Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Art of Cerebral Selling | David Priemer - Author, Sales Leadership Coach & Keynote Speaker

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Lessons - The Art of Cerebral Selling | David Priemer - Author, Sales Leadership Coach & Keynote Speaker · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, we dive deep into the modern art of cerebral selling.
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  Discover the key components, messaging, discovery, objection handling,
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  negotiation and leadership. Learn how empathy, science-based tactics,
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  and mindful execution can help you connect with customers and drive sales success.
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  Let's break down what the current modern day iteration of cerebral selling is, because now
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  you have a book out, you have a course that's been broken down in time, pretty sure six different
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  components. What is the full complete cerebral selling when you teach somebody how to sell this way?
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  Well, it's funny. When you start a business like mine, when you're focused on training,
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  it's not just about the content, because there's lots of great content out there. I often
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  times will focus just as much on the delivery mechanism and the retention, because people forget.
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  Actually, as a consumer of sales training over the years, where the sales trainer comes in and does
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  it, the thing for two days, you forget most of it, and this has been proven out. What I do is I
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  focus on a particular topic, like messaging, and we focus on that, and then I leave you to
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  execute those tactics in the field for two, three weeks before I come back and I teach you something
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  else. We focus on the fundamentals, messaging, discovery, objection handling, negotiation,
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  leadership, focus, and in each case, we focus on science-based tactics,
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  executed with the right empathy and tone. It's especially relevant now when you think about
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  the current buying climate, whatever it is you say you do, there's a million people that will say
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  the same thing. At least, now you think you're this delicate snowflake and you're unique from
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  everyone else, maybe you are, but to your customers, you just all sound the same.
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  So, no one really cares what it is you do, and a lot of times when I say,
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  oh, Scott, what are you doing? You're like, oh, we're a platform to it. No one cares about your
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  stupid platform. I'm saying that the best possible. No one cares about your platform. People walk
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  around, caring about their problems and their lives, and not even features and benefits. So
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  speaking the language of pain and enemies, for example, if you say, so David, what do you do
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  at cerebral selling? It's a sales training and thought and practice, and I have a book and
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  then no one cares. So I said, like, I work with sales teams who realize that people
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  have to buy stuff, but they hate talking to salespeople. And now you've had a little
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  amine epiphany of like, oh yeah, I also hate talking to salespeople. Tell me more.
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  When you think about from a messaging perspective, it's not just having empathy for your
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  customers, but like really thinking like, how does my customers brain process this information
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  when I give it to them so that I maximize my chances of creating interest and conversion later
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  on down the road? And none of this is like, this is all completely about board. It's easy stuff.
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  It's stuff that you can execute with passion and conviction, but that's that's how it breaks
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  down in every step messaging discovery objection handling. There's all these like little
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  tips and tricks that you can manifest. I mean, I can give you more examples. No, I think
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  that's so what I wanted to do. So I saw there's messaging discovery objection handling negotiating
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  leading for growth, which I'm not sure what that actually means. And then I don't know what that
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  actually means, but it sounds interesting. And then it sounds great. I like the copy. It's great
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  copy for these little breakdowns and then mindful execution. So five and six, we can we can
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  shell those for a quick second. So messaging discovery objection handling negotiating.
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  These are things that if you sold anything to anybody and put an ounce of effort into researching
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  how to sell something, these will come up again and again and again. So let's break down the
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  cerebral approach, excuse me to the other three. So discovery objection and negotiation.
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  And how do you do that with the cerebral nuance? For sure, well, with discovery, I kind of think
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  about two things and you go, you go into a discovery call of the customer. Well, what is it that
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  you want to know? Like what do you want to talk about with that customer? Because there's like a
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  million things you could talk about, not all the things will be equally important and not all
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  things will have an equally emotional impact on the customer. So we talk about that. The other
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  thing we talk about is the science of self disclosure. How do you get people to tell you things
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  that they don't want to tell you? Like when I come to you and I say to Scott, like, what's your
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  budget for this project? Like even if you walked into a car dealership and the car salesperson is
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  like, so Scott, like, what's your budget? All of a sudden, you're the hamster wheels cranking
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  in your brain. I don't, I don't want to. Yeah, shield up. Why do I ask? And what are we going to
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  do with this information when I give it to them? What should I say? Should I low ball? Right? And
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  so we get into like the science of self disclosure and like how to kind of recognize the kind of
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  pictures that are going on inside people's heads and how to kind of approach those discussions.
