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What does teaching elementary school for nearly two decades have to do with closing sales in a fast paced call center more than you might think. Today's guest, Doug Robinson has taken the patient's communication skills and the people first approach he masters as a teacher and turn them into a secret weapon in the world of sales. Doug's story is proof that no matter where you start, the skills you've built can lead you to success in surprising ways. Stick around because we're diving into how Doug went from grading papers to crushing sales targets and how his journey can inspire yours. Doug, I want to thank you for coming in today and if you can break the ice a little bit here and let me know a little bit more about your background. I know you started out most of your career as a teacher before getting into sales. Can you give me an idea of where you started out in life? What led you into teaching? Absolutely. So I am a fifth generation teacher actually. My my parents were teachers, grandparents were teachers going back all the way in. And I was just the family business is something I really wanted to do. I loved it. I love teaching I loved being with the kids, and seeing them develop and you know working with them And that was a passion of mine for a long time. It was something that You know I really worked hard at and I loved it a lot, but, once you get to the top of the teaching pay scale there's nowhere to go. And so I had two daughters that I wanted to push towards college and help them out with their lives. And it really started with, starting businesses, we, I a couple of friends that I started a sports camp and we started painting houses and just make ends meet. And then, you had a, an entrepreneurial bug a little bit, dissatisfied with mainly just the income from teaching. Yeah, it wasn't the students at all. I would, if they would pay, what I needed to do to survive or push my kids into college if they would have paid there, I would have stayed there forever. But it was just something that I had to do to help my family. Okay. No, that makes sense. And basically you mentioned that you'd started like a painting business and like some side hustles. How did that kind of work out for you? I went really well. It it first started with the painting business. I started with my dad a couple of summers, then another couple of teacher friends and I started painting a lot. And it got to the point where we had to turn a lot of people away because, when you're a teacher, you don't do it for the money, so everything is a passion and, you want to do everything right. And so like we were. We were good painters and like we, because we were very particular about getting everything done on a fast pace, but everything looking good. And, if it took us an extra day to make sure everything looked good we would do that because, we had that passion. And we, we definitely started turning people away because we couldn't keep up with the demand and then we started the sports camp and the sports camp, when it started with 20 kids and it exploded to about 150 kids and, it was fun, but but again, you have teaching and then you have. The painting houses, then you have, it starts to stack up and you're going for 40 hour days to 70 hour days. Or that's 40 hour weeks. Yeah. No and I'm guessing the sports camp, that came about because, one of the other things that I was in your background is that you were doing football coaching, right? Yeah. I love that. Middle school coaching. Okay. Now I'm going to go back a little bit more about being a teacher for a moment, and we'll circle around to some of the other things in a few minutes. But you mentioned that you were a fifth generation teacher. Everybody in your family had taught for many years. And was that just a calling to you to a certain extent, or just what was expected of you and your family? My parents were both teachers and they were very good teachers and I would go into their classroom as a kid and they would, let me help the students, cause they're elementary school teachers as well. And we would go out to recess with the kids. It was just fun, a fun atmosphere. And I thought it'd be a fun career path to, do that with my life because they lived a good life. And my parents, were great. And so they were they were my idols. So it was something that, you know. I really liked to do. My brother went into the business world, I went into education and I don't regret it at all. What did you like, what was it that you really liked the most about teaching? Working with the students, it had to be. It definitely wasn't, you don't do it for the paycheck you do it to help kids thrive and and see their successes and, to be honest I wanted to be a father too, and I wanted to be around for my kids, and I saw that my, my parents were teachers, and they enjoyed their job, but they were also here for, my brother and I, so that was a motivating factor as well. Yeah, absolutely. Now, were there any kind of, skills or habits you developed in the classroom that kind of, surprised you as far as how useful they were in, other aspects, whether it was, developing your painting business, your, the sports camp or even in, your sales career? Yeah just it's persistence. It's getting getting students to do what you want to do, even though they don't want to do it. I was a 10 year old kid at once, too, at one point, too. And I remember going to school and dreading school and not wanting to be there. And it's just manipulating the situation so they A, want to be there, B, want to work for you. And it went the same way with, the painting jobs and the sports camp. It's manipulating the situation. One of the things that you mentioned was that you had, obviously had to convince, students to do things that they didn't want to do, right? They, obviously, kids probably, I have very various levels of motivation at the end of the day, you're judged as a teacher by, how many of these kids are passing and moving people forward and things like that. What, what kind of techniques do you use to obviously moving the motivated kids forward is easy. They're self motivated, internally, driven, but the kids that were, falling behind resistant to change, things like that. What kind of. Techniques to be used to help keep them moving forward. The longer you teach, the more or the better you get at reading students. And it's all about reading the situation. Cause like in, sales or anything else, it's every situation is different. Every kid is different. Some kids deal with humor. Some kids need to be pushed. Some kids need to, eat back a little bit. Something kids need help. Some kids, want help from students. Some kids want