See show notes for this episode: S 02 | Ep 37 The Anti-Sales Manual: How Curiosity Closes More Deals.
Alex: Well, I am super excited to introduce you to Barry Rhein, founder of award-winning sales training and consulting firm of which I'm happy to say I was one of the customers. It's selling through curiosity, coaching through curiosity. It's basically everything through curiosity, which is I'm really curious to learn how to other curious people who don't think they're in sales, who don't think they're in the persuasion business could actually use their curiosity to do great things in the world. I think. One other thing I want to highlight is I wish Barry's class was a requirement at Stanford Business School when I was an attendant student there. And I'm really, really happy to say that it is now one of the most well attended skill-based courses at Stanford. So Barry, let's get the juice of what Those lucky Stanford MBAs are getting from you to change the world.
Barry: I love it. Thank you Alex. And by the way as you were making the introduction and thank you for those kind words. What's interesting is we're all in sales. Everybody, always everybody. If you think about every conversation someone's buying or selling an idea, a concept. And so everywhere everybody is in sales. And that persuasion is magic, all communication. That what it's all about, right?
Alex: It is. And I think it's really fundamental. I think some places sales is a bad word and I think there's some professions where people that are doing sales, they still don't want to call it sales. Like an investment banking is a great example of a highly paid salespeople. you know, that, but that, but they, they, they, they take your courses, they, they learn from the best. But I think fundamentally what you're also doing is for people like myself that maybe had a, like originally like knew that this is something you need to do but had maybe a stigma associated with the word sales, because it like implies some degree of transactionality. What I love about your approach is that you're, you're making it about fundamentally a good thing about being really curious about the other party, what they need, what they want, maybe helping them solve their problem. So tell us a little bit about where does this come from? Where does this personally resonate with you as a framework? And why have you been doing this so successfully with some of the best sales organizations in the world like Salesforce, SuccessFactors, SAP, where I was DocuSign, you know, and I know repeat customers just keep taking you From Salesforce to SuccessFactors to DocuSign, you know, over and over. So you know, you're do, you're doing this that you're like a. Well, one of the best secrets of Silicon Valley, sales culture. And I think it, you know, fundamentally, where did it, where did this start? if the curiosity approach.
Barry: No, it's interesting. I m. Was really blessed. One of the things my parents did really well was my dad always said, if you can become an expert, the answer is yes. So when I was a kid, I was a young kid, I love to fish. I still love to fish. I'm looking at the water right now. I love to fish. And as a young kid and a boy, I learned that you can take worms and you can put them in soil, and if you throw some food in there and you water them, you can make lots and lots of worms. And then I was able to sell the worms. And so that was my first kind of idea of, of sales. And my, my. I was three.
Alex: How old were you? How old were you when.
Barry: Twelve. I was young.
Alex: Okay, 12. Okay. All right.
Barry: And. And I was fascinated by bees, so I studied bees. And, and so my parents really encouraged curiosity. Every kid wants a monkey. I had a monkey. I had an Asian macaque from the Philippines when I was 15. And then I wanted to start a dog training business. I learned to train dogs. And so I had all of these different ways of just being curious. I was just a curious kind of kid. And I think many of us, my grandson, extremely curious. It was so fun. When he's young, he's six, he's seven now. And when he was two, we would walk around the ranch and he would see something. And it was just that mindset of, you know, interest. And of course, being curious myself, I'm right there with him. And my son's right. We're all curious in our family, but we've always fostered that. And I think that that's shut down a lot in. As we become adults, I think this idea of, how do you learn about anything? And if you're talking about sales.
Alex: Yes.
Barry: How do you learn about them? Integrity says you can't sell something to someone if they don't authentically need it. At
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Barry: least that's my definition.
Alex: Right.
Barry: And so, you know, I always love talking to groups of people that want to learn about sales that aren't traditional salespeople, because I ask them, when someone cold calls you on the phone, how do you feel about them? And if they're honest, they say, I don't like it. So therefore we have this negative, you know, this feeling of salespeople. But yet we have to be one. So it's an interesting process. But I was, I learned early on in a dog training business. It used to take me two days to train a dog. It took me 12 weeks to teach the people how to work the dog that already knew what to do. And that was my first fascination with belief in behavioral change work and helping people learn and what that process looks like.
Alex: So it's fascinating because it almost feels like nobody wants to be sold, but people like their problems to be solved.
Barry: Yes, they do. Everybody.
Alex: Right. And so I, in some ways, it, it feels like if there's just a very basic reframe of like, hey, I'm not here to sell anything. I'm not here to even to like, maybe it's an attitude of service. Right. Like serving is a great thing, it's a gift. You're helping others. Right. Solving their problems. If I can't solve their problem, I'll try to find somebody else who can. Right, right. It feels like a much more genuine, life affirming way of going through the world. and I'm curious, when people join in the program, when they have not sold historically, what is the biggest obstacle for them to get over and kind of start thinking of sales and themselves and their sales capacity as a positive contributor to others?
Barry: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I, I, I am blessed. I get to be on faculty in the business school at Stanford, which is for me is always a, a every day I walk. Every time I've been doing it 13 years, every day I walk, I'm, I'm amazed at this campus and, and I, I revere it. It's just amazing. I never went to a four year college. I had a few, I had enough college credits at a junior college to become a police officer in San Jose. And it was a fun job. It was not a career for me. And what's always interesting is in my class we teach the fundamentals of effective selling is the name of the class. The key is my students are there like 90, 10, 90% are not salespeople. In fact maybe 95% aren't salespeople. But they all realize that even as a founder, even as someone that's doing a startup as tomorrow's leader, you have to understand sales. I find it so crazy that we give our kids masters of business and we don't teach them revenue generation. I sort of think about business as this. There's only two kinds of problems in business. Not enough revenue and everything else because if you have plenty of revenue sales, you can buy yourself Runway to fix everything else. And so what's interesting is with the, with my students that I it's honored is one of the biggest problems is this. People seem to think that they can think their way in sales, they can think their way through a sales motion, but yet when they drive a car or fly an airplane, they very much get I have to practice. Like no one gets in an airplane and says I, I flew a simulator on my Microsoft flight simulator game and now I'm going to get behind the an airplane I'm going to fly. Well, the concepts are easy, you can think through, that you can watch YouTube videos, but when you get put in the seat, it's a very different experience. Yet sales is not thought of as a skill. People think of it as I have to be gregarious. No you don't. I've built a career training tens of thousands of people. They weren't gregarious, they weren't natural salespeople. And so it's a skill like anything else. And the biggest mistake is people seem to think that with this skill I can just think through it and it doesn't work that way.
