20 Years In: What We'd Do Differently

0:06SPEAKER_01:Welcome everybody to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcast 20 years strong celebration. My name is Brian Neal. My name is Bill Kaske, and I'm so glad Brian's back in the microphone game. I am not back in the microphone game. If you've been listening to this up, these uh uh podcasts for 20 years, God bless you. And if you just got here, you got 20 years of catch up to do, but you know we are audio snobs.

0:31SPEAKER_01:Well, we both use a podcasting board, technical term for a mixer, and uh called a roadcaster. And I've had power issues with mine, and I think I fried it this morning. So I I bought this little Samsung kind of USB uh microphone and at a at the closing of uh the music store called Sam Ash. Remember Sam Ash Music Store? It closed, yeah. And they had like a clearance sale, and I went over there and I got this little Samsung USB microphone for emergency purposes only, and I think it was three dollars.

1:07SPEAKER_01:Isn't that a great deal? It's a great, yeah. I mean three bucks. I got this thing.

1:11SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you have to make sure you're not too close or not too far.

1:14SPEAKER_01:Is that totally sweet spot? So that's why it's three right there, baby. Anyway, I gotta be here.

1:19SPEAKER_02:I love that store, even though I'm not a musician. I know you are.

1:22SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh, you can live in there.

1:23SPEAKER_02:Audio and the uh it was a great, but there was never anybody in there.

1:28SPEAKER_01:That's a kind of well, and and uh our friends up at Sweetwater, uh Sweetwater Sound in Fort Wayne have just really, really uh captured most market share in the professional music recording instrument world with service and and attention to detail with customers. They're so good. Sweetwater is so good, they're very good.

1:47SPEAKER_02:So all right. So today we are going to kick off our three or four episodes celebration of uh our 20th year in podcasting. And uh we're going to we've got some clips and cuts that people have sent in over the last few months. We've asked for them and they've sent them in. And we we we still welcome them. You can go to a listener at advanced sellingpodcast.com or you can send it, send your audio actuality in there. Actuality. That's a you can send your audio clip in there and we'll play it.

2:19SPEAKER_02:Uh so we've got three or four. We're gonna start today there, and then over the next few episodes, we'll play one and then we'll talk about uh a little bit of reflection on the podcast and all that stuff. That sound okay?

2:30SPEAKER_01:So it sounds great to me. And can you can you believe it, Bill? It's been 20 years. I love it.

2:36SPEAKER_02:You know, I was telling somebody yesterday, a client who says to me, Yeah, yeah, or he says, you know, I I know I need to post more. I need to post more, I need to do shoot YouTube videos. And he's in an industry that it's wide open for that. I mean, he's really good on camera, but he doesn't do it. And I said, uh, and he said, What's your secret uh with you and Brian, advanced selling? And I said, The secret is we enjoy it. If you're trying to create a task list of something that turns your stomach that you're anxious about that you don't enjoy, you're just not gonna do it.

3:08SPEAKER_02:We're adults, we know our brains are wired to avoid discomfort if you don't enjoy it. And and I said 20 years, and uh I do enjoy it every time. You know, every every time we get together, I enjoy teaching, I enjoy sharing, and I enjoy working with you and the camaraderie that we've built over the years. We had it before the podcast, but it's stayed alive.

3:32SPEAKER_01:So it's truth, and same. I it's just it's uh it never feels like work, it never feels like a burden. I never look at my calendar and go, oh crap, I got podcasting. It's so effortless because we love it so much. And I'll also say this even though this is what you might put in the the other categories of podcasts, like the guru category, like we're the ones giving advice. We I think, I hope this comes through, do not see ourselves as gurus. We're more reporting experts and observing experts and thinking experts and questioning experts.

4:07SPEAKER_01:And that part keeps us humble and and true to our true north of how we do things and what we talk about. And so, and we got and our listeners are the same way. Our listeners are just great human beings. Every time you meet a listener, you're like, Well no wonder you listen to the advanced selling podcast.

4:22SPEAKER_02:Even get a direct message or an email. Totally. There's a uh what was it says in the Bible that gentle as a dove, vicious as a viper. When we need when we need to be, we can we can go at it, but we try to be gentle about it because everybody's at a different place. Every listener, some of you are brand new, some of you have been with us for 20 years, and and some of you are super, super high achievers, million-dollar income people, and some of you aren't.

4:48SPEAKER_02:And we try to meet people where they are, and so that's uh, but anyway, let's go to Scott's nodes. Scott is a uh a friend of the show, he's been a listener forever. He was in is in our insider program, which is our monthly training program. So if he mentions insider, that's what it is. But here's Scott uh sharing his lessons.

5:05SPEAKER_00:Bill, Brian, Insiders, congratulations on 20 years. That is so impressive. Um, I'm Scott. I am one of the globetrotters uh here with my colleagues and my friends. And we wanted to congratulate you on hitting this tremendous milestone. We can't thank you enough for everything that you have done, for all the insights and support and the enthusiasm that we've been able to get out of uh the podcast and the insiders group and the network and the community that you have been able to build.

5:40SPEAKER_00:Uh we became friends, and we can confidently say we are now lifelong friends as a result of that work. Starting with the accountability and the collaboration that we got to do as sales professionals together, uh, we became the globe trotters. I'm here in Toronto right now, and I just wanted to let you know that the most valuable thing that I got out of this group, your support, was being able to build a sales process. When I joined uh Insiders, when I started listening to the podcast, having a formal sales process was not even uh a consideration.

6:15SPEAKER_00:It's now a fundamental part about the posture and the way that we uh go to market with the business um that uh that I sell for. And it's been completely transformative. That activity is in fact what got us together uh to share some of those ideas and make sure that we were committing to uh making that happen.

6:35SPEAKER_01:My man Scott Snowden, love that guy. I love that he calls it a process. It's one of my favorite things about Scott. I know him super well. Um, but um uh I want to start with, you know, he's part of a um some other podcast listeners have a little group together, and I think we heard from most of them uh when our in our outreach for you know the the celebration videos. And one, that's a very cool feeling to think that you had a little bit to do with bringing together people who would become lifelong friends.

7:09SPEAKER_01:The bigger lesson for me though, that's a sales lesson, is what true relationships are built on. And I just came from a training session in Austin, Texas, with a group of, and I was told this going in, they sell to healthcare, big, they sell software to hospital, huge hospital systems and things, and they're very relationship-oriented and relationship sellers. And I try to tell people this all the time good relationships don't start with going to baseball games and they don't start with playing golf together.

7:42SPEAKER_01:That's not where good relationships start. They start with doing something good when you really don't know each other well and you come through something together, then you become lifelong friends after that. And these people didn't know each other, and when they got together, they weren't trying to find lifelong friends and build relationships, they were trying to get work done and do better, and that brought them together. So if you're a seller and you go, I'm a relationship guy, I take the ball, I take my clients to ball games, I take them out to eat, we get beers together.

8:13SPEAKER_01:That's fine, but help them with their business first and then watch where the relationship goes. That's a thing, man, isn't it?

8:22SPEAKER_02:I get so tired of the whole build relationship thing because they really aren't. They're higher level of acquaintance. So if I have acquaintance and we go play golf, okay, we've strengthened our acquaintance. Um now, if we play golf and at night we go back to a uh room and we talk about life and existential things and how I can help them in their business, then we're starting to talk relationship. But yeah, I think that's just an overused phrase, but I think you're exactly right.

8:52SPEAKER_02:I love the idea of going through something together.

8:55SPEAKER_01:It's so good, isn't it? Yeah, with a common goal and a common purpose, humility, commitment to work, all those things. If you do that with your customers, you will have lifelong friends. If you try to win their relationship first and become friends with them, you never get space to do the work. No, you know? No, so interesting. Okay, that's good. That's a whole uh that's a whole episode. We should do that. It really is. We really should on relationship, on the myth of relationship selling.

9:21SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I th I think there's a there's a certain amount of randomness too that these these four people were in our insider program, a few of them still are, and there was a a randomness where Andy picked Scott and Scott picked Karen and Karen picked Chris. You're gonna hear from them in up next episodes. And it wasn't like they went through a vetting process, it was just like, do this, yeah, let's do this. And sometimes I think we get so we get so vet conscious, like uh, well, you know, I'm not sure if they're right for me.

