Judy Taibi on Sales Cookbooks, DISC, and No-Pressure Prospecting

Transcript

0:00 All right, we have another episode of Tailwind. Today we're joined by Judy

0:07 Taibbe. Judy has been a seller for over 20 plus years. She's been a seller and a sales trainer. So, she not only knows

0:14 how to talk the talk, she can also walk the walk. Um, that's an, you know, important distinction, uh, when it comes to understanding, you know, exactly

0:21 what's happening when we're trying to, you know, progress deals. Uh, Judy, anything I missed on that intro?

0:27 No, that's that's exactly what uh my background has been. So, uh I appreciate being thank you very much for inviting

0:36 me to the podcast. I want um excited about this, you know, discussing the two topics that you asked me to address.

0:43 Cookbook management and no pressure prospecting.

0:46 That's right. Yeah, I'm excited to discuss it with you. So, you know, just let's I think we should just dive right in. Let's go into cookbook management as our our starting point.

0:55 Okay. Excellent. Um, you know, selling is simple, but it's not easy. And it's usually not easy be it for a number of

1:04 different reasons, but I find with my clients and people that I know in the selling profession, they don't have a system. They're just out there every day

1:12 is doing something differently. It's like the wild west. And if you can't measure what you're doing, then you're not going to know whether it's

1:20 successful or not. So a cookbook is something it's just like if you have a recipe. If there's a particular recipe

1:27 and you follow it exactly the same way, your outcome is probably going to be the same. If you start deciding you're not

1:35 going to use salt, you're going to use a lot of pepper or you're not going to use chili, you're going to use a lot of uh oregano, the whole thing is going to get

1:44 pretty uh messed up pretty quickly. So, we need to have a system, which we call a cookbook, in order to have a

1:52 repeatable process because, let's face it, you know, we're focused on closing deals. We're focused on getting

1:59 appointments, hitting revenue goals, a lot of different things that are going to pull us away from being really

2:06 religious about what we need to do. So I suggest that people first of all you know what your goals are. You know what your quotas are. You know how much money

2:15 you want to make and then what kind of activities do you need to do on a

2:21 consistent basis in order to move in that direction.

2:27 That's really what a cookbook is. Uh and those activities have to be done the same time. So I'm just going to I think

2:36 Austin you probably heard of this. Do you know about the success triangle?

2:40 A little bit, but I always need a reminder because I'm still learning it.

2:44 Okay. Basically, there are three sides of a triangle and there are three comp components for that triangle. When we

2:52 talking about sales, it's your attitude, your technique, and your behaviors or your activities. So of those three

3:01 attitudes, techniques, behaviors, what do you think is most important in order to be successful?

3:10 I'll go with attitude.

3:13 99.9% say attitude. Yeah.

3:16 Now, let me tell you why we think your activities and your behaviors are more important. Mhm.

3:21 You can on a Monday morning, you could wake up and you know that you have 10 cold calls to make.

3:29 Say, just I'm not up to it. I have a lousy attitude. I'm going to be I want to do it tomorrow.

3:36 The next day you manager calls and uh upsets you or just whatever happens or

3:43 you lose a client, you're not in the mood to do the cold calls. And by Friday, you have so many things that you haven't done because of your lousy

3:52 attitude all week that it's overwhelming and you can't get to all of it on Friday. So, you move it forward to the

3:59 next week. So the attitudes uh are important but if this is really interesting in terms of cognitive

4:08 behavioral patterns of human beings if you don't feel like doing something and you do it anyhow

4:16 your mind starts to say hey this wasn't so bad we could do this and then the actually the activity that you found

4:25 that you were avoiding you can do more quickly and and actually more successfully.

4:30 So that's why the that's why having an activity planned out is very important.

4:38 Um and it needs to be done for a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Mhm.

4:45 So some of those things that you need to do is your prospecting calls. How many conversations are you going to have a

4:52 day? How many LinkedIn outreach messages are you going to do? Um, how many

5:00 networking meetings or networking touches? Uh, how many referrals are you going to ask for? How many follow-up

5:08 calls? How many minutes on pipeline review? There are a number of different activities, but you have to know what

5:16 are those that are most important to you and when you're going to do them and then do them. That's the Achilles hail.

