Selling Without Being Salesy: The Kind Way to Sell.

This is the big lesson I learned: when you reach a certain level in your life and you are working on projects above $200,000, you have to understand something: clients can hire anyone around the world, so your level of competence has completely changed if "You are using a minor league strategy to play in the Major Leagues, it is counterintuitive that if you keep doing what you are doing today you will continue to grow, but eventually you hit a ceiling or a wall, what got you here won ". I didn't get them there so I needed to learn something different and what he taught me allowed me to double my business in a year.

What's up, beautiful people? The video you are about to see is my presentation that I just did here at rgd design thinkers. He is called a Natural Born salesperson to take advantage of his natural gift for influencing and persuading people. Hello everyone, very happy to be here. I feel like I did something wrong and they sent me to jail because it's been like four or five years since I did it. been here, I'm very happy to be here, a couple of different things, number one is I just realized something and I've been doing something wrong my whole life.

I've been saying Toronto and the tea is quiet, that's how it's supposed to be. come here and say hello Tana, that's right, okay, you learn something new every day, okay, some points there, uh, I'm going to jump right into my presentation here and hopefully we'll have some time for some questions and answers . What I wanted to share with you is that I have this observation, this observation is that when we talk about sales we tend to think that if you are a big energy extrovert, boisterous, then you make sales and if I know my people, most designers are introverts just because a show. hands how many people identify themselves as introverts, okay, and everyone else, what are they doing here? because it's not real, so here's the problem, the problem I see is that extroverts are gregarious, they are social butterflies, they have the gift. from Gab, you know what I'm talking about, they can walk into a room full of strangers and strike up a conversation and feel like family right away and I'm outside at the window looking out into the cold, how do I do that?

I can't and they're charming and they draw people in and they seem to get all the glory and this is a struggle that I think a lot of creative people face because you're in the backstage. you're doing the work, the good work, and you're not getting the reward. I would like to change that and maybe one of the most famous

sell

ers is on this list, but I want to draw your attention to one person in particular. Jordan Bord, he's the Wolf of Wall Street, guys, have you seen that Leo DiCaprio movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, and that's why he's doing all these aggressive, manipulative things and

sell

ing a lot of junk bonds, so we have the impression that you guys have to be like this to do this, so what's wrong with all of us?

What are we supposed to do? I'm here to try to empower creative people to make a living doing what they love, so we have to consider this idea. sales and I don't just mean

selling

your idea, selling your vision, I mean sales, like sitting in front of a customer and

being

able to do a business transaction with them, so if I were to ask you all, how do you think about the sellers? What

kind

of image comes to mind? Maybe they're very aggressive manipulators and we have that classic used car salesman vibe that we get from them and I don't know if you've ever been the victim or had to sit through a Times Share sales pitch.

I have to say it's horrible, so don't go for the free breakfast. Nothing in life is free, okay, and I almost bought a Time sh that I didn't want, so you get this really icky feeling about it. As we walk we have the impression that selling is

being

like a snake, so we are not going to want to do it or we are going to have a bad attitude when doing it, that feels fair, if you hate doing something. You're not going to be good at it, so I think what we do is have an alternative to Mr.

Jordan Belfor, The Wolf of Wall Street, one that's more permission-based where you're actually giving or creating value to others. That feels aligned with who we are, guided by curiosity, and with a spirit of generosity sounds a lot more reasonable, but that's probably not the image you have of a salesperson, so today I'm going to help you rethink sales. so that you have a healthier relationship with the idea of ​​sales. I am mistaken. I stay here. Okay, a couple of things you need to know. Number one in sales is change management. Have you heard of it being described this way?

Change management. Well then. Hopefully I'll defend this concept here, so another way to look at change management is that someone wants something and they can't get it, this could be your client who wants a client, your client who wants a certain result and you help them. to discover it. figure out what it looks like and how to get it, so you just have to ask yourself two questions: what do they want and what's getting in their way and since we're in a room full of designers, I made a much simpler chart for you, okay? just three parts, just remember these three parts, number one is that there is a current state that you are in today and then there is a desired future state, so all of you I am going to assume that you are here today and you have given up. some of your free time gives up some of your resources and the things you have to do on that to-do list because you want to achieve something, there's an outcome you want to achieve and that's fair and then you're going to buy a ticket. to achieve that outcome, then if organizations like this understand it very well, what they need to do is communicate to you the desired future state that you are interested in, so that some of you want to network, others want to connect with people you already know.

