Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:16
So currently we’re using active campaign for both the pipeline stuff and also just sending emails. It’s really good at that. But all of them are good for their own reasons. Talk about what are the mistakes you’re seeing when you are analyzing. What are people doing on the calls that is tripping them up?
Nick Loise: 19:39
So there’s a couple things. that I really see that I think it’s a skill. Right. So it’s not a technique, it’s a skill. And they’re not listening.
They’re not actively engaged in listening to the person on the other end. And some of it could be that certain demographics or younger populations think that they can multitask. So if you watch them on the video, you know, you and I are on this and we’re looking at each other, but you’ll see their eyes go over to another screen. You’ll see them look down. They’re on their phones.
I’m not taking anything away from those other tools, but all that stuff should be shut down. So you and I are having a really good conversation and I’m listening. And I think if you boil down to where mistakes are made and where things are missed, it’s the skill and the active listening that is not adhered to and it’s not taught anymore. And actually ironically, like when I was, I, you know, listen, I’m dating myself, but I grew up in sales in the late 80s, early 90s. Right.
And there was the top producer in our office, and he talked about active listening back then, and he talked about a record that they used to listen to. I went out and found this on eBay and bought this. It’s eight records, right? And people may not even know what record is an LP, right. An LP.
It’s coming.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:58
Back. My daughter actually got a record player.
Nick Loise: 21:01
Yeah, I’m a big vinyl artist.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:02
Interesting.
Nick Loise: 21:03
Yeah, but it’s all about active listening, right? There’s.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:07
That was the record. It was about someone talking about active listening.
Nick Loise: 21:10
Yeah, actually a sales training program or a training program about active listening that was created. And then and then it’s called active listening. I think it was created by IBM. And you could go out and it was, you know, it taught you how to active listen, how to active listening, especially in a sales engagement. There’s some good books on it too.
And the names of the books escape me, but we could get them for for the show notes. But that is the number one thing, right? We also go into it thinking that it is a screw. And I only have a screwdriver in my tool kit, right? Instead of saying what is the problem?
But going deep, right. So we talked about copywriters. I think copywriters really have a good understanding of what’s going on in the conversation, in the person’s mind. Right. And how do you go not just surface level, but going deep and fully understanding what’s going on?
Because if you’re selling in a B2B environment, you’re competing against other priorities, but you’re also competing against politics, right? You’re competing against problems. And so you kind of have to really understand that chessboard to really move the deal through. So those are the I mean, listen, those are soft skills. Right?
So you really kind of have to have to focus on that. I just pulled.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:26
This up real quick.
Nick Loise: 22:27
Yeah. Yeah I got that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:28
So I just look up non-fiction best books on active listening. There’s a lot on here right. So people can check that out. I don’t know if any of these keep.
Nick Loise: 22:36
Going down a little bit. There’s one.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:37
The art of mindful listening. The listening leader, the lost art of listening. Listen well I hear you. The surprising, simple think fast or talk smarter. Listen to sell.
So there’s a lot on here.
Nick Loise: 22:51
Just listen is the one that I was referencing. Yeah. And the lost Art of listening is another good one. And so if you think about the sales training, right, that we are today, you know, it’s almost like punch and dodge. Punch and dodge.
Here’s the, here’s the 14 objection handling skills or anything like that. I think that the really good sales training is almost like therapy training of listening to the person and what the other person is saying on the other end and unpacking what they’re saying. I have a saying it’s trite, right? And we throw around ABC in sales all the time, which is always be closing. And I think that’s the wrong use of that acronym.
I actually think ABC has always be curious, right? So always listen and ask questions and really go deep on that and have a firm understanding of what’s going on with the other person. What’s their problems. Right. Think about, you know, what they have to solve.
And how does your product and service help them solve that?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:54
I want to get a little granular nick with that, which is I’m curious since you’re a big on systems, right?
Nick Loise: 24:02
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:03
I’m wondering what you have people look at like, do they have some kind of Google Docs script up and at the top says, make sure you active listen. Like, what are they actually using when they’re on the calls to keep track of everything that has to go on?
Nick Loise: 24:19
Well, you know, we’re big on what I call a flow chart, and I don’t know if I have the ability to share on my screen, but I can bring.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:27
Up I mean.
Nick Loise: 24:29
Yeah, let me so let me bring one up.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:31
And by the way, I don’t know if I’m the best active listener because I had doctor Mark Goulston on my podcast and I did not remember that. We did interview him on Just Listen. So I mean, in my defense, it was a long time ago, but I will have to relisten to that episode.
Nick Loise: 24:50
So I’m going to bring this up really fast. Go ahead. And I’m going to take it down right. So you can kind of see the flowchart that we have and how we have, you know, here are the core question boxes. These are doors you have to close along the way.
