← Outside Sales Talk
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- [00:00]
A
If we don't handle the first meeting right, you know what happens, Steve? There's no second meeting. And if there's no second meeting, no deal. So we have to create an experience in that first meeting that we're not begging for a second meeting, that we create an experience that they're saying, steve, when can you come back and meet with us again?
- [00:22]
B
This is Outside Sales Talk, the best podcast for outside salespeople. I'm your host, Steve Benson and we're here to chat with the world's top sales experts so that you can get their best sales tactics to level up your game. Welcome back to Outside Sales Talk. Today I have Lee Salz with us and we're going to talk about the first meeting differentiator. Lee, welcome to the show.
- [00:47]
A
Thank you, Steve. Great to be here.
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B
Lee Salz is a globally recognized sales differentiation strategist and the author of the First Meeting Differentiator, part of his best selling sales differentiation series. He's a sales contrarian who challenges old school selling and helps organizations win more deals at the prices they want. Lee is an award winning speaker and he was named the 2022 speaker of the year by the Institute for Sales Excellence and ranked number six top sales thought leader by Global Gurus for 2025. So today Lee is going to share how to turn first sales meetings into powerful client focused conversations that set you apart. So Lee, you've said traditional discovery meetings must die.
- [01:47]
A
What's broken? How's that for starting the conversation?
- [01:53]
B
I like it. What's broken about the way most salespeople approach first meetings today? What should we change?
- [02:01]
A
Yeah, see you introduced me as a sales contrarian and you're exactly right. And this is just one of the things discovery meeting that I'm on a mission to eradicate. Because if you think about how do most salespeople prepare for discovery meetings? They come up with a list of questions they're going to ask, the information they're going to share. Right. Nothing wrong with that. And if you're in a campuses, that's a great game plan for the first meeting. Let me ask you this, what's the person on the other side of the desk get out of this meeting? And if you're like most salespeople I've talked with, you've never looked at that first meeting from that perspective. That right there is the fundamental flaw with having a discovery mindset. Looking at that first meeting as a discovery meeting. Because discovery meetings are entirely for the salesperson's benefit and most people are aware of that. Which is why when you prospect and you're lucky enough to get someone to engage with you, either on email or you get them on the phone, they decline to meet with you because unless they're already in buying mode, there's no point meeting with you because they know they're not going to get anything out of that interaction. But if you think about the times when you've gone to the doctor, you've gone there for two reasons. To become wiser about your circumstances and. And to understand potential remedies. You wouldn't have gone if you thought you were a science project. They were going to gather all this data about you, but you got no benefit out of it. But that's what we're doing with discovery. It's all for us, nothing for them. Now, doctors don't call first meetings discovery. What do they call them? They call them consultations. And the expression consultation implies there has to be meaningful value for the other person as well. So I'm on this mission right now to change the sales mindset from discovery to consultation, with an emphasis on providing meaningful value during a first meeting. See, what I'll do, Steve, is I'll ask salespeople, if I agree to take a meeting with you, what do I get out of it? And they'll pause and they'll think. They'll say, well, you're going to learn about my company and what we offer. That's not getting you in the door. Here's why there's two types of sales, and I'm going to explain those two types of using a bathroom environment. Now, I know, Steve, you got nervous, but allow me to explain. You ready?
- [04:16]
B
Let's do it.
- [04:17]
A
Okay. You buy toilet paper. I sell toilet paper. But you're buying it from my competitor. And I'm saying, you should be buying my toilet paper because it's superior. That's a takeaway sale. That's what most salespeople have as a sales environment. The other type of sale, you buy toilet paper. I sell bidets. It's an alternative way of solving a problem. So, as I mentioned, most salespeople are in a takeaway sales environment, which means they already have a supplier. So you're reaching out to them. You're saying, meet with me and I've got 400 things on my desk to do, and you're saying, put those aside and do it in a. For a meeting that I'm not going to get anything out of. Well, that's not going to happen. So let's come back to that meaningful value question. If I take a meeting with you, what do I get out of it? And now they're stumped. And I'm guessing, Steve, your audience likes free things, right? We all do, generally. Okay, if. And I'm going to share with you a very difficult URL for everybody to remember. Meaningful value.com. if you go to meaningful value.com you can download my tip sheet. 10 Ways to Provide Meaningful Value During a first meeting with a prospect. Here's the key. If you want them to take that meeting with you, they have to come away wiser. Learn something that helps them either in their role or helps their company learn something during that time spent with you. Now, here's the key. When you identify that meaningful value that you're going to provide during that first meeting, you fold that in your prospecting messaging. So you'd say, steve, when we get together, I'll share with you a best practice that manufacturing executives are taking advantage of to creatively reduce costs. Now, that's going to help get you in the door, and you're going to have a much more productive consultation.
- [06:19]
B
That makes a ton of sense. I mean, I think it's, it's probably just the nature of our game that people do discovery calls, and from their perspective, they're trying to, you know, it's, it's focused on what they want in their own minds. They want to learn, they want to qualify this. They want to figure out, hey, where does this guy slot in? Is this even my deal or do I have to give it to the other rep? Like what, what.
- [06:42]
A
You know, right?
- [06:43]
B
What is this? Where does this fit? And you're right. It's got to be about what the customer gets. You gotta, you gotta give them something. You gotta be consultative or there has to be a, a reason for them to show up. It can't just be about you. Which is a challenge with a lot of, a lot of companies, sales processes, right? Where the first call is with more of a qualification situation.
- [07:04]
A
Right? Well, qualifying is important. And there's a chapter dedicated to that subject in my book. It's one of the most underappreciated skills built by salespeople and sales executives. Right? Because what we do is we say, hey, salespeople, you need to qualify. They go, okay, yeah, of course I gotta qualify. Well, relative to what? You gotta qualify relative to something. And you're probably thinking, I mean, an ideal client profile. I think that's the worst thing you could ever give a salesperson. How's that for a sales contrarian, Steve?
