How Salespeople Make You Fall In Love

author James Clear was always on my dream list of people to interview on this podcast when the opportunity to interview him finally came a few months ago it had to be recorded remotely and if you're a regular follower you know that I don't often do remote interviews I immediately started researching trying to find the best possible tool available and the one name that came up consistently was Riverside if you don't already know Riverside is a platform specifically designed for highquality remote video and audio recording and it's good for anyone who needs reliable recordings of remote conversations what I loved about using it is that it puts users first for example it records audio and video locally on each person's device which means better quality even with varying internet connection one less thing to worry about when it comes to editing speaking of which their editing tools make post-production a breeze with features like animated captions and text overlays when you're editing you get instant feedback on exactly how your changes impact the overall look and feel of the project you can also upload content into Riverside and leverage their super easy editing features such as their text based editor and automatic clip Generation by the way if you want to watch or listen to the James Clear episode you definitely should to see how it turned out when I used Riverside it's episode number 65 right now you can try Riverside for free just click the link below and when you purchase a plan you can get 15% off with code Erica just go to erica.com Riverside remember Erica is always with a K that's erica.com Riverside I'll put the link in the description so you can try it for free I'm Erica Colberg and you're listening to the Erica taught me podcast so what what do you think is the difference between excellent salespeople versus mediocre salespeople before before Colin answers that question I want to call out the word salespeople that you mentioned because it's important to note that everybody is a salesperson like I want to make sure that if we're going to dive in and start this interview talking about selling that you realize that anybody listening sells yes there are salese who are salesp people by trade but if you are selling your ideas at work if you are selling your children on eating their broccoli if you are selling your friends on where to go out to dinner you are selling so all of the stuff that we're going to talk about for the next however long when we talk about selling we're talking about leading and teaching and inspiring and motivating and a whole bunch of other things so I don't I don't want to turn anybody off right at the beginning where they're like oh we're talking about salesperson we're talking about you dear listener so I know you wanted to answer but I wanted to get that out there before we did that yeah that's a great answer um so picky back on that we we say it often that everyone is either selling themselves selling an idea or selling someone else's idea and that's okay and what we found is that the difference between those who are selling at a high level and those that are trying to figure out or figure it out is that like they're not self-confident they're self-aware so like they're talking to someone they know in real time I realize that this person is not listening to me they are waiting to speak and they can course Direct in real time or they realize oh this person as I'm talking to them doesn't understand what I'm trying to say like they think that I am trying to sell them and really like I'm ask them a question I actually want to know the answer ansers to or they think I'm trying to extract value and in actuality like I'm not I am trying to add value so these people are just really self-aware really self-confident to answer your question directly like what's the difference the difference is like great sales people are the exact opposite of who people think they are and so they show up that way and we'll ask them like what do you think of when you hear the word salesperson I also was thinking about sales as an everyone as a seller yeah like I distinctly remember when I was in college I met the first lawyer of my life I didn't know any lawyers growing up and I asked him what the most important skill set was and he said to be a good communicator and Warren Buffett also says be a good communicator that's the most important skill but I actually think one level up to be the best skills that anyone can have if you want to get rich is to be a good salesperson be good at selling because that means not only are a good communicator but you are self-aware and you're persuasive in the way that you communicate yeah right so take that a step further then because that's so imagine like you're talking to someone and you realize you said something and it didn't land what do you do do you just continue to move on or do you just acknowledge it you know what that did not land and I'm able to course correct and real time and make sure that I acknowledge it or when someone's listening to you and they're like I actually think this person's waiting to speak like how do you adapt in real time like there's like this we talk about pathological optimism a lot as like this uh this course theme across great sales people it's not because they're naive it's just because they know what a conversation sounds like when you don't need something from someone like imagine if you already thought the person was on your team already was your partner already was a customer how real would you be with them so succinctly put I think that the greatest sellers on the planets are showing pieces of themselves most people have been taught to hide since their you know professional career took off and we're just trying to get back to people like people like themselves so why not show someone you're imperfect ASAP so that you can Vibe yeah what is pathological optimism pathological optimism is a characteristic trait that we have found across really great leaders really great sellers really great influential people it's where someone truly believes in the upside of the conversation of the of the outcome so like an example would be me and your having today South by so pathological optimism is we believe that this room is going to be full right we believe that the value in our product is going to be immense and so then we come from a place of optimism not because we're naive but because we actually believe in what we're saying and so we're able to have that conversation so that when someone's talking to you they're not thinking huh I feel like I'm being manipulated I feel like I'm being sold to as opposed to why does this person continue to see the good in me when I'm not looking for it right believe in the opportunity and you talk about good salespeople and good selling and there's this weird thing that happens and we see it all the time especially we're like we teach a class called sales mindset for entrepreneurs at USC so we get to see these college students who are going out into their first job and we've we've As Leaders as sales leaders as coaches we've seen sales people and anytime get into a selling situation they like become this person that they aren't they want to be this person that they're not supposed they think I have to put on this particular act to be a salesperson I have to know what I exactly what I'm talking about I have to sound a certain way I have to be an extrovert even if I'm not and the reality is great sellers are they throw those rules quote unquote out the window like they they know that they can use their own strengths whatever they may be as Colin said to be able to have a a meaning meaningful conversation connect with somebody and teach them something that is going to allow them to make a decision that's good for them one of the things that you were both saying is that you have to be quite self-aware and you have to know whether your messaging is hitting right so how can you tell whether your messaging is hitting right and you have to course correct it's different for everybody in a weird way we have this rule that we talk about in class often which is if you think you sound cheesy you're right you sound cheesy or if you think you sound like you're being pushy or you're right like we all have that inner Compass where we're like you know what this this just feels like it's not Landing right now the greats are just better at listening to that and we found that you can teach it and you can start to learn it as you start to look for it and label it but in general we all have that voice in our head where it's like you know what this story I'm telling right now is rambling a little bit and you're right your story is probably rambling if you're thinking that so that it's that self-awareness element that like the first five minutes of this podcast when you were talking yeah yeah no we ask this question often you know what do you think of when you hear the word salesperson and people will say manipulative smarmy yucky lying like we just just happened and then we'll say this the next question which is well who's the greatest salesperson you can think of and the top two answers are Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Steve Jobs and the close third are people's partners and people's kids and you think about that in congruence like how is it that you just said yucky when we asked you what you thought of when you heard the word salesperson and then you talk about someone you Revere and you admire when we ask you who the greatest salesp person is that you can think of so there's this amazing in congruence that we live in like the antithesis of great salese are great sales people and so we just you know we need people to see themselves in that because you can't change the world you can't change anybody's world if you don't know how to move people yeah and that's why we started teaching I think right like it was like we were seeing these new entrance into the workforce they didn't know how to move people they couldn't chase their dream they couldn't ask for promotions they couldn't ask for projects they couldn't even like raise their hand and say this is what I want to do in 3 years and so we were like okay let's teach the class that we wish other people were teaching right now and then the book came out of that I just think we need to reframe sales people like if sales people have this negative association with it then you need to call it