[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. 

Welcome to another episode of the sales IQ podcast. I'm pumped to have you join us for what will be a different episode today. We, we, we are flipping the way we think about the buying journey and this week is all about thinking about selling the way people buy. And it sounds a little bit obvious, right?

Sell the way you buy. In a lot of cases, for some reason, sales processes are set up in a process that we need to take people through, to arrive at a point, which we need from a, from a sales perspective. And I think what's gonna be pretty cool about this. We're actually gonna think about this a little bit differently and really think about, well, how do our buyers actually buy and what do we need to do to help them through that journey.

Now you might have noticed as a listener, as a long time listener of our show, If you're a new listener to our show. Welcome. Pumped that you have decided to join us this week and we hope you take away some content to help you be the very best you can be. And if you are a long time listener, thank you for all your support and you would've noticed we've missed a couple of weeks.

I've been incredibly well. I'm not gonna say busy cuz I think that's, that's a cop out saying we're busy cuz I think we're all busy. I've just had a lot of conflicting priorities and distractions with a lot of client projects. And I've got a whole bank of incredible episodes ready to launch. So watch out over the next few weeks, we got some cracking guests coming on, talking about different topics.

That will absolutely help you be the very best sales professional you can be. So, but before we jump into today's topic, and before we have this week's guest, David prima join us. He's the founder of cerebral selling. So really brings a different level of thinking to the sales process, a different level of thinking to the sales equation.

But before we jump into this awesome topic, I just wanna share a couple of things that I've been learning of late around, around the buying journey and, and why it's important for us to really help our clients and educate them and make sense of things because in, in today's world, right information, we, we don't lack information.

There is an incredible amount of information available to us. And I think from a buying perspective, buyers can kind of get overwhelmed with the amount of information. That they've been engaging with, and this is the topic I spoke to about with the author of the challenger sale. Brent Adamson, incredible topic, incredible author.

It's an incredible episode. If you haven't checked it out, go check it out. Cuz it's an awesome episode. And he talks a lot about making sense for buyers, but this is just something that I've, again, I've learned through a recent experience where I had a buyer and, and had a prospect and the prospect was so gun ho to move, to move forward.

And they were like, look, send me a proposal. I need a proposal. I'm evaluating some of the providers and I just need something. I need to share it with my CEO, my chief marketing officer, and this will help us move forward. I'm like, okay, cool. But because the buyer was and, and my prospect was so keen to move forward.

I was actually a bit concerned that I lacked enough information to put together a really. A really strong proposal that would put me in a position of winning, but more so not even about put me in that position of winning, but would help the buyer really understand, well, what is it, the problem they're trying to solve and, and what would be the appropriate scope to help them get there.

Right. And so I actually reframed moving forward with the proposal. And what I did do was say, Hey, look, completely understand the urgency you have around X problem. And, and the fact that you have a pipeline gap and you need to really fill that pipeline gap, et cetera. But. You know, in order for me to help you and, and put the right proposal in place, I actually need to get a better understanding of the scope of work.

Otherwise I'm concerned that IA won't put something in place that will meet your needs and, and you know, what was awesome. She actually accepted that and said, alright, that's a great idea. Let's have a bit, bit of a further chat and what actually came outta the conversation when we're having the scoping exercise is.

There was not enough clarity around the problem. Like there was an absolute focus that there was a massive gap and that was the gap. But because they were going so fast in trying to find a provider to help them, they hadn't got very clear on the exact root cause and some of the issues, the underlying issues that was causing that problem.

And that came out of the scoping process. Now I'm really happy to, to say that we were selected. As the partner to help him with this particular project. But if, again, upon reflection, if I hadn't sort of stopped and gone, you know, Hey, we need to check X. I would've allowed the momentum. And you know, the, in the thrill of going, yes, this is we're moving forward.

We're moving fast, fast, and potentially it, would've got to a point where they might not have made any decision. And this was interesting cuz when I spoke to them post that selection and post that decision, I actually asked them questions about how did they find the experience? What they did say was they did the same with other providers and other providers just went back with a proposal.

