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The Problem With Sales Is Selling · The Expert Method

• speaker-0: Objections are not rejections. They are just unanswered questions. The more you sell, the less you will sell. You want people to be pulled towards you, not repelled by you. The reason you can't close them is because you didn't open them. speaker-1: So how does one go about opening that door, opening that paint? speaker-0: My job is not to sell you anything, my job is to help you make good, accurate informed decisions and get so damn good at understanding their world that you can articulate their problems better than they can. They will then automatically assume you have the solution. speaker-1: When you get on a sales call, you're usually going to find pressure on both sides. The seller wants to move the deal forward, and the buyer is trying to figure out whether or not they can trust the person in front of them. And a lot of salespeople respond to that pressure by selling harder. They explain more, they push the product, they can try to control the frame, handle objections, and get to the close. The problem is that the buyer can feel when the conversation is being steered towards the seller's outcome instead of the best decision for them. They start giving guarded answers. They hold back the real problems. And the seller ends up trying to close a door that they never actually opened. So how do you sell without making people feel sold to? To help answer that question, I'm excited to be joined today by St. Jin Craner. Sinjin is a rural sales coach who trains sales teams that sell to farmers, which means he works in a market where trust, patience, and buyer safety matter because the decisions are high stakes and the farmers are tired of being sold to. In our conversation, we discuss why the more you sell, the less you'll sell. And how to ask questions that make buyers feel safe, why closing problems often opening problems, and how specificity can make sales and marketing easier. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Sinjin Craner. Sinjin, thank you so much for being here. speaker-0: You're welcome in. Pleasure to be here. speaker-1: Absolutely. So St. Jin, you've said before that the problem with sales is selling. What do you mean by that? speaker-0: ⁓ the more you sell, the less you will sell. So ⁓ you want people to be pulled towards you, not repelled by you. So if you think about magnets and metaphors and you think about a positive terminal and a negative terminal, we're back at school and physics. Basic law is that basically the more you serve, the more you sell. And but if you sell, that's a negative and people don't like salespeople because they don't feel safe with salespeople. So there's two negatives which repulse someone versus the opposites, the polar opposites, which is being positive, which is serving. And then attracting what is perceived as negative, which is a cell. So I can't of often use a magnetic metaphor. speaker-1: I like it. So what does selling look like? And then we'll contrast that later with what serving looks like. speaker-0: Selling isn't about selling. Selling is actually about buying, and buying is about deciding. So if you want to get really good at sales, you've got to be really good at human behavior and psychology and human decision making. It's the laws of human nature. So your Robert Greens, your Dan Pinks, your ⁓ Dan A're's all those kind of guys, Danny Carlman, all those kind guys. So the more you serve, the more you sell. Like we call it serve to sell. That's our methodology. And obviously I train people that sell to farmers, you know, guys that sell. grain or machinery or fertil feed and farmers are very oversold to because everyone sees them with big, big, big farms and lots of assets. So you have to trade very, very carefully and you need to sell very softly and very non-assumptively. And the problem I find, particularly my North American clients, is they get some very happy clappy sales trainers that teach them to sell too hard. So what we do is we teach you to sell slow so you sell fast. And that means, and I know I'm throwing a lot right at the listeners straight away, but I want to give them as much value. is you need to stop selling and you need to start serving and when you do that you make your buyer feel safe. And you do that, then you're gonna make a lot more sales and we can unpack. speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. I would love to. I think just to kind of really make sure that the picture is clear for the listener, selling is like you have this thing, you're gonna do whatever you can to get this person to buy it, right? You're gonna just talk about this thing, you're really just gonna like push hard to get this person to buy this thing. Like you're just like, Look at this car, like look at this machine, right? Like talking about this thing nonstop and just like pushing it on them. Is that kind of the way you speaker-0: Yeah, totally, totally, a hundred percent. So you shouldn't be pushing anything. Because the more you push, the more you push them away. You need to pull them towards you by helping them understand that your job is to not sell them anything. Your job is to help them make good, accurate, informed decisions. Because you think about it, selling is the lowest form of sales intelligence. You sell the way you buy, you don't make any sales till someone buys, and no one buys till they decide. So we're about deciding, buying, and then selling. And so we have to like flip it and reverse it. And a lot of people just don't give thought to it because they're so self interested, because that's the survivorship bias of us all. We are very consumed about gathering resources and assets. So we are self-oriented. We're self serving, which makes us self-ish. We need to be selfless by serving rather than selling. And then our buyer feels safe and they go to a different part of the brain, which we can talk about as well. speaker-1: Yeah. And you talked about this idea of selling non assumptively. What do you mean by that? speaker-0: It means that I don't make any assumption that I am going to make a sale. My job is not to sell you anything. My job is to help you make good, accurate, informed decisions. So what I'm trying to do is detach from the outcome and attach to that process, and therefore the sale will then follow. If I