Negotiation secrets (from an enterprise buyer): Mark Schenkius.

 A few years ago, Mark made the switch from a career as a procurement professional with Mars Foods to that as a sales consultant, trainer and author of a great book called "The Other Side Of Sales".

Now, he coaches sales reps about the strategies professional procurement use in their buying process so we sellers can be better prepared and better armed when we are finally dropped into procurement. 

Often, we hear experts talking about ‘buyers want this, or they expect this', but do they really know?

In this show, we get to hear it from someone who really does know. Mark is an expert in buyer behaviour. 

In this episode, we cover things like what you should be asking but are not… as well as what negotiation tactics procurement professionals use to get you to lower price or change your offer.

What I learnt is that many times, just when you think the deal is done, the negotiation is just starting. 

Mark Schenkius

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markschenkius/ 

 The Other Side of Sales
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Sales-Mark-Schenkius/dp/949274404X
 

Mark’s Website

www.roi-10.com

Mark McInnes

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

Subscribe to Mark’s VIP newsletter

www.markmc.co/pow 

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Transcript

mark_mcinnes: 0:00

Welcome to the BOSS podcast today. We're joined by mark . Mark is from, is from the dark side. He's from the other side. He's from the Boeing side, mark. Welcome to the boss podcast.

mark-schenkius: 0:11

Good to be here.

mark_mcinnes: 0:14

Yeah, I'm very, very pleased to have you on. This is something we haven't done before and I'll feel a bit silly cause it feels like something we should've done a long time ago. We spend all this time talking about. Talking to buyers. And here you are, you're an expert on negotiation. I'm on an expert on managing the process. And I think you said you had 17 years of procure as a procurement officer with Mars

mark-schenkius: 0:36

Yeah, correct? Yes.

mark_mcinnes: 0:37

So yeah. So you know a thing about buyers. I think we're too about bars. I would imagine. What else have you got? So you're an author of a book called the other side of sales. And you teach at Fontes universal. I believe as I know also you have a consultancy business that helps sell us think like bias,

mark-schenkius: 0:59

Yeah, correct? No, absolutely. A mark. So as she said, 17 years at Mara, so many years in procurement, a bit more cheated all in procurement. So a strategic tactical, you name it all sides of of buying. And I realized how difficult sellers sometimes think buyers are in dealing with them. So they struggle to really deal with buyers. And actually I thought, ah, that's, that's, that's an interesting perspective. Why don't I help you sellers get more successful at dealing with buyers because that's quite a complex process going on behind the scenes that most sellers don't. I don't know. I'm not aware of, so absolutely.

mark_mcinnes: 1:35

Yes. Both sides of the transaction are very focused on what they want. And, and very rarely do we get the opportunity to have I. You know, a proper look at what's going on, on both sides of the conversation. So I'm really interested to, and obviously you, you used it now go and talk to salespeople, right? So you're an expert in this crop and the crossroads of where buyers and sellers crossover. So, you know, we're going to get a sneak peek into that. Doc's Audubon and specifically, you've got a couple of interesting negotiation tactics issues. So I think that's

mark-schenkius: 2:06

Yeah, no, absolutely. So one, I just jumped into that, so I know buyers can be difficult, you know, not all of them the easy buyers, it's that simple because you know how to deal with them. But I think. It's when you're dealing with difficult buyers and you're not sure why they're being difficult. And one of the the things I always talk about when I explain negotiations is I talk about chairs and a table, and we're like, imagine that you have a traditional negotiation set up. You know, we were sitting on the chair. The buyer or the other party is sitting on the chair and you're sitting at the table negotiating and I use two colors for the chair. So I had to sit on a red chair or a blue chair. And the blue chair is a it's a very cool. negotiation. And it was like a, one-off very much price focused. You're not really interested in the relationship. You just want the best price and the best deal, you know, No buying something on eBay or some kind of platform, you know, you just want the paid lowest price and the seller wants to get as much money as possible for it. So that's blue and that's a blue type of negotiation. There's also red and red red chairs, where basically, you know, as a seller or as a buyer, you are very interested in the relationship. It's not just about price. It's about long-term partnering. It's about multiple variables. You know, it's very warm, it's open or blue is very secretive. Yeah. Negotiation are actually much more open. So I do both the buyer and the seller considering the blue or a red chair, and depending on the situation and the color of the table is determined by the color of the chairs. I'm going to ask you a couple of difficult questions. So imagine note, both buyer and seller are on the blue chair. What do you think the color of the table is the negotiation table? Yeah. Fantastic. Well done. Absolutely. Because both are blue, both are just interested in a short-term relationship. So, you know, it's, it's, it's a very blue table. This one is slightly easier as well, but it gets more complicated, their permission. So what if, if, if both buyer and seller are on a red chair, what do you think the color results.

