Doug Vigliotti, bestselling author of The Salesperson Paradox: A Strikingly Simple Way to Provide Solutions Your Customers Can’t Say No To, podcast host, and sales strategist and Bridget Gleason, VP of Sales for Logz.io and my regular partner, join me on this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

First guest: Doug Vigliotti

• Pepe’s Pizza Original Tomato Pie is the pizza to beat. Doug gets it in New Haven, CT. Doug compares the basic simplicity of the pizza to today’s topic.
• The salesperson paradox directs performance. To improve selling performance you have to move away from selling into helping. It is centered on the customer. Doug contrasts that with self-centeredness.
• Humans are innately self-centered but focusing on your own needs doesn’t serve the customer. Helping needs to be your first goal. The successful sales path is: help the customer, then make quota, then make money.
• The customer holds all the cards. Doug wrote his book to help salespeople understand how they can create solutions that the customer will want to buy, rather than trying to sell something to the customer.
• Doug introduces the CRINGE solution covered in his book. A customer would cringe to say no to it. The solution is rooted in strategy, not tactics. Ask yourself the right questions before you get in front of the customer.
• C = Customer first. Does the customer feel they’ve won by using your product? Word-of-mouth drives business. Lengthen customer contact by many touch points before and after a purchase. Clarify your product features.
• Disarm any competitive disadvantages by making them clear before the transaction to avoid buyer’s remorse. Prevent bad sales. It builds trust. Why do 50% to 80% of the deals in a pipeline end up making no decision?
• Quantify the buyer’s desired outcome and qualify your product as a solution to get them there. That process qualifies a buyer.
• When we fail to communicate, engage, and build a relationship of trust we get no decision from the customer. Eliminate tension in the relationship. Join their team. Get buy-in from the customer on the sales process.
• Honesty, listening, being a resource, delivering on your word, are Doug’s four pillars of trust-building. Andy compares them to those of Stephen M.R. Covey — transparency, integrity, competence, and execution.
• Doug reveals his book genre preferences — psychology and non-fiction.
• “In life, you should try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”
  — Thomas Huxley