A New Approach to Selling and Marketing w/ Kimberlee Slavik [Episode 739]

Kimberlee Slavik, author of five books, including Visnostic Sales and Marketing: The Power of VISualization DiagNOSTIC Statements™ A Neuroscientific Approach to Communicating, Training, Selling, Marketing, and Leading, joins me on this episode.

Episode Summary

Kimberlee Slavik has published five successful sales books in 2019 and is working on three more. Readers’ reactions to her first book led to the others in a series. She also wrote a leadership book from her sales experience. Kimberlee recommends upgrading sales management standards and suggests requiring licensing for sales management; there should be consequences for bad behavior in the sales industry.

Kimberlee was motivated to write Visnostics to provide plans for the execution of the sales theories she had learned along the way in sales. She tells how to flip the story to appeal to customers when improving sales. Generation Zs have a three-second attention span so you have to get their attention with your first words. You never know what your audience is going to be. Different people have different perspectives; present your services from their perspective. Kimberlee relates the meeting that sparked that moment of understanding to create the basis of Visnostics.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul 0:00
It’s time to Accelerate. Hey friends, this is Andy. Welcome to Episode 739 of Accelerate sales podcast of record. Another interesting episode lined up for you today. Joining me on my guests on this week’s episode of Accelerate is Kimberly. Kimberly is the author of a book titled Visnostic Sales and Marketing: The Power of VISualization diagNOSTIC, A Neuroscientific Approach to Communicating, Training, Selling, Marketing, and Leading. So in this episode, Kimberlin is going to talk about the salesperson developed called this Visnostic. And it’s based on this premise that that your customers perspectives are gonna vary based on the individual each every has their own way they look at life and you never know who your audience is going to be. And Kimberly shares how she’s developed this Visnostic was just short for visualization diagnostics to help sellers learn how to present their messaging from the perspective of the buyer and think she calls it translation but it’s a way to, again approach it from the perspective of the buyer as opposed to a seller’s perspective. We’re also gonna spend some time discussing whether sales need professional standards like so many other things. Stories should sales managers and sellers be required to pass a certification test in order to get a license to sell. Let’s jump into it. Kimberly, welcome to the show.

Kimberlee Slavik 3:36
Hi, Andy. It’s good to be here. Good to see you.

Andy Paul 3:40
Tell us a little bit about you. So a little bit about your background and what got you to this point?

Kimberlee Slavik 3:46
Well, I’ve been in AI T-cells my entire career, which is a really long time, and not that long. I had been in leadership roles the last 12 years. And I thought it might be a good idea to take a year off and try and document some of the things to make myself a better leader. And when I was circulating the draft of my first attempt at that, I started getting people hiring me to come to teach the principles. So that’s how this whole crazy world started. And it was October of last year, and it’s just been a whirlwind. Okay, selling is my passion.

Andy Paul 4:35
Yeah. So, yeah, that’s sort of the way things happen. So what inspired you to write the book? I mean, you said you’re taking a break, but was it specifically to write the book or did you have the same idea in mind for a long time how to write this particular book, I’ve got something to say.

Kimberlee Slavik 4:53
Really, it was kind of a weird situation, because, at this stage of your career, it’s really hard to put all your accomplishments on a one-page resume. But no one’s going to read an eight-page resume. So I thought, well, I’m going to go at a complete extreme and not the only document what I’ve done, but I’m going to explain how I do things. And that’s how the book evolved. It was going to be more of a leadership tool for me to share with my team. I had never in a million years, I’m not a writer, don’t want to be a writer never had any aspirations to be a writer. And I have five books right now. And three more that I’m in the middle of writing right now. The first book was published in February, so it hasn’t even I haven’t even had books out a year yet.

Andy Paul 5:39
Interesting. So you got the eight books now. It’s taking me more work on my third book, it’s taken me probably it’s six months from start to finish. So what am I doing wrong? Why, how are you able to write so many books so quickly?

Kimberlee Slavik 5:52
Well, I don’t have a podcast that’s so popular. For one thing.

Andy Paul 6:00
I mean, this is like, can I serve drawing the analogy like Van Gogh, you know, Van Gogh is so familiar with office paintings and actually he, you know, did almost all of his famous paintings within about a year period of time and that was it so it’s like you’re having this burst of creative energy.

