Simply Sell
Bringing unique hosts every day to discuss the nuances of sales to make it simple.
Simply Sell
Sales Differentiation with Lee Salz
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
I was lucky enough to have bestselling author Lee Salz on the Simply Sell Podcast. Lee is a proud sales contrarian and has written three great books centered around selling differently. In this episode, we discuss his latest book "The First Meeting Differentiator". Everybody knows that engagement is the toughest thing in sales, so the First Meeting is crucial to earning business from a client. Lee and I dive into what it takes to have a good first meeting. Lee also touches on flipping the script from using the term discovery call to a consultation call. Listen to this podcast and take your sales to the next level by bringing meaningful differentiation to your first meeting with a client.
Welcome to the Simply Sell podcast. I'm Brian Buckaloo and my guest is Lee Salls, a globally recognized sales differentiation strategist and author of the hot new sales book, The First Meaning Differentiator, which I have read and it's amazing. I've actually given it to people on my team. So if you're not reading that book right now, you need to be reading that book. So the book transforms the sales-focused discovery into client-centric consultations. This is the third book Lee has written in the sales differentiation series. Lee is known as a sales contrarian. He combats old school and effective selling methods and challenges you to think about selling differently. It's a different approach. So he's the creator of sales differentiation strategy. Lee guides sales organizations, including the one that I work for now, Majestic Steel, to win more deals at the prices that you want by simply differentiating what you and how you sell. In 2022, the Institute for Sales Excellence named Lee Speaker of the Year, and he was recently named by Global Gurus to their top 30 sales thought leaders for 2025, ranking him number six in the world. While Lee specializes in building salespeople into world-class sales forces. Welcome, Lee Salls. Thank you, Brian. Great to be with you. I'm thankful that you're on. So you've written three books on the subject of sales differentiation strategy. And I've read all three, and I use it every single day, and I influence anybody on my team to do that. So what sparked your interest in it?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we're going to turn back the hands of time to 1986 when I was a high school junior. Gosh, yeah, 1986, living in Marlborough, New Jersey, which is central New Jersey. And we had this family friend named Dave who had this revolutionary business idea: pickup and delivery dry cleaning. Now, Dave didn't own a dry cleaning store. He just felt that people found it to be a hardship to take their dirty clothes, bring them to the dry cleaner, and pick them up when they're clean. So it was a logistics play. So Dave goes up to my dad and said, Hey, would Lee like a summer job? And my dad said, absolutely he would, without even asking me. The fact that I already had two summer jobs, Brian, didn't matter. So my part-time job in the summer of 1996 was as his part-time driver and sales guy. And I remember wondering, I was hoping, would people be willing to pay more to have this service? Because this was a cost on top of cleaning the clothes. What do you think, Brian? You think people want to pay for that? Absolutely. I would every day of the week. The answer was some people. Some people. Are you familiar with Marlborough, New Jersey?
SPEAKER_01I'm not, but believe it or not, I was born in Redbank, New Jersey. Long range.
SPEAKER_00We got to talk. Marlboro is not far from Red Bank.
SPEAKER_01But I moved out of there when I was three years old, so I knew nothing about New Jersey.
SPEAKER_00You don't remember from when you were three?
SPEAKER_01No, I can't do it. I'm not that good.
