Buyer-First Sales for Business Owners with sales coach and author Carole Mahoney.

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Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business.

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Resources:

Books mentioned in this episode:
[We receive commissions for purchases made through these links (more info)].

• Buyer First: Grow Your Business with Collaborative Selling by Carole Mahoney
• Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz

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You can find other episodes of The How of Business podcast, the best small business podcast, on our Archives page.

Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

Henry Lopez (00:16):

Welcome to this episode of The How of Business. This is Henry Lopez. My guest today is Carol Mahoney. Carol, welcome to the show.

Carole Mahoney (00:22):

Thanks so much for having me, Henry. I’m excited to be here and talk with all of your audience of business owners and about to be business owners.

Henry Lopez (00:29):

Absolutely. This is such a big topic for most business owners and aspiring business owners, so I’m excited to have Carol on the show today because she’s a widely respected sales coach, and so whether you’ve always hated sales or you’re simply looking for a more effective way, an authentic way to connect with buyers, the conversation we’re going to have today will help you reframe, I think not just your mindset, but also your approach to how you do sales. You can find all of the Howa business resources, including the show notes page for this episode, and information on my one-on-one and group coaching programs at my website, the how of business.com. I also invite you to please consider supporting this show on Patreon, and please subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don’t miss any new shows. Let me tell you a little bit more about Carol.

Henry Lopez (01:19):

Carol Mahoney is an author, a keynote speaker, and a sales mentor who’s been changing the way the entire sales industry sees itself and how buyers see it too. Very importantly, she has been called the sales therapist by a Harvard Business School professor. She coaches Harvard Business School, entrepreneurial MBA Students on Sales, and has been featured as a top 15 sales influencer in 2020 by LinkedIn, a woman to watch in sales by Sales Hacker, and a top sales coach by ambition. She’s the author and we’re going to chat about her book called Buyer First, grow Your Business with Collaborative Selling. So we’re going to chat about that book. Carol Mahoney, welcome to the show Again.

Carole Mahoney (02:04):

I am so thrilled to share. I never get tired of talking about this, so it’s a good thing that I wrote a book on it.

Henry Lopez (02:09):

Exactly right. Yeah. Appropriate topic. You’re passionate about it. So tell me, let’s talk about the early days. Did you start out your career in sales or take me back to how you got started?

Carole Mahoney (02:19):

Oh heck no. I did not start my career in sales. I didn’t think so. I mean, I grew up with a family of business owners and my grandmother was my first sales mentor. But despite the positive image that she left for me about sales, I hated the idea of sales. I thought it was pushy and manipulative, used car salesman, very stereotypical perception of sales. In fact, I disliked sales so very much that I got a degree in marketing. And when I did first start opening my own business because of the great recession, I didn’t really have a choice. I was on a mission to make salespeople obsolete like the internet and SEO was brand new. I was going to do such awesome marketing for clients that leads were going to in, they weren’t going to need salespeople. Long story short, I found that that’s not necessarily the case, that we still need people to help us to make decisions that we trust, that understand our pain points and the best solutions for them, and that we still need salespeople today. But the problem is that I found with my marketing side is that when we would deliver leads, they didn’t know how to interact with today’s internet educated buyer. It was still the 19 and eighties sales tactics, the Glenn Glary, getting Ross pushy and aggressive tactics,

Henry Lopez (03:28):

Coffees for closures, people

Carole Mahoney (03:29):

Were still using. And for business owners, even if you’re not a salesperson, you still have to be able to sell. And I would argue that as a business owner, selling is much more difficult than selling for someone in a company, selling yourself your skills, your expertise, and it’s a whole other ballgame.

Henry Lopez (03:46):

Yeah, because now it’s personal. You’re putting your creation out there to be rejected. Yeah.

Carole Mahoney (03:51):

Yep. And I mean, that’s a mindset thing, but also it impacts us into how we show up in our sales. And the other part of it is, as a business owner, if you’re also selling, you’re not doing it full time. So you have to be as effective as possible because you have a limited amount of time that you have to do that with.

Henry Lopez (04:08):

Right, right. I want to go back to the reference to your grandmother. So what did she sell? Did she sell something formally or she was just a great sales person or storyteller, what is it?

Carole Mahoney (04:19):

Yeah, so Grandma Mahoney owned the first female owned real estate brokerage in the seventies in my home state of Massachusetts.

Speaker 4 (04:25):

Wow.

Carole Mahoney (04:27):

The thing about Grandma Mahoney and everyone would say about her is that she was always on, she had business cards that she carried everywhere with her, that she would leave at every dining table in the restaurant, in the bulletin. She was always a

Henry Lopez (04:39):

Salesperson, always on. She had the name tag on probably the whole bit.

