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Today’s show featured an interview with Lee Salz, author of “The First Meeting Differentiator.” Also appearing is Wes Amann, VP of Sales at Filterbuy.
Find Lee on LinkedIn. Find Wes on LinkedIn.
LEE’S TIP: “Everyone wants to talk about closing techniques, but closing problems are just a symptom. The real issue starts in the first meeting. If that foundation is weak, the deal is weak.”
WES’ TIP: “It’s not about making a thousand calls. It’s about making connections. Always bring value, and always build a human connection.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: We got an exciting day today. We have Lee Salz, who’s produced a new book. Lee, you’ve been on the show a couple times in the past. You’ve been a prominent speaker at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling and you were our Sales Speaker of the Year in 2022. His new book is called The First Meeting Differentiator: Transforming Sales-Focused Discovery into Client-Centric Consultations. I read the book, I’ve already done a couple LinkedIn and Facebook posts about it. It’s great. The whole concept that you’ve invented and been promoting on selling differently is probably more important now than it’s ever been.
It’s always been important, but we’re doing today’s interview in October of 2022. The book just came out a couple of days ago, and excitedly, we brought on Wes Amann, the VP of sales for Filterbuy, who is going to be talking about some of the things that you’ve brought to Filterbuy and some of the lessons. I’m thrilled to have both of you here.
Lee, since we’re going to be talking in detail about you, I want to give Wes an opportunity to introduce himself and then we’ll get deep into the book. Wes, I’m very interested in you having worked with Lee, how you’re bringing some of his ideas to Filterbuy, and how you’ve been implementing this. Give us a brief introduction, tell us what Filterbuy does, and I’m excited that you’re on the show. Thank you very much.
Wes Amann: My group is actually Filterbuy Business. Filterbuy is the number one direct to consumer filter brand in the US, direct to consumer, meaning e-commerce. That’s how we got started 14 years ago. Now we sell more air filters over the internet than anybody else. A couple of years ago, the owner of the company, David Heacock, said, “Okay. We’ve got people saying, I’m a business. Can I buy at business pricing?” Two years ago, I was hired, brought in to start a B2B group. Today, we’re at 46 people in two years. When I started working with Lee, I think we had 8. It’s grown quite a bit.
Lee Salz: Did you have that many?
Wes Amann: I think so. But our group sells direct wholesale to businesses. We’ve got seven factory distribution centers around the US and we have arrangements so that we can basically do next-day delivery to 70% of the US for businesses. Because it’s wholesale, it’s usually a lower price because we don’t go through distributors, distributors markup. We’re growing.
I’ve been a fan of Lee for years. I didn’t put these here just a few minutes ago. These sit by my desk all the time, but this is a short version of what he’s got behind him. Those are all his books. Some way or other, I was contacted, I thought, “I don’t know that my company is really ready for this high-end type of consulting,” but it has worked out to be incredibly beneficial. He has helped me substantially in figuring out the best path forward in the shortest amount of time to make changes so that we’ve been able to grow like we have.
So far, we’re well over 50% growth over last year. Lee has contributed to that through helping to put together a playbook. One of the things that I think is the greatest thing, and it’s one of the things I use when I interview people, I tell them, “You don’t come in here and you get a desk and a list and start calling.” We have put together a playbook, 50 pages, that say, “Okay, this is what we sell. This is why it’s important. This is the buyer profile. These are the organizations they belong to.” I’ve got books here in my office with broad examples of how to overcome objections. They’re broad and they’re 200 examples.
One of my favorite parts of the playbook is we dialed it down to eight objections. These are the eight objections that you will get when you’re trying to sell air filters. The great thing about air filters is that everybody needs them and everybody needs them over and over. You can’t say, “Well, we had a slow quarter, so let’s cut back on our air filters.” It simplifies it, it helps get my people up to speed faster. There’s eight objections and here’s how to handle them. There’s more in there than that, but it comes down to, part of it is getting the first meeting, but then preparing for that conversation and how to walk through and find out what you need to find out to differentiate yourself and show that what we have to offer is the best solution.