SPEAKER_00So Marlboro, New Jersey is central New Jersey. If you drew a line north, southeast, west on a map of New Jersey, that intersection point is where Marlboro is. It's about an hour and a half drive to Philadelphia, about an hour and a half drive to Manhattan. So a lot of people from Marlboro commute to one of those two cities on a daily basis. And back in 1986, we dressed a little differently for work than we do today. So those people that had those lengthy commutes, got dressed up for work and didn't have someone help the dry cleaning, thought the idea was brilliant. I mean, Brian, I had several people say to me, gosh, I wish I came up with this idea. But those who work locally didn't get dressed up for work or had someone help out with the dry cleaning, thought we were nuts. I mean, I had people say to me, who would pay for such a thing? So at a very young age, I developed a clarity and a passion around a super important business concept that I'm just as passionate about today. Know who will perceive the most meaningful value in what you offer. We all deal with the price issue. And one of the reasons why the price issue comes up is with chasing the wrong deals. If I would have spent the summer of 96 1986 chasing people who work locally, didn't get dressed up for work, had someone help out the dry cleaning, we wouldn't have sold a single thing. But with this clarity, at the end of that summer, there were three Lees, part-time drivers and salespeople. And that's what started, which become which has become my lifelong passion of sales differentiation strategy.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. Okay. Well, you're right about the chasing the wrong deals. You see that all the time, and you just get caught up in volume or the you know the the name of the client or whatever, and then you lose sight of what do you really is it really a deal that you want to win? So very, very, um, very good information there.
SPEAKER_00So Brian, Brian, a lot of people think that I'm referring to an ideal client profile that salespeople should have that. And if you have one of those, please throw it away. You don't want one of those. Here's why. An ideal client profile says if all the stars were to align, this is the kind of business we'd love to have. It's like a lottery ticket. It's a one in a gazillion chance you'll ever stumble across one of these opportunities. Have you ever looked up the word ideal in the dictionary? I haven't. What you'll see is the definition existing only in one's imagination. Like sales isn't hard enough. You're giving me a tool that's only in my head. But what every salesperson needs is a target client profile. And that's not me wordsmith, and you may recall this from reading the first meeting differentiator. It's a completely different tool. The target client profile says this is who will perceive the most meaningful value in what you offer, which gives deals the greatest likelihood of coming to fruition. We also tell salespeople you need to qualify. Well, qualify relative to what? Well, this becomes the benchmarking tool that salespeople use when evaluating deals to determine whether or not they should keep pursuing it. Something I see a lot, Brian, I'm sure you have as well. Um I'll be asked to do a post-mortem on a deal, and you know, the client didn't win it, and so they they take me through this journey, and it was six months a year, sometimes even longer. They lay the whole thing out and they said, So we lost this deal. And after they take me through the whole deal, I'll say, based on what you shared with me, you didn't lose this deal. They'll say, Well, we didn't win it. Now that's true, you didn't win it. You didn't lose it. You were never a viable option. If you would have qualified them in that first meeting, relative to your target client profile, you would have seen big flashing red lights saying, run, go find another opportunity. This is a waste of time, it's a mirage, you're never getting this piece of business.
SPEAKER_01I see that all the time. And I look at it like it's a big filter. Like you have a filter here of all the deals that are there, and you have to filter out to the ones that you know that you can you can win that fits that target profile. And it's it's funny that you say that because for me, I don't really want to spend my resources and company resources on traveling to go see somebody. And you mentioned this in your book that why would I go and spend company resources on a deal that I know that I'm not gonna win? So and you qualify that on the front end before you even invest the resources. So that was one thing that I really got out of the first meeting differentiator was you know, where am I gonna spend my time and resources?
SPEAKER_00And my mantra is if you're gonna lose, lose early. Lose early. Yeah, that's it. Lose early. 18 months chasing a deal only to find out you didn't lose it. You were never a viable option. Had you qualified in that first meeting, you never would have invested all that time, not to mention the company dollars and resources. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01So, why did you write the first meeting differentiator?
