In this week's episode of Mastering Modern Selling, we were joined by the remarkable Moeed Amin, a seasoned sales professional and neuroscience expert.
As we explored the interplay between neuroscience and effective selling strategies, Moeed shared invaluable insights that are bound to transform the way you approach sales.
Key Takeaways:
◾ The Intersection of Neuroscience and Sales:
Moeed delved into how understanding the human brain can significantly enhance sales strategies. By recognizing how decisions are influenced by cognitive processes, sales professionals can tailor their approaches for maximum impact.
◾Emotional Intelligence in Sales:
The discussion highlighted the critical role of emotional intelligence in sales, emphasizing the importance of empathy and understanding buyer emotions to foster meaningful connections and drive decisions.
◾Strategic Questioning:
Moeed emphasized the power of strategic questioning in uncovering the underlying needs and motivations of potential clients, enabling sales professionals to offer more targeted and compelling solutions.
◾Building Trust Through Authenticity:
Trust is the cornerstone of effective selling, and Moeed shared strategies for building genuine relationships with clients, ensuring long-term partnerships and success.
◾Adapting to Buyer Behavior:
Understanding and adapting to the evolving behaviors and preferences of buyers is crucial in today's dynamic market. Moeed provided insights on staying agile and responsive to these changes to stay ahead in the sales game.
Moeed Amin's expertise in neuroscience offers a fresh and profound perspective on sales, urging professionals to embrace a more informed and empathetic approach to their interactions.
By integrating these insights into your sales strategy, you can unlock new levels of success and customer satisfaction.
Don't miss out—your next big idea could be just one episode away!
This Show is sponsored by Fist Bump
Your prospecting partner to authentically fill your pipeline with ideal customers.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling Relationships
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Social and AI in the buyer-centric age.
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Join host Brandon Lee, founder of Fist Bump, alongside
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Microsoft's number one social seller Carson V Heddy and Tom
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Burton, author of the Revenue Zone and co-founder of Leet
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Smart, as we explore the strategies and stories behind
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successful executives and sales professionals.
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Dive in to business growth, personal development and the
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pursuit of excellence with industry leaders.
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Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader,
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this podcast is your backstage pass to today's business
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landscape.
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This is Mastering Modern Selling, brought to you by Fist
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Bump.
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Speaker 2: Hey everybody, welcome to Mastering Modern
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Selling.
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We're a little light today.
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There's two of us instead of the usual three of us.
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Tom is busy closing deals or doing something important, but
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Carson and I are here.
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Carson, how you doing.
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Speaker 3: I've never been accused of being light Brandon,
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but here I am.
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Speaker 2: That's fair enough.
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So Moeja sent me a message.
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Oh, he is coming.
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He, you know what Time changed.
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We changed our clocks and in the UK they didn't, so he's
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hopping on now.
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He said it'll be here in a few minutes.
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So, everybody, welcome to Mastering Modern Selling.
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We got a few things we can talk about anyway.
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Carson, right, welcome to everybody.
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If you're here on one of the live streams, welcome.
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We'd love to have you throw in the comments who you are, where
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you are, and, as you know, we love your questions, we love
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your comments.
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We wanna bring you to be part of the show as well.
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So please do that.
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And if you're on the podcast, thank you so much for joining us
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and we'd really appreciate it.
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If you find value in this, we'd really appreciate the ratings.
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If we're worthy of five stars, we would really appreciate it.
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And if you think somebody could use it, man, screen capture
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that on your phone, share it with somebody, share the episode
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, share the show we'd really appreciate that.
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So, while we're waiting for Moeide to come on poor guy he's
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like I'll be there in five minutes, so he's coming.
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Carson, tomorrow you and I are hosting a webinar and we are
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sharing your playbook that you've used to do over a billion
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dollars a B everybody a billion dollars in revenue over the
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last 10 years.
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Do you wanna tell everybody a little bit about what they can
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expect, what they're gonna get from you, other than kind of
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full open commodo like here's what I do on a daily basis?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no doubt about it.
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So I made no secret on this show about how, years ago, I
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subscribed fully to the philosophy of social selling and
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really bet big on it.
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How to leverage social, but also how to gamify the sales
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approach.
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When you think about it, it is a game of law of averages.
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It's a game of probability and odds.
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We're dealt a hand like you're playing cards, but on the same
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token, it's what you make of what you're dealt.
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And so how to map out your business, how to figure out the
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key relationships that you need and to go get it, what you can
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control, what are the variables and the parameters, and when,
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inevitably, things change, how do you adapt to the event in the
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light of that?
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So we're gonna talk a lot about how to prepare, how to set the
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foundation for a successful year , the difference that mindset
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needs in that, how to uncover and address your total
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addressable market, how to also think about executing and
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constructing what we like to call plays, but making them
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really meaningful, and, especially when you know and
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when you agree that something is important to resonate with your
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customers, how you do it year round, not just once you know.
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It's not just one email and you've had yourself on the back.
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You know how do you really personify and execute these
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plays to perfection and assist in over time.
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And then, finally, you know how do you stay top of mind with
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your target customer, how do you engage them uniquely over time,
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how do you build community around what you do.
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We'll talk about all of those things, but I feel like the last
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10 years Brandon had been building up to this day Like I
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feel like this is the pinnacle.
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So I'm really excited about tomorrow's session.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean too, and I've obviously had a sneak peek
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and I've known your playbook but got into the weeds of it and
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the way that I see it and we haven't shared this actually
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with you yet, carson.
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So I saw it broken down into three.
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There's kind of three categories of what you do, and
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one is the mindset, which I know is extremely important, and I
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don't think I've encountered a salesperson in my career that's
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as hard charging, hustler and coming from a place of serving
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and his people, his customers and collaborating and bringing
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community together is.
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I've learned from you which has been really incredible.
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So that first part is the mindset, and then you have a
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section on the tools that you use that help you be more
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efficient and get information out there.
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And then also the third one is what we call your actions.
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What are the activities that you actually do and where do you
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do them?
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When do you use LinkedIn?
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Where do you use your podcast?
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I know that's been a big part of you creating a reputation.
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I love to tell the story and I don't mean disrespect from
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anybody, but when I was in St Louis with Carson, we actually
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piggybacked on somebody else's lunch.
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They had their buffet and we went over and took some of the
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leftovers.
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As we were going back to the room that we were working in,
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somebody came around the corner and he was so excited.
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He's like, oh, carson, great to see you.
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And he's like, goes to shake Carson's hand.
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He was so excited.
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Carson's tried to juggle his plate and not drop his food and
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shakes his hand.
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He's like, oh, carson, dah, dah , dah, dah.
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He leaves.
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And I said, oh, I said that was really cool, carson, who is
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that?
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And he's like I'm not sure.
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Speaker 3: And again, no disrespect for the person, I'm
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giving a day of the life of Brandon Lee, because I know the
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same stuff happens in Brant.
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Speaker 2: Okay.
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Speaker 3: The reality of this is how you can put something in
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place that positively impacts and influences all the
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relationships you have in your life.
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It's created countless revenue dollars but, at the same time,
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meaningful relationships like this with Brandon, where now we
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are friends and on a regular basis texting each other and
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friendly competitions and all that jazz a relationship that
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was created right here on LinkedIn and so yeah, and I
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think the key thing for I would want people to know about it
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You've got your your system that you use, but all of it is
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really geared around.
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Speaker 2: You've built a reputation that people know you.
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You're known as the number one social seller at Microsoft, but
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the reality is that they know you and they know you well, and
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so when you are sending messages , people are quicker to respond.
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When you do make calls, people respond because they know you
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and I think in this day and age we're prospecting and pipeline
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building is so difficult and the traditional outreach of cold
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calling and cold email and cold door knocking is so challenged
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that our reputation is so important.
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How do we go about attracting and retaining customer attention
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, because they may not need us today, but they could use in
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three months or six months, and are we still top of mind?
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Do they know who we are?
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Do they remember us so that when that need arises, you know
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I need to, I need to call, I need to reach out to Carson for
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any of us?
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Do they know you and remember you and to reach out?
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Speaker 3: So I'm going to go where it's going to go.
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You know I want to piggyback on that real briefly.
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It's amazing to watch the evolution of a career because,
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as I've made moves in my career and I've gone into new roles,
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first off, I've come back around to be the skip level of the
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people supporting people that I've managed years ago as an
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account rep.
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Furthermore, there have been relationships that I've built
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built in prior iterations of my job here that now I'm able to
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connect those people with people that I work with in new roles.
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And you know it's that value that we're always trying to add
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it's.
