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Collaborative Selling with Carole Mahoney · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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  People are willing to pay quite a bit more for things that they've put together themselves
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  versus something that's been put together for them.
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  So when we collaborate with our buyers in our conversations, we're adding more value to the
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  conversations and they're seeing more value in the solutions as a result.
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  2, 1, 0, ignition, liftoff.
• 0:23
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:26
  Welcome to the small biz chat podcast with the number one small business expert, Melinda
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  Emerson.
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  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
• 0:37
  you need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
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  Now here's your host, the small Biz chat lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
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  Calling all author speakers, coaches, and consultant.
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  Join me in Philadelphia September 21st to 23rd for bringing in demand live.
• 0:58
  Learn how to dominate on the national stage.
• 1:00
  It's time for you to unleash your brand's power.
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  Register today.
• 1:08
  Welcome back to the small bizchef podcast.
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  We hope you're watching on my small biz lady fan page on Facebook or on my YouTube channel.
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  Please subscribe, leave a comment, tell us if there's a topic you want us to discuss on the
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  show.
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  I'm sure I know an expert who can give us the deets on it And don't forget to listen to the
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  small Bishop podcast, which comes out every Wednesday on Apple Podcasts or anywhere you
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  like to listen to audio in your ear.
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  So I am back with my guest.
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  Her name is Carol Mahoney, Carol is the author of buyer first.
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  Grow your business with collaborative selling.
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  Carol is changing the way The entire sales industry sees itself and how buyers see it too.
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  She's been called the sales therapist by Harvard Business School where she coaches sales
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  for their entrepreneurial MBA program.
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  He's also the president of AA ISP Boston and has been named a top sales influencer by
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  LinkedIn and sales hacker and voted a top sales coach by ambition.
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  With the heart of a teacher and the spirit of a coach, she is ready to share how you can unlock
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  sales success that you would never thought pop for more information, go to carol with an
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  emahoney.com.
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  Carol, welcome to the small fish chat podcast.
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  Thank you so much for having me.
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  I'm so excited to be here with you.
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  Oh gosh.
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  I am so happy that you are here.
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  You you gave me an early version of buyer 1st.
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  And so I'm so excited that it's finally out because I really, really loved your book.
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  So now, Carol, let's just start at the beginning.
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  How did you become an entrepreneur.
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  I think it was in my DNA.
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  I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs.
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  Right?
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  My grandfather had his own welding business and as well as sporting good store.
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  My mother had her own painting business.
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  My father was an artist and made all of, like, in the seventies, all the murals they would see
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  on the hippie VW, the N Buses, those were the kinds of things that he did.
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  And so, you know, working a 9 to 5 job in my family was a foreign concept.
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  And so when I went to college and then worked a 9 to 5 job, they were like, What are you doing?
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  But my plan was to always start my own business.
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  And when 2007 crashed and I got laid off, my 5 year plan to open my business became a 6 month
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  plant.
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  And that's how it all started.
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  Yeah.
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  I think I think 0708 changed a lot of people's lives.
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  And my my prayer is that we don't Go back to that because that was a super ugly time.
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  Now let's talk about sales.
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  Yeah.
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  Is sales really about your mindset?
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  Is is, like, if your mind's as bad, you are not gonna get results.
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  Is that is that pretty much what you teach?
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  Pretty much.
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  The The research in the psychology behind it is called the theory of reasoned action or the
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  theory of plan behavior.
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  And basically what it says is You can know exactly the right words to say in the right
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  process and techniques, but if you get in the moment in a conversation with your buyer and
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  you find yourself bailing out of those tough conversations or asking those tough questions
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  is because your beliefs and mindsets are not supporting you in that action.
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  And that's what the theory of reasoned action says is that it is your in attitudes towards a
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  task that will dictate how you will perform that task if you do it at all.
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  And so how we think about things absolutely becomes the behaviors that we have and the
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  behaviors that we have lead to the results that we get.
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  I completely get that.
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  Well, has the human aspect of sales been lost?
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  Cause I feel like sometimes You deal with salespeople, and they are so aggressive.
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  Or, like, the second I look at some information on a website, somebody is calling my phone, and
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  it's like, Just wait a minute.
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  I was just trying to get some information to decide if I wanted to even talk to you, and
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  they don't even give you a chance to decide that because they're all over you.
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  And I know that the sales are made of it technology.
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  It enables people to do that, but Is that really converted?
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  Cause it turns me off entirely.
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  And, you know, and you're absolutely right.
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  It is not working.
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  If you will look at the studies from LinkedIn and their state of sales support as well as
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  countless other research studies.
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  Buyers are completely turned off by the way salespeople act.
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  We don't like the pushy slimy sleazy sales tactics.
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  If you've read Daniel Pink's book to sell as human, Devin, out of 10 of us, these sales is
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  that used car salesman that we all despise having to deal with.
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  And the sad thing is is you can still go on to a car lot and the exact same salesperson that's
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  there, and that's what really forms our mindsets about what sales is all about.
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  So when we go into business for ourselves and we think I have to do sales, we're like, I
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  ain't doing that.
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  I ain't gonna be that.
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  But it still creeps in.
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  And so we try the automated email sequences.
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  We try the, you know, spamming everybody that we know on LinkedIn.
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  Anything that we can do to try and get more customers and clients, and we don't even
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  realize that we're doing the same behaviors that we despise in other people.
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  And so we've lost that human aspect.
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  And the thing of it is this.
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  Sales, the definition of sales is an exchange of value.
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  Sales isn't something that we do to other people.
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  I'm gonna sell you on this.
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  Like, when has anyone ever wanted to say that statement.
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  But sales is really something that we do with other people.
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  It's an exchange.
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  It's a collaboration.
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  It's a conversation between 2 human beings.
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  Which, you know, the conversations that most salespeople have is they do all of the talking,
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  tell you how wonderful they are, how the competitor is horrible, and why you should buy
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  their stuff right now, or you're gonna miss out on blah blah blah blah blah.
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  And it's just not how we make decisions as humans.
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  It's not how we like to interact as humans, and the whole idea of technology today is to hope
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  to make a human connection faster and easier to happen, and instead, it's actually made us
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  further apart.
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  What do buyers value?
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  This is my favorite question.
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  Because we think that buyers value things like huge return on investment and low cost and
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  savings and things like that, which are all important part of the decision making process.
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  But what buyers really value If you've read, Deb Calvert's book to stop selling and stop it
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  leading, they interviewed 530 BBB Business Buyers.
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  To find out what are the kinds of behaviors that buyers actually prefer in salespeople, and
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  they prefer to be collaborated with.
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  They prefer to be challenged to think about their problems in the options to solve those
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  problems in a different way.
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  And they want people that are gonna collaborate with them to come up with new solutions.
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  These are the things that buyers value.
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  And, unfortunately, it's the exact opposite of what most salespeople do.
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  We feel we need to pitch.
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  We need to give value proposition, we need to give our elevator pitch and convince you of why
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  you should do this thing.
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  But if you've heard of the idea of or or even IT, that furniture store you put together all
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  of the stuff yourself.
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  There was a Harvard study that was done to find out Do people place more value in the things
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  that they've actually helped to co create?
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  And what they found is that people are willing to pay quite a bit more for things that they've
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  put together themselves versus something that's been put together for them.
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  So when we collaborate with our buyers in our conversations, we're adding more value to the
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  conversations and they're seeing more value in the solutions as result.
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  I love it.
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  I love it.
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  That is really, really good advice.
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  So tell me about your book, buyer first.
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  So buyer first It is
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  a book that I wrote.
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  It's actually the book that I wish that I had when I first started my business in 2007.
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  I had actually started a marketing agency because I buys the idea of sales so much that I
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  thought the internet was gonna make it easy for me to help businesses to grow by making
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  salespeople obsolete.
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  But what I found was that we still need human beings to help us feel confident and
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  comfortable making especially big decisions and making big changes.
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  And so what I also found was happening is that my clients in my marketing agency were getting
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  a ton of leads from their website.
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  But they weren't closing any sales, which means they weren't actually growing.
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  And I started to wonder why that is and what is happening in those sales conversations that's
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  causing buyers to opt out even though they've raised their hands for help.
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  And that's what buyer first is really about it.
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  It's for the small business owner, the entrepreneur, or the salesperson in a company
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  who's tried everything.
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  Every tip, every trick, every hack, You've seen these books behind me, every sales process
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  known to man?