do that right, Ian, in my world, more often than not the customer ends up closing themselves. Here's a mic drop for your listeners. Everyone s is obsessed by closing. Closing problems are about opening problems. The reason you can't close them is because you didn't open them. You've got a door behind you and it's closed. If I ask you to close that door, it's a physical impossibility for you to close that door. The only way you can close that door is by keeping it open, and the only way you keep something open is by keeping it safe. speaker-1: That is good. So the only way that you can close a deal is if you open the problems. And that comes from exploring through a conversation with a non-assumptive conversation with your client. Because if you're and this is something that I struggle with in sales, is I make all these assumptions that I know all these things about the prospect, the person I'm talking to, the problems that they're experiencing. Right. So I just like assume that and kind of project that onto them. But I actually haven't discovered that in a conversation with them. speaker-0: Don't make any assumptions. Test and validate. Like, don't make any assumptions. Best advice I give people, well, hopefully give the lessons lots of advice is never assume the sale. You don't know if they're going to buy or not. Your job is to help them decide if you can help them with a product, service, or course that you have or program. Your job is never to sell the thing that you have, it's to serve them and their needs and find out what they need, what problem they're trying to solve, and how will they know when they've got it. speaker-1: Yeah. And that idea of not assuming is something that I'm learning I need to apply in the role of being a podcast host. Right, like even as you're explaining, don't be an assumptive salesperson, I am then assuming like, okay, so what the opposite of not assuming would look like is like through asking questions is how you kind of open up that pain. So I'm gonna take this principle of not assuming and instead ask the question to you. So how does one go about opening that door, opening that pain? speaker-0: Okay, I'm gonna give you a great question every listener can use straight away. It's one my favorite questions. So you have an inbound lead and your guys and girls will know what I mean by inbound lead. I don't do explain that. And they come to you through your meta ad or your funnel or your whatever. And I say, Ian, hey, thanks so much for reaching out, really appreciate it. Hey, quick question before we get into how amazing and wonderful we are, which will probably bore you senseless. Could you tell me, like, why are you potentially even looking at something like this now? I did quite a few things there. Did you notice what I did? ⁓ Mm. speaker-1: I saw like obviously I I focus mostly on the question itself. Like why are you even interested? Like why speaker-0: How did I lay it up though? How did I lay up the question? I framed it. speaker-1: Right. Okay. speaker-0: What I'm doing is first of all, I'm being a good guy and a good human being, because, you know, if you're a good human being, you're a good salesperson. And we'll talk about not being a salesperson, but being something else. What you're doing is you are intrigued and you're curious. And you go in there and I say, Ian, hey, thanks so much for reaching out, really appreciate it. Before I get into the whys and wherefores and baffle you of how amazing and wonderful we are, do you see what I just did there? I disarmed you. 'Cause what I'm doing is you've got a click and were response in your brain. It's a pattern recognition prediction machine that goes, This guy's gonna sell me something. So immediately I meet you in your mind and we move you to a different part of your mind. So that's why I do that. And then I say, Hey, so tell me and then I ask permission, like a good chat show host does before they ask their questions, hey, Ian, tell me, why are you potentially even looking at something like this now? If you listen to how I said it, it was very curious. It was very soft and it was very non assumptive. There's a lot of psychology in that question, which the word potentially signals a lot of non assumption. And it keeps your buyers safe and it puts them to the right part of brain. So we're teaching our students all the time how to make sure because when you're dealing with big burly farmers, men or women, they're bloody sold to all the time. They don't want to be sold to, they want to be served. And they have making critical decisions that can affect their livelihood, their family, and they could even lose the farm if they make a bad crop or machinery decision. So we have to tread very softly, very sensitively, if that's such a word, with our market. And it's the same for anyone because everyone's sick of being sold to. And as soon as you sound the same, you'll get treated the same. I always say if you sell like a commodity, you'll be treated like one. So you have to pass an interrupt using disarmament, using framing, anchoring, future pacing, we can get all of those things. Just make them feel at ease. And you immediately when I say, Hey, Ian, Hey, before we talk about how amazing and wonderful we are and bore you senseless about that, you go, ha ha. He already understands where I'm at my mind. I meet you in the mind and then we move to the next place together. So that's where we're meeting you in your mind and aligning with the buyer as opposed to being out of step with the buyer. speaker-1: Yeah. And then using that word intentionally, the potentially, or why are you potentially interested? Because you're not assuming that they're interested. You're just saying subtle subtly potentially speaker-0: And even and it sounds semantic and there's a Jeremy Minor, but he does some good stuff too, and this these linguistic markers is don't say interested. Just say, hey, so tell me why are you potentially even looking at something like this now? Be nondescript, be quite vague, because you want to keep them safe. You don't want to back them in the corner, because you back someone in the corner, they they will either fight or flight with you. And you then elicit the back part of the brain. What we're doing is, hey, so tell me why you potentially even look at this now, like what's the problem you're trying to solve? See, I just did a two question, I