#537 - Why You May Be Better at Sales than You Think

Speaker A: Hey, welcome back. Another episode of the Good Advice podcast

Speaker B: where we talk about all the things

Speaker A: that you need to know to run your business better.

Speaker B: No fluff on the show, just the stuff that actually works.

Speaker A: And I'm your host, Blake Benz. I appreciate you tuning in to the podcast today. Whether you're a longtime listener or you're a first time listener. Hope to give you some good perspectives today as you think about growing your business. Now today we're going to be talking about a very, uh, simple truth in business. And it's all about alignment. It's about understanding alignment with what you sell and the people who want to actually buy it. And if you've been struggling in sales, today's conversation might actually make it a little bit more palatable for you. We're going to talk about it today on the show, but as always, before we dive in, we have a business who sponsored today's podcast episode. Check out this quick ad and we'll be back soon.

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Speaker A: Enjoy this episode. So I want to talk about the simple truth in business. And I mentioned in the intro, you know, we're talking about alignment today. Um, but specifically I want to talk to the business owner today who is feeling frustrated by sales. And they're frustrated that certain things aren't pinging or they aren't working or it isn't clicking. And what I want to tell you today is the cliche, hey, it's not your fault. And I really do mean that in the sense of, I think sometimes we over embellish the process of business as being like, you know, you have to become this sales guru, you have to become this really smart business owner. Um, and I think we almost over, um, develop the journey a little bit where, you know, you see like the ads or like the social media posts on, uh, the rags to riches story of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. And you know, a lot of these things are just billionaire worship slop really. I mean, just, you know, often they leave out details of the story or, you know, someone posts the picture of Jeff Bezos in his garage and they're like, you know, where could you be in 10 years? And it's like, okay, well this guy had millions of dollars. Like, this wasn't just an average Joe starting a business. Um, and that's nothing, you know, specifically intentioned to be, you know, mean to Jeff Bezos. I just, I'm pointing out though that a lot of times in business we think that there is something that we're missing and we have to persevere, we have to learn it, we have to develop it. You, um, have to develop what it takes and yada, yada, yada. And I think in a way some of those things are true. You know, entrepreneurship is not for everybody. Running, um, a business is not for everybody. And there are certain appetites and things that you have to grow into and you do have to develop. You know, like dealing with rejection as a business owner or you meet someone and you never even ask them their opinion and they're like, your business is stupid or who would ever pay for that? You know, you're constantly getting opinions from other people and uh, not even just negative things, but people who are like, you know, why aren't you selling with crypto? And you're like, uh, I'm an electrician. And they're like, oh man, you would revolutionize your industry if you were the only electrician to accept crypto payments. And it's like, okay, you know, you're just, you're just constantly dealing with opinions and feedbacks from m other people that, you know, maybe from someone who they're really passionate about crypto, but they've had a 9 to 5 job for the last 20 years. You know, they've never stepped out and actually run a business. So again, that's not intentioned to be mean to anybody or rude to anybody. It's just, you know, I do think as a business owner, you, you do have to learn some things and grow into some things and what have you. It's not. It's not to take away, I guess, from, uh, the journey a little bit. But I want to talk today about alignment, and I want to talk to the business owner who you're frustrated. And what I want to point out today is that in many cases, it is simply not your fault. A lot of times a deal does not work out because the two of you did not have alignment on what it is that, um, each of you were expecting. And I have lots of examples today. Um, I had somebody, you know, we have podcastable, we have the podcast production business. Um, I don't talk about it a ton lately, only because, um, you know, I bought this marketing company almost a year ago, and, um, that's been almost all of my energy and attention. But I had a guy who reached out, um, earlier this year, or I think actually it was later last year, and he said, hey, um, we're looking to swap our podcast production company. Um, I heard you were great. We want to use you, yada, yada. Seems like a slam dunk, right? So we've all kind of been in this situation, I think, where you have the customer who seems like a slam dunk, and then you start working together, and for whatever reason, the relationship goes sour. Obviously, this isn't every relationship. You know, sometimes you work with someone and they're a customer for life, and it's great. But many of us have been in that relationship where it