Episode 159: Different is Better with Mike Michalowicz

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I am surprised how few vendors have reached out to me and said, hey, how can we improve ourselves? Which therefore to me represents the opportunity.

Great point.

Actively reaching out to our customers and saying, how can we serve you now? Acknowledging things are different. We, we're, you know, we're still open for business, but we realize we need to be open for business in a new way.

Mike Michalowicz is back, the popular author of many books including The Pumpkin Plan and creator of Profit First, used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive profit. He's one whom Simon Sinek deemed the top contender for the patron saint of entrepreneurs. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at CommsCube. Mike's our guest today, and he'll be joining us for Sessions at Home, the industry's only conference dedicated solely to amping your sales growth. Mike will join us to share a vital message for our industry. At sessions, he'll talk about how to engage and convert prospects in real time, the mental triggers of customers and what makes them buy, and what customers notice, care about, and what they don't. Always inspiring, humorous, and practical, his message is crucial for your team. So be sure you get anyone who's involved in the sales process to join us. I say this not to fill seats.

I say it because I know we are entering a new season.

Fall, for many of us, is our January 1st. Fall brings new beginnings, and it's been a long summer. There's no better time than now to inspire and motivate your team. Sessions at Home will be held on Thursday, October 8th from 2 to 5 PM ET. And again, you can learn more and register at commonskew.com/sessionsathome. Today, Mike and I talk about a variety of topics, including a really cool knitting project done by wedding planners. Also, how the sales world is changing and how Mike Michalowicz stays motivated. It's a sneak peek of what you'll experience at Sessions at Home. And today's episode is brought to you by Commenscue, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more or to begin your free trial now, visit commenscue.com.

Now here's Mike. Well, Mike, Sessions at Home is a conference hyper-focused on selling in this new virtual world. You talk to a lot of organizations and you have your own experience as you've taken your business as a speaker and as a consultant virtual. What have you learned about selling in a virtual world this year that's been a new experience to you? Or maybe, maybe a better way of asking is like, what key lessons have been the most important for you this year as you transitioned to virtual only?

I think the biggest lesson is presentation still matters in the virtual world. So you see these gaffes where folks say, "In my pajamas working," and I don't know if that's satisfactory. So the nice thing about being a speaker is while pre-COVID, 80% of my work was person-to-person on stage, 20% still through a Zencastr link or Zoom or something like that. So I had some degree of preparation. And now I would say it's 95% online. There's still actually an occasional, believe it or not, face-to-face, face-to-distant-face, I should say. But presentation matters. So here's the little hack I did. I called a photographer right when this was breaking out and said, "How do I turn up my game in presentation?" He's like, oh, are you doing the thirds? And I'm like, what's the thirds? He's like, your eyes are in the top thirds. There's the lower thirds for text that people add in. It's the positioning on the camera. What's your key light like? I'm like, what's a key light? And so lighting matters. Camera matters. Audio quality matters. I actually have 3 different microphones. You can't see me now because we're doing this over a Zencastr link, but 3 microphones. I have a boom mic, a compressor mic. That's what I'm on now, which gives a deeper voice. But if I was on a live presentation where I can't have a microphone in front of me, I jump over to the boom mic. I think that stuff is necessary. And the last thing is when we go virtual, it de-dimensionalizes us, meaning instead of being a third dimension where there's depth, depth is gone. It's literally a presentation in two dimensions on someone's screen. And it also flattens our energy. So therefore, when it comes to a presentation virtually, we gotta bring a higher degree of energy because it somewhat gets muted across the wire.

I don't know that we really think, I think we acquiesced to this is the way life is and we'll deal with whatever tools we have, but sort of investing in what's going to make, investing in new sales tools are critical right now, as you're saying. We're an industry that has traditionally been dependent upon relationship businesses like many, heavily dependent on in-person contact, mostly around tangible products. You work with a lot of organizations How are you seeing other organizations adjust to this?

