My New 2024 Sales Strategy REVEALED!

Does the idea of sales calls give you that icky, slimy, creepy, I don't want to do it kind of feeling? If so, you're definitely going to want to check out today's episode of the CFO Report. Hey, there. My name is Michael King, and welcome back to the CFO Report, where we talk about starting, scaling, and optimizing fractional CFO firms. Now, a lot of us in the fractional CFO industry, we really stress out about sales calls. We think about their traditional used car salesperson experience, and we don't want to give off those vibes in our own sales calls. Well, it turns out there is a way to handle sales calls that's the complete opposite of slimy. In today's episode, I'm talking with Carol Mahoney. Carol's the author of a brand new book called Buyer First Grow youw Business with Collaborative Selling. She's also the founder of Unbound Growth, and she's been called a sales therapist at Harvard Business School, where she's an entrepreneurial sales coach for their MBA program. Carol is literally changing the way the entire sales industry sees itself and how buyers see it, too. Today, Carol and I are diving into what she calls collaborative selling. It's a completely new way of thinking about sales, and that puts the buyer at the front of the discussion. I've started incorporating a lot of Carol's techniques into my own sales process, and I'm already seeing results. So I'm really excited to share this conversation with you today. Let's dive in. Carol, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm excited to talk to a legitimate sales guru.

Okay. I haven't been called that before, so thank you.

Oh, okay.

All right.

I want to dive right in. Our audience is primarily fractional CFOs. We are primarily people that don't typically love sales. So my first question is, selling is such a source of stress and anxiety for so many business owners, especially fractional CFOs. Why do so many people hate selling?

It is a complex answer, but it really comes down to the experiences that we've all had with sales or salespeople or what we've heard others around us say about sales and salespeople. In Daniel Pink's book, To Sell as Human, he surveyed people and asked, what's the first word that comes to mind when you think of sales? And it was pushy, slimy, manipulative, icky. And then he asked, well, what's the first image that comes to mind? And it's a used car salesperson. And we've all had that experience with a used car salesperson. And I think it also goes back. Like, if you look at the history of how sales came about, I mean, it's the oldest profession there is and the most despised. And a lot of it, I think, comes because of the way that we've been teaching sales. Like, the first sales process was called phrenology. They called this the science of selling because they measured the size or took into the count the size of someone's forehead when they needed to sell Ford Motor cars because it was a new technology. And they thought the larger the head, the bigger the brain, the smarter they're going to be to come on to new ideas and concepts. And it doesn't get much better from there. You what? We've all had that experience with the insurance salesman who says, well, and they sit down with you and your spouse and your loved ones and say, well, of course you'd want them to be protective if anything happened to you. And so we feel manipulated in these buying processes when we have to deal with salespeople. And then the Internet happened, and it took almost all of the power away from salespeople to be able to trick and manipulate us, you would think, but it still happens, and we have a sense of buyer's remorse and buyer's regret. And LinkedIn did a survey, and they asked salespeople, you know, on a scale of 1 to 5, how much importance do you put on your buyers? And everyone said, you know, 60 something odd. Percent said, well, of course, we always put our buyers first. Well, then they asked their buyers the same question, and only 23% of buyers agreed. And I think the other reason we don't like sales is it has to do with issues around money. A lot of times, I think, and it's ironic, right, when you're thinking of a CFO or fractional CFO or accountants who might have issues around money. But when you come into a sales conversation, sales is defined as an exchange of value. And as a business owner, the value is you. And so it brings up all kinds of insecurities and mindsets and beliefs around ourselves and money and what we're worth. That makes these sales conversations even more difficult. We don't even realize that some of the everyday beliefs we have get in the way. And then we do the things that we don't necessarily want to do, but we feel like we have to do, like cold calling or networking, and we do it poorly because of our mindset towards the action.

I think the LinkedIn study that you talked about is interesting. So 60, 70, some odd percent of sellers said that the buyer is in mind or front of mind, yet far fewer buyers actually felt that way. Why do you think there's such a disconnect between what the sellers think they're doing and what the buyers are receiving?

So I think it's one in how salespeople are hired. When they ask managers, what's the number one trait that you look for when you hire a salesperson? Active listening was the last one they listed the last one. Things like complex problem solving and negotiations were the top of the list. And when you ask, they also, of course, asked buyers, what's the number one trait that you value in salespeople? And it was active listening, asking us questions, you know, getting us to think differently about our problems and solutions. But the problem is, is that when you're hired into a sales organization, usually the very first thing that they do is start teaching you about them, their sales process, their product features and benefits. And the buyer is an afterthought as to, oh yeah, and this is a buyer that you're going to be selling to. And this is how you're going to pitch our products and services. And so it becomes how they're trained. And so that's one of the reasons why I think that that happens. But then also it's the fact that we're still focused on what's in it for us. We need to make the next sale, we need to make sure that we get that next client. And in putting the focus on what we want and need, we get wrapped up in our own heads about what to say next. Or the fear of, you know, being rejected or the fear of not being seen as smart enough or good enough in a certain way. And it causes behaviors that buyers find disconcerting, manipulative, not authentic. And they have a hard time trusting us. We end up talking all about ourselves and the things that we know and what they should do instead of collaborating with them in a conversation where they feel listened to and heard and valued.

The word collaboration continues to come up in everything that I read and hear from you. I'd like to just take a step backwards and let's talk about the concept of collaborative selling. And Carol, how is that different from the opposite of that? Not collaborative selling? I don't even know if there's a term for the traditional model that's clearly not collaborative. But what is collaborative and how is that different?

