Sales Clichés and the Damage Done
Blair tears down seven common sales advice statements that B2B creative firms should actually avoid following in their new business engagements.
Links
“A Sales Skeptic Interviews a Sales Expert”
“Making Adversarial Assumptions in the Sales Process”
“Communication Components in Your Sales Toolbox”
“The Seven Masteries of the Rainmaker”
“Why Account People Should Close New Business”
“A Beginner’s Guide to Negotiating”
“Mastering the Value Conversation”
Transcript
David C. Baker: All right, Blair, you wanted me to interview you on sales clichés and the damage that they've done. I thought, "Oh, I like this. This could be pretty interesting." I opened the document you sent me and there are seven of them. How thorough were you? I was thinking there'd be about 40.
Blair Enns: Oh.
David: You came up with only seven sales clichés. I could name 40 just in my sleep. These are the worst or what?
Blair: Well, in my note to you, I said we could easily do a part two on this. Maybe I should have just listed 14 of them. I think it's going to take us a while to get through seven.
David: Well, looking at your notes, the briefer the notes, the more wound-up you are.
Blair: I'm actually a little bit worried about how I'm going to handle this because I said to you when I wrote up the notes, I got all riled up because part of me just kind of seeds and rages against these sales clichés. I think of the damage that's been done to the profession that is selling and all of the horrible ideas that we have about what it means to be a salesperson from our experience in being a buyer on the other side of the equation from a person who has embraced these clichés.
There's just so much damage been done. I have a friend, I won't name him, kind of famous in the sales world. We were talking about one of the best-selling books on selling. I can't figure out why it sells so well. When I mentioned that book, he said, "That guy and that book have done more damage to the sales profession than anything else." A friend of mine said to me years ago, "Be hard on issues and ideas and soft on people."
I'm not going to name names, but I read some of these books. There are some great sales books out there and I read some of them. I think, "Man, these are just reinforcing the standard clichés." Part of it is because all strategy is autobiographical and that will come up a lot today. Part of it is some of these people are writing sales books for different types of salespeople. It's not so much that some of these clichés don't work or don't have a home. They just don't have a home in our world selling ideas and advice.
David: Right. Before we get into the specifics, I'm just so fascinated by why there are so many of these things out there. Why do we listen to them? In other words, you don't see this kind of nonsense being spouted about how to manage people or the other sort of business functions. I wonder if it's because there are so many people like this is the missing link for them. If they can solve the sales equation, they can figure everything else and they seem even more eager to just swallow big statements that are made without thinking about them.
It's as if they're trying to borrow confidence from somebody else even though, secretly, they know it might not actually be the secret to sales success, but they're open to just prematurely assuming that something is the answer. I don't know why unless it's just that so many people struggle with this. I was thinking too about sales training like your sales training in particular. It's really not sales training. It's detraining. It's helping people be more human again and you're stripping out some of these ideas that people bring to the table.
Blair: Oh, we are absolutely in the deprogramming business. I've said on this podcast before like if there's just one thing we could do for our clients, I would wave my magic wand and get them to unlearn everything they know about selling. Just show up like a human being and have a conversation.
David: Like we're going to have a very calm conversation today.
Blair: [laughs] This is the calm part.
David: Is this going to be an explicit episode?
Blair: Yes, it is. We're going to label this one.
David: Okay, so number one, I think it might be fun for you to get mad at me. I'm going to read each of these as if I believe them. The key to sales success is you've got to want it more.
Blair: This one drives me--
David: [laughs]
Blair: Language alert. This one drives me fucking crazy. I'll swear one more time and then that's it for this episode. What the fuck do you do with that advice? That is an opening advice in a very well-selling book on sales. The key to sales success is you've got to want it more. What do you do with that? How do you increase your want? It's like, "Oh okay, don't you want it as much as you want it?" You read that and think "Well, okay. Well, yes, I'm going to kick myself in the ass. I got to want this more."
David: Yes, I've got two kids at home. It also just implies that if you fail at sales, it's a personal character flaw. You just didn't want it badly enough.
Blair: Yes, and there's a lot of that undertone in common sales guidance. We did an episode called Selling in One Lesson and the lesson is P=db/D. That equation stands for your power in the sale as a function of your desirability being greater than your desire. Your desirability, how badly the client wants an engagement with you, has to be greater than your own desire for the client. Otherwise stated, he who wants it the most has the least power in the relationship.
David: The opposite is true, you're saying?
Blair: Well, I'm saying in consulted of selling of any kind, particularly when you're selling expertise in the sale, is the sample of the engagement to follow. This is absolutely not true. The opposite is closer to the truth than what this cliché proclaims. Again, as I said in that episode if listeners want to go back and have a listen, we don't extrapolate that formula out to the nth degree and say, "Therefore, we should seek to maximize our desirability and minimize our desire for the client or the engagement."
The first part is true. We do seek to maximize our desirability. We do that through positioning and through how we prove our expertise through content marketing. We don't try to minimize our expression of desire for the client because we don't want to appear aloof, disinterested, arrogant. We simply want to be aware of the power of dynamics. Wanting it more, a recurring theme in this podcast, like overinvesting in the sale is one of the biggest problems. I've said multiple times, if you want to get better at selling, no sunk costs.
Emotionally, time and money do not overinvest in the sale. Then you can be more practical, more pragmatic, more professional, more discerning. When you are selling expertise, you need to be all of those things in the sale because you need to be those things in the engagement. Again, the sale is the sample. It's where the roles of the engagement are established. You need to show up in the sale the way you will show up in the engagement. This idea of just wanting it more, ginning yourself up, getting all excited, doing everything you can to possibly close the deal, that just runs counter to common-sense advice.
David: You're going to end up with a client that's not a good fit. You're probably going to end up putting more effort in than the client is paying you for. You're probably going to end up not enforcing scope creep.
Blair: Yes, you're going to broadcast your neediness. Now, I can understand how the author of this statement and many others who would use similar words to describe the sentiment here arrived at this. This is somebody who comes out of high-volume, transactional selling. I don't know that world. Maybe that advice is less irresponsible in some other forms of selling, but not for our listeners.
David: Well, with some of those salespeople, it's not a fun way to sell. There's this constant need for the drip of motivation. Saying the key to sales success is you've got to want it more. All of a sudden, against that background, you can see, "Oh, I need to keep these people motivated because, otherwise, I'm asking them to do some things that feel a little bit counterintuitive." I've never understood and I always felt a little icky around that kind of selling.
Recently, about six weeks ago, I had to trade a truck in and order a different one. I was dealing with the general manager of the dealership, who is a very motivationally-oriented guy. It was really fascinating to see how I got pulled into it. It wasn't dissatisfying. It was just like, "Oh, I see this now. I want to be a part of the in-crowd like him." I found myself responding to those. He was pushing those buttons. It was interesting, the first experience for me. All right. The second one is the best salespeople are rejection-proof.
Blair: Yes, so another standard sales cliché. This used to be true. We have to define salesperson here. Again, bringing it back to our world, 10 years ago, I'll say-- What year is this? Maybe it was 20 years ago now. Time is fuzzy, where a business development person in an agency, their primary job was lead generation. Things started to shift around, I want to say, 10 years ago. A few years into internet search.
The tide really turned. When it comes to an expertise-based business, the typical relationship began with the client doing some homework on the web and then reaching out to you, the firm, the agency. Previous to the web days, when I first started doing agency business development, it was all smile and dial. If you think of these two functions of selling, there's the outbound lead generation function, or at least there used to be, and then there's the navigating the sale.
The skills and personality makeup required to succeed in that outbound lead gen rule, that really is that high-pace, high-drive, rejection-proof, smile-and-dial, pray-and-spray-type person. If you're leaning on outbound, you want somebody who's reaching out to as many people as they can in high volume and is not dissuaded or discouraged from hearing no all day long.
Now, as soon as that lead generation person gets a live one, gets an opportunity, then it's time to slow it down and be more discerning like the professional practitioner in the engagement and really put that practitioner hat on and decide, "Is this really a right fit?" and change their tone completely. As you can imagine, that's really hard to do. It's hard to be both of those things.
I've encountered very few business development people over the years who are good at both, who are rejection-proof and can do the high-volume outbound, and then slow it down and be more discerning. That's why we would separate those two functions. Then something changed about 10 years ago, where the folks at the conference executive board, the gentleman who wrote the book, The Challenger Sale, did a bunch of research.
They started publishing data on what percentage of the decision-making is made in hiring a professional or hiring any B2B entity, what percentage of the decision-making is made before they even speak to anybody at that organization. It crossed the line over 50% over a decade ago and it keeps going up, so it's well over 60%, I think, now. In that world where lead gen in an expertise-based business is really inbound.
It's really about you'd narrow your focus. You have this distinct claim of expertise that you take to the marketplace. You prove that expertise by the content that you create. You build this reputation. You drive inbound inquiries. The moment you take the lead generation function away from sales, you now solve for this problem that you can't have both of these skills or it's very difficult to find both of these skills in one person.
Now, your salespeople are not these rejection-proof, smile-and-dial people. They're your very best professionals. They are your subject-matter experts and they show up in the sale. Inbound inquiry comes in and they behave like the expert from the very beginning. That's the best way to do this, so this cliché of the best salespeople are rejection-proof. That used to be true. It's still true in some businesses where those two functions are not separated from each other, but it's no longer true. It hasn't been true for about a decade in the agency business.
David: That bears out in the research I've done around personality profiles. When you had somebody who was in charge of selling at an agency, you almost never found somebody who was successful at that, who didn't have a lot of D, so risk-taking, and a lot of I, so outgoing people, relationship stuff. You just could predict somebody wouldn't be successful once they had those things. Like you said, a decade or more ago, that changed.
Now, you can have somebody in that role who basically has no personality like me down in Unabomber land, who can just write and think, right? It doesn't have to have a certain personality type and it's been revolutionary. It's really opened up the world. You don't have to be gimmicky, but you also don't have to be a certain kind of person, so that's really interesting.
Blair: Yes, and less sales drive, which means more patience. You get somebody who's more patient, more discerning, who's like, "Yes, I'm not sure this is a good fit. Let me ask you a few more questions." I'm exaggerating in tone a little bit, but that's what you want. Your best salespeople are more closer. They're subject-matter experts. They're patient and they're discerning and the client can feel that discernment. They can feel that they're being vetted for a good fit. That makes them feel confident about the organization they're talking to.
David: All right, number three. I haven't heard this one before. "ABC, Always Be Closing."
Blair: This is right out of the best sales movie ever, Glengarry Glen Ross. Alec Baldwin is the sales manager who comes in and yells all of these great tropes and one of them is, "ABC, Always Be Closing," and you hear that a lot. You're always closing on the next step. You're always closing on the next phase, "Always Be Closing." Then, again, it comes from the transactional world. I don't want to dwell on this one. I just wanted a shout-out to Alec Baldwin and that fantastic movie.
David: Not just "Always Be Closing," but everybody needs to Always Be Closing too probably. We've talked about that.
Blair: Have we talked about the fact that everybody's a salesperson?
David: Yes, exactly.
Blair: That's another mistake that it's not on this list maybe if we do part two. That ABC, it speaks to the transactional type of sale as opposed to a consultative type of sale and when you're pushing too hard, when you're always trying to secure the deal or close hard on the next step. I've done this when I was learning how to sell properly in the early days of without pitching when I was a consultant, I guess, almost 20 years ago now. I can think of some examples where I was just pushing too hard.
One in particular really jumps out at me where one of the decision-makers at an agency said, "Well, you were doing great right up until that last line and then you lost me." He left the call. He just walked away. His partner said, "Don't worry about him. We'll take care of him. You're hired." It really did put my foot in my mouth by being too aggressive and pushing too hard. I don't want to give people the license to never close, to never ask because that's just the other side of the problem, right?
I'm not saying all of these sales clichés, which are typically tied to a personality that is hard-driving, entrepreneurial, and rejection-proof, I'm not saying the exact opposite of these things is better or what you should be doing. There's often a middle ground there. You do want to have some rejection-proofness backing up to the previous cliché, but not to the point where you have to sort people based on their personality for that.
You just need to accept that there are some engagements that they're not all going to work out and that's okay. There's another sales cliché that I actually really like. It's, "Some will, some won't. So what? Next." It's a great line. Some will, some will buy from you, some won't. So what? Next. Move on. That's a little line that some salespeople say to themselves to steal that kind of rejection-proofness. Always Be Closing, I threw that in there because I want to give a shout-out to the fantastic movie Glengarry Glen Ross.
David: Number four, the threat of starvation is a great motivator. On the face of it, that sounds pretty legitimate to me.
Blair: We've talked about this recently. We did a whole episode on it. Bottom line, salespeople are not different. Let me just talk about that a little bit more because they used to be seen as different. It occurs to me that sales was the domain of entrepreneurial people who didn't have the means or wherewithal to start their own business. It's like these high-drive, rejection-proof, hard-driving people on highly-leveraged compensation plans where if they didn't sell something, they didn't eat. That was like starting your own business.
There was a lot of appeal. That's where you see a lot of entrepreneurship in classical salespeople. It really is a problem that I see not so much anymore, but I've seen it a lot over the years in our client's businesses is that I would say, "Hey, your business development person is running her own business under your roof." Part of it is her personality, but a big part of it is how you pay and manage her. You're paying somebody 100% commission. You don't even have the right to ask them to attend a meeting. Their time is their own. It really is their business under your banner.
David: They'll take it with them when they leave as well, right?
Blair: Yes.
David: The faux entrepreneurship, which some of the classical salespeople would feel they would frequently give themselves more credit than they deserved for the success of the firm. It's not as if they weren't having an impact. They were having a really significant impact, but they weren't taking any financial risk. In their conversations with the principal, they would frequently talk as if they had a lot more leverage than they really did. When sales isn't integrated into your philosophy and your positioning but it's integrated in a person, especially if that person isn't you, there's going to be a problem.
Blair: Yes, there's absolutely going to be a problem. We've unpacked this, "Salespeople aren't different. They don't need to be managed differently. They don't need to be paid differently." There's just some small wiggle room there when I talked about that in the previous episode. I forgot what we called it, but we'll put a link to it in the show notes.
David: All right, so the first four where the key to sales success is you've got to want it more. Second, the best salespeople are rejection-proof. Third, Always Be Closing, ABC. Four, the threat of starvation is a great motivator. The next one, five, is that it's all about relationship. Before I turn you loose on this, I just can't help but think back to some of the folks who used to speak very frequently in this space who talked about the fact that it was largely about relationship and there was very little about sales approach. It was about the right meal you take them to and it was about some spark, some chemistry. That's what you're talking about here, right? Brings back a lot of memories.
Blair: Yes, it shows up in a lot of places. I remember Alan Weiss, who's written some very good books on selling consulting. He had a line in one of his books that I strongly disagreed with, but he forced me to rethink it a little bit. He said, "Make no mistake when it comes to selling consulting services." This is a relationship business and I had my usual reaction that I have to align like that, but he went on in a little bit more detail.
What he really meant was after the first sale, he really meant growing the business. You are seen as this trusted advisor and you are highly regarded by your clients because of the value that you've helped create. Now, you have all kinds of opportunity to help in other areas to make recommendations on how they can use you in additional ways. That throwaway line, there are some people who lean heavily on relationship.
There's me at the opposite end of the spectrum who I'm probably overly dismissive of the importance of relationship, but the idea that it's all about relationships. I hear this a lot in some of the questions I get in training. I get these leading questions that just really communicate quite clearly that this person really believes that it is all about the relationship. Now, we need to unpack this. Why is it not about the relationship?
The best line that I've read about the role of relationship in consultative B2B sales comes from Neil Rackham. I've referenced this before. Neil Rackham is the founder of SPIN Selling. He's probably done more research on B2B sales than any other human being on the planet. He wrote the foreword for the book The Challenger Sale. In it, he said, "The relationship is the reward for delivering value. It is not the avenue." That second part, I'm adding.
People who say it's all about the relationship see, they try to build what I consider to be the wrong type of rapport. I've told this story previously. I'll tell it again. Back when I was a consultant, I was interviewing a candidate for a business development position at one of my clients' firms. This candidate said to me, "Blair, if I call you and ask you 'How's business?' that's one thing. If I start the conversation by saying, 'Hey, how are your kids?'" He said, "I'm sure you will agree that you and I will establish a rapport and it'll be easier for me to sell something to you."
I got a little bit angry and clenched my jaw. I said, "No. If you open a sales call by asking about my children, you will cross a line from which you will never recover." He could not fathom that there was another human being on the planet who did not want to mix personal and business with somebody they didn't know. He could not get his head around it and that's back to this idea that all strategy is autobiographical. If you are a relationship-oriented person, you have a high need for affinity connecting with people and being liked by people, then you assume everybody else is the same. That's just absolutely not the case. In a complex B2B sale, the relationship gets in the way.
David: Is there room for some relationship building or at least sensitivity?
Blair: Absolutely, so my theory that we've talked about this before, I've tested your affinity score. It's the lowest I've ever tested.
David: You love telling everybody in the world.
Blair: [chuckles] You're in the 5th percentile and the test does not appear to go any lower than that.
David: [laughs]
Blair: I think that's part of what makes you a great consultant. You will tell people their baby is ugly. When I look at the profiles of the very best business development people I've worked with, their affinity score is in the 50 to 60 range. Sometimes even a little bit higher. I'd call it 50 to 65th percentile. They have average to slightly higher-than-average need to connect with others and be liked by others, but that is always dwarfed by their power score, their need for authority and respect. I always see those two dimensions as in competition with each other, so the affinity score allows you to be human.
It shows up and you can have these conversations. While it's important to you to connect with people, it is not more important to you than your need to be seen as the authority. People with zero low, low affinity, obviously, you built a very successful business. Therefore, on some level, you have to be seen as a great salesperson, but you would be even better if you could ratchet up that part of you. It's not that relationship is not important.
I just couldn't state it any better than Neil Rackham did. The relationship is the reward. We all have something we need from the other party in any social interaction. For some of us who are highly skewed, it's a recurring thing. If you have high-affinity needs, what you need from that person is to be liked by them. That in and of itself isn't a bad thing as long as you recognize it.
You just need to be able to suppress that in the moment and tell yourself this Neil Rackham line. I really want a relationship with this person, but I don't want to make the mistake of seeing the relationship as the path to the sale. I will suppress my need to establish this deep personal rapport here and put the relationship on the other side of the sale. The relationship is the reward that I will get for, A, getting hired and, B, delivering value. That's how you should think about it.
David: Maybe this is me. I don't know if you see the same thing. When I just step back at a distance and I look at all the websites out there of the agencies that are putting their best foot forward and then I compare that with other thinkers or advisors or whatever, it's so different. It seems like in our field, and I wonder if this is connected, for the first time, I just thought it might be, we're really trying to be liked.
There's really goofy, interesting pictures. You don't see that in other industries. There's something about what you do on the weekends. Your favorite movie, is that where that's coming from? I don't see it in any other industry, but it's trying to humanize. We talk so much more about how much you'll enjoy working with us than we do the research or the IP we have. It just drives me crazy.
Blair: I think we conflate sales messages to clients with appropriate sales messages to staff. In a creative business, culture is really important for attracting and retaining talent. It's in the nature of an agency principle and that firm to want to show off what it's like to work there because that's really important to creative people. Can I bring my dog to work? How good is the espresso machine? Are people having fun? What does the office look like?
These are really, really important things when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. The idea that it's important to our clients with some exceptions if you've got a chief creative officer on the client-side, that might be important to them. I doubt it's more important than making their numbers, but I think that's what's going on there. These are important messages to send to one audience. We make the mistake of thinking we need to send it to the audience of prospective clients.
David: All right. Number six, which is closely related because it talks about people in relationship. You've stated like this, "People buy from people they like."
Blair: Yes.
David: On the surface, that doesn't strike me as all that controversial.
Blair: No, but I'll fill in the blanks here and offer some context. People buy from people they like when all the meaningful variables are seen as the same when they're considering different providers, different agencies. The meaningful variables are the ability to create value and price. If a prospective client looks at you and thinks, "Yes, you can probably do as good a job as this other firm," that's when personality, likability becomes important. Now, I should say that for some individuals, this is a highly personal thing.
I talked about a salesperson's need for affinity. That's a thing on the other side of the equation too. Clients have a need for affinity that you can measure. Some clients really want to like the people they do business with and they really want to be liked with them. Those people who will prioritize liking the people they do business with tend to be lower level, tend to be middle managers. My hypothesis, I can't prove this, but I think the higher you get in an organization, the less likely you are going to see that need for affinity be dominant. I think rising to the top, you need a little bit of sociopathy and a little less affinity.
David: What's happening with agencies is that if they lack, say, the leadership value that the client's looking for or if the pricing isn't ideal, then the natural reaction is try to overcome that by being liked?
Blair: Yes.
David: It's not bad to be liked. It's just bad to try to overcome other things with it.
Blair: It's a tie-breaking variable. The only meaningful variable is the client's sense of your ability to solve problems, create value relative to the other firms under consideration. I think we all intuitively understand that if you are leaning on personality and likability in the sale, then the implied message is that you yourself see your ability to create value is no greater than the other firms under consideration. Because if you are a low-affinity person and you really thought we're the only option here, you could show up however you want. You could be as grumpy as you are today after your COVID booster shot.
