Harry Spaight – Selling With Dignity

If you ask some people, sales is a four letter word.  Some salespeople seem to uphold the stereotypes of the leisure suite wearing hustler.  

Harry Spaight, of Selling With Dignity feels there is a better way.  After working in some less than great jobs and being told to do less than great things to sell people, Harry decided there was a better way.

Listen as Harry explains how he helps train sales people to sell with dignity and actually make sales.  

This was a great conversation and will be sure to offer you some selling tips to keep your ethics and your sales way up.

Enjoy!

Visit Harry at: https://sellingwithdignity.com/
Authentic Business Adventures Podcast

Podcast Overview:

[00:02:41] Learning service led to successful sales career.
[00:04:03] Sales bullpen: overwhelming but profitable challenge.
[00:10:07] Quick car purchase, no dealership involvement.
[00:13:50] Sales under pressure, be consultative, not needy.
[00:15:14] Believe, work, and have faith.
[00:18:28] Get info by asking for help kindly
[00:21:48] Deal forecasting requires managing probabilities effectively.
[00:25:26] Forecasting is not as important as results.
[00:30:55] Building trust with bank account deposits.
[00:34:02] Brand is what people say about you.
[00:37:54] Podcast about business struggles, triumphs & sales.

 

Business Podcast Transcription:

James [00:00:03]:

You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the Business program that brings you the struggle, stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. We’re locally underwritten by the bank of sun prairie. If you’re looking for some downloadable audio episodes that can be found for free on the podcast, link found a drawincustomers.com. And today we’re welcoming, preparing to learn from Harry Spaight, the founder of Selling with Dignity, which I mean, can you do that, right? Harry, how is it going today?

Harry Spaight [00:00:30]:

It’s going great, James. What’s the good word for you?

James [00:00:34]:

Sales. Lo and behold, in the business world, nothing happens till sales made. Well, hell, that goes beyond just the business world, right? Why don’t you tell us, first of all, what is selling with dignity? I guess both the phrase and the business, and we’ll just go from there.

Harry Spaight [00:00:51]:

All right. So if you think about people who are stereotypical salespeople, they’re always selling, they’re very talkative. It’s always about them. They’ve got to hit their number. They’re the top producer for their company. They’ve got it on their business card. I am the complete opposite of that. So I like to refer to myself as the anti salesperson. I didn’t trademark that, though. But for a lot of people who don’t like sales and don’t fit in that personality type, there’s hope for you. Selling with dignity. This is my thinking for the day. Selling with dignity is the short version of it is self valued. Dignity for yourself. Right. Dignity for your client and dignity for the craft of sales, which is treat everyone well, do the right things for people, good things will happen. Interesting. How’s that sound?

James [00:01:50]:

That all sounds great to me.

Harry Spaight [00:01:53]:

Quite a concept.

James [00:01:54]:

Yeah. The question that comes to mind then is when did you get into this? Did you sell or get sold without dignity? And then you’re like, wait, we got to change this, or how did this.

Harry Spaight [00:02:05]:

Yeah, it’s a good question, and it’s really been a work in progress over the past two and a half decades. So prior to my sales career, I was selling of another type. I was doing mission work.

James [00:02:19]:

Oh, interesting. Okay.

Harry Spaight [00:02:20]:

Everything is sales in life, right? We’re selling since we came out of the womb, when we cried for our mama, we wanted to close that deal and throughout life. So I eventually I had a higher calling, supposedly, and I was adventurous. So my wife and I ended up living for a couple of years in the Dominican Republic.

James [00:02:41]:

Nice.

Harry Spaight [00:02:41]:

When we left that beautiful tropical paradise. And by the way, no resorts, so it was lots of outhouses, very little running water and limited electricity. So it was rustic, to say the least. But I learned a lot about serving people. And then when she dropped some line about, are we ever going to have kids? Oh, my goodness, I’m going to have to earn an income. So we came back to the States long story short, I got into sales, struggled, mightily realized that the best thing I had going for me was I knew how to serve people. Started applying that in sales instead of trying to be the closer the ABC guy always be closing and so forth. Just started serving people, and that stuff worked. Built a great career, got into sales, leadership, servant minded leading teams. That worked out really well, and so I wanted to pass that on to others.

James [00:03:43]:

All right, so what were you selling initially? That was more the ABC stuff.

Harry Spaight [00:03:48]:

Yeah, exactly. Are you familiar with The Wolf of Wall Street and Boiler Room and any of these movies where they show a sales bullpen?

