The Sales Conversation (Part Five)

You're selling to an amygdala in drag

Jan 16, 2022

Just Give Me The Main Points

How might we overcoming nervousness in the Sales Process?

Understand the biology of sales: Fear is a natural response to the unknown, and sales can be an intimidating process.
Reframe your mindset: Focus on the value you can bring to the customer, rather than the fear of rejection.
Prepare: Research the customer and the product/service you are selling.
Practice: Rehearse your pitch.

About five years ago, I met up with my buddy Kev,

KEV: You know what’s the most attractive thing you can wear on your arm?
ME: [Recently divorced] No, what?
KEV: Another woman.

Kev’s hot. Objectively hot. But he’s also not 6’11'“. He’s micro-hot. But hot, nonetheless.

It’s easy to think that only hot people can sell. There aren’t many ugly spokespeople and newscasters. In a lot of ways, ugly people are placed beside hot people to increase their hotness. Biryani tasted better when paired with white rice.

While hot people do sell - just check out any Vegas IT Conference - I know some regular-ass looking folks who sell A LOT

If you’re determined to sell without becoming hot as a prerequisite, this post is directed at you. Hell, if you’re hot, this post will only help you outsell these ugly mfs even more.

Update: I showed this post to Kev and he said I should read this now.

Sales 101 - Sales as a Problem-Solving Mechanism

Sales seemed so random back then.

I had a high-value sale disintegrate in the span of five seconds. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t experiencing a failure but rather a rite of passage in sales. Having a high-value sale you’ve been working on for over four months burn to the ground in the last moment is a rite of passage for every enterprise sales rep.

The first offer that I ever made as a Headhunter was rejected. That cost me a ton of time and money, and I was determined to figure out how to make sure it never happened again. I didn’t want to keep spending four-six months carefully setting up sales only to see them vaporize into thin air at the last moment.

As a Headhunter, I always wanted to know why my candidates were turning down my jobs. Was there a way that I can generate the most attractive job offer for my candidates in a consistent way?

What separates a salesperson who sells versus a salesperson who doesn’t sell?

That’s the question Neil Rackham and friends asked themselves. They answered the question by eavesdropping on 15,000 sales calls. The answer?

Sales is a process of problem solving with four discrete steps:

Understand Situation of Sales Prospect.
Make a list of the Problems from the perspective of the Sales Prospect in the Situation.
Rank problems by Impact in terms of:
1. Costs saved by a hypothetical solution.
2. Revenue earned by a hypothetical solution.
Advance the sale to the next step.

When I was a Headhunter at a Boutique Agency, this process helped me discover that people didn’t want more money or a better boss or better tools - they wanted a short commute. It was really astonishing when I realized that people would sacrifice pay to gain leisure time, but that’s the lesson of Veblen.

Veblen said that we seek to fill our 24 hours with leisure as opposed to work. Furthermore, when we could afford to spend all 24 hours as leisure instead of work, we humans hire OTHER PEOPLE and fill their hours with leisure (think of a Driver who only Drives 90 minutes a day and is left luxuriously idle the rest of the day.

The combination of leisure time added and stress reduced by a shorter commute turned out to be the most motivating part of any compensation package. And that’s why I still use Neil Rackham’s four-step problem solving process when selling.

The last step in Sales is the Advance. Complex Sales require advances, not closes, because complex sales requires sign-off from multiple RACIs (Responsible Accountable Consulted and Informed stakeholders).

But then Kev shared with me Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff. Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff showed me the Biology of Sales, which was nowhere to be found in Rackham’s work.

Sales 201A - The Scorpion and The Frog

FROG: Scorpion, why did you sting me? Now we’re both going to drown.

One day there was a scorpion and a frog sitting by a river. Both of them wanted to get to the other side, but only one of them had the ability to swim. Therefore, the scorpion only had one option: convince the frog to take him to the other side.

So the scorpion asked the frog to let him ride on his back to the other side of the river.

FROG: Why would I let you ride my back? Scorpions sting Frogs like me, and your sting is deadly.
SCORPION: Why would I sting you if you help me across the river? I can’t swim. If I stung you, I’d kill me.

