Building genuine connections is the key to "selling from the heart," a strategy that transcends mere transactions and fosters lasting relationships in today's challenging trust landscape. In this episode, Larry Levine, author of "Selling from the Heart" and "Selling in a Post-Trust World," joins us to explore how authenticity fuels successful sales. Larry, with his extensive experience in the office technology channel, discusses shifting from product-focused approaches to relationship-centered interactions, emphasizing that everyone, especially in competitive markets, is essentially in the people business. We delve into actionable methods for establishing trust rapidly, connecting genuinely with clients at all levels, and transforming existing relationships into powerful growth drivers. Whether you're a seasoned sales professional or just beginning, Larry's insights will guide you in enhancing your people skills and achieving sustained success through heart-centered selling.
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Selling From The Heart: Larry Levine's Authentic Sales Secrets Revealed
We've got a great show for you. We've got Larry Levine. He is the author of Selling From The Heart: How Your Authentic Self Sells You! Just a great book, great read, a lot of great expertise that Larry's brought to the table because he spent literally almost three decades in the photocopy industry. When you think of a successful career as a salesperson or sales leader in that competitive industry, some might say it's a very commoditized industry. The only thing that differentiates in the marketplace is how well you sell.
These days, that's also highly applicable for almost anybody reading. No product sells itself. It's the salesperson who can make the key difference. How well you sell can be your competitive differentiation. A really clear message from Larry in this great conversation where he shares that we're all in the people business and the relationship building business regardless of technology, we're in the people business and the relationship building business. He and I talk a lot about that authenticity.
How do we get comfortable being ourselves in front of clients and prospects? We might be new to sales, we might be new to business, and selling to a CIO. How do you get comfortable in that conversation so that you can have that authentic engagement? We talk a lot about very helpful tips for our existing client base. No matter who we are, we want to grow through new logos. We want new business.
Part of the path there is understanding your existing clients. The more we help and support our existing clients, doors it opens to new logos and new clients. What do we do outside of engaging them? A, when there's a new deal on the table, or when there's a problem, or when we do a fly by. What else do we do? What's the target? Larry does a great thing at the end of this show. He asks us all a couple of questions to think about regarding our most important client, however we define that.
He wants to know how well we know them. What are their top priorities over the next 90 days? What are some of the issues and challenges to getting there? I think it's a good exercise to think about regarding the most important clients that we're working with. Folks, I enjoyed the energy, the enthusiasm, and the positivity of Larry. I think you're going to enjoy this episode as well. If you do, please like and subscribe to the Selling Well podcast because that matters to us. Please enjoy my discussion with Larry Levine.
Larry, welcome to the show. This is a long time coming, and I'm so thrilled to finally meet you.
This has been more than a long time coming. It's so awesome. I'm so thankful to be here. Thank you for having me.
We're talking about selling from the heart, how your authentic self sells you. You've got two books, very successful books, out. The second book is Selling in a Post-Trust World. That's interesting. There's a real connection between the two, of course, but we're going to start with Selling From The Heart. Larry, just to kick things off, maybe give us that short story of your professional career, which I loved because there's some alignment here. Tell us about how you got to where you are.
Office Tech & Kodak Days: Building Sales Skills & Company Culture
I've been looking forward to this because Mark, we're kindred spirits. I'm in Southern California. I've grown up in Southern California, just North of Los Angeles. My whole entire sales career was in the office technology channel. Love it. In other words, I sold copiers. I was a business partner in several copier dealerships. I have toner in my blood. I see from the late ‘80s to 2015 selling copiers and all the peripheral supplies that go with it.
I've been around the block a time or two in sales. I always say, “If you can make your way selling photocopiers in a highly commoditized market, you're worth your weight in gold out in the marketplace.” I just bring a passion for the first sales, but selling something, where I always said, it's a race to the bottom. God bless all the people who are still in it. It's a race to the bottom in a very commoditized market. I just figured out how to make it work by bringing my authentic self to the forefront and building relationships, and bringing meaningful value.
First of all, so many things to unpack, just on the fun front. Many of the folks who reading know I started in that industry, and I loved it. My first corporate job was selling big photocopiers for Kodak. First of all, that company had one of the nicest company cultures I've ever come across, even since. It was just such a lovely company that there are lots of business cases on Kodak now, that they had a tough time cannibalizing their core business, which was traditional film.
