Dollars and Sense: Reframing How Salespeople Talk About Money

Summary

The Advanced Selling Podcast

Episode: Dollars and Sense: Reframing How Salespeople Talk About Money
Hosts: Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale
Release Date: April 14, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode

In this compelling episode of The Advanced Selling Podcast, hosts Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale delve deep into the intricate relationship between sales and financial conversations. Titled "Dollars and Sense: Reframing How Salespeople Talk About Money," the episode addresses the often-overlooked aspects of discussing ROI (Return on Investment) and the broader economic implications of sales decisions. The hosts aim to equip sales professionals with the strategies needed to navigate financial dialogues effectively, ensuring both their success and the prosperity of their clients.

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Lifetime Value and the Importance of Long-Term Thinking

Early in the discussion, Bryan emphasizes the critical concept of Lifetime Value (LTV) in sales conversations. He states:

“One thing that I would always want to know is what's the lifetime value of a client. So if you acquire a client this year, how long will they stay? How much will they spend during that duration?”
— Bryan Neale [06:30]

Bill reinforces this by sharing a personal anecdote about his wife’s long-term relationship with her hairdresser, illustrating the substantial returns of nurturing long-term clients:

“I had to ask her this weekend, how did you even find him? She saw an ad 20 years ago and has been loyal ever since. If you sold that ad, the return couldn’t have cost you more than $50 or $100 to acquire one client, leading to a $50,000 lifetime value.”
— Bill Caskey [07:13]

This segment underscores the significance of understanding and communicating the long-term financial benefits of a client relationship, moving beyond immediate sales metrics.

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Challenging the Break-Even Mentality

A pivotal point in the episode is the hosts' critique of the prevalent break-even mindset in sales. Bryan points out:

“ROI isn't break even. Nobody wants it to pay for itself. Everybody wants a multiple. A typical business owner expects a 5x return on cash.”
— Bryan Neale [08:29]

Bill concurs, highlighting the necessity of aiming for substantial returns rather than mere cost recovery:

“ROI isn't break even. No owner of a business or investor wants it to break even. They want a multiple, like a 5x return on their investment.”
— Bill Caskey [08:34]

This discussion emphasizes that sales professionals should guide clients toward understanding significant financial gains rather than settling for minimal profitability.

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Storytelling Over ROI Calculators

The conversation shifts to the effectiveness of storytelling versus traditional ROI calculators. Bill expresses skepticism about rigid financial models:

“If you show me an ROI calculator created by your CFO and it doesn't work, I'll leave because our product isn't worth buying.”
— Bill Caskey [11:12]

Bryan elaborates on this by advocating for narrative-based ROI demonstrations:

“Through story, you're telling a narrative about a customer who experienced significant financial benefits, making the ROI feel more tangible and relatable.”
— Bryan Neale [11:34]

The hosts argue that storytelling humanizes financial data, making it easier for clients to grasp and relate to the potential economic benefits.

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Aligning with the Client’s Financial Vision

Understanding and aligning with the client's long-term financial goals is another critical theme. Bryan suggests probing clients about their future objectives:

“Ask your customer, what do you want this to look like five years down the road? What’s the end vision for this?”
— Bryan Neale [12:52]

Bill adds that delving into metrics like gross margin trends can provide deeper insights:

“Ask about trailing gross margin percentages and their projections. This helps in understanding not just the client's goals but also the financial trajectory they anticipate.”
— Bill Caskey [13:11]

By aligning sales strategies with the client’s financial aspirations, sales professionals can tailor their offerings to support long-term growth.

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Comprehensive Economic Assessment

The hosts advocate for a holistic approach to evaluating economic deals, considering both direct and indirect costs. Bryan emphasizes:

“There's a cost to everything, including not taking action. As a sales professional, you need to present the full picture, including implementation costs and the costs of maintaining the status quo.”
— Bryan Neale [14:09]

Bill agrees, stressing the importance of vetting economic deals to ensure they are genuinely beneficial for clients:

“Not every economic deal is a good economic deal. You need to drill down and determine whether the deal makes financial sense for the client.”
— Bill Caskey [20:16]

This comprehensive evaluation ensures that both the salesperson and the client are making informed, financially sound decisions.

