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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the CREATIVITY IN SALES Webinar sponsored by the Institute for Excellence in Sales and hosted by Fred Diamond on November 13, 2020. It featured best-selling author and world-known sales consultant, author and trainer Lance Tyson.]
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EPISODE 303: Well-Known Sales Expert Lance Tyson Shows How a Read Offense Can Help You Bring Your Prospects the Deeper Value They Need Right Now
LANCE’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “There are two books on the top of my bookshelf – “All the Places You’ll Go” and “Green Eggs and Ham.” If you look up the amount of objections that are in “Green Eggs and Ham,” you’ll find there are 73 and the main objection is, “I don’t like green eggs and ham.” But the first objection is “I don’t like Sam-I-Am.” The first objection of the book is, “I don’t like the salesperson!” You have to work on your likeability factor. I came out of Dale Carnegie Training and the book How to Win Friends and Influence People doesn’t say you have to like anybody, it says you have to have a likeability factor. I urge all sales professionals to be conscious of that and to keep working on it.”
Lance Tyson: Fred, I appreciate the time today and I’m excited to be here. One of my first webinars coming out of the pandemic where we started to get some steam, things would pick up again was actually on this and I literally remember being down there last year when we won the award with you folks. It’s been quite a whirlwind since then. A little bit about Tyson Group so you understand our perspective, we are a top training organization with several trainers and consultants, a big part of our business this year has been consulting and redesign work with getting in the door and how we’re able to help our clients reduce their sale cycle times because things are getting elongated.
Today I’m going to talk to you more as a consultant as opposed to a trainer so let’s look at some perspective. Whether you’re in sales, you’re trying to drive your own business or you’re managing a sales team, think about what we’re being asked to do. Think of your skill set, think about your approach as maybe a $5 bar of iron. If you took a $5 bar of iron, this looks a little bit like gold bullion but it’s not, it’s just a bar of iron. If you took that $5 bar of iron and you transformed it into horse shoes, you’d actually increase the value by $12. You took a $5 bar of iron and you transformed it, let’s say, into sewing needles, you’d actually increase the value to about $3,500. If you took a $5 bar of iron and you turned it into springs for a Swiss wrist watch or an Italian wrist watch, something expensive, you’d increase its value about $300,000.
The reason I bring this up is we have to transform. We do a lot of sales leadership coaching and I was coaching an organization the other day, their sales executive team, you might have heard them, Topgolf. We were talking and one of the leaders kept talking and referring about when it gets back to normal and I said, “Are you open for some coaching? You’ve got to stop saying that. We’re not getting ‘back to normal’, this is the new business reality and this is how we approach sales and how we’re going to sell. There is no going back, it is what it is right now and for the foreseeable future, things have changed.” Consider this for a second, the landscape has changed and I had one of my salespeople ask me, “Are we in post-COVID or are we in COVID?” I go, “That’s a great question.” I’d say if we looked at COVID more as an event, let’s say we’re post-COVID the event so when you look at the sales landscape that’s changed, there’s have’s and have not’s right now. There are some organizations that are doing really well, some salespeople are doing well. I think a lot of us are feeling the net effect of people acting more conservative with their dollars, competition is getting a little stiffer, spending is going to become fierce.
I ask this question to a lot of groups we work with, “Has anybody ever considered being into pharmaceutical sales?” I know I have. Over the years I’d go, “What would it be like to sell drugs and show up at a doctor’s office with some donuts and coffee and get in front of the doc and then pitch my drug, whether it’d be diabetes or heart drug or something like that?” If you’re in pharmaceutical sales, I do not mean to demean the industry at all, that’s just how I always thought about it. We actually had a major pharmaceutical change reach out to Tyson Group and said they needed help and I said, “Help with what? What’s the issue?” They said, “Our whole sales process indicates that we’d land the vault, meaning we’d start our sales process being in front of the doc and our biggest challenge is right now we can’t even get in the door.” If you’ve been to a doctor’s office you can see that there’s actually signs at most provider’s offices that there’s protocols if you’re in sales, you must make an appointment. Now all of a sudden this pharmaceutical organization of 3,500 salespeople never has trained really on prospecting, they’ve just walked in, they’ve had carte blanche – things that a lot of us haven’t done in 20 years. Now they have to compete in this virtual office creatively getting through the door so that sales landscape has changed for a lot of us. Pressure’s on sales leadership, select, develop an effective sales team and then draw a great game plan. We’ve been asked so many times to help draw a game plan, I’ll share some of that game planning with you and really make an adjustment.
