Essentially Human: On Sales and Salespeople ft. Peter Smith

Mike talks with Peter Smith about why selling stays “Essentially Human” even as AI and short-form content reshape how people pay attention. Along the way, we pull practical lessons from stories about music, used cars, pricing, and resilience that help you sell with more clarity and less anxiety.

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Transcript

Welcome And Book Tease

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back everybody to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Bourbeau. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop. This week I'm joined by Peter Smith. I had Peter on earlier this year, and it was one of our best performing episodes ever. It was really well done. And this time I'm having him back on to talk about his new book, Essentially Human and Sales and Salespeople. It's a really interesting book. It's broken it down into these really bite-sized chapters and chunks, and each one kind of comes away with these takeaways at the end of each chapter, and it really boils down to each chapter. And they're all these stories. And he kind of takes these really not like far out, but like far away from the jewelry industry's stories, and then pulls them back in and shows you how you can learn about um sales and selling. And it's just a really cool conversation. I could talk to him for hours and I wouldn't get bored. Uh really fun conversation. I hope you enjoy. Check out his book.

Sponsor Punchmark

SPEAKER_00 1:05

This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, PunchMark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth, or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, PunchMark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical world in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmark.com slash go. And now back to the show.

Why Essentially Human Matters

SPEAKER_02 2:17

I'm good, Michael. Thank you so much. And uh it's a blast to be uh to be doing a repeat session with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah, we had you on earlier this year, and uh it was a root we were talking also about some of your writing before. Uh this was about a uh an online blog article that you had written that I found very compelling. And then uh you had reached out and said, Hey, I just released a book. Um, and you're very gracious. You sent me a copy and I got a chance to read through it. What struck me very uh very much so is that the cover has the Vitruvian Man, the very iconic illustration by um uh Leonardo da Vinci, and one of my favorite illustrations of all time. Could you maybe just set up for the people at home what it is that you're covering in your book?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah, so I look, maybe I start with the Vitruvian Man uh since you brought that up. Um there's a couple of things I don't think about a lot while in the process of writing a book. This was my fourth book, and so uh yeah, I've sort of been down this road before. And the couple of things that I don't really think too much about are the title and the cover, because you know, my sense is we're gonna get to them when when when the right time comes, the you know, the right uh the right inspiration will hit. And in this case, as opposed to hiring squirrels or or or sell something or the salesman, it this was this didn't come until very, very late. I was actually starting to get to the point where I where I where I'm thinking I might have to uh to kind of force fit a title and to force fit a a cover. And and almost not quite at the same time. This because essentially human, I I the that came to me um really because of how inundated, and it's something that is getting more so not less inundated we are with technology. I mean, the every conversation it seems now starts or s or soon incorporates AI, chat GPT, or it's clawed, and and you know, no matter what we read and where we read it, people seem to be talking about that stuff a lot. And as I was going through this book, um it occurred to me that one of the central tenets throughout the whole thing is the impact of human beings. Because, you know, when you when you're talking about storytelling, uh for sure, and when you're talking about psychology and you're talking about behavioral science, and you're talking about consumer behavior and all that stuff, that central thread through the whole thing is is people, and and and at no point does that go away. And so essentially, human when it hit, um, just felt like the right title, and it felt like the right time for that title. And then the idea of the subtitle on sales and sales people, it kind of announced itself because um, you know, when I wrote my first book, I expected it to be the to be the last. And then the second book was, oh, I've got all these interesting columns that I've written, and wouldn't there be an interest? Well, maybe it would be interesting to have a sort of a place for those and then you know fill in the gaps. And and then the third one, the sales minute, was was written because I heard so often from people, especially retail store owners, we can't get our people to read. And and so, you know, I'd love for them to be reading this book or that book of yours, but I can't get them to read. And so what I wanted to do with that third book to just sort of park it and give you the context for this one, was it was an exercise uh for me that wasn't very pleasant because it was how can we have a physically small book that on any given page only has one a tip, and and and I cannot write any more than can fit on a single page of a very small book physically, um, so that it could be opened randomly by salespeople. So salespeople could open, you know, page 30 or page 70, read a tip in less than a minute, and put that tip into play, all many of them, uh obviously uh based on the behavioral sciences. And so that wasn't fun to write because as an Irishman, I'm a storyteller and you want to tell stories and you want to hear stories. And so that was that was written, I think, with a view to now when people tell me they can't get their people to read, I'm I'm gonna be able to respond. You don't need to have them read a book. They can have a book and they can reach into their drawer at the beginning of the morning, randomly open the page, read the tip, and put that into play that day. Sort of the essence of literary, you know, digestible bites, uh if you will. So this one, um this one I don't think there was unlike some of the others. I don't think there was a light bulb moment where I said, I need to write, you know, this book, this fourth book, essentially human. Um but I was drawn to, and I am drawn to stories. And so what happened was um over the last few years, um, we've probably talked about it previously, but my main uh um uh role is is is uh consulting with with vendors and suppliers and brands. And then I do some sales master classes as well, which have evolved um over the years to be now sort of mostly half-day off-site kind of situations where I get into what makes great salespeople great and uh and what are the important uh traits and behaviors, and then more importantly, what are the um uh the psychological principles and the behavioral science nudges that give them a better opportunity uh to be to be more successful. And so as I was teaching these sessions around the country over the last few years, I would always use stories uh to make points because if you stand up in front of a group, forget about three-hour sessions, which is which is the norm for my sales masterclass, but if you stood up in front of them for an hour and you just recited facts and details and whatnot, you're gonna lose people pretty quickly. They're just you know gonna go away. Um you you may have seen one of my recent columns about brain rot. This brain rot was was the word of the year from the Oxford Dictionary last year, and now the American Psychological Association this year had a look at all these, you did a whole meta-analysis uh on the effects of our brains from this constant consumption of short form videos. And so this whole idea of brain roads becoming a real thing, and it's changing the wiring in people's brains to the extent that you know paying attention to anything for any significant period is becoming ever more difficult for all of us. This is not a Gen Z or a Gen A, or it's a it's all of us. Um, and and especially so, you know, the idea of reading books. But I uh was so intrigued by how impactful telling stories was as I uh conduct these masterclasses, that I just thought it might be interesting to do a book where I collected stories from other people. Um ultimately I sort of write the narrative and and you know put whatever prose in it I needed to. Um, but that I could collect stories for them from them on sales and on salespeople and on their process and on you know their journey, but everything sort of related ultimately to to their wiring and to their ability to influence positively the sales process. So I started collecting stories, I think, Michael, before I did anything else. And you know, then I'd get the story. Sometimes people would tell me over Zoom and I'd record it, and then I'd