SPEAKER_00Great question. And that's normally coupled with, and why should I read it? And I'm sure a lot of listeners are wondering that. And if you're smiling, because that's what you're thinking, you're gonna love chapter five on empathetic expertise, which gets into the art of emotionally connecting with buyers. And that energy helps to energize your deals, that emotional connection. And Brian, I'm sure you've seen this. Countless studies have shown that the first meeting is critical when it comes to increasing win rates. The first meeting's a deal foundation. When it's weak, the deal's weak. And what I've found is a lot of companies lack a clearly defined, repeatable strategy for handling first meetings. What do they do instead? They assume the salespeople that they've hired have this mastery, that all of a sudden they know how to handle first meetings. And that assumption is deeply flawed and it causes sales organizations to underperform. And this isn't new. This was just as true a century ago as it is today, and it'll remain true forever because the principles of human connection, trust building, and differentiation are timeless. So whether your first meeting lasts 15 minutes or two hours, there are non-negotiable elements that have to be addressed, right? You got to qualify, as we just talked about, you got to differentiate what and how you sell, got to create emotional engagement, acquire information, share information, provide meaningful value. So much needs to happen in that first meeting. And that's why I wrote the first meeting differentiator, because that step of the sales process is so critical to deal win rate. Now, what's interesting is when I was first talking to HarperCollins about this concept, I said, I want you to go into Amazon and I want you to do a search on prospecting, how to get a meeting. Literally, thousands of books come up. Now I said, I want you to do a search on great, I got the meeting. How do I put together a game plan for it? Believe it or not, there was not a book written on that subject, not at the time. This was the first one to come out and do it. Sure, there's books on questions and messaging and storytelling and objections and all those things, but one book that said, here's the strategy, encapsulates the whole step-by-step exercise. You got the meeting, here's how to turn it into your strategic advantage. It didn't exist. So that's why I wrote this. And it's for, as you found, it's sales manager, executives, individual contributors, and how to put this strategy together. So coming back to my second question that you were thinking, why should I read it? If you want to win more deals, the prices you want, this is the recipe. It's 2026. I still find salespeople looking for these manipulative tactics to end at the ask at the end of the process, you know, the ones they think are going to make the checkbook pop open. Those don't exist. That game's over. If you want to increase your win rate, do a better job in how you handle first meetings. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01I totally agree with you. So in your bio, you refer to yourself as a sales contrarian. I love this. Um, I'm curious, as my audience is as well. What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00Well, I am a proud sales contrarian. Here's why. And I'm sure you've seen the salespeople have been told a lot of stuff, given a lot of information, they've embraced it. And these quote unquote accepted concepts and best practices are just flat out wrong, and they're limiting salespeople's success. I put together a list of over 30 of them. You want to hear a few? Sure. All right, here's one of my favorite examples of guidance given to salespeople that's just wrong. Sales is nothing but a numbers game. How many times have you heard that one? All the time. Worst counsel ever given to salespeople. See, if you exclusively look at sales through the lens of a numbers game, you treat people like a number. And no one ever wants to feel that way. You know what else that tells you? You can prospect too much. I bet you never heard that one before. Yes. You can prospect too much. Prospecting studies continue to come back and say the key to success is personalization. Each person that you reach out to needs to feel like your message is just for them. And one of the things I tell clients all the time when it comes to prospecting, if your message is for everyone, it's for no one. So we need quality outreach, not just the quantity. You want another one? Sure. All right, I'm gonna put you on the spot here. You're only as good as your blank sale. Oh, that's easy. You're only good as your last sale. I'd like to have a word with the person who first said that. Only as good as your last sale. Nothing good comes from that expression. If you believe in that expression, you're only as good as your last sale, you'll likely suffer from the sales EKG effect. Let me take you through that. Do the right things, do the right things, do the right things, land a piece of business, get a fat commission check, and we get lazy, lazy, lazy. And then sales manager comes along and says, Hey Lee, how about doing those right things again? Okay, I do the right things, do the right things, do the right things, land another piece of business, get another fat commission check, and lazy, lazy, lazy. And that cycle perpetuates itself over and over and over again. Good luck growing a company if you think that expression is you're only as good as your last sale. Good luck growing your income, if you believe that expression is you're only as good as your last sale. The expression we should all embrace is you're only as good as your next sale. Always focus on what's coming next. That's why we do pipeline reviews, because we're looking at what's coming next. And if you embrace that expression, you're always gonna be prospecting and developing a healthy sales pipeline. For sure.
