How to Succeed at Making Sales Training Stick with Hamish Knox

How to Succeed at Making Sales Training Stick with Hamish Knox

Mike 00:03 Hey everybody. Welcome back to the How to Succeed podcast. This is how to succeed in making sales training stick with Hamish Knox, longtime Sandler trainer from Calgary award winning trainer and author of Sandler books as well. And I'm excited to talk about this topic because there's this interesting sales training paradox where I always equate it to like driving with a police officer behind you. All of a sudden, you've forgotten everything that you know, how to drive for the last 20 years, and you started thinking and overthinking everything. We're going to talk about how to overcome that and really make the sales training. Take action. This podcast as always brought to you by Sandler, the worldwide leader in sales management, customer service, training, more information. taylor.com. Hamish, welcome back to the podcast. Tell me a little bit about the sales training paradox here and what we're going to talk about this week.

Hamish 00:56 Thanks for having me back, Mike. So the sales training paradox is everything works, if it's implemented, and something that has come up recently, and it actually was started by a couple of sales leaders saying to me, do I have the right sellers on my team? And I was like, Okay, well, let's, let's really unpack that, because first of all, those sellers are human beings, right, who have families and mortgages and hopes and fears and dreams and all that. And they also have to perform right, this is not a permission to not not perform. So we started unpacking, and we've been working with these groups for, you know, varying lengths of time, longer than three months, but but shorter than shorter than a year. And as I reflected, what I realized was the sellers weren't necessarily implementing, they were coming to sessions, they were doing the self directed stuff in Sandler line, and they were implementing the stuff that was really comfortable. It's really easy stuff. And when it came to implementing the stuff that really would help them differentiate on how they sell, not what they sell, setting, the upfront contracts, beginning and end of every conversation, really getting into the compelling reasons for buying, quantifying them understanding in advance what the buyer is willing and able to invest time and resources, understanding the entire picture of how they're going to select somebody that wasn't happening. So the leader is seeing the sellers go into session on a regular basis, doing the stuff Oh, yeah, Sandler's great boss, but then they're like, Okay, except the results aren't really changing. So one of these things is not like the other.

Mike 02:42 Yeah, there is so much to unpack there. So we're going to do it one at a time, attitude, behavior and then technique. My initial thoughts are they're just some interesting things when you start sales training is that it's sometimes it's messes with your head a little bit with the imposter syndrome that I've seen people who were once good sellers, all of a sudden start overthinking it, like I mentioned, or they start cherry picking things like you said, of, Oh, I really like this, because this is what I was already doing. And then they make us or sometimes when we learn about personality profiles are disqualifying and things, there's this tendency to like, go for no and get it a lot involved experienced that. And so there's a lot of kind of speed bumps here that we can trip over as we get started. And I've also seen it where the opposite is true. So I don't want to scare everybody off were my favorite story of all time. We had this guy that was in a similar situation to you, the owner came to us and they were like, he's been with the company three months, he hasn't sold anything, he's gone through Foundation's, we don't know whether we should move him on to the next step and keep investing in him or just let them go. And we talked him into taking the next step and engaging in President's Club and given him like another 90 days. And what's amazing is he made his first sale and started selling that week because not because we changed anything about his training, but he was so worried that he hadn't sold anything that he was gonna get fired that he was messing up the sales calls and being too desperate on all the calls. Anything happened once he realized he had another 90 days yeah, he was able to relax and finally get some deals done really interesting things happen like that in our head. So when I say add your what comes to mind for making sales training stick and making it helpful, not hurtful.

Hamish 04:48 So there's a bunch and and the number one and it's two parts. So I'll say the both parts and so everyone can can resonate with them. So part number one is for the person learning Right seller sales leader, customer service project, whatever is I have the right to ask. The second part is, my buyer has the right to say no. Because there are no magic bullets that you know, there's no seven magical things that you can say to always get the sale or the meeting or whatever. That's all nonsense. Yeah, so have I 17 different ways. And so what if, again, everything works if it's implemented, but if I don't believe that I have the right to do it, if I don't believe I have the right to ask are the right to implement. I'm never gonna do it. Because I'm already beating myself up before I even get in the ring. And we have to not be like, well, if I say this to Mike, that it's absolutely going to get them next meeting. Because Mike is a human being who has his own hopes and fears and dreams and worldview, and patterns of interacting with sellers, that I am probably violating for lack of a better word, because I'm not going okay, sir. I'd love to send you a proposal and hope to hear from you never, I'm saying yeah, like having to do a proposal. kind of curious, you know, if you see if you get the proposal, and you'll love everything to see what happens next. You're like, no sellers ever said that to me. So I have the right to ask, my buyer has the right to say no.

