The Go-Giver - Feel GOOD About Selling! | Bob Burg

Most people think sales is about persuasion, tactics, and closing deals. But what if the real secret to success was giving more than you take?

In this episode of MarketPulse: Pros and Pioneers, we sit down with Bob Burg, the bestselling co-author of The Go-Giver, to discuss how shifting from a sales-first mindset to a value-first mindset can transform your business, career, and life.

Bob shares:
📌 The biggest mistake most salespeople make—and how to avoid it
📌 Why AI can’t replace real human relationships
📌 The power of asking the right questions in business
📌 Why money is an echo of value—and how to create real impact

If you want to build trust, grow your influence, and increase sales without being "salesy", this episode is for you.

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Show Links:
🎧 Podcast Directory: https://marketpulse.javelincontent.com/share
📖 Bob Burg’s Website: https://burg.com/
📚 The Go-Giver Book: https://thegogiver.com/
🔗 Connect with Bob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobburg/

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Transcript

0:30

We've all heard that sales is about closing deals, but what if that's completely wrong? In this episode, I sat down with Bob Berg co-author of the Gore Giver, a book that has sold over a million copies globally. Not only that, but Bob is a whole of fame keynote speaker and is known the world over for his philosophy on networking. I'm joined by Bob as he explores how the most successful people in business don't just sell their serve, build, trust, and focus on creating value first. If you want to win in business without being pushy, you need to hear this.

Paul: 1:08

Hello and welcome back to MarketPulse Pro and Pioneers, where this week we have a very limited special edition episode this week. It is my honor, to be honest, Bob to invite you along to the episode. Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Berg thank you for coming along today, Bob.

Bob: 1:26

Thank you, Paul. The honor is mine. Thank you for having me.

Paul: 1:28

The interesting story is I was chatting on a post in LinkedIn and somebody who, ironically the person who tagged you, Bob, that isn't even in my initial network either. And they kindly tagged you into the post and you'd reply to something that I'd said, and your name immediately sprung to mind because I've had your name drummed into me by various people who are respecting the networking world. And whilst I, I hadn't read your book, I knew of your book, and I know that we're very much aligned in how we go about things. And so I'm very pleased that you accepted the cheeky invitation via email to come along to the podcast. Really do appreciate your time today.

Bob: 2:08

My, my absolute pleasure.

Paul: 2:09

So ladies and gentlemen, in, in the audience if you don't know Bob I'd suggest that you familiarize yourself to be honest, because I align very heavily and I know a lot of you follow me because you also align with my vision on networking and relationships. And I'm happy to say that a lot of that. Happens to be similar to very much based on the teachings that Bob's given for the last 30 years or so. Bob is a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, a bestselling author, and also one of the world's lead invoices on relationship marketing and influence. And his book, the Go Giver, which is co-authored by John David Mann, as well, has sold over 1 million copies and sparked a global movement around the idea that shifting your focus from getting to giving and providing immense value to others is the most effective way to achieve business success. So as I say, for the last 40 years, Bob has coached entrepreneurs, leaders, and sales professionals on how to build high trust relationships. Generate endless referrals and grow their business by becoming Go givers. Bob also runs the Go Giver Academy, which is offers his training programs as well as his daily impact emails, and Bob continues to teach that influence, generosity, and value creation are the real drivers of success. Bob, I have to say, in an AI driven world where everybody's looking for an easy and cheap silver bullet to make themselves rich quick. That by all is just so refreshing to hear because it's real. It's real. And I live it. I know how much impact that has. So yeah, did you start out with the whole Go Giver journey, Bob? Like what were your early days that led to that kind of Mormon where you thought that this is something that needs to be out there in the world?

