How sales prospects want to be sold to with Jeremy Miner

Speaker 1:

It doesn’t matter what kind of an agency you run, traditional, digital, media buying, web dev, PR, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. The Build A Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ, will show you how to make more money and keep more of what you make. Let us help you build an agency that is sustainable, scalable, and if you want down the road, sellable. Bringing his 25+ years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Excited to bring our guest to you today. Before I tell you a little bit about him and his background and what we’re going to talk about, I want to remind you that the Build a Better Agency Summit is coming up May 16th and 17th. If you’re an AMI member at any level, you can attend Family Day, which is May 15th. We’ll have speakers in the afternoon and then all go out to dinner together. Then the conference itself starts on Tuesday morning, so Tuesday, May 16th and May 17th. One of the speakers that is coming this year is brilliant woman named Andrea Shup. Andrea is an estate attorney who specializes in working with entrepreneurs and high wealth individuals. You may say, “Well, I’m not high wealth.”

Number one, we want to get you to be high wealth. Number two, you are an entrepreneur and you own a business. All of those assets are subject to probate and all kinds of other things that basically if something happens to you robs your family of what is rightfully theirs. Andrea is going to talk about the strategies and tactics that any of us can put into play to protect our estate from unnecessary taxes at the time of our death. Not a happy topic, but a really important topic. Also, I will say that a lot of her strategies have nothing to do with the day you die. It’s really about tax planning as well.

So, she’s going to give us the nitty-gritty on how we can protect what we have built, both the business and any of our personal assets, and give ourselves as greatest tax advantage as possible, and also to protect our loved ones if something happens to us. So, she’s super engaging, doesn’t sound like a lawyer at all. She talks in normal language. You’re going to love her and you’re going to love what she teaches you. So, another reason to come to the Build a Better Agency Summit, May 16th and 17th. Okay, you can get your tickets by going to the website agencymanagementinstitute.com. Upper left corner, it says BABA Summit. Just click on that link and it’ll drop you down and you’ll see the register button.

Grab a ticket while we still have some and make sure you grab your hotel because that room block is going to sell out. So, please do that. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about today’s topic. So, my guest is a gentleman named Jeremy Miner, and Jeremy has been in sales for his entire career. He was actually named the 45th highest earning producer out of more than 108 million salespeople selling anything worldwide. So, his earnings as a commission only salesperson were in the multiple seven figures every single year. He has now started a company called Seventh Level. It’s a global sales training company. It was ranked number one as fastest growing sales training company in the US for the last couple years, 2020 and 2021, by Inc. Magazine. Jeremy has cracked the code on sales.

What we’re going to talk about is the psychology of sales and why we’re uncomfortable selling, why that doesn’t feel right to us, and why the fact that we’re uncomfortable actually means that we can be great at sales if we do it the right way. We all think of sales in a certain way, and there’s really actually a whole psychology and human behavior science behind how people buy and how they want to be sold. So, we’re going to walk through some of that and I think you’re going to get some great tips and tricks from Jeremy as we delve into his methodology. He also has a brand new book out called The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation. I think it’s number three on the Wall Street Journal Bestsellers list as of this recording. So, clearly a great book, clearly an expert in the topic, and I want to just start picking his brain. So, let’s get to it. Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Jeremy Miner:

Drew, thanks for having me on. How are you doing out there, man? You staying warm?

Drew McLellan:

You know what? I think we’re going to get about 10 inches of snow today. So, we are inside staying warm. In fact, we had Jimmy John’s just bring us lunch, and I was like, “I got to say, one of the things I love about COVID is it got everybody to just bring everything to your house.” That’s a beautiful thing.

Jeremy Miner:

Yes, that’s valid. I love it. Well, thanks for having me on the show. It’s an honor. Let’s get started. How can I help?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, let’s talk about it. So, first of all, let’s tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you came to have this insight and knowledge that we’re about to pick your brain on for an hour.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, yeah. I’ll give you the snapshot version. I want to bore anybody to death, but I got started in sales 22 years ago as a broke, burned out college student. I got my first job selling home security systems door to door. If anybody’s listening on here, who started off selling door-to-door, who had a door-to-door sales job? You know what I mean. So, basically, the company hires you. Everybody’s paid straight commission. So, they hire everybody to see who’s going to stick. They basically give you a script, a couple of books from the sales gurus and basically drive you out in a van. I would say even kick you out of the van and say, “Hey, go make some sales. It’ll be easy. We’ll pick you up after dark,” that mentality.

I was actually the last one dropped off in the neighborhood, and I still remember it’s like this flash moment. I remember looking back at my sales manager dropping me off. His name was Exen. I still remember these words that haunt me the first couple months I was in sales. He said, “Hey, make sure when you knock on the door, show them how excited you are about the product. If you show them your excitement, they’re going to be excited as well and they’re going to want to buy.” I’m like, “Hey, what do I know? I’m a 21-year-old kid. Okay, sure, That makes sense. If I show them I’m excited, they’re somehow going to be excited too.” Makes complete sense. So, I started knocking on the door and I was really excited.

I started talking about the features and the benefits and how we had the best this and it was going to help them with this. We were the number one this. I started noticing from the very first door that I was getting all of these objections. Yeah, we don’t need it. We’re not interested. We’re good. That was always, we’re good. We already have somebody for that or we just talked to you guys two months ago or it’s too expensive for me. I don’t have the money. I need to talk with my spouse. Can you call me back in a week, a month, a year later? It’s those type of objections, right? I remember probably seven, eight weeks into that, the nonstop rejection, barely making any sales, because as everybody knows, if you’re a straight commission, you don’t make sales, you don’t make any money.

