Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Bob Burg on Closing More Deals with the Go-Giver Sales Strategy | Sales | YAPClassic

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Starting point is 00:00:29 our incredible deals in the show notes or at younginprofiting.com slash deals. What's up, YAP fam? What if I told you everything you've been taught about sales is backwards? What if the key to closing more deals was to stop trying to close and start giving instead? In this YAP Classic episode, which first aired in 2022, I spoke with Bob Berg, host of the Go Giver podcast, about a radically different approach to sales, one that's not about pressure or persuasion, but about value, service, and authenticity. In our conversation, he breaks down the five laws

Starting point is 00:01:15 of stratospheric success, the most common mistakes salespeople make, and how to build real trust and connection with every prospect that you meet. Are you a GoGiver when it comes to persuading and influencing others? Stick around and find out. Hey, Bob. Welcome to Young and Profiting podcast. So happy to have you here.

Starting point is 00:01:36 Thank you, Holly. Great to be here. Yeah, likewise. Before we get into all that good stuff and the meat and potatoes of the interview, I do want to talk to you about your career path. Similar to me, you started in radio. So I started my career at Hot 97 and then kind of evolved from there. So I'd love to hear about your broadcasting background and how you ended up, you know, becoming such a popular writer. Just began as a sportscaster for a local radio station where I grew up, got into TV.

Starting point is 00:02:06 I was the late night news guy for a very small ABC affiliate in the Midwestern United States. I wasn't very good at it though. I was, yeah, I could read the news, anyone can do that, but I certainly wasn't a journalist. And so it wasn't long before I graduated into sales and I stumbled and floundered for the first few months because I had no formal sales training and the company I was with apparently didn't either. So I was sort of left on my own.

Starting point is 00:02:33 Fortunately, after a few months, I was in a bookstore and I saw there were a couple of books on sales, which doesn't seem like a big deal right now, but that was 40 years ago. And sales books were just, they simply were not as prolific as they are now. So I didn't even know such a thing existed. So when I saw them, I picked them up, bought them, brought them home. And every night I'd come home after work and I would study into the

Starting point is 00:02:55 wee hours of the morning. And within a few weeks of applying the information, my sales began to go through the roof. And it was really a great experience for me. From there I started to really get into the personal development aspect because I quickly learned that sales was really about building yourself on the inside, right? And that that success manifested outwardly, but it really was what you put into your mind and took into your heart. So I started getting all the, you know, the classics of personal development from Dale Carnegie's, How to Win Friends and Influence People, to Think and Grow Ridge,

Starting point is 00:03:27 to The Magic of Thinking Big, and Psycho-Cybernetics, and As a Man Thinketh, and Ogman Dino's books, and all the great books. And I just, I became a, I guess an internal library. And you know, so I really enjoyed it,

Starting point is 00:03:40 and eventually worked my way up to sales manager of a company, and people began to ask me to show their sales team what was working for me and eventually just morphed into a speaking business. I love the fact that you brought up that you've read so many books. I interviewed Steven Kotler pretty recently and he told me that books have the best ROI on your time and you can literally time arbitrage with books because these authors are spending years of their lives researching and pouring out their expertise

Starting point is 00:04:11 that might have taken a decade to acquire and then you get to read that book in just a few hours and absorb all that information. Exactly and you know, I think when you, and there were different types of books. There are the books that really you're just developing yourself personally and professionally, and then there are the how-to books,

Starting point is 00:04:29 and they can provide, and such as the ones I purchased, and they were by Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins, the two that I purchased when I first saw them, they were roadmaps for me. They told me how to do what I needed to do. It was really, it was a methodology, it was a system. And to this day, I personally define a system as the process of predictably achieving a goal

Starting point is 00:04:53 based on a logical and specific set of how-to principles. The key being predictability, right? If it's been documented that by doing A, you can get the desired results of B, then you know all you need to do is A and continue to do A and continue to do A and eventually you'll get the desired results of B. So yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:05:14 And you think about how many years Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Ziegler spent learning their craft. And then as you said, they put it into book form and I got to read it within a few hours and you apply the information. So yeah, I think you really hit it right on the head. So I know we don't have that much time together, so I do want to get into the bulk of the interview and really understand what a go-giver is.