James [00:03:59]:

Yeah, I don’t know anyone that’s listening to this. That is not okay.

Harry Spaight [00:04:03]:

So the sales bullpen is an interesting room, right? There’s a lot of testosterone, there’s managers, there’s a lot of yelling and maybe a couple of curse words here and there. So I went from the Dominican Republic with a little bit of a break for a few months into a sales bullpen. I was completely out of place. Completely. I mean, I was like, what did I get myself into? That kind of thing. So I was so out of place trying to figure out that am I supposed to be, like, running to the manager on every question? People were breathing next to me. People were listening. I mean, it was really gross for me in the beginning, but I enjoyed to embrace it, or I learned to embrace it and good things happen, but in the beginning, it was tough. And so I learned from that experience that I could separate myself from the pack, do the right things for people, and still be successful in spite of the surroundings of the bullpen.

James [00:05:12]:

All right, so were you selling investments.

Harry Spaight [00:05:14]:

Of some oh, I’m sorry, yeah, I was selling office technology.

James [00:05:20]:

Are you talking printers and copiers?

Harry Spaight [00:05:21]:

Printers and copiers, that was my world. I’ll cut it out.

James [00:05:26]:

Oh, yeah. I had a printer repair company and I worked as a technician for years.

Harry Spaight [00:05:31]:

Way.

James [00:05:32]:

I mean, we’re talking a long time ago. Yeah, but yeah, that’s savage business. I joked with people that it would be safer to sell crack than it would be to sell machines, office machines.

Harry Spaight [00:05:41]:

Because it was brutal. Brutal, brutal, no question about it. But it’s like, it’s really easy to separate yourself from the pack if you are true to your word, right. You follow up, you’re good to people, you do the right things for them. It wasn’t nearly as gross as it could have been.

James [00:06:01]:

Page counts. Page counts, right?

Harry Spaight [00:06:03]:

Yes. Oh, my gosh, count. Yes. That is so oh, my God, there’s so many stories we could go down that road, I’m sure.

James [00:06:11]:

So what made you or let me back up a step when you decided, hey, I don’t want to do it this way because I imagine the company of whatever kind it was was probably offering training. That was the ABC, right. Hustle and all that kind of stuff. I imagine they had.

Harry Spaight [00:06:28]:

Yeah. So they didn’t know what to do with me because I was a free spirit. I was older than my manager because I was in my mid 30s. My manager was still 20 something.

James [00:06:40]:

Wow, okay.

Harry Spaight [00:06:41]:

Right. Because that’s what they did. It’s a business model. They hire a bunch of kids out of college, in five years, they’re management, and seven or eight years are VPs. They’re still barely 30 years old. So basically, I just was tough to deal with. But I felt like, I can do this. I’m just going to have to do it my way. And I had plenty of conversations with my manager, who was really cool and just gave me some rope to hang myself, and thankfully, I didn’t.

James [00:07:15]:

So was he this particular he? She? I don’t know who it was.

Harry Spaight [00:07:18]:

Well, first it was a he who was a really calm, collective guy. But I felt like the smart thing to do was to complain about my manager to the owner, because you know how that goes over always well, and the owner actually took my side. He says, you know, you’re right. I’m going to let you work with someone else who is a lot more my style, personality wise, a lot more fun and had certain characteristics, like, didn’t have their collar sticking up. That was just like a complete embarrassment. It’s like I can’t even go out in a call with someone whose collar is sticking up. A person needs to go to a dry cleaner. So little joke, but that’s kind of the way it was. And then once I had it better not better, but a different style for me that fit perfectly. We knocked it out of the park.

James [00:08:07]:

Interesting. You know what’s interesting? You say that about the employees, the underlings, I suppose, complaining to the owner about the manager. I was thinking of that as an employee, but as an owner of a company, I love it when employees do that because they’re telling me stuff that I don’t know because I’m oblivious to it.

Harry Spaight [00:08:25]:

Right.

James [00:08:25]:

But as an employee, I can see and I’ve certainly been in a position when I was an employee that I’ve talked either owners or higher ups above the manager that was above me saying, hey, something needs to be fixed here. There’s one owner I can think of specifically. I didn’t want to hear it. So even though it was a problem, it was kind of see no evil, hear no evil.

Harry Spaight [00:08:49]:

Right.

James [00:08:49]:

So I can understand all the employees apprehensive.

Harry Spaight [00:08:53]:

Yeah.

