The Josh Bolton Show

Using the Right Question Sells Better | Benjamin Bressington

March 04, 2022
The Josh Bolton Show
Using the Right Question Sells Better | Benjamin Bressington
Show Notes Transcript

Benjamin is a speaker and author of multiple books. His latest book is “People Ignorant: Unlocking Success, Confidence & Influence.”

Ben has a law & criminology degree from Australia. Ben spent 10 years helping Fortune 1000 companies apply gamification principles to their sales and communication process.  Now he spends his time helping people improve their sales conversations. Specifically, he helps people close deals faster and discovers the hidden opportunities in our daily communication.

Ben helps you to connect with people more authentically and understand the real meaning of what someone is saying. Benjamin cycles on average 150 miles per week when he’s not designing algorithms for persuasion.

Website:
behaviorsales.com


Ben’s personal social media pages:

https://www.facebook.com/benjamin.bressington

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


Behavior Sales Social Media Links
https://www.facebook.com/behaviorsales

https://www.linkedin.com/company/behavior-sales


Sponsors:
https://powerfulcreators.net/
Promo: MENTOR96

https://nw-recovery.com/
Promo: JBolton 


Support the show

if you enjoyed the show be sure to check out my info:

https://app.wingcard.io/ROB3SA64

Josh Bolton:

today's podcast is brought to you in part by powerful creators mentoring. Are you ready to manifest rapid growth in your business or your sales career? Head over to powerful creators dotnet backslash mentoring. And when you're checking out number two, enter in promo code, mentor 96 to get 96% off your first mentoring session. Today's show is also brought to you in part by naked warrior recovery. I have been on a personal health journey to improve myself. And after stumbling across naked warriors happy berry energy drink with all the good vitamins electrolytes to give you a great balance and mental clarity found the junk and jitters like other brands give you I personally can't get enough of naked warriors energy drink powder, and it actually tastes like happy berries. Click the link in the bio and type promo code J bulging at checkout for 20% off.

intro guy:

Welcome to the Josh Bolton show where we dive into interesting and inspiring conversations and now your host Josh Bolton

Ben S:

not too not too bad. Lunch is so good. There we go. Cool. What's going on?

Josh Bolton:

Now merchant yourself.

Ben S:

And actually where Betsy based?

Josh Bolton:

Like Southern California area where you?

Ben S:

sighs Yeah, Tampa, Florida.

Josh Bolton:

Nice. Yeah, we got a couple a couple 1000 miles between us.

Ben S:

Exactly, exactly. Tell me how to leak. Yeah. How did we connect? I think it was matchmaker.

Josh Bolton:

Matchmaker or go for the kiss virtuoso, virtual assistant one.

Ben S:

Yeah, be matchmaker. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

Josh Bolton:

You have so many, like, where did I get you from?

Ben S:

Oh, yeah, well, we getting booked on over 100 podcasts this month alone. So I got a whole lot of stuff going on. So it's I then it's my, okay, who am I talking to? Who's your audience? It helps me understand. And then we can I can we can make it happen.

Josh Bolton:

Cuckoo. And you're like, you say you're the social engineering for like sales and all that. Yep, correct. The way you hesitated my wages, I just say you're wrong.

Ben S:

No, no, you're right. No. So I was just just closing the window. But now we help people improve their sales compensation sales conversions by using behavioural intelligence. So personality types, personality profiling, giving them a feedback loop for the conversations they have. So we can actually tell them like if the person you're talking to you even have influence over, so to speak, by analyzing the like the call recording, so the emails and things of that whole lot of cool stuff.

Josh Bolton:

That's cool. It's funny, because I just had, I tried to get as many shows as I can do. And I had to earlier and that was one of them. They were talking to me, and I'm like, man, if you just asked me this, like four hours later, after I call 11, I could give you the answer. Because they're like, Oh, you're such a nice like, you almost seem like you're like a friend. Oh my God, that's nice, but a time to get sales with this personality.

Ben S:

Well, it's it comes down to the type of questions you're asking a lot of people don't realize that the the way this selling is actually old school, which is actually creating resistance. And that resistance is making the sale harder. So yeah, so there's a whole lot of cool new stuff. I don't

Josh Bolton:

Well, how about I'm kind of liking where this is going. How about we give a quick intro of who you are what you do, and we pick up where we left off.

