Steve Klein - Sell When You See the Whites of Their Eyes

This podcast is supported by TalkSpace. When my husband came home from his military deployment, readjusting was hard for all of us. Thankfully, I found TalkSpace. Talkspace provides professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatric providers online. Military members, veterans, and their dependents ages 13 and older can get fast access to providers, all from the privacy of their computers or smartphones. I just answered a few questions online and TalkSpace matched me with a therapist. We meet when it's convenient for me, and I can message her anytime. It was so easy to set up, and they accept Tricare. Therapy was going so well, my husband and I started seeing a couples there. through TalkSpace too. TalkSpace works with most major insurers, including Tricare. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com/military. Go to Talkspace.com/military to get started today. That's Talkspace.com/military. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for. Their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach, Bill Black. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. We have a fantastic guest lined up, Steve Klein, who's joining us from the Professional Development Center in Richardson, Texas, and we're going to talk about selling when you see the whites of their eyes. So let's get right into that. Steve, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us. Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Thank you. Steve, tell us a little bit about uh yourself and the professional development center and uh uh what do you do and and who do you help? Well, as I tell people facetiously, I'm a lead miner. I help people get the lead out. I got into sales, got into sales, uh, oh, over 30, 35 years ago because I got fired from a job and uh wasn't mature enough to handle all the work and I was put into sales. Had no idea how to sell. I was passionate about what I was selling and I didn't know why I was succeeding, so I began to study sales, eventually wrote the book called Sell When You See the Whites Their Eyes, and I tell people 30 years ago I couldn't spell salesman. today I are one. OK great. OK, so selling when you see the whites of their eyes, tell us a little bit about that that topic and what do we mean by that? Well, I didn't write the sales book because I thought the world needed more sales books. I wrote it because I have a little different take and philosophy about what selling is all about. The key area is about relationships, developing relationships with people to become clients. There's 4 key areas in the book. One is on the first one's on attitude. Second part is on activity and tracking what you're doing, the sales process, and then understanding how to implement change in your life. But the title of this of the book Sell when you see the Whites Their Eyes, uh, kind of a play on, uh, don't shoot till you see the whites of Their Eyes came from a story a friend of mine had told one time. He said if you're, um, in a major city, let's say, um, uh, New York, Manhattan, and it's 2 o'clock in the morning and you're in a hurry to get someplace and you're running through an alley to get there, and a fellow jumps out, starts throwing rocks at you. Well, let's say as you're going through, there's a garbage can next to you with a lid on it. You pick the lid up and you protect yourself. Well, you're probably thinking yourself if this guy quits throwing rocks at me, maybe we can do lunch together. Well, probably not, but the, the, the garbage can lid, um, that you're holding up to protect yourself is the same thing that many prospects do when they're dealing with sales people. If you can't see the whites of their eyes because that garbage can lid is up, you can't sell them. Now if you go to pull that garbage can lid down or shield down from in front of the prospect, they're going to pop it right up again. A good example is going into a retail store and you're looking for something and a clerk comes up and the the question that generally asks is can I help you? And the first words out of her mouth is, no, just looking. Well, that's the shield that's up. And again, if you go to pull that down, they're going to pull it right up again. The whole idea, the concept behind what I work with people on in the book is to get the prospect to want to pull that shield down, to want to listen to you, to develop a relationship and to eventually buy. Yeah, and um, you know, I, I'm like that. I go into places and the salesman comes up and I say no, just looking, but uh is it because they're not asking the right way uh how do we get that shield to come down? I'll give you a good example. Oh, probably about 20 years ago when I was purchasing my first computer, I went to a number of stores, knew nothing about computers, and since I knew nothing about computers, I was looking for the least expensive computer. Went from store to store and, uh, pardon me, I was uh looking for that computer, going for the least expensive one until I went to the last store and I was I was looking at the uh computer as a salesperson walked up and he said to me, it looks like you have some interest in this computer. I said, Yes, I do. He said, you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? I said, Sure. He said, What do you plan to use a computer for? What kind of software do you need? Uh, what will you be doing on the computer? Well, he was asking questions I really didn't have the answer to. And as he was explaining this to me, he said, this is a really good computer, he said, but this probably won't do everything you're looking for. Let's take a look at this one, and now we're moving up in price, he said this will probably handle everything you need to to accomplish with your computer, he said, but look at this monitor and compare that to this one over here, and again we're going up in price. I said, My goodness, that. So much better, he said that's if you're going to be spending that much time in front of a computer, that's the monitor you want to be working at. Well, the bottom line is I bought a computer that day and I spent twice as much money as I was planning on spending initially. The reason why is he asked me questions I didn't have the answers to, and I call those prospect motivation questions. He got me excited. He got me to the point where I wanted to have what he wanted because he asked the right questions to get me thinking in the right direction. OK, so not just that he had asked you questions you didn't have the answer to, but he was trying to really help you understand