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[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
Hello everyone! Today I have the privilege of having the "Sales Whisperer" on the show today. Wes Shaffer, welcome to the program.
Wes Schaeffer 0:50
Thanks for having me.
Umar Hameed 0:52
So, Wes, what's really intrigues me is this, is when you're in the Armed Forces, and I can see in the background of our video shot that you were in the Air Force, that there's really good leadership training, but in the Air Force, you can have lieutenants that are like spectacular and ones that are not as good they went through the same training. So talk to me about the disconnect, because we're going to talk about sales as well. Just going through the course isn't enough, so let's take a look at the military first and we'll come back to sales.
Wes Schaeffer 1:22
Yeah. What's human nature? Look, by definition, half of the population in anything that you do is below average.
Umar Hameed 1:33
Yep. All the population there on the upper half.
Wes Schaeffer 1:37
Exactly. And so it applies in leadership. You got good leaders, you got bad leaders, sometimes the the bad leaders get better. You know, I remember going back to my my 10 year reunion, and this guy came up to me, because at the Air Force Academy, you've got 40 squadrons, right? You've got roughly 4000 cadets, you know, somewhere in that neighborhood, so roughly, roughly 100 students cadets per Squadron. And so you spend your first year in one squad and then you transfer to another one, because you're getting yelled at for a year, and they're like, we'll send you somewhere else, so there's no bad blood, you got to hang out with anybody. So I spent three years with this guy and in Squadron 34, loose hawgs, and this guy was kind of a geek, we were not particularly close. And I saw him in our 10 year reunion. He, I was just politely avoiding him, right? And he countered, you know, he confronted me, right? like, got in my way as I was walking to the bar, and he's like, "Wes, I've changed man. I saw the light, you know," and then as I got to talk with others, he really had he grew up he got out in the in the real Air Force, we call it, became an F-16 pilots. And he realized that his idea of leadership and even communication at 18,19,20 years old, was not quite right, wasn't quite the, the most effective way to really get people to follow. So you know, some of the bad ones learn, and, you know, some of the good ones fail, but it's like, it's life, right? It's, nobody's perfect, there's...
Umar Hameed 3:30
Yeah, it's, it's,
Wes Schaeffer 3:30
...always it's down.
Umar Hameed 3:31
I'm a firm believer in, everyone has the right to suck. And what that gives you permission to do is to execute. And as long as you execute and monitor, you can get better, and if you'd never execute, of course, that doesn't work. But let me tell you something really interesting, probably one of the best keynote speeches I've ever heard, I don't remember his second name, first name was Charlie and he had to be like 89 million years old, and he was a resident at the Hanoi Hilton, the Vietnam War. And he was saying, you know, this one guy was the glue that held the whole fricking thing together and they use tapping with wires to communicate, because guards didn't permit it. And then they will have contest and the contest was okay, who you know, got captured when, how fast you were going and how high you were going. And of course, the Air Force boys, your people were like, I was doing like Mach two, I was at 40,000 feet, I got shut down. I got captured and then went all the way down to this guy that was the glue that held the entire thing together, was a sailor and he was on a ship and he accidentally fell overboard, and so he said, "I was doing like 20 knots and I fell like 50 feet and I was not captured, I was rescued," And he was the lowest guy lowest ranking person but he ended up being the the morale glue that held everything together.
Wes Schaeffer 4:45
Yeah.
Umar Hameed 4:46
Which is amazing kinda.
Wes Schaeffer 4:48
Yeah. You never know. You never know what you're capable of until you're pushed, right? and I think we, you know, you see the old story that hard man make for good times, good times make for soft men, soft men make for hard times.
Umar Hameed 5:04
Yes. Cycle.
Wes Schaeffer 5:06
Either hard times or bad times lead to good men, strong men. So you need to push yourself, you need to get uncomfortable, and it's hard, right? We like being comfortable.
Umar Hameed 5:06
Yeah.
Wes Schaeffer 5:09
So you got to push yourself to really know what you're capable of. And, yeah, you never know who the real leaders are. You've seen, you've countless stories, like from the Holocaust and things that people rose up children, you know, World War II and whatnot, just rising to the, to the occasion.