And the fact that we taken the time to really help understand the scope and it actually gave them clarity and it actually helped them understand further about some of the challenges. It was the differentiator in the process. So this is something I want you to think about. And, you know, there was a lot of conflicting information out there and I feel your pain.

Yeah. I feel your pain that there's all these gurus and there's this incredible thought leaders out there talking about why you, you know, meet the buyer at, when they're out in the journey. But in, in some of the complex sales that we deliver, the complex solutions that we put forward. sometimes we act actually have to just slow it down and take a step back because otherwise, if we're not careful, we might be proposing something that's completely different to what we need to be proposing for. Right. We might not be actually addressing the right problem and, and, and therefore putting the right proposal in place.

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[00:07:27] Luigi Prestinenzi: So that's just something to, to give some thought as we lead into today's episode with, with David, because again, this is all about just changing the way that you look at the buying journey and really thinking about it from a buyer's perspective.

So, you know, buckle up. This will be a great episode. And as I said, Watch out for some of the other episodes that are coming up because we've got some incredible guests who are gonna drop some great topics, all focused on helping you be the very best you can be.

[00:07:58] David Priemer: Welcome to the show, David. Hey, great to be here, Luigi.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm pretty excited.

[00:08:02] Luigi Prestinenzi: I'm excited to speak to another Canadian. We have a very good friend Darra, who is one of our favorite Canadians. So yeah, we're really excited to have you on our show and talk a bit about why sellers need to sell the way people buy. But before we jump into this topic and, and talk about some of the tactics and strategies that sellers can use to enable more buyers to progress through their buying journey, we'd love to hear how you started in the wacky world of selling.

[00:08:30] David Priemer: Absolutely. Well, the good news is we're both from Commonwealth country, so, you know, I'll say process and project. So it won't be, you won't be unfamiliar to a lot of your users, but you know, similar to so many people who ended up in. I ended up in sales by accident, right? We don't go to school for this thing.

We don't learn how to do it. And, and your guidance counselor never tells you, there's a thing you can do. So I was no different. I actually started my career as a research scientist over 20 years ago. And ended up getting into sales at the turn of the.com. Boom. So I ended up joining this little startup based in Toronto, which is where I'm from.

There was like 20 people at the time I started as a sales engineer solutions consultant. So shout out to all the, the solutions consultants that listening out there and absolutely fell in love with sales, because to me, sales became kind of this. Really complex engineering problem. If you think about it, like all these variables and, and I fell in love with sales, and then over the course of the next 20 years, I just spent my time across four high growth tech companies.

Three ended up being acquired one, which I helped start in 2008 was acquired by Salesforce. And so I came over with the ship and spent five awesome years at Salesforce, kind of seeing how the, the sales machines were built operationally and culturally at scale. And then even. Ended up starting my own practice focused on you know, teaching and learning PR and fancy selling.

[00:09:43] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. Fantastic.

So, you know, you've obviously gone through various stages of sales growth with these companies right. Into the behemoth that is Salesforce, right. So you've probably seen things from various different perspectives which is fantastic. Tell me, where did the inspiration come for you to write a book?

You know, sell the way you buy?

[00:10:02] David Priemer: Yeah, well, I mean, I just, you know, I, I like doing hard things, I believe. Good, good things come from, come from the, on the other side of doing hard things. And, you know, I had written a whole bunch of content, you know, by the time I I'd written my book, I had. You know, 60, 70, or so articles and videos.

And I said, you know what, I, I wanna write a book. So I set out to do this. But the concept of sell the way you buy was kind of this mantra that kind of kept repeating in my head. And, and people often ask me, they say like, well, what does that even mean? Sell the way you buy. And I kind of say, it means two things.

Number one is there's this empathetic component. You wanna use tactics that would actually work on you if you found yourself on the buying side. And it's funny to say, but as a sales leader, I had reps come to me all the time saying, oh, Hey David, this customer's gone dark. Or I just, you know, we just got off this call and we're looking to kind of reinvigorate engage the customer.

I'm thinking of sending this email here or using this tactic. What do you think. And I would be like, I don't know, Louis G like, would, would you, would you respond, you know, get this email and they would, they would kind of smile and they'd be like, well, maybe not. I'm like, then why are we doing this? Right.

