Episode 26
Mastering Empathy: Tips for Sales Success You Can Use Today
Empathy is an essential ingredient for building trust in sales, and in this episode, we dive deep into how you can cultivate this vital skill. Brian Moseley, co-owner of SailTime Boston, shares his extensive sales experience and offers practical examples of how to apply empathy in your conversations with prospects.
From active listening to being genuinely curious, he emphasizes the importance of putting your agenda aside and focusing on the needs of your clients. Brian also highlights common mistakes, such as making assumptions about a prospect's situation, and how avoiding these pitfalls can lead to stronger relationships and quicker sales cycles.
Tune in for actionable tips that can transform your approach to sales and help you become a more empathetic and effective salesperson.
Takeaways:
- Empathy is crucial in sales as it builds trust and rapport with clients.
- Always prioritize understanding your prospect's needs over pushing your own sales agenda.
- Active listening can significantly enhance your empathetic communication during sales conversations.
- Do not make assumptions about your prospects; ask questions to truly understand them.
- Being punctual and respectful of your prospect's time demonstrates empathy and professionalism.
- Practice empathy in personal interactions to improve your sales conversations and techniques.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- HubSpot
- Semrush
- Databox
- Amazon
- SailTime
- PowerTime
Transcript
Welcome to another episode of the Trust Builder podcast.
Hannah:Today I get to have my long term friend and sales coach, I would say almost because you were my first sales coach.
Hannah:Brian Mosley with me today.
Hannah:Welcome to the show, Brian.
Brian Mosley:Thanks for having me, Hannah.
Hannah: time we met was, I would say: Hannah:You were working at HubSpot.
Hannah:I was just a fresh.
Hannah:Actually, you made me a HubSpot partner and so I want to get to that in a second.
Hannah:But since then you had a long career of different sales positions.
Hannah:You worked after HubSpot, I believe, for Semrush with your latest data box, Amazon.
Hannah:I mean, you worked at some large companies and you have a wealth of sales experience, but recently you made your passion project, so it'll be a full time job.
Hannah:Right now you're with Sail Time, which is a fractional.
Hannah:I hope I get this right, like a sailing franchise out of New England.
Hannah:And I love your tagline, your boat is ready when you are.
Hannah:So tell us more about your journey and where you're at right now.
Brian Mosley:Well, you, you nailed it.
Brian Mosley:And that's a big, big part of empathy, is starting by doing your research and being able to articulate someone else's background to a T.
Brian Mosley:So you, you nailed that.
Brian Mosley:Yeah.
Brian Mosley:I got my start at HubSpot.
Brian Mosley:I was there for almost five years as a sales rep and a sales manager.
Brian Mosley:Then I went to a small startup called Databox with one of my mentors, Pete Caputa.
Brian Mosley:And I sort of qualify that time as the zero to one experience taking something that didn't really exist, being the first salesperson in there and growing it to cashflow, break even.
Brian Mosley:And then after that I got a lot of enterprise experience working at aws, the big player in the cloud space, and got to work with large Fortune 100 type companies.
Brian Mosley:And then I got to take sort of all of that and put it into practice at Semrush, where I both had to do the zero to one startup launching an enterprise platform.
Brian Mosley:Semrush primarily operates the core product with a lot of SMB and mid market type companies.
Brian Mosley:And then a guy named Marcus Tober, a really brilliant, hesitate to use the word genius, but he came in and sort of built this large enterprise platform.
Brian Mosley:And then after about 10 or 11 years or a decade in working in marketing technology, I sort of took a step back and looked at my life and my career.
Brian Mosley:And I had been doing nights and weekends at a small fractional boat franchise like you mentioned, and the other people I worked was working with had grown that company in those last four or five years to a scale that it was too much to handle or there was too much to do for just two people.
Brian Mosley:And so timing was just kind of right.
Brian Mosley:I felt like I had accomplished what I'd want to in software.
Brian Mosley:Not saying that I won't go back.
Brian Mosley:Cause I really enjoy a lot of things about it, but I'd always had this itch.
Brian Mosley:Ever since working with marketing agencies like yourself at HubSpot, I always felt like a little bit of an imposter.
Brian Mosley:I felt like I was giving advice to small business owners who were struggling with payroll or struggling with sales, or struggling with hiring or struggling with leading or managing.
Brian Mosley:And I was giving this.
Brian Mosley:This advice that I trusted was good advice because I'd seen it work.
Brian Mosley:But I always felt like a little bit of an imposter because I had never been in that seat before.
Brian Mosley:So I always knew I wanted to run a small business at some point in my career.
Brian Mosley:But I didn't want to run a marketing agency.
Brian Mosley:I didn't want to run an E.
Brian Mosley:Com business or a coffee shop or a trampoline park.
Brian Mosley:I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do.
Brian Mosley:So I've been starting my and growing my sailing career over the last 10 years in Boston.
Brian Mosley:And this opportunity came to do it full time.
Brian Mosley:And so I decided to take it.
Brian Mosley:So as of May 1st last year, I jumped in with both feet and that's my only source of income right now.
Brian Mosley:So doing it, doing it full time and having a blast, working with my friends, supporting the sailing community in New England and in the Caribbean in the winter seasons.
