Jeff Bajorek is an expert sales coach and on this episode of The Salesman Podcast, he is sharing why most “10 ways to close the deal” articles, videos and content are complete bullshit.
Jeff goes on to explain what actually moves the needle of sales performance and where #SalesNation should be focusing if they want to crush their quotas.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- JeffBajorek.com
- Jeff on Linkedin
- @jeffbajorek
- Book – The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
Transcript
Will Barron:
Do you work in sales and are you constantly trying to find new hacks, new tricks, new tactics to close more deals, or this episode shows you why all that is complete nonsense.
Will Barron:
Hello, Sales Nation, and welcome to today’s episode of the Salesman podcast. On today’s show, we have Jeff Bajorek. He is a world leading sales coach. On today’s show. He’s showing why all that hacks, the tips, the tricks in sales are complete nonsense. Why the Top 10 Ways to Close the Deal, that article that you see all the time you see on LinkedIn, the complete bullshit. And more importantly than all of this is sharing how we can win more business, the processes that we need to put in place and a lot more. You find out more about Jeff over at jeffbajorek.com. And with all that said, let’s jump in to today’s show. Hey, Jeff, and welcome to the Salesman podcast.
Jeff Bajorek:
Hey, will, thanks for having me.
Do Sales Tips, Tricks, and Hacks Actually Work? · [01:04]
Will Barron:
You’re welcome, Sam. I’m glad to have you on, we’re going to dive into a bunch of stuff today. We’re going to dive into working hard versus quote unquote, “working smart.” We’re hopefully going to ruffle some feathers. And I think there’s lots to go out with this one. So I’m going to tee it up with, and I don’t think you’ll have a percentage number for this, but give us an idea, gives us the gist of it. For a modern B2B sales professional, how much of their success is coming from hacking the process, coming from working smarter, not harder, coming from things like social selling and things of that nature that is obviously a buzz at the moment versus how much of the success is coming from just sticking with it, going through the sales process and just hard work?
“What I’m seeing right now is so many people working hard to try to work smart that they’re not getting any work done, if that makes sense.” – Jeff Bajorek · [01:55]
Jeff Bajorek:
Well, feather ruffling is my specialty. So I appreciate you giving me that opportunity. But I think what I’m seeing is that I don’t have a certain percentage, like anything else, all politics are local. Your situation is going to vary from even the person in the cubicle next to you or in the car next to you if that’s the case. But I think what I’m seeing right now is so many people working hard to try to work smart that they’re not getting any work done, if that makes sense. So you get on the social channels, you listen to the podcast and everybody’s got the next latest, greatest way to do something. And, “Oh, that expert said this, well, I’m going to start doing that. Well, wait a second. Now there’s another expert over here who I kind of like, and she says that I should do this. And so, oh, I’m going to start working that.”
Jeff Bajorek:
And then we just get ourselves tangled up into knots, and we don’t get any work done because what we forget about is why we’re trying to do that in the first place. What are we actually trying to accomplish? There aren’t very many steps in the sales process. So when all of a sudden, we’ve got stacks of this and stacks of that, and we’ve got to fill this out and we’ve got to enter this. It dilutes what we’re actually trying to do. And ultimately, selling is about getting people’s attention, delivering your value in a way that matters to them, being able to follow through with the promises that you made, and making sure that you don’t forget why they bought from you in the first place, so that you can keep reminding of that and keep that approach going forward when you have something else to sell them. This is not rocket science.
Understanding the Main Job of All B2B Sales Professionals · [03:05]
Will Barron:
So let me ask you this and let me throw that question back at you. What are, and to group as many B2B sales professionals together here, which obviously isn’t ideal, but what are we here to do? What is our job?
“Our job as salespeople is to provide solutions. And so we need to educate our prospects and our customers on what becomes possible by them working with us.” – Jeff Bajorek · [03:30]
Jeff Bajorek:
Our job is to provide solutions. And I like to say that we need to educate our prospects and our customers for that matter, of what becomes possible by them working with us. In a B2B situation, your company provides a solution for a specific type of customer. Typically, it’s a more specific type of customer than we’d like to admit, because we want to cast that net as far as we possibly can, but our job is to help provide solutions and help solve problems.
“The problem with most B2B salespeople is they don’t understand exactly what it is that they bring to the table that nobody else does. And so they communicate in terms of these big, broad lists of features and benefits that really don’t mean anything to anybody.” – Jeff Bajorek · [03:59]
Jeff Bajorek:
And we do that by communicating our specific value. The problem with most B2B salespeople is really is selling for their companies, they don’t understand exactly what it is that they bring to the table that nobody else does. And so they communicate in terms of these big, broad lists of features and benefits that really don’t mean anything to anybody, because the company’s trying to get them to mean everything to everybody. And there’s not enough specificity because we’re scared to do that. And without that specificity, you can’t solve a specific problem. And if you can’t solve someone’s specific problem, you’re going to have a very difficult time getting their attention and really ultimately bringing them on board as a customer.
Is Sales All About Generating Revenue or There’s Something More to it? · [04:40]
Will Barron:
Is the value in drilling down this even further that one or maybe even many steps deeper of, we are here to win business and we take away the potential procrastination of, we’ve got to add value, we’ve got to obviously all these help win business, but we’ve got to add value, we’ve got to communicate correctly, we’ve got to tell stories, we’ve got to manage the whole process, there has to be a process, it has to be trackable and traceable for management of above us. And obviously a lot of we’re not in control of this, but a lot of CRM nonsense comes top down versus kind of what’s useful for us. And maybe it’s useful for the business and a lot of salespeople mean included when I worked in medical device sales, Anyway, I didn’t understand how useful it was for forecasting and things of that nature. So putting out to one side, but should we be focused 99% of the time on the fact that we are getting paid to do a job and the job is to drive revenue?
Jeff Bajorek:
I think ultimately we need to remember what that’s all about, but I think there needs to be a little bit of thought put into the kind of revenue. Is it revenue for revenue’s sake? I mean, you know this. You’ve had customers in the past where you having the opportunity to do it over. Yeah. I may not have had that person as my customer because whoa, what a nightmare it was to manage those people or to even just manage the relationship with those people.
Will Barron:
Well, even that for just a second and I’m only playing devil’s advocate, obviously we’re aligned on this of not wanting to kind of bring people on board that aren’t on the right fit for numerous reasons. But if we’re going on this baseline level, rather than the higher level of our job is to drive revenue, should we just be driving all the revenue we possibly can be put in, just suck it up and deal with the customers that are pain in the ass because there’s some not quite right fit there, or they’re just an idiot and you shouldn’t have prospected them in the first place. It is on our contract. And, when we get our bonus, it is 99% driven on the fact that we’ve hit or achieved over target. Should we be spending energy on the perfect customer on driving less revenue than being the customers, perhaps even being better for the company and being longer term customers, or should we be being more selfish in only, ironically fulfilling the minimum part of our contract, but that probably leads to more money?
Jeff Bajorek:
I think every salesperson needs to look themselves in the mirror and decide what they want to do. I’ve worked with all kinds of different sales people. People who will sandbag in December because they know that they’re not going to hit their bonus, but they’ll hold those orders over until January 2nd when they can get a good start on hitting their bonus the next time. I have, and I was always the person who look, if we had the product in stock and there’s an order for it, I filled it. And if it wasn’t in stock, I wouldn’t fill it. And I just always very transparent with my customers. And I can tell you that my customers always appreciated that. I can tell you that my managers always appreciated that because they knew what they were going to get from me.
Jeff Bajorek:
I made a deal with one of my managers. He was the guy I worked for the longest time with the last company that I was with. And after a couple of quarters of, “Hey, Jeff, you got any rabbits you can pull out of a hat this quarter? Or “Hey, is there anything you can do for us?”
Jeff Bajorek:
And then there were a couple times at the end, literally at the end of the year and it wasn’t coming directly from him. Obviously it was coming from some probably three levels above him, but I remember December 20, it was all right, all hands on deck. We need everything we got. Let’s go. Bring in everything you can, we got to hit the number. And then December 27, placed in a big order, “Hey Jeff, can you hold onto that? That might be a nice one to start on the…” And I said, “You know what? This is it. No, I’m pushing this out.” Whether I get bonus on it or not, I’m pushing this out because I make the promise to my customers that I’m always going to be the same guy, whether it’s the fifth of the month or the 25th of the month, because that’s how customers like being dealt with. And how many times I’ve been complimented for just people…
“There is value in your customers knowing what to expect from you.” – Jeff Bajorek · [08:36]
Jeff Bajorek:
Let me just say it this way. There is a value to your customers, knowing what, what to expect from you. The flip of that is my managers. And even people in senior management always knew what they were going to get from me. And to the point of, should I hit my bonus just because it makes me more money. Even if it means I bringing on bad customers or bad orders for the company? What I always tried to do. And I’ve been criticised for this and I’ve also been applauded for this, is I tried to understand where the company’s best interests were.
Jeff Bajorek:
And so if I was always acting in the best interest of the company when they aligned with my best interest, I knew what to expect from them. I could always over deliver for them. And on the long term, they knew where I was at and they trusted me, which made my work environment a 100% easier to deal with. I think that’s where, what a lot of people miss is your company. If you think of your company, even the management levels over you, if you think of them as your customers, then all of a sudden you think about them just a little bit differently and you know that when you need something from them, you’ve also provided the value to them ahead of time to where you can ask for that.
Jeff Bajorek:
We’d get their annual reviews and what do you need from your manager this year? We’d fill out all the reports and what do you need from your manager? I need my manager to go to bat for me when I ask him or her to, because I’m out there every day in the field swinging for her. So I need her to stand up for me if I need special pricing on something, if I need to get creative with a deal or whatever. I think a lot of that gets lost. And then, you bring up the CRM thing. Well, that’s just a tool. A lot of times that management uses to micromanage their salespeople and salespeople don’t like that. So again, who’s it for? And all of that stuff erodes at the trust within an organisation, which makes it very difficult to establish trust outside of your organisation with the customer.
The Power of Having an Abundance Mindset in Sales · [10:39]
Will Barron:
I think you might have touched on something here, which is perhaps something that we weren’t both planning on chatting about, but I’m going to ask you about it anyway. And that is the deeper psychological aspect of this of, and I’ll give you an example for myself of, I would at the end of the year, if I’d hit target, not obviously in medical device sales, if a surgeon needs a product, you couldn’t give him the product. There’s no way I would haul back an order that would stop a procedure going ahead or anything like that. And I was always running around like an idiot dropping off equipment and helping them out.
Will Barron:
So there’s no moral kind of implications to this. But if I had a big order that was going out on the 29th of December and I’d already hit target, I would want 100% ask the delivery team to hold off. And I was kind of targeted over a year, 12 months. I would a 100% ask them to hold off until January, because I’d get just the way it worked, I’d get the same bonus, but it’d be a great start to the next year.
Will Barron:
But I think there’s a perhaps difference between here of you and I of when you take all the morals out the conversation, that’s me having a scarcity mindset. That is me going, “Well. I’m not sure how well I’m going to perform next year. And so I better move that forward. I better ” And this comes down from management as well, because their bonus is based on yours. If you’ve hit target, they’re going to hit, obviously the team or hit target, they’re going to hit target. Everyone’s happy versus there’s a risk obviously of getting a little bit more money up front now versus not hitting target next year. And it being a huge pain in the for everyone involved.
Will Barron:
So that comes into it as well. But I would a 100% kind of push over to the next year, but it was a, it was a risk aversion. Would you say that you have more of a bond mindset? Would you say that you would push it out on time, deliver it as promised because at the back of your mind, you know that there’s enough business out there that next year, you can just do the same and forever more.
Jeff Bajorek:
I would look at the end of the year and I mean, like I mentioned earlier, I mean, my approach was if we had it was going, if it wasn’t there, I wasn’t going to force it. And at the back of my mind, whether I was at or above target or whether things just weren’t going my way and there wasn’t enough business out there, I would always tell the people that I report to, that I am out there trying to sell as much as I can as fast as I can. And if the arbitrary number that you pulled out of thin air and told me that I needed to hit, it was satisfied. Then I’m very, very happy for you. But what I’m trying to do is sell as much as I can as fast as I can.
“There are so many variations and there are so many ups and downs in sales, but the more things we can hold consistent the better.” – Jeff Bajorek · [13:32]
Jeff Bajorek:
And so when you’re consistent that way, not only from the customer standpoint, but from the management standpoint, when things just aren’t good. I mean, we had busy seasons, we had slow seasons, “Oh, Hey Jeff, what’s going on? Why are you trending behind?” “Boss, I’m selling as much as I can, as fast as I can. And you know that every single time.” And I think there are so many variations and there are so many ups and downs in sales, the more things we can hold consistent the better. And if that is your activity levels and the things that you’re doing to drive the pipeline and the selling process, I think that’s important. But also, just knowing, look, you can count on me to give you everything I got. And sometimes that’s going to be way more than you need. Sometimes it’s going to be a little less than what you’re asking for. I need you to know, look them right in the eye. I need you to know that you’re getting all I got every time.
“When I was a top performer and a top producer for as long as I was, I earned the right to not get hell on the 28th of every month. It was either thank you or man, just keep swinging.” – Jeff Bajorek · [14:24]
Jeff Bajorek:
And after some time of doing that, I mean, it takes a while to earn that, but after some time of doing that, then they know it. And then all the BS at the end of the month, all the BS at the end of the quarter, it’s reduced. Look, when I was a top performer and a top producer for as long as I was, you’ve earned the right to not get hell on the 28th of every month. It’s either thank you or man, just keep swinging.
Jeff Bajorek:
And that got me through probably the last year, year and a half of the last company that I was with, because I had a very mature territory that I had tripled in the first 18 months. And then after about seven years of sustained growth, I had an off year. Lost zero customers. But through whether it was economic forces or just the climate in medical devices where I was, there were some down months. And there were a lot of people in similar situations to me that didn’t make it. But I knew that I wasn’t going to get as much pressure. I wasn’t going to get as much pushback because I’d earn the right for them to know. And that goes down to saying some things that aren’t always PC in steering committee meetings with executives and CEOs. We could talk about this for a long time.
Jeff Bajorek:
Well, but I think ultimately salespeople get a bad rap for not doing the right thing all the time, which just erodes that trust. It’s not always easy to do, but if you can consistently do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do, people are going to look at you differently. And I think that’s a good thing.
The Problem With Sales Leaders and Salespeople Not Trusting Each Other · [16:14]
Will Barron:
So I don’t want to take the responsibility away from the audience because clearly you’re not going to have success in anything until you take a 100% responsibility for it. But is this, because I inadvertently, anecdote was the whole premise of the show of I was massively over complicating things by trying to game the system internally within our targets and budgets and quotas. So with that in mind, is this a problem, because I see many sales people doing the same thing, is this a problem of the game of sales that’s been set up by management or is this a problem on the salesperson’s perspective because they’re looking to do the minimum amount of work to get the most amount of cash?
Jeff Bajorek:
I think it’s a give and take. I think you’ve got sales people looking to game the system and you’ve got sales organisations looking to game the system of the reps gaming the system, right? I mean, I’ve been asked that before. “Okay Jeff, here’s this, this comp plan. So you’re a sales guy. How would you try to screw this thing over?” “What? Okay. I think I knew what you’re getting at here, but now you’re trying to play a game because these people are trying to play a game. Nobody trusts anybody.” That’s a problem in an organisation.
Jeff Bajorek:
I don’t know if people realise that, but when you can’t trust your employees and they can’t trust you, that’s a problem. So how do we get to the bottom of that? And I always just tried to break through that. You knew what you were going to get from me every time. It wasn’t always what you were going to want to hear, but you knew what you were going to get from me. And that was something that, I mean, it kind of became my reputation there. And that was a good thing.
Will Barron:
Let me ask you this then. Other than so the obvious one is to work hard or as hard as you can every day. Clearly that’s that is variable. We have ups and downs. We have things happening in our family lives. We have over priorities and sales isn’t the all and end all of our lives. And you can tell me if you discreet, but it shouldn’t be, I think sales is a vehicle. It’s a tool. It’s a way to gather cash capital as quickly as possible to invest, to retire early or to buy a stupid car like this on the GTR, my table here, whatever it is that you aspire and want to do.
Salespeople Need to Focus on Activities That Make Their Customers Take Action · [17:54]
Will Barron:
So with that said, what, other than working hard, which it should be just a no brainer, anything that you want to invest time in, you shouldn’t be doing anything that you’re only half saying. You should just engineer that out of your life.
Will Barron:
Other than working hard. What are other some consistent factors that we should all be trying to implement that by saying I’m going to do this every day, it simplifies the whole process and gives us a net positive result?
Jeff Bajorek:
Well, I think what we need to do in sales, especially in business to business selling, is really understand what is going to make our prospects or our customers act. And the concept of empathy and selling is underutilised. If you can bring yourself to where your customer is already, you really get a feel for how it is that they work. And then you have a completely different perspective on how to position things. That is so much different than just feeds and speeds and vomiting features and benefits all over people. I don’t know how many people that I talked to. They’re like, “Well, I walked into an office and I dropped off a brochure in a business card and all right, I did my job today.” But wait a second. Was it specifically tailored to them? Do you have any idea how they make their decision?
Jeff Bajorek:
I mean, and we talk about that with prospecting and questioning and probing and things like that, but there’s a difference between asking these manipulative type of questions and what exactly is your budget? How many people are going to be involved in this situation? That’s information that you need to know, but it’s approached from such a disingenuous place. I think if we can realise that there’s a person on the other end of this deal, there’s a person on the other end of the phone or the email or the social media channel, whatever one that is, you want to use, all of them. Hopefully you get a feel for what that other person is trying to do and how you can be of assistance. We all have to work hard. There’s no question about that. I think, are you working hard on the right things, which is where we get to working smart and we get to efficiency and then to kind of bring it around to where we started this conversation. Are you working so hard to work smart that you’re not actually getting any work done?
Jeff Bajorek:
Every salesperson’s going to have a different thing that they need to work on. We’re tragically ineffective when it comes to prospecting, because there’s so few people that like to do it. So in terms of something that you need to do every day, if you’re not actively making a call, making an email, trying to reach out, doing something you need to at least actively be thinking like a prospect. It’s funny. I tell people I still cut my own lawn. It’s not a big lawn, but I still cut my own lawn because what it gives me an opportunity to do is step away from my phone, step away from my computer, take a walk and think. I think, yeah.
Jeff Bajorek:
So to answer your question, to make a long, very long answer short, what we need to do every day is think. And that’s where a lot of people are missing. We’re too busy trying to act on something that someone else told us to do to think about what makes sense for us to act on.
Will Barron:
I think you might have really elegantly give us a, we could almost put this whole show together as like a set of rules of work as hard as you can. That’s one rule. I think another rule here is, think and have empathy and understand that there’s a real person on the other end of the phone call, the email. The manipulative question, because when you do that and this is what’s jumped out to me, as you said, that was you wouldn’t spam out using a sales enablement tool, 500 emails that are somewhat half-ass customised, hoping that you’ll get a reply rate of one or 2% back of you know, which the response is, send me some more information, and half time they’re just being polite, because they don’t want to be hounded for the next six months by more automated emails.
Will Barron:
But when you factor in and take a moment and I don’t want to use the word meditate, but that’s the word I’m going to use because that’s what comes to mind, when you sit for a second before you email. So when you say you meditate and think about that individual and what they want. You would never spam an email list to 500 people with this ridiculous marketers might, but their priorities are getting top of mine. They are to get branding in front of people. That’s not what our role is as sales professionals at the core level. That’s potentially another rule.
How to Genuinely Get Your Prospect’s Attention · [22:30]
Will Barron:
So work as hard as you possibly can. Think about the person before you reach out. Is there any other rules that we could put into place that would simplify multiple facets of sales by just following this one thing?
Jeff Bajorek:
Well, that’s a great question, Will. You should have a podcast, really. You do well.
Will Barron:
I should send questions over to the guests before the record of our podcast. That might be a way to, and there might not be an answer because just living by those two rules might simplify sales enough.
Jeff Bajorek:
Yeah. I think that when you go that extra step of actually empathising, thinking about the person that you’re working with, when you make that connection. And that’s the thing that I think is being lost from selling now is that everything is so automated. And I know your SAS product is good for millions of people and you can help so many people. So you need to reach all those people. I get it. But how many times will have you gone and seen a resource, an online resource, a piece of content or something you’re like, “You know what? That looks really interesting.” But given my recent experience, it’s probably only going to be about half as good as I think it is. And now I’m going to be in someone’s automation. I’m passing and you probably pass on five of those a day because they’re all out there all over the place. And so-
Will Barron:
Well I’ll tell you what exactly what I do on this, Jeff. I can’t remember the surface now. It might be whymail.com so that you can Google it. There’s plenty of services that do it, that anything like that, I will use an email address service like this. You don’t have to log in, you don’t have to sign anything up. You just type in what your email address you want to be. And then it gives you that email address for 24 hours. So you can put it in, you can do the trial, the software, you can download that white paper. You can do whatever it is and that’s it. It’s disappears. It’s gone. And it’s a pain in the ass for marketers, but you get access to the thing without being spammed the heck out of afterwards. And I’m sure if I’m doing this, there’s plenty of clever of people of me that are doing the same thing,
Jeff Bajorek:
No question, but look what you’re doing. You’re gaming the system and I’m not pointing the finger. I’m not blaming you for that. It’s actually a very smart thing to do, but you’re gaming the system. And now there’s a marketer on the other end of the deal trying to game you gaming the system again and it’s that same microcosm again. Why can’t we just tell people what it is that we do and how we can help them?
Will Barron:
But the responsibility of this is on the marketer on the salesperson, right? It’s not on me as the market to have to fast round of all this stuff. If you want my attention, it’s you as the salesperson, who’s got to earn it, right? Not kind of use games, I guess that’s the crux of it.
Jeff Bajorek:
Exactly. And gamification is a completely different thing, but now all of a sudden we’re playing games with each other. And I think it’s very hard to trust somebody that way. And by the same token, when you know someone has delivered value to you in the past, you’re in, once they’ve actually earned that trust. But now what we’re trying to do is get people and earn trust with people in a way that’s not very trustworthy, and that’s a problem. And I think that gets missed a lot.
Is Social Selling a Valuable Way to Drive Sales or Just Another Time Wasting Activity? · [25:15]
Will Barron:
This brings me onto, and I want to wrap up with this social selling. So clearly there’s use cases for it. Clearly the term is just ridiculous and it’s been coined so people can sell books on the back of it, because it’s just sales on a different platform. We’ve been selling for 50,000 years or however long it’s been.
Will Barron:
So with that all side, we’ve covered that in the show in the past, but it drives this gaming someone to get their attention. Should we be doing this? And what I mean by this is, should we be retweeting SWAN three or four times, retweeting their content, then sending them a cold email. Then when we don’t hear back from that, we reach out to them on LinkedIn and retweet their content or share their content again, even though we know we’re not really moving the needle for them, we’re not really having an impact. We’re just trying to get to the top of the notifications list. That’s all we’re really doing with it.
Will Barron:
Where does the line get drawn here on, if I share someone’s article, there’s probably value in it for them. Not that you know, I’m not being high almighty, but I’ve got some somewhat of an audience. Or if I have someone on my podcast, 600,000 downloads a month. And so there is an impact to that and I’ve had people and I’ll be open and honest about this. I’ve had people CEOs from companies on my show to do an interview that I wanted to build a relationship with to get them to sponsor the podcast further down the line.
Will Barron:
So I’m not out of this loop, but should we be, is the value in social selling in doing this of just trying to get in people’s notification feeds so they see our name? Or should we take all that time that we’re spending essentially just clicking buttons and send them an email with a really useful insight or something instead that actually helps them because one is scalable. One is less scalable, which should we be focusing on?
“If you are building scale at the expense of building or making real connections, I think that’s fundamentally missing the point.” – Jeff Bajorek · [27:12]
Jeff Bajorek:
If you are building scale at the expense of building real connections or making real connections, I think that’s fundamentally missing the point. But let me ask you a question, because it’s going to help answer the one that you just asked me. When you were working in medical devices, every once in a while, you’d have to do a meeting, you’d ask a physician or someone for a coffee or maybe you’d invite them to a dinner where there was a presenter or maybe you’d bring lunch to the office, whatever it was. You did something to get their attention, right?
Will Barron:
Correct.
Jeff Bajorek:
Ultimately, that means of getting their attention was so that you could deliver a valuable message to them. The way that you got their attention didn’t matter as much as the message that you were able to deliver to them. Now, if someone wants to-
Will Barron:
Let me just stop you here for a second though, because what you’re saying might be, and there’s a difference between medical devices in the UK and the US, I’ll premise it with this. But if I, and the product is, and endoscopic equipment, so it’s high end capital sales. I did see people doing consumable products who did bring in lunch and things like that. But if I brought in donuts, the surgeon would be, and people have said this to me, if I brought in donuts, I brought in food, I brought in sandwiches, the surgeon would immediately be, “What do you want?” So I never did that ever.
Will Barron:
To get attention, I would lead. I would give the value. It wasn’t a two step process for me. It wasn’t, I have to get attention by giving donuts. And then I pitched them on something. It was, I would invite them onto a course that at sports or whoever that I’ve worked for in the past was running. And I would look after them or I would take them up to wherever and be spending time with them on the course. And it would only be through after that, the value was the attention, if that makes sense. And I just thought that was a differentiation for what you were describing then for the audience that, does there always have to be that one, two punch of “Look at me, here’s the value” versus here’s just a shit tonne of useful, whatever it is now, can we have a conversation?
“If your means of getting my attention doesn’t provide any value to me, you’re going to lose it. So if you think you’re providing value to me by liking one of my blogs or watching one of my videos and sharing it with your audience, I’m grateful for that. That’s fine. Thank you for doing that. But ultimately, when we do interact, if you don’t have anything for me, I don’t care how many times you’ve liked me. I don’t care how many times you’ve retweeted my tweets. I don’t care what you’ve said about my podcast. It doesn’t matter.” – Jeff Bajorek · [29:50]
Jeff Bajorek:
That’s exactly the point though. Are you grabbing the attention with the value or are you grabbing the attention with, “Here, come to our party at the conference or here come by the booth,” or whatever. The surgeons don’t want to go to the booths. They never do. They avoid those altogether, but to make my point, though, there’s a way to get that salespeople all the time will get the attention of people. They’ll send a come to this place for drinks or come to this place for dinner, or we’re making a presentation. If that means of getting attention, doesn’t provide any value or there isn’t any value behind it. You’re going to lose it. So if you think you’re providing value to me, by liking one of my blogs or watching one of my videos and sharing it with your audience, I’m grateful to that. That’s fine. Thank you for doing that.
“You can’t just flatter me by taking me to dinner and expect me to return the favour with a PO or a credit card number. That’s not selling.” – Jeff Bajorek · [29:50]
Jeff Bajorek:
But ultimately, when we do interact, if you don’t have anything for me, I don’t care how many times you’ve liked me. I don’t care how many times you’ve retweeted me. I don’t care what you’ve said about my podcast. It doesn’t matter because I mean, I’m grateful for it, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to do business with you. You can’t just flatter me and expect me to return the favour with a PO or a credit card number. That’s not selling. And there’s still so many people out there who think, “Oh, just take them out wine them and dine them and then you’ll get their business.” No, listen, no one ever did. I don’t do business with someone because they took me to dinner. Listen, I eat every day. Trust me. I make sure I eat every day. That’s not going to be the big differentiator for me.
Jeff Bajorek:
So I think when it comes to social selling, regardless of the channel that you’re engaging through, whether it’s person to person, I mean face to face, phone, email, Twitter, Snapchat, I don’t care. There still has to be some reason that I’m going to interact with you because we’re all really busy. I have friends, I’ve got a family I don’t see as much as I’d want to. I don’t need more people to just hang out with. And then especially when I know that as soon as I write that check or give you my credit card, you’re gone. Okay, now that I’m not it’s disingenuous and it’s not selling, I don’t believe that’s professional selling.
Will Barron:
Love it. As you were saying that this quote, I’ve scribbled it down here, because I’ll probably make a quote card out of it to promote the show. Now that I’ve, I’ve thought of it, but I imagine this quote card on Instagram, wherever it is. And it’s just flattery is not leverage. I think that sums up a lot of what we’re just described here. And a lot of the old school selling techniques and don’t get me wrong, there’s value in going for a game of golf with someone that you’re trying to sell to, because you’ve got access to them for four or five hours or whatever it is. But trying to leverage the fact that you’ve taken them for a game of golf, that is inconsequential versus going, having a great game of golf and having a chat with them. It gives you access to them.