did a two for one where I did a disguise question with a cover question. So I mean I've got questions like we spend all day around questions, which we don't. But you just ask some simple, well-worded questions using the right tone, which is curiosity, which is before we came on saying, be more interested in them, you are interested in you. And again, the best advice is be more interested in the person in front of you than the product or service you sell. You'll make more sales doing that, way more sales. speaker-1: Yeah, because that interest, I would assume, if you're more interested in that prospect where you're going to spend more time asking questions about them than you are in describing and pitching this thing that you're selling, right? And you're going to get to the information that is absolutely critical, which is the information you need about them and their situation, the problems they're experiencing, the things that they want to achieve, which is that opening of the doors that are required to make the ⁓ the close later on. speaker-0: So what happens is some of your listeners might have been trained and with all good intent. And they might have been trained by, right, hey, Ian, I've got fifteen minutes before my next call. The purpose of our call, and they're already controlling the frame, is to say to find out if we can help you and if we're a good fit or not. Is that okay? There's nothing wrong with that. But the problem is you're already talking about your needs, not theirs. And so I think sometimes that gets what I call a back of brain amygdala type response. So Ian What I'm gonna do is I'm not gonna force you through a kind of like rigid process where we tick all the boxes. Really the whole purpose of this call is to find out if we can help you or not. So I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions. And if it makes sense to have another conversation, we can. And if not, then we'll love and leave as friends and I'll point you in the right direction and wish you well. Are we good with that? So it's a different way of opening the call. So I think what's happening is I'm not being unkind to North America. I'm obviously in New Zealand, but I trained UK, Ireland. Australia, Canada, America, so train all over the world. And I'm very fortunate to do so. But I find North American sales training has conditioned a very hard kind of closing, very aggressive. And you know the kind of guys and girls I'm talking about on the internet and the internet Insta bros, it's really bad. 'Cause they don't make their bars feel safe. And actually it's harming those people to make more sales. speaker-1: Yeah. And I can tell you from first hand experience in college I had a quote unquote internship where I was basically just like an unpaid contractor where I was just cold calling all day. And like the sales training that I got in that job was like it's all about maintaining frame and being like the one that like can step away and right just being like all this posturing and like part of our script was that thing it's like, Hey, I only have fifteen minutes, like da da da, like we're gonna qualify and see if you're even a good fit to work with us kind of thing. Like That did not work for me and it sounds like it really just doesn't work in general. speaker-0: Doesn't work per se. I mean, 15 minutes, if you're selling a big item, you know, everyone talks about sales list and not having sales calls and G docs and all that stuff. And we can't get into that rabbit hole. But the reality is you need to sell slow to sell fast. If you're selling something that's of a significant value, you've got to take your time and make sure you give them the time. Because fifteen minutes sounds like you're turning over a table at a restaurant. I tell you what, if you turn over a table in a restaurant with me, I purposely slow down. Yeah. speaker-1: Absolutely. One of the things you mentioned earlier, you talked about the click were response or click run response. That did that come from the book Influence? speaker-0: Yeah, it did. That was my first book I read. It was a seminal book. Dr. Robert Caudini or Ciaudini. It was the first book I read on human behavior and that opened me up to all the wonderful books that are behind me now. It is a click and whir response, but what more and more I learnt about the brain and Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow is a beautiful, beautiful book to read about human behavior. That if you ask me about another book that was seminal for me, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow by Danny Carmen. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for that work, who's the only behavioral economist of his time to win that win that prize. And the click and word is the brain is a pattern recognition prediction machine. So the brain always wants to know what's happening next because it ensures our survival. So if they don't know what's happening next, this is why I ask permission to ask one of my questions so you are ready to respond. So I don't stun or surprise you and put you in the back of your brain. So I say, Ian, so tell me, could I ask another question around? And then I ask the question. Or when you said around key word. Could you help me understand that a bit better? So I'm always signaling not only respect, but true intent to serve, not to sell. So what I'm trying to do is make sure I break the pattern that your brain is trying to pick up because you're going, this guy's going to be a sales guy. 95% of people I meet sell to me. I'm sick of being sold to. So don't sell them, serve them and be different, and they'll treat you differently. So that click and wear thing, you've got to break it because. It's just a survival mechanism. It happens in milliseconds, you know. I i we do it with job interviews, you know, we make up our mind on people within the first thirty seconds. speaker-1: Yeah. Random thing to bring up, but it like that click were response autonomous nervous system, just automatic, you know, just things happening in the brain actually really impacts memory too, which is like a fun little nugget that I'll share. But, you know, ninety percent of the time our brains are just running on autopilot, not really capturing any of the information that we're taking in. We remember things when they kind of break the patterns of what we're used to. That's why like you can