Hannah:Awesome.
Hannah:Yeah.
Hannah:You just came back from the Virgin Islands, you poor thing.
Hannah:I did.
Hannah:Let's just rewind back.
Hannah:I remember I did 10 years of corporate and then decided to leave SAP and go into opening up my own marketing agency.
Hannah:And for the first three years or so, I was struggling.
Hannah:Deer in the headlights, what am I going to do?
Hannah:And I remember you've been such an integral part in my success story as a HubSpot partner, as an agency, but also I would say, in now becoming a business coach, because a lot of these lessons that I learned with you really applied throughout the last 10 years.
Hannah:And it's really funny, in preparation of this conversation, I mentioned to you how I want to focus on empathy and respect in like sales conversations or running.
Hannah:Running a business, because those are integral parts of building trust.
Hannah:But you said you don't really remember necessarily focusing on empathy.
Brian Mosley:Yeah, and I don't.
Brian Mosley:You know, at least back then, I never saw it as my superpower.
Brian Mosley:I thought there were, there were things I was, I was good at.
Brian Mosley:But if you, if you had me write down a list of 10 things I don't know that I don't know, the empathy would have been one of them.
Brian Mosley:I think that's a good place to kind of start the conversation.
Brian Mosley:I think what harms people early in their sales career, and I'm not the first person to say this, is things that you were taught by your parents.
Brian Mosley:You know, how to like always be really nice, overly nice to people and try to be really, really friendly.
Brian Mosley:And then that works in relationship type sales roles.
Brian Mosley:But for people that are in more consultative sales roles, we know that, that sales has changed a lot.
Brian Mosley:And people no longer buy from people that they want to get a steak with or have a beer with.
Brian Mosley:They buy from people that teach them something new about their business or how they, how they do their jobs.
Brian Mosley:That's what the book that the Challenger Sale taught me and that really stood out.
Brian Mosley:So, you know, a lot of these colloquialisms of like how to, how to just kind of bend to the customer and the customer's always right and don't ever challenge them.
Brian Mosley:Those no longer really apply in the modern consultative sales process.
Hannah:Right.
Hannah:We as modern buyers, we feel always kind of a sense of distrust and our BS monitor is always on, always sniffing out and someone who is just maybe genuinely nice, as you said, we put them in a friend zone, but we don't really trust them in business relationships because we want an authoritative, almost like a teacher.
Hannah:Right.
Hannah:A teacher person.
Hannah:If we think about our best mentor or our best teacher, they have certain characteristics that would be really good if they were transferred into a sales role.
Brian Mosley:Yeah.
Brian Mosley:Prospects are extremely skeptical.
Brian Mosley:And if you're walking down the street and someone comes up to you and offers to hold the door for you and gives you $20 bill out of their wallet and asks to buy you a coffee, you're a little bit skeptical.
Brian Mosley:Okay, what does this person want from me?
Brian Mosley:Yeah.
Hannah:So now if you talk about having empathy in order to build trust, that almost sounds like the opposite of what we're talking about right now.
Hannah:Right.
Hannah:But in my.
Hannah:So I shared with you that I'm building this trust builder model and I'm writing this book.
Hannah:And the first layers of this model is that you have to show that you're competent, that you're reliable, and that you have integrity.
Hannah:And the next layer of that is that you have to be empathetic and you have to be respectful.
Hannah:So in Our sense here in trust building, it's the next step that forms that cognitive trust and forms it into or transforms it into a relationship based emotional trust.
Hannah:Because with empathy, we're showing that we understand the person's needs, that we can put ourselves in their shoes.
Hannah:So if we think about what you just said about being authoritative or being sort of a teacher role and not just a nice friend, how does that translate into empathy in those sales conversations?
Hannah:What does it actually look like?
Brian Mosley:Yeah, I think there's, there's the micro and the macro.
Brian Mosley:So the micro is simple things that your sales manager will tell you, which is show up on time, you know, beat your prospect to the meeting.
Brian Mosley:If I think there was early in my sales career where I always felt like I was running late and I'm, I'm a very punctual person, but I would jump on zoom calls four or five minutes after the hour and my prospect would just been sitting there tapping their fingers and that's a really bad way to start a call.
Brian Mosley:So one of the things that I did was I bought a little silly little egg timer and I kept it by my desk.
Brian Mosley:And instead of thinking about a 60 minute call, I knew I only had 50 minutes because I knew I wasn't good enough to get off the call right at 60 minutes.
Brian Mosley:Converse.
Brian Mosley:We'd be right in the mix of a great conversation and I have to cut it off.
Brian Mosley:And I was five minutes, I was, I ended that conversation poorly and then I would jump to my next conversation poorly.
Brian Mosley:So with the 50 minute call, I was very disciplined.
Brian Mosley:So I'd start winding the call down at the 42 or 43 minute mark.
Brian Mosley:I would get off that call politely with plenty of time.
Brian Mosley:I'd spend five minutes recapping that call.
Brian Mosley:I'd spend another five minutes getting in the mindset for my next call and I would join on the hour.
Brian Mosley:And that really, really helped.
Brian Mosley:And again, it sounds really silly, but it's something I buy software today in my, in my business and there are a lot of sales reps that still are early in their careers and can't really figure out how to get on a call before their prospect.