The last thing I want you all to think about is the profile selling has changed. I’m in the training business, I’ve been working with salespeople since the time I worked at Dale Carnegie from ’95 to 2010, I believe in people, I will say at this time not every salesperson is going to make it, there are going to be some salespeople that will really struggle at being successful because we are not in a straight line type of sale right now, you’re just going to have to be agile. If you were my last webinar here – I’m going to mention some things I mentioned before – we worked with our research partners and we’ve looked at a lot of B to B selling and we’ve realized that since that profile has changed, how we’re going to have to hire has changed or we may have to come up with a process for certain skill sets that are going to drive your success. By the way, not every skill set is trainable so there might be some things you may not be good at. We’re going to talk about some of those things right now.
Florida State did a study to argue – this was about 3 1/2 years ago – The Challenger Sale. If you ever heard The Challenger Sale, these folks are good folks, we compete against them at some level they were owned by I think Corporate Executive Board. I think they’re out of DC as far as I remember but Florida State was trying to argue some of the assumptions in that book, Challenger Sale. I recommend you read the book, it’s a good book, especially their concept on how to bring insight and tailor but there are some things in the book that state what a successful salesperson does, I think successful salespeople have always done some of those things. But in the Florida State study they said high performers had a dominant style based off the situation they had to address, essentially, they were chameleons. They studied about 130 organizations from complex sales to mid-complex sales, there were clear win-loss ratios when the situation strategy was used, high performers would deploy the strategy with the best odds in any given situation which meant they actually had multiple odds. The only accurate label you can classify a top performer is they were agile or situational sellers and I think Fred had mentioned that there was a consultant on recently talking about agile selling. Whoever was talking about that, that is a good point.
Now, if you’re going to be more creative you have to have some predictability in what you do. Years ago when I was a Dale Carnegie trainer we were doing a lot of critical thinking and creativity work with a company – and this was prior to Tyson Group – with a company called Steris. They make operating tables and you may have actually seen they do a pharmaceutical grade kind of hand cleanser. We were working with a guy named Doctor Burke and he was a big believer that with all these scientists, he needed them to be creative but he needed them to have a pattern or a process for creativity. If you’re going to get in the door, you’re going to have to be more creative but you have to know where you’re going if you’re going to do that.
In my first book I talked about this balance attack approach, you’re going to really need to understand the mindset of a client right now. Things have changed with that mindset, raise your hand if you know somebody that’s had COVID, if you don’t, I had COVID so now you know me. Raise your hand if you know somebody that’s lost their job over COVID, raise your hand if you feel it’s harder to do business or things have changed in your business. You’ve got to add those things to understand the mindset of the client minus all the other things that are in their mindset anyway. Economy has shifted, it’s getting better, it’s getting worse, I’m not an economist but I feel shifts so we need to understand the mindset of the buyer which then dictates our strategy. Now what’s happened is we’ve layered this COVID mindset on top of the mindset regularly that’s in our industry or vertical or business. If you go back to the Florida state study, we’re going to have to really understand the mindset of the buyer and we may need multiple strategies to do things like for instance, getting in the door or winning an appointment, which then dictates tactics. What tactics do we use to address those things and then ultimately, do we have the skill set to pull it off in our team or us individually? If you don’t address the mindset of the marketplace and the perception of the buyer at this point, you’re going to lose and you’re going to test a lot of things that will fail.
Said another way – and I brought this up last time we talked – we know this is really working for our clients, embracing more of a read offense as it relates to how you sell. If you’re not a sports person, what does that mean? An air traffic controller is in a read offense, they have a process that they follow and all during the day there’s different things happening with planes, traffic, weather patterns, things that were unplanned for that read off and it allows them to make critical decisions in the moment or change a tactic or strategy based off circumstances. Kobe Bryant just died, for instance, and if he were running the point, that’s the read offense. It’s the ball at the point, looks at what the defense is giving them and they make some adjustment. If you go down below, that’s a game against Vancouver, Nashville, if you’re running the power play, you like hockey, you’re seeing what that defense gives you and how you’re going to play. Or if you’re fishing you’ve got to get on the crab but you can’t get on the lobster and crab in one spot, you’re going to have to move or you’re going to have to anchor in a certain spot or you’re going to have to keep your engines moving based off of what the waves are giving you. That’s what sales feels like right now, this read offense. What does it look like from a diagram standpoint? It looks like this, it says, “What is the pre-approach that you’re going to do? What has your industry said? What do you project the buyer’s mind being?”
I was on the phone earlier today with a sports team in the Baltimore-Washington area with a partnership salesperson, we do a lot of consulting in the media side of things and the sponsorship side of sports even though there’s not a lot of people in stadiums right now, they still do a ton of sponsorship deals. That person was looking at a roofing and a window company that does a lot of advertising and a lot of media and we spent the majority of the time planning out this negotiation about what his pre-approach was, what were some observations. We spent a lot of time on what he thought the buyer’s mindset was and he kept giving me very general things and I go, “No, you’re not deep enough. Are they going to be a buyer now? Are they doing more of this or have you seen upticks in this?” Then he wanted to pitch them something that they never had done before and I said, “Might you find out why they’re acting a certain way now and continue to operate a certain way and you see that makes sense…” We really start to look at a couple different strategies in that first meeting and instead of him going in with one strategy – and he’s a good salesperson, he’s been around the block and he’s sold other things besides media and advertising. We now have three strategies based off of two questions we’re going to open up with which will drive the tactics that we’re going to use in that first meeting that drives the second game. Our whole goal now, our #1 strategy is to move to meeting 2 and we had to spend a lot of time on that earlier today. Think through that a little bit, what does that read offense look like for you?
Fred Diamond: If you’re watching today, Lance has dealt with every challenge pre and during this COVID era. Suggest the biggest challenge that you’re facing, we’ll make it a point to address it. Lance, we’re doing a webinar every single day and one of the topics that has come up frequently, this was first proposed to us by a mindset consultant named David Morelli who said that everybody on the planet is dealing with three things. They’re dealing with recovery and dealing with COVID, of course right now we’re seeing some spikes, we’re seeing surges, the CDC told people, “Don’t go to your family’s house for Thanksgiving.” The second thing that everybody on the planet is dealing with is the financial and economic repercussions of COVID and then everybody is dealing with a third thing, whatever it might be depending on them, depending on the industry, depending on the situation. Same thing with your buyers, the challenge that they’re all dealing with are those three things, how do we get past all the things that COVID has forced upon us? Secondly, all of the economic things that have been forced upon maybe not us but our customer and then our customer’s customer? It’s the food chain for the first time, and then something specific. Maybe your company was going through some kind of a challenge, maybe there was a new product.
We’ve got an interesting question here from Dustin, Lance. Dustin wants to know, “How do we create urgency when there’s uncertain business circumstances?” Specifically sports. Your book, Selling is an Away Game, you’ve got a picture there of the Nashville Predators and the great Kobe Bryant. Thanks, Dustin, for the question. We always talk about how customers now are in charge of the buying process in a lot of ways but is there a way to create urgency now and is that something that you need to shift off of? Just curious on your thoughts.
Lance Tyson: You’ve got two concepts, the first concept off of the consultant you’re talking about, a way that translates and may build on that and then tied into Dustin’s comment and question is if you think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the basis of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is survival and security. The very nature of COVID if you just looked at it from a business standpoint for many organizations and many individuals, it’s created a security and a survival issue. I just had somebody text me from a very large brand that’s on this call, a major brand in pro sports and a renowned brand, him and I had talked several times. Even in that industry there are a lot of people looking over their shoulders in sports entertainment, for instance, they’re worried about their jobs. You perform at a much different level and then there are some companies that are in survival and security mode so they act more conservatively.
That other thing I don’t know but I’ll tell you what, from a corporate standpoint and an individual standpoint, that really challenges things. Going to Dustin’s question, “How do you create urgency?” If you’re in an industry or in a job where you’re in survival or security mode, that may help with urgency but I don’t think you’re going to dictate to somebody, I think they’re going to dictate that to you so it’s your job to find out. I can say the opposite also, survival and security modes actually put people to act more conservatively and I’m not talking politics, I’m just talking they may retract, not buy, you’re competing for dollars. I think the word, Dustin, that I would be looking at is at any stop in the sales process, if I don’t have momentum, how can I create artificial momentum? We’re seeing that with a lot of our clients and more complex sales processes.