Mike 06:20 I think that's really great. Now, did you say there was two things, or those are both things at the same time.

Hamish 06:25 So that one was the first one was two parts, there's a couple of other ones, but I figured you might want to unpack that one a little bit. Because that is a big paradigm shift for a lot of our clients is both sides, right? Not only believing that they have the equal business stature, they have the right task. But that also, it's not some magic bullet that the buyer is gonna be like, Where have you been? Oh, my life, here's my money. They're gonna be like, Yeah, that sounds great, dude, but how about you just send me the proposal?

Mike 06:51 Well, that's where I was going in two things came to mind for me. One is, I think we want to continue doing what was working for us. And not all of a sudden, like, you know, changing a golf golf swing, blowing it all up and starting over and forgetting how we sold in the first place. Because it can really mess up your pipeline and, and sales pretty fast. But at the same time, we can only do what was working for us, we got to have permission to try some things. So that permission ask, to me kind of translates into permission to fail. Yeah, right, we need to go and we need to try some new things that may or may not work. And just because a new sales training technique didn't work the first time you tried it doesn't mean it's the bad technique or the wrong thing to do. Right? That's really hard to figure out your head.

Hamish 07:40 Amen. And that's where like, I was having a conversation with a seller a couple of days ago, and like, Well, yeah, I mean, you know, not all of the Sandler stuff works, is it? No, no, it all works. However, it's not necessarily a literal copy paste from what you hear in the session, through what works in your world. You know, Sandler said, I'm giving you sheet music and helping you make it send in your world. And unfortunately, because our brains are wired to keep us safe, which usually means stuck, our brains are lazy. So the brain goes, Well, Mike said this. So I'll say that, Oh, it didn't work. Mike's fault. It doesn't work. Whereas if we look at sales and really human interaction, as a scientific method, right, I have a hypothesis, Mike as a qualified as a qualified client. I'm going to run an experiment, I will ask a question that I heard in a training session, I get new data, oh, maybe Mike's not a qualified buyer. Let me run another experiment. And keep iterating on my hypothesis until either Mike is a qualified buyer, and we do business or he's not acquire qualified buyer for right now. And we're not doing business for right now.

Mike 08:44 Now, I know you've written some books on the subject and stuff. But when we get to behavior, this is what I think we're talking about, we have to do the behavior enough to find out if it's working and enough to get good at it. And so there is a certain amount of trial and error testing hypothesis, adjusting to get there. But what's your advice here and the behavior bucket?

Hamish 09:07 So several things, the first one is, and I make this mistake continually, right? So my comfort zone is over here. And for those who are not watching, you know, with my hands on the left side of the screen, and then where I want to be is over here, which is on the right side of the screen now because I'm not necessarily the smartest person every now and then I will try to go from where I am to where I want to be in one move. And there's plenty of listeners who are nodding sagely going oh yeah, I've made that mistake myself. Right. So what we coach our clients to do is pick what is the thing that is comfort zone adjacent. So the thing where you're like, Okay, that makes me slightly uncomfortable, but not massively uncomfortable that when I go out in front of a buyer, I'm going to sound like what just went to sales training and I have a shiny new toy to try out. So you're already awesome. Pick the thing that you believe is going to make you money. We're awesome, that just makes you slightly uncomfortable that you can deliver in a conversational way. And then only do that one thing. This is again, where human beings tend to make a mistake. And you said earlier is I'm going to change everything, well, then it's not scientific, and we can't control the variables. So pick one of the things that has come for Joe to JSON. And do it for maybe a week, maybe it's three weeks, it's probably at least a month, until you've actually had enough buyer interactions. And this will depend on how many interactions with buyers you have on a regular basis. If you're more transactional sales, maybe it's only a week, if you're in much more of that enterprise type environment. Maybe it takes you two months, I don't know. But you commit to doing that thing every time. And then the second behavior is debriefing, every interaction with a buyer. So what went well, what went didn't let go? Well, as it relates to the thing that you're trying so not the overall call, we're going to narrow our focus down and just say, Okay, for this thing that I'm trying, I'm asking, you know, is doing nothing an auction, right? That's one question that a lot of our clients find early success with when they start working with us. So I'm just going to analyze what went well, with is doing nothing an option in this interaction. I'm going to gather that data. I'm going to I'm going to iterate on my hypothesis, I'm going to go out find another buyer. And I'm going to ask that question again. And so the so that's the second thing is we got to debrief because otherwise, we have no data to see whether it was working or whether it's not. And it's really just like, Well, my company thinks it's working. So I'm going to move on to something else. And that's not necessarily beneficial.

