EntreLeadership - #220: Anthony Iannarino—Conquering the Close

Episode Date: September 4, 2017

Even if you’re offering up the most groundbreaking, one-in-a-million product, actually sealing the deal—the close—can be tricky. But best-selling author, sales leader and entrepreneur Anthony Iannarino insists it doesn’t have to be. In fact, in this episode, he explains that closing the deal can be the easiest part of the whole sales process. The key is approaching each transaction as a collaboration with and for your potential customer instead of as a self-serving proposition. This small shift in perspective may just mean big success for you. entreleadership.com/podcast Super Selling Cheat Sheet Are You Losing Leads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our feature conversation this episode is with Anthony Anorino. His book is entitled The Lost Art of Closing, Winning the Ten Commitments that Drive Sales. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.

I think this is breakthrough stuff for you folks when it comes to sales. You might need a list of this on average, I don't know, seven to ten times in the first month. Did go back and forth. I kid you not, I rarely say this to you, folks. I'm telling you, it's that good. Also, John Falcons, our head coach is in studio. We'll bring him up to you in just moments. And of course, we've got some great resources to help you out.

And at the end of the broadcast, a fun challenge for me. All right, folks, it is that time. Once again, our head coach of All Access, John Falcons, in studio with me. Good morning, John. Good morning, Ken. How are you doing? Oh, I'm doing fantastic. And I always love when we have you in here because we get real questions and you give us real answers. And how about a question from across the pond? Let's do it. You like that? Now, if you don't know what that means, do you think everybody knows what across the pond means? Probably. I don't think they do. Here's where I would differ with you. I think the majority of the people that listen to this podcast knows what that means.

Fair. All right. Very good. But if you do not. Because I am a man of the people. If you're the outlier. If you're the outlier does not know what the phrase across the pond means. And the reason I say this is we have young Eric the producer and young Will the engineer.

And sometimes I say things and phrases that they look at me like I'm nuts. Yeah, that's, well, I am nuts. I was going to say, I don't think that's limited to just those two young men. That is true. I digress. The whole analogy just crumbled right there in front of me, folks, but there you go. All right, so this is from Tony, who is across the pond, which means he's in the United Kingdom. He writes, I have recently been promoted into a leadership role where I lead four other team members. I have no control over pay, hiring or firing. Then he writes in parentheses, this is my favorite part of the email.

actually no control of anything. Tony's not having a very good attitude right now. But he says, a couple of my team, no matter what I do, are lazy, and they're just not doing the work. This forces me to work extremely hard to complete the work. I was wondering if there's anything I can do to improve the work ethic of the team. And then it gets really complex. So he's asking, can he do anything but he doesn't have any control? Then he says, the added problem to this is one of the culprits, is my best mate.

Oh boy. John, where to start on this one? This one is just really messy. It really is messy. You know, there's so many things to say here, to be honest with you. I mean, let's not go down this road, but I have to just note that Tony is saying he's been put into a leadership role where he has no authority. And so I would question the leadership of the organization that has put him into this position. but I, too, digress.

We don't have time to unpack all of that. So let's just focus our help on Tony. And the good thing is, and I say this somewhat tongue and cheek, but control is an illusion. You're not really going to have control. A title doesn't give you control. Even authority to hire or fire doesn't give you control. The way that Tony wins in this situation or any leader wins in leading a team is through influence. And so this is what, Tony, you need to focus on. How do I grow my influence with this

team of people? How do I grow my influence with my best mate to use the phrase? And so things that we need to focus on to grow the influence is our competency, you know, our ability to engender trust from the team because we do what we say we're going to do, to shoot them straight, to lead the pack in terms of excellence, all those kinds of things that need to happen to grow influence is how you win in this situation. It's great advice. Tony, I had one thing here. John, I'm reading this and I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, if this is true that he has zero authority over these four people. Right. I just don't know. Yeah. But let's just assume he has zero authority, but he's supposed to lead them anyway. Volunteers. Tony, I would start reading books, reading stories about people who

are leading volunteers because I've always felt like the best leaders are leaders of volunteers because volunteers at the end of the day don't have to be there. True. And if you can lead and influence to your point, volunteers in your office. So, John, I thought that was incredible. It is about influence at this point. And Tony, we appreciate the question. Up next is Holly.

She writes, I've been in a leadership role for just under a year with changing our culture. We've recently had to let go of two team members. Both were rock stars. The team is feeling the hit. and it is affecting our work. There's confusion. People have a heightened emotional sensitivity. What can I do to help bring the morale of the office back up? You know, Ken, some of this is to be expected. If we just go through a situation like this and we want to invalidate everybody being a little bummed out, we're going to cause more problems than just recognizing the fact, hey, we've lost somebody that we all cared about.