Alex: Well, it's interesting you bring it up. It's sort of there's this analytical thread to some of the folks that get into business schools, right. They're academically strong and so they tend to over rely on their strength. Right. And they've. And like I would put myself in that in the shoes of somebody fresh out of business school. I was of the opinion that if I only could, write a very, very compelling presentation that it would just sell itself. Right. Naturally it would sell itself. And then I was very surprised when that didn't work. For whatever reason, it was a brilliant presentation, it was structured,
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Alex: it was easy to follow. and ironically that's by the way for our relate to fans that are listening. that was one of the genesis behind Relate to is what is it that if you are creating a presentation, you put your heart and soul into some sort of content. For it to actually persuade others, it needs to create a digital interaction with them and kind of lean towards their interest and be curious about what they are interested in so they get their questions answered. Not you trying to shove your presentation down people's throats or shove your product down people's throats or here's about us, like what a great company we are shoving that down people's throats. So we're kind of moving away from this monolith. Fake. Like, here's a monologue about why we're going to change your world. to first understanding what's in people's world, what's relevant, what's not, and then moving them, you know, eventually, potentially to solve the problem. so where do you see people that have been doing sales for a long time, that are not like the mba, where they still, where do they fall?
Barry: Right.
Alex: Because it's a lot of folks that go through your classes kind of in the enterprise software universe. They've had successful sales careers in some organizations. And, I'm curious if that was, you know, the success was because of the product that they were selling that was kind of selling off the shelves or because they knew they, like some of them were still missing the skills of selling maybe a new product or something. That's not proven yet.
Barry: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think that I applaud and celebrate everybody's success. I am, the optimist. I look at what's possible. So what I love is when we go into companies and do sales transformation programs. Yes. The top 10%, we know they sell the greatest amount. The bottom 10%, they sell the least. My challenge is I need to create an opportunity, create a space for, for all those people to learn what they need to learn to be more effective. So when I train people that are in the bottom 20 or 30%, some of the fundamentals, they all apply, obviously. However, when you think about the top 10 or 20 or 30%, and I've trained some massively successful people. Top. The number one sales rep at Oracle, the number one sales rep at hp, number one sales rep at Salesforce. I've had these people in my classes
Alex: just for those folks that don't know that's like a multimillionaire probably.
Barry: Oh, yeah.
Alex: They're like taking, taking the trainee off the yacht somewhere.
Barry: 100%. So now what do I have to offer someone like that? I'm not going to tell them they're doing something wrong. I would be insane. And I don't believe that. What I believe is what do we need to change in our thinking or our skills to be more effective to accomplish our goals faster, quicker, and again, my for and spend more time with my family and friends. That's my whole motivation of why I do what I do. And so when you say to a top salesperson, when they come through our class, they pick up little different tidbits. And what's interesting is everybody that goes through and you know, this Alex, from our experience, because of the pedagogy, which is a word that I didn't know until I got to, Stanford. I never went to college. Pedagogy means the way in which we teach my secret sauce. And I'm very blessed that I figured it out early on is, is I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I create an opportunity for people to go through a different way of thinking and a different skill set. We do beliefs and behaviors, both. That's how you get long term change. And so when you let people role play and practice and have experiences that are fun, that are engaging, and that are methodical in how we want to develop people's thinking in this game of selling, it's all skills. What winds up happening is the top salespeople look at that experience and go, oh, my gosh, I do all of this really well. But if I change these five questions, I can get there, faster. I've had top salespeople say to me, barry, I never thought that I could actually ask early on these kinds of questions. I always wait till way later I'm asking them earlier, which means I'm getting to a, yes, faster. So did I double their sales? No, I did not. Did I help them get there faster? Yes, I did. Did I help them get more referrals because they maybe never asked? Yes, I did. So everybody learns something in this, in our classes, as you know. And it's not me teaching people, it's me creating a space for me to share content, for them to practice it and realize on their own maybe they're not as good as they thought they were. Maybe there's an, opportunity to be more effective.
Alex: Well, let's, let's make this real for our audience.
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Alex: Like you're, you're renowned for being applied. So there are some, like, what are the, let's say, three questions? let's just say three questions that if you use them in your life, career, that will, that will have disproportionate results. And then maybe we could practice some, you know, or pick a part of the sales journey or maybe the earlier part that, where we could even practice some of these questions in the similar role play that you're doing. And let's assume that I'm starting at zero because it's been a long time. I probably attribute, the success of, persuading my wife to marry me to you, which I'm really grateful for.
Barry: Congratulations.
Alex: But, but, but let's assume I forgot the rest because I, maybe the kids are not as, I'm not as persuasive as the kids as I would like to be.
Barry: Yeah. Parenting through curiosity adds a whole other element.
Alex: Yeah, exactly. That's a plug for your, for your, for one of your platforms. But let's, let's take it like for somebody who is curious, who is who wants to curiosity like they think of themselves as they, they genuinely want to be curious about other people. Let's give them the tools, that they could take every, you know, today in their next conversation.
Barry: Okay, that's kind of fun. Okay, let's try that. So before I do that, let me take a step back. What is selling through curiosity? I think of selling as a triangle. The left side of the triangle is all around information gathering. What are the most effective questions to ask? How do I learn about the other person? How do I understand their logic, their thinking? How do I, what's the information that I need? That's the most effective to allow me to serve them? That's the left side of the triangle. Now let's say you get really good at asking these questions. What do you do with that data? That's the right side of the triangle and that's what we call creating customized value. Customized value. I didn't say value. Customized meaning. We're going to map our solution. We're going to map what we want to help them with to their words, their examples, their stories, to their highest business priorities. We're going to map it to understanding their decision making process. When they bring up objections, we're going to use that, their definition of value to help them in that decision making process. In closing, that's the right side of the triangle. Now what's the base of the triangle? That is what we call all around relationship building. So we believe there are tactics, daily tactics to gain mind share, to drive authentic connection and to authentically make again. If people like and trust you, they're going to be more apt to want to believe and buy, buy from you.