SPEAKER_01So you certainly have a sales contrarian perspective about discovery meetings, which I I really like where you're going, where you're gonna go with this. So can you share that with our audience?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. First meetings are just another example of my sales contrarian philosophy. Salespeople have been told your first meeting is a discovery meeting. And I completely disagree with that. As a matter of fact, chapter one, as you saw in the first meeting, differentiation. First meeting differentiator is titled The Necessary Death of Discovery Meetings. So let's talk about that. Traditional discovery meetings need to die. How's that for being a sales contrarian? Well, what's wrong with discovery meetings? See, I know what you're thinking. How do most salespeople prepare for discovery meetings? Well, we come up with a list of questions, message points we're going to share with them, and a list of what we're going to show them. Nothing wrong with that, right? Now, if you think that's a great game plan for your first meeting, let me ask you this. What does the other person that you're meeting with get out of that meeting? And most salespeople look at me dumbfounded when I say, so what do what do they get out of it? See, you when you're reaching out to me, you're saying, I know you've got 400 things to do. I want you to put that aside and meet with me. Great. If I do that, what do I get out of it? Now, a lot of salespeople will say, well, uh, they'll learn about my company and what I have to offer. It's a big fail. Here's why. There's two types of sales, Brian, and I'm gonna use a bathroom metaphor to depict those two. You ready? Ready. I think I just made you nervous. You buy toilet paper, I sell toilet paper. But you're buying my competitors' toilet paper, and I'm saying you should be buying my toilet paper because it's superior. That's a takeaway sale. That's the environment most salespeople are in. Let me take you through the other one. You buy toilet paper, I sell bidets. It's an alternative way of addressing an issue. That's a demand gen sale. But like I mentioned, most salespeople are in a takeaway business environment, meaning they already have a provider in place. So think about this. I've got 400 things to do. You're saying meet with me, and the only thing I get out of it is learning about your company and what you have to offer. Yeah, I'm just not doing that. I got 400 things to do. So what we need to challenge ourselves with is what do they get out of it? What's the meaningful value that they will get if they agree to invest time with us? See, this is one of the flaws when we look at that first meeting through the lens of a discovery meeting. But if you think about the times when you've gone to the doctor, you go there for two reasons. To become wiser about your circumstances and to understand potential remedies. Brian, could you imagine going to the doctor and the entire experience was for the doctor's benefit? All the data, all the information was for them. That's what discovery is. Now, the medical community doesn't call that interaction discovery, they call it a consultation. And that's the expression that I've embraced because it implies that first meeting can't just be about me. The person I'm meeting with also has to get meaningful value out of that interaction. Well, what do they want? What do they want out of that? They want to become wiser as a result of time not spent but invested with you, meaning they learn something that helps them in their role, helps their company, or best of all, both. And I'm assuming your audience likes free things, right? Absolutely. Okay, I'm gonna give you a very difficult website to remember. Meaningfulvalue.com. If you go to meaningfulvalue.com, I have a one-page tip sheet of all ways you can be providing meaningful value during first meetings. Great. I'm just wrote that down.
SPEAKER_01Meaningfulvalue.com. Okay, great. I got a freebie out of this. Awesome. You did so, so earlier you talked about providing meaningful value. You just talked about it. So what are some of the examples of meaningful value? So, you know, we're talking about it, but let's just get right into it. What would be some examples of meaningful value?