we've lost somebody that we all counted on, and it is going to be bumpy for a while. It's going to take us some time to heal from this. If we can't recognize that, then things are going to get weird. So, you don't necessarily want to live in that indefinitely, but I do think we need to stare it in the face and say, this is a bummer. This is a hard thing that we've got to go through, and it's going to be all hands on deck to get through this, but we're going to get through it. You know, it's the balance between patience and persistence, and that's what needs to be struck here. We're going to be patient with everybody. We're going to allow everybody kind of that grieving process, but we are going to be persistent because of our why. Our reason for being, what are we here for? You know, Dave

frequently says, this group of people, when he's referring to our team, all 600 plus of us sitting in the room, this group of people exists to serve the people that aren't here today. And so, Holly, your team doesn't exist for the benefit of the team or the individuals. It exists to serve the people that aren't on the team. And that's where the focus needs to be. And that's what will help the team come back, rise to the occasion, and march on to serve the mission. I want to go back to one thing that she wrote about. And I think that this is one of the big problems and thus part of the solution, really in addition to what you said, she said there's confusion. True. Now at Ransy Solutions, somebody, a rock star has to go. Yep. There's never confusion. True. All the feelings that you talked

about. Right. That's all reality. Yep. But they're not confusion. I want you to just teach on that for why is there not confusion and then how is that part of the solution? Well, let me do it in reverse order if you don't mind. The reason why that's a part of the solution is because we've learned, studies have shown that what is stressful to people is not change. It's ambiguity. So, you know, it's one thing. If you come to a construction project on your way to work and it's well signed and there's an explanation and you know how long it's going to take to get around it, it's a change, but it doesn't generally freak you out nearly as much as coming up on something on the road and you just have no

clue how to get around. It's ambiguous. You don't know what's going on, and that's the confusion that you're talking about. So the solution here is to bring clarity, to bring certainty, and that's, we're going to get through this. This is what went on. Here's how we're going to get through it, that kind of conversation. How does that work around here? Well, as you know, the soundbite is, to be unclear is to be unkind. And so Dave, I even jokingly say sometimes when I come out of meetings with Dave, Dave was just very kind with me. I love that. That's really good. Great stuff. Thank you, Coach Falcons, and thanks to Tony and Holly for sending in your question.

Folks, if you'd love to submit a question, you've got a problem. I promise you, Coach Falcons can help you at the entire team in all access. That's what they do on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. You can email us podcast at ontraeleadership.com. That's podcast. Entreeleadership.com. Coach Falcons, good to have you in. Man, we'll get you back again real soon. Thanks, Ken. So our feature guest, as I said, is Anthony Anorino, and we got a notification recently from Daniel

Tarty, who was our senior vice president of Entree leadership, and you've heard him on the show many times. And I think it's fair to say that Daniel Tarty may be the best salesperson I've ever known personally. Great sales leader as well. So, you know, this is a guy who, when he says, I read this book. I think this guy's great. His content's great. I think you should put it on the podcast. It's okay. All right. Let's get it done. So Eric, the producer did it. And here is the conversation. I meant it when I said it. You may need to listen to this seven times to get everything that's in here. Here we go. Well, Anthony, this is a real pleasure to have you on with this. And when the book was brought to my desk, I saw the title, The Lost Art of Closing. We're going to dive into that and some other broader topics that our audience wants to hear. hear from you on. But before we get into some of those other specific broader topics, the lost art of closing, winning the 10 commitments that drive sales. So the lost art of closing, very interesting to me, because I used to be in sales. And so when I saw this, and obviously you have a great

track record and a lot of credibility, I thought, well, this is very interesting. I didn't know that closing had become a lost art. So because I love titles so much, and I know you were intentional, set the scene here. Why this title? Because it clearly is what the entire book is about. How has this become a lost art? It's a great question. A long time ago, 1988, Neil Rackham wrote a book called Spin Selling. And in that book, he said, the best salespeople get in advance. At the end of a meeting, they get some commitment that moves the deal forward. but that salespeople who tried aggressive closing techniques in a complex B2B sales or whether there was real value being created, it actually worked against them because they were asking for a commitment that was too far into the process for the buyer.

And people took that and they recognized, wait a second, we've taught salespeople always be closing, always ask the customer for their business, always ask them to buy, and they used to say things like close early and close often. And that's exactly how we got the reputation as salespeople being self-oriented. And that's why there's this negative connotation around the word sales. And it's specifically because of that behavior. So that shifted. And salespeople got softer and softer.

And it turned into never be closing. Never ask for commitments. Wait until the customer's ready and they'll tell you that they want to take the next step. And we've, of course, gotten a lot softer because we're more consultative, we're more professional than ever. But at the same time, we're not really serving the client because they're in the process of change. And the process of change means that they need to make about 10 commitments. And unless they're willing to give us time and explore change and collaborate with us, they don't generally get the results that they want. So now we're swinging the pendulum back

the other direction and saying it is always be closing, but it's not the self-oriented closing anymore that gives salespeople a bad reputation. It's the commitment gaining that says, go through this process together and figure out how we can get a better result. Yeah, and you do this so beautifully in the book, and we won't have time to unpack effectively all 10 of the commitments. But there are 10 commitments, and you say that if we get this and we begin to do this well with the customer, that closing becomes the easiest part. For the cynics out there, why? Well, it's a choice. It's either the easiest commitment you'll ever gain, or it's the most

difficult. And to make it easy, you have to go through a process where you spend time with your prospective client understanding what do their needs really consist of. You need to spend time collaborating with them to say, what's the right answer going to look like for your company? And it might be different than some other company. We have to talk about, are we really committed to change? And can we get consensus? Can we get everybody else on the team to go along with us? And how it turns out is that if you do this work and you go through a process where you gain all these commitments and have these conversations about the sticky and tricky things about making change, then when you get to the final close and you ask for the business, it's very

natural. And you can just say something like Ken, it feels like we've done all the right work here, and it sounds like we have a really good answer. And unless you have some concern that you haven't shared with me, I'd like to ask you for your business and I'd like to put the contract in place and begin taking care of this. And that's really easy. But if you didn't do the work and you haven't had all the conversations that you need, to. It's a very uncomfortable conversation because that person's saying, I don't think we're there