So this element of empathy, but the, in my mind, the actual bigger piece of sell way you buy is really about the science. Meaning. We should be really curious about the pathways and mechanisms by which human beings. Purchasing decisions, how we make purchasing decisions and then sell along those pathways.

Cuz unfortunately a lot of the way we've been told or taught to sell kind of goes counterintuitive to how people actually buy in the way they make purchasing decisions. So that's what sell the way you buy is about, it's really about examining those pathways and aligning your sales motion in a very kind of scientifically and, and kind of empathetically you know, aligned way.

[00:11:44] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. And, and how did you go about really learning. That psychology, that drives. People to take action during the buying journey.

[00:11:55] David Priemer: Yeah. I think a lot of it's just curiosity, like as a research scientist, you have to be naturally curious about explaining something that you see in the natural world or whatever it is and say like, well, why did that happen?

Yeah. And so what was interesting was when I was a solutions consultant and, you know, for those of you who like this is like a functional technical expert on the, on the sales side. But I didn't own the deals. You know, there was always an account executive that I worked with who kind of ran the deals.

And I was, so I was kinda like part of the deal team, but, but a little bit on the sidelines and could be a little bit of a spectator and be like, oh, When the AE said it like this, the, the customer got it. When the AE said it like that the customer got pissed off and looked at them sideways. So I started to get really curious kind of back to my research science roots of like, well, why did that happen?

Yeah. And that kinda led me to the study of like human psychology and decision making to really kind of, you know, peel back the layers around. Okay. Like how do we actually make purchasing decisions and kinda what are the forces that are play in our minds? And it just became a natural curiosity. You know, to me, just like my science and engineering background, it.

Science after all. Yeah. And what was interesting, the more I kind of got into it and the more I started to kind of get into it and teach it to other people, people started to have a lot more conviction and excitement around the sales motion, because all of a sudden they were doing things that they understood finally, fundamentally why they worked or why they didn't.

[00:13:11] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. So this is interesting, right? Because I think it isn't for me, you know, I was one of those. Those people on the receiving end of some sales surrounding earlier in my career, which spoke about sales process, which spoke about tactics and closing techniques and, you know responding to objections with the perfect objection, response.

Right. And over time I realized, you know, what a lot of those tactics, a lot of those techniques were kind of very superficial because it didn't really address. What was driving the buyer to either ask that question or get to that stage, or, and so I found the, when I really saw a major change in my career and the results in my career was within when I flipped the thinking about the sales process and started thinking about the buying process.

And this is why your book's title really resonates with me. I'd love to use this time to really explore, you know, the two or three key. Elements of your book that help sellers start to change the way they think about the buying.

[00:14:20] David Priemer: Mm-hmm a hundred percent. Well, I, you know, if I were to kinda sum it up in one way, and it's funny, you know, we were talking earlier, it's not just buying, but also like in the realm of life and leadership emotion.

Yeah. People make decisions based on emotion. I was doing this leadership workshop with a whole bunch of leaders from this great tech company the other week. And I said I want you to picture in your mind, the best manager you ever had. Can you picture them? Like how, like how long did that take you? And they're like, oh, it, it took me a split seconds.

Okay. Now, You know, you can identify that person at the speed of emotion. I didn't ask you what was so great about them or to, you know, think about like, what was, you know, about them that made them so great for you. Then you start kind of cranking in your, in your mind as like, okay, what about this? What about that?

But like at the speed of emotion, you know, we make decisions very, very quickly. When the emotional state of that decision is very, very clear. And so oftentimes in sales, we're kind of taught to talk about features and benefits and like, here's why this is gonna save you money and all that kind of stuff.

I'm like, I don't know. I think that's all bullshit. Like people don't buy things based on a good ROI if they did, then every solution would get purchased because everyone must have a good half decent ROI. But even when it comes down to like describing what you do or even describing the business case around your solution, it all comes down to one.

how quickly and emotionally does your customer buy in? Right. So if I say like, oh, you know, Luigi, what do you do? And you're like, oh, like I I'm in sales enablements when I train salespeople, like, I don't care. Like I'm, I'm immediately, there's a million people that do what you do. And there's a million people that do what I do.