Fred Diamond: Lee, pretty good endorsement there from Wes. You’ve already written three books on the subject of sales differentiation, which by the way, I’ve noticed is trademarked. Good for you. Now, September 30th, The First Meeting Differentiator, why did you write and publish The First Meeting Differentiator?
Lee Salz: One other piece, before I answer that question, part of my editing process and development process is to have subject matter experts. Wes was one of the subject matter expert editors that I had on my team in the development of this book. When I put it together, I’ll send it to that crew and I’ll say, “What can you not implement based on how I’ve described it, and what needs more explanation? What’s unclear?” It’s not traditional editing. I’m looking for people who are the target audience for my book. Wes, being a VP of sales, is a great example of someone who’s a target audience for the book. As a matter of fact, he purchased it for all of his salespeople to go through. Let me come back to now your question of why I wrote it.
This is not something that I would call timely. What I mean by that is, this book was needed 200 years ago and it’s needed 200 years from now, because of this whole notion of the first meeting. When you’re selling, you’ve got to have a recipe for it. But what I mean by that is, and I’m sure you’ve seen this, Fred, there are literally thousands and thousands of books on Amazon that teach you this is how you get a meeting. Then I’ll say, “Great. Now that I’ve got the meeting, where’s the strategy? Where’s the game plan that says, this is what to do?” It didn’t exist? Sure, tons and tons of sales books talk about here’s an idea, here’s a question, or something like that. But a book that said, this is not how to get the meeting or what to do after, this is the construct of that meeting. I was amazed that it didn’t exist. What’s been funny is, and I had this conversation even this morning with Anthony Iannarino, the number of people that have said to me, “I can’t believe I didn’t think to write this book,” because there’s such a need for it.
That first meeting, I describe it as the deal foundation. If it’s weak, the deal is weak. Everybody wants to talk about closing techniques, and they say, “Why aren’t we closing as much as we want?” They’re looking for this magic formula that all of a sudden makes the checkbook pop open. That’s just not going to happen in 2025. It’s not the issue either. It’s a symptom of the issue which you can trace all the way back to the first meeting, because there’s so much that goes on there. We have to qualify, we have to acquire information, we have to share information, we have to engage emotion, we have to differentiate ourselves in a meaningful way. There’s so much that’s going on there, and if any of that’s not done properly, the deal is in jeopardy.
Fred Diamond: Lee, you’re known in this world as a sales contrarian. Just to explain what that means, you certainly have a sales contrarian perspective about discovery meetings. It led to a pretty thick and well-thought-out and well-written book, by the way. Congratulations on that. Talk about that for a second. How do you angle that? Then, Wes, I want to get some of your thoughts on what Lee just talked about for the first meeting.
Lee Salz: There’s a lot of stuff that salespeople have been told, and I just think it’s flat out wrong. Some of it, the world has changed, but a lot of it was never true. I’ll give you an example. How many times have we told salespeople, sales is nothing but a numbers game? What happens as a result of that is they think the whole thing is all about numbers, and they forget the most important piece of selling today, which is personalization. Study after study reveals the key to success, it’s personalization. If your message is for everyone, it’s for no one. That’s true with your prospecting. It’s true in that meeting.
One of the things that I say is, yes, you can prospect too much, and you’ll hear that very often. That’s what I mean about being a sales contrarian. You have to prospect at the level that allows you to personalize that experience for every single outreach. I don’t want a thousand phone calls to be made. I want a targeted amount that I know is actually going to translate into deals during the pipeline. I’ll give you another example.