I remember probably about two months in, give or take, a couple days there, I remember standing on a curb. I think it was on a Friday or maybe Saturday night. It was towards the end of the week. I remember I had worked 12 to 13 hours that day, which was pretty normal in that type of job that you’re doing. I still remember my legs completely worn out. When you walk door to door for 12 straight hours, as anybody knows that’s done that, your legs feel like jello. I remember the sweat, the hot humid July weather just rolling down my chest. I remember sitting there thinking, because I’d made zero sales for that day, so I made $0. In fact, that entire week, I made zero sales. So, I’d worked like 60 hours for $0.

Drew McLellan:

In a lovely environment, it sounds like too.

Jeremy Miner:

A very lovely part of town. Let’s just put it that way. I remember sitting there thinking, “Maybe selling just wasn’t for me.” Has anybody on here ever felt that themselves, where you just don’t want to get out of bed and get on the phone or knock on a door, talk to anybody? You just hate the non-stop rejection. I remember when I got into the van that night, the sales manager, he popped in this Tony Robbins CD. I’m assuming everybody knows Tony Robbins.

Drew McLellan:

That’s right.

Jeremy Miner:

Great guy. Tony said something like this and I’m probably butchering what he said, but he said, “You will fail if you don’t learn the right skills necessary to succeed.” He said, “You will fail if you don’t learn the right skills.” Now, he actually went on to say in that CD, because 22 years ago, people listen to little round things called CDs. I know it’s hard.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I remember.

Jeremy Miner:

It’s hard to even think about, but he went on to say that everybody’s taught skills. But he said, the people who fail are the ones who are not taught the right ones. When he said that, it was like this light bulb moment went off in my brain. I would say divine intervention from the heavens itself, that there was a difference in skill level. I mean, I was a 21-year-old kid. I never had comprehended that all skills were just the same. So, I sat there thinking about that that maybe what the company was training me, what I was learning from what I now called the old sales gurus. Maybe they just weren’t the right skills. Maybe they were just outdated. Maybe they didn’t work as well anymore with today’s consumer. So, I really didn’t have a choice at that point.

I had to commit to myself and my family that I was going to have to acquire more skills because I know you on here like me want to provide for your family as well. I remember at the same time, I was going through this major dilemma because I was being taught these traditional selling skills from the company and all the gurus, some of the books behind me here or if you can see us on YouTube or something on video. I would notice that some of their techniques when I used them, even though it felt uncomfortable, they would work, but I also noticed many of the techniques they were training in the books and programs didn’t work at all.

In fact, when I used them, it seemed like I got even more sales resistance. I got more objections, and it seemed like I lost even more sales. Has anybody ever noticed that? At the same time, I was in college and I was learning from my professors. One of them was by the name of Robert Cialdini. You heard of Robert Cialdini?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Jeremy Miner:

He’s the head of behavioral science here, actually at Arizona State University, just down the road where I’m at here. I was reading his works. I was taking an online course, that was the new thing 20 years ago, whenever that was, these online courses that were coming out. He was teaching me and some other professors that I had in behavioral science in college that the most persuasive way to communicate was over here, but the gurus in their books and programs, they were saying it was over here. It was completely opposite. I’m like, “How does that make any sense?” I’m like, “How do I take the theory of behavioral science, human psychology in the way the brain makes decisions, and how do I wrap that into a sales process?” That’s what I started learning how to do.

I didn’t really have a choice. It was either get out of sales and get a real job or whatever or I’m going to have to get better skills, more acquired skills. So, I started learning how to use techniques that worked with human behavior that caused my prospects to pull me in instead of me trying to push them. Really, we’re talking overnight. Selling became very, very easy and extremely profitable, because unlike you, Drew, or maybe people watching me here or listening, I wasn’t born out of my mother’s womb with advanced questioning skills. I wasn’t born out of my mother’s womb with advanced tonality skills.

In fact, I wasn’t born out of my mother’s womb with advanced objection handling and prevention skills. I had to learn those skills. I had to acquire those skills. So, that’s how my story started. You with me?

Drew McLellan:

I am with you. So, then you have had a very successful sales career for your whole life. You never had to leave sales. Yeah. Well, you didn’t open a franchise. You didn’t open a dry cleaner. So, this worked out pretty well for you. Yes.

Jeremy Miner:

Some would say, yeah.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Well, in fact, we know that you’ve won a lot of awards for your sales. You’re being very modest, but this has been a rewarding career for you. But again, to your point, you brought different skills,. In fact, you developed a methodology that you call NEPQ that you really leverage to be successful. So, tell us a little bit about the methodology and how you used it to be so successful in sales.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, this might make more sense with everybody listening to me and watching if I break down, let’s say, the different type of sales techniques quickly so they can see where they’re possibly at, because sometimes we just don’t know what we don’t know. I hate being in that position. I always ask, “What’s the biggest problem in sales?” People are like, “It’s this. It’s the leads, it’s the mindset, it’s this.” I’m like, “No, the biggest problem in sales is the problem that you don’t know you have. Because if you don’t know what your problem is, you have no idea how to fix or change that problem. But once you learn what your problem is, then whose responsibility is it to change?” It’s ours. So, like I said, my background in college is behavioral science and human psychology.