Right. But if I were to say, you know, Hey, look, I work with sales teams who realize. People love to buy stuff, but they hate talking to sales people. Right? All of a sudden you have a much different emotional reaction around that statement. Right. And so it's the same thing, you know, when we sell, whether it's describing what we do, handling an objection, doing discovery, to the extent that we can raise the emotional.

Mm, element of our narrative and of our sales motion. Yeah. It's gonna help our customers more deeply and quickly connect with us.

[00:16:24] Luigi Prestinenzi: So let's talk about the, I think this is a really important topic, right? Because we know that emotion drives action. Yeah. And you know, I've seen a recent study that 92% of buying decisions are made with emotion, and then we justify it with logic.

Right. So I think we there's been a lot of studies around this. If you are a sales sales person or somebody that's out there meeting with prospects and, and having those early conversations, like how do you, how do you get the emotion in, because you can't exactly say, Hey, let's ignore everything about, you know, the features and the discovery.

And let's just, I'm gonna try to pull the emotion out. Obviously I'm trying to, you know, exaggerate here, but would love to hear, like, what are some simple. Examples or stories, or can you share how a seller can actually help bring the emotion into the, in, into a sales interaction?

[00:17:17] David Priemer: Yeah, a hundred percent.

So yeah, one of the tactics, the easiest messaging tactic I teach is whatever for just polarization, meaning when a customer asks you what you do, or you're starting a conversation to think about who that customer's. Is like, you can sometimes think of the enemy as the problem. Yes. But it's, you know, it's not like, for example let, let's say I wanted to sell you you know, it security software I could say, oh, well, it's gonna help, you know, improve your you know, it's gonna automate this and it's gonna save you some time and it's gonna, you know, improve your security.

And over time it'll save the, a, B and C yada, yada, yada, but like maybe. you have this deep rooted fear, like, let's say you had a data breach at your company now you're at risk of getting fired. Okay. So your enemy is now like job preservation, you know, like you wanna preserve, you know, you wanna preserve your job or yeah.

To give you another example. It's and this is kind of an interesting one, cuz both of you and I are in the same in the same space. So imagine someone is looking to hire you for some kind of sales enablement sales training function. Why would they do that? Well, on one hand, you're thinking to yourself, well, okay.

I would hire Luigi because I'm looking to see, we talked about top of funnel. Like I am having a challenge with my top of funnel. I don't get enough leads. So if I hire Lui, then he's gonna help my reps fill the top of the funnel and I'm gonna have like all these more leads and more revenue and LA deals and life, life is gonna be good.

And you think that like, that's the main thing that we usually say. Yeah, but. Who is the enemy in this case, you know, it's not the, you know, it's not the lack of leads. It could be for example, you know, fear of failure or it could be you know, having a competitor leapfrog you, or I'll give you like a real world example in the world of, you know, virtual sales training.

These days with sales teams now distributed all over the world. Everyone's living their best zoom life as they have for the last few years. And as you know, like a lot of people have moved companies. Retention is an issue. Yeah. And and a lot of companies haven't done a lot of investment in, in programs and live events cuz they couldn't.

Okay. Yeah. Now you're talking in Luigi about doing some sales training and doing some sales enable. What's the problem you're trying to solve. If you're trying to solve the problem of engaging a team, that's basically been sitting on the shelf for two, three years without any kind of, you know, live engagement or investment.

Yeah. So, you know, One of the things I might say, if I'm Lui and I'm trying to sell my services. I mean, look, I, oh my gosh, David, I've been talking to a ton of sales leaders these days who say, look, you know, they love, you know having their team, you know be sharp and engaged and all that kinda stuff.

But they hate the fact that it's so hard to do now with the pandemic and everyone's working remotely and they're struggling to figure out how we engage this workforce, who wants to learn so much. And if they don't, they're gonna. Leaving, you know, to, to go somewhere else cuz the grass is greener again.

I'm just, yeah. You know, I I'm just embellishing here, but again, like thinking about that narrative sounds very different than, oh we do top of the funnel sales enablement. We're focusing on our customer's enemy and we're and we're leading with the problem. I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about what we do and the nuts and bolts in the feature, but we have to earn the right.

to do that. Yeah. If we lead too quickly with the features and functions, then we just end up turning our customers off.

