Your Sales Process Probably Sucks (ft. Brad Pearse)

Brandon Welch 0:00
There’s really no such thing as a dead lead. There’s just a lifetime customer who hasn’t needed us yet.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m joined today by one bad dude that you definitely need to know if you want to grow your company, this is the place where we help you eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and help you achieve the big dream. And what bigger contributor to the big dream than big sales? Brad Pierce is a veteran sales leader across multiple sales industries, with a track record of crushing quotas of companies he served, including OtterBox. He’s a multiple award winners of salesperson of the year, sales trainer of the year and new acquisition rep of the year. Told you he was bad to the bone. The coolest part is, after a career of knocking it out of the park for the companies he served, he extracted the things that worked at the highest levels, and he’s now making them available to entrepreneurs everywhere through his company simplified sales. He’s the CEO and founder of simplified sales, and today he’s going to give us some juicy takeaways you can use to improve results at all corners of your growth. I promise you’re in for a treat. Please help me welcome Mr. Brad Pierce, what’s

Brad Pearse 1:14
up? Brandon, thanks for having me on

Brandon Welch 1:16
you’re you’re looking awful Florida tan. I imagine you keep that year round, right?

Brad Pearse 1:22
I try,

Brandon Welch 1:23
I try. So I told everybody, what a what a bad to the bone sales guy you are. But tell us about the Bad to the Bone dad life, because I know that was just a tiny fraction of who you are. Two kiddos, right? Two

Brad Pearse 1:37
kids. I’ve got two daughters, 110’s 113’s been married to my wife for about 18 years, and we made the trek out here to Florida a couple years ago, and absolutely love it out here. So

Brandon Welch 1:51
yeah, he’s an outdoorsman. We’re fellow Johnny Morris fanboys, and we had a good conversation about Bass Pro. And I’m just so glad to have you because we talk a lot about marketing. We talk a lot about the philosophical growth and the vision and the, you know, the missional operation stuff you need to have in place to be qualified to grow a company. And we talk about generating those opportunities for the sales people. But very, very very seldom do we get to dig into the world of that salesperson. And when we met a while back, I just, I couldn’t help but think our audience needed to know you, and you have such a heart for serving people. You have such a heart for entrepreneurship, and that is what we’re all about here. So we’re just going to go through some things you’re seeing, some things you learned, maybe why the sales industry is changing. And I know I’m going to do my very best to shut up and just let everybody absorb your wisdom. But tell me first, if, if you had a magic wand and you could change one thing about the sales industry in America, what would that be?

Brad Pearse 3:01
There’s there’s probably one thing i I’ve thought about this a lot, Brandon, um, if you think about sales and just the profession of sales, at the end of the day, obviously, every single one of us, we want to drive revenue and we want to go out there and win. However, if there’s one thing that a salesperson really needs to have is the right mindset before they do anything. And that mindset is really about owning it and really treating the business. If you’re working for somebody else, and you are a sales rep, or you’re an entrepreneur, or whatever that might be, this, this, this idea of treating sales in your sales territory, if you will, like it’s your own business, and you’ve got to own it and and, and be accountable for, for everything that you do on a daily basis. So

Brandon Welch 3:53
so everybody who owns a business right now is going, absolutely, yeah. That’s Heck yeah. That’s what I wanted to hear. I would ask you first, what? What does that in juxtaposition to, like, what if that’s what we need to have as World Class sales folks? What do we have instead? Now, where are we at? Now? What’s the state of things, compared to an Ownership mindset,

Brad Pearse 4:16
everything’s transactional. That’s what I see, versus actually building a relationship and owning it all the way through and doing it in a way with intentionality. If that makes sense, you got to be intentional with your sales, your approach, how you communicate, how you connect,

Brandon Welch 4:36
yeah, yeah. That’s That’s got to be tied to the there’s a quote that it goes something. I’m going to botch it, but it goes, it, but it goes something like, you know, mothers want their boys to be, you know, firemen, lawyers, doctors. But no mother has ever wished for her son to be a salesman. And we just kind of associated with such a, I guess, a violating thing. And, you know, I. Had a plenty of experience in the sales roles of other companies before I had our agency. And I suppose, I guess sales would be a function of what I do here, if we don’t really think of it like that, but, but I had to separate myself from that mentality. I can’t remember when or why it happened, but there was, there was a moment where it was like, I’m not a salesperson, I’m a consultant. I don’t even know like when and why that happens, but you have obviously done that in your career. Do you remember a moment where you shifted and what would your advice be to somebody who’s maybe doing it that old way, that transactional way? And what were some of the key shifts

