Problem Centric Selling: Why No One Gives a Shit About You or Your Company

Good morning. How's everyone doing? Oh, fuck. I'm not even going to ask again. How many of them have seen me speak or know me? Let me see your hands. How many came because of the title of the presentation? Wow. Well, that's fucking cool. Because now you'll understand. Know me. And with that, anybody here who's sensitive, PC or whatever, not to be an ass, but you might want to go now because I just don't self censor. I say how it is and I get after it. And we're have a lot of fun. So I say that jokingly, but I also say it seriously. So if anybody wants to say, I really loved your presentation. It was really cool. Boy, your language, really. No, I already know. I've been told a thousand times. So I appreciate it, but just enjoy it. Don't let it get in the way. So we're gonna have some fun. All right. How many salespeople do I have in here? Oh, nice. I love salespeople. So seriously, I love you guys. You're the best in the whole wide world. Because you guys took on a job that half your salary is up for grabs. People are always telling you, no procurement. Do I got to say anymore? Right? So, you guys, I love you guys. Love my salespeople. How many marketing people do you have in the room? Wow. I love you guys, too. When you take care of salespeople, when you don't take care of salespeople, you get on my nerves because I won't even go into it. I only get 45 minutes. So are you guys ready? I don't know if I am. Okay. I'm Keenan. This is me. I want to. My new books come out Gap selling. That's what we're going to talk about today. Much of what you learned today is in this book. Comes out Q4. Oh, I am one of those guys who break out your phones, break out your laptops, tweet, link in, take pictures, share, talk. And I got books. Signed books to the persons who share the most on Twitter or share the most on LinkedIn. My assistant, Brady. Raise your hand. Brady. She rocks. She will be paying attention. And at the end, I'll sign a book or books. For those of you who are the most vocal and most loud on social. All right? So have at it. Share. Even if you don't like it. I'm not counting likes, just. That was bullshit what Evakina said. That counts. You get credit for that. Don't you wish they did that in school? Give you credit for giving the teacher a hard time. Mrs. Jo, I got a good joke, but I only have 45 minutes. I have a great joke about that, but I can't. Ask me after. I'll tell you the great joke. All right? You can find me on LinkedIn@ keenan. And why is there a dot? A Keenan Dot, and that's just Keenan on LinkedIn. Anybody know? No? Because in LinkedIn you have to have something in the field with the last name. They won't let you leave it blank. So you got to come up with something, right? So that's why. That's what, Keenan on Twitter, Jim Keenan on Instagram. Because, yes, that gentleman. I was late. Anybody know? Anybody in Melbourne, Australia? Because the woman who has Keenan is like a 16 year old girl who has only like 100 followers and she's private. I've private messed her a thousand times. I'd give her four figures for that name. She won't even respond. She must be rich. Because if I was 60 and someone's going to give me two, three thousand dollars for my name. Here, have that. Do you want another? I got a bunch of names you can have, but she doesn't even respond. Like, literally, I've tried everything I did in the Sun. This girl will not get back to me. So she must be some rich, famous Australian person. Like, I don't need your money. I got my name. So anybody know? Anybody help me with that? Her name's Stephanie Keenan on Instagram. Straight Keenan. I got some love for you. I'll give you a commission. All right? Relationships, they matter in sales. Who agrees with me, who doesn't agree with me? Okay, I'm not a math guy, but there's this really weird math equation that goes on in conferences because that was this. 50. 50. Either you agree with me or you don't. For some reason, I only get like 25% of them, right? If I say how many agree with me? Relationships matter. Let me see that. Thank you. How many agree? Who don't agree with me? See, it doesn't add up. It's not 100%. I don't get that. Like, it should be a direct inverse boom. Just as many, right? Oh, well, I'm over that too. Well, I got some news for you. Let's find out, shall we? People buy from people they like. Do we agree? Not so fast, my friend. This is my matrix. I love this matrix. If they don't like you and there's no value. No, I'm not buying it. Fuck off. I'm pissed off. I don't like you. You wasted my time. I'm irritated and you have no value to me. So I want nothing to do with you, right? And that's the truth. Some of you nice people might not say it, but that's you thinking, like, just go away. No value, no value. And I don't like you. Get away. But if they like you and have tons of value, it's like, yes, let's have a beer. Like, I love you. You're awesome. This is your favorite client, right? You love them, they love you. They buy from you. Guys want to go have a beer? Am I preaching the gospel here? Right? We love them, right? But this thing sucks. What about when there's no value but they like you? See, guys, this is a no with a smile. This is your Uncle Bernie's multi level marketing. You love your Uncle Bernie, but no, you are not going to join his multi level marketing scheme because there's no value, Right? This is your Aunt Jody's Tupperware. No, babe, I don't need Tupperware, thank you. Right? I like you, but there's no value. I'm not buying. So you know what the next one is? There's tons of value. I don't like you. I don't care. I'm still buying. I'm still buying. It's all about value, people. That's where the biggest mess perpetuated on salespeople for, for the last 150, 200 years is that people buy from people like. No, they don't. We buy for value. I could run up right now and pop one of y' all in the face and call your mother all these dirty names. And if I had a Ferrari Enzo and I was willing to sell it to you for $50,000. You buy it because you know that sucker's worth a half million dollars. And you'll take it and you'll spin around and sell it for 450,000 and then be like, on you, Keenan. I'll take a punch in the face for that any single day. It's about value. But yet we run around trying to be liked. Stop it. Provide value. No, that's. You don't have to be liked to be trusted. Don't be confused. The two I appreciate you have. Trust is critical, but you don't have to be liked to be trusted. I'm sorry, there is. But you still have to be liked. And, oh, by the way, here's the overlap. He's got a great point. I love hecklers. Here's the point. Here's the point. And this Is a very American thing. Although you're European, so you may. I'll let you stare me on this one. Americans are super zero sum, right? It's black and white. Everything's black and white for us. But the truth of the matter is when it comes to like and dislike, if someone doesn't like you, it doesn't mean they dislike like you, Right? To dislike someone, that's way out. So you have to deliver a whole extra lot of value if they dislike you. But usually it's neutral if they don't like you, but they don't dislike you. So I don't have to like you. You can be neutral and I can trust you. And I earn trust through credibility, not likability. And if you still want to debate that, we can do it after. We'll have a great time with it. Right? You build trust because he's absolutely right. You cannot sell without trust. That is correct. But you can build trust through credibility without likability. And that's where we're going to go with this. Nobody gives a shit about you or your company. And it's the truth. We don't care about you because we're about value. I want the value that comes right. Why don't we give a shit? Oh my God. This just kills my mojo. Because salespeople are fucking pesky, man. Guys, I love you salespeople. I do. I love you. But man, I read your pathetic emails. I see your pathetic cold call campaign. I see it, I read it and it makes me want to throw up in my mouth. No, you can't have 15 minutes of my time to hear about the cool features of your little product. No, you cannot. No, I'm not interested in hearing how your company is on the Inc 500 for the seventh year in a row. I don't care. In marketing, you're pesky too. And so is this stupid gosh. Okay, it's time we put our customers first. And let me give you an example of why we're pesky. This is a real email that I got trying to sell me shit. The I love expense reports. That was the subject line in the email, right? And then this is the body Sid. No one ever try out. I copied this. So you even butchered it. Try out a free test. Try to free test drive to learn more about easy expense reports from your mobile phone. Free trial demo videos, links, Jim, which nobody calls me Jim, but that's a different story. When you have time for chat 5 or 10 minutes next week to see if we can help your team at a sales guy. No, you can't have five or ten minutes of my time. What am I supposed to do with this? And guys, this is a big company that sent this. I'm being nice. Normally I call out the company, but I'm being nice today. That's a big company and they sent that shit. But hey, it's not just them. Look at this one. Hey Jim. I wanted to provide you with a free 30 day trial to XYZ's engagement driven webinar platform. Here's a little link. If you have any questions, would like to set up a more personal call, please let me know. Yeah, that's what I got. Hey, you know what? This came in short for my day. I'm going to stop everything. Oh, now it wants to go. But I'm going to stop everything and I'm going to click on your demo and I'm going to set up for a 30 day call. 30 day trial. I have no fucking clue what this is, but I think I'm going to do it. Seems like fun. I've been looking for a skate. I've been looking for something else to do right? I. I don't like this proposal I'm putting together to a new client. I'm going to stop that right now. I'm going to stop making money right now so I can spend time on your free trial of something. I have no clue what it is, but hey, I'm in. That's the state of sales, people. This is the state of sales. And I'm willing to bet you that. Who's a sales leader in here? Any sales leaders? I don't want to be mean, but I got 100 bucks at almost all of your people's emails are something like this, some version. And you're not. And you got to say it's not. But If I spent 10 minutes with you, I could prove that it is in most cases. And if it isn't, I'll pat you on the back and give you big hug and kisses. You got to stop. You got to stop. This shit is bullshit. No one wants it. Put yourself in the shoes of your buyer. If you receive that, what would you do with it? Would you buy your own product? If you sent the email to you? The answer is probably not. Probably wouldn't even open the damn thing. But yet you just ride your salespeople to death because they're not closing up deals, they're building the pipeline fast enough. But you trained them to do that, right? You trained them. You created the monster. Now Fix it. So now we got to put the customer first. We put the customer first. Everything starts with a problem. Everything. People we buy to fix problems. Like right now, if somebody had a new clicker, I'd buy it. I'd buy it right now. I'd be like, here, give it up. Oh, gives works. Throw this one down and I'll pay one in. I'd pay like 25 bucks right now for a clicker. It's a problem. That's what would drive me right now to buy is I have a problem. This fricking clicker is messing with my mojo. I've got 300 people in this room who want a good presentation, and my mind is stuck on this damn fucking clicker. That's a problem. I would pay to fix that problem. So here's the first. See, I just clicked. All right, this is a little bit of work. I'm gonna get kind of serious. As serious as I can be for a second. This is a gift, what I'm giving you guys right here. This is what I call the problem identification chart. This is how you structure your ability to become a problem centric seller and build problem centric selling organizations. You have to start and ask yourself, my product and service, what problem does it solve? Or what problems does it solve? And here's the deal. We all know every company, at least in America, was started in a garage or at a bar on a bar napkin, right? We just know that, right? But what I can tell you is when they came up with this idea, nobody wrote features on a bar napkin, did they? No. They recognized that there was a problem. Someone sat in the garage or sat in a bar, and they're talking. They're like, you know what I hate? You know what I can't stand? You know what I can't do? You know what I wish I could do? Am I preaching the gospel here? They recognized there was a problem that drove them insane. They said, I want to fix that fucking thing. And so that's how the company started. But as the company grew and as more and more incompetent people started joining the company and the brilliant founders got washed out, everybody started talking about the features. They shifted. Something happens along the way, and that's all they want to do is talk about the features. They lost sight of the problem. So get back to basics. List in that column all the problems, the business and technical problems. Your product and service sells, right? Then from there, list the impact of those problems. Because, guys, here's the power. The problems are what causes the pain but it's the impact. The impact is what we buy on. And I'll give you an example. I use this all the time, so bear with me. But it's good. You have a nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty splitting migraine headache like you can barely see Sunday morning. Okay, how many people would pay $1,000 for one pill to make that headache go away? A couple people. And I'd even challenge that when it comes time to give up the money. Right? But what if I told you that you had nothing to do that Sunday? You could just lay around all day, you might not get, you might not spend $1,000. But what if I told you that you had a proposal that was due Monday morning for a $5 million deal and your commission on that 5 million dollar deal was $50,000? Who would consider $1,000 now? Okay, what if I asked a few questions and found out that this headache was being caused by a malignant brain tumor and you had six months to live and this pill would eradicate the brain tumor. How many are you going to pay? 1,000. Do is. Now, those of you who aren't raising your hand, you're not playing along. So I do this to illustrate this one thing. The problem is the headache. Are we all in agreement? It's the impact that drives the motivation. It's the impact that's the value. My problem is only a problem based on the impact it has on me or my organization. And the greater the impact, the greater probability I'll spend more money. And I'm going to spin this one more way for those of you who said you'd pay $1,000 to get rid of that head, get rid of that malignant brain tumor, not die in six