[00:00:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: By the Sales IQ Network, this is the Sales IQ Podcast. I'm your host, Luigi Prestinenzi, and each week we'll be going on a journey that will inspire you, motivate you, and help you be the best sales professional you can be. Our focus will be on mindset, tactics, and the strategies that will enable you to create more pipeline, and win more deals. 

What are the biggest challenges when it comes to selling is building trust through the audience you want as a sales professional, to have that level of trust with your target audience, so that you can get to the heart of the conversation so that you can get to learn more about the outcomes your prospects and your clients are seeking to achieve.

Because you know, the whole premise of selling is helping our customers and our prospects achieve a better outcome. But how we get to that point where the customers were, our prospects were our target market, trusts us in a world where there is so much noise. There is so much competition and now we're all vying for the attention of our target market.

And what's really interesting is some data that tells us that the actual gap between buyers and sellers from a trust perspective is huge. Some report suggest nearly 80% of buyers don't trust. When you think about that, that's huge. And the reality is we can see why, because with all the incredible technology that's been made available for sales professionals and marketers, sales, engagement platforms, marketing automation platforms, and the like what's happening is a lot of people are just jamming data, putting some messages in our platform and sending it out to their target market.

And unfortunately people's inboxes have been with poorly crafted messages, trying to get their time. So even when you are a sales professional, you go down the path of research. You go down the path of taking the time to personalize a message, to put a relevant message in that person's inbox.

Unfortunately, the sea of rubbish. When you think about it, the sea of emails that are just getting jammed pack into people's email boxes, that's what you're competing with. That's what 24% of emails are opened over 50% of deleted before they're even open. It's creating competition. Yeah, the sales people out there that are not really, they're just going through the motions of creating competition for the people that are actually doing their job.

They're engaging with people with a relevant point of view. And that's what this week's episode is all about. We're actually talking to Andy Paul. Who's an incredible thought leader in this space. And he's going to talk about his book, sell without selling out and talk about some of the strategies that sales professionals need to be doing today to build that trust with their target audience, because that we can't control, but there is an absolute, huge volume of things we can do. And we can control to build that level of trust with our target audience.

[00:02:53] Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by the Create Pipeline program from Sales IQ Global. This program will equip you with the skills, tools, and confidence to run an outbound strategy so you can generate more qualified opportunities and close more deals. Hear what Ellis from DocuSign has been able to achieve since joining the program and our incredible community.

"So, my name's Ellis, I work at DocuSign as an ABR. And the reason I started Sales IQ was because I really needed that guidance and that training to make sure that the outreach that I was doing was hitting the nail on the head. So I was lucky enough to start the program early on in this role and since then I've been pretty successful and last quarter I finished on a 185%. So I've seen some huge results by adopting the principles."

Our next cohort is starting soon. So to learn more, go to www.salesiqglobal.com, or if you have a team of sellers, talk to us about our in-house offering. Control your pipeline, control your destiny, with Sales IQ.

[00:04:00] Luigi Prestinenzi: Now, these particular episodes, a little bit different. We recorded this last week for our Sales IQ Global Community. And we're only going to share the first 20 minutes of the recording. And if you want to access the risk, please click the link in the show notes, you can get access. It's completely free to get access to ourselves or Q community where you can listen to the rest.

It's different because our members ask Andy some questions, they ask him some questions about the book, about some of the tactics, and strategies that they can do to really bridge that gap between the buyer and the seller so we can get, we can earn the right to get to the heart of the conversation that deep, you know, that the meaningful part of the sales conversation that allows us to create value allows us to go deeper beyond the features of a product or service and go into the conversation about outcomes, about commercial outcomes, about things that are important for our prospects and our clients.

So look, I hope you get a lot of value out of these conversation with Andy and I can't wait to see you in the Sales IQ Community.

Just want to say, thanks Andy for coming on. And yeah. And just going to talk a bit about his book a bit about how you as a sales professional can go out there and sell without being salesy. And then we'll open it up for a bit of Q and a, and have a bit of a bit of engagement with Andy. So I'll hand the mic to you mate.

[00:05:19] Andy Paul: Oh, great. Yeah. So yeah, please stop me at any time. If you have, have questions. Because very, very informal. My, my motivation for writing this book was part is as we just had to keep elevating the profession, but I also thought that we had this huge missed opportunity during the pandemic to, you know, as we were completely disrupting how we were conducting business thought, we really missed an opportunity to serve, reset the bar about how we engage with our buyers to help them achieve what they're trying to achieve.

So it was partly in reaction to that. Partly a reaction to. Just having been in this profession for a long time and through very, very many different stages of growth and technology usage in the, in the profession. Is this just feeling like a little pessimistic, perhaps that we just weren't getting better?

And if that was the case, what was sort of at the root of that and what could we do differently going forward? So Yeah, the basic premise of the book is how do we create better experiences for our buyers at the end of the day? And in most, most technology certainly is technology fields, but it's not exclusive technology is that the actual differences between products and services are, are fairly minimal and the ability to develop and maintain any sort of significant product differentiation in the eyes of the buyers is also extremely difficult these days.

So if that's the case, then what is the differentiation? And yeah, my experience has been, and we've certainly seen research from Gardner and challenger and Forrester and others that, that, yeah, the real differentiation boils down to the buyer's experience with the seller individual seller or sellers. If there's multiple people working on an account that is more than, I mean, that's sort of the predominant.

