It's easy to see why best selling author, sales expert and entrepreneur Patrick Tinney has been so successful. He has an innate ability to break the sales process down to it's simplest form and make it seem effortless.
One common truth about sales prospecting is it's hard. It's mundane. It takes work. It is all of those things. However, Tinney breaks it down into having fun and becoming an insider for the organizations you work with.
Tinney is the Founder and Managing Partner of Centroid Training and Marketing. Patrick is also the author of two breakthrough, sales and negotiation reference books.
Books
Perpetual Hunger Sales Prospecting Lessons & Strategy
Unlocking Yes Sales Negotiation & Strategy
Over his 30 year career Tinney has concluded multi-million dollar media sales and negotiation solutions for many of Canada's largest advertisers. He's an expert in sales negotiation and prospecting and one of Canada's most published authors on sales and business negotiation.
Some key vitamins we discuss include:
I know you will get a ton of value and sales vitamins out of this episode.
CONNECT WITH PATRICK
Official Website
Books
CONNECT WITH JOHN
LinkedIn
It's easy to see why best selling author, sales expert and entrepreneur Patrick Tinney has been so successful. He has an innate ability to break the sales process down to it's simplest form and make it seem effortless.
One common truth about sales prospecting is it's hard. It's mundane. It takes work. It is all of those things. However, Tinney breaks it down into having fun and becoming an insider for the organizations you work with.
Tinney is the Founder and Managing Partner of Centroid Training and Marketing. Patrick is also the author of two breakthrough, sales and negotiation reference books.
Books
Perpetual Hunger Sales Prospecting Lessons & Strategy
Unlocking Yes Sales Negotiation & Strategy
Over his 30 year career Tinney has concluded multi-million dollar media sales and negotiation solutions for many of Canada's largest advertisers. He's an expert in sales negotiation and prospecting and one of Canada's most published authors on sales and business negotiation.
Some key vitamins we discuss include:
I know you will get a ton of value and sales vitamins out of this episode.
CONNECT WITH PATRICK
Official Website
Books
CONNECT WITH JOHN
LinkedIn
The Sales Vitamin Podcast Official Website
Blogpost with Transcript
John (0s):
Hey, what's up. Everybody. You're listening to the sales vitamin podcast. I'm your host John Bossong. I'll be deconstructing the play books of some of the most successful sales authors, leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, field sales professionals. We're going to discuss their strategies, their perspectives, and their insights. So sit back, relax and get ready to take your vitamins because here we go.
John (24s):
What's up, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the sales vitamin podcast. Patrick Tinney is the guest today. He's the founder and managing partner of Centroid Training and marketing. He's also the author of two breakthrough sales and negotiation, reference books, Perpetual Hunger, Sales, Prospecting, Lessons and Strategy, and Unlocking Yes, Sales, Negotiation, Lessons, and Strategies.
John (1m 3s):
You're going to learn a ton in this episode, Pat is relevant. He spent over 30 years in the media industry selling print media. He knows his stuff. He's a sales pros pro he's realistic. He's practical. So let's get into it. Let's get ready to take your vitamins, man. I'm so excited to have you today, Pat, just a home run for this podcast to get someone of your caliber and your, just the passion you have for sales. I can see it in your writing and just the history of your over 30 years in the media industry of all industries.
John (1m 37s):
That is a true sales training ground right there, the print media of of years ago. So we're, we're, I'm excited to have you today. And I want to just jump right in. And one of the first things I wanted to talk about was prospecting and the changes that you've seen. Let's talk a little bit about, let's go back to your early days and prospecting versus, you know, a 10 year, 15 year, maybe 20 year timeline of prospecting and what changes you've seen over the years.
Pat (2m 10s):
Wow. We get less face time with customers. Yes. You know, I was, I was a guy, I was educated just outside of Toronto in the city. I lived in Hamilton, 20 miles down the road. I had no money and I would hitchhike back and forth to school every day through the winter. Yeah. And what that taught me at a very early age, I was just one of these people, kids, if you will just love the whole idea of talking to people, especially older people.
Pat (2m 48s):
So, you know, I, I did every kind of crazy job you can ever think of as like, as a kid. And some of it was economic lost my father when I was nine And I had to go and shovel snow to make money. I did everything. I picked worms. I did everything you can think of to deliver groceries. You know? So when I left home, I moved from Hamilton to Edmonton to take my first job in the media business.
Pat (3m 18s):
That's 2,700 miles away from home. And I didn't know anybody. I just went out there with one of my buddies from college. We rented a big apartment. We had no furniture. We had no clothes. We had no money. We had one car, he would drop me off in my territory. And I would walk all day in a three piece suit in the middle of the summer. And I only had three shirts. So I had to make sure I rotated my shirts nicely. And I would just sell all day.