months. And this guy, salespeople make this mistake and you got to be the smartest of you will get it. The rest of you won't Ask me at the end what I mean by this. If you're a 99 year old man or woman in a nursing home, your kids and grandkids haven't come to see you in five or six years, all your friends, you went into the nursing home already dead. You have this malignant brain tumor. How many are you going to pay to fix it? I'm going to die. Impact. But guess what? My circumstances changed the value of that outcome, didn't they? Us salespeople, we don't spend enough time trying to get there. We don't try to get there. We just, oh, he's going to die. I got a deal. This is a deal. He's going to die. No one wants to die. Well, why not? You're wrong. You got to dig deeper, right? So they write down the impact and find the root cause. What is causing the problem? What is causing the problem? Why does the problem exist in the first place? And why is that important? It's important because it's where you create credibility. Any of you ever been to the doctor? And the doctor's like, yeah, you have this rash or you have that, this. You're like, why did I get. Well, really not sure how many of you like that answer. You don't. The doctor says, oh, it's caused by this, this, and this. We've learned that it's this. They get all the credibility in the world. And who do you think is better prepared to fix it? The one who diagnosed it or the one who diagnosed it and knows what causes it? That needs to be you. So now I want you to imagine you have 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 major problems. Because, by the way, they're not 25, 30, or 50. That I can tell you right now. You look at the products and services you have, you do one of these for each one of those, and you have 5, 10, usually 10 of the most major problems that they solve, and you have the impact, and you have the root cause. Guess what? You now use for all your marketing and all your calls, the problem, right? You now you have to use that to get them to acknowledge they have a problem. And we can do that now. We can do it this way. Consider this email. Hi, Elle. We found that many organizations struggle with insert problem. And because of that, it's causing insert impact. If you're struggling with this challenge, I'd like to suggest 30 minutes. Discuss how we may be able to address your issues. What's causing the problem? And in order to create a new outcome, Create blank, insert outcome. So now I get that. If I'm having that problem, what is the probability of me or someone like me who's suffering with that problem to get back with you? Oh, wow. Should I leave? It's much higher. It's much. If I'm having the problem, I am more inclined to discuss it with you. I am more inclined to respond to you. And the more descript and the greater the impact, the more inclined I am to talk with you. And if I didn't know this is a problem that exists. If I didn't know this is a real problem, I'm even more inclined. What do you mean, this? Wait, whoa. What do you mean? Companies like mine struggle with this? This and this. Oh, I haven't heard about this yet. Whoa. Yeah. Give me your 30 minutes now. To every person saying, well, that's not going to work. Whatever. Here's the deal, guys. I just talked about this the other day on LinkedIn. Sales is like baseball. Nobody bats a thousand, nobody bats 900, nobody bats 800. If you can win 30% of your deals, 35% of your deals, you are an all Star. Unless you're in a very niche market, someone please don't come up with some crazy off niche thing. I get it. But generally speaking, across the board, if you are responsible for closing 20, 30, 40, 50 deals a year and you can bat 35% or you can close to win 35%, you're doing a good job. So doing this can change your batting average or your winning average from 25% or batting.250 to.300. 350. This is going to get you one or two or three more inquiries that you wouldn't have got before, per week or per email, over and over and over. The more numbers you get, it's in your favor because you're focusing on them. You guys getting this? We're focused on them, them, them. By the way, I don't have a timer here, so I have no clue how much time I have. I'm sorry. It's 10, 15. So, yeah, so keep me honest, somebody, because I'm not going to stop if you tell me. I got two minutes. I'm halfway through. All right, so now that we understand that we need problem centric, would somebody please. Will it work? Yeah, 100 bucks. I'll give you 25. Here's what I'll do for you. Yes, yes. Because it's effort. A for effort. Oh, the computer's back there. All right. See what they do. See if they can help you. It's back there with them. I don't know if it's going to work, but the A for effort. Okay, here we go. So I'm going to skip right through. Okay. It's about change. Now that we understand that it's about them and it's about a problem, then at the root of every single sale you will ever make is change. You guys ever think about it like that? Salespeople are change