Ben S:

Yeah, Norris.

Josh Bolton:

Take it away, of where you from Ben?

Ben S:

Alright, so Yeah, Ben Brassington from behavior sales, and I help people improve their sales conversations and sales conversions and how goal is to help people 5x their sales conversions by giving them a framework in which they can communicate with people. So people persuade themselves rather than you having high pressure, creating sales resistance, and helping people understand personality types through behavioral intelligence to connect with people faster and easier than ever before. So it's like, imagine if you had Google Analytics that gave you insights for your sales conversations. That's what we're talking about.

Josh Bolton:

All right, awesome. This is that's really good. So the one thing I wanted to ask you is more more selfishly, and this will help just everyone in general, I'm trying to sell like a package of Ellika one or two hour call 1000 or two bucks 1000 to 2000 bucks for my time. and teach entrepreneurs, business owners, even managers if they want it, how to treat their employees with, like empathetic leadership? Where's What can I do for you instead of what can you do for me? How would I pitch to someone that may or may be more resistant? Believe in their ways the right way?

Ben S:

Yeah, well, one of the things you need to understand is your sole job. So one of the things that let's get back hold on a little bit, let's step back. So what you need to understand is the model in which you're trying to sell would be client side selling, right? Or that consultative type sales model, right? That was created in the late 2000s. And consumer behavior to that has slightly changed. So your sole goal and what you're doing, and the reason you're getting the objections you're getting is literally because you've got a conversational problem at the start, not the end. So your sole goal as a salesperson is actually to do problem finding and problem identification. So you need me to be communicating my problems to you. And the reason you're doing that, is I have to understand the problem and persuade myself that there is a real problem. And most of the time that if you're asking logical, basic questions, you're not having an emotional connection. So therefore, I don't emotionally feel that I need to solve the problem you're solving, and therefore there's no value, right? So it's all then it becomes a pricing debate, rather than an ROI debate, if there is an ROI conversation you're having, because you're talking about solving the core problem, not the surface level problem, your pricing, objections disintegrate, literally disintegrate, because like, you've now identified the problem. So it would come down to how you're actually connecting with the person, then how you're bringing what we classify as situational awareness. Like, how are you having me become aware of my current situation? Right? And then how are you having me go into the next layer, which is that problem awareness, and like really defining the problems to go through? And then, and then you literally only have to pitch 5% of the call. The problem is, if we looked at some of your recordings, you're probably pitching too soon, too early. You're justifying, hey, empathy based sales, do this facts, figures, features benefits, they don't give a shit. They don't really care. So the thing is, is if you're actually presenting incorrectly, you're creating resistance at the get go. And you're just resistance resistance resistance. And they like closing off. Does that make sense? Yes. 100%? No, I noticed that. So keep going. No, no, no, sorry. Go ahead.

Josh Bolton:

So it was just from like, for me, when I used to teach martial arts and I would sell it to and I did, that's pretty good. But that was the biggest one I just more chat with them, see where they're at. And then be like, hey, it actually sounds like I'm not a good fit for you. But I know someone down the way and we still got business because that was just one of those. So, but like for me, like the pitch, it's more like right now. I'm like, strategizing planning. Because I when I worked a security gig a couple years ago, this big, like CEO pretty much paid 50k A month pretty much approached me and said like, this warehouse is tanking. This is like what got me to where I'm at? Why is my baby dying kind of thing. And I just told him like, well, Morrell doesn't exist here. You're treating them like robots. They're humans. Like, it's shitty to say, but a WT worker 100 bucks is game changing. Have you thought about like, making games, no one gets hurt. Top five winners get 100 bucks each. And that went in, they did a quick summary of this all they did it. And they 3x and three months. It was just one of the owners like and it was just one of those. It didn't cost them at worst, like 10 grand total prizes and Taco guy food. And he went from making like 300k a day to 1,200,000 a day. So it was just one of those. He actually just handed me a 10 grand $10,000 Check. And I was like, it's closed. My WT work. I'm like, ooh, taxes, you're gonna suck here. You can have it back. Now I'm sitting here