9:53SPEAKER_02:You know what? The only way you're going to know is to try it to it and say, look, we're gonna give this 90 days. If there's somebody in their group that didn't want to be here, then get out and we're fine. And yeah, sometimes you just have to try things. And also I think sales can be a lonely profession. And knowing that there's three other people around the world who care about you and who are encouraging you when you're together, we don't we don't get a lot of encouragement in our lives.

10:19SPEAKER_02:And we might from our spouse occasionally, we might from a pastor, but sometimes that's very transactional too. Um, and so encouraging at a deep level, like these guys do, is just it's you can't put a price on it. It's awesome.

10:34SPEAKER_01:So awesome, isn't it? The other thing I'll give them credit for, and I know we were talking a little bit, we're in year 20. And Bill, you were talking about a client, friend of yours who, you know, has all the gifts, you know, great on camera and all the things, and just doesn't do it. I was asking you, you know, talked about our secrets, and we talked about loving it and all the things we talked about. The other secret, the behavioral secret, is so simple.

11:02SPEAKER_01:Bill and I record this podcast every other Monday from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern. Full stop.

11:09SPEAKER_02:Yeah.

11:10SPEAKER_01:We miss sometimes for vacation. Today's a Friday, but we make them up. We've never stopped the behavior. And we don't record the podcast four hours a day, five days a week. It's every other week from 9 to 10 a.m. Eastern, and we record two episodes. And that is the behavioral silver bullet to anything at all is that consistent behavior. And that Globetrotter group that Scott's in, they have committed to that. That's right. They get together on a regular basis for years now, and we know them all.

11:38SPEAKER_01:Look at their all their sales results, they are fantastic. All of them are.

11:42SPEAKER_02:So we'll hear from the other three that sent this in here over the next uh couple episodes. But one thing that uh my client, who I you just brought up, mentioned, was we're talking yesterday. I said, you have to you have to get in into your mind. So yeah, you get the consistent behavior, nine o'clock on two Mondays, whatever that is, but you have to get it in your mind that there are people out there waiting for you to share something with them that you will share in a way that nobody else, nobody else will share, or it will connect right with that person.

12:17SPEAKER_02:Not like I know you and I. There's certain people I connect with because of my nature and voice, certain people you connect with. That's just the way of the way of the world. If we don't ever think that there's somebody out there waiting for something that we know that we can help them with, we'll never do it because we'll say, well, that's a waste of time. But if you think, oh no, I've learned something. It's this dude that I was talking to yesterday, he's 60 years old, he's been in this bit, his business for 25 years.

12:41SPEAKER_02:You don't think there's something? Oh my god, maybe a 40-year-old could learn from this guy that, but if you don't see that and you don't recognize it, you don't really feel that, you're gonna say, Well, yeah, come on. He's 40. I'm 60. What am I gonna teach him? Exactly the person that he needs to hear from, not a 40-year-old, sometimes gray hair and a beard and a little pot belly.

13:03SPEAKER_01:And yeah, yes, yes, all the above, all the above. So yeah, we forget, I was gonna say, we forget as we get older in career that things that have become third, fourth, fifth nature for us that we think are common knowledge are not. And we forgot that we didn't know them at some point. And there's some other 25, 35-year-old, 38-year-old seller rolling around, and you're going, Well, just do that. And it's not, they don't know that yet. And it's our duty to tell them and share that.

13:32SPEAKER_01:Pass the elevator, send the elevator back down.

13:34SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's so good. All right. Um, so let me ask you this. Uh, one of the things that I hear a lot of times from people who you know, the guy's in jail and he or he's in debt up to his, you know what? And somebody says, Well, do you have any regrets? Oh no, I've got no regrets in life. And it's like, should have a few regrets based on circumstances. But do you have any regrets about the podcast um as you look back? And I'm not talking about life, existential, which is, you know, like, yeah, I wish we'd have done this differently, or I wish I could have, you know, do you have any anything?

14:10SPEAKER_02:I've got a couple.

14:11SPEAKER_01:I just wonder if any um yeah, I mean, I always go with my first gut reaction. The first gut reaction is that um we were we were extremely consistent, which was the biggest gift and the biggest curse. Because when you get to a certain level and stay consistent at that level, you don't grow and pass through a ceiling. And we never press through another ceiling. Now, if you search sales podcasts, we are on every list ever known to mankind because we've been so consistent.