They got disrupted by those folks in digital, but they had a great marketing education center. We got hired to sell photocopiers. We got sent away to copier school. Three months before we even met a client, because we're going through the educational process, it was competitive, Larry. We were in Rochester for that period of time, and every week, a few people got touched on the shoulder because they weren't making it. They got sent home. It was over, but just a wonderful formal education.
It was a little heavy on product education, not as much on sales education and sales strategy, but it was Miller Heiman back in the day. You're right. Even back then, there was not a lot of differentiation in terms of products. The reality of it is that for everybody in SaaS out there who thinks they've got a unique and different product, it's only a matter of time. There's nothing unique and different anymore. Everything can be replicated. Learning to sell a product that could be quite similar to something else, you had to rely on your sales skills to make the difference. That's exactly where we are a couple of decades later.
It's a 100%. You're so right. I enjoy saying that goes “What's forever old is forever new.” The things that we were doing back in the day, when I say back in the day, when I started in the late ‘80s, isn't it interesting? It has all come full circle. All the tech that's out there, and I'm not here to say any negative things about tech, whatsoever. Tech is wonderful. It's facilitating our relationship and how we've built ours, but it gets down to the very core of the subtitle of selling from the heart. It's how your authentic self sells you.
If you can make your way selling photocopiers in a highly commoditized market, you're worth your weight in gold.
By the way, and this is my belief, Mark, everybody's in a commoditized market. Somebody's always going to come out with something that's bigger and badder than yours, that's going to be priced differently than yours. All these kinds of things. However, what's unique is you. We've got to be able to sell our authentic self as the key differentiator and not so much lean on the product. I've always told those people in sales, “We've got to step in front of our company and in front of our product and not hide behind it.”
Ditching The Veneer: Embracing Authenticity In Sales
Well said. We were laughing at the beginning, Larry and I, because I put a post on LinkedIn a little while back, which was my original business card for that first shot.
It was, I saw.
Your beautiful head of hair, young guy. I was so excited to be a part of that company. It's funny with those posts. They go crazy. In terms of response and comments, it's the personal ones that get the response. I want to touch on this authentic self because, and this is something I pulled from the book that I love so much, Larry, that guy in that picture, the Kodak business cards put their picture on it. He was not authentic. I was not my authentic self. For some reason, I thought, “There was a private personal party, Mark.” With all my buddies and all the craziness we did, and there was lots of craziness.
Suddenly, when I was selling copiers in downtown Toronto, I had the suit on, and I felt like there had to be this veneer of being perfect. I was anything but perfect, but it felt like that whole personal thing. I just wanted to keep parked somewhere because to me, it seemed crazy, the whole lifestyle of being a young person like that. It came across because I was just too uptight all the time. I just didn't feel comfortable or confident. Maybe it's part of self-esteem and so forth, but you also talk a lot about that in the book.
Do you know what's interesting? I'm sitting here listening to what you're saying. I just had flashbacks to my very first year selling copiers. I write about the beginning of selling from the heart, is I was trying to be somebody I wasn't, because back then, you went to school and all that. I didn't have the luxury of spending three months at a school and getting that sophisticated education on how to sell the products I was selling. I was on the independent side of life, where it was up to the dealer principal owner as far as how they trained and coached their salespeople.
The dealer network.
A 100%. This is so interesting. I spent a week watching, now I'm dating myself, but you'll get this. There'll be people reading. You'll get this. I was watching VHS tapes. After a week, miraculously, my business cards were done. I got my business cards, and then I had to go out in the field and start cold calling. Once I brought the cards back, I had to start following this script, and then I would start writing out with salespeople.
Somehow, something tells me that's still happening. However, where I latched onto this is as I was trying to mirror and mimic scripts and what other salespeople were doing, I lost my identity because I was trying to mirror and mimic the top salespeople, because those are the people I was doing field write-outs with. All of a sudden, I'm like going impressionable twenty-something year old. I go, “I want to be like Mark because Mark's successful.
He's got the big corner office. He's got the nice car.” A 100%. I'm riding out with him. All of a sudden I start mirroring his mannerisms. I start using his vocabulary, and guess what? It wasn't working. I six months before I ever sold anything until I finally said enough's enough. I throw my hands up and say, “There's got to be a better way.” The better way is what I innately knew all along. Focus on the other person. Don't focus on the product.