Ben S:

going to damage. One of the things. Yeah, one of the things you want to be aware of is so one of the tools we created literally can analyze your email inbox, your slack, your team's, whatever the communication channels a company is using. And we can actually show you exactly the 17 different emotions that people are experiencing who's happy with who, who's frustrated with who, who's expressed disgust with someone because if they expressed disgust, it's actually a very problematic emotion in the sense that it causes positive action in a negative way. So it forces them to leave forces them to stifle your growth. If they don't want to leave it could force them to do malicious insider type stuff, right? So then it's like if you want to create a real company culture, how do you leverage not surveys and asking questions, but actually analyze, like, what, how each other? How are we communicating with each other? And what is that emotional impact? And how is that not effective, even identifying the different personality styles of your entire workplace, just by reading emails just by analyzing the slack communication, for example, which kind of brings a whole new opportunity, because you can actually see where there's management misfit, because the manager doesn't understand the personality types on how to communicate to the people on their team. Right? That awareness can transform a company quite quickly. So there's huge opportunity in that space, too.

Josh Bolton:

So is it your matching? Do you have like a software that can read all this and figure it out to you? You're selling?

Ben S:

Yeah, so we that's the that's the behavior of sales, behavioral intelligence platform. So yeah, so it's a Software as a Service subscription that people subscribe to, and then they implement in their company. And through that they can apply it to the company culture dynamics, they can apply it to understanding the relationship between their salespeople in their clients and customers. Like we can do things like predicting churn, we can predict which of your employees are going to be leaving. And right now, 16% of any workforce is literally looking for new work, which is a huge problem for any company, that's one in six people. Right? So that's a very expensive problem that companies need to be solving right now. And that they're getting killed by particularly if you've got a remote workforce. And then obviously, we help we do really focus a lot on the sales conversations and optimizing sales conversations to help people shorten the sales cycle. And a lot of the time we find that people are asking the wrong questions. They're, they're not using the questions that exhibit elicit the emotion from their prospects. And they're just getting into the pitch way too well, like that. It's, they're forcing that sale. And as a result, it's problematic and it's longer and they're having issues. And that's where we really help them if that makes sense.

Josh Bolton:

So you mentioned a few times, can you give an example of the different the the more the emotional questions to to prime them for the last 5% of the the pitch, what would be some questions, we need to ask like that?

Ben S:

Yeah, so Okay, well, let's start at the top of the sale right to the top of sale. One of the questions is, just because someone didn't, so you never want to assume the sale, assuming the data actually shows now that assuming the sale actually creates sales resistance. So the person when you get on the phone, you actually want to be more neutral and more to the side of skeptical, right? Because you want to be having them sell you Why should even work with you. So you want to be qualifying more, which is a different perspective for a lot of sales reps. Does that make sense? Right, so that mental shift alone at the start can make a big difference. So one of the things you can say, so here's a scripture people want to write this down is like, have you found what you're looking for Josh? Or are you still looking? Like even my uncertainty in my tonality? And that gets you to talk to me about well, what you're what you're looking for how you're looking for? And then, and then obviously, you want to ask them the questions of like, So Josh, what are you doing now? How long have you been doing that? And then you probe a little bit deeper with that. And you go, Well, what got you involved with that? Why did you choose that model? Right? So you're trying to extract from them their rationale, their decision making process, why they don't like if you just ask those type of questions, they, you've connected with them at a core emotional level. And now you're asking emotional questions to help them to find that one of the things you, you want to be thinking about, for example, is always asking them. Why is that important to you? So, Josh, why though, did you choose that solution?

Josh Bolton:

Well, seemed the most cost effective and efficient at the time.

Ben S:

What was there another reason you're looking for that or a problem you're trying to solve?

Josh Bolton:

Yeah, my, my, my sales team was doing this. And they claimed to need a software and this was the best declaimed in the industry.

Ben S:

Yep. So now you're understanding why they are choosing that decision. And you've gone actually two layers deep but and they started to analyze and look at their real pain. They're starting to persuade their software they're looking at so one of the things you can their ad, and doing this a little bit of add, add of order, but you really want them to define that problem. So for example, you could say why do you feel like that was the best software choice she could have chose at the time?

Josh Bolton:

Because my senior manager recommended instead it was the best.