Starting point is 00:05:37 So go-giver is a very popular book series that you wrote with your co-author and there's four books in that series. I think it's Sales, Leadership, Influence, and then the original. And let's just understand what a go-giver is. I guess it's the difference between a go-getter and a go-giver. Well, kinda.

Starting point is 00:05:57 Let's look at that. So the basic premise of the go-giver is simply this, that shifting your focus, and this is really where it all begins, shifting your focus from getting to giving. Now when we say giving in this context, we simply mean constantly and consistently providing immense value to others,

Starting point is 00:06:15 understanding that doing so is not only a more fulfilling way of conducting business, it's the most financially profitable way as well. And not for any way out there, woo woo type of magical mystical reasons. It makes very logical, very rational sense. When you're that person, Hala, who can take your focus off yourself and place it on serving others, on discovering what they need, what they want, what they desire, focusing on helping them solve their challenge and problems,

Starting point is 00:06:46 taking your focus off of yourself and making it about helping to bring them closer to happiness. People feel good about you. People want to get to know you. They like you. They trust you. They want to be part of your life, part of your business. They want to tell others about you. Now, we would say in terms of go-giver and go-getter, it always depends on how you define terms, okay?

Starting point is 00:07:06 So what we like to say is we love go-getters because go-getters are people of action. You know, you're a go-getter as well as a go-giver. You're a person of action, right? And you started in radio, you went into, you had your blog that you had, you led a whole group of teams. As that died down, now you went into something.

Starting point is 00:07:23 You're a go-getter, but you're always providing value to others You're a go-giver and so we like people to be both go-getters people of action and go-givers People who are absolutely focused on providing immense value to others We would say the opposite of a go-giver is a go-taker and that's that person who feels almost taker and that's that person who feels almost Entitled if you will to take take take without having added value to to the person to the process to the situation and they tend to Be frustrated because they they rarely have the kind of sustainable success that they believe they have I love that go takers

Starting point is 00:08:03 I think that's really interesting and I can't wait to get into manipulation later on and I love that. Go-takers. I think that's really interesting. And I can't wait to get into manipulation later on. And I think that really ties nicely with manipulation as well. But before we get into that, even though influence, persuasion, manipulation is literally my favorite topic to talk about, let's talk about your five laws for success

Starting point is 00:08:21 that you talk about in GoGiver. What are those five laws at a high level? Okay, so there are the laws of value, compensation, influence, authenticity, and receptivity. The law of value is all about making the experience so wonderful for the prospective customer and client and eventual customer and client that aside from just the intrinsic value

Starting point is 00:08:42 of your product or service, it's the excellence, it's the consistency, it's the empathy, it's the attention, it's the gratitude, it's everything you put into the entire experience that makes it so worthwhile for them that they feel as though they're receiving much more in value than what they're paying. And they do, while you also make a very healthy profit. In any free market-based exchange, there should always be two profits, the buyer profits and the seller profits, because each of them come away much better off afterwards than they were beforehand. Let's hold that thought and

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Starting point is 00:12:29 That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Hey app fam! You know, the other day I was served an ad for a revolutionary dog grooming kit. I don't have a dog, I don't groom dogs, and I'm not even sure what a revolutionary dog grooming looks like. But that ad reminded me of something. That one of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. It doesn't matter how clever your message is or how great your product is.

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Starting point is 00:13:57 Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. So basically what you're saying is we need to provide more value than just what we're getting paid for, if I understand correctly. So how do you, like give us some examples, some concrete examples. How can you have an engagement with someone they're paying you? Give us examples of providing more than what they're paying you for and going and providing that extra value that they'll remember you for? Okay, so let's say you hire an accountant to do your taxes and she charges you, we'll just name a round figure, $1,000.

Starting point is 00:14:34 That's her fee or her price, okay? $1,000. But what value does she give you in exchange that is so immense. First, through her experience, her knowledge, her wisdom, her desire to find out about you and what you're looking to accomplish, she gets to know your business. She's able to save you $5,000 in taxes. She also saves you countless hours of time. She also provides you and your family with the security and the peace of mind of knowing it was done correctly. So she's just given you well over $5,000 in value

Starting point is 00:15:14 in exchange for a $1,000 payment of price. So you feel great about it, but she also made a very healthy profit because it's worth her time, it's worth her while, okay, to sell or lease her time, her energy, her expertise, her caring, her, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, totally. And so both of you come away much better off afterwards. Awesome.