Stories, Brain Rot, And Attention

SPEAKER_02 10:45

write it up and send it to them. Are you comfortable with that? And you know, and then what I would do ultimately is begin to find and insert the psycho psychology principles in each story, you know, the lessons uh that were that were gleaned. So that's kind of where um you know where that where where the idea came from. And so in some respects, it kind of grew organically, not terribly fast. Probably it took me longer to write this book, which I say is my fourth and last, and I'm gonna try to keep last keep into that at this point. But you know, you're doing hundreds of columns as well. I'm always writing, and so there's no uh it's not like I feel like I have to write a book. And it's a it's a challenging process. I know we'll we'll sort of get onto it a little bit around that, but yeah, but but but but you know, taking these stories and reading these stories and and and digesting these stories from other people, and then just things I would read in general. I mean, I don't know if you read the point or not. I think it's it's quite early in the book, but you know, it's reading a biography of Paul Simon, the singer, the musician.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Because there's a lot of a lot of stuff about musician uh music in there, too. That's how you actually open the book, is you discuss how being uh you know a singer in a in a rock band uh is fundamental to you being a salesperson, which I thought was a a very interesting connection. Seems kind of like pretty far away, but you tie them together quite nicely.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Well, I yeah, well, music is important to me. I if you just even scan the book, you'll you will see some of that stuff. But the the the surface impression of what you just said might be for listeners, oh, you're you're you're bold enough to get up on a stage and perform. Therefore, of course you're gonna be a good salesperson, because uh if you can get up on a stage, you most certainly can stand in a in a store or or in front of a client if you're if it's not retail and perform. And in fact, uh as you know because you you read that section, um, the point I was making there was in that particular situation, we used to write our own material, right? So we we would we would have this was back in the sort of the mid to late 80s, we would do all of the songs of the day, NXS and REM and you know Brian Ferry and all that stuff. But we would write our own material, and the longer we would play, the more we would incorporate our own material. And the the the what I found to be similar was when we were writing music, I couldn't help but see music everywhere. I I'd be driving down the street and I would see somebody, and I would bring a line of lyric into my head, and that single line of lyric would turn into a song, and then probably within 24 hours, or certainly the next band rehearsal, I'd have this idea of what I wanted to do, and I'd start singing it, and we'd start finding the chords, and all of a sudden we're rocking on this song that didn't exist until I saw this guy on the side of the road, and something uh you know sparked in me. And the the behavioral sciences and psychology and human behavior, I see that now and have done for for a few years. You were mentioning uh before we started about what a voracious reader you are, and I I certainly share that passion. I I'm sort of a 50-plus book guy a year. And then when you're you know I'm not I'm trying to. Well, look, anybody who reads is reading books. I mean, I I I give them credit. It is yeah, I would say it's more difficult on the one hand to do it nowadays with the with the the assault of of technology, but it's also more rewarding because it takes us away. You know, so it takes so that so that was kind of where the where the music came from. But the specific quote that I thought was so interesting, which is why I wanted to include it in the book, was you know, the the Paul Simon quote, where he talked about when he was had just gotten started with Art Garfunkel, you know, Simon and Garfunkel, and they were out at some photo shoot or some recording session, but but something very, very early in their in their in their in their history. And Art Garfunkel turned to Paul Simon at one point and made this very dismissive comment. He said, you know, no matter what happens, I'll always be taller than you. And the most people would just sort of, you know, let that sort of go and and and put it down to maybe a tad of insensitivity, but not get too troubled by it. The author asked Paul Simon, did that really bother you? And he said, it bothered me enough to where 60 years later, I still think about it. 60 years later, he still thinks about it. Now, when I read that, Michael, I think about, and there's a section in the book for the traits of good managers, of good sales managers. And when you realize that a perceived slight can have that kind of damaging impact on a salesperson or a member of the team. It doesn't have to be a salesperson. I I read that and I go, wow, I just learned something really powerful. Yeah, cognitively we understand that stuff. Cognitively you're gonna say, look, of course, somebody is gonna potentially have issues with it with it with a slight or a perceived slight. What you don't think about is the reality that here's somebody who's world famous, multimillionaire, celebrated alongside people like the Beatles and whatnot. And yet he's still troubled as an 80-plus-year-old man by a slight or a perceived slight that his partner made when he was a teenager or early 20s. I mean, it's that's powerful to me. So as I saw lyrics back in the day, I see the influence of psychology and the behavioral sciences and can and consumer behavior and traits and whatnot. I see that everywhere now. So I don't have to read, you know, 50 books, 40 of them, which are probably psychology in the course of a year to know that. I literally see it absolutely everywhere. So as I got these stories, collected these stories from these people, Michael, I just I started to extract what I thought were interesting psychological lessons that were true in all of them. Uh, not just as a sort of a narrative and whatnot, but you know, from from from the first one, the the the the the brown car, which was hilarious.

