Episode 280: Building Personal Connections and Overcoming Objections

Intro

0:00:00 – Jeff West: Making Sales Social to me is all about making that personal connection. And it’s harder now because we’ve gotten so automated as a society. And so it really takes planning and thoughtfulness. But when you do that, you’re actually working with the neurology of the brain and it makes people comfortable moving forward with you. They, if they feel like they know you, they’re more willing to go forward. And you have to work extra hard at it sometimes now because of technology.

But oh, you guys are awesome at training people, especially with LinkedIn, about how to do this. So never underestimate the connection. That’s the deal.

0:00:39 – Bob Woods: Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show.

0:01:04 – Brynne Tillman: Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m really looking forward to my conversation today with Jeff West. After over 30 years in sales, sales leadership, and entrepreneurship, he is now a best-selling and award-winning author, speaker and leadership coach. His books, the Unexpected Tour Guide, and Thus, and the lady with the Blue Hair, co-authored with direct sales legend Lisa M. Wilson, have earned recognition from Ready, the Axiom Business Book Awards, the National Indie Excellence Awards, the American Book Fest Awards, his latest book, Street.

I was going to say that three times. His latest book, Street Wise to Sales Wise, becomes objection proof and beats the sales Blues, who is co-authored with like my favorite sales guy in the whole world, Bob Berg earning praise from business leaders around the US. He’s been a guest just everywhere, sales leadership shows, and of course, a member of Bob Berg’s Go-Giver Success alliance, where we originally met.

So, Jeff, welcome to the show.

0:02:24 – Jeff West: Oh, thank you so much for having me on, Brynne. This is an honor. I’m excited.

0:02:29 – Brynne Tillman: I’m excited to have you. So the first question we ask all of our guests is, what does Making Sales Social mean to you?

0:02:38 – Jeff West: You know, that’s such a great question. Making Sales Social to me is all about making that personal connection. And it’s harder now because we’ve gotten so automated as a society. And so it really takes planning and thoughtfulness. But when you do that, you’re actually working with the neurology of the brain and it makes people comfortable moving forward with you. They, if they feel like they know you, they’re more willing to go forward. And you have to work extra hard at it sometimes now because of technology, but oh, you guys are awesome at training people, especially with LinkedIn, about how to do this. So never underestimate the connection. That’s the deal.

0:03:20 – Brynne Tillman: So I love that. So I have to ask because you now have co-authored a book with who I really truly believe is the ultimate sales relationship builder, in the world. In fact, behind me, if anybody ever sees me on video, I have endless referrals. This is not just because Bob Berg is your co-author on this, but it’s always there because I do believe he is a genius when it comes to sales and relationships.

And I know the show is about you, but now I have to ask you, because I have to, how did you end up a co-author with Bob Berg?

0:04:03 – Jeff West: Well, I’m blessed beyond measure, I’ll tell you that for sure. But Bob and I have actually been friends now for over 20 years. It’s funny, that same book that you’ve got behind you, endless referrals was a catalyst in my career. When my career in the insurance industry began to take off, I was being brought in every month to speak to the new agent school and tell the story. And I would brag about the book, endless referrals, and talk about it all the time.

I had never met Bob, ever at that point. Once I was a regional sales coordinator in north Texas with that company. I got a phone call one day, and my administrator buzzed me, and she said, there’s some guy on the phone. I said, who is it? And she said, he says, his name’s Bob Berg. And I thought, sure, my friends are pulling a joke on me right now because I’m such a fanboy about this book. And so I got on there, and, you know, Bob, he’s got this positive vocal velocity. So he gets on the phone, and says, “Hi, Jeff, this is Bob Berg”. And I said, and I quote, “Brad, sure it is, buddy.”

0:05:05 – Brynne Tillman: I wouldn’t believe it either.

0:05:07 – Jeff West: Well, he said, excuse me? And I said, is this really bomb Berg? And he said, yes, it is. So I told him how much the book had meant to me and how I promoted it all the time. And so it just began the beginning of a great friendship. And over the years, I’ve been a client of his. I was later estate manager for that insurance company, and Bob came in to speak, and I helped him get a lot of other gigs from that.