yet. We haven't talked about all these issues. My team's not really aware. We don't have the buy-in that we need. And then you've gone too far, and it's impossible for them to say yes. So the choice of how we behave is really the outcome that we get when we get to that point where we're asking for the commitment to decide. Yeah, talking about this commitment. And I think you've touched on it, but I want you to add a little bit more if in that last answer you gave us an overview of chapter one, which I love. You say we need a new philosophy of commitment gaining. And you say something on page 17, as you really launching into chapter one, you write, selling isn't something you do to someone. It is something you do for someone and with someone. That's a really interesting shift. And I love what

you're doing here when you talk about a philosophy of commitment gaining. Why did you phrase it that way? And what does that mean? What do you take us through as you set up the book here in chapter one? We have to come from a place of serving. We have to come from a place of we're trying to make a difference for another person. And what that means is that we have to serve them by making sure they understand why they should change. They should understand how they need to change and what kind of tradeoffs they're making. And for many, many years, selling was literally something that we were doing to another human being. We were selling them a bill of goods.

I mean, there were all these kinds of negative connotations around selling. another human being because we were self-oriented and we were taught and trained to ask for the commitment to buy no matter what. But that time is past and what I'm trying to do is give people a better way to think about this. And you need an operating philosophy that says, what am I doing here? I'm trying to serve another human being. So how does that direct my behaviors? It means I can't be self-oriented. I can't want the deal so bad that I'm willing to alienate the customer or go too far or hurt them in some way. Otherwise, my long-term goals are all being undone, and I'm not really going to be the kind of person that somebody calls a trusted advisor or somebody that gives them counsel.

Page 19, you call out in one of the most powerful sections of the book, but this is what I love. You talk about the right mindset. I want to read these out, folks, for you, and then Anthony's going to kind of, I've got a question about the right mindset. So you say the six key components of the right mindset are confidence, caring, persistence, speaking from the client's mind, embracing concerns, and you just touched on this, realizing it's not about you. You were just talking about serving the client. Here's my question, and I am a question nerd. I am a professional question asker. Okay? So I'm sitting here listening, and I read this and I went, seems to me, Anthony, that if we need to be confident, caring, persistent, speaking from the client's mind,

embracing their concerns, and realizing it's not about us, that one of the ways to do that is to get really good at asking questions. Am I right or wrong? You're right. And it is the opposite of what salespeople traditionally have been taught to do. We've been taught to go in and tell them about our company, tell them about our features and benefits, tell them why they're should buy from us. And that's not the most interesting question for the client. The most interesting question for them is, why should I change at all? How should I change? How can I be certain that this is the right decision for me to make for my team? So we're starting from exactly the wrong place if we really want to be consultative and if we really want to help people generate better results.

Yeah. Listen, if you go into a first meeting and you know how to ask questions, there's your confidence right there because you're going to come away with what you need to know and you're going to look like you care about them. And boy, you can be persistent without being obnoxious if you're asking good questions. You can also create greater value. I mean, and having a good set of questions, you know, it's an interesting switch, Ken, that's flipped for us in sales. Discovery used to be me coming in and trying to discover your pain points so I could immediately touch that to what I sell and pitch you. Now what we do when we're at our very best is we ask questions that causes the client to discover something about themselves or something about their business.

So a good, powerful set of questions is exactly what allows them to say, wait a second, we haven't thought about this this way. And now I'm starting to sense that there's a gap between where we are and where we could be if we were willing to make changes. All right, chapter 2, page 28, big, bold section headline, the psychology of how buyers really buy. I want you to explain this. How do buyers really buy? We all need to get this.

Well, for a long time, we've been told, go in and find out what they're dissatisfied about. But if you've been in sales for the last 10 years, when you walk up and you say, what's keeping you up at night, they say nothing. We're pretty happy with the way things are going. And the status quo is deeply entrenched, and people aren't sitting there thinking about why should I change and buy something new. What they really have at this time, I call dissonance. And they recognize that something's not as good as it can be. they recognize that things have changed in the outside world. It's having an impact on their business, but they're not really sure how to understand it. So most of us start out in a stage of an unawareness of what's available to us and why we're not getting the results that we want. And then once we get that awareness, we start to have what I would call a problem worth solving and a compelling vision of a future state. And that's what we're actually helping them come up with when we're doing the discovery work. We're helping them through those ideas, what should be compelling them to change that they don't know about.

Once buyers start to recognize, wait, I see a future state, I've got a vision of that, I know what I want, then they want to start looking around to say, is this the right problem to solve? What's the best way to solve this problem? What are my choices? What kind of tradeoffs do I have to make? And what makes you a value creator is knowing how to talk about those tradeoffs. And then ultimately, at the end of any buying cycle that's strategic and risky, and there's going to be a lot of money spent,

they need to assess their risks and say, wait a second, we have concerns. I'm not sure that this is going to work. Or what happens if the train comes off the track and we're right in the middle of this initiative? Is this the right amount of money? And am I spending it in the right place?

And the salesperson has to be the person who can have that conversation and say, let's make sure it is right for you. Let's make sure we do make the right decisions. And let me make you comfortable that this is going to work and help you resolve these concerns. Now, I've got some people that are listening in here and they're really tracking, and I want to ask you a question, what happens when the buyers control the process? Because what you're really laying out here in this book is process systems on how to really sell and really get the clothes.

What happens when you're walking into a situation and the buyers control the process? I think people understand what we're talking about here. You're really kind of trying to go against the machine. Yeah, if the buyer has a process at all, it's probably an RFP. and none of the things that I would recommend you do are possible when you have an RFP, because an RFP is arm's length, and I want to actually hug the customer. I mean, I want to get my arms around them and help them. How do I do that?

