What Ultra High Achievers Say (Part 3 of 3)

Summary

The Advanced Selling Podcast: What Ultra High Achievers Say (Part 3 of 3) – Detailed Summary

Release Date: December 9, 2024
Hosts: Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale

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Introduction to the Episode

In this third installment of their series on ultra high achievers, Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale delve into the specific language and communication strategies that set ultra high achievers apart in the sales arena. Building on insights from the first two episodes—where they explored the mindset and actions of ultra high achievers—this episode focuses on the verbal nuances and conversational techniques that drive their exceptional performance.

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Key Topics and Discussions

1. Contextualizing the Customer’s Needs

• Understanding the Customer’s Position: Ultra high achievers excel at assessing where the customer is in their journey, rather than where the salesperson hopes the customer to be. This involves recognizing the customer’s current knowledge level and emotional state.
  • Notable Quote:
    Bill (02:34): "The language we use up front when we are speaking with the potential customer matters. We need to meet them where they are."

2. Empathetic Language

• Building Emotional Connections: High achievers use empathetic language to connect with customers both intellectually and emotionally. They acknowledge the customer's feelings and potential anxieties, especially when navigating complex or intimidating products.
  • Notable Quote:
    Bryan (08:27): "If you're expecting your verbosity to help people understand and you're not drawing pictures or telling stories or metaphors, it's your fault if the customer doesn't understand."

3. Effective Storytelling

• Structured and Purposeful Stories: Ultra high achievers are adept storytellers who introduce relevant anecdotes succinctly to illustrate points without becoming tedious. Their stories typically have a clear beginning, middle, and end, enhancing the overall communication.
  • Notable Quote:
    Bill (11:00): "High achievers are really good at bringing stories into the conversation without being laborious."

4. Comfort with Financial and Mathematical Conversations

• Navigating Complex Financial Discussions: Exceptional salespeople are comfortable discussing financial metrics and accounting concepts, allowing them to engage confidently with stakeholders like CFOs. This proficiency helps in accurately addressing and leveraging economic impacts of their solutions.
  • Notable Quote:
    Bill (16:01): "Ultra high achievers are really good at talking about math, understanding cash flow, and how their solutions impact a business financially."

5. Ability to Disagree Positively

• Maintaining Integrity While Challenging Customers: High achievers can respectfully disagree with customers when necessary, using this as an opportunity to guide conversations toward more beneficial solutions. They balance assertiveness with empathy to preserve the customer’s integrity.
  • Notable Quote:
    Bill (13:43): "You can tell them that their thinking is ridiculous if you say it right, with a smile and genuine concern."

6. Mastering the Pivot in Conversations

• Seamlessly Transitioning from Inquiry to Explanation: Ultra high achievers know when and how to pivot from gathering information to presenting solutions. This transition, often referred to as "the big pivot," is executed smoothly to maintain the flow and keep the customer engaged.
  • Notable Quote:
    Bryan (14:14): "The pivot is that time when you switch from being an inquirer to an explainer."

7. Patience and Timing in Conversations

• Waiting for the Right Moment: Patience is crucial during the pivot. High achievers allow moments to settle before transitioning, avoiding abrupt changes that can disrupt the customer’s emotional state and the conversation’s momentum.
  • Notable Quote:
    Bill (15:45): "You have to have patience to the pivot, don’t you? You’ve got to let it be for a second."

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Insights and Analysis

• Language Alignment: Ultra high achievers prioritize aligning their language with the customer’s level of understanding and emotional state. This ensures clarity and builds trust, as customers feel genuinely understood and supported.

• Structured Communication: Through effective storytelling and clear structuring of conversations, high achievers maintain engagement and convey their messages more effectively. Their ability to tell concise, relevant stories helps in illustrating key points without losing the audience’s attention.

• Financial Acumen: Comfort with financial discussions allows ultra high achievers to address and anticipate complex questions from financially savvy stakeholders, positioning themselves as knowledgeable and reliable partners.

• Respectful Challenge: The ability to disagree respectfully enables high achievers to guide conversations constructively, helping customers see alternative perspectives and making well-informed decisions.

• Smooth Transitions: Mastery of the conversation pivot ensures that high achievers can transition seamlessly between understanding customer needs and presenting tailored solutions, maintaining a cohesive and persuasive dialogue.