[00:20:32] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. It's an interesting, it, it is interesting, right. Cuz I absolutely totally agree with you that, you know, we should lead with the outcomes that we help people achieve. And then the byproduct of that is what we do to help him get there.

So I, I really like the way that you've kind of, you've kind of described Describe that kind of, you know, example and tactic. Why do you think, cause this is for me, this is a really interesting conversation, right? Because I think for many sellers they know what they need to do, but actually doing it.

Is harder than, than it sounds right. Like a lot of the concepts that we hear about, if you jump on LinkedIn like yourself, I'm following so many incredible content, creators and thought thought leaders around this subject, we know that, you know, cold calls away should be structured. Having an agenda, doing X, doing B and like yourself.

I have the privilege of watching and listening to so many calls, whether it's on go or chorus. And doing core calibration sessions. And I find that more, most of the calls that I evaluate a lot of the fundamentals that you discuss aren't being followed. Right. And then when you talk to the seller, you're like, Hey, share with me what happened to the agenda.

You're like, yeah, I know I gotta do an agenda. Didn't or, you know, Let's have a look at the types of questions you're asking. Yeah. I'm asking a lot of closed questions. right. They know that it's ask open questions, for example, why is it that we know what needs to be done, but yet many fall back doing a things a certain way?

[00:22:09] David Priemer: Well, now you're asking a life question and the it's funny, the book, I think. Is a book called the knowing, doing GA written by two Stanford professors, Bob Sutton Jeffer. And what they talk about is specifically is, is in relation to leadership practice. And they say, but I could apply it to anything. They, they basically say, how is it that there's all this, all these books and knowledge and content around how to be a great leader.

And then people still suck at leadership. Why is it that we now know more about nutrition and diet and disease and, and more people are obese. right. Yeah. So there's this knowing doing gap and the actual thing that I, you know, when we were kind of talking about this earlier the way people learn, you know, is different.

You can't just shove a whole bunch of tactics at someone and say like, do this, you can't. And it's, it's actually interesting, cuz I've, I've talked about this a lot recently, if you let's say have a McDonald's F. Mm, it's, it's very easy. Like I could hire anyone off the street and teach them how to make a hamburger.

Like you do this, you do that. You do that. Like, if you just follow these instructions, boom, the hamburger will come out and it doesn't really matter who makes it it's gonna be identical. Yeah. But in the world of human interaction, right. Where there are so many degrees of freedom, it's, you know, not to necessarily digress to a, a scientific example, but I, I was a, a trained meteor.

Back in the day. Yeah. And people always like to rag on the weather man or the weather lady. Like why, why do you get the weather wrong all the time? Like we live in the future here with computers and stuff. Like, yeah, why is the weather wrong? And you're telling me it's gonna rain and it doesn't rain. And the reason is because the formula that the formulas that govern.

The movement of kind of synoptic forces in the environment. Each have so many different variables, as you can imagine. And each of those little variables has a little margin of error. And so what happens is you put all of these equations into a computer model and it runs, runs, runs, runs, runs. And if it runs in the short term, for example, tell me what the weather's gonna be like this afternoon.

Pretty accurate, right? Yeah. Cause there's not that many room for, there's not much room for those airs to propagate, but if you run the weather forecast out for four or five, What happens is all those errors propagate. And then you end up with so many different permutations of what could happen. You start, you know, you start saying, well, in probabilities, there's a 30% chance of this or this because we don't know.

And sales this, I gotta make a YouTube video on this. Sometime, either sales is like this. Exactly like this. When you start with a human being an interaction with someone, maybe. I'm negotiating a contract with you, and there's a series of steps that I go through, but maybe you got in a massive raging fight with your partner this morning, and now you're going toe to toe with me in the negotiation.

Now, all of a sudden there's all of these variables that I can't control that are nonetheless playing a part of my negotiation. Right. So when you say it's too expensive, you could just be saying it's too expensive, cuz you're pissed off at your partner. You just wanna get off the phone with me so you can call them back.