agents. They're change agents because here's the deal. We don't buy anything unless we what? Thank you very much, brother. See, I like participation. Right? Oh, man. Nice, right? It's about change. I don't like where I am today. Something's not working for me. Today I want to change. So we become change agents. So we're going to become change agents. What does change require? Do I have a better one? Oh, my goodness gracious. I almost fell over. Thank you. Oh, I'll give this lady in pink. Don't let me forget this lady in pink. It's about change, right? So if we need to change, we have to change from something to something else. And if we have to find the problems, we understand what's going on. We better damn well understand where they are and where they're going. And that's what the rest of this is going to be. The next 36 minutes right there in front of me. When I said, hey, I don't know how much time I left, they came through and said, hey, you got 35 minutes. I like that. See, now I'm on target. I'm ready to roll. Feel better now? I got a new clicker. I got a timer. I'm a new man. Can you tell? Right? This is critically important because if we're change agents, we have to help the customer see the transition, see the change, and see the value and see the benefit. Because if we cannot, we aren't going to make the sale. We're not going to control the sale. We're not going to influence the sale. And by the way, I love taking side notes. I'm going to take a side note right here. Too many salespeople right now, guys. I'm sorry. Even though you call yourself salespeople, and I love when you work really hard, you're order takers, your order takers. You may make up the call, you may get the inbound call, and you may pitch. You may pitch their product and service, and you may do a demo. But the truth of the matter is, you have no idea why they're buying. They just say, okay, I'll buy, and everybody cups you in the hand and pat you on the back. It's great. That's an order taker. Salespeople are influencers. It's your job to influence the sale. And if you don't know the fucking why they need to buy, then you're not influencing shit. You're just taking what they give you. Like, okay, this is great. This is great. This is great. You got to be influences, and this is how you become an influencer. This is how you influence the sale. I'm going to walk us through this really quickly. Current state, future state, the gap in between. That's the value. That's the value in what they get. And I'll show You what? I mean, it's not that you can't sell, it's that you can't diagnose. You have to be able to diagnose the problem just like a doctor. I have a doctor who can't diagnose me. There's no freaking way in the world he's going to subscribe any freaking solution. That's for sure. Right? No way. If you can't diagnose what I got, you ain't touching me. Same thing with sales. You can't diagnose. Then why are you offering me a solution? How do I know it's going to work? How do I know it's going to solve my problems? How do I know it's going to affect the impact that I'm currently having? Right? So with that, then we need to be. We need to learn how to discover and be problem finders. Problem finders. That is our number one job. So go back to the pick problem identification chart and say, okay, here are the set of problems that I know my product or service solves. Going to go find one of those suckers. Maybe I'm going to find two, maybe I'm going to find three. I'm going to get the customer to admit they have those problems and we're going to go on a journey together. And how do I do that? I start with the current state and there are four elements to the current state that you have to get. Salespeople and marketing people. Everything I say here you can flip and just think about marketing to it. Okay? So salespeople, your job because you have the one on one responsibility, whether it's an inbound or outbound. You can ask the direct questions. You can say, hey, do you have this problem? Do you struggle with this? Are you finding this difficult to do marketing? You can assume a problem and build your marketing messages and your marketing materials around that. Do you know who's absolute? You want a lesson. You want a lesson in marketing and you're going to laugh at me, but these are the best problem centric marketers in the world. Do you know who they are? The infomercial people. Right, the infomercial people. Think about this. How does every infomercial start? Yeah, it's a problem. It's gloomy. The music's all, you know, down and sad. It's black and white. And some lady reaches into her cabinet. Do you hate when you're Tupperware falls and she opens up and comes down on her right? You see that one on the Tupperware falls all over Her. And then you get these really bad actors, and then she washes one and it's been in the microwave with the spaghetti sauce on it. They show, she throws it down, right? They're illustrating the problem. They're telling you, if this is your world, we can fix it. So any person who. Any