¶ Intro / Opening
Hey, welcome back to the pod today. We are talking to Sarah Murray. Sarah is a sales consultant, trainer, and speaker, and works with leaders and sales teams to unlock the untapped potential in their prospecting and business development efforts through her workshops, consulting, and podcast prospecting on purpose. She empowers professionals to enhance their communication skills, approach prospecting creatively, And effectively address business needs rather than push products.
Cause no one likes to be pushed. Anyways, Sarah,
¶ Sarah's Journey into Sales Training
Logan, we're
Hi, Raul. I'm so happy to be on it. Thanks so much for having me.
excited for this. We can dive into a lot around prospecting your model of how you approach selling your worldview around that, but I think I'm more curious right now to begin. Why focus your career around doing more sales training and speaking? Versus being the in house salesperson.
it's funny. I was thinking about, building a business. And when you build a business, the goal is to do something that you're passionate about, that you can do day long. And I was thinking, what do I most enjoy? And I really narrowed down to, I really loved the very beginning part of the sales process.
Like sitting next to someone at the airport bar and finding out what they did and then getting them to buy my widget or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, Finding connection points on how I could add value. You never know who you're talking to, their brother, their cousin, their business partner. the world is quite small. It's big, but it's quite small. And so I really loved the beginning part of the sales process.
And I think that's an area where people really struggle is just creating business development and hunting for business. So that's, I was like, okay, I love talking to people. I love business. It's something that comes naturally to me. How can I create some materials around it and market it and monetize it? And that's what I've been doing for the past two years. And it's been super fun journey ups and downs, but, it's been very rewarding.
And I like the idea that you packaged it and created your own IP around that, which I think is a good podcast episode with gray, hopefully it'll air before this one, but he talked about creating a leveraged expertise business. And I liked that framing because it's essentially you're doing. It's not the same work. Every client is different. Every niche is different.
Every industry is different, but it's the same process, or you can compound learnings on that process so that you can be the best in the world for what you particularly do for your particular clients. And I really like that you mentioned that here. That's one way to think about it as well, as much as I do X. It's, I've pounded this process time and over again, and I found better ways of doing it. And that's what people are actually buying. It's the actual framework of how you approach it.
And not
¶ The Art of Prospecting
just the execution of it, which we can have debates, which one's more important versus the other.
it's funny. I was thinking about the term prospecting and that's an umbrella term. It could be in business development, could be in sales, it could be networking, but like prospecting as a whole. And I, what I did is dorky, but I drew a tree on a notebook. I drew a trunk of a tree and then all these different branches. if I was going to sit in front of someone and explain what prospecting is and how to do it, what would I tell someone who had no clue what it was?
And so I wrote prospecting in the trunk of the tree, and then I just started filling out the limbs. Of just different processes to make friends to build business to start conversation And then I put it in a priority order what comes first and then that's how I built the content That's how I built the workshops But it literally started with just me drawing a tree and thinking if I was gonna just explain It to someone who had no clue What would I say?
And so it was, it's funny that certain things you create end up being the framework and foundation for all these other things,
Yeah, mapping out the ideas. Why do you think a lot of people struggle with prospecting? I think, let's not just talk about the technical aspect of it. Because you've seen this in large organizations and midsize organizations, maybe even smaller organizations. But why does that seem to be a key sticking point?
I feel like when
So
a job, When we're in a sales role, when we're in any type of role, really, whether we're self employed or working for a company, we're focused on our personal end goal, which is to do our job or make X dollars. We're focusing on ourselves so much, and I feel like when we do that, We cut ourselves off creatively. We don't see opportunities sitting next to us at the airport bar because we're so focused on ourselves and what our specific goal is.
So I think where people get stuck is they're focused on their own objective and that creates blinders to real opportunities that are always around us.
it is a framing and it's almost akin to just the way, I've listened to a lot of I wouldn't just call it motivational speaking, but just a lot of different ways to see the world. And those words that I implant through audio books or programs to help me see my situation differently. It's similar here as well. If I'm just focused on my thing and myself, then I don't see the opportunities that are right in front of me. How do you shift that when you're working with teams? Cause you do.
Either doing what trainings and in a corporate setting, or you're actually helping businesses that are fractional component and you're helping those people think differently. What are some of the ways that you enable that to happen? Because it's not just, Oh, here's the thing, a slide, you're done. It's a process of the habit. How do we practice it? Yeah. And
From my corporate world, I come from a commercial construction background, selling into hotels predominantly, but commercial buildings, enterprise clients. And I could always get to the top decision maker always.