We need to coach and train our youth today on how to have confident, comfortable business conversations.
Ask really great questions. Bring curiosity to the forefront. It was innate in me already. I knew that, but I was mirror and masking everybody else. I expand upon that by selling from the heart. That's why I believe if you're authentic self, if you can open that cupboard and find out who you are, bring that to the forefront. Don't second-guess it. That's what people connect to.
Sales For Everyone: Navigating B2B As A Young Professional
It makes so much sense. You and I having this conversation now, Larry, we have a little bit of experience between us where we've had this validated. Maybe along the way there's a little bit of, “I don't care anymore. I am who I am.” It's not that I don't care, but I have no other option. This is who I am now. For me, I probably happened maybe almost ten years after that first job, a little less where I just started relaxing and being myself, but being the best version of myself.
A well-trained version of myself or a well-prepared version of myself for a call. I never knew really what else to do on a sales call except ask questions because I never really wanted to be the person pitching or all that stuff. It didn't suit me. I love your advice, as there are so many amazing young people leaving college and university and going into professional B2B sales. In fact, our pal from Harvard, Frank Cespedes, who's written nine amazing books, of the most recent is called Sales Management that Works, but he's just fantastic, a professor at Harvard.
In that book, he says, “If you graduate college or university, you've got a one in two chance of being in a professional sales job at some point in your career.” Daniel Pink, everybody's in sales. How do we get people comfortable listening to the BDRs, SDRs being their authentic self and, knowing that line? You see a lot of these internet platitudes and all of these things talking about different things people do. How do you get comfortable being on that call? You're speaking to a CIO and you're two years out of school, scared to death, and thinking the CIO understands so much that you don't.
I am so glad we are having this conversation. Much needed. Thank you for bringing it to the forefront because I see this. It runs rampant. I'm going to answer it through a story. I think this will play out in what you just said. I remember the transition from analog, copiers, to digital. I remember that I was right smacked in the middle of that transition, and it scared me like none other because I'm not the most technically inclined person.
Now, all of a sudden, I'm going to start having conversations with technically oriented people, and I'm not technically oriented. What's going to start happening? I realized real fast, I didn't have to be the smartest person in the room. I just needed to understand how to facilitate a business conversation. Young people, you know how to use tech. You've grown up with tech. What we need to be coaching and training our youth of around is how to have confident, comfortable business conversations.
When they can do that, they start raising their confidence and their believability in themselves. They get scared. Sometimes I feel sorry for them if they get scared talking to somebody two times their age, maybe sometimes three times their age, because they don't want to look like they don't know anything. You don't have to. You just have to know how to facilitate that conversation. The way you do it is possibly start reading and listening to the things that these people read and listen to. Just bring up some of these things in conversation.
Whatever framework you're asked to make calls around, make it your own and watch what starts to happen. You might say, “This is really simple stuff.” It is, but we overcomplicate the art of having a conversation because I believe there are youth of are so fixated and focused on the conversation and moving it to the next step that they lose track of. I just have to have a conversation with this person in order to move it to the next step. If I cannot engage in that healthy conversation, I cannot get it to the next step.
It's so well said. I think that you focus on that outcome, and you feel a bit of that pressure and go, “I've got three conversations.” Let's say I'm a BDR and SPR. “I've got to get one of these to book a meeting with Larry next week. I'm in this conversation, and all I'm thinking is book the meeting. Again, authentic self. I'm not in the moment, and I'm not making the conversation about them. Making the conversation about me.
I love that idea of just say, “Listen, let's just have a great conversation with someone.” There is work that we can do prior to that conversation to say, “We might have some insight and knowledge and value because our company and my teammates deal with other clients. We know what's going on with them. We can help make sense of some of the things going on in the marketplace.”
Back to the book and just being authentic, like caring about what's going on with the business, earning the right for that conversation with research and some preparation. One of the things we coach on, I'm certainly interested to hear your opinion. We don't mind doing the odd workshop with a company saying, “Let's just do a mini MBA.” I think sometimes the world of business seems so complex to people.
