Episode 296: Insights on Effective Conversations

Intro

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.

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Brynne Tillman: Welcome back to Making Sales Social. My guest today is John Savage from The Savage Group.

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Brynne Tillman: John has spent over 30 years engaging organizations and leaders from a variety of industries and cultures.

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Brynne Tillman: His experience base has given him a unique perspective on new sales, and conversations. He and his company equip philanthropic boards, leaders, and organizations to grow to the next level of revenue impact and fulfillment. John, welcome to the show.

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John Savage: Thanks so much. It’s great to be with you.

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Brynne Tillman: Excited to have you here today. So, as you know, we ask all of our guests the first question, which is, What does making sales social mean to you?

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John Savage: Well, I think it’s a great context and question. And of course, you’re really the expert on all this, but we’re all happy to be a part of your community and you know what we’ve learned is we interact with our clients and our prospects in what we call tribes, and we just recognize that every tribe has social values, if you will, and culture that’s important to them. And so when we’re talking to people. They’re really asking us 2 questions. The first is, do you get us? Do you understand us?

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John Savage: And secondly, you know, can you help us? The answer to the first question is really more important than the answer to the second question, so most of us wanna work with people that get us that understand us.

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John Savage: And I think, as you teach, you know, being authentic in your relationships and being socially connected, if you will. Societies, our tribes of sorts, and they have common values. And for us, we’re we’re in about 12 different tribes. And they have different values, different cultures, different things that are important to them. And so when we engage, you know, it’s really about them.

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John Savage: not about us. And so people ask us, oh, tell me about the savage group and what you do and all that, and we’ll say, Well, let you know if you don’t mind. Let us tell you about our clients that are either doing great and want to go to the next level looking for a third party to help them get there, or they have a present, a problem they want to solve, you know. Which one are you? So we really have to start with letting them tell us what they value and what’s important to them. Obviously, what their pain points are. Those sorts of things in social selling, but what it, what it illustrates, and what you teach is that it’s different, depending on the society, the tribe, the social setting. You’re part of that. It’s not everything. And we pride ourselves on not having cookie-cutter solutions. So we really try to understand the culture from which the individual the organization comes, and then see if we can help or not.

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Brynne Tillman: I love that. I think that’s a great, great answer. And that’s gonna lead me to kind of my first question, which is really around insights on sales, and conversations. So from your extensive engagement across various industries, what principles have you identified as vital for effective sales, conversations?

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John Savage: Well again, as I stated a little bit it’s really gotta be about them, not about us and so we delve deeply with fairly intimate questions about the leader. There are organizations that retain us and pay our fees. But we’re really helping an individual, a CEO a board chair. We’re mostly in the nonprofit sector space family business space philanthropic space even some church organizations. All of those 4 groups actually function and dysfunction in the same way. And so we recognize that sometimes they’re not getting effective results because of the dysfunctional issues that are there. And we have to make a a safe space to talk about that and to engage them accordingly, so that they own the problem that they wanna solve. We have a 3-point framework of clarity competence and completion.

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John Savage: and the clarity is foundational. What is the problem we’re trying to solve? What is the thing of greatest interest to you? And that’s the starting point in our conversations to see if it makes sense to work together or not.

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Brynne Tillman: So I love that. And you know, one of the things we talk a lot about is stop sharing content that you want people to know and start sharing content that they wanna consume. And I feel like that kinda encompasses this from a conversation perspective, right? It’s talk about what they wanna talk about now, what you wanna talk about? So I love that. Do you have any examples of sales challenges that you’ve seen in the churches, or wherever you’ve worked, and how shifting that conversation made? A measurable impact.

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John Savage: Well, I think, for most of the people that you or we are in conversations with, they’re stuck in some way. They have an obstacle. They’ve got a ceiling. They got something they’re trying to break through. Even if they’re very successful, even if they’re an accomplice leader, they still have a vision for something beyond where they are today. And so I think the first part is to give them confidence. This is why we move from clarity to confidence.

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John Savage: That they actually can believe that it’s possible to break through. And for us, it’s really about the team. So our confidence module is really about building team and a better team and understanding the limitations of where they are today, that their confidence to break through that obstacle will come from, you know, team building and an enhancement, you know, on that level. And this plays out in privately held businesses that have shareholders on a board nonprofits that have boards, and churches that have boards.

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John Savage: There’s this other piece of leadership or ownership that most CEOs have to deal with for better or for worse. And that’s this shareholder group. And so we help them deal with that as well. Really, the shareholder group, the executive suite, and then the revenue team. Whoever is involved there.

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Brynne Tillman: So you know, I’m hearing teams. And I’m hearing different types of teams. So I kinda wanna, jump into the cultural influence right? So in your experience. How does cultural understanding play into maximizing conversation, effectiveness?