Alex: Right? right.
Barry: Don't trust me. It doesn't matter how good my product is. We're going to have a problem. Right? So base of the triangle and there are tactics now in business school that base of the triangle is very difficult for my students. My first five years teaching it was very difficult. They gave me a run for my money. And what I had to learn was many people that are not in sales. So your audience, possibly they think that when we do things for people, it's inauthentic. When you talk about relationship building, it's inauthentic if it's in the context of sales. And that's not mine. I'm talking about authentically connecting. We can talk more about that now.
Alex: That's because they're like, they have the stereotype that like, oh, tell me about your kids. And you know that, that type of
Barry: tell me about your kids. Send a bottle of wine, handwritten thank you notes. I'm bribing them. It's all that, all that brought together. And yes, there, you know, it's like my daughter Joey says, way to fit your stereotype. Salespeople are notorious. They have a bad reputation for a purpose, for a reason. Of course we know why. But that is, that's not. This is all about authentic connection. You know, my daughter Joey, and I am so proud of her. And she. It's so fun to be in business with my daughter. She's the co founder of our program Dating through Curiosity. And we have a simple vision. Helping hundreds of millions of single people with the skills and confidence to find true love. It's a big problem in our world today. There's billions of single people and the
Alex: skills Covid all lacking basic communication skills because of the dating apps, you know.
Barry: Absolutely.
Alex: Over the world. Yeah, yeah, I get it.
Barry: It's terrible. And so we have some really amazing solutions with practice and things like that. But let me go back to that. So, so in, in when we think of dating, you can't be inauthentic. It's like me putting in a profile. I'm six, three. When I meet them in person, I'm five, nine. It's a problem. I don't know why.
Alex: It's just eliminated half of the profiles and some sites.
Barry: But yeah, that's another conversation. But so, so we think about sales. That's the triangle. What goes in the triangle are the applications of what's on the
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Barry: outside, which are prospecting. You have to value based value proposition. Objection. Handling, negotiating, closing, mutual. So there's a. That's the application. So with that being said, now let's talk about this thing called curiosity. Because most people, they think curiosity is questions and that is not curiosity. Curiosity is genuinely being interested in a topic. Interested and genuinely means without an agenda. And this is the magic. And why parenting through curiosity. Or, or when I work with my wife together, when we're a couple, curiosity is really difficult because I have my side of the argument.
Alex: Yeah.
Barry: So. So you already.
Alex: You already. It's a little bit easier to be curious with People who you don't know is kind of what you're saying, what I'm hearing because you have a pre written story.
Barry: Not emotionally charged.
Alex: Not emotionally charged. Right.
Barry: My wife and I, we want to see we want to decide what we're going to watch on Netflix. It's not emotionally charged. My wife and I talking about our kids getting into college. Oh, that might be a little bit more emotionally charged. Selling a deal. That's your biggest deal of your career. Emotionally charged. And this is something I want to leave everybody with because this thought as we move on. I do not believe you rise to the occasion. I believe you fall to the highest level of your training. You don't rise to the occasion when you're in stress, when things go crazy.
Alex: Yeah, you go to the default mode.
Barry: And so what is that? And so in any kind of persuasion in sales, you're a co founder, you're trying to raise money as a co founder, you're trying to sell your first products, whatever the case may be, it's emotionally charged. You are only going to, you don't rise to the level of your just rise to the occasion. You fall to the level you're training and so this becomes what's your skills and practice. So with that being said, now let's talk about that.
Alex: So I don't want to take away like so we got the triangle I think on the. But like this, this is one of the topics that we want to come back to. I think you spend a lot of time in your Stanford course on limiting beliefs that people have, right? And I think there is a, so there's a limiting, generic limiting beliefs like I'm not a I'm not in sales. Right. Like I can't sell. Right. Like this where this is like unauthentic. Right. And so we could kind of uncover that for some folks that are new. But I think when you bring up this level of the level of attachment, right to an issue or attack like this deal I'm attached to, I, I could certainly relate to you know, being a driven achievement oriented person that you know, connects, historically grew, being successful through achieving certain results. And then when you do that and you have some success, you start defining yourself along the lines of those results like m. I'm only as good as my last quarter in sales. I'm only as good as you know, the amount of money we raised as a startup. Right. I'm like. So there is this tendency in competitive, really you know, pretty successful people to start Measuring themselves on this achievement and then the more they get attached to it, the more there is at stakes. and so I'm curious, how do you help people who have a, you know, really, like there's a lot, there's a lot more at stake than there probably should be, needs to be. And like, do, do they need to meditate before the call, kind of reflect on how they're gonna connect with this other human being? That it's not about the call, it's just about the conversation and everything else is an upset. Like guide me a little bit on that emotional state and emotional training that you help people get to to remove the level of attachment to results.
Barry: Yeah, it's a tough one because it presupposes my belief. I know that confidence comes from practice and you're going to see some themes with me. So what I know is when I go into a situation that I have practiced that I am confident, I react differently. People are human. You're human creatures. It's this human dynamic. And so when I think about and I ask people, well, you're in the situation, you're a salesperson, you're doing this or you're raising money or you're just trying to hire, you're recruiting someone. When was the last time you videotaped yourself? When was the last time you were on Zoom and then you went and start and stopped and watched. Now here's the problem with my statement. If you don't have a methodology to bounce off your evaluation, you're just watching
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Barry: yourself. You did the best you could at the moment. Now you're watching, you have nothing to bounce it off to. So that's why when I think of a curiosity based approach and how to be and how to ask effective questions and when to ask effective questions. Right. It requires both. And so as we think through that, curiosity is very fascinating. So let's play a game. You talked about a role play. Let's play a game. I want you to interview me for like 30 seconds and I'm going to. Let's be your business and your interviewing me as a business owner. And I'm just going to, let's do a few sentences and then I want to. We'll deconstruct what is possible. Now if you're, if you're a viewer, you're listening to this, imagine you're a salesperson and you're imagining you have a company and you're going to hear me talk for just a few sentences. Listen to what I'm saying and what Questions would you ask and why would you ask them if you were in sales? How about we take that approach? What do you think?
