200: Problem Solving as a Sales Process

Michele  00:00

Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice. With us on the podcast today is Jeremy Miner. Jeremy is the chairman of seven level a global sales training company. Jeremy shares with us today that the single most effective way to sell anything to anyone in 2022 is to be a problem finder and a problem solver, not a product pusher. We'll discuss this and why the old ways of selling no longer work well.  Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health, and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background, as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design, industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry, to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to profit is a choice.  Hi, Jeremy, welcome to the podcast!

Jeremy Miner  01:09

Michele, thank you, thanks for having me on, I appreciate it. This is going to be exciting. So I'm excited to have this conversation with you to see what we can do for your audience.

Michele  01:19

Yeah, I was excited when your information came over, I get a lot of pitches, which you have a podcast as well. So I'm sure you get a lot of pitches. And I take a very small percentage of what is pitched to me, because I want to make sure that aligns with not only my company and values, but also what we put out there. And so there's a lot of, I'm just gonna say ickiness, around some of the sales pitches that I get or anything that has to do with sales, and yours stood out to be so very different. And so that's what makes me excited.

Jeremy Miner  01:53

I have to ask, what was the difference?

Michele  01:56

I think, well, a couple of the things, one of the things that you mentioned, was about not doing it the way everybody else did it. You talked about, which I don't like you talked about communicating, and being cautious and not just looking at where they were going to object but actually building things. And I get that part of it is the normal sales process. Sure. There's just something about the messaging, but the way it came across, it felt relational, and real, and not IQ and slimy and salesy. And I think that's important, right?

Jeremy Miner  02:29

I mean, it's well, like I said, if you if you want to be if you want to be because I know a lot of people, you know, on your show are entrepreneurs, they're interior designers, right, they might have their own store their own service, right. So if you want to be if you want to get your prospects to view you as like the expert, or the trusted authority, that's going to get them the results they want. You can't have them view you as just some salesperson that's trying to stop your solution down their throat. I mean, that's what average salespeople do. That's what average business owners do in our day and age, you know, the year 2022 we're in. So if you want to be great at persuasion, at selling, you have to start looking and viewing your business or sales as collaborative, it's you working with the prospect to help them find problems that that maybe they didn't even know they had, because most of the time when we're starting to talk to a prospect, as you know, they don't really know what their real problems are. Right? They don't know what they don't know, right? They don't know what they need, right? Or maybe they do know they have a problem, but they don't know how bad that problem is. Or maybe they don't understand the consequences of what will happen if they don't do anything about solving the problem. Now, once you've gotten the right questioning skills, okay, once you've learned how to how to get prospects to pull you in you, you learn how to work with human behavior, not only are you able to help your prospects find that maybe they just they thought they had one problem. But now you're able to help them find that they really have two or three or four other problems they didn't know they had. And when you're able to pull that out of them, how do they view you, they view you as the expert, right the authority with what you're offering, whereas they do everybody else, you know, they kind of get rid of them over here in the corner and commoditize them and just view them as somebody trying to sell them something so you have to view selling as collaboration. Whereas so many people out there had been taught that selling is more adversarial like you against the prospect trying to win them over manipulate them so you can make money. If you sell like that in the information age we are in right now. You are going to be very average at best at business and selling for sure.

Michele  04:47

Absolutely. Before we jump in any more. Jeremy, if you would take just a minute and share a little bit of your background and what brought you to the point of seeing this as a different way and doing things differently but Because I'm sure that if you went through any type of normal sales process you were taught, you know, the more adversarial way as opposed to, to kind of the view that we're on the same side of the table trying to solve a problem are we are we meant to work together to solve that problem?