Ben S:

Gotcha. So now you know that there's a senior manager and Who's actually the influencer? Or maybe the decision maker? Okay, so the thing is, is, you may not realize you're actually selling the wrong person talking to the wrong person. So you've actually got to get in and talk to the other person and find out what the real problems are and how that prove that logic happens, right? So you want to be thinking then of the one big thing that a lot of salespeople don't do is they don't ask what we classify as consequence questions. See, something like that would be along the lines of Hey, Josh, have you thought about? What would happen if you don't do anything about this? No,

Josh Bolton:

no, I haven't even thought about that.

Ben S:

So if you don't solve this problem, and the situation got worse, like, what would that mean for you?

Josh Bolton:

Now, I would be losing a lot of money. And probably a lot of workers too.

Ben S:

So do you see even like, if you use those dollar questions right now, and when you're talking to those people, your conversation takes on a whole new, deeper level, it takes on an emotional level, and then you're using the emotion, they're using the emotion, or sorry, you're using the emotion to persuade them through using their own words. Does that make sense?

Josh Bolton:

Right. So it's like the, instead of the pitch more ask this question, then ask a question on the question kind of thing.

Ben S:

Hundreds percent. Yeah. So it's asking, it's asking the right question. And we've actually got a process, we've actually got about 240 different questions now, in the process funnel that you can use and rotate through. But it is five to seven stages, you actually flow through on the call, and even to how you're pitching and even to the point of how you qualify them at the end. And even getting them to commit to taking action. So for example, like you can you present your solution, you don't pitch it, you kind of present it once you get to the pain, but you do it right at the end. Right? Right, right at the end. And you're like, Well, Josh, do you feel like this could be the answer for you?

Unknown:

Yeah.

Ben S:

So and then the most important question you need to ask to them after that is literally going, so But why do you feel that?

Josh Bolton:

Oh, that is a good question. Um,

Ben S:

so just asking that question. Now, you understand that now, you are telling yourself why this is the solution on why you need to take action. Interesting.

Josh Bolton:

I like it. This is this is like, alright, super hyperfocus. Good stuff, man. Thank you.

Ben S:

So it's, and one of one of the big things if anyone who's got to discuss and get an objection, one of the things you really need to be aware of with that is you want to be clarifying, discussing, and then diffusing a lot of people, they'll get an objection, they dive into it. And they just like they're trying to feature and benefit products speak their way out of the objection. And what they haven't done is addressed. The core objection, which we spoke about earlier, but yeah, so I think that type of stuff could dramatically help you and your conversations and the people in your audience as well.

Josh Bolton:

Yeah, obviously, that's a lot of good nuggets, right there anyone listening in definitely take care really, really listen to this. Well, Ben just said. So what is also then this, this just applies to all sales, whether it's like a $200 a month package or a $10,000 consultation call? Kind of thing?

Ben S:

Yeah, 100% 100%. And a lot of people literally they, they even if it's a $200 package, or $200,000 package, or 2 million $200 million package, it really doesn't matter. Because you This is like the anti sales anti persuasion process. Because you're not using any pressure, there's no pressure you're having, you're having a conversation. And what people really need to understand is like sales is really a conversation. But most people are ignorant to how to have this conversation. Because this is not boiler room, high pressure sales stuff, which is where a lot of sales training kind of came from, like high pressure, high anxiety, force them in against their will. And that's not what the science says on how to persuade people, if that makes sense.

Josh Bolton:

Right? Yeah. Like I forgot one of my I have a mentor call every Thursday and he's like, the presenting will pain, drag him to hell and sell them the ladder out of hell. And I'm like, that's kind of brutal. You literally took it to a dark place, and you're like, the only way out now is paying me. And I'm like, there's a lot of objections that can come up from that. Yeah. So there

Ben S:

is and the problem is, is if you're leaving them sitting in that pain for too long without selling them the vacation You actually can have them shut down, and that you're gonna have the opposite effect of what you're trying to do. So yeah, drag them to hell is one way. But the thing is, is they've most people struggle with the transition out and the prospect actually get stuck in hell. And then when you call them again, they get they're going to go shoot because you, all you do is leave them in a negative emotional state. And we can actually tell that from your sales call, like, did the call Finish happy? Or did the call Finish? Negative and if the call finished negative, you're obviously you've got now this negative emotion that's festering that's gonna cause them to ghost you and I don't want to work with you avoid you because you don't make me feel good. And what do people do when something doesn't make them feel good?