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Integrity in Sales Conversations

A recurring theme is the importance of integrity when discussing financial aspects with clients. Bryan notes:

“You have to be of high integrity and present both the costs of solving a problem and the implications of not solving it. This builds trust and ensures transparent conversations.”
— Bryan Neale [14:03]

Bill echoes this sentiment, highlighting the ethical responsibility of sales professionals to prioritize the client's best interests:

“If every sales opportunity passes the economic test, something's wrong. It’s crucial to maintain objectivity and ensure that each deal is beneficial for the client.”
— Bill Caskey [20:03]

By maintaining integrity, sales professionals foster long-term relationships built on trust and mutual benefit.

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Practical Application and Closing Thoughts

As the episode concludes, the hosts encourage listeners to adopt a fearless and thorough approach to financial discussions in sales. Bryan advises:

“Be unafraid to investigate and explore the economic aspects with a prospect. Understand the real costs and benefits involved.”
— Bryan Neale [19:25]

Bill adds a final note on maintaining objective and ethical standards in every sales interaction:

“Not every deal is a good economic deal for your customer. Maintaining objectivity ensures that you’re not pushing deals that aren’t truly beneficial.”
— Bill Caskey [20:16]

The episode wraps up with an invitation to join their LinkedIn group for further discussions and live coaching sessions, reinforcing their commitment to helping sales professionals excel.

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Key Takeaways

1. Understand Lifetime Value (LTV): Recognize the long-term financial benefits of client relationships to effectively communicate ROI.
2. Avoid the Break-Even Trap: Aim for substantial returns (e.g., 5x ROI) instead of settling for minimal profit margins.
3. Embrace Storytelling: Use narrative-driven ROI demonstrations to make financial benefits more relatable and compelling.
4. Align with Client Goals: Delve into clients' long-term financial visions to tailor sales strategies that support their growth.
5. Conduct Comprehensive Economic Assessments: Evaluate both direct and indirect costs, including the costs of inaction, to present a full financial picture.
6. Maintain Integrity: Prioritize ethical conversations by ensuring that each deal is genuinely beneficial for the client.
7. Foster Trust Through Transparency: Build long-term relationships by being open and honest about financial implications.

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By addressing these aspects, Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale provide invaluable insights into enhancing sales conversations around money, ultimately leading to more informed, profitable, and trustworthy client relationships.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome back to the advanced selling podcast. I'm your host, Bill Caskey. My co host is Brian.

[A]

What about the intro?

[B]

We are the longest. Well, there we go. We're the longest running sales training podcast, podcast history. Google says that and we say that.

[A]

So does chat. GPT do they. Everybody says it now.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

All the cool kids are doing it.

[B]

So if you go to Google and say, what is the longest running sales training podcast, podcast history. Guess who? You'll see it's good.

[A]

LinkedIn group. LinkedIn group.

[B]

Yeah, we gave them an assignment last week.

[A]

I don't know that this will drop in time for them to know, does it? I don't think it does. Anyway, we'll. We're going live April 7th. If it's past April 7th, you missed it.

[B]

Oh, yeah. But you can go in the group and get. Let's see the recording of it though.

[A]