I mean, you see my shelf behind you. If you would see like the color coded books of all of the different sales processes and methodologies that I've studied that I've tried. And the thing that was the issue with it, it was it was never something that I was able to really dig into and understand the buyer better. Like, it was just like you understood just enough to then be able to do what you wanted to do. And the thing is, is that they don't all necessarily work. Like people try to do bant or spin or solution selling and they have some limited success to it. And the challenge is that they're trying to follow it step by step by step and it might not be in context and what's actually going to work with this particular buyer, it becomes something we need to do to other people. I'm going to qualify you based on your budget. I'm going to, you know, influence and persuade you to think differently about this. And it's all about the intention behind it. So collaborative selling is actually based on some research called the IKEA effect, which was done in Harvard Business School. And they wanted to understand the IKEA store. Like, why are people willing to go to a store, pay more for something that they then have to put together themselves? Like, they couldn't really quite wrap their head around why they would want that. And so what they found was that when we actually put skin in the game, when we actually collaborate on solutions that are going to be things that we end up using, we place more value on it because we've taken our input in, has been customized for us. We want it to do it this particular certain way. And the thing of that is that we're willing to pay like 16% more for something like that. And so collaborative selling isn't about you being the one that tells your buyer what they need to do. It isn't about you asking maybe one or two questions to understand enough to be able to then pitch your product. Okay, I've understood your pain, I've understood your situation, I've understood your impact. And now I'm going to, you know, sell you the product and the service that I need you to buy. Instead. It's more about getting inside your buyer's head. It's more about understanding how do they look at risk. What are, you know, some people, they look at risk in terms of, you know, how much money could I potentially lose or how much money could I potentially gain in this particular situation and what are the different factors there. And so it's using discovery and open ended and sequential questions to get our buyers to share more information about what they think and what they want a solution to look like for themselves. Essentially collaborating with us on how their unique situation is going to then be solved by some unique features and benefits within your solution that you collaborate together as to what that best fit looks like. And sometimes you find that it's not going to be the best fit. And so collaborative selling is really based on collaborating with our buyers to come up with unique solutions for their problems that are compelling to them. And it also helps them to lower their risk. It also helps us to build sets trust in the sales process. And sales is like the third least trusted profession in the world. I think the only thing that's worse are politicians actually in lawyers. And so when we are asking open ended sequential questions that dig deeper to help people to understand what it is that's really going on behind this issue or the problem or the obstacles that they faced in challenging it and coming up with ways to solve those particular things in ways they haven't been able to do before. And we're getting them to share this information is we're actually, it could be activating the part of their brain which is the cerebral cortex. And then this part of our brain where we actually form relationships and trust with people is where we also release dopamine. And when we talk about ourselves and what we think and our opinion, it lights up that part of our brain and it helps us to build trust with the other person. We will actually start to change our own minds when we have talked it out. I can't tell you how many times that I have come home or my husband has come home and he asked me about my day and I have this problem or issue that I haven't been able to talk to anybody else about all day. And he'll ask me one or two questions and I'm often running to the races. I've already like by the end of the five minute conversation figured out what's really the underlining issue and how I best need to solve it and who I need to talk to or do next about it. And he just looks at me, he's like, did I even need to be involved in this conversation? Like did you even need me here for it? Because I figured out how to solve the problem. And now I'm looking at him going, thank you so much for your help. He's like, I didn't do anything. And that's what collaborative selling is really all about. Because when we come up with I have this problem, we are almost instantly thinking of what the solution for that's going to Be and it is an AI chatbot search, a way to help us to learn more about it. So collaborative selling is a way that we can add more value to conversations with human beings than a chatbot or a Google search can do. And that emotional dynamic is something that will never go away in human to human sales. Until we're like comfortable with robots making life or death decisions for us, we're still going to need human beings to help us make these kinds of decisions because they're emotional, not logical.

One of the things that I heard you say, Carol, is that, that it's so important to really get into the true, like, motivators, those emotional drivers that the buyers have. And when I think about the work that fractional CFOs do, in a lot of ways you're putting the buyer in a very vulnerable position. I would argue just one small step away from like going to a doctor where the doctor is like, take off all your clothes so I can see exactly how healthy you are. With a owner, there's a lot of ego and things that are involved in their finances. And you're asking for that opportunity to see behind the curtain and see all of the icky things that they don't want the rest of the world to see. So in the sales process, how can you ask questions that really get the trust built up to where they can open up enough to give you those true emotional, vulnerable drivers that are going to ultimately lead to them trusting you enough to buy?

