Know Why You Win (Audiobook)

Speaker A: Uh, is this thing still on? It's been a while. This show's been on hiatus for a couple of months. I told you that Doug and I were going to put something together the likes of which you had not ever seen before. And I still plan to do that, but it's not going to happen in the immediate future because I've gotten bigger things on my plate right now. So what I wanted to do was, well, something. And Doug, uh, and I started talking and he said, hey, um, hey, remember the Deeper Thought podcast you did a couple of years ago? Doug and I decided that we could go through some of those episodes over the next several weeks, several months. You're going to get access to what you previously weren't able to. Hopefully this little provocation will help you sell something that you haven't sold before. And stay, uh, tuned for these episodes as they drop week over week. I think you're going to take something away from them. I know you're going to be entertained by them. And, uh, I just. I can't wait to talk to you again real soon. Welcome back to the show. My name is Jeff Bajoric. I'm your host, and I'm here to help you rethink the way you sell. We're going to do something a little different today. I have not recorded anything new for this podcast feed in quite a while, but the feed still exists, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to share something new with you. Um, I wrote an e book called Know why you win? And I wrote it because I think companies everywhere are leaving multiple, six, even seven figures worth of annual revenue on the table. And it's not because they're not working hard enough, but because they don't really understand why they win, why their best performers are so good, and why, perhaps most importantly, their best customers buy from them. And if you have, uh, listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know, that's a big deal to me. Uh, so in order to make this book as accessible as possible, I recorded this audio version of it. Um, it's here in the podcast feed. It's also on YouTube if you want to go follow along there. It's. It takes about 35 minutes to get through unless you speed up the audio like I tend to. Um, and I hope it helps you rethink the way you sell. Let's get into it. The success you can't explain. Here's a question I ask every company I work with. Why do your best customers buy from you? If I asked a hundred salespeople, this question five would actually know the real answer because they've asked. Fifteen would guess correctly because they're sharp and attentive, and 80 would be completely shocked that it's more than just the bullet points on the website or in their glossy brochures. Over the past 10 years, I've never had anyone disagree with this sentiment. Now think about that for a second. You work at a successful company, probably been in business for 20, 30, maybe 40 years. You have loyal customers who keep buying from you and veteran salespeople who consistently deliver results. But if I asked your team right now, genuinely, honestly, why do your best customers buy from you and continue to do so, would they actually know? Or would they say something generic like, uh, we have great relationships and we provide great service. We've been doing this a long time and we know our stuff. Those aren't answers. Those are categories. And this isn't just about your salespeople. Ask your leadership team, what do we bring to the table that our competitors don't? What's our real differentiator? Why do we win when we win? Well, they'll probably have different thoughts and sharper answers than your field reps. But would the answers be specific enough to paint a picture for someone new to your industry? I've put a lot of thought into this and discovered something that explains why successful companies, uh, struggle to keep growing. They're missing two critical pieces of clarity. One, they don't know themselves, and I mean really know themselves. They can't clearly articulate what they actually bring to the table, what makes them different, or why they win. Two, they don't know their best customers. They've never systematically asked them why they buy, which makes it harder than it needs to be to find more like them. The lack of clarity imposes an artificial limit on your growth. When you can't get hyper specific about yourself and your best customers, your success becomes more accidental than you'd care to admit. You'll recognize this growth ceiling as an invisible limit where your revenue growth starts tracking the market rate instead of exceeding it. You're still successful, uh, but you can't break through to the next level. And for the life of you, you can't understand why that ceiling stays in place until something changes. And I believe that addressing these blind spots is the simplest way to make an impactful change. And it's definitely less painful than looking for a merger and acquisition. Does this sound familiar? This phenomenon is known as unconscious competence, which is succeeding without understanding the patterns that drive that success. It's impossible to systematize what you don't thoroughly understand. But once you can clearly see these blind spots, several things shift. Your messaging gets sharper because you're articulating actual differentiators instead of generic claims. New reps ramp faster because you can teach them what actually works and not hope they randomly figure it out. Strategic decisions get easier because you understand what's actually driving your success, and succession planning becomes a lot less scary because