If you haven't lived a bit in seen a few businesses, and been at a couple of different levels. At the end of the day, everybody makes a product or service. They'd sell it to somebody. Who is it? How do they sell it to somebody, and how do they expect to compete and win in the marketplace? Particularly if they're a publicly traded company, they explain to the universe their strategic priorities in one-syllable words.
41These are the three things we're trying to do this year. By the way, these were the three things we tried to do last year, and how we did against them. It's reading the first eight pages of a 10K report and forget the P&L and statement of cash flows, and balance sheets. The other 200 pages don't matter that much. Just take the chairman's message and the president's message, and you can get a sense for what's happening with that business.
The People Business: Coaching Sales Teams On Relationship Skills
This is so good. You'll get a kick out of this. Always ask this. I ask this to executives, but I also ask it to salespeople as well. This ties into really the underlying theme of selling from the heart, and selling in a post-trust world is, if I asked executives in the people business, forget about your products and all that, just set your products aside for a moment. Are your salespeople in the people business and relationship-building business? Simple yes or no, that's all I'm looking for, and they shake their head up and down like you are.
Yes, my salespeople are in the people business and relationship-building business. Fair enough. I agree, by the way. Here's my question. As the executive, the person who's steering this corporate ship, what are you doing and what are your leadership team doing to coach and train your salespeople on people skills and relationship-building skills? They're the profit and generating and revenue generating arm of your company. How are you doing this in a world that unfortunately doesn't view salespeople through a trustworthy lens?
I hear crickets, and I hear that with salespeople as well. That's the big mission at Selling From The Heart. With Selling in A Post-trust World is if we elevate the people skills and relationship building skills, some might put a little air quotes around soft skills, but those drive hard dollars in today’s day and age. Everyone does great product training, sales skills training. I'm not here to take a stab at that. The opportunity to increase revenue and profit is to elevate the people in the relationship-building skills of your salespeople.
I completely agree. Again, back to the photocopy world, the joke of that post where my wife, Donna, had found that picture, and I put it up there. I literally was the demo king for North American. I got all these awards, and I couldn't sell because I hadn't connected the dots between them. Forget the demo. How does this thing pay for itself in a print shop, and how do the features tie to an outcome that the print shop runner or the company needs?
What do we do for the company that they care about? They don't care about me in the demo, as perfect as it was. By the way, I love the VHS. We used to record ourselves on VHS to watch the test was like an actor. It was fantastic. I think this thing goes back to the people skills, I believe there's this common sense revolution taking place a bit in sales. Ironically again, driven by technology because AI will take down the pitching, the cajola, all that's all gone.
Elevate your salespeople's relationship-building skills to increase revenue and profit.
What's going to exist through a few years from now is back to what it was back in the day, you have to have consultative skills, problem solving skills, curiosity, the ability to make a connection, the ability to connect the dots, the ability to identify problems or communicate problems to a buyer they don't even know they have. It was back in the day.
We had this whole thing where technology got in the way, and then suddenly we said, “Just demo a product.” How does demoing a product ever sell anything? Imagine if you tried to demo Microsoft Excel. Everybody uses Excel. We use 3% of the functionality of Excel. Excel is a relational database. You can do a solver. The finance people can make it sing. Most of us use it as a spreadsheet program to do basic functional math for our home budgeting.
Guilty.
The people who really know, we wouldn't demo Excel with Solver. 90% of the world doesn't know what Solver is. They don't know it's a relational database. It's really saying, “What do you want to do? I want to do basic math faster.” I think there's this opportunity out there. I love this about you, talking about the soft skills, and you talk about what you are doing? I like that question, Larry, to the CEO saying, “What are you doing to enable your teams with those relationship-building skills, the ability to make a connection?” When they have a blank stare on their face, what do you suggest? How can you help them?
That's the opportunity. I'm not here to say that what executives are doing to coach and train their salespeople is not working. That's not the point behind this conversation.
No, of course.
The point is, I know they want to increase revenue. I know they want to increase profits. I know they do. However, their clients, their marketplace is changing. Their clients are changing. They're expecting more out of salespeople than ever before, not less. In a world, unfortunately, that doesn't view salespeople as being the most trustworthy people out there. If I'm an executive, I'm looking at how fast my salespeople can build trust. How fast can my salespeople connect and relate to our clients and our future clients?
This is what's interesting. This happens in the very first conversation that a salesperson has. By the way, that conversation doesn't have to be face-to-face. That conversation could be phone. That conversation could be over email. That conversation can be over a message center and a social platform. That conversation can be on a social platform. It doesn't matter. Salespeople are either establishing or eroding trust the minute they open their mouth, put fingers to a keyboard, or phone to an ear. As executives, we have to be cognizant of this.
I'm a big believer in coaching salespeople on how to establish trust, how to connect real fast by the words and the messaging that they use to get engaged with whoever they need to get engaged with, based on whatever market sector they're calling into. What I do is not rocket science. I'll share one more thing because it's a commonality that we have still to this day. I don't know how a copier works. I spent decades in the business. I don't care. What I cared about was the other person sitting in front of me. It wasn't.
The copier was just a means to an end. It just happened to be the vehicle upon which I sold something to earn a living and to help somebody in a better place than they were before. I'll use Mark, I'll just use you as an example since we're having this conversation, I just knew this, and I want people to key in on this. I knew that if Mark was the executive sitting in front of me, the more comfortable he became about me, the more Mark starts to open up and share what I call his business secrets. That does not happen with everybody because I've connected and related, and I've made Mark feel comfortable.
Salespeople establish or erode trust the minute they open their mouths, put fingers to a keyboard, or phone to an ear.
Building Digital Relationships: Trust & Connection In The First Meeting
Let's keep pushing on that, Larry. That's super, this is gold. How do we do that? You talked about, “We might have this start of a relationship digitally, and your pal who gave you a wonderful testimonial for the book, Tim Hughes.” We love Tim too. He's been on the show a couple of times and Adam and the gang over there, but he talks a lot about building, leveraging things like LinkedIn, not as a sales platform per se, but just like a digital cocktail party where you're both interested and interesting.
If we have that face-to-face meeting, there are still people coming in, thank goodness for face-to-face meetings, first meetings. What do we do to prepare for that first meeting or that first Zoom call? Maybe we're walking into meet somebody more senior than us, and we're trying to introduce our company to theirs. How do we quickly build trust and credibility?
This is good stuff. I'm going to give you the complete polar opposite answer which is probably what many would say. This is people skills, relationship skills. Think about this, and I'm a mindset guy, Mark. I'm going to give you a verbatim here in a second. What I want people to think about as they're reading what I'm saying and how Mark set this up is I want you to think about the first meeting. You could be doing the dancing and all of that with email and engaging on social posts, and sending them a message inside LinkedIn. Let's call that dancing.
You're dancing to get to that very first meeting where they agree to agree. I don't care if it's face to face or it's on any virtual platform, Team, Zoom, whatever, doesn't matter. That's just a call in the world. It's not face-to-face. Let's say it's all virtual. Mark agrees to have this virtual meeting with me, Larry, and we've been dancing around, we're connected, and all of that. We agree that's the magical day that I'm going to have that meeting. I can guarantee you this. Mark is the executive is probably thinking, though he may never say it, that this call is going to go down like the other five that I've had this past week.
What's Larry going to say that's going to get me to think? Larry's probably going to say the exact same thing. The other five salespeople said within the first five minutes, Mark my word, that's probably going through Mark's head. What I would say is this. I believe this, the first couple of minutes, you're either going to establish trust, or you're going to erode trust. This is people skills, relationship skill building. I'd say something like this, and I lay this on CEOs and presidents, and I'm just like, I just love watching their facial expressions.
“Mark, I'm super grateful for our time together here. Thank you. It's been wonderful getting to know you. I've been looking forward to this since we agreed to agree to this meeting two weeks ago. Thank you.” Silent pause, and then I lean in. When I lean in, I say, “Mark, tell me something good. What's been going on with Mark Cox lately? Talk to me. What's been going on?” Pause. Mark will tell you something. “By the way, Mark, thanks for sharing. Before we get started, I'm just curious. This morning in my reading. I was reading a great book. I was reading Learn to Love Selling.”
Thanks for the plug, Larry.
It's all good. I'm staring at it, Mark Cox. Beautiful setup. Seriously, “I'm curious. This morning I was just reading Learn to Love Selling, a great book. In the first chapter of that book, this particular section stood out to me. The reason it stood out to me is dot, dot. Mark, how's this sit with you?”
