Sales Skill Atrophy, Part 2: The Comeback Plan

0:06SPEAKER_01:Welcome everybody to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcasts. Sneaking up on our actual 20th anniversary. This might be the one, Bill. I'm Brian Neal. I'm Bill Kaske. We are so glad that you're here. Oh my gosh. It's just great. Um, it's been 20 years. Can you believe it? Um, we've had a few of you reach out with messages. We really appreciate those. We played a couple of those in past episodes.

0:31SPEAKER_01:Um, I believe our first episode was on October the is it the ninth or the sixth?

0:40SPEAKER_00:Could have been the sixth. I I don't know, but it was first first week in October. We've always talked about September, but it's October, I think.

0:47SPEAKER_01:It's it's October. Yep, yep, yeah. Um so glad that you're here. Um let's see. If you've not joined the insider group, what are you waiting for? Um got to go to advanced sellingpodcast.com. Uh Bill's got live training for you every week. Awesome crew, awesome people, great training from Bill. Um it's every month. It's every month.

1:08SPEAKER_00:Like every week.

1:08SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Did I say every week? I meant every week. You said every week, yeah. I'm every week. I'm sorry, every month, once a month, and I'm multitasking because I just looked up that um according to Chat GPT, which is always correct. You it's always right. Um, October 25th, actually, 2006 was our first episode. Oh, October 25th. Well, we were way up. We got another month. We got another month to celebrate. Oh my god. Let's go. So, Bill, uh, welcome back.

1:36SPEAKER_01:You've been uh you've been out and about.

1:40SPEAKER_00:We did a two-week uh West Coast National Park tour, which we love to do, and we've done it in the past, not two weeks. This was my longest, it was the longest two weeks of my life. No, I mean it was a long, it was two weeks away, it's a long time for me. And uh went with another couple, my uh in-laws, uh uh sister-in-law and brother, and they're great. We travel together well, and there's very little drama. Um, but you know, after two weeks of traveling with somebody, you get on each other's nerves a little bit.

2:11SPEAKER_00:And I'm sure I'm guilty of getting on their nerves too. I'm I'm willing to admit that because I talk about things in the car, you get a lot of windshield time when you're traveling three hours every couple of days, and I'm bringing up stuff that they're like, what are you talking about? You know, and because I I enjoy talking about stuff, and I'll I'll come up with like a trivia question. Like, what was what was the uh WLS radio station in Chicago, the 50,000 watt behemoth in Chicago?

2:38SPEAKER_00:What what do the call letters stand for? Anyone know and Mike Mike Gang that's a good one, care less about roads.

2:45SPEAKER_01:I care like that one. I don't I gotta think of what that is. When uh when I don't know this world's largest station. I didn't know that. I didn't that's a great trivia. That was yeah, see, you must have gone with you. I would love this, I would love this trip. 12 days of the car. Maybe we should do a road trip segment where we take the ASP on the road, we drive around for 12 days and do stupid trivia. I would like that.

3:10SPEAKER_00:And there's a lot of stickers in national parks, people have stickers on their laptops. Did not see one ASP sticker, and I had$100 ready. I'm telling you, that offer still goes. If we ever see your laptop out and you're a Starbucks and you have our sticker, uh$100 coming your way. So I was going up to people looking very closely at their laptop, which got creepy people. But the the funniest story was that uh we met Jane's brother and uh his girlfriend in uh Las Vegas for our last three nights.

3:41SPEAKER_00:They came up from Phoenix and it was good, and we went out to dinner and everything. And and Jane, my wife, is is a great planner, and she and Lori, her sister, planned this whole thing. And Jane probably took a little bit more of the planning because that's just her nature. She just is good at that stuff. And we had an itinerary, we had everything. It wasn't too tight. It was just, you know, we knew what we were doing every day. We knew where we were going to dinner every day.

4:04SPEAKER_00:Because if you don't, some of these places you can't get in. Okay. So we got to Vegas, and uh, so Jane's like, you know, I'm kind of tired of planning everything. You let's let Kirk, her brother, and uh he's been to Vegas a lot. And so we're sitting outside during the day, and and we had reservations at a place called Mateo's, which is in the Venetian. And uh, I've never eaten there before, but I I've heard it's really good. And we had reservations at 7:30.

4:32SPEAKER_00:We had gone to Wizard of Oz at the sphere, and then we were going to dinner, but just just to have a kind of a you know, one in the pocket, a reservation. Kurt said, Uh, I don't know if I want to go there. And he goes, I heard the peppermint is really good. And Jane's like, Oh, okay, peppermint. I mean, he said, Yeah, I heard it was good. And so Jane said, Well, why don't you take care of that? I'll cancel Mateo's and we'll go there. That's fine.

4:59SPEAKER_00:No, no, we're not tied to anything. So we get done at the um sphere, and we're standing up, getting ready. You ever been there?

5:09SPEAKER_01:I've not been in it only next year.

5:11SPEAKER_00:You know what it is. Yeah, yeah, you know.

5:12SPEAKER_01:Oh, of course, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

5:14SPEAKER_00:And uh, so we're standing, uh kind of getting ready to go outside. And uh I said, okay, so uh what's the plan? And Kurt looks at me and he says, Uh, what plan? And I said, for dinner. What's the plan for dinner? And Jane says, Yeah, what's the what's the plan? Are we going to peppermill? He goes, I don't know. And we're like, Well, we've we just canceled reservations at Mateo's, so that's out. Um, you you where is the peppermint? Where is this? And he goes, I don't know where it is.

5:46SPEAKER_00:I just had somebody casually say that we should go to the peppermint. Like, you didn't make reservations. No, I didn't know you wanted me to so we are like pulling our hair out. And then at some point, you think, you know what, it's food. We're not gonna starve to death, probably in Vegas. I mean, there's gonna be a street vendor or something we can go to, but just the whole idea of I'm looking at Jane and then you have to realize that we're not all built the same, we're we're just not.

6:14SPEAKER_00:We're Jane is built as an organizer, and uh, we always know what we're going to do the next couple hours when we're in hour one. We we kind of know and we're not obsessed about it. We kind of know, and so when he said, I don't know, she she came and she looked at me like I'm gonna pop my top. So that was the funniest thing. It wasn't funny at the time, but uh because people get hungry, you know. You're you're you're moving around a lot, people get hangry, they get angry, they get hungry, and then yeah, you're you're screwed.

6:43SPEAKER_01:So and trying to find dinner with three adult couples with opinions and everyone, and then and then Midwest politeness, like, well, okay, yeah, we'll do that. Oh, you know, we'll go to the peppermint, sure. But we're not going to the peppermill. Yeah, that's funny. The peppermint.

7:02SPEAKER_00:Well, anyway, so thank you for asking. It was a great trip, and uh it was two weeks, and that's kind of long for me. So we'll we'll see if I do that again. But so I'm struggling a little bit trying to get back into the into the groove here. So I'm really glad that we're recording today because uh it was uh I I need something to kind of jolt me free. So you've got the topic that you remember from our last time. So why don't you tee it up?

7:23SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna continue talking about atrophy. We talked the last episode a little bit about um sales skill or sales muscle that atrophies. So think about my prospecting muscles atrophied, my LinkedIn muscles atrophied. Um, we talked about um I still have a prospective client who just came off of um an allocation. So the seller since COVID. So what is that? Six years, five years?

7:49SPEAKER_00:Yeah, six years.

7:50SPEAKER_01:When was COVID? Six years? 12 that's uh it have atrophy because they've just been basically managing orders and haven't had to actually prospect and sell and move forward against competitors. So um we talked a little bit just about that and had you take a little inventory of your atrophied sales skills. Now we're gonna talk about what do you what do you do about them? What do you do about a sales skill that's atrophied? How do you get back in the groove?

8:14SPEAKER_01:Because there I think there's a there's a a little bit of an art and some science and some thoughtfulness that should go into how to get back in the groove.

8:22SPEAKER_00:You know, I was just thinking as you uh talked about this, and I do remember that we talked about how skills atrophied from COVID and with your client and um or with your prospect. And sometimes the world changes, and so you can't just pick up the skill as it was six years ago and just go redeploy it. Uh oh, I'll just refer to what I did six years ago, and then you realize, oh, well, what I did six years ago doesn't quite work as well as it did six years ago.

8:50SPEAKER_00:Doesn't work as well today. So I think there's also that element of when the world around you changes, your skills have to change too.

8:58SPEAKER_01:Gosh, that's that's really great. And um, I have a quote from a friend, and I don't know if he stole this quote or not, uh, but I'll I'll read it to you. But I think it's a really awesome way to think. It says uh a redefinition, a modern day definition of illiteracy. This is a modern day definition of illiteracy, is the inability to learn and then unlearn and relearn quickly. And I think learning, unlearning, and relearning quickly is the new like super skill.

9:37SPEAKER_01:It's a new skill, yeah. It is, yeah. And I love what you said about that. You you you part of the um I don't know what you call helping your atrophy or not fixing it or what the word is. Um part of that is to unlearn what you used to do because it's likely irrelevant, even if it was just last year. Like, oh you know, 2025, I was prospecting a lot and haven't prospected for a while. I'll start prospecting. Well, it's different because Chat GPT is here and Claude's here.

10:09SPEAKER_01:That's right, and they weren't here last year in a year. Um so I think that's a really good point you make there, Bill.

10:16SPEAKER_00:And even and we've been talking about the tools here, and I think the tools do change, Chat GPT. That that's obvious a big claude or whatever, AI. But there's also the the market itself drifts and moves, and and it used to be that you know, people were really interested in making more money. Let's just take a sales organization. But yeah, they're still interested in that, but there are other things that they're interested in too. There are other angles to your message, and that sometimes changes, and it changes so you know, so gently and slowly that sometimes you think everybody's out there trying to make more money, but really the marketplace is like, no, there's more to it than this.

10:56SPEAKER_00:And that may be a bad example because I know money's almost part of it, but uh, so don't forget about what the market wants may have changed a little bit too. So, what what is one skill that you find your and you mentioned prospecting, and I I would say that's one of the top skills. What's a skill that you think people uh need to re just kind of recommit to?

11:22SPEAKER_01:Uh discovery, discovery, and I'm gonna use your advice in the discovery. Um, old discovery doesn't work anymore. So old discovery was a litany of questions, big huge list, and the questions were to pick at and point out pain that a buyer has or might have. And my feeling is that skill has atrophied because one, it hasn't evolved, and two, um people one, they haven't done it well, and then two, the way they've done it isn't as effective as it used to be because uh I think especially senior level C level buyers aren't interested in a big QA.

12:10SPEAKER_01:They're they're they know that they don't want to get you know, the whole, and I I know some of you say that what keeps you up at night, or I'm like that that is so bad. Like people don't think that way anymore. I hate that. And it's awful. And you know, it's like, you know, well, what if you used to work?

12:26SPEAKER_00:What if you could it used to work, but then everybody started doing it.

12:30SPEAKER_01:And yes, yes, that's it's like yeah, so so I I think a read and and to me it's less about discovery to find pain, it's more about analysis discovery, it's more about critical thinking and objective. So I like to think like um if you've ever been in around like a private equity firm who's buying a company, if a private equity firm is going to buy a company, they're not asking pain questions of the owner of the company they're about to buy. They're doing analysis and critical thinking about market share and about what uh pluses and minuses strategies and weaknesses and threats and and five and three year visions and things like that.

13:14SPEAKER_01:And they're doing it from a place to discern whether they want to invest their money in that company. Yeah, they're not doing it like, oh, I hope they sell it to us, but they're still they're still in sales mode because private equity firms sometimes have to compete against other private equity firms to buy a good company. Yeah, but they none of them do that, you know. So I think that's a skill that's atrophied, has a lot of development to be done.

13:37SPEAKER_01:Um, and with research, you should know the answers to most of the questions that we used to ask because you can find all that stuff out on Claude and ChatGPT before you ever get there.

13:47SPEAKER_00:You know, that's my so what so what you're saying is the skill of understanding their situation or predicament, they meaning the prospect, that has changed from picking away at feelings and opinions to being a more analytical process where we look at closing percentages and we look at cost per sale, we look at cost per lead, we're very analytical about that. Yeah, that's what so it's still a discovery, but it we're not discovering opinions, we're discovering facts.

14:16SPEAKER_01:Yes, and there can still be some opinions in the facts, but I think the we used to just say, so so what kind of problems do you have today, Bill? So, what are your top three priorities right now? And I just think you know, C-level people just don't want to sit there and answer those questions, they just want to get to it, and you can get to it by just doing a little using you know chat and claude again to just do some research. And um you'll find out a lot of that there, and then you can validate it uh and or ask more questions about it.

14:47SPEAKER_01:So yeah.