Okay, that's good. See what it's like. We're doing more of that, I think. And then go to the end. The insider. Go to the advancedlinkpodcast.com look, the insider. Join that program. We talk about that all the time. And great, great topics. Live coaching. Bill Casket Bill. I had the absolute honor. Now, I know we, you know, our podcast is listened to. People from people around the world listen to the event selling podcast. Some know that we're headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. You specifically are headquartered in Carmel, Indiana, which most people call Carmel. I had the great honor to be the keynote speaker at the Carmel Police Department Awards. Told me that last Friday and I got to do it. And it was fantastic to be around that group. I got to meet the mayor. Felt like I was like, you know, if it's the mayor over there. And I did say from the stage and I said, just be with me on this one. And so growing up, you know, in Indiana, Carmel kind of had a little. It's got a little, you know, a little reputation. Let's say People would think like, oh, it's caramel. Like the old fancy stuff and the fancy houses and the rich people and all these fancy things. And they started building roundabouts. And, you know, I'm like, oh, God, of course Carmel's gonna build roundabouts. Of course. Of course they're gonna do. But I gotta tell you, and I said this on the stage. I love caramel now. And I say this all the time. I hate that. I love caramel. I tried to hate him so much and I can't. It's just such a great community. So cheers for that. I did not get any get out of jail free cards. I got no, like business cards where you hand your license if you get pulled over. But what a great time to be with that group. And they have these awards. It's just stuff you don't know. They have these life saving awards. I don't think they call them people actually saved another human's life as part of their job. It's what they do. It's just so wild to think about. But they were fantastic. It was really, really great group.

[B]

That's good. Yeah, I know what you mean about that. I grew up here, so I never, I never had that experience of hating it. I was like, liked it. But I have a lot of people who have moved in and they're like Warren Central or, you know, Greenwood. A lot of Center Grove people. And Center Grove and Carmel have like this rival. They hate each other. But then they, they come up here like, oh, I wouldn't live anywhere else. Why would I live anywh.

[A]

That's true. It's a great community. So if you're ever passing through, give us a shout out. That'd be an interesting thing. There've got to be sales people that come to Indie. They'll listen to the podcast. Yeah, we'd love to meet you.

[B]

We did. We've done that a couple times.

[A]

There's got to be, you know, we got millions and millions of listeners. Don't be bashful there, people. And we can help you with connections, maybe, I don't know, but.

[B]

So now you're inviting people to have coffee with us.

[A]

I mean, got a beautiful pool out back. We're gonna sit, smoke cigars. Exactly. We have a listener meetup now.

[B]

We could do that once a month if we. Yeah, that would be. Or some version of that.

[A]

Some version.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Okay. Topic today we're gonna get into this. We're gonna talk about money. But it may be in a different way than we've talked about in the past. I had the good fortune to meet a accounting professor from Purdue University. We'll let that slide because I'm an IU Indiana guy.

[B]

Do you have a name?

[A]

Yep. Dr. Kohaki. Dr. K, as I call him. Not your typical accounting professor. I think I might have him on. I might have in my interview. He's a great, great. But he's got a little niche going where he's teaching, he's training and coaching salespeople on how to read income statements. Now his niche is really in big publicly traded companies where he uses a 10K, which is a. Filing a publicly traded company has to do to dig in to see what's going on. But he also does some very, very basic fundamental work around reading income statements and things, things like this. So I am not planning to go into that because I don't feel well versed to do that. What I am hoping we do here today, Bill, is just talk about where we are in the sales world when it comes to talking about investment in our product that we sell. Or the buzzy word that I think we should talk about a little bit is roi. People are always one, how do I get roi? That sort of thing. And so just talk a little bit if you're listening to this and think about how do I think about this, talk about it and that sort of thing. Because it, no matter what you do, what you sell, at some point the money's in the game and there's someone who's likely not in the process or if they are, it's lightly CFO or controller who's, or accountant, whomever is going to, poking around at pricing and terms and things like that and justification. So one of that's the topic for today.

[B]

I love the topic because I don't, I don't think we, and I'll, I'll say me, I don't think I am well enough versed sometimes or don't feel like I am in the topic of economics and, and accounting and, and investment to have a intelligent conversation. And, and part of that's because sometimes the customer doesn't know enough to have that intelligent. Like if I were to say to somebody, since we're in the business, you and I are of helping them acquire clients usually, then one thing that I would always want to know is what's the lifetime value of a client. So if you acquire a client this year, how long will they stay? How much will they spend during that duration? And if you don't know that, which most people don't, most companies don't, if you don't know that, how do you ever know how much to assign to a budget to acquire that client? Yes, I'm going to generate a client and every client is worth a million dollars over 10 years at least on average. What am I willing to invest to get that?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Am I willing to invest a hundred dollars? I hope yes. Willing to invest, yeah. So I think there are things that I sometimes am not comfortable with because I've asked it so many times and people don't have the answer. But what I need to do then is help, help guide them and lead them through what that calculation is.

[A]

That's great. We just had. This is. I know it's a consumer version, but I was. My wife got her hair done and she said this weekend and she said, I think this is the 20th year that I've been going to Chris. That's her hairdresser, he's in Zionsville, Indiana. I'm like, are you serious? 20 years. So it's on average, she's a once a month person, which is a lot. 12 times times 200 is 2400 a year. 2400 times 20 is. Bill, you're really good at math.

[B]

40, 45 grand.

[A]

5045 to $50,000. I asked her this weekend, how did you even find him? She said, funny you should ask. I saw an ad in one of those neighborhood mailers that come to your mailbox 20 years ago, and I didn't have a hairdresser, so I went there because I saw the ad. Now, if you're the one that sold that ad, the return, I can't imagine that cost Chris more than 50 or 100 bucks just to acquire one client. Nobody talks about lifetime value.

[B]

Nobody does.

[A]

And I'm not saying everyone's staying 20 years with Chris, but if anybody, if anybody stays three years with Chris, or if they say four years with Chris, or if two people stay two years, there's some math there to be had. It's the time horizon that people miss. People kind of look at. This is a huge mistake people make. ROI isn't break even. I, we, we hear salespeople say this. Well, you'll. It'll pay for itself. And. Exactly. No owner of a business or investor wants it to break even. Nobody wants it to pay for itself. Everybody wants a multiple. A typical business owner Multiple is a 5x a 20 return on cash. Right. And so you need to figure out when 5x comes, not when break even comes.

[B]

And that 5x is not a 20% return, though. 5x is a 200.

[A]

Is a 200. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Yes, 500. 5x of the investment is a 500% return on the investment. Right.

[A]

Over a five year. Yeah, I see this one that I said it wrong. So, yeah, just. We're not doing.

[B]

Yeah, your buddy now is an accountant.

[A]

So I gotta break it down. But it's a time horizon. It's a time horizon thing. So when do I get to that? If I invest a thousand dollars, at what point do I get $10,000 back from that or 5,000, whatever number you want to use. That's, that's the trick. And that could be three to five year time horizon. That could be. But don't get, stay out of this, break even, it pays for itself kind of mentality sort of thing. That's a thing I see people still do.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So the recipe for this then is you have to understand how money flows through your customers, company. So you even know how to portray your investment as a, as any kind of an roi. So if you. Yeah. So one thing I see sometimes if you're selling a product that is a cost or money saving thing like we're going to improve, reduce redundancy and you might not need as many full time employees. There's always a number associated with that. And if you're going to do that over five years, then you've got to extrapolate that whole thing. You can't just say this year because if a customer is going to save 100 grand every year for the next 10, that's got to figure into the calculation. I don't think we're good. I think you talked about the timer. I don't think we're good at really digging into what is the, what is the ROI on this. Instead of like you say, instead of you. You'll get your ROI back in six and a half months. Yeah, that's no help.

[A]

That's no help. No. And nobody wants to, you know, I don't want to just tread, tread water in a business. Either the cost reduction has to continue or the business has to continue to grow on the, from an income standpoint and not just like, oh, that's good, we'll break even. Then what? You know, Big miss. The other thing this comes from, I love, you know, we love Gong. We've had Ahmed, their founder on Gong's huge. Now, do you know that Bill Big, Big. They have a lot of data that says you should not do ROI calculations through calculators. You should only do ROI work through storytelling. And this is another big mistake I think people make. And some people are going to get mad because they do this like, well, we got an ROI calculator. You know, our, our c, our CFO put together an ROI calculator and you run it through the ROI calculator. That'll show them people that doesn't make.