And meanwhile, there's so many different variables in that discussion. Like it's very difficult for me to pick them apart and that's why we pay sales people who do this profession. Well, a lot of money. Yeah. And not high school students, minimum wage. So. back to the why don't people do this. The knowing doing gap is real.

We, we teach it in sometimes an overly complex way, and there's so many different variables. You have to be good. Yeah. At improvising, when you're having a human conversation, otherwise you're gonna get stuck in a narrative. That's gonna produce the opposite of the outcome you were hoping for.

[00:25:30] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. I mean, I know that we've got, we've gone down a little bit of a path here.

Right. But I think it's actually a really important topic because I think again, for many sellers, right. I think. , this is where, you know, I love the concept of McDonald's because I think McDonald's got it incredibly well, right. Create a very simple process or simple, but create a process that anybody can, it can be a repeatable process.

And I think the magic, you know, formula for any business selling something is to try to make that formula very simple for anyone to follow and help people progress to that point of decision. Right. When we actually think about it, when you look at it, simplistically. You write up a funnel on a board or the buying process on a board.

You're like, Hey, this is actually really simple. Like, there are things that people need to need to learn. They need to become aware. They need to learn and have a level of education so they can consider what we're, what we're offering. And then we need to get them to a point where they do an equation and say, you know what, this business case for change it's in my favor, the pain of change is less than the pain of saying I'll take action.

Right? And you go, oh, its actually really simple, but. When you think about all the buying or the people of the buying committee, the, the internal challenge that you spoke about, then the change management component, which is becoming very difficult. Because again, if, if sellers can't follow a process and we go back into, we know what to do, but we don't do what we need to do, then the buyer's going, I've gotta implement this new tech or I've gotta implement this new initiative.

And jeez, how am I gonna get all these people on board? Then all of a sudden it makes the buying journey a little bit more complex. Right? And I think this is what we're seeing now more, more today than what it was. I reckoned three years ago. You know, as a result of the pandemic, that buying journey is becoming very complex.

And I often refer to a stat that I heard. My good friend, Jen Ellen talk about, which is about 39% of B2B engagements end up in a no decision category, right? Because either they can't get consensus, the problem aligned is not there, or they just say, you know what? The fire that's currently burning.

We're happy with it because if we change the actual, fire's gonna be bigger than what it is today. What the pain of change is, is far greater. So I'd love to co explore this. Right. And, and I know we, haven't got too much time to, to dive into this, but think about the things that you've just mentioned you know, picking up on that intuitive component.

How do we as sellers. Become a little bit more emotionally connected to the buying process to kind of find and understand where our buyers are emotionally, so that instead of pushing the opportunity forward, we can kind of hold back and say, you know what, right now it's probably not the best time for me to.

To engage in this. I need to step back.

[00:28:15] David Priemer: Mm-hmm well, look, there's a whole field of conversation that I focus on around mindset. Yeah. Right. Especially as it relates to doing discovery with customers, because oftentimes sales reps have confirmation bias where we think everyone's get fit for our solution.

Sure. And then kind go in and look for evidence that they are versus evidence that they're not. Yeah. And customers can feel that too. Like they can feel. If you are selling at the end of your month or quarter, and you're kind of, you know, Jones in for some client that you can give some kind of, you know, period and discount, like they can feel, they can feel that.

Yeah. Don't think they can't. Right. And so the way it's funny, the way I kind of describe it, it's like when my kids come to me, I have three, three kids and two are teenagers. One's a bit younger. When they come to me and they're about to hit me up for something that they think I'm gonna say no to, you know, like I can tell immediately.

Yeah. Right. Just by the way they approach me. So part of the mindset game is to kind of understand the mindset that you're approaching your customer with, because they'll be able to feel if you're desperate difference the end of the month, end of the quarter. So just kind of, you know, Kind of being cool in that respect also kind of taking a little step back and, you know, just to marry maybe a couple of the concepts we've spoken about today and, and kind of weave it into this, we talked about like, well, why is sales so hard?

And, and why can't we just follow a process? Well, for example, a lot of sales organizations have a process that says, okay, see, I said process we're, you know, we're, we're speaking the Queens English here. So if I said you know, okay, you need to like, you're a medic or band or whatever it is. Yeah. You need to find out who the economic buyer is.