the knowledge isn't locked in a veterans unconscious patterns. This ebook won't give you a complete transformation roadmap. That's not what it's designed to do, but what it will do is help you understand where to look and what you need to start asking and provide a guide for that exploration. Once you see why you're succeeding with more clarity and specificity, you can start making that success conscious, systematic, and replicable. Let's understand what's really working the first gap you don't really know yourself. I've asked hundreds of salespeople and their leaders to articulate their company's differentiators. What do you bring to the table that your competitors don't? Why do you win when you win competitive deals? What makes your approach genuinely different? Uh, here's what I hear 90% of the time, Jeff, we actually care about our customers. Sure. And nobody else has ever said that we build great relationships. Okay, but what kind of relationships? How? With whom? Based on what? The real kicker is whether you could build them the Same way today versus 15 years ago. Jeff, we provide great service. What does great service actually mean in your context? Is it response time? Technical expertise? Proactive problem solving? Something else we've been around for 30 years. So you're old. Why does that matter to your customers? What does longevity give you that matters to them? Our people are experienced. Experienced at what specifically? What can they do that less experienced people? Can't you see the pattern? These aren't answers. They're vague assertions that sound good but mean very little. I know what you're thinking. Uh, this feels like splitting hairs. We, uh, know what we mean. Why does the wording matter so much? Because when you use vague language, it just doesn't resonate the way you hope it will. And training generic concepts leaves people unprepared for what they see in the field. How can you be certain that it means the same thing to your 25 year old new rep that it does to your 25 year veteran in the field? When Bob says we understand their business, he knows exactly what he means. Based on thousands of customer interactions. New reps hear the same words and have no idea what to do with that information. Getting specific isn't wordsmithing. It's the difference between having a clear definition of what good looks like here and hoping people figure it out on their own. If you can't articulate what makes you different in specific, demonstrable terms, your salespeople are left guessing at how to communicate it to prospects. Then prospects just hear the same generic claims they hear from everyone else. And your team can't seem to make the splash you need them to. The we're different delusion. Most companies genuinely believe they're different. They probably are in subtle, important ways. But they can't articulate how they're different in terms that are specific and easily understood, matter to their actual customers, and can be demonstrated or proven. Let me show you what this looks like in real life. One of my clients is a network of food service dealers. When I asked the CEO and some of their sales leaders what made their teams different, they all said, we really understand our customers. Businesses. Okay, but every dealer says that. So I pressed, what do you understand about their businesses that your competitors don't? Long pause. Well, we just. We've got long standing relationships over the past 20 to 30 years and we know their operations. But what specifically do you know? What do you understand that creates value for them? Another pause. Our reps can walk the restaurants and know what they need. Okay, how do they know? What are they seeing? What experience or knowledge lets them do that? We spent over an hour drilling into this, and here's what we eventually uncovered. The salespeople weren't just understanding their customers businesses. They were recognizing the workflows of the kitchen and the dining room from the perspectives of both the staff and the guests. They were, uh, identifying consequences and limitations of the equipment decisions and offering alternatives based on the priorities of the restaurant managers. They were understanding regulatory considerations that affected equipment choices and maintenance costs. They were spotting issues and helping to proactively address them. Now, many of the field reps are former kitchen managers and cooks. They've got real world experience and the grease underneath their fingernails to prove it. That's different. That's specific. That creates value. The real money question. Here's the test that reveals this blind spot. If a prospect asks, why should I buy from you instead of your competitor, can your salespeople give a specific, compelling answer that's actually true and provably different? Not generic claims about relationships and service, not features and specifications. Unless you truly have unique products, which most of you don't not We've been doing this a long time, which might be received as we're old and set in our ways. A real answer that identifies something specific you do know or bring that others don't, explains why that matters to them and can be demonstrated or proven. Most sellers can't, and only because the work hasn't been done to help them more clearly articulate it. Why this matters more than you think when you don't know yourself as well as you could, you run into some issues. Your messaging becomes generic and unmemorable. You sound like everyone else because you're saying what everyone else says, which means you don't stand out in an