Ed Wallace and Ron discuss the foundation blocks of sales

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The interesting thing about this virtual is the first podcast you and I did, we talked about a rectangular selling approach and how we weren't as a society or as businesses ready for that. We had different backgrounds. We didn't have any branding, blah, blah, blah. And here we go. And then, you know, recently we did. We did a podcast on what you're labeling as worthy intent, which is such a powerful tool to influence customers' behavior and personal behavior. And so we get to this virtual muscles term that you've used. What does that mean to you?

Well, if you think about it, how the world has changed in the last two years. As you are the same, we were front of the room people. Right. We do a lot of learning and development. We've normally done it in person with people in a proximate way. And all of a sudden, if you think about it, both of our businesses were at risk once the pandemic hit. Now, you were already down the road at creating your online platforms and everything. So your business wasn't nearly as much at risk as my business was at risk because our whole business was helping people build business relationships. And it's hard to do those. Virtually. So we quickly had to pivot because our customers, who are sales teams, were looking for help with building virtual relationships. And we're trying to figure out how to train people on building virtual relationships. So I started thinking about what goes into a relationship. You talked about worthy intent.

Putting the other person first, making sure their goals are ahead of yours. And then aligning your behaviors with that. Starts with that principle. Moving into how do we build a relationship? How do you create relationship capital? You have to be believable. We call that credibility. Then when you work together, you have to deliver. That's trust. You have to come through on your promises. And then just being yourself. Just being your authentic self. And when those three qualities come together, that's when relationship capital is built. Let's take those same three qualities and let's say, okay, well, how do I build credibility virtually? I'm in front of a room or I'm with a customer or I'm across a parts desk. It's pretty easy. You can read their body language. You can shake their hand. All those things are kind of going away because now we're in this rectangular world.

One of the things that never goes away, whether you're doing it in person, proximate or virtually, is asking great questions.

Yeah. Yeah.

It doesn't matter if you're on the phone, if you're on a conference call, if you're on a Zoom, if you're in person. Are you asking questions that provoke thought about the person asking the questions you? Are the questions aligned with what we call the relational GPS of the person, their goals, passions, and struggles? And it's interesting because I don't think I shared this technique with you last time, Ron, but you can ask one question and you can turn it into 12 answers. Oh,

yeah.

So here's our approach to that. And this is one of the greatest ways you can build. I want to talk about LinkedIn a little bit. And I also want to talk about, you know, your presence on a Zoom. We're going to come back to that. We're just at the fundamental level. One of the favorite, you know, I train salespeople. And one of the things salespeople ask a business owner is, you know, Ron, what's keeping you up at night? Tell me about your challenges. If I'm a business owner, I meet Eddie Wallace for the first time, Eddie, the sales rep. How the heck does he come off asking me about my challenges? You know, I don't even like the guy's gel in his hair, right? And he's asking me about my challenges. Now, but if I ask the business owner, you know, Ron, it's been quite a last 18 months for everybody, right? Oh, yeah. You're going to say, yeah. I'm going to say, tell me about your best accomplishment.

The thing you didn't think you were going to accomplish over the last 18 months. What are you going to do when I ask you that question, Ron?

Oh, you're going to start bragging about things. You're going to, you can't wait to start talking.

You're going to share all kinds of information. It's an honest question. And then you're going to take a breath and I'm going to, I'm active listening here. So I'm going to wait until you take a second breath because active listening is part of building virtual muscles. and it's harder on a Zoom or on a conference call. And I'm going to wait. I'm not going to speak next. I'm going to wait until you're done. Now I'm going to ask you another question. And guess what that question is? Well, Ron, why do you think that happened?

Exactly. Exactly.

And what are you going to do when I ask you that question, Ron?

Well, it's, you know, now you're going to start telling me what the problems were that you overcame.

And then I'm going to say, then I'm going to pause again. I'm going to wait. And I'm going to say, Can you tell me more? Yeah. Ron's going to go on. You're going to go on with more, right? Yep. And if Ron is really full of himself about his business, which all of us are, we all want our own businesses. I'm going to have the, you know what to ask him this. Is there anything else? So one question, three, we call it ask, ask, ask. One major discovery question. Three. Sub questions, ask, ask, ask. And guess what? Something in there that Ron's going to share, you can start it again. And you can ask, why? Can you tell me more? Is there anything else? And I'm not saying this and sharing this, Ron, to be manipulative, but you're trying to distinguish yourself from the other sales rep they just talked to.