Kimberlee Slavik 6:16
Well, shielded Visnostic is the focus that I do have one separate book that’s on leadership and it’s about sales leadership has to change. But this Visnostic series, when when I first put the first book out, I started getting a lot of naysayers that said, Yeah, but you sold $2 billion of very complex IP stuff that doesn’t apply to me. So I wanted to prove a point that it applies to everybody. So I did two special edition books, specifically on real estate was the first one and then the second one was on auto sell, because those are two really big so feel, and they were huge successes. So I’m doing a lot of specialty books like I’m doing I’m the one I’m writing right now is for the food service industry because Massey is a big client of mine. So as people do workshops with me and I become a keynote speaker, one of the things I provide is a customized book for their events or their vertical market.

Andy Paul 7:17
Okay, so why do you think you’re getting pushback people saying, well, this doesn’t apply to what we do?

Kimberlee Slavik 7:25
Because it’s human nature to have mental barriers, and a lot of people, especially sales, people are their own worst enemies. So a lot of salespeople would just say, yeah, this isn’t going to work for me. And I wanted to prove that it can work for you.

Andy Paul 7:40
Well, and that’d be the case about anything new really were salespeople, isn’t it more than anything else is regardless of what the specific methodology is, it’s more often than not, it’s just like, just having an open mind to something new.

Kimberlee Slavik 7:53
Yes, it’s true. And then one of the books was so the original book that came out was called is Visnostic selling, and it’s an interactive book. So I encourage the readers to reach out to me. And in the first four months of people reaching out, I had a whole book of success stories in very unique original ways that people were using it. And I thought I would much rather write about other people’s successes with his Visnostic than mine. So the new book that’s replacing does not seek selling, his club does not seek sales and marketing. It’s twice the size because it’s mostly reader success stories really creative ways they’re using it.

Andy Paul 8:29
Okay, well, we’re gonna jump into just like, let’s ask a question about so you wrote this book about why think sales leadership needs to change. So a, yeah, I’m sure we all have our opinions about why it needs to change what’s your take on it?

Kimberlee Slavik 8:43
Well, so I really didn’t know what I was doing with that book. And I didn’t know that I was even going to publish that one. It was more of a therapy book. And I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just a complaint. You know, a bunch of whining and complaining. For every problem that I observed are different. In a fight, I tried to come up with a solution. And if I could summarize that book and where it kind of guided my thought process, and my logic is that sales are a very unusual profession. It’s the number one profession in the world. You know, and there’s not a real regulatory agency around it. Like to be an attorney, you can get your law degree, but you’ve got to pass the bar exam in each state if you want to practice. And if you misbehave, you can have that taken away from you. And what I’m proposing is we’ve got to up the game on so standard, and when people behave badly, then that needs to be taken away. But it’s been my observation in salespeople. I’ve worked with some amazing salespeople. I’ve worked or worked with fewer amazing sales managers. And it’s kind of like that old adage. You know, those that Do those that can’t teach. A lot of times, people just, they end up in a sales leadership position and they really aren’t qualified to do it.

Andy Paul 10:10
Well, who’s responsible for that?

Kimberlee Slavik 10:14
I think for one thing, I am. And my career was as an individual contributor as a salesperson. the least amount of money I made and the most hours I worked was as a sales leader. Hmm. And that’s, those are some of the things that really need to change. If you want to attract top talent and top tier sales, leadership, then it’s got to be worth their time.

Andy Paul 10:37
So at the start with just a little bit of a garble on the connection so which saying is is that we should be promoting this because it’s always the conundrum is some companies are faced with this am I gonna take my best people and turn them into managers, which oftentimes we know does not a fit does, how do they really identify because I think this is a pressing issue. Especially today is how do companies identify that people are best suited for sales management roles? And I and I make the point it’s about to pay. But is it really about payers about something else?

Kimberlee Slavik 11:16
Well, I mean, one of the things I read about in the very first few paragraphs is the average sales leader is VP of sales position is less than a year now in Silicon Valley, and just a few years ago was 18 months. And it I mean, it’s got to be the most unstable job there is, you know, the bullets are coming downhill uphill and sideways at you. And then a lot of cases you’re just political body shield, and is what I’ve heard.