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John Savage: Well, again, I think if people are struggling to explain who they are again, you just don’t get us. You just don’t understand us and every one of our prospects, and say, Hey, we’re really unique. There’s no one else like us, and that’s generally not completely accurate. But we respect. You know where people are and have to. That’s our starting point of commonality is to to respect the elements of that culture. And of course there’s good and bad in that for a lot of organizations, you know. There’s the age will comment off. This is how we’ve always done it. And so we’re not gonna change and so we have to be courageous, I guess, on our end in speaking the truth and love and wanting to bring across realities. And that’s where a third party, just like in the work you do. A third party is so helpful to come inside a culture and see things that they’re not seeing, because they’re myopic, and whatever’s going on there, and they’ve got to be teachable. They’ve got to be humble. They’ve got to be willing to have outside voices, you know, speak into their world, and if that’s true, then we usually can make a lot of progress.

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Brynne Tillman: Excellent. So I’m gonna go one deeper on that and dig a little into what strategies or approaches you teach when you know, you’re talking with sales professionals in order to master that meaningful, impactful sales. Conversation.

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John Savage: Well, I think everything falls and rises with leadership, and leadership can be a person you know, can be a movement. It can be all sorts of things. But

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John Savage: I think salespeople need to establish their own voice now. Maybe they’re on a team of a company. Maybe they’re a solo entrepreneur but in either case, they are a person not just an employee on an org chart. And so what is your own voice? What is your own vision for your customers? How do you want to help them? How are you uniquely gifted to help them, and so give me permission for that voice to emerge? What is it you really care about your own value system? How do you want to change the world within your industry or whatever that is? People are basically buying from you. And they’re trusting you or not trusting you. Because of your own character, your own reputation. And so whether you use you know Linkedin or other social channels to establish your identity, you know, and then within Linkedin, people do move around, but you’re still there. You still have a brand. You still have an identity, and it really does fall back on you.

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John Savage: I was in commercial lending early in my years, and really was focused on, you know, on service, and they really didn’t care who I worked for. The question is that I keep my word that I follow through, and that built a great referral business. So you may be in a business that can cultivate referrals and repeat customers, or it may be a single transaction. You know, I don’t know. But in either case, your brand is gonna be you know, I think

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John Savage: I can’t remember. But I just got an anniversary remark from Linkedin, and I’ve been there a long, long time, and so you as you develop your own brand as a salesperson, you’ll probably be there a long, long time, and so you want to, steward that well.

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Brynne Tillman: So I love that. Let’s say you’re in a room with future leaders, seniors in college, Po. Folks that are ready to go out there, no matter what they’re going into as a career. There’s always some sales aspect to this. Whether you’re selling yourself on an interview, you’re selling your ideas internally, or you’re actually in a sales position. So what advice would you give seniors in college who are entering the world?

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John Savage: Stuff. Well, the the book I have half written but not finished, is Working Titles, the art of Good Questions. And so I think when you walk into a room sorority, fraternity, job hunting, you know, whatever it is. There’s the old adage that people don’t care what you know till they know that you care. And so that is exhibited by having intelligent questions about the person you’re talking to where you can do research in advance. It’s helpful. So you can ask intelligent questions.

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John Savage: And so if you’re coming to me, and you actually know something about me, and you ask me some questions about my career path, or my latest book, or you know, whatever it is I’m like. Oh, well, I actually want to talk about that, because most of us do want to talk about ourselves. So if you ask me questions that pull that out of me, I’m going to be more interested in you than the person next door who impresses me with all these stats on how important they are.

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John Savage: But it has nothing to do with me so social sales, social connection, you know it’s all about connecting and finding common ground, and you can only find common ground if you get out your shovel and you start digging to find it and look for it. And so using index cards on your phone, or how whatever method I think, come up with about 10 questions before you walk into an interview. My daughter just got a great job in Pennsylvania, and I said, You know the interview isn’t just about you. You need to interview them too, and see if there’s a fit for you. And so, being proactive in the interview, which is all about asking questions, is where I would start.

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Brynne Tillman: I love that so? My last question is, what question did I not ask you that I should have?

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John Savage: Well, that could be a long answer, of course, but.

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Brynne Tillman: The table is yours.

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John Savage: Yeah, I think, you know, I’m interested personally in a broader impact. So like, the question is, probably you know what’s the vision yet fulfilled for you, John.

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Brynne Tillman: Okay, go ahead. What’s your vision?

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John Savage: And so you know, we did some research when we started the company with some other client relationships. And they? Basically, we said, W, you know, how would you describe us? And they said, basically, you make us better. And so our tagline is making you better for this average group. And that is you know,  our 4 core interests are to help people wherever they are, grow to the next level become better, and be excited about that. So we’re not. We don’t have metrics that are just general in accomplishing, you know, stats, although we do have them. But our transformational stories are what really give us purpose give us life and help people go to the next level, whatever that is for them. And that’s how we measure success.

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Brynne Tillman: I love that. How can people get a hold of you?

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John Savage: Yeah, thanks so much. Our web is johnsavagegroup.com.

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John Savage: I happen to be John at John Savage group.com. And available on on Linkedin and elsewhere.

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Brynne Tillman: Terrific. Thank you so much. You’ve given us some great insights on how to have more effective sales conversations. So we appreciate your insights today and for everyone else. When you are out and about. Don’t forget to make your sales social.

Outro:

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