Carole Mahoney (04:42):

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. She was always on, but for her it was really about building trust and about building relationships because for her passion was helping people that were small time, not small time, but new homeowners that they wanted to be able to get in their home for the first time and start their being first time homeowners. That was her passion for things, and she was relentless about it, and so she was my first influence.

Henry Lopez (05:07):

Yeah, it’s your influence. So what you mentioned when I think already building that trust, but is there something else that you think back? God, I learned that from her.

Carole Mahoney (05:16):

One thing that I learned from her is that the close starts, well, before you ask for the business,

Carole Mahoney (05:24):

The moment you open your mouth to say hello, it has started. That was one of the things that I learned from her. And one of the things that still shows up in the back of my mind is that first impressions will either help you or hinder you. And so always show up as your best version of yourself. Don’t be winging it, be groomed in everything like how you show up and make that first impression and say hello. She had me going to networking events when I was nine years old so I could professionally introduce myself at any networking event by the time I was 10. That was one of the things that she always drilled into me. Be prepared. Prepared to make a good first impression because that will make you or break you.

Henry Lopez (06:03):

It’s interesting. On that point now, just to go off on a quick tangent. Now as you mentioned that the internet introduces us first, that is making our first impression to a big extent what people find out about us, about our company, what our website looks like. All of those things are making that first impression

Carole Mahoney (06:23):

For us and what other people say even more so. Good point. When you talk about the idea of branding and the age of the internet, we still have this concept that somehow we can put out this image and brand of ourselves, but it doesn’t take long for people to poke holes in anything that is inauthentic or real or true or against. If you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, you will be quickly called out on it, and that will make or break any small business owner. No matter how they hear about you, they’re going to go online and find out more about you. So how are you showing up there?

Henry Lopez (06:53):

Okay. So you had these entrepreneurial influences. You had the grandmother who was the consummate salesperson, at least for that era certainly. But yet you got turned off to sales. Did you have some negative experiences like all of us do early on or did you not like the approach that your grandmother took in some regards? What was it that made you hate sales early on?

Carole Mahoney (07:15):

I think it first started with, everyone in my family did not necessarily like Grandma Mahoney because she was the epitome of the salesperson. And then she was always on, and I wouldn’t say that she was aggressive, but she was certainly tenacious. And so the rest of my family had this perception of what she was. I wanted to be just like her. But there was this perception of everybody else around her and how they interacted with her. And then when I was very young, my mom was dating a used car salesman who was

Henry Lopez (07:46):

Literally

Carole Mahoney (07:48):

The worst of the worst. The worst of the worst. And I was maybe three or four years old, and he was your typical conman that would try all of the tricks and everything to get people to buy. He didn’t really care about his customers or her buyers or how any of the tactics that he did influenced him. And I basically grew up with this

Speaker 4 (08:08):

Man. I

Carole Mahoney (08:08):

See. And so I had Grandma Mahoney, my family kind of fighting against that. And then I had the used car salesman that we were living with that I was like, Nope, I don’t want anything that looks like smells like or sounds like sales in my career. Even when I graduated college it with a marketing degree, my career advisor said, you would be a great sales person. I’m like, if it says sales anywhere in the job description, just cross it off the list.

Henry Lopez (08:31):

And they said that because you were probably a really strong communicator, and that’s a key component of it. Yeah. Is that fair?

Carole Mahoney (08:38):

Yes, I think so. And it was a degree in marketing. And so when back then when you graduated in marketing, you either went into a marketing department or you went into sales,

Henry Lopez (08:47):

Right. Much more opportunities to make money in sales typically.

Carole Mahoney (08:50):

Okay. Yes.

Henry Lopez (08:52):

Alright. So we fast forward to you start your marketing agency, you figure out that you do need salespeople. You still need to make that human connection for most things that we sell, right? We’re not talking about e-commerce, but most of the, especially bigger ticket items, business to business, all of those things still require that human connection. But so was it that realization that Lynn made you think, I have to rethink my idea of sales?

Carole Mahoney (09:17):

Well, the realization came when, about a year after my business had been going, I was a week before Christmas at the grocery store and my credit card and my debit card, everything was getting declined. I was just flat out broke, ready to file for bankruptcy. I had two kids and two mortgages to support. And that was the kind of rock bottom that made me say, what I’m doing is not working. And so I need to face up to the things that are making me uncomfortable that I have been avoiding. And I hired a business coach. And it was through that process in working with that coach and several other coaches even since then that I really started to address what are my own mindsets towards sales and where do they come from, but even more importantly, how were those mindsets inhibiting me from being able to make real connections with people?

Speaker 4 (10:04):

I see.

Carole Mahoney (10:04):

And it really came down to when I was rock bottom, I decided to go and look for a job, the four letter word as an entrepreneur. And my sister introduced me to her boss who was looking to hire someone. And as we went through the interview, Jack was his name, said to me, I’m really having a hard time deciding between you and this other person.

Carole Mahoney (10:25):

And in that moment I thought, well, I’ve got to get this job right. I’ve got a mortgage to pay, I’ve got groceries I need to buy. I really need this job. And then the next thought was, but this is my sister’s boss, and so if I’m not the best fit for this and this doesn’t go well, it’s going to affect her relationship with him and my relationship with her. And so I did what I could only think to do, which was to ask him the question, which was, what is the most important aspect that someone needs to be successful in this role? And when he told me what it was, and it definitely wasn’t something that was in my strong suit and I knew the other person was, I said, you would be better off actually hiring this person because that is their strong suit where it is not mine. And he looked at me, he’s like, thank you so much for making this decision easier for me. And then he said, the thing I didn’t expect, which was I’m going to see who else needs your services

Henry Lopez (11:13):

So that

Carole Mahoney (11:13):

They can hire you,

Henry Lopez (11:14):

He facilitated. But in that instance, you flipped the model for yourself from one of selling yourself to listening to what it was that he needed and then deciding, do I have something that’s a fit or not?

Carole Mahoney (11:28):

Exactly. Instead of making it about me and what I wanted, which was,

Henry Lopez (11:31):

And forcing it whether they need it or you can use

Carole Mahoney (11:33):

It or not, I’m focused on them. And so when I went home and told my husband this story, he’s like, well, maybe that’s what you need to do is to stop trying to sell people.

Carole Mahoney (11:41):

And then I hired a coach and I was like, alright, I need to figure out what it is that’s causing this. And took an objective assessment of my skills and my strengths and where those mindset gaps were happening and worked with that coach every other day on the conversations that I was having in role-playing and practicing and really challenging the way that I was thinking about things so that I started showing up differently. I started asking better questions, I started listening more. I started saying no to people when they weren’t a good fit because I knew that if I said no, then I was going to find the one that was the good fit.

Henry Lopez (12:14):

Lemme just go off on a tangent on this because this is something that I’ve had pushed back on me when I’ve taught or taken or led people on a consultative approach from a sales perspective is that, well, it takes a longer now to get to close. When people say that to you as an objection to this approach, what do you say?

Carole Mahoney (12:34):

There’s a saying in the military that if you want to go fast, you need to go slow. In other words, slow is smooth. And I’m sorry, how does it go Slow is smooth and fast. I can’t remember it now.

Henry Lopez (12:49):

Yeah, I get what you’re saying though.

Carole Mahoney (12:50):

But essentially it is when you slow down, you actually speed things up because you’re smoothing things out. And so

Carole Mahoney (12:58):

For example, with Jack, when I said, you know what? I’m not the best fit for you. His immediate response was to want to refer me to other people. When you ask, and the thing is, when people think about consultative selling, they make this misnomer of, I need to provide this expertise, I need to consult them. I need to tell them what it is that they need to do. But that is not what buyers want today. They’re educated, they have a lot of knowledge about what’s going on. They probably have a lot of knowledge about the solutions that are out there. They need someone who’s going to collaborate with them to ask them the questions that make them think differently, that come up with new ideas and perceptives insights that they hadn’t thought of before that really relate to them in their specific situation. They want someone who’s, this is what the research the neuroscience all says is that we want people to collaborate with us to come up with solutions specifically for us. And so it’s not about dragging it out, it’s about being concise in the questions and the listening to then be able to get to the heart of the matter quicker.

Henry Lopez (13:56):

Yeah. I think it also leads me to the point that we go back to the point of our websites or other collateral or marketing material. One of the roles that it has to play is to help people as they’re collecting that information, because like you said before they come to me, they’ve done the research by and large, especially larger ticket B2B sales. And so I got to make sure that I provide them with the right information so that they can start to make those decisions. Am I explaining it right? In other words, it can’t just be a one-way commercial on any of my marketing materials I’ve got to share. That’s why, for example, in a lot of scenarios, a case study is so much more powerful than me telling you what my features are. How are people using it is so much more powerful because that’s the work they’re going to do upfront before they even get to me. Right?

Carole Mahoney (14:51):

Yeah.

Henry Lopez (14:51):

As the sales

Carole Mahoney (14:52):

Person, my favorite phrase, and this comes from my friend Brent Adamson, who wrote or co-wrote The Challenger Sale, is that when he’s trying to offer those insights, so those case studies, what he often says is, in working with companies like yours, what we’ve learned is this, that this is how other people in this situation just like you, with these same challenges, this is what we’ve learned they’ve been able to do by applying this thing.