Andy Paul 11:48
Yeah, we’ve all seen the statistics again, whether it’s 12 months, 18 months, it’s it’s short, right? It’s hard for anybody to put their stamp on an organization FMLA leadership perspective in such a short period of time, it seems like reserving this self-fulfilling prophecies circle is there’s a vicious cycle is that? Yeah, put people into impossible situations expect them to form miracles without being given the opportunity to develop their team develop the skills are a team, and so on. And do you see that? I’m sorry, but the fear is I see that spreading beyond Silicon Valley and beyond the tech industry.

Kimberlee Slavik 12:28
Other industries as well. Oh, I agree with you. 100%. And, you know, the big question is, how are we going to fix it? How do we address this problem? And, you know, how do we make it change? Well, I’m only one person but I’m, you know, putting it in writing and hopefully spreading the word and getting more people engaged. A couple of the ways that I’m, I’m making my goal is, you know, out of 14 million salespeople in the world, there’s only 120 universities that offer So leadership degree, and I’m trying to get involved with as many of those universities as I can to help them make sure that they’ve got the right curriculum because right now, one of the professors I’ve been working with a gentleman named John Krabs, out of the University of Minnesota, he said that regardless of what degree you get 50% of all college graduates are going into sales careers now. And as a sales leader, we would hire these college grads and what do you think we had to do here? They are no, their college degree, we’re having to send them away for a month for additional education. So at a collegiate level, corporate America and the universities need to get on the same page as far as the curriculum to make sure that the people coming out are ready to hit you know, already.

Andy Paul 13:50
By the data that 50% of college grads are going into sales because then in the B2B sales world, the number is fairly stable in terms of employment. But yeah, it’s always this issue of is there any value in training undergraduates and syllogistic? sales going thing that we’re really familiar with me as is? Yeah, first I’d start, I see the value of a sales degree, I don’t necessarily see the value of a sales management degree. And maybe they’re both the same thing. I mean, I’ve spoken to college classes and universities that have a sales degree. And even the classes of talking to us those who are majoring in sales, only less than a half or even attending to go into sales, you might have found that sort of interesting so I think we have this issue rather than having that’s why it’s sort of taking issue with the gentleman from Minnesota is that I think we have a bigger issue just attracting people into sales, let alone serve. I have so many graduates coming into the profession.

Kimberlee Slavik 15:04
I agree. I actually talked about that in the first part of the book too, you know, colleges and universities are businesses. And it’s the supply-demand. So, I mean, when the last time you ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up, and very few say they want to be a sales manager or salesperson, and John Burroughs, he just wrote a really good book. It’s a child of children’s books, and I want to be a salesperson when I grow up. So that’s a good start, you know, to help educate children and really parents because they’re the ones a lot of times that are paying the tuition if parents don’t start thinking yeah, I want my kid to be a salesperson, then that demand still gonna stay pretty low.

Andy Paul 15:43
It’s our profession. I don’t know about you and your background that people sort of fall into though. Yeah, certainly from people I’ve interviewed on the show is amazing how many started off as teachers, for instance, and then found their way into salespeople You’re quite successful in sales. I started in sales but had no one no idea that that’s what I would do. I mean, when I graduate college I had absolutely no idea that being in sales, let alone spam. Decades doing it. I’ve sort of gone back and forth on that myself is is whether certification of sales equals sales or, you know, a regulatory issue like lawyers are granted their, you know, self-governing bodies, but lawyers and doctors and accountants and so on.I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s intriguing on one hand, for the reason you said is that these, you know, creative, professional, rounded, professional standards, but it’s it’s hard to imagine, given how soft the skills are that That’s something we could really enforce interested in your thoughts on that?