Umar Hameed 5:41
Oh, yeah.
Wes Schaeffer 5:42
So, you know, push yourself. So you, you know what you're truly capable of and I forget who said it, but it's, you know, you It's an old adage that when the moment occurs, right? you don't rise to your potential, you regress to the level of your training.
Umar Hameed 6:01
Yeah.
Wes Schaeffer 6:02
Okay. So train hard.
Umar Hameed 6:04
So in the military, let's go to infantry for a minute and I promise want to bring it back to sales right now, you can get a platoon of soldiers that are strangers that come together, and something magical happens where people go above and beyond the call of duty, and they do things for each other that they would not do otherwise, like put themselves in harm's way, and oftentimes, they're lifelong friends. So then we come into the modern world, we've got sales teams, and one of the things that you talk about is, I'm going to help you build the best sales team ever. So how do we bring people together to build a strong team, because you've got egos and people have their own hang ups, that all that human stuff? So Wes, can you tell us about a particular team you helped? How you found them when you started working with them? And how you got them to where you got them?
Wes Schaeffer 6:52
Well, I'm kind of like, the police, right? You don't, you don't call 911, and just tell them "Hey, everything's fine. Come on over for hot dog," right?
Umar Hameed 7:06
Right.
Wes Schaeffer 7:06
When people are reaching out to me, yes, some are proactively looking to grow but a lot of times, it's like, "Whoa, things are, things are a mess. We need some help."
Umar Hameed 7:17
Right.
Wes Schaeffer 7:18
And people will call me all the time and, or, like we'll meet at a function back when there used to be functions, you know, and they go, "Oh, sales whisperer, so you're a sales trainer?" "Yes." One of the things I do, "Oh, can you train my people?" Right? and what they expect me to do is get into a song and a dance and start to pitch them about blah. But what I what I asked them is, how do you know that you have people that are even trainable?
Umar Hameed 7:46
Right.
Wes Schaeffer 7:47
Okay, so when people come to me, and we need to realize this in any industry, they something has happened, that led them to finally pick up the phone and make that call to reach out. Okay, so we have to figure out what has happened, and what is the impact, and who besides that one person really cares?
Umar Hameed 8:14
Alright, so let me pause you right there, because I think all of that is brilliant. But give me a real world examples so we can actually put structure to it, and you know, you can change the name of the company, so we don't embarrass anybody. But give me a real life story of this is what was going on, this guy noticed, came to me and this is what we discovered.
Wes Schaeffer 8:31
Right. Well, and I'm leading to it because it's, people I've, I have failed probably as many times as I've succeeded, because the, the, the client wasn't willing to change. Okay, I mean, I'm working with one right now they are believing memberships. And it has taken six weeks to convince them to take one very small action that we've already seen, like a 50% improvement just on the phone on the initial conversation, okay, so now they're starting to buy in, with, with little wins. So in, in any business, so when those that are listening, we need to take the time to truly uncover the pain and the motivation and that raw nerve, you know, to, to follow our advice. Okay, so I've, I've turned around daycare, centers, legal firms, laser eye centers, because it they're all humans.
Umar Hameed 9:49
Yes.
Wes Schaeffer 9:50
Right. And they so we've got to find their motivation. But you know, the daycare we added a quarter million dollars to their bottom line, and they only had 96 seats, what 22 of them were vacant. You know, I took this husband and wife, that they have a marriage ministry, something like 74% of the room opted in to their offer, you know, almost 200 people in the room. I just changed how they ask for their contact information. And I did it, I met them an hour before their talk, and I just read it, we did their talk. We did their close now.
Umar Hameed 10:35
Right. Yeah.
Wes Schaeffer 10:36
Yeah. So you've just, you got to take the time to understand their motivation and their pain, and then big changes can happen quickly.
