Proven Communication Tactics for Sales Success with Mike Bauer

Unlock the secrets to sales success with Mike Bauer of Delta Defense, the genius behind a team that turned into a $135 million sales powerhouse. In our latest episode, discover how 'humble confidence' propelled his team to unparalleled heights during the 2020 firearms boom. Mike's insights aren't just about seizing opportunities; they're a goldmine for anyone aiming to master the art of sales with finesse.

Join Mike and me as we explore the power of communication in sales. Learn how silence can speak louder than words and gain actionable strategies to connect with clients and captivate audiences. Our conversation is your playbook for refining your pitch, potentially your ticket to sales stardom. From storytelling to adaptability, we provide a battle-tested framework—memorize, internalize, customize—ensuring you're armed to forge genuine connections and achieve professional triumphs. Join us for a dialogue that's enlightening and invigorating, as we prepare you not just to meet the bar but to raise it.

NOTABLE QUOTES
"When we position ourselves well enough amplified by opportunity, when the wave [comes], we are ready to surf and surf." – Mike
"Someone who is humbly confident is, you are confident in the things that you have done and that you're doing, but you're humble enough to understand that you always have the opportunity to learn more." – Mike
"Being humble is knowing that there's more ahead, that they aren't the cream of the crop, they're not at the very top of the peak." – Philip
“I'm a huge advocate of lifelong learning." – Mike
"If someone was calling us and it was the wrong phone number, we trained our team to take care of that call and have the one-call resolution, even if that person is calling about something that has nothing to do with our company. So we were truly customer service based first to get those sales." – Mike
"Most often, it is not advantageous to correct someone in their line of thinking right out of the gate. I think that it's much better to go down the line." – Mike
“We share what we share and if we happen to forget something, if it's not that important, don't worry about it." – Philip
"Focus first on what's the main priority at hand . . . and then we can figure out the rest." – Mike
"Just focus on them. This is exactly how it is when we go to speak somewhere, and that's where sales and public speaking go hand in hand." – Philip
“Getting the local presence, being in person with people, is such a big deal.” – Philip
“If you can find a way to talk about something that interests [potential clients] outside of the business that's at hand, you will often be surprised at how much more friendly the business at hand gets.” – Mike
“As salespeople, if we can have a conversation around something that interests them? Know, like, and trust—that's going to skyrocket because they're going to see that this guy isn't just here as a salesperson, he's a true human being.” – Mike
“You've got to start with being insanely curious.” – Mike
“It’s not necessarily that you have to have a bunch of facts that you rely on. It just comes down to you naturally having to be curious, with the understanding that eventually you have to get down to business.” – Mike 
“Have constant curiosity and strive to continue to get better.” – Mike

RESOURCES
Mike
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mike.h.bauer.7/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike.f.bauer/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-f-bauer-293a1b7b/

Philip
Digital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-course
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions

Transcript

Philip Sessions: 0:15

What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the speaking sessions podcast. I've got Mike Bauer here. Six years ago, he was approached by an entrepreneur on the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies list and asked to join the founders sales team. Unfortunately, there was no sales team at all, just a call center. Who would have figured that? And instead of sales teams, a call center. But relying on the power of proximity, mike joined the call center. Anyways, in a year later was asked to pilot an outside sales team that has gone on to sell over 135 million dollars in just five years Guess what with only a $400 recurring membership product.

Philip Sessions: 1:03

Today, mike, also known as mark on some calls, manages the highest producing team in the country, and when he's not working, he enjoys time with his wife and four children and investing in real estate. So, mike, mark, whatever you're called, I guess it's better than being called an a-hole or something like that on a sales call, because I'm sure that has happened plenty of times. But welcome to the show man. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Awesome, yeah, thank you for having me.

Mike Bauer : 1:30

Yeah, like you had just read. So what I currently do over for a company called Delta Defense. If you're in the firearm space, you're probably not familiar with Delta Defense, but it's very likely that you're familiar with the US CCA or the US concealed carry association, and it's a company that it's one of the longest companies that's been on the ink 5000 fastest growing companies list, at only 20 years old. And I approached the entrepreneur six years ago because I understood that If you've got a rockstar company, it's not because you do it yourself, it's because you've got a great team. And I just I saw this humble confidence about him that I saw that I wish I was that way in 10, 15, 20 years. And so I started working with him in his call center, not because there was this great opportunity ahead of me.

Mike Bauer : 2:14

My wife and I she had just had our second child. She had we had decided that she was gonna be a stay-at-home mom. It was a hundred percent on faith of power, of proximity, and so I was able to kind of be mentored underneath him and see the ways that he had grown his business. And since then, a year later, I was asked to help be the pilot of our outside sales team, which is now about 50% of our business. So it's a it's a very, very unique story, just like everyone's got their own unique story.