- [07:34]
B
That it's very Convenient, but I love it.
- [07:37]
A
Well, let me explain. An ideal client profile says, if all the stars were to align, this is the kind of business we'd love to have. It's like a lottery ticket. If you look up the word ideal in the dictionary, you'll see the expression existing only in one's mind. Sales is hard enough. I don't need something that's only in my head. Right. But here's what salespeople do need. A target client profile. And I'm not wordsmithing. It's a totally different tool. A target client profile says, this is who will perceive the most meaningful value in what we offer, which gives deals the greatest likelihood of coming to fruition. So in my book, I lay out a 12 component tool that you can construct that becomes a benchmarking tool to qualify, as well as helping you to identify which deals you should be investing time in. Because our most precious resource is time. Nobody gets more or fewer minutes based on how much money they have. Right. We all get the same amount. And when you look at top performers, they are so careful when selecting the deals that they're going to invest their time in. Notice I didn't say spend their time, invest their time pursuing. And Steve, I have these conversations all the time at post mortem on deals that they didn't win. They take me through them. They said, yep, we lost this deal at the end. So you didn't lose a deal. They said, well, we didn't win it. No, I agree with you. You didn't win it. You were never in the game. You were never a viable option. There's some qualification you could have done in that first meeting, in the first 15 minutes that would have told you, run, don't go after this deal, you have no shot. They have requirements. They have some things that they absolutely must have and you're not a fit for it. You know, a lot of salespeople say it's a lottery ticket, you got to be in it to win it. Well, that's what an ideal client profile does to you. And you wind up chasing pipe dreams and you don't have a pipeline.
- [09:37]
B
That's, that's. I'm going to quote you on that. That's fantastic.
- [09:41]
A
Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're done. Interviews over this one idea. I've heard enough.
- [09:47]
B
No. So you call the first meeting the differentiator, which I've never heard before. What? Talk about why that moment, the first meeting is so crucial compared to the rest of the sales process in terms of differentiating yourself and your service.
- [10:08]
A
Yeah. So the first meeting is the Deal Foundation. Right. Think about what's going on in that first meeting. We talked about qualifying, we talked about differentiating ourselves, acquiring information, sharing information, arousing emotions, which I'm sure we'll be talking about in a little bit. So much has to go on in that first meeting because one of the things that I'm trying to decide from my side of the desk as a salesperson is go, no go for all the reasons we talked about a few moments ago. And if we don't handle the first meeting right, you know what happened, Steve? There's no second meeting. And if there's no second meeting, no deal. So we have to create an experience in that first meeting that we're not begging for a second meeting, that we create an experience that they're saying, Steve, when can you come back and meet with us again? When can we talk some more? That's how you know you got it right.
- [11:04]
B
And is that when you've created meaningful value, the value is meaningful enough that they want to engage you going forward. What are some tips and tricks that you would have either how do you, how do you communicate in a way that strikes someone emotionally or irrationally or whatever this, the framework is that makes them say, ah, this, this is really valuable. I, I need to hear from these guys again. I gotta, I gotta start walking down the aisle with them.
- [11:28]
A
Yeah. So let's come back to this concept of discovery. We said, how do salespeople prepare for discovery? Here's the questions I'm going to ask and here are the message points I'm going to convey. But if you think about it, there's an infinite number of questions you can ask and only so many someone's going to tolerate. You can talk about your company and what you offer for 16 hours, but this, no one's going to give you a 16 hour meeting. I don't think you'd want it anyway. So there's a strategy I present in the book, there's a chapter dedicated to this, of reverse engineering the first meeting, where we define it by saying it was a great first meeting. If we accomplish what. So we think futuristically, the meeting is over. If it's a zoom, we're ending the zoom meeting. If it's an in person meeting, we're heading back to the car. It was a great first meeting. If we accomplished what. So we need to identify the outcomes, the criteria that would make for a great first meeting. So there's certain information we'd need to acquire. Right. So we'd identify those aspects, other aspects we need to accomplish during that first meeting, and then it becomes a project plan. So imagine you have this left hand column. Here's what I have to achieve now. How do I achieve it? Those are the rows and the tools we have to achieve. Those are the questions we ask, the information we share verbally and visually, and the actions we take before, during, and after. So now let's come back to the difference between discovery and a consultation. In a consultation, what questions am I going to ask? Only the ones associated with the outcomes that I've identified. What information am I going to share? Only the information associated with the outcomes that I've identified. Now, you have a defined approach for handling that first meeting. So I mentioned there's a chapter dedicated in a book to it. What you'll find in the book is there's tons of relatable stories, but there's also workshops. And not only are there workshops, but there are downloadable tools. So the book will guide you through the completion of the tool. But like in this case, when we're talking about reverse engineering that meeting, there's a download to identify. So I'm not asking you to start from scratch and say, so what are the outcomes that would make for a great first meeting? I've got probably 97, 98% of them in this worksheet. But there's a place for you to add some more if I missed anything. But you go through all that now you say, okay, now we know what a great first meeting looks like, and now we got to put the game plan together, which is what the rest of the book guides you to do to help you achieve all those outcomes.
- [14:00]
B
Makes sense. And I've read you talk about empathetic expertise. What does that, what does that mean in practice? And how can sellers use it to better engage buyers on an emotional level?
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A
Great question. So, Steve, I'm going to throw out a sales concept. I know you said you're not in sales, but I'm going to guess you've heard this expression somewhere near 4 million times. You ready?
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B
Yeah.
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A
People buy based on emotion and justify their decisions with logic. How many times have you heard that?
- [14:32]
B
Once or twice. And that makes sense to me.
- [14:34]
A
Not the 4 million. Okay, so you're, you're in the minority there.
- [14:38]
B
At least. At least 500,000.