So, if you go back into behavioral science, this is geek out stuff, but it might be important for sales if you want to make more sales or scale your company. Behavioral science in a nutshell is really the study of the human brain, behavioral patterns, and how we make decisions socially, just behavioral patterns that human beings have had since the dawn of history that we know of. It seems like now we’re like, “Oh, the humans here 300,000 years ago, but 10 years ago, we thought they were here 5,000 years ago.” It’s just evolving all the time. So, it’s really recognizing how does a human being make decisions? Why do they go left instead of going right? Why do they say no instead of saying yes? All right, so check this out.

According to behavioral science, there are actually three forms of persuasion. I would suggest everybody listening here, write these down. Because once you understand the differences in persuasion and where you are now, even if you’re already doing good compared to where you could be, it’ll completely change everything for you. So, the first mode of communication, I won’t give the scientific term for it. Drew, I’m going to ask you this. If I said the words boiler room selling, what would be the first image that came to your mind?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, that’s somebody reading off a screen.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, it’d be more like you see the Gordon Gekko, the Wall Street films, Wolf on Wall Street. Hey, I’ve got a great opportunity for you. Then we talk about the features and benefits and how we have the best this and we push and manipulate them and tell them why they need to go with this. So, according to the data, we’re actually the least persuasive when we tell people things or we attempt to dominate them, posture them, manipulate them, push and pressure them into doing something we want them to do. What’s the biggest reason why so many business owners and salespeople feel so uncomfortable in selling?

Drew McLellan:

Because they don’t want to do that, right? Yeah.

Jeremy Miner:

It goes against human nature. We’re not built as human beings to be aggressive and push and pressure and manipulate. It’s just goes against the way we were built by God in my mind. All right. So, it’s just like if you tell your spouse or your teenage son that, hey, you really, really need to do something and then you push and pressure them, well, what do they do back? Push back. It’s just human behavior 101.

So, I’ll give you a few examples of the least persuasive way to sell. Presenting, crazy, right? We’re all taught we have to have this great presentation. Show them the 60 minutes of our slides. Here’s our corporate office. Here’s all of our customer service awards. Here’s our owners. We have the best this, we have the best that, which, by the way, doesn’t every single company or salesperson say they’re the market leader?

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely. They have the best employees, all of that.

Jeremy Miner:

So, everybody says that, everybody, right? You even have TV shows like The Bachelor that says the most dramatic season ever. You’re like, “Wait a minute, you said that the last 22 years straight. That doesn’t make any sense.” So as a society, we become very skeptical when salespeople or companies say those type of things to us. Why? Because we’re used to everyone that’s ever tried to sell us a vacuum cleaner to a car, to a life insurance policy, to even cybersecurity for offices say, “We’re the market leader. We’re the number one.” So human beings actually trust us less when we say things like that, especially if we talk down about our competitors.

So, according to the data, it’s not very persuasive if your presentation is more than 10% of your entire sales process. The average salesperson or small business owner typically presents in any industry… We train 158 industries, including the one that tunes into your show, presents about half of the time. That is a major information overload and that’s why you get so many, “I want to think it over. I need to keep looking around” objections. Telling your story, I hate to tell everybody, nobody cares about your story when you’re selling one-to-one. Whose story do they care about? Their story, right?

Drew McLellan:

That’s right.

Jeremy Miner:

It’s a sales pitch. We’ve all been taught you got to give a great pitch. Very low on the persuasion poll, especially if it’s early in a conversation. We hear a problem. Oh, well, let me tell you how we solve that and you go right into your pitch. Then all of a sudden, your prospect just puts up the wall and it’s over. So, you got to get rid of the pitch. Putting sales pressure on people. There’s a massive difference. Getting the prospect to feel so much internal tension from your questionability of where they are compared to where they want to be, that builds urgency compared to putting external sales pressure and trying to push them forward. Once you’ve learned what I just said there, nine-day difference in your results as a company to expand.

The big one, assuming the sale. I know everybody’s heard you got to assume this, ABC is a closing according. I’m just going off the data, pesky facts, according to the data, very low on the persuasion poll. That’s where we really believe the term sales is a numbers game comes from, because we’re forcing it to be a numbers game because we’re only focused on the quantity of conversations rather than the quality of each conversation. It’s a big difference in that. That’s the first mode. Now, the second mode, not as scary, that’s more known as consultative selling. But a lot of people have heard of that.

Consultative selling came out in the late ’70s, ’80s with methodologies like Sandler Institute, books like SPIN Selling, Neil Rackham, college professor, never sold anything, by the way, but taught that you needed to ask logical based questions to find out the needs of the client. That was revolutionary in the ’70s and ’80s compared to [inaudible 00:19:38] selling, right? We call those logical based questions more surface level questions, because when we ask logical based questions, what type of answers is our prospect going to give us? Logical answers. The human beings, as you know, do they buy on logic or emotion? Emotion 100% of the time. Brain studies prove that at this point.

So, when we ask questions like, “John, tell me two problems that keep you awake at night, or who besides you would be involved in this decision, or what are you looking for in a solution?”, those are surface level, logical based questions that do not emotionally involve the prospect. So, I want to re-language that. If you’re selling to a company and you’re trying to find out who the decision makers are on that company, you want to re-language that. You might say, “Mary, can you walk me through your company’s decision making process when it comes to solving X, Y, Z problems like this? Can you walk me through?”

That’s more of a lead in phrase that gets into think deeper about the question you just asked or getting on a sales conversation early on and saying, “Well, what budget do you have set aside?” Well, the problem is, how could a prospect know what budget they need five minutes into a conversation when they don’t even know what their real problems are yet? Because your questionability has to get them to see what problems they really have, because most of your prospects don’t know what problems they have. They might have an idea, but they don’t know the depth of the problem. They don’t know the consequences of what happens if they don’t do anything about solving the problem.