14:48SPEAKER_00:So it used to so maybe it's a matter of degree because I still think there's a reason to ask some of these top-level 30,000-foot view questions, like you know, what what prompted what prompted you to reach out to me? I think that's always a good one. Uh but again, I don't want to get into what keeps you up at night, but I do want to make sure that we're we're looking at the problem, the same problem in the same way. So they and I, and we're not we're not looking at different problems in different ways, because then the solution's never going to be quite right.

15:20SPEAKER_00:So I agree. I think there's a validation. So it's a I don't want to spend 45 minutes of the first meeting on picking away at pain. Right.

15:29SPEAKER_01:Right, exactly. Exactly. And the core thing beneath, I know we're talking about this one a lot, but the uh the core thing beneath it is intention. Because the old intention behind discovery was to find the thing to fix, to pitch to fix. Oh, you got a closing percentage problem. I can help you with that. You know, is that a big problem? Is that keep you up at night problem? You know, um, and to me, it it this is just more of a collaborative process.

15:55SPEAKER_01:Um it's it's much more neutral than, you know, let me find it, you know, rip it open.

16:01SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:04SPEAKER_01:But that was what we were taught back in the day.

16:06SPEAKER_00:It was yeah, but yeah, just let it play there. So everybody can see him. Yeah. How do you feel about looking at your guts there on the table? Well, I feel kind of empty right now. Um, yeah, I agree with you. So but so so discovery is still important, but it's not 45 minutes important, it might be 10 or 15 minutes important in in a call. And so what's the what's the answer to that then? So, how do I improve those skills?

16:38SPEAKER_01:That's uh I first think so. You've got that kind of awareness that, oh gosh, you know what? I should, I'm listening to Bill and Brian talk about this and I still do old school discovery. What can I so I first is that acknowledgement, but the next thing is I think I need to step back from it and create a uh an uh atrophy plan, an atrophy correction plan instead of just like jumping right in and trying to you know change something real quick, um, saying, okay, uh, if I'm learning a new skill, I need to learn it.

17:09SPEAKER_01:Then I need to practice it and then apply it in low risk scenarios. And I like that. So I need to figure out okay, what does my new discovery look like, sound like? Let me prep that out. Let me prep for some calls, let me practice with my manager or a peer or into a camera or whatever, and let me just see how this feels. Let me practice with Claude or ChatGPT. Um, then I want to apply early something new to a low-risk environment. So if you've got a gigantic, awesome wheelhouse prospect you've been you've been chasing, you get your first meeting with the CFO of Caterpillar, don't try something new there, is my opinion.

17:48SPEAKER_01:Try it when there's a little less uh, you know, less less to lose um or less to gain.

17:53SPEAKER_00:You're popping up.

17:54SPEAKER_01:That's what I would do there. You're you're popping. Yeah, I know that yeah, the whole thing's choppy.

17:59SPEAKER_00:Um I can hear you fine. Just uh popping. Okay. Okay, okay. Yeah, so I like that. I like that a lot. Uh so maybe the thing to do here, which we talked about last time, is make this list. What are the so let's let's just go down a list. Let's not describe every element of the list, though, but let's just pick off three or four each areas that might you might be needing to look at in terms of atrophy. So I'd say prospecting or business development. I know that's a big that's a skill that could have 30 subskills in it, but generally prospecting business development is one.

18:31SPEAKER_00:Um, discovery and how you how you lead people through the discovery process is a skill. I don't care what you say, it's a skill. Some people are really good at it, some people are lousy at it, and the people that are good at it make more money, their closing percentages are higher, so you have to look at it as a skill. Uh anything else? And I was going to add a third one to that, and that is the ability for you, the skill of looking into a camera, and I'm I'm just talking about video, I'm talking about a presentation.

19:01SPEAKER_00:Maybe it's a live presentation on Zoom virtual, or maybe it's physically, you're right there, looking into a room and being able to extol the virtues of your offer and and talk about it in a way that is compelling and that that connects with people. And versus you taking a page out of the marketing handbook and just, you know, doing a bunch of slides, reading vacuous words that don't mean anything to anybody. You've got to have that ability to meet what's in the room, meet them where they are, and be able to extol again, extol the virtues and talk about your product or your offer in a way that causes them to say, you know what, we need this.

19:44SPEAKER_00:And that's a skill. And I'm telling you, I've got clients who are really good at it, and I've got clients who are pretty good in the marketplace, but they still struggle with that.

19:53SPEAKER_01:That is an awesome, awesome comment. And agree totally it's a skill, and it's a skill that never ever uh stops needing tending to, if you will. That that you have to continue to work at that skill forever because of the changes that you said earlier, that the market's changing all the time. Yeah. That is that's a really good one, Milike.

