[00:00:00.000] - Scott
Welcome.

[00:00:04.980] - Dave
To Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with interesting people about the process improvements and tricks they use to grow their businesses. I'm Dave Meyer, President of Busy Web, and every week, T rig Vee Olson and I are bringing you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations.

[00:00:24.030] - Trygve
Dave, the leads are weak. Leads have always been weak.

[00:00:28.600] - Dave
That's what I hear about, especially from our marketing teams. But I think we have a guy to help us weed our.

[00:00:34.980] - Trygve
Way through this. All the time. How many times a week do we hear that as we're talking to businesses? Two, three times a week from sales teams?

[00:00:41.310] - Dave
Yep.

[00:00:41.800] - Trygve
The leads are weak. The leads are weak. Well, you and I are in a unique position in that sometimes we understand that leads aren't always weak. Sometimes it's a question of what you do with them. Sometimes when you've been a salesperson for a long, long time, or if you're just getting started in it, you just really don't know what to do. It's good to have a process and it's good to have an idea of what to do. What does a business typically do in that scenario? Well, they hire a coach. I would say a lot of the coaches that you hire, they have their own patented nine step process in order to achieve success. Then if you don't follow it, then you're an idiot. But there are people out there who are good coaches, and that's who our guest is today is Scott Plumb from the Minnesota Sales Institute. Hey, Scott, thanks.

[00:01:31.900] - Scott
For joining us. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you and your listeners. I'm anxious to share some of the skills, the advice, my beliefs, opinion when it comes to sales and for the salespeople to really scratch their head and go, I'm not sure if that works. Or sometimes they say, I used to do that. Why did I ever stop? Or the company that I was working at before did that. How come we don't do that here? I want to really create some inspired friction where people are scratching their head going, I might give that some thought and might consider applying it. So if we're going to just start with consideration and then go from there on applying new techniques, we're on the path to growth and change is inevitable. Growth is optional. And stuff that I'm going to share today is so new that not even Oprah knows about it. I mean, fresh stuff, exclusive. Release here first.

[00:02:22.950] - Trygve
Can't wait. So let's do some level setting. Tell us, Scott, what the Minnesota Sales Institute is and what your day to day life is.

[00:02:30.680] - Scott
I just celebrated 20 years in the business, and I've been selling since I was 21 years old. And I work with companies or individuals on creating more collaborative and committed teams through training classes, workshops, coaching, seminars, and work on the introduction, the application, and the reinforcement. And we need all three steps. We need the introduction of new content. We need to go through the application of that new content so that when we get a situation where we can apply something new and better, we're going to get a different outcome, a better outcome. Different is not always better, we want a better outcome. Then just like any other change, we need reinforcement, constantly reinforcing our healthy habits to be able to get the predictable outcomes. Sometimes we feel like there's a lot of uncertainty. However, I think sometimes there's a little bit more unpredictability because we're comparing the present with the past. That's unpredictability. We can make things more predictable in the future if we feel like we're in control of our time. Too often, salespeople just don't feel like they're in control of their time. You have to make good time traits every single day and get an investment in time and a return on your investment of time.

[00:03:49.320] - Scott
That was probably a little longer than you were thinking of, but once.

[00:03:52.400] - Trygve
Taking on a role. I started to appreciate the choir about losing track of time.

[00:03:56.820] - Scott
Yeah, common.

[00:03:58.070] - Trygve
I made the joke in our intro about got you about the nine patented nine step process and the special sauce. So you don't have a special sauce in the patented nine step process, do you?

[00:04:08.860] - Scott
My special sauce is really leveraging my experience being relative to a salesperson's challenge or goals or sales team's goals and challenges, and to really be able to find out where the kink in the hose is. Where are we not getting the throughput that we need to be able to get a predictable, better outcome? And I'm a little untraditional when it comes to sales training or sales development, and that is that I work a lot on uncovering the unsupported beliefs that salespeople have. We all have experiences in our life and the interpretation of those experiences creates beliefs. Our behavior is determined by what we believe to be true and not true. Obviously, our behaviors give us the outcome. There's a ton of sales books on techniques and skills and nine steps and everything like that. But if you can't get through the conceptual barriers of dealing with some head trash, you're not going to apply anything, no matter what I say it, or you're reading a book, or watch a podcast, or webinar and podcast, etc. And there's a lot of beliefs, common ones in sales is that a lot of us were raised in a young, unprofessional age.