Kimberlee Slavik 17:06
Well, no, you’re

Kimberlee Slavik 17:10
already right. But when I think about, you know, you can’t even cut hair without a license. And if you don’t, if you don’t do things right, you can get that license revoked. And the same thing with digging a trench, you can’t dig a trench to put in pipe pipeline, right? Unless you’re certified and you understand all the safety precautions and so forth. And even though those expired, it’s an ongoing continued education, CPA, you can’t be a CPA, without getting your passing your CPA test. You can have an accounting degree, but you got to pass the CPA. And even then you’ve got to maintain it and continue your education to maintain your credentials. But with salespeople and there’s a lot of bad behavior that you know, I talked about in the book blurb there’s no consequences for bad behavior in our industry, and While you’re waiting for certification, you get fired. In theory Yeah. It’s been my experience that it’s there they’re pretty forgiving if the deal gets closed the behavior around it

Kimberlee Slavik 18:15
held at a high yeah standard.

Andy Paul 18:18
Yeah, I mean that’s there’s certainly some of that. Why just I guess my my thing is and I’ve had this conversation with some other guests on the show and including some people that have started organizations try to do this the certification and and the difference between yes a lawyer or a doctor a doctor. Yeah, I don’t know how much my wife is Professor medical school and I’m not sure how much of the you know, medical exams, licensing exams really come down to judgment as opposed to knowledge you know, so hard knowledge hard skills, and yeah, Bill similar with you know, bar exam which is all based about case law. Yes sir factual and we’re in this professional so everything so subjective is is from yet just to raise the questions yeah could we what could we test right that’s because it’s like almost like artwork to me is is yeah cuz it’s such a creative professionals you know it’s like well okay to create a certification for salespeople good It’s like saying we’re and create a certification for novel writers or something like that I mean how do you how do you know what’s good?

Kimberlee Slavik 19:33
You know I think there needs to be and I think it’s starting from what I’ve observed there needs to be a stronger connection between corporate America and the collegiate level. And, you know, you asked me what I’m doing about it UTD here in I’m in the Dallas area.

Andy Paul 19:49
I know Howard Dover Yeah.

Kimberlee Slavik 19:50
Yeah. I’m so impressed with Dr. Dover and the program that is put in place so, you know, I’ve gotten involved in in his program just recently and I’m trying to get involved with as many of the hundred and 20 universities as I can to see what I can do to help in any way I can. Sure. And I’m also going to be learning, you know what their challenges are? Because it’s all a brand new world to me.

Andy Paul 20:17
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it’s it’s an evolving space. And yeah, Dr. Howard Dover and University of Texas, Dallas has got a great program going on there that that is to your point earlier is very much tied to servicing the demands of the local community for people certain skill sets in sales, which is, is what we need. I mean, if we can, for me, sort of the ideal and one of the frustrations is that we seem to, I think two point you’d made earlier as we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time so just teaching new cadre of salespeople that come in to some of the basics that seemed like they should be almost second nature by now. When they come out of education or wherever they are, you know, college wherever they’re being educated. And if we could, yeah, big shorten that learning curve that’d be that’d be ideal and maybe get people to stay in the profession longer. All right, let’s talk talk about your book. So what’s what’s the premise behind this Visnostic wants to tell us what sort of inspired you to write the book.

Kimberlee Slavik 21:24
Well, like I said, I’ve been selling for, you know, a million years. So that’s when I first started in was in the 80s. When I first started, it was all about relationship selling. So Dale Carnegie was Big Jim Cecil, have a love affair with your customer was big. And then we kind of moved into the consultative sale where we were asking a lot of questions to the clients and getting more strategic and blue sheets from strategic selling and selling. And then, you know, Sandler Training came up in the early 2000s. All this training has been wonderful. There’s always good pieces to Everything I’ve ever learned. But the one thing I always saw myself doing as a salesperson was, I read these really great books, but they were, I felt like they weren’t written by salespeople. I felt like they were written by theorists. And they were really good theory. But what I had to do was translate what I was reading and do, how was I going to execute this stuff? Well, so.

Andy Paul 22:22
So give me an example of that. So what what were the ones that if you can pick one and not to pick on anybody, but that’s fine is what what was one example that you’re encountering, but you felt there’s this gap between theory and execution?

