JOHN COSTIGAN: All right, got a bunch of things written up here again. Quick reminder again. Remember, sales
process, concept, simple. Problem. Got a problem? Got any money, you want to fix it, right?
Going through our four steps. Connect, discover. Now I wrote deliver. That’s the next one. The
deliver is where you’re now going to tell them how you’re going to fix them, but stop. You know I
keep referring to the, oh gosh, I’m going to try to draw this. Here’s a doctor. I’m going to do this.
That’s the stethoscope. Here’s a doctor with a stethoscope. You’re like, “Man, get somebody else
to draw for you, please,” but you guys get it, right?
There’s a difference. You know I keep referring to the doctor methodology of hey, just be the
doctor where you’re going to ask questions, understand their challenges, and then you’re going
to advise them on how to get them fixed. A doctor never tries to close you. A doctor doesn’t go,
“What can I take to earn that business to try to do surgery on you?” It’s not how they work. In the
doctor’s world they’re assuming you’re there for a reason. They’re going to tell you these are your
choices, and you get to go decide if you want to go do it or not. In sales, same thing. We’re going
to listen to their are challenges. We’re going to advise them of how we could deliver it. Then we
can leave it up to them to decide, but that’s where for us we want to maintain control more. We
want to control this process and let them see us, salespeople as trustworthy, confident, competent
and my company, my products. They want to look at me as that’s the solution to getting fixed and
a big part of this delivery. This is huge.
I don't want to lose you and take too long about telling you the differences here between the
doctor and the rep. The rep, we need to close. The doctor doesn’t need to close. The point right
here is this. This is this magic, magic right here. Right here is a key, key spot. I’m going to bring
it right over here. Right after you do your discovery, and you’re asking a series of questions, and
by the way when I was doing that earlier in discovery, I know it was a long section. It’s not like,
“Hi, tell me this, tell me this.” It’s just an ongoing conversation. You can’t go, “I walked in with
my needs analysis profile. Let me ask all these different questions.” No. He’s going to go,
“Really? Is this a Spanish Inquisition here? We’re not going to play 20 questions.”
When I look at this discovery, and then between there and delivery, right here is where you got to
have this. You just got to have your barometer, your red flag moment. There’s our red flag. The red
flag moment is this. I wrote all these things down because for me there’s got to be this barometer
going is any of this stuff happening in my discovery? If it is, red flag which is going to stop us
from working to try to win this deal. When I mean by stop us from working, remember I said
gang, our goal, our number one goal, remember, our number one is continue to move forward or
not. We’d like to stop earlier, if we can because it’s terrible when you stop down here. You got six
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JOHN COSTIGAN: months, and you lose, that’s a bad day.
We want to get a no here. I always say that. No is a good answer. Yes is a great answer, but maybe
stinks. You know what I was probably going to say, but maybe, I hate maybe. I’d much rather get
a no here. I think as a sales go, I hate maybes. Maybes, I keep working without knowing what
happens when I get done doing the work. I’m going to give you a list of my red flags. Number
one, are you doing all the running around and all the work, and they’re not? That’s a big one. On
our clear next steps you go, “Great. How about you do this, and you do that? I’ll do this, and I’ll
do that. Then let’s grab our calendars and get back together,” or do you find that you’re going,
“Let me go back to my office, let me go grab my people and go put together a proposal. Let me go
get referrals for you.” Stop.
You got to make sure that they have something to do on their end because if they’re not invested,
and you’re the one running around, you know something? Now you are. You’re like the doctor
begging them to go into surgery. You got people going, “No, dude. This is your problem, not
mine.” When was the last time a doctor called you, “Hey, we’d really like to have you do that
surgery?” Now I get you can talk about dentists, and stuff, and how they try to be proactive, and
get you to come in and stuff, but at the end of the day doctors are like, “Hey, man, you’re one with
the problem. You want to fix it or not?” If not, fine. I got other patients to see. That’s how you need
to think, you do. If you do a great job at connecting and a great job at discovery, when you do this,
you start to get that customer in a pain state. They’re starting to man, we got to fix this. You want
to get to the point where the doctor is going, “You want to do it or not?”
You got to do a great job of the discovery to get them in a pain state. If you’re not doing that, and
they don’t feel like they really got to get something fixed, that’s why a lot of times I would tell
people, “Hey, listen. When I start doing a discovery, here’s what’s going on in my mind. Every
time I ask a question I’m taking another inch off their arm.” I want to find a hang nail, and 22
minutes later I want this person on Prosthetics.com. I want rip their freaking arm off, I do. Why?
If you’re in enough pain, you’ll be flying to the hospital to get fixed. Pain wins always. If you get
enough pain, it’s sacrifices anything. Any feature and benefit, it takes priority, correct? It does.