Mike Bauer : 2:41

The thing that I think is really incredible is when we positioned ourselves, there was a huge boom in firearms around 2020 and we you know, I I probably had over a hundred interviews that I did for salespeople over the course of just one year. That then went on to build a team that we now have about a hundred and thirty hundred and thirty five W2 sales reps. It's just an experience that was only amplified by an opportunity that we positioned ourselves well enough at, and then, when the wave came, we were ready to surf man and surf. We did man.

Philip Sessions: 3:10

That's incredible. And Just a little side note here, I think too often we think, oh, entrepreneurship is the route, we just need to dive right into, just start our own business, and it really sounds like you've been able to become an entrepreneur. Maybe it didn't start out that way, but you've been able to come that entrepreneur and you get to really learn all of these different skill sets Without all the risk of being the entrepreneur or the business owner. It's that's kind of a little side note there. But you mentioned something about humble competence. I'm kind of curious what exactly does that mean? Because when we think of humility, we don't necessarily think of confidence and and Striking that balance, if you will, is something that a lot of people struggle with. But you do need to have a little bit of both, because you can't go on to the side of arrogance. So tell me a little bit more about what that humble confidence kind of actually means, if you can describe what that looks like and everything.

Mike Bauer : 4:02

Totally, and I think that, as I'm describing this, anybody who has someone in their life that's a true leader.

Mike Bauer : 4:08

I think you'll see these same qualities in any leader that's within your life, and so, for me, when I'm talking to someone that is is humble, I'm not necessarily going off of the Google definition of placing yourself lower than what you actually are.

Mike Bauer : 4:21

I know some, there's some definitions of that and I don't agree with that.

Mike Bauer : 4:24

Where I see humility is, I believe, true humility is you understanding that there's always something that you can learn from really anybody, but if, but, there's always an opportunity for you to grow is, I guess, the best way to look at that. And so, for me, someone who is humbly confident is you are confident in the things that you have done and that you're doing, but you're humble enough to understand that you're always having the opportunity to learn more. And so when I see someone who's a true leader, I see someone who's confident in the things that they've already accomplished, and primarily because of not because of their accomplishments, but because of the actions that have gotten the results of that daily discipline, and then Also being able to still see that, even though that person is very confident in what they believe and what they've achieved and the results that they've had, but they also have the humility to understand that there's always something, there's always that next level, and that there's there's more for them to be able to learn.

Philip Sessions: 5:10

And, if I could kind of wrap it a different way really just having that self confidence in themselves is where that confidence Comes out, but being humble, like you said, knowing that there's more ahead, that they aren't the cream of the crop, they're not at the very the top of the peak, if you will. So I think that's a it's a great way that you said it and just trying to say it a little bit differently so people can maybe under and understand and grasp that a little bit more. And that humble confidence yeah, again, I've never really heard somebody say that, but I can really picture that when you say that and I can think of a couple leaders that are that way and that I tend to respect those kind of leaders a lot more than the ones that are just Extremely confident but they feel like they're kind of at the top of their class, of being the greatest leader out there and stuff like that. So it's definitely something I want to keep in mind. But let's go ahead and transition a little bit.

Philip Sessions: 6:00

I know we talked offline about what we're gonna talk about and since today we're really gonna talk about sales and communication and actually I want to dive into the story because we mentioned a little bit about Mike and Mark and stuff like that, and Sometimes you get on sales conversations or sales calls and and we talked a little bit about mirroring as well but you have to kind of adapt what just kind of happens in the conversation in that sales call to what's going on in a little background for everybody. Mike we have Mike on the show, but he's been on a couple calls where people would just randomly start calling him Mark and rather than trying to correct them, he just goes along with that. So kind of give us a scenario where this has happened and then I want to kind of break that down a little bit from there Totally.

Mike Bauer : 6:43

So one of the blessings that that I had when I was in the call center is that I believe that you get better by sheer volume. More than any sort of, you know, video, you watch, book, you read all that stuff. Now, to preface that last year I read over 52 books. So, like I'm a huge, huge advocate of lifelong learning, that said, I think that just having the repetitions gets you somewhere faster and in a way that you have just a better understanding of it, right. And so one of the things that was a blessing for me when I worked in the call center is, I mean, we're taking 10, 15, 20 calls a day of people, you know, inbound phone calls, and when I was in the call center we had a super queue which meant there were people who were current customers and weren't current. So there are prospects that were calling in to get information and and our job was what we called one call resolution you take care of it. So if, if, if someone was calling in to get a membership with us, we could have that call. If someone was calling us and it was the wrong phone number, we trained our team and to this day we have, you know, multiple hundreds of people in the call center. They are trained to take care of that call and have the one call resolution, even if that person is calling about something that has nothing to do with our company. So we were truly customer service based first in order to get those sales what I would have all the time.

Mike Bauer : 8:00

For some reason and maybe it's just because I talk fast I'm from Wisconsin but you know I probably have an accent that I don't recognize but there were so many times where someone would call in and you know I'd say, hey, you know, this is Mike, thank you for calling, and do the typical introduction. But there were so many times where maybe people would miss it and they would go oh, mark, thanks for calling hey, and they would jump into it, right. And and I just felt that most often it is not advantageous to correct someone in their line of thinking right out of the gate. I think that it's much better off to go down the line, and it also typically would help me because if someone was like real bolsterous, sometimes they'd call me mark, and then down the down the line, I'd maybe send them an email while they're still on there.

Mike Bauer : 8:41

Oh my gosh, have I been calling you Mark. Hey, man, don't worry about it, I'm here to help you. It's not a big deal. And now they almost take that step back. So I never I probably did every now and then help someone, but I typically wouldn't do it right away because I'd rather them let's, let's take care of the priority first, that mission first kind of thing. My name doesn't matter, I'm here to help you here to serve you.

Philip Sessions: 9:02

Yeah, and you hit the point that I was going to bring out right on the head that well, obviously, your name is important to you in that conversation, in that moment. That piece of information isn't that important. And to correlate this back with speaking a lot of times when we go to speak somewhere, sometimes we get tripped up on our words or we'll miss a point that we were going to share, or maybe we didn't share quite everything that we had initially planned to share and yet we feel like, oh, hold on, let me go back and talk about that real quick and we want to interrupt the flow of our speech just to go back to bring up that point. And just like, your name in the moment wasn't that important for them to get right. Now, the other way, yeah, a little bit more important to get their name right for the transaction and stuff like that, but for them to know your name wasn't important because that wasn't a part of the sales conversation that had any importance. And the same thing when we speak, that we share what we share and if we happen to forget something, if it's not that important, don't worry about it. Even if it is your name, just go with it.

Philip Sessions: 10:05

I get called Paul all the time too, so I guess somebody calls me Paul. I'm just going to go with it for now on. They'll introduce me as Paul Sessions on stage. But how do you feel like you learned that concept? I feel like that's something that a lot of us I mean we take pride in a name and we should take pride in our name and we'll hey, no, my name is actually Mike. No, it's not Mark, it's Mike, like people want to correct really quickly. How do you feel like you learned that wasn't something that you needed to worry about.

Mike Bauer : 10:35

For being someone who talks too much. If you're in sales and you're a talker, which is most people who are listening, there's a very high chance that you are someone who has, either has or is about to go through this transition of over talking the sale too much. And I don't know if it necessarily came from books I read or from podcasts or whatever it is, but I'm always trying to learn and I just know that there was a time where I realized all the information I have does not matter. They don't care. They don't care. And even if they do care, the more I talk, the more I'm talking them out of the sale because I'm probably giving them more than what they were already considering. So for me, I think it wasn't just the thing about the name. It was more of the foundational concept of let's focus on what. Do you know already? What's the buying trigger that you're, the signal that you're giving me? For me in the call center at that time, it was just through listening, and then, when we created our outside sales team, it was selling to groups of people. So I'm instead listening and looking and hearing and like you're just adding all those things in there, but one of the things that almost every new salesperson has to learn is when to turn it off. And you and for what?

Mike Bauer : 11:49

The quick coaching thing that we always teach for our guys is. I just had this conversation with my top manager her name is Kaylee and we talked about how there's three different types of coaching. So, if you're going to coach yourself, there's three different types of coaches. You've got someone who's brand new, who's on the job, you've got someone who's good, and then you've got someone who's great the separator between them. Typically, if you're a brand new coach like if you've got a manager position or a player coach on a sales team you've been put in that position because you're good at what you do, and often you're going to default back to this is what I do, that's good, and that's the coaching feedback that you're going to give All right. Well, if you're coaching yourself, that's out of the mix.

Mike Bauer : 12:26

So the next one is the good coach, and the good coach typically what they're looking for is they're trying to give every single bit of information on how you can get better at what. Maybe it was a live listen or the call that you just had, or whatever. The difference, though, in the separator and if you've ever read. The book from good to great is a massive one. Going from a good coach where they give you everything, the great coach goes what's the one thing? And so if you want to get better at that phone call, better at sales I believe that a lot of times it's let's start with finding what's the one thing that this person is going to buy for, and let everything else be just added on top of that.

Mike Bauer : 13:02

They don't need to know about the pricing plan or the time of delivery or any of that If all they're asking for is does it do this one thing? Yes, it does. What other questions do you have? You don't need to be that person that just word vomits everything, and I guess that's the way that I always looked at that. Let's focus first on what's the main priority at hand. What's the reason they called in, what's the reason they're having a conversation with me? What's the one thing? And then we can figure out the rest.

Philip Sessions: 13:27

Yeah, and I get that completely and I kind of laugh or chuckle here because I just think about like, oh, the one thing that's important for them is knowing my name, and really like how arrogant is that if we, you know, we're just so worried about that. I mean, if they just, I say, if they just completely butcher your name or something, that's maybe a little bit different, but even then like who really cares? I mean, now, if they ask you, that's a different thing, like hey, what would you say? Your name was Okay, then you can repeat it. But they've asked you, like you said, so really, what are they there for? And really just focusing on them, which is exactly how it is when we go to speak somewhere, and that's where sales and public speaking really go hand in hand. But I want to kind of break down the difference between the call center and the outside sales. So it sounds like for you, with the call center, you got more like incoming calls versus outgoing calls. Did you have both or just the one?