Brad Pearse 5:50
for me? It was, you know, when I started off in my career, you know, one of the things about it was, is, is what happens is, is you, you you work for somebody else, or you’re working for yourself, but at the end of the day, you’ve got specific sales goals that you need to hit, revenue numbers, all of that. And the thing about it is, is, I don’t think a lot of people realize, like, you can’t control the outcome. And if, if people try to, like, go after this specific number in that way, it’s good, but you can’t control the outcome, so you gotta kind of like, step back and think through, well, what is how am I supposed to get to that point? How am I supposed to get to that end goal? My if my quota is, like a million dollars a year, how am I supposed to get to that million dollars? Well, there’s a lot of things that have to happen in order to hit that number. And it all if you reinvert, you know, re basically reverse engineer the sales process from the end goal, it all comes back to the starting point of having the right mindset. And the shift for me when I first got into sales, and I first got into sales was actually in my family’s business on the retail floor, never sold anything before. That’s,

Brandon Welch 7:10
that’s a that’s where we all need to start. I think, I think high school ought to have one year of retail sales, or or, or serving in a restaurant. Would be even better, maybe. Yeah. Well,

Brad Pearse 7:20
it’s interesting, because I had this number that I had to hit, you know, we all had our, you know, revenue goals based off of the product categories that we were selling. And it was intimidating, like you’re thinking to yourself, dude, I’ve got to hit this number or else I’m going to get fired. That’s the mentality that I had. So the problem with that mentality of operating in fear is that it paralyzes your ability to think creatively and your ability to really think through and solving problems for your client or your customer, and it just paralyzes you. And so one of the big shifts for me is that I had to find kind of my lane in terms of, like, honestly, like my personality, like, I love relationships, I like connecting with people, all of that. How do I find the right way to connect with people in a genuine, authentic way, but yet still be in that spot where you’re offering the solution and asking for the business? So once I started kind of finding my groove within my own personality and kind of figuring out, you know what, what worked for me, you know this idea of coming from a place of true like servanthood, empathy, connection, it changes the tone of that conversation. And so it goes from a transactional to a real conversation. And we all know that in sales, it really, it’s all about tone and pace.

Brandon Welch 8:50
Yeah, well, those things, man, you said so much. I want to unpack there, but just to grab that, that tone and pace. And this, this natural consultant that we all want to deal with, like we want to deal with competent consultants as consumers, right? That is so unavailable to the person who is operating out of anxiety or fear. And I just, I thought of a couple things. There was actually a CEO group I’m involved with. We had a guest speaker one time, and I remember distinctly. He said, If sales leaders in America truly wanted their people to succeed, they would eliminate their quotas. They wouldn’t let them know about their their quotas, because that becomes the thing. It’s like the it’s like the whole 38 special song, hold on loosely, but don’t let it go like we just need to keep that as a as a lagging indicator. And I think, I think too often we treat sales numbers and budgets and quotas like that as leading indicators of success, and all they are is a is a rear view mirror, right? Would you agree with that 100% and so, man, I’ve been, I’ve been in some sales environments where it was a daily grind to look at your numbers and, um. Um, I get why they do it. Stake, stakeholders and shareholders have to have some security and some, you know, deductive reasoning as to when their investments going to return to them. But that is not how humans operate, right? Um, I forget who said it, but it’s we are feeling machines that think, not thinking machines that feel. And so tell me about where you have seen a shift in other people so you had a mindset, and I think it probably has something to do with you being so close to the owners of the company, IE or parents, right? You got to untap that, but to the anxious salesperson, or to maybe the anxious sales leader. How do we tap into that relational, holistic mindset that you’re talking about? Give us some other tactics.

Brad Pearse 10:53
Yeah, you know, I think when you think about sales itself, think about times like where you’re meeting somebody new, right? I think a lot of it, you know, when you think about it, when you’re meeting somebody new, the very first thing that goes through your head is, what’s this person’s about? What was this person about? Should? Then other questions start to kind of percolate right in your head. So what happens is, is you start to get in this state of mind of curiosity about that person, and you start asking questions. And one of the things about just human relationships in general is if your ability to take genuine interest in the other person and ask questions about them, yeah, they’re going to engage with you every single time, because human nature, they let people love to talk about themselves, right?

