Why face to face sales was always a hoax – Jeff Bajorek

Jeff talks us through a real-life sales scenario where his clients and prospects tell him to not come around and visit them face to face anymore.

We also discuss, why we might’ve been buying our prospects favour with gifts, golf and dinners and we question whether that’s going to be sustainable as we come out of a COVID selling environment.

So, how can we build relationships remotely and how important are relationships after all in the scheme of selling in 2021?

Jeff has some great thoughts and challenges us around overestimating the importance of face-to-face selling.

We covered a lot of valuable sales topics in our chat so I decided to break this into two episodes.

In the ‘part 2’ we cover off the requirement to be persistent in sales today without being a pest. How do you become ‘professionally persistent’. Including, why can’t you reach out to your prospects every single day?

Jeff’s second episode will be released in the next week, so keep an eye out for that if you’d like to catch more of Jeff Bajorek.


Jeff Bajorek
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffbajorek/ 

Sales Community
www.jeffbajorek.live


Mark McInnes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mcinnes/

POW Course
www.markmc.co/pow  

Tactical Pipeline Growth
www.markmc.co/tpg 

Catch all versions of me here.

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Transcript

S2E42Mark: 0:00

Today I'm joined by Jeff Bajorek. So this has got to be great because Jeff is super well known, very passionate and very successful sales consultant.Is the host of his own podcast. The why and the buy. And he has a couple of books that I haven't read yet. So full disclosure, there are called rethink the way that you sell effectively. That looks like they part one and part two. He's also a contributing author for the sales hacker community, which is a, a really cool community that we should all be part of. And most of you probably are. I importantly, Jeff has a, his own sales hack or his own sales community, Peggy partner that you can join called rethink the way you sell. And like I said, you can and should join that. So that's free. So CAF been around for a while. He certainly knows his stuff and this is not his first rodeo or rodeo as they like to say in the States. So, Jeff, thanks for coming on the bus podcast. Good man.

S2E42Jeff: 0:51

Thanks for having me. This is, I mean, you managed to pronounce my name, right? Which more people than not don't even though I think it's pretty simple. I mean, I guess it's mine, but I think, you know it's pretty simple and you have you know, fortunately I know a guy and I might be able to get you a couple of copies of those books if you're interested in reading them. So thank you for the warm introduction and more importantly, thanks for the opportunity to. Kind of just chat with you. Like, I love doing this stuff and people ask me why I create so much content. And it's like, I, I love thinking. And I love talking through my thoughts and I love writing about my thoughts. I think every sales person gets better when they write and have to solidify their words. And so I'm just, I'm kind of stuck out, I guess I'm a content creator now. So happy to be here.

S2E42Mark: 1:35

I don't. I I've seen you recently on know writing content, a couple of videos, and I just love your style, the way that you challenge sales people to think, you know, you sort of got a bit of a tough love style. And, and I think we know in today's age, there's a lot of us going, you know, that's good, Johnny, here's a, here's a bronze medal for participation and, and silence. We don't get a bronze medal. Right. But, but I do want to, I do have to face up, so I did play your cause, you know, on LinkedIn, you've got your name there, you know, pronounce it, you pronounce your name. So I applied that, applied that sacrificed for six times to make sure I've got a right. And then I spelled it in my notes, the way that I thought it was going to be. Yeah, so I've kind of traded me.

S2E42Jeff: 2:15

Oh, Hey, listen. It's not cheating. I put it out. I put the cheat codes out there for you to find,

S2E42Mark: 2:21

Yeah.

S2E42Jeff: 2:22

it cheating or is it just research? Is it just homework?

S2E42Mark: 2:26

Well, it just probably, I mean, we, weren't going to talk about this, but we say this with sales people all the time. Right. So they ring me up and they say, ah, Mr. McKenna's, you know, and I screw up if last night and mean, you think, well, this person clearly doesn't know any right way, you know, whereas if they listened to that, then they get the pronounced what's the best sound for anybody. Their favorite sentence, your name.

