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I used to hate sales. I detested it. This book basically unpacks everything I've learned in my life and career and added nuance and detailed case studies that really helped me understand why what I did for the last 25 years worked. I'm going to cover the five biggest lessons I've learned by reading Socratic Selling by Kevin Daly. Let's start with number one, dollar rise to value. Which is to mean to sell money, you don't want to sell services, you don't even want to sell benefits, you want to sell money back to the buyer or to the client. What Kevin's talking about here in terms of dollarizing the value is everything that we do as a service provider or even a product has a value to the mind of the client. So what we need to do is to explain to them explicitly what value they're going to get as a return on their investment. So for every hundred dollars you spend or every $10,000 you spend, here's what you're going to get in terms of real value versus soft, touchy feely things. So when we sell brand design or identity design, what is it that we're really selling? Most of the times the mistake that we make is we sell services, we sell deliverables. How many logos, how many iterations you're going to get when we should be trying to figure out how does doing this service, identity design in this case advance the business forward? What is it actually doing for the business? Will it save them money? Will it make them money? Will it improve customer experience? And then find out the actual value of that. And once you're able to dollarize the value, the price won't seem as much given the relative value that's created. Well, most creatives don't even speak this language and think about what they're doing as having material impact on the business. They're too stuck on creating this premium feeling and focus almost always on aesthetic value, which to a non discerning buyer doesn't actually mean that much to them. Let me rephrase this a different way. There are some people in your family that just don't care about what it is that they wear. You can try to tell them the values of wearing luxury brands and they don't. They're actually anti brand. So instead of speaking to them in your language, speak to them in their language, the language which they care about. So for my dad it could just be convenience or durability or the fact that it's made in the usa. Those are things he cares about. But we want to take it a step further and find out what it is that they value and how by paying you money to do something, it's going to achieve a real business result. Now to discover what's really valuable to them. That leads me to the power of asking open ended questions. This is where the client actually sells themselves. You've heard me say this before. When you're saying it, you're selling. When they say it, you're closing. What Kevin talks about is he starts off with an anecdote about this person who approaches sales in a very different way in ancient times. And instead of saying, you should buy this, these are the virtues and values and the benefits of buying this thing. They were engaging in conversation and dialogue, asking open ended questions that were centered around what the other person wanted, where they were in their current state and where they'd like to be in their desired future state, and understanding the bridge between the two and the obstacles that stood in the way. The customer starts to realize how important it is that they achieve this goal and what the real obstacles are standing in their way. And by asking these kinds of questions, they feel a sense of levity, a sense of clarity in terms of what they need to do next. Although they do most of the talking, they sign most of that value to you because what you did was you created space for them to think and to articulate what was important to them. This is why you need to really understand the power of asking open ended questions. Here's an example from the book itself of how most sales presentations go and how not to do it. Most sales presentations goes with the salesperson does a presentation, a pitch, a capabilities deck, then they talk about their company and their products and then they start asking questions and this is exactly the wrong way to do it. Because in the mind of the buyer, when all you've been doing is talking about yourself the entire time, not once do they feel like, do you understand my problem? Do you understand what I'm going through? They're not feeling seen, heard, nor understood. They have to just bear through the part where you talk about yourself the entire time. And if you're really lucky, some of what you're saying is going to hit what they need, but more often not. You're just talking about things they don't care about. So what happens then? They start to tune out. So let's do this instead. The transition that Kevin Daly talks about in this book is usually you have a meeting and you have prepared materials and then the prospect's going to say to You. And they're kind of complicit in this setup. They're going to say, so, what are we talking about today? And that's when you typically kick into your presentation mode. But instead of saying that, say this instead. I prepared a full presentation for you today, but before I get into it, I'd like to find out what's important to you. What is it that you're looking to accomplish? What are the challenges that you're facing? Where are you today, and where would you like to be? What's on your mind? What's the reason that's motivating this conversation today? Those are really great questions. And then you can flip it. If you do this, it shows that I'm prepared. I have lots of things I can show you. But, you know, what's more important than me giving you a presentation is finding out what's really important to you. I'm going to pull directly from the book at this point here. So the script goes something like this. The Socratic opener. So here's the example, Mr. Jones. I prepared to talk to you about brand identity design, which we discussed on the phone. Now, if you could give me your perspective on that, we can focus the meeting on what interests you. That's the exact Socratic opener. Now, once you open up the questions, it's going to lead to the next point, which is full value listening. What is full value listening? What you're doing here is you're communicating explicitly and implicitly to the prospect, to the buyer, that everything they say is important. And the mistake that we make a lot of times is we've been told this before. In order to connect with people, we need to make eye contact with them. Look me in the eyes when you're talking to me. You've heard your parents say this. You should always look people in the eye. Your teachers, everybody that you're talking to, as a sign of respect. Here's what happens when someone is talking, telling you all their problems and their challenges and objectives they want to accomplish. When you look at them in the eye, they're thinking, is any of this being retained? Do you remember all this detail? So instead of looking at a person in the eye, here's what I want you to do. Bring a