5:25 And I find that in order to stay that organized on cookbook creation and

5:32 management is probably harder than doing the activities. Mhm.

5:38 And there are and I would just suggest to your your audience folks are nice enough to join us for this podcast. You

5:45 really need to learn do use some of the tools that are out there. When I started my business 10 years ago, none of this

5:53 existed. Now you have the benefit of working with for instance um top sale is

6:01 spectacular in terms of keeping you organized visually what to do when to do

6:07 it um how to do it so that you can judge where you are and where you're slacking

6:14 off or where you need to pivot in a different direction to order to be more impactful in that particular activity.

6:24 So, Top Sale, I'm sure there are other uh platforms that out there, but get demos, folks. Get demos from several companies and see what you're missing.

6:35 Um I think it's it makes people's lives a lot better. So, um and know what your numbers are. Most sales people don't.

6:44 The most successful sales professionals are not focused on the things they can't

6:51 control. You can't control somebody's budget. You can't control if they need sign off from their manager, the owner

7:00 of the company, and that person's gone on a month or six week vacation. Those

7:07 things you can't control, but what you can control in terms of your activities in the cookbook will give you an ability to be successful.

7:17 Do the activities and the success will follow.

7:20 Yeah. So I think that I think that's where people get stuck is that they don't do the right thing at the right

7:28 time in the right amount. And that's where a cookbook can be invaluable to you. Make sense?

7:36 It makes a lot of sense. I I think one of the things that really struck me with when you were talking through it um the management and like the planning aspect

7:43 of it being something that is like hard to do. I I also wonder too, do you do you see often that people, you know,

7:51 hide in that that they're like, "Hey, you know what? Like, let me just plan this one through and make sure I have the perfect 10 people and like I just

7:59 spend I just want to just spend all my time theorizing and hypothesizing and thinking about doing it, but then stopping before I actually do it or

8:07 coming up with a reason that I shouldn't do it quite yet because I'm not quite ready." Um, I just think it's so interesting that I've seen it in people for sure.

8:17 Well, you know the problem with being a human being, there is never a perfect time for anything.

8:25 And you know, you may not you don't have to be 100% billing. You don't have to knock it out of the ball. The pro the

8:33 person that you're calling isn't going to know if you forgot two sentences or not, right?

8:38 You know that you know 110% more than the person that you're speaking to about the reason you're making the call. So,

8:46 and the more even if you're uncomfortable, do if you feel I always say to do a pre-call plan, know what you

8:54 want to say, know what questions you're going to ask, and how you're going to run the call because you're the salesperson. Um, that gives you more

9:02 confidence, builds up your confidence, so you don't have to be perfect, perfect, perfect. And the more you do that particular activity, the better

9:12 you're going to get at it and the closer you're going to come to quote perfection, which is not necessary to

9:18 begin with. Um, procrastination is a killer. Yeah.

9:22 For all sales people. Um, and in anything in life, we like to avoid things that get us out of our comfort zone. You can't really afford to do that

9:30 in sales for too long or you're going to be out of a job.

9:33 Yeah. Yeah. And I think it, you know, goes back to your your point like just establish the behavior and the rest will follow. And even with being perfect,

9:42 it's like, well, get the 10 reps in and then the technique will eventually catch up as long as you're getting those reps in every single day and everything else

9:50 will fall. So, I think it's further proof that start with the behavior instead of the other two. Absolutely.

9:57 Just, you know, like Nike says, just do it. Yeah.

10:00 Just do it. And if you're that um if you've been selling for a while, this shouldn't be that much of an issue. But

10:10 if you're relatively new to selling, do role playing.

10:13 Do role playing with somebody in your company, with your manager, do role playing with someone in your family so that um if you sort of dub your toe, you

10:23 can learn from that and you don't feel that you're going to be embarrassed with an actual prospect. There are a lot of ways to get over it, but the the most

10:32 important is just being committed to doing the activities.

10:37 Yeah. Well, and I think uh something I remind myself is whenever I mess up, you know, and I get done with the call, I'm like, "All right, well, that that didn't feel great." But also, they're not going

10:44 to remember who I am in about the next 30 minutes. So, it doesn't it's not going to follow me around that I made a mistake. Absolutely. Yeah.

10:51 And you and you know what people realize?