S2E42Jeff: 2:47

their own name. Yep, absolutely. Dale Carnegie said that.

S2E42Mark: 2:51

Correct. It was to die off. Yeah. So wait, where are you joining us from tonight? If whereabouts you look at it just to give the people some context.

S2E42Jeff: 2:59

Yeah. I live in Southeastern Michigan. Most people have heard of Detroit, Michigan, and quite frankly, most people have heard of it for all the wrong reasons. But I live just outside Detroit and so yeah, we're here in the United States.

S2E42Mark: 3:10

Okay. Lovely, good stuff. So when I think of Detroit, I think of Eddie Murphy. So.

S2E42Jeff: 3:16

Oh, I like it. Beverly Hills cop, right from the, with the Mumford t-shirt Mumford high school, no longer exists has been torn down. And there are a lot of things that have happened to Detroit, but I'm proud to call myself a Detroit because there's so many good things happen in Detroit. And we don't need to spend a lot of time on this, but I remember being in outside sales, being one of the only representatives of the company. In the state of Michigan, let alone in Detroit. And when people would fly in from marketing or whatever, I'd say, okay, we're, we're, we're taking that the, the, the afternoon, we're going to take a little extra time to get you to the airport. We're going to drive downtown. Maybe we'll stop, get something to eat. Let me show you how cool this place is. Some of the places you're not going to see on TV. And so, yeah, very proud to be from this part of the country. Very proud to be from this part of my state. And yeah, there's say nice things about people in Detroit. Let's just, we'll leave it at that.

S2E42Mark: 4:02

cool. So yeah, I have traveled a fair bit in these, in the States, but I've not made it to Detroit. So I'll put that on the list

S2E42Jeff: 4:08

I'll show you a good time.

S2E42Mark: 4:10

Hey, thanks, man. So I wanted to cover a couple of things today and I noticed something that you posted. I think it was just yesterday. And of course depends when you're listening, listening to the podcast, but something that could be in 12 months time that you caught the court, my line about selling remotely. And you were saying stock warning about selling remoting selling remotely, and that selling has never really been about face-to-face meetings. Now that seems a little bit counterintuitive to me. Do you want to add, to share what your thoughts are there?

S2E42Jeff: 4:37

Yeah, I was trying to get your attention.

S2E42Mark: 4:39

Yeah.

S2E42Jeff: 4:41

the you know, what's interesting is I have always struggled with the idea, the concept of, well, selling's all about relationships and it's like, okay, I get that in relationships are definitely. Valuable and, and I'll, and I'll bury the lead right now. Face-to-face time is very, very valuable. Don't get me wrong. But if it's all about relationships, then how does someone earn relationships? How does someone starting out in sales, someone going prospect? How does someone go find new customers? People they've never met before and start doing business with them. So, okay. I get that. It's about relationships for the long-term, but how do you start there? And so that's been something I've been really working on and thinking about for several years now. And I've written about that in my books. Like, you know, look, your prospects are not looking for new friends. So you don't need a relationship ahead of time. You need to provide value to the relationship. And if you're selling, probably providing business value, not friendship value. Well, so many of those people who say that it's all about relationships they're the tired reps who have been doing this for 20 or 30 years. They have their friends and they've used their corporate expense accounts for reasons to go hang out with their friends. And they call that selling. And so all of a sudden you've got these people, particularly in professional service firms or in you know, in certain industries in the industry I came out of in medical device sales, it was very much door to door, face to face person, person. And but when COVID happened, all that changed all of a sudden we couldn't meet face to face because there were restrictions. And then. It was like, well, okay. But how do you reconcile that with the fact that we still have a job to do? And so is it really about face to face? What can you say face to face it? You can't say over the phone, what is the message that you can deliver only? Face-to-face what is the problem you can solve only face to face, even though you're not really typically there when that problem is being solved. So we have to get back to what we're trying to do. And that was the point I was trying to make. Look, if you know how to sell, you don't need to be face-to-face. So stop saying that I have to be face-to-face in order to sell no, that's a lie. And the sooner you recognize that that's a lie, it's not true. The better off you're going to be. So I, maybe I provocatively worded it a little bit and said, face-to-face, doesn't matter, of course it's valuable, but when it's not available, don't tell me you still don't have a job to do.