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You know, I like to say this a lot.
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It's like it started out as this tiny little snowball of
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believing that it was.
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You know social selling was the way to go and it's turned into
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an avalanche of influence.
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You know, being able to meet people, being able to add value
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just by connecting people and getting out of their way so that
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they can do great things together, it's been very
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rewarding.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that brings up a question that asks us
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where wait for Moe to still come in the term social selling?
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You know, I've got my social selling sucks t-shirt, primarily
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because I hated the word, I hated the term, because years
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ago a bunch of and we talked about this with Mike when he was
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on is he called the charlatans of social selling.
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Like, just do these things.
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We'll get three new leads every day and it proved to not really
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work and not be as fruitful as promised.
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How do you talk about or define social selling?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, social selling is now just
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selling and it's using all of the tools that are available to
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you that enable you to meaningfully connect with people
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and also stay top of mind with them.
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So you know, there's a lot of social tools and there's some
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have changed over the years.
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There's new ones coming out all the time.
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There's a lot of AI infused tools now.
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But, I think, social selling how can you leverage some of
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these platforms, like LinkedIn, to find your target audience,
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meaningfully connect with them by commenting, by connecting, by
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earning meetings as a result of your connection there, and then
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also building a personal brand as a salesperson, as a
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professional and as a thought leader?
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Those types of things can be infinitely impactful to your
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career and you'd be surprised I mean, it has literally
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catapulted me, you know, surprisingly, throughout my time
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here over the last decade.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would say , as you talk about personal
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brand for everybody, it's really how are you known?
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It's building that reputation and in this busy world it takes
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consistency and it takes multiple even channels, but then
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also ways of doing it.
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What I like, what I see with you, do like you're a host with
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us, a Mastery Modern Selling.
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You have your own show and podcast.
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You've got lots of content that goes out to you and you're you
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co host other shows as well with Helga.
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But you have lots of content that you're sharing through lots
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of channels, and it's different types of content.
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It's not just you know, buy my Microsoft products.
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It's leadership.
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It's you know your own personal journey as a sales guy and I
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think that that you've written a book and you use all that
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content in order to build that personal brand and again, that
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is reputation.
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It's how you're known in the community.
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I mean.
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Speaker 3: I think the key takeaway there, brandon, is you
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know, if you're listening right now, your story matters, right?
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You know you're you're entering the sales arena or you're a
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seasoned veteran, like us.
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You know your story matters, you're having experiences that,
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by sharing them, would benefit others.
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And even if you have a product or service being able to talk
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about how you have partnered with someone and the outcomes
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that they've realized as a result of your partnership
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obviously with their permissions those types of things are what
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ultimately land the land the day .
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You know, I go out and I try to seek.
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Like you know, we talk about webinars on the show.
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The best webinars that I've ever done have been the ones
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that spotlighted customers.
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You know people don't need to hear or see me.
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I'm not the pro in this.
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I'm here to shine a light on the story of how my customer has
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done something great because of something that my team worked
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with them on.
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Ultimately, at the end of the day, that's what really matters,
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and again, it's that.
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It's that domino to fall, it's that snowball becoming the
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avalanche.
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You just need to build momentum .
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So start having these wins.
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And again, where I've really found success is by mastering
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the probability element of it.
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You know right now I'm working with my team.
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I'm in a relatively new environment for me.
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You know I made a move into a scale territory and you know
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we're working together with.
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You know, going out on the sales navigator, finding
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customer targets, reaching out to hundreds of executives at a
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time with a AI aided message that owns their website, and the
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goal is to get a meeting.
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That's it.
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I know the value that I can bring and I know the value my
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team can bring to these organizations.
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We want to make sure we say something that is aligned with
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their goals, their mission, their value statement.
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You do that.
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You earn that meeting.
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The rest is up to you.
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The tools help you get there, but the rest is going to fall on
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you, and so make sure you take that seriously.
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You know I like what you said about that too is.
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Speaker 2: I'm looking at the comments.
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We have Butch Nicholson, who's on here, and we have Victoria
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Jimenez, who's on here, and Butch is seasoned.
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He's been selling for 40 plus years.
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He's informed me that I can no longer call him a baby boomer.
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I have to call him the wise one , because they're the wise era.
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And then you have Victoria, who is.
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She's in an internship in her last year of college and she's
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graduating in May.
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Congratulations, victoria.
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She's going to be a guest on our show in May, right before
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she graduates.
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And what you're saying is share your story, share what you're
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learning, share what you're doing, share what you're
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observing.
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It doesn't matter if you're new to sales, like Victoria, or if
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you're Butch, who's been seasoned and did the, did the
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pounding, the pavement and door knocking and all that.
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When we share our story, that's how people begin to resonate
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with us and that's the process of building our personal brand.
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Speaker 3: I want to approach Jeb's note.
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Jeb, thanks for joining us today.
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So Jeb asked what have been the results from using AI and the
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prospecting messaging process.
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So you know what's been helpful very, very positive.
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I will give you an example.
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So we've got a few customers about I'd say 30 or so that have
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been completely quote, unquote dark to us over the last couple
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of years.
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We've not had inroads and, by default, when you have hundreds
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of customers that you manage, it's kind of challenging to get
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really deep with multiple executives, right.
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So the results have been positive.
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And here's why because we infuse the AI into the human
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touch, right.
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Ai can never be the end, all be all when it comes to messaging.
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But what we're doing is going in and exporting customer names
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and titles from Sales Navigator.
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Going in obviously arrive at their email address any number
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of ways zoom info, doing internet searches for what their
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email address nomenclature is.
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But then what we're doing is just combing their you know,
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their mission statement, their website, their about statement,
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and then putting that into the AI model and really just
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prompting it to write a compelling message about why we
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would be a unique or a compelling partner based on XYZ,
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and then pasting in that data.
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It's going to obviously give you a very long format.
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That's not what I want to send to my customer, but there will
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inevitably be a couple of sentences that I will extract
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out of that but I throw into what you know, I ultimately send
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to the customer.
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Now, the reason that this is successful is love probability.
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I'm messaging 100 plus executives in one organization
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at the same time and I'm also sending a very you know,
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targeted message that is really geared toward how I, and also
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our organization, could uniquely help this, this organization,
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partner with them, and so that's why it resonates and then doing
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it consistently over time.
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Of those 30, 20 have responded within an hour over the last two
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weeks, and these were customers that previously we had zero
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relationship with whatsoever.
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So it's positive, but only positive not because of the AI,
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but the AI is a time saver.
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I could do all this work.
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I could come their websites, I could extract some pieces, but
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what it's doing is, in seconds, flat extracting these key pieces
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that I can talk about why we care about these items.
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You know if they care about sustainability, they care about
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diversity and inclusion.
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If they care about, you know different ways that we can work
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with them from a technology standpoint and digital skilling.
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I can reference that in my mail .
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That's why it works.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's.
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We're going to talk about that actually next week for everybody
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that's listening, we're going to we're going to talk a little
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bit more about this prospecting playbook and what it can look
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like to piggyback on the webinar tomorrow.
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I think Moead's here and I believe what I'm going to say
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happened.
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Moead, there you are, my friend .
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Speaker 4: How's it going, guys?
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Sorry about that, that was a bit of a rush no worries.
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Speaker 2: What I think probably happened is we changed our
00:17:36
clocks already and I don't think you guys changed them, so maybe
00:17:40
that's not a hiccup here?
00:17:41
Yeah, this silly thing we do about changing times, you know
00:17:47
if we're going to do it, can't the entire world just do it on
00:17:50
the same day?
00:17:51
Make things a lot easier.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 2: Thankfully, you were on LinkedIn and Brandon was able
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to send you a mail, so you know what you and I are going to
00:18:02
connect on WhatsApp now, because I was like I don't have this
00:18:05
cell phone.
00:18:06
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll give you.
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I don't know why we don't actually have.
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We haven't shared that.
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That's so weird, I know After all this time.
00:18:12
So, yeah, we'll do that after this for sure, but I'm glad to
00:18:15
be here and I was listening to the discussion and looking at
00:18:19
the questions as well.
00:18:20
Very interesting stuff, very interesting stuff indeed.
00:18:23
Speaker 2: Well, let me, let me introduce you to everybody and
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everybody.
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Thanks for letting Carson and I , you know, prattle on a little
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bit, and we're going to deep dive more on that next week.
00:18:31
But today, Moid, I mean he's, he's.
00:18:36
You have a title, your enterprise account executive
00:18:39
with SEM Rush and you're the founder of provable proverbial
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door.