what you're gonna be using it for and really go deeper and really becoming a thought leader for you in this in this particular topic. He was asking questions to help me, not to help him. If a, if a clerk says, um, can I help you? It's a closed center question and it does nothing for the prospect. I work with a number of people in the automobile industry, and many, uh, sales people in that field will ask a question of something such as how much can you afford each month on payments? Well, that's a way to to qualify you. That has nothing to do with how the, uh, how you feel about buying a car. But the suggestion I make is ask them something that gets the, uh, gets the prospect excited, such as what would you like on your next car that you don't have on your current vehicle? Now that gets me thinking and that gets me excited and you're right, it's, it's asking questions that that I, the customer, care about, not the salesperson. And especially these days wouldn't you say because so many people can get the basic information easily and most of them do before they go shopping, they're they're already the salesperson is no longer the person who puts the brochure in the client's hands or the customer's hands. They've already probably looked at all of that information, so the salesperson has to be one step ahead of the customer to help them with more more advanced type of questions and that lead to conversation. Absolutely. Well, that information brought me in as an example into that car dealership, but what most sales people don't realize is 3 sales have to be made to make a sale. The first sale is yourself, the second sale is a company, the 3rd sales a product. Many salespeople start by selling the product. Well, if you don't know enough about me, you're not going to sell me. And the example I use is a pyramid. If you can imagine a pyramid with a point on the top, many salespeople spend very little time at that very top of the pyramid, and that's what the small part of the pyramid represents very little time spent with the customer and by the time you're at the bottom of the pyramid pyramid, it takes a tremendous amount of time to close them and ask them to buy. But successful salespeople use the pyramid upside down where the base is at the top. That's the timeline. They spend a tremendous amount of time getting into the prospect. So by the time it's down to the very bottom where the tip is, in many cases the prospect says, well, how quick can I start, when can I get it? It's a very simple sale because the relationship has been made between the salesperson and the customer. That's a great point. So building that trust so that the customer maybe at the end of it is saying, Well, which one do you think I should buy because they trust the they now trust the salesperson as a counselor. And the key to that, correct, the key to that is asking them questions. The theory behind that is the person asking questions is always the person in control, but the person answering the questions feels like they're in control. So by asking the salesperson asking questions to the prospect, you're making them feel like they're in control and unconsciously they feel closer to you and develop, as you said, the trust. Great points, great points. I love it. So what is uh what is CCDA? CCDA is a concept that I put in the book called Correct Consistent Daily Activity, and that came up because of an epiphany I had one time, oh, about 20-30 years ago. So I was driving down the road, I realized I enjoyed playing more than I enjoyed working. Well, that's a thought many people have had, but the second epiphany came to me and that second epiphany was, yes, but I need to make the money to play. Being in sales and, and also enjoying sports, I decided to take the most important things I do on a daily basis and give them points. See, many people, many sales people believe if they don't make a sale today, they've had a bad day, or if they made a sale, they've had a good day. Well, making a sale to somebody is something that in many cases you have no control over. So my concept is controlling the controllable, doing the basic things, making the phone calls, getting the referrals, booking the appointments. If you do those things on a regular basis, you'll you'll get presentations and you'll make sales. So as an example, my objective each day was to get 200 points. Making a sale is worth 100, asking someone to buy was worth 50. Making, um, uh, a presentation with 25, booking an appointment was 10, getting a new referral was 5, and making a contact by phone was 1. I could get my 200 points in any combination, but the key to that, the three lowest points is making a contact, getting a referral, and booking appointment. Those three things I had control over. My day was a success when I hit my activity level. Sales came as a result of that. One of the things I tell sales managers is never ask a salesperson if they've made a sale for two reasons. Number one, if they made a sale, you would have found out about it already. And number 2, since they didn't make one, they feel bad enough as it is. So as a sales manager, ask the salesperson, did you hit your level of activity today? That's the thing they have control over rather than asking them if they made a sale. That's great. So driving that activity and and making sure that monitoring that's something you can monitor too by the way, as a sales manager, which is great to help a sales person and say, look, if you don't do these activities you're not gonna make a sale. If you do do these activities and the sale will come eventually you just have to uh keep doing, keep getting the points and doing the activities. I love that concept um how do you how do you help uh become successful? How do I help sales people become successful? Yeah, how do you help sales people become successful? Sorry about that. Well, that's, that's, that's the first part of it, developing activity. One of the things I do when I work with sales people is help them keep track of their activity for at least 3 weeks. That gives a pretty good baseline on what their success is. And what I do is I take the numbers and and and divide into the sales we're making to see exactly how much activity it takes to make a sale. Then we work backwards. We, we focus on how much money they want to make, assuming these are commission sales people, and we break that down into how much money they make like to make daily or weekly, how many sales they're going to have to make, and then figure out the activity necessary to do that. And it's, it's not rocket science, it's just, just doing the activity. One of my