I see some really cool things and we've implemented some of it. They're bringing back a tactile experience even though we can't have it. Here's what I mean. For example, I was working with these wedding planners and they said weddings in the traditional sense are done. Some people want to plow ahead with a virtual event. They still want to celebrate. Now you got people sitting around on a Zoom meeting and it's kind of boring. Well, the forward-thinking wedding planners, shared an insight with me. They said, "You know what we did is we got all the effects of a wedding and put it in a box, the champagne glass and flute, the rice that you can throw, the confetti and celebration and other things like that. And we said for each guest, we sent a box out. And when they got the box, each item was numbered. And as the celebration went online, they said, 'Okay, open number 1,' and people were having a tactile experience around this." They blended it. I think there's no— I think the excuse we have is, well, now we're virtual, everything's virtual, and we're leaving that behind. I think the smart businesses are still integrating some kind of personal touch, literally in this case, that distinguishes them.

Yeah, you're talking to the right industry here. That's such— that's so good. And I love what you said about that, that this is a personal experience. This isn't really— this isn't a marketing piece, it's a personal experience. How do you think the sales world is changing as we've adjusted to this new normal? I'm curious what you think the lasting impact will be, the impact we'll see in the sales world when business returns to more normal operations.

I think there's a move, and I've actually put a label to it. I don't know if I love this label, but a move from selling, selling, traditional selling to what I call serve selling. And this has been, it's always existed, but with the move to a virtual environment, things are moving quicker. I don't need to drive out or travel out to visit a client or something like that. So there's more efficiency, which avails more time Some people are trying to do more volume sales, and I don't know if that's smart. Others are trying to go deeper in the sales relationship through service. And here's an example. I hired a personal assistant, and one of the tasks I gave my personal assistant, I said, we need a coffee machine for our office. This was pre-COVID. And she came, her name's Amy. She came back and said, I got 3 coffee machines based on the parameters you shared. And here's like kind of the high end does everything. Here's the middle end. And here's the low end. And she goes, it's actually my suggestion. We just do this low end one. Because it, it matches all the things we want. Well, it won't be a surprise. I said, okay, let's get that coffee machine. There's a 99.9% acceptance rate when someone is a virtual assistant. So I tasked her to find something that I want to buy. And of course I'm gonna accept it because she's my assistant. Now when it comes to serve selling, we can go in the same mentality. The customer is looking to buy something, a coffee machine, and our job is not to convince them to buy ours, Our job is to best satisfy their solution. Now, if our company's solution is the best, we then have a responsibility to say, I looked at these solutions, here's the 3 or 4 that I would encourage you to consider. Of these, I'm happy to report that my company, I've concluded, is the best solution for you. Yeah, it's a little bit of a spin on how traditional selling is, but it's no longer about convincing someone why we're the best. It's really just seeking out what the best solution is for them. And if it— if you conclude it's your company, then you have the responsibility to present it that way.

Yeah, yeah. You know, when this— through this experience, we've seen a lot of pretension sort of disappear and dissipate, and just people get real. And that's part of that experience, is that I just want to help someone here, and we're more open to it. I think we're more eager for that kind of feedback, that kind of encouragement, that kind of help. Switching a little bit toward focus and business planning, you know, you've done so much research and work on so many aspects of the business, from profitability, working with the best clients, which was the subject of your SKU Camp Talk from New Orleans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And differentiating your business. What do you think businesses need to focus on right now for the foreseeable future? You know, Q4 is upon us, and a lot of folks say Labor Day is like a reset button, and we're heading into 2021. Well, it'll be here before we know it. What do you think we need to be focused on for business planning in this current environment?

Yeah, I think it boils down to empathetic communication, really enhancing our listening. And listen, we've been told this for eons. But this is the time. I don't believe 2020 is the new Great Recession of 2008. I think it's the great reinvention, meaning customers are redefining their needs. I know my expectations have changed when I travel or go to a restaurant. I have certain expectations for my safety and my family's safety and other concerns too. I found the— refound the joys of takeout over sitting at a restaurant and so much more. But so my expectations have changed, which means the vendors that satisfy my new expectation are the winners. I am surprised how few vendors have reached out to me and said, hey, how can we improve ourselves? Which therefore to me represents the opportunity.