And I think that everybody’s a visual thinker. Right. So having a script that they got to read word for word doesn’t work. But we kind of have that. And on some of the other ones we have, you know, epi active listening always be engaged.
Here are the 4 or 5.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:19
Do they have that up when they’re doing a call like.
Nick Loise: 25:21
Yeah they have it. Yeah. And in the if, if we get them into you know nowadays everybody’s remote. In the old days they had the cubes. Right.
And I’m a big fan of sales floors. And I’ll explain why I love those. But we would want that almost paper like wallpaper. So they have all their talk tracks and all the flow charts up. So they have that ability to really have an idea of where am I at?
Oh crud, I didn’t close door number four and I’m going to get an objection, I know I am, because I got to go back and close that door, if you will. If it’s a one-call close, a lot of times it’s not right. So a lot of times it’s really doing good discovery. Then taking that discovery back and setting up that second or third call. So it needs to be visual.
I think it I like flows or flow charts versus scripts. And that’s the first thing that we do. Right in the old days. And I think you may have seen it or we’ve talked about it, is we used to bring them into when we had an office before Covid, and we would have all the sticky notes, right? All the different colored sticky notes for different things to do on the wall.
And then we would move it around, and then from there we’d create the process, and then we take the process back or send them back with the process and have them test the process for about 30 days. Right means tested. See if it’s working and then go back. Because a lot of times scripts and talk tracks are written in a vacuum, and they’re not going to be perfect the first time. Right.
Even the copywriters, the great copywriters that we talked about, they have X amount of drafts, right? But what do they spend the most amount of time? They spend the most amount of time with their headline, and they spend the most amount of time with their bullets. And so that’s what we’re doing. We’re creating talk tracks and scripts and flowcharts for people and objection handling matrixes.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:06
I remember talking to some top people who do webinars. One of them, I think, you know, Bradley will, and he always talked about one of the things that he looked at when he was creating a webinar, was looking at all the objections and then building those into the actual webinar. Right. And so that’s kind of that’s what you’re doing in the sales process as well.
Nick Loise: 27:33
Yeah, 100%. And I think the sales process is we’re really storyboarding it, if you will. And, you know, just like they will do with a great movie or play or whatever TV show, right. It’s storyboarded out. But you also realize that there’s room for improvisation, right?
And so you kind of it’s not 100% verbatim write the script, but it’s okay. We’re going to take what the other person’s going to say and go with that, or go to that and respond in kind. Right. So it’s and you’ve been on calls, I am sure usually they’re, you know, customer service calls. You’re trying to get out of a contract or something.
And they’re reading from a script. And there’s nothing more annoying because I just really want to get out of this contract. Right. And so you got to give people the ability to kind of just cut to the chase and say, you know, it’s just really something you want to do. And if not, let’s just pull the plug on that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:31
You know, I know before we hit record, we were just talking about a couple scenarios. One scenario is there’s a lot of deal flow and nothing’s closing, right? And I don’t know if we missed anything. I mean, you talked a lot about these things that you look at the process. You look at the constraints.
Is there anything else that we should talk about in that scenario that would be helpful?
Nick Loise: 28:53
I think the first thing is would that customer that we talked about right. They’re doing about 4000 inquiries. Right. And they’re barely scratching the surface on, on a, on a, you know, under 10% close ratio. Right.
So we got to get in and take a look at what’s being said. So the first thing we really looked at was where the salespeople. Right. Goes back to the skill set that we talked about. And we realized through, you know, through testing them, right, either through OMG or Disc or DTI or sales leader.
And there’s so many great different sources and I don’t care what you use, but did they have the ability to did they have the skill set? Do they have the modus operandi, if you will, or the hardware or the operating system? And what we realized was they had a money tolerance, right? And they couldn’t ask for the money. And they had a high desire to remain and be liked.
Now, you and I are both likable guys. You more so than me. But, you know, if I have to get all of my identity through you, right, then I’m never going to ask you to do the deal. Because the fact that I’m going to break our rapport and therefore I’m going to lose your friendship. Right.
And so you got to have the right people on the bus. And I think that’s trite to say. Right. Jim Collins kind of coined it, but it’s been around forever. And great coaches do that.
And coaches of teams do that. So that’s the first thing you need to do is really take a look at because it’s not the leads. They’re all going to complain about the leads. It’s taking them through the process. But before I take them through the process, I want to make sure I got the right people to take them through the process.
Then from there I create the process and the system, and then from there we take them through. So that’s the first thing that you want to look at too.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:41
You know, you talked about this earlier which you know the difference. You kind of say the differences. There’s a difference between selling and closing.
Nick Loise: 30:50
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:50
Right. So how talk about that distinction for a second.