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  With objection and handling, it's all about understanding before we even handle the objection,
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  it's understanding what will be the intent. So for example, the most common objection in sales
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  of any kind is too expensive, right? Everything's too expensive. If everything was free, life would be
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  good, but everything's not free. Unfortunately. So when someone says, oh, it's too expensive,
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  it's like, if I, if I ask you out on a date, Scott, and you don't want to go with me and I say,
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  so Scott, hey, let's, what we, we, we mad like Saturday night, I'm free. You want to go out
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  Saturday night and you don't want to go with me. And you say, oh, David, I'm sorry. I'm, I'm busy
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  on Saturday night, right? That's the equivalent of it's too expensive. So I don't know what,
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  what does that mean? Like, you want me to make it cheaper for you? You want to go out, you want to go
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  Sunday? You want to go Friday with that. That's right. So, well, exactly. So now if I, you tell me
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  your busy Saturday, and I say, well, hey, look, I know, Scott, I know I'm springing, uh, uh,
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  spring is on you on the last minute. Hey, look, what, what about next Saturday night? How's that
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  looking? Right? And now if you say, oh, okay, next Saturday night's good. Well, I realized this
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  was just a logistical issue. Like, that was your intent. It was to find a date that you're available.
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  Just like if I say, well, it's too expensive, but I say, well, what if I could show you how we can
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  make it more affordable? You're like, okay, great. But maybe that's not, maybe you never want to go
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  out with me and you say, oh, I'm really busy that Saturday night, too. And so now I'm creating a
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  deeper picture of like, okay, it's not a logistical issue anymore. It could be something else.
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  So it's the same thing when, you know, when someone launches a two expensive. So really,
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  this understanding of like when people have an objection, well, what do they try? What's the intent
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  behind it? And then what I teach, and this is, you know, one of the biggest, I say, mistakes
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  that people make when they think about objection handling is they think about objections as like a
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  two column chart. Customer says this, column A, then I say this, column B, I say this, and the
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  objection goes away. And like, that's not how, you know, that's not objections. Work objections
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  are like anything else. They're conversations. So what we try to do is we try to teach the elements
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  of that conversation and layering in it. There's 10 objection handling tactics I teach, but I also
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  they're in my book. So if you want to, you have my book, you can read about these tactics.
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  And the purpose of these tactics is that they can be combined together. So almost think of it.
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  If you're like a gamer and we were talking about, you know, playing in the arcades as kids
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  grown up, think about this as like buttons on your controller. So the, you wouldn't just like
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  stand there in the hit the A button, just to keep punching and punching and punching. Like,
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  you would have to combine that with a bunch of other tactics. And so that's what we teach. But,
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  you know, at the end of the day, messaging discovery, objection handling, the customer doesn't care
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  what part of the conversation that they're in. It's not like, oh, yes. And I remember as a kid
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  taking karate. And I remember, you know, the instructor would line us up and we'd be, you know,
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  across from someone else. And he would say, hey, great. So Scott, you're going to punch. And then
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  David, you're going to like block like this and then punch back. And I'm like, oh, okay. So we're
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  practicing this thing. And I remember saying, I said, you know, to the instructor, can I just ask
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  a question in real life, if we ever, if we ever in a fight, how, how will we know what the other
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  person's going to do? Right. It's like such a naive question. And like, oh, this is all choreographed,
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  right? And the reality is like sales is the same way. There's a choreographed like the customer
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  doesn't say we are now in the negotiation portion of the conversation, right? It's, it's very free
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  flowing. So, you know, I start with the fundamentals, the messaging and discovery. But once you get
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  objection to handling, you start leaping in discovery and messaging tactics back again. So
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  kind of all hangs together. And that's one thing that I think, um, any sort of, I guess, linear
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  sales, training or sales process really misses the mark on. It's assuming that, uh, that once
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  you finish that one step, it's on to the next. But in reality, a true conversation, you are,
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  you're always doing all of these things almost constantly. And to take it a step further, if,
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  if the, if the messaging and the objection handling, when you have those, when those pieces
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  are injected into a conversation with the customer, if that messaging and that objective handling
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  is not also, uh, built into your marketing messaging and your website copy and everything else
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  that the customer sees, it's like a, it has to be holistic. It has to be, everything has to be
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  feeding into everything else all the time. Because if it isn't, then you're assuming that the
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  customer will move on to the next step and the next step and the next step. And that's not how
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  people buy. That's, that's, that's, that's never how they buy. Absolutely. Um, look, you know, we're all
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  in sales, everyone, right? And it's funny because you sometimes you meet marketing people or people
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  who are in customer success or account management and they say, well, I'm not in sales. I got,
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  first of all, they think sales is a little gross, which is why they ended up, they's like, I'm,
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  I'm in these roles because I don't want to be in sales. But like, guess what? You are in sales.