Brandon Welch 11:46
So Nate could probably tell you that when we hire people on a Franken Maven, we take we tell them the two most important ingredients you need to be a successful marketer are curiosity and empathy. That sounds like it sounds like it’s the same for sales people,

Brad Pearse 12:01
it is. It is because in a sales conversation, if I meet a prospect right away, they don’t know anything about me. I don’t know anything about them. They already have this preconceived notion that this dude wants to sell something to me. So I don’t, I don’t really kind of lead into, hey, we have this great Fandango product or service or whatever that might be that can help solve your problem. I and you know this better than anybody. Brandon, you probably get emails and LinkedIn messages all the time, people you know pitching you stuff that they don’t know anything about your marketing agency, absolutely zero. And it’s completely irrelevant to what you do and how you do things. I get them all the time. And so I don’t want to be that guy when I was actually, you know, you know, prospecting and Hunter Mode and sales. The mind shift for me was, was essentially a couple of things. Number one is, it’s that mindset of curiosity. But how do you get into their mind? So the first thing for me, when I and this is, this is probably 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 1015, years ago, but this idea of adding value to other people first, yeah, started to break the walls down. So what I would do is I would actually go out there and do research, not only on their company, but I would do research on the prospect itself, if I had access to that LinkedIn was a very powerful tool in that way. The other one was find something in their industry or about themself, and do research on it. Yeah, you figure out like a helpful piece of content or article or whatever that might be, and send it to them and say, Hey, John, I was just thinking about you the other day. I came across this article. Thought you might enjoy it. Let me know if you have any questions. Have a great

Brandon Welch 13:59
it’s funny you say that, that is, I think, I think there’s a deeper place that can come from, and it just makes the whole thing work. But if you’re looking for a tactic, if you’re a leader looking for a tactic, what Brad just said, I actually used Google news alerts when I was in sales. Yes. Do you ever use that? Yep, yep. And it’s just like, you put in the industry and a few keywords, and every morning or every week or whatever, it’ll it’ll ping you anything new that came out from the news. And so if you had, if you had some manufacturing client, you don’t know anything about that industry. But holistically, yes, it was a good tactic. And holistically, it was like, I can use that and maybe get in the door, and I don’t press them with my, you know, attention to detail or whatever, but holistically, I think, I think as salespeople, we have to have that curiosity. We can fake it to a degree, and we’ll be better than maybe the next guy. But like to have a sustainable career in sales, you have to have that natural curiosity 100% and I would just tell. Somebody, if, if you’re not empathetic to the person or the industry, or you’re not just, like, wildly obsessed with what, how they make money and how they serve their clients, just naturally, like as a kid with a box of Legos, like you’re probably doing the wrong thing. Yeah, well, and,

Brad Pearse 15:19
but, and here’s the thing, so being empathetic with with the prospect, doesn’t mean you lay down and you just do whatever it is that you tell them, being empathetic is putting your putting yourself in their shoes and understanding where they’re coming from, but yet still have that mindset of being in control the conversation, if you will. Right? And it’s more compass. Yeah, it’s more the compass. And once you understand that, then what you can do is you can actually start to guide them down the path. So when we think about the sales process, the sales process, all that is, is a customer journey. And in that customer journey that you’re doing, you’re literally building rapport as you go, and you’re building trust and authority with them, but you still have to take control, and you still have to guide this individual or this prospect down the path, because they don’t know what they’re looking for. They’re relying on you to guide them down that path, if that makes sense, yeah. So this idea of curiosity questioning gets you to that second, third, fourth level, questioning whatever that might be, if that makes sense. So,

Brandon Welch 16:27
so we’re going to have that curiosity behind us. Hopefully it’s naturally, hopefully we can tap into our inner, curious young self and just who is just curious about the world, like, if we can get back to that spot, I think this, the whole empathy thing kind of takes care of itself, because you just naturally become a human that’s actually interested in them, instead of pretending to be when we have that, suppose a sales professional can find that. One thing I see is they might have an abundance of natural curiosity, but that thing you were saying, Yeah, but we still have to take them to a process. What does the process look like that’s successful because a lot of the companies I’m thinking of couldn’t articulate their sales process. I there could be an owner who’s very, very skilled and talented and naturally intuitive, or or a or a seasoned professional like yourself, but how do we take that to where any average person coming in the door sure tap into it.