I’ll give you an example, we were working with an IT consulting organization and they were trying to qualify the buyer in the first meeting and they brought us in to look at some of their deals. One of the ways we train is we call them autopsies or “let’s make a deal”, we’ll look at deals that have died and deals that are currently going on and the salesperson spent a lot of time trying to qualify the person and they said, “There’s really no sense of urgency there.” I said, “What makes you think after one or two meetings they’re going to really share with you what they’re going to do or tell you what their budget is?” and he goes, “That’s what we normally do.” “While that makes sense,” I said, “Right now the market has shifted.
Why don’t you infer to them that you recognize that they may not be willing to do something right now but that you should put some ideas down for them and plant some seeds for the future so they’re armed with some of the best information, as when and if they do change, they could actually have it? That would give you a chance maybe if you present something to them.” “Lance, they’re on a budget.” “I get it, but you might get into a deeper conversation, find a gap by just presenting something to them.” Then the owner said, “It doesn’t cost us that much to present an idea like Lance is saying.” My point is you might find the urgency there but my bigger point is if you don’t have momentum, you need to create artificial momentum and the artificial momentum there is moving the meeting or moving to an advanced step even though it’s not lining up perfectly like it normally would.
Fred Diamond: We have another question here that comes in from Jerry and Jerry is in New Jersey. Jerry is a frequent attendee of our webinars, Jerry wants to know, “What does Lance describe as success right now?” You talked about this particular situation you were working with, the goal was to get to the second meeting. One theme that we’ve seen happen frequently on the Sales Game Changers webinars that we’ve done is the number of transactions in a lot of cases have decreased for obvious reasons, but the same concept being that if you’re a sales professional, what should professionals be doing? I’m just curious, you deal with sales organizations and of course we’re talking about sports so you’re dealing with a bunch where maybe the goal was to sell a hundred sponsorships last year, this year there are zero to sell. Just from a global perspective, how are you coaching your customers, your clients on what success might be in 2020? I’m just curious on your thoughts and thanks, Jerry, for the question.
Lance Tyson: Jerry, it’s an interesting question and there’s probably 10 different ways to ask it. If I’m going off the theme by which we were just talking, a lot of our clients regardless of what business they’re in, they’re very used up until COVID to be very activity-driven with their metrics and dictating success with, “How many calls did you make? How many follow-ups did you make?” I think in a lot of businesses and even in my own business, we have five salespeople in our organization that report up to Gina as my VP, we’ve gotten away from worrying about how many phone calls somebody’s made. Success and a lot of the business we work on is we’re able to win that time off of somebody’s calendar, how good are you at winning time? Why do I have that watch and ring there? That watch and ring represent two things, selling time. Watches tend to be one of the more expensive pieces of jewelry you would wear and so would a ring and they both signify commitments of time. Can you sell time? I would look at that as a win. Activity sometimes doesn’t equal results so I think a lot of organizations are going away from that.
One of the things in some more complex businesses, a very big KPI for us is how good do you get from meeting one to meeting two or meeting two to meeting three? We look at that as success and being able to move the needle that way. We’ve gotten away from a lot of activity-based success and more toward entrepreneur. I’ve been probably asked more questions of what my journey has been as an entrepreneur over the years and I usually give advice for the people we work with as opposed to telling my journey as an entrepreneur. I would say from an entrepreneurial standpoint, startup is rewarded for the creativity. I think that’s successful also, being able to sell something where one did not exist or create an opportunity but there’s challenges because the challenges are sales have a tendency today to be way more fragmented than they’ve ever been before. There’s a lot of interactions and you’re including them together. So what does success look like? Your ability to sell time, creativity to get something to keep in play, they’re all KPIs that I think drive success.
Fred Diamond: We have a question here from Nell and Nell is in the DC area. Nell asks, “Can Lance show us the slide he showed us on call flow?” She was probably on the webinar that we did back in May. We really got deep into this when you presented for us back in May and this was a lot of content here but I want to spend a few moments on this because you just made some great points. Maybe success is getting to the next stage right now whereas it might be a transaction at some point, continuing to move forward. Lance, where can they find your new book Igniting Sales EQ? Obviously Selling is an Away Game you can get anywhere good books are sold.
Lance Tyson: I wrote Igniting Sales EQ more because it’s a consumable, very short read, it’s on Amazon Kindle, we have more of an end book coming out in March called Sell Me This, but you can find them both on Amazon pretty easily either Kindle version or you can have it Prime.