And like who's gonna, you know, the timing and all that kinda stuff. How would I find that, like, imagine I go to you Luigi and I'm like, Hey Luigi, like who is your boss? Right. Like, yeah. Lu Luigi, what's your budget for the, I gotta, I gotta, cause I gotta, you know, tick the box on my, on my checklist here on my process.

Like. What's your budget. Yeah. This idea that just because I want to know things doesn't mean anyone's gonna tell me any of the stuff that I want to know. Mm-hmm right. So you have to be mindful yeah. Of not only what you want and the process, but how are you going to extract. This information, because look, sometimes we have clients that are very verbose and are just happy to chat and tell us everything.

Right. And sometimes they're very kind of tight lip because they're worried about what we're gonna do with the information. So you need to focus as much on your process and what you need to know. Yeah. As you do on being a human being. So people feel comfortable talking to you and telling, telling you things, right?

It's like if I ask you out on a date and you don't want to go with me, You might be tempted to say, oh, I'm, I'm busy Saturday. You know, when you ask me it's your home. Meanwhile, the, the, the answer is you don't want to go out with me and you're trying to be a nice guy about it, and you don't wanna hurt my feelings.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking I still have a chance when the reality is I don't, I'm busy on Saturday night is the sales equivalent of it's too expensive. Yeah. It's like, what the hell does that mean? Like we have to really dive in and figure it out. And part of it. To your question, a little bit of, of, of empathy, a little bit of emotional intelligence and a little bit of pattern recognition.

Yeah. So that, you know, as a seller, when we hear it's too expensive or Hey, the, you know, Luigi, this was great. Can you just send me some information and I'll call you back. Like in the next few weeks, when things settle down, you have to have a little bit of that pattern recognition to know. If I just do what they say, I'm not gonna hear from this customer every again.

Yeah. You know, and then kind of approach it in honest way like that.

[00:31:32] Luigi Prestinenzi: Yeah. So I love the way that you, you, you're kind of describing this, right. Because again, I think, I think in some cases we, we kind of can go into autopilot right. Where we hear something and we automatically go, okay. Bang versus really going.

Hang on. Let me just think about this for a moment. Is this the actual reason why they can't meet or is there something underlining that's, that's, that's driving this. Right. And, and I loved, you know, one of the words that you mentioned earlier, which was that element of curiosity. Right? And for me, I think one of the things that sets a great seller apart is the fact that they are curious, right.

Is the fact that they do approach a conversation with the level of emotional intelligence. They're asking themselves questions about the certain situation before asking the prospect and not always responding. Right? So I actually, I've taken a number of key things away from this, David. So I think this has been a great conversation, but, and maybe we could talk about this for hours, cuz this is a concept that I there's probably.

Four podcasts we could create as a result of this four different topics. So this has been awesome, but, but where is the best place for our listeners to find you? And, and we will put a link to your book in the show notes, but where is the best place that our listeners can find and engage with you?

[00:32:53] David Priemer: A hundred percent. Well, you know, the easiest place I've been accused of giving away too much stuff for free. So if you go to my website, which is Cerebral Selling, all one word cerebral, selling.com you'll find, you know, my blog you'll find links to my free Facebook group, where I do trainings every week, my YouTube channel is also called Cerebral Selling.

Yeah. So you can find it all there. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or you can check out my book, which is called, sell the way you buy, and you can find that on Amazon or whatever it is. You, you buy books.

[00:33:19] Luigi Prestinenzi: Awesome. Well, we'll make sure we put that in the show notes. And if you like me, most of, if you're on the LinkedIn platform, David is sharing some great content there's V you know, YouTube links.

You can go and watch some videos. For me, I love it, cuz it really talks about the psychology behind why people buy. So David, I just wanna say, thanks for the contribution you make to the sales community. The content you create is helping sellers be the very best they can be. So I wanna say thanks and thank you for coming on to the Sales IQ Podcast.

[00:33:46] David Priemer: Oh my pleasure, Luigi. Thanks for having me. It's great to be connecting with all your listeners out there.

[00:33:50] Luigi Prestinenzi: All right.

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.

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