- [14:41]
A
Now find a salesperson who's never heard that expression. Everybody's heard it gazillion times. Can you find a salesperson that puts it into practice? I bet you can't. If you and I recorded 100 first meetings. All types of sales, technology, software, hardware, products, services, all of that. All market segments all around the world. I bet you the deeds in my house that 99 of that 100, if not all 100. The entire conversation was logic, no emotion whatsoever. And I struggle with this. Like, if everyone has heard that expression, they know that concept. Why is no one doing it? And then I had this epiphany. I have two sons that played college baseball. And I remember when they were first learning the game, Steve, coaches would say, now the name of the game is to hit home runs. And they smile and go, got it. Hit home runs. But you know what? They didn't hit home runs until someone taught them how to do it. So we preach to salespeople, people buy based on emotion, justify their decisions with logic, and they go get it. But we haven't taught them how to do it. So I'll give you an example. Common question salespeople ask Steve, what's the biggest challenge you face in your business? And as a result of that question, you're going to give me some information, Right? What if I asked the question this way, Steve, what is that one thing? The one thing that has you pulling your hair out, just like, we got to figure this out. What is it? You felt that question, didn't you? We're just in a podcast interview, but you felt that. Yeah, and that's what I'm looking. And that's what I'm looking for that other person on the other side of the desk to do as well. I want them to feel that question. And as a result, I don't want information back. I want information with color, flavor, texture. I want to know how they feel about that information. Because emotion is a deal energizer. When you look at deals where you go, wow, you know, had a nice conversation with them, it never went anywhere. The deal fizzled out. I got ghosted. And what I found is one of the most common reasons for that is we didn't engage enough emotion in that meeting, if any emotion to energize the deal. I'll share with you an interesting anecdote. One of my favorite all time TV shows is Law and Order, not the spin offs, the original. And it came back a couple of years ago as a reboot. There was an episode where the prosecutor was very frustrated with the case. He was trying. He felt like he had all the facts to get a conviction, but he could tell the jury wasn't with him. So he goes to the district attorney, takes him through the case. And the district attorney says to him, here's the problem with your case. It's all fact, no heart. And the jury isn't buying it. All logic, no emotion, and the jury isn't buying it. I go, oh, well, that's interesting. So attorneys are using emotion to affect decision making. Would that be really helpful in the sales world? Wouldn't it? Now law and order, they say rip from the headlines. But of course I couldn't use that as a source for the book. So I interviewed a judge, a prosecutor, a litigator, and a trainer of litigators about ways attorneys use emotion to affect decision making. And the conversations were fascinating. The prosecutor said to me, when I'm trying a case, I'm going to take the jury on a journey. Say that fast three times. The jury on a journey from having the ability to convict to having the desire to convict. Think about the sales world. Having the ability to contract with us to having the desire to contract with us. And the only way that happens is by engaging emotion. So he went on to say, if I have a firefighter on the stand, I'm not asking fact based questions. I'm asking questions like, what did you feel? What did you feel when you entered the building? I want that jury to feel like they were in that fire with the firefighter because we know emotion drives action.
- [18:59]
B
I'm taking notes on the stuff you're saying. This is great.
- [19:02]
A
Oh, thank you.
- [19:04]
B
So how would you go about asking questions like how would you coach someone to think of what questions they should be asking? Let's just say they're selling a, a medical device, a, a laser to that. A laser that does something in surgery that is useful to a doctor. How do, how would you coach that sales rep to. What's the framework that you would coach them to ask questions in such a way that would make someone go from having the ability to do something the doctor obviously could buy your laser to actually.
- [19:46]
A
Yes.
- [19:47]
B
Having the desire to doing it. And therefore, because desire the emotional, it hits them at the emotional level, they actually take action.
- [19:54]
A
Right. Okay, so let me continue with what we were talking about. The emotion. The sole measure of empathetic expertise is three words. They get me. And if you think about people you've done business with, particularly on a repeated basis, you'd probably say that about them. They get me. There's an old expression in sales that people buy from those they like and trust. You've heard that. Right. But there's two other criteria. They buy from those that have solution, expertise and also have demonstrated empathetic expertise. See, what's interesting is if you have solution expertise, but you're not likable, they don't trust you and you lack empathetic expertise, you're not selling squat. But if you have empathetic expertise, you come across as more likable, they trust you more, and you appear to have a greater expertise of what you're selling than you actually do. And I have just countless stories of examples of this notion of empathetic expertise. And that's one of the things when we talk about reverse engineering, that first meeting on that punch list is an option and the default is checked, that you've demonstrated empathetic expertise. So you asked me about crafting questions. I want to craft questions that convey that I have solution expertise and empathetic expertise. And you're going to say, well, what questions should we be asking? And they're a function of the outcomes that we've identified. So I don't have this list of. Let me give you a question that you should be asking. It's all a function of what do we need to accomplish during that first meeting?
- [21:43]
B
Makes sense.
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A
I'll take it a step further. Something another thing salespeople have been told. Back to the sales contrarian conversation we had. You present features and benefits. That's what you need to do during that first meeting. And there's a chapter in that book titled Features, benefits and boredom. Features and benefits of the way you put people to sleep. Let me tell you, it's available in blue. And the benefit to that is you can match any color you'd like in your house because this blue goes with everything. Excuse me, Sorry, we're mid interview. I probably shouldn't be yawning, but the way we should be conveying that information is through stories. You embed the facts, the figures, the features, the benefits in well crafted client success stories. And there's a reason why salespeople are stuck with features and benefits. Sales leaders have not created what I call a deal pursuit story portfolio. If your company's been around a year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years, there are great stories of deals that came to fruition. But if you hired me today, how would I learn those stories? You haven't documented them. So a recommendation I have for sales leaders that are listening to us today is to create a deal pursuit story portfolio where you lay out that journey of how these clients came to be, what challenge did they have, who are they working with today, et cetera, et cetera, and the solution that you created and the results from that solution. And you put that together in such a way that you can, during onboarding, teach this to your salespeople. Have them then share the story internally with the same excitement, the same passion as the person who sold that deal way back when. So that they're believable, that they're credible when they're sharing this. The thing that we're up against in sales is a study done by Herman Ebbinghaus. Have you ever heard that name?