mark_mcinnes: 4:05

Okay, bye bye. The

mark-schenkius: 4:06

Yeah.

mark_mcinnes: 4:07

question, right? Yep.

mark-schenkius: 4:08

So that's sort of, when both parties are in the red chair, they're both interested in the long-term partnership, the relationship, and that's where you see, you know, they're negotiating it's, it's much more warm or open, transparent, you know, just getting most out of it, not a difficult question. And this is also where buyers become difficult for sellers typically is, is when one party is on the blue chair and the other party is on the red chair. What do you think the color of the table is? It's actually blue. And here's the interesting part because if, so, if one is blue, it's just looking at the lowest price and the other one is red and they are interested in, you know, getting building a relationship, building a partnership. The blue chair will be asking and the red chair. Yeah, that's how it works. And, and this is, this is a tricky area because, you know people who were sitting on a record need to recognize the negotiating and the blue table, and they're not negotiating at a red table, if they hoped they would be would do. Now, if it's risk of generalization here, I know. And many buyers would like me for saying this, but actually buyers, typically blue chair negotiate. Yeah. They're very often, especially the difficult buyers. They are very much focused on the price, getting the lowest price. They don't care too much about relationships or long-term partnerships or long-term deals. So just want to have the best price, what they buy sellers. Oh, pretty much. 99% of the time sellers are very much red chair negotiators. They do want long-term contracts. It makes sense because it's also linked to their bonus. You know, if you have a customer for 10 years, it better than having a customer for one year. So they're very much right. In their behavior. And this is where, you know, it gets into a bit of a tricky situation because when you, as a seller are red, your buyer is blue. You're negotiating at the blue blue table, although you would like it to be red. And that is a problem. And that's where you struggle, you know, getting getting this partnership with buyers because they're just not interested in it. They are interested in the lowest price and not particularly in a partnership. So that that's a bit of a trickier. And in open buyer's statement, they run RFPs request for proposals when they run these kind of exercises. It's it's, it's when they create the perception of blue. Yeah. It's better. They pretend there's so much competition and it just focusing on price. And for you as a seller, this is extremely hard to deal with because you don't know who the competitors are. You are very rich. You want to build a relationship where buyers are just displaying this, this blue kind of behavior by pretending. Doesn't mean, they're actually as competition by pretending at least that there is a lot of competition on the market. And that's how they, they, they, they play this game. I think th th the key question there is, what can you do about it? Because now, you know why it's difficult to deal with bars, but the key question is what can you do about it? And there's actually two options. Should I ask you what, what options there are? Because it's a difficult question.

mark_mcinnes: 7:04

Yeah. W

mark-schenkius: 7:05

Yes. So actually, when you are on the richer as a seller and your buyer is on the blue chair, the table is blue. So either option one is you become blue. The table is blue enemies. So you become blue, which is not something that sellers are typically good at, but it's something they. can actually control because it's their decision. Okay. So if, if they become blue, then they are also negotiating in the blue chair, but that becomes a really hard fight just based on price. And this is this is something that most centers don't like, but actually sometimes we need to do actually to to J things around because they are taken advantage of if they are staying on the red chair and then negotiating at the blue table at the buyers are we are winning that negotiation. So you can either become. The other option is that's you need to turn to buy a RET. So how can you make them read? Because when the buyer becomes writ, you are again negotiating at the red table, which is something that you prefer, but this is harder to do because, you know, making it not a party rat is it's not something you can influence. It means you need to influence your party to show them it's better to be red and blue, which is not easy, but not impossible.