Brad Pearse 17:25
Yeah. So the sales process, if we take a look at the sales process on a very basic level, and if you’re a new sales leader or new sales rep, you have to have these four pieces in place just as a process. Perspective, the first thing is, is you’ve got to identify, like, what your core message is, and what does that mean? Well, it’s it’s really the story. Because one of the biggest things about being a sales rep, and what I’ve seen working with other sales reps, training with other sales reps, they struggle with articulating the story that they’re bringing you to the table to help solve that problem for the customer. And it is probably the number one thing that I see in terms of just, you know, having clarity around what they bring. So it’s, it’s kind of like the question of, like, Hey, what is it that you do? A lot of people like stumble and fumble around that Well, you gotta get that story, like, nailed down, yeah, the

Brandon Welch 18:27
one liners and the elevator speeches, right 100% and

Brad Pearse 18:32
be crystal clear on it, and and, and develop the story in a way that connects with your prospect. If that makes sense. The other one is you gotta, you gotta establish, essentially, clarity around what the problem is that you’re solving for. Cuz, keep in mind the products and services that we offer in the marketplace. Products and services are developed to solve a problem, and if it’s ideally, hopefully, yeah, hopefully, right, it’s there to solve a problem for that prospect. And if we’re not clear on the actual problem, what we’re solving for, that’s a big problem. And that all leads back to point number three, is identifying who your ideal customer is. There’s

Brandon Welch 19:14
somebody listening to this going Well, that’s obvious. We solved the problem of new roofs. And actually, you probably don’t. That’s not actually what you’re solving, or we solve the problem of HVAC. It’s like, no, there’s a chapter in our book called What you’re really selling. It’s got kind of a method of breaking down and figuring out what that core thing is. But it’s, it’s the it’s not the quarter inch drill bit. It’s the quarter inch hole, right? Or, furthermore, it’s the shelf hung up on the wall, right?

Brad Pearse 19:48
Yes.

Brandon Welch 19:51
So I would just stop, because you just said that, like, that’s a really profound thing, and I would just stop and say, like, when’s the last time you had that exercise? With your team, and it seems so Elementary, but get out of whiteboard and be like, no, what are we actually solving? We’re not. We’re not installing a new roof. We’re we’re making insurance company pain go away, right? We’re making friction go away from having to deal with the cost of a new roof. But we’re not selling windows. We’re selling comfortable living rooms, right? So any other, any other suggestions as to how a founder or a sales leader might bring their team to that core message?

Brad Pearse 20:32
Yeah, yeah. The biggest thing about a sales leader, they’ve got to really sit down and really think through what their story is, how they’re solving the problem for that particular client, they gotta understand who they’re talking to, who their ideal customer is. And you know, you’d be surprised on how many people really can’t articulate well, who is my core buyer, who’s actually buying my product? Because it all goes back to this whole idea of like, empathy and understanding where they’re coming from. Because if you don’t understand who they are, what do you like, Who are you serving? Right? And that’s, that’s a big, big gap. And all these things that I’m talking about is essentially, really the kind of the pre work, before you even engage with the prospect, and then you take them down the sales process of this customer journey and experience.

Brandon Welch 21:21
So would you say is it’s pausing before you just run in with a piece of paper trying to sell something 100% when I was in when I was in advertising sales, I would actually used to sit in the parking lot and just watch how people interacted with the business. I might get my lunch for somebody was on my list, and just go eat lunch and watch in the car, watch, just watch people going out of that business. I might go in there as a potential customer, if it was something I could remotely buy. And hear what the dialog is, right? So it’s the whole two ears, one mouth, thing, right? Two eyes, one mouth, yeah, two two sides of the brain, one mouth, right? So here you go. So I heard core message, so we’re going to find our core message to really clear and elementary, I guess, about the problem we actually solve and who we solve it for, right? Is that, are this that steps one and two? What’s step three?