Starting point is 00:15:39 Okay, law of compensation. Okay, so this says that your income is determined by how many people you serve, as well as how well you serve them. So where law number one says give more in value than you take in payment, law number two tells us that the more people whose lives you touch with the exceptional value you provide, the more money with which you'll be rewarded.

Starting point is 00:16:00 Nicole Martin, the CEO in that part of the story, told Joe, the protege, that law number one, the law of value represents your potential income, but it's law number two, the number of lives you impact that represent your actual income. So we could say exceptional value plus significant reach equals very high compensation. Got it.

Starting point is 00:16:22 So my question for this law is really about referrals, because if we want to expand our sphere of people that we help, I think the best way to do it is through referrals. And you are the guru when it comes to getting referrals. So tell us about some key strategies. And I know we've got to be a little bit quick, but what are your best strategies for getting referrals? Well, it's building the relationship.

Starting point is 00:16:47 One of the things that I said, the premise of endless referrals and something that was in the GoGiver was that all things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know, like, and trust. So this is really where law number three of the GoGiver comes into play, right?

Starting point is 00:17:05 The law of influence. Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first, which isn't to say in any way that you should be anyone's doormat or a martyr or self-sacrificial. It's just that when you look at the all things being equal, the no like and trust, what do we see? That placing that other person's interests first, okay, that is the way to develop that know, like and trust toward you and others. And that's how referrals will happen because you're developing, you're creating these great

Starting point is 00:17:35 relationships with people. The way you begin doing it is from that very first conversation to make it not about you, but about them. It's asking them questions about themselves and their business, not in a prospecty type of way, just in a way that creates a relationship. It's asking them how they got started in their business and what they enjoy most about it.

Starting point is 00:17:57 It's asking that person what I call the one key question that will distinguish you from the rest, which is how can I know if someone I'm speaking with is a good customer for you? Which totally reframes everything from being the typical, I'm out there trying to give my elevator speech and sell you my product or service the first time I meet you, to, I want to know how to help you. I want to know how to serve you. I want to know how to bring value to you.

Starting point is 00:18:24 And it's the same whether you're in person or online. You know, you're really a LinkedIn expert. You're someone who's so lit. You have such a huge audience on LinkedIn. And how many times do you see when someone sends you a connection request, what's the first thing they do after you connect? They send you a sales, they write to buy from them.

Starting point is 00:18:44 Well, are you going to create a relationship with that person? Probably not. They send you a sales thing, right, to buy from them. Well, are you going to create a relationship with that person? Probably not. But it's probably the person who's asking themselves a question, hmm, how do I add value to Hala's life, to her business? How can I comment on one of her posts

Starting point is 00:19:01 or one of her interviews? You know, how can I share something that's going to bring her value? How can I get to know her in a way that she sees that my focus is on? That's how we start the referral process. Now there's certain questions we can ask once the no like and trust is there to create the context where the person's probably going to give us great referrals, but it always begins with the relationship

Starting point is 00:19:25 Hmm. I'm gonna have to have you back on to just talk about referrals at some point Because I think it was so- We can do that. We can do 30 minutes just on that. I know, for real. Okay, so let's go on to I think we got to law- we're at law- the law of influence. We kind of did law of influence. We did that within the Within that so we sort of we sort of snuck that in a little bit because it's again, it's placing the other person's interest first, not in a self-sacrificial way, but in a way that benefits everyone concerned.

Starting point is 00:19:52 So I do want to dive a little deeper on this influence topic because I heard you saying something on another interview and I loved it. And that's the fact that when you're a true person of influence, you're not pushing, you're pulling. Talk to us about that, because I think that's really powerful. Sure. So if we ask what influence is, because remember, you know, the word influence has been thrown around so much now that people have lots of different definitions for it. And so I think if we look at it first on a very basic level,

Starting point is 00:20:24 influence can be defined simply as the ability to move a person or persons to a desired action, usually within the context of a specific goal. That's the definition, but it's not its essence. Because the essence of influence, as you said, is pull as opposed to push. How far can you push a rope? Well, not very, well, at least not very fast

Starting point is 00:20:48 or very effectively, which is why great influencers don't push, they don't push their will on others, they don't push their ideas on others, they're not pushy, right? You never hear someone say, wow, that David or that Mary, she is so influential. She has a lot of push with people. No, Mary's influential, she has a lot of push with people. No, Mary's influential, she has a lot of pull with people.