OCD person who can't stay in their Tupperware drawer is instantly locked in on this. And once they capture you with that problem, the rest of the commercial walks you through the change. What they do is they highlight the problem with. You can't organize that stuff right. Then they show the impact. That's what they're doing. When they open that door and all the Tupperware falls down on her, that's the impact, and it's connecting with people. So marketing, you can do the same thing. Watch them, think about them, lead with the problem. Salespeople, you have the advantage of finding what their specific problem is. Marketing can't do that. You have to pick. Pick the ones you think are the highest. So this piece here is focused on salespeople. Look, first and foremost, start asking questions around the physical and literal current state. What's going on? What's happening? How many people do you have as it relates to the product, what problems or issues you're having? It's tough to tell this without a specific product, but you want to get very specific with their current situation. How many people are working on it, how often does it happen? Blah, blah, blah. The next thing you want is you want to ask about the problem. You want to uncover the current problem. Then you want to uncover the current impact. Then you want to uncover the root cause. Now, because you've written this down, you have a guide. This is the cool part. You have a guide to tell you where to ask and what to look for. So use that guide and start looking for those specific problems that you know your sales organization. I mean, I'm sorry, you know, your company can fix, your product or service can fix. Start looking for those. And then the last one is the emotion. Try to either assess the emotion. You don't really have to ask, how do you feel about this? But sometimes you can. But you can listen and see if you can assess. Are they pissed? Are they angry? Are they frustrated? Are they scared? What emotion is going with that? And capture it all, okay? Because what we're going to do next is we're going to do the same thing on the future state. Then you want to start asking. You want to flip this script and start asking, well, where do you want to go, what are your goals? How much you trying to achieve? What are you trying to save? What kind of efficiency are you trying to create? You want to move them into the future state. Most salespeople start in the future state right away. I do it all the time. They start right away with future state because that's what they want to sell. And they got the right idea. But if I don't know the current state, what am I missing? The gap, the compare and contrast. I don't know where they are, so I don't know the gap. If I don't know the gap, what don't I know? The value. The value. I don't know the value. Right. So what you want to do is you want to get that entire current state as deep as you can, and you want to understand why they want to buy. I sit down with sales people and sales teams all the time, and I'll be going through a pipeline review and like, oh, yeah, the customer's ready to buy. They're super excited. They love this feature. They're ready to do this. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Great. Why do they want to buy? Well, because they want a new system. Why do they want a new system? Well, they don't like the one they have. Why don't they like the one they have? It doesn't work. Why doesn't it work? And then they stop making shit up. No, I'm serious. They stop making shit up. Like, they just, you know, sales people, smart. They start backing their way into it. They start making shit up. So then I'm like, well, then how have you influenced the sale? If you have no idea why they want to buy, then what makes you think they're gonna buy? Well, they said so. Why did they say so? I don't trust my customers. I love my customers. I love my prospects. I don't trust them. I know before they know, hi, Trish. I know before they know that they should buy, that's when you know you're winning. When a customer says no, and you can look at them and say, what are you crazy? Wait a minute. And you can defend it, and you can defend it. So the way you defend the value is you take the current state. I'm making some of this stuff up now. Our company right now is wasting $250,000 a year on managing online assets that we don't know where they are, and we. We can't keep them up and blah, blah, blah. We'd like to get that. We'd like to get that down to 50,000 or to zero. Right. My product, does that get you to zero? Get rid of those wasted assets, help them manage them better, help them stop losing money so we can get you to zero. So current state, future state, 250,000. Minus 250,000 in this case, is. Is to zero. So the value of that quick little scenario is what, $250,000? My product service costs 2,000amonth. Is that a justifiable purchase? Yes, from the math equation. I will back it up with the impact, not just the financial impact. There'll be a bunch more impact. I'll back it