Umar Hameed 10:48
So one of the things that I find kind of intriguing is, we drink our own Kool-Aid, and we think our messaging is so spot on, but Wes you don't understand people really need to know about this portion of it, but you see things clearly and in fact, you have a sword behind your skin and cut away all the bullshit, and but, getting them to believe it, and to embrace it are two different things. So they may be paying you but they fight it. So how do you get people to take a step back and look at it more clearly because you know, I'm guilty of it, I see things my way, and sometimes it takes someone to say something and me to kind of noodle on it for a day and go, "Why did they react so badly, what they were saying was actually spot on? So how do you counteract that?
Wes Schaeffer 11:34
It's human nature, I mean, you can't read the label from inside the bottle.
Umar Hameed 11:37
Yep.
Wes Schaeffer 11:39
Right. Looking from the outside, looking in, it's easy to see where the issues are. So what we need to realize is, we have to decide as humans in our business, do we want to be right? Or do we want to be affected?
Umar Hameed 12:00
Yes. No, I want to be right.
Wes Schaeffer 12:01
Then, and so that's why your bank accounts going to be limited.
Umar Hameed 12:06
So you know, it's...
Wes Schaeffer 12:07
Right.
Umar Hameed 12:07
...a fierce statement. It's a fair statement, what you said, but it's how we see the world. It dictates what it shows up like so sometimes, you know, being right, we think is effective, but it isn't. And you need somebody to hold up that truth that allows them to realize it.
Wes Schaeffer 12:27
Well, yeah. But when I say, look, when eventually they're going to come around to realizing I'm right. Okay,
Umar Hameed 12:34
Yes.
Wes Schaeffer 12:34
but you can't just, can't just bash him in the face. Okay, "What you're doing, you're, are you ignorant? How the hell are you even in business? This is amazing. This is the worst. This is the most disorganized company I've ever seen, blah, blah blah," like, no kidding,
Umar Hameed 12:49
That's not going to help!
Wes Schaeffer 12:50
That's why they call me because things are in disarray. Because maybe they lost their biggest client, maybe, you know, margins are down, okay, they know that, I don't have to beat them up. Now, despite that, and I understand as humans we want to be right. So even though they're calling for help deep down, they, they want to be told, "Hey, it's not your fault. It's okay. You know, you did what you could," any rational person would have made the same decisions. So you have to, you have to balance that with, "Okay, are you really ready willing and able to make the changes, I'm going to recommend." Okay, that's how you, you prove you're right by getting them results. Okay, so you can't just bash him in the head with it right up front.
Umar Hameed 13:41
So when you go into a team, and you find a particular team member, and you go, "You know, Jane, she could be spectacular, but there's something kind of getting in the way." So how do you diagnose individual folks, especially the ones that are doing a good job, but there's greatness there, and for whatever reason, they can't achieve it. And if you can think of a real life person that kind of makes your example a lot more real for the audience.
Wes Schaeffer 14:08
Am, hmm. The answer broadly at first, but most,
Umar Hameed 14:14
Sure.
Wes Schaeffer 14:15
most companies, most sales managers, they spend all their time on the turkeys and ignore the eagles. Okay, and then they're surprised when the eagles leave.
Umar Hameed 14:30
Fly the coop.
Wes Schaeffer 14:31
And, and they're left with the turkeys. Now, granted most of the eagles, they don't, they don't necessarily want or need a lot of help, but they do appreciate good effective help. They don't want to be taken for granted. And even though most salespeople are are in it for the money, they are also humans and they appreciate the recognition. Okay, so take the time to recognize them. But it's, it's the old adage, you know, you can lead a horse to water, you can't make them drink. What I tell people is, if somebody is underperforming, you kind of ignore them, okay, tell them what's expected, then get out of the way, make them rise up and ask for help. Okay, I can't force it, I can't force somebody to get better, I can't force somebody to follow the script, I can't force somebody to follow the procedures that I put in place, okay. But I've had a lot of people, you know, tell me I'm working with a guy right now, and in our Monday sales calls, and he's making outbound calls, because he has to, because that's the nature of his business, who he's calling on, the people he's calling on or not downloading white papers and case studies and free reportsm he's got to call them and speak to them. Okay, and,
Umar Hameed 16:06
True cold calling.