So, when you ask budgeting questions that early on in the conversation, the prospect might think they need a budget of… Let’s say, I’m just going to throw out random numbers. They might think they need five grand a month, but in order to solve their problem, after you’ve taken them through that process, they start to realize, “I need 15 or 20 grand a month to get me where I want to go.” So, we have to be careful.

Drew McLellan:

Plus, it’s weird to ask people about money that early. It’s walking up to a stranger and saying, “How much money do you have in your wallet?”

Jeremy Miner:

“How much do you make each year?”, two seconds in a conversation.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeremy Miner:

Now, if you do get signs, let’s say you get on there and they’re just like, “Is this going to cost many money? I’m homeless now.” Obviously, you got to qualify, but for the most part, with what you’re talking about, most people are in that situation. So, that’s the second mode. See, it’s more persuasive than the first mode of boiler room selling, putting pressure on people, but you’re still having to play the numbers game because very little emotion is brought out by simply asking logical based surface level questions. Third mode of communication is more known as dialogue. So, according to the data, we’re the most persuasive when we allow others to persuade themselves by asking what are called here’s where it comes in, neuro-emotional persuasion questions.

That stands for NEPQ. Now, I always get asked, how do you get a human being to persuade themselves, Jeremy? That’s like the $1 trillion question. We don’t even deal with billions anymore with our country. It’s more trillions now. So, that’s the $1 trillion question. Can you just show up and say, “Hey, dude, go ahead and persuade yourself. By the way, here’s our wire directions”? Now you have to learn three things. You have to learn specific skilled questions, when and how to ask those questions. When I say how, the right tone, because there’s certain parts of your sales process and certain questions that you have to use more of a curious tone. Can you walk me through what you guys do now to generate new leads and clients for your industry? That’s more an industry specific.

That’s a curious tone. Okay. There’s other parts of that conversation that requires more of a skeptical or challenging tone, not early, more later in the conversation, after there’s more trust. Then there’s other parts of that conversation that require more of a concerned tone, a tone that shows empathy. Well, how do you know which questions to use that type of tone? Because once you learn that, prospects, well, 99% of the time they open up because they feel that you’re in it for them, not just to line it in your pocket. You see what I’m talking about there?

Drew McLellan:

Yup.

Jeremy Miner:

That’s what NEPQ means in a nutshell. There’s a lot more to that.

Drew McLellan:

I suspect there is. So, I want to take a break and then let’s dig into more of what that involves and how we learn what questions to ask, which tone to use, and how we create those dialogue conversations. So, first, we’ll take a quick break and then we’re going to come back and get into the specifics about how you guys can dial in these skills and these specific questions and tones to drive better sales. So, we’ll be right back.

Hey, everybody, I promise I would keep you more than a minute, but I want to make sure you know that at AMI, one of the things that we offer are virtual peer groups. So, think of it as a Vistage group or an EO group, only everybody around the table, figuratively in this case, is an agency owner. So, you have to be an agency owner to belong. The virtual peer groups meet every month for 90 minutes on Zoom. This was not a COVID creation, it was pre-COVID. You see the same people in your cohort every time. So, you get to create relationships with them. It is facilitated by AMI staff Craig Barnes, who has owned his own agency for 25 or 30 years.

So, plenty of great experience, both from Craig and but also learning from each other. So, if you have any interest in learning more about how that works, head over to the AMI website. Under memberships, you will find the virtual peer group and you can get all the information there. All right. Okay. Let’s get back to the show.

All right. Jeremy and I are back, and we have been talking about all the ways sales doesn’t work and the evolution of sales. I’m curious, the dialogue methodology has been around for a little while. How did COVID impact it? Because one of the things I have agency owners say to me all the time is, “Man, if I can get in a room with someone, I can make a sale, but now I don’t know how to find them. I don’t know how to talk to them. I don’t know how to have that first conversation, because I’m not bumping into them at a trade show or a conference or something like that.”

Jeremy Miner:

Well, all that tells me is they don’t understand the psychology behind why a human being buys and why they don’t buy they. That’s okay. We all each have our own specialties, but how COVID has changed in our mind, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the prospect is this or that. It just changed more of the logistics part of it. So, when COVID happened, I’ll just give you an example of two of our big clients. So, we started about four years ago. So, it was probably about a year before that we launched the company. So, about a month before COVID happened, actually at that time, one of the biggest used car dealerships in all of Canada. I think they had 17 or 18 dealerships. Now they have 47, and I’ll tell you why that is.

But in Canada, their lockdowns are really strict compared to the United States. I mean, they were locked down. You’re talking like over half of the time. So, you couldn’t walk into a car dealership to buy a car. There was chains on the door. You would go to jail if you went in there as a car salesperson to try to sell a car. So, they’re freaking out, because they’re like, “We’re going to have to close down. We’re going to file bankruptcy.” I’m like, no, no, no, no. So, we taught them how to call leads from their salespeople. The salespeople would just be at their home and they would call leads and we taught them NEPQ and took them through the process. They would get on Zoom.

They’d make a first call, discovery call, sometimes cold calling, and then they would book them into a Zoom call. They would make that sale on that Zoom call and then they would drive. They would schedule the appointment later that day. They would drive to the dealership, the customer would drive to dealership, they would meet outside in the parking lot. They would authorize the agreements and paperwork, and here’s the new car. Over the next year, during lockdowns, their sales went up by over 200%. So, they just made that shift because now instead of waiting for people to come in the store, they were all calling leads all day. So, they were talking to 10 times more people. That was one shift. They’re not going back, I can assure you of that.