Pat (3m 49s):
And at the end of the day around four o'clock he'd come up and pick me up. And then I go back and I would process the advertising that I sold that day. And then we go home with that all over again. So I would make like five, I can't, I can't tell you how many calls I've made. Because I'd be just walking into retail outlets, any business that I could see, I'd just walk in the front door and say, hi, this is what I sell. We do great things. We can bring your business to life. Yeah. You know, and I was afraid to fail.
Pat (4m 21s):
Failing. Isn't failing. Failing is when something awful happens and iteration is an advance, right?
John (4m 36s):
So a lot less face time with people today, obviously when you do your consulting and when you talk with different companies around the, not only in Canada, but in North America as well, what are the, what separates the really good prospectors from the ones that are so, so, or mid level in the companies that you see, what are the, what are the things that you see from those, those sales men and women that are just really good prospectors?
Pat (5m 5s):
Ah, that's a great question. Do you know what I think it is? I think it is taking the time to understand the customer's culture. What's important to them where they are, where they want to go, go look at their website, talk to their competitors, you know, find out as much as you can so that when you actually pick up the phone and talk to them, you don't sound like some person asking questions. You sound like an insider, right.
Pat (5m 36s):
Go around to their warehouses, talk to their warehouse. People go visit their stores, talk to their employees, do something bigger, embrace positive risk, pick up the phone. Like it's your best friend. It's not like, you know, the fear factor to me is kind of, maybe it's just because of my, it just doesn't matter if you don't get a sale, it's not because you're a good salesperson.
Pat (6m 7s):
It's just because you know, they might have a good relationship with the vendor they have now. And it might be a long time to close that sale. I was in the long clothes business. I've seen sales take a year to close right now, if you're selling, you know, things that are small and you know, there's no risk involved in it or anything like that, then yeah. Just pick up the phone and just keep molding through and see what you can sell, you know? But when you get into a bigger items, like when you get into the millions or even a hundreds of thousands of dollars, all of a sudden you have to de risk the sale.
Pat (6m 44s):
So the conversation becomes more of how can, how can I help you get from where you are to where you want to go.
John (6m 52s):
Right? Yeah. I was going to say, I'm in the equipment leasing industry. So it's a very, you know, capital high, like you said, very high amount of money. So the sales cycles can take six months, 12 months, 18 months because these companies are gonna make decisions for, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars over a term, or just a onetime transaction. That's, that's very expensive. I like the way you put that. De-risking the, the transaction.
Pat (7m 22s):
Well, think of it this way. What if you bought a, an piece of software and you had somebody talk to you in software, Greek, and then you went home to your wife and you said, wow, I just bought Zippel. She goes zipper what's Zippel I don't know. Yeah. We'll wait on the guy. The Zippo guy comes in and he'll explain it, you know, that's to me, that's, that's the problem.
Pat (7m 55s):
You know, you, you want to, when you're selling the kinds of things that you sell long, lease, bigger lease, you have to de risk it to the point where the person that you're selling to you can sell it internally and do it with great confidence because they know, they know John's going to show up rain or shine,
John (8m 16s):
Right. There seems to be this focus now as well. And you've probably seen it much more than, than I have, but the prospecting is focusing on the customer now and talking about them, you know, making it all about them. When I started back in selling back in the early nineties and the mid nineties, you know, here's your brochure, go out and make a bunch of calls, tell everybody how great you are and how great we are.
John (8m 46s):
But that seems to totally have, have, has shifted to, you know, you really need to have your focus on them and not you. And You talk a lot about that in the book.
Pat (8m 58s):
Yeah. Yeah. The big, the big change happened around the year 2000. And you see from about 1950 up to the year, 2000, we had what was known as a seller's market. In other words, there were too many buyers and not enough sellers, everything was being rebuilt after the second world war, right. New technologies develop during the second world war, all kinds of cool cars were coming out in the fifties, you know, in the sixties. And it just got better. You know, clothing was important, you know, if you didn't dress a certain way, it was like, what's wrong with you?
Pat (9m 33s):
Yeah. Now that fashion is kind of like, I don't know what it is anymore. I used to be a fashion forward guy because I worked with large department stores, large fashion outlets. And so we all understood what it was, but now it almost seems like that's changed. And so now you've got people competing with you from all over the world, John, you didn't have that. So now you have too many sellers and not enough buyers, this is called a buyer's market.
Pat (10m 5s):
Right. That's the shift. And you talk about that in the book. Yeah. It's, it's, it's really important. And if you understand that upfront, then, then that, that gets your head in the right space, because I don't mean to sound live here, but I'm almost incidental. It's all about the client. And if I don't perform at a very high level for the client and I've let them down, right.
Pat (10m 39s):
That doesn't go anywhere. Yeah.
