[00:00:00] Darryl Praill: My name is Darryl Praill. I'm your host and you, my friend, well, you and I we're gonna go on a journey every single week, talking to the industry's most accomplished sales legends, as they share with us, their tips, their tricks, their techniques, and their tactics to becomes sales rockstars. You simply need to do what they're doing and you will achieve similar nirvana. If you like to laugh, you like to be entertained, if you'd like to go off on tangents and tell stories, you're going to love what you're going to hear next. Sit back, relax, it's going to get real.

How's everybody doing it's another week in the books and here we are back together again, kids. I am so delighted to have you on the Inside Inside Sales show. So what's going on in your life. Let me tell you what's going on in mine. And tell me if you can relate at all. So as many of you know, I changed gigs a couple of months ago and I'm I I'm, I'm now much more aware of what the hell I do with my new employer and what, who our audiences and who our customers are.

And I have, shall we say an understanding of who. I could speak to with some intelligence whom I could help, you know, what customer, what persona in what industries, what I do, customer profiles I could personally address and I've figured out who else in the organization could address those other persona.

As experts as subject matter experts and add value in what industries they're good at. As I put together the whole marketing plan to go to market and kick ass in these exciting times, we have where, who knows what the economy will do to us as we progress throughout 2022. Why do I bring this up? I bring it up because I have realized that there are some knowledge.

So in this particular case it's been a few years since I've had such a global team. As of right now, I have staff or entire teams operating out of countries like Germany, Poland, France, Spain, England, Ireland, Brazil, Argentina, the U S, Canada, the list goes on.

And with that comes some challenges because once you get outside of English and this is a sales and marketing statement, you know, once you get outside of the English speaking countries you have unique, very unique culture.

So for example, in France or Germany, the the influencers and those marketplaces, the voices that people listen to for our expertise and advice are not necessarily the same voice as you would have in England or the U S or Canada. So the other issue is you have pop culture, like what's going on, whether it be sports or politics, or what have you again, very different.

So let's say I wanted to do some news jacking and I wanted to take advantage of something that was happening at a moment in time earlier this year, I might've done some news jacking on Joe Rogan. You know, more recently, I might've done some news jacking on abortion rights, who the hell knows. Right. And of course, in my case, I would be doing, from a social media point of view, to try to generate noise and hype and get conversations going, which then goes into the sales pipeline that we try to work. That's the whole point. Well, the point is here, those conversations are different in France are different in Germany. You're different in Poland.

And that leaves me as a C-level officer to go. What's the best way to manage my resources and make content and build brand and drive inbound leads and those countries that are not English speaking. And I realized that I don't have all the answers. So then what is the answer?

So then I've started doing wonderful things everybody can relate to you. I started Googling for answers, but obviously that takes you down some rabbit holes sometimes. So then I went to my communities, I went to my communities and I started saying, Hey, how do you, how do you folks do this? How do you handle this? And the community has given me all this feedback.

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And what was interesting. Is for me, it's basically a reversal of what I normally experience. What do I mean? Well, normally I'm on this podcast, I'm public speaking, I'm posting on LinkedIn or sharing content. And in that process, I'm sharing expertise and experience around sales, around sales and marketing. And as a result of that, people are seeking my advice. And as a result of that, They come to me and I get new business because they, they value what I have to say. They perceive me as having more knowledge in a certain area than they have, but they need that knowledge to do their job.

So that's exactly what I'm doing this last couple of weeks where I'm seeking knowledge from others who have more knowledge. Did you know that what I've just described, which is an everyday occurrence? There are things in your life, my friend, where you have more knowledge than somebody else. And there are things in your life every single day where you go seek knowledge from those who are smarter than you. It's something we do, but I'm going to bring this around full circle.

What I've just described as a term. I'm not going to tell you the term yet. I want to let today's guests share the term and today's guest is going to talk to you about how, what I've just described can be like your secret sauce to sales success, but the nut of it is you. If you approach your job correctly, if you prepare, if you study, if you learn, if you're intentional, you can be an expert that helps your prospects in turn, use that position to turn them into clients.

Now, I'm not saying this near. Nearly so eloquently as our guest is. So let's just stop with the lollygagging. You may know this cat. I've talked to him once or twice. I shared a stage with him last year at the Outbound conference. In fact, funny story at the Outbound conference last year, the crew there came to me and they said, "Hey, can you open up the show?"