Brian Mosley:So that's kind of a very simple micro version.
Hannah:If I can jump in here real quick before you go to the macro version, because that is something that is still so prominent in my day today.
Hannah:What I learned from you is if the prospect doesn't show up in five minutes, you actually taught me to write them a quick email to say, hey, is everything okay?
Hannah:Yeah, because you don't want to be like the one who is nice checking in, but sort of having an expectation.
Hannah:Well, the two of us had a meeting, and there's a nice fine art about how to approach that.
Brian Mosley:There is and is everything okay?
Brian Mosley:Is a totally appropriate response.
Brian Mosley:Another one I like is, you know, and I give people the benefit of the doubt.
Brian Mosley:I always do.
Brian Mosley:People are busy, they have their kids, they're walking their dog, going to get a pack, you know, they're working from home, they're going to get an Amazon package at the front door.
Brian Mosley:Like, I get it.
Brian Mosley:But after, you know, seven, eight minutes now, I will send an email and say, hey, I'm going to be on the call for until 9, 10, you know, until 10 minutes after the hour.
Brian Mosley:And then I'm going to move on to other things.
Brian Mosley:Let me know if this, if this time still works for you.
Brian Mosley:And I think some people might do that more aggressively, and maybe I did earlier in my career.
Brian Mosley:But yeah, I think it's a, it's a soft way to just say, hey, look, my time is just as valuable as your time, Mr.
Brian Mosley:And Mrs.
Brian Mosley:Prospect.
Brian Mosley:And, and if this time doesn't work, like, that's fine, but I'm not just going to sit here for 20 minutes and, and twiddle my thumbs.
Brian Mosley:So, yeah, that's a great point.
Brian Mosley:I, I had forgotten about that.
Hannah:All right.
Hannah:Now you were going to jump into your macro.
Brian Mosley:Sure.
Brian Mosley:And so the macro version of that is always, you know, empathy.
Brian Mosley:It sounds like sort of this fluffy sort of emotional word when you think about it in the context of your friends and your family.
Brian Mosley:You know, if your friend had something terrible happen to them and their, their boat sank or, you know, they're going through a tough time with their, their parents, health or something like that.
Brian Mosley:Empathy is like sitting on the couch and putting your hand on their shoulder and listening and giving them a shoulder to kind of cry on.
Brian Mosley:That.
Brian Mosley:That's, that's what I think of, but I don't think of it that way in the sales process.
Brian Mosley:You know, a salesperson is, is.
Brian Mosley:Can sometimes be a therapist, but that's not their primary role.
Brian Mosley:What I think empathy is, is, is it's, it's taking your agenda, which is selling a deal.
Brian Mosley:Like, let's be honest, that's what salespeople, that's what we came here to do.
Brian Mosley:That's what we're compensated to do.
Brian Mosley:It's to sell a deal.
Brian Mosley:It's taking that agenda and putting it aside and focusing on whatever the prospect's agenda is.
Brian Mosley:And this is very important wherever the prospect is in their journey.
Brian Mosley:Another huge mistake I see a lot of salespeople make is they start at the beginning of their sales process, regardless of where the prospect is.
Brian Mosley:I was evaluating some software recently to help us manage service tickets for our fleet, and I get on a call and there was a sales engineer there, and they did a decent.
Brian Mosley:They did a very decent discovery call.
Brian Mosley:And I was prepared for some sort of demo.
Brian Mosley:I already told them, like, that there was like, two features.
Brian Mosley:I was interested in, like, two features.
Brian Mosley:And they built rapport.
Brian Mosley:They did everything right.
Brian Mosley:They showed up on time.
Brian Mosley:But they started at the beginning and they just started walking me through their software and it just felt very canned and very templatized.
Brian Mosley:And so oftentimes I would get on calls, and it's usually happened with people that were very busy or very stern or very direct, is they'd say, I'd say, like, they'd seem very, like, hurried.
Brian Mosley:And they were very, like, they'd seem very, like, frustrated.
Brian Mosley:They're like, I've been on six demos today.
Brian Mosley:I don't want to sit here and go through the login screen and what languages you offer and whether or not this landing page is mobile, responsive or not.
Brian Mosley:They're like, I want to see this and this.
Brian Mosley:And so having empathy for where your prospect is in their day and how busy they are is taking your planned agenda, your planned demo, and maybe, maybe you spent an hour prepping for this call, but maybe somebody comes on the call and they just want to see two things.
Brian Mosley:Taking your whole plan, putting it aside and saying, got it.
Brian Mosley:Let me show you this, Let me show you this.
Brian Mosley:And whenever a prospect was very, like, pushy, I would just.
Brian Mosley:I would.
Brian Mosley:I would sort of throw my script away.
Brian Mosley:I mean, I don't really.
Brian Mosley:I don't really use a script, but, you know, throw your.
Brian Mosley:Throw your plan away and say, here's all the tools.
Brian Mosley:You tell me what you want to see.
Brian Mosley:And that disarms them.
Brian Mosley:It puts them in control and it gets them.
Brian Mosley:Their cortisol, their.
Brian Mosley:Their stress chemical in their.
Brian Mosley:In their brains kind of goes down.