Mike 11:39 So the natural follow up question there for me is debriefing with a coach or a manager or somebody that can give you independent feedback and evaluation, not necessarily just saying like, Oh, I did it and like you said, I think it worked or I think

Hamish 11:54 both and both. And so we tend to be our biggest critics, right? I and high achievers especially tend to be their their worst critic. So you might have said, Hey, Hamish is doing nothing an option like, actually no, Mike. You know, what, what do you want to do, Hamish? Well, I think I got to start working with you, which actually happened that has happened to several clients. And you're like, Man, that was only a $250,000. Order. I bet I could have got more out of it. It's like, okay, well, you got the order. Let's celebrate that. Right. And at the same time, we want to be debriefing with someone who is either watching call recordings or going on field visits with us and doing that debriefing. Because we do want that third party support for either side, right? Are we too hard on ourselves? Are we too easy on ourselves? Most of us fall into one of two extremes and that person gets to bring us to the center go, okay. Hamish, I think you're not as bad as you think you are. But you're also not as good as you think you are. So let's talk about, you know, how you can iterate on what you're already doing, and then grow and scale from there. Yeah,

Mike 12:56 exactly. And my next question, then is the the snap back. So I know you have written a book on accountability. Again, I'll just shout it out. But there is the other side of that personality, like some people want to jump too far. And that causes them to snap back because they're like, Oh, it didn't work. And it was painful. Let me run away from that. But there's also where if we don't do enough, or we don't create this habit out of it, sometimes it works so well that we stopped doing it and we go, oh, we made a couple of sales. Now. I gotta get busy and service those sales and have stopped doing what was working. Can you help us out with that problem a little bit? Yeah,

Hamish 13:33 that's a great point, Mike, because we need to make the commitment not only to ourselves, but to someone else. So we talked about accountability. And there's plenty of studies out there that when we commit to someone else, like workout buddy is usually the cliche that most people reference right? If you've got a workout buddy, whether you actually work out with them or not, but if you commit to someone else that you are going to exercise a certain length of time a certain number of times a week you are much more likely to not only start but continue and eventually you know expand what you are doing in terms of in terms of exercise so it can't just be like well you know, I heard Mike say that so I'm going to try that like no no, write it down. Share it with someone I in my book on accountability, there's a whole chapter on consequences. I am a big fan of positive consequences because the word positive consequences actually neutral. I am cookie operated as a lot of people know from vacation podcast before so you know for me a consequences I get a cookie and by the way, listeners It is literally a cookie that I get when when I complete it.

Mike 14:33 So they stop saying cookies because I started this new diet this quarter and I'm on the second day of like a juice fast. I feel like we're speaking to me right now.

