How to Sell The Way You Buy – In Just 7 Minutes with David Priemer

Resources/Links:

• Check out this intro first call deck presentation template and training at https://cerebralselling.com/intro-presentations/

Summary

Are your sales teams struggling to stand out in a sea of competitors, despite all the product training and sales tools at their disposal? It’s a challenge for many B2B companies—sales reps armed with endless product knowledge but still failing to connect with buyers in a meaningful way. But what if the problem isn’t the product or even the salesperson’s knowledge, but the way the conversation is framed?

Often referred to as the “Sales Professor”, David Priemer is also the author of two bestselling books, Sell The Way You Buy and The Sales Leader They Need, as well as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University and the London Business School.

In this episode, David reveals how to flip the sales script and sell the way your customers actually want to buy. With his fresh approach to customer-centric selling, you’ll learn how to resonate with your buyers, overcome objections, and make lasting connections that lead to real results.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:51 – David’s ideal client: B2B sales teams at high growth technology companies.
• 02:12 – The problem he helps solve: My clients often find themselves drowning in what I refer to as a sea of sameness.
• 04:02 – Symptoms of the problem: There’s a lot of product-focused enablement.
• 05:18 – Common mistakes David’s clients commit before reaching out to him: They’re really not thinking about the pathways and mechanisms by which human beings make purchasing decisions.
• 07:20 – David’s Valuable free Action [VFA]: If you follow the link that Tom’s going to leave for you, I have an intro first call deck presentation template and training that you’re more than welcome to steal and use as you like.
• 07:43 – His Valuable Free Resource [VFR]: Check out the intro first call deck presentation template and training at https://cerebralselling.com/intro-presentations/
• 08:29 – Q: Will AI save us? A: The answer is no. AI is not yet coming to save us. So I say focus just as much on that personal interaction as you do with the technology.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“What the reps and teams need to better articulate to the customer is not just the problem that they're looking to solve, but why the customer cannot solve that problem on their own.” -David Priemer Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Greetings everyone, and a warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. I’m Tom Poland, beaming out to you from, it’s currently a very wet Sunshine Coast here in Australia. Joined today by David Priemer. David, welcome, Sir from down under, where are you hanging out?

David Priemer 00:25
I’m from Toronto, Canada. So you’ll see by my accent to say process and project and that kind of stuff.

Tom Poland 00:30
Right. Your accent. Yes. Now, I don’t have an accent. You’ve got the accent. That’s right. You’ve nailed that one. David is often referred to as the sales professor, and the reason why is that his thing is cerebral selling, so he is kind of with a background in BS in Chemistry and Atmospheric Science. You’ve got to be reasonably cerebral. He has taken that and looked at the way we sell and figured it out. There’s a few things that we’ve really messed up along the way. So his approach to having this conversation with potential clients, that, at once is a very smart way to approach it, but at the same time is kind of empathetic because it’s looking at their issues, it’s looking at what they want to solve as opposed to just flogging whatever we’ve got. So the author of two bestselling books, Sell the Way You Buy, which is a direct reference to what I’ve just been talking about. How we flip it and look at how we like to buy because people like to buy, they don’t really like to be sold so much. And also the sales leader they need. So two target markets, I guess they’re the sales person and the sales leader. Let’s get into it, though, David. Title is, How to Sell The Way You Buy. So David, our seven minutes is going to start now. Question number one, Sir, who’s your ideal client?

David Priemer 01:51
Yeah, my ideal client, as you said, are B2B sales teams at high growth technology companies. So both reps and leaders.

Tom Poland 01:59
Reps and leaders. So, what’s the problem you say you’ve solved for them because these people have probably had a lot of sales training over the years. Well, some of them will have, they might be a bit long in the tooth. What’s fresh about your approach? What are you going into the needs that you’re specifically meeting?

David Priemer 02:12
For sure. Well, of all the sales training they got over the years and AI and all these tools was enough to sell things, then they wouldn’t need me. But oftentimes the current status quo is not sufficient because budgets are tighter than they’ve ever been. There’s so many different products in the market, and my clients often find themselves drowning in what I refer to as a sea of sameness. They just kind of, to their clients, they all kind of sound the same and they’re struggling to break out. As a result, it’s very difficult for these teams to manifest the conviction that they need to convert modern buyers, especially for the younger, less experienced sales reps. And when they go to the internet and say show me all of the great sales tips that exist out there, there’s like a million things that come back. And they have no idea what works and what doesn’t. So that’s the problem that they hire me to solve.

Tom Poland 02:59
Sub question here, do you find this kind of jaundice or some antipathy towards the traditional sale processes, the train tracks that people are asked to run down?

David Priemer 03:08
Well, I guess if you’re asking from the customer’s perspective, then yes, customers hate talking to sales reps. If you’re asking from the sales perspective as well, a lot of sellers and organizations have become kind of nose blind to the fact that the things that they’re teaching their reps don’t work. So, for a lot of companies, especially B2B Tech companies, they predicate their growth on this idea that we have all these great products, and if only the reps knew about how the products work and the features and functions, they would sell them more. And that is absolutely not the case. That’s a huge problem that I go into organizations to help fix, because product knowledge alone is not what the customer cares about. And, and so we’ve gone as salespeople nose blind to the fact that this is the way to sell, which it’s not.