Jeremy Miner  05:16

Background, I don't want to bore everybody. But I got into sales when I was when I could have just barely turned 22. I think it was a junior in college, and I had no money, completely broke. And one of my buddies said, Hey, there's this job opportunity you can go to tonight, they've even got free pizza. And as you know, a broke college kid, you're like, Okay, free food I'm in and I remember, there was like, 100 of us there at this recruiting meeting. And okay, you can go out in the summers, and you can sell these alarm systems door to door and you can make enough money in the summer where you don't have to work the rest of the year. And I'm like, that's perfect. I'll just go bank a bunch of money. And then I can focus on my schoolwork. You know, my, my degree I was studying was behavioral science and human psychology, which it led to me where I'm at right now. But I remember going out there, you know, they took us out in a van dropped us off in in a neighborhood and not so safe neighborhood, and basically said, Hey, go make some sales, we'll pick you up after dark. Okay, they gave us a script. Here's a couple of books like a week before we went, you know, I'm reading all this. And I go out there and I thought selling was going to be easy, because that's what everybody told me. And so when I knocked on the door, I noticed very quickly from the very first door, that I got a lot of objections, we don't need it. We already have somebody for that. We would never use that. We're good. We're not interested. We're interested, but now's not a good time. Can you call me back in a week, a month, a year later? Right? Has anybody ever heard any of those type of judges, I want to think it over I need to talk to my spouse, right? And I'm like a, bla bla bla bla. And it got to a point after going through all of that rejection for about seven, eight weeks straight, barely making any sales now realize door to door sales straight commission. It's not like you get some salary. And if you don't make many sales, you're okay. I made $0 for weeks. Okay, so I remember sitting on a curb one night, it was after a week of not making any sales. So I'd worked like 60 hours that week, I made $0. Let me repeat that 60 hours $0 I would have been better off working at McDonald's for minimum wage. Okay. So I remember sitting there like standing and the managers about to pick me up in the van to take me back. It's like 10 o'clock at night. I'm like, drenched in sweat. This is in like the middle of June. In the Midwest. It's really hot. And I remember sitting there like, what am I going to do? Like, I'd just gotten married at that time, I had a child on the way. And I'm like, how am I going to go tell my new wife? You know, like, what am I going to tell her that we don't have enough money to pay rent here next month? Oh, by the way, we're probably going to have to move in with your parents. I was going to be that guy. And I remember thinking to myself that, you know, maybe, maybe selling just wasn't for me, right? Has anybody ever heard, you know, thought that when you're when you're like going through the hard times, like oh my gosh, why I've had this great product or service, nobody wants to buy it. And I remember getting I remember got I got picked up that night by the sales manager. And he popped in a Tony Robbins CD. I mean, this is 21 years ago, you know, so instead CDs back in the day, and that CD changed my life Tony says I might be butchering, but Tony said something to the fact that most people fail for the simple reason. They don't learn the right skills necessary to succeed, they don't learn the right skills. Now, he goes on to say everybody is really taught skills. But people who fail are the ones who are not taught the right ones. And I'm like, it was like a light bulb went off in my head that maybe what the company was training me and maybe what they were saying for me to learn from what I call now the old sales gurus, maybe they just weren't the right skills. Maybe they just were outdated and didn't work very well anymore. Okay. So at the same time, I was in college and my major was behavioral science and human psychology. So I was learning from my professors, that the most persuasive way to communicate was here. Whereas all the sales gurus were saying it was here some like they were completely at odds with each other. So I'm like, How do I take what I'm learning from behavioral science human psychology, the way the brain works? The way human beings make decisions and or don't make decisions? Okay? How do I take that into sales and have a process where I can get prospects to pull me in rather than me pushing them because as we know, human beings one on one human behavior 100 when we push somebody, what do most people typically do that.

Michele  09:48

They push back or they back away?

Jeremy Miner  09:49

Yeah, exactly. We trigger that fight or flight mode. Okay. So I went from like hardly making any money in sales like being last on the totem pole. All, within one year from that date, the number one salesperson in the entire country in that industry, which had like 15 to 20,000 salespeople in the United States, okay, I went on to be ranked before I started Seventh Level three years ago, I was ranked number 45 in the world by the Direct Selling Association, as a top salesperson in any industry in the entire United States. Okay, I was making multiple, seven figures a year at my job as a W2 salesperson. But 20 years before because I didn't have the right skills, I almost quit. So that's the point of it. Okay, who cares like it once you have the right skills, it doesn't matter if you're three feet tall, it doesn't matter if you're an alien from Mars, it doesn't matter if your hair is cool, you have no hair, it doesn't matter your religion, who you are your gender, none of that matters. All that matters are your skill level and your sales ability. And once you have that, you can be successful with any thing you want to communicate with me.

Michele  11:02

I am and it's interesting, you know, Michael Port in his book, Book Solid, makes the comment that sales isn't about coercion or twisting somebody's arm, it's about meeting them where they are. And if they have a problem, and you have a solution, it's to your point, very collaborative in nature. That's the way that it works. And I think that's the slimy part of sales is when people are sell overselling that old school selling, you can see it from three miles away. And by the time you get up close, like, I know that when it happens to me, and I'm on the receiving end, I've already said no jet, whether I liked the product or service or not, because I don't like the tactics, the tactics turn me off.