Carole Mahoney (15:17):

The other part of it is that we talk a lot about asking a lot of questions in sales, but we also have to examine are the questions that we’re asking questions about what we care about understanding so that we can pitch our solution or the questions that we are asking, are they tuned into helping buyers get the answers they need to feel comfortable and confident in making the decision that they’re making the right decision? That’s what makes sales cycles longer. Not that we are asking so many questions, it’s that we’re not asking enough deep questions that help people to really understand what is going on that make sense of all of the information that’s out there, all of the research that they’ve done. We need to help them to make sense of what they know and what they don’t know, and help them to frame how is the best way to make this decision? What’s important to consider based on what we’ve learned and working with hundreds or thousands of people just like you in the decades of experience that we have in doing that. So that’s what I mean by the military saying that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Is that when you go deep enough into those questions to really understand, and that’s what most people don’t do. They ask the surface level questions about what they care about. How much is your budget? When do you want to make a decision by not

Henry Lopez (16:24):

Right? The self-serving questions that are just obvious too. This is yeah, brilliantly said. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This is Henry Lopez briefly pausing this episode to invite you to schedule a free coaching consultation with me. I welcome the opportunity to chat with you about your business plans and offer the guidance and accountability that we all need to achieve success. As an experienced small business owner myself, I understand the challenges you’re experiencing, and often it’s about helping you ask the right questions to help you make progress towards achieving your goals. Whether it’s getting started with your first business or growing and maybe exiting your existing small business, I can help you get there. To find out more about my business coaching services and to schedule your free coaching consultation, please visit the how of business.com. Take that next step today towards finally realizing your business ownership dreams. I look forward to speaking with you soon. Alright, so speaking of books, your book, buy or First Grow Your Business With Collaborative Selling, I always ask, why did you write it? What brings you to writing it and who is it for ideally?

Carole Mahoney (17:35):

So the why I wrote it, what I told my husband is that I, over the 20 years in being a business for myself, have learned a lot based on the mistakes that I’ve made. And so if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, this is my insurance policy that the rest of the world can learn from my mistakes. And he just, that’s morbid, hun. But the real reason was I wrote it for business owners who like me, had tried all of the tips and tricks and hacks and processes that are typically written books that are written for people who work in corporations. And we already know that selling as a business owner is different than selling as a company. And what I was finding is that when I tried to figure out sales for myself, the books, all of the ones that you see on my shelf behind me here, they didn’t actually dig into what I was struggling with and how I was going to be able to take action on this as a business owner.

Speaker 4 (18:21):

And

Carole Mahoney (18:21):

So on top of the fact that I wanted everyone to learn from my mistakes, but I also wanted people to be able to see as a business owner, here’s how you can be most effective in sales. And the third reason was is that most of the sales books out there, first of all, there’s little to no sales books written for specifically business owners. And the third part of it is those that are typically marketing techniques where you’re not actually having a conversation with someone. And they’re also based on one person’s experience. They’re not based on academic research and studies and neuroscience and data specific to sales because how we did it here or how someone made six figures in six months, why doesn’t that work for us? Because it doesn’t, the science doesn’t line up. So I wanted something based on not just my experience, but research and science for business owners, and that answers the questions that not only the mistakes that I make, but I think every business owner makes at some point.

Henry Lopez (19:13):

Tell me a little bit more about the research that you did conduct for this book,

Carole Mahoney (19:18):

For the research. I have a partnership with a data company that we have data performance metrics on two and a half million sales professionals, and that includes the mindsets and the impact that those mindsets have on behaviors and the results that has. I also started digging into psychological research. So the theory of reasoned action, which is how you think about something, becomes how you behave in that particular situation, which becomes the results that we get. So our mindsets towards sales impact our behaviors, impacts our results. And then finally was the psychological sciences and the neurosciences and the social sciences on how we make buying decisions and what are the things that buyers are looking to be able to do in their buying decision process? What questions do they ask themselves? How do they answer that? How do they want to interact with a salesperson? I took research from Harvard Research, from Stanford research from other psychological institutions because I wanted to be able to not just say, here’s how you should do it, but here’s how it works, so that people could then start to test and experiment based on research and science and not just, alright, this didn’t work for me onto the next thing.

Henry Lopez (20:24):

So at a high level, what generally do buyers want from a salesperson or the business owner who is the salesperson?

Carole Mahoney (20:35):

So the hint is in the title, they want collaboration. There are studies that show, one is called the IKEA effect that was done from Harvard Business School, which showed that when people put effort and collaboration into something that they place more value on. That other studies that were done at Stanford also showed that when people get asked open-ended questions, the what, who, when, where, and why to really understand something that not only does the person asking the question understand them better, and that’s one of the things that buyers complained about with salespeople is that they don’t understand us and our pain points, they’re just pitching products.

Carole Mahoney (21:09):

But the other thing it showed is that when we answer those types of questions, that we start to change our own minds about our problems and our issues and the things that we have and other studies that were done that on buyers of what is it that you actually value in salespeople? And those studies showed that we want people to collaborate with us, who help us to come up with different insights and ideas because we have our echo changer inside of our business. We need the outside perspective that is truly going to help us to make the right decision. And so that all combined together is what I now call collaborative selling, where you’re not just pitching or asking questions you care about, but they’re actually trying to collaborate to understand them, have empathy for them, why is this a problem for you right now and what is the impact that it’s having and what kind of results do you want later on? Those are the kinds of conversations that really help buyers to feel comfortable in decisions.

Henry Lopez (21:57):

Yeah, it makes sense. And of course it ties back to you were talking about earlier about they’ve done a lot of gathering information. They need you to help guide them through how do we make sense of this and how do we apply this here? Right. And then that’s why it’s so powerful if I can share with them other customers, clients, companies similar to yours have done A, B, C with our product. And so that provides that proof that it’s not just me as the salesperson telling you, but I can share with you how it’s being used by a similar company. Right?

Carole Mahoney (22:28):

Yeah. And we often hear we need to have ROI, buyers today, don’t believe whatever ROI that you’re going to pontificate about, but when you can tell them a story,

Henry Lopez (22:38):

Is it helpful if I share how somebody else saved money? Is that valuable? I’m assuming still or not as much? You?

Carole Mahoney (22:44):

Not as much. Not as much. Because then what happens is you are so, so-and-so got 150 return on investment from this, and the first thoughts that come to your mind is, well, who are they? Are there situations the same as mine? We are a little bit different than that. So is this really an apples to apples comparison? And we start to try to poke holes in it

Carole Mahoney (23:03):

Versus here’s the situation that you’re in. We find then have learned that a lot of companies are really struggling with hiring their first salesperson and that they often don’t have the systems in place to do that. When you use our system, you have the data of two and a half million sales professionals so that you don’t have to compromise quality and fit, and then you can have a more than 70% chance of hiring the right salesperson versus a 50 50 shot of getting a right salesperson. That’s a story that relates to an ROI without saying, you’re going to get 150 return on investment in six months with this. It raises doubt.

Henry Lopez (23:35):

Alright. I’ve got a question. I’m going to ask you two different ways. One is more generally speaking, in your experience, what are some of the key things, attributes, skills, abilities, that makes for a good salesperson?

Carole Mahoney (23:49):

So there are five mindsets that we evaluate for that will help or hinder someone in any skill. So one is the need for approval. We all have one. We all want people to like us and we believe that people need to like us in order to buy from us. But the problem with that is that when your need for approval is out of control, you’re making it all about yourself and do they like me? And you won’t ask those tougher questions that you need to ask that are actually the questions that will build trust. You won’t ask to reach decision makers or talk to someone’s boss because you don’t want to upset them. You won’t go out and do more prospecting because you don’t want to be rejected or told that you’re being annoying or something.

Henry Lopez (24:29):

I want to follow up because I think I’m pestering,

Carole Mahoney (24:32):

I’m being a pest if I follow up too much. All the tied back to that need for approval. And so we have to make those conscious efforts in both our everyday lives especially, but also in our sales conversations of making sure that we’re not letting our need for approval get in the way of asking the tough questions.

Henry Lopez (24:48):

What’s one way that you potentially identify that when you’re interviewing a salesperson?

Carole Mahoney (24:55):

So what we do is we actually have them take an evaluation so that it shows up in their assessment report, but in an interview say that they do the assessment and it shows that they have a need for approval. Then I’m going to ask them behavioral questions of tell me about the last time that you had to say no to someone and it upset them and how did that make you feel? Or when you said yes to someone, when you should have said no to someone, or when you disagreed with someone but you didn’t say anything and what impact did that have later on? Those are the kinds of things that I’m going to share with someone who’s interviewing that they need to be asking those

Henry Lopez (25:28):

Things. Yeah. Related to that, I might ask, so tell me, walk me through how you feel when you lose a deal, and I think I’m listening for

Carole Mahoney (25:37):

Their or how you feel when you have to get to the boss, when you have to ask for

Henry Lopez (25:39):

Exactly. When you have to ask for access to decision maker. Exactly. How do you feel about that? And I think I’m listening, therefore I want to hear a competitiveness. I want them to hate losing, but not because it was a need for approval personally. In other words, I also want to hear, but then I move on to the next opportunity and I learn and I move on. Right,

Carole Mahoney (25:59):

Right. Well then that competitiveness part, I often find that that has a lot more to do with someone’s ability to manage their own emotions. And so managing your own emotions in that moment will allow you to be one present. It enables you to actively listen. It enables you to think of what that next question should be because you’re actively listening to someone. You’re genuinely curious. When we are emotionally wrapped up in something, we have to win this deal, or we’re not going to make our numbers for the month. I’m not going to be able to pay my bills. When we are so wrapped up in that we’re so busy listening to the words in our head, we’re not hearing the words that our buyers are

Henry Lopez (26:34):

Saying. Okay. But that’s often the scenario for a small business owner, right? Exactly. It’s early days or I’ve gone through a slump, so what’s a technique that as a business I can use to make sure that I try to keep that at bay and I go about the sales process the right way and not let it be influenced by that desperation.

Carole Mahoney (26:54):

So one of the things that I wrote in the book, and I think I wrote it over 15 times, was meditation. Because meditation has been proven that neuroscience bot wise, that it has been proven after 15 minutes of meditation that you’re more emotionally regulated, you’re better able to make decisions, you are more tuned into what’s going on around you. And so not only that, but it also helps you to handle the stress of just being a business owner. And so things like self-care, taking care of yourself, meditation walks, eating well, all of these are the things that are going to enable you to regulate your emotions in high stress situations, which as a business owner is 24 7.

Henry Lopez (27:32):

Okay, but would I also apply it? I’m about to go into a high risk or high level call. Do I do a little bit of it in a car before I go in? Do I do all my breathing exercises before I go in in addition to what I might’ve not done or done this morning? Is that what you’re saying?

Carole Mahoney (27:48):

That’s part of it, yes. One of the things that I will coach my salespeople and business owners to do is that when you’re about to go into a meeting five minutes before, don’t be running into the meeting, but five minutes before you can do a box breathing exercise where you breathe in before, hold the before, do that four times. Another thing is that I encourage people to do tense up your body and then relax it. That also will regulate your emotions and turn that cortisol down. And if you’re in the conversation, the conversation’s going in and you suddenly realize that you’ve checked out, you haven’t heard the last 30 seconds of what they said. One thing that you can do is I encourage people to, I used to have elastics on my wrist and I would snap them, which would a physical reminder to bring me back in the present moment, or I’ve had other clients. So they said that they would actually press their forefinger and their thumb together as another physical reminder to stay in the moment. And if you still haven’t gotten what it is that they said, then the question that you can ask is, so can you tell me a little bit more about that? And then that allows you to get back into the conversation. So

Henry Lopez (28:50):

Recover and

Carole Mahoney (28:52):

Because

Henry Lopez (28:52):

They’re probably going to recap and continue to elaborate unless it gives me the ability to catch up and recenter, refocus.

Carole Mahoney (28:59):

Right. Pausing is such a powerful thing.

Henry Lopez (29:01):

Such a powerful thing. Yeah.

Carole Mahoney (29:02):

Because they will fill in the gaps for you.

Henry Lopez (29:04):

Yeah. Well it’s such a powerful thing in any negotiation and listening and all of it. Okay, so low need for approval, managing your emotions. What else stands out that you think makes for a good salesperson?

Carole Mahoney (29:16):

How you buy is how you will sell. We call it the supportive or non-supportive buy cycle. So if you are someone, and I get it as a business owner, you’ve got to budgets, you’ve got to research, you’ve got to get the best price for things. But if you are excessive about that, I had someone who had a massive Excel spreadsheet to figure out how to buy sneakers, right? Took him six months to figure out they were out of stock by the time he made his decision. And he also struggled with giving. When people would give you objection, oh, I need to think this over, or Can you do better on the price? Because we make our decisions that way, then we are going to be empathetic to them making their decisions that way and nothing’s going to happen. So it’s almost like a bad form of empathy. And so if you can change the way you make your buying decisions, then you’re going to be less susceptible to people in that objection of, I need to think it over. I need to get a better price. I need to go and check with so-and-so. Because then your need for approval will support you in being able to then ask a tough question.

Henry Lopez (30:13):

Alright. Speaking of objections, I know you covered this in the book as well, but help me here at a high level, overcoming objections without using those traditional sales pressures. What are some techniques or tips there that you can

Carole Mahoney (30:25):

Share? Well, so whenever you’re getting an objection, most people react emotionally and defensively. They want to defend their stance and why that person’s objection is incorrect,

Speaker 4 (30:35):

Which

Carole Mahoney (30:35):

All that does is further alienate your buyer and tell them that what they think is unimportant. Instead take a pause. And what you want to do ultimately is ask a question about that objection so that you can better understand that. And sometimes what we need to do is we need to reframe that objection. So that question, tell me a little bit more about that or where does that come from for you? I’ve had an objection recently that someone had worked with recruiters before and it never worked out really well with them and they didn’t want to go down that path again. Now I have a partner with a recruiter when we’re hiring salespeople. And so instead I asked ’em that question, well, so tell me about what happened the last time you worked with a recruiter and what you felt went wrong, but also maybe what you felt went right.