00:18:44
I'll slow down a little bit, and the reason I asked Moid he's
00:18:47
actually going to guest on my show before the show I had prior
00:18:51
to this one.
00:18:51
He is an expert in neuroscience and he uses all of that applies
00:18:57
everything he knows into sales and how people make decisions,
00:19:03
and so that's what we're going to talk about today.
00:19:04
Moid, welcome to the show.
00:19:06
Even if it's late, I'm so excited to have you here.
00:19:09
Tell everybody a little bit about you and your background.
00:19:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, and firstly, thank you for having me on and
00:19:15
it's a it's a real pleasure to speak with with you and everyone
00:19:20
who's listening in today.
00:19:23
So my background I've been in sales for about 20 years, held
00:19:27
various positions all the way to senior leadership, decided to
00:19:32
step back from leadership and go back into sales along with the
00:19:39
business that I currently have, where I'm coaching and training
00:19:42
both salespeople as well as early stage entrepreneurs, and
00:19:48
sometimes going into series A, and in that time those 20 years
00:19:54
I've been involved in enterprise based selling, some of it for
00:19:58
low ticket items.
00:19:59
When I say low tickets, we're talking about $20 all the
00:20:04
way up to the millions and so in that time, I have learned not
00:20:10
just a lot about sales, but about human behavior, and it was
00:20:14
in 2007 where I had a serendipitous moment where I
00:20:21
realized that actually, my near assigned degree, as well as the
00:20:24
others that I have, actually was a benefit in the sales process,
00:20:29
and I realized that there was a massive gap in the markets
00:20:33
where it comes to this, and, in fact, most salespeople have no
00:20:38
inclination or have never been taught, or even aware, at that
00:20:41
time at least, of the importance that psychology plays in the
00:20:46
buying process, and so what was interesting is in 2007, which I
00:20:51
then, during the financial crisis, was the top salesperson
00:20:55
in that company about 200 odd salespeople I think at the time
00:21:00
and that's just in Europe, not including America's and other
00:21:03
parts of the world and that was really through just the
00:21:06
understanding of neuroscience and what kind of makes buyers
00:21:08
tick and what are the emotions and thought process that they go
00:21:13
through at every stage of the buying process, and so that led
00:21:19
me into a lifelong journey of kind of using what I've learned
00:21:22
to actually aid in not only my sales approach but help a very
00:21:28
large number of salespeople really kind of excel in their
00:21:32
sales career and just completely open their perspective into
00:21:37
sales right and what it takes to be a great salesperson.
00:21:42
And you know, unfortunately is still the case.
00:21:45
It is not what's being taught.
00:21:47
That doesn't mean it's all bad, of course not, but it has to be
00:21:52
slotted into the right perspective and the right
00:21:54
context and therefore have the right understanding.
00:21:57
So yeah that's my long ramble about my past and kind of what
00:22:02
I've learned along the way.
00:22:03
You know, I've had the privilege of being able to work
00:22:06
with so many people and, you know, really kind of open their
00:22:08
eyes around this.
00:22:09
So, yeah, that's how we kind of connected, I think, through a
00:22:13
particular network as well.
00:22:14
Speaker 2: And it reminds me when a life changing situation
00:22:18
for me was my freshman year of college and Henry Kravitz, who's
00:22:22
one of the founders of Colbert Kravitz and Roberts and KKR,
00:22:26
spoke at our school.
00:22:27
I went to a small private college and the KKR guys all
00:22:31
went to my private college and he was there speaking and
00:22:34
somebody asked him about you know, what should we be focused
00:22:38
on as undergraduates?
00:22:40
And he said you know, they hire people from the best MBA
00:22:44
programs around the world and he said one of the biggest
00:22:47
challenges they had is their ability to communicate.
00:22:50
They were smart as can be, but their ability to communicate,
00:22:53
their ability to understand people, and he said if you can
00:22:57
understand people and how they think and how they behave,
00:23:01
that's more important than all the book knowledge you get.
00:23:03
And I shifted my undergraduate degree to psychology and
00:23:07
communication because that plus I was dying in economics courses
00:23:11
, but so there's a little other motivation there.
00:23:14
But that really did.
00:23:16
What's that?
00:23:17
Speaker 3: I can relate to that.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what shifted.
00:23:21
So, as we, as we start talking about this, can you, can you
00:23:25
share a little bit about that?
00:23:27
The science back on how people make decisions.
00:23:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's a really big topic, and so let me
00:23:38
let me distill that into four main pillars that are
00:23:46
particularly relevant in the sales process, and so the first
00:23:51
one is the analysis and calculation of external
00:23:57
information.
00:23:57
So when we go to make a decision, that ability to make
00:24:02
decision doesn't just come from within.
00:24:04
There's external information, feedback, analysis about the
00:24:09
world around us that goes into forming what decisions should we
00:24:13
make here.
00:24:14
So the kind of assessment and calculation of external
00:24:20
information, is the first bit.
00:24:22
The second bit is assessing gains and losses.
00:24:25
What I have to say here is for salespeople not enough attention
00:24:32
is being paid into the losses part, but that is a critical
00:24:36
component of how we make decisions.
00:24:38
The final part is something called well, not final.
00:24:42
The third part is called plan implementation.
00:24:44
Plan implementation is essentially how would this
00:24:47
become a part of my world?
00:24:48
If I buy something, how will that become a part of my life
00:24:52
and my world, whether it's clothes, whether it's a phone,
00:24:56
whether it's a piece of software , whether it's the person you
00:24:59
marry it's, how will that become part of my world and what would
00:25:04
that look like?
00:25:05
And then the final part is when you go to pursue a goal or
00:25:10
pursue an action, and there are four parts of the brain that's
00:25:14
involved, main parts of the brain that are involved, two of
00:25:17
which are emotional centers.
00:25:19
The last part is actually how you calculate whether you should
00:25:25
pursue a goal or not, and it's in the portion of the brain
00:25:28
called the orbital frontal lobe.
00:25:30
And the reason why I bring this up about all of this is if you
00:25:33
want proof of how important emotions are in decision making
00:25:37
process.
00:25:37
All you have to do is look at the orbital frontal lobe.
00:25:43
So that part of the brain essentially helps you make
00:25:45
decisions and the way it makes decisions is it measures.
00:25:49
What is my emotional state right now and what will my
00:25:54
emotional state be when I achieve that goal or pursue that
00:25:58
action?
00:25:59
The difference determines whether you take that decision
00:26:02
or not, and here is why emotions are so important.
00:26:06
If that part of the brain is damaged, in patients what we see
00:26:10
is complete apathy.
00:26:12
They cannot make the simplest decisions, such as drinking a
00:26:17
glass of water or putting on a jumper or getting up to go to
00:26:22
the door.
00:26:23
They can't make any of those simplest decisions and what's
00:26:28
interesting is that happens when that part of the brain has been
00:26:31
damaged.
00:26:31
So emotions and our ability to measure the difference in
00:26:35
emotions between now and when we pursue an action is critical to
00:26:40
us making a decision and taking action on that decision.
00:26:43
So those are the kind of four parts.
00:26:45
We can go into that in more detail, into each one of those
00:26:47
four if you want, but those are the four things.
00:26:49
So calculating and evaluating external information, assessing
00:26:54
gains and losses, plan implementation and then the four
00:26:58
parts of the brain that are involved in the pursuit of a
00:27:01
goal or an action.
00:27:03
Speaker 3: Well, I'm fascinated by the science of sales.
00:27:06
I'd be curious, especially for our audience listening today, a
00:27:10
lot of modern sellers.
00:27:12
What would you say are some common misconceptions or
00:27:15
approaches about sales today?
00:27:17
That maybe your science-based approach seeks to debunk, or
00:27:22
that you have a different take on it than maybe what has been
00:27:25
the norm?
00:27:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, really good question, and there are actually
00:27:28
quite a bit.
00:27:29
There's quite a lot here, so let's start with the first one,
00:27:34
which is, and my old mentor, matthew.
00:27:37
Dixon wrote this in his recent book the Jolt Effect.
00:27:40
You love.
00:27:41
Speaker 2: Matt, I was just going to bring that up.
00:27:43
Speaker 3: I just made a post about that him yesterday he was
00:27:46
on a prior show.
00:27:47
Love that it all comes back to challenger sale and jolt effect
00:27:51
yeah.
00:27:52
Speaker 4: Well, it was an old mentor of mine and the research
00:27:56
I've done, I've interviewed how many, is it now?
00:28:01
480?