James [00:08:53]:

Bringing employees of mine listening rock and.

Harry Spaight [00:08:56]:

Roll come to me, they’re still complaining about me.

James [00:08:59]:

Yeah, certainly. Yeah, me, managers, whatever. But I can understand where in some companies, it’s a roll of the dice.

Harry Spaight [00:09:09]:

Yeah, definitely. I didn’t know any better. I never was in a corporate position, but the owner was understood. And I’ve got my hand slapped a few times over the years for doing that. But it’s all part of who you are. And if someone is impacting how you go to market, maybe they’re corrupt, maybe they’ve got some challenges at home, who knows? And you want to succeed and make money. If stuff was getting in my way, I kind of let people know.

James [00:09:45]:

So interesting thing that I’m coming up with as we’re talking is that I feel like a lot of salespeople don’t mean to sell without dignity. They just don’t know another way. Or it may be easier for them to follow this script that may be somewhat shady than to go down the rose petals and unicorns way or something.

Harry Spaight [00:10:06]:

Yeah, well, thank you.

James [00:10:07]:

Thank you for I don’t know that I can tell you last time that I bought a car, bought a car at a dealership, used car. And he started to go into his pitch and I said, no, I don’t have time for that. I want the car. This is the price. Whatever paperwork you have to do, just knock that out because I’m coming to pick up the car. I don’t want to be there more than an hour. And it was one of those like we don’t have a way for you not to be here for 3 hours. Right. We got to sell you on all the other whatever they got, the warrant, the undercoating. Yeah, we got to put some rust proofing on the windshield or something, whatever it is. No, I just want the car because I buy cars from persons, people, not dealerships. Because it’s so much faster. Just give them the money, get the car and move on with your life.

Harry Spaight [00:10:58]:

Yeah, exactly.

James [00:10:59]:

So I wonder I’m assuming people don’t intentionally maybe this is an incorrect assumption. They don’t intentionally sell without dignity. They just maybe don’t know any better.

Harry Spaight [00:11:13]:

Yeah, and it’s real easy to fall into traps. And I’m not saying I am perfect along those lines by any stretch because I too have fallen into the traps that are out there and if you don’t feel good about it, you just stop doing it fair. So that’s kind of what I learned. It’s like that didn’t feel good, so I’m not going to do that again. Others go the opposite direction and they say, that was kind of easy. Let me see what else I could do.

James [00:11:43]:

Nice.

Harry Spaight [00:11:44]:

Major. I mean, people it’s crazy, but people will sign contracts for a customer. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across that, but I sure have. It’s like what were you thinking on their behalf? Kind of signing on the behalf of the customer. That’s immediate termination. Just nonsense. Right. But I don’t believe they ever started down that path. They didn’t start there, but after years they needed money. Things were there in a slump. They got away with something and then got away with something. Else. And then it’s like, oh, my God, how long have you been doing this? Is what the question. Because when you catch someone the first time, you wonder, was this the first time?

James [00:12:24]:

Yeah. It probably wasn’t like getting pulled over for speeding, right? This is the first time I’ve ever done it.

Harry Spaight [00:12:30]:

Yeah, that’s not a good excuse.

James [00:12:33]:

Yeah. I’m following my pregnant wife to the hospital right now. Right.

Harry Spaight [00:12:40]:

That’s not a good excuse either. Come on. I’ll try my I need to come up with new material.

James [00:12:46]:

Yeah, right. So you raised an interesting point, though. I can tell you from the years that I’ve been networking and stuff like that, you meet people. I always joke that networking events or groups seem to be a bunch of sharks trying to sell each other.

Harry Spaight [00:13:00]:

Yeah, that’s true.

James [00:13:01]:

And you can tell the people that are new ish in their business, they’re hungry, which is good, but they’re pushing hard. And I feel like the people that have been there for 10, 20, 30 years and they found some success, they don’t need it that bad because exactly. They’ve been fed, and so they can do things a little calmer, a little nicer. They really don’t need the sale. Like, if they make it great, that’s fantastic. If they don’t, that’s fine. I’ll move on with my life. Tell me yes or no, but I’m not going to deal with a maybe kind of thing. So I wonder if some of this is because people, they’re new, they’re hungry. It’s either sell or don’t eat, which I would definitely prefer to eat. I wonder if you find this in salespeople that are just newer to the industry.