Now this is kind of the first show, you know, as the COVID was slowly starting to open up and I was like, sure, yeah, no problem. And of course I was totally panic inside because I'm like no pressure at all prep. And so I went and I did it and I came off stage and the first face I see, which is not a pretty face to see, just so we're clear this, the first face I see is this guy.

And he had the biggest smile on his face and I felt all my pressure go away. Cause I thought that. I didn't suck. Doesn't say I was good, but I didn't suck that my friend, that fellow who was smiling at me, one of the original founders of the show at Outbound and the author of the latest and greatest book called Elite Sales Strategies, the guy to being one up there's that term creating value and becoming truly consultative is the one, the only Anthony Iannarino. Anthony, my friend, welcome to the show.

[00:07:16] Anthony Iannarino: I was so thrilled for you. I knew you were going to do great. But the ending with this is outbound like that. That's in the documentary. There's a video of me doing it. I can watch it over and over again. Your energy was so good. It was the perfect opening for the outbound conference, especially because we were still in the pandemic at that time.

And the people that came there, you met them. Like everybody was thrilled to be there. It was a beautiful event, wasn't it?

[00:07:45] Darryl Praill: It was phenomenal. And the one thing I people have asked me, even at my new gig, they were asking me because we're building our event show and the question comes up over and over and over again.

And they're like, what, what are the top sales shows to go to? And I say the top two shows, and I said, they're extremely different. This is completely my bias. They sell, not everybody will agree with me, but I think I won't have many people who will disagree with me. I said, if you're like a say executive you're an account executive, you're a sales professional, or a sales leader, even the best show bar, none in the industry I mean, it's not even close is Outbound.

But I said, if you're starting out in sales, like a sales development rep, early days, I said, check out 10Bound, two completely different situations. But outbound in my opinion. And I've gone to them all folks, best show hands down. I'm not saying that cause I was on stage last year. I would've said that beforehand. So because I mean, you've got

[00:08:37] Anthony Iannarino: You're saying it now because you're going to be on stage this year.

[00:08:39] Darryl Praill: Well, that may be, we shall see, you know, it depends how you do in this podcast. If you embarrass me, we'll have to re reevaluate

[00:08:46] Anthony Iannarino: It's impossible to embarrass you. You, you're not, it's impossible.

[00:08:51] Darryl Praill: Oh my gosh. You're so full of it. I love that about you.

[00:08:53] Anthony Iannarino: You're liberated.

[00:08:54] Darryl Praill: Do you know what folks do you know what Anthony did last year? When I got. He bought me a kick ass shirt, and I thought about wearing it today, but I thought about it too late. And I, and every time I open my closet and see that shirt, hang in there, I think of Anthony and that's kind of creepy.

I just want you to say, I do not want to think of Anthony when I'm looking at my clothes and I'm naked in the morning, but it's a killer shirt. That's the kind of guy he is. He did it with no expectation, just he thought of me. And he said, you know, cause I commented on his shirt and he said, you would like this as comfortable as great for trouble.

And so that's Anthony sides. You don't see of Anthony. You were on stage last year. You were early days in your one-up premise, you gave a wonderful presentation on it. You were dramatically excited about it. You were you were like this and me and my next book and sure enough. It came out. And it was so good folks.

I spent my own money on it. I don't ever see the YouTube videos where they say in full disclosure, the vendor did send me this free of charge. But but this is my own opinion. No, no, no, no. I spent my money on this because it's Anthony, he's got great stuff. I mean, for those who don't know, Anthony, haven't read his books.

Just some of the books you need to know. Right. We've got Eat Their Lunch, The Lost Art of Closing, The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need. Awesome books, check them out. The latest one of course talks about the one-up premise. What was the inspiration for this one, sir?

[00:10:16] Anthony Iannarino: I had read an article by a guy named Jay Haley about the relationship between the psycho analyst in their patients. And Jay Haley was allowed to read this three volume set of a book that was written by a person who was studying psychoanalysis and also being treated. And when he read the book and he, he wrote a, an article in a magazine called Et Cetera. And I read it, I immediately understood what it was talking about because the, the way that J Hailey's retelling of this is, is that the person who needs psychoanalysis. And I'm not saying that anybody here might need that, but...

[00:10:56] Darryl Praill: Are you suggesting I need psychoanalysis, is that what you're saying?

[00:10:58] Anthony Iannarino: There, there could be possibilities. And, and, and they want the psychoanalyst to be able to help them. So they want them to be in the one-up position, but as they have a conversation over a long period of time, at some point they go Dr. Darryl, you're a horrible doctor. You've never helped me. I have no idea why I come here because nothing good ever happens to me. And all I do is give you my.

