautiful thing about a university is every four or so years, if you do your job right, four years, you've got a whole other group of people coming into the university. So we've been around since 1997. We were one of the really first three university sales programs in the country. And so we, what we've really figured out over our basically 25 years of history is how do you scale sales education? And also, honestly, how do you make sales really an interesting opportunity for an 18, 19, 20, 21 year old and get them interested to actually learn the skill set and the tools to ultimately hopefully better themselves and the world around them.

This is great. And now I want to give you an opportunity to sell us all on sales. Okay. And so when you think about sales as a skill, not just for people who want to actually go into SAL and they see themselves having a career in sales going down the road, but people who their job title might not include sales, but they have to sell every day. So sell us on the importance of sales skills.

Yeah, absolutely. It's something that it's no secret. I start really every semester, especially with newer students, that you're not going to offend me. In fact, I'd rather we get all the stereotypes of sales out of the way. So we typically start with when you hear the word sales, what do you think of? Inevitably you hear things like sleazy, pushy, unethical. You're going to hear basically the worst version of the case, if you will. Then we usually ask the question that, okay, when you think of the word service, what do you think about? You think about helpful. You think about somebody who's trying to help a customer, help a client, help people. You think about somebody who's asking questions, who's being empathetic. And that's really where for us as a program, what we think about is servant selling in the idea that can you have a very successful career and make a really healthy living selling? Absolutely you can. But if you start with that idea of I'm just here to make money, then yeah, you're probably going to do some pretty unethical, some pretty bad things. Rather, if you start with the idea that, hey, I'm here to help people, that's what I want to do. That's really why I'm here. That's what a salesperson inherently should be doing, is helping them, helping a customer, helping somebody discover problems, find a solution and ultimately push forward. That's really where I think that we start seeing the light bulbs, kind of click on to your point. We're always selling whether you want to be a salesperson or not. If you go through a job interview process and there's interviews, it's a sales call, realistically, it's a sales call for yourself, but you're still having that conversation and you're still following the process. It's interesting. One of the things that recently we took over in the sales program was enrollment, basically recruiting for undergraduate admissions here within the College of Business. And we started really with the mindset of, hey, it's a sales call. When you're sitting down and meeting with a 17 year old high school student, their family, their friends, maybe aunt, uncle, guardian, grandparent, whoever it may be, ultimately you're having a sales conversation. You're trying to assess, hey, what are you looking for in a university? What are you looking for in a business school education? What are you looking for those pieces? And then ultimately by asking those questions, you can identify what are the value propositions, what are the areas that you can actually deliver for the student or their decision making unit. And so that's really where for us we think about, hey, how can you really apply the sales process? Whether Your title has sales in it or not. Whether you consider yourself a salesperson or not, we really feel like the skills of being able to ask really good questions to identify what's most important, that skill is not going away. If anything, it's become more and more prevalent and important because it's one of the areas that realistically AI and other technologies can't really automate away very well. It's that human connection, it's the emotional connection. It's being able to have those conversations that we really feel like is fairly future proofed.

Yeah, you're spot on. And that's one of the things when you think about the Turing test in artificial intelligence. Can the computer be smart enough to trick a human that it is not a computer? Right. Still haven't figured that one out. Which is great because you're right. Ultimately it's job security, your humanity and putting skills behind your humanity is the thing that ensures your viability in the professional world. Very well said and critical. The reality is too, because we're all selling in different ways. I think if you bring that healthy mentality around selling and then empower people to realize that selling is not a bad word and they are selling any every day, so you might as well learn how to do it well, I think that's really powerful. And you're putting the students in a good place to succeed in the long term.

Yeah, absolutely. It really is critical. And the proofs in the pudding, Most of our, we really operate the program on a corporate partnership model. So we self fund via basically organizations that see the value in recruiting from a talent pool of really high caliber students and students that really have a desire to go into sales. We fund the model that way. But realistically, most of our partnerships, they're long term partnerships, right? These are companies that have worked with us for 10 plus years because they say, hey look, your students outperform. They really are the ones that they're coming into these positions and they're doing incredibly well and then they're progressing up and they're becoming now future leaders of the organization. So it's a really nice model for everyone. It helps the students of Ohio University obviously get great jobs and it helps the employers of Ohio and all over realistically have a really strong talent pool year over year.