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Conclusions

Ultra high achievers distinguish themselves in sales through their exceptional communication skills, empathetic language, and strategic conversational techniques. By contextualizing customer needs, employing effective storytelling, handling financial dialogues with ease, and knowing when to pivot, these top performers foster deeper connections and drive superior sales outcomes. Their ability to balance assertiveness with empathy and patience further solidifies their status as leaders in the sales profession.

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Additional Notable Quotes

• Bryan on Self-Awareness:
  Bryan (09:31): "To do that, I think you have to have an element of self-awareness which is back to the mindset which we talked about."

• Bill on Economic Impact:
  Bill (18:00): "When we start talking about the economic impact, they feel it becomes so real, it changes their decision-making process."

• Bryan on Investment Questions:
  Bryan (19:35): "If you don’t think that’s on their mind, it is. And the better you can be about understanding the exact nature of the problem and the economics of it, the better."

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This episode provides valuable insights into the verbal strategies that ultra high achievers employ to excel in sales. By adopting these techniques, sales professionals can enhance their communication, build stronger relationships with customers, and achieve greater success in their careers.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome everybody to the advanced selling podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcasts. My name is Brian Neal.

[B]

18 years and going strong. I'm Bill Caskey.

[A]

How fun is that? I'm actually in my. I got out of bed. You know, I've been doing these episodes at home in the basement. Nothing fancy, bad studio, decent audio, good audio. But we, we started early and I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna get up. I had a Thursday game, so I'm clean to get here and it's good. Little groggly. Got a little, a little cold.

[B]

Yeah, but I like it. I like the little gr.

[A]

Not to. We. We're continuing a series. You've heard our previous two episodes. We've talked about this ultra high achiever and we examined a little bit about how ultra high achievers think. In episode one. Episode two, we did how ultra what ultra high achievers do. And today we're going to talk about what do ultra high achievers say? Which would be a good thing.

[B]

Okay, I've got a story that fits perfectly that will bring us into the. The language part of high achievement.

[A]

Okay, I'm ready.

[B]

I was at the ATT store the other day because I bought a new phone, the 16 Pro Max. Oh, and, and the screen cover was cracked in a couple places and I took it in, I said, well, I, you know, I just bought this thing. And he goes, oh, if you sit, if you sit on your phone, put your phone in your back pocket, that can happen. I'm like, I've had screensavers for the last 15 years. I've never had that happen. Anyway, so as I'm waiting for him to put the screensaver, you know, the screen on and he's doing all the jacking around with it, a lady comes in and the other AT&T attendant comes up, says, hi, how can I help you? And she says, well, I'm thinking about buying a Apple watch for my 12 year old daughter. And the lady says, well, okay, okay. And you could tell the way that the customer was speaking that there was not a lot of familiarity with things. It was just she was using the wrong language and she was kind of nervous about it. She a very attractive and seemed like a professional woman, but she wasn't familiar. And that lady should have known that. The customer agent, service agent says, are you thinking about series nine or series ten? And the lady said, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. She goes, well, if you're thinking about series nine, you can just get Those on Facebook, Marketplace.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And the lady, and I'm looking at her and she glances over at me and she kind of. I'm smiling, kind of shaking my head like, oh, this is not good. And she smiled at me. And then we. We hugged. No. And. And the questions. And it was obvious that this agent was not. Was not well trained. And I think this gets back to meeting the customer from a language standpoint where they are, not where you hope they are or where you'd like them to be, but where they are. And this person just did not do it. So one thing led to another. She left the store. I walked out too, because I was done. I said, excuse me, ma'am, I said. And she laughed. She knew. I think she knew I was observing. I said, how was that overall experience for you? It was terrible. She said, I actually wanted to buy an Apple watch. I would have bought an Apple watch, but I didn't understand what she was talking about. She noticed. And I said, what are you going to do? She goes, I'm going to go to another ATT store or Verizon or whatever.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I just feel like some. And the question is, do we do this as sales professionals inadvertently? I know we don't mean to do that. That was an extreme example. But I think the language we use up front when we are speaking with the potential customer matters. And so that's why I'm really glad that we're getting into this today.