- [23:55]
B
I have, yeah.
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A
So he was a researcher in the 1800s. He developed the forgetting curve. That sound familiar? That's his claim to fame.
- [24:04]
B
That does sound familiar. Yeah. I've come across that before in some prior life.
- [24:10]
A
Okay, here's what that study revealed, and it's still valid today. People forget 50% of what they learn within 24 hours and remember less than 10% of that a week later. So let's do the math here. You have a one hour first meeting, they remember about six minutes of it. A week later. Ouch. Ouch.
- [24:32]
B
Makes sense.
- [24:33]
A
So here we are trying to tell them everything, show them everything in that first meeting, and guess what? They think you showed them everything and told them everything. And they don't feel a need to meet with you again because you've done all that and they remember six minutes of it a week later. So there's other studies that have been done around memory, and when it comes to retention, you are much more likely to remember a story with facts embedded in it than someone lecturing you on features and benefits. So we're up against that Herman Ambighouse story. A way that we can confront that and we can defeat that study is to share stories, relatable, memorable stories. That's how. That's one of the ways that you can be more memorable and also get subsequent meetings.
- [25:28]
B
And that's fantastic advice. It's funny. The bad news for, for Herman is that I forgot him. But he was. I talked about him in a video. I did. And it must have been. This, must have been eight years ago or something. It was a sales training video. I did.
- [25:47]
A
Okay.
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B
And I only know this because I just looked it up in my Google Drive and it was a meeting. It was a course called following up after a Sales Meeting. And I talk about Herman Ebbinghaus kind of in the lead in to it, but I don't think I had anything as valuable to say as you did. Like a way of solving it. Maybe I did. I'd have to. I'd have to read what I said I'd have to watch my video because the, the bad thing is even, it's even a meeting, even a video that you're doing with yourself which is kind of like a meeting with yourself. I guess you, you still, you still forget most of it. That was absolutely.
- [26:26]
A
That is very true.
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B
It doesn't speak well to us, us, us humans in our, in our competition with AI because that doesn't forget anything. I just, all I had to do is Google. Google my. I Google my own drive. So, so the computers aren't forgetting the good news, bad news. I guess that's very true. So can you change like, like one reason Fact People are asking fact based questions and they're kind of anchored in fact we find ourselves as salespeople anchored in fact based stuff. I think is, is because that's kind of the world we live in. Right. Like I, I'm not lying to you. I'm telling you things about this thing. It does do this. It is this color. It is blue.
- [27:10]
A
Sure.
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B
Like you, I think we're drawn towards the fact based world.
- [27:15]
A
We are.
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B
How can we pull ourselves out of it or turn those things that we have to talk about as facts into emotions? Is the answer stories there as well.
- [27:27]
A
So there's a couple of pieces. Let's come back to the questions part. This is an assignment I gave a group earlier today. Sit down and make a list of the fact based, the logic questions that you're currently asking. Which ones Are there an opportunity and a necessity to turn into emotive questions? So not every question needs to be turned into an emotive question. So which ones? Is there an opportunity that it can be turned into an emotive one and it'll be a really good idea to do it? That's the necessity part. So you make a list of the questions, identify the ones that meet those two criteria and then develop emotive questions. And by the way, you can use Chat GPT for help with that. Right. So that's going to help you with crafting the emotive questions that you need to energize your deals. In the book I lay out a framework for storytelling and how to construct the stories in a way that they're memorable, that the person gets it and understands. The features and benefits part because they're embedded in the story. We all love well crafted stories. Think back to when you were a child, get in bed and mom and dad would tell you a story. We all love that. But every one of us hates to be lectured and that's What a feature of benefits presentation is. It's a lecture.
- [28:56]
B
It's probably a good lesson for all of us to go, go on ChatGPT and just ask it about what, what are, what are success stories that a customer of XYZ product or someone purchasing lasers in my earlier example, what are, what are some ways that a doctor could be successful after purchasing a laser that people use on their, I don't know, face or whatever?
- [29:18]
A
There you go.
- [29:19]
B
Like what? You know, and, and then map your actual customers to those stories. Like, oh, you know, who did, you know who had that experience of, of upselling their existing customers with this l. With this laser. Is, is that doctor. He, you know, he was, he was getting X percentage of Botox patients to also do lasers. You know, it's, it's that, that's probably a good, a good exercise for us.
- [29:47]
A
Well, Steve, see, the problem is our generation, we, we've been conditioned to. If you find a shortcut, you're doing it wrong. Right? If you use Cliff Notes way back when in school, how dare you not read the whole book, right? Use Cliff Notes to get the salient points, the main points. And, and the teachers would go out of their way to create quizzes and tests that the answers were not in the Cliff Notes. Or your math teacher would say, you can't use a calculator. You're not always going to have a calculator handy. I got a calculator anytime I want. What are you talking about? So our generation, you know, when we talk about Chat GPT, there is this little bit of you feel like you're cheating and you're not. You're being smart. It's. You've got a tool that is able to make you so much more prepared for first meetings or any part of the sales process just by using it.
- [30:45]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Even in business school, which is I graduated in 2006, we still weren't allowed to use calculators. And it was like, but in the real world, I should be able to use Excel on this test. I mean, in the real world, don't I get Excel? Do I not? You, you want me to do this with my fingers? Like, I, Yeah, I'm not that good with my fingers. But you know, see, you know what's.
- [31:12]
A
Great, what kills me is you see, you see these tick tock videos come up. We were all taught, you know, all these different ways to do math, and it was like this convoluted process. There's all these shortcuts that they never told us that are, that you see now in all these videos that give you the same answer, just as reliable, like, well, that would have been helpful to know many years ago.
