EPISODE 730: Attract Don’t Repel – Chaz Horn on the Art of B2B Selling with Intention

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

This is a Sales Story and a Tip episode! Watch the video of the interview here.

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Read more about the Institute for Excellence in Sales Premier Women in Sales Employer (PWISE) designation and program here.

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

Today’s show featured an interview with Chaz Horn, author of “B2B Blueprint To Predictable Sales.” Learn more about it here.

Find Chaz on LinkedIn.

CHAZ’S TIP:  “Always treat each and every person that comes into your life with respect, empathy, and look to serve.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: I got Chaz Horn on today. Chaz, I’m really excited. Give us an introduction to you and who you are.

Chaz Horn: I’m celebrating eight years in business this month. Eight years ago, I had worked for many other companies over three decades, and there was a big gap. It was always missing in all the companies that I worked for as an employee, a sales leader, a sales manager. As I worked for people, the founder, my boss would say, could you help Jennifer or Bill? I was always put in that role.

Finally, with everything that I developed over the 30 plus years, I didn’t have a name for it back then, I developed what I call a B2B Blueprint to Predictable Sales. I started my business to fill the gap for those B2B businesses out there with the B2B Blueprint to Predictable Sales. I’ll just give a brief overview, as I believe your listeners will find value in this.

It basically boils down to five things. It’s TTABS. Tactic is what you do to reach your prospect. Technique is how you execute the tactic. Attitude. Nothing happens without the right attitude, but it’s much deeper than that. It’s about our intention. Your intention will attract or repel. Then behaviors, that’s the key performance indicator, and strategy. That’s the big thing that a lot of businesses are missing. You have to have a marketing strategy to identify the main need and want, so you can speak to it in such a way that you attract people to you because they have confidence that you and your solution can solve their problem. That’s my business, is the mastery of B2B sales. I help small businesses identify, attract new prospects, and convert them into new clients.

Fred Diamond: Chaz Horn, I’m excited. Tell us a great sales story.

Chaz Horn: Well, I talk about TTABS for most of my sale, and I think a lot of your audience can appreciate this. They focus on TAB, the tactic, the attitude, and the behavior. The tactic many times is cold outreach. The attitude is one of tenacity, and then the behavior is massive amounts of whatever that tactic is that you’re doing. A lot of people are sending out DMs, emails, cold calling. I remember I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired of doing the stinking cold calls. Back then I was sitting in front of a building about to do another round of in-person cold calls. I thought, “There’s got to be a better way.” By the way, the questions that you ask yourself determine the direction of your life. Ask the right questions, your brain will come up with the answer. I kept asking myself, “What can I do? How can I improve this?”

As I kept asking myself this question as I was going from cold call to cold call, a thought came to mind. We had a person who was a consultant that was helping the business that I worked for. His name is Joe, and he also had a CEO roundtable. We would go there and visit with all these CEOs and we would discuss things about how to help one another, what they’re doing in this area and whatnot, and you just learn from one another. I wasn’t involved in the roundtable, but I did talk with Joe on a regular basis.

As I thought, “How can I have leverage so I’m not reaching out to just one on one, on one, on one? People don’t even know who I am.” Typically they had already received many cold calls, whether it was on the phone, in person, email, or direct message. I was thinking strategy, and I wasn’t thinking strategy at that moment in time, but I was thinking leverage. I was thinking about my resources and I was thinking, “Wow, Joe has a roundtable of a group of CEOs who are in my target audience. What if I could have him have me speak to the CEOs?” Leverage. At that point in time, I was selling a technology cybersecurity. I could talk to them about how they’re vulnerable and how to protect themselves. He said, “You know what, Chaz? That’s a great idea.”

I put together a presentation and had an amazing conversation with these CEOs, there was 12 of them. I gave them some information. I told them how they’re vulnerable. We had an open discussion back and forth. Afterwards, we got together and they go, “Wow, I didn’t realize that we’re vulnerable if we don’t do this.” One of them came to me and said, “You know what? Our POS system, our payment system,” this was a restaurant owner with 19 locations, he said, “It was just hacked and 90 people’s credit card information was stolen.” The company who allowed them to use Visa said, “If you don’t become compliant, then you’re going to lose your privileges to take Visa any longer.” As a restaurant owner, you lose your Visa, you’re going to go out of business. Timing, great, multiple people.

That one person, that one business owner, because of that, because we redid all of the infrastructure, the servers, everything to make them PCI compliant, it ended up being $525,000. Think about this, hundreds and hundreds of cold calls, I never received that. One-hour meeting, I obviously had to prepare for it, a discussion afterwards, and that leverage with the strategy, looking at multiple people, being introduced with a third-party endorsement, they already saw me as a potential authority, as long as I gave them valuable information that resonated with them, that led to that $525,000-sale.

Fred Diamond: Wow, that’s a great story. Actually, a couple things come to mind. One is you had to have been invited to give the presentation, et cetera, so you had to have built trust. A couple things, you need to be associated, it’s not just be associated with the right people, but a lot of times people will talk about referrals and things like that. People say, “Gee, if anybody knows anybody who needs a better IT solution.” Well, you got to be real specific and you got to be talking to the right people who are in the room with those people.

Give us a tip that you take away from that great story.

Chaz Horn: I heard one of your other podcasts, I think it’s your most recent one, the gentleman was talking about building trust with people and whatnot. When you come in contact with people, you never know who you’re communicating with. I talked about TABS. That day, it went to TABS, or I added S in the technique. The A, intention to serve, is a value I live by and I started to live by back then. Anybody who came into my life, I wanted to be curious, I wanted to learn about. Joe is somebody who I developed a relationship with and I knew him from my past employer to this employer. We had been going back and forth and I’d been asking him questions. I had been giving him information.

Since that relationship was built, there was trust there. He understood my capabilities. He really didn’t give it a second thought. We went back and forth to see how it would work or whatnot. But always treat each and every person that comes into your life with respect, empathy, and look to serve. Go-Giver, a great book on the subject, and Zig Ziglar’s old quote, he said, “You’ll get everything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they need.” If you live by that with the right intention, and I say this to my clients and prospects all the time, if you go with the intention to serve and not sell, you will attract and not repel. That’s not just about prospects and clients, that’s about people in general.

Fred Diamond: Once again, that’s a great story, and great tips as well. I want to thank Chaz Horn for being on today’s Sales Story and a Tip Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *