Sales Essentials: Ramp-Up Course

Communication as the Foundation

Here we are, lesson three, and we're starting the beginning of the Sandler Sales methodology. We spent a lot of time outlining why this matters and talking about the mindset we need to be successful in this profession. Today we're starting step one of the Sandler flywheel: communication. It's all about personal chemistry, comfort, and building the relationship right out of the gate with our prospects.

These two pieces together - communication and upfront contract - collectively make up what we call the building-the-relationship piece of our process. Communication, bonding, and rapport is literally the glue that holds all of the other processes together. Upfront contracts also recur throughout our sales process, but we start importantly with warming up that relationship.

The Five Elements of Rapport

What we want to invite you to do today is think about relationship building as something you are very intentional about. Building rapport with a prospect is ultimately my responsibility as the seller. It is not the buyer's job. It is my responsibility to create an environment where they want to do business with us, where they are comfortable doing business with us. I might have an aggressive, loud, fast-talking personality - I do - but if I'm meeting with somebody who is more reserved and soft-spoken, it is my job to adjust and create a persona that they like to work with. Part of what we are paid to do as salespeople is to be adaptable and flexible.

If we were to break building rapport down into elements we can wrap our head around, there are five components. The first is trust, and I want to highlight here the difference between trust and likability. Have you ever met salespeople who do a really good job building relationships? They seem to have a lot of conversations, they're putting a lot into their pipeline, they go to a lot of lunches and events and have a lot of meetings - but the numbers aren't showing them closing very much. I used to be one of them. I relied on my people skills. I was highly likable, but people weren't actually giving me their money.

What that indicates is they didn't trust that I could get the job done and get it done well - whether they feel you can deliver on the promise, credibility, all of those things. One thing we have to be careful of, particularly salespeople who tend to be natural people-people, is are we walking that line between likability and trust? Because at the end of the day, a prospect would obviously like to like the people they do business with, but if they had to choose, they're going to pick trust.

Here's an example. Let's say I have a lifelong friend who became a surgeon. Something happens - I break my ankle, which I actually did recently - and my friend could fix it, but I've known this person a long time. Maybe I know that sometimes they go into surgery and they've told me some stories that make me think, "I'm not sure you're the person I want cutting my ankle open." Now, I might like this person a whole lot. I want to get dinner with them, get a drink, hang out. But when it comes to cutting my ankle open, I might choose the jerk who has really good outcomes. Ideal world, we want our prospects to both trust and like us, but if we have to pick, go with trust. We can't confuse the two.

The next element is comfort. Do they like being around us? When we interact with them, are they at ease, or do they feel pressured and pushed? Are we able to connect? Do they feel like we understand them when they're explaining things - who they are, what they're looking for, the culture of their company? Then there's credibility. Are we a company they can go to their boss and say, "I hired this firm, here's all the work they've done with others, they're super credible"? And then there's equal business stature, which I'm going to spend more time on.

Of these five, the two that salespeople tend to do a really good job with without having to think too much are connection and comfort. Credibility is where we try to talk about all the ways we are wonderful - we've been in business 50 years, we're the leader in, we're the best at. The problem is they hear that same story from all of your competition. Credibility for a buyer can get difficult to discern because the competition is largely telling the same story. I'm going to come back to credibility, because there's something we're going to introduce called disarming honesty that's going to address that.

Equal Business Stature

Equal business stature means we are at the same level. Now, this can be really tricky. I personally have been a "lowly sales rep" selling to CEOs and CFOs. Equal business stature comes naturally and easily to C-suite selling to C-suite, or VP selling to VP. But how many of you are salespeople by title and yet have to sell to people of greater stature? Very common.

So you take that, and then you layer on the fact that the natural order of things - unless we are intentional about shifting that dynamic - is that the buyer is really operating from a place of power because they have the money. They say yes or no to whether they choose to give it to us. The buyer is kind of the parent figure, the seller is kind of the child figure. What do you need? You need a quote? Okay, I'll turn that around. You want to see a demo? Okay, how fast? What can I move around to accommodate you? Unless we're really intentional about shifting that dynamic.

If we're not really careful, our head trash about our stature compared to the person we're selling to - or just the natural order of them having the money and us not - means we're giving away our equal business stature all the time. We're making ourselves less than our buyer in the words we choose, our mannerisms, and the way we go about a deal.

There is absolutely an element of this in how we open conversations. If I say, "Hey, sorry to bother you, this will only take a minute, I only want a couple of minutes of your time," the subtext is I view myself as a pest. The subtext is I don't really think I'm worth your time, and I think your time is more important than mine. Now contrast that to, "Hey, this is Emily from Sandler. Let me tell you why I'm reaching out, and then you can let me know whether or not we should talk." Do you hear the difference in my view of myself in those two talk tracks?

So as we think about bonding and rapport and creating equal business stature, the things that come out of our mouths and the way we respond to prospects matter constantly. Are we giving off "I'm a busy professional who qualifies opportunities based on what's worth my time"? Or are we giving off "I'm desperate for your business, could you just please give me a moment of your time"?

The I'm Okay / You're Okay Framework

Two more concepts before we get into DISC. One is the idea of okay / not okay. There was a book in the 1960s called *I'm Okay, You're Okay*. You don't need to read it, but here's the summary. There are four relative positions we can take in relation to someone else.

The ideal scenario is I'm okay and you're okay. My ego and self-worth are intact when I talk to you, and you feel the same when you talk to me. We're both whole. Another dynamic is I'm not okay, but I perceive that you are very much okay. For those of us who were not the cool kids in high school, that's that dynamic - the popular kids walk down the hall and in relation to them, I'm feeling less okay about myself.

Another dynamic is I'm feeling great about myself, but the person I'm talking to is not okay. This is one we want to be very wary of as salespeople because we can create it really inadvertently. For example, maybe I sell complicated software solutions and my prospect isn't well-versed in this stuff. I'm using jargon and tech terms and language they don't understand. I'm feeling totally okay - I'm feeling smart - but my prospect is actually really uncomfortable. My intention was probably to show how expert we are, but the effect is the opposite. And nobody ever says, "Hey, do you remember that salesperson who did that presentation and made us all nervous? Call him back."

Then there's neither of us are okay - the dynamic where because someone is miserable, they want everybody else to be miserable too. But what I particularly want to draw your attention to is being conscious of equal stature in the conversation, and also protecting what I'd call their okayness. If my prospect is feeling pressured, insecure, overwhelmed, or just frustrated with you, their natural human tendency is to go a different route. That's what it sounds like, and that's what we're working to prevent.

Pattern Interrupts and Disarming Honesty

There's an overarching concept called a pattern interrupt. We've talked before about pendulum theory - we get the question "Why should I buy from you?" and we don't want to do the predictable thing. The predictable thing is to be on the wrong side of the pendulum: "Because we're the best, we're the leader in..." That response is what's expected of a salesperson.

A pattern interrupt is any time I as a salesperson do something that appears to not be in my best interest - the unpredictable route. If you ask me, "Why should I buy from you?" and I respond, "I don't know that you should. I can tell you why others have decided to work with us, but I don't know enough about your situation to know if that would even make sense" - that's the unexpected answer. Any time I say something or take an action that appears to be disarmingly honest, that's a pattern interrupt.

I love the concept of disarming honesty because it accomplishes credibility within your bonding and rapport. Here are some things we might say that qualify as pattern interrupts - they're not the norm for a salesperson, but they're also wildly true. "You might be okay where you are." "Doing business with us might not be the right choice." "We don't make sense in every situation." "I'm not yet sure if we can help you." These things are radically true. They increase our credibility and they interrupt the pattern of what a buyer expects from a salesperson.

The honest truth is I'm willing to bet everybody in this room represents a company where you're not the budget option. And the temptation, if you're not conscious of your equal business stature, is to hear "We love what you're showing us, but you're really expensive" and immediately start defending and justifying pricing. But really, if I look at this from the perspective we just talked about, the simple answer is: "We do tend to cost more than some of the other options in the market." We're not apologizing, not justifying, not defending. It is what it is. And another pattern interrupt I've heard people use when someone says "You're too expensive" is to go left of the pendulum and say, "It sounds like you've already made up your mind." And they go, "No, no, no, no," and suddenly they're swinging back. That's another pattern interrupt.

Introduction to DISC

I think if you were to ask Sandler trainers to pick one tool that could most help you in selling, DISC would be at the top of the list. You're going to use it in every training going forward. Today, I'm going to introduce it and give you a deep understanding of what it is, how it fits into selling, and how to use it to sell more effectively.

The number one rule of the communication stage - the bonding and rapport piece - is this: people don't remember what you say, they remember how you make them feel. So I'm going to do an exercise. I'm going to act out one character for about five seconds, and you're going to answer two questions: describe that person, and how does that person make you feel?

What I just did was over-exaggerate a nervous person. I didn't say anything, and yet people on this call felt nervous, annoyed, anxious, confused, fearful. That's physiology. And if you're on a sales call and you're nervous - because you're meeting with a CEO, or you have to bring up a price increase, or you have to present to your management - and you carry that physiology in before you've said a word, you can make people feel uncomfortable. Nobody ever says, "Hey, do you remember that salesperson whose presentation made us all nervous? Bring him back in." Your physiology and your tonality have a lot of impact on how people feel around you.

If I talk really fast, I may make you nervous. If I talk really slow, I'm boring. If I talk loud, it puts you on the defensive. So between physiology and tonality, I can make you feel certain ways. There's a concept called neuro-linguistic programming - NLP - and if you're not familiar with it, go to YouTube and search "NLP matching and mirroring Tony Robbins." There's a 20-minute video on matching and mirroring. That's your homework. It's probably some of the best coaching you'll get on developing rapport, and it has nothing to do with "Hey, great weather" or "Did you see the game?" That's not rapport.