Brad Pearse 22:20
It’s, it’s, it’s identifying who your core customer is. That that’s really step three, and you know, so identify core message, identify what the problem is, and identify who your ideal customer is. You have those things in your toolkit, if you will, and you in you as a sales leader every single sales meeting that you lead your sales team with. You talk about these three things every single sales meeting, because it’s a very easy thing not to talk about, because you get in the day to day minutia of going out there and doing your sales activities every single day, but these are the things that literally drive the entire sales process, knowing who you talk to, what problem you’re solving and what is your story, because that’s what you’re communicating to these prospects. Yeah,

Brandon Welch 23:16
thinking about my in home sales guys, there’s they may just get a lead off the website, and they may not know. Well, actually, I guarantee you they don’t know, quote, unquote, who they’re going in to sell to, but if they would stop for 30 seconds and look at the zip code, probably the make or model of the car that’s in the garage, that tells you a lot of psychographically, somebody who drives a Toyota does a totally different beast than than somebody who drives a BMW, than somebody who drives a Dodge, right? There’s some psychographic things you can pick up there. How well, how neat they keep the yard. That tells you a lot about them. What kind of flag is hanging on the door? What kind of bumper stickers are we talking about? Right? Like we can, we can take these pauses and go, Okay, I’m going to empathetically align my conversation with this person, instead of being some random agent that walked in with a product that they kind of sort of think they need, right?

Brad Pearse 24:11
100% 100%

Brandon Welch 24:14
I’ll go, I’ll go to the creepy level and say, What if you, if you’re a local salesperson, well, if you punch your name into Facebook and see who they know that you know, you might find some mutual friends, right? You might get a clue about what they’re into. Usually, people’s profile, mine would be me flying, right? I’d have a picture of me in a headset. So somebody could be like, Oh, you fly airplanes or whatever. And yours might be you fly fishing or something. I don’t think I’ve looked you up on Facebook, but, um, just use the tools that are available to you, and probably 80% of the time you’re gonna find something, right, absolutely,

Brad Pearse 24:53
yeah, and it’s all being about, like, being aware. You know, you gotta be self aware about. And how you’re communicating and connecting with other people. You can’t just, you know, dump product and features and benefits and all that kind of stuff to the customer without even asking them a question, right?

Brandon Welch 25:12
So our favorite question is, what are you trying to make happen?

Brad Pearse 25:16
Yes, yep, what’s your goal?

Brandon Welch 25:19
Yeah, what’s the big dream? Yeah, right. So I’ve got spend some time in your core message, like every business owner should do that, and I’m gonna guess Brad would be willing to help you with that. But while you’re doing that, clarify down to a bullet point level, the problem you solve. And then, three, while you’re doing that, get really serious about who you solve it for there might be three or four different avatars you serve, right? Would you? Would you agree with that 100%

Brad Pearse 25:48
three or four different avatars, and in that specific story, a key, key element behind that is, part of your story is testimonials, right? Part of your story is, hey, we ran across this problem with this particular situation. This is what we’ve been able to do with them, and this was what the outcome was. I don’t know if you’re in that same situation or not, but thought you might be, you know, interested in hearing what I wanted to share with you. Donald

Brandon Welch 26:18
Miller talks about the power of narrative transformation. And when you’re telling somebody a story, it engages that imaginative part of your mind. Yes, like you take somebody, there are two hemispheres of the brain. The left is generally in charge of numbers, logic, black and white, fact, factual things, right? Yes, the right brain is in charge of no language patterns, a savant, a goofball meandering around humming tunes and looking at colors and making you know meaning out of things that don’t have any logical sense to them. Well, that part of the brain tends to be, or not tends to be, actually, is where relationships and deep feelings and associative memories of good things come right, left, part of the brain is. What’s it cost? How fast can you get it to me? What are the Express guarantees of the product? Is this feature as good as somebody else? So if we think about it, we want to cause somebody to imagine a new world with us. We would get as far away from product details as possible, and where do stories and patterns and where we experience and enjoy art. Where does that come from? Comes from the right side of the brain, doesn’t it? So take them to the right side of the brain. Yeah, it’s the easiest way to do that.

