Rethinking Sales Strategy with Emily Shaw

Speaker A: Good day, everyone. I'm excited to welcome you to episode 28 of the shocking Profit Podcast. I'm, um, Tim Van Megham, your Shocking Profit host. Please join me in welcoming Emily Shaw to the show. Emily is a sales coach with Lucien. And Emily didn't just join Lucian. She came up through it. She began as a client. She fell in love with consultative selling and ultimately transformed that passion into a career, helping leaders unlock consistent and predictable growth within their companies and teams. Let's dive in.

Speaker B: You're listening to the Shocking Profit Podcast, a, uh, show for business owners and leaders who are interested in finding new ways to claim and create value in their companies. Shocking Profit is a practical and endlessly fascinating study of how to effectively run a company and build wealth. Host Tim Van Megham has decades worth worth of business battle scars from working in the trenches with business leaders. He is here to share his experience to make your journey a bit less treacherous and a lot more profitable. Shockingly profitable. Now here's your host.

Speaker A: So, one question that we've talked about this in person, but I think it's such a great question, a good story. What drew you to Lucian? You know, you were already a successful salesperson. Why reinvent yourself through all that?

Speaker C: Oh, man, that's such a good question. I could probably spend an hour talking about that. So the short answer is, I am a salesperson through and through at heart. If you were to ask my mom, she would say, I've been selling since I was able to talk. Whether it was the movie I wanted to watch or the snack I wanted to eat or, you know, to sleep over I wanted to have or talking myself out of trouble, definitely. But in, in the real sense of the word, professionally, I just been doing that since my first job. Uh, so I really do love selling. My major was psychology, and I had intentions of going on to doing a master's degree and a PhD. But before all of my grand plans could be finished, completed, I was granted with a, uh, totally different gift and plan in my daughter. So I was a. I was pretty nearly immediately a single mom and needed to get to work and, um, went back to what I know and continued to do sales. And when I stumbled upon Lucian, I was a client first and I was fascinated by their content, by the conversations that they were having, uh, with me and, but with other people and just what they were doing in general. And long story short, Lucian essentially combines the practice of selling with the principle of psychology. And that, like, wait, I could do both my favorite things at once and get paid exactly I want to do that. So in a nutshell, I guess, uh, that's how that happened.

Speaker A: Yeah. I love it. You get to apply principles. That's what you do. You've learned some principles. Now you apply them and you help your clients apply them totally. It's a good way to live.

Speaker C: It's great. And I, uh, was telling my husband too, and I was evaluating taking the role. I'm not a person who likes to sit in the same. And that's not necessarily like the same job or the same role, but my sameness. I feel a little bit like if I'm not growing and developing, at best, I'm plateauing at worst, uh, diet lowly. And I remember being on a walk with him when I was evaluating taking the role. And I was like, I just can't imagine a role that would require me to grow constantly. Like this one is inherently built into the gig because you can't help others grow while you flatline.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker C: It would just force me to do a thing that I probably would have done anyway. But it's convenient that it's baked into the job.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then every once in a while you run into really thick headed, stubborn clients. You have to learn new skills, how to break through to them.

Speaker C: Everyone.

Speaker A: I'm glad to provide that canvas.

Speaker C: You and a few others I think would be proud to take that title home for sure. Yes, absolutely. And keeps me on my toes. No two people are the same. No two approaches could be the same. Absolutely. It's fun.

Speaker A: One way I've heard you talk about what you help your clients do or the a big topic is predictable and consistent sales growth. Those are two big words that go together. And I've heard you talk about it. The positive and the negative maybe start and the negative. How do people prevent themselves from achieving and seeing predictable and consistent growth?