Great point.

Actively reaching out to our customers and saying, how can we serve you now? Acknowledging things are different. We, we're, you know, we're still open for business, but we realize we need to be open for business in a new way. How can we do? If we empathetically listen to our customers, truly try to understand the new needs they have, and then enhance our offerings, modify or tweak accordingly, I think we're gonna come out a big winner. Yeah.

I think we keep trying to make assumptions for the buyer or reading headlines and, and really just that, those basics of calling the customer and talking with them about it is key.

It's the shortcut. The shortcut's to assume, 'cause it's easy. Like, ah, right. Customers need this.

Right.

It's, and it's scary. It's scary to ask customer what you need. Yeah. It's scary. It is. And scary for the customer to say, I don't know. Or the customer may say, I don't need you. But that, even if it's painful information, it's valuable because it's their truth, right?

And we have to get beyond— we have to be vulnerable enough to get beyond the thinking that we have to have the answers all the time, when really we're in a new environment where customer doesn't have any answers anymore. They just have lots of questions. But the questions can reveal a whole lot.

Yeah, you know, Henry Ford said a classic line, but I want to dig into it.

It's—

he said, uh, If I asked the customer what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse.

Right?

Right. And he says what he was arguing is the customer doesn't know what they want. But my consideration of that exact statement is the customer did know they wanted something faster. Now the context was a horse because that's all they understood, but they gave him the insight faster and his job was to innovate around it. Your customers are not going to nail the solution, but they are going to nail the need. The need was faster. The solution was a car. Ask your customers what they need, and they'll give you at least the need, not necessarily the solution. That's your job to find it.

Yeah, we are seeing sort of two major attitudes, and this is oversimplifying, grossly oversimplifying, two major attitudes through this experience and then heading into Q4 and next year. The sessions at home, the sales conference is hyper-focused on selling, and we see a lot of folks that are in sort of a wait-and-see mode or pause. And then we have folks that are interested in reinventing and taking advantage of this time to reimagine their business. Now, the subject of your talk at Sessions is Better Is Not Better, Different Is Better. We know different stands out, sets us apart, but the phrase different is better. Can you give us a quick capsule of what you mean?

Yeah. The question I've been pondering, and I've been truly pondering this for 10 years now, is, is there a way for our businesses to get noticed, to beat out the competition every single time? Is there a guarantee? And I've been pondering it and I'm convinced, yes, there is. What it boils down to, and this is a hobby of mine, I'm not credentialed or certified in this by any stretch of imagination, but I'm just fascinated by behavioral psychology, how our brain operates, all that stuff. And what I found is that our brain has this thing called the reticular formation. The reticular formation is a net system. It includes a thing you may have heard of called the reticular activation system and other elements. But the job of the reticular formation, it's right at the top of the spine and the beginning of the brainstem, is to intercept any inputs and if at all possible, ignore it. Literally, the primary function of the brain is to ignore because there's so many inputs. Right now, wherever you are standing or sitting, you can just look around you and you'll see something and you could spend years observing it. I just picked up a coffee mug and Why is it colored black and how do they make this dye black? And why is it shiny in one spot and matte in the other? And why do they, who came up with those words? Like it literally could go on forever. So our mind ignores almost everything, but what it does do, this reticular formation, this net, both a literal and figurative net, is it does allow 3 elements through. If something's a threat, meaning like if it's something about to harm you, a Mack truck is running your way, it will send it right to your amygdala, another part of your brain. To enact quickly and move out of the way. The other thing is opportunities, known opportunities. If someone puts a stack of hundreds of dollars of bills in front of you and says, "Enjoy," your reticular formation will not ignore that. It'll say, "Oop, known opportunity. Let's grab that money." But there's a third thing that gets by too, and it's called the unknown. When the reticular formation can't quantify something as more white noise, it says, "This must be evaluated because it could be a threat." Or it could be an opportunity or it could be ignored. We don't know yet. Therefore, when it comes to presenting our company, different is the key to our success. If we do something that's unexpected, I guarantee you, you'll get the attention of your customer. It's actually mandatory based upon brain function. If you and I right now, Bobby, we're sitting or standing in a yard having this conversation and all of a sudden something squiggles on the ground, We will immediately react to it. We don't recognize what it is yet, but our brain is like, is this a threat? Is this a snake? Is this more white noise? Did someone turn the hose on? It's flipping around. What is this? And so at first we react, we pay attention to it, guaranteed. And then we go through this evaluation process. So the idea of different is better is when we market our businesses in a different way, it guarantees attention every single time. It gets you in front of the customer. Once you have their attention, and this attention, by the way, is very short-lived, half a second at most, the mind then goes through this qualification process. We have to play into what I call the attractor factor. Is what they're seeing compelling to this community? Are they like, oh, this could be an opportunity. And if it is an opportunity, we move on to this third step, which is direct them to do something. So first differentiate, then attract, and then direct. So DAD is the acronym. And that's what I'll be teaching at the event.