The frog succumbed to reason and let the scorpion on his back. Both frog and scorpion began swimming across the river together.

Halfway across the river, the frog’s arms starting to become numb. Slowly, the frog’s hands starting feeling like plastic.

FROG: Scorpion, why did you sting me? Now we’re both going to drown.
SCORPION: I stung you because I’m a scorpion.

Your customer is a frog who’s been stung and drowned over a thousand times. Imagine that the next time you’re calling.

Sales 201B - Sales as a Process of Biological Reaction

When you encounter another animal in the wild, your brain asks you,

Should I eat it, fight it, or fuck it? - Oren Klaff

By understanding the biology of sales - and more specifically the biology of the brain - I was able to take my sales ability as a problem-solver to the next level by incorporating emotion.

Klaff contends that amateur salespeople sell technicalities, and technicalities are processed by the Neocortex. Unfortunately for amateurs, the Neocortex is NOT active when they first meet the customer. Rather, the Crocodile Brain aka Amygdala in the customer is trying to determine whether your a friend or foe.

Here’s how it all goes down:

You meet the prospect.
You become the dominant alpha by breaking their frame of the situation and replacing it with your own framing of the situation. When the situation is framed in a way you have a unique understanding, they have no leg to stand on.
You introduce a narrative - man in forest, beasts attack, will he survive?
You pause the narrative to introduce three market forces that frame the problem in a way that you uniquely solve.
You conclude the story with your solution as the answer.
You give them a moral reason to do it.
You state the offer and leave the room.

It’s more complicated than that, but I really believe I’d do you a disservice by showing you the formula. Some formulae should be derived rather than spoon-fed.

The Challenger Sales Model - Why The Best Tech Doesn’t Always Win

In a world where your product, service, and brand are identical to everyone else’s, it’s only your sales process that differentiates you and makes the sale.
- Challenger Sales Thesis

You’ve heard that the best technology doesn’t always win. Hell you’re seeing that right now with BTC vs BSV. BSV is the best technology yet BTC is more widely-adopted. Now you could argue that BTC is susceptible to Craig Wright, and you’d be right. You know, Craig Wright, the holder of more BTC than anyone on the planet who’s re-instantiated his original Nakomoto Consensus? Enough about that for now.

But it’s true. The best tech doesn’t always win. Hell, with competition being so fierce these days, we’re discovering that the Challenger Sales Thesis is as true as ever.

In a world where your product, service, and brand are identical to everyone else’s, it’s only your sales process that differentiates you and makes the sale.
- Challenger Sales Thesis

The Challenger Sales Model was a book recommended to me by another Mentor, someone I call BRAIN. He sells datacenters as a service. The book showed me that it was my responsibility as a salesperson to not only frame problems better but create solutions based on those problems and then present the company as a solution to a problem only I could identify.

Sales 301 - The Drip

The big thing in SAAS selling is retargeting. Retargeting is when a customer fails to buy from you and then you pop up in their FB, IG, Twitter, and Pinterest feed saying, “Would you buy it if I gave you a discount?”

"…mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it."
- Zajonc

Retargeting is built on a psychological foundation called The Mere Exposure Effect. Zajonc et. al. proved in the 50s that the more you exposed someone to stimulus, the more it became ATTRACTIVE to them.

They say it takes 5-9 sales call before a prospect says yes. Take that idea to the digital world, and imagine every time that a prospect goes online they see you. That sounds expensive until you realize the secret to sales is TALKING TO THE RIGHT FUCKING PROSPECTS. You shouldn’t waste time throwing pearls to swine.

Sales 401 - ASKING YOURSELF THE TOUGH QUESTIONS

The toughest questions in sales aren’t the questions you ask the customer, but rather the questions you ask YOURSELF.

Who are the right prospects? Geoffrey Moore gives us the list.

These are very tough questions in sales. They’re so tough that salespeople get paid more to solve these questions when compared to the compensation packages of the engineers in the same company.