Bob: 3:59

Yeah. It's a great question, Paul, because I was very. To be raised by two wonderful parents. And so I think they instilled that, That basic mindset in me. And and that's, that's very much an advantage. And I know my co-author John David Mann, he said, his parents were very much the same. Really when I got into the business world beginning in sales, I saw people do things in certain ways that. Sometimes you see people do things according to the values that you hold and they do really well, and other times they do those things and they don't do as well. And other people do things contrary to what you believe they do really well. And other times people doing things contrary to what you believe and they don't do well. Okay? However, in time you begin to see patterns develop, right? And patterns are those things that are. predictable. Doesn't mean it's a hundred percent of the time, but it's predictably true. And what I saw was this, that the most successful, the highest money earning sustainably, successfully, high earning money earning people and those who also had success in their personal life, had good friendships and healthy relationships, and felt good about themselves. it Just seemed like these were the people who were really just focused on making other people's lives better. Not in a self-sacrificial way, not in a way that hurt them no, but in a way that always found a way to add value to life and add value to the lives of others. To me, since that was congruent with the values I was brought up with, it made sense for me to follow that. A couple of years after I'd been in sales, I. I had done fairly well after a slow start because I had no formal sales training. But once I started, reading the right books and going to the right seminars and listening to the right, back then it was audio tapes. That's how long ago this was. But, my sales went really well, but then I moved to another company. And I was selling a high ticket item, and I was in a sa. I started in a sales slump and was not getting out of it. I made a very young salesperson's mistake. And that is, I panicked and I started really focusing on myself and my sales as opposed to focusing on, I. Pleasing the customer and helping them with what they needed. And one day an older gentleman, he was about to retire. He wasn't even in the sales department. I think he was an engineer or something. He was one of these very quiet type of people who didn't say much, but whenever he did, it was always profound. He said to me. I think he saw, the potential in me and he said, Berg, can I share something with you or can I give you some advice? He said, I said, sure I could. I could use it. And he said, if you wanna make a lot of money in sales, he said, don't have making money as your target. Serving people. Now when you hit the target, he continued, you'll get a reward and that reward will come in the form of money and you can do with that money, whatever you choose. But never forget, he said, the money is simply the reward for hitting the target. It's not the target itself. Your target is serving others. And Paul, what that said to me was that great salesmanship. Is never about the salesperson. great salesmanship is never about the product or service as important as that is. It's just never what it's about. Great salesmanship is really about the value you are adding to another person's life, or we could even say it's about another person's life being better. Because you are part of it. And I think when start from that premise, we're really nine steps ahead of the game in a 10 step game.

Paul: 7:49

Question for you on that note then, do you think. It is possible for somebody who has previously come at their sales game from a perspective of looking to make revenue, and it's all about the money and transactional, and how can I make my, make this sale bigger by just doing what I need to do? What's necessary? Is it possible for somebody to flip that mindset, to become a Go Giver, to lead with value first?

Bob: 8:17

It's possible, and I've seen a lot of people do it. But here's what's important and here's why I your question, because it has to do with whether this person is willing to look at a different way of doing something. I. Because if this person doesn't see that, they're let's put it this way. We can never overcome a problem. We don't realize we have. So if this person, based on their mindset or their upbringing, or what they've been taught, which they have, accepted as fact, accepted as truth, this is how you do it. There's only one thing they may just say no, I'm not interested in something like that. But you've got the person who says yeah, okay, I've made a good living, I've made a good career. I'm always having to repeat my efforts. don't have loyal advocates, I don't feel necessarily good about myself all the time because I have to say and do things in a way that really isn't, so there a better way to do this? And okay, now they're in a position where they can. open to some new information in a different way of doing things. And one of the nicest things John and I can hear is that someone did exactly that. I will say this, Paul, most people who write us will say they like most about the book is you just told me. What I want to be doing, this is how I want to be doing, how I've always done it. It's just you've given me almost permission to do things in a, because human nature really says we wanna make a difference in people's lives. And as salespeople and entrepreneurs, we tend to do that mainly through our product or service Now that doesn't mean we can't do other things and be involved in other that, but most of our time is working right. At a sense. So that's how we really bring value to the world and I think most people, most entrepreneurs, salespeople, they wanna feel good about what they're doing. So I think a lot of people related to the book because of that. love when we hear from someone who says, oh, I was always taught blah, blah, blah, blah. Since using the Go Giver way, we've boom, and that's just always such a wonderful thing to hear.

Paul: 10:53

That's fascinating. If I bring it back a little bit then, so you'd obviously started in that sales role. You were starting to figure things out in terms of adding that value and putting that into practice and believing in that kind of service led relationship building. What was the point where you realized that you had something that other people needed to hear?

Bob: 11:14

Oh gosh. I think one of the biggest things, and this came out of necessity, was that in the prospecting process, I. It can be so difficult to get people's interest in you. And I always say when I first started in sales, I was on the phone a lot, right? And so one of the first things I learned and I came to realize that I just discovered, right? Is that nobody hung up the phone on me they were talking. If I'm talking about myself and my product they are, and we're number one, and we've been around since 19 and they don't care. They're right, wanna get off the phone, but if they're talking about themselves, they are engaged. You know what, not only was that true in person on the phone it was, it's, it was true in person. Of course, today, we could say on Zoom back then, 40 years ago that wasn't the case. But it was true in person so what I came up with was a way of having certain questions that you could ask people engage them to begin. A healthy relationship. One of the things I've said, I said this in my first book, endless Referrals back in 94, I think it came out, but I was saying this before that is that what I call the golden Rule of Sales? The Golden Rule of Business, and that is all things being equal people will do business with and refer business to those people they know and trust. The fastest, most powerful. Most effective way to elicit those feelings toward you is by moving from an eye focus or me focus to that. Other focus looking to as Sam, one of the mentors and the Go-Giver advised Joe the protege to make your win all about the other person's win. And we can do that in an initial conversation with someone that we just met somewhere in our community, at a, some function or a an event or whatever it happens to be. When we asked that person how they got started in their business. Because who asked them how they got started there? Most people are just talking about themselves. They give their elevator speech and, but what if we said to somebody, we have introduced ourselves and we know they sell copying machines and we sell whatever we sell and we say this. How did you get started? How did you get your start as an office products professional? Now it's not a clever question, not a slick question. It's very mundane. How did you get started in, whatever Your people love answering that question, right? Because you're asking them to tell you their story. Nobody asked them to tell them their own family has never asked them to tell them how they got their stuff, and here's you who different from everyone else they've met. You're another question, a nice follow up question to that is. Is asking them what they enjoy most about what they do, right? So it might be why you must have had some fascinating experiences. What do you enjoy most about your work? This is a question that flies in the face of so much traditional sales teaching, where we're taught to immediately find their pain, reach into their heart and tear it out so you can go, but the relationship hasn't even started yet. They're not necessarily ready for this. And, when you ask these questions and then, I like to ask what I call the one key question that will distinguish you from the rest after asking these first couple of questions, and that is. How can I know if someone I'm speaking with is a good potential client for you? So again, You're focusing on them. From the very beginning. And you are creating that environment for this person to really feel good about you, to wanna get to know you better, to wanna be part of your life. And these are how related. And when I started doing that and started teaching that to people and people were saying, oh my gosh, this takes all the pressure off me having to do. And people were coming back and saying, oh, this is, that's when it said, okay, I think there's something here. That people are open to, that people want learn about.

Paul: 15:14

Amazing. Amazing. It is. It's,

Bob: 15:17

for that were my folks. Just

Paul: 15:18

yeah.

Bob: 15:18

them do that

Paul: 15:19

And that, it's fascinating hearing you say that because again, that's something I can align with myself as well. So it part of me wonders whether there is, a lot of stock in that. Certainly a good base point to jump off from. I wonder then, so obviously at this point you're a sales person. You are starting to see, people around you are starting to take an interest in what you've got to see. What was the point where you decided that you were happy to give a keynote speech? Did that get thrust on you? Did you ask for it? How did that happen?

Bob: 15:47

So what happened was I was I was always attending seminars when I could, to learn more. And so now at this point, I'm a sales manager of a company Zig Ziglar was coming into town and another guy was coming into town opening for Zig. And so I took my sales staff to the, my sales team to this event. So at the end, I buy Zigs tapes, of course,'cause I always buy whatever Zig would sell. And then this other guy was selling a tape tape. Again, these are tapes. I don't even know if your audience members remember the, the

Paul: 16:11

Oh I, think they do.