10:55 I always tell all my clients, you want to be remembered for what you sell or how you sell

11:02 because people buy emotionally and then they intellectually justify their decision.

11:09 So if you use um some do the prospecting and give you some ideas about how that

11:17 can be more effective effective to differentiating yourself from competitors who are doing cold call goals. Um, that's what they're going to

11:25 th look at you differently. They're going to trust you different way. Yeah.

11:29 Uh, when you have when you ask them questions rather than drill down drill,

11:37 you know, your no one cares about features and benefits. um their their Harvard Business Review has done so many

11:44 studies, Forbes, um Gallup that people basically if you're speaking to the

11:52 decision maker, they've already been online. They've looked at your competition. They know the features and benefits. You have to get to speak with

12:01 them and convince them that you're there to be curious, not to be convincing.

12:09 And that's a very different term that most people use.

12:14 Yeah. I think it uh to borrow a Sandler term, it kind of puts you more on a business equal business stature by being curious and like either not being differential or not being like imposing.

12:26 You're just trying to be on their their same wavelength. Um you were mentioning uh for pre-all planning being a good way

12:33 to make sure you're having success. Uh, for prospecting calls, what what do you include as part of your pre-call planning structure or routine? How do you go about that?

12:43 Well, I try I I'll do something um I'll know a little bit about the company. I don't have to look at their annual report and you know that's overkill.

12:53 That's you know being want to being a perfectionist. Um I want to know first of all something about if I can a little

13:03 bit about how they like to be communicated with. Mhm.

13:06 And because Oscar Wall had a very uh interesting quote that the biggest problem with

13:14 communication is assuming it's taking place because we don't again with all the

13:22 digital communication we have lost the ability to actively listen to people. Yeah.

13:29 We or hear them. We'll listen to them and we're waiting for them to stop speaking. So then we can come in and and

13:37 say our thing and make ourselves look great. You have to be able to realize that people want to be heard and they want to be heard, not just listened to.

13:50 And there is something if you haven't been u introduced to it, I would suggest that you take some time to learn about

13:58 it. It's called the DISC DISA communication model. And I'll just can I just take a few minutes now to talk

14:05 about Okay, there are four different disc styles. They cut across gender, age, cultural affiliation,

14:15 um religion, uh political affiliation, every way you can bucket people cuts across. And

14:24 interestingly, you're basically born and you're hardwired to one of these four styles. M

14:30 it's one is D for dominant, one is I for influencer, one is C for

14:37 compliant, one is S for steady. So what does that mean? There are certain ways

14:44 that people communicate and they like to be communicated with. And if we can be able to

14:52 start to understand what those cues are and then pivot into their direction and communicate with them the way they like

15:01 to be communicated with, it makes the world of difference. So let me just give you a few different qualities for a

15:09 disc. Discs are people who are very bottom line oriented. They're usually the people who are in the corner office. They make decisions quickly.

15:19 um they have to sort of be coached to listen to other people. Uh they are quick to you'll hear them interrupt.

15:28 They're not being rude. Their mind is just going so quickly that they are jumping ahead of you. You'll hear them

15:37 say, "Judy, this is really interesting, but just cut to the bottom line." When they you hear those words, you know you're talking to

15:45 a day. They just they don't how is this going to impact me and my company?

15:51 What's in it for me? That's the kind of people they are. So obviously when you're speaking to them, it's not a lot of sugar. It's to the bottom line. So in

16:00 a pre-all plan, I want to know what kind of person I'm speaking to. If I'm speaking to someone who is a high eye,

16:08 which is a person who's very chatty, they're very communicative. They want to know all about you before they do business. They want you to know all

16:16 about them. Um, it takes more warming up and more chitchatting. So, if I'm a D

16:25 and I'm speaking to a high eye, I don't care what they did on the weekend. I'm that's not I would just want to, you

16:34 know, let's get it here. We're here to do business. But I know in order to be comfortable for them to speak with me, I have to pivot in their direction.

16:44 So those are the nuances. The other two um sees they are very interested in facts and figures. They want to know if

16:53 Austin, you and I need 10 facts to make a decision, they may need 50. So we have to have patience with them knowing that

17:00 they need more confirmation before they're going to be able to move ahead.