up. And so now I have justified and can show that's one of the reasons I need to buy it. And so this is how we're going to. Once you do that, you want to have all of that in the CRM. All of it. Every single piece. The whole current state, the entire future state, what the gap is, what their intrinsic motivations are, why they want to buy it all needs to be in there. So you sales managers, when you're doing pipeline review, you should say, hey, why do they want to buy? What's the problem? What's the impact of that problem? How's it affecting them? What happens if they don't do anything? You should be able to ask so many questions. They should look like experts in that company. Look like complete experts. Where are they trying to go? What are they trying to get done? So I'll tell you a story, Trish, you're going to like this. Sorry, I keep talking to Trish. Trish Bertuzzi. Anybody know Trish Bertuzzi? Yes. Trishi rocks. She's. She's author of the Sales Development playbook. I get that. Right? I always screw it up. So I had a client, he saw me speak at something like this Great guy. He was looking for some consulting help, and he spoke to a number of the other thought leaders. And I was an afterthought. I don't remember why. At the very last thing, oh, I remember seeing Keem speak. Let me talk to him too. He was all ready to go with another thought leader. I like. These guys are all friends of mine. He's all ready to go with one of them. And we got on the phone and we talked for about 45 minutes. And I barraged him with questions. And then he was like. And then he. He had already sort of verbally said he was going somewhere else. He said, I'm going with you instead. I said, why? He said, look, you got to something nobody else got to. So he had a sales team, they were doing well. He just felt that they weren't doing enough. He couldn't put his finger on. He thought he needed training and blah, blah, blah. And after asking a bunch of questions, I realized a couple things. One, he was trying to scale from 20 to 48 million. He had to do it in 2020. He had two and a half years to almost double the company. And I asked him this one question. I said, where are you now? He said, here. And I did the math. I said, wait, you're behind? He said, yeah. And I said, how much? And I do the math. You're $7 million behind. That's a huge goal is this. No one else had done that. No one else had done enough on the current state. These are thought leaders that tell you guys every day how to sell. And they didn't do that. None of them understood the gap. None of them understood and articulated the gap. Back to him exactly what it is he was trying to achieve. The distance between where he was and wanted to go and what the problems were. Now this is why Root cause comes in. They're an international company. I asked him about each of his locations. He said, we have locations in South America, Europe, Australia, us, not in Asia. And those four, I said, well, how are they managed? Each general manager ran the sales team, so there was no connection globally. The general manager did it one way in Europe. The general manager in Australia did another way. There was no tie to revenue, no tie to common practices, no tie to nothing. I said, dude, here's free advice. Fix that shit right now. Get a global sales director and get that shit going horizontal because you're fucked if you don't. So take that away. So I told him one of the root causes was just his structure. I was able to give him some advice without hurting myself. He was. He quickly changed. They went with me. And the reason to tell you he went with me is because I helped him understand what he was really faced with. And I built the credibility that he was like, I believe this guy can help me fix it. And guess What? In that 35, 40 minute quest conversation, how many minutes do you think was dedicated to what I do? How much time do you think was dedicated to talking about my business? 0. 0. If any of you give me time, any of you business leaders, CEOs, whatever, I could sell you without ever talking about a sales guy consulting. And then I would tell you if we should work together or not. And you'd agree or not agree. You'd agree we shouldn't do it. You're right, we shouldn't. We should. Yeah, we should. I agree. Never have to talk about product. That's where you want to get salespeople. That's where you want to get experts in the problem so you can have the conversation. The outcome is what you're selling the future state. The gap is where the value is. You're selling the outcome. Hey, Mr. Customer, I can get you the 48 and 20 in just two and a half years. The Gap is your 7 million behind and it's already a serious goal. And, and, and, and that's the value. I'm going to eradicate that 7 million dollar gap. I'm going to accelerate sales. I'm going to create more continuity. Here's your solution. Okay. Why is this so much fun? This is the power. This is one slide. But other than the problem identification chart, this is a slide that gets me jazzed. If you do this