The Art of Authority Podcast with Mike Saunders - Ep 16 -Interview with Anthony Iannarino -How to Sell with Authority & Influence

Welcome to the Art of Authority podcast, bringing you interviews and episodes to help you radically optimize your authority and influence to become the go to expert in your field. Here's your host, authority positioning coach, Mike Saunders.

Hey, guys, welcome back. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. And today we have with us Anthony Annarino, who is a speaker, author, coach, consultant, all things sales. Now, let's just jump right into some thoughts because authority, expertise and influence, I think, are starting to gain some traction and buzz today. But I wonder in the sales world how that is being integrated, because you can come up as that cliche, quote, unquote, salesperson, and people lose some trust because of your techniques or you being brash or pushy. So you want to be that educator, advocate for that target audience. So tell me a little bit about where you are focused on in your B2B sales presentations and then we'll just kind of see where it goes from there.

Sure. The way to think about this, in my view, is that there are really four levels of value that a human being can create or a business can create. And the first level of value is the value in the product itself. And that's when salespeople tend to do things that cause other people to be repelled away from them. And we walk in and we say, let me tell you about my company, let me tell you about my history, let me tell you about our products, let me tell you about features and benefits. And immediately as soon as you do that, the person knows this is a salesperson, straight up. They're going to try to sell me what they've got in hand right now, because that's their view of what they're supposed to be doing in this interaction. There's a couple other levels up from there. There's level two, which is experience. And it's a way to say it's not just product, it's our experience. We're easy to do business with these kinds of things. And then level three is where most of us have been that have played in the sales arena for any period of time. And it's really.

Can you get me a result? Can you show me a tangible result? And that means that you start with this assumption, this person has a problem, I know how to solve their problem. That's pretty good. But there's a level of value higher. And rather than coming in at the lowest level, what I would tell you the most important thing for people who have to sell anything, and you want to talk about authority and positioning, then you start here with level four. Which is I'm not reacting to the fact that you have dissatisfaction now teaching you what you should be dissatisfied about. I'm creating a gap between your current results and your future results because I have information and insight and wisdom and situational knowledge and experience and the ability to make trade offs that I can show you that there's something better available to you. That's the space that I want to occupy as somebody who's going to try to help other people get results. So if you want to hold the position of authority and to be a peer and a trusted advisor and to be consultative and all these nice words we use when we say we're at our very best, then you have to start this conversation by saying, Mike, I want to share with you what I see as being the three or four most fundamental trends that are going to impact your business. And if you want authority and you want influence, then these are the areas that you're going to have to look to to be able to do that in your client segments. So that's really the starting point for this conversation. What do you know? And you only need two things to be a trusted advisor. It's a very simple recipe. You need trust, which means you're credible and I'm reliable and I believe you. Then you need advice. So you actually have to know things that benefit other people at a very deep level to occupy that space.

Yeah, you bring up huge, huge points that we could probably spend about a day and a half on on just that one statement.

They didn't sign up for a day and a half though.

Yeah, everybody here. Right, exactly. So don't worry. But yeah, that's a massive, massive thought process. And here's one thing that I was thinking when you were saying that, number one, that precludes and presupposes that you have done some research on that market. On that market. So you know that client, if you're thinking B2B, you know their industry, their vertical, you know their niche and you, you don't need to ask some of the basic questions. But when you come at it from that approach, aren't you, don't you also display some empathy? Not in the sense that a lot of people think of, like, oh, that's so bad that you're expecting this gap because you're not pulling the curtains back going, I understand you are here, you want to be there. But the fact that you're speaking to it from that position of educating them, they realized like, hey, he gets that. And they might not even consciously say it or Think it. But they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And so when you're. When you're coming at it from that approach, and maybe you're even setting that expectation, hey, in this conversation, we just want to hit a few points here. One of them is this. And I think that when you're starting that off that way, boy, they're not seeing that my product and my service and my company is. And all the me, me, me stuff.