Starting point is 00:21:10 So how does that pull manifest itself? Well, again, and this is that law of influence, it goes back to placing the other person's interest first. The genuine influencer asks themselves questions to make sure they're facing the right way. See, I believe that we need to be internally motivated, but outwardly focused. Because remember, people don't do things for our reasons.

Starting point is 00:21:37 They do it for their reasons. I often, when I speak at sales conferences, I'll often say, nobody's gonna buy from you because you have a quota to meet. Right? They're not gonna buy from you because you have a quota to meet Right. They're not gonna buy from you because you need the money or even because you're a really nice person They're gonna buy from you because they believe they'll be better off by doing so than by not doing so which is the only reason We could ever expect or should ever expect anyone to to buy from us. So so the genuine influencer So the genuine influencer asks questions of themselves

Starting point is 00:22:08 to make sure they're outwardly focused. For example, how does what I'm asking this person to do, how does it align with their goals, with their needs, with their wants, with their desires? How does what I want this other person to do, how does it align with their values? What problems am I helping them to solve? How am I helping them to get to a direction or get to a place where they want to be? Now, when we ask ourselves these questions thoughtfully, intelligently, genuinely, authentically,

Starting point is 00:22:42 not as a way to manipulate another human being into doing our will, but as a way of building everyone in the process. Now we've come a lot closer to earning that person's commitment, right? As opposed to trying to depend on some type of compliance or push. The other thing I really want to cover for my listeners is the difference between influence, persuasion, and manipulation. Because I think they're all slightly different and I think it will help us understand where on the spectrum we want to be. Sure. So if influence is a matter of being able to move a person to a desired action, there are two ways to influence you could do it through Persuading another human being or you could do it through

Starting point is 00:23:36 Manipulating another human being one's positive one's negative right now the interesting thing is both persuaders and manipulators Understand human nature. They understand what motivates people, they understand how to move people to action. In a sense, you could say persuasion and manipulation are cousins. Now, one's the good cousin, persuasion, and one's the evil cousin, manipulation. If we want to describe manipulation, I think the person who described it best was a guy by the name of Paul W. Sweats, who wrote a book published in 1987 called The Art of Talking So That People Will Listen, which was really more about listening than it was about talking, but that was the title.

Starting point is 00:24:12 It was a wonderful book. And in it he said, manipulation aims at control, not cooperation. It does not consider the good of the other party, and it results in a win-lose situation. Now in direct contrast to the manipulator, the persuader always seeks to enhance the self-esteem or I would say the position of the other party. People respond better because they're treated as responsible, response-able, self-directing individuals. So it begins really with intent, though that's not where it ends.

Starting point is 00:24:52 But here's the thing, see, a manipulator may not be trying to necessarily hurt the other person, but if that's what it takes to get their way, they'll do so because it's all about them and their needs. With a persuader, that can never happen. Because for a persuader to be happy with the situation and with themselves, they have to know that not only has the other person benefited, but that the other person feels good about the situation.

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Starting point is 00:30:38 is really about the fact that people love to be the ones making their own decisions and they want to make their own decisions. So tell us about the law of the back door. I thought this was really interesting. Well, thank you. Yes, autonomy is a key aspect of human nature. People wanna feel they're in control of their own lives.

Starting point is 00:31:00 Okay? An out or a back door is an emotional escape hatch you give someone so that they never feel as though they're back into a corner. So Berg's law of the out or back door simply says the bigger the out or back door you give someone to take, the less they'll feel the need to take it. So you don't necessarily give them that out so that they'll take it, although if they think they should, they will, which that would make sense.

Starting point is 00:31:29 But no, you do it so that they feel comfortable enough with you and the situation that they don't feel pressured and they don't feel the need to take that out or back door. So even saying something, let's say you have a prospect, a sales prospect, and you're in front of that person and they kind of come to the table kind of defensive and it's well, don't think I'm gonna buy anything necessarily from you, I'm not some easy sell.