Speaker C: So there's a couple different. You can go with. We could go at the individual level, go at the organizational level. Uh, same patterns that you are aware of. The triangle. The Sandler's behavior gratitude technique. Triangle mat triangle. Call it a few different things. Essentially in order to achieve success. Success in anything you do, whether it's running a business, hitting, uh, being a parent, dog, owner, anything requires three equal parts of effective, which is the activity. Setting goals, having a plan, actually putting that plan into practice. The mindset of, um, certain feel about you, but how you feel about your marketplace, how you feel about your organization, your product, your services, et cetera. And then the tactic or technique with whether or not I think we could wrap strategy in the myriad of tactics and techniques there are to achieve a strategy. But it's whatever you're doing right over and over, is it effective? Those three things. It's all of those three things. Two of those three things. But it's always one, you know, a combination or one of. And where I see it often, first thing that comes to mind is people love to make a plan. They love and you know, people love to have a process.

Speaker A: Healthy.

Speaker C: Yeah, totally. Would we like to make lists? We like to create. If they think, then problem solve. When it comes to moving our uh, and doing the thing, having discipline to do it every day, don't feel like it when it's hard, when it's scary, when it's unpredictable, when it's not working. All of that is typically what falls by the wayside first. Or organizations have either departments or individuals or team that are doing things differently. There's no consistency across what everyone is doing. So they'll have rogue lone rangers who are doing something or they'll have a team that is super managed and team that is wild. Wild. There's just a lack of consistency and it's hard to be consistent when you don't have a plan and goal and how you're going to get there for that plan. And so they don't have a thing to grab onto. So I'd say in general, I feel like I'm not answering the question very specifically, but in general it comes down to the moving of the feet, the action that they're taking.

Speaker A: There's an aspect of that I want to call out because it's a big part of our practice looking at operations. And you talked about there being a maverick or someone who does something really well. And basically the company relies on that.

Speaker C: Oh yeah, right.

Speaker A: And it reminds me of a story that I just love where, ah, we were in a chocolate factory and the plant manager was giving us a tour. And we came to the part where they were wrapping the chocolate and at this time they had people wrapping the chocolate wasn't automated. And he pointed out this lady, go see this lady here, Lucy. Like, yeah, she wrapped twice as fast as any other guys on the line. There were 20 people wrapping chocolate bars

Speaker C: and twice as fast as. Quite a, uh, difference.

Speaker A: It's a big difference. Okay. Everybody else looked like Lucy on the back of the chocolate line from her show. But the point was it was almost irrelevant because she was one of 20 people. The fact that she was working better, it didn't impact total. And uh, the idea of Standardizing and everybody following a process that works. That's a proven process. It works is it's true in operations. And what I'm hearing is it's true in sales too.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And just like operation, sometimes you guys get actual robots to work with and machines but oftentimes you have people. And I don't aim to turn anybody into. I don't aim to turn anybody into a robot. Have a process. I think the delicate dance that you have to sort of weed out of is what are the milestones that are important for everyone to hit, how they get there and how they them. I'm uh, not interested in taking away individual dial. I'm not interested in taking away the ability to wrap twice as fast as everybody else. I don't want her to stop doing that because that's her skill set. She's got a superpower in that. And I have people on my teams who are great at getting in front of people do it and I, I don't want to change that. So it's not about necessarily maybe the cookie cutter and exactly the same. But how about we use methodology much like you guys do. Why don't we have milestones that need to be hit through the process and we'll individually get there with the how. Uh, that kind of gets line translation sometimes. And what we both do. We're trying to be efficient with people. We're not. We're trying to be efficient. Process brings a total difference between those two things.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And let me ask it like in a really direct way. If a company isn't seeing predictable inconsistent sales growth, is it possible that's just their world that it's not real for them?

Speaker C: Certainly if there's not a product market fit, uh, sure. If they've seen success in the past and they're not getting it narrow, if they reach the goal of success and can't quite get there and take another nosedive and it's a thing anything other than a true non product market. I tend to believe the calls coming from inside the house.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: I love it. See that's what I thought uh, you would say and it really that's the piece to hear. If the answer is that your company truly doesn't have a product the market wants, you probably want to figure that out sooner rather than later anyway. But outside of that, if you're not happy or seeing that consistent and predictable growth, you can change that. Period.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Another way that I've heard you talk about sales and another area is uh, controlling the sales process. And I'D love to hear. I think this might be a good way for people to connect and understand and empathize with this. What does it sound like when somebody's out of control or the buyer controls the process?

