Glenn Mattson
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Glenn Mattson
Hey everybody, season six, episode six. Today, I want to take a look at this piece of what I call unselfish selling. Sales, inherently, is a selfish mindset, if you look at it. I had a great peer of mine speaking at the Sandler Summit on this, and I've been noticing it quite a bit lately, the last three, four months, and it's really apropos. So, I wanted to share with you some thoughts around selfishness, and how does that really adversely impact your ability to be great at sales versus making you good at sales? So, sales, if you really look at it, are inherently almost designed to be selfish, right? The salespeople expect to be selfish. The prospects fear manipulation. If you think about what sales have been and how people look at it, it's going for the “yes!”, right? It's ringing the bell, it's pursuing the “yes!”, it's closing the deal. Just think of all the things that we say and the words that we use around sales: “commissions”, “you're a rock star”, “you go get them”, “you closed them”, “high five”. The best is when you make a sale and they ring the bell or hit the gong, or how many wins did you have, or losses did you have?
Glenn Mattson
So, you start looking at even some of the terminology, “objection handling”, “stalls”, so you close them. All these words are really geared towards, quite honestly, a scenario of winning, and with that comes some form of selfishness. So, when we take a look at, you know, in this version of today, is taking a look at how we can actually go to market and potentially change that vision, right? If you look at how many of us, and I have a lot of my clients, quite honestly, at their annual meeting, they're walking around with lanyards, with all the awards that they have. Top sales in this, number one in that, top in this, this is the type of practice that you have, or the type of business that you're bringing in, or you're at this echelon, and you're at this value or this type of award system. Or, you need to have this color lanyard because you're part of this group, because you sold this much product. Well, if you're part of a group because of product sales, that seems like you're there because of what you sold.
Glenn Mattson
So, when we're looking at this, again, it just points everything towards selfishness. If you really think about it, how much money are you going to make on this sale? Let me think about the weekend, or how come, when it goes to a “no”, many of us are distraught for four or five days, not because we got the “no”, it's because we just lost a commission. Or we may not get money that month, or you're not going to get some type of award that you're hoping for. So, more times than not, you really do look at many people when they go to sales, it is a selfish type of relationship, and unfortunately, it's mutually understood.
Glenn Mattson
If you look at prospects, the prospect system, a lot of times, prospects will lie, and they lie to maintain control. You're not gonna have a prospect come in and tell you all their problems right up front because they're terrified that you're gonna use that information against them later. So, there’s this crazy manipulation dance going on that just doesn't really need to be there. When you're a prospect, you're desperately trying to be heard, and you're desperately trying to be understood, and you want that trust factor. You want to have the person that you're talking to make recommendations that's best for you, not what's best for them. So as a prospect, that's what we want and what we hope for. But we also know that the average sales guy is going to do what's good for them, or this average salesperson is going to do what’s best for them, not necessarily what's best for me as the buyer. So, when we look at our award systems, we look at how people even make money within them, we look at the words we use. The whole industry is geared towards, again, this selfishness of selling.
Glenn Mattson
In fact, some award systems will take you away on trips. They’ll make 15 or 20 of you, super, super high-end, just for you. Well, if you want to get there, you have to work twice as hard, close twice as many deals, increase your average case size, expand your clients, get more licenses, whatever your objectives are for your KPIs. But even if you look at your KPIs, look at the things that you're graded on, on a monthly basis. How many wins did you get? How many yeses did you get? How many successful strategy calls did you get? How many demos did you do? It has nothing to do with how many conversations of truth you get to, or how many conversations you actually accomplish, and you got a “no”, because you guys weren't a good fit?