persuasion or you need to call it the art of yeah aligning people with your vision it's exactly right most people that we talked to as we were writing the book we can get into that a little bit as far you know we thought we were going to be writing a book about the greatest salespeople on the planet and how they thought and how they approached selling and what ended up happening was we would ask these questions that Colin just asked and we would ask the people we were interviewing we would say who's the greatest salesperson you know and so we started out with down the line real you know professional salespeople and they were giving us answers immediately of people who did not have sales in their title it would be you know artists or the cupcake shop owner in their home town or who knows what but we would ask if we could talk to these people and so then we would start having conversations with non-sales people and ask them about the quote unquote selling that they do every day and they all sounded the same it was crazy like it didn't matter if we were talking to the number one salesperson at Adobe or an artist who's world-renowned for her feminist paintings and was nervous about going to an an art opening in Germany because she had to sell paintings like they were saying the same things and so those became the buckets that we write about in the book and that we teach about the most interesting thing was it didn't matter what Walk of Life you came from the greats the successful ones still approached it in exactly the same way yeah there's like a sense of agency that is so hard you know how like a lot of times early in your career you think you're supposed to know it all yeah and then at some point you realize damn like people don't like being in a room with know-it-alls and then all of a sudden you're like wait a minute like have I been lost this whole time like I thought I was supposed to be a knower and now I'm realizing that people want me to be a learner and I have to authentically be a learner like you have to actually ask questions that you really want to know the answers to like that's a very hard transition from someone who's being trained their entire life to act like someone they're not and then to give permission so like this the sense of agency is what we found is just a huge through line across great salese that when you realize people will say no to you because you're right like when you realize that people will say no to you because you have the answers when people are like ah I don't feel like part of this decision like I don't feel like you need me or you value me so like why would I say yes if you don't even need me in the process like we have found that these great sellers these great leaders these great people like they create a sense of agency in the people they're talking to so that the people that they're leading want to work for them want to fight for them not have to fight for them or have to work for them their customers feel like they are part of the decision- Mak process like it's really hard to ask someone a question never heard before MH like that's like we wrote the book we were like hey why are great sellers asking questions that no one else is asking it's not because they're asking leading questions it's because they're thinking about these people differently like like in their head the conversations they're having with themselves are different than most people you come out and you ask them on a question you've never heard before you will ideate for the first time in real time on that answer whatever that answer is that's your answer like you own that like someone didn't sell you on that answer like you take ownership if I never saw you again I gave a gift by asking you a question that you've never heard of before like these great leaders sellers people are Masters at creating a sense of agency and the people that they are selling to so give me an example of that kind of question you can ask that someone has never been asked before we call them impactful questions um and like Colin said it's these questions that add value it's they are generally never yes or no questions they're always open-ended um and if you think about a selling situation like let's talk about a typical selling situation you're usually extracting value when you're asking questions what's your budget tell me your budget what's your timeline you know tell me this and it's stuff that people know and they know why you're asking it but all of these greats they come in and they ask these impactful questions that do this adding a value so there's a million different ones and and we have a lot of fun in our class every semester we'll trade them we'll be like okay you guys think of a an impactful question and tell us and then we'll give you one of our favorites because we literally collect them like gold and so it could be anything Colin's favorite is just something like what rules should we be breaking I love that which is a great question because you never really think about things in that context like yeah there are rules that we have in whatever context we're thinking of that maybe we don't actually need to stick to every time um we do an interviewing session with our students because a lot of them want to either interview people to join their startups or give interview get interviewed so that they can join a company of their own and you know everybody at the end of an interview is going to say oh what you know do you have any questions for me and they're going to hear the same questions all the time and one of those questions is always going to be what does it take to succeed in this role which is a fine question but the interviewer has been asked that question a thousand times if they interview enough people to make that an impactful question it could be as simple as just putting some constraints on it and saying of the three people who have been most successful in this role what is something that they all had in common that person's never thought about it in that context before they've never said oh let me actually go back and think of specific individuals and what they had in common as opposed to the textbook answer that I have here which is you know coachability and thriving in a in a crazy environment and all the other things that they have so it's really it's not easy but it is simple to change a non- impactful question into an impactful question yeah yeah we have a lot of them um like one of my favorites is like if you could only spend resources on one problem that you're currently facing like what would it be we have so many problems that we're facing like you want me to isolate that like let me think about that but whatever that answer is once again that's my answer not your answer and if you like all of a sudden every the internet broke and we left that's your answer like for the rest of your life like I gave you it's such a rare breed of per of people that you could ask questions that add value yeah most people are just sucking it out of you and I want to say that they're not leading questions like why they're special isn't because they're asking impactful questions like they're special because they want to know the answers to the questions that most people don't that's why they special you can't ask an impactful question that you don't actually want to know the answer to so going back to your first question about what makes a great seller like they genuinely want to know the answers to the questions they ask they find a way and different ways to get into the head space where they're like I need to know more about this person I want to dig into the problem that I might be able to help thems I want to dig into other things just to get to know them individually that caring of what the answer is separates the person who's just reading from a script and going through the motions and having a conversation with 30 people every day from the person who gets to have a conversation with people that they are genuinely excited about learning more about credit card rewards when used properly can really maximize your shopping experience and add serious value but which one should you use and when if you're tired of guessing and want a smarter effortless way to never miss out on rewards again then you need Kudos your automatic guide to maximizing every swipe Kudos is a free smart wallet that does everything from suggesting the best card use checkout autofilling your card info in one click and recommending new credit cards to earn you even greater rewards my favorite feature is that Kudos also doubles your credit card rewards on over 15,000 sites that means if you usually earn 4% on Walmart or Sephora you'll now get 8% back with Kudos that's basically free money Kudos is trusted by over 150,000 members who collectively earned over $100 million in credit card rewards last year all while maintaining a perfect five-star review there's a reason why card rates calls Kudos the number one app to multiply your credit card rewards it's just that good so what are you waiting for Kudos works on all major desktop browsers and your iPhone just click the link below and use code Erica to get kudos for free today as an added bonus Kudos is giving my viewers 2,000 points after your first eligible purchase that's the equivalent of getting $20 back stop leaving money on the the table and start getting more out of your credit cards click the link below and use code Erica to get kudos for free today so I'd love to go through these different scenarios where it is very important to be good at selling whether selling yourself selling a vision whatever it is and I think the one that applies to the most number of people listening is that interview situation so what else can you tell me about how to succeed in an interview by being a better seller yeah that's a really good question that might be an impactful question the first thing I would do is know that if you are interviewing me for a job I am selling I'm selling myself to you and yes you're selling your company and stuff to me but I am you know realizing that that is an actual sales situation I think is step one and that and that it's okay it's not a bad word we uh we talk about this concept in the book it's called showing your work like in math class like in high school like you got credit for showing your work to the answer not just showing the answer so we have students all the time and they're like I don't want to show up like some privileged USC kid that like