Brian Mosley:And they're like, okay, this person's not going to waste my time.
Brian Mosley:Because.
Brian Mosley:Because that's what busy people hate.
Brian Mosley:They hate feeling like their time is being wasted.
Brian Mosley:So taking your agenda, putting it aside, focusing on the prospect's agenda and meeting them where they are in the sales process.
Brian Mosley:Because as we all know, no one's evaluating your software from scratch anymore.
Brian Mosley:People do.
Brian Mosley:Geez, I don't know the number used to be like 70% 10 years ago.
Brian Mosley:Now people are starting to engage sales at like 80, 90, 95% of the way through the sales process.
Brian Mosley:So you got to understand that as a salesperson and say, look, I'm sure you've already researched our trust reviews on Trust Radius.
Brian Mosley:I'm sure you've already talked to four other people that are customers.
Brian Mosley:I'm sure you've already looked at our pricing page.
Brian Mosley:I'm sure you're at the very end of this thing and you're deciding between us and somebody else.
Brian Mosley:What do you want to.
Brian Mosley:What do you want to know?
Brian Mosley:What, what can I.
Brian Mosley:What can I help you with today?
Brian Mosley:And just teasing that out of them, that's going to give them a.
Brian Mosley:It's going to help them make a decision much faster, which is essentially what we all want in sales is to shorten that sales cycle.
Hannah:Right?
Hannah:Nothing kills sales better than time.
Hannah:Right?
Hannah:Like, you need to keep that momentum.
Hannah:And actually how you're describing just ties perfectly back what you said in the beginning with being that consultative, authoritative person.
Hannah:If you can put that aside, you're showing, I'll just counsel you or I give you advice on what you really need.
Hannah:It shows also that you're very confident in the thing that you're selling now.
Hannah:My, my biggest concern when I talk to people about empathy is it's something that you can quite easily, not for a long time, but initially, quite easily fake.
Hannah:Right.
Hannah:If someone shares a problem with.
Hannah:With me, and I can train someone like a salesperson to sit with that a bit and be like, oh, that must be hard.
Hannah:And my, my concern is always that people will use it in a manipulative way.
Hannah:But have you ever experienced that?
Hannah:And what sort of the.
Hannah:I almost don't want to lead you on to say, look, guys, it's not gonna work.
Hannah:Don't do it.
Hannah:But what's the, you know, what's the problem of that if I use it in a manipulative way?
Brian Mosley:Oh, it's a, It's a really great question, I think.
Brian Mosley:I mean, the obvious answer, you're gonna.
Brian Mosley:You're gonna lose your prospects, you're gonna lose sort of.
Brian Mosley:This sounds so cliche, but you're gonna lose trust with them.
Brian Mosley:Obviously.
Brian Mosley:I, I think to a role I had working for a marketing agency where the sale was much, much more relationship and a lot.
Brian Mosley:The thing I sold was very much a commodity.
Brian Mosley:And so when you sell a commodity, people do need to buy from you because they like you, because they can get your product anywhere.
Brian Mosley:I have a Good friend of mine, Sam, who sells polypropylene resin, which is used in plastics, and there are 10 different companies that sell it.
Brian Mosley:And these buyers call them up and they ask for a certain price, and either he can get different rail cars of this propylene resin pellets for that price, or he can't.
Brian Mosley:And so in his business, he's always flying around the country and he takes people to Boston Red Sox games and to hockey games and to steak dinners.
Brian Mosley:And people do buy from him because they like him.
Brian Mosley:And he's very honest with these people, and they're his friends.
Brian Mosley:I was at his wedding over the summer in Colorado, and there were his boss and three of his customers were at my table at his wedding.
Brian Mosley:They become part of his sort of, like, inner circle and, and you can maybe fake empathy and for the first couple meetings, but over the long term, people are going to kind of find you out.
Brian Mosley:And Sam doesn't mind telling people he can't do things for a certain price.
Brian Mosley:He doesn't mind saying, nope, I'm not going to do that, or I'm not going to put my team to try to, to try to, you know, get this for you as a rush order, because he's thinking about the, the long term now in a, in a, in a consultive sale, it's.
Brian Mosley:It's a little bit different, I think.
Brian Mosley:I think you're just going to get found out at a certain, at a certain point.
Brian Mosley:I think that.
Brian Mosley:I think it's focusing on the wrong thing.
Brian Mosley:Like, like making somebody feel comfortable telling you where their problems are is sort of my logical reason for building rapport and building trust early in the sales process.
Brian Mosley:I don't, I don't think of it as like, oh, I need to.
Brian Mosley:And I need to show a lot of empathy early on so that this person will like me.
Brian Mosley:And there's actually a whole set of qualities that hurt a salesperson's abilities.
Brian Mosley:They're called these, like, sales weaknesses.
Brian Mosley:There's a great blog post about this, and one of them, which I had early in my career, was this need for approval.
Brian Mosley:I think a lot of people, salespeople, start their careers and they start with nothing.
Brian Mosley:They start with a laptop and an email account and a list in Salesforce, and they're told like, hey, go.
Brian Mosley:Go sell.
Brian Mosley:And when you lack experience and product knowledge, you try to make up for it in being overly sort of nice and empathetic and being somebody that.