But I can't do that if you won't give me a commitment to meet with you, if you're not willing to explore, if you can't collaborate, because you have rules that say we're not allowed to have a collaborative conversation, or you're not allowed to talk to these people. So when the buyer controls the process, they eliminate the value, creation that we do. And it makes it very difficult to do this. Although, if you get an RFP, there are ways around it. I mean, there are ways to call and say, I'd like to challenge your RFP and tell you why we think it's not going to generate the results you're capable of. And even

just having that conversation is often enough for a purchasing person or the buyer to say, what is it that we got wrong? And at least then you've pulled yourself out of the box and you don't sound or look like everybody else. I like that. What else can you do there? Let's say you get that call and they call you back and go, okay, what's wrong with my RFP and you get that moment? Give us a couple more things there. Because I think that's a real roadblock for folks. Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to read the RFP so you can find something that they've assumed that isn't necessarily true. And I'll give you an example. I come out of the world of staffing. And I got an RFP from a big company who had a great logo and I really wanted

their business. But when I read it, they had recommended pay rates for certain skill sets. and so I read it and I looked at this and I found about a dozen skill sets that they were way, way underestimating the amount of money they need to spend. So I picked up the phone and I called the professional buyer who had sent me the RFP and said, I'm going to turn in a no bid on this. But before I do that, I want to explain to you why. You've underestimated the spend that you're going to need in these categories and we're not going to be capable of getting you those people because your pay rate's not going to be competitive in this marketplace. And let me know what you want me to say on this, and I'll send it back.

And he said, wait a second. What is it you're saying? And I said, well, there's more than a dozen positions here that you're underestimating the spend. For example, you've got something at $35,000. That's going to cost you $60. And he said, would you come in and talk to us about that? And I said, absolutely. But now I've changed the process, and I've moved them back to the dissonance, right?

I've moved them to the part where they go, wait a second, I'm confused. why isn't what I'm thinking going to work? And now I get a chance to have a conversation. And of course, we ended up winning that. I'm about 85% on winning those. But you do have to have some insight that you can use to say, what I think you're trying to do here, there's a better way available,

but your RFP didn't allow us to answer this way. And if you have that conversation, you can sometimes pull yourself out of the box and get a better bite at the apple. That's good. That's good. All right, chapter three, trading value. Again, you've began to touch on all of this, but I want to go a little deeper here.

I'm going to read a couple of sentences from the start of chapter three and let you just take off here. To gain the commitments you need to control the process, you are going to have to trade something of value, skipping down one sentence. What it means to trade value is that you promise your prospective client something of equal or greater value in exchange for the commitment you're asking for. Now, give us a couple of examples there because I still think people can, they could get to whole book and still kind of missed this in that introductory kind of moment, that first impression, and you're so eager and you think you're so polite and so charismatic, but at the end of that, you're not offering any value in that first impression. And, you know, the first impression for most of us is, Ken, I'd like to stop by and introduce

myself and my company. Yeah. And that'll be the 300th time that the contact has heard that. And they're thinking to themselves, I don't know if I can live through another conversation like this where this person's going to show me all the locations of their business and tell me all the logos that they've won. And it's so not interesting to them because the company that they're worried about is their company. And the product that they're worried about is their product. And the clients that they're worried about are their clients. And it's starting from a

place where there's no value to be created. So the first thing I would say, and probably the most important, we're trying to get somebody to give us the one finite non-renewable resource they have. And that's time. And that's a huge commitment we're asking people to make. And I need to give them something of value. So I'm going to say something like, Kim, what I'd like to do is share with you the four trends that are going to impact your business over the next 18 to 24 months. Some of the questions you're going to want to answer and you're going to want to challenge your management team to answer.

And then we'll give you some ideas about some other things that other people are doing so you can sort of frame up what's going on in the world. And even if you never buy anything from me, even if there's not a next step, I'll leave you with the slide deck, and I want to be the first person you think of if you decide that any of these are worth talking about. I'm telling them I'm going to trade them the value of understanding their business in a new way, a set of questions that they can answer and challenge their management team to answer that will help them understand the decisions that they make over the next 18 to 24 months. I'm trading the value that I can create as a consultative salesperson for their time.

And this really sets up the rest of the relationship. It's who is this person? Are they going to be a time moister, or are they going to be a value creator? And they're making that assessment very, very early on by your willingness and your ability to trade value. And I'll just go with one more. Even just looking at the next commitment, the commitment to explore change, I have to say at the end of this meeting, whether or not you decide to do anything, you are going to understand some of the choices that are available to you, and you will understand what you could do if you decide that this is a problem them worth solving. And I'm letting them know they're going to be leaving this meeting with something that they didn't have coming into it. And we have to do that at every single commitment.

See, I'm so glad you brought that up because we can't get through all 10. But I think the commitment to explore and the commitment to change, if you can get that early on, you've got a great shot at closing. Do you not? You have the best shot if you're the one that can talk about change. And that conversation, you've got the book in front of you. So we've given people sample language. But this is the one that salespeople get nervous on and entrepreneurs get nervous on is I have to ask you, Ken, we've looked at the compelling reason that you might want to change and we've explored some of the ideas. Is this the right thing for us to be working on together? Does it make sense to commit to going down this path and deciding whether or not it's right to change and how we might do that? Because we're going to start needing resources from my team and your team. And their fear is, what if they say no?