Hamish 14:43 Accountability Okay, so So then I and by the way some for some of us we may actually get need to give the other person the cookie so that they can actually witness us doing it right so it's, it's not just like Well, I I thought about saying that to Mike but I like cook He's anyway, so young good for me. Right? We need to actually do that do the behavior. So this goes back to okay, what are our typical buyer interactions? How is this thing that I'm picking this thin slice comfort zone adjacent is is going to actually pay off professionally and personally. And so like with the Sandler no pressure prospecting call, there are seven steps in a Sandler no pressure prospecting call. And some of the listeners are counting in their head right now to make sure they know all seven steps. When we coach that we coach, our clients do not do all seven steps. Pick one, because also by the way, the nice thing about having seven steps is you can say, Oh, I'm doing step one, the natural progression is to go to step two, once step one is starting to work. So we really have to be clear with ourselves as to what thin slice are we going to do and thin slice a group do not try to do everything at once thin slice it comfort zone adjacent, how often are we going to implement it? How often are we even committing to implementing it? What does success look like? This is very similar I was on a while ago talking about trials and demos. This is really what we're doing. We're doing a trial or a demo on ourselves. So commit to what success looks like, commit to an accountability partner, and then commit to what is the next step? Because where we often fail, and this is the point you were making a second ago is we say, well, I did that. Well, yeah, we checked the box, we did that. And we have nothing else to go to because we didn't define it in advance. So if we define it in advance, we are much more likely to continue the progression, as opposed to rolling forward and then stopping.

Mike 16:42 That's amazing. Now we get to the technique bucket. And there's lots of ways we can go because you've already shared several techniques from thin slicing and accountability and debriefing and others that we could use here. But what about maybe making techniques stick? So I find this to be very interesting is there's just so much especially in Sandler, you've already shared a lot of tips of picking one thing, and others, but Does anything come to mind when I say the word technique here?

Hamish 17:14 Totally Well, I'm also gonna refer back to another podcast you and I got to do together on roleplay. Right, the single greatest way to develop is by roleplay. Because the hardest four inches to move in our life is breaking them up. And and it all the knowledge in the world is useless if it just lives in our brain, it doesn't change the way we behave or the way that we communicate verbally with our with the people in our lives. And so, so leaders listening roleplay with your people, one on one every single week. Roleplay is a private activity is not necessarily a group activity, you can do it in the group, it's much more effective one on one, because the anxieties that are inherent in it roleplay are amplified in a group. So if we do it privately one on one, we can also tailor it to the person because you might might be awesome at the first three steps of the no pressure prospecting call. So with you, I can just focus on step four and 567. Whereas I have a more junior person on my team who's really working on one and two, they got one pretty good, but they're really not that good at two. So I can spend time with them working on getting that up. And then in a group setting. You're not rolling your eyes like oh man, do I have to listen to this, you know, this junior stuff, and the junior person is like, Oh man, I haven't even got that I'm gonna tune out. So roleplay is number one, the other one because some of you're like I don't have someone to roleplay with absolutely fair shadowbox. So I trained Muay Thai for 10 and a half years. So shadowboxing, shadowboxing is role playing with yourself. So you play both sides and again, we are tend to be our biggest critic. We also tend to be our biggest enemy when we are shadowboxing because we invented the movie prospect who doesn't exist. If you can consistently shadowbox with a bogey prospect. Anything that your buyer in the real world says to you is going to be completely simple. So those are the two key things on a technique side is is roleplay if you can, or if you can't, and even if you can, roleplay shadowbox is really powerful. That's

Mike 19:14 really good. I would add my own personal tip here. We talked about picking one thing at a time, but what I found is thinking about the situationally that yeah, a lot of people again, try to change everything all at once rather than you're not even supposed to do it all at once. So Dave Matson sold the famous story of him in the car with David Sandler, where he was like, Oh, you didn't do any of it on that call? And Sandler just said, Oh, you're a bully. You're trying to use all these moves every single time with every prospect. Yes, you can beat them up and say that you did the moves. Yeah. So I'd love to hear you talk about the difference between using a system and being consistent with what you're doing versus doing the same thing every single day. And we're trying to use all the moves because some of these, and a lot of our rules are rules because it's if this happens, then do this. So if you're under attack, then fall back if this prospect is negative, go more negative. And so we're not using every move on every call. What are your thoughts there?