Tom Poland 03:47
Well, let’s continue on this thing. Question three is, what would you say are some of the big symptoms that when you’re talking to a prospect and they say, this is our situation, you’re going, you need my stuff. What would you say? What’s happening in the organization or with the individual salespeople?

David Priemer 04:02
So there’s a lot of product-focused enablement. So we get a lot of product training, a lot of product knowledge, but the reps go out and they struggle to get clients interested because we’re not speaking the language that the customers understand, which is pain and problems. The other problem is that in a world where budgets are very tight and customers feel that they’re very smart, oftentimes customers will feel they can solve the problems that they have on their own. I don’t need you, I can do this myself. And so what the reps and teams need to better articulate to the customer is not just the problem that they’re looking to solve, but why the customer cannot solve that problem on their own.

Tom Poland 04:42
Right. There’s a fair bit to unpack there, but I get it. It’s the AOL issue of the salesperson and sometimes the end of the product in the case of coaches, consultants, training and so on, having their stuff in their brain at the forefront of their brain with the medieval prospects as opposed to switching that around. That’s obviously a big mistake because there’s no empathy, there’s no relatability established, there’s very little rapport established. Question four is, what would you say are some of the, just a couple of the big mistakes that organizations or individuals are making in the south process that you could actually help them with?

David Priemer 05:18
Sure. By virtue of the fact that they’re leading with problems, one of the things we talk about ‘sell the way you buy’ is that they’re really not thinking about the pathways and mechanisms by which human beings make purchasing decisions. Okay. So they’re not thinking, what am I doing that might be turning the customer off? What might I be saying that the customer isn’t getting? So for example, if I came to you and I said, ‘Hey, Tom, we have a solution that will save your company a whole bunch of time. It automates a whole bunch of stuff, and it’ll save you like 15% of your time every week.’ What the hell is 15%? I don’t know what but if I said, ‘Hey Tom, this thing will save you seven hours a week of your time. Multiply that over the course of your team, that’s hundreds of hours a year.’ It might be mathematically equivalent to saying 15%, but it’s processed completely differently in your mind. So the idea is, kind of understand what these pathways are by which human beings make emotional connections to the products they buy and the salespeople that sell them to them and sell along those pathways. Be very mindful of your words, your tone, your approach. It all matters when it comes to selling.

Tom Poland 06:20
Yeah. And you could even say this is going to free up one team member every single week. What could you do with that? So you are communicating in a way that means something is meaningful to them, right?

David Priemer 06:33
Yeah. Correct. But there’s so many emotional traps and psychological traps that sales reps and leaders fall into. We don’t have time to get into them now, but that example is just a small example of all of the different traps people fall into over the sales cycle.

Tom Poland 06:48
It’s a very interesting concept because 15%, you’re right, it doesn’t, I’m struggling to even know what that looks like, but if you’ve got 40 man hours a week or people hours a week or whatever it is, 40 hours a week will do now. And it might mean something. So 90 seconds left. Two questions to go. A top tip, what can we give people that’s going to, in addition to what you’ve already shared, that’s going to, may not solve the whole problem for them, but it might step them in the right direction, but also download something that’s going to be very significantly valuable to them.

David Priemer 07:20
I give away tons of content on my website, but one of the number one places where sales reps miss the mark is in their intro presentation. So if you follow the link that Tom’s going to leave for you, I have an intro first call deck presentation template and training that you’re more than welcome to steal and use as you like, but it’ll really help you kind of tighten up that initial narrative you give on those first calls.

Tom Poland 07:43
Thanks David. So folks, if you’re listening to this on audio, it’s cerebralselling.com/intro-presentations/, and you’re going to find a presentation there on how to craft a killer first call sales deck. So this is really, really valuable stuff. I’m going to pause the timer just so we’ve got a little more time for the last question. So link again, cerebralselling.com. It’ll be under the video if you’re watching the video, but if you’re listening to this on audio cerebralselling.com/intro-presentations/, mistakes to avoid, the winning narrative and the templates to use. Very, very valuable. So last question, Sir, what’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

David Priemer 08:29
Yeah often people say like, will AI save us, Tom? Is that the solution to are we going to get better with using all this technology? And my advice is I say, look, with all the technology that exists in the world, are we better at sales now than we were 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years ago?

Tom Poland 08:47
It’s no.

David Priemer 08:49
The answer is no. We’re getting worse at sales. And a lot of it I say is wrapped up in the interaction that human beings have with each other because a hundred percent of customers are humans. A hundred percent of salespeople. AI is not yet coming to save us. So I say focus just as much on that personal interaction as you do with the technology.

Tom Poland 09:09
Perfect. David, thanks so much for your time.

David Priemer 09:12
Pleasure Tom.

Tom Poland 09:13
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.