You know, I talk a lot in my courses and in the book about, you know, doing your research on people understanding the context of their world. You know, if I were a fractional CFO about to go and talk to a business owner, you know, the first thing that I would be doing is I would be stalking their Facebook page, their Instagram page. You know, what do they post about what's valuable to them, what do they say about their friends, their family? Gets me a sense of who that person is, what's valuable to them. And, you know, and of course, then going to their business website, looking at like, what are their customers saying about them, what are, you know, the education that they have, how long have they been doing this for? And if I have their address, I'm going to Google Earth their address and see what kind of neighborhood they live in. Like, I get all cyber stocky on people because I want to understand them in their world. And again, this all comes back to the intention. It's not to not for evil, only for good. I even have a tool where I will look at and understand what is someone's disc profile or communication style based on some of the things that I'm seeing on their social media profiles. So, so I get an understanding of what their communication style is so that I can match and mirror that so that I can put them at ease a little bit more when I'm talking with them. And then in the conversation itself, one of the things is that when we get into sales conversations, our nerves are up, our emotions are up, and these hidden obstacles about what we think about sales in the conversation get in the way of us being able to be focused on the other person because we're so wrapped up in our head. And so some simple exercises like, you know, I talk a lot about meditation and yoga, but whatever gets you into a state where you're calm and cool and collected, whether that's a breathing method or going for a walk or, you know, maybe you're Dwight on the office and you have to listen to that Journey song in order to get pumped up and eat or go, whatever works for you to get you, you know, out of your head and focused on the other person. Because then the whole art of asking questions is a sense of curiosity that comes from being in the present moment with someone. You know, like we all know when we're not being paid attention to and when someone has their phone even out, we feel like we're competing for their attention, for the phone that might ring at any moment. So, you know, no dings, no looking at your computer, just face to face with that other person and just being generally curious about them and starting with things like, you know, how did you hear about me? Or if it was a referral, you know, what were you and so, and so talking about when my name came up and how do you know each other? And like, you know, things like that and building rapport with them. Like if they say, hey, I'm really looking forward to this weekend, what's so exciting happening this weekend? And how did you get into that particular hobby? Like those types of things show people that you're actually curious about them again, again, depending on their disc style. Sometimes you're dealing with alphas who just want to get you straight into the point and so you match their style, you get straight into the point and the other part is really starting to dig into an understanding. So tell me a little bit about what's going on now and where your frustrations are and you know, how do you see things right now? And really asking some other open ended questions such as, you know, we talk a lot about what we need to position or pitch to people as far as the solution goes. But what I talk about in collaborative selling is actually understanding what do they think a solution should look like, like what have they tried before, what about that worked for them, what didn't about that work for them, how would they like to have it work for them in this particular situation? And instance, you know, the type of reports that they want to have. Understanding, okay, you want to see a P and L report and you want to see it a certain way. Can you tell me a little bit more about what is important about that to you and how are you going to make decisions based on that and understanding? You know, digging into the, let's say that we get everything straightened out for you. What's the end game here? What is this leading into and setting up for you in the future? And you know, asking a lot of open ended questions in non threatening ways. One of the things that a lot of people say in sales conversations is you need to understand their why. But this is your first conversation with someone, they're not going to like want to necessarily divulge that to you. And so it might be towards the end of the conversation where you can start when you've built the trust with them that you know, you do understand them in their world and you're listening to them and you have some solutions that can help them. And then asking, so what happens in you know, two or three years? Where do you want to be set up for and what, what about that's important for you is a little bit less threatening than so tell me why you want to do this, tell me what's, what's important to you, tell me what your goals are and taking a little bit of a softer, more human approach to it so that they feel comfortable sharing that. And when they give you a little piece, drilling down into that even more, you know, it's a little ironic that we're having this conversation, recording it today because I literally have a conversation with fractional CFO later on this afternoon for my own business because I'm looking at it like, all right, I have some big decisions that I need to make as to where to invest the my resources and my time so that I can get to where my ultimate goal is, which is, you know, to have a rental property to, to buy a piece of land in New Hampshire to build this off grid greenhouse where my husband and I can retire, that's all one level and travel in the south because like we want to get out and we want to explore, but also feel like we have a home base and residual income. So I have to decide how I'm going to make some investments in how I want my business to be in the next couple of years that are very personal to me. The person who I called for this was someone who already knows me personally, that I trust already, that I can just dive right into it with them. So if it's the first time that you're meeting them, you almost, you have to almost become their friend in a way that they're going to share some of these deep things with. And it's not going to happen in a 15 minute conversation again depending on the person, but it's going to happen through those sequential questions and curiosity that you have and then being able to summarize that for them in a way that you can then position how you're going to be able to help them to address the fears and risks that they have, as well as challenging them to maybe even think a little bit bigger about what's possible if there's something that's standing in their way. Because that's the other thing is when you've built trust with someone by showing that you understand and showing that you can help, it also allows you to then be able to push back on them in a way that they don't find threatening. Where you can say, you know, I can completely understand why you might think this way, but what you might not realize is this, and reframing the way that they see things so that they can get past their own sort of inner demons that are going to stop them from moving forward and making a decision. And the thing is, with CFOs, rational CFOs, you're the ones that can power the way that they want to design their life. But you have to first understand how they want their life to be designed and what's the driver underneath that to understand how they're going to make financial decisions. And you're right. I think this is one of those things that outside of a doctor or maybe arranging your funeral services, are life's big things that we what is it like 44% of marriages end in divorce because they can't talk about money to each other. Imagine the marriages that you could be saving by being able to collaboratively sell with your clients.