Wes Schaeffer 16:07
true cold calling. And he, A, he's using the script that I created, B, he's, he's following the structure, the timing, I mean, we literally get down into when should you call these people. And so giving him specific time blocks, specific things to say, you know, and the guy showing up, you know, smiling on the Monday morning calls, his numbers are up, he's hitting his goals, you know, and this is, this is right now, you know, January, February of 2021. So, but the crazy thing is, I've been teaching the same stuff for 15 years, you know, in good times and in bad, it works regardless.
Umar Hameed 16:50
Humans are humans.
Wes Schaeffer 16:51
Humans are humans. So following that now, in a way he, he is self motivated, because he joined the course, but the reality is the family owned business and he could kind of coast and he has coasted for a little while. And in working with the company overall. It took a little while, but he has come around.
Umar Hameed 17:18
Nice.
Wes Schaeffer 17:19
But very passive, not aggressive at all. reluctant to put into play some of the things I've been talking about because he could kind of coast because it's a family business. But he he does have some self esteem, right? He's got some pride, and he's finally come around, this has all been remote, he's way out of Miami, I'm way out in Southern California. You know, but he, he's come around, it's been fantastic to see because it's, it's so effective, it's so easy to do, it's simple, it's not easy, right? picking up the phone and calling, I understand there's a lot of hesitation around that. But when you get your talk track down, you'll write better emails, your,
Umar Hameed 18:10
Yes.
Wes Schaeffer 18:10
your, your write better marketing content, it's all everything is interrelated. So, you know, good on the phone.
Umar Hameed 18:20
Actually I came across this joke that I kind of like is, how do you make a salesperson shut up? Give them a telephone. So I was working with a client once, and we're working on you know, doing cold calling, and then I go, "Okay, get your phone out and I want you to I'll get my phone out. I'm going to record you making a phone call to a client." And we record the phone call just his end of it, and then I said, "Okay, great. Now do me a favor, who's your best friend?" "My bestfriend's Johnny," "Call them up and invite him out to the movies this weekend." Calls up Johnny and bud some out for the movies and I said listen to both recordings. And the first one is tightness in the voice, distressing the voice, he goes, "Holy cow. I had no idea sound like that," and I guess a lot of people have done that, but when we played the call to a friend, there's warmth, there's connection.
Wes Schaeffer 19:11
Right.
Umar Hameed 19:11
And just that contrast between the two was enough for him to go, "Okay. I get it,
Wes Schaeffer 19:17
Right.
Umar Hameed 19:18
why it's important," and then. So as you work with organizations, what have been the unexpected opportunities with a pandemic? And what do you think have been some of the things that are getting in the way of sales?
Wes Schaeffer 19:34
Speaking on the phone, right? One of the opportunities is the phone, people are answering their phones. You know, the funny thing is, they're like their corporate lines are being forwarded to their cell phones so you can reach people, you can text them. They actually, now that we've settled in, people are a little more relaxed, actually, they're not commuting, you know, they have a little bit more time, so you can have some conversation with people. And, and you don't have to be worried about a barking dog or crying baby or whatever, people are more chill and more, I think more human in a lot of ways, you know, so that has been good. I think people are, they can use this as an excuse as well, it's because these are new, uncertain times. You know, the crazy thing is I've worked from home for 21 years, and I've been selling over Skype and AWeber and whatever, since ever since they were invented. So I think people had some misnomers about, "Well, my business is different. I really can't sell remote, this is face to face, I, no, I don't think so." I think people are coming around to that, that they can.
Umar Hameed 20:56
Nice. And I think it's just making it so much more frickin' productive, because there is no traveling half an hour for a half an hour meeting and half an hour...
Wes Schaeffer 21:04
Trough discipline.
Umar Hameed 21:05
...wasted your day?
Wes Schaeffer 21:06
Well, if you discipline or you could say, "Well, I don't have that 45 minute commute so I can spend 45 minutes on Facebook and then 45 minutes turns into 90 minutes...
Umar Hameed 21:14
True.
