Can I save your marriage?

Something interesting happened to me last week that I thought I’d share with you.

Last Monday here in Sydney, we held a Trust-Based Selling Master Class, a full day for business owners who came to completely shift their mindset so they can exponentially grow their sales results.

As you probably know, my life’s work, at least for the past 15 years, has been focussed on transforming businesses that are reaching a plateau in their sales growth and are ready to create a sales breakthrough – through my Unlock The Game trust-based sales mindset and methodology.

Watching these business owners literally transform and “shift” right in front of me and the other attendees in the Master Class, is what motivates me to get up each morning and continue our mission of changing the world through trust.

At the session last Monday, I and my business partner Delmae Bower, focussed a solid portion of the day on helping the business owners in the room “let go” of their main goal of focussing on “closing the sale”.

We of course also focused on trust-based languaging to instantly have the other person they are selling to feel comfortable telling them their truth (so they don’t have to chase anymore, that’s called sales bliss).

I explained with multiple examples that when you focus on YOUR goal of the sale, you subconsciously detach from the potential client you are speaking with.

When your mind is focussed on the “next step”, everything you do and say comes across as if they are in YOUR process. (This is why so many corporate sales programs fail, because the person selling feels inauthentic about their hidden agenda).

After the lunch break, everyone came back excited about the possibilities of creating a sales breakthrough in their companies without having to chase prospects.

The afternoon session is where it got really interesting which ties back to the headline in this email: Can I save your marriage?

One of the business owners in the room was a Wealth Management professional in the finance industry. Throughout the morning session he kept very much to himself.

As I would describe and make the case that selling has shifted dramatically in just the past 24 months, requiring him and the others in the room to make an equally dramatic shift, you could tell he was struggling with “letting go” of what he believed was the right way to sell. He had been selling in his industry for the last ten years.

In the afternoon session, Delmae delivered a stunning presentation on how to convert their “sales pitch”, meaning their solutions, into a problem-focused approach 100% aligned with their prospect’s core issues.

She did an exercise that we created for our Master Class called the “Problem Tree” exercise. With large pieces of paper on each of the tables, each business owner was asked to draw the main trunk of a tree, writing on it their core problem they believe they help their clients solve.

Then off the branches of the trunk of the tree, the attendees were asked to write the “sub-problems” relating to the main problem.

This simple, yet sophisticated exercise, which they thought would take a few minutes to complete (keep in mind, all the attendees had been in business for at least a few years), took close to an hour and a half.

They struggled with brainstorming the core issues they help their clients solve.

What? Strange…how could this be?

They are all “experts” in what they sell, but when it came to having to STOP thinking about their solutions and START articulating the problems they help their clients solved, they were like a dear in headlights.

Now, this is normal, don’t think this was unique just to this group. With every group we work with, it’s normal at first to struggle with “letting go” of focussing on solutions and rather instead, focus on core problems.

Why is that?

Because most business owners are so wedded to what they sell, their identity becomes all about their solutions. They are supposed to be “solution providers” right? When someone asks them what do they do, what do you think they can’t wait to talk about: their SOLUTION.

Mid-way through the exercise, you could almost see the light bulbs popping over their heads. They finally started to SHIFT, getting really clear on the problems they solve.

That shift they experienced in the room, was the closest thing they had ever experienced to putting their self-image/ego aside, so they could deeply connect, listen and build real trust with their prospects — focussing on their prospect’s problems, not their own “next steps” toward their solutions.

At the end of the day, the Wealth Management professional I mentioned earlier, who at first really struggled with this shift, approached me as he was about to head home and said: “If I had gone through your Master Class ten years ago, I could have saved my marriage.”

Silence from me, a smile from him, then he headed home.

Wow….

What was he really trying to say to me?

He was expressing his realization that for many years, he had been focussing on his agenda in ALL areas of his life, business and personal.

If, at the time he was married or during difficult times in his marriage, he had truly focussed on his partner’s needs, and not only on his needs, he may still be happily married today, rather than divorced.

I’ll leave you with this thought: The new currency of success in this modern day and age is TRUST and trust can only be achieved with another human being (business or personal) when you focus 100% on them and not you.

Your comments are always welcome and appreciated….

To your success,