Mike Bauer : 14:22

So I was part of the when I started here. We just had the call center collectively and two months into that, on some success, and myself and a few other people were asked to start the in inbound sales sales team. So this would be someone who is just receiving calls, ideally from someone who's not already a member of ours. So we went from a super queue of anyone calls first person available gets it, to now you're on an inbound sales team where you're receiving those phone calls and then there are other outbound teams that they created, but the team that teams that I was on were 100% inbound for the first year that I worked here.

Philip Sessions: 14:56

Okay, well, I think, for the benefit of the podcast, let's stick with, like that, the outbound calls, because I feel like inbound calls it's usually a warm lead. Obviously, there's nuances that are going to be there that are beneficial to learn, but from an outbound perspective and I correlate this with cold DMs, where people are just constantly sending you DMs, especially LinkedIn. So how, how do you go about navigating that conversation? I know you're more on the inbound side, but still from an outbound perspective. Or you're reaching out to somebody cold or maybe they had said they were interested. That's like could be kind of warm somewhere. But how do you go about randomly calling this number up and then answering the phone and, I'm sure, being a little hostile if they actually answer like who the crap is this? What do you want, mark? So how do you go about winning them over quickly and then moving into the conversation to get towards the sale at the end?

Mike Bauer : 15:52

Sure, so I'll try and take a little bit more almost a going upstream sort of thing with this. Now there's there's different buckets that we could put this in. As far as categories, this could be someone who maybe you're outbound dialing or you know, like that door to door person who they're doing 80 to 200 outbound calls or doorknocks a day or whatever, where. Where our outside sales team lies is a little bit different where our team, what we ultimately do it it'll make more sense if I describe it our team partners with firearms ranges and retailers so that we can sell our product to their, to their customer base. That's the short version of it. And so the beginning of when someone starts with our team, the very first, the hardest three months that they should have with our business, is the first three months where they're creating relationships with people who have a customer base, a revolving door of customers that we want to have access to. And so, if you go back to the whole idea of no like and trust, these guys have to know who we are, which is, you know, call, email, walk in the front door. They have to, they have to like us ideally. But then the last one is they have to trust that if they give us their customer base, which for us is 100% in person we don't do any. Our team doesn't do anything online outside of research and reach out. But when we sell to our customer going from that B2B sale to the range or the instructor when we sell to the customer B2C, that is 100% in person. So they need to trust that when we're handling that customer. If you've got a customer and you're going to pass them along to me, you need to trust that I'm going to be able to be a professional at the very least. So the process for us is pretty simple. We understand what the ideal because we can. We start B2B and then we go B2C. If we can solve the B2B problem and create a partnership there, if they know, like and trust us and they're cool with us, they're going to be cool with us speaking to their customers and that's a just a shoe in. So we start with what is the opportunity that we have that's going to be able to benefit that that customer that we're going to reach out to me, whether it's a range or a farms instructor or whatever. And so we first need to figure out what it is that we have. So we've created a program for that. That's pretty simple. Then, when we reach out to them, the main thing that we want to have is we don't want to. We want to make sure that we find a time where we can get them out of the forest fires.

Mike Bauer : 18:00

So if you are running a business that is a retail business and coming from retail before I worked here you, when someone calls you on the phone, it's the worst thing. Hey, is this a good time? No, I work retail. There is no good time. And so if we're reaching out to a manager of a retail shop we got a training center, they've got a range, they've got retail items, they've got online promotions, they've got all that we need to find a way that we can effectively get them out of that day to day.

Mike Bauer : 18:24

And a lot of times where that just comes down to sales one on one, I'm here to take you out to lunch, here to take you out. So you've always got to eat, whether that's here at your office. Ideally we go and grab the spot up the road. That's your favorite place to go to. If you're grabbing lunch and it's outside of here where you go and I want to pay for it, that is essentially the most broken down, simple way to do it. There's 101 ways that you can do it, but the key is, let's get you out of the day to day so that all these little dumpster fires that come up for anybody running a business and make sure that they're not focused on other things and even if it's just a 10 to 15 minute, we're scarfing down pizza real quick. That's where that conversation can happen. When you get someone out of their element the last thing is that I always talk about the power of proximity. I think that's the same thing with sales. You get around someone that breeds familiarity and they understand that you're a real person. That's where you get your time to shine.

Philip Sessions: 19:14

Hmm, yeah, so, yeah, I wasn't sure exactly how your business works. So thanks for sharing that and everything which you're right Like, getting there in person is so much better. And I think COVID really hurt a lot of us because we think that, oh, we can just do it online. And I've seen that even in some of the groups we run in that they're like, oh, I'm just going to post online, things are going to happen. And that's not the case at all.