11:44

Somebody could call you from the state, you know, whatever office is called that you won the 100 million dollar lottery. And by the way, they're communicating, you could literally go into fight or flight mode and cut them off. And they were just calling you to say you want $110 million? Michele, we need to send you we need to send you the bank wire. Which what No, right because of the way they're communicated. I think that's one thing that all of us have heard that, you know, people go into fight or flight mode. I think most of us in the sales world have heard like, Oh, hey, people go into fight or flight mode and try to get rid of you. But does anybody know why that happens? Does anybody know how you're actually triggering the prospect to go into fight or flight mode by the way you're communicating? So one thing that we have to understand is just kind of behavioral science one on one that within the first seven to 12 seconds of any sales conversation you're in. So that's whether somebody walks into your store, if you have a storefront, that's whether you call somebody that's whether you meet somebody in person, that's whether you have a phone call, it really does not matter. Your Prospects subconsciously, are picking up on social cues from you. Now, we cannot help that as a human being subconsciously just the way our brain goes. Okay. So we are picking up your verbal and nonverbal cues based on that person's tonality and what they are saying and are asking, that triggers our brain to react, react in one of two ways. And you hit it right on the head a minute ago with what you said and how people just tried to get rid of you or they argue. So if you come across like assumptive, if you come across really needy, like you need to say have you come across attached, and you don't know the right questions to ask. It triggers the human brain to like we said, go into fight or flight mode, where we try to get rid of you fast where the prospect tries to get renewed and they say, Hey, I'm good. Or, you know, I'm not really looking for anything or now I'm just out looking or, you know, I'll get with you if I need it. Or I'm too busy. Can you call me back later? Or we don't need it right now. Thanks for your time, or we really want to think it over Can you just send us a quote or proposal right before you even talk to them? That's fight or flight mode. Now, when we learn how to work with human behavior, when we come across in our conversations more neutral, we're unbiased. We're not quite sure we can even help yet because I don't even know what's the situation is. How could I know if we come across more calm, like collective if we come across especially I like to use the word detached, so we're detached. And we ask the right questions. It triggers the brain to become curious enough, where the other person actually wants to engage with this. They want to open up to us because they feel like we might have something important for them. So we have to learn how to how to come across more detached from the expectations of making the sale, and instead focus on whether or not they even have a problem that we can even help now. Do I mean when you get into a conversation or a call or someone walks in the store that you shouldn't make a sale? No, of course I do not mean that. But what I mean is you have to keep that to yourself. Because the moment the prospect feels that you are just there selling them something is the moment they do what they start to emotionally shut down. Like you said, I've already decided, no matter how great it is, I'm not going to buy because you emotionally shut down. By the way they triggered you that was a triggered response from them that caused you to think that way.

Michele  15:23

You know what's interesting, too. So part of my sales process is I have a discovery call. And I have an application for a discovery call and the application ask questions, so that I can even look to see, are we even the beginning of a fit, and what's right, and the truth? I mean, the 100% truth of the matter is, I'm very relational in my selling, and I don't want to work with everybody, I can't solve the problems of the entire world, I have a subset of problems that I am perfectly suited to solve. And so on that call, I am truly thinking the entire time. Is this the right fit my sales process or my coaching processes a year? Can I work with this person for a year? Am I the right fit? And there are many times that I have said to the person, I don't think the timing is, right, and I'm not even going to offer a sale, right. And we're not even going to move forward right now. Because I know that it's not right. Or I know that the problem and the challenge they have actually could be solved by somebody else better than I can solve it. And I am 100% open to doing that. But the ones that I know that I can solve and that we are a good fit. I don't have a problem saying it. And I think that also, and it opens up people are willing to talk to me then because I'm still going to talk to them and help them and try to discover what the real problem is. It's like going to the, the chiropractor when what you really need is a knee doctor for something else. Like I want to make sure that when they come to me that I'm not telling them what they don't need, just so I can record as miserable.

Jeremy Miner  16:59

It doesn't help you in the long run, right? You actually lose business, you lose your brand, you lose reputation. But I would probably I'm going to ask like sometimes when you turn down those people, they probably say like, well, how can you work with me? What can we do together or they refer somebody else to because they start to view you as an authority, an expert, because only experts or authorities in that subject matter can turn away people. Desperate salespeople take anyone and they know that. Right? So typically, you make way more business like you know, one of the I sold in four industries in my almost 17 year sales career. Two of them are in the b2b space two and b2c. And you know, one of the b2b spaces I sold them was like debt relief services to like fortune 500 and fortune 1000 companies. And there would be some, you know, fortune 500 companies where there legitly was nothing we could do for them. But then they would be like, well, how can you work with this? Like, we would tell my Hey, that, you know, based on what you're telling me, there's not much we can really do for you. So, you know, there might be some better options that we can point you in to like, wait a minute, like, don't don't go like, Is there something you can do for us? Because when you're basically admitting that, Hey, am I there's something I'm not quite sure we can even help. It's like they're wanting to pull you in. Rather than most of these pushy salespeople that try to push, push, push, and they just push push back and just, you know, the sales cycle delays, and nothing ever happens.

Michele  18:29

And that's the thing I think I love about just an approach in general is there's a discovery aspect, there's not a walking in saying I'm going to sell to you, regardless of what you need. I'm going to come in and discover what you need, what were the pain points are. So talk to us a little bit about this. Jeremy, you made the comment at the beginning that maybe they think they have one problem. And as you talk to them, you uncover four or five. I know that is so true in my discovery calls. And I think what's interesting, of course, the podcast is called profit is choice. But I think that people sometimes when they have a need or a problem, they don't even understand the cost of continuing to live and work with that problem. As compared to the cost of getting help and assistance to solve it. Is that part of the process that you bring up as what is it costing you to stay where you are?

Jeremy Miner  19:19

Yeah, I mean, that's that would be like what we would call in our methodology. So our methodology is any NEPQ stands for Neuro emotional persuasion, questioning, okay. Yeah, sure. We can do that. I think, you know, my, here I'm going to break it down like this in three different ways. So everybody can kind of understand the world of communication according to like psychology and behavioral science. Okay. So remember, I was in college, right? So behavioral science, human psychology, that's pretty much the only thing I know. Like if you asked me to go change these light bulbs up here, I'd be like, I'm not sure I could do that. You know, I'd have to get somebody but that's subject I know what to do. So according to behavioral science, okay. There are three forms of communication, three forms. All right, and so everybody listening unless you're driving down the road, write these down. Because once you understand where you're at, and your current sales ability, compared to where you actually could be, and I don't care if you're already doing well, once you understand where you could be, it will completely change everything for you and your company. So the first mode of communication, we call that era, E R A one type of sales would be more like boiler room selling. Okay, everybody, when I say boiler room selling, what's the first image that comes into your mind? Right? Probably like, Wall Street, people on the phones banging it out, you know, manipulating people. So we're the least persuasive. And we tell people things, or we attempt to dominate them, or posture them or manipulate them or push them into doing something we want them to do. So when you think of boiler room selling mostly people say when I'm at events are like, Oh, Wolf On Wall Street, right? Like the the movie Wolf On Wall Street, that's how they portray it anyways, okay, I don't know, you know, those people, but that's how it's portrayed. So, hey, I got a great opportunity for you. And then we talk about the features and benefits of, of why they need to go with us. And then we push and tell them why we have the best over the competitors. And it just like if you tell your spouse that they really, really need to do something for you, and then you push, push, push, what do they typically do back?

Michele  19:36

The don't do it.

21:00

It's human Behavior one on one. So I'll give you a few examples of the least persuasive way to sell. Okay, presenting. Okay, we're all taught that you have to have an amazing presentation, these, you know, you know, hour and a half slide decks of how great your services are. And we got the best this and we've got the best that which, by the way, doesn't every single salesperson or business owner say they have the best product or service? How many salespeople how many business owners say, Yeah, you know, our service is the fifth best in the market. No one does. Now you don't have to tell them that you just keep that to yourself, alright. Everybody says they have the best. So when your prospects hear that, and especially when you talk down about your competition, psychologically, prospects actually trust you far less. Why? Because they're used to every salesperson who's ever tried to sell them something for decades saying the same thing. So according to the data, it's not very persuasive. If your presentation is more than 10% of the entire sales, conversation and process. Most salespeople and business owner it's about 50% has to be lowered down to about 10. Okay, telling your story, I hate to tell you this, nobody cares about your story, when you're selling one to one whose story they mostly care about their story, right? It's just basic stuff, given a sales pitch we've all been taught you gotta give a great pitch. But according to the science, very low on the persuasive poll, like if you ever if you ever watch like Shark Tank on CNBC, you know. So take a look when the entrepreneurs the excited entrepreneurs come out. And there's Daymond, John and Barbara and there's Mr. Wonderful and Mark Cuban and Kevin and you know, they rotate the guests. But watch how when they come out in their excited and their pitching, take a look at the sharks body language, they're like, you know, like, whoa, they just turned off. They're like, it's just like, it's too much, right? We have shirts for our clients now that say hashtag ditch the pitch? Hashtag ditch the pitch? All right? How about putting sales pressure on people? Do you do that, or the big one assuming the sale so coordinated the data, very low on the persuasive pole. Hence, that's where the term sales is a numbers game comes from, because you're triggering, that you're triggering it to be a numbers game, because you're turning so many people off, especially if you're more of a complex sound environment, like a lot of your listeners are that are going to require more than one conversation or more than one call. Okay. Now, that's the first form second form of communication. Current behavior science is more known as consultative selling, if anybody's ever heard of that consultative selling era to Okay, so we're more persuasive when we attempt to have a discussion. Okay, consultative selling came out in about the mid 80s. Really, with one of the big books on that was called SPIN Selling by a professor Neil Rackham. If you haven't yet, it's groundbreaking in the early 1980s, where he taught, you know, you need to ask logical based questions to find out the needs of the client. But what's the potential downfall of the approach? When you only ask logical base questions? We call those surface level questions where your prospect is only going to give you surface level answers in return. They're never going to go below the surface of what's really going on. And do people make major buying decisions on logic or emotion? brain studies show it's 100% emotion. There's really no debate at this point. I mean, studies show us that now. So I'll give you a few examples of some consultative questions that trigger sales resistance. You never want to Ask these, you never want to get into a call, like they used to teach and say, How's it going today? How's your day go and John? Because they know you don't care how their days going, they know what you're doing. Okay? Typically, especially if you're talking to an A type personality that triggers resistance, or like, hey, just get to the point, right? They know you're not genuinely interested in how their day is going. Okay? Or how about this one? Um, so Sally, tell me what's keeping you awake at night? Or can you tell me two problems that you have? Or who besides you would be involved in this decision? Okay. Now, if you're selling, you know, I don't know if any of your listeners I don't know if they're selling mainly to consumers, or if they're selling and chair design stuff to companies. But if you're selling interior design, I know a lot of listeners do that.

Michele  25:47

Most of them are going to be to the consumer, most of these are home based in the home selling to a husband and a wife or at a family.

Jeremy Miner  25:55

So business to consumer, you wouldn't really ask who's going to be involved in the decision, you would just bring both of the men but let's say you have a list on here that sells interior design to a company. Okay? Because the average company United States has about six decision makers or influencers that are going to decide on that decision. Okay. So instead of saying, Who besides you, it'd be involved in the decision, because most people like in a company like oh, no, I can do it, even though they don't really have the decision making authority. You agree language and you say, can you walk me through your company's decision making process when it comes to solving problems like this? Walk me through your company's decision making process? Well, I need to get Betty over in human resources, I need to talk to Jim over in this department. Okay. So it gets them thinking, all right. All right. So those are consultative questions now more persuasive than the first mode of telling your story, putting sales pressure on them and assuming the sale. But the problem is, you're still playing the numbers game, because very little emotion is brought out by simply asking logical base surface level questions. So if you're just asking them, like, let's say, your interior design, and you're asking them like, Okay, what's the square footage of your home? What's this? What's that? See, those are just logical based questions. You have to find that out in the front, like on the front end, but you got to go below the surface and find out really, why they're even looking in the first place like what's behind the why not just why they're looking but what's behind the why what's driving that that's where in motion is brought out, okay? Doesn't matter what you sell. Now, third mode of communication, okay? Which is called dialogue, that's air three type of says it's called dialogue. So the we're the most persuasive when we allow others to persuade themselves to pull you in. That's dialogue, when we asked what we call neuro emotional persuasion questions, any PQ. Now, the key here is where do we use certain questions and techniques that work with human behavior to get that prospect to pull us in? Rather than us trying to push them forward? You know, can we just say, hey, Linda, this has been great conversation, go and persuade yourself and you can make the checkout six YZ LLC company, and we'll get started tomorrow, great, you can do that you have to learn specific skilled questions. And then when and how to ask them in a step by step structure that will get your prospect to sell themselves rather than you trying to do it. Make sense? All got scientific, weird stuff?

Michele  28:28

Yeah, for sure. Um, and you know, it's interesting, because we are in this industry, whether we're selling window treatments, or we're selling design services. By and large, we're not doing any cold calling, right? They are coming to us, they are calling us, they're filling out forms, they're telling us. And it's interesting, because we've talked about it in a lot of the classes that I've taught that we're not really selling them a sofa, or a table or a chair, we're selling them how they want to feel in that space, how they want to entertain in that space. We're selling them on the emotion exactly what you said. And it shows up by the things that we do in that space for them. And if we can connect them to the emotion and the outcome that they want at the end, how do they want to feel? How do they want to be? Where's the emotion? Where's that track? And then what is it that we can put? That's right, that's right said

Jeremy Miner  29:24

like selling you're not selling them the thing I love how you know, it's not the the sofa, you're not selling them the the bar down in the basement, you're not selling them the new kitchen stuff that I mean, you're not that's not what you're selling. You're selling them the results of what that's going to do for them. Really what you're selling is you're helping them solve any emotional need. Right?

Michele  29:47

I'll give you give you a couple of prime examples the way that I have framed it in my own coaching. If you had a woman who had just lost her spouse, and she called you in and said I need to redo the bedroom What is it that we're really giving her? Yeah, because we're not just giving her a bed and a new comforter and new treatments, we're giving her hope that she's going to make it, we're giving her something new to look at, you know, if you're selling to a pregnant mom standing in an empty room with the baby on the way, we're not selling her a crib, we're selling her. That baby doesn't care what that room is gonna look like, it has no care in the world. It doesn't, it doesn't feel like alright, Mom, I guess the nursery is ready, I can come now like it doesn't care. So what we're selling does something different than what we think. And if we win, or if we go in thinking, it's about the elements that we're putting into the space, we're going to miss it,

Jeremy Miner  30:43

You're selling them that you're selling that that fulfillment, emotional need for one mother, that nursery might be you're selling her social service, because her friends come in and see that and she wants to compete with those nurseries that her friends have. So for one mother might be social status. For the next mother, she wants it to be warm, and she wants it to be like homey feeling. That's what you're selling, you're not selling a crib. And that's what I you know, I was I was at a training event a few months ago, and somebody in the audience said, Hey, Jeremy, if you could describe selling in one word, what would that word be? It took me about four or five seconds, I'm like, change. Selling is just change, right? It's about how good you are at helping your your prospect or your potential customer view in their mind that by changing their situation, that means paying for your services, and getting what they want is far less risky for them than then doing nothing at all staying in the status quo, their problems stay the same, and nothing ever changes. So whether they're wanting something better, or they're trying to get away from some pain, it's just about change. Now, here's the problem that all of you need to understand. Human beings do not like change, even though they say to do so on one hand selling is about change. But another human beings don't like change. And why do we not like changes humans, because it makes us feel uncomfortable and unsettled. Especially when it's initiated by some pushy person that's ready to pitch their services within the first 10 seconds of meeting that person. So human behavior shows that we value something that is more consistent, and something that is more familiar, even if we don't like it that much. So like you said, I love it, we're not selling the thing, we're selling the results of what that thing is going to do for them. And once you start to understand that everything can really open up to you as a business owner or a sales professional, for sure.

Michele  32:44

I think what's also interesting is understanding I love what you said about selling is change. And it does create an uncomfortableness and an unsettled this. But I think sometimes if we can also tap into that the first time it's uncomfortable, but the second time, you kind of know what that uncomfortable is going to be like, for example, I've had two children, I didn't know the first time how uncomfortable I was going to be. But I had an idea the second time, it still was new and different. But I knew what I was signing up for. I knew I couldn't make it through. And part of sales as well is I believe, telling them I understand that this change is going to cause uncomfortableness and unsettledness. And I've walked this before and I've helped other people manage this change, and our product or service or whatever we're doing. We're here to help you manage the change. I mean, that's it's like, can we help you manage the change?

Jeremy Miner  33:38

You're like, it's like you're asking like, Okay, but what if you don't do anything about this? Right? What are the what is the cost? What are the ramifications? If you don't? Yeah, about this in the situation gets even worse, like what happens in and that gets them to realize it's far less risky to get your services and have what they want than then trying to have all this pain and figuring it out on their own and, and wasting months of their time. And then they don't get the end result they want. Right? Which is more risky?

Michele  34:04

Well, and I think asking them the question, how long have you lived like this? And how much longer are you willing to live like this? Right?

Jeremy Miner  34:13

Yeah, so what Tell me one big problem that that let you say your services solves when you go in? homeowner wants some interior decorators of what's one problem in your mind that you solve for them? Like, why would they come to you?

Michele  34:26

As an interior designer, they would come to them simply because they don't know how to put together the proper elements and items to make it look completed. So that that includes the color, the scale, the proportion, the texture, all of that thing. So, Jeremy, what they do, just to give you a quick idea, they'll go out onto Pinterest, or they'll look on Facebook or they'll look on social media and they see all these beautiful things. And they don't know how to curate that for their own home. They want it but they don't know how to get it.