Josh Bolton:

We were Yeah, we can't jump or go away. 100%. That's, that's interesting. So then they get we've been touching on it, this whole thing. So let's say our call is going really well. And I kind of awkwardly fumble at the end, it wasn't like a bad or a negative note. How would that transition? That work in the sales process? Like an awkward phone? But then would it still convert?

Ben S:

Awkward fumbles are okay, so it's an you got to be more aware of the tonality and the skeptical ness of it. So an awkward fumble is okay, the thing is, is you've got to be able to own your questions and your scripts. So you may have fumbled because you're actually going from authenticity back to script. And say the fumble was in the transition, right? Rather than like, hey, if I'm just authentically engaged and interested in you the whole time, I'm asking you questions. My pitch is at the end, and it's only 5% of the call, because unlike just walking you through the fundamentals, if that makes sense. So we find that a lot of people struggle in the position of transitioning from their authentic or rapport authenticity into that like, script following in when they're in that mode, they're failing to actually connect with the person they're talking to. Does that make sense?

Josh Bolton:

Yes, yes, it does. So I'm just thinking, this is one that keeps keeps coming up in my head, instead of an actual cold call, or like an actual phone call would like a video, pitch, same feel. But you were asking a question, pausing, let them think that asked a question like, like a webinar kind of thing. Without work to for this?

Ben S:

Yeah, you can certainly do that. Yeah, you can work that through. And you can ask them the deeper questions and you go, Well, hey, most of some of the people we're talking to have this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem, and they've had this so you tell them the stories for the problems that you're eliciting, right? So you can still work through the same flow. And in your sole driving metal home, and you've just been having them ask themselves those better quality questions, which is engaging more emotion.

Josh Bolton:

Okay, cool. That's good. So then I'm more curious, because you, you've brought it up a few times is the personality type. So are we talking like the disc or the Myers Briggs Personality Type? Or the the more generic like introvert extrovert? personality type?

Ben S:

Yeah, great question. So one of the things that we did is we use the disc Amaya Briggs, but we actually simplified it. So we call it actually good behavior. Because most people have done a DISC assessment of the done a Myers Briggs assessment, and then they don't know how to use it. They don't know how to apply it to a conversation like so for example, you've you've done one of these assessments, right? What's your personality?

Josh Bolton:

So? Myers? Brigg? Is intp and disc is a CD? So yeah, so I don't really understand

Ben S:

why CD to your conversations. I don't know. So, yeah. And like, they, they're great for self awareness. Right. But the problem is, is a lot of people don't know how to transition that into practical, like, how do I use this information. So that's why we simplified it in what we call bird behavior, this for bird profiles. So you need to remember, you don't have to worry about all the other crap, because we'll show you exactly how to use it in conversations and connect it to your conversational scripts and give you the words to say and then you it's easier to identify, it's easier to identify people. So for example, do you know what I am?

Josh Bolton:

You are definitely more analytical, very extroverted. But yeah, that's about all I got right now.

Ben S:

Alright, so you can tell me what I am when I teach you the four birds, okay. And then you can actually start to see so I'll run you through this process. So first of all, we have what I call i, this one's called Vegas, the name is Vegas. But it's the bird. The bird is a peacock. Right? And the thing about the peacock is they want to be famous. These are the social media influences. They hate being bored because they're always like, Ah, I'm bored. And they're looking for usually outside stimulus to make them find an excited, right they're looking for achievement recognition. This person is the person who will cut you off to tell their story about a story that's similar to your story, right? They are the social butterfly. And they're always doing that type of stuff. Do you know many peacocks?