[A]

I wonder if that's an independently owned store or a company store. I'm always curious about that because I know some of them are independently owned, some of them are owned corporately. And I get the, you know, the pool of candidates is the baby boomers retire. It's a thing. Then you get some generational things there about people's ability to work and do things a certain way as a deal. And the topic today is ultra high achievers. It's not even just basic fundamental stuff. And as I think about, I love thinking about this. This is kind of a weird thing to think about on both sides. If you think of anything, any endeavor, we talk to salespeople. So you're a salesperson. If you're listening to this, somewhere on the earth is the. We would argue is the best salesperson that there is like, or, you know, makes the most money or has the highest revenue. And then somewhere there's the worst. And like, in all sales teams to take it down, there's 20 salespeople. There's number one, there's number 20. There's also that this is the scary part for pilots and surgeons, which really scares the hell out of me. When you think about flying on Delta, there's a Delta pilot who's the best pilot in the fleet. There's also the guy gal who's the worst, which is kind of scary. Same with surgeons. But since we're doing the ultra high achievement, we're in that like 0.1% of people. And I'm wondering, in the ATT world, somewhere in that ecosystem there's a number one salesperson and what would that person have said when that woman walked in and said, I'm thinking about buying an Apple watch? Probably not. Would you like the 9 or 10? Probably not that.

[B]

No.

[A]

No. So my first observation about ultra high achievers when they're faced in a, with a conversation is they are brilliant at contextualizing what is going on. They see everything. So an ultra high achiever would notice that this woman seemed to by her question, not have a lot of knowledge about Apple watches at all. Like none whatsoever.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so to contextualize that and make that woman feel safe, because some people, especially these days in technology, when people age, they feel stupid going to buy technology. They come in feeling stupid or, you know, inadequate. Right?

[B]

I do and I'm pretty technical, pretty savvy with it. But sometimes if it's a new technology, then it is confusing. And the problem is, and this, this is part of the high achiever language thing is if, if you're expecting your verbosity to help people understand and you're not drawing pictures or, or telling stories or metaphors or backgrounds or helping them put the pieces together, if you're just babbling and high achievers don't babble. But if you're babbling and then you can't figure out why your customer doesn't understand your technology, it's your fault, right? Not theirs. I mean they're, they're doing the best they can. But I, I remember when I worked at Hag Drug. You probably don't remember. Hag.

[A]

Hag Drug, Are you kidding me? My massage person, Karen, her dad was the president of Hague Drugstore.

[B]

What's her name?

[A]

Karen Wiltrout or I don't know her maiden name. I don't know her mate. Yeah, I don't remember. He, he's Syrian. Syrian guy. He's a pharmacist.

[B]

Huh. Anyway, well, there was a, Everyone listening.

[A]

Like, what are they talking about? It's a local Indianapolis drugstore. Yeah, cbs.

[B]

It's no longer people's Drugs.

[A]

I'll get you a hat.

[B]

The point is with all this lost. My point, sorry, is that my boss, Ron Skibby, used to have a pat a paper pad. And it went at the top it said avoid verbal reports. Avr. Avoid verbal reports. And the idea there was write it down. Show people. And I think that's the same thing when we're dealing with technology or something that you understand, but your customer may not because they don't understand everything you do. Because they're not in the business 20 hours a day like you are.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So figure out a way to, to draw pictures when you're explaining how things work. If it's, if it's elementary too much so for the customer, they'll say, oh no, no, I get it, Brian.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

But sometimes nobody's really explained it to them.

[A]

That's right. And so contextualizing is a thing that I observe. High, ultra high achieving people do really, really well. The second thing I see that they say verbally really well. They're very good at empathetic language. They're very good. When you said earlier, meet them where they're at. In my mind I started to think of people that I know and they're very, very comfortable saying to people things like, I know this can be super confusing. I, I know the kids these days, you know, they really, really, you know, you're worried you're going to buy the wrong thing or whatever because that instant little connection of empathy meets the person not just where they're at intellectually. Like I don't understand what a difference between a 9 and a 10 is, but it meets them where they are emotionally, which is really, really important. More, more important would argue, more important than educating them. The difference between a 9 and a 10. So I see ultra high achiever people really, really good at empathetic language.

[B]

That's really good. I was. And to do that, I think you have to have an element of self awareness which is back to the mindset which we talked about. But we have to, you know, it's like in basketball or football. Quarterback. No, that's your favorite sport. Quarterback has to see a lot of what's going on. If, if the quarterback, his mind is only set to one receiver and that's all he's looking at, then there'll be people open wide, all wide open. They'll never see them. That's one thing about Brady and Peyton Manning, these amazing quarterbacks. Rod. They, they saw the field and they could take snapshots of the field. Dan Kahneman called it thinking fast and thinking Slow. And they have the ability to take snapshots. So they know if they're looking down here out of the corner of their eye, they know this guy's going to go left and then posts go right. And. And most quarterbacks can't do that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's why, you see, I think a lot of, you know, NFL quarterbacks struggling in the passing game and anyway, that's a whole different topic. But the point there is we've got to be able to be aware of those things so that if we show up, we're not talking about series nine or 10. We're staying, stepping back and saying, I wonder where this customer is on their journey. Yes, they're inviting me into the office, but wonder where they are. Maybe we should spend a little time figuring that out.