John (10m 42s):
You talk a lot about in the book and I really thought this was pretty cool in the book. You talk about a SWOT analysis and, you know, everybody knows about a SWOT analysis and what it is, but when you put it in perspective in the sales aspect, rather than just a marketing or, Hey, what are our strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities and threats. But when you put that into your sales process, that's, that can be a game changer. So talk a little bit about that. And is that something that you developed over the years and actually utilized in your sales process?
Pat (11m 16s):
Yeah. A great question. And you pick up one of the most important parts of the book, by the way, I, I just can't get away from this water analysis, because here's the thing. If you understand your competitors, weaknesses, and threats, you know, where their soft points are, when you understand their strengths and opportunities, you know, what's going to go in their proposals. If you understand your customers, strengths and opportunities, then the opportunities are that gap that you want to fill to help them complete their mission.
Pat (11m 56s):
If they've got a business implications, which are weaknesses and threats, you know, you want to try and help them plug those in if you can. And, and that may be a way to selling as well. But, you know, I prefer not to talk about pain points as much anymore. I mean, they're there, but if you're operating as a company, you don't want your pain points are you're in rough shape. You know, and the hardest thing to do is to do one on your own company, because nobody wants to talk about their own company's weaknesses.
Pat (12m 27s):
That's a mistake,
0 (12m 28s):
Right.
Pat (12m 30s):
And so I triangulate the customer, our competitor and us in a SWOT analysis. So for me, that helps, it helps me think in SWAT, because when you think in SWAT, you're always, you're always traveling around those six points in there. There's six touch woods. And once you start to think that way I can do it on the back of a napkin sitting in somebody's front office.
John (12m 54s):
Yeah. I was thinking about that too. As I read your book was, you know, a SWOT analysis on myself as a salesperson, as a sales professional.
Pat (13m 5s):
I just did that. It's funny. I I've just built a masterclass, which I will be, I've got a U S partner right now. I got some people in Canada and talking to the people around the world. And one of the things I kind of say to people just to get ready for the masterclass that I teach them to certify them is just want analysis on yourself or your career, see what you want with.
John (13m 27s):
Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah.
Pat (13m 35s):
You can't lie to yourself or you are lying to yourself. Look out.
John (13m 41s):
Yeah. How, how good in today's world 2020, how good are the organizations and, and the, the companies that you work with, how good are they at teaching prospecting? If you were to answer that, you know, Hey, how good are they at training their sales people, whether they're new tenured or whatever at actually prospecting.
Pat (14m 7s):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a wonderful question. I'll come at it a slightly different way. I'm not sure that all companies have a benchmark for their salespeople. In other words, a certain level that they must understand sales app, as opposed to hiring people, dropping the seat, handing a phone, putting them on a zoom call, you know, to me, that's, I just think it's one of the, one of the biggest challenges right now in, in business, because I don't think that a lot of companies even think about that, you know, it's like having a philosophy around selling.
Pat (14m 46s):
So I tried to articulate a philosophy in a perpetual hunger, but how you have to acclimate your mind to get ready to go out and talk to anybody. And so the philosophy that I explained there may not work for you perfectly, but if you take pieces of it and adding the pieces that are important to you and really match your personality, then you can go and you can talk to anybody. It doesn't matter. Just try to think like an insider, try to be their best friend.
Pat (15m 18s):
What do you got to lose? Yeah.
John (15m 22s):
Yeah. And I think that's where the preparation, you talk about that as well. I know I'm not as good as I should be in the preparation process. The upfront work that has to be done to be a good prospect. It's kind of like hitting golf balls on the range. You know, you got to do that to go out and be able to play. Well,
Pat (15m 44s):
What you want to do is you want to be able to understand your business, your products, your potentially new customer to the point where you can unscript. So you're just thinking in the present, and you can talk about a proposal. A proposal might be something that's eight pages might only be one page, right. You know, I think sometimes, and again, this comes back to the buyer's market.
Pat (16m 16s):
Now in the buyer's market, things are slowing a little bit because nobody wants to make a mistake. You know, buyers don't want to make mistakes, you know, and everybody's working hard. You know, I talked to my, you know, my buyer, friends, they're hardworking people, you know, they deserve our best,
John (16m 42s):
How important is, and it's kind of becoming almost a buzzword. Now I know Jeb blunt talks about it in his book, fanatical prospecting. And you talk about it in perpetual hunger a little bit, but the concept of blocking time and half of that prospecting block, that, that block too, you know, and that's not an original thought or anything, but it's, it's a, it's a matter of, Hey, whether it's 30 minutes or an hour or an hour and a half, if you're not managing your time, you you're going to struggle when it comes to
Pat (17m 14s):
Prospecting. Time is your, is your most important facility. It's, it's, it's your equity. We can take money and go burn it in the backyard. No. Well, why would you burn time? Right? That's it, you know, Jeb talks about a time blocking and I'm a big fan. Jeb's a great guy, great guy. I kind of look at it in a slightly different way. This is going to sound funny, but I, I, I go back to an old Brian Tracy book, we talked about eating frogs that just busts me up.