uh favorite movies, um, was, uh, with Tom Hanks, um. And now I can't remember the name of the movie with the with the chocolates, and he was uh Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump, thank you. And he was told that when he was playing football, once he got the football to run, well, no one told him to stop, and he kept running. Well, that's almost the way a salesperson has to be. They have to believe blindly in their activity to become successful. The second thing I do with them is help them understand how to set and achieve goals, and it's, it's very simple. You have to. You have to have a very, very vivid picture of what it is you want. One of the suggestions I make to my clients is to cut a picture off a magazine, go on the internet, find what you want exactly. For instance, if it's a car you want to have, it needs to be the right style, the right model, the right color. Take that picture, look at it all the time. Write out as an affirmation. Uh, the first person pronoun I, I own a 2016 blank and keep looking at that. Say that to yourself on a daily basis and close your eyes and imagine yourself having it. What happens is, since everything is out there in abundance, your mind starts going into overdrive and figuring out ways to help you get what you want to have. Similar to a story I heard one time, a fellow said to his friend, I wish I had enough money to buy an elephant, and his friend said, What do you want to buy an elephant for? He says, I don't want to, I don't want the elephant. I wish I had the money to buy the elephant. When we're focused, when we're focused on something we want, our, our mind helps us find a way to get it by focusing on that and doing the things necessary to get there. Yeah, that's a great point. So that's vision of being uh cognizant of the fact that if you see it, you can achieve it if you, you know, if you dream it, you can achieve it, but you, there's a process to that that's that's beyond just a wish and a hope, right? It's absolutely doing things. There's an excellent recording that can be found on the internet that was done by Earl Nightingale in the 1950s called The Strangest Secret. And essentially what he says in there is we become what we think about, but we have to watch our thoughts because many people are thinking about the wrong things and they attract themselves to that. And the example I use for people is just think back to when you purchased your last automobile. Did you start seeing a lot more of those cars on the road? Well, that's because everyone out, went out and bought the same car at the same time you did. Well, no. It's because it's on your mind and we attract to us what's on our minds. So it's extremely important on a daily, a moment to moment basis to be focused on what we want to have, not what we don't want to have. And those people have worry and have troubles, if you keep focusing on that, it, you develop more of it. Yes, you have to work on it, but look at it logically and focus on what's going to happen once you complete the problem or or get the objective. Great information. So how important is change in this process? Well, change is one of the reasons, change is very important. I have that in my, in my, uh my website and my uh my company's name. We change all the time. If you look back in your life 10 years ago, you're a different person. You were 10 years ago. You'll be a different person in 10 years. If we don't take control of change, change takes control of us. We need to make a decision where we want to be in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. We have more control over making things happen when we do that. Most people change. They don't like something dramatically changing their life, but if you look around, your change is happening on a daily basis. So by focusing on what you want to have and understanding that, you can begin to make that happen. One of the concepts I explained to people is something called the 10th multiple. If you take $1000 and double it 10 times, you'll have $1 million. 2004, 208 2016, etc. But what's interesting at the halfway point, you have $32,000 which is only 3.2% of a million dollars. And the example I use, if you told a friend of yours five years ago that you would be worth a million dollars in 10 years and you see the friend five years later and the friend asks how are you doing towards your million dollars, you say, great, I have $32,000 they'll probably laugh at you. The story behind this is that success does not go on a on a 45 degree angle. Success goes very slow, and the ninth multiples when you have your half your money of $512,000. If people aren't willing to stick with it with it, they will not be successful. The two guarantees I tell people is if, if you, uh, would like to guarantee to fail, don't start and quit. But once you start something, if you believe in it, if you have the passion, if you stay with it, you'll make it work. Great point, Steve. Thanks very much for joining us. Tell, tell our listeners how to get in touch with you and uh and find out more about what you do. The best way to get in touch with me is you can check my website, which is PDC stands for Professional Development Center, PDCange.com. They can also get a hold of me at steve@pdcchange.com. And if they do send me an email, I'll send them a report that I wrote called 10 Mistakes Salespeople Make and How to Avoid Them. Great information and also your books sell when you see the whites of your eyes is available on Amazon can they also find that on your website? They can find that on my website and yes said uh they can get on Amazon also. Well, it's been an extreme pleasure to have you on the show. Great information, and I wish you the best of luck and, and I think that maybe uh at some point in the future we should get together again and talk about some of these concepts in more depth. Love to talk further, love to talk to you about it. Thank you, Bill. Thanks so much for joining us today. We're gonna take a short break and we'll be right back after this. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Uh, spam calls, sound familiar? Introducing line 2, get a second phone number right on your existing phone. Imagine, discounts, appointments, online forms. Handle it all without giving out your personal number. It's like having a secret weapon against spam, and when those Unwanted calls sneak through, boom, blocked. No more interruptions, no more stress. Stay connected, stay protected. Keep your main number safe and out of harm's way. Ready to take back your phone? Visit line2.com/auudio or download line 2 in the App Store today.