- [31:32]
B
So many things about life today would have been helpful before. I mean, you know, that's very true. There's now a piece of software for every. Everything you're doing, and it does it better and faster. There's. There's an app. There's an app for that that's given. I've been talking to people about these clever little apps for that for, you know, 15 years or so. And, well, more than that, if you count other apps that I've worked with in prior lives when I worked at Google, et cetera. But like, it's. It's amazing how often they're like, I can't imagine how much time I have done what this thing does by hand. I can't. I don't want to start with, you know, I'll be talking to some VP of sales or something, and they'll be like, I spent 15 years doing this stupid thing by hand that we're talking about getting for, for the reps. Like, do you know, do you know how much my life wasted? It's, it's like, yeah, yeah, me, me too, man. Me too. That's. But, but it's. There's so many things like that, right? Like, yeah, it's. It's amazing. It's amazing how much of the, the, the hard, annoying things. And it's like with coding, our engineering team isn't. We're not finding that, like, AI replaces our engineers. It just makes them go faster. They don't have to do the annoying work. It's like the annoying, busy work that it's really good at. It can't show them how to solve the problem yet, but it can do a bunch of annoying, busy work. And so they're like, yeah, we're going 50% faster than we used to because all the stupid stuff, you know, that I used to have to train an intern to do or, you know, outsource to, you know, Fiverr or whatever it was. Now I'm just, you know, plop it right in and it does it.
- [33:23]
A
Well, you see, there's two types of salespeople. There are salespeople scared to death that AI is going to take their job away. And then there are salespeople and say, you know what? AI is going to help me look really, really smart much, much faster than I ever have been able to before.
- [33:37]
B
I think sales is one of the jobs that do not get go away with with the world of AI, I think, I think elements of it do just like you could say, oh, you know, the Internet's going to take away all the jobs.
- [33:48]
A
It's like, yeah, absolutely.
- [33:50]
B
I, I bet my sales reps do spend less hours doing demos because if you want to see the product, we have the perfect demo on the web already. Actually. I guess it's a. Right, it's a demo of the product three years ago, but just missing a few features. But it's more like we were just talking about how we got to update that. But it's like write that.
- [34:10]
A
I was going to say write that down. You, homework.
- [34:12]
B
Yeah, I, I knew but like the, it's like a, It's a, a 20 minute demo done perfectly edited fast, you know, like everything perfect. Right. So do reps do fewer demos? Because that exists and it's been watched I don't know, 30,000 times or whatever. Right. It's like, yeah, they've done 30,000 fewer demos, but that's not the part of the job they wanted. They, they got to spend that because the person already showed up being like, no, no, I, I, I saw it, I understand what it does. I want to talk about XYZ problem or I want to talk about can I apply it like this or I want to talk about, you know, it's, it's like they're, they're already 60% of the way through. But it's the, it's the, it's the annoying 60%. The good stuff is still left, you know, like the, yeah, so that's, I, and I, I, that's how I see a lot of things in sales going with, you know, I think a video is kind of a good example of the types of, it's like, yeah, I don't have to research this company for two hours before I go. And you know, when I'm writing the proposal, I can get my answers very quickly on what I need, you know.
- [35:15]
A
Correct. That's right.
- [35:17]
B
It's hard to read financial statements. It's really Easy to ask ChatGPT about the company's financial statements. Like tell me about.
- [35:23]
A
Right. What do they mean? Tell me. Right. I don't want to see the financial, Tell me what you see in the financial statements. That's what I want to know.
- [35:30]
B
Absolutely. So it's, it's a brave new world out there. You talk about consultation cliffhangers.
- [35:39]
A
Yes.
- [35:40]
B
Share what one of those sounds like in a real world conversation. Teach us about consultation cliffhangers.
- [35:48]
A
Sure. So let's talk about what the Concept is, first, a cliffhanger. So TV shows all the time, in that last episode of the season, they'll do something. And one of the most famous examples of a TV cliffhanger is Dallas from the 1970s, who shot Junior? Right. You see the end of the episode, Junior getting shot, and you don't know who did it. And you wondered all summer long. And everyone's pontificating who did it? And the producers and the advertisers and everyone else associated with the show saying, yes, everybody's talking about it. So they'll do one thing. What's the one thing? The TV company wants people to watch.
- [36:31]
B
It next year and more people to watch.
- [36:33]
A
You got it. They come back and won and they watch it again.
- [36:36]
B
I, I still remember my parents. I wasn't, I wasn't allowed in the room when this was happening, but they would. They were watching Falcon Crest and Dallas together. I still remember that.
- [36:47]
A
Yes, that's right.
- [36:47]
B
I was probably like seven years old or something. Yeah, it was like one at seven and one came on at eight or something.
- [36:54]
A
I don't remember.
- [36:55]
B
But it was like this whole period of time when my sister and I had to like, sit in the kitchen. Amuse. Exactly. Amuse ourselves.
- [37:07]
A
So the, the, the, the conversation around a consultation. Cliffhanger. Let's go back to Herman Ebbinghaus. They remember less than 10% a week later. So you don't do everything. You don't bring everyone. You don't show every sample you have in that first meeting because they're not going to remember it.
- [37:25]
B
But everyone's going to remember me in the kitchen waiting for Falcon Crest to end.
- [37:30]
A
That's true. That's true story.
- [37:32]
B
So what I see, see, see examples.
- [37:36]
A
Yes. So what in the. Unless you're expected to walk out with a deal with an order, in that first meeting, you know, there's going to be multiple stages. So if you bring everybody, I got my compliance person, I got my operations person, I'm going to show them the demo. I'm going to bring samples of stuff, everything. Why should they keep meeting with you? There's nothing left. You've done everything. So maybe you make the CEO visit the second meeting. The demo is not the first meeting. It's the second meeting. Because in that first meeting, again, we talked about the outcomes to acquire all the information needing needed to personalize a demo. Let's not rush the consultation, let's not rush the demo, because we're also up against the forgetting curve. You show them all this again, this much is going to Stick. So let's not try to accomplish too much. The overarching goal of that first meeting is to peak a high enough level of interest that they want to see you again. That doesn't mean you do everything. That means you do enough so that they want to continue interacting with you. That's the key. That's. So the cliffhangers, the consultation cliffhangers are plan strategies to end that meeting. So that they're saying, when can we talk again? Not me, them, the prospect saying to me, when can we get together again? When can we meet again? That's how, you know, you get it, right.