just like is interviewing like everybody else and like what do I do like how do I not show up that way and we're like should show your work like what do you mean like do that say that like say the part that's in your head first before you say the right side of the equal sign so these kids these students will go in these interviews and they'll be like you know what I have not had the easiest time preparing for this interview in fact I even asked my two professors like how do I make sure I don't show up like the person I don't want to be because I don't want to be so some privileged USC kid that like is entitled to this interview and then what I realized was and then they say the right side of the equal sign and like that's when people start to see themselves in you right like when you're not perfect when you're Perfectly Imperfect when you show what's going on inside of your head and we saw during the interview process we were interviewing people that would talk to themselves out loud like it's a craziest thing ever but like now that I say it you probably do it all the time like we're interviewing this guy we're like hey like tell us yourself my name is Jason you know I'm a senior vice president and he stopped like right when he was introducing himself he stopped and he looked up the ceiling he was like what did I just do that for I gotta stop that you're like what and he looks at us he's like can I start again oh we're like sure my name is Jason I'm a father I'm a philanthropist I'm a he didn't want it to R Define himself the point is is that Garrett and I after that interview we were like why did we like him so much we've been deconstructing people like trying to find the good the bad the indifferent and for some reason this guy he took us on this high for those three seconds that micro moment of connection we were like this is one of the greatest sales people in the city and for three seconds we know he's not he's not selling us and like that high we never came back down and then we saw it like in every interview that we've ever done yeah I think two weeks later we were interviewing one of the top trial lawyers in California and you talk about a selling job you're he's representing a client selling to the 12 members of the jury uh while his competition is literally poking holes in his sale in real time and he said he was making some kind of argument and the judge interrupted him and said can you repeat what you just said and and we weren't talking to him by the way about talking to yourself out loud he was just telling us a story he goes yeah the judge interrupted me and I stopped and I looked up and I went what did I just say he says I look back down I go your honor I have no idea what I just said and the jury laughed and the judge laughed and for that moment you know he was just a nervous person in the courtroom just like everybody else and it wasn't a tactic none of these people are doing this as a tactic and that's another thing that differentiates great sellers is that you could read sales books all day long and you could weaponize that stuff you say oh I'm I know human psychology now and I'm gonna do this and these people don't do that they just he was vulnerable enough and comfortable enough to show his work and for that moment he wasn't that attorney who was going to say anything he was just a person um and and these people do that all the time I've done that m ever on purpose but for example I don't know maybe a month ago I was doing a live session and teaching people there were tons of people on this live session I was teaching them the difference between a Roth IRA and a 401k and I've talked about this a thousand times I know it like the back of my hand but for some reason like combination of lack of sleep stressful like stuff going on in my personal life I got it all jumbled and I started explaining the crisscross version and I just got so nervous on this live that I said like give me a moment please and then I think I got it right the last time but I was just so in my head about it and at the end of it the feedback I like apologized profusely everyone I said I'm so sorry I don't know what's gotten into me and the feedback was like we love you Erica you're doing a great job and it was the nicest feedback that's the moment that makes perfect sense that's the moment the moment when people see themselves in you is the mo that's sales right like you want someone to look for the good in you you want someone to believe in you like how do you get that that's a hard cm to cross like what do you do like you have to have that moment that moment when someone goes oh this is Erica like she's oh she's just like me sorry I almost cursed she's just like me like I see I make mistakes like people like value perfection in such this weird way we forget that like we get an icky feeling when someone's too perfect like it's a gut feeling and if I let Garrett talk about science he'll tell you like why it lives in the gut but like it's a gut feeling all the time people do not like people that are perfect because we know it doesn't exist so if people like to buy from people like themselves how how does a half black half white Jewish guy relate to a 67y old Mormon right like across the country like the only thing that we have in common that I know of without ever meeting her is we're both imperfect it's just a matter of like who's imperfect first like during Co like that was like lockdown was huge for us we were seeing these groups of people that like were not good at selling and then for some reason during lockdown they were thriving we had no idea why but we saw these patterns that were emerging and they were all different verticals so we didn't we knew it wasn't about like what they were selling so they had to been doing something in common so we're like why are these Underachievers all of a sudden thriving during lockdown we go and we start rewinding all the zooms because we were in a position to be able to do that and what we were finding was all of their conversations for the first five minutes sounded identical they were like hey I don't even know if we should be having this conversation right now like this is like very weird that's my wife behind me like trying to chase my two-year-old to put on an adult-sized mask like this before we figured out how to like blur the backgrounds like I I don't even know if I should be in the same room as them like really frantic and I'm like anyways I'm sorry I just want to call out the elephant in the room and like all the time you'd see these people on the other end of the zoom go oh thank you for saying that like this is so weird this is my first pandemic too like you would see these people live in this like shared experience you've never seen a salesperson and a customer get on the same page in the first you know 36 seconds because they knew they were living in a shared experience they knew that that covid experience they were living that other person was living and that's what we see in these unsold like that's just a microcosm of what we're seeing in all these great sellers like they know without a shadow of a doubt they're living in a shared experience with the person they're talking to and all they have to do is just show the piece of themselves that most people are hiding and they're like oh that's me you're me we say it all the time yeah that's what our message is all about like how do you get into that mindset where you genuinely and authentically care and want to ask those questions where you genuinely and authentically can give yourself permission to be that vulnerable um or to say those things we talk a lot about like when I was um engaged like I had this fiance who was a very big wedding planner so she would take my work calendar and she would put our wedding like planning invites in between my work meetings oh yes she's industrious she's and you know like I'm not going to tell my fiance I have a hard stop at 3M so what that means is that I would show up late to a lot of meetings and I'd just show up and I'd be like I'm so sorry like I'm the leader of this organization like I shouldn't be late and i' I'd frantically like just justify it like I have this fiance and like wedding planning and like buam Vilas and tulips it doesn't matter I'm sorry like I just want you to know I should have been here early I will be early you know moving forward and like the responses were always the same like Colin don't worry about it it gets really easy on your second marriage quote right Colin don't worry about it like I've been married for 30 years happy wife happy life but it's like the minute that I said it was a moment that they saw themselves in me the moment that they gave me Grace like the moment that they that they realized it like it didn't matter how different we were like oh you're you are me and maybe that wasn't the inflection point like maybe the inflection point was me realizing I saw myself in them so I could treat them like someone how are you adversarial with someone that's like you so anyways but that's a paradigm shift for a lot of people yeah that's like what we were talking about earlier about how you have this this box that you think you're supposed to fit into as a seller or anything else like you give yourself permission to be imperfect like that and all of a sudden you can sell as a conversation or as yourself instead of as whatever the idea is that you have in your head I always think about how my you remember from law school when you're going through interviews for these law firms there's so many interviews back toback you're doing like 10 in a day and there was this one interview that I got a call back meaning the law firm really loved me they said we're going to fly you out to New York to do more interviews because we loved you so much and I thought what did I discuss on this interview and I realized the whole time we talked about how she did ballet growing up and I also did ballet growing up and it was like there was nothing substantive nothing related to the law that we talked about yet because we were able to connect so quickly on the ballet topic she walked away from the interview thinking wow Erica seems great when really she didn't know anything about me that's perfect and you weren't doing that as a tactic you weren't like oh I'm going to get her to talk about ballet ballet instead of my my legal background but like that is what human connection is all about and that's that's selling Colin said earlier that's how you