Kimberlee Slavik 22:35
Okay, so I talked about three of the books. The Challenger sell is one of them. Simon Sinek start with why and Michael Bosworth what great salespeople do those are three recent books that you know, I found myself going okay, now, how what does this really mean and how does this translate? And so the book that I wrote with Visnostic is wrapped around those three books on how to take that theory and actually execute So the challenger sale I think philosophically is solid, which is, if you go in and tell a customer like consultative selling, I witnessed this firsthand, I did this, you know, where you do all your research, you’ve asked all these questions that you present, you’re so proud because you’re presenting everything that you, you know researched about them. And you don’t get invited back to the next meeting, because you didn’t tell them anything of value that they didn’t already know about. And so the challengers, so that was the main main takeaway from them was, how do you challenge customers and clients to do things differently? How do you execute that principle? And that’s what one of the things that I tackle in the book, the other one is, Simon Sinek. Start with like, I have been in leadership, where we embrace that book to come up with our mission statements from all these things. But in selling What does that mean? What is the Why? And what my book teaches the Why is the result. The customers don’t care what you do. They care about The results of what you do. And then what real people do is about storytelling, which everybody’s got to spend on storytelling. That is like the best thing right now. But what, what exactly and how is that? What is the formula for a really solid, good story? And when I started reflecting back on my entire career, the one thing I noticed over and over again, is that I would go with my deck with my PowerPoint slide that Marketing gave me and I was telling my story and putting people into comas. And what I’m realizing is, what we really need to do is take our story and translate it into our rd world and make it our story, their story. And that’s in a nutshell, what does Visnostic is challenging the by articulating it in a an assistant A pattern which I, I teach people in this Visnostic to pick out the results, results timeline, and then the rest of the stuff that you do. So what did the clients get out of it? What’s the results? How quickly did they get those results, and then go into what you do. Our brains in our society have wired us to just start vomiting what we do, and then kind of as a side note, say, and we’ll save millions of dollars if you do what we do. I’m teaching people to flip that. And the reason that that’s so important is that the attention span everyone’s talking about that too. And the gen Z’s are graduating they just came out their first class are 25% of the population. You and me we had a 12 second attention span Millennials are down to eight. Everyone knows a goldfish has nine second attention span and the gen Z’s have a three second attention span. And they’re very, they’re very much about them themselves. You know, the Instagram and Facebook and social media. It’s all about impressing everyone around you. So those first words of what you can do in your story has to be results that are going to make their life better. So that’s why I took three books and turned it into execution.

Andy Paul 26:13
Okay. Yeah, so, so question is is so this is one thing that that always troubles me with so much of what I read and the I’m probably guilty of it to some degree as well is, is I’ll take millennials for example, there’s been a huge mischaracterization in my mind about about this generation about Yeah, we take easy facts and figures like attention span and so on and and,

Kimberlee Slavik 26:44
and

Andy Paul 26:46
I have to say I, I don’t I don’t buy it personally, right? Because I think that there’s an assumption in there and I said, I, I guess I’m sure I’m guilty of this as well and things that I’ve written, but I wonder if we make a mistake. In assuming that, that people have changed so much. I mean, it’s it’s Yeah, we talked about how selling a service evolved, you gave some good examples of books that, that throw the transitions and sales training. Emphasis, let’s say are sales perspectives, you know, from relationship selling, blah, blah, blah. But I think what that idea of relationship is because there are certain going through this period where people sort of poopoo relationship selling. But I wonder whether people really understood what that that meant. I mean, to me, there’s, there’s this whole idea of relationship selling is, you know, take the customer to lunch, we play golf, we, you know, we bond over these extracurricular activities, which I agree, that’s done beyond three Martini lunch and unless you’re in certain industries is probably completely gone. But for me, yeah, I believe that Everything revolves around relationship and sales.

Kimberlee Slavik 28:03
Yes, but there’s different kinds of relationships. So you and me, we’re used to face to face. We’re used to you ask a question and it’s rude if I don’t respond quickly, you send an email and I need to be responsive. This new generation, and you go seen, and it’s almost it’s a thing. You don’t want to text back right away and you don’t want to seem too eager and hungry. In their communication. They have a difficult time, a more difficult time when they have a face to face situation. And this is coming up. It’s been a topic of discussion. And believe me, I love millennials. My son’s a millennial. I think they’ve made us all up our game and I think the gen Z’s are gonna make us up our game. So it’s not a complaint in Morris Macy. I don’t know if you familiar with Maurice Macy, but, you know, I talked about him in the book as well. He was talking about you are who you are because of where you were when he was talking about World War II people that, you know, grew up during World War Two, and they had to, you know, give up their pots and pans to make ammunition. That is a different kind of generation. I can’t even relate to what those four people went through during the World Wars. So, you know, there are differences.