[00:05:15.100] - Scott
It's not polite to talk about money. Okay, well, I'm guessing your number one objection is money. The price is too high because you didn't talk about money in comparison to the cost consequences and risk of inaction. Another one is don't talk to strangers. Well, how's that going as a salesperson? We're just sitting here waiting for the phone to ring because we want them to call us. We don't want to call them. And if you can take a call, you can make a call. How about that for a concept of a new sales skill?

[00:05:44.660] - Trygve
That's certainly true. What are some of the indicators? You talked about head trash. Really, one of the overall questions I want people to take away from this is why you would want to hire somebody, an outside source to come in because there are certain instances where it's incredibly valuable. Talk a little bit more about head trash and what does that mean and how can people identify it in their salespeople?

[00:06:07.510] - Scott
Well, if we look at head trash within an organization, the leadership within an organization, do they believe that there are more opportunities in the marketplace right now? A lot of the listeners, I'm sure, that are with us today are independent contractors. They are self employed and their head trash is maybe listening to the news and thinking that we're in inflation or recession and everything is going to clamp down. Then they adopt that belief and the outlook of the marketplace is negative, so they don't see opportunities. The other side of it is looking at companies that believe this is a great time to gear up when it comes to marketing, when it comes to developing salespeople, because they feel there are more opportunities in the marketplace and there's going to be refinement of companies that are going to be able to survive and not survive. And if you have a belief there's more opportunities, you want to convert those conversations to commitments. You believe you have the right people, and sometimes that can be another step in the development. And if you don't have the right people, let's get the right people. Let's hire the right people.

[00:07:11.540] - Scott
Let's train and onboard the right people. And then let's create an investment of time and energy and resources in developing the skills, managing the behavior, offering consistent reinforcement to the salespeople on what they need to convert more conversations to commitment. So it's really three steps. You believe there's opportunities? Do you have the right people? Are you willing to invest in creating those opportunities into commitments?

[00:07:39.040] - Trygve
What are some of the first things that you do when you come into an organization?

[00:07:44.120] - Scott
The first question that I ask the leadership of the company is define the problems you solve. Tell me about the problem you solve. And this is the first step of sales change, culture development, a sales culture within an organization, often they cannot define the problem. Leadership in the company cannot define the problem. I just read an article in the Harvard Business Review a couple of issues back, and they said the reason that startups fail is because they don't know what problem they solve. They have a solution, but they don't know what problem they solve. Leadership needs to know what problem they solve, because if they don't know that, you cannot instruct and lead the sales team. And this happened to me in a company that I was doing some work for last year, and I was working with the salespeople, and I was asking the salespeople, what problem do you solve? I was working on really a foundational question. I realized the salespeople don't know what problem the company solves. I go, Whose fault is that? Well, that's leadership not setting the definition of here's the problem that we solve. And if sales leadership doesn't understand the problem that the sales team has, I come in, I'm trying to solve a problem, assuming that there's some fundamentals that are in place, and I end up frustrating the salespeople more because I'm talking about stuff that's at a higher level than where they are.

[00:09:19.550] - Scott
And that's very frustrating for them and for me because I really want them to be able to take what I share with them and apply it that day. But if they become more confused and they're more distracted and frustrated, it's a setback for everybody.

[00:09:34.370] - Trygve
Is it often where you find that the leadership, the salespeople when they're answering that question of what problem do you solve? What do you do when you get two different answers?

[00:09:46.500] - Scott
It starts to role play a little bit through a sales call and how a sales conversation would go with a salesperson and a prospect to be able to weed out how does a salesperson reframe.