[B]

Anyone move what it sounds like a C and see how school you are.

[A]

Yes. And that's what. So show me an ROI calculator. When you plug in all the math, it doesn't work. And you go, sorry sir, it didn't work. I'm gonna go ahead and leave now. Because our, our stuff's not worth you buying. That never happens. So it's loaded. It's loaded. Drives me crazy.

[B]

So through story then means you're telling story about another customer who experienced a benefit, a financial windfall or whatever, but you're, you're being more story and emotional about it versus just the intellectual spreadsheet.

[A]

That's it. Totally. So if you work with a sales team of 10 people, and the top two people were averaging a million dollars over three years after they plugged our system in, that million dollars went to a million four at the same margin and that number spit out and then that we suspect will sustain itself and, or grow for three to five years. And that gives you, that's how you get to your return. But you show the actual math of the client, not the calculator that you create, your CFO created. That makes you look really good.

[B]

I think another thing people miss and, and it's not easy to do. But if, let's say I'm, let's say I'm selling, you know, telecom gear, equipment, and, and I sell high end stuff, cloud base, I mean the whole, you know, everything digital I sell. And, and I ask my customer, well, what, what do you want this to look like five years down the road? What, what's the, what's the end vision for this? Because in many ways I think the end vision will lead to an economic calculation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Versus having no vision. Oh, I just want to get this problem solved. It becomes hard to monetize the value of that. What do you think about how we ask that question of vision and where you go, where do you want this to be in five years or two years or whatever? How do you feel about that?

[A]

I think it's fantastic. There's, this is some stuff that Dr. K digs into a bit with publicly traded companies. You could ask it of a business owner though too. You can ask for their trailing. You could just say, hey, last three years, like gross margin percentage, is it going up, down, or staying flat? That's just an easy question. I didn't know what gross margin is, but you can ask that and then you can say Bill's question. So it's been trending up, but it seems like it's, it's flattening out. What do you anticipate it looking like? Or what do you want it to look like in the next three to five? They may at all say, well, we want it to go up, but I do want some guidance there, like by how much? Right, by how much. And that's the part we miss. We do miss that, yes. Because we just go, oh, we want to go up, or we're gonna, we're gonna drive costs out of the system. But how many costs and what. To what degree and what's the cost of driving the cost out?

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Everyone just like, harps on this, like, oh, all the positive news.

[B]

There's a cost to everything. And there's everything you're going to do. There's a cost to everything you're not going to do. So if we, if we put it on the scale. Scale of justice and we say, there's always going to be a cost of buying from me because there's going to be outlay, but there's also going to be costs of implementation and taking your people off the road for whatever. But there is also a cost to not doing anything, to living with the problem. You, as a sales professional need to be savvy about both of those. If you're only finding out what the cost of the problem is and you're not being fair by saying, look, it's not only $20,000 a month, but also you're going to incur another 1500 dollars a month through Facebook ads or whatever, you're not really looking at the whole picture either. You can't expect them to look at the whole picture if you're not willing to. So I think you've really got to be of high integrity here and say, look, I'm going to be asking you some questions about cost of the problem, implement implementation, implications of not solving it. And I'm also, I'm going to tell you exactly what it's going to cost to solve it. Now you're getting the full picture, as are they.

[A]