help from parents, from teachers, but some kids don't want help at all. And you just have to be able to read the situation and that's, the best teachers can read what that kid needs and what they need to do to survive. They don't fit in a box. Not every kid is a square peg, going into that square hole, there's a whole bunch of different shapes, like a whole bunch of different students. So you have to just be able to read students and figure out what they need. And sometimes it takes longer with others, like we just have to figure out what they need in order to survive or in order to thrive. And I'm sure you get a lot of different, educational abilities, like myself, I grew up with, ADD and, that's one of those things that, makes for some kids, I feel actually the act of learning is painful for them, and, transitioning that into sales, a lot of what you do in sales is, finding somebody's point of pain and trying to find a way to, provide a solution for that pain that works for both you and the customer, right? And I would imagine there's a certain amount of that goes on in education as well, right? Because the pain point is they don't want to do the work, but they also need to get the grades to move forward. Yeah, absolutely. And it's finding what that is, and that, that's the talent there. You had to find what that pain point, as you say is that what, or, or, What can push them and make them enjoy class and make them want to come back, because that's in sales, too You know, you want them to pay for your product you also want them to come back So you want them to enjoy this the relationship as well if you know if that can be yeah It doesn't do much good in sales to sell somebody something But then burn the bridge behind you and you got there, you got their money today, but now whatever company you're working with, whether it's the insurance company you work for now or your painting business or the, sports camp. Any of those kind of things, you get a bunch of bad reviews because you hard sold some people, burnt some bridges in the way that's going to be counterproductive, right? Yeah, you don't want that for sure. You want to keep that balance of, being in sales it's a lot like teaching. You have to keep that, teetering point. You want to push and push. But you don't want to push them over the proverbial cliff. You want to push them enough where you can be successful, where they're happy too, or at least they're, happy. Okay, with the situation, the same thing with the teaching. Like not every kid, I can't tell you that I was successful with every kid. Nobody's successful with every kid. Nobody's successful with every sale. It's just being able to keep that teetering point between, what's best for you and what's best for the company while also keeping your client happy. Yeah, absolutely. Now, obviously, when you decided to leave teaching to go into sales you were feeling kind of your own pain point there which was, your ability to provide for your family in a way that was up to the level that you wanted to do, right? Where was that teetering point for you that kind of led you to say, Hey, you know what? My, my life's goals and dreams and everything else were to be a teacher. And I need to jump off that to go do something majorly different. Sure. At one point I had five jobs, like it was. Teaching, coaching, painting houses doing the sports camp. But I was also working at a restaurant as a waiter. And, I was honestly was missing some of my kids sporting events. And was the end. Like I was always their coach growing up and I got into teaching so that I could be there for them too. That was, like I said earlier, that was my, one of my major draws to teaching is, yes you could work with the kids, but you could also be there for your family. And when I was missing a couple events, because I was doing things with either a other kids or B working at a restaurant. That was when I said, enough's enough. I don't want to miss any more of my kid's stuff. I need to find something else. And I had a buddy who was also a teacher and said, Hey, look, you could do this too. And your friend was in had transitioned from teaching into sales. You mean, and Indian insurance in particular. So he came gave me a blueprint. So that was definitely helpful, like seeing that. Yes, I could be successful doing this. Okay. Yeah. And basically what it's we haven't really talked about income or anything like that. Obviously, you, I think I saw on your profile that you had a master's degree and had been teaching for basically 19 years. And at that level you still needed to have, several other side hustles and jobs and things like that to be able to get to the point you could help your kids in college and things like that. And then that transition to sales, you were looking, then to change your income from that. And we're basically replace the income from the primary side hustles and do that in a way that gave you a little bit better work life balance. Is that correct? Yeah. So like it was consolidation. It's almost like a debt consolidation. You took all five of the jobs and made it into one 40 hour job to make, to hopefully make the same amount or maybe a little bit more. And and. I I did a lot of research on it. I did a lot of research how the company did, how my friend did. I shadowed him a few times to see what, his daily job was like. And and we grew up together, so he was very forthcoming with, how well he did financially and, it made sense at that point to, to make that jump. Okay. No, that makes sense. Now, so obviously you had a little bit of a leg up with somebody you trusted that gave you a introduction. And, I imagine it was pretty scary leaving the safety of 19 year sales or 19 year teaching career to jump in as a, rookie salesperson and learning on the fly. And what would you say was your biggest challenge as a rookie salesperson? And how did you overcome that? I think it was I think, that's a great question. It was for me. Everything's always a competition, you know I grew up in a very competitive household like my dad and brother still we compete in everything, and you know picking football games or golfing or you know Whatever Dylan so for me. I stepped in this situation and just knowing the fast pace realm of sales and like how everything's pedal to the metal, whereas teaching it's, Hey, we had to get to this point, but we have, two weeks to get to that point. So we have to speed it up, but we can slow it down if we need to, we can branch off and this is just pedal to the metal. I guess that was the biggest thing was the fast pace and getting used to that. But but I enjoyed it because the competition level growing up and through coaching and. And the fear of not succeeding, like