Glenn Mattson
Sometimes, what I'm suggesting in this podcast is that we often have a sense of selling a product versus trying to solve a problem. Very big difference. So, I think a lot of you, or a lot of people, sell out of convenience, and not sell out of conviction. Selling out of conviction is selling a solution that's right for them. It's the right thing to do. It's the thing that you would sell your own grandmother or grandfather. So, when you take money out of it, is it the right thing to do? That's selling out of conviction. Convenience is selling that you're going to get pain, you get the budget, and you sell it to them so you can make a commission. In your mindset, everything's geared around, How much money can I make? It's not necessarily how much premium I can have, or how many families I can help, or what type of impact I will have on certain projects. It's how much money I can make. If you look at it from that value and that standpoint, that means you're the epicenter of the world, that means you're “I” centered.
Glenn Mattson
Sandler will always tell you that one of the greatest rules that we have is to be not centered. Do not be “I” centered in sales. That's trying to say to you in so many different words, don't be selfish. You're always supposed to put the prospect first, then the salesperson is second. We also say that a no is just as good as a yes. A no is an ability that you can learn from a lesson. Which means that you're going to cash your check. It just happens to be tomorrow, not today. So, I don't know why people run from the “no’s”, you don't want a no. Keep getting six yeses to get to the end, to close the sale. People fear no. Heck, no is liberating. No is fantastic. No is just as good as a yes, but you cash the check tomorrow. So, why do we, again, look at this as a wrestling match, and we have to arm wrestle back and forth to finally figure out what's the best thing to do for both parties?
Glenn Mattson
So, I want you to think about being unselfish. I want you to think about for a moment what that looks like. Now, please understand, I have people tell me all the time, Why would I be unselfish? If I'm unselfish, I will sell less. I want you to actually think about that for a second. If you believe honestly that if you're unselfish when you sell or qualify, that you're going to sell less stuff, then we have a bigger problem. I want you to realize that being unselfish doesn't mean you're going to sell less. What it really means is that unselfishness isn't about being less. It isn't about being less than someone. Quite honestly, unselfishness in selling is all about equal business stature. It is the fact that we are Equis, we love to have you, don't need you. Love to help you, don't have to. If I can, that's great. But a person who wants to be selfish or push a product, every question that they're asking is geared toward getting the buyer closer to buying their product. So, I want to take a couple of minutes and just walk you through a few things that maybe you can think about, a few things that you can do when you're out there to break this selfishness that you have in the back of your brain.
Glenn Mattson
Now, let's take a look at what we can do, because at the end of the day, trust is what motivates and takes action. Trust will get you truth. Trust will get you closer to pain. Without trust, they won't share their problems or their pain with you. So trust is incredibly important, and trust is developed when the prospect actually believes that they're dealing with an unselfish salesperson. If they believe you’re selfish, then why would I trust you? And trust, by the way, is in everything that you do and how you act or react, body language, tone, and words. So, let's take a look at a few things I want to share with you about being unselfish. I want everyone to really think about the last week or so, how often during a sales call did they really act like a selfish salesperson? I got them. I hear that one all the time, and it's crazy.
Glenn Mattson
So, the first thing is, let's take a look at some tactics and strategies, and from there, we'll go into some mindsets. So, when we're looking at Sandler, and we're looking at Sandler material, and what you know about Sandler, a couple of things you may want to take a look at that may help. Okay? I remember Sandler years ago when we really started getting good at the negative reversing, or the pain funnel, or even some great questioning techniques where you can put three or four of them together. If you get that person to answer this, then you know you’ve got three more coming, and boom, you're gonna have them in pain, it’s going to be critical pain, then you can be able to help them out. The reality is, you're weaponizing your skills. So, I want you to ask yourself, are you weaponizing your skills so you can sell more? Or are you actually being unselfish and trying to help out as many people as possible? Let's take a look at how we can get to those things without really changing or becoming or using the tools for manipulation.
Glenn Mattson
So, the first one is, if you think about it as bonding rapport. Bonding rapport, when we look at it, is to create a rapport where people buy from people they trust. They're not buying the product. They don't buy your company. They buy you. They buy the trust that what you're telling me is actually going to happen. So when you look at your ability to create trust, one of the things about bonding rapport, you have the rapport pie. You also have the disc, for instance, right personality styles? The whole key about personality styles is you need to know what your style is. You need to know what their style is, and then you're supposed to adapt your style so you can communicate more effectively with the other person. It doesn't mean that you manipulate it so you can sell more. What you're trying to do is reduce energy, reduce friction between you and the other person, and by reducing friction in just any type of difficulty, it actually starts to create trust. And more trust means more information.