You’re ready for a fill in the blank? You’re only as good as your blank sale. What do we tell salespeople? Your last sale. Horrible counsel to give to salespeople. Let’s celebrate yesterday and not worry about tomorrow. Any salesperson or any sales leader that believes that that’s the correct expression, you likely suffer from the sales EKG effect. You do the right things, do the right things, do the right things, land a piece of business, get a fat commission check, and lazy, lazy, lazy. Then Wes says, “Hey, Lee, how about doing those right things again?” Do the right things. Do the right things. Do the right things, land another piece of business, another fat commission check, and I get lazy, lazy, lazy. That cycle for fluctuating yourself, if you believe you’re only as good as your last sale. What that expression should be is you’re only as good as your next sale, always thinking about tomorrow. If you’ve ever been involved with selling a business, nobody wants to talk about yesterday. Tell me what’s in the pipeline? What’s coming? That’s what drives the multiple.
Fred Diamond: Wes, we just threw out a lot of things there. You’re smiling, so I’m curious on some of your initial thoughts.
Wes Amann: I have so many thoughts going through my head as the different ways to respond there, but one of the things that came to mind just out of the blue was that personalization. Again, a numbers game, that just means make phone calls, make phone calls, make phone calls. It’s more important to have number one, ABV, always bring value, but number two, work on the connection.
Yesterday, one of my new salespeople, she was calling into a university. The person that she was talking to said, “Oh, no, we’re fine. I don’t want to talk to you. We’re set.” But somehow or other, they got to talking about baseball. They ended up having this 20-minute conversation about baseball and he said, “Okay, Beth, I’ll meet with you. What is your availability next Thursday at 2:00 o’clock?” Something like that. She said, “I’ll be available. I’ll be there. That’s great.” Set up the meeting. She got a meeting with a large university to talk about their filters, even though he had tried to brush her off, because of their shared interest in baseball. After she hung up, she looked on the map and saw it was a three-hour drive, but it’s still a great opportunity.
Lee has in all of his books, the fact you need to have a plan. You’ve got to have a plan and you have to follow the plan. I think that’s important. I’ve always, always, that’s why I have these books here, and when I hire new people, I tell them, “Put this on your company credit card,” because I think the differentiation in my business, air filters, is there any business that is less sexy than air filters? There’s a few, but not many. If you go to the store, you think, “This filter is the same as that filter, is the same as that filter.” We have to explain. That’s one of the primary things that I push on my people, is you have to be able to show how we are different. That’s why I have them read the books on differentiation that Lee wrote.
Fred Diamond: Just curiously, one of the first steps in the sales process is qualification. Where does qualifying fit in your first meeting strategy?
Lee Salz: Let’s first of all come back to what that first meeting is. Back to that sales contrarian question. What do we call that? A discovery meeting. In my first chapter, I talk about discovery needs to die. It needs to go away. That probably has a lot of our listeners scratching their head. Well, think about how salespeople prepare for discovery meetings. Let me make a list of questions and the information I’m going to share. Okay, great. Here’s my question back to you. What does the person on the other side of the desk get out of that meeting?
A lot of salespeople say, “Well, they’ll learn about my company and what we offer.” That’s not meaningful value. Here’s why. I’m going to explain the two types of sales, and I’m going to use a bathroom environment to explain it. I sell toilet paper. You buy toilet paper from my competitor, and I’m saying my toilet paper is superior and you should be buying mine. That’s a takeaway sale. The other type of sale is you buy toilet paper, I sell bidets. It’s an alternative way of solving an issue.
Most salespeople are in a takeaway sales environment, like western salespeople. They’re buying air filters today. They’re buying from the competition. We’re saying, “You should be buying from us.” But if you think about what you’re asking that person to do when you’re prospecting, “You’ve got 400 things to do on your desk, put them aside and meet with me.”
“Well, I already have a supplier, I have a provider. Learning about your stuff is not meaningful to me unless I have a problem.” Most of these people probably don’t. “I’m not going to put 400 things aside to meet with you just to learn about your stuff.” Let’s try again.
What’s the meaningful value that I would get out of that interaction? Now they’re stumped. Here’s the thing. That’s the problem with discovery, by the way, is because it’s an egocentric sales step. It’s all about me. I’m going to get some information from you. I’m going to tell you about our stuff. They are not going to take that meeting, not with any level of frequency.
