Compel or Repel

 Welcome to the Sell the Sizzle podcast. If you need to sell an idea, a product, or a service, this is the show for you. We're gonna be sharing sales secrets so you can be a sizzling success. Let's go

and welcome to the show. This is Mick Holly, your host. And I'm glad you are here. So let's get into some, uh, sales ideas and sales improvement. This is what this show is about. I've spent about 40 years in sales. I've worked with, uh, hundreds of salespeople, and during that whole process, I've distilled the essence of success and also seen the pathology.

Of failure. What does that mean? That means that I can give you really good tips from mentors that I've had, uh, great salespeople that I've worked with, show you what works, but also in terms of the failures, there are common patterns. And what I'm gonna do is help you avoid those mistakes in your sales process so that you can sell more, close more deals, get more commission, and have ecstatic clients.

And what I'll be doing on the show is some of the shows I'll just be talking and giving you some of my, uh, experiences and thoughts and other times I'll be in interviewing guests who will be great sales mentors and we'll be trying to elicit from them. What they've done to be successful and what ideas can we transfer to you to enable you to be successful in your career.

So I thought I'd start off this episode with, uh, my own mentor. If I go back. 35 years, I'd already been well groomed by great blue chip companies in the uk. I'd worked with one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world as a medical representative, and I'd also had many years working with IBM and received fabulous training.

And then I joined a smaller company, a consulting company that was selling business improvement to businesses. So it was a consulting sale, high dollar value, uh, you know, half a million, million, uh, $2 million improvement, uh, program. So quite a complex sale. And, uh, my boss was a gentleman called Gerry Burke.

I affectionately refer to him as Jerry. The dog ate my homework, Burke because he always had some excuse or otherwise he hadn't done something or why he wasn't in the office. He was quite the character, but he had this absolutely brilliant understanding of the human psyche and what motivates people and how you can overcome sales challenges, and he actually made me do some things that at the time made me cringe.

Uh, and I felt was against the professional ethics of how you would do sales. Uh, but, uh, he beat me with a stick. And, uh, over the years, what he has taught me has, uh, allowed me to be incredibly successful. In fact spent, uh, you know, having, having had that, uh, coaching enabled me to have a good career in the uk.

And then I moved to the US about 24 years ago and had a, a very, very successful career here. Um, so what of the first deals that I was doing in the uk, I was trying to sell a consulting business improvement program. To a food manufacturer in the western part of England, in, uh, in Cornwall. And the name of the company was, uh, Ginsters Ginsters Cornish Pastis.

And if you live in the UK you, you would recognize the name Ginsters. And for those of you who, don't dunno what a Cornish pasti is, it's a bit like a calzone. Uh, and it's filled with meat and potatoes. And it was, um, originally designed. For the Cornish tin miners. So it was a pastry case with a, with a very hard crust, and they miners would take it down and at lunchtime they would, they would eat that pasty holding onto the crust.

And to eat the rest, which was like a full meal, very, very popular, savory, uh, dish in the uk and I'd met with the managing director of that business. His name was Dennis, Dennis Tierney, or I can still see his image today. And I was in competition with another consulting company and I'd had several meetings with Dennis, his team.

We'd looked around the factory. And we put our proposal in and, uh, they were imminently gonna decide whether they were going to use my company or whether they were gonna use the competitor. So I was, uh, in our office, which was, uh, in Richmond. In, in the uk just on the outskirts of Greater London on the, um, on the west side.

Uh, about four hours from, from from Cornwall. And, uh, uh, Jerry, uh, came in and asked me as is was his want, Hey Mick, what's happening at us? I said, well, Jerry, there's a board meeting on Wednesday, uh, where they're gonna be making the decision. And, uh, Jerry said, well, are you gonna be at the board meeting? So, I said, Jerry, it's a board meeting you.

You don't, you don't go to other people's board meetings. I mean, you just, just don't do that. Yeah. You need to be at the board meeting cuz if you are not there, you might lose the sale. So you need to be in that board meeting, call Dennis up and tell him you come into the board meeting. And I was absolutely aghast at this because you don't, I mean, can you just imagine it, I mean, you, you are cringing in your seat now as you're listening to this, but Jerry would not be denied.

Uh, so I picked up the phone and I called Dennis, so I get on the phone. Uh, hey. Yeah. Hello? Yeah, Dennis, this is Mick Holly. Oh, hi Mick. How you doing? Yeah, well you've got the board meeting on Wednesday. That's right. That's right. Um, I think I should come along to the board meeting and, uh, and uh, and present our proposal, Mick.

You, you've been very thorough. I thank you for all of your efforts, but, um, we have all the information you need and no, you're not coming to the board meeting. Um, thank you. It puts the phone down, which is what I would expect. Right. That would be the response that you and I would, would, would respect, would, would expect.

So I'm sitting at my desk, in the office keeping my head down, hoping that Jerry isn't gonna appear, but of course. Jerry comes over. Mick, what, what happened with Dennis? What's happening about the board meeting? I said, well, Jerry said, look, you, I can't come to the board meeting. Um, you know, it's just, it, it just, he just, it just said no.

Well call him back up and tell him that you can sit outside the board meeting. Um, and then if there are any questions, they can call you in. I said, Jerry, that's crazy. Call him up. So pick up the phone again. You know, call up Dennis. Dennis. He says, hello. Yeah, Dennis Mho again. Mick, what? What do you want? I said, I've, sorry.

You know, I've been in this situation many times before. And often there are questions that come up that don't have an obvious answer from the submitted material. So what I'd like to suggest is that I'll sit outside your board meeting and then if you've got questions, you can call me in and I can answer them.

No, no, you're not coming to the board meeting and you're not sitting outside the board meeting. I've told you we've got everything that we need to. No, leave me alone and I'll, I'll call you when we've made our decision, puts the phone down and, um, You know, a little while later in the office, Jerry comes over, Hey, Mick, what's happening at Gins?

I said, Jerry, Jerry, Dennis was very angry, and he said, no, I can't sit outside his board meeting. He said, well, okay. He said, what I, what I want you to do is I want you to call him up. And tell him that you're gonna be in the area and that if, and that if he need you, you, you can, you know, come into the board meeting.

I said, Jerry, he's four hours away in Cornwall. Right. No, there's nothing in the area. I mean, saying I'm gonna be in the area is ridiculous. He said, you call him up and tell him you're gonna be in in his car park. I said, so I'm just absolutely cringing now. So I call up Dennis again. Mick, what do you want?

I've told you you'd stop calling me. Well, Dennis, I forgot to mention in my last call that I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be in the area and what I thought I would do is, Um, I don't have any meetings that morning. Um, so I'm gonna come and sit in your. Car park or parking lot and, uh, I'll give you my, um, car phone number.

Uh, in those days you didn't have mobiles, you had, you had car phones. And I'll sit in my car and then if you have questions, you can call me and I'll get out the car and come upstairs to the board meeting and answer any questions. He said, Mick, you are not coming to our board meeting and you can sit as long as you like in the bloody car park, but you are not coming into our board meeting.

Good day. Puts the phone down.

So Jerry, Jerry comes over. Jerry comes over again. Mick, how did it go with Dennis? I said de Jerry. He, he was mad. He said, I can't come. He said, no, he didn't want me to come. He didn't want me to sit in the car park. No, he, he, we can't talk in the board meeting, he said, right. He says, I want you to get in your car.

I want you to drive there to sit in his car park and then call him. So on the day of the board meeting, I have to drive four hours, sit in the car park, and I get there and I pick up the phone. Hey, hey Dennis. It's Mick Harley. What? What do you want? I said, I want to let you know I'm in new, I in new car park.

And he said, well, you can stay there. He asked, but, but you know, if you do have questions, you, you could, you can, you can call me on this number. And I'll come up and I could see the window where his office was. And uh, I could see him looking out the window at me thinking, goodness me, what is this guy doing?