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  But don't understand why the things that seem to work for everyone else in these books
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  doesn't seem to work for them.
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  And what they don't realize, it's their mindsets that are getting in the way of sales,
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  and there's very specific mindsets that are getting in the way of executing on the
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  behaviors that buyers value moat is that collaboration.
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  And so in the book, we talk about what are those mindsets?
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  How do they impact us?
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  But more importantly, how do we change them?
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  And then what are the behaviors that we need to adapt to make our buyers feel understood,
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  heard, and at the same time, build our businesses together?
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  I think that that is such a valuable thing that I don't know if everyone's thinking about that.
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  So I think that makes a lot of sense.
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  But tell me, What are the most common misconceptions that you think business owners
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  have about sales?
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  There's so many of them, but one of the biggest ones that I encounter is that Business owners
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  believe that people need to like me in order to buy from me.
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  It's a common misconception.
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  We hear it all the time.
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  If people don't like you, they're not gonna wanna buy from you.
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  And what that really means is that you can't be a jerk to someone and expect that they're gonna
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  wanna do business with you.
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  You, of course, you need to be a human being and have tact in grace.
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  But it goes over to a bad side when people are free to challenge their buyers in the questions
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  that they ask or They're worried about how something is gonna impact me.
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  They're worried about how am I going to look in this conversation.
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  Do they think that I'm smart enough for them to be able to buy from me?
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  Because we're so wrapped up in ourselves and our products and our services.
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  And what are they gonna think of me that we end up becoming the yes person.
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  Right?
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  The person that says yes to everything.
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  Oh, yes.
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  Of course.
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  I can do that.
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  Yeah.
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  I can do that too, and I can do that.
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  And I can do it all for less.
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  And we end up spreading ourselves too thin, but also what we're doing is it making it hard for
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  our buyers to trust us.
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  Because how many people have ever trusted the person that says yes to everything?
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  The yes man and woman?
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  We don't trust that person because we don't know what they stand for.
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  They never say no to anything.
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  They don't have any boundaries.
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  And so when you think in sales that people need to like you in order to buy from you, be
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  careful because that can get in your way of actually having a collaborative with your buyer
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  that gets them to think differently about something.
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  Mhmm.
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  I I completely agree with you.
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  So what do you think is the number one thing that business owners can do today to have
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  better sales conversation?
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  Stop making it about you.
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  I have these t shirts that I wear a lot.
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  They're black and white and, the the letters not about you are printed upside down on the t
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  shirt so that the person looking down and wearing it can be reminded not about you.
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  It's about the other person.
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  It's about their thoughts, their wants, what they think is going on, what's worked, what
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  hasn't worked for them, because people like to talk about the things that they think.
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  So when we make it not about us, there's another aspect to this whole need for approval
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  talking all about ourselves all the time is that when we talk about ourselves, there was a
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  study done at Harvard in 2012, neuroscientists found that when we talk about ourselves, that
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  we get dopamine flooding through our brains.
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  And what that is, it's it creates pleasure for us.
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  We love talking about ourselves so much that the participants in the study were offered
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  money stop talking about themselves, but ignored the money.
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  It kept talking about themselves.
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  Like, you couldn't pay them enough to shut up.
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  Exactly.
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  And so the trick the thing of it is Is that part of our brain where the dopamine is
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  released?
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  Is the part of our brain where we also form relationships, where we form bonds, and where
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  we form trust?
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  So if we can get our buyers to talk more about themselves, then we talk about ourselves,
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  that's how we start to build trust with them.
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  That's how we start to collaborate with them.
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  And so if you can remember as a salesperson, as a business owner who has to sell yourself,
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  which is even more difficult to do, The more you can make it about the other person and less
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  about you, the better the conversation will go.
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  I love it.
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  I love it.
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  When we come back, we're gonna be talking more with Carol Bahoney about how to boost your
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  sales.
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  This is a small biz chat podcast that we will be right back.
• 13:14
  Are you thinking about starting your dream business this summer?
• 13:17
  Well, listen.
• 13:18
  I'm gonna be teaching my become your old boss course starting June 20th.
• 13:23
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  Alright.
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  Head over to small bisleyuniversity.com and get all the details, class to start, June 20th.