Yeah, it's the way that I think about this is it's more compassion than empathy. Empathy is saying, you know, I feel your pain. Compassion is recognizing that your prospective client, instead of walking a mile in their shoes, it's recognizing that their shoes are two sizes too small and that you actually need to swap out their shoes. So I have some theory. And if you want to be an authority, there has to be this disparity of information. I know more than you do in this particular area where your business and my business come together on this fold. I know more about this area than you know. You know your business way better than I will. But I've done enough research to understand one thing, and this is what if you want to be an authority, if you want real influence, that you have to understand. Most of the people that you're talking to don't understand why they can't get the results they want. And if they did understand why they can't get the results they want, they would already be doing something about it. If you're talking editors, right, and your competitors, if they thought they could help them, they would have already done it. So you have to have a theory, you have to have a hypothesis about what's wrong in their world, because what they're really experiencing is dissonance. I know what I want, and I don't know how to get it. And I've tried this, and it doesn't work. And I tried that, and it doesn't work. I don't understand why I can't do this. And now you come on the scene and you say, listen, based on where you are right now, to get through this distance, let me explain to you what's happening in the world that's causing you to have this kind of challenge. And then let me tell you what some of the choices are that you might look at that might help you get better results. Now, I'm standing as a peer and as a trusted advisor telling you these are the ways to think about this, because I have a deeper knowledge, again, right? Where the intersection of our businesses are. That's how you develop that position. Yeah.

And I agree with you 1000%. So I've got a thought and a question. So let's say that you had done some pre planning and again, this is. We're thinking about selling in a specific vertical. So you're going to have a lot of this data just from your own experiences. So let's say that you realized clients like this need to have X, Y and Z. And their concerns are, their gaps are. And here's their frequently asked questions, their pain points. What would happen if you had put together an educational piece of content? And that content could be anything. You know, it could be. I did a podcast on, I published an article in Forbes about. But if you had these things and you were sending that ahead of the time from the meeting to say, hey, review some of these, it'll cover some of the basic questions. When we get together, we can go deeper. Do you feel like that would help to set the stage for that conversation so that they're seeing that as, wow. Not only do they get it, but boy, that guy's out there. Anthony really is out there. And I can't wait to talk to him. Because that one piece in the article or that one section of that interview where he said, whatever, hey, Anthony, you know in that video you did, you had mentioned, how does that work? What are your thoughts on kind of pre framing that meeting with some of your content?

I'm the wrong person to ask this to and I'll tell you why. And it's because I am most comfortable walking into a meeting with nothing except a legal pad and a pen. That's my most. Because everything that I need is here. Yeah, I don't need a brochure, I don't need a business card. I don't need a slide deck. Although a lot of people like my slide deck. So I tend to be able to put the computer on if I want to. I don't think there's anything wrong with sending something ahead. But I'll tell you one of the things that you have to consider and you're probably going to have a program here on this, but it is, you do have to consider content marketing and shaping the person's thinking. So if you want to be an authority, mindshare is really helpful. So if you did an article in Forbes and you send the article and that they look at that and say Forbes published this, so it looks like it was vetted at some level or they saw it on LinkedIn and it got a Lot of comments. And people look at it and go, okay, so that is legitimate because people are now responding to it. I think mindshare is a big deal. And in my view and in my experience, mind share equals wallet share. So if you want somebody to spend money with you, they have this lens that they're looking through the world. They get to see the world through this lens that they've had on for a long time. And if you walk in and you switch out that lens, then they go, wait, I didn't see it this way. Yeah, and the content that you can send ahead of a meeting can start them seeing this through a different lens, where they start to say, oh, I thought the problem was this. And it's really that.

Good point.

And, and people don't know this. And some of the businesses that I'm involved in, they're around staffing and human resources.