mark_mcinnes: 8:10

Yeah, I think this is where most salespeople would like to go. Wouldn't it like if there's feisty this situation, their preference would be to try and turn everybody red in this instance to use this

mark-schenkius: 8:20

So, so Yeah, you're spot on because, well, naturally I've trained a lot of salespeople. They struggle being blue, even though, you know, it should be part of your toolkit learning how to negotiate really at on the blue chair. The struggle with that, because it feels like they're destroying the relationship. They're destroying the partnership. They're destroying all kinds of long-term agreements. So, so they're naturally not inclined to go into that direction. So, so yeah, you're right. Their preference is to make the other party. Right. But how to make that happen. That's, that's a very tough question typically for for salespeople. How do you make the other party rep actually you can't just ask them like, Hey, could we be red? That's typically not how it works. So you need to motivate them. Yeah. You need to motivate buyers to become red and. There's, this is mobile. It's called college matrix. It's I won't go into too much detail here because it's, it's, it's, it's quite a complex matrix, but it's a matrix that buyers use in terms of how they approach to market. And actually in that matrix there's one key parameter that influences the decision for a buyer to come either blue or red. And that is based on the number of suppliers that they have access to. So imagine you're a buyer and you have a hundred suppliers to choose. Do you care about supplier 93, supplier 54? Not at all. That's how it works, because you know, if, if one supplier doesn't label, you just move to the next, it's that simple. That's what you do. When you have one supplier you can source from that. Just the only supplier you can source from. Now, it's a different story. Now you have to be red because if you're blue and you know, you're scaring of this one supplier. You're stuck. You don't have any options anymore, so you have to be read. So the key question is for a seller, how do you become unique? How do you make yourself unique? Food is one buy it because if you're not unique, trust me, buyer doesn't care about you. And I deal run RFPs and deal. Leverage the market's trying to get the best prices on the market. And you just either play ball or you lose. That's how simple it is. But the key question is how do you become truly unique for a buyer and

mark_mcinnes: 10:24

well, isn't that part of the, you know, the consultant, consultative sales process, you know, bringing something to the table by perhaps Stein already understand, might be bringing something that's oh, they can improve some business processes or somewhere else inside their supply giant or, or bringing some knowledge or some systems that they might not already be aware of. W D is that the sort of thing that you're talking about

mark-schenkius: 10:44

Yeah, it is, but it's, it's even more deeper than that because buyers are, you know, they're scared of putting all their eggs into one basket. And for them, it's a risk you have having one supplier is a risk, so they will never tell you you're unique. And even if you have something you need to sell, they will always look for opportunities, you know, who else could be doing that, you know? And and I know they're not comparing apples with apples. You're comparing apples with pears and lemons and what have you. So, so, but, but, but in, in, in, in essence, they, they will, when they run an RFP, they pretend. Everyone has an apple and they can compare easily. And definitely right. You know, as part of the sales process, it's, it's really around how to make yourself truly unique, truly, truly unique, but that's not always best done through a buyer because a buyer will always say you're not unique because when a buyer confirms you're unique, they are in trouble and they will. Executive power shifts to you as a supplier. So duke will never, ever, ever tell you. We'll tell you it's the rest of the organization behind the buyer because they don't have this commercial sensitivity in terms of the organization. They are the rest of the organization behind the buyer is much more rent in their approach. Now, if you talk to finance, to marketing, to sales to it, All departments. They want to build a relationship with you as a, as a supplier. You know, it wants to have connection like EDI connection or connectivity. Finance wants to have a smooth process in terms of invoicing. Marketing wants to have great ideas from you as a supplier that they could use to the market. So everybody is in an organization is red except. They are blue. So the key is how do you make yourself unique, not just going through the buyer, but using, also address of the organization and in terms of access points and to make yourself, you know indispensable for the organization, because then the buyer has to work with you when they have to work with you. Do you have to be read? They can't be afford to be blue.

