Stop Selling. Start Solving. The Second Cornerstone of Ninja Selling

Yeah. Big results.

Welcome to the Ninja Selling Podcast. Hello everybody and thank you for joining us. This is the Ninja Selling Podcast. I am Rob Nelson. I'm here today with Don Tennyson and we're gonna talk about one thing, Don, and that's people love to buy and they hate to be sold. Well

You're absolutely right. And it's so good to be here, Rob, and it's a pleasure to visit with you. And you know, I was in a situation just the other day where uh there was a salesperson there and I thought, man If this guy could just have ninja selling for about thirty minutes, we could fix this problem and I'd be buying something from him rather than wanting to run away.

The reason we're here is because Peter and I about six weeks ago sat down and talked through principle number one of ninja selling, which is personal mastery. And principle number two is our subject today, which is stop selling, start solving.

And these come from the ninja selling book, but they really come from the ninja selling philosophy. When Larry organized the book, he built it into these four principles that we're gonna be covering in this series. So when you think of stop selling, what comes up for you? First thing that comes to comes to my mind is this I idea, are people coming toward us or are people moving away from it?

And, you know, that is so a critical. And we use the example in the installation all the time. Hey, pretend that you're out there thinking about buying something. Somebody who thinks they might be a salesperson comes towards you. What's the first thing you want to do? And the natural reaction is run. And we have all these built in mechanisms we all know about of, you know, no thanks, I'm just looking or I'm just starting. And if not physically, at least mentally, we start to step away.

uh from these salespeople because we're concerned about manipulation being taken advantage of. You know, that uncomfortable sort of closing the sale process that tends to happen. And so the first thing I think about is when stop selling is stop pushing people away. Yeah. The idea of the pursuer distance or dance is a very Larry Kendall definition of exactly what you just said. But the idea is would you like to attract customers rather than chase them?

Well one of the things that we've said in Ninja for a long time is one of our goals is to change the way people see salespeople. And I think that's absolutely legitimate. And what if An individual realtor would just take that and say, okay, my goal here with this brand new buyer, this brand new seller.

My goal is to change the way those people see me or how they perceive me as a salesperson or as a typical realtor. What do I have to do to really build relationship here rather than just complete a transaction? And that is the mindset behind ninja selling. And once you've adopted that mindset, the first step in ninja selling is to get people moving toward you to attract them rather than to chase them. Right. Yeah. You know what's funny about that?

is that I find myself now in situations all the time where m Mary and I would think about buying something and uh we kinda make a game out of it. We said, okay, how long's it gonna take before this guy tries to close us uh somehow, some way? It might be an insurance thing, it might be a financial advisor.

It could be a clothing store we go to. But Rob, I gotta tell ya, I mean, this seems like common sense, but it is not the way most of the world works. And we Can agree that if you've made it this far, you probably are aligned with the philosophy that our job isn't to make people buy. Our job is to help them decide. And the way we do that is asking questions to clarify and creating value. So Don, let's talk a little bit about what is the difference between sales and helping people decide.

Yeah. Well the first thing is I think is the mindset is that the mindset of a salesperson is to try to get something from someone, whereas the mindset of a ninja is what can we give in order to build the relationship, create the trust. And then everything else that happens is kind of automatic after that. Yeah. Customers are attracted to value. Yeah.

So well how do we add value then? And I think in our world today, with real estate the way it is, is the I think the way to add value is to create relationships. So that people end up saying, My realtor called me and said this. My realtor uh did that. Th this concept that says they take ownership that you are their trusted advisor. Well, how do we do that? Well, build relationship, focus on them. Let's see what we can give rather than what we can get.

It's the reputation replaces persuasion piece of ninja selling, right? Where today the reality is the story that your customers are telling about you is far more important and it's frankly more powerful than the story you could ever tell about yourself. And that is the antithesis of most marketing strategies that are out there today. But let's go there, go deeper, Don, when we say creating value, because customers are attracted to value, and we know that we do it through building relationships.

But how? What is the mechanism for this? Okay. Well I think the first thing is a recognition of what people want. And in a real estate environment, one thing they want is information, another thing they want is a process. Uh the other thing they want is to make sure that they don't get surprises.

So I think all we have to do is look at well, what what do they want? They want follow up. Uh they want someone that will stay in touch with them and communicate on a uh regular basis. They want someone who is in their corner. So it's it I don't think it's all that complicated. And yet in today's world it it seems like even with social media uh that there's this

tendency to want to talk about ourselves, to promote our sales. No? What if we just took a back seat in that area and a way to create value is to say, you know what? I'm gonna do those things so that these people absolutely know that it's not really about me. The focus is on them. And when we talk about value creation, there are really two very clear pieces of value creation. One is what do you do during a transaction and what do you do between transactions?