This is great. It's funny because for me as the CEO here, recognizing that we're growing our sales team and recognizing how difficult it is to grow the sales team, it's challenging. I'm seeing the purpose behind Shane making sure that you got on the show and talked to me. This is really great. I hope this helps other people to recognize, oh, there is a pipeline and that we can tap into for really ethical, but also ethical and effective salespeople. It's a great partnership. And I think the thing that's just fascinating to me just on the side is just that it's not that prevalent in the industry. Why is this not more prevalent? It makes so much sense because you've been leading and you've been leading for a long time, but people haven't been trying to replicate that. What do you think is the disconnect between traditional education and the reality that practical sales skills are important?

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Yeah, you know, you're spot on, Kwame, in the sense that I think the higher education industry as a whole really, it's been behind, especially within the sales space. If you look at the broader landscape, depending on how you measure it, there's about 4,000 institutions of higher education in the U.S. those are groups that basically degree grant. Of those, there's only under 250 that really have any degree of sales curriculum. I'm talking even just a class or two classes, let alone a full on program. The numbers of even the 200 or so, if you look at a multi class program where it's a certificate model or a minor or a major all of those programs, it's fewer than 100. Realistically from that standpoint, there's definitely a major mismatch in terms of the marketplace. When you consider about 50% of all college grads will start in sales or a selling related career, there's a lot of institutions that candidly they are behind in that sense. We're seeing more shifts happen and I think that's healthy and good. I think honestly what's happening is the consumer of higher education. So your traditional higher Ed Customer is a 17, 18 year old, give or take. They're becoming more educated, I think in the sense that they're becoming a more educated consumer of the service itself. It used to be where, how did you actually quote unquote buy higher education? You looked at a booklet, maybe you talked to a guidance counselor and maybe you toured the campus and that's about it. Now you can actually really connect on a much deeper level. You can reach out to people on social media and see, see the campus, get their opinions of it. You can get a much deeper view. And I think, you know, programs like ours that really provide a jumping off point for a career that is a high earning career, it definitely is attractive now. You know, one of the reasons why we're seeing the challenges honestly in the marketplace is, you know, it's hard to find people that want to teach sales. In all honesty, there's really a mismatch in terms of, you know, your two sources of talent. You know, if you're a really good salesperson, chances are you're making a pretty good living. And while higher ed education, I love it, is great, you sometimes aren't necessarily making the same degree of earning that you could make out there selling. So your more practitioner professor is harder to find. Now on the flip side, you have what are called tenure track professors. So typically that's kind of like a PhD or somebody with a terminal degree. Those folks There are certainly PhDs in typically marketing strategy that have sales focused. There just aren't that many of them. And honestly there's only a few campuses in the country that you could actually get a PhD with a sales marketing focus that is that attractive. And so you have kind of this issue of even if a university is forward thinking and wants to I would say, shift away from maybe the more pure liberal arts focus towards a more practical skill set focus or at least add that on. It's hard to find people to actually teach that in a way that is effective and honestly in a way that connects and attracts students to the program.

That makes a lot of sense. And I can see the challenges, but also I can see the opportunities for the people who can manage to do it well, like you and your program. You've managed to do it well and you've taken advantage of that. So it's really impressive. And one of the things that we talked about in our little pre interview chat too is the fact that the dynamics of sales are changing. And so what may have worked five, 10 years ago, it's not working the same way now. Can you tell us a bit more about those changes?

Absolutely. I think when you really look at the broader sales landscape, you're seeing consultative sales approaches, relationship based sales approaches, really becoming the go to or the king. Ultimately what we're really seeing is if it was able to be automated, it probably was automated away. That's really where you started seeing your more transactional sales approaches or industries realistically don't have nearly the same degree of demand of salespeople they would traditionally have. Realistically, kind of the order taker, if you will, is going away because it's just inefficient. Paying somebody to sit and wait for a phone call to place an order is not necessarily that efficient. When you can set up a Shopify for 100 bucks a month and have a really nice website and you're good, you know what isn't going away and really if anything is becoming even more prevalent is a consultative seller. Somebody who's leading with insight. Somebody who sees the overall marketplace, really becomes an expert in their sector, in their industry and is able to provide value to their customers and clients in ways that aren't just what the product itself is even focused in on, but in ways that are truly kind of a business advisor or trusted advisor. What we've really seen, and I think that's really the culmination of why for some of the audience that knows the challenger sale that book came out in, but now it's close to 10 years old. And I think the area that we've seen really take off within that book is the idea of insight selling. So the idea of you don't just go to your customer client with this idea of hey, here's what I have, what do you want to buy? You really go with the idea of we're going to do market research, we're going to look for ways that we can provide value to you. Maybe not even just with the product or service, but tangential to it. I think that you're starting to see even industries that have traditionally been commodity based industries shifting much more towards are there additional services that we could offer? There's this concept of servitization within marketing. The idea of. And you're seeing in a bunch of the more even traditional manufacturing industries selling basically add on services, added on data services into their actual core product. I think about a Rolls Royce engine for planes. They're now selling major data packages along with the engines themselves. And that really comes out of the fact of hey, we want to protect our lead, but it's not just on the product side it's on, hey, what else can we actually help provide our customers with? So that's really one area where I think we're seeing more and more of that demand of really organizations that hire salespeople that can ask great questions and can actually listen to the answers to those great questions and use those answers to help ultimately everyone involved in the sales process.