Used Car Lessons On Rapport

SPEAKER_02 17:31

And the guy told me.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

That was going to be the one I I wanted to ask about because it's so strange that you mention this whole section on used car salesman. And you start the you start the process of talking about used car salesmen um seemingly kind of kind of negatively about them. Like, ah, you know, they have this this uh appear, they have this certain aura about them that they're gonna try to rip you off. And there's even like uh a law that was passed, the lemon law, about making it so that if they do rip you off and you catch them, then they they have to give you your money back essentially. And that doesn't really exist for, I think you use like for like couches. I thought that was really accurate because and I was thinking about it even more because I'm actually in the process of trading in a car to a used car place and getting a new one right now. And it hit me pretty accurately because first of all, you talk about brown cars. I don't know the last time I've seen a brown car, and that's that's very specific. And the second thing is uh you we work in, I work in jewelry and we work in jewelry. The the relationship between a car sale, a used car salesman, and a jeweler with their shopper seems to be on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. On one, the the salesperson is trying to create an imbalance where they can, that's where the profit lives. Whereas I feel like jewelers, I sort of think that the profit is in everybody being very happy together. And it's almost like the profit is right in the middle, but they reach it from the exact other ends of the spectrum. I thought your uh your analysis is a very funny story about like how they come in. And uh and I I think it it might have either been your story or someone else's story about how you're like gonna go in and you're gonna be like, no, this is not a relationship building moment. I'm gonna take your, I'm gonna take your uh your offer and I'm gonna see if that's that. And then before you know it, you build a relationship with them. And I found that to be um very interesting. I I've um could you kind of expand upon that idea?

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Yeah, so I I I think it's a it's a it's a it was a great story, I think, for a lot of different reasons. The first uh part was it was not intended to be the story he submitted for the book. So we were introduced by a mutual friend, and and and he is a car salesman, and as you point out, that's probably the one industry as much as any other industry where you know the tropes exist and you know you're gonna get ripped off and blah, blah, blah. And and when I called the guy, um, I was immediately struck by his laid-back style and this that his tone of voice, which is a you know, huge thing. We we we often hear about Moravian's communication model where 38% is tone of voice. Tim sort of exemplified that in the extreme when when I was having a conversation with him. In other words, I was drawn to him without having met him in person, without knowing anything before. And, you know, I wanted something from him, right? He I wasn't gonna buy a used car from him, and yet there was a wonderful warmth there. So if you think about just that little quote unquote throwaway story, you had sense of humor, which was which which is pretty clear, you had tone of voice, you had which you were sort of referred to on the continuing sort of car, because it's a car theme, obviously, on that one, right? Where I talked about then going to sell a used car that I had, and and as you mentioned, I walked into one situation. In fact, it was a day, and I said, all right, no relationship building here. Whoever gives me the most, they're gonna get the car, and I'm done. I've no, I had no tolerance for for dragging out this thing. And if anybody went to see the manager, I'd be gone by the time they came back. It was just it was that kind of a situation. And I happened to go into, and it was one of the last, I think I scared myself three. I'd go to visit three. I went in to see these two guys, and they were two Turkish brothers or cousins. I think they were cousins of brothers, I'm not sure which. And they were very nice. And I actually said to them, look, this we're not gonna be building a relationship here.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

You're never gonna see me again.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

No, you're not. I'm gonna I'm gonna either sell you. This car, or I'm not, and then I'm gone. And that's that's all there is to it. And and um I said, I have a couple of offers, and I want to know what you're gonna offer if you're interested. And they they were interested because the process now you can you give people permission to reach out to you on the blue book site and blah, blah, blah. And they they reached out to me. So the one guy said, Well, okay, I need to take it for a drive, and off he went to take it for a drive. And then the other guy and I started talking. And you can imagine, you can imagine, even if people haven't read the book, what uh what transpires. And you know, he's oh, I'm taking my family to Dublin. You're you're from Dublin. We're gonna, where, where should we go? Now, I believe it was true. It may or may not have been. Even if it's not, I mean. But by the time, you know, the cousin or the brother got back, we had established enough of a rapport, a warm rapport about things that had nothing whatsoever to do with cards. Um, that I concluded if they were even in the ballpark, uh, they were gonna get the business because it mattered to them, and it didn't matter that much to me. So, I mean, I wasn't gonna take a thousand dollars less, but and so they came, they said, Well, we'll give you this, and I said, Look, I'm already slightly above that. And then I showed them a card where it was written, which I hadn't done previously, and they said, We'll match it. And I said, Done, we're finished. And so, you know, as you get these stories, and I was going through these stories, there were powerful, powerful lessons. That one happened to be my own story, but it was sort of connected to the brown car, which is not something we see an awful lot of, and I think a very funny story in its own way. And then there might have even been another sort of vehicle situation there. Maybe um Richard Shot and the British psychologist, you know, tells the story in there as well. So, no matter which of these stories I looked at, I just found that they were uh phenomenally rich in psychological behavior. And so, you know, I thought them ultimately I collected enough from her said, I think there's a I think there's a book in this. And that's when they started to put it in.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