[A]

Yeah, Fantastic.

[B]

Okay. The second thing I had, I think you got too. So I got to catch up with you is I think High Achievers are good storytellers. Not like long, laborious, tedious stories, but a story that they've selected that works for the situation. So if you're doing a presentation, if a high Achievers doing a presentation, let's say it's face to face in front of a few people, tell a story about how you've arrived at the presentation that you're about to deliver. You know, I want to share with you before we get into the show slideshow here in the preso, I wanted to share with you kind of how we've arrived at this point. And, you know, we used to do it this way, now we do it this way. Or our company was. It could be a company story, but something to bring the customer up to speed so they're. They're connected with you. And that's the great thing about stories. Unfortunately, even though everybody talks about telling good stories, I'm not sure how good we are at them. And so that's one of the skills I think from a language standpoint High Achievers have is they're really good bringing stories into the conversation without being. Without becoming tedious.

[A]

Yes. They know, like all good stories have a beginning, middle and end. Ultra High achievers are really good at ending. That's where most people suck. They don't know how to stop a store. And then we did, and then with this, and then, and then. And it just doesn't work if you.

[B]

Catch yourself like I did earlier, saying, oh, no, where was I? Probably because the story is too long.

[A]

Because I interrupted you. Here's another thing going a little different direction that I see. Ultra High Achieving salespeople verbally do really well is they are very comfortable in disagreeing with a customer in a sales process. And a whole lot of salespeople who are relationship oriented do not know how to do this. And it is okay. And I see people do it. To say to a customer, I think that would be a mistake. They'll say things like the ultra achievement have. No, they have complete detachment because they have good intention with what that kind of statement is going to do. Where average to even above average people who are pretty good do get. Do a lot of agreeable type language. Oh yeah, totally agree. Oh yeah, that would be awesome. Oh yeah. Yes. And it's that kind of real positive versus Go versus someone going, I don't think you need that or I think you're good where you are or I think it would be a mistake to not do this, things like that. So in a very kind way that the trick on that goes back to our first episode of how the ultra high achievers think, which is good intention. If you're good, if you have good intention, good attachment, you can say anything you want. It's very, very clean. You're very clean. So I see ultra high achievement people do that. And most of you listening are I almost guarantee will be more relationship oriented and you're much more comfortable in them. Oh yeah, yeah.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

Oh totally. Yes.

[B]

Well, we've been taught from an early age to not to be disagreeable.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And in sales, you know, don't pick a fight with your prospect or however you have learned that. But I think there's a way to challenge them in a way that keeps them, preserves their integrity. Integrity keeps them. Okay, that's the trick.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Is doing it with a smile and with a general generous concern for the well being of your customer. You can tell them that their thinking is ridiculous if you say it right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think high achievers have that. Here's one thing that I find the ultra successful do is especially in sales is you know, you're going through a process and the process is you're asking them questions and you're trying to find out the lay of the land and understand their dilemmas and you're trying to find out where their problems are, what they're trying to accomplish, all that, all that stuff, I'll call it inquiry, you're inquiring. But at some point there is a pivot that has to happen to where you make your offer or you talk about how you work or you talk about the kinds of solutions you offer. I think the ultra high achievers are really savvy at when that pivot happens and how to do it gracefully. Because if I'm inquiring and inquiring and they're talking and I'm writing notes and everything's fine, I think you, you screw it up if you just say, okay, let me tell me about, let me tell you right now about what we do. I think it's like, whoa, whiplash, what's going on here. Especially if they're in an emotional state where they're actually sharing more and you know, they're not emotional unless they're sharing something of value to you and what the problems are. So high achievers are good at the pivot. They call it the big pivot. It's, it's that time when you switch from being an inquirer to an explainer.

[A]

I love it. Patience to the pivot. You have to have patience to the pivot, don't you? You got to let it be for a second. Everyone's antsy to get there on a team.

[B]

Oh, it's all, it's always. We've been, we think about that. From one.

[A]

Yeah. Patience of the pivot. I like that. The pivot. I've got one more. That might be. You might go, oh, I didn't see that coming. It just popped. Literally just popped in my head.

[B]

That's why we do these.

