Poking the Bear to create more conversations (Josh Braun, Founder @ Josh Braun Sales Training)

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1. 6:29

   where the question is, what have you already tried to do? Well, I outbounded you. I probably caught you midfield on the problem, but not so much that you requested a demo yet, right? And they might not have tried to do a lot yet, but some of those are winnable deals. So if I find that out, they haven't tried to do much about it. Then what do I do? So you illuminate the cost of “inaction. So what do I mean by that? So I'll give you a clear example. There was a friend of mine.” So she was a salesperson and she was copying and pasting repetitive text into emails, Zoom links, calendar links, snippets of text. She would copy them and she would actually type them in. And I asked her if she's ever heard of a product called Text Expander. And I explained

   In Cost-of-inaction messaging

2. 7:32

   We multiplied that by six months and eight months. And it was like five or six hours a month she was losing. But once she saw that and she saw the price of Text Expander, which was, I don't know, $15. I said, why don't you try for a week and see what's like five. She switched because you “highlight the cost of inaction. Sometimes prospects don't know what they don't know.” That's your job as an outbound rep. This gets back to poking the bear. Most of the time when you reach out to someone, they're getting the job done. Your job is to tell them something they don't know that can hurt them and to show the cost of inaction so that they can decide if it's something

   In Cost-of-inaction messaging

3. 15:10

   That's meaningfully different because I'm not gonna get injured and it's easier for me to load my docks Versus we're yellow and they're red So if I don't perceive in your message and how you're saying it This is any different than what I'm doing. You're gonna get an I'm not interested Or if the problem isn't relevant or if I'm making progress “Or if I don't have the big enough problem, like I'm making progress. You're gonna get an I'm not interested” So that's the culprit. Number one is you're not relevant. It's not it's not a relevant problem Culprit number two is a reflex reaction to a salesperson and that is caused by you saying my name is Josh With Acme and I'm a sales consultant. I'm worth the Josh Braun sales consulting

   In Lack-of-need objections

4. 22:31

   conversations than the sort of product centric pitch, but both can work. And so you test these two approaches. And then you have to deliver. So when I get on these calls, I actually do have a five slide presentation where I share my perspective. You guys definitely have a perspective. What's your point of view? “How are you going to poke the bear? What's wrong with the world?” is a great friend of mine. He's a founder and CEO of Basecamp. I'll never forget this about eight months ago, he called me up. It's like, Hey, I'm working on this new product. Like, what are you working on? He's got an email thing. It's called Hey, I'm going to charge 99 bucks a year for it. And I'm like, why the hell would I pay 99 bucks a year for email? It's free. And he said something that I'll never forget. Notice what he's doing. He's not going to sell

   In Belief-based messaging

5. 24:11

   I call the next number. Because there's plenty of people that are, that are okay, but that are interested in that. I'm not going to try to persuade everyone. That's too much pressure. I don't want to do that. Let other people persuade themselves. What are you selling? I'm sorry if I came across as trying to sell you something. I got this commission breath. I've been trying to work on it. Clearly, it's not licked yet. I'm a work in progress. I'm just “calling to see if you're open to a different perspective on generating” leads without traditional advertising spending on Facebook that are targeted that your salespeople would like. Josh, this has been phenomenal. I learned so much from you. We got to move to the final question because we're running out of time. The last question is this. We've talked about a lot of good habits salespeople should be incorporating into their sales life. And now we got to talk about a bad

   In Question-led cold call openers

6. 26:19

   question, the deal has risk and I have something I can coach to. Now, we built a guide with our friends at Insightly CRM on how to run pipe reviews that surface real risk and get deals moving again. And you can get it for free at the link in the show notes. Your top four takeaways from this episode with Josh Braun include, number one, when a prospect “says this isn't the priority right now, maybe it's a priority in two quarters, do not try to persuade” them. Instead, understand what the difference or how expensive that gap is going to be for them right now. Number two, always sell from the buyer's perspective. One thing you can do is you can poke the bear. And the way you do that is you just lift or create the initial thought that there might be something missing before throwing all your features at them.

   In Timing and priority objections

7. 26:52

   is you can poke the bear. And the way you do that is you just lift or create the initial thought that there might be something missing before throwing all your features at them. Number three, there are three reasons why not interest happens. It's either your product isn't relevant to them, you led with your company and they're on the defense, or number three, “they could be interested, but it's not a good time. The way you handle this is you diffuse it” by mirroring them and then get to the actual reason they're not interested. And then lastly, number four, two different cold call approaches. You can start with poke the bear, or you can start with the invitation. You can try to generate some interest with education. In other words, say, I was wondering if you could help me out. I have XYZ collateral and I was wondering if that was

   In Timing and priority objections

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