¶ Adding Value in Sales
And I was, again, when I'm building my tree, I was thinking about how am I doing that? And. I really boils down to what I call a B a V always be adding value. And anytime you're approaching any type of situation, you're thinking, how can I add value to the other person? And that could be the man who's opening the door for you. The person who's driving you to the airport, like it can be small or it can be large scale.
And when you approach things with that mindset, the sales portion becomes a lot easier because you're not asking for anything. You're just adding value. And it stems from Stephen Covey's concept of the emotional bank account, where you're adding these deposits into the other person's bank account.
I'm just always focused on adding value and adding deposits, when it comes time to ask for the meeting or ask for an introduction or ask for a lunch invite or ask for the order, The sales part becomes a lot more organic because I have so much equity in the bank. It would almost be weird if I didn't for business after we build this. Friendship, this camaraderie, this is proving that I'm a trusted partner because I'm not just in it for your money or your sale.
I want to know who you are as a person. I want to add value to your business or your life. And then it becomes easier to ask. So I really think that one of the biggest like secrets is if you can reframe your mindset to always be adding value in any interaction, that's, what's going to help catapult you to these higher level decision makers, because. You're differentiating yourself from every other me to salesperson.
to be honest with you, one of the conversations I've had recently. It was a prospecting call and the way that I reached out to them, I forgot what I did. It was some sort of ad inbound messaging. So we can dive through the strategy later. But the whole idea is there was a resistance on their end because obviously like it's a no, no name. I don't know who you are and what's this guy sending me this training location or whatever guy and like I would be pushed off to the side.
I'm like, okay, what are you working through? And they actually shared one key problem, but a very terse language, like short language. And I sent them, you know what? It sounds like I can introduce you to my friend. I introduced them to the friend who can actually add value to what they're doing and actually solve their problem. They met or whatever.
And I kid you not, they posted on LinkedIn, like shouting out for me in the way that prospecting process work, not because I'm some sort of genius. Cause frankly not just because I saw a knee. I'm like, okay, cool. Here's someone
¶ Practical Examples of Adding Value
that can help you. And then maybe two or three weeks later. That is an example. Can you give us more examples? If you're doing this in person, like you mentioned the taxi, the door person, maybe the front desk, maybe when you're meeting at the conference room. What are other ways to add value? Because we hear that a lot. Give me some tangible ideas that I can work well.
this is a silly example. I think this could be internal and external. So I'm going to give you an internal example and an external example. my grandparents had an avocado tree growing up and I would always pick avocados from my tree
Lucky, there you go.
And then I would get, avocados like anywhere from two to four bucks sometime. So it's like green gold, right?
I know.
the time my corporate headquarters was in Pennsylvania. So I would bring a whole suitcase full of avocados. I'd carry it on. And then I would just go around to people's desks and give them avocados. And it's the smallest example of an emotional bank account deposit. But when I needed their help. I could call my internal teammates and say, Hey, and they would answer my call because I had some, like even the smallest little example.
So other ways that I like to do this is think of your own passions. Like maybe you love to hike, or I know you're a triathlon, runner, swimmer, biker, you do all the things, Raul, Like maybe next time I'm in San Diego, Hey, I just heard of this awesome hiking trail. Have you heard of this hike? let me grab your phone number. I'll text you the details. So it's a nice organic way to get people's contact information too. It's a little like Trojan horse. let me send you this awesome podcast episode.
What's your number. because in post pandemic selling direct contact info is king, I had a really cool story I just heard from one of my clients where they were going to a trade show. And it happened to be in Buffalo, New York, which is where they lived. So they had home court advantage, but they're thinking, okay, How can I add value? all been to trade shows. You get a ton of emails, visit the booth, stop by the booth, come
And flyers you never read and stuff like that.
Never. And so what these guys did, they're like, okay, how can we add value? They put together, they said it was no frills, it was like a two page PDF, unformatted, and it was just, Hey, when you're in Buffalo, here's the top Mexican restaurants, here's the top Italian restaurants, we got a bus going to Niagara Falls if you want to come on our bus, but if not, here's the other tours, you can't miss Niagara Falls. And they just blasted that out.
And they said it was the biggest game changer for their show, because everyone came to visit their booth to say thank you. They would run into people out at the restaurants that they recommended. And they're like, Oh, you're the one that recommended it. The event planner came and thanked them. And then they opened accounts in seven new States that they weren't currently doing business.