Josh Bolton:

A lot? Yes,

Ben S:

okay. Exactly right. And particularly in California, I'm sure you're aware of a lot of peacocks out there. Right? Everyone wants to be famous. Alright. The next one is what I call the pigeon, or the Dove, depending on how you resonate with it, but the pigeon is if you think of a pigeon in a park, right? They're a pack animal. They want to be everybody's friend. They're very flighty, like they will like the slightest noise. The site is disturbance like they will scatter, right. And the thing is, is that the pitch and when you're talking to him online, while on a sales call, is very flighty as well. Like one objection, one bad emotion. Like, one bad review online has been like, oh, I can't do this. Because they hate rejection, they hate taking risks. So as soon as you present your conversation in the way for that high risk, it's very, very problematic for them, right? You may not perceive it as a high risk, but high risk is any real change for them. Alright, interesting. What's interesting is the, the the pigeon is someone that you never want to take to the Cheesecake Factory. Because he's going to the Cheesecake Factory, and there's 500 items on that menu, right? Like, I can't make that decision. It changed the their mind 20 times what they want to eat, right? But every time the player walks by them, or was it very know what you're eating, like it changes, right? They it's hard for them to make a decision. Like they're the type of person when the waiter comes to the table. Right? They're going to be asked last because like they're going to change their mind 10 more times before the waiter even gets them. You know, people are

Josh Bolton:

that. Oh, yes. They're just as common as the peacocks.

Ben S:

Exactly. So the next one is I call Liberty the eagle. And Liberty is like freedom and power. Right? So the thing is, the ego wants to be the boss, they want to be in control. They care about achievement, they care about the task, they want to judge, what am I going to do right now? And how do I make it happen? Right? What are the what are the three things you got to do? And how do I get it done by five o'clock today? Right? What's the ROI on this? Right? That's what they want to talk about. They don't care about anything else. And they they're not very people focused. They're okay. They're happy pissing you off. Right? And they're like, Why did I piss you off? I just got the job done. Like what, what? What, what's wrong with you? Right? They don't understand that people interaction and that not everyone is like seeing the world as that eagle from like, a mile away who can see the mouse and then like, lock in and get it right. Right. So that's the ego, they hate losing. Right? And then the next one is what I call the thinker, which is the owl, right? And the owl is the person who would rather be right than rich, right? They want to prove everybody wrong. They've got multiple degrees after their name, multiple letters, the certificates, the achievements are a big deal for them. They hate uncertainty. They hate impulsiveness. They, when they say they're going to think about it, they're going to think that they're going to read every manual every white paper, right? So you got to be aware of this when you're talking to this person and trying to sell this person but you say like, Hey, Josh, did do you read the white paper I emailed over to you that was on our side about these features and how it's connected to the workflow functionality. And other Oh, no, I missed that. I really need to read that. Now. Oh, and like, so you need to use that research and white paper and that type of validated conversation and language in how you're communicating with them. Because if you don't, they aren't going to get the answers they need to know or how all this stuff works. They want to know the details where the peacock doesn't care about the details. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, that makes more sense. So what are the four birds?

Josh Bolton:

Peacock, pigeon, Eagle and owl?

Ben S:

Like I said, you're you're already a someone who's mastering personality types, right? Like, and you already can picture each of these people and start to identify them. And it doesn't have to be any complicated in that. Right.

Josh Bolton:

Right. So to answer your question earlier, you're an eagle. Or am I wrong to

Ben S:

Eagle peacock is Yeah, yeah. Now you're 100%. Right. So isn't that easier? Like no personality assessment? No fancy stuff, you know? All right, great. How do I connect with these people? Now because I know who I am, I know what they are, therefore, you can be more effective in your communication.

Josh Bolton:

So just talking on the combination, then because like listening to it, I was not a peacock or a pigeon. I was more predominantly ego. But with a little bit of the owl. How would you sell to that kind of a personality?

Ben S:

Well, that's a great point, because there's usually a prominent, so there's a primary and a secondary personality type. And it all depends on the context, because you might be Egle in certain circumstances, but maybe on financial decisions, you are out or maybe when you're with family members, you're different, right? So you gotta be have context is really, really important with this. So the thing is, is, if you if you've got the eagle owl, you've got to be aware of the results and ROI. But I've got to give you the time for you to make the decision, or I've got to be asking you those questions where I'm qualifying you, for example for you to actually see the value and understand the logic with that and the emotion with you. So for example, I might be asking you, Josh, what is most important to you now, though, right, as the qualifying question, and I'd be going so why is that important to you now? I don't

Josh Bolton:

know it. Sorry. I'm just saying interesting out loud. That's one of those. A lot of people have asked me ty. I've just wondered, as I've noticed the the question, but I've never picked up on why. That's interesting. Thank you. Yeah.