move people and that that sounds like a perfect example what do you do if you're in a conversation and you're just not connecting on anything you're not finding that Synergy that topic that you align on oh that's my favorite that is an amazing opportunity to show your work show your work you know what a gleck is no you know what a gleck is GLE yeah a Gleek no a gleck is like when you accidentally spit on someone or you it like comes from under your tongue from the depths of your soul like you're just talking no no abely le on someone like you'll be talking I know multiple people in this room have gleaked on out you're just talking and then all of a sudden and it just the velocity is different and it and it just like comes out of nowhere okay you've done it trust mein even if no one's told you was wor oh [ __ ] you just B no it's so what I'm saying is is like we sell this all the time Garrett cringes every time I say it but it's the best it's the best analogy there's two types of people in this world the type of people that gleak on you and act like they didn't just hakal Lugi on you and the type of people that GLE on you and like oh my God I just spit on you I'm so sorry like we value you the people that acknowledge their imperfections like if you spit on me and you act like you didn't just spit on me if you're talking and you jumble the word and you act like you didn't jumble the word if you made a joke and it didn't land and you act like it landed like that is the most the biggest turnoff you can have as opposed to someone just being like that that was not funny so take away from spit and answer your question yeah if you feel like in a conversation is not going great it is perfectly okay to go you know like I feel like this isn't Landing or there there are ways to say it again that are comfortable to you and the way that you say that may be different than the way I say it or the way Colin says it but it's it's probably okay especially in a selling situation to be like you know normally when I'm talking about this I'm seeing my my potential customers leaning in and they're excited I'm not getting that like is there something that's missing here and just call it out and have the conversation in a way that feels right to you yeah yeah we say If you think you sound cheesy you're right another example of it y like Garrett and I could say the same exact thing one of us could cringing like oh my God I just said that and the other one of us be like damn that felt good in an interview what is the best way to answer the question tell me about yourself for me that's a hard question so I would acknowledge that first I would say that is a hard question because when I'm thinking about it I go I want you to know that I'm a philanthropist like I want you to know that I'm a teacher like I want you to know how much I care about my kids but at the same time like this is a profession podast and I think what you actually care about is like who I am in the Enterprise like who I am as an author who I am as like a friend of Garrett um so I'll answer the question and then I'll give you the answer but that was that that part was like me being honest like showing my work on what was on the left side of the equal sign like telling you how I was thinking about answering it and then I'll give it to you on the right side by saying I I am a human being that really values like people like you know I have a lot of goals but I view them as mile markers not as Finish Lines and I have this purpose and if I'm being really honest like I've manufactured this purpose so that I'm in the best part of the movie at every time right which means even when I'm hitting my goals like I'm still in the chase part of the movie so if I'm telling you who I am I'm the person that values being in the best part of the movie at every single moment I possibly can recognize that I am but that was 20 seconds right and 40 seconds was me showing you how I was thinking about it and like your viewers or listeners might think yeah I'm not hiring that dude yeah I was not gonna hire you that Dam it so you wanted me to go first you know but I'm okay I'm interested still the showing me the work part I think that makes sense to me yeah like it just shows a little vulnerability but then I feel like on the other half of the equation you got to be sharp and on it like right I mean I am not hiring you if you're too good because it's just too scripted like if I told you who I was like without skipping a beat and like without making a hiccup and just being like like boom boom boom boom boom like okay that didn't feel very impactful or Genuine or authentic so it just depends right to each his own like if you're not seeing yourself in me that's okay but at least I know I'm like showing up like giving you my truth you asked a really hard question like I'm not just going to BS you for 60 seconds like I'm gonna at least give you 30 seconds of letting you know how I'm trying to answer it and then 30 seconds of okay I think I figured out here's the answer as opposed to 60 seconds of an act and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't but we have a really good track record for our students um because this is the hardest thing for them to do like how do I brag about how do you brag about yourself it's the hardest thing in the world to brag about yourself so how do you teach them that the concept of showing your work like what are you grappling with like what are your issues that you can't answer this question confidently like what's the process that you're going through to figure out how to show up like as the best version of yourself are you supposed to show up as the best version of yourself like these are really interesting conversations that people care about I I think maybe I still don't buy it that's why I'm having a little skepticism you might value Perfection you might want me to be perfect yeah that's yeah part of why Colin and I work so all together aside from just being best friends is that we're very different and he's giving you a very emotional answer my answer will probably be more logical and which which makes sense because and that appeals to me I know that that's exactly it so every sale whether you're selling yourself in an interview or selling your product or anything else is some combination of logic and emotion sometimes it's 9010 sometimes it's 50/50 part of it is self-awareness who am I talking to if I'm talking to a very logical person I probably want to speak more logically about facts and specs and figures versus you know this is how you're going to feel when you're driving this car or using this product so I agree with everything Colin saying about showing your work and I do think that's important a more logical answer is that once you've acknowledged that how however topheavy you want to lean in on that and for you that might be less then you want to answer the question with something that can't be found on the resume because they know your backstory they know where you went to school and they know what your job history was how do you then weave the things that you're excited about telling them and wanting to tell them into a an interview answer and that's where that preparation comes in again too and one of the one of the pieces of advice that we give to all of our students and we do this big interview class every every semester um one of the pieces of advice we give is you know have three or four stories real stories about your life that you can adapt to any question because you know you're going to get the question about like what's your weakness they might not ask it that way they might not say what's your biggest weakness but they're going to say you tell me about a time you struggled or whatever have that story and tell me about this or tell me about that if you have three or four stories about things that you're proud of challenges that you've overcome and you can in real time then adapt and have the conversation weaving one of those stories in and making the point that you didn't make that's a very logical way to do that so I think if you can find whatever combination you're comfortable with of how do I let them in on here's what I want to tell you versus what I'm worried you want to hear but also hear some stories and some things that you're not going to find on the resume that's in front of you you're probably going to have a winning answer there got it okay so Colin's answer would have very much appealed to someone who is emotional and then your answer is would have appealed to someone who's logical so that means that as soon as possible during this interview you need to figure out whether the interviewer is logical or emotional right it's less about the interviewer and more about you also I mean yes you want to communicate in their language and you're going to figure that out but I think if this the first question in interview in an interview which it probably is and you're telling us that you're more logical and you don't quite want to let people in yet and show them the work you want to answer the question in a way that you're comfortable because otherwise you're going to be back to that faking it which is the seller that we all don't want to be yeah I I challenge it a little like he just did an great job of showing his work for two minutes like that was in a logical way sure but like we did the same thing right like he was telling you exactly what he was thinking and it it landed with that landed but literally the same thing though like he didn't actually answer a question the last two minutes was him telling you how he was thinking about answering it that's true right so so it doesn't matter if you're like G and I interview a lot of people like we help people interview a lot of people and like our rule of thumb is like can we hire people for you for us that have the hardest stuff to train like it is so hard to train someone to be vulnerable it is so hard to train someone to be authentic to be coachable to be optimistic to be curious to be creative like you that takes a long time to teach someone I can teach you X's and O's I can teach you the Tactical stuff immediately but I'd like to hire people that have the hardest stuff already down so when I'm interviewing someone or helping someone interview someone and they're showing their work and they're showing pieces of themselves that the last 10 people have been way too good to hide like I'm hiring that person like hands down doesn't matter because at least