Yeah, that's incredible. And it really helps to identify why it's so important to stay up on your training, whether it's sales or negotiations, because things change. We're living in a dynamic world, but a lot of our education is static. So most people are either under educated or completely uneducated when it comes to their specific field. So we just happen upon a career in sales or happen upon a career in procurement, you know, and then now it's like, oh, I'm negotiating or selling for a living. Never got training, but I learned on the fly. That's good enough. Right? You know, that's what you want the pilot to say too. It makes we have the concept update these skills. When you think about the people who are out there say, listen, thanks, Greg. This is cute and everything, this newfangled new school approach to selling. I was doing Challenger. I've been making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why do I need to change? What is the risk? What would you say to that person who's kind of stuck in their ways of doing selling the old way?

Yeah, I think there's really that idea of we have choices, really, at any given time, you have an inflection point, you have the opportunity to say, hey, do you want to stay the status quo or do you want to make a change? And if you stay the status quo, ultimately, what we know is you're not really staying the status quo. You're actually declining relative to the people who say, take an alternative path. And so, realistically, I hear this sometimes from typically more older school sellers, if you will, folks that say, hey, I've been doing this for 20 years, 30 years. I don't need to change. Somebody else needs to change. I hear that a lot from especially managers, leaders, as they were recruiting, especially millennials. I'm a millennial myself, but I would hear a lot of these millennials need to understand that the world isn't like how they think it is, and they need to adapt to us and make those changes. Certainly there's a kernel of truth there as well. I'm not going to completely discount the critique, but I also really have heard a lot around, look, the younger workforces they want different things in some cases. In all honesty, it's to the company's benefit of what they want. But it does require the idea of you will have to make some changes. I really think about it as if you want to take the status quo approach, then you're declining because someone else is out there and they are making changes. It's the same idea of when you think about the post mortems of these giant corporations, these S&P 500 companies, that ultimately they wake up one day and it's like this startup has eaten their lunch and they're like, oh, woe is me. How could this possibly happen? It's like, well, it didn't happen overnight. Honestly, it happened off of a bunch of small decisions, a bunch of small choices around. We don't want to adapt, we don't want to change, we don't want to continuously improve. That's really where I think that honestly, to some extent, a lot of, to our earlier point, a lot of the institutions of higher education have taken more of the status quo approach. I think the organizations that have not, the colleges and universities that haven't, honestly, the proof's in the pudding. You can take a look at the enrollment levels and you can see that a lot of the universities that have made adaptations and changed the way they have taught what they're teaching are more successful because your customers and clients aren't dumb. And you're really not going to get away with just say, hey, this is how it always is. So just trust me. I think that that's a big area where for us we're seeing more and more of that idea of dividends because we made changes and made choices a few years ago and the program just continues to grow because of those choices.

Yeah, that's great. I think that's a fantastic answer because you're right, everything changes. And if you're just staying stagnant, you are slipping behind. When you think about who was on the Fortune 500 list 20 years ago, it looks very different from what it looks like now. And those people thought they were rock solid and now they're slipping behind if they still exist. So that's legit. One of the things that you mentioned earlier was in our pre interview was talking about the value of diversity in sales. And I thought that was really interesting because when you think about it in the business world, especially in sales, we're just focused on the numbers. It's hey, listen, if it makes dollars, it makes sense, right? And so the question is, does diversity make sense? In the sales space.

No, absolutely. And it's a big passion, honestly, for our program. We were really, I would say, at the forefront within the sales program space of actually having. We have both a. What we call a student director. So we have 28 different student leaders within the program. So again, we're all about development, continuous improvement. So every single year, we have new students come in and help us lead the program. But we also have a faculty director of diversity, equity inclusion as well. All really focused in on, number one, how do we attract the most diverse set of students? In really every respect, as a program, we are really trying to be the biggest tent possible because we really believe that the skills of sales are beneficial no matter what you want to do and where you come from. But moreover, to your point, absolutely, the dollars and cents matter. And I think that's something where, for a lot of organizations, the reason to do diversity, equity, inclusion, sure, it's absolutely the right thing to do, don't get me wrong. But also, it's the right thing to do. From the bottom line, I think that that's an area that. But to some extent, I think that the moral stance, Trying to take a moral stance around diversity, equal inclusion, it's a tougher battle. The battle that's more effective to me is take the purely capitalistic stance of, hey, guess what? It leads to better outcomes. Everybody wins. You're able to attract people with different viewpoints, different life experiences. You're able to attract people who can connect with a different customer base in a way that maybe someone else can't. And that's really an area where, for us, our approach is very much on the ground, recruiting for our students. You know, we have to recruit every single student that comes to our program. And so, you know, we have basically what we call ambassadors to every different multicultural organization here on our campus. You know, we're connecting with our LGBT center. We're connecting with, you know, all of the other multicultural fraternities that we have, as well as some of the other student unions. And so really, what our approach is, is to get in front of people and just share. Hey, sales isn't just used cars and insurance and snake oil. There's a heck of a lot more behind it. And that's really what we really try to focus in on.

Yeah, I think that's brilliant. And I agree with your approach of using the capitalistic type of persuasive model. And I know there are going to be some people saying, that sounds icky.

I don't like that.

We should just do it because it's the right thing to do. Well, we're not trying to convince you. You've already been convinced. That's not an issue. But a lot of people, it really just simply comes down to, I'm trying to run a business. I need to meet my numbers. Does this help me meet my numbers? Oh, Greg, it does. Tell me more. And now they realize, yes, now I'm an advocate for diversity because it lines my pockets. It might not be like the best, like, it might not feel like the best way of persuading, but when I think about it, for me as a lawyer, my clients pay me to get the job. When you think about our goal as advocates and allies and everything, we want people to really adopt these methodologies because, yes, it's the right thing to do, but also we realize there's a path to persuasion that's tied to profit too. And when you look at the research as well, if you do these programs the right way, you are really supercharging the work that you're doing because different people can connect in different ways. The more different viewpoints that we can adopt, the fewer blind spots we have, which will increase our ability to make better deals, make more sales, those type of things. I really appreciate you sharing that.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I absolutely couldn't agree more.

Yeah, so this is great.

When you think about the next steps for the program and the fact that you're constantly trying to improve and doing a great job of it, what do you think the next iteration of the program in sales looks like?

Yeah, it's a great question and something that, honestly, it excites me to wake up every day because I see a lot of opportunities, opportunity all over. I think, honestly, the interesting thing about COVID in particular, it really challenged us to think about, hey, how can we deliver education very quickly into our full switch to virtual. That was fall of 2020. We basically completely converted one of our conference rooms into basically a multi camera studio. And that's how we taught our virtual classes, was with the nice cameras, sound equipment. We had lower thirds, we had graphics all over the screen. We did a lot to really try to challenge how do you teach, even online and virtually. And the interesting thing is now that we're back in person, some of those tools we've actually now brought into the classroom in a way that we never thought we really would have. I think on the other side of that, we're still looking at, hey, we learned this competency of virtual education. We learned the competency of how do you engage students virtually? And so we're actually starting to look at how do you bring some of those pieces back into what was a traditional residential, in person experience here at Ohio University. I think one of the big areas for us is we're continuing to scale. Our college of business has hit back to back years of record enrollment, in part, I think, honestly, because students see the value. I'll take a little bit of credit in the sense that the sales program took over our recruiting process for the last two years or so. So we basically literally put in a sales process for recruitment. But really, moreover, the interesting part about it is that because we have back to back years of record enrollment, we really have an opportunity here to teach more students than ever before. And that's an area that every single, I'd say day now we're challenging ourselves as to how do we reach the broadest audience, how do we provide the most value to every single student on our campus?

I love this, Greg. This is fantastic. And so for the listeners who want to connect with you, learn more, maybe join the program, what's the best way for them to make that happen?

Absolutely. So I'm on LinkedIn is probably our absolute best way. If you search the Ralph and Lindsay Shea sales center or my name, Greg Scott. We are pretty active posters, I would say, in terms of getting content up there. Our other handles are a sales. So Shea is S C H E Y and then sales. That's on Instagram, TikTok. You could actually see me doing a series called Resume Rips that I do to try to help our undergrad students perform and get better resumes. That's a fun one for us. And then we are also, obviously, if you search, Ohio University Sales center will come up there as well.

Oh, Greg, I was disappointed. I thought you were going to do some sales related dancing on TikTok. That's what I was waiting for, man.

Not yet. I'm not there yet. Although I think every, every semester the students want me to. So we're getting closer and closer to it.

That's awesome. That is awesome. Well, listen, Greg, really appreciate it, my friend. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Kwame.

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