00:28:03
I can't remember the exact number now, but it's 480 or B2B
00:28:06
bias, something like that, over the last 15 years.
00:28:10
So the first thing is that there's a point in a
00:28:15
decision-making process where you know the benefits, you know
00:28:23
the potential value.
00:28:23
In fact, we wouldn't be at this advanced stage in the sales
00:28:27
process unless that has been agreed, unless we know that
00:28:32
we're just not going to waste our time anymore, especially
00:28:34
senior people.
00:28:36
Now there's a point there where they need to have confirmation
00:28:40
of that value.
00:28:41
That's fine, that's understandable.
00:28:43
But one of the things that I often miss is what do I stand to
00:28:49
lose from this right now?
00:28:51
So the area of risk and risk management, and not just risk
00:28:59
management, but surfacing the risks, having an open
00:29:02
conversation about it, because we, the salespeople, shy away
00:29:05
from risks.
00:29:05
We think, oh, if we bring this up, then we've somehow put in
00:29:09
their brain something that they weren't thinking about before.
00:29:12
It's totally untrue.
00:29:13
They're thinking about it from the very beginning.
00:29:15
You not bringing it up means that you're means a few things.
00:29:20
Number one is that you're not in sync with how they're making
00:29:24
decisions.
00:29:25
You're not in sync with their psychology at that stage.
00:29:27
So there's a dissonance there, and with that dissonance comes
00:29:31
distance.
00:29:31
The second thing is that, without you bringing up, the
00:29:39
buyer feels as if you're trying to hide something, and that
00:29:42
again creates distance.
00:29:43
So be very clear about what the risks are for the buyer.
00:29:49
And sometimes those risks aren't just the downsides of using R2
00:29:53
versus someone else.
00:29:54
Sometimes the risks are things like I don't know what to expect
00:29:58
if we sign on the dotted line.
00:30:00
And if I don't know what to expect ie that planning,
00:30:05
implementation side, if I don't have a vision of service, if I
00:30:08
don't know what those stages are , if I don't know what my team's
00:30:10
responsibilities are versus yours, if that hasn't been
00:30:13
mapped out, then I'm going to get nervous because in the
00:30:16
absence of information, the brain defaults to the negative,
00:30:20
ie it will remove itself from the potential risk.
00:30:22
Just to admit just the sheer fact of just there's a gap there
00:30:27
, there's some ambiguity.
00:30:29
I'm just going to distance myself from that because I'm
00:30:31
wired to protect ourselves from ambiguity.
00:30:34
So that's one thing.
00:30:38
The other thing is business value versus what I term
00:30:43
emotional value.
00:30:44
There was a study done by Google, mattis and CEB about
00:30:48
this and we found that B2B sales has emotional value.
00:30:53
What they call personal value I call it emotional value has
00:30:56
twice the impact of business value.
00:30:58
Ie there's a point where the ROI might be clear, the benefits
00:31:03
might be there, but in order for me to want to push this
00:31:06
through, particularly when I'm facing challenges or pushback or
00:31:12
skepticism from my boss and my stakeholders, me having personal
00:31:17
or emotional value in this and seeing that for myself and my
00:31:22
team will give me more courage to present that case and to
00:31:29
stand to my ground when the CFO is going to really challenge me
00:31:33
on whether we should do this or not.
00:31:35
So that's the other one.
00:31:37
The next thing is that yeah, so this is related to risk.
00:31:46
So one of the biggest surprises for me it was a surprise how big
00:31:51
this was.
00:31:51
When we dug into why someone made a decision to go with one
00:31:56
provider over another, the overwhelming majority wasn't
00:32:01
innovation, it wasn't ROI actually, it wasn't that you're
00:32:07
a better solution.
00:32:08
It was kind of tied to the sales experience which CBO found
00:32:15
.
00:32:15
But I went even further, because, to me, sales experience
00:32:19
what does that even mean?
00:32:20
I mean, is it just a great conversation?
00:32:22
Is it the fact that I trust this person?
00:32:24
And so I dug further and what I found was that the overwhelming
00:32:29
majority of reasons why someone made a decision to go with one
00:32:33
vendor over another was protection or innovation of
00:32:37
their career.
00:32:38
If I went with this vendor, how would that impact my career?
00:32:44
And my career might be all about stability.
00:32:48
That's kind of what I've been brought in, or that's what the
00:32:51
CEO is expecting of me, and whatever it might be is to
00:32:53
steady the ship, don't take any risks, grow a little bit in
00:32:58
terms of innovation and products and the way we do things, but
00:33:02
do it safely versus someone maybe coming in here, maybe
00:33:07
brought in to shake things up.
00:33:08
The company, the investors had enough.
00:33:12
They brought someone in to basically say we're just going
00:33:14
to strip things out or change the way we do things in a
00:33:18
radical way because, quite frankly, we've hit that critical
00:33:20
mass.
00:33:20
So, whatever the decision was it really came down to, is this
00:33:26
person going to protect and or elevate my career, or are they
00:33:30
going to harm my career?
00:33:31
And I don't know?
00:33:33
I don't care how much better this vendor is or how many
00:33:37
accolades this software has.
00:33:39
If I feel that another software or another solution presents a
00:33:46
safer alternative for me, then I would choose that.
00:33:49
So that was another surprising one.
00:33:54
So those are just a few of quite a lot of things that we
00:34:00
uncovered.
00:34:05
The area about emotion is something I just cannot stress
00:34:09
enough.
00:34:09
I cannot stress that enough.
00:34:11
Oh, the other one is passion in your voice is a really big
00:34:17
no-no.
00:34:17
So we're taught that if we are passionate and we have to sound
00:34:23
passionate, we have to.
00:34:24
Don't take what I'm doing here as an indicator, because we're
00:34:28
in a podcast show very different mode of communication here.
00:34:31
But in a sales process, if you sound overly enthusiastic and
00:34:37
overly passionate, what was really surprising is that that
00:34:42
triggers a safety response in the buyer.
00:34:44
It's too much emotion, right.
00:34:47
Why is this person standing to gain from this.
00:34:49
Why is this person so excited?
00:34:51
It doesn't give off a feeling of professionalism.
00:34:55
It actually gives off a feeling of immaturity.
00:34:59
Whereas someone who and I'm not saying you have to be monotonous
00:35:02
and boring, I don't know.
00:35:04
But what I'm saying is, if you come across as dependable,
00:35:08
professional in your approach analytical in a lot of ways
00:35:13
don't be overly enthusiastic.
00:35:15
Be enthusiastic about them, but do so in a measured way,
00:35:19
because if you're too enthusiastic then someone will
00:35:21
think, well, hang on a second, what's going on here?
00:35:24
So that was another very surprising one.
00:35:26
Professionalism over enthusiasm , right, those are the things I
00:35:31
would say.
00:35:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm hearing Matt when he was on here and we
00:35:36
spent a lot of time talking about the FOMO versus the FOMO
00:35:41
and how much the fear of messing up dominated.
00:35:44
All that to be said, then, how does this transition as we talk
00:35:48
about modern?
00:35:49
How is personal brand contributing to this?
00:35:53
Because it seems to me and Carson and I have talked a lot
00:35:56
about this your reputation over time impacts whether they want
00:36:02
to talk to you in the first place, but then also like the
00:36:06
tone.
00:36:06
It kind of sets the table for that conversation.
00:36:09
And then, anthony, I want to get to your question.
00:36:11
We'll find the right time to bring it in for Moe.
00:36:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
00:36:16
So personal brand At the end of the day.
00:36:23
So I'm not going to go into the history of commerce and sales
00:36:28
and things like that, because that would be a five hour
00:36:30
discussion, right, and that's something I do at universities
00:36:35
or special seminars that I host.
00:36:36
But let me give an understanding, let me give a
00:36:41
description of where we are right now when it comes to,
00:36:44
particularly when you're selling to senior level people.
00:36:46
It doesn't mean that's not the case with more junior people,
00:36:51
it's just a bit more pronounced for senior people.
00:36:54
They don't want you to come to them with data or insights,
00:36:58
because they can get that.
00:36:59
They don't want you to come to them with an idea, because they
00:37:06
probably have a lot of ideas.
00:37:07
What they want you to come to them with is a solution.
00:37:12
It's a well, I've turned this a hypothesis but they want you to
00:37:18
not only agree or empathize or identify an unforeseen situation
00:37:25
or unforeseen risk, but they want you to come with some form
00:37:29
of an answer.
00:37:30
Now, that answer doesn't have to be concrete, it doesn't have
00:37:34
to be totally mapped out, it doesn't have to be exact, but it
00:37:38
is a directional answer.