drive from home to work every single day, right? And not have any memory of it. Like you can be completely checked out because it's just your brain is running on autopilot and it's like it's trying to save energy, right? It's trying to save as much energy as it can. So it just runs on that automatic system for as long as possible. And there's a really fascinating podcast by ⁓ Andrew Huberman all about memory. And that just like blew my mind. It's like Yeah. speaker-0: Well, you if we want to get real funky, I mean, that's actually Dr. Robert Cialdini's stuff. Sorry, Danny Carmen, thinking fast, thinking slow. So we basically got system one, system two brain that you're talking about. So basically our brain's actually run on ninety five percent autopilot. So it's really, really hard. And so what happens is ⁓ the brain detects difference. I'll say it again. The brain only detects difference. When you think about marketing, infinite scroll, all the noise, all the Instagram, everything else. If it's different, I hook curiosity intrigue, they might stop and l watch it. But of course, you've only got about three seconds to hook them in or not. So this validates everything that you're saying. And then Dr. Andrew Hoodman, who I'm also a massive fan of, he talks about the mid-anterior cingulate cortex, the MACC. So here's a little fun fact for you and the listeners. So when you understand how the brain works, that thing grows like a muscle the more you do difficult things. So if you go and look at David Gobin's brain and they did an MRI scan of his brain, his mid in mid-anterior cingulate cortex, his MACC will be bigger than most, Droco Willink, because they've done difficult things. And doing difficult things is where you get your confidence from and you need a lot of confidence and belief to be successful in sales. So you need to have a big ACC. So there you go. There's a little nugget back to you. speaker-1: I love it. I love it. So obviously learn all this neuroscience, learn how people work in psychology and that stuff and then go do hard things, right? That's a that's some two uncommon pieces of advice on how to become a better salesperson. I love it. And another anecdote that I'll add about where confidence comes from is another line that I've taken. I think this is from Ed Milette originally, but I have this written down all over my place. But it's ⁓ confidence comes from keeping the promises that you make with yourself. A hundred but I think like yeah. And I think a part of that is like you okay, you're gonna make this promise that you're gonna do this thing and then you know, the MACC probably grows when you when you do that. But ⁓ yeah, it's another little anarchy. speaker-0: Got it. I these are just wonderful things that you're sharing with the listeners. So what it happens is I talk about a psychological contract. And psychological contract is what we talk about is the standards that you set for yourself. You have an inbuilt standard like a spirit level. Not spirit as in woo-woo, but like you have a standard. And when you violate the standard you set for yourself, you feel shame. So it's like when you don't win a deal, it's because you didn't plan or prepare for the call or you didn't ask the questions or you you didn't record the call and then deanalyse the call with AI or whatever tool you use. So what happens if you feel shame self? So you say, I'm gonna go for run or I'm gonna go to the gym or I am gonna read that book from John C. Maxwell like I did this morning before the kids get up. You make sure you don't break the promises you make to yourself because you actually self-harm in a psychological sense, because you break that psychological contract. So you end down at shame self, not future self. We don't want shame self. You don't win there, you win in future self by doing the things that you need to do. And Hormosy and all the other guys that we all love here. that a lot people will be familiar and follow, he says, just do the damn reps. Just do the work. Do what needs to be done. And if you just do what you know needs to be done, you will literally be in the top ten percent. speaker-1: Yeah. Easily. Right. Like you know that's not the issue that exists in the world is there's no lack of understanding of what you need to do or what we need to do. It's just the lack of actually executing and doing it for long enough to achieve the result. And like that's the messy middle where it's just the hard part is in the actually doing it and having the patience to stick with it long enough to achieve the result, whatever you speaker-0: Yeah. I mean I've been doing this I've been almost doing this for ten years, formally and formally for twenty. The business is thirteen years old. I've been probably doing it for ten. We're only really just starting a sort of hockey stick now. You know, we're starting to get into a good position where we're known, we're an expert, we're a niche, we're, you know, beginning to be known for that. But it's taken a lot of time. But I could have given up several times. There's several times where I couldn't even pay the mortgage, you know, and it frightened me. And, you know, sleepless nights and all those things. But that's an entrepreneur's journey, you know, where there's risk, there's reward. speaker-1: Yeah. What do you think you were lacking in those moments where things got really tight? You almost missed payments on your mortgage that you know now? Like like what did you pick up and learn from those experiences where 'cause I've had the same thing happening with me with this new business, right? Like I'm starting this new business off. I've had months where like things were really tight. And ⁓ yeah, I don't know, in your own journey, like what did you what were you missing then in that moment where things weren't working out that are that you fixed today? speaker-0: Great question. I didn't have perpetual lead generation. I didn't have predictable, reliable and predictable way of generating leads. So what was happening is I was oscillating. So I was really busy working on the business I got and then not spending enough time getting new business. And so I was trying to do it all on my own. And that's very frightening because w I had three kids under five, massive mortgage, about three hundred about just under three quarters of a million mortgage at the time. really, really frightening. I'd put