SHOW SUMMARY

Nobody likes typical salesy behavior: sellers don’t like practicing it, and buyers definitely hate it. In this episode of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast, best-selling author and sales consultant Andy Paul talks about doing away with typical salesy behavior and returning to a buyer-centric mode of selling. Instead of persuasion and manipulation, Andy advocates for truly understanding your buyer’s pain points and ensuring that what you’re selling is the appropriate solution to their problems. It’s time to do away with manipulative tactics and engage in adding value, or buyers will not have time for you. 

HIGHLIGHTS

• Both buyers and sellers hate salesy behavior
• The stigma with sales doesn’t need to be true 
• If you’re not adding value, buyers won’t have time for you
• The 4 Pillars of Selling In 
• A seller’s job is to provide the best solutions, not persuade buyers
• Try to figure out the one thing that’s most important to your buyer
• The most important decision-maker is not necessarily always the CEO
• Don’t make your clients tell their story over and over again

QUOTES

Andy: “The premise of my book, one of them is hey look, we can take all these behaviors that I call salesy, I call selling out, that our buyers resist, that our buyers hate, that sellers for the most part hate, and we can just stop doing it. We can do cold turkey today.” 

Andy: “If we know that progress is value, then we have to be very intentional about how we provide the value. So what I write about my book is, you need to create a very simple value plan for every interaction you have with the buyer.” 

Andy: “The four pillars of selling are connection, curiosity, understanding, and generosity. Now these are innately human behaviors that drive these buyer-centric way of selling. Which also, by the way, if executed properly, compresses decision cycles and increases your win-rates.”

Andy: “Unfortunately, the cultural thing is we train sellers, or we socialize sellers to believe their job is to believe that their job is to go out and persuade somebody to buy their products. And I think, no, that’s not the job at all. Our job as sellers is to listen to our buyer, understand the things that are most important to them, in terms of the challenges they face and the outcomes they want to achieve, and then help them get that.” 

Andy: “Rule of thumb: Your odds of winning a deal are in inverse proportion to the number of times you ask the buyer to tell you their story.”   

Learn more about Andy in the links below:

• Book: https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Without-Selling-Out-Success/dp/1989603572
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/realandypaul/
• Website: https://www.andypaul.com/

About Josh Wagner: 

Josh is a growth advisor and the host of the Love Selling Hate Sales podcast. He specializes in helping executives understand modern marketing and sales to drive growth in a scalable way. 

To learn more about Josh and his work, follow the links below:

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joshwagneraz
• Company website: https://www.leadmd.com 
• Personal Website: https:///www.joshuadwagner.com
• Podcast: https://www.lovesellinghatesales.com