00:37:41
And so what does that mean to your personal brand?
00:37:43
Well, you've got to be someone that's able to deliver on that
00:37:45
answer.
00:37:46
You've got to be able to.
00:37:48
You've got to show them that you're someone that A
00:37:50
understands their business in their world and I don't mean
00:37:52
that just their business, I mean the industry in which they're
00:37:56
working with it, the company and what's going on in that
00:37:59
business.
00:38:00
What are the typical MBOs and the objectives that that buyer
00:38:05
has to go through, has to deliver on.
00:38:08
You've got to understand those things and then, when you have
00:38:15
all that information, your personal brand is now an
00:38:19
extension of that.
00:38:20
It's a demonstration of that.
00:38:22
And so if you're talking on LinkedIn about things to do with
00:38:26
your products, yeah, it's okay.
00:38:30
If you're talking about how great you are at sales, forget
00:38:32
it right, which I still see a lot of salespeople do.
00:38:35
But if you're talking about the updated trends, the best
00:38:39
practices, what are you seeing that CTOs are genuinely doing at
00:38:44
the moment?
00:38:44
What are some of the pros and cons?
00:38:46
What are some of the risks involved?
00:38:47
What are some of the dangers involved Currently, right now,
00:38:52
with CMOs?
00:38:53
I think there was a study done by Gartner where they found that
00:38:57
59% of CMOs were actually disappointed by the results from
00:39:03
the investment they made in data and analytics.
00:39:06
What is your idea about how some of the best CMOs are
00:39:10
handling that situation Right and why is that the best idea?
00:39:14
In other words, you're helping them learn and learning.
00:39:19
When you acquire information, the brain registers the rule.
00:39:23
It uses the same reward mechanisms for acquiring you an
00:39:27
interesting so that's subjective , but interesting information.
00:39:30
It's the same reward pathways when you eat sugar.
00:39:33
It's highly desirable.
00:39:36
And it's highly desirable because added information was
00:39:40
actually the very root of our separation from the end of those
00:39:44
, and that's why Homeosapien one of the theories, strong
00:39:47
theories and reasons why Homeosapiens survived.
00:39:51
So new information is highly desirable for us, and so what
00:39:55
information are you sharing that's of interest to your buyer
00:39:59
and their world?
00:39:59
Not what's interesting to you or about your product, and so
00:40:02
your personal brand is the extension of your knowledge.
00:40:06
It's the extension of the results that you've delivered
00:40:09
for others.
00:40:09
This is one of the levers that you use to not only communicate
00:40:18
but show that you are at the same level as the buyer.
00:40:22
One of the things that I learned in CEB that was hugely valuable
00:40:27
for me was that I was having more discussions with at the
00:40:33
time I was selling to, chief what do you mean?
00:40:36
Chief R&D officers In my opinion, one of the hardest
00:40:39
people to sell to.
00:40:40
I spoke to more Chief R&D officers in one week than those
00:40:47
Chief R&D officers would speak to other Chief R&D officers in a
00:40:51
year, and so within a month, within six months, within a year
00:40:56
, I built up such a wealth of knowledge of what some of the
00:41:02
best practices are out there, but also some of the dangerous
00:41:04
practices, and just me sharing that kind of information I
00:41:09
realized was hugely valuable to those people that I was speaking
00:41:12
with.
00:41:12
They really value those insights, and so salespeople
00:41:17
have this inferiority complex, but actually just by the sheer
00:41:21
volume of calls and discussions that you have, the amount of
00:41:25
knowledge that you have is actually really valuable to
00:41:29
those buyers and so, again, that is a part of your brand
00:41:32
extension as well.
00:41:34
So personal brand is important, and the reason why is because it
00:41:38
goes back to the fact that they're doing business with you,
00:41:40
not just your company, and if it's a complex solution, they
00:41:44
need to know that the person they're dealing with has the
00:41:47
professionalism, the stability and the confidence and the
00:41:50
experience to navigate them through that.
00:41:53
The more complex the deal, the greater the consequences of the
00:41:58
decisions and the solution that you bring to their business.
00:42:01
Therefore, you need to show yourself as, in my opinion,
00:42:07
being having a higher brand of the company that you're working
00:42:09
with.
00:42:10
That's what you're striving for .
00:42:11
So personal brand is incredibly important in this process
00:42:16
because you're at the very tip end of that sphere behind your
00:42:21
company.
00:42:22
So I don't know if that answers your question.
00:42:24
There's a lot of that in the chat.
00:42:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
00:42:30
Hey, Carson, I have a question for you.
00:42:32
We're just talking about there with the personal brand and that
00:42:35
reputation.
00:42:36
How does that practically play out for you with what you do
00:42:41
with your content creation, your webinars, your podcasts, the
00:42:46
type of content you create, you share it, you send direct
00:42:50
messages?
00:42:51
When you and I first connected, we talked about how you
00:42:55
leveraged the nine figure deal and how you had the swarm
00:43:00
approach and working with people .
00:43:02
How does what Moeid was just saying, how does that play out
00:43:05
for you practically day in and day out?
00:43:09
Speaker 3: There's so much that Moeid has shared today that I
00:43:11
think is so relevant, and it actually the biggest thing that
00:43:15
I think I want to really anchor on from today's session is the
00:43:19
whole de-risking the decision for your customer audience, and
00:43:24
if you leverage that to inform how you go about your go to
00:43:28
market strategy, it makes all the difference in the world.
00:43:31
And what I mean by that is I spend a lot of time really
00:43:34
thinking about, okay, what's the problem or the challenge or the
00:43:39
gap that I typically see when I talk to different executive
00:43:44
leaders.
00:43:44
Right, and then how can maybe I help them uniquely solve it?
00:43:49
It's not about talking about a product or a solution.
00:43:53
It could be a relationship that I help create.
00:43:55
It could be finding someone that that person serves in a
00:44:00
community or a different customer organization that maybe
00:44:02
I've supported or one of my colleagues supports.
00:44:04
How can I meaningfully show up in a way that helps them feel
00:44:10
good about working together?
00:44:11
And I think it really embodies what Moeid was saying earlier,
00:44:15
because that is at the heart of everything that I seek to do.
00:44:17
How can I show up in a way that it shows it first off.
00:44:21
I'm paying attention, I know what matters to them based on
00:44:24
their company reports, their website, et cetera, and even
00:44:27
their own LinkedIn profile.
00:44:28
Like I've forged relationships based on what I could tell
00:44:31
matters to that person individually a customer that
00:44:34
wouldn't respond to my team, but when I reached out to them and
00:44:37
I saw them LinkedIn, they were on podcasts and blogs and they
00:44:39
had a thought leadership around a certain topic.
00:44:41
Guess what?
00:44:42
That's where I tried to show up Clearly you're a thought leader
00:44:45
here.
00:44:45
We could learn a lot from you.
00:44:47
Let me connect you with some other people in my organization
00:44:50
that care deeply about what you're talking about so that we
00:44:53
can learn from you.
00:44:54
They responded in five minutes and nobody could get a meeting
00:44:57
with this person.
00:44:58
So I think the point of the matter is is that there's no
00:45:00
cookie cutter program, there's no silver bullet.
00:45:03
But if you think about what matters to your target audience,
00:45:07
you understand what their gaps look like and you don't go toe
00:45:09
to toe on the strengths of their way of doing things.
00:45:12
Like you're never going to win if you go against your
00:45:14
competition based on your competition strength.
00:45:16
That's just not going to happen .
00:45:18
But if you can make them feel good about what you can bring
00:45:21
and what your organization can bring in the way of partnership.
00:45:24
That is key.
00:45:25
Now the other element from a branding perspective building
00:45:29
that reputation that you're an important person to know as part
00:45:33
of a process, brandy, you talked about the nine figure
00:45:35
deal.
00:45:36
That customer had seven seven C level changes in two years.
00:45:39
Every time they had a new C level, they were told you need
00:45:42
to meet Carson because he's going to read you in on what
00:45:45
we're doing.
00:45:45
That's the value that I was working diligently to bring.
00:45:49
I am obsessed with finding ways to serve through value and by
00:45:55
having these relationships and knowing what we were doing, I
00:45:57
was able to onboard, in essence, these executives and say and
00:46:00
make them feel good, this is what we're doing.
00:46:03
What is your unique vantage point?
00:46:04
What's your charter?
00:46:06
Obviously, you came to the organization to do something
00:46:08
important.
00:46:09
How can I make sure I'm delivering a win to you?
00:46:12
Because, at the end of the day, if you make everybody in your
00:46:15
sphere win, guess?
00:46:16
Speaker 4: what.
00:46:17
Speaker 3: You're going to win too.
00:46:17
So, whether it's passively educating the masses so that you
00:46:21
de-risk the decision for them, you make sure that you're
00:46:25
helping them take in information on their own terms, not being
00:46:29
pushy.
00:46:29
You're always available, you're responsive, you show up and you
00:46:33
look for ways proactively to uniquely help them.
00:46:36
You can't lose Moeid back to you.
00:46:43
You've got me fired up, moeid.
00:46:45
It's funny because I had a bunch of questions I was going
00:46:48
to ask and you answered a lot of them in your last bit, really,
00:46:51
about some of the experiences that you've had, how you've
00:46:56
applied the neuroscience approach.
00:46:58
I'd be very interested to hear how do you see things continuing
00:47:02
to evolve, especially now with the role of digital channels
00:47:07
linked in the evolution of B2B sales prospecting, how we're
00:47:11
using AI, how could and should a science-based approach play in
00:47:19
modern selling and the future of sales?
00:47:24
Speaker 2: Just a small question .
00:47:25
That's a big question, you guys are asking me big questions.
00:47:29
We brought your big brain here for a reason.
00:47:34
We have big questions.
00:47:36
Speaker 4: That's very kind of you.
00:47:37
That's very kind of you guys.
00:47:38
Let's start with the first bit.
00:47:46
The way I envision this is imagine there's a core.
00:47:48
That's you, that's your knowledge, your capabilities,
00:47:54
your application of things.
00:47:55
Then you have another circle around you and then maybe a
00:47:59
third circle or a second circle around you.
00:48:01
That's where AI and digital play.
00:48:06
They are tools, they are channels.
00:48:08
Think of them as the runway for you to get to a destination,
00:48:13
but the core doesn't change not really.
00:48:16
There might be some nuanced elements about the core that
00:48:20
changes with time, but really that's kind of stayed true for a
00:48:25
very, very long time.
00:48:27
Let me address those core first , because your question is a
00:48:31
fantastic one, carlson, because we are going into the situation
00:48:34
with AI.
00:48:35
In fact, I've created courses on that.
00:48:37
I've done that with a good friend of mine, fred Coates.
00:48:39
I recognize the importance.
00:48:43
I use AI obsessively throughout the day.
00:48:45
People jump into AI and LinkedIn and all these nuanced
00:48:56
techniques and approaches, but actually there are some
00:48:59
fundamentals that they don't have and that is what's failing
00:49:04
them, not the fact that they can't use AI or digital or
00:49:08
LinkedIn in the right way.
00:49:10
If you don't mind, let me start from there first, because there
00:49:12
are some really important things .
00:49:13
The first one is you're not a salesperson, you're a business
00:49:22
person.
00:49:22
You just happen to sell something.
00:49:24
So let me repeat that you're a business person.
00:49:28
Who's who happens to be selling something?
00:49:31
It was Warren Buffett that said that.
00:49:33
You know, finance is the language of business, right?
00:49:39
So if you can't, if you don't understand finance, you really
00:49:44
can't speak the language of business.
00:49:46
And Especially when you're selling to a C level person, or
00:49:50
even a VP, for that matter, like when I say VP, you know I mean
00:49:56
a real VP, not I don't mean to be bad to other people a VP of
00:50:00
sales or something like that way .
00:50:01
It's just a glorified senior title, but actually that person
00:50:05
doesn't really have P and L responsibility.
00:50:07
So I'm talking about people that have P and L responsibility
00:50:10
, not just the budget.
00:50:15
If you can't understand what they're going through
00:50:17
financially and how that underpins the decisions they
00:50:20
make, if you don't understand the difference between capex and
00:50:24
OPEX, if you don't understand the difference between things
00:50:26
like accounts receive the balls and things like that, then
00:50:29
you're not going to be able to understand what's moving and
00:50:33
shaking their business and what's driving the decisions
00:50:36
that they're making.
00:50:37
And so I mean on my YouTube channel.
00:50:41
There are, I think, something like almost a hundred videos of
00:50:45
Different companies that we've analyzed their financial
00:50:48
statements to help people understand.
00:50:50
How do you read financial statements, what?
00:50:52
What insights and inferences can you draw from that?
00:50:54
I've seen too many salespeople just rock up and basically say
00:50:59
this should be important to you, but if they took just one quick
00:51:02
look at the financial statement , you can see that that
00:51:04
absolutely is not the case.
00:51:05
Or even if it is important to them, they are mis they're
00:51:09
assuming it's important because the training told them that the
00:51:12
application of this is here and actually they read their
00:51:15
financial statement.
00:51:16
It is important to them, but it applies in this area.
00:51:19
This is why that's important.
00:51:20
So that's one fundamental that I think really people need to
00:51:24
understand.
00:51:25
The second thing is You've got to understand the MBOs of your
00:51:30
buyers.
00:51:30
What I mean by MBOs is management by objectives.
00:51:33
These are the.
00:51:34
These are the KPIs metrics objectives that Determines if
00:51:42
they've done a good job.
00:51:43
So, as a CTO or a CMO, your objective for this year is to do
00:51:50
these four things.
00:51:51
And, by the way, those four things are created equal.
00:51:55
This one has a weighting of 40% .
00:51:56
This one has a weighting of 20% , right, whatever?
00:52:00
So when people talk about innovation, for example and
00:52:04
innovation is a part of that C levels persons role Most of the
00:52:09
time, it will feature no more than 10% of their MBOs, so
00:52:15
you're playing with something that actually is the lowest
00:52:17
value for them, right?
00:52:21
Speaker 1: So that's the other thing.
00:52:22
Speaker 4: The other thing you need to know is the industry.
00:52:24
What is the industry they're playing in?
00:52:27
Because that those are the forces that impact what they're
00:52:30
doing.
00:52:30
If you don't know that the industry is growing at a
00:52:33
compound on your growth rate of 20 10%, but they're growing at a
00:52:36
compound and your growth rate of only 5%, that means they're
00:52:39
underperforming their industry.
00:52:40
Right, that's important to know .
00:52:42
You've got to know where the substitutes are coming through.
00:52:44
You've got to know where the threats are.
00:52:46
You've got to know how strong their suppliers are, how strong
00:52:49
the buyers are.
00:52:50
All of those things makes has an impact on it Fundamental
00:52:54
decisions that they need to make in their business.
00:52:55
So there are some fundamental core elements that I absolutely
00:53:01
and really strongly recommend that salespeople, if you want to
00:53:04
be the sales, successful salesperson of the future, those
00:53:08
core things are even more important.
00:53:10
The good news is that if you do that, you're actually in the
00:53:14
top, top percentile, because unfortunately, there are too
00:53:18
many salespeople With even 20 years of experience that's that
00:53:22
don't have that knowledge.
00:53:23
So let's go into AI and digital .
00:53:28
These are tools.
00:53:29
These are the extension of your core, the extension of your
00:53:31
approach.
00:53:31
These are the mechanisms that you use to be able to
00:53:34
communicate your you know, for LinkedIn, for example, it's an
00:53:42
incredible communicator for you to have to do and develop your
00:53:44
brand and broadcast your brand.
00:53:46
Before social media, it was incredibly difficult.
00:53:47
If you're old enough, like I am , you will know how difficult
00:53:51
that was.
00:53:52
You know incredibly hard to be published.
00:53:53
It's an expensive and believe, and let me tell you something,
00:53:58
you've got to know the right people, right, it was just not
00:54:01
an area that was open to you.
00:54:03
So social media is democratized , our ability to communicate
00:54:08
about which is incredible.
00:54:09
And so LinkedIn, and let's use LinkedIn, for example.
00:54:13
Linkedin is the channel by which you extend that brand,
00:54:17
that communication, with the, the thoughts that you're sharing
00:54:19
, but you're also going to know the room in which you're playing
00:54:22
, right, so the paradigm of that room.
00:54:25
You don't post in the same way of LinkedIn as you would on
00:54:28
Facebook or Instagram.
00:54:28
Right, there is a, there's a micro culture within that social
00:54:32
media platform and that's the paradigm that you need to adhere
00:54:37
to, and so LinkedIn has the same.
00:54:39
Now, the reason why I say that is you can't treat LinkedIn In
00:54:44
the same way that you treat cold calling or email, right, it
00:54:48
just doesn't work because the people that are the buyers there
00:54:51
are not there for that reason.
00:54:53
That's not the mode of communication.
00:55:01
They're there for something else.