Brad Pearse 27:45
Yeah. It’s interesting, because I know Donna Miller talks a lot about just how our brain works, right? I mean, at the end of the day, it’s all about clearing for your message, so customers will listen and and that’s really what it comes down to. And you know this Brandon already, but you know your brain, the way it works, to your point is this right side, left side, but your brain is constantly scanning for information based off of two things, survive or thrive, yes. And so you know, your brain is burning up crazy amount of calories. And if you don’t come in to your sales meeting or a prospect meeting, or whatever that might be, and your message is all over the place, you’re going to lose that prospect within the first minute of that conversation.

Brandon Welch 28:34
When you confuse, you lose Yep, bingo.

Brad Pearse 28:37
So what that prospect’s doing is they’re looking for a way to survive or thrive, and if you can’t give them that in a clear, concise message, they’re on to the next. Yeah, love it.

Brandon Welch 28:51
Love it. I’m going to put you on the spot in a minute. I’m going to ask you what you do? Have you give it. Have us give you your example of that. But is there a step four after we’ve got core message problem you solve core customer defined

Brad Pearse 29:05
so, so that’s kind of the pre work. So the step four is, is, is now you actually engage into the actual sales activities and going out there and prospecting. So you got to have a plan and strategy on how you do that, to bring what I call it is a customer life cycle. So there’s really, like three parts of the customer life cycle, right? There’s the beginning stages of marketing, putting out content, adding value, whatever that might look like, to attract that lead into your sales funnel, if you will. So once you have that, then you go into the actual sales process itself. And every company has a sales process, whether they they know it or not, the gap is they don’t write it down and get it out of their head and put it on paper.

Brandon Welch 29:52
The gap is theirs. Probably sucks. Yeah,

Brad Pearse 29:57
sucks. Yeah, yeah. But, but. So on a very basic level, sales process, once that lead comes in, you book a discovery, call, you make a presentation, and you close with the agreement. And then after that, your goal is to make him a raving fan. It doesn’t end there. You gotta cultivate that relationship long term?

Brandon Welch 30:21
Yes, we would call that the yesterday customer, right? That’s, we talk a lot about that on the show and in the book and all that stuff. That’s probably in time, that’s your most valuable type of sales and marketing activity you could possibly do. Yep. How would you like to wake up to half of your sales goal met? Amazing. Yeah, because your past customers love you and are coming back or sending their friends and family

Brad Pearse 30:47
well, and it’s interesting, through this whole entire customer life cycle, after you have the pre work done, you gotta figure out the right strategies to get those leads in the door right, whether they reach out to you, Brandon, and work with you on their marketing strategy, their website, putting a lead magnet together, whatever that might look like. They got to have that strategy, right? Once that’s in place. And here’s what’s interesting, right? I think a lot of business owners and founders, what they’ll do is they’ll find themselves in a situation where they’re just focused on growing sales. Yeah, you’re just focused on we need a market, which is great, because you definitely need to do that. But what happens when that lead comes through the door after Brandon, you’ve done all this work for them, and they the leads don’t close well, then that tells me that there is no sales process in place, or at least a process in place that actually is engaging with that customer, because, again, you’re the guide. You’re bringing them through this journey. Yes, and that’s the you know, that’s the difference.

Brandon Welch 31:53
We’re that what I heard there is back to what you originally said. We gotta fix our mindset. Yeah, our job is not to get sales. Our job is to produce new outcomes for human beings so that they will want to buy from us.

Brad Pearse 32:06
Yes, because that’s, that’s the byproduct, right? Like the by revenue is a byproduct of of the customer experience, the

Brandon Welch 32:13
lagging indicator,

Brad Pearse 32:14
Yep,

Brandon Welch 32:15
exactly. If you’re, if you’re this, this just blows my mind. How many, how many people get off track here? But if your sales are down now, don’t, don’t yell at them about what’s gone on the last couple of weeks. Go look back what they were doing 180 days ago. And I might you know frankly, suggest what were you allowing them to do, or what were you leading them to do 180 days ago? Or what were you not leading them to do? Sure, and if we’re talking about a three to five year growth, like looking at how, how fast we’re growing compared to, you know, three years ago, yeah, if that’s not what you’d like it to be, guarantee you this follow through in this mindset of holistic customers are not, is not, is not being taken seriously because my companies that continue to grow at this, you know, astounding rates they have yesterday, marketing down like that is a core function. It’s not when they feel like it. It’s not when things are slow. It’s no that is missional for them, because your family, your business, whoever decided to do a transaction with us, and that is the first of many servant hearted activities we plan to do for you. If salespeople just woke up with that mentality, what would, what would happen?