Now the psychoanalyst who has been trained to follow Freud's recommendations says nothing. They just they're sitting behind you. You can't see them, they don't respond at all. And then that person immediately goes back and says Dr. Darryl like, I'm so sorry. You're a great doctor. You've been so helpful to me. I shouldn't have said that. And I love coming here and I love that you're my doctor. And they put themselves back in the one down. And I was thinking about the relationship you have sometimes with clients where they think they know certain things, but their assumptions are outdated or they've made a misconception and they've decided that that's a truth and we have to correct those things.

So as soon as I read it, I immediately understood the value of the concept. One person is one up and the other person is one down. Now I have to correct something that you said.

[00:12:17] Darryl Praill: I knew you would. I knew it was, I was going to say something.

[00:12:20] Anthony Iannarino: You're close. You're very close, but you just

[00:12:22] Darryl Praill: I was close. Dammit.

[00:12:24] Anthony Iannarino: It's not that you're smarter than your client.

It's that you have different knowledge and different experience than your client.

That's a fair, yeah, that's a fair point.

They can be smart and you can be smart too, but there they have better experience. Understanding their industry and their company. And you have better understanding about your industry and how you help people and what they should be doing to get better results.

So the person who should be one up is the salesperson, because they're the one that's responsible for counsel advice and recommendations. So if you don't know anything and you're one down and your client knows more than you do about the thing that you're talking about, you're in the one down position and you're not going to be very.

Now I also have to tell you the problem here with this is that while you're one up, as it pertains to the things that you experience and what you know, you're also one down because your client knows things that you need to know, and they have to transfer their one up-ness to you. So you're not one down anymore.

So we have this interplay between I'm educating the client on what they need to do to get the best results. And they're educating. How we can do this together because they know their team, they know their company, they know their constraints, they know what resources they have. There's a whole bunch of things that we could learn from them.

And if you want to be a really good salesperson, you should learn from every client that you have. But the thing that most people don't do is they don't teach the client because what we've done Darryl for, let's say 35 years in that neighborhood, I'm going to spend selling in 1988. So right to there. Let me tell you about my company.

Let me tell you about our outstanding founder with this tremendous story. You can't even believe that everybody loves him. Let me tell you about the logos that we've already won in the clients that we're working with, that look like you, and then I'll share with you what our solution looks like and how it can solve your problems.

And I'll ask you, what's going on in your world. We've done that for 35 years. So now what everybody's doing. Is there differentiating in the exact same way that every one of their competitors is differentiating. So the differentiation is I'm going to talk about my company and my product, and I'm going to use those as differentiation, just like the next guy and just like the next person that comes after them.

And I, I would only slightly joking say if a salesperson goes and sits down across from a client on Tuesday, we'll call that one salesperson. And they go through that same pattern. I just laid out company, founder logos, product service solution, all that on Thursday, salesperson B goes in and sees that same person.

And then you go to ask the client and you say, what was the difference between salesperson a and Salesforce? And they'll say salesperson a was taller and had a lighter hair and salesperson B had a red logo. I know that for sure. It's the same red color that my car was when I first got it. When I was 16, like that's a, they will not remember anything about that conversation at all, because there was no value being created for them.

There was no value being created for them. The only way that you create value for clients is teaching them something that they don't already. So the great game that we're playing by being one up is I know something you don't know. Can I share it with you? And that's the whole game. Now, if I can share it with you, I start giving you my ideas and my experience and all of my knowledge so that I can prepare you to make the decision that I would make.

If you said, Anthony, what do you think I should do? Because that is what you're doing when you're selling. You're saying, I think you should do this. I think you should make these changes. I think you should do it in this particular way. And I'll even give you the advice on how we go through your buyer's journey together and the most helpful and beneficial way.

So you can be certain that you make the best decision and that your team supports you and that you can execute these things. So this is the nature of being one up. Is that it's your job to guide and lead your client.

Are you taking notes?

[00:16:41] Darryl Praill: No, I'm I'm. I'm going to quote you in your book, shortly, that's what I'm trying to find.

I'm actually looking to promote your damn book.

[00:16:48] Anthony Iannarino: My damn book.

[00:16:51] Darryl Praill: Your damn book, because, cause what you're saying, you, you did a great job on articulating in your book and that's the, I want, wanna, I want to hammer it. Well, I find it. I know, I know where it is roughly, but the I'll stop for a second. How many people here?