And I wanna give you this, Don. I'm gonna tell you that w my wife and I recently made an offer on a home. The prospect of moving was in front of me. Now It did not work out and in some ways I'm thankful that it didn't work out because now I don't have to move right now and it was an upgrade. It was something that would have been wonderful had it come together. But until you're in that moment and you realize that, although we know that change in people's lives drives change in their real estate.

and that our job is to be their guide through these processes, it's all theoretical until you're the person who might have to move. And what you talked about is no surprises, smoother processes. I think one of the realities of this is that we undercomplicate what clients are going through and we overcomplicate the transaction itself.

Well, what it makes me think about, Rob, is this concept we talk about of fabled service. And the the conclusion that I've come to as we've sort of researched this and paid attention to it is This fabled service thing, really in the end,

is not about the technical excellence of the transaction. It's really the relationship part of the it's how we make people feel that makes it makes it all happen. And so, well what's that look like even either in between the transactions or even in the transactions

What's that feel and I I'll tell you, my my wife and I, we're sellers right now in this work. Yeah, we're selling some rental properties. It's time. They've done what they're supposed to do. And This has been such an eye opening experience, but because I'm waking up in the morning. We've probably been involved in seven hundred and fifty real estate transactions, you know, over our real estate career. And yet I wake up in the morning and I'm thinking to myself,

Does that title representative have everything they need? Do what do I do with the keys? Did I forget did I forget to call the utility company, you know, to it it's worth six hours away from closing. All these things come up, you know, and I'm thinking, Oh man, here's the here's the deal that we forget.

the level of stress that people are under with this kind of a change that's going on. And I think part of our job with stop selling is just do everything we can so they don't have to lay awake at night. What do I

I have to do so they don't have to lay awake at night is exactly right. And most of it comes down to communicating, translating what's happening in the transaction. to what is happening in reality. And I think the other piece of it too, Don, is the acknowledgement of this existing in their life. that I've been through a lot of real estate transactions. You've done 750, but this one feels different. I don't know what it is. And I do know what it is, is that I'm involved as a party.

Yeah. It's w what's really amazing about that is that i i if you think about Things that realtors tend to do today when we get known. all hyped up about our social media strategy and what am I posting it today and what's my closing gift gonna be and you know, do I have the right business card and you know, all this stuff.

And I th well, you know, not unimportant, but w i in the end it's like, okay, what kind of communication do we have? Do we have all the bases covered? And I've been talking about moments of truth. And I I I saw that definition the other day. A moment of truth is defined as when your client comes into contact with your process. Well, what's the process, you know? Uh and and how detailed can we get?

in terms of anticipating what those people are thinking. And if we're gonna stop so we've got to start doing something else. Well what are we gonna start doing? We're gonna start paying attention to the clients instead of just going through the motions of the the transaction. Let's talk about process a little bit. I only say this because I recently saw a post from another thought leader that said

Something along the lines of we don't sell houses, we build trust. Oh, sure. We get where that's going. Simultaneously, I think that abandons the existence of a process. And that if you have a process, you're not selling houses, you're selling a process, and the byproduct of that process is trust.

Totally. I think too when you say process, one of the things I think of well, could a checklist be part of a process? Absolutely. And yet at the same time Having the checklist is one thing, but doing it in such a way that it builds relationship at the same time, that's a different conversation. I think that the checklist is a black and white thing. A a real estate transaction is a big financial transaction for most people involved. Maybe the biggest they ever have.

But it's infinitely more complex than than the second and third financial transactions that they may have. So maybe getting a mortgage is up there. That's pretty black and white. What about something like rolling over your old 401k? Maybe you're gonna sit down and pick a portfolio allocation.

But beyond that, you sign a form, get it notarized, send it into the old company, and they mail a check over. It doesn't have the overlay of life events, of career change, of marriage, of divorce, of children, of All of the things that drive a real estate transaction are on top of something that's high stakes, complex, and emotional.

Yeah, when you put it that way, that's crazy. And part of what we do at Ninja Selling is to Try to make the transaction so greased that we don't really have to think about the transaction. that then the focus can be on the people, you know, rather than the transaction. And it's one thing to make a phone call to say the appraisal is in and everything is good.