I talk a lot about impacts as a fractional cfo. I'm a little bit biased, Carol, but I argue that fractional CFOs have a greater opportunity to impact more people than any other. What I'LL call vendor out there. And I had never thought about the marriage thing before. You think about getting the owners salaries up, they can hire more people, pay people more money, have more vendors of their own and all the ripple effects from that. But I never really thought about the fact that there's such a negative force in marriages around money. And I think that that's even magnified for business owners because it's so much harder. Yeah, we got to add that to our list of impacts that we can have that we probably will never even know. Thank you for sharing that. That's a really good insight. I'm grateful for that. One of the things that I talk about with my audience, Carol, is as fractional CFOs, if you want to scale a firm where I'm talking, you don't have two or three clients, but you have 20, 30, 50 clients and a team of other fractional CFOs. It becomes important to have a defined scope of work. And you've got to clearly understand what it is you do and what it is you don't do. And one of the questions that's come up as I've talked to people about your message of collaborative selling is they say, well, how does that marry up with the fixed scope of work? I'm asking them what they think would work and how they could view this, and they're giving me input. But I have a box around what I'm willing to do. Does collaborative selling work with a fixed scope of work and what would that look like?

So we've applied collaborative selling to software solutions, We've applied it to manufacturing, we've applied it. We're starting to learn ways to apply it to health care. I'm actually working with the largest funeral services company in the US of how do we apply it to that particular sale where it's actually more of a B2C sale. And so when you have a fixed scope of work and services, it's not about changing the scope. It's being able to understand based on the answers they give you and what's most valuable to them and how they want things to work, as to how you actually pull out the parts of that that are going to be most important to them. So say you have, you know, a list of, you know, reports and actions and things that you're going to do. They don't need to care or know about every single one of them, but you need to be able to pull from those. All right, because you said this was important, that's why this part of Our scope includes this. Add some quantifiable metrics to that to help them to understand the impact that it has and give it cred. It's like a software solution. They have millions of features and benefits. They don't necessarily change the software for every customer, but the way that they help to translate their needs to the solution is that that translation happens and the answers that you get from those collaborative questions. So one of the frameworks that we talk about in the book is telling details. In order to use that framework, you have gotten to a lot of information that you've uncovered in that conversation that you had with your buyer to be able to fill in like ad lib style, fill in the blanks of those, tell details. You know, like I think in the book I gave the example of how I help business owners hire salespeople so that they can have a higher rate of success and they're frustrated by, you know, they've hired people in the past and it hasn't worked out. They're paying these high recruiter rate fees and then, you know, within six to nine months, that person turns over. The revenue doesn't get met and they're not able to, you know, make their investors happy. Because a lot of times this happens to software companies. And so when I position my services, which there's a box around it, there's even a licensing part of it, it, I'm only really highlighting the quantifiable pieces of that particular scope that are important to the pain points that they've shared with me and then tying the results of that or the benefits of that to the results that they're seeking to get. So it's a way for you to then customize how you talk about what you do. The scope doesn't change, it's just those pieces of it that you're going to be presenting.

So it's not necessarily about doing more or doing different things. It's just about how you package what you already do in a way that's relevant and pertinent to that specific buyer.

Yes, exactly.

I love it. So as an example, if a particular buyer doesn't care anything about tax strategies, even though you offer tax strategies, it's not even on their radar. They're worried about getting profit up so that they can, you know, run payroll. It would not be in your best interest to talk about tax strategies because they don't have any profits to pay taxes on. Is that directionally correct, Carol?

Yeah, exactly. And it's not that you, when you've seen this happen with clients, you solve one particular issue. And this is why I say discovery never actually ends. Because even when you've solved that first issue with them, then it's, you know, if you're continually asking these open ended questions of them and uncovering what's going to be the next major priority once we fix this piece of it, then it's going to be tax strategy. It's already included in your scope and you can position that as the nest logical step to take with them so you actually have happier clients that stay with you longer.

I love that one thing about numbers nerds, and I can call them that because I am one. We love a good framework and a good process. So in the broad context of collaborative selling, what is kind of the general framework or process that you would encourage people to walk through to do collaborative sales?

So in the book we talk about phased questions and each of those phases of questions is really a guide for people to be able to walk through what a conversation and how to uncover these particular things and customizing those. But the other thing about those phase questions is that they can also align to a buying and a sales process. And so if you think of the phased questions as the milestone markers between each phase of the process for buying and selling. So like let's start at the beginning. Most of the time when we think of a sales process, we think of that very first stage as discovery. And for buyers, they also have a stage that they're at. They're trying to identify and understand more about their problem. They've done their Google searches. And so the questions are designed to help you uncover what they're thinking about their particular problem, how it came to be, what the impacts of that might be. And so aligning discovery with the buyer phase of problem identification and the questions is what helps you to understand if you're in the same place with your buyer. And it moves throughout into qualification. When we start talking about the consequences of that particular impact, what are the negative consequences, what are the hope for positive consequences and then that qualification also discussing what are their resources and time that they have to be able to put towards understanding and solving this particular issue themselves, or working with someone to do so. And then the buyer, they have a particular stage that they're going through which is understanding the solutions. And so as we move through, then we start getting into demonstration or demo or proposal of that stage. Buyers have a stage, they have questions that they're asking as well. And so it's really about using the questions that you ask and the information you get to not only know what stage of that particular process you're in so that you can market and know. You know, one of the biggest challenges I see business owners having, they're like, am I in discovery phase? And am I in qualification phase? And when I move to this phase, like, how do I know when it's time to move from one to the other? And then what does that mean in terms of its likelihood to close? And by aligning it with the steps and stages your buyer is in, it becomes much more predictable. Because when we remove some of our biases from it by checking ourselves against, all right, where's the buyer at at this stage? For some people, you know, if you have a business owner that you're working with and they have a board and maybe they have a vice president, and it's a larger organization, there's multiple people you're going to have to talk to in that discovery phase. So it might stay there a little bit longer. And so it's really aligning how is it your buyer behaves and the questions they're asking in each of these phases and steps, and using your questions to know if it's time to. To move forward through them. That'll give you a more predictable pipeline. That also doesn't make your buyer feel like they're being rushed through a process that doesn't align with what they want to do. Like the typical car buying experience. Typically, still the works today, we don't want our buyers to feel that same way. So, yes, have your phases and your checklists, but always have your gut instinct or gut check on that. Be, where are my buyers at right now in this space?