S2E42Mark: 7:05

yeah. Yeah. Look. So I think you're right. And this I'm one of those old sales guys, you know it looks like I'm a bit older than you, but you know, I used to love taking clients out to play golf. I love golf, nothing, nothing better than using the boss's credit card to go to a really nice golf course and smash balls in for four hours and write up a six figure deal on the But, but I think. Look, I agree with you. Like, I think relationships are becoming less important simply because, and we've all heard this before is, you know, the buyer committee. I mean, you can't take seven people out for golf. I mean, the, the co the organization is not going to let you take that seven of them.

S2E42Jeff: 7:42

right. The golf course. Isn't going to think very highly that either there are only four to a group, right?

S2E42Mark: 7:48

Yeah. Interesting. So are you saying relationships. I never met him.

S2E42Jeff: 7:56

No I'm saying that relationships matter. I want people to understand the basis of those relationships, right? I learned very early on from a mentor of mine and he shall remain nameless until he comes on my podcast. And every time he hears that he chuckles a little bit. But my mentor taught me very early. He said, Jeff, you're gonna lose business the same way you win it. So be very cognizant of how you win that business. Right. The more loyalty you build, the more work you put in the longer it takes. Just realize someone's got to do all of that a little bit better than you in order to take it away. So when we think about that, I mean, is it really about the nice dinner that you took someone to? Is it really about the bottle of wine you bought them as a gift around the holidays? Is it really about the golf course? You took them to play because as soon as someone else, if it was really about the golf, it was really about the meal. If it was really about the wine. Then as soon as your competitor, bottom, a nicer meal with a nicer bottle of wine at a nicer golf course, you're out. yeah. If that's not going to happen. Exactly. You're proving my point for me, does the dinner, does the wine, does the golf, whatever you want to insert the fill in the blank, does that create an opportunity for a great discussion? Oh yes, it does. But it's always been about the value of the discussion and the value of the PR the solutions that you bring and the relationship is born onto that. But there's still work to be done in too many people. I've heard it too many times. Oh yeah. I was out drinking all night. And my wife was upset with me because I came home at three o'clock in the morning, just, you know, stinking, you know, but I was with clients, so it's all good. And it's like, hold on, come on. What are we trying to do here? And, you know, coming out of the medical device industry, and I don't know it's different in different areas, but here in the United States, it was illegal. Not just like, you really shouldn't do that. It was illegal. For me to be spending money on my customers on my prospects. If there wasn't a specific business purpose, a specific undocumented business purpose, which meant that I had to have people sign in for meetings, Eddie people have signed. I had to have people sign in for meals and things like that. Like it was taken very, very seriously so that those options were largely off the table. You know what, Mark? I still sold a lot of stuff.

S2E42Mark: 10:09

So what about the shared experience? So if we just stay on the golf course, right? So if you and I, if you, if you're on your prospect and we play around the golf and you know, you hit a great, great drive, and then, you know, you can remember that time. You, you got that awesome Eagle or on that long path, when we're right out the back of XYZ, you know, th those things stay with you with the relationship

S2E42Jeff: 10:29

They sure do. And I have a golf trip that I put together every year and there are good friends of mine who are clients of mine that come on that trip. And they were good friends before they were clients. They are, there are some people on that trip who are good friends now because they were clients. And that's fine. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying let's be real about what it's for and if your relationship is based on you spending money on them. Probably not that much of a relationship, right. If you're really just using this as a boondoggle, right. An excuse to spend someone else's money to have fun. That's not what I got into selling for. It sure is nice when the stars line up. Okay. But we have a job here and that job is The job is to create value and hopefully get paid for that. Not try to create the illusion that we're creating value for our own companies. So they'll continue to give us the corporate credit card. It's shared experiences. Oh my gosh. Yes. You know, and you know, now that I run my own business, it's pretty expensive to invite someone out to golf. So if they come out to golf on my dollar, I'm gonna make sure that I have a conversation coming on the back end of that. And then it's not just, Oh, Hey, great. Yeah, it was really good to talk to you. Let's do this again sometime. Okay. And then, you know, two months later, they call you back and say, Hey, can I you mind you know, paying for my golf again, like, what's this what's this about, right. That was my point of the piece. You know what I mean? You have a job and that job is not to. Entertain be and call them prospects. That job is to figure out the problems you can solve or the help that you can provide to those people. And if you have the assets available, to be able to have those kinds of conversations on a beautiful golf course, by all means go and do it. But when it's wintertime where I live golf, not available, I still have things to sell when COVID comes and we're not supposed to be can, you know, congregating or gathering or doing those kinds of things. Okay, well, I still have a job. Let's, let's be real about that.

S2E42Mark: 12:19

So what are some of the ways that we can maintain our face-to-face relationships in a bird commerce? When we can't go face to face. So.

S2E42Jeff: 12:28

a great question. Well, I think, you know, You need to know, anyway, some, a lot of people don't, you need to know what you bring to the table. You need to know why your customers buying from you and you need to, you know hopefully tie those two things together. What are those things that differentiate you? Right? I wrote in the five forgotten fundamentals of prospecting. If you cannot differentiate, you cannot sell right in the absence of any real differentiation. All that's left is price and you enter a price war. It is a race to the bottom and I don't like entering races to the bottom. So you have to know what you bring to the table that is different from your competitors. And you have to tie your differentiators to your prospect or your customer's motives to buy. And that means that you need to be reminding them that they're making progress with that problem that you're solving for them. They need to be reminded that you're still there with additional solutions. Should they need to bring on additional project projects or, or, or things like that. And so you should still be keeping in touch with people, you know, even when you went face to face, there was a reason for your visit, right? thing, those, those reasons don't change, you know, like that's the thing that you, you see legions of salespeople falling into this trap of, okay, you gotta spend money to make money. And I gotta be face-to-face with my client once a month. What does that create? It creates a bond. It creates a severe lack of meaningful conversations. And it creates a bunch of expenses that probably don't need to be created, right? If you know, why your customers really buying from you and you really, you can really have incisive conversations about those problems, those goals, those solutions, and whenever possible, have those face to face. And if it works out every once in a while, have them on a golf course and maybe have a nice glass of wine when you're done by all means. But yeah, the conversation is what is important and you can have those conversations over the phone. I've sold deals over text messages before to repeat customers. Cause that's just the best way to con to contact them. You know, it's funny. I go into this face-to-face thing. I had a physician who was, I used to sell the orthopedic surgeons and his first day in practice was my first day in orthopedic sales. And we were introduced that day. And so as his practice grew, I knew what days to go and see him. When do I stop by when do I not go by? Cause that's a busy day. When is he at the surgery center? When is he at the hospital? And then one day I met him at the surgery center cause I needed to talk to him about something and I just, I did business at that place. So I walked into his operating room. I was welcome there. And he was just getting ready. No, just getting done with a case. He says great, Jeff. Great to see you. Come walk with me. And he walks me out the door and he shows me the room where they're prepping for his next case. He's like, I have to go out into the waiting room here, tell the family, I just got done operating on their daughter. I have to go into the prep room over here, get ready for my case, two cases from now. And then I got to scrub back in and get into this other room. He said, I'm busy. I mean, you mind walking and talking with me? And I said, sure, doc, let's go. We'll walk. And then at the end he says, Jeff, here's the deal. I'm busy. I love seeing you. And I don't want to tell you not to come and see me, but can you please not come and see me? Because now I feel like I have to ignore you. And I don't like that. So look, send me a text. Let's grab a beer. Let's go play golf. Let's do that stuff. But give me a little heads up, please. Don't just pop in and see me. And I was like, wait a second. Of course, doc, appreciate that. And you know, I did, as I was asked, but I was like, wait a second. I just got asked to not come and see somebody, but I feel like I won at the same time. Cause he said he felt bad that he'd have to ignore me. Like I was just confused and I was like, you know what? It's not about the face-to-face thing.