Larry, here's the thing. I believe you. When you do that, I've had enough interaction with you in the last hour. I'll mention one other thing, but you believe what you're saying. This isn't a sales pitch. You are that guy. You'd have the same start to a conversation if you met your friend at church, or you met your friend having a beer after work, or whatever. That's it's just you.
Selling From the Heart
A 100%, I want to let everyone know something. Mark's in sales, I'm in sales. You all have to grow your business like we have to grow our business. I will tell you this, the things that I'm sharing, I use. I got to share a funny story. This is a very true story, as true as true gets. This was about two months ago. Two months ago, I had a division president of a very large company I set up some time with. We were connected on LinkedIn, and moved it off of LinkedIn to an agreeable time to connect. The agreeable time was a 30-minute Teams call.
Mark, I always launch my calls early, like ten minutes early. I schedule it. I block it in case something happens. I reboot all of that. Just FYI, don't launch your calls 30 seconds before time because poopoo might happen. My camera's on, he pops in, camera comes on. Insert name. “I am super grateful for our time together here. I just wanted to say thank you. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Just wanted to let you know that.”
Insert name. “Tell me what's been going on.” Five minutes later, he tells me what's been going on. Here's the hook on this because I believe executives will test salespeople. This person goes, “Tell me your backstory.” Now, most salespeople would fall for the hook. Tell me your backstory, Joe. Joe starts telling them how wonderful he is and all that.
Beyond Backstories: Focusing On Client Needs, Not Sales Pitches
Insert name, and I said, “That's not why we're here. I would be more than happy to tell you my backstory, but quite frankly, you'd probably roll your eyes and tell me exactly what you'd probably tell most other people. I expected that. More importantly, this is about you. What's your story? Will you be willing to share?” I never said anything for the next twenty minutes. That 30-minute initial conversation went an hour and twenty minutes.
First of all, awesome. For those reading, I'm to tell you, this is the guy Larry is. I don't know if Larry remembers, but we're supposed to schedule this episode about three weeks ago, four weeks ago. Something big came up for me with one of our clients, and I went upside down and backwards. I had to send Larry notes saying, “Listen, this has come up. I'm so sorry.” Think about how busy you know Larry is, and he's scheduling these back to back, etc. Rather than coming back saying, “No problem. I'll just reschedule, etc.” Larry sends me a note and goes, “Mark, is everything okay?” That was the note. Do you remember this?
Yeah, I remember his plans day.
It wasn't anything about Larry, and it wasn't anything about the podcast. It was, “Everything okay?” When I had sent the note, I was in this mental state where it wasn't all okay. It wasn't okay. I was going, “I got to do a couple of things here and get, do some dancing.” It took a pause. Before I respond to it, it was such a helpful question because the reality of it is this was not life-changing what I was going through. It is just something I had to work through. I thought, “It's nice that somebody asked me that.” I came back and went, “Larry, it is okay. We love our clients.
Something great came up. We've got to, we've got to jump on this one, but it's all good.” It was just such a nice way of saying nothing about you and your day and the impact on your schedule. It was a lot about, “Are you okay?” We hadn't even met. There's this idea of authenticity. I love your approach on that sales call, by the way. I'm such a fan of gratitude because gratitude helps me. Forget what it does for the rest of the world. I feel better when I'm grateful. Again, your pal, Anthony, wrote some great stuff about that in the negativity fast. The physical and mental manifestations of gratitude are shocking. It's like exercise. It's so good for you.
A 100%. What we're talking about goes back to the two words. It's connect and relate. I want to be able to connect to somebody. If I can connect, if I can start to relate, we start to form the basis of trust. In a post-trust world, everyone's swimming for it. When there are high levels of trust, I know what happens. Things speed up. When there are low levels of trust, things slow down. It just turns into a price war.
Beyond The Sale: Cultivating Lasting Client Relationships
By the way, at some point we're going to bring you back. We're going to talk again about this trust, just so I think there's a whole podcast on trust. While we've got you this time. Larry, one of the things that jumped out to me about the book was this clarity. I think this is an opportunity for anyone reading. You have existing clients. This idea of managing, maintaining that relationship after the sale.
You talk a lot about, Larry, in the book, average salespeople only interact with an existing client when the client comes to them with a problem, or there's another opportunity to sell something. There are these very limited interactions, or they do the proverbial fly by, I'll just grab a cup of coffee. We see that a lot of lunch. Everybody out here has existing clients. What are a couple of things you might suggest, I think you talk about the three kinds of keys, for building a better relationship with your clients? Just a key takeaway people can leave with.