Well, if they say no, then you know that maybe it's not a priority or maybe there's something else that you need to work on. But what you can't do is pretend that they're committed to changing because you want to say you have an opportunity when they're really just having a nice conversation and they're not intentionally deciding, yes, I think it's worth going down this process. That's right. And invariably, if you get the commitment to change, you're probably the person that wins the deal just because you created this case for change in the first place. Yeah. Okay, folks, let me take something. get a chance, rewind what Anthony just said, and listen to it about seven times. Pause, write some comments down.

How does this look like in my world? Because I think you just dropped an absolute bomb of wisdom. And I want to stay right here because you were intentional in this book. When you put the 10 commitments together and you put the book together, first comes the commitment to explore, then the commitment to change. And that's really huge. There's a reason why it works that. way. When you walk in and you just laid it out there for us, the way you gave us that sample statement, that's why folks, I want you to go back and listen to it, put it in your

own words. But this idea, when you get somebody willing to explore that they might need to do it differently, or I'm willing to look at that, they're all of a sudden open to you and what you are selling, whether it be a product or service. That's really huge. It's all about exploration. To me, Anthony, I'm just wondering, it seems as though we, in that first opportunity, or certainly very early on, need to have one goal. And that is to get people to really be thinking after we left, right? I mean, if we can make them think, they're going to be so receptive to our next conversation. There's something to this, isn't it? They will actually reach out to you to try to get you to come back in and have more conversations. And I'll tell you

why. And this is the first part of the book, why we can't be self-oriented. Because if you say, going to come in and I'm going to pitch you my product or my service and I'm going to show you everything that we can do to help you. That's really self-oriented and it's about me wanting to sell you something. But if you're the person who says, I want to come in and explore and see whether it makes sense for you to do anything at all and ask some challenging questions that we can answer together, that's an interesting exercise for people to go through. And then they say, wait a second, this person's got good questions. They know how to think about this. Let's bring them back in here and ask them some more questions and see what we come up with.

And that makes you interesting. Yeah. It also gives them the power. That's the idea I was getting at with asking questions and you've nailed it. This idea of getting the potential client to explore, they turn into the hero. It becomes their decision, not you persuading them of anything. It's their decision to choose you. I think throughout the book, when people read it, the one thing that they're struck by is that

I treat this whole thing like it's a collaboration from beginning to end because it is. It's not something I'm doing to them. It's something I'm doing for them and with them. So I'm ceding some of the power in the relationship back to them so that we can control this process together rather than having somebody say, wait a second, I feel like this isn't going the way that I wanted it to. I haven't had this conversation. And then they drop out.

So we need them to make the commitments and we need them to be an active participant in it. And invariably, if you go to people who sell or who are entrepreneurs who are selling their product, they will tell you invariably where we have a collaborative relationship and we're talking about next steps and it's very transparent, it works better than anything else we do. Folks, this is so good. So you get them exploring first and then help them walk into the decision to make a change and then they're going to pick you. That's just beautiful. Okay. So if I had two hours, we would break this entire book down, but then you folks should pay us for it. And this is a free podcast.

So I really want you folks to get the book. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to, because I know people are leaning in, Anthony. They really are. They're going, okay, what are the other commitments? So we start with the commitment for time, the commitment to explore, the commitment to change, the commitment to collaborate, the commitment to build consensus, the commitment to invest, the commitment to resolve consensus. the commitment to invest, the commitment to review, the commitment to resolve concerns, the commitment to decide, and finally the commitment to execute.

Now, go buy the book, okay? Just go get it, and we cannot unpack it. I want to go into some general questions here because I think we've got people's brains really working. And where I want to kind of dive into in a different direction is, I think there's a lot of people that are listening in Anthony, and they're going, oh, this book is great. I can tell it right now I've got to get it. I got to get it, but I got some salespeople that just, oh, boy, I just can't find good salespeople.

Is that true? And if it's true, how true is it? And what's the solution? There are plenty of good salespeople, and I will tell you, entrepreneurs have a tough time getting good salespeople because they're entrepreneurs, which means they're automatically some of the most optimistic people on earth, right? They started a business, so you better be optimistic. And the mistake that they make is they look at a resume and they say, this person has experience so I can hire them because they know how to do this job.

And what they don't understand is that there's an obligation on the side of the entrepreneur to provide that salesperson with the right mindset, the right skill sets, and the right toolkits. And that means you have to be a really good manager and a really good leader. So the reason that entrepreneurs struggle is because they think all of the responsibility is on the side of the sales force, and it's really all the responsibility is on the side of the leader. We have to give them the coaching, the development, the training.

We have to spend time with them. And you have to be a really good sales manager, which means you have to know how to hold people accountable for going through a process like this with your clients and developing the business acumen to have good conversations with people. And that's why they feel like there's not enough good salespeople. There's plenty. They just need your leadership.

And if you struggle with that, that's probably an area where you could go and pick up a number of books and read just a general book about the sales process and what kind of meetings we have and immediately improve your results. Okay. All right. Let's stay there because I want to ask the more difficult question. They can go read books. They can go to conferences. There's all kinds of webinars. I mean, goodness gracious. If you can't find resources to be a better leader of salespeople in 2017, you're under a rock. But let's go deeper. I mean, there's just certain entrepreneurs that aren't wired to be really good at leading their sales force. So I guess the question is, and I'm a believer in if you're wired with some strengths in one area, stay there. If you're a three in leading salespeople and you go to every conference for five years, you may turn into a five. And five is not good enough. We need nines and tens.