[A]

I think ultra high achieving salespeople are really good at talking about math. I think the best salespeople that I've seen are very comfortable. When we start talking, and I'm not talking about ROI calculators, I'm talking about being able to converse with the CFO who's managing an income statement and a balance sheet and or evaluation of a firm and cash flow and all those things. I think the ultra high achieving people are very comfortable in that conversation. And a lot of pretty good salespeople are way less comfortable.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

Just understanding what cash flow is and what it does to evaluation of a business or what payment terms do or anything like that. And I think the good to above average people miss sometimes what the high achiever doesn't miss, which is what a CFO is trying to accomplish with something like a term. We just, we've got a really big expansion deal that, that we just are working through. We've got, we don't have. I don't think we've got a contract as of today, so I'm always careful about that. But the CFO wanted to pay the full contract up front. And most People go, well, yeah, that's great, you know, but we just got to understand the reasons why. And I understand a little bit about why they're doing it to do with the, you know, tax liability and things like that. Just to understand math and be able to talk about it comfortably, I think is a really, really good skill to develop. And Ultra Achievers are really good at that.

[B]

You know, that's good. I would even take it. That's a great one. I did not. I did not.

[A]

Nobody saw that. Me either. Like, there it is.

[B]

But it's also accounting. As part of that is math slash accounting. How. How does the customer account. You're going in and you're going to make a recommendation for a solution that's going to make them a million dollars or it's going to improve their leads or reduce their cost. Do you know how the math works when you are. They're fully realized and optimized with your solution?

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Because that influences how you charge them. When you talk about money, it influences a lot of things. I was on a call last week with a company, and they have 100 sales agents and 12 sales leaders. And the conversation was about, how do we train the leaders to train the sales agent salespeople. They're a European company. And we started talking about, what's the impact of this? What's the economic impact? And they said, oh, it could be $50 million. And I said, well, walk me through that.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Because what it came down to was it probably wasn't 50, it was more like 30. But by the time we got to the working out the math, it became so real for them that I could just feel a change in the room. It felt like they were like, how quickly can we get this done? Because then I said, how are you guys going to pay? I mean, are you going to have. They have an alliance with one of the big platforms? Are you going to have them pay for it? Oh, yeah, we're going to pay half. They're going to pay half.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How's that going to work? And they were very. And it gave me the freedom to ask those, you know, investment questions because we'd worked through the math already.

[A]

That's fantastic.

[B]

So even if you just do it for yourself.

[A]

Yes, but.

[B]

But even better than that, they. If. If you're not working through. Through it with them, they may not be working through it on their own.

[A]

Yes, it'll. It'll live in the cost expense bucket even outside of, you know, like, boy, it's a lot. And then what they. What I have found people will do. And high ultra achievers are really good at redirecting. This is. They'll start to think of what else they could get for that same amount of money. In our world with Bill and me, it's usually, oh, I could hire three salespeople for that amount. And you could. And then those people would re. Remain unskilled or under processized or not have a mechanism and you put them onto a bad machine. It's just like putting like cheap tires onto a race car.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

It's not gonna, it's not gonna make it faster. We get, we get four tires for that. Yeah, but if your race car is not tuned up, if it's not dialed in, it's still not going to go any faster.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or it's going to go marginally faster at best. So.

[B]

Yeah, I think you bring up a good point. Is there. There's always that what else could I invest in using this money? And if you don't think that's on their mind. It is. And the better you can be about understanding the exact nature of the problem and the economics of it, it allows those other things to dissipate. Because now the person's like, oh no, we have to do this based on what we just went through. $10 million. We can't find another hundred thousand dollar investment that'll help us get $10 million.

[A]

That's great. It's fantastic.

[B]

Yeah. So that concludes our. That concludes this test.

[A]

In the emergency good old days.

[B]

This test has been. Oh boy. I went through that the other day with my wife. I said, I still remember that from college radio. And I could go through it. And I did for her. And she was not impressed.

[A]

We should an episode on things that we say to our wives that don't impress them but to impress each other. That impresses me, actually.

[B]

Well, when I used to listen to the Cincinnati Reds on radio, Joe Knoxall and Marty Brenneman and they. After the first pitch, always after the first pitch, they would go pitch number one. And this game is underway. This broadcast authorized under broadcasting rights granted by Cincinnati Reds baseball and the express limited concern of anybody is expressly prohibited. And we used to do that for our football games when I did it. Yeah. There was nobody licensing or anything.

[A]

Fantastic.

[B]

Anyway, good old days. All right, I'll see you next week.

[A]

Bye.