increasingly crowded market. Your salespeople can't create urgency. If prospects don't understand what's different about you, why would they be in a hurry to buy from you? This extends your sales cycles and makes forecasting difficult. You attract price shoppers when you can't articulate differentiated value. Price becomes the main comparison point, which compresses your margins and makes the wins less exciting. New reps struggle. They're trying to sell something they don't understand, using value propositions that sound good but don't actually make an impact. This extends ramp times and you can't overstate the value of quick wins. You make decisions blindly. If you don't know what actually drives your success, how do you know what moves the needle? How do you really focus and prioritize when you need to? You're working harder to win less business at lower margins with longer sales cycles. There's that growth ceiling I mentioned earlier. The good news? Once you really know yourself, these are no longer issues. Oh, and another thing. What happens when your veterans retire? Even if unconscious, it's still competence. When they leave, that knowledge walks out the door with them and you're left with newer people who think your calling card is relationships in service. The first step to fixing this before you can create messaging that resonates, before you can train new people effectively, before you can scale your success, you have to know yourself, not vague assertions about quality and relationships. This means doing the hard work of getting specific, forcing yourself past the generic answers that feel sufficient, drilling down until you can demonstrate, not just claim, using language that prospects remember after the conversation, making the unconscious patterns of your veterans consciousness and transferable. This is the work. Not the easy work, not the comfortable work, but the foundational work that makes everything else possible. Everything you do to impact growth, selling, marketing training can either be built on a foundation of clarity or one of assumptions. The second gap. You don't really know your best customers. Remember what I mentioned earlier? 8 out of 10 salespeople don't actually know why their best customers chose them. They think they know. They have theories, they have assumptions, but they've never actually asked the question systematically and listened to the real answers. And if your salespeople don't know why your best customers buy, how are they supposed to effectively sell to new prospects who look just like those customers? The assumptions we make. Here's what. Typically, a rep closes a deal. When asked why the customer bought, they say they like our promise and they trust me. Sounds reasonable. But here's the problem. That's an assumption, not an answer. When you actually ask the customer, you often discover something completely different. Sarah pointed out that with your just in time delivery, we could carry less inventory and reduce carrying costs by 15%. Most other reps just point out how many products they carry. Now, Sarah, um, thought she sold relationships. The customer bought an inventory and risk reduction insight. Sarah's business acumen sold that deal, not her willingness to pick up the phone after hours. Those are completely different value propositions. And if the rep doesn't know the real reason, they'll keep leading with relationships and service when they should be leading with operational insights. Reps who lead with relationships and trust end up waiting for opportunities to respond and serve instead of leading with valuable information. That changes the buying criteria. That's a huge difference. What your customers actually value. I'm not saying relationships don't matter, but more than ever, the way they're built matters. And that has changed. It used to be that you could take someone out for a steak dinner or a round of golf, wine them and dine them, and because of some combination of likability and reciprocity, you'd win the deal. Things just don't happen like that anymore. Times have changed, and buyers have, too. They're not giving away their family time for a meal they can probably afford on their own, and they're skeptical of strangers making such offers. You build those relationships by providing insights and real value that makes them tangibly more effective at work. When companies sit down and ask their best customers why they really buy, they consistently discover gaps between what they think matters and what actually matters. The company message. We have deep technical expertise. What customers actually value. They translate complex technical issues into simple business terms we can actually use. When the company message is we're responsive, customers actually value, uh, they don't just pick up the phone when we call. They spot problems before we know we have them. The company message of we've been doing this for 30 years. What the customers really appreciate. They speak our language and make it feel like we're talking to peers who have been there before. You see the pattern. You're emphasizing one thing while customers are buying something related but different. And that gap undermines everything. Your messaging, your training, and your ability to replicate success. The questions you've never asked. Here's what you're really trying to understand. What's on their mind first thing in the morning? What pressures are they under? What metrics drive their decisions? What problems are they trying to solve that you might not see why they actually bought? Uh, not just their