Brad Pearse 33:36
It would? It would be a game changer, right? Like if, they woke up with the mentality that, you know what, we’re on a mission, more of a servant heart kind of mentality, yeah, and really have this idea of, like, building relationships. And I know I keep talking a lot about it, but that’s how important this is, and understanding, you know, your customer base, in a way that you’re truly building a relationship with them, not just in the now that after you get the project done, but ongoing forever. And that’s the mentality you have to have when I grew up in our family business, Brandon, the whole premise behind the customer walking in the store is that we had the mentality that this customer is a lifetime customer, and there’s there’s a there’s a moment in time when that customer comes in transaction that it’s called the moment of truth. And the moment truth really boils down to how you treat that customer in that moment, and what value do you bring to them in a way that helps them, you know, essentially, move forward, if you will, or solve their problem, whatever that might be. So powerful.

Brandon Welch 34:49
This is a lifetime customer. They may happen to buy something today, they may not, but either way, they’re a lifetime customer. So let’s treat them as such. That’s amazing. I love that. I. Uh, so core message, problem you solve, define your core customer, execute the sales activities, which I just want to clarify. It’s not get lead, set, appointment, sale, right? That’s the mentality that’s screwing America, right. That’s screwing our sales world, right? It is articulate what it is, instead of get lead, set appointment, sale,

Brad Pearse 35:26
yeah. So that that’s, that’s kind of the underlying, kind of components of what most organizations do, right? And you have to have kind of that basic fundamental, but where the difference is, and here’s the thing, so people think about sales as like this, I don’t know, for some reason, sales has somewhat of a stigma. And there’s a reason for that, yeah? And the reason is, is that most sales people are transactional. Most sales people are out there just to get theirs and get their number and their commission, or whatever that might be, yeah. And that’s what a customer expects, a customer and prospects expects that kind of experience. So the difference is, if you really want to make waves in the ocean, if you will, is that knowing the customer expectation and exceeding the customer expectation is where the magic happens. So exceeding the customer expectation?

Brandon Welch 36:23
Yeah, that could be a whole another episode that we’re going to do someday. But yeah, so keep going. Sorry. So,

Brad Pearse 36:30
so the expectation for that prospect is to go through lead, discovery, call, presentation, close. Well, a lot of salespeople that start off, it doesn’t really work that way, linear, right? Like there’s a lot of different things that have to happen in between, and one of them is once the lead comes through, and you set that discovery call, well, when that lead comes through, it’s on the sales person’s shoulders to reach out to that prospect. And the biggest thing that I see in this part of the sales process today is that that sales person will only follow up with that lead maybe one or two times, maybe three if they’re really, really feeling like, Hey, maybe I get a chance to do this. Yeah, the problem with that is, is that it takes eight to 10 touches of that prospect before they even engage with you into a discovery call, and you’re thinking to yourself as a salesperson, well, gosh, this, this lead reached out to us. Or, you know, they re responded to my email a couple times, but they went dark. Yeah. Well, you you can’t stop there. You got to keep going. There’s really no such

Brandon Welch 37:45
thing as a dead lead, that’s right. There’s just a lifetime customer who hasn’t needed us yet.

Brad Pearse 37:50
Yes, yes. Now the question is, is a well out of those and eight to 10 times that you’re touching that customer? Well, what does that even mean? Or what does that even look like. Well, it’s a cadence, and it’s a mix of different touch points, between emails, calls and what I today, what I use today is, is LinkedIn messaging. LinkedIn is probably one of the most powerful sales tools that you have at your disposal. If you don’t have LinkedIn, and you’re not prospecting from LinkedIn, if you’re in B to B business, you have to be using that. You gotta be using that tool.

Brandon Welch 38:26
Cool, there’s, yeah, there’s so much you can gather and little influence things. I mean, people that use LinkedIn, I mean, I do. It’s a daily thing. It’s just like Facebook. It’s their morning news, in a way, and just a tiny little blip on their radar every day or every week. That’s that’s what we call the tomorrow. Customer is committing to being in their lives every day and adding value. So we are so aligned. I know we’re going to do some awesome things together and helping. You know, some of our agency partner clients improve their sales processes. You know, I know I know we said we could do a whole another episode on customer experience, but, yeah, do you have a couple of things that you could just offer really quickly that a average sales person who’s getting average results could do today and implement that to improve that Experience?