notepad with you. Write down what they say. I don't mean to be a courtroom reporter where you record every single thing, but write down key bullet points, facts, colors, information, challenges, and pain points. And then when they're done talking, you can circle back and ask them any question about things that were Unclear. You can unpack the suitcase. Words, words that have multiple meanings. So you literally have to unpack it and pull out the things that it's to meant means be careful of hearing those words because it can send you down a different direction. He writes in the book, a tape recorder remembers everything but understands nothing. This is very important that you listen, that you record, but then you play back, showing that you understand what is being said. That is the power of full value listening. Now, I know this is a slap in the face of everyone who's ever thought this before, but I'm going to tell it to you right now. When talking to a prospect, it's less important that you make eye contact with them and more important that you actually take notes and show them that you care. Every person who's in a position of power, in this case your potential client or prospect or buyer, wants to feel powerful. And people that are in charge, that are powerful when they speak, people take notes. And that's what you should do, take notes. This leads me to the next point, which is all sales is about the past. We are so eager to get to the future, which is we close a deal, we do the work and we get paid that we oftentimes will just run right over the most important things. Somewhere in the client's timeline in their history in the past, a problem existed that warranted this conversation. Today, when that problem hits a boiling point, they take action. This is oftentimes referred to as a compelling event. So before we can go to the future, we must go to the past. We must go back and say, well, what has happened in the past that's caused this conversation to happen today? What warrants this conversation? And they're going to tell you, and they're going to say, well, here's the thing, we got behind it. And now there's an event that's happening in a couple of weeks or months, and my team is scrambling to make things happen. And we heard that you're very good at being able to do things quickly at a very high level. There's a lot of things that are counting on this going well. You see what has happened there. You've uncovered so much beautiful, valuable information. What's important, why they reached out to you, what kind of stress and pressure they're under now. Before you quickly move on to the middle and the later parts of closing the sale, you want to put your finger on the pain. You want them to relive the pain. Kevin talks about this in the book quite a bit. The way you help them to relive the pain is you ask them lots of questions so that they can emotionally go through it with you. And when they feel that pain, pain, they want to buy medicine to relieve that pain. It's called selling pain relief. And that's what you do. So if they miss this event or they have a poor showing, it could account for millions of dollars of lost revenue, professional embarrassment, key members being fired, downsizing of the team. Now you know what's at stake, and they know what's at stake, which is more important. And so now when you offer a price of $100,000 or $200,000, if you, it's relatively small, given the pain that they're going to suffer if they don't do this, well, now you've done a great job of doing everything we've talked about before. The fifth and final point is to use something that Kevin calls the conditional close or the hypothetical close. And there's a quote inside the book by William Butler Yates that says, in dreams begin responsibility. This is the importance of why doing a conditional close is really important. If you ask the client or the prospect to buy right now, they have to make a really hard decision, a yes or no decision, and that creates a lot of stress. So if you want to have a really smooth sales process, what you want to do is ask him a hypothetical and it starts something like this. If, then after summarizing what you've heard, sharing insights and resolving any conflicts, addressing any objections, you're now ready to proceed to the close. So you want to say something like this. If you saw a proposal that solved a B, C problem and did an X, Y, Z timeline for X price, would you be willing to move forward? There's some really key principles in this hypothetical. Now think back when you were like a younger person. If you won the lottery, what would you do? And you could dream. If you were the most popular person in school, who would you date? If you could not fail, what would you try? If you could live forever, what would you do? And so we're used to these kinds of hypothetical questions. If it's very safe doesn't create a lot of stress. The second component to why this is really important on the Socratic close is this is you're not putting yourself in there. You're saying if you saw a proposal, this is third party, neutral and objective. Versus if I sent you a proposal, now what the client has to do again is think. If I say anything yes to this, it means I'm agreeing to you. And we don't Take the line's power away from them by taking away their decision making ability. We must let them make all the choices. So if you saw a proposal that solved ABC problem on XYZ Timeline for Z price, would you be willing to move forward? Or you can even ask this in the negative. Is, would there be anything that's holding you back, allowing them to say no? Is there anything that is still bothering you? Is there anything else left unresolved? They say no. Then you can go into saying the next part which is something like this, well, I'll send you a proposal by then a business day today and if there's nothing else getting in the way, do you foresee yourself being able to make a decision in the next 24 hours? And they at that point have made it several small commitments that should allow them to say yes at this point? I find that this process is very permissive, permission based, built on general and mutual respect and understanding, and that there is not a lot of forcing, pitching, presenting that goes on in the sales process. That's why I'm a big fan. Socratic Selling by Kevin Daly. If you've followed any sales guru in the last 10, 15 years, you probably have a pretty clear idea as to what they do. It's really aggressive. It's about manipulation. It's trying to force your will on another person. And it's no wonder a lot of us hate sales. And when you think of salespeople, what comes to your mind? An image of a snake. The reason why this book is such a fresh perspective on this, even though it was published in 1996, or at least this copy was, is that it's a 180 on this whole thing. It's really built around asking questions, understanding the client's problems, showing them that they have the power and giving them respect. I love this and I think if you're an introvert like myself and hate sales, this is your key. Read this book. It's under 200 pages, so you could probably read this in less than one day.