Andy Paul 29:22
Sure, absolutely. But But I just wonder is that, where I see it sort of wrapped in where I’m interested, because you’ve got tremendous amount of experience in sales is, is

Kimberlee Slavik 29:34
I think we tend to make

Andy Paul 29:36
too much of the differences. Yeah, I love reading about the course of human evolution and how people evolved and so on. And that’s a process that’s taken place over 10s of thousands years, hundreds of thousands of years. And so this idea that people fundamentally changed over the course of a generation, in terms of the way that we need to change Yeah, fundamentally change how we communicate is saying instead of saying look, there is still granted. Yeah, the idea of the old time relationship selling, which I wouldn’t even associate with Dale Carnegie I would associate I don’t know who would associate with but you know certainly prevalent the 50s 60s you know, Mad Men, yada yada yada. Yeah, that’s gone, by the way, but the way people still want to receive information and process it the way they they evaluate risk in the way they make decisions, hasn’t really fundamentally changed.

Kimberlee Slavik 30:37
So I think each person I will the one thing I do love about what Morris Macy says is you are who you are because of where you are when and he talks about you know, the psychology of when you’re a child, you know, you develop and you mimic your fam, you start looking towards your peers and outside of your family for that influence And then by the time you’re 21, you are who you’re going to be fundamentally to the core from a moral perspective and what’s right and wrong and those kind of things. And it takes a significant event to change that. I do agree with you that I think this cutoff you know, if you’re born from, you know, the state to 64 you’re going to be this person and 65 like this, that gap between 64 and 65. I don’t think it’s that clear cut. I think it is a gradual thing. But I mean, look at us, when we miss when we were children, and we miss Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on TV. We had to wait a whole year before it came out again, right? These kids get a wild hair the today. I don’t even know how they find stuff. It’s not just Netflix and Hulu and all these other things. They can find stuff online. They are on demand and talking to the university. Well, I talked to a guy the other day whose daughter

Kimberlee Slavik 31:52
because of how much she’s spending and he says my daughter just barely leaves her dorm room because they have a policy. They’re like all of the classes. Recorded now. And if you make it great if you don’t you do an on demand and get to watch the replay. I mean, we didn’t have that I didn’t have that when I was in college. So even education is, is getting this on demand mentality towards this generation, because that’s how they, that’s all they know is on demand. So I do think that the one thing I do want to share with you there’s a story in my book about the history of this not like, like, how did this whole thing come about? And this is really, you know, even if you don’t believe in the millennials, and the Gen Z and the baby boomer and all that, that’s cool. I own a problem with that. But one thing is for sure, our audience is always going to be different, and you never know what your audience is going to be. And I had this period of time in my career where I was selling the perfect dream software. Everyone wanted it. I mean, I was kind of just I was going through the motions. I was so arrogant and confident because everyone bought what I put my slides up there, you know, they’re like, How fast can we get But this one guy fell asleep during my presentation. And I was like, What is wrong with him? And of course, he was embarrassed. He said, Come back. And I came back. And this time he was taking notes. And I was all excited. So I went over to see what he was writing to do this grocery list. So he still wasn’t engaged. And I left. They’re so mad at myself that I left there. And I was like, What did I do wrong? He was different than all my other audience. My other audience was taking my messaging and translating it and why they cared. This guy was had something on his mind or distraction, where he he was in, he was not capable of translating all my bullets that said, This is what I do. He wasn’t capable of translating that into why he cared. So I went back and I really looked at my wording and my presentation and I realized we could be selling or an elevator or a toaster oven and use new and innovative and all these fancy buzzwords and it was wasn’t clear on what I could do for him. So then I started thinking of all my successful clients and the results they were having. And I started rewording my presentation on I created a spreadsheet that, you know, I started instead of saying, we do this, I wrote it from his perspective. And I called him back and said, Can we go to lunch? And he said, I’m not buying from you. But if you want to bomb you on sell, go, so we did. And I say, I’m not selling. I just want to go over these statements with you. And you tell me if you can save us today, if you wish you could say to stay over, it’s been important. And I took a bullet that said, we will make your restoration faster. You’re now you’re bound up. I took that bullet and I reworded it to say. backups are a very easy process for me. And as soon as I said that, I watched his eyes and he just started talking, and I was taking notes as fast as I could, and he was telling me the story about the CEO lost an email, no one could replace it. People got fired. That’s a felony. Sleep, he had worked all night trying to find it. And he didn’t know what he was going to do. And the reason he was doing his grocery list was because he was so far behind because he was working all the time trying to get you know, things fixed. And then, you know, I went to the youth, What’s the next one? So I started going through these things, and he pushed a suicide. He goes, can I stop you for a second? Can I assume you can do all this stuff? Is that while you’re going over this? And I said, Yes. And he goes, why didn’t you tell me and I said, This is my presentation, I’ve given to you twice. And he said, Nothing sounded familiar. And it was at that moment that I realized is that it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. And different people have to have that communication delivered in different ways. And so I thought, all these other people were easy. They translated my words into why they cared, but there’s not always going to be those people that can do that translation. So if I upped my game, and created messaging that was for that difficult audience, then all those easy ones are going to you know, follow us So he made me up my game and changed my communication style, which is what is today does not fix. And this was back in early 90s that I invented this thing. But so it is relevant when you’re teaching people like you and me, we know about all this, you know, evolution of people and the changes and things like that. But there’s a whole generation that’s never heard of it. It’s brand new information for that. And that’s what I’m trying to educate is. We all have to adapt our communications for the most difficult member of the audience than everyone else.