I know what I'm getting like I can see inside and then I can map it to what came out as opposed to someone that had just the right answer logical or emotional so I mean we're we're we're different people for sure but we both did the same thing and and it landed with you yeah one of them did okay that makes a lot of sense so every interview that I conduct before it even gets the interview stage with me they have to submit a loom video so they have up to five minutes so they can say anything that they want to on a video and it is very interesting how different people use those five minutes some the prompts we give them are tell us who you are what you do and why you could bring value to us and some people use it to tell me for four minutes about their dog and how much they love their hobbies and then like one minute business some people use it for five minutes what we what we can do for you and it's it's just super interesting to get into the weeds of how people think about how they best allocate those five minutes and I think the best ones that I've seen are not the ones that you use all five minutes to just hit me with all the facts of why I should hire them it's a some touch of personal vulnerability showing the work yeah and each one's going to be different because they're comfortable with different ratios yeah the brain's also so malleable like if you look for something you will find it like as an interviewer as an interviewee like if you're looking for the good in someone you'll find it if you're looking for the bad in someone you'll find it so like that there's an element of that like if you know that you have no idea yet I don't know if you're looking for the good in me or not so like what am I supposed to do yeah and that's where that process starts like let's see if I can just be my the like a real version of myself the real version of my authentic professional self where you see yourself in me and and the goal is not for you to see yourself in me the goal is for me to be such a real one in a professional setting where you're like oh yes I know exactly what that feels like and then you start like that's what sales is right like you're looking for people to believe in you you're looking for people to want to look for the good in you and that is a very very hard thing to do when you're walking into an interview setting when you have to sell me like how do I how do I how do I level the playing field so it's not like you're up here and I'm here like you have to see me the only way to really see me is if you see me in you and that's the whole show your worky we're talking about yeah I know you work a lot with companies when you go into a company and you're trying to help them improve their sales team well what kind of framework do you create for them to improve their sales team that was one of the most fun Parts about the bookwriting process was figuring out how do we come up with these ways where people can actually put this stuff into practice and so the best example I can give you is there's a traditional sales training um exercise called a 3X3 that a lot of typical sales trainers will teach and basically the premise of it is that before any sales call sales conversation sales meeting you spend three minutes doing research about the person or people that you're going to talk to and the subtext there is okay we're going to do some research and find things that we can leverage in the conversation so like we used to sell software security it might be if we were being taught by these traditional trainers they might be oh if you did some research and found out that their company had a security breach you could use that in the conversation or you can just do some research about them and use it to build rapport and that's fine research in a sales conversation is important but we never liked that because it always had this weird subtext of like you're leveraging it against the person that you're talking to and so we have changed it and adapted it over the years and we teach salespeople young and old to spend that three minutes doing research but instead of looking for three things that you can leverage in the conversation look for three things that you could love literally love about the person that you're going to talk to we do that exercise the first session of our class every semester so we've got these 60 students who think they've signed up for a sales mindset class and we tell them okay we give them 10 minutes you're you're we're going to pair you up with somebody in class who you don't are already know and you're going to spend 10 minutes falling in love with each other and we give them one piece of advice we say the only the only hint we're going to give you is focus on the questions that you would need to ask them in order to have the chance of falling in love with this person we see a lot of eye rolls and they like I thought this was a sales class and what am I doing here but they but you know they go and they do the exercise because they're captive audience at that point and without fail every single semester every single pair falls in love and it's magic we'll have like a future Olympic swimmer sitting with like the next Mark Zuckerberg they have nothing in common and they're like the F-word comes up it's fate it's fate that we sat next to each other I changed Majors as a sophomore and they changed Majors as a sophomore or like this past semester we had two students one of them was from a remote Village in China that nobody outside of that area has heard of and the person she was falling in love with his mother was from the exact same Village like it was fate that we sat next to each other but you know we dig in we have a conversation afterwards and we talk about what actually happened and without fail every single time the moment that people fall in love with the person they're talking to is the moment they see themselves in that person every single time and we never asked them to do that we didn't ask them to do that we asked them to fall in love we didn't ask them to ask questions that were rooted in their own values we didn't ask them ask questions like based on what they cared about we were like you got one shot focus on questions you have to fall in love what do you do and that's what they did because once again it's hard to have an adversary relationship with yourself and so they immediately were trying to find themselves in other people like your framework question just to give you like a different answer because that's an interesting one but a tieing to this is like we talk a lot with our students about a purpose framework and the reason why we do it is because students and professionals are so goal oriented it's just like yeah I want to I want to write my goals down I want to achieve them and we started like writing this book and we doing all this research and what we were finding were these like exceptional people out there wouldn't answer our questions around goals they just wouldn't every time we asked them about their goal orientation they shoehorned the word purpose in we're like we're not asking you about your purpose it's not this is not that book like tell us about your goals and it was unimportant to them to the point where like at some point they were like sure you want us talk let's talk about goals for a second sales people don't wake up one day and decide to be smarmy manipulative yucky like managers leaders they don't show up one day and decide to be Hypocrites or mean or krogans like that's not what happens like that is when your back's against the wall you're not hitting your goals and you start to act unnaturally and we were like huh yeah we've been there before and they're like what happens when you hit your goal like everyone we're talking to or saying some version of have you ever hit a goal and then you thought to yourself I thought this was going to feel different like if you hit a goal and you were like damn this is it you got to set another one that's your reward as you celebrate for a few minutes maybe a few days if you're lucky and then it's on to the next one and this framework that like that we put into place was because we found that these really successful people were viewing goals not like Finish Lines they were viewing them as mile markers which meant that like once they hit it they weren't like this is it they were like oh that's just one step closer to this purpose I have but our students were never trained to have a purpose writing framework or a purpose statement like we were all about goals so like when we get in front of our students and we show them how to write a purpose statement how to manufacture being in the best part of the movie at any given moment and how your goals are leading up to purpose and how you can write like like Purpose Driven goals so that you can attach your purpose to your goals like that framework has changed a lot of our students lives because like they're asking questions rooted in what their purpose is and then you see them in interviews and they're like the interview went so well what happened like I don't know like at some point I just realized that this was a purpose-- driven person because real recogniz is real like if you've done a purpose-- driven exercise you're talking to someone you're like oh I know exactly who I'm talking to or like you you're actually a great example how could I not like you if you're helping me serve my purpose so I see my purpose in you so but if I don't have a purpose and I don't see my purpose in you so I don't move differently and I don't treat you differently than everybody else so the I think the purpose framework is another one that has really shifted how people think about selling themselves let alone their ideas so can you take me through how to go through this purpose framework exercise like what if I have a notebook what do I do yeah yeah we got a great book that has a very simple but no exactly in in in truth there there's no right way to do it and that's that's sort of our our overarching message with selling and leading and everything else is like there's no one way to do it the way that works for you to sell and lead people is going to be different than the way that works for me so you can go online and you can Google purpose statement or how do I make a purpose statement and you'll find some great ways to do it we have a version in there and the version that we teach in our class is very much quick and dirty like what are traits that make you you so