a lot of risk on. I'd left a job that was paying almost a quarter of a million of dollars because I was a good sales guy. And I jumped from a skyscraper to a bungalow and it was scary. And it was really, really scary. And what I did is I realized that when I was in those tight situations, I hadn't surrounded myself with enough options and a perpetual pipeline. I hadn't been prospecting enough. I got busy on the business, not in the business, cliches aside, and I oscillated. So I was so busy working on the business I got, I forgot to then go on campus and prospect. And it wasn't until I put a new lead generation system in in place, that system where I then was able to go, it's okay, I've got other leads and other prospects that were coming in. The other thing was cash flow and getting paid in advance. So obviously giving an incentive, ⁓ you know, payment advance discount to people that pay me in advance. So I got the money in the account and we secure the training and the diaries. Cause remember, I I do what your listeners do. I'm a coach, I'm a I'm a trainer. And you know, I've had some really good training from lots and lots of people. But yeah, that's the that's the guts of it. Cash flow and lead lead flow. Yeah. 'Cause obviously lead flow cash flow comes from lead flow. speaker-1: Yeah. And when you have perpetual leads, I would imagine that you were able to sell more effectively because I've been in that situation where I'm not getting a lot of leads, right? I have no idea where the next project is coming from. I don't know when I'm gonna get my next opportunity. So when I'm in that sales conversation, it just makes me so attached and so wound up. It's like this deal has to go through. I'm just speaker-0: And you put all that pre and then you convey all that pressure and dump it on your prospect and they feel it and then they go into fetal position and curl up and go into the back of their brain. Cause they go, This guy wants to deal with them all. The thing about negotiation, the person that needs to deal the least is the one that wins. So you have to surround yourself with as much options as your prospects. So for me, we go off some pretty big deals now in Canada and the US and we're, you know, this sort of specialized rural training company in New Zealand. And we, you know, we sort of go really well in New Zealand. We're We're pretty well known in Australia Australia, fortunately, and we've worked hard to do that. As you start to go in the northern hemisphere, into North America and UK and Ireland where I'm from originally, you know, we're an unknown and we we have to work really, really hard at that. But the point I'm making is more lead flow leads to deal flow, which leads to cash flow. So you don't need you can't be needy and desperate because you overly invest in a sale if you don't have enough opportunities. You have to have as many options. You have to be continually prospecting and canvassing, and that is both automated and manual. And you know, you have to have many legs to your lead generation stool. That's another thing that I learned. You know, you've got to really diversify like a like a portfolio. You wouldn't have all your money in stocks for one asset class. You know, you've got a podcast in that's going well for you. I've got a podcast, but I've also got blog, I've got SEO, I've got an AI tool, I talk at conferences, I write books, I ⁓ speak to media, you know, I go to field days, demo days in my world. You know, I'm making sure there are many legs to my stool so that stool is secure and certain so when I sit on it it doesn't collapse. You know, it's gotta have a minimum of three legs. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting because I I a hundred percent understand that idea, right? Having many different channels where you're bringing in leads. But then you look at or you listen to somebody like Alex Ramosy, he talks about like one product, one channel, one niche into like a million dollars. Right. Like he talks about like and then you can add like your second. But he's really disciplined on like focusing on one channel and only having one means of generating. I'm not sure. Obviously, I haven't had the chance to talk to them and ask it in this question directly. on like how seriously he takes that? Because I know obviously in his business now today they're using literally any every possible channel to generate leads. But what do you think about that? Like the balance between like, okay, when you're on the road to that first million dollars, should you really just be focusing on just maximizing and optimizing one channel for your lead generation? speaker-0: So I'm probably gonna say something that's controversial, which probably goes against the grain of what the the good work that Alex and Layla do, okay? So I think you need to have three legs to your stool. I don't think you have one. If you've only got one, it's a pogo stick. I don't sit on pogo sticks because they fall over. I need certainty and security and stability when it comes to lead generation. So I want three legs and then I become a bloody octopus when I've got the resources. So find out what your first leg is, then the second, then the third, and then grow fourth, or fifth, or sixth, seventh, eighth. We've probably got eight, nine, ten legs to our stall now. But you're right, they are right only when you get to a certain number. So the problem is if you'd like if you're like meta ads or in store or whatever else, as soon as they shut down your account, if you haven't got those emails, you're done. Like we've got a really, really big farming group here called New Zealand Farming. It's got 120,000 people in the group. But they've got bugger all emails. So if they shut it down, and Meta and their wise wisdom goes, ⁓ you said something that was wrong or hate speech or God forbid, they'll shut it down. They've lost their whole membership and their whole community. So I don't think you should have one. I should you should have three. And I just use the metaphor of a stool. You've got to sit on a stool, it's got to be secure and certain and stable. Why would you not do that for your business? You wouldn't put all your money in one asset class when you're investing, but you don't spread it so far across that you're distracted because I I'm really enjoying this conversation because hopefully it's useful. It's like there's always