Hamish 20:18 Yeah, that that actually, that is a really big frustration for me is when, and I did this when I first started, Sandler, I'd hear David Sandler on a recording, say something and I'd be like, I must say that so I go out and visit with the buyer. And I'd say it and they look at me like you just what the sales trainee? Did you got a shiny new toy to try it? Now? They wouldn't say it. But everything about their body was like, I know, this is gross. Can you just like back off? And so Sandler is meant to be conversational, right? That's our new rule in sell and how to sell the modern buyer is sales is a conversation between two adults to get to the truth. And so ultimately, like I've shared recordings of my calls with my team, and sometimes like, Did you do anything, I was like, I had a conversation, I got to the truth. And yes, if you want to go frame by frame, you can probably pick out where I was using those, those those techniques. Ultimately, going back to something we talked about earlier, we have to be focused on the other person, we have to be focused on supporting our buyer from where they act to where they want to be not necessarily where we want them to go, because of our buyer starts to feel like we're shoving them down an alternate path, we completely break report and we lose all of our credibility. So ultimately, the things that we are sharing with our clients, whether it's in sales, Development Series, sales that are growth series, organizational excellence, it's in our rules, it's in a self directed course. Those are mountain tops. And how we get to the mountaintop is different, depending on how your communication style is what the situation is. There are no magic bullets. There are no save me because it's it's a human interaction, and every interaction is going to be different. Even if I meet with you, things are great. And we sit down again. Well, you're not frozen and carbonate between our meetings. He's a very current Star Wars reference. And by the way, oh, look, you just brought David. Well, who's Dave? And what does he care about? And so now, I can't get caught up into like, Oh, I was trying to get Mike across the finish line. And now I have to, I have to be like, Okay, you situation. I am present and focused on my buyer. And I want to meet them where they're at now and see where they want to get to. And by the way, if I'm not a good fit to guide them along that path, I'm going to tell them that because that's gonna raise my credibility too.

Mike 22:46 I love it. Good stuff this week from Hamish Knox, longtime Sandler trainer from Calgary, Alberta in Canada. How about that? Also, you can go check out those books we mentioned. You can go you know, search Hamish, in your podcast directory, find a lot of other episodes. We've had them on here. But so Hamish, I think I've asked you all of my questions. But once since we talked about implementing one thing at a time, what's the one thing you're working on right now.

Hamish 23:15 So the one thing I'm working on right now is actually the transition of my longtime associate Nisha the president of Santa Calgary. So that was December summit back in back in March. And it you know, it also talked about doing everything at once. I also hired someone in January to take over my calendar. And I'm still managing my calendar. So clearly, I'm not I haven't developed that. So working on it, right. So Right. But I'm really you know, when the one thing I'm implementing is how you, I trap myself into doing the things that I should be doing, which is focusing on supporting our clients and growing the business of timber, Calgary, and letting the individuals that I've hired who have expertise that I don't to do the things that I shouldn't much more effectively. And so that's really what I'm working on right now. And it is a big transition. Because you know, may 8 11th was my 13th anniversary in Sandler. And I've actually been working with Nisha for twice as long as I was working by myself. So it's a pretty cool journey that I'm on right now. Amazing,

Mike 24:24 super fun stuff. I'll give you one last crack at this question or a favorite, you know, Sandler concept or rule here but anything I should have asked or something that you wanted to share with the audience while you got the mic and the camera on?

Hamish 24:38 Thanks for the opportunity. Mike. The thing I will share with all the audience and especially the leaders in the room, who are listening are leaders number one job is to create clarity. And a human's number one job when we're interacting with another human is to create clarity and unfortunately, we've been socialized especially in North America to create ambiguity and and not necessarily Speak plainly and something that I have learned, you know, in the past when we're recording this boat eight months. On the personal side is we are allowed to speak clearly. And we are allowed to say what we need and what we want. And this goes, this goes back to something that I mentioned earlier about, you know, we have the right to ask they have the right to say no. And so leaders, especially when you are supporting your your team members, or you're rolling out a new initiative, if your team members are not changing their behavior in the way that you need to, that's caused by a lack of clarity that's on us as leaders. And so it's not why are they getting it? It's why didn't I communicate it? Or how have I not communicated it clearly? And what do they need for me in order for them to adapt their behavior to what I need it to be going forward?

Mike 25:57 I love that great stuff today. From Hamish Knox. You can find him in Prestine if you have multi locations, multilingual teams and you put the enterprise model reach out to them as well. As always hit subscribe share this episode with somebody that you think needs to hear it. It sounds like a great starter for somebody getting in to your team and getting started with Sandler Training. So don't snooze on that. Until next time, wherever you are. Be a good one. We'll see everybody