It's fantastic. But then well what's the next level of that? What is the not selling part of that? Well, it might come down to really asking the right questions so that people say, well, it's not just the transaction, it's the relationship that we build that goes along. And it's the reality that when you're moving, when you're in this, you're moving your furniture, right? You're also moving family photos. And you're moving routines and sometimes school districts and social circles.

And all of the things that encompass this that are so much different than going from this moderate growth allocation to this moderate growth allocation.

Okay, you made me think of an example. Four months ago, my doctor, uh I was in to see him and he said, Hey, since you're here, I want to give you a heads up. Uh I'm gonna be leaving. We're gonna go down, we our goal is to live in the mountains. Uh we bought this uh house up in Golden Gate Canyon, uh west of Golden. So I made a decision I'm going to move my practice down to West Denver. And this guy, I think probably he'd been my doctor for 25 years. I actually helped him relocate here.

as part of a tour process that we Mary and I did with doctors are moving here. So we've known him since the day he came into town. And so I thought, Well that congratulations, way to go. And he said, here's two or three other guys in the practice that I think it's it's interesting. I have not taken up any of those doctors and I think back on how those

times when I needed help, not that he was this great doctor or he could diagnose things or that he was intuitive or i any of that. You know what I remember? What I remember, Rob, is he gave me his cell phone number, he said, Don, I know you travel a lot, if anything ever happens, if you need antibiotics, if you need something on just Call my cell phone at night and I'll just take care of it for you. That's what I remember. Yeah. I don't remember his skill as a physician.

He gave you that glimpse into the fact he really cared. I know he he would end up looking at his watch because those calls would end up being more about how my kids and grandkids were doing then sure, we handled the business of the healthcare, but there was so much more to it. And I think it's interesting that I've even hesitated to start the process of finding somebody else.

Very interesting. And I think the part that you said at the beginning of this what's sets the stage for something we've talked about in Ninja is you said my doctor. Not a doctor that I see, but my doctor. And that my realtor. It's powerful. I'll give you one other example I was thinking of this morning, that my grandfather was a car salesman.

And I remember as a kid, I was eight or nine years old. I would be over at his house. The car dealership was about two blocks from the house. And so I would walk down Fiddle around a little bit and he'd go back. And he was the number one salesperson in that car dealership year after year after year. And I even remember one time asking my dad, I said, What's going on with Grandpa Ray? Because

He doesn't sell anything. All he does is sit around. He stands around, drinks coffee and smokes cigarettes and delivers cars. I don't understand how that works. And he said, he said, it's not about the car. And I thought, Well, that's kind of what we're trying to do here. Yeah.

Yeah. It really is. Remembering that people are going to forget things and people are going to overreact and they're going to hesitate in your transactions and They'll get... Defensive and they're gonna second guess. I went through all of this. You maybe went through all of this. You've been in it, you have a different lens. And in that environment, the charisma, the sales skills, they don't stabilize people. Caring about them, structure, and having a process does.

Yeah. It's really remarkable that this is not complicated, but it is unique. When people do. It really is. And it's truly not that you're building trust and you don't do that through charm or through scripts. Right. But you build confidence through clarity. That's it.

So here here's one other example. May may be able to uh to learn something from. So my dad was in the radio business and and we're in northern Colorado and he ran a radio station for many, many years. And running radio stations involves selling advertising. And so we showed up here in the mid sixties and there was a guy at the radio station who was on the air. He was did some news and he had a music show and all back in the day.

And um this guy knew everybody in town. He was i amazingly connected. He claimed he never had sold anything in his life. And my dad was smart enough to let him know he says, You know what? You're being underutilized here. We need you in a sales capacity. You'll make more money and instantly he became the number one salesperson i at the radio station.

And I remember one time watching my dad in action and somebody said, Well, uh d Jack there, how did he become within two months he became the number one salesperson? How did that happen? And my dad said, Well, here's the deal. Jack's been selling for the last thirty five years. He'd just started picking up the orders last month. Amazing.

And that well i i it's not about selling, but it's about the relationship building. He had relationships all over town. He just started picking up the orders. And that's really the way it works. Yes, his Rolodex was full of people who already knew, liked, and trusted him, and this was a natural progression. It was just the next one. It feels to me like there's a mantra here and it would go something like if I'm solving then I don't have to sell.

And if I am selling, I've probably stopped solving. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something to remind ourselves as we are in situations client facing, if you feel that you are in a sales situation, you've probably stopped solving. It probably means we started thinking about ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And ultimately in that situation, how do you remedy it?