Maybe not now, maybe now, but in the past I've been kind of given when you have a call with. You physically open up and you have that opening slide deck. So I'm with company ABC, and this is our founder and the song we've been around, these are the awards we won. This is what Gartner says, made this, how many but G2 says about us.

And this is our secret sauce. This is our management team, but no, nobody cares by the way

[00:17:30] Anthony Iannarino: Footprint? Do you have a global footprint?

[00:17:31] Darryl Praill: The global footprint. Exactly. Yeah. And that's exactly what you're talking about.

[00:17:37] Anthony Iannarino: And then they go like, ah, great. So 97% of your people are located in a place where they'll never be able to give me any support or help at all.

[00:17:46] Darryl Praill: Correct.

[00:17:47] Anthony Iannarino: Got it.

[00:17:48] Darryl Praill: I'm getting angry because I can't find what I'm looking for. You did well, I'll tell you what I'm looking for. You did a great job.

[00:17:52] Anthony Iannarino: We're going back to the psychoanalysis?

[00:17:54] Darryl Praill: Going back to the cycle. No, no, you did it. Oh, here we go. Found it, I knew I'd find eventually. So Anthony does a good job. You're talking about one up one down. And what was really interesting here was he actually it's in the damn introduction. I started looking at chapter one. That was the issue. Your introduction was compelling. By the way, it's total sidebar. If you haven't figured it out already cause he's talking about a psycho now analysts, Anthony is likely the absolute best read individual in the industry and that's why you need to sign up for his sales blog.

So thesalesblog.com check that out. Everybody who is successful and I'm not blowing smoke ups behind this blog is dynamite. So do that, but my point being one of the funny things about. Anthony means so well read, he sees constantly quoting people. And in this particular book, every single chapter starts off with a quote.

Of course, the first thing I did was I skipped to every single chapter because I want to see who he's quoting. Right. So we got like Bob Dylan, we got Napoleon Bonaparte. We got tough letter. We got a hope like it's all over the place. So, but the great quotes. So check that out anyway, going back to what I want to hit up on.

Two things. I shared this before we did a survey, not too long ago, but 2000 executives, what is the number one thing that they want in a sales person? The number one attribute. All right. And the answer was. Industry knowledge. In other words, you know, my, there are many means, you know, my job, you know, my world, you know, me, you know, my pain, it wasn't your features.

It wasn't your competition. I mean, that's ranks, but it's an industry knowledge, which is kind of what Anthony was. Ludy on here. He has an inventory on an introduction on page five. He says, how do you know if you're one down? So tell me if any of you can recognize this. If you're one down, if you have no relevant, no.

If you're not recognizing the factors for our decisions, if you have no depth of understanding, if you're not learning from your experiences, if you're using outdated sales approaches, if you lack confidence, if you're desperate for a deal, if you fear your client, if you're doing compliance at all costs, if you.

You had conflict aversion, or you avoid responsibility. That is when you're one down and you're not going to win when you're one down. Now you also talk about one up tactics. So we can go into that if you watch in a bit, but in a nutshell, how would somebody utilize one up, cause you go to great lengths and your opening sections to talk about.

There's like, even in your foreword, I think it was Charlie Green that wrote your, your, your forward. Yeah, he, I actually, that was one of the best forewords I've read in a long time. He goes, he hits it right away. Talk about the ethics behind this or the morality, if you will talk to, cause you can abuse one up.

So talk, talk to me about that because I see too much of this.

[00:20:52] Anthony Iannarino: The reason that people are so concerned about this, and I told Jeb and Victor and Mark, and a number of people that people might run out of the room. When I start talking about one up, because it sounds like one-upmanship, and it kind of is in a certain way.

And that would be like me going Darryl, did I meet you at Columbia? When I was getting my MBA in '86 was, I mean, do you remember, did we meet. And then he's like, but I didn't go to Columbia. That's just me trying to put them down. Right. But I don't need to put them down. And when you said the 2000 people that were asked about what they want from a, a sales person, I thought you were going to say a great sense of style.

Because I, I thought that was going to be just self-serving for you, but that, that wasn't you actually told the truth on that. So that's good, but a sense of styles. It's, it's also how you talk about the things that you're talking about that matter as well. So there's a style issue there too. So you can prove that the other person doesn't know anything, but it doesn't benefit you to do it that way.

You should expect that everyone has a certain amount of ignorance and ignorance isn't that you're dumb or you're stupid or anything like that. That just means you don't know what you don't know. And so you want to be careful and pretend that people do know these things and that you're reminding of them, you're reminding them that these things are true so that you don't have them start, you know, with their hands coming up and they start feeling like they have to defend themselves.