David: Simon Cowell, Gregory House.
Blair: [laughs] You could be Simon Cowell and you would still get hired and it wouldn't matter. Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be polite human beings and treat each other appropriately and put on your smiley face and all of these things. I'm not saying don't be your wonderful, likable self. I'm just saying when we lean on that, the message we're sending is, "Our ability to create value for you is no greater than the other firms that you're considering."
David: I have a boat and we're going to have some fun on that.
[laughter]
Blair: Oh, yes, that's great. "I have a boat. Here's a picture of it."
David: I'm thinking of a couple of clients of mine that have boats right now. Both of them actually are very high-affinity salespeople. [laughs]
Blair: Really? That's interesting.
David: Yes, but they're also upper 60s too. All right, so number seven, the last one was ask the five whys which, again, on the surface, doesn't sound all that bad. Didn't sound like it would have made me as mad as it made you. [laughs]
Blair: Yes, this one doesn't make me mad at all. In fact, I used to ask the five whys all the time. We used to teach it. What's the five whys? People are asking. A client comes to you with the stated tactical problem, "I need a new website." You ask why. "Why do you need a website?" "Well, the current one is not working." "Why isn't it working?"
David: You're at three and I'm already annoyed. [laughs]
Blair: I refer to that as peeling the onion of need. It's not a bad approach. Then one day, I had this realization, "Man, if I have to ask the five whys, I have led with the wrong question. There has to be a better question." I think a better approach than asking the five whys and peeling the onion of need is if you can find a question that gets to the heart of what the human being that you're dealing with wants as opposed to the stated tactical need, the stated corporate need, the underlying business deal like, "What do you want?" if you can get that person to tell you what they want, they will tell you everything else as part of the package.
David: How would you sleep better at night if we solved this?
Blair: Something like that, yes. Put them into their desired future state. "What do you want?" "Well, I want all these things." Put them into that state and get them to describe success. There are all kinds of questions often referred to as high-gain questions that do that. My favorite one is there's a whole book written on. It's called The Dan Sullivan Question. Again, there's lots of nuance, but here's the question. Imagine we're having this conversation three years from today. You're really happy with your progress. My question is this. What's happened that makes you so happy?
David: Drugs, I discovered drugs.
Blair: We don't have time to unpack all of that. Any high-gain question puts the other party into their desired future state and gets them to describe it so that as they're describing it, they achieve the emotional benefits of having actually achieved that state. It's a cathartic experience. There are times when it doesn't work because of different variables. There's all kinds of nuance around follow-up questions, et cetera.
That's a better question, getting them to describe success and getting them to do it by telling them that it's already happened. Imagine that it's already happened, now describe it to me. Then through some nuanced follow-up questions, you can get all of the answers to all of the questions you really want in a way that actually transcends the problem as it was initially stated.
Client comes to you and says, "I need a new website." You ask a few questions about that, then you ask them a high-gain question that puts them into their desired future state. Now, you have all kinds of information and material that will allow you to think creatively about how you can put an engagement together that can help them get to that desired future state in a way that almost certainly transcends just the website.
David: I have conversations like this sometimes with clients where I'm having trouble getting through on the idea of the importance of positioning. I'll usually go way ahead and say, "I'd like a world for you where you would have no hesitation in turning down an otherwise great client. You have that courage to say no." Now, how do we get there? Well, we're going to have to have a lot more opportunity than capacity.
How do we get there? We got to have a marketing plan. How are we going to get there? We got to have positioning. Oh, okay. Now, I see. It's essentially forcing everybody into a focused conversation about the things that matter. It's not like why isn't going to do that. It just feels a little manipulative too and a little sloppy and like you're treating everybody the same.
Blair: Again, it's not horrible. There are worse approaches, but just that realization that, "Man, if you've got to ask five whys, you've opened with the wrong question." There has to be a better opening question. Again, it's number seven because it doesn't make me angry. I just realized there's a better way.
David: All right. Today, we've been talking about sales clichés and the damage that they create. First was the key to sales success is you've got to want it more. Two, the best salespeople are rejection-proof. Three, ABC, Always Be Closing. Four, the threat of starvation is a great motivator. Five, it's all about relationships. Six, people buy from people they like. Seven, ask the five whys. I hope you feel better now. I hope this has been good for you as well.
Blair: I'm going to be fine, I think. Yes, thanks. That was cathartic.
David: Okay, thank you.