Harry Spaight [00:13:50]:

Yeah, there’s all kinds of things that people will say and do when they’re under pressure. And there’s a book out called The Prosperous Coach by Steve Chandler. And Steve Chandler talks about the slimy salesperson in his book and in his podcast. He’s really a person that just so aligned with me as far as sales is concerned. Where was this guy? I mean, I would have completely aligned with Sally with Dignity. If you’re desperate, the prospect picks up on that, then you’re needy. And nobody wants to deal with a needy salesperson. Instead of being consultative and helpful, as in if you don’t need the business, you’re already prosperous, then, like being the prosperous salesperson or the prosperous business owner, if you’re already prospering, you don’t need the business. And Steve’s line is or one of the lines he used was, if I can think about it, he said that even when I was hungry, I knew the business would come. It just didn’t have to come from the person I was speaking to.

James [00:15:13]:

Oh, I like that.

Harry Spaight [00:15:14]:

Yeah. So powerful. So you have faith in that. You’re doing the right things, laws of the universe, reciprocation, God, whatever you want to call this. You do the work, you’re going to get fed. Right. You just have to believe. And then if you start doubting that and you become needy, that’s when people say, yeah, go away. They don’t. Exactly. When you’re needy, you become desperate. And then you’ve got to learn to handle that. I mean, I’ve been there. I understand. I think we all have to. You’ve got to do the right thing.

James [00:15:52]:

Yeah. I can remember trying to make a sale, and in my head it was already done. When the person says no, for whatever reason right. To a copy or a printer or something like that, you wanted to be like, wait, that doesn’t fit in my life plan for you to say no right now.

Harry Spaight [00:16:09]:

I already spent that money. Right.

James [00:16:12]:

Or just, yeah. I mean, I don’t know where the next person in the funnel is. Like, you were supposed to say yes to bide my time here a little bit.

Harry Spaight [00:16:19]:

Yeah, well, yeah. We go through those lessons without question.

James [00:16:24]:

Now, I can tell you I’ve heard no so many times that when you do, it’s kind of like great. It’s almost a relief because I like a no way. Better than a maybe or a summer.

Harry Spaight [00:16:34]:

Yeah, exactly. And then I just lost my thought. It was brilliant, though. I had a brilliant thought there, ladies.

James [00:16:43]:

And gentlemen, but it escaped insert brilliant thought here.

Harry Spaight [00:16:47]:

Right. Exactly. What else do we want to talk about?

James [00:16:52]:

So I was trained years ago in Sandler, sandler sales training, which I thought for the most part was good, very good. I wouldn’t necessarily consider it slimy.

Harry Spaight [00:17:03]:

No.

James [00:17:04]:

There were a few things every once in a while that I was like, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to ask that. But one of the things, I guess you mentioned the ABC, which is like, that’s the salesperson’s movie. Right. I can’t even think of the name.

Harry Spaight [00:17:17]:

Of it right now. Yeah. Glenn Gary. Glenn Ross.

James [00:17:18]:

Glenn gary. Glenn Ross. Right. Or even Wolf Wall Street.

Harry Spaight [00:17:23]:

Boiler Room.

James [00:17:24]:

I imagine there are tactics that are typical, normal, everyday, this is total slimy salesperson tactic. And then you have a counter tactic or a tactic like instead of this, do this. That would be considered more ethically viable kind of thing.

Harry Spaight [00:17:43]:

Wow. Yeah. All right.

James [00:17:46]:

Can you give us an example or some absolutely not. No.

Harry Spaight [00:17:50]:

Yes. I can sense you’re a guy that likes to chuckle a little bit. So do I. Yeah. So there’s a few things. One is the gatekeeper is the gatekeeper and you get through the gatekeeper. I was never comfortable with that. James, please. Making a call. James, please. Who’s this? Harry. Does he know you? No. Right. That’s not how you treat people.

James [00:18:18]:

No.

Harry Spaight [00:18:19]:

Those types of calls, I said I can’t do that. I’m going to have to say, hey, this is Harry Spate calling. What’s your name?

James [00:18:28]:

Right.

Harry Spaight [00:18:28]:

And I’d get the person talking and I’d say, hey, Mary, my real goal here is to chat with James. Is he available? By chance, he said, no, Harry, that’s impossible. I’m like, cool. I get it. Mary, to help a guy out, what would you say would be a good way to try to reach James? Does he, like, come in really early, or does he stay late? Does he like to get involved in the community before social media? Right. So I’d ask questions like that, and a lot of times not always, but a lot of times I got the he will be in very early, if you call it 730. He’s typically in the office or late in the afternoon or something like that. So I would get information and use that. But treating people like humans, that would be one nice thoughts. What do you think about that?