What you're trying to do is transfer your experience. So the book is a lot about information disparity. I know something that. And without that information disparity, you can't create value because if the client already knows everything that they need to know, you're not all that helpful, but if you can teach them things that they don't know or give them a lens to look through, that they haven't seen before, then they have new choices and they can recognize new potential and new results.

So that's what the whole book is about. It's how do we transfer our knowledge and experience to another person? So that they can make the best decision for their company and get the best results possible.

[00:22:56] Darryl Praill: The thing that was going through my book as I was reading this, cause you've just, I mean, I'm assuming you've given this explanation a few times.

You did a great job. That's what it's about. I was the word that I had was humility.

[00:23:07] Anthony Iannarino: Yeah.

[00:23:08] Darryl Praill: If I am an expert about something, I have knowledge. On a topic, more knowledge than you have. Right. I deliver that with humility. Cause I'm here to help you. But similarly, if you have more knowledge on a topic than I do, I humbly ask you to share that with me.

And I'm, you know, that's what was going through my mind, which goes, which I found so interesting because one of the, the, the one downs was a lack of confidence. And what I'm going to is I tell my reps, cause they'll often say to me, they're I want, if I'm selling to someone like you, I like your. You know, you're a C-level officer, I'm just a young pup.

You've got gorgeous white hair. I still have my hair. All these things. I, I just, I, I am intimidated by you. I, I stammer, I don't know how to talk to you. And what I tell them is. Be relaxed. We both put our genes on one leg at a time. We both have sore backs after we go work out. You know, we both have a lot in common lean into the commonalities and let's have a conversation because if you know your product really, really well, would you talk about lack of knowledge being that's a one down, you know, your product really well and you know, your customer really well and you, and you know the situation.

Well, then you have knowledge. I need. And I'm paid to learn from people like you and implement, you know, and I'm paid also avoid mistakes. And by the way, because I make more money than you. That means I'm closer to the. Which means I'm not paid to make those mistakes. I want you to teach me. I'm like, that's what you need to understand.

90 plus percent of the population out there is really open to that. To you being one up, I will humbly let you be one up. If you can help me achieve and solve my problem.

[00:24:55] Anthony Iannarino: And just so everyone that's listening to understand that Darryl's primary expertise is pomade. I mean that, that is his world....

[00:25:05] Darryl Praill: You've been waiting for that one.

[00:25:07] Anthony Iannarino: World-class I thought you were never going to stop talking. I was like, I hope I don't forget it, but you're right. That the intellectual humility means. I recognize that I'm one down to like an, I need to correct my own one downness and if I'm sitting across from somebody who's been in their industry for 35 years, I'm going to ask them to educate me.

And I actually have a story in the book where. I was sitting in a meeting that I got invited to by a client where they were going through all of their numbers for their peak season. And they kept saying the word throughput. And I understood like the general idea of what it meant, but they were using it as math.

And I couldn't understand, like, I just, it's the amount of stuff that goes through. Right. That's it. So it's not that complicated, but they kept talking about numbers and I'm like, what are these numbers and why are they sharing this? And my sponsor was a guy named Dallas Molder. Dallas was probably late fifties, early sixties, and I, I walked into his office after the meeting and I said, I understand the concept of throughput.

I understand it, but I don't know how you're calculating it and what it has to do with me exactly. And he said, however much we ship in retail to the store divided by your labor. And I said, okay. He said, do you want to see a spreadsheet? And I said, I'd love to see a spreadsheet. And then he showed me metrics and I got an even clearer view. About three days later, I walked into another distribution center and said, tell me what your, your throughput numbers look like.

And they're like, you know what throughput means? And I'm like, well, I said, yeah, of course I do. I only know it like this. Wow. Right. I have almost, I have no real knowledge at all. Except for I had somebody educating. But now I'm starting to understand the language of the business because somebody teaching me the language and they're teaching me the math.

And as I get smarter and as I get more one up, because I've been doing this, I become a better salesperson because I recognize I'm one down on mostly everything. And the reason I read so many books, they're all this because I don't know very many things. You have a, you have a tiny little view from your own experience.

And then you have all these other people's experience. So a book for me for $25 in six hours, I can get with somebody, spent their whole lifetime learning. And you're just going to give it to me for like a penny, a page or something easiest thing in the world to do. I mean, you have to go find that from someplace.