Brad Pearse 39:19
Yes, absolutely. So there’s a couple different things that you can do as a new salesperson. One is is deliver value to your prospects that they don’t expect, whether it’s an article or whether it’s Hey, maybe I found out that Brandon loves Bass Pro Shops, so I’m going to go down to Bass Pro Shops and buy him a Bass Pro mug and ship it to him unannounced with a personal note handwritten to him. Love it. Another thing that you could do in your sales process is continue to mine for information and data in your respective industry and. And make a list of some of those key articles that you found really valuable, and send it off to them and say, Hey, you might like this. Thought you might get a lot of value out of this. But then I would say the last piece is, as soon as you close the deal, the very first thing that you want to do is take out a thank you card and handwrite a thank you note to that prospect and thank them for their business. Because nobody else does it today. If you want to stand out as a trust and authority salesperson, that’s the way to do it. Love

Brandon Welch 40:33
it such a rare thing. It’s like one out of 100 sales pros does that. Yeah, when you get it done for you, it’s just, it’s just the best thing. Okay, so that’s the sales experience, or that’s the customer experience elevation, and that is, that is, like, a repeatable thing, and you can get the reputation as having, like, this amazing rapport about you and that that bleeds into other customers and referrals. So I think we need to do a recap. And I think if we gave anybody any more value, we would either have to split this into two episodes, or people are just gonna their heads are gonna explode. So if I can recap what we’ve done, yeah, it’s all about mindset. Sales leaders, stop talking about quotas and start talking about the core message of your company. Start getting super serious about what it is that you do, the impact you make on the world, and help your people say that, well, you’re going to get really serious about the problem you actually solve. Less focus on training for your features and benefits, but more the problem you solve and the outcome. And we’re going to get language going that helps us articulate that quickly. Third is we’re going to define our core customer so that it’s so obvious that anybody just knows who it is, and we know what their needs, pains, hopes and fears are. Fourth, we’re going to do the sales activities, but it’s bigger than lead appointment sale. It’s actually lead curate, curate, curate, curate, treat them as they’re a lifetime customer already, is that’s one of my favorite things. Brad said they’re a lifetime customer, and we just haven’t had a chance to buy yet, like, or treating them that way, right? And then when we get that chance to do the appointment, Don’t stop. Keep curating. And then when we get the sale, keep curating right. And then you’re going to elevate that customer experience in the middle, sending them things that just made you think about them, because you’re naturally curious and empathetic. And then you’re going to use the art of the handwritten note, and you’re going to be a world class salesperson. And maybe you’ll start getting some results like, Brad, maybe you’ll be one of these double your sales quota type guys. So does that sound like a good plan? Brad,

Brad Pearse 42:48
yeah, that sounds great to me. So

Brandon Welch 42:50
we’ve definitely got to have you back for a whole nother episode on, like, expounding on customer experience, like we could Jive on that so well, I know you have a lot to offer. In the meantime, there are some people listening, and I know they need your help. I know they’re going, I know I need this, but how do I get started? Would you be willing to help them, and how would they reach out to you?

Brad Pearse 43:11
Absolutely, yeah, they can. If they need help or have questions, I’d be more than happy to have a conversation with them. Best way to get a hold of me. Is my by my email, which is Brad Pierce at simplified sales.com or they can jump on my website, and they’ll see a button there that says, schedule a discovery call. Yeah, I’d

Brandon Welch 43:32
recommend doing a workshop with Brad. Uh, I’ve seen this process, and it’s really great. And you’re going to his fee is ridiculously low for the value you’re going to get out of it. You’re going to pay for it. And a couple extra sales, and I know that will be just scratching the surface of what he’ll be able to help you do. So Brad, thank you so much for being with our audience. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom so freely. You have already delivered a better than average customer experience, and I’m just grateful that we got to experience that with you today.

Brad Pearse 44:00
Awesome. Thank you so much. Brandon. We’ll

Brandon Welch 44:01
talk to you next time, and until then, we’ll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why

Brad Pearse 44:10
are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.