Would you recommend having a actual checklist, especially when somebody's just getting started, so that they can kind of visualize and be more intentional about, okay, what questions do I need to be asking? What conversations do I need to be having? And just kind of have that written out?

Yeah, I actually encourage them to write it out. When I first started doing this for myself, before, like the book, and when I was trying to figure out how to do sales for my own business, I had this massive Excel spreadsheet with a column. I'm an Excel person. Like, that's how I think. I don't know why. I figure CFOs can probably relate. And so I had Excel spreadsheet, and each of the columns was my sales process. And then each of the rows were the questions that I needed to ask within each. And at the bottom of the column was, all right, what are the buyer behaviors? That are happening that tell me that I'm in the same place with them. So, for example, in discovery, I had my list of questions in that particular column in rows, and then at the bottom that I had. All right, the buyer at this stage should be either introducing me to someone else in the organization, setting the next meeting to bring other people into the next discovery conversation, or sharing information with me as far as their numbers or something like that goes. And if they're not displaying those behaviors, if they're giving me the, I don't want to set a next appointment. I need to take this back to the team and think it over. I'm going to downgrade that as an opportunity because they're not displaying the behaviors that tells me they're ready to move to a next phase at some point. And so then I have to know and understand and deal with that. And I had that in front of me for my first, I don't know, six months of sales calls until it became second nature to me. But it wasn't a script like this then that it was just a visual representation of that checklist so that I could pinpoint where I needed to be and what questions I needed to ask based on where they were in their process. It was almost like a big old puzzle. So I encourage everyone to take the, you know, the worksheet that has the phase questions on it, make a copy for yourselves, and go through and edit. And what questions would you ask in each of these phases? And then find a coach to practice them with. Like say them out loud so that the first time you're not saying it is to your buyer. Don't practice on them, practice on everybody else around you. You know, find a Coach or other CFOs where you can actually role play these conversations. It takes about 100 or so repetitions for something to get really second nature for us. From what I see in my coaching and what I'm seeing, some, some data that's coming in. And so the more you can practice these questions and role plays, the more comfortable you're going to to feel when you get into a conversation with your buyers, because you've gone through and done the reps, you've done the practice, and when things start to change or switch in the conversations, you've practiced it so many times, you can do the improv and switch and be able to then come back to where you need to come back to. It comes with practice. But writing them down, saying them out loud, that's the first steps.

It's interesting that you say that. So it's literally on the order of a hundred times or a hundred reps before you get truly comfortable. And, and I would assume that with that comfort comes confidence. And, and you need to have the confidence on the sales call to convince the buyers that, you know, our services aren't inexpensive. And so if you don't show up with a level of confidence, you're probably going to struggle. And one of the things that I, I really want to impress on the audience is, look, you're probably not going to be comfortable or confident with this out of the gate. Get the reps. I like to encourage people get on a sales call even if you know it's a dud, just to get the reps. Does that line up with what you've seen experientially, Carol?

Yeah. I mean, I've even had some of my coaching clients that I've worked with, they're like, you know, this next person I'm about to talk to, I don't really know that they're my best buyer. I'm like, that's okay. It's a practice repetition. Like, you know, and honestly, if you look at every sales call that you go into as practice, we expect to fail in practice. And so the fear of failure gets diminished a bit when we look at it from the perspective of like, you know, everything's online. I need to get this right. If I don't get this right, I'm not going to get the next client in. That's the kind of thinking that will undermine you in this actual conversation. And so a lot of times what I'm trying to get my clients to do is to just have fun with it. And you know, one of the ways that you can have fun with this and you can practice this is practice on everybody around you. Practice just asking open ended sequential questions and doing active listening techniques where you're not listening to answers or you're just listening to understand and think about where is this coming from for this person. And questions will start to naturally come to you. And the interesting thing about this is with my coaching clients, we talked before about how CFOs can save marriages. I would even argue that doing sales, you know, training and coaching like this and changing and shifting your mindsets and behaviors and beliefs around it will also change your everyday relationships because sales skills are just good communication skills and putting others first. And if we do that more in our everyday lives, we start to build better, stronger relationships. I've had clients who've called and said, I'm Getting engaged and married to my girlfriend. Now because of your sales coaching or you know, like my wife and I are getting along so much better. I've had them on stage saying like this has impact our personal lives and it's happened to me as well. And so practice on everybody around you. I practiced on my husband asking open ended questions and we actually stopped arguing as much after dinner. So this is something you can practice in your everyday life to get those hundred repetitions in. If you're only able to role play the actual role play conversation maybe once or twice, it's getting the muscle memory in. Right. It's like if you've ever watched the Karate Kid, you know, the wax on and wax off and he's doing these everyday behaviors not realizing that he's actually learning defensive moves. It works the same way.