Carole Mahoney (31:16):

And then I was able to reframe his objection and saying, look, I totally understand that in the past that you had recruiters that gave you people that weren’t necessarily qualified, which is why we’re going to make sure that we use this data assessment so that we’re objectively evaluating candidates who come in. We’re only talking to the ones who are most qualified. And you’ve also shared with me that because you’ve just taken people who were available in the past that that’s led to you getting these bad recruits this time, what we’re going to do is we’re going to seek out people who might not actively be looking but be the best fits for you so that we can reframe the objection by one validating what they think. I totally understand. You’ve been in this situation before. These bad things have happened, you shared with me that this is why it’s important to you and here’s how we’re going to do it differently.

Henry Lopez (31:57):

Excellent, great structure. What about the most common objection, which is price we recommend there?

Carole Mahoney (32:05):

I totally understand that this seems like a big investment to you right now, but based on what you’ve shared with me in the past that the failed sales hires that you’ve had in the past have cost you a $250,000 in recruitment fees. Is it worth spending $1,500 per hire now to avoid wasting that $250,000 later?

Henry Lopez (32:26):

So you’re helping them do the math to justify, and of course, hopefully you’ve built a value along the way and you’re selling something that the only differentiator is in price, right? If that’s the only, you got a bigger problem. But at that point in time, because risk always goes up at the end of the sales cycle from the perception of the buyer, in my experience, you’re helping them if they haven’t already do that math to explain why the price and see it from a different frame.

Carole Mahoney (32:54):

But none of these frameworks will work if you haven’t done good question asking throughout the conversation uncover what kind of results do they need to see? When do they need to see them buy? Why is that date important? What are the consequences of the inaction and what is the impact of the actual goals that they’re trying to reach? Without that not you’re selling on price, you’re

Henry Lopez (33:15):

Just going to have to, discount is all you’re going to have to do.

Carole Mahoney (33:17):

And that’s a race to the bottom and

Henry Lopez (33:19):

Exactly

Carole Mahoney (33:19):

Right. Trust for a business owner, that is the kiss of death.

Henry Lopez (33:22):

Exactly. Right. Well said. Well, alright, we’ll kind of wrap it up on these questions with this one. You talk about it in the book, the importance of aligning, and I think we’ve touched on already the importance of aligning your sales strategy with your personal values and strengths. In your words, what do you mean by that?

Carole Mahoney (33:40):

So in other words, you started your business for a reason. You wanted to solve a particular problem for a particular person because the impact that you believe that that has. And so I’ll use my own business as an example. I have a lot of inbound that comes to me from the book and from everything else. But when I look at going after clients that I’m going to put the effort into going after as an opportunity, I want to understand what are the values that are important to me. And so by setting goals that are personally meaningful me and understanding what is valuable to me. So for me it is I live in the main woods, I live on a lake, I have hiking trails all around me. I’m an environmentalist dead at heart because it’s like we have one planet, right? Let’s take care of it. And so when I’m looking at how do I want to spend my days, how do I want to spend my money, but who are the people that I also want to work with

Speaker 4 (34:29):

That

Carole Mahoney (34:29):

Align with my values of making the world better than the way we left it or found it? And so companies who have sustainability initiatives or that have green initiatives or energy initiatives, those are the companies that I actively am seeking to work with because I believe in what it is that they’re doing and I want to put more of that out into the world, but

Henry Lopez (34:48):

Also my, and if you find those prospective buyers, you’re have a better opportunity to align with them and to collaborate with them. Is that

Carole Mahoney (34:58):

Correct? Yes. Because we have values that align together versus I really, I’m really going to have a hard time working for a chemical company who’s trying to figure out easy ways to dump something somewhere. That’s not going to be my thing,

Carole Mahoney (35:11):

But it has to somehow make the world a better place. And so that’s the companies that I’m focusing on for myself. But the other part of it is looking at what is the lifestyle that you want for yourself? Do you want the hustle and grind? Or maybe you’re like me and you want to be able to spend a couple of hours in the morning with your dog and in the garden and doing yoga and things like that and starting your day at a certain time and talking with certain types of people because this is the daily lifestyle that you want to create for yourself. And then how does that then turn into how many clients do you need to get of the values that align with yours and what does it take to get those clients? How many calls, how many meetings? Where are they? What connections do you have that then aligns to your sales strategy? Like I could go out and do advertising on LinkedIn, or I can look to the communities and the people who trust me that know these types of people at these companies as a way for me to develop my sales strategy.