Speaker C: Frustration, surprise, bloated pipeline forecasting. Uh, they review.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Which unfortunately I think is the common experience for a lot of people. I think salespeople and maybe even the organizations that, that play, that don't understand that it is better for you to be in control as uh, the expert in the product or service as ah, the expert in how to buy the product and service as the expert and how to make the decision for how implemented. Everything you are the expert. It's crazy that you're not in control. And I always feel like I have to qualify this by saying I don't want sales people sitting in all towers petting hairless cats, laughing, a lightning riddled guy. I don't want anyone to be diacally in control. But it's almost like the experience of a kid looking to a parent to being in control. It's not that you necessarily need to be uh, a dictator. Right. Or lead with authoritative parenting, but they need to feel like somebody's in control here and this is a safe space and that you know what you're doing. And the how to that can be can take a little bit of time to understand. Cause I think most salespeople show up thinking that they have to be the court jester juggling, uh, dancing around with the jazz hands to be more interesting than. I'm going to guide you through this process more like a consultant, not worrying about the outcome as it pertains to me, but helping you uh, cover the best way to make the decision. It's a bit of a mindset shift for a lot of people.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a difficult journey for me to understand that. I often think like being results oriented means I got to close this sale, I got to close this one, I got to close it. Right. And what I love where this is coming to is being dispassionate about it, about any given sale. At the end of the day, if it's something that they need and they have a problem we're solving that we can solve, great. And if not then we move on. Uh, and here's what I want the business owners here to hear is not so much how to solve it. We can't solve it in two or three minutes. But how do you know if your company is out of control? Letting the buyer dictate, I think inaccurate

Speaker C: forecasting and unpredictable pipelines is probably the biggest, most glaringly obvious piece. Where does your pipeline become bloated? Tends to be when you're not in control. That everything is stacked up quote and proposal stage and nobody knows why it's not moving or how to get it moving. It's like spaghetti. Right. Throw a bunch of noodles against the wall and I'm gonna go with the one that sticks. Throw a bunch of proposals against the wall and hopefully one of those will work. That means you're not in control. You're making a lot of guesses and your company is at the best of these guesses. Not uh, predictable, measured. I know why this going to move forward. Here's the conversation I chose to have with this prospect because they said uh, this thing that's not usually the case when we come in. It is when we know we spend some time, but I think some time to get there.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. So if you're a business owner and have this big pipeline that sales is proud to show and happy to show, but it never converts or uh, they get 10% of what they were predicting for the month. The thing that I love about what you're saying is that's under your control.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's addressable.

Speaker C: Totally.

Speaker A: Even when you're doing like quote based selling like companies. How, how does that work? Cause a lot of the companies we work with, a lot of CEOs, they, they're responding to RFPs from automotive, they come out with a new model. How do you get in control or some semblance of control in that situation.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I think the easiest way is to start working it backwards. What I mean by that is looking at uh, your best deal, your most profitable deal, all of those things and saying okay, what do all these things have in common? What were true for all of these things? And then wrapping some criteria around that and you can't force the criteria that everyone's going to be using certainly. But you can qualify against the criteria. And you know, the more criterion that you hit of these profitable deals that are your best clients to work with, that continue to be good clients that come back, it's someone's hitting all of these criterion in the conversation gives you a little bit of awareness as to what's going to happen here. But more importantly what questions you need to ask to uncover some of that information and help them realize that they are suited to work with you, et cetera at a transactional level when the phone is ringing off the hook still milestones that you would want to hit because from a operationally efficiency standpoint, if I've got 90 calls coming in, uh, only 10 of those is actually getting my forward. But I've got people working on hoarding 80 of these things that are never going to happen. There are some efficiencies that can be had, and I'm sure there are some questions that we could be asking based on criteria that the organization could use to know whether something is qualified or disqualified. That can be asked very quickly and simply. And it's not that you want to hang up on people and say, hey, jerk, go find something else. We don't want your business. You gotta find a way to say, you know what? I think what would be better for you is over here. And so you're still a trusted advisor, but you're not spending man hours on stuff that's never going to move forward.