Jeremy Miner  34:57

But if they don't hire you what Have the consequences of that.

Michele  35:01

Yeah. So the consequences of that would be, they're buying things that are too small, too big, wrong color, can't find it can't get it, the cost of the mistakes and what they can't, you know, take back. So they literally will spend more money on making the wrong selections and their time. I think that's one of the big things in the interior design world is the homeowner says, I can handle these things, I'll do it. And they don't even account for how much time it's going to take out of their day and everything else that they're doing.

Jeremy Miner  35:30

It's almost asking like, Well, how long have you been trying to handle it yourself? Yeah, over the past five years, right? Do you want to go another five years trying to do that? Or would you rather have somebody come in? Who could actually do it in the next four months? Or whatever it is? Right, exactly. Oh, you know, so it's like, they don't they don't know what they don't know, until you ask certain questions that allowed them to think differently than they thought before, right? asking certain questions allowed them to question their way of thinking that's allowed this problem to keep happening. That's the key. Hey, and if you're, before I forget, because I forget half the time on these shows, any of your listeners, if they want some of those questions that they can use for like different scenarios that they might be in with a homeowner or with somebody they're talking with, they're always welcome to get some free resources from us at that Facebook group I gave you guys it's, they can just go to SalesRevolution.Pro. And then right when they joined the Facebook group, we I think there's about 18,000 or so different sales professionals and entrepreneurs that are so many different things. But right when they joined, just have them check their Facebook messages like a messenger, and somebody on my team will message them over free training called the NVQ. One on one mini course by my CEO, Matt Ryder. And they'll just be like a list of different questions that they can just use in different sales situations that they're going to find themselves if they want to sell more. So they're welcome to have that if they want.

Michele  36:05

I'm curious, you had mentioned like era one, era two, era three that the different changes and SPIN Selling back?

Jeremy Miner  37:02

Remember, what, eight years ago? Funny, that was 40 years ago,

Michele  37:07

I got the book on my shelf, I love all the books. The listeners can't see this, but you have like all kinds of like, I could, I could dig that space. I've got a space just like yeah, I I'm a pretty avid reader, and I love them. But um, so talk to us a little bit, Jeremy about the changes in selling, because let me say this, from an interior design perspective, or from a home furnishings perspective, we can broaden it even to that people have so much more access to things now in an online environment, they can look it up. I had a client the other day, who's her client came to her and said, Oh, yeah, I've reverse search, everything you sent to me. And I can find it here. And I can do this. And I can she's like, whoa. So selling is changing. We can't do like even home sales, I worked in software for 10 years, software sales is a very different thing, that very corporate way of old selling is not going to work. When I walk into the home with a mom, and I'm trying to sell her window treatments, or I'm trying to help design a room. It's a whole different thing. I am in a private personal space, there is so much emotion attached to it. It's just a very different sales technique. And now let's move forward. But I don't really want to count how many years from the 80s because I like to think is 20. And it's really not. But 40 something years from the 80s. And selling is shifting again. And do you see do you see another wave of a change in sales coming?