shiny things. There's always something else and the TikTok and this and then the new platform and then the, you know, the Grok or the Gemini or the ⁓ Chat GBT ads and everything else. Master a few things really, really well rather than one thing, and then graduate and then move. Because those three legs will get you I can tell you what after e legs are, 'cause you might be interested. In our world, it's the podcast, a weekly frickin' email. And on meta ads. It's all three. If I relied on meta ads, we've had our account shut down twice for whatever reason and it's a nightmare to get it done up. It's ridiculous. I've got no diversification. It's a risk mitigation thing. So a podcast is really good, but you know the best one? The first one I started was was wi with a weekly email. Just a simple text only, not Starburst, not MailChimp where it looked like a sales email. It was just a serve to sell educational based content email. I cannot tell you how much money that's weekly email has been. I've been sending that email for thirteen years. ⁓ religiously, every Tuesday morning. And it's made me a lot of money. Because your email list is everything. Like your list is your lifeline. speaker-1: Absolutely. And that's, you know, another problem when you rely strictly on those channels like meta ads or Instagram, Facebook, any of these social media platforms, if that is where you engage with and c communicate with your audience only, like you could lose that overnight, right? You could just lose your whole account. You'd lose it. You don't own that. speaker-0: You don't own it. You own your list. Your list is in terms of your business multi ⁓ valuation or on multiple, they're gonna look at your list. How big's your list. I mean, we're we're very niche, right? We think probably there's only sort of about we think the research really about like maybe seventeen to twenty thousand rural sales managers or rural business owners over the world. We've got twelve thousand of them on our list. speaker-1: Wow. I love it. What do you think is like the real value of being so niche down? Cause I when I see your business when I did my research on you, I loved it immediately because it's just like you're so niche, right? You're not a sales coach for anybody, right? You're a sales coach that teaches people that sell to farmers. Like that is a beautiful niche. And that's something I learned in my marketing agency is the value of being niche down. But what do you see as the value of being so specific and niche? speaker-0: Everyone is sh scared about niching or niching down, as we say. I say, do you want to be the general practitioner? Do you want to be the GP do you want to be the specialist? I'd rather be the cardiologist that has a waiting room of people queuing to see me and I charge a premium because I'm really good at what I do, because I'm a specialist. When you go to a GP or doctor, normally they're guessing. They're generic. That's why we call them general, general practitioners. A specialist is often referred. You need to work really, really hard and don't worry. You know, like Alex spoke to you about, is like choose one niche, one avatar, one ICP, and get so damn good understanding their world that you can articulate their problems better than they can. They will then automatically assume you have the solution. So you are being sought after, you're not seeking. So it then, you know, the podcasts, the books, you know, that's I've had to bleed my brain, you know, writing on planes, not playing Candy Crush or movies. Which I don't do because they don't make you any money. But I let you write all my books on planes. And, you know, like you, when I started off, and I'm still on a learning journey, we're not the finished article, far from it. I'm just trying to be consistent. And I'm consistent about investing in myself and showing up for myself and serving. And, you know, like your beautiful podcast here, Ian, you know, you're starting out, you've had some amazing guests on there. And you're serving your listeners and you're reciprocating. And hopefully if you're a value to them at some point they might might return and reciprocate that favor. So it's so, so important to be consistent in what you do ⁓ and not give up. speaker-1: Absolutely. Consistency is everything, right? And being consistent for a long enough time horizon will lead to success inevitably. ⁓ as long as you're working on like a productive flywheel of some kind. But yeah, going back to that idea of like the value of being in a niche, granted, I'm very early on in my career, but we found like in my marketing agency, the niche that we stumbled into was iron worker trade unions, right? There's two hundred and eighty of them in the country. Very small. speaker-0: Nice. speaker-1: But nobody was serving them. Like nobody had obviously there were a lot of people that could help them. There were a lot of people that could set up their Go High level account, build them a funnel, run ads for them, create content for them. There were lot of people that could have done that. Right. But just nobody was building a tailored solution for that niche specifically and and intentionally reaching out to them. Yeah. And we found it. Right. And we were able to do that and we were able to dominate that niche because nobody had a tailored solution for speaker-0: Is that the marketing agency that you previously exited? Yeah. That is so amazing. Because the other thing, sorry, I lost my train of fork because I'm I'm so keen to sort of add as much value as I can to your listeners. Is when you are a specialist, you have a magnetic quality. Because what you do is you actually attract the right customer and repel the wrong one. And that's the importance of positioning. It's not branding, it's positioning. Branding is cosmetic, positioning is strategic. So speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: What I mean by that is don't worry about all your colours and your logos and everything else. Get really good on your positioning because the first job is to repel the wrong customers and the second job is to attract the right ones. We all forget the first job, but we always think of the second one. So get your positioning right strategically. And then what happens is when you start writing your emails, your blogs, your Facebook's, your Insta, your Reels, your carousels, whatever, you are literally talking