James [00:19:22]:

I think that I bought a lot of pens that had my company name on them by a guy that called me up, and he said he essentially just made friends with me.

Harry Spaight [00:19:33]:

Yeah.

James [00:19:33]:

He said, I’m going to tell you a dirty joke, and then I’m going to take 30 seconds more of your time after that, and if you want to hang up on me, you can, but wait till the joke is done. And he would tell me some dirty joke or some stupid joke. I can’t say stupid because they’re funny, but I can’t even remember what they were. But it was enough for just like, we both know what’s going on here. You want to put up a brick wall? I want to sell you something. Let’s just talk. Like, the brick wall is not that tall.

Harry Spaight [00:20:01]:

Yeah. I like it.

James [00:20:02]:

And it was human. And there were some times where I’m like, I already have 1000 pens. I’m good now. But he would call, I don’t know, once a month, something like that. And other times I would say, like, you know what? I got a trade show coming up. Let’s spread some wealth here.

Harry Spaight [00:20:19]:

Yeah, exactly. So the person used their personality totally instead of being the robot that follows this book. Page, chapter 23, page whatever this paragraph says, treat everyone like they don’t matter until you get to the decision maker.

James [00:20:37]:

Right. Oh, interesting.

Harry Spaight [00:20:38]:

Right.

James [00:20:39]:

There’s a book that says it.

Harry Spaight [00:20:40]:

Well, it’s basically the way you made calls.

James [00:20:44]:

Sure.

Harry Spaight [00:20:44]:

And I just didn’t look at people as I looked at people again, I tried this. I just wasn’t comfortable with it.

James [00:20:52]:

All right.

Harry Spaight [00:20:53]:

So when I wasn’t comfortable, I said, there’s a reason why I’m not comfortable. It’s not me. So I’m going to talk to this person that picks up, and I would say things like, how’s the day going? And management people are like, what are you doing? You’re not supposed to do that. It’s like, yeah, okay, well, get rid of me because I’m like a top producer. Right.

James [00:21:14]:

Best line ever. Get rid of me because I’m a top producer.

Harry Spaight [00:21:19]:

Yeah. So that’s why I mentioned that people didn’t know what to do with me because I had virtually no funnel. This is the other thing, right? You had to have, like, three, five, and ten times the funnel, whatever the numbers were back in the day, right? Three times your 30 day, five times your 60 day, ten times in your 90 day, whatever those numbers were. I had hardly anything in the funnel because I didn’t really lose deals.

James [00:21:47]:

All right?

Harry Spaight [00:21:48]:

Right. So when people were saying, we’re going to lose whatever, 70%, you get 30% of your deals, it’s like, that’s not good. No. So I would forecast someone that said, whatever, I’m forecasting $60,000 for this account, and they say, well, what if that one doesn’t come in? I say, Well, I’m not going to have anything. And it’s like, well, that’s unacceptable. And it’s like, okay, when the deal came in, it’s like, all right, so now what? I’m not getting extra pats on the back. But I knew I mean, I believe when the client said, we’re going to do it this month. And again, I learned from that. I had to manage teams, and I would ask the same question of people, what will you do if that one doesn’t come in? And not everyone has the I mean, it’s sort of like an athlete that turns into a coach, all right, where the athlete does things a certain way, can’t necessarily explain how they’re doing it, and then becomes a coach and gets really frustrated. Well, at first, I thought everyone when I started into management, I thought everyone was like me, and then I realized they’re not. And then I had to help people build a funnel differently than the way I built a funnel. So I started falling into this three times 30 thing is good because you’re only winning 25% of your deals is different than winning 80% of your deals, or whatever the numbers were.

James [00:23:18]:

Sure. Oh, you’re a huge point. Right?

Harry Spaight [00:23:21]:

Yeah.

James [00:23:21]:

When you just hurry up, get in the zone, catch the ball, whatever, and they’re like, how?

Harry Spaight [00:23:25]:

Yeah, exactly. Those numbers. I’m a very creative person. I know there’s creatives like me in sales versus and we’re all really anyone who’s an entrepreneur is creative, has to be ideas, right? Exactly. And so sometimes you just have to use your creativity as far as the human connection is concerned, and you get the buying signals, right? You get the messaging. I’ve learned to say things like.

James [00:24:02]:

I.