Brian Mosley:Somebody that other people want to hang out with.
Brian Mosley:But I think as you.
Brian Mosley:I think, I think the thing that you need to do at that stage is build your confidence through experience.
Brian Mosley:So really diving in and learning everything about your, your space, learn about your competitors, like, become that industry expert is the only way to get past that need for approval.
Brian Mosley:And once you shed your need for approval skin, you can then focus on doing things like, I used to share something personal about myself on calls, and I used to share my personal goals on calls first.
Brian Mosley:I sort of like, was a little bit vulnerable and put myself out there and I would share my personal struggles, my personal challenges and my personal goals with prospects that I didn't even know with perfect strangers because that would enable them to feel more comfortable sharing their personal goals and challenges with me.
Brian Mosley:Because what you really need in sales is, what you're really selling is not your product or your service or yourself.
Brian Mosley:You're really first selling your prospect against inaction.
Brian Mosley:The thing that kills all deals is prospects.
Brian Mosley:Just not doing anything, not buying your product or not buying another person's product.
Brian Mosley:It's usually just them not doing anything.
Brian Mosley:And so in order to get them over the hump to convince themselves, you can't convince them, they can only convince themselves to convince themselves that they need to do something different.
Brian Mosley:You have to be able to get them to articulate there is a deep, deep, stressful pain that they cannot go another day, you know, enduring that pain.
Brian Mosley:And that you have to tie some real consequences to inaction.
Brian Mosley:And so in order to, that's, that's deep.
Brian Mosley:Like, that's, you're really, you know, diving into this person's day to day.
Brian Mosley:And if their pain point that they come to you with is like, my email deliverability rates are low, you're not going to sell that deal.
Brian Mosley:That, that is not a compelling enough reason to switch from your current provider.
Brian Mosley:You have to get them to say that their email deliverability is low and therefore their last review with their boss was poor.
Brian Mosley:They're on a performance plan, their company's losing money, they're.
Brian Mosley:They cut 10 different jobs.
Brian Mosley:Excuse me, you have to get them to say, like, where it hurts and how much.
Brian Mosley:And the only way to do that is to in the, in the beginning, while you're building rapport and doing your discovery call to show a ton of empathy and get them to feel really comfortable telling you what's going wrong in their lives.
Brian Mosley:And that's a very difficult skill, I think, for, for a lot of people.
Hannah:Yeah.
Hannah:So one thing, or let's say another thing I learned from you was that I shouldn't imagine myself across the table from someone, but actually sitting next to them.
Hannah:Right.
Hannah:That's where for me, a lot of that empathy that you gave me or that you were showing in sales conversations is expressing itself.
Hannah:And since then, I have that mindset of sitting next to the person.
Hannah:But another thing you told me while you were explaining that concept back then was you said, don't just try to sell, try to help.
Hannah:Because I kept on saying, I'm, I'm an introvert, I have imposter syndrome, I can't sell.
Hannah:I'm so scared of, you know, all these things.
Hannah:You're like, yeah, but just imagine yourself helping them.
Hannah:Mind blown.
Hannah:Completely changed the rest of the trajectory of who I am as a person.
Hannah:Right.
Hannah:Because now I'm sitting next to them.
Hannah:I'm asking questions without an agenda.
Hannah:I'm really genuinely exploring, I'm genuinely digging deeper.
Hannah:And you were just alluding to that.
Hannah:It's not like that surface level questions dig three layers deep, like law of three, right.
Hannah:Just peel the onion, try to get to the root cause of the thing.
Hannah:And if you have that mindset of I'm trying to help here and I'm genuinely asking questions for them to discover what the actual problem is, that's showing empathy right now, that's genuinely, you can't fake that.
Hannah:You have to have sort of that, that mindset.
Hannah:Any other techniques or habits that you have that get you into that empathetic mindset.
Brian Mosley:Yeah.
Brian Mosley:I think a great example of what you just talked about is I, I had a friend recently come over to my house and we'd been talking about different builds.
Brian Mosley:He's building a house in Maine and he came over and he put three different layouts of this house him and his family were building in Maine.
Brian Mosley:And he was asking my advice and I was looking at layout 1, layout 2, layout 3.
Brian Mosley:And it reminded me of what you just said about sitting on the same side of the table.
Brian Mosley:And so the analogy is, in order to do that, you have to really, again, take your agenda of selling your product and kind of put it aside, which is really hard for people to do.
Brian Mosley:It sounds so paradoxical and counterintuitive, like, well, I'm not going to talk about my competitors.
Brian Mosley:And I think there's a lot of old school sales managers that still might say, like, do not talk about your competitors.
Brian Mosley:I'm personally very comfortable talking about my competitors because it's the only way that I can build the trust that I need.
Brian Mosley:So in that example, what I would, what I would often do is I'd say You know, look, you can choose between.
Brian Mosley:There's a bunch of great email software systems out there.
Brian Mosley:There, obviously, there's HubSpot, there's Pardot, and Marketo.
Brian Mosley:Here's what I really like about Pardot.
Brian Mosley:Their Salesforce connector is better than ours.
Brian Mosley:Here's what I like about Marketo.
Brian Mosley: 't have, and this was back in: Brian Mosley:We're the best, like, all in one play.