The question I’m now asked and Fred and I talked about this as we were talking about content, I want you to think a couple things. Let’s go back to this before you look at this mess that’s there, don’t get caught up on that mess yet. If you think about odds, believe it or not, regardless of your opinion of this because I’m not interested, I did in the last couple weeks something we all used to do, I took a trip. I did some consulting in Vegas, a very old client, they wanted to do some things very socially distant but the people were together, we had our masks on and stuff like that. By the way, I had COVID so I think I’m pretty good at this point, at least they said for another month. It was interesting because as I left, my one son had put my bag in the car and my wife was standing at the door with the dog waving, “See you, we’re going to miss you” but I’ve never been ushered out the door so I’m thinking there are some buying signals there that they were glad I was leaving for three days.
I never stayed at Red Rock before, it’s in Summerlin and there was a lot of people gambling, masks, sitting at the table, there’s plastic between, dividers. The game of craps is the game that probably has better odds, your lower odds games are things like slots and black jack, poker, keno and craps have a tendency to give you higher odds. However, if you ever go into a craps table it’s really intimidating. There’s a lot of action going on, a lot of yelling going on, if you look at the table there’s a lot of different bets going on and you’re like, “What the hell does this mean? What’s a 15 to 1? What’s a 10 for 1? Should I bet the pass line, should I pass the go line?” However, if you had a hundred thousand dollars you’d probably come out with a little bit more, lose a little less if you play craps. We could argue this all day but you want odds.
When you look at things that gain odds you’ve got to look at your process. There’s a lot of different ways to look at the sales funnel, this is one that we use when we don’t want to customize or tailor a sales process. If you broke the sales funnel and say, “In prospecting we’re identifying who we’re going after, then we have an initial communication, we’re trying to drive an interview, we need to do a needs analysis, an opportunity analysis, we develop a solution, we present a solution. They evaluate, they object, we negotiate in some cases and then close.” I was on with a new one yesterday, Steve Richard from ExecVision and he formerly owned a company called Vorsight, we’re just excited about our partnership with those guys, it’s a sales enablement platform. Him and I were talking about if you look at your numbers at this point, it was probably 6 to 8 touches to get contact with a buyer if you’re prospecting pre-COVID. Right now, every single one of our research partners – and I say this and I can name 15 of them from HubSpot to Salesforce to organizations like Steve – you are looking at 9 to 15 touches to get contact at this point.
Why? People are hiding, they’re not answering their phone, they have more on their plate because the company has been downsized, they’re not working out of the office, they’re in a hybrid model so it’s hard to get people. I think as you look at this, you’re looking at somewhere 9 to 15 touches maybe to get contact and maybe anywhere from 7 to 12 contacts to win an appointment – if your job was to win an appointment. It’s just an example, not everybody on the phone probably deals with that.
What does that mean for you or a salesperson? It’s aim small miss small so now all of a sudden if it’s taking a bigger lift to do the job, more labor, more time you can’t afford to talk to somebody and miss, you’ve got to know exactly what you’re going to do. If you go back to that having multiple strategies, that read offense, you’ve got to be ready to go, you’ve got to be ready to have people come at you with a COVID objection or a mindset around that and then around the business. I have a lot of customers, as a matter of fact, yesterday I was on the phone with Jacksonville Jaguars and one of their salespeople said, “Lance, you think people are using COVID as an excuse?” In some cases, “We’re going to wait and see”, you’re hearing that, doesn’t make them a bad person, does that mean it’s not true? It’s not for you to tell. I can’t answer that for you, I don’t have a crystal ball or Magic 8 ball but it definitely is something that’s a filter people are using. You’ve got to be able to move laterally in those situations because it’s so hard to get somebody if we were just talking about prospecting.
One of the things we talk about and we’re big endorsers over, if you’re in a type of business where you have multiple people that could be buyers, influencers or champions, go after everybody at once, spider web. Increase your odds, back to the craps game. That’s your approach, you go after the C suite, the B suite, the manager and then when you get in touch, what does that look like? This is something that we’ve developed and a lot of this won’t even make sense, it looks confusing but if you had your initial reach out, what are you going to say? How are you going to open up when somebody answers the phone or if it’s an email, what does that look like? At some level you’re probably going to have to deal with the mindset of the buyer so you’re probably going to have to ask them. Even if you have an appointment with somebody, “Just out of curiosity, what got you to take the appointment with me today? What’s going on in your world?” Some of this was truer a few months ago but it tells a story and the triangles, they could be normal. Maybe you go there, “Lance, our business is on pause a little bit, we’re still planning for the unknown”, “We’re in trouble” or, “It’s a nuclear no, we’re not going to do any business with you.”