It hasn't been seen in a long time, some of you just want to escape the house and get out, but others want to learn something that you can get away with today and that you can apply today and tomorrow to change your life, so we know this. If there is a current state and a desired future state, there is something standing in the way, so if you want to be more effective in your persuasion skills or help clients achieve it, you must identify what the obstacle or challenge is. gets in the way. That is clear, there is no obstacle, so there is no friction, they are already in the desired future state number two, you have to understand this, that people already know it, you also know it, that only by spending money will the problem disappear.

I'll give you a really basic example: if you need to make a brochure and you don't have a printer, you know you have to go to a printing shop and do it if, for some reason, the plumbing in your house bursts at a really inconvenient time and I guess there's There is no convenient time. You know the only way to do this is to know how to fix it or you have to call someone to come to your house and fix it. We have to spend money to make the problem go away so it doesn't go away.

I don't feel that gross and people already know that when they contact you. This is a critical piece of information: how much they spend is proportional to the size of the problem in relation to the person who is not buying from you but from them. What you want to do is start looking for big problems to solve in relation to the potential buyer of whatever you do, small problems, small budget, big problems, big budget number three, when a potential client reaches out, when they call you, when They send you an email when they enter your DM.

You are already qualified. Many of us feel: Oh, how can I prove myself to them? What do I need to say? The fact that they are taking time out of their day to communicate. to you it means they have seen enough so you don't need to sell them anything, so at the beginning of the conversation you have good will and everything you do afterwards will erode or develop that will to build or diminish. Trust, keep this in mind number four and I think this is something that once you realize this, it takes a lot of pressure off your shoulders and that not every client or not every prospect or client has at least three options that I have. . aware that they can hire you, of course, that's a preferred option, they can hire someone else or they can't do anything at all, so when I started my career as an entrepreneur trying to build a design practice, I always felt like there was only one option, any.

Have you ever felt like you have to hire me? It's a lot of pressure to feel on that call, so you're generating a lot of nervous energy and that will affect the way you speak, the way you behave, and the way you listen. when you realize this is great because your job on that call in that meeting is to help them understand their problem and get clarity on what they need to do so they can make the best decision for themselves. I know you can hire someone else so let's have a conversation about what their needs are to see if there is a possible good fit and if there is one that might warrant another conversation and sometimes the best thing you can tell them is that I don't think need to do anything at all, so we don't We don't want to sell what we want to do is help clients align or not align with their goals with their resources with their results and help them overcome their challenges or say this is not a good fit no fits well you don't have a real problem or you don't have a problem that I can solve, so we're going to make this change, we're going to go from being self-centered to talking about what it is that we do, how beautiful that is.

We know how beautiful the things we make and the equipment we use or our process are that we want to get away from ourselves to focus on customers, so we have to have an attitude or mentality of serving others. We use this word in two areas that I can think of generally in the church and generally in the military thank you for your service we are willing to do something put another person's needs before our own number two is that we want to stop giving advice or advising others people what to do do and what we want to do is be really good at asking questions beautiful open questions that we'll go into a little bit more depth later we want to stop talking and listen more and you could use, you could play this game with whoever asks the most questions whoever wins ask more questions you are in control of the relationship think about that and then just listen the next thing we need to do is when clients tell us about the last bad experience they had with a creative, what we need to do is we need to look at that and feel that with them and empathize with what they are going through.

We have to empathize because they have many other problems they are dealing with, not just the one we want them to focus on. and that's how we build a meaningful connection with people and the last part is, instead of selling, we want to summarize, so we want to serve, we want to ask, listen, empathize and summarize, and that turns out to be this sales acronym that we're going to rethink. has a service mentality, we're going to ask more questions and the cousin asking questions is listening, we want to empathize and we want to summarize, and if you do this and follow this exact framework, you will never have to sell again or at least you won't have to sell in the same way. way that feels super

salesy

.

I was really drawn to this book written by Zoe Chance and the book is called Influence is Your Superpower, so Zoe brings up the idea that we all have this nature. ability to influence people before language when you wanted to be fed as a baby, you know what to do when your diaper was dirty, you know what to do, somehow, so we are all born salespeople and we have to tap. Back to the energy and maybe give a different example of what it means to sell so the world doesn't feel so disgusting and disgusting and before we continue I have a little confession to make.