Brian Mosley:And then I would just go on mute and just let that sit out there.
Brian Mosley:And when a prospect hears you talking positively about your competitors, all their guard goes down.
Brian Mosley:And they're like, this person's not trying to sell me.
Brian Mosley:They're not.
Brian Mosley:They're being completely different than the pushy car salesman I was used to dealing with 10 years ago.
Brian Mosley:This is kind of weird.
Brian Mosley:I feel like I'm talking to a software consultant now.
Brian Mosley:And now I can come a little closer to the middle.
Brian Mosley:I can meet this person.
Brian Mosley:I can tell them a little bit more about my business because, man, they're an expert.
Brian Mosley:I didn't know that each of these softwares had this core competency or this superpower.
Brian Mosley:I wonder what else they can teach me about this.
Brian Mosley:And then, you know, the next question is like, well, what are the.
Brian Mosley:What are the cons of all these products?
Brian Mosley:And I'll say, well, Marketo is typically the most expensive.
Brian Mosley:You know, Pardot has, you know, is complicated to use.
Brian Mosley:And HubSpot, you know, man, I don't even remember anymore what I used against HubSpot, but I use something.
Brian Mosley:And when you, when you can, you're not slamming your own product or you're not slamming your competitors, but when you're being objective, that's what gets people to, to trust you more.
Brian Mosley:And so, so be prepared for that conversation.
Brian Mosley:Don't be afraid to talk about your competencies, and don't be afraid to talk about your downsides.
Brian Mosley:And hopefully you work for a company that you really do love the product.
Brian Mosley:I think if you don't love the product or love the company that you're at, you're going to have a really hard time with this in general because it's going to be tough to get people to trust you.
Brian Mosley:Like, step one, really love and trust the company and the company that you work for and the services that you sell and the products that you sell.
Brian Mosley:And then step two, really understand your competition.
Brian Mosley:And do not shy away from, you know, talking about your inefficiencies and don't shy away from talking about your competitor strengths.
Brian Mosley:That's the only way to get on the same side of the table as your prospect, because that's what a consultant would do.
Brian Mosley:That's what an objective third party would do.
Brian Mosley:They don't have a dog in the fight.
Brian Mosley:They simply want to help.
Brian Mosley:They're simply motivated to help their client make the best purchasing decision.
Brian Mosley:And that's the exact right mindset to be in as a salesperson.
Hannah:Yeah.
Hannah:So now to someone listening, they might think, well, this is all great.
Hannah:I get your point, you know, empathy, I get it.
Hannah:But how do you balance having empathy to actually, as you said before, you're getting paid to sell Ultimately, we're not a charity.
Hannah:We are here to make money.
Hannah:How do you balance having empathy to meeting your sales quota?
Brian Mosley:I think early in my career I realized that success begets success.
Brian Mosley:And one of the reasons that top performers stay at the top is because they're not afraid to walk away from deals.
Brian Mosley:So I think sales, when you're not at your core, and I've been at both.
Brian Mosley:I've been the number one sales rep and I've been, you know, I've been on one of the, one of the last on my team in any given month.
Brian Mosley:So I know how it feels.
Brian Mosley:And I can tell you I sell much differently when I'm at the top than when I'm at the bottom.
Brian Mosley:And what that means is when you're at the bottom, you're chasing deals and these, these, these, these empathy that you have, this trust that you're trying to, that you really spend a lot of time cultivating, trying to build.
Brian Mosley:You're very, you're very.
Brian Mosley:When you're at the top, you're very careful with it.
Brian Mosley:You know, it's very delicate.
Brian Mosley:It's like, it's like you're building an origami swan or something like that, and you have to be, like, patient and, and you feel like you have all the time in the world and you're very relaxed and you're like in the Zen state where you're building this, this intricate, you know, swan.
Brian Mosley:But when you're at the bottom, everything's rushed and it's like you have a light shining on you and a timer above your head and you kind of fold really, really quickly and you get a crummy origami swan, the best thing to do.
Brian Mosley:And it sounds silly, but it's like, focus on your top of the funnel and focus on prospecting, because then you'll always have enough deals and opportunities to be able to let some of them go.
Brian Mosley:When you start to get hungry, you start to chase and you start to, when you chase, you start to shake shortcuts.
Brian Mosley:And that really affects the, the empathy and the trust building in the sale.
Brian Mosley:So the standard advice, and again, it sounds kind of silly and simple and basic, but the more you can do to focus on your prospecting and keeping disciplined around prospecting, whether in good times or in bad times, that will enable you to have enough abundance of opportunities that you're not going to go chasing a bad deal and wasting your time trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
Brian Mosley:There was a.
Brian Mosley:This actually reminds me of a silly YouTube clip I saw recently where there was this, this boxer and he had just won this title and it was like his third title and he was this up and coming up and comer.
Brian Mosley:And the person that was interviewing him was really excited and wanted this like, big emotional reaction, like, how does it feel to be on top?
Brian Mosley:And he sat there and said, it feels really good.
Brian Mosley:And she's sort of stunned, says, wow, I thought you'd be more excited.
Brian Mosley:He said, well, when I lose, I try not to get too down on myself.