I, Hey, look, you, you're in it now. You you're out of teaching or you gave up your other jobs. This is what you chose to do. And it's the fear of letting your family down, I think that was it too. Yeah. It was, it's a little bit more stressful for sure. One of your bigger challenges, like on a personal or emotional level, it's the fear of Kind of that fear of failure was a driver for you then based combined with the competitive nature of, that you grew up in a competitive household, obviously had, sports background and things like that, and you got into the next question that I was going to ask you, about coaching football and being, involved in competitive sports, what type of transferable skills were there that helped you in sales? One of the questions that was asked to me during my interview was I mentioned, cause I was looking for a job, the same company my friend was working for. And they said not a lot of people can go from teaching to sales. And I said my friend did this and they said not a lot of people are this person. And and I stopped and I said I, this is where my competitive nature came in. yeah I don't want to be this person. I want to bury this person, so it was more so having growing up with sports, like you said, that's a, that was a big one growing up in a family that's competitive, that fear of failure. In coaching you always want to win, and you always want to be the best and that, that is definitely the biggest transition I see, at least in sales because you're compared to everybody else and, You have to have that. That inner interpersonal drive to not just want to survive, but to thrive and, and my goal every week is to, with our team per se is to be the best, to have the most sales and if I'm in second, it drives me ups and it'll push me to the end until I can beat that last person. So yeah, I get that. I grew up, in a very competitive household as well. My dad was a business owner. I got into competing, very young in life, through, I was the shortest person on my middle school basketball team, I was really, I was a tiny little kid and, competing with, kids that get dunked. And then I, was, I got into horses and middle school and high school. And, by the time I was a senior in high school, I was in the top 10 in the country. And then I went to my first world championship my freshman year of college. And so everything, my mentor that I, used to spend summers with, he was a four time world champion and he used to always say, first is first and second is nothing. And I don't think that's a healthy attitude to have many things in life, when you're an internally motivated, like self driven person, it's that voice that's in the back of your head. All the time, right? It's that thing. Like what? It kind of mirrors what you said, which is, if you're coming in second, it just kicks you in the butt and makes you push that much. Absolutely. And it's it started with actually the person that I grew up with. He would like when I would tell him, I would say, Hey, I had this many sales this week and he would, he knew what kind of person I was and a competitor I was. And he would say, Hey that's pretty good for a little fella. And that would just, oh man, that would drive me nuts. And so that, that became my, Focus is beat that person. Then when you get on a team, it's beat that team. And now it doesn't help if you hurt the other people on your team, you want them to thrive too, because if they're thriving and you're trying to beat them, that pushes you farther too. So it goes into, helping your teammates because you want them to be better because if they're better, internally, that's going to push you to be better. Yeah. It's when I was younger, I used to do boxing. Sure. If you're, if you were going to be. Sparring with the people at your gym, you wanted to push each other to be better, but you didn't want to hurt each other, cause you're all there and your friends, they'd be hanging out afterwards and it's, the same thing. You want to be the best, but you also want to help the other people be the best around you because, that helps everybody, the rising tide carries all boats, so to speak. Sure. Absolutely. That's a great way to put it. And yeah, you just, you want everybody to succeed because if the company is succeeding, you're succeeding. Absolutely. No, excuse me there. So what would you say has been your proudest moment as a salesperson so far since moving over? I always go back to my team and my team is is or, the first two people on my team are my daughters. And I guess the, when my, income started to increase and, get to the point where I could be there for them. And provide for them at the same time that was my proudest moment. Like it wasn't I know what you're saying. And I get the whole numbers thing. And yeah, those are proud moments. Definitely the proudest is being able to provide for your kid for. In a way that you couldn't do so previously, that, that was by far the most internally proud moment for sure. Yeah, I get that. I know with my daughters, we went through some very lean years. I went through a divorce when my daughters were like in preschool age. And when my youngest was still in diapers, my older one was in preschool. And I was a single parent most of their lives. And, it had a very difficult time even holding down a job or my own businesses had failed. And I went from being, a very wealthy person to, all the way down to food stamps for a while, went through a personal and business bankruptcy. And, I remember, teaching my daughters that, Santa was real, but he was more like a UPS driver because whatever, Whatever you got from Santa and your friends might get more than you and things like that. Their parents had to pay Santa to deliver, it's like Amazon, you had to pay for the presents and then Santa would put them under the tree for you. Santa wasn't doing that for free. And to teach your kids that to manage their expectations of what you could do for them. And then, it's difficult and yeah, it's, it was heart wrenching. You want your kids to grow up in this world where everything is possible. And mine, when they were little, we're growing up in a world where not much really was. And, Using sales to dig out of that hole and be become financially successful again. It was really nice I remember being able to take my daughters to a concert You know for the first time and it was just sure you know we want to see Carrie Underwood of all people and it was because I'd actually won the con or won the tickets at a contest at work and They you know, they said hey you win you won two tickets And there were halfway decent tickets, and I remember going in and I traded the tickets in that were two decent tickets and I traded them in to get worse tickets so that I could take everybody. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just that I, that drive of doing something for your kids is just unbelievable. Oh, sure. And seeing, cause I, I played sports growing up and I'd still golf and things like that and you really want to do well, it's a whole nother level when you see your kids doing well, and that just, that's the biggest motivator I think by far. Absolutely. I feel like one of the things that. From teaching that's really important is being able to, build trust. I feel how can you get a kid to learn from you if they don't trust you to a certain extent? And I feel like sales has a lot to do with teaching. And, I personally, and one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you today is that I've always personally believed that, teachers are some have a lot of the skills to make the best salespeople because. Your job is to build trust in people, transfer knowledge, and then get them many times to do something that they don't want to do, but that is in their best interest. And that pretty much, in my opinion, describes what we do as salespeople every day. absolutely. You have to be, teachers are empathetic, and they they can feel, like what you want. You know what's wrong with your situation and they want to help. And I think that's the definition of being a salesman. You want, you find out what their issue is, what you can do to help and how you can help it. And, but they have to, like you said, trust you. You have to see where they're coming from. That you do in particular on your end that you feel helps to get customers to trust you and obviously in the inbound, call center type world, you've only got a few minutes. You don't have, eight or nine months to build a relationship with a student. You've got, 15 minutes to introduce yourself, get that person to know that you care about him, get them on your side and then get them to trust you enough to give you their credit card number, right? what would you say is any kind of a skill that you developed in teaching that, helps you do that? I think the biggest one is listening. Listening and reading. Reading what they want, finding out what they want. But listening to what their plight is, or what their issue is. Do they need, this or that or what is their problem and how can you help fix at least a portion of that problem? And same thing with teaching is being able to read students what is best for them and then listening to what their issue is. And not just saying, okay everything else, don't be a robot, listen to what they have to say and not, take a call and just everybody's the same. You're going to get the same spiel every time because they're not going to trust you. They need to know that like you've been, if I was a customer and I was calling in for something, I want that salesman to listen to what I have to say and know what I'm saying. And. Be able to help me with my situation because my situation is different from every other situation. And to me, my situation is the most important situation in the world. And you have to give them that. Yeah. That basically you're listening to them. Personalizing it for them and trying to, in your mind, in your actions then, really convey to them that in that moment they're the most important person in the world to you. Absolutely. Absolutely. No distractions because I want to be able to help. How would you say that you approach objection handling and do you feel like your teaching background helps you with that? For sure. When students are pushing back and, or clients are pushing back on, on what they want to do or anything like that. And it's, you have to show empathy. You have to show them, like you understand their issues and you want to help with them. And and like you were saying earlier, it's being on their side, showing that they need to trust you. And Yeah. Like for me being on the phone, I try to put myself in the situation. I want this guy to understand what I need. And and this is not, not what I was expecting. So I want him to be empathetic. Like I want him to, say, Hey, I understand what you're going through and let's see what we can do to help you out. Yeah. So because the customers often, they're on the phone with you because they have a problem or a point of pain. And our job as a salesperson is to find out what that point of pain is and find a way that we have to soothe that pain, so to speak. Sure. If they're having challenges, we want to go through that. I really like what you mentioned there about empathy. That's something I always try to do. I often try to think about, if I was on the other side of this desk or if I was on the other side of this phone call, what would I be feeling? What was, what are the things that I could do? And if I can put myself, mentally and emotionally into their seat at that point. I feel like it definitely helps me reason a way out that can help them find a solution that is in their own best interest. And I feel that's a lot like teaching as well. You're, your kids don't want to, they don't want to be a lot of the kids don't want to be straight A students. They just want to keep their eligibility up so they can go on the. The basketball team or the football team, right? And you've got to find a way to problem solve for them to do that. Does that kind of absolutely. And you know what, like we were saying earlier, each, and like you just mentioned, each person is different. Not everybody wants to get it, get all A's. Some people want to be just eligible, same thing with sales. Not everybody, A lot of people understand their situations. A lot of, they understand that not that I'm might be paying more than the other person because of this, and this. And they just want to hear that, that you understand their situation and you're trying your best to help them out. And I also meant to shameless plug here in my book, called stop selling, start believing, right? One of the core messages in the book is the importance of belief, right? Like not just in the product, But in your customers potential success with it, right? And I feel like that's Very similar as well to, with students, you're, you believe in that kid, you see the potential in them, you know that they can, do better than where they are. And you've got to find a way to help them do that. And in sales, a lot of times somebody, whether they're buying insurance or buying a car, they're buying a consulting program, you're. You wouldn't be selling it and putting yourself out there on the line and staking your reputation on it if you didn't believe what you were doing was right for the customer. And what do you, is there anything in particular that you felt you've been successful with? And conveying that sense of belief to your customers is the same as you would have with your students. It's not one set thing. Like I said, it's, each student, each client is different. It's in that moment, reading that, That person and understanding what they want to hear. And you're not saying things just because you want to hear it. Like you said, you believe in the product you're selling. But you had to show them that, Hey, look, I believe in what you say. This is what I'd say. This is what I can provide you. And we are this kind of company and this is our path to, so you can trust that this is not just a just a company that just a pop up company. This is, we've been here forever and and this is what you're saying is like you're leveraging the strength and longevity and trustworthiness of the company and the product that you're representing, right? And then you as a person, like, how are you trying to convey your own personal belief? Sure I, yeah I give them two situations that I've been through hey, look, I understand this happened to me once, and, this is what happened and I understand it's a frustrating time for you, because, I remember being frustrated as well. I remember not, having this to, this to fall back on. And it's just reading that situation and trying to pull from your own personal informations, because if they can hear that you've been through that, those same issues and you sound successful on the other line, that maybe they can, see that and see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's just reading each situation and it's tough. It's going to take you a while as a salesman or teacher, like you're not going to just come into a company and blow everybody away because you have to either you're either born with it, which 90 percent of people aren't, or you have to learn it. So it takes a while. It's if you circle back around to, coaching football, it wasn't always the most talented kids that did the best. It was the kids that had enough talent to succeed, that put the hard work in Really did that. For sure. And, I had teams that like were much more talented that were 500, 500 records and I had teams that were, they just worked their tails off and, they, they were undefeated. So it was. No, it's each situation. It's just separate. No, absolutely. All right. So let's kind of change gears a little bit. You came to have a little bit of fun and sure. Go for it. Perfect. So one of the things that, I'd like to do is a little bit of objection handling. Exercise, right? Kind of what you do in coaching to get over the hump. It's, cause I feel this is a good place to segue into that, right? In order to get over the hump to where your talent meets your potential, you have to put in practice. You've got to put in the reps and the hard work behind the scenes, not just when it counts. And so one of the things I've always done when I used to manage large sales teams is a lot of, objection handling role play, just different parts of the sales process to make sure everybody was sharp. And one of the exercises that I like to do was something called, are you out of hot chocolate and it'll get clear in a moment. Okay. So basically we're going to do set up a framework that has nothing to do with anything that we're actually selling and just build those skills and sharpen them a little bit. That's just an exercise that you still like to do with a lot of my people. Now, in order to do that, the first thing we do is I go through a objection handling framework that I like to use and that I used to teach to a lot of the sales teams that I used to manage. Now before we dive into that, I do want to share something special with listeners. If you're looking to take your sales game to the next level, visit StopSellingStartBelieving. com To learn all of my objection handling frameworks and grab a free copy of my book million dollar questions, where you can pay 10 bucks for it on Amazon. It's packed with a thousand powerful questions that will help you close more deals and build stronger relationships. And don't forget to watch for our objection handling masterclass coming soon. It's designed to help you master the art of overcoming objections and boost your closing rate like never before. You can check this stuff out at StopSellingStartBelieving. com Now, back to you and me, Doug, the next thing that I like to go through is that we're out of hot chocolate. Before we do that, I'm going to take you real quickly through a basic objection handling method that I used to teach all of my clients and sales staff. It's called the AVARA method. Okay, there's the five step method, which I know sounds like a bit much to remember. But basically what IFR stands for is acknowledge, validate, ask, respond, and agree. Okay, so basically the first thing when the customer gives us an objection. I'll put you in the customer's place real quick. What's an objection that you face a lot, in your everyday sales career? Oh, most common is that's way too much money. Way too much money. So a price objection. Okay. So to break this down into five steps, the first thing I would typically do would be acknowledge the objections. Oh, wow. You feel it's way too much money, right? I, I do definitely agree. This is a second step, which is validate. I definitely agree. It is very expensive. Next step is ask. So why do you feel that it's expensive? I used to pay 200 a month and you're asking for 325 a month. And then the next step is respond. That's a great point. I realized that you used to pay 200 a month and now it's 300 a month. There have been some, inflationary pressures. Your personal situation has changed and in the market, this seems to be the best option that we have now. And then the next step after that is agreed. And that's where you're going to make sure that the customer agrees with you or you can ask for the sale. Okay. So if we're at a point where we feel like we can ask for the sale, like it's a very quick transaction, we agree on to move forward or we agree to move past that particular point. Does it make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And a price objection is fairly straightforward. Say for the agreement, we're going to say, so I feel like With the pricing and the different car and all the other factors that we have here that this is a really great deal for us today. Would you like to get this started on a monthly or annual basis? And so that's how the basic framework of that works. Alright, so Doug, the Next thing I want to do is let's flip this around and let you go through this once, all right? You ready? It all looks pretty good to me, but I really feel like I need to talk to my wife before I make a final decision. Okay, so