Helping Business owners convert virtual prospects into paying customers.
With over 3 decades of sales and marketing success under his belt, ]oe has doubled sales revenue for companies in the Automotive, Software, Chiropractic, Dentistry, Mortgage and Real Estate Industries.
Joe can help any sales organization to maximize their lead to sales conversions by removing the "trust potholes" that are inherently damaging your road to the sale.
[Podcast Transcript Using Artificial Intelligence]
Umar Hameed 0:01
Are you ready to become awesomer? Hello everyone! My name is Umar Hameed, I'm your host on the No Limits Selling Podcast where industry leaders share their tips, strategies and advice on how you can become better, stronger, faster. Just before we get started, I've got a question for you, do you have a negative voice inside your head? We all do, right? I'm gonna help you remove that voice and under 30 days guaranteed, not only remove it, but transform it. So instead of the voice that sabotages you, there's one that propels you to much higher levels of performance and success. There's a link in the show notes, click on it to find out more. All right! Let's get started.
Umar Hameed 0:41
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the No Limits Selling Podcast. Today we're talking to a certifiable sales genius Joe Ingram, welcome to the program.
Joe Ingram 0:50
Thanks so much, Umar. Yes, certifiable, I've been called that so many times in my life. I think it meant something different than most people give credit for.
Umar Hameed 0:59
Brilliant. So two salespeople go through the same training, they come out and they deliver dramatically different results. They made solemn promises, I'm going to follow this training, and so why the delta, why do you, what gets in the way of salespeople reaching their potential?
Joe Ingram 1:16
Majority of the salespeople you'll find, so there's two factors that come into, into play. One of them is most trainers only train in the medium on which they process information. So when you look at visual auditory kinesthetic learners, right? if I'm a visual learner, I tend to put everything up on a board or on a computer screen and tell everybody to learn, okay, and so two people go into a class, but if the training isn't customized to their learning, right?
Umar Hameed 1:47
Modality?
Joe Ingram 1:47
It helps them understand. Yeah, that modality, if you don't touch on that, and don't include it, then that person is basically learning in a different language. So the, the ease of application isn't there at the end of the, of what they've learned.
Umar Hameed 2:04
Absolutely. And when I learned to be a keynote speaker, one of the things that I learned was this is that, you know, there's five senses, six, one, if you believe in that sort of stuff, I do. So you've got what you see what you hear, what you touch, what you taste, what you smell. And the three main ones, of course, are what you see, what you hear, which feel. And so it turns out that people that are very visual use visual language, and they tend to talk faster, because they firing off pictures in their head. And the people that are auditory talk at a normal pace, and then people that are kinesthetic, sometimes talk a little bit slower than the rest, and they use feeling words like impact. You've come across this before, Joe?
Joe Ingram 2:42
Absolutely, absolutely. In any of the, again on a keynote, right? as we both do. But as a keynote, I have no ability to go pass out an assessment ahead of time to figure out what they are. I just assume...
Umar Hameed 2:54
A lot of people when they try and do a keynote, they do pass out.
Joe Ingram 2:57
Yes, exactly. And so, usually just throw up first is easier...
Umar Hameed 3:02
Yeah.
Joe Ingram 3:02
...and less stress. But...
Umar Hameed 3:04
Yes, and you need to connect human to human, right?
Joe Ingram 3:07
Correct. And so instead of you staying in your own modality, and you can reach out and understand that there's three sitting out there three major ones, right? I can't, I can't throw on like popcorn in the background in my training, hoping that every time they smell popcorn later, they're going to go back to my training method. But I will sit down and touch in all three of those areas. And you know, what's unique Umar, and this is what I love listening to people all the time is that, if you're presenting something visually, if you're presenting it the auditory way with the correct language, and the right verbiage and all that, and then all of a sudden, you know, you go back to the, let's go into the impact, the feeling the, I want to do all these things, and you start working with the kinesthetic person that's trying to take notes and things like that, as you go through, guess what? nobody heard it three times,
Umar Hameed 3:58
Oh, yeah.