How do you balance? Need to practice and get comfortable with, hey, it's just gonna be messy when you first do it. And so I think what a lot of times people that do what we do, we're perfectionists and we don't want to get out into the world and do the thing until we've reached this whatever our perception of perfection is. How do you balance? I'm going to practice, but I also need to just really go out and do it with real buyers. Where do you delineate? Okay, it's time to just go do versus maybe get some more reps.

I would say if you could practice say for a week or two on the people around you in small ways, like five, 10 minutes, you focus on asking more open ended questions of people. After about a week or so, you know, you start to get a little bit more comfortable. It will maybe feel a little bit more awkward. Even if you're just saying the questions out loud to yourself on a video of the questions you want to ask your buyers and just go in with a learner's mindset. That and even the full expectation that this is going to be awkward, this is going to be uncomfortable at first, but in that look for the small win, maybe you asked the question that you haven't asked before. Yeah, it probably isn't going to be perfect. Maybe it was a little bit long winded, maybe you rushed through it a little bit, but you asked the question that you've never asked before. And so it's really looking at what I call those small bright spots of improvement that help you to know you're making progress, that gives you the confidence to keep going. I use the analogy of yoga. I started doing yoga every day like Two years ago. And when I first started doing it, like I was falling over. You know, like my dog is coming over to see if I'm okay and my husband is laughing at me. And now it's like I'm doing upside down headstands and, you know, one legged tree poses and my husband's like looking at me like, how did that happen? But it was through the falling down and then just getting back up again and trying it again and being able to laugh at yourself and not putting that pressure of perfection on yourself and having fun with it. It's when you start having fun with it that it starts to get a lot easier. But go into it knowing this is going to be awkward and that's okay because that's how I learn and get.

You mean you didn't get good at yoga because you found the one hack on TikTok that unlocked perfection overnight for you. It was actually just due to boring reps. Yeah, exactly.

It was due to boring reps. I was actually, we're doing another semester at Harvard now and my students were last night asking me one how do you come up with like these answers to these questions or case studies so quickly? Like, how do you take all of this information and filter it through to get these actionable insights? Like, we've read through this three times and we weren't able to pull that out of it. I said you have to one, use the filter of your buyer. And I think when you think also in terms of being awkward with things and learning new skills is if you think about, it's not about you, it's not about how good you are, how smart you are, how valuable you are. When you take the focus off yourself and that I need to look a certain way, I need to get this exactly right or I'm not good enough. When you take the focus off of you, I and put it on helping the other person, it takes away that pressure because it's not about you. The second you start thinking about yourself is the second that you're starting to disengage and build distrust with your buyers. So if you can remind yourself that I am putting myself in this awkward situation because I'm going to help this person to save their business and possibly their marriage, then that kind of takes all of the air out of the lungs as far as, okay, I don't need to be perfect here. I just, I just need to help this person get out of the ditch right now. And I think that's just when you think about that. I remember when I First realized that it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. And I wasn't worried about what to say or what to do. I just was in the flow of it coming naturally because I was focused on the other person and what they needed. It's freedom from your own head.

One of the pieces of advice I give to people when it comes to networking, because we put a lot of it's a similar pressure. I feel like when you're going to a networking event or a conference, I said, look, focus less on seeming interesting and focus more on seeming interested and other people will open up and give you all the answers you need. And like you said earlier with your husband, it's like, you know, you ask one question and they just start talking and they're like, wow, that was like the nicest person I ever met. They were so interesting and they never said, it's like, wait a minute, I didn't say anything the entire conversation because.

Of all that dopamine that's being flooded through their brain. That this feel good chemical is now making them look at you differently. There was studies that were done at Harvard and both in Stanford that both showed that when we ask these types of open ended questions of people, not only we're releasing the dopamine and understanding them better, we're also helping them to change their minds about how they see things. And so it's the magic of putting other people first is that you're actually helping them. It's like coaching. By asking the questions, you're actually helping them to dig into what's going on underneath this that they've never really looked at or uncovered, but it's been sitting there right in front of them the whole time.

If I'm sold on the idea of collaborative selling and I want to get away from the scripts and all the other those car salesperson things. What are some of the things that you see people get wrong when they try to start doing collaborative sales?

The thing that people get wrong, I think the thing that people get wrong is that they think by collaboratively selling that they're giving the buyer all of the power to take. Like they're the ones who are the ultimate rule. Because the new golden rule is that, you know, they who have the gold make the rules and that's our buyers. However, you also need to remember that they've never either dealt with this problem before or dealt with it successfully. They're not the expert here. You are. And so a lot of times we think collaborative selling is just, you know, asking the questions, but never challenging or never pushing back. And it's our ethical responsibility to, to push back when people are either thinking in a way or taking steps in a way that's actually going to either harm them or prevent them from actually reaching their goals. And that's one of the beauties of that telling details framework is that not only does it allow you to position how you can help them in a way that they can understand is tied to their particular outcomes and their risks and fears, but that it also allows you to be able to challenge them in the way that they're thinking about things by asking some other open ended diagnostic questions, like if you can offer a piece of insight to someone that maybe they didn't know or fully realize, that is valuable to them because again, we want to add more value than an AI chatbot or Google searches do. And that's where your unique experience can challenge the way that they're thinking about things to get them out of a cycle that's not helping them in some way or dealing with objections that they might have. You know, for example, we talk about reframing objections in the book and one of the most common ones is price. And a lot of times when you're a cfo, I would imagine you're having to deal with the mindsets that people have around money, money and how much is a lot of money. And you know, if someone comes to me and says, well, this is going to cost you X amount of dollars, and I'm like, okay, that's more than I thought it would be. Maybe the problem I have wasn't as big as I thought it was, that I need to spend that much money. And your job then is to not just say, well, no, you're wrong, but to say, look, I totally understand that this might seem like a lot of money to you, but what you've shared with me is that in the past you've been spending, you know, 20, you think more $30,000 in taxes that you never expected to get. If by spending $10,000 now you save $20,000 later, is it still worth spending that money? And so you can challenge them by offering some insights into things that maybe they didn't fully realize because they didn't realize, my gosh, I'm spending $30,000 a year extra in taxes where I could be saving that and more just by investing up front in this particular process. I actually, I listened to one of the coaching calls that you were doing with the woman who was trying to figure out what their niche was, and it's the kind of the same idea where you bring them back to the. You're exactly in the situation. That's your worst fear right now. And we have to do that in our sales process as well. And challenging during collaborative selling. But it's through that collaborative process that we understand exactly the best way to do that.