And we already established, I established, I think within a previous webinar we did, a podcast, that 85% of buyers want their sales rep to understand their business. And only 14% actually take the time to do that. This is taking the time. This is worthy intentions around this Bella's business or this business owner situation. And now you probably asked 12 questions over the course of this interaction. You're understanding that now it's time to tell something. Now it's time to talk about how you might be able to help them.

Yeah, it's kind of that's the

first step is build credibility. And then you follow through your commitments. And then you just be your authentic self in that whole process. And that's how you build a relationship. Long answer. Every question you ask, you're going to get a long answer.

You know, that's that's that's cool that, you know, in the sales world that that I inhabit, I pound the desk hard to have people do research on their product, on the customer, on the relationship that they have. The second thing I pound hard is you got to have goals. You got to have objectives. There's got to be a purpose for what you're doing. And then I'm in the questions. And the way the illustration I use on what you're talking about is you're going to be interviewing for a job. And I'm the one that's doing the interviews. And I want to find out everything I can about you. And because I'm not very good at this, Ed, what would you say is your biggest fault? You ain't going to say anything. You're going to sit on your hands. And what do you think your greatest attribute is? And stand back because they're going to run their most forever. Right? And it's really fundamental. If we can get people talking.

I used to tease in the sales environment when I was out traveling with salesmen. I would look at the customer and say, you know, I'm... I'm going to try and get you to buy my product because I know it's best for your business. And here's why. And we'll go through the whole thing. And if I knew the guy, then I'd play a little game with them. I said, you know, you know, you're going to buy from me. You feel bad because I've been in here so often trying to help you and you haven't given me any business. Sooner or later, you're going to give me an order just to get me to go away. You're not going to give me an order just because you don't like me. You know, it's fine. But if you're building the relationship, that virtual muscle is constantly being exercised with the ask, ask, ask, with your GPS, which I still think is absolutely brilliant. You know, goals, passions, and struggles.

All of these things were the intent, building relationships, relationship capital, trust. All of these things are absolutely critical, particularly in the virtual. Look at us. You can see whether I'm paying attention or not. You can see whether I'm well-dressed. I'm trying to, you know, in person, it's easier to kind of drift in and out than it is virtually.

It's a great point. I mean, that's a point that I've never thought about. And again. I train on this stuff. I never thought about the fact that you got to pay more attention virtually.

It's true though, isn't it?

That you got to know that you have to pay more attention in person because you drift in and out because you're noticing things in their office where they're saying someone walks by the window. You know, it's interesting. The one thing that I wanted to add to that was somewhere in there, when you tell me about something you accomplished, now I can ask. What do you think might hold you back in 2022? And then you do another round of Ask, Ask, Ask. So it's such a softer way. And just to transition into another idea, LinkedIn. Every industry adopts it at different rates. Some interesting data for you here. There's over 700 million people on LinkedIn. Wow. It is the business network. And a lot of people use LinkedIn for when they need a job. That's not when you start using LinkedIn. A lot of people start using LinkedIn to try to sell. That's not what you use LinkedIn for. LinkedIn is curb appeal. LinkedIn is the beautiful painted picket fence.

The flag is hanging. The lawn is manicured. I think I'm going to tour this house. And 86%. of buyers today, check out the seller's LinkedIn profile before they engage with them.

Isn't that interesting?

It's shocking because a lot of those decision makers are older millennials who grew up with this stuff. So for all the baby boomer and Gen Xers out there, take the prom picture off of LinkedIn. Take the picture with the dog off of LinkedIn. And start professionalizing your LinkedIn because you are getting checked out and you may be missing opportunities without even knowing about it. Because guess what? Even though you represent a great, let's say, equipment brand like Komatsu, if you look like you don't care on LinkedIn and you don't have any information out there on the industry, you're probably not going to get that meeting. I want to share a fellow's LinkedIn address here with everyone. I think it's a great model to use. So John White Sales. John White Sales. I think John does a great job. He's in sales enablement. He used to work. He was one of my sales reps a while ago.