This developed specifically for the Houston Texans team and I’m using names of clients that obviously might resonate because they’re bigger names. We’ve also done this for that IT firm I was talking to, because of client confidentiality I can’t mention specifically who they are but this is stuff we’ve developed and it’s a tool for their salespeople to see more like a Waze app. It could go multi-directional, this is only the beginning of a call, this isn’t even the whole sales ecosystem or the whole sales process, this is just a few minutes.
Fred Diamond: One of the things that your company, Tyson Group does is work with specific companies on their challenge to develop this. I want to get to a couple questions that have come in here, we have a question here from Kevin, I’m going to guess he’s probably one of your clients. Kevin says, “In speaking with some of your clients, what do you see as being some of the biggest blind spots that sales professionals need to recognize and change to be successful in today’s landscape?” That’s a great question, thank you so much, Kevin. I’ll give you an example, I got a call yesterday from somebody who obviously didn’t know who I was, they just found my name somewhere and they just started pitching. I picked up the phone for some reason, they went right into the, “How are you doing today, Mr. Diamond?” and started pitching something that I had absolutely no need for. Give us maybe the top one or two blind spots that you’re seeing sales professionals not fix today.
Lance Tyson: I think it has to do with flood light or spotlight and I’m glad you asked that question. A lot of salespeople pre-pandemic have gone in with a spotlight like, “This is what our company does, this is the general benefits we bring” if they were using this at an appointment or even questions that they would ask. A blind spot is if I were general, I might cast a big enough net to get somebody interested. What we’re seeing now is you have to do that but a blind spot would be you may actually now have to do some homework on somebody and you need to really talk in terms of their interest specifically, which may require you to have done some research on that organization or that person which you have to spotlight. You can’t just be a flood light, you’ve got to be a spotlight, that would be an example.
Two is something I mentioned before, not every skill set is trainable. You’re going to have to recognize what you’re not good at. For instance, an analogy is if you were in a 5640 and we need you to run a 4640, stop training for the 46 because you’re never going to be able to do it, you must come up with a process. For instance, if we were going to ask some questions you’ve got to come up with a process with which to ask questions that make most sense because it doesn’t matter how much you train for it, you might not ever get good at it and there are some untrainable skill sets. There, Kevin, are a couple of blind spots that I would realize and as a leader I would definitely try to recognize those things.
Fred Diamond: Lance, I’m not sure if you realize this or not but you’ve provided so much value, you personally and your organization to thousands if not tens of thousands of sales professionals around the globe and it’s paid off, obviously decades. It’s really paying off in a lot of ways right now, the need to be creative, the need to understand the sales process, you just mentioned doing homework. You’d be amazed at how many times the word preparation has come up, again we’re doing a daily webinar, we’ve had over 10,000 sales professionals register for the daily webinars we’ve started doing since March. Preparation is one of the words that comes up all the time, you’d think if you’re a sales professional you would have that down cold.
You mentioned Steve Richard before, Steve is a good friend of the Institute for Excellence in Sales and when he was running Vorsight, one thing that he would always talk about was 3×3: spend 3 minutes to find 3 things on the person that you’re about to call. Even something as simple as that in 3 minutes let alone an hour’s worth of prep. I just want to acknowledge you for the service that you’ve provided to definitely tens of thousands of sales professionals over your career to help them improve their company, to improve their lives and to improve the lives of their customers. Lance, you’ve given us dozens of things, give us an action step as we wrap up here, something that everybody watching today or listening needs to do right now to take their profession to the next level.
Lance Tyson: I’m going to move my camera up above me and hopefully you can all see there’s two books on the top of my shelf, one is All the Places You’ll Go and the other one is Green Eggs and Ham. I’ve said this a lot over the pandemic, if you look up the amount of objections that’s in Green Eggs and Ham you’ll find there are 73 and if you’ve read the book, what was the objection? The objection is, “I don’t like green eggs and ham” but what was the first objection? It’s, “I don’t like Sam-I-Am.” The first objection of the book is, “I don’t like the salesperson.” If there’s one thing you do, you have to find your likeability factor. I came out of Dale Carnegie Training and the book How to Win Friends and Influence People doesn’t say you have to like anybody, it says you have to have a likeability factor. This is going to come out soon, Human to Human Selling, that’s what I work on.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo