Deploy The Psychology of Negotiations with Guest Brian Will

Speakers:
Andy Olen: Host
Brian Will: Guest

Andy Olen:
Hello and welcome to the Sales Warrior Within podcast. My name is Andy Olen. Thank you, Sales Warriors, for joining me today on what I think you’re gonna hear as a really fun and engaging episode, one that I had a lot of fun recording and sharing and getting to know our guest today, Brian Will. Brian Will is an industry expert in sales and management consulting and the best-selling author of a great book, The Dropout, Multi-Millionaire. And his new book, No… the Psychology of Sales and Negotiations. He’s a big-time entrepreneur. He’s built and sold a ton of businesses. And I think seven of them highly successful companies across four industries worth over half a billion dollars at their peak. That’s a lot of zeros at the end of that number. And as you get a sense of Brian on this call, he’s very practical, he’s very thoughtful. And his negotiation tips, which we really focus on today, sales process and negotiations, we focus on his book, No… the Psychology of Sales and Negotiations, really will leave you with some great insights. And hopefully, most importantly here, and this is something that I really agree with, is I want you to feel comfortable running towards that next negotiation. And you have to be really thoughtful about how you. run your sales process, how you engage customers, how you build trust, how you overcome objections well before the negotiation. You’ll hear Brian talk about this and then get into that successful negotiation ultimately to close a great deal, not only for you, your company, also for your customer as well. So we get into the psychology of negotiations, which Brian and I both agree is very, very important. And I really had a lot of fun talking shop, talking negotiations with our guest, Brian Will. So, Without any further introduction or introductory comments from me, let’s get into the conversation. Here we go. 

Andy Olen:
Brian Will, welcome to The Sales Warrior Within. It’s great to have you.

Brian Will:
Andy, I am fired up about being with you today. This is gonna be good. Thanks for having me.

Andy Olen:
You’re very welcome. And I think we should get right into it because we’re both people that are passionate about negotiations and helping other people effectively negotiate. And when I saw the title of your book and read some of the pages of the book, and we’ll read the whole thing as well. Uh, it is the title of your book is No… The Psychology of Sales and Negotiations, 40 lessons in negotiations from a street smart negotiator. So right away, the word no captured my attention. So tell me a little bit about your negotiation approach and tell me a little bit about the title of this great book.

Brian Will:
Well, the genesis of that comes from actually a Richard Branson book. And coincidentally, I was just on Necker Island last week with Richard Branson for a week. And in his book, he talks about buying negotiation, buying and selling. And one of the things he says in the book is if your first offer doesn’t insult them, then you’ve offered too much. Right? And I use this as a basis of negotiation because I always tell people, listen, you better become a good negotiator. Because if you don’t, and you come up against somebody who’s a good negotiator, They’re going to eat your lunch, right? It’s the old adage that when the person with money meets the person with experience, the person with experience gets the money, person with the money gets an experience, right? So the genesis here is that your first offer should always be low. We call this setting the bar at the bottom. You have another term for it. I heard in one of your podcasts, but we’re on the same track there. And I always look at it, the word no comes from the buyer’s perspective. And if they’re a good negotiator, they’re probably going to tell you no, whatever your first offer is, right? So if we know they’re going to say no, and we know they’re trying to set that bar low, I think you called this the, uh, the buyer’s university or something like that.

Andy Olen:
Yeah.

Brian Will:
I’ve heard you say in some of your stuff, if we know they’re going to do that, then we have to understand what they’re doing, why they’re doing it. We know we’ve got somebody who knows how to negotiate and we got to work up from there. And the flip side is if you’re going after to buy something, I will do the same thing. No matter what the salesman tells me, my answer is always no. Right. And sometimes it’s as simple as just no. And sometimes it’s as simple as no and here’s why, but it’s always no and I always drive the price down in every instance or almost every instance using that. So that’s kind of the genesis of that.

Andy Olen:
Right, well, we’re gonna go deep into this, and you’re absolutely right. A customer negotiation university is the place that all customers go to

Brian Will:
Yes.

Andy Olen:
learn how to negotiate. And one of their tactics is, even before they share a no, sometimes they’ll offer their terms up front for the anchoring effect. I wanna anchor the salesperson and

Brian Will:
There you go.

Andy Olen:
the negotiation at a very low price point, very favorable terms for me. So even before… Brian, you have the opportunity to throw your offer at me. I’m gonna set the expectation even further down, which is almost like a no on steroids.

Brian Will:
We are talking exactly the same language. I call it setting the bar at the bottom to start the negotiation, right? So anchoring, I love your term better. I’ll probably use that moving on. I’m gonna steal that from you

Andy Olen:
Yeah,

Brian Will:
Andy. Ha ha

Andy Olen:
you can use it. Absolutely.

Brian Will:
ha.

Andy Olen:
So the other part of the title of your book from a street smart negotiator So share with the audience a little bit your background And sort of the foundation that you’ve laid throughout your very successful career and very diverse career as well To give you these negotiating experiences that now you can share best practices around and with folks

Brian Will:
Yeah, my first, and by the way, I didn’t go to college. My second book is called The Dropout Multi-Millionaire. Got failed out of high school, honestly, didn’t go to college, started my own business because I didn’t have anyplace else to go. My first business was landscaping. I did that for 10 years. And the second company I started was in insurance sales. And we spoke about this before we went on. I was working for a company out in Milwaukee called Assurant Health. And interestingly enough, within like six weeks of starting with them, I became the top salesperson in the country. who knew I could sell, right? But I started learning how to sell and dealing with people and we sold millions and millions and eventually it turned into billions of dollars worth of insurance products around the country through some of the largest distribution folks out there and started building the sales training and sales process. And I do everything based on the psychology of what the consumer is thinking when the salesperson is talking to them. Backing up real quick, by the way, I sold my first company to Venture Capital. It’s called Connecture. They went public, back private, they back Medicare. My second company we sold into Venture Capital. It’s called GetInsure. They power nine state exchanges on the ACA. My third company we sold to Private Equity, and that was an online marketing company. I’ve done consulting, I’ve written books, I’m in politics. I’ve done so many weird things, but as I like to say in the book, every sale’s a negotiation, and almost everything you do is a negotiation in life. And so really just developing these negotiation tactics based around human psychology is what we’ve done. hate what we call slammers. I hate people who use cheesy sales lines. I just I hate trying to pressure people into doing something that they don’t want to do. So I would rather use the psychology behind the way they think to move them in the direction I want them to go or to get them to do what they already came here to do, which is buy. So that’s kind of where that came from.

Andy Olen:
Yeah, that’s great. And you know, it’s a common refrain. And I heard it this morning. I was talking to a cath lab nurse who’s in her final interview with a med device company. And she has this imposter syndrome where I don’t know if I belong because I’m not a salesperson. I don’t know if I’d be good at it. And she’s in her third interview with the sales leader through a lengthy process. And I said, well, you got to step back and. You definitely belong they wouldn’t be burning these calories of having you continue on through the interview process if you were not Deemed to be a really good candidate for this role But you said something that I think a lot of people share is like I didn’t see myself as a salesperson Yet as your story that you just shared and continued successes have shown is that you’ve been a very effective You’ve been very effective in selling So what advice would you give to people who don’t see themselves as a salesperson but who are interested in wanting to break in?

Brian Will:
It’s interesting and I’ve trained, I don’t know, maybe over a thousand salespeople over the last 20 years. And one of the things I’ve always said is I can’t really tell you who’s going to be really great at sales. I can tell you sometimes who’s not, but I can’t really tell you who is. And I’ve seen selling styles, people who talk fast, people who talk slow, people who get into detail, people who don’t, people with a southern draw, people from New York. I mean… Anybody, any style, any way can be good at sales if you learn a couple of key things and they are very learnable. But there’s nothing about you that can’t sell. And I always use this analogy, it’s just like sitting at the bar with your friend having a drink, right? And your friend says, what do you do? Well, you don’t go, oh my gosh, let me tell you about what I do and blah, blah. And you raise your tone of voice an octave and you start talking too fast like I’m doing right now. You just have a conversation with somebody. And if you are a professional and you know your industry and you have a conversation and you learn a few key things that you know that we teach and I’m sure you do as well, you can be very effective at sales and you can make a hell of a lot.

Andy Olen:
That’s right, I remind people that if you’re an expert in something, then you’re already halfway down the field, if you want

Brian Will:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Olen:
to use a sports analogy, you’re three quarters of the way there in terms of becoming a really effective salesperson. If you wrap on top of that, that you have… skills at building and sustaining relationships in your personal life, you really then have the DNA to become successful

Brian Will:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Olen:
in sales. You’re good at relationship building, you understand it, you’re passionate about it, and you’re an expert in something that presumably people want to have access to your expertise, to your products, to your services. So that helps people get away from this idea that they can’t be or become a salesperson. And so I think you and I are also examples of that. Back to the book and negotiations, one of the things, Brian, that I see is that even very, very tenured successful salespeople have never really been through a training on negotiations, or they haven’t read a negotiations book before. They just learn how to do it some effectively,

Brian Will:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Olen:
some not so effectively. What’s been your experience on the negotiation acumen that’s out there? Are people getting better? at being able to negotiate or is it still one of these skills that is a continual work in progress?

Brian Will:
So I break it down like this. If you look at a sales organization of almost any kind we’ve ever worked with, we call it the 20-70-10 rule, right? 20% of the people in the organization are rock stars. You don’t have to teach them a thing. They can sell and they’re sleep. They could wake up out of a dead sleep and say whatever their product is and not even think about it. That’s like professional athletes versus high school or college, right? There’s some people who are just naturally gifted and they are just rock stars and that’s the way it is, right? Then you’ve got the 70%. I say this sits in the middle of the organization. These are the people we’re going to work with. By the way, the bottom 10 is who we get rid of. And we got to keep rolling them over because they’re never going to listen. But the people in this 70%, as I like to say, we can make you better, right? You might be so, you might be good at this level. We can take you to the next level. If you were literally just listen to what I tell you and do what I tell you. And sometimes we even say, look, until you can prove to me that you can figure out how to sell on your own, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you. exactly the way I tell you, you’re going to literally repeat my script, insert some personality until you can prove to me that you can do this without doing that. This is how we kind of move them up the bar. We take people in sales organizations even that have gone through the training and they go out and they’re selling, but they’re not succeeding and the first thing I do is bring them back in and say, listen, you’re clearly not doing what I told you. So now we’re going to role play and we’re going to role play, role play, role play until you can say exactly what I need you to say within some boundaries. and then go back out there and do it again. So anybody can do this. You might not be Tom Brady, but you know what? You can still be really, really good and get to the Super Bowl and have the rings and all that kind of good stuff. So I guess that’s it.

Andy Olen:
Yeah, no, and I agree with that. And I, the analogy I often use probably to represent those really top tiered people, the professionals, is that when they see a negotiation, they choose to run towards it, because they see it as a catalytic moment that is an opportunity to change the status quo, hopefully in their favor and in the customer’s favor as well. I think that’s a nuance that a good negotiation will ultimately yield is success for both parties involved. It’s not a beat down event. It is a coming to terms and agreement that will lift both sides of the negotiation. But for many others, when they see, probably that middle 70%, when they see or know a negotiation is coming, the anxiety starts to grow because they see it as a competitive event or there’s gonna be negative judgment or they may not be liked or they acquiesce. What are some in your experience and in the book as well, some… you know, maybe those moments of fear and anxiety that people see, how do they overcome those? How do they get to that disposition of wanting to run towards the negotiation?

Brian Will:
You know, I’m gonna move around this topic just a little bit, and I wanna start with the sales leadership. I think the first thing we need to teach the sales leadership is this 20, 70, 10. You have too many people that are in sales leadership who think everybody should be a superstar, and they’re never going to be, right? The majority of the revenue and the profit in your organization is gonna be built in the middle. The top tier is just like this icing on the cake. It’s like the top of the muffin, right? From the 70 percentile, we’ve also found, and I find this to be true almost all the time that these people generally will only sell at the level to which they need to sell in order to meet their personal needs or to meet their personal self-image. Right? So, and I use organizations and say, listen, if we give you the same product, the same leads, the same opportunity, the same commission level, the same everything, why can one person take 10 leads and turn it into four and one person take 10 leads and turn it into two? Or why does one person get to the 20th of the month and stop working and go in coast cycle when the top performers are still out there pushing, right? It’s because they’ve, they’ve reached the level of self-image or the level of personal need, and that’s when they stop. This is why organizations put, uh, programs into place for incentives and all kinds of bonuses, which most of them screw that up too, by the way, in my opinion, um, cause they don’t do it correctly. People that are genuinely afraid of the sale are never going to be in that solid 70%. They’re going to be probably in the bottom 10 or the bottom of the 70. And these are the folks we are going to have to work in and we’re going to have to work out of the organization. So I think more than trying to get them to overcome their fears is trying to get them to overcome their own self-image to get their sales to increase.

Andy Olen:
Sales warriors, you can pick up Brian’s book at brianwillmedia.com. That link will be in the show notes. And Brian, you said something really interesting earlier on. You talked about the criticality and the sales process, and also here with your book around negotiating the importance of applying psychological principles to the negotiation. Can you share with the audience what you mean by that and maybe some examples?

Brian Will:
Yeah, so real quick, I always tell people and I’m sitting in sales training that you need to put yourself into the customer’s frame of mind and think about how you would feel if you were the customer and somebody else was trying to sell you this product, right? And however you feel and however you react is probably how your customer is feeling and reacting. And so part of what we talk about is we talk about overcoming objections in the sales process and overcoming objections should start at the beginning of the sales process, not at the end. I’ve seen way too many sales training programs where they say, okay, now we’re going to talk about overcoming objections. They’ve got this whole sheet of things written out and you’ve already done your pitch. In fact, I saw a video the other day online and the guy’s sales trainer pulls a guy out of the audience and he goes, okay, you just pitched me your product. I’m going to give you some objections and you have to overcome them. And I thought that’s not fair. First of all, he’s a professional. He’s going to rip this guy to shreds. Second, the guy never had an opportunity to pitch the product. So if you’re overcoming objections at the end of the process, you’ve… You’re way too late. You should have, as I tell people, if you’re selling a product, if you’re professional in what you do, and you’ve done this more than a dozen times, you’ve had the same objections over and over and over. And so you should be able to document what those objections are and build a sales process around overcoming those objections. And it starts with the first objection. And the first objection is people don’t like salespeople. And it’s not that they don’t like them personally. You could be a great guy, coach little league, you throw parties, but when you put your sales hat on, a wall of mistrust comes up between you and the consumer or the client. And they’ve got their virtual dukes up and they’re ready to fight you. And that wall of mistrust is based on the fact that they do not wanna be sold and they think you as a salesperson are going to sell them. They do not believe you’re looking out for their best interests and therefore they do not trust you, they do not like you, and they are ready to fight and battle you. If you know that this wall of mistrust is there and you know that they don’t like you or they don’t trust you, what is it that they don’t like? They don’t like being sold. They’re afraid of that and they don’t like the unknown, which is the sales process you’re about to take them through. And so the first thing we do in sales training is we say, okay, what are the objections they’re going to have? We know the first one. Now let’s overcome it. And the first objection is, hey, you don’t like me. So I say, Andy, listen. You’re interested in my product or you’ve called me or I’ve called you, here’s what I need to do. In order for us to move forward, I need to ask you a bunch of questions. I’m going to do that so that I can determine whether my product or service is good for you or will do what it is you want it to do. If we come to a mutual decision that what I’ve got is something that will work for you, then I will run over options for you. I will give you pricing and then I will let you decide if this is something you’d like to move forward with. Now, is that a fair enough process for you?

Andy Olen:
Absolutely.

Brian Will:
And they’re going to say, well, of course it is. Now all I have to do is do what I say, engage in what I call active listening and connective response, take them through this fact-finding phage, build in the overcoming of objections of all the objections I know they’re going to have. And by the time I get positive affirmation, positive affirmation after positive affirmation after positive affirmation, I do my pause for effect and my check-ins and I make sure they understand all these things we teach in sales training. there really isn’t a close, because by the time I get there, I’ve overcome their objections. I’ve started to build that trust with them. I’ve come across as a professional. They’re starting to like me. I’ve made a connection. And they talk themselves right into the sale. And it’s all about that human psychology of what is it that they’re going to object to? Number one, being you. And so you’ve got to overcome that one. And so that’s really the whole sales process is built on that. If you can’t overcome that, then you’re going to be trying to go around that wall, over that wall, under that wall. through that wall and you really need to just get them to drop the wall at least partially so that you can move forward.

Andy Olen:
I think it’s a great reflection, great insight, and a great way to frame it, Brian, that it reminds salespeople that your job is not to rush through the sales process. Your job is to learn and then to evaluate and to ensure that what you actually have to offer is something that is going to meet the need of your customer. And if so, to your point, you’re going to make it to the end one way or another. And moreover, it’s not just about the sales. don’t rush to the negotiation either. Everything you just explain precedes a negotiation. And if you do all that stuff that precedes the negotiation, well, the negotiation, by its very definition, becomes a heck of a lot easier and much more co-operative.

Brian Will:
Sure, 100%. And I will tell you it is very, very important that you learn active listening and connective response. And a perfect example is that before we even got on the air, you know, one of the things I asked you, is you from Milwaukee? Yep. And boom, I told you a story about Milwaukee.

Andy Olen:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Will:
You used to spend time there working with a company that has a connective response. It’s amazing how many salespeople are so concerned about what they’re going to say next, they aren’t listening to what was just told to them and making a connective response to it. And

Andy Olen:
That’s

Brian Will:
if they

Andy Olen:
right,

Brian Will:
would

Andy Olen:
it’s

Brian Will:
learn

Andy Olen:
always-

Brian Will:
to do that simple thing, then they connect with a client and that makes them like you, trust you, think you’re professional and you’re looking out for their best interests. That’s the key.

Andy Olen:
Yeah, it’s such a, I share this and you may have heard this story. I think Simon Sinek told the story that back in the day that the San Diego Charger football team was playing in San Diego, they’re now in LA. But back in the day in San Diego, if you’re walking down the streets of downtown San Diego, beautiful city, and you have your San Diego Charger shirt on and you walk past another person with San Diego Charger hat on, you’re probably not gonna stop that person in the road and say, wow, you’re a Charger fan, that’s amazing. Why? Because you’re in San Diego, there are gonna be a lot of people. It’s not novel. But put both of those people walking down the Champs-Élysées in Paris,

Brian Will:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Olen:
and they see each other there, they’re gonna have this intense connection. Oh my God, you’re from San Diego, you’re a Chargers fan. Where do you live? What do you do? We go to this, you know, we work in the same area, we go to the same places, and that connective response is there. And so it’s always fun for me to jump on with a customer, or in this case, with a great guest on the podcast. And the first thing we do is like, oh, Alpharetta, that’s where you’re from. I have good

Brian Will:
You did

Andy Olen:
friends

Brian Will:
the same

Andy Olen:
there, I

Brian Will:
thing.

Andy Olen:
love visiting. Milwaukee and it’s reciprocated as well. So all of that for a salesperson and a customer is part of the dance they do well in advance of that negotiation starting to happen. But yet you are planting the seeds and building that great foundation for a solid negotiation to evolve later on.

Brian Will:
The customer must like you, trust you, believe you’re professional, believe you’re looking out for their best interests. You do all those things by making a connection. That’s the key. That’s the difference between somebody who sells 2 out of 10 and somebody who sells 7 out of 10 all day every day. It’s making that connection.

Andy Olen:
Yeah, so let’s sort of stay in there. So obviously a mistake that a salesperson could make or even a customer could make in a negotiation is not to let this sort of discovery phase happen on the front end or getting to know each other, understanding the diagnosis. What other mistakes do you see that salespeople and or customers frequently make within or around a negotiation?

Brian Will:
Salespeople is easy. They talk too much. Okay, they talk too much. When I build sales or sales scripts for sales organizations, I usually stick with five things, right? There’s when you get into the actual presentation piece of your whatever it is you’ve got. I’m going to tell you five things and five things only and it can be four three or two or six. But the point is too many salespeople tend to think they have to know everything and tell everything to the client, right? And the example I always use, and I love using simplistic examples, is I would ask you a question. Andy, have you ever gone to a car lot and bought a new car?

Andy Olen:
have.

Brian Will:
Okay, when you drove onto the car lot and you met the car salesman and you said I’m looking for a car, did he hand you the owner’s manual and tell you to read it? Did

Andy Olen:
Not

Brian Will:
he

Andy Olen:
at

Brian Will:
take

Andy Olen:
all.

Brian Will:
you to the finance department and say I need you to look at this 32 page contract that’s on one long piece of paper that comes out of the printer?

Andy Olen:
No,

Brian Will:
No.

Andy Olen:
he, no, not at all.

Brian Will:
He said what color, what kind, standard automatic, cloth, leather, let’s take it for a ride.

Andy Olen:
take it for a ride. They want to get you in that car driving

Brian Will:
I want

Andy Olen:
it

Brian Will:
you

Andy Olen:
as

Brian Will:
to

Andy Olen:
soon

Brian Will:
fall

Andy Olen:
as possible.

Brian Will:
in love with the product. and it

Andy Olen:
Right.

Brian Will:
doesn’t require the owner’s manual to do it. It doesn’t require financing derivatives. It doesn’t require anything except for Andy behind the wheel thinking, my neighbors are going to be really jealous when they see me driving this car. Right. That’s a simplistic example, but almost any product can do that. What is the solution that you need? I can tell you that in three or four pieces. Once I get you to fall in love with that, we can talk about the rest later, or you can ask me whatever else you want to know. Too many salespeople think they have to throw the owner’s manual at somebody. And here’s what we know about people. We know that in a straight selling conversational environment people are only going to retain about 20 percent of what you say. And that means the more you talk the less they remember. And the problem is the less they remember might be the important stuff, right? So if you can limit this down to four or five and do Pulse for Effect now understand this software package does XYZ does that make sense? Is that something that’s going to work for your organization? Does that solve your problem? Yes. Okay well it also does this. Is that something you’re looking for? Yes. Do you understand how that’s going to fix your problem? Yes. As opposed to me just regurgitating over and over and over and over and over and over and over and you’ve lost them. And what I always tell people and I have a great example I always use about chicken because nobody believes me when I say you can only remember 10 percent of The example I always use is have you ever had a conversation with somebody and they say something that confuses you? What does your brain do? It stops. You just looked at your eyes went up like this

Andy Olen:
Yeah.

Brian Will:
and you started thinking, right?

Andy Olen:
Well, yes, I got

Brian Will:
If

Andy Olen:
it.

Brian Will:
I kept on talking, your brain has already stopped and it’s trying to think about what I just said. So if I say something too technical or if I say something you don’t understand or if I use language that’s big in my industry but maybe not to you. your brain stops listening to me. And when it stops listening to me, I’m still talking. By the time you spend 30 seconds figuring out what I said and your brain re-engages, now your brain’s trying to play catch up because in its peripheral, it kind of heard what I said, but it’s trying to play this catch up peripherally and it’s not retaining anything that’s going on. And when you get to the end of the pitch and your client goes, okay, I need to think about it, they don’t need to think about it, they don’t know what the hell you said, okay? Or if they start asking you questions, that’s how you know that you lost them somewhere. And when you lose your client, you’ve lost the sale. So you’ve got to talk less. I mean, way, way less. Only get them to fall in love. And you’ve got to pause and ask them on every point. Pause for effect. Check in. Did that make sense to you? Does that solve your problem? Do you see how that’s going to work for you? Yes. Okay, then I can move on because your brain is locked into that. We move on to the next one. If we could teach salespeople one thing, it would be to talk less. and stop acting like you need to give them the owner’s manual on whatever it is you’re selling because they don’t need it right now. They just need to fall in love.

Andy Olen:
Well, and just over this virtual meeting, you were able to diagnose that body language effect that I had in thinking about the answer to your question. What do you do when you’re asked something that’s confusing or makes you really think? Well, yeah, you stop listening. And so another good point in there is that for the salesperson, the one negotiating, or even when you’re in the sales process, not only to pause frequently, like you said, but to pick up on the body language cues. of your customer, the moment they look confused is the moment no matter where you are in your pitch, your key message, your term, stop, exactly.

Brian Will:
Yes.

Andy Olen:
Stop and pause. Hey, I noticed that you’re thinking about that one.

Brian Will:
Yes.

Andy Olen:
Let’s talk about it. And there’s a level of respect and caring that goes into that too that I think is hyper-connecting. And then you don’t move on until the customer’s ready and you probably continue to gain momentum from there.

Brian Will:
Yep, it’s just that too many salespeople don’t do it. They think they got to keep right on rolling. They think they got to tell them everything in the world, and all they’re doing is losing their client. That’s all they’re doing. We teach people that, that’ll increase their sales significantly.

Andy Olen:
Yeah, it’s, you know, sometimes too, and I teach this in presentation skills training, especially in the boardroom, that when you’re asked a question, and it’s a yes, no question, give a yes or no answer. Don’t then go on, well, yes, and let me tell you all about

Brian Will:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Olen:
all these things, because again, that savvy customer, if they ask you for a discount, and you say yes, and then keep talking, and talking, and talking, or they ask you for a concession on a term, and keep talking, you might give three terms up. in the time that you’re talking through just your answer to that simple yes, no question. And you’re not giving yourself any time to think about a thoughtful response, which is very okay in a negotiation as well, to pause, to think, and to be thoughtful in your response. So I think it’s great reminder, simple reminder, but powerful one. Salespeople can create a lot of challenges for themselves in a negotiation by talking too much.

Brian Will:
And then you get to the end and one of the things we teach is at the end of what is the goal of the sales process? I love this question when I ask salespeople say, what is your goal here? And some people say, well, my goal is to get a yes. And that’s not the goal. The goal is not a yes, right? Because if the goal is a yes, and your close ratio is 40%, then you’ve failed 60% of the time, which means you are a 60% failure, right? Your goal is to get a yes or a no, or what we call clear direction. clear direction says that it’s not a yes today but this is what I need in the future. The reason it’s important to get a yes or a no or a clear direction is so that we know as a salesperson whether we need to spend any more time worrying about this. How many salespeople do you know are fooling themselves into thinking that they have something they don’t? Thinking that they have a potential client that they don’t? When the client has literally told them no in one way or another but the salesperson doesn’t get it so they’re wasting all this time on people that are never ever going to So we need a yes or a no or a clear direction. And a clear direction is not call me next month, call me at the end of the year, call me here. That’s a no, by the way. So learn what a no is, learn to recognize a no, get a yes, no, or a clear direction, and that lets you know how to move on, right? As long as your close ratio is, as long as your close ratio fits into whatever it’s supposed to in your organization, I would rather you move through your lead opportunities at a quicker rate by understanding no and make more money for all of us. that sit around, you got the salesperson over there, Joe’s been with us, he’s got 17 clients on the hook, he’s gonna get one of them one day, and no, Joe’s never gonna close anything because Joe doesn’t understand a no. So he’s so busy talking to people that are never gonna buy, he’s not talking to people who are. So yes, no, clear direction is another big one we have to teach people at the end of the sales process.

Andy Olen:
I think that’s great when you ask that question, what’s success in the sales process? The first thing that came to mind was certainty, which I

Brian Will:
The

Andy Olen:
think

Brian Will:
same

Andy Olen:
falls

Brian Will:
thing.

Andy Olen:
in. Yeah,

Brian Will:
Yes,

Andy Olen:
it just,

Brian Will:
no, it’s exactly the same.

Andy Olen:
yes. Now let’s talk about the sales leader’s role then in, and the manager’s role in supporting, guiding that salesperson to a successful negotiation because it’s maybe a little bit of a nuanced approach where so many companies and sales leaders are… having to defend a win rate of X percent or this at Y percent. So if certainty or a win, a loss, a yes or a no, or clear direction for later is really the goal, do sales leaders and companies have to think a little bit differently about what success looks like?

Brian Will:
Yeah, again, this gets back to what we talked about. What’s the close ratio that’s expected in your organization? Whatever your marketing dollars are, whatever lead flow you’ve got coming in, however you’re generating that, what is the anticipated close ratio versus revenue per agent? We do bottom-up P&L forecasting, that kind of stuff. And by the way, as a sales leader, I tell sales leaders this all the time, do you know what your job is as a sales leader? manager, you are an expense to the organization where the salesperson is actually in the revenue column. Right? So the only people that make money in this organization are the revenue generators and that sales. Everybody else is an expense. So if you’ve moved out of sales and into the sales leadership, you’ve become an expense to the organization. So the only way that you can justify your expense is to make your people better. Your job is not to sit around and count the sales. Your job is to make them better. Right? Which means you have to actively manage those people. And that means going in and helping them learn that things are doing wrong, helping them get back on script, helping them manage those yes and those no’s so they can get onto the next one. And as a sales, I tell my sales leaders, you need to look at the book of potential sales that every sales person’s got. And you as a professional sales leader should understand what a yes and a no is at that point. And be able to go in there and go, this is not a yes, this guy’s dead, this organization’s dead, get rid of it, make one more call and it’s gone, right? And the reason we do scripting, by the way, on the sales process and on the follow-up process is so that the sales manager or the sales leader can be involved in the process without being on the phone. I know as a sales leader or a trainer, if you do exactly what I tell you, then you’re essentially telling the person what I want the person told, right? So I’m part of the process without being there. So build proper sales scripts, build proper sales process, manage the yes, no clear directions on the potential business or book that every salesperson’s got, and you’ll see a much higher result.

Andy Olen:
Yeah, it is an active role for sales managers to be involved with their folks to help them become better negotiators. And I had probably never heard that thought before that once you move into sales management, you’re no longer technically part of the profit center, you’re more in the cost center, but you’re an enabler. And that’s right, and I agree with that. And so in the realm and in the world of negotiating, especially if that middle 70% is, you’ve talked about They need your help sales managers. They need, they need your support. They need to be there to give you some honest assessment too, on if this is going to go forward positively or close it, right? Let’s move on to the next viable target versus loitering around this one that will never develop. Uh, but that is a little bit more nuanced, I think, than your traditional sales, uh, sales organization roles and responsibilities, but I think it’s a helpful, helpful mindset.

Brian Will:
give you another one we do with organizations is we do what we call bottom-up P&L. Every salesperson in the organization has an individual P&L,

Andy Olen:
Mm-hmm.

Brian Will:
every single one. If we take the entire OPEX of the organization, we divide it into each of the salespeople here at the bottom, that’s their fixed OPEX. We add their variable OPEX, which is their commissions and their marketing costs. And by doing this, we can build this P&L across the channel. And you’d be surprised sometimes, I’ve had organizations where the top salesperson wasn’t the most profitable. In fact, I’ve had top salespeople who weren’t profitable at all because of the sales process and the retention rates of the customers when you’re selling a drawn out product. The retention rates were so low that they were getting all the money, all the accolades, all the trips, all the awards, but their customers were falling out the back faster than they were bringing them in the front, right? Because we were trying to manage from this top down as opposed to a bottom up. So if you build individual P&Ls by salesperson, you can really at a finite level determine how well each one of these people are performing. and then you know where to focus your time and effort. You have people that might be average sales, but their profitability is higher just because they’re putting on more solid clients who stick around for a longer time.

Andy Olen:
Yeah, we could have a whole nother episode on sales compensation, incentives, the culture of the top revenue folks out there being given the accolades. And to your point, because revenue is a function of price and volume,

Brian Will:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Olen:
that often for a salesperson is how much can I gather, how much volume can I bring in, yet the person who might bring in lower volume but at a higher price might actually have more gross profit, gross margin.

Brian Will:
Exactly right.

Andy Olen:
which is more valuable to the enterprise and to the owner or the shareholder owner or the family owner, whomever it may be. So to break it down and have visibility at that level is fantastic. And again, I think it shouldn’t be a novel thought. It should be a common practice, but I still think we have some ways to go to get people wired and to think that way.

Brian Will:
I told you I worked for that insurance company in Milwaukee and the first thing I did is pull their waterfall down and did a P&L on their sales organization and they were shocked. We ended up losing 20% of the sales organization because they were not profitable.

Andy Olen:
Right.

Brian Will:
The revenue being generated from the top down looked good but from the bottom up was terrible. We made more money, more profit, less marketing costs with less people, less overhead by fixing that P&L at the bottom and then letting it roll up.

Andy Olen:
Fascinating. And you know, one other critical role for a sales manager, I don’t want to leave the manager responsibility and fiduciary duty here without this comment as well and get your thoughts on it, is that I’ve always said, especially in complex sales that have a lot of zeros at the end of the deal value, is negotiate as a team. That you

Brian Will:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Olen:
don’t have to do all this alone. And If you’re going up again against someone who’s been trained at customer negotiation university, when they walk into that room, they’re not walking alone in there. They may have their analysts with them. They may have different players. They may have someone who has nothing to do with it, but they’re there for the effect to create pressure, to create strength in numbers or whatever it may be, or someone to play good cop, bad cop. They have their prep done too. And so you don’t, as an individual contributor sales rep, don’t have to go do that alone. Prepare. with your manager, prepare with colleagues, but maybe even bring that manager along and have roles and responsibilities

Brian Will:
100%.

Andy Olen:
developed in

Brian Will:
So

Andy Olen:
advance. Yeah, so what are your thoughts on that?

Brian Will:
I’ll tell you, the second company I sold, we sold an adventure capital, we turned it into, it was an online retail health insurance organization that we flipped and we turned it into a carrier enrollment platform. So we sold the very first carrier enrollment platform for health insurance in the US. And I was the lead salesperson and I know absolutely, and when I say nothing, I mean literally nothing about technology. but I’m the salesperson. But our CTO, Mark, was like the smartest guy I’ve ever met in my life. So we would roll into these organizations, you know, billion dollar companies, and I would always have Mark sitting off my side over here. And I would start doing my thing, you know, I’d have the CTO, the CMO, the CEO, and I would talk to the CEO, and I would talk to the CFO, and then the tech guy, the CIO, would be like, well, I have a couple of technical questions, and I would literally just go, Mark? And Mark would do his thing. Or if anybody asked me a question I knew, I’d go, Kenny? Use the power that you’ve got. You don’t have to be everything. I was just a mouthpiece and I brought the people with me that were smarter than me and we crushed it.

Andy Olen:
Absolutely. And it’s more fun, the prep, the experience, and the success is always, at least my experience, and with successful salespeople, we’ll probably vouch for this. To negotiate as part of a team really is a joyful part of the job as well. And you’re just gonna be that much more effective. So, Brian, one last year I wanted to close our discussion on negotiations is in fact the art of closing. And one thing that I experienced and you may have and probably have seen this as well is that at times people are afraid to just close the negotiation, close or ask for the business, but it’s an important part of this ritual, this routine and a negotiation as well. So what type of feedback or best practices would you give to salespeople on concluding or wrapping up the negotiation and closing the deal?

Brian Will:
So if we have done a proper process through the sales process and I say take it through the fact finding phase and into what I call the presentation phase, right? If you remember what we talked about before, it’s okay so I understand you’re looking for XYZ product because you’re looking to have something done. My product does this, do you understand how my product is going to solve that problem for you? Yes, okay. And you’re also looking for this, do you understand how my product is going to solve that problem for you? Yes. This is by the way in my fact finding and in my presentation. My presentation is never about pitching my product. It’s literally about regurgitating what we just talked about and all the things that they said I was going to help them achieve or fix or provide. And so you understood how that was going to work? Yes. You understood how that was going to work? Yes. You understood how that was going to work? Yes. And you know my pricing is XYZ. Yes. Okay. Well, you want to go ahead and write it up? I mean, the close to me is done. If they’d said no, I don’t understand it anywhere, then we got to go revisit it. If they said, no, it’s not going to work for me, then I either don’t have a sale or I haven’t explained it properly. But if I do the pause, I do the check in, I get the positive affirmation on every single point that solves each one of their problems, there isn’t really a close. They’ve already said, yes, yes. And then I just say, sounds like what we’ve got is exactly what you’re looking for. Are you ready to go ahead and get this rolling? I mean, that’s it. That’s the close. It’s it’s there’s nothing to it. But if you’re not doing the pause, if you’re not doing the check in, if you’re not getting them to confirm that, yes. what you’re providing is good, then you’ve got to go do some fancy schmancy clothes you wouldn’t have to do if you’d have just done it throughout the entire process. This is why we build the scripts for sales organizations. I call them specific and general. Specific script is you’re going to say exactly this. General is you’re going to form it like, frame it like this, and you’re going to put your personality in here, but you’ve got to pause, check in, positive, pause, check in, positive. If you do that, there really isn’t a close. Close is done. So, Sounds like everything we’ve got is everything you need. I mean, you want to go ahead and do this? It’s the… Well, I got to think about it. Okay. What are we thinking about?

Andy Olen:
Yeah, can you share with me what we haven’t covered yet,

Brian Will:
Yeah, well, this goes

Andy Olen:
right?

Brian Will:
back

Andy Olen:
Or we’re

Brian Will:
to the

Andy Olen:
concerned.

Brian Will:
this goes back to the YYY win. I call it the three Y’s and a win, right? Why? Why are they shopping? Critical. Why should they buy your product? And by the way, Oscar asked him who else they’ve shopped, where they’ve looked, why they did or didn’t like, who else they’ve looked at, and then why should they buy it from you? Specifically, you. Why your product and why you? And why you better be because you made a connection, right? And then the last one’s three Y’s and a when. We set this all up at the beginning. This is about overcoming those objections, remember? When are you looking to do this? I’m looking to do it in six months. I’m not gonna spend a lot of time with this person unless it’s a six month sales cycle. And people say, oh, well, you’re gonna lose a customer in six months. And my answer is no, I’m losing a customer today because I’m talking to somebody who’s not ready to buy for six months. I need to know when so if I know why you’re buying and I’ve already answered all those questions and I know why my product is the best and I know why you’re buying from me and I know when you’re looking, we’re taking away objections. That’s our entire goal here is to take away objections so when we get to the end they don’t have them anymore. You’ve got to think about it. As I recall you told me you needed to have this in by the first of the month or by the first of August. Is that correct? Yeah. We do have a six week implementation timeframe, so we’d have to do something pretty quick if we’re gonna hit that. So I’m not trying to pressure you by any means, but I am trying to be honest with you. If you come back in two weeks, I can’t do it. Does that make sense? Are you with me? Is that fair enough? Okay, I use is that fair enough a lot. That’s a huge one.

Andy Olen:
I think that’s good, very disarming. Yeah, is that fair enough? Not salesy at all, not pushy at all. For those of you, again, listening that are new to sales, building your experiences in sales, or thinking of getting into sales, Brian’s given some really good tips here. And reminders that what you hear from, you know, the stereotypes of a car salesman, or what you see in Tommy Boy, the movie, or, you know, Glengarry Glen Ross, that is not really how good salespeople do it. And… If you do your job effectively, you don’t have to say that awkward closing line, like, what do I have to do to put you in a car today? That doesn’t ever happen. That’s a myth. If you are saying that line, then you’re missing something along the first whole 90% of the sales process and negotiation.

Brian Will:
If

Andy Olen:
So…

Brian Will:
you’re saying that line, I can help you increase your sales by 300%

Andy Olen:
Yeah,

Brian Will:
in about

Andy Olen:
exactly.

Brian Will:
two days.

Andy Olen:
Call

Brian Will:
Okay.

Andy Olen:
Brian. With Brian, he will get you into the right spot there. But again, sales becomes really easy when you do all these very purposeful activities on the front end, ultimately comes down to that creating that connection, the listening, the active listening skills, the picking up of the body language, being an expert, being prepared, working with teammates on this. And so I want to come full circle back to the title of your book, No… the Psychology of Sales and Negotiation. 40 lessons in negotiations from a street smart negotiator. And start with that word no, because from the yes if guy over here, me, that’s always a tough word to hear, but I think you’re absolutely right. And I’ve become convinced that yes, I also want you salespeople, and Brian, please share your thoughts on this, that you will be told no at the beginning, maybe even during a negotiation. Don’t let it shut you down. That is not the end. For great salespeople, that is the beginning of the process. Expect it, prepare for it, and then work your way forward from there. So

Brian Will:
Look,

Andy Olen:
what…

Brian Will:
if they are good at negotiation, they’re going to say no, and they’re going to anchor you, and you need to understand that so that you can overcome it. If they’re a good negotiator, you better be a good negotiator, they’re gonna eat your lunch, right? They’re going to do the exact same things that you’re talking about here, Andy, and as a salesperson, you need to understand that, recognize it, not let it get you down, set you back and just move forward. Look, I’m only willing to pay $750, I’m gonna tell you that upfront. I gotta be honest with you, my product started 800 and go to 1000. Should we even continue this conversation? Oh, well, yeah. In my mind, I’m like, okay, liar. Right. I bet you anchored, I anchored. Now I’m going to at 800, I’m just telling you, you’re not getting all the benefits you think you were going to get. I can certainly pitch you that, but you need to tell me the benefit levels you’re looking for and whatever it is you want. And then we can start there. Right. That’s another one we do on the front end is. If we’ve got anybody like that, I’ll say, hey, look, I got a range here and it runs from, my solar panels run from 8,000 to 20,000. I don’t wanna go through every single benefit of every panel, you need to tell me where you’re at.

Andy Olen:
Correct.

Brian Will:
Because I can’t go lower than eight, just doesn’t exist. But I can, we can, depends on what you want. So you tell me where you’d like to start. By the way, I never ask people what their budget is because they always lie, right? Because I always lie. And people say, well, how much you want to spend? I’m like, $8. If I’m going to react that way, so is your customer. So I go ahead and set that range for them if I feel like I need to.

Andy Olen:
Yeah, show me what good is and I’ll spend that. Right, because I’d spend, ideally, an infinite amount for something that gives me infinite times two in value. Of course.

Brian Will:
Yeah, well your competition down the road said they would do it for $7,500. Well I can tell you my $8,000 product is about the same as their $75,000 and I’m telling you I wouldn’t buy it in my house.

Andy Olen:
Right. Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Brian Will:
I mean, I’m just being honest with you.

Andy Olen:
Yeah,

Brian Will:
Because

Andy Olen:
absolutely.

Brian Will:
I’m not going to close every client. I don’t need to close every client. That’s not my job.

Andy Olen:
And that’s where confidence comes in. Good negotiators are confident negotiators. They feel empowered. They are experienced enough to know what the other person’s going to throw their way. Just expect that your customer is skilled

Brian Will:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Olen:
at doing this as well. And you have to have some of that confidence. Like, sure, we can do this solution. I’m just informing you. That’s not the solution I would recommend or use myself. Here’s why. And Let me know if you want me to share something else about something in the $15,000 price range because

Brian Will:
And by

Andy Olen:
that

Brian Will:
the way,

Andy Olen:
may be

Brian Will:
Andy,

Andy Olen:
best

Brian Will:
this gets back to exactly what we talked about. You already know what those objections are going to be. You already know. If you’ve done this enough, you already know. So you need to have scripted out your response in your process to each one of those in advance so that you’re not sitting there thinking, oh, now what do I say? Right? No, I already know what I’m going to say because I’ve already heard this 50 times and I know what works and I know what doesn’t. And that’s where you bring a good coaching, by the way, to help you to build those. And then once you’ve got them, you just rip them off. You wake up out of your sleep and go, oh, well, I can’t do it for that price. My range is X.

Andy Olen:
That’s right.

Brian Will:
If you wanna keep talking, we can, but you need to tell me what you’re looking for.

Andy Olen:
That’s great. So Brian, the book is available at https://brianwillmedia.com/ along with your other great books. You offer so much more than that, so is that also the best place for people to come in and look for sales training and all the great things that you offer?

Brian Will:
Yep, I run a podcast like this. Andy, I’d love to have you on mine. So my podcast, my guest appearances, my books, I’ve got a coaching program called Force Multiplier Masterminds. It’s similar to what yours, yours is probably way, way better than mine. You’ve been doing this longer than me. But yeah, everything is on there, you know, and I’ve got a contact page if you wanna get ahold of me. You know, just go there.

Andy Olen:
Fantastic. We’ll leave all that in the show notes as well. Brian, we could talk for a long time on negotiations and all things sales and business, but it’s been a treat to have you on to talk about negotiations today. I’ve learned a lot, which is always exciting for me.

Brian Will:
Hehehe

Andy Olen:
And I know the listeners have as well, incredibly valuable. So Brian Will, thank you so much for joining the Sales Warrior Within today.

Brian Will:
Andy, this was awesome. Thanks for having me.

Andy Olen:
Brian Will, thank you so much for a great episode of The Sales Warrior Within podcasts. I love leaving podcasts, learning more about subjects that I’m really passionate about. I’m sure we all feel that way, and I hope you felt that way listening to our great conversation today. I learned a lot from Brian, and I really wanted to emphasize for the sales managers and leaders out there, hey, get out there and support your. frontline salespeople in those negotiations. Support them in their sales process. Make them better and you’re making your organization and ultimately you’re making them and the deals that they put together great for all parties involved. And for all of you out there, remember how important the simple things are in negotiation. The act of listening, the connection, the building of trust. the ensuring that as Brian said, don’t talk too much. Get to the point, wait, pause, ask your customer if they understand and then move forward. The simple rhythm, the stance of a negotiation is so much fun, so enjoy your negotiation experiences. Go check out Brian’s new book, No… the Psychology of Sales and Negotiations, 40 Lessons in Negotiations from a Street Smart Negotiator. That’s Brian, and you can find his book and his entire offering. at https://brianwillmedia.com/. Thanks again, Brian, for joining the Sales Warrior within today. And Sales Warriors, my name is Andy Olen. Thank you for listening. We’ll talk to you soon. And in the meantime, good selling, good leading, and good living.