right, every objection, every challenge goes away and you have brass balls. Here's the deal. A customer goes dark, you no longer have to send those stupid, pathetic emails that says, oh, you've gone dark. So either you're really, really busy, something, something, or you're being chased by a hippo. Call me back. You guys know what I'm talking about, don't you? Okay, look, you have to write those emails because you don't know the value of what you're selling. If you did problem centric selling correctly and someone goes dark, you can say, hey, Al, I'm confused. Last we talked, we discovered that you're $7 million behind your run rate of getting to 28 and 40. Your sales teams were not being able to consistently execute because you're structured in a way that doesn't allow people to talk, to create common themes, to create common methodologies, understanding that your goal, 40 and 20 is tick tock, tick tock. I'm confused. I haven't heard from you. Have you already solved it or should we take 50 minutes to talk about where you are in this process? Who am I talking about in them? Me or him or her? Them. Them. I'm taking their shit and putting it back on me. What do you mean you're not calling me back? You're dying here. This isn't about me. I got plenty of customers. Plenty people I can call. You told me you've got a problem you need to fix. Here's the problem. Why are you not getting back to me? Brilliant. How about this one? Objections? I'll lump these two together in interest of time, lack of features. You know, I really, really like this. But you don't have the influx capacitative feature, and it's really bothering me. And we really need the influx capacitative feature. Okay? If you understand their business and understand the problems, you should be able to say, you know what? You're right. Understanding what? You told me that influx capacitor is critical, and you should have seen that ahead of time. You shouldn't have gotten that far. But you know what? You're right. Because without it, you can't do these three things. So I recommend. You're probably right. We shouldn't do this. Or you're like, wait, my favorite line. I'm confused. You told me you have these four problems. The influx capacitator will only affect this little tiny piece. You said your end goal was to make this happen. That doesn't affect the end goal. Why the hell are we talking about the Influx capacitator? Have I missed something again? You don't defend you. You make them defend their decision that they need that piece of that feature. You make them defend it. It's brilliant, guys. It's fucking awesome. I don't have to say, well, the feature is this, this, this. Or how about this one? I've talked to engineering. We're going to try to get that in by 2020. So if you just buy and. Hang on. See, you guys know what I'm talking about, right? No. You challenge the customer to explain why that's critical to the buying decision based on what they told you the problem is based on what they told you they're trying to fix. You don't ever, ever, ever defend the lack of a feature. You don't ever defend anything when it comes to objections. How about creating urgency again? You use this to create urgency. Going back to my client with the seven videos. Hey, I haven't heard from you. We're having a difficult time closing this. I'm confused. Every day that goes by, it's going to be difficult for you to reach your goal. You said you need to achieve this by this time. What am I missing? It seems to me we're not going to make it at this rate. Has the date been moved? Is it okay to miss? Sometimes they come back and say it has. Okay, now you know something? No, we can't. Right? Thank you. I got to get going. Right again. I'm not saying, hey, what do you need? Hey, hey, come on, come on, come on. It's you. You said, you said, right? And here's my favorite one. Price. Yeah, I don't know. This You're a little expensive. I didn't budget for this. It's too much money. But wait, you said that you're losing $250,000. What? I say year or a month? What did I say year. You're losing $250,000 a year. We can make that go away. And it only costs $3,000 a month. I'm confused. Why are you saying this is too expensive and. Shut up. Just shut up and let the customer squirm and try to explain to you why spending $9,000 or $2,000 a month for 10 months, that's a 10 year return. Why that's too expensive. And then whatever they say, then you address it. Could be a budget issue. Okay, let's talk about budget. But no, it's not too expensive. And I'm not going to lower my rate because that's a damn fucking good deal. This problem centric selling helps you flip the script and makes your customer defend themselves. Makes the customer puts the customer at the center and allows you to influence the sale. Now, not be an order taker, right? Problem selling customs. Problem centric selling puts the customer first, not you. And that's what it's about. It changes everything. You now become an influencer. You get it done, you make it happen. All right, I'm out. Peace. Sa.