I’m a massive believer in this. I learned this through all my years doing what I was doing, is I'm a fan of selling more to your existing customers and growing new business. I knew this, the way I would increase my business was to increase what I know about my customers. This plays out both ways. The more I started to know my customers' business, the more I grew with them. The more I started to build authentic relationships and bring some meaningful value, not just that salesperson who just stops by and goes, “I was in the neighborhood. I thought I'd stop by. Is everything okay?”
You don't know where I'm going with this. Absolutely no value. They go, “I got great relationships with these people.” I'm not going to doubt it, but I probably not, but you probably don't. I knew I just want everyone to hear me out on this because it just goes against the total grain. The more frequently I spent inside my customer's offices, walking the halls, getting to know people, upper-level management, mid-level management, and lower-level management. The more I got a chance to meet people and shake hands and slap high fives, observe by watching, listening, meeting people, asking questions, the more I started to grow my business because I understood their business.
The first couple minutes, you're either going to establish trust or erode trust.
I found other things that I was capable of selling them to layer on top of that. My new business grew through my existing customers by taking care of my existing customers. The bow on this is to grow your business through your customers, not at the expense of your customers. The way you do that is by building genuine, authentic relationships, high, wide, and deep. When I say this is you got to get to know these people personally and professionally, what makes them tick? What are their goals, dreams, and aspirations? Where do they see themselves a year from now?
Knowing Your Customer: Deepening Personal & Professional Understanding
What are they working on this quarter? What did they need to remove from their business plate? How can I or somebody in my network help them do that? The personal side is, I want to know what makes these people tick outside of work. I want to help them grow their business. If I can help them grow their business, I believe this, I've earned the right to have them help me grow mine. By asking for referrals or by saying, “These are five businesses I'm trying to go after. I got to grow my business just like you got to grow yours.” Do any of these businesses ring a bell to you?
Are you familiar with any of these? “That one. Tell me, what do about that business?” People, it is not that hard to grow your business, but if you can agree you're in the people business and relationship-building business, grow the people skills and relationship-building skills with your current customers. Go high, wide, and deep, personally and professionally, and understand who's who inside the businesses you're working with. Get to know these people. They will help you grow your business, but you have to put forth the effort to help them grow their business.
Well said. By the way, the nice thing about the book is that it's also said very simply. I just find you you must have good editors or did a lot of passes on it. You had some great people who provided testimonials. We're big fans of Bernadette and Anthony.
Bernadette is a dear friend of mine.
They're all great. Let's also think about what we want to do with our lives. This is what I want to do with my life. This is what we do in the funnel. Now we do this because we want to, but I want to get to know people. I like people. I want to help them run a better business. I don't want to be the fly by sale, “I'm gone.” All of that stuff. I want to make sure that somebody who made a decision to move forward with us, we make them look very good for having made that decision.
That's our mission is to make sure that they become the hero for making that decision. This is one that I find very interesting for the folks reading. I find this topic to be some of the lowest hanging fruit out there, where you just say, “We've got an existing business. We've been doing it for years. We have a client base. We know them well.” I think there's a difference between we know them or we've set up a structure to have engagement or meetings with them, where we go to a different level of conversation about them and their business.
When there isn't a deal on the table for us and we call it a health check. With folks reading, find if you've had these clients for years, you get a little complacent in your relationship. I might have a social relationship with them. See them at hockey, etc., but I think they know us, and they think I know them. Every once in a while, I like to try and trigger a different meeting where maybe a few different people come into a room and we have this conversation about, how are we doing?
I like a QBR. We get into “How are you doing? What's going on with your business?” I find that depending upon whether you sell into a large enterprise or an SMB, if you're selling to middle management, VPs, and a large bank, they need to think about the answer to that question. You think they know what's in their 10K report and how they're progressing against key metrics, and exactly how those things cascade down to their division and so on and so forth. They don't always.
If I go by for a coffee and go, “Tell me how you guys are progressing against your CEO's top three strategic priorities.” They don't have the answer. Sometimes, if you put in a little easy agenda and say, “Listen, I'd like to talk about this. Let's just find out what's new with you guys and how you're doing against the strategic priorities.” They prepare for it.