Glenn Mattson
So, are you spending your time learning about discs just so you can manipulate people? Are you learning about discs so you can understand how to communicate more effectively with them, to understand what their concerns are? Do you understand that when you do talk and you go into a high eye, for instance, yeah, they're going to be great visionaries. They're not great at details. You need to spend some time on details to understand, really, why the cause of the problem is there, and what some of the things maybe they've done in the past to solve it. And by the way, they're gonna have a tough time sharing that because they're embarrassed. So yes, there are rules to understanding personality types, but it goes back to the understanding of the intent, of why you're learning it. Are you learning it so that you can do a better job uncovering the truth, which is really what they're trying to accomplish. It’s really what they're trying to have accomplished as an outcome and as a process to get there. So, finding rapport is huge, making sure that you understand how the pace of someone, the speed of someone's language, and the words in which they use are all part of reducing the amount of energy it takes to create trust. It's not for manipulation.
Glenn Mattson
Now, let's take a look at upfront contracts, for instance. My gosh, the whole premise of an upfront contract is to reduce anxiety and stress between two people. If you really think about it, the majority of anxiety between a buyer and a seller is in the first seven to 12 minutes and the last seven to 12 minutes; it's the bookends. Those two bookends create massive anxiety between both sides. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Where are we going? How is he, or how is she, going to try to close me at the end? I mean, it's just constant. So a great way to be unselfish is to understand how to utilize the upfront contract and not weaponize it. For instance, we have an hour, right? That is not asking the core fundamentals of an upfront contract, which has to be mutually agreed upon and mutually beneficial. Meaning that what you're putting down as the agenda has to benefit them just as much as it has to benefit you, and it has to be in both parties’ interest. So, it has to be mutually agreed upon and mutually beneficial.
Glenn Mattson
So, by saying to someone, “Hey, we had an hour, right?” That's not the way it's supposed to be. That's leading. How about this one? I hear this all the time, and it drives me crazy. “So, Glenn, we have an hour. Is that still fair for you? What I have down there we're going to cover is A, B, C, and D. Is there anything that you'd like to add? Really? That’s what it is? How is that mutually beneficial? You're the one who just created the agenda, you gave it to them, and then you said, “Oh, would there be anything you'd like to add?” Just by the mere way you're asking the questions, no one's going to say yes to you. So, the way that you're doing it is, you're doing a checkbox, which is saying, “Yeah, I did it up on contract”, but you didn't really do it.
Glenn Mattson
So again, taking a look at, how about this one? When you do the outcome or the result of the meeting, was the result of the meeting fair for both sides? Is it super easy for them to say no? Is it super easy for them to say yes? Do you have clarity on what yes and no mean? Do they understand that no is 100% okay? If you're on a discovery call, a discovery call in that meeting, you’ve got to tell them upfront, Hey, we may get down a path and just find out we're not right for each other. Nothing wrong with that. I can't help everybody, and not everyone wants my help. So, you’ve got to make sure you use your upfront contracts, right? Then we have pain, the pain funnel for goodness' sake. Look at the formula for pain. Find someone who is well, then you get to hurt, then you get to sick, then you get critical, and then you perform a miracle. Even some of the stuff we do is based on that, too, right? So when you get pain, are you doing it because you want leverage? Are you getting pain so that you can get them to the critical phase, the impact phase, so you can get the money? That's manipulation. See, the pain funnel is supposed to, by design, allow the prospect, the buyer, to have a journey with you. You're supposed to be the Sherpa, not dragging, standing next to, so that they can have a self-discovery. That's the whole purpose of the pain funnel. Just look at the questions they ask in there. How come some of you skip through a lot of the questions just to get to, “So how much is that costing you, and how does that make you feel?” But there are 16 questions you were supposed to ask before you got there. Again, if you're selling a product, you're not trying to find out what the problem is.