Speaker A: You remind me of a project we did last year where we did an analysis for a client that included looking at their quotes and the RFPs that they responded to. And they responded to thousands of RFPs. And one of the things we found was 41%. That number sticks in my mind. 41% of the quotes that they put time and money into were with customers that had never hired them in years and years. And the part of it is, it's always good to keep an eye on your business and ask those questions and find out where you're spending your time and making money.

Speaker C: And not when an adult, those people or those entities. Why, why do you Keep sending us RFPs? You never know with us.

Speaker A: Yes. If they were honest, it's probably because we're their stocking horse. Yeah. But one thing that I picked up working with you is that qualification phase and actually like actively working to qualify a customer before you invest major time and money, giving them an opportunity to demonstrate, do they have a problem that you can solve? Do they have the appetite and the resources to actually solve it? And do they have the authority? And I wonder. This is a question. I think this would be fascinating if. And, um, does this happen where, when you turn somebody down, where they say, we'd like you to quote, you do some qualifying, and then say, yeah, we're not going to quote.

Speaker C: Yeah. So oftentimes, depending upon the situation. So if anybody's listening and they take this literally and blindly, we might need some context here. But depending upon the situation, I encourage some of my clients to respond when they get an RFP request that falls in the bucket of 41 that I, uh, know people that have with them to Respond with, thank you for inviting us to participate. We don't respond to RFPs like yours. And so people will kind of like, what do you mean, like mine? And you say, I'm happy to talk about it, um, real time. Otherwise, best luck in all you do. We're cheering for you. And the goal is just to get a meeting to help them understand that it's really the best way to go about deciding who a vendor is going to be that you're going to use. One of my favorite questions to ask is, why are you going to bid? And it's, we're not necessarily happy with this. We're wondering if there's this out there. We're not seeing the best or whatever we thought we were going to get. And then, uh, the next question I asked is, how did you make the decision last night to go with this vendor process? What? You're doing the same process and you're expecting a different outcome. I, um, feel like there's a rule for this. I could put my brain.

Speaker A: Think about insanity.

Speaker C: Yeah. Something about going crazy and just helping. Just break that pattern a little bit. And I think that's part of what, what goes into being successful in life, in business, in sales, is can you break the pattern that everyone is expecting the normative, the sameness over and over and over again, effectively, politely, in a helpful manner. Uh, because you'll go so much farther if you have the capability to do that. Yeah, it's a fun game. The World RFPs.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And it's. I imagine it's fun to be able to be like. Part of what I'm hearing is to be clear, to have boundaries. And I would imagine that you companies will win some sales that they may never have otherwise won. If they simply went through the rfp, they would never win it. But if they stop and say, yeah, we're not good. We don't answer RFPs like this. And then buyers don't like to be told, no, nobody does. Nobody does.

Speaker C: I don't want to be there. For the record.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was told that once. Yeah, I don't like it either, but

Speaker C: mom with the selling skills.

Speaker A: But that it interrupts the system is what I'm kind of. The momentum. It interrupts the momentum and gives you a chance to grab their attention and engage in the meaningful conversation.

Speaker C: Absolutely.

Speaker A: I have two more questions. One is kind of an overall question. If you, you're at a, uh, charity event and you meet the CEO of a company and having a conversation and they drop a hint that they're not pleased with the predictability and consistency of their sales growth either. What would be your first couple questions or what would come to mind for someone in that situation?