But if you think about the times when you’ve gone to the doctor, you go there for two reasons, to become wiser about your circumstances and to understand potential remedies. You certainly wouldn’t go to the doctor if you thought you were a science experiment, that the doctor’s going to gather all this information, and it’s all for that. That’s what discovery is. Now, the medical community doesn’t call that interaction discovery. We call it a consultation. I’m on this mission to eradicate the expression discovery, that mindset out of the sales world, and embrace consultation. I’m not going to say I developed that word or came up with it, but I’ve embraced it because it’s a totally different mindset. What it tells you is the person on the other side of the desk has to get something out of that interaction.
I mentioned salespeople struggle with that, and I know everybody likes free things. If you go to meaningfulvalue.com, download my tip sheet, 10 Ways to Provide Meaningful Value during First Meetings. The key is that they come away from that interaction learning something that either helps them in their business or helps them personally. Once you’ve identified that meaningful value, you’ve folded into your prospecting messaging. By the way, Fred, when we get together, I’ll share with you a best practice that operations executives are using to creatively reduce costs. I meet with Lee, I learn something. I’ll take that meeting.
Fred Diamond: Wes, let’s go back to your example before. Your sales rep found out that her prospect and she both loved baseball. He decided, “Okay I’ll give this person some time.” Lee used the example of toilet paper, and you mentioned before in your previous example that filters aren’t the sexiest thing in the world. Talk about some ways that you’ve taken what Lee has taught you, or on your own, to get the message across. Your sales professional, she got that meeting, it’s the first meeting. She’s not going to offer bidets like Lee had used in the toilet paper example. What would be something of value that, and it doesn’t have to be specific, but how would they get that message across that I’m just not a typical rep here just selling these filters that are going to cost you a penny more or a penny less maybe? Maybe that’s the value. I don’t know. Give us some thoughts on how do you provide value.
Wes Amann: I’d love to say we provide value in a whole lot of different ways, but it’s one of those things where what I try to get my people to do is, first, what would you like to get out of this meeting? Generally, when that happens, you ask that question, what would you like to get out of this meeting? They will volunteer to tell you about how they do things. Salespeople need to listen. That’s one of the big problems with some salespeople, is they don’t listen. But if they listen, then they will get the information they need to better differentiate themselves. I have a list of a dozen different things that differentiate us from our competitors. They have to listen to that, what do you want to get out of the meeting? Then respond with the ones that are most appropriate.
In this particular case, it’s a large university and they want to get their filters packaged so that, okay, this all goes to this building, this all goes to this building, this all goes to this building. That’s something that a lot of our competitors don’t do. We generally win on price, but price is not the top most important thing. Once you get it there, if it takes them two days to sort things and find what needs to go where, they’re losing money. I’m learning not to use that word, discovery, but it’s find out, if at all possible, it’s back to the old pain points, find out what it is that will help them do their job better or help them personally. One of the two.
Lee Salz: Something Wes’ team implemented, Fred, it’s a prospecting strategy of mine, it’s the unknowingly prospecting strategy. You talked about meaningful value. One of the things that Wes and his team have identified is that most companies are unknowingly overpaying for air filters. For example, their competitors require that you order by the case. With Filterbuy, you order the exact quantity. There’s countless examples from shipping costs to a number of different ways that it’s a cheaper filter, it’s they’ve cut out the middleman, as Wes mentioned at the outset. They sell direct. When you have a distributor in the middle, it’s another layer that’s got to get fed from a dollars’ perspective. You’re not getting more value out of it, it’s just because there’s another mouth to feed in there that you’re paying more. One of the things that his salespeople are really good at are helping their clients identify ways to reduce the cost of their air filters.
Fred Diamond: Lee, in the book, you talk about the fact that from the beginning of time, salespeople have been told to share features and benefits. Obviously, you disagree with that, as we talk about not infrequently. I want to get your thoughts on that. Then, Wes, I want to do a follow up question is, how often do your customers ask for features and benefits. How often is that needed as a part of the conversation in your history? Are they looking for different things from you? Just get the real world together here. Lee, what’s your thoughts?
