 Yeah, this problem I'm having in my business, well, it beats me up on the weekend and I don't feel like going to play softball with my buddies. It's keeping me up at night. I'm not able to play with my kids because I'm waking up exhausted, I need three cups of coffee. Well, they would have came to the call not realizing all these other impacts and if I just assumed, oh, well, I already have your solution, then in their mind, well, it isn't actually that big of a deal. It's not a pain that needs to be solved right now. Let me think about it. Let me get back to you. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Number one, there's listening and that goes hand in hand with that curiosity and this is a mistake that I made when I started in sales is assuming that I know more than the potential customer, therefore, I'm going to start solving their problem that they haven't even admitted to me before they have actually stated what they need. And I think so many starting out in sales want to rely on the script, want to get from point A to B as fast as possible and it's easy to fall into that trap of assuming you know what the person needs and therefore starting to make recommendations and moving faster in the sales process versus being patient and listening with curiosity to really understand at a deep level, what is the emotion behind solving this problem for someone, not the logic, not the benefits, not the payoff, but why are they in need of this car, this phone, this haircut, what's going on beneath the surface. If you can work to that in conversation through curiosity and listening, you're going to start to hear more from the other person and you're actually going to start to build trust that you can solve their problem. So that was a mistake that I was making very early on in my sales career, trying to solve problems quickly, get out of the conversation, get the sale. What are some other mistakes that you see in your clients and people just starting out in sales that they're making as they're developing this set of skills? Before you answer that, Wes, I just want to add to what AJ was saying. There is a sense of pride in understanding your business where you tend to think that you have the answers for everyone before they speak because of how well you know what you do. So it's an easy trap to get to get stuck in, which you have to surrender yourself to say, I don't know this person and I can't infer what I think they might be looking for and I have to let them open up. And also what goes along with that in order to build this trust, people need, we have to play a vulnerability game in order for trust to be built. So by giving them the floor and being an ear, that begins that process. Yeah. Yeah. So another of my ABCs is always be curious. Right? I slow things down and men are worse about this in general than women. My wife now, she'll start out by saying, I don't need you to fix anything. I just need to vent because I'll go fix it. I'll go punch that dude in the face. What's the problem? What do you mean? They were rude to you at the store. She just needs to vent. Okay. I won't go punch him in the face. I'll just slash his tires. Okay. Let me. So always be curious. Take your time. Okay. But here's what happens though. We, we're all broken, fatally flawed creatures. And so we have, we have some unmet issue, unresolved pain that we haven't come to terms with in our lives. And so we're going to fulfill ourselves. We're going to pat ourselves on the back by telling the prospect, by demonstrating how smart we are. How much I know about iPhones and cryptocurrencies or the building, you know, this new house and why you got to act now, because the market is doing this in the Federal Reserve of it. And you're just losing the people, right? And you don't recognize that you're, you've got this inferiority complex that you're trying to solve at the expense of a sale. Okay. So be quiet. Right. Ask more questions. Like, like AJ, you brought up, it's like, when somebody's shopping, something happened. Something happened. And, and I'll literally ask that question. You know, hey, you know, thanks for booking a call. I got before this, I had a call with a prospect. You know, I'm like, what happened? What led you to book this call with me? Something happened. So in her business, it was just a culmination of things, too many systems, too much complexity. Things still aren't working the way they want. She's got three months before her software contract must be renewed. So at least she's coming in early. She's like, I've got to solve this complexity problem before I renew my contract. I want to know that I'm either making the right decision by renewing or we need to fix things. Okay. And that's still, I mean, I then, after we spoke, I then let her pay me to then send her a detailed questionnaire so I can really analyze her situation. Then, so then we met again today was the first of the paid calls to really define what's going on. And we're going to do another call, you know, because this is, you know, three, four million dollar business, 20 employees. I don't want to make the wrong recommendation. So before I recommend anything, I mean, we're going to have three or four phone calls several, you know, about an hour each. I mean, then I'm going to prescribe, you know, but you must thoroughly diagnose. It's literally the bedside manner of a doctor. You know, I may know right away, right? AJ makes an appointment. It's flu season, you know, I read the charts, you know, chills, blah, blah, blah, achy, stuffy nose. Yeah, dude, you got the flu, right? You know, let's assume COVID's gone, right? Back before COVID, when people just got sick, you know, if I just go, I just text, you know, or tell the PA, right? You know, tell them to drink whatever, you know, dayquil, nightquil, tamaflu, blah, blah, blah. If you didn't feel better, tell me, call me in 72 hours. That's probably the correct diagnosis and prescription, but because you don't feel listened to, I'm going to get a second opinion. The next thing I know, I lose you as a patient, you know, because I just was too curt, you know. So we've got to give time. The prospect needs to feel heard and understood. Then they'll trust whatever you say, you know. And you hit on a key point there. It's a place of pain. There's some pain. Maybe it's envy. Your friend has a nicer phone and you were out and you took a photo and his phone photo was better than yours. And now you realize I got to go from a 7 to a 12. I can't have this crappy phone. Yeah, they're mocking me. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's the car. Your car is great, but it's not the latest model. And you want to have that ability to talk about the latest model. Every one of these decisions is coming from a place of emotional pain, looking to solve that in their business, in their life, in their aspirations. And if you don't get to that, focus on the benefits and the solution and how great it is and how many other people have had this problem solved for them, they're going to go, okay, great. Yeah, send me some more information. I'll get back to you because you were not actually listening with curiosity and patience to understand what is the deeper emotional driver for them to schedule this call to come looking for the solution to figure out what that transformation or benefit is. And if you don't spend time understanding at a deep level what that pain is and you just lump your previous pain onto them or make assumptions about where they are because, oh, I've heard this before a thousand times. You know, even on our calls, I have to play dumb. I know the solution, but I still have to slowly go through methodically, well, what exactly are we talking about here? What exactly are you frustrated? How so? How is that impacting you? Is it impacting other areas? Oh, you know, I never really thought about it, but yeah, this problem I'm having in my business, well, it beats me up on the weekend and I don't feel like going to play softball with my buddies. It's keeping me up at night. I'm not able to play with my kids because I'm waking up exhausted. I need three cups of coffee. Well, they would have came to the call not realizing all these other impacts and if I just assumed, oh, well, I already have your solution then in their mind, well, it isn't actually that big of a deal. It's not a pain that needs to be solved right now. Let me think about it. I'll get back to you. Let me give you an example. You had brought up the doctor-patient relationship. Now, we have had, so we do, a lot of doctors come through our programs because there's two pieces to listening. There's one of I'm actually collecting the information that I need to make a better decision, but the other part is the person that is telling me this needs to feel that they've been heard completely or it doesn't work. And if they don't feel that they've been heard completely or to a satisfactory level, that can lead to a malpractice lawsuit. Not only could it lead to just, I'm taking my business elsewhere, it could be, well, because now I feel disrespected and I don't feel heard and I felt rushed, I'm now going to make a huge problem for everybody here because of how I feel. And now the doctors who have come through, it's not because they were not compassionate or they needed to learn empathy. They are boosting skills that they had already learned, but they wanted to take to another level because of just the extensive damage that malpractice or some of these other things could charge, but also on top of that, when they allow their patients to feel heard and thoroughly satisfied that they are getting the correct treatment and that trust has been built. Well, this comes back to the fact of those referrals are going to be coming in because let's be honest, who likes going to the doctor and if you are dealing with, you want somebody who allows you to feel that you are being taken care of. You know, amen. Well, and I want to go back to your ABCDE because it really was a core driver for Johnny and I starting this business. When we started the podcast, we were taking other training programs and what we noticed is they were very much about the ABC. Get the cash, get them through the door and then the program experience wasn't very great. They didn't really follow up. They didn't take care of their clients. They were churn and burn ready for the next client and we even heard the coaches in passing talking about oh, they just can't wait till they get the next weekend off and they don't care about this class and this person's problems and we saw the gap in the market because the gap was they were not delighting and they were not endearing and we have been able to outlast many companies in this space around training social skills and dating and helping people in their career because we build lifelong relationships with our clients. They're part of our family and I'm talking to clients that I worked with 11, 12 years ago and I'm still in their life and they come back and say it's the most impactful training because the training wasn't just the week together it wasn't just the weekend experience it was us caring deeply about them getting the results well beyond that weekend spent together and understanding that when you take care of people that well they'll come back years later and write a Yelp review they'll come back years later after some other life event happened and they're like you know what I need that experience again I need more out of it I didn't get as much that I thought I would out of the first go I'm excited to double down and that was a gap that we saw in this exact space so think about your competitors they're stopping at C most people stop at close the deal on to the next one where's my next lead where's my next call who else can I talk to and if you can start to excel at delighting and endearing people well you're going to have people beating down your door here marketing efforts are going to be a lot easier it's going to be a lot more fun in terms of doing sales when people are excited to hey I got to see Wes I need a new phone and they're tracking you around the best buy to get you they're waiting till you're on they come in on a Friday oh no he's working Saturday I'll be back on Saturday that's game changing you know entrepreneurs I think sometimes we get stuck we think we have to keep reinventing things and staying ahead of the curve and that's true to a degree but you've got to stay true to your foundations you know I read this quote from Einstein you know he was a professor and one of the you know whatever physics theoretical physics whatever classes he was teaching right gave out a final and the student says you know professor this is the same exact same exam from last year he says yes it is the same exam but this year the answers are different you know you start to think like imagine right after he discovers E equals MC squared yeah a physics test is probably going to have some different answers you know just the very next week so you think about that and it's like I'm going to Austin in the fall I'm already buying the tickets to attend a class that I've attended twice you know but the last time I did it was eight or nine years ago okay the world has changed society has changed I've changed right I got another kid you know my business has changed so I need to hear the same things because I'm going to perceive them differently you know so stay true right stay true to what it is you teach you know you got to adapt and update a little bit but that core better never change