The Four DISC Styles

To simplify, picture a grid. A horizontal line divides people who are task-oriented above it from people who are people-oriented below it. A vertical line divides people who are active or extroverted - they talk more than they listen - on the right, from people who are reserved - they listen more than they talk - on the left. That gives you four quadrants.

The **D - Dominant** style is task-oriented and extroverted. Their philosophy is: "People don't tell me what to do. I tell them what to do. I lead, they follow. The minute I lose control, I'm going to get killed." They're decisive, tough, strong-willed, competitive, demanding, independent, self-centered - they want control. Their biggest fear is loss of control.

The **I - Influencer** style is people-oriented and extroverted. Their philosophy is: "The way to stay safe is if I can get people to like me, I won't get killed." So they tend to be outgoing, the life of the party, jovial, fun-loving. They make connections and are team-oriented because they want you to like them. Their biggest fear is social rejection.

The **S - Steady Relator** style is people-oriented and reserved. Their philosophy is: "Haste makes waste. Slow and steady wins the race." They don't do anything impulsively. They take their time, collaborate, come to consensus. They're calm, loyal, patient, friendly, very accommodating. They say yes to everything and can get overwhelmed. Their challenge is that they avoid confrontation.

The **C - Compliant** style is task-oriented and reserved. Their philosophy is: "You have to dot your I's and cross your T's. You start making mistakes, you're going to get killed." They're perfectionists. Their biggest fear is criticism of their work. They tend not to like salespeople because salespeople come in with new ideas and they take it as an implication that something is wrong with what they're already doing.

To illustrate, imagine each style returning jeans to a store on day 35 of a 30-day return policy. The D slams the jeans on the counter and says, "I want to return these," and when told about the policy, berates the clerk and demands the manager. The I walks in with a big smile, chats up the clerk, and when told about the policy says, "Oh my gosh, has it really been that long? Is your manager here? I want to tell them what a great job you're doing." The S quietly walks out without saying a word - but gets on social media and tells everyone how badly they were treated, because they don't like to confront. And the C? They wouldn't return them. Because they followed the rules - they knew it was a 30-day policy, and they probably had it planned out by day 28: "If these don't fit, I'm returning them Thursday at 2:00." Things are black and white to them.

Selling to Each DISC Style

**Selling to D styles:** They want the bottom line up front. Be direct, be fast, go faster than them. If they say "I've got five minutes," say "Why don't we take one minute and see if we need the other four?" Don't slow them down - people don't remember what you say, they remember how you make them feel, and if you slow a D down, they're going to be frustrated. Make them look good, make them go fast, make them the best. And don't take "let me think it over" at face value from a D - if a D says that, it's usually over. You can actually call it out: "You're a pretty direct, straightforward person. You're not really a think-it-over person - what did I miss?" You can only say that to a D. Also, challenge them sometimes. One of my clients was in a presentation after a three-month selling cycle, and the prospect said, "How can you guarantee your solution will work for us?" Instead of defending, my client said, "I've been doing this 20 years and I know it works. My bigger concern is whether three months from now you're going to be onto the next flavor of the month - I'm questioning your commitment to this initiative." The prospect immediately pushed back: "What are you talking about? Why would I waste three months if I wasn't serious?" And they got started. That's a pattern interrupt. It shows confidence, and it's exactly what a D style responds to.

**Selling to I styles:** Your goal is to build a genuine relationship. Let them talk - prepare questions. Laugh at their jokes. Keep their optimism high. Don't come in with a rigid agenda. Keep it informal. One thing to be aware of: this style tends to run late to meetings. As Emily said, it's your responsibility to build the relationship, not theirs - so if you're an on-time person and the meeting starts late, don't let your frustration show in your physiology. That will undermine the connection before you've said a word.

**Selling to S styles:** If they're a turtle, be a snail. Slow down. Ask about their team and how things affect them - they're team-oriented. Use the crawl-walk-run philosophy. In a first meeting, you might say something like, "This is probably the first of three or four meetings. Really just to get to know each other - you get to know me, I get to know you - and if we're comfortable, maybe we'll have another conversation about business." Some of you are thinking, "I can't do that." But that's what they want. Match their tonality - soft and slow. Don't pressure them for a decision. They actually do think it over when they say they will, so honor that. Follow through on everything you commit to because they remember.

**Selling to C styles:** Use data and facts. If you have white papers, proven stats, research from universities - they eat that up. Don't interrupt them. Let them finish their sentence. And here's a big one: they don't like salespeople because salespeople tend to oversell, and C styles are always thinking, "What's the catch? What are you not telling me?" So bring up the downside first. If I'm talking to someone about Sandler, I might say, "Sales training is not a panacea. It's expensive, it takes time, people have to get out of their comfort zone, and it takes a while to get traction. But here's what we do have - studies from major universities showing the efficacy of the training proven over time." Lead with that and they're much more open. If you happen to be a salesperson by default - maybe you came from a technical background - tell them. Say, "I'm a problem solver, I kind of got stuck in here because I know my stuff." That's a genuine bonding move with a C style. And when they say they'll think it over, they actually will. Give them the space to do it.