Alex: Sounds good.
Barry: It's an impromptu, so, okay, go ahead and ask me about my business. So I'm going to be your. I'm a potential customer. Go ahead and go.
Alex: Barry. So what, what made you excited to build your business in the first place and now you've been doing it for over 30 years? What, what gives you motivation to keep going and keep. Keep leaving a legacy? Was your business
Barry: perfect? I love that. And so let me put. Let me put it in context. Here's what I heard. This is what I heard about you. And I just want to verify. I heard that you can really help people like me and you can help my companies. My company. I have heard that for you about what. Get you working with you. What gets me excited about that is I think you can help me and communicate faster. And that's really important. we have missed some goals and I'm looking for some help. So I'm looking if you could maybe give us a demo of your product. I'd like to understand and learn more.
Alex: Thank you, Barry. But before I dive into the product, I'm just curious if you have, thought, about what would be the impact of having your voice and the good habits that you provide for your graduates of your course available to them immediately after the course, in the next three months, in the next six months, so that they get more and more chances to experience the Barry Ryan experience, when you're not in the room.
Barry: Okay, perfect.
Alex: What kind of impact would that be?
Barry: Okay, perfect. I'm going to go ahead and stop. So for our listeners. And by the way, Alex, how direct can I be?
Alex: Yeah.
Barry: How direct in coaching you?
Alex: Oh, please.
Barry: Okay, cool. So, we're stopping the role play. So our listeners, a couple of things. So, Alex, you have a direction you were going in, which was wonderful. You knew what questions you were going to ask. However, when I said some very interesting key words.
Alex: Yeah.
Barry: I said, I've heard about you guys. I believe you can help me. Yeah, we need to communicate faster. I missed my goals. By the way. These are my handwritten notes that I just took everybody from my conversation. So we haven't practiced this or rehearsed this. This was just kind of like Alex and I do it our thing. So I. While you were talking. While I was talking, I was writing down my words. Why was I writing down my words? To use this as an example, any time that we're Trying to be curious or learn about someone in any kind of traditional or non traditional, selling their words is what we're going to listen to. They are little insights, we call them points of view, their insights into a person's logic. For me to serve someone, I've got to understand their logic. If their logic makes sense, then I can help them. But if I don't know it, what am I going to pitch? So, some questions I would like
Alex: to pick you up. so is the implication is that I should have taken that thread more, used those words more as I was going forward?
Barry: How about go be curious about it. So for instance, Alex, I've heard about your company. Ah, what have you heard? why did that excite you? What prompted you to be interested? How did you hear about us? Those are four quick questions just around that one. I heard about you. I believe you can help me. Now, this is very powerful.
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Barry: How do you see us helping you? So literally I said to you, alex, I think I know about you and I think you can help me. And you did not find and you did not ask.
Alex: Yeah, I didn't draw. Yeah, yeah.
Barry: Right. Because I could have explained to you why I've already bought. And again, for points of view, we have to communicate faster. Ah, tell me about your communication. Why faster? What is faster? How will that be of value? If we can help you communicate faster, how is that of benefit? So what, what I'm pointing out here, and I want everybody that's listening to this podcast, when you're in conversations with your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your husband, your wife, hopefully not all of them together with, at work, with, with customers, with clients, we lose the ability of listening for the purposes, to understand. And that is a skill set of listening, writing a few things down. And again, there's some situations you can't. But let's go with this for now. And then being able to make sure that we hear them, we learn from that. People want to share what, they want to share their story and they want to. People want to feel heard. My wife and I go to problem solving, we want to have conversations. Many times there's different conversations with my kids, my purpose is not to solve a problem, my purpose is to listen. So I need these skills. Other times, my purpose, because I ask what's my purpose is to actually solve problems. And so these are the kinds of things I want you to think about it. So let me stop and check in with you. What do you think about what I just said?
Alex: I think it's beautiful. It's really interesting. I was more paying attention to our earlier conversation, than to this one, which is actually very probably a common mistake because in the past, in our other conversation we were chatting about exactly this approach of what happens after the training, you know. And you know, what, what, what's the possibility of creating like a, you know, guide was the favorite questions and everything in there. And I was so basically in a way I was jumping already to solution from an earlier conversation. Right. Versus listening to you right now in this moment. and your, your four key, one key words like I heard about you. I, I think you can help me. And the faster communications. Right. Those were, I think those, those were the, the ones.
Barry: Yeah.
Alex: And then the other, the other thing that I noticed is I didn't write down what you were saying, which is sort of an intriguing, I, intriguing notion. So I think it's pretty easy when you follow the. Like I'm tend to be free flowing in the conversation. So when you're free flowing, I think you could pick something up. So you will still go with the flow. In this case, I didn't do a great job on it, but, but you will still probably miss the other three things that were brought up. Right. Going in unless you write it down. So I was going in the direction that, you know, let's say I would have picked one of those topics. Oh great. You said we're like we could help you communicate faster. I still would have missed the other, the other ones which are, you know, pretty important. And I'd say like, yeah, look, of course I would ask in the. Oh great. You, you, you, you. I'm curious how you heard about this. So I've done this before, but it, it's interesting to your like, I think it kind of supports your point of practice. So like if, by the way.
Barry: Yes, yes. Because you would have missed. Also I heard that you want communicate faster. What else is on that list? So the what else questions is, is something we actually teach and we practice that people don't do. What do salespeople listen for the good ones? A point point. What do great salespeople listen to for all of the pain points and getting them to quantify and prioritize them in order so they can understand which are the business problems that they will spend time, money and energy and resources on right now to solve. You see, I'm not here to solve all your problems. I'm here to identify which are the biggest problem.