Nick Loise: 30:55
Well, you know selling it is, I think at the beginning stages. Right. So it’s the building of rapport. It’s doing the discovery. It’s kind of some of it’s a little bit marketing.
Here’s who we are and what we do and why we do it. And it kind of let’s figure out where you’re at on this. You know, the close really is now we’re going to get to you the benefits and the prospect on the other end doesn’t get any benefits until they say yes. Right. So the close is really the selling is for us, right.
To get all the inputs in the closes for the customer. Right. Because that’s now where they get the benefits. And we think it’s all based on the objection handling. And when I get called into companies, it’s like I just need the four great objection handling scripts.
I’m like, there isn’t one. If anybody’s selling that, they’re selling you hopium right. And it’s not. And it really has to be okay. Objection.
Handling is part of that. But it’s really just question-answering. But the close is really getting them to take that action, to move them over that gap of saying, here’s where you’re at, here’s where we think you are, and here’s all the benefits that you’re going to start to get. And I think where we as salespeople and especially sales leaders and business owners falter is we think it’s one linear plane and it’s not right. So the front end is the sales and the marketing of it.
Right? So getting all the inputs from the customer, getting the discovery down. Now let’s talk a little bit about here’s some case studies and all that stuff. Now we’ve moved to the gap which is I got to get you over that gap and get you to move to where you need to go. And the only way I could do that is through massive pain.
And now here’s how we’re going to take that pain away or massive pleasure. And here’s the next steps to get you to that. You know, it’s just human behavior.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:43
No, I like that thought on the closing is for the customers and they won’t get the benefit. So I feel like there’s a mindset thing with people. Right. Of being liked. Is there any resources or recommendations you have for like getting over that mindset of, well, I don’t want to be pushy or I don’t want to, you know, so there’s negative connotations kind of associated sometimes with closing in sales, right.
Nick Loise: 33:09
You know, so I think the one of the great, you know, Sandler kind of created that, right. It’s the identity and roles. So if anybody does Sandler training or if you have anybody in your in your that you’ve interviewed, that you have a podcast that you could send them to. There’s a great thing on that. You know, there’s a lot.
I’ve done. One. They could go to my YouTube station. There’s a quick ten minute thing on identity and role and how you can’t, you know, you can’t get your identity from the role of a salesperson. You know, there’s probably some other books that I’ve read that just escaped me.
But it’s really about, you know, OMG does a lot of really good objective management group. I’m using an acronym and I want to make sure that people understand what this or David Kerlin does a lot of really good writing on this, on a salesperson that has a high propensity to be liked and needs to have that, let’s call it, you know, they need to get they they get their stimulation and they get their internal motivation by people being liking them. They’re never going to be a good salesperson, right? They may be a good marketing person. They may be a good brand ambassador.
They may represent you really well in a trade show booth. But getting that thing to close, they’re never going to do that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:27
Nick, I know we only have like six minutes and I have 72 questions to get through.
Nick Loise: 34:32
Yeah, six minutes. Rapid fire.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:35
Yeah. No, but I do want to talk about recruiting is a big issue for people. I do want to know you serve a lot of different types of companies, from home services to law firms to SaaS companies. So maybe we’ll choose one of those and then talk about the recruiting process. So why don’t we start with recruiting and some of the mistakes people make with recruiting.
Because salespeople are salespeople, right? So they’re good at selling. They, you know, good at selling themselves. So what are some mistakes people make in recruiting salespeople?
Nick Loise: 35:07
So I think it’s objective. Biasness. Right. And it’s you’re having somebody take a very skilled at selling themselves or selling their wares through a process. And that person on the other end, maybe it’s an HR person, maybe it’s a recruiter.
Nothing wrong with them. They just don’t know how to challenge, right? And then the sales dynamic, there’s always some level of challenging. And so that’s where we kind of bring them in. And a lot of times owners will take on that and they get that.
They get that objective bias of saying, oh, I really like this person. They’re like me or I just like this person. I just know that they’re going to do well. You gotta take all that out, right? So that’s why they hire us or hire a firm similar to us.
So the first thing we do is we talked about is we create a direct response ad, right. That’s going to go on all the different platforms. And that direct response ad in its purest form is going to repel people that we don’t want to have apply and attract people that we do want to apply. Right. So if it’s a closer mentality, we need to call that out.
If it’s somebody that has to work the phones a lot, we need to call that out. Then you take them through and you do some initial screening, right. Whether you got to see if they follow. Right. So we always say lead call and leave a voicemail message.
Right. Or call and send a video. If they don’t do that, then they’re not going to follow any process and they don’t listen. Right. So we just talked about that.
So have things built into your recruiting process that stops people from moving forward. Right. Because they just can’t follow rules. Then we’re going to take them through some, let’s call it mock sales environment or mock sales calls. Right.