like if we asked your friends what are a couple of traits that that make you you what would they say taking those and then focusing on times when you felt most complete and fulfilled and yourself and thinking back one of our favorite exercises to do with people is to go okay think of like four different times in your life starting at childhood on to recent where you have just genuinely felt like I'm in my zone this I'm I am happy I am at my best I'm in flow whatever that means to you and then look at all those moments and see what they have in common are you with other people are you alone are you creating are you just consuming it's different for everybody but there there are probably things that those have in common so taking the traits that make you you and then those moments and creating a statement around that that that kind of creates this ideal um that quick and dirty version has worked really well for a lot of people and then you know we this another exercise that we do with our students and when they do that we love to see how they go off on their own we give them a week or two on their own after they do the version that we teach yeah and they just come up with such amazing things like such inspiring things and it makes us so happy and hopeful at this generation that we're lucky enough to get to hang out with because man they're Mission driven and they they know what they want to do and they want to do big things and it's fun to see people take it for their own I'm curious what the answer is because earlier you were alluding to one of my interview tactics being in the book so I was telling you that for my interviews when I first started I Am Naturally very analytical researcher so I researched everything I could about a person the way it turned out was I would know more about them than they knew about themselves like I could recite something they said in a 2014 interview and they would have no idea what I was talking about so I realized after that that for these interviews and also when they would answer questions a lot of these people answer the same ways same questions over and over again so I would be bored by their answer because I would know exactly the way the story went and so then I switch completely where now I know very little about my guests I come on just curious to learn I have obviously the basics but I definitely don't read the book I definitely don't like do thorough research and you told me that that was actually a tactic that you use in your book tactic is the right word I don't know if tactic is chapter two read the book chap chapter two is called intentional ignorance okay and what you are doing is staying intentionally ignorant because you know that by intentionally ignoring what you could know about us if you had read the book or listened to other interviews we' done or read anything else about us you will show up differently and all of these amazing sellers that we talk to and we have tons of amazing examples of this they stay intentionally ignorant to the thing that are going to prevent them from showing up as their best self Ray Lewis has his great quote he says they pay me for what I do Ray Lewis is no football player just in you looked at me like I know who Ray Lewis is assume somebody doesn't assum great NFL Football Hall of Famer and he just he said like they they pay me for what I do Monday to Saturday but Sundays are free and we're interviewing all these people and we're realizing that they all know their Sunday moments like they all know what they love so much about their job that they would do it for free they would be solving that problem on Sunday morning and also like what they what they pay me for right and we were finding that everyone that we were interviewing because they knew what their Sunday moment was they were able to clearly articulate the parts of their job that they have to show up inauthentically passionate about and it's almost like like they know what their Dharma is and so at that point when you know what you love doing you have a choice to make which is do I have a team around me who loves different things that owns different Dharma so that you can be intentionally ignorant so you don't have to show up we interview like a top sales he was like number one salesperson at like some unicorns and now he's like a number one salesperson at this huge startup not start 8.5 billion dollar company now but they still call themselves a startup and we're like why does everyone keep saying that you sell the unsellable because that's what everyone could talk to this guy talk this guy like why why do they say that he's like I don't I don't know like I don't have a process like well what do you do and was like someone hands me a lead right I don't like I don't look at where the lead comes from I don't look at any of the data like I talk to myself for a little bit get myself a pep talk and then I show up and Garrett and I are like blown away we're like you don't look at the data like the data the company pays for that's supposed to help you sell better like why AR you looking at the data and he goes because I know that people buy more in the southwest than the Northeast and if I know that someone's in from the Northeast I'm going to treat them differently immediately so I am intentionally ignorant and we're like of course you sell the unsellable like we interviewed an adte executive who told us that the moment her career changed forever was when she decided that she was going to acknowledge she didn't like technology we're like what she was like yeah I used to always act like I had the answers but I didn't I just had the words until someone like started pulling the covers off and then it was like I am now being shown I am inauthentically trying to explain my way out of a hole that I dug for myself I started saying I don't know but I will go and find out for you I will go fight for you and she was like I saw like a stark difference how people treated me like they were giving me more credit for being resourceful and going out and finding answers for them than just always having them at the ready and that's why mindset is our whole thing like that's why our class is sales mindset for entrepreneurs you can go and you can learn how to build rapport and overcome objections and ask for the close anywhere but the people who are doing it the best are thinking about it differently it's like how do I get into that frame of mind where I am going to Care differently where I am going to ask those better questions and be the best version of myself and so if you can't create that infrastructure around you to be like there are certain things you just have to know in your job you can't intentionally ignore certain things but above and beyond those are there things where you could go you know I don't necessarily need to know that I have a client who could come in and talk about that or a coworker or there's a resource that I can give them instead so that I don't have to sit there and pretend to be somebody I'm not it's like how do you give yourself permission to be the most authentic version of yourself as much as possible when you are going to into a company how do you help them identify which salese are going to become Stars versus which or not it's I that's a hard one to answer because we we have done that with companies we do do that with companies that we work for and with but it's very different and it's very subjective um it kind of depends what you're selling it kind of depends on the industry you're in is it a an Enterprise sale that takes 12 to 18 sometimes more months or is it something that you're going to close on the first call you're like you're looking for different things so I don't want to give an answer that's going to that somebody's going to be listening oh that just doesn't apply to me but I will say that if you go back to when we were talking about the interviews and we were talking about hiring for the intangibles that's the stuff that you want to vet out as quickly as possible in that first 30 days does that person have the things required in your particular business or industry that are really hard to teach that take like yes you can teach people things that will increase their emotional intelligence it's it's a fact and your emotional intelligence increases over time but it's hard and it takes a long time to make somebody who's not super self-aware into a more self-aware person so those types of things if you can vet those out in the early days versus if they're nervous giving a demo or they don't know the facts about the product or they don't you know they bot that's stuff you can teach so it's I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the intangibles I do Focus most on that in the early days and then go from there yeah the most dangerous person in the room is a person that lacks self-awareness yeah like it is very very scary and that comes to question asking like if I had to answer your question more direct I would say is this person self-aware enough to know what's happening like that's what I would be looking for like for instance is this person self-aware enough to know what their goal is right like what like what the intention is of the conversation that they're having like barar Walters did this great interview and she and they were like how do you get people to cry all the time when they know that you're the interviewer that like makes people cry you get them all emotional like how do you continue to get people to cry when they they they're saying out loud I she will not make me cry and she's like I don't know like I don't really have a process that it's very simple like if I had to boil it down like I write a bunch of questions on a bunch of no cards I throw out the ones that I don't you know really love I reorder the questions and then I start again I write throw away I reorder right throw away reorder and the operative word is reorder like she s enough to know what the order is that she wants the know information like that doesn't make her like the greatest interviewer in the world that just makes her very special because she's self-aware enough to know what she wants and what's happening so she'll ask Will Smith a question or anybody a question right like how did it impact you when your parents got divorced and everyone assumes oh that's the Finish Line right so that's not going to make me cry like it was fine but that was never her finished line right like she's self-aware enough from the beginning to