seems like it's great, but it goes sour. It doesn't work. Um, for whatever reason, many times this is because you and the individual who bought from you were not in alignment on outcomes, on budget, on cost, on what's actually included, what work you are actually going to be doing. I think as a experienced seller in your business, often it means communicating these things in a way that is simple to understand and brief. You know, you're not sending, uh, an email that's an essay about what this is and what it isn't, because no one's gonna read it. So this gentleman reached out for getting his podcast some help. And, um, I looked at his podcast. It looked great and it sounded great. So I think any average salesperson probably would have said, okay, great, let's make it happen, you know, and would have just taken the deal. Well, instead I looked at it, I did some research. I kind of thought about what could we offer. And, uh, sometimes this is like a very easy process. Like, you look at, you look at someone's podcast and the audio is all jacked up. You know, the guest audio is way louder than the host audio. Uh, the color, it hasn't been color graded. The lighting's different between the two shots. The color's off. Um, it's different cameras. You know, the cuts are strange. Uh, there's missing frames. Just random things that you can just look for. And the longer you've done this kind of stuff, the easier and quicker it is that you see this kind of stuff. But in this case, that wasn't the case. The podcast looked great and it sounded great. Well. So I'm naturally thinking, well, why is this person wanting to switch their podcast production company? And so therein is where I discovered the issue, and more importantly, where myself and this individual were not in alignment. So I said, hey, so what's going on? What are you unhappy with? And he said, well, we just haven't seen the podcast grow as much as we want it to. And I said, okay, tell me more. Like, what are you looking to see? Like, explain to me kind of what you were hoping to see happen with the podcast. And we talked numbers and subscribers to his YouTube channel. And it's basically a business that has a podcast as, like, a marketing part of their business. Um, and they hadn't seen, uh, sales improve like they wanted to. Well, long story short, I eventually get to a point where I'm like, hey, it kind of sounds like you're not looking for a podcast production company. It sounds like you're looking for a marketing company. He's like, well, what do you mean? And I was like, well, I mean, everything you're talking about is marketing related. You're talking about the reach of the podcast, getting in front of the right people. You're talking about converting, um, into actual revenue. I mean, that's not a podcast production company. That is a marketing company. So help me understand. Are you looking to swap production companies or are you looking for a marketing company? And he said, well, yeah, I think I'm looking for a marketing company. And I basically said, yeah, that's. Which, at the time, I didn't own a marketing company. Uh, and our. And even today, our podcast company is not a marketing company. And so I said, um, yeah, I mean, that's great. You know, we're purely a podcast production company. We don't do marketing. Uh, let me recommend you elsewhere. And I introduced him to somebody else. If he and I had not had that conversation, here's what would have happened. We would have gotten into our agreement, into our contract, into our work together, and then this person would have been frustrated Because I would not have been providing the results that he would have wanted. And then I would have been frustrated because this customer is all over me about not doing something that well, why would I ever have done that in the first place? Now this seems like a, uh, no brainer, but we have these issues with alignment all the time. Think about for example, if you're married, if you have a spouse, you have a partner, and this is someone you literally live with, you do life with this person, maybe you've known them for 10, 20 plus years and yet the most obvious things that are obvious to you are somehow lost in translation with your spouse. I'm not going to give any examples there, but I'm just, you know, my wife and I, we have known each other, we've been friends and married for 15 years. And you know, I just, there's just things that we are disconnected on or, you know, I, I think it's clear, she thinks it's clear and um, it just isn't. So then naturally, of course, people who are total strangers to you, who they think they want what they, they think they know what they want, but they don't know what they want, or they don't know the industry language, or maybe they ask for one thing thinking they know the language, but that actually, that term means something else. And so you get to actually doing business together. And then like uh, uh, I've talked about this example many times on the podcast. My most challenging customer, and this is, this was a two way street. My most challenging customer was a gentleman who um, I was selling a consulting agreement to him to basically, uh, build some processes and grow his business. And he said, you know, I want to make sure I've never hired a consultant before. Um, I don't want to hire someone. And you like email me a manual on what to do. Like I'm looking for someone who can be collaborative with this, who can like build this with me. And I thought, yeah, of course, that's how we do it. We don't just email off notes. Like we meet and we talk about the business and we figure out what levers to pull and like, we're very active. And he said, okay, great. Well, so we get into the agreement and then he says, well, I'm confused because like I thought you were gonna, I um, thought you were gonna be here at my work. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And he's why? I just, I told you I wanted to do this with someone. I don't wanna, I don't want someone Just to tell me what to do. And I was like, well, you mean like come to your work every day? And he was like, yeah, I thought I was paying you to come to my work every day. Which I'm like, kind of sounds like a job, you know, or like a partner. And uh, I was like, well, I mean, like, in what world would someone agree to come to your work every day? Like, how would that ever be sustainable for me? And he was like, yeah, I don't know. Again, in hindsight you're like, this makes no sense. This is so obvious. But for whatever reason, um, when he said we're going to do this together, he meant literally, physically, let's do this together. And unfortunately, this was not a good agreement between the two of us. And uh, this was not a good relationship between the two. There's no bad blood now, but, um, certainly at the time I felt really bad about it. I'm sure he didn't feel good about it. Um, but we were out of alignment. So let's talk about this from like a sales perspective. You know, you may not actually be bad at sales. You may be, you may just not be great at getting into alignment with potential buyers for your business. And sometimes these are just very simple questions. You know, when I'm in a conversation with someone and we're talking about, um, like SEO for example, or like marketing, or like a marketing campaign, uh, SEO is a really great example because it's just, it's so there's some very clear cut boilerplate questions that I ask. So let's say I'm talking to someone from a marketing perspective and they say, hey, I want you to grow. Um, I'm sick of paying for ads. Uh, we're spending, you know, x thousands amount of dollars every month on our ad budget. It's very frustrating. You know, we're not getting the return we want. We want to look at organic, we, uh, want to rank better on Google, yada, ah, yada. You've heard all these things before. Um, we want to hire. We want to hire. Good advice to run, uh, this SEO marketing campaign. Okay, great. So some of the questions I might ask would be, um, what's your budget? I might ask, what's your budget? Uh, or in some circumstances, if we're already like in the conversation of cost, I might say something like, okay, yeah, you can expect to spend somewhere between 800amonth and 2,000amonth, depending on how fast you want to achieve X, Y and Z result. And then I'll say, does that align with your Budget. Now all these conversations, again, they seem like no brainer conversations. And yet you have people who are hungry for the sale, they're hungry to make a deal. And so they bypass all of these questions until a contract is signed or what have you. And then their customer is shocked because of the sticker price that wasn't appropriately discussed on the front end. Or, uh, you have people who aren't confident in their business. And so the customer says, um, well, no, you know, we're gonna, we, we don't really wanna do that. We were thinking more like $200 a month. And they say, can we make it work? Cause they really wanna work with you. And they say, can we make it work for 200amonth? And you're like, yeah, we could figure something, we could do some like very light SEO. But the problem is, is that it doesn't work at that price point. The amount of content you're building doesn't actually make any meaningful differences. But you're so hungry for the sale or being, you know, acquiescing to whatever random. You know, it'd be like, it'd be like, um, uh, there's a guy local who sells, uh, who rents trailers. Or actually a better example, um, there's a local company that is a moving company. And one of the stories that they told me was that a customer might call and be like, hey, I need a moving company. Okay, great. Um, I need them to be here in 30 minutes. Like you, you have a team of people, you have employees, you send them. You don't just have them in your back pocket. They're not just waiting around, they're, they're working. So a lot of times in business we're like, yeah, let's try to make that work. But in some cases it's like you're trying to make something work that just simply does not work that way. Like, there's a limit where you've stripped away so many parts of the engine that the car doesn't run anymore. You know. So unfortunately, a lot of business owners are so nervous or unwilling to be, uh, confident or competent in, or show that competence that they're like, yeah, let's do that, let's make that work. Instead of just being like, no, we can't do that. I'm sorry, we don't do that. But so someone might ask, they might say, well, we want something for 200 bucks a month. And rather than like, grieve. Excuse me, rather than saying no, what we do is we grieve the sale and we're like, oh, well, maybe we could make it work or maybe we could do it and

