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Hey everybody. Bill Caskey, Solo Episode Advance Selling Podcast. I hope you continue to join us for our main episodes we release on Monday morning Solo Episodes. Brian does a few, I do a few, try to do at least one a week. And I know I've been a little bad about getting these out, but I am changing my ways. Today we're going to talk about something that is a part of a I wrote a book last year or in 2024, I guess it's still this year, called the 12 Bold Moves and I also have an implementation and training program available behind it. If you want to learn more, go to 12 Bold Moves.com. but anyway, month one is where we talk about what we call a customer centric sales process. And I know if I were to ask you is your sales process customer centric or you centric, Almost all of you would say no, it's customer centric. But if I were to look at it, I would probably have a different conclusion. And the question I would ask myself is, is there anything of value there for your customer or prospect? Is there anything in that sales process where if they didn't buy from you, they could still get value out of meeting with you and going through a process or procedure with you? Most of the time there isn't. Now this topic probably requires more than a five minute solo episode on some random podcast you're listening to, but here's a couple of thoughts that I think will start to juice your mind up little bit and get you thinking about this. I want your process to benefit the prospect whether they buy from you or not. So how do we do that? Well, one way to do it is to offer some kind of assessment or analysis of their problem. The fact is that when people come to you, sometimes, not all the time, but I'd say more often than not, they really don't know. They know what you do and they might have a sense of the product, but without you explaining how the product works and how it helps them solve a problem. Sometimes these problems are problems they know they have. Sometimes problems problems they don't know they have. But either way that is extremely valuable to them. If through your survey or assessment or just questioning, just a process of questioning, you can determine for them where their needs are, what where their problems are. My recommendation to all of my clients is create a rec document, a recommendation document, and say basically here I'm going to recapture. I just did this on the in a call a few weeks ago where I had four people on the phone VP of Sales North America a couple of Their team members, his team members. And after our call, I recapped on our entire call. I used AI for that. And then I made a recommendation here. The five things I would do first. Now, he can take that and go off into the distance and look up 17 other sales train, but he's not going to. He's not going to because I'm the one that was asking the questions that precipitated the analysis and the interpretation. And in that analysis, I also gave my opinion. I was. I was not shy about saying, look, if you go down this path, here are the five things to avoid. Here's the five things to look for, for. Here's what I would recommend the curriculum to be. And I did it all through AI So it didn't take that long. Now I'm becoming much more comfortable with AI So what it's spitting out is really useful. But the point is, now that that process is beneficial for him, he's not wondering, well, I wonder what Caskey does. And he's not. I'm just not talking on these calls. I mean, I'm talking and I'm asking, but he's getting something. And I prepared it and packaged it in a very nice document so it. It really felt like something special. Now, should I have charged for that? Maybe. But it wasn't that kind of thing. It wasn't where I said, look, I'm going to charge you five grand for this assessment. I would have needed to come in, work with the sales team, talk to some of his people, you know, fill out surveys. That's just not. I. You know, that's not bad, but that's not my business. I want to get right to the point. I want to know what the problem is, where they're trying to get, what's stopping them, and then create an interpretation document or a recommendation document. So that's just one example of what you can do if you don't have anything like that. Now, then here's what happens. The customer is always wondering, is he really into this? Is she? Can she really help me? Or do they just want to sell me something? I've heard it. I've heard it referred to as commission breath. When you're breathing, you're breathing the need for commission. And when you're needy and you're attached, people can feel that. I know you don't think people can feel that when you do it, but I can almost guarantee you they do. So that's your assignment here, is start thinking about what can I do to bring value to the sales process, then what you're going to find is people will be much more attracted to you because they will know that you're not just about making the sale that you want to help them all the way through. Now, are you going to have some people who take this recommendation and they go somewhere else and buy? Yeah, but you have that anyway. You know, if you're only if you're closing, I don't know, 20, 25% of your deals, you're having first calls with people. I think this process will help you close 50% of your deals. Now, will you lose a few? Maybe. But I would just chalk it up to marketing expense. So hopefully that served you today. But I want you to take a long, good, hard, long look at your process and ask yourself the question, is it helping my customer make a decision? Is there value in it? And if not, get busy on this. This is just one way to do it today. It's a way I found. I teach my clients to do it. They all love it. I use it. But you'll have to decide if it's right for you. I hope this has served you today. I always say that, but I always hope it does. I'll see you on the next solo episode. If you'd like to get a copy of my new book, 12 Bold Moves, where I take you through the exact moves you need to make as a sales professional. If VP of Sales, go to twelveboldmoves. Com.