SPEAKER_00Well, for example, a best practice that could help them in their industry, a new trend, a creative way to reduce costs, a way to increase revenue, um, something that the competition is doing that they're not. Like if you say to me, hey, there's something your competitors are doing that you're missing out on, we get together, I'll share that with you. You're gonna take that meeting, aren't you? Absolutely. That's the key. Okay. So, and once you define that meaningful value, you fold that into your prospecting messaging. Just like I said, by the way, we get together, I'll share with you a best practice that manufacturing CFOs are using to creatively reduce costs. Oh, I'm gonna get something if I take that meeting with Lee. I'll take that. Now, is that gonna work every time? No. But my theme is move the sales needle, look for incremental gains. If that gets you in the door 10% more than you are today, are you happy? Of course you are.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, engagement is the hardest thing that we we deal with in sales. It's the it's the number one thing. It used to be closing, in my opinion, back in 86 to 90, 91, you know, but now that the hardest part is opening engagement. So I think, you know, coming in with something like that is is very beneficial, especially for people that are just getting into sales and they deal with that frustration all the time. I can't get this person on the phone and and this and that. So, you know, engagement is is very difficult right now. So thank you so much for that. That's that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00And I'll take it a step further, Brian. So we work really hard to get that meeting. Like you said, that's that's the toughest part is getting in the door. We finally get that meeting and we screw it up in the first few seconds because we have this discovery mindset. So what we do is we come in and we say, Brian, what I'd like to do today is ask you some questions about your business, and then I'll tell you what we have to offer. What I want to do today, we've just convinced them that the purpose of this meeting is entirely for my benefit. Now, if you view this meeting as a consultation rather than discovery, you don't make a statement, but rather ask a question. For this to be a great use of your time, what do you want to make sure we talk about here today? And the answer to that question does two wonderful things for you. First of all, they tell you what's most important to them, which can chart the course for the entire meeting, and you've just communicated right up front that you genuinely care that they get meaningful value out of that interaction. Awesome.
SPEAKER_01Another thing I just wrote down. So moving, you know, forward through this, where does qualifying fit in your first meeting strategy? We kind of touched on it earlier because we want to lose early if we're gonna lose and qualifying and and that kind of goes hand in hand. So dive right into this and tell us where qualifying fits into your first meeting strategy.
SPEAKER_00It's super important. Like I said earlier, if you're gonna lose, lose early. So that first meeting should be used as a go-no-go decision to determine if this is worth pursuing further. So when we put together that target client profile, it's a 12-component tool that you'll learn about uh in the first meeting differentiator. And there's a download in the book as well to put this together for your organization because it'll give you a level of clarity that you don't have today around those who will perceive the most meaningful value in what you offer, which gives deals the greatest likelihood of coming to fruition. So qualify early and often. Your goal is to lose if you're gonna lose, lose early.
SPEAKER_01So there's an age-old expression in sales people buy based on emotion and justify their decisions with logic. I mean, we've bought things based on emotion, whether it's real estate or gone on vacation, whatever it is, and that's based on emotion, and then we justify it after the fact. So just about every salesperson on the planet has heard the expression a gill gazillion times, but they they don't do it. Their prospect meetings are entirely logical conversations. Why do you think that is?
SPEAKER_00That's a great question. That was a head scratcher for me. For the longest time, I didn't understand it. If every salesperson on the planet has heard that, not once, but a gazillion times, how come nobody does it? So I talked to a ton of salespeople and I said, Do you just not believe in the concept to a person? They all said they absolutely do. So I'm like, okay, then why isn't anybody doing it? Then I finally had this epiphany. I have two sons that played college baseball. And Brian, I remember when they were little and they were first learning the game, and the coaches would say, Now, boys, the name of the game is to hit home runs. And Vig smile, they'd say, Got it, hit home runs. Well, guess what? They didn't hit home runs until they were taught how to hit home runs. That's the flaw. We have preached this concept that people buy based on emotions, justify their decisions with logic, but we've never taught salespeople how to do it. So in chapter five of the first meeting differentiator, I present the concept of emotion as the deal energizer. The concept behind that is empathetic expertise. Now, empathetic expertise has two parts to it. The first part is that you understand all the emotions they're experiencing around the issues that you address. Well, how am I supposed to know that? Well, that used to be very difficult. Now that you have AI tools like Chat GPT, you can go into ChatGPT and create the simplest of simple prompts and ask, what are the biggest challenges today that manufacturing CFOs have? And it'll give you that list. Now you know. The second part of empathetic expertise is that you convey that you understand all the emotions they're experiencing around the issues that you address. Great quote. You've probably heard this. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. Super important. Now, what I also get into in this chapter is the art of asking emotive questions. I'll give you an example. You know, we talk about this uh that people base their decisions on emotion justifying with logic, right? One of the things that drives that are the questions we're asking. We ask logic questions. That's all we ask. So, for example, I said, Brian, what's the biggest challenge you face in your business today? And as a result of that question, you're gonna give me back information. But I don't just want information. I want color, I want flavor, I want texture, I want to know how you feel about the information you're sharing with me. So, what if I asked you the question this way? Brian, what's that one thing in your business? The one thing you're like, oh, we gotta figure this out. Did you feel that question? Yes, I can feel that question. So you can imagine, right? So you can imagine how that would work in the field. Because obviously we're just talking among colleagues here, but you phrase it that way, you're not just gonna get information back, you're gonna get color, flavor, texture. You're gonna know how they feel about the information that they're sharing back with you. Another example in Discovery, we've been told best practice, you share features with benefits, right? That's what we're told. Again, it's 2026. If you're talking features and benefits, bring a pillow with you because you're putting people to sleep. No one wants to be lectured on your features and benefits. But everyone loves a well-told story. And that dates back to when you were children. And the day would end, mom or dad would sit on the edge of your bed and read you a bedtime story. There was no better way to end the day than with mom or dad reading you a story. That's how we like to learn. And that doesn't change now that we're adults. So what we want to do is put together emotive client success stories with the features and benefits embedded within them. Now they become much more memorable, much more understood by those with whom you're sharing them, as opposed to lecturing on features and benefits. And when you share them in an emotive way, all of a sudden you're bringing emotion into the conversation. And again, we said emotion is a deal energizer.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's interesting about the the stories. Like what one thing I really love about your books is the stories that you tell behind it, you know, uh, in in all three books you did. And and I think they're relatable and it makes the book easier to read as opposed to like what you were just saying, lecturing on, you know, topics and so on and so forth. So so I commend you, and anyone that's you know on that's watching this right now, that's the one thing that I would say from Lee's books that's a big differentiator, no pun intended, is the stories behind the stories in the book. So they I sometimes struggle with reading comprehension. Um, I lose, I get distracted or whatever, but the stories kind of kept me into the book. So uh one thing I would say about the book, the stories are great. So thank you very much. I really like that. Um, so now you've been told that, or salespeople have been told that you identify a prospect's pain, you're well positioned to win the deal, but you don't agree why. So, so can you kind of go into that piece of it too? That's a little bit of a complicated question. So, again, kind of give us a little bit of color there.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So imagine you had this first meeting with a prospect, a consultation, not a discovery, and you position your differentiators, they eat them up. The deal looks so good that you can taste it. And then you go home and you're dreaming of all the ways you're gonna spend that fat commission check because during that meeting you found pain. And all the sales pundits say if you find pain, you're gonna get the deal. So you tell your significant other, we're finally gonna get that boat. Then the next day you get the text. Brian, thank you so much for visiting with me. After further thought, we've decided to stay with our current provider. How does that happen? I found pain and I didn't get the deal. So are all the salespondents wrong? No. But their counsel is incomplete. We have to take the conversation deeper to determine if the pain we've heard is an inconvenience or a problem. And those aren't synonyms. We love to say we sell solutions. Well, we don't solve inconveniences, we solve problems. And that right there, not being able to discern if the pain we've heard is an inconvenience or a problem, is why salespeople have pipe dreams instead of pipelines. Interesting.
SPEAKER_01I love that. And it's either an inconvenience or a or a problem. It's like what you had said in your book about the blinds, they were an inconvenience until your in-laws came in town. Absolutely. And then it becomes exactly right. Then it became a problem. So, yeah, it's I totally completely get it. So having a house here, you have a lot of inconveniences, but they you don't really deal with it until it becomes a problem.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, and it can mean it's it's a nuisance. We talk about it, we complain about it, but we don't do anything about it until it elevates to the level of a problem. And then and only then are we willing to invest time, resources, and dollars to address it.
SPEAKER_01So let's finish up here. So let's assume the first meeting has gone well. What is the best way to end it? Oh, we have to end it.