In this case, if you do a great discovery, you’re into the pain part. They’re finally going, “Great,
let’s get fixed.” That’s why I’m bringing this up now. I could have put it in the last section under
discovery, but it was going too long. I wanted it to dovetail into here. If you do a poor job on
this, these things start to happen right here. You start doing all the work, unpaid consultant. Hey,
can you show us this, show us that? I can’t tell you how many times me being now a CEO of
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JOHN COSTIGAN: a company, people come in with their proposals. I go, “How would you do it?” They tell me
everything with no commitment. I’m like, “Great. Now that I know, what do I need you for?” You
just told me how to do everything. Don’t be that person. Explain, what the heck was that? I’m
looking through my screen. Explain, what is it? Explain, what the hell is it? Explain Charlie?
Here we go. Okay this is great. This is the part where I don’t know my own handwriting. Explain,
explain. You’re like, “What’s he writing, man?” Explain challenges. That’s why I was looking
through the screen and to that screen going, “What did I write over there?” Explain challenges.
Are they explaining their challenges, and are they being forthright, or they’re holding close to the
vest? I hate that. When they don’t start telling me something, don’t take this the wrong way. I
hope I’ve done a great job with connect and build rapport. See, if you do this good upfront, people
will be more amicable, and they’ll be more forthright to talk to you. If you don’t do a good job
here, they’re going to hold close to the vest, and maybe sometimes I haven’t done a good job in
this. Sometimes I’ll ask questions, and they’ll go, “We’ll just get on that later.”
I'll finally go, “Hey Bob, stop for a second. I got to tell you right now one of my biggest concerns
is I’m trying to understand what’s going on in your organization, so I can help you. I almost feel
like I’m the doctor walking in going, ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ You’re like, ‘You figure it out. I’m
like, ‘Can you just tell me a little bit?’” If they don’t, I go, “Hey, listen. Let me stop. Maybe I’m
screwing this up. If I am, that’s fine. If I am, I’ll just pull up tent, and I’ll head out.” There’s a part
of my brain that says, “I’m too old for this.” I’m too old to be sitting here begging you to tell me
what’s going on in your organization when I know you have a problem.
At the end of the day, just let you know, now maybe that’s a little bit of John older, impatient. I
get that, but if you do a good job at connect, and somebody really starts to play close to the vest,
then you don’t want to be a jerk. Sometimes I’ll say, “Hey, listen. I think I’m at a point, Bob,
where I don’t have enough information to really be able to help you, I don’t.” I feel like I’m the
doctor where you go, “Hey, my chest hurts.” You’re like, “How can I fix it?” I’m like, “I might
want to ask you a few more questions. Did you have chili today?” Yeah. Then Maybe you’re not
having a heart attack. We might want to hold off on the whole cracking up the sternum here and
trying to help you. You may not need that.
Sometimes I’m a little brash, but I’m like, “I don’t want to waste my time.” I don’t, and I hope
I’ve done a good job in connect and discover. If they’re going to hold really close to the vest on
discovery and not tell me much, then how the hell can I help them? It’s impossible. Don’t let
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JOHN COSTIGAN: people do that to you. There should be mutual respect. That doesn’t mean you walk in, play 20
questions, you just keep asking questions. You go to build rapport. It’s like a tennis match. The
ball goes back and forth. It’s not you keep lobbing questions over like this, and they’re going,
“You’re driving me crazy. Can you just tell me what you do?” Don’t be that person either.
Any way, there’s two things that are going to happen here. Number one, the rest flags, and these
are your red flags. Open and honest. You want them to be open and honest. You don’t want them
to be wishy washy. You don’t want to start doing premature presentations. Let me erase this, so
I can keep looking at you guys. Premature presentations. Finally, this is my favorite thing. Just go
with your gut. If your gut is telling you this is not going anywhere, chances are you’re probably
right. I ask most people, “Is your gut right?” Most people say, “Yeah, it is.” You want to make sure
you go with your gut.
At this point in time here’s what I do. The first thing I do is do I have any red flags? That’s number
one. Actually, I’ll put this up here, number one, make sure I’m on my screen. Am I on my screen
there? Cool. Number one, red flags. Remember, I have not gotten to delivery yet. We’re going
to do that section next. Are there any red flags? Is there any ding, ding, ding, ding, warning, Will
Robinson, we got an issue? I know you got everybody here under the age of 40 going, “Who the
heck is Will Robinson?” Trust me, go search warning Will Robinson on Google. You’ll know what
I’m talking about in the show Lost in Space. It was on in the 60s.
Then number two though, number two is this, is now you want to do your first real close. You
want to do that. Your first real close is this. I’m going to do this for your again. I’m going erase
the doctor here. We’re going to do this in real time. I want to show you something. Stay with me.