You may spend five years and still be a three. Yes, good point. Okay, so now we've set the reality for the question. So what would you say to maybe that person who's going, okay, Ken's let me off the hook, it's okay. What should they be asking themselves? What is their criteria with themselves, maybe with their leaders around them to go, am I really the best person to be leading this or do I need to do what I do best and be that pure entrepreneurial force and get out of leading maybe a sales team? I think that you still have a responsibility to lead the sales team, but if you're not that sales leader, you should hire one. And that should be the person, but you should still be deeply engaged with the sales force. Well, sure. And the thing is, you know this because this is what you guys do. If you're going to be an entrepreneur, you're going to have to deal with the fact that you have to sell stuff. And that's what entrepreneurship requires of you.

But if it's not your strong suit to lead a sales team, and it's not for everybody, it's a difficult task at best, then hire. somebody, but then still stay engaged and still expect that you're going to join meetings and you're going to have reporting coming up to you so that you know how to make sure that they're executing what you need them to do to run your strategy and to build your business. Yes, absolutely. We are not in any way espousing you take your hands off the wheel, but leading a leader may be more kind of apropos to what your style or your wiring is. Okay, let's also ask this. I've talked to small business people before, leaders, who are entrepreneurs,

and they struggle with how much they're in the weeds and kind of doing the things sometimes that maybe they need someone else to do. And they also want to get out there and be a whale hunter. So should an entrepreneur leader, maybe the founder, somebody's really good at it, how much of their time? If any at all, should they be putting towards maybe going out

and harpooning some big whales? Sometimes they're so passionate. They end up being the very best salesperson to go in front of really big clients. Right. Because nobody loves the story. Nobody tells the story better than the entrepreneur. Nobody's that passionate. And if they can dedicate, I'm not going to say you have to dedicate half your time to that,

but if you could dedicate four or five hours to actually spending with clients selling, it can have a dramatic impact on your business. And I know it's easy to end up getting dragged into operations and getting dragged into financial and getting dragged into all the other areas of the business. But if you can block enough of that, you end up really being a great leader for the Salesforce in a great example. And they love to tell the story about the founder and the CEO and the entrepreneur. And being on those calls listening to U-Tel, it gets them to tell that story with greater passion. That's good. So let's get really practical as a follow-up to that. The person that you're talking about right now is listening to

this. And they're having lunch with you. And you're going, all right, so if this is you, you are the best salesperson, you are the story, what should they be doing? I mean, like, what changes do they need to be making? I would tell you probably the best change I've ever made personally as an entrepreneur was to decide that the first two hours of my day are dedicated to sales and marketing. And by prioritizing sales and marketing, I'm always confident that I'm creating the new opportunities that are going to allow me to grow my business.

And if they would make this fundamental change and say, I'm going to put sales and marketing first, and then I'm going to deal with operations after that, they would immediately improve their sales results. And I'll speak just a minute about this, because every area of the business is important. But when we talk about growth, there's only three things that you can do to grow your business.

You can sell more to new clients. You can sell more to your existing clients, and you can raise your prices. So those are the three choices you have. But when we spend time dedicated to other areas of the business, which do not cause us to sell more or to raise our prices or to acquire new clients, then those things don't happen naturally. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs wish that they had more inbound and more things coming in.

But unless you're Apple and people are going to line up to buy what you sell, you've got to go line up at the customer's door instead. And the more of that work that you prioritize, the greater your speed to growth, and the greater the velocity. Okay. I want to ask you about something that honestly, I don't hear a lot of conversation about. And to me, it's like a huge part of this whole sales process.

And that's pricing. I mean, you can do a lot of things right. But if you don't have the right pricing, are you not in some ways just almost competing against yourself? Pricing is a tricky issue for entrepreneurs. And I'll tell you why. They've probably never been taught that there are only things. three strategies a business can pursue, because when we have a great idea, we want to get the

idea into the world. And that's the most important thing for us, is to go ahead and start executing. But you really have to make one or three choices. If your choice is to be the lowest price provider, that means you always have to have the lowest price. And that's the strategy that you've chosen for your whole business. So pricing is a strategy decision. The second choice you can make is to have the absolute best product. So you're looking at Walmart, who's making, the decision we will always have the lowest price, and Amazon's now competing with them there. You're looking at Apple who said, I'm going to create the very best product on Earth, and I'm going to be able to charge a premium for it, and people are going to line up.

And they're competing with Samsung, like BMW competes with Mercedes. And then the last choice is called Customer Intimacy. And if you want to read a book on this, read the Discipline of Market Leaders by Tresi and Warsama. But those are the three choices you have. And for most of us, we end up in customer intimacy, which means I'm going to know you and your business. I'm going to understand how to build solutions for you. I'm not going to have the lowest price. And I may not even have the best product, but I'm going to generate the best outcomes overall.

And the decision there requires that we capture a little bit more value so we can invest in those outcomes. So the mistake that sales leaders inside entrepreneurial companies and entrepreneurs make is thinking that pricing is a decision about, winning the business, but it's really the business's strategy. So if you're not low price, then you can't say, well, I'm going to lower my price to acquire these clients and I'm going to try to raise my price over here. You have to be consistent and pick a lane. How do you want to compete? And if you want to compete on greater value, you have to have a price that let you capture greater value because you need to make the investments to be able to execute for the client over the longer term. And it's really, it's a strategy conversation. And if you're

an entrepreneur pick up the discipline of market leaders and decide where do you really want to play. And if you do, then everything you do has to be aligned to that decision. Yes. Wow. Okay, so Will the engineer and Eric the producer are immediately scrambling to go get that guest? Because that's a huge conversation. But until then, because since you know enough about it, this is the follow-up question. I cannot wait to ask. So I'm going to ask you, if someone's listening in right now and they go, man, we've been playing this lowest price game. That's not the game we need to be plan. We didn't realize it was a strategy and we've made it a strategy. And we don't want to be there. We want to be over in that customer intimacy bucket. How do they begin to make that transition?