They still have the retail people, but they got most of people at home still calling leads, way more money than that. Insurance industry was a big thing because they would say the same thing that you told me that some of your people in here say like, “Oh, I can only close if I’m in the home. There’s no way. Oh, my God.” I’m just like, “Look, once you learn the right skills, it doesn’t matter if you’re on the phone, if you’re on virtually with Zoom. Everybody started to learn how to use Zoom. Even grandpa and grandma go to church on Zoom. So, most people know how to get on Zoom now. So, we taught them how to make that first call, book an appointment on Zoom.

Now they were stacked all day, 30 to 45 minutes. It’s usually about 40 minutes, I think 45-minute sessions. They had 10 of those a day, because in insurance, they were maybe talking to two of their appointments a day because they’d start driving at 8:00. They’d get there at 8:30. That first prospect wasn’t home. No show. So, then they had to drive across town, show up to the next appointment at 9:15. Then they’re done with that one at 10:00. Then they drive 25 minutes over here and maybe they see three people in a day, but now they’re on with 8 to 10 people a day.

So, that industry not going back either. Now, there’s some exceptions to the rule. We still do have some insurance agents that will go into the home, but most of them, they know how to sell virtually now and they can see three to four times as many people and not drive 300 miles a day to try to make a few sales. So, in my mind, in our mind, from our clients, that’s how we saw COVID changed things. Just more logistics, not really the sales process. Did I answer your question?

Drew McLellan:

Yup, it did. All right. So, before the break, we were talking about the dialogue methodology of sales and you were talking about specific questions and specific tones of voice and also about there’s a timing issue factor in this. When do I ask the right question with the right tone in the conversation? So again, everybody listening is selling services. So, they’re not selling something tangible. It’s not a vacuum. I can’t throw dirt on your carpet and then vacuum it up. I’m selling you ether. I’m selling you ideas, strategies, leads, things that I can’t show you tangibly, right? So how does a dialogue conversation like that go?

Jeremy Miner:

Well. When I say dialogue, no emotional persuasion, questioning would be much more than just a regular dialogue.

Drew McLellan:

Of course.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, I’ll show you what I mean by that. So, what I everybody to understand here is that you’re not selling the thing, okay? You’re not selling services. You’re not selling marketing strategies. You’re not selling branding strategies. You’re not selling higher quality leads. You’re selling the results of what all those things does for the prospect. You’re not selling the thing. You’re selling the results of what that thing does. I hate to tell everybody, nobody gets on a call with you because they’re just interested in, let’s say, branding, or they’re just interested in like, “Oh, I need higher quality leads.” They’re interested in those things because they want to make more sales. They want to scale and grow their business, and they can’t do that without those things. So, I just want everybody to put that change our mindset.

Drew McLellan:

That’s the old, why does somebody buy a drill? It’s not the drill. They want the hole, right?

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of us just forget about that, right? Because if I summed up the word sales and one word, that one word would be change, because all sales is change. It’s about how good you are at getting your prospect to view in their mind that by them changing their situation, that means hiring you to, in your case, do their marketing or work with them on marketing. That by them doing that is far less risky than them doing nothing at all, staying in the status quo, their problems stay the same, and nothing ever changes, which is more risky. Now, here’s our problem though. Selling is all about change. Yet human beings don’t like change, even though we say we do. So, I’m going to repeat that. Selling is about change.

Human beings don’t like change. Why do we not like change? First of all, it makes us feel very uncomfortable, especially when it’s initiated by some pushy, high pressured salesperson that’s ready to pitch their services and products early on in a conversation. Repeatedly, human behavior shows that we value something that is familiar to us, even if we don’t like it that much over something that is new, something that is foreign, something that is unknown to us. I hate to use this example, but it’s the clearest saying I could say. Think about a battered spouse. We all know somebody, a relative, a loved one, a friend that was in a really bad relationship and there were verbal abuse, mental abuse.

Now, sometimes they might not leave because they’re honestly afraid for their life. That’s extreme. They could be afraid of life, but for the most part, we always wonder why do they keep going back to that? Do you know why? Because most people are afraid of change. Even though they don’t like their situation, they are more afraid of the unknown outside of that situation. Like I said, there’s certain rules to that. They could be worried for their life. I mean, there’s other things that could happen, but for the most part, they’re afraid of change. That’s why the girlfriend keeps going back to that boyfriend that doesn’t treat her good because she’s afraid of change. Vice versa, the guy goes back to the girl, afraid of change.

So, what we have to do is we have to get the prospect to overcome that fear of change by, like I said, viewing that it’s far less risky for them to pay for your services and get what they want than it is for them to stay in the status quo and the problem stays the same. That’s just an overview, if that makes sense. So, we want to take them through this process. The first part of the process, we call connective questions. Now, connective questions. Take the focus off you, the salesperson or business owner and put it right on the prospect.

Okay? Let me give you an example. Now, let me ask you this, because we train a lot of companies in your space. Some of them do inbound leads where somebody will book on a calendar. They’ll meet them on Zoom. Others just get outbound leads where they’ve got a name and a phone number and they’re just calling them back. What do most of your clients do?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I think it’s a mix. I think agencies that are doing a great job with thought leadership are probably having people reach out to them because they’ve demonstrated an expertise in something. Other agencies, they might bump into somebody at a trade show or something else or a client might make a referral. So, they’ve got to pick up a phone to schedule that first call.