Starting point is 00:31:56 Why did they fit? But who knows what their experience has been? We never know what someone's experience is. Maybe there's somebody took advantage of them or maybe they really are someone who doesn't trust themselves to make this up. I don't know. But what we can do is refrain this

Starting point is 00:32:11 using the out or back door. So it might be something like, Susan, while we've been fortunate to be able to help a lot of people with this product, whether or not it's the right fit for you, we simply can't know without exploring deeper, and both of us discovering that. So please know that this conversation is for both of us

Starting point is 00:32:30 to determine whether this would be right for you, and if it is, great. If not, that's okay too. And I bet you you could even do that in a simpler manner. Like if you just wanna hop on a call with someone, you could be like, hey, you're probably slammed this Friday, but if you have time, would you be able to hop on a call? Like, does it work in, yeah,

Starting point is 00:32:49 it even works in simple situations like that. Very, very much. Okay, so I know we have two more laws that we didn't cover, and so I just wanna make sure my listeners understand them at least at a high level, so I believe it's the law of- Law from Sydney. Yep, go ahead. Most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. And in this law, Deborah, who was the mentor

Starting point is 00:33:11 in this part of the story, explained that all the skills in the world, the sales skills, technical skills, people skills, as important as they are, and they are all very important, they're also all for not if you don't come at it from your true authentic core. But when you do, when you show up as yourself, day after day, week after week, month after month, people feel good about you,

Starting point is 00:33:34 people feel comfortable with you, they feel safe with you, and why not? They know who it is they're getting. So authenticity is a very powerful part of building trust. Now I think today authenticity know, today authenticity, just like influence, it's a word that gets bandied about so much. I think people kind of confuse aspects of it.

Starting point is 00:33:53 I think, you know, a lot of people I believe think authenticity means you have no boundaries. Say whatever you want, do whatever you want, this is how I am, take it or leave it. Which by the way, good philosophy if you want no happy relationships and you don't feel like being successful in business, then it's a good philosophy, but otherwise no, it's really not.

Starting point is 00:34:12 Authenticity does not mean you have no boundaries. Authenticity simply means you act congruently with your values, okay? It should never be used as an excuse for staying where you are It's like the person who says well I have anger issues and I yell at a lot and I yell at people a lot and if I were to act any differently That wouldn't be authentic of me. That's baloney. That's hogwash

Starting point is 00:34:36 It simply means that person has an authentic problem That that person needs to authentically work on in order to become a better, more effective, higher version of their authentic selves. Got it. And so thank you so much for explaining that. And then your last law. The law of receptivity says the key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving. This means nothing more than understanding that yeah, you breathe out, you also have to breathe in.

Starting point is 00:35:08 It's not one or the other, it's both. Breathe out carbon dioxide, you breathe in oxygen, you breathe out which is giving, you breathe in which is receiving. Giving and receiving, despite the many anti-prosperity messages we receive from the world around us, which is really a shame. Despite that, giving and receiving are not opposite concepts.

Starting point is 00:35:30 They're simply two sides of the very same coin, and they work in tandem. The key is that you focus on the giving, and you allow the receiving, which is why John David Mann and I say that money is simply an echo of value. So you focus on the receiving, which is why John David Mann and I say that money is simply an echo of value. So you focus on the giving and when you do this and you create such wonderful value for

Starting point is 00:35:53 others, you've created that benevolent context for success and then you allow yourself to receive as a natural result of the value you've given. I think that's a really important point. A lot of people kind of block themselves off from receiving all the good that they've put out for themselves, so I totally agree there. So the last question that I ask all my guests is what is your secret to profiting in life?

Starting point is 00:36:18 I think it goes back to a definition, as you can tell, so many things go back to definitions, right? And I think it's when we, you know, we talked about authenticity, acting congruently with your values. I think happiness, which is really what it's all about. When you think about it, at the end of our life,

Starting point is 00:36:32 what is it? It's how happy we were, right? I would define, I personally define happiness as an ongoing and genuine feeling of joy and peace of mind, the result of living congruently with one's values. So I think that with everything we do, if we're able to check on this is what I'm about to do congruent with my values, congruent with the person who I believe I am and or want to become, then I think we create that context for happiness,

Starting point is 00:37:06 which doesn't mean life is rainbows and unicorns either, life is life, okay? But it means that we have that ongoing sense of happiness. Makes sense. Thank you so much, Bob. This was such a wonderful conversation. Where can our listeners go to learn everything about you and what you do?

Starting point is 00:37:24 Best place is burg.com. Awesome. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Bob Burg on Closing More Deals with the Go-Giver Sales Strategy | Sales | YAPClassic

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