And I really enjoy how you have these uh takeaways at the end of each each chapter. Right. Each chapter is is a story, and then you, you know, you bring it back. And I I really enjoy how you you try to, intentionally or not, you try to go as far away from what I expected as possible sometimes, where yeah, talking about salesmen or talking about talking about music, and then you bring it right back, and then you hey, here's how you can learn something from this. Let me put it into real terms. And then there's these takeaways, and there are these like little bullet points, and I found it to be very digestible. Uh is that kind of the result of what you were talking about with you know, making it so that things are as easy to pick up and digestible as possible.

How Much Detail To Share

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Uh, I would hate to the TikTokization of all media is coming for us. However, I do feel like when people find a novel way of doing it, like like with these takeaways, or sometimes with like a little bit more brief storylines, or even if it's just like DIYs that I see online, sometimes they are short, but like they cut out a lot of the fluff and like the background story to things. Is that do you think that there is some benefit to people maybe being more concise with their with their messaging, whether it's in sales or in storytelling?

SPEAKER_02 25:33

I I think the answer is yes and no. And and and and I say that because it's it's really both. So for instance, I'll give you an example. I had a column this week in National Jewelry on the on branding, diamond branding, and and the origin of you know, how we put a lot of um uh uh influ a lot at stake on the whole idea of origin. And and um my sense, of course, is we're we're using origin as a rationalization, and people don't buy it because of rationalizations, they buy because of emotion, and then after the fact they they they they rationalize it. So I don't know how long, Michael, the story was. I'm gonna guess probably 16 or 1700 words, which would be a good deal longer than let's say anything I would do in store, which about 500 words, or the jewelry book, which is the print vehicle about 500 words, and and and Centurion uh is probably around 500 words as well. So you could say, well, what is the argument? Is the argument for more or is the argument for less? And the answer is both because you do need, for me anyway, as this as a storyteller, I do need some platforms where you can get into a little bit more detail. And there are, I mean, I just leave in the column this week the amount of emails that I've gotten from people and LinkedIn outreaches and you know, people wanting to talk about this or that or the other.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

So there is an audience there for a longer form uh that's why podcasting is so unique, in my opinion, is is one of the few things where people will give me 30, 40, 50 minutes of their of their time and their attention. Whereas, like in on Instagram, if you ever look at your uh I post reels, if you ever look at your reel stats, it's like, oh yeah, your average watch length is 11 seconds. And it's like, and that's a good one. That's a that's a well-performing reel.

SPEAKER_02 27:25

But hopefully people are not watching reels while they're driving, but they will listen to a podcast while they're driving. You know, for me, I'll I'll go on walks, and depending on whether I have the dog or I'm alone, my my walks alone are about an hour and a half. I'm I'm gonna listen to a couple of podcasts on those walks. If I've got driving, I'm already lining up the podcasts I want to listen to. It could be a four-hour drive or a whatever it might be. So I think that in some respects, podcasts is today's radio, right? It's it's it gives us an opportunity to to just listen to some things that are really interesting to us in a manner that we're captive anyway. What else are we gonna do while we're walking? We're not walking and writing. You know, we can talk on the phone, obviously, but I think that there will be a so anyway. Look, on the column, it's you I both have the 1600 words, but then I'll also extract a couple of points from that column and pop them onto places like LinkedIn and potentially Facebook and whatnot. I'm not quite the Instagram guy I should be, um, to just make a key point here or there. And but I'll still put the column on it and say, look, if you want to learn more about that, you can actually read the column, which will take you a few minutes to read. So I think it is both, but I think that we, and especially I think about marketers now, if you're not fashioning your content, and I don't care whether it's digital or billboards, you know, how many times do you drive by a billboard, which are still big in in cities, especially, and there's so much stuff on the billboard, you have no idea what they're trying to say. I mean, just no idea. Or it's or it's the the so much copy that it's impossible without killing yourself or somebody else to read it. So I think that when we're doing videos now, when we're doing, you know, whatever it might be, messages, even in stores, less, not more, um, there is a strong, strong argument to to really think about uh that paradox of choice, which we probably you know talked about in our in our last session. And that's the idea that our brains weigh, you know, two to three pounds, but absorb 20 to 30 percent of our body's energy. The brain wants quick. Wants quick and it wants now. And and so we need to be cognizant of that, I think, as we as we uh as we do write written content or communication in any way, shape, or

Sponsor Stratus Estate Buyers

SPEAKER_02 29:49

form.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

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Selling A New B2B Platform

SPEAKER_01 31:27

we're back. But you know what? What's really interesting, Peter, is this book finds me at a really opportune time. Uh I actually in doing something that I have haven't had to do at Punchmark in uh nine years of working here, is I am actually going to have to do a sales product. I'm gonna have to sell uh this product that I've been very very very focused on for the last uh 16 or so months. Um just to give like the the TLDR on it, is we built this new platform for jewelry vendors to work with our retailers better. And for the first time ever, we're going to charge them. It used to be a free platform. There would still be a free plat uh version of it where we're going to have, we're gonna have a paid version as well. And I've been working on it with the Ross, our CEO, and Brian, our CTO. And it's been like, it's been a long time. And now all the things are in place. We have the work getting done. And now I have to have these meetings and have these sales meetings with vendors. And there's a couple of things that are going through my head. And my first one is actually later today at uh two o'clock this afternoon, um, actually 2 30. And it's with a vendor who I really respect. And I am a little bit nervous about it. But maybe if I could just talk to you about what I, you know, tying into your book, but also what I've been thinking about. One of the things I have done for myself is I come from a user experience background. Um, that's actually, I'm director of user experience at Punchmark. And what UX, one of the things that they do is they find it nice to put people into a uh a persona, which is just a fancy word for like a client bucket, as you might say. And with personas, I find it is a nice way to kind of step out of your own way and create this new kind of version of yourself. And we've done this before. We do this for our retailers, we have personas that we place people into, whether they know it or not. And this helps us tailor our messaging and things like that to them. Um and what I've had to do is kind of think of what is the persona that I'm going to present to our vendors when I go to sell them this. And I had to kind of think of it, well, just like to, you know, I guess talk through it. One of the things I'm I'm doing is I'm changing my messaging. I used I retailers always used to be about uh we punchmark portrays itself as very um approachable and cool and modern and young, all of these words we we like to present ourselves as very um likable, you know, which is something that we think is a real strength. Whereas with this one, the thing that's so interesting is that the vendor relationship, I mean, you know this better than probably anybody, the vendors are it's you're doing B2B. And then suddenly it's like you can cut back a lot of frills. So in preparation for this meeting, and I'm about to do a couple more next next week, is I sort of had to like change my almost like my affect and make myself someone else. Does that kind of seem uh you mentioned that you can be a maybe like a better version of yourself when you're doing the sales process, maybe more streamlined, more likable, more relaxed, all those things like you mentioned with the salespeople. Even if that's not their natural way of being, do you have any advice maybe when it comes to how I should prepare myself for this 230 meeting that's in just a couple of hours? Anything that you might, you know, give some advice to someone that that has to actually do sales for the first time in a while?

Authenticity, Listening, And Questions

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Yes. I I I first of all, it's I I'm not sure if I mentioned it in that book, but it certainly would have been in one of the books or or or in in maybe more than one column. You know, Daniel Pink uh uh wrote a book called he's better known for Drive, his book Drive, but he's he is um he had written a book called To Sell is Human. And his whole take is we are all in sales. You know, whether you're an attorney or you're a doctor or you're providing any kind of a service, we are all in sales and we need to embrace that. But there's there's so many um uh elements that you've touched on, and I want to just complete, you know, speak to a couple of them. The first one is you you're an eminently sort of likable and warm guy. And so when you talk about being, you know, somebody else, um I what I would caution is that um because I don't want you to m mistake what I might have written about or what I might have said in terms of you can be a better version of yourself, you can be a ver you can be a better version of yourself to the extent that if I read a column and something in that column sparks something that enables me to change a behavior, I I'm better than before I read it. I but but but I think you have to be your own your own self. You have to be authentic. And so I think that thinking about yourself as a salesperson is probably not the way to go. Thinking about yourself as a guy who really understands UX and really understands what a value that can be for the right partners is infinitely better than thinking about yourself as a as a as a salesperson. Now, uh it might be semantics, but when I hear personas, uh I what what what I think is profile, and I think one of the challenges with profiling people is we very often underserve them because we in some respects in an untoward you know way, we're kind of putting them in a box. We're saying this guy can do that and this gal can do that, and what I would say is think better of them, talk about much higher aspirations, because what you're really looking to do is you're really looking to inspire and influence behavior, right? And so I don't think putting somebody into, well, you know, this would be a an A customer and this would be a B customer, it's not what I heard from you, by the way, but this would be a C customer until we know absolutely and definitively as a consequence of their actions and behaviors over an extended period, it's we're never better for for for profiling customers. Um, and so I would be careful about that. Um, and I think it also not profiling them reminds you of two of the really, really important things in in sales and in life, period, and that's to listen and to listen without judgment, because it's amazing what you can hear, it's amazing the gifts they can give you, Michael, if if you're really listening to them, because and if it's on on on video, uh that's even better because you can see the body language and you can see what the reaction is to things said and the things not said, and and and and conversely, when they're telling you about something, you're going to see things that you otherwise you know might not have seen. So I I would say in a big, big way to be your own authentic self. Now, there's a couple of more things uh that I think I'd be coaching somebody who, you know, uh there is actually one of my sons is in the book who doesn't know he's in the book because I didn't didn't talk about it, and he's in uh in sales, and uh, you know, he was making this presentation, and and and I said to him, I want you to give them three

The Three Option Pricing Framework

SPEAKER_02 39:40

options. I want you to give the prospect three options. And he was telling me all the reasons why that wouldn't make any sense. And they said, Well, you go away and figure out how it does make sense, because what we know is that we know that agency matters to us as people. Hugely important. From the time we're toddlers, we're handling around the house or the apartment. We want to control the environment, pick up stuff, throw stuff, climb on stuff. So agency matters. So giving them choices is huge, as opposed to here's what I think a great deal for you would be. Don't go that route. Here's three options I'm going to give you. And three is a magic number. We don't want to have, you know, here's 10 choices, isn't that great? You know, think about going into, you know, I've used the analogy many, many times, the Cheesecake Factory, it's a nightmare for me. I mean, there's like a hundred different options. Now I go to a restaurant that has five options, so I'm gonna have a meal. And the latter is much easier than the former. So I think there's a magic in three. And now what I would say is as you think about your pricing, you want to give, and you can use your own sort of uh uh uh metric on this, but in effect, you want to give it one choice is a dollar, one choice is two dollars, and one choice is three dollars. Or that could be a hundred, two hundred, and three hundred, or that could be a thousand, two thousand, and three thousand. It could be ten thousand, twenty thousand, and thirty thousand. So, in other words, there's a relationship between those three options. The options that enable me to, okay, this is not overwhelming. I uh he's up there's three choices that I get to pick from. There's really four, right? One is no, thank you, but there's three options if I'm gonna make a selection. And the what happens far more often than we can imagine, uh 65, 70 percent of the time, is giving that option to people, but giving it to them in a way that's not overwhelming, which is to say three, and then putting that relationship of the pricing in A, twice A, and then split the difference. What we see is again and again and again people selecting the middle option. Again and again and again they select the middle option. Think about your own behavior. Do you want a small, medium, or large ice cream? Do you want a small, medium, or large drink? Do you want a small, medium, or large French fry? That's not just happening in smaller consumables like that. It's happening with vehicles, it's happening with diamonds, it's happening with much bigger stuff. It's use UX platforms, whatever you want to you want to suggest. The extremes, which is say the low and the high, push me to the middle. I don't want to get the cheapest one because I might be missing stuff out, right? There's regret avoidance that's happening there. I don't want to have go back and say, geez, could I have done better on that? I don't want to get the expensive one because boy, that's really expensive. I will settle for the one in the middle because that feels like the right thing for me. So I would say the two things, I mean, the authenticity is a given. You do you be you, uh, because that's what people respond to more than anything else. But when it comes to actually presenting, if you can find a way to present three options, and those three options, there is an actual relationship between the prices. Not one that's a grand and one that's eleven hundred and the other that's three thousand. But you have a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, or a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, or a dollar, two dollars, three dollars. That is powerful, powerful stuff. Yeah, and it works tremendously well in sales.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

I have a I have a real hard time. I think that this might have something to do with my upbringing as the I was the youngest, uh, youngest son, and I didn't I didn't usually get to ask for certain things. Uh, I usually just got what I got, which is okay. You know, you get what you get. Yeah. And uh exactly. And I have a hard time with asking for for money. Um, it's definitely something I have worked on for a long time, but I am still not where I need to be. And what's funny is I've actually gotten better at it with my own profession as a I have a side career as a watercolor painter. And what's funny is I I've gotten over that. And the reason why is because. I know that the price is the price because if they say no, I'm busy enough as it is that if they say no, they're actually doing me a favor because then I don't have to do the project and I can work on the other projects I have as a backlog. If they're paying it, it's like, okay, now I have to do the thing. The money is kind of like a an uh it's cause and effect. Like the money comes from doing the work. When it comes to this, I have toyed around and I hate using AI all the time, especially in in human relationships. But one thing I did is I gave my whole speech. I've done it several times. Um I've tried to shorten it as much as possible so that it's a little bit more digestible because I'm, you know, I only have so much time with these vendors. And one thing I've learned is that uh, and I take the transcript and I fed it back into this bot that I have that's very um tied into this project. And I asked for feedback on this. And the one thing that they said is that you you bounce, you dance around the what the actual cost is too much. You should act you should just say it, you should stand on business and and that's the price of the price. And it's so funny. I have such a hard time just like coming out and saying this is the price. When it comes to that, first of all, do you have advice on maybe mentally getting over that hurdle? And the second one for you, just again, I'm getting free coaching as by being a podcast host, I appreciate you. Uh is it better to just lead, or not lead, but like have it earlier in the pitch and then reiterate it at the end instead of just kind of like keeping it at the end? Because I sometimes feel like people don't even listen all the way until they hear what the price is, you know?

SPEAKER_02 45:49

Yeah. So I I'm gonna tell you a little story and then I'm gonna come back and answer a little bit more directly. Um,

Banksy And The Power Of Context

SPEAKER_02 45:56

you have heard of the uh the artist Banksy. We now believe that Banksy is a is a is a is a British guy, but we didn't know previously whether it was a uh a woman, a man, or a collection. We didn't know any of that stuff. So you may have heard that uh Banksy did an experiment in New York a few years ago. Yes. And uh did you ever heard about that?