Your clients, many of them will be the more mature they are as a business person. The more they will have intellectual humility. And they will know that they don't know, and they will want to learn. If you don't believe me, then go through the oldest possible book. You can find, let's say the Bible pick, pick up the Bible or something like that.

You will find that Kings in Pharos and people with power always surrounded themselves with people that knew something that they didn't know that would help them get the results that they need. This has been going on since there's been human beings that had responsible. So, this is just your job. If you want to be a trusted advisor, if you want to be consultative, that means you have to give people good counsel.

You have to give them the right advice and you have to make recommendations that help them get the results that they need. We call that being one up. I'm the one that should be teaching the client, what they need to know. And at the same time, I'm willing to be educated at the same time.

[00:28:42] Darryl Praill: So it's interesting about the book folks.

I mean, I'm just speaking candidly as a fellow who's and as the fellow has trained so many folks out there, not unlike Anthony again, if you go to his, his website, the the sales blog.com, he talks about all of his ability to help you right. Different ways he can help you. What we see over and over again are reps who are desperately saying, how do I sell, how do I open up the phone call?

How do I. Have the knowledge necessary to do this? Cause I don't have it. How do I do discovery? How do I, how do I, how do I think this goes on and you're desperately out there and what's. Anthony talks a bit about this in his book. And he talks about legacy approaches. There's a lot of legacy approaches out there and he opened up, he gave an example already earlier in the podcast.

That's just one very small example and too many people are using a lot of legacy approaches. What's interesting about what he's talking about here is this something that'll stand the test of time. They even talked about that Charlie Green does in the forward because, and this is my point of view because what Anthony is talking about here, and I love it.

You use the example of the. Is what we're talking about here is literally a, a human dynamic that has existed throughout time to me, reps are looking for shortcuts. To me. Reps are looking to game-ify inventory to, to, to, you know, let's use bots. Let's just use the same script. Let's just automate as much as possible.

Let's go full volume. And yet the reality is buyers like me can smell you a mile away when you're doing that. We told a kid. What, what I love that, you know, one example and there's so many examples in his book, Anthony. Dismisses many, many people here. We've talked about this before. We use the approach of, Hey, I've got 27 seconds or, Hey, I've got 37 seconds to have this pitch.

And he dismisses that. Cause he's saying that's putting yourself in a one-down position right away. And then he gives you an example of how you could have opened that phone call. And you're leading from a one-up position and authoritative position, which is much more enticing to a C-level buyer or an executive, because again, answers knowledge.

I need knowledge to run my business. That's just one example, but it's. If you're going to invest in yourself, I would suggest this book, but if you really want to invest in yourself, you ought to go with a one, two punch. Here it is. You want to invest in the book, but you want to go to Outbound con. And you want to see Anthony live on stage.

And if Outbound this year, it's gonna be like, Outbound was last year. He'll ask the, have a little table there where he can sell you the book. So maybe you just need to fly to Atlanta to buy the book. That's your business case when you talk to your manager. So you can, and then if you're really nice, he'll autograph it for you.

But what are you talking about? Have you figured out, I, I'm assuming you're talking about this on stage this year, have you what's your topic?

[00:31:42] Anthony Iannarino: I was not going to, and then the book came out and then I started getting so much feedback from it in there. I still have so many more things to say, cause you only get 65,000 words for a book.

And then I decided I have other things to say, so I am my first keynote on day one at the end, Jeb opens, I close. And then the next day I open, he closes. We always do it that way. The first day my closing will be a whole bunch of new content around the concept of being one up. I think it's got legs.

I think it's really important. And I think it's, what's missing for most salespeople. Like you just described you, you have to be in a position and that means you have to study. You have to pay attention. In the book. I ask you to just listen to CNBC or watch it while you're working out in the morning, squat.

Nonpolitical for the most part, even if they have politicians on, nobody's really divisive there, but you're going to get an education. Like you're never going to be a great salesperson. If you're not a great business person. Like that, that's the problem. So if you don't have the business acumen, you don't think like a buyer or a leader or a decision maker, it's hard to help them.

But if you do and you learn to have those conversations, the only thing you ever have is a conversation. It's very hard for me to, to explain this Darryl to people, but you've got the value and the differentiation in the sales conversation. If you do well on that, then they may buy what you sell and get the value of what you sell.

But salespeople spend so much time talking about why us and why our solution, and it's all hypothetical. Like it's all hypothetical. They can't feel or see the value of it because it's just, it's not in the room. They can't talk to. It's just a UN we're. All we're doing is having a theoretical conversation about what might be possible.