What I love about this, Mike, is I've, I know from my experience, I've always heard clients speaking and categorizing us in boxes. It's part of it, but I've never understood it until you said it as a defensive mechanism because they're processing too much. They're busy. They've got busy calendars. They got the next meeting on their mind. They've got all these things going on and their defensive mechanism. If you meet a prospect for the first time is to sort of categorize you, put you in a box and go, okay, I got you. I know where you're at. I know what you do. And, and then you, that's where commodity, that's where it leads to commoditization as opposed to differentiation. So that's a fascinating glimpse at that. I know you're going to unpack this more as we get into sessions, but is being different about aesthetics or branding? I mean, what distinguishes different from being just that? And the reason why I ask this, I think a big problem in our business, our industry, is that we apply being different to our branding, but you peel back the veneer and we're basically not focusing on what differentiates us from our competition.

Right. So I, it's funny, I've been doing surveys with audiences, live audiences around this for eons now and say, you know, who here is better than the competition? And I would argue every hand goes up. Uh, the hands that don't go up, I pick on them. Like, if you're not better than the competition, what are you doing here? Right. So everyone says they're better, but then I say, well, how are you better? And what it boils down to is the 1% differentiate. 99% of what lawyers do is the same as the other 99%. It's the 1% that we're different at. We specialize in a certain type of crime or whatever the thing is. That 1% differentiator is the opportunity. We have to speak to that. Then what we do is we bring it out in our marketing. And one of the techniques is breaking what I call the generic label, what you just referred to. If I went in as a lawyer and said, oh, I'm a lawyer, I'm done. Stick a fork in me because everyone knows what a lawyer is. The brain is designed to say, oh, that's white noise, ignore it. Lawyers are lawyers. Someone's going to sue somebody. But if I go in and say, oh, I'm Integrated Counsel, I get past reticular formation because the brain doesn't know what Integrated Counsel is. So it says, well, what the hell is that? It's unexpected. That gives us the opportunity to apply the attraction and say, oh, what Integrated Counsel is, is I do legal services, but I integrate our practice within yours, meaning we actually show up at your office We get a sense for the culture of your organization. We understand your culture. And when we write the legal documents, it speaks to how your business actually operates. It's not the generic boilerplate stuff. And that for the right customer is a differentiator and says, oh, they get it. So it starts off with something that you got to do it in that 0.5 seconds. It's got to get past the, I know what this is, it's a threat. I know what this is. This is more of white noise. Once you get past that, then you can position yourself as the opportunity and then direct them to take action.

Yeah. Well, I, again, we're going to unpack this more and we are going to provide resources for folks that are going to show how to actually differentiate using, because a lot of folks will, don't realize it, but working with clients, like you just said, the types of clients they work with is one key to unlocking what makes them really different. They've got an expertise working with those clients that other people don't. And that's one of those. One of the questions I had, Mike, with you in particular is like, you're a successful entrepreneur and consultant. And as I look at your body of work, if you had to sum up the essence of what you teach, I'm going to be a little presumptive and say, I, I think it's about intention and focus. So you have with all the books that you've written for all those talks that you've given and the people you consult with, there's been this, like, there's been this focus on certain topics, focus on profit. Being intentional with the right clients, thinking about your business with a different perspective, and you're known in conveying this, you know, as this pot with this positive energy. Now I'm curious, how is Mike Michalowicz, the entrepreneur, the business person, the boss, the human, maintaining a strong positive attitude through the ups and downs of this experience?