Wes Schaeffer 21:14
...in the morning and in the afternoon, and in the middle of the day because you don't have the discipline. Look up a friend of mine, I've trained jujitsu with, he was accustomed to going to the office. And when all this happened and all started shutting down last summer, he's like, "Dude, my gyms close, I don't have my commute, I'm a lazy bum," he's, he like literally ate like two bags of doughnuts or wheat, Twinkies, something like, like two bags of junk food, right? in, in one day in one sitting, and I was like, and this was like a big tough guy, a competitor winning jujitsu tournaments, big strong guy, right? very disciplined when in his in his routine. So, you know, I gave him some tips, and, and fortunately, he followed them, and was able to kind of get, get into a good routine, but it was new for a lot of people, right? People have told me all the time for 20 years, you know, I got seven kids at home, they're like, "How do you work from home, those kids I could never do that," and like, "Well, clearly you can because we all have to right now."
Umar Hameed 22:25
Yeah.
Wes Schaeffer 22:27
So, but it was a hard transition for a lot of people. And so I don't, you know, I don't I don't want to downplay it, but hey, it's the hand we were dealt. So, you know, make the most of it.
Umar Hameed 22:39
Speaking of technology and getting better at what you do, and CRM, they're like so many freaking CRM, you've got the granddaddy of them all, Salesforce, and I know, you've got a quiz that people can take to figure out which one is going to be the right one for them, and the answer is the one you use. But other than that, tell us about the quiz.
Wes Schaeffer 22:59
That is, that is the best one. So it's just crmquiz.com, just asked a bunch of multiple choice questions just to help you narrow down the choices. You know, on the one hand, I tell people like I had a blog post I wrote a long time ago saying that CRMs are dead, you know, part of that's a marketing ploy. But part of it it's true because the standalone CRM is dead, you know, Salesforce bought exact targets I think back in like 2012 something like that it's been been a while for a couple billion dollars. And they that does you know, email and marketing automation and they had already bought par dot exact target did in part dot does automation of workflows and processes and whatnot. So even Salesforce has recognized for almost a decade that having a CRM is not enough, it's, it's the store of the data. And, and you need good, accurate, reliable data, so you can then take the appropriate actions, and the, so finding the right platform is important. But you know, there's free tools out there, there's low cost tools, there's there's very specific, you know, a unique kind of platform. So that's why I made that quiz, I've been in the space now since 2007 as a seller and trainer, but I've used them as a salesperson since really were invented, right? We had a we had a client server kind of database when I was selling mobile homes in Mobile, Alabama, in 1998, if we didn't enter our prospects info, and if they came back on a lot later and bought, we didn't get any credit. But if we registered our leads, and they came back and bought, we get 50% of the sale, even if we weren't the salesperson that closed them, so just for entering their data. So 23 years I've been logging my customer data in the database.
Umar Hameed 24:58
Brilliant. Wes, before we parted company today, is there a mind hack or a shortcut that you use to make you more effective that you'd like to share with the audience?
Wes Schaeffer 25:08
Hmm, well, shortcuts, yes. I'm a, I'm a freak about efficiency. I tell everybody look at what you do two or three times a day or four or five times a week and have a process for it and automated if you can.
Umar Hameed 25:20
Right.
Wes Schaeffer 25:21
I use a tool on my Mac called text expander, it's also built into your iPhone and into the into the apple ecosystem. So on my Mac, in Safari on my iPad on my iPhone, I use the keyboard text expander, so I've I have over 100 shortcodes that literally if you ask me for my bio for this talk, this interview I can I can send you, you know, five paragraphs of content with just a click, Wes Bio, but it my...
Umar Hameed 25:54
Nice.
Wes Schaeffer 25:54
...address, my cell phone number, my email, my email is long, wes@thesaleswhisperer.com, it's easy to miss type, if I type in Wes and the letter E, it spells out my email. So I'm very productive just sitting on my phone, right? I can, I maybe 10 minutes early to a meeting and I can respond to a dozen emails, you know, with content when others might be able to get to done, you know, so...
Umar Hameed 25:55
Brilliant.
Wes Schaeffer 25:57
...I'm a efficiency freak in that regard.
Umar Hameed 26:26
Wes, it was a pleasure chatting with you today. Thanks so much for being on the show.
Wes Schaeffer 26:30
Hey, thanks for having me.
Umar Hameed 26:36
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.