The Dichotomy of the Expert Salesperson

As Blair is finishing his new book that drops later this year, he comes to the realization that pretty much everything he does comes down to the fundamental issue that experts think they need to show up as a different person during the sale: pitching, persuading, and convincing instead of as the leader their prospective clients need them to be.

Links

"The Dichotomy of the Expert Salesperson" article by Blair Enns at WinWithoutPitching.com

"Ditch the (Sales) Script"

Transcript

David C. Baker: Blair, I have noticed that you have been lighter of spirit these days. Really, all I've noticed is you've been a little nicer to me, you've acknowledged my significant influence in this space. It's like, what happened, did a kid finally move out?

Blair Enns: It was probably a microdose day.

David: Now, is something happened recently that you feel better about?

Blair: I'm not sure. I think if you're talking about the topic today, yes, I've had this realization of what it is that I've been doing for the last 23 years.

David: No, I'm thinking about what you've been doing for the last 23 months, maybe, or I don't know how long.

Blair: Oh, longer than that, yes. The book is finished. My next book is done. I'm finished with it. I've done the writing and I just got it back from the editor. Yes, I don't have that full relief. I still have this tension of it being unfinished because it's got to go into design, it's got to go into production, it's got to get launched, so there's still a lot to do. I don't have the sense of having crossed the finish line, but I would say half of the weight is off of me.

David: Yes. Do you think it'll be out this year?

Blair: Yes, it'll be out in the fall of this year. We're shooting for September 1, it might be October 1, but it'll be out in Q3.

David: I don't know what you're going to answer here, but everybody listening is saying, well, David, ask him what's it about. What's the title? What's the price?

Blair: Yes, it's Cats I've Known and Loved.

[laughter]

That was actually a real book, I think, by a Canadian historian, Pierre Burton. I think he had a multi-book deal and he wanted out of it. He ended up writing a book called Cats I Have Known and Loved. No, I'm talking about the fact that the book exists, I'm not mentioning the title yet. I've written a book on selling and I've written a book on pricing. This is a book on selling and pricing. I guess I'll say a little bit more. It's really the here's how to follow up to the Win Without Pitching Manifesto, but it's also broadened out from just creative professionals to experts of all kinds. Expert advisors and expert practitioners. Those who give advice and those who also execute. Obviously, creative professionals, marketing firms fall into that. The market's been telling me for quite a while to broaden out a little bit, certainly in the writing, maybe even in the business, just because we get so many people in our training now who are outside of that target market who sell some other form of expertise.

David: Most of the principles apply. I was reading through some of your writings on this stuff and then something you wrote for me recently. There was this huge question that was like a banner across all of it. Why do we assume that selling expertise should be different than delivering expertise? By the way, I have a little notion, but I don't want to share that until I hear the real answer because I want to be embarrassed. If I'm not embarrassed, I'll tell you what I think. That's the big question. Why do we assume that selling expertise should be different than delivering expertise? Every word in there matters. Why do we sell expertise in one way and deliver it in another way? That's the age-old question you're trying to answer.

Blair: That's the million-dollar question. I realized that's at the heart of what we've been doing for the last 23 years is I've started to think about the problem differently, this idea of the expert salesperson. I'll answer the question or I'll give what's probably not a wholly sufficient answer. I'm not sure what the honest answer is. Your point is that experts behave in a certain way. They show up in the engagement a certain way. They have a certain amount of stature and trust in the eyes of the client and they perform with a certain amount of integrity and they're never trying to talk somebody into something. Salespeople, it's almost the opposite of that. When you look at how experts sell, and this is a recurring theme and the patterns in the work that we've done is, okay, they show up the right way. They're very good at what they do. They show up with integrity and they're discerning and we'll get into the attributes. In their role as salesperson, their second job of selling that expertise, they default to a lot of standard, not only sales techniques, but sales cliches.

In this world of being an expert advisor or a practitioner first and salesperson second, those sales techniques really clash with their persona, the gravitas, the demeanor, even the goals of the expert. I think that conflict is at the heart of the problem that we've been solving mostly for creative professionals over the last 23 years.

David: That's why you called it The Dichotomy of the Expert Salesperson.

Brian: Yes. Why does it exist? in my observation of the training that we do with our clients, some people have been trained on certain sales techniques that don't apply to experts, but a lot of them haven't. Still, they show up the same way. There's this almost mythology in our society of how a salesperson should behave. I don't mean the worst stereotypes. I just mean, generally speaking, it is a convincing role. It's your job to talk somebody into something regardless of the nefarious closing tactics that you may or may not use. That idea, it's my job to convince. It just permeates every sales training out there, every sales ideology out there. There might be some exceptions. Certainly, I see ours as the exception. I think it's just a hangover idea that we have in society. Also the second part of my wholly insufficient answer to why is, there's something about money.

I often say to our clients, "You're a great communicator, or if you weren't, you wouldn't be in the position you're in." There's something about a sales environment where your communication abilities become stressed and you don't communicate as well. You think you have to convince. You think you have to be brilliant and perfect and persuasive. We spend a lot of time trying to convince them that they don't. They can just be themselves. They can be the expert version of themselves. If they could just show up that way in the sale, they would be better off. What's your answer? Why do you think there's such a dichotomy here?

David: I'm not sure I have the answer either. It's really puzzled me. It's actually irritated me because I needed to think about some stuff in my life today. Here I'm thinking about this, trying to solve this. I think it's because there's this direct connection between the people who don't have enough opportunity are the ones that slide into a traditional salesperson role. The people who have plenty of opportunity, it never occurs to them that they need to do anything but be an expert in the sale. What I mean that is there's some physician, what was the guy's name on TV that had terrible bedside manner?

Blair: Dr. House, your role model?

David: Yes, my role model. [laughs] He was in great demand. He never sat around. There was always people waiting to see him. He had plenty of opportunity, so he never slid into that. Compare that with somebody that's going house to house trying to sell you a new roof. Very few people are looking for a new roof. They feel like they have to step into that role. It's the only thing I can think of.

Blair: I agree with you. I think that's a keen insight that explains a bunch of it. I have also observed that senior people, senior experts who've built a book of business and who don't have to chase work, when they find themselves in a sale, they still reflexively go back to these pitching and persuading and convincing. It seems just so incongruous to me with their expert persona, how they show up in their engagements. I guess this goes back to the idea, we've talked about this before. It's an idea that I cobbled together from some input from various sources, the biggest one would have been Dan Sullivan, which is the idea that there are two levels of success in business. The first level of success you get there through sheer effort. Hard work and saying yes to everything. The second level of success where business becomes more lucrative, you actually have to down those tools.

You have to put down hard work and saying yes to everything. You have to embrace taking risk and saying no to almost everything. The idea is the longer you're at the first stage of success, the more these tools become natural and ingrained with your approach, the harder it is for you to put them down. Maybe that explains why I think if you take that idea and your observation that early on, you've got to go build your book of business. You go into persuade mode. My observation is you stay there, you stay there because it's really hard to put those tools down. I think we've just solved it. I think that's the problem in a nutshell.

David: [laughs] The other thing that would flip this script in our minds is if we just flipped roles in the sale. We've talked about this quite a bit, too. The idea is I'm not trying to talk you into hiring me. I want to make sure you're David-worthy. Yes, that's a little arrogant sounding. It's like, "No, you sell me on why we should work together. It's all the same,

except you just flip it over.

Blair: Yes. Let's say I'm looking to buy something from you. Let's say I'm an agency owner. I'm looking for a total business review. I say to you, "Well, look, why should I hire you, David?" As you pointed out when we did an episode on this, you;d just flip the script and you'd say, "Well, it's not my job to convince you to hire me. I'll tell you why my clients hire me. If their reasons are the same as yours, then maybe it makes sense to proceed. If not, then maybe it doesn't." That's you flipping the script. You're also free to say to me, "Okay, give me some information about the size of your business, because I have a minimum size threshold." You can impose your conditions on me. We're modeling a qualifying conversation. I would imagine you would impose these conditions on me in the engagement, therefore you should be doing that in the sale.

David: Right. The sales, the sample, something that you've said many, many times here. In the second big book you wrote, Pricing Creativity, there was sort of a double intent and I actually didn't catch that when it first came out. Then when I saw it, I was like, "Oh, I know who thought of that. That wasn't by accident." I like the idea of, all right, let's get creative in our pricing or how do we price creativity? There's another double intent in this too around selling expertise, right?

Blair: Yes. I'll use the French double entendre.

David: I hadn't seen that one either.

Blair: Oh, you didn't? I thought everybody saw-- The book is titled Pricing Creativity. It's about creativity in your pricing, but also pricing these creative acts and then selling expertise. My book, I've just finished writing that'll be out later this year. It was going to be called Selling Expertise. It no longer is. The double entendre there is this idea of the act of selling these expert advisory or practitioner skills, but also the act of building expertise in the domain of sales. In this topic today that I guess we'll get to the meat of here, the expert salesperson, that's another double entendre. That's the idea of there's really two yous for the sake of this discussion. There's the expert you and that person shows up in the engagement a certain way. Then there's the salesperson you and that person shows up in the sale.

David: I only like one of them.

Blair: Yes. We all only like one of them, right? Maybe some really high-drive salespeople really appreciate other high-drive salespeople who are pushing hard for a close. If my cardiologist was trying to talk me into like, "I'm really, really passionate about your heart. I really want your business.", I would be terrified, I would run the other way. I think that same idea applies to any other type of expert as well.

David: Yes. I've heard you privately admire a salesperson and give them a sale when you weren't really in the market for it, but you really recognized their skill. I've seen you do that.

Blair: I love being sold to by a very good salesperson. What do we mean by a good salesperson? They know what their objective is. They have a framework for navigating to that objective. They have questions that they need to get answered and they just show up like the expert. They model how they would behave in the sale and they're not trying to talk me into anything. They're basically showing up and facilitating a discussion, a conversation on whether or not it might make sense to work together. They lead in a way that makes me want to follow them rather than them trying to coerce me. When I encounter that experience, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have encountered such a salesperson, it's a revelation. I sometimes feel like I would buy anything from this person.

David: Yes, I know. Every once in a while when you're buying lawn care or something for the farm or something that you wouldn't think of as expert selling expertise, I see it happening. I'll always point that out to somebody, "You know, you're really good at your job. You've said the right things to me." This is after we've finished negotiating, right? Not before. I don't want to give him any extra power. Hey, can you contrast the expert you and the salesperson you? Dive deeper into that, the differences between these two.

Blair: Yes. Let's just think of how they show up. Expert you in the engagement, you're discerning. You're often discerning because you've got your thinking hat on, client wants to do X or has a recommendation, comes to you with a really silly idea and you're thoughtful. You don't jump up and down and say, "That's a great idea. Let's do that. You're discerning thinking, hmm, let's back up a minute, talk about why this may be a good idea or may not be a good idea. Especially if you are an advisor of some kind, like that's what they're looking to you for. I often call my financial advisor and he'll give me a little bit of a hard time. Then he'll say, "I'm not saying, 'don't do that.' It's your money. You're free to do whatever you want. Let's talk about a better way to do it."

David: What he's really thinking is, "I can't believe you even are considering doing that."

Blair: What he keeps saying is, "You need how much to live on? How is that possible?" I don't know, I have needs. Expert you is discerning but salesperson you is enthusiastic. It's like, I really. really want your business. You lean on passion and enthusiasm. You think you're in the customer service business, you're nodding your head, "Yes, we can do that." before the client even finishes saying what their need is. There's a little bit too much of a, I don't know if it's a false enthusiasm, it's certainly a ramped-up enthusiasm. You're really hungry, you want this. Discerning versus enthusiastic is one set of traits. Expert you is advising, whereas salesperson you is pitching. Whether it's free pitching of ideas or just pitching your ideas.

I've also got convincing versus collaborating. Expert you is collaborative. It's one of the things I just modeled about my financial advisor. He's actually quite collaborative. It's like, "Okay, you want to do this, let's find the best or the least harmful way for you to do this thing." He really works with me. Salesperson you is convincing. You're trying to convince the client to do something. You're trying to convince them that you're the right person, et cetera. I have all these other demands too, like questions.

David: I love this next one about questions. Yes, that's one of my favorites.

Blair: Expert you is asking questions. Salesperson you is answering questions. You're answering questions to the point where it starts to feel like an argument sometimes in the sale. You're coming out with responses to objections before the client even finishes the objections. It starts to feel like an argument sometime. You think of expert you. We've talked about this before too. Personally, it's taken me many years to go from seeing myself as the person with the answers to seeing myself as the person with the questions. You should be asking questions in the engagement. Therefore, you should be asking questions in the sale. I've been doing a lot of training for a private client recently, a large client. One of the observations, one of the patterns I'm seeing across multiple, multiple people is they don't ask enough questions. They assume too much. They let the clients pose the questions to them in the sale.

David: Your next thing here is saying that experts are present. It's being present, but a salesperson is presenting. I was thinking about this in a different context yesterday. I was thinking about certain people I know who just constantly ask me questions, but I don't really feel like they're listening. I feel like it's sort of their way to avoid a deeper conversation sometimes, even though it sounds really interested in me and it really isn't. Here, what I like about tying these together is somebody's asking questions, but then they're really listening too. It's like the next question that comes after this one, I don't know what it's going to be yet because I haven't heard your answer. It's being present versus presenting.

Blair: Yes, I just think of listening to a podcast interview where the interviewer asks a very good question and gets the beginnings of a great answer from the guest. Then you want them to pull on that thread and go deep, and they don't, they go to the next question. They weren't listening to the answer. They were looking at their list of questions, wondering, getting ready for the next question. That's infuriating. That happens a lot in sales too when you sit in on sales conversations or listen to the recording and you review it with the salesperson. Right there, when they said that, you went on to the next thing on your list. That could have been a 20-minute conversation about their need state, about an objection you need to overcome, about something big that's going on in their lives. I explain it as being present or presenting, and it's one of my fondest lines that I've authored is you can present to people or you can be present to them. You cannot do both.

When you go into presentation mode, you are no longer present. Advisor you, expert you, you are present to your clients. You are good at listening. You are good at asking questions. You are good at creating space to let them talk. Salesperson you does none of that.

David: This is beautiful. Last week, I suggested to a client who wanted to pitch a big presentation deck in a new sales meeting. I said, "Here, I'm not going to wean you off this, but let me give you a suggestion. Give them the clicker and see how much faster they get through it than you do." Ha ha, I haven't seen how that worked.

Blair: What a great idea. How did your client, the agency, respond to that idea?

David: They thought it was a great idea and they said they were going to try it. I haven't heard whether that's true or not. I did a brief study of about a half dozen firms many years ago, an unscientific one. In every case, the client clicked through it faster. It just illustrates to me the difference between being present and presenting. When you're presenting, you're on this path. It doesn't even matter who's listening really. New rule.

Blair: New rule.

David: Oh no.

Blair: In Blurtopia, my rules are law. New rule, if you're going to go into presentation mode, if you're going to present a deck, hand the clicker to the client. I absolutely love that. That's fantastic.

David: I am responsible for one of the rules in Blurtopia. This is beautiful.

Blair: Pizza grows on trees.

David: All right, the next is using frameworks and tools. That's one, versus swinging it. Explain this one a little bit more.

Blair: Yes, so salespeople, I've written a post on this recently. I don't remember if we did an episode on it. Oh yes, ditch the sales script. It's a few episodes back. You can plot all salespeople on a spectrum. Some people want scripts and some want just the freedom to wing it. The point I make in the post and in the podcast episode is neither of those two types of salespeople should get what they want. In the middle, between complete freedom and being forced to use scripts are the ideas of frameworks. Somebody who is a professional, almost every expert in their advisory or practice work, they have frameworks that they use. You should have frameworks in the sale. It should feel like you are using frameworks, that you're A, not winging it, and B, not reading scripts. You should be using frameworks and tools. You do that in your practice, you should be doing that in the sale.

David: Yes, there's three more here. The next one is expert, you as highly paid salesperson, you as high cost of sale. Somebody else is highly paid, essentially you're giving them lots of ideas for free. That's the difference.

Blair: Then after that is expert, you as in demand. Salesperson, you as communicating the opposite, you're working for free. You're working away doing all of this work for free in the sale. Then expert, you, it's client first. You might even have like an ethical responsibility to put the client first in, depending on the nature of the work that you do. Salesperson you, you just scream, "Me first. This is about me, this is about the firm. Let me talk to you about our solutions, our products, our services. Let me speak to you about what is in my best interest. I'll try to frame it in a way that it's in your best interest." We've got this list of about 10 different attributes that are opposing attributes or close to opposing attributes, depending on whether it's expert you or salesperson you. That's the source of the conflict. My guidance is just to strike everything under salesperson you, copy and paste everything under expert you, and paste it under salesperson you, and just show up in the sale the same way that you do in the engagement.

Blair: Be the same person.

David: Yes, be the same person. I think the natural response is, okay, that's probably the right thing to do. I'll actually enjoy selling more because I'm behaving like I would behave in my first job being the expert, not the second job being a salesperson. I'll just be the same person in two different roles. It's probably going to cost me money because salespeople who are not trying to talk their prospective clients into hiring them, surely they don't make nearly as much money. That's just absolutely not true. Think of how you want to buy professional services or expertise of any kind, advice or execution, and ask yourself, who are you more willing to do business with? Who are you more likely to pay a higher fee to?

Blair: Who you're more likely going to want to date even?

David: Yes, it's another great way to put it.

Blair: You had a phrase in here I thought might be a good ending to this because it's short and very, to me, it's very emotive, and I think it communicates exactly everything after we've talked so much about sort of the dichotomy between a salesperson and expert. The phrase you used was, "The world needs more expert you."

David: Yes.

Blair: I love that.

David: It really does not need salesperson you.

Blair: Yes.

David: At all. It hurts, but you know what? There's a freeing sense there because I'm very bad at the typical salesperson role. I feel very comfortable selling as an expert. When I criticize salespeople, I'm always unfairly criticizing people that don't do sales well.

Blair: Yes, well, we've all been on the end of bad selling experiences, right? We know what it's like to be the buyer in those situations. Why would we want to show up as that person on the other side of the table?

David: Yes, for sure, especially in expertise. The world needs more expert you. Thank you, Blair.

Blair: Thanks, David.