So we’re going to take them through a mock sales call. And we’re going to be really hard on the objection handling. We’re going to be really hard on discovery. You know, we’re going to give them all those types of things. And then we’re going to if they make it to a certain point, because these tests do cost some money, right.
So then we’re going to start screening them for all the different characteristics and behaviors that we want. And we’re going to use all the different tools that we’ve mentioned really quick in this call. And then from there we’re going to get as best of a reference checks as we can. Right. Because those reference checks are gold.
And then if you or your team doesn’t have somebody that’s a salesperson, right? I don’t want an internal sales person doing this last part, but somebody that has sold before doesn’t have to be your products and services. Have them talk to that person, even if it’s for 5 to 10 minutes, because it’s based on the analogy that a gun knows a gun, right? It comes from an old gunslinger thing that you know, I know what it’s like to pull that trigger, right?
And that person will know, yes, this person will do it or no, that person won’t. And he or she doesn’t have any like, skin in the game, right? They’re just a friend. Or maybe you’re going to buy them dinner for talking to 3 or 5 people. And then now you could take that person through and they’ve done a lot of different things, and if they’re still around, then it’s probably the right person to hire for your.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:05
And you’ll run this process for people.
Nick Loise: 38:07
We do that. Yeah. That’s part that’s exactly what we do. We actually created a new division, a new company, because we’re getting more and more people to do that. And it’s called your sales recruiter.
Historically, we’ve only done it for clients, but now we’re just getting people to hire that want us to do the recruiting for them. They’ve got a good process and system. The other thing on recruiting that I’m going to say is 90% of 90 days is the clock, and you lose salespeople. I think it’s like 55% of salespeople leave an organization within 90 days. Some of it, they were the wrong people to be brought in the door.
But the other thing, Jeremy, that people don’t do, and I think you’ve bought Joel Coleman on, you know, it’s the onboarding process. You got to make sure you have systems.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:51
Yeah. Joey Coleman yeah, for sure.
Nick Loise: 38:52
Great guy, because he’s got a great book, two great books. Never lose a customer. And also, you know, never lose an employee. And it’s really we spend a lot of time thinking about how do you onboard that new employee. Now, you know, it’s sometimes you’re fast and furious and they get thrown into building a Ferrari as long as you’re up front with them and saying, hey, listen, we’re building out the sales processes as we have you.
We’re doing all this as we have you. So realize that some of this stuff isn’t built out. I’m okay with that. Right. But then you build it out while you’re with them and get their input along the way.
But you need to onboard a salesperson really, really, really well.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:30
I know we have a minute. Yeah. I don’t know if we want to take a minute for one of those examples. Home services law firms or SaaS. Which one would be interesting?
Or you could just rattle off all the books. That’s like the Leaning Tower of Pisa behind you. I want to, like, push it and knock it over and see it, but there’s so many cool books behind you, so I’ll let you take the last minute on. Maybe we’ll do a, you know, one of the examples, or if you just want to rattle off some of your favorite resources behind.
Nick Loise: 39:58
Yeah. Well, you know the resources. We’ll do a, I’ll do something on my YouTube station that, you know, all my favorite books. So, I mean, listen, if they’re, if they want to be in sales or they have sales people, you gotta start with the basics, right? So you gotta understand zig, right?
You got to study Zig Ziglar. I know he’s dated and his stories are old, but his messaging is to the core. And it’s surprising to me how many marketers don’t know who Gary Halbert is and how many salespeople don’t know who Zig Ziglar is. So go. You know, even Seth Godin, who you know, who is like the granddaddy of, you know, Yahoo! marketing, right?
It relates everything to that. So focus on that and go deep. Right. So there’s like two sections right there that I’m pointing to that are old as heck. They’re like written in the 20s.
Right? I mentioned the active listening record that I have. And so go back to the old stuff, not the new stuff that’s tried. And it’s really just a consultant trying to get gigs, but that were written by sales people. I’m a firm believer that you have to have people that are writing that are doing it each and every day, not people that haven’t done it.
So those are the first two things. And then the other thing that I would really do is, you know, one of the things that we do or somebody that, you know, one of the case studies is we looked at the person’s business line differently, and we realized that they had two pockets, that they had referrals Roles come through, or that were great sources of inbound phone calls from them. So this wasn’t a consumer-based company. But there was also, let’s call a B2B aspect to it. So we put outbound sellers in that so they could focus on growing revenue for those pockets.
And you and your business have those types of things. So look at your business differently and say okay, I do things x, y, z, but how can I do things one, two, three or 4 or 5 six in my sales process to go differently through that?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:49
So I know you gotta hop on your next call, but thank you everyone. Check out Nick and his site and salesperformanceteam.com, and we’ll see you next time.
Nick Loise: 41:59
Jeremy, you’re a prince. Thank you.