17:04 but also knowing we have to set boundaries. So they ask us for a proposal or they want in this

17:12 information and then they come back and they need more and more and more information. We have to set the boundaries to make sure we know and they

17:20 can identify what they need. S's are fantastic people. They're very

17:27 easygoing. Uh they are very they don't like to rock the boat. They will agree with you. You think, "Wow, I got this

17:36 one. I've, you know, keeps saying, "This sounds interesting. This sounds interesting." Well, because they're so concerned with not hurting people's

17:44 feelings, they may unintentionally lead you along because they they just don't want to tell you, they're not going to do it. Yeah.

17:52 So, you can I think just from these few minutes we've spent, you can see the benefit of understanding the different

18:01 disc styles. Um, I found it very helpful in my pre-call plan. I want to know a little bit about the company. I want to

18:08 know if I can find out online what some of their challenges have been. And I want to know what their distance is. And

18:15 I want to know what I want that call to accomplish.

18:20 It's not just And I know that people's time is important. So, I want to be able to I'm not trying to sell them anything

18:30 on a prospecting call. I just want to get them interested enough in listening to me and my finding out information

18:38 from them that they'll give me time for an appointment. Never try to sell on initial prospecting call. It's a kiss of death.

18:47 I've done that a couple times and it never worked out. So, I've been practicing.

18:53 It's too soon. It's like the first date, you know. You got to pace yourself, guys. So,

18:59 yeah. Uh, and you have to listen and ask the right questions at the right time.

19:06 It's not about you. You should be speaking 30% of the time and the prospect should be

19:16 speaking 70% of the time because you've asked them questions about um what's important to them. And the

19:25 tonality, the tempo, the pitch, the inflection is um extremely important.

19:31 I'm going to do a little a little exercise with you if you give me I just have to give you a heads up. Men usually not very good at this exercise.

19:41 All right. Stumbled. All right.

19:43 Okay. So, now the pressure is on you. Um and then I'm going to give you a little bit of what I use in a prospecting call,

19:51 initial call. But first of all, here are three words. I'm just going to spell them. The first letter is I. The second

20:01 word is spelled L O V E. And the last word is spelled Y O U. Now you've heard those words before, right?

20:10 I I have, which is a good thing. You said them or you've heard them.

20:14 Yeah. No, in terms of the fact that we are not using we we don't give enough

20:22 credit or do we use our voices uh to the best of our ability. I'd like you

20:30 to say those words, those three words three different ways

20:36 in terms of tempo, inflection, pitch. So that each time those three words have a different meaning.

20:46 Yeah. All right. I love you. I love you. How about I love you?

20:54 Right. Absolutely. Or I love you. You know, do I? You have to be kidding. I love you. Yeah.

21:02 So when we have to be more creative in how we use our voices um particularly in prospecting. So it

21:12 just doesn't sound like you know very da da da da da and people say is this person on life support. You have to show

21:21 you know your personality and you have to give them an opportunity to uh also

21:28 speak to you. So on a prospecting call and I I get a lot of cold calls for some

21:35 reason and some of them are so bad that I feel it's incumbent upon me as a

21:43 professional to give them a little help. And I'll say Austin, I don't think you know this.

21:50 You're just this. I'm just a cold call for you, but I'm a professional sales trainer. May I give you a suggestion?

21:59 uh I don't want to hurt your feeling, but I think this would be useful to you.

22:03 And they always say, they'll stop, they'll pause because they're really not sure what's going to happen.

22:08 And then they'll say, "Yes." I'll say, "You and I have been on the phone for six or seven minutes." And all you've talked about are your

22:16 features and your You never have asked me once. You haven't takes 60 seconds to ask me what my problems are or what's important to me. Mhm.

22:27 And then it's like dead silence again.

22:30 And I'll I'll say, "Listen, I think you could use a little help." And then I'll give them some resources on my website or what I'm not trying to convert them

22:39 into a client, but I think that's the Achilles heel for all of us is we have to ask questions. So, I'm going to

22:47 pretend that I'm calling you on a cold call. Okay? Right.

22:51 And I'm not saying this is the best or the only way, but it does help differentiate yourself from other people. Okay. Dingoling.

23:01 This is Austin.

23:03 Hi, Austin. Um, this is Judy Taby. Uh, did I catch you at a bad time?

23:10 Uh, no, not not at the moment.