People don't know why they're struggling to fill the jobs that they have. And they don't have the skill sets. Well, when I explained to them there's 11,000 baby boomers retiring every day in America, that's 4.3 million a year. And they're retiring at a faster pace than new entrants are coming in, which means 4.3 million means we need 358,000 people entering the workforce every single month. Last month we created 311,000 jobs. That was the best month we've had in decades and we were still 40,000 short. Where are you going to get these people? But if they don't know that fact and they're going, we should advertise more. We should do this and we should try to find people to replace these people. The young people that are coming into the workforce don't have that skill set. So they're looking at a lens like, where do I find a person to replace this one? The real lens they might be looking through should say, how do we train people to have this skill set now? Because the people that develop this Skill set over 20 years are gone. But that's insight and that's knowledge. And that's what makes you an authority, is that you understand what are these factors? What are these trends? What are the trade offs? What's the right decision here? And that's really where you're going to.

In that example, you just gave the knee jerk reaction standard. You know, operating practice is advertise more, you know, put more out. And when you come in saying what you just said now, that person goes, oh, wait a minute, that's a, that's different. That's a good point. And so you don't even need to say and because I am, you know, it just. It screams that you are different and you have a unique perspective. So. Excellent, Excellent point. Hey, let's talk about inbound versus outbound, because I know that you are focused on and speak at outbound and inbound conferences. What is the difference? And in the sales world, how should we be noticing the differences between inbound and outbound?

It's a good question. It's kind of a charged question for me. I was sitting in a conference. I don't remember where I was at the time. And the inbound conference from HubSpot, who I'm a client of, by the way. And I like their product. I'm not saying anything to bash them at all, but I notice how much emphasis there is right now on inbound. And I'm good at inbound. Personally, I'm good at it. I write a blog post every day. I do YouTube videos every week. I have a lot of leads that come to me and I have a lot of people that they're not even leads. They just come to me because they want to buy mean, which is great. That's how you know you have authority and position. Right? Okay, so that's happening. At the same time, though, I have people that come into my world and find me and they look like they could be a prospect. And me and my team, we reach out to them proactively and make an outbound reach. And it's a very, very soft and subtle reach. Mike, I mean, we don't pick up the phone and say, I got Mike on the phone. He's buying from us today. It doesn't matter if Mike needs a keynote speaker or not. We're going to sell him the keynote. We don't do that. But when we call Mike, we're just going to say, mike, I notice you work for a billion dollar company, and based on just a little information that we have, it looks like you have somewhere close to 200 salespeople. And I just want to introduce myself to you and I want to make sure that if you need anything, you know what resources we have available and you know what we might do to be able to help you. Can I share with you some resources just based on what you looked at already that might help you. And then I just want to make sure that if you need anything, you know that you can reach out to me at any time. That's an outbound cold outreach, just like that. But it doesn't sound cold because it doesn't have to be. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I just want to make sure that should you need anything, you raise your hand and say, you know what? I think Anthony could help me with that. And that's all I need to do in that particular one. And it's. It's sort of in this book right here. The law started closing. Everybody worries about the final close. That's. That's not the hard one. The hard one is saying, can we explore change? Does it make something different? Yeah. Can we continue this conversation in the future? That's all you're really trying to do is say, let's make sure we know each other. And then when it makes sense to have another conversation, we'll do that.

Yeah. I spoke to John hall with Influence co. He wrote Top of Mind. And it plays right into that, where if you did that outbound and just a nice touch, and that person says, yeah, that'll be great, thanks. And you shot them that information. And then what can you do to stay top of mind? What? You know, your daily blog post. Can you once in a while drop one back to that person and go, hey, you know, this might help you out. I think that's a huge, huge point that salespeople don't keep in mind because a major percent of people aren't ready to buy or make a buying decision with what you have right now. But they will be or should be or could be in months to come. But too many salespeople want that sale right now to meet a quota. So do you find that that consistency really is almost like the, you know, lever almost that keeps, you know, some salespeople from succeeding because they're just looking for the quick hit.