you're saying you want to give your wife a call before you make your decision on this? Yep, absolutely, and that was step one, acknowledge, very good. Next step, how would you validate that? Yeah I understand. I'm in that same situation. I would want to ask my wife or significant other their opinion on how we spend our money as well. Okay, perfect. Now, the next step, what would you want to ask me to move me off of my spot? Obviously, we've talked a lot. What do you think that she would say about this situation or what we've talked about thus far? I feel like she would probably be pretty happy with the price. The bigger thing that she would probably be worried about is, the reputation of the company. Do you have any more information I can give her on that? I do respond. I totally understand your situation. Instead of me conveying that information to you and then you sending it to her and then you call me back, why don't we get her on the phone? So that way I can tell you everything that I tell her, everything that I've already told you. Okay. And then the, then I, as a customer, I might say something, you know what, she's out of town or. I might just say, you know what? Yeah, that's a great idea. Let's get her on the phone and then the next step would be agree. Yeah, definitely. Let's give her a call. I'll explain all that situation to her and we could take, we could do this with a, either monthly payments or we can pay it off in full. Okay, perfect. And now basically that format is something that can be used for. You can use it in selling, cars, boats, cows, pretty much anything you want to do. One of the things I feel like is even there, in teaching and you've taught kids in school, I've taught sales to, individuals and entire teams at a time. And that's something that I always feel like helps in teaching as well. You always have to acknowledge students struggles. You need to validate their feeling. And then you need to, be guiding them towards success, right? Absolutely. You just it's a process, you wanna, you want to find out what they need and what they want and how to get there. All right. So now we promised the listeners that we're going to sell them some hot chocolate, right? So next I'm going to go through this real quick. And something that I've used in a lot of sales meetings over the years. It's a role play that I like to call. We're out of hot chocolate. All right. Now, basically what we want to do is Doug, you can pretend to be in a, you're going to pretend to be a barista facing a customer objection or a waiter at a restaurant where, some picky customer came up and they want hot chocolate, but you're out of the hot chocolate. Does it make sense? And what we're going to do is use the Avara method to. Go through some steps to find out what can we do to satisfy the customer, even though we don't have the one thing that they really want? Does it make sense? Okay. Sure. Okay. All right. And I'll take you through a little bit on how I do this, right? The customer is going to say something like, I'm out of hot chocolate. I'm going to, as a waiter, I'll say, Hey, yeah, we're out of hot chocolate. The customer's Oh man, I really want hot chocolate. So I use the five step method to ask them, basically validate their concerns, acknowledge it. Yeah, I know you're disappointed that we're out of hot chocolate. We want to validate it. I'd be very upset too. Then you ask a question, something about what was it that was. What was it that was important about the hot chocolate? Was it a consistency? Were you looking for a warmer, cold drink? Were you looking for it to be mostly earthy? Or was it the sweetness that was important to you? Things like that. And then your response, another. Option, maybe we don't know about chocolate, but maybe we have a lot or maybe we have coffee that's warm. Maybe we have a diet coke that might, if it was sweet and then you agree, it was, that's something that would work. Now, the customer doesn't have to agree and then you can just keep going through the process until you find something the customer's happy with. Does it make sense? Okay, sure. Keep your in front of you and then just go through each step as we go through it. Make sense? I guess so. All right. You're the waiter. Okay. What can I get you to drink today? You know what I really like? It'd be a nice hot chocolate. A large hot chocolate would be perfect. So you're saying you're looking for some hot chocolate today? Absolutely. I totally understand. I love hot chocolate as well. Unfortunately, we don't have any hot chocolate today. Oh, wow. That's really frustrating. That's what I had my heart set on. Yeah I get that. I love hot chocolate as well. What in particular are you looking for as far as a hot chocolate go, are you looking for something sweet or hot? Why is it the hot chocolate that, that is, why is it that the hot chocolate is what you're looking for in particular today? You know what? I just had my heart set on a hot chocolate. I, I was really in the mood for a nice warm drink. It's a really cold day today. Yeah, I totally understand that and I get that as well. How about this, instead of a hot chocolate, obviously you don't know, you know we don't have any of that anymore. We do have hot chai's, hot tea's, hot coffee's or anything I can help you out with that. I'm not really sure man, I was the, I was really looking for a hot chocolate. Do you have anything like really similar to a hot chocolate? Like what would you do if you were me? Yeah I get it too. I get on those fixes as well. I want a hot chocolate and that's all I can see is hot chocolate. Obviously we don't have any of that right now, but what we do have is we can do one of two things. We can either, get you a hot chai mocha, which is chocolatey flavor, but it's got that coffee feel to it as well. Or we can just, turn around and get you chocolate milk instead. If it's chocolate you're looking for, we can get you chocolate milk. It's cool, but, or we can get you that, that chai mocha. Yeah. So you have chocolate milk but that's cold. I was really looking for something hot. Is there anything we could do to make the cold milk hot? Absolutely. We can, put it in the, on the stove and warm it up for you. So it'll be a a hot chocolate milk, if you will. Is that with a whole milk or a skim milk? We No, generally only carry one one kind of milk and I you know, I know I sometimes when I'm trying to lose You know lose weight. I've tried to do skim milk, but a lot of times I like that whole milk feel to it We normally just have 2 percent milk, but it is very good milk Yeah, I was hoping for something a little richer than that Know what we could do and I understand the whole richness of chocolate What