14:44SPEAKER_01:Um what we are not is the uh number four listen podcast on the earth, and many, many podcasts have been started after ours that grew past ours, I think from a more deliberate uh effort to grow. Who's the British guy who does the diary of a CEO? Gigantic Calvin. I don't know, yeah, yeah. Uh yeah, Stephen Steven uh that guy, that guy, Steven. I don't remember what's name, but he's the you know, number one, two, you know, Mel Mel Robbins. All of them started their podcast five years ago, you know.

15:21SPEAKER_01:Even even Lewis, uh I know, you know what I mean? I I know Lewis House, they all started after us. And now we didn't set out to be famous or have, you know, that wasn't the point. And it could have been had we chosen that, and we chose not to. We chose to be steady, consistent, episode type, stayed in our lane of sales, and left it be. That would be our in the category of regret. Not regret like I beat myself up about it, but no, no, I understand.

15:47SPEAKER_01:I understand.

15:48SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I totally agree. I think that this has not been what it could have been, right? It's good and it's it's fun, and we have other businesses, so we don't rely on the podcast for any kind of wealth creation, thankfully. Uh, but it it's it serves the public, but it's not what it could have been. And yeah, I hear I hear some of these guys, but one thing I've noticed is that all these people that have top podcasts, they're all almost all of them are interview podcasts.

16:15SPEAKER_01:Yes.

16:16SPEAKER_02:Where they have people on, and I think we probably consciously said, you know what, we've got enough content with the work that we do and the people we see and the people we coach that content is really not a problem for us. It might be for somebody like I don't know that Stephen, what's his name who does diary, could sit there and yap for 30 minutes, just about he probably could at this point, but when you start, you don't you can't do that, so you've got to rely on interviews.

16:41SPEAKER_02:And I mean Joe Rogan interviews, diarie CEO interview, Lewis House, always interview, never two-headed things like we're doing. So the genre that we've selected is a little bit. I think the second regret I've got a lot of regrets. Second regret I got was um or is I think we have been in the sales lane for so long, and I think there's lots of lanes that connect with sales that aren't sales that we should probably have been or should be looking at.

17:16SPEAKER_02:Um you know, just like something simple like relationships. That's a good example. We just talked about this. Uh, that's a topic that almost everybody, I don't care what role you play inside a company or outside a company, there's some stuff that we've learned about that that we should probably share and that other people can grow. So, but we've we've branded the podcast for salespeople because it's called selling podcast. And so probably a regret might be should we have branded it that way?

17:45SPEAKER_02:Yeah, probably. Maybe we should have done another one called something else, and yeah, and then in that podcast, we do more of the generic general uh wisdom and advice.

17:54SPEAKER_01:Awesome.

17:55SPEAKER_02:Me like me like I think one more thing I regretted at all. Welcome to the regret episode, everybody. My name is Brian Neal. No, I've these are all just things as I as I think back. We never really built a community. We we say it's a community because we have the insider group that's you know 50-60 people in, but and that's a community in in a way, but there's no school community or Slack community or any this we probably could have and should have, and maybe we still should build a community where it says, look, if you're a listener and you want to be a part of our you know ASP nation, go here, register, it's free, and contribute there.

18:41SPEAKER_02:Um, now we have a LinkedIn, we have a LinkedIn group, but I'm not sure that's really built for community. It's not bad, but I'm not sure they did a great job with that. So that's a regret I have because I do think there's you all have you 15,000 people who listen every week-ish, uh, all have something in common. And that is that is this. And this thing has enough legs that it could be if you see somebody else who is an advanced line podcast listener, there's an automatic, a slight bit of affinity there for them.

19:15SPEAKER_02:And I'm not trying to be bigger than we are, but you listen, you like the philosophies we teach, and if somebody else likes them, you got something to start a uh acquaintance with.

19:24SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I like, we like, all right, and even with the regrets, so everyone listening, we are so freaking proud of what we built. Yeah, and we know you're part of our our community, our tribe. And so we're very, very thankful for that. Awesome. All right, see you next time.

19:37SPEAKER_02:See you next time.

19:38SPEAKER_01:Cheers. Bye.