S2E42Mark: 16:05

Yeah, that's a great story. That's an awesome story, man. So, so, you know, and I think this is going to be the new, new. And I know that that's been said for, you know, I think there'll be a lot of businesses that will say, look, there's, there's very little for us to gain in a face-to-face conversation. In fact if you've got some really good sales people, it might be working if on that, if I'm the the customer, if they've got very good sales people in market working against me to have face-to-face meetings, cause they might be too persuasive, too influential. Whereas if we can put some distance between us and the prospect of us in the sales people, it'll give us a a bit of a buffer. So I think we're going to see more of that. Particularly in rock industries.

S2E42Jeff: 16:41

I agree. And I think you know, will the real salesperson please stand up? You know, we'll, you know, the person who understands how to sell the person who realizes now that since the standards is the standard is a little different when you recognize it. Oh no, we only do things face to face. And then for the last year, you haven't been able to meet with your clients. So you figured out that zoom works, that the phone still works. That email is pretty valuable. You know, now all of a sudden those don't become. Those things that we don't do, those become real tools to scale. So think about how many more meetings you can have over zoom. That you, you know, in the replacement time for traveling to and from sales calls. Okay. We can scale in a bit there that's valuable. And now we recognize the value of a face-to-face call. So if we can reserve some of that, I don't know, pomp and circumstance. Right. And that might be a little much, but if we can reserve some of the special nature of a real face-to-face interaction for those times, when it's really valuable, like now they're more impactful. You know, now you realize that even though the state of the industry is over zoom, I didn't need to fly across the country to meet with you, but you are that important. This deal is too important. This, this, the, the beginnings of this relationship, it could be so beautiful that it was worth the expense of the time to come over here and do this. Like now all of a sudden we have a better idea of what. Of the meaning of these sales calls and the intention behind them. I think COVID is going to be wonderful for sellers longterm, even though it's, I mean, admittedly and I don't, I mean this with all sensitivity, it's admittedly been a mess, you know, for a lot of people, a lot of it there's been certainly a ton of upheaval. But I think long-term what the lessons that we're going to learn from COVID are going to benefit salespeople long into the future.

S2E42Mark: 18:25

Jeff. That's great stuff. Before we close this out. How can people get in contact with you? You know, what's a great way for them to get more of your sales, brilliant swayed. And I go, and, and how do they find you? What sort of stuff?

S2E42Jeff: 18:36

You mentioned@thetopoftheshowrethinkthewayyousell.com. It's a community I've put together. It's on a really cool platform. I think you'll like it. You can just go right there. You can apply to join. I've got five questions basically that I ask at the beginning to get in. That just helps me understand what you're looking for and whether or not I can deliver. For on this free platform for you. But if they want more of me, I do live sales training every Wednesday afternoon. It's Eastern standard time or daylight time, depending on what time of the year it is. But every Wednesday afternoon I do live sales training. It's free you just register and then come in. And then I make the the recording available for a couple of days. And then it. Kind of goes into the, the, the vault of a premium program that I sell, but that is there. And if that's not something that you can make, cause you're halfway across the world I've got a podcast called deeper thought that you can find on your podcast player right now. Couple episodes are there for free. There's a $99 subscription fee for the entire podcast. There are two to three episodes each week and it's really, really cool. Show. So lots of ways to get in touch with me for free. And there's also some there that have a price tag on it, and I think people pay attention to what they pay for. So the price tag is like, I'm not making a living on a hundred dollar podcast subscriptions, but I do find that people get more out of it because they're paying to pay attention.

S2E42Mark: 19:46

Yep. I could definitely agree with that. So they had got listeners, it's a bunch of ice. You can get more of GIF and he's very much shy with wall kicking out so different. Joel really appreciate you coming on then boss, best of sales skills podcast. Thanks for your time.

S2E42Jeff: 20:02

Oh, Mark. This was fun. Thank you.