So I think what serves me— actually, I know what serves me. Is I'm rooted in a purpose. And I believe, Bobby, we all have one. I don't feel any one person's purpose is greater or weaker than anyone else's. Mine's to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And it just goes back to a point in my life where I wiped out all my wealth because of just pure ignorance and arrogance, quite frankly, and had to start anew. And I realized at that point, even though I'd been an entrepreneur for over a decade, I had no clue on what made an entrepreneur tick, how to simplify the journey. And going through that trauma, at least that's my definition of financial trauma, I reset myself to resolve that. This is a quick vignette. I met a gentleman speaking and he was so kind. He came up to me. He says, "I heard about your purpose to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty." He's like, "I have a purpose, but I'm embarrassed. It's so small." And I'm like, "Well, I don't understand. What is it?" He says his wife had passed away in the past year, He said, I just want to put food on the table for my children and be there with them because that's it. Because I'm embarrassed. I'm like, embarrassed? I'm like, I don't know if we can compare purposes here, but that sounds even bigger than mine. Like, you're caring for children, your own children. You want to step up in such a significant way. That's huge, man. Well, sadly, I don't remember this guy's name. I don't even remember his business. I remember though meeting him a year later and he came up and said, do you remember me? And I remember the story and he said, I found that dinner is, is the time for especially single-parent families to connect. Because I started a business preparing meals for parents that are single parents to avail them the time, because that's the hour window you get every day to be with your kids. And there's only so many windows you're going to get before they're out of the house or something else happens. He's like, that's what I got to do. So what's interesting is there is no big or small purpose. Whatever resonates with you is the driving factor and gives you that— gives me that energy. And it can morph into its manifestation of how it is of service, maybe by creating a food service or by writing books or maybe just caring for your family. There is no vehicle that's bigger or smaller. Just that purpose is a great driver for me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike, I got one last question. What interesting little thing I saw, I guess it was through Twitter, something, a picture of you and John Jantz. I think it was John Jantz playing guitar, jamming together. And John's been on the podcast before and a friend of ours as well. But anyways, I, you, do you play?

Yeah. Yeah.

Obviously you do. Yeah. Okay.

Great.

That is, and you garden and you do all these other things that I think probably center you as well. I'm curious, you know, COVID, and this is a question I like to ask everyone. COVID with all its calamity, with all its tragedy, has also brought some really strange gifts to us as well. What gift has this experience given you?

I think the gift, actually, I give a very specific one. My daughter, who just turned 22, was planning to go cross-country to travel these national parks with her best friend, but her best friend couldn't go. And I got the, "Hey, Dad, do you want to be the backup and go?" And my answer was, "Hell yes, I'm in." For the last 10 years with my speaking regimen, I've been traveling almost every week, and I've never been able to avail that time. I, due to the virtualization, I was able to perform the few perform— the few presentations I needed to do on the road. And on a drop of a hat, I was taking a trip with my daughter and had an experience that I'll never forget. It was so much joy. Actually, my greatest joy was just seeing her smile and laugh and have fun for 10 consecutive days, travel through the Grand Canyon and the Grand Tetons and all these wonderful areas.

That's beautiful, Mike. Thank you, man. I— we are so glad that you're back. You have really been— impacted a lot of entrepreneurs in this industry. It's a big industry. There's lots of folks who are looking forward to you coming. And I would like to remind folks, you can learn more at commonscue.com sessions at home. It will be Thursday, October 8th, from 2 to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time. It's Mike. Thanks again for your time.

Thanks for having me. I can't wait for the event.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKUcast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKUcast on iTunes or to our blog at community.comonsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.

Mm.