And of course, he didn't call me. So I drive four hours all the way back, uh, to the office. Um, so an eight hour drive, I'm sitting in the car park for two hours. And you think this is crazy, right? You think this is mental? And, uh, we, um, Dennis calls me, he said, mate, we've, we've, we've, uh, had the board meeting and, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna go with the other company.

Thank you for all of your efforts. Um, So I was, I was a bit devastated by that. Uh, so Jerry comes over, he said, Mick, what's happening against us? I said, Jerry, we lost the deal. He said, well, we'll call him up and tell him he's made the wrong decision. I said, Jerry, I can't do that. I'm not him. So Jerry says, well, I'll call him.

I'll call him. So Jerry picks up the phone. Gets hold of Dennis. He goes, uh, yeah, Dennis, uh, this is, this is Jerry Burke. I'm Mick Holley's boss. I said, Mick has told me that, uh, that we haven't got this deal. And I said, I d he says, I do want to apologize if, if, uh, if Mick was too pushy or aggressive, uh, I can certainly help you and reshape the deal.

And, uh, you know, how can we, how can we turn this around? And he said, well, Jerry, thank you for your, thank you for your response. He said to man, he said, you, we just. You know, we, we, we wanted to go in a different direction, he said, but I tell you, he said, if we had people like Mick Holly selling for us, he said, we don't, we'd own the world.

He said, that was just fantastic what he did. Now here's the lesson from, from, from all of that. What actually happened was the competitive team went in and didn't do a particularly good job and. This company had an another business operation and I was asked to go and look in that business operation and we secured that work and ultimately, uh, Dennis and the team called us back in and we won.

The business. And so I formed a philosophy which was baked into me by many of these stories, these uh, events that Jerry would put me through. Um, and I've developed this philosophy called compel. Or repel. So the idea is that you, uh, if you fundamentally believe that your service, your product, your idea can really make a difference to your prospect, then it is your duty to convey that with every fiber of your being.

Because they'll, they, they can, they can understand that you truly. Believe in your service, you believe in the value that you can add. So it's very compelling, aren't so what I want you to do when you go into sales, into sales meetings, I want, I want there, there, there are two outcomes that you know alike.

Number one, it's such a compelling, it resonates with them that they, that they pull you, that they pull you in by the lapel. Absolutely. We need this or you repel. Right. They, they, they, they, they push you away. But you've, you've, you've articulated your benefits and position and belief with such conviction that it's absolutely clear where you stand and what you believe, because ultimately, In the future, if what they do doesn't quite give them the results that they want, they'll come back because they go, well, you know, mate, you know, you really believed in what they were doing.

Sounded very professional. The service he was offering was, was, was complete. You know, we, we need, everything that he said was resonates with us. We need to come back. So you've gotta play a little bit the long game, but in terms of. Compel or repel. That way you don't have a banal blah offering, right? It's really gotta be distinctive.

You've got to be absolutely confident about it. So you compel it, you know, compellingly tell your story and your benefits with, with absolute, you know, energy and zeal, and that way you will communicate that belief. Because in sales, right? People buy you number one, from people they like. Number two for the, the, uh, company, like they like, and number three, the product or service.

So they're looking at, you know, if they believe that you and your company have. Know that you can deliver what you are saying, then they're gonna trust you enough and then the service or product will, you know, be the icing on the cake. So what I want you to do when you go into your meetings is I want you to really, really, You know, manifest that conviction and be compelling.

Don't be afraid if the client says, no, some clients aren't gonna buy from you. Two thirds of your clients are not gonna buy from you. So when you use compel or repel, you will qualify out those people who don't want to buy much, much earlier, which will allow you to focus on. Other opportunities and these people will remember you.

You will be memorable and opportunities will present themselves in the future if you compel or repel. If you enjoyed this episode, please. Leave us a review on Apple's podcast that makes a big difference, and we'll see you next week.