Joe Ingram 3:59
right? As you're presenting it and going through, they don't go, "Wow, he repeated himself," you know, two different ways on top of what I heard, because they don't speak it. And so somebody...
Umar Hameed 4:10
And just to add...
Joe Ingram 4:10
...speaking Spanish, Chinese and English, if you only speak Chinese, you can't, you're not gonna understand the other, other words,
Umar Hameed 4:17
Absolutely. But one of the things that is like so annoying, is when great speakers repeat themselves, and nobody notices and people retain it longer that we actually were more self conscious about that than we need to be number one, because great trainers really nail that point several times. But this is how I was trained, come on stage, and you basically talk at a slower pace using kinesthetic words and every single kinesthetic person in that room goes, "Huh, you're talking to me," and they come on board. You don't lose the other people, they're just like, not as interested. And then after a minute or two, you start speeding up to auditory use auditory words, and because you've built up rapport with the kinesthetics they stay with you and then after a little while, you go to the fast visual stuff using visual words. And then you come back down, and it's almost like you're doing the scales in a way, one, it makes your talk more interesting, two, everyone connects and three, it forces you to be more engaged, because you're not just up there parroting some kind of thing, you've done a million times that you're paying attention to body language and connection. And I think bringing that back down to sales, it's least my worldview, it's not about me, it's about you, my customer. And if I can pay attention to you and you feel attended to that we move further along on that sales conversation, rather than I'm talking and you're like, basically disconnected from me?
Joe Ingram 5:37
Absolutely. When it comes to sales itself, right? So I believe in my philosophy, and I come back to it, I tell everybody, all the time, I say my responsibility as a salesperson, is to provide my prospect with the logical reasoning to justify their emotional decision. So they're...
Umar Hameed 5:56
Absolutely!
Joe Ingram 5:57
...gonna want to feel that they want to do something, and you, can you give them the words, that they could then explain to somebody else, as to why they made that emotional decision. And if you can provide them that where they feel comfortable in parroting back what you said, then all of a sudden, because again, what do we do, we tell you, let's go over the features, the advantage and the benefit of the product, well, all of that is doing what, helping them to come to a decision, but giving them the ability to use those words again later, when somebody says, "Why did you do this?" Well, because of this feature, the advantage, the benefit, blah blah, blah, blah, and so that's what I look at and say, "Can you do that," but my whole belief is, check my ego at the door. And if I check my ego, and I say, "What do I need to be? What part of me do I need to bring out to match this person?" so that I can be who they feel comfortable enough with buying from, that's a lot easier than going with everybody in there, "Hey, I sat down with a prospect,' 'I did a meeting with somebody, and I'm chasing a 25% close rate." And I'm like a 25% close rate if there's four distinct personality types in the world, you're selling to the other person like you, that's a 75% failure rate, I can't afford that. And so my answer is if we all have all four within us just a different level of degrees, depending on which personalities profile you want to build off of. But if you look at that, I say, "Oh, there's four," then why don't I take that part of me that maybe isn't the most dominant? And why don't I utilize that part of my personality now, so that I can match you in your dominant personality style. And then I can go back, so I can hit your learning style, I can hit your personality type, I can match and mirror physically, I can match and mirror audibly. And so and I think that's where a lot of people miss the boat, is that they don't understand how to match somebody, and the match and mirror is completely off,
Umar Hameed 8:04
Absolutely!
Joe Ingram 8:05
and they don't get it.
Umar Hameed 8:07
So one of the areas to kind of just take that a little bit deeper is, sometimes when someone's talking, their hands are an extension of their thoughts and they go, "Joe, the situation was just horrendous,' and this gesture over here isn't just a gesture, this represents three years of pain and suffering. And what I'm looking for Joe is something that's going to help us. And so when you go to do the finalize the close, so I understand that you want to let go of the past and you do that same gesture is not just a gesture, you're tapping into three years of pain. And our solution is going to allow you to get the freedom you want, and paying attention to gestures and realizing they're more powerful than you think just there's always a better way. And we're always learning new techniques to get better. I think the only way you can do that Joe, is what you described, checking my ego at the door." And people that are great, are always looking for nuances and new strategies to do better, and people that have high ego is like, "No, no, I know how to do that." The other day, I was talking to a VP of sales, and it was like, "No, no, I don't need to I've been doing this for a while," and it's like, "How many of your salespeople are hitting quota?" "I don't want to talk about that," because that would bring the reality of you need to learn but their ego won't let them. So how important is mindset to a salesperson's journey?