Lee Salz: There’s a chapter in the book, the title is Features, Benefits, and Boredom. Back to the sales contrarian thing. One of the things that we’re up against in this meeting is a study from Hermann Ebbinghaus. In the late 1800s, he developed what’s known as the forgetting curve, and it’s valid today just as it was back then. What he found was that people forget 50% of what they learn within 24 hours and remember less than 10% a week later. Let’s do the math. You have a one-hour first meeting. They remember about six minutes of it a week later.
Then there are several memory studies that have been conducted that say people are less likely to remember individual facts and figures than they are to remember stories when those are embedded within them. What I advocate is get away from talking about features and benefits, factual information, and share compelling stories because they’re much more memorable. You can add emotion into them because we know emotion is the deal energizer, and if they don’t remember the conversation with you, highly unlikely you’re going to get the deal.
Fred Diamond: That’s probably one of the core parts of the whole concept of selling differently, is if you only get that six minutes and your competitors also get that six minutes, how are you going to appear differently? Wes, what are some of your thoughts about the concept of communicating features and benefits? Does that work? Do your people still feel gravitated towards communicating that? Do customers want to know in the first meeting? Give us some real-world experience?
Wes Amann: Again, filters are boring, so there aren’t a whole lot of good stories you can tell about them. It’s price, it’s functionality, it’s speed of delivery. It’s ease of storage, ease of ordering, but it is best if you can communicate it in a story. Most people don’t understand that one air filter compared to another air filter, they’ll look the same, they have the same specifications on them, but one doesn’t take as much energy to push the air through it. If it takes less energy to push the air through it, that saves energy. You’re going to save a lot more on electricity than the 5 or 10 cent difference between the two filters.
Rather than say, “My filter has lower pressure drop and it’s going to save you money,” it’s better to say, “Well, one of our clients implemented this. They switched from this to this and resulted in a $30,000 a year savings.” That’s a better way to convey the same information. Again, the first meeting, if they tell you, that means it’s a pain point. If they bring it up, then you’re responding to exactly what they want you to respond to, it makes the meeting go faster. They don’t get bored talking to you, you get it all done as quickly as possible. I tell my people, learn the stories, learn what’s different, read, always educate yourself on how you can better share what we have with our prospective clients.
Lee Salz: Fred, when you talk about information sharing, here’s the difference between a discovery consultation. You prepare for a discovery by saying, “What do I want to tell them?” Consultation you ask, “What do I want them to remember?” The preparation is completely different when you look at it through the lens of what do I want them to remember?
Fred Diamond: That’s a great point. Lee, let’s presume that someone’s read the book, they’ve gone to the website, they’ve gotten more materials, and let’s say the meeting goes great, the first meeting is going really well. What is your advice on the best way to end the meeting?
Lee Salz: A few things. The first thing is, and it’s such an easy one, Fred, and I’m just amazed at how often salespeople forget to do it, say thank you. Remember I said they had 400 things on their to-do list, 400 things on their desk to do, and they carved out, if they gave you 5 minutes, if they gave you 50 minutes, they put that aside and they didn’t spend time with you, they invested time with you. Then if you think the meeting has gone well, I use what I call a meaningful value test. Fred, how’d we do today? What I’m looking to get back is, “I’m so glad we met today. This was a great use of my time,” because if they’re saying that to me or something that sounds like that, I know I’ve passed a meaningful value test.
Then from there, there’s only one acceptable outcome of a meeting that’s gone well, that you schedule next steps with a defined next interaction. I see it all the time. It doesn’t matter if you talk about a junior salesperson or all the way up, someone’s been selling 30 years, meeting’s gone well and I finish it up. Everybody’s wrapping up and I go, “Fred, I’ll email you next week and we’ll pick up time to talk again.” You’ll be chasing Fred for the next six years. While everybody’s together, because we know everybody’s calendar is right here, schedule that next interaction.