How important is it, Carol, to watch game tape of your sales calls? I don't hear people talk about that a lot, but I think that that's been one of my keys to success personally, is I go back and re watch it and I actually have a little audit checklist where I walk through my sales framework and I just ask myself, did I do the things? Was I listening? Was there something I should have gone deeper? Do you find that watching game tape is important and how do you think through how to get the most out of that activity?

Absolutely critical. You know, watching the game tape is gonna feel uncomfortable. And in case you haven't realized yet, this whole process is going to make you feel awkward, uncomfortable. It's. It's hard work to do. And so part of that uncomfortableness and getting outside of your comfort zone to exact this change is going to require you to get used to seeing and hearing yourself in action. And just as you said, you know, having your, you know, framework of questions that you ask, looking for the buyer behaviors as you're asking these questions. Because sometimes we don't always see how people are reacting in the moment because we're caught up in the moment. And so when you go back and look at the game tape, you can say, oh, their tone totally changed after this question, good or bad, or their facial expressions changed. I actually use a call recording technology that actually analyzes people's facial expressions and body language to tell where they're most engaged in a conversation. So that I can know both in my speaking and in my sales calls, where can I go back? What's really resonating with people and what's kind of like going over their heads or checking them out or causing them to feel defensive. That gives me a good indication as to how well my sales process is working. And I always need places where I need to tweak as well. And so it's absolutely critical, one, to be able to start building your confidence because you'll start to see yourself make improvements as well. I do this with my Harvard students. They go in, they do their video role play. They then get, you know, I give them some feedback based on a matrix and scoring. And, you know, one is this and five is that. And but what I ask them to do is that once you get your feedback scores, I want you to go back and listen to your call again. And they start gaining all kinds of insights from that that I, like, don't even necessarily need to say to them because they see it right there in front of them. They have the checklist, they have my feedback, and then the conversation becomes about, all right, how do I get better at this one part of my particular process? And that's really important to focus on one part of your process at a time so that you can overcome those perfectionist tendencies, but also build your confidence with those small wins. And so maybe you focus first on, I highly recommend when you're looking, where to focus. Start at the beginning, because how you open your mouth and say hello will dictate the rest of how this is going to go for a lot of, a lot of the time. And so focus at the very beginning. How are you building rapport? Are you making a unique connection with them? You know, my litmus test is, do I get them to laugh or smile in some way or nod their head that I know that I've made some kind of a connection with them? And then moving into, you know, understanding the current situation for them and how they came to this conclusion and why they're talking to you and what they're hoping to learn and digging in one step at a time on your process to focus on. And once that goes well, you move on to the next part of the conversation and before you know it, you know, again, it's like doing yoga. Your downward facing dog is going to be the best one you've ever done. Now you can work on crane pose or tree pose or something else along those lines. And you start habit building, you start like progress building so that by, you know, I typically start to see changes really start to happen with clients when they put in this kind of work between six and eight weeks, that you'll start to see changes in your sales process and impact so that it actually starts into more closed deals later on. So give yourself at least six to eight weeks of feeling uncomfortable and awkward, but lean into that awkwardness because that's where you're going to see the true growth happen.

Six to eight weeks feels like a long time, probably. What are some indicators early on in that six to eight week period that should signal to somebody that's new at this, like, okay, maybe I'm doing this right. What can we look for to get a sense of are we at least directionally correct or do we need to start over.

So one of the things that I encourage people to look for is look at how your buyers are behaving with you. Are they sharing more information than they did before? Are they talking more on the call than you are than you did before? You know, when you hear things like, I hadn't ever thought of it that way, or that's a really good, good question, or, you know, I'm not really sure, what do you think those are? Huge red flashing lights that, yes, yes, you're doing it right. And so looking for those small behaviors that change in other people towards you is one of the first indicators that this is starting to work. The other thing is, then, you know, look inwardly. How are you feeling about the conversation? Do you feel more calm, confident about it? Do you feel like you have an idea of what it is that you need to do next, even if you're not entirely sure how that that's going to go? And so looking at your own sort of level of comfort within the conversation is where you can start to see that, all right, I am starting to understand this a little bit more. I am starting to notice that my buyers are behaving to me differently. And, you know, one of the things I encourage people to do is start writing those things down, whether that's in a journal or in your calendar or in your CRM system. When you write those things down, it's like it becomes a milestone market marker in your brain that progress has been made and now you can continue. You know, when you have those down days or those slumps, you can go back and read where you have made progress. One of the things that I do when I'm like, you know, having one of those days where everyone seems to be saying no is I'll go and I'll look at, like, some of the emails clients have sent to me or, you know, recommendations that they've written for me to remind myself why I do this work and the impact that I can have so that it helps me to keep going. So looking for those indicators, but then also giving yourself planned strategies of how you're going to encourage yourself to keep going. Like I shared, you know, going back and reading through reviews and, you know, testimonials that people have given help to pick me back up again. So find the thing that works for you to pick yourself back up again and look for those bright spots and watch how your buyers and other people even start behaving towards you.