to them and meeting them in their mind. You know, when I write emails, success sounds like I get an email from somewhere like in Saskatchewan or Wisconsin where they go, Have you been listening to us? You were you in our sales meeting yesterday? And that means that I know I'm doing the right thing. Cause I turn up to conference at the AgriTech conference in Australia, go, You're the only email we read each week and don't unsubscribe to, because every week you say something that pokes the bear and it connects, as Robert Collier talks about, the old copywriter. You've got to study the old copywriters. Mm-hmm. Robert Collier says this beautiful quote. He says you must connect with the conversation happening in your customer's head. And that is really good advice. And you've now got all these beautiful AI tools, but please do not use your AI slop. Have a point of view. Get it to be your coach, your aspiring partner, and get it to think better. You always need to set his persona to challenge you, not to be second and go, ⁓ yeah, that's great and everything else. Because if you are crap, it will just multiply that crap. speaker-1: Yeah. I work with AI now, right? And you have to have the seed of your own unique idea. And then yeah, you need to prompt it, right? The red teaming prompt, the high signal direct communication prompt if you're going to use AI. But yeah, the niching down makes everything so much easier because you are just focused on serving one very specific type of person. And then that informs, okay, what do we say on our ads? Well, we are speaking directly to this person. We know exactly what their problem is. And then you get to work with the same amount of type of customer over and over and over again and they all start to describe the problems they're experiencing in the same way, using the same language, and then you can use that in your marketing and that's going to resonate more clearly with them. And ⁓ yeah, that idea of you must connect with the conversation that's happening with your prospect head is beautifully said. It rhymes a lot with Hermosy's idea of whoever can articulate the pain that their prospect is experiencing more clearly is going to be the one that is most likely to win the deal. This is this speaker-0: Where he's got that from, it's his translation. He's very, very well read. He's Jay Abraham. And that's where that comes from. So this is the thing. I have another coach. I'm going to shout him out. His name's James Kemp. He's actually a Kiwi. He lives in Bali these days. And he works with Tucky Moore Black Belt and stuff. And I've been trained, very lucky to be trained by both of them in the early days. And James says specificity spits cash. And because he's a humble Kiwi. He probably, I don't think it was his phrase, but he says specificity spits cash. And so I moved it and said the way I translate it is. specificity sells, generic repels. So you're saying climbs, birds will have a fox together. So we say these things so people remember them. But the more specific you are, the more money you're gonna make. And you need to be hyper specific in a very noisy AI schlot world. So you if you can really zero on on a very, very specific problem. And I honestly I applaud you and your partner, the the marketing agency of iron worker trade unions with a TAM of two hundred and eighty. Fantastic. It makes your job so much easier because you instead of trying to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. I mean, it's like trying to basically take a shotgun and shoot a target that is a million miles wide. Like you need to literally crosshair on a one very, very specific audience. And then you become the subject matter expert and that's where you have your premium positioning, and that's where you get your GP and your cash flow and all those good things happen. speaker-1: Yeah, a hundred percent. And it's just like on the operation side, which is where I that was my big role on the on the in our partnership was I was one of the operations guys. So when you're coming down and you're getting ready to like scale your team, that all comes down to standardization, right? You need to have a very standardized offer because the standardized offer can create a standardized fulfillment process if you're a service business. You can only standardize things if you're selling the same offer every time. And you can really only sell the same offer every time and fulfill it pretty much the same way if you're selling to the same kind of person. Right. So just Being super specific, being super niche down makes everything really easy. And I think the big concern that we had is like, ⁓ well, we're gonna really limit ourselves. But it's like if you just sit down and do the math, if you get a hundred customers paying you three hundred dollars a month, that's thirty thousand dollars in revenue. Like that's pretty good. And you can just, you know, charge more or get more than a hundred, right? Like there's very few niches that only have a hundred people. Yeah. That we could talk all day about the the value speaker-0: ⁓ I I just think I think I've I've only been able to pronounce the word in the last few years through the continuous repetition. Specificity sells. The biggest mistake I see in marketing is people not being specific enough. It's like be more specific. You're being generic and generic, there's already too much noise out there. It's crazy. You're just not you're not cutting through. You're just adding to the noise. The signal is the specific. speaker-1: Yeah, a hundred percent. We just had Chris Fenning on, was our last podcast guest, and his whole expertise is built around being able to explain your ideas simply. And I think another thing that we could add as a part of this conversation here today is simple and specific. Right? Make it really specific and simple to understand for the people that you're trying to communicate with. I love it. ⁓ yeah, sweet. So a big part, a big issue thing to overcome when you're selling is objections. Where you talk about preventing objections before they even come up. How do you do that in the process without like sounding corny, defensive? speaker-0: The answer is so simple. I just ask better questions and then I nullify the objections. So you wanna be on the front foot, the back foot. Now I say, Ian, Ian, thanks so much for reaching out for us. Really appreciate it. Before we