Jeremy Miner:

So, let me give you an example. Let’s say somebody books on your calendar. Maybe you run ads, right? I’m assuming since you’re an agency, you know how to do that. Let’s pray. Oh, that would probably be a good skill ad if you’re selling your services, brother. Since somebody responds to an ad on Facebook, they book into your calendar. There’s some type of business owner. Now, typically, what problems do the people listening to this show solve? Do they solve higher quality leads, more leads, better branding? Is that typical?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Jeremy Miner:

So right when I get on the call on Zoom, what most people do-

Drew McLellan:

But I will also say a lot of times they just get a call that the client thinks they need a thing. I need a new website.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah. In any industry, what we all have to understand is that 99% of your prospects don’t know what the real problems are when you first start talking to them. But it’s your job to ask the right questions that allow them to understand what the real problems are. If you tell them what the real problems are, guess what? In one ear, out the other, because you’re biased. You’re trying to sell them something so they don’t believe you, but your questioning allows them to see what the real problems are. That’s the biggest difference. So, let’s say they book on the calendar. What most people do is they get on, they’re like, “Hey, how you doing today, Drew? How’s your day going? Oh, you live in Denver.”

Yeah, I love Denver. Did you see the game last night? Yet just like all this chit-chat that for the most part, most of your prospects genuinely don’t believe that you really give a about how their day’s going, right? Let’s be honest, right? I’ve had some sense where, no, I’m really interested in how each of my prospects day’s going to make. I would be very skeptical if you were interested, genuinely interested in every single lead you ever talk to stays going. Here’s a problem. Even if you are genuinely interested in how a prospects stays going, your prospect doesn’t believe you are, right? Why is that? Because every salesperson they’ve ever dealt with asked the same predictable, “How are you doing questions?”

So, all their brain does, this is just behavioral science. Their brain associates you with all those other salespeople that they said no to. So, you’re automatically triggering resistance in a lot of people. Even if they don’t give you an objection, what you’re going to notice is you’ll start asking them some good questions and they’ll just stay very vague and generalized and they’ll stay surface love with you. Has anybody ever notice that, right? There’s a reason why, because you’re triggering that resistance early in the conversation by what you’re asking and saying. So, when you get on there, I’m just going to give you an example. There’s a lot more to it. You might get on there. Can you hear me? Good. Can you see me? All right. Good. Okay.

You look down at whatever form you have from them or whatever, depending on what you do. Okay. So, it looks like you had booked on the calendar about looking at possible outside help and getting a higher quality lead to really grow your business, right? Yeah. Now what did I just do there? That’s just a little example there. I might tweak that depending on what you’re selling there, but for your industry, that’s a generalized approach. What did I just do there? I’m automatically getting them into results-based thinking over price or cost-based thinking by the first words of mouth.

Let me repeat what I just said. Okay, so it looks like, “Can you hear me okay? Can hear you good? Now you can say that for a few seconds. You don’t want to just jump right in.” Okay, so let’s see. It looks like you booked on the calendar about looking at possible outside help and getting a higher quality lead to really scale the company. Nobody’s going to say, “No, I’m not looking for higher quality leads to grow the business.”

Drew McLellan:

Especially if they put it on the form.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah. See, that’s what I’m saying. The reason why I use the word possible outside help, because I want to be neutral there because I don’t have any trust or credibility with this prospect. Now they don’t even know who I am, right? But if I said, looks like you booked on the calendar because you’re looking for help, some people, A types will be like, “Well, we’re still in the research mode. We’re just still looking around.” What you just did there is you triggered resistance and now they’re walls up and they’re going to be guarded the rest of the call. Now you have to compete trying to break the wall down. You want to learn how to cause them to let their guard down the whole time, because when they let their guard down, they open up to you. That’s where the sales made.

That’s just an example of a connecting question right there that takes the phone and immediately gets them, “Okay.” They’re like, “Yeah, yeah, right.” Then I’ll say, “Okay, do you know what you’re possibly looking for?” See, that’s a curious tone. Notice how I slowed down. I don’t want to say, do you know what you’re looking for? Because that’s too quick of a question. I’m going to get a knee-jerk answer, a surface level. But if I say, “Okay.” You know what you’re possibly looking for, how I slow down? Yeah. It causes them to think deeper about that question I just asked. That’s how my tone affects them, thinking deeper about the question I just asked. They’ll say, “Well, yeah, we’re looking for this.” Okay. All right. Yeah, I would say this is called a status frame.

I would say the first part of this call, it’s pretty basic. It’s really more for us to find out what you’re doing to generate leads now and maybe the results you’re getting from that compared to where you’re wanting to be. Just so we can see what the gap looks like to see if we can help. Then towards the end of the call, if you feel that hey, this might be what you’re looking for, we can talk about possible next steps. Would that help you? See how I’m framing that? I want to show everybody what I just did there. There’s a whole bunch of moving parts there you want to understand. The first part of this call is pretty basic. Now, why would I downplay the call? Why wouldn’t I be like, “I’m so excited to be on with you, John”? Why would I want to downplay that right there?

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think we learned from your early days that enthusiasm doesn’t match sales success.

Jeremy Miner:

No, it doesn’t at all. That’s the biggest myth in sales. It might have worked in 1935, but we’re in 2023. That’s the problem. What I want them to do is pull me in. I don’t want them to feel like I’m all… Now, I’m not saying you’d be boring and negative. You’re just right in the middle. You’re neutral. You’re not quite sure you can even help yet. You don’t know anything about their situation. So, my first goal is to get them to let their guard down, because if I can’t get them to let their guard down where they open up, there’s no sale, there’s no pain, there’s no move.