That's a cool way of doing live events.
And it's free. It doesn't cost any money and it's just out from the noise. And I think that's when you come from a place of value, going to stand out from the noise.
I like that example because it, you mentioned this word and I think we need to compound on it right now. Creativity. Cause it's not just here's like my 20 checklists of things that you need to do. It's here's the principle and now it's up to you to come up with it creatively. And when you reframe it, it does force you to think creatively around it. One of the biggest things, especially in B2B is obviously the slower sales cycles and the longer it takes.
And from here, what you're saying, these are principles. They also seem like it's going to take a long time. It's going to take. How do you balance the length of time
¶ Building Emotional Bank Accounts
to relationship building to knowing where to move the conversation in the relationship because we can't just be friends for a living.
I have a framework, I call it bridging the gap framework. And the gap is really where we put our customers or our prospects up on a pedestal. And then we're all down here trying to jump up on the pedestal. And so the trick is to not take the person off the pedestal, but to find a way to put ourselves on it with them. So GAP stands for genuine interest. So just. questions, be genuinely interested in other people and listen actively.
People are terrible listeners these days, myself included, I have to practice it too. But if we can make sure we're listening, that's where the creativity starts to percolate. Because now we're hearing, oh, Raul's interested in mountain biking. Okay, maybe I can give him a mountain biking trail. there's different ways to Form those bonds at the beginning.
The second letter in the gap framework is ABAV, always be adding value and we're consistently putting deposits in and the P stands for prized clients. And this is where we pivot from relationship building to sales generating activities. So I have a short example, another trade show example, but I was at a trade show at the time I was selling fire features, fire pits and fire elements. And I live in LA, you probably know this company, golden road brewery, golden road beer
I'm not sure.
they were based in Burbank and they were at the time they wouldn't distribute farther than a truck would travel. It was very eco conscious brewing. And I see this guy walk by the booth and he's got a badge that says, Tony, ABC pubs, Burbank, California. And I knew the owner of golden road also owned another pub called Tony's. And so I said, Oh, Hey. Are you golden road, Tony? And he says, actually, now I'm Anheuser Busch, Tony. I sold the brewery to Anheuser last year gave him a high five.
I was like, Oh my gosh. I didn't hear that. I said, I have to tell you, I'm a vegetarian and you have a recipe on your, you have a, menu item called the Hearts of Palm Ceviche, and I love it so much. I hope they keep the Hearts of Palm Ceviche. starts geeking out because he's that's my recipe. I'm a vegetarian too. So we're like, have all this common bond. And then I call them icebreakers, but mild, medium and spicy icebreakers. So I asked him a little spicy icebreaker.
I said, so what are you going to do with all your Anheuser Busch money? we had a bond at that point. We're high fiving and vegetarian nerds. But I said, what are you going to do with all your Anheuser Busch money? He says, Oh, now I'm building five new restaurants in LA. I said, Oh, have you considered fire pits? And now we're in the booth and now we're talking about his business. So it's like those two little steps of genuine interest and always be adding value.
Like I'm adding value because I'm. his business prowess. I'm complimenting his recipe indirectly, but just again, being curious opens the doors and then it would almost be weird if I didn't ask him about what's next for him would be weird if I didn't push the fire features, but I'm going to give a caveat there, What we also see in trade shows is like this product pitch facts and features
Yeah, all the time.
And so the other thing that I think is really important once you get to sales generating activities is communicating your message in a way that builds their business. So, hey, Tony, when you add a fire pit to your exterior patio, these people are going to sit around, hang out, spend more money on food and beverage. Don't worry about the fuel cost because it's going to pay for itself in the first couple round of drinks. showing that it's a marketable amenity feature.
There's an Instagram, feed with the fire pit. So, finding different messages where, I'm not talking about how hot the fire pit gets or what the material is made of. I'm talking about how it's going to build his business. And that's like the biggest emotional bank account deposit you could ever do.
Yeah. Anchoring it towards the outcome. And that's first of all, I like, let's dive back into the your, what is the mild, medium and spicy.
Oh
Bridges
That's the number one step in genuine interest. You got to open that door somehow and doing an icebreaker is an easy way to do it.
and the nice thing there is that the environment that you were in, it would have been weird if you never asked for any interest because it's a, the environment is a natural selling environment. Same thing with LinkedIn, like when people aren't in LinkedIn, people are there for business. They're not there to chum up and high five and just like post and whatever, like they're there to either learn something, connect with someone, or be entertained.