Speaker C: Yeah. So a couple things first we'll conduct is get context.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: I don't presume to know why that's happening, nor do I certainly presume to know the solution to why that is happening without a ton of context. Is it their process? Is it their product? Is it their leadership? Is it people, their skillset? Is it their strategy? I don't know if they know what I do and they're bringing that up on purpose. I'll ask a few contextual questions, gauge if that's a conversation they really want to have at the moment. If they don't know what I do, I will say I happen to do some of this for a living. Are you okay with me asking you a couple of questions or is this an off limits zone? Should go get another cocktail and call it a day?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah. Cause I think a couple things about power of permission when someone voluntarily opts through a conversation with so much less resistance. I think even if you were telling me, I'll flip it the other way around. If I were to say, Tim, uh, this awesome show I've been, you've got to watch it. You would love it. There's like this welling sort of defensiveness happening internally. Even though we've known each other for a while, I think we trust each other. I think we know each other well enough to know if you'd like a show or not. There's just kind of skeptical kind of thing. But if I said, would you even be open to hearing about this show that I think you might like, or I shut my mouth down and we'll just never talk about it again, you're like, no, tell me. You're so much more responsive to taking it back.

Speaker A: Exactly right.

Speaker C: So that's one thing about permission that makes the conversation easier and I think it makes it easier on the other side too. Because if I know you're okay with it, I don't feel as awkward or uncomfortable or weird talking about myself or asking questions in relation to what I do. Uh, give me permission by way of you giving me permission to march forward with this conversation, to over think it as much as I think people are want to do in those scenarios. So let's say permission, context, and I'm less interested in all of the mechanics of the problem and more interested in their experience of the problem. I get to both eventually to be able to help. But in an initial conversation. There's a couple why is that happening? Questions, but more give me a picture of what your, your experiencing. Like if I had a crystal ball and I could see what your daily experience with. And I think initially that's what people want to talk about. They won't, they don't really want to talk about the solution to the problem. Anybody who's ever been married knows this.

Speaker A: No comment. Yes, exactly.

Speaker C: When I talk to my husband about agreements and he goes straight into problem solving mode, I'm like, don't want to, don't. I just want to complain.

Speaker A: Don't listen.

Speaker C: Yes, listen to me. And so I think maybe that's all they need. I don't know, maybe they just need to gripe. Maybe they just need an event. I don't know if they're actually serious, but I know I can give them space to do that. And if they are actually serious, that contextual relevancy is going to be helpful to our conversation later. That their human experience is absolutely going to come into play. Uh, in my sales process. So there's no harm either way. I can, I can be a, uh, space to just hold that time so that you can do everything with it.

Speaker A: Uh, you know what I love about that, Emily, is I wonder how often the person you're talking to realizes that you're demonstrating an effective sales process in how you have that conversation that they say, why did I just tell you all this? This is awesome.

Speaker C: Yeah, Usually they don't until they're in the training and they're like, yeah, that's

Speaker A: what you did to me.

Speaker C: And like we, I didn't do it to you. That sounds weird, right? But yeah, and I think that's true. I think that the skillful are never obvious. I think if it's obvious, you're likely thinking about your own advantage. And how does this benefit me? I think that's another one of the really challenging things for sellers to wrap their minds around that. I'm sure you've heard me over and over again say, it's not about you, it's not about you, it's not about you. Uh, it's hard to keep that at bay when you are measured and paid based on your quota that you're hitting and the deals that you're bringing in. It's hard, it's hard to detach your own self preservation from a conversation like that. But it is the very thing that will prevent you from having a productive conversation is not being able to make it about the other person and only trying to qualify them and wonder, oh, I wonder if this is an opportunity for me or how big this deal would be for me or any of that. I think the adoption of the belief. I have no idea why they're telling me this. It's all my job is to get context and figure out. Are you venting? Are you hoping I'm going to be able to help? Helps me stay out of the danger zone of.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Trying to figure out if there's money here for me at my quota. I. Because I think that's self sabotaging behavior. If anybody gets a whiff of that, you're dead in the water. If anybody feels like it's about you, not them, they don't want to talk to you anymore.

Speaker A: Well. And the best way to make it about them and not you is for you to actually mean that.

Speaker C: Care. To care. Yeah. I know what a concept it is

Speaker A: and I'm glad, like, I am, um, lucky enough to be in a business where I love what we do and think it's immensely valuable. So it actually, I've always thought it was worthwhile. Like, I've never sold something to somebody to where I'd like, oh, it was great for us, but they didn't need it. That's not ever happening. But there's still a big difference when you realize or when you go into it with the mindset, I'm not here to sell you, I'm here to help you buy what you need.