First part is called pretty basic. It’s really for us to find out and watch my hands, really to find out more about what you’re doing now to generate leads and to grow the business and the results you’re getting from that. Look at the little gap here and the results you’re getting from that compared to where you’re wanting to be. See, what did I just do visually in their mind?

Drew McLellan:

You suggested there are more results to be had.

Jeremy Miner:

I created a gap automatically in their mind visually. So, now they’re starting to think about a gap. See what the gap looks like to see if we can help. Then towards the end of the call, if you feel that it might be what you’re looking for, we can talk about possible next steps. Why would I use the words might be what you’re looking for? We can talk about possible next steps. Why wouldn’t I say, “At the end of the call, if you feel it’s a good fit for you and we feel you’re a good fit for our company, we’ll show you-”

Drew McLellan:

[inaudible 00:41:56] today.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, we’ll show you how to sign up in the next steps. Well, you can, but with a lot of personalities, that’s just going to cause them to get their guard up because now they know the questions you’re about to ask them or more for you to try to close them than it is for them to see if you can help them. That’s a massive difference in getting someone open up. Now there’s usually another connecting question we ask and then we’re going to go right into our situation questions. Drew, maybe walk me through. What do you guys do now to generate new leads in clients? Okay, that’s a first situation question. There’s a couple more after that for your industry, but we have to help the prospect understand what the real situation is.

Because like I mentioned, most of your prospects don’t understand the real situation when you first start talking to them. So, if we’re trying to build a gap from where they are, we call that their current state to where they are, to where they want to be. We call that their objective state. If we’re trying to build that gap, it’s impossible to build a gap if we can’t even get the prospect to understand where they’re at now. How can you build the gap to where they want to be if they don’t know where they’re at? Okay, so those are situation questions. There’s more after that. We don’t have time. Then we’re going to move into what’s called problem awareness questions.

Problem awareness questions help the prospects see what their real problems are and not only what the real problems are, but it goes far deeper, what the root cause of the problem is. Why are the leads are getting not the leads they want? What’s the root cause of that? See, most salespeople and entrepreneurs will get a surface level problem. We’re not making many sales from these leads, but they don’t know how to clarify and probe to find out why. What’s the root cause of that? Not only the root cause of that problem, but how is the problem affecting them even personally? See, that’s where emotions are drawn at. As Tony Robbins would say, a human being into what’s called their emotional state.

That’s where human beings make buying decisions because they feel comfortable with it, because they’re emotionally attached to their problem and to the need of fixing it to get where they want. There’s problem awareness questions we have to ask. Then we work into what are called solution awareness questions, where we get them to focus what the future’s going to look like once all these newfound problems are solved that they didn’t even know they had 20 minutes before they started talking to you. So, an example of one of your last solution awareness questions and I’ll try to make it as industry specific as I can.

I don’t have any of your industry scripts up in front of me, but I might say, “Okay, so let’s say that we’re able to come in. We’re able to help you get X, Y, Z high quality leads to your salespeople, and were able to help get your revenue up to whatever they said they wanted.” Yeah, I’m just going to throw out a number, Let’s say 30 million a year at that point, because you’re talking about doubling the revenue that you did this last year. What would you do with the extra cash flow coming in? Well, I would do this. I would pay off this debt. Now these are logical answers they’re giving you here, and then I’m going to move in.

I’m going to say, “Okay, but you being able to do those things, what would that do for you? What would it do for you personally? You being able to do those things? What would it do for you personally?” See that verbal pause there? See how my tone lowers? It’s more of a tone that shows empathy. It’s a more of an empathetic tone that creates trust. Now women already have that empathy in their DNA. Men have to be taught how to do that. It’s not something that most men are born with just massive amounts of empathy. Women are, okay. So, if you’re a woman, listen to this. Use that to your advantage. If you’re a man, you have to learn how to show empathy in your tone. That opens them up. Then we’re going to probe and clarify off their answers. That builds a bigger gap.

The bigger the gap we can help them build in their own mind from where they are to where they want to be, the easier it is for that person to want to change. That means paying for what you’re offering. That means you’re eliminating most of the objections you are now getting crushed with. Let’s say that they do have an objection, because you’ve built so much of a gap in their mind and they have that much trust in what you’re doing, it’s easy to help them overcome that. Whereas if you don’t build that gap, you don’t have the trust and it’s really hard for you to overcome the objections.

Drew McLellan:

Well, you haven’t shown them enough impetus for change either, right? You haven’t.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah. Then there’s a lot more solution awareness questions you have to ask. Once they see what the future’s going to look like, once these problems are solved, you’re going to lean in and ask a consequence question. That gets them to defend themselves on why they have to change now. So, what happens if you guys don’t do anything about this and you keep getting these lower quality leads to your salespeople? Like you mentioned, your sales keeps stagnating another 3, 6, 12 months. What happens to you then? See that’s a concern, Tom. Oh, my gosh, I don’t know. I’d lose my job. See, now they’re emotionally involved in wanting to change. See the difference? That’s more to that, but I’m just giving an overview.

Drew McLellan:

So, I feel like we have just scratched the surface.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, we did.

Drew McLellan:

But all of these questions, all of this methodology is outlined in your new book, right?

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, it is. I mean, if they want to get the book, you can order it right now. You can go online and order it from really anywhere. I think on Amazon, it’s like listed number two or number three as we’re recording or as we’re doing this show.