get into whys and wherefores and how amazing and beautiful our products are, I do need to let you know that we are not the cheapest option. See what just did there. What I'm doing is I've nullified you cannot ask for cheap now. But equally, we're not the most expensive. So you'll be able to find trainers that are much more expensive of us, and you'll find trainers that are cheaper us. What we try to do is we'll try to be very fair and competitive on your potential commitment. So if we could start there, then we can work out if we've got a solution for you or not. Is that okay? So you see what I'm doing there? I'm framing it. Let me give you another gift for the listeners. Everyone's petrified of No one does any cold calling anymore. It should be warm calling. An outbound does work, but you've got to have a good script. But when it comes to objections, objections you need to reframe objections. I'm going to say this really clearly and simply. Objections are not rejections. They are just unanswered questions. All you have to do is ask the right question at the right time to the right person in the right way, for rights, you'll nullify almost every objection. Let me give you another example. You get the higher authority. I've got to speak to my wife, my partner, my girlfriend, boyfriend, father in law, son, whoever. Dog. Hey, Ian, sounds like you and I are on the same page. Before we get too much further and ahead of ourselves, could I ask, who else is potentially involved in a decision like this? And what would they need to see from us? Now what I've just done there is I've just done two things. I've nullified the buying committee, the high authority, and I've also built the business case in two very easy questions. So people probably need to go back and listen to that. But we have like hundreds of questions like this. But how you ask the question is important is what the question is. speaker-1: Yeah. And would you say the only way to get good at how you ask? Because that is so important, right? That's important in sales and it's also important in content creation, right? It's like you could have an amazing script for awesome video, but if you say it in a completely monotone way, like it's not going to resonate with anybody. But when it comes to sales, is there any way to develop the how you say it other than just speaker-0: Yeah. Hat tip to Jeremy Minor. I think he does a really good job and he's very, very good at what he does. And he talks about different tones. I only have one tone. It's not monotone. It's curiosity. Curiosity is the tonic to tone. So the more curious you are, the more money you make. Because curiosity opens doors and criticism closes them. Don't force people down a funnel or make it difficult. Be a good human being. Lean in. Be curious. Detach yourself from the outcome, attach yourself and process. Ask them. So when you heard the questions, I asked them with such a curious tone. Because I'm generally interested in you. And then you feel that, you sense that, because feelings are very important in sales, right? How you make people feel. There's a lot of physiological and neurological reasons why we say the things we do, because they light up different areas of the brain. Literally, different words light up different parts of brains. We know this from FMRI scans. So it's very important how you say things and the words you use. If you think it's verbiage, Or just, you know, selling ice to Eskimos and it's just words, then y you need to get real and and start studying human behaviour. speaker-1: Yeah. Man, yeah, so much to unpack. I'll definitely have to have you back for another conversation if you're open to it. But ⁓ before I get to my last question, a recurring question, I ask every guest, Sinjin, how can people get in touch with you? speaker-0: It's rural salessuccess.com or just one word. And in there are books, podcasts, all the bits and bobs. If you want to jump on my email, see how I do it, or the books, or the funnels, just just go for it. And if you are by chance a rural business owner or a rural sales manager whose team isn't performing, then we'd love to help. speaker-1: Absolutely. So ruralsales success dot com we'll have the link to that and all of your social media platforms in the description. So go check that out. Sinjin, my final question is a recurring question that I ask all my guests. If you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why? speaker-0: Stop selling and be consistent. speaker-1: Yeah, and I think stop selling and be consistent. And I think the why behind that is pretty evident in the last forty minutes of this podcast. So if you need the explanation, go back, restart this one. But Sinjin, thank you so much for the time. speaker-0: You're welcome in. I really enjoyed it. speaker-1: Thank you for listening. The main thing I'm taking away from my conversation with Sinjin is as a salesperson, you should approach your sales conversations as an opportunity to help somebody make a better decision. That sounds simple, but it changes the whole job of you as the seller. If the goal is just to move the deal forward, the conversation gets pulled towards your you as the seller's outcomes. And the buyer can feel that. And they start protecting themselves in conversations with you. They give safer answers and hold back the real problems. And then you as the seller end up trying to close something that never really opened, right? You need to open the doors of pain before you can close the deal. But when the conversation is built around and you come in with the frame of just trying to help the buyer think clearly, the seller has to slow down, you ask better questions, and you can make it a safe environment where the truth can come out. That is where selling really starts to become less about pressure and more about responsibility and trust. If you want to get connected with Sinjin, you can find his website, podcast, and LinkedIn in the description of this episode. And if you run a coaching program, course, or have a book and you want to make it easier for your clients to get results, download the free program execution system toolkit in the description. It'll show you how to install what I call execution infrastructure, which guides your clients through the work that you assign them to do, making it easier for them to get results. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.