Henry Lopez (36:01):

What comes to mind here is that perhaps one of the reasons we might hate sales as a business owner is we really don’t believe in what we’re selling, what we’re offering. So that’s something to look at as you begin to start a business or choose what kind of business you got to go into. I’m not a big believer that you have to be passionate about what your business is, but I think you do have to be passionate about serving that customer, that client, and serving them in the way that you would want to be served. So I think that this speaks to that as well, and it also speaks to, as Seth Godin says, who’s our tribe? And we’re not trying to be the next Walmart, at least most of us are not. We want to serve the people that see value in what we have to offer. And to your point, it’s even better if they align with our values.

Carole Mahoney (36:49):

Yeah, I look at it this way, especially if you’re a services based business, you’re going to be talking with these people on a regular basis for months and years to come. If you’re going to wake up in the morning, and I was at this point in my business early on where I woke up in the morning, dreading my client,

Henry Lopez (37:02):

Dreading those conversations. Yeah.

Carole Mahoney (37:03):

It’s like, why am I working with this type of person? And like, oh, right, I have a business. I get to decide who it is that I work with. I don’t have to work with anyone who’s willing to pay me.

Henry Lopez (37:13):

Well said. Alright, the book, again, buyer First, grow Your Business with Collaborative Selling. I know I can get it at your website as well as on Amazon, but where do you want people to go online to learn more about you and all of the services that you offer?

Carole Mahoney (37:27):

You can go to my speaking website in the book’s website, which is carol mahoney.com. Don’t forget the E at the end of Carol and the E in Mahoney. And then my corporate training website, which is where I also have a lot of programs for small business owners is@unboundgrowth.com.

Henry Lopez (37:42):

Perfect. Perfect. We’ll have a link to that on the show notes page of this episode@thehowbusiness.com. Is there another book or resource that comes to mind, particularly maybe perhaps it doesn’t have to be, but as it relates to maybe helping with sales and learning sales from a small business owner perspective, what would you recommend?

Carole Mahoney (37:59):

So I have a tough time coming up with another one that’s specific for small business owners, but one of the books that really had a huge impact on me in my business was Profit First by Mike Malowitz,

Henry Lopez (38:09):

Of course,

Carole Mahoney (38:09):

Because one of the mistakes that I find that people make is they think, I just need to get more business in, I just need to get more sales in. And they don’t take thought and consideration to how am I handling the money that is actually coming in and am I actually being profitable? Am I actually pricing things at are right that I can actually be profitable? I think that’s a lesson that I learned too late in my business and I would have everyone as you’re starting out in sales, because I think that creates that kind of sales desperation when you keep having to refill your bank account because you’re not managing it well.

Henry Lopez (38:39):

Well said. Yeah, great recommendation. I’ve had the pleasure of having Mike on the show, and so that is a fantastic book and a fantastic approach to managing the money. Thanks for that recommendation. Alright, we’ll wrap it up here. What, Carol, is one thing that you want us to take away from this conversation we had about buyer first selling or collaborative selling?

Carole Mahoney (39:01):

One thing, the one thing I would have everyone understand is that sales and selling is not something you do to other people. It’s something that you do with them and that if you remember that it’s not about you, it’s about them. It actually will give you a sense of freedom in the sales conversations and release you from the stranglehold of the need for approval and the fear of rejection.

Henry Lopez (39:20):

Well said, something we do together and not that I do to them. I think that encapsulates it extremely well. Tell us again who you want us to go online to learn more.

Carole Mahoney (39:30):

So you can go to carol mahoney.com or unbound growth.com. If you find me on LinkedIn, please reach out to connect. Let me know that you saw me here or heard me here on Henry’s podcast. I love hearing from everyone and what their thoughts and takeaways are.

Henry Lopez (39:43):

Wonderful. Carol, thanks for taking the time to be with me today. Thanks for sharing the book and these very specific insights, which is what we always look for. Thanks for sharing today.

Carole Mahoney (39:54):

Thank you so much, Henry. I can’t wait to hear how everyone applies this and changes their business. My favorite emails are the ones that they say, you saved my business. You changed my life. That is the whole reason I did it.

Henry Lopez (40:05):

Huge. Alright, this is Enri Lopez, and thanks for joining us on this episode of The How of Business. My guest today, again is Carol Mahoney. I release new episodes every Monday morning. You can find a show anywhere you listen to podcast, Spotify, YouTube at my YouTube channel, the How of Business YouTube Channel, and at my website, the how of business.com. Thanks again for listening.