mark_mcinnes: 12:39

Yep. Did that make sense? A premium that you know, of having done this for such a long time, that the relationship is worth like a price premium. So, you know, if you've got an excellent relationship, you are considered to be somewhat unique, you know, is there a, is that worth 8%, 15%, you know, 30% on your pricing

mark-schenkius: 12:58

Yeah.

mark_mcinnes: 12:59

is this something is, know, what's your expectation or your

mark-schenkius: 13:03

Yeah. So my parents, this is if something has never been, you know, if some business has never gone through an RFP process, now it's been just business. As usual, things are ongoing, then typically prices are about 50% higher than what the market. Yeah. So once the buyers want RFP, yet they save about 15%, one, 5% of, of, of, of failure, basically. So so by being unique, they don't have an option to go to the markets. So you could probably, you know get about 15% higher price than than your competitors.

mark_mcinnes: 13:38

Yep. That was what I wrote down. I know this is an audio podcast, but you know, it was that's it. I worked with an organization not too long ago. And we said that the value of the relationship was about 15% premium pricing. So that's good. That's good to hear. Okay. So, so how do we make ourselves unique? How do we do that, mark?

mark-schenkius: 13:55

it's, it's a good question. And it's very specific for the industry you work in. So one of the things that I really liked what actually, I didn't like it when it was a buyer, but with hindsight now is on the other side of the table. I actually do like it is get yourself involved earlier when, when there's an RFP process taking place. You know, it's too late, you're too late because then you're already, you know they're going into the market and it's going to be a blue exercise, you know, and you're, you're going to lose out. So get yourself a full earlier, you know, get seats at the table at marketing. When they're doing, for example, some design of a new product or service, when they're designing something new, once you get on board, there, it's so much easier to help shape. Thanks. And then it becomes much more difficult for a buyer to actually, you know remove you and find alternative suppliers for you because you've made yourself unique and indispensable in that process. So and often what I see with salespeople is that they are fairly reactive, you know, to have a tender, oh, let's participate in the tender you need, I know you need to join in a year earlier, get connected to the rest of the organization, not just the buyer, you know, find entry points there. I think that that really helps.

mark_mcinnes: 15:04

Yep. Yeah. I agree with the reactive place too many times. People just go all up. The, even some of our clients who have got like two and three year contracts, supply contracts, you know, they go and speak to their prospects or they come or call. You know, a month before the contracts re due to fear in you and like, why weren't you talking to them three months ago, four months ago, six months ago. Like it's so much easier to restore that relationship when that contract is still a long way away, you can get some good information as soon as people stop going to. Buying mode, then everything becomes blue, you know, and it's much harder to try and rekindle the relationship three, four weeks out from, you know, a new contract signing rather than if you had done your homework four months, six months in advance, right? Sorry. It's it's, it's something that we see all the time. That's a real bugbear,

mark-schenkius: 15:56

And I think I think there's are three reasons. Typically why a buyer would leave, you know, a supplier would move to a new Spire. It could be quality. The service could be price, you know, and, and quality of service. Typically, you know, you've got that organized through your organization because otherwise the buyer would have full raise heck the buy earlier, Right. to so, so if you have really fulfilled the three-year contract, then you can assume that service and quality are working to dissatisfaction. But then, you know, if you really jump in that stage and it's just about price, you know, they'll go out to the market and look, what else is available there? You could indeed really at the start of the project, just look at, to know how to intensify our corporation. What could we do together? No, it terms of some kind of continuous improvement program. Just after you won the business for three-year contract, start on the continuous improvement program. What it does, it does two things. One, it builds connection. Like I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you because buyers have objectives to save costs regardless. So you're helping them be successful. That's basically what you're saying, but secondly, by going through this cost improvements program, co-teach a proven programs and you're reducing the total cost. I'm not saying you should, you know give away some of your margins. Really around how to reduce costs in the relationship. As a result, you will be more competitive when the tender comes that you will have already taken out costs in the total package and you will be more competitive during during these kind of RFP processes. So. Don't you, like I said, don't just wait two to three weeks before the contract expires start really two, three weeks after the contract starts to start working with your buyers on continuous improvement. I think that will really, really help. It builds much more powerful relationship than just no winning the business. Moving on to the next.

mark_mcinnes: 17:41

Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. What else? What else have you got? What other negotiation tactics should we be on the

mark-schenkius: 17:47

Oh, well, I have I've, I've wondered why when I provided training to to, to sales people have a booklet called negotiation tactics, which is filled with about 35 different tactics.

mark_mcinnes: 17:56

Give us your

mark-schenkius: 17:56

Well, when I, when I like well, I, I don't like to hit the historical, want that context, but what I like is it's a, it's a Russian front. I'm not sure you've heard of that one. So the origin is the origin sexy quite well. It's not funny. It's actually quite interesting. It was in the second world war Germans German soldiers. They were, they were given two options. They were said, either you go fight at the front in front. Or you go fight to front in Russia and soldiers are like, okay. I don't like either option. Of course they didn't, but no fighting in France. At least it was sunny and warm. They had food in Russia. It was cold. There was no food. So.

mark_mcinnes: 18:35

Okay.

mark-schenkius: 18:37

So, so they'll chose to fight in front. They were happy to go to France, even though he would have asked them, would you like to go and fight for us, you know, in France where pretty much certain death will happen to you? They would probably say, no, I wouldn't do the Russia front tactic is really where you're presented two options. One of which is so awful. That you were actually happy to proceed with the other one. and that's what buyers do, you know? And, and, and you can hear your difficult, why you can hear them say it. And we're like so either you reduce your prices by 5% or we're going to go out to the markets and send an RFP. What do you like that? That's a Russian front tactic and you'll, you'll hear that a lot. So and it's, it's, they present it as if there's only two scenarios. So the way how to counter it. Well for a third scenario. So there are more scenarios in these two, but that's how they present it. So that's the Russian font style that some buyers might actually would actually use.

mark_mcinnes: 19:31

Okay. So, and what you're saying is we should strong start to think of it strategically and come back with a third or a fourth option and say, well, hang on a second. This is what you're trying to achieve. Is there another way we can do that? What about if we did this? What about if we talked about payment terms, et

mark-schenkius: 19:45

Yeah, so it absolutely. And it's actually presenting a threat or asking questions. I think questions are very, very effective in these kinds of situations. And you could also say, all right, I hear what you're saying. You're looking for a 5% decrease or, you know, you need to go out to the market under what circumstances would you be able to continue our business at flat rates? Just ask the question and you might not get an answer. You like it. Let's talk, start to explore him because with this Russian front they're presenting, like there's only two options. Now you need to start exploring what other options are there and under what circumstances are things possible and you will find there's always things possible. It's never just black and white with the buyers. Yep. Yep.

mark_mcinnes: 20:26

Yeah. Well, I like that because I think most people would just go back to their boss and say, oh, they've asked us to do this or this, which one should we do instead of thinking a bit deeper and digging, digging Dan Metronic, farm and alternative solution. Good stuff. Do, do you have a, do you have another strategy for us other than the

mark-schenkius: 20:43

thinking which one is one that's that's supplied a lot. Yeah, it's probably the It's it's it's it's one bear. It's nibble nibble is nine 11 it's it's it's it's. It's close to the end of the negotiation where you know what you're close to getting to a deal. and, and at the end, et cetera. We can agree if you can just extend payment drops by 30 days, then we have a deal, right? It's just this, this this, this one thing that is asked at the end of the negotiation and I'm not sure. I'm not sure. But do you actually no Colombo, you know, this detective Sherry's, if you ever watched this Colombo. Yep.

mark_mcinnes: 21:14

Yes. Yes. Yes.