I'm not a sales trainer. I am not a sales expert. I have not received any formal sales trends. In fact, I used to hate selling. I hated it and I want to do something here. I want to dispel this idea that has been perpetuated in all design schools in that case. is good enough, you won't need to sell how many people have heard this how many people have said this how many people believe this because there are many of you out there so what happens is that if we believe this we will never acquire the skills that we need to acquire to flourish as a business have a conversation with business owners and we will always be regulated by the person working the cash register.

There is nothing wrong with that. I think there's a lot to love in that, but it should be by choice, not by default, so I'll tell you in a moment how I went from hating cells to actually loving them and feeling really good about it, and I'm a bit of a sales nerd. and I only use the word nerd because it allows me to steal a joke from Don McMillan and share it with you. Don McMillan is actually a real nerd, he's a comedian who uses sales charts and diagrams, so I'm going to show you right now. so he says that to be considered a nerd you have to have three things you have to be very smart you have to know what you're talking about it's okay to be a nerd you have to be socially awkward I see you all Okay, we'll just look at each other. to the other, everything is fine and you have to be veryrelated to how fit I feel. what she just did there she asked me to tell her what is important to me and made me show her how important it was by asking me why the score isn't lower.

Tony Robbins talks about this is the number one driving character or behavior. for people it's the need to be consistent with ourselves he didn't sell me anything heI kept asking myself why is this so important, why not do something else and you got into the emotional part, not the data-driven part, Because he also knows that people buy based on emotions, not facts, so by asking the right questions, customers will sell themselves, this is what I mean, selling without being a salesman, it is the art of conversation and making big, beautiful, wonderful questions in the service of other people.

Story number four is Carrie, that's not his real name. Carrie called me in a panic and says Chris I. I'm really tired and frustrated by what's happening and she told me that there was another designer who was in the same coaching community as her and that she was copying her language from her website and speaking about how to do a brand strategy and every time she has a conversation with a prospect, what happens is she makes a lower offer each time to less than half of what she proposes and she didn't know what else to do and that really affected her , she was the main breadwinner for her family okay so they said krie if you see the problem more than once whose fault is it their fault or is it your fault if you see the problem more than once well, Of course, it's her fault, she hadn't changed her game at all, so I gave her some clear instructions, I told you.

I know what I want you to do. I want you to raise the objection first at the beginning of the call. If you know each time will be about money, say this before you begin. I just want you to know that I'm more It's probably going to be the highest person that's going to bid on this, it's his main decision based on how cheap it is or based on the price, so I told him to do something, change the conversation, take back the power, tell the person they should talk to someone else. people first and if they figure out what they need, there's no need to have this conversation with you at all and I said, but before you let them go, I want you to educate the client on what to look for, what are the warning signs that someone isn't I don't know what they're talking about, she's like, oh, I could do that.

I was like, yeah, yeah, it's called Throwing Shade in your competition, come on, and then you finish it off with this super powerful move and you're like, just call me if you don't do it. Feel completely confident in the options you have. This is the crazy thing. Carrie gets a lot of sales calls so she got someone she called The Very NE this very day and then she called me back the next day and left Chris, you won't believe this. What happened? I'm like I did what you told me to do and they don't call me back.

So what's a surprise? I said just wait, it may not work who knows and then surprise, surprise, a couple of days. Later the same customer comes up and says, "You know what I asked them," the questions didn't give me good answers. I don't feel good about this, let's talk, and by making this change, Carrie continued to double over the next year. her income and she said I've made more money in four, four or five months than I did in the whole of last year doing this, so unfortunately I auto and stopped talking, you're too busy with work, go figure, okay, last story that wanna.

Sharing with you is the most perfect sales pitch I have ever heard in my life and I want to share it with you. Okay, we normally work with sales reps and we wanted to try something different and this person I've never met. I talked to whoever I was talking to on the phone and he says Chris, do you know what we do? I tell him no, he says, can I have a few minutes to tell you what we do? I'm sure, sure, go ahead, he says, what we do is. We eliminate the pain point of what he feels.

Let me make a wild guess. When you work with sales reps, it takes too long to see results. It could take three or four months before you know if you'll get them. any new lead and the way sales reps traditionally work is knocking on doors, making calls, you have no idea what they are doing, how they are doing it, all you do is get a bill every month for the money you they are spending. and you're paying them the retainer and then if you don't like what you get with them, you have to start over and you're going to spend another three months, so how much is this really costing you?