Alex: Yeah, most.
Barry: The ones that you'll spend time, money, energy effort right now to solve because then now I've. I've now created some. There's urgency that I've been able to uncover, which helps me in my sales motion. Without training and practice, that's even less of a chance of you doing that versus even coming up with the first few
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Barry: notes on the first one. It's a skill.
Alex: So a great take. So great takeaway is, that anybody can do if I'm playing. Playing it back right now. So first of all, obviously, you want to know how they heard about you. That sort of like, could be validation. You want to know why you think, you know, you could help me. You want. You could double down on the one answer. But like, the. What else is the. What I actually think is the least obvious one. Because you then very often when you're selling some sort of software, you think like you say you have a problem, but you don't. It may not be the m. Most urgent problem that needs to be solved today. And if you have the type of solution that could solve multiple problems, you're basically putting eggs in the wrong basket. Right?
Barry: You might be. Now here's the part that I love the best. So, Alex, we're going to redo this very quickly and watch how different you're going to think. So now I'm going to start in. You're the salesperson. Now, everybody that's listening to this podcast, because Alex now knows what. What he's looking for. We've talked about curiosity. He ran a few questions. In fact, if you look at what he just did, he's reaching for a pen and paper because we've already shifted his belief about that interaction. Now let's watch his question. So here we go. So, Alex, let me tell you what's going on. I'm excited you asked me why I'm excited. I'm excited because I've heard good things about your company. I believe that you can help us. And we have some businesses. We have to communicate faster. we've missed some goals, and I'd love a product demo.
Alex: Okay, great. I'm just shutting this down. I make sure I cover this. so first of all, I'm delighted that you. You. You've heard about us. Tell us, how did you hear about us?
Barry: Hey, brilliant. So let's just stop right now. You added your personality. I'm delighted that you heard about us. So that's just you. All of us have different aspects. And then you're starting right in. Look at the difference in just the frame, your body. You just now Leaned in, you took notes. Now you're a little rusty. So guess what? With a little bit of practice, note taking come right back. People say, barry, I'm going to use AI. I use AI note takers all the time, 100%. I use them to supplement my notes. Because if you rely on AI for the conversation, you don't know how to layer. You don't know what to come back with in a conversation. And now you're sitting there and what are you doing? You're picking the last thing you heard to layer to be curious about. And you've missed all of the first and throughout. But if you then hear something up front and you just keep that in your mind, you miss everything else. So you compromise the integrity of communication with AI relying on the note taking. It's a skill set. I'm sorry, It's a skill set. And so I think you're absolutely right.
Alex: And this is what I think it's beautiful that you bring this up because I think this is a gap, right? Like, I think we've all started taking less notes and the assumption that AI is going to do good job and it's going to write the next steps. And I think what you're saying is, well, next steps are going to be shitty if you don't do a great job during the meeting. And for that you need to take notes to make sure you don't miss the threats. Did I get that?
Barry: This is why, you know, 100%, this is why. And again, I've built a career on this. I'm in my 40th year. I will take an army of B, players that I can teach because they'll all rise than having a few A players and trying to build a business on that. I'll take an army of C players that are motivated to learn that I can teach skills because these skills are all learned. And you know, you went through, when you went through the program with the success factors.
Alex: Well, I'm feeling like I didn't really get much. I'm feeling self conscious about it now. But I got rusty for sure.
Barry: By the way, I would never go fly an airplane today after being a student pilot with 100 hours 20 years ago, why would I just think that I could get in an airplane and, and take off? It's insanity. But yet, like you say, it's been a while, I'm a little rusty. Here's what I know. If we did one or two more role plays, videoed, and you and you coached me, you would be 90% back
00:40:00
Barry: like that because they're perishable skills, but because you believe in the concepts. That's the belief piece. You like curiosity. We talked before about how do you use curiosity with our kids? the concept is there. The skill set's a little rusty. But here's what I know, Alex, and this is for all of you that are listening. Do you have to be a master at questioning? No, you do not. Do you have to be like, I have to be in my tactical questions. Do they all have to be perfect? No, they do not. What gets carried is if you're genuinely curious.
Alex: Yeah.
Barry: And so we teach open ended questions. No. Yes and no questions. So now if someone goes, are you happy? Did you do this? Did. But that's not good. But if someone's genuinely curious, Alex, I'm curious. Are you happy? You're not happy. So tell me what's going on for you? What is carried is the. Tell me what's going on with you. I shouldn't have asked the first two or three questions. It's multiple questions. It's not tactically sound. It doesn't matter. What matters is you literally, Alex, when you go back and watch this, you leaned forward when you said thank you. This is, I'm curious. You literally were part of that. And that experience is where genuine curiosity for everybody listening. All of you are in relationships, all of you have connections. All of you have to sell an idea, a concept. all of you do. These skills of being genuinely curious and focusing on what's important to them, they're masterful and they'll help in every, every aspect of our lives.
Alex: So the big underlying theme, it's almost the, not even the particular question, although they need to be open ended. It's the intent behind the question.
Barry: it is. But you, you got, but you still. When you think about sales, sales means I'm going into a meeting. What is my purpose? What is the data I want to get? Those are our categories of qualification. And then our questions. We want to focus to be as most effective. But, you need both. You need my intent. So if you remember, in enterprise sales we had categories. Motivation. What motivated you to see us? or to take the call about them? We had to learn about them, their company, their culture, all that we need to know about their current situation. How do you currently do blank today? Help me understand that. So there's questions around that with what you're doing today. What do you like? What don't you like? What would you all improve? There's those bank of questions what are you ideally trying to accomplish in a perfect role? We want those kind of questions. And then in that we have our, if you remember the advanced questioning, once we have the pain and it's quantifying, what are the issues you would spend your time, energy, money now then we have to understand once we have the pain, what's the impact of that pain, the negative consequences, what's their ideal solutions and how will that be of benefit? All of that has to be quantified and measurable. Once you have that, then we roll into the decision making process. How do you guys, let's say we can solve these problems for you. You just described them. Let's see. Tell me about the decision making process. How do you think about making decisions? The evaluation process. We have to understand a little about the timeframes or how are they thinking about that and how do they handle the money, the budgets and how do they think about budgeting. And so these are all categories in an enterprise sale that are all part of that. And there's a few more after that. and so now once you have those, then we have to start thinking about if I have a sales call or I'm going into a meeting, which of those do I want to deal with now? What are my questions that I want to have? And then now I want to be able to be curious. And now the questions matter a little less as long as we're genuinely curious, but we still know that we're there for a purpose. People go into meetings without knowing what the purpose is. I'm a very big believer. Purposes are 100% in my control. That means I can't solve their purpose, but I can try and understand the best I can. If it's in my control, I become a genuinely curious person as opposed to, if I focus on stuff out of my control, I become frustrated because people do what people do. People are weird.