theory about why. The actual reasons. What problem were they trying to solve? What would have happened if they'd done nothing? Why they chose you over alternatives? What specifically tipped the decision? What did you do or say that competitors didn't? What they value most now? Is it what they expected when they first bought? Or did they discover value they didn't anticipate? Without specific answers to those questions, you're building your entire strategy on assumptions. And assumptions don't scale. They multiply blindly. The unconscious competence trap and what it's costing you. When you haven't done the work to articulate what makes you different and you haven't really dug into why your best customers buy, something happens to your most valuable asset. The expertise your veterans have developed over decades. Bob keeps closing deals. Sarah has the highest retention rates in the company. Because they're still successful, it doesn't look like a problem. And that's where the danger lies. From the outside, everything looks fine. But try to replicate what they do. Try to teach it to someone new. That's when you discover the blind spots. And, uh, let me show you what this looks like in practice. The veteran success pattern. Bob has been your top performer for 20 years. He consistently closes deals that others can't. He has deep customer relationships. He knows exactly which prospects are worth his time and which to walk away from. If you ask Bob why he's successful, he'll say, well, uh, I build relationships. I understand their business, and I'm persistent but not pushy. Here's what's actually happening. Bob intuitively knows after all these years which prospects have both budget authority and political capital. He's pretty sure within the first conversation, whether an opportunity is real or just someone kicking tires. He understands the subtleties of when to push forward and when to back off. He positions your value in ways that create urgency. For this specific type of customer. All of this is unconscious, almost a sixth sense. At this point, he can't articulate how he's doing it. Bob knows what good looks like here. He just can't explain it. Why this creates problems. When you hire new reps, you have them shadow Sarah. She tells them just build relationships and pick up the phone. Whenever they call, the new reps nod. They take notes. They watch her in action. Then they struggle for six to nine months trying to figure out what Sarah actually does before they give up and move on. Why? Because what Sarah says she does build relationships. And what Sarah actually does recognizes subtle patterns. As a result of thousands of sales calls are completely different. You can't teach unconscious competence. You can only hope people randomly discover the patterns through their own trial and error. Some do. Most don't. Even when it works, it takes way too long to find out what this actually costs. Without more clarity, every one of these costs shows up as a constraint on growth. Extended ramp times. Uh, we've known for years that you can't just hop in the seat and succeed. But why does it really need to take so long? Do seasoned reps need to scuffle along for over a year just because they don't know the nuance of your solution? What if you could cut that in half? Inconsistent results. Some people happen to figure out the patterns. Most don't. Your results become a lottery rather than a system. You can't build predictable growth on luck. And you're putting a ton of pressure on your new hires. Knowledge walking out the door. When Bob retires, 20 years of pattern recognition disappears. No documentation, no transfer. Just gone. And you spend the next five to 10 years trying to rebuild what he knew intuitively. Good luck. Generic messaging that doesn't differentiate. When you can't articulate your specific value, your messaging sounds just like everyone else's. Prospects can't distinguish you from competitors. So price becomes the main decision factor. And you also lack the code words that attract your very best potential customers. Strategic decisions built on guesses. Should you expand into that new market, add this service. Change your pricing. Without understanding what actually drives your success, you're making million dollar decisions based on assumptions. Growth ceiling. You can't systematically replicate unconscious competence. Your growth is constrained by how many veterans you have and how long they're willing to work. Meanwhile, new competitors with novel solutions are getting more attention. Why this matters now? This isn't just a long term concern. Two things make it urgent. Your veterans are aging. Bob's 62, Sarah's 58. They're thinking about retirement and everything they know is stored in their heads, not transferable playbooks and processes. Competition is intensifying. While you're hoping new people will figure it out, new competitors are popping up everywhere with novel approaches and solutions. If your team can't articulate what makes your relationships so valuable, they can't routinely do the things that keep those relationships intact so those relationships become vulnerable to the next shiny alternative. The path forward I've got good news for you. Unconscious competence isn't a permanent condition, but it's a blind spot because most leaders don't sit with their teams, dive into specifics, and document them. These are tough, sometimes awkward conversations to have. But once you do this, once you can articulate what your veterans know intuitively, everything changes. Training becomes effective because you're teaching