Glenn Mattson
So, when you look at pain, always remember that pain is about a problem that you've uncovered, the reason. Then you've uncovered the impact. Then you discover if they want to fix it. Then you talk about how you can fix it. Then you can talk about your product. But why are you bringing up your product so soon? You bring up a product before we even start talking about a problem. You bring up a product before we even start talking about why I have the problem. If you bring up a product before we start talking about what happens because I have a problem, you're selling a product. If you truly wanted to understand what the issue was, and you were truly unselfish, you would want to know a handful of things. What is the problem? What's the reason for the problem? What's the impact of the problem? Is this something you even want to fix? And if so, how come? What's your expected outcome? Simple things.
Glenn Mattson
Another thing that we have to take a look at is even with Sandler, besides the upfront contract, pain, and bonding rapport, heck, is the negative reverse clock. Look at that one. So negative reversing is probably my favorite technique. It is probably by far the best at getting truth serum, more so than anything else. But if you use it wrong, or you have the wrong intent behind it, negative reversing can be exceedingly manipulative. So I always remember Sandler, when we were in Timonium, Maryland, at a summit, that it was our responsibility to understand how far we needed to take the system to get the information that we needed so that they could make a change. He was very aware of not weaponizing, Sandler. You should not weaponize your skills. So, having the ability to go in and ask the questions, to go towards a no and not be afraid of the no is a truth serum for negative reversing. Very powerful. And remember, from a headset standpoint, one, you don't solve problems. You solve the impacts of those problems. Two, stop selling a product. Find out what the problem is, why they have it, and how it's impacting people, so you can solve the impact, right? You solve that. Don't go sell a product. People want to be heard and they want to be understood. If you're getting just as many nos as you are yeses, that's a good thing, too.
Glenn Mattson
So, when you have the ability to give up control and let someone else have the decisions to make the control, it's everything. I want you to realize that when I talk about unselfish selling, it's about the manipulation. That's the core, fundamental behind it. You want to facilitate, right? You gotta write this down, it’s a great one-liner; you have to facilitate choices, not the decisions. Give them the freedom to make their own choice. If you can, and the truth is there, and there's pain or a problem, just expose the truth, but not the decisions. They’re the ones who are going to have to decide if they want to fix it. You’ve got to remember, whatever decision they make that's in the best choice of themselves, in theory, it should be the best choice for you, too. If you qualified them correctly, you really spent your time doing it correctly, and you looked at your solution from all the different angles and asked all your questions.
Glenn Mattson
That's why we have awareness questions, assumptive questions, so many, we have to make sure we’re on the same page, engagement questions. If you only do what's best for you, you're always going to be Hawking. You're always going to be seen as that guy or that person. If you try to truly do what's best for them, that you do have the same page, you're both on the same page about qualifying, getting pain, commitment to fix, all that fun stuff, realize that if you do what's best for them, they will always, always bring you more business than you ever know how to handle. It's called the Emerson law of compensation. You spend 80% of your time taking care of your clients, and your clients will spend the time that you need to have a full calendar, so you only have to spend 20% of your time looking for new biz. You take care of them; they will take care of you. That's being unselfish.
Glenn Mattson
When you only want to sell a product, that means every time you call them, they cringe, because now it's like, “Oh, what is it? What are they going to sell me now?” If that's what you're trying to build, so be it. This is probably not the best podcast for you. You're trying to create relationships. You're trying to create an unselfish practice where it's equal business stature. They respect you. You respect them. You sell. If you sell because it's the right thing to do, you'll get referrals, and you'll have cross-selling opportunities abound. People love to share with other people, people they trust and use and have a great experience with. So, as you're out there selling, moving forward, you’ve got half of a year left; everyone's running crazy for year-end. It's not time to be selfish at the end of the year. Maybe, for you, it's time to spend the rest of your 2025 being an unselfish salesperson. Come join me next time on the Building Blocks of Success.
Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