Salespeople ask me all the time, how do you avoid ghosting? Well, you can’t a hundred percent eliminate it, but there is one thing that I’ve found that greatly reduces it. That’s scheduling a next interaction and sending an invite. The likelihood that they show up is extremely high. But if you go the other route, I see this happen at the end of first meetings, I see it happen at trade shows. You have a great conversation at a trade show, “I’ll ping you next week and we’ll schedule time to talk.” Everybody is together right now. Your calendar is in the phone. Let’s schedule it. That’s how you eliminate ghosting. That’s how you keep your deal on track.
Fred Diamond: Lee, is there anything else you want to say about the book? I know you have some free things that you’re offering. The book is obviously up on Amazon, the audio, the Kindle, etc.
Lee Salz: We’ve already hit the best seller list, so thank you to everyone who’s already purchased it. You can buy the book anywhere, Amazon or wherever your favorite books are sold. Wherever you get it, visit firstmeetingbook.com. First of all, you can download the first chapter from there. But also, there’s a bonus. Anybody that buys the book, I’m offering three masterclasses based on the book exclusively for those who purchase it. The way to register for those is right on that website, firstmeetingbook.com.
Fred Diamond: Congratulations, Lee, on the great book. Wes, it was great hearing from you. Give us a final action step. Something that you would recommend everyone listening to the show, besides go buy the book, which is presumed, but what is a Wes example of an action step you’ll recommend, something that people should do right now after listening to the show.
Wes Amann: I’ve got five or six dozen different answers for that. I wanted to throw out there that I have the book, but I also bought the audio book so that I could reinforce it and listen when I’m in the car. That makes it where I’ve read through this, I read it in detail, but like Lee said, a week later, I’ve forgotten a certain percentage of it. Having the audio book, I have it on my phone so I can just listen to it in my car, or if I’m sitting at an airport, or whatever.
To your question of ending a meeting, in our case, you end the meeting with, because we’re selling air filters, we need their list. We need to know what it is that they would be buying if in fact they did business with us. When we end a meeting, we ask for the list. Half the time they give us the list right then, the other half they send it later. But after that, we say thank you, always say thank you, and then schedule the follow-up. You get the list to me, I’ll have the quote to you within 48 hours after that. We’ll have a call to review it so that you don’t just get this piece of paper that says a bunch of numbers on it. We’ll go through it together so you understand why this is a good investment.
Say thank you, schedule your follow up, and always try to have some other thank you or some other information to provide as a thank you. We’re a member of the National Air Filtration Association, and they have 12 different white papers on best practices for different industries. We always offer a, “Hey, by the way, thank you. I’m going to send you the NAFA white paper on best practices in K-12 educational facilities.” They’re getting a little bonus at the end. They feel good and they take our call when we follow up with them.
Fred Diamond: Lee, why don’t you bring us home here. Final action step that people should do right now to take their sales career to the next level.
Lee Salz: One of the oldest expressions in sales, people buy based on emotion and justify their decisions with logic. Every salesperson on the planet has heard it. Now find a salesperson that actually puts it into practice. There’s a chapter in the book on empathetic expertise and how to engage emotion when selling. Emotion is a deal energizer. If we’re only having logic conversations, deal has no life to it. High likelihood it’s going to stall out.
One of the opportunities you have to arouse emotion is with the questions we ask. So often we just ask fact-based questions like, Fred, what’s the biggest challenge you face in your business today? You’re going to give me an answer, which is going to be a fact-based answer. What if I phrase the question this way, Fred, what is that one thing, the one thing that you’re like, “Oh, I got to figure this out?” What is that one thing that you want to get fixed today? Now, we’re here in a podcast, but I bet you felt that question. I want the prospect to feel that and I want to feel their response. I don’t just want information back. I want color, flavor, texture. I want to know how they feel about the information they’re sharing, because if I arouse emotion, the deal has some life to it.
Fred Diamond: Once again, congratulations, Lee, on the new book. It’s a great read. Wes, thank you so much, from Filterbuy. I appreciate you both. My name is Fred Diamond. This is the Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo