Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, guys. Eric Smith, host of Laundry Talks. I'm excited to bring you season two, starting right now, with my first guest, Walker McKay. Walker McKay is an author, a sales coach, a podcaster. His podcast is the no BS Sales School. And I'm going to talk to him about a couple things today. One of them is why sometimes it's great to get no for an answer from your prospect. And also, what do you say when your prospect asks you about your competition?
So, looking forward to my discuss with Walker and thanks for joining.
This is the podcast for the textile rental operator community to learn new things, share ideas, and drive conversations. Welcome to Laundry Talks with your host, Eric Smith.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Eric, thank you so much. And it was fun. We were at the.
What was the event where we were in qr. What was it?
[00:00:57] Speaker A: It was the Independent Textile Rental Association Annual meeting. Yeah.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Itra. Yeah, that was cool. That was fun. I enjoyed meeting a lot of people there. That's a great, great industry and a great group.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So what we're going to call this today, It's a no BS conversation about sales with Walker McKay. And, you know, that's pretty much what we want to give some great actionable information to our listeners here. I want to share one quick thing that I learned from your book at the top of this meeting, because I've already used this almost every day. And when you're in sales, when you're in service, it doesn't really matter. And you get into a lot of meetings. One concept you helped me with already is that before you go into the meeting, I sit down and tell myself, what's the best possible outcome of this meeting? Because a lot of times you get into the meeting and you have a great meeting, but you're like, well, did we accomplish what we wanted to? But even better than that is 90% of the meetings, you do not accomplish the best possible result. What's the next best possible result? And so having those two things in front of me, you know, gives you a lot of options. At the end of the meeting, do we accomplish what we wanted to do? And if we didn't accomplish it, are we still moving forward to another step? So do you want, you want to talk a little bit about that? Because it really blows my mind.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah, Kind of one of those, no, no, duh things that nobody ever told me and kind of figured out that you go in a meeting, you say, typically, then of a meeting like this, we're deciding X like typically, then a meeting like this, we're deciding whether or not you hire me to do this or whether or not you introduce me to your boss? And so you tell them that at the beginning.
Here's what we typically decide. Are you okay if we decide yes or no to that at the end of the meeting?
And if they say, well, no, I can't. I can't decide that, you say, okay, well, here's what we decide. Other times we're figuring out whether or not we do this lower step. Are you okay with that? Every meeting we go to, there needs to be something we're trying to figure out or solve to get a yes or no answer to. And. And I want to be as transparent and as.
I guess transparent is absolutely the right word. No secret agenda, nothing hidden. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish. Is that okay if we get yes or no to that? Is there something else you want us to accomplish? And let's learn that up front. So, yeah. Thank you, Eric.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: I'll tell you what my. My best possible outcome of this podcast is today, and that is that anyone listening to it that's in this business or you don't have to be running a laundry. They could run a business that they get five actionable things that they can walk away with. Great. The next best possible outcome is that they find anything, a single thing that could help them out.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah, great. Absolutely. I love that. That's terrific.
[00:03:24] Speaker A: Terrific. Two other big things from the book that I really took away was one, that this idea of getting a no and getting a no quickly is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. You want to talk a little bit about what that means?
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's so funny. It's a.
All we can control is what we do, and I am of the belief that we can't.
Sales is not about convincing. I don't think that. I don't think we can sell anybody anything, but I do think that we could have really good conversations with people and figure out if they're at the right fit. They're going to be the right fit for what we do.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: And so I tell people, no's my second favorite word, and I hear it all the time.
I can't control whether somebody tells me yes or no, but I can control it. There's a decision.
And so I tell people when we're going in. When you go into a sales call, you need to have two kind of, I don't think they're competing, but two different thoughts in your brain. And one is, I'm absolutely certain if you hire me and it's the right situation, I'm going to make a huge difference, right. If you buy our software, if you use me for insurance, if you do my sales training or you use our laundry service, we're gonna make a huge difference in a good way. I'm certain of that, if it's the right fit. But number two, I'm not convinced, I'm skeptical that you're actually ready to make that change.
I'm skeptical that you are ready. And so it's my job, it's my job as a salesperson to disqualify those people that aren't ready. And I would much rather hear somebody say no, I'm not ready at the end of the first meeting than at the end of the sixth meeting.
And I've given em information and begged em for business and whatever else I don't do anymore. Does that make sense?
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Absolutely. It makes getting a no now feels a little bit better than it used to.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Because here's the thing. We can't control whether they say yes or no, but we can control. What we can control is that there's a decision being made.
If they can't say yes, they have the meeting. We can say, well, let's just call a no. It's no pressure at all. And if you, if they want to say, well, I'm going to prove you wrong, I'm going to show up and bring in a check tomorrow. Okay, But I'm gonna have to call it a no from my side.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: And then the other thing that I made note on in, in the book and I'm not distilling the book into these three things, but they're just things that resonated with me.
But most people, you say most people don't know what good is. And I just really like the way that that sounds and you know, tell me what that means to you.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: So it's, it comes from. It's a great question. I'm glad you picked up on that. It's how do most people sell? They like, they'll say, well, we've got the best people, we've got the best service, we've got the best quality, some version thereof. And probably a lot of your competitors, you know, are sharing their superlatives that all sound exactly alike. And the reason that we're different is because we say exactly the same thing everybody else does. So as a buyer, we bought this guy, whatever, we use him for insurance or whatever, and he said he's got the best service, best quality, best product. And everybody said the same thing, but I picked him. And so I'm just assuming everybody's about the same.
And so I don't know any different than that. I don't know even know what good looks like. I just know what I've been getting. And so as a salesperson, we have to. Nobody can see that you're better till they see that you're different. And oftentimes they can't see that your product or service is different till after they buy it from you. So our opportunity to differentiate has to be with how we interact with them during our sales calls, during our prospecting, during all of our interactions. Does it feel different than dealing with other people?
Because, I mean, really, how am I supposed to know what great. What Mike, what a great homeowner's insurance agent does that a normal one doesn't do? Because most of us, we pick one and we kind of ride with it for 20 years. That's what they count on. And so it's our job to differentiate ourselves in our conversations and to ask questions. Like when your agent sits down with you once a year, twice a year, to ask you, what new have you bought at your house? You need to make sure of insured. What have you sold to make sure that, you know, you're not paying for insurance for that anymore.
When they do that last time you met, you know, a couple months ago, what did y' all change?
And the person goes, we don't ever do that. He never talks to me.
Okay, well, I wonder why.
Right? So we're planting seeds of doubt.
You can show people what you do without saying, we do that. You could just ask questions. We call that an assumptive question. To show what you do differently.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Yeah, let's pivot and talk a little bit about the laundry industry. So textile rental industry. And maybe that's not your number one focus, but, you know, this industry, you have clients in this industry.
Do you know a little bit about the challenges and opportunities that. That exist here?
Can you give us some initial thoughts on, you know, what's different about this industry? What's the same as any other, you know, what's.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: What I found is different, and it's interesting to me is how many generations of families have been in your business and how it's something that has more than any other business I have been around. It's many of the businesses, especially at the ITRA conference, were, you know, they're third, fourth, some fifth generation in the business. And there's. The family is tied up in that, and the business is treated like family, which is awesome in many ways. And that's. That's terrific. So I admire the keeping it in the family industry part of that, which I think is terrific. So there are several varieties. This, right there is. There's the people that are selling like, uniforms, like rental uniform, stuff like that. I mean, a uniform is a uniform. You can rent one from this company or this company or this company. So you really have to differentiate. And everybody's going to say, oh, we've got better service because we're tiny. We've got better service because we're huge.
But where you can truly differentiate yourself is to ask your prospect, what do you like about what you're currently getting?
You're working with Cisco or you're working with Cintas.
What do you like about the service that you're getting from those guys?
And it's not. Not as an attack. You're sincerely curious. You might even say, good for you. You're working with Cintas. They're a great company.
What do you like best? And they may say, well, we like that there. We know the rep and they've got good, clean uniforms and they get us our stuff on top.
And I want you just to agree with them.
Yep, they're known for that.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Just agree.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Because one of the, one of the ways you won't build trust with somebody is meeting them for the first time and then tell them they're stupid. And so if you say we work with Cintas and they go. And the salesman goes, they're terrible. We're much better than them. All you're doing is telling your prospect they're stupid. So let's not. Let's get away from that and let's seek to understand there's a reason they're doing what they're doing. And so what do you like about syntastic these things? And just agree with them because that's what they believe. And who the hell are you to tell them they shouldn't believe that?
Then you say, here's what I know, though we atlant aren't perfect. I can't imagine those guys are perfect.
Is there one thing you wish they did better, differently? What would that be?
Maybe they say, well, you know, the route driver seems to change every two months.
Or, you know, if we lose, they. They bill us every time the sun goes down, we get an extra charge. Or we've got no idea if they're bringing back 30 uniforms or 60, but we get charged for 60 every time.
And then you can say, I'm surprised. Tell me more. Can you give me an example, right? Seek to understand your prospect before you sell them.
And when I say before you sell them, when you start asking about that stuff, you start asking, oh well, they bring you back, they charge you for 60, even though sometimes you kinda only get 45 or 50.
How often does that happen? What have you tried to do about it? That work?
What do you suppose that's cost you?
Is that a big deal?
What happens if you don't fix it? What do you think you ought to do? Right. And so I'm fully digging in to understand this person's position and if they go, yeah, not that big of a deal, I'd say, good, if I were you, I wouldn't change.
I'm not going to commit there because some of them, they've got to be there for a reason. Or the CEO plays golf with the CEO of that company or this person brings us our favorite cookies three times a year. And if that's the reason they're going to stay, that's the reason they're going to stay.
No need to tell them they're stupid.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: I was going to ask a little bit about because we're on the topic of talking about Cintas and competitors.
One of the things that operators in this industry are doing is they're doing new sales teams and they have route sales teams and the route sales people are typically hired on a different skill set. They're there to be customer centric, to solve problems.
But at the same time the challenge in this industry is they're expected to do some upselling on the route. And some people are natural at doing that. And other guys, other people are, you know, want to jump under their truck and hide when they're asked to make those sales. They feel like they're, they're crossing the customer. So, you know, yeah, yeah. What's going on with that between those two different types of people?
[00:12:47] Speaker B: I think that when someone says they're a natural born salesperson, either they themselves are talking about somebody else.
In my world, that often is code for I really, I talk a lot, probably too much and I lean on people, some of whom will buy from me. Right. I have found that people who. And so, but they're comfortable. I lunch with a guy like that today, great guy. Barry Smart said I'm great at sales and he launched into his pitch about how he tries to convince people to do it. He just loves sales, getting in there and doing all this and I'm like, that's the last thing I want to go to.
But sometimes though, with personality Charisma and the right opportunities, they can be business development genius. They can do great. Right. They're just in there and people like them automatically. And. And that can help.
The thing about that, I believe, about sales, is we have to have equal business stature with the people that we're calling. We need to see ourselves as equals, and I tell my clients, equals with everybody else on the planet, same level. And sometimes the route salespeople don't see themselves as being equal with the people that they're walking into the office. They see themselves more as a servant than they see themselves as an equal. And so they're afraid to bring that stuff up. And again, great. Customer service is a servant mentality. Totally get that. But I think if you can have somebody even just as easy to say, hey, who do you all get your other stuff from? Who do you all buy this from?
Would you be interested in hearing about what we have? Just nothing too complicated, or you. Okay, if I have somebody call on you and tell you about what we do there, Just ask. It's amazing how that works. It's also another quick thing that can be, you know, something simple like, is there anybody else in another one of your, you know, another one of your plants that we should know?
Is there another plant that you guys own that we should know about because we're not talking about? Yeah, I mean, it's nothing magic, but just simply asking questions, have no pressure. I think some people are afraid. Again, they're afraid of hearing no. They're afraid of being told no. They're afraid of having a power thing where somebody pushes back on them.
I would just say no's my second favorite word. And you're not asking to make a sale, really. You're just saying, hey, who do you buy this stuff from now? Any reason we should talk to you about that?
Another way to do it is a lot of people don't know that we provide this service.
Is that something you and I should be talking about, or is that something I should get somebody to call you about? Yeah, easy peasy.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: That's natural. That's a natural way for it to come up. And I think that would probably be a good, you know, for. For, you know, route sales teams to role play in that type of situation. Um, I know another thing I just.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Thought of that may be helpful, which is it's my job to keep up with people like you, to make sure you're getting the help that you need.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: It's my job to keep up with people like you, make sure you're getting the help that you need. And that works in any industry.
So you're not just checking in, circling back, reaching around, or whatever. It's. Hey, it's my job to keep up with people like you and make sure you're getting the help that you need.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. And, you know, one thing people have had success with is sampling programs for route sales. Reps are great because now they're giving something, you know, they're giving some value for free to the client, and they can accomplish that and sell at the same time. So those are always very, very popular.
And I also like. You know, I've heard someone say that when they're looking for something, they come in and say, what are the chances that you might be interested in this?
[00:16:36] Speaker B: And yeah, right.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: Great. What great way to do that.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Or even bored. There's a lot more behind this than we probably talking or. So my guess is you guys aren't interested in something like this.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Because the truth is they're probably not just go tell the truth. They go, no, no, we might be. You say, okay, really? Why? Let's talk about it.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Well, then you had also coach on it when they, when they get surprised, and then they say, yes, we are interested. And then what's. What comes fixed.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: And I say, okay, well, wow, why would you be interested in that?
And then we can start. Right. We're always seeking to understand if we're doing it right. But yeah, you're right. I've been doing this a long time, so perfect.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: But I'm all about telling the truth and seeking, but seeking to understand first. People like, oh, I just go and be myself. Which again means you just probably talk too much. How about go and be empathetic and try and understand the person you're talking.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. One, one thing just to wrap up on the route sales stuff before we go into new business sales, my last guest, Nancy, she told me something really interesting, which was for route service people hiring, she said the best question to ask them was, did you own your own business as a child? Like, were you. Did you have a lemonade stand? Did you run a newspaper route? Because those were the people that were. They understood the service element of it, but they also kind of treated it like their own business. And that's the type of person. What type of person would you be looking for that could service the customer and do route sales?
[00:17:59] Speaker B: I think that's a great thing to look for. I also, you know, people that, you know, what did you do? A great question to ask for any salesperson, route sales the same. What did you do to make money in high school or college? And I want somebody that says well I did a newspaper route or I did this or I did this in the summertime. Because those that can't really come up with an answer or you know, they're BS in you, then it's probably, you know, probably not the right person to hire.
So yeah, I think that's a great question which you asked.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: And not everyone will be the perfect fit. And that's why we have coaching and processes too, right?
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Not everybody. Not everybody who's a great at route sales ran eliminate Stan when they were coming along. That's just one thing that is probably more positive than not for sure.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: So okay, let's shift to new business sales. And that's going to be. This is a big, big topic. So you do a lot of coaching with sales teams and some of that's small to medium sized business, not a lot.
When you get hired to work with a sales team, where do you start and how do you change behavior in a team that's been selling the same way for like a long, long time?
[00:19:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it's hard. Gotta be honest.
And so whenever I first engage with a customer, the first thing we do I do a sales skills analysis. Basically it's, it's an online test. It's not a personality test. It's what are the hard skills that they have learned?
Hunting, qualifying questions, listening, able to stay in the moment. All these they asking for referrals. What are the skills that they've actually learned and developed. And so I can then look at the entire team and we'll talk to the owner and the owner will say, well we're not getting new business and if we are having a discount price, I could look down on the sales skills report.
And I can see, well 6 out of 8 people don't like talking about money.
I can look and so that would be a problem. That's why there or they get uncomfortable talking about money over a certain amount. So if we can find this stuff out at the beginning, I can come back to the owner of the company or the head of the sales team and say, all right, here's kind of as a group, here's where your salespeople are and things you need to work on. And then as we coach them and train them individually, here are the things this person is going to need help with.
And there are some people that shows Eric are very comfortable and they've been selling for 40 years and they're doing fine and that their assessment will show me that. And we can say, you can put them in training if you want to, but they're not going to change.
And I. You don't have to exclude them from this, but we can't expect anybody to change. As soon as somebody, though, is in class and they do this, or what are you going to teach me that lasts more than two weeks, then we're going to ask them to go spend their time doing the stuff that makes them do well. You start with change with hoping to show people well. There's a buyer's process that happens in B2B sales. It happens in B2C sales as well.
Four steps. See if anybody recognizes these. The first step when we approach somebody or the first step of the buyer's process when buying is to some version of ask about price.
Can you save me money? What would it cost if. Or, hey, you know, if it's cheaper, I'll talk to you. If you make it past the first step, the second step is some version of they invite you in and you have a conversation and they ask you questions about what you have.
And most people, oh, my gosh, somebody's interested. So we'll share all our information and we give them information, information, information.
The buyer will often say then, well, why don't you. Can you put that in writing?
Can you put that in writing to make sure that I understand and compare?
So we do that, and we see it as a buying signal. They're interested, they love me, and then we give them the stuff in writing. We wait to overcome objections, but oftentimes we don't get objections because they don't want to wrestle with a person, with a salesperson. They just. They don't want to. And so, first step, ask about money. Second one is get free consulting.
The third step, instead of giving you objections, is they'll say, you know what? This looks really great. Appreciate what you've done here. Very important.
My partner's traveling in Europe and he won't be. And I can talk to him when he comes back or I need to sleep on it, or, we've got two other bids coming in. Why don't you call me back in a week? But it really looks great. Love what you've done. This is amazing. Apples to apples, all things being equal, can't see any reason why we wouldn't do business with you at some point.
Ask about money, get free consulting. Say nice things and get rid of you. Step number three, right? And so then you go to call Back, they say, call me back in a week or two weeks or whatever. And you're all excited and you're like, yes, this is good. They like me. And you go to call back and I don't know, they've had time to take your proposal and hand it to the person that's doing that for them now and say, hey, can you. They say they can do this. Can you do this?
Where they see if they can do it internally. That happens to me all the time. And some people say that's just sales, but the reality is that's not sales.
Maybe that used to work 50 years ago where you meet them, greet them, propose them, close them. But now people are smarter. They've got much more ways to gatekeep. They can get all the information from the interwebs.
And so we have to be smarter than that and at least gain.
We ought to have 50% of control.
We're the same as everybody else. I think I mentioned that before, right? We have equal business stature. We don't need to put up with stuff. Yeses are fine, nos are fine.
But even to say, hey, look, why don't we.
Happy to come in.
We're never going to be cheaper.
You okay if I ask you some questions and see if it even makes sense for us to have another conversation?
[00:23:53] Speaker A: A couple final questions I want to wrap up with, you know, again, talking to the family owned or the independent operation out there. And every market has these, these family owned businesses. So if, if someone's trying to really improve their sales process. So what is a simple, a couple pieces of information to, to create a, you know, simple, repeatable sales process for a small team. What would that look like? Where would you start?
[00:24:21] Speaker B: Well, I think you first need to. The first thing we got to figure out is who is our ideal prospect.
And so I think we talked before about the stories about squirrels, deer and elephants. Can I tell that story?
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: So first of all, I gotta figure out who is your ideal prospect. And so there's this story that I tell people, and y' all probably know where it ends before I get there, but a man lives out in the woods, he's got to feed his family. And he says, there are a lot of squirrels in the woods. And so he gets up in the morning, walks all day, he shoots, you know, five or six squirrels, comes back, scans them, cleans them, cooks them, feeds his family one meal. Day two, same thing, three, four, five, same thing. And finally he goes, this is exhausting. My family's not getting full. I'm I'm tired. I gotta go further and further to find squirrels. I'm gonna go kill an elephant because I can kill one of those and feed the family for two years.
So he gets up the next day, gathers all the stuff necessary to kill an elephant. He walks out the door, and he's gone.
And a couple days go by, and his son's kind of hungry and says, you know, I don't know when dad's coming back. There are no elephants nearby. They're hard to kill. He's as likely to get killed by one as kill one himself. How the hell will he drag it back? All those things? He says, you know, there are a lot of deer in the woods, too.
And so he grabs his rifle, climbs a tree, gets lucky the first day, shoots a deer, drags it back, skins it, cleans it, able to feed the family for two weeks, goes that. Ten days later, she's now Eric. You already nod your head. You know where the story's going.
Think about your customers and your prospects as squirrels, deer, elephants. There's nothing wrong with any of them. Squirrels are the tiny ones. They're probably calling you. Maybe you can make good margins on them, but it's no money, and they're a major service hassle. Squirrels are very needy. They're calling all the time there, and they need your help, right? And sometimes they're the ones you've had for a long time, and you've got this relationship, and they're with you when you started, and you want to be good to them. Back on the other side of the elephants, they take a long time to close.
You got to make a lot of promises to get them.
You get excited when you close one. Maybe you add. Add members of your team. You hire people to ramp up to go take care of this, and it's great. And the money comes in, you're excited. And then at some point in the near future, one of them, they will say, well, hey, love what you got. This is really great. Appreciate your service. Can you give us this one extra thing at no extra charge?
Scope creep, right? They ask for a little more. The next thing that they will do is say, hey, we're getting a lot of calls from your competitors.
You charge. You're charging US$10. They say they can do it for seven.
We love our relationship in quotes.
Can you, you know, can you help us out? Getting a lot of pressure from the board. Can you cut your prices? Otherwise, we may have to make a change. We don't want to make another thing that elephant could do. If not that, if not cut your price directly is, hey, look, we're going from paying you in 30 days, we're going to start paying you 90 days.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great one.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: We're going to start paying you 90 days. So just know it's going to be a little late next time. You're like, oh, my God, right?
So anyway, at some point it becomes untenable. And either you can't provide the service you're providing before because you're making no money.
And so they fire you and they hire the other guy, whatever. If they. If they told you the truth at $7 versus $10.
And then the cycle repeats.
So deer are the ones right in the middle. They're right in your sweet spot. And there. There should be. The way you look at this is hundreds, if not a thousand in your marketplace, lots of them out there.
And they can. You can handle them right in your sweet spot. They're not a lot of extra work. They can go. They can fit right in with what you're doing right now. They pay their bills, you make good margin.
And if you had. Everybody's business is different, but if it's somewhere between, say, call it 25 and 100 deer, you have a really nice business. Because what we know is 15% of your revenue is going to go away every year.
So you got to add 15% at the top. So I would tell my clients, focus on who are you going after?
Have a real strong idea of who that is. And they're going to give us, you know, as accounts that pay us, making this up between 5 and $20,000. They do these kind of services with us. This is what we're looking for.
They're probably not the ones that are calling you. The squirrels are the ones that are calling you.
You got to go out and get them.
So identify who that is. Make it very clear to everybody in your company this is who we're looking for. And create a plan for that. Take your squirrels.
Sounds terrible. So you mad at me for saying this? Double their price, triple their price.
Some of them, a number. 25% will stick around and they'll increase their business with you. You.
The others will go away.
Maybe you can refer them to the competitor you don't like the most so that he can choke. He can choke on all their high. All their high service needs.
So that's a thing. And then I would start with a behavior plan. The sales begins with, well, there are three things there. Your actions, there's your attitude. And then there's your, your approach.
So your actions are kind of your individual personal goals and then your plan and then what are you doing on a daily and weekly basis. I would get those dialed in so that somebody you would know to be successful. You need to make, and I'm making this number up, $50 a week to new business or 50 door knocks to new business every single week. And that's what I would measure. This is what our new plan is. This is what we're going to do. If you do this, you'll be successful.
And then have them do that. If we're not getting results from that, then we look at attitude, which is what are their beliefs about the company and the marketplace and themselves. This is where all excuses are made.
Our prices are too high or we don't give good service or, or I can't call on those people.
They're not like me.
What to recognize is if that's what's holding you back, then we've got to address those things. Those are excuses. And you have to say, all right, how do I say that?
What we say out loud is what we tell ourselves. The world is lying. And so I tell people, how about change that to I haven't figured out how to.
I haven't figured out how to get that person to call me back. I haven't figured out how to get their business. I haven't figured out how to be more effective with what I'm doing. Say it out loud because I believe your brain goes, yeah, we hadn't figured it out yet. How do we figure that out versus they can't. I won't. It'll never. Then your brain goes, yeah, that's the truth.
And the last one is the part everybody wants to know about, which is the approach, which is your, your strategies and your systems and your tactics.
And that's.
Those are good and they can make a huge difference. I would rather have somebody who was a. We call them a behavior animal who made the calls every day no matter what, did what they had to do, who had crappy, really crappy approach than somebody who had the best approach in the world but wouldn't make a freaking dial, hire for work ethic and then train for skills.
Because if they got the work ethic, that's terrific. If they don't have the work ethic, it sure as hell is hard to teach somebody. And if you say, I'm gonna hire them for 100% commission and then that's gonna make them hungry, they're gonna go do it. I'm not a big believer in that either. I think you'll get people who can't get jobs anywhere else.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: So that's great.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: That's great. That's great advice. I love that.
Yeah.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: So anyway, that's kind of a, that's a general high level thing, what we'd look at.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Well, one of the things I wanted to ask before we wrap up, but I'm, I'm glad we did get to the, to the squirrel, deer and elephant conversation because I think it's a great, I mean it's just, it applies to anyone, anyone in the sales world and for any business experiences that so, so.
But before we wrap up, tell me something outside of this sales discussion. Tell me something interesting about you. Either place you have been to that you that is your favorite place or a great book or a show you're a show, you're binging. Just tell me what's going on with Walker these days.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: The most exciting thing I have on my Jen is that Saturday it's be December 13th. Saturday, December 13th, my family and I are leaving for New Zealand.
My wife and my younger son and I are leaving for New Zealand. My older son moved to New Zealand after graduation and by himself, knowing no one, has moved to Christchurch which is the largest city on the South Island. And he is looking for work in the forestry business over there. Something that's taken his attention and so Ken doesn't know anybody, got no connections and he's knocking on doors with forestry companies to get a job. So we're going to go spend Christmas with him.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Your first time there? Your first time there?
[00:33:25] Speaker B: I'm there. Yeah. It's been on my, been on my dream list of places to go for a decade, Walker.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Been my pleasure. Fabulous. I feel like I accomplished the best possible outcome of this podcast today. But we look forward to keeping in touch and have you on for any.
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: The name of my book is Some Will, Some Won't. So what, who's Next?
Some Will, Some Won't. So what who's next? It's on Amazon if you want to find out more about me or what we're doing. LinkedIn is a great place to find me. It's Walker McKay and my name, my company is no BS Sales and then I have a podcast called the no BS Sales School which is probably anywhere that you listen to podcasts.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Well, thanks. Wonderful having you on as a guest. Thanks, Walker.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: Thank you, Eric. You're the best. I appreciate it.