23:13 Okay. Well, listen. I just want to if I can take 60 seconds, only 60 seconds of your time. This is a cold call. I hate

23:21 to make them. You probably hate to receive them, but uh if you can give me 60 seconds, I'll tell you why I'm

23:29 calling. And if it's interesting, we can continue to continue on or schedule more

23:36 time at a more convenient time. And if it's not, you can just hang up on me. No problems whatsoever. And then they'll

23:43 laugh. They I've never heard anybody say, "Don't have 60 seconds." Or they'll say, "I'll give you 67 seconds." Or or

23:52 they'll say, "Okay, I'm at my watch." No, I'll grab it for 60 seconds. And I'll say well you know we work with

24:00 companies in tech who techn creative technology uh innovators like top sale

24:09 um to be able to work with them and you know typically we find that they have certain problems and then I will just

24:16 I'll say the three top problems that that industry or that company has and

24:23 I'll say I don't know does does that any of that resonate meet with you and they'll say, "Yeah, you know what? We that is those are challenges for us." I

24:32 say, "What are your top of those top three, what are your top two?" And then they'll say, "Well, you know, this or

24:40 that or whatever it is." And I say, "These are some of the things that we work with we with our clients who have

24:47 identified those same challenges as well as others to be able to close those performance gaps. And then I'll give them a little bit about how we work with

24:56 clients. And then I'll say, you know, we're over 60 seconds. I appreciate you giving me three minutes or five minutes

25:04 or whatever, but um can you tell me of those top two? Uh what are what's more

25:11 meaningful? What has been you know being curious? What is the how does that impact your business? Have you tried to

25:19 do anything about it? Um has it been successful? No. I don't want to take any more of your time. I think we have enough here to schedule more time just

25:27 to have uh us an additional conversation where we can get more into the situations that you feel you want to

25:36 improve or correct. Would that make sense? And they'll and they usually do say yeah. They say well give me a call back. I'll say look I know you're busy.

25:45 I just got lucky being able to speak to you now. Austin, do you have your calendar? And they always do. I say,

25:52 "Would you mind us look looking at your calendar now and let's pencil in and then 30 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever."

26:00 And then after they do that, I'll say, "I know you're busy. Um, but is it okay if I

26:08 email you or send you an Outlook email, and if you can't make it or I can't make it, is it fair that you can give me

26:16 24-hour notice?" Because I want them to know that my time is important. I respect their time. I want them to

26:23 respect my time. Um and then I will send them the outlook and then I have some

26:31 other things that I do send in terms of making that next conversation significant like a five minute survey or

26:40 whatever gets a little deeper drills into deeper what's going on in their situation and I'll tell them like it's only going to take you five or 10 six

26:49 minutes and it will make our call on next Monday uh a a lot more meaningful. phone.

26:55 Um, can you can you you think you can carve out five five six minutes so that

27:01 uh I can have a much fuller appreciation what's going on in your shop, in your company, with your team, etc.

27:09 And it goes so much more easily when you ask them questions and ask them

27:16 for permission and I'm all saying this is Judy Tab with Sandler and they and then they pause because

27:25 they they're trying to go through their mental, you know, file. Do they know you? I say, you never heard of me, did you?

27:33 And you know, you you have to be humble because people think a cold call is like grabbing you by the neck. I say a lot of

27:41 people never most people never heard of me, but um that won't stop me from helping you.

27:47 So, and just play it has to be easy and playful. You don't want to um frighten

27:55 people off. If you are pressuring or pushing or pulling people in a direction with the

28:04 prospecting, they're going to get defensive and it's just going to go south. One, two, three. What's the worst that can happen when you make a cold call for prospecting?

28:15 Say no thanks. Or they just hang up. They hang up. Say thanks but no thanks.

28:23 you know, and then I'll say when they say no thanks, I'll say can I just have a just let me ask you one more question.

28:31 You're not interested cuz you don't think there is any problem. You're doing more business than you can can even handle or I haven't done a good job

28:40 explaining to you what I do because I want the feedback and then they'll stop. You want to have what we call pattern interrupts. Mhm.