Joe Ingram 9:25
Okay, without it again, because that that's what separates the big boys from the little boys, right? the mindset of I'm forever learning, and I need to take from you something, right? If I walk into every scenario and say, "I'm going to learn something from this individual, I don't know what it is yet but I'm going to learn something from this individual." That's a different one, a different mindset than the person who says, "I'm closed off to whatever you're going to try and teach me," okay, so I'm one of those individuals that when you say, "You know what you need to do?" my brain just throws up this big block that says, "Don't tell me what to do," right?
Umar Hameed 10:03
Yeah!
Joe Ingram 10:04
And so it's really bad like, every time I run a company or I run all these different things, I go in and somebody will go, they go, "Good night, have a good night boss," and I go, "Don't tell me what to do," right? And even to that level of somebody wishing you...
Umar Hameed 10:18
Yeah!
Joe Ingram 10:18
...well, right? And I'm like, "No, no, don't, don't tell me what to do," and they go, "Oh, well, then don't have a good night," "Oh, still you telling me what to do."
Umar Hameed 10:25
Yeah.
Joe Ingram 10:26
So you got to work on that, that...
Umar Hameed 10:28
Oh, yeah.
Joe Ingram 10:28
...parademon, that voice that comes up because what's going on, but again, are you open to it, do you see there's something, right? So again, when you go into train somebody when you're going into say, "Hey, Mr. VP of sales," right? I will always sit down and talk with them and ask them the questions and said, "You know what,' let's just say and again, you got to make it silly for him, you go 'Look, wave a magic wand, what's the biggest problem we want to go away right now?" right?
Umar Hameed 10:56
Absolutely.
Joe Ingram 10:57
The one, the one that you you looked at it, if you looked at it, you said, "As soon as I as soon as I fix this," because we know you can fix it. I just want to know, if you fix this today, what would make the most impact right now? And they go, "Oh, well, if so and so would get off of his behind? And you know, do more sales calls or do more this, do more of that." And then I said, "So," okay, now looking at that if if we get so and so would you object for me to go sit down, have a conversation with find out what's holding them back, right? And I always bring back in especially to executives, and I was talking to a an executive leader over at Verizon last week. And so as I was talking with her, she said something, she goes, "Man, I really need you to talk to my people," and I said, and she goes, and I talked and I said, "Whoa, whoa, stop." I said, "At this point in time you talk at them, you don't talk to them," and I said, "You have become and I'll date myself with this reference, Charlie Brown's teacher,
Umar Hameed 11:59
Yep.
Joe Ingram 12:00
their parent deaf." And she's like, "That's what I say, I'm like, these guys are just like my kids," they're just like my kids. And I go, "Well, you do sound like Wah, wah, wah, wah wah," to them. Because you're just saying the same thing over and over again, they can't hear you. We all could learn something from our friend's mom that our mom had been yelling at us for weeks to learn, right?
Umar Hameed 12:21
Guilty.
Joe Ingram 12:21
But the difference was the delivery. Yep.
Umar Hameed 12:24
And also delivery and also our beliefs around that person, because mom doesn't know anything, and she's trying to control me, and so we've got all of those filters in as well, but, but totally brilliant. And I think you can only do what you said, Joe, is if you build that level of trust, do you mind if I have a conversation with Bill and figure out what's going on? If you don't have trust, they're not going to let you do that. But if you have that trust, and it's like a no brainer, it's like, of course, you could do that. So it all comes down to, So Joe, let me ask you this question. How old are you now?
Joe Ingram 12:55
52.
Umar Hameed 12:57
You don't look a day over 51 by the way, but what something that you're...
Joe Ingram 13:02
It's notworking with the collagen? Yeah.