Decision point. That's our Swayze things. When you're in a situation where products are roughly perceived to be equal. And so in that environment, I want to help point out that, that a lot of what we do traditionally and sales and the behaviors we've been socialized to believe are appropriate for sales, what I call salesy behaviors.

And we certainly have all been on the receiving end of those. In our lives, both from business and a personal standpoint. And we certainly have seen them and in action and do we certainly see them in popular culture and movies and TV shows and so on. And yeah, I sort of summarize those, you know, very self-interested pushy SIM borderline ethical, you know, do anything for the order and order at all costs type behavior as selling out or salesy.

And as I talked about in the book, And I've had this in presentations for awhile is, is, you know, there's one question, a buyer will never ask you. And that is, you know, could you be more salesy, right? I mean, no, one's going to say, Hey, Luigi, love your product. We want to buy your product, but you know, Hey, you're just not salesy enough.

Could you be more salesy? And it's just a question that is not gonna ever be asked. But the reason being though is that that behavior doesn't help. The buyer has no value for the buyer and it has no value for the buyer. It has no value for you. So I draw the. Opposite case for that, who I call selling him and describe for why consider the four pillars of selling him to be able to help the buyer.

And those are connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity. And if you compare those and contrast those with, you know, the selling out behaviors, those selling out behaviors are learned behavior. These are not, we don't pop out of the womb, you know, being pushy, persuasive, borderline unethical, and so on.

These are things we are socialized to do if not outright trained, to do by contrast, talking about selling in based on a Nate human behavior. So we are wired to connect other people. We are wired to be curious. You know, we use our curiosity from the day we're born to navigate the world around us, the unfamiliar.

Hell every time we meet a new potential prospect, that's unfamiliar. We have to deploy our curiosity there, but through our connection, we build trust. And through the trust we're given permission from the buyer to stick our noses into their business and ask the type of questions we need. To reach a level of understanding about what's really most important to the buyer and what we can do to help them achieve those things.

And it's through our generosity, that on the way we give and the structured way that we give that we're able to help the buyers achieve the things that are most important to them in terms of meeting the challenges I face in achieving the outcomes they want to achieve.

[00:10:08] Luigi Prestinenzi: And you'd love to know like, cause I think, you know, the thing is even though we've gone from so many salespeople or sales professionals are trying to develop these skills, right? The trust gap doesn't seem to be being bridged. It's getting water and water. And some reports are saying over 80% of buyers, just don't trust sellers. And you know, you talk a bit about that salesy, that salesy culture.

Why do you think that it's still such. Aye. I culture that people that, that sellers and the attributes that sellers are exhibiting when they know that it creates such a Garrett, such a barrier with, with their customers.

[00:10:45] Andy Paul: Well, I think in some cases they are forced to do it by leadership, certainly that's the case.

I think at some cases, though, they, again, it's a, it's a matter of mindset and. I used the word socialization, how we train and socialized sellers to think about the job is they think if I've got a number to hit. I must act this way right now, I've been on a podcast tour promoting my book and I've had that question posed to me on two or three occasions, like, well, you know, if I've got a number to hit, you know, what you described sounds great, but don't, I have to be salesy to hit that number.

And that's just sort of this perspective that exists. Somehow we have to act in a way that that buyer. Immediately resist and distrust in order to win business and, and hit a goal. And that's just, Hey, that's not, my experience is not the experience of a lot of people. It just doesn't need to be that way.

So I think that to the point you made before is I think the, I think the, you know, that 80% number, I think it's overblown. And maybe, but it's just, you know, the reputation is unfair. The sellers have, but we've also. Caused it to happen. So we're complicit in it as well.

[00:12:04] Luigi Prestinenzi: Oh, so I was just going to say, what are the things that we can do as a profession to kind of, you know, develop empathy gain that credibility, improve that speed to trust with our buyers so that we can start to work, you know, move beyond that trust element and actually start to understand what are the problems that exist with the client that we can start to then problem solve and, and put together a business case for.

[00:12:28] Andy Paul: Yeah, well, I think one of the things we can do and I talk and write about this in a book, I have a little acronym. I coined for four steps to develop trust, and the acronym is mice mic. And the M stands for are your motivations transparent? You know, we, we have this issue that occurs monthly in sales, where sales people.

Begin their engagement with the buyer and let the buyer know that, Hey, I'm really here to help you achieve, you know, fix this problem, whatever. And then at the end of the month or the end of the quarter, you know, what can I do to get you into the equivalent? And you S speak, what can I do to get you into this car today?

Right? What are you going to do to get the order this month? And suddenly what you've done is you've gone from being somebody who's working with somebody perhaps on a transformation to being purely transactional. And once you create that, that perception in the mind of the buyer, that your transaction.

Yeah, you may get the business, but you'll never be at that level of trust that you really need to do to be able to help them in the longterm. They'll turn.

[00:13:30] Credits: This show has been recorded remotely produced by Sales IQ Global, audio editing and music production by Stefan Malliate. Show notes by Victoria Mathieson and graphic design by Julie Marshall. Don't forget to leave a rating and review on your podcast player. And if you want to find more about the programs that we offer at Sales IQ, head to www.salesiqglobal.com.

This episode was digitally transcribed.