28:49 You want to be able to make sure that they're participating and that you're asking them questions that they have to

28:56 stop and and think about, well, maybe we do have that problem. Maybe I should give her some time, you know, and schedule a call with them. After the

29:05 prospecting call, do a debrief call for yourself, you know. Now, you can record

29:13 all of your meetings. There are, you know, you can go back and see where you dropped the ball, how you might have

29:21 wanted to do it differently, how you will do it differently going forward, and what seemed to work particularly well. Yeah.

29:28 So, um, those are some of the things, you know, in prospecting. Uh, they're all different techniques in terms of

29:37 email outreach, networking, etc. But we don't have the time to get into all of those variables. Um,

29:45 I would, you know, I do you have any questions for me in terms of summing up what we've discussed?

29:53 Out of curiosity, you know, you you talked about the debriefing as you're looking through and for somebody who's newer, they're probably going to have to work on all of it, which is, you know,

30:02 that's just how that that process goes, which is nothing wrong with. Um but you know you talked about understanding the person and the company and having a

30:10 light understanding of that uh from like a fmographic approach and then you have like their disc and then you have your own tonality and then you have the

30:18 structure and let's say somebody is starting on like a scale of one to five.

30:22 They want to get to a five but everything's at a one. You have a recommendation on which one they should focus on first

30:30 look I think you can people overdo learning about the company. You have to get you have to get your you have to get

30:37 your messaging across. So if either you want to use you know Judy Taby have you have you ever heard of me or not? You

30:46 want to be able to differentiate yourself than people who are just dialing and trying to chat it up with

30:53 people. I think that's important and to have an understanding of what style person you're speaking to in terms of

31:02 the disc model. It helps because then you can give them pivot in their direction.

31:10 Um, and it makes it easier. That's probably more that's important. It's very helpful in the first call. It's very significant when you have more time.

31:19 Yeah.

31:20 You know, with an individual because again, people want to be heard. They don't want you to talk at them. They

31:28 want you to to they want to know that you're interested in them.

31:34 And that makes a huge difference asking the right questions at the right time

31:41 in the right sequence. In fact, let me just throw this out. Um, if you want to contact me

31:50 through my LinkedIn, uh, connect with me on LinkedIn or you have my email on my LinkedIn uh, profile page, judy.tibsler.com. t aib bi.com.

32:02 Um, if anyone has an interest, I'm going I can send you a little booklet that Sandler has. It's 100 questions the

32:10 Sandler way. So, kind of just jumpst starts you and it it breaks it down into in the beginning of a call, in the middle of the call, the end of the call.

32:20 You don't have to ask and memorize 100 questions. You just pick out two from

32:27 each of those sequences and make them your own. Use your own words. But it makes it easier for

32:34 particularly for not only people who are new to selling, but for people who are um been at it for a while because some

32:43 people say, "Well, I've been selling for 30 years." Well, maybe you've been doing the same thing for 30 years. This the landscape has changed significantly. So

32:52 maybe time to brush up, you know, some of your selling skills. And I always suggest that people remember that

33:00 selling is not an activity. It's a profession and as such you have to build the right

33:08 skills in order to be a professional seller.

33:11 Love it. Uh learned a ton during this conversation. Before we wrap it up, what would be the final point or summary that

33:19 you want to drive home for people who are listening in? Could you repeat that?

33:25 Oh, sorry. Well, what's what's you know learned a ton. There's a bunch to go over, but what would be like your final drive at home point that you want people

33:33 to walk away with and make sure, hey, if you learned one thing, this is the big thing to take away from the the conversation. Be courageous.

33:41 Yeah. Be courageous and realize that no one has ever in the whole history of the

33:49 human race, no one has ever been born nor will anybody ever be born who has

33:55 your unique talents, qualities, personality.

34:01 I mean, each of us are unique and when you're speaking to people and you're you're trying to engage them to

34:09 find out if you they have a problem and you have a solution to that problem, that's one of the best things that you can do because you're making their life

34:18 easier. Um, so there's a saying at Sailor, have equal business stature.

34:27 You're speaking to another professional.

34:29 Don't go in there with your hat in your hand and not be confident. People are attracted to confident individuals. So

34:38 if you need some additional skill building, you need some additional role playinging, do what you have to do to build that confidence so you come across being the best version of you.

34:51 Starts with the behavior, right? Yes.

34:54 Yeah. Cool. Well, Judy, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time to share this wisdom with us. Oh, my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. I hope folks get a couple of good pointers from it. They will.