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Yes, where he sells the originals and people don't believe that.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

And did originals, absolutely, and put them, I don't know if it was inside the park or outside the park or whatever it might be. But literally for a day or the guts of a day, Banksy did what lots of people do in and around Central Park on a Saturday and put his original artwork up for it to be sold, and I think sold either six or seven or eight pieces in the course of the entire day. So all of the thousands of people that passed passed by Banksy's work. And of course, I doubt very much Banksy himself, as we know now, was there, but he was doing this social experiment. And they could have bought that artwork, and six, seven or eight people did, for about sixty dollars. Now, as we both know, I think he ended up making $300 and some odd dollars, having sold six or seven pieces over the course of a day. His work goes for tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And yet, what was proven was that absent context, value changes the whole thing, right? The entire perception of value changes. And what I would say to you when you're talking or anybody when they're talking about sales, is you cannot lose the context of your space, your place, your customer, the conversation, et cetera, et cetera. And so, in some respects, I mean say two things, and they're a little bit sort of contradictory. One is you lean into the price and you feel very good about it. This particular one is 5,000. And you don't speak after that, because then it almost sounds like you're justifying it, you're rationalizing it, you're defensive. It's just this one is 5,000. Now, again, if you're going to deliver three, now, as you know from what we've already talked about, that's a much, much bigger thing. But I think if you think about price as a byproduct of delivering something that they are excited about, the question becomes have you delivered enough value around what that thing is? So one of the things I like to hear people ask in in sales and in especially retail, but sales, period, what's most important to you? Tell me what's most important to you. And then as they begin to unfold that, you're learning, learning, learning. And then you might say, if you if it hasn't come through in the answer, tell me why. Right? So by the time you get to price, which we should never just lead with because it has no context, there's no there's no value proposition. Take that same Banksy artwork, put it in a gallery, tell people it's on sale today for $20,000 each, and they'll be buying it. But here you, they just people passing by and they don't spend $60 because it's on the railing of a Central Park. So I think that when you ask those questions of potential customers, what is most important to you? And you know, where are your pain points? And you know, how have you overcome this in the past? And and then you use why a lot. Tell me why, or tell me more about that. You'll find that by the time you get to price, it's done. Price is a byproduct of having solved a problem. Or in you know, it's not always a problem. People don't come in to buy, let's say, uh uh fashion jewelry to solve a problem. They come in because there's uh a multitude of other reasons. My own brand building, reciprocity, because this store has been so good to me over the years, or or whatever the case may be. But you know, by the time you get to price, it's a non-factor. And it should be a non-factor. If you're starting with price, it almost comes across a little bit as though you don't fully buy into it yourself. So I would say, you know, in a contradictory way, perhaps, lean into it, which is to say, it of course it's worth that, right? To yourself. Of course it's and if it wasn't worth that, we wouldn't have priced it at that.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

But sit that aside and have conversations about not selling. Here's what we have, here's why it should be great for you. Tell me how you solve this problem in currently or in the past. Tell me what would look what a win would look like for you if you were to have this, that, and the other. And then if you can connect your solution, your product to that, then the price is a byproduct. And especially then if you can say, look, as it happens, then maybe you get back to them. It's better than just sort of doing it in that first conversation. And if you get back to them then with three potential solutions, each more advanced than the other, and three different price points, I think you'll be shocked at how it'll it'll it'll move the bar.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Yeah. Man, you give me a lot of encouragement. The thing that is scary to me, again, I I I appreciate the the free coaching. Um what is scary to me is I have not yet sold one. I haven't had this is going to be my first meeting. And I, you know, booked the first one to be with um a vendor I have a a lot of you know past relationship with and who I think very highly of. And I'm hoping to kind of build the snowball as I go with a few other ones. And what I find, I think that this could go very well. I told my my bosses because they were, they asked me, hey, project how many of these do you think you can sell? And I was like, man, there is like a real chance we crush this and we sell 20 of them or 30 of them or 50 of them. There's also a really real chance we sell like four or or or one.

SPEAKER_02 51:58

So can I challenge something there? You know, when you say, and again, I have a book called Sell Something. If you think about it in terms of how many of those will people want to buy, as opposed to we want to sell, because in some respects, you turn it up on its head and you're saying the you know the solution as a consequence of their conversation is going to be so obvious that people are gonna want to buy them. Yeah. And so I I just think that that's a better way to sort of think about it. And as I talk about people who what we're trying to do and what we're looking to do is to influence and inspire buying behavior. Yeah. And so I think that if you just change your mind, your mentality a little bit around that, you're trying to influence and inspire buying behavior. Now you get to think about how does that happen? How can I inspire buying behavior? How can I influence that? And that's where the right questioning and and especially the open-ended tell me why, tell me what you're doing right now, tell me what a solution would look like for you, tell me what's most important to you, why is that? By the time you get through that, and you'll get better and better and better as you do this, um, you'll find that your your your your batting average will be incredible. I mean, your your batting average would be incredible.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

I would love to hit a couple home runs there, Peter, but it's uh scary.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

Start with some walks and singles. You cannot exchange a few.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

Oh man, I would love, I would love, uh, I'll take a hit by pitch, even man. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't mind at all. Whatever gets you on the base. Yeah, yeah. I I'm I'm a team player, I'll take a lump. But I really appreciate it, Peter. It's it's um, it really did come at a really interesting time. As I've been prepping for this interview, I've also been prepping for uh these sales um opportunities. And you can and I didn't even put that together until like two days ago when I was like, oh, this is uh we're almost talking about the same thing. It's exactly one thing you don't uh talk about uh uh maybe enough, or maybe in other books, is that it's like I think that you're almost writing for people that naturally will like go into sales or are trying to improve at sales.