Brian Mosley:And so when I win, I also try not to get too high on myself.
Brian Mosley:I just try to go back to the gym and work hard and prepare for my next match.
Brian Mosley:And I thought that was really neat.
Brian Mosley:I think sometimes when you see.
Brian Mosley:I watch a lot of ice hockey.
Brian Mosley:When you see ice hockey players score goals, they react differently.
Brian Mosley:Some of them, like, throw their hands up in the air and smile and hug their teammates and sort of like almost jump up and down with joy and adulation.
Brian Mosley:That's, that's what I would do.
Brian Mosley:And then other players are a lot more stoic and they don't really smile and you don't really see that reaction from them.
Brian Mosley:Check it out.
Brian Mosley:Notice it next time.
Brian Mosley:If you're, if you're watching sports or something, watch how people celebrate.
Brian Mosley:I think it tells you a lot about their character.
Brian Mosley:And so I think in sales, to tie the sporting analogy back, is I think whether you're winning or losing, you really should try your best to keep an even keel and, and stay sort of as moderate as you can in your mindset and know that it's a marathon, it's not a sprint.
Brian Mosley:And you're going to have wins and you're going to have losses.
Brian Mosley:Good months and bad months, good days and bad days, and it's sort of just analogous for life, really.
Hannah:That's a great analogy.
Hannah:I love.
Hannah:I mean, I'm more a soccer person myself, but I love when they.
Hannah:Some.
Hannah:Some players just.
Hannah:They score this phenomenal goal and they just.
Hannah:Okay, next, right.
Hannah:They just move on the floor and.
Brian Mosley:They take their jersey off.
Hannah:Yeah, well, that's not allowed anymore.
Hannah:So just to finish us off here, what advice would you give a sales professional to prioritize empathy?
Hannah:If they say, okay, I hear you, I get it.
Hannah:I'm not a naturally empathetic person myself.
Hannah:Is there one or two small things that they could start implementing today that could really help them on becoming more empathetic?
Brian Mosley:I'm going to admit something that I'm a little embarrassed about, but when I first started to learn what active listening was, and maybe it sounds shocking to people, but I was 28 before I really understood what active listening was.
Brian Mosley:And I had to be taught it.
Brian Mosley:It wasn't something I learned in high school or college or.
Brian Mosley:And looking back, it's like, man, how did I operate with friendships and with families without being good at this skill set?
Brian Mosley:No one really teaches you this.
Brian Mosley:And I think some people, it comes very naturally to them.
Brian Mosley:Some people, you, for example.
Brian Mosley:I think you're a very naturally empathetic person.
Brian Mosley:I was not.
Brian Mosley:I had to literally be taught.
Brian Mosley:But you can be taught.
Brian Mosley:It's a skill set like driving a car or anything else.
Brian Mosley:And so I'll never forget, I took my first sort of active listening class at HubSpot, and they were teaching this topic, and they spent a whole session on it.
Brian Mosley:And I remember I called my mom.
Brian Mosley:I didn't tell her, but I just, you know, asked her how her day was.
Brian Mosley:And I sort of had to really do something I'd never done before, which is like, really listen to what she was saying and try to articulate it back to her in a way that didn't sound like a robot and didn't sound repetitive.
Brian Mosley:I didn't use the same words.
Brian Mosley:I sort of told the story in more of a summary.
Brian Mosley:And then I started doing that with all my personal conversations.
Brian Mosley:I started making a mental note before that conversation that I was going to practice.
Brian Mosley:You can't get good at something unless you kind of practice it.
Brian Mosley:And.
Brian Mosley:And, you know, I.
Brian Mosley:I heard something from.
Brian Mosley:I think it was like either Jerry Seinfeld or Ray Romano, one of those comics that has clean sets where they don't swear.
Brian Mosley:They said that they had to stop swearing in their personal life in order to stop swearing on stage.
Brian Mosley:And I Think you have to practice these things in your personal life in order to get good at them at work.
Brian Mosley:And so when I would go on dates, I would even, I would even do this earlier in my, in my life and I would, I would listen to what the person next to me was saying and I would make a mental note to really try to unpack it in my brain, pay attention to it, and then sort of repeat it back to them throughout the course of an hour long type conversation.
Brian Mosley:Maybe it sounds silly and maybe.
Brian Mosley:And it wasn't disingenuous at all.
Brian Mosley:I was truly interested because I'm a very curious person.
Brian Mosley:I was truly interested in what my mom was saying, telling me about her, her doctor's appointment and her pickleball lesson and all these different things.
Brian Mosley:But I had, I was always doing something else when I was talking to her.
Brian Mosley:I'd be walking around my, my condo or I'd be thinking about 10 other things that I had to do that day.
Brian Mosley:And it wasn't until I made a specific choice and I was more deliberate about those different conversations with friends and family that I started to gain the practice that I could use those same skills on calls with prospects where it didn't sound forced and it was truly genuine.
Hannah:Yeah, one other thing, and I'm sorry, I keep on going, one other thing I learned from you, but it's true.
Hannah:As you're talking about active listening, the other thing that you always kept mentioning that goes hand in hand is never to make assumptions, never come into a conversation just assuming something, but ask the person and have them verify it or just be genuinely curious.