Ben S:

So one of the one of the things you can factor in like even how you can qualify people is like, So Josh, like, how important is this really feeder solve this problem? Right. And the thing is, is I'm getting you to talk to tell me how important it is. And you're telling me, so is this something that's even at quarter to problem you want to solve? Or is this something like q4, q4, or next year? Well, maybe q2, maybe q3, but I guess it will depend if it's this budget connection. Alright, great. Like now you can start to understand and analyze that. Does that make sense?

Josh Bolton:

Yeah. So it's the budget problem, not the actual results, they want it? They're not sure if they have the money. They Yeah, that's good.

Ben S:

And one of the things with budget, when you're always talking about budget, it means that you haven't connected enough pain or realization. Because if they, if they see that they have a problem, and you haven't identified the true problem that's most important to them. Because if you identify the true problem, they will find the budget, they will work out how to get the budget where the budget is going to come from, they'll reallocate the budget. So it means pricing is usually connected to haven't defined the problem well enough or got them engaged with the problem sufficiently enough.

Josh Bolton:

Okay. Yeah, that's one thing I've noticed, like when I was selling martial arts, it was one of those, the packages were pretty big, like 300 bucks a month, and like 1000 bucks, or 2000 to 2000 for stuff. And once I did the proper pitch, I kind of realized now like, as I'm listening to you, I did a very similar I would see, okay, who's a pigeon who's a peacock, etc, and pitch them that way. And dirt broke, but somehow they managed to scrape together five gay, and I'm like, how did you deal with that kind of thing?

Ben S:

Yeah, well, that's one of the questions is like, well, so you could go to them. So Josh, why do you feel as a this could work if you had the money?

Josh Bolton:

Oh, that's a good one. Just to add on to it, it's, I feel the value added. And the, the incentives you're bringing to me are very important.

Ben S:

Right, and then say it and you can tell like, my tone was like skepticism, right? So I'm like, Okay, so are you open to me? Given a suggestion, Josh?

Josh Bolton:

Sure. What do you recommend?

Ben S:

So what I did there is I asked for permission. I'm not I'm not here to pitch or possible suggestion. Alright, so the thing is, is I'm not like, cuz I'm helping you persuade you. Right? So the thing is, is you can go to them. And so, Josh, what other app avenues do you have for funding? Maybe?

Josh Bolton:

We have a lot of investors outside and the board is very active. So we have multiple students income.

Ben S:

Yet no. Well, the thing is, is you say, well, that'd be like, Well, have you thought of putting it on a credit card and paying 30 days later? Or? Are you interested in more of a payment plan to help you like this is where you can give them suggestions. Interesting if they've given you permission to find the funding, because what you're asking them to do is starting to think of how else could they get the funding to solve this, it might be like, Well, is this problem more important than the problem you're solving right now? Because this problem is connected to three other factors. So therefore, should you be putting the budget to that? So reallocating budget type thing? So pricing becomes very interesting. And if if you have defined the problem correct enough, they will always, always fund the

Josh Bolton:

budget. Right? That's very true. I'm just curious how long do I got you for?

Ben S:

Probably about another 15 minutes.

Josh Bolton:

Cool. Just want to make sure I didn't want to run over and get you in trouble for our interview. So then for the budget one, let's say I'm, I've somehow managed to get the interests of Coca Cola, the one of the Fortune 500 pitching him on the the whole thing. Is there is it a similar process or because they're more of a bigger dance that it's a longer play?

Ben S:

No, it's exact same process. And this is where people make mistakes, because you have to do emotional sale with everyone. And one of the things you need to be aware of there is you probably got to do this emotional dance with say, seven people, six, six and a half people, on average. So you may have to do this emotional dance with six people or 30 people, because of how the conversations flow, and you need to be aware of the personality. So with every single one of those people you're talking to, and where and this is where like the behavioral sales platform comes into its own because like, we can take your call recordings or your emails between all your parties that you're talking to and understand who has influence over who, right because it's a daisy chain. It's like, because Sally's got influence over Jim. But Jim doesn't influence Sally. And Jim's got nothing to do with this other department. So they don't care about him. So it's, it's understanding those social dynamics? And how do you lean on them to actually make this work for you? So it's the exact same dance, but with all of them, and where a lot of people go wrong? It's like, oh, it's Coca Cola. It's gonna be a different presentation. It's all people. It's all emotion. There's no problem. There's no emotion, there ain't no sale.