Kimberlee Slavik 36:38
will follow suit as well. Mm hmm. Does that make sense?

Andy Paul 36:43
Yeah, it does. I mean, I think that that yes, I was, as I was reading through the book it even though you probably wouldn’t agree with us because he was fairly strong and saying that, that your statements don’t constitute questions because people are afraid Questions, but in my mind, there they are questions. And yeah, I mean, leading with that type of information as opposed to saying what you do, but instead leading with, with questions, and I agree, not all questions are created equal is Yeah, definitely a stronger, stronger way to go. Because, you know, presentations don’t encourage a conversation. And you don’t learn anything when you’re presenting you learn it when somebody else is talking. Mm hmm.

Kimberlee Slavik 37:29
And so being that I grab it you can you can

Kimberlee Slavik 37:34
questions don’t have their place, but I think it was overdone.

Andy Paul 37:38
Well, it could everything could repeat that we garbled just a second so. Oh,

Kimberlee Slavik 37:43
yeah. I’m not saying that there’s not a place for questions. We’re never going to get rid of questions. But I do think in the in the era of consultative selling, it was so overdone. I mean, I executed it right. I was a salesperson, so I live this world, and I tried my hardest To make it work, but I could see the body language and I saw my clients go, how many more questions are there? And where are we going with this? And they were just like, beaten down and tired. And then I started thinking, you know, if somebody asked me to do a survey, I do. Sometimes I do it because I’m nice, but I don’t want to do it. And if somebody, you know, calls me up and says, You know, I have a political service click you know, I just don’t want to have that invasion that fight or flight instinct gets engaged.

Andy Paul 38:29
Well if that’s but that’s the point specifically because I think what surveys and and i think you’re right on this point is not is it’s it’s an interrogation right, it’s not a conversation. So the examples Yeah, and this is this is part of the problem we see quite frankly with with too many sales organizations today, especially those on inside sales organization where they equip their reps with these scripted list of questions that they feel honorbound to get through in a conversation that I have with the prospect is yet interrogation. So when you’re interrogating people, yeah, they reach their limits. And they decide, yeah, this is Yeah, I’m not learning anything I’m not getting the chance to because part of the way I as individuals or understand what I think is to express it and verbalize it. And if you’re not giving me a chance to do that, then I really don’t know. Know what I’m what I’m learning here.