SPEAKER_00Let's just keep going. You said it's gone well.
SPEAKER_01Well, we've all had those those meetings with clients where they start out 30 minutes and then it goes they go into an hour and a half, and that you know that those have gone well unless you have problems that you that you have to deal with. But let's let's live in a positive world that we're we're solving their problems, not fixing the ones we've created.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Okay, so here's the first one, and this is something mom and dad told you to do, but so few salespeople do it. Say thank you. They put 400 things aside to meet with you. Don't thank them for spending time with you. Thank you for investing time with me. That's the first step. Second step is to give yourself the meaningful value test, right? Our goal is to provide meaningful value. And the test is so how do we do today? I want to hear back, Brian. I'm so glad we got together. You really made me think differently about what I'm doing today. You really challenged some of my beliefs. That's how I know they receive meaningful value out of that interaction. Now, for any meeting that's gone well, the non-negotiable must finish with a defined next step and a next interaction. Scheduled. Not, oh, I'll give you a call next week to pick up the conversation. No. Energy is highest right there. You've peaked their interest. That meeting finishes with a defined next step, scheduled next interaction, and you send an invite. I'm often asked, Lee, what's your secret to avoid ghosting? Because that's obviously very problematic in the sales world. This right here. Every meeting ends with a defined next step and a scheduled next interaction. You do that, you send an invite. The likelihood that you get ghosted is reduced dramatically.
SPEAKER_01That's very true. And that's one thing I've learned from you is like uh on every meeting that we have with the client, whether it's a monthly meeting with them to go over, you know, the the what we're doing from a service standpoint or even in the prospecting piece, you've got to grab them right there because if not, I always like to use the term you get you get stuck in meeting land. And then all of a sudden they're you know, you don't get them for like three or four months because they get distracted, PTO, they're coming for somebody on PTO, uh, other projects. So yeah, so that was the one thing, another thing that I got from your books was, you know, getting that meeting scheduled while you're on the call there. So that was that was great.
SPEAKER_00And do you remember we were talking earlier? I mentioned we're gonna screw it up right in the first few seconds. Right. We're also gonna screw it up in the last few seconds. Because when we talk about next steps, we say to them, so what do you think we should do next? Well, whose expertise is bringing deals to fruition? It's ours. So we should be making a recommendation. So, Brian, based on what on what we talked about here today, what I recommend we do next is fill in a blank. What are your thoughts? So we're still gonna ask for their perspective, but we're gonna make the recommendation because this is our expertise, not theirs. Absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01So I think we've covered everything on this this podcast, and I've gotten so much out of this. But really, what I want to say is this podcast is all about you. So, so I want, what would you like to tell the audience? Anything else that you would like to say? I'd like, I'd like for you to be able to talk about, you know, where they can find your books, all three of them, specifically the the first meeting differentiator. But but again, um, thank you so much for being on the podcast. But take a second and give yourself a little bit put a little bit of pub, talk about your books and where they can find them.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. So, first of all, if you are interested in the first meeting differentiator and would like to read the first chapter, if you go to firstmeetingbook.com, you can download the first chapter from that page there. The book is available wherever you like to buy books, of course, on Amazon, and it's available in hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook.
SPEAKER_01Great. I will tell you this, and I know I've been a big cheerleader on this call uh or on this podcast. Thank you. I will tell you that I've read all three books. I've taken everything from these books and used them in my client calls and have found it to be, you know, a game changer for me and my sales. So I think my sales went way up and my engagement levels went way up. So I would recommend anybody out there to, you know, use Lee's books. I know he does speaking engagements, um, you know, obviously training. So he's trained a lot of the best. He's trained, you know, people at my company that where I work at Majestic Steel USA. So I would highly recommend Lee and his services. Lee, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was really, I got a lot out of it. I took a lot of notes. So uh so thank you so much. And thank you for having me. We'll have you again next time. Thank you again.
SPEAKER_00I love it. Thank you.