Speaker C: Whatever it is that you need.

Speaker A: Whatever it is, it might not be

Speaker C: my product or service. And I hear people sometimes say, well, I don't take no for an answer. Well, you should, you should honor someone's

Speaker A: boundary when they tell you that's funny. Oh my gosh, that is great.

Speaker C: And I don't think mean.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Uh, but again. And I think that puts the emphasis on you and your outcomes and not your willingness to help somebody else and what you can do for somebody else. And I'm like you. I'm. I'm grateful to be in a position and a role at a company selling a service that I already know changes lives because it changed my life. I was a client for three years. I have the benefit of actually having had the experience of it changing my life so there couldn't be any more conviction from a personal standpoint, and then been doing it for nine years and watched it repeat over and over again for clients. We are very lucky. Not everybody is in a position like that. Some people are selling widgets. People are selling a, uh, commodity. And in that Case a simple pivot is the experience that I can provide for this person. Can be different, can honor them as a human. Like I. I have power to impact somebody's day with the conversation that I have. And I either made it easier for them and I created clarity, which helps create energy, which gave them the power to make a decision, or I made it more complicated or leave the call thinking, man, I didn't know it was gonna be that easy. And we've all had calls like that where you're anticipating something really challenging, get off the phone, you're like you're in a brighter mood. Okay. That pump. It's not about blowing smoke up anybody's but or feigning compliments. It's just did you actually care about their experience? And I think even goes down to really small exchanges that you have at the desk of maybe a doctor's opinion checking in. You can feel when people are transactional with you screen and. And it may not make you in a bad move, but it certainly doesn't improve your experience in your day. So I think just subtle ways you could find to about the other person and put yourself aside. The more fulfilled anybody would be in

Speaker A: their role and it's a good way

Speaker C: to live and you're happier.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker C: Silver lining.

Speaker A: Emily, what's the best way for someone to get in touch and learn more about your practice in Lucian? And also if you don't mind, if somebody isn't happy with their current sales growth and predictability and consistency, what does it look like to get started with you?

Speaker C: Oh, yeah. So the easiest way to get in touch with me, I'm on LinkedIn, of course, our website, Lucian.com. you'll see me there too, by one of those ways you can get to me and we can exchange emails. What it looks like to work with myself or anybody at Lucian is we start with an objective look at what's going on. And so we evaluate, uh, strategy, we evaluate structure, we evaluate process sales, of course. And then we also evaluate the skill set of the team members. And that's inclusive of managers. It's inclusive of VP of sales that we look at the relationship between those folks. And it's not based on something like maybe disc or a behavioral model of how you act out in the world. It's like, what are your hunting skills? What are your qualifying skills?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: We're gonna, we're gonna investigate all of that stuff and see where maybe some things aren't working that need attention. And then we develop a customized plan based upon that and it's all live training and coaching, totally tailored to the needs of your organization. And we're constantly keeping track what the goals are, micro perspective on what we decide for our work skill set. But how is that informing macro of your revenue generation or ah, speed to close or whatever it is that we've decided with you is the most important to your organization.

Speaker A: So it starts with clarity. Getting clarity. Yes.

Speaker C: Always saving our business without it.

Speaker A: Thank you, Emily. This was fun.

Speaker C: Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Oh, you're welcome.

Speaker C: This was fun.

Speaker A: Um, it was a lot of fun. We'll have to do it again.

Speaker C: Yeah. Thanks so much, Sam.

Speaker A: What a powerful way to wrap up this episode of shocking profit. I love considering how helping people buy not only drives predictable sales growth, it's also a good way to live. Thank you, Emily. Be sure to tune in for episode 29. And in the meantime, please tell your friends about us. If you have a question, a challenge, or a life hack, reach out to us@elwoodockingprofit.com and remember, everyone, focus on what matters to shock your profit. See you next time.