Hannah:But it comes back to what you said before.
Hannah:Putting something aside.
Hannah:That's always something I stress with the sales teams that I coach to now say, don't make assumptions.
Hannah:Like, don't come in and say, oh, they have read this thing or they have done this thing or they know this, whatever it is.
Brian Mosley:I have a great example that is.
Brian Mosley:You're totally right.
Brian Mosley:I think this goes back to what we were talking about earlier where like the things that you learn in elementary school, like how to be nice to people and how to talk to people, really on the American side, it's much different than the European side.
Brian Mosley:Right.
Brian Mosley:So like when you're walking down or when you talk to a business colleague and they say, hey, how's your day?
Brian Mosley:What do we say in America to that?
Brian Mosley:I'm like, hey, Hannah, how's your day?
Brian Mosley:What do we say?
Hannah:Great, how about you?
Brian Mosley:It's great, it's good.
Brian Mosley:How about you?
Brian Mosley:It's great.
Brian Mosley:Oftentimes sometimes in Europe, people aren't as friendly.
Brian Mosley:You know, they can be a little more direct.
Brian Mosley:And I remember once I was on a call with a prospect, with a woman, and I was like, how's your day?
Brian Mosley:We're starting a call.
Brian Mosley:She's like, it's great.
Brian Mosley:I was like, oh, because it didn't sound great.
Brian Mosley:She said, great, but it didn't sound great.
Brian Mosley:And I said, oh, what's great about it?
Brian Mosley:It doesn't sound great.
Brian Mosley:What was great about it?
Brian Mosley:And she paused and she kind of broke down and she was like, it's not great.
Brian Mosley:My dog is sick and my boss yelled at me.
Brian Mosley:And we're really down on our goals this month.
Brian Mosley:And going back to what you said, not making assumptions.
Brian Mosley:Don't make assumptions about how people are doing.
Brian Mosley:And even if they tell you one thing, you know, be skeptical, sort of dig in.
Brian Mosley:That's a very sort of silly, high level example.
Brian Mosley:But, but, but, but never make assumptions about like how people feeling or whether they read the content that you sent them.
Brian Mosley:And, and don't be afraid to kind of dig in a little bit and kind of get, get to the root of it.
Hannah:Awesome.
Hannah:Now, you already mentioned the Challenger Sale as a book that changed your outlook on sales.
Hannah:What is another book that you read in the last six to 12 months that has changed your life?
Brian Mosley:I read a book on this sailing trip by an author named Lori Gottlieb.
Brian Mosley:She wrote another book called Marry him the Art of Settling, which is like, actually the title's a little deceiving.
Brian Mosley:It's much deeper about like how people choose their partners.
Brian Mosley:I really like her writing style.
Brian Mosley:And so I read this book on the sailing trip called you'd should Talk to Someone, which, yeah, it's not a business book.
Brian Mosley:It's about her experience as a.
Brian Mosley:She's like a writer for out in Los Angeles and she a producer.
Brian Mosley:And then she eventually went to med school but didn't become a doctor and then became a therapist and then an author.
Brian Mosley:So she's this really impressive person who sort of got notoriety much later in her life and her career.
Brian Mosley:But she does a great job of storytelling.
Brian Mosley:And the book starts out with her kind of going through this really intense breakup with this person that she thought she was going to marry.
Brian Mosley:And she uses that to sort of weave this narrative and of like her journey when dealing with really difficult things.
Brian Mosley:So it's, it sounds sort of depressing, but it's actually a fun read and she's a really interesting person and I would recommend that book.
Hannah:Awesome.
Hannah:Thank you for that recommendation.
Hannah:So now if someone wants to get in touch, how would they go about doing that?
Hannah:I mean, whether it's to try out sailing or maybe they have a sales question.
Hannah:I don't know if you're open to that.
Hannah:But as a follow up to this conversation, how would they be in touch?
Brian Mosley:Yeah, well, I think they do what you did, which is you sent me a really nice loom video.
Brian Mosley:It was like 60 seconds.
Brian Mosley:It told me the background of the podcast and what you were hoping to get out of it.
Brian Mosley:And you.
Brian Mosley:You did some.
Brian Mosley:I mean, we've.
Brian Mosley:We've known each other, obviously, but if we didn't, you know, you kind of had my LinkedIn pulled up and you, you talked about a recent post that I made.
Brian Mosley:So I think that's definitely the best way to get in touch.
Brian Mosley:But, yeah, I mean, just, you know, LinkedIn.
Brian Mosley:I'm on Instagram, bmos14, I'm on Twitter.
Brian Mosley:And then you can go to SailTime.com and learn more about getting started sailing in New England or taking winter charters in the Caribbean.
Hannah:Well, I can't thank you enough.
Hannah:I am genuinely thrilled to have you on this on this episode, and I learned so much.
Hannah:We didn't really get to the respect part of the side of the story, but so many insights here.
Hannah:Truly appreciate it.
Brian Mosley:Yeah, the respect thing, let's just, let's cover that in one sentence.
Brian Mosley:Like, just don't be a jerk.
Hannah:I love that.
Hannah:That's a great finish line.
Hannah:Thank you so much, Brian, for coming on.
Brian Mosley:Thanks for having me.