He was amazing and I don't know what he said after that but all I knew is that we hired him because he spoke to me, he touched my weak spots, I felt like he was looking into my soul and this is the tool you can use. without going into too much gory detail, so if you can identify the top three pain points that your clients have all the time, try this technique, mention it at the beginning, say something like this every time you talk to clients or customers like you, they By Usually, tell me what your three biggest problems are and then fill in the blanks, just try it and see what happens.

Okay, now what you want to do is if you don't have enough data, don't do this if you've been in business. for some time and you keep hearing certain things, then you can do it, so don't guess, be specific and if you are able to nail this down, it's an instant credibility builder and then when you're done saying it, ask this question. that's right and what you're looking for is okay so there are a couple of things you can do to prepare for this next sales call so here are things you might want to take a picture of this you don't have to but ask yourself this ask yourself what pain is your customer experiencing that is functional, financial or emotional, just do it yourself, you need to figure these things out and you should, if you have been in business long enough you will know the answer to this question number two, what are the results negatives.

Your customers fear or try to avoid number three, this is the important one. What objections or accusations might be raised by new customers? Most likely, they will raise questions about experience, vertical experience, price, probably, timeline, and the size of your business. team, it's usually one of those five things, so what you need to do is write them down and start thinking about what the answer is going to be, prepare for this, so here's a quick reminder that sales isn't compelling, it's not . persuading is not manipulation selling is helping it is about being curious selling is learning selling is an act of generosity so there is a lot to remember in the process so it helps ask listen empathize and summarize I just want you to focus on the two key skills that do not You know I need to know something else, if you can do these two things, ask and listen, you will understand this, so focus on these two things.

When you ask a really good question, it's like magic, you open people's minds and there's a great book. I don't know if you read it, it's called habit coaching and there's a framework there that Michael Bung talks about. I'll share the questions with you, but I didn't realize that this is an amazing sales coaching book, it's not. about something else, but as I read it I think this is how I sell, this is perfect, number one, it says to be slower with giving advice, ask more questions, be curious for longer and here are the six or seven questions that have and the ones that What I highlighted for you is what's on your mind and then you keep asking and what else and what else and then you ask and what's the real challenge for you in a sales training call I did with my group.

I literally just read the script. and I didn't even respond to anything the other person said. I literally went through the list and that was amazing, Chris, thank you. I just read a script. Here's a script. You can also use it. It works, so if "You're terrible, just literally read the script. The next thing you need to know is that if you ask because you don't listen, the question is worthless and people do this all the time and you will do it later today with you" . They will ask you a question about how your life is going and then their eyes will be somewhere else, they don't really care so you have to listen.

It's twins asking and listening, so you want to do this thing that Kevin Dy talks about. It's called listening with full value listening with full value is what the other person says is the most important thing you've ever heard you have to listen with great attention to detail what they say and feel what they feel the mistake that What I'm talking about here is that when you ask a question you are given an answer the next question should be a continuation of the answer you were given this is how you know you are listening and I see this happen all the time someone asks a question you get an answer and then you just ask a totally different question that's unrelated to the first question because then you feel like, oh, I think you're reading from a script right now and, unfortunately, that's how most podcasters interview people, they're 75 questions and it literally just goes from one question to another and when I get asked this I get really bored, okay, so there's a stack here, you start with the current state when you're listening to what's going on right now. their life is good, great, I understand what the desired future state is, where they would like to go, what

kind

of transformation, what kind of result, what kind of change they want and what is standing in their way, how would they measure success, what is valuable to them.

If you can figure out what this is, you'll do a great job and then when you hear all this stuff, you'll process it and do something that Kevin is referring to: play and summarize and it's very important that you use the same words that they use if they say I'm very fatigued with this don't say you're very tired say fatigued you're using exactly the same language because language is important and it matters you change the word, you change its meaning and then when you summarize all of this you say: Did I miss something? Is it that correct?

It's an opportunity for you to learn new information and then no, I think you have it all, that's how you close. the sale you ask a hypothetical question that we all love H asking hypothetical questions and an if question so what I heard you say was blah, blah, blah, blah, so if you saw a solution that did this and that right now for this amount of money then you would be willing to move forward and you will be waiting for an emphatic yes, not a significant pause, not a forced yes, an emphatic yes, when you get the emphatic yes, say: I will have a proposal for you by the end of the business day today.