mark-schenkius: 21:16

Older viewers or listeners to that. So Columbo did this tactic quite well in, in, in television shows and cause what happened and this is exactly also the, how, why the nibble works towards the end is, you know, Columbia towards the end. He knew who did it. Yeah. Who knows who killed person a or whatever. So he knew who did it. And then he would walk up to this person and ask a couple of like silly questions now. Like not, not, not too difficult questions and. Then he would like turn around and say, oh, thank you. And then he would turn around and he would walk away. And what happened with the killer and the person who did it, they would feel a sense of relief. Like it's done now, right? Oh, I'm off the hook now. And then Columbia would turn around and they would say, oh, just one more question. It's just one more thing. Just one more question. And he would, he would race, like literally the killer question. I would ask something like, where were you on there and what happens actually? And why does his tactic work? Because people feel relieved. No. It's like when you're negotiating, your old tends to the killer was tensed and then he would walk, the detective would walk away and like, oh, I'm off the hook and you would let you go, you would let your, let your guard down. And that's what happens as well with the nibble, you know, at the end of the negotiation, you feel like you're ready to shake hands. Like we've done a deal. You let your guard down. And then the buyer comes in. Exactly when you've let your guard. And they will come in and ask him for it, but Just one more thing. and typically be like, yeah. Okay. Let's not waste the entire deal and just jeopardize the entire deal, you know, just doing the Okay. I will accept it.

mark_mcinnes: 22:54

Go on. I think I've

mark-schenkius: 22:54

Yeah.

mark_mcinnes: 22:54

that myself. I think I've fallen for that one a couple of times. Very interesting. So I'm really interested with your time at miles foods, you know, w what was it like, what were the, some of the things that you really disliked about salespeople, you know, people that were selling to your organization? You know, we, you're very receptive for, you know, would, did you have like, huddles, you know, how can we get on, how can we get on top of all these sales people this month? You know, like,

mark-schenkius: 23:23

No,

mark_mcinnes: 23:24

you know, what was the perception

mark-schenkius: 23:26

it's not that bad. You have to imagine. I think sellers Wilton the buyers will be very different as a buyer. I will dealing with hundreds of suppliers as a seller, especially when you have key accounts, it's probably a handful or maybe two hands full of, of, of, of customers that you deal with. So buyers are not that prepared for it and negotiations as you could. And because you do so many negotiations that you don't always prepare that well for them. So think about it from a buyer's perspective. How many actually, how many suppliers do they have? If everyone needs a bit of their attention, they have a lot to do. One of the things that I, I that surprised me a lot is it's one question that rarely any sales professional asked me. And it even I'm still surprised about is, you know still, still today. And that question is mark. What are your objectives? Like they would come in and start selling. Right. So they would come in saying, this is my product. This is complete presentation and blah, blah, blah. Then they would come in and just, you know, sell or sell themselves, sell their product. But they wouldn't ask the question, what are our objectives? And secondly, I think even more important, it's a follow-up on that question, you know, how can I help you achieve those objects? Very very powerful because now you're not on the other side of the table, you actually sitting on the same side of the table as the buyer. And I think sellers could be better at that. Just asking more questions, learning to understand, you know, a buyer's perspective, even, even better.

mark_mcinnes: 24:56

Yep. Okay. That's that's good advice. So when you were at mass, let's do a little bit of a hypothetical here, right? Like and I know you probably weren't in this particular. Division. But like if I was a sales rep of a packaging company, for example, and you'll, you're buying lots of items and things for Myles foods, and I came up to you with something that I think is really innovative in relation to a rat, a MozBar wrapper. Right. It might be it's maybe it's more economical it's cheaper, or maybe, maybe it. It disappears into the environment. It's more environmentally friendly or maybe it goes into your machine faster, you know? So it's easy to put the chocolate bars in one of those things, right. Would, would, would your business be interested in having a conversation with somebody? If I go look, I think I've got something that's really interesting to share with your business or are you guys always like shout out going now? We're just doing what we've already done, always done. And we're not interested in the