Umar Hameed 13:04
So what's something that you used to do in your 40s that you got to break through on that you let go of that allowed you to be this fabulous person now, like, what's something recent that you broke had a breakthrough on that allowed you to improve?
Joe Ingram 13:19
So I'm in my 40s, I attempted to build rapport, okay, all the way up into my 40s, the answer was, again, if you go back, everybody says you got to build rapport, to get to the next level for to go on, right? Like, listen, believe and buy, is what you're looking at, I think it takes too long. And so between 40 and 50, what I learned was I said, "I'm assuming we have rapport, " so that's the concept I have, which is assumed rapport. And that's what I teach people, I'm like, you know, what, if it's going to take a friend, to get them to understand why they need to buy, than just assume your friends and move forward, they'll check you if you're not. And I...
Umar Hameed 14:05
Absolutely!
Joe Ingram 14:06
...and if you look at it based on you know, personality profile you go through, it's almost 70, 70% of the population is worried more about relationships and liking than they are about results. And so looking at that, I'm going to save 7 out of 10 people are worried about the like part of it, assume the like part move forward. I'm already 50% ahead of everybody else. Because they're still looking at that, that 20, 25% 20 to 25% of them that they're trying to match exactly, I'm going to say we're already friends. So in my mind, we're already friends, which means I'm going to talk to you as if we are.
Umar Hameed 14:49
So that's brilliant, for a couple of reasons. Number one, when we don't think we have that connection, and we pretend to have it, they can sense it. So when you authentically go, "Oh, yeah, we're friends, we've got rapport." And the second part was, it sounded like when you're in your 40s, you're actively trying to get rapport, and when you're in your 50s, you're just in rapport is no trying, you just assuming and doing, and it's a different connection and vibe. So oftentimes we think the other person, whether it's your spouse, your kids, your customer, have all the power when the reality is, you've got so much power within you, if you just let yourself just step into that role and not be concerned about will they like me? Won't they like? Me, am I doing a right? Am I not doing it right?
Joe Ingram 15:35
Right. And if you look, right? if in the basis of our clientele, depending on what you do, for the most part, right? all of my clients in the sales world, I'm not hanging out with them on the weekends, right? I'm not looking for my spouse, your spouse, "Let's go hang out," "Let's go to dinner," "Let's go to," "Hey, why don't we travel some place together?" That, that's not what we're doing, "We're in the what is it the one thing we have in common, we have a desire to increase sales for your company, right? And as your friend, my goal is to increase sales in your company." So that's my focus. And so if we have a shared focus, we're automatically in rapport, because we have the same goal, right? What is it that we tell everybody find common ground, they have common ground, otherwise, they wouldn't be talking to you, they're looking for an improvement, you can bring in improvement, all I got to do is get you to get past your ego, I myself, I use humor. The second I get you to laugh with me, the ego checks out the wall between what you know versus what I know goes away. And now whatever it is, I'm trying to share with you can be absorbed at a deeper level without the filter of ego, right? And I always tell everybody say to me, ego is edging gross out of your sales. So that's what...
Umar Hameed 17:06
Absolutely!
Joe Ingram 17:06
...said, don't do it. Yeah.
Umar Hameed 17:08
So just going back to what you said,
Joe Ingram 17:10
There was so many brilliant things, I don't know what you're going to go back to.
Umar Hameed 17:13
I'm gonna have to pick one out of those things. A lot of brilliant things are the obvious things that people miss. So I wrote this down, you know, we have a common agenda, whereas a lot of salespeople really think that is adversarial. Like, you don't want to hire me, I gotta force you to hire me, and then some sales manager says, you have the same agenda, and they go, "Yeah, yeah, sure," but it's more like a superficial bullshitty kind of thing. And what you're talking about is building up rapport, and then it's the authentic pneus of, "Hey, we both want the same thing. How can we work together to make that happen?" And it's all about our state and our intention that needs to go there. And sales is simple, if you let it be. And it's difficult and challenging if, if you just do what you've always done in the way you've done it, and just going to another workshop or another seminar ain't going to help because you're going to get a veneer of stuff that isn't you and it has to be authentic, and only way to get authentic is to let go of the fear and the anxiety. So Joe, I met some of your fans, and they think you walk on water. And...