Harry Spaight [00:24:02]:

Hate to ask this question, but the company I work for, they ask about forecast. They want to know when I’m going to sell. That’s not me at all. But do you think this is going to happen in this month? Like, that people say, yes, Harry, or like, no, not a chance. It’s like okay, cool. Then you just keep building.

James [00:24:27]:

Right. One of the reasons that I think that I believe a lot of sales, let’s say less than dignified or less than ethically great ways people have to speak as a salesperson is to get the other people, the people that they’re trying to sell, to either come up with a decision or just give that salesperson an answer, even if it’s a no. Because I feel like some people, many people are just space cadets. Like, in that example, I feel like a lot of people that I’ve dealt with, they don’t know, they don’t know the answer because they’re so messed up on the back end that the answer doesn’t exist because even they don’t know the answer.

Harry Spaight [00:25:10]:

Right.

James [00:25:11]:

But they don’t want to admit that, harry, the back room is on fire. But I can’t tell you that. Or I can’t tell you that we’re on the verge of bankruptcy.

Harry Spaight [00:25:21]:

Exactly. We’re not making payroll. I’m not going to tell you that stuff. Right?

James [00:25:25]:

Right.

Harry Spaight [00:25:26]:

That’s where you got to connect the dots, all right? And if it’s not a hell yes, I love that line, right. You cannot predict it. Again, I was leading a team for a publicly held company. We had forecast meetings way too often, way too often, where it got to the point where it’s like the forecast is more important than the actual sales were. And I cracked up at what numbers came in at the beginning of the month in the forecast and what numbers came in at the end of the month, the end of the month, comparatively speaking. And some people are not even 50% of the numbers they forecasted, so it’s not even close, right? You can’t take that to the shareholders and say, we’re going to have an incredible quarter, because look at this forecast, it’s the results that matter. And I’m a common sense person, and so I used to have my own little janitorial business. I remembered that money was way better than promises. Like checks in my bank account were better than people that owed me money. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. I could cash one and buy stuff. The other one I’m like, what is it going to dream? And that’s what forecasting was to me. It’s like you’re trying to get the pats on the back, on the back from leadership, when what really matters is what you take home to your family, right? So that’s kind of where the way I looked at it. And so if I had reps that would forecast a ridiculous number, I’d say, how about we go with half of that? Can we get half of that? Oh, yeah, we’re locked in for half of that. It’s like, great. And if my forecast was blank, if it was less than quota, people would say, we forecast less than quota. It’s like, yeah, I’ll take full responsibility.

James [00:27:25]:

For that, all right?

Harry Spaight [00:27:27]:

And it’s just, you’re going to write the business, you’ll make up for it, but some months you’re going to have I love when people say month over month. We’ve grown every year, month over month, 20 years, whatever the number is, right? Not everyone’s like that. Not every business is like that. And you got to deal with some soft months occasionally. And what do you do in the soft months is you prospect like crazy so it doesn’t happen again in the near future, is the way I looked at it.

James [00:27:58]:

Yeah. It’s ebb and flows.

Harry Spaight [00:28:00]:

Yeah.

James [00:28:00]:

As long as you’re generally heading the correct direction.

Harry Spaight [00:28:03]:

Yeah, exactly. So people who are out there, how does this all apply to you? Is that you’ve got to have relationships with your potential buyers so that they can be honest with you. And if the more that they’re honest with you, you can say, what’s the timeline on this, James? Any thoughts as to what is working in your mind for this? And if you say eventually, Harry, I’m going to get to it, it’s really important to me. I’m just not 100% sure when. It’s like, how would you like me to follow up, James? Would you like me to touch base within a few weeks?

James [00:28:38]:

Great question.

Harry Spaight [00:28:39]:

Months. You’re doing this instead of walking away saying, well, he doesn’t know right now. I’m calling in a couple of days, like, do you know now? I want to take the pressure off. It’s not like I want to hear the word no. I want to know what I need to do next.

James [00:28:56]:

Right, so it’s a yes or a no or future commitment, one of those three.

Harry Spaight [00:29:01]:

Yeah, exactly. Or I’ve got work to do.

James [00:29:05]:

Yeah, right.

Harry Spaight [00:29:06]:

And then the work could be it’s like, I haven’t really they’re not buying into this yet, and sometimes that could be their need. Maybe it’s just I’m not doing a great job, but I’m asking those questions. It’s like I don’t feel it. And being honest with yourself there, does that help at all?