mark-schenkius: 25:51

It's it's, it's a really funny question because actually one of my when I was I, I did packaging buying for some time or at least I was managing a team of, of, of packaging buyers. So, and actually the funny story is it's almost like this is a setup, but it isn't because it's, it's a completely random question. I was once at a conference, so we organized our packaging conference. And I was sitting at a table with probably six suppliers. They were Dutch, German and Dutch, German. People tend to be quite vocal and expressive, especially after a couple of pints of beer. And I asked him the question, like I was new to the role night. Well, naively asked him the question, like, you know what do you think we could improve it more? And NAMI feedback I received over the course of the next two hours was it was immense. He said, oh, you're not innovative enough. But they also said, it's not just you it's any business is not innovative enough. And so it was awesome. So what do you mean? He said, well, we have so many ideas, so many innovations, et cetera, et cetera, and that we could implement. You just don't want to. And it made me wonder, like how, how come you're not interested in innovations? Why are buyers aren't interested in innovations? And I'm coming back again to something we discussed earlier in this podcast and started to connect them. Like, cause normally you would say, you know, yes, everyone is interested in innovation. It's new, it's new energies, new grade ideas and moving forward to sustainability and all these kinds of great things. But for buyers, it means risk and that's there's alarm bells. Ringing when you hear the word innovation and why is that? Because once a supplier has something unique, can we go again to offer you it's a risk because you know, you'll be priced above the market for it. And you know, you you'll find it hard to find an alternative supplier for it. So buyers don't always see the positive of it. They also see the negative of it. And that's why for, for some sellers, it's really hard to bring innovation to the table, at least to the buyers. Yeah. Because stressful organization might be interested in it. They typically like innovations.

mark_mcinnes: 27:53

Yeah. Yeah. Good point. So, so, so many organizations are focused and buying organizations are focused on minimizing risk, not only supplier risk, but any risk, you know? So what if that rapper didn't see it as well and you know, kids walking down the road, the miles falling at the end, right? Yep. So right now the status quo with the miles by reference. If they don't want to choose to look at my new fancy wrapper, it opens risks. So the benefit salespeople and sales organizations tend to focus on opportunity and buyers, I think, focus on minimizing any external risks. So yeah, there you go. That wasn't a setup. I didn't know you were going

mark-schenkius: 28:34

no, but you're absolutely right, but I think you're raising a very good point actually, because you said, you know, sellers, you're looking at opportunity to Hey, this is what it can bring you. But I think as a seller, you need to address the risks associated with. It's like, I know there's risk, you know, that, that it might have run on the line. That's why we have a group of technical experts. We're going to help you set it up. We know that might be riskier. That's my agenda. Now think about the risks that a buyer or an organization might perceive and then think about what are you going to do to help them mitigate that? Because if you're taking away the risk, they just see the benefits. They don't see the risk anymore, but there will be risks in their heads. So don't just sell the positive, sell or find a solution for the negatives as well.

mark_mcinnes: 29:18

Yeah. fantastic. Mark. I've really enjoyed having you on the boss podcast. Appreciate your time. How can my listeners get in contact or our listeners get in contact with you? Are you interested in, you know, more people connecting with you? Are you on LinkedIn? Are you on Twitter? Like how can we,

mark-schenkius: 29:32

Yeah, LinkedIn, for sure. So you can find easily my find my LinkedIn profile because I'm the only one named with that horrible, last name. So you should be able to find that you can also, you mentioned the book I wrote called the other side of sales, where I share even more secrets, how to deal with difficult buyers. So I'll I'll talk about that. And they can visit my website. It's WW dot R O Y hyphen.com. So it's our white Ten-X dot com and then hyphen between the I and the 10.

mark_mcinnes: 30:01

Lovely. And in the show notes, I'll put links to your LinkedIn profile, your website, your book, and there we go. So I think that's it. That's it. People can get in contact with you,

mark-schenkius: 30:12

to reach out to me. So happy to help.

mark_mcinnes: 30:16

mark. Thanks for coming on the bus podcast. You've been a great guest. I've really enjoyed it.

mark-schenkius: 30:19

for having me, mark pleasure.