Will Barron:
And I think they’re two totally different things. Jeff, may I could talk about, you can come back on in the future and we’ll talk about this in more detail, because there’s so much more to go there. It’s almost, I think we can do a whole episode and I’ll think about it and I’ll try and distil it before we connect again on the rules of selling. Just simplify the whole process. And it’s almost, I’m not religious in the slightest, but it’s almost like a religious doctrine, a doctrine for selling of, if you follow these four or five things you won’t go far wrong. I think that would really valuable for the audience. So we’ll do that another time.
Jeff’s Advice to His Younger Self on How to Become Better at Selling · [32:43]
Will Barron:
But with that, I’ve got one final question to ask everyone that comes on the show. And that is, if you could go back in time and speak to your younger self, what would be the one piece of advice you’d give him to help him become better at selling?
Jeff Bajorek:
Trust your gut. So many things that when I first got into selling reluctantly, like most people, I thought it should be done a certain way yet I felt this pull that I had to do it the way everybody else was doing or the way you’d grown up seeing it on TV or whatever it is. And at the end of the day, when you remember what it is you’re trying to do, and this connect with somebody and not just build a meaningful relationship, but be able to continue to provide value to that relationship. You need to remember there’s a person on the other end, and we don’t and our regular relationships with our friends, our family, our spouses, or significant others, we don’t put anybody through a process. Ever notice that? Not that you need to marry all your customers, but we’re not focused on a process. We do those things that come naturally to us when we want to be connected to another person, don’t deny that. Don’t forget it really. And I would question anything that any system that comes in a can that tells you to do that.
Will Barron:
I love it. That is really profound. That is really interesting. That’s worth diving into furthering this next episode, because I’ve never thought about it like that before of there might be some kind of a process to chatting someone up at the bar to get you kind of foot in the door, but as some interns from, because that’s transactional as that turns into a relationship where you are willing to give that wherever the number is, you’re willing to give 60% and only ever except 40% back, or which is, I think the book’s called a world less travelled. And that pitch is that an ideal relationship is two people that decide to be together, but they don’t need each other. They’ve got that flexibility. They’ve got that ability to live their own lives, but they’re not entwined that much, that if one of them has a problem, it affects the other.
Will Barron:
They decide, they make their choice, that one on one equals free in that scenario. I’m going to butcher his name now with surname’s Peck. Anyway, I’ll link to the book in the show notes, but that always resonated with me, but I’ve never thought about that in a business relationship of two people that can happily survive either side, but for them to work together, there’re no ties in value of, I only give 51% and I expect 49% back or even worse sales people trying to push for I’ll give you 30% upfront, but then I expect 70% back over the next five years as you continue to use our product, which is the mindset of a lot of people. I think that’s really profound. Yeah. Amazing. Jeff.
Parting Thoughts · [35:28]
Will Barron:
With that, tell us where we can find out more about you because clearly the audience, hopefully going to be fascinated in this conversation. They’re going to want to do a bit of research and perhaps reach out to you. So where can we find out about you and everything that you are doing?
Jeff Bajorek:
Well, if you go to Google and type in my name, Jeff Bajorek, I own the entire first page and I actually, haven’t gone back to page two to see how much of that I own either because nobody goes to page two. So you can find me at jeffborak.com. You can find me on YouTube. I’m on Twitter @jeffbajorek. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. That’s where I spend most of my time on social media. It’s still a valuable tool for me just to kind of make myself better and see what other people are up to. I don’t do much on Facebook. So don’t look for me there, but send me an email jb@jeffbejo.com. I love talking, selling. I don’t know if you recognise this well, but I love talking, selling, so you just want to talk, I’m sure there’s a way that we can work together. I know there’s a way I can help you, but even if you just have a question I’m happy to field those questions, good
Will Barron:
Stuff. Well, I’ll link to that and showed it to this episode. It is salesmanpodcast.com and without Jeff, I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for your insights. What I like about the insights of this conversation is it’s not tied to selling a book, a service, a product or a process. You’ve been really real with it all. So I appreciate that, mate. And I want to thank you for joining us on the Salesman podcast.
Jeff Bajorek:
Thanks, Will. You called me elegant, quotable and profound today. I’m going to float through the rest of my day.