One thing about this glass board, it is awesome, but man, you got to work to erase it. Let me do
this. I used to do this years ago, and I love this. One of the things you want to do is the old way of
selling and the new way of selling. When I look at the old way of selling, the old way of selling
was pretty much this is that you’d walk in the door. You’d walk in, and you would I say this.
You’d walk in, you’d ask a bunch of questions. I’m sorry, you’d walk in. You’d do a feature and a
benefit. You tell them about you. You ask a few questions, but a lot of times it’s usually about you.
Hey, here’s what our company does. Here’s who we help. Let me ask you a question.
Once you ask a couple questions, then you come right back, and you talk about feature and
benefits. Then you talk about the product that you have to help you. It’s feature and benefits, and
then we’re telling them about our products, and how great we are and how wonderful we are. Then
finally at the very end ... Let’s pretend the meeting is at one o’clock. Now it’s coming to 1:56, and
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JOHN COSTIGAN: now you’re going to try to close to them. Mr. Customer, what can we take to earn your business, or
what are our clear next steps? Even though you’re doing the clear next step part, it’s the old way,
and it’s not real fun. Everybody does it, and here’s what the new way, but even just the awesome
way is this. Here’s the awesome way you should sell.
Instead of that first thing you walk in, you do information gather. You do connect. You’re going
to do a connection, build some rapport. By the way, you might have done that here too. I’m not
going to say you didn’t do that here. Sure, you might have built some rapport and talked about the
weather or the Cubs or something, I get that. Then what you do is I want to go information gather.
I want to ask some questions. By the way, do I need to establish myself a little bit in terms of
what we do? Sure. If I need to give my pitch, it’s 40 seconds, and I’m not moving back to asking
questions. I’m going to gather information, and then the next thing I’m going to do is this. Close.
The last thing I do is product, the last. I might give them tiny little snippets, but I don’t want to be
the unpaid consultant.
What I do is I’ll ask questions. I’m right here now, I’m right here. This is right there. Now
I’m going to go, “Hey, listen. Let me ask you just really quick. If all the stars are aligned, and
everything was perfect, and you go, ‘I love it,’ when would you want to get this fixed? When
would you want to implement this and roll this out? When would be your go live date?” You want
to do that right here, right there. By the way, they might say, “I need to see how the heck this is
going to work.” I would say that. I’m pretty skeptical. If I were the rep, I feel like I’m doing back
like, “Hey, I want to see how it works.” Then I’ll be back to the rep. This is John the CEO, and this
is John the rep.
I would go, “Awesome,” and I’ll do that. I’m actually going to start to show you here a little bit.
What I’ll do is I’ll give him a little taste of how I’ll help him. Then I’ll stop and go, “Hey, are we
on the right path?” John, the CEO will go, “It’s looking pretty good.” You go, “Perfect. The reason
I’m asking you, I asked you earlier, I’m wondering if I can provide you a solution that’s perfect, is
this something you’re looking at doing this year?” John will go, “Based on what you’ve told me
so far it looks pretty good. Keep going through it, but if this really works, John, I’d like to do this
in the next 60 or 90 days.” That’s how this works. They may be resistant upfront, but right at this
point if you’ve done a great discovery, and you got them in a state of pain, remember the hang nail
person? If you’ve got them in a state of pain, they’re going to begging for you to fix them. They’re
not going to be resistant, they’re going to be forthright, and they’re going to want to get fixed.
Right here, I haven’t even gotten to delivery yet of tell them how. I just said connection, discovery.
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JOHN COSTIGAN: I got their arm hanging off, and I want to go, “Great. If I can fix all this right here, what happens
next?” If they go, “Let’s go,” now I pitch my product. That right there is the delivery. Now I’m
going to deliver, and that’s the part where I do the presentation, the PowerPoint, all of it, whatever
you got. This is now where I start to validate yes, this person can fix my problems. That’s how you
want them to feel. I’m going to do that section next, but I wanted to go through this with you. This
is how this works, you guys.
I know these sections get a little long, and I know you can actually download the audio and listen
to this over, and over and over, but remember, right between two and three, quick summary, look
for red flags. Go for your close, look at the inverted triangle. The old way is do some rapport,
feature and benefits, here’s our products. Then you start asking some questions, then you try to
close. Wrong way. Here’s what you want to do. You want to be able to do information gather. Once
you do that, now you go for the close early on. Then you finally pitch the product at the end. Most
people reverse this. They ask questions, then they talk about their product. Then they put the close
at the end. Reverse them. Try to close as early as you can. If you could do that, then I’ll tell you,
you’re going to start getting people motivated to start giving you commitment to start signing up
sooner as opposed to later. We’ll see you in a second, we’re going to talk about delivery.
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