And I just realized my mic isn't connected and these headphones are capturing that, so big issue.
Sure.
Yeah, that was crazy.
Sorry, I could have stopped you. I wasn't sure if it was just freeway outside.
no, there's someone's constructing something outside and mowing the lawn. But on LinkedIn, it would be very awkward and very weird to just have those conversations and not move it. And there's also the antithesis of that. As some people go online, it's like, I don't want anyone to sell to me here. It's like, okay well, don't go to the national trade show of every single professional in the world. But you did it with tact and you did it with an actual strategy behind it.
You didn't just do it loose. I'm just going to fly by the seat of my pants, but you had the intention, you have the goal. Talk to me more about what you just mentioned on selling. Because I see this all the time too, even for services or for clients that want to sell a specific service versus selling the actual outcome. And my key thesis is never sell your services, like just don't sell them. No one cares about it. They care about what they do because of you.
They care about your creative work because of what it allows them to do, not because of the work itself, which I might get some heat for that. But tell me your thoughts around like selling the, what is it, selling the business model versus just selling features.
Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest shifts. And I learned this from a mentor at an early age. He gave an example of Starbucks coffee. And so why do people like to go to Starbucks? Is it because the coffee is so much better? Not really. if anything, you could probably argue local coffee shops are going to have better quality, but we go to Starbucks because we can order it on our cell phone. It's ready before we walk in the door on the mobile app.
We collect points like it's consistent across all properties. We always know there's a Starbucks. That's more of like a program selling approach is more of a business to consumer example, but I like it because it's so simple. Most of us aren't going to Starbucks because the coffee's that great. We're going because it's convenient and the way it fits into our lives and B2B is the same way.
Everyone's bombarded with facts and figures, but it's like, how is your product going to make their lives easier? So a good framework to look at it is how does my product or service make my customer money? Or how does it save my customer money? And that changes the conversation because now you can get to the top level of decision makers because you're solving business problems versus just pitching product facts to them.
One of the, are there more categories besides those that you've seen? Cause sometimes I see people buy because of ego. It makes them feel important or because you're the safest option versus a non safe option or a riskier option. And I think this does always boil down to more money, lower costs, longer LTV. Like I know that those are the KPIs you can anchor to, but have you leveraged or use any other angles or can we just boil it down to make it super simple? Make more or save more.
I think the make more money or save them money is a really helpful first starting point. Because obviously if you have brand recognition, that is such a luxury. It takes usually many years to build brand recognition. if you have that in your tool belt, you should be leveraging that all day because I, I used to work for, don't know the right example, like the king of the mountain, like the industry leader. That's probably better. I had to defend the mountain, but I worked for an industry leader.
And one of the biggest things that I could confidence say to my client is, Hey, sure. You can go for that lower cost startup item, your hotel's going to be here for 20 years or longer or 10 years before you need a renovation. 10 years? Because I have three other hotels that I'm helping out right now because the product went out of business. So sure. Like if you have brand recognition, if you have a superior product, if you're the market leader, then you're coming from a place of success.
defending the hill if you're newer and you're trying to build expertise, it's going to be an easier conversation. If you can speak to their business model and how your product solves problems or makes their lives better, easier, faster, et cetera. that's, I think, the competition because people are going to want to accept your meeting in a different way. Then. Hey, let me tell you about our software product. I have another example. my 1st client.
my consulting business was my next door neighbor and we lived in Venice beach it was so disgusting there. And so one day we decided to clean our garbage cans together, but like with masks and gloves, and it was just gross. So we're out there cleaning our garbage cans for hours and we're talking about business and I didn't realize he had a startup, his startup was a really interesting product. It was.
a device that would give a Wi Fi reliability score for short term rentals this was like peak of remote travel peak of pandemic and people wanted to travel to Costa Rica, for example, but who knows if the Wi Fi is going to be. And so they had a model and when I helped him start to have conversations with decision makers that particular message wasn't a huge pain point for them that they were solving. And so I ended up asking, who do you use for your door locks?
they used a wifi enabled door lock company said, okay, when the wifi goes down, how do you get notified? a problem with the locks, then your tenants can't get in. And that's a bigger problem. He says, we have no alert system for that. Okay. this device is going to help you communicate if the wifi is unreliable. And so it ended up being an alert system for the other wifi enabled devices, but you don't figure that stuff out until you start asking questions.