we could do is we could add a little cream to it And we can, so it would be a little bit, more, of that whole milk feel to it. Okay. And you think And we can do, we can get that, we can get that for you this second. Okay. And you feel I guess what I'm worried about though is that now we're going to water down the chocolate. I feel like I just don't want chocolate milk. I don't want a warmed up chocolate milk. I really wanted hot chocolate. I feel like that's just not going to be sweet enough for me. What do you have that would be warm and sweet, but still have that kind of rich, full flavor? For sure, I would want that flavor as well. What I would suggest is our mocha coffee, because that is definitely, it's not milk, but it's definitely has that rich, full, chocolatey flavor, but it's rich and full and it's warm. So you don't have to, we're not warming up chocolate on a stove for you. This is what it's meant to be. Chocolate milk is usually meant to be cold. This chocolate mocha is meant to be hot. This is what you're looking for. Okay. All right. Let's go with that for now. I appreciate that. Absolutely. We can do that with your credit card. Oh, we just put it on my bill. I'm ordering a whole bunch of stuff here for the table. So sure. What else? Okay. So a couple of things that I would look at. You did pretty well with that as far as keep moving things forward and offering, offering solutions and things like that and not getting frustrated. You could tell that you've been doing sales for a long time now, which was awesome. The one thing I would mention, you did get a little bit off of the Avara program a little bit. So as I said, no, I don't want that. You went immediately into offering alternative solutions. I'm going to switch this back around and I'll go through this with you and I'm going to be the way that you'd be the customer and I'll show you could look a slightly different. It makes sense for you. Okay. So I'm going to be the waiter now. I'm coming over to your table. Hey, how can I help you today? What would you like? Yeah I'm really looking forward to a nice hot chocolate today. It's the only thing I really want. Okay. You know what? That's fantastic. Unfortunately, we are out of hot chocolate today. It's, we had a run on it. It's been a cold day. I tell you what, man, I'd be frustrated by that too. That's my favorite. We're really known for that here. Can I ask you one thing real quick, though? Obviously, I want to make you happy. What was it about the hot chocolate that was most important to you? Was it mostly that it was a hot drink? That it was a sweet drink? Or something that was just really rich and full? It's pretty cold out today. And, I just came out from the snow. And I wanted something warm to drink. And I love hot chocolate. Okay. We do have coffee here. Do you feel like a nice hot coffee would do what you need? Not a big coffee fan. I'll drink it, but it's hot, which is nice, but I was looking for that chocolatey flavor to it. Chocolatey. Gotcha. So basically, and say that was my respond and now I'm going to go to an agree. So what we're going to do on either we can't agree on a coffee cause it doesn't sound like you want that. So we're going to agree on a next step, right? So if we could find something that was warm, but still gave you that rich fullness, that, that would be something that would be obviously not what she really wanted, probably something would satisfy your need. Would you agree? Yeah I understand that would be, if that's my alternative, if I can't have chocolate milk or hot chocolate, that would definitely be something that I would be looking at. Okay, great. And unfortunately we're out of all chocolate mochas, any of that kind of stuff, unfortunately. We do have a chai tea, which is pretty cool. It's not chocolate, but it does have that sweetness to it. It's got, the sweetness and the warmth that you're looking for. We could get something like that started for you. It's been the most popular drink here behind, behind the hot chocolate today. Oh, so it's a popular drink. It's a very popular drink. Or my customers have loved it. I, I've been drinking it myself, even if we have hot chocolate, even though hot chocolate's my favorite, I love chocolate mochas, all that kind of stuff. I'm a bit of a chocoholic, but that's really been something that, that I've been really enjoying lately. Is that something I can get started for you? Yeah, let's try it. Okay, perfect. You were a little easy on me there but can you see where the, where this can progress as far as a objection handling practice, right? Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, and I feel like that's one of the things that like, for me, it's just taking those reps, right? It's when you are, Coaching somebody like for football, you don't tell him, Hey, just go put the football in the end zone. You've got to draw the play up and practice it dozens and dozens of times in order to get there consistently. No, absolutely. Absolutely. In practice, it's, you could see the new salesman or salespeople, sorry that, when they first start off, there's, many mistakes just because they haven't done it before. And the more calls you get, the more people you talk to, the more students you talk to, the better you get, and it just takes, it takes a long time to, to figure out your method and what's best for you and. And taking tips like this, like that, that you were just telling me and tips from your job and tips from other people and sharpening your skills. Yeah. Now, do you ever feel with a hot chocolate exercise that you've run into a situation like that in real life sales where you just can't really give the customer what they want and you've really got to go down the line? Road of trying to find whatever alternatives you have. Only on days that end with y So it's, yeah, every day there's something like that. Every day you have something, a situation somewhat similar to that situation, where no matter what you do, it's, I want this. And it's not, bickering, it's just, navigating your way through that situation. Yeah. It's all about problem day. All right. So let's move past the hot chocolate thing. Now I'm actually in the mood for hot chocolate. It's a cold day in Ohio here. I'm going to move back a little bit. What do you say is a lesson that you've learned, since transitioning to sales that you wish you had known sooner? I guess being willing to, when you're in a, you're a competitive person, you want to do really well, you just, put your head down and grind. And we're I think the biggest thing is to listen to other people that have been that, have been there. And and if I were to tell my, myself when I was first starting out, I would say, Hey, listen