But he's like the everyman and the way the everyman should represent themselves on LinkedIn. So if you want a primer. and you don't want to take a LinkedIn course, go to John White's page, follow John by clicking connect, okay? Or invite or whatever. And just see what he does. The way he describes his contribution, it's not his title. It's what he does in the world. And you'll see his picture. You'll see a nice background. Again, John White's sales, everybody check that out. You'd be really interested. If you want to link in with me, Ed Wallace 007. So I try to get everybody on the front. I don't care about, I do care about the page, but when people see Ed Wallace 007, they're kind of amused by it. I don't know how I got that, but that's my LinkedIn. So link in with me. We post a bunch of stuff on sales effectiveness, but if you want to learn a great way and model after somebody does a great job, John White sales.

You know, it's value to go further than LinkedIn. Same thing's true with all social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, obviously web pages. You know, there was a joke in the early days, back in the 80s and 90s, when Internet was in its infancy, that people would create storefronts

on

the screen. And, you know, this was an ego trip because we put all in, you know, I was. Born in 1702. I got married in 1791. I'm still married to the same woman. We've had 72 children, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yada, yada, yada. The Steinfeld deal, right? And then we got a little smarter. We started putting equipment lists out there. Some people got even sexier and they put pictures with sound out there. Oh, fantastic. But they never, so in the early 80s. Late 80s, Caterpillar put a storefront out. It was a consistent image for every Caterpillar dealer in the world. And they started taking parts

orders

through the internet. They never got more than 10% market penetration. People just were not attracted to doing it. So this is where I come up with some craziness. What do you do with a dead horse? Because that was a dead horse. Well, the first thing you do is get a stronger whip. So you start pounding the dealers or what the heck are you doing? You're not doing anything. Then, you know, that whip didn't work. So you change riders, you know, and sooner or later, you just take the horse down to the turpentine factory and away you go. We haven't really paid that much attention, John, to that or Ed, to that particular aspect of life. What does it look like?

Is it warm? Is it inviting? Does this person's face look like someone you want to talk to? I mean, we make decisions emotionally before we make rational business decisions. Believe it or not,75% of business decisions start off emotionally, not rationally. Well, I think it would be the opposite.

Yeah. And if you think about the whole thing in social media, TikTok is taking the whole place by storm because it's very personal. It's a story.

My son, Grant's fiance now. They just got engaged.

Hey, congratulations.

Thank you. I will pass that along. She has a regular job, but she's a whiz at TikTok. And I kid you not, she will do a TikTok, putting on a new jacket and get 100,000 views.

Isn't that something?

She'll take a mason jar. that's just sitting there and she's got a really, really kind of warm voice, right? So her name's Christina and she'll take the Mason jar and she will say, and I ordered this on Amazon and it's a different kind of lid, not like the cork lid or the twist. It's a, and she turns it into something in those 20 seconds where I don't even know how much time you have on TikTok, right? And she gets 50,000 hits. So. Grant, my son says, maybe you should be in the digital marketing business. And she works as she's an athletic trainer. So the fact of the matter is, you're right. Now, let's talk about those things in relation to business. Unless you're doing business to consumer, I still think LinkedIn is the place to play. TikTok, Twitter. Instagram, Facebook, or whatever it's called now, right? I think they're more like your personal life and look at me, what I'm doing.

In fact, on my Facebook page, I literally have a banner that says, I do not use Facebook. I don't have the time. Please contact me on LinkedIn, right? So again, nothing, no judgments about any of those, but from a business, a sales professional standpoint, a parts professional, service manager, LinkedIn is the place where I'd suggest you live. And then I mentioned one last thing that I would cover. So I want to make sure I deliver for you, Ron. And that's the whole idea of the virtual experience, right? We talked about, you know, virtual muscles. Everything I'm talking about contributes to virtual muscles. So our background. You think about our background. Now I've got You know, my products on the shelf. It looks like an office where I'm working. I can't say it's the greatest background, but I have a great example of a strong background.

So one of my customers sells laboratory products and they would go into laboratories and universities to sell beakers and evaporators and all these things I don't understand. Right. Anyway, a lot of those things had to be demoed. So think about it. A sales rep could get into maybe two labs a day and demo. The minute the pandemic hit, my friend Jim Dawson completely pivoted. He took his 18 salespeople. He said, instead of spending 95% of your time on the road and 5% at home, you're going to spend 90% at home and 10% on the road. And I'm going to create a demo station in your bedroom because a lot of them are younger sales reps. Your bedroom is not going to look like your bedroom anymore. It's going to look like a well-outfitted demo station for Hydeolph equipment, right? And literally, it's not overdone. There's just a little Hydeolph banner somewhere. And all the equipment is right behind the rep when they're talking to the prospective customer.