But over the course of the years, when I retired from the insurance industry, on my first book, the unexpected tour guide, Bob was the first person I sent it to. And I said, you know, give me your honest opinion about this, is it? Is this good or bad, what? And he was so encouraging and just gave me such kind compliments. And he actually mentored me about going into the speaking role and all that. So go forward a few more years. The go-giver success alliance where you and I wonderfully met, that’s.

It’s just such a huge thing to me. But on one of the calls there, there was a lady named Lisa Wilbur. And on this call, she was kind of intimidated, Brynne, because she’s a very laid-back person. She’s actually Avon’s fifth-highest earner in history. The ladies made millions of dollars with Avon. And she had blue hair on the call.

0:06:22 – Brynne Tillman: I do.

0:06:24 – Jeff West: But she said on that call she had blue hair and she felt very intimidated because she had done it because her kid does things to his hair and all that. She just wanted to blend in, I guess, with blue hair, I guess. But she said on that day, you know if you ever want to stop being judgmental in your life, dye your hair blue. It changes how you think. She says, I can be in a grocery store and I can see a lady that I think her skirt’s too short and too tight.

But then I remember, send the lady with the blue hair. And so I popped in the chat that would be an excellent book title. Well, a year later, she and I did that. And Bob’s just been encouraging and making all these things happen. Well, it was the fourth quarter of 2022, and Bob and I were always communicating about sales things and we’d pick each other’s brains. And he had sent me something. He said, what do you think about this? Because he was thinking about putting it out and I answered his question, but the very last sentence in his email says, oh, by the way, that saved this, because when you and I do our parable, this could be some great material.

And we’d never discussed a parable at all. And so when I replied to his comment, I said, “Oh, and PS. by the way, if you’re serious, oh, yeah, we’re doing this.” And so that’s kind of how it started.

0:07:38 – Brynne Tillman: That’s amazing. So I love this. So, you know, I’m curious. Of all the things in all of sales, you went with become objection proof. And I, you know, immediately go to, this is probably, I think, the second hardest part of sales. The first is hard. The hardest part, I think, is getting to hello. And the second hardest thing is overcoming objections. So first, before I kind of get into my real questions to you, why did you choose this element in the sales process?

0:08:19 – Jeff West: Bob has had some material on becoming objection-proof, somehow to things, and he never turned it into a book. He had a pretty good-sized note file and had played around with a couple of ideas with it, but he never got, never made the decision to go ahead and pursue turning the objection proof, which he’s trademarked, actually turning that into a book. And so when he reached out, he says, I’ve got this. I’ve really been wanting to do something with it, and I think it’s got great potential as a parable.

And so he sent it to me, and I looked it over, and it does. And, it matches so well. This book has so much of my training in it, so much of Bob’s training in it, and it really nails down a process that I call fusion points. But the way he teaches how to handle objections starts with the premise that you don’t try to overcome the objection, you really don’t. The word overcome, if you look at the root words and how it came to be, it’s about conquering.

And what’s the last time you ever wanted to be conquered?

0:09:21 – Brynne Tillman: Oh, I love that. So, you know, that’s a great kind of segue into why you say that objections no longer need to be something. That’s fear.

0:09:33 – Jeff West: Well, that’s a great question. A lot of corporate training, all the training that I had gone through, they almost teach you a way to work with objections, and they always call it overcoming an objection. And the way they teach you to work with it is you learn certain canned responses. And the challenge with that is when you hear an objection that a prospect has, oftentimes it’s not even the real objection. They don’t even know why they’re objecting. They just have this feeling inside them. It’s like a spidey sense going off or whatever, and they know something’s not right, so they may throw, well, your price is too high, or I don’t need that and whatever.

But in the actual context of it all, when you take the time to actually go through a process that we teach where you’re controlling your own emotions, you’re empathizing with the person. What you end up doing as you walk through that process is you not only help them by basically doing it with them because you’re their friend at this point, you help them come up with a solution because they’ve already said they need, or in most cases, they’ve said they’ve given you some indication they could use your service once they know what it is.

But when you work with them on that, you actually build a relationship. So the objection can even make your relationship with that person so much stronger. And once you get comfortable with that idea, you don’t look at it the same way. I’ll give you an example. I was on a show with someone, I guess it was two weeks ago, who used to be in New York, but now he’s in North Carolina and he has read the book and he said, I have to tell you, I’ve been using that. He said, now what happened?

I almost get disappointed if I don’t get an objection because this is good stuff.

0:11:25 – Brynne Tillman: So I love that. And a lot of what, how you talk about this is reframing it. Right. So can you go one level deep and give us an example of, there’s an objection, and here is how I’d reframe that?

0:11:40 – Jeff West: Sure. Sure. I’ll tell you a great example might be if someone in the real estate industry and they’ve shown a house and everything seems to be going well, they’re kind of going through one of the final walkthroughs and maybe the husband or the wife, they say something. You know, I’m just not sure about this. It seems like it might be too far from town. Well, if you do objections like a lot of people are trained and you go into, well, it’s not very far from town. It’s only 12 miles. That’s no big deal. You know that you do it from your perspective, but the challenge is your perspective. The frame you see things through is not the same as theirs.

And so the process that we teach is, you know, stay first off, control your own emotions because you don’t want to lose focus on what you’re doing. And then ask them, empathize that their concern is something that, that’s worthy. And, you know, I can, I can see how that’s a consideration you may want to take into mind. Do you mind telling me what is it about that, though, that makes you think that way?

And maybe they say something along these lines. Well, you know, we’re used to being able to walk to the grocery store. We used to be able to get to the doctor quickly or whatever. And you start as you ask that question, oh, I can see how those things might be important. But then it gives you the opportunity, if you have a solution, to be able to point that out. You know, in a real estate example, it might be, well, you know, there’s a new development going in right over here. They’re going to have restaurants and a movie theater.

It’s going to be a little clinic over there. It may or may not be enough to make you comfortable with that, but that is going to be right around the corner from you. Does that seem like something that you might be okay with? And then when, when you’ve done that with them and you worked through that, their frame starts to shift. You know, we all see things through the frame that we, everything that’s ever happened to us in our life builds the frame, that we look out the window, and that’s the way we see the world.

But when you work with it in this way, you then get the opportunity to say, well, let me see if I can get you to see it this way just a little bit. And you shift their perspective slightly. And oftentimes that process alone is enough that they join right in with you and you have a solution, and it goes on through.

0:13:47 – Brynne Tillman: I really love that. And one of the things that I’m hearing is, you know, going back to, you’re not conquering their objections. You’re guiding them to identify if it’s a real objection or if it’s a deal-breaking objection. And by the way, as a salesperson, understand the core of why that matters. Maybe it just matters to them because their mother said it mattered to them. We have some objections that don’t have as much merit as we might think once we start thinking about them.

So you’re acting as a guide, right?

0:14:29 – Jeff West: Absolutely.

0:14:29 – Brynne Tillman: To help them identify the core. And by the way, if the house is the wrong house for them, you don’t want to sell it to them anyway.

0:14:37 – Jeff West: Absolutely. You know, sales, and I know this is how you do your business. Sales, at its core, is being focused on the other person, and what they are. What they need, what they want, what’s in it for them, and then helping them get it. And if that’s not the right choice, then it’s better not to do that for you. For you or them. And I know that’s how you run your business, too.

0:14:59 – Brynne Tillman: Yeah. And I think it’s for me. It’s really about serving the client and making the money is the bonus.

0:15:06 – Jeff West: Absolutely.

0:15:07 – Brynne Tillman: How I have to look at things because it’s what, it’s what excites me. Right. Is just to bring that value. So I want to move this a little from that realtor perspective to more of a b two b perspective, where often salespeople’s biggest challenge is getting past the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper is throwing out those objections. What do you recommend in those cases?

0:15:33 – Jeff West: I will start on that. Such a good question. I’ll start on that one. Really, the first, the first person I would want to change their frame on that is the actual salesperson. I’ll give you an example. I grew up in a business-to-business sales environment. That’s why my 30-plus years are really there. And it wasn’t unusual at all that when you made that initial contact, the administrative assistant, whoever was in the mix, they weren’t going to let you in to see the owner of the company.

That wasn’t their modus operandi. For most, there were some that could, but most didn’t. And so basically what I learned to do and what we teach in the book actually is be focused on how the gatekeeper is, how their world changes if you’re there, you know, because truthfully if you. If you know that, how the gatekeepers themselves will benefit from the relationship with that company? Like I was in the employee benefits arena, I knew exactly how that person was going to benefit.

Then it allowed me to change my focus to what was in it for them. So when I approached about what we did, as in, this is what’s in it for you, this is how your world’s going to get better. All of a sudden, that gatekeeper is not keeping me out. They’re the key holder. They were getting me. Yeah, they had the keys to the kingdom and all because they understood what was in it for them. They wanted to help me get to see the right person. And it worked like a charm.

But it starts off with the salesperson realizing whether it’s an administrative assistant, whether it’s a buying or purchasing department, whatever the model is if you can focus on the value that you bring to that person you’re speaking with at the time, at whatever level in your conversations it is, focusing on their value gets them on your side. And even if it’s just making their job easier that day, and that helps you because, you know, you think about an administrative assistant.

If the owner of a business took every salesperson’s call, they’d never get any work done. So you can’t get mad at the gatekeeper for doing their job. But if they know what’s in it for them, they become your key holder and they’ll unlock those doors.

0:17:43 – Brynne Tillman: Oh, I love that. You know, I think it’s interesting what I’m hearing you say, because we talk a lot about detaching from what the prospect is worth to you and attached to what you’re worth to the prospect, but even the gatekeeper detach. So for you, the close is the gatekeeper lets you through. Right. The gatekeeper unlocks the door. But if you are solely focused on the gatekeeper unlocking the door, then you lose focus on what matters to the gatekeeper.

I absolutely love that your goal here is to bring value to that gatekeeper and earn the right to get the door opened.

0:18:26 – Jeff West: Oh, absolutely. You know, that’s one of the things that I learned from endless referrals, even though it wasn’t phrased the same way. But that’s the first book that really got me focused on every level of my sales process, including not being around a decision maker. How did that person benefit? By taking the step I’m asking them to take.

0:18:44 – Brynne Tillman: Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, this is endless referrals there. I have three books that are the core of everything I do, and endless referrals is one of those. So we are right there together. So I’m going to throw out a few objections that salespeople hear all the time, and maybe you can guide us a little bit on how to overcome them, like the big one. I need to think it over, or your price is too high, or we’re happy with, you know, we’re happy with who we’re using today.

0:19:13 – Brynne Tillman: Those are the objections we hear over and over and over again. How do you use your reframing to not to overcome them, to help your buyer work through that?

0:19:27 – Jeff West: Right. Such a, such a good mindset. The biggest thing that I would teach into something like that is basically to, the better your discovery is. You know, every sales conversation has. Has sections, and I’m not a big believer in teaching someone a lot of scripts, although I’ve had view scripts, and most people that I know have tended to, when they use a script, they don’t take the time to internalize it and make it sound like them. So I kind of teach a structured improvisation thought process.

0:19:58 – Jeff West: But in the case of things like that, it’s oftentimes that in your part of your sales conversation that’s in the discovery section, you want to do two things. Number one, you want to ask some really great questions that get the prospect to start to tell you what they need to hear in the first place. You know, I could tell them, well, here’s what we’re going to do for your company, ABCD and E, and that’s all well and good, but if I ask the right questions, that prospect’s going to tell me, well, we really want to do ABCD and E, and if I’ve done that well in my discovery section, then it’s easy for me. Well, there’s things you’ve already said you want to do. I can help you do that. So you can link it that way, then the truth is, the better your discovery is, the fewer their objections are going to be.

0:20:45 – Jeff West: And then we all get certain canned objections. I say canned. That’s probably not fair. Within the first couple of weeks that you’re in sales, you’re going to hear some of the same objections over and over. It’s just what happens. We all have some that are kind of baked into our business model, and one of the things that is a great way to overcome that and become objectionable is to learn how to deal with that. Actually, in your sales conversation itself, when you have kind of a common objection, you get, whether it’s price or whether it’s too big or too small, whatever it might be, there are certain ways that you know how to handle that already. When you do that, bring it up during the course of the conversation. Because if you bring it up there along with a solution, it’s not an objection, it’s education.

0:21:31 – Jeff West: But if you wait until it’s over and they bring it up, then it’s an objection, and you’ve got to work with that objection with your prospect. And so like, and I’ll give you an example on price. When I was in the employee benefit arena, nobody loved going to insurance meetings. They didn’t. They hated them. And I knew that was going to be the case. And so they always thought, we can’t afford anything else. We don’t need anything else. I was in a particular niche in the industry that was a supplemental product.

0:22:03 – Jeff West: It was a voluntary benefit they did through payroll deduction, and nobody thought that. And one of the first things you’re ever told in sales training 101, at least back a few decades ago when I started, was, you don’t bring up price too early. You want to make sure that you get your price in at the end, not me. Because what I learned is when I began my presentation, I would say the three biggest objections I’ve been going to get upfront and say, number one, you got to be thinking you already have insurance.

0:22:32 – Jeff West: Number two, you don’t want to pay for anything else in your life. So you got to be asking yourself, why am I listening to that boy? And then I would handle, I would work with those objections. And then in our case, the why was the fact that we took care of the part that their main insurance didn’t. Then we gave them money in their pockets, the price. I would give them the price and say, look here these are the prices of the products I’m going to end up showing you at the right time.

0:22:58 – Jeff West: Don’t spend more than about an hour’s wage to 2 hours of wages per week with me. Keep your budget in mind. And all of a sudden, you’d watch their faces, Bryn, because I was handling that at that point in the process. I was educating. I would watch their faces. They’d come in with their arms all folded and scowl on their face. And then they’d start relaxing and I would tell a couple of jokes. I’d start laughing.

0:23:19 – Jeff West: I had a lot of my clients where we had 100% of their employees on the program.

0:23:25 – Brynne Tillman: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. So how important, you know, I’m listening to this. So one of the things I hear is you’re, you’re handling the objections before they come up. That’s brilliant. How important is empathy in the objection proof process?

0:23:43 – Jeff West: It is absolutely. It’s probably the biggest key. And it’s not just in the objection proof process, it’s in everything you do. And there’s a science behind that. I’ll briefly mention in a minute. But the empathy part, what it amounts to, is when most people go into a sales and prospect scenario, it’s not exactly a gel. If they don’t already know you like you and trust you, they’re not immediately going to accept everything that you say is being true.

0:24:12 – Jeff West: You’re the salesperson. If you can ask the question and they say it, they’ll believe it. But if you said it, it’s not necessarily something they’re going to take at face value. So when they have an objection, and if you do it the standard way, most people have been trained in sales, and you try to overcome that objection, it becomes that ping pong. You hit it here, they hit here. He said this, I said that.

0:24:34 – Jeff West: Nobody wins that. And plus, when you get down to it, an objection is like an opinion. Nobody wants their opinion overcome. You need to look no further than the political climate in our country to know people don’t want you to overcome their opinions, and they get angry with you. So in that process of becoming objection proof, when you control your own emotions first and then you empathize, you realize, hey, they’re seeing the world their way. That’s okay. I don’t have to be right about everything anyway.

0:25:03 – Jeff West: But, and you tell them point blank, you know, I can see how that’s something you’d need to consider. All of a sudden, you will see their, their wall start to crumble. They’ll, they’ll open up to you more, and that give. They’ll give you the mental permission to ask questions so you can dig in a little deeper. And then when you do that, it gives you that opportunity to work with them and find the solution.

0:25:27 – Brynne Tillman: I think it’s brilliant. And I think, you know, I’m thinking I have grandbabies, and, gosh, how that’ll work with them, too.

0:25:35 – Jeff West: Absolutely.

0:25:36 – (Brynne Tillman): Instead of just saying no, I can see how that’s frustrating. Like, I just. The whole, that is empathy, and it is when they feel heard. You’re right. All the walls will come down. And I love the sales side, but the personal side, it works beautifully as well. I love that.

0:25:59 – Jeff West: Oh, it really does.

0:26:01 – Brynne Tillman: So I want to talk to you just briefly about the five steps of working the objections. You call it working the objections with objections, like a pro. So share those steps with us, if you don’t mind.

0:26:15 – Jeff West: Step one is control your own emotions, because what happens in all of us, we are creatures. The way we were designed, our brain works a very specific way. When we have an emotion that happens in our brain, our brain, before we can make any decision, it has to communicate. The logical part of the brain and the emotional part of the brain will communicate, or no decision gets made. So they’ll communicate in our brain.

0:26:41 – Jeff West: When we have that fear of loss or that fear of rejection, someone’s about to tell us no. As the salesperson, it sets up a negative emotion that sends an immediate electrical charge down into our bodies, and it creates a somatic marker. We feel different because it happened. We have a physiological response to that. Now we must start breathing heavy. We must all that. But that alone can make us respond defensively or confrontationally. It’s going to make the prospect do the same. It’s a no win situation.

0:27:12 – Jeff West: So step one is to control your own emotion. Step two is to show that empathy. Tell them that you can see how that’s a valid concern. And don’t. Don’t tell. No, no, that doesn’t count. The next step is to ask questions so you can dig a little deeper, because that’s the only way you’ll know if you’re really getting the proper objection, because you could give the perfectly rehearsed response to the absolute wrong objection if you don’t, because they may not even know what the real objection is at that point. It may be surface level.

0:27:42 – Jeff West: The next is to isolate the issue, find out if there’s more objections than that. You know, you ask a question like, well, other than that, is there anything else going on? If we were able to find a solution for that, do you see any reason you wouldn’t go ahead and move forward? And that’s the isolation part. And when they say no, then the final thing is to shift their perspective, reframe it, offer your solution that would work in their scenario, and ask them how they feel about, do you think that will work, even if it’s not perfect? Does it get it to a level that’s palatable to you?

0:28:13 – Jeff West: And then the final thing is to close the sale. Offer social proof. Show. Show them other clients that you’ve had that are really happy with you.

0:28:21 – Brynne Tillman: So that’s brilliant. I love this. So, my second to last question, is there any question I should have asked you that I didn’t?

0:28:31 – Jeff West: You know, there’s one thing I love to talk about, and it’s the science behind it all. You know, you and I learned, we’ve studied the psychology of cells. We’ve learned, okay, if you do this, it works better than that all the time. But nobody ever really took the time to explain what happens in the body. And there’s a branding that I use when I’m working with an organization or I’m speaking. And it’s called fusion points engage the science of persistence, and it’s built on that model about. About how our brain works when we’re experiencing emotion and logic.

0:29:02 – Jeff West: There’s a gentleman that I follow. His name’s doctor Antonio Damasio, and he is a professor of neuroscience at USC and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. I won’t go through all of the science, but he did a major study, and what he determined in that study was when the two parts of the brain, that one controls logic, one controls emotion. If they can’t communicate, decisions stop. People could give you all the logical reasons. It would work either way, but the decision stops.

0:29:30 – Jeff West: And so his. His theory or his proven science now is that all decisions are a combination of logic and emotion. When that negative emotion happens in the brain and our body feels that way, we don’t want to keep going forward. We want to back off. So when you combine that with logic, you have what I call a collision point, and nobody moves forward. In a sales process, relationships break up. If there’s so many collision points, the emotion and the logic, people are going away.

0:29:59 – Jeff West: But the opposite is true, and the opposite is the magic of why everything we teach in sales works. And it’s called a fusion point. When our brain generates a positive emotional experience, something to love, joy, a sense of belonging, those things, when it sends that somatic marker into our body. We like that feeling. We want to do that again. Hey, let’s go out again. Let’s do whatever. And so when that happens and you combine that with logic, the person wants to take that next step.

0:30:29 – Jeff West: And so a fusion point is that moment in time where logic and positive emotion merge and ignite. And when it happens, it creates loyalty, it creates persistence in our own career, when we can do that for ourselves. It creates so many things that make people comfortable with that next step. And one of the things that I told Bob when we first started working through his objection proof material is I said, this perfectly illustrates the point of a fusion point because you’re connecting with that prospect in a positive, emotional sense by how you work with them. When they have the objection that then they mentally give you, they’re comfortable giving you the permission to take that next step and listen to your solution, I.