The more value you create through the first part of that, the sales conversation, the easier it is for you to sell what you're going to sell, and then they will get the value that that creates. But I would tell you, if you believe this is the most one down thing that you can think the value is in the product or the solution, if you believe that.

Now I want you to believe in your product. I want you to believe in your company too, but don't believe that your customer cares anything about that. The value that you create for them is helping them to make a good decision and teaching them how to make a good decision. You can't create value by pointing at your company.

You can't create credibility by pointing at your company. None of those things happen there. They're judging you on the value of the conversation that you have. That conversation has to be good. Counsel educated. Advice and recommendations. If you don't have that, if that's not the conversation, you making it very hard for them to buy.

If you enable them to buy by having the right conversations, you're going to have a much better success rate, especially winning large deals.

[00:34:38] Darryl Praill: So there's a lot more here, but I think about what he just said. Right? So if you understand the impact, your solution can provide and you do that by talking to the in-house experts.

You have as well, more than anything talking through the customers as well as industry influencers and subject matter experts, because by the way, chances are, there's a competitor. There has got a solution comparable to yours. You know, it can be nuance. Now it's hard to believe. I know how dare you and their customer.

Are going to have similar pains and challenges and issues as your customers do. So you can, you don't just need to learn from your own customers. A problem is a problem is a problem. It's a problem it's shared. That's why you have such, you know, the total addressable market, the TAM is big enough for more than one vendor.

[00:35:21] Anthony Iannarino: What's funny about this. Darryl is that when I tell people you should already know what your client's problems are and they argue with me and they go, no, they have to tell me, I don't know, how would I know. Is it your third day on the job? I mean, how many days have you worked in that business? I've been in the business for like nine years.

And you don't already recognize the patterns that you see in front of you when you walk in, you don't have a good theory that you're working from why'd you call him and ask him for a meeting. And then I had to explain this to somebody on LinkedIn and I ended up writing it in a post. Like what if they say Darryl, listen, I do have some problems.

My parking lot is not big enough. For all of the people that we have working here right now in Jimmy and accounting as a really bad attitude, what are you going to do with that? That's their problem. That's what they're focused on. Why'd you ask them for a meeting because you have a theory that there's some area that, you know, very well that they could improve their results in.

Maybe they don't even know that they have a problem yet, and they need a one-up salesperson to come in and teach them that these things are happening and they need to start making changes. Before they actually get harmed before they ever realized that they have the problem. And they argue with me and say, no, I have to ask them what their problem is.

No you have to do is, is show them something, give them an executive briefing, show them what's going on in the world. And then they're going to say like, what are you guys seeing? What are other people struggling with? What what's happening right there. They will start asking questions. They'll lean in.

They're not going to lean in, I mean, If you've got a global footprint, now they might lean in because that's a really sexy.

[00:37:01] Darryl Praill: It's sexy in one way, but it's a pain in the ass, on the other.

[00:37:05] Anthony Iannarino: Yeah. Like th they're not going to lean into that. They want to learn something that's going to help them improve their position.

That's it. So when you know that you can get rid of all of the stuff that doesn't matter to them, the why us really should come at the end anyway.

[00:37:21] Darryl Praill: It really should come at the end. And some people don't understand that that's like, you're trying to make the final decision, why us versus somebody else, especially when it's around price.

But that all said, how many people listening to this podcast right now, as Anthony was talking about, you should have all this knowledge. You know, you, it's not about the features, you know, they don't have, you know, it's not about you doing discovery. You should have this knowledge. Are arguing with him are yelling at the radio or the phone or your, your, you know, defunct iPod player and saying you're full of shit Iannarino.

All right. How many of you are doing the, how many of you are panicked and going, but I don't know that yet. I'm still, I've been hired to do this job. Well, that's what puts you in a one-down position, kids and Anthony covers that. But here's the thing, everything we've just talked about is not unique to this book, understanding your, the impact of your solution and understanding your buyer.

Understanding the industry is sales 1 0 1 and you choosing not to address it is you choosing to fail. And I hate to say it any other way, folks, if you're saying, but I don't know how, or my boss didn't teach me or it wasn't part of the onboarding, I guess. Yeah. A lot of people out there suck at training and a lot of people suck out there at onboarding.

I fully get it. Guess what? That doesn't stop you from doing exactly what I did, which was when I took on this new job, I got news for you just because I'm on LinkedIn does not make me a social media expert asked me how well I use Instagram, by the way, I can't figure the damn app out. Okay. So there you have it.