Yes. And if we're doing this right, not every economic deal that we sell is a good economic deal. So this should be an off point for a lot of processes. Not the lot is a vague word, but if you, if a hundred percent of them pass the economic test, I think something's wrong. Personally, I don't think every sales opportunity you have is an economically good deal for a customer. That just makes no sense to me whatsoever. And so you've got to drill down and figure out how to vet that out. And I bet you're losing some deals that you don't know you're losing because you haven't done this. You think you're losing for other reasons, but you haven't done any of this. Therefore, they're not compelled to do anything forward. And they say, well, no, it's just not a good time for us right now. But you didn't do any compelling math out to show them. Like, I had a client who had a deal stuck, and I asked her. Her name's Anna. She's an awesome, awesome sales leader. She said, it's huge deal. Kind of stuck with some person retiring one of those deals. I said, and I know what she does for a living. They use. They help healthcare systems collect money. I said, how much are they? So when you plug your software in and it starts going, how much extra will you collect in your. Because they do all this data, it's like, yeah. She goes at the very, very low end. It's about $40,000 a month. I'm like, okay. So every month they delay because the CEO's retiring and she wants to wait till the new CFO. Every month is another 40 grand. And are they comfortable going to the shareholders or the board and saying, yeah, we had a chance to recover this 40 grand every month five months ago. So now we're at negative 200 that we could have gotten. And once you miss. Because there's a collection window you miss, you can't go back. That's the kind of stuff that people aren't doing. And even Anna who called, she was like, oh, my God, yeah, we need to go back to that. Because people just overlook.

[B]

We overlook it, or we're not comfortable with. With having those conversations, or we just. We never did it. So now we have no. We have no basis. We don't have the 20 grand a month figure to work with.

[A]

Exactly. And we checklist it. Once we do it, we go, okay, we're. It's a good economic deal. Now let's go try to get the deal closed. And we've. We've. Don't talk about it again for four months. We talk about the logistics and the legal documents and the contract and the onboarding. We forget that there's an economic reason we're doing it.

[B]

Can I, Can I bring up another topic that fits along with this? Excuse me. And that is once you understand the economics and they're clear about it and they say, oh, yeah, we want to get. We want to get from 20 million to $30 million in revenue here in the next three years. And we know we. Our people need help, that's not enough, because at some point, they still have to believe. They have to, you know, capital B, believe that you're the person that can help them get there. Not just that they want to get here just because you're the One that shines a light on the numbers doesn't mean they believe you can help them. Now, it's better if you do shine the light, I think from, from a belief standpoint than if you don't. But you still have to be able to say, look, based on what you're telling me and based on where you want to get from where you are now, here's the best way I can, I believe a map to help you get to that end result. And you've got, that's where another place you got to have stories. You got to have, you got to have some, some heft there or it's just a, it's just a number sitting out there. And I've, I've, I've not bought from people who have been pretty good at the financial part, telling me what the pain is, but terrible at the belief part.

[A]

Yes. Yeah. And, and what you say, I'm glad because I instantly, I thought story and you just have to tell you just to show them here are all the things that occur and it doesn't all occur at once. That's the other thing that people don't realize. I think they're going to flip this software on. It's going to instantly work and change things or I'm going to bring Bill in and my sales are going to shoot through the roof. We're working with a client right now. Is very clear about that. Like you're not going to see this major lift early in two months. You're just not. And so we can't go looking for that super clear, documented what we, here's what we can see. But that puts us on a path to an economic thing that is very substantial, which we know also. So I love that.

[B]

Yeah. So let us know in the, in the group chat on LinkedIn if you have, have some thoughts here. Maybe a lesson that you got from this. I don't know that it's formulaic like step one, step two, step three. I think it's more, let's get our minds right about the numbers and the math and as you call it, the compelling math. And let's be unafraid and fearless about investigating and exploring that with a prospect. And don't be, don't be afraid about going back and saying, okay, you had this problem for the last seven years, so do you feel like it's cost you 20 grand a month? Oh, at least that. Maybe more. And so what's, what's the plan of changing? Well, that's why you're here, Bill.

[A]

Yes, yes. Yeah. And think, too. Not every deal is a good economic deal for your customer. Not every deal from your desk is not. Is a good economic deal. If that's the case, you've lost objectivity. Now. You're a bad intention salesperson.

[B]

Yeah. So that's good. Excellent. Good job. All right, so we're going to be doing another live here sometime soon. So we did one back in back in April on April 7, and we had a few people on. They liked it. So we'll probably be doing another. We'll let you know. But make sure you join the LinkedIn group. Definitely.

[A]

All right. See you next time.

[B]

All right, see you.

[A]

Bye.