James [00:29:22]:

It does, yeah. One of the things that I’m going to ask a sales guru like yourself, because this is something that I often have a challenge with. And even a lot of students that I have in business planning classes I teach, they ask me, and I don’t have a good answer, is how do you get someone to trust you enough to be able to be honest with you? And that, of course, you just hang out with them for the next five years.

Harry Spaight [00:29:49]:

Yeah.

James [00:29:50]:

Every Wednesday, and then eventually they’ll trust you. But in sales, you have to expedite that, but you don’t want to come off as slimy.

Harry Spaight [00:29:56]:

Oh, my goodness. There’s lots of ways to do this, but it’s the little things, all right? Like, if you have an appointment at, I don’t know, 230 and at quarter of three, someone’s calling you saying, Where are you? Sort of like, what happened with you and I?

James [00:30:16]:

Details, all right?

Harry Spaight [00:30:18]:

A little humor, but you get the idea is that the little things matter. So if you’re showing up on time or ahead of time, you say you’re going to follow up, I’ll send you the email by close of. Business or by noon tomorrow. You do all of those little things. You say things like, you send an article that you say, I read this article, I thought of you. Or based on our conversation, I did a little research. I found this. You’re building up that, as Stephen Covey says, that emotional bank account.

James [00:30:54]:

Oh, nice.

Harry Spaight [00:30:55]:

Right? So you’re putting things in the bank account. So now the person is looking at it and say, this James guy has built up this history of putting stuff in my bank account. Right? He showed up on time. He was prompt. He was polite. He was respectful of my time. He gives me good information. He didn’t try to close me prematurely. He’s not constantly bugging me. He sent me a couple of articles. He actually referred me to someone in his network. It’s like, okay, so now you’ve got all of this versus the person that shows up late for a meeting, talks about themselves, says how great their product is and says, hey, can you trust me and tell me honestly what’s going on here? It’s like, no, everything is about you. I don’t care about you. I care about me. And you’ve done nothing for me other than try to sell your product. I got it a huge challenge. That’s why people go one of the reasons it’s so easy for people to start ghosting people because there’s no value, right? I get ghosted. I provide tons of value. I think I still get ghosted. How is the person that does nothing right? They’re going to get ghosted, I think, a little bit more often, and then people will resurface after they ghost and they say, I saw all your emails. I just got really busy. I apologize. Let’s do this right.

James [00:32:20]:

Oh, nice call.

Harry Spaight [00:32:22]:

You want versus, I don’t know, whatever happened to them?

James [00:32:26]:

Tell me. I’m going to challenge you a little bit, if you don’t mind.

Harry Spaight [00:32:29]:

Of course.

James [00:32:30]:

So this sounds like we’re selling bigger ticket stuff where the sales cycle is longer, right? $20,000 copier or $50,000 car, whatever.

Harry Spaight [00:32:40]:

Exactly, yes.

James [00:32:41]:

So what if you’re in a retail environment where you want to sell somebody, whatever, your little widget? Yeah, I was going to say a barrett, but I don’t know if people wear barrettes anymore. Whatever. A baseball hat or something. Something where you’re not just like, let me build rapport at the Walmart.

Harry Spaight [00:33:00]:

Yeah. Okay, so can you give me a scenario?

James [00:33:04]:

Let’s say I have a woman that was on the show. She sells used clothing. So people essentially trade clothing. Yeah. Okay, so people coming into her store essentially looking forward to change up their wardrobe, they’re going to bring in their old and then come back with somebody else’s old. Just they have something fresh for them. Okay, but the visit is going to be 20 minutes, half hour maybe.

Harry Spaight [00:33:29]:

Yeah, I would definitely be asking personal questions.

James [00:33:34]:

All right.

Harry Spaight [00:33:35]:

I would totally just like I’m going to be friends with everyone who comes in my store. This is going to be a place, like, people are going to love to come to, right? They’re going to say, this is the friendliest place there is. I’m going to be like the Uber driver that gets five stars. I want a five star review from everybody that comes in.

James [00:33:53]:

That would be more like an event. So it’s more like an event. Something you look forward to instead of a task. I have to go.