I talked to. And then I talked to my internal stakeholders and then I talked to wait for it. Our customers, I wait, I went to, I went to my success team and I said, give me 10 of our ideal customers, customers who are having a success that would be symbol, you know, emblematic, you know, symbolic of shared problems and challenges that everybody else is having.

And I said to them, I went to them. I said, I knew here. I said, Why us, why not somebody else? What was your problem? You know, what's the impact been? You know, what advice would you have for me? But if I used what you have for a peer in your space, I did that. It was crazy. All right. And then I went and talked to other experts

[00:39:37] Anthony Iannarino: That speed to result. I mean, you can, you can get that as fast as you want. If you're relatively new to sales, chapter 12 is about how to become one up much faster. There's a whole chapter. I devoted to people because I knew this. Like, you can't be one up that your first day in sales, but you don't have to take as long as people allow you to take to become one up.

That's a decision. If you don't even know that one up exists and that that's, your responsibility might take you seven years to get there. You can do it in a year. If you go and talk to smart people, if you want to understand how to have the right sales conversation. Ask a salesperson who's incredibly successful to let you join them on their calls and offer them in trade.

I'll be your scribe. I'll write down every question. I'll write down every answer and we'll go through them together and you'll be, you'll have a record here of that call. I'll do the work for you. So it's great when you have a scribe and you can just focus on the client anyway, that's a nice trade, but then you can ask the questions.

Why did you ask this? Why did they answer it that way? Why did you have the next conversation over that? You can learn this as fast as you want to, but you have to be proactive about it and you have to be aggressive about it, but you can shorten the time. That's what Darryl just described. Like I'm going to shorten the time.

How do I do that? I'll talk to 10 clients. I'll get an understanding of what they cared about, how this is impacting their business. Now I don't have to wait for a year to figure that out. He could do it in what two weeks. Two weeks. Yeah. Yeah. You can get that in two weeks

[00:41:12] Darryl Praill: And then you spend another two weeks just playing with it, like, you know, trialing the messaging and seeing how people react.

Anthony talks about chapter 12. We're way over schedule on time here, folks. I apologize. But it's, it's just, it's something that's really, I don't know. It's really personal to me. I want you to succeed. And at the end of the day, it's just about people being people with humility and intentionality because you got something I need and vice versa.

So chapter 12, he talks about that. The person quota I'll probably say it wrong. Maya Modo Musashi. He says the true value of sword fencing cannot be seen within the confines of sword and seen technique. So the true value of sales cannot be seen in the confines of sales technique. See how he did that. I read the first paragraph.

Anthony says being one up may sound intimidating, but remember that anyone who's now one up started one down. There are no shortcuts to being one up. You can't buy a stairway, you can't fake it. And you certainly can't cheat your way in like success. It requires that you do the work, the level of competency needed to become and stay one up means you must do the work to make most of your competition one down and no threat to you in a contest for your dream clients before how could occupy in that space, not be worth every second of work.

And that my friend is why you need to buy the Elite Sales strategies book from Anthony. Here it is on Amazon. I went and saw it today just to double check to make sure it's still there. It is in stock, amazon.com. You can get it in Kindle.

You can get it in hard cover. There you go. As well, check out Outbound conference where Anthony is not a founder, but he's a rockstar on stage. That's my guidance to you.

[00:42:54] Anthony Iannarino: I really need people to write, read and buy this book immediately because my spokesmodel Daryl is a very expensive spokesmodel.

He's got the style. He's got the glasses, he's got the post. It's, it costs a lot of money to get this.

[00:43:09] Darryl Praill: It's all it. This does not come cheap. These glasses were like 200 bucks. I mean, this was, and then there, and, and they're progressive. So there you go. Okay. By the time we are so out of time, check it out.

Anthony Iannarino, he's a rockstar. He's legend. He's influenced how I sell and how I lead. And dammit.

[00:43:24] Anthony Iannarino: Thank you, man.

[00:43:24] Darryl Praill: He should influence you too. Hope you like today's. We're gonna do it again next week. Share this episode, everybody on your team. Better yet. Go buy them all copies of the book. Yes. I'm pushing it hard.

Yes. I'm pushing the show hard. There's a reason. Hope you had fun today. Folks. I did remember the sales blog.com to get more Anthony. Anytime of the day, there he is. Do what I do. Go there late at night and stare at his picture. It's awesome. I'll see you soon. Bye bye.

This episode was digitally transcribed.