- [39:11]
B
Yeah. And, and I've employed this on my team and I think this is really important and I think, I think if, if you just think about it, everyone can do it. You've got something in your back pocket. For, at least for, for me it's, it's less about like, oh, we withheld this piece of information, we've got something more interesting for you next time. I think that can definitely work. But I like to have something to give them or to give or to give some. Give someone who's on the, the buying, decision making, decision making team. So the two plan strategies that we use to kind of inform people. Oh like, well, to just I guess get kind of to get it back on the phone but also just to give them something and something to look forward to. And a reason to pull more people in first is we have a, like a, an analysis, like a spreadsheet, basically a complex spreadsheet that adds up all the places that, that a sales team gets value from the, from the software. Right. Like it adds, oh, well, you're going to save this much on gas and you have this many people and so you say this much on. So save this much time, you're going to save this much. All, every little thing is all broken down in the spreadsheet in a way that you can then turn around and give it to your CFO and be like, these are hard costs saved. This is where we're going to, you know, this is where we're going to sell more, which is valuable to the revenue. Obviously this is, this is this, this is this, but really delineates it and breaks it all down and tries to tie it back to their, their, their financials. And like, you know, so a lot of times people will want to do that because they're like, well yeah, if I want this stuff and I know that I've got to sell it to the guy that has controls the first strings, right? Because usually we're talking like the VP of sales, so they've got to like extract the money from the, from the cfo. Right, so.
- [41:04]
A
Right, true.
- [41:05]
B
So they, so that, that is one strategy that's going really well. And the other, Steve, you didn't, you.
- [41:12]
A
Didn'T use this expression, but you did meet the objective, peak a high enough level of interest that they want to continue meeting with you.
- [41:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's what you're.
- [41:21]
A
Describing is it's, to accomplish that objective.
- [41:24]
B
Yeah. So either. Because. Yeah, I, Yeah, absolutely. Just giveaways are great for that, like information, you know, and maybe these aren't hitting emotionally. Right. But if people are like, for people that want the thing and if you're like able to help them, help them get it pushed through their process on their side that they know they have to go through, that's helpful. And the other thing we'll do is, that has worked really well is we're, we'll just, we'll, we give giveaways. Right. Like the, the thing that we'll do is we, so we have, we mostly have our main project thing, you know. Right. But we, we also have other things. And one of those other things, one of those other pieces of software that we built is like territory balancing. And so we'll give people just like a free territory balancing. We'll just, we'll, we'll run their data through, through our system and let them rebalance their territories and play with the thing. And that offer of, hey, well, you can just use this. We'll just do it with you for you, you know, you can. And then you'll have it. It's cool, you know, it's cool to see what, you know, what would, what would software say is balanced? What would, what ideas would you get from that? Whether you buy it or not, you can see the result. And that will get people to engage. Right. They're like, oh, I'm so, I guess I, I guess both of my things, it's a, it's a, hey, I'm giving a reason for the next meeting. And the reason is you're going to get X, Y or Z. And so I think people can look around for what you can give people that, that, that engages them and gets them to keep going with you, you know, because, yeah, sure, it's like, and a lot of times it's like free consulting of some type or free expertise. Like, but as a salesperson, you're often an expert in their, in their business. Right. Like, if you sell the Dentist, they don't talk to, you know, 30 dentists a week. You talk to 30 dentists a week. I'm sure you're, that's right. And you're selling, you know, some dental equipment or, or gel or something. But you also know about, like, you know, other things that dentists have problems with. Like they're, they're, you know, you've heard other, other dentists complain and solve their problems about their scheduling software, even though you don't, you don't sell the scheduling software. You, you sell fake teeth, right? You sell, you sell dentures. You know about scheduling software. So bring your expertise and, or, or develop expertise in something. Like if you just ask people what are your problems that have nothing to do with me, and they'll tell you, oh, well, this, this, this, you know, my customers, finding parking. Like, you can become an expert in, in that element of your customer's business and you can write a, write up a little thing, you can give a little presentation. You can, you can say, oh, I, I actually happen to have deep expertise in software that dentists use for scheduling. Happy to, you know, next time I'm here, I'll, I'll totally, I'll take you through it. And it has nothing to do with what I do at all. I don't, you know, I don't have a horse in the game, but I'll give it to you. But giveaways, giveaways are great like that.
- [44:28]
A
I think, as long as it's relevant to them. Yes, yes, I agree with you. And the piece again that you left out is go to ChatGPT. If I want to know the biggest concerns dentists have today, I can find out in about two seconds.
- [44:41]
B
Yeah, great point.
- [44:43]
A
And if I want to be more specific, the biggest concern dentists have relative to scheduling today, you know, you can just keep building out that, that prompt and you can learn this. And then when you're getting together with a dentist again, back to this notion of empathetic expertise. You know, Steve, one of the things that we continually hear from dentists is they really struggle with this, this notion of scheduling. They, you know, this happens, that happens. What's your experience been, you come in, they go, okay, this guy understands dentists. They get me.
- [45:14]
B
Yeah. So smart. Well, let's assume that your first meeting has gone well. What's your best way to end it and what's your best way to follow up? I guess I'm jamming two questions in.