Pat (17m 50s):
So I, I'm a big fan of eating frogs. First thing in the morning, get as many back as you can get, because all of a sudden you bunch of eating those frogs, you go, Oh man, I'm Lucy goosey. It's like, you talked about playing golf. You know, that first tee box is killer. You know, you can ruin a whole round by, by shaking a ball. I've done that many a time. You can take out somebody's windows too, you know?
Pat (18m 21s):
So yeah, that's really important. And I, I think the other thing that's really important by the way, John is to have great empathy for your customers and their time. Right? In other words, you know, don't walk into a restaurant and try and sell them something, you know, at around 11 o'clock in the morning. Right. Don't do that. Get up really early in the morning while they're prepping, go in there, like seven, seven o'clock or eight o'clock in the morning, or go in, you know, at a time when, you know, when they're not really serving a lot of people, which might be like three or four o'clock in the afternoon.
Pat (18m 60s):
If you have an important person that you want to get to, Mark Hunter is great at this. He's got it all figured out. He kind of thinks that you want to get to somebody really important, figure out when you believe their meetings will be ending. So he likes to kind of insinuate that you should probably call somebody at around a five to four, five to three, five to two. So you get that or tend to do so you know that they're probably coming out of a half hour meeting. They're defragging, they're getting ready for their next meeting and you got them or call them first thing in the morning, like call it seven 30.
Pat (19m 35s):
I used to work with 'em. So I used to call them Walmart head office in Canada. I did so for a long time. And I knew that if I had a problem, that my guy would, my buyer would, would take a call at seven o'clock in the morning because he left home at four because he didn't like riding in Canada's rush hour or Toronto rush out. Like, I don't know if you've ever seen the four Oh one highway, but it's widest. It's like 16 lanes. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's like arguably the, the busiest highway in North America.
Pat (20m 9s):
Wow. It's big know because Canada's linear. Okay. So we're East to West. There's not a lot of North to South, so everything has to travel that way. Huh? Yeah. So this guy, he hated driving rush hour traffic. So I knew he'd be at work by like six 30 or seven. And if I really needed him, I could pick up the phone call Fred, and he'd pick up the phone and go, how's it going? I say a little problem here. Got a couple of minutes here.
Pat (20m 40s):
Yeah, sure. You know, and that's, that's the cool thing about, you know, understanding your customers. Some people work late at night and you know, for some people that's prepped for the next day for some people, that's their creative time. And by the way, I don't time to, to be creative whiteboard. If you don't own whiteboard by two or three of them just use on my whiteboard here right now, you can just laugh. I mean, it's just covered.
Pat (21m 10s):
Yeah. You know, and there's a great quote, Kim Thurston, this book think better. Think better. Tim Thurston, an American who moved up to Canada and he, so Jeb likes to do a thing called murder boarding. Yes. I've read that. I've read that in his book. Well, Tim kind of goes the other way. And I, I agree with both gentlemen, by the way they are, they are both gentlemen.
Pat (21m 44s):
Tim says that if you work on a problem long enough, you will exhaust yourself. You got to stay with the same problem and you got to stay and you got to work at it and work at it, work at it too. You're exhausted when you're finally exhausted that that's when the good stuff happens because you're loose. Yeah. That makes sense. Sure. It does make sense. Sure. It does. I mean, you look at the, you look at the back the golf for a moment. Cause I see you're wearing a wonderful shirt.
Pat (22m 15s):
You think about when tiger was loose, he was beautiful. He couldn't, he could we'll the ball into the hole. We've watched it. Yeah. And that's, that's the kind of confidence that you want to have as a sales prospect or you want to be loose. You want to be happy, live in the moment. Don't worry about the future. Don't worry about the past. That's gone. You can't, you can't fix everything. You can only fix the present.
John (22m 47s):
Absolutely. One of the, one of the things you talk about too, in your book that a, in the book was written, I think back in 15 or 16, right around that time from Perpetual Hunger, I think that's about the time. And you were talking in the book back then about how important content creation and, and how, how that helped you in your career as a sales professional create content. So I just wanted to talk about that a little bit and get your thoughts on, you know, I think there's a big movement for that in the sales profession.
John (23m 21s):
And for most professions is to be able to create that content. How do you, how do you see a sales professional using content creation to help them sale?
Pat (23m 33s):
So I'm going to come at this in a slightly different manner. One of the things that I recommend that salespeople do is become a specialized generalist. In other words, sales is a panoramic view, sales, prospecting, consultative selling sales negotiation. They're all bolted together, right? But there's within your, within what you sell there is that vertical where I'm. So in my particular case, being in the newspaper business, I was in it for 30 years while everybody was going off and studying marketing, I went off and studied how the machines work.