Well, first, you're going to have to start with new client acquisition and say the new clients that we're going after, we're going to target and we're going to message a different way. And then it may mean that you have to go back and I get this question a lot, how do I reset that relationship? And you have to go back and you have to try to execute a price increase by saying, you know, Ken, we've done good work here, but we haven't done the work that we're capable of. And I want to apologize to you for that. And I want to ask you if I can reset our relationship because we can do more for you, but we need to ask you to give us a little bit more money so that we can do that. Can I share with you what we're thinking and can I talk to you about what that might look like?

And I'm going right back to the commitment to explore, right? Yep. Can we explore this? And I'm going to ask them to make the commitment to change and I'm going to try to bring them along with me because I do want to try to reset that relationship. So I would do those two things at the same time. One, acquire new clients where I'm going to be able to capture greater margin so I can deliver it more better. And at the same time, I'm going to try to reset the relationships I have and increase the price so I can't deliver the way that I need to. So people are listening right now and they're going through those buckets. Lowest price, that means you're kind of always having to lower, lower, compete or squeeze people like Amazon

and Walmart do and very few people in the world can do that to be able to offer that pricing. Or you've got to go to the best product. So you're a premium. product or service or customer intimacy. And I'm just wondering if there's a subcategory here. And where I'm going with this is the idea of, you know what? It's just the best service. Is that a part of customer intimacy? Is that what you're saying?

So you're going, I'm not offering maybe the best product of the premium side of things. I'm not going lowest price. But the end of the day, we're fine just saying we charge more because we just do more for you. Is that a subcategory? Is that what you're saying customer intimacy really is? Yeah, that would be a customer intimacy play. It would be overall the solution is going to be better. So that experience, the support, the service. And you know what? I call this high trust, high caring, high value. That's a play. And that means we care more. And I can't tell you right now, if I had to choose a business model, there's really we're coming down to caring and we're transacting. It's coming down to those two things. You can either go on the website and order it. I'll never know who you are. I'll send you what you ask me for. or I care so much that I'm going to understand you. We're going to develop a deep relationship.

I'm going to have enough knowledge to know how to serve you that I'm going to end up being the best choice that you made because I know how to operate and help you develop the results that you need. Okay. Very good. Okay, folks, that's good. That's a master class right there. Okay, I'm going to go back into the book. Anthony, I do this to the audience all the time. I'm teasing them to go get the book.

But I'm going to go back to the end of the book, Chapter 15. and this is so fun for me, because I think we get people listening in right now who they've got these dream clients, what I'm calling gigantic whales, or maybe it's your grizzly bear. It's what you're going for. It's your trophy client. You've dreamed about it. Maybe you are in the process of going after them, or you're just, you're in the middle of it, and they're just not buying. And so you call this transformational conversations and fearing the wrong dangers.

And you start the chapter by saying there are two major reasons your dream client refuses to make the commitment. The first is that they have some fear that prevents them from agreeing to move forward. The second is that they don't believe that making that commitment and taking the next steps creates value for them. So I love this. Transformational conversations and fearing the wrong dangers. What does this mean? What are you teaching us in this chapter? I'm just so happy that you said this, Ken, that when you release this,

I'm going to cut this section out and I'm going to send it to my editor who tried to cut this chapter out of the book. Well, you know what I think of editors who try to tell experts what to put in their own book? But anyway, I said,

this is so important for people to understand it has to be in the book because there's not a way to avoid it. And what happens with human beings is we fear the wrong danger. So what we tend to do is say, I'm afraid of making this change because it's going to be complicated

and messy and political and I'm going to have to have all these conversations. But the real danger is not changing and being obsolete or having your business turn around and go the wrong direction. And I tell people the story about the gentleman whose name escapes me right now because we're on an interview. And as soon as we hang up, I'll remember. The person who invented the digital camera worked for Kodak in 1975.

And when they looked at that, they said, if we release that, we'll never sell film again. And they shut it down. And now Kodak still doesn't sell film anymore. They feared the wrong danger. The danger is not changing. The danger is not changing, but we fear it because it's messy and it means that we have to do a lot of work. And what we do as salespeople and consultative salespeople and trusted advisors when we're at our very best is we listen to understand what the root of that fear really is.

We address that root fear and then we help have a conversation about, wait a second, if we fear that, this is probably a greater risk for us and how. do we move forward and deal with us together? Because they will fear things like, well, I'm worried about changing. Okay, well, I'm worried about it getting worse. It's been getting progressively worse. I know that you think everything is okay, but we see a lot of people experiencing this and having trouble because they're still doing it the way that you're doing it. And there's a better way available to you.

And we're seeing people who make this change capture market share. And I'm worried we can't avoid this. So somebody has to be the person that goes first. and says, can I show you how this might work out, and can I try to resolve this concern for you? And can, you know, being in sales at whatever time you were, we were taught objection handling. But these aren't objections that we're dealing with.

These are real concerns and real fears that other human beings have. So I can't pretend like it's something that I have to overcome. It's something that I have to discuss and talk about in a way that allows my prospective client to take that next step and move forward with me. So true. And that's not easy, but it's important. It really is.