Yeah. And relationships are something that are developed over time, and the relationships that you invest time in end up being relationships that serve you and that client over the course of a lifetime. So I think to go fast, you go slow. And for me, you know, when people come out and they get on my newsletter and they start getting the Sunday newsletter every week, I'm shaping their mind over time by giving them something that's valuable to them. And my standard there is that what I write and give them on Sunday, they should be able to put to work on Monday. And you do that with people 52 times a year. And then people start to understand the value that you create and understand the ideas, and they share it with their friends and their peers. And then more people come into your community, and when they have a Need, they raise their hand because they already know and trust you and they know that because they already know what you think and how you think and what you're probably going to ask them to do in order to produce a better result. So I think nurturing relationships over time is a big deal. That content kind of approach lends itself to inbound. But I would tell you, if you wanted to be really good at what you do, you would think about it as outbound too. So how do I serve people without outbound? Using this content that I might be using for inbound, but to make sure that I'm nurturing people and helping them know like and trust me and think that I'm a value creator.

Yeah. So it's almost like a silent outbound because you're creating content that gets out there and leaves that digital footprint for people to find down the road and then they could take action and then it becomes an inbound. I think there's a fluid relationship there and people don't realize that and it's nurturing and that that is a relationship. And you might be starting a relationship with people before you even communicate with them personal, you know, they might be going, oh, I feel like I know you already because I've seen so many of your videos and your YouTube.

I have it happen all the time where people walk up and they say, I love your stuff. And I've never met them before, but they've seen me on YouTube with now 250, 300 videos and they know me even though I don't know them. And that helps tremendously with the trust.

Yeah, really. So let's think about this. When we're talking about selling from a position of trust, authority, however we want to call it, what are some ways that people can be making mistakes where if they're doing these certain things, you're really chipping away at that trust and reliability and being that trusted advisor and they're not seeing you as a credible source. What are some things to avoid?

There's just one big category that sort of all this stuff falls into and I would call it being self oriented. Yeah, it's about you. If the conversation is about you, if the content is about you, if everything is about you and what you're trying to do and what you want, if you lead with your product, if you lead with an ask and you haven't earned that ask yet, and by that I mean you ask people to buy and they're not at the position where they should be ready to buy, I mean all those Sort of self oriented behaviors start to destroy trust. If you look at Charlie Green's work, who wrote Trusted Advisor with David Meister and Trust Based Selling the Trust Based Selling field book, he'll tell you that trust is made up of reliability times credibility times intimacy, divided by self orientation. So if you're unreliable, you're definitely going to take away from trust.

If you lack credibility, you're going to take away from trust. And if you lack intimacy, which means I don't even know who you are, but I'm going to go ahead and pitch you anyway, by being self oriented, then you start to destroy that trust. And if you think about this, this isn't anything that should be surprising. Any relationship that you have in your life is built on trust. And as soon as there's a betrayal of that trust and you start to recognize this person doesn't care about me, then the trust is gone and the relationship tends to follow very quickly thereafter.

You know, funny you should say that because even before we started recording we were talking about microphones and you were saying you've used the same brand, same type for years and years and years. And that's brand loyalty. And brand loyalty is wonderful as long as they keep their brand promise. You know, if one day that microphone or the next one you buy or the next brand car that you buy. So we need to think of ourselves in the terms of being a brand, right? The Anthony Annarino brand, the Mike Saunders brand. And I think that we need to protect that brand, to build that brand, because that is what precedes us. So yeah, you're exactly right in that. And it makes me think, what about the newbies out there, the ones just developing their career, whether it's sales or entrepreneurship, because guess what, you could sell as a professional salesperson or you could be an entrepreneur building your business and you're selling. So it's the same exact concept. But there's so many times that I think that people go, I just need to get the ball rolling. And all of this relationship building stuff sounds great, I believe in it, but how do you, how do you shorten that cycle? You know, I mean, you can't circumvent that. You can't say, I want a relationship with you and give it to me now. So what do you say to the people that go, I'm going to start down that road, but I need it to be a little quicker than later.

Well, then you need to increase the activity because here's the thing, I said this before, I'm going to say it again, in human relationships, fastest slow and slow as fast. So walking up to somebody in a bar and saying your place or mine as the first thing out of your mouth, that person's going, I don't know you, but now I don't like you because you're, you're going way further than I'm willing to go right now. Just met you. Yeah, but if you, if you want the relationship to go faster, you go slower and you say, why don't we just have a chat, get a cup of coffee and explore change, you know, and the exploration is a very different level commitment than sign a contract, signed a document. You don't want to propose marriage before either of you know who the other person is, and they surely don't. The reason that I wrote the Law Start at closing was specifically because there's about 10 commitments. And if you get the first eight of them right, number nine, the commitment to decide is so easy. If you, if you get the commitment for time, you get the commitment to explore change. That could be all. On one call, somebody says, yeah, I really want to do this change. You collaborate around the solution, get consensus that it's right, talk about the investment and review it. All those can be done on a very short time. B2C for sure. They get done that way anyway. Now and then you give them a solution and resolve their concerns. The ask ends up being really easy. I just say, mike, listen, unless there's something else that we still need to cover, I think we're ready to put this in motion for you. Can I ask you to sign an agreement and I'll go ahead and start the process of executing this and helping you get this result? That's it. That's all you have to say. You don't be tricky. But if I don't know you and I walk in and say, mike, I can definitely help you. I'm going to need you to sign a contract and I'll get started. Then we left out the part where we have all these conversations about what the right answer looks like. How is it going to serve you? How do I resolve your concerns? Is the investment right? All these things that have to happen, you get through those. The slower you try to get through those, the faster it tries, it tends to go. And the faster you try to get through those, the slower it starts to go because you become disconnected with the other person. I'm ready to close you. And they're like, I'm ready to talk about the money. I haven't gotten past that part. And you Go, well, I'm ready for an agreement. They go, I still have concerns, I'm afraid it might not work. So you have to make sure that you're going up at the same time at the same speed. So the slower you go and make sure you stay connected, you get the velocity, the speed.

Yeah. And you know, you bring, you bring up a good point about the speed because it's almost like the saying, you know, if I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd take the first five and sharpen the axe. Well, if you start whacking away at it, the clothes, then you're not getting anywhere. And I think sharpening, if you want to think of it in that sense. Boy, there's some things that need to be done in our conversations to sharpen our awareness. And sometimes it starts with self awareness. I was talking just yesterday someone about how self awareness is so critical in seeing what we, how we respond to a situation. And we can't just be listening to someone in that conversation and thinking about our next point because they can tell that. They can tell you're kind of starry eyed, lazy eyed. So what is your, what are your thoughts on the listening process and keeping them on task? Because I would venture to say that some your prospect, there could be times where they're starting to veer off and you're like, we need to keep, you know, so how do you, how do you keep that listening process?

I don't want to keep them on track. I mean, whatever they think is important is coming out of their mouth and you might be overlooking something that later on you want. So I would be careful with that. I'll tell you what, what I did to learn to be a good listener, and I only learned this about eight years ago.

I stopped interrupting people until they were done talking. And at first I started just by like, I'm gonna give people a four count. That's what I'll try to do. And after they were done talking, I would wait 1, 2, 3, 4 before I talk. And then I found out that in that period of time, they're still finishing their thought process. They're learning what they think about as they speak it. They this, the questions that we've asked them. They don't have a well designed answer for it because they're still going through the processing which is why they're talking to us. I started to just carry it out to an eight count and an eight counts a long time, I bet.

Yeah.

And. But when you give somebody an eight count, then they have A chance to process. And what comes out of their mouth after that little bit of silence ends up being something really important. Like, I'm not really getting the result I need from my team right now.

And we probably haven't given the training that they need. Bingo. I got it. And I wouldn't have got it if.

I was jumped in right there in that gap. You would have gone, oh, well, the results, we can provide it. And it would have not talked about training. But if you had waited for them to say, and we're probably not giving them the training now, it's a whole different conversation.

And so you take a legal pad and a pen with you and you write down notes as they're talking, and you try just enough words, and then you wait till they run out of words. And when they run out of words and they're done talking, you have your notes and you pick back up where you need to be. So I wouldn't. I don't really like to try to redirect people too much until they get finished talking, because they'll say something. They'll say something like, the last two training, last two training events that we bought, they didn't work. That people didn't get the outcome. And they might not have meant to say that, but now I know. Okay, so there's probably a fear here because they did this twice and it didn't work, but they said this out loud. And then they just keep right on talking. And then I get to go back and say, tell me what happened in the last two training events that you didn't get the outcome that you were looking for. They just threw that away. But to me, it's an insight and it gives me something to work with.

Yeah, I think when we do sessions like these, I love to have at least one practical, tactical takeaway that can be implemented. And we've talked about many. But I think for me, the thing that stands out is just that pause. Whether it's 4 or 8. Now think like you said, 8 can feel like a lifetime. But, you know, just wait, just hold it for a second and see if they almost track how many times that you would have jumped in but you waited and now you picked up on that one new angle. Like, but I think we normally would do this and see how many, how many times that that can be done in your next conversation. So for me, that's a huge, huge takeaway. So let's wrap up with just one last point and think about or comment on what do you feel like is the most important Thing when we're moving forward into taking some of these thoughts that we've talked about and one of these practical implementable things, what's the most important thing that we need to keep in mind so that we're not getting scattered and feeling rushed?

I would tell you, if you think about influence, and I've written a blog post every day for about eight years now.

The thing that I would tell you is if you just start to catalog what it is that you know and you just start thinking about.

How do I help people get a result that they can't get middle is say here's the 10 things that they believe that are generally wrong and causing them problems and what they should believe instead. If you write down those 10 things and then you turn each of them into a list of 10, doesn't have to be 10. Maybe some of them are seven and maybe some of them are 14, I don't know. But let's say you just try to get to 10. With each one of them.

You will have 111 lists of 10. When you're done with that, and you will have a framework for thinking about how you help people. And then you're going to design everything that you do around. Where does it fall into this framework that I created and what do I have to know in every one of these areas to be able to help different people? Problem shows up one way in one company, it shows up in another way in another company. So, for example, somebody's getting poor sales results. Is it activity, is it effectiveness, is it the sales process? Is it poor leadership? And it can be any or all of these or some combination thereof. And so you start looking at that to say, what's the lens that I need to swap out? And if you want to be an authority and if you want to position yourself as somebody who's a trusted advisor and consultative that people should spend money to get new results with, Think about, how do I take that lens and just say, get rid of that one, Put this one on. What am I going to teach people so that they understand that I have the ability and I have the experience, the situational knowledge to be able to help them?

That you can do. I'll say, all the things that you can learn. Who you are matters more than what you do. So if you're the kind of person who knows all these things, you're going to do better than someone who tries to get tactical and tries to go fast with people to try to shorten the cycle to get money.

I love it. I'VE talked about that for years with going deep on how you help people. And the interesting thing is as you were mentioning that there's so many of those topics or subjects that someone could feel like that's talked about all the time, but it's not talked about all the time from your perspective, your business and your life experience. And you can bring a fresh approach to that and talk about the same type of thing, but make application in a unique way that does set yourself apart. So I think that that is so incredible to be able to yourself to the equation because no one else is you. That's an excellent, excellent piece of advice. So hey, thank you so much for your time. I just wanted to wrap up with that last piece and that was awesome. What's the best way that people can reach out and pick up your books? Because I've read both of them and by the way, I thought it was hilarious. You're one, you know, the last sales book you'll ever need and then you followed up with another one and the joke was, you know, well I guess the last one was it the last one. This one now is the closing. So it was just really funny how you were doing kind of that tongue in cheek campaign when you had to do that.

After the publisher names the first book the only sales guide you'll ever need. I'm like kind of constraining with that.

Name since we have a so we.

Done here an option on three best place to find me is the.

Orino.Com my last name both to the same place and you'll get accosted by a pop up banner to sign up for the newsletter, which is my favorite piece of content every week. So I hope you sign up for.

The excellent and I'll make sure I have direct links in our show notes. So thanks again for your help and thanks. I really appreciate your advice.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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