Philip Sessions: 19:39

And I've told the story a few times, not to you, but when I did my first event, my first speaking event, where I hosted the event and everything actually had Doug Mitchell come out and speak, yeah, man, it was a flop, not Doug. Doug did an awesome job at speaking, but the event itself was a flop Because, like, nobody showed up. It was speakers and a couple of other people and that was it. And that's because I had this huge or, in my mind, a huge online presence, a lot of people that knew me, but I didn't have that local presence. And, and as I started getting a local presence, I've thrown smaller events, more like lunch and learns versus an actual like conference event, if you will, and I've had a lot more people show up to those with less planning than I did for the actual event that I threw, trying to bring speakers in and everything like that.

Philip Sessions: 20:26

And so getting that local presence, being in person with people, is such a big deal. And so how besides I mean pizza, besides going and getting some food, because I want to kind of speak to somebody that maybe they don't have that budget necessarily to go out to eat what are some other tactics that maybe we can use, especially in person, to be able to win somebody over and maybe get them away? Because I like that tactic that, hey, let's get you away from the environment that you're in, because otherwise, oh, hold on a second, yeah, let me go help them out, and everybody's going to come up to them the whole time and then they can never make a decision and, yeah, you just become a nuisance at that point. So what's some other ways maybe that are a little I mean, that's obviously pretty cheap with still that we can maybe do for free, that we can pull these people away from their businesses to be able to talk with them.

Mike Bauer : 21:18

Yeah, ultimately, there is plenty of times where guys we try to get them where they can take someone out to lunch or they can take them to dinner or something like that. If an account is big enough, we'll even go so far as to say that they should, you know, they can invite their spouse or whoever. And that's where, like to your point, it doesn't really come down to the type of business that you have. If it's something more B2B, it's a little longer sales cycle, it's a higher ticket item. That's a different way to look at things than opposed to just a quick one to one sale. I think that the main thing, though, is number one you've got to make sure that you walk in there with the not only the intent of what you're trying to get, which is simply said. You got to be willing to ask for the sale eventually, and so what's the pathway that's going to get you there? Because if you get their attention but you don't have anything to talk, to talk about, well, you just dropped it. That's kind of that first interaction. You've ruined that. So make sure that you have kind of a pathway of where you want to get to, with the ability to understand that, as a good salesperson, you're going to have to pivot, and that just comes through time, through coaching and all that. The other thing is, once you do have their attention, you got to make sure that, for me at least, most times there are people who just want to talk about business, and for guys like us, there's going to be times where listen, if I'm taking a sales call or whatever, I'm only taking this because I understand that there's a business aspect to it. However, the majority of people that you're going to talk to I forget the exact statistic, but the most people are going to be friendly. They're going to be talkers, and if you can find a way to talk about something that interests them outside of the business that's at hand, you will often be surprised at how much more friendly business at hand gets.

Mike Bauer : 22:53

So, for example, there was a one of our managers. He went out to go see an account with a guy who, to kind of whitewash a little bit of the story, so it's not too easy to look into. There was a contact who was kind of. He wasn't necessarily the yes or no absolute decision maker, he wasn't the owner of the company, but he was the training director and so he had the ability to veto the decision. So the owner was already pretty bought in, but this guy was. We had found out that he was former special forces and so we knew a little bit of this going into it. So we get the meeting and our manager walks in there and the you brought Jaco Wilnick in.

Mike Bauer : 23:30

Right, yeah, exactly Right, and so so so our guy, Nick, walks in there and Nick is one of the best communicators that I know. He's excellent at relationships and this is actually something that I learned from him so he goes in there and before they get started, he notices that there's a very, very specific type of gosh. I'm going to butch this. I think it's a Black Panther chameleon that this guy has tattooed on his full sleeve of tattoos. And you know there's, there's special forces tattoos and all this. You know, probably the Constitution, I don't know. He's got a full sleeve of tattoos, though, right, and a lot of it's military base, but he notices there's, there's this one, one tattoo that's off. He goes is that is that tattoo a Black Panther chameleon? And immediately he said there was a moment where his demeanor, this guy, changed from being this, this, this hard ass, if I can say that, of a, of a military guy, to all of a sudden his demeanor changed and it was like he just softened. He didn't say anything, it wasn't any, he just you could tell. And he goes how do you know what a Black Panther chameleon is? And immediately Nick just had this repertoire of things that he understood, because he's fascinated by reptiles and amphibians and all this.

Mike Bauer : 24:38

I'm telling you that conversation lasted for 40 minutes of the one hour of conversation, and those 40 minutes were the things that signed that deal.

Mike Bauer : 24:46

And so I guess the lesson behind that is you're not always going to get that opportunity where you can have a conversation that is above and beyond just the business that is at hand. But as salespeople, because we have this flight or a flight or flight response that goes off in our head when we hear an objection or when we hear you know someone trying to push us too fast or they throw us off our script, we got to remind ourselves that at the end of the day, we're just having a conversation and if we can have a conversation around something that interests them, no like and trust that's going to skyrocket, because they're going to see that this guy isn't just here as a salesperson, he's a true human being, and maybe I'll let my guard down and hear him through Now. It's not going to change that. You still have to be a professional, know your product, overcome objections and all of that, but, man, does it make getting in the door a lot easier?