Joe Ingram 18:17
I do, I've actually taken a bottle of water, put it on the ground walked right over it. It's it's very, very impressive...
Umar Hameed 18:23
Miraculous.
Joe Ingram 18:24
Even if it rains, I walk outside. Yeah, I'm not scared.
Umar Hameed 18:29
I'm not a witch, I'm not gonna melt. So what attribute do you think you have, that really appeals to those folks that builds that level of trust and that level of conviction.
Joe Ingram 18:40
So the one thing I do is I laugh at myself. Okay, so when you laugh at yourself, it shows the humility. And when you can laugh at yourself, they stop and realize, because usually what I'm laughing about myself is what they're kicking themselves for, because they've done it. So when I laugh at it, right? again, that's, I, as you get older and you focus on we're already in rapport, which means I can drop the facade of being perfect. And so to me, the answer is, I can be inperfectly perfect, right? But if my focus is strictly being who you need me to be, so my ability to utilize the part of my personality to match theirs to break the first wall down, right? Implement the humility and say, "Huh, I can mock myself because of the fact that, guess what, we're the same," and then all of a sudden, the barriers are gone. And I can hear you for what you're trying to say and where you're going.
Umar Hameed 19:47
So two final questions for you, Joe. Question number one, your negative voice inside your head, what does that say to you, to stop you from being awesomer? And question number two is, what's the challenge you're working on for Joe right now to make him better, stronger, faster?
Joe Ingram 20:06
So I will tell you that negative voice, okay, comes from a lot of what's going on today, which is, if I am truly me, right? how many people will run, right? So for me, the answer is always, can somebody handle me at full strength, or do I need to dilute myself to get to the point, right? I don't want to be the, to me, and my answer is I want to be like a isolated ice cream, right? But that means I'm never going to be in the top 10 of ice cream, that's theirs, so, and I hate ice cream so the example is just weird but yes.
Umar Hameed 20:49
So there's a guy called Gair Maxwell, who's a Canadian marketing expert, and he had said this, one thing that ties into that is if your marketing does not have the ability to offend, it does not have the ability to convince and I think getting Joe at 100% strength is gonna sort people out is either they love you, or there's like, or we hate you, but it's the people that love you are the raving fans that allow you to succeed. And so that last question, what's a challenge you're working on for you?
Joe Ingram 21:17
The, how do my personal challenge that I'm working on is, how do I release a lot of the daily ToDo's to get some, so my thing now is I need a virtual assistant. I know that scaling is important, but being a control freak, is also what I need to be involved in, all the way through. And so but I've actually I set up meetings with probably three different VA companies, and going through and putting it all out there because letting go of the control, so that, it can the company can grow beyond me, right? And I've done it before, I've given up piece given a piece, we're still here, right? It's just getting myself to get past that initial until it's perfect, I can't hand it off,
Umar Hameed 22:05
Right.
Joe Ingram 22:06
and I'm limiting myself because somebody else's creativity and expertise in that area could expand us so much further than what my understanding of that area is, right? I completely trust my accountant, I give him all the stuff and tell him, "Okay, do I cut a check, do I not?" I don't go dig deep and say...
Umar Hameed 22:26
His name is shady Malone and you still trust him?
Joe Ingram 22:29
You know exactly. I've never met him in person, I just dropped my stuff off under a door. Yeah, no, but it's uh, but when I look at that, I'm like, "I will do that because I have no desire to learn that part." But if there's a somewhat desire to learn it, then my answer is I want to learn it before I delegate it, which again, slows me down.
Umar Hameed 22:48
So Joe, thank you so much for being on the show today. Hard to believe is 23 minutes, but it just flew by. Thanks a lot. I'm looking forward to our next conversation.
Joe Ingram 22:57
Fantastic. Thanks, Umar. Appreciate you.
Umar Hameed 23:04
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave a five-star rating. And if you're looking for more tools, go to my website at nolimitsselling.com. I've got a free mind training course there, that's going to teach you some insights from the world of neuro-linguistic programming and that is the fastest way to get better results.