Pat (24m 9s):
I became a certified print production practitioner to your program that understand everything. So that gave me the ability to understand how all of the machinery could work outside of the norms that my company was using them. Right. Yeah. I actually, I actually said to the company at one point, you know, we know we're making money on the insert business and stuff that goes in the center of the newspaper, but I want to share how profitable they are and how we calculate profit.
Pat (24m 47s):
And so I ended up on a pricing strategy committee for the company and of course I took on answers and I sent out a survey across the country and everybody was calculating cost differently. So once we understood that, then we understood the profit by newspaper. And then that allowed me to have much more flexibility because then I knew where I could stretch and where I could, but people were thinking that way I actually wrote 'em you were doing a little bit of split testing.
Pat (25m 21s):
Really? I was, I was trying to do everything I could do to, I was trying to find a nonconventional money. You've always gotta have this one thing over in the corner where you say, you know what? It looks a little weird, but I think we can do it. And customers love edgy stuff. Like if you take something new into a customer and say, you know, I haven't shown this to many people yet, but you're kind of cool. So I'm going to share it with you. Look what, look what we're going to do. You want to get a ball?
Pat (25m 52s):
You want to be part of the test content, right? You know, people are talking about writing native content. The old days we called that advertorial. I mean, I really think, I really think content support, you know, and even in writing the books, I mean, you don't write books to make money, write books, you write books to give to your community. You know, somebody said to me, one day he said, Hey, Pat, you charge 24 99 for Unlocking Yes.
Pat (26m 25s):
I said, yeah. He said, he must be making a pretty good buck on that book. And I said, I make a little bit of money, but he said, let me ask you a question. He goes, yeah, sure. I said, it took me seven years to finish that book when you work for seven years for nothing. Right. And
John (26m 44s):
So here's the power of books for 24 99. I don't care if I paid $299 for unlocking. Yes. I'm going to find one, two or three things in that book. That exponentially covers that that money returned a hundred X. Yeah. I mean, it looks, books are your best investment. I think for the, for the return that you get. And you know, when you're, when you're reading perpetual hunger, well, there's, there's dozens of things in here that I can implement right away that are going to cover whatever I paid for this book exponentially.
John (27m 21s):
And I think people need to look at it like that.
Pat (27m 24s):
I've got a friend of mine, Jun Chang, who's, he's open he's out on the West coast, Washington state. And he laughs and he says, Pat, he says 24 99 for perpetual hunger. Are you kidding me? 24 99 for unlocking? Yes. He said, what a joke, joke his book is soaking wet. I mean, he's fine. You know, he said, my, you know, I get a big kick out of people who highlight books because I do it.
Pat (27m 58s):
Right. Yeah. It's a way to embed your thinking. So if you highlight a book with a certain technique and then you say, geez, I got to go back and find something rather than looking in the index. I'm just flipping through the book and I'm looking for my highlights. And I also write in a format in lesson format. So I decided that when I started writing that the world was becoming a smaller think world. In other words, time is our greatest commodity.
Pat (28m 30s):
So why am I going to sit around and read 5,000 word stanzas to try and understand something, all of the lessons in my book and their lessons. They're not chapters are written in 1200 words or less
0 (28m 43s):
Real short, real concise. I liked that about it,
Pat (28m 46s):
Simple language. I wrote it. I wrote it at about a grade 11 level.
0 (28m 51s):
Yeah. And then you have the exercises on certain chapters. I thought, which were beneficial as to, for anybody really in the industry can, can go through there and, and gives you at least a start to kind of get the concepts embedded in your brain and what you want to do.
Pat (29m 7s):
Can you imagine if you bought a Perpetual Hunger for your sales team and you went through one lesson a week, just one, right? Or you went through one exercise a month, just one, how fast would that team level up very quickly. Yeah. And that's back to benchmarking. You see, this is, you know, there's, I think that I think that a sales company or organizations, they gotta have some kind of a philosophy around what selling really means to them.
Pat (29m 46s):
Because when you have a philosophy, you can always fall back on it. You have somewhere to go. It also process. Now everybody's going to process crazy. I try to keep my stuff a little simpler, but I do believe that if you and me being a little bit of a gear head, but if you understand the circular motion of a sale and the customer enters that sale from the wrong direction, which they do all the time, are you prepared to handle that?
Pat (30m 19s):
It's like back to the panoramic view, prospecting, consultative, selling, and negotiation. So you pick up the phone and you say, man, have time block and me do some prospecting today. So you get on the phone with somebody and they love your, they love your Zippo or whatever it is you sell. Right. I'll take a thousand, but I need a 10% discount. And the person prospecting says, Oh, I'm not negotiating anything. I'm just prospecting.