Grow your business through your customers, not at the expense of your customers.
The Best Customer Challenge: Deepening Client Knowledge & Connections
This is what's interesting. I'll throw everyone a challenge. Can I throw everyone a challenge before we wrap?
Absolutely.
It plays on what Mark just said. Here's what I want everyone to think about. Follow along with me on this one. I want everyone who's reading or watching to focus on their single best customer. However, they choose to define that, I'm going to leave that one all up to you. I want you all to visually think about your very best customer. This will be the one that, if you're having a bad day, you had a bad call, you're picking up the phone because you want to hear their voice, because it's going to put a smile on your face.
If you all believe you're in the people business and relationship-building business. I hope this gives you a gut-check moment in a very positive way. I want you to think of that customer. This is the one if you lost, it would hurt. I want you to think about the following. How many people inside that organization do you know? How many of them know you? What do about them personally and professionally, and vice versa? How many people at the upper level, mid-level, and lower level management do you know?
You're all going to be telling me, Larry, “Don't worry about it. I got great relationships with these people.” “What do you know about these people?” Now here's the gut check moment. What are their goals, initiatives, and challenges over the next 90 days at said levels, upper-level, mid-level, and lower-level management? If you cannot answer that question on your single best customer, that client customer, however you all want to refer to it, is vulnerable.
I want everyone a I hope this inspires you to think a little bit differently, but you're in the people business and relationship-building business. “I trust you should know this. I trust this, just in case that's your homework.” Isolate your single best customer. Go 5 or 6 people deep. What do I know about these people, and what do they know about me? Do I understand their goals, initiatives, and challenges over the next 90 days? If you don't, that's your homework. If you do, you get a pass on this.
By the way, if you do, go to the next one.
Go to the next one.
Go to the second one. By the way, I'm thinking about that. By the way, what a great universal tip for everybody. Larry, what a pleasure meeting you.
Thank you. Mine as well.
Just a real joy to read Selling From The Heart. By the way, let us know a little bit. How do people who are reading, who want to learn more about you and want to engage with you, how do they do it?
I'm not too hard to find. You can find me all over LinkedIn. Very simple. Just Larry Levine, but my LinkedIn name's Larry Levine 1992. You can find me all over the place. Just go to SellingFromTheHeart.net. It's the easiest place. You can find what we're up to. It gives you links to things I've written. It gives you links to the Selling From The Heart podcast. The simplest way, go to SellingFromTheHeart.net.
Team, that link will be in the show notes. Selling From The Heart, you want to pick that up from Amazon. We also want to pick up Selling In A Post-Trust World. These are great reads, fun reads, enjoyable reads. Pick these up, so we read the books usually first, and then go after the podcast guest. What a real treat to have you on the show, Larry. Thanks again for joining us.
It's my pleasure. Good seeing you, Mark.
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Team, thank you so much for joining the show. As you know, we run this podcast because we're trying to improve the performance and professionalism of B2B sales. In doing so, we believe we're improving the lives of professional salespeople. We appreciate you reading. If you enjoyed the podcast, please like and subscribe to the podcast because that's how we get great guests like Larry. We also love constructive feedback. If there are other things we can be doing on the podcast that you'd see value in, please let me know. I'm MarkCox@InTheFunnel.com. That's my personal email. I respond to every bit of constructive feedback we get. We love constructive feedback. Thanks for sending it in. We'll see everybody next time on the show. Thanks so much for joining.
Important Links
About Larry Levine
Larry Levine is the best-selling author of two books, Selling from the Heart and Selling In A Post-Trust World.
He is also the co-host of the award winning Selling from the Heart Podcast, as well as the Culture from the Heart Podcast.
Blending a heart of service with over three decades of in-the-field sales experience, Larry helps sales professionals develop a mindset and skill set for authentic success.
In a post trust sales world, Larry helps sales teams leverage the power of authenticity to grow revenue, grow themselves and enhance the lives of their clients.
Larry has coached sales professionals across the world, from well-tenured reps to new up and coming salespeople entering the salesforce. They all appreciate the practical, real, relevant, relatable and “street–savvy” nature of his coaching.
Larry believes people would rather do business with a sales professional who sells from the heart as opposed to a sales rep who is an empty suit.