Philip Sessions: 25:29

Yeah, it really does, and just being relatable with people is so much better I mean relating this back to speaking. When we just share information, when we just give everybody what they want, really, at the end of the day there's a few people like us who are like, hey, just give me the information, I'll go apply it and I'll take action now. But most people, like you said, while they do want the information, they want to feel connected to them and they also need that help with that connection with that. Obviously, with this you were just trying to win them over, but when you're trying to give that information, a lot of people they need help connecting it in their brain because it's like, ok, I've gotten the information, but how does this apply to me? And so when you bridge it with the story, that's what helps them understand that more.

Philip Sessions: 26:17

Plus, you, as you tell the story, I always like to say that you need to share a little bit of you within that story. So share your story. That applies to what it is that you're trying to teach and educate on, or give some kind of situation that you've been in kind of like you just did with that sales conversation there and use that to help people understand that and more people will get it and be bought into you as a speaker or even as a sales professional, because you shared that story and everything and that's a great story. And so sometimes you don't know what a Black Panther chameleon, whatever, is. I can even repeat that back. But yeah, if you can just find something, anything and just keep trying stuff, so that's actually a good. I think of this as a good question to ask you.

Philip Sessions: 27:04

So sometimes, especially in a sales conversation, maybe we're struggling like that and maybe we don't find something because maybe that was mentioned, the Black Panther chameleon was mentioned and yet like that was just like whatever man, like this guy is just seeing stuff. That kind of like I could say, oh yeah, you got America flag behind you. You got America flag behind you, you like America? Huh, yeah, yeah, I kind of like it. Like is this like really like a stupid? And so I can see where some sales people would and I've probably been guilty of this myself like, oh well, let me find something else. Why? So you got kids up there? Oh, I see you got your wife. Like I just keep trying to point out things that I'm seeing to relate with you. How would you, how would you help us navigate to be better about relating without coming off as super obvious that I'm just looking at the environment and finding something to relate with you is this totally goes back to the you know.

Mike Bauer : 27:59

You asked me where did I learn that one thing it's from over talking too much and screwing it up and then eventually just realize how not to screw it up anymore? The it's it does go back to. So and I'm actually I'm not intentionally doing this, but, for example, one of the things that I noticed when we jumped on, you've got two Alex Hermosi books behind you and one of the things that Alex talks about. See, I don't look like I do.

Mike Bauer : 28:19

So with with his books and leads and offers. One of the things that Hermosi talks about that I really appreciate is the different levers of business and so if you can break down what's the most important thing and then go with that lever first and then kind of go from there. So, for example, when, when our guys are walking in to have this meeting, yet the end of the day the thing that we want to have is them to sign a W9 and a master service agreement with us to allow our guy in their classroom every single week to be able to sell our memberships, that would be great. But if we walk in there and we immediately say this is what we want signed here, like that just doesn't work. You don't go on a date and go cool shoes, what's your bank account information? So where I think it really just comes down to is you start with being insanely curious. I use something that a tool with my team that's called the pitch notebook that I can dive into. I think it's the most powerful tool that we've ever created for our guys. But you've got to start with being insanely curious that over time it's going to build up. So Alex talks about those levers you want to start with first. Let's see if we can hit a common ground. If that lever doesn't work, you've got to go to the next one. You've got to go to the next one. If you've done your research ahead of time, you don't have to. If the personal thing doesn't work, then it's going into the next one.

Mike Bauer : 29:32

When we walked into a partner of ours in Baltimore called Gun Tree, I knew that the owner before he worked there was a Baltimore police officer, and so I asked him about the because it was. It kind of went away from. You know I couldn't come up with something that was entirely personal, but I did know that he had a sheriff's background, and so I asked him I'm like Rick, what got you to go from being law enforcement officer to owning this massive range? And I won't curse like he did. But basically he said I ask myself that question every single day, and we had a chuckle about it as he's taking us on a tour to the next thing.

Mike Bauer : 30:07

And so I think the point is not necessarily that you have to have a bunch of facts that you rely on or anything like that. I think it just comes down to you just naturally have to be curious, with the understanding that eventually you have to get down to business, and sometimes that's going to happen right away. Sometimes you're going to have some leeway and you just need to realize that until you go through that cycle over and over in your own business, it's going to take a little bit of time. I think that success in sales does create more success. So if you go from one industry to another, you're going to obviously bring all those skills with you, but you're still going to have to go through that same process of that learning curve, and so I would tell someone, the best thing that you can do is keep a pitch notebook.