Josh Bolton:

Very chill. Silky. Okay. I'm just I'm personally curious, never bought a lot of people probably thinking the same thing. What is your general pricing for your software?

Ben S:

The pricing for the Behavioural Insights element literally starts at a $20 a month subscription. And then it goes up from there, if we're doing the sales analysis, or if we're going out coaching programs. So we've got a 90 day five extra conversions coaching program, that program starts at$7,000. And it goes from there. But we're literally coaching and consulting you on every conversation you're having. We're giving you real time feedback on exactly what you're doing what you need to be doing optimizing sales scripts, in helping you work through like, hold on, you said that, but the tonality was wrong. You said this, you should review that in teaching you our what we call the behavior sales framework for having sales conversations using data, not just some made up script that applied are worth in the 60s. Does that make sense?

Josh Bolton:

Right, no. 100%. So then let's say I'm interested in the the end, analyzing but also the sales, what would be the combo for two?

Ben S:

Well, that's all included in the 5x coaching program, you get access to the 90 days and we walk you through, right. So that's very hands on very coaching, and the the the analytics platform for the sales analysis. It all depends if it's rep based or company based. And that's how that works. But there's over 100 different linguistic variables that we can analyze in your conversations and help you kind of improve everything. So there's a whole lot of opportunity

Josh Bolton:

there. That is that's a lot of opportunity. There's definitely one of those, I wish I had that for a long time ago, like just is it kind of like otter or grammerly, you just kind of upload it and analyzes from there.

Ben S:

Yeah, it's 100%, like that. And it's even even easier than that. Because we can literally connect your email, we can automatically connect your Zoom account. And then we try to automate how we're like extracting zoom calls or video calls or we integrate with the CRM. We're doing a massive integration right now with closed IO to be able to roll out and provide solutions fully integrated into the CRM, which is really impressive. There's, there's a whole lot of cool stuff going on right now.

Josh Bolton:

Then I'm just curious because I'm working with I have a different CRM. Could you integrate with Karcher? Let's say I pay up is that one I could integrate with them? Or not yet?

Ben S:

Yeah. So there's a we integrate with Slack. Sorry, Zapier and Integromat is the latest integrations we're literally pushing out within the next two weeks or so. So you're literally going to be able to integrate into every system so it'll automatically pull the data pull the pull the emails and then provide you back the insights that you need.

Josh Bolton:

Cool. Yeah, Zapier works with Karcher so definitely get into one of those I'm going to be looking into it anyone else definitely recommend I got three going out questions for you. So other than work what what have you been doing to keep yourself busy during these lockdown times

Ben S:

I'm an avid cyclist so i My goal is to cycle at least 150 miles a week. That's what I love doing and that's kind of where my passion I think in time so yeah, yeah, so I'm frustrated the weeks that I don't get to cycle 150 miles so that's yeah. And my great weeks 200 plus miles so yeah.

Josh Bolton:

What is that like? Almost like what? hour and a half two hours or a run or is it more three hours? Oh, sorry. A ride Sorry, just like three lightning 30 Miles

Ben S:

is it? No, it's So 20 Miles is better now. So yeah, you when you're doing a 30 mile rides than an hour and a half each time, so yeah, there's that can be 15 to 20 hours on the bike a week, or more.

Josh Bolton:

Nice. So then second question is someone that's inspired to be like you start their own SAS help people with sales? What are some tips, tricks or advice you'd give them to start on that path?

Ben S:

The biggest thing you do is become aware of yourself, and what your own personality style is, and the personality size of the people you're talking to. And learn the right questions to be asking from the get go and make sure you're connected into questions that are emotionally driven. And so if you can do that, focus on the conversation and the quality of the conversation, your sales game will be transformed.

Josh Bolton:

Perfect. And then we can everyone contact you at

Ben S:

easy it's behavior sales.com And if they reach out to help at behavior sales.com They'll be able to get access to some cool bonuses if they mentioned this podcast.

Josh Bolton:

Perfect yet so definitely take them up on that already been an absolute honor and a pleasure to have you on