actual success patterns. Ramp time compresses because new reps learn systematically. Messaging sharpens because you can articulate real differentiators. Strategic decisions improve because you understand what drives results, and succession planning becomes less terrifying because knowledge is transferable. The question isn't whether you can decode this. The question is whether you'll do it while your veterans are still there to help. And before you get carried away with the idea that this will put all your reps into the same box, yes, you can systematize your process while still giving everyone the freedom to sell authentically. Let me show you where to start. Starting to see clearly now, you might be thinking, okay, Jeff, what do I actually do about this? The good news is you don't need to overhaul what's working and spend six figures on a new sales framework. You need to better understand what's working and why. Start by asking better questions to yourself, to your team, and most importantly, your customers. Uh, let me give you the tools to help you get started. Do you really know yourself? Most companies think they know what makes them different, but when you push them to articulate it specifically, the answers fall apart. Here's how to test yourself. Gather your leadership team or just grab a whiteboard if you're working through this solo and answer these questions. But here's the rule. If your answer could apply to any of your competitors, it doesn't count. Question 1 what do you bring to the table that your competitors don't? Write down your first answer. Then ask yourself, could any of your competitors say the same thing? If yes, dig deep, deeper. What's underneath that claim? What makes it true for you in a way that's different from them? Question 2 what's the difference maker when you win competitive deals? Not what do customers say when they buy. What actually tips the decision in your favor? What specific moment, insight or interaction changes the conversation from we're considering you to let's move forward. Question 3. What do your veterans know that they can't explain? Think about your top performers. What do they do intuitively that newer people struggle with? Watch them in action and pay attention to the small things. The questions they ask, the timing of when they push or pull back, the way they position your value. Question 4. If you had to train someone brand new in 30 days instead of 6 months, what would you teach them? This question forces prioritization. You can't teach everything. So what are the three to five most critical patterns that drive success? Not the features of your products. Not the generic build relationships advice. The actual patterns. The test of specificity. Now, uh, for every answer, push yourself to add which means? And for example, we understand their business, which means we can spot operational efficiencies they don't see. For example, we recently helped a customer reorganize their inventory layout and cut carrying costs by 15%. We have deep expertise, which means we've seen every variation of this problem. For example, when customers describe symptom X, we know it's usually caused by Y or Z, and we can diagnose which one in the first conversation. Now, once you can articulate these answers in specific, demonstrable terms, you've closed that first critical gap. More importantly, you now have the specific qualities that your top performers should look to double down on. And you can use these as training topics to bring newer reps up to speed faster. Do you really know your best customers? This one is simpler to solve, but it requires something that most salespeople resist. Vulnerability. You need to have direct conversations with your best customers and ask them questions that might make both of you squirm a little, but in the best way. Here's a framework I call the five Great Questions for Killer Customer Conversations. They're simple, they're powerful, and 95% of salespeople will never ask them. 1. Why did you choose to do business with us? This seems obvious, but most reps have never directly asked. They have theories, they have assumptions, but they've never actually heard the answer straight from the customer's mouth. 2. Can you please be more specific? This is the linchpin question. Whatever they said in response to question one, it's probably surface level. Your job is to model vulnerability. Here you're showing them it's safe to go deeper. You need them to be specific, because that's where the gold is lead. The way. Ask for a story. Ask for an example. Ask what specifically tipped their decision. Get them past you guys are great to the actual reasons. 3. Why do you continue to do business with us? This is different from question one and that difference matters. The reasons people start buying from you are often different from the reasons they keep buying from you. Pay attention to what they say, but also pay attention to what they don't. How well do your, uh, account management behaviors align with what's really valuable to them? Number four. Do you know anybody who might appreciate the same value? You've just had a vulnerable, meaningful conversation with one of your best customers. You've learned what they actually value. There's never been a better time to ask them for help. 5. Would you be willing to introduce us? An introduction is worth 10 times more than a referral. A referral is a name. An introduction is a warm handoff with social proof built in. If you've handled questions one through three well, the red carpet is rolled out for you to ask why this works. When you