And again, more trust is engaged. And when you begin to really understand those things and don't belittle them and don't try to, you know, minimize them, that's where the trust comes in. It's really, really good stuff. By the way, Stephen Sasson was the guy who created the first digital camera at Eastman Kodak in 1975. Had to give that to you. You know, you got to love the research. Thanks to Will the engineer for popping that went in to me. Final word from you, Anthony.

I mean, there's so much here. We've covered so much. This is a fun question I love to ask because I think it's so big. If you could sit and have lunch with every one of our listeners. And they had just read your book. They've just closed it the night before. And they're sitting with you at lunch the next day. And they've just told you how much they loved it.

And you've talked about the book. And before you leave, you say, hey, here's one more thing. Now that you've read the book, here's what I want you to do. What would you say? I want to know what commitment to change they're going to make and what they're going to be accountable for. That's what I would want them to do. And this is something I feel very strongly about. A book is the greatest deal on earth.

For $24 and six hours of your time, you get the ability to transform your entire business, transform your sales approach, help other people transform their businesses. I mean, there can't be a better deal. but it's the worst deal on earth if you don't do anything with what you read. So the reason that I write books that look like workbooks and why I give away workbooks when people buy the book, when we are at our very best, we're helping other people transform and get results they couldn't get. And that's my opinion on why we're here. We're here to do purposeful, meaningful work that helps others transform. And if you do that work, your life is so fulfilling and so meaningful.

And if you pull your punches, you struggle. That is a great word. If people want to learn more about what you're doing, get engaged with more of what you're doing that will help them, where would you send them? The salesblog.com or YouTube.com forward slash Anorino. Oh, nice. What are you doing on YouTube? A daily video blog. Uh-oh. Last I checked, folks, that's free. So I don't know why you wouldn't take him up on that and go get the book. It really is fantastic. And I'm telling you, Anthony, you agree with me. We barely scratched the surface of the book. I mean, barely. I think you did a great job, though. I'm going to point people to this who are concerned.

I'm going to make sure that they go right here because it's a great interview. Well, that's kind. But I'm pointing out that there's so much more in here that we did not even get a chance to unpack. It really is a must read. Anthony, thank you so much for being with us. We know you're busy. But I know you helped a lot of people. We're all better for it.

Thanks so much for having me. Well, folks, I've told you. I think you need to listen to this multiple times. I think you need to buy the book. I think you need to buy it by the case. The Lost Art of Closing, winning the 10 commitments that drive sales. Big thanks to Anthony Anorino for being with us. And I know I told you you should buy the book, but how about something free that will help you?

That's what Entree does for you. Free stuff on this broadcast. And so we are bringing you the super selling cheat sheet. This has been very popular. We have new people joining the broadcast all the time, so we're bringing it back up because it's appropriate. And it's free. The super selling cheat sheet, the secret to serving your customers, well. If you haven't downloaded this yet, you need to get it. Here's what it includes. A chart

that will teach you how to sell to each different personality style. Some classic sample closes that will work no matter what you're selling or to whom you are selling it. So download it, check it out. It's free. Why wouldn't you check it out? Just text one word, E-L-sales. So no space there. Just E-L, and then the word sales, no space. EL sales, text that to 33-4-44-4-4-4. Or you can just go get the link in the episode show notes at Entreeleadership.com. Oh, folks, we love Infusionsoft. They've got a great resource for you that I want you to take advantage of, and it is free. That's right. Are you losing leads? That's actually the name of this free resource, and I love it. Are you,

you missing out on potential revenue? This is a real question, and it's got dollar signs attached to it. So the question comes from InfusionSoft because they're the best when it comes to helping you automate. So another deep question, how many more leads or customers could you get or retain if you used automation? This resource in less than five minutes will help you calculate additional revenue that you could be generating. Ooh, this is eye opening. You might need to get the old peps at AC out, just in case the indigestion comes along with the shock of how much money you've been leaving on the table. Here's how you get it.

Go to infusionsoft.com slash calculator revenue. Infusionsoft.com slash calculator revenue. Or you can get it at entreleadership.com slash podcast. So I told you, folks, I was going to challenge you. Here's the challenge. We've never done this before. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to actually listen to this episode with your team.

You can just fast forward to the interview. Specifically, I want you and your team together to listen to my conversation with Anthony. Now, you can do this however you want to do it. You want them to listen to it individually and come back and you discuss it. But I think that the team needs to listen to it. Your sales team specifically, right? That's what this is. I want your sales team to listen to this conversation.

And then I'm just curious, are there any breakthroughs as a result? Some positive changes. What were they? If you see some change, some growth, and a team member has a win as a result of this conversation, we would like to hear what the result is. And hey, depending on what it looks like, we'll brag on that team member on this broadcast so they can hear it. Never done this before.

But we really want to challenge you if you're listening to this on a regular basis because it helps you, why aren't you having your sales team listen to this very hyper-focused conversation that has absolutely everything to do with what they do for you? Then I want to know if you've got some great breakthroughs because of it. We want to hear this. We want to help you praise somebody. Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever thought about the fact that if we're helping you help somebody else and they

win and then they do it well and we brag on them and then they hear us. bragging about them, well, that's a win for you and for them. So there you go. That's the challenge. Make sure you hit us up with the stories. Podcast at entreleadership.com. That's podcast at Entreleadership.com. Well, folks, that is going to do it. Where did the time go? Oh, my goodness. On behalf of Eric the producer, our engineer Will Rutter and the entire Entree leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.