Jeremy Miner  38:39

Yeah, I mean, like I said, old school sales techniques are going to be harder and harder and harder for you get to get by on using, I'm just telling you like, you're going to go from average to like, way below average. Because like you said, because of the power of the internet, and especially social media, your prospects know they have many choices to choose the exact product services that you're offering, okay? All they have to do is go to their smartphone, type in that information they know all about your company, they know about your price points, they know who your competitors are just like you they know where to get the same thing you're offering maybe for a different rate now maybe they don't know what they don't know, though. Maybe it's not the same maybe but they don't know that. Right? So you know, it's something that we call and one of our clients his name's Brandon Kane. It's a really good book. It's called hook point how to stand out in a three second world. So he's a big, Hollywood influencer. He does all of like Taylor Swift social media and Brianna's and MTBS. But anyway, so he has a program that teaches people in any industry how to brand their business. Okay, so in his book cook point, he says that there are over 3 billion content creators every day, trying to take attention away from your prospects. You were even can competing with 13 year olds on Tik Tok. Okay, just trying to pull attention away. How many content creators do you think there were 22 years ago in 2000, less than 1 million. Now there are over 3 billion and growing, okay. And like I said, that's because of the information age we live in, in the power of the internet, sports and social media, your prospects are being sold to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, week after week, month after month, year after year. I said that at event one time like No, no, I'm not being sold to all the time. Like, really, I want you to think about it. You wake up in the morning. What's the first thing you do? You get on your phone? You get on Facebook or IG or tick tock and what do you see? Ads trying to sell you something? You walk into the kitchen, you're like, oh my gosh, I gotta get to work. I've got a client I've got to meet with or I've got to get in the office. You turn on the TV while you're getting your coffee? And what do you see commercials trying to sell you something? Right? You get into the car, you've got to drive to a client office or whatever you're going your turn on the radio. What do you hear ads trying to sell you something you drive down the road you're looking around? Oh, everything was so this I gotta go shopping over here. You see billboards doing what? Trying to sell you something. You're at lunch, you're sitting there at Starbucks or whatever getting a coffee you get back on social media. And then you see your aunt trying to push her latest greatest MLM opportunity. See, people are trying to sell you something 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Okay? So if you want to stand out as a business owner, or sales professional, whatever you're doing, we have to you know, it's we have this in this new book, we're publisher now. But we have to become in our minds and in the prospects mind what we call problem finders and problem solvers, not product pushers, okay. So while we talked about a little bit ago, most people don't even know what they need when we first start talking to them. And think about it in this way, I'll give you the best analogy I can. Let's say you wake up this morning, and you have a massive headache. You're like, oh my gosh, my head hurts so bad. I need to go to urgent care. And I need to get some medication. Because I've got a really bad headache. And that's what you think you need. So you're like, okay, my copay is $50, I'll pay $50 They're going to give me some medication that cost me 10. With my insurance, it's going to be $60 I need to solve my migraine. That's what you think you need, you go to the doctor, and they start asking you some questions how long that headache has been there, okay. And they're asking you about the symptoms and, and what and what what type of pain you're feeling and how long and what that pain is doing to you. And suddenly you start to realize from the doctor's questioning that you might have a bigger problem than you thought you had originally. And oh, by the way, they said we might need to do a CAT scan, and they do a CAT scan, and all sudden the results come back the next day that you have a terminal tumor in your brain. And oh, by the way, if they don't operate within the next 30 days, you could die. And oh, by the way, that surgery is a million dollars, and your insurance is only going to cover 80%. So now you have to come up with $200,000, you thought your budget was going to be 60 because you thought you had a migraine and you needed some medication. But then because of the questioning skills, you now realize you need $200,000 or you're going to die. So most people don't understand what they need when we first start talking to them. And it's only your questioning skills that allow them to see what they really need to go from where they are we call that their current situation or a current state compared to where they really want to be. We call that their objective state. Now what's the gap in between? It can only be determined by your questioning ability that allows them to see how big that gap is. And the bigger the gap that is from your questioning, not by you telling them that goes in one ear out the other, the buyer questions allowing them to tell themselves what they need. The bigger that gap, the more urgency there is for them to act now and do that with you.

Michele  44:07

Yeah, nothing is absolutely true. If they don't see the need don't see the problem, then they don't feel an urgency to act to fix it. Like why would we solve a problem we don't have. Yeah, exactly.

Jeremy Miner  44:18

And they're willing to spend way more because the gap is way bigger in their mind only because of your question ability and your listening ability and your tonality ability and that is all a learnable skill. No one is born out of their mother's womb having advanced questioning skills and tonality skills.

Michele  44:37

I don't know. I don't know I might fight back on that. And Jeremy because as a three year old, my son's only work Why Why? Why? Why my questioning skills that drove me nuts for a while. My dad said that I deserved that one but it was

Jeremy Miner  44:52

that is true. My daughter's three and a half and she's like but why? And I'll answer why. Yeah, you can't do that. Wow. Just because the show I really appreciate it.

Michele  45:06

Oh, thank you. And I will put in the show notes, the Facebook group and lead everybody there. And I really appreciate your time today.

Jeremy Miner  45:14

Alright, thanks. Thanks very much. And let us know if there's anything we can do for you. Okay,

Michele  45:18

We'll do it. Thanks. Thank you, Jeremy, for joining the podcast. Becoming great at asking the right questions takes time and dedication to really understand the problem that you and your company are solving. People need to see that gap that they need to fill between where they are and where they want to go and recognize the need that they have and then be willing to engage in the change necessary. They also need to see you as the trusted adviser to bring about that change with the solution that you have. This is a profitable sales approach. If you want to talk through the gap that you have in your interiors business between where you currently are and where you want to go, I would love to talk to you. So sign up for a discovery call on my website at scarletthreadconsulting.com, we would love to see if we can help solve your problems and move you closer to where you envision your business to be. Make the choice to be profitable because profit doesn't happen by accident. Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening, and stay creative and business minded.