Well, I think number one is let's not allow ourselves to get in that situation. But if we do, I just think we have to take a step back and ask ourselves, okay, what are we trying to accomplish here? What is the goal? What's the end result that we're looking for? And I think we get back to that idea, Rob, that the sale, the transaction is just the consequence.

of all it's not the goal. It's the consequence. And we've talked about this for years that if the if the goal is to get the listing, then we're in sales mode. But if the goal is to help the client get to the next chapter of their lives, well now we're n now we're focused on what we should. Yeah. And I feel if you get in a situation where the tone goes towards selling, the best pivot in that moment is to ask a question.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think about this lady that I've been taking golf lessons from and she's amazing. She's an L P GA professional and she's got all this inside and she's got a calendar uh that could be filled up with the golf lessons and the only thing that she and I have ever talked about is What do we need to do to improve your golf game? What do you think the next step in this process is? And never once was it would you like to get six lessons for the cost of five?

You know, that's what a salesperson would do. No, it was it was never about that. In fact, she didn't even ever talk about her fee. I had to inquire about that, but the whole thing was let's see what we can do so that you can have more fun playing golf. So in the end it wasn't about the golf and it wasn't about the lessons. It was about how we can help you have more fun. And I thought, oh, that's kind of interesting. Yeah. That was her process.

And my guess is that money is less relevant to you having fun than it would be to the cost of golf life. Well gosh. At this point, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Because the value is there. Yeah. So and where's the value? In the relationship.

All right, so if there's three anchors from today, number one, people love to buy, they hate to be sold. You can only help someone who's moving toward you. So subsequently, our mission is to create value, to attract people, to bring them toward us. And the way we do that is by investing in relationships. Right. And one of the things that that I think about, those are great anchors. It's like, okay, well, is it gonna be possible to to have a stranger come toward us?

Well it's not impossible. It can happen with an open house or you know whatever, sign call or something like that, but Really that kind of leads us to this idea that we better be focused on the people that we know. That's how they'll come toward us. Yes. As opposed to all this other stuff that historically we've done to try to attract strangers.

And while I agree with everything you just said, there is a segment of well, Don, they're only a stranger for as long as you let them be a stranger. So if you have a meaningful conversation where you're asking the right questions and they are building that trust with you in an open house setting, the next time you see them, they're not a stranger anymore. One hundred percent. Couldn't agree with you more.

Yeah. The same applies to all kinds of situations that often have had the do you wanna know anybody who wants to buy or sell real estate quote attached to them when all reality that's not the right question to be asked. No, because we know the answer to that question. Yeah. Gosh I can't think of anybody. But if we ask a Ford question that says, gee, you know, how's your golf game? Who are you playing with? Uh uh

D do you play with the same group every uh every Saturday or do you play with different people? Tell me about that. And then all of a sudden the mind is open and those opportunities come about. So isn't it interesting that we just keep coming back to relationship in this deal uh versus the idea of something that's transactional? Yeah. I think that's ultimately what principle number two is all about is it's not stop identifying as a salesperson. It's redefine what a salesperson is.

Oh that's a great way to say it. to uh provide some advice or some instruction to uh realtors who may be listening to us, it would be, why don't why don't we just forget about the real estate and focus on the And if enough people do that enough times, we'll change the way the world sees this. Well, yeah, absolutely. And if you think about it, it's happened before because there are uh other companies out there in other industries that have pulled that off.

the you know high service whether it's in the hotel industry or the hospitality industry, they've pulled it off. I I think about Viking cruise lines where uh they have clearly set themselves apart as the it's the experience that we're going for here, not the cost or the two for one special or whatever it might be. It's about everything that happens beyond what anybody else could offer. Don, it's been a pleasure. What do you want to leave the ninjas with today?

Well, I think probably the thing is this. Why don't we take the next step in this process by putting ourselves in the role of these buyers and sellers. I I've thought for a long time it probably it ought to be a requirement along with your continuing education that a realtor either buy or sell a house every two years along with the renewal of your real estate license.

And just put yourself in that position and realize how simple it is to help people be able to feel like they've got somebody in their corner who's going to help them get where they want to go. Yeah. And what's funny about that is I feel as though being a party to the transaction may give you Insight into the moments of truth where people would touch your processes and you may be able to improve the way that you serve them.

Well and I think when we find ourselves in those situations, what we realize is th they're not it's not the big stuff. It's the little tiny kinds of communication that could occur that just put people at ease. Yes. That makes it faithful. You got it. Don, thank you so much for being here. We'll continue in a few weeks. We'll have uh principle number three of Ninja Selling, and we look forward to chatting with you then. Thanks so much.

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