Harry Spaight [00:34:02]:

This is your brand. So is your brand. Jeffrey, who is that guy? The guy that sells books, occasionally started bookstore. Oh, Amazon. Jeff bezos that guy. Yeah. He knows the thing, right? Yeah. Okay. But he says your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. Okay, so think about that. What are people saying about your little second hand store? Second hand clothing store? Are they saying it’s awesome? I go there. The owner is incredible. She’s got tea for people that spend more than X. She’s got whatever, right? We talked about family. She knows my kids birthdays. It’s this. I’m going in and I’m doing a transaction. If you’re doing a transaction, mines will be online, even online, unless you got millions of people buying from it. But you can send thank yous. You can do a little automation and say, thank you for shopping here. It’s awesome. If you have any problems whatsoever, please contact me. Here’s our direct number, blah, blah, blah. But make it an incredible customer experience, in my opinion. No matter what.

James [00:35:13]:

I like it. I love it.

Harry Spaight [00:35:15]:

If I put on the spot, did I pass the test?

James [00:35:17]:

You totally pass the test.

Harry Spaight [00:35:18]:

Yeah.

James [00:35:20]:

You know what’s interesting? I think the customer service thing is well, I don’t think I know. I know the customer service thing is a challenge for a lot of people because they’re good at whatever it is that they do, but they’ve never been necessarily taught customer service, and maybe they’re just not aware of what ought to be nice. I don’t know. Customer service, to me seems to be pretty simple, but for a lot of people, even in business, I can tell. I don’t know, either they feel like they don’t need it, or they feel like they have it even though they don’t. It’s just one of those things. Like, if you’ve ever called a junkyard, you learn, like, don’t do that.

Harry Spaight [00:35:58]:

Yes, I have called many junkyards over the years. I’m a dy DIY person. Yes.

James [00:36:05]:

Yeah. What was your thought on the salesmanship customer service side?

Harry Spaight [00:36:10]:

Not good. Like, if you don’t get it here, we don’t care, right?

James [00:36:15]:

Yeah. Zero care.

Harry Spaight [00:36:17]:

Totally zero. We don’t care. There’s a whole bunch of other places go there, but don’t ask me any questions, and we’re not going to get the part for you out of the car. You have to do that yourself.

James [00:36:27]:

Let’s have the fun. Harry, I appreciate you being on the show, how can I should ask you really quick before we go, do you work with people one on one? Do you work with companies, group coaching.

Harry Spaight [00:36:38]:

One on one, whatever people need. So if I go to my website, Sellingwithdignity.com, you can download a few chapters of the book on Selling With Dignity and then I’ll have some little group coaching thing going on on the website. Or find me on social media. Yeah, but yeah, I’m all about helping people and giving away content. There’s zero bait and switch.

James [00:37:05]:

Oh, that’s rare.

Harry Spaight [00:37:07]:

Just keep giving. And there isn’t. I’m going to give you a little bit, then I’m going to ask you to spend ten grand. If you feel like, hey, this is the guy that can really help me get to the level I want to be at, then let’s chat. And if you feel like you just want free content from me, then let’s chat.

James [00:37:22]:

Oh my gosh, I love it. That’s what I do at drawing customers.com as well.

Harry Spaight [00:37:26]:

I love it. See, we’re put all out there.

James [00:37:29]:

If they want to spend money with you, that’s fine. If they don’t, I hope you took the content and you ran with it and it made you some money.

Harry Spaight [00:37:35]:

Exactly, yes.

James [00:37:36]:

Name of the game. Yeah, name of the game.

Harry Spaight [00:37:38]:

That’s why we’re so in sync here.

James [00:37:40]:

It works out. We’re just two smart people full of.

Harry Spaight [00:37:44]:

Dignity, former printer people.

James [00:37:48]:

We’ve seen the dark side.

Harry Spaight [00:37:49]:

Yes. We know what bad can be and we need to break free from it.

James [00:37:54]:

Yeah, amen to that. Amen. This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle, stories and triumphs and successes of business owners across the land. We are locally underwritten by the bank of sun. Pray if you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a big ol thumbs up subscribe, share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those slimy salespeople types. And best of all, coolest of all, if you could do us a huge favor and comment below. What are some of the sales tricks that you had to deal with, maybe Given, or the ones that you just loved? It when you heard that salesperson say to you and you said, you know what? I like this person. Good stuff. My name is James Kademan and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country on the web, at callsoncall.com and of course, the Bold business Book, a book for the entrepreneur and all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, Harry Spate, the founder of Selling With Dignity. Harry, can you tell us what that website is? One more time.

Harry Spaight [00:38:58]:

Sellingwithdignity.com.

James [00:39:01]:

It doesn’t get easier than that, right? Past episodes can be found morning, noon, tonight the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for watching. We’ll see you next week. Stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, Enjoy your business.

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