• 13:45
  Welcome back, everybody, to the small biz chat podcast.
• 13:47
  I'm your host, Melinda Emerson Smallbiz lady.
• 13:50
  And I'm so excited to be here today with Carol Mahoney.
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  She is talking to us about her new book, buyer first.
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  Alright, Carol.
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  I got a big question for you.
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  How do you know when it's the right time to hire a salesperson?
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  This is a
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  big question because a lot of business owners try to hire a salesperson so that they don't
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  have to do the sales part themselves because they don't like the idea of doing sales.
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  And the reason that If you're hiring a salesperson because you don't wanna do sales
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  yourself, and that is the only reason it is not a good reason.
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  There's a couple of reasons why.
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  1, Mindsets are contagious.
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  How you think about sales, what your beliefs are around sales, are going to be contagious to
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  the rest of your team.
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  Because if you have a negative mindset towards sales, their team is 355 percent more likely to
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  hold those same beliefs, and that's gonna undermine their success without you even
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  knowing it.
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  But if you can adopt positive beliefs about sales, then that's going to impact your team in
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  a positive way at a 1000%, and those teams will perform more likely.
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  So first, make sure your head's right about sales before you think about hiring a
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  salesperson for that.
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  And then the second thing to consider when you're thinking about hiring a salesperson is
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  What kind of environment are they going to come into?
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  What kind of onboarding can you supply and what kind of support and development can you give
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  them?
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  And at the same time, how How are they what skills do they need to have to be successful in
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  this role?
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  Have they sold at these price points before?
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  Are they familiar with this particular buyer?
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  Are they comfortable in the type of environment that they're going to go into?
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  And then also consider how are they going to get business?
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  Are you gonna be sending leads to them?
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  Do they need to develop their own leads?
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  These are things to take into consideration as to how and who you're going to hire.
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  Also think about the volume in your business now.
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  If you're selling in your business now, And you're at a point where you can't grow in scale
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  because there's no there's no more hours left in the day.
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  That's the time to think about hiring a salesperson.
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  And I would hire a salesperson before you hire a delivery person because sales is something
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  you can teach relatively quickly to people who have the right attitudes and mindsets about it.
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  I love it.
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  Alright.
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  Last question.
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  How do you get over your misconception of sales?
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  If you if you're just like, sales is sleazy.
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  Spimey.
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  How do
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  you get over that?
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  The first is to repeat this mantra to yourself.
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  Sales is not something I do to other people.
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  It is something that I do with them.
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  Just as you would have a conversation with anyone about any situation that they're having,
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  there's a back and forth that that goes there.
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  So it is less about having the exact right pitch and product which is what a lot of people
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  think sales is all about.
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  And it is more about being comfortable having a conversation and asking tough and thought
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  provoking question.
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  Some of the other things that you can do to help you get more comfortable in sales.
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  One of the things I would say is build up your own self confidence by acknowledging the things
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  that you've done well in the past to build your confidence to do new things in the future, as
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  well as making that all about them.
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  Because when we make sales all about us and what we need to do and what we want we want
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  from other people, it makes sales difficult.
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  But when we make sales all about others, the buyer first, Then it's no longer about us.
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  It's not about it's not about rejection.
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  It's not about wondering what they think about us because it really doesn't have anything to
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  do with us.
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  Sales becomes pushy, slimy, and sleazy when we make it all about ourself.
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  I agree.
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  And what is the best business advice you've ever been given?
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  The best business advice I got when I first started my business was that you cannot manage
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  time.
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  You can only prioritize it.
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  That's like trying to take sand and hold on to it for a long period of time in the wind.
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  It just doesn't happen.
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  We all get the same 24 hours in the day.
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  It's what you do with those hours.
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  And how you prioritize those things to align with your goals.
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  That's how you start to get progress and success.
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  I love it, Carol Mahoney.
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  Thank you so much for being here.
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  I can't wait to see the final version of your book, buyer first, and hang out with us.
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  We're gonna bring you back in a few.
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  But next, when we come back, we're gonna be talking with a sales expert who's gonna, excuse
• 17:49
  me, a tax expert who's gonna help us with what we all need to know about sales taxes.
• 17:54
  You're watching the small biz chat podcast, and we will be right back.
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  Register today.
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  this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday for more fantastic
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  Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.