Pat (30m 49s):
That doesn't go well, right now, one of the things I found interesting too, is that, you know, back in the day, the sales channels that we had were on your feet and a phone, you know, I carried a pager and you know, would find the nearest payphone to return a call. When I had someone to call back today, you've got the phone, you've got texting, you've got your social media, you've got email.
John (31m 20s):
You, you have a lot of channels. What are your thoughts? And when you're training these, these fortune 500 or mom and pop companies, the wide range of companies that you talk with, what are the best channels for a lack of a better word? Or do you need to figure those channels out for your industry? Because there's so many right now. And how does a sales professional go about saying, okay, I want to prospect, is it a blend or is it, hey, hone in on the one or two that you're really good at?
John (31m 52s):
Are they your customers hang out at and prospect that way?
Pat (31m 57s):
Yeah. You know, well, you've asked an elegant question there. I see a lot of retailers using Facebook, smaller retailers, some of the larger ones too, when you're talking about enterprise sales, not there, you know, you don't want to be up on LinkedIn. You might have using Twitter. You might think Instagram. I, I, I tend to move more between LinkedIn and Twitter. I have a Facebook account.
Pat (32m 27s):
There's a couple of things up there, but you know, it's, it's just a different environment. And you know, one of the things I think that people have to be really cognitive of, you're going to, if you're going to spend some time up on LinkedIn, which I think is not a bad idea, as long as you're using your time wisely. Right? Think about your LinkedIn profile as a defacto resume because people are going to go check you out. Right. And don't put junk up there, you know, be playful.
Pat (33m 0s):
I mean, don't get me wrong, but you know, think about, think about the idea that you're a walking, talking brand. The minute that you got on the air with me, John, within five seconds, you made 40 decisions about me. You did. So what are people thinking of on LinkedIn? What are they thinking about content when we produce it? Yeah. Have you noticed all the news anchors, all their hair is growing.
Pat (33m 32s):
My hair is growing. I haven't been able to get a hair. And so all the news anchors are saying, Hey man, look at your hair. This is going to be an amazing experiment. That's taking place right now, you know, in this, in this marketplace. And I just, I'm going to get off topic here, but I just think we need to be more helpful to each other, a little kinder, listen more. Cause people are gonna go through troubles. Right. You know, there's a lot of people out there right now that are just having a horrible time making ends meet.
Pat (34m 9s):
And like my heart was up to those people. Cause I've been there. I've been at that point when I was in Edmonton and I eat, everything has come out of a can. I would wake up in the morning and eat as many French fries covered with as much gravy as I could because that's all I could afford for the day.
0 (34m 26s):
Yeah. And there are a lot of, you know, PR from a prospecting standpoint, you know, engaging right now is a little bit different. Like you're talking about. I mean, you've got to have that empathy and I think the empathy piece is important, no matter what time period we're in. But especially when you're going through a pandemic such as what we're going through right now, you know, the empathy becomes really important. Especially on the sales side.
Pat (34m 53s):
I gotta tell ya, showing high self-interest in a marketplace like this. I dunno. I, you know, I think we should be leaning into our customers trying to help them out. You know, if there's challenges around payment or whatever, work with them.
John (35m 15s):
Yeah. Absolutely
Pat (35m 17s):
Work with them, you know, because we're all in this together. There's, you know, so you and I are on a, on a zoom call here, but we might as well be standing two feet apart because we were thinking the same thing at the same time. We know what the challenges is. And so I think this may be one of the great levelers in our lifetime because the only time you've had something like this happen, this magnitude where the first and second world Wars, but there's no bombs going off.
Pat (35m 56s):
We're just being asked to stay home, you know? And I know people are having a tough time, but you know what, when I see a billionaire, it's get on, get on TV and tell everybody how bad I kind of think. Geez, look, you're probably going to get three squares today.
John (36m 17s):
Oh yeah. The one and one thing I was thinking about as well was I was talking with a customer yesterday. We were on the phone. And one thing I've learned to do is I've learned how much I really don't need during this time period that I would, you know, just go out and consume and consume and really sitting around thinking about, you know, Hey, well, here's, I'm actually able to make it with, with this.
Pat (36m 43s):
Yeah, yeah. You're exactly right. You know, my son was a professional chef. I love to cook. So for me, this whole idea of, of making my own food right now, it doesn't really bother me at all. As a matter of fact, you know, just making things simple. Yeah. Sales should be that way. You know, if you really, if you really want to make sales really real, I have a colleague say this to me. Oh, a number of years back. And it just resonated so deeply.
Pat (37m 14s):
You think back to the days when farming was, that was the big industry, how would farmers call problems? What they might need over at the side of a rock fence. One farm looks over the next pharmacist. How's it going? Not too bad, but I'm having a little bit of problem with my feed mixes. And you know, not, not that any of those cows fast enough really I'll tell you what, once I get down towards here, I'll pull over.