to, what your boss has to say, but also listen to the other people around you and find the best agents in your company and ask them what they do or ask them to listen in on their process. And be willing to change your process so that way, and always be, and the other thing is always be willing to change, don't go down, don't be, staying in one lane and never be willing to look at other situations and other ways to do things because, you can always get better, and my original self. One of the greatest things that you can learn in life, I think, is learning that you're not special. Yeah, absolutely. I want to be the best on my team, but I also want to be the best in the company. And you're not going to be the best in the company if if you don't listen to what the other bests are doing, if you listen to what the other bests are doing and say, Oh, wow, I really liked that. Or, wow, I really need to change my thing or even helping them out. Look, Hey, I know you said it this way, but I tweaked it just a little bit this way. And it's helped me out a lot. I think it would help you out too, and, that just pushes the needle a little bit more each time but be willing to change. Yeah. And I think you just touched on something else that I've always tried to do in my life, not just in my career as a salesperson, but just in life in general, which is, I feel like I learn more by teaching others a lot of times than I do by any other method. Because whenever you teach, you're not just spouting things off, you have to listen, right? So you have to understand what somebody else doesn't understand and find a way to explain it to them in a way that they can understand it, right? Whenever you're selling something to somebody, you have to give them the information about your product, the services, how they can use it in their life, why you personally believe in it. And You're teaching them something and at the same time you're learning about your own product, service, company, things like that. You usually find out more than what you did if you're really doing your job right. And by doing the same thing with people that are around you, other, other sales people, literally your competition, helping them get better. I've never helped somebody and regretted it. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. And, they say, when I was teaching, they say that if you can actually teach the material you'll know it better than, any other situation. I would put a lot of my students, I would say, Hey, look, I need this lesson taught and I want you guys to teach the class and what that did is I would get that group because that group you're going up in front of people and presenting information so that put that like pressure on them to actually really know the information because they didn't want to look foolish in front of their friends and so like when and When you do that with other people, when I take on new or when there's new agents that came, come to our company and my, my bosses want me to talk to them or, you don't want to look foolish either. So if you are able to teach that to other people. Get your game right, and but even the new people like, don't just listen to the people that are the best, listen to the new people too. Hey, look, this is what I see because I used to do this in my job. They might have a whole new clean look at it that we never looked at. So it's just listening is the most important thing, I think. Yeah. Fresh be open to fresh ideas at all times. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. Actually something you mentioned is something I think is also a very effective objection handling technique that we didn't even, wasn't even planning on talking about today, when you have, your students teach the class, right? I feel like the same thing, whenever I'm selling, I try to set up a little bit of a teacher student relationship because it's, conveying knowledge and, you need to make sure they understand or they can't agree. One of the things I think in the objection handling for the spousal objections a lot of times, if you can get your customer to explain the features and benefits of the product or service to their spouse, or if you're doing, you don't, if you ever did any kind of B2B sales, having the champion within the company present to the board and on your behalf and things like that can be very effective to overcome sale objections because they essentially, Put themselves in that teacher slash salesperson role and overcome their own objections. A lot of times you've seen that as well. Absolutely. And being able to for them to communicate that information. Cause I, I don't do a lot of B2B sales, but being able to convey that to their sons or daughters, or, especially if, it's a younger kid looking for insurance and their parents are there, having that that, okay. Hey, why don't you talk to your parents about this? Or why don't you tell, I hear them in the background. Why don't you explain it to them on what you'd be getting, and that empowers them in that situation. Yep, absolutely. And I'm trying to see what else we've got here. Man, you, we've covered a lot of ground. You've done a whole bunch of questions and I've tortured the heck out of you today. I do want to thank you for sharing, a bit about, your journey and insights. And I know I've learned something today and I hope the people listening get something out of this as well. And I do think it's really cool that, we've been able to tie in, a bit of, the parallels between teaching and selling and I think that sales a lot of times gets a bit of a bad rap because of a few bad apples, that and try to do things like, manipulate people or push or hard, the slimy used car salesman. And, you're one of the better, one of the better salespeople I've ever met in my life. And just a natural salesperson. And I definitely think, you and I know the gentleman who got you into sales also insanely good salesperson. And again, I feel like it's just that natural ability to connect quickly. Sure. And people to learn, because once again, it's made by. Absolutely. Absolutely. I appreciate you having me, and I definitely learned a lot today and I like that method that you used, and it's, I would definitely take that to the next level for sure. Absolutely. Anyways, I want to thank you for your time here today. I don't want to take up your entire day. I know you've got a family to get back to. And for the people listening don't forget to visit, stop selling, start believing. com to download the million dollar questions for free and keep an eye out for the objection handling masterclass. Your next big sales breakthrough might just be around the corner. Thank you very much and watch for our next episode.