20:17unknown:Yeah.

20:17SPEAKER_00:What which one uh what is it another skill that you think of as we talk about this that might need some attention?

20:24SPEAKER_01:I would say the last one I would say is the skill to uh handle an economics conversation. The skill to handle an economics conversation is a skill that is atrophied or has some uh uh has some room to grow in most of the salespeople I interact with. I agree. Um people are scared of the conversation, they don't know how to uh work through a collaborative discussion. Yeah. Uh they get emotional about it, they feel like pressure, uh, they feel like when when a someone resists a price that they have to give in.

20:58SPEAKER_01:And uh I think that's a skill. I was just with a a new client, brand new client, an awesome, awesome company, great group. CRO, she's an awesome person, an awesome seller. And she's talking about this in big negotiations. It's like a like a multi-seven figure, it's not eight, but it's a gigantic deal. And she was so great. She's like, they're asking me, and she's like, you know what? She's like, I don't want to negotiate against myself. And they've asked me twice, and I said no, and I I want to say no again.

21:27SPEAKER_01:And I'm like, good on you, man. That's awesome. That's a really good high-level skill. Most sellers don't have the guts to do that in a seven-figure deal. No, you know, they don't.

21:39SPEAKER_00:So or or they don't have the tools to do it. They might want to do it really badly, but she, it sounds like has not only the desire to to hold the line, but also the tools by which she will hold the line. Uh, the language and the the stories, and the you know, because you you you have to say something it's point you have to say something when they say hey we want an extra five percent there's got to be you got you got to react in some way and that's where the that's where the challenge sometimes is if we react wrongly then we look needy and desperate yeah she has very high level mathematical reasoning for not going south yeah makes lots of logical sense I think that whole economics conversation uh is I I don't even know if that skill has atrophied I don't know that we ever had it I I really don't I I was I was interested in purchasing a um like a mastermind program from a guy and uh and we got on the phone he was really he was really nice really good guy I mean you can just tell this organization got great values but his but he never really got to the economics of of why I wanted why I wanted to do it and so then he he he posed a price which I kind of knew about what it was and I'm like okay uh and I said you know that that's a little bit more than I thought and so how does that work and we talked about he goes and he goes but if you don't want to do that I've also got another version which was like a third the price a third the price for the first price was 20 grand for six months the other was seven grand for six months but you don't get one-to-one access to this stud this leader and when he said that I thought okay so is there another price there zero yeah let's keep going let's keep going and and he thought it was a price resistance but it really wasn't it was a justification resistance it was yes I'm getting ready to invest this 20 grand let's just say how how will I determine whether it has a payoff to it or not and I'm I'm not asking and I don't think any you're even saying look you have to get it to the point where if you pay 20 grand you make 200 grand it can't it can't be that easy because there's too many loose ends to it but you can have a general direction that if you invest this here are the five things that are going to happen and each one of these five things have an economic value to them generally here's what you're gonna find I would have probably done it but he never he didn't have that skill and and now he's following up all the time like okay what are we gonna do what are you about and uh I'm I'm just gonna have to I haven't said it yet because I was gone but and I want to help him you know you want to help good people so I kind of feel like I want to say look you you just you didn't you didn't connect the dots between the money and the value you just didn't yep yeah now it's too late yeah yeah and he could have you gave him you gave it to him like here's here's what I need dude like you know just you know bake the cake here are the ingredients just do it I'm an open book when it comes to if if I want something and I I wanted to buy this to which you would say well why didn't you buy it well it just didn't feel it didn't feel right because wait I never got to economics.

24:54SPEAKER_01:Okay so as we close up today there's all these skills prospecting business development discovery uh messaging looking into the camera and being able to tell a story and extol the virtues of your offer those are skills and then the last one we just talked about was um economics I think that's a bit we should probably do another episode just on that actually yeah right right be like so yeah if your skills are atrophied put a plan together pick one of these skills and say okay I'm gonna learn the modern version and then you plan and then you practice and you apply low risk and then you that muscle will build and you will be a better seller for that.

25:30SPEAKER_00:And let us know let us know how you do on this and if there's a skill that you feel like is atrophied and you want us to talk about it shoot us a note on uh over uh LinkedIn in our LinkedIn group that's the best place to get with us. I love it. All right see you next time. Bye bye