How we are always selling. Pt. 4

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Baylor. In today's episode, we'll touch on topics such as why you should consider embracing speaking in front of others, the power of the art of asking questions, answering the question, how well are you listening, and embracing the art of selling the solution. Enjoy the show.

You know, so drawing some correlations back to this point about overcoming fear and building confidence. So, you know, in the book, How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling, the gentleman, Frank Bettcher, he was talking about how he had a fear of talking to people. And if you're gonna be in sales and you don't wanna talk to people, you're not gonna make much money. Right?

Yes

sir. But you know, when you draw this same parallel over to what you do on a day to day basis, which is probably not sales, you have to embrace talking to people. Right? You have to overcome the fear of getting up in front of people and having to speak because we all have to do that in some form or fashion. It could be just like a general team meeting.

It could be like Terry and I did at a conference. It could be just a one on one conversation. But you cannot have the fear of talking to people and be successful in anything. Right? You have to be able to overcome that.

And even one of the points he made in here was about, the power of public speaking. Like he was so afraid to speak to people that he took a course in public speaking. Right? Which has been said as one of the top 10 fears that most people have is being is speaking in public because, you know, you don't wanna be criticized. You don't want failure.

You don't want, for for people to talk about you, things of that nature. So he did those things. And as a result, he got some incredible success out of his career. It helped to change his perspective about the fear of speaking to people and the fear of speaking in public. So just wanna encourage everybody, right?

Overcome your fear and build confidence around talking to people. Being a communicator is gonna be one of the greatest assets that you have in your career. And if you have a business, obviously in your business because you have to be able to talk to your customers. I mean, any thoughts on that, Terry?

Yeah. And let's just take it one step further, right? Your customers are internal to your business. So let's say you're going in, I'm just gonna use seven Eleven. And the guy who's stocking the shelves, that's your customer.

I'm just using like a base example. Let's say that you're an accountant and you have to deal with the IT team because they're always spending money. IT, call center. We're trying to give out of being seen as a call center. So they have to put in a requisition.

That person is your customer, And so reaching out to them saying, Hey, I understand that you guys have, $200,000 budget and you've only spent 50,000 this year. Do you guys plan to make any more purchases this year? If so, let me work with you to make sure that the requisition is in it correctly. Is it prepaid or not? What do you expect the monthly reoccurring costs to be?

So you can start to engage your customers and to be of value, build value with them and they'll begin to see you as a trusted partner. Let's say that you're in marketing. And you know that there's a big project going on but there hasn't been any communication going out about it. Go and find that product owner and say, Hey, what's your communication plan? When, how soon, what's the date?

What's the first group? Do we need to target a special messaging to them? So not waiting for that business unit to come to you but if you have some inside information where you can reach out to them and start to build that exchange. It's important, man, all balls out of enthusiasm. So no, great points Ralph, really extremely great points.

Okay, all right. So moving on to our next point, understanding your customer. So, some of the sub bullets in this in this section is or should I say, the art of questioning. So he stressed in the book, the value of asking insightful questions to uncover your customers' needs, pain points, and aspirations. You can build rapport and trust by actively listening and showing genuine interest.

So this is one that we've we've been cultivating for years, Terry. The the art and and I and I stress the word art. The art of questioning. So, you know, there's always an art and a science to everything. Right?

Science is these are the practical things that you can do to get, you know, this result. But the art is how do I use these multiple components to produce a certain outcome. Right? And that art gives you the creativity from one person to another to not have to do it exactly the same way. Right?

I definitely have benefited from this, in my life and in my career, once I understood that the most powerful way to get a person to do something is to is to make them wanna do it for themselves, I I I started to dive into the practice of asking great questions. Because when you ask questions, you get people to talk about what's on their mind. When you ask questions, you get people to think about what it is that they think they know. Sometimes as you ask them a question and they actually start to speak through it, they realize that they didn't know as much as they thought they did. Right?

When you ask questions, you also have the opportunity to educate. Right? Where a person may think they knew something and you start asking questions that kind of led them to a different end, they realized that, okay, I didn't think I didn't know this like I thought I did. The art of asking questions is probably one of the most powerful tools you have in your arsenal when it comes to human to human communication. I mean, but Terry, we've talked about this for years.

I mean, what comes to mind for you?

Yeah, I love it, I love it, I love it. So I'm just gonna throw a book title out there. I'm sure we've referenced it before, but Good Leaders Ask Great Questions, Bill Maxwell. I'm sorry, John Maxwell. Bill Maxwell is the drummer for the wine and so sorry about that guys.

John Maxwell, great book. That book is one of the books that changed my life because it's true. Good leaders ask great questions. And the beauty about asking questions doesn't mean you have to have the answer. It's about gaining clarity.

The question is a unifier. It creates an opportunity for exchange. It creates an opportunity for you to listen. One of the things we talked about in the last series had to do with, are we listening to reply or are we listening to understand? So as that great leader who's asking the questions, listen to understand what the And I'm gonna start throwing some terms in here, Ralph, and I'm gonna transition us to one of the books that I've been reading.

Act to Act some through maybe my second or third time on it, I'm actually third time on it. Is listen for what is the big problem? What is the big problem?

That's it.

So once you understand what the big problem is, right? And you create, I'm a throw another term out your narrative imperative, you can help to see if you have the big solution. As we listen. So those terms come from a book called Inspire Your Buyers. It's a great book.

And so the essence of the narrative imperative is listening to your customer. And here's the key. You do ask questions, right? Because we wanna understand what the big problem is. We wanna hear what the big problem is.

And as that big solution is being developed, a lot of times here's the challenge. We tend as solution providers, as the subject matter expert, we make either ourselves or our product the hero. We don't wanna be the hero. You want your customer to be the hero. What does that mean?

Does that mean? When you position your solution, you The goal is to equip your buyer to be able to go back to their organization, right? Whether it's a company, whether it's a business unit and say, this is what we are going to do. And they are the ones to convince those influential persons, whether it's the head of the department, whether it's the CFO, whether it's the CEO, this is what we should do. And then they become the hero in their organization.

Our goal is to create Look, look, you got Batman and Robin. We're Robin in the story, not Batman. Our solution is not Batman. We want the customer, right? So we wanna understand what's their big problem, right?

What is their expected outcome? And then we can say, Oh, we have a big solution to get you to your expected outcome. And then they go and sell the idea for you versus you selling the idea. Right? Then they become the hero in the story and we're the Robin.

We're like, I got you.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. That's great.

That is great.

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. We hope that you not only enjoy the content but gained something to help you on your personal leadership journey. Feel free to reach out to us on X and Instagram under the handles Leadership Sovereignty. Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.