Rejection, Resilience, And Guardrails

SPEAKER_01 54:16

But what I sometimes don't think that salespeople ever talk about is that uh you gotta get rejected a lot of times. And you also people have to say no. And what I always laugh is that there is definitely like some like, you know, connection between people who are salespeople and people who are like good at hitting on people at bars, you know. I think that people who are are good um romancers. And I think it's because of the fact that they can take rejection better than most. And I just found right now, what am I afraid of in this in in my upcoming sales call is I'm afraid they're gonna say no, which is it's not gonna hurt me. I mean, I have I have uh 73 other shots at this, but at the same time, what is it that they're gonna say like they could say yes or no? And or or you know, let me know later. And I just kind of think um in this book, the only thing I kind of feel like that is um not that I I didn't yet see is that I am a little bit afraid. And it's kind of like uh a very, I don't know, inspiring thing to read a book where people are trying to get better. And I am just trying to start, I guess. And I thought it was a very uh very inspiring thing.

SPEAKER_02 55:37

I I I have which I think would be worth revisiting if you haven't read it, and if you have, uh if you have not, uh certainly do it. But there's a chapter in the book on resilience.

SPEAKER_01 55:49

Resilience, okay resilience.

SPEAKER_02 55:51

I and I got I don't know if I have an early uh copy of the book and maybe the actual copy, it's not the same page, but on this copy I have it's on page 47. But in any case, if you go to the table of contents in the book, uh you will see that there is a chapter, uh, you know, it's the the whole duo model for me, which is that you know, the things that are so essential. Just tell me what you have for chapter nine, if you have the table of contents.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

Yes, I have it right here. Uh chapter nine, yes, I do have resilience, yes. 47.

SPEAKER_02 56:22

Okay, so so if you if you read that before uh uh before uh your your call, uh I'm not gonna say it'll fix the the sensitivity that you have around rejection because uh that's tied into as much the big five psychology traits as anything else, but it would give it'll give you some guardrails. There's there's a there's a section in the book that says if you're short in this or that, here are some things that you can do to get better at it. It's not gonna make you more you know infinitely more resilient, but it'll enable you to sort of think about resilience in a way that's a little bit more fair to you and to recognize that huge numbers of people, uh, whether it's not just sales, sports, uh uh any competitive environment, huge numbers of people have difficulty with rejection, right? Because rejection in our brains is a little bit like uh getting punched in the head, right? Neurologically rejection feels, I mean it really does. That's not I'm not making that up, that there's a neurological effect of rejection, whether it's a girlfriend rejecting you or a school or a job or whatever it might be. And so if you are sufficiently low, have sufficiently low reserves of resilience, you're going to have to overcome that in order to be successful in a situation, any situation where there's a lot of rejection. It can be done. You can put guardrails on it, you can get help with it, but it's just something that you have to work on constantly. You don't, there's no pill that says, I have really, really bad resilience, really low resilience. I'm gonna take this pill and wake up tomorrow, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna be totally fine with hearing rejection and no, that's not the case. But you can teach yourself to sort of say, look, I'm aware of it, I know it's there, I've got to be conscious of it. I've also got to recognize they're not rejecting me. This is not about me. It's not a personal rejection. That situation, such that it was presented to them, is something that they're not willing to be be inspired by right now. Let me go back and revisit how I'm doing this, but they're not rejecting you personally.

SPEAKER_01 58:35

Peter, I really appreciate that. I will read that right before my uh probably right after this, and then that way I'm

Book Links And Final Goodbyes

SPEAKER_01 58:42

prepared. Um, Peter, if people were interested in reading your new book, Essentially Human, on sales and salespeople, where can they go to uh learn more, purchase it themselves?

SPEAKER_02 58:53

So they can go. There's a bunch of places, but I think the two most uh oft-visited places are Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com, where you can buy it. Um and and of course, if they want to contact me, uh LinkedIn is probably the best place. My email also, if anybody wants it, is at theretailsmiths at gmail.com. So theretailsmiths at gmail.com. And um let me know what they think. If if they read it and they enjoy it, let me know what they think. If they read it and they don't like it, keep it to yourself.

SPEAKER_01 59:27

Yeah. Well, Peter, thank you so much. See, that's a sale right there. I mean, uh you're just selling selling on there. Man, that's how it's done. Uh I really appreciate your time. It's really interesting listening to you, especially um as I'm on the cusp of doing something that I'm a little bit intimidated on. Uh, this comes at a great time. Uh, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 59:46

That made you growing. Thanks for having me on, Michael, and uh really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 59:50

All right, everybody. We'll be back next week, Tuesday, with another episode. Cheers. Bye. All right, everybody. That's another show. Thanks so much for listening. My guest this week was Peter Smith with Essentially Human and Sales and Salespeople. His new book. It's really good. Make sure you check it out. I'll put the link in the show notes below. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, Michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cochran. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and leave his feedback on punchmark.com slash boot. That's L-O-U-P-E. Thanks, we'll be back next week, Tuesday, with another episode. Cheers. Bye.