Pat (37m 46s):
We'll have a look at what you're doing. He said, okay. He said, I'll bring my boys over to, if you got any extra little things you need done, you tell them what they need to do and they will look at your feet and we'll get that fixed up. And then we'll sit down and have, we'll have a glass of lemonade. How's that sound you mrs. Make good lemonade by mrs. Makes good lemonade. Right. Sales should be like that. It's just, you know, it's just getting together and saying to somebody, where are you now?
Pat (38m 18s):
And where do you want to go? And let me fill that gap. Let me help you with your mission.
John (38m 27s):
Yeah. That, that current state to the future state
Pat (38m 31s):
That's right. That's where you show extraordinary value. That matters. That's another interesting topic as well. And you touched you touch on it in the book as well about the sales professional today has to have that business acumen has to have all of those things you were talking about as a trusted advisor to be that sales profile. And that's, I think that's a requirement.
Pat (39m 1s):
Now you have to have that business acumen, that ability to help customers solve problems. You know, not just someone that's dropping off our brochure and waiting on a call, but No, you know what a lot of companies have been compressed and there's going to be even more compression after what we're going through. It's going to happen because a lot of companies are going to learn how it is. They can sell doing things differently. And what's happening with our customers is they don't, they look like they've got a lot of tools, but sometimes they don't have a lot of tools.
Pat (39m 37s):
So the guys that are in the, you know, in the buying department or they're in the procurement department, you know, they, they might be running on really thin budgets, meaning personal budgets, you know, and, and really, you know, if we don't need it, we're not going to buy it. We need it, buy it smart. And so when you bring in great ideas to those customers and give them a competitive edge in the marketplace, even if it's just for a month, they're going to love you.
Pat (40m 8s):
They're going to love you because they're going to be able to go in and they're going to get, to be able to say to their team, wow. I just talked to this guy, John he's mindblowing. You wouldn't believe what he just showed me. And I think we've got an edge for a month, a month. All that's so cool. We're going to crush budgets. You know, if you get into that helper, mind state, and you, you understand the whole concept of not having a continuing call, but having an advancing call, the advance is where you're filling that gap from where they are to where they want to be.
Pat (40m 47s):
Otherwise you're just, you're doing laps. It's also qualifying customers to make sure you're dealing with the right customers. Don't waste your time with customers. They're never going to buy their vampires.
John (41m 3s):
Yeah. They just eat up your time.
Pat (41m 5s):
Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I'm guilty of that as well of, you know, you hang onto that prospect that, you know, whether intentionally or not they, they lead you on like, yeah, they're going to buy, they're going to buy, well, you know, six months to a year in it. And you're still back to, well, we're waiting on a decision or, well, we, you know, we're, we're still getting the budget, correct. It's stuff you should have found out. Like you just said way back in the qualification and the discovery process.
Pat (41m 35s):
Yeah. Don't be afraid to ask hard questions. You know, you don't wanna be the rabbit greyhounds chasing rabbits, man. You don't wanna be the rabbit.
John (41m 47s):
Yeah. The tortoise wins that race all the time.
Pat (41m 51s):
You know, you just, you want to have the right conversations with the right people and you want them to be honest. And everybody, everybody has to know they have to be profitable. I mean, one of the things I try to help people understand in the whole area of negotiation is that if you sign a leaky deal, in other words, there's not much profit in it. Implementation is not going to be pre service is not going to be pretty because your own people will resent it.
0 (42m 27s):
Right. You've skimped, you've skimped. And you can't provide that service because you can't afford to do it. You've got to pay your employees too. Right.
Pat (42m 37s):
Everybody's got to get paid. If he's got to eat, if you're not making any money, you're just barely keeping the troops alive.
John (42m 49s):
Yeah. That's a great point.
Pat (42m 51s):
It's gotta be meaningful. You know, this is where, this is where I think that, you know, when we get talking about things like collaborating with customers, you know, I like to sort of say, you know, I create unique solutions for unique customers cause nobody wants to be treated the same as everybody else. They just don't. You know, when I go into buy a pair of glasses, you know, you know, I want somebody to sort of, you know, give me that time to sort of say, you know, mr tinny, this is the way last is, should look on you.
Pat (43m 28s):
As opposed to here's a pair of glasses. When you're selling benefits, you want to sell benefits on steroids. You know, don't say, Oh yeah, I sell trucks and they come in blue. No, no, you want to say, man, you can drive this truck hard. This, this dog can hunt. Yeah, absolutely. You know, if you want to, you want to share them that, you know, you know, we've done all the back testing.
Pat (44m 4s):
We know what the payload is. We know the durability of the products that we put within these trucks. We know when you're going to have to pull them over. And, and by the way, we want to make sure your drivers are safe.