Alex: So on the topic of the sort of the long journey, in our conversation you brought up the topic of a demo. And I think a lot of product driven people, product led companies, increasingly there is a type of software called product led growth product led sales where the demo starts playing an earlier part in
00:45:00
Alex: the sales journey. That's at least the theory of the case. And I struggle to see the personalization. Right. Unless people can, unless it's something pretty transactional and maybe pretty well understood as a, as a, as a like problem. Then, then I think maybe or low dollar volume. Right, but, but, but so there's this tendency and I think I'VE felt it because you know everybody, like as a founder, like a lot of founders or product oriented people or sales engineers, like they, they think the product is amazing. They're, that's why they joined the company. They love it. Right. So they, you, you want to share it right enough. Oftentimes you share quite a lot and you know, and so you end up having the, injecting this product discussions pretty early. I think you even brought up, hey, I would like to see a demo. And so I think that was a, like for somebody who was waiting to demo the product, they would have probably skipped for those other parts.
Barry: And that's why I put that there for that. Perfect. You're correct.
Alex: Yeah. Continue. I didn't, I didn't fall in that trap. But like I have in the past. Right, because you're, you know, hey, let me show you this thing and this is what we're doing with AI and you know, I'm curious, what have you seen about in the, in the world where the tensions are shorter, right?
Barry: Yes, they are.
Alex: And there is less of an appetite for, you know, pattern matching. I kind of know what you're going to do. I'll tell me about your problems that are done. I'm like, I know you need it, but can, can we skip through some of these steps and can I, can I see for myself if the product can, you know, is what I need. So there's some people that want to shortcut through that process. Have you seen successful examples of using demo and mixing? That was a curiosity based selling? that, that are working today.
Barry: So. Yes. And so let's redefine. I, I have a different definition of a demo. Okay. What is the purpose of a demo? It's qualification. So people say, no, I'm showing the demo to show them the product. No, that's, I don't believe that. That's not my, that's not my belief. My belief is you have a sales motion. Every single step drives curiosity.
Alex: Okay.
Barry: So I believe now for a $5 sale, we're not doing customized demos. I get that. So under the pretense when you are going to be doing a customized demo, there is an overarching rule of thumb and it is simple. When you think about when you're the prosecution in these and you're going to trial, you never. The rule you're supposed to. There's like a rule of thumb that says never ask a question you don't know the answer to or something like that. Never do a Demo that you don't have a question before or previous knowledge from a previous discussion. So in order for me to do a demo, I have to, even if I have to do a short demo, even on my first sales call, I'm not compromising discovery. What I'm doing is, I'm saying, okay, you want to see the demo? I'm going to show you a demo before I jump in. I just wanted so I can show you the right things that are relevant when you think about blank. What are your highest business problems you're trying to solve there? Tell me about what you're doing now. So then I'm gathering data to show if this is a deal of size, meaning it's the right strategic value and, or it's the right dollar size. We don't do demos without doing discovery. I'm sorry, we don't. I get. Our. People will argue. Well, no, our, our, our, our, our, you know, SDRs, our processes, we show a little bit of the demo to tease them. Okay. I would have to understand the sales process and the methodology there. But let's just go with it for a moment. I'm not going to show something that I don't know the answer to because I don't know how, I don't know what language to put it in.
Alex: And so Barry, some, some of these companies, they already have a demo tutorial type of.
Barry: They do 100. So but they, they're doing that on their own. Yes.
Alex: Do you think that's a mistake? Do you think that so, because that basically the customer, oftentimes we've seen examples, the customers either pre qualify or they're coming in and they kind of the value, part of the value has already been destroyed because the demo is, you know, about, you know, little widgets and smidgets and not about the underlying value. And so they get hooked up on some features that ultimately, you know, maybe don't, don't move the needle.
Barry: I'm not saying that's wrong. And so I don't, I don't have enough data that it's, it's, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on that style because there's so many variables. What I will say is we get asked a lot to look at a can demo. We get asked a lot to look at what
00:50:00
Barry: we have, our YouTube videos. And I look at them and my mind always is, what is the value proposition? How are we pitching value? Not features, value, value, value, value, value. So if you're using something to hook people to then have a conversation Great. If it's a small dollar volume. I know companies look in the consumer world, you don't. There's no conversations. We sell products without conversations. So of course it's appropriate for those kinds of. Right. I'm thinking of in situations where a salesperson or an SC is needed and it's a strategic and or the right dollar volume, then there's some fundamentals that we want to start our conversation as sort of our truth, which is if it warrants, we don't do demos without doing some discovery either before in a call or real time. I have no problem. No problem. And there's different methods. Right. So let me stop and check in with you.
Alex: Yeah, I think this, this aligns. It feels like what we see happen is as companies get mature they probably see three or four types of problems that they solve really well for their ideal customer profile. And so there's a bit of a selection mechanism that happens where like who are you? Okay, I'm this person. And then we. Okay, great. If you're this person and this type of company, we have a pretty strong thesis as a company that you.
Barry: For that vertical, 100, that vertical or
Alex: that even though the language we may know the case study. So then we could basically take you and show you something that's maybe a little pre organized for you or at least has. Even if it's a standard demo, it has the value language that will resonate. And I think the problem though is that the way the modern communication setup is done is you have to be either super prepared, to discover all that in one, in one call, so to speak. Right. Or you kind of need to create a architecture where it allows people to choose where they are. Like pick your.