I'll contact you tomorrow, okay? So you've already solved the problem, talked about the price, gotten a verbal agreement from them that this is how they want to move forward and you won't realize how powerful this is. The secret is to commit to your own words and ideas, so I found this quote by Jeffrey Gmer. Don't tell your clients something they don't know about you, tell them something they don't know about them, that's a big Unlock asking good questions will give you an unfair legal competitive advantage. If you practice this, you'll start to see your close rate increase, budgets increase, and your friction decrease, so here are some quick resources for you guys always. ask for the book list there it is, take a photo and I have a little scorecard for you and then I'll get off stage.

I can't believe I did this in time, here we go, here's your question scorecard every time you advise. Speak up, assume that you are ambiguous with your questions and are being too assertive with your tone. Delete a point. This is how you decrease trust and goodwill and how you kill the relationship every time you ask a great, specific, beautiful, intelligent question. You listen carefully and play back what you heard every time you ask a curious question that focuses on the client's needs and not your own, every time you ask a clear question and use the voice of the late night FM DJ.

You get one point. I don't have a DJ voice on FM. I'm a horse, it's cold. I'm sorry. Thank you very much to all. That's my moment. We have time. We have time for some questions. Yes, we have two minutes. Friends, you can send. In some questions for Chris, type quickly if you go to Instagram in stories, there is a question box, but I already have one, which is awesome, so someone was quick. What's one mistake you've learned from when it comes to selling and becoming this? I'll tell you before I learned how to sell, I did something terrible.

I thought it was my job to tell clients what I think they should have done and I was hurt by this amount so I phoned and they described me. the report and I was immediately starting to come up with ideas about how we could do this, we could film it with this camera and use these lenses and sequence it this way and, like thank you, they hung up the phone and I was like, I don't know why You never called me back I don't know what happened, so it's making too many assumptions and not being curious, that's the biggest mistake.

Do you sometimes think clients need you to tell them what to do, even though I'm thinking about myself? experiences, yes, eventually, but I try to make itas painful as possible for them, let them do all the talking and I'll tell you this when I first learned how to ask these questions and big sales unlock the mystery, it was like wow, I'm saying it. with them I am going to talk to you I am going to ask you a lot of questions and it may be very uncomfortable but it is important for me to understand what your needs are what inspires you what a victory is like where you fail where I have been successful, so I can provide you with a solution adapted to you and they accept it, so a 30 minute call becomes a 90 minute call and we're all exhausted and you'll be exhausted if you do this right. butThis is the beautiful thing about this is that only then do you propose a solution, so before we learned how to do this, we would propose and make 17 different ideas, 17 different logos, three different CU storyboards, we don't know, we had no idea. so it's just a guessing game yeah what are you thinking about in your own business right now when it comes to selling well?

That is a good question. I think I did my job well. This is what he needed me to do. If I do not do it. I don't think I'm selling anymore, what I do is try to create content, okay, I know what's good, here's my strategy for selling, create such good content, give it all away for free as much as possible, no strings attached, no funnels, no email. traps to make you feel guilty and make you buy something, that's it, that's the secret, there's a gentleman here that works backstage and he's like, "hey, I just had to say thank you for my friend who literally made a million dollars watching your content". send me a check for a million dollars she's literally a million dollars I haven't seen the check yet I don't know not to feel so guilty Are there specific things about the sale that you're thinking about, although you obviously think about this way beyond what What have you presented?

What are you thinking about in your mind? I'm trying to sell you something, yeah, or even just the kind of spirit about selling. Has anything changed in your way of thinking in the last moment? It hasn't changed, but it continues. to evolve and I think that if I try to help whoever is in front of me, all of you or you as best as I can, the sales have started, they really have and this is the strange thing. I'll just tell you this and I realized we're out of time, I just finished doing a workshop in Miami with no intention of selling you anything and all of a sudden people are like, "I want to buy more from you," like, oh, okay. , let me solve this.

I was even trying. That's the most beautiful thing. part of this, so if you help someone, if I'm trying to sell you, I'm really going to get into your business, whatever your business is, and I bet I can work something out with you and tell you something you didn't know and for that, you'll start to feel an emotional connection with me right now. I feel like it's a challenge. I'm not doing it right. My DJ voice, okay guys, leave it for Chris one more time, thanks.