Kimberlee Slavik 39:21
Oh, I agree. I agree. Well, so part of the the Visnostic is about visualization. Right. That’s what was not was ation diagnostics. So the diagnostics is very good, you know, replace the questioning. And when you there’s a whole bunch of little things that I got from you know, Michael Bosworth, actually from his neuroscience aspect of what great salespeople do when you give we all know you know, right as sales one on one, what are we taught about questions? Never ask a closed ended question a yes or no question, right. You want to get more information. And one of the exercises I don’t know if he did it or not the money Exercise. No, I, I did it in my I did it yesterday in my workshop and everyone was paired up looking at each other’s eyes and so I’m going to say a word and when she see the first thing that goes in, visualize the words money. And then I just sit back and I listen to people talk, talk, talk, talk, talk talk, and I finally cut them off after five minutes. I said, I was one word. You know, you should have said $1. But we don’t. When you when you do a visualization stimulation in the brain chemistry starts engaging. People can’t. Like they want to talk about their feelings. They don’t just see $1 sign they want to talk about why they saw $1 sign and that’s the power of is Visnostic does is it gets your client to tell you exactly who they are. You know you are who you are because of where you were when they’re compelled, chemically to tell you more than you could ever get with a question.

Kimberlee Slavik 41:00
Okay, well, I mean, I

Andy Paul 41:02
yeah, I I didn’t really see the real distinction. I still think questions have done phrased effectively. But you’re basically what you’re doing is is that I mean, it’s, it’s, you’re flipping it to a certain degree, which is great. I mean, it’s similar to what Oren klaff just wrote about in his book flip the script. I don’t have a chance to read that. Which I think is yes, is a good idea cuz you want people to be looking at it from their perspective and expressing things from their perspective because, you know, your perspective doesn’t account for anything.

Kimberlee Slavik 41:31
Right? That is so true.

Andy Paul 41:33
So, okay, well, unfortunately, times can I pretty quickly we’ve already run over. So tell people how they can connect with you and learn more about what you’re doing.

Kimberlee Slavik 41:44
Well just buy one of the books I highly recommend of his Visnostic sales and marketing. Big mainly because of all the reader success stories that are in there. And all through the book, I have exercises where you can communicate with me, and I want that engagement and I want to help people. I have a That’s an interest in every single reader success, because I want to write about them someday and share their success. So those books are available on Amazon other

Andy Paul 42:08
places.

Kimberlee Slavik 42:09
Yeah, 42,000 bookstores worldwide, but Amazon seems to be where 90% of the books are bought now,

Andy Paul 42:14
and people want to reach out to you or how can they connect with you?

Kimberlee Slavik 42:19
Just, I have a special email address that I set up for podcasts so that I can say, Hey, you know, Andy, thank you. I’ve got you know, little side. podcasts at dine exec calm. It’s podcast, and Dinah exact is d y. Na EX ec.com. All right, perfect.

Andy Paul 42:38
All right, Kimberly, thanks for joining and we’ll look forward to doing it again.

Kimberlee Slavik 42:40
Thanks, Sandy. Good to meet you. Good to meet you as well.

Andy Paul 42:50
Okay, friends, that was accelerate for this week. First of all, as always, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to join me. I also want to thank my guests. Kimberly Slovic. Join me again next week as my guest will be Craig Walker. Craig is the co founder and CEO of Dialpad, the primary topic of our conversation will be is technology really helping sales? Is it increasing performance and productivity? And if not, what’s the path forward to using it better to benefit all the salespeople. So definitely make sure we check this out. You’re sure to join us that now before you go, don’t forget to visit Andy Paul comm Get your copy of my sales growth planner for 2020. And I walk you through a step by step process to create an incredibly effective sales plan will help you hit your targets in 2020. This is the same plan format that I’ve used throughout my sales career to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. So for more information, visit St. Paul comm forward slash planner, get your copy. Alright, thanks again for joining me until next week. I’m your host Andy Paul. Good selling everyone.

Bring DNA is leading a revenue acceleration platform that uses AI to help scale business growth. trusted by the world’s top sales teams across the globe. Ring DNA has proven to exponentially increase call Connect rates, opportunities and revenue wherever your teams live and work. So if your sales support team has gone fully remote ring DNA can arm your team with the tools they need to work from anywhere on the planet. Learn more at ring dna.com forward slash Andy that’s ring dna.com forward slash Andy