Drew McLellan:

The title of the book is The New Model of Selling: Selling to an Unsellable Generation, correct?

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah. It’s myself and my co-author, Jerry Acuff. He’s the CEO of Delta Point. It’s a big sales consulting firm on the East Coast. So, we wrote that together. So, it’s all outlined there. You’re going to get some parts of their… A book is a book, right? Teach advanced tonality in a book, right? Because you’re just reading words, but we give you some nibbles, little hors d’oeuvres in there that will help them. Drew, if they ever want little bit more hors d’oeuvres, some nibbles, they can always join our free Facebook group. I think I gave you the link. Have them go to salesrevolution.pro, sales revolution.pro.

Right when they join, we’ll have them check their Facebook Messenger and we’ll have somebody on the team. We’ll give them like a free training. I’ll have somebody on my team, give them what’s called N EPQ 101 mini course. It’s just some different questions they can use for different situations. We’ll give that to them for free. We won’t charge them or anything. If they want more advanced training above that, they can always reach out to us through that Facebook group. There’s about 50 some thousand people in that. A lot of them are in your space for sure. So, they’re welcome to join that if they want.

Drew McLellan:

That would be awesome. So, again, let’s make sure everybody knows how to get ahold of you to learn more about the work you’re doing. So, yes, they can grab the book. Yes, they can go to the Facebook group. If they want to follow you on social media, they want to follow your writing where, how can they find you in all of that?

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, the best place for them if they want some hors d’oeuvres, the nibbles, we always call them the nibbles. Yeah, have them go to that Facebook group salesrevolution.pro. That’s going to be the place they’d learn the most because they can always get ahold of us through there. We have people working in there all the time. They can walk into a bookstore and purchase that book here actually in a couple weeks because the print version is available in Barnes and Noble and those type of things as well. You’ll see a big orange book there that will stick out off the shelf and they can order the book online as well at Amazon and all the online places too.

Drew McLellan:

All right. So, last thought from you. As I told you when we started and I can’t remember if we’d hit the record button or not, but most agency owners are very reluctant salespeople. They don’t warm up to the idea that it’s their job to sell for the agency. So, what would you say to people who are on a bound because of the company they own and the role that they play in that company to sell, but they’re not excited about selling?

Jeremy Miner:

Well, the only reason why they’re not excited is because they’ve been forced to learn techniques that work against human behavior and are making them feel uncomfortable because they’re triggering sales resistance and it’s not their fault. But like my CEO and business partner says, Matt Ryder, “It is their problem. It’s not our fault, but it is our problem.” So, once you start to learn what we’re starting to initially talk to you about, selling makes people very comfortable when you understand the right way to do it. Because if we look at our prospect, not as a prospect that we’re trying to win over so we can make money, that’s what average salespeople do.

We look at selling not as adversarial, you against the prospect trying to win them over, but if we look at selling as being collaborative, you working with your prospects to help them find and solve problems they didn’t know they had. Because if we can’t communicate to our prospects, then that means their problems don’t get solved. That means they stay in the status quo and they never are able to grow their businesses and get their products and services out into the world to help other people.

So, in my mind, when I was in sales, I always like this butterfly effect. I didn’t blame the lead if they said no. I’m looking at myself. What did I not say? What did I not ask? What did I say that triggered them to run the other way? When we start to think that way and take responsibility and acquire the right skills, we start to view our prospects so much differently. I would suggest when you do that, you’re not going to have any issues. I mean, I’m just going off experience from what our clients say that are in your same industry that used to think that.

But everything’s different. It’s like they were taking the blue pill the whole time and now they’re taking the red pill and they’re like, “I will never go back to selling that old way because I hated that. Just different.”

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Awesome. Jeremy, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and telling us your story. I think you gave everybody some great food for thought and I appreciate you taking the time to be with us.

Jeremy Miner:

Yeah, Drew, thanks for having me on. It’s a pleasure.

Drew McLellan:

You bet. All right, guys. This wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. Lots of practical, tangible skills, and techniques that we talked about in these last 45 minutes, and that’s just scratching the surface. So, Jeremy very generously offered to let you join the Facebook group to give you a free mini course, talked about the book. So, if sales is an Achilles heel for you, if you hate it, even though you know have to do it, really it’s about thinking about it differently. So, I invite you to please take advantage of what you learned in this episode and what Jeremy’s offering to give you access to. In the meantime, huge shout out and thanks to our friends at White Label IQ. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor for the podcast.

One of the things that we push at AMI and we talk about all the time is this 55/25/20. That agency should be able to make 20% profit minimum. I don’t care what the economic condition is, I don’t care what else is going on in your business, but part of that is how you staff your agency and all of you know that staffing has gotten much more expensive. White Label IQ does white label PPC, dev and design. So, if you’re looking for a way to manage your salary costs and still make sure you drop 20% to the bottom line, White Label may be a great resource for you in trying to figure out how to juggle those dollars. So, head over to whitelabeliq.com/ami and you can read all about how they serve agencies and get some free hours on your first project. All right. All of that said, I am super grateful you’re here.

Always glad to see you come back. I’ll be back next week with another guest. In the meantime, I am around if I can be helpful. I can see you in the Facebook group, the Build a Better Agency Podcast Facebook group where we’re answering questions every day for agency owners just like you. All right, I’ll see you next week. Thanks for listening. Thanks for spending some time with us. Visit our website to learn about our workshops, owner peer groups, and download our salary and benefit survey. Be sure you also sign up for our free podcast giveaways at agencymanagementinstitute.com/podcastgiveaway.