understand what she actually wanted to know was how it impacted them she just started with that question so the second question is the one that gets people crying she's like okay and how did the divorce affect your mother specifically and they're like and the Waterworks come she's not like intentionally trying to make people cry she's just the most self-aware person in the room so much so that she knows what questions she wants to ask when she wants to ask them in the order of information she wants to hear because she understands it'll build like that social awareness that self- awareness so that's what you're looking for in the first 30 days is self-aware do you know what yeah do you know are you self-aware enough to understand like what you're doing why you're doing it like it's less about I think even at in the first 30 days about being socially aware it's just like do you know yourself you talk to somebody in a room who doesn't is not self-aware someone that doesn't realize how they sound that's someone you do not want representing your brand that's when your brand Integrity starts to get real diluted when someone's out there talking about you and doesn't realize what they sound like doesn't realize they just gleaked on somebody you know sorry to bring her back to the GLE but stop I just figured I know it makes you uncomfortable so I figured I'll just do them I just interviewed someone today and it was a unique interview I've never done anything like this where it was a zoom call and it was a two-hour interview by the way which I also usually don't do but I think I'm GNA hire this guy and maybe like an hour into it I decided to show the job description on the zoom call shared my screen and I said let's go through every part of this job description and you rate yourself one through 10 of how good you are at this and it was very eye opening because he was so self-aware some things he told me 8 n he didn't say 10 for anything which I also like and then some he gave me an honest three or four but each time he gave me a four he said look this isn't my strong suit but here's how I'm working on improving it or here's how I think you could hire someone else on the team to really complement my skills that I do have and it was fascinating just how self-aware this person was and that made me feel like I got to hire this guy that is an excellent example because you got sold and and I and I don't say that with any negative judgment like you you got sold in the best way possible and it's another misconception that people have when they're selling they think that they have to keep the customer and in this case you were the customer the person he was trying to sell on himself they have to keep the customer at a high all the time and not we can't have anything bad go we can't say anything bad about our product we can't acknowledge competitors we can't do these things but it's just wrong people know that there are competitors and they know that no product is perfect and they're not looking that's where that that smell test comes in and you're like H this is a little too perfect like it is okay to show the parts that aren't perfect the best thing you can do if you're interviewing if you're selling is acknowledge the imperfection and then acknowledge what you're doing about it that's like that's that's a piece of advice that we give to our students all the time too like when you get that what's your biggest weakness type question you're going to tell them the story about when that weakness manifested but you're also going to tell them that you're self-aware enough to know that that weakness exists and what you're doing about it to make it better yeah that's real selling asking somebody their weakness is it's a great experience either on the interviewing side or on the interviewer side yeah just like how do you tell someone like what you're bad at when you want that when you want the person to want you and that Paradigm Shift of oh like they could want me because I'm not perfect that's a very hard pill to swallow early on in your career it's true like it doesn't we for me personally but I think I can represent both of us like the Arc of your career is really interesting because at some point you know you realize it like you realize like I'm I'm supposed to I'm supposed to be perfect I'm supposed to have all the answers like I'm supposed to stay away from the friction like I'm supposed to stay away from problems and then you get to this point in your career where you're like anybody that's doing anything of significance is solving really big problems how am I supposed to solve really big problems if I keep avoiding problems if I keep avoiding friction and then you see the the LA you know the that part in your career where like you start looking for the problems you start looking for the friction you start living in those areas and that is is full circle to this conversation I think I had an epiphany because of you guys so I always thought I was hiring for talented competent people but I think I'm hiring for self-aware people because I'll tell you the last two hires I made I did something in the interview I always say hey if I called your boss today and said you know so and so I know she's great but what is her biggest weakness what would they say and I have them answer and then when I go to the reference check and I call their boss I ask the same question I ask the boss hey I interviewed so and so what would you say is their greatest weakness and if those align I hire the person because I think that is telling you a lot about how self-aware you are and sometimes you hear people say completely different things from what their boss says their boss just told me that they forget tasks they get overwhelmed a lot and they said their attention to detail is their biggest weakness and there's that misalignment but I think that Epiphany that you guys just gave me is I need to hire for self-awareness that's what I need to be looking for it's the hardest thing to train yeah there's a lot of things like coachability self-awareness optimism and by the way I don't confuse optimism with realism as being you know counterparts like that's not like these are things that are just really hard to train like really hard but if you can hire someone that has all that you could teach them anything else and you're golden I don't know how long it takes someone to tr to teach someone to be self-aware but I don't think we've ever done it in one semester no no so you don't have time to do that you know so yeah self-awareness is we said it earlier you know when you asked us like what are the characteristic of like great sales people they're not the most self-confident people in the room they're the most self-aware people in the room they know they said something it didn't land they're able to course correct real time they are socially aware too they they do talk to people they do realize that the person is not listening to them they're waiting to speak and they can shift but like these are these are characteristic traits that have nothing to do with like what most people think you need to be good at at your job or like why we're hiring you think about entrylevel jobs this is the most fascinating thing to me there's a lot of level jobs now that require 3 to 5 years experience how in the world are you going to go to college and then graduate and you can't get a job without three to five years experience when you were just in college so like what is the that's what there that's the Gap the Delta that they're that they can't hire you for is because you don't have those skills because you haven't been in the work setting enough to realize these emotionally intelligent characteristic traits that are the most important how do you navigate ambiguity how do you make decisions and how do you lead and Influence People authentically how do you want to give feedback right like versus like I can teach someone to give feedback but how do like you want can you teach someone to like want to give feedback like I want to have your back like these are really hard things that take a lot of time to master these are the skills that that we're hopefully harnessing in this book so a big thing we've been talking about is this authenticity and how selling really just means authentically showing up as yourself how do you kind of resist the urge to hold back like sometimes I know people can feel like maybe people don't want to see my full authentic self or maybe they won't think it's professional or the way they expect me to be how do you resist that urge or fight that urge to hold it back yeah it's a it's a really common concern that we get a lot we interviewed um Chef Roy Choy who sort of reimagined the food truck landscape in his you know TV shows ET he's a big dog right now in the room and he's doing great things and he had this line in the book but during the interview it just flored me and he was like I have multiple authentic versions of myself and just out of nowhere he like needed us to know like the authentic version of you as a father as a son as an entrepreneur as a student like these are all authentic versions of yourself but they're not all just one authentic version you can have multiple authentic versions of yourself and that was interesting and then the next day we interviewed Ari melber from MSNBC and he said you know authenticity has boundaries like I would prefer to show up with like a t-shirt and like tattooed sleeves but like I need the people to like hear me and look for that in me like look for look for the good in me look for reasons to believe and therefore like I have to create my authenticity within the confines of what is acceptable so like it's interesting because there's a way to show up as the most authentic version of yourself in a setting where you're not overboard like you're not like you're not offending people because you're self-aware enough to know what is offensive and what isn't um so I would you know I guess the the the short the long answer is I would compartmentalize like what authentic version of myself are we talking about and then be self-aware enough to understand like what what this is going to mean for this interaction and then go from there and then worst case scenario show your work like if you go out of bounds say it be like that did not land well like in my head that was going to sound a lot better but the reality is and that might not work for you logically speaking right as opposed to emotionally but