Speaker B: your, uh, business

Speaker A: will move so much more quickly when you learn to have an appetite for when someone is not in alignment with you. You know, even thinking about things that you pay for. I mean, I was hiring a web developer and, um, I had this guy who I was chatting with and we were just talking about some of his expertise and then I said, you know, we're typically paying around this much for the role. And he was like, oh, that doesn't really work for me. Uh, I really need something that's like $3,000 a week. And I said, well, I mean, I don't have the volume for that and I also can't pay you for that for someone who's basically hourly. Um, you know, it's just, that's just not something I can do. But we got that conversation out from the get go and like, how silly it would be for me to say, well, how can we make this work? Or how can we, well, maybe we could just do well, maybe we could promise X, Y. Like you're so far out of alignment that again, rather than grieving the fact that you can't work together, you're just out of alignment. It just is what it is. It'd be like if you sold cable TV services, you worked for Comcast or Cox or whatever and you're selling TV services and you go up to someone and you say, hey, are you looking for a new cable TV service? And they say, I don't own a tv. Are you really going to grieve that? Are you really? Oh, uh, well, hey, Best Buy is running a deal. Why don't you run down there and get a T? And then once you do, this is how many of us approach our business is like bending over backwards and acquiescing. And you know, well, maybe we could cut a deal for you. Maybe we can make it. It's like, dude, the person doesn't own a tv. You know, it's like I sell SEO marketing and someone doesn't own a website. You see that? You see the issue here? Or, uh, you know, we're doing, we're doing business consult. Like, this is actually a very common thing that I've run into where someone calls for business consulting and they say, hey, I need, I need some help with my business. And I say, okay, tell me about the business. And they're like, oh, it's, you know, a hobby, uh, woodworking business. And it's like, okay, cool. Well, how much do you do per month? We do about, you know, we do one cutting board a month and we make $20 on it. Like, dude, you don't have a business, uh, that's not meant to be mean. It's just like, we're totally out of alignment here. We're totally out of alignment. So part of what alignment looks like is someone has an appreciation for what you do. They have, they see value in what you do. They have respect for your expertise m and your approach for doing that thing. And they have the budget to pay you what you think that thing is worth. Now, it's not only one way. I told the story, I think maybe last week, but, um, a friend of mine was telling me a story about a guy he was talking to who sold life coaching. And this guy sold life coaching. And, um, basically the details are this guy's like a 22 year old kid and, um, sells life coaching and he sells it for $30,000 a year. And my friend was kind of flabbergasted and was like, well, why do you sell it for so much? And he goes, hey, that's what I'm worth. I'm worth 30 grand a year. And he's like, okay, so how many customers do you have? And the guy was like, well, I don't have any customers yet. Okay, well, that's not surprising. Um, you're out of alignment. Your age is out of alignment. That's not to mean that someone in their young twenties can't be incredibly brilliant or smart or talented. But from a perception point of view, you're out of alignment with what someone buying life coaching would expect. And your price point is out of alignment for what someone would think these things would cost. That's not to say there's not someone out there who charges 30 grand. That's not to say there aren't people who would pay for that. But generally speaking, you're out of alignment. Often as business owners, we are the ones who are most delusional when it comes to alignment. There's a good book I've talked about on the podcast before. It's called the Mom Test. And the premise of it is that if you want to have a successful business, or rather a successful idea, your idea must pass the mom test. Here's what the mom test is. When you have an idea or you want to do something a certain way, don't go ask your mom what she thinks about it. Because generally speaking, your parents love you. I say generally, I don't know your drama. Generally speaking, your parents or your spouse or Whoever, they love you. And what are they going to say? Oh, baby, it's a great idea. Absolutely do that. Oh, they'd be crazy not to pay for that. Oh, yeah, and, and I, I mentioned this, uh, maybe last week, but I had a service that I was rolling out, and I even asked some customers and friends what they thought of, and they're like, oh, it's a great idea. It's great. I love it. But when time came for, when I rolled it out, this was five, six years ago, um, and it was a really stupid product anyway, but when I rolled it out, nobody showed up ready to buy it. You know, the mom test is understanding that many people will often tell you want what you want to hear rather than what's true. And the same thing on, uh, my comment about business owners being delusional is that we often look for evidence that supports what we think rather than looking at what's genuinely true. I'll give you a very easy example of this. Let's say you restore VHS tapes. They're antique, they're cute. You know, you're, it's, you got into it because your grandparents or your mom and dad, whatever, um, you know, their wedding was filmed on a vhs. You know, it's fun to have. And you've, you, you have this personal experience and you meet some random person who, of the 7 billion people on the, on the planet, uh, you found the one other person who also has a love for VHS tapes. So you talk to this person and you're like, see, this is why I'm going all in on VHS restoration. Now, I think this is so difficult to process sometimes, because sometimes those niches, those random specific things can be really powerful for your business and they can be really profitable for your business, but they can be when the evidence is there for it. Now, if you're the only person in the world who can restore a VHS tape and, you know, you find someone who pays you 50 grand to do it, you might have a business there. But if more often than not people can convert it to DVD or they can convert it to, you know, some digital format and bypass the VHS altogether, then you are delusional in thinking you've struck gold. Instead, you're chasing what it is you want to hear. This is something we all have to navigate. This is something that I have to navigate. I've had to face very many difficult truths in my business. Um, you know, speaking about the business, the entrepreneurial journey, I think sometimes is stripping away these biases and tendencies and looking at what's real. And when it comes to making a sale or making a deal or working with a new customer, I'm always looking to take away my biases and limit the other person's biases. And let's talk about very specifically what this is and am I the right person to solve it for you? So the next time you're in a tough conversation, you feel like you're your. Your sales have slowed, uh, make sure you're not spending too much time on these difficult kinds of conversations. Make sure you're asking those questions that either bring you closer to alignment or they help you identify quickly that we're not in alignment and it's better for me to go elsewhere. Hey, thanks for listening to today's podcast episode. If you enjoyed the podcast, don't forget, if you're a business, you can always sponsor an episode of on the Podcast. Or you can always, uh, support the podcast on our Patreon. Patreon.

Speaker B: Com.

Speaker A: GoodAdvice. Uh, seven years of podcasting. We've got a lot of supporters, and I really appreciate it. That's all we got today on the Good Advice podcast. I appreciate you, and I'll see you later.