Bob: 16:13

And I went, I got that person's tapes. They were really good. Good information. And at the back he had an advertisement that said, if you wanna make some extra money learning how to speak and sell these tapes, call our office. So I did and I went down there and they showed me what I'd need to do and I, I could buy wholesale the, the tapes. And then they taught me that the guy himself taught me how to give 30 minute. Presentations at all sorts of civic clubs, organizations, groups, anywhere that anyone that would have me for 25 to 30 minutes, how to do the little, sales commercial at the end, holding up the tapes. And, from what I understand, I was their leading salesperson and doing that across the country part-time, but again,'cause I listened, I did what they told me to do. But it put the finer in me that I like doing that. And so then I, I began my own speaking practice. My own speaking business. A key for me was that I joined the national Speakers Association, which is a big association of professional speakers. And so I learned, which is focused mainly on the business of speaking.'cause it's like anything else, it's a business like anything else. And I learned sort of the system for selling and marketing myself as a speaker. And I did that and, few years, it took a few years to build a successful practice. But eventually I did.

Paul: 17:28

So. Coming to the end of that side of things then. And obviously you've been keynote speaking for such a long time. What's your, you must have a favorite story of somebody who's been impacted by the message that you've delivered. What's the biggest impact you've delivered to somebody else's life? Because that's, again, aligns with so much with what I do because my why is helping people make better decisions so they can live a better life. Where does that sit for you?

Bob: 17:54

And I think my why is really to be an encourager to, to help people feel genuinely good about themselves. And so when I speak, really my goal is to provide the how to information such a way that they have the confidence. To be able to go out and immediately apply it. So I would say that the feedback I received from the talks is along those lines, that they were able to take the information and boom, put it, I, sometimes I hear these sales figures from people and I think, oh my gosh, they're doing a lot better than I could done. But I love, it's the nicet compliment you could receive.

Paul: 18:35

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it, but that begs an interesting question, right? A lot of businesses are driven by the investors in the business. They, especially in the tech world and the SaaS businesses, and the pressure, I see a lot of salespeople being put under, is driven by those metrics that the investors wanna be able to measure. They wanna be able to know, right? You've reached out to, I don't know, 10,000 leads this month via email via phone calls, via WhatsApp, via LinkedIn. What would be your advice to a salesperson who wants to adopt the Go Giver methodology and philosophy, but they're feeling the pressure from above to automate things and Go in the transactional route, if that makes sense.

Bob: 19:19

Yeah, my message is more to the leadership to understand something. That, nobody's gonna buy from their salespeople because they want them to be able to give, metrics. And if you force your salespeople to do that, what you're doing is you're really cutting off your nose, spite your face you're yourself. Now remember. Doing this selling as a Go-Giver doesn't mean it, it takes longer than doing it by, by just trying to make the quick sale. No, it actually Is faster. The reason why is, again, if you're the type of person who's just, you're just focused so much on making the sale and getting their money, people know that. Not everybody, but most do, and they're less, they're actually more resistant to you when they know that you genuinely have their wellbeing at heart. Which comes from knowing how to ask the right questions in the sales conversation, how to discover their needs, their wants, their desires, right? How to add the insights that are gonna help mitigate weaknesses and help them to leverage strengths and all these things. Your sales are gonna come faster but when you put pressure on a salesperson to have to account for every contact that has to result in something as, in other words, being an attachment to the results. No it's hurtful. It's hurting their production and it's hurting the company's bottom line.

Paul: 20:43

So then part of the part of the message that you've got out there is around genuine influence. On. We'd love you to share the idea behind genuine influence to people, especially with regards to how, business owners and marketers can help build influence, in an authentic way. I think that's being lost these days. I've, quite honestly, I just see so many people putting stuff out there that they haven't even written themselves. And then in the, it's hard. So what's, what would you say about genuine influence with regards to, especially with regards to that kind of automation angle that's coming now?