- [45:28]
A
There, but no, I think that's great. Okay, so let me share with you first. The simplest thing to do that not enough salespeople do. Thank you. They had 400 things on their desk to do. They put those aside to invest those minutes with you. So start off by thanking them for investing time with you. And then if you believe the question has gone well, I like to ask what I call a blank canvas question. How did we do today? How did we do today? And I'm looking for them to say something back. I'm so glad we got together. This was a great use of time. I call that the meaningful value test. If you get that response back, you're on your way. So that's a key. But there's something that salespeople don't do. And it's not just. It's. We all do this, and it doesn't matter how long you've been in sales. We get lazy. We get sloppy with this. So, Steve, let's say we've just had this great meeting. Everything's gone well. Wrap it up. And I go, yeah. So, Steve, I'll email you next week and we'll schedule a time to pick up the conversation. Oh, I got Steve right there. His calendar is right here, right then and there. Any meeting that's gone well has to finish with two things. A defined next step and a scheduled interaction. No promises to call next week. Email next week. It has to finish with that. I get asked all the time, Lee, what's. What's the secret to not being ghosted? And I'll tell you one thing that I found that do it my own business. And I've coached clients to do it. Nothing eliminates it entirely, but it's exponentially better than what they're doing today, which is if you have a scheduled next meeting and you send the invite for that meeting, there's a good chance they're going to show up. But if you leave it to. Yeah, I'll ping you next week and we'll schedule a time to pick up the conversation. You're just saying ghost me. Please ghost me, because that's what you're going to get. So that meeting has to end with a defined next step and a scheduled interaction.
- [47:48]
B
Yep.
- [47:49]
A
And I'll add one more piece to that meeting ending. Another way to combat the forgetting curve. Steve, I'm going to send you an email later today. The subject line is going to be recap. And I'm going to summarize our conversation here today. Now, I'm not relying on Steve to remember everything. I'm going to put the key points in that email to Remind him of what I want him to remember of our time spent together. I should say invested together. And in, in the book I lay out the framework for putting that recap email together.
- [48:31]
B
That's fantastic advice. I think. So whenever you can, tell them what you're going to do next and then do it next. So I think absolutely. Finish finish meetings with a defined here's what we're going to do next. Try to try to get that, you know, schedule on their calendar right then and find out the best way to communicate with them. Is a. Is another thing that really helps like hey I'm. This is what I'm going to do next. Is email. Is. Should I, is email the best way to do this or should I text you? Should I talk to your administrative assistant? What's, what's the best thing to do? Yeah, I think that's.
- [49:05]
A
But when you're together, lock in that next interaction. Yeah, it's a call. It's an in person lock it down and you will see exponentially if you have issues with ghosting, if you start doing that or if your sales cycle is becoming protracted because it takes a while to when you said I'm going to reach out to you next week, but it takes them three weeks to respond to you. If you want to shorten your sales cycle, have that discipline. And you may need to have a post it right by your computer to remind you of those two things. Scheduled next interaction. Define next steps.
- [49:37]
B
Love it. Well, as an actionable takeaway, what's one way that salespeople can start transforming their initial meetings starting tomorrow?
- [49:48]
A
Well, one thing they can do is they can go on Amazon and they can get this for themselves. First meeting, differentiator, little commercial.
- [49:57]
B
Well, just, just, just to clarify, like you he Lee's book just it came out yesterday. Right.
- [50:04]
A
Like it hit yesterday. And Steve, I'm really touched by this. I, I have a whole process I go through when I develop a book and one of the things that I do early on is I get involvement from not just people like me, but salespeople, sales leaders, executives. And my question is what have I not addressed in this book that you would expect a book like this to address? It's part of the editing process and as a result at the end of this and they're all included in the book, I have over 120 endorsements for the book before anybody was able to purchase it. It's people that do things like what I do for a living. It's business owners, CEOs, other executives, sales leaders, and salespeople. So I'm just really, really touched by the kind words. And. And if you go on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is now flooded with all these endorsement quotes of them putting out. So I really appreciate that. If you go to firstmeetingbook.com you can do a couple of things. You can download the first chapter, and if you decide to buy the book, go to firstmeetingbook.com and take advantage. There's a bonus that I'm offering. I'm offering to conduct three master classes exclusively for book purchasers based on the content in the book to help you implement what you read.
- [51:25]
B
Very cool, Steve.
- [51:28]
A
What's interesting is if you go on Amazon and you look for a book on prospecting, there's a gazillion of them out there. Right. The purpose of those books is to get you the meeting now. Find a book that helps you to put together the strategy once you've got the meeting. It didn't exist till yesterday. Tons of sales books touch upon it. But this book doesn't tell you how to get a meeting. It doesn't tell you what to do after the meeting. It's dedicated to the first meeting.
- [51:57]
B
Very cool. Yeah, it's, It's. It's a. It's a funny thing. I've never. I've never. I'm running through my memory banks. I don't know what podcast episode this is. 300 or so of. Of sales thought leaders that I've talked to, and I don't. I don't think anyone's ever addressed this concept. But it's obvious. I mean, it's.
- [52:15]
A
I'm shocked.
- [52:16]
B
It's obvious that it's. That it's super important. I mean, without a doubt. I mean, it's obvious. Like, it's, It's. It's a strange thing that just no one's taking that angle of. Because when you train a sales rep, what. What are the first things you do? You tell them how to take that meeting. Right. Like, that's right.
- [52:31]
A
Everybody's thinking about how to get the meeting and they go, I booked the meeting. What are you going to do during the meeting?
- [52:35]
B
Yeah, yeah. Well.
- [52:37]
A
So hard to get it.
- [52:38]
B
Well, I'm thinking about my own training material where we're literally training two sales reps right now. And I'm like, are we doing this enough? Are we teaching them about. But.
- [52:47]
A
Well, I'll give one last nugget before we wrap up. Here's the difference between a discovery mindset and a consultation mindset. A discovery mindset you got the meeting. Yay. And you're going to start that meeting by saying this, Steve, what I want to do today is ask you some questions about your business and then I'll share with you some background about what we do, what I want to do today. Right. In the first few moments, you've just proven the purpose of this meeting is for me what I want. Rule of thumb, there's only one person in the world who cares what you want. You know who that is, Steve?