I think that's a really strong pivot. And I'd suggest that if you have a sales team and they're doing things virtually. There are some creative ways, you know, we create great backgrounds for them. It doesn't have to be the background that looks like it's not a real background, right? Create a background for them. The way you facilitate the Zoom is also incredibly important. And again, we always want to build rapport in the beginning. And I'm not saying that we have to say, hey, there you are, whatever. But I think it's more like, you know, hey, Ron, you know. How are things in Lake Forest, Illinois today? Because I checked out your LinkedIn profile. And by the way, I'm open to the fact that I checked out your LinkedIn. Hey, I noticed you're involved with the MS Society. I have a sister who's got MS. It's fine to use LinkedIn as a way to build that experience. And the meeting time,30 minutes max.

Yeah, yeah.

When you send an invite for an hour, you take all the air out of that person wanting to join that meeting. 30 minutes, end it early, create a great meeting experience for everybody. Just a couple of tips on that. I've got a lot more, but I know we're kind of running short on time.

Well, I think, no, I think that's perfect. And part of the virtual muscle is that we constantly have to be practicing and upgrading our skills, adapting to the reality of the world around us, because it's changing quickly now.

The term a lot of the academics use is upskilling. You know, and even if, what was the, there was a really great sports analogy. Oh, I mentioned it to you once before. Just want to get better 1% every day. And you mentioned the, was it, that's a Japanese approach. Like where did you, I forget what you said.

Kaizen.

Kaizen.

Everybody goes to work every day. This was part of the. Duran and Deming world back in the 70s. They want to improve their job every single day, even if it's one-tenth of one percent. But do something better every day. That's their culture. That's not our culture. Our culture needs to adapt to that.

Absolutely. I think that we'll see a story about someone or we'll hear an anecdote. oh my gosh, John's work ethic is incredible. We almost make that a big deal, right? Because his, what about everybody's work ethic being incredible? But we tend to not, we tend to look at it now like an exception rather than a rule.

It should go back to being, you know, there was a real interesting, Victor David Hanson, who's, I think at the Heritage Foundation, a professor at a member of universities, pretty smart man, wrote a piece last week. about the fact that America seems to be losing its work ethic. What opened up this country was husband and wife homesteaders in a wagon going out and trying to make a living out of the ground that they didn't know. My grandparents came from Wales, wanted to go into farming in a part of Alberta that you can't even grow rocks. I mean, you know, it's, but that's why we got to where we are. Virtual muscle, the relationship capital, you have so much to offer and share with people. No wonder you're successful teaching people and training people on how to sell. Thank you. You got any closing comments on this relationship capital and virtual muscle, et cetera?

I think the number one thing when we do training and we help people learn, Take one thing away from everything you hear. It's, you know, we were on for 20,25 minutes, Ron. We talked about a lot of things. Whenever you listen to a podcast or something, or you go to a webinar, or you're in a training program, you can't possibly gather all the fluency that the instructor's trying to share with you. I teach master's degree students at Villanova University. And I say, look, we got a four-week class here. At the end, I want you to tell me the one thing you're going to use from this four-week class in the real world. So whenever you're in some kind of learning experience, think about the 1%. Take one thing away, one memorable thing, and then you've got to practice it for a few weeks for it to become part of what you're doing. And if you don't practice anything, it's going to be lost by the next day or two. So I would say my best takeaway, Ron, is...

Hey, take one thing away from every book you read, every experience you have, every television program you watch, whatever it is, take one thing away and just focus on that one thing once you're finished.

That's perfect. That's wonderful advice. That's a great way to end this, Ed. And thank you very much. Mahalo. And thank all of you who have been participating and listening in on this. I hope you've enjoyed it. I look forward to having you with our next Candid Conversation sometime in the near future. Mahalo. Thank you for listening to our podcast. We appreciate your support. Should you have any thoughts or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us at www. learningwithoutscars. com. The time is now. Mahalo.