0:31:10 – Brynne Tillman: Feel like that’s the foundation to all of sales success.

0:31:15 – Jeff West: I agree.

0:31:16 – (Brynne Tillman): It’s right there.

0:31:17 – Jeff West: Yeah. And then what I teach when I’m working with a group, Brennan, I’ll actually teach them. Before you make that first request for the meeting, before you request that first visit, you need to set some fusion points in motion prior. Whether it’s something you send to them on an email, that’s something valuable, or maybe you saw a positive review about their company and you saw that, say, hey, I want to send this. I saw this.

0:31:42 – Jeff West: And quite frankly, the way I do it, Brent, is I’ll actually print it off, write a handwritten note on it, send it to them, say, I saw this review. I thought that was great. Good job. Hey, someday I’d like to meet you. Please expect my call, and then I’ll do that three times before I’ll ever even ask for the first meeting. So they’ve gotten three positive emotional strokes by something I’ve done. And then when I put that with a logic of why I want to visit with them, your percentage of people who say, yeah, I’ll meet with you goes drastically up.

0:32:09 – Brynne Tillman: I mean, that aligns with sort of our perspective in slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome.

0:32:17 – Jeff West: That’s why you guys are amazing. You got a great show.

0:32:22 – Brynne Tillman: Well, I am thrilled. Our last question is, how can people reach you and talk a little bit about where they can buy the book?

0:32:31 – Jeff West: Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. The best way to find out about the book is go to streetwisetosaleswise.com dot. It’s on all the retailers websites and all that. But that’s the best way. And I’ll tell you why. The fastest we’ve lined up through Ingramspark, the fastest way for people to get the hard back at the best price is just be able to order straight from him. And you can do that on the website, of course. You can get it on Amazon and all that as well.

0:33:00 – Jeff West: My website is jeffcwest.com, so they can find out about my book there or other books, too. And then the last thing was if someone wanted me to work with their sales team, fusionpoints.com, or they can go to jeffsewest.com dot, they’ll find me. Those are the things. And there’s something we’ve got coming up to Bob and I are doing that. You, you may not want me to put this on the show, but I’ll just say we’re doing a go ahead. Okay.

0:33:24 – Jeff West: We’re doing a live event in West Palm Beach, Florida in June 2 through the fourth. We’re putting everybody that comes, they’re going to be in the Ben Hotel, which is absolutely gorgeous hotel. But we’re doing that. Bob and I and Kim Anjuli are doing a three day intensive sales training event. And it’s, it’s not going to be you just listen to a bunch of speakers on stage. We’re going to do stuff from stage, but then we’re going to do stuff with the audience and people are going to interact with each other and try to walk away with the skill set, not just they heard a nice lecture.

0:33:55 – Jeff West: And so that’s coming up in June, too.

0:33:57 – Brynne Tillman: So you know where to go.

0:33:59 – Jeff West: I’ll make sure you get an invitation.

0:34:01 – Brynne Tillman: So that’s in June. We will make sure. This will be, this is live. If you’re listening to this now, June 2024, if it is past June 2024, reach out to Jeff and see if there’s another one on the book. So this is great. You’re amazing. I knew this was going to be amazing, but it was even better than I expected, which was I already had high expectations. So how awesome is that? You’re fabulous. I feel blessed to have you in my networking world circle, and I’m grateful for the insights you’ve now shared with the world with this book that you and Bob have published.

0:34:42 – Brynne Tillman: Streetwise to sales wise. Thank you so much, Jeff and to everyone who’s listening today. When you are out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

0:34:54 – Bob Woods: Thanks for watching and join us again for more special guest instructors, bringing you marketing, sales training and social selling strategies that will set you apart. Hit the subscribe button below to get the latest episodes from the making sales social podcast give this video a thumbs up and comment down below on what you want to hear from us next. You can also listen to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. 

0:35:22 – Bob Woods: Visit our website socialsaleslink.com for more information.