like most skills or traits it's it's also something that gets better with practice it's a muscle that you need to flex sure and so if you're one of these people out there going ah this sounds great I want to be the most authentic version of myself but I'm just not quite feeling like I'm there yet start with a little bit start with showing your work a little bit and see how that feels and then progress from there it's not necessarily for some people being that authentic comes with a lot of discomfort and so treating it as a muscle and going a little bit further each time and seeing what works for you is probably the way I would recommend doing it for those types of people I wanted to ask besides reading the unsold mindset if someone comes to you and says they want to become better at sales what are three action points you're going to give them that's an impactful question that we've never been asked before I like that you said three that's why it's impactful that's why it's impactful number one the conversations that you have with yourself are typically way more important than the conversations you have with other people uh that's the first one yeah I think acknowledging the times you were selling that you don't realize you're selling so so when you're trying to talk your roommates into going to Chinese food for dinner instead of Italian food for dinner like that's a sale and realizing that you have those moments or those micro moments every single day and thinking about how you act when you're successfully doing that versus how you act when you consciously are like o I'm selling now and I do this just that labeling that like what do they say name it to tame it or whatever some cheesy thing like that like once you label that and see that you're selling you can immediately start to get better at it by just realizing that you don't have to do things that you maybe think you're supposed to okay and then the third is I think the malleability of the brain like people just don't get it enough or early enough you will find whatever you are looking for people will find whatever they are looking for if you look for the good you'll find it if you look for the bad you'll find it so you know in the context of self-awareness like what are you looking for and make sure that you know that when you are walking into a selling situation and if all of us so often like we're in a selling situation we're looking for reasons they're not going to say yes reasons they're not going to invest we're trying to get get ready to overcome the objection but if you were looking for the good in them like what would that look like how would you show up what questions would you ask what would you laugh at you know versus waiting to speak so another important sales conversation that most people should have in their careers is about salary negotiation how to get a raise so what are your sales tactics I know you don't like the word tactics but what are your sales tactics for that yeah we we've talked about this before um but it's the best approach if you're uncomfortable talking about getting a raise and you you're looking for the good in the person that you're talking to meaning they'll understand they've asked for a raise before right like they see like the value and me that makes it that's the conversation you're having with yourself first that makes that conversation a lot easier where you could just share that part with them and you can say it you can say I came here to ask for a raise it has not been easy like over the last week here's what I've been doing to prepare for this I I was looking at you know what like how much revenue like I've made for the company and where the rooll gaps are in our organization and how I can add more value and how 1 plus 1 equals three and at the end of the day what I realized was like that's not enough to get promoted like the reason why I should get promoted is because I care more about this company than anybody else or whatever right like like whatever your honest truth is um but you gave them all the bragging points not because you were trying to brag but because you were just tell you were showing the work right you were telling them I'm not sure how to answer this because I have a lot of answers but if you were going to make me give you one it's not what you think it's because like no one is going to stay up calling Australia on Thursday night when everybody else is at the bar drinking Jameson with their friends like nobody else is going to be thinking about solving these problems on Sunday more than me like but you gave them all the logical stuff first Garrett said something earlier he said you know there's no sale that doesn't include logic and emotion you know your emotion is justifying your logic your logic is justifying your emotion we work really well together because we sort of personify that and so people see themselves in logic they can see themselves in emotional or normally see themselves somewhere in the middle um but that I think that's my long longwinded answer and if you're talking about somebody who's negotiating a salary for a job they don't have yet a line that we love that we have had used or or told to us and that we have have suggested other people say is I wouldn't be the person that you want in this role if I didn't ask for more money um or if I didn't ask if it's possible to do XYZ with my salary like there are ways to show your work and soften it and say you know like you're hiring me say for a sales rooll I wouldn't be the salesp person you want me to be if I didn't ask if there's some wiggle room in this in this salary the only thing I'll add to that is I heard a story earlier this week about somebody who they were having a conversation about salary for a new job um agreed on the salary got the offer and then they came back a couple days later and asked for more money and the potential employer said they were just so turned off by that because it wasn't the appropriate time and it goes back to the self-awareness that we've been talking about a little bit but if you're not self-aware enough to know the appropriate time to ask for those and have those conversations you could get yourself into some trouble like there is a time where it's perfectly okay to say yeah I could use some more I could use some more money but if you've already had that conversation then gotten the the offer you know maybe not in every case but in this particular case it turned the employer off enough to literally go sorry we're not doing that and they gave the job to somebody else so there are pitfalls and you have to have that awareness to look out for them we actually had that same situation too because it went from being something admirable where it is I am happy that they're advocating for themselves to if it's done after the contract has already been agreed upon it just feels like taking advantage of the employer and we had that situation and it wasn't a good feeling for us we ultimately I think gave that person the offer but they didn't last more than 60 days because there just wasn't a cultural fit and that like Tak advantage of theme continued on how do you not know like just back to self-awareness like how do you not know what that sounds like right like like that feeling that you had like after the fact like like that's actually what like what goes on in your head you're like how does this person not know what this looks like I do not want to hire somebody that's not aware of what this looks like because this is obvious so if they don't know what this looks like what else do they not know what else is going to come out of their mouth when they're representing my brand that they're not aware of how they actually look yeah self-awareness yeah also I just want to say that impactful questions is always a great way to negotiate so we have a closing tradition the podcast is called Erica taught me but really today is all about Colin and Garrett taught me so what do you want people to walk away saying Colin and Garrett taught me this if there's one thing that you take away from this it's that there's no one right way to be a great seller everybody is selling themselves or an idea or somebody else idea you could be really logical about it you could be really emotional about it Garrett and I normally have completely different answers but we always end up in the same place so like this is a great example of that like he was going to say there's not one right way to do this and I was going to say there's not one right way to do it but if we were each going to tell you what the right way was it would come here and we would meet in the middle beautifully said I was going to say that but since I don't like when he has the last word I'm gonna say something different just for fun I also in addition to that which is the correct answer hope that people walk away realizing that it is possible to maximize the time in your day of the things that you would do for free there are parts of your job there are parts of your life that you would do for free and if you can find a way to turn those things into the actual thing that you do every day it's really magical I get to travel around with my best friend talk to amazing people stand on stages and talk to more like people we've never met before about a subject we're passionate about and while it's certainly not every minute of our day the more that we can maximize that the better and so even though that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with selling I just think that's a nice message to leave with that that's a really cool goal to have and I recommend it for everybody thank you both so much this was awesome this was great it was really fun I hope you enjoyed today's episode and don't forget if you want to become a confident investor and create a path to Financial Freedom be sure to join our 5day investing challenge we're starting on Monday the 29th so make sure you secure your spot and get free access today to do that go to erica.com slstart that's e r i ka.com slstart start is spelled s a t or to make it easier you can click the link in the description see you inside if you've enjoyed the episode please take a moment to leave a review it really helps support what we're doing thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next Tuesday on a brand new episode of Erica toau me

Channel: Erika Kullberg

Views: 5,235

Keywords:

Id: iKQUgk41wJ4

Length: 75min 59sec (4559 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024