- [53:21]
B
My mom.
- [53:22]
A
That's it. Your mom. That's it. You're the first one ever to get it. You're mom. No one else cares what you want. But what if we started that meeting this way? This is a consultation, Steve, for this to be a great use of your time. What do you want to make sure we talk about here today? I've just conveyed, I'm genuinely interested in making sure you get meaningful value out of this interaction. You know what the other thing that question does, Steve? It tells you what they care about. The entire course of this meeting has just been defined because they just said, here's what's important to me today. We make sales so much harder than it needs to be. It's an open book test.
- [54:06]
B
Right. It's not like college.
- [54:08]
A
This would be a great use of your time. What do you want to make sure we talk about here today?
- [54:12]
B
Yeah, why? It's, it's a version of the why are we here question, which I've always loved. Like, oh, what are, what are we supposed to. Why are we here today? You know, I mean, why, why, what made you want to take a meeting with one of our.
- [54:22]
A
Yep.
- [54:23]
B
With our, with someone from our company. Like, what are, what are we? What's what. What was interesting to you about all this? It's, it's especially like when I used to work at IBM, it was really important because we had like, you know, 5,000 products. Like you have to, you'd have to be like, what are, what, why, why don't you want to talk to me? I hope it's about something I know something about, because if it's about servers, I'm in trouble. Well, cool. Let me. I'm going to try to summarize the, the knowledge that you've dropped for us in about two minutes here. So a lot of knowledge here today. So unless a person is already in buying mode, they have no reason to meet with you, especially today. Right. The, the information's on the Internet.
- [55:07]
A
So if it's. Well, if it's, if you have a Discovery mindset. And that's your approach, that first meeting. You're right. No reason to meet with you. Right.
- [55:16]
B
So discovery meetings are, are.
- [55:18]
A
And.
- [55:19]
B
And having a discovery mindset, it's. It's all for the salesperson. You're like, you have to ask yourself, what is the prospect? Get out of this meeting. And you want to change from a discovery mindset to having a consultation mindset. Prospects need to come away from meetings with something meaningful and valuable for themselves, and they have to think they're getting something meaningful and valuable in the next meeting to do a second meeting. Create a target client profile. And the keyword here is target, as opposed to ideal. This is who will give you the. This is who you'll get the most meaningful value. And it is. And as also these deals are most likely to come to fruition, they're going to get the most value from your product. So it's not ideal, which is, you know, a pipe dream, which you had a great saying about, but I didn't write it down, unfortunately. But it was a great saying about.
- [56:18]
A
Pipe truths versus pipelines.
- [56:20]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so much we could do with that. That could have been another title for your book. I really like that. So the first meeting is the Deal Foundation. You're creating an experience in the first meeting, and you're not begging for a second meeting. You want to reverse engineer the first meeting? Ask yourself. It was a great first meeting. If we accomplish what? And only ask questions that get the outcome that you identified and only share information based on getting that outcome. Like, if this person was going to walk away, being like, that was a great first meeting. What did you have to talk about? What did you have to share? Emotion drives action. Ask questions that make your prospects feel something. So you could say, Mr. Customer, what is the one thing that has you just pulling your hair out right now? And you want to make people have the desire to work with you by doing that, as opposed to just the ability to work with you. So you're touching on what's really wrong, what's really bothering them. It's. It's memorable and it touches emotion. And people act on emotion. Ask questions that demonstrate empathetic expertise. Make people walk away from an interaction with you saying, they get me. And too many people don't focus on that, and instead they just focus on being experts in the solution that they have. So you don't want to just rattle off features, which is all about your solution. You want to embed those features, embed those benefits that people would get from the from your features into a well crafted story about customers having success with the product or service. Stories are much more relatable and much more memorable. You can use consultation cliffhangers and this, this is don't show everything in the first meeting. You want to peak at a high enough level of interest so that people want to see you again. It's kind of like a first date. If, if there's nothing more that was interesting then they would why would they go on a second date? You can use ChatGPT to do research that you that you might have in a prior life five years ago done in discovery calls. Now you can, you can show up knowing that stuff. Right at the end of the first meeting not enough people say thank you and a great follow up is how do we do today? And any meeting that has gone well has to end with a defined next step and a scheduled next meeting. Send a summarized meeting recap email afterwards and include the things that you want the prospect to remember from the meeting. So Lee, this, this has just been fantastic. Where can our listeners read more about your work? Obviously your book, but where can how, what how else can they read more about your your work reach out to you?
- [59:25]
A
Yeah. So first of all, I have tons of videos out on all the social media platforms. I'm on tik tok if YouTube, I have a a channel. If you look up le lessons you'll, you'll find those there. My website is Sales Architects A R C H I T E C t s so it's plural.com salesarchitects.com but you can learn more about me, learn more about the book and again the bonuses we talked about as well as download the first chapter at first meeting book.com.
- [59:59]
B
Fantastic. Well, this has been a great episode of the outside sales talk. If you like the show, definitely give us a review on wherever Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening from. Super helpful. And if you work in, if you work in the field in field sales, you I know you'll love Badger maps. You've heard about that before. Get a free trial@badgermapping.com and if you can think of any other sales reps who would benefit from learning the things that Lee's taught us today. I mean it's hard to imagine many salespeople who weren't and I haven't heard this take before. It's really pretty cool. Share the love and forward this on to those, those people that you think it'll be useful to. But Lee, I appreciate you coming.
- [60:40]
A
Thank you, Steve. This was awesome. Great fun.
- [60:42]
B
Absolutely. Take care. Until next time, everybody. Very cool.
- [60:50]
A
Awesome.
- [60:51]
B
Very cool, Steve.
- [60:53]
A
Thank you. I really appreciate it.
- [60:54]
B
Yeah, thanks for coming. I. I really appreciate it as well.