Carol, if. If somebody's listening to this and they're like, okay, I'M sold. I want to do, go with this collaborative selling approach. What do I do first? Like what's, how do I start rolling this out? What advice would you give them?

So the first advice I would give them is actually one of the last chapters in the book, which is the feed the fire in your belly. Because we've already talked about this is not easy work. It's not quick work. It's going to be hard, it's going to be uncomfortable, it's going to be awkward. So you really need to know and tap into what's going to put your feet on the floor every morning to get you to do it. You know, we're financial people, people. I, I go by numbers as well. And so it's very easy for me to pick a number and, you know, align a plan of how I'm going to reach that number and who I'm going to reach out to and how many times a day I need to do that. But the really hard part for me of this process was understanding what my own why behind. It was like I wanted to renovate the house, I wanted to get off of the grid, I wanted to do these other things. But why is that important to me? How does it align with what my values are and the kind of, of person I am? I'm a saver, I'm a. I'm someone who eats healthy, I'm someone who's an environmentalist. And so, you know, doing all of these things that are my goals, that are my rewards, it's not just about the number, it's about what the number represents and allows me to do in my life that's so important and so understanding that first having that conversation with your own loved ones about how do we want to design our own life and what's it going to take for us to make that happen and having that support system in place. Because when you start going through these changes and things start to get hard and awkward reminders of why you're doing it is the thing that's going to help you be more consistent in it. And it's not like you're going to always feel so motivated. It's not about the feeling, it's about the consistency towards a particular thing and why that matters to you and then breaking that down into a plan of. All right, where are my biggest hang ups? Where do I look? If you were to look in your pipeline right now and see, all right, I have just a lot of conversations with people, but they don't go anywhere. And so digging into what is it that I think that's going on there in order for me to start working on it and find one area of your process to improve on, you know, using the frameworks that we've talked about in the book. You know, one of the other things that I also encourage people to do is, is get an objective assessment of your own strengths and skills so that you can remove some bias from what you think might be wrong, which is one of the things that we offer to people. But by having someone objective to work with, whether that's a coach, is also going to then help you to get out of your own head. Because this is hard work to do, it's even harder work to do alone. And so finding a support system, whether that's a coach, you know, getting an assessment, you know, joining a coaching group of other people that you can role play with, those are the key things to setting up a support system. People you can share your goals with that you can be held accountable to. You know, just like going to the gym, we're more likely to go and we know that there's going to be someone there waiting for us. Those are all kinds of the first key steps in taking because what we're talking about is behavior change. And like any behavior change, it's going to start with motivating goals, a support system and a plan to get there and removing some of your biased perceptions about the things that you've held onto for so long and identifying what those are and finding strategies to start working through them.

That's amazing. Thank you so much, Carol. This is really good. If, if listeners want to learn more about you and some of the assessments that it sounds like you guys provide. Where do they go to learn about the book buyer? First grow your business through collaborative sales or grow your business with collaborative sales. Where can they go to find out all the things about you and how you can work together with them?

Yeah, so if you want to learn more about the book or any of the talks that I do around these types of frameworks and mindset, then go to my speaking website, which is Carol Mahoney.com you can order the book from there as well as, you know, see some of the talks that I've given on that. If you're looking for actual coaching help in this, in that regard, then I would encourage you to go to my commercial website, which is unboundgrowth.com we do have programs for small business owners, even group coaching sessions where we're actually instituting and coaching to these frameworks for people and we're going to be having some online programs that come out later this year as well.

Awesome, Carol. Thank you so much for being here. This was so needed.

Thank you so much for having me, Michael. And because you're right, like, this is one of those kinds of sales and conversations that will make a huge difference in people's lives. I can attest to that.

I'm so encouraged by that idea of you're getting ready to get on a sales call. The nerves and the anxiety and the stress are boiling up, and just that realization that there could be a marriage on the other end of this sales call that gets saved because of the work that you can do. And so it's like, okay, it's not about my comfort anymore or my, you know, whatever, like the growth zone or the comfort zone. It's about service to others. And so let's just go get after it.

Exactly. Because when you make it about others, it's not about us anymore, and life is easier for everybody.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you, Carol.

Thank you so much, Michael.

All right, my friend. I hope you found this episode helpful. I know I've learned a ton from conversation with Carol. I've included links in the description below to Carol's book buy her first, as well as links to her website and coaching programs. You know, one of my favorite parts about this discussion with Carol was the conversation about how CFO services can actually impact marriages. You know, impact is hands down one of my favorite parts about being a fractional cfo. If you're the kind of CFO that wants to learn more about how to maximize your own impact, then I'd love to invite you to the 2024 CFO Accelerator, live, happening right here in Dallas, Texas, May 15th through 17th. Go to www.the cfoacceleratorlive.com to learn more. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you back here next week, my friend. I'll see you then.