Barry: I think that's great.
Alex: And then you get to these right. Demos. So that's one of the things that we've seen some of the customers that have taken your training like Salesforce that are way better at maybe doing this than I was in this call. Right. They are thinking, all right, how do we take you on a journey that's really relevant to you? And then we show you the demo that meets your business goals as let's say a Salesforce partner that's trying to grow their revenue through sales. They're going to have one very different demo or very different resource than somebody who is like technical, technical specialists on that same product at 100% company.
Barry: All that segmentation all has its value. Yes, 100%, I agree with that.
Alex: And so the question, the question then becomes how much of that can be packaged into content. Right. So basically curiosity based marketing, or curiosity, you know, based customer communications versus, versus like one on one high touch sales, enterprise sales process. Right. Can you, have you seen people scaling your approach in their content as an example?
Barry: 100%. And I think that is, I think a demo in the old days was a step in a sales motion that was always done by a sales engineer. we don't see that as much anymore. We see some companies that salespeople do it. We see some companies that demos online, we see companies with pricing and demo online. We see all of that, we see segmentation. So if you have the SMB market, that's different than the enterprise versus mid market. All of that is contextual. You have to take all that into account. I'm looking at when there's two kinds of curiosity, there's a machine learned, right? So it could be through AI or through whatever. And then there's a human connection when it's time for human connection, which in many cases is less and less because with AI we have to be that much more effective and we can't have salespeople or sales engineers on larger opportunities. Having a customer that has seen a demo via on the line has watched and educated themselves. When they finally get to us, our skills matter even more because the opportunity to authentically connect and build trust is less because it's transpired through technology.
Alex: So they're already educated. So you're, you're educated knowledge that you have is no longer so, so what, what makes a difference? And I've, I've heard this from some customers. Like we, we have this SDR that's kind of one year out of school.
Alex: and you know, they're doing cold outbound outreach. Like I will consult you on xyz, you know, like, okay, great, where do I sign up with my 30 minutes. Right. Type of reaction. and then, then on the other hand, the customer may be like an engineer type of mindset. Like very much like, I don't want to be talking to humans, unless I really have to and I can learn everything on my own, or I could, you know, consult AI or whatnot. And so you have this almost a situation where the level of knowledge of a, customer may be higher in some or potential customer, very much higher than that of a generalist sales rep or an sdr, you know. So what do you do in that situation? How do you add value and build, build a richer connection?
Barry: Well, interesting curiosity doesn't require you to be as technically Savvy as it does being a sales consultant or a sales engineer. It doesn't. So what's interesting about curiosity and what's interesting with people that have done research, it just changes the way we ask questions a little bit. Okay. So we have to be a little bit more mindful and thoughtful. We have to be a little bit more skillful in the questions we ask. Again, we don't really. But our close rates are not where they need to be. We don't really. But then our discounting is excessive. Right. So there's consequences of, of not being effectively trained and the consequences add up to the billions of dollars when you start looking at that. So we have to be better technology. Is technology making us, better or lazier? It's a very interesting question. I will say for many people, the skill set that is required to be effective at sales that require personal connection technology in many cases is making us lazier.
Alex: So this is back to that point that where okay, I'm over relying on the demo, whatever, or I'm over relying on the zoom notes and not paying attention in real time to the little golden nuggets that you gave me in the conversation and then maybe just pick up one of them and not. Not the others. Right. So that. Because I know the notes will capture everything. Right. So what else? you know, the, the sort of in this world of technology, aiding salespeople like automating outreach, which I think we see quite a lot of. What do you feel, is going to help people to at least succeed in the earlier stages of the sales journey. Right. Getting people moving there. Because that feels like that's right now where the bombardment of AI generated it is reaches, is. It's convalescing. So I'm there. You know, we're all get. You get probably messages. I get messages. What feels authentic and curious in that early outreach?
Barry: Yeah, I think it roll. I mean it's a hard question to ask generically. Right?
Alex: Yeah.
Barry: My generic example of a client. Yeah. M. My generic.
Alex: Some of the best insurance companies in the world, you know. So in insurance, commodity facing commodity pressure in the business, like well, how do you. How do you stand out in that world.
Barry: So in that world I'm. I'm always addressing the only really piece I look at technology that I play in is are there questions effective and is their value proposition clean and crisp? I'm still shocked to this day at how terrible companies are with their value propositions and their salespeople's ability to be Able to communicate them. So that's kind of the areas that I look at for me in there. Then everything else is all about human interaction. When it's time to interact, that's where I can make the difference. So when you think about if you increase closing rates 40%, that's a really big number. We do that. That's not a, that's not a typical thing that we do. When you're able to. When you think about moving people through a pipeline faster so you shorten sales cycles. Those are things we do all day long. So now AI is front end loading that AI
01:00:00
Barry: is having technology, technology is starting to have a front end opinion on that. However, at some point when it's time for them, if there is a human connection of some point, that's when skills matter and that's where we influence that the greatest amount.
Alex: so let's come back as we're wrapping up Barry, like so you gave us this triangle and let's maybe like let's go back to the triangle. So people take that away and then like maybe like what is in some scenario, maybe it's for. Relate to, maybe it's for your own business. Like what are the couple questions for each base of the triangle that we could go and start practicing? in. In our next conversation?
Barry: Yeah, you know, I think the, the, the purpose of, of. I think one of the first ones early on is what, what, what, what caused them or prompted them to. To want to visit. So we're trying to get to some initial business paint. If someone takes a meeting. Thank you. What prompted you?
Alex: Like you said, is that in relationship phase or is that in the discovery? Like where do you feel like that fits? So you have this sort of learning information about them and then there's a relationship building that's more information learning about them.