00:55:01
So you need to slot yourself in within that place, right?
00:55:03
The future now for sales Is that, god, are the days where
00:55:14
you can use your gravitas and relationship and you know your,
00:55:19
your personality to break down doors.
00:55:22
Those days are gone.
00:55:23
If you're not a tech powered salesperson, you're going to be
00:55:30
left behind in a An astonishingly fast rate just by
00:55:34
the exponential curve of how technology is being taken up.
00:55:37
And so if we look at AI, ai does a few things that if you
00:55:40
don't go on top of it, you're going to find yourself left
00:55:47
behind by someone who's mediocre , who happens to have to use AI
00:55:49
really well.
00:55:50
So I'm not.
00:55:51
It's going to pass, sorry, if you don't.
00:55:56
Speaker 3: I'm that medium, I'm that mediocre guy that's gonna
00:55:57
ask you when I say mediocre, I'm only doing that to hit the mark
00:56:01
home.
00:56:04
Speaker 4: But actually that person using AI to then become
00:56:05
excellent.
00:56:06
You're not mediocre anymore.
00:56:09
You're using tools that helps you advance more than anyone
00:56:12
else, and so there are so many things that AI can do.
00:56:15
I mean it's just astounding.
00:56:16
But I'll run off a few of them.
00:56:19
Number one is you can save a huge amount of time.
00:56:20
You can collapse 30 hours into 30 minutes Worth of research.
00:56:24
Right now.
00:56:25
I'm just use those, use those numbers just to kind of hit home
00:56:27
that the extent by which you can do that, you can do role
00:56:31
playing with using AI.
00:56:32
You can actually figure out what the type of buyer is and
00:56:37
what the psychological processes they're going through at each
00:56:39
stage.
00:56:39
You can figure that out.
00:56:40
You can figure out what a lookalike company is.
00:56:45
You can input information about that company and basically say,
00:56:47
given all this information and the fact that Inflation has now
00:56:50
dropped to 3.4%, as it has in the UK over this period of time,
00:56:53
this, this Kegar, this information about this
00:56:56
particular company, these types of you, could put all that
00:56:59
information and basically say Tell me what's going on, what
00:57:01
are your theories about what's going on in this company.
00:57:04
Now for you to have to do that.
00:57:06
When I showed this to my father who Ran industrial manufacturing
00:57:10
businesses etc.
00:57:11
Back in the 80s and 90s.
00:57:12
He would have to hire a team in India to do that at a very
00:57:18
large price, he's.
00:57:19
He looked at that and basically said, oh wow, this, I wouldn't
00:57:22
need any of those people anymore .
00:57:25
I wouldn't need those 20 25 people that are hired as
00:57:31
research analysts to constantly scan the market and build
00:57:32
theories and hypotheses of what we need to do.
00:57:33
You don't need that.
00:57:34
That's how powerful this is.
00:57:36
There are so many ways that you can apply AI, not just, in my
00:57:41
view, the basic, you know.
00:57:41
Generate this email for me, although that in itself can be
00:57:44
very powerful.
00:57:44
I have a colleague with ADHD and he absolutely relies on
00:57:53
Gemini and chat GBT.
00:57:54
It's given him such a leg up.
00:57:54
So, going forward and, by the way, it can help you, as long as
00:57:57
you put the right inputs it can help you build an incredibly
00:58:03
strong hypothesis.
00:58:03
I figured out how to build a strong hypothesis.
00:58:06
I figured out using it.
00:58:10
Using it, I figured out the ingredients to an R or Y
00:58:12
calculator for some of our products.
00:58:13
That's far exceeds what we had before, and so it's just an
00:58:20
incredibly intelligent tool, like your fingertips, that you
00:58:22
know how, you need to know how to use, but it's changed it.
00:58:25
I mean to ask you a question.
00:58:27
In a lot of this change the game in so many different ways,
00:58:29
you've got to be able to know how to use those technologies
00:58:33
Because if you don't, you're going to be left behind really,
00:58:35
really quickly and that can be very scary for long salespeople.
00:58:39
My advice is pick one or two things and just get better at
00:58:45
those one or two things.
00:58:45
You don't need to know how to use every technology stack at a
00:58:51
maturity level five, but pick one of two that are critical.
00:58:55
That you need to get to a four or five AI, I would say, is one
00:59:00
of the most important ones.
00:59:01
That you need to get to a level four or five as fast as you can
00:59:04
.
00:59:06
Speaker 3: I can't wait to listen back to this one, brian,
00:59:08
yeah, I was just thinking the same.
00:59:09
Number of like quotables, like how important AI is, how
00:59:16
important it is to understand the risk to your customer, how
00:59:19
not adopting some of this technology is going to leave you
00:59:22
behind like sellers everywhere.
00:59:25
This episode is gold.
00:59:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of, even on the practical side.
00:59:29
Right, because we talk about modern selling and we talk a lot
00:59:32
about LinkedIn, we get the base questions of well, and you, you
00:59:36
hit it earlier.
00:59:36
We hear a lot of people say, oh , we tried LinkedIn and it
00:59:40
didn't work.
00:59:40
Great, how did you use LinkedIn ?
00:59:43
And often they used it like a different channel.
00:59:47
They used it like a call, they'll use it like the phone,
00:59:50
they use it like email and they say, oh, it didn't work, and
00:59:53
their tendency is they want to throw the whole thing out.
00:59:54
But what?
00:59:56
What you're talking about is leveraging this tool.
01:00:00
But you got to get the core right, and too often the core
01:00:05
isn't right.
01:00:06
And we came out of an era where and you hit on it personality,
01:00:11
charisma could get the door open , primarily because buyers
01:00:15
needed information.
01:00:16
So, your charisma, everything would get the door open.
01:00:20
Then you get in the room and then you had the opportunity to
01:00:22
sell.
01:00:22
Well, if that charisma is not opening the door for you,
01:00:26
because the way the buyers are looking at it is what do you,
01:00:29
what do I see?
01:00:29
And this is where personal brand, for me, is so important.
01:00:31
What are you posting, what are you commenting?
01:00:35
How are you adding to conversations.
01:00:37
That's what gets people to stand out.
01:00:39
That's what gets a buyer's attention.
01:00:42
It's really the substance of what you're doing, not just
01:00:45
where you're doing it.
01:00:46
And LinkedIn is that 24 7365 platform when you use properly.
01:00:52
But you got to get that core correct.
01:00:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, and one point to make about LinkedIn is people
01:00:58
will say I can't follow everyone that I'm trying to sell
01:01:03
to you or that's in my business , in my list of businesses, and
01:01:09
my answer to them is, well, don't try.
01:01:11
Right.
01:01:12
Linkedin is a strategy that I would say is for your top 20
01:01:18
accounts or top 20 people.
01:01:22
It's not something that you would use if you have a large
01:01:25
book of business.
01:01:26
It's not something you should use for the others, so pick your
01:01:30
.
01:01:30
Speaker 2: You're completely sustain like me, and I think
01:01:35
there's a, there is like a plan B, if you will, which is go
01:01:41
after your top 20 accounts yes, but then also you can look at
01:01:45
who's influencing your industry yes, I, who's creating that
01:01:49
content consistently?
01:01:50
Because we know that, you know, I think the number is still 2%
01:01:55
of people on LinkedIn consistently create and share
01:01:58
content.
01:01:58
So we hear a lot of times oh, my people don't publish.
01:02:02
Well, so what?
01:02:03
Most people don't publish.
01:02:05
But who are they paying attention to?
01:02:07
Go talk to them, go engage with them, go get in front of them.
01:02:11
And it's not difficult.
01:02:13
You just have to take the time to show up and have your core
01:02:17
right.
01:02:17
So when you are there and you are having a conversation,
01:02:20
you're not saying great post, I want to share this, you're
01:02:25
actually contributing and you're learning.
01:02:27
And that's where that I think, getting back to the core, and
01:02:29
then some of those specific tactics make a lot of sense and
01:02:33
they add value.
01:02:35
Speaker 4: Absolutely great, absolutely great.
01:02:38
It's a slower burn, but it has a higher impact.
01:02:42
In my opinion, you've got a lot to use it.
01:02:47
Speaker 2: We're pushing time.
01:02:49
So, moïd, will you come back?
01:02:50
Number one, because I think we want to keep going on this, so
01:02:55
we'll get you scheduled sometime in the future to come back.
01:02:57
And I kept saying we were going to answer questions, so let's
01:03:01
put a couple of them up, just so we don't short sheet the
01:03:05
audience.
01:03:05
Victoria's most recent question let's start there and then we
01:03:09
can work backwards.
01:03:09
Noor, so, moïd, I think you can read it there, but what would
01:03:14
you say is the best way to know whether you're at a four or five
01:03:17
with how quickly AI is adapting and evolving?
01:03:22
Speaker 4: So I initially with that question is what's the best
01:03:25
way to know whether I'm at a four or five?
01:03:27
Ok, so, with how quickly AI is adapting and evolving, all right
01:03:30
, ok.
01:03:30
So the four or five is not your proficiency in knowledge of AI,
01:03:36
it's your proficiency in using AI for your sales process.
01:03:40
So sometimes AI will adapt in specific ways that just isn't
01:03:45
really relevant to your sales process.
01:03:47
So think of it.
01:03:48
Don't get too scared by how AI is evolving rapidly.
01:03:51
It's going to evolve very fast and most of that involvement is
01:03:58
becoming more intelligent.
01:03:59
But of course, there are other things that are involved, such
01:04:03
as Leonardai, et cetera, et cetera, where it's involved in
01:04:09
images and videos and things like that.
01:04:10
So how would you know you're at a four or five?
01:04:12
Well, the good news is that I have a map for that on lots of
01:04:20
one versus a five, the way I would, without being too psyched
01:04:26
if you don't need to be too scientific about what's a four
01:04:28
versus a five what I would ask you self is, firstly, do I
01:04:36
understand the fundamental things?
01:04:38
Do I use it to understand the fundamental things I need to
01:04:42
about the business that I'm trying to sell our solutions to?
01:04:46
So do I use it for my research purposes, for example, do I use
01:04:53
it to help me analyze the transcripts from this company's
01:04:56
recent financial webinar financial statement?
01:05:01
Do I use it to?
01:05:06
Here's another example do I use it to basically say input
01:05:11
details about what my product is , what my solution is?
01:05:14
Have I asked it to tell me what are the pros and cons from the
01:05:18
buyer's perspective about my product?
01:05:20
What questions would they be asking about a solution like
01:05:26
mine?
01:05:26
Why would they decide to go to someone else Like what would be
01:05:33
the overriding reason for them to do so?
01:05:35
What are they skeptical about a solution like ours?
01:05:38
Why would they be so?
01:05:42
Just understand.
01:05:44
Don't think about getting to level four and five.
01:05:46
I know I talked about level four and five, but let me just
01:05:49
make it really easy for you.
01:05:50
Number one is how is my solution perceived amongst
01:05:55
buyers from the buyer's perspective?
01:05:57
So ask the owner to act like a CTL or CMO, whatever it is.
01:06:00
I'm presenting this solution to you.
01:06:03
Tell me all the reasons why you were loving, all the reasons
01:06:08
why you were, all the things about it.
01:06:09
You'd be neutral and one of the things that you'd be highly
01:06:13
skeptical about would be very wary of, and why.
01:06:17
That's the first thing that you can ask it and really try to
01:06:20
understand, because these are things that your buyers are not
01:06:22
going to necessarily tell you, but they're absolutely thinking
01:06:25
as what's driving their decision .
01:06:27
That's the first thing.
01:06:29
Second thing is you can help it to conduct role plays.
01:06:36
So if you have a very important sales conversation coming up
01:06:41
and it's a large deal for you, you can run the role play.
01:06:44
You can ask it to play the role of the buyer and say I'm going
01:06:49
to inject some statements here to you.
01:06:50
I want you to respond as if you are the buyer and obviously the
01:06:54
more information you give about the buyer, the more realistic
01:06:58
that AI is going to be able to respond to in that role play.
01:07:01
So that's another example.
01:07:04
So use it in the form of research, buyer understanding in
01:07:10
the moment, sales coaching and testing of theories.
01:07:13
Use it to that effect.
01:07:16
For example, you're going to send out an email, or you want
01:07:20
to send out an email about something.
01:07:22
Ask the AI to suggest the email for you and describe what it is
01:07:26
that you want to do with that email.
01:07:27
Just think of it as your personal Albert Einstein, in
01:07:32
fact, even smarter than that way , smarter than that, but next to
01:07:35
you.
01:07:35
We've all been there where we said you know what I wish I
01:07:38
could ask someone how would I do something like this?
01:07:42
Well, you do have someone.
01:07:43
That's the beauty.
01:07:44
Now, it may not be 100% accurate, of course not, but
01:07:48
it's way better than if you try to figure it out yourself, and
01:07:51
it will take days.
01:07:51
Speaker 2: Way faster.
01:07:53
Speaker 4: Way faster.
01:07:54
I mean, it literally collapses time, and so the way I would get
01:07:58
to level four and five is those three things Research,
01:08:02
bio-understanding and sales applications.
01:08:07
So role-play, scenario planning , structuring of emails, even
01:08:12
structuring of proposals sometimes, and so that's how I
01:08:18
would start to use it and get familiar with it as quickly as
01:08:22
possible.
01:08:24
Speaker 2: Well, anthony, I am going to ask Moide to come into
01:08:27
the comments and respond to your question.
01:08:30
There we're way over time, but Moide I'm sure will be willing
01:08:34
to go in and answer that question for you later.
01:08:37
I can actually question Moide quickly now very quickly, which
01:08:41
is distrust creates distance.
01:08:44
Speaker 4: So the further you are between you and the buyer
01:08:46
and the buyer feels how far you are from them, then it doesn't
01:08:49
really matter whether it's distrust it can be multiple
01:08:52
other things but what you're trying to do is create that
01:08:54
mental and emotional connection.
01:08:57
So distrust is one way of creating distance, but distance
01:09:02
is something that's the enemy.
01:09:03
That's where ghosting happens and things like that.
01:09:07
Speaker 3: If you're keeping Italy at home, which I know you
01:09:09
are.
01:09:09
This just became the longest episode yet and chock full of
01:09:13
goodies.
01:09:14
Like I said, I can't wait to go back and mine the video and
01:09:18
transcript for us.
01:09:19
Speaker 2: I'm quoting Noor just messaged us that we have our
01:09:23
most views live views from X and YouTube.
01:09:26
So there we go.
01:09:29
Well, moide, I would imagine there's going to be a lot of
01:09:32
people that want to reach out and connect with you.
01:09:35
What is the best way for people to find you?
01:09:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, linkedin is the best way.
01:09:40
So forward, slash Moide Amin and hit me up.
01:09:47
Ask me any questions you have, give me some observations,
01:09:50
disagree of me if you want, no problem.
01:09:52
I love that because that allows dialogue and I actually learn
01:09:57
through those disagreements as well.
01:10:00
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm always scared to disagree with you.
01:10:03
Speaker 4: Really why.
01:10:04
Speaker 2: That's all right?
01:10:05
I'm not.
01:10:06
No, we've had great conversations.
01:10:09
Speaker 4: That's why I want you back, so yeah, LinkedIn
01:10:12
LinkedIn is the best way and you can go to like if you really
01:10:15
want to build your business acumen and be able to read
01:10:17
financial statements and understand what you can learn
01:10:21
about companies from their financial statements, then go to
01:10:23
the YouTube channel at proverbialdoor.
01:10:25
I think there's almost like 100 companies that my colleague and
01:10:29
I have analyzed who are public businesses and some private as
01:10:34
well.
01:10:35
Speaker 2: Oh, that's excellent.
01:10:36
Well, this was excellent reminder for everybody.
01:10:41
Carson and I are leaving that webinar tomorrow where Carson's
01:10:45
going to share his playbook.
01:10:46
I think some of the nuggets that we talked about today are
01:10:48
probably going to find their way into the discussion to explain
01:10:52
some of the things that Carson does in his playbook when we are
01:10:57
.
01:10:57
There's probably a link to it in the comments and if you find
01:11:00
a link, make sure you find mine, not Carson's, because we've got
01:11:03
a competition going on who's driving the most registrations,
01:11:07
and Carson has me beat by about nine at the moment.
01:11:11
Speaker 3: And trust me, brandon needs all the help he can get,
01:11:13
so please click the link.
01:11:14
Speaker 2: I love it.
01:11:15
Well, Carson, you want to wrap us up and send us on home?
01:11:19
Speaker 3: Absolutely, moey.
01:11:20
Thank you, this was amazing.
01:11:22
I'm really excited to get you back on too, and until next time
01:11:26
everyone, thank you for listening, thank you for
01:11:28
watching Happy Modern Selling.
01:11:36
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern
01:11:39
Selling.
01:11:39
Our relationships social and AI meet in the buyer-centric age.