ask these questions, three things happen. First, you deepen the relationship. When you have a vulnerable, meaningful exchange with one of your best customers. That matters. Second, you get the exact language you need to find and keep more customers like them. You're not guessing at what matters. They're telling you in their own words. Third, you build your referral engine. If you handle questions one through three well. Questions four and five give your best customers an easy way to help you grow. Here's what you do. Pick your top 10 customers. Schedule conversations with them. Make it clear this isn't a sales call or a check in call. You want to strengthen the relationship by understanding what's working and what you can do better. Then ask these five questions. Listen carefully. Take notes. Pay attention to the specific language they use. With just 10 customers, patterns will emerge. You'll start seeing the same phrases, the same problems, the same reasons for buying. That's your decoded value proposition, straight from the people who matter most. And when you can articulate that clearly, you can lean into replicating your best customers, which is way better than replicating your worst. The beginning, not the end. These questions aren't going to solve everything overnight. What they will do is start making the invisible visible. You'll begin seeing the patterns that you've been too close to notice. You'll start articulating value in ways that actually resonate. And you'll have something specific to teach instead of hoping people figure it out. This is how you start. Not through, um, a massive overhaul, but through the disciplined work of getting specific. Because getting specific is the work. That's how you decode what good looks like here. The feedback loop. Don't miss the reality here. These two gaps don't just coexist. They reinforce each other in ways that can either keep you stuck or propel you forward. You probably already have a good hypothesis about your value proposition. We provide responsive service. We understand their business. Yeah, that's your starting point. But it's just a hypothesis until you validate it with your best customers. And using those five questions helps you do that. What you learn almost always, uh, surprises you. They're not buying responsive service, they're buying you. Spot problems before we know we have them. That's more specific. That's something you can position, teach, and systematically deliver. Now you have the ability to position yourself better with prospects who look like your best customers. You're not leading with generic claims and hoping they resonate. You're speaking directly to what you know they value, and it feels immediately to them like you're exactly the person to work with. You do better, more profitable work with companies who value what you actually bring to the table. And each iteration makes you sharper. Each conversation with a best customer either confirms what you're doing or reveals a new angle you hadn't considered. Each new rep brings fresh perspective that helps you see patterns you'd stopped noticing. And each deal you win or lose gives you data to refine your understanding. This is how you break through the growth ceiling. Not with one big revelation, but with systematic refinement that compounds quickly. Most companies stop after the first generic answer. We asked our customers. They said they value our service. Uh, loop ends, no refinement. You stay stuck with vague language that sounds like everyone else. But if you keep asking, keep refining, keep testing, the loop starts working for you instead of against you. That's the real work. Not a one time project, but an ongoing discipline of getting more specific about who you are and what your best customers actually value. That specificity, that's what separates companies who plateau from companies who keep growing. What happens next? Well, you've got a choice. You can take what you've learned and do the work, or, well, you know, the other option. But you didn't read this far to stay stuck, did you? Start on your own? Take the questions from this ebook and begin the conversations. Ask yourself what makes you different? Sit with your best customers and learn what they actually value. Or I've created a free self assessment tool to help guide your exploration. You can find the link there in the show notes. If you have the internal discipline and leadership alignment, you can make real progress on your own. Or, and you knew this was coming, you could work with someone who's done this before, someone who knows how to forensically diagnose what's actually working, decode unconscious patterns and help you systematize them. That's what I do. My name's Jeff Bajoric and this was know why you win. I help sales teams understand what their best reps do, why their best customers buy, and I help to make those behaviors repeatable for the rest of the team. If you recognized your team in any of this, the veterans who can't explain what they do, the new reps who are struggling to find their footing or the growth that should be there but just isn't, the next step is a free self assessment@jeffbajoric.com WGLH it's short for what good looks like here, but don't worry about it. Uh, that is going to be in the show notes. It's linked right there. And if you want to just hop on a call to talk about what you've learned here, maybe argue with me on some of these points, I'm happy to do that. You can see that link to book 25 minutes with me in the notes as well. Thanks for being here this whole time and I hope to talk to you soon.