Mike Bauer : 30:46

We can dive into what that is, but ultimately you just need to be, if anything, comfortable with getting the repetitions, knowing that over time, as long as you're being intentional with how to create what we call competitive positive, how do I make this a win, even if it wasn't a win, so that the next time you get better at it? And I think it's less of here's exactly how you do it. It's more so be curious, make sure that you have a pathway to where you want to get to, and be willing to adapt and be flexible in the middle so that you can have the conversation that the person in front of you wants to have just as much as the conversation you want to have.

Philip Sessions: 31:20

I like that, yeah, really focusing on that end in mind, but, yeah, being malleable along the way. And that's where and I'm going to tie this back in with speaking that's where I like to have stories because, yes, you have your end goal where you try to end your speech at, but then you're using stories and you can adapt your speech based on the audience there, based on what's speaking on stage. Obviously, you're not adapting to the conversation, but what you're doing in a sales conversation is you're adapting how you're navigating through your sales pitch, so to say like, okay, hold on, they don't want to go straight into business, so let's back up a little bit, let's be a little bit more personable. Or, okay, now things are starting to move along, we can jump right into business. Or yeah, you got some of those people like all right, man, all right, like I'm cool, like I don't need to talk about myself, like all right, let's talk business, let's get right into it and you can figure out where, like how to navigate that along the way. But in the end, obviously for you is to help the customer, not about selling them I mean, obviously that has to come to help them but still it's about helping that customer with your product or service. So I like that. But yeah, let's talk about this pitch notebook. I like that. Yeah, it's something you want to say first, I got one thing that I want to add in there and then definitely I'd love to dive into the pitch notebook.

Mike Bauer : 32:31

So one of the cool things with our 130 sales reps that we have is that essentially what these guys eventually, when they get through that business proposal and all that and they're now in these classes, their full-time job is essentially small group public speaking. That is 100% what they do.

Mike Bauer : 32:50

And so they've got a sales pitch where sometimes they're like I don't want to call it a sales pitch, how do you get paid? Well, I got to close. It's a sales pitch, but the way that we do it is very informative, and so one of the things that we try to coach these guys on is there's a framework that I really love, which is memorize, internalize, customize. It's just a really great framework that you start with a script, then you internalize it so that you don't even have to think about it as you go and then you can customize it from there, which is just really customizing to your audience, not necessarily customizing the message. Most people try to screw it up and start from scratch when, in reality, just because you had a joke that flopped at one engagement doesn't mean that now you rewrite your whole pitch. You just tweak it for the audience.

Mike Bauer : 33:31

But one of the things that we do is, to your point, the stories and personal engagement we intentionally have in a sales pitch that we teach our guys for insurance compliance reasons. We have areas of engagement in there, and so, for example, one of the things that we used to teach our guys was they should ask the audience how many of you guys have traveled in the last year, whatever it was, and that was always fun during COVID, because then people would raise their hand or whatever and it was like, oh really, you traveled, but we would ask someone OK, so, philip, where's the last place you've traveled to? Texas, texas, ok, my man, texas is pretty big Land of the free. Where exactly in Texas did you go to?

Philip Sessions: 34:08

The Houston area, houston.

Mike Bauer : 34:09

Ok, business pleasure a little mixture of both A little. Mixture of both A little mixture of both OK. What did you do for business when you're down there?

Philip Sessions: 34:16

I did a podcast recording with a buddy Love it, man, very cool.

Mike Bauer : 34:20

So when you're down in Houston, right, and you're down there recording a podcast, let's say and now that, right, there is where I would transition back into my pitch. So what we would coach our guys to do is do two to three questions of asking you something where you feel as if you're directing the flow of the conversation. But in my mind, I know that anything that you give me is only going to add to what I'm about to give you, and so the idea behind why we were asking someone that is, our product gives the opportunity to service someone in all 50 states, even when they're traveling. Hmm, so when we're asking you business or pleasure, you might have some funny story of like man, I was down in Texas, I didn't tell anybody this but man, I was learning about dolphins and we're like dolphins, like I'm telling you the things that we would get. It would get the entire five to 10 people in this class. They've all been in this classroom for four hours listening to this instructor. Now this guy's down in Texas learning about dolphins. They're like what? And all of a sudden you feel the room, the guard, comes down because now we're talking about dolphins. I thought we were talking about insurance.

Mike Bauer : 35:26

So the point there is again if you're able to take that, the message that you already have, and you can find ways that you can interact with your audience. You don't always have the opportunity, especially a big group. It's hard to do that with a microphone or whatever, but we've been to those, those, those events where, when, the, when you get the engagement from the speaker, even if you, you know, three steps removed you can go. I know what he's doing right now. He's trying to get buy in. We still feel more comfortable than the guy who's just talking to you the whole time.

Philip Sessions: 35:52

Yeah, I agree. And there's sometimes on the other side where I've seen the guy that like just so much buy in and that that kills me. I get there's people that need tons and tons of interaction and tons of buy in and saying yes, 500 times before they finally get to the sell or whatever. But those, those kill me. Like what you're saying here, like a little bit, like I'm cool with that, like even I would, I'd probably be like I get what they're doing, but I'm still liking it. But some of them, some of those guys that are speakers out there, they just they go way too far. It's like all right, like Russell Brunson, I mean, obviously he's done very well for himself. So I'm here like being hypocritical because he knows what he's doing, but still the way that he he does it sometimes.