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  We're all in sales. And in that alignment, I actually call the messaging supply chain. Um,
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  is so important because the worst thing is when sales says, oh, you know, we, we can do a BNC
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  and then they sign and then we, we move them to our support or customer success teams and they say,
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  what sales told you that? No, like, we can't do that. And so it's very important. Not just from
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  that perspective, it also, as you say, like on your website and, and marketing can play a tremendous
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  role as far as arming the sales team, disarming objections, creating the right copy. Like, if you're
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  the most expensive product on the market and the sales team is going to get that objection 90% of the
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  time, marketing can help by creating content, air cover perspectives, you know, to establish that
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  value, even before someone gets to a sales person, say that alignment is super next, next one,
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  negotiation, just a high level of what that looks like from again, from a cerebral perspective.
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  Yeah. So, you know, the way I kind of think about negotiation is also two parts. There's like
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  the preparation part and then there's the execution part. And people, when they think about
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  negotiation, typically what people think about is, how do I minimize concessions? Like, how do I
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  minimize what I give away? But they don't stop to think about oftentimes, like, okay, what's the
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  balance of power? How much power do I want to have going into the negotiation? What can I fall
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  back on? Who am I negotiating with? Like, what is it that I want? When at what point should I
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  stop negotiating? What's important to me versus what's important to them? Because the things that
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  are important to both of us may not be the same, right? Like my organization might be especially
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  in SaaS might be focused on getting like upfront, you know, contracts and multi-year agreements.
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  And the customer might be okay with that. They just need a better price, right? So, that's what
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  negotiation is. We focus a lot on like the preparation, like, what do you want to know going
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  into the negotiation? What are the levers? You know, what are you going to do? Because oftentimes
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  with sales, we just, we don't practice anything. We just go in and get our ass handed to us and
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  in real life, right? So doing some of that preparation and then, you know, the execution pieces.
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  But again, there's a lot of like discovery. For example, if in a negotiation, a customer says,
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  oh, we love your product, but it's too, it's just too expensive. What is that? Are we negotiating
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  now? Are we negotiating for, or I do not have I just not established the value? Maybe I did a
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  bad job of explaining what it is we did. So do I have to go back to the messaging? But to put a
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  bow on it because you asked about the leading for great as well, one of the biggest sources of
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  leverage that we have in our sales organizations is coaching, you know, the reps that get good,
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  proper coaching are statistically and scientifically proven to be more likely to exceed their quotas.
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  And I'll tell you like we would do sales rep surveys all the time and sales force in my companies
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  and we would ask reps who would say like, Scott, what's one thing that you wish? You know, you had
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  more of and Scott would say more time with my manager, I want them to listen to more of my calls,
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  write alums, all that kind of stuff. So sales leadership has a tremendous role to play in the
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  success of the organizations like we all, you know, extensively believe that. But sales leaders
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  actually get one third of the investment and training of their skills as their reps do. And
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  usually it's not how to be a better coach, how to give better feedback, how to create more
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  transparency, how to advocate for your team. But all of these things have, again, scientific
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  principles rooted in that can help us get better. And that's actually one of my favorite
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  leadership books. Actually, my favorite Simon Sinek book, I'm a big Simon Sinek fan,
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  is Leaders E. Last because he gets into kind of like the science and leadership. And so
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  that's, you know, what I do in my my academic background now, I teach sales leadership in my
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  practice as well as at some business schools. But sales leadership is such an under invested in
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  elements of the sales motion, but it has a massive impact if you can get it right and really help
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  these leaders get better at their craft. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See
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  you in the next one.