Bob: 21:14

If you look at influence itself on a very basic level, it can be defined simply as the ability to. Move a person or persons to a desired action, usually within the context of a specific goal. That's the definition, but that's not really the essence of what we would call genuine influence. Genuine influence is really not about push. your ideas, pushing your will. Push it right on. On others. You never hear people say, wow, that Tom or that Mary, she is so in, she has so much influence. She has a lot of push with people. No, she's influential. She has a lot of pull with people and that's what genuine influence really is. It's pull, it's an attraction. influencers. Genuine influencers attract people first to themselves through who they are, right? And then to their idea. Now again, this pull manifests itself through the questions you ask, well you listen in order and when you ask questions or your focus needs. I always say be internally motivated, but outwardly focused. So anything that you do, if you wanna be a genuine influencer and the most effective influencer you can be is to always question yourself. Such as how does what I'm asking this person to do? How does it align with their goals? I. With their needs, their wants, their desires, with their values. How does what I'm asking this person to do, how does what I want this person to do? How does it solve a problem for them? Not for me. For them, okay. How does it move them closer to happiness? And when we ask ourselves these questions thoughtfully. and intentionally intelligently genuinely, authentically not as a way to manipulate another human being into doing our will, but as a way of building everyone in the process. Now we've come a lot closer to earning that person's commitment as a, which is pull as opposed to depending on some type of compliance, which is push.

Paul: 23:30

I guess it's almost that idea of having social capital in the bank with people and being able to, command that when you need to. But I love the, I, I line quite closely with the idea that it is not about the money. It's about delivering some value to somebody else's life and work. Commitments that makes their life better because you've been in it and just knowing that there will be, financial, the financial gains will come, but like it is never the reason. It's a symptom of having done what you've done. It's an act outcome. I.

Bob: 24:04

yeah. One thing, John David Mann, my awesome co-author, what he what he phrase he coined, I think this goes right with what you just said, is that money is simply an echo of value. It's the funder, if you will, to values lightning. Which means the value must be your focus. Remember, nobody's buying for your reasons. Nobody's buying for my reasons. Nobody's buying for any of the reasons of anybody watching this. They're buying for their own reasons, right? That's also human nature and that's reality. And we need to respect reality. so when we focus. On providing immense value. And remember, even value is relative, right? It's the relative worth or desirability of a thing, of something to the end user or beholder. What is it about this thing, this product service concept, idea, what have you, that they find such high worth, immense, worth, or value in that they willingly exchange their money for it. They're glad they did. While you make a healthy profit, like in any market based exchange, there should always be two profits, the buyer profits, and the seller profits because each of them come away better off afterwards than they were beforehand. But it always begins with the salesperson or entrepreneur focusing, on how they can make that other person's life better through the value they're providing. The money is simply a natural result of the

Paul: 25:33

Yeah,

Bob: 25:34

they've provided.

Paul: 25:35

and again, it can't just be I need to add value to this person so that I get some return out of this. It has to be, I'm going to add value to this person. Full stop,

Bob: 25:46

Yeah.

Paul: 25:46

end of conversation.

Bob: 25:48

Oh, exactly.

Paul: 25:48

But it always does. It always comes back. It always, whether it's directly in sales, whether it's in other opportunities, whether it's referrals or connections or network, or just trust like it's there and it's absolutely palpable. It baffles me that I didn't come across your work. Long before I did. And exactly as you described at the beginning, when I heard more about your philosophy and the methodology behind the Go Giver, it did feel like somebody had given me permission to carry on doing what I was doing. I was like, this is on that is really. Wow. Somebody else thought that too. Oh, I wasn't the first devastated but genuinely I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Bob and I could probably do, a three or four hours of conversation with you, and it's been fascinating to dig behind the scenes a bit. Thank you very much for coming along today and being a fabulous guest.

Bob: 26:38

my absolute pleasure, honor to be with you.

Paul: 26:40

Thank you very much. And ladies and gentlemen, if you're watching along and you're entertained by what Bob's had to say today, I will make sure that all of the the show notes, cover all of Bob's books and where you can find out more information about the Go giver. Would love you to dig into that a bit more because. More than anything, more than any of the guests that we've had on the show. I just think that by following that, that philosophy, then the world would just be a such a nicer place to be in. When you next open your LinkedIn inbox and you see all the spam mail that's in there, just ask yourself like, if everybody in this inbox followed the GOGI methodology and believed the same things, we would never have another spam message to deal with. Wouldn't that be a nice place to be? Thank you very much for being a fabulous guest, Bob, and thank you everyone who's watching along from home. Really appreciate you being a fantastic audience for us. And we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.