Philip Sessions: 36:35

I remember growth con three. He did that. He's like, oh, here we go, like, yeah, here's our stuff. And it was the same exact thing from growth con two. But then he's like, oh, let me bring up somebody a testimonial. And oh, let me bring another testimonial. And he had like eight testimonials. Like, dude, I get it. Click funnels works. I'm good Like, oh, here I am talking about it. So clearly it was still working, like I was still thinking about it, remembered the speech and everything. So I say this little tongue in cheek, a little hypocritical if you will, but you got to figure out who your audience is and clearly I was in the audience because I've never bought click funnels, but there's somebody out there that was there for that and so, yeah, even even if it's somebody like me that doesn't care for how you speak, still speak the way that you're going to speak. You got to be you at the end of the day, kind of like we talked about it's very beginning.

Mike Bauer : 37:22

But I think it's a good lesson to that though, because there was a whole there's a whole documentary on the lead up to growth con three, and I watched the recording of growth con two where he did what was that? Two to three million and 90 minutes, and I mean it was. It was storybook. I mean there you can watch that, and there's actually there's a moment that he actually has from growth con two that we implemented into our pitch and so, for example which is so funny that you brought this up but one of the things that he said was you know, if the what I saw happening was do you remember when he in growth con two, when he signed like what one out of seven people or whatever? He said guys, if this is for you, you meet by people in the back of the room. Whatever talk track he was, he goes. Guys, if this is for you, getting up right now is not rude.

Mike Bauer : 38:05

We think about this. There were 9,000 people in that audience. There were guaranteed people that were getting up, going to the bathroom, had no interest in this, but when you looked around and you saw that there were people getting up and going to the back of the room, you thought well, that guy trusts him to give him $3,000, that guy I'm gonna give $3,000, you know what I'm gonna? I want to do it too. And so this momentum of getting people to push forward by using your surroundings is, I actually think, a really really good example of why that works so well for him.

Mike Bauer : 38:33

Because little things like that, those little nuances of like guys getting right now is not rude. I would teach my guys to say if they had an instructor who didn't give them the time afterwards for the students to sign up for the membership, we would tell them to tell the guys, guys, as soon as you're done filling out that form that's the reason I'm here go ahead and raise your hand. Raising your hand is not rude. The moment that we did that, we increase our conversion rate 5% to 10% per person, because they now were telling the audience exactly what to do and it just made it less awkward, whereas before they were like well, should I, should I not? You just told them what to do. But yeah, the difference between growth con two and growth con three, the results were pretty drastic, I think.

Philip Sessions: 39:10

Yeah, yeah, I didn't see that documentary. That that's crazy. I don't remember that him saying that. I mean, that's very specific thing to remember. But yeah, that is crazy to think it. And again, he is incredible at what he does. So I'm not saying that he's wrong by any means it just I personally don't like that and I know there's other people that don't.

Philip Sessions: 39:30

But again, when it comes to speaking, when it comes to sales, you got to do what you like, what works for you. Like you mentioned the conversion rate, the data is what matters at the end of the day, and if the data says this isn't working, don't do it. If it says it's working, keep doing it, no matter what people say. So, man, I know we were going to talk about the, the notebook, but I mean, we're kind of running out of time here and so I definitely want to be able to respect your time and get to our last question, because I kind of feeling what it might be. But I'm kind of curious to see if you can only share one message for the rest of your life, what would that message be?

Mike Bauer : 40:04

For me, I think, having constant curiosity and be striding and striving to continue to get better, I think those are the two things that if I were to tell young like these are the qualities that have helped work for you over the last 10 years and if you just keep doing this for the next 10 years, you know, I think we always try to give ourselves and give other people these, these grandiose like, do this or do that, and it's ultimately just going to come down to the the historic of what worked for us. I think, on a foundational level, if I can teach my kids always be curious about something and always be working towards getting better at something, I think that they're going to be just all right.

Philip Sessions: 40:41

Man, you're exactly right and I thought that constant curiosity would be the thing that you had mentioned. And it's true the more curious we are, the better and the long run and the more we're going to be able to do in life. So definitely go out there and be curious. If people want to follow you, they want to get to know more about you. Mike, where's the best place for them to reach out to you?

Mike Bauer : 41:02

Social media. Look up Mike F Bauer. If he doesn't have a great beard, it's probably not me.

Philip Sessions: 41:06

Nice, you do have a great beard there and, by the way, like great eyesight. On seeing the Alex Hormozzi books, I was very shocked by that. That's why I was like, wait, you can read that. That's why I look. But anyways, mike, appreciate you coming on, sharing the value that you did. Sales is definitely something that we all can strive to get better at every single day. Guys, make sure that you like subscribe, go follow Mike to learn more about what he's got going on with his great beard and all, and have a great day.