Barry: And their world is a little bit different than now when we're shifting to business. So I think that the biggest areas are going to be about motivation. So I think that's a big one. Business pain. What are your highest priorities? Not what are your priorities and not what you working on, but really being a little bit more. And by the way, each of you have a personality and a way you are comfortable. So I would coach you all this way. I love people getting out of their comfort zone a little bit, but not too much as they're learning this. And Alex, the challenge is you can go to AI right now and say give me the best five questions for motivation in this situation and AI will give them to you. The problem is it's not going to teach you layering and it's not going to teach you how to have your personality and how to be comfortable with that. That's the practice. So no matter how you look at this, it is about practice. It is all about becoming more confident through practice. But, but a few questions. Business pains, a big one. There's. We teach high level. There's two questions we should be asking ourselves or as a manager, we should be asking our people, is there a real deal here? Can we get a deal done? That's it. Is there a real deal here? That means we have to ask questions like, tell me about your business pain. what are you currently doing? How are you trying to solve this now? What prompted you to take a call with me? That is our real deal here. We got to get that information. Yeah. Can we get a deal done?
Alex: That's back to, our. That's this, the other part of the triangle that's like, can we, you know, have a personalized outcome value? You know?
Barry: Yeah, that's a tactic. But what I'm talking about is the way I know can we get a deal done is I'm asking you, Alex, tell me about your decision making process and getting a deal done here. And if you don't like that vernacular, Alex, how. Let's say we can solve these business problems for you. Walk me through your process. That's the decision making process. So I would leave everybody here as we wrap up with a concept that says motivation, pain and decision making process. That's if at its simplest I would
Alex: be thinking about that and what you did there is. It's kind of a sleight of hand. But I think for people new to sales, that's really important. Even though I kind of intuitively at some point picked up on that. Is that, okay, fine, let's assume we can address this need. Right? Really? Well, let's talk about, you know, what would, you know, what would. Who would do this? Would you do this? Would you be the owner of this?
Barry: Not who, who's closed ended? Are you the owners? Closed ended. No disrespect. All right, walk me through your process.
Alex: Open ended. Walk me. So, okay, open ended. Walk me through the process. You got it. So basically, keep it all open ended. But like, remember that there's different parts of the cycle, like their needs. Is this the, you know, how, how do you see this solving your needs, or some, some kind of version of, of that. And then like the process, assuming this solves your needs, you know, the
Barry: people don't ask decision making process. And by the way, they, they don't ask it anywhere in their lives. It's kind of shocking. Like if I'm trying in a sales, I need to know, how are you going to think about this deal? How does a deal get done here? Walk me through your process. I use how does a deal get done? You may be uncomfortable with those words so you want to change the words a little. But still keeping it open. People don't ask that enough. When it's funny, like with my wife or my kids, I'll ask, okay, so help me understand what we just what
01:05:00
Barry: you're thinking and what's the process from here? I just need to understand where do we go from here? What does that look like? So that I can, I just need to know the process so I can then in a selling situation, prioritize, I can build in some pre handling of objections, all that stuff.
Alex: And Barry, one of the themes that I do now recall you brought up that you could ask the same question in multiple ways. Because of course people won't necessarily answer it the first time or they won't be. Maybe they'll be confused about the answer. Maybe they don't want you to know. tell me a little bit about that approach. Right. How do you do that without being annoying?
Barry: well, we have, if you remember, we have an exercise that we run people through where they come up with each of the categories and then they have to come up with five questions of how to ask what that. So decision making process. Give me five questions. How do you guys make decisions here? Tell me a little bit about your process. How do you think about making decisions here? Let's say you're comfortable with us. walk me through their process. Those are four different ways to all ask the same question.
Alex: Ask the same question. So it's okay.
Barry: But everybody's got to have two because if you ask one, you take your shot and it doesn't work. You got to have a backup. Most people don't have one and most people don't practice any.
Alex: Feels like there's a lot of practicing to be done. This is this is your.
Barry: There's a lot of practicing in relationship to what people do now, but it doesn't take years of practice. It takes minutes. Alex, when you went through selling through curiosity, we did a three or four day event and I'll bet you we spent in that three or four days. When you look at the actual amount of practice that we did, it was four or five Hours. And so if people say, wait a minute, the actual role play, because we would spend an hour creating questions, that's not role play. It's a different way of doing things. But the actual bantering, you can learn it so quickly. So when I'm not asking or saying to people, it takes years to do this. Absolutely not. I don't get years. Remember, my business is simple. If they don't get results, they don't pay me. It's simple. When I do equity deals, I work for free for 179 days. At 180 days, we do a thumbs up, thumbs down. If they had value, I vest six months back. And we do month to month forward. Everything's results. So I don't get days and weeks and months and years to figure stuff out. I get days, I get weeks. So this stuff happens fast and it's transferable from business to personal, personal to business. It affects all of the different categories. It's why you and I, when we first talked a few weeks ago, you were like, I'm trying to use curiosity more with my kids. It's transferable. Yeah, all of it takes practice.
Alex: All right, Barry, where can people practice? Where can they find you?
Barry: Where can we are, selling through curiosity.com, barry Ryan.com just search selling with curiosity. We have programs and things of that nature and would love to hear from you and would love to participate. I'm blessed. I'm 66 years old. I've had a 40 year career. It's been unbelievable helping tens of thousands of people. And I get passionate and genuinely excited every day with the idea of how can we help people be more curious because it just makes their life easier and it furthers their goals as much business far more personal. I get excited with helping kids and saving marriages and things like that through curiosity as I do, you know, closing, you know, 40% more deals, whatever.
Alex: If you want your kids to love you, if you want to save your marriage and if you want to do well in your business, check this out. Dari Ryan. I am going back for remedial training, obviously, but I, I, it stuck with me. It was before I did anything, related to sales and kind of wearing a marketing hat originally, when I went through it and I kind of, I think I had a partial attendance. But I am really glad to, to have brought this wisdom and decades of experience from Barry to, to our audience. Please, please find Barry and please, underlying theme, especially for those in the relate to ecosystem is that we are no longer shoving information, shoving products, shoving services. We're having conversations. And so that's this. You know, if you're, if you're wondering why this matters, if you're in the content business, your content needs to embody what the best, sales and communication professionals are doing, and they're just having conversations through that content. So, Barry, we're. We're gonna commit to applying your ideas inside the, The Relate to platform. Thank you again for sharing your nuggets.
Barry: Happy holidays, Alex. Thank you. Bye. Bye.