John (44m 23s):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cause everybody's got a truck. Every manufacturer has got a truck that they lease, sell, they do a full service. You you've got To create that value and add value. You're absolutely right. Otherwise you, you talk about it in the book, you commoditize yourself and you know, unless you're Walmart or Google, nobody's really good at the price game. You just don't win.
Pat (44m 48s):
I actually walked into a company that it was just like a nightmare. They were buying business to stay alive. It was a nightmare. I just, I had to get out. They were the wrong customer. Yeah. I don't negotiate that way. I mean, when I think about negotiation, I'm a bigger piece of the pie negotiator. So this whole idea of everybody's going to sit around a table and say, Oh, Johnson's a cool guy.
Pat (45m 22s):
I'm going to push another five points across the table at her good luck. You're dreaming. You know, here's the deal. Buyers get paid to lower prices. Sellers get paid to maintain profitability and grow sales. They get paid for conversions. They get paid bonuses not to lose money. You know, if you're one of these guys and I've seen, I've been out with senior manager, right.
Pat (45m 55s):
Or I just, I just feel ill at, at some of the deals that they've signed. Because you know, when you work in a corporate setting, you're, you're, you're, you're under the microscope. People are watching you, you know, they, they want to know that you're the best representation of their products in the marketplace. They'll often walk, you know, if your senior management team is really smart every once in a while that she'd just go out and visit all of their largest customers and just say, you know, how are we doing?
Pat (46m 30s):
Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, here's the, and I, I actually, I think I mentioned, I think I mentioned this book, if not, there's another one. If you run into a really difficult problem where you know, the bike team and the sell team can't solve the problem and they're, they're editing passenger deadlock. That may be the time for the, the CEO of your company to call the CEO of their company and just say, listen, could we have a, just sort of a one on one just to chat because you'd be surprised how everybody's got similar worries.
Pat (47m 10s):
The buy worried about risk. The South side needs to know that, you know, they're appreciated and not a commodity. It's a relationship.
John (47m 22s):
Yeah, no, that's a great point. All right. I've got one more question for you. But before we get to that last, the book perpetual hunger, Patrick Tinney author bestselling author, the other book, Unlocking Yes. Sales, negotiation, lessons, and strategy. You need to run to the Amazon store on your computer and get both of these books, a exponential return. Get these books running, do that today. Where else can they get in touch with Patrick tinny?
John (47m 52s):
What's the best place for our listeners to get in touch with you?
Pat (47m 56s):
Yeah, well you can go to my website, which is a Centrod Marketing.com. You can link up with me on LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn for just sort of being able to look at what people do. It's how you and I come to me. And I'm blessed to have bumped into you. Absolutely. One more thing is I'm watching book number three in about two weeks and it's called the Bonus Round. And it's all about corporate sales is helping people level up to that next.
Pat (48m 28s):
You know, Anthony, you know what I was selling in the mid 1990s, my territory was 35 million plus a year while large, large deal for me was $13 million with one signature. Wow. If you think money doubles every, every seven to 10 years now think about what those, what those numbers look like. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Moneyball.
John (48m 54s):
So centroid marketing. He's got a new book coming out. Patrick. Tinney bestselling author. Last question for you. So you've got one, you've got a jar of vitamins, but you can only give this sales professional one vitamin what's the one vitamin you give him. What's the one piece of advice you give him or her. And that's all you can give them is one vitamin. What do you tell that Sales Professional?
Pat (-):
Vitamin C that's right.
Pat (49m 26s):
You know, vitamins are good. You know, the, we, we don't survive without them. We know that. And it's no different in sales. If you don't feed your sales brain, it will go hungry. It'll start doing things that are gonna make him money. See, here's what I hope people do. I hope people are able to elevate themselves so they can live their sales dreams.
Pat (50m 2s):
You don't want to, you don't want a job. There are no jobs anymore. We live in a world where selling is now a craft and you want to be in the top 10%, the top 5% of those sales professionals. That's what you want to be aim high. What do you got to lose? If you miss, you just missed just below the perfect target. But if you don't try, you're never going to get, I think it was Wayne Gretzky's that said, you know, you'll, you'll miss a hundred percent of, of all of all goals that you, you don't shoot the podcast.
Pat (50m 37s):
That's right. You know, Michael Jordan, how many times did he miss a lot more than he made? Yeah. Tiger woods. They call them woods because he's in the woods a lot. We've seen him. We've seen him get out of, out of more pickles, Phil Mickelson. Oh my God. Fill the thrill. But you know, here's the thing. What do all these people have in common?
Pat (51m 9s):
They embrace positive risks. They believe in themselves. They're creative. They unscript, they do things that people aren't going to expect. And they expect more of themselves. They're professionals, right to the T. Absolutely. Yes, sir.
John (51m 28s):
That's it for today's sales vitamin. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any episodes and please leave a review. It'll mean a lot, whatever platform you listen on, hit the subscribe button, have a great day and remember take your sales vitamin.