You start to be curious and then you find where does my product or service save them money or make them money. And in that case, it was saving them money. Okay. Because we are, we're able to enable alerts and impact other wifi enabled devices on property. So it, that was a long example, but it's really just pulling the thread and asking questions about the customer's business model so that you can find ways to slot in your messaging accordingly.
Yeah, I call it creating the business case because if you're coming in, like you mentioned, as a startup, you have to present that case pretty strong, but I also never thought of it. And this is good that you put it into words like this way is if your brand is strong and you are, like you mentioned, the industry leader, the more time in business, you can start framing the problem as a loss that they don't work with you. But it does flip.
the approach where your product is the prize versus the client or the customer being the prize, which you talk about for them being on the top of the pedestal and moving up those steps with one of the one of the things you mentioned earlier, and as you're beginning and growing and you're in your business on the consulting side. Is the emotional bank account. Could you give us maybe an exercise or maybe like a habit or a regiment? What can people
¶ Connecting and Networking Strategies
be doing today to build that emotional bank account? Cause we never know when we're going to have to make those withdrawals.
I will tell you one of my secret weapons to LinkedIn, especially if you're an entrepreneur or solo, self employed person. We meet as entrepreneurs, so many different people just in conversation, like Raul and I are pretty new friends, but we've had a handful of meetings at this point because we, I think we have shared values. I don't want to speak for you, Raul, but we have shared values.
But one of the things that I've been doing that has been very fruitful, and it's a coming from a place of genuine and sincerity, that's another layer, but reach out to people and say, Hey, I want to talk to you. I'm meeting so many people in my business. I'd love to get a better understanding on what your business is so I can keep you in mind for my networking efforts. And Raul, you gave such a good example of connecting two people.
Like being a connector is one of the biggest ways you can add emotional bank account deposits is something that helps that person's business. you connected those two people and solved a problem. That's a major emotional bank account and both of their. Thanks, but it didn't cost you any money. It's just you having active listening skills, building out your network and thinking, Oh, so and so can help. So and so I'm going to put them in touch with each other.
Like that, I think is a really easy way to start to build connection points. I have a meeting next week with the CEO of a company and their product is pretty similar to someone I went on a bachelorette. Party with And so found her on LinkedIn. I said, Hey, check out this company because I have a meeting with the CEO next week. If there's a fit, I'll bring you up and put you in touch. So it's I might never do anything with that. It may totally be irrelevant.
But she now knows that I'm thinking enough about her to find her on LinkedIn, send her the note. So it's just always thinking about how you can build others, how you can add value to others. And then that always gives you a reason to be front of mind without being salesy.
and also not being boring. So go to more parties in bachelor.
just goes to show you business can be built anywhere.
That's the key thing. It's all. And I think one of the key takeaways too, is that you just can't do this in isolation. You can't do this just by cold messaging strictly. You have to build relationship, build network, go out to those events, go out to the speaking things, the conferences, and then from there being smart enough to connect the dots and like working backwards or just even reviewing that.
yeah.
Wonderful.
I just learned that word recently, but I've been using it a lot, like an amalgamation of, where things come from. Like I have a meeting with a prospect tomorrow and it came from a woman I had on my podcast and she was listening to my podcast and it's a construction company. And they asked her for business and she says, I don't really have this experience. But I know Sarah does.
And so it's funny to see how business starts to come inbound when you've been doing it long enough, but I'm finding ways to stay front of mind in a way that's not pushy or salesy or buy my thing. It's Hey, let me help your business. Let me have you on the show. So finding ways to add value is really, I think the secret sauce in any type of success.
It is the principle and it's also time and market. The longer you are in market, the more that you're consistently doing these simple acts. Will compound over time. Sarah, thank you for sharing these principles. And just like the simplicity of the approach, it's not super complicated. It's very understandable, but I know that it's a significant amount of effort for our listeners out there.
Where's the best place for one that thank you for being on maybe depositing your emotional bank account and to learn more about where you're up to.
Okay. I love that. my website is Sarah Murray. com S A R a murray. com. And then, I also have a podcast, it's called prospecting on